Wrecker regime legal setbacks
24 April 2025
*The wrecker's officials create uncertainty to evade court orders rather than comply.*
Wind projects imperiled, US coasts
24 April 2025
[The wrecker] *halts construction of big wind farm off New York coast.*
"Christian nationalists" imposing religion on the US
23 April 2025
The wrecker is trying to help plutocratist "Christian nationalists" impose their extreme religion on the United States — and to lead them to be more plutocratist.
Lies and coercion used to arrest Aditya Wahyu Harsono
23 April 2025
Deportation thugs lied to Aditya Wahyu Harsono, saying they had revoked his permanent visa weeks before so he was "late" in leaving the US, then pressured his coworkers to fake a work meeting so they could surprise and arrest him.
Those coworkers may be ashamed of this for the rest of their lives. Worse, they may teach themselves to believe the bully's lies so as to convince themselves that what they did was right.
Or they may instead join the resistance to make up for the harm they did.
Effects of wrecker bullying China
23 April 2025
With the wrecker bullying various countries to demand that they punish China, China is now threatening those countries with similar bullying if they do what the wrecker demands.
Urgent: D.C. U.S. Attorney nominee
23 April 2025
US citizens: Call on the Senate to reject Ed Martinâ as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. His praise for a notorious January 6 rioter should disqualify him from any position in the government; in this position, he will leave Congress exposed to physical violence.
Supreme contempt of court
23 April 2025
*[Senator] Amy Klobuchar calls on supreme court to hold Trump officials in contempt.*
I hesitated to call for that particular action because I was not sure it was tactically wise. It might just play into the wrecker's hand. But if a senator thinks that we have come to this, I suppose it is so.
Unraveling decades of progress in safeguarding our nation
22 April 2025
* Despite such painful lessons of [the Big Spill], we find ourselves once again hurtling toward disaster. The [saboteur in chief]'s personnel and programmatic cuts at science, environmental and safety agencies, and the wholesale rollback of environmental regulations, threaten to unravel decades of progress in safeguarding our nation. These actions aren't just misguided — they're a dangerous rejection of the hard-won knowledge gained from former crises and a gamble we cannot afford to take.*
Disasters of melting Arctic ice
22 April 2025
Melting Arctic ice is a disaster mainly because it is raising sea level, but it is causing several kinds of secondary disasters too.
UK imprisoning people for sleeping on the street
22 April 2025
The UK is putting people in prison for months for sleeping on the street. That is shame-worthy in itself, but it gets worse: sometimes the decision is made in a court hearing where the accused person was not present, has no legal representation, or both.
Proposed new powers to punish people for begging or feeding pigeons are even harsher.
For the man who desperately needs to feed pigeons for company, I wonder if giving him a budgerigar to take care of might have enabled him to feel better while avoiding bothering neighbors.
US-deported Venezuelans now pawns, SLV
21 April 2025
The persecutor has sent hundreds of Venezuelan refugees to El Salvador which engaged to hold them in prison without trial. Now El Salvador is offering to release many of them to Venezuela in exchange for Venezuela's political prisoners.
Such an exchange might be good, if we could assume that (1) the Venezuelans now in El Salvador want to go to Venezuelans and would be safe there, and (2) the prisoners now in Venezuela want to go to El Salvador and would be safe there.
I can't tell from the article whether any of that would be so.
Feeding the exploiter more wins
21 April 2025
Ariel Dorfman imagines new kinds of honors that might be bestowed on the bullshitter.
Mass rallies condemn regime, US
21 April 2025
Robert Reich: mass rallies to condemn the bully are a display of courage, which inspires courage in those who felt helpless to resist.
Tesla odometer as warranty cheater
21 April 2025
*Tesla accused of hacking odometers to weasel out of warranty repairs.*
Perhaps we should make a legal requirement for odometers to be implemented such that other systems in the car cannot override their settings.
RMS will give a talk in London
20 April 2025
I will speak about free software and computing freedom, and about related issues that affect whether your computing respects your freedom.
This talk will be at King's College, on Tuesday, April 22 in London, England.
There are many threats to freedom in the digital society. They include nonfree software, massive surveillance, and censorship. Nonfree programs are often designed to restrict users, control users or manipulate users. The War on Sharing aims to stop users from sharing copies of published works. Computers for voting make election results untrustworthy.
Other threats come from use of web services, implemented by companies that can impose any conditions whatsoever. Finally, most internet activities (aside from those which existed before 2000) are precarious, dependent on permission from one company. All of these threats originate more or less in the use of nonfree software. That is why free software is the first battle in the liberation of the digital society.
RMS will give a talk in Oxford
20 April 2025
I will give a talk at the Lecture Theatre, on Thursday, April 24 in Oxford, England.
The topic is free/libre software and freedom in the digital society.
We understand that the uses of computing can be unjust. Most do not realize that the mechanisms of computing can be unjust in other ways.
If a program that the users do not control does your computing, it controls your computing.
When servers that the users do not control do your computing, those servers control it.
So don't entrust your own computing to a program that isn't libre or a server whose operator isn't a loyal friend. For your own computing, instead of a server that might mistreat you, use free software on your own computer.
Foreign disinformation welcomed in US
20 April 2025
The wrecker has eliminated an agency whose mission is to detect and counter disinformation campaigns, especially Russian.
I suspect this is one little part in the establishment of the axis of dictators, to start with the wrecker and Putin. But it may be more than that. The wrecker depends on disinformation too, and some of that originates in Russia.
Forever chemicals
19 April 2025
*Fears that UK military bases may be leaking toxic "forever chemicals" into drinking water.*
Trump’s coal expansion
19 April 2025
The saboteur in chief wants to expand coal mines, and is cutting programs that try to protect the workers from getting sick from working in a coal mine.
Musk & Social Security
19 April 2025
*Musk Is Lying About Waste and Fraud in Social Security to Have an Excuse to Kill It.*
Berkeley Fire Safety
19 April 2025
Berkeley, California, is about to vote on new fire safety rules designed to slow the spread of wildfires.
The rules include having no plants (and other flammable material) within 5ft of a residence.
I wonder why this does not include other kinds of buildings, in the areas that are most vulnerable.
Legal saga of Ábrego Kilmar
19 April 2025
Detailed history of the case of Kilmar Ábrego García.
President Bukele justifies holding him in prison on the supposed grounds that he is a "terrorist", but has not tried to prove that that is true. He has not had a trial to justify that claim.
Under Bukele's "war on drugs", it is normal to imprison people for years and trials are considered unimportant.
The greatest outrage of this case for the United States is that the bully and Bukele are blatantly conspiring to respond to the Supreme Court by coordinated deceptions.
The bully's deception is the claim that he has no influence over Bukele.
Bukele's deception is the claim that
The two deceptions are designed so that there is no way to prove that either of them is false, even though by common sense we can be completely sure they are false. The message to the Supreme Court is, "We can use these deceptions to thumb our noses at your rulings."
A US senator went to El Salvador and asked to speak with Ábrego. The vice president told him that was somehow impossible, as some law of nature.
Homan, the Tsar's "border tsar" called Ábrego a "terrorist". Since Ábrego has not sought publicity, can he win a lawsuit for libel against Homan?
Kilmar Garcia
19 April 2025
The bully admits that deporting Kilmar Ábrego Garcia was a "mistake", but he shows no contrition about the harm that it did to Ábrego and to his family. He joins Bully Bukele in laughing at their suffering.
Note the curious contrast between the bully's ready admission that he has no authority to order Bukele to release Ábrego to the US, when it is an excuse to allow Bukele to do what the bully really wants Bukele to do. Contrast this with what the bully does when he wants to impose his will by force in the US in situations where legally he has no such right.
Doge agency
19 April 2025
The DOPE agency demanded to mess with an NGO because it received some government funds.
The agency personnel were embarrassed to discover that the wrecker had cancelled the government support a few weeks before.
Lyft convo transcription
19 April 2025
Canadian friends riding in a Lyft car found that their conversation had been recorded and sent in the form of text to the phone of one of them.
This is supposed to be illegal, but Lyft says it shouldn't have been possible and it doesn't understand what happened.
I can't draw any specific moral conclusions about Lyft from these fragments of understanding, but it is clear that microphones in cars are dangerous and taxi passengers should be able to switch them off.
Endangered species
19 April 2025
The wrecker plans to change endangered species protection to enable reckless habitat destruction.
ISR ready to starve all in Gaza
19 April 2025
Israel says that, to get the hostages released from Gaza it is ready to starve everyone Gaza to death (which includes the hostages).
I can imagine the government claiming that, "We had to destroy our people to save them."
Were Gaza paramedics murdered?
19 April 2025
Autopsies of [the Gaza paramedics] killed in Gaza show ‘gunshots to head and torso’.
This is additional evidence that they were murdered.
Urgent: GOP weak in all voting districts
19 April 2025
US citizens: call on the Democratic Party to run candidates all across the country in 2026, to take advantage of the hostility and resentment generated by the Republicans that hate our freedoms.
J. Stiglitz on Columbia U. capitulation
19 April 2025
*Nobel Winner Joseph Stiglitz Denounces Columbia’s Apparent Capitulation to [the wrecker].*
Toxic metals in cropland
19 April 2025
*About 15% of world’s cropland polluted with toxic metals, say researchers.*
I wonder if there is a feasible way to decontaminate large areas of soil.
Food and Drug Administration staff cuts
19 April 2025
*The FDA labs that test food to prevent illness have been affected by wider health and human services staff cuts.* Some tests have ceased to be made.
European State of the Climate report
18 April 2025
* European State of the Climate report "lays bare" impact of fossil fuels on continent during its hottest 12 months on record.*
*Deadly floods and storms affected more than 400,000 people in Europe in 2024.*
(satire) Salvadoran President lacks humanity
18 April 2025
(satire) *Salvadoran President Claims He Lacks Humanity To Return Wrongly Deported Man.*
Threats to end rule of law over deportation
18 April 2025
The bully threatens to end rule of law over deportation in two different ways.
We must not idolize system of global "free trade"
18 April 2025
We must not let the damage done by the wrecker's stupid tariff policies lead us to idolize the system of global "free trade" that he has smashed. That system was inflicted on us by plutocrats who did dooH niboR's dirty work.
Mohsen Mahdawi is bully's latest choice for arbitrary expulsion
18 April 2025
Mohsen Mahdawi, the bully's latest choice for arbitrary expulsion for supposedly hampering the bully's plans for peace between Israel and Palestine. (Comparing this claim with the actions of the US suggests that, for the US, "peace" for Palestinians means "the peace of the grave".)
Here Israeli student Mikey Baratz, who works with Mahdawi to make real peace possible, refutes that accusation.
You could hardly imagine clearer proof that the magats are using the Big Lie method.
We must take care to resist the mind-set of all-out conflict which can blind people to tactics that can make the world worse even when used for a cause that is basically valid. Like Baratz, I have felt that the movement to end the bombardment and siege of Gaza and defend Palestinians' rights often goes too far — to the point of demanding to annex and abolish Israel. A demand for annexation is as wrong in one direction as it is in the other.
My criticism of that excess is in no way meant to excuse Israel's atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, which are enormous crimes that call for prosecution.
Students sue Hegseth over book bans
18 April 2025
*Students at Pentagon schools sue Hegseth over book bans on race and gender.*
University of Pittsburgh's suspension of Pro-Palestine Student Group
18 April 2025
*[The University of Pittsburgh]'s Suspension of Pro-Palestine Student Group Violates First Amendment, Says ACLU Lawsuit.*
Harvard's pushback against Trump
18 April 2025
*How Harvard's pushback against Trump may embolden more US resistance.*
Bezos's publicity stunt suborbital rocket flight
18 April 2025
Bezos's publicity stunt suborbital rocket flight, in which all the passengers were women, reduces science, engineering and feminism to superficial tokens, replacing the substance they formerly had.
It is not a bad thing that the launcher is so automated that it doesn't need a crew. What was bad was the pretense that this publicity stunt had real significance.
US-born citizen ordered to leave the US
18 April 2025
The Department of Homeland Suffering ordered a US-born citizen to leave the US. Fortunately she is a lawyer and knows how to deal with this.
The border thugs told her that they “used the known email addresses of the alien to send notifications". If a non-personal email such as an American citizen contact was provided by the alien, notices may have been sent to unintended recipients."
But that doesn't explain why the letter was addressed to her, not to any of her clients. If they did not intend to threaten her, their sending this letter to her demonstrates inexcusable carelessness.
Pentagon cutting down projects to reduce US caused civilian casualties
18 April 2025
Under direction from the hater, the Pentagon is cutting down its projects to reduce the number of civilian casualties US forces cause.
Urgent: Lawmakers vs Judiciary
17 April 2025
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bill to undermine the judiciary's power to resist unconstitutional laws.
Harvard University heroic efforts
16 April 2025
Harvard has refused to surrender to the bully/cheater's political demands and will fight them in court. Bravo!
*Harvard University faculty sue to block Trump review of nearly $9bn in funding.*
It is futile to make a deal with the bully/cheater, since he does not hesitate to cancel a deal, or cheat. Once you choose the path of appeasement, he will demand more and more appeasement.
The bully/cheater told Columbia that giving him all he had demanded was not enough to have its research funds reinstated.
Foreign, business, US bribes now OK, US
16 April 2025
The wrecker has ended prosecution of US companies for paying bribes in other countries. He claims that, in places where bribery is normal, the US companies should not be at a disadvantage in that game.
This article argues that the game is bad for the companies that play it, and that US companies will be better off if corruption is kept down.
Xi in Vietnam
16 April 2025
The bully claims that Chairman Xi is in Vietnam to develop ways to screw the US. He might very well want to screw the US, but he no longer needs to figure out ways to do it. It suffices to pick up the opportunities that the bully throws his way.
Urgent: Hold Big Oil accountable
16 April 2025
US citizens: call on your state governor and attorney general to hold Big Oil accountable for its climate crimes.
Urgent: Reject the "SAVE" act
16 April 2025
US citizens: call on The Senate to reject the "SAVE" Act, short for Suppress All sorts of Voters Explicitly.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Making sense of what the corrupter means
16 April 2025
An attempt to make sense of what the corrupter means by what he says. It proposes a model of how he thinks about his actions and their aims: he has no principles, no values except gain, and no loyalty except for mutual gain.
When he causes havoc, it is not always that he is unaware of the damage his acts can do to others. Sometimes he just doesn't care.
It makes sense that he inclines towards promoting prejudice, hatred and cruelty: because they insulate a person from values and loyalty other than taking away from others.
The hardest challenge for those who wish to restore the former (partial and insufficient) role of principle, loyalty and justice will be how to defeat that empire without sinking to the corrupter's level and thus replacing one corrupter with another.