Urgent: Extend tax credits for Medicaid
18 November 2025

US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to extend the tax credits for Medicaid and undo the recent cuts in Medicaid.

If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121

Reason children talk via online dis-services
18 November 2025

A poll of US children found that they would rather see other children in physical presence, without constant adult monitoring, and it's because that is not allowed that they talk via online dis-services instead.

Democrats threw away the month-long struggle
18 November 2025

Democrats had a chance to restore medical Funding for millions of poor people, but a few of them chickened out and threw away the month-long struggle.

Explanation of why Republicans stick to the party line
18 November 2025

Robert Reich's explanation of why Republicans stick to the party line more than Democrats do is a matter of basic values.

I suppose there is some truth in this, but it is not the whole story, What causes some Democrats to block progressive measures that most Americans want is lobbying by rich people and even richer corporations.

This doesn't divide Republicans because Republican positions are chosen mostly to suit those rich bastards. The Republican ideas based on hatred of disprivileged groups or imposing Christian extremist morality don't conflict much with the ideas based on serving the rich.

So they have little reason to disagree.

By contrast, among Democrats there is a pervasive conflict between the progressive policies that most Americans support and the plutocratist policies that the lobbyists advocate. That is what pulls Democratic elected officials apart. Each one decides how much to support the rich and how much to support the party's base.

Too much support for the rich alienates the base, which is why this year some of them turned to the magats in desperation.

The way to change this situation is to choose exciting progressive Democratic candidates in Democratic primary elections. By strengthening the Democrats' will to overcome the plutocrats, we will reduce the division that they can sow in the party.

Amount of carbon dioxide that needs removed from air
18 November 2025

* Johan Rockström of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who is one of the chief scientific advisers to the UN and the Cop30 presidency, said 10bn tonnes of carbon dioxide needed to be removed from the air every year even to limit global heating to 1.7C (3.1F) above preindustrial levels.*

How we could remove that much CO2 from the atmosphere is not clear.

Tobacco companies lobbying to prevent tax increases
18 November 2025

Tobacco companies are lobbying hard to prevent the tax increases that could save many lives.

Venezuelans sent to El Salvador endured systematic torture
18 November 2025

*Venezuelans sent by the persecutor to El Salvador endured systematic torture, report finds.*

Human rights groups accuse his henchmen of complicity.

University of Texas professors suing the university
18 November 2025

Two professors at the University of Texas, Dallas, are suing the university for restricting their teaching after they were arrested at a peaceful protest.

Dark forces preventing us fighting climate crisis
18 November 2025

George Monbiot: *Dark forces are preventing us fighting the climate crisis – by taking knowledge hostage.*

*Once a global leader on climate action, the EU has given in to the right’s green-bashing.*

Likewise the UK.

Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet
18 November 2025

*Techno-capitalists think innovation can save the planet. But that same thinking is what got us here.*

Concretely, what in their way of thinking tends to find "solutions" that create new problems? I see a few reasons.

Some of those problems could not have been predicted. For instance, PFAS solved a lot of problems, but we could only learn that some of them cause medical problems by trying them in large quantities for a long time. Long enough that now it would be hard to stop.

Turkish disaster response specialists waiting at border
18 November 2025

*Turkish disaster response specialists sent to help locate Palestinian and Israeli [dead] bodies inside Gaza remained near Egypt's border with the strip on Thursday, awaiting Israeli authorization to enter.

The 81-member team from Turkey’s AFAD disaster management authority are waiting to enter with life-detection devices and trained search dogs.*

Israel is citing HAMAS's failure to return the remaining 10 corpses as an excuse to continue limiting food brought into Gaza -- punishing the whole population. It would seem that Netanyahu intentionally prolongs the problem as an excuse to prolong the punishment.

Regime of retribution and reward
18 November 2025

*[The corrupter] has built a regime of retribution and reward.* In effect, a tyrant's regime.

Machine learning system recognized bag of chips as gun
18 November 2025

Some machine learning systems that recognize patterns work very well. But some are not reliable enough to be used in real life.

A school's "gun detection system" that analyzes camera images saw a student's bag of potato chips and recognized it as a gun, whereupon thugs were sent to handcuff him and search him.

A conscientious human could have watched what happened after signaling an alarm, and noticed if the supposed gun turned into something else.

Tyrant's illegal summary executions
18 November 2025

The tyrant's illegal summary executions.

Proposing UK ban political donations via cryptocurrency
18 November 2025

Proposing that the UK ban donations to political campaigns and parties via cryptocurrency, and also the laundering of anonymous donations through intermediate organizations that receive it anonymously.

This would protect elections from being bought by foreign countries and foreign rich people, but the best thing would be to put an end to private campaign financing and give all registered candidates an equal means of publicity that doesn't depend on any private money.

Music and movie stars no longer taking a stand
18 November 2025

Various music and movie stars that formerly spoke up against the persecutor are now not taking a stand.

They knew how bad he is and they cannot have forgotten it. I suspect that they see speaking up as dangerous or unprofitable.

Global heating droughts
18 November 2025

Global heating is causing bigger droughts and bigger floods.

Iran is one place that tends to get drought.

You could say that the oil Iran has exported has brought the drought, but oversimplified recrimination about past mistakes is a distraction. Every country has participated in extracting and using fossil rules to the extent that it was profitable or useful.

Those most responsible are the fossil fuel companies and their owners. They have lobbied hard to thwart efforts to curb global heating, and they are doing it even now at the Cop30 conference to make sure it doesn't achieve its purpose.

EU chat control
18 November 2025

Various countries blocked the EU's Orwellian "chat control" proposal, so they have redrawn the proposed legislation to achieve similar pervasive surveillance with changes in the details.

For instance, companies offering email or messaging accounts would have to make clients scan their faces. Anonymity in email would be impossible.

These would almost surely be done using nonfree cr…apps, which is an injustice in itself -- using a nonfree program is inviting the entity that controls it to mistreat you through malicious functionality.

The article refers to a decision which might be made on Nov 12. Since that is now in the past, can anyone tell me what was decided?

Gaza
18 November 2025

*The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a "green zone" under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a "red zone" to be left in ruins.*

This plan seems designed to allow Israel to annex half of the Gaza Strip, while driving the Palestinians in the other half are driven to beg to leave.

Drilling propaganda term
18 November 2025

The latest propaganda term for drilling for fossil gas is "nation building".

Global heating disaster will generally tear down nations, not build them.

"Less lethal" rubber shrapnel grenades
18 November 2025

Thugs in Australia attacked protesters using a "less lethal" rubber shrapnel grenade, and caused injury to protesters (or was it just one protester?) who plan to sue.

The use of plural pronouns to refer to a single person makes this article a pain to read. Please don't do that. Please make reading easier by using a gender-neutral singular pronoun to refer to a person of non-binary gender, as I do,

Icelandic
18 November 2025

A warning that Icelandic could be forgotten and lost in just one generation, because the unwise tendency to use bullshit generators is leading Icelanders to read English instead.

Urgent: medical debt
18 November 2025

US citizens: call on your members of the House and Senate to keep medical debt off credit reports.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

Urgent: Affordable medical treatment
18 November 2025

US citizens: press your congresscritter to protect affordable medical treatment by signing a discharge petition, or thank per if perse already did so.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

Urgent: State tax
18 November 2025

US citizens: call on your state to make the state tax system fair for everyone. That means closing loopholes that benefit the rich, taxing extreme wealth appropriately, and investing those revenues back into education, healthcare, infrastructure, and other public goods that strengthen our communities.

Israel Breaching International Law with Restrictions on Aid
18 November 2025

Israel is breaching international law by continuing to impose restrictions on aid flows into Gaza, where the population remains critically short of food and life-saving goods as winter sets in according to UNRWA

Urgent: Investigate deportation prisons
16 November 2025

US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the deportation prisons and end the deportation thugs' violent raids.

Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you sign or phone, please spread the word!

Urgent: Stop global heating
16 November 2025

US citizens: call on Brazil to lead the world towards preventing climate disaster.

If you sign, please spread the word!

Urgent: Stop arming Israel
16 November 2025

US citizens: call on Congress to stop US arms for Israel, because the Israeli army keeps killing Palestinian civilians.

Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you sign or phone, please spread the word!

Urgent: Seth Meyers, NBC comedian
16 November 2025

In the US: call on NBC to stand with Seth Meyers — Don't let the bully make you take him off the air.

If you sign, please spread the word!

How I relate to the perennial wisdom
15 November 2025

Aztec ideas of training one's moral strength and steadiness have something in common with what I've learned from my own campaigning.

I can confirm point 1 directly. When I choose to strive for freedom and justice in the world, it's not that I expect that having more freedom and justice myself will make me personally happier. On the contrary, there are defeats and failures and they hurt. But overall, my life is worth something because of working for a goal beyond my own happiness.

Points 6 expresses very clearly something that the long struggle for software freedom has more or less taught me. And it probably applies to any other political cause that requires a struggle that isn't over soon.

Points 7 and 8 are directly related to firm rejection of nonfree software. By doing that, I have built that rejection into a habit which helps me keep doing it. And years of finding ways to do various things without running nonfree software, because I refuse to run the nonfree software, has taught me that the resulting inconvenience is manageable.

I suspect that this wisdom literature was older than the short-lived Aztec empire and that they inherited it from previous civilizations in the Valley of Mexico.

Urgent: Coffee-giant corporate picket
14 November 2025

US citizens: Tell the Starbucks CEO that you won’t cross the picket line.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code—not trivial, but not hard.

Urgent: Spy agency accountability, US
14 November 2025

US citizens: call on Congress to continue to require confirmation hearings for the heads of US spy agencies, so it can impose at least minimal accountability in how they spy on Americans.

Urgent: Block this corporate Rail merger
14 November 2025

US citizens: call on the US Surface Transportation Board to block the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Mega-Merger.

Tyrant told CBS what to cut from interview
13 November 2025

*[The tyrant] Told CBS What to Cut From 60 Minutes Interview — And They Listened.*

Merging state drivers' license databases with database of citizens
13 November 2025

The persecutor's henchmen seek to merge state drivers' license databases into its database of citizens, which it intends to use to interfere with voting.

Non-citizens are not allowed to vote in the US, and it is very rare that they try to. But this data could include opportunity for confusion and error which could call the citizenship of citizens into question.

Climate defense plans inadequate but not too late
13 November 2025

The Climate Analytics report asserts that governments' climate defense plans are inadequate, but that it isn't too late to avoid global disaster if we increase them.

The biggest challenges will be to convince the governments of China and the US, and the banks and billionaires that dominate the latter.

Toxins and bacteria from salt lakes
13 November 2025

Salt lakes, when they dry up, give off blowing dust that contains toxins and bacteria that damage the biomes in people's lungs.

NSW police accused of double standard
13 November 2025

*NSW police accused of ‘sickening’ double standard over neo-Nazi rally [vs defense of Palestinians.]*

Both Jews and Palestinians are condemning this.

Devastated hospitals, mass graves
13 November 2025

* Devastated hospitals, mass graves, bodies eaten by dogs in the street. After speaking out, I discovered my visa will not be renewed [by Israel].*

— Jonathan Whittall heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)'s mission in occupied Palestine.

China's CO2 emissions flat or falling
13 November 2025

*China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for past 18 months, analysis finds.*

Senate Democrats dropped demand to preserve medical insurance
13 November 2025

"Moderate" (plutocratist) Senate Democrats dropped their demand to preserve medical insurance for poor Americans, in exchange for a purely symbolic concession by Senate Republicans to hold a separate vote on that insurance funding later this year.

With no leverage to pressure Republicans to vote for it, we must expect they will defeat it. And since the House of Representatives won't vote on it at all, it is a dead end that can't lead to any real restoration of the funding that was cut.

Money sent by US to Equatorial Guinea to accept noncitizens deportees
13 November 2025

*US has sent $7.5m to Equatorial Guinea to accept noncitizens deportees.

Country is one of world’s most repressive and corrupt, raising concerns over rights abuses of those deported.*

Martin Decker's appeal against deportation
13 November 2025

Martin Decker's appeal against deportation from the UK was successful. This does not erase the injustice of imprisoning him for a nonviolent protest. The UK must abolish the laws that punish protests for mere inconvenience.

Fannie Mae officers investigating FHFA
13 November 2025

*Fannie Mae officers were investigating whether [the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)] inappropriately accessed mortgage details of Letitia James, Adam Schiff and others.*

Child invites kids for outdoor play
13 November 2025

An enterprising child distributed a flier in his neighborhood urging other kids to join him at a specific place and time for outdoor play. It was a success, and started regular meetings for play.

Israelis attacks on Palestinian water sources
13 November 2025

*Israelis attacked Palestinian water sources over 250 times in five years, data reveals.*

Hot to Decrease allergy to peanuts
13 November 2025

Introducing young children to peanuts at a younger age has greatly decreased the frequency of allergy to peanuts.

Urgent: Ceasefire in Sudan
12 November 2025

Everyone: call for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan.

If you sign please spread the word!

Emulating Mamdani's social media strategy
12 November 2025

*A note to politicians hoping to emulate Mamdani's social media strategy: without the right policies, it's pointless.*