George Monbiot: *Wage war on nature to build new homes: that’s Labour's offer, but it's a con trick.*
England can vastly increase the available housing for non-rich people by taxing mansions that are rarely or never occupied enough to convince rich people it is not desirable to own them. Increasing taxes on mansions that people do live in could help too.
Some local governments in the US have passed surtaxes on very expensive apartments and houses.
We should do this at the state or federal level — that would be more effective.
Governor DeMentis has abolished protection of many historic buildings in Florida. I wonder why?
Is it simply that developers stand to make a lot of money by demolishing them, and offered DeMentis and Republicans a share of that?
*Brazilian thugs are investigating Bolsonaro, accusing him of counterfeiting a Covid-19 vaccination certificate.*
This is bizarre, because Bolsonaro says he proudly refused to be vaccinated and never claimed otherwise.
He visited the US on a special head-of-state visa. Maybe heads of state are not asked to prove vaccination.
It is idiotic not to be vaccinated, unless you have some specific medical problem which contraindicates vaccination. Please don't believe the disinformation which cherry-picks occasional problems with this vaccine and exaggerates their significance, while minimizing the continued danger of catching Covid-19.
London thugs mounted a huge operation to remove four people who had occupied a Russian billionaire's disused house. They wanted to invite Ukrainian refugees to live there.
It's unusual for squatting in a rich person's empty house to have such a sharp political motive. The usual reason, in a city where the rich are making people homeless, is to have a place to live. I believe that it is even more important to support people who do that.
Two Russian activists broke into a luxury estate in France, said to be owned by Putin's "ex-son-in-law", to invite Ukrainian refugees to stay there.
Instead of trying to kick them out, France could put sanctions on the owner and offer the estate to refugees legally.
A similar occupation is occurring in London.
A guide to the fashionable ways to impress people, for those who can't afford a mansion.
To advance the campaign to curb global heating, stop feeling guilty and trying to make small decreases in your own use of fossil fuel, and join efforts to change the system that makes everyone live wastefully.
The exception to "stop feeling guilty" is for activities that make profligate use of fossil fuels. For instance, to have a private jet, a large boat, a mansion, or a child, are things you can and should avoid.
The same advice applies to the campaign against nonfree software. People often write to me asking me to forgive them for using some nonfree software. But I don't ask them to apologize for this; I ask them to support campaigns against nonfree software, such as the GNU Project.
Elected president López Obrador says he will not accept the usual salary and mansion of Mexican presidents. Bravo!
He also says he will not accept bodyguards, because the people will protect him. I am sure they will want to protect him, but can they do the job of professionals?
The UK plan to censor speeches in universities means the end of intellectual freedom, in a sad contrast with the tradition of liberty.
Evictions in the UK are hitting a record pace. Traps placed in welfare benefits by the Tories are almost certain to cause an eviction when they go off.
The main problem is that the wealthy are using a larger fraction of the UK's total housing space than before. This can be reversed at least partially by raising taxes on large houses and apartments, which will move the middle class and somewhat wealthy towards somewhat smaller spaces, making more buildings available for poor people to live in.
Baby coral animals may be able to adapt to higher acidity.
Everyone: support US fast food workers on strike for $15 an hour.
Japanese corporation Sumitomo tried to get a license to mine in the Solomon Islands by telling the Japanese ambassador to threaten to cut aid for a hospital.
The ambassador didn't dare say no, but fortunately he avoided carrying out the order.
Common "complementary medicines" claimed to assist cancer chemotherapy are likely to undermine its effectiveness.
Eating Less Meat Essential to Curb Climate Change, Says Report.
Most people don't realize how big a footprint meat production has. Especially beef.
Fixing this problem does not require "telling people what to eat"; making greenhouse-emitting activities pay for the damage they do would be enough.
Soap, Sunscreen And Steroids Found in Antarctic Waters And Wildlife.
Some of these chemicals can be harmful to wildlife in minute quantities because they mimic hormones.
Important EU countries are pushing to end Luxembourg's tax-dodging scheme.
When thugs disbelieve a woman who makes an accusation of rape, they often threaten her until she falsely confesses to lying. Then she gets prosecuted and may be caught in prison until the rapist is caught raping someone else.
Antisemitism Is Racism. We Need to Acknowledge That.
The rifle manufacturer Kalashnikov, whose weapons are used in wars around the world, now advertises itself as "promoting peace and calm".
Reminds me of how the US renamed the War Department as the "Defense Department".
A journalist in Bangladesh has been fined for questioning the government's claims about the number of political murders in Bangladesh's war of independence.
Ironically, he was instrumental in calling attention to these murders.
Such vile censorship is not unique to Bangladesh. France has two laws each explicitly prohibiting disagreement with the official views on a particular question. One was adopted just a few years ago.
All this while encouraging people to keep burning fossil fuel.
Obama isn't proposing to stop militarizing US police, only to monitor the process more.
The US is dragging its feet in Lima climate talks, acting as if we could take our time curbing global heading slowly.
The US spent a lot of money for war but won't help Syrian refugees.
I think the US should offer funds for permanent resettlement of these refugees, not just to keep them alive in refugee camps, because that way the problem will be solved.
Australian immigration seems to have pressured Monica Jones to agree to be filmed for a TV program, on pain of receiving harsh treatment.
Clinton's criticism of fracking presumes that there are some places where the risks are acceptable.
Clearly she is considering only the local risk of polluting water and not the guaranteed harms of (1) using scarce water and (2) contributing to global heating.
The Labour Party would have used a little less austerity than the Tories applied, but both would have spread poverty.
Obama plans to somewhat limit the militarization of US thugs.
Why is this program "popular in Congress"? Probably because of the money of the companies that make the equipment, which have arranged to divide the work around nearly all congressional districts.
We must reject the idea that an elected official's proper job includes pulling jobs to their districts from other parts of the US, or getting the government to do misguided spending in their districts.
Where to draw the line between online death threats and jokes or self-expression?
A just criterion can't rest on the subjective understanding of either party. It has to be based on what is reasonable in the situation.
In addition we must stop publicly posting our private musings. Web sites such as Facebook that encourage that practice are harmful.
The Iraqi army, trained by the US, had
50,000
"ghost soldiers" on its payroll who were not really acting as
soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
This alone does not explain PISSI's triumph. The 10,000 real soldiers in Mosul greatly outnumbered PISSI, and could easily have held the city — if they were inclined to fight.
The Spanish right-wing government cut off funds for finding and identifying the graves of people massacred by its predecessor, the dictator Franco, during the Spanish civil war.
Franco was a general, and tried to stage a military coup, but ran into resistance from the people so that it took him three years to conquer all of Spain.
Friends in Spain told me a few years ago that Franco's supporters still occupied positions of power. It is no surprise, therefore, that right-wing politicians want to Franco's crimes to be forgotten.
A Bahraini human rights campaigner was
sentenced
to prison for attacking two thugs. That's what the
thugs
generally say; more likely they attacked her.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
The effect is to keep her in permanent exile.
London residents facing eviction by a new tax-evading landlord protested at the company's office.
US citizens: call
on Congress to renew incentives for renewable energy and energy
efficiency.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators not to wipe out nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
Studying Syrian censorship through leaked logs.
Thousands of Hong Kong democracy protesters occupied a street, and were attacked by thugs with dogs and pepper spray.
It seems to be a very strong form of pepper spray.
Putin is exerting control over publishing in Russia, not just "news".
In general I object to using the word "content" to describe publications, because it disparages them. However, it may be a fitting word for the publications of Putin's flunkies.
Millions with HIV die because they can't afford the drugs to keep them alive.
The World Trade Organization and its TRIPES (*) agreement is partly responsible for the high price of these patented drugs. The leaders of that organization, as well as the politicians that signed it and ratified it, should be tried for mass murder by the International Criminal Court.
* Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science.
How to Police the Police: What Rules Should Govern Police Use of Body Cameras?
When a US company has data in a server in Europe, which country has jurisdiction to seize the data?
1000 protesters tried to enter Tahrir Square and were attacked by thugs.
The Suez Canal has allowed toxic tropical jellyfish to invade the Mediterranean, where they endanger people and fish. And other dangerous invaders too.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture rebuked the US for failing to punish torturers, as well as use of solitary confinement and violence by thugs, and imprisonment of large numbers of people facing possible deportation.
The small health risks of some birth control methods are smaller than the health risks they prevent, and trivial compared with the health risks of pregnancy.
Many US women are in prison for being unable to stop their husbands from beating their children to death.
The legal system fails to consider that the women were terrorized by those men.
The grand jury gives prosecutors a secret opportunity to indict anyone — or, as in the case of Michael Brown's killing, to avoid indicting someone. This article proposes a replacement system.
The UK is giving out "counter-terrorism" leaflets whose only use is to make people scared and ready to give up freedoms for security against a tiny danger.
(You know already what these campaigns are for, but the article is so funny it would be a shame not to show it to you.)
The way for the UK (and the US) to minimize the danger of terrorism by Islamists is to wind down the many interventions in mainly Muslim countries.
In 1944, just after freeing Greece from the Nazis, the UK joined with Greek collaborators to massacre unarmed leftist demonstrators in order to impose a right-wing government of the former flunkies of the Nazis.
This led to the Greek civil war an dictatorship, and to today's Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party.
It is quite likely you are already responding to fear of what internet surveillance can do to you.
Scientists protecting endangered species on the Galapagos Islands have run out of money because competing local people made them close their gift shop.
Human inhabitation of the Galapagos Islands endangers the unique species there, and so does tourism.
Chicago's schools lost 100 million dollars after banksters led them into a tricky financial scheme
, telling them not to worry about the fine print.The crucial point is that banksters had shortly before procured a state law to permit this sort of scheme. That's the way they work. All the "financial deregulation" laws of the past 20 years should simply be repealed.
In the UK, homelessness and destitution are becoming normal: people are starting to accept it as a permanent state of affairs which need not be corrected.
The same happened in the US in the 1980s; it is part of Reagan's legacy.
Right-wing Japanese officials are pushing denialism of forcing women from occupied peoples into prostitution, using one piece of questionable evidence as a false excuse to deny all the evidence.
Germany's biggest electric company
will split
off fossil fuel generators to concentrate on renewable energy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
US thugs that get fired for misconduct typically have no difficulty getting jobs as thugs in other places in the US.
The person who did the autopsy on Michael Brown seems to be hardly qualified for it, and not very honest.
Why, I wonder, did the state entrust such a sensitive job to someone like that?
Tibetan singer Kalsang Yarphel has been imprisoned for encouraging Tibetans to learn and speak Tibetan.
Evidently China aims to erase Tibetan culture.
Having a baby is substantially dangerous; occasionally the only way a woman can save herself is with a late-term abortion.
Washington DC thugs have planned years in advance how to spend the money they expect to take from people not convicted of crimes.
An example of research that should not be done: tracking people automatically from one camera to another.
Note the idiotic non-response given in the article to concerns that this is dangerous. They suggest that if the video is encrypted in transmission to Big Brother it will protect you from being tracked by someone else. As if anyone were as dangerous as Big Brother!
I've proposed making it illegal to have remotely accessible cameras pointed at public places.
US citizens:
call
on the US to stand for strong measures to curb
global heating in
the Lima negotiations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
In my message, I used the term "global heating" to underline how serious the danger is, rather than the denialists' term "climate change".
Michael Brown's killer quit the Ferguson thug department.
The buying fever on Black Friday is a disgrace to society, as well as a distraction from more important things.
The people who do it don't understand how pathetic their obsession with appliances is.
According to reports smuggled out of Raqqa, PISSI lords it over the inhabitants like an occupying army, and doesn't bother defending them from Assad's bombers when they attack civilian areas.
If this is accurate (it could be an exaggeration), it would be easy to get people's help in pushing PISSI out, if only there were a decent alternative on offer. But there isn't.
I wonder why Assad continues making them hate him.
Note: PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Murder and corruption charges against Mubarak and some of his henchmen were dismissed in an arbitrary way.
With the supporters of democracy and human rights under total repression, I guess al-Sisi doesn't need to pretend to hold the previous military ruler accountable for anything.
Italy is trying to weaken EU standards for network neutrality.
Brazil's Javari Valley Threatened by Peruvian Oil, Warn Tribes.
The Peruvian president, Ollanta Humala, gave an impression of being vaguely leftist, but this does not seem to be very much the case.
The harm done by fracking could be comparable to that of thalidomide, tobacco or asbestos.
The Germany spy agency came up with a tricky legal excuse to spy on the communications of some Germans.
Your Face Is Not a Bar Code: Arguments Against Automatic Face Recognition in Public Places.
This article is as valid as when it was written a decade ago. However, I must disagree with one point in the article: fear of terrorists is not justifiable for Americans in general. The danger of terrorism in the US is so tiny that it is foolish to worry about it, unless you're one of the small fraction who has a job to do to prevent it.
The Massachusetts "fusion center", created to try to find "terrorists", was used to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters in Boston last week.
David Brock used to get Republicans elected; now he proposes to work for Ms Clinton, who is almost a Republican.
An example shows how mainstream media propaganda for Wall Street works: by grossly misrepresenting what progressives said.
And it handles the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline by presenting a "debate" between two associates of the oil industry.
Haitian thugs
shot
and wounded protesters who want the US-supported sweatshop next to
their town to provide them with electricity.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
Chinese activists are being tried for fictitious acts of "disorder".
The UK legal system leaves many women vulnerable to their ex-abusers who are released from prison, unless they have extra money to spend.
Of course, women in that position tend to be short of money.
The US needs to seriously address the question of racism and its effects.
Practical racism interacts with the growing inequality of wealth. With ever more Americans poor, groups that are targets of prejudice will tend to get poor first.
The UN human rights report reproved the US for imposing sleep deprivation on prisoners.
Pope Francis, visiting Turkey, calls for responding to religious fundamentalism by helping the poor and marginalized.
It seems that he and I agree on political issues, except for those related to sex and reproduction.
A Chinese official threatened Tibetan students with punishment later if they study the Tibetan language.
Some of China's methods of spreading propaganda about Tibet.
Israel deploys balloon-suspended cameras over Jerusalem which can track all protesters, and everyone else too.
A man in the US was arrested after pointing a banana at a thug as if it were a weapon.
It is foolish to pretend to threaten armed people with a gun, even if it without anything that looks much like a gun. If he had succeeded in fooling them, they couldn't be blamed for shooting him in perceived self-defense.
However, once they knew it was a banana, they also knew it was never seriously meant as a threat. Thus, it was wrong for them to arrest and charge the man with threatening anyone. Mere folly should not be treated as a crime.
A study estimates that over 10,000 people in the UK are in slave labor.
In general, the estimates for numbers of slave laborers in various countries include a lot of guesswork.
Exit International teaches how to commit suicide painlessly. People flock to learn this in case they will need it later.
I think everyone should have the right to commit suicide, though it makes sense to impose a waiting period and to treat people for depression if that's the root of their wish to die.
Death is unfair; that people must die is a fundamental injustice in the universe (though there is no one to blame for it). But when life is so horrible that even death is better, forcing the person to go on living is a kind of torture.
Ohio has been embarrassed by a series of botched executions, so now Republicans plan to block even courts from investigating how they are carried out.
A thug in Ferguson shot at a woman in a car, causing her to lose an eye.
US citizens: stand with Elizabeth Warren in rejecting bankster Antonio Weiss as an official of the US Treasury.
Peaceful protests closed shopping malls around Ferguson on Fools' Friday, and other activities around the US.
Some e-cigarettes contain a lot of formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic.
I suggest that they should be sold like tobacco itself: to adults but not to minors.
US citizens: call on the EPA to push harder and faster to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants.
Women on Climate Change Frontline Make Big Impact on Small Grants.
Weather has devastated olive production in many countries.
Specific occurrences of these kinds of bad weather are random, but our global heating activities are making them more frequent.
Most poultry in the UK is contaminated with potentially fatal bacteria, and the UK government is failing to tackle the problem.
Instead it is considering an industry proposal to cut inspections.
An Indian version of Hamlet faces censorship threats.
Thugs beat up Hong Kong protest leaders after arresting them.
The European Union is trying to impose the right to have articles dropped from searches for your name on Google world-wide.
I don't think this particular requirement is a big deal, but it is dangerous for any country to have the power to limit search engines world wide.
Dostoevsky predicted the totalitarianism that can occur when people abandon individual morality by going to any lengths to fight for some cause.
It is a mistake, however, to equate morality with religion.
The problem he presents is not in having ideals, not as such, but in approaching them with the assumption that they justify any means whatsoever.
Pakistan's Geo News to Appeal against
Owner's 26-Year
Jail Term for Blasphemy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
Two people in the Indian film industry were sentenced to 26 years for "blasphemy" consisting of having a religious song playing during a wedding scene.
Pakistan should beg the world forgiveness for censoring criticism of religion, but in the second case it wasn't even criticism.
India is not very good in this department either.
One railroad line in the UK was run by the state, and was run so well that it became an embarrassment to right-wing politicians who insist on privatization.
Privatization of the railroads in the UK has been a rip-off. They should all be re-nationalized.
Indonesia's president proposes plans to protect forests and peatlands.
The Five Leaders Who Failed Ferguson.
A former UK Tory leader lost his libel suit: the judge believed the thug who said the politician called him a "pleb".
The judge said that the thug didn't have enough imagination to have made this up, but lying in court, for a thug, is not the stretch it would be for you or me
.I can't find either of them credible enough to believe.
Nuclear weapons can be detonated by accidents and rebellions, making them so dangerous we need to eliminate them all.
Refusing to ransoming hostages from PISSI, so that they got beheaded for propaganda instead, may have done the US and UK more harm than ransoming would have done.
US public schools are so poorly supported that they charge students for lunch, and when students' parents have not paid, they go hungry. Some students receive lunch gratis, but they are treated as objects of scorn.
When I was a child, the public school gave all students lunch.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that rejecting the idea that the poor deserve to be looked down on is one important lesson for schools to teach.
Indian rich fritter away millions on frivolities, displaying contempt for the rest of society.
A judge rejected DNA testing that might support Rodney Reed's claim he is innocent of murder. The judge would rather kill a man than recognize doubt in a past verdict.
The death penalty is inherently wrong, because it can't be undone when evidence shows the convicted person was innocent. And other reasons too.
US citizens: call on Holder to give justice for Michael Brown and to defend the right to protest.
US citizens: call for stricter carbon emission standards for existing power plants.
US citizens: Call on Obama to give justice for Michael Brown.
The Oregon referendum on labeling GMOs came out so close that it requires a recount.
Canadian scientist Alfredo Frid explained why he joined in civil disobedience against an oil pipeline.
Frid is mistaken when he accuses the Canadian of "inaction" on "climate change". The Canadian government is a strong supporter of global heating and takes many kinds of actions to speed it up, including gagging scientists and shutting down research projects that can monitor heating.
The thugs clamped down hard on protesters in Ferguson.
One thug begged people not to burn down their city. Considered by normal standards it is foolish for people to burn down their own city, but then, if they had normal lives and considered normal standards applicable, they wouldn't want to do so.
The killings of blacks around the US is the extreme manifestation of a racist system that needs systemic change.
Of course, the system in the US oppresses whites plenty as well; just not as much on the average.
Obama is planning to send some more US troops to Afghanistan.
The US can never actually lose the war in Afghanistan, but it can't win either, and continuing the fight means continuing the suffering of Afghans and the expense and militarization of the US.
The resumption of night raids will increase the suffering.
I don't think war is justified under these circumstances.
A Venezuelan opposition politician faces charges of
organizing
to kill President Maduro.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is not an absurd accusation, given that the opposition launched a coup attempt against Chavez a decade ago, organized by the US.
However, it could also be stretching the facts.
A UN committee's resolution against massive surveillance left out the crucial issue of recording who talks with whom.
Records of who talks with whom are absolutely crucial. Whistleblower Donald Sachtleben is in prison because the US government exhaustively studied the phone records of dozens of journalists from the Associated Press.
The UK asked Vodaphone for the phone records of one journalist, so Vodaphone handed over the phone records of everyone at the same newspaper.
We Should Cash-Bomb the People — Not the Banks.
On the other hand, if officials' goal is to help billionaires, not the rest, handouts to banks make perfect sense.
Mexico's Missing Students Draw Attention to 20,000 'Vanished' Others.
Deforestation in Brazil has become substantially less this year.
It is not clear why.
In Egypt 78 teenagers were sentenced to prison for protesting for Morsi.
The EU has taken a
feeble
first step towards controlling CO2 emissions from ships,
but it won't even start until 2018.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
Charging a fee for emissions would cover this naturally; shipping any load by air or sea should be charged for the emissions involved.
Three (or more) factions are now fighting over Libya.
I am not sure whether there is a basis to prefer any one of them to the rest.
Islamist fanatics
killed
two polio vaccinators in Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is an extreme example of the harm religion does to society.
UK thugs are distributing fear propaganda which will aid their campaign for further surveillance and censorship.
Human overpopulation is leading to increasing human incursion into a national park in Mumbai.
The UK government wants to follow the US in weakening the inspection rules for farm animals.
This would save money for companies in ordinary operation and make some rare big dangers more likely.
US citizens: call on Obama to require increases in fuel efficiency for trucks.
US citizens: call for federal guidelines to prevent racial profiling by state and local thugs.
Although most countries have signed the treaty to ban cluster bombs, Russia, China and the US have not, and many banks and funds have invested in their production.
A gene modification treatment for an obscure disease costs
over
a million dollars per patient. What will happen to the poor?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-22 because the
old
link was broken.]
The ham-fisted UK spy-on-all agencies are blaming Facebook as an excuse to get themselves off the hook for incompetence in detecting jihadists planning an attack; but the real problem is the unjust interventions that make people so angry they will kill.
It seems incorrect to call that attack "terrorism", because it was aimed at a soldier, not at civilians.
In the Greek "economic recovery", the state drains people and schools to support banks that hardly lend money.
I'd say it's an extractivist government of occupation.
Warm weather in autumn