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.
*Democrats and climate groups "too polite" in fight against "malevolent" fossil fuel giants, says key senator [Sheldon Whitehouse].*
A judge ordered the deportation thugs not to arrest anyone without specific grounds about that person. Mere racial profiling is not enough grounds.
Here's how Angelenos have learned to respond to the daily raids.
Israeli Extremist "settlers" murdered a Palestinian-American who was visiting his family in the West Bank. After injuring him, they block medics from reaching him until he died.
They killed another Palestinian by shooting him.
The Australian government has jailed the Gazan grandmother of a family in Australia. The government says it did this because she is a security threat, but refuses to explain how that could be so. Two other people from Gaza were likewise jailed.
The government said it won't send them back to Gaza. Maybe that means it will send them to some remote prison island such as Manus Island.
*Gaza's healthcare system is being destroyed by targeted attacks.* Israel has killed 1400 medical personnel in Gaza, with persistent attacks against medical clinics and hospitals.
600 Israeli medical practitioners have signed a letter condemning Israel for the war crime of killing medical personnel in war.
The Australian government has named a "special envoy to combat antisemitism", choosing someone known for fervent support for Israel.
Usually a special envoy is appointed for Australia to influence other countries, but in this case it seems to be the reverse: a way for the Australian government to tell Australians to pay more attention to heed her repetition of Israeli policies that confound criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
[This plan] is the latest push to weaponize antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off.
*Labor Friends of Palestine concerned by [the "envoy"'s] recommendation government adopt IHRA’s contested [criterion for] antisemitism.*
The main author of that criterion said that it is not suitable for this purpose.
Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, says that the supposed "humanitarian city" on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp.
He also condemned Israel's government for supporting the organized campaign of pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank rejecting its denials of that support), and for committing war crimes in Gaza.
*US man arrested while filming Home Depot Ice raid sues government for $1m.*
Uniformed thugs have gone around brutalizing innocent people for decades, if not millennia. The US government used to impose rules on violent thug departments to keep their violence in check.
Now, by contrast, the bully encourages thugs to let their cruelest appetites run away with them.
(satire) WASHINGTON— *In a stunning security breach that reportedly left many top-ranking administration officials vulnerable to attack, the White House was evacuated Tuesday after the building’s trans alarm went off.*
*Family of US citizen beaten to death by Israeli ["settlers"] calls on [US government] to prosecute killers.*
I don't believe the persecutor would try to do that, or that he would care much about the murder of an American who wasn't his loyal supporter.
The DOPE's accusations of unemployment fraud are themselves a fraud. Many are records of claims that were denied years ago because they were found to be invalid.
Gazans who survived an attack while they were trying to collect food packages report that other nearly civilians were shot with targeted fire.
The deportation thugs told eight prisoners they were being transported to another deportation prison in Louisiana. This was a lie: they were being tricked into being deported to violent and dangerous South Sudan.
Such trickery should be punished as a crime. It is bad enough to be deported with some notice. Even people awaiting deportation have some rights, and deserve human decency. This lie denied them both.
US citizens: call on the Department of Veterans Affairs to pledge not to discriminate, for patients or for staff, based on political affiliation, marital status, or national origin.
Does anyone think the persecutor is so virtuous that we need not worry about this danger?
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per to reject all the efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
The wrecker has clever advisors who can write modifications that seem minor but will indirectly make a big change for the worse.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*"Tremendous uncertainty" for cancer research as US officials target mRNA vaccines.*
A substantial fraction of people get cancer. You could be one of them. The research they are canceling could have saved your life.
The 110 lawyers in the Federal Programs branch of the Justice Department have the job of arguing the legality of what the wrecker wants to do. Almost 2/3 of them have quit, apparently because they believe their job is defending the indefensible.
Heavy rain in New York City flooded highways and subway lines.
We knew that global heating would eventually cause New York City to be inundated, but now it seems that the city may become unlivable long before that.
Join a Good Trouble Lives On protest tomorrow, July 17th, to protest the ongoing, full-scale attacks on the civil and human rights of our country.
The protests are scheduled with the memorial of civil-rights champion John Lewis.
Millions of Americans are already protesting every weekend in virtually every city. This sends a strong message to our representatives. This is what democracy looks like.
The wrecker is quietly striking blows against rule of law in the US and other countries. He bullied Israel into pulling back from putting Netanyahu on trial. Now he seeks to order Brazil to letting coup-leading ex-president Bolsonaro go free. Lula refused to do that.
This is leading towards a personal alliance of right-wing despots against their countries. The democratic world needs to recognize that as the enemy of all.
*[The cheater's] Great American Heist You’re Paying For.*
Lula: *With the world in crisis, many say end globalization. I say that would be a mistake.*
I more or less agree. We need to reorganize global trade so that it doesn't put plutocrats in a dominant position, not abolish it.
*Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats How Not to Take the Bait [of a false choice on a hot-button issue].*
Vienna presents an example of policies that don't crush people who rent housing.
This is to remind people that the term "IP" is poisonous propaganda. It was coined to lead people to lump various laws together and assume they are basically similar. That is false! Please reject that term so as to avoid spreading that confusion.
People sometimes respond to ask which term they should use instead, to refer collectively to all those laws. That is a misguided question! Because the laws are so different, it is a mistake to generalize about them at all. So don't do that! Talk about one law at a time, and don't lump other unrelated laws with it.
US citizens: call on the bully and Bondi to stop threatening NYC's mayoral election.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop pervasive surveillance through Palantir.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Why is Mr Unamerican in such a hurry to attack human rights and democracy?
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Block the Bombs Act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Democrats should condemn the wrecker's wild and destructive use of tariffs but must refuse to support the demand from business to make international trade completely easy.
Tariffs can be effective for promoting specific industries in a country, but the tariff plans the US has adopted in recent years have been foolishly designed.
I object to the way the author uses the word "liberal", meaning "in favor of letting businesses do whatever they like". That is not what liberals stand for when we had political influence, and it is not what Liberals stand for now. Liberal policies adopted in the 1960s and 70s included Medicare, Medicaid, prohibiting racial discrimination, protecting voting rights, protecting the air and the water, protecting endangered species, and protecting workers from injurious working conditions. You can tell from the way the right-wing Supreme Court has attacked these that they do not bow to business.
Wildflowers growing on contaminated soil can absorb arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead from it, and pass them on to bees. It damages the bees' memory, which can wipe out the hive.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge each one to protect the funding for public media.
Here's a suggested script that I am passing along with changes. Of course, you can say what you wish to say.
Hello! My name is [First Name]. I'm a constituent and am calling to
ask Sen. [Name] to oppose any action that cuts funding
to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Public media are among our nation’s most important media, with
overwhelming support among people from all 50 states and all political
leanings.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: write to Palantir's board of directors and call on them to explain what they are doing with personal data from the US government.
In my letter I called on Palentir never to process that data together with any personal data obtained in any other way. That would include, for example, location data.
I used the following Subject field:
You must tell us what Palantir is doing with personal data from the US
government and NEVER process it together with any other data you have.
I used the following message body:
Others are demanding that Palantir be transparent about what it does
with personal data from the US government. I join in that demand, but
that does not go far enough.
Palantir must never combine, or process together, any of that
government data with any other data it has or obtains about people.
To do so would establish a China-like system of total repression.
I want to be able to continue to love my country. I want it to remain
"the land of the free and the home of the brave." I hope you don't
want Palantir to be responsible for converting the US into a place
that people must flee for their freedom's sake.
Sincerely,
It is most effective if you write your message in your own words. If you are in a demographic that tends to support the bully, it is good to mention that.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Iran is deporting 4 million Afghan refugees in a hurry. Many are single women, who under Afghanistan's repressive laws can't even leave the border post.
With their prospects, death is an escape. Why, I wonder, do they obligingly walk to the border post, when they could instead drop on the ground and say, defiantly, "You can carry me or you can kill me"?
There may be other opportunities to fight their guards, for those who would rather die fast than be driven to death or slavery.
Australia wants some of its oldest rock art to be listed as a World Heritage site.
Advisors say Australia should first end industrial development and damaging air pollution, and then it could be listed. I agree Australia should end those, but I wonder if the committee could issue conditional approval.
Charges against Mario Guevara have been dropped. When brought to court, they proved to be garbage.
*Bangladesh's ousted leader Sheikh Hasina has been formally charged [in Bangladesh] with crimes against humanity after being accused of ordering a deadly crackdown against anti-government protests last year that left more than 1,400 people dead.*
Greg Palast: Tesla stays afloat as a seller of greenhouse gas offsets.
*So, my dear green friends, when you buy a Tesla, you're not reducing your carbon footprint by a quarter inch, because Musk is selling your good intentions to General Motors so they can pollute more.*
*The corrupter's inaugural fund got $19m from fossil fuel industry, analysis shows.*
The corrupter used the electoral fund as an opportunity to pressure the rich for bribes.
If we ever win back democracy, we should make it illegal for any elected or appointed official to raise funds for anything similar in spirit to an inaugural fund. If its purpose is per glorification, perse must have no direct relationship with its operations, with its fund-raising, or its money.
The US saboteur in chief deleted the web site that published national climate assessments, including the most recent one which is from 2023. A copy of that is available here.
Much worse, he has shut down the preparation of the next edition, due in 2027. This will surely please his sponsors, the fossil fuel companies.
Scotland is in drought, due to global heating, and the government has asked people to limit water usage.
That is the right first step, but to avoid making things worse they must use less fossil fuel.
People in part of Texas have suffered a disaster that they partly brought on themselves. That includes the flood itself — many years of voting for climate denialists have permitted more global heating and that enabled the flood. And it includes the wrecker's efforts to weaken and abolish FEMA.
How should we express our disgust for those political policies in relation to the resulting non-natural disasters?
A doctor in Texas wished for Republican voters in the flood region to suffer the bad consequences of their votes. That is not the right ethical position.
Many Kerr County voters are getting the consequences most of them voted for — but we should be sad for that, not wish for that. Their votes were foolish because of their bad consequences; we should regret both those foolish votes and their bad consequences.
People get the government their behavior deserves, but people always deserve good government.
We can say that people brought disaster themselves without wishing for disaster to harm them. We can wish that they learn to make wise decisions without wishing for a disaster so "to teach them" that lesson.
Moreover, disasters don't always get people to be compassionate towards each other.
Meanwhile, while she was being fired for wishing that right-wingers suffer the harm they have caused, a group of right-wing fanatics seek to impose that harm on non-right-wing Texans.
*The Private Prison Industry Looks Forward to Soaring Profits Thanks to [the persecutor]'s Budget.
Senator Whitehouse accused *Democrats and climate groups [of being] "too polite" in fight against "malevolent" fossil fuel giants.*
I agree. The planet-roasters have grounds to know that they are risking destroying civilization and most living humans for their own profit. We don't owe them the benefit of the doubt.
Asian friends of the US are aiming to increase their trade with China as a replacement for the US.
This is a natural consequence of the bully's tariff threats.
Cory Doctorow: Instead of retaliating towards US tariffs with its own Tariffs, it should retaliate by repealing the Canadian equivalent of the DMCA. And it should follow up by publishing jailbreaks for various US companies that are jails.
Doctorow argues that that would do far more harm to oppressive US companies that sell people jails, including Apple, Google, John Deere and car companies, and would avoid raising prices for Canadians.
I criticize the article's choice of terminology. When talking about copyright laws such as the DMCA, it refers to them by the over-general and vague term "IP". That term is always an overgeneralization and we should never use it.
It also refers to digital handcuffs as "digital locks". The most important thing about DRM and other digital handcuffs is that they are fundamentally unlike locks.
Locks, in general, are not nasty or unjust in that way. The lock on your door doesn't oppress you — because you have the key. Your password is a lock on your computer that does not oppress you because you choose and you have the key (password) to open it.
Protecting your control over your home or your computer is not an injustice.
The systems that companies use to restrict what you can do with your computer are handcuffs, not locks. The handcuffs are unjust towards you because the companies put them on you.
Digital handcuffs are an injustice because they give a company control. If we call them "locks", that tends to legitimize them — so let's not!
Some of America's best academic researchers are being chosen for the chance to move to a French university.
300 researchers have applied, but there are only 38 finalists. I don't know how many will actually be chosen, but I would estimate not more than 10. What will the others do?
140 EPA employees who signed an open letter criticizing the management *dismantling the EPA office of research and development, canceling environmental justice programs and grants, making employees fearful, undermining the trust of the public, and "ignoring scientific consensus to protect polluters."*
In other words, of acting against its official mission.
Those administrators suspended those employees and said, "The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration's agenda…"
And when the "administration's agenda" is to make the EPA fail totally, who then ought to be suspended?
Journalist Mario Guevara was arrested covering a protest, and handed to the deportation thugs. A judge ruled to release him on bail, but the thugs are playing silly games to keep him in jail.
Project 2025 seems to have planned a general campaign to probe the law at every possible weakpoint, seeking ways to negate people's legal rights. Among those, the authority of judges to order officials to correct their abuses.
Amazingly, US immigration persecutors were able to see the case for mercy for Mandonna Kashanian, an Iranian student who was stranded in the US when the Islamic revolution took power. Her family mobilized people in her community to convince their congresscritter, who had influence with the deportation thugs.
Her name leads me to speculate that she may be of Armenian ethnicity and not Muslim. That would be a reason why returning to Iran would have implied oppression.
The fact that it is possible gives reason to hope they might feel the stirrings of human decency more often.
Salafi Arabia executed over 100 people in 2024, and over 100 people in the first half of this year, for nonviolent drug offenses.
According to Amnesty International, the trials are inadequate as proof that the accused even committed those crimes (though perhaps some did so).
The Big Bad Bill will kill many renewable energy projects, which will make electricity substantially more expensive a few years from now. To compensate for this, the saboteur in chief plans to subsidize existing fossil-fuel generating plants.
*Democratic senators introduce bill to prohibit [deportation thugs] from wearing masks.*
I don't think many Republicans will vote for this, but their opposition could show people how slavish and cruel they are.
The use of toxic sewage sludge as fertilizer produces crops that contain small amounts of many different chemicals, some of which are toxic.
What is not known is whether the amounts of various chemicals present in actual food is a significant danger to people who mostly will die anyway before reaching the age of 100 years. Each chemical poses a separate question.
One lesson of this, which I've stated before, is that we must absolutely reject the idea that a company has a right to conceal data about its processes and outputs that is pertinent to public health. A government of the people, by the people, for the people tells companies, "Document what we need to know, or shut down."
Lawyers are trying to prove in court that the deportation thugs are using wanton violence against whoever they encounter, citizens or not.
The US measles epidemic is petering out, after around 1270 known cases. There may have been hundreds of thousands more cases not reported.
This is what used to happen every year when I was a child. Every year, 400-500 people died from measles in the US. The article does not say how many developed a weakened immune system or lasting disability, but I'd expect it was in the thousands.
All of that could be coming back — but we could avoid that by kicking out the trumpets.
*Governments are not powerless in the face of deep sea miners colluding with [the wrecker].*
The US travel warning for South Sudan says "Do not travel" and warns people to make a will first if they do go there. But the persecutor had 8 people deported there, a country they did not know, after lying to them about where they were being taken.
The US deportation thugs feel no obligation of decency or proportionality. Now that they have got away with deporting people to South Sudan who don't know that country or its culture, can't speak the language, and mostly don't adhere to the dominant religion there, and cannot make a living there, they will try to expand the practice to include people who had no criminal records, are entering with apparent permission, and get refused incomprehensibly at the arrival airport.
Joseph Stiglitz: *[The bully] bullied Canada over "digital taxes" — and Ottawa submitted.*
It's too bad, because these would have meant more taxing of companies that are dangerously powerful.
*Palestinians fear razing of villages in West Bank, as [colonizers] circle their homes.*
(satire) *Insecure Woman Doesn't Like Eating In Front Of Surveillance State.*
The land under the Alaskan village of Kipnuk is slowly eroding and buildings are falling into the ocean. The sadist's men have just canceled the climate adaptation grant that was going to pay for a retaining wall to protect it.
Many such grants have been canceled. The victims are suing.
Robert Reich explains why the wrecker is trying to crush universities and make them submissive agents of his control over thinking.
All the parties in Britain believe that the people don't care about climate defense, so they can abandon the effort. This article argues that they are mistaken.
If you recognize that the survival of civilization depends on curbing global heating, so failure is likely to kill billions, you will realize that you must do that even people fail to demand it.
The US put sanctions on Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories. The report inculpates Alphabet/Google, Facebook/Meta, and Microsoft, plus others in various countries.
US citizens: call on all Democratic candidates to pledge not to accept oligarch money.
*UN Gaza investigator Francesca Albanese says US sanctions against her a sign of "guilt".*
I don't think what the persecutor feels is guilt, as such. He seems to be impervious to the moral self-criticism that is essential for avoiding wrongdoing. I think he realizes that the condemnation will carry weight with the public, and lead some to despise him, so he seeks to silence or discredit those critics.
A billionaire who switched from supporting the Tories to supporting Labour evidently thought he was joining Tory Lite. Now he is worried that Starmer might get the idea he is head of the Labour party.
George Monbiot: Attacking the poor creates a power base for right-wing fanatics when "centrist" plutocratists are in power, they do this; when the fanatics get into power, they can continue doing it.
In Europe, as in the US, governments have encouraged and fed the corporate takeover of housing. This is the root cause of unlivable prices.
Europe spent the "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War mostly on tax cuts and mostly for the rich. It can rearm and protect the non-rich now by returning tax levels to previous levels.
I suggest putting a withholding tax on business's payments to stockholders and creditors, which for EU taxpayers would count as withholding towards their personal tax payments. Non-EU taxpayers would not be able to get it back.
*Tesla asks NHTSA to hide its response to Robotaxi questions.*
Businesses employ people but they are not people. They are not entitled to keep secrets from the public in matters that rightly concern the public's well being.
*UK bosses to be banned from using NDAs to cover up misconduct at work.*
This is a step forward, but it should go further. Businesses should not be allowed to compel employees to cover up harm to the public either.
The UK is considering abolishing jury trial for some subset of criminal charges.
If the system is "collapsing" it is probably traceable one way or another to budget cuts, made "necessary" by tax cuts for the rich.
Economic forecasting predicts that the changes that the Labour Left forced on Starmer will convert a predicted increase in poverty into an predicted decrease.
That's good, but will it last? Some other change that hurts the non-rich could convert the positive forecast into negative again.
The US suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine, claiming that its stockpiles of weapons were running low. However, there is no evidence that such a thing is happening — that justification seems to be just bullshit.
A Canadian woman has been living in the US since childhood, with her husband and their children, without official authorization. Her husband voted for the persecutor, and now that his wife has been targeted for persecution, he says he regrets his vote.
*The UN is our best defense against a third world war. As [the wrecker] wields the axe, who will fight to save it?*
Adapting to dangerously hotter summers can fit in with reducing greenhouse emissions, funded by taxes.
The author speaks of taxing the worst polluters, but drivers in aggregate are among the worst and the less wealthy of them can't afford to pay more tax. However, subsidizing fossil fuel for them undermines decarbonization. A solution which avoids undermining it is to give poor people a payment they can use as they wish. They can all use it, and it preserve for each of the incentive to switch away from fossil fuels.
Why are the British so concerned about fly-tipping? Does an upside-down fly have difficulty getting back on its feet? Are flies now delivering food to diners' tables?
20 years ago, the economic powers started working together to "make poverty history" around the world.
Since then, governments have abandoned that goal. Now they are adopting policies to increase poverty in their own countries.
Rebecca Solnit: *Did National Weather Service cuts lead to the Texas flood disaster? We don’t know.*
It is clear that the wrecker's cuts to science, and in particular NOAA including the NWS, will do harm again and again. But we can't take it as certain that they was responsible for how bad the damage was this time.
On the other hand, we know that the planet roasters' resistance to decarbonization caused this flood to be worse.
We also know that their current resistance will lead to more and worse floods, as well as to more and worse fires, and to inundation of many coastal cities, large and small, around the world.
Israel's Orwellian language for many aspects of the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Israel has openly announced a plan to force all Palestinians out of Gaza, confirming the intention that many have suspected.
The first step in the plan is to concentrate the population of Gaza in one camp on the ruins of the border city of Rafah. Even worse, it is explicit that this is part of a plan whose goal is to expel them.
If the world does not quash this plan, it will be rip up the restraints that still partly discourage crimes against humanity around the world. Other states are likely to follow this example, expelling populations much bigger than Gaza's, perhaps into deserts where they will die. In the probable age of hunger, a few decades from now, tens or hundreds of millions may be eliminated in bulk by a single command.
Israel labels each act or tool of cruelty with the word "humanitarian". This appears to be a campaign to inure people to hypocrisy, aiming to poison that word and make it hard to describe actual humanitarian actions.
A heat wave in central Europe is hindering shipping on the Rhine and Danube.
This has happened before. Sometimes shipping nearly came to a halt. The problem is a consequence of global heating and it is getting generally worse.
Zohran Mamdani attacked with a dishonest political hatchet job.
Zohran Mamdani was born in Uganda. Hie parents are of Indian ancestry, and his father was a Ugandan of Indian ancestry. So when he applied to Columbia University, he checked the boxes for Indian and African.
So far, so reasonable, but various political enemies (starting with the New York Times) are trying to spin this as a serious scandal. What they are actually proving is how untrustworthy they are.
The government of India demands the handover of ancient jewels excavated from a stupa along with (reportedly) some of the ashes from the cremation of the Buddha.
We know what the Buddha would say about this, if he were alive today.
Such attachment to material objects, such as jewels, or what remains of a person's dead body, will only cause suffering. I advise you to stop venerating me, and focus the wisdom I passed on to you: meditate on the impermanence of human life.According to my nonreligious ideas of right and wrong, I think that the Government of India made a reasonable and ethical deal with Pappé: to keep the bulk of the jewels, demonstrating the range they span, in a museum as it should be, and letting Pappé have 1/5 that were not special. There are no grounds to reopen that deal.
Stupas, like other ancient sites, are heritage of humanity for the knowledge that can be learned from them, and should only be excavated by skilled archeologists who can learn from them the most possible knowledge about ancient times. But that was not an option in the 1870s.
Can an intern do multiple tasks?
Melting ice encourages volcanoes underneath to erupt. Oops!
60% of Honeybees in the US died last winter, killed by he varroa mites which spread various diseases among the bees.
*ICC issues warrant for Taliban's supreme leader for persecution of women.*
Hooray! Even though it isn't likely that he will be arrested and brought to the court for trial, this will still have good effects on the world.
The security detail for the prime minister of Sweden ran and rode their bikes to and from work shifts, and allowed a personal surveillance app to track them. This allowed the public to track the prime minister's movements.
I gather that publishing where users run or ride is a documented feature, not a bug or a documented malfeature. If humans were infallible, the fault would be entirely on the guards who used it. But since humans are fallible, the system is at fault also.
Don't be a sap,
Avoid the app!
Just as the bully's followers are attacking anyone that they can describe as antisemitic, the bully himself uttered an indisputably antisemitic slur. Can he be deported for that?
Britain's repression of protest becomes more vicious, as we might expect. 20 protesters face prosecution and perhaps 14 years in prison for carrying signs stating support for the banned "terrorist" organization, Palestine Action.
The declaration that Palestine Action is a terrorist organization declares an absurd (and false) exaggeration to be true. The prosecution of the sign-carriers, if that goes ahead, will use that false "truth" for tyranny, and threaten even more tyranny.
I expect that the judge will forbid any discussion, in the trial, of whether Palestine Action really is terrorist -- to insist that the declaration replaces the truth.
Advice to protesters on how to overcome the magats' usual attacks and build a movement that goes beyond protest.
Although I am not an expert, it seems rational to me.
US citizen and Israeli citizen Eran Zelnik: *I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By [the fascist leader's] logic, I’m a terror supporter.*
He compares the current US regime in detail to the Nazi regime that his grandparents fled, and then asks Kash Patel (head of the FBI), "Do you want to arrest me?"
NYC's Democratic primary demonstrated the superiority of ranked choice voting.
The EU is investigating whether Google Search's "AI" Overviews are anticompetitive.
* A former FBI agent who allegedly shouted "kill ’em!" at law enforcement during the January 6 insurrection is now advising a "weaponization working group" in the "justice department".
Genetic evidence that air pollution provokes development of lung cancer — and faster aging of telomeres.
Canada is considering a cruel and dangerous immigration and surveillance bill.
The immigration part would permit officials to cancel visas arbitrarily and ban arbitrarily any pathway for people to reach Canada to ask for admission. No appeal is allowed.
Furthermore, people arriving across the border where there is no crossing point would have just two weeks to apply for asylum. What does such harshness serve?
The immigration minister has admitted that all this is a surrender to pressure from the bully.
The surveillance part would make it easier for cops and prosecutors to get access to people's communication metadata without a warrant. It includes an almost unlimited exceptions for emergencies; perhaps it would be acceptable if it stated more concrete limits, or if it prohibited the state from retaining such surveillance data more than 2 weeks if it has not by then obtained a warrant covering that same data.
The EU seems to be abandoning its leadership in curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Bhutan expelled 100,000 members of an ancestrally Nepali minority group into India, They went to refugee camps in Nepal. Many were later allowed to move to other countries including the US. Some have been deported from the US for various alleged crimes, but the US doesn't check that Bhutan will allow them entry (it does not). So they go to Nepal, but the refugee camp won't let them return, and Nepal does not believe, or does not care, that they formerly lived there.
Now Nepal insists on deporting them to Bhutan, and officials seem unwilling to face the fact that Bhutan won't allow them in.
A court ordered that Ward Sakeik not be deported, and deportation thugs tried to deport her anyway.
*Droughts worldwide pushing [around 100 million people] towards starvation, says report.*
This looks like the beginning of what we know global heating will produce: a permanent inability for some regions to sustain their current populations. To stabilize the population of endangered regions with birth control and abortion is urgent, if we want to prevent megadeaths from doing so.
The article's actual title said "tens of millions", but those words are misleading since the article's text says "more than 90 million". In the absence of a basis to know it is closer to 90 than to 100, the best rough approximation is 100 million.
Many BBC journalists rebuke the BBC for refusing to present the facts that would shed a critical light on Israel's war crimes. For instance, its refusal to show the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which it had commissioned, apparently because of the truth that that documentary would demonstrate.
Another pertinent issue:
I am obliged to point out that authorized distribution of BBC video
programs on the internet is wrapped in DRM, which is
an
injustice in
itself.
The article talks about other channels that distributed the documentary in the UK, after the BBC finally rejected it. I suppose that their internet distribution is afflicted with DRM too, meaning no less subjugatory.
I hope you will join me in refusing to use anything that imposes DRM on published works. Let's make DRM a felony!
However, you can find textual explanation of the same facts in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0xp969n69o and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/24/new-details-on-killing-of-paramedics-in-gaza-appear-to-contradict-idf-account
*How Mamdani connects climate policy to his affordability agenda as he runs for New York mayor.*
Daily Kos, the organization, has been notified that the US government is investigating it for un-magat activities, but with no specifics about why.
Here it explores what the alleged grounds might be.
*Key climate change reports removed from US government websites.*
The wrecker is not merely uncooperative with efforts to curb fossil fuel; he seems to be doing everything possible to ensure global gigadeaths.
UK universities are getting advice from a specialist law firm on how to obtain year-long protest bans.
Cardiff University obtained a ban his way. Other universities that registered for the webinar include Reading, Exeter, Northumbria, Hertfordshire, Birkbeck, Bath Spa and Liverpool John Moores
If you are or were a student at one of them, you might want to inform the university that this or other opposition to traditional political freedom puts you off any will to donate to that university.
*New York lawmakers [including Zohran Mamdani] relaunch bill to stop charities funding Israeli settlers.* The bill would also prohibit donations to Israeli military units operating in Gaza.
About the "donations" in question.
Mamdani is currently a member of the state assembly, and is the Democratic nominee for mayor of NYC.
Mackerel in the Northeast Atlantic are overfished, and numbers are shrinking.
*Big tech's new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areas.*
A government that considers people important will prohibit the operation of a datacenter if there is a shortage of water in the region when it is operating.
Greenpeace is suing the pipeline company Energy Transfer under the EU's anti-SLAPP directive
The lawsuit against Greenpeace clearly is a SLAPP. It was meant to distract attention from the danger of river-polluting pipeline leaks, the broader danger of deadly floods and fires, and the longer-term danger of collapse of civilization from global heating.
i wonder how an EU court has jurisdiction over it, though. The protests were in he US, the SLAPP lawsuit is in the US, and Energy Transfer is in the US.
Some US states have anti-SLAPP laws, but North Dakota is rather right-wing so it probably does not have one.
The US deportation thugs have rules and procedures that systematically result, occasionally, in jailing US citizens and even deporting US citizens. Part of the cause is racial profiling, but fixing the operational rules would prevent most of these.
The UK has been pressuring various mostly autonomous colonies which are tax havens for decades to keep track of corporate profits that flow through them to anonymous owners, but it isn't pressing hard enough to make them change anything.
Ralph Nader presents the wrecker's three overall goals — riches, vengeance, and permanent plutocracy — and relates them to his specific acts of destruction.
I think that the word "vengeance" is not adequate for the second of these goals. Its targets are not limited to personal rivals or enemies; he aims to crush everyone who was on the other side, politically, and support those who were on his side.
The Social Security Administration sent (some) recipients a letter whose only purpose was propaganda to praise the Big Bad Bill.
Part of the claimed benefits were false, of course. Never suppose that magats are telling the truth.
US citizens: call on state legislators to reject any calls for an Article V convention.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on California Attorney General Rob Bonta to protect journalists covering the LA protests.
*[Deportation thug] raids leave crops unharvested at California farms: "We need the labor."*
Beyond the obvious irony of this, I note that the wrecker hates California and seems to look for any way to cause harm there. This may part of the purpose of the raids, rather than collateral damage.
Mamdani's margin of victory over Cuomo was 12% — Cuomo was not even close.
The persecutor has ordered a sweeping campaign to try to cancel the citizenship of naturalized citizens. One of the possible grounds, lack of "good moral character", could be stretched out of all recognition by partisan judges. Even when the victim has a good chance of winning, perse may lack the funds for a lawyer.
Magats plan to try to strip Mamdani of US citizenship to stop him from winning the mayoral election. This would take a lot of stretching plus a double standard.
Is it required that the mayor of NYC be a US citizen?
Israel confiscates supplies from doctors visiting Gaza. When volunteer doctors try to visit Gaza, Israel confiscates items such as baby food and surgical equipment. It is also very fussy about whether a doctor is allowed in.
In particular, doctors who talk to the media after they leave Gaza are blocked from visiting Gaza again — blocked at nearly the last minute, so there is no chance to find replacements for them.
This reduces the number of doctors in Gaza, and interferes with main remaining channel for news reporting coming from people who don't live in Gaza.
The EU needs to act to thwart Orbán's suppression of human rights in Hungary. He targeted the queer minority first, to prove that no one's rights are safe in Hungary; soon he will extend that suppression to all dissent.
The abolition of USAID is estimated to be likely to kill 14 million people by 2030.
The saboteur in chief's cuts to the weather bureau forced it to shut down at night, and reduced the available data to compute forecasts from. This interfered with forecasting tornadoes and flash floods.
*Tracking sea ice is "early warning system" for global heating — but US halt to data sharing will make it harder, scientists warn.*
While the bullshitter is the enemy of trust, the muskrat is the enemy of empathy.
*Here’s what the Democrats can learn from Zohran Mamdani.* An active supporter reports on what she heard from voters as she canvassed for him.
Arguing that the enormous level of lead air pollution in Tacoma, Washington, was responsible for the cluster of several killers who grew up there.
The UK government is considering more facial recognition in public places.
Also robot prison guards, and implanting tracking devices in people's bodies.
Idea: name big storms after fossil fuel companies and manufacturers of SUVs.
The article focuses on Britain, but the idea makes sense globally.
After a long delay, people in a small part of France received an official order for certain vulnerable people should avoid drinking tap water, due to presence of PFAS in the water supply.
The warning focused on babies, pregnant women and the immunocompromised. That decision is based on caution, which has some rational basis. But actually, no one knows how much harm various PFAS are likely to do to those people, or to other people. We have reasons to think they might do harm, but we don't know. There are hundreds of different PFAS, and no one knows what effects each one might have.
Collecting statistics on exposure to each one, and on the medical problems that develop at various exposure levels, is likely to take decades.
When Israel bombed Evin prison, used by Iran for political prisoners, some of them were killed. Afterward, Iran moved many others to other prisons where conditions are more painful.
Iran's government is not necessarily doing that to punish the prisoners. It seems to be working to improve some.
But Iran's government it entirely and solely to blame for imprisoning people for demanding human rights. Just as the US government is when, it jails people for protests.
Mamdani's proposal for city-run grocery stores will provide a place to buy groceries, including fresh produce, in the parts of New York City which now have none.
Kilmar Ábrego's lawyers have published descriptions of how he was tortured in El Salvador's prison for alleged "terrorists". It is horrible.
The guards recognized that he was not a gang member, that his tattoos had nothing to do with gangs. So why did they subsequently start to torture him? I think they must have got orders from higher up — perhaps from the persecutor, via Bukele.
Ex-Twitter will use bullshit generators (LLMs) to write the "community notes" that substitute for fact checking.
Oxfam supports the initiative of Spain. Brazil and South Africa to tax the super-rich globally.
Europeans seem to recognize that heat waves indicate a slow-moving disaster, but they have given up on the idea of convincing governments to resist the planet roasters.
In effect, they are giving up civilization for dead.
How sad — because they could make governments safe if they determined not to give up.
Jeremy Corbyn's party is reanimating the Labour Left
Israel was compelled to admit it had shot a convoy of Palestinian medics, but still has recourse to false facts and irrelevancies to defend it.
Whether some or all of the medics in a team are related to an enemy force is irrelevant as long as they act as medics are supposed to act, and these did so.
The army's own investigation has contradicted its public excuses.
*We are witnessing the destruction of science in America.*
With years more research, we would have been likely to find treatments or preventatives for many diseases that plague millions of people.
I suppose research will still be done in Europe and Asia. But the US contribution has been important.
The largest oil company in Italy is suing those who have denounced it for its greenhouse emissions, and even arranged for one to be prosecuted.
Dutch schools' prohibited the use of snoop-phones in class, and that has improved education and social interaction.
*Family of Dr Marwan al-Sultan says the Israeli airstrike "precisely" hit the apartment block the cardiologist and his relatives occupied.*
*Palestine Action isn’t a danger to British democracy — but this repressive government is.*
Any government that tries to stretch the definition of "terrorism" as an excuse to punish someone declares itself an enemy of freedom.
(As is any government that tries to stretch the definition of "antisemitism" as an excuse to punish someone.)
The bully has jailed over 130 immigrants from Iran since the brief war, accusing them of being "sleeper cells" for sabotage.
Many of them came to the US because they opposed the Iranian regime, defending there the human rights that the US used to stand for. If they were deported to Iran, they could be put in
Evin prison or another prison even worse.
Now the US could deport them to some other place such as Djibouti.
Will courts ensure that the deportation thugs prove a case against these accused spies before deporting them? Or will it allow the bully's hate-spreaders men to spread terror among all refugees and naturalized citizens in the US?
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the Big Bad Bill, which Congress just passed. Here's an AFL-CIO list of how it harms low-income Americans:
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Right-wing methods of dealing with the inconvenience of homeless people living in public areas sooner or later take a cruel and vicious form. Here is an example from Australia.
I've often linked to examples from California,
Some places choose rather to give each homeless person a place to live in.
The magats' big brutal bill is designed to keep refugees out of the US unless they have some money. They will have to pay to request asylum, and pay for the years that they wait for a final hearing. All this is to make people persecuted in other countries give up unless they are wealthy.
It also makes sure they have to wait a long time, by limiting the number of immigration judges.
The idea of the global system of asylum was meant to ensure that people forced out of their own countries by persecution can find welcome somewhere. This scheme is designed to drive them away. Australia and the UK have been doing their best to drive away refugees for years now.
*Palestine Action is part of Britain's proud history of protest. Proscribing it is an assault on democracy.*
A nationwide British food co-op has decided to boycott exports from a list of countries, on account of their widespread human rights abuses: Afghanistan, Belarus, Central African Republic, North Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Arguing that Netanyahu is likely to break the Iran-Israel cease fire because he stands to gain from unending war.
(satire) *Entitled Child Expects To Eat Lunch Every Day.*
(satire) *Congress Passes Blank Bill For Trump To Write Whatever Law He Wants.*
(satire) *Christian Faith An Important Part Of Who Senator Pretends To Be.*
The wrecker's campaign to repress journalism is intimidating many students who write or wrote for school newspapers. They are asking the newspapers to delete their articles.
The USA's tree of liberty was always flawed, but now it may be poisoned entirely. The wrecker's axe is cutting into the heart of the trunk.
China has set up a national government system for internet accounts, enabling uniform ID checks on all platforms.
Every unified national system of internet accounts is a scheme ready-made for repression. Whatever its purpose is — even if it is only to verify a person's age — it will enable the government to track all of everyone's internet use, on all servers that the state chooses to impose this on. Combine that with a would-be autocrat and it is disaster.
The US government is building a database to list all citizens. This will be dangerous, because it won't list all citizens, only those whom the federal government has verified.
The article says that it *could provide local and state governments a powerful method to check the citizenship of almost all Americans without additional documentation requirements.* But that must be confusion. Even if the data base has a record about you, you will still have to authenticate yourself as that person. What papers will that require?
The "voter ID" method of voter suppression demands that voters show up-to-date government ID. That disenfranchises many citizens who had to move to a different address and have not had the time to update their driver's licenses since. Republicans adopt this method because it tends to stop poor people, students, and old people from voting.
What will happen to people with such driver's licenses if a state checks this citizenship data base? Will it suppress their votes?
A court ruled that Kristi Gnome cannot prematurely end the temporary protected status of Haitians.
The publication in Turkey of a cartoon which appears to show Muhammad and Moses shaking hands inspired Erdoğan's tyranny to revile and imprison the cartoonists.
Apparently the idea of peace between religious groups is "against [the] sacred values" of religious fanatics.
Condemnation of depicting Muhammad has not been a universal principle of Islam, and anyway, no religious group has the right to impose censorship on the public. Not Muslims in Turkey, not Christians in the US, and not Jews either.
Ticks of a certain species, from the southeast US, cause a painful and lasting allergy to mammal meat and dairy, in humans they bite. Due to global heating, the ticks are spreading north and have been seen in New York and Maine, close to the northern border of the US.
One could imagine that the spread of this allergy could reduce consumption of red meat and dairy thus curb global heating, but I don't think it would be enough to save civilization.
Robert Reich: *Last night I couldn’t get out of my head that [the would-be emperor] is intent on abolishing the two branches of the government with the constitutional duty to constrain him.*
The Big Brutal Bill was going to strip federal courts of the power to issue injunctions to block specific unconstitutional or illegal practices no matter who the victim was. The decision on that bill has not yet been made, as far as I know. But the Supreme Court just did the deed.
The Supreme Court's devastating decision effectively allows the bully to disregard the constitution, except against the specific plaintiffs that have sued about it.
The same 9 justices upheld that power as legitimate when it was used against Biden's policies, and for a long time before that under other presidents.
I've read that some lawyers are using a class-action suit to try to get around this change.
US citizens: call on the CDC to restore funding for vaccine development.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on the USPS board of governors to retract its nomination of a Fedex board member as head of the USPS.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
*Israeli officers and soldiers said that they were ordered to deliberately fire at unarmed civilians waiting for humanitarian aid.*
I find the accusation credible, given how the aid-bait sites were designed to make killing easy.
* The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.*
We can't take for granted that the investigation will seriously consider punishing guilty killers, but at least it has taken the first step towards possibly doing so.
If Israel fails to carry out a proper investigation and prosecution, I think the International Criminal Court could do it.
Andrew Cuomo lost the Democratic primary for mayor of NYC, but he may run for night-mayor as an independent in the general election — against both Mamdani and Eric Adams.
It would be fun to see them split the opposition. Or, who knows, one of them might run as a Republican.
*Colombia gangs lure children to join ranks via TikTok [and Facebook], UN warns.*
* As many as 35,000 Ukrainian children are still missing and thought to be held in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to an American team of experts, with families saying they are being forced to take desperate and risky measures to try to rescue them.*
A study concluded that air pollution costs Americans, on the average, around $2500 per person per year as of 2014 in damage from illness or death, and killing around 100,000 people per year in the US. These harms are mostly due to PM2.5 particulates pollution, and the US has greatly reduced them by reducing the burning of coal.
We should reject the demands of the plutocratist politicians that want to preserve coal burning.
A deportation thug grabbed US citizen Andrea Velez and carried her off to a deportation prison, uninterested in seeing her identification.
Her relatives hired lawyers, and it took hours for them to get any information about what happened to her. The deportation thugs said that she was arrested for assaulting a deportation thug.
I am skeptical about that claim, because she would have had no motive to bother him unless he did something wrong to her first.
Orcas cut off strands of kelp to use as a tool to mutually scratch with.
It requires two orcas to use the tool together, by rolling it or rubbing it between their bodies.
*The saboteur in chief is making US intelligence parrot his line on [war with] Iran,* much as Dubya did on war with Iraq.
*[His] intervention on the issue of the damage done to Iran's nuclear facilities is also crucially important. By setting out the narrative that the spy agencies are [expected to loyally] adhere to, [he] is slamming shut a door on actual investigation and intelligence-gathering.
The saboteur-in-chief has distrusted US intelligence agencies every since they took note of signs that he was under Putin's control or influence.
Israel has been allowing some aid through the Gaza border wall into the north of Gaza, but closed that gate last Thursday.
Perhaps this is why the lack of any hunger games food sites in northern Gaza had not caused a total starvation there … yet.
An example of magats' performative cruelty: the deportation of US army veteran Sae Joon Park. There were excuses to deport him, and reasons for mercy. Previous administrations chose mercy; the bully chose cruelty.
The pattern of acting this way, by deporting some people, denying other people abortions and depriving yet others of medical care, is one of the basic general characteristics of the persecutor.
*US state department told to terminate nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs.*
No surprise this, given his visible stance on democracy in the US itself.
The propagandist is seeking to eliminate any information that is negative about the US from national parks, monuments and historic sites. If anyone mentions that the US did something bad there, the public is asked to report it so that it can be gagged.
At the camps where Japanese Americans were jailed during World War II. this policy creates an irreconcilable contradiction. it won't be easy to explain what events those sites commemorate.
This reflects the persecutor's general priorities: loyalty over truth.
A US court ruled that using a copyrighted work to train some sort of pattern recognizer is not copyright infringement. That means that we will not lose the right to do digital style analysis.
The recognition program that was being trained was an LLM, and it has the ability to generate output imitating the sty;e of existing works. Copyright does not cover generalities such as writing style, so it is correct that the possibility of imitating styles does not make for infringement.
Attempts to broaden copyright are typically organized by publishers with the support of famous best-selling authors, who label non-infringing uses as "theft" to convince us to surrender more of our freedom. Usually these campaigns advocate changes that we should reject.
For my view on copyright law, and how to support authors better while respecting readers' freedom more, see my speech, Copyright vs Community.
A new invention will capture CO2 emissions from cargo ships by passing the exhaust through a shipping container filled with lime.
Shipping generates 3% of all emissions, so this step is more than tokenism, but won't delay disaster long by itself. We need to demand reductions in greenhouse emissions from ground transport and agriculture.
*Ukrainians who fled to UK being refused asylum on grounds it is "safe to return" [to Ukraine].*
*Rising poverty in conflict zones "causes a billion people to go hungry."*
Erdoğan banned the Queer Pride march in Istanbul, and arrested activists who tried to hold it anyway.
When you wish to refer to bigotry against queer people, please don't use the multiply misleading term "homophobia". Bigotry and phobia are different things. A phobia is an anxiety disorder, and we cannot blame a person for suffering from one. By contrast, bigotry is a moral fault, and anyone who is bigoted ought to learn not to be.
Israel announced the intention to attack the east side of Gaza City, and warned all civilians to leave. This suggests a plan to disregard the safety of civilians there.
Warning civilians to "evacuate" — supposing they can find an intact house somewhere else — will not excuse indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The bullshitter admitted for a time that his Big Beautiful Bomb probably didn't destroy Iran's uranium enrichment factory, but since then reverted to his wishful pretense. And now he has threatened to imprison journalists who published the leaked intelligence report unless they reveal their source.
We do not know whether the journalists know the identity of the leaker(s). We can hope they do not know. But what if they do?
Their duty is to go prison rather than help the authoritarian regime lie in the future. But that takes special courage, that few people have.
A leaker could protect the journalists by fleeing and then announcing perse was the leaker. But where could perse be safe? Is there a country on Earth that would protect the leakers?
Some enemies of the US might protect the leaker, out of hatred for the US rather than out of love of human rights; but they are ruled by tyrants even worse than what the bully seeks to become. Accepting shelter from such a tyrant would not be a defense of freedom and truth.
(Remember that Snowden did not choose to live in Russia. He bought tickets for a connection in Moscow, but while he was in the air, the US cancelled his passport, so he could not board his flight out of Moscow.)
US citizens: Tell the Senate to remove the million-dollar deposit requirement for asking for an injunction.
US citizens: Tell the US attorney for NJ to stop prosecuting Rep. McIver.
The UK minister for repression is absolutely determined to label the organization Palestine Action as "terrorist" and ban it on account of a protest where its members sprayed red paint on warplanes in a military base.
If protesters can get access to them to spray paint, someone with violent and hostile aims could get access too. The Royal Air Force should be grateful that its weak security was discovered and reported in this way, and the British government should cease its repression of people protesting against support for Israel's war crimes.
The group's lawyers claim that the proposed ban would be illegal. I wonder whether a court would have a chance to judge whether the ban of the organization is lawful. Or would punishment of its members be automatic, with no consideration of whether the group deserves the name of "terrorist"?
Swedish journalist Joakim Medin visited Turkey and was arrested, accused (and later convicted) of insulting President Erdoğan at a protest in Sweden. He was also accused of terrorism, but it seems those charges were dropped, because he was allowed to leave Turkey.
If anyone can tell me what concrete act constituted the alleged terrorism, I would be grateful, especially if that comes with a URL that I can link to about that.
Global heating is making Britain hotter and dryer.
Global heating will cause many problems around the world. Either each part of the world can adapt to too little water or too much water, and too much or too little of many other things that global heating will cause, and then do some more of each in a decade or two, or the world can get serious about curbing global heating.
6 million American student loan borrowers are at risk of defaulting in the coming weeks.
This is the persecutor's doing. Biden had allowed the borrowers to stop making payments, while searching unsuccessfully for a way to forgive the loans despite the obstruction by Republicans in Congress.
The US should do what Britain has done, and make repayments conditional on receiving a middle-class salary. Then the loan would not ruin the whole rest of your life if you don't get such a salary.
For comparison with Iran, the history of how Israel developed nuclear weapons.
In the 1950s, 60s and 70s several of Israel's neighbors insisted that they sought to destroy Israel. There are countries that are hostile to Iran, too, but only Israel might seek to destroy it.
Costa Rica allowed the US to deport there 200 migrants from various Asian and African countries. Costa Rica kept them in jail for a few months, but a court has ordered them freed.
Now will come their real problem: how to live in Costa Rica without knowing any Spanish and not be an outcast. Some of them will be able to learn a new language well, depending on their age and health, but some will not.
In 60 years of overfishing, cod have evolved to be half the size.
*Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities [with masks and no badges] "highlights the illegitimacy of actions".*
He also explains how the masks put the public and also the cops in danger — that making it clear you're a cop is the foundation of safety practice. Also, how having thugs from outside ICE deputized to work with ICE can lead them to violate people's legal rights without realizing it, but also enable them to hide the violation.
German worked in the FBI to infiltrate right-wing militia groups. They may have been supporters of the wrecker, and may still be such. I speculate that he was fired this year precisely for having done that job. But I have no way of finding out.
*Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth.*
*Algorithmic wage discrimination doesn't need to use third-party surveillance data: Uber, who invented the tactic, use their own in-house data as a way to make inferences about drivers' desperation and thus their willingness to accept a lower wage.*
Uber stands accused of optimizing its pricing algorithm to manipulate both riders and drivers so that they make out worse and the company profits more.
Note that this is not an injustice of nonfree malware. The software for the pricing algorithm runs in Uber's own computer. It is, I suppose, Uber's private software, but if it were someone else's released free software that Uber used a copy of, Uber would have the right to make the same modifications in its copy.
The app that riders must use to be customers of Uber is nonfree software and does have a malicious surveillance functionality, but the computerized manipulation being criticized here is not particularly related to that.
What makes the manipulation possible is that Uber forces its customers to identify themselves, so it can make a complete record of its dealings with each customer. It has a similar asymmetry of information about each driver (and that could hardly be avoided). The results are unjust because they are dooH niboR at work, enriching the rich owners and pushing down the low-income drivers.
In my view, the lessons are (1) don't assume that all nasty behavior of computing is caused by nonfree software, (2) governments should stop Uber from identifying its customers or requiring them to run nonfree software, and (3 governments should regulate drivers' pay to keep it higher.
Russia and Ukraine have developed mostly autonomous killer drones, and are rapidly researching full anonymity. It could be easy to program one to hunt down and kill a specific individual by recognizing per face.
Negotiations for a UN treaty to ban such weapons are becoming more urgent, bu it is not clear how to make sure all countries, all underground rebel groups and all mafias comply with such a treaty.
Oregon has banned the subterfuge that corporations were using to sneak around the law that a corporation can't own a medical practice.
UK courts are increasingly willing to reject proposed "carbon offsets" whose validity is suspect.
*Tobacco exposure killed more than 7m people in 2023, study finds.
Researchers say tobacco linked to about one in eight deaths worldwide and numbers rising sharply in some countries.*
(satire) *Israel Claims Slain Palestinian Rescue Workers Didn’t Properly Identify Selves As Human Beings.*
Two Union leaders have quit the Democratic National Committee, criticizing the party for becoming too plutocratist.
I quit supporting the Democratic Party for that reason in the 1990s. Bill Clinton was too plutocratist for me to stomach.
Robert Reich reposts a call to effective resistance from Liz Cheney.
Starmer has yielded partly to opposition within the Labour Party by reducing the planned cuts in support for the disabled. They will, nonetheless, be cuts in support for future disabled people. One Labour MP says he will still oppose it.
The "food aid delivery" sites in Gaza are designed to make it as easy as possible to shoot anyone and everyone who has come for food.
Interestingly, none of then is anywhere near Gaza City. It seems to have been left out of the supposed plans to provide food to Palestinians in Gaza.
*University of Toronto agrees to host Harvard students facing [the persecutor's] visa restrictions.*
I wondered what was the cause of shooting so many Palestinians at food aid distribution points in Gaza. Here Médécins sans Frontières explains the sadistic and dehumanizing system which creates the violence.
The food is delivered inside a large walled compound surrounded by armed mercenary ex-soldiers, with Israeli army fortifications nearby. At a chosen hour, workers open the games and Palestinians must rush in so as not to be left empty-handed. They can be shot for coming early and shot for arriving late, and shot if they try to climb over the compound's walls to bypass congestion at the gate.
That system is positively designed to produce chaos which serves as a "reason" to shoot people. It would be simple to avoid shooting anyone; indeed, when the UNWRA delivered food in Gaza, there was normally no violence.
If I heard the words "the hunger games" and didn't know the story in those books, I would imagine something like this.
Most of the food in the boxes is uncooked and dry, so it must be cooked, and that requires both water and fuel. Those are not easy for starving Palestinians to obtain in Gaza.
*If Iran’s nuclear program was not an imminent threat, what motived the US-Israeli attack? Why now? The answer is political opportunity.*
Specifically, the opportunity to try to curtail Iran's refusal to comply with the US's foreign policy.
That refusal does not imply that Iran stands for good. Its main policy goal is religious fanaticism, resembling the fanatical current US regime and opposed to it only in that they support two different religions.
*Trump and Netanyahu aim to remake the Middle East with bombs. Iran shows why that will always fail.* It had planned in advance to cope with the sort of attack that Israel and the US could deliver.
It was wise of whoever makes decisions for the US now to avoid, this time, the trap of endless futile war that the US has fallen into repeatedly.
*Why do we pretend heatwaves are fun -- and ignore the brutal, burning reality?*
The Supreme Court temporarily lifted an order that prohibited deporting immigrants precipitously to countries they do not come from.
The bully's officials announced "guidance" that might be intended to prevent abuses. But it is too weak in its enforcement, and I fear could easily be disregarded.
Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, former political prisoner in Iran's Evin prison, denounced the US for bombing that prison, saying that the *attack was a publicity stunt that endangered [Iran's current political] prisoners.*
She reports calling relatives of prisoners, who said that the building's ceiling had collapsed but they had no word of whether those prisoners were alive or dead.
Cheap throw-away electronics that few people will want to keep and use are boosting the growing problem of e-waste.
People may look at the low price and think, "Why not buy this? Its price is so low." But the cost of disposal is not included in the sales price.
Many countries and regions have backed away from plans to require the start of the long, slow migration away from current fossil fuel usage. Their politicians didn't have the courage to face down the temptation offered by the planet roasters.
Victoria, in Australia, is an exception, an example of courage. It has continued with its plans to move housing and commercial building gradually to electric power.
The wrecker took an axe to the "roadless rule" and the protection of old growth forests.
*US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites only set back [nuclear] program months, Pentagon report says.*
This leads to some questions:
When the bully discovered that the enormous US bombs didn't destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, he announced a cease-fire, and Iran and Israel accepted it. Thus, that war is over, for the time being.
Quebec provides public childcare with trained, unionized staff to parents of young children for an amazingly low fee, and pays for it out of the taxes paid by the mothers that this childcare enables to work. Many other side benefits are described.
Canada is now extending this to the other provinces.
A few US states are trying something similar.
36 members of the Board of Deputies of British signed an open letter stating their moral horror at Israel's destruction of Gaza's population.
The board as a whole (mostly representing orthodox synagogues) responded by voting to reprimand the signatories and to "suspend" a few of them, described as punishment for making the board look bad.
Emil Bove, the wrecker's nominee for a US appellate court judge, reportedly said that the Department of Justice should tell courts "fuck you". This according to attorney Erez Reuveni, who worked in the Department of Justice and heard him say it. He reported the misconduct within the department and was fired for that.
A demo of Tesla's driverless cars saw them driving dangerously.
Tesla calls them "self-driving", but I have seen no information about whether their control system makes use of a data connection to drive. We need some sunlight on their possible dependence on "clouds", which could cause them to fail whenever there are no clouds to hide in.
Regardless of whether these driverless cars drive safely, I will refuse to ride in them because Tesla will surely, imitating Uber, require passengers to identify themselves using a snoop-phone and keep track of where they go.
108 Labour MPs demand changes in Starmer's plans to cut the support for disabled workers, or they will vote against it and maybe defeat it.
Starmer is standing absolutely firm. When he sets his heart on a right-wing policy, nothing can change his mind.
I wondered what was the cause of shooting so many Palestinians at food aid distribution points in Gaza. Here Médécins sans Frontières explains the sadistic and dehumanizing system which creates the violence.
The food is delivered inside a large walled compound surrounded by armed mercenary ex-soldiers, with Israeli army fortifications nearby. At a chosen hour, workers open the games and Palestinians must rush in so as not to be left empty-handed. They can be shot for coming early and shot for arriving late, and shot if they try to climb over the compound's walls to bypass congestion at the gate.
That system is positively designed to produce chaos which serves as a "reason" to shoot people. It would be simple to avoid shooting anyone; indeed, when the UNWRA delivered food in Gaza, there was normally no violence.
If I heard the words "the hunger games" and didn't know the story in those books, I would imagine something like this.
Most of the food in the boxes is uncooked and dry, so it must be cooked, and that requires both water and fuel. Those are not easy for starving Palestinians to obtain in Gaza.
Shortly before the last UK parliamentary election, the thug department that had brutally attacked striking miners in 1984 destroyed its records about that attack. Thus they ensured that Labour's plans to fully investigate what the thugs did in 1984 cannot now be fully carried out.
If that prevents the investigation, Labour should pass laws to make it a crime for thugs to destroy, or fail to protect, records about the thugs' accused plausibly criminal past actions.
US citizens: call on the Senate to censure Senator Mike Lee for his contempt towards the assassinated Democrats in Minnesota.
Iran's government has blocked international communication by internet for most people, which has made it hard for Iranians in Iran to communicate securely with each other.
Reportedly the state fears a student uprising.
Progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary to run for mayor of New York City, defeating plutocratist Democratic Andrew Cuomo, who conceded.
Bernie Sanders, who campaigned for Mamdani, is triumphant.
Cuomo was governor of New York State, then was compelled to resign over sexual improprieties whose details I don't recall. The principal reason he was a bad governor is that he harmed all non-rich citizens of New York State by favoring the rich. This year, rich people tried to parachute him in as mayor, so it is good that he lost.
In the final election, Mamdani will run against Night-Mayor Adams, who stands for being harsh on crime except when committed by him.
Robert Reich reposts a call to effective resistance from Liz Cheney.
*Average person will be 40% poorer if world warms by 4C, new research shows.* Experts say previous economic models underestimated impact of global heating — as well as likely ‘cascading supply chain disruptions’.
If they have estimated well the effect of those cascades, maybe this estimate will be on target. But I doubt that is even possible. With globalized production, it is easy for even a local disaster to make a crucial component totally unavailable for years. Maybe there would be no new computers, or no new cars.
Mahmoud Khalil has been freed by a judge, and has returned to New York to appear at a rally for *Palestinian freedom and opposition to both the university and the [bully].*
I also advocate for a free state of Palestine, but I partly disagree with Khalil. I am careful to make it clear that Palestine would be alongside Israel, not a replacement for Israel.
Kilmar Ábrego García's case has become complex and paradoxical, as different parts of the US government demand to do different things to him. The consequence is that he can't be released on bail lest that put him in danger of precipitous deportation.
This shows there is a dangerous flaw in the current law. The criminal charges were created as a justification for deporting him; even if they were true, it is an obvious injustice to use them to deport him before those charges are adjudicated.
The UK government has labeled an activist group as "terrorist" for a peaceful protest, and plans to abolish its existence. That is such contempt for human rights that it reminds me of the bully.
*Israel kills innocent Palestinians. Activists spray-paint a plane. Guess which the UK government calls terrorism.*
Kilmar Ábrego, victim of an unjust deportation, has been much in the news, and journalists have had difficulty knowing how to present his name.
The Hispanic naming system gives Kilmar Armando Ábrego Garcia (like almost everyone else) two apellidos (family names): his are Ábrego and Garcia. It is helpful, in an article which discusses a person at length, to present per name in full form (as in this paragraph) at least once, for completeness. But mostly one uses only the first apellido.
Some writers in English seem to think that the two apellidos are equivalent to a hyphenated double name in English, but that is not so. An English hyphenated name is just one name, and it is incorrect to omit part of it.
Rep. Nadler condemned the weaponization of a supposed fight against antisemitism into an excuse for repression in universities.
Preliminary results from an experiment suggest that using ChatGPT lowers subjects' capacity to think while writing essays.
*Court strikes down Louisiana law requiring display of Ten Commandments in schools.* Texas is on the verge of passing a similar law.
It is commonplace for thugs to attack people and then accuse their victims of "assaulting" them. Usually they do that to people with little influence, such as poor young black men.
Now they are doing it to Democratic elected officials, which is a terrorist/intimidation tactic.
The persecutor's campaign to crush universities, and make universities repress the left, grows out of a right-wing hostility decades old.
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food calls for armed aid convoys to deliver food, where that is necessary.
I think this might be successful in places such as Sudan, where the enemies are not powerful enough to crush the arms of he aid convoys from a distance. But I think they would be ineffective in Gaza, because Israel would kill the armed UN guards from the air.
At least two Republican congresscritters said they would have voted against the Big Bad Bill if they had known it said X or Y.
For the bill to pass, the House will have to approve the final version. If that final version still contains X and Y, will they vote to defeat it? Their majority is so small that Just a couple of Republicans voting no would be enough to defeat it.
The UK proposes to prohibit online commercial advertising of sexual services, and the wording makes it clear that the motive of this campaign is based on rigid conservative ideas of right and wrong in sex.
The author rigidly presumes that doing sex work is "being exploited". Women who are trafficked are being exploited. Women who do sex work by choice, and there are many of those, are doing business for their benefit.
In a better world, the traffickers would be punished, the trafficked women would be freed, and the self-employed sex workers would not have to hide or be ashamed. We cannot get there without recognizing all of these groups.
*PEN America "gravely concerned" by deportation of Australian writer critical of Trump administration.*
"Predictive policing" often amounts to a disguided excuse for systematic harassment of black males.
The article raises the possibility that it could be better if it is "more transparent", but no actual results of trying.
*"This presidency is a brand-franchise": the profiteer has taken the commercialization of politics to a new level.
Antivax disinformation is having an effect in many countries: more children are not vaccinated.
The CDC has invited an anti-vaxxer to present a report containing disinformation about thimerosal. It contains a mistaken citation that seems intended to report a real study, but cites that study's results exactly wrong.
One of the British activist who had a "spy cop" as lover pursued her legal case to the end, and it ended in victory. She received all the confidential reports he had made while spying on her. Now she has published them.
*How Democratic Party Leaders Quietly Support [the bully's] March to War With Iran.
The bully has forbidden (with narrow exceptions) entry into the US of the nationals of 12 countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Referring to this as a "Muslim ban" is false. According to Wikipedia, four of the countries — Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti and Republic of the Congo — have few Muslims (those in Burma are a persecuted minority, the Rohingya). Eritrea is more or less evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.
Meanwhile, many mainly Muslim countries are not covered by the ban. These include Albania, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Syria, and Turkey, and some more.
It seems clear that the motives for the ban are political, not racial or religious.
I don't see a sensible reason for the ban. The US has quarrels with some of these countries, but not all. And it is perverse to deny a person asylum because of something bad about the country perse is fleeing from.
The bully has ordered members of Congress to request permission 72 hours in advance before visiting deportation prisons.
This would give the employees of the prison company a chance to clean up the signs of cruelty.
Deportation thugs attacked protester Jose Manuel Mojica, then accused him of attacking them. Fortunately, the charges against him have been dropped. Full justice calls for charges against the agents who attacked him.
(satire) *Man Returning From Near-Death Experience Recalls Angels Making Him Sign NDA.*
Abortion is almost prohibited in Brazil, but religious right-wingers are trying to get rid of the "almost".
New South Wales, in Australia, has an anti-protest law that allows conflating condemnation of Israel's war crimes with antisemitism. The confusion can be invoked by holding political and military events in synagogues.
The bully's attack on democracy and freedom in the US is rushing ahead much faster than today's other authoritarians did.
It is unfair to list Hugo Chávez as one. He held real elections and the people really voted for him.
Indian deportation thugs are grabbing Muslim Indians and forcing them across the border with Bangladesh. Bangladeshi border guards reject many of them, saying they are Indians not Bangladeshis, and force them back to India, sometimes by arduous (and unguarded?) routes.
A few years ago, India passed a law allowing it to claim that people were immigrants if they didn't have documents to prove their forebears were Indian citizens. Another law allowed such people to claim Indian citizenship, but not if they are Muslims.
Put them together and they combine as a recipe for labeling a Muslim Indian who was born and raised in India as an unauthorized immigrant, so as to expel per.
Canada is "fighting" the wrecker by sucking up to Canadian businesses to the detriment of the non-rich.
Florida's attorney general was found in contempt of court for ordering state agencies to disregard a court order against enforcing a state law to arrest unauthorized immigrants.
So far, magat officials have played at defying court orders. I think that was meant to make their supporters eager to see real defiance and a showdown that might make the federal courts powerless. Then what steps could judges take? I fear that would be the end of rule of law in the US.
Someone asked the WhatsApp "help" chatbot for a train company's customer service phone number and it gave some other user's phone number.
When the user objected to that, it generated output that resembled what a human being would say if trying to excuse that mistake or claim that nothing was wrong.
The article quotes someone criticizing this chatbot in a way that assumes it is capable of understanding what was defective about its output, and even ideas of ethics and responsibility as applied to its own output. How foolish!
That Artificial Stupidity system does not understand what it means to help someone, does not understand what it means to harm someone, and does not understand what it means to be honest — or deceptive. It only looks for ways to make pertinent-sounding responses based on frequency tables.
Salafi Arabian journalist Turki al-Jasser has been executed for criticizing the government of Salafi Arabia on ex-Twitter, after 7 years in prison with torture.
Sage commentary about what the wrecker thinks about relations with other democratic countries.
*[The wrecker] claims simply to want deals with dictators, but he seems also to crave validation from them. By contrast, he thinks it is humiliating for the US commander-in-chief to be seated at a round table as the peer of a German chancellor or the prime minister of Canada – barely a proper country. The idea of coordinating foreign and trade policy on the basis of shared respect for political pluralism and the rule of law is an idea Trump finds absurd, if he even understands it.*
*Over time, reluctance to say aloud that [the wrecker] is an authoritarian menace to the US’s constitutional republic becomes complicity in the assault.*
Press freedom is threatened in various countries in the Pacific Ocean.
Contrasting the No Kings rallies with the narcissist's disappointing birthday parade.
(satire) *SWAT Team Robot Successfully Dismantles Black Man.*
How the mainstream mockers ridicule leaders of the resistance and make them look foolish or small.
Some professors who studied and taught in the US about fascism have moved to Canada, seeing the current situation in the US as having little barrier against full-blown fascism.
The Russian concept of "obnazhenie" seems to describe exactly what the bully and his officials have been implementing even before Jan 20, wherever they had local power.
*I study the resistance against the Nazis. Here’s what the US left can learn from it.*
The ignoramus's "intelligence" ministers are learning to agree with their master and disregard what the experts working for them think. Their master wants them to say the damage was total.
In any case, the US government can't know for certain.
Iranian officials know what damage was done to Iran's nuclear facilities, but they too may lie about it. So far their story is that everything is ok.
Imagine if Iranians officials and American officials join in telling the ignoramus what he wants to hear, exaggerating the damage. What would he do? Perhaps he would declare victory and let the fighting end.
Billionaires put 2.6 billion dollars into election campaigns in 2024. That doesn't count what they have found sneaky ways to contribute anonymously.
One new practice was eliminating progressive Democrats from Congress by supporting primary challenges by plutocratist Democrats.
If Israel (perhaps with the US) "win" a war against Iran, what would come next? There are reasons to expect it to be messy.
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "October" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
The US has once again gone to war based on false certainties without an exit strategy, at the behest once again of Netanyahu.
The warlord ordered the US Air Force to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. It seems the arrangements to do this were started some weeks ago.
US intelligence has been saying that Iran was not working on designing a nuclear weapon, so Netanyahu's claims about danger were alarmist.
It appears that Iran prepared for the attack weeks ago too by moving the enriched uranium and crucial equipment elsewhere.
Iran responded by attacking a civilian target in Israel, and their parliament has approved a motion to close the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off oil shipments from Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Salafi Arabia. I think that those countries will try to stop any blockade.
*Tens of millions in US face dangerously hot weather in rare June heatwave.*
We could have prevented this, and other worse heatwaves of coming years, if we had done since 2000 what the climate scientists told us we needed to do.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to reject proposals to encourage coal mining and coal burning. It is good to mention that the air pollution from coal burning kills tens of thousands of Americans per year nowadays, but the global heating it contributes to will kill tens or hundreds of millions later this century.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Pete Hegseth suggests he would disobey court ruling against deploying military in LA.*
Magat officials frequently suggest they would disobey court orders. Sometimes they engage in sort-of-disobedience making bogus excuses.
All this, I believe, is to prepare the political climate for major disobedience of courts, a path to reduce US democracy to nothing more than a sham, within which the wrecker can act like an autocrat.
A new HIV-suppressing medicine is effective for six months, and could be made for around $25 per dose. It would open the possibility of eliminating HIV, if not for the patent in the way.
People in LA put up hand-made posters to mourn their dear deported loved ones, calling them "abducted".
Karen Read has been found not guilty of murder. She was accused of murdering her boyfriend, a cop.
The case has become a scandal, because the prosecutor's allegations were contradicted by a mountain of evidence. People suspect that he was killed by his fellow thugs and that they tried to frame Karen for it. I suppose they expected to succeed.
Iranian dissidents are divided on what to think of the bully's threats and demands.
One thing they can be sure of: the bully does not value democracy, not for Iran any more than for his own country. He supports imposition of religious rules in the US, so he is not likely to oppose that for Iran. So if he succeeds in making the repressive Iranian religious tyranny sue for peace, you can't expect him to do anything for the sake of democracy in Iran.
*Drought fears in Europe amid reports May was world's second hottest ever. Copernicus data show month was 1.4°C above estimated 1850-1900 average used to define pre-industrial level*
*Key crop yields could fall due to climate crisis even if farmers adapt, study finds. By as much as 120 calories per person per day for every 1C the planet heats up,*
An NHS nurse was ordered by his hospital to remove a painting of a watermelon (a symbol for Palestine) from the background of per video calls. The hospital called it "antisemitic".
Supporting Palestine or Palestinians' rights is not in itself antisemitic. But pro-Israel campaign organizations regularly conflate the two as a means to gag criticism of Israel's violence against Palestinians.
The persecutor's bombing of Yemen killed around 220 civilians — almost as many as 23 years of bombardment of Yemen before.
This seems to imply that he dropped some previous policies to protect civilians.
The tactic of waiting for medics to respond to a bomb, and then bombing again, is one I first read about as something that "terrorists" did. When the US military does it, can we deny that that is terrors?
After two months delay, Israel admitted its soldiers shot at ambulances in Gaza. The fact that they did so was clear shortly after the act.
The Israeli army has attacked rescue vehicles, rescue workers and medical facilities regularly in Gaza.
* If I reduced my existence to a series of ChatGPT prompts, the act of my living is only shorter — not better.*
Israel keeps some (or all?) Palestinian prisoners incommunicado for months (or years). Alaa abu Zeid was not informed until he was released, after over a year, that a bomb dropped on a school had killed his wife and children.
If abu Zeid had had even occasional contact with anyone from home, he would have found out what had happened to them. We can deduce he had none.
Other Palestinian prisoners report similar experiences. Clearly this is a systematic practice.
West Bank prisoners also are physically tortured and injured, and mentally damaged by brain-washing conditions.
RFK plans to have the government "reevaluate" the approval of various life-saving vaccines. The evaluations that led to their approval were done too scientifically, it seems.
The world's largest banks gave almost a trillion dollars more financing to fossil fuels in 2024.
Governments are abandoning civilization's future so that banks and billionaires can profit now.
Men who were raised under the Evangelical "Purity" movement can go for decades without ever learning what it is like to go on a date. Some may never overcome the fear that this taught them.
*New data from NASA has revealed a dramatic rise in the intensity of weather events such as droughts and floods over the past five years.*
*The study shows that such extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe, with last year’s figures reaching twice that of the 2003-2020 average.*
Climate disinformation now finds fault in various methods for reducing greenhouse emissions. The idea is to show that all the solutions are inconvenient, so we may as well resign ourselves to the fall of civilization and the death of most of our descendants.
Iranians, inside and outside Iran, talk about their hopes, fears and wishes, supposing war makes the state collapse.
A bipartisan resolution in Congress aims to invoke the War Powers Act to stop the bully from adding the US to Israel's attacks on Iran.
An unexpected positive feedback: global heating reduces clouds in the polar regions. Since clouds reflect some sunlight into space, the decrease in clouds means more heating.
4 to 6 million people are estimated to have joined No Kings protests on June 14.
*The anti-Trump camp was in disarray. How has No Kings managed to unite it?*
Due to the DOPE's cuts, the US is not prepared to handle this year's fire season if it is like other recent years. And what if it is worse than other recent years?
US citizens: call on Congress to shut down DOPE.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the CEO of Vanguard to meet with climate justice campaigners.
US citizens: tell Congress that we stand with Senator Padilla. who was battered by thugs as he tried to ask a question in Kristi Noem's press conference.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to denounce [the repressor]'s illegal, unprecedented deployment of troops against U.S. protesters.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the Comstock Act (postal censorship).
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the USPS board of governors not to appoint a postmaster general who has a conflict of interest — being on the board of FEDEX.
US citizens: call on prisons in the US to give prisoners safe food.
US citizens: Denounce cuts to the Department of Education.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the saboteur in chief's logging expansion.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.
There is far too little competition among phone radio networks already. Any decrease is clearly bad.
Of course, there are more important problems with mobile phones. For instance, both cellular and WiFi connections track the phone's location, and the phone can be made to listen and transmit all the time. (That last is a consequence of nonfree software in the phone's radio processor.) By contrast with that, the increased price caused by insufficient competition is a superficial issue. It is, nonetheless, bad to decrease the competition.
US citizens: call on JP-Morgan Chase to stop bankrolling fossil fuel exploration in the Amazon.
US citizens: phone each of your senators and urge them to block the worst things in the Big Bad Bill. Ask them, for instance, to protect Medicaid and SNAP. Ask them to protect Medicare by not cutting taxes for the rich. Ask them to protect the authority of federal judges.
Ask them to protect tax-exempt organizations from tax. Who's afraid of the Big Bad Bill? Anyone who isn't rich, or cares about people who aren't rich, or values democracy and human rights.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
There is a push to repeal the law that allows extensions of patents that block the manufacture of important generic medicines.
I've argued that patents should not be allowed on medicines at all. There are other ways to fund the development and testing of drugs.
To allow drug companies to fund the tests for approval of a drug is an invitation to corruption.
A group of thugs arrested journalist Mario Guevara as he was covering a No Kings rally in Atlanta.
The charges were dropped, but they handed him to the deportation thugs. From the description I suspect that the arrest was planned in advance.
Guevara used to cover issues of human rights in El Salvador, until he fled death threats and asked the US for asylum. The article does not say explicitly what his immigration status is in the US, but I expect that the bully's henchmen would consider "journalism about deportation" to be a "threat to national security".
On living in a world of increasing disaster:
* the point isn’t just to feel better necessarily, but to feel in ways that allow us to show up in the moments that matter most.*
Doctors and other medical staff at veterans' hospitals are now permitted (in principle) to refuse patients based on the patient's national origin, or political views. The organization justifies this as implementation of one of the wrecker's executive disorders.
They may never discriminate in that particular way, but the same change opens the door to discriminating based on what they want treatment about.
The American Bar Association has sued to overturn the bully's persecution of law firms that worked for his adversaries.
*We should all grieve about the state of the world. It can be an integral part of activism.*
Senator Padilla recounts the experience of being suddenly attacked and handcuffed by agents, while the agents who had brought him there said nothing about who he was.
Corruption by UnitedHealth: * secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant.*
The specific remedy we need is to break apart the different activities of UnitedHealth, and also splitting the insurance part into 10 competing sub-companies which are forbidden to merge.
But what we really need is to replace private medical insurance entirely with a national medical system.
Of course, Republicans won't do any of this. Biden made moves in that direction, but there were too few Democrats in Congress and they were not progressive enough.
An invasive thorn bush is spreading rapidly through Kenya, drying up land where it grows.
Evidence that the US is preparing to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
Right-wing disinformationists spread lots of lies about the shooting of two Democratic elected officials in Minnesota.
This illustrates their practice of disrespect for truth. Even if on some occasion their statements accord with facts, giving them support enhances the power of the lie.
Senate Republicans propose to make it impossible to sue to get an injunction against the government unless you put down a potentially enormous sum as bond in case the injunction is reversed.
*Toy-maker Mattel accused of planning "reckless" AI social experiment on kids.*
These toys evidently have microphones and internet connections. Don't assume they aren't making a permanent record of everything the children say. If Mattel says they don't, you can't trust that. There may be "fine print" in what they say about this, which would appear to promise something which isn't really promised.
There may even be a universal back door that can alter some or all of the nonfree software in the device.
Two more years of greenhouse emissions at the current rate will be too much to allow Earth to remain under 1.5°C of heating.
Prepare yourself for food shortages and tropical diseases.
The Maga regime intends to judge foreign student applications based on the students' opinions of various things about the US.
One requirement forbids "Any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States." That would include a wide range of opinions that are protected by the First Amendment.
* You might feel hostility towards US citizens who are bigots, or who own companies that exploit their workers.
* You might well dislike various aspect of US culture. I strongly dislike rap and blues, for instance, and weddings that are fancy and formal. I also dislike the sound of the accents of certain groups of Americans.
* You might find the government disgusting while billionaires have control of it and rig elections.
* You might condemn institutions such as churches that preach hatred or repression.
* You might abhor founding principles such as slavery and the disenfranchisement of blacks, women, and poor men.
Note that these criteria are all vague, leaving a broad range of possible places to draw the line of what is forbidden.
If these lines are drawn in the strictest and harshest place — which recent events must lead us to expect — they will be unconstitutional, if the First Amendment applies to what would-be students have said outside the US. But does it?
What about the next criterion: "advocacy for, aid or support for foreign terrorists and other threats to US national security"? Rejecting anyone who directly helps a terrorist group is legitimate; indeed such help would be a crime. But "aid or support" could be construed to include peacefully supporting the cause for which some terrorist group fights.
The last criterion, "support for unlawful antisemitic harassment or violence", could be a legitimate basis for objection provided the interpretation of that criterion scrupulously follows the First Amendment and does not misconstrue condemnation of Israel's war crimes as "antisemitism". But since officials are often frequently does misconstrue that, we have to expect this criterion to be wrongly enforced.
The Democratic Party is now split between two camps: the "abundance" side which is really just trickle down warmed over, and the "anti-oligarchy" camp which aims to actively stop the richest from practicing squeeze-up economics.
In the past I have called them the plutocratist Democrats and the progressive Democrats.
Iranians demanding human rights regard the Israeli attacks as an impediment to achieving their goal.
Masked thugs arrested an NYC elected official for challenging them to show a warrant before arresting a migrant on his way out of a courtroom.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose Israel's attacks on Iran and stop the US from supporting them.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to preserve the authority of federal courts over unconstitutional or illegal executive actions, by defeating the No Rogue Rulings act.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the White House to remove military troops from Los Angeles and prevent further deployment of troops to the city.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on RFK jr and his subordinates to un-cancel the vaccine research for HIV and bird flu, which they recently canceled.
Israel "ordered" people to "evacuate" a large part of Tehran, its capital city. It said that it would attack "military infrastructure", but in fact bombs and missiles are falling on civilian markets.
*[The bully] brushes off US intel reports on Iran to align himself with Israel.*
Millions of Iranians hate their government, but that doesn't mean they don't love their country. The attacks by Israel are just the thing to make them unite (at least for the while). Threats from the US will make Iranians hate the US and look for more ways to support Russia.
Hmm, maybe the bully is still trying to serve Putin.
Israeli troops shot 37 Palestinians who were trying to collect some food.
Similar incidents have been happening daily.
(satire) *Kristi Noem: Sen. Padilla Had Even Deadlier Opinion That Failed To Go Off.*
Explaining how the UK could take over the incompetent and corrupt water companies without giving them to any other companies, and without paying a ransom to anyone.
An ecologically important protected wetland in Australia has been attacked by a toxic algae bloom, brought about by human-caused global heating and pollution. The bloom is likely to repeat whenever the high temperatures repeat.
Lawful protesters should be free to cover their faces, and in the US, the Supreme Court has recognized their right to do so.
The article contrasts lawful protest with civil disobedience. However, it is an obvious error to categorized whistleblowing as a kind of civil disobedience. Whistleblowing is not symbolic disobedience, it is direct action.
Ukrainian soldier Maksym Butkevych, captured by the Putin forces and recently exchanged, described the beatings, threats and lies dished out by the Putin forces guards during his two years of captivity.
About the campaign pressuring Target to bring back some of support for the minority groups that face unequal treatment by society.
The proposed My Body, My Data Act would prohibit "collecting, using, retaining or disclosing information about someone’s reproductive health," except for a "specific request". Because of the words "collecting" and "retaining", this might do some real good. Texas can't use a subpoena retroactively to make a system collect or retain data that it did not collect or did not retain.
It would be crucial to make sure that offer the option of storing the data solely on the device. If the only mode of operation that an app offers is to store the data in some cloudy server, and the user asks the app to do anything with per data, that might create a loophole: asking the app to do anything might be construed as an "explicit request" for the app/server to collect the data and retain it.
Other dark patters or manipulative money saving offers might also be used to manipulate people into making the poisonous "request".
As the Texas example shows, reproductive health data is not the only data that can be used for faith-based repression of abortion, birth control and medicine. Location data can serve the same unjust purpose. The requirements for collecting or retaining location records must be made bulletproof against fanatical officials willing to distort the truth or lie outright.
The fascist-in-waiting has prepared for years to create a test case of using the military to crush peaceful protests. Defending democracy will require careful tactics to avoid giving him a bogus excuse which he can then distort.
*Israeli government issuing "illegal" orders that must not be obeyed, say IDF intelligence officers.*
Unlike the usual position of Israeli opposition to the war, based on the wish to ransom the Israeli hostages soon, this opposition is based on recognizing the right to life of Palestinians. The "illegal orders" are illegal because they are orders to kill innocent Palestinians, with no military justification — and that makes them war crimes.
And they are being presented by prestigious army officers who back up their criticism with defiance — refusing to obey those illegal orders.
This resistance has the potential to shake the Netanyahu government. I hope so.
To ensure Americans get less help in coping with disasters, the wrecker plans to abolish FEMA and take direct White House control over the distribution of aid.
Giving the job to people he has personally appointed will also cause confusion that will surely reduce what really gets done.
Organized groups of Muslims in Australia are pressuring for a unified definition of racism (or bigotry), so as to block the push for an unjust criterion for antisemitism.
Bravo! This is an important issue, and they have chosen the right direction for solving it.
Side issue:
The word "racism" means prejudice based on race. A prejudice based on religion, sex, gender, national origin, or caste, is not racism. It is a similar moral issue, and may be equally unjust, but it doesn't fit into the word "racism".
Let's not adopt terminology that builds confusion into the moral foundation of our views. When we want to reject bigotry whether based on race or not, let's use the broader word "bigotry".
Orhan Pamuk: *I've never seen such clampdowns in Istanbul. Turkey's democracy is fighting for its life.*
The country's most popular politician has been jailed, to stop him from running for president and perhaps defeating Erdoğan. Other dirty tricks are being used to stop him from running.
Even metro stations, buses and car travel in İstanbul are restricted, as is entry to the city, to make protests difficult.
When we see the bully's thugs beating up members of Congress, we have to wonder whether the federal courts will be able to protect democracy effectively from the bully if he does the sort of things Erdoğan does.
Heating homes and water is more efficient when done in Stockholm by municipal systems serving neighborhoods.
*CDC official in charge of Covid data resigns ahead of vaccine meeting. … She does not have confidence data will be use[d] to make "evidence-based vaccine policy decisions."*
Resigning from an official position makes no impression on magats. They do not care about the capacity to judge carefully, based on evidence, a question they prefer to judge based on emotion alone, so the government's loss of that capacity does not strike them as significant.
It would be more effective to stay in the position and criticize vociferously whenever magat officials. Eventually they will fire you, and your reproach will win more attention.
*California bill proposes misdemeanor for officers who cover their face on duty.*
I would expect there to be an exception for undercover cops that infiltrate criminal activities. That activity is useful. But it will be a challenge to draw up a rule to distinguish legitimate undercover investigation from anonymous snatches.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Higher Wages for American Workers Act, which would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
* A [UK] scheme aiming to turn children arrested for violence away from crime has claimed staggering success, with up to nine out of 10 diverted from further offending, according to a report.*
*John Maynard tells Guardian the US must consider new rules on betting ads as operators lobby against federal crackdown.*
North Carolina parents allowed their children to walk to a store. One was killed in an unlikely accident; now they are threatened with many years in jail.
*[The wrecker] claims [foreign flags at LA protests] signify a "foreign invasion" but experts say they're flown by US citizens proud of their heritage.*
The UK government seems to have sold its soul to nuclear power, and cites arguments based on assuming the habitual problems of nuclear power will inexplicably not happen this time.
*The mainstream media [have] enabled [the bully's] war on universities. For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right [wing]'s assault.*
Kenyan thugs appear to have arrested and then killed Albert Ojwang for making accusations against one of the high officials of the thugs. Now that official and some other thugs are being investigated for this.
Deportation thugs lurked next to an elementary school, apparently using the school children as bait to arrest their parents. One of their cars collided with another vehicle whose driver was then taken away in an ambulance.
RFK jr has fired everyone on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and appointed Antivaxxers to it.
Many medical and scientific organizations in the US make a practice of relying on the recommendations of such advisory panels. Now that this one has been rendered incompetent, those organizations may find that institutional inertia stands in the way of recognizing that they are no longer fit for such trust. Those that are prepared to recognize this encounter another problem: who else can they trust instead?
A historical survey concludes that 3.5% of the population, engaged steadily in nonviolent activism to change the government, achieve that goal.
The survey also found that in general nonviolent activism is considerably more effective than armed resistance.
Nine protesters in LA are being prosecuted for supposed fights with official thugs, which appears not to have occurred at all.
It is not unusual for official thugs to bear false witness so as to get someone unjustly punished. Solidarity in lying is part of their culture, so when one does it, the rest know they are expected to lie to support it.
I don't have a basis to be certain that all nine of those protesters are victims of lies and that all the accusations are false. What I will say is that we should not trust the word of official thugs about such accusations.
* Four years after the January 6 attack, the president is toying with invoking the Insurrection Act to respond to a conflict he provoked.*
Some Republicans Opposed Using Troops Against Protests in 2020. Now They’re Marching in Lockstep.
*Brazil to auction oil exploration rights months before hosting Cop30.*
When Lula was president before, he was a strong champion of curbing global heating. Sad to say, this seems to have changed. Even worse, the change seems to be a world-wide pattern, that governments are dropping most of the efforts they did make to save civilization and nature from global heating.
Texas is trying to enforce its law that treats a fetus or embryo as a person, by murder charges against someone who gave a pregnant woman an abortion drug.
The wrecker claims to have abolished California's authorization to impose special stricter standards on new cars.
After surrendering to political censorship and control, should Columbia be called a university?
Russia and China seem to be collaborating on sabotage of undersea cables.
Australian Alistair Kitchen was sent back to Australia when he arrived in the US. Agents told him the reason for interrogating him was due to his writings about protests against Israel's war crimes in Gaza, which he had witnessed shortly before his 2024 graduation from Columbia university.
Most of what the agents did would have been reasonable and not cruel, if they had done it for a real reason. What was wrong was that they did it to someone based on per nonviolent exercise of constitutional rights. That is totally offensive to the United States and its Constitution.
*Greenpeace lost — not because it did something wrong but because it was denied a fair trial.*
(satire) *Trump Orders All Children Born Under Biden To Be Renamed After Confederate Generals.*
Commercial "period tracker" apps, which connect to servers, collect users personal data and then store them in the servers for others to obtain.
A bizarre alternative has been proposed: governments would run these apps and store the data in their own servers.
One might wish we could trust those governments not to use that data against the users who entered them — but if the government is taken over by right-wing fanatics, it will use those data in all the nastiest ways — including punishing abortion.
The real solution to this problem is to keep the data encrypted on your own computer. But in order for users to rationally trust it, it needs to be free software, so that no one is in a position to corrupt the program.
A man who said he was a deportation thug tied up a sales clerk and took $1000 in cash.
The article asserts that he was an impostor and not a real deportation thug. Perhaps so — but can anyone verify that? Can we be sure he wasn't an authentic deportation thug?
The deportation thugs are practicing deceit and cruelty — for instance, tricking people into signing papers that accept deportation.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of the executive order to reject grant applications that talk about DEI or mention the existence of trans people.
* As the Earth heats up, the amount of algae in our waterways is rapidly increasing, transforming the color of lakes and killing entire ecosystems.*
Several massive human outputs combine to cause algae blooms, and human economic growth increases all of them.
*[The Big Bad Bill] is built on falsehoods about low-income families.*
Poor people don't make bad decisions out of laziness. They do it out of high levels of stress in their lives.
(Satire) *[Saboteur-in-chief] Issues Executive Order Reversing All Vasectomies.*
Orwellian planet roasters are labeling fossil gas (methane) as "clean energy".
The wrecker is planning to label US greenhouse emissions from power plants as "not significant", showing his usual disregard for facts, as an excuse to permit increasing them.
What Chicago does to protect its residents from deportation.
I must rebuke the article's author for saying that the bullshitter has *worked to fulfill campaign pledges to carry out mass deportations after promising to remove "millions".* Yes, he said that, but he has no sense of obligation to carry out promises, whether campaign promises or any other kind.
He sticks to this line of attack because he thinks it is an effective strategy for reducing the US to submission. Part of the reason for that is that magats are mad for it. That has a superficial partial resemblance to "carrying out a promise," but they are fundamentally different.
Vast areas of Britain have been taken over by a grass that forms a mono culture. No birds or insects can live in those areas.
Two former prisoners in Guantánamo are suing the UK government, claiming it was complicit in the torture they suffered at the hands of the US government.
Remeasuring ocean acidification has found it is worse than scientists had believed.
This will soon start wiping out corals, crustaceans, and mollusks with shells, by dissolving their shells. This will also wipe out thousands of species that depend on corals.
US citizens: call on Congress to *Stop [the wrecker]'s Authoritarian Troop Deployment.*
*The line between military and civilian government is among the critical protections for democracy.*
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An Argentine political activist, who was disappeared in 1977 by the military which had seized power, sees in the bully's tyranny a resemblance to the tyranny in Argentina.
Exiled Russian human rights activists teach Americans several terms that Russians developed to refer to phenomena of Putin's developing dictatorship, so that Americans can use them to understand them when the would-be dictator of our country does them.
The bullshitter's go-to distraction technique is to accuse his victims and enemies of doing the wrongs he is doing.
With enough of a mindless chorus of supporters, people who don't have a clear orientation have trouble seeing the ground through the fog of similar-looking counter-accusations.
Nobel laureates, scientists, writers and artists call for resistance to fascism.
Israel attacked Iran directly, targeting both nuclear facilities and the homes (it seems) of officers and officials. Israel threatened to do this in the past, but backed down because of US objections.
What has changed? I suppose the change was that the persecutor-in-chief didn't oppose it very strongly. *[Mad bomber] scrambles to claim credit for Israel’s Iran attack he publicly opposed.*
He (apparently) approved this attack even while trying to negotiate another non-nuclear deal with Iran.
If the persecutor-in-chief approved this attack, maybe it indicates he thought that some bombardment would make Iran offer more concessions in the negotiation.
I don't think that strategy is likely to work. The rulers of Iran are religious fanatics, and they will not be dissuaded by casualties and damage. There was a better chance of softening their stance through a series of deals.
US citizens: call on the Senate to delete the $50B tax increase on nonprofits from the Big Bad Bill.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The bullshitter's speech at Fort Liberty, which he had recently renamed to "Fort Bragg" to honor a confederate general, was full of falsehoods.
I suspect that the corrupter chose to give a speech at "Fort Bragg" to call attention to his support for naming a US military base after a traitor.
The Persecution Party keeps inventing new excuses to avoid releasing Mahmoud Khalil.
The persecutor has cancelled federal regulations that permitted doctors to carry out abortions when necessary to save a woman's life.
This makes it explicitly clear that magats would rather kill a woman than allow an abortion.
US citizens: call on RFK Jr to revert the cancellation of the bird flu vaccine contract.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on the Smithsonian Institution to stand firm against pressure to slant American history.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to defund DOPE (so-called "DOGE").
US citizens: call on Congress to reject cuts in funding for medical treatment, and instead extend this to a universal national medical system.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the JUDGES bill which would let Republicans pack the federal courts.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Anticipatory compliance: when people are so intimidated that they obey a bully's commands before the commands are actually given.
Syria is suffering a wave of theft of antiquities, and the new government is not strong enough to stop it.
I wonder if other countries could win friendship in Syria by paying to hire cops to stop this.
There are AI systems that can determine, from almost any photo, what place it was taken in. This leads to even more danger of tracking people.
*Neo-Nazi group "actively seeking to grow in US" with planned paramilitary training event.*
This reflects the bully's general practice of supporting and recruiting neo-Nazis.
Arguing that Antarctica should have "rights" and be designated a "person".
I support legal protection for Antarctica, enforced by a world body which has the necessary power to achieve the goal. But it is absurd to treat Antarctica, or a river, or a forest, as a person. Exercise of the rights of a person requires will, but that is something that neither Antarctica, nor a river, nor a forest actually has.
Does Antarctica wish to remain ice-covered, or would it prefer to melt the ice and have forests with fruit trees? If Antarctica were a person, it could have a preference and we would be obliged to ask what that is.
We should protect Antarctica as a major part of a climatic system, whose stability is crucial for that system. That is even more important to protect than one person.
*Frequent TikTok users in Taiwan more likely to agree with pro-China narratives, study finds.*
Children living in poverty show biological signs of faster aging, apparently caused in some unidentified way by poverty.
A long list of ways that the saboteur-in-chief and his henchmen have blatantly defied laws.
Calling on New Zealand to protect sea-bottom life from trawling.
The blows of domestic violence can cause lasting gradual brain injury, and other sorts of mental illness.
*University of Michigan ends undercover surveillance contracts after Guardian revelations.*
However, the university put the blame entirely on excessive zeal by one employee of the company. Based on reports, it was more than one employee. More deeply, the wrong was not limited to the methods used by the company. The decision to snoop on students and staff preemptively to quash protests was the root of the evil. The university must repudiate that practice, not just the methods used.
Corrupt Night-Mayor Adams has personally ordered the city government to adopt the biased IHRC criterion for "antisemitism".
This criterion has been condemned by its own main author, and any entity which adopts it for judging actions morally or legally thereby makes is conclusions unreliable.
I hope the mayor is not authorized to make such a decision personally.
New South Wales has a commitment to create a new nature reserve to protect endangered koalas, but it has left out an area of land that is home for many koalas.
The muskrat invented a boondoggle called "golden dome" which would develop antimissile to defend against nuclear attack.
I would be delighted if the US had an antimissile system for nuclear defense, provided that (1) we could expect it to succeed reliably in doing its defensive job, and (2) we could count on US leaders not to rejoice by threatening a nuclear first strike.
But (1) is unlikely to happen, because the job is so hard that the system will probably never achieve the goal. The money spent would be wasted, from the nation's point of view. By contrast, the principal contractors (Musk?) would find the system quite lucrative, whether it is adequate or not.
Today there is a No Kings protests at a city near you.
The No Kings protests are specifically aimed at the President of the US, but also the masterminds behind a unitary executive theory, playing the roles of White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, and director of Office of Management and Budget.
Millions will be out sounding and presenting emergency-messages assertively. Certain people at any organized protest will have the training and skills for peaceful protesting and de-escalating in order to avoid stirring up traps, and to maintain an emotional intelligence.
Today is also the President's birthday occasioned by a military parade near the White House.
Today is also US Flag Day. Show the world what we stand for. We live in a democracy, we're informed, we exercise our right to protest for the sake of our nation.
Robert Reich: *The Coward Goes to War Against America*, for the purpose of appearing brutal.
His announcements anticipate (eagerly?) a "need" to deploy soldiers "everywhere". That may be a clue to the actual target of his provocations.
US citizens: Call for the resignation of acting FEMA head David Richardson.
US citizens: call on state Democratic parties to ban super-PACs from Democratic primaries.
On June 8-9, Israel attacked the Madleen, a ship bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. It was operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The Hind Rajab Foundation has formally filed a war crimes complaint about this attack.
*Eyewitnesses report that passengers were physically assaulted, exposed to choking white substances sprayed from drones, and denied communication with the outside world.*
The ship and its personnel did not try to commit any violence or any damage against Israel, so there is no possible excuse for the violence that Israel committed against the ship and its personnel.
Israel attacked vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza several years ago.
Greta Thunberg accuses Israel of kidnapping the people on the activist boat that was bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. The attackers forcibly brought the activists to Israel, where they are now (ironically) being "deported", but they never intended to go there.
Earlier this year Israeli naval forces attacked an aid boat and damaged it seriously.
Lauren Weinstein, who lives in LA, posted this:
TRUMP AND THE REST OF THE FASCISTS ARE LYING TO YOU ABOUT L.A.Despite the fake images, fake reports, fake statements, and the rest of the fascist tactics, what protests there have been in L.A. over the last few days were entirely limited to a few blocks downtown. Bullsh*t from would-be dictator Trump that L.A. would be burning to the ground now if not for his National Guard deployment is nonsense, and they were sleeping on concrete because Trump didn't provide proper resources for them.
Los Angeles is gigantic, 500 square miles in size. Outside of that tiny area downtown where the situation calmed down dramatically even before Trump started his fascist vomit-fest, the rest of the city is operating completely normally and you wouldn't even know anything unusual was going on here.
It's Trump's and his sycophants BIG LIES to push his fascist agenda of arresting children and housewives rather than the "criminals" he promised would be his deportation focus. DON'T BE FOOLED.
*Netanyahu defends arming Palestinian clans accused of ties with jihadist groups.*
Arming and supporting Palestinian groups opposed to HAMAS is not necessarily a bad thing to do. Depending on what those groups stand for, it could be bad, or it could be good.
It seems that Netanyahu has chosen religious fanatics who could be like HAMAS only worse.
Australia has joined UK, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in putting sanctions on the two most hateful Israeli ministers, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
*The sanctions make it an offense to make assets available to a sanctioned person, require the freezing of any assets in Australia, and prevent them from entering Australia.*
Better late than never, but I expect that making Israel stop its war crimes will require wider and stronger action than this.
Ralph Nader describes the media landscape of the 60s, which permitted mass mobilization for progressive causes, and how it has changed such that the right-wing rich now dominate it.
US citizens: call on AG Bondi to give no taxpayer money to Proud Boys.
Massive protests against deportation are flooding Los Angeles, as the bully's sub-bullies revel in threats.
There are situations where deportation is called for, and they may need the option of using force in those situations. But deportation thugs have a pattern of disregarding immigrants' legal rights — sometimes under commands by presidents, and sometimes as individual improvisation. They treat laws as opportunities to stretch them into excuses to do wrong.
They also have a habit of making vague, blustery threats of violence, and given their history of refusing to correct "mistakes" we can't be confident that their exaggerations are nothing more than bluster.
The bully has federalized the California National Guard and deployed them in Los Angeles to attack protesters. California is suing, claiming that the legal requirements for doing that without permission from California's governor, Newsom, were not satisfied.
Meanwhile, the Great Leader plans to deploy Marines in Los Angeles to emphasize the threat of repression. An inside source asserted that the purpose of this is provocation for a "manufactured Crisis". Governor Newsom said that the bully "wants a spectacle — so don't give him one."
(satire) *Protesters Urged Not To Give Trump Administration Pretext For What It Already Doing.*
The bully sent the California National Guard to fight protesters, not on account of any need for that, but as a preemptive measure. The likely result will be to make the US military a political tool.
I expect that officers who are loyal to the principle that this must not happen will find themselves compelled to resign, resulting in an army that is loyal to a tyrant instead of principle.
*Democratic lawmakers denied entry to [deportation prisons] in LA and New York.*
The deportation thugs in LA are arresting many alleged immigrants, and holding them incommunicado. Their relatives have to wonder whether they are in California, Louisiana, El Salvador, or Somali land, and whether they will ever see those relatives again.
Their lawyers have not been allowed to talk with them either.
Greta Thunberg and other European activists are sailing in the "freedom Flotilla", putting pressure on Israel to stop the bombardment and siege of Gaza by symbolically bringing some food aid there.
Israel is making it quite clear that it intends to stop food aid for Gaza at any cost.
US citizens: call on the Senate to preserve the authority of federal courts over unconstitutional or illegal executive actions, by defeating the No Rogue Rulings act.
*Trump uses LA protests to redirect dissent from policy failures to the "enemy within".*
We know, of course, who is the real "enemy within".
US citizens: call on the Cop30 president to pay attention to cutting fossil fuel use.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop Thiel's dangerous surveillance scheme.
The article seems to think it makes a big difference that Thiel will make money from running this system. I think that is a side issue and we should not let that distract us from the harm that surveillance will do.
US citizens: call on Oklahoma to stop trying to teach right-wing election lies in public schools.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the Charter-Cox megamerger.
All mergers that would result in company with more than 10% of any market should be prohibited.
US citizens: call for restoring the funding for development of a vaccine against bird flu — before it spreads to humans.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated Javascript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The University of Michigan is paying private "investigators" to follow and snoop on students involved in Gaza protests.
In some cases, the students report, these "investigators" also harass the students, both physically and with fabricated accusations, as well as by listening to and recording their conversations.
It is clear that the university management has discarded all concept of justice and human rights in its persecution of student protesters.
The UK government is planning to build nuclear power plants in places that will be inundated by sea level rise.
Long before the sea rises enough to permanently inundates them, it will create a Fukushima-like vulnerability to temporary rises.
Keep in mind that forecasts for sea-level rise are systematic underestimates. In addition, as global heating advances, new weather phenomena appear which we had no basis to suspect at lower temperatures, and often they cause positive feedback.
We ought to speed up our archaeological investigations of sites less than 20 meters above sea level — and start demolishing the cities which are doomed to be flooded, so we can discover the facts hidden under those places while they are still dry land.
*Fighting the climate crisis is vital for national security.*
That applies to every country. Massive disasters can destabilize any part of the world.
The racist-in-chief's Secretary of Education says it is permissible for schools to teach about the Tulsa race massacre as long as they "give the facts on both sides".
Are we supposed to believe that there is a positive side to a murderous riot by racists?
Are we supposed to believe that there is a positive side to a riot that attacked the Capitol?
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 denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I present this comment about them.
*With humankind currently transgressing at least six of nine planetary boundaries, the cornucopian perspective [that population growth is not a problem] is a dangerous one and needs to be challenged wherever encountered.*
The deportation thugs threaten to deport witnesses who testify in a lawsuit that aims to prevent deportation of academics for their political views.
*Mass firings [on the Department of Education] spark concern as department employees say cuts set stage for widespread fraud and abuse.*
I suspect that the saboteur-in-chief would be pleased with that consequence. It would provide an excuse to attack the system of loans, and thus to weaken higher education in the US.
Britons who bought homes constructed with dangerous, flammable cladding have won a court case against the builders.
This is just — the builders had the responsibility to do the job safely, so they should shoulder the costs of fixing their wrong decision. I hope they won't be able to avoid paying by legal stratagems.
Kabul is rapidly running out of water supply, and most of what remains is polluted by various poisons.
Chicago's 75-year contract for privatization of its parking meters is exploitative in many ways. It was rushed through without proper study of its terms, and part of the argument for it was trickle-down, which is always suspect.
Outside of a few states with progressive policies, day care for young children in the US is so expensive that many parents cannot possibly afford it. The US frenzy against allowing children time at home alone multiplies the expense.
Other wealthy countries subsidize child care.
This leaves me with a question: how do poor American families, in which both parents need to work, cope with this situation? Since they can't afford to pay for day care, evidently they don't. What do they actually do instead? And what are the consequences of doing that?
Pushing to restrict lobbying in Australia.
I don't know the details, but in general that is a good goal.
dooH elekuB is taking land from poor people in El Salvador, and jailing them when they protest.
Britons protested demanding that the UK tax the rich more instead of cutting the poor more.
The DOPE used software to choose which Veterans Affairs contracts to cancel, under a person with no pertinent experience. The department now refuses to say which contracts it has cancelled.
This is intentional incompetence. If it doesn't cause a disaster, that will be sheer luck, and thus no reason to excuse the stupidity.
An outbreak of "vaccine-hesitancy" in Canada has infected thousands of people with measles. Next it could be thousands of people with polio.
I don't think parents should be allowed to deny their children vaccination without presenting a strong justification. Mere vaccine hesitancy should not be sufficient grounds.
(satire) *New Pope Declassifies Jesus Crucifixion Documents.*
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to reject cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. Also SNAP which provides food aid to poor families.
While you're at it, you could speak up for NOAA, FEMA, the EPA and the IRS.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: write to Brazil's ministers in support of climate defense policies.
Glowing predictions about how well nuclear power plants will work don't take account of the tendency for workers to bully those who report safety concerns.
Someone in Syria fired artillery or missiles at Israel. Israel responded by attacking the forces of the fairly new Syrian government.
That government does not have full control of the territory of Syria. There are forces loyal to Assad, and others loyal to PISSI. Most likely one of them fired at Israel. Israel's actions and words suggest that it is looking for an excuse for war with the Syrian government, and considers even a morally flimsy excuse to be sufficient.
Israel to Palestinians in Gaza: if you drive a car to an "aid hub", looking perhaps for some food aid, we will shoot you.
So if you're a Palestinian in Gaza and you are too weak to walk to get food, don't think of trying to get a lift.
I don't know for certain, but I'd expect this policy is a war crime.
*At least 27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at food point, Gaza officials say.*
A group of international journalists tried to observe the continuing Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from Masafar Yatta, but Israeli soldiers forcibly stopped them.
The troops said the reason for this was to "keep order", but no legitimate kind of "order" needs to be preserved from journalism. We are entitled to suspect that the real reason is to cover up crimes that the troops and the violent "settlers" are committing.
Jeremy Corbyn: *How exactly has Britain supported Israel's military assault on Gaza? The public has a right to know.*
*Israel accused of arming Palestinian gang who allegedly looted aid in Gaza.*
Is there anything so vicious and treacherous that Israel won't do it?
Cutting off rhinos' horns cuts poaching by 80%.
The killing of rhinos to cut off and sell their horns is profitable due to medical disinformation. It is just one example of the harm that disinformation does.
I wonder what the dehorners do with the horns they cut off. They could undersell the poachers and that might make poaching cease to be profitable.
I wonder why the poachers don't start cutting off horns without killing rhinos. Perhaps they could pay for licenses to do this.
*Amazon "testing humanoid robots to deliver packages."* Their delivering packages near people could be dangerous; if part of one bangs into your body it may not stop moving.
I don't know how those machines will be constructed, but robots built out of metal and motors move with great momentum. If a human gets in the way of any moving part of the robot. it can easily injure per. Simply having a person in the space that the robot can move through is dangerous. If a robot goes through sidewalks and buildings where humans go, the dangers is active.
Maybe these new robots move with little momentum and can easily be stopped by contact with any part of a human body. But the article does not say so.
The bully is shutting China's access to advanced proprietary technology of US companies, but at the same time opening back channels for such technology to reach China, via Qatar and UAE and via the corrupter's Chinese billionaire friends.
MIT punished the graduating class president for talking about Gaza in a speech. She was barred from the subsequent graduation ceremony — which I don't think can be justified — but did receive her degree.
I disapprove of this censorship, but at least it wasn't followed by a draconian punishment as happened at other universities in the past month.
*US vetoes resolution for unconditional Gaza ceasefire at UN security council.*
This makes the persecutor solely responsible for continuing Netanyahu's campaign of killing.
Deportation thugs, disguised with masks, grabbed alleged unauthorized immigrants out of stores in Los Angeles, and fought with large crowds of protesters.
Given the illegal acts the persecutor has already ordered, we have no reason to have confidence that those arrested were in fact unauthorized.
The protesters did not engage in violence, but one threw eggs. Nonetheless, the thugs claim that they, notwithstanding their force and arms, were in some sort of danger.
(satire) *IRS Allows Taxpayers To Deposit Payments Directly Into Elon Musk's Bank Account.*
I wonder if the sudden public hostility between the bully and the muskrat is simply distraction theater.
Journalist Martin Bell reports how, during the 1973 war, Israel's army allowed him and other foreign reporters to go almost everywhere and report almost everything. Nowadays, by contrast, while Israel carries out massacre after massacre, it will not let foreign journalists into Gaza at all.
Diplomats are meeting to draw up regulations for weapons which act under the direction of a machine learning system.
The article starts by assuming that the reader foolishly embraces the unjust computing systems that society invites and pressures everyone to use. Let us recall that some readers stubbornly refuse. But the assumption applies to most people.
What can we conclude about this issue?
US citizens: call on the wrecker to restore funds for research in curing fatal diseases.
US citizens: call on Congress to establish a national universal medical system.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to reject attacks on the Department of Education.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The bully has returned to his favorite theme: banning people from various countries from traveling to the US at all.
This is foolish and unjust because the ban punishes hundreds of thousands of people, of whom perhaps a handful might do some harm.
*In late May, UCSF terminated Rupa Marya following a nine-month suspension from the elite medical school based on social media posts in which she criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza and questioned how Zionist ideology affects health care outcomes.* The school fired her and is trying to smear her reputation. She has sued the school for this.
The article reports that the school has committed similar repression against others.
Global heating has given the western US a warm spring and a high danger of wildfires. Put this together with sabotage of FEMA and the Weather Service and it spells danger.
Why the wrecker attacks education, even education that Americans admire.
*Authoritarians know that if they can convince us our country has never been wrong, they can make us believe our ruler is always right.*
A prosecutor in West Virginia threatens to prosecute women who have miscarriages.
It is not safe to be pregnant in West Virginia. If you get pregnant there, move to a state that won't prosecute you, and stay away. Even if you want to have the baby, you are not safe doing that in West Virginia.
Immigrants in the US are unlikely to commit crimes, compared with native-born citizens, and unauthorized immigrants are even less likely. But the bully is using an example of a hate crime committed by a marginally authorized immigrant as an excuse to demonize all immigrants.
The wrecker blocked millions of recognized immigrants from working by making the Social Security Administration stop giving them social security numbers.
The two would-be emperors of the US have fallen into a harsh public dispute, reminiscent of Caesar and Pompey.
They could tear up the US in their civil war.
The US has put sanctions on judges of the International Criminal Court.
The US has tried to fight the ICC since around 20 years ago ever since Dubya realized that some US actions in the occupation of Iraq might be war crimes and the ICC might prosecute them.
Let's wish for a US that won't tolerate war crimes and will prosecute Americans who commit or order them. That way, the ICC would not get involved. Its mission is to prosecute criminals whose countries won't prosecute them.
US citizens: call on the EPA to Keep PFAS out of our water.
For background, see this.
Join the worldwide anti-Trump protest — NO KINGS — on Saturday, June 14, next weekend.
Millions of Americans have already been protesting, every weekend, sending a strong message to their representatives, but June 14 is also Flag Day and Trump's birthday.
Show the world how Democracy works.
US citizens: call for the immediate reinstatement of Logan Rozos's diploma.
Un-American NYU punished him with shocking cruelty for stating forbidden political views.
Even in a protected rain forest, with no pesticides, insect diversity has crashed in the last few decades. A light trap used to photograph 3,000 species in one evening. The same light trap, operated nowadays in the same way at the same season, now records a small population of few species.
Sharp population decreases are also observed in animals that eat insects.
Scientists suspect the damage is done by ecological mismatches caused by changed aspects of the climate in each place. If so, to avoid disaster we need to stop the global heating that causes the other changes.
US citizens: call on the US government to continue medical care for veterans.
Republicans are now split between their pre-bullshitter goal of reducing the deficit and the wrecker's goal of cutting taxes for the rich.
Avoiding the increase in deficit would avoid wiping out Medicare. But if the way they choose to reduce the deficit is to cut other non-military spending, that could make the disaster even worse.
US citizens: call on Paramount to resist the bully's censorship lawsuit and let CVS defend itself.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Chief Justice Roberts to stand up for judges against the bully's campaign of demonization.
Google search allows its bullshit generator to summarize some web sites instead of just directing users to the site. When it does this for medical web sites, the summaries are often inaccurate, and this can be dangerous.
It is a mistake to call these errors "hallucinations" because that presumes the LLM tries to understand the site's text and the supposed summary that it constructs. It does not understand either of them, because its mechanism does not understand the semantics of anything.
Some prominent Hong Kong supporters of democracy have been released at the end of the four-year prison sentence they received for advocating democracy and trying to practice it.
TikTok is a bad place to get mental health advice.
*The experts established that 52 out of 100 videos offering advice on dealing with trauma, neurodivergence, anxiety, depression and severe mental illness contained some misinformation…*
This is in addition to various other kinds of dangerous misinformation and disinformation. And the whole thing is based on running a nonfree client program that surely tracks each user's activities. It may do other nasty things too — nonfree software generally does.
TikTok influencers and their misleading medical claims.
*Hegseth calls on Asia to boost military spending in face of "imminent" threat from China.*
China is certainly expansionist and repressive. Whether Xi aims to conquer and subjugate other countries, aside from Taiwan, I don't know. China's navy is already trying to muscle in on their territory, though not as grossly as the bully does in Mexico and Central America.
Turning to the US for support would be a natural thing for China's neighbors to do, and several are already doing it. Their problem is that the wrecker has made it clear that the US government under the power of the bully does not respect any soft of commitment; he has even threatened war against US allies such as Denmark to seize Greenland. Australia's government is starting to doubt whether the agreed-on purchase of submarines from the US is safe.
Texas thugs searched records of license plate cameras of various other states, looking for a women who (they suspected) might be seeking an opportunity for an abortion.
These records were copied and stored by a company which makes them conveniently accessible to thugs from Texas.
Ramon Morales-Reyes appeared to have signed a letter threatening to assassinate the corrupter. Noem found this an ideal example to prove how vicious immigrants are, and rushed to present it to the press. Then it turned that he didn't write, sign or send the letter.
The magats are in the habit of circulating accusations without checking them, and nowadays some of their carelessness becomes visible.
US Jews protested at Columbia University against the university's repression carried in the name of "fighting antisemitism".
Leaders of the plutocratist right-wing tout the riches of the rich people of countries such as Salafi Arabia, Dubai and China, without a word of about their repression. The danger is that they will teach young people in the west that that those riches are the thing to admire.
The US border thugs are taking genetic samples of pretty much every non-citizen entering the US who they stop and "detain".
Amazon arbitrarily decided to make all Echo devices send all the audio they hear to Amazon servers. The server will figure out what (if anything) someone asked it to do.
What else will it do with that recording? There are no limits except management's will. It might save some of the utterances what it hears and present them years later to the political police.
It will also make this available to the persecutor's political police.
*How the FBI and Big Ag Started Treating Animal Rights Activists as Terrorists.
These activists induce fear … of unfavorable but accurate publicity. This should not be treated as a crime. Businesses are not morally entitled to privacy in the way human beings are.
*Israeli strikes on Gaza schools used as civilian shelters part of deliberate strategy, say sources.*
In Australia, the Karratha Gas Plant's main activity is contributing to global heating and the consequent likely fall of civilization, but it has a secondary effect: releasing emissions that degrade the 50,000-year-old rock art (plus other rock art that is less old) in the surrounding Murujuga area.
UNESCO would like to designate that art as a World Heritage site, but there is an objection: World Heritage sites are supposed to be protected. Australia's response is to pressure UNESCO to make an exception there.
Meta has decided to stop asking human experts to judge whether changes in the behavior of its systems could cause harm to human users. Instead it will use some sort of "artificial intelligence" system to determine whether a change is safe enough for actual use.
We could imagine a truly intelligent program that would fully understand human psychology and could make such judgments as well as the most capable humans. But there is no reason to assume that whatever system Meta has designed is as wise as that.
On the contrary, since Meta will not have to convince anyone else to test how well this system makes such judgments, Meta has every incentive to skimp on the design, so that the system would disregard some possible problems and systematically give grades that are too high.
The persecutor has imposed political censorship on veterans' doctors and scientists' publications about medicine.
*Parks, libraries, museums: here's why [the bully] is attacking America's best-loved institutions.
Most of these institutions suffer the damage without casting blame on the one responsible — so he gets away without a penalty. Even if there is nothing more you can do, never cease to cast the blams!
Planet-roaster officials plan to allow oil drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve.
This is bad because (1) it means additional greenhouse gas emissions, (2) it would destroy an important de-facto wildlife reserve, and (3) because the petroleum there is being saved for some possible future pressing need.
China has built peculiar, innovative bridge-landing ships for invading Taiwan. They are designed to land vehicles onto roads at some distance from the shore, where there is no beach, by deploying a bridge extending across the land's edge to the road.
I hope Taiwan is getting Ukraine's guidance in making maritime drones to attack naval ships with.
US Christians seek to make divorce more difficult, for couples that have a special kind of marriage called "covenant marriage." Such marriages impose extra hoops to jump through in order to qualify for divorce.
If people make that choice after due thought, I don't think that is a disaster. But many people will be pressured in the name of religion into choosing this sort of marriage.
The Hind Rajab Foundation calls on various countries' governments to pursue Israeli war criminals who visit those countries.
US citizens: call on the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to stand by Harvard in its refusal to submit to the bully.
Republican Senator Joni Ernst did not quite say it is of no importance whether her constituents live or die. Rather, she made a pedantic quip about careless wording in a constituent's criticism of the substance of her position.
The criticism's intended point was that the Medicaid exclusions she supports would leave many unable to afford medical treatment, and that would cause some of them to die much sooner.
*Proposal to limit student loans for "professional programs" risks driving people away from medicine, critics say.*
The magats figure that after big spending cuts on medical treatment for the poor, the US will employ fewer doctors and nurses.
The persecutor's henchmen claim that providing temporary aid to border-crossers is a crime, and threaten to prosecute the people who do so.
The US Supreme Court ruled that cities can sue oil companies in state courts for the damages from global heating.
As the article says, these lawsuits' judgments won't be able to repay the cost of the damages done by global heating. All the money in the world won't be able to do that. We have to hope it will lead to a political decision to decarbonize.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to drop all charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver, She was arrested trying to demand answers about a deportation, along with the mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
*Classing grievous acts of environmental harm as crimes against peace may hold states and corporations to account.*
As with crimes against humanity, the hard part will be to overcome the ways they use their power to make governments protect them — and protect their crimes too.
I question whether it is wise to include "of a given territory" in the definition of ecocide. The biggest ecocides now in progress cause damage around the world, but that fact should not exclude them from being considered ecocide.
*My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner.*
He published that article over two months ago. It reflects the American ideals of freedom and democracy.
He is still in jail now.
A court in North Dakota ruled that Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for protesting against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The fossil fuels transported in that pipeline will increase and hasten the damage caused to nearly everyone by global heating disaster. If that leads to the collapse of civilization and the death of most humans, there will be no way to measure the damages Energy Transfer is liable for, nor to collect them from what remains of that company, nor to pay them to the descendants of the dead.
*[DOPE] employees hold stock in firms set to benefit from cuts, Democrats allege.*
When officials know they won't be prosecuted for corruption, they often turn to corruption. The DOPE's slogan could be "Corruption Я Us." I wonder if the corrupter will ask Putin for official Russian permission to use the letter Я.
US citizens: call on several major US stores to state on product labels how much of the price is due to the bully's tariff decrees.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Robert Reich: the corrupter is still a threat, but we can see that the tide is turning against him.
*[The persecutor]’s revenge spree on Harvard echoes well beyond education. Attacks on the university make clear that [his henchmen's] administration will wield its power against anyone who incurs its displeasure
*Palestinians gunned down while trying to reach food aid site in Gaza, hospital says.*
Mahmoud Khalil's lawyers demanded information about the private organizations that said nasty things about him to the US government, reports which the government claims showed some sort of danger, though they may be pure noise.
The wrecker is canceling NASA missions that could elucidate mysteries of the universe, including whether there was life on Mars, and basic mysteries of physics and cosmology.
The magats' cuts in federal agencies that aid survival and reconstruction after emergencies are interfering with recovery from the disastrous Los Angeles fires of January.
PBS canceled a documentary about Art Spiegelman because the people making it refused to omit a scene in which Spiegelman talks about a cartoon that criticizes the would-be king.
Ironically, the executive of PBS had rational grounds to fear that any criticism of him might provoke him to try to destroy PBS. That does not make craven censorship acceptable.
Even more ironically, since he is already trying to destroy PBS, practically speaking PBS had nothing to lose by allowing that scene except its honor.
PISSI is citing both the persecutor and Hegseth to recruit supporters.
(PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.)
The persecutor has ordered the deportation thugs to arrest at least 3,000 people per day.
Quotas for arrests are automatically unjust, since they can only be filled if the thugs arrest people who normally should not have been arrested.
On the DEA's program for massive collection of phone call records.
A French hunter shot and killed a bear that was chewing on his leg, and is being prosecuted for killing a protected bear.
It appears that he went to hunt boar in a protected nature reserve. Perhaps he should be tried for that — but that crime cannot deserve death or maiming as a punishment.
Perhaps he should be sentenced to paint clearer markers around the nature reserve, as a form of community service. That will protect the other bears there.
Hungary used facial recognition to punish the participants in protests, for a cause that has been outright forbidden to express.
Spain is considering a law to require manufacturers of moist towelettes to pay the cost of the cleanup made necessary when people flush them down toilets.
Those costs are substantial, which is why people are taught not to flush anything solid except human waste and toilet paper down a toilet. But not everyone has learned not to do this.
Argentina's right-wing government is trying to pressure women to get pregnant and then to have babies.
The UK has started nationalizing train operating companies. Now the new operator has to use the money it will no longer pay in dividends to improve train service.
One of the painful effects of privatization was that your ticket was always for a specific train run by a specific company. If all the trains are from the same company, there is no need for that to be so.
The "defeat device" fraud, which disguised the pollution of diesel engines while their emissions were measured, is estimated to have killed 16,000 people in the UK.
It may be less in the US because the US forced manufacturers to fix the cars.
Inside Salafi Arabia's secret brainwashing prisons for disobedient women.
Mary Trump describes the character flaws of her uncle, the persecutor.
The US needs to offer young people education in skilled trades without the expense of college.
This reminds me that we need also more craft and trade workers who are trained through apprenticeships. At least we do, around Boston. But maybe what we need is to make it easier for customers to find them.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to reject injustices in the Republicans' Big Bad Bill
One injustice is making court orders unenforceable — so the bully could brush aside those impediments to absolute power.
Another injustice is the cuts in medicine and food aid for Americans who can't afford it.
And then there are the tax cuts for the rich. (The rest of this email I have copied from a message which suggested running nonfree software. I can't refer the public to that!)
Republicans know these tax cuts are wildly unpopular, so they’re scrambling to rebrand. Speaker Mike Johnson trimmed the plan slightly and Trump floated a tiny rate increase for ultra-high earners both designed to generate positive press.
But don’t be fooled, this is still a massive giveaway to the billionaire class:
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The wrecker and Pentagon officials are in a dispute in which various officials accuse other officials of lying.
They must all expect the others to lie, but they surely don't like wondering, "Which ones are lying to me?"
Maybe none of them can trust each other any more.
Putin is not interested in negotiating peace with Ukraine. He thinks he can win more by continuing to attack.
The only way to stop this war of conquest is by supporting Ukraine in fighting it.
*The bully has canceled $100m in contracts [with Harvard]* as simple retribution for its refusal it submit.
China joins the US and some European countries as big creditors that will squeeze poor countries dry.
New Zealand's right-wing government has hurriedly passed a law to encourage new mines, which evidently works by allowing mines to damage the environment.
Every mine will eventually run out. Mining operations will cease, but leaking of toxic chemicals will not. The mine will require expensive cleanup, and the company that extracted lots of money from running the mine will try to dump the cost on the public. That follows the usual "capitalism for our profits, socialism for the problems we cause" spirit of business.
To allow mines to operate without eventually harming the public requires carefully designed laws. When governments are eager to please business, as the current New Zealand government is, one can expect them to neglect this part. New Zealand's law to promote mining was hurried, so I'd guess they didn't try very hard to protect their local environment.
Allowing new coal mines is declaring war on civilization.
Netanyahu's plan for a humanitarian aid mini-program for Gaza turned into bombing when starving people came too many at once.
This program is not designed to bring in enough food for everyone.
*Thousands of Israelis have joined a state-funded march through the Muslim quarter of the Old City in Jerusalem, where large groups chanted racist slogans including "Gaza is ours," "death to the Arabs", and "may their villages burn."*
In Israel as in the US, right-wing marches meant to display power and threat, and to recruit people who want to attach themselves to those things.
A former Israeli prime minister said that Israel is committing war crimes in a private war with no (legitimate) purpose.
This is not news to us, but its being said by important politicians may lead to a way to stop it.
The saboteur-in-chief has ordered US embassies to stop processing applications for student visas.
If this continues, the US universities might admit new foreign students but it would be futile since they could not attend the school.
But maybe it is meant to be temporary, since there seems to be a plan to issue student visas again — but only after looking at each student's political views as seen on antisocial media.
Chased, beaten and robbed: [Palestinian] survivors [forced to flee their village, Mughayyir,] describe Israeli settler violence in West Bank.
It is happening all the time now, in one village after another.
*Environmentalists fear effects of [the wrecker's clean water funding] cuts on Great Lakes.*
*Countries must bolster climate [defense] efforts or risk war, Cop30 chief executive warns.*
To start a war today over future scarcities and dangers would be unlikely, but once those scarcities and dangers start to kill lots of people, that will occur to some politicians.
If our governments has real courage, they would defeat the real enemies — the planet roasters — now, and implement the better solutions to avoid the suffering that is likely to cause wars.
*[The bully's] Lying Now Produces Deadly, Costly, and Soon Calamitous Consequences.* A list of his most important persistent lies and the damage they do or will soon do.
US citizens: call on the Senate to to block weapons sales to Qatar and UAE due to the corrupter's corrupt dealings with both countries.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Santander Bank to stop investing in deforestation and covering it up with greenwashing.
US citizens: call on Amazon to accept the union's Safety Bill of Rights, and bring its high worker injury rate down to the usual level for warehouses.
The corrupter's cryptocurrencies are a range of opportunities for rich people to pay him off.
If we ever have a US government not in the hands of the rich, it should prohibit federal and state officials from owning an investment fund of any kinds.
It is scientists' duty to resist the persecutor's anti-science and anti-education program.
The bully has said nothing about Ukraine lately, but since he was unable to bring about a peace deal (which was probably impossible), he may have lost interest. Or he may have something worse in mind.
The UK's border thugs are operating under orders from the military.
Explaining the part of the Big Bad Bill that would make nearly all existing court orders in the US unenforceable.
Republicans control Congress and the presidency, and have demonstrated their intention to convert that into absolute, arbitrary power. The only obstacle that remains is the judiciary. This is their plan to make the judiciary too weak to restrain them.
The campaign to bully law firms to refuse to work for his victims is another method of making the courts powerless.
*US judge overturns [the bully's] order targeting major law firm Jenner & Block.*
(satire) Instead of making English the official language of the US, the US should ban it.
The Anna's Hummingbird species has evolved, in less than a century, to adapt its beak to California's hummingbird feeders, and spread its range as the feeders have spread.
President Bukele of El Salvador has jailed a prominent anti-corruption lawyer. I wonder if they tattooed her with alleged "gang symbols".
The bully's attack has strewn chaos in medical care for US veterans.
*[Republican] Members of Congress are accused of hiding out when workers have sought answers on why their jobs were axed.*
Why so Republicans persist so firmly in supporting something they know their constituents loathe? It's not as if they were ignorant of that sentiment. So there is to be a reason.
I have two theories:
The bully's henchman arbitrarily revoked Harvard's authorization to enroll foreign students and enable them to have visas.
This would have done great harm both to Harvard and the 6000 or so foreign students now there.
Harvard did sue, and (I read) obtained a temporary court order to block the attack. (I wonder if the Big Bad Bill would enable officials to disregard that temporary order.) But even if that order can be enforced and becomes permanent nationwide in a few months, that won't stop foreign students from reconsidering whether to take the risk of enrolling in any US university.
The wrecker seems to regard US universities as a center of influence, which he therefore is trying various methods to damage and weaken them.
*A biblical hatred is engulfing both sides in the Gaza conflict — and blinding them to reason.*
The Killing of two people is not comparable in magnitude to the killing of tens or hundreds of thousands; the latter is a campaign of atrocities while the former is at most one. But the article is right in insisting out that we must recognize and condemn each side's deadly violence for what it is, and not allow either one to excuse the other.
US citizens: call on Congress to halt the weapons sales to Israel fueling the massacre in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call for stopping the US arrests of public officials for disagreeing with the wrecker.
*Israeli "settlers" force about 150 Palestinians to leave their West Bank village.*
This describe one instance of a usual and frequent pattern.
The Big Bad Bill's cuts in Medicaid and SNAP will kill Americans, advocacy groups warn.
The implied automatic cuts in Medicare (not mentioned in the article) will kill other Americans — those who are old, have medical problems, and don't have a comfortable sum of money to pay for treating them.
Arguing for military intervention to stop the genocide in Gaza.
Since Netanyahu's latest plan encompasses killing a large fraction of Palestinians in Gaza, and expelling the rest. I am now convinced that the term "genocide" correctly applies.
I have noticed a tendency to think that accusing people of a campaign of killing is not a very grave accusation unless one calls it "genocide". I disagree. I think that any campaign to kill large numbers of people is an enormous crime.
The persecutor hates gangs, right? Not when his buddy Bukele makes a deal with the gang.
He doesn't really hate MS-13 at all; he just uses that as an excuse to persecute people by accusing them of being members of it.
The bully urges magats to file false claims of misuse of federal funds, under the False Claims Act, against US colleges, in the hope of overwhelming them with frivolous lawsuits. And — who knows — a few of those lawsuits might by strange chance succeed,
*Yes, the media’s Biden coverage was flawed. But its reporting on [the bully] was far worse.*
The Anti-Defamation League lobbies towns for laws restricting showing people signs or handling them leaflets.
*[The bully]'s ambush of South Africa’s president shows how low the US has fallen.*
A judge ordered the government not to deport anyone to South Sudan without the court hearing that every deportee is entitled to, but they did it anyway. He has ruled that they violated the court order.
South Sudan is on the edge of civil war, and is not a safe place to deport anyone to.
The judge will proceed to consider punishment for the officials responsible. I fear that the wrecker will stage an autogolpe by defying this. On the other hand, if the judge backs down, that would give the wrecker the same victory.
Perhaps the judge will impose a small but symbolic penalty, which would seem absurd to defy.
*Israeli troops fire ‘warning shots’ at 25 diplomats [representing 31 countries] visiting [Jenin in the] occupied West Bank.*
The Israeli government says they were "warning shots". What sort of government considers it appropriate to use "warning shots" to ask a group of diplomats to go down the other street? And what did Israel not want the diplomats to see?
The visit was arranged with the Palestinian Authority. Perhaps the intended warning was, "Don't talk with the PA."
How the bullshitter's welcome to "refugee" Afrikaners is perceived in South Africa — mostly as a butt of ridicule.
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 practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I label them like this.
If you're concerned about the US national debt, or about effects of others' concern about the national debt, tax the rich!
Most Britons want a legal requirement for businesses and services to accept cash payments. If you live in the UK — or anywhere else — please support the cause of cash. You can do it through organizing for such a law. And you can do it through direct action by paying cash.
You can also turn around and walk out of a business if it won't let you pay cash. That is what I do.
Another good way to respond to refusal to accept cash is to ask other customers, those who don't see the reason to pay cash, to accept your money in cash, then pay it to the business using a card.
The head of the Committee for Public Safety, aka Department of Homeland Security, did not know what Habeas Corpus means.
I suppose that she never was interested in learning about systems to protect people from arbitrary arrest and punishment.
RFK Jr's distorted report on the health of US children by disregarding the main causes of children's death: guns and car crashes.
Brazil's congress has passed a law to "dismantle regulations in farming, mining and energy, increasing risk of widespread destruction."
*Children and elderly are dying from starvation in Gaza, says health minister.*
Meanwhile, the insufficient supplies of food aid are somehow snagged and not reaching the starving Palestinians. I have no information on the cause of the snag, but I have to suspect it is no accident.
*[Microsoft] Employees on Wednesday began noticing that email messages sent from their company account containing a handful of keywords related to [the war in Gaza] [arrived late or not at all].
The bullshitter's "evidence" for accusing South Africa for practicing bigotry against whites is, as usual, full of bullshit.
Hong Kong's "random" income tax audits seem to fall strangely often on independent journalism.
Kenneth Roth: shooting embassy workers to make a point about Gaza is inexcusable. It is also self-defeating, since Netanyahu is citing that killing to try to discredit all the others who condemn the bombardment and siege of Gaza. Irrational as that argument is, it will have an effect.
*At least six organizations that claim to champion patient rights have deep financial and operational ties to Big Pharma and work to advance corporate profits.*
*If aid doesn’t enter Gaza now, 14,000 babies may die. UN peacekeepers must step in.*
The UN General Assembly has the power to do this as a last resort. I think the time for a last resort came a year ago.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on the to vote against the magats' Big Bad Bill.
Robert Reich summarizes facts about the Big Bad Bill. Cutting Medicaid and food stamps are just the start of the suffering.
One thing not mentioned there is that the bill would automatically cause a large cut in Medicaid because it would increase the federal deficit.
The bill would also block federal courts from enforcing court orders by declaring the officials who ignore them in contempt of court.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Massive disapproval within the Labour Party, inside and outside if Parliament, compelled Starmer to cancel some of the plans to reduce support for poor people.
While the decision affects just one issue, aid for home heating, he may have to re-prioritize more broadly and serve the non-rich.
*U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data.*
Your data will probably be available to them, because you use systems that collect the data about your movements and your actions. That data collection creates an Orwellian system, whose results we see here.
I reject nearly all such systems because I am against the Orwellian society that they create. The database of mobile phone location data can't have any information in it about me, since I have never had one.
Please join me in rejecting these systems and demanding that they not collect data about who people talk with, where people go, and what they do there.
*China accused of using mental health law to lock up critics.*
Various dictatorial countries have used this approach to jail people who criticize the government.
US citizens: call on Congress to block Trump's $400 million flying bribe.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to have the FBI investigate real criminals, especially abusive corporations, not immigrants who have done no wrong to anyone.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*EU urged to act over Hungary's plans to "effectively outlaw free press."*
The question is, what can the EU actually do? Under the EU treaties, intervening in a member country's "security" arrangements is very difficult.
The deportation thugs wait outside the door of the buildings where immigration courts meet, so that they can immediately arrest and deport people who lose their cases.
That way, the victims won't have a chance to peacefully arrange their own departure, pack up their possessions, or say goodbye to their families.
*The wrecker's sanctions on ICC prosecutor have halted tribunal's work.*
A candidate in the UK's fascist party who praised Hitler and Assad has been put in charge of deciding who is an acceptable candidate for that party.
This follows the bully's approach in the US: a strategy of radical rejection of reality, to a point verging on insanity.
The bullshitter wants to build space-based nuclear weapon defenses that would cost a trillion dollars (spread over 20 years).
Even if this system works against nearly all of the attacking missiles, it won't stop 100% of them. It doesn't require many nuclear explosions to cause a nuclear winter and destroy both sides (and the rest of civilization).
However, the system could be effective deterrence for a nuclear first strike intended to destroy the US nuclear capability. That might assure a nuclear war between great powers never happens.
But is that indeed likely ever to happen? Maybe its inherent dangers are enough to deter it. Would that first strike itself start a nuclear winter and destroy both sides?
*[So-called "AI"] to play increasing role in UK armed forces, defense secretary says.*
I can see it now. "Oops! Three of the four divisions we sent to Poland do not actually exist, and the other one was ordered to Finland at the same time."
Countries that provide arms to Israel, and their leaders since 8 Oct 2023, may face condemnation and punishment for supporting Israel in its mass killing in Gaza.
The bully is targeting programs that aid victims of domestic violence.
Why? Could it be simple performative misogyny?
The US secretary of the interior theoretically recognizes that global heating occurs, but denies that it is happening already.
Big Tech wants you to share your private thoughts with chatbots -- while backing a government with contempt for privacy. That's not to mention that chatbots can be set up to implement or inculcate prejudices.
Please don't propagate the error of referring to chatbots as "AI".
A magat senator has proposed a bill that would make it a crime to distribute or even own anything that his religious extremism would call "obscene". Including, arguably, The Game of Thrones.
I think that distributing copies of The Game of Thrones should not be a crime unless they are perverted by DRM.
As for web site age checks that block access based on the user's age, I think they are acceptable provided they convey no information about the user to anyone aside from whether perse qualifies according to the age check. One way to implement this with free software is with a variant of GNU Taler.
*UK suspends trade talks with Israel and attacks "repellent" extremism.* Finally this is starting to be the kind of pressure that could make Israel stop.
This accompanies moral condemnation of Israel's plan to conquer Gaza and forcibly expel the population.
The UK and France are negotiating about recognizing Palestine as a state.
*US oil firms pumping … chemicals into ground and not fully reporting [which ones].*
The muskrat fired 10% of the staff of the National Weather Service, and the staff shortage hampers it from protecting Americans from dangerous weather.
This has already done real damage.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Hope for Homeownership Act, which would prevent hedge funds form buying up large numbers of houses and making them unavailable for people to buy as residences.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The wrecker has eliminated a regulation requiring consulting a special group before investigating or indicting a public official.
This would facilitate bullying officials by threatening arbitrarily to prosecute them.
I will speak at 17:15 on May 26 in the Politecnico di Milano, in Milan, Italy at Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, Room 9.1.2.
Topic: Computing freedom, software, and services
We understand that the uses of computing can be unjust. Most do not realize that the mechanisms of computing can be unjust at their own level in their own ways.
A nonfree program is one that that the users do not control. If that does your computing, its owners control your computing. This is the basic idea of the free software movement -- but what about using services?
When you use a service to do your own computing, the service's owner controls that computing. If that owner isn't you, this is unjust. By contrast, if your computer talks to a store's server on your behalf, to arrange a deal between you and the store, your side of that can be fully under your control.
Society and powerful institutions lure and pressure people into a tangled web of online dis-services and nonfree software which may seem impossible to escape. But you can start by rejecting a few of them. Saying no even once is helping!
*Verbal attacks by [the bully] and allies are creating a hostile climate that endangers [safety of judge that ruled against him], experts say.*
Labour is reviewing "security" relations with other countries, but doing it by disregarding some countries' torture practices despite criticizing them while it was not in power. These countries include India, Pakistan, Libya, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Salafi Arabia and Sierra Leone.
Of course, Labour desires favorable treatment by those other countries, but should not purchase that by treating their torture as acceptable.
The wrecker has declared, arbitrarily, that accepting certain government grants for climate resilience was "fraud". And he is trying to use that as an excuse to shut them down immediately by freezing their bank accounts, before any court decisions about the bizarre accusations.
How the perverter Putin-ized a party of cold war hawks.
Almost half of Britons age 16 to 21 would rather live in a world with no internet.
Nonfree software which is designed to be malware plays a role in many of the things they find painful. By rejecting nonfree software and SaaSS, they could avoid the worst aspects of today's internet. Users would have more control about how programs treat them. With free software for client programs, they would have more control over how services treat them — users could fix dark patterns and defeat attempts to addict them.
Compiling a list of all the threats to the survival of bees.
*Britain, France and Canada attacked Israel’s expansion of its war as disproportionate, described conditions in Gaza as "intolerable" and threatened a "concrete" response if Israel’s campaign continues.*
This looks like the start of a gradual diplomatic effort. That might have made sense 2 months ago, but now that people in Gaza are on the edge of starving, it is too slow.
The attack on nonprofit organizations has been removed from the House dooH niboR bill, which still imposes large and deadly cuts on medical and food aid for the poor and grants large tax cuts to the rich.
*[Amnesty International] declared ‘undesirable organisation’ amid Kremlin crackdown on critics, journalists and activists.* It vows to continue its work anyway.
This is what the would-be dictator wants to do in the US.
The CEO of CBS News is resigning. One must suspect that the corporation that owns CBS wants to let the corrupter censor CBS News.
A list of environmentally damaging budget cuts in the Republicans' budget bill.
New Orleans Thugs are operating 200 real-time face recognition cameras, violating local laws.
Sweden has recognized that cash is crucial in emergencies, and now encourages everyone to keep a supply of cash for emergency use and to use some regularly.
This is a victory against the danger of mass surveillance.
The central bank now urges the government to require some businesses and public agencies to accept cash. But there is no guarantee that such a law will be passed, or that it will cover enough places that ask for payment.
You can help pressure businesses to accept cash. Go to a business ready to buy something carrying a copy (or at least URL) of the statement in favor using cash, and offer to pay cash. If the business refuses to accept it, give it the statement and then say, "I'll return some day and see if you will accept cash from me."
It would be a good thing to establish a national organization to promote cash payment, and present anonymity as one of its advantages.
When scientists talk about a "conservative" estimate of future change, they mean a low estimate of the amount of change. When safety engineers talk about a "conservative" estimate, they mean the largest plausible change, on which safety plans ought to be based.
This failure of communication confuses governments about how to plan safety measures sufficient to protect the population and critical facilities.
I don't know of an article I can link to to give more explanation, but I would be glad if you find one and tell me about it. For me to link to a URL, it needs to be accessible anonymously without running any nonfree JavaScript code.
*Burning, worsened by global heating, overtook farming and logging [in 2024] as biggest cause of destruction of tropical forests.*
The proposed head of the IRS is accused of corruption.
Republicans in Congress want to repeal the law that allows the FTC to punish companies for cheating you.
This is on top of replacing the head of the FTC with someone who won't necessarily want to stop companies from cheating you.
US citizens: Insist that Protesting Tesla is not domestic terrorism. Denounce any attempt to arrest and imprison nonviolent activists.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per not to let RFK jr. decide which kinds of government medical programs to keep and which to cancel.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Everyone: call on Worcester City Council to stop city cops from brutalizing the city for the deportation thugs.
US citizens: call on NIH and NSF to stop cutting critical health research.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to urge them to put a stop to Attorney General Bondi's campaign to force reporters to rat on their sources.
For information about that campaign, see here.
Oklahoma's public schools will add explicit right-wing political indoctrination to the recently established Christian indoctrination.
This is clearly unconstitutional, but it is not clear that we can trust the right-wing Supreme Court to vote to recognize that.
*The US, UK and other [countries] routinely flout international law. That's why there’s scant hope for a new tribunal on crimes against Ukraine.*
*How [the corrupter]'s "historic" Gulf state deals benefit a handful of powerful men.*
Israel has intensified the bombing of Gaza, but the famine that it is imposing will be even more deadly.
The wrecker and the Supreme Court seem to be heading for a showdown about whether he is a dictator.
Will some of the wrecker's slavish sycophants in Congress be willing to put him in his place, as a mere president under a constitution living in a world of reality? Or will he succeed in making a monkey out of the two?
*European "green" investments hold billions in fossil fuel majors.*
*Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa decries ‘nightmare’ of Putin-Trump alliance.*
Things don't seem to be going in that direction just now, and the would-be emperor has been threatening Putin. But that could change if Putin gives him a certain minimum amount of submission.
An interview with Kseniia Petrova, jailed by the deportation thugs who falsely claimed she lied about the frog embryo samples she was bringing to the Harvard research lab where she works.
The claim that she concealed the frog embryos is absurd. She not only told the US government about the frog embryos, she arranged in advance for a license to import them. That has to be why they targeted her.
I wonder if the bully's agents chose her as part of a campaign to punish Harvard for not submitting to the bully.
Norman Solomon: the US government and news media have never dropped their pretense that the US intervention in Vietnam was moral and admirable. The US was not at all like that, and neither was the other side. Ironically, the North Vietnamese government established a corrupt dictatorship over all of Vietnam and is now more or less allied with the US against Vietnam's traditional main enemy, China.
A study found that erroneous citations are rife in the output of LLM-based search engines.
Please don't describe them as "intelligence" — that term spreads propaganda that makes them seem more capable than they are.
*The [persecutor] appears to be laying the groundwork for a global gulag for expelled immigrants.*
(satire) *U.S. Military Bans Men With Girl Names From Combat.*
The wrecker is trying by executive order to undo the Supreme Court decisions that ruled that unnecessary job requirements which have a discriminatory effect violate US civil rights law.
Another middle-finger nomination of an Amazon executive for head of OSHA. If he was happy at Amazon, whose warehouses are as deadly in reality as werewolves are in fiction, we can't expect him to try very hard to carry out OSHA's mission.
Ralph Nader warns that the elimination of cash and unchecked credit card practices are threatening core consumer rights—including privacy, autonomy, and equal access to commerce.
And tend to make living more expensive for poor people.
In the last year I have been to a number of major Boston-area hospitals. I usually had to pay a copay for the visit, but when I took out cash to pay it, the agent said that the hospital does not accept cash and would bill me instead. I have a way to pay that bill because I have a checking account, but many poor people don't have that.
When buying products, if not on prescription, I won't use a check either. It's cash or nothing!
You can defend cash without taking an unyielding stand like mine. Just make sure to carry some cash whenever you leave the house. If you don't have enough cash for something you want to buy, don't pay by card! Instead, go to an ATM and withdraw the cash you need, then pay with that. The bank will know where you withdrew the cash but will not know what you spent it on.
Labour has gone so far to resemble the Tories that it now proposes deregulation of construction in much the same way that Tories did in 2021,
It is even getting advice from the same lobbyists!
Just as the government increasingly punishes protesters for wearing masks, the deportation thugs that grab people off the street are wearing masks.
The corrupter's attitude towards many government policies (those he doesn't personally care about) is that they are merchandise for sale.
The antivaxer in charge of vaccination in the US proposes to eliminate updated Covid-19 vaccines for the latest version. And maybe also for flu vaccine, which for years had been updated each year for the variants expected to be most widespread that year.
Salafi Arabia has sentenced visiting Briton Ahmed al-Doush to 10 years in prison for a tweet. (There is no information here about what that tweet said.)
The article condemns the UK government for not doing enough to win freedom for him. I hesitate to say that, because we cannot assume there was anything the UK could have done to achieve this.
We can all keep ourselves safe from direct violence by never going to Salafi Arabia. Making the US safe from corruption from Salafi Arabia would require a different president.
Arguing that every society should establish a maximum wealth, perhaps around 1,000 times the median wealth.
El Salvador refuses to show Venezuelan lawyers proof that 250 Venezuelan captives are still alive.
When the Putin forces capture foreigners who have joined the Ukrainian army, they label those prisoners as "mercenaries" and declare that to be a crime. An Australian volunteer who was captured last year has now been sentenced to 13 years of torture in prison.
Are those actions war crimes? I hope they can be prosecuted after the war.
The bully's deals with several Arab countries this week are a message to Netanyahu that US policy no longer focuses on him. This might lead to an end of the bombardment and siege.
India punished journalist Raphael Satter for his writings by canceling his Indian residence permit, which he had by right due to being married to an Indian.
Bruce Springsteen castigated the bully from the stage.
This might do some good.
A US bill would require a back door within high performance processors such as GPUs made by US companies. The back door would report the processor's geographical location to the manufacturer.
Putin's destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam *caused ‘toxic timebomb’ of heavy metals.*
The reservoir created by the dam was the basis of Ukraine's immense agricultural production. The world needs that production -- but even if the war ends, would this pollution make its water unsafe in agriculture?
Was it already unsafe due to pollution before the dam was destroyed?
*Almost 300m people at risk of death through starvation* (around the world).
Cuts by the wrecker in USaid have contributed significantly to this. At the same time, the UK has also cut foreign aid.
15 states, evidently controlled by Republican officials, have cemented the power of businesses over citizens by passing a law encouraging judges to toss out regulations that limit businesses.
Republicans made their massive dooH niboR bill also a giveaway to polluters.
The corrupter is overtly charging for access to meet with him, using his private cryptocurrency. This conspicuous corruption is another way he can proclaim his power to spit on laws.
This joins many other actions to undermine the laws that try to keep the US system of rule of law functioning. But I don't see how anyone could possibly sue to put a stop to this. It harms the US as a whole, but I don't see that it cheats any specific persons such that they would have standing to sue to put a stop to it.
Qatar's flying bribe could cost a billion dollars to accept.
*GOP House Ways and Means Committee Advances Bill to Give Billions Away to Billionaires, Paid for by Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.*
*[Santander] has funneled $600m to firms clearing South America's fragile Gran Chaco ecosystem for beef, palm oil and soya, Global Witness says.
Mississippians voted to legalize abortion, but the Republican-dominated legislature has decided to ask them to vote again about limiting it.
*The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste — [DOSE] cuts could wreck the cleanup.*
US citizens: call on congresscritter to increase taxes on rich. The bullshitter has lately been talking about increasing taxes on the non-billionaire rich. Phone your congresscritter (especially if perse is Republican) and call on per to do this, instead of cutting Medicaid and other things that help the non-rich.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support two bills introduced by Representative Don Beyer to correct and prevent slasher attacks against federal agencies:
* The REHIRE Act would give hiring preference to the career professionals wrongfully removed by Trump. This would go a long way toward restoring the knowledge, continuity, and skill that our institutions need.
* The PREP Act would protect future public servants from being fired for political reasons — so that no president can again purge government employees simply for doing their jobs.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Sign the Grassroots Amicus Brief: "DOGE" is Unconstitutional.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the right of Habeas corpus.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Global heating is projected to make tropical countries unable to grow bananas by 2080. Bananas are a large part of the food humans eat in those places.
The corrupter's lawyers argue loopholes to excuse his accepting a gift airplane from Qatar.
Whatever those loopholes may be interpreted to say, it is clear that this is an act of bribery, and damaging to the United States.
It would also endanger national security for any officials with access to government secrets to travel in it.
Chimpanzees use leaves to clean parts of their bodies (their own and others') and to treat wounds.
*Early air pollution exposure [(ages 1-3)] affects health in adolescence, study finds.
Israel attacked multiple hospitals in Gaza. That can't be a coincidence of accidents — it must be an intentional attempt to attack medical personnel and their patients.
Robert Reich: The US has suffered from oligarchy before, but now it is moving for total power.
The wrecker may be giving Dictator Xi the best possible opportunity to increase China's power and influence.
A summary of the wrecker's war on science, released by Bernie Sanders and with a link to the full report.
Republicans plan to attack federal support for college students so drastically that it would be nearly impossible for non-rich Americans to go to college.
The icing on this force-fed poisonous cake is that students would have to repay the loans they got for paying scam colleges that have been shut down for fraud.
Why habeas corpus must apply to people threatened with deportation, what it says they are entitled to, and why the violation of eliminating it threatens US citizens too.
NYU bends over backwards to perceive "antisemitism" in criticism of Israel's war crimes, and presents the mere possibility of such perception as grounds to deny a student's diploma.
Repression is the only term for this, and NYU has made that repression a continuing principle.
Defenders of Israel's treatment of Palestinians are extremely skilled at perceiving any criticism of those actions as "antisemitic". They have elevated this ability to a fine rhetorical art. That they can do this is no excuse for censorship.
The bully's henchmen are twisting laws for repression against Newark Mayor Baraka.
Bird warnings on windows, and lights off at night, can save a large fraction pf the million-or-so migrating birds that crash into tall buildings each year in the US.
Just as the persecutor and his henchmen cite supposed "antisemitism" as an excuse for repression around the US, he has invited to live in the US an Afrikaner "refugee" who is a real antisemite.
I expect the persecutor will pretend this did not happen, and continue using alleged "antisemitism" to justify censorship and punishment.
Ahmed al-Doush, a UK citizen, went to visit relative in Salafi Arabia and was arrested while trying to leave. He still doesn't seem to know what he is accused of, and has been allowed very little contact with his family in the UK or his lawyer in the UK.
The UK will henceforth permanently deny citizenship to refugees granted asylum.
This policy will harm both the refugees and Britain.
The saboteur in chief nominated an influencer with no medical license to be the Surgeon General of the US. She promotes medical disinformation ("snake oil") and I suppose her sales will increase.
It is interesting to compare this with Stalin's favorite biologist, Trofim Lysenko, who championed Lamarck's mistaken theory of evolution, which Stalin liked because it fit his ideology better than Darwin's. Scientists who understood Darwinian evolution were purged, sent to the gulag, or even executed.
The US Episcopal church canceled working with the US government to help resettle refugees, now that the bully has designated Afrikaners from South Africa as the favored group of refugees and blocked the others.
Legal racist discrimination by Afrikaners against blacks ended 30 years ago in South Africa, but they still suffer from the poverty caused by decades of racism. Some amount of compensatory aid to them is justified. I expect that that is what the bully calls "discrimination" now.
Border thugs stopped controversial commentator Hasan Piker as he tried to reenter the US, and interrogated him for two hours about his political views.
According to a posting he made, they also asked him about someone he had interviewed in Yemen, accusing him of interviewing a Houthi. He showed by that man's name that he was not one.
(satire) *Man Can’t Believe He Has To Download Stupid App Just To Bribe President.*
The corrupter seems to be half/supporting a move to raise taxes a little on high income Americans. He seems to have sent mixed messages about this, which is making obedient magats confused and unsure what to do.
I don't think this represents any concern for non-rich people; the increase is too small to make up for all he has done to enrich the rich. My conjecture is that he wants to convert their attachment to the specific ideology he used to won their support into readiness to obey whatever orders he may give them in the future.
Arguing that the bully has decided that Netanyahu is an obstacle to doing business with Salafi Arabia, and has decided to punish him until he stops being such.
We cannot be sure it is true. His attitude may change again every week. If it is true, that does not imply that the bully cares how many thousands of Palestinians are killed, tortured or expelled.
But if he decides to tell Netanyahu to jump in the lake to please Salafi Arabia, that could imply the end of the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
Giving Artificial Stupidity chatbots control over anything involved in finances is an invitation to disaster.
The search warrant that the deportation thugs obtained to search the rooms of two student protesters has been seen and studied. It was based on false statements about law and about facts.
The US has denied several musicians visas to perform in the US, and have arrested a US-based permanent resident musician who was departing with a band to tour.
*People who stop weight loss drugs return to original weight within year, analysis finds.*
Labour in Britain seems to be cozying up to the exploitative Big Tech companies.
Hungary is considering a law to shut down independent media and NGOs that have foreign support by labeling them as "threats to national security".
Drug overdose deaths in the US dropped by more than a quarter from 2023 to 2024.
Part of this is due to successful efforts to prevent overdose and treat overdoses.
One of the bully's targeted visiting academics, Badar Khan Suri, has been released from jail by a federal court, who ruled that there was no need to ask him to post bail.
I wonder, though, whether he has a way to appeal to a real federal court about the revocation of his visa.
Campaigners are trying to make the UK government admit that its planning rule changes would harm the environment.
I have read that there are so many disused residential units in the UK (often held as investments) that using them as residences would fix the housing shortage.
Some technology investors already aim to make almost all humans obsolete.
LLMs will never be capable of doing this — they play with text but don't understand what it means. That's why I call them "bullshit generators". But that doesn't mean it is impossible to develop true general artificial intelligence. It could happen someday. What would happen then?
There is always the Ex Machina possibility that the masters will lose control of intelligences which they "own" but are smarter than they are. But let's suppose that does not happen — that the masters retain control of them. What would the masters use them to do to the other remaining humans?
I see two extreme possibilities: (1) the masters can share their wealth with the rest, and (2) they can wipe out the rest.
There could be a variety of intermediate possibilities, in which they maintain some humans as pets or serfs for whatever purposes.
Aside from sex, there is (3) the hunger games outcome in which the masters make the serfs fight each other, and (4) the artistic competition alternative in which the masters maintain a population of serfs who compete by making art.
Overall, I consider possible superintelligences rather dangerous.
The bully has lifted US sanctions against Syria.
I think this is the right thing to do, given the new government made up of those who fought Assad. Of course, we can't be sure how much this government will respect human rights, but it is likely to do more if that if we give it the benefit of the doubt.
I am still concerned about the fate of Rojava, and we can't assume that the bully shares that concern at all. However, last I heard, the new government sought a peaceful accommodation with Rojava.
The House bill to cut taxes on the rich includes a rider that would allow arbitrary removal of any organization's tax exemption.
I hope the Democrats have the courage to filibuster the whole thing.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 202-688-0628 to oppose the Republican bill that would allow certain officials to cancel the tax exemption of any tax-exempt organization.
Here's what Free Press Action recommends saying:
Hello! My name is [first name]. I'm a constituent and am calling to ask Rep. [congresscritter] to oppose language in the budget-reconciliation legislation that would empower the Secretary of the Treasury to target nonprofits' tax-exempt status.This dangerous language lacks adequate safeguards against abuse, violates due process and would hand unchecked power to the administration to politically target nonprofits.
Reject executive overreach no matter what form it takes.
US citizens: call on Congress to Protect NIH Funding for Lifesaving Research.
Republicans are working to repeal part of the Federal Trade Commission Act that makes it illegal for companies to cheat you.
US citizens: call on the FTC to maintain its ban on noncompete agreements. Noncompete agreements restrict a worker who has quit or been fired from getting another job in the same field.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why to avoid running it.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
*Food security experts warn Gaza at ‘critical risk of famine’ amid Israeli blockade.*
US citizens: Call on Congress to implement for real the promise of wellbeing that the cheater falsely made to Americans.
How the corrupter's henchmen running the EPA are systematically corrupting it.
*Poor [president]: you can't even accept a luxury jet from Qatar without being called corrupt these days.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to save the CFPB.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the FCC commissioners to stop trying to censor broadcast news that disagrees with the corrupter.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to stop the attorney general from persecuting the press by searching reporters and forcing them to testify about their sources.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An interview with a maker of The Settlers, which shows the violent process of driving Palestinians off their land in the West Bank.
*Police Shot Them in the Head With Rubber Bullets. Now UCLA Gaza Protesters Are Suing.
Shooting people in the head with these less-lethal weapons can cause permanent brain damage. It is something thugs do to people they hate.
El Salvador imprisons people without trial in prisons designed intentionally to make prisoners suffer in many ways. Many of them are tortured, some to death.
*Israel [and specifically Smotrich] laid out its harrowing plan to take Palestinian territories in 2017.*
That plan is now being implemented. It would demand Palestinians accept the status of colonized people, and forcibly expel anyone who does not.
This displays absolute contempt for the UN charter, and threatens to usher in a new epoch in which countries shamelessly reduce others to colonies.
An Israel Jew who teaches at Harvard, and led an event in which people presented various views about Israel and Palestine, found it and her (without her name) in a Harvard report, described as "antisemitic" and "anti-Israel".
(From March): *Columbia University investigates students critical of Israel amid Trump’s threats.*
The US military has started to hunt down all transgender military personnel and expel them.
It appears that people with gender dysphoria will be expelled too even if they do not try to change gender role.
The US has adopted Israel's cruel plan for food aid for Gaza, which would (1) require the whole population to go to four places in the south of Gaza and (2) pass face recognition gates while armed guards point guns at them.
Many people in Gaza are so weak from hunger that they can't possibly walk such a distance. They would be killed. Meanwhile, Israel has persistently refused to prosecute gratuitous killing of noncombatants in Gaza.
Palestinians fear that the guards will shoot anyone they feel like shooting, but even if they don't go that far, anyone placed on the "HAMAS" list would be starved.
Starbase is the muskrat's company town in Texas, totally under his control, and paying taxes to SpaceX and ruled non-democratically. The corrupter is pushing the US in that direction
Amazon claims its warehouse robots do not replace human workers, but the figures show they do.
What should we do about that? In a more equitable society, with government dominated by workers rather than billionaires, we would tax companies like Amazon heavily so as to support the non-rich more, so that each of them could work fewer hours. That way, increased productivity would benefit everyone who could work. But today's American politicians, except for a few such as Bernie Sanders, don't want to do that because they serve the rich.
Israel knew immediately that journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was intentionally shot dead by an Israeli soldier — and who he was. Instead of trying him for murder, it mounted a campaign of denials and lies so as to reject blame.
Israel excuses killing journalists by labeling them as "combat propagandists", as if that justified killing them.
The UK's new age verification law threatens to ban Wikipedia in Britain by imposing the same rules that it imposes on Facebook.
The repression of peaceful protesters has become so powerful that people who want to save civilization and the natural world from climate disaster feel they have better chances getting away with sabotage of equipment.
*DEI's fundamental contradiction was this: It argued that race is a social invention—a system created to control people by reducing complexity — yet it never suggested replacing it with a more holistic vision of justice.*
*A prominent French journalist has said he is stepping down from his role [at] broadcaster RTL after comparing French actions during colonial rule in Algeria to a second world war massacre committed by Nazi forces in France.*
I don't know enough about French rule in Algeria to agree or disagree with what he said.
The persecutor has eliminated rules to protect the health of infants and pregnant women in deportation prisons.
This is cruel but understandable in terms of his hateful values. If a pregnant woman facing deportation dies or miscarries, either way it avoids the birth of a baby who might be a US citizen.
*UK Lawyers for Israel condemned over claim war may reduce obesity in Gaza.*
That goes beyond a mere bogus excuse — it is an expression of contempt for human life.
*US government invokes "state secrets" privilege in Kilmar Ábrego García case.*
This is one of many insincere stratagems by which the corrupter tries to make a monkey out of US courts.
*Universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home.*
*NOAA to stop tracking cost of climate crisis-fueled disasters.*
The planet roasters prefer to keep us in the dark about how important it is to stop them.
US citizens: call on Congress to serve the people, not the billionaires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to get billionaire money out of politics.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Rümeysa Öztürk has been freed on bail and has returned home. Her case for illegal arrest continues.
Her case not to be deported is happening in Louisiana, and I suspect it is in the court of the judge that always rules, "Off with his visa!" Will she have a real chance to appeal that?
*Children eat more after seeing just five minutes of junk food ads, study finds.*
Robert Reich: When regressive regimes (including the incipient one in the US) display their power by bullying, they make some people feel hopeless. Some protect themselves from that feeling by denying the situation. Some keep silent because they believe they are powerless.
But we can find many ways to resist.
*India and Pakistan both claim victory after ceasefire declared.*
It is silly of them to say that, but it is a better outcome than a continuing real war.
The Mayor of Newark went to a deportation prison along with some Congressional Democrats to object to its reopening. Deportation thugs arrested him.
The Democratic congresscritters that visited the privatized immigration prison in New Jersey with Mayor Baraka of Newark accused the immigration thugs of starting the confrontation.
It looks like another instance of the authoritarian tactic of provoking a fight and blaming the victim for it, beloved by thugs everywhere.
I've seen a report that Baraka never entered the prison, he only stood outside it.
*Wanting democratic norms is not sufficient; it is merely a precondition for meaningful change. Making sure the US’s plumbing was secure did not mean that anything of importance would pass through the pipes.*
The article presents the meaningful change needed. I more or less agree. We need to make America a good place for people (including non-rich people) to live in.
Big businesses are "investing" in Trump antiSocial. Maybe they expect him to pressure other businesses to "invest" and cause their "investment"'s value to grow. Or maybe they consider this a bribe for his favor.
*Modern slavery victims [in the UK] opt to stay with exploiters for fear of deportation, research finds.*
Crucial
points about massive surveillance using LLMs can be found
here, after "On Privacy Concerns".
The writer does not recognize that some of these dangers are
predicated on users' running nonfree software, and that replacing that
with free software could prevent the dangers. However, in a world
where most people do run nonfree software, the allegation of
vulnerability is valid.
The writer is correct in insisting that the current state of the art
in bullshit generators does not imply that artificial real
intelligence is around the corner.
For future systems that are somewhat intelligent to destroy humanity
does not require them to be autonomous and indifferent to humanity's
fate. It is sufficient if they are controlled by billionaires (humans
or corporations) that are indifferent to humanity's fate.
*Finding "who you really are" is a restrictive and divisive
preoccupation
for
young working-class people.
In terms of race, I am classified as white. But I would never imagine
that, or my recent ancestors' religion, or their national origin, as
saying anything about "who I am". Nor, for that matter, my parents'
level of wealth.
Who I am is defined by what I think about important questions.
US citizens: while Republicans work on a law to cut taxes for the rich,
phone your congresscritter and say, "Increase taxes on the rich."
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*US [reportedly] planning to
deport
migrants to Libya despite
"hellish" [and dangerous] conditions*
of repression and civil war.
*Sanders, Senate Dems to CBS Owner:
"Do
Not Capitulate" to
Assault on Press Freedom.*
Voice of America may be
converted
into a right-wing propaganda outlet
rather than shut down entirely.
Deforestation is
destroying
the Gran Chaco. In some places they plant
crops.
In others they set fires and leave only ashes behind. (Why do that,
I wonder?)
(satire) *National Endowment For The Arts
Lays
Off 30,000 Muses.*
Republicans assert that the additional hardship and suffering that
their policies will create ought to provide plenty of inspiration for
art, especially among those not wealthy enough to find muses in other
ways.
Sad to say, the US seems to be
advancing
in its campaign to impose
government-issued ID cards on Americans, with the "real ID" driver's
licenses.
*UK experts warn …
therapy
chatbots are not safe.*
Calling them "AI" is repeating a grave error which is at the root of
this problem. Those systems are not intelligence, because they cannot
understand the words they play with, and that is also why they are
unsafe.
Why do people think they are intelligence? Because of those who
foolishly
call them "AI".
*Elon Musk Set
to Win Big With Trump's Trillion-Dollar Pentagon Budget.*
His companies were selected in some cases
based
on favoritism,
and in some agencies he was given the power to decide which offices
to shut and which to keep open.
Both are forms of corruption.
*The [wrecker] is poised to kill federal research into
pollution
from satellites and rockets, including some caused by
Elon Musk’s space companies, raising new conflict-of-interest
questions about the billionaire SpaceX and Starlink owner.*
This concerns pollution from rocket exhaust and
pollution
from satellites burning up during reentry.
Britain will experiment
with several systems of local geoengineering
that try to reduce the sunlight falling on the test area.
I expect that local method of cooling are safer from those that would operate
globally. However, I can imagine that using them with enough strength
to make a significant difference to
global heating would be very expensive
and might cause pollution.
They could also backfire in complex ways -- for instance, some parts
of Earth could have drastic global heating while others are protected
by cooling. That could cause changes in weather patterns and ocean
currents.
But given the disaster we are facing, and the success of fossil fools
in corrupting governments so as to keep on pumping he fossil fuels,
I support trying these experiments.
* Abandoned coalmines and oil and gas wells are now one of the
biggest sources
of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, new data shows, and
little effort is being made to clean them up.*
I expect that the fossil fuel companies to divest themselves from old
mines and wells in ways that will avoid liability for them — just as
they sometimes disconnect
themselves from responsibility for
supporting former workers.
So I suggest making it a felony to implement a restructuring of
business or assets in a way that is likely to result predictably in
strand assets that carry financial responsibilities with no one
capable of shouldering the responsibilities.
The cheater has
kept
casualty figures secret for the fighting with Yemen.
Even if they are small, this violates the accountability that the people
have a right to.
Deportation thugs
attacked the organizing of farm workers by
deporting
the leaders.
A previously unknown fungus is
infesting
precious, old artworks in
Danish museums.
And perhaps unnoticed in other countries too.
*Seize Gaza, or make it uninhabitable.
That's
Netanyahu's plan — and either
way he wins.*
*NYU Law About-Face:
Students
Can Take Exams Without Swearing Off Protests.*
However, the restrictions on them remain very tight.
*Palestinians awoke to bulldozers. Their
village was destroyed
by noon.*
The Putin
forces attacked the structure built to cover the old, damaged
Chernobyl nuclear power plant and caused
millions
of dollars worth of damage, and a risk of escape of radioactive dust.
The bully's henchmen in Congress are going to investigate
one
of the prosecutors who prosecuted the bully for federal crimes.
They have made it clear that this is for personal retribution, not
because of any objective grounds.
*[The chaos spreader] keeps saying he doesn’t know
what
his own administration is up to.*
*Judge
orders White House to temporarily halt sweeping government
layoffs.*
What about the ones already "done"?
An expert testifying for the Congressional
committee investigating
"antisemitism" compared that committee to the House Un-American
Activities Committee which persecuted real or alleged supporters of
Communism.
*Ahead of McCarthyite House Committee hearing on College Campuses,
Jewish Columbia Students Urge Congress to take Action Against the
… Regime’s
False Allegations of Antisemitism.*
The wrecker's
rushed cuts in foreign aid are about
to cut
off the food aid for up to a million refugees in Uganda.
Just before the corrupter
dropped his recently increased tariffs for
imports to the US, Rep. Marjorie Greene
bought
stocks that would rise as a consequence.
Was that insider trading, a crime?
A tariff exemption is an exception to tariff requirements, granted for
importation of a specific foreign product.
The corrupter is issuing
exemptions so as
to benefit
his rich supporters.
The bullshitter
wants to replace American History with with
a compendium
of propaganda myths designed for him. We can expect him
subsequently to try to compel schools to teach this propaganda in
place of real history.
There have been plenty of myths in American History as taught in the
past, which met with efforts to replace the myths with facts and
serious thought. The principle of valuing truth supported those
efforts. But that principle never had to contend with the power of
the state.
An exploration of philosophical
ideas implicated
in the idea of human rights.
The author has not considered the question
of a right to control your own
computing. I'd be interested to see what
perse does with that
idea.
Wars are festering in various parts of the world.
The US
keeps many of them going, but not all. No one seems to know what
to do to end them.
Regarding Yemen, it is clear that terror bombing of civilians in the
Houthi territory is unjust and won't achieve anything good. It is
also clear that we ought in any case to make Israel end its
bombardment of siege in Gaza. Doing that would end the Houthis' attacks
on shipping, so that one festering battle would end.
I don't post about the other festering wars unless there is news of a
change in the situation -- because I don't know enough about them to
think of ideas for ending them.
Robert Reich: the bully acts towards people under his
power like
an abusive parent.
A method has been developed to attribute fractions of the world-wide
damage from extreme heat
to various
producers of fossil fuel, based on their contributions to the
fossil fuel consumption. This may make them to be liable for some of
the damage.
Although this is a small fraction of the damage their emissions will
do in the future, holding them liable for this part could provide
pressure to decrease fossil fuel investment.
In principle, it should be possible in a similar way to hold
agribusiness liable for the emissions from their deforestation
and fertilizer runoff.
China is
arresting relatives
of a Hong Kong democracy activist in exile, after making it a crime
to help refugees get access their funds that are caught in Hong Kong.
This amounts to taking their relatives hostage.
The wrecker
hopes to engage
magats' imaginations by talk
of reopening
the Alcatraz island prison.
If the island continues to attract tourists, the ruiner's henchmen
could randomly choose some to seize and hold in the prison. They could
have a big laugh over this at the expense of non
magats like us.
The corrupter's
foolish tariff policy is partly based an emotional
truth that attacks the
weak politics
of plutocratist ("mainstream") Democrats.
The weakness is real, but the right way to fix it is by supporting the
progressive Democrats.
*Layoffs and funding cuts to FEMA and NOAA
will hamstring
emergency managers,
warns professor Samantha Montano.*
Israel announced a plan
to conquer Gaza
and maintain a military occupation. I see no reason to think
that this occupation would be temporary, but it could end with ethnic
cleansing.
When Israel says that it plans additional extreme crimes, I figure we
can believe that. When Israel suggests its future crimes will be
limited, I am skeptical.
Many American children and teenagers are oppressed constantly by
pervasive surveillance by their own parents. One summer camp has a
policy of refusing
to provide parents
with "surveillance as a service".
The kids need to become accustomed to life unmonitored,
and parents need to get used to going for days without
monitoring their kids.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to protect public media from Trump's move to destroy
public journalism.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The bully proposes
to suspend the right of habeas corpus on the grounds that
immigrants
constitute an "invasion".
Courts have already ruled that that is no invasion and can't be treated
as one. ISTR that a court overturned Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus
in Kentucky on the grounds that public safety was doing ok there.
This makes it explicit that the bully and his henchmen want to
throw citizens in prison arbitrarily. They are the ones who belong
in prison.
*Plastic producers have pushed
"advanced
recycling" as a salve to the plastic waste crisis despite knowing
for years that it is not a technically or economically feasible
solution, a new report argues.*
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to Legalize Marijuana and End the Federal Ban.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Israel is starving Gaza. It's a cheap, silent and
brutal
way to kill.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 231-400-0602 to tell per,
"No cuts to Medicaid."
The Indian government is
retaliating
to a terrorist attack in Kashmir by random terrorism against
Kashmiri civilians. They must be getting a lot of fabricated
information this way. Surely much of it is false, but it will suggest
lots more people to torture.
The thugs are also
blowing up the houses of relatives of alleged Kashmiri terrorists.
This also seems like terrorism to me.
India should hold the decades-ago
promised
referendum in Kashmir and heed the results.
Republicans resume
pushing for voter ID laws in states they control,
even as they try the same at the federal level.
Their position is that one can't make too sure that marginalized
citizens don't vote.
*Harvard shows
resistance
is possible. But universities must join forces.*
*Medical cannabis shows
potential
to fight cancer, largest-ever study finds.*
*First-of-its-kind Hawaii bill
raises
tourist taxes to fund climate relief.*
The approach for raising funds is a good one, but it falls into the
fashionable error of prioritizing protection against the current level
of global heating
over avoiding future global heating.
Protective measures can be effective today, but if we allow global
heating to continue, it will eventually overwhelm the defense we can
do. We must prioritize stopping it from getting worse.
Yes, we should bail the water our of our lifeboat. But the most
important thing is to plug the holes through which water keeps flowing
in.
Australia may have
voted
to head for broad decarbonization.
The doubt in my mind is whether Labor really will change fossil fuel
tendencies of the last year or two.
Ralph Nader's
articles
of impeachment for the corrupter.
Alas, we learned in his first term that no crime, no matter how
heinous, will convince Republican senators to vote to remove him.
His personal power is their primary loyalty because without him they
are nothing.
*{The corrupter's]
white-collar criminal pardons
cost
public $1bn,
says ex-DoJ official.*
Assuming he profited from this in some way, it amounts to a transfer
from America's account to his account.
While some groups of deportation
thugs
told mothers being deported that they
had
to take their US-citizen children with them, another group told
another mother that she could not do so.
I conjecture that they have been given vague and confusing
instructions, written in a hurry by inexperienced people,
so in similar situations various officials draw
different conclusions. That tends to happen when those who write the
instructions don't think carefully about them.
(satire) *RFK Jr. Encourages Americans To
Do
Their Own Research About Dragons.*
* The saboteur in chief
has ordered the
closure
of 25 scientific
centers that monitor US waters for flooding and drought, and manage
supply levels to ensure communities around the country don't run out of
water.*
From now on, if your region has floods or water shortages, the
saboteur will be partly to blame.
British human rights defenders have
defeated
in court one increase in
repression of protests. The increase was serious but the Tories
treated it as minor.
I wonder whether this will free any of the UK's political prisoners who
were convicted of protesting.
There is once again a fleet of unarmed ships carrying aid to Gaza.
Someone used drones to
attack
one of the ships, half the Mediterranean
sea away. The suspicion is the attack was done by Israel.
I agree it was probably the Israeli army , because Israel had means,
motive and opportunity. Some other countries had the means, and
perhaps an opportunity, but no other country had a motive.
Israel used to
seize
aid boats and arrest the people on them.
The change to attack the boats and maybe kill the people
on them reflects how Israel has changed since then.
Was that attack terrorism? I think it was.
Terrorism means making war on noncombatants, and those unarmed
aid workers are clearly not combatants.
*Labour's planning bill
threatens
protected habitats [in Britain],
says environment watchdog.*
Some Buddhists are making a big fuss about the auction of ancient gems
that belonged to a man who found them and excavated them.
They claim that the gems were mixed with a kind of relic — some of the
dust remaining from Buddha's cremation — and this makes them
sacred so they can't be auctioned.
I can imagine what the Buddha would say about this obsession:
Please join me in focusing on things that
A Zionist lobby group is pushing for California to
impose
state censorship
of the ethnic studies classes that are mandatory in high school there.
I think these classes should teach Uri Avnery's
Truth
Against Truth
and follow
that with the work of today's bridge-builders,
such as Mohsen Mahdawi and his
Israeli
colleague Mikey Baratz
But that should not be enforced by government censorship.
*Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick laid out a
disturbing
plan to bring
back serfdom.*
*RFK jr. rejects
cornerstone of health science: Germ theory.*
He also endorses the
implausible
theory that "chem-trails" are made
intentionally and by DARPA.
It is dangerous to let an ignoramus mess with America's medical system.
He will order the use of useless "treatments" for imaginary problems
while rejecting the real treatments for real medical problems based on
imaginary reasons.
On NYU's repressive
punishment of nonviolent student protests,
which it improvises from week to week and enforces in a biased
and haphazard way.
Mohsen Mahdawi was
released
on bail and defended democracy for all
Americans.
*Once the repression of dissent, in the name of security, becomes a key
objective of a government, authoritarian rule and even martial law are
not far off. When they look at my case, all Americans should ask
themselves: what is left of our democracy, and who will be targeted
next?*
The US needs more citizens like him.
Many countries have passed laws that
label
journalists that criticize the state as "foreign agents".
This enables arbitrary restrictions on the press.
The challenge is how to distinguish foreign-organized influence
campaigns from campaigns for journalistic freedom.
Rebecca Solnit talks about protests that have had
important
political effects,
even if the target doesn't explicitly agree to any demands.
One example, was the protests in Seattle in 1999, which blocked a
global "free trade" initiative.
"Free trade" tends to mean that companies can get away with whatever
they wish and rich people can hide all their wealth from taxation, so
it is very harmful. I have a feeling that some super-rich people and
companies are using the example of
the wrecker's reckless and sudden
tariff increases to teach the public that "tariffs are bad, we must
eliminate them", but that idea would be as harmful now as it was in
the 1990s.
The U.N. special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories
calls for more European leaders to be
charged
with complicity in war crimes
for supporting Israel's bombardment of Gaza.
A former Labour shadow minister, now in Parliament as an independent,
calls on Labour to
listen
to the revulsion of many Labour voters
against Starmer's right-wing policies.
The population of flying insects in Britain fell by half from 2021 to
2023. In
2024 it
did not bounce back. The cause is not known, but it can cause
disaster for many kinds of plants, as well as birds, frogs, and other
things that eat insects.
Just as the world came to have a chance to eliminate HIV through
medicines that prevent its spread, the
wrecker showed
up and cancelled US plans to pay for doing that.
If civilization falls due to global heating, we are likely to lose the
technology to make medicine to treat and prevent HIV. What a shame to
prevent us from getting rid of it first.
Eliminating patents on
medicines is
very important. The three fields where patents are most harmful
are agriculture, medicine and software.
El Salvador's CECOT prison
is more
cruel than Guantanamo. The prisoners are kept incommunicado and
have no legal rights. Anyone there can be sent to that prison on the
"president"s whim. Other, older prisons there are (reportedly) even
more cruel.
*Israel must give Red Cross
access
to jailed Palestinians, Britain tells ICJ.*
The crimes of HAMAS are grave, an many, but the crimes of Israel are
comparably grave and far more numerous. Citing one side's crimes
does not justify the other's.
*US and Ukraine
sign
minerals deal* that sets up a way for Ukraine to pay the
price of the military aid that the US has already donated.
This agreement is not really a deal; rather, it is a general roadmap
to reach a deal. This will give the cheater at least one excuse to
start demanding that Ukraine sell the whole store for one dollar. But
since he doesn't feel the need a valid excuse, the cheater won't
hesitate to break it anyway to demand more money. You should prepare
for any deal with him to be cancelled at any moment.
Nonetheless, if this deal results in continued US military aid and
that stops the advance of the Putin forces
( please
don't call them "the Russians"), it is better than no agreement at
all.
*Charting 100 days of [the saboteur in
chief]’s onslaught
on the environment.*
*[The wrecker] has
launched more
attacks on the environment in 100 days than his entire first
term.*
*I
witnessed US
cruelty as a Guantánamo lawyer.
[The bully's] deportations are
disturbingly familiar.*
Paramount wants to do a merger, and Paramount owns CBS. That
relationship enabled the repressor
to impose
censorship on CBS.
Last year, the FTC might have blocked the merger to preserve
competition, but it would not have demanded power over CBS
programming.
It is clear that the purchase of news publishers by much bigger
businesses is bad for the freedom of the press. These larger
companies are vulnerable to many kinds of government pressure, and
they have no tradition of seeing censorship as bad.
If we get out of this mess, we should ban such mergers and break up
those mergers.
*RFK Jr and [department of HHS] falsely claim MMR vaccine
includes
"aborted fetus debris".
Mohsed Mahdawi has
been freed
on bail. There was never any reason to jail him except the
Republican policy of intimidating all opposition into submission.
Italian journalists that have exposed fascist-leaning members of
Melonu's right-wing governing Party have
been attacked
with spyware on their snooping devices. (They don't by default
snoop for anybody and everybody.)
*[London Banks] have poured more than $100bn (£75bn) into companies
developing
“carbon bombs” -- huge oil, gas and coal projects that
would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature
limits with catastrophic global consequences.*
Robert
Reich: If leaders stay silent, the US won't survive [the
corrupter's] next 100 days.
An American pleads for other countries to adopt policies that can
lead/press the US back to democracy.
*I firmly believe that the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada
and
Japan have
a historic obligation to the American people to do what they can
to help us preserve our democracy. An America descending into
authoritarianism also poses a threat to the democracies they lead.*
I hope that they share these feelings, despite the disadvantage that
they must scramble to protect themselves from the right-wing extremists
in the United States while resisting similar extremists in their own
countries.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
the Social Security Expansion Act.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The muskrat
*appears to be laying
the groundwork to privatize some
space and satellite operations now under the authority of National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), or steer lucrative
contracts toward his SpaceX and Starlink companies, former agency
employees say.*
This shows us a directly corrupt potential in the
DOSE
(Depredations of Sabotage and Evisceration).
*UNRWA says Israel has
abused
[jailed UNRWA] staff and used some as
human shields.*
UNRWA says that Israeli prison guards subjected some of them to
brainwashing techniques and obtained some forced confessions.
This is what Israeli prisons
generally
do to Palestinian prisoners.
Bernie Sanders: *It's time for the US to
guarantee
healthcare to all.*
US farms switched to no-till farming to reduce loss of topsoil,
which prevents harmful environmental degradation. Friends of the Earth
warns that this has led to much
more
use of dangerous herbicides.
So what should we do? The loss of topsoil is permanent and we need to
prevent that. We need to keep people safe from the herbicides too &mdash
but how do we do both?
The muskrat's
companies benefited greatly from government subsidies.
Now he wants to
end
such subsidies for the future.
But I don't think we should continue being ripped off to subsidize
businesses.
In my view, no government should ever subsidize a business without
getting a fair amount of debt or shares in exchange. This includes
manufacturing,
stadiums(including
Olympic games),
movies,
and other
things. Otherwise, the people are being cheated.
In the case of paying for research, the government should
make sure that the discoveries can be used by anyone.
The Putin forces
kept
a Ukrainian civilian journalist prisoner almost
totally incommunicado, Eventually they handed over her dead body,
which showed signs of torture.
I am puzzle by the people on the left who are included to excuse this.
They would not excuse Israel for torturing Palestinian civilians in
its jails.
Former Israeli military chiefs warn Israelis that their government is
threatened
by extremism.
This is one of the things that are gravely wrong in the Israeli
government. The other is repression and persecution of Palestinians.
I think the two are causally related.
Let Benevolence Shine
Twixt the river and the sea,
We should not get so caught up in how to take the difficult next step
that we forget where we are trying to get to.
*Deportation thugs
seeking
out unaccompanied immigrant [minors] to
deport or prosecute them.*
The article's title says "children", but I think that is an example of
the misleading practice of calling adolescents "children". If I am
right about that, the fact that the victims are over 18 does not make
the actions any less wrong. But real children are the ones least
likely to be able to stand up to such pressure.
Using "welfare checks", supposedly meant to protect people, to find
excuses to persecute them is even more vicious. That will teach
people to distrust real efforts to protect them, much like the fake
"vaccination
campaign" which the US set up to look for Osama bin
Laden.
*Two women who were deported to ]Honduras alongside their US citizen
children were held
in “complete isolation” and denied any opportunity
to coordinate the care and custody of their children before being put
on a flight, according to one of the lawyers representing them.*
The effect was to forcibly deport their US citizen children too.
They experienced several other forms of unjust treatment from the US
government, described in the article. The government is using its mistakes
as excuses for unjust treatment.
But that's Republicans for you. If a person is in a group they have
decided to start, when some nasty treatment gives them an excuse to do
more harm, they grasp the opportunity gleefully.
A survey of noteworthy
recent instances of cruelty by the US deportation
thugs.
(satire) *FBI Claims Gavel, Black Gowns
Prove
Ties To MS-13 Gang.*
*Elon Musk's DOPE conflicts of interest
worth
$2.37bn, Senate report says.*
DOPE = Depredation's of Perverse Evisceration.
Arguing that the recent idea of using psychedelics to treat people in
mental distress
comes
from shamans who told tourists what tourists
wanted to hear, in the last century.
Australia's coal exports have reached a record level,
as the coal companies
fund
ads to promote the right-wing planet
roaster parties.
The money trail was visible in that instance, but I am sure they are
doing far more of this than people can trace.
*Labor and Coalition
accused
of being on fossil fuel ‘unity ticket’ as thermal
coal exports hit record high.*
The government's foot is on the coal pedal as well as the gas pedal
as the world accelerates
towards the climate cliff. We can't see how
far away the cliff actually is, but there are signs it will be difficult to
slow nature in falling in.
The wrecker
ordered reducing tariffs on cars from Canada,
in a selective way that
helps
Tesla most of all.
A New York Times article took evidence that Muslims are the religion
most targeted by prejudice in universities, but spun it to give the
impression
that Jews are most targeted.
Here is a careful
account of the report they are talking about.
Note: I criticize using the term "Islamophobia" to refer to bigotry
against Muslims, or to refer to criticism of Islam. That bigotry is
nasty (like other bigotries), while criticism of that religion is a
legitimate issue for discussion (like criticism of other religions),
and neither of them is a "phobia".
There is information that suggests that the British government helped
the Israeli
government meddle to bring about prosecution of protesters
in Britain.
The corrupter's
choice for undersecretary of the army says he will end
all his conflicts of interest except one: all the stock he owns in
one
arms company.
This is enough to conclude he is not serious about doing the job
honestly; enough reason to reject him. But I don't think that
magat
senators object seriously to corruption. If they did, they would not
serve the corrupter.
A judge
has ruled that the *Alien Enemies Act does not allow White
House to deport alleged gang members* in the southern district of
Texas.
Eventually appeals courts will rule on this.
How many different reasons to use cash will it take to convince your
friends that they have
good
reason to use cash too?
RMS will give a talk in Liberec, Czech Republic,
Wednesday, May 7, 16:30 – 18:30.
For programs that you could run,
and for network services that could do your own computing,
under what circumstances is it reasonable to trust them?
RMS will give a talk in Alicanta, Spain,
Monday, May 5, and it is already full.
US citizens: tell the saboteur in chief that you condemn the
arrest
of Judge Hannah Dugan.
A study of populations of 500 species of birds found that
3/4
are declining,
especially where they were formerly numerous.
Disposing of thousands of satellites by letting them burn up in reentry
will release thousands of tons of
aluminum
oxides into the upper atmosphere, which can significantly increase
global
heating.
Former
US
ambassadors compare the situation in the countries where they
served with the situation in the US now.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to stop fake abortion clinics' deceptive and predatory
practices.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The wrecker has
done harm around the world to
humanity's
freedom and future.
The US engages experts to recommend policies for coping with global
heating effects; the next report is due in 2028. The wrecker has just
dismissed
all of them.
Judging from his other actions, he will choose new bogus "experts" to
make a bogus report advising damaging policies, then will pressure all
states to follow it, and some of them will do so (to their own misfortune).
Attorney General Bondi's actions, since appointed, have amounted
to a campaign of
sabotage
against due process of law and equal rights, opening opportunities
for sabotage by America's enemies (foreign and domestic).
The bully plans to eliminate
rules
that protected journalists from subpoenas for investigations into
leaks.
The hypocrite's henchmen have ordered
an
investigation of Harvard
because a student-run organization complied with federal DEI policies
while they were in effect.
(satire) *[The wrecker's]
Support
Surges After He Points Gun At Nation.*
The big power failure has taught many in Spain how dangerous it is
to
rely on digital payment. This may help us campaign to resume use
of cash.
When the systems are working normally, we still have reasons to pay
cash for most payments: to maintain our freedom and security, and to
block surveillance.
US citizens:
call
on The FDA not to end routine food safety inspections —
change would lead to sickness and death.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to attack Section 230 — that is dangerous
for people's freedom of speech.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The Canadian Liberal party just won a national election
because its
new
leader stood firm against the bully's threats and harassment.
What the wrecker
has
ruined
in just 100 days.
I invite all of you to learn to be less attached
to physical things, including gems and
derivatives of parts of my former body.
Attachment generates suffering, and that
includes attachment to those things. If my
former body has any importance, it is only in
the advice that it once spoke to you, which I
now repeat.
really matter and you will become more enlightened.
Richard Stallman, 2023-12-14
Palestine nigh Israel be.
Both in peace, let both be free;
Be lands of democracy.
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