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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Many US companies have imposed censorship on Indian internet users.
Chomsky: the "war on drugs" gives the US an excuse/opportunity to militarize Latin America.
The Senate health care bill would increase prescription costs by blocking the introduction of generic drugs.
Israel has announced a large construction project in East Jerusalem, in effect asserting that the rest of the world is too cowed to do anything about it. The ethical policy for the US to follow would be to condition all future aid to Israel on measured progress in reducing settler occupation in the West Bank territory conquered in 1967.
Historic
protest at CIA HQ
against murderous drone bombers.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US courts
convict people of terrorism
based on evidence so flimsy it is hardly proof of anything.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Abdulmutallab's home-made bomb reportedly set the airplane's cabin wall on fire. The new security measures are surely unnecessary in some ways and inadequate in others. Meanwhile, you don't need a terrorist to cause a fire in an airplane — for instance, survivable crash landings sometimes start fires.
So what's an airplane doing with a flammable material in the cabin wall? That's what needs the attention.
Protestors in Iran fought back after police started shooting them. Families of members of the police, army and militia should start pressuring them to quit or disobey orders.
How Denmark sabotaged the Copenhagen negotiations. I've seen several reports of who sabotaged the talks and how. For instance, that China did and that the US did. These accusations do not contradict each other, so they could well all be true. The accusation I am inclined not to believe is the one made by the US against the hostile Latin American governments in Bolivia and Venezuela.
How the Senate
health care bill
is bad.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is escalating attacks against Palestinians, and also against Israeli dissidents.
Over 30 "terrorist" suspects have been
killed while prisoners
of the US; 8 seem to have been tortured to death. The victims were never tried, so we don't know whether they were really terrorists. The perpetrators enjoy more or less immunity.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
"Green consumerism" can backfire, serving as an excuse to leave vital government-organized conservation undone.
Liu Xiaobo, who dared to call for free elections in China, has been imprisoned for "subversion".
Iraqi Christians have been targeted for bombings. But Iraq is not quite an equal-opportunity killing field. No matter who you are, someone is trying to kill you, but the enemies of some groups try harder than others.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
A campaign to free 2200 Venezuelans punished for protesting. I got information on some of the laws they want to repeal. Some of them could prohibit protests that ought to be allowed in a democracy, but most of them seem like valid laws to me.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
One cause of the problem of US business is that business schools teach finance rather than production. I agree with those who pointed out this is not the only cause. The "free trade" policies that made US workers compete with slave labor in China are also very much responsible.
One insightful comment said:
There are more people who have the skills needed to run a manufacturing operation, but the bigger issue is that while a dozen people working for a year can wring out an extra $1 million in manufacturing efficiency in the factory, on Wall Street, one person with the right skills can generate the same amount of revenue in a day.It follows that if we want US business to try to do anything other than buy and sell companies, we need to change those conditions. We need to make it much harder to make that million on Wall Street, so that instead of half the CEOs in the US competing to be among the few who succeed in making amillion dollars in a day, they go back to trying to invest in producing something.
The US is attacking al Qa'ida with drone missiles in Yemen. In principle, there is nothing wrong with fighting and killing Al Qa'ida fighters, when they are in places where it is impossible to arrest them. But what limits the strength of such groups is not their current manpower but rather their ability to recruit more. Attacks that kill civilians are just the thing to strengthen them.
ACM members: tell the ACM you condemn its opposition to "open access" publishing. The ACM's expensive "digital library", whose expense it cites as a reason to restrict access, solves a "problem" that exists only because of these restrictions.
Post about the issue, too.
A witness to the Copenhagen negotiations says that China suckered Obama into accepting a lousy deal that poor countries blamed on the US. If the events happened as described, that doesn't mean the blame falls on China. It takes more than one to make a deal; Obama could have denounced China's proposals as inadequate and demanded a deal that would really solve the problem. But he didn't, indicating that he took the cowardly view that a pretend solution, no matter how bad a failure it covers up, is better than admitting failure.
The Chinese negotiators must have figured that out.
But how did this situation arise? It was created by the "free trade" policies of the US adopted by Clinton (with Republican support), which allowed China to become so powerful and destroy the US economy. This, in turn, occurred because business had taken control of the Democratic party, which got itself into power by surrendering most of what it stood for.
The death of Ayatollah Montazeri has brought renewed large protests in Iran. If Shah Khamenei's men fear that a major Shi'ite holiday will be the occasion for protests, evidently the "Islamic Republic" cares as little for Islam as it does for the Republic. The quest for power has undone it totally. It makes an interesting comparison with the early years of the Soviet Union.
Israeli border police shot Lily Sussman's laptop, fortunately missing the disk. I cannot imagine any possible valid motive for this act, no matter what crimes they may have suspected her of.
The Bush regime fell for a hoax that claimed Al Jazeera was sending coded messages to terrorists. Probably this is because Bush wanted to believe Al Jazeera was in league with terrorists. Meanwhile, the US has never satisfactorily explained the tank attack that killed an Al Jazeera journalist in Baghdad.
Jimmy Carter calls on the US and other powers to support a UN-imposed ban on construction of Israeli "settlements" in Palestinian territories. I agree.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israel systematically
represses nonviolent Palestinian activism.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell your Egyptian consulate to
let the Gaza Freedom March cross
into Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The CO2 cuts proposed in Copenhagen were insufficient to prevent a disastrous 3 degrees C of warming. This is supposing they were real cuts, not paper cuts. As explained previously, cap-and-trade leads to reductions on paper which don't reduce real emissions.
The CIA works closely with Palestinian "security agencies" that torture prisoners that are held without trial. Israel holds thousands of Palestinians prisoner without trial and often tortures them. Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority depend on US support, and the US could simply order them both to stop torture. So the US is responsible.
These prisoners include leading Palestinian human rights activists. They have not been charged with anything, just imprisoned.When Israeli "settlers" set up an outpost in a Palestinian neighborhood, they start harassment attacks against people who live nearby,
including children.
It is one step in a many-step process of ethnic cleansing.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Clown tried to blame China for the failure of the Copenhagen talks, plus the countries in Latin America that do not bow to US pressure. How strange to omit Canada and the US from the blame, as well as the oil companies whose influence pulls their strings.
Lithuania set up secret prisons for the CIA, and allowed the CIA to transport prisoners in and out without checking them. The transportation of prisoners without checking who they are is the real root of the problem. Many US "allies" allow the US to do this. The practice must be stopped.
I agree fully with the churchman who told people it is better to steal food from large stores than starve.
US citizens:
tell the EPA
to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Saboteurs cut the main Iraqi oil pipeline, perhaps trying to prevent their nation's wealth from being handed over to foreign conquerors.
Child labor booms among Iraqi refugees in Syria.
Mexico has authorized planting transgenic maize, which endangers its traditional varieties with contamination. Since maize pollen is carried by wind, 500 meters of separation is completely inadequate.
The experiments are unnecessary unless Mexico intends to allow farming of transgenic maize. But that would be a disaster. Contamination with artificial genes has already been discovered in Mexico, but this would mean a lot more.
Sign
this petition
to oppose the Senate health care bill without a public option.
More information
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery: Obama is a total disappointment.
The Senate health care bill is
good only for the insurance companies,
but Obama and most Democrats are not honest enough to admit defeat. They would rather pass a harmful bill and pretend it is good.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Further information.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
London police accused an Italian tourist of "terrorism" for filming famous buildings. They didn't believe anyone would do this for pleasure. Part of what we see here is the tendency of police to believe and support other police. It is no good to give PCSOs less powers than real police, if the real police come to arrest anyone that PCSOs tell tales about.
Police in Pennsylvania face charges for helping murders lie so as to escape conviction. The federal "hate crime" charges are a disguised form of double jeopardy. Even for murder grave, double jeopardy can never be excused. However, the dishonesty of these policemen is a deeper form of rot than the murder itself, and charging them is not double jeopardy.
Haiti's principal political party, Lavalas, has been banned from the coming elections that will be run by the UN. Even if the mechanism of these elections is "fair", they are no more democratic than the Iranian elections in which the mullahs veto candidates.
Banks "too big to fail" must not be allowed to exist. To prevent banks from exceeding a certain size, it is not sufficient to pass a law saying it's not allowed. We need a system which will take hold of any bank heading for that size and send it firmly and irresistably in the other direction.
One way to do this is to impose a tax that starts small but rapidly gets bigger as the bank's size gets close to the limit. This tax could be charged per day. So if a bank gets near the limit on Tuesday, it won't have to split up by Wednesday or shut down — but it will be under strong pressure to take effective action soon.
Why Propaganda Trumps Truth: how the official story about 9/11/2001 helps maintain a bunch of other lies
Protestors in Copenhagen have to face the obstacle of police that are allowed to arrest and imprison anyone on a whim.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose nuclear power. Also sign this petition.
The Wall Street Journal was a business-oriented right-wing newspaper, but Murdoch's extremist editors are turning it into another Faux News.
Uganda proposes to execute people that have homosexual relationships, and imprison anyone that speaks in favor of homosexuals' rights. For information about the history of this proposal, see here.
The International Emissions Trading Association effectively represents the oil companies, which suggests they know that cap-and-trade won't really reduce oil consumption. If the US had participated in the Kyoto accord, cap-and-trade would have been thoroughly tried and its failure would be conclusive too.
Global warming denialist PR works together with Murdoch to spread falsehood and boost nuclear companies.
Obama renominated incompetent Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve Bank. Senator Sanders is leading efforts to block the nomination.
The Wall Street Journal is now the printed equivalent of Faux News.
The head of a UN agency concerned with illegal drugs said that money from drug gangs saved the banking system. Prohibition of drugs causes many forms of injustice. Here it ironically had a benefit.
How the health insurance companies trick Facebook users into opposing health care reform. How a right-wing billionaire secretly funds opposition to health care reform.
Everyone: sign this petition condemning the violent attacks of police in Denmark against nonviolent protests and against even people suspected of possibly planning a protest.
March Forward aims to organize opposition to the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan among soldiers. I am obligated to mention that I originally supported the war in Afghanistan. I think it is hopeless, that Afghans won't fight for Karzai any more than Iraqis fought for Hussein, but I disagree with the stronger things that some of the people quoted said about that war.
There is some validity in Raughter's point that people who enlisted since the start of the Iraq war should have thought about the morality of the war, and declined to enlist. But if they failed to think before, that doesn't mean they must not start now.
I'm skeptical of Marjorie Cohn's claim that all the US wars since World War II were illegal. My understanding is that the US participation in the Korean War was authorized by the UN Security Council, as well as by South Korea's request for help defending against an invasion. So was the first gulf war which kicked Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait. It seems to me that those wars were lawful (and justified, which is a different question). However, the US has engaged in a number of unjustified wars which may have been illegal too.
A detailed history of Gaza over the past few decades, and of the war crimes committed there. I find myself unmoved by Gilad Shalit's pleading for special concern. His son, a soldier, was taken prisoner; that is normal. Israel has taken many civilians prisoner without charges; that should not be normal. Each of their relatives has more claim to our sympathy than Mr. Shalit.
The nuclear power reactor companies, which have already won US government support for subsidies for reactors that would lose lots of money, gained further support in a draft Copenhagen treaty produced by a few corrupt governments.
The Australian government says it will erect
a China-style censorship wall,
censoring a secret list of web pages with no explanation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Censorship is an attack on human rights. No matter how offensive something seems, that is no excuse for censorship. But this is not the first way that the Australian government has declared itself the enemy of its citizens.
Police in Copenhagen
attacked a massive peaceful protest,
after preemptive arrests and sabotage. The conference is turning out to be a failure, so there will be a big protest, which surely the police will sabotage again.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
As British scientists try to recommend a diet that will cause less environmental damage and less global warming as well as better health, food businesses use their political power to prevent government support.
Here, as in many other issues, the political power of business threatens everyone's health. There are major government subsidies for many kinds of agricultural production. Governments should stop subsidizing those that do harm, and start taxing them instead.
Protestors
closed a store in London
that sells products made in an Israeli colony in the West Bank.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
In the Gaza Freedom March,
1000 foreign activists will enter Israel
from Egypt.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The city of Vancouver ordered the
removal of anti-Olympics mural.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
This is one of many ways the city has attacked the rights of citizens who complain about the trouble the games will cause them. And small businesses with "Olympic" in their names (because that city is on the Olympic Peninsula) were forced to change their names.
Perhaps in the future the Olympics will have to be held in countries such as China that generally don't respect human rights. Or else the games will have to stop being a scheme to benefit some of a city's businesses at the expense of the citizens in general.
Israeli officials told Aadel Suad it would take 30 years for an Arab like him to get a permit to build a house on his land. So far it has been 12 years and
the officials are still finding excuses.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar was
seduced into Bush's invasion of Iraq
through sycophancy: he was star-struck by Bush's power. However, his own lack of honesty predisposed him to this.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
B'liar is no longer the prime minister, the British government continues its cowardice, shamefully bowing to
Israeli demands to protect them from arrest for war crimes.
What exactly distinguishes Israeli soldiers from "terrorists", Ms Livni? Is it the fact that Israeli soldiers kill a lot more civilians? Or is it the fact that their victims are Arabs?
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Monsanto is
using gene patents to take control
of seed industry. Patents on genes used in agricultural plants should be abolished, along with anything that stops farmers from saving, breeding and exchanging seeds.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1111 and tell Obama to stand up to Senator Lieberman and not let him get a health care bill without a public option.
Even if you have "nothing to hide", you must not ignore threats of surveillance.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support HR1147 and S592, the Local Community Radio Act. See http://www.prometheusradio.org/
The Copenhagen plan for trading carbon emission cuts is tailor-made for industrial-scale fraud, rather than real emission reduction.
Jews and Arabs held a peaceful protest near houses in Jerusalem that Israel has taken away from long-time Arab residents.
Police viciously attacked the protestors,
including some who were only filming the events. The police say the videos of
spraying pepper spray in Professor Nir's face
were "edited" to hide the justification for doing this. That claim is absurd; whatever may have happened before, it couldn't justify such a damaging act towards someone unarmed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Science Fiction writer Peter Watts was beaten up by the US border police as he tried to return home to Canada, then charged with attacking the police. It is easy for police to make false accusations because they are habituated to lying in court.
Tobacco companies pay to set up "Life Skills Training" programs in schools because they found these programs are ineffective at helping people quit smoking.
Proposed in Congress: a bill to tax stock trades and other financial transactions of the big casino.
Obama has done one thing right in Afghanistan: tightly controlling air strikes so as to avoid killing civilians. (I find the attitude of the article repulsive, but the facts it describes are interesting.)
This is a big step forward from the Bush regime policy of lying about the problem. If this had been done in 2005, perhaps the Taliban would not have become as powerful as it is. But it already is powerful, and I don't think ceasing to kill civilians is enough to win admiration for a regime that is visibly both undemocratic and corrupt.
The Obama regime seeks to use unrelated trade issues to pressure Canada into imposing unjust copyright restrictions. In effect, the US offers monetary rewards for a few Canadians in exchange for denying freedom to all of them. A government that serves the rich, which is what most of them mainly do these days, would consider this a great bargain.
The use of the term "intellectual property" when the topic is copyright law (and not patent law, not trademark law, not trade secret law, not publicity rights, etc.) is confusion; for the sake of clear thinking, please avoid repeating this practice in your own discourse.
The U.N. Commission against Torture reports on many forms of systematic injustice in China. These include not investigating accusations of torture, shielding torturers, narrowing the definition of torture, imprisoning people without trial, holding prisoners in secret prisons, threatening defense lawyers, deporting people to countries likely to torture them, and blocking access to information about casualties of state violence. These practices should be familiar because the US has done all of them in recent years, and continues doing several of them.
The US government has become so despicable that it cannot rebuke China any more. I suppose this explains the good relation between the US government and the Chinese government.
CO2 is making the oceans acidic, and many kinds of of sea life are in danger, directly or indirectly.
The House of Representatives passed a bank regulation bill that
can prevent some abuses against the public, but
fails to address the structural problems that caused the financial
crisis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The
IRS persecutes poor people
for making too little money to get by.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
London police say, "We didn't search him for taking photos, we did it because he didn't think he owed us an explanation for taking photos." That's a shoddy excuse and shows that the police have the attitude of bullies. Furthermore, the continued willingness to use "anti-terrorism" laws against people merely for refusing to be intimidated shows that these laws are part of a dishonest system of bullying.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, "Give us a real public option in health care reform -- or vote against the bill."
Also sign this petition.The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Climate Research Unit
discarded some of the raw data
its conclusions are based on, in the 1980s, because it did not have space for the magtapes and paper. This does not seem to be misconduct, but the result is unfortunate. The lesson we should draw is that we should insist scientist release their raw data when they publish conclusions based on it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Egypt will allow
some Palestinian students to leave Gaza
through Egypt. When Egypt keeps the Rafah crossing closed, it helps maintain the siege of Gaza. It is surely doing so in response to US pressure.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The EU firmly
rejected Israel's wish to annex East Jerusalem
and parts of Palestine. If only the US would do so as well, peace might be achievable. The idea that a policy of not offending anyone might lead to peace is utter confusion.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The WTO is trying to
ban countries from regulating the financial derivatives
that caused the bank crisis.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Irish women have gone to the European human rights court for abortion rights.
Israel's "Justice minister" wants to
impose ancient Torah law.
He is the Jewish equivalent of the theocratic Christians in the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
50 years ago, Israel forced Bedouin in the Negev to move to a town, Heiran. Now Israel is
forcing them to move again.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Amnesty International reports widespread torture of dissidents in Iran as well as threats to torture their relatives.
US citizens: tell the Senate Democrats not to compromise away the public option in health care reform. It would be a total surrender to the insurance companies.
Senator Bernie Sanders explains why Bernanke did exactly the wrong things in dealing with the financial crisis.
The insurance companies and the senators they fund seem to have defeated the public option. At this point, the honest and useful thing to do is to declare that they have blocked useful reform, give up, and condemn them and their paid senators for it. But what I expect most Democrats to do is to try to paint it as a success.
Police in Copenhagen tried to sabotage protests by arresting 200 people and seizing equipment for nonviolent protests. This is an attack on democracy. The excuse that someone is planning violence is what the police always say when they sabotage protests, but even if that is true, it is no excuse for the police to attack democracy. And there is no excuse to seize equipment for nonviolent protests.
The Republicans today are using
the tactics of McCarthyism: guilt by
association, and exaggerated accusations of treason.
One pervasive right-wing lie not criticized in this analysis is the
claim that Obama is a Liberal. I'm a Liberal, so I can tell: Obama is
not one.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
A real Liberal would restore FDR's reregulation of the banks, so they can't cause more crashes. A real Liberal would help the working people who are in danger of losing their mortgages. A Real liberal would not bail out any company except in exchange for ownership of it.
A real Liberal would support a national health care system. A real Liberal would not sign Free Exploitation Agreements that give businesses increased power over everyone's lives. A real Liberal would not secretly negotiate a treaty (ACTA) to restrict citizens for the sake of companies.
A real Liberal would not trample the human rights of Americans by letting the police listen to our conversations without court approval. A real Liberal would not support coups against democratic countries. A real Liberal would not continue pointless wars to prop up corrupt rulers.Obama is no Liberal. Kucinich for president!
Israelis came in the middle of the night for a pogrom against the inhabitants of Enabus village.
The multinational oil companies are gaining control of Iraq's oil, and some of Dubya's officials are profiting personally from this. Iraqis should stop fighting each other and unite to nationalize the oil again.
What the house
health care bill says;
what the senate bill is likely to say.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
There is little scientific evidence that Tamiflu can prevent deaths from flu, and the manufacturer is blocking access to the results of some studies. We should not let drug companies directly fund studies of the effects of drugs. They use this arrangement to get power to skew and suppress the results. Instead we should tax them, and the government should fund the studies.
The social health of a nation correlates inversely with religiosity. This shows that religion does not make life better, and suggests that people turn to religion to bear life in a bad society.
Some of the organizations now trying to
manufacture a scandal from the Climate Research Unit emails
have been funded for many years by oil companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Civil forfeiture continues to be used in the US to punish people without even accusing them of crimes. Letting police or prosecutors punish people without a trial is surely convenient for fighting criminals and non-criminals alike. It fights everyone unlucky enough to get in the way. With marauding police like this, who needs criminals?
Punishing people without trial (or even accusation of a crime) is tyranny, and the practice must be abolished.
Famous musicians are suing the major record companies for billions of dollars which they owed to the musicians but didn't bother to pay. The non-famous musicians have contracts that exploit them, and would not get very much.
These are the companies that want governments to adopt unjust laws against sharing, in the name of those musicians.
There were massive protests in Iran, on the anniversary of the murder of student protestors by the former Shah. The current Shah Khamenei sent his militias to attack the protestors.
The UK's first ID card office has met with protests.
Why we need to
stop global warming
before it reaches 2 degrees C.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators and say, vote against the Nelson-Hatch amendment to forbid insurance plans from covering abortions.
In the Himalayas, global warming has reached 4 degrees C, around 7 degrees F. The effects are blatant and dangerous.
Iran is trying to silence critics all around the world by threatening their families in Iran.
A Canadian climate researcher's lab has experienced robbery attempts recently.
Obama will use the EPA to cut CO2 emissions if Congress fails to approve a strong bill.
UK police officials told police to stop threatening photographers using "anti-terror" laws. Ending this one abuse of these unjust laws does not make them acceptable. Some of these laws make it a crime to be suspected, and others are handy for sabotaging protests of any kind. It is not enough for the authorities to be refrain from trampling the rights of people in one activity. The UK must explicitly restore human rights.
The UK police must also pass an "attitude" of their own: to respect people's rights instead of trying to intimidate people out of them. Do they still pressure pubs to set up cameras and let the police view the footage whenever they wish? It should be <em>illegal</em> for anyone to show security camera footage to the police without a court order.
Public Citizen (founded by Ralph Nader) organized
a protest to break up the banks
that are "too big to fail."
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US citiziens: sign this petition for regulating the banks to prevent more bubbles and crashes.
A musician tells how his record company habitually lies to him about income even though it would not have to pay the band any money for many years.
Canada has given its political allegiance to dirty oil made from tar.
Rom Houben, who has been in a coma for 23 years, is said to be conscious and able to communicate. But is it really he who is communicating?
Bangladesh's finance minister called on Britain and other wealthy countries to accept millions of refugees whose lands will be submerged by rising seas. I think it is more feasible to pay millions of people to have no children.
Think tanks funded by arms companies helped convince the US government to send more troops to Afghanistan and now are telling the public that this is going to result in victory.
Why it's a pointless annoyance to check train passengers' luggage for bombs.
Turkey plans to assign
every citizen an email address,
which means the government will automatically track everyone's email. I don't think either a government or a large company with millions of users can be trusted with my email (or yours).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The airline lobby uses misleading statistics and distraction to try to avoid being regulated for the sake of controlling global warming. If most of the global warming effect of jet planes comes from causes other than the CO2 they emit, that makes the case difficult since a tax on petroleum will underestimate the harm done. It would be necessary to put an extra tax on jet fuel to cover the other global warming effects.
That isn't hard, since jet fuel is already taxed.
Attempts to train the Afghan army and police are undermined because they don't have anything positive to fight for. Perhaps NATO would do better recruiting an army of Afghan women. Surrender would be no option for them, and no Taliban could ever sneak in. They would fight the Taliban until the Taliban are dead or surrender. Then they would tell Karzai where to get off.
US citizens: sign this petition to Senate Majority Leader Reid saying to use all possible methods to protect the public option in the health care bill.
A would-be governor in the Philippines is accused of murdering the family and supporters of another candidate.
After the Bush regime's monsters tortured Abu Zubaydah, and took photos of his injuries, they showed the photos to other prisoners threatening to torture them the same way.
Iranian exiles in Turkey say Iranian agents are threatening them there.
In Honduras and Haiti,
the U.S. Rules by Proxy.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli thugs with government backing continue
seizing Arab houses
in East Jerusalem and kicking the inhabitants onto the street.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
James Hansen says that the approach chosen in the Copenhagen negotiations, "cap-and-trade", is so misguided that it won't help at all. The idea of cap-and-trade is that those for whom reducing emissions is expensive can pay someone else to reduce emissions for them. In theory, it should work; in practice, those who reduce emissions anyway — or can pretend they did — sell these credits, so nobody else has to conserve, and the policy doesn't achieve much.
An emissions tax could be collected easily by taxing carbon-containing fuels, and cattle (for the methane they produce). There would be no way to escape paying, so everyone would feel the pressure to really conserve.
Paying this tax might be painful, but the changes we need to make cannot help being painful. The resistance to undertake these changes is what Hansen means by "business as usual".
Israeli activists
joined Palestinian farmers
so soldiers wouldn't stop them from plowing their land.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose funding for escalation in Afghanistan. Also sign
this petition
to Congress.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Fresh water entering the North Atlantc can turn off ocean currents and plunge Europe into an ice age in a period as short as a couple of years. Melting of lot of Greenland ice could do this, at least for a while, so that Northern Europe would get cold. The rest of the world would continue getting hotter.
An Iranian doctor who testified that prisoners were tortured to death has been killed by poison. Suicide seems like an implausible theory. If you decide to take an overdose of drugs, why put the drug in a salad?
Israel has dropped its spurious prosecution of New Profile but systematic persecution of human rights activists continues.
The UK's high court ruled that the Clown regime cannot use denial of bail to keep suspects in prison forever based on secret evidence that they are not allowed to see or answer.
Obama will send more troops to Afghanistan in a futile attempt to win an unwinnable war. Little will be different in 2012, but Obama may be able to pull the troops out then just as Nixon pulled them out of Vietnam — through the pretense that Karzai's government will be able to sustain itself. Then it could be allowed to fall on its own, as the South Vietnamese government did, or make some accommodation with part of the Taliban. The inter-group fighting in Afghanistan could continue as it has done for most of the past 20 years.
A BBC photographer was stopped by police from taking a photo of a cathedral in London.
A study found that religious people often attribute to gods they worship whatever moral beliefs they hold.
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1111 to oppose escalation in Afghanistan.
Canadian border police searched Amy Goodman's notes, car, and computer, afraid she would say something about the Olympic games and the police repression aimed at those who criticize it.
Citizens of India: tell your prime minister he should go to the Copenhagen negotiations.
Obama plans to appoint a sort of viceroy in Afghanistan to exercize the real power in place of Karzai (to the extent he has any). This approach is necessary since Karzai's corruption makes his government contemptible. At the same time, the critics are right that this approach cannot work, since it will make Karzai's government contemptible. You can't make a good government out of a corrupt flunky.
An activist denouncing police gangsterism in Venezuela
has been killed,
apparently by the police.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Concordia University censored David Bernans' book reading, then tried to pretend it hadn't done so. Now he has proof that the secret "risk assessment committee" compiled a dossier of false information about him.
A pub in the UK has been fined because
someone used its Wifi net
for illegal sharing. This is an example of the practice known as "collective responsibility". When a state attacks the people it rules, they tend to turn a blind eye to each others' acts of defiance. The natural next step for such a state is to punish anyone who refuses to serve as an enforcer against the rest. Collective responsibility is meant to make people afraid to cooperate with each other.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
This is one more demonstration that the UK government is fighting an undeclared war against its citizens.
B'liar is going to be examined in regard to a letter that told him in July 2002 that invading Iraq was illegal. B'liar had already committed himself to an invasion with the goal of deposing Saddam Hussein, whether or not there was any legitimate reason.
Honduras' coup-installed government has tried to legitimize the coup with an election carried under repression. I would expect that the candidate aligned with Zelaya pulled out because his rallies and supporters were being attacked by police.
If the turnout was 70% in rich areas and 30% in poor areas, it seems that Zelaya's call to boycott the election was heeded by his supporters. This government should not be recognized.
Marwan Barghouti could become a Palestinian leader with enough authority to win peace, putting an end to the practice of negotiation that is not really trying to reach a deal.
In the UK, political parties can take contributions from companies, even from craudulent ones.
I think the "honest" businesses—those not engaging in illegal forms of fraud—are a bigger threat to democracy in practice.
Government papers that could prove B'liar lied about the Iraq invasion in January 2003 (or, in principle, could support what he said) are being withheld from the Chilcot hearing on various pretexts.
Netanyahu gave Obama a "supension" of settlement building which hardly slows their actual construction, and Obama has pretended it means something.
Aminatou Haidar, a nonviolent activist who rejects Morocco's conquest of Western Sahara, was summarily exiled to Spain without a passport. She is now on hunger strike in an airport terminal.
Clown plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, supposedly to train the Afghan army.
You can train Afghani troops in various techniques, but mere training will not lead anyone to be loyal to Karzai's goverment. It has no virtues to inspire loyalty, except a cut of the money.
Former ambassador Meyer's testimony has directly given the lie to B'liar's claim that the reason for attacking Iraq was the mythical Iraqi weapons. While saying that to the public, in private it was all "regime change".
After widespread repression, Honduras' coup-established government is holding an election with right-wing candidates.
The US rewarded the coup by agreeing to recognize the results of the election. This reinforces the suspicion that the US encouraged the coup in advance.
Everyone: participate in a
vigil for ending global warming.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The former German "defense" secretary admitted blame for denying that there were civilian victims in an Afghanistan attack, when he knew that there were civilian victims.
At least he shows a certain amount of integrity by his willingness to resign when caught. In the US, or the UK, officials caught in a lie go on lying for years.
China and Russia joined in demanding Iran stop working on a secret nuclear enrichment plant.
Electronic products are still made in sweatshops by people regularly working 80-hour weeks. The corporate "codes of conduct" are regularly circumvented and mainly serve to hide the problem. The US should require companies selling products in the US to disclose the subcontractors that actually made the products and their major subsystems. Each company wants to keep this secret to gain some tiny advantage over its competitors; but if all were required to publish the information, they wouldn't really lose anything.
East Antarctica's
ice sheet is melting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
When B'liar claimed to be a restraining influence on Bush, that was a lie: he didn't even try to influence Bush.
The UK government safety agency found that French and US reactor designs have flaws that affect safety.
Even if a nuclear reactor is totally safe in its own operation, its waste cannot be safe. And nuclear power plants are so expensive that it is better to invest the same money in renewable energy and more efficient energy use. If the putative "energy crunch" in 2017 is for real, wasting money on nuclear plants will make it worse.
Bush tried to convince the UK to join in attacking Iraq even in early 2001.
A Honduran teacher active in resistance against the coup was
kidnapped and then shot,
presumably by agents of the illegitimate government.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Instead of offering to cut CO2 emissions, China says only that it will slow the growth of emissions. That's a program for disaster.
A UK government report proposes major reforms in how police treat protestors. This may be a big step forward, but reform is equally needed in organization that investigates accusations against the police. Instead of seeking to ignore and whitewash police crimes, it must make justice its goal.
I suspect that it was not by coincidence that the police under B'liar and Clown have made it their mission to crush protests and never mind the cost. I suspect that they were catering to pressure from the government. If the government does not stop the pressure, the police will find a way to serve it.
UK citizens: phone your MP to condemn the plan to disconnect people from the Internet for sharing, and say that the deepest problem with this plan is that the goal is wrong. Sharing is good!
I saw a
petition which condemns only the means proposed
but since it grants undeserved legitimacy to the evil goal
of this plan, I do not recommend people sign it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Global warming deniers have had a field day taking phrases out of
context in some emails that were taken from the East Anglia Climate
Research Unit and leaked.
This article explains the real, innocent
meaning of some of those guilty-sounding phrases.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Obama wants to continue the tyrannical parts of the U SAP AT RIOT act.
A secret CIA prison site in Lithuania has been found, but the CIA continues to try to conceal the crimes it committed there.
Geithner seems to have engineered the bailout of AIG so as to hand out billions of taxpayers' dollars to its wealthy creditors.
Large bonuses for stock-trading bank employees were a crucial factor in last year's crash.
Obama has rejected the idea of capping bonuses. A simple cap may be the wrong solution. However, requiring bonues to be delivered in shares that can't be sold for several years might help.
Pakistan has put militants on trial for the Mumbai terrorist attack.
Iraqis believe Bush and B'liar destroyed their country and got away with murder.
The tobacco companies developed many techniques to control the legistative process. Now other industries have taken up the same techniques.
Pakistanis who tortured British prisoners told Human Rights Watch that British agents knew all about it and were "breathing down their necks".
The UK must prosecute B'liar for this, just as the US must prosecute Bush for approving torture.
Certain bacteria on children's skin help reduce inflamation.
The family of de Menezes has settled its legal case against the UK police for around $200k. However, the police have not reformed their conduct so as to cease to be a danger to the lives of everyone in the UK. I doubt this compensation is enough to discourage them from reoffending.
Police in the UK are arresting people as an excuse to take DNA samples from them.
The UK's investigation into how the invasion of Iraq was launched has been hamstrung by the government, which did not appoint legal experts and skilled cross-examiners.
A prosecutor in Afghanistan wants to prosecute two ministers for corruption.
Developing nations call for UN body to police battle on climate change.
The US has started arming local militias in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban out of their areas. This suggests to me that Obama has given up on depending on Karzai to establish security in Afghanistan. I agree Karzai cannot do that.
It also, paradoxically, could be a path towards removing the US troops. A balance of power between various militias may be as close to peace as Afghanistan can get. Since the Taliban are not united either, the foreign forces might be able to depart leaving that balance in place.
B'liar stopped the army from preparing properly for the invasion of Iraq just to prevent Parliament from realizing that he had already made the decision to attack.
Former pilot Lotfi Raissi was mistakenly suspected of involvement in the 9/11 attacks in the US, and had to wait months in jail while prosecutors failed to tell the judge that they knew the suspicion was spurious.
World-wide opposition to Scientology is heating up after the defection of various celebrities and church executives, who have denounced its abusive practices and its absurdities.
UN troops again
shot people
in Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The Clown regime admits that pervasive surveillance of cars is used to harass protestors using "anti-terrorist" laws. It amounts to tyranny. Britons, don't let talk of "terrorists" distract you from the real enemies of your freedom!
Bikram Yoga claims to have a copyright on a series of yoga exercises. Bikram is trying to stretch copyright power, because a sequence of exercises is not copyrightable under US law.
Although the claim goes squarely against the US legal tradition, the propaganda campaign based on the term "intellectual property" puts pressure on courts to go along with attempts to stretch copyright power.
Sri Lanka has agreed to release all the Tamil civilians now held in prison camps.
NASA's Earth-observation satellites, crucial for measuring and understanding climate, are getting old and not being replaced.
Measuring how global warming affects the climate is vital if we intend to do something about it. If we are just going to wait for disaster, we might as well keep our eyes closed.
Cuba's repression has increased under Raul Castro; people are still imprisoned on suspicion, without committing any actual crime.
The US also practices imprisonment without trial, and the UK imprisons people on suspicion (after convicting them of the crime of being suspected).
Understanding just how many species we humans are wiping out.
The Clown regime says Karzai would fall in weeks if not propped up.
This is because his government has done nothing to earn respect or loyalty from people in Afghanistan. It never has, and it never will, since its basis is just corruption. So the situation will not improve. We can keep propping it up, but victory is a pipedream (as in Vietnam). The only real question is how long to go on doing so.
The UK's new internet law is a plan for digital tyranny.
Iran rejected the deal for Russia and France to reprocess its uranium into reactor fuel. I don't think there is any way to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran will not agree to abandon its uranium refining, and China won't approve more sanctions, and a military attack is not justified and probably wouldn't stop the development anyway.
Iran might agree to nuclear disarmament if Israel does too.
Iraqis are still fleeing as refugees, but UN support for these refugees is dwindling. According to the article, 1000 new refugees register every month in neighboring countries. Meanwhile 1000 Iraqi refugees either return to Iraq or move to countries outside the region. That means the number now returning is less than 1000, less than the number now fleeing.
Many refugees may soon face the choice between starving in Syria or being murdered in Iraq, all thanks to the USA.
Bush forces soldiers who murdered prisoners said it was because they expected the prisoners would otherwise be released soon.
I don't know how to reconcile that expectation with the many news reports saying that thousands of Iraqis had been imprisoned for months or years, without any attempt to try them. But even supposing it was true, it seems to imply that the soldiers had no real evidence that these prisoners had committed any crime, and also that they were not going to be treated as prisoners of war.
Koalas are heading rapidly towards extinction due to habitat destruction, disease, and global warming.
Version 2 of the proposed Google Book Search settlement is approximately as bad as the first draft.
Even authors of bestsellers can
make little money compared with the publisher.
Keep this in mind when the publishers demand more copyright power in the authors' name.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators in support of a single-payer health care system. Or sign
this petition,
but phone calls generally have more impact.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: use
this form
to tell the EPA you support strong fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks (such as SUVs).
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli soldiers shot two Palestinians in Bil'in in the head with tear gas canisters. The second victim died from the blow. The first victim was permanently injured, but he is well enough to continue nonviolent protests. He give
this interview.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
People whose home were flooded by Hurricane Katrina may get compensation after a judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers was callously negligent. Repairing the wetlands around New Orleans might make sense if we stop global warming. But if we fail to act on that, it is futile: the rising ocean will cover them, and New Orleans.
Afghanistan and Iraq judged among the 5 most corrupt states.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Dignitas helps the incurably ill to commit suicide.
The idea of a "good death" is self-deception; death is very bad, so bad that it is always an unjust fate. But there are circumstances where continuing to live is worse. Those condemned to a life of torture or helplessness are entitled to help in escaping from it, if they wish, even if the only escape is to the lesser injustice of death.
Lemurs in Madagascar are facing extinction as the government encourages businesses to cut down the remaining forests and drought-stricken farmers burn them.
The human hunger in Madagascar is due to overpopulation combined with the drought; but the drought may be partly human-caused too, through CO2 emissions and deforestation. What's being done now will make the drought worse.
Global warming is headed for total disaster — 6 degrees centigrade by the end of the century.
But we may not get all the way there. I am not sure civilization could keep going through the mass starvation, mass migrations, and wars that would occur before that point.
Everyone: tell the US Chamber of Commerce to
stop its support
for laws that let companies protect rapists.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Over a million children in the US often don't have enough to eat, and many of them have a parent who has a job.
The British Bush forces soldier says that everyone in his unit tortured prisoners, and they all imitated each other in the methods.
The battalion commander set the tone for this.
Many congresscritters repeated lobbyist-supplied text in their speeches about the health care bill.
This provides a nice demonstration of what we already knew: most congresscritters are mouthpieces for the lobbyists.
Nuclear power doesn't eliminate CO2 emissions if you consider the uranium mining.
A government investigator says the bailout of AIG was so incompetently done that it made matters worse.
A UN
event to discuss governance of the Internet censored a poster
that mentioned China's censorship of the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign up to send coat hangers
to congressional Democrats that supposedly support abortion rights but voted to ban insurance coverage for abortion.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Protestors in the UK shut down exports from Israeli settlements in Palestine.
A UK soldier faces 10 years in prison for condemning the war in Afghanistan.
The Economist says that
population growth is falling fast
in many poor countries. This is great news, but it does not mean we are safe from the effects of population growth (some of which increase global warming). We should make every effort to reduce world-wide population growth now, as well as helping poor countries develop and protect the environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
A UK Bush forces soldier who pled guilty to torturing Baha Mousa says he saw other soldiers kicking and punching prisoners.
Israel is trying to discredit Human Rights Watch with lies.
The US calls for an "Afghan FBI" to fight official corruption. With corruption streaming down from Karzai and his ministers, I also doubt they can find enough Afghanis who are ready, willing and able to resist corruption and yet capable of commanding respect. If they can't, this body would inevitably be a puppet of the US, and be perceived as such. So it will either arrest the whole government, or give up on its mission.
There is little difference between arresting all the ministers and officials and replacing the government bodily. It would be easier to let the Taliban do that.
Neda Soltan was not a bystander — she was prepared to die for freedom in Iran.
As Obama heads for China, he probably won't talk about the human rights activists that are being arrested in honor of his visit.
The current recession will not delay dangerous global warming by very long.
The UK is pushing for negotiations with some of the Taliban.
The TSA banned snowglobes, all of them, because it is too stupid to measure whether they fit its arbitrary criterion for liquid content.
Now that the British Bush forces are out of Iraq, the people they tortured are starting to complain.
Clown endorsed the sensible idea of taxing financial transactions to raise money for future bank bailouts. It was shot down by the US. Obama doesn't do much to confront the power of the banks.
Sign
this petition
calling on Rupert Murdoch to end race-baiting on Faux News, or else admit he agrees with it.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The US is moving to seize assets from an Iranian-controlled foundation through civil forfeiture. The Alavi foundation is accused of feeding funds to Bank Melli, which is illegal. But it will not be tried for breaking that law. Instead, the US government wants to confiscate its assets through "civil forfeiture". This procedure, often used against people accused (truly or falsely) of selling or buying drugs, was invented as an excuse to bypass the US constitutional protections for the rights of the accused.
I have no sympathy for the government of Iran or for its agents, but whenever anyone in the US who is accused of any sort of wrongdoing, that someone must not be punished without a fair trial.
Former Blackwater executives say the company authorized bribing Iraqi officials to drop their criticism after employees shot civilians in Baghdad for no reason.
Italians: join the protest in Rome demanding Berlusconi's resignation.
A whistleblower in the International Energy Agency says it has deliberately overstated the possible rate of oil extraction. In fact, shortages are coming. The way to prevent these shortages from causing price spikes is to raise the price in advance using taxes. That will help the world get used to using less oil. Wise countries have used high gasoline taxes since the 70s.
Meanwhile, we must make sure that the response consists of burning less, not burning coal or shale-oil instead.
An institute of engineering says the UK needs a "war-time mentality" to succeed in reducing its CO2 emissions. Even if some of the issues raised by this study are real, I have doubts about its assumption that new nuclear plants are needed, given that Amory Lovins has shown they are wastefully inefficient as ways to reduce CO2 emissions. Also, some of these methods might reduce warming but would not prevent acidification of the ocean which threatens to wipe out all molluscs.
Many of the principal officials that Bush placed over Iraq have
profited personally
from Iraqi oil dealings.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The economic downturn was caused by a
failure to regulate
financial markets and companies properly, which in turn was (and still is) caused by the antidemocratic political dominion of large companies over the state. Individual corruption played a role, too.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
In the UK: send a message to Mandelson opposing the plan to disconnect people from the internet if they share music. I suggest going beyond criticism of this particular method and condemning the very idea that sharing should be stopped. Sharing is good.
Everyone: sign this petition for increased food aid for 1 billion people that don't get enough to eat. We must also give them birth control aid, because starvation is a very bad way to limit population growth.
US citizens: sign
this petition
to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that the health care bill should not ban insurance coverage for abortions.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The Kyoto treaty has been a failure: countries that promised to reduce emissions have increased emissions instead.
Kucinich explains
why he voted no
on the health care reform bill. I agree with his goals, but I think it is better to pass the bill (if the abortion coverage ban can be removed) than not. It will help Americans get coverage and remove abuses. It will also increase prices. But then, when people see how much it costs, there may be more support in the future to eliminate the insurance companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Extremadura, which led the world in moving computer education to free software, is improving sex education with practical lessons. Teaching people to explore masturbation is useful; they may be able to tell their lovers what they like. But that's still not complete sex education. Complete sex education would include practical study in pleasing your lover.
US citizens: if your congresscritter voted against the amendment to ban insurance coverage for abortion, call your congresscritter and say thanks. Otherwise, call your congresscritter and say you're angry. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Although Hamas has suppressed rocket attacks from Gaza, Israeli soldiers continue
shooting at Palestinian farmers
with rifles and artillery.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers (i.e., land thieves) started
plowing on Palestinian shepherds' land.
Probably the Palestinian owners cannot grow crops on that land because Isreal has taken
most of the water resources.
This water is available for irrigation only to the settlers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The US ambassador in Afghanistan says more US troops are a mistake with so much doubt about Karzai. In other words, he appreciates the similarity to Vietnam and its corrupt rulers which others have pointed out.
Iran executed a man for belonging to a banned opposition group. The US, less barbaric but no more just, only imprisons people for belonging to banned opposition groups.
Emergency workers who assisted at the World Trade Center are starting to get cancer. This article does not mention that officials falsely denied that the fumes around the WTC were toxic.
The US press is starting to consider the idea of
using the US subsidy to make Israel get serious
about peace. I propose that the US stop offering aid to Israel, and instead offer to purchase the West Bank settlements, building by building. The US can then rent out the apartments, to Jews and Arabs, on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, ensuring that inhabitants respect each other's rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Without some real changes, the Palestinian Authority is likely to disappear
as its officials resign.
They are concluding that the P.A. cannot achieve anything except to legitimize the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
A British Bush forces soldier admits lying to protect the soldiers that kicked prisoner Baha Mousa to death.
Toward a slow news movement.
There is a campaign to change the UK's libel laws, which have the effect of censorship. My prediction is that the Clown regime will not try to do anything about this problem. This is because the Clown regime mainly tries to serve the companies, and the companies probably find these laws useful.
The government of Iraq is trying to impose censorship on the Guardian (of London).
Israel frequently demolishes Arab houses in East Jerusalem, where Arabs can't get a building permit. Now it plans to
demolish the Womens Society office
there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
With global warming, all islands and coastal areas are in the same leaky boat.
A large fraction of Iraqis can't get enough to eat. This is due to a combination of the effects of Bush forces' attack with drought partially due to global warming.
The Clown regime is determined to subsidize dangerous, polluting, expensive nuclear plants, and silence local opposition to them. Amory Lovins has shown that renewable energy and efficiency improvements can eliminate more CO2 emissions for the same money. So building nuclear plants actually hampers efforts to reduce emissions.
Activists ask the New York Mets to cancel
a fundraising dinner for Israeli colonization
of Hebron.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
An associate of RAWA debunks
the idea that the war in Afghanistan helps Afghan women's rights.
The Taliban are horrible rulers, but not all of them are as bad as they were before. And the ones the US is supporting are not much different.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
As in Vietnam, the US is propping up a corrupt dictator that can't inspire anyone's loyalty, and using worthless elections to legitimize him.
A US pullout would not immediately end the fighting in Afghanistan. In Vietnam, what happened was that the fighting increased, until one of the two bad sides won, and then the fighting ended. That might happen in Afghanistan too, but it is an improvement over what is happening now. The fighting is increasing even now, and will keep increasing, and as long as the US troops remain the fighting cannot end.
Jimmy Carter
defends the Goldstone report
and explains how Israel's siege of Gaza continues even though Hamas has cracked down on rocket attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
B'tselem reports that Israel is
investigating accusations against soldiers that abused civilians
in Gaza (sometimes fatally). This is inadequate because it only addresses isolated incidents in which soldiers violated their orders — not the much worse atrocities that form a pattern because they followed orders.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Greg Palast explains why associating the Taliban with the 9/11 attacks is stretching the facts. His article only states part of the uncertainty. We can't even be sure that the Saudis accused of carrying out the attack were the real attackers, or that the Bush regime was not involved. Bush tried to block the investigation, then weakened it and corrupted it.
Uri Avnery: As Obama continues Bush's policies of letting Israel use a fake "peace process" as an excuse for further colonization, Palestinian President Abbas has refused to participate any longer.
The
US State Department reports on how Israel
does not recognize the rights of non-Jews.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The London police SWAT team has had thousands of accusations of brutality in the past few years, and nearly all were systematically ignored. The police are gangsters that enjoy official protection.
The UK government's spying on Muslims and dissidents amounts to the systematic semi-prohibition of dissent.
The coup regime in Honduras cheated on the accord with Zelaya, perhaps encouraged when the US said it would recognize elections carried out by the coup regime. This encourages suspicions that the US supported the coup all along.
Iraqi police are attacking journalists who publish dissent, and the government has imposed licensing of TV reporters.
The citizens of Amherst, Massachusetts, want to welcome Guantanamo prisoners (those not charged with any crime) as refugees.
Iraqi police try to detect bombs and guns by dowsing. No surprise that it doesn't work.
Europe only goes half-way in protecting Internet rights.
CIA agents and Italian governmemt agents were convicted of kidnaping Abu Omar to be sent to Egypt for torture.
Carbon Trading, which is supposed to enable reductions in emissions to be made wherever it's cheapest to do so, has been converted into a vehicle for speculation, and is failing to reduce emissions.
I prefer a tax on CO2 emissions, collected on fuels.
The government of Bangladesh
tried to censor a photo exhibit about Tibet on behalf of the
Chinese government, a "good friend" of Bangladesh.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
In Venezuela, gays and transsexuals face
frequent and dangerous harassment from the police.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
The Copenhagen talks have failed; if they reach an agreement, it will be a gesture only.
Palestinian President Abbas says he will not run for reelection, because Israel offers no hope for peace.
Development of recreational drugs is moving so fast that prudish governments can't keep up.
Among all these new, untested substitute drugs, sooner or later there will be one that is particularly dangerous. It would be safer to let people use the not-so-dangerous well-known drugs.
London Police are still covering up how they killed Ian Tomlinson.
Another report the bombings in Iraq
may have been done with help from inside the government
"security" forces, for political infighting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
A new guide tells how to visit Sicily and not contribute to Mafia protection racket.
What Europe needs next is a guide for how to run computers without contributing to the software protection racket.
When Obama's men carry prisoners to the US, they treat the prisoners horribly.
I think it can be ethically acceptable to seize criminals in other countries to put them on trial. For instance, as long as the US protects the kingpins of torture, such as Bush and Cheney, and refuses to either prosecute them or consider extradition to some other country willing to do so, it is legitimate for another country to seize them and try them. But they should not be tortured into a confession that might be false, or convicted based on such a confession. Even Bush and Cheney deserve a fair trial.
Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed to meet with US diplomats visiting Burma.
Pseudo-scientific attacks on vaccination are endangering lives in the US.
US citizens: sign
this petition telling Obama not to appoint a
pesticide company advocate as a US trade negotiator.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Comparing US health care costs with other countries: look what the insurance companies have managed to take from us.
Another report the bombings in Iraq may have been done with help from
inside the government "security" forces, for political infighting.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
If your emails are stored in a US company, it can turn them over to the police without even telling you.
Defectors from Scientology reveal how the cult hounded people who had quit.
The UK convicted a woman of the "crime" of being suspect.
To imprison people on suspicion is an evident act of tyranny, but in the UK it fits a general pattern of tyranny in the B'liar/Clown regime. Tyranny is far more dangerous than underground terrorism.
The absence of strong reforms of banking and business are preparing the way for the next financial crisis.
But that may be the intention, according to Naomi Klein's idea that crises are planned as opportunities to shift wealth to the rich.
Health insurance company lobbyists have won themselves a bill that will do more to protect their profits than to protect the public's health.
This bill might solve, mostly, the problem of poor Americans that don't have insurance coverage. But Americans who are not poor will be forced to pay whatever price the insurance companies decide to charge. And we can expect those prices to increase substantially as a result.
Perhaps those price increases will lead to rebellion and some of the bought legislators responsible might get voted out. That is all we can hope for.
1/5 of known mammal species are threatened due to human activity. The danger is worse for other kinds of vertebrates.
B'liar's approach to government: don't allow a major change to be discussed, because that way he couldn't keep everything under control.
This is typical of the attitude of New Labour towards the people. A few years ago, it abolished a cabinet office without discussion. Now it is negotiating the ACTA treaty without discussion. They could do a great job of governing a country, if only those pesky people were not in the way.
The opposition candidate in Afghanistan has quit the presidential election, saying it will be fraudulent.
From what else I've read, it seems he is right. How sad that Karzai was unwilling to settle for a highly probable honest victory. Now he has no chance of being more than a crook.
Now the US intervention in Afghanistan aims for nothing more than to keep a crook in power. The similarity to South Vietnam is increasing.
Coca Cola has offered the American Academy of Family Physicians a lot of money, and some doctors are quitting in disgust.
The coup government of Honduras has agreed to let Zelaya return as president, one month before the election of his successor.
What I am concerned about is whether Zelaya will have the time and cooperation needed to properly run an election.
India's elephant population is in rapid decline.
A major cause of the elephant population loss is human population growth. More people demand more land, leaving less and less for most wildlife.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter in suport of the Weiner amendment for a single-payer health care system.
To prevent people from knowing about prisoners tortured to death, Bush
turned off all reporting of deaths of prisoners in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
Obama has done nothing to change this.
The US government adopted a law to cover up evidence of torture by its agents.
Everyone: sign the statement of support for the Goldstone Report on war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter in support of the Goldstone Report. Congress is planning to pass a resolution to denounce it.
As the Indian state sells off poor people's land to big companies, it drives them to rebellion.
A retired assistant police chief says the TSA's practices are
misguided in spirit and practice.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-08 because the old link was broken.]
These conclusions fit well with the conclusion that the TSA's main function is to provide an impression of security ("security theater") and to instill a general tendency towards obedience.
The B'liar/Clown regime has instituted multiple systems of intense surveillance of protestors.
The insurance conpanies' bought politicians are blocking the appointment of the US Surgeon General as opposition to health care reform.
It is understandable that these companies oppose health care reform, because the purpose of such reform is to put an end to their profitable, dishonest and harmful business. Understandable, but not excusable. Neither is it excusable for politicians to serve them.
Sad news: the Swiss government wants to restrict assisted suicide.
The idea of limiting the right to death to those who are going to die soon anyway, and turning away those condemned to helpless suffering that could last for decades, is particularly cruel. Switzerland should be proud to be the place they turn to for compassion.
The UK will split up banks that it rescued.
Any company that gets rescued because it is "too big to fail" should be split up, preferably into more than two pieces.
David Nutt explains why his report opposes the idea of stricter prohibition of marihuana.
For common individual activities that occasionally cause problems, the precautionary principle is an absurd approach, a recipe for harshness and overreaction. On the other hand, it's called for when dealing with a plausible potential disaster whose likelihood cannot effects cannot be anticipated, such as the disaster of global warming and the disaster of acid seas (both of which CO2 emissions are causing).
Meanwhile, harsh policies towards individuals are a much more grave measure than regulation of businesses. We should generally be far more reluctant to deny some people freedom than to reduce the profit of some businesses.
So it is curious that politicians tend to cite the precautionary principle when it could be an excuse for treating people harshly (in this case, pot users), to prevent problems from common activities. But when it's necessary to limit certain business practices to prevent world-wide disaster, they argue that the precautionary principle is overcautious.
Why this paradoxical backwards response? I think it's because these politicians conceive of the businesses as their masters, and the people as their subjects. Harsh restrictions on people teach them the habit of obedience. That's good for cementing corporate rule, regardless of whether these restrictions serve any purpose.
In response to this article, the government removed Nutt from the ACMD, on the grounds that he was interfering with its plans to give the public clear, simplistic, false messages about the danger of drugs.
UN torture investigator Manfred Nowak was invited to Zimbabwe by Prime Minister Tsvangirai, then arrested and deported , almost certainly at the orders of Mugabe. The UN will be right to take action against Zimbabwe for this. It should also take action against Israel for blocking Judge Goldstone from visiting Gaza.
Pakistan's army brought journalists into South Waziristan for a brief visit . A brief, controlled visit like this is not enough for journalists to see the real situation there. Like the Bush forces' embedded journalists in Iraq, they see only the Army's side. An army can, potentially, suppress organized and overt rebel activity such as occurs in South Waziristan. However, the Islamist terrorists in Punjab are a different kind of problem, which can't be addressed this way.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Call Senator Kerry and tell him not to go along with exempting coal-burning power plants from the Clean Air Act.
The pain of torture makes victims sound guilty
, to those connected in some way with carrying out the torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli border guards sadistically attacked Palestinians
on the street in Jerusalem, and boasted about it. But they were not punished. Sadistic attacks by the border guards are normal, from what I hear. What is unusual is that they didn't even hide it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Here's another take on the civil war in Pakistan. Parts of it seem one-sided; for instance, using local militias in Swat to fight the Taliban there seems reasonable to me.
The progressive organization J Street calls on American Jews to proclaim that they do not support the Israeli hawks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The bombers of Iraqi government buildings may have had help from inside the "security" forces. In Iraq, parties regard control of a ministry as a sort of booty, and each party has a militia. There could be, inside the police, sympathizers of each party willing to help an attack against a ministry controlled by another party.
Karzai's brother has been paid by the CIA for 8 years.
The US Chamber of Commerce has sued the Yes Men for their hoax press conference. If we take the accusation at face value, then we should note that this lawsuit gives the Yes Men publicity nobody can buy. Let's do our best to increase the publicity by spreading the word.
Gush Shalom plans to legally attack the US organizations
that apply their tax exemptions to extending Israeli settlements (colonies) in the West Bank. Settlers attacked Palestinian farmers trying to harvest their olives. The Israeli army did nothing to stop them
. That's nothing unusual.
[References updated on 2018-05-13 because the old links were broken.]
Many former Israeli officials face arrest for war crimes if they go to European countries.
Iraq's government says car bombs were made inside the Green Zone.
Matthew Hoh, a US diplomat in Afghanistan, has resigned so as to call publicly for an end to US military intervention there.
Australia is considering a policy of banning construction near beaches, since such buildings are likely to be flooded due to global warming.
The UK police label protestors as "dangerous extremists" in order to justify harassing them.
The UK government is still trying to conceal evidence of torture by the US. It's one bunch of tyrants in cahoots with another.
US residents, and anyone who can help: support the BanksterUSA.org campaign to reregulate the banks that cheated the citizens and prosecute the executives that acted illegally.
The EU is well on the way to have "the coercive machinery of a state" without democratic controls.
A democratic union of Europe, which would place priority on the well being and freedom of the citizens, is an inspiring ideal. The European Union of today is nothing like that, and if it isn't corrected, it should be ended. Each and every country should be prepared to withdraw from the EU of today, for the sake of its citizens' freedom, if the EU is not reformed to respect freedom and democracy.
Amnesty International says Israel takes 80% of the West Bank's water for settlements (colonies) while leaving 20% for the Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Gary McKinnon's case is spurring review of the unjust extradition treaty between the US and the UK, which discards the usual legal protections. I don't see it as very significant that McKinnon may have Asperger's syndrome. Illness or not, it unjust to propose a heavy punishment for someone who did not intend to do damage.
Also I wish they would stop calling him a "hacker". Breaking security doesn't make him a hacker, though he might be one for other reasons. The major issue of this case is the injustice of the treaty itself.
This looks like a plan to intimidate protestors and those that work with them. In other words, it is tyranny: business as usual for the B'liar/Clown regime, which is an occupation government for the empire of the megacorporations.
Radovan Karadzic is using delaying tactics to prevent his trial for genocide.
One of Scientology's Hollywood stars has broken climactically with the church and denounced its policies.
Attempts to put palm oil production on a sustainable basis are breaking down. Note the absurd arguments of the agribusinesses: "since we have already ruined the Earth so much, why not stop now?"
The best solution is to prohibit use of palm oil and other farmed crops for making fuels. It doesn't save energy, and it adds to global warming.
The WTO shares the responsibility for this problem, since it prohibits the consuming countries from placing requirements on how things are made in other countries.
Japanese citizens: sign the petition to abolish fingerprinting
of visitors to Japan.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support this petition to the FCC for net neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's quandary over the Goldstone report: sham investigation, or just stonewall?
Everyone: support the 350.org campaign for measures to stop global warming.
Reportedly, Iraqis blame election infighting for the bombings in Baghdad. (In Iraq, each party has a militia.)
Note that what reduced the violence in Iraq was not an increase in Bush forces troops, but rather the policy of buying the support of Sunni militias who were getting annoyed with al Qa'ida.
Iraqi Sunnis have bombed and destroyed several government ministries in Baghdad.
A large protest in London against the war in Afghanistan included a soldier facing court martial for refusing to return there.
Scientists propose to preserve coral from extinction cryogenically.
Will this preserve the many other species of fish and arthropods that shelter in or live on reefs? I doubt it.
Madagascar's rainfall has been reduced by global warming and deforestation. The result is hunger.
Part of the problem is having too many babies. Part of the aid that Madagascar needs is contraception and programs to help people use it.
US citizens: take action against "tort reform" that would leave the victims of medical malpractice without recourse.
For more information about the issue read this.
T. Boon Pickens says his company is entitled to Iraqi oil contracts
because of the Americans that died fighting in the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Far more Iraqi civilians died than Bush forces soldiers. By this reasoning, Iraqi civilians are the ones really entitled to the income from the oil.
US citizens: support the campaign to
turn around the WTO.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
I suggest editing the message to object to the WTO's rules on copyrights, and to the requirement for poor countries to recognize patents on medicines and plants.
Peruvian protestors say a multinational mining company imprisoned and tortured protestors, and worked closely with police to kill some.
The free exploitation treaty between Peru and the US gives support to businesses like these which endanger the environment.
China has executed some Tibetan protestors.
The US Chamber of Commerce is trying to block reregulation of the banks by saying this will create jobs. But its whole history is of supporting outsourcing and elimination of jobs.
The US Chamber of Commerce violated tax laws by spending millions on judicial elections and not reporting it.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Kucinich's single-payer health care plan.
Disinformation PR campaigns have convinced 20% of Americans to doubt the danger of global warming in the past two years.
Obama's men meet frequently with the large progressive political
groups to
try to keep them in line.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Obama is not much of a progressive, so it is only natural that progressive organizations want to go further than he does and that he tries to slow them down.
This demonstrates the importance of putting pressure on Obama and other Democrats. In particular, progressives must organize to replace the "blue dog" conservative Democrats.
The US Chamber of Commerce is trying to shut off a parody website using the DMCA.
The US Chambern of Commerce says it represents American business. If it weren't a dishonest bully, it would not be an accurate representation.
Copyright is an easy tool for corporate censorship, since most ISPs delete anything at the first complaint.
The US military resorts to sneaky and deceptive methods to get information about American teenagers.
However, we need to teach children that the risk of dying is not the worst thing about joining the US military. There are causes for which risking one's life is admirable. But many of the US's wars are evil, and it is wrong to fight them even if the soldiers are operating a drone by remote control and are totally safe.
An Iranian blogger has been imprisoned for a year without trial. His father's open letter calls on the state to state the charges and give him a fair trial.
Many other countries practice imprisonment without trial, including the US. Their citizens should be ashamed.
The UNHCR condemns forcible deportation of refugees to Iraq.
The UK tried to do this. Iraq allowed in only those who said they were willing to return.
Many people say LSD and Ectasy help them deal with severe medical and psychological problems.
Parents of British soldiers killed fighting in the Bush forces want B'liar to be prosecuted for lying to start a war of conquest.
Vigilantes in the Dominican Republic shot and killed Haitians who were cutting down trees to make charcoal.
Cutting down the forest causes eco-catastrophe, so it was necessary to stop them. But it should have been done without killing.
Verizon and AT&T are corrupting legislators and minority group NGOs to oppose net neutrality.
Our plastic refuse is
killing albatross chicks
on remote islands in the Pacific Ocean.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
3/4 of the
babies born in Falluja
are deformed — probably because of Dirty Uranium used by the Bush forces. Countries which are allied with the US should think twice about whether to allow the US to "defend" them in such
a deadly fashion.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Karzai accepted the runoff election required by the massive election fraud in the first round, in exchange for being praised as a "statesman". But nothing has been done to prevent fraud in the second round.
A hoax press conference, perhaps by the Yes Men, claimed the US Chamber of Commerce had dropped its opposition to measures to stop global warming.
US citizens: sign
this petition
asking Democratic legislators to boycott Faux News.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
How do US banks make money? They borrow money from the US government at zero interest rate, and buy treasury bonds. In effect we are just subsidizing them.
Overuse of ground water has dried up the lagoons at Las Tablas de Daimiel, and now they are on fire underground.
The cruelty of the Bible continues to do spread pain today, even in jury decisions.
The UK nuclear industry funds a special police force that carries out covert intelligence against protestors to prevent "public disquiet".
We can expect this will be used against political dissidents. Here is more information.
Children of Dalits in Gujarat face abuse in school — forced to do dirty work, denied access to water fountains, even denied grading of their exercises.
Pakistan has launched an attack on rebels in South Waziristan that launched a series of bombings in the past week. I think that the stability of Pakistan, which has nuclear arms, is properly given higher priority than whatever happens in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, since the groups under attack are linked with other Islamist militants in other parts of Pakistan, this may not be enough.
Once again, we are offered fallacious arguments that it is "too late" to reject genetically modified food.The confusion between genetically modified human food and meat from animals that have eaten genetically modified feed is a logical fallacy in the reasoning of this article.
There is also an error in the presuppositions. Cutting down the forests in Brazil to grow soy beans to feed to cattle is hardly the way for the world to avoid disaster. Eating smaller amounts of meat would do a lot better.
I am not necessarily against genetically modified food, provided it is tested properly for safety and does not deny farmers their traditional freedom. We can hardly expect proper testing under the control of the agribusiness companies, have attacked the careers of scientists who criticize them.
The UK's plans for disconnecting users accused of sharing is meeting a lot of public opposition.
US citizens: sign
this petition to house and senate leaders
for a strong health care reform bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery explains why Israel acts to make PA president Abbas weak and strengthen Hamas, while its words go in the other direction.
The copyright lobby in Canada opposes legal protections against surreptitious installation of sabotage software and spyware in users' computers.
It looks like the international Election Complaints Commission will find massive fraud in Afghanistan and report that Karzai got less than 50% of the vote.
Global warming increases the spread of marine mucilages, giant long-lasting blobs of jelly-like substances in the sea that harbor bacteria that can infect humans and fish.
Some businesses are now pushing for action to prevent global warming, in the hope of preventing measures that would reduce the size of the economy.
It will be nice if no economic sacrifice is required, but we would be fools to refuse sacrifices outright.
If 70% of emissions "come from" consumers, this is nonetheless due to the social patterns which are shaped by laws and business practices. A substantial change in the amount of emissions requires changes in those laws and practices. Governments need to act to make that change.
It would be folly to assume that businesses think long term. Many of them think only as far as the stock price in the next year.
Here's a different view on the question of whether more economic growth is what we need.
The UK has set up a massive program to record the thoughts and views of of citizens, under the guise of "preventing terrorism", and have subverted many organizations into reporting on people they deal with.
The B'liar-Clown regime has consistently headed towards tyranny along many avenues, so this is a natural progression. Just as naturally, it lies about the activity and lies about people who oppose it. This sort of government is far more dangerous than the non-state-sponsored terrorism it uses as the excuse.
Should we fear high oil prices? Here's an article that invites us to consider that possibility public danger number one.
That article is a subtle attempt to distract us from the greater danger of global warming. It harps on the short term danger of a recession due to high oil prices while disregarding the longer-term danger of destroying civilization through burning too much oil. We don't know whether technology will be able to extract 11 trillion barrels of oil from the ground, but we can be confident that pumping all that CO2 into the air will bring us ruin.
Why this one-sidedness? Perhaps a clue can be found in what it says about the multinational oil companies. In the past, they controlled the oil in countries such as Iran and Venezuela, and exported most of the profits as well as the oil itself. They defended this exploitation by getting the US and UK to attack governments which attempted to keep these profits in the country. For instance, the overthrow of the elected leader Mossadegh in Iran, which restored the Shah to power, later led to the current Islamic Republic. The article describes this sort of colonialism in glowing terms. I suspect that the oil companies have something to do with the writing of the article.
I wonder whether the author has some sort of profitable relationship with these same oil companies.
Cartels and bubbles can indeed cause unnecessary trouble. The way to prevent them is to manage the price of oil, and all fossil fuels, with a tax that will make the price rise in a steady, predictable way. That won't directly stop market manipulation, but it will reduce the demand which makes market manipulation so effective and tempting.
But that's not what the oil companies want. They want to sell as much as possible in the near future.
The UK tried to forcibly deport some Iraqis to Iraq, but Iraqi immigration would not allow them to brought in against their will.
The UN Human Rights Council approved the Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza and submitted it to the General Assembly.
There is no chance that this can interfere with US initiatives for peace because those are already flat on their back.
The banks have no shame. After they caused a financial crisis, and got a massive bailout while the public didn't, they think they are entitled to be immune from regulation to prevent a repeat. The bailout should have given the government ownership of these banks so that it could order them to cease all lobbying on the issue.
Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), one of the financial derivatives that caused the financial crisis that started in 2008, offer an opportunity to create booby-traps which nobody can detect or even prove. This would be a good reason to prohibit CDOs, but there is another reason which is even more important. When people about to lose their houses asked banks for forbearance, the banks said it was impossible since they had already resold the mortgages to other companies.
Banks should not be allowed to resell home mortgages — not as CDOs, not to anyone.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter not to let the US stop states from putting their own regulations on mortgages and loans. The federal government protected banks from state regulators a few years ago, with disastrous results.
Big companies can shape the direction scientific research takes by making small contributions to it. They use this power to ensure that possible harm done by their products is not studied. I agree we should bar companies from making these corrupting small contributions, but we should go further. We should tax them more, and support research with their taxes without asking their opinion.
The Bush forces casualty figures still do not properly count the casualties among mercenaries, disregarding legal requirements. This policy was surely implemented so as to disguise from the public the full extent of casualties among the Bush forces. Bush also chose not to count the number of Iraqi civilians that his invasion killed or wounded.
80 Israeli high school students have stated
their intent to go to prison rather than serve in the army
as part of the occupation of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The "free trade" economic system guarantees perpetual poverty for millions of export manufacturers in Haiti and other countries. The proponents of free exploitation treaties invite us to have faith that things will get better some day, when the economy expands so far that the world has an overall shortage of workers. But we are already choking the planet by producing too much. We need to fortify all the poor countries in demanding higher minimum wages for their citizens.
The UK used an "anti-terror" law to stop a citizen from travelling to Denmark for a protest.
Maoist rebels in India
gain strength
as the government takes poor people's land to give to commercial projects. Usually they don't get compensation, but when they do, they get swindled out of it. Here's an instance of
what India does to poor people
when a company wants their land for a mine.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops
demolished a house in Jerusalem
after evicting the occupants. Israel has demolished 60 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and now proposes to
demolish almost 300 more.
[References updated on 2018-05-13 because the old links were broken.]
Israeli troops
threatened Palestinians who house international peace activists.
These activists serve as witnesses when Israeli troops or settlers attack Palestinians and lie about it. Some activists such as Rachel Corrie have been killed by the Army.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Clown has decided to
send UK troops back
to the Bush forces in Iraq. 100 troops are just a symbolic contribution to the Bush forces. They are only enough to make the UK once again responsible for the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make sure a public option is included in the health care reform bill goes to the floor of the Senate.
Loggers massacred an Indian tribe in Brazil so they wouldn't be a legal obstacle to logging. I think only full protection of large regions — together with well-funded birth control programs — can prevent these.
Legal restrictions on abortion kill 70,000 women a year in poor countries.
Gorillas and elephants are necessary for the survival of the trees in the forests where they live. However, protecting the gorillas won't save the trees from being cut down by humans. This requires ending human population growth in those regions.
Big companies get injunctions in the UK to censor the press and forbid reporting on censorship too.
The Senate Finance Committee passed a health care bill without a public option.
Despite this victory, the insurance companies campaigned at the last minute to make the bill even worse. Maybe that is because the battle isn't over: the whole senate still has to vote.
Meanwhile, Christian fanatics reinstated funding for Bush's perverted "abstinence only" anti-sex-education, and came close to banning insurance coverage for abortions.
An PLO internal memo recognizes that Obama has caved in totally to Israel and dashed any chance of he can achieve peace.
Good for him that he already has his Nobel prize.
The UN's attempt to disarm the Hutu armies in Eastern Congo has killed and raped thousands of civilians.
Greenpeace protestors climbed to the roof of Parliament to unfurl banners calling for reduction of CO2 emissions. Government spokesmen criticize this act of tresspassing to distract our attention from their endangerment of civilization's survival.
Global warming is melting the glaciers on Mount Everest, causing drought and occasional catastrophic floods.
US citizens: tell Congress to enact strong protection against misconduct by banks.
Global warming has caused a giant dead zone off the coast of Oregon and Washington.
A scientist has demonstrated how to produce something like the Shroud of Turin.
The Senate passed Al Franken's bill to bar contracts to companies that stop their employees from taking sexual assault and discrimination cases to court. The 30 senators who voted against this apparently do not care about any sort of abuse.
China has sentenced a number of people to death for murders during the riots in Urumqi. They might be guilty — I have no basis to say they were not — though it is hard to have confidence in Chinese justice. But even if they are, execution is not justified.
Bush secretly continued Total Information Awareness after Congress ordered it shut down.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
A fund manager from Bear Stearns faces prosecution. In his diary he admitted that his fund could "blow up", but he told customers everything was fine.
Pakistan's army attacked the Islamist terrorists who had taken hostages in Pakistan's army HQ. I'm not surprised they were able to attack with inside support, since it was Pakistan's intelligence service that launched al Qa'ida, an it has been accused of protecting al Qa'ida and the Taliban throughout recent years. This attack will make it hard for anyone in Pakistan's government to try to protect them any more.
I fear that they will torture the captured terrorist, Dr. Usman. If so, he is likely to give false confessions. They might be useful for making Pakistan's intelligence service look good (or covering up its involvment), but we must not suppose they are true.
The UK will end its loopholes and support an EU ban on shark finning. But we need a global ban in order to prevent sharks from being wiped out.
Sarkozy has given France the world's nastiest law (HADOPI) to stop unauthorized copying, but his office does unauthorized copying on a large scale. The French minister of culture, who pushed hard for the HADOPI law, seems to think that rape of a minor is a much less serious wrong than sharing files.
Vancouver has banned protests during the Olypmic Games — even signs and leaflets. Citizens are fighting back. Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee is trying to use copyright to suppress photos of the exteriors of its sports venues.
An Iranian protestor faces execution, allegedly as a result of a false confession obtained by torture.
Private equity companies profit by buying and selling companies, loading them up with debt in the process, and ultimately leaving them bankrupt.
Change we can't believe in: Obama mostly continues Bush's policies.
So why did they give him a Nobel prize? His efforts towards peace between Israel and Palestine are laughably weak, but he has indeed launched diplomatic initiatives for nuclear disarmament and peace with Iran which might achieve something. However, results remain in the future. It is too soon to judge these efforts, too soon to judge whether they will deserve a prize.
US citizens: call your representatives in support of the Fair Elections Now Act, which would establish a public funding alternative for congressional elections. Or use this web page to send a message.
Burma's military dictators allowed foreign representatives to meet Aung San Suu Kyi.
Perhaps they are hoping for relaxation of sanctions. I don't believe they will be willing to allow democracy, but they might be willing to run a dictatorship only as bad as that of China or Egypt.
UN diplomat Peter Galbraith says that 1/3 of Karzai's votes were fraudulent.
High-tech organized poaching rings are putting the rhinoceros in renewed danger of extinction. Can someone develop convincing fake ground rhino horn?
IMF policies in 31 countries exacerbated the economic downturn.
The US troops in Afghanistan are discouraged and demoralized, not knowing what they are fighting for.
The new head of the bank bailout program rebuked various government agencies for lying to the public about the situation when the bailout was started.
The Taliban announced that they do not wish to threaten western countries, suggesting they might be willing to break with al Qa'ida and make peace with the US. I supported the invasion of Afghanistan, not because of al Qa'ida but because of the tyranny and cruelty of its rule in Afghanistan. However, nowadays some of the Taliban have moderated and don't seem to be much worse than the US-supported corrupt Karzai regime.
A man was arrested for informing protestors at the G20 meeting where the police where going. The same methods were used by protestors in Tehran. Then police searched the house where he lived and seized the belongings of everyone there, based on a warrant that was improperly broad.
The "tort reform" movement was invented by the tobacco companies. It uses false stories to make liability law seem dangerous, so as to generate support for reducing liability.
The only possible way to convince Iran not to develop nuclear weapons is to negotiate a treaty denuclearizing the whole region, including Israel.
Kucinich reminds Americans of how in 2002 he documented the holes Bush's arguments for invading Iraq. So nobody is entitled to the excuse that "If we knew then what we know now, we would all have opposed it."
Berlusconi's law making him immune from prosecution was found unconstitutional, allowing many prosecutions to go forward.
The Republican Party now has no philosophy beyond hurting the Democratic Party.
In Chiapas, right wing militias
attacked Zapatista farmers,
captured some and tortured them.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
A proposed coal-burning plant in the UK has been cancelled. This project was the target of major protests by climate protection campaigners. The Maldives island held a cabinet meeting underwater to call attention to the danger that it will be submerged by rising sea level.
Do you know people in Paris? Please call their attention to
the campaign
against new surveillance cameras.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Some Israelis don't dare visit the UK lest they be
accused of war crimes.
Meanwhile, Hamas is preventing Palestinians from firing rockets at Israel. There is no possible doubt that Hamas is a possible partner for peace. The doubt that remains is about Israel.
[References updated on 2018-04-07 because the old links were broken.]
Israel is building
800 new apartments and houses
in colonies in the West Bank, hurrying construction to negate any future freeze.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Afghanistan is looking more and more
like Vietnam,
and the US is trying the same "solutions" which failed there.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
The Palestinian police have kidnapped and tortured many Hamas supporters. Some have been tortured to death.
British troops in the Bush forces tortured a prisoner by pouring urine on him and pushing his head into a toilet.
The UN has a plan to pay poor countries to preserve forests. But it could be vulnerable to massive corruption. If the verification is done by an international agency based on satellite data, it could be harder for corrupt politicians in the poor countries to fiddle with it.
US citizens: phone your senators to demand health care reform including a public option.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on the US to plan its exit strategy for Afghanistan.
Soot from wood fires and diesel engines is contributing to climate change as it falls on ice and absorbs heat.
But reducing soot does not make it safe to continue emitting CO2, which is making the ocean acidic enough to dissolve the shells of molluscs and wipe out most life in the sea.
Chicago may have lost the Olympic games because US immigratiom is so unpleasant for visitors.
Instead of correcting the problem, the government is considering a PR campaign to suppress the resentment it arouses.
Don't let this succeed! As long as the US takes fingerprints of visitors, everyone subject to this policy should refuse to go to the US.
Judges ruled that the British government was derilict in not investigating accusations from relatives of tortured and murdered Iraqi prisoners.
Ireland voted to approve the EU constitution-in-disguise. This is sad news for Europe.
London police apparently killed an anti-fascist campaigner while he was protesting a fascist rally 30 years ago.
In Honduras, Micheletti's abolition of human rights has weakened his position, and he has agreed to
talks with Zelaya.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
The US and Europe quashed an attempt to ask the UN Security Council to take up the war crimes (by Hamas and Israel) described in the Goldstone report. This shows that Obama has become, like Bush and Clinton, a puppet of the right-wing Israeli government.
It may also indicate that the PLO is desperate to reinforce its status through futile peace negotiations. There is no chance that negotiations will be fruitful unless the US ceases to give Israel unlimited support.
Bank of America's policy: we won't cash your check unless you come with arms.
While Mr Valdez objects to their demand for his print because he could not provide one, I think it is just as wrong to demand a print from a person who can provide one.
Speaker Pelosi insists that the House of Representatives' health care bill will have a public option.
The public option will not reduce overall costs like a single-payer system, because that requires eliminating the health insurance companies and the multi-payer bureaucracy of our current system. But at least it will provide medical care to the uninsured at reasonable costs.
The US government gave up control over ICANN wich allocates Internet domain names and IP numbers.
Interpreted in nationalistic terms, this change would appear to be ipso facto good for the world outside the US. However, the question that really matters about ICANN is not which country nominally controls it, buit how it deals with the rights of internet users; specifically, whether it bows down to companies that wish to use ICANN to extend their control over names they use beyond what trademark law allows. I don't know how this change will affect that question.
The Senate Finance Committee ruined the health care bill by eliminating publicly funded insurance as an option.
This is the result of a systematic and deceptive right-wing campaign.
Being tortured destroys memories: the victim can come to believe false accusations before signing a confession.
Investigators that want information already know that torture is an ineffective way to get it. The real motive for torture is to get confessions — it works really well, if you don't care whether the confessions are true or false.
A UN investigation confirmed that Georgia started the war with Russia in 2008.
Attend
the speeches of the Israelis who went to prison
rather than participate in the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
In NYC: See the Yes Men's film on Oct 7.
Catastrophic global warming could occur as soon as 2060.
A secret CIA prison was operating in Baghdad through the end of 2008. Prisoners were held there secretly and tortured.
The UN is headed for treating caste discrimination as a human rights violation.
Iran has made a tentative deal that heads in the direction of showing it is not trying to make nuclear weapons.
I am skeptical: I tend to think that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapon.
Three three nasty provisions of the U SAP AT RIOT act are going to expire.
Obama wants to renew them. Some senators
propose to replace them
with something less dangerous.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
Lisa Graves testified in the Senate committee opposing renewal.
The Burmese military rulers decided to keep Aung San Suu Kyi in house
arrest.
The IMF will work on a
global tax on financial companies
to build up a fund for future bailouts.
It looks like the alleged bomber of Pan Am flight 800 was convicted
based on testimony obtained by witnesses who were paid for it, and
information contradicting their testimony was concealed from the defense.
Pakistan is
setting up local militias to keep the Taliban out of Swat.
UK conservatives say they will end the surveillance state, but their
manifesto
fails to address many of the worst forms of surveillance.
The presidential guard
killed 150 protestors
in Guinea.
China's anniversary "celebration" turns Beijing into
a phony theatrical act,
in which thousands have been forced to perform, while most of the city has been ordered to stay home and out of the way.
How
the BBC is conspiring with Hollywood
to impose DRM on broadcast TV in the UK.
Israel denounces the Goldstone report as "one-sided", but
the report condemns Hamas war crimes as well
as Israeli Army war crimes. However, the Goldstone commission was in a way superfluous: the overall approach and rules of engagement chosen by Israel guaranteed many civilian casualties in Gaza.
Ahmed al-Darbi describes how
he was tortured into false confession
by US agents in Bagram and Guantanamo. He saw another prisoner tortured to death. Parts of his sworn statement were apparently censored. Do they describe torture even more embarrassing than what was allowed through? Will Obama keep him in prison for the rest of his life so he cannot tell them to us?
Peace negotiations without a freeze on Israeli settlement contruction is just a cover for continued colonization. When
Obama surrendered on this issue,
he assured that any negotiations will not get anywhere.
Global warming will lead to
global food shortages and malnutrition
in a few decades. Global warming is reducing the Antarctic ice cap by speeding up the flow of glacier to the ocean. Whether this will lead to catastrophic flooding in this century is beyond science's ability to predict. So, do we want to take the chance?
A grandmother faces criminal charges for
buying cold medicine twice in a week
for her three sick grandchildren. Here you see police on a power trip.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call your state legislators in support of HB 2160 which would protect medical marijuana use.
Palestinians related to civilians killed by the Israeli attack on Gaza want Britain to
arrest Ehud Barak.
Instead of sending bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes so as to take drive them out and expand the "settlements",
Israel now orders the residents to destroy their own homes.
A London policeman who attacked a protestor will
face charges,
but Tomlinson's killer still escapes prosecution. These bullies will keep on rampaging until they are made to pay.
US citizens: Thank Speaker Pelosi for
insisting on a public option
in US health care reform.
Net neutrality in Europe is under threat from (what else?)
business corruption of government.
People in Honduras are starting to denounce
the business elite that backs the coup regime.
And a Brazilian official confirms that the embassy was attacked with toxic gas.
With Iran testing new missiles, and a secret uranium enrichment plant revealed, there is
new pressure for stricter sanctions.
The question remains, as before, whether China will veto them.
The person who originated the distorted "death panels" accusation against Obama's health care reform plan is an experienced (and obviously unscrupulous)
right-wing paid political activist.
Six EU countries with large fishing fleets blocked
a proposal to ban fishing Bluefin tuna,
which is being pushed to extinction. This reflects the way our political system, which pretends to be democracy, is organized to obey the businesses most directly interested in the issue at hand. Even when those businesses are destroying the resources they use, governments still cannot disobey them.
Antarctica's glaciers are moving faster, so
the ice cap is thinning.
New York, Boston, Washington DC may go the way of New Orleans in a few decades.
Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused deployment to Iraq because he believed it was an illegal war,
will be discharged from the army,
which has given up trying to prosecute him again. I take issue with Kagan, who cheered that Watada "never disparaged the service and the sacrifices made by countless other soldiers and officers who obeyed their orders" and presented that as positive. The pretense that Bush forces soldiers were "serving their country" and that they deserved our "support" were instrumental in blocking effective opposition to the war.
I admire the sacrifice and risk that Lt. Watada undertood, which was all the more heroic because he did it without any moral support from those around him. That is plenty to make him a hero, and I will not criticize him over anything else which he might have additionally done. But if he had also disparaged the so-called service that obedient Bush forces, that would have been good to, and perhaps quite effective for ending the war.
Death squads, disappearances and torture in Pakistan.
The war against the Taliban in Swat was justified, but
that doesn't excuse torturing and killing people in custody.
Obama's pledge to close Guantanamo has become meaningless,
since he does not plan to end the injustice that Guantanamo
represents — just shift it around.
One point this article fails to mention is that Guantanamo or some
overseas prison is a necessary part of Obama's policy of imprisonment
without trial. Moving the prisoners to the US would give them the
legal rights that they deserve, so Obama would have to either
prosecute them or release them. To avoid that, he needs a black hole
outside the US to dump them in, and Guantanamo does the job.
However, Guantanamo is not the only place he can do this. Bagram in
Afghanistan is being used the same way. To close the Guantanamo
prison by moving the prisoners to Bagram, or some other destination
outside the US, would be no more legitimate.
Greece is
imprisoning thousands of illegal immigrants who arrive by
boat fleeing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. THey will take any
risk to get to Europe because the alternative is probable death. Yet
Greece gives asylum to hardly anyone.
The root cause of this problem is in the wars started by Bush,
which drove these people out of their home countries.
The G20 have agreed on
new regulations for bankers' bonuses and to limit trade imbalances.
To put the latter into practice seems to require a big decrease in the
US standard of living. That might be tolerable if the4 burden falls
on the rich, but I expect Obama to do the opposite.
Zelaya, in the Brasilian embassy in Tegucigolpe,
is
attracting world attention to his demand for reinstatement
to preside over the election of his successor.
Americans are
turning against the war in Afghanistan, and against
Obama at the same time.
I never supported Obama, because he always struck me as too right
wing, but I did support the war in Afghanistan when it looked like it
could succeed in liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban's oppression.
However, the people of Afghanistan are no longer enthusiastic about
our help, and under those circumstances it cannot do any good.
Uri Avnery:
Netanyahu has beaten Obama and vanquished,
for the time being, the threat of peace.
The Senate is considering a plan to
trim back the U. S.A.P. A.T. R.I.O.T. act.
Note how the Republicans' excuse for total surveillance is to have "all possible tools for law enforcement". That is a bad goal: to give the police all the power they say they need is to create a police state. We must protect ourselves from the bigger danger, which is the tendency of the US government to start wars with no valid justficiation. This is a bigger crime than the 9/11 attacks, and also tends to encourage such attacks.
The Senate may also cancel the retroactive immunity that it granted a year ago to the telephone companies' illegal spying.
300 people dared to protest
the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh
despite effective military occupation of the city.
The Yes Men said they would storm the UN by water, then lock world leaders in a room till they reached a deal. They were not serious.
The police arrested the protest's leader,
based on statements which are provably lies.
Obama's support for
nuclear arms reduction
has led to signs of progress.
Why 16 is too high for the age of consent.
The harm done by criminalizing pleasurable activities that don't directly harm anyone else is why I don't advocate outright prohibition of proprietary software.
Spain's government
denied participation in a scientific contest
to a university localed in an Israeli colony in Palestinian territory.
In the UK,
a large fraction of prisoners are military veterans.
The same thing was observed in the US after Vietnam, and it was partly attributed to the military quagmire and to the well-recognized injustice of the US intervention there. But these British veterans are not all from quagmires, and not all from unmust wars. This poses a problem I don't know how to answer.
The FBI has brought back
"total information awareness" datamining.
True to form, they presented "terrorism" as an excuse, but use the system for investigating all sorts of people, including dissidents.
Obama has definitively endorsed
the practice of imprisoning people without trial,
based on mere suspicion or even rumor. The supposed reason for this policy is to protect the US. Likewise, when China imprisons people without trial, the supposed reason is to protect China.
These excuses are nonsense. A government which imprisons people without trial is an evil regime that has no legitimacy. Even US courts persist in recognizing this, saying that prisoners in Bagram have the right to a court hearing.
Lula's brother-in-law owns a company that uses
cheap labor in Haiti.
(This information appears far down In the article; search for "Brazil", and read the 7 paragraphs following that heading.)
A leaked White House memo shows that Obama is
concerned about the banks and the stock market,
not about citizens.
McChrystal wants to withdraw troops from rural areas and
concentrate around cities.
That means a step forward for the Taliban, along the path that guerrilla uprisings take. I think there is no way to defeat the Taliban under the present circumstances. The people of Afghanistan don't like them, but someone like Karzai cannot inspire them to fight. It is Vietnam all over again.
China took a step towards a strong commitment to
stop global warming.
The US notably failed to do the same.
Netanyahu has refused to freeze construction in Arab lands,
preventing any progress towards peace.
Uri Avnery has explained many times that Israeli leaders want to avoid any peace deal, and how they make peace impossible by refusing to consider the necessary concessions. If Obama is trying to achieve anything beyond the fictitious successes Bush boasted about, he needs to put pressure on Israel.
As the Israeli Army attacked civilians in Gaza,
the police attacked civilians in Israel who tried to protest.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose Murkowski's amendment that would block the EPA from regulating CO2 emissions from power plants and factories. The amendment would delay this for one year, but you can expect them to delay over and over.
Torture in the British army wasn't done by "bad apples";
the whole barrel was rotten.
The coup-installed Honduran government has besieged the Brazilian embassy, and shut down a large area of Tegucigolpe around it.
This siege may be an act of war;
if so, Brazil would be entitled to respond with a naval blockade cutting off Honduras' trade. That would, in effect, be the sort of trade sanction that could reverse the coup.
Buzzwords
can't mask failure
in Afghanistan.
Illegal CIA experiments on U.S. soldiers were
the basis for Bush regime torture,
and doctors participated.
France has adopted a slightly modified version of
the law for internet disconnection as punishment.
Since the first one was found unconstitutional for imposing punishment without trial, this variant calls for quick "trials" which disregard norms of justice.
Laws banning smoking in public places
cut heart attacks by 1/3.
A total ban on tobacco would probably save additional lives, but prohibiting something that many people want to do causes disastrous problems (as we learned from prohibition of alcohol in the past, and marijuana today).
Airlines are trying to forestall CO2 emissions regulations by proposing
an ambitious-sounding program of reductions.
The problem is, they won't actually reduce their emissions, just buy reductions from others.
'The Age of Stupid':
a wakeup call on climate.
Zelaya is now in
the Brasilian embassy in Tegucigolpe.
The US says that the Honduran air force has control over the base in Palmerola and does not ask US permission to land planes there. However, there are strong arguments that the military would not have acted without a go-ahead from the US.
Obama is considering the posibility that
the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable.
The Yes Men strike again, with
a fake New York Post issue
giving future news of global disaster due to climate change.
China and India are adopting
strong climate protection policies
on their own.
17 journalists have been
murdered or died suspiciously
in Russia in recent years. The state has done little to prosecute the killers.
Obama is exploring
deep cuts in nuclear weapons
as a way to spur worldwide nuclear disarmament. It will be hard to get an agreement, but the willingness to try shows real statemanship.
Whole Foods markets itself as "natural" to appeal to progressives, and
gives the money to nasty right-wing causes.
Massachusetts citizens: support the campaign for
instant runoff voting.
Israel's response to the Goldstone report is
the same old counteraccusation,
no matter how absurd it is.
Trafigura, which dumped
poisonous wastes in Africa that made many people sick,
hopes to get off the hook by paying compensation that is small compared with its profits. At that rate, poisoning people could be profitable even if it is discovered occasionally.
Obama gets mixed grade on
privacy issues in EPIC report;
C+ on civil liberties.
The UN is planning
workshops for world leaders
to get them ready for a climate control deal.
Court documents show how various drug companies
systematically produced "scientific" papers for marketing purposes.
One of them is suing a doctor for denouncing the dishonest way a paper
was published.
The crucial point is that the doctor, Eastell, who participated in the
corruption, was motivated by the desire to protect grants from a drug
company. We must not allow drug companies any control over the
funding of university research. Instead we should make them pay taxes
which will be handed out through peer-reviewed government programs.
Hard proof of
election fraud in Afghanistan.
Paper ballots do not guarantee an honest election, but they do make it
much easier to investigate.
Due to global warming, shipping between Asia and Europe can now
travel through the Arctic Ocean.
Next they will be able to
sail across Manhattan Island.
Wall Street should give priority to stopping global warming before it
gets flooded.
Now Blackwater offers
security training for "faith-based organizations".
Kucinich warns that the Obama's health insurance reform is likely to
turn into a replica of the Massachusetts bill that
requires everyone to buy insurance.
Israel
refuses to freeze housing construction in Palestinian land,
and Obama continues to demand it.
Israel is dependent on US money just as the Palestinian Authority is.
If Obama wants to achieve peace, he will have to use this lever on
both sides.
The record companies are now
asking children to write their propaganda.
US citizens: use
this page to tell your congresscritters and senators
to support stricter regulation of banks.
Fashion and media are
systematically sexualizing young girls
to make them shopaholics.
A European oil company has been
dumping toxic waste in Africa,
and tried to deny it, even to the point of suing the press to cover it up.
Muntazer al-Zaidi speaks
for Iraq, devastated by Bush. Sadly, a man in Falluja threw a shoe at Bush forces troops and they shot him.
A lawsuit by Iraqi torture victims
against mercenaries was thrown out.
The judge is a personal friend of Cheney and Rumsfeld, which ought to disqualify him.
Damilvany Gnanakumar, who volunteered to treat civilian casualties as Sri Lanka's army crushed the Tamil Tigers, has been freed from prison and allowed to return to England where she lives. She says that
the civilian casualties were enormous and the government is lying about them.
That is standard practice in Sri Lanka. During the fighting, civilians fled to an area where the army said it would not bomb them, and and then it did bomb them. The continued imprisonment of nearly all the civilians is evidently cruel, but when I ask myself why this is being done, I fear the purpose is to kill them, or at least a large fraction of them. I cannot see another plausible motive.
Tomgram:
Is America Hooked on War?
A Taliban attack on NATO troops
killed many civilians. Note how the shopkeeper blamed NATO rather than the Taliban.
Obama has dropped the plans for
a missile defense system in Eastern Europe,
which could help plans for arms reduction. I'm skeptical that it could ever have worked anyway.
The SEC fined Bank of America for concealing bonuses from its stockholders. The fine was too small to mean anything, and
a federal judge rejected it.
Wendell Potter explains
how businesses run capitalist front groups
to create a false appearance of broader support.
The US has
invaded Somalia again.
People call Somalia a "failed state", but the last government to exercise control over Somalia didn't fail on its own. It was destroyed by the Ethopian intervention, which was backed by the US. That intervention kicked Somalia back into the chaos of battling militias, with a "government" that is no more than the militia that gets some US support.
A year of financial crisis has done nothing to weaken the banks'
stranglehold over the US Congress. Senator Durbin says
the banks "own the place."
The BBC has
plans to regulate TV sets in the UK, imposing DRM and
potentially other malicious features.
US citizens: phone your senators and tell them not to give in to
right-wing demands to prohibit health insurance from covering
abortion.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support the Respect for
Marriage Act, which would give the same recognition to same-sex marriages
(when made in states that allow them) as to other marriages.
You can also send email through
this page but a phone call carries more weight.
The UN has
demanded a recount
in 1/10 of Afghanistan's voting precincts.
Zaidi says that he was tortured in prison.
The torture start in the Green Zone,
which is controlled by the Bush forces directly, and this makes them responsible.
Diplomats say that Obama wants
to scrap the Kyoto framework
in any new climate treaty, and start from scratch. This would weaken the resulting treaty, and probably take years.
The UN investigation found that
Israel's attack on Gaza was "designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population"
and calls for prosecution of the individuals responsible.
Deniers of Stalin's mass murder are
suing a Russian newspaper
for saying what he did. Given Putin's influence over all institutions in Russia, and his wish to deny Stalin's crimes, I think he might order the court to sustain the accusation.
Corals might be able to resist rising sea temperatures up to a point,
by switching to different species of algae.
However, this won't help them resist the acidifying effect of atmospheric CO2, which starves corals of the mineral that they use to build their shells.
NYC will have a referendum to call for
a new investigation
of the 9/11 attacks.
In New York: help the Yes Men
pull a stunt
(still secret) to promote action on climate change.
Inhabitants of the US,
sign this petition
calling on companies to stop advertising in Glenn Beck's TV show on Faux News.
Obama again spoke of trying to
reregulate the banks.
However, it was not long ago that the US torpedoed a French plan to limit bankers' bonuses.
Another Republican "family values" hypocrite has been caught out. He boasted about
sex with a lobbyist
and didn't know his mike was live.
Wal-Mart's influence in
spreading poverty through the US
is rooted in the founder's contempt for his workers, and its effect goes far beyond its own workers.
Sri Lanka has released only 15,000 of the 300,000
Tamil civilian prisoners.
The rest lack food and water, and those who complain to reporters get disappeared.
When pregnant women drink alcohol, they can cause
permanent brain damage to the fetus.
Large numbers of children may be being born with brain damage that will make them dangerously violent. No other drug, whether now legal or illegal, is likely to harm as many people as alcohol does. But prohibition is a cure worse than the disease: it's unfair to millions who use alcohol in moderation, it doesn't achieve its goal, and it causes other worse problems. Prohibition is the wrong way to prevent the harm that some drugs do. What, then, could be the solution? I don't know, but I think we should look for it first of all for alcohol.
An
interview with two former Bush forces soldiers who have become
anti-war activists.
US citizens: sign
this petition asking Congress to censure Rep. Joe Wilson.
Religious fanatics in Baghdad are
stalking gays to murder them.
The "War on Drugs" has caused only disaster;
we must end this war.
US citizens: if you live in the states of certain crucial senators,
phone them to support health care reform.
Police in the UK stretch and abuse their
"anti-terror" stop and search powers,
which are already too broad.
Afghanistan is getting
too dangerous for real journalism;
the effect is likely to be that we only hear what the allied governments want us to hear.
Obama is continuing Bush's work in setting up
a pervasive system of surveillance in the US.
As usual, the excuse is "terrorists", but the system is used against dissidents, and anyone that the police don't like. The participation of "private companies" in handing over intelligence means that they report on their customers. This is why you should not give companies information about yourself. Don't feed Big Brother – pay with cash only.
Interviews with the family members of the civilians that were killed in
an airstrike in Afghanistan.
German troops called in the airstrike after the Taliban had taken some fuel trucks. But, by the time the trucks were bombed, mostly civilians were trying to get fuel from them. If the fighters had fired warning shots and returned in a few minutes, could they have avoided killing civilians, and shown that NATO does care about their lives?
US citizens: sign
this position supporting health care reform
including a "public option".
Although without instituting a single-payer system (and eliminating
the heath insurance companies) there is no way to save money, it will
provide coverage to everyone.
The Bush forces are
increasing troop strength in Iraq
while disguising it as a decrease: they are replacing official soldiers by a larger number of expensive mercenaries.
This technique could also serve to disguise a permanent occupation.
Proprietary software,
designed for surveillance on kids' browsing,
spies for the developer as well as for the parents.
China is bullying Nepal into
mistreating Tibetan refugees
and banning their protests.
France will
adopt
a carbon emissions tax, which will start out small and grow over
time. Since I despise Sarkozy for his attacks on internet freedom, I
have to recognize that here, at least, he sets a good example.
Zaidi, the shoe-thrower of Baghdad,
awaits a hero's welcome
when he is released from prison. The contrast between Zaidi, and Maliki who imprisoned him, will be stark.
The Israeli Army kidnapped
5 Palestinian teenagers
who were herding sheep.
Everyone: join
a climate change "wake-up" flash mob
on Sep 21.
US citizens:
sign Kucinich's petition
for a single-payer health care system.
The companies that want to mine tar sands have set up
a fake "consumer" group
to prevent action against the high CO2 emitted by converting these sands.
Van Jones was
targeted by an organized Republican demonization
campaign, and Obama surrendered to it meekly.
Rashid Rauf, suspected airplane bombing plotter, could not be
extradited to the UK because his torture rendered the evidence against
him questionable. Then the Pakistani guards said he escaped and later
was killed —
which may have been a disguise for killing him.
The UN commission says it found
"convincing evidence of fraud" in Afghanistan's presidential
election.
Lubna Hussein has decided to go to prison rather than pay a fine
for having worn trousers in public.
Since this has unleashed a battle between Islam-inspired bigots and
feminists, the world must not stand idle and let the bigots crush
dissent by force.
Iran
arrested dissidents investigating the torture of previously
arrested opposition figures, and locked the office of their party.
The Iranian police say that anyone questioning or opposing the
government is an enemy of their country. That's what the neocons said
in the US. That reasoning is the reasoning of a tyranty.
The Israeli government proposed a
6-month suspension of some construction of the illegal settlements
in the West Bank, which won approval based on the argument that it would
really change nothing.
Obama has not accepted the pretense that this would count for anything,
but unless he exerts more pressure, nothing more will be offered.
Iraq's government wants an
international tribunal for suspected bomb-layers in Syria.
The organizations of non-commercial users of the Internet
denounced ICANN for giving too much weight to the interests
of business.
This is what happens under governments in which democracy
has been corrupted by business power.
An Obama administration official was
pressured to resign by Republicans.
They attacked him for calling Republicans "assholes",
which is nothing compared to what they call Obama, and for doubting
the official story of who was behind the 9/11 attacks.
I suspect that Obama asked him to resign, although they do not say
this.
Obama not only fails to support a real investigation of 9/11, but
effectively shows that no one in his administration can support one.
US trade, like US aid, is designed to
keep Haiti in slavery.
Avoiding
killing civilians in Afghanistan
proves easier said than done. Part of the cause is that the military is trained to fight another army. In such a war, it is best to use the "most effective" weapon, the one that will defeat the enemy with the least risk: here, an air strike. But those priorities don't fit a counterguerrilla operation. The urge to bomb the trucks rather than risk troops retaking them must have been almost irresistable. However, even with the best efforts it is impossible to avoid killing civilians in war. Other civilians forgive this if they believe the war is being fought on their behalf. But it's clear that the people of Afghanistan don't believe this now. Although the NATO troops say they protect the civilians, the claim is not believed. Civilians in Helmand say they feel caught in the crossfire between NATO and the Taliban. Karzai's rigged election only makes it worse.
Israeli troops fired tear gas at
the weekly nonviolent Bil'in protest
and then at an Al Jezeera reporter who was covering the protest.
Child protection authorities in the UK
hope to remove babies from inadequate parents,
who would screw up their lives, and have them adopted by better parents, before they are old enough to notice. The idea makes sense in the abstract, but implementing it may be difficult. It may be hard to find good parents who want to adopt these babies, and hard to tell who would be good. It would be even better convince the inadequate parents to avoid having the babies. A reduction in natalist social pressure might have a great influence with people who are conflicted about what they want in life.
Melting ice caused by
global warming
will unleash earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanos.
Sri Lanka
expelled a Unicef official
who warned that the monsoon would soon flood the camps in which 300,000 Tamil civilians are imprisoned. Supposedly these civilians were detained so as to find Tamil Tiger soldiers hiding among them. The authorities should have been able to check and release a considerable number, at least tens of thousands, in the four months since then. How many of these civilians have been released? Should't the security council take action?
In Uganda, children are
killed to sell their organs.
Contrast this with the execution of adult prisoners in China
so as
to sell their organs.
Israel continues killing Palestinians in Gaza by blocking them
from
travelling to get medical care.
US citizens: sign
this petition to call for antitrust action
against Monsanto for its control over the seed market.
40 years of climate change have
made drought the usual condition in a
large part of equatorial Africa. There is hardly even enough water
for the people to drink, let alone keep their herds alive.
A million people can't survive by selling charcoal to each other.
(Not to mention that the activity causes deforestation.) The land can
no longer support its population, so the population is going to
diminish: many will have to either migrate or die, and nowadays
overpopulation will make other countries reluctant to let them in.
The people will not die all at once. It will happen over a period of
years; those who can't afford enough food will die of various diseases
which they can't afford to treat. Meanwhile, other problems caused by
climate change, pollution, and overpopulation will strike other parts
of the world.
Parts of the US are threatened by long-term water shortage. The US
overall still has food and drinking water enough, so people could
move. It might also use its resources less wastefully. But as the
productive economy gets weaker, the resources (including ground water)
are depleted, the rich concentrate political power, and the population
increases, we will gradually get closer to the edge. The Americans
who die now from medical problems they can't afford to treat are a
sample of what is in store for us. The fraction of uninsured only has
to double twice to include half the population of the US.
Although the world population is doubling more slowly than it was 30
years ago, it is still growing even as it overflows what the world can
handle. Reducing the birth rate is as urgent as other steps to reduce
CO2 emissions. The inconveniences of a population which is decreasing
due to fewer births are well publicized. People need to recognize how
much worse the other option is.
An Appeals Court ruled Ashcroft is
personally responsible for twisting laws to illegally imprison a US
citizen without charge.
Does this mean he can be prosecuted? Will Obama protect him?
Obama joined with Clown to protect bankers' right to
tremendous bonuses from banks that are losing money.
So whose side are they on?
Former President Cardoso of Brazil calls for
world-wide legalization of marijuana.
Shaker Amer,
now a prisoner in Guantanamo,
says the UK colluded when the Bush regime had him tortured in Afghanistan. He did not show up for a meeting with his lawyer, because the guards had taken away his clothing.
There is
an international press
to curb the bonuses paid by banks.
The US has
suspended some aid
to the coup-established government of Honduras, but approved an IMF loan that will more than make up for the suspension.
Iraq's semi-puppet government accused Syria of harboring bombers, and
Iraqi refugees there are afraid
they will be forced to return to Iraq. The fighting in Iraq nowadays has nothing more to do with resisting occupation. It is factions with militias fighting for control over parts of the country. If Syria is involved in that, it is just meddling. But Maliki might make a false accusation for reasons of his own.
Periods of higher economic activity correlate with
decreased life expectancy.
Pfizer faces a fine of over 2 billion dollars for
corrupting the US medical system.
If Bush had a third term as president, what would it look like?
Not that different from Obama.
I have to recognize a couple of important differences that the article
didn't mention: Obama is trying to reduce global warming and reform
health care. But these must be viewed against the background of the
many similarities described in the article.
US citizens:
send a message to Obama to stand firm for
a public health care funding option.
Even though it won't save money the way abolishing
the insurance companies would, it will provide health care
for the Americans that now go without.
Physicians for Human Rights says that
doctors participated directly in torture for the Bush regime.
CO2 in the atmosphere is already at the point where
coral reefs are doomed,
and with them, a large fraction of life in the ocean.
Senators in the pocket of fossil fuel companies have
killed the chance of a climate protection treaty this year.
They may also have killed our coastal cities, our planet's coral reefs, and our civilisation.
Society is moving towards
total surveillance of everyone's movements;
but it is not too late to put controls on it. From some of these forms of surveillance, you can defend yourself. For instance, don't carry a cell phone; pay for a metro card with cash, not a credit card; refuse to carry an ID card that identifies you to a computer; don't use EZ-Pass. These are all standard practice for me. But we need more than individual resistance to really correct this problem.
An interview with holocaust-denier David Irving has reopened the question of
European laws that make certain historical views a crime.
I disagree with Irving's position about the holocaust, but I stand behind his right to state it.
In addition to the big drought,
Iraqi farming has been devastated
by a US-imposed policy of welcoming food imports.
The same thing has happened in other countries,
such as Haiti.
Israeli conscientious objectors, who decided to go to prison
rather than carry out the occupation of Palestine,
are touring the US.
Azerbaijan has arrested people for
posting a parody news conference
with a donkey acting the role of a government spokesman.
I can think of some other countries where this comparison would be
apt.
Putin is trying to
make Stalin a hero.
Musicians' groups in the UK have taken a stand
opposing the War on Sharing.
Companies that sell bottled water, and other drinks,
are corrupting World Water Week with their subsidies.
These companies should pay more taxes, and useful events,
research, etc. should be funded through those taxes.
Plastic manufacturers are blowing tobacco-style smoke to
prevent the FDA from protecting the public from the highly
dangerous chemical Bisphenol A.
Israeli police tried to
arrest several people in Bil'in,
home of the longest-running series of Palestinian nonviolent protests. The most plausible reason for the arrest of these people is intimidation of their peaceful protests. Bil'in is not a center of anything else.
Melting of the Greenland ice sheet
keeps accelerating.
Recent predictions have already been surpassed, since warming creates new phenomena that speed the effect. It's very risky to bet your life on how long a big ice cube will last inside a furnace.
Bristol, in the UK,
will let the public vote
about each piece of grafitti to decide whether to erase it or keep it.
The UK will require doctors to raise the
issue of organ donation
with dying people whose organs might save lives, and their families. Doctors in the US pay too much attention to the preferences of family members. With the signed organ donor card in my wallet, nobody should have the authority to stop my organs from being used for transplantation if I die.
Obama plans to continue
handing over prisoners to countries where they have no rights,
as long as the countries promise not to torture them.
It is wrong to capture someone and hand him over to a government that
won't give him a fair trial based on evidence, even it doesn't torture
him.
Christian fundamentalists can now
purchase rapture insurance for their pets.
I don't see anything wrong with profiting from their lunacy,
but I think one is obligated first to try to talk them out of it.
The Canadian government held a "town hall meeting" about copyright
and pretty much
let only the copyright industry speak.
It also
blocked students from handing out leaflets to express
the position they knew would not get mentioned among the speakers.
The UK has
imprisoned hundreds of children, mostly under 5 years old,
as their parents face deportation. The children are emotionally scarred.
False reports that armed gangs of Blacks were looting in New Orleans
led to
real acts of murder by armed gangs of racist Whites.
A large fire
threatens Mount Wilson in California, as well as several suburbs.
Global warming is expected to increase both the drought and the heat,
so California and other parts of the American west have more and worse
in store if we don't have a strong treaty to cut CO2 emissions.
Using marijuana in Argentina is now legal, and other countries
in South America are also doubting the wisdom of the War on Drugs.
Iraq has
1000 prisoners awaiting execution, some of whom were tortured
into confessions. The trials are not fair.
A Colombian union leader who worked at Nestle
has been murdered.
Murders of union leaders in Colombia are typically carried out by the
paramilitary terror gangs that are allied with President Alvaro
Horrible. I suspect that Nestle paid them to it, since otherwise they
would have no motive.
[References updated on 2018-04-07 because the old links were broken.]
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[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
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[Reference updated on 2018-04-07 because the old link was broken.]
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