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.
Facebook says that blocking posts about Linux or "Linux" was an unintentional error.
US citizens: call on New York governor Hochul to remove NYC night-mayor Adams for his deal to escape federal corruption charges.
The National Campaign for Justice mailed out this:
It's a corrupt quid pro quo, and New Yorkers are the bargaining chip. This isn't speculation. [The corrupter]'s ICE henchman Tom Homan basically admitted it on FOX News, practically waving the deal in our faces:
"If he doesn’t come through ... I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’"
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript before going there.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The wrecker's agents fired some of the workers that maintain security for US nuclear weapons. Then it realized that this was stupid, but it can't figure out how to reach them to offer them their jobs back.
If you do things without careful thought, you are likely to make mistakes. I am sure the wrecker's destruction workers have made many mistakes in its haste. But usually they don't care, and say nothing.
What is newsworthy this time is that they care enough to try to undo it.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the CFPB from sabotage by the muskrat's dog(e)s.
For decades the US has been systematically trying to curb global corruption, but the corrupter has eliminated many of the programs that contributed to the campaign. It looks like the US government has flipped to the pro-corruption side.
Alan Singer describes the history over time of his relationship with Israel, developing from intense support to moral reproach.
Rejecting the superstition that if we refuse to call it "fascism" that will somehow restrain the regime from going all the way there.
*In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy.*
The Department of Education used to be responsible for enforcing accessibility requirements for US schools, as to ensure disabled students could attend school. Now it has more or less stopped doing this.
The wrecker wants to eliminate the Department of Education, so we must expect the US government will abandon the goal as well as the means.
I made the above link to an article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected -- hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
*By voting in favor of nominees they knew should never be approved, Republican senators became [the corrupter's] subjects.*
The US government plans to scan the internet for postings that express hostility to the deportation thugs, then search high and low for all information it can get about the person who posted them.
We cannot at this point expect that this search will confine itself to legal methods.
The right-wing-controlled Pentagon is imposing right-wing censorship on the libraries of the schools for military personnel.
Vance distorted edge-cases of European laws to attack crucial human rights, and to promote his allies in Europe — European far-right extremists-Nazis — and encourage them to seize repressive power there as the Trusk regime is doing in the US.
European anti-Nazis need to be bold, not hesitate and rely on measures that aim only to oppose them.
Since the US appreciates Putin more than Europe, and is as likely to behave like Europe's enemy than like Europe's friend, Europe urgently needs to re-arm.
The lesson from this is that European governments must ensure their weapons production does not depend significantly on US industry. They could be cut off by sanctions at any time. Europe must cease buying US weapons systems that depend on US spare parts, US maintenance, or software that Europe cannot maintain and change.
NATO no longer makes sense with the US as a member, so perhaps the other members of NATO should construct a new alliance without the US. That could be a framework to facilitate joint defense of Greenland, for instance. With luck, that would deter the wrecker from actually invading Greenland.
(satire) *[The saboteur-in-chief] Unsure What Department He Has To Cut To Make JD Vance Go Away.*
Fremont, California, has made it a crime to be homeless there.
I wonder what Fremont will do to people found to be homeless there. Jail them? That would be expensive. Forcibly transport them to out of the city? The city which does that would be shirking its share of the burden of housing people, and dumping it on other cities.
Perhaps it will transport them by helicopter to a wilderness area, where no one will notice if they can't make it out. That fits the cruel spirit of the repression of the homeless.
Right-wing Israelis are proceeding parcel by parcel with driving Palestinians off their land and seizing the land.
*World’s largely unprotected peatlands are ticking "carbon bomb", warns study.*
The wrecker is eliminating a broad range of protections for nature, to allow more fossil fuel extraction.
Put that together with the additional global heating caused by burning those fossil fuels, and the result is a double danger.
The idea of an "energy emergency" that could be addressed by rapidly burning up the Earth's remaining fossil fuels is doubly nonsense. Keeping fossil fuel inexpensive for a couple of decades would be followed by rapid price increases, and in the mean time we would suffer from the air pollution and the heat.
*White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued … dispute* the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
The wrecker is hoping to teach all news organizations that he will damage them if they don't completely obey. The AP is carrying out heroic resistance to that threat.
I too have declines to do interviews with people if they did not commitments about whet names to use. But my declining to give someone an interview is not a threat to per freedom to work, because I am not so important or influential that anyone would imagine perse could not do without it.
European countries are starting to address the need to organize a strong defense, without (and perhaps from) the United States.
*The US president's bullying of allies and partners is short-termist and will boost Beijing's power, not Washington's.*
I think Tr-usk are too focused on breaking and subjugating the American people, especially nonwhites and women, to be concerned about anything as remote as a future contest with China.
Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would not recognize any peace deal negotiated by the Putin regime with the Tr-usk regime.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to protect the CFPB so it can continue to protect Americans from gouging by banks and other financial dis-services.
Here is what the wrecker has been doing to the CFPB.
The senators in the Senate Banking Committee are well paid by banksters and want to get it out of the way so they can gouge using junk fees.
Another way US banks gouge the public is by pushing credit card interest rates up to loan shark levels. This happens because the Supreme Court eliminated states' ability to regulate the interest rates they can charge.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to defeat HR 899, which would abolish the Department of Education. This would be a big blow to the children in non-rich US families. The children of poor people would have even less chance of getting good jobs, and they might have to go without some meals.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: demand no oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
US citizens: call on Congress to block funding for the wrecker's deportation machine.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The British lawyers working in Britain to defend Hong Kong democracy activist Jimmy Lai have been hit by a campaign of threats of violence and cracking attacks on their bank accounts as well as other forms of cracking and physical harassment.
We have to presume that what the wrecker and the muskrat are aiming to do with the US is something like this.
The duumvirs are defying some of the court orders that told them to restart some of the government activities and agencies they have shut or wrecked. They are pushing for absolute power.
They openly say that laws and judges are supposed to serve them, never limit them. This fully justifies the terms "fascist" and "coup".
The Guantanamo prison was a previous Republican president's excuse for disregarding human rights and the laws that protect some of them, even for people accused of grave crimes. Because it was outside the US, he could argue that it was a zone in which human rights did not apply.
So it is natural that the persecutor would seek to put those he aims to persecute into Guantanamo prison as another way to evade the rule of law.
Hundreds of thousands of Federal workers are being thrown to the dog…s. *Some were reportedly given only 30 minutes to pack their belongings and vacate federal offices.*
The muskrat us treating them with special vindictiveness, not for anything that they did, but because he can (due to a gap in civil service protection).
Why would he do this? It could be that he simply revels in the chance to be cruel to someone, anyone. But I don't think he has let his emotions run away with them completely. I think this is a calculated maneuver meant to make other federal employees scared and weak.
Federal employees, at any moment you may be told you can't see that office ever again, so be ready for it — remove immediately from your offices everything you would be sad to lose. And remain ostentatiously ready for that, for as long as the haters remain in power.
It will be a way of saying, "Yes, I know you could fire me in a vindictive way, but I'm prepared for that and you don't scare me!"
The muskrat is determined to cut government spending, except when it is buying from his own company.
Richard Stallman will give a talk on Feb 24 in Bolzano, Italy. Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society, in English, 18:00–20:00, at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
Registration and program: fuss.bz.it
The muskrat is directly spreading political disinformation to attack foreign politicians. It includes weaponizing antisemitism through false accusations.
This is on top of his other efforts to support European neo-Nazis.
I disagree with Robert Reich on one pertinent question. I think it is an injustice to prohibit expression of certain views and attitudes — even those that I condemn, such as antisemitism, racism and sexism — and even to prohibit insulting a person. This is one of the aspects of European countries that make me uncomfortable.
Another similar injustice in European countries is prohibition of blasphemy — or its secular, ecumenical version, prohibition against expression that would hurt the feelings of believers in some religion or other.
I suggest that countries instead pass laws forbidding the operation of a social network that is owned by hateful foreigners. In other words, treat ex-Twitter and Facebook the way the US for a while treated TikTok. Also, to prohibit operating a social network so as to drive people to use a specific recommendation engine.
This would not censor any kind of views, but it would prevent managing a social network so as to boost particular kinds of views.
A month ago, the US fascists were systematically planning to suppress four main areas of resistance to their power: universities, nonprofits, the media, and unions.
The UK regularly sentences women to prison supposedly "for their own protection".
That is obviously an injustice, and it often has the opposite effect.
(Humor) The manipulation paradox of personality-training systems.
*Missouri sues Starbucks, claiming "systemic discrimination" via DEI. [In it's suit] claiming — without evidence — coffee chain's hiring policies cause higher prices.*
This is an example of a widely repeated harassment tactic: sue until the victim can't stand more lawsuits.
A British court canceled licenses for new oilfields on the ground that the decision disregarded the effects of greenhouse emissions from burning the products that would be pumped out.
*USAID Workers Reportedly Believe They Were Recorded by Google's Gemini [chatbot].*
The wrecker is shutting off funding at the NIH for research on infectious diseases. RFK is ideologically opposed to research in that area.
I don't know for certain, but I expect that Congress decided how much funding to put into that area, which would imply that these cuts are illegal,
A judge orders the wrecker to resume USAID's foreign aid payments.
It is not clear whether this order will compel USAID to rehire the staff necessary to make the payments. I expect that the wrecker will respond by making a monkey out of the judge and the law.
The wrecker has two contradictory goals: to reduce the federal government's office space, and to make every employee work in the office five days a week. When they all come in, they can't get work done because there aren't enough desks — or parking lots.
Soon many of them will be out sick from Covid-19 or flu.
Missouri's voters voted to legalize abortion on the state constitution, but Republicans in the legislature enacted impossible requirements to ensure no abortion clinic could open. But a court has struck them down.
Climate models predict that the *record-high ocean temperatures observed in 2023 could become the norm* with 3°C of global heating.
The UK assisted suicide bill will employ a panel of a judge, a psychiatrist and a social worker to make sure that the person requesting this is doing so voluntarily.
I think that is reasonable. However, the part of the bill I still criticize is that it is limited to people who are going to die anyway in a few months. What about the people whose lives have become useless due to diseases that prevent them from doing anything useful? Lacking terminal illnesses, they might have to suffer this for years.
*Elon Musk owning OpenAI would be a terrible idea. That doesn't mean it won't happen.*
*Musk-linked group offered $5m reward for proof of voter fraud — and came up with nothing.*
No matter, the noise that Republicans made by claiming there was a lot of election fraud gave them the excuse to make it harder for Americans to vote.
Right-wing extremists have designed a playbook for canceling academics whose views oppose theirs. They set up an echo chamber and introduce accusations based on Republican DEI: distortion, exaggeration, and insinuation.
*Far-right populist [politicians] much more likely than the left [or centrist politicians] to spread fake news — study.* The study examined every tweet made by any politician in 26 countries.
Norway plans to attack wildlife systematically by allowing large hydroelectric generator dams in supposedly "protected" rivers.
These dams would endanger salmon and other wildlife.
(satire) *New Evidence Suggests Humans Developed Written Language To Avoid Breaking Up In Person.*
* Scientists say more-frequent hotter temperatures in west African region are part of reason for reduced [chocolate] harvests and price rises.*
Antivaxxer RFK Jr. has been confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Millions of Americans will be at risk if he undermines vaccination. Will vaccines for the latest flu and Covid-19 variants be prepared at all?
By now we have seen that the Senate's Republicans are too intimidated to reject any nominee, no matter how outrageously unfit.
The wrecker's Gaza plan is provoking condemnation from jihadis and from right-wing white nationalists.
*"No to ethnic cleansing": over 350 rabbis sign US ad assailing [the persecuter]'s Gaza plan.*
Harvard adopted the misguided IHRA definition of antisemitism, and based on that definition punished protesters who campaigned against the bombardment and siege of Gaza.
It is possible some of them actually endorsed antisemitism, but with that bad definition it is quite likely that some of them were falsely labeled as "antisemitic".
Republicans use "DEI" as a racist dogwhistle — to presume, based on nothing at all, that every black is unqualified for per job.
I linked above to that article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think making a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected -- hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
The wrecker's actions toward NASA might endanger flight safety, as staff was insufficient and some are already leaving in disgust.
Labour is imitating the wrecker by undermining crucial agencies that regulate businesses. Details in the article.
Perhaps that's their idea of how to promote economic growth of business: by letting them disregard regulations intended to prevent them from doing various sorts of harm.
*Texas judge fines New York doctor for mailing abortion pills to patient in Texas.*
The closure of USAID will spread confusion and cause independent media outlets to shut down. That will leave the field clear for propaganda and disinformation published by states.
I suppose the wrecker's advisors will be pleased by this.
The wrecker showed how he plans to make a deal over Ukraine. He simply told Putin, "You can have everything you want."
The bullshitter has a history of being a follower of Putin. In the past year, he has talked tough about how he would deal with Putin, but we now see that that was just bullshit, like his claim not to have anything to do with Project 2025.
Will Putin conquer Ukraine with the wrecker's help?
*Union leader calls mass firings "reckless" and will fight for all impacted employees.*
Arguing that unions can be effective for deploying power against the wrecker.
New Yorkers resisting the deportation thugs.
Mayor Adams of NYC is the beneficiary of some sort of deal with the corrupter, who has ordered the Department of Justice to drop charges against Adams.
It looks like what Adams did for the corrupter in return was to aid deportation raids in NYC.
I got mail from a campaign to call on New York Governor Hochul to remove Adams as mayor. I did not sign it because I expect that signatures of people who don't live in that state won't count, but I hope she does so.
Several officials involved with the prosecution have resigned in outrage. I share their outrage, but I think it would have been better in this situation not to quit. Now they will be replaced will loyal henchmen. If they had stayed in position until fired, they might have had the chance to do something for justice and get away with it, at least for a while.
In the old days, officials resigning in outrage would have been a scandal and had an influence on the next election. But today's magats are so isolated from the truth that they will hardly care about it.
Only the biggest of big businesses are likely to benefit from the wrecker's coup. Those are the ones that can expect the corrupter to appreciate their support, and reward them. The others will suffer from the tariffs, if the tariffs don't get negotiated away.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit members of Congress from owning stocks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to block the wrecker's attack on renewable electricity.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to defeat the SAVE Act.
"This baseless voter suppression bill would create unnecessary barriers to voting for [nonwhites], young people, disabled people, transgender people, people with low incomes, tribal voters, rural voters, survivors of natural and climate disasters, and military families, not to mention the tens of millions of married women who have changed their names."
It would also block remote registration and registration by mail.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*US park service erases references to trans people from Stonewall Inn website.*
Removing mentions of trans people from government web sites is not just deletion of attitudes and opinions, or even advice — it covers historical fact as well.
I admire the people who fought the thugs at Stonewall. No matter that it wasn't my own fight; it was a fight for the freedom not to conform to rigidity, and that is something to cheer for.
I am considering a trip to Europe for late April, and perhaps half of May. If you would like to invite me to speak in Europe, please send me email now at rms on the site gnu dot org, with the subject line "Europe in the spring". You'll have to fund the extra costs of my travel there.
Please repost this elsewhere to spread the word.
Robert Reich: the mainstream media are failing America by refusing to call this a coup.
US citizens: phone your senators (especially Republicans) and say not to vote to confirm Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
The wrecker is disrupting the federal agencies that have the responsibility to protect the country against bird flu.
*The Kyoto protocol was the first really clear example of how politicians can say all the right words on the world stage about tackling [global heating], but then fail miserably to deliver real action at home.*
Users report that Facebook blocks posting about "Linux". That implicitly also blocks posting about GNU, when people erroneously treat GNU as part of "Linux".
I would like to see first-hand and journalistic reporting about this. I can't test it myself since I absolutely refuse to be used by Facebook in any fashion.
*Intense heatwave in southern Brazil [Rio Grande do Sul] forces schools to suspend return.*
*Nearly $500m of food aid at risk of spoilage after [the wrecker's] USAid cuts.*
The NSA is now blinding itself to concerns of justice and/or rational thought, by ordering the deletion of web pages that use the terms "injustice" or "confirmation bias" — as well as many others.
This policy threatens to wipe discussions of whether policies are just or unjust, and discussions of whether certain arguments are valid or not.
The deletion campaign is intended to wipe anything that relates to the diversity movement, and recognizes that some occurrences of words on the target list may be legitimate even to the magat mind. But judging each of the occurrences individually is an enormous job, so there will be blanket deletion at least at first.
Imagine pages discussing the inclusion of certain words on the deletion list. Those discussions might get deleted because of the word "inclusion".
US citizens: phone each of your senators and say this (in your own words).
Stop the attacks on government agencies that Congress has established and the gutting of crucial programs that Congress has already funded.Congress sets the budget — not the president and not the hateful rich. I urge you to treat this like the constitutional crisis it is by stopping business as usual in the Senate until Trump and Musk back down.
If no one picks up, please leave a message — it'll count!
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A few days ago, HAMAS accused Israel of violating the cease fire terms, and said it would delay the next release of hostages until Israel started complying.
The alleged violations are numerous and of many kinds. The details are described in this article, and some are independently confirmed.
A report attributed to HAMAS appears as two images in the article. If they do not appear, each image's space has a link to visit it,
The corrupter has done nothing to pressure Israel to keep its side of the agreement, but instead threatens HAMAS, demanding it disregard Israel's violations.
You can't expect a corrupt man to serve as an honest broker in making a deal, because he will not honestly insist that both sides keep the deal.
As we look at the horrible events of the war in Gaza, let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
How the Iron Man film of 2008 was designed as propaganda for the US military.
*Major Donors [for the scapegoater] who complained of immigrant "invasion" used Mexican workers illegally, sources allege.*
It would not surprise me if they were hypocritical. Why wouldn't they be?
*Oil and gas firms operating in Colorado falsified environmental impact reports.*
Is anyone threatened with prison for this?
I expect not — and that weakness of enforcement is why it happens so much. Millions of lives will depend in the future on how we enforce environmental regulations. Inadequate enforcement is as dangerous as inadequate rules.
The wrecker and the muskrat use two different naive misunderstandings of genetics to advocate eugenics.
*Keir Starmer is one of Labour's most rightwing members of parliament, according to a study of the political positions of the MPs from every major party.*
This gives some hope that a defeat could make the party replace him.
Various political camps weaponize the term "antisemitism" misleadingly, and that obstructs campaigning against the real wrong of bigotry against Jews.
Historian Timothy Snyder argues that Putin invaded Ukraine as a way to use his influence with the wrecker, supposing the latter became president of the US.
He also explains the importance of refusing to "obey in advance". Even if bigger and richer people are bowing down and obeying, we must continue to refuse.
"It's particularly distressing that it's the billionaires who have the media outlets, so who are in some sense the most powerful. Like, what do you have to be afraid of? Why don’t you do something interesting that the historians will remember you for instead? But I also want to say it’s not surprising. The reason we have Lesson One of On Tyranny is because we can’t count on the non-regime-proximate oligarchs to do the right thing. Like the regime-proximate oligarchs, like Elon Musk, they're doing the wrong thing."
*Infrastructure neglect and poverty lead to [infection by] parasites in the Mississippi Delta.*
The frozen potato market in the US is dominated by just four companies, and the result (whether explicitly planned or not) is price fixing.
Protesters in London opposed plans to allow China to build a large embassy, warning that it would be used for espionage and for punishing Chinese expats in the UK. It could even be used to imprison Chinese expats when they come in for an appointment, and perhaps even refugee dissidents.
Chinese embassies in various countries threaten residents Chinese people living in those countries, to stop them from criticizing China.
*China tops list of countries trying to silence exiled dissidents over past decade, study shows. Russia, Turkey and Egypt also among worst perpetrators of transnational repression around the globe.*
The LLM-excused copyright grab is advancing with a lawsuit against the sale of art generated using a generative video model.
Using generative systems to generate text that does not appear to be fiction has the problem that people believe it is truthful. Likewise using them to generate art that appears to be a photo.
That problem does not arise for text or visual art that is presented as, or appears to be, fiction or art.
*An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff's access to federal payments systems "the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced."*
A federal judge temporarily blocked the muskrat's men from accessing personal data held by the US Treasury.
The permanent decision will be made later.
*Federal judge blocks [the muskrat's men from] access to critical Treasury payment system.*
*[Engineer] Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.*
His "ties" with the muskrat are clearly active, because The only way he could have got this power is because the muskrat gave the command.
Elez resigned from the muskrat's employ after he was linked to flaming racist posting, but the muskrat now says he will rehire Elez.
After all, why would a Nazi sympathizer like the muskrat object to racism?
A US neo-Nazi leader has been convicted of planning to attack power grid facilities with a bomb.
It's a shame that the FBI won't be willing to investigate possible ties to the wrecker's followers.
HAMAS says it will postpone the next prisoner swap on the grounds that Israel is violating the cease fire.
Meanwhile, Israel's minister of hatred, Smotrich, says he will not permit the cease fire to be extended past this first phase — he would rather bring the government down.
Since the corrupter does not have real moral commitments, I don't think he will care whether this cease fire continues as long as he can make the situation be about him.
Freedom of the press is threatened in Israel. Thugs in Jerusalem arrested the Palestinian owners of a bookstore.
The thugs seized many books, including each book that showed a Palestinian flag. This included books by Noam Chomsky and Israeli writer Ilan Pappé.
They also seized a copy of the newspaper Haaretz.
This is part of a wave of arrests of Palestinian political intellectuals in Israel and Palestine.
Side point:
I used to make links to articles in Haaretz before it sprouted a
paywall. To pass the paywall is impossible without running nonfree
JavaScript software on my own computer, so I cannot see that
newspaper's articles, nor recommend them to others.
The payment of money, as such, I would on some occasions accept, if I could pay it anonymously without running nonfree software. But I never accept running nonfree software, and I never urge the public to do so.
The National Institutes of Health have cut the ratio of "overhead" payments that they add to research grants.
The NIH offers these overhead payments knowing that the things that they fund are necessary for the research organizations to function so they can do the contracted research. Reducing them will make it hard for the research organizations to do the research.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and call on them to protect FEMA from plans to abolish it or greatly cut its funding. Climatic disasters are increasing, and will continue to increase as long as we keep increasing greenhouse gases in the air. FEMA will need more funding than it needs now.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Fury Over Musk and DOGE Triggers Spike in Calls to Congress.*
*Members of Congress say they are being flooded with calls from angry constituents about President Donald Trump's Director of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, and what he is doing inside the federal government.*
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the corrupter's inauguration fund.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The trasher thinks of the environment as an enemy and yearn to trash it at every opportunity, even in small ways, to demonstrate his hate for it. He decided to encourage plastic pollution by canceling Biden's decision to gradually end use of plastic straws in the US government.
The trasher's campaign for plastic straws may seem to be a pointless frivolity, but the attitude he seeks to instill is broader and potentially deadly. The attitude consist of prioritizing short-term desires over long-term needs. People who approach questions this way can be manipulated into wasting their money.
That campaign turns the World War II slogan, "Use it up, wear it out, do without," on its head, applying it to the environment rather than to products such as straws.
If we use up and wear out the environment, humanity can't survive very long.
The reason so little plastic is recycled is only a few kinds of plastic are practically feasible to recycle. Several other kinds are recyclable in principle, but it is too expensive so so that never happens. Plastic industry PR fooled the public about this by getting the "recycle" symbol put on those other kinds, so people imagine they will be recycled.
*In Waning Senate Days, Kyrsten Sinema Screwed Workers and Spent Campaign Cash on Stay at French Castle.*
*Performer in Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl show [questioned by "security"] on field after holding up Sudan-and-Gaza combined flag.
Google(‡) has adopted the motto, "Be evil in every possible way," by its decision to use artificial intelligence for weapons.
I write "artificial intelligence" because I presume this would use the adaptive pattern matching that really is artificial intelligence, not the bullshit generators which aren't.
‡ I don't distinguish between the different corporate entities of Google because I see those distinctions as insignificant details that cloud the overall picture.
Phoenix, Arizona, tried to prohibit construction in areas where there is no sustainable groundwater available. Rich real estate interests are trying to invalidate the ban in court.
I guess they hope to make money selling houses to people who will eventually find that it is impossible to live in them for lack of water.
A collision between an airliner and a military helicopter near Reagan National Airport happened in 1949. Ever since pilots and people involved in air safety have warned of the danger that the difficult situation would lead to another collision.
So don't believe the fabricator when he puts the blame on his usual suspects.
Facts concerning the FAA's DEI hiring program, compared with presidential bullshit.
The Guardian suggests that the wrecker's attack on the International Criminal Court bespeaks his preference for the law of the jungle.
Flies in hospitals can carry drug-resistant bacteria from patient to patient.
The wrecker's destruction of USAID and cutoff of most nonmilitary foreign aid has probably increased China's global influence.
I don't think the wrecker cares about this as much as he cares about his own power.
*Kurdish officials fear [PISSI will revive] as US aid cuts loom.*
*Democrats [in Congress] join protest against [the muskrat's] "hostile takeover" of federal payment systems.*
Legally, their presence in a protest may not change anything. But it will contribute to the spirit of resistance, and that is vital.
Right-wing extremist groups in the US now express their scorn for people protesting on behalf of Palestinians by threatening to get them deported by claiming (arbitrarily) that they support terrorism.
Arrogant right-wing attacks are often based on some false presupposition. In this case, it the presupposition is, "Everyone that stands up Palestinians' human rights is a jihadi Islamist terrorist." The goal of these campaigns is to lead the public to believe the false presupposition.
Analyzing the proposed No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, and its likely consequences for cities that practice community policing.
*Trudeau says that [the bully] is serious about wanting to annex Canada.*
For the moment, the bully has made Canadians feel more committed and loyal to Canada.
James Hanson says that global heating is going faster than predicted, showing that human-caused greenhouse gases have a bigger effect than was assumed in modeling. (Other climate scientists disagree.)
He concludes that it is impossible now to avoid 2°C of heating, an amount which scientists expect to cause massive worldwide disaster.
Thousands of Jor-Els, with detailed predictions, and still they cannot convince the political leaders to take the necessary action to avoid climate catastrophe.
*Scientists brace "for the worst" as [the bullshitter] purges climate mentions from websites … [P]ulling references online "won’t make crisis stop" [impacting] Americans’ lives, say experts.*
Several of the inspectors general that the wrecker fired worked at agencies that were, or had been, investigating the muskrat's government contracts.
US citizens: phone our senators and call on them to stop Elon Musk's Coup. Call 202-688-0628.
Free Press Action posted his campaign but did not include a URL for it, so I a copying the text here.
Members of Free Press Action took part in protests across the nation’s capital this week as Elon Musk and his squad of sycophantic tech bros abruptly shuttered federal agencies.The richest man on the planet — and what we can only describe as the Elon Youth — invaded the Treasury Department’s Social Security and Medicare database and will exploit that access for the next step in their horrific autocratic scheme.
Via his unconstrained "Department of Government Efficiency", Musk is blitzing major agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Treasury, and the Departments of Education and Labor. He's forcing out civil servants with actual expertise to make room for his handpicked legion, literally reshaping our government to fit his deranged and dangerous plans.
Free Press Action has sounded the alarm on Elon Musk for years: From reinstating thousands of neo-Nazis and other extremists on Twitter to gutting the platform’s content moderation rules to helping repressive regimes silence dissidents, Musk has a pattern of spreading hate and harassing critics. But now that he’s spent nearly $300 million to elect Trump — successfully buying his way into the highest echelon of the federal government — he is more dangerous than ever.
This is a clear authoritarian power grab from a man who twice gave an apparent Nazi salute to cheers from an adoring inaugural crowd. No one elected this man. And yet he won’t take no for an answer.
Elon is conducting a coup before our eyes and members of the Senate have an obligation to do everything in their power to stop him. Please call your senators at 202-688-0628 before it's too late.
Here’s a sample script to get you started:
-------------------
Hello! My name is [First Name]. I'm a constituent and am calling to ask Sen. [Senator] to stop Elon Musk’s unelected takeover of the federal government.
I urge you to vote "no" on all nominees and halt the Senate’s business while this power grab is underway, until the separation of powers is restored and you have answers.
Stop Elon Musk’s coup immediately.
-------------------Elon and his loyalists are running roughshod over the Constitution and our public servants — and everyday people like you will be the ones who pay the price. He's stealing your most sensitive data while threatening basic social services. It's far past time for our elected officials to protect us from this monstrous coup.
In solidarity,
All of us at Free Press Action
*[Musk rats] sought to use critical Treasury payment system to shut down USAID spending, emails show.
*FBI turns over details of 5,000 employees who worked on January 6 cases to [corrupted] Justice Department, as agents sue* to stop the wrecker from having them fired.
We have seen at least one judge refuse to let the wrecking crew make a monkey out of him, by rejecting the claim that although a payment shutdown order had been "rescinded", the shutdown was still in effect.
This will eventually come to the Supreme Court, dominated by right-wing extremists. Will they choose between loyalty to their country and its freedom? Or obedience to their master?
*Judge temporarily blocks Trump from placing 2,200 USAid workers on leave
Forced leaves had already begun when ruling came through, as workers tried to halt dismantling of agency.*
*Thousands of [old] press releases about decade-old enforcement actions topped search results on [Google], all updated with a timestamp from after [Jan 20].*
The bullshitter must have told his fanatical followers to aim to wipe the possibility of making national decisions based on the truth. This ranges from barring publication of the truth in some areas, shutting agencies' eyes to the facts in others, and publishing a flood of distraction in this instance.
A few days after firing the commander of the US Coast Guard, magats abruptly ordered her to leave her official residence with three hours notice and leave the door unlocked. This meant, in effect, exposing her to the risk that her own property (which she had been given no chance to remove) remaining in the residence would be stolen.
This is a sign of the bully's vindictiveness, but it is part of a system with a dangerous practical purpose: to scare everyone in US employment, whether civil or military, into eager compliance with the ruling party's ideology.
*In this … era of shakedown diplomacy, everything has a price.*
The article describes how bullying as diplomacy can backfire. Alas, he equates "countries making and keeping agreements" with "acting in ways that help everyone", but they are sometimes in conflict, as in the example of the Trance Pacific Partnership
The article presumes that the US remained a moral force until the start of this year, On some issues it was, while on others it was not.
*The wrecker's Gaza plan could amount to war crime, say experts.*
*Call on Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare from the muskrat.*
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations.*
If the goal is to spread panic and discouragement, a false impression of facts is as good as real facts.
In a small part of Kansas, tuberculosis has increased to a level that US public health would never have allowed. Republican attacks on public health organizations, both state and federal, are interfering with the normal response when tuberculosis starts to increase.
An experiment found that bilingual children tend to have better executive function.
Parts of Australia had over 2 feet of rain in 24 hours, and over 7 feet in the past week.
People are cut off, without potable water and electricity and out of food.
Where and when such things happen is largely random, but the fact that they get much worse nowadays is part of global heating. So we can expect it to get much worse over coming decades.
Ukraine's military intends to make armed robotic vehicles to deploy at the front.
*"Our goal is to create a military where innovative technologies help perform the most dangerous tasks, saving the lives of our defenders," he said.*
That goal is fine, but is this an autonomous killer robot? I can't tell from the brief notice in that article, but It sounds like one. No one should be the first to introduce autonomous killer robots into the world. The west should not allow Ukraine to do it.
Israel did something like it, by using a machine learning system to choose targets for human-controlled weapons. The expectation that human control over weapons will avoid some atrocities presumes that human soldiers are fighting a war to defeat another army, not a campaign of hatred.
*Air pollution reduces people’s ability to focus on everyday tasks, study finds. Even brief exposure to particulate matter found to impede selective attention and emotional recognition.*
Amazingly, the wrecker wants to negotiate a new non-nuclear agreement with Iran, which would replace the one he canceled in 2019.
It remains to be seen whether these two parties could actually make a deal. Both tend to be very hard to negotiate with.
If they do, I will say that is good. However, let's keep a sense of proportion. This success, if it happens, would not come near to compensating for the harm he has done to the US in the past 3 weeks, or the wrong of the rigged election of 2024.
*Who will show [the wrecker] and Netanyahu that they're not above the law? It has to be Europe.*
The wrecker proposes to allow fossil fuel extraction in national monuments. That could poison the wildlife in the short term, but in the long term the world's fossil fuel policy is to let the billionaires make civilization collapse.
*US election commission chair says the corrupter tried to fire her illegally.*
*Defector [from Assad's army] who exposed Assad’s brutality calls for Syria sanctions to be lifted.*
*[The underminer]'s pick for key national security position linked to far-right figures.*
We can expect him, if approved, to develop a blind spot against crimes planned by right-wing extremists. That would be quite convenient for anyone who in the future commits crimes at the behest of a right-wing extremist official.
*Aspiring autocrats … are always more dangerous the second time in office.
Google used its bullshit generator to make an ad for its bullshit generator, and the ad had a glaring factual error, which Google had to use human editing to fix.
*[US] government report says private equity [purchases of] nursing homes led to 11% increase in patient deaths.*
The amended headline called these purchases "investments", but I think that word is as false as perfume on a turd.
The wrecker sabotaged California farmers by opening dams and releasing water that was being saved to give to them in the summer, when they will need it.
He pretended that this was a way to help fight fires in Los Angeles, but (1) LA does not have a shortage of water overall, and (2) the water will not flow to Los Angeles.
What LA is short of is capacity to pump water up to the hilly areas where the fires have been out of control.
More generally, the problem is caused by global heating, and as long as we keep pushing global heating that problem is likely to spread.
Amazon and UnitedHellth have asked the corrupter for favors, which we can presume are in exchange for their million dollar inaugural "donations".
The first court rebuke to the muskrat's rampage through government departments has come, denying the muskrat and his followers access to data from the US Treasury.
The muskrat's rampage can be compared to an ongoing security breach.
A right-wing extremist organization is compiling lists of government employees that it labels as "woke".
That organization has no real power to hurt them, but it surely believes it is providing guidance for right-wing extremist political appointees who would be glad to punish or fire those employees without bothering to offer justification.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to sign a letter calling on the saboteur-in-chief to reinstate Gwynne Wilcox in the NLRB.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*The Central Intelligence Agency offered [its staff "buyouts"], citing aim to bring agency in line with [new regime's] priorities, US media report.*
Making the whole staff hostile seems like a really foolish thing for an intelligence agency to do. Driving many agents to leave seems dumb too, since some will be angry enough to sell secrets to foreign countries.
Especially now that their country won't be the United States of constitutional rights that they used to be loyal to. Disobeying your country's rulers is not betrayal if they have betrayed your country already.
The corrupter said the US should take over Gaza and move all the inhabitants permanently to other countries. Implicitly, this would mean transferring them by force, although he claimed (implausibly) that they would be glad to move.
His proposal continues that the US would take over Gaza and rebuild it. It doesn't say who would own it after that. It would not surprise me if he arranged for this to be his property and exempted himself from paying taxes on it.
It has been suggested that this proposal is meant to distract attention from his attack on the US system of government.
*Democratic [New York] governor Kathy Hochul signs law permitting doctors to leave names off prescriptions for abortion pills.*
This is good, but if the organization that employs per is not limited to New York State, fanatics might be able to subpoena that name from that organization outside New York State. It would be enough to determine who that patient had an appointment with on the date the prescription was issued.
(satire) *Elon Musk Offers Self $10 Billion Federal Buyout.*
*Meta accused of "bowing" to [the corrupter] by making abortion [information] harder to find.*
Please join me in refusing to use the word "content" to mean "publications, treated as a commodity".
The wrecker's press secretary claims that he has already sent prisoners to Guantanamo, unauthorized immigrants who were in the US.
The wrecker, or someone working for him, has a cunning awareness of the US's sores, and picks at them to exacerbate the soreness. This spreads the feeling that the US will be so massively cruel and evil that it threatens to demoralize Americans who want their country to be good rather than cruel.
*The oldest bullying technique is to threaten little guys who don’t have nearly the power you have — say, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, and Greenland (Greenland!) — and then, when they appear to cave, announce that your bullying has worked. And then move on to larger targets.*
This is what the bully is doing now. But he has an additional advantage that so many treat anything he says as truth. He didn't get a surrender from Mexico or Canada, but when he boasts about one, his magats are thrilled that the USA is (in their minds) a powerful overlord.
But it is not guaranteed to stay that way. He could start doing to other countries the real damage he has done in USAID, the OPM, the US treasury, NOAA, and the CDC.
Another bullying tactic he uses is acting unpredictably and showing he can do drastic things (that less vicious leaders would be wise enough to avoid) and get away with them. The message is, "I am so powerful no one can restrain me — so be afraid and bow down."
Putin tried the same thing in his "I'm a madman with a nuke, so give me whatever I demand" act. Putin's disinformationists and supporters told us we should be terrified and meek. Biden and other western leaders realized it was an act, so they ignored it and dealt with Putin as someone evil and vicious but nonetheless sane.
The persecutor "paused" the CFPB's regulatory work, including the regulation not to include medical debt in people's credit reports.
This was a weak response to the problem that medical costs were ruining Americans, but it had the advantage that the executive branch could do it without support from Congress. The stronger measures were blocked by Republicans.
*FBI agents sue the … DoJ over effort to target January 6 investigation workers.*
Amerindians born before 1970 did not get birth certificates.
With the law to limit voter registration that Republicans are proposing now, in practice those Amerindians would be disenfranchised.
Arizona is making it easier for them to get birth certificates belatedly. But I would not be surprised if red states did the opposite, as a form of voter suppression.
*Grassroots & Progressive Democrats Call for Total Blockade of Trump Nominees.*
The problem of how ti rouse "mainstream" plutocratist Democrats to fight for a New Deal has been with us for decades.
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Torino, Italy, February 12th at 17:00.
The talk will be at the Sala Ciminiera of the Department of Computer Engineering.
The Department of Transportation has imposed the irrelevant requirement on cities and states not to make mask or vaccine requirements. Also the irrelevant preference for places that have higher marriage and birth rates.
The magats who have seized the US government are looking for every way to impose their religion and their superstition on all Americans.
*Why the wrecker's tariffs will be "very bad for America and for the world".*
I think the bully intends these tariffs as a threats and expects other countries to pay a big ransom — going beyond money — to avoid them.
If they do, the world economic harm of the tariffs themselves will not occur, or not for long. But that would introduce a global empire of the billionaires, who will steadily impoverish everyone else and eventually wipe out most of humanity through global heating.
The wrecker has got rid of many of the staff of USAID and sent the muskrat's dogs to destroy it.
The persecutor has canceled the temporary permission of 300,000 Venezuelans to stay in the US, and has threatened 300,000 more.
They fled Venezuela due to economic collapse caused by US sanctions against Maduro's government, rejecting it as the US encouraged them to do.
Maduro is a tyrant, and action against his rule can be justified in principle. And the US claimed to be acting for the sake of Venezuelans who were suffering from it. It was proper for the US to act on concern for Venezuelans that suffered as a result, especially if they wanted to cease their allegiance to Maduro.
However, with the persecutor it is "all hatred, all the time".
Just remember, if you support him and you are not a billionaire, your turn to be his victim will come.
Marco Rubio has gone to Panama, perhaps to play the role of "good cop" in contrast to the bully as "bad cop".
It would be dangerous for a repressive, expansionist great power, led by a megalomaniac liar, to take control of the Panama Canal or systems it depends on.
*Georgian police have arrested two opposition leaders during a street protest against the ruling party, which has been accused of democratic backsliding and of moving Tbilisi closer to Russia.*
Magats in Wyoming propose to prohibit many kinds of medical procedures in order to prohibit abortion as well.
It seems their prohibition on causing harm *to the heart, lungs, brain and other organs* is meant to refer to the organs of a fetus, but would also cover those that harm to the patient's own organs, and that is an unavoidable cost of many important treatments. For instance cancer treatments often damage some organs, but patients accept that because it is preferable to dying.
*Billionaires and corporations leading TV networks and newspapers seem to have caved to the [wrecker]'s pressure.* *"He's become America’s assignment editor."*
You can't expect to get real journalism from them any more.
Scientists can now predict some aspects of a person's appearance from genes, but not reliably or completely enough that anyone should be convicted of a crime on that basis.
Robert Reich: will the cruelty of the wrecker awaken Americans to recognize that he and his backers are our enemies?
El Salvador's autocratic president is putting environmental defenders on trial a second time, after their first trial found there was no evidence of any crime.
The second trial has been carefully prepared so that the result will be different.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Bondi as attorney general.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The wreckers deportation tsar complains that non-citizens (and occasionally citizens too when the deportation thugs threaten to deport them) protect themselves from deportation prison by citing their constitutional rights.
The article also describe the lies that deportation thugs use to invade without a warrant.
*US Government Websites Are Disappearing in Real Time.*
Canadians propose to cut off crucial exports to the US as well as replying with tariffs.
One of the unsolved questions of artificial intelligence is how to tell whether an apparently intelligent system really has thoughts and feeling. Is it conscious, or is it only mimicking. Some academics are proposing moral rules for treatment of any artificial conscious systems.
The case of today's bullshit generators has nothing to do with this. We know how they work, and we know they are not conscious. There is no need to worry that a chatbot will feel hurt by your cursing at being compelled to talk to it.
With Syrian Kurds in Kobane, under constant attack by the Turkish army.
The article has some information about Rojava.
Robert Reich: "winning" an election (*) and becoming president didn't give the wrecker enough power, so he and the muskrat are carrying out a coup, overthrowing constitutional government at various government agencies that make payments required by law.
We can call this unusual event a step-by-step slow coup. It depends on the subornation of the actual legal authorities so that they obey the duumvirate rather than upholding the checks and balances of the Republic.
The most accurate name for the Gulf of Mexico is "Gulf of Non-Natural Disasters".
The US and Mexico have made a deal to postpone tariffs. It may be impossible to carry out — I don't think any country has ever succeeded in stopping smuggling of drugs, or guns — but at least there is nothing barbaric and cruel in it, and nothing fascist.
*Greenland ice sheet cracking more rapidly than ever, study shows.*
An odd hero for antifascists: "Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy," wrote James E Dennehy, who has led the New York field office since last September.
He may be able to sue to stop this purge.
Cops, mostly Republicans, used to stand for "law and order" targeted at the weak, poor and downtrodden. Here is one who stands for law and order against marauding billionaires.
The corrupter is planning for the US government to buy TikTok.
That way, instead of spying for authoritarian China it will spy for the authoritarian US. Instead of authoritarian Chinese censorship, users will encounter authoritarian US censorship.
*The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s power grab: a coup veiled by chaos.*
Republicans' latest sacred cause is to keep lead poisoning alive.
US citizens: call on the acting IRS Commissioner: Continue to use your authority to crack down on wealthy tax cheats while you still can.
US citizens: call on schools to reject [the bully]'s Gulf of America imperialist fantasy.
In countries where Starbucks operates: Pledge to refuse to buy from Starbucks in solidarity with striking workers.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold the wrecker accountable for his illegal purge of Inspectors General.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to save Net Neutrality.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The EPA was already, under Biden, quietly speeding approval of industrial use of new PFA chemicals, after hardly any experiments to find out whether they are dangerous.
(I write just "PFA" because that expands to an adjectival phrase.)
This illustrates a general point. Biden gave only partial support to many progressive causes, and was far from the president we needed at the same time, the wrecker is far, far worse.
The wrecker's sabotage to the government employee email system left it wide open for anyone to blast emails with.
Presumably the intended result was to enable the muskrat's men to send bullying emails to the staff. I suspect it was implemented by non-experts.
*People with insufficient home insurance more likely to risk their lives [trying to save them from] bushfires, experts say.*
Israeli soldiers whose mission was to watch carefully specific nearby parts of Gaza repeatedly reported on dangerous Hamas preparations for the Oct, 2023, attack. Some who were taken hostage and recently released demand a thorough investigation of why the government ignored this.
I heard reports in 2024 about suspicion of government responsibility for leaving the border open — and blocking an investigation of how that came to happen. Given how bloodthirsty and unprincipled Netanyahu has been, some Israeli suspect he decided to let HAMAS attack since that would give him an excuse for killing or expelling all Palestinians.
It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that that is what happened, based on the little evidence we have. It is not proof, but it is reasonable grounds for suspicion. The US and Palestinians, as well as Israelis, should demand this investigation.
New York City's methods of protecting immigrant students from being grabbed via the schools by deportation thugs, and why this is important for the rest of the students as well as for them.
*[The wrecker's] disregard for US constitution "a blitzkrieg on the law", legal experts say.* The wrecker is crashing ship into the foundation of checks and balances which is supposed to keep the US government democratic.
*[His] deliberate deluge of policies overwhelms resistance as he aims to weaken the legislature, analysts say.*
The persecutor's servitors in the Justice Department want to fire as many as thousands of FBI agents, nominally as an irrational act of retaliation because the agents worked on investigations they were told to work on — of the persecutor himself and of the fanatical supporters whom he whipped up to attack the Capitol.
It was not even their choice to work on those investigations, but they were lawful and were part of their job, so they did it. For the persecutor, justice as we understand the term is not part of any question.
I think that he wants Americans to be terrified of finding themselves obliged to disappoint or inconvenience him in any way, much as Russians would be if by luck they found themselves in Putin's way.
However, the ultimate aim of this may be to make it possible to recruit thousands of new agents who are slavishly loyal to the wrecker.
*[The wrecker] orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis.*
This is going to hurt farmers both in the short term and the long term. I hope they figure this out fast and start raging.
*Freed Gaza hostage told Starmer that HAMAS held her in UNRWA premises, her mother says.*
We have only indirect report of this, but it could be true. If it is true, what follows from that? To militarize a hospital is wrong; so HAMAS did wrong when it did that. Of course, HAMAS committed much worse crimes than that.
However, we cannot condemn UNRWA for "allowing" this, because given he circumstances UNRWA, which had no soldiers, could not have prevented it and maybe could not even have found out it was happening.
On the probable underlying causes of decreased air safety around National Airport in Washington DC.
*[The cheater] has refused to pay £290,000 in legal fees after [a lawsuit of his was] dismissed in UK, court told.
He has a history of stiffing people he as hired for the work they have done.
It is unwise to agree to work for him unless you have something on him to make him pay you.
Will the UK government have the guts not to allow him to enter the UK until he pays these legal fees?
The US Office of Personnel Management has been filled with people linked to the muskrat's companies, and to Palantir.
In effect, he can now control the entire US government personnel management, which in practice means he can get rid of anyone who remains loyal to the country instead of to the empire.
Ironically, Tulsi Gabbard may be rejected as the nominated director of national intelligence for steadfastly defending principles of liberty that I support too: defending Edward Snowden and condemning the twisting of the law so as to surveil Americans without a warrant.
See How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?
US citizens: call on state governors to pass climate defense laws.
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov If you phone, please spread the word!
The UK minister who decided in favor of expanding Heathrow airport cited a report for "evidence". The report was commissioned by Heathrow airport.
Citing lobbying material without saying that's what it is is a typical technique of politicians in bed with business. Doing this on an issue so important for curbing global heating, and that has attracted so much public concern already, shows how much the Labour Party is now under the thumb of business.
It caused this by choosing "growth" rather than "tax the rich".
Perhaps the party should change its name to "Tory Lite".
*The Democratic National Committee Is Undemocratic. That's by Design.*
The 448 members of the committee are supposed to act as its board of directors, but they are not given enough information about the organization's spending make informed judgments about it. And until recently the organization wouldn't tell them how to get in touch with each other.
Of the four candidates for chairman, only one (Shakir) would give The Intercept an interview. He was headed the Sanders campaign in 2020. The DNC strongly opposed Sanders, and changed the schedule of primaries for 2024 in a way that gave the Sanders campaign little chance to catch on.
*Environmentalists urge [UK Chancellor] Reeves to rethink plans for airports and roads.*
This is more of the inevitable consequences of surrendering to the rich instead of taxing them more.
Some distinguished physicists say that some teams have made cold fusion reliably generate useful energy, at a small scale but steadily.
*Make no mistake: Israel’s far right is planning for a Gaza without Palestinians.*
The coastal inlets of Galicia are a prized source of mollusks — except that many species' populations have collapsed.
Even in some pristine forests in Ecuador and Panama, bird life is declining steadily. Most species have lost more than half of their 1980 population density.
No concrete cause has been found, but scientist suspect it is due to ecological disruption due to climate.
New Zealand has surrendered to blatant irrationality by recognizing a mountain as legally a "person". This is almost as absurd as recognizing a corporation as a "person".
Here comes the explicit targeted political repression we have expected fro the persecutor — aimed at those opposing the bombardment and siege of Gaza, and calling them "antisemitic".
*Order asks agencies to explore ways to deport activists, including students with visas, who engaged in protests.*
This repression started occurring while Biden was president, but this makes it more painful and explicit.
Jewish Voice for Peace is fighting the repression.
Instagram is obscuring or hiding the groups that help Americans find abortion pills.
We are entitled to hold Zuckerberg responsible for this. It is understandable given his decision to become a vassal of the corrupter, but that is no excuse for it.
An Iraqi exile in Sweden was murdered while on trial for burning a copy of the Qur'an.
I don't express my disapproval of movements or views by burning their symbols. As a form of criticism, it is a rather inarticulate.
However, doing that merely offending people, and offending anyone is part of human rights. To punish people for defying terrorist threats is to legitimize those threats.
UK thug departments were punished by a court for illegal surveillance and unjustified arrest of two journalists, who published leaked information that accused thugs of colluding with the Protestant terrorists in Northern Ireland.
The newest big-time bullshit generator, competing with the famous US bullshit generators, is made in China.
All of them are generally called "artificial intelligence" by their developers, but none of them qualifies as "intelligence", because they are unable to know or understand anything.
The Chinese system is subject to strict Chinese censorship; there are many sensitive topics it will not say anything about. I've heard that Google's bullshit generator is subject to US right-wing censorship.
*Support letter for RFK Jr’s confirmation includes signatures of [medical] doctors with suspended or revoked licenses.*
Just the sort of person to be involved with the medical disinformation that fascinates Republicans.
The wrecker told voters, before the election, that he would reduce the price of groceries.
His subsequent comments suggest that he did not understand the meaning of "groceries".
*With 47% approval rating [the wrecker] is only president to have sub-50% reading at start of term, Gallup poll indicates.*
This makes sense given that, according to Greg Palast's investigation, less than half of the votes that US voters tried to cast were for the wrecker.
The wrecker's plans for Greenland would allow his business barons to trash the environment there, and privatize the land.
By his brazen demands to seize (he says "buy") Greenland, the bully has put European leaders in an emotional vice. It is less frightening to ignore the threats than to confront them.
Global heating seems to be helping rats breed in cities.
The wrecker's shutdown of all foreign aid is causing disasters around the world. Here's news about one crucial system whose absence could cause disasters in various countries.
The shutdown is nominally for 90 days only, but there is no telling how much aid will actually resume.
Louisiana has pressed charges against a New York doctor who by telephone wrote a prescription for abortion medicine for a woman in Louisiana.
I expect this case will come down to a question of which state has jurisdiction over the doctor's actions: the state where the woman was, or the state where the doctor was.
But I fear that the persecutor will direct the FBI to intervene to aid Louisiana cops in grabbing the doctor from New York and taking her to Louisiana. That is just the sort of bullying that he would love.
*Young women turn to sterilization as [the persecutor] intensifies war on reproductive rights.*
Robert Reich conjectures how the wrecker's strategy and goal.
The goal *is to concentrate ever more power in [his] hands, so he can concentrate ever more wealth in the oligarchy's hands.*
The wrecker has, it seems, crushed the principle that government employees owe their first loyalty to their country and their mission, rather than to the president.
Without that principle, no government can be honest, and it is unlikely that any employees hired after this will want to try.
Some of these derelictions of duty could perhaps still be overcome by judges. Not all judges appointed by the corrupter in his first term will reject this principle now. If those prosecutors sue to get their jobs back, they may win. And that would help, for the long term, to preserve that principle.
But it won't make a big difference right away, because if they win and get their jobs back, I expect they will be given no work to do. I suppose they expect that too. I hope they sue anyway.
Little talk of resistance from Democrats: *Why people are warning about "Vichy" America.*
The wrecker arbitrarily blamed the Washington DC plane-helicopter collision on government diversity polices. Simply using it as a way to attack them.
In fact, the cause seems to have been the opposite: an insufficiency of a kind diversity of staff at that moment. *An initial Federal Aviation Administration report obtained by US media organisations said staffing levels were "not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic."*
*Crash called "avoidable", with lawmakers and residents previously sounding alarm about region's crowded skies.*
The Australian government lobbied UNESCO and other countries to prevent listing the Great Barrier Reef as "in danger".
This represents a decision to cover up the danger from global heating and increased CO2, rather than protect the reef itself.
This list of suggested nonviolent ways of sabotaging an organization from within.
was published by the US government during World War II. People are suggesting it may be useful against the fascists who took over the US government by attacking its election system.
Gig payment hiring for nurses makes them work for less pay (and thus pressures them to accept overload as a normal state of affairs).
Google is forcing its bullshit generator, Gemini, on many users of Gmail without asking them, and not even offering the users a way to deactivate it.
Workplace IT managers, whose employees are forced to use Gmail, can get it turned off after a laborious procedure, followed by waiting — the darkest of dark patterns.
The persecutor can't prosecute General Milley (for blocking him from illegally sending soldiers to attack peaceful protesters), so he is trying various underhanded means that he does not have to justify.
Removing his security guard detail is a way of deniability facilitating his murder. The persecutor is aware that his violent fanatical followers try to murder anyone he labels as an enemy, and they will now expect him to pardon them. But I don't that would be grounds to convict him of participating in the murder.
The president can't pardon people for state crimes. If Milley goes to live in a strong blue state, that will help thwart plans to kill him.
Robert Reich warns that the "buyout" scheme for federal employees is intended to help the corrupter install right-wing extremists as replacements.
It is probably a swindle, too. If you accept the deal, you may get stiffed, left with no job and no buyout. Both the cheater and the muskrat have done this before.
The wrecker's new Secretary of Transportation has canceled a coming strengthening of fuel efficiency standards. That will lead to transfer of more money to fossil fuel billionaires, but a shorter time for civilization to survive.
*[The persecutor] Hit With New Lawsuit for Funneling Sensitive Info [about federal employees] to [the muskrat].*
DeMentis is wiping out a second Florida state university that is liberal-leaning.
The first one still exists in name, but the old facility and students left and what remains is an ideological right-wing propaganda mill.
Other right-wing states may imitate this.
Israel is planning to shut down all UN aid to Palestinians, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.
A cease-fire condition that allows aid to be delivered to Palestinians would be pure bullshit if Israel can get away with disregarding it. I suppose the cease-fire would collapse at that point and Israel would start killing thousands more Palestinians.
*Experts suggest that replicating the conditions that saw neighborhoods burn to the ground may not be the best policy.*
Helping the people who have been rendered homeless is one issue and rebuilding in a similar way in the same place is another. It would be reasonable to change building codes; anyone building in fire-prone zones, whether perse lived there before, would thus be required to build a home that won't burn.
*"It's a death sentence": US health insurance system is failing, say doctors. Firms including United [Hellthcare] have denied basic scans and taken months to reconsider, physicians say.*
The wrecker announced 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada.
I suggest that those countries respond by declaring sanctions on the muskrat and his companies. That could provoke friction between the wrecker and the muskrat.
The maladministration stated it was withdrawing the memo that blocked nearly all US government payments in programs to help non-rich people.
Then it "clarified" that only the memo was rescinded, not the policy.
A judge thereupon ruled that this was meaningless bullshit, and that the policy was indeed canceled.
*The Deadly Consequences Of [UnitedHellth]’s Unchecked Growth*, and the company's influence over judges.
Richard Stallman will give a talk at
National Institute of Technology, Surathkal
Hall Complex - C (LHC-C)
Western Campus, NITK Surathkal
Surathkal is near Mangalore.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Mike Huckabee, the extremist nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
The wrecker illegally fired a member of the NLRB, leaving it with no quorum and therefore deactivated.
By hook or by crook, he will support the billionaires against American workers.
As part of the War on Human Rights, the wrecker has given permission for state and local book-banning in schools.
Greg Palast: *Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.*
*Harris cheated out of 3,650,000 votes by these Jim Crow tricks. 4.7 million voters purged. 3.2 million registrations rejected. 2.1 million mail-in ballots tossed.*
*Europe "must not be bullied" by Trump and Musk on tech laws, NGOs say.*
I think the EU should resist the bullshitter on every demand that would strengthen his power.
Bullies generally exaggerate their strength and pretend to be invincible. But they always have weak points too. The first surrender makes the bully stronger — so almost always you should resist the first demand/threat.
The only exception that occurs to me is when you are rapidly building your strength and have real reasons to think you will have a better chance of winning if you wait for that.
A prominent CNN critic of the wrecker quit after the network moved his show to midnight.
We have to conclude that this was an attempt to win the wrecker's forgiveness for showing criticism of him to so many people.
Oklahoma plans to demand proof of citizenship (or legal immigration status) from children who should go to school. In addition to denying to unauthorized immigrants' children, many US citizens would have trouble proving they are citizens.
Worse, the US House of Representatives is about to vote on such a voter-id bill.
Massachusetts voters: call on your state representative and state senator to pass the Location Shield Act (HD2965/SD501) and the Dignity Not Deportations Act (HD3596/SD1107).
Each of these bills does far less than what is needed, but each is a step forward nonetheless.
*Fighters [who belonged to PISSI] in Syria could escape from prison with help from the wrecker's stoppage of US aid to the forces keeping them in prison.
*The year the rainforest dried up: how the climate crisis beached Brazil’s floating communities.*
Not long ago, scientists warned that global heating and deforestation were going to eliminate the rainfall that keeps the Amazon rainforest in existence. The death of so many trees will cause a big shot of greenhouse gases that will hasten climate disaster world-wide.
The wrecker fired 17 inspectors general, apparently illegally.
A new computer program heuristically detects medical insurance's automated denials of coverage.
This implies an arms race. I tend to suspect the insurance companies will win, that it will be easier to fool whatever the detection program looks at than to overcome its disguises. What is really needed is to change the laws or structure of the insurance system.
*[International Criminal Court] chief prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for Taliban leaders over persecution of women.*
I did not know the ICC had the ability to prosecute crimes like this. Bravo!
I imagine that this step will make the election-riggers in the US hate the ICC even more, but since they already hate it as hard as they can, I doubt they can escalate their hostilities.
Islamic law is cruelty and injustice to women (and also sometimes to men).
*Big oil spent $445m in last election cycle to [politicians] report says.*
A lot of this spending was on helping to influence (or fool) the public to vote for them.
Yet again, Labour retreats from a planned tax increase on the rich in response to their threats of pushing back.
The right way to respond is with a counter threat. One idea is a special tax on income from British business that goes to non-taxed stockholders?
Bernie Sanders: *The simple truth is that [the wrecker] ignored almost every major issue facing this country’s working families in his first speech.*
A crazed young man with no specific political goal or views murdered several children. The government wants to label such people as "terrorist" although that stretches the definition of "terrorist" to the point of meaninglessness.
Terrorism means violence (or threats of violence) against noncombatants for some cause (regardless of which cause). That is a coherent concept, so terrorists thus labeled on the basis of that definition have something important and clear in common.
But once you include people who engage in violence for no specific reason, the set becomes so broad that it ceases to be coherent.
Some cops want those murders to be declared terrorism because it would allowed them to question the suspect for longer.
They advocate stretching the word "terrorism" to be arbitrarily stretchable. That would make the word entirely meaningless.
Should they have been allowed to question that suspect for longer? I have no opinion on that; I am not sure what the possibilities are. But if the UK would like to give cops more time to investigate certain kinds of suspects, it should do this in a way that avoids causing collateral damage to the word "terrorism".
*Serbian students block Belgrade road junction to demand that the government do its job.
In Britain such protesters would be sentenced to years in prison for that. Curbing global heating is necessary for the survival of civilization, so it is part of the government's job.
*Water companies in England "use greenwashing playbook to hide environmental harm."*
Privatizing water services was a terrible idea which has had only bad effects. It is very disappointing that Labour is not getting rid of them.
*"[The corruptor's] grifting tendencies": how [his] crypto ties could spur corruption.*
UK agencies that support the public were supposed to use chatbots to talk with people seeking help, but they canceled several because they don't work reliably.
It is a nice thing that they had the decency to cancel these, rather than forcing them on people.
Bulgarian border thugs are accused of blocking rescuers from reaching migrants who were freezing to death at the border with Turkey.
That constitutes murder, it seems to me.
A new UK plan for digital government identification via a snoop-phone app could lead to a de-facto mandatory national ID card.
The wrecker's sudden halt to payments for humanitarian aid is causing danger and suffering around the world.
US citizens: call on Congress not to let the Muskrat destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An irrational zealot like RFK Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services would have many methods available to wreck public health in the US, and as a follower of the bully, he would threaten them.
RFK Jr. is now trying to pretend he was never anti-vax.
This shows that his views on issues are calculated opportunistically, which means he might do anything whatsoever if it seems profitable. He is not fit to be in charge of anything.
Phone your senators and tell them this.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Deportation thugs raided Newark and arrested over 500 people, including US citizens as well as unauthorized immigrants.
They questioned a US citizen veteran and doubted the validity of his discharge papers. I wonder if he was, perhaps, Hispanic — could they have disbelieved him because of his race?
Will we find people put in deportation prison for days, or longer, because they did not have their papers at the time of the raid?
(Later): Indeed, they checked only people who looked Hispanic.
US citizens: call on the Big Banks to divest from fossil fuels.
Republicans want to give state officials power to veto specific peoples immigration into the US.
The saboteur in chief has purported to shut down government-funded activities that we all depend on. Americans have a chance to stop him through the courts. If that fails, many of us could suffer losses, sometimes even illness or death.
US citizens: call on Congress to provide immediate disaster relief for LA fires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Dr Oz.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Kalispell, Montana, is persecuting homeless people in every way it can find. It has made buses impossible for them to use by requiring passengers to identify themselves with credit cards — a vicious offense against all riders' privacy, even those who have homes.
The planned next step is to force a homeless shelter to close.
*[The persecutor] Halts Sanctions on Israeli Settlers, Threatens to Seize Assets of War Crimes Investigators.*
Robert Reich: *In effect, [the corrupter] is writing the rules for a [cryptocurrency] business venture from which he and his family are personally profiting. It could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars.*
All regulations that might get in the way are being changed or will be ignored.
I expect the direct victims to include the magats that will put money into them because they trust the corrupter. But we can all lose a lot if banks' holding those crypto-coins and it causes them to get in some kind of trouble.
It is also a great opportunity for indirect bribes. *Any wealthy person, corporation, or foreign leader wishing to curry favor with Trump now has a particularly easy means — just buy $TRUMP and $MELANIA cryptocurrency tokens.*
Greg Palast reports the details: if not for aggressive Republican voter-suppression, Harris would have won the popular vote and the electoral college.
The current US government is fraudulent and illegitimate at multiple levels.
*North Korea preparing to send more troops to Ukraine war, says South Korea.*
If Ukraine can use naval drones to attack the transports taking those troops from North Korea to Russia, it could destroy nearly all of those troops before they can fire a shot. Dictator Kim might abandon the idea after a defeat like that.
Canadian columnist Andrew Coyne: *[the corrupter's] Election is a Crisis like No Other, Not Only for the U.S. But For the World.*
*Bombs buried in Gaza rubble put at risk thousands returning to homes, say experts.*
Why would they move that rubble? Perhaps to look for corpses of their relatives.
As more and more plant species become endangered, botanical gardens are running out of capacity to handle many more species.
The US, under the Biden administration, has been keeping Russian dissidents who fled and asked for asylum at the US border in prison, calling them "threats to national security".
According to the article this was an automatic consequence of labeling people from certain countries, Russia, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, for "expedited removal". Why would Biden have done this? My guess is that they were suspected of being spies for Putin. But it is horrible that enemies of Putin got this treatment.
When Germany invaded Poland, Britain jailed all Germans as potential enemy agents, never mind if they had fled to Britain fleeing Hitler's persecution. It took Britain a year or more to realize that they were in fact allies, but once that was recognized they were treated as the allies they were, and welcomed into the war effort.
We can't predict what the persecutor will do to them. He may consider Putin's agents as his friends, but most of these people are not Putin's agents, and he surely regards anyone committed to human rights and resistance to tyranny as his natural enemy. So I expect him to try to expel them, or crush them.
*Just Stop Oil protester, 78, has jail term extended after no suitable [tracking] tag found.*
When people are fighting in the streets over food, these functionaries' children will at least have the satisfaction of saying, "I am proud of my parent for making sure the people who tried to save us from this were jailed for precisely the full time of their sentences."
Louise Lancaster, sentenced to four years in prison for a nonviolent climate defense protest, publishes her prison diary.
She mainly describes the injustice of the court and prison systems and how they treat many other prisoners unjustly.
*Mississippi police department hires officer fired over racist slurs to Latino man.*
In general, freedom of speech must include unfounded insults, because prosecuting people for that would lead to repression. However, a police officer must not make such insults, because an officer's job is to treat everyone with respect (even while arresting per). Someone who fails to do that is not fit for the job.
*Through the blizzard of edicts, see [the wrecker] for what he is: an autocrat reaching for limitless power.*
Deportation thugs raided Newark and arrested over 500 people, including US citizens as well as unauthorized immigrants.
They questioned a US citizen veteran and doubted the validity of his discharge papers. I wonder if he was, perhaps, Hispanic — could they have disbelieved him because of his race?
Will we find people put in deportation prison for days, or longer, because they did not have their papers at the time of the raid?
The UK canceled its Tories' special exception to permit use of a neonicotinoid pesticide.
Republicans in several states are pushing laws to criminalize having an abortion as murder, or prosecute people for helping anyone travel for an abortion.
CBS TV station fired its meteorologist for posting, on her personal channel, condemnation of the muskrat for his two slightly modified Nazi salutes.
I expect we will see many businesses join in trying to repress Americans for calling a Nazi a Nazi.
*Poland Is Warned: Welcoming Netanyahu to Auschwitz Memorial Would Be a "Grave Mistake".*
Poland, as a member of the ICC, ought to tell him it will hold him for the ICC if he comes.
Pamela Hemphill, convicted for the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, has rejected the pardon that the wrecker gave her for that act she has come to recognize as a wrong to her country.
New pun: Stallman-Org says we ought not do this and that.
The wrecker is now out to eliminate FEMA assistance, based on reasons that are false. FEMA has done a bad job under Republican presidents Dubya and the wrecker, but that is not a reason to eliminate it, but a reason to have a Democratic president.
Eliminating FEMA would especially hurt poor people and marginalized people, and those are the people that the wrecker wants to hurt.
US activities for dealing with bird flu are gravely handicapped by the wrecker's ban on travel by federal employees of everything related to public health, including research.
The ban also covers reviewing and publishing research. I forecast that it will eventually be replaced with censorship of research based on whether disinformationists like the results or not.
Americans, this stance will block research that can save your lives. American farmers, this will prevent efforts to save your cattle from bird flu.
The wrecker has stopped the CDC from publishing anything at all, including news about the spread of bird flu.
Is he aiming to cause panic, is his goal to make Americans sitting ducks?
US citizens: call on Congress to provide immediate disaster relief for LA fires.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Extreme weather failing to encourage political climate action, says activist Luisa Neubauer.* Right-wing disinformationist billionaires have convinced extremists that the real danger is from climate activists.
Why do the billionaires do that? My speculation is that they want to wipe out all of humanity except for a fraction that they convert into their serfs. I consider that plausible because of the meeting that Douglas Rushkoff reported.
Richard Stallman will give a speech in Bengaluru, India, Jan 27 11am–1pm
The speech will be at Jain University, as part of the Technology Future Summit.
Bengaluru is also known as the Silicon Valley of India, and as the IT Capital of India.
The West must stand by Ukraine now or fight Putin later.
It is better to fight him now with Ukraine's help, than later without it.
Congress is working on a bill that would call for deportation of any unauthorized immigrant who is accused of couple-violence — without a trial.
Another bill was recently passed would do the same thing for various accusations of crime, including theft. In both cases, a false accusation would dispose of whoever you don't like.
I would not be surprised if deportation thugs start inventing false accusations to get an excuse to deport someone fast.
Pete Hegseth, the wrecker's middle-finger nominee for Secretary of Defense, was confirmed by the Senate despite three Republicans who voted against him.
Senators who criticized him focused their objections on personal failings: drunkenness and "sexual assault", but I think what really disqualified him is support for Christianitist extremism. He might take steps to exclude Americans other than Christianist extremists from the armed services.
If it were a matter of excluding everyone but Islamist extremists, the danger of this would be obvious — but Christianist extremists are far more numerous in the US than Islamist extremists, so the threat of the former is far greater.
However, the accused personal shortcomings helped the wrecker demonstrate that he can get any candidate through the Senate, no matter how hostile to American political, constitutional, legal or diplomatic traditions.
"Sexual assault" is such a stretchable term that it is incoherent to form a judgment of a person's conduct or character or fitness for office based on that. What was perse actually accused of? Was it a grave crime, such as attempted rape, or was it merely annoying, such as a stolen kiss? Or something in between? If you accuse an act that is grave, call it by a name that reflects the gravity of the act, and I will consider the accusation with the appropriate gravity. If it might be just a stolen kiss, I will treat it as a minor social faux pas.
The persecutor has cancelled the government bodyguards for Anthony Fauci. This means he will be in danger of assassination by terrorists stirred up by the persecutor's own rhetoric. I expect the persecutor to crow if Fauci is murdered.
Likewise for officials who authorized in 2020 the US's assassination of an Iranian general on orders from the wrecker himself.
If the wrecker controlled "the force", he would be using it to kill his underlings, like Darth Vader.
Robert Reich calls this his "vengeance machine".
In Slovakia 2% of he population rallied to demand that the Putin-loving prime minister resign. That is comparable to a rally of 6 million Americans.
He responded by claiming that only new elections can result in a change in the government. Well, have new elections.
*With both Israel and Hezbollah having violated the [ceasefire] agreement [between them], people in Metula fear the fighting will resume.*
*Indiana bill seeks to end tax breaks for non-profit hospitals that overcharge patients.*
This is a clever tactic, and I can imagine it might work.
One of Iran's vice presidents has stated his wish for a new non-nuclear agreement with the US,
saying he hopes the divider will be willing to make one.
The persecutor's acting Attorney General threatens to prosecute officials who do not cooperate with the persecutor's mass deportations.
The reason I don't call the persecutor by name is that he seems to be a narcissist, getting pleasure from people's saying his name. We can avoid giving him that pleasure — please join me in depriving him of it.
The persecutor has reinvigorated the Ku Klux Klan, which is now directing hatred at immigrants rather than at blacks.
MIT critics of Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza, condemning punishment of student protesters, have reported on years of funding of MIT projects by Israel.
The persecutor has ordered the Justice Department to investigate "weaponization of the federal government", which is ironic because that's exactly what this investigation is meant to do.
*New Report Shows That Work Requirements for Safety Net Programs Fail to Boost Employment*.
To simplify the matter few people make a choice to forego working if they are poor enough to be eligible for these aid programs.
The wrecker banned US support to foreign medical organizations that do abortions.
This rule goes far beyond removing US support for abortions in other countries. It also refuses support to organizations that perform a broad range of medical treatment unless they agree to stop doing abortions. Most of them refuse to be bullied, but the result is that the US boycotts their other medical activities.
It appears that Labour in the UK has chosen short-termism (prioritizing economic growth) over long tern survival (reducing greenhouse gas emissions).
The basic decision to reject taxing the rich tends to lead to a bouquet of short-term optimizations that dump the costs on climate disaster over the next few decades.
California required large "fast food" chains to pay a $20 minimum wage, disregarding executives who predicted that would cause job losses. Indeed, no such result occurred.
It is indeed possible for raising the minimum wage to reduce employment. But executives have an interest in stretching the truth about this, so politicians should get their advice from someone who isn't biased against workers.
About a book on the "reactionary nihilism" of the right-wing extremists that have seized control of the USA.
Billionaires even in Australia (and I presume everywhere else) are sucking up to him, asking for what will make the US a better "investment opportunity."
I urge Australians to elect politicians who will thwart those billionaires' desires, and make Australia a good place for all Australians to live in.
A billionaire whose loyalty the corrupter has bought is disloyal to per country.
Meanwhile, *toadying Brits finally come to realize [the corrupter] has no need of them.*
The persecutor wrecker lifted the US sanctions on violent Israeli extremists who carry out pogroms against Palestinians, and revived sanctions against the International Criminal Court.
When he said that he wanted to be a "peacemaker", maybe it means that he wants to make deserts and call them "peace".
The wrecker took the US out of WHO again. This was not only foolish, it was based on false "facts".
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Kochi, India, Jan 27 at 11:30, at Jain University, as part of the Technology Future Summit.
(See link for address information.)
*All the artifice about corporate responsibility, echoed year after year at Davos and by the Business Roundtable and in business schools, gave lawmakers who wanted one an excuse to sit on their hands, because, they’d say, big global corporations can be trusted to do what’s right.*
But now that US megacorporations and the US government have conclusively rejected those goals, Davos no longer claims to be interested either.
The economic shifts that replaced good quality furniture in the US with lousy stuff that won't last correlated with outsourcing.
Israel agreed in the ceasefire deal to allow more aid to reach Gaza. In effect, this proves that Israel was besieging Gaza all this time, limiting the flow of aid.
Of course, we who condemned this had no doubt that that was true.
[The wrecker's] refugee ban "strands Afghans endangered by US withdrawal." *More than 1,600 people eligible to resettle in the United States are waiting to flee Afghanistan and Pakistan, say advocates.*
This is a betrayal of faith, but the wrecker has committed much bigger betrayals and plans to betray the most basic principles of the US.
*Palestinians begin search for Gaza's missing as they return to ruined homes.*
Many people know that relatives were inside a certain building when it was bombed and then collapsed. Those relatives are listed as missing but they are almost surely dead.
The city of Beit Lahia has been turned entirely into rubble. I think that is true of a lot more.
*South Korean democracy was nearly toppled by its president. It was saved by its people.* Imagine Koreans, years from now, celebrating Impeachment Day as the day that Koreans saved democracy. Since we are imagining, we can imagine a future in which they celebrate all across Korea.
*Eighteen Democratic-led states sue over Trump birthright citizenship order.*
The UK Labour government is going soft on monopolies, or at least proclaims that it will.
This is an example of the sort of harmful consequences that follow from deciding not to tax the rich. The UK need money to fix all the things that the Tory government broke and the only way to get enough is to tax the rich.
Since it won't do that, it has to claim that it will stimulate growth so as to collect more taxes. That effectively requires letting businesses get away with various sorts of unfairness: they threaten that they won't grow unless they are given privileges, such as unfair competition.
British thugs arrested two members of parliament, along with other people, for breaching rigid customized restrictions on where they could go while protesting Israel's attacks on Gaza. One was Jeremy Corbyn.
The thugs are treating protests in support of Gaza as antisemitism, which they are not.
The stories of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel display a pattern of arbitrary and exaggerated grounds that resemble those of supporters of Palestinians safety and rights arrested in the US.
*A third of the Arctic's vast carbon sink [tundra] now a source of emissions, study reveals.*
Personal contact in the context of work helps knit society together and helps both the workers and the clients.
The muskrat made Nazi salutes, but fudged them enough to make them just barely deniable. I expect that he planned them, both the salutes and the deniability. The deniability is a way to make a monkey of people who condemn support for Nazis, saying "I can get away with doing this and then lying about it."
Right-wing extremists have no difficulty in recognizing the muskrat's variation of a Nazi salute as endorsement of them. We should not let him off the hook for his quibbles.
*[The corrupter] reclassifies thousands of federal employees, making them easier to fire.*
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to reject Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
In an incremental act of cruelty, the cruel bastard ordered the deportation police to arrest people at churches and schools. Perhaps medical clinics too.
Note how he uses "criminals" as if everyone being deported were guilty of a crime. He claims they will use "common sense", but we know that we can't trust them to do that.
I think this will create backlash from parents whose children were traumatized by arrests in their classes.
The hater has eliminated all possibility of requesting asylum at the US-Mexico border.
The establishment of the right to request asylum was a great advance in international respect for those who flee oppression. Not everyone who comes to or crosses the border is eligible for asylum, so it is necessary to evaluate each case. But those who are qualified should be given asylum.
The bullshitter claims to have signed executive orders to reduce inflation and reduce energy costs, but did not say just what they do.
I have a hunch that they consist of encouraging more fossil fuel extraction, and more pipelines to transport them, and ceasing to require more electric cars. That could reduce the price of those fuels, for some years, while making global heating worse in the medium term. In a decade or two, staying alive would become more expensive, and also less likely.
Some in the UK think that incapacitated people suffering from anorexia who are incapacitated to the point that they cannot commit suicide on their own should not be allowed help in doing so.
I am not an expert, but I tend to disagree. If a person's life is suffering and perse persistently asks for death, we should not forcibly prolong per torture.
*Austria's "firewall" against the far right collapsed. Could the unthinkable happen in Germany too?*
How can one reconcile the bullshitter's stated wish to be a peacemaker with his demand to seize foreign territory?
It is silly to try. They are both bullshit, meant primarily to energize his supporters or spread anxiety among everyone else. Neither one necessarily has any seriousness in it.
In the US: write to the CEO of John Deere to tell the company to stop closing factories and moving production to low-wage companies.
I included text to support the right to repair tractors:
Turning America farmers into digital serfs with the restrictive systems in your tractors is even worse. Farmers deserve the right to fix and change the hardware and software of their tractors.At this rate, John Deere is making more detractors than tractors.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code by editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Useds of Facebook or Instagram: call on Zuckerberg to restore fact-checking in Facebook and Instagram.
US citizens: call on Congress to rein in political spending — pass the Democracy for All amendment.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Robert Reich: *How we get rid of the American oligarchy.*
*From the US to Uganda, how climate activism has been criminalized in 2024.*
After the Democrats have joined up for repression of climate defense while somewhat in power, we can't expect them to do much to defend against what the billionaires' vassals will try to do.
"Wanted" posters about medical insurance executives are great HHOS.
Drone-manufacturer DJI has decided to put an end to including software to forcibly prevent the drone from flying into prohibited areas.
That proprietary software was the spacial equivalent of DRM, and that made it unjust. I have nothing against the rule to keep one's drone out of prohibited areas, and except in purely theoretical special cases I would willingly comply with it. But the idea that someone could take control of my drone, perhaps by remotely altering its geofence, is repugnant.
I suspect that all the rest of the software in those products is nonfree also. My conscience would rebel at having one of those drones, either before or after the recent change.
Fortunately I have never felt any particular wish to have a drone.
Iranian popular singer sentenced to death for "blasphemy".
*Palestinian prisoners’ families say their houses were raided by Israeli forces.
[Also] Israel says it will prevent "public displays of joy" by families when Palestinians are released as part of Gaza ceasefire.*
Given the reports of released Palestinian prisoners who had been crushed by months of physical or psychological torture, these prisoners' families may hardly feel any job on seeing what has been don't to them.
(satire) Will Israel create a new Department of Palestinian Misery?
George Monbiot: The empire of the billionaires is likely to destroy the lives of millions of Americans, starting very soon, and no institutions seem to be ready to resist this. We can see in Argentina what it will do.
Special counsel Jack Smith believes that the corrupter would have been convicted of various crimes related to trying to steal the 2020 election, if his grabbing the presidency had not got him off the hook.
Greg Palast claims that the corrupter would have lost in 2024 if not for new efforts at voter suppression.
Will we get our democracy back?
Someone else is now saying that we must put an end to big tech's use of recommendation algorithms to get users addicted
(and, along the way, to push right-wing disinformation on them).
Religious fanatics in Texas are proposing many schemes to attack or block those who send, prescribe or help fund abortion pills for pregnant Texans.
I fear that the new saboteur in chief will encourage federal laws to support the fanatics.
The poor and meek do not escape If they conspire the law to break. This must be so, but they endure, Those who conspire to make the law.
Women might consider saying to their boyfriends, "If you want to go to bed with me, first give me a set of abortion pills just in case." But there is no obvious way for a man to obtain these prescription medicines and be sure they are not fake.
The Liberal Democrats, a UK political party, will advocate making a new customs union with the EU.
This is what Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party said he was in favor of.
The Liberal Democrats will explicitly say that the wrecker is a "threat to peace and prosperity" so *relations with him must be transactional*,
not breed mutual trust. That is simple rationality. However, accepting a plan to have a meeting with someone (Zelenskyy or anyone else) as substantial concession is self-delusion. The wrecker would be happy to have a meeting with Zelenskyy and say he will give half of Ukraine's territory to Putin.
* Britain’s crackdown on climate protest is setting "a dangerous precedent" around the world and undermining democratic rights, the UK director of Human Rights Watch has said.*
* The past year has marked the “absolute failure” of western democracies as champions of human rights around the world, the head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.*
* Ex-workers say [Zuckerberg's] declaring relocation of moderation and safety teams from California just a play for [the bullshitter's] approval.*
Bullshitting in support of him is another expression of support. It announces that henceforth Zuckerberg will say what pleases the bullshitter, regardless of the facts.
US citizens: phone your representatives and senators and call on them to protect funding for NPR and PBS.
They are far from perfect. They feel obliged to take a "balanced" view even in an unbalanced situation. But they will help resist fascism.
Older Britons are moving back to cash payment, but most young people can't summon up the will to escape from tracked digital payments. the first step is to make sure you carry a reasonable amount of cash. You can decide to have cash on hand, then each time you leave the house take a reasonable amount with you. After a week or two it will become a habit.
When you don't have enough cash to make a purchase, don't make a tracked digital payment. Instead, get cash out of an ATM and pay with that. The surveillance system will get less data about you from the ATM!
Don't just take out the amount needed for that one purchase. Withdraw enough money to last you for a few days. That way, for your next few payments you will have enough cash.
The UK sentenced activist Stuart Bretherton to a few months in prison for a forbidden protest that was entirely nonviolence and did no damage to anything. It is clear that his "crime" was nothing other than the act of criticizing the government.
I continue to believe that it is an error to be "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine".
We should be anti-atrocity, condemning the heinous atrocities of Israel and Palestine but not hating either people. I agree with Bretherton's conclusions, condemning the British government for its repressive imprisonment of nonviolent protesters.
* Julie Su, acting labor secretary, fears many of Biden’s pro-worker policies will be undone by the new administration.*
These policies are among those that led me to describe Biden as 1/3 progressive.
Which is a lot better than not progressive at all.
* Global heating means atmosphere can drive both extreme droughts and floods with rapid switches.
…The research found that almost everywhere on the planet has experienced between 31% and 66% more whiplash events since the mid-20th century, as emissions from fossil fuel burning heated the atmosphere.*
Scientific experiments show that most people in Britain underestimate the amount of racism that is actually present in society and underestimate how racist each one individually is.
According to the New York Times, RFK Jr wrote to the FDA in 2021 calling for cancellation of the approval of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Suggesting to Australians how to express their dissatisfaction with both of the major parties' weak attitude towards the advance of global heating disaster.
One of the Project 2025 fanatics told people that the "age verification" requirements are a sneaky way of moving to ban porn.
Reportedly the thought of disobeying the fascist leader made Netanyahu realize he had to accept Biden's ceasefire plan.
The plan involves a temporary truce and exchanging 33 female hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
*Bangladeshi and British politics collided to bring down Tulip Siddiq.*
(satire) *LAPD Arrests Everyone Who Lost Home In Fire.*
*People in Maga hats at meal last week [in Greenland] did not know [the grifter's] son and were invited off the street, hotel boss says.*
With those bullshitters, we should never assume any appearance of anything is not phony.
*[The bullshitter] Decried [sneaky FISA law surveillance on Americans] as a Deep State Spy Weapon. His Nominees Sure Seem to Love It.*
For more information about this, see
It is useless to point out the inconsistencies between the bullshitter's proclaimed "views" or "positions" and his specific actions to put pressure on him. He doesn't really believe those "positions". But showing these examples may help convince Americans not to trust his "positions".
*Scott Bessent Set to Serve Billionaires, Big Banks, and Big Oil as Treasury Secretary.*
Hegseth, the middle-finger nominee for Secretary of Defense, wants to bring back the base names that honor traitors who fought for the Confederacy. In addition he is accused of various sorts of personal misconduct.
It seems he objects to allowing honesty and patriotism to infiltrate the US military.
What Senator Ernst did shows that any time a Republican shows a sign of concern for proper governance, we cannot expert per to stand up to the Republican base who are fanatically loyal to the wrecker. As the article explains at the end, in the past Republicans could do so.
Rats display many signs of joy when given the chance to drive a rat-sized car.
Rats that have grown up with toys show mental flexibility: when given the chance to drive rat-sized cars, the rats with interesting environments learn faster.
*Joe Biden warns ‘oligarchy is taking shape in America’ in farewell address.*
I wish he had campaigned about this.
*Israel Agrees to the Ceasefire [deal that] It Rejected Months Ago, [since which time] Thousands More Died.*
However, there are reports Netanyahu is reneging on the deal already. (Sorry, I don't have a link for this.)
I have a suspicion that the wrecker asked him to delay the deal to give the wrecker a chance to claim the credit. But it could also be a matter of appeasing his extreme right-wing supporters who demand "total victory" and object to anything less.
The possible end of the war in Gaza sees Iran's Islamist allies greatly weakened, and the legitimacy of Israel's cause cast into deep doubt.
Richard Stallman will give a talk in Montpellier, France Jan 20 at 18:30
Location: Salle du Conseil de l'Hotel de la Métropole, à Montpellier.
Language: En français
Streaming: https://live0.emacsconf.org/rms-20jan25.webm
US citizens: call on Attorney General Garland to release the report of the investigation into alleged crimes by the corrupter.
*With few exceptions, the news has shied away from showing how the unfolding climate crisis plays a large role in the [LA fire] disaster.*
The US media have taken this approach ever since the effects of global heating became visible, and I pointed it out years ago.
*Israel admits soldiers used ambulance in raid on refugee camp.*
Disguising soldiers as medical personnel is a heinous crime because it risks raising suspicion against real medical personnel. Remember when the US disguised agents as polio vaccinators to search for Osama bin Laden? The backlash against that spurred rejection of polio vaccination in part of Pakistan. Twenty years later, that part of Pakistan is the only region where the vaccination campaign has not been completed.
Experts warn that [the fascist leader] could direct DoJ officials to scale back enforcement of Voting Rights Act.
United Hellth pursues denial of coverage so assiduously that its agent phoned a surgeon to argue an operation was not necessary, just as she was in the process of performing it.
The saboteur-in-chief's supporters are trying to give the right-wing global heating denialists power over the National Climate Assessment, hitherto directed and made by climate scientists.
*To resist the climate crisis, we must resist the billionaire class.*
The recent UN human rights ruling affirms the principle that Australia bears full responsibility for the offshore immigration prison it established with the help of Nauru, and for the harm that it does to the prisoners.
The magats seek to crush America's spirit of civil solidarity, and uses disasters as an opportunity.
Here's an example.
The muskrat seeks to drown out serious discussion of policy issues by screaming distraction so loud that most journalists won't disregard it.
*[The fascist leaders] crave your attention. Don’t give it to them.* Denounce them once in a while for this, then go back to concentrating on the issues that really matter.
What science concludes about making protests more or less effective.
The UK's "internet safety" law makes operating a specialized noncontroversial nonsexual conversation forum dangerously unsafe. One site that supports hundreds of them is closing them all.
The way the word "content" is used in that article, as if it were a kind of substance or commodity, fills me with disgust every time I see it. If the issue were not pressing, I would feel like not linking to that article.
Iran's arrest of visiting Italian journalist Cecilia Sala seems to have been a response to Italy's arrest of an Iranian accused of making a drone attack on a US base in Jordan.
It seems that Italy made a deal with Iran to release both of them in order to rescue Ms Sala.
Iran seems to be using China's method for getting its agents out of jail: arrest hostages to exchange for them.
*Meta never cared about fact-checking. What it wants is friction-free oligarchy.*
You can do your part to punish Facebook and its other disservices by not letting them use you.
Zuckerberg once apologized for feeding Americans Russian disinformation. Now, kneeling to the corrupter, he calls that part of Facebook's mission.
The major tech CEOs are eager to become vassals of the man who would be king of the United States.
Like Russian oligarchs, they may make billions with his approval, but they will be required to uphold his dominion over us.
*LA officials warn of price gouging as those displaced by fire seek housing.*
As fire losses gradually accelerate, they will gradually increase the national shortage of housing.
Tulip Siddiq, the UK treasury minister, has resigned because of criticism that her aunt was until recently the president/dictator of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina.
Atrocities in her name are reported continuing until the very day she fled the country.
For an official who makes important decisions to have a close relationship of any kind with an important foreign official is not necessary actual corruption, but the temptation it creates should be considered disqualifying as a conflict of interest.
A close relationship of any kind with a decision-maker in a major company should likewise be disqualifying.
South Korea's impeached president was arrested, with a big operation that met with only desultory resistance.
Perhaps his guards realized that their primary loyalty was owed to the country rather than to him.
Everyone: call on Meta to resume fact-checking, because facts are not decided by what more people think or whether one view's supporters can intimidate the other views' supporters.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to choose the people over Big Telecom — to save Net Neutrality
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
The Democratic National Committee does not publish its list of members. It identifies some members but not others.
Now the full list has been published with the help of leakers.
The states that ban abortion tend to have harsh policies towards single mothers and their children. Per year, around 150,000 more households move out of these states than move in.
Reportedly Sudan has fallen into a race war, with lighter-skinned "Arabs" killing darker skinned "blacks" — though people may also be killed or spared based on specific ethnic groups.
*Venezuelan opposition candidate accuses Nicolás Maduro of coup.*
Curbing global heating would make life healthier and more comfortable, as well as limiting climate disaster.
Talk in Lausanne, Switzerland Jan 17 at 18:00
Free software, and freedom in all your computing. Also, how I push the line in my own life. rue de Lausanne 64, Renens (School 42)
Language: The talk will be in English but I will accept questions in French or English.
US citizens: call on Biden to give clemency to Leonard Peltier.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The Israeli army has made a rule that interviews with soldiers can't show their faces or their names. This is to protect them from possible prosecution for any war crimes or atrocities they may be found to have committed.
(satire) *Jealous Trump Throws Own State Funeral To Upstage Carter's.*
*Elon Musk is a monster bully on the loose, but he can only get his way if we let him.*
Some of the houses destroyed by fire in Los Angeles belong to media celebrities.
The loss of a celebrity's home is not a worse blow than the loss of someone else's home. On the contrary, the celebrity may be wealthy enough to have another home elsewhere already, and perhaps can afford to rebuild what was lost, except for some valuable art.
But these celebrities may be in a position to make the public aware that "This can happen to you, and probably will happen some day if we don't curb global heating."
Former British soldiers who were in Afghanistan testified in a government inquiry. At least one testified there was a policy of killing any Afghan men who were encountered in the field.
A Japanese gangster is charged with trying to sell fissionable materials. (Also drugs, but that is not what's noteworthy.)
It seems to me that the crucial question is where it came from. What country that can make large quantities of fissionable material is selling them or losing them?
*Six [biggest] US banks quit net zero alliance before [the wrecker's] inauguration.*
There was always a chance that it would be hard to make the banks keep their commitments — that they were giving only lip service to avoiding global disaster. That chance has now become certainty.
I recommend moving your money out of those banks and into smaller ones. Those banks were also among those directly to blame for the 2008 fiscal crisis. I moved my money out of one of them around then.
They are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs. JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo
*The "winners" of the annual Shkreli Awards — named after notorious "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli and given to the 10 "worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare" — include a Texas medical school that sold body parts of deceased people without relatives' consent, an alleged multi billion-dollar catheter scam, an oncologist who subjected patients to unnecessary cancer treatments, and a "monster monopoly" insurer.*
21st-century fires are more dangerous because of several different effects of global heating, working together.
Tens of thousands of people have lost their homes in the LA fires. This will cause a regional housing shortage and make thousands homeless.
The corrupter has been sentenced, for 34 felony convictions, to … no punishment at all.
The Department of Justice has released a report on a new investigation of the Tulsa race massacre.
This report presents concretely the cruelty and hatred that racism inspires. It was not the only such racist mob attack in US history, but it was perhaps the largest. There are right-wing extremists today who would like to commit more.
Ironically, 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 which report on worse cases of bigotry, and the massacre surely is worse.
Robert Reich forecasts that the wrecker will use the LA climate disaster as an opportunity to attack California, which he hates because it votes Democratic.
The impeached president of South Korea lives in a fortress guarded by his personal guard corps, who won't allow cops in. The parliament wonders how to arrest him.
I suggest passing a law to cut off the salaries of his guards. Then they could allow only adequate but boring food in.
The Lancet estimates that Israel's bombardment of Gaza had killed around 65,000 people as of last June.
They estimate that over 60% of the dead were noncombatants.
This figure does not try to include deaths causes by the siege, or people buried under rubble. Palestinians have reported thousands of specific people they believed to be buried in the rubble of specific buildings.
*2024 was hottest year on record for world’s land and oceans, US scientists confirm.*
How building houses in areas of frequent fire within LA built up the conditions for worse fires.
It could be that leaving some areas vacant would help protect the rest of the city from fire. But not necessarily.
The end to fire suppression in certain areas would cause more frequent fire in those areas. Those would not directly harm anyone if the areas were uninhabited — but these fires have been spread by burning embers which can travel a long way. It could be that the frequent fires in those areas would spread each time to inhabited parts of the city.
I can see the question, but I don't know enough to propose an answer.
Building all buildings so that they have nothing flammable on the outside would make them safe. Eliminating all trees would help too.
Is anyone working on a fire-extinguishing robot? To have 10,000 of those in the LA area would be expensive, but it might be worth the cost.
US citizens: call on the FDIC to release findings from probes into executives of failed banks.
The United Nations human rights committee decided that Australia violated the human rights of refugees by sending them to Nauru, essentially for life.
This decision was published almost 24 years after Australia started sending refugees there. The committee warned other countries that they too would be violators if they shirked their responsibility to asylum seekers by outsourcing the handling of them.
A fire destroyed 5,000 buildings in Pacific Palisades, part of Los Angeles. 5,000 more buildings have been destroyed in other parts of LA.
Global heating is affecting the US to the point where Americans even in major urban areas are in danger. And the world overall, too.
The only way to stop this from getting steadily worse is to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Biden tried to make a start at that in the Inflation Reduction Act, but after 2021 Republican opposition solidified and he could not do more.
I expect the bullshitter to scapegoat Biden for not doing enough (never mind who prevented him from doing more), while pushing useless measures that won't reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
How heating-caused climate changes, and others, helped to trigger the Arab Spring in 2011, as an example of what global heating does to political situations.
It is illegal in the UK for thugs to retain photos of people who were arrested if they were not charged with a crime. But it seems that thugs regularly do this and use it for facial recognition.
Spain is considering a law requiring whoever posts fake news to publish a correction.
A law like this is good if it is not misused. The danger is that a repressive government is surely going to try to misuse it. The bullshitter often calls reports of truth that criticizes him "fake news". If the US had that law he would surely try to use it to censor truthful criticism of him.
Roman mining activities put a substantial amount of lead into the air, which shows up in Arctic ice cores. This could have reduced the average IQ by up to 3 points.
That decrease could have had an effect on society overall.
If this atmospheric lead arrived in the Arctic, it may have arrived in Asia and North America too. So the effect could have reached there too. However, it is also possible that the level of lead in the Arctic was less than in Europe.
Maybe it would have reached parts of Africa and South America too. I don't know enough to say whether this was likely to result.
An article calls on the Labour Party to further de-prioritize poor people in general to focus narrowly on voters who graduated university but couldn't get a decent job afterward.
It might be a good strategy for getting reelected, if we take for granted that Labour won't do what Britain really needs: to tax the rich and enable all non-rich Britons to have a better life.
An instigator of the racist riots in the UK some months ago has been sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.
The US government needs to make sure to do this reliably in response to efforts to intimidate voters or lawful election campaigners. If it had responded vigorously in 2020 when a mob of magats besieged a Democratic campaign bus, perhaps magats would not have been so ready to attack the Capitol on Jan 6.
Predicting that the wrecker will feel "second album pressure" to commit outrages that top what he did in the past.
Predicting that the corrupter will systematically undermine and weaken efforts to enforce US laws against corporations that break them.
*EPA to require municipal waste incinerators monitor for toxic emissions.*
This is a very good idea, and should have been adopted many years ago. I speculate that it was delayed by opposition by business.
*The Los Angeles wildfires are climate disasters compounded.*
Remember the insane rigidity of UK punishment of climate-defense protests, which is bent on repressing climate protesters and will punish them even for unintentional failure to comply. The root of this cruelty is a fundamental wrong decision not to recognize the magnitude of the crime that fossil fuel companies are committing.
*Kurdish general urges [the fascist] to leave US troops in north-east Syria.*
If Russia were still contending for power in Syria, Putin would have told him not to do this. But Putin may have little influence now over decisions about Syria.
The European court of human rights found Greece guilty of secretly carrying out deportations of refugees seeking asylum, in violation of European human rights treaties.
In January 2025, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram will replace fact-checking with a system of not-really-checking similar to what ex-Twitter does.
The announcement was made in ways that signaled the intent to become a loyal part of the corrupter's tame media organizations.
That article also argues that "social media" fact checking was never very effective. (I have no experience with it so I don't know whether that was true.) It further argues that result was inevitable, but I don't see that that claim is sustained there, so I am skeptical that anyone can know whether this is true.
See Facebook.html for many other reasons to refuse to be used by Facebook.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to reject H.R.9495, the bill that would make it easy to strip a nonprofit organization of tax-exempt status administratively, bypassing trial.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Climate crisis "wreaking havoc" on Earth’s water cycle, report finds.*
Most kinds of physical crime have decreased steadily in Britain (and likewise the US) since the start of this century. So why do most people think crime is going up?
A few kinds of crime, such as theft of portable phones and shoplifting, have increased, but the total has decreased enormously.
New pun: The swarm of gnats
Can the bully silence the US mainstream media? It looks like he is already succeeding.
*Firms that donated to Republican party avoided tariffs in [the corrupter]'s first term.*
Republicans don't miss a chance to extract the moral equivalent of a bribe.
Labour has retreated from another plan to accelerate decarbonization with a deadline date.
I can understand the pressure to do this. Such changes always cost money. They may reduce the income of some businesses, which generally oppose the change by cherry-picking and exaggeration. Once a government decides to keep the country poor by allowing some individuals to be giga-rich, it keeps encountering a "need" to abandon the attempt.
Pushing for requiring new hybrid cars to have chargers.
A Washington Post editorial cartoonist quit because, for the first time, she was told that a political topic was off limits.
The topic that was forbidden was that of billionaire executives going to Mar-a-lago to swear fealty to the corrupter.
More examples: Amazon, and "Open" "AI", have joined the parade of big companies that are donating to the glorification of the corrupter -- what the cartoonist was going to criticize. These donations are not, strictly speaking, bribes, since they don't go to the corrupter personally. But they are the moral equivalent of bribes. They demonstrates how the corrupter has made corruption normal.
*Burning waste is not the way to move the UK towards a circular economy.*
The Taliban are inviting foreign tourists, and there is no sign that they refuse in revulsion against the total oppression and segregation of women.
Jan 6 is a date that will live in infamy, unless the wrecker intimidates commemoration of it.
We need a name to help each other remember it by. The only one I can think of is "Coup defeat day". Watch out: the wrecker and the muskrat will try to celebrate the coup as heroism in a perverted idea of patriotism.
There are crucial differences between hardware and software, This will not come as a surprise to you, but based on them I conclude that it makes no sense under present circumstances to talk about "free hardware". What does make sense as a concept is "free hardware designs".
That article addresses many issues about freedom raised by digital hardware.
13 of the world's principal oil export ports will be put out of action by 1 meter of sea level rise, which could happen as soon as 2070.
However, if it gets as far as 1 meter of sea level rise, lots of other things will be going very wrong too. And the rise won't stop then. Even worse, oil companies could make replacement ports and go on flooding the world's coastal cities.
Ohio, ruled by Republicans, will charge a fee to look at thugs' body camera footage. That will interfere with checking whether the thugs were honest.
Two tourists from London went to Dubai with their families, and had a holiday romance. Then one was arrested because the other was not legally "old enough".
This is one of many reasons to stay away from Dubai.
When building "new towns", design them to be easy to live in without a car.
Reminder: don't assume everyone can ride a bike.
South Korea's recently impeached president is wanted for arrest for insurrection, but the question of how to arrest him has raised a constitutional crisis.
The UK government proposes to burn more garbage instead of some of the fossil fuels.
That produces as much CO2, as well as random mixture of toxic pollutants. So I think it is more harmful even than coal. As far as I can see, the only advantage is that the garbage is cheaper than fossil fuels. That suggests this is an example of short-term thinking by the government, instead of the long-term planning that is crucial for survival
Aside from the materials that can be put to better use immediately if separated, a landfill may be the best alternative. Not perfect: harmful substances (some toxic, some planet-roasting) do seep out. But they emerge over a much longer period, and a substantial fraction may not get out.
I wonder if the UK has a searchable national register of all proposed projects that would need planning permission. I think every country should have one.
The UK has authorized a cooperative to operate trains on the national train tracks alongside money-extraction corporations. But it won't operate until 2026.
This may prove to be a good solution. It will certainly treat its workers better. However, a worker-owned cooperative does not automatically treat passengers better, and there is no assurance that it will respect travelers' privacy more than any other train operator.
*10m trees to be planted in US to replace ones destroyed by hurricanes.*
If the hurricanes were a freak one-off event, this would correct the damage. But since they represent a new normal, there will be more hurricanes and many of these new trees won't live very long.
Generally, repairing damage from local climate disasters cannot substitute for curbing the global heating that regularly causes worse disasters.
Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas confronted Erdoğan, and now has advice for Americans about how to confront the corrupter.
The US deportation thugs hastily arrested and deported a US citizen's wife for missing an immigration appointment. She missed the appointment because she suddenly started to give birth to US citizen children.
Anyone who is so heartless and rigid as to make a decision like that should not be in a position to make such consequential decisions. Doing so merits punishment.
The punishment for the first such offense should be publicly begging for forgiveness. For the second offense, dismissal.
Thug departments in the UK were found to have surveilled journalists in recent years for investigating accusations of misconduct by thugs. How much more have they done this?
Unmarried foreign domestic workers in Salafi Arabia that have babies cannot ever bring their children home with them because Salafi Arabia punishes them for their parents' "sin" by forbidding them to leave. It also denies those children all normal rights, including schooling.
Many of these women are effectively trapped there too, because they will not abandon their children.
This shows the vicious nature of religious condemnation of sex and pleasure.
It seems incomprehensible that Salafi Arabia despises these children while forcing them to remain there. But perhaps the practical result is that they are compelled to spend their lives working underground at low-pay menial jobs. That must be convenient for powerful people in Salafi Arabia.
On filling the gap that makes for "existential boredom" with finding out what really matters to you.
One kind of thing that you might find really matters to you is making a free and just society. There are many ways of working for that goal, one of them being the free software movement. Maybe one of them will give meaning to your life.
Bringing Americans back, once again, to condemning the rich for impoverishing the rest of us.
The New Orleans terrorist murder endorsed fanatical Muslim views condemning music and lewdness, as well as alcohol.
Islam prohibits drinking alcohol in even small quantities. Mainstream Islam does not condemn music, but there is a long history in the Muslim world of extremist movements that prohibit all music. The Almurabitun and Almohad empires which conquered Morocco, and most of what is now Spain in the 11th century and 12th century, prohibited music. ISTR that the Taliban did so before 2001, and maybe they do that again today.
Most Muslims think that is crazy.
*6th Circuit Wrongly Rejects Federal Jurisdiction Over Essential Broadband Internet Access Services.*
This wipes out federal network neutrality regulations, unless the extreme court resurrects them. Those regulations are inadequate to really protect internet users' freedom, but it was better than nothing. Now there is nothing to limit how ISPs in the US restrict users for their profit.
When the corrupter was president before, he launched an investigation into congresscritters and staff, and some journalists, and the Department of Justice disregarded its rules for such investigations.
Suggesting that we are in an "anti-politics" age which leans towards irrational rage as the way to express resentment with politics.
Here is more about the murderer that the article refers to.
A magat got out of his car to violently attack a TV reporter working on the street in Colorado, saying he was attacking on behalf of the fascist leader.
It appears the attacker knew nothing specific about that reporter except his appearance, which indicated non-European ancestry.
Due to crush-the-poor economics, millions of Britons are suffering from serious vitamin deficiencies. Due to policies crested by Tories but not yet fixed by Labour, many cannot afford a balanced diet.
Awards for companies for especially cruel and nasty customer disservice.
I suspect that this behavior results from having too few human staff in charge of correcting such errors, so that they are under pressure to insist that whatever the computer did must be correct.
Robert Reich describes being squeezed between the contemptuous service of United Airlines and the contemptuous service of Hilton Hotels.
That is no coincidence. this is the natural result of the use of lots of computers that impose unpredictable decisions and complex rules and shaft the customer for any failure to satisfy them.
I think this is natural, though not self-evidence, consequence of digitalization — which means we should oppose it on general principles.
When Israeli soldiers attacked and wrecked the Kamal Adnan hospital, they arrested Dr. Abu Safiya (and other medical personnel).
If he is not freed soon, he could emerge mentally and physically damaged by torture. This has happened to another hospital director that Israel imprisoned.
Bernie Sanders: tasks that must be part of fixing the dysfunctional US medical system.
The list includes fixing other parts of society which tend to cause bodily or mental illness.
Activists are apologizing to Jimmy Carter for condemning him as "antisemitic" in 2006, when he described the occupation of Palestine as operating a system of "apartheid".
I did not read Carter's book, but when I saw that Desmond Tutu said the same, I trusted him, an expert on confronting apartheid, to judge the question right.
Israeli peace leader Uri Avnery went further: he compared Israel's efforts to make the West Bank empty of Palestinians to Hitler's efforts to make Germany and its conquests empty of Jews. I trusted him, one who had seen Hitler's repression of Jews close up as a youth in Germany, to judge the question right.
Remembering Jimmy Carter's work for peace and democracy after his term as president.
The reason he was not reelected seems to be that Republicans made a deal with Iran so that they would refuse to make a deal with the US government to free the US embassy hostages until after the 1980 election.
Carter was not a pacifist. He sent US troops to rescue the hostages. It was not his fault that some of the aircraft collided while on the way.
The muskrat published an article supporting Germany's extreme right-wing party, that has semi-underground Nazi sympathizers.
Hundreds of thousands of electric cars made by Volkswagen (including its subsidiaries, Audi, SEAT and Skoda) were reporting the car's movements to the company. Sometimes security breaches in the cloudy servers Volkswagen uses allow others to get the data too.
Bizarrely, the author is not outraged at Volkswagen's snooping, not that itself. Perse seems to think that would be ok, if only Volkswagen had taken care not to let others, even others unknown to Volkswagen, access the data too over the net.
And Volkswagen reassures the owners that where they went is not very sensitive information.
Of course, the most dangerous thing the car company can do with that data is give or sell it to the state, if the state is repressive (as many are).
If you own a "connected" car, be sure to engage a mechanic to deactivate the antennas that enable it to (1) receive GPS (and therefore remember the location for the next servicing) and (2) make radio transmissions (whose location of origin are tracked).
Owners of connected cars should organize to demand that manufacturers let the owners deactivate these malfeatures. If the manufacturer makes it necessary for you to trust them not to tell others where you went, it is already mistreating you.
It won't take long for the voters who voted for he bullshitter to see that what Republicans are doing is harming them terribly. At that point, they will organize to thwart and defeat Republicans. Therefore we can expect the Republicans to act forcefully to suppress dissent and protest.
It occurs to me that the law-twisting repression of protests on behalf of Palestinians will turn out to have been great preparation for repressing protests on behalf of non-rich Americans, non-white Americans, and unwillingly pregnant Americans.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the muskrat from attacking Social Security.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An anchor-drag trace on the seabed shows that the electricity cable from Finland to Estonia was intentionally attacked.
If the only ship that was in a position to do it at that time and place was the Eagle S, it must have been that ship. Other ships must have been crossing the cable, but if they crossed it at other points they could not have been responsible for the sabotage.
It seems to me that countries must armor their undersea cables to make sabotage physically more difficult. The method needs to be cheap compared with the cable. Not being an expert, I can only speculate. Putting a meter or two of boulders over the cable might work, or maybe concrete blocks with holes to lift them by.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Russ Vought as head of the Office of Management and Budget.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the next DNC chair to rebuild the Democratic Party for the working class.
*One of the few doctors still working in northern Gaza has been taken to an Israeli prison and his hospital shut down, his family believe.*
Destroying and shutting Gaza's hospitals is an atrocity by itself. It has to be deliberate, because otherwise the result would not be the same for all the hospitals.
Warning that companies that collect personal data might draw conclusions about what you might do in the future, and sell those predictions.
US citizens: call on postal officials to protect the Green Trucks project.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
Iran has intensified its persecution of "indecency" to the utmost degree. People who show themselves on recordings in a way the regime calls "indecent" can be executed. Anyone who fails to join in repression faces persecution.
Iran's regime has been weakened in international power rivalry by the fall of Assad, but that doesn't mean its repression is in danger of tottering. I can't foresee that it will fall, but I will cheer when it falls.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass protections for journalists before the wrecker takes office.
Was it just to conclude that Ibrahima Bah was guilty of killing the other refugees who were passengers in the overloaded rubber raft that he piloted?
I think it depends purely and simply on whether it is true that the smuggler gang threatened to kill him if he refused. If that did that, we can't blame him for obeying, given that his other choice was to say, "No, kill me and choose someone else." But if that was a lie and they did not force him, then he is responsible for joining in the crime.
That conclusion may be disappointing if there is no way to find out whether his claim is true or not. But that's not a justification for choosing a different conclusion.
I find his claim plausible -- I've read that (at least some) smugglers regularly force one of the customers to pilot the boat.
Palau established a large and effective marine protection zone, but population pressure is leading to pressure to reduce the size of it.
That is a short-termist "solution" which doesn't solve anything in the long term. Perhaps Palau needs to limit the numbers of people (inhabitants and visitors both).
The US accuses Iran of arresting Italian journalist Cecilia Sala as a hostage to procure the release of an Iranian accused by the US of violating sanctions on drone components.
I will not join in pressuring Italy or the US to trade that prisoner for Sala.
Apple Stupidity "summarized" BBC news with a grossly false statement.
Perhaps all publications partly written by bullshit generators should be required to display prominent warnings saying, "This was generated by a bullshit generator. Parts may be true; parts may be false."
Israel is forcing all Palestinians out of northern Gaza, piece by piece
*Several conservative critics of [the muskrat] were stripped of their verification badges on [ex-Twitter] after publicly challenging Musk's stance on immigration.*
They were defending the wrecker's broad stance against immigration even as he was dropping that stance and deferring to the muskrat.
It looks like the wrecker is being obedience-trained. After that, his followers will be compelled to learn to quickly follow changes in the party line, like "We have always been at war with Eastasia" from Orwell's 1984, if they don't want to be purged from the party.
They accuse the muskrat of censoring them on ex-Twitter, which may be a bit of an exaggeration since he did not block them. But what is more ironic is that he has done this downgrading to other users before — but since those were not right-wing extremists, the people complaining now did not complain then.
A study found that, on the average, one cigarette costs you 20 minutes of healthy life.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the American Stability Act, to make these economic changes to tax the rich and support the non-rich. I've copied this text from a campaign which I can't refer to because it requires nonfree JavaScript code.
*Establishes a Cost-of-Living Exemption for federal taxes equal to the median cost of living for a single adult with no children ($40,000/per year). The tax benefit is phased out at 200% of the Cost of Living Exemption;
Shifts the responsibility for the lost revenue onto taxpayers making more than $1 million a year by implementing a 3% surtax on incomes over $1 million, and an additional 5% surtax on annual earnings over $15 million;
Replaces the federal ‘minimum’ wage with a new Cost of Living Wage calculated as the median cost of living for a single adult with no children ($20/per hour);
Indexes the Cost of Living Wage to either annual inflation or to the increase in the average wage for all workers (whichever is higher);
Eliminates most exceptions to wage law which allow employers to pay some classes of workers less than others (e.g. disabled workers and “tipped” workers).
As it is currently constructed, our economy will guarantee that we become even more unequal ever more quickly over time. An increasingly global economy and the emergence of AI and other technologies virtually guarantees that this problematic trajectory will sink the nation if we let it.*
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to boycott the musket's slash & burn commission.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Starbucks's CEO to offer striking workers a decent contract.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to refuse to confirm anti-vaxers (including RFK jr) to any office related to medicine or public health.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
An illustration of the power-by-hook-or-by-crook attitude that the Republican Party encourages.
When a Republican from Florida leaves the House of Representatives, governor DeMentis sets an election for the replacement soon. When a Democrat left, DeMentis delayed the election of per replacement for most of a year so as to deny Democrats one vote for those months.
The article calls this "hypocritical"; if DeMentis claims to support free and fair elections, then it is that. But I say it is an example of Republicans' fundamental opposition to free and fair elections.
The bullshitter threatens to attack Panama and seize the Panama Canal, complaining about the high toll that Panama charges.
It is hypocritical to condemn gouging of shipping companies that pass these costs along to their customers, and not condemn companies that gouge ordinary Americans that can't do that — companies that provide food, medicine, and shelter.
Reporting on the 37 congresscritters or family members of congresscritters who traded stock in major military contractors in 2024 — while making decisions about how much to buy from them.
Rep. Tuberville has a good point, but we should use it in the other direction: let's discourage people from running for Congress in search of profitable conflicts of interest.
The bully's attempt to bully Panama, making use of accusations that China was taking over the Panama canal, provoked a firm rejection.
Is there any objective evidence to cite about whether there are Chinese managers or soldiers there? A priori I would expect that the bullshitter is bullshitting again. but it would be nice to cite facts.
Farmers and fishers in Brazil face a choice between facing the heat of the daytime, worse each year, and working at night for lower yields.
*Experts warn of mental health risks after rise in magic mushroom use.*
A few days ago an acquaintance of a friend offered me "a mushroom cookie" and it turned out to have psilocybin in it. I said no to it, as always. I have never tried any hallucinogenic drug, because I have always been afraid of damage from a "bad trip".
The repressionist is suing the newspaper that published a mistaken election poll and the pollster who carried it out. The poll reported that Harris was leading in Iowa by several points, because that's what the data indicated. Now we know that the election did not come out that way, but no one knows why the data misrepresented the situation. The pollster, Ann Selzer, can't figure out how the poll went wrong.
Robert Reich has adopted the term, "the muskrat", that I use to refer to Elon Musk.
I am glad to have promoted this term. However, it is a mistake to capitalize such mockery — that weakens the effect. Besides, the muskrat has far too much capital already. No one should be allowed to have that much power.
*WHO "appalled" by Israel attack on northern Gaza's last functioning major hospital.*
The attack did substantial damage. If it was not done specifically to endanger noncombatants, I expect the army could have found a way to achieve any valid military goal without much damage to the hospital.
US citizens: call on Congress to refuse to privatize the USPS.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden not to pardon the corrupter.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the For the 99.5% Act and tax billionaire dynasties.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the House Ethics Committee to investigate Rep. Richie Neal.
*It’s not bigotry to worry about migration — the latest figures tell a complex story.*
The article describes pluses and minuses of the rate of immigration into Britain, but I'd expect the same factors would apply in the US, more or less.
The UK sentenced 8000 convicts to indefinite sentences, meaning they might receive parole sometimes for a while but their sentences would never end. 6000 of them are still serving such sentences (I presume the rest have died). This was meant for criminals who had committed heinous crimes, but many were sentenced for repeated petty offenses.
Christian fanatics in some US states are trying to prohibit giving information about abortion access to people in those states.
Robert Reich describes the century of history that made most Americans comfortable, then under right-wing power impoverished them for the benefit of the rich.
*Climate crisis exposed people to extra six weeks of dangerous heat in 2024.*
I think that means that the average over the whole human population was six weeks.
*Five Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strike on van in Gaza, employer says.* Israel claimed the van belonged to Islamic Jihad. That could be because the news network they worked for is associated with Islamic Jihad. But that does not legitimize attacking the journalists.
US citizens: call on Congress to save PBS from Republican budget cuts.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Iran has jailed well-known Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who has been covering political developments there.
Iran has a history of accusing visiting westerners of spying.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Patients Before Monopolies Act.
The Patients Before Monopolies Act would force big medical conglomerates to sell off their pharmacies within three years. This would eliminate one of the mechanisms that UnitedHellth uses to gouge. But it would not affect the other mechanisms. So it would not fix the whole problem, but it would do some good.
More details about the Patients Before Monopolies Act.
Nearly all homes in Cyprus make hot water using solar power. As for heating the homes themselves, that is not needed in Cyprus.
How some US state universities are imposing repression on students and faculty who protested or want to protest against Israel's war crimes in Gaza and US support for them.
Vietnam will try to force all users of antisocial media platforms to identify themselves.
The right to publicly dissent is not totally safe in any country, so we must be firm in opposing any pretext to eliminate anonymous political expression.
The company Patagonia is suspected of passing money to political campaigns anonymously through a front company.
There isn't proof.
(satire) *Jets Fans Required To Sign NDA Before Leaving Stadium.*
After Republicans turned the Supreme Court into a mockery of constitutional rights, the Democratic Party in 2020 timidly did nothing to correct that. Now most Americans distrust the judicial system.
SpaceX covered up a serious system problem on its private manned space flight.
The problem was corrected after an hour and caused no lasting harm, but the fact that SpaceX covered it up shows we should not assume we can judge its capability based on its PR.
Robert Reich: Plutocratist Democrats such as Hakeem Jeffries cite Harris's defeat as proof the party was too progressive. This is one of the standard plutocratist ploys, and Reich cites instances from before I was old enough to understand.
America's root problem is plutocracy, and plutocratists will never fix that.
The EU executive proposed to end arms sales to Israel. The foreign ministers of the EU countries voted to continue them.
This has not resulted in actual pressure on Israel, but it got closer to doing so. And the ministers who voted to continue sales may be punished for this decision.
New York night-mayor Adams has adopted a right-wing hostility towards unauthorized immigrants since the election. Is he trying to trade political support for a pardon from the corrupter?
Robert Reich debunks 10 myths that have long been used to justify the dooH niboR economic system of the US. And one very recent political myth.
The US is asking the UN to increase the approved powers for blocking import of missiles and drones into Houthi ports.
The wrecker plans to rename Denali — is this an act of Denial?
*Louisiana’s prison system routinely holds people weeks and months after they have completed their sentences, the US justice department alleged in a lawsuit filed on Friday.*
I have a sad suspicion that the wrecker's attorney general, whoever it turns out to be, will drop this case, Most prisoners are poor, and their rights count for nothing with right-wing politicians.
Does Louisiana use privatized prisons? I would expect it does, and their owners could donate to right-wing politicians campaigns.
* The shift of Arctic tundra and other carbon sinks to carbon sources (Arctic tundra is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs, US agency says) reminds us that tipping points are largely irreversible on human timelines.*
Influential Americans are already selling their souls to the corrupter. They want to be on the winning side, even if the winning side is to replace the republic with an empire.
Arguing that the defeat in Syria, together with tightening of oil export sanctions, has weakened Putin to the point that he may lose power.
I tend to think that this article has some validity but maybe not to the extent it claims; that it overstates the difficulties Putin is in.
It also presumes that the wrecker regards Putin as an enemy and that he would deal Putin knockout blows if given the chance. I doubt that, because the wrecker has generally acted like a supporter and protege of Putin.
Not two but three major Japanese car companies are considering merging.
I suspect this was unleashed when Republicans removed Lina Khan as head of the FTC. Those companies have enough activities in the US that (I suspect) the FTC could have blocked them from merging, and Khan had the gumption to do it. Republicans work for the rich, especially the billionaires and near billionaires, so they see concentration of business as a victory.
A victory over whom? Over their enemy — the non-rich.
On the prospects of the Kurds in Syria, given the ascendant power of despotic Erdoğan in Turkey.
I do not have an ethnic prejudice for Arabs, for Kurds, or for Turks. Nor particularly against any of those ethnic groups. What wins my support for Rojava is that (from what I have read) it welcomes all those groups and endorses equal rights for them, recognizing human rights including religious freedom.
By contrast, the best you can say for Erdoğan is that he had carried out less persecution and less repression than Assad. He even started a civil war against the Kurds of Turkey so as to rerun an election and get more votes.
Could HTS take the step forward to recognize human rights as Rojava does? Perhaps then the two could form a united Syria that would deserve full support.
It would be a stretch, but we can hope for it.
US citizens: call on Congress to defeat the wrecker's plans to privatize the USPS.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A major British union requires members to sign confidentiality agreements in which they commit not to talk about harassment (or worse) suffered inside the union to anyone except the state.
Such practices abound in other sorts of organizations and businesses. The point is that unions are not immune to such injustices.
A group of Islamists burned a Christmas tree in Syria. Christians protested peacefully, and a leader from HTS said the attackers were foreigners and assured the Christians they would be safe as they carry out this old northern European pagan custom.
The custom is ironic, but what is important is that HTS is standing clearly for peaceful relations between religious groups, and against Islamism.
GM, Ford, and Toyota are giving the corrupter million-dollar gifts as the moral equivalent of bribes.
I speculate that he has passed the word that companies that want in on the gravy train must pay these not-officially-bribes.
Ex-rep Matt Gaetz was found to have violated many rules of the House of Representatives.
He clearly did not expect to be held accountable for that. So I wonder whether it was normal for congresscritters to do that.
Australia was gong to require airlines to compensate passengers whose flights are cancelled.
The airlines want this burden to fall on passengers, who are not as wealthy as an airline.
Having a flight cancelled is usually not much of a problem for me, as long as I get on another flight by the next day. Perhaps a good compromise would be to require compensation in the cases when the cancellation causes some concrete significant loss. For instance, if the delay makes it a waste for that passenger to make the trip, and person prefers to cancel it entirely, that passenger should get their money back.
The UK government is too timid to legislate to block the muskrat from buying the next UK election for right-wing extremists.
The ministers believe that the measures they were considering could backfire (because they could be bypassed). Well, look for stronger measures.
I suggest making it a crime, punishable by imprisonment, to participate in transferring money (your own or from someone else) or equivalent into UK political campaigning, except when it comes from UK citizens who reside in the UK, and the total amount coming from each one of them under a certain limit.
To de-fang antisocial media platforms, the UK should prohibit platforms from operating recommendation engines.
Both of these measures have the virtue that they block systems of influence that are available only to the rich, without explicit explicit political bias.
China's refusal of Sweden's polite request to investigate whether the Yi Peng 3 sabotaged undersea cables is effective corroboration or the suspicion that China was responsible.
Now the question is how to respond so as to prevent or deter further sabotage.
An initiative petition has eliminated the Missouri laws that banned abortion, but the fanatics also legislated a gratuitous and onerous licensing requirement that blocks opening abortion clinics.
(satire) *Texas Bans Sale Of Luggage To Pregnant Women.*
US citizens: call on Vanguard CEO to meet with front line climate campaigners affected by Vanguard's "investments" in fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to limit large campaign donations.
*Trump and allies are waging campaign against media to stifle dissent [, say] experts* *Lawsuits against Iowa paper and settlement with ABC signal beginning of aggressive legal action to silence critics*
An interview with Iranian filmmakers who made a film which is acclaimed outside Iran — they are on trial for it. They intentionally defied the religious censorship rules because they condemn the religion-imposing regime.
On the fundamental folly of electing someone radical for the sake of "shaking things up". You are likely to find perse "went to far" with radical changes you did not expect — and they make put your country in an inescapable trap.
A friend of mine spoke in fall 2016 of voting for the bullshitter to "shake things up". He changed his mind once he saw what the bullshitter did when in office — but by then it was too late for the US to reclaim the Supreme Court from its radical erasure of protections for the non-rich and the non-powerful.
*Sanders Explains Why He's Voting Against the New $850 Billion Pentagon Budget.*
Workers are on strike in 50 Starbucks stores.
A few years ago, there was a strike in a Starbucks store in Boston. I stopped by and offered to join the picketing, but that was impossible, because their ways to make the arrangements required the volunteer to run nonfree software.
It would have been easy for them to work for their cause without working unknowingly against the cause of computing freedom. But there was no way to get them interested in making such a change.
US citizens: call on Congress and state governments to regulate fracking more strictly, to protect Our Health and Environment
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*Joe Biden commutes sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates.* He has commuted their sentences to life in prison.
It is unfortunate that he left out three of them. Their crimes were grave — but no one deserves to be killed, not even a criminal who has committed heinous crimes. A CEO who has killed thousands of innocent people for profit deserves a long prison term, not execution.
US citizens: Support Sanders and call for a national universal medical system.
US citizens: call on the USPS board of governors to fire DeJoy.
*Global heating is already making [brick] kiln workers’ lives unbearable [in India]. And it will only get worse.*
40% of Earth's land is now arid. A substantial fraction has become arid due to global heating in recent decades.
This is a big part of why it will be hard to feed humanity in a few decades — and part of the reason we should have a lot fewer children.
US citizens: call on Amazon to bargain with its striking workers and give them fair wages and working conditions.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
Go to the place where it says `&redirect' and replace all the text from there to the end with `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to cease supplying weapons and funds for Netanyahu's war in Gaza.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject RFK Jr. as Secretary for Health and Human Services.
The Burmese military government has suffered another major defeat: it has lost control of Rakhine state.
The region was taken over by the ethnic army of a local ethnic group, which also calls itself Arakan and calls the region that too.
Arakan is also where the Rohingya live but the Arakan and the Rohingya are mutually hostile.
*Investigation by Senate Democrats found that Thomas accepted gifts and travel worth more than $4.75m since 1991.*
I see this as corruption, pure and simple. But now there is no hope of taking the court back from the control of the right-wing extremists, three of whom are known to be corrupt.
*[Medical] Insurance Execs Should Live in Fear of Prison, Not Murder.*
But that can't happen unless we pass laws to prohibit the existing medical megaconglomerates such as United"Ill"Health.
We should try to prevent killing of executives of United"Health", but the first priority should be to put an end to killings by such companies. Ideally a national medical system could put an end to both kinds of killings by replacing those companies.
The history of how United"Health" used vertical integration to grow like a cancer in US medicine, using its power in one aspect to gain control of another.
For instance, when its delays in paying clinics and medical practices for the work they have done push them into financial distress, United"Health" buys them up, working toward a monopoly on another level. And they can require patients to use only the clinics they own.
*At least 5000 people a week die in hospitals in the U.S. due to “preventable problems,” concluded a peer-reviewed study … in 2016.* The rate has surely increased since.
Not all such deaths are caused by United"Health" in particular; other similar companies surely cause some too.
*Bird flu sweeps through zoos with ‘grave implications’ for endangered animals.*
This variant of bird flue will probably die out in a few years, as they generally do — thing is to make sure no species are wiped out in the mean time. I gather zoos are vaccinating some of their animals, but the article does not make it clear why vaccinated animals are still in danger.
It may be helpful to wall off their enclosures with wire screens that no wild birds can fit through.
How the bully plans to strip the citizenship from naturalized citizens, even over minor harmless errors, with a funded program to de-naturalize as many people as possible.
The program would be led by people have absorbed the right-wing ideology of dehumanizing hatred for immigrants.
If the people targeted can't afford a lawyer, they could easily be punished by mistake. As for those who can afford one, if they come through with their citizenship intact, they could be ruined by the expense.
The immigrants' children would also lose US citizenship, and might then be expelled to countries they have never seen.
Wikipedia described Asian News International as working for the Indian government and promoting disinformation. That company sued and threatened to have Wikipedia blocked in India.
The court ordered Wikipedia to take down a page about this case. The page linked above still has a link to that page, but that page's real contents no longer appear.
The major car manufacturers Nissan and Honda want to merge.
They are planning to exploit the amoral loophole in antitrust law: "We're major competitors in our field, but we need to merge to compete with the giants."
A policy of Granting such requests leads inexorably, over time, to a market made up of just a few giants.
I think Lina Khan would have blocked this merger. But now that Republicans have blocked her reappointment, we have to hope that the EU or Japan will block it. The Republicans surely hope that they have paved the way to having a few more multi-billionaires they can serve.
The fascist sues the press to say, *Bend the knee or else.*
Bulgaria is using word-twisting, threats and beatings to compel Syrian asylum seekers to sign a "voluntary" agreement to return to Syria right away.
After a reasonable amount if time, it may be clear that Syria has become stable and respects human rights. It may then be valid to deny asylum to most Syrians because they no longer need asylum and have no claim for it.
But it is unjust to jump to that conclusion now, even if it were done in an honest way. We don't know today whether Syria will become stable and respect human rights.
North Korean soldiers are fighting Ukraine in Russia. What are the implications for North Korea and its foreign relations.
The musk-rat is talking about donating massive amounts to the extreme right-wing British political party.
It is not only Musk who can get too much political power from his money. There are British billionaires who also give large amounts to the right wing. And (I've read) Musk may be entitled to get British citizenship, which would bypass this obstacle.
The UK should prohibit political donations and spending by businesses, and limit the amount of donations that any one individual can originate.
The US has eradicated the northern giant hornet, which threatens honeybees.
Ukraine made a mining agreement with the Biden administration, and postponed signing it until now so that the corrupter could give the false impression he had something to do with it.
At least this delay did not do any real harm to Ukraine or to the US.
When companies hire temporary workers for a peak season, those workers should have the same legal rights as permanent workers, except that their employment will end at the end of that season.
A new law gives the US government extremely broad indirect powers to snoop on digital communications.
*House Republicans crafted language requiring any "service provider" with access to equipment "that is being or may be used to transmit or store wire or electronic communications" to help the government spy.
The language was so broad that almost anyone with a business who happened to have access to a hard drive could be forced to comply, critics have warned.
The government could force commercial landlords, for instance, to help it scoop up the communications of journalists, nonprofit groups, political campaigns, and lawyers, according to the Center for Democracy and Technology.*
Nominally this spying must be directed at foreigners, but when they are used they tend to spy on Americans too.
Of course, if you're the sort of person who carries a portable tracking and surveillance device various companies can snoop on you too.
Uber donated a million dollars to the corrupter's inaugural celebration. This is the moral equivalent of a bribe.
Don't be a customer of Guber — it mistreats its customers and its drivers.
*Pakistan and Bahamas join push for global pact to phase out fossil fuels.*
Several other countries already support it. But we are still far from getting a global agreement to stop destroying the ecosphere and civilization.
*‘Everything is gone’: how Israeli forces destroyed Jabaliya refugee camp.*
The current stage of the attack on Jabaliya is systematically demolishing large parts of the area, leveling everything and building wide roads for military vehicles.
*Republicans Said the FTC Was Too Politicized. Now Trump’s FTC Pick Says It Should be Politicized — by [his side].*
An international company forces the employees of its national subsidiaries to run apps that snoop on them and manipulate them. Italy has found that app to be illegal, for various reasons.
This is a good decision, and I am glad that the GDPR are actually benefiting some workers. But they don't go far enough, and neither does this decision. Simply requiring workers to carry a snoop phone with them is an injustice and should be illegal.
Labor in Australia claims to have said they did not open any new coal mines, but that is based on mislabeling a new mine as an extension of an old mine located 10ks away.
Most Americans live in states which do not use the death penalty and may have forgotten about the issue, but the states that do execute still display scandalous disregard for new evidence that tends to prove that trials gave incorrect results.
The bullshitter may soon order Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to spew disinformation.
When Argentine soldiers were throwing dissidents out of airplanes into the Atlantic Ocean, Mexican "security forces" were doing likewise in Mexico.
Surely this was not a coincidence. They must have been in touch. Perhaps by way of the US?
If you are searching for a missing relative, do not me taken in by shamans or other supposed mediums. They have no special access to factual information about missing people, and cannot communicate with the dead.
Amazon workers in various US cities are now on strike.
The musk rat has been failing military security examinations because of refusing to tell the examiners about some of his meetings with foreign officials. Some US and allied officials see him as a risk.
Emperor Tusk the First killed an urgently needed omnibus spending bill by ordering Republicans to vote it down, and spreading false criticisms on ex-Twitter.
Bernie Sanders referred to him as "President Musk", but "emperor" fits better, since he is nothing like a president. Like Augustus in Rome, he has no official position, but through his riches he compels legislators to bow to him. Of course, there are many differences in detail; history does not repeat itself exactly.
This is very dangerous to the republic, since after some years of this it will be presented as normal and expected by the powerful voices.
US citizens: phone your senators and tell them to reject Billy Long for head of the IRS. When in Congress he proposed to eliminate income tax so as to tax low-income people more with a national sales tax.
Every sales tax falls unfairly hard on low-income people. We ought to replace them with taxes that fall mainly on those who can afford to pay them.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to prevent any cuts to Social Security. Stop any efforts to privatize this critical government program.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
It is fashionable to adopt policies whereby a computer system judges how a certain person deserves to be treated, but they "put a human in the loop" by giving per the job of looking at the computer's recommendations and authorizing them or not.
Experiment shows that such systems systematically fail. The article explains why they fail. What it comes down to is that "putting a human in the loop" is ineffective at correcting the computer system's errors, but instead has the practical effect of serving to excuse those errors.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important — and I label them like this.
The experience with Israel's machine learning target selector system tends to confirm this conclusion.
*Bernie Sanders Says Defeating Oligarchy Now Most Urgent Issue.*
*I utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel. Ireland is pro-peace, pro-human rights and pro-international law.* Well said!
Experts express fear — and resilience — as they prepare for [the wrecker]'s potential attacks on climate research.*
Climate science depends on measurements and records of measurements. Sometimes the same measurements are made in the same way for decades so that they will be fully comparable, So planet-roasters have canceled series of measurements, presumably in order to hamper climate science and thus interfere with reaching conclusions that will show the extent of the coming crisis.
They have even tossed out data from past measurements. Scientists had to rescue the precious records from dumpsters.
If they were saboteurs working for alien enemies, sent to weaken Earth's civilization, their actions would make sense. Why Earthlings would do it is beyond me.
*Spain's culture ministry has returned the first of more than 5,000 items taken by the dictator [Franco] 84 years ago.* That was shortly after the end of the civil war, in which most of the army joined the fascist rebellion, and the Spanish Republic was defended by the volunteers it could raise.
My friends in Spain told me, earlier in this century, that the right-wing party was still permeated by the influence of people who supported Franco's dictatorship, who blocked efforts to end the state's support for Franco. In the past decade, those efforts are going faster.
The US, EU and Turkey endorsed a statement calling for *A Syrian-led transition to "produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process", with respect for human rights.*
That doesn't mean it will be easy, or successful, but at east they endorse a good goal.
Some major practical threats that the wrecker's fascist machine could wreak.
The page does not include some most profound threats which are longer term:
Coca-Cola made a highly publicized pledge to move to 25% reusable packaging by 2030. But now it seems to have quietly stopped talking about all that.
Society depends on agencies that appoint experts to make carefully studied decisions. Right-wing extremists are working on destroying the ability to do this.
I will not claim that these agencies are always right. Business lobbies often persuade them to go against the interests of society and non-wealthy people. But the right-wing extremists are not trying to restrain that power — on the contrary, they seek to open the floodgates.
New Zealand's right-wing government hollowed out environmental protections by allowing some of them to be "fast-tracked" — that is, evaluated without taking due care.
There may be occasions when this is necessary, but mere profit can never be enough to justify it. Only something desperately needed can justify this.
A study by the US department of Energy reports that, as we would expect, authorizing extracting (and exporting) a lot more natural gas would speed up global heating.
This would increase the risk of deadly damage from "natural" disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding, fires, heat waves, and crop failures, as well as collapse of technological civilization, and these could lead to the death of tens or millions of people in the US. In the shorter term, more natural gas exports could cause difficulties in Americans' lives by making fossil gas more expensive.
This has been criticized as a weak criticism.
*More than three-quarters of UK universities join fossil fuel pledge, say activists.*
Governments must do much more to restrain "investment" in causing global disaster, at whatever levels they can.
In parts of Britain, children of age 10-11 are likely to still believe in Santa Clause. And parents demand that other adults maintain the falsehood.
I'm amused by the irony of a cleric's puncturing one myth while upholding another. But I find it shocking and disturbing that anyone as old as 10 would still believe in Santa Clause.
Parents who hoax that children are liable to try to conscript other people into supporting the lie. This has happened to me, and it puts me in a moral conflict. I don't want to overturn their family arrangements, but joining in the hoax would be doing wrong to the children. I resent the attempt to rope me into doing wrong.
I'm looking for speaking invitations for a trip in January and February that will include some part of Europe, then India, then some other part of Europe.
The first visit to Europe will be roughly Jan 16 to 22. The visit to India will start Jan 22 and can continue into February. The second visit to Europe will be after that. Those dates are flexible.
One advantage of this period for you is that the intercontinental flights are already covered, so you won't need to pay for that.
If you are interested in inviting me, and you have a venue to use and a public to invite, please email me soon with "speaking invitation" in the Subject field, using the name rms and the host gnu dot org.
US citizens: call on Lula and Brazil to be the world's climate leaders in COP 30 next year.
US citizens: call on the Senate: don't allow the wrecker to make recess appointments. Don't abdicate your duty to vet the wrecker's nominees.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose any cuts to, and any efforts to privatize, Social Security and Medicare.
US citizens: call on Biden to Pardon Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
Mangione's political views are a mixture of right-wing and left-wing, and he has crystallized hatred of US medical deinsurance companies among both sides. Right-wing leaders are trying to attach that to "wokism", but it doesn't stick.
In fact, most Deinsurance in Congress and most Republicans in Congress are plutocratists, and that goes double for the wrecker. If you want to find an official, or candidate who seeks to put an end to medical deinsurance, you'll find that progressive Democrats stand for this.
I've said that Biden is 1/3 progressive. He has a history of trying to reduce medical deinsurance, but he did not push to go all the way by instituting a universal medical system.
* Rainfall patterns are changing, crops are ripening earlier, and the normal rhythms of farming have fallen off — exactly as climate scientists warned.*
We are already encountering the next step, which is shortages of some foods. That can lead, some years later, to mass hunger and eventually to mass death and breakdown of society. My addition to this forecast is the end of globalized manufacturing and the loss of all high technology. You and the hundred people in your fortified farming village won't be able to make ICs or solar cells, thus soon no computers and no electricity.
You won't even be able to keep the local all-devouring weed from taking the land away from you. Sure, you could cut it and uproot it in any particular small area. However, doing that in a large area will take too much work, especially when the only power available is muscle power.
*A strain now circulating in dairy cows appears to carry little risk for humans at present, but we need to develop an effective strategy before it mutates*
In particular, we will need vaccine for whatever strain becomes a threat. Now the US faces the danger that crazy politicians might forbid this.
The Signal client's own code is free/libre, but it farms out some activities to Google services. Depending on what Signal uses each of those services to do, using it might be SaaSS, which is as subjugating to the user as locally running a nonfree program.
I don't use Signal, because it is almost impossible to make a Signal account without having a cellular phone, so I can't. Since I can't use Signal, I don't try to learn anything else about it. I know almost as little about the specific Google services named in the article — I don't have a Google account, and most of its services require the user to run nonfree client software.
As a result, I don't know whether it is possible to get some real use out of Signal without using the Google services listed in the article, or whether the job each one does constitutes SaaSS.
I can correct two errors made in comments in that page: (1) free software is a matter of freedom, not price and (2) Android is contains nonfree components, and has contained them since almost the beginning.
(satire) *Wrongly Convicted Death Row Inmate Exonerated Mere Hours After Execution.*
The bully is trying to bully the judge who refused to dismiss civil claims against him.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare from the cuts that the wrecker, the musk-ox, and that wiseacre of Oz want to make.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Iran has threatened to finish building nuclear weapons if the West resumes trade sanctions against Iran.
It looks like the West and Iran agree that the better choice is no sanctions and no Iranian nuclear weapons. Obama negotiated an agreement to bring that about, and the wrecker broke it. Biden tried to negotiate resumption, but this failed. I never found out why it failed.
Studying the ecology of places that humans have abandoned.
Sometimes human presence enables many species to make a complex ecosystem, where otherwise a suffocating monoculture of one dominant species could take over and exclude all else.
Australia's Labor Party said it was going to prioritize environmental protection — but dropped the proposed law at the last minute.
This decision, shocking to Labor supporters, strikes me as entirely consistent with the policy of allowing major expansion of fossil fuel extraction. After all, if the new federal Environmental Protection Agency were going to be effective, it would need to brake that expansion.
Here's more about the complex political dispute.
If "not giving the Greens a victory" is enough to motivate Labor to leave the environment in danger, I have a feeling its priorities are weak.
Workers at a Whole Foods store have filed to unionize. The next step will be for the company to harass them to change their minds before the actual vote.
How Epic medical records systems help hospitals cheat medical insurance companies by finding opportunities to exaggerate what treatments were done, so as to charge more.
This requires doctors to spend more time entering additional data that are useful for such "upcoding". Here is more information.
Epic also makes the nonfree JavaScript code and apps that hospitals pressure patients to use to access these servers. If I used them, Epic would control the computing on my computer. I refuse to give the control of the computing on my computer to Epic (or anyone else), so I refuse to use those web sites and apps.
Maybe, as a result of my noncooperation, EPIC misses some opportunities for "upcoding".
It is a terrible mistake to let a company analyze your genetic data. If that company goes bankrupt, as 23 And Me has done, it will be forced to sell that data to people who will use it against you.
To enable Syria to recover, the US should cancel sanctions on Syria. Those sanctions were meant to defeat Assad. Now that Assad's enemies have defeated him, the sanctions don't make sense any more.
I can imagine the US negotiating an agreement with the Syrian rebels and Rojava, using the dropping of the sanctions as an incentive for them to come to a peaceful accommodation.
One of RFK Jr's close associates filed to revoke approval of polio vaccine. Loss of the polio vaccine would produce an epidemic after a few years.
I wonder how billionaires' families would respond to this. Get vaccinated in other countries, while most Americans have to go without?
*The musk-rat's six major conflicts of interest with the federal government.*
Texas is suing a New York doctor for mailing abortion pills to a woman in Texas. Texas has passed a law prohibiting mailing abortion pills into the state; meanwhile, New York State has passed a law meant to protect against any such lawsuits from Texas.
I've read that there are networks of women who send each other these pills. I have a feeling that women in Texas can best keep their helpers safe by arranging for anonymous mailing of these pills.
*BBC says it has complained to Apple over fake news [output from a bullshit generator] attributed to [BBC].*
Joseph Stiglitz: *The message to Democrats is clear: you must dump neoliberal economics [and become progressive].*
Syrians backed by Turkey are having border clashes with Rojava,
Which is distracting Rojava from keeping PISSI
under control.
Thomas Piketty refutes the claims that governments cannot tax billionaires, offering methods to overcome supposed obstacles.
Various big oil companies are suing Greenpeace in an attempt to wipe it out
We should not have to depend on organizations such as Greenpeace to protect civilization from environmental disaster (including global heating and more). This is governments' mission.
Amazon has donated a million dollars to the wrecker's inauguration fund, as a token of loyal greed.
When a bully is powerful enough, rich people (and those who want to be rich) all fawn on per, hoping perse will pave their way to more riches. That is what the executives of big companies are doing now for the wrecker.
* For all its supposed "populism", the new administration will probably target offices that protect consumers* and workers.
*President Biden: stand up to Chevron and pardon Steven Donziger.*
Amazon warehouse in Staten Island workers are on strike.
If Americans had elected Kamala Harris, these workers would have a good chance of making Amazon give them better wages and working conditions. But Bezos just had Amazon pay a million dollars to the corrupter's inaugural ceremony, and we must expect him to do what he was paid to do.
*Debunking Every Myth You Hear Against Universal [Medical]care.*
Facebook donated a million dollars to the corrupter's inauguration.
I suppose this is not a crime, but it is in effect a bribe.
A woman who was rejected for renting an apartment on the strength of some computation's result sued for racial discrimination.
People have proposed laws to prohibit using the output of an program to evaluate individuals and decide how to treat them. Those laws were aimed at decisions made by government bodies, meaning that the government would be the user of that program.
This example shows that judging people to make advice for private entities to judge people by can be likewise devastating.
If we wanted to address this problem with a law, what might that law require? Perhaps it should require the advice-giver to show everyone concerned what recorded facts the evaluation is based on.
The article assumes that when SafeRent describes the software a "AI", that has some substantial meaning. We have no reason to think it does. That could be nothing more than hype for SafeRent's marketing. Or it could be an excuse for refusing to tell a court how the score is calculated.
*Ex-FBI officials worry that Kash Patel as director may wield unlimited power.*
That could include *opening investigations unilaterally*.
Some past FBI directors have done such things, and their power threatened freedom in the US. The fascist might relish that.
*White US neighborhoods have more EPA air quality monitors, study finds.*
This despite the fact that white US neighborhoods tend on the average to have more pollution than black neighborhoods — so the EPA is not doing that part of its job fairly.
This systematic racial unfairness is one of many kinds, which add up to what is called structural racism.
I have a hunch that the system involved, in this particular case, is a simpler system than in many other cases. Perhaps studying how this system functions, and how it produces unfair results, could shed like on how structural racism more generally, and on how to prevent it.
A US army officer was convicted of sexual harassment after pressuring a junior officer under his command to have sex with him.
I gather that this sort of thing happens often but is rarely punished. So this is an improvement. But this was worse than most cases of sexual harassment, so the sentence he received seems too weak to me.
Man Americans are jumping on a bandwagon for raw milk based on choosing a political side
— rather than based on medical facts.
Some of the arguments are evidently irrational. For instance, one proponent argues that more dangers is virtuous because that requires producers to be more careful: if raw milk increases the danger caused by "cutting corners".that will make everyone more careful.
Experience says, however, that increasing the danger that can result from any sort of slip-up will mean more people harmed by slip-ups. Safety engineering is based on recognizing that everyone makes mistakes, so we should design a system in which mistakes don't cause bad consequences.
The UK is considering limiting donations to political campaigns and parties to stop Musk from trying to buy triumph for the more-or-less fascist party.
US citizens: fight back against the corrupter's proposed Big Money cabinet.
US citizens: oppose the muskrat's plan to slash spending for nonrich Americans.
In the US: support striking IKEA workers.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the string &redirect=... and delete everything from there to the end of that URL. Then insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort compared with the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators and tell them to extend the ACA Advance Premium Tax Credits, to avoid a large increase in the cost of medical insurance.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Oppose the creation of Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" (or, better described, Department of Government Evisceration").
US citizens: call on House Democrats to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Ranking [Democratic] Member of Oversight and Accountability Committee.
US citizens: call on Biden to cut off military support for Israel's atrocities in Gaza.
US citizens: call on the Senate to oppose Dr. Oz as head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
In the 1980s, the Broward County Sheriff's department made and sold drugs as a sting. That sting was illegal, so the current state attorney plans to vacate all those convictions.
*Global food production at increased risk from excess salt in soil, UN report warns.* *Scientists say climate crisis and poor agricultural practices to blame.* It affects 10% of global land. The article describes ways in which excess salt damages soil.
Many of the causes reflect overpopulation in one way or another. If we allow continued population growth, we won't be able to grow as much food later as we do today.
The congestion tax for driving in much of Manhattan operates by identifying all cars heading into the congestion charge area.
Charging a tax for causing congestion is legitimate in my view, but it does not excuse tracking people's movements in the absence of legitimate grounds.
It would not be terribly hard to sell a temporary sticker that you could attach inside your windshield to indicate you paid the congestion tax for today, for this month, or whatever period you chose. The system could be designed not to record which car has passed if it shows proof of payment.
To accept the excuse that "identifying people is the usual method" or "the easy way to implement" as sufficient justification for identifying people is, in effect, to accept total tracking sooner or later. We must insist that Freedom and privacy for everyone are worth what they cost.
*Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street's Internet of Shit slumlords.*
Iran's rulers, feeling more threatened, have increased their capacity to enrich uranium. To avoid nuclear proliferation and possible nuclear war, this writer recommends reassuring Iran that it is not threatened, and steer away from that. However, the wrecker is likely to do the exact opposite.
Billionaire Polluters is planning to "focus on fossil fuels" (and on the megadeaths they are likely to cause) instead of renewable energy.
If civilization is to survive, it should stop Billionaire Polluters (and other planet-roaster companies) from developing any fossil fuel systems.
The Mexico-US water sharing agreement is running aground because there isn't enough rain in the Rio Grande watershed. This seems to due to global heating, which means it will only get worse.
I can imagine that the wrecker will use it as an excuse to start a war (He has threatened to start a war with Mexico.).
UK thugs have the power to arbitrarily punish accused sex workers, without any trial.
The UK is deporting a man to Pakistan although he is likely to be murdered if he is there.
His wife is likely to be deported some time later, and she too faces the threat of murder.
Israel seized a small demilitarized zone on the Syrian border.
I think that the importance of that border zone is minimal. Precisely because of that, Israel's seizure of it was a stupid and vicious act, likely to provoke various sorts of conflict just as Syria had encountered possibilities of peace.
The corrupter reaffirmed his intention to pardon everyone convicted for participating in the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol that the corrupter launched to overthrow the US government.
*Liz Cheney calls Trump threat to jail her an "assault on the rule of law".* The supposed grounds for this investigation would be that she participated in investigating the attack on the Capitol.
*RFK Jr to research unsupported link between vaccines and autism, [the truth-hater] says.*
In effect, the corrupter has declared war on truth, justice, and honesty. In place of the United States of America, he would have the Utter Subservience to the Autocrat — a state in which patriots are imprisoned if they obstruct him and criminals freed if they serve him.
Like Putin, he hopes to leave no visible path to find the truth except to believe whatever he says.
*Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Still at Risk from Oil Drilling.*
Brain rot caused by recommendation engines is not just a metaphor. It has been demonstrated by many experiments, both psychological an physiological.
* Investigation uncovers how chemicals like diquat, banned in the UK but legal to export, are causing [medical] problems in [other countries].*
The issue is worth posting about, but I reject the term "global south" and I took this opportunity to campaign against it.
I also took the opportunity to highlight my disagreement with the marketing campaign to replace the word "medical" with "health". I don't know whether that author (or The Guardian) supports that as a marketing campaign—it may be a matter of following a fashion. But I see it as a marketing campaign, and as such I reject it.
This came from A Word A Day. It fits the right-wing servants of dooH niboR who whip up poor fools to vote to cut their income to help the rich.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the ax for the ax was
clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was
one of them. -Turkish proverb
Some European Countries have decided to pause decision on asylum for Syrian refugees, to wait and see if Syria now becomes a safe country from which people have no need to flee.
Let us hope that Syria now becomes safe for peaceful civilians, but if that happens for most of them, that does not imply it will be safe for all of them. For instance, will it be safe for secularist people that want an end to religious persecution? Will it be safe for non-Arabs, such as Kurds? Will be safe for freethinkers? Will it be safe for queer people? We cannot assume all that.
Thus, even if Syria ceases to persecute millions of its civilians, there may still be some Syrians who are entitled to asylum for specific reasons.
Boston City Council reaffirms prohibition on Boston cops' helping to deport anyone who doesn't have an arrest warrant.
The doctrine, that corporation executives are obligated to make "more wealth for stockholders" the highest priority, sounds simple — but it obtains that simplicity by disregarding all factors that weren't trivial to quantify.
Events have shown that it doesn't lead to clear consequences on any question.
Robert Kennedy Jr said he will "give infectious diseases a break", by letting up on some of our best weapons against them. That would be a dangerous error, given that the more people they have infected, the more starting points they have to infect others.
Th FTC's order to block the merger of the Kroger and Albertsons supermarket chains was upheld in court.
However, it appears that Lina Khan, responsible for several years of militancy by the FTC, will not be reappointed. That means it will become weaker, and additional damaging mergers of large companies will proceed.
I would like to know more about how this happened. If you can point me at an article about this, please email me the text as well as the URL.
Monarch butterflies are now listed as threatened in he US, which puts limits on actions that could further harm the species. The limits, not very strict, are described in the article.
It looks like the part of the US State Department that tries to combat foreign disinformation will be defunded.
Who in the US government might want to do that? Perhaps those who are in league with Putin, such as the corrupter, and those who spread foreign disinformation, such as Musk.
*Arctic tundra is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs, US agency says.* This is a consequence of the higher temperature in the Arctic, and consequences such as wildfires.
US citizens: call on Amazon and Whole Foods not to oppose unionization at Whole Foods.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Kash Patel as head of the FBI. The petition lists several reasons.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to urge them to maintain the IRS funding. It is using that funding to chase rich tax dodgers, and this reduces overall government expenses.
Commenting on the military situation in Syria, as the rebels keep advancing.
Assad is a murderous military dictator. In the past, his enemies were murderous Islamists, so it was hard to say that either one was less vicious than the other. The only part of Syria deserved support was Rojava.
Will the Islamist rebels be willing to coexist with Rojava? If not, can Rojava hold out with no foreign power to support it?
*President’s staff look into possibility of protecting public officials named by Trump in vows to seek retribution.*
I would like to state my support for this.
The UK may allow research on embryos until 28 days.
There is no reason to truncate this research to less than 90 days.
*Romanian court annuls first round of presidential election* because of interference by Putin's digital troll army.
Americans overwhelmingly call for dangerous drugs to be treated as a medical issue rather than prosecuted.
Some parts of the UK have privatized the issuing of fines for minor nuisances. They have creatively stretched the definitions of these minor nuisances so as to make life a mode of harassment.
Chicago gave a company the contract to run street parking and to profit as much as it can contrive to do. After that, the streets were run so as to suit that company, not the city and residents of Chicago.
It just goes to show, never privatize a function of government.
*Biden extended contracts to private immigration jails despite reports of "horrific" conditions.*
It is unjust to let businesses run prisons, because that is a luring temptation for the business to profit by mistreating the prisoners. Privatization eliminates their accountability.
Private prisons should not be allowed under any circumstances.
*Hunting [the] bigger, more experienced animals [of a given species] eradicates memories and knowledge crucial to group survival, research suggests.*
Major physical disasters tend to kill many people, more in poor countries than in wealthy ones. Scientists are discovering that a much larger number of people subsequently die prematurely as a result of the indirect consequences.
For instance, if a storm kills no one in your family immediately, but does destroy your house and you can't afford to replace it, this could contribute to your early death through many chains of events, including *stress, financial hardship, pollution [and] long-term disease*. For instance, floods often dissolve buried toxic chemicals and spread them in places where many people can encounter them.
There are indications that some of the subsequent deaths could be prevented by a good social safety net.
RFK Jr is considering appointing an advisor on raw milk whose raw milk products have been recalled repeatedly for contamination with bird flu.
A wiser official would learn from his results rather than heed his advice.
The thugs of Sao Paulo, Brazil, kill people shamelessly under the leadership of one of Bolsonaro's supporters.
With nearly everyone in Europe in favor of action to reduce greenhouse emissions, what is difficult is to design policies that will win enough support to overcome the inevitable resistance.
According to the article, the keys to winning support for concrete measures are (1) winning people's trust in the political leaders and (2) compensating non-rich people for the short-term costs of the solution.
(1) is a point I have made here.
*Disbelief turns to jubilation in Damascus* as Assad's departure inspired the soldiers in his army to pull off their uniforms.
*Joe Biden should pardon Reality Winner for her actions as a whistleblower.*
The UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders reproached the US for harsh punishment of peaceful (but inconvenient) climate protesters.
The annoyance these protests cause is as nothing compared with the annoyance (and, eventually, mass death) that they are trying to avert.
*Ohio Satanic Temple to offer religious program for elementary school students.*
Ralph Nader describes how US medical insurance companies deny coverage for needed medical treatment, and in other ways undermine medicine to increase profits, resulting in thousands of deaths per week.
The companies deny coverage for various medical services so often that we could call it a denial-of-service attack on patients' health.
One man seems to have taken violent revenge for this, murdering the CEO of UnitedHealth-Care and leaving signs that accused the company of killing patients. Detectives could perhaps try to find the murderer by checking the relatives of people who have been killed by denial of service — except that they could never check so many suspects.
Violence against a CEO can call attention to the evil but is not going to end the companies' deadly denial of service. The company will soon have a new CEO and continue the same practices. To end the killing of patients can only be done by new laws. But will we ever have enough effective democracy to try?
I have recently encountered the denial of service personally. For a couple of years I have been taking febuxostat to control gout. I tried the cheaper allopurinol first, many years ago, but that made me so drowsy and forgetful that I could not function. I had to stop using it.
A few weeks ago, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts told me that it would no longer cover febuxostat. I asked why, but instead of an explanation I received an autospeculation: "Maybe we wanted to make people use the cheaper allopurinol."
I too had made that speculation in my mind, but that company owes me a reason, not merely an autospeculation.
I will try allopurinol again, on the off chance that it doesn't incapacitate me now. It is reasonable to ask patients to try the cheaper medicine and see. It is not reasonable to say, "We will abandon you if that cheaper medicine won't work for you.
In civilized countries, the national medical system negotiates with the manufacturers for a good bulk price. Biden tried to introduce this into the US medical system, but was mostly blocked.
* A $200bn wave of new gas projects could lead to a “climate bomb” equivalent to releasing the annual emissions of all the world’s operating coal power plants.*
The corrupter said he plans conniving pardons for crimes his henchmen will commit for him. And he has already tried this.
But now that Biden has pardoned his own son, the corruptor will pretend that he is following Biden's example, even though that gets the time order wrong.
If he claims that pardoning his henchmen is no different from what Biden did when, don't fall for that.
One by one, the billionaires work out deals with the corrupter.
It's easy for a billionaire to make a deal with the corruptor: agree to support him politically while he agrees to let you screw the public.
But it does not work with me. I have never bought anything from Amazon and I am resolved never to do so.
It is now certain that 2024 will have been the hottest year in recorded history, breaking the previous record set in 2023.
The planet roasters have become so powerful that they are now building enormous amounts of additional fossil fuel facilities. That amounts to mass murder.
Assad abandoned Syria and fled to the refuge offered by every tyrant's friend, Putin.
The Guardian accuses Israel of committing a war crime by attacking a group of 6 journalists in the house where they were staying.
There was no fighting in the area at the time and no Hezbollah forces were nearby.
*Regardless of their political affiliation, killing journalists is illegal under international humanitarian law unless they are actively participating in military activities.*
*Israel attacks hospital in northern Gaza …, director says.*
Attacking a hospital is an atrocity; expelling doctors is an indirect atrocity.
But I think we should not get distracted by minor details such as what happened to the corpses of people who were killed in the attack. Morally, what's important is the injustice of killing.
The main Spanish right-wing party is demonstrating that it still defends the dictator Franco and his crimes.
The Taliban have banned women from studying medicine.
Since women in much of Afghanistan are not allowed to be seen by a male doctor, this will in effect mean no medical treatment for them.
I have a suspicion that the corrupter's middle-finger nominations for executive branch offices are meant as throwaways. He has chosen people who represent his contempt for even the minimal public responsibility, and I suspect he did this expecting some to be rejected before their official confirmation processes start.
Robert Reich calls them "groveling, subservient yes-men".
I suspect the plan is that they will establish limits of tolerable outrage at the point where some right-wing senators would reject them. Then the corrupter will nominate other people, just as radical and equally cruel in substance, but not superficially outrageous.
The right-wing senators, having established that they do have some standards, will no longer need to prove that, so the second-round appointees will sail through.
There is a political battle in New York City about whether the city thugs will be told to help the US deportation thugs.
Legislators who oppose that are concerned that it might discourage *non citizens from interacting with the police when they themselves need help or could assist in reporting crimes or carrying out investigations.*
*Activists slam Biden for pardoning turkeys, not those on federal death row.*
US citizens: call on the US Postal Service to offer mail carriers a good contract.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without trying to run the site's nonfree JavaScript code on your browser.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The island of Qikiqtaruk is falling apart piece by piece due to global heating as the permafrost breaks up.
*HAMAS and Fatah agree to create committee [of technocrats] to run postwar Gaza Strip.*
This combination would be a step forward compared with HAMAS alone, but Israel won't accept it. Perhaps it wants a committee of Israeli technocrats to govern Gaza.
*Experts create controllable gastric balloon to aid weight loss.*
A controllable balloon must be the ultimate gas trick.
After UK thugs arrested Leona Kamio for various alleged crimes in a protest against Elbit, the Israeli arms manufacturer, they next arrested her mother, Emma Kamio, who was not involved in the protest.
They labeled her as a terrorist, kept her incommunicado in a filthy cell with the lights on for five days, and denied her access to a lawyer.
The thugs eventually released her with no charges, but have not returned her clothing, her jewelry, or her computers.
Emma recognizes that the injustice she suffered threatens everyone. "My story can happen to anyone due to the over policing and the repression that is happening right now in the UK."
I know nothing of the facts about Leona Kamio, but there is a general tendency to stretch facts and exaggerate when accusing or punishing protesters against Israel's violence. It is possible that she really committed some crimes, but if she did, I'd expect they are less grave than they have been painted.
The US Justice Department concluded that the Memphis thugs "regularly violate" the rights of black people.
Billy Long, nominated by the wrecker to head the IRS, once asked the IRS to revoke the tax exemption of the Humane Society. This as after it urged Missouri voters to approve a referendum on a law about proper treatment of dogs.
My recollection is that it is lawful for a tax exempt organization to fund grass-roots campaigns for or against referendums. Grass-roots campaigning about an issue is not considered "lobbying", which is regulated.
*Guess Who Profits From [the wrecker's] Deportation Plan? Private Equity Firms.*
*CFPB Proposes Crackdown on Data Brokers That Sell Sensitive Personal Information.*
That would be a step forward, but it tackles only the secondary aspects of digital surveillance. Surveillance starts with the collection of people's personal data. That is where we need to stop it.
Zuckerberg has found a way to make a deal with the corrupter, by reducing moderation on his platforms.
That means more of the things that many useds actively dislike about Facebook — those useds who don't recognize its fundamental wrongs which may not always be evident.
George Monbiot explains more reasons why "carbon offsets" are self-delusional excuses to continue global heating.
*We need to talk about capitalism.*
*The freedom to be ripped off is at the heart of liberal capitalism. Yet caveat emptor is a defense that relies on a degree of equality between the buyer and seller and what they know about the product in question.*
As should be clear already, I advocate forbidding the business practices that systematically tend to take advantage of segments of the public. Businesses are not entitled to "freedom" in the same way that each person is in per own life.
Hong Kong's streets are now full of facial-recognition cameras, and its conversations are full of fear.
South Korea's president declared martial law and tried to use the army to exclude the lawmakers from parliament so they could not override the declaration. But they got in anyway, and voted to end martial law. Hooray for brave South Korea!
It appears that all the major parties have condemned that martial law declaration, including the president's own party. Three cheers, South Korea.
The president's own party does not have a majority in parliament. Perhaps the president aimed to push the legislators aside.
The US and China have launched into economic warfare over chip manufacturing.
The chips that are at issue are mostly backdoored (Intel and AMD) or chained by a secret instruction set (Nvidia).
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries called on Biden to pardon the working-class Americans imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.
I mostly agree, but I think that fraud should be excluded for the most part.
The transition team officials signed papers to permit government investigation of people the corrupter appoints to official positions. This means the corrupter will find it more difficult to thumb his nose at the country by nominating people who show total contempt for honesty and human decency.
Suspicions that Harris chose not to defend Lina Khan from an attack because she had had the FTC investigate Uber, which employs Harris's brother.
*How noise pollution threatens the return of Norway's whales.*
Radical Islamists out of Idlib suddenly captured the major Syrian city of Aleppo. (Assad's forces are much weaker since Putin pulled out most of his military support to put it towards conquering Ukraine.)
The next question is whether these Islamists will oppress people from other Muslim sects, Christians, Jews, Atheists, other non-Muslims, women who dress western, and so on. Will they make peace with Rojava?
Meanwhile, this defeat is a defeat for Putin's prestige. I wonder if he might think of settling with Ukraine so he can recover prestige in other world influence competitions.
Degradation of land is proceeding rapidly; a million km^2 per year are becoming degraded. This will surely contribute substantially to the food shortage of coming decades.
How the wrecker plans to put the US Constitution to a stress test and see its checks and balances break. He aims to force the Senate to adjourn so he can impose his mockery nominations through without consideration by the Senate.
Israel is demolishing neighborhoods in Gaza to build permanent military bases.
This would, under international law, make Israel officially responsible for food, water, medical care and so on for the civilians in Gaza. It does not follow that Israel will actually provide them. It might prefer to exterminate tens of thousands more. But if Israel does provide humanitarian needs in full, it could cease the wrongs that have gone on for years.
Israel denies that it is deliberately planning to permanently displace civilians, but planned construction of a large strip of Israeli military bases in land where people live is undeniably a deliberate plan to permanently displace civilians.
I fear we are witnessing the complete abandonment of the idea of internationally punishing war crimes. That would be a terrible setback for justice in the world.
Of course, that system never functioned entirely. But many governments endorsed it and tried to make it function. Despite its gaps, it remained an advance over the world as it was before World War II. Now we are falling back towards barbarism, and the wrecker is likely to do it to death.
*We need to talk about plastic: five everyday items choking the planet.*
The Taliban have imprisoned tens of thousands women for begging (which other vicious laws compel them to do).
*Iran and Europe seek to break nuclear impasse before return of [the wrecker],* who was the one who sabotaged Obama's non-nuclear deal to begin with.
China has convicted a major journalist of spying simply for talking with Japanese diplomats.
There is speculation that the government wants to intimidate people against having contacts with diplomats.
An Israeli member of Parliament has been "suspended" for condemning Israel's war crimes. He describes how the space for democracy in Israel is being squeezed down to nothing.
Greeks tried to hold a general strike, but they were in such penury that they could not afford to miss a day of work.
Racist harassers are shutting down anti-racist events in London by threatening violence.
They ought to organize to defeat any violence, rather than giving up at the first threat.
*‘Catastrophic’ marine heatwaves are killing sea-life and causing mass disruption to UK fisheries.*
If it is that bad around Britain, you can imagine what a disaster the heatwaves in tropical areas such as Florida have been.
*Huge election year worldwide sees weakening commitment to act on climate crisis.*
I suspect that many billionaires are supporting right-wing candidates who will allow them to wipe out civilization (and most humans) unhindered.
*World will be "unable to cope" with volume of plastic waste in 10 years, warns expert.*
It looks like the US military is developing autonomous weapons. Its vague non answers provoke suspicions but make it hard to know for certain.
Higher levels of PFAS in the blood correlate with (1) lack of access to fresh food and (2) proximity of toxic waste sites. All three tend to correlate with poverty.
As a result, when we see correlation between those factors and medical problems, it is not trivial to determine which of them cause medical problems, and which simply correlate with things that cause medical problems.
The talks for a treaty to curb plastic production have failed with broad disagreements.
Everyone: call on Walmart, the NFL and the Wash Post to stop advertising on ex-Twitter.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above function without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code.
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Enter the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort compared with the benefit of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Biden to to pardon people imprisoned for drug offenses.
US citizens: call on senators to reject Pam Bondi as attorney general.
US citizens: call on officials at all levels of government to block Project 2025.
US citizens: call on the corrupter to sign the standard transition ethics pledge.
It might be effective for Biden to order refusal to cooperate with the corrupter's transition team until he formally agrees to this ethics pledge.
* It should be possible to campaign for Palestinian freedom, condemn racist Israeli football fans and still show unequivocal solidarity with European Jews.*
Reaction to the wrecker's nomination of a Russian asset to head the CIA.
Think about what this would mean. Every person secretly working for the CIA would be reported to Putin's (renamed) KGB, and available to its assassins.
Wales changed most roads to have a 20mph speed limit. It reduced deaths and injuries on the roads, but a right-wing grass-roots campaign was launched to fight it.
It turns out that the organizing was done by people who just happened to be Tory politicians.
Biden has brought about a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel.
Israel has achieved its war aims in Lebanon, which were simple: an end to attacks by Hezbollah in support of HAMAS. In effect, Hezbollah has accepted a substantial decrease in its power and territory, but has not lost anything really crucial. The Lebanese army is supposed to maintain control in southern Lebanon.
The previous agreement, which Hezbollah broke in Oct 2023, likewise said that the Lebanese army was to maintain control in southern Lebanon and keep Hezbollah from dominating that territory. The Lebanese army unable to do that, as Hezbollah was stronger. Hezbollah is now weaker, so perhaps the agreement can establish peace. Or it might fall apart.
This Lebanon agreement does nothing to prevent the killing of additional tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza.
Why would Musk care if the CFPB continues to protect Americans?
He surely owns shares in some large US banks, and if the CFPB were eliminated, those banks would squeeze some additional billions out of their non-rich customers. Musk would get some of that.
But I doubt that is enough money to move Musk to have an opinion about the question. I think he must have some other kind of motive, more emotional than financial.
I conjecture that he has come to hate people who advocate regulating businesses. That he wants to eliminate anything that could limit his power to make people obey.
*Pakistan army and police accused of firing on Imran Khan supporters.*
I don't know enough about this situation to draw any conclusion about which side — if any — supports human rights and democracy. Both sides are using force, but the army is shooting and seems to be covering up the casualties.
Drought and sea level rise are bringing salt water into the Delaware river, threatening to spoil the drinking water of millions.
The drought may be due to global heating. The sea level rise certainly is.
(satire) *Most Americans Have Enough Saved For Absolutely Incredible Single Day Of Retirement.*
*[The wrecker's] promise to loosen crypto regulations may be boon for extremist groups* (such as his own).
*Climate denial a unifying theme of [the world-wrecker's] cabinet picks, experts say.*
*ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrant for Myanmar military leader… for crimes against humanity over deportation and persecution of Rohingya minority.*
The University of Sydney is considering a rule requiring speakers to "make the meaning of contested words and phrases clear to the audience."
I can see a lot of vagueness in that rule. Does this apply to any word or phrase whose meaning someone contests at that moment? Or would there be a specific published list of words and phrases that must be made clear if and when used?
The big tech companies have proved they are no friends of progressives, democracy, or civil liberties.
Banks are finding ways to trade highly leveraged assets that cause a risk of global financial crash.
The laws passed around 2009 to try to prevent this were not as strong as the depression-era Glass-Steagall law that was partly repealed in 1999. When bankers get powerful enough to repeal the protections meant to stop them from crashing society, it shows their corrupting influence has prevailed.
Putin continues his nuclear panic campaign by firing an experimental hypersonic missile at Kyiv without a warhead. We are supposed to be terrified because, as Putin reminded us repeatedly, that model of missile could have been launched with a nuclear warhead (though it wasn't).
The message Putin communicates this way is, "Be afraid! If I really were crazy, I might fire a nuclear weapon at you. Hey, aren't you afraid yet?"
Hypersonic missiles have a practical advantage: that they are hard to intercept. Aside from that, they are not much different from an ordinary ballistic missile.
Hundreds of climate protesters have been arrested in Australia recently for disruptive but nonviolent protests against the fossil fuel juggernaut of death.
*Megachurch founder TD Jakes suffers health incident during sermon in Texas.*
Does he ever claim that material harm is a punishment "sent by god"? If so, that can be used against him now.
The special counsel who was investigating the corrupter's 2020 crimes decided to end the investigation because it is impossible to indict the president.
Robert Reich says he should have put the charges on hold instead.
It may not matter. Maybe the corrupter will pardon himself. Maybe he will corrupt the US government so thoroughly that no trial of him or his friends could ever convict. Those are possibilities, and if they occur, it could have become futile to keep the indictment alive.
But they are not inevitable. They might not have happened.
Meta invited the US military to use LLAMA to choose places to bomb. (So far, only for exercises.) Marketing materials show it gives a nonsensical answer to a foolish question that it ought to have rejected.
I conjecture that those marketing materials were written to convince politicians to spend billions on the system, rather that the commanders who might in theory someday actually use it. But that doesn't necessarily imply it would work better in real life.
*PFAS and microplastics become more toxic when combined* — for water fleas, at least.
To measure how they affect humans is a very difficult study, since it would take many years and there is no way to create a control group of humans who have not been exposed.
The corrupter's choice to head the Department of Defense openly advocates committing war crimes.
*Turkish woman convicted under anti-terror laws for sharing Guardian article* about a British volunteer fighting in Kurdish forces in Syria. (For Rojava, I suppose.)
One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. The Guardian may well have glorified the volunteers who went to Rojava to fight for human rights, but surely that article did not promote terrorism. However, to Erdoğan any army that opposes Turkey might be called "terrorist".
*We must defend elective abortions, not just the most politically palatable cases* (in which a woman might die because doctors obeyed anti-abortion laws).
Robert Reich: 10 million fewer Americans voted in 2024 than in 2020. This is why Harris lost.
Reich puts it down to the Democratic Party's visible abandonment of poor and working-class Americans.
*‘Who benefits from this?’ Soul-searching after the Amsterdam violence.* This includes a detailed history of various waves of violence, coming from different groups and directed at various groups, starting at a football game in Amsterdam. Thugs shut down peaceful rallies against massacres in Gaza, conflating them with part of the violence.
*With these outrageous appointments, [the corrupter] is showing us exactly how he intends to rule.*
In my view, these nominations are a way of giving the middle finger to the public and the law. He is declaring his intent to let billionaires trash anything and crush anyone, by appointing officials ready to ignore any laws that ought to restrain them.
The corrupter's nominee to head the Department of the Interior has a history of giving in to fossil fuel companies.
*RFK Jr could have disastrous global impact on public health, experts fear.*
*Big Banks Trying to Sabotage CFPB's Open Banking Rule.*
*Malcolm X's family sues FBI, CIA and NYPD for $100m,* accusing them of knowing in advance about the plan to murder him and allowing it to happen.
It would be good to expose this, but I have a feeling that a decades-delayed fine against governments will not in itself do much to deter future crimes of this sort.
In the negotiations for a treaty to limit plastic pollution, the biggest contingent of participants are the plastic lobbyists.
How did this happen, I wonder? What determines how many lobbyists can participate in the conference? Are the companies allowed register however many they can afford to pay fees for?
What enables these lobbyists to get in the way of a good treaty? Are the governments which want unlimited plastic production using their votes to support the lobbyists? If so, if the real opposition is from those governments, are the lobbyists a red herring?
But if that is not the case, why don't the governments and other parties that want the talks to succeed quash the activities of those lobbyists, or limit how many are allowed?
If Microsoft gets its way, your next computer will be nothing but a terminal for a cloudy Microsoft server.
As we know, there is no cloud — only other entities' computers. In this case, it would be Microsoft's computers, that would do your computing in whatever way Microsoft wants.
With Microsoft, the future of computing is controlled totally by Microsoft. All local software is remotely changed by Microsoft, so there is nothing you can choose.
Microsoft claims it is completely secure because it can't do anything locally — it can only be a terminal. File storage, account management, and even configuration are possible only in Microsoft's servers. Whatever this may mean for security against Cap'n Cracker, it implies total insecurity if you are attacked by Microsoft, or by any entity Microsoft chooses to aid.
You might even be compelled, some day, to converse with a piece of "artificial intelligence" (properly known as a bullshit generator) to ask Microsoft for whatever it might be.
About the military coup plot which Bolsonaro is accused of helping to organize.
Reportedly the coup did not occur because some of the high commanders refused to join it.
US citizens: call on President Biden to publish the Equal Rights Amendment as having been adopted.
US citizens: call for no cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject attacks on transgender rights.
The Israeli government is trying to destroy Israel's left-wing newspaper, Haaretz, by boycotting it for being left-wing. No alleged crimes or wrongs are needed as justification — merely not supporting the dictator is enough.
Ironically, I have boycotted Haaretz for years for a different kind of reason — for having a paywall.
Haaretz had a substantial importance for the world even after Israel became mostly right-wing. I used to make links to Haaretz articles recommended by Israeli peace activists.
But then it set up a solid paywall, so I had to stop. By my principles it is wrong to make a link to anything that requires readers to (1) identify themselves or (2) run a nonfree program. The paywall requires both, so I could no longer post links to Haaretz articles (or read them myself, usually).
Haaretz still has a potential value to the world, if only it would let down the paywall at least for some important articles.
The UK government is using algorithms in deciding who to deport.
The deportation department says that a human makes the final decision, but if that is true it does not imply that an algorithm takes most of the decision.
Algorithms should never play a significant role in decisions about how a person will be treated by the law. Inevitably that leads to gross injustices that a robot does not understand. Even when a human gets involved, perse may ape the rigidity of a robot. When there is a mistake or omission in the data, robots typically are hard to convince of this.
It is ironic that the article insists that a bullshit generator is "artificial intelligence" but a system that represents knowledge and makes deductions is not.
Cop29 has agreed on new rules for carbon offsets. The rules are meant to assure that a carbon offset really will result in a reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions. But will these rules really achieve that goal?
Given that some experts already have doubts, I would expect they have valid grounds for those doubts.
One specific reason to doubt is that whether any particular offset plan really does reduce emissions depends on future developments of global heating, which we can't reliably anticipate. For instance, if we plant many square miles of trees, even supposing we have chosen good trees for the local climate and situation, we cannot be sure whether global heating will kill them all.
Arguing that "consultants" who control (or represent) funding sources directed the Democratic Party down to defeat.
My mother belonged to a local Democratic Party club when I was young and lived in NYC with her. It was quite active.
RFK Jr went to Samoa to participate in a campaign that cast doubt on measles vaccination. At least 83 people died from this outbreak which followed.
*Crypto Sweep Puts Congress on Notice: Vote With Us or We’ll Come After You With Millions.*
While Brittany Patterson brought one child to a medical appointment, her 10-year-old went out for a walk. Lunatic officials are prosecuting her for not tracking him during that time.
As it happens, she had no way to do that except to cancel her child's appointment. That would have been far more likely to cause harm to her kids than what she is being prosecuted for doing.
If you want to live in a country where everyone is tracked and monitored all the time, go live in China. Don't bring China here!
*New York City plan to charge $9 fee for driving in Manhattan approved.*
I support this plan to charge for driving in downtown and midtown Manhattan provided it does not have the byproduct of tracking who goes there, and in particular it is possible to pay without being subject to injustice such as identifying yourself or running nonfree software.
But the article fails to say whether the fee system has those unjust aspects. Like so much journalism these days, it focuses on monetary cost while disregarding cost that may (or may not) accrue to our freedom.
Five suggestions for Biden to act, while still president, to impede some of the destruction that the wrecker plans to do.
Some of the wrecker's choices for official positions have direct links to Project 2025, which tends to confirm the suspicion (which I mentioned then) that he was lying when he said that Project 2025 had nothing to do with him.
*The Democratic Party Is Toast If It Doesn't Earn Back the Trust of the Working Class.*
*The Democrats need to recruit more working-class candidates. Here's how.*
A former official under the wrecker expects the wrecker to make non-wealthy Americans' medical insurance weaker and more expensive.
The article makes the mistake of seeing a contradiction between this and what the bullshitter said to the public to win votes, but there is no reason to suppose he wasn't bullshitting then.
California limits on PFAS in products are having a real effect.
Robert Reich: Enormously profitable GM says that it "must cut costs" by firing workers, and most Democrats don't show outrage.
The fascist wants to appoint a secretary of defense who anticipates a civil war — perhaps anticipating that the fascist's oppression will cause one.
*EPA staff fear Trump will destroy how it protects Americans from pollution.*
*First came the bots, then came the bosses — we're entering Musk and Zuck's new era of disinformation.*
Sebastian Stan, who stars in The Apprentice, a biopic of [the bullshitter] focusing on his association in the 1970s with lawyer Roy Cohn, has said that other actors in Hollywood are too “afraid” of the president-elect to participate in press with him.
A successful author, whose other nonfiction books have been successful, wrote a book about Musk. No company dares to publish it in the US.
I assume that this book is not actually libelous, because he surely knows by now how to have a lawyer check that, and how rewrite to avoid libel. It would follow that this is a new form of intimidation: people so powerful that no one dares publish even truthfully about them.
I suggest posting the book on a web site under a Creative Commons license — that way, at least people could read it.
*Saudi Arabia accused of modifying official Cop29 negotiating text.*
All participating nations are supposed to have the same access. Favoritism towards one of them is allowing it to cheat. In this case it would seem to be favoritism from Azerbaijan (a planet-roaster state) towards Salafi Arabia (another planet-roaster state).
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to close the Data Broker Loophole, that allows agencies like ICE, CBP, and the FBI bypass the 4th Amendment and spy on everyday people's location and online activity without a warrant.
In my view, that change would be a change for the better, but would not be adequate. We are entitled to use devices controlled by us, not be companies. We should be able to make sure they do not tell anyone where we go.
But closing the Data Broker Loophole is at least a change for the better.
US citizens: call on Biden to revoke Musk's security clearance.
*Analyses are stark evidence of how global heating is already supercharging deadly weather beyond anything ever experienced by humanity.*
Brandon Durham called 911 because people broke into his home. While he was struggling to take a knife away from one of them, a thug arrived and shot him dead.
His relatives want the thug to be tried for this hasty killing which predictably invited a deadly mistake.
*The Republicans were always the party of big business, but [the corrupter] is turning them into a playpen for oligarchs.*
*Harris ran from the Biden policies that were actually popular with voters* and adopted more plutocratist policies instead.
*[The wrecker's] cabinet picks are agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance.*
*An economic populism for the majority — irrespective of gender, race, religion, [and sexual] or gender [identity] — is the way forward.*
The International Criminal Court has ordered the arrest of Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Galant.
I hope they are convicted, but it won't be easy to arrest them.
Bolsonaro is now formally charged with plotting a coup after the election that brought back Lula.
What the US anti-trust case against Google is asking the judge to impose. Most of these proposed measures I see no specific flaw in. But I do see two specific flaws:
However, its variant, Chromium, is of some benefit to the free world. You would not run it if you are wise, since it contains some nonfree code for doing web DRM. But free software supporters use it as the basis to make Un-googled Chromium, which is much closer to being usable in freedom. (I don't know precisely how close.)
Spinning Chrome off to another company might lead to the elimination of support for Chromium. That company might make Chrome purely proprietary, and that would indeed be a loss.
Call on the FBI to reopen the investigation of Kavanaugh's various sexual attacks on various women.
*Call on countries around the world to exclude biomass energy from their national climate plans at COP29.*
US citizens:Support Bernie Sanders: urge Democrats in Congress to resist Republicans.
*New Tracker Keeps Tabs on [the fascist's] Appointees' Conflicts of Interest.*
A British surgeon who has worked as a volunteer in Gaza reports on what he saw there, including an apparent campaign by Israeli snipers to render men permanently disabled.
UC San Francisco is punishing employees for showing support for Gaza under attack.
I think it is legitimate for an organization that provides crucial service to the public to insist that employees in work activities stay neutral on political issues — provide this policy is general and unbiased.
However, to punish employees for advocating political views outside of work activities, as UCSF did to Marya, is a violation of their human rights.
*China and India should not be called developing countries, several Cop29 delegates say.*
I agree. China and India are economic powers. They are now among the countries that exploit others, rather than among the countries that get exploited.
The wrecker seems to be serious about ordering the US military to participate in deporting millions of non-citizens from the US.
I have never advocated "open borders". However, the US has a duty to give asylum to those who those who ask for it and meet the international criteria for deserving it. It must not create artificial obstacles, such as the wrecker set up when he was president before, and Biden more or less continued. Instead, the US must speed up making the correct decisions about asylum cases, so that immigrants entitled to asylum are not subject to cruel treatment during years of waiting.
And there is no excuse for gratuitous acts of cruelty, such as separating families and deporting people who came to the US and could not fit in in the countries they supposedly "came from".
*Brazilian police arrest five [military and police] over plot to assassinate Lula after 2022 election win.*
Bernie Sanders's resolution to block the new arms deal to Israel was defeated.
I agree with what Sanders is quoted in this article as saying.
One of the Jan 6 rioters has been convicted of subsequently conspiring with others to kill federal government employees.
I wonder if the wrecker will pardon him for this. The article does not say whether he was convicted of anything on Jan 6, 2021.
The US vetoed a Security Council resolution that demanded "an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in the war between Israel and [HAMAS], along with "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages".
All the other members of the Security Council voted for the resolution.
Private equity parasites did their usual trick of threatening to move to a different country, to bully Labour into dropping its plan to tax them more.
I suggest that countries impose the higher taxes private equity deserves to pay is to impose them, not on the fund organizers or fund "investors", but on the companies they own — so that the "investors" and "funds" can't get out of it by relocating to a tax haven.
This would go well with another reform I have proposed, which is to require private equity funds to obey the rules that exist for public corporations. This makes sense, because private equity investing is effectively a subterfuge to evade those rules. To be airtight, this requirement should be imposed by a country, not on the private equity funds set up in that country, but rather on those that own part of businesses in that country.
Private equity funds are often company-wreckers. They buy a company, then sell it off so loaded with debt that will will go broke and shut down. If the result of justified regulation and taxation on private equity funds is to make them sell off all assets in your country, your country will be better off.
It is not clear whether Ukraine's use of long-range US missiles will make a big difference to the outcome of the war.
Biden has authorized them only in relation to the Kursk salient. It would make sense to use them in whatever ways would most impair Putin's war effort.
Teenage boys in the US are now venting misogyny in school. Girls in one school have noticed this and are wondering what can be done about it.
An idea occurs to me: the girls in a school could set up a web site where they anonymously rate the boys on how misogynist they are in everyday interactions in school. (It would not be focused on dating or anything like dating.) They could tell the boys were to look at the ratings, but not give them accounts to alter anything in the site.
*From Campus to the Courts, the "Palestine Exception" Rules University Crackdowns.*
I looked at the article for which Dahlia Saba and Vignesh Ramachandran were accused and threatened with punishment. It is democratic participation, pure and simple, and trying to punish people for that is vicious opposition to democracy. For a university administration even to consider such intimidation shows a lack of respect for democracy and academic freedom.
I expect this repression to get far worse when America's highest officials are overt enemies of democracy, acting on administrators who have no sense of loyalty to freedom of speech. Others expect it too.
*Canada reportedly foils Iranian plot to kill former justice minister Irwin Cotler,* who was campaigning to have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps designated as "terrorist".
I can well believe that it merits that determination, but such decisions should be made by trial, not by administrative fiat.
* By relying on natural carbon sinks such as forests and peat lands to offset emissions, governments can appear closer to greenhouse gas goals than they actually are.*
*Gaetz pick raises fears that [the bully] will seek "retribution" on political foes.*
*World's 1.5°C climate target "deader than a door-nail", experts say.*
Indeed, the world's governments have talked for years about curbing global heating, but have chiefly promoted excuses rather than solutions.
* The jailing of 45 pro-democracy activists testifies to the ruthless suppression of [Hong Kong's] once-vibrant civil society.*
*Information about some of those activists.**Starmer twice declines to directly condemn jailing of Hong Kong pro-democracy figures.*
The UK economy, as that is normally understood surely benefits from trade with China. Whether poor Britons participate in that benefit, I am not sure. But if the price of that trade is to legitimize repression, in the long run he world loses.
The US may be next. Those who don't dare to criticize Chairman Xi won't dare to criticize the wrecker either.
*El Salvador ex-president among 11 to face trial for 1989 murder of Jesuits.*
That murder was an international scandal for the right-wing government of the time, and boosted support by Americans for the resistance.
US citizens: call on world leaders to reduce deforestation and environmental degradation, so as to preserve biodiversity.
Amazon, DoorDash and CVS donate *to group backing hardline anti-abortion Republican.*
(satire) *New Indiana Law Requires Women Voters To Show Husband’s ID.*
*Abu Ghraib Torture Trial Against Virginia-Based Defense Contractor [CACI] Begins Again.*
Putin's obedient servants have fined Google more money than exists in the world, as a punishment for not allowing Putin's PR.
This won't make Google change anything, but I expect that Putin's friend in the White House will do so by February.
*China and Russia team up to undermine krill fishing restrictions in Antarctica.*
These restrictions are designed to protect whales, penguins and seals.
*Israel's ban on UNRWA will annihilate healthcare for Palestinians.*
Argentina is working to extradite Brazilian extremists, supporters of Bolsonaro, who participated in the attack on government ministries just after Bolsonaro lost the last presidential election.
Rebecca Solnit describes the real life zombie apocalypse: people trained slowly by automatic systems to withdraw their attention from all other people.
Since I refuse to carry a portable tracking and listening device, I sometimes need to ask people passing by, "Would you please make a phone call for me?" Nowadays, the hardest part of this is to get the attention of people in phone trance, who don't seem to notice a live person speaking. People seem to be willing to help, provided they see you are there.
*Over 1,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29, says report.*
*Almost 500 carbon capture lobbyists granted access to Cop29 climate summit.*
Their numbers show the amount of money that seeks to direct the world away from the path that we can be confident would actually save civilization, which is that of diminishing greenhouse emissions. That illustrates how these conferences are corrupt at the core.
*Cop summits ‘no longer fit for purpose’, say leading climate policy experts .*
*ACLU files lawsuit to gain information about Trump mass deportation plans.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass Bernie Sanders's resolution to block the coming arms sale to Israel.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to hasten confirmation of Biden's nominated judges and regulatory officials.
US citizens: phone Biden and urge him to do everything he can to publish the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment. Call (202)456-1111 to reach the White House.
What the fascist leader's choices for major government positions have in common is obedience to him.
This is a big change from 2017.
The Supreme Leader wants officials that will serve him, not their country or human rights.
Amsterdam is arresting people for participating in peaceful and harmless protests for Palestinians' safety and human rights.
This is due to an "emergency order" that was a response, according to the article, to violence started by Israeli soccer fans against protesters peacefully condemning Israel's violence.
Maybe an emergency order was needed, but in order to serve its purpose honestly it should have been enforced only against those who engaged in violence, not against all protesters.
Not surprisingly, the cops vented violence on the protesters supporting the rights of Palestinians.
*Soaring grocery prices helped the wrecker to victory. The climate crisis is only going to make this worse.*
The wrecker is steadfastly determined to exacerbate the climate crisis. To keep America under the Tr…ance as the early stages of agricultural failure grow and spread will require intensified disinformation and repression.
Robert Reich describes the damage that RFK Jr would be likely to do if he becomes Secretary of Health.
*Global plastic production must be cut to curb pollution, study says.*
Palestinians in Jabaliya in northern Gaza have run out of food and water due to Israel's siege, so many of them are now forced to leave, despite the danger and hardship of that.
I suppose those who are not capable of leaving will all die.
This is ethnic cleansing, a grave crime.
*Spain's deadly floods and droughts are two faces of the climate crisis coin. Scientists say violent weather battering Mediterranean is a harbinger of what the rest of Europe can soon expect.*
*Texas woman died after being denied miscarriage care due to abortion ban, report finds.*
Australian aboriginals set fires to control the amount of shrubs, but only in some regions. In some other regions, they almost never set any fires.
Controlling large fires by setting small ones worked pretty well, but one new complicating factor is that nowadays there are is a scattering of man-made things that must not be burned — such as buildings and fields of crops.
See https://gnu.org/education/how-i-fought-to-graduate-without-using-non-free-software.html gives more ideas, from a student who resisted very cleverly.
Advice for journalists, organizations and individuals about surviving under fascism while dragging your heels against its evil plans.
In particular, don't obey demands by anticipation. For instance, Anthony Albanese, the PM of Australia, is resisting pressure from Australians who want to do that.
I would add one more suggestion: if you can't refuse to obey when power demands you do evil, at least refuse to disguise it. Show explicitly that you are obeying orders, not making a decision of your own.
RFK Jr. promotes anti-vaccine disinformation, touts raw milk as a supposed cure (never mind that it can give you an infection), and supports conspiracy theories that demonize medicine.
Modi's demonization of non-Hindus has extended to Canada, influencing some of the Hindus there to attack Sikhs there.
*Australia accused of "exporting climate destruction" on tiny Pacific neighbors with massive gas expansion plans.*
Australia is not alone in doing this, but every country doing this deserves condemnation in these clear terms.
Biden has authorized Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to attack places in Russia.
He should have done this months ago. Nuclear weapons aside, Putin attacks using every weapon he has available, in whatever ways will cause harm to someone. Even including war crimes.
Ukraine should not commit war crimes, and should not attack nuclear weapons and facilities, but aside from that it should not hold back.
For his enemies to restrain themselves in the hope that Putin will restrain himself is foolish since Putin doesn't do that.
Vaccination substantially decreases the probability that an acute Covid infection leads to long Covid that lasts for a year.
A large fraction of people suffering from long Covid are incapable of working full time, or incapable of working at all. Thus, long Covid harms the national economy as well as the individuals who have it.
Norway and Sweden have recognized that cash payment is necessary for national security reasons. Sweden plans to urge all residents to keep cash at home and use it regularly.
Hooray!
This is a response to the threat of sabotage and war from Putin. That aggression in waiting is the world's misfortune, and preparing to meet the threat is necessary. We can rejoice that the preparation will provide at least one real benefit to society even if war is avoided.
*[The wrecker's threatened mass deportation] of migrant workers would trigger productivity losses and a new round of inflationary pricing pressure.*
If he admits a comparable number of authorized migrant workers, that would not have macroeconomic consequences, but he may find it hard to reconcile that decision with the way he has demonized migrants.
If he tries to replace them with US citizen workers who will demand better wages, he is likely to cause inflation, which will make his supporters recognize one of the ways that he duped them.
I am in favor of giving farm workers a better standard of living, but doing this without causing inflation would require taxing the rich to subsidize that raise.
Measures to shift Americans' eating habits toward more healthful food in more healthful quantities could reduce the amount of food we actually need to grow. But they must not be rushed, or imposed harshly.
The US has recently charged two intelligence agents with crimes for separately leaking secret intelligence information to the public.
One of them, Asif Rahman, leaked information about Israel's plans for attacking Iran. That attack was to be retaliation for Iran's latest attack, which was retaliation for Israel's previous attack, which was retaliation for Iran's previous attack, and so on.
Human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong, imprisoned since 2020, is now on hunger strike, protesting mistreatment in prison and isolation from his family.
If the wrecker achieves his goals, there are likely to be imprisoned American human rights lawyers on hunger strike too.
The wrecker nominated Matt Gaetz, a fanatical supporter for whom legal rights count for nothing, to be attorney general. There is talk that Republicans in the Senate will reject him.
If they do so, it would indicate a degree of loyalty to values other than obedience to the wrecker himself. That would be a positive change, if it happens. But I am not confident they can do so, since the wrecker will attack them for it.
The wrecker has shown a pattern of demanding outrageous things from his supporters, and mobilizing the more extreme to bully the rest into endorsing these things. (One of many examples is claiming that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats.) I think he expects to do the same thing to them over Matt Gaetz.
Robert Reich says this nomination is a test of how loyal Republican senators are to the wrecker personally. "If [the wrecker] can get 51 votes for Gaetz, he can get a Senate majority for anything [he] wants to do."
*Is there any red line that Israel will be held to? Biden has just confirmed the answer is no.*
No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. The hater plans to support Israel 200%. Instead of discouraging atrocities ineffectively, he will encourage them.
The Guardian said it will no longer post on ex-Twitter. That sets a good example for everyone who ever posted on Twitter.
*"Go to hell": Project 2025 chief kicks Guardian reporter out of book event.*
The author who spewed that hatred may soon have a chance to join the wrecker in spewing hatred on everyone in the US who is not subservient to the latter.
Democrats in Congress rallied to defeat the bill that would have allowed canceling the tax exemptions of organizations based on accusations with no specifics.
The injustice of that plan is fundamental. Even with a non-fascist president, it would be an intolerable attack in freedom and justice, because it would amount to "guilty of unspecified crimes unless proven innocent."
*Despite nations’ pledges at Cop28 a year ago, the burning of coal, oil and gas continued to rise in 2024.*
In other words, the planet roasters have defeated the campaign to save civilization (and your lives) from destruction.
(satire) *Oklahoma Law Requires Ten Commandments To Be Displayed In Every Womb.*
*The Air Pollution Foundation, which was primarily funded by the lobbying organization Western States Petroleum Association, publicly claimed to want to help solve the smog crisis, but was set up in large part to counter efforts at regulation.*
It was informed in 1955 of the future danger of global heating.
* Australia has amended or lapsed at least 16 defense-related export permits to Israel in recent weeks.*
This alone won't make Israel stop committing atrocities, but it can blaze the trail for other countries to do so.
*Why the Trump administration will be bad for [most] Americans' health.*
The exceptions will be the millionaires.
US citizens: call on World Leaders to agree on a strong treaty to reduce plastic production.
Women in several countries are responding to arrogant right-wing misogynous men by rejecting all men, for sex or for love.
In a place where abortion and birth control are restricted, it is obviously rational for women to reject penis-in-vagina sex with men (except when they seek to get pregnant). This doesn't require rejecting all lovemaking, but that is what these women are doing.
The misogynists will deserve such rejection, but what will happen to the young men who yearn for kind and tender love with a woman? They will well know that life makes that as unlikely as winning the lottery. They may join the misogynists only because no other path proclaims itself as offering any hope.
Sensitive men will see that misogyny is a path to a dead end of twisted hatred, not a path to happiness. But when they reject that path, where could they go instead? They won't see any good path -- only despair.
With women hating them sight unseen, trying to be kind and considerate won't be enough to give men an opportunity for love. Even to learn what constitutes "kind and considerate" requires feedback from someone prepared to appreciate you when you make progress, and misandrists will form a solid wall against that.
I am so sad for the men and for the women.
*Cattle, crops and ancient olive groves: Lebanon’s farmers "lose everything" to Israeli bombs.*
Republicans will try to attack abortion rights nationwide, despite their half-hearted pretense before the election.
The Democrats gave up on the votes of most men. An advisor argues that that was a terrible mistake.
*Cop29 CEO filmed agreeing to facilitate fossil fuel deals at climate summit.*
I see little hope for efforts to preserve civilization and technology fro the danger of global heating, but if it is to happen, the COP conferences as they are are useless window dressing. They mainly serve the planet roasters as greenwashing.
They do provide funds for some useful conservation activities — useful, that is, supposing we do save civilization by preventing global disaster — but they won't help prevent global disaster.
Papua New Guinea has denounced the conferences as a worthless waste of time. Bravo!
If there is to be any chance of replacing this broken process with one that will work, it has to start with an ct of defiance like this one. Then other countries have to follow that lead lead.
The complaints from rich people and businesses, that Labour's tax increases and regulations will be have some deleterious effects, show that it would fix problems that vested interests don't want fixed.
In a market-based economy, any change in one variable affects many others. Pulling on one string reshapes the rest of the network a little. Some of those secondary effects are good and some are bad.
The fallacy in those arguments is that they exaggerate the significance of the bad secondary effect, inviting the reader to assume that it will outweigh the primary benefit of the action. Sometimes that does happen, but you can't take the word of the complainers for that.
Fear of the wrecker is leading foreign political leaders to try to alter their past statements.
(satire) *Neuralink Patient Unable To Stop Hand From Voting For Trump.*
Republicans are trying to create the power to strip the tax exemption from any organization that officials accuse of "supporting terrorists", with no requirement to present any reason or evidence for that accusation.
The group thus attacked would get a hearing, but it is hard to refute an accusation that offers no specifics. Even worse, there may be no limits on what sort of action would constitute "support". Would "End the siege of Gaza" be construed as "support" for terrorists? I wouldn't be surprised if the bully's followers said so,
This attack on the freedom of political association in the US, this attempt to subvert the rule of law by injecting arbitrary power, illustrates the commitment of right-wing extremists to the elimination of the basic principles of human rights, such as "innocent until proven guilty."
I expect the Senate to block this bill, for the rest of this year.
Tuition fees in UK universities are going up, and some students will need bigger loans to pay for that,
The UK student loan system is fundamentally better than the US system, because in the UK system the ex-student who has a low income does not have to repay the loan.
*No it's not your money: why taxation isn't theft.* Refuting the claim that however much you can extract from the market is a measure of what you deserve.
The wrecker has emboldened misogynists to provocatively shout their contempt for women and demand for power over them.
Some of them will act this out violently. We must expect to see an increase in rape.
Many "protected" nature reserves are not protected very effectively; biodiversity is declining within them, due to causes such as drilling for oil.
Global heating could also be contributing to that decline. Protecting a specific area of land won't preventing from getting hotter, and getting much wetter, much drier, getting burned to the ground, or getting flooded.
On criminalization of hostile public posting and speech in the UK.
* Moscow is using ties with neighboring countries to deport and arrest anti-war Russians who fled after invasion of Ukraine.*
Soon the fascist may help Putin do likewise to expat Russians in the US.
*[Harris's] Fruitless Pursuit of the Mythical Moderate.* The article attributes her defeat to her failure to take an overall political position that would help struggling majority of Americans.
I emended the article title because it would be presumptuous to refer to a person I don't know by per first name.
Rep. Jayapal: *We've got to pick some big fights where people can't be in denial or question whether or not we are standing up for them or whether we're standing up to the big corporate interests*, the Washington congresswoman said, adding: "It's a difficult message to send when you're trying to court money from that community."
In other words, Democrats need to become what they once were: sincere populists, defending the vital interests of the poor majority of the US, to overcome the Republican phony populists who pretend to stand for that majority by scapegoating smaller and poorer groups.
*[The wrecker] will give Israel ‘blank check’ which may mean all-out war with Iran, says ex-CIA chief.*
If that happens, it could become a nuclear war if one side starts to lose.
When the bullshitter said Project 2025 had nothing to do with him or his plans, we suspected he was lying as usual. Now there is evidence of this.
*Analysis of 19m flights between 2019 and 2023 reveals 50% rise in emissions, condemned as "gratuitous waste".*
Any country can regulate private jet flights that begin in, end in, or cross that country.
Arguing that the main reason for right-wing victory is the highly funded right-wing media that dominate "news" (including pseudo-news) in the US nowadays.
* More than half the world's food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly accelerating water crisis grips the planet, unless urgent action is taken to conserve water resources and end the destruction of the ecosystems on which our fresh water depends, experts have warned in a landmark review.*
*US judge bars Alabama from purging thousands of voters before election.*
Evidence that PFAS cause changes in intestinal bacteria.
An Australian developer of encrypted messaging software has moved to Switzerland to escape the hostility of Australian laws, including the law that allows the state to order employees to install backdoors in servers and in released software.
Netanyahu announced the ethnic cleansing of North Gaza.
I must suspect that South Gaza will follow, but this is itself an enormous war crime.
Biden can redeem himself morally by voting for a Security Council resolution to order Israel to take this back, and calling for sanctions otherwise.
*Heads of Amazon, Meta and Apple swift to congratulate Trump as Musk celebrates and declares victory for himself.*
I boycott all of those companies, as well as Musk's companies. You can join in!
(satire) *America defeated America at the ballot box.*
People expect that the wrecker will give his pal Putin a gift by ending military support for Ukraine.
If Ukraine is weakened that way, it might be sensible for Ukraine to seek a compromise peace that would be less disastrous than fighting and losing.
However, Putin has the attitude of a cheap gangster: when a victim starts to talk about making a deal, that means perse is weak, so it is time to demand more. Putin would increase his demands to the maximum, figuring that he will get all he demands, sooner or later, whenever Ukraine can't hold a front line any more.
But what if we imagine bizarre ideas with the sort of audacity that Putin has got away with? I have a few wild ideas.
* Ukraine can attack Belarus and perhaps trigger a rebellion to overthrow the dictator, Lukashenko, who is a client of Putin. There is a chance this would free Belaris. At least, Putin might have to send a large army there, enough to interfere with the attack on Ukraine.
* Ukraine can attack Hungary and remove Orban, who is a client of Putin. Maybe Hungary's government would flip.
* The Biden can send several regiments to Ukraine, at Ukraine's invitation, then station them the way of Putin forces' advance, ordering them not to fight unless attacked. Putin will face the choice of attacking the US troops and bringing NATO into the war, or ceasing to pursue those lines of attack.
If Putin does attack them, it would be hard for the wrecker subsequently to pull the US out of the fight. He would look like a coward and a traitor if he did. He does not want to look that way.
If this does not save Ukraine, it will at least help ensure that Ukrainians can take refuge in NATO countries if their country is conquered.
What do you do when democracy is in the intensive care unit?
"Living in Beit Iksa is like living in prison." The only way in or out of that Palestinian village is through an Israeli checkpoint, and if the guards see fit, they can block an ambulance from coming for you while you die.
*Vaccination centre and aid official's car bombarded in Gaza, says UN.*
Right wing extremists aimed to sow so much chaos that the election would fail, and they could start an uprising to make the election irrelevant.
They failed this time, it seems, but perhaps since the wrecker won they decided it was time to relax.
Robert Reich describes the misguided "lessons" that plutocratists want the Democrats to learn from Harris's defeat.
California has already prepared to resist some forms of attack and reprisal that the bully could apply arbitrarily.
Netanyahu dismissed his war minister, Yoav Gallant, who then said there is no "security reason" to continue the fighting in Gaza.
He accuses Netanyahu for rejecting a deal of hostages for peace for invalid reasons.
Ways that the wrecker could preside over the effective elimination of the free press in the US.
One of many ways would be to follow Biden's beginning by prosecuting publishers of leaks.
A couple of years from now, serious journalism about what the US government is doing may have been forced into exile, much as serious journalism about what the Russian government, Chinese government. and many other repressive governments.
Sending letters to blind people who cannot read them is one of many forms of idiotic careless contempt that the UK government shows to the handicapped.
I think this attitude was instilled by the Tory government's attitude.
but Labour has a responsibility is to correct it, rather than disclaim responsibility.
*[The wrecker's] voters want a revolution. It’s time for progressives to offer their own.*
*Democrats must offer more than just hope.*
If you ignore politics, your life may be easier for a while — until nasty policies, that you failed to fight, ruin thousands or millions of lives,
and by chance yours is one of them.
*Why Democrats Lose Even When Republicans Are So Endlessly Terrible*
*Harris Ran to [The wrecker's] Right on Immigration — and Gained Absolutely Nothing For It.*
*[Plastic] pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, ocean acidification and human health, according to analysis.*
The wrecker says he will deport all unauthorized immigrants and threatens to punish states that resist.
This must be part of the reason California is allocating funds to cope with that punishment.
If the wrecker goes ahead with this plan, then he will have to replace them with authorized immigrants, or convince millions of Americans to do the job. For that, he would have to give those workers a big raise.
*Incoming Trump presidency threatens millions of Americans’ [medical insurance].*
The wrecker's threat to freedom of speech and journalism in the US.
Rebecca Solnit: *Authoritarians like Trump love fear, defeatism, surrender. Do not give them what they want.*
One important point is distinguishing hope from optimism.
* [Ohio sheriff's lieutenant] received written reprimand for posting: "If you support the Democrat Party I will not help you."
This illustrates the attitude of hostility that convinces Republicans to act as if Democrats (the majority of Americans) were enemies to be fought bitterly.
This is the bully's fault, and his strategy too. Before 2020 it would have been almost unthinkable. The bully's strategy is an attack on the unity of the United States, and his use of it makes him an enemy of the United States.
*Texas House candidate campaigning in churches, in potential legal violation.*
Christian churches have long tried to disregard the law against supporting political candidates. Punishment by a slap on the wrist encourages the defiance. Since that is a systematic campaign, I think the US needs to punish this enough to make churches think twice.
I would suggest revoking the tax exemption of any church caught doing this. That will make executives of churches take care, while not making any person a martyr.
* Representatives at the Cop16 summit in Colombia negotiated against a backdrop of extreme weather and ecosystem collapse.*
* A dozen black canvassers were tricked, threatened, and driven in seatless U-Haul vans [by Musk]. They were fired after WIRED reported on their plight — some without full pay or a way back home.*
[A political activist in Singapore] faces punishment after refusing to "correct" online posts criticizing Singapore’s death penalty and drug laws.
Singapore strictly represses criticism of the government.
*How Moldovans bravely fought off Russian election meddling — and stood up for democracy.*
If only we could say the same about the United States.
The truth seemed to be Haydn for a while.
China wants to make its embassy to the UK much bigger. Why would it want this? One reason could be to keep Uyghur and Tibetan protesters, whose protests we should support, further away. But if this allows China to have more diplomats in the UK, China would use them for nefarious purposes, including espionage and intimidation of oversees Chinese. An inconvenient old embassy in Beijing is a price worth paying to hamper that.
*"People do not want to believe it is true": the photographer capturing the vanishing of glaciers.*
Migrant workers in the Persian Gulf countries are compelled to work in temperatures of up to 45°C for as much as 14 hours a day.
*Increasingly violent siege of north [Gaza] raises suspicions about Netanyahu’s war aims.*
The concern is that he may aim to annex part or all of Gaza, and expel any living Palestinians. Before that,the fighting could kill most of the people in North Gaza. That would indisputably be genocide.
The Tory Party released a snoop-phone app (nonfree, like nearly all of them) which sends back data about its users.
I wonder what Tory supporters think about these nasty business practices when used by that party against them.
*Can democracy survive now the world’s richest man has it in his sights?*
It is clear that some of the dirty things the muskrat is doing ought to be crimes punished by imprisonment.
The EU's Common Agricultural Policy was supposed to protect biodiversity and the environment, but has failed to achieve that goal. Things are getting rapidly worse.
*Columbia pays $395,000 to student suspended over protest "fart spray".*
I think Columbia went too far in punishing the student for expressing perself in a way that was annoying but not actually harmful to anyone. It is proper that the university was punished for this.
However, we must not forget that most of the punishment is being directed mainly at critics of Israel's massacres, not at supporters of them, and much of that punishment is also unjust.
*Republicans preparing to reject US election result if Trump loses, warn strategists.*
*PFAS mixtures more toxic than single compounds, [which would tend to be the danger worse than previous estimates.]*
The UK deported a man based on administrative technicalities caused by delays due to the pandemic, without the hearing he was entitled to, and then gave him just three days to leave.
This demonstrates that humans can be as rigid as robots if they are taught to do so.
A survey of people in eight countries found that most want to make Big Oil pay for the damage done by climate disaster.
That would be fair, but will it be possible? That depends how much the damages add up to. Eventually they will equal the total value of all human wealth and all of nature. Long before that, they will far exceed the market value of the oil companies.
The point is, the idea of getting compensated for the destruction of nature and human works is inherently foolish — an excuse for not focusing on preventing that destruction.
*Israel formally tells UN of intent to sever all ties with UNRWA relief agency.*
I don't know whether this will make a difference to Palestinians in Gaza, since Israel is already choking off food, water and medicine for them. But it could overwhelm the West Bank with suffering.
*Swing-State Voters Disillusioned With Kamala Harris Can Swap for Two Non-Swing-State Votes.*
A similar idea was used by supporters of Ralph Nader's presidential campaign on at least one occasion. It sends the desired message without risking putting the worst candidate into office.
I voted for Nader at least once, I am proud to say.
If we had ranked choice voting, it would be easy to send such messages without ever risking putting the worst candidate into office. It is a defect of our system that it compels people to vote for the so-so candidate rather than the one they really support.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep private equity out of the child care business.
US citizens: call on Big Tech to stop amplifying election lies.
US citizens: call on lawmakers to ban surveillance pricing.
They should go further than that and ban collecting personal data about the purchaser.
The Putin forces are using specialized drones that drop grenades on civilians. The drone controllers do not target a specific person; rather, they generally attack anyone they come across.
As we increase the number of artificial satellites in Earth orbit, the danger of the Kessler Syndrome (a chain reaction of collisions) increases too. Humanity could bar itself from space entirely.
The movie Gravity showed an extremely fast chain reaction. It might actually take years, but be unstoppable nonetheless.
*Mozambique opposition figures killed as protest grows over election results.*
*"Crunch time for real": UN says time for climate delays has run out.*
*Time to act: UNEP paints bleak climate picture without rapid emissions cut.*
Today's US college students have no memory of a Republican Party that wasn't extremist. To those whose families were Republicans, the way they find it now is normal.
*Corporations using "ineffectual" carbon offsets are slowing path to "real zero", more than 60 climate scientists say.*
It is obvious that use of bogus "offsets" as an excuse not to do real decarbonization keeps the greenhouse emissions high.
Putin is supporting the propaganda of a US neo-Nazi group.
Putin and the corrupter support each other, too.
*Spain's apocalyptic floods [following others in countries around the world] show two undeniable truths: the climate crisis is getting worse and Big Oil is killing us.*
The annual COP conferences that was created to get the world o the road to safety has been captured by planet roasters, and it is hard to see how the US and Russia could negotiate any sort of agreement about fossil fuels.
Some large countries could set up a carbon tax system on their own, using the tax money to help the poor not to subsidize specifically fossil fuel for poor people. Maybe then other countries would join.
* A high school in California has decided not to invest in coal, oil or [fossil] gas, instead pledging to put money into clean energy..*
This was a demand made my the students. Bravo! But what we really need is to stop anyone from "investing" in fossil fuels.
*…Working-class white people were actually the dispensable pawns of white supremacy. Or as Lyndon B Johnson put it: "If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you."
I made a link to that article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected — hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
*Five ways [that the wrecker as president] would be disastrous for the climate.*
The billionaire owner of the LA Times blocked it at the last minute from publishing an already-written endorsement of Harris for president. Some editors resigned in protest, and many subscribers have quit.
Bezos blocked at the last minute an already written endorsement of Harris for president, according to staff. Some editors, staff and subscribers are quitting.
Since Bezos is not an ideological right-wing extremist, there are suspicions that he was afraid the bully would punish his other companies if he allowed an endorsement of Harris and then the bully somehow became president.
People have asked what Musk hopes to get if he can make the bully president.
I think Musk wants to be emperor.
The danger that billionaires pose to the American republic somewhat resembles the way concentration of wealth destroyed the Roman Republic (1). Eventually the richest Roman of all, Julius Caesar, became so powerful that no few in Rome could go against his wishes, not enough to succeed in denying him anything. He aimed for total power.
Later his nephew, Octavian, actually got that total power, so that no one could safely oppose him at all. This he obtained the official position that we nowadays call "emperor".
If we defeat the bully this time, he may go away and leave us alone, but Vance won't refuse the "support" of Musk, and they are not old enough to be likely to disappear soon. To be safe, we will have to take away most of Musk's wealth. And likewise for other billionaires.
[1]. There are many differences, of course. The Roman Republic never had goals such as democracy or equal rights. The vote of a rich citizen counted for more than that of a poor citizen, and a sufficiently rich citizen was automatically a senator. Wives had little more rights than slaves. Notwithstanding the revolt of Spartacus, few ever said that slavery was wrong in general.
Nonetheless, there are similarities in the evolution of the system into instability as the richest fortunes became greater.
*Israeli prison staff accused of assaulting Marwan Barghouti [in his cell],*
causing several wounds.
He is kept in solitary confinement, which is effective a form of torture,
and rarely allowed visits, even from lawyers. So the attack could hardly have been done by anyone but the prison guards.
Some famous writers have supported a campaign to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, except those that have taken a stand against the occupation or atrocities.
The reason I call Israel's massacres of Palestinians "atrocities" but not "genocide" is that the meaning of the latter word is a matter of magnitude of the acts in question, not just the kinds of acts.
Killing 20 people in cold blood is clearly an atrocity, but it is not genocide. Killing 40,000 people out of 2.3 million, by violence or starvation, is a series of atrocities, but is it genocide? I think that is still stretching the word. Killing 10% of the population of Gaza might be genocide. Enough additional killing (which I hope will not occur) would surely make it genocide. But I don't think there is a precise line.
Why argue about that question of the meaning of the word? Killing tens of thousands of people is a grave and vicious act, and calling it a series of atrocities expresses the gravity of the crime in a way that is totally clear.
Russia has more or less taken unofficial control of Georgia (the country in the Caucasus), though the opposition is still fighting and claim that the election was rigged.
* The working class saw Clinton’s support of NAFTA, which cut most tariffs between US, Mexico and Canada, as "a betrayal".* They continue to blame Democrats for it. It was a betrayal and it was promoted by Democrats (though not as many Democrats as Republicans).
But what counts in the election is what they would do next year. Overall, Democrats are inclined to resist the demands of rich people and the businesses they own somewhat more than Republicans would,
though not as much as Bernie Sanders would.
The wrecker is threatening to upend the Veterans Administration, which is likely to kill many US veterans.
It appears that he despises living veterans as much as he despises veterans who are dead.
He also expressed his support for the Confederacy, and thus indirectly for slavery, by saying he would rename Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg.
Soldiers, would you want your base to be named after an enemy general that fought against the United States?
Soldiers, would you want your base to be named after an incompetent general whose decisions helped the US so much that US generals said it was unfortunate to have killed him?
*Philadelphia DA sues Elon Musk and America Pac over $1m voter giveaway,* calling it *running an illegal lottery.*
I am surprised that it is not a crime that can be prosecuted. Prosecution might make Musk stop, but I think he will disregard have his lawyers just let the process proceed, and resolve the suit next Wednesday Nov 6 by paying whatever penalty is imposed, The amount he would lose is probably insignificant to him.
(satire) *Pros And Cons Of Prosecuting School Shooters' Parents.*
*Where do [the corrupter] and Harris stand on housing, taxes and other policies?*
*[The bully] accuses Harris of "campaign of hate" one day after his racism-filled rally.*
It is a standard right-wing disinformation tactic to accuse opponents of doing the bad things that the right-wing does. That way, when people find out that the right wing is doing these things, they may suppose that "everybody does them".
Companies in the fossil fuel business are spending millions per year to convince Democrats that fossil gas is a "clean" energy source.
There are subtle points in which the corrupter differs from what 20th century fascist leaders did to take power.
I'll take the author's word for this, but does it mean the corrupter is not a fascist? How important are those details? Are they big enough to imply that he is not a fascist, or do they only make him a somewhat different kind of fascist?
I'd say it is the latter.
Margaret Reid explains how she felt it was her duty to join in a climate protest, because preserving art is futile when we don't preserve civilization.
Wajahat Ali: *Yes, I think Democrats are complicit in genocide. But Trump would be far worse.*
He directly tackles the view, held by many, that "both sides are the same evil."
To give the victory to someone who is a monster on many issues, in order to punish a party that is a monster on one issue, is an instance of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Climate disaster killed around 40,000 people in Europe in 2022 through heat waves.
The corrupter hinted tantalizingly that Mike Johnson, the by-hook-or-by-crook Speaker of the House, is somehow going to steal the election.
He could do this by arbitrarily rejecting the elections of some states. So it is not a mere vague suspicion. It looks like he and the corrupter are trying to suggest that he will do that.
*The Saturday following Hurricane Helene, soldiers warned Whitney Anderson about the [chemicals in the mud that could cause burns].
Attackers set fires that burned some early voting ballots.
I have to suspect that this is part of the violence that Team Tr…ance stirs up. The wrecker has repeatedly suggested that mail-in ballots somehow put the election in danger and that the 2020 election was "stolen", and many of his followers are inclined to violence.
US citizens: call on The FEC to investigate and prosecute Elon Musk's illegal campaign events now.
*Mitch McConnell Funneled Cash to a PAC Pitting Arab and Jewish Voters Against Harris.*
Another article said that the stir up hostility between those Arab and Jewish voters while using them all.
This is one of the problems with political ads funded by anonymous rich people — they can easily pat to say one thing to group A and the opposite to group B, while keeping it secret from the public.
Targeted advertising makes it easier to do this. It also fuels a motor for pervasive tracking and surveillance — "surveillance capitalism". I think we should abolish it.
The US is building battery backup for the power grid so fast that it makes all talk of needing nuclear power for that purpose absurd. Nuclear power is simply inferior to these batteries, in cost and in time to construct.
US professors at various universities have been fired, or are being "investigated", based on activism against Israel's atrocities against Palestinians.
Columbia university Katherine Franke criticized Israeli ex-soldiers in the Columbia campus for harassing Palestinians there. Other professors then accused her of creating a hostile environment for Israeli ex-soldiers.
This shows the absurdity of this system, in which any statement alleging harassment can be taken seriously as harassment. This can be twisted to target anyone who is not a nebbish.
I do not approve of Kanazi's poem, which aims to polarize society and turn the political disagreement over Israel and Palestine into an uncross-able rift between two camps. I don't shun individuals for developing nonfree software, and I certainly won't shun anyone for disagreeing with me about this.
However, freedom of speech about political issues includes the right to make statements such as that poem, and people should not be punished for redistributing it. People deserve the freedom to share copies of any published work.
*Israel is not "saving western civilization". Nor is Hamas leading "the resistance". *Both sides believe they have right on their side and use it as an excuse to perpetuate bloodshed.*
* The sudden collapse [last year] of carbon sinks [of forests and land] was not factored into climate models — and could rapidly accelerate global heating.*
This seems to be caused by changes in the climate big enough to disrupt natural processes on a large scale.
Bob Woodward: Trump kept backchannel open to Putin after leaving office.
Greg Palast reports on the views of attendees at the fascist's rally: they are convinced that they will rebel if he loses.
I think they are nerving themselves to start shooting.
I hope that, if they start actually pointing guns at people, US troops will not hesitate to use guns to vanquish them. In their way of thinking, they are entitled to shoot people who won't support them, and if you aren't ready for a gunfight, that implies they should bully you. They will bully the US army if commanders seem hesitant to order "Fire!"
But if they see that the Army is prepared to return fire if they shoot, they may still hesitate to start actual shooting.
Interesting views on the idea of reparations for slavery from Britain to descendants of slaves.
Although the individuals who participated were responsible for their own actions, the state was responsible for maintaining the system of slavery for denying equal rights to those who were slaves. The state does properly owe these reparations — and that British state still exists.
To get the reparations from those who are wealthy today because ancestors invested in slavery would be very just, but figuring out who should owe how much may be very difficult — and may not be necessary.
In the case of Britain, I have the impression that nearly everyone who was rich from the 1600s to the 1800s got much of that wealth from slavery. Those whose business had nothing directly to do with slavery nonetheless did profit from the greater wealth of the country that was due to slavery.
So I think it would be sufficiently just, and much simpler, to get the money for the reparations by increasing taxes on income and wealth today,
I've reached a similar conclusion for reparations in the US, through a similar system.
Each note starts with a date and a brief topic in parentheses. That
text is also a link to that note.
For instance, if the note
starts with "31 July 2022 (Inflation)" then you can link to it with
"https://www.stallman.org/notes/2022-may-aug.html#31_July_2022_(Inflation)".
Return to Richard Stallman's home page.
Please send comments on these web pages to rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2024 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire page are permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.