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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
US citizens: call on Congress to block Paramount from consolidating the main US news media.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
The bully is eager to reclassify marijuana. The change in regulations he wants would make it easier to do research on medical uses, but would not relieve the threats and restrictions on people who actually use marijuana or its derivatives.
*I Wrote a Movie Review. Cops Took It From a Protester's Home to Make the Case That He's a Terrorist.*
Argentina's President Milei imitated another right-wing extremist president by accepting a personal payoff for ordering the country's government to invest in cryptocurrency.
Some schools, and some US states, want to get rid of personal computers for students in the classroom, for educational reasons.
It is too bad they don't appreciate the injustice of the software in those computers, because that is an separate reason for doing the same thing. The two reasons are not entirely independent — the fact that the software is nonfree is part of the explanation for why it does bad things. But they are independent enough that they can broaden the base of the argument.
We need to bring these two converging movements together.
* Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) describes itself as an independent organization producing research on energy policy.* In fact, it gets millions of dollars from oil companies, and what it "produces" is obtained wholesale from them.
US citizens: call on your federal legislators in Congress to repeal federal school vouchers and protect public education.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
*Israel escalates attacks on medics in Lebanon with deadly "quadruple tap".*
A Kuwaiti-American journalist was visiting Kuwait and made footage of the mistaken shooting of an American F-15 and reported on this. Since then, Kuwait has arrested him, possibly for publishing that, or possibly for other journalism, under repressive new "terrorism" laws which can define journalism as "terrorism" under rather vague conditions.
US citizens: call on your state governor to legalize balcony solar power.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
Your state's agency-contact information is at USA.gov.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to cancel the funding for the deportation thugs and eliminate that agency, +1-202-998-6094.
National Nurses United recommends this short script to when you call:
Hi, my name is _______. I am a constituent and I’m a nurse/other health care worker/patient. It is unconscionable, after a year of constant violence and militarization of our neighborhoods by the Trump administration, that Congress would consider sending billions more in funding to continue this harm. I am calling today to urge my senator to vote NO on the Senate Homeland Security reconciliation funding package that includes another $70 billion in funding for ICE and CBP, rescind the already $75 billion allocated to ICE and $65 billion for CBP in last year’s Republican budget reconciliation bill, and take immediate action to abolish ICE.
*In Europe, lobbyists are using soaring fuel prices to make the case for more dirty energy.*
I understand how professional lobbyists would find this a profitable and appealing business. What I do not understand is why so few governments hold firm and denounce the invitation to follow the road to megadeaths.
A woman in her 60s went to a No Kings rally wearing an inflatable penis costume and carrying a sign "No Dick Tator". A thug attacked her violently and she faces serious prosecution for ridiculous charges.
It seems that the local magats are using her as an example to demonstrate that they are always serious about punishment as repression, no matter how absurd the grounds for punishment are.
Major LLM dis-services show a pattern of sycophantic discourse and its effect on the user is to decrease prosocial intentions and promote dependence.
It is unfortunate that the article adopts the marketing practice of equating LLMs with "AI". LLMs are certainly artificial, but do not qualify as intelligence, and the artificial systems which do qualify as intelligence are not LLMs.
Google is ready to destroy civilization (through global heating) to make its Pretend Intelligence a success.
*EPA moves to designate microplastics and pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water.*
Even if this is advocated by RFK jr, it is a reasonable direction for effort provided it is done in a rational and scientific manner.
Many countries have experienced population growth past the sustainable level. Yet people continue to call for further population growth as a way to achieve unsustainable further economic growth.
I suspect that a large part of the motive for these pseudo-solutions is to distract the non-rich from the need to reduce the share of wealth and income that the rich get.
*New North Sea drilling would barely reduce UK gas imports at all, data shows.* Planet roasters exaggerate the short-term benefit to distract the public from the urgent need to stop using fossil fuels.
The US government is expelling the daughters of Qassem Soleimani and of Ali Larijani, two high officials of Iran that were killed by the US.
What I wonder about is why their daughters moved to the US in apparent conflict with the positions and offices of their fathers. It is conceivable that they did so to act as agents of Iran, but it is also possible that they did so out of disagreement with the revolution's misogyny.
How right-wing extremist parties in some European countries attack the free press and rule of law.
Some Pretend Intelligence chatbots help gambling addicts find their way to online gambling.
In the UK, parking fines are typically enforced by private companies that can increase their income by bullying and tricking motorists. Often the tricking is followed by bullying.
I think the root cause of this specific problem with paying for parking is the policy of allowing private companies to collect parking fines. That encourages fee collection companies to compete with each other bullying and/or tricking customers. An official system for dealing with motorists that don't pay could be designed to collect effectively but not unjustly, because those who carry it out would not profit from being unfair.
Attacking the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, Iran, would threaten to spread radioactive fallout in many countries in the Middle East.
Pheap Rom, Cambodian citizen in the US who was convicted of murder and served a prison term, was deported after the end of his sentence. But why did the US send him to Eswatini rather than Cambodia?
When he arrived in Eswatini, he was immediately put in prison although his sentence was over.
He rejoices that Eswatini eventually did send him to Cambodia. It seems that Cambodia did not put him in prison.
A federal thug shot a less-lethal object at the eye of Tucker Collins, who was standing still and photographing a No Kings protest from a distance. The damage to his skull caused him to lose that eye.
The right to sue for damages is, for the victims of the gratuitous violence of thugs, an inadequate remedy — magat officials think that damages paid for maiming and killing is money well spent. Stopping this violence requires criminal prosecution, which a hateful president can easily prevent.
I suggest creating a corps of special prosecutors who cannot be removed from office except by impeachment, with the mission of prosecuting violent misconduct by any person who holds an office that grants more than the usual right to engage in violence.
Amazon says that workers seeing a medical emergency should call Amazon's emergency number rather than 911, because Amazon's response team, stationed at the warehouse itself, can get there sooner.
It sounds logical, and it might usually be true — presuming Amazon tries assiduously to provide fast and good emergency response for workers. But can we expect Amazon to care about its workers enough to do that job properly?
Green Party leader Zack Polanski called for the UK to terminate its trade treaty with Israel and apply sanctions to end Israel's beyond-defensive wars and repression of Palestinians.
Various targets that the wrecker has prominently attacked have driven him off — most recently, Iran.
It should be noted that few or none of these successful defenses against him has been a complete success — for instance, deportation thugs are still marauding in Minnesota, though not quite as intensely.
Also, such victories against the wrecker do not necessarily last. Once he is driven off, he may strike again in a different way.
Nonetheless, defeating him is much better than surrender.
An Australian family that lived in the US for 15 years, considering it "home", is moving back to Australia from disgust and fear.
The UK is concerned that buses made in China might be vulnerable to digital sabotage by remote control, through the cellular data connection.
The danger is real, in these buses and in ordinary cars and trucks. The only way to verify safety is to completely block over-the-radio software modifications.
The same danger is present in portable phones. There is always some entity with the power to force software changes, and you can never fully trust it.
Interview with a schoolteacher who told per students to keep their Chromebooks in the backpack so as not to be distracted by them. Using paper made a great improvement in their learning.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect minors from being imprisoned and treated cruelly by the deportation thugs.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Trader Joe's to commit to keeping deportation thugs out.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich! Pass the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Young US men: call on your congresscritter and senators to get rid of the plan to bring back the draft.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Maryland has banned dynamic pricing in stores.
I hope this will be banned everywhere.
*An Ecuadorian fishing crew describe their ordeal as victims of Trump’s purported war on "narcoterrorists".* Instead of treating the crew as accused criminals are supposed to be treated, it captured them, sank their boat, and took them incommunicado to another country.
Israel has jailed two soldiers that intentionally smashed a statue of Jesus in a Christian town in Lebanon.
It is proper and wise for armies to enforce a law requiring respect for the peaceful practices of all civilians in regard to religion. (I word it that way to cover Atheism also; religious belief must not be given more legal rights than unbelief.)
I wish the Israeli army would enforce similar respect for civilians themselves, their homes, their farms and businesses, their schools, and their medical facilities. However, the Israeli government in general shows public support for attacking those things.
*Rabbi who boasts of bulldozing Palestinian homes will light torch for Israel's national day.*
The US military government runs "news" websites Al-Fassel and Pishtaz which present constant praise of the wrecker but barely mention that they are under his command.
The wrecker destroyed the Voice of America, which presented itself openly as funded and run by the US but allowed some editorial independence.
Put together, these two actions add up to something clear: an attempt to do to the foreign communications of the US the same thing that billionaire magats are doing to the major media in the US: CBS, CNN, and more.
Russia's "shadow fleet" is sending hundreds of ships carrying oil along the north coast of Canada.
They are going through the formerly nonexistent "northwest passage", which is opening up now as global heating melts the Arctic ice. These ships are decrepit, and not very safe to operate there, and even less safe with a cargo of oil.
US citizens: call on your federal legislators to make Congress release the names of members of Congress who used taxpayer money to silence sexual harassment claims.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Secretary of Aggression Hegseth.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
A rant by an old-time personal computer user who loathes today's big tech and briefly suggests he might be using a Libre operating system — seems to be completely unaware of the free software movement.
I think he might sympathize with it if he knew it.
Bernie Sanders: *We need a 5% wealth tax on America's 938 billionaires. … The richest people in America have never ever had it so good. … The American working class has been under savage attack for years.*
Each state of the US has the power to reverse the Corporations United decision for corporations incorporated in that state.
Over 20 state attorneys general are suing to overturn public enemy #1's executive order to mostly ban voting by mail.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on universities to join UPenn in the case to overturn an order to identify its Jewish employees to the government.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: thank the senators who voted to block weapons for Israel and hold the rest accountable.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
*No Israel prosecutions for killing Palestinian civilians in occupied West Bank since start of decade.* Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel, hopes to spur the International Criminal Court to intervene.
Several former heads of the army, the police and the spy agencies are supporting the campaign.
An Israeli lawyer (whose name I don't recognize) responds, "The system is programmed to manufacture impunity, not accountability. But it was smart enough to also have very rare occasions of accountability, that could be referred to as examples of how law enforcement was working" (so as to convince the ICC it had no basis to get involved).
A Palestinian (whose name I don't recognize) responds, "Such Israeli critics often give the impression that settler violence could be tamed by simply ousting the (current) far right government. That would certainly have an effect, but it doesn’t recognise that the settlements are a project of the state that was shaped and led across the political spectrum."
That is true; indeed, Olmert was a right-wing politician. Nonetheless, what he is doing now takes courage.
The bully's minions fire immigration judges who uphold the first amendment rights of immigrants, and praise judges who deport people for exercising those rights.
A psychiatrist studied the imprisoned surviving Nazi leaders and wrote that such people were not a special problem of Germany — rather, people inclined toward tyranny and enormous crimes could be found in any country, including the US.
Proposing a plausible peace deal for Iran and the US — if they are willing to accept it.
*Utah reports more than 600 measles cases as outbreak spreads across US.*
Utah is full of Republicans, and many of them are now magats. I hope the rest of the country learns from this example of stupidity not to believe magats.
Bernie Sanders's speech to the senate calling for an end to arms transfers to Israel.
The resolutions were defeated, but it is only a matter of time before public opinion prevails.
A court has voided the protest ban law of New South Wales, which was used to ban protests against the president of Israel while he was visiting.
Australian lawyers rushed to use LLMs, but encountered the risk that the argument presented in court might cite a nonexistent decision in a nonexistent case.
*Lawsuit in Norway alleges Telenor passed on data helping Myanmar military arrest 1,200 [opposition] activists, some in safe houses.*
Telenor should have considered the question of how it would respond to demands like this before deciding to do business in Burma. If it could not come up with a response it could justify, it should have stayed out. Norway and other countries should pass laws making it clear how telecommunications countries must protect dissidents in situations like this.
Empirically, Google Search so-called "AI" Overviews have a 10% chance of giving incorrect answers.
Google says users should check them before trusting them, but this is just an excuse to avoid being liable for the errors. At the same time, Google uses the hype term "AI" so that users will trust them.
If you don't want to be misled by them, don't look at them. Even better, don't use Google search at all.
I can't use Google search because it doesn't work at all, for me. It requires users to run nonfree JavaScript programs, and my browser is set to refuse to run such programs, so if a link ever takes me to Google search, it has no chance to mislead me.
The CDC is nearly paralyzed, as 80% of the group leadership positions are vacant. This adds to a lot of other damage — 1/5 of the staff were fired (or quit).
The previous acting director, Bhattacharya, was previously infamous for advocating allowing Covid-19 to spread unhindered and advising old people to protect themselves by avoiding contact with other people.
Either RFK jr is nuts or he is committing intentional sabotage — I can't see any way around it. But neither alternative fully makes sense.
Most Democratic senators now oppose providing arms to Israel, like most Democratic voters.
Israel's callous chain of atrocities had to have an effect, and it has.
Rümeysa Öztürk, Tufts student who was jailed for publishing in support of Palestinians' rights, has finished her PhD and returned to Turkey.
That is a good and just outcome for her, but the US won't be a safe place to live in until we remove the officials who are inclined to persecute people for criticizing government policies.
Big Oil is pushing Republicans to sell them immunity from lawsuits over damages they cause by roasting our planet.
There is no way those companies could ever pay for all the damages that global heating will do, because eventually the damages will add up to the worth of just about everything in the world. But these lawsuits, even before they are decided, can help slow Big Oil's march of damage.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to protect our voting rights — reject the corrupter's takeover of our elections.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: applaud the court decision insisting Pentagon respect freedom of the press.
Main switchboard: +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
*"India is going to face a food crisis": Farmers panic over fertilizer shortages amid Iran war.*
Ralph Nader: *The Deafening Abdication of Four Ex-Presidents on [the wrecker].*
The blusterer is covering up the few US casualties, and airplane losses, from the war with Iran.
The losses are rather small. If the war were justified and necessary, these losses would be insignificant. We should focus on the stronger reasons to end this war, and why there is no reason to be fighting Iran in this way.
Ralph Nader: The enormous US military may now be vulnerable to attacks with cheap drones even in the US. If one happens, the would-be dictator would use it to whip up support for his regime in the name of "patriotism."
If one does not happen, he might arrange for one to happen, to create an excuse to wrap himself in the flag as if it were anti-drone armor. No moral scruples would discourage him.
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, has been singled out by the persecutor as a special target for the most extreme possible lawfare persecution.
It is shocking that the US has the power to block use of bank payment cards world-wide. No country should have that special power, and European countries ought to set up their own networks that the US cannot censor. But I can affirm that it's not hard to live without a bank card. I never use mine except to buy airline tickets, which I do perhaps once every few years — and I could pay cash if necessary.
The other forms of harassment and punishment described in the article are harder to cope with.
Massive public resistance to the bully's deportation sweeps is partly successful, and they have weakened his appetite for them.
The worst thing about them, in my view, is not that they are deporting people but that they stretch the law and the facts to create false excuses for it, and that they use deportation as a tool for political repression. These pervert justice and human rights, which harms everyone in the US.
The UK arrested 500 protesters for carrying signs to support Palestine Action.
Although a court ruled that the ban on supporting Palestine Action is illegal, the government decided to appeal that decision rather than give in. It seems awfully desperate to carry on the repression. It has given no rational reason that would justify this desperation.
The bully claims to have agreed to a two-week cease-fire with Iran, but it is dubious that the two actually agree on anything. Both sides have announced conditional offers of cease-fire that don't meet each other.
Perhaps it will suit each side to pretend that other side has met its condition, so they can stop actually fighting. But I don't have confidence that this agreement to disagree will last. Announcing renewed hatred is a frequent part of the bully's playbook in a dispute.
*Retired military officers call [the bully's] threats against Iran "likely war crimes".*
*Congress Must Restrain [the bully] from Nuclear Weapons First Use, Says Union of Concerned Scientists.*
The bully's deranged threats against Iran constitute proof that the attack he threatened would be an intentional attempt at genocide.
By contrast, we know that the US military's bombing of the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school was due to out-of-date records which said that it was still part of the adjacent IRGC base. To have chosen knowingly to bomb a school, in the absence of some specific military need (which did not exist) would have been a war crime, but an error is not.
By contrast, I tend to think that the bombing of Iran's B1 bridge, a primarily civilian facility, was a war crime.
Moreover, the bully and Netanyahu are, I believe, guilty of the crime of aggressive war.
One of right-wing extremists today is to erase both the goal and the means for punishing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggressive war. They are so carried away by hate that they regard all attempts to limit acts of hatred as outrageous interference.
The wrecker's antivax officials are spreading antivax views less for the moment, having learned that voters dislike that.
Do not be fooled by this. It is not a change in substance and does not imply they will reverse the harmful changes they have already made. To make America safe from contagious diseases again requires replacing the magat public health officials with public health officials dedicated to protecting public health, and ready to use scientific knowledge to do so.
LLM-generated communications are systematically different from human utterances. As LLM output influences people, and other LLMs, these tendencies could bring important changes in how people communicate, even with other people.
One change the LLM companies have brought about intentionally is the practice of referring to them as "artificial intelligence", which presumes they are more capable than they really are.
Feminists have denounced new forms of recreational misogyny for over 20 years, warning that they were designed to recruit more male supporters.
Drivers often choose SUVs to cope with potholes, but SUVs make the problem worse: they cause more wear to roads than cars do.
People in the Netherlands are building tanks to store large amounts of rainwater in the event of too much rain. This can prevent flooding and the water can be used later when hotter summers cause drought.
The madness of King Donald is contagious to other countries' leaders.
*The Forever Spoiler: Netanyahu Has Been Blowing Up Diplomacy With Iran for Decades.*
Last year's Big Bad Bill cut the funds for Americans' medical care. Around the country, hospitals and clinics are closing as a consequence.
For the corrupter's family members, any official responsibility is a chance for corruption.
Magats used to blame President Biden for his son's business crimes, even though the president did not set him up for those. When their opponents commit a real crime, they jump on that, but always in a hypocritical way because they commit similar crimes without a qualm.
A very warm winter and spring has left the Rocky Mountains with little snow. That means drought and fire this summer.
*Is the US committing war crimes by targeting Iran’s civilian infrastructure?*
The answer seems to be "it depends but very likely yes."
US government fascists join Russian government fascists in supporting wannabe tyrant Orbán's reelection in Hungary.
Commodity traders are turning to the betting site Polymarket for inside information about fluctuations in oil prices (including the secret government plans that will determine coming fluctuations).
*The [New South Wales] Greens' justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, alleged that her phone calls were "routinely" monitored despite it's being against the law for [prison thugs] to listen to calls between parliamentarians (such as Ms Higginson) and prisoners.*
New Zealand plans to eradicate feral cats. This will help protect endangered native birds.
I support requiring people that keep pet cats to keep them indoors.
US citizens: call on your governor and attorney general to arrest federal deportation thugs who break state laws.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect our voting rights — to reject the corrupter's takeover of our elections.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress not to renew FISA section 702 with its indirect authorization for snooping on Americans with no warrants.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Take action: Congress must investigate DOGE’s Social Security data breach!
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your state's Secretary of State not to allow deportation thugs to loiter near polling places in your state.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
*[The bully's new Columbus] statue isn't about preserving history – it's about asserting the power to rewrite it.*
The bully and his right-wing extremists aim to make rape and enslavement acceptable again.
*The question is no longer what Christopher Columbus did. Most Americans, if pressed, know enough. The question is whether that knowledge is allowed to matter, and who gets to decide when it does.*
An Arab-American student in Michigan demonstrated her commitment to American tradition of civil liberties by suing her school after a teacher punished her for refusing to stand during the pledge of allegiance.
She stood up for freedom of speech when it counted, and that for an American is true loyalty.
Some survey organizations trying to measure trends in society pay their participants. Many participants make more money by delegating the responses to Pretend Intelligence, and the Pretend Intelligence generates responses which don't reflect the actual public.
*China has brought millions out of poverty. The US has not — by choice.*
Britain's privatization of parts of the electric supply paralyzed its ability to upgrade standards for its electric grid by making many organizations that need to be convinced to agree and coordinate.
This shows another way that privatizing a public service can lead to gratuitous national problems.
America's billionaire oligarchs despise and reject democracy because they want to be able to live like lords. Some of them they say so, flat out.
Perhaps we should have No Kings, No Lords protests, to target them as well as the corrupter in chief.
*[The saboteur in chief] signs order to restrict mail-in ballots in probably unconstitutional move.*
Anti-abortion crusaders continue pushing to define a fetus as a human being and redefine abortion as murder.
Iran has large national minorities, some of which seek independence. The regime knows that some of them would seize opportunities to rebel.
Big Pharma is pushing a bill to make medicines more expensive in the US.
The magats have incapacitated the CDC even for activities they don't say they aim to abolish — such as testing for diseases.
*Civil rights groups sue [US government] over [the voter suppressor's] order to limit mail-in voting.*
The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto was.
The Ford Pinto caused a national scandal because the manufacturer disregarded the known flaw, despite deaths it caused. Today, a worse scandal about the CyberTruck can barely get off the ground.
Perhaps that is because we are accustomed to businesses treating their customers with contempt, and the main news media have mostly been bought up by billionaires.
Iran seems to plan to execute hundreds (or thousands?) of prisoners, many of them for protesting, and is hiding the news by threatening the relatives if they tell anyone.
*Israel's death penalty law marks a new phase in its dehumanisation of Palestinians.*
Pretend Intelligence is leading secondary school students in England to be deficient in critical thinking, creativity, writing, even how to have a conversation, teachers report.
For one day, the muskrat's chatbot, Grok, talked about (imaginary) "white genocide" in response to just about every query. One way this might have been implemented was by changing the primary prompt.
It is surely not a coincidence that, soon after, the muskrat began ranting about this nonexistence injustice.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop private equity from taking over Americans' 401(k) retirement plans.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to make the ultra rich pay their fair share.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate possible war profiteering.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Orbán privately told Putin in October that he was at Putin's service.
Hungary voted authoritarian Orbán and his party out of power.
I have to wonder whether Peter Magyar, who only two years ago was a member of Orbán's party, wishes to undo all the damage Orbán has done. Has he said that he does?
Iran's conditions for ending the war include big demands.
Sharing the control between Iran and Oman might make it more acceptable as a demand.
The disagreement about what the supposedly agreed cease-fire with Iran requires has become sharp: Israel is back to bombing Lebanon and Iran has closed the straights of Hormuz again.
The temporary cease fire negotiations failed, so the monster is raging again and threatening attacks on Iran's vital civilian facilities, including water plants. Threats like that are just the thing to convince Iran's rulers they need nuclear weapons, like Mr Kim.
He also said the US would blockade the Straits of Hormuz, which basically repeats what Iran has already done, except that it would block Iran's oil exports as well as other countries' oil exports. Perhaps the two countries could take a step towards reconciliation by establishing joint patrols to make sure no oil exports travel through the straits ;-!
We would all be so much better off if the wrecker had not canceled the non-nuclear deal with Iran that Obama negotiated.
*Israel got away with targeting [medical facilities] in Gaza. It's no surprise it is doing it in Lebanon too.*
*Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon.*
AIPAC is disguising its campaign funding through organizations which in no way indicate their connection with AIPAC, or that they choose candidates based on their positions about Israel and Palestine.
As expected, the Democratic National Committee rejected a resolution to condemn the influence of AIPAC, and of dark money generally.
It is dominated by "moderate" (right-wing) Democrats, who serve the power of rich donors. Some rich donors are Zionists, and some are evangelical Christians, and they support Israel's injustice towards Palestinians.
Meanwhile, almost all of them demand to keep most of America's wealth flowing to the rich, by rejecting the New Deal policies that most Americans support.
* The continental US registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records.* And it will get worse and worse over the coming decades.
It may be possible to negotiate peace between the US and Iran, but the bully still thinks he can get total victory through willingness to cause damage.
The Straits of Hormuz tollbooth can be very lucrative for Iran (and maybe Oman too) until someone builds a competing toll road. One of the Gulf states (Qatar?) has a pipeline that bypasses the straits and arrives at the open sea, but it can carry only a fraction of the total rate of export. Part of the UAE's shore is outside the straits but it isn't set up to do all its export through there.
After a few years of construction, Qatar and the UAE could arrange to export their whole production, bypassing the straits by a wide margin.
Rubio decimated the US Foreign Service (at the wrecker's orders), firing (among others) the staff that had experience in organizing evacuations of American civilians from countries where war breaks out.
As a result, once the wrecker launched war against Iran and made an evacuation necessary, the US had no way to do it.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was looking at the legality of the deadly US campaign of bombing boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean, but the US is now threatening to retaliate against it if it does that.
The corrupter has perverted the Justice Department to work systematically for the opposite of justice. It is prosecuting Cassidy Hutchinson for testifying to Congress about the corrupter's involvement in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.
The idea is that prosecuting her for "lying to Congress" will lead magats to blindly assume her testimony was false.
Russian psych-war agents are manipulating vulnerable Ukrainians to make and set off bombs near where they live.
To me it is incomprehensible that these efforts can succeed, but apparently they do.
Too much fishing for cod and mackerel, around Britain, is driving the population to extinction.
Regulation of hunting and fishing is one of the classic examples of how everyone can benefit in the long term by having a state that can make and enforce limits. The sea tends naturally to be an unregulated commons, because each fisher or boat crew may catch as much as it can or will. If some catch at an unsustainable rate, eventually that species will disappear and they will all be the worse for the loss.
It is possible for fishers to make a social agreement and keep it without a state. Lobster fishers in Maine and Canada adopted the practice of marking the pregnant lobsters they catch and throwing them back; this averted a previous crisis. (See The Secret Life of the Lobster by Trevor Corson.) But this sort of voluntary measure is harder to establish than to imagine, especially when fishing involves a big investment in a boat. A state can save all the fishers (and all the people who eat fish) from the consequences of their own temptation.
That is, the state can do so if it has the moral strength to stand firm against the the short-term thinking of the fishers who lobby to be "allowed to catch more so they don't go broke next year."
They could not stay in business very long after wiping out the fish, but they kid themselves that this can't really happen — until it does. Cod near North America were almost wiped out, and after protection was set up, they have remained at a low population for decades despite the prohibition of catching them. Apparently, once the population gets far too low, protection is not sufficient. It needs to be done before the disaster.
The British government lacks that moral strength, and has lacked it for a long time. I wonder what the E&W Green Party says about this.
Emperor penguins have been tagged an endangered species because global heating effects have killed a large fraction of them.
*US accused of pressuring Latin America to cut ties with Cuban doctors program.*
Chile's right-wing extremist president has demonstrated support for the dictator, Pinochet, and specifically for his systematic torture of people who opposed him.
*Heatwaves are already breaching human limits, with worse to come, study finds. Analysis of six extreme heatwaves found that when temperature and humidity were accounted for, all were potentially deadly for older people.*
I expect the situation to become much clearer in 10 or 20 years: heatwaves then will simply be deadly to many unprotected people.
*US ignoring evidence Russia is helping Iran because it trusts Putin, says Zelenskyy.*
It is natural that Putin would help Iran, because it depends on Iran's military support as well. It is natural also that the wrecker would look for opportunities to support Putin, because that is his basic inclination and has been for many years. His support for Ukraine is reluctant and he keeps threatening to end it.
US citizens: call on Congress to censure the bully for threatening reporters with treason charges.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on Congress to restore PBS and NPR funding.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on the USDA to fully fund conservation programs.
US citizens: call on Congress not to cut funds for Americans' medicine for the sake of unjustified war.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on Tell Congress: Reject any budget package that slashes basic needs programs to give additional billions to deportation and war.
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US citizens: call on universities to stand with he University of Pennsylvania to protect Jewish employees from federal persecution.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Magats don't actually care about Jews, but they find "stopping antisemitism" a convenient excuse to persecute people who speak up for the rights of Palestinians. However, threatening Jews in the name of "stopping antisemitism" is even more perverse.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the wrecker's proposed $1.5 trillion military budget.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to fight any Republican scheme to cut funds for medical care or boost funds for war with Iran.
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US citizens: call on the Federal Trade Commission to ban junk fees for rental housing.
In my letter, I also said that would-be renters should not be required to use any web site in the process of seeking, accepting, occupying and paying for the rental. Those web sites are usually malicious, since they run nonfree software in the user's browser. And they do various sorts of snooping.
By raising this issue in your letter, you will support software freedom.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to expand the investigation of torture of prisoners to all deportation prisons.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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US citizens: call on your state legislators to pass the Fossil-Free Insurers Act.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to Support and Pass the Home Team Act, to hamper sports team owners from squeezing money out of cities.
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US citizens: call on your officials in Congress to impeach Russell Vought, head of Project 2025 and White House Budget Director.
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Chemical companies worked with trumpets to kill planned strict safety limits on exposure to formaldehyde. It involved disregarding the data from experiments that showed the danger, and choosing instead data from experiments chemical companies had sponsored.
A former Iranian minister boasted in an interview about arranging several assassinations of Iranian exiles.
The wrecker has a pattern of crying "emergency" based on no real grounds. Each time, it is based on a lie.
Right-wing members of the Supreme Court are unwilling to call a lie a lie.
In 1984 British police rioted and attacked a crowd of striking miners, then charged many of them falsely with crimes. Now, belatedly, the government will hold a proper inquiry.
A series of bills in Congress would prohibit various aspects of market consolidation in medicine.
It used to be the case that large investment funds needed a publicly traded corporation to raise so much money. Publicly traded corporations were regulated more strictly. But increasing concentration of wealth made it feasible to raise such sums without a publicly traded corporation, and thus to avoid the regulation, with harmful consequences. I believe that any investment vehicle over a certain size should be required to be a publicly traded corporation.
Scammers recruit people to "work" writing and posting fake reviews of whatever. The reviews are usually blocked by the sites where they are posted, and the real goal is to scam the "workers".
Australia invited the president of Israel to visit, which naturally inspired protests. The thugs seem to have had it in for the protesters, and came up with dubious claims that violence was necessary.
Some of Maduro's political prisoners have been released and describe horrible torture even more active and aggressive than the horrible torture in US deportation prisons.
The FCC has banned importation of foreign-made routers, except for models already approved.
This addresses a real problem, but the supposed solution addresses only a part of it. When a router is made in a country other than the US, it's possible that that country's government has imposed spyware to snoop on Americans — or perhaps only on selected Americans.
However, other countries have the same reason to suspect routers made in the US. The US government maintains systematic ways to snoop on everyone, even its own citizens in defiance of its laws and constitution. Perhaps other countries should ban US-made routers as well as China-made routers.
But national governments are not the only entities that might make a router manufacturer snoop on users. The company might do this for its own purposes or to sell data.
To address this problem thoroughly, governments should insist that routers' software be released under a free/libre license, subject it to systematic analysis looking for security holes, and that the router allow the user to install other software through a method that involves pressing a physical button.
Texas State University fired professor Idris Robinson for giving a talk, at a book fair unrelated to the university, about Israel and Palestine. Now he is suing the university for violating its contract with him.
Hate activists worked on line to identify the speaker and then push for firing him, distorting his talk to into an excuse.
Increasing numbers of Pretend Intelligence chatbots are finding ways to defeat safeguards.
If you assume they are intelligent, you could see this as a sign of cleverness. The reason that I say they are not intelligent is that they often can't tell they have output pseudoinformation.
The bully has tried to pervert US public health, but is having trouble putting people into office who can stay in office.
Instead of the smoothly functioning disinformation agencies he sought, he has got evident failure.
America is starting to enact laws to tax the rich more.
This is a step in the right direction, and it can enable states to do much to help the poorest. However, the small amounts of these tax increases won't reduce the political power of billionaires significantly. If we cut their income and wealth in half, that would start to do it.
*Two Thirds of People Arrested by [deportation thugs] in Minnesota Surge Had No Criminal Records [or pending charges], New Data Reveals.*
The magat's persistent false claim that the deportations they do are protecting us from criminals demonstrate their contempt for the truth, and that demonstrates that the real targets of their deportation campaign are human rights and justice.
* A New York congressional primary is exposing the gap between Democrats who want to fight [the saboteur in chief] and Democrats who want to fight for something.*
Richard Stallman will give a talk titled "Free/Libre Software and Freedom in the Digital Society" at 4pm on April 15 at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas.
US citizens: call on Congress to invest in America — not in war with Iran.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: Urge the Postal Board of Governors to protect vote-by-mail.
US citizens: call on Congress to vote to end the bully's war in Iran.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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Everyone: call on Delta Airlines to Stop Assisting Deportation Flights.
US citizens: call on Congress to make the USPS restore real-time postmarks, for the sake of mail-in voting.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on your representative and senators to reject any budget package that slashes basic needs programs to fund deportation and war.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on Congress to block the warlord's gift of 20,000 bombs to Israel. Sad to say, we must expect Israel would use them in unjust and harmful ways.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: Support Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal's Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold Pam Bondi accountable for refusing to testify.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on state governors to act, where the USDA is failing, on climate and biodiversity crises.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your state insurance commissioner to stop computer-driven medical claim denials.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call your members of Congress to Ban Insider Gambling by Government Officials. In my letter I asked for this ban to include all government officials that are sometimes privy to policy decisions not yet publicly announced.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on state officials to fund public schools, rather than private or church schools.
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US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
Your state's agency-contact information is at USA.gov.
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US citizens: Ask your congresscritter and senators to block the war-lover from sending over 20,000 bombs to Israel.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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The US bombed and destroyed Iran's biggest bridge.
Of course, the Iranian military will find this somewhat inconvenient, but the bridge was civilian infrastructure and used mainly by civilians. There was no military reason to attack it, and the ruining of the bridge will do nothing to loosen the repression. All it will do is cause general damage and suffering.
Iran has already threatened to retaliate against the Gulf states' civilian infrastructure when it is attacked in this way.
*Israel using white phosphorus to scorch earth in south Lebanon, researcher says.*
Israeli soldiers attacked a CNN team that was reporting on Palestinians being attacked in their homes by fanatical right-wing Israelis. The soldiers did nothing to protect the Palestinians, but they treated the CNN team as if it were an enemy unit.
One soldier violently attacked a cameraman.
The army announced that this was totally against its rules and spirit to attack and threaten non-Palestinian journalists, but there was another attack on CNN journalists a week or two ago.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Israel killed a journalist team working for a Hezbollah-owned TV station by firing a missile at them.
Israel said this was justified because one of them had previously reported the location of some Israeli soldiers. However, attacking journalists doing journalism is a war crime regardless.
Israel will use military courts to try Palestinian terrorists who kill Israelis, sentence them to death, make it especially easy to convict them, and rush to execute them.
The law has been contrived to discriminate between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli terrorists. However, some of these distortions of justice should never be allowed, regardless of the crime or the circumstances.
*The Guardian view on Israel’s death penalty: capital punishment is always wrong. This new law is doubly so.*
Unprecedented floods in Minas Gerais, caused by global heating, are damaging coffee production and driving the price up. (Not to mention killing human beings.)
Humans are fishing more and more for krill, the food most whales eat. This threatens to drive whale populations down, just after the decrease in whale hunting enabled them to recover.
I wonder what people do with krill caught by these large boats. I also wonder whether ocean acidification, expected to wipe out crustaceans along with coral, would indirectly wipe out whales too.
Crown Prince Bone Saw, effective ruler of Salafi Arabia, reportedly urged the wrecker to bomb Iran to smithereens.
The name refers to how his henchmen chopped up the body of exiled dissident reporter Jamal Khashoggi after killing him in the Salafi Arabian embassy to Turkey. The prince is a murderous Islamist fanatic, like the rulers of Iran, and there is nothing to choose between them -- or between them and the wrecker.
The bully fired Bondi as attorney general. Good riddance, but will her replacement be even worse?
Robert Reich says he fired her for not succeeding in all the harm he asked her to do.
Milpitas, California, will distribute video cameras to residents to enable them to upload videos to the cops when they choose. They will be gratis, but not free in the sense of respecting freedom.
It proper that uploading will nominally be a decision for the camera owner, rather than for the cops. But unless the software installed in the camera is free/libre, the owners and the public can't be sure that the camera's manufacturer isn't snooping for other reasons of its own, such as tracking everyone by facial recognition.
The wrecker is planning to uproot the US Forest Service by moving it to a different city and closing its regional offices.
This move, given the basic favoritism towards big business, could enable logging companies to get away with just about anything. I suppose that is its motive.
If the agency were already centralized, moving its center to the Rockies could indeed bring that center closer to the majority of the forests. But closing the regional offices will have the opposite effect, just about all over the country.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the USPS for November's election.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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New pun: Show us warrants.
*[The bully]'s Iran war is holding him hostage.*
The best estimate is that Iran still has roughly 1/3 of its missile stocks and 1/3 of its drone stocks. So much for the bullshitter's bombastic claim to have destroyed nearly all of them.
I think serious people already knew that such claims coming from him were not to be taken seriously.
Solidarity with the victims of hate extends to both Arabs and Jews.
*Earth being "pushed beyond its limits" as energy imbalance reaches record high.*
Hong Kong has given thugs the power to demand people hand over their passwords.
The UK has a similar repressive law, which it used on David Miranda when he carried a copy of the Snowden leaks to Glenn Greenwald. It was a terrible mistake for him to carry with him the password to decrypt that data, and likewise a terrible mistake to pass through the UK on his way to Brazil. Someone involved with the Snowden leaks should have told him to avoid those risky choices.
The henchman in charge of the Pentagon responded to the court ruling that its biased restrictions on journalists are unconstitutional by promulgating a modified set of restrictions.
Deportation thugs have jailed a Canadian woman married to a US citizen, and their daughter. She has papers authorizing her to be in the US, but not currently in her possession because she submitted them to another US agency for some sort of bureaucratic step. She warns all Canadians in the US that they are in danger, especially while their papers are in "processing".
Israel bombed oil processing plants near Tehran. They released toxic smoke which is causing respiratory damage to people in Tehran.
*The Guardian spoke to residents who described having headaches, eye and skin irritation and difficulty breathing. Experts have warned those symptoms could be just the beginning, with long-term risks of cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, DNA damage and cancer.*
This makes two reasons why that bombing is particularly culpable: for grave harm to a substantial fraction of Tehran's population of ten million, and for escalating the war to include attacks on energy infrastructure. Iran threatened to retaliate against the energy infrastructure of the Gulf oil states if Israel (or the US) continues attacking Iran's oil infrastructure.
Argentina is politically divided between those who wish to remember and punish the crimes of the murderous military dictatorship in the 70s and twisted right-wingers who celebrate them.
The main political position of the twisted right-wingers is to promote the usual right-wing positions, allowing the privileged groups to exploit and castigate the disprivileged groups. Just as in the US, the right-wing in Argentina have found that celebrating the dictatorship is a way to appear powerful and win the support of people who want to feel powerful.
The US sanctions arbitrarily placed on UN official Francesca Albanese threaten anyone with US connections who does any sort of business or cooperation with her with punishment, even without a trial.
This includes US academics who investigate the patterns of Israel's war crimes in Palestine, as well as other students and faculty. Some of them support the lawsuit that aims to declare such sanctions unconstitutional.
Democratic candidate Talarico. who is Christian, responds to Hegseth's Christian hatred with Christian love.
I am impressed favorably with Talarico's tolerance, and I am sure he is a better person and better citizen than any Republican candidate. However, while this reflects well on him, it is not evidence that any gods exist.
iMonsters in the UK are now demanding users "prove their age" by identifying themselves.
Age verification has become a universal excuse to demand that all users identify themselves, an injustice to every user of whatever age.
2°C of heating transformed a Rocky Mountain meadow with grass and wildflowers into a dry patch of sagebrush. Global heating isn't just that most places are somewhat hotter. They can become very different.
Activists in Memphis are delivering food and other necessities to immigrant families who don't dare leave the house.
Old weapons dumped on the sea bottom become a home for large amounts of wildlife.
*Four weeks into a war that was going to take four days … Washington is further away from a diplomatic agreement with Iran than it was in May 2025.
Not only has the war failed to persuade Iran to agree to dismantle its nuclear program in the comprehensive and irreversible way the US demanded, Washington is now having to negotiate to reopen the strait of Hormuz.*
The idiotic attack on Iran could doom Ukraine.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate insider trading on prediction markets.
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US citizens: call on Congress to impeach FCC Chair Brendan Carr now
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US citizens: call on Congress to protect whistleblowers from the persecutor's attacks.
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US citizens: call on Congress and the Department of Justice to halt the persecution of nonprofit organizations that criticize injustice.
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US citizens: call on your officials in Congress to protect immigrant children's right to education in public schools.
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*US directs American embassies to wage campaign against foreign "hostility" – with Musk's help.*
If you know anything about his online dis-service, ex-Twitter, and its chatbot, Crock, you understand that this is a campaign to crush the idea of truth. The bullshitter wants a battle between his bullshit and Putin's bullshit and fanatical Muslim bullshit — and whichever one wins, truth loses.
The magats are planning to cancel endangered species protection for various endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico, as a gesture to show that they will let nothing stop them from drilling more fossil fuel wells there.
The current crisis will be long over by the time those new wells are finished, but they are concerned with fooling the public, not with real needs.
Spain has denied its territory and airspace to the US for purposes of war with Iran.
The US would find it hard to make the Strait of Hormuz safe for oil tankers by force. It could perhaps capture Kharg Island, but that would not protect oil tankers, and occupying the island would not make it easy to capture much oil.
Basically, these threats seem to be bluster.
The bully's pattern of bluster followed by pulling back has backfired completely against Iran.
While it gives me a wry pleasure to see him thwarted, seeing Iran's murderous religious fanatics defeat America's murderous religious fanatics in foreign relations is no pleasure. That will lead to great suffering for Iranians, and no alleviation for Americans.
*Five EU governments found to "consistently" dismantle rule of law.*
They are Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia.
New pun: "Ifs, ands or buts"
After my cataract operations, they gave me a strict rule, "no ifs, ands or buts." But I used those words anyway, and I got conjunctivitis.
*Europe has made "staggering progress" in producing clean power but neglected efforts to phase out fuel-burning machines, the head of an electrification industry group said.*
(satire) *Chick-Fil-A Announces Two Halves Of Buns Must Be Married Before Becoming Sandwich.*
The bully has paid a billion dollars of US funds to persuade TotalEnergies to drop two offshore wind power projects near the US East Coast.
He will go to any length to keep the US and the world dangerously dependent on the fossil fuel that threatens to destroy civilization.
I once speculated, facetiously, that this is a secret plan by hidden conquerors from another planet who are trying to make Earth hot enough for them to live on.
Mines usually put toxic wastes, known as "tailings", behind a dam. Global heating's torrential rains are breaking these dams and allowing the toxic wastes to reach rivers, lakes and farm fields, where they kill almost everything.
Banning minors from using antisocial networks isn't enough. We seniors need to be banned too, for our own protection, lest we fall prey to romance fraud or companionship fraud.
The whole US Senate wants to resume funding for the TSA. Republicans demand to restore funding for the whole Department of Hatred and Sadism in order to fund the TSA. Democrats won't fund the deportation thugs without explicitly requiring them to respect the human rights they have been trampling. They plan to propose a bill to fund the TSA alone.
If Republicans reject that, it will demonstrate that they are making air passengers suffer inconvenience as a ploy to continue making immigrants, and some US citizens among them, suffer terribly.
The wrecker threatened to attack Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export terminal.
Iran has already threatened to respond by attacking Persian Gulf countries' oil export terminals. This could lead to an oil crisis that would last for years.
I wonder whether the wrecker aims to bully them with the threat of such a crisis. That is a typical pattern of his. However, I can't envision what concession he might hope to get from them in this instance. I wonder whether anyone else has an idea.
If the goal is to reduce Iran's oil exports, the rational way to do that is by seizing tankers once they exit the Persian Gulf (or stopping empty tankers from entering it and heading for Kharg Island). They would have no way to resist, so it could be done without actual violence. The US could seize and sell the oil, too. With a wiser leader than the wrecker, it could offer to return the ships, and pay Iran for the oil, when peace is agreed.
But I don't think the wrecker would see such an outcome as a sufficient triumph.
*Israel deliberately targeting medical facilities in south Lebanon, say health workers.
Medics and officials say there is systematic use of double-tap strikes in campaign to make the south uninhabitable.*
Nixon sabotaged Johnson's peace negotiations to end the Vietnam War, so as to deny Johnson a success that could have enabled Hubert Humphry to win the 1968 presidential election.
The FBI can track most Americans using the personal data data bases that it regularly buys.
"OpenAI", which we could call "OpenSPY", buys it too. Its contract with the US government supposedly impedes snooping on Americans, but the wording is weak and may not do any good.
The collection of these data bases is a threat to the freedom of Americans generally, not merely to a few of them.
The bully is talking about stationing deportation thugs in airports to substitute for TSA agents watching exits from the secure area (to ensure no one enters through them).
If that's all they do, I suppose it is safer to have them there doing that, than to have them walking around your town, jailing unauthorized immigrants, authorized visitors, authorized permanent residents, and sometimes US citizens too. And shooting protesters.
But I have to wonder: if they are willing to stretch the law, can't they find excuses to harass people and jail people while nominally watching an airport security exit? I'd expect the bully has been looking for ways they can harass people while working there.
*Freshwater fish populations worldwide have crashed by about 81% since 1970.*
(satire) *[The bully] Threatens Airstrikes On U.S. Gas Stations.*
*Australia approves new coal seam gas expansion.* Is that really "Like lighting a cigarette while trying to quit"?
In my view, that comparison is not quite valid. Rather, extending the gas mines is like taping extender segments onto the mouth end of the cigarette, so that it never burns out.
*Let's forget the term AI. Let's call them Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences (SALAMI).*
*Iran says it will "irreversibly destroy" Middle East infrastructure if US attacks energy sites.*
It is a war crime for either side to destroy civilian energy infrastructure, and this would be a disastrous one. But the bigger evil would be that of whichever country starts doing this. The wrecker says he plans to do so.
*Israeli settlers have carried out a series of attacks across the occupied West Bank, setting homes and vehicles on fire and wounding several Palestinians in what witnesses described as coordinated raids on communities.*
The fanatical and violent "settlers" have been carrying out terrorist attacks on Palestinians for more than a decade, with police and border patrol watching passively, escalating step by step as they shift the government's stance.
*How ignorance, misunderstanding and obfuscation ended [US-] Iran nuclear talks.*
They had made substantial progress before they were abruptly ended when the US and Israel started to attack instead.
*Oman claims Israel pushed US into Iran war when deal [with Iran] was possible.*
The WATCA bill, which is one way of taxing the rich more, will provide only a small benefit for non-rich Americans. That's because its main method of helping them is by reducing their income tax, and poor people's income tax is already low.
In and of itself, WATCA is better than nothing, but we should focus on supporting other bills that would tax the rich more than that in order to help the non-rich more than that.
The imperialist says Israel attacked Iran's gas wells without telling him, and he has ordered Israel not to attack them again.
Whether or not he is telling the truth about what happened, it is at least somewhat of a relief that he seems to realize how much any further such attacks would backfire.
Owen Jones: *[the Bully] thinks brute force will arrest the US's decline. His heavy-handed actions in Iran are only accelerating it.*
The closure of the Gulf of Hormuz is sending enormous windfall profits to a few rich people. There should be a windfall profits tax in place all the time for the sake of future fossil fuel price spikes, so that governments won't need to act fast.
* In interviews with dozens of parents deported to Honduras, as well as physicians and psychologists, government officials and staff at reception centers for deportees, researchers found that many parents were deported quickly after they were [jailed], without a chance to arrange for the care of their children.*
We understand the cause of this: deportation thugs are acting out hatred towards immigrants in general, and are eager for the chance to be cruel.
Christian Zionists want to help Israel conquer much of the Middle East, believing that then sacrifices will trigger biblical prophecies which will result in forcing Jews to convert to Christianity or else be damned.
It is not easy to get along with fanatics like that. It is unlikely that the prophecies would actually come true, but there is no telling what might they do if the situation arises and the prophecies do not come true.
A new upgrade of Amazon Alexa will be better able to understand speech uttered in a relaxed, usual manner. The better to snoop on you with, my dear.
US courts are generally rejecting attempts to equate criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians' rights with antisemitism.
New York City cops have pressed charges against some of the participants in a snowball fight which they entered, apparently as an excuse to find fault with Mayor Mamdani.
Bondi treated Congress with contempt by refusing to take an oath for her testimony.
At least she showed a minuscule level of respect for the oath to tell the truth — by refusing to take the oath and then lie anyway. That is a start, at least. Perhaps in the future she can be convinced to show truthfulness a little more respect, and then a little more, and so on.
* World Happiness Report finds platforms focused on connection less harmful than algorithm-driven apps.* For example, Instagram was more damaging to mental health than WhatsApp.
Both of the client programs are nonfree software, thus damaging to users' freedom.
The deportation thugs are once again working unpredictable cruelty. A Canadian who married an American, and her daughter, are in a deportation prison, being pressured to "self-deport". The thugs have given no explanation for jailing them despite their valid visas.
*A judge ordered the Pentagon to cease its new political censorship policy for press coverage.*
The wrecker has granted the biggest US banks a step towards weaker regulation. Banks can cause a disastrous crash if they are not careful in how much and how readily they lend. That's what caused the 2008 financial crisis.
In Europe, the result was disaster for countries that needed deficit spending to get out of the recession but were banned by the Euro zone rules from doing that: Spain, Italy and especially Greece. But the crisis was profitable for the biggest banks, since governments were compelled to bail them out rather than allow them to actually fail.
Naturally, the biggest banks wanted to be allowed to do this again. And naturally the wrecker gave it to them.
In the name of "security", Russia is shutting off mobile phone networks, but in an unpredictable way which causes trouble for many activities, some of which Putin has no evident motive to shut down.
Ironically, it means people have to live the way I choose to live. It is a little inconvenient and much less vulnerable to surveillance.
Finally, there is a survivor from one of the boats that the US military attacked and sunk.
Maybe the survivor will testify about what the people on the boat were doing.
A woman in Georgia has been arrested for "murder" for taking abortion pills.
Burning "smokeless" fuels at home produces produce less particulate pollution of the usual size, but instead produces lots of ultrafine particles.
The usual particulate pollution damages people's health. Does the small particulate pollution do likewise?
*Why We Have to Fight Back Against [deportation] Protesters' Terror Convictions.*
According to the V-Dem Institute, democracy is in rapid decline globally, and the US is leading the decline.
World-wide, only 18 countries are observed to be democratizing. The article does not give a comparable count of countries that are autocratizing, but they are 40% of the world's population.
Temperatures in California, Nevada and Arizona are 22-25 °F above normal. Temperatures are about to reach as much as 108°F. The heat will put some people's health in danger, and it's only the very beginning of spring.
If part of July is 22-25 °F above normal, that will kill thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands. This is global heating.
I expect to have a trip to Europe in May - June. The start and end dates remain to be decided.
If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me now so we can start discussing it. Write to `-invitation' following my three-letter username.
The board of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, newly altered by the saboteur in chief, voted to close down for two years of "renovations".
I can imagine what the building will look like after that remodeling: every 20 feet along any wall there will be a molding depicting his face. It will be necessary to spend more money to undo that.
How Oakland, California, greatly reduced homicides.
California law shut down a leaky, polluting pipeline under the Pacific Ocean from Santa Barbara, after it spilled a lot of oil on a beach. so the oil spiller in chief gave the pipeline's owner, as a favor, an "emergency order" to restart it immediately.
California and the federal government continue legal action over whether the pipeline will be allowed to operate. What is clear is that having one more oil pipeline operating is not overall a benefit for the world.
Democratic candidates that are backed by AIPAC are now reluctant to admit that.
Google has deactivated an online dis-service that until recently offered medical advice based on applying Pretend Intelligence to what users with no medical training said.
This may have been the wise course, since Pretend Intelligence does not actually understand the text it inputs or outputs.
In the mainstream press, even criticism of streaming platforms takes for granted that they are entitled to the power to control what you can do with a recording, and thus reinforces that assumption. Here's an example.
Once you recognize that that power is based on Digital Restrictions Management, which means using nonfree software to control what users can and can't do, you can resist that implicit argument in favor of subjugating you.
Many infants start practicing deception before they can talk, at an age of less than one year.
Eight protesters in Texas, allegedly supporting of the alleged organization "Antifa", were convicted of "material support for terrorism". In their trial, prosecutors cited the fact that some of them wore black clothing, used Signal, and/or carried guns.
Right-wingers also carry guns at protest, and use Signal, but somehow do not get prosecuted for that.
Scientists claim that Covid deaths in the US in 2020 and 2021 were around 18% more than the ones counted as such, and also which demographics they mostly belonged to.
The US Department of Health quietly ignored the administration of Title X, which provides birth control and sex-specific medical treatment for females, and the system may soon collapse.
I have a suspicion that this mysterious failure was engineered by right-wing extremist Christians who seek to force females to have babies.
The wrecker's new nominee to head the Department of Hatred and Sadism has a pattern of speaking so as to give the false impression that he has military experience.
This deception marks him as untrustworthy, but if he were honest about his lack of military experience, that might not be crucial. The DHS does not manage soldiers, after all.
I expect that anyone nominated by the wrecker would regard it as per mission to be cruel and sadistic, and thus should not be confirmed, but that is a separate issue.
Tesla "cybertrucks" have locked passengers inside and burned so hot they've disintegrated drivers' bones.
States should designate vehicles which can lock passengers in as unsafe and illegal to drive on a road.
Just 8 years after the EU banned neonicotinoid pesticides, the populations of insect-eating birds are starting to recover.
Because these pesticides are persistent, full recovery will take a long time. I hope other human-caused effects, such as global heating, will not swamp it.
The British right-wing extremist "Reform" Party is trying to bribe voters by entering them in a lottery, where winning may depend on which party you voted for, and stating which one you will vote for next time.
Zelenskyy offers Europe Ukraine's help in countering drone attacks, whether from Russia, from Iran, or from criminal gangs.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate energy market manipulation.
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US citizens: call on Congress to investigate FCC Chairman Carr's threats to silence news media that report on the Iran war without slanting it to favor the war-starter.
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US citizens: call on your federal legislators to stop the bully's attack on child care and families.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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On March 28, or a date close to that, join one of the No Kings protests.
A drug that is used to slow Alzheimer's disease occasionally kills patients. This article reports on an alleged conspiracy to get the drug wrongfully approved, and threats against someone who wrote about deaths that it caused.
Corruption of the medical system by Big Pharma is rife, and it does a lot of harm. Threats of violence against journalists are part of the evil of fascism.
But this drug raises an deeper question. Can a treatment for Alzheimer's disease be beneficial for patients, and thus morally deserve approval, despite killing a small fraction of the patients who take it?
Alzheimer's disease turns its victims slowly into zombies. Although the patient's body continues to live, the person who became a zombie is dead. This begs the question, if a certain drug gives a large fraction of patients several more years of non-zombie life, but kills a small fraction of them, does that make it a failure? If on the average it extends patients' non-zombie life, does that make it a bet worth making, one that drug regulations should allow people to make?
This question is important to me personally because I can envision being in that situation in a few years.
One of Britain's undercover infiltrator cops seems to have fabricated an accusation that an animal rights activist wanted to get a gun and attack someone with it. Fortunately, his handlers distrusted the accusation.
I speculate that a cop whose job includes lying as part of false friendship will tend to normalize lying to anyone else.
A facial recognition system falsely identified a suspect as Angela Lipps, and she was jailed for 6 months; then, when she was brought to a courtroom in another state, the court noticed that the criminal could not be her. Meanwhile, she had lost her home and her car.
False identifications will always occur. Although this one used digital face matching, recognition by human witnesses makes mistakes too. But I think that the main mistake here was to wait 6 months before noticing her alibi and without granting her bail.
The Israeli army has dropped charges against soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner.
The grounds given for dropping the charges are that (1) the prisoner had been released to Gaza and (2) *the conduct of senior officials had affected the chance of holding a fair trial.* To me, this says that (1) they are exaggerating to create an excuse and (2) high officials created an excuse and have suffered no punishment for it.
*Top US regulators met with Bill Anderson, Bayer's CEO, last year to discuss "litigation" issues – including "supreme court action" over its glyphosate weed killer – just months before henchmen administration took a series of steps to boost Bayer's case at the high court, internal government records show.*
This sounds like a betrayal of the US — analogous to treason except that it occurred in a civil dispute rather than in a war.
Local cops of some US towns regularly search license plate cameras to help the deportation thugs to track immigrants.
More about this.
*Israel's Deadly Blockade Traps 7 U.S. Doctors in Gaza.*
In a class-action lawsuit against the deportation thugs, some of them testified about their arrest quotas, and the digital tools whose vague output often leads them to arrest people who are present in the US lawfully.
Violent practices, such as breaking car windows with only a hint of an excuse, seem to be systematic. They figure they will nearly always get away with it, and for typical victims (whether unauthorized immigrants or authorized immigrants or citizens), the expense of repair will create hardship. Releasing a person hundreds of miles away from home can make it very difficult to get home.
The officials in charge of deportation agencies have the duty to stop these practices, but it is clear that they are not really trying.
*[Various different magat] policies set to increase rates of lung disease and death, study finds.*
Breonna Taylor was shot dead by a thugs who had burst into her home without warning, and then fired wildly. Americans demanded and got policies to limit no-knock warrants. But now magats are canceling the limits.
Why do this? I don't think it will make any legitimate activities of cops significantly more effective.
I speculate that magats expect that killing people that they can demonize (for instance, blacks) will win them increased support from their base.
George Monbiot: *Rightwing politicians, Tufton Street junktanks and the billionaire press tell us our energy security will be enhanced and our bills will fall if we abandon net zero policies, ditch renewables and reinvest in North Sea gas. These claims are not just a little bit wrong. They are the exact opposite of the truth.*
*Wearing All Black at Protests Makes You Guilty of Terrorism, Prosecutors Tell Jury.*
More precisely, they claimed that wearing all black is a sign of support for the nonexistent US organization, "Antifa".
The Spycops inquiry in the UK found that undercover London thugs snooped on the relatives of Jean Charles de Menezes, because they had denounced thugs' murder of him.
It is impossible not to suspect that they did this because they wanted to prevent his relatives from making the thug department look bad by teaching people about the killing by exposing its cover-up.
A henchman threatens to shut down broadcasters for saying things that the bullshitter chooses to call "hoaxes".
This is a threat of arbitrary censorship, and I'm sure the TV news broadcasters understand it as such. Many have already bent the knee to the bullshitter; they have nothing to worry about. But the rest will now face another kind of threat.
Age-checking in Australia is pushing adult internauts away from the sites that are banned for minors, because they fear the tracking that is a side effect of the age-checking systems.
A study observed bullshit generators encouraging delusions in some patients.
*"They [the US and Israel] are also lying! Like the regime has been lying to us," said Amir, a student at the University of Tehran. "You are all worse than each other."*
It appears to Iranians that Israel and the US are attacking infrastructure rather that the regime's SS-equivalent, trying to weaken Iran for the long term rather than free Iran.
It doesn't surprise me that they were only trying to use the Iranians who have opposed the Iranian tyranny. Neither Netanyahu nor the bullshitter cares about human rights, democracy, or well being, not those of ordinary people in any country, and neither one hesitates to lie.
Even so, with even a lick of sense they would have tried carefully to protect those Iranians and keep them on side. It would not have cost much.
Paul Krugman: *The ultrawealthy put [the wrecker] in power but other people will pay the price.*
Ralph Nader: Seventeen Impeachable Offenses by Trump and Counting. He urges Americans to send this list to their congresscritters and senators.
*ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, According to a New MIT Study.*
Any kind of skill fades if a person stops practicing it.
Richard Stallman will speak on March 26 in Cesena, Italy, at the Engineering and Architecture Campus of Cesena of the University of Bologna. Pillars of Tech Free/Libero Software And Freedom in the Digital Society The talk is in English from 15:30 to 17:30 in Aula Magna (Room 4.3), Via dell'Università 50, Cesena. We suggest you bring cash.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to support an Emergency War Powers Resolution to block the deployment of U.S. ground troops in Iran — and vote NO on any bill for conscription.
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US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to refuse to fund the bully's illegal war.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on Congress to block the bully's machine-learning-powered warrantless surveillance of Americans.
We must support this by blocking the collection of data about us. We can do so by refusing to give our names, addresses or other personal data when we pay for products or transportation.
At 73 years of age, with arthritis in the knees, I have multiple justifications for getting a discount card for the Boston buses and subways. I reject it because that card would identify me whenever I use it to travel. We must not surrender to massive surveillance for the sake of convenience!
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on your members of Congress to investigate the corrupter's $1.4 billion profit from the presidency.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: submit an official comment to reject the corrupter's attacks on diversity, immigrants, and nonprofits.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Congress to censure Republicans who called for violence against American Muslims, and for taking away their committee seats.
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US citizens: call on your senators to support the Equal Tax Act.
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US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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US citizens: call on your state education leaders to protect Students from federal retaliation for protesting deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call your members of Congress to stop the war-lover from sending American troops into Iran – And Vote NO on the Draft!
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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US citizens: call on your members of Congress to block the $10 billion scam to fund the corrupter's Orwellian Board of Peace.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
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(satire) [The nincompoop] *Defends Addition Of Ballroom To Air Force One.*
An interesting analysis of differences between generations. For instances, the differences in attitudes nowadays are much less than in the past, but marketing makes them look bigger than they are.
It is unfortunate for me that hitchhiking has ceased. There are times when I have no way to get anywhere except to beg, such as when the bus over the Golden Gate Bridge rejected me as a passenger because I had the luggage that I had taken on a flight.
I don't feel danger in getting into a stranger's car; by contrast, the potential danger in a proprietary surveillance system (for example, Guber) is intolerable. The probability that the driver would do wrong to me is minuscule, but the probability that the proprietary surveillance system would do wrong to many passengers is quite large.
Thatcher said that the "New Labour" of Tony B'liar was her greatest achievement — shifting the Labour Party to put business and rich people first. A Labour MP describes the major changes needed to restore democracy and give priority and political power to the people.
White South Africans have spread a myth that ending apartheid led to a reversed system of racism against them, that blacks hated and persecuted whites much as white racists in power had formerly hated and persecuted blacks. Right-wing extremists have propagated this falsehood to justify the cause of continuing or bringing back racism.
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 their information important — and I present this comment about them.
Germany's current government is right-wing, and competing not to let the extreme right-wing outdo it in wrongdoing. It intervened in the prize for best independent bookstore by arbitrarily excluding some candidate bookstores. It refused to give any explanation, but it may be because they are antifascist.
*In richest areas of London, black people up to 48 times more likely to be stopped and searched [than other people].*
It is hard to be sure why cops' behavior is prejudiced in this way, but the tendency to search people because of perceiving them as making "furtive glances" suggests that unconscious racism is at work. Suspecting someone because of a vague impression is exactly the sort of thing that gives unconscious prejudice an opportunity to influence the decision.
*Fears for women's rights in Chile as anti-abortion president set to take office.*
The new president is literally a fascist — a supporter of the coup-leader Pinochet, who in power was a murderous dictator.
I wonder how he managed to win the election. Was it stolen?
The values of right-wing politics, based on dominating other people, have led to pressure on men to make their faces meet an imposed idea of what looks powerful.
The wellness-influencer axis plays a part as well.
North Korean agents are getting hired for remote work under fake identities by using Pretend Intelligence to disguise their appearance and voice.
Adam Smith never held the "free" market ideology that its supporters claim he held. He endorsed many of the progressive causes we stand for, such as making the rich pay more taxes.
Public opposition has made RFK jr quietly drop the idea of terminating the recommendation for Covid-19 vaccination.
He will continue undermining US public health as long as he is in a position to do so. But it is not only him. Many of the saboteur in chief's appointed henchmen seem to have been chosen for their inclination to cause chaos; he seems to think that their chaos will open the door for him to destroy more of the institutions that protect the Constitution, human rights, and democracy.
One of the corrupter's favorite methods of fomenting corruption that can bring him extra income is by firing the inspectors general of various agencies.
The exploitative career of "influencer" is based on deluding suckers into spending money on artificially enhanced alluring dreams.
Knowing this, you can easily refuse to contribute any of your own attention to their "attention economy."
Bukele has eliminated El Salvador's gang violence, and El Salvador's democracy with it, replacing it with arbitrary imprisonment and torture.
Researchers doing badly designed studies on vaccine effects in Guinea-Bissau are connected with some of RFK Jr's vaccination sabotage team, and some fear that they will try to impose policy based on badly designed studies in the US too.
Australia has arrested and charged protesters for saying the words, "From the river to the sea." One was arrested for giving an explanation of what the phrase refers to and history of its use.
*The failure to limit global heating to 1.5C is a "moral failure and deadly negligence," the UN secretary general [said] at the opening session of the COP30 climate summit.*
Alas, COP30 proceeded to (in effect) abandon that goal, which many countries had abandoned already in the preceding year.
The causes of that abandonment are not visible, but I suspect the impetus comes from billionaires who are sucking up to governments that are more or less fascist and in cahoots with the fossil fuel companies.
One of them is Bill Gates, who has called for offering palliative care to the billions of poor who will be wiped over coming decades by accelerating global heating.
By the way, I do not endorse the straw man claim that global heating could literally render humanity extinct. Humans, even without science and the technology it led to, were very flexible about surviving in a wide range of environments. But the number who could survive would be far less than today.
A county in Florida has replaced some bus routes with an ULU system (Unjust Like Uber) that requires an individual user to make a request via a snoop-phone.
*MP [Charlotte Nichols] tells Commons she waited 1,088 days for her rape case to reach court.
[Nonetheless,] Charlotte Nichols opposes plan to cut jury trials in England and Wales and calls [instead] for creation of special courts to hear rape cases.*
I basically agree with her: prosecuting crime is vital and so is the right to a trial by jury. There is no fundamental conflict between them — all that's needed is to tax the rich enough to pay for these and the other things that even non-rich people deserve.
*Democrats urge windfall tax as big oil set to make billions from Iran war.*
President Bukele's repression forced the news site El Faro and its journalists to flee El Salvador.
*Most of the 4.9 million children who died in 2024 could have been saved, according to a new UN report.
The corrupter is following the usual fascist playbook for clamping down on the free press and converting it into a propaganda engine.
The wrecker said he will refuse to sign any bills until Congress passes a bill to disenfranchise millions of American citizens. This seems to imply that he will veto every bill — but it does not in fact imply that.
The president can allow a law to pass by waiting ten days (not counting Sundays) without either signing or vetoing the bill. He hasn't said whether he will do that. He might go for the greatest possible sabotage by vetoing every bill passed — but he also might not.
Of course, he is not at all honest and doesn't hesitate to contradict whatever he said he would do, so maybe it makes no difference what he said.
Political prediction betting has led to threats against a journalist demanding he retract an article, supposedly coming from a bettor who stood to lose millions of dollars because of that article.
Israel attacked an Iranian fossil gas extraction complex, and Iran is now threatening to retaliate against other countries' fossil gas extraction complexes.
Israel's attack was unjust and dangerous, because there was no military basis for it. Iran's threatened response would likewise be unjust and dangerous, for the same reason. However, Iran has not done it yet; if other powers deter Israel from continuing this, Iran may not start.
The US/Israeli attempt to make Iran's government collapse by killing high officials appears to have failed — it is organized to survive assassinations.
Iran's regime has committed enormous violence against the opposed public, violence at a level that magats might dream of but have not yet fallen to.
Optimizing systems for efficiency when running at maximum capacity means aiming for minimum slack. It is a mistake for an individual, but an even more devastating mistake when a country does it.
Almost half of the Britons age 16 to 24 who are neither working nor studying say the reason is due to a medical problem.
I think it is alarming that life-hampering diseases are increasing in frequency.
Some countries' successful interventions to reduce childhood obesity.
Some of them cost money. Governments must bite the bullet and take a bite out of the billionaires' assets.
Deportation thugs arrested authorized permanent resident Juanita Avila without looking at her green card, but her daughter recorded the arrest and that shamed them into releasing Avila with merely some gratuitous physical injury.
Then Avila and others sued, and a federal court in Oregon ruled that deportation thugs cannot arrest anyone without a specific warrant unless they present a written justification that satisfies strict legal standards for arrest without a warrant.
*CBS News heavily edits 60 Minutes interview [with the corrupter], cutting boast network "paid me a lotta money".*
A year ago, he sued CBS for editing an interview with candidate Kamala Harris in a way he did not like. It paid him millions to settle that lawsuit, and he explicitly presented that as a success in humiliating CBS. And suggested that CBS not broadcast that remark, and other humiliations, but he knew they would be reported.
Was it wrong for CBS to edit out the bully's boast about having made CBS bend the knee to him? Is it better for freedom and democracy to make a company look bad for having let us all down, or would that be likely to help him bully other companies into subservience? I don't know, but I would not trust news from companies that have given fealty to a would-be king.
*The appointment of a controversial slate of [antivax] vaccine advisers by Robert F Kennedy Jr likely violated federal law, and all votes taken by the committee over the past year have been stayed, a federal judge ruled on Monday.*
In particular, their vote to remove many vaccines from the US childhood schedule has been rendered inactive — for now. But if a higher court reverses this court decision, that will reactivate the vote.
*These "advisers" "missed 99% of data" on Covid vaccines before making recommendation, memos reveal.*
Interviews with civilians in Tehran who aren't sure which side of the war they need to fear more.
Masood Masjoody, an Iranian dissident in exile in Canada, disappeared and it looks like the regime had him murdered.
Calling for investigation of bets about the attack on Iran, because of suspicions the bettors had inside information, and the implications if they did.
Iran has plenty of supporters for its new supreme leader, just as it has plenty of protesters who hate him.
He is reported to hate the protesters and plans to ramp up the repression in Iran.
The wrecker threatens to go on strike by refusing to sign any bills that Congress might pass, unless/until it passes the voter-suppressing Subjugate America Act.
If he does go on strike, that would protect American from many bad bills that Republicans want to pass, bills which would attack our freedoms, crush the poor, or subject us to diseases.
Alas, we can't expect him to keep his word. He might at any moment break his own strike by signing some particularly vicious bill.
A famous and celebrated Australian defender of human rights has condemned the government's endorsement of the US and Israeli attack on Iran.
*"They [the US and Israel] are also lying! Like the regime has been lying to us," said Amir, a student at the University of Tehran. "You are all worse than each other."*
It appears to Iranians that Israel and the US are attacking infrastructure rather that the regime's SS-equivalent, trying to weaken Iran for the long term rather than free Iran.
It doesn't surprise me that they were only trying to use the Iranians who have opposed the Iranian tyranny. Neither Netanyahu nor the bullshitter cares about human rights, democracy, or well being, not those of ordinary people in any country, and neither one hesitates to lie.
Even so, with even a lick of sense they would have tried carefully to protect those Iranians and keep them on our side. It would not have cost much.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to release their investigation into the causes of their defeat in the 2024 election.
*Mexico's cartel violence fueled by trafficked firearms from US.*
It's no surprise that American right-wing extremists turn this on its head by claiming that guns come into the US from Mexico.
Antivax rhetoric boosted by the US government is spreading measles around the world. It is truly sickening.
Iran has once again shut down communication with other countries for nearly everyone.
Another proposed bill to tax billionaires' wealth has been introduced by Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna.
It doesn't have enough support now to pass, but it will focus public pressure on politicians.
UK university halted human rights research after pressure from China.
It is crucial to limit the influence on your country's institutions of individuals, groups, companies and institutions in a repressive foreign country.
How Abraham Lincoln argued against giving the president the unilateral and unchecked power to counterinvade.
The wrecker's henchmen eliminated most of the funds that help keep the global internet visible inside countries that try to block access to foreign news and discussion. These funds reduced the effectiveness of Putin's imaginary world propaganda.
US DoJ drops legal case against law firms that stood up in court against the bully's arbitrary demands for subservience by these big law firms.
Case involved henchmen's orders targeting major law firms for representing clients or causes the president wanted to blow away.
Texas has increased the tax on the poor represented by the system of cash bail.
Nominally, bail is money handed over by or on behalf of the defendant, to be returned if the defendant does appear for trial. This would appear to be fair (except when the defendant can't come up with that much money and is kept in jail during months or years of waiting).
But the way the system usually really works is that the defendant gets the money from a "bail bonds" company for a nonrefundable fee of around 10% of the sum. The company will later get its money back from the court, but the defendant pays, in effect, a tax for being charged.
(satire) Kim Jong Un Can't Believe Daughter Already Executing Boys.
In the "homogenocene" epoch, human effects mess up specialized niches and drive their specialized species extinct, and they are replaced by generalist species such as pigeons and rats.
I think it is a mistake to extend this to the disappearance of coral, since that is due to a systematic trend human-caused that damages coral.
An indirect method of measuring sea levels at points around the world has been found to be inaccurate. Remeasuring with better methods will give a more accurate picture of soon any particular piece of coastal land is likely to be inundated.
The rate of sea level rise is mostly under human control. The question is which humans will prevail: the inhabitants of coastal regions, or the planet roasters.
(satire) *[Deportation] Agent Injured After Repeatedly Trying To Detain People In Neighborhood Mural.*
The lunatic is using Pretend Intelligence to plan wars. This is a risky thing to do.
Please don't refer to PI as "Artificial Intelligence". If you train yourself to take for granted that it really is intelligence, you'll come to learn to expect it to be far more intelligent than it really is.
It is clear that computing companies' rules can't effectively bind a powerful government.
The deportation thugs tricked Oregon cops into helping them by hiding their raid for deportation behind a raid by other federal agencies for alleged growing or marijuana.
Just goes to show you can never trust what a federal agency tells you when the bullshitter has anything to do with it.
(satire) *NBA Reaffirms Commitment To Gamblers Only Ruining Their Lives Legally.*
Kash Patel Halted Probe Into [the killing of] Renee Good [for PR purposes: so she would not be described as "victim"].
Robert Reich: The unlimited use of military and monetary power is attacking the moral basis of civilization.
*Kristi Noem's [firing] from the DHS won't mean an end to agency's violent tactics.*
Some details might change, as the new head of Hatred and Sadism may have a different set of fetishes and cunning ideas. But the overall mission from the hater won't change much.
Henchman Hegseth ordered "no quarter" at war, which means to execute any enemy soldiers that surrender. Doing that would be a war crime: killing prisoners.
In the US: call on the media to call the war with Iran a "war".
*Why would the bully launch a foreign war when he is so domestically weak? Precisely because he is weak.* The article presents the war as a distraction from how weak he is, and from his plans to rig the election in November.
*[Pretend Intelligence]-generated Iran images are widespread. How do we know what to believe?*
I think the advice in that article is wise.
*Israel did not have a realistic plan for regime change when it attacked Iran, multiple Israeli security sources have said, with expectations that airstrikes could lead to a popular uprising having been driven by "wishful thinking" rather than hard intelligence.*
*Dismay as ancient heritage sites across Iran damaged in US-Israel bombing*
The most serious confirmed damage to date has been to Tehran’s Golestan Palace, dating back to the 14th century, and the 17th-century Chehel Sotoon Palace in Isfahan.Why aim a missile that close to a unique ancient treasure? Whatever legitimate target was near either of those palaces, it could not have been so militarily important as to justify the risk of damage to them, nor the risk of alienating Iranians.Judging from videos and public statements, neither historic building was hit by a missile directly but the shock wave from nearby blasts and possibly some missile debris shattered glass and brought down tiles and masonry.*
Robert Reich: *The best way for us to respond to the devastation of this war … is to strengthen the mechanisms that should never have allowed it to occur in the first place.*
Dubai is especially repressive about posting photos or videos of anything related to the war, and even commenting on such postings. Foreigners are shocked when they face many years in prison for that.
Iran's rulers believe that they can hold out despite US attacks, and are unwilling to agree to any concessions.
The article reports an expert as saying that Israel bombed Iran's infrastructure, with that the people now see this war as an attack against their country rather than as an attempt to liberate them from religious tyranny.
I speculated a few days ago that Iranians would be torn between these two perspectives.
Predicting this result, *Iranians living in UK tell Starmer that war will only strengthen Tehran regime.*
Thus, it seems that Netanyahu and the wrecker were carried away by foolish overconfidence and defeated themselves: they turned a potential ally, the Iranian people, against them.
Available evidence shows that the Minab school was attacked by the US, as part of an attack on the Iranian military buildings right nearby.
I think this convincing proof that US fired at a missile at that school, not intentionally, but through assuming erroneously that it was a military structure.
The US military had pictures that should have indicated the building was a school, so it had the responsibility to recognize this and spare the school. I think that makes the attack a culpable error, but that is not as bad as an intentional atrocity.
The gnome has been fired as head of the Department of Hatred and Sadism. *She committed the cardinal sin of making [the bully] look stupid.*
The US and Israel are using in Iran the terrorist tactic of dropping a second bomb just when medics have had time to attend victims of the first bomb.
Arguing that the bully and Netanyahu have misunderstood Iran's governmental system and Iranian people's attitudes.
The writer suggests they are not likely to collapse. If Iran does at last fall apart, it won't be the way they expect.
I have a hunch that any non-Persian group in Iran that allies itself with the US will arouse hostility among Persians.
The wrecker's bombings have made Iran unstable, but he and his henchmen have no clear idea of how this will end, or even how they wish it will. At some point he will say, "It's over, we won."
But it may not be "over" in any meaningful sense. The repressive Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian people, the Gulf states and Israel have conflicting ideas of how they want Iran to end up, and they may fight over this for months or decades.
The US is encouraging Kurdish and Balochi separatists outside Iran's borders to enter Iran and destabilize the border areas.
Perhaps the US commanders see this as a way to make the situation even more tactically complex for Iran's military. But it could also give the Revolutionary Guards a way to rally the support of Iranians whose sense of nationalism takes offense at the possibility of "dismembering" Iran.
To come out of this crises with peace and respect for freedom calls for someone with the understanding of statemanship together with the political strength to win people over to an outcome. I don't see who that could be, or what the outcome might be.
*[The bully and his henchmen have] still not settled on reasons for going to war with Iran.*
The wrecker and Iran have different escalation paths available, and both include making the war broader and harder to halt.
US citizens: call on US media to take seriously the threates by the saboteur in chief and his henchmen to sabotage the 2026 congressional election.
Everyone: call on news organizations to cover the SAVE Act clearly and directly as a voter suppression measure — examining who would be blocked from voting, how implementation would work, and why these requirements are being advanced now.
Britain's right-wing extremist politician, Farage, bizarrely says that Iran is a bigger threat to the UK than Putin.
This seems bizarre and irrational, but it is understandable seeing that that's what the corrupter thinks of the question. Farage is simply acting as a repeater for him.
The influential spokespeople of the British political class are pushing for joining the wrecker's war with Iran, giving absurd reasons that the people are solidly rejecting.
Why, I ask, are people with those views the ones highlighted in the media?
The British major media are mostly right-wing, often viciously so. I conjecture that the media's owners, and those of big advertisers, want to keep business in charge, and they have decided that if Britain swears fealty to the wrecker, he will reward those owners. What happens to the rest of Britain counts for little with them.
*Bombing of Iran's oil infrastructure to have major environmental fallout, experts warn.*
*[The bully's Iran war will reinforce North Korea's view that nuclear weapons are the only path to security.*
How section 702 of the PAT RIOT act allows the US government to collect and search Americans' communications without warrants.
Section 702 will expire soon unless renewed.
Please phone your senators to call on let this section expire, by refusing to extend it.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Fired CDC workers have organized the National Public Health Coalition to advocate for public health, despite the wrecker's damage to the CDC.
*US to offer passport services to citizens in illegal West Bank settlements.* Step the US moves towards legitimizing mass expulsion and annexation.
The German state has fired the head of the Berlin film festival, apparently for refusing to ban criticism of Israel there.
She had opposed calls for the festival itself to take a specific stand, instead saying that artists presenting films there should be free to express their views. Apparently such freedom is now considered "antisemitic".
Germany is abandoning laws designed to decrease future fossil fuel use.
This can only be called a surrender to planet roasters. The US and UK are doing similar things. The inevitable result is disaster.
The Taliban have banned music, and have a campaign to destroy all the musical instruments in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's traditional musical styles are now threatened, as they can only be passed on outside the country.
Islam has had a thread of such fanaticism for a thousand years, at least. Muslim fanatics, the Almohads, took over Morocco in the 12th century, then parts of Spain. The Wikipedia entry does not mention this, but they banned music too.
If you want to listen to the example linked in the article, please don't simply follow the link to Youtube! Use invidio.us or yt-dlp, preferably through a proxy so that it can't be tracked to you.
Later in the article, there is a link for a different kind of music. I warn you, it is on Spotify.
Out, out, damned Spotify!
(satire) *Kash Patel Faces Backlash After Partying With Nancy Guthrie's Captors.*
Deportation thugs falsely claimed to be city cops in order to enter a Columbia University dorm and seize an international student.
Was this an instance of the crime of impersonating an officer? Can they be prosecuted and imprisoned for this?
Performances of Shen Yun are encountering bomb threats emanating from China.
I watched a Shen Yun performance once in Paris with a French friend. The impression it produced on me was curious: it reproached the Chinese government as cruelly repressive (which indeed it is), and spread on such a thick layer of this teaching that I began to find it annoying, despite the fact that I agreed in advance with that reproach.
I told this to my friend, and she had felt the same. "It preaches too much," she said.
I still condemn China's repression and threats — like what the bully is trying to impose in the US — but I have no appetite to see another Shen Yun performance.
Hillary Clinton testified at a congressional committee hearing in which the questions were meant primarily as harassment and distraction.
She had to repeat that she did not know Epstein, and was asked repeatedly about UFOs and about Pizzagate.
Republicans imposed a rule against releasing photos, then Rep. Boebert (Republican) secretly took a photo and released it, violating that rule.
The saboteur in chief is thinking of requiring US banks to check the citizenship of all their clients. This might imply that some non-citizens could no longer have bank accounts, who now are permitted to have them.
Individual US states can deny corporations the power to support political campaigns.
Montana is planning to do this, and soon maybe California too.
*Ancient stepwells brought back to life as India begins to run out of water.*
This is a nice form of historical preservation, but it can't get more than a tiny fraction of the water that's needed for India's rapidly growing population. India (and the world as a whole) need to stop population growth.
*Two women arrested in Uganda for allegedly kissing in public could face life sentence.*
That is one item in a long catalog of unjustified cruel bigotry that is fueled by various religions.
*US ‘bullying’ could scupper carbon levy on shipping, warn experts.*
I can only envision one motive for this: the saboteur in chief is determined to maximize fossil fuel consumption.
Would it be possible for countries to impose a tax on importation of goods based on the computed fuel use for transporting those goods from the place where they were produced? From the ship's actual consumption one can calculate the fuel use per gram of cargo along that trajectory, and make the tax proportional to that. The fuel needed to move the ship over that trajectory without cargo could be "charged" to the actual cargo through some formula.
British cops will start using facial recognition implemented in snoop phones.
Nothing will stop them from using it to identify protesters and then place grave charges against their protests. The efficiency of the system will help them repress many more protesters than before.
Kansas has arbitrarily and abruptly invalidated all trans people's driver's licenses.
Such arbitrary and abrupt invalidation of anyone's credentials is cruel and unjust regardless of the criteria for which licenses to invalidate, but cruel injustice is precisely right-wing extremists' goal: it is performative cruelty, naturally aimed at one of their usual hate targets.
Some of the people targeted are suing.
Twice, the US army used a laser weapon to knock down a supposed "threat from Mexico." Each time, the flying object had not come from Mexico and it was not a threat at all. The second one was a US government drone.
It could just be a series of human incompetence events. But it could also be worse than that. I wonder if they are basing their targeting on pretend intelligence generated by a Pretend Intelligence system.
Israel used to do that when bombing Gaza. They seemed to consider that method a success, but perhaps that is they preferred to kill any Palestinians in Gaza rather than none.
Hannah Spencer, plumber, has just been elected to Parliament for the Green Party. Her victory speech presents a person who would have been a Labour activist, and then a Labour MP, back when Labour was true to its founding ideals and goals.
Starmer Labour has completed the discarding of them, and put the rich firmly in the driver's seat, after expelling or driving away many of its elected officials who still believed in those ideals.
These ideals fit well with a Green Party, since the rule of the billionaires, which Starmer Labour supports, and the global environmental disaster they have decided to impose, is likely to kill of most of the world's population and reduce to serfs most of the survivors.
A Green Party would naturally oppose both aspects of that.
The EPA has cancelled the recently adopted rules requiring chemical companies to prepare for chemical disasters, so as to protect workers, rescuers and people living within miles of the company's plant.
Repeal of EPA's Endangerment Finding Will Have Devastating Impact.
*Palestinian solidarity in the UK is being "silenced, criminalised and sanctioned," with more than 900 examples of repression [recorded] across Britain in the last six years.
People had been targeted with smears, disinformation, harassment, doxing, visa cancellations, financial blacklisting, loss of employment and arrest.*
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the deportation thugs' mass surveillance and use of widespread face recognition.
Iran's government has a planned long-term strategy for winning the war. US officials didn't bother to think about one, assuming that resistance was impossible.
Since the Iranian regime and the US regime are both cruel and repressive, it would be unjust for either of them to control Iran. But there is no evident way for Iran to avoid both of those outcomes.
*Democrats must defund [the fascist's] Imperial war.*
A US mining company has been cutting down endangered native forest in Australia. The Australian government secretly made a deal to allow it to continue this, to placate the wrecker.
*Corruption is no longer envelopes of cash – now it is about who Washington is shielding and who it is sacrificing.*
*The secret Afghan women's book club defying the Taliban to read Orwell [and other important writers].*
The UK requires police to declare whether they are freemasons, because a masonic lodge "is hierarchical, has confidential membership and requires members to support and protect each other."
This policy is necessary because masons in a police department will come across the requirement to support each other against the perpetrators and/or victims of crimes or bad policies.
Australian censorship thugs seized *art posters depicting [the persecutor, the muskrat], Putin and Netanyahu in Nazi uniforms.*
Because Nazi symbols stand for hate, it is now perhaps prohibited to condemn acts and policies embodying hatred by comparing them to Nazis. This would be good for a laugh at the cops' expense, if it weren't seriously dangerous.
*Study finds global increase in hot, dry days ideal for wildfires.*
Over the last 45 years, the frequency of such days has increased from around 20 days per year to around 60 days per year. About 60% of that (36 days per year) are caused by fossil fuel, but some of the rest is caused by other human activities such as deforestation.
As long as we keep driving global heating, we will increase our vulnerability to fire. This is why I reject the idea that today's fires, floods and storms are "natural disasters".
A secondary problem of this increased temperature level is damage to coffee cultivation, in the main coffee-producing countries.
An influential PI company is manipulatively urging officials and voters to worry about being "left behind" if they don't embrace Pretend Intelligence. Therefore they should race to give PI companies tax breaks, waive environmental regulations for them, and teach students to disregard the danger of letting companies get your data and store it in cloudy systems.
A company that does biometric identification (on behalf of LinkedIn) collects 12 kinds of biometrics and consults 6 kinds of government and commercial databases. Then farms out processing of face data to 17 other companies.
Those companies are North America, so in practice they can ignore the EU's "data protection" regulations, and the US government can seize any and all of that data.
This example shows the concrete meaning of dis-services operating in cloudy servers. Don't trust them! I never do.
Of course, I would never ask to be identified on LinkedIn. I do not use LinkedIn at all, because it too is cloudy processing, not to mention the other unjust things it does to its users. But LinkedIn is just one example, and the broad conclusion applies to nearly any business that wants personal data from you.
Metropolitan [British] police using [machine learning] tools supplied by Palantir to flag officer misconduct.
It is legitimate to monitor the conduct of police officers in ways that would not be morally legitimate for workers in general, because police officers have special authority and face the temptation to become thugs. However, giving their personal data to Palantir is not excusable.
Sad to say, use of "bossware" for monitoring of workers with no special authority has become widespread.
The CIA and MI6 saw that Putin was moving to invade Ukraine, months before he did so, but they could not convince either European allies or Ukraine that it would happen. Until it did.
When the UK's privatized water companies were effectively blocked from polluting the seas, they switched to polluting the rivers — massively.
Starmer Labour's ministers say Britain needs "investment stability", but that is a bad outcome when it comes to investment that is a kind of exploitation. That ought to be criminal, not protected.
The UK, like most countries, is unstable against being consumed from the inside out by business. The way to put an end to this instability is to make the owners of water company stock forfeit the entire value of their "investments".
Students in Iran have resumed large protests, condemning the state for killing many thousands of students in January.
No one in the US today has experience in treating severe cases of polio. There haven't been such cases in so long that the doctors who had that experience have got old and died.
As a result, when American children start developing polio thanks to the lunacy of RFK Jr (and his boss, the wrecker), they won't even get the treatment that sick children in the 1950s used to get.
Iran's universities face armed repression and the exclusion of students from campus.
Epstein and his friends were a nexus of sexist influence in academia.
Putin hates Telegram, and is trying to arrange Russian criminal charges against its developer, Pavel Durov.
This leads me to suspect that he is planning a military-style attack against Durov or the people who operate the servers behind Telegram. against Durov or the people who operate the servers behind Telegram.
About the war situation in Ukraine.
Some big US banks have "invested" in planet roasting, and some have not. That means large organizations have a significant choice to make.
The bully's henchmen have purged the last antitrust expert from the "justice department". The bully's criterion for whether to permit any particular merger involving large companies is based on how much those companies have given to him or his fund-raising activities.
US citizens: call on state attorneys general to stop Paramount's mega-media monopoly.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Non-privileged people permitted to into the UK but those whose permission is not permanent have to pay over USD 1500 per year on formalities to reapply for permission. This continues for ten years.
This is not nominally a fee for residence, but it is tantamount to that.
No wonder Starmer Labour, competing in harshness with right wing extremists, proposes to require extend that fee to 20 years.
The wrecker's commitment to fossil fuel knows no bounds. Not only is he inviting fossil fuel power plants to roast the world, he is willing to let them poison people with mercury and other chemicals.
Karen Newton, Briton, went to the US with permission for tourism, with her husband. They were jailed for 6 weeks based on no reason she was ever told.
They soon signed forms to agree to deportation, but instead of being sent home, they were kept in jail for weeks first, separated. She was sometimes kept in constant cold, without a bed.
Eventually the deportation thugs stole their luggage.
What she heard in prison was that a thug gets a bonus for each victim perse jails.
The war in the Middle East is having major repercussions, including strengthening ties between Russia and China. Robert Reich calls on Americans to phone their members of Congress in support of invoking Congress's power to stop the US intervention.
There is no need to worry about how this might affect subsequent events in Iran, because nobody in the US government has a plan anyway. One more random shuffle won't make it any more random than it already is.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to transfer military spending to human needs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to shut down the US deportation prisons rather than permit them to continue torturing.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
A billionaire supporter of the wrecker told the employees of Conn Selmer's factory that it will move production to China.
You can't expect a bullshitter to be sincere when he says he cares about your jobs.
After the US military attacked three unarmed boats on Dec 30, 8 people jumped into the stormy and dangerous water, and needed immediate rescue. The US military waited 40 hours to send a plane to try to rescue them. It did not find anyone.
No survivors have been rescued after any of these murder missions.
The article speculates that this was intentional — that commanders intended the survivors to die. What is indisputable is that they did not make a competent attempt to rescue the survivors.
Volunteer medics in UK and US who have denounced atrocities committed by Israelis that they witness while in Gaza say that Israel has refused to let them return to Gaza to work as medics again.
This retribution seems designed to intimidate present and future medics in Gaza so that they will help Israel cover up atrocities.
The FBI is investigating members of Extinction Rebellion.
This is an instance of how the wrecker aims to get things backwards. The FBI ought to investigate those who are contributing, knowingly, to the danger of extinction.
Many plug-in hybrid cars use considerably more fuel than manufacturers claim. How much more, varies from model to model.
The Food and Drug Administration tried to reject the new mRNA flu vaccine without even examining it, in accord with antivax ideology, but has changed its mind and will now examine it.
The US told Europe it still wants an alliance — but only with tyrannical, right-wing countries.
The EU should avoid agreeing to this, and avoid being scared by the threats, while accepting the alliance as if it didn't have those conditions. This way it can play for time hoping the US kicks out these right-wing jerks, and use the time to prepare for the US to break off with them.
Aside from the danger of remote surveillance and control, digital systems to control parts of your home have a tendency to be too smart for your own good.
When I looked for an apartment in 2019, I rejected outright any building with digital rather than metal keys. I do not trust whoever controls the system not to track residents' movements. I also rejected outright any building with a security camera.
Despite the bully's attacks on unions and unionizing rights, there was a small increase in 2025 in the number of union workers.
The US government's museum about the US Constitution has fired its president, and people suspect he was fired because he wasn't a magat.
*Long Covid is still here. I know – my life came to a stop because of it.*
Someone asked Amazon for a report on everything that their Alexa listening device had listened to since they first got it. It was enormous.
Think about which words Amazon might have set it up to alert various US government departments about — and which departments those might be. (That might depend on which country you are in.)
Amazon never hears anything in my home.
*The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reviewed dozens of testimonies, photographs and medical records documenting what it describes as serious abuses by Israeli soldiers and prison guards against Palestinian reporters. The report draws on in-depth interviews from 59 Palestinian journalists. Of those interviewed, 58 reported being subjected to what they described as torture [in prison].
"While conditions varied at different facilities, the methods those interviewed recounted – physical assaults, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, sexual violence, and medical neglect – were strikingly consistent," the report states.*
I just saw Zohran Mamdani's comments on "globalize the intifada" from last October, and his stance had much in common with mine.
I also recognize the tone of the criticism he received for discouraging that phrase. There are people whose attitude is, "If you reject my method of expressing disapproval of X, you're weak, and effectively a supporter of X." This reasoning is not valid.
As part of the bullshitter's War on Truth, social media sites that suck up to him have eliminated fact checking. Since he equates fact-checking to censorship, they do too.
The difference between fact-checking and censorship is that the latter blocks or prohibits saying something, while the former labels it with a criticism that is labeled as such.
There is no absolute and inherently inerrant source of truth. Therefore, freedom of speech must include the freedom to make statements that others call "false". (If that becomes prohibited, everything that magats call "lies" will be censored.)
But that is no reason to get rid of fact checking.
Deportation thugs use special apps for facial recognition and iris scanning.
US citizen George Retes was arrested by deportation thugs while he was commuting to work, then jailed for days without access to family, an attorney, or information about the charges against him. He is now free, and suing. I hope he wins, but this is not enough.
The fact that Retes is an Army veteran does not seem significant to me. It would be just as bad if they did this to someone who was never in the US military.
I believe in being very tough on government crime.
When individual official thugs break the law in a significant way, they deserves to pay a penalty, such as a prison sentence. When the government agency broke the law, the agency also should pay a penalty. But when the agency follows a general practice of breaking the law, and that practice was accepted by upper management, the upper management should get the prison sentence.
A bill has been proposed in California to require all 3D printers to come equipped with gun-pattern detectors, starting in 2029.
In principle, I don't defend the right to make your own guns. I don't think what this law requires is inherently unjust.
However, there will be a tendency to implement it by making it impossible or illegal to modify the software in a 3D printer. That would be unjust.
Criticizing society's assumptions of how to collect and then use data, and what makes data valid or useful.
The corrupter has found he can order some Hollywood billionaires around, much the way kings ordered their courtiers around.
US citizens: call on Congress and the FCC to protect local news, by blocking the Nexstar-TEGNA merger.
US citizens: call on CBS to stop yielding to magat bullying.
US citizens: Call on Congress to stop the deportation thug department from using Palantir's massive surveillance system to track and target immigrants.
US citizens: call on your congressional officials not to accept campaign funds from Palantir.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Everyone: Tell the IEA: Ignore Chris Wright’s Threats, Follow the Science on Climate Change.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
The Greek right-wing government is prosecuting Yanis Varoufakis on the absurd charge that his description of using MDMA once constituted "promotion" of the drug.
Prosecution of political enemies on obviously absurd charges is a common tactic of fascist-minded governments, and it is no joke.
*Yet another mid-talks attack jeopardizes chances of Iran taking Trump seriously.*
In 1941, Japan launched a mid-talks attack against the US — but it was mid-talks because of a screw-up. (The Japanese embassy was slow in translating the note that declared war, and when Washington learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the translation was still not finished.)
*The real winners of [the wrecker's] global tariff war: law firms, hedge funds and [bubble-blowing machine learning].
Businesses are vying for a refund, with nearly $175bn on the line, but customers are unlikely to benefit from reversal.*
*[Some] Caribbean countries pledge humanitarian support for Cuba amid rising tensions with US.*
Israel is using its attack on Iran as an excuse to starve Gaza completely.
A gambling site permits people to bet on questions such as "Will Ayatollah Khamanei be out of power tomorrow".
People who have secret information, such as "we attack at dawn", are allowed to bet. That makes the bet a cheat.
While the bullshitter gives an array of bombastic excuses for attacking Iran, Henchman Hegseth treats the question of "why" as irrelevant.
When the US entered World War II, it published a series of short films collectively entitled, "Why We Fight." That responded to understanding that something as violent as war requires a moral justification, not merely an order. However, according to magats, "The ruler says so" is supposed to suffice.
The one reason that in my mind could have justified the attack is if the Iranian people had implored the US to defeat their cruel government. The bullshitter addresses Iranians, calling on them to rise up, so as to make people imagine they are doing so.
Many Iranians hate their government and for good reason, but it doesn't follow that they want a foreign enemy to attack their country.
Meanwhile, Hegseth and Vance says that they don't care whether Iranians overthrow their government or not, and that is not the aim of the attack. I hope Iranians do eliminate that religious repression, but if they do, the US won't deserve any credit for it.
Florida, the Banned Speech State.
Richard Stallman will speak on March 11 in Bern, Switzerland, for the Guild42 group, at Berner Fachhochschule, Brückenstrasse 73, 3005 Bern
Title: Free/Libre Software and Freedom, touching on how they relate to machine learning
An explanation of the issues of justice and injustice in distribution and running of software, and in use of computing services and dis-services, with discussion of how this relates to machine learning, including both Artificial Intelligence and Pretend Intelligence.
Location: Brückenstrasse 73, CH-3012 Bern, Room: Aula
Time: 17:30
As usual, the event will have around an hour of presentation and around an hour of Q&A.
US citizens: call on your state legislators to block construction of deportation prison-warehouses in your state.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on Protect Vote by Mail. Tell Congress to act now! Demand the USPS Restore Real-Time Postmarks.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on CBS to stop engaging in political censorship to fawn at magat officials.
More information: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/21/cbs-trump-anderson-cooper-stephen-colbert-paramount
Everyone: Tell the IEA: Ignore Chris Wright’s Threats, Follow the Science on Climate Change.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: call on your congressional officials not to accept campaign funds from Palantir.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the deportation thug department from using Palantir's massive surveillance system to track and target immigrants.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on CBS to stop yielding to magat bullying.
US citizens: call on Congress and the FCC to protect local news, by blocking the Nexstar-TEGNA merger.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your congressional representatives to fight to impeach Bondi.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on your representatives and senators to take action to stop the next great recession!
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
Here is what I used as my letter text. I hope it inspires you.
The wrecker's henchmen at the Securities and Exchange Commission are laying the groundwork to bring back one of the core financial products that led to millions of foreclosures during the 2008 crash — even as economic and climate conditions make its return all the more destabilizing.The SEC is intended to act as Wall Street’s top regulator, but they want to do the opposite of their job. Then the megabanks will "need" another big bailout, and Republicans will eagerly give them one. Please fight hard to prevent this big theft.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
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