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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.
Some sites have paper tiger paywalls that can be defeated by deleting a cookie. I don't post links to those sites because it would be too complex to tell users what to do to avoid having to identify themselves.
The Republican Party has endorsed Internet freedom, but it must be a rather weak stand since the MPAA does not object to it.
Brazilian
Supreme Court Judge Overturns Suspension of Belo Monte Dam.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senator to limit
NSA
surveillance of Americans.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell
your senators to support EPA regulation of coal ash
from coal-fired power plants.
Big data and combining data means companies are developing the "database
of ruin", which can find out enough secrets to ruin nearly
anyone.
See also Cory Doctorow's story,
Scroogled.
Work is being done on making paper
money with RFIDs.
It's dangerous because governments could track who gets and spends what money.
Also dangerous because thieves could track who has money in his purse, or in
a hidden pocket.
Muslim fanatics out for blood
threaten
mob violence against the retarded child accused of burning pages
of a Qur'an.
Of course, it would be equally unacceptable to punish a mentally
competent adult for this. The right to offend anyone about anything
is a central part of freedom of speech.
Reportedly every
country in the Middle East now has Stuxnet-type
attack viruses.
Corporations that already duck the US income tax are nonetheless
reincorporating in
other
countries that allow them to pay less.
The US should make sure that proper taxes are paid on US business
activity and prevent the accounting tricks used to attribute
the profit to anywhere else.
US citizens: call
on Obama to defend environmental education in US schools.
Everyone: write
to Putin demanding he free the members of Pussy Riot.
US bank employees are being fired for minor
crimes committed many years ago. However, the gross fraud
committed by the banksters goes unprosecuted, so banks don't have
to fire them.
Criminal miners from Brazil killed
around 80 Yanomami who did not want their
land to be mined.
The international mining companies operating in India, Peru, Canada
and other countries can kill more people, but they construct a legal
excuse so that they can claim not to be "criminal".
After a judge closed one loophole about identifying their donors,
the Koch brothers switched to a
slightly different
loophole.
Although Obama's new fuel efficiency standards are a step forward,
they don't go far enough.
Here
are some flaws.
US military contractors have been
cutting
jobs even as their contracts increased.
Florida's Republican anti-voter-registration law
bites
the dust.
The Republican Party platform advocates
abstinence-only
sex noneducation and falsely claims that it prevents pregnancy.
Murray Energy
forced
workers to take a day without pay and attend a Romney
campaign rally.
Protesters blocked construction of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline
for a day by chaining
themselves to a truck.
The "Urban Infrastructure Bank" is a desperate scheme to indirectly
privatize
parts of US cities' infrastructure.
The attraction of these schemes is short-term: the cities are not getting
enough funds from the state and federal governments and can't maintain
their infrastructure. However, as Chicago has already learned from its
privatization
of parking meters, the long-term effects are to make the problem
worse.
Chile's version of the DMCA protects
against false copyright claims by
requiring a court to approve an order to take down material.
US citizens: call
on Duke Energy to stop supporting ALEC.
US citizens: thank
Obama for increased car mileage standards.
Obama doesn't do 10% of what's needed to prevent disaster, and seems
to be in favor of increased drilling which means increased emissions.
However, that is more reason to express appreciation when he does
something.
US citizens:
tell
Governor Perry and 11 other governors
to allow the expansion of Medicaid in their states.
Carbon-trading markets in Europe and Australia will be
linked.
In theory, cap-and-trade systems like these should work efficiently
to reduce emissions. In practice, the systems can easily have flaws
that cause them not
to achieve their goals at all.
Thus I think we should institute a real tax on fossil fuels,
rather than cap-and-trade.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Twitter has appealed a court ruling that it must turn over a protester's personal info.
I have some criticisms of Twitter in other areas, but no one could do more to protect its users' from government searches. However, what is needed is better laws: laws that recognize that the user is entitled to challenge searches of her data stored in a company's server.
Massachusetts Senator Brown was the crucial swing vote to weaken US financial reform, and got paid off for this by Morgan Stanley.
Rachel Corrie's parents and other activists will protest for divestment from Caterpillar, which provides bulldozers to Israel which are used for demolishing Palestinians' homes.
It looks like Assad's men murdered 400 civilians going house to house in Daraya, near Damascus.
The US is having its biggest ever outbreak of West Nile Virus, in its hottest year on record, and the trail points straight at global heating.
Some of today's top Republican campaign figures participated in an illegal voter-suppression operation in 2004, but were not punished.
Thousands protested in Albany, New York, to oppose fracking in the state.
The TPP sets out to attack Internet freedom in the name of the twisted cult of "free trade".
The EFF gave the details.
The TPP would also to kill thousands, perhaps millions of poor people,
through increased patent powers
and other monopolies over drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
An Austin man who campaigns against harassment of photographers by
the thugs was arrested a second time
for filming their actions in
public.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
South Korea's Supreme Court decided that it is unconstitutional to require web sites to demand users' real names
After a mob of Jewish teenagers beat an Arab teenager nearly to death, Israeli schools are barely starting to confront ingrained hatred.
The US soldiers in Afghanistan were warned that burning Qur'ans was a bad idea, that it was likely to make many Afghans feel offended.
I mention this to correct an earlier note in which I supposed that wasn't so.
I disagree with Greenwald's equating of an act that some took offense at with a killing.
Amnesty International: Rachel Corrie Verdict Highlights Impunity for Israeli Military.
The Israeli army in Gaza was totally accustomed to killing civilians, often children, and lying about that too.
Desmond Tutu cancelled his attendance in an event to protest the presence of Tony B'liar in it.
Doctors are traveling around the US on a bus to argue in favor of Obama's health care law.
The law is a step forward, but fails to do the whole job because it is a compromise with the medical insurance industry, which now wants to abolish it.
Americans should abolish the private medical insurance industry before it abolishes our lives.
We Don't Need No Stinking Warrant: The Disturbing, Unchecked Rise of
the Administrative Subpoena.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Alternative currencies are springing up in Spain to help people cope with punishing right-wing economic policies.
Iran, leading a meeting of the unaligned states, reiterates the call for total nuclear disarmament.
Romney's campaign says only Obama's campaign should heed fact checkers.
The Orkney Islands are on the verge of generating a surplus of electricity from wind and solar power.
France has opened an investigation into the possible murder of Yasser Arafat.
Human Rights Watch rebukes Israel's decision on Rachel Corrie.
The Lib Dem leader proposes a wealth tax to reduce austerity in the UK.
What Putin does with the money he extracts from Russia.
Microfinance can help the poor, but can also exploit them.
When someone told me she worked with microfinance, I asked her if they were visible to the naked eye.
A bill passed by the California legislature would totally deregulate phone service, cable TV service and Internet service in the state.
Satellite photos show the extent of the bombardment of Aleppo by Assad's forces.
A Vermont man's lawsuit against being forced to work while in
pre-trial detention was
brought
back to life on appeal.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
However, the bigger threat to Americans' way of life comes from requiring convicted prisoners to work for low wages, competing with free workers.
Rachel Corrie's parents lost their lawsuit over her killing by an Israeli bulldozer driver.
US troops that carelessly burned Qur'ans, and others that made a video of urinating on corpses, were punished administratively.
I think this is, for once, the just response. There is nothing inherently wrong in those actions, and the burning of Qur'ans was not intentional anyway, but I'm pretty sure all soldiers were ordered (for good reason) not to do these things, and they had no grounds to disobey.
More texts from former Israeli occupation soldiers.
Everyone: ask the New York Times to pay attention to the basic questions about Julian Assange's extradition.
The US interrogated prisoners while under the effect of mind-altering drugs, and whatever they said is presumed true unless they prove it false.
Twitter has appealed a court order to give private information about a user account thought to be used by an Occupy protester.
Israel blocked a hundred activists from bringing school supplies to Palestine from Jordan.
How the history of India since independence gave rise to the weakness of its democracy and human rights.
A study shows that use of marijuana by teenagers permanently reduces their intelligence, but that adults are not affected.
US citizens: sign this petition for the Democratic and Republican parties to endorse Internet freedom.
Delta Airlines blocked a man from flying because his shirt set off fears in unidentified racist passengers.
Ironically, the shirt's message criticized precisely these irrational fears.
The Dictator's Practical Internet Guide.
Population growth and water scarcity may force most of the world into vegetarianism.
Limiting yourself to a small amount of meat is good for your health, but rather than being forced to go all the way, we should arrange to limit population growth.
30 Israeli soldiers describe how they repeatedly and systematically subjected Palestinian children to abuse to squeeze confessions out of them, or make them rat on their families.
One US judge appears to continue to work for the RIAA.
French tourists were convicted of blasphemy in Sri Lanka for
simulating
the act of kissing a Buddha statue.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Like all laws against offending someone, this law is pure injustice. It is also a ludicrous travesty of what the Buddha said.
If the Buddha could be reincarnated (impossible, according to Buddhism, since he attained nirvana), he would tell the authorities and people of Sri Lanka that their attachment to his statue and his relics is an obstacle to their spiritual progress, and they should try to overcome it through meditation and benevolence. But the Buddhists of Sri Lanka would not listen.
Rich families there vie for the prestige of sponsoring a ceremony to adore his tooth, permanently enshrined in the Temple of the Tooth. Thus they convert his tranquil wisdom (albeit based on the then-general assumption that reincarnation occurs, for which there is no evidence) into competitive folly.
I wonder if they would sentence someone for teaching Dr. Ambedkar's thoroughly rational version of Buddhism.
Mining companies dispossessed indigenous people in Guatemala thanks to a US-backed coup, then took advantage of US-backed repression, and then imposed a "reformed" mining law to let them take what they want.
Guatemala's president should be in prison for the repression he led. With him as president, the country is little better than Assad's regime in Syria.
The US scans all car license plates at the border and gives all the data to a private organization, including times and places.
The border is a special case, and maybe it is legitimate for a country to record the licenses of all cars that cross the border. It is certainly not legitimate to show all those licenses to a private organization. Meanwhile, this method is wasting opportunities to block car theft.
The appropriate US agency should have a list of stolen cars' license numbers, and check for those plates at border crossings — while the car is still there.
The head of Ohio Republicans admitted that Ohio voting inconveniences are meant to stop Blacks from voting.
The US corporate press paints Paul Ryan as a good Catholic for trying to oppress the poor and help the rich.
The FBI plans to give US thug departments software to access a database of over 12 million photos for face recognition purposes.
A leaked draft shows that TPP is planned to impose a regime of punishment by accusation without trial, and Internet filtering.
"Free trade" treaties are meant to weaken democracy, by giving businesses more power than governments. They should all be torn up, for that reason. However, it's normal for these treaties to have additional requirements that directly attack the citizens, especially when the US gets involved. That is an additional reason to tear up these treaties.
Assad's men seem to have committed
another
massacre of civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Syrian rebels attacked the old city of Aleppo, destroying
buildings almost a thousand years old in the combat.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The war crimes of the rebels, which include ethnic cleansing as well as killings, are a serious problem: they compel many Syrians, who might welcome a secular state with human rights, to support Assad instead.
Romney proposes "energy independence" for North America by extracting fossil fuels everywhere possible and never mind the damage.
The downside is that thanks to global heating North America will cease to be food-independent, and there will be none available to import either.
Everyone: support EU sanctions against Putin's cronies.
South Africa's president Zuma faces intense criticism for taking the mining company's side against striking miners.
The article places the emphasis on the possible effects on Zuma's political career, but what's really important is decent labor conditions for the miners.
Correa
says that the UK has promised not to invade the Ecuadorian embassy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Electric plants in Illinois are discharging water that is almost boiling, due to the unusual heat of the water they use for cooling. The result is almost to boil the fish.
It will be far worse in 20 years. These plants may have to shut down.
Americans are deeply confused about what government policies they
want, giving
contradictory-seeming answers to slightly different poll
questions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The corporate media keep up the impression that Paul Ryan pays careful attention to budget details by covering up the facts.
At the Democratic Convention in anti-union North Carolina, sanitation workers are being driven into the ground with mandatory overtime.
US citizens: call on the US government not to let BP off the hook.
Malware can use brain-computer interfaces to extract secrets from the user.
A fascist-minded principal denied valedictorian Kaitlin Nootbaar her high school degree because she said "hell" in her speech.
The editors of the University of Georgia student paper have quit after corporate staff were put in charge of them and pressured them to avoid writing about "bad news".
Don't they understand? This is was simply intended to prepare them for professional journalism.
The claim that women can't conceive as a result of rape dates back at least to the 13th century, and appeals to politicians whose views are still in the 13th century.
Scientific information about rape and pregnancy.
Obama announces he is ready to be even more right-wing as a "compromise" with Republicans.
He's already too right-wing for me to vote for.
Garry Kasparov was freed after a court dismissed charges that he participated in an illegal protest.
However, Putin stands convicted of leading a state that declares protests illegal.
New York thugs fired randomly at people on the street while chasing an armed killer.
The killer pulled out his gun but did not fire it. Perhaps did that in order to get killed ("suicide by cop"). It is understandable that the thugs shot him, but hitting 9 other people means they must have fired all around.
Greenpeace has occupied a Russian Arctic oil drilling platform.
Iranian newspaper publishers and writers have been imprisoned without trial for over a year.
Everyone: support Amnesty International's campaign against arbitrary eviction from slums in Africa.
US citizens:
call
on the mayors of cities hosting the Democratic and
Republican conventions to respect the right to protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call
on Ohio to reinstate early voting, to help all voters participate.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: donate to the reward for leaking the TPP draft text to Wikileaks.
Haiti's new constitution made the Vodou religion illegal. Participants in a ceremony were recently jailed, though it is not clear whether that is mainly about their religion or instead for their political sentiments. Of course, it's a shameful act either way.
US citizens: call on the FCC to enforce net neutrality rules against AT&T.
The issue is about banning a protocol set up by Apple, available only through nonfree software that (for your freedom's sake) you should never use, which runs only on the malicious iThings which you should reject also. But that doesn't affect this issue. If AT&T can arbitrarily ban one protocol, it can arbitrarily ban any protocol.
US citizens: call the major news media to insist they cover the TPP plans for Nafta on Steroids.
The New York Thug Department has systematically infiltrated Muslim
neighborhoods and mosques for 6 years, finding
absolutely
zero sign of terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
A new analysis estimates that around 3/4 of the casualties from US drone attacks in Pakistan are civilians.
Residents of Ahuas tell how the US-supervised Honduran troops shot and killed without warning, brutalized people in the town, and refused to help rescue the wounded. And then they tried to cover it up in several ways.
US citizens: call on Obama to block drilling in the Arctic.
On Ecuador and freedom of the press.
A teenager in London has been harassed for 4 years, including numerous arrests over false charges, because of hostility by the thugs.
Racial prejudice may be the reason it started, but I think it developed into a personal prejudice against him.
LA Muslims who sued about FBI surveillance suffered a setback, thanks to the law that allows the government to say the magic words "national security" and quash any lawsuit.
Cory Doctorow: between the owner of a computer and its current user, who should have what control?
My view is that in the case of a long-term lease, the person who has obtained the computer by lease should have full control over the software, just as if he were the owner.
UNESCO opposes creation of new barriers to diffusion of information.
Although this article means to oppose those barriers, it unwittingly lends them support by using the term "intellectual property", which refers to other unrelated issues at the same time. Please don't use that term.
A loophole allows US cities to spend less on minority group students' schools.
US citizens: sign the campaign to reject deficit cuts and instead
make
the rich support rebuilding America.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Privatizing child welfare protection in Nebraska led to horrible mistreatment of children.
Privatization of any state function is bad unless it gives the public a competitive market. The kind of privatization where the state gives the contract to one company should always be avoided, because the way the company profits is by shafting the state, the public, its workers, or all three.
Romney wants to let states allow oil companies to drill in Federal land.
Paul Ryan's lousy foreign policy record.
Big Oil's temporary victory in Iraq depends on illegal contracts and repressing the oil unions.
The ITU plan to take control of the Internet represents an attack on freedom for all users, and serves the interests of the dictatorships (and the phony democracies).
The article mentions the term "intellectual property", but based on the substance, I think that is inaccurate: I think that what is meant here is copyright enforcement. Referring to this as "intellectual property" is a biased and confusing practice — please don't repeat it.
Privatization of US water supplies exploits the financial crisis to create hardship for Americans.
Getting Rid of Dubya Wasn't Enough. The US Remains a Bully.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Alas, I don't see any sign that reduced US power will lead to a better world order. Rising powers such as India and China are no better (India keeps getting worse). And Russia is turning into a overt dictatorship.
An Israeli attack on the Iranian uranium enrichment plant in Bushehr
would kill
thousands, perhaps eventually hundreds of thousands.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The leader of Kadima, an Israeli centrist party not particularly in favor of peace, condemned Netanyahu's threats to attack Iran as rash and irresponsible.
The Palestinian Authority has invited Swiss investigators to test Arafat's remains for radioactive polonium.
South
Africa requires labels "Made In Palestinian Territories"
for goods made in factories in Israeli colonies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Missing in the US election is a debate about what role the government
should play in people's lives.
Neither
the Democratic Party nor the media are interested in it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Questions About Sweden's Actions in Assange Case.
Corporate propaganda in the form of
"educational" books
for children.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
We Built
This, Except That It Was Mostly Publicly Financed and It's Publicly
Owned and Supported.
[Reference updated on 2022-03-10 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps these Republicans were misled by the name Tampa Bay Times Forum. US cities nowadays consider everything to be for sale, even the names of public buildings. I think that some company must have bought permission to put its name on that building. The name might give the appearance that it was a private building, privately constructed.
The lack of freedom of speech in the UK is demonstrated by sentencing someone for sending a rude email.
The message was rude but made no threat. It only expressed an attitude of disapproval and rebuke. I have no opinion about whether that attitude was justified, but freedom of speech includes the right to say such things (and even harsher) about anyone.
The UK has adopted a law to facilitate moving money into tax havens.
I guess the government thinks that companies pay too much taxes and wants to increase government deficits.
Anonymous wrote dissident slogans on the web site of the court that imprisoned Pussy Riot.
Writing a slogan on the wall of a nasty institution is part of opposition, and this is its virtual equivalent. It is legitimate, and should be legal. Please don't call this an "attack" or "hijacking" because that is propaganda for those who don't want democracy or opposition in the virtual world.
Strangely, Mugabe has started to gain some public support in Zimbabwe.
Farmers and herders in Kenya are fighting over use of land.
Such conflicts have gone on for a long time, even in the US (see the movie, Shane). But they are likely to get worse in the future in Africa, since population growth makes the existing supply insufficient just as global heating reduces what is available.
US is trying to prosecute Assange, Australian cables reveal.
The media cold war: states vs users of the Internet.
The US attempts to kick Wikipedia off the net and prosecute Assange put it on the wrong side.
US citizens: sign this petition for the Republican and Democratic conventions to stop accepting corporate sponsorships.
US citizens: call on Jim Lehrer to raise the issue of global heating in the presidential debate.
New, non-political comic (in Spanish).
Serious debate about real issues has almost vanished from the US political campaigns, thanks to a twisted and corrupted press.
1/3 of US workers are temps, with no social safety net.
This is why we need to disconnect medical care and other benefits from employment.
China has arrested over 1000 Tibetans involved in a movement to preserve Tibetan culture. Some of them have been disappeared.
A thinning Antarctic ice shelf indicates the
human-induced
global heating over the past 50 years.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Tony Nicklinson, who was unable to get permission for anyone to help him die, died of pneumonia.
Maybe his rejection of food since the court verdict, about 5 days before, contributed to his illness. It is also possible that he refused some treatment that could have cured it. Still, it seems like amazing luck to develop a fatal illness so soon.
In addition to Putin's tyranny, Russia will soon face another obstacle to democracy: the WTO.
If Novartis wins a lawsuit about Indian patent law, various generic drugs from India will be blocked and lots of people in many poor countries will die. They will have been murdered by the World Trade Organization, and the treaties that set it up. Their funerals should be protests to abolish it.
The person in the article who criticizes the pharma companies for spending too much on research is mistaken. Actually they spend only a tiny fraction of their funds on research, and far more on marketing.
Intellectual Ventures, the giant patent troll, operates over a thousand shell companies to disguise the fact that it has tens of thousands of patents.
The Republican Party is likely to approve a platform calling for banning abortion in all circumstances.
China and North Korea are adopting smartcards as ID cards to record everywhere a person goes.
Are Your Skinny Jeans Starving the World?
Dennis Kucinich: the US seems to have learned nothing from 10 years of interventions that have created more enemies and inspired terrorists.
I disagree about the intervention in Libya; that one was justified and didn't have this effect. (Libya still has conflicts, but few want to go back to Gaddafi and few blame the US.) The intervention in Afghanistan might have gone well if Dubya hadn't invaded Iraq, but it is hard to be sure. However, Kucinich's overall point remains valid.
US citizens: tell the EPA to ban use of diesel fuel for fracking.
Todd Akin, the Republican candidate who said that real rape doesn't make women pregnant (as an excuse to ban abortions even after rape), has refused to quit even after Romney said he should.
This provides an opportunity to reelect a senator who supports abortion and contraception rights.
World leaders state their fulsome admiration of the Ethiopian tyrant who just died.
Apparently in their view arresting the political opposition does not make him unworthy of admiration.
Oil companies are taking US homes to build pipelines.
This is because the Supreme Court ruled that eminent domain can be used for companies.
Apple gets rich by paying very little taxes.
I think products DRM should be subject to a special punitive tax rate of 1000%.
LA's smog pollution is 2% of what it was in the 1960s, even with more cars. This is entirely due to government intervention.
Butterflies in Massachusetts are moving north due to global warming.
Some that used to inhabit the northern part of the state are now hardly present at all
The US bans Guantanamo prisoners from telling their lawyers how they were tortured.
The US says that knowledge of CIA torture techniques would cause the US "exceptionally grave damage". Indeed the US would receive lots of well-deserved condemnation.
A large fraction of the prisoners in Guantanamo are acknowledged to be innocent, but still can't get out. The men being tried are accused of real crimes, so they deserve real trials.
Thousands protest in Togo accusing the government of ensuring its reelection by gerrymandering districts.
Obama and Romney campaign mobile phone apps slurp down loads of personal data.
Labeling that states the amount of trans fats in food has pushed US food manufacturers to reduce its use. But they fought to prevent this.
If Assange had sex with a sleeping woman, the morning after they had sex and then slept together, was that rape? MP George Galloway says no.
Waking up your lover with sex is a tradition that has given pleasure to many, and prohibiting it by designating it as rape is absurd. If that's what the law says in some country, that law is absurd.
On the other hand, waking up someone with sex who is not your lover (or has recently been disinclined to have sex with you) is properly considered rape. Thus, the conclusion depends on circumstances.
The circumstances described for Assange are borderline, but the couple were lovers at the time. Their last interaction, a few hours before, was to have sex. Based on the circumstances described in the article, I agree with George Galloway's conclusion. I don't know whether that description fits what happened, of course.
I agree with him also that the empire's crimes are a bigger issue than this one. However, there is no need to make that comparison. Handing Assange to the US is one thing; investigating the sexual accusations is another.
If the two issues are to be tied to one single decision — if the only choices are to permit both or prevent both — that would raise the question of which issue is more important, which issue should be the basis for the choice.
However, tying the two issues together is in itself incorrect. The UK and Sweden want to do that because, for them, the sexual accusations are only an excuse to deliver Assange to the US, but there is no valid reason to tie them. The two issues ought to be kept separate, so that each one can be handled on its own merits.
That's what Ecuador is doing: protecting Assange from the US, while offering to cooperate with Sweden in regard to the sexual accusations.
The Russian Police are
hunting
for the other members of Pussy Riot. That is, the ones who didn't
participate in the song for which three members have been sentenced to
prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli laws and punishments against protests resemble Russia's.
Paul Ryan sponsored a bill to declare that fetuses are persons, which would have banned abortion and some kinds of birth control.
Years After Haiti Quake, Safe Housing Is a Dream for Many.
Paul Ryan's Fairy-Tale Budget Plan, according to Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Burma's abolition of advance censorship does not in fact mean freedom of the press.
Palestinians in Kufr Qaddoum held a peaceful protest against the theft of a third of their land and the siege of their village. Israeli soldiers attacked them and journalists; some journalists had broken bones.
Four women from Gaza, who want to study in the West Bank, won a court victory in Israel, so the military invented a "security reason" which is too vague to answer.
Israeli "settlers" in Palestinian territory threw a molotov cocktail at a taxi carrying a Palestinian family.
Violence against Palestinian persons extends the long-established practice of violence against their farms and houses.
Israeli "settlers"
cut
down Palestinians' olive trees
near an "illegal" settlement that they wish to expand.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
All the settlements are illegal by international standards, but the ones that were built without permission from the Israeli government are called "illegal".
Other illegal settlers stole Palestinian land to build a chicken farm.
Other "settlers" used an electric pump to flood Palestinian farmland while simultaneously emptying a well.
This is especially nasty given that the "settlers" have taken for themselves a disproportionate share of the water resources of the West Bank.
It is even worse in Gaza: inhabitants spend 30% of their income on drinking water.
The United Church of Canada joined the boycott
of products made in Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.
In response it was subject to the usual barrage of fallacious
criticism.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Some companies pay more to their CEOs than they pay in taxes.
Burma has ended its official system of advance censorship of news stories.
This does not necessarily imply freedom of the press, but it is an important step forward.
Republicans in Ohio fired Democratic election commissioners for
not
following orders to vote against allowing early voting on the weekend.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Voter suppression is the general strategy of Republicans in this election, and it shows their intent to force themselves on the country.
Report: Romney May Have Violated Ethics Laws Through Company Linked to Paul Ryan's Brother.
The US listed attacks on Palestinians as "terrorism". These attacks are becoming more frequent, and Israel does almost nothing to discourage them.
All the Christians living in a suburb of Islamabad were chased out, after a girl was accused of burning a copy of the Qur'an.
The accusation sounds so implausible that it must surely be a lie. However, ethically it would make no difference if the accusation were true. There is nothing wrong with your burning any book, as long as it's yours and it's not rare. You have the right to burn a copy of the Qur'an, or even Free Software, Free Society, if you wish — and anyone who tries to stop you is an enemy of freedom.
French thugs arrested protesters supporting Pussy Riot, because they were wearing balaclavas as Pussy Riot does.
This demonstrates that the law against wearing face coverings in public, which Sarkozy pretended was aimed at a handful of Muslim women, was really an attack on everyone's rights.
With face recognition surveillance, the only way to have any privacy will be to wear a mask. More masked protests are needed to demand this freedom.
July 2012 set a US record for the hottest month ever (since record-keeping began).
US businesses use unregulated data to decide who is a desirable customer, and this could result in big discrimination.
Assange, speaking from a balcony in the Ecuadorian embassy, called on the US to end its war on whistleblowers.
This war has been described by several political notes.
Obama asked Congress to spend money to help localities hire more teachers.
Stimulating the economy like this is a good idea. I wish it were not such a rare thing from Obama.
In Russia, churches have been converted into props for tyranny, but the head of the Orthodox Church was eager for the job.
So are the leaders of many US churches.
US citizens:
sign
this petition to reinstate the Glass-Steagall act.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Arctic summer sea ice is not only retreating, it is getting thinner,
so fast that in
10 years it might be totally gone.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
This is extremely dangerous since that will cause the Arctic Ocean to absorb a lot more heat from the sun in the summer.
Supporters of Romney, Ryan and Obama have convinced themselves of a fundamentally false picture of these people's lives and politics.
Obama has appealed
the court decision banning imprisonment without
trial in the US. By doing so he has declared in favor of imprisonment
without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Construction of the planet-roaster pipeline started in Texas
and was met with protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
NPR has fired several radio presenters for protesting against banks, but it is happy to let one large bank underwrite the Planet Money show, whose host makes a business of giving speeches to banks.
These two policies might seem contradictory if viewed in ethical terms. However, if viewed in terms of selling out, they fit together perfectly.
The US Veterans Administration is too eager to diagnose PTSD, applying that label to many other kinds of problems including depression. This leads to giving veterans the wrong therapy, and making their problems worse.
Everyone: thank Ecuador for giving asylum to Julian Assange.
Student protests are spreading in Chile as
students occupy more schools.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Copyright trolls, who threaten lots of people with lawsuits unless they pay a medium-size sum for possibly real copyright infringement, have inspired a phony copyright troll whose activities are pure fraud.
The funniest part is, this is not very different from what the real copyright trolls have done. Some of them have been shut down by courts for abusing the legal system.
You Have the Right to Remain Spied On.
Increased monitoring of US government employees through their computer threatens to punish whistleblowers, or worse, to make their activities impossible.
The top 100 US corporations for air pollution.
Koch Industries is in 5th place.
The current outbreak of West Nile virus in Texas will recur often in the future since global heating helps the mosquitos.
The Sioux tribes plan to use some of their settlement money for the US theft of the Black Hills to buy back parts of it.
Former eagle scouts returned their scouting medals to protest the
anti-gay stance of the Boy Scouts, but
the
organization is unmoved.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call
on the clothing store company Zara to stop
using cotton picked by forced child labor in Uzbekistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Shell's drilling in the Arctic could damage newly discovered cold-water corals that can take centuries to recover if they are smashed.
Pakistan has extended its Internet censorship to blocking political scandal.
The previous censorship, of sex and criticism of religion, is also an injustice and in no way excusable.
Bain Capital is moving a profitable car parts factory in the US to China so it can pay workers less.
If these workers had had guts, they would have gone on strike and told the company to ask Romney to train their replacements.
Romney is fibbing when he claims to have disassociated himself from Bain in 1999. However, it makes no great difference that Romney is no longer running Bain. He built this monster and set it in motion, so he's responsible for what it continues to do, no matter who is at the controls now.
Romney is profiting from behavior that the US economic system was set up to encourage. The system is to blame — and Romney is also to blame. So are the politicians who set up or preserve the system, including nearly all Republicans and many Democrats. In general, when a system leaves you vulnerable to mistreatment, that doesn't excuse the people who take advantage of it.
Time
Wars: how precarious employment, misuse of technology and
domination by the rich have turned all time into work and crushed
creativity.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Big data means racial discrimination can be disguised as "personalization".
One way you can resist such monitoring of you is by not identifying yourself in your purchases and other activities.
The women of Pussy Riot were sentenced to 2 years in prison.
Hundreds of supporters protesting outside the courtroom were arrested.
Other Russian dissidents are accused of obviously bogus crimes too. It is misguided to argue that some of these people are really innocent of the crime of protesting, since it would not be bad if they were "guilty". Prosecuting protesters, whether in Russia, the UK or the US, only proves the state is guilty.
Privatization of public services is a recipe for inefficiency, failure, and even oppression.
No public service should ever be privatized unless the result is to offer competition directly to citizens.
An unusually hot summer in Greenland may be linked to the unusually cold and wet summer in the UK. As well as to the droughts and storms in the US.
Dead Woman Working: the greatest hope for working-class Americans is to keep paying the rent.
Nabeel Rajab, already in prison for criticizing Bahrain's government, was sentenced to three years in prison for an "illegal demonstration".
Obama shamelessly continues propping up Bahrain's tyrannical government.
The US has committed acts of persecution and aggression for a long time, so it is appropriate that Julian Assange has been granted political asylum for fear of oppression by the US.
US teenagers mostly listen to music via YouTube.
This makes it even more unfortunate that the YouTube site cannot be accessed in HTML5 without running nonfree Javascript code from the site.
Large companies that own "natural" or organic food brands are funding the opposition to the GMO labeling ballot initiative in California. Along with many other big food companies.
The US prefers failed reconstruction of nations it has destroyed to reconstruction of American cities that have been pushed into poverty.
Another possible cause is that it was easier for corrupt interests allied with Dubya to divert money in Iraq than in the US.
A man in Texas shot the thug who came to deliver an eviction notice.
Romney is trying to distance himself from Paul Ryan's poorhouse budget,
but not long ago he was praising it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Romney's advisors said that whatever Romney said during the primary campaign, afterwards he could erase the slate and start over.
Egypt's government is putting a journalist on trial for insulting the president.
That change is effectively a confession of failure to respect freedom of expression.
Ethiopia is repressing Muslim protesters who objected to state interference in their mosques.
The Ethiopian government represses anyone in Ethiopia that gets in its way, and has the backing of the US in doing so.
South African thugs shot and killed striking miners. Some say the miners attacked first, but that seems unlikely a priori.
Tony Nicklinson lost his lawsuit demanding not to punish people for helping him to die.
The judge may be right that this is beyond the authority of a court, but Nicklinson deserves to be helped somehow.
He has the right to travel, and the right to travel to Switzerland since he does not need a visa to go there. Does the state pretend to deny him this right merely because he might use it to avail himself of the services of Dignitas?
The Euro is not in trouble.
Europeans are.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Julian Assange Asylum: Ecuador is Right to Stand Up to the US.
Clothing designer Zahia Dahar was a prostitute for a while, and one of her customers when she was 17 faces prosecution.
The term "child prostitution" calls to mind the troubled girls and boys, in their early teens or even younger, who are lured and pushed into prostitution. Treating them that way deserves prosecution.
However, there is no reason to prosecute the customers of people like Ms Dahar, who chose their path and are not under anyone's thumb.
The US "Justice Department"
will
not prosecute Goldman Sachs for swindling its clients.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Paul Ryan has faced no difficult races for Congress, but he has accepted millions in campaign funds from corporations that want service from him.
Apple envisions making iThings control all the appliances in the home.
The abuses of Big Pharma can make people sick, but the fines they agree to pay are tiny compared to their profits, so they don't stop.
What Olympic games sponsors buy is sin-washing.
Why it is often a mistake to vote for the lesser of two evil candidates.
The US is deploying the same sort of cameras that China used to identify and intimidate protesters through face recognition.
We should avoid exaggerating what Trapwire surveillance does, but no exaggeration is needed to show the US is turning into a surveillance state that represses dissidents.
Islamists in Pakistan attacked an air force base.
Australian politicians call for an independent investigation into why Australia joined in Bush's conquest of Iraq.
A US court ruled that the government doesn't need a search warrant to collect people's phone GPS locations.
A warrant should be required for the phone company even to take note of a phone's location, except when the user asks for it.
US citizens: sign this petition to save Social Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign up for the campaign for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision (to call it what it really is).
Here's a comparison of various bills proposing constitutional amendments related to corporations' power and regulation of campaign spending.
Everyone: call on Hyatt
Hotels to reinstate two workers who were
apparently fired for objecting when their coworkers mocked them
with pasted-up photos.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Nobody should have 5 children — even 3 puts too much of a burden on the Earth — but that doesn't excuse what Hyatt did.
The UK has threatened
to invade the Ecuadorian embassy to capture Julian Assange.
In defiant response, Ecuador formally granted him asylum.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
That the UK would threaten to take things to this level proves conclusively that this is a scheme to hand Assange to the US. Craig Murray's private sources say the US ordered the UK prime minister to do this.
The UK could get Assange without violating treaties or starting a war by breaking off diplomatic relations with Ecuador and shutting the embassy.
The usual figure cites for the sequester's reductions in military spending increases is exaggerated by 100 billion.
Too bad — the US needs to cut more.
Republicans in Florida want last-minute voter purge.
Non-citizens are not entitled to vote in the US, and there is nothing wrong in principle with making sure they don't. However, we know from experience what Republicans are really up to. They will get a long list of names of non-citizens, lots of them Hispanic, and exclude all voters whose names resemble those, including lots of Hispanic US citizens who are entitled to vote.
Romney wants to force those lazy, greedy welfare recipients (mostly single mothers, nowadays) to work. But not the lazy and greedy banksters, of course.
Since Romney and friends have shipped all the jobs to China, what work would there be for these women to do? He'd have to send them to China too.
Belo Monte Dam Suspended by Brazilian Appeals Court.
Paul Ryan argued against economic stimulus and clean energy programs, but he was happy to spend the money after he lost.
Rootworms have developed resistance to BT toxin made by GMO corn, and this is joining with the drought to destroy the US corn crop.
Farmers had better go back to crop rotation, and integrated pest management.
Paul Ryan's family company is closely tied to a corrupt union that supported Ryan's candidacy and punished members who objected to this.
Poland is investigating the CIA torturers who operated a secret US prison.
Mexico's Supreme Court has ordered a civilian trial for the officer accused of covering up the killing of a civilian prisoner.
Egypt's military has backed down from the confrontation
with the new president by giving up on the
constitutional
changes that it tried to impose a few months ago.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Rep. Kucinich has proposed a law to block the use
of NATO as an excuse
for the US to engage in war without consent of Congress.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: preregister now to participate in an anti-TPP protest in Leesberg, Virginia, on Sep 9.
Please do NOT use Google Docs to inform Public Citizen that you have registered — that requires running nonfree software. Instead, please tell Public Citizen some other way.
An independent investigation reports contradictions in the official story about the raid in Honduras that shot passengers on a ferry.
Here's the full report.
The US is withholding
some funds for Honduras based on accusations that
its new thug chief operated a death squad before.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
A UN investigation holds Assad's army and Shabiha militia responsible for massacres and torture of prisoners.
The investigation also says that rebels have killed prisoners.
The Syrian civil war is leading to hostage taking in Lebanon.
A Spanish mayor is leading
resistance to the right-wing's cruel policies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Putin's thugs attacked a small protest in favor of Pussy Riot and then arrested some of the protesters.
It seems thugs are the same in Moscow and New York City.
"Self-reliant" Paul Ryan got a college education using
Social Security benefits at a publicly funded university. Yet he
wants to deny the same help to future Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell
the Forest Service not to allow fracking in national forests.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition to the Democratic and Republican parties to adopt preservation of a free Internet in their platforms.
A US court ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop assuming that it is safe to store used fuel rods along with the reactors and that this will only be a temporary stopgap.
However, it is a long way from there to any practical effect, such as denying licenses to old or new power reactors.
In the absence of a permanent solution, perhaps we should start moving and/or converting the used fuel rods to a kind of storage that is safer than pools next to reactors. The Fukushima meltdowns demonstrated that that is a very bad place for them.
Google has shut down YouTube download helper sites, by technical means and by threatening to sue them.
Streaming anything from YouTube requires running nonfree software, which for your freedom's sake you should refuse to do. To view a recording on YouTube without running nonfree software, you need to download the recording. There are free software scripts to do this. Whether the sites that are now being attacked can be used without running nonfree software, I do not know.
The US military-entertainment-industrial complex reinforces an idealized view of soldiers and war that facilitates war.
It also helps the arms spending lobby.
Most US high schools have turned themselves into exclusive marketing platforms for either Coca Cola Company or Pepsico. Now studies find that selling junk food in school promotes obesity.
Racist advertisements calling Palestinians "savages" face censorship pressure.
In certain periods in the past, Palestinians committed plenty of acts of savagery. In recent years those are more commonly carried out by Israelis, as Gush Shalom ably documents. These ads are clearly mistaken. Nonetheless, I defend people's right to express that political view (or any other). There is no place for censorship in a free society. Progressive views face censorship too in the US, and we must continue to fight against it.
Australia has won a victory over tobacco pushers:
cigarettes
will have to be sold in plain packages to reduce marketing
(especially to teenagers).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Note how the tobacco companies tried to use the vague, almost meaningless term "intellectual property" to argue that the state must compensate them if it does anything to limit their ability to market tobacco. This term is harmful and we must reject it.
Slashing value from famous brands ought to be adopted as a goal in itself, because those brands' marketing power and the outsourcing system they support facilitates many abuses. We must reject the idea of logos or trademarks as investment vehicles, and return them to their original purpose: identification so that purchasers can know what they are buying.
Students in Santiago Chile have occupied high schools to demand improvements in public education.
Protesting a fracking pipeline in New York City.
Malaysia is tightening Internet censorship through a law to punish Internet cafes if their customers say anything dissident.
Mainstream US media are praising Paul Ryan as a great expert on the
budget, and pretending
that there is a problem that needs a drastic
"solution" such as he proposes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Suicide bombers attacked noncombatants in Afghanistan.
Schools in Meridian, Mississippi, are sending students to prison for wearing the wrong clothing.
These schools are clearly prisons, and the only thing the students could learn from them is resistance. They should protest by wearing prison uniforms to school.
When banks sue people over credit card debts, most of the time they have no proof they are owed any money; but they win by default.
Mauritania still practices slavery, and the slaves are so downtrodden that they will lie to avoid being freed.
The EU has adopted strict new rules for handling of e-waste.
I don't know whether the rules are good ones, but the goal is important.
Superstition can kill: children in the UK accused of witchcraft by credulous relatives have suffered abuse that sometimes is deadly.
There are claims that a system called Tripwire is in use in the US to carry out widespread surveillance via TV cameras and license plate recognizers.
Interviews with some nonsectarian Syrian rebels.
Unfortunately, their existence does not make the Islamist fanatics not exist.
Israel might attack Iran before the US presidential election figuring that Obama would not dare refuse to join in.
US voters don't want war with Iran. But it's not the voters Obama is concerned about, it's the rich people who demand war and might threaten to use their money against him.
How personalized store prices can hurt customers.
I don't have any store "loyalty cards", but occasionally I use other people's numbers.
A three-star general explicitly ordered brainwashing treatment for Bradley Manning.
This demonstrates that the repeated official claims that this treatment was for Manning's own protection were not merely absurd and false. They were deliberate lies told by a cruel and arrogant state that takes pride in its callousness. We have no proof that the orders came from even higher up, but Obama surely heard the world criticism of this brainwashing for a long time without stopping it.
Do the US government and US army have enough courage and integrity to prosecute those responsible? I'd applaud if they do, but I don't expect it.
I do not expect Manning's judge to dismiss the charges. The flaw of all military trials is command influence: the judge is an officer whose future career is under the control of the army command. In this case, the judge's own superiors (up to Obama) ordered the prosecution of Manning, and his brainwashing. He knows what verdict they want, and he knows what will happen to him if he does not deliver it. To refuse would take considerable courage.
I use the term "brainwashing" because what the US did to Manning resembles what North Korean captors did to US GIs during the Korean War to break their will.
Radiation from the Fukushima meltdown is causing mutations in butterflies living near the reactors.
Greater temperature swings, caused by global heating, can give parasites an advantage over some of the animals they live in.
Facebook wants to present itself as a virtual town square … a censored one.
WIPO is once again pushing a treaty to create a new pseudo-copyright for broadcasting, that would give broadcasters a monopoly over the works that are transmitted.
As usual, the US is the bad guy.
US citizens:
Tell Colbert, Maddow & Stewart that Jill Stein deserves air time. You can send email to
US citizens: ask Obama and Congress to commit to no cuts in Social Security or Medicare.
South Korea has censored several critics of the state; some even face criminal charges for criticizing the government.
Vermont voted to set up a single-payer health care system, but it needs US government waivers to start before 5 years from now, and the medical/financial interests are campaigning to prevent it.
US citizens: call on Clinton to pressure Russia on human rights.
Subway is firing workers in Oakland for trying to unionize.
Thugs' unions and prison guards' unions have lobbied effectively for enabling their members to abuse more people.
I would say that the unions are not the root of the problem, but rather a manifestation of it. The root is in the impunity these people have, together with their incentives to commit abuse. The New York City thugs behave like an occupying army, not just towards minority groups but towards protesters and the press.
Thousands of UK workers have been secretly blacklisted
for
years or decades.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Florida thugs pulled a driver out of her car and strip-searched her by the side of the road.
No matter what anyone had claimed she had done, it could not justify this.
Thanks to school vouchers, Louisiana pays schools to teach that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, that slavery was kind, and that the great depression wasn't very bad.
The French government plans to deactivate Hadopi, the law to punish people with Internet disconnection. This is a step forward, but not enough. That unjust law must be abolished.
Yekaterina Samutsevich of Pussy Riot made a closing speech defiantly explaining how Putin has used the Russian Orthodox Church for political purposes.
There is a long history of this; the tsars did it starting in the 1700s.
Romney founded
Bain Capital with money from rich Central Americans who
also invested in death squads.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Egypt's president confronted the army's power by replacing two generals and revoking the army's constitutional alteration.
A former Israeli soldier will spend 45 days in jail for killing two Palestinian women in Gaza who were waving white flags.
That seems like a slap on the wrist to me.
US citizens: tell
the EPA once more that it should treat the death of
honey bees as an emergency.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
90 journalists are in prison in Turkey.
A protest in Dallas against imprisonment without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The barbaric Islamist rulers of Northern Mali are using amputation as a punishment.
In the south, 60,000 people rallied for peace and reconciliation. But I think that is a misguided goal, if it is possible instead to defeat those barbarians.
Belarus has imprisoned two journalists for protesting the imprisonment of their colleague.
A Vietnamese blogger has been imprisoned, explicitly because of what he said in his blog.
Supposed TSA "behavioral detection" turns out to be just plain old racial profiling.
Even worse, it focuses on issues that have nothing to do with the safety of flights. In effect, this article admits that the TSA's main activity is an unwarranted fishing expedition, with safety of flights as a mere excuse.
Amnesty International says that indigenous leaders in Ecuador
face false criminal charges for protesting
against mines in their territory.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The barrier to innovation in the US is that established companies prefer rent-seeking rather than innovation, and buy laws accordingly.
A new satellite shows that Arctic Ocean ice is melting faster than predicted.
Afghans in Karzai's government's uniform have carried out two attacks on government forces in two days.
In one case, the attack was led by the commander of a unit.
We've known for years that Karzai's corrupt government cannot inspire loyalty, except in exchange for money, so its army would never be able to fight very hard. Now it is becoming clear that his soldiers are likely to fight for the enemy.
Under Paul Ryan's tax plan, Romney's tax rate would drop to under 1%.
That would be another reason to call the super rich "the 1%".
Americans without health coverage sometimes must choose to die of
cancer rather than accept expensive treatment. A doctor recounts an
example.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
With such advanced lung cancer, the best medical care possible today might not have extended this man's life for very long. However, even one extra year would have been a very good thing for his daughter.
Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, is a global heating denier in the pay of the Koch brothers.
He used to call himself a Randian, and he wants to destroy Medicare and Social Security. He also wants to raise taxes on the middle class and cut them for the rich.
This is known as class warfare. Sad to say, Obama is not on our side, merely less enthusiastic about attacking us.
Occupy Wall Street calls for protests against the two Plutocratic National Convention and the Repelican National Convention.
In Spain, one method of resistance to the policies of poverty is to take food from supermarkets and give it to the poor.
Many other forms of civic resistance are described — even police who refused to act like thugs.
With the US drought, millions will go hungry around the world.
This is the beginning of problems that will only get worse as global heating batters farm output around the world.
Oxfam calls for an end to the diversion of food crops to make fuel.
That is an inefficient way to make fuel, anyway. It uses lots of petroleum to replace petroleum.
Ohio has expanded voting hours in generally Republican areas and reduced them in generally Democratic areas.
New Mexico is trying to stop many people from voting, and also obstruct voter registration.
Homeless Americans (their number is increasing) face difficulties in registering to vote.
I disagree with the article's claim that local elections are more important than national ones. Back when Cambridge had rent control, I voted in local elections for candidates who were in favor of it. Ever since Cambridge rent control was abolished by voters outside Cambridge, I have never heard of a single local issue that would affect anything important.
However, that might be different for homeless people.
Republicans believe life is sacred, for fetuses and wealthy people. The others are welcome to die.
Israel is trying to bribe and threaten the Palestinian Authority into dropping its bid for statehood.
The peace negotiations that Israel demands are phony, since Israel demands impossible terms and thus ensures they make no progress. In effect, they are an excuse to let Israel do whatever it wants to Palestinians.
US
Senate voted to demand an investigation of the car crash that
killed Oswaldo Payá, even though the survivors, who are his
supporters, say it was an accident and no other car was involved.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: urge
the Obama campaign to drop its cynical pro-coal ad.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Senator Reid said someone had told him Romney paid no taxes for years, but that he (Reid) had no way to tell whether that was true, and Romney should release his tax returns to show the truth.
The US corporate media are distorting this, and accusing Reid of acting like Joe McCarthy.
TEPCO has released video of discussions held about how to respond
to the Fukishima meltdown,
but
most of it is without sound, not showing what the people said.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
1/4 of US pregnancies are due to failure of contraception. Implanted hormonal IUDs have the potential to put an end to this failure, but the US government has not approved them for women with no children.
Chilean senators propose decriminalizing
cultivation
of marijuana for personal use.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Uruguay's President Mujica has formally proposed
legalizing
marijuana with the state as the distributor.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
GM won't negotiate with the Colombian workers, injured by their work,
who were fired without compensation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Americans who are interested in foreign affairs generally have no wish for a war with Iran.
So why are Obama and Romney speaking talking tough? Because they are paid to. The influence of the "fat cats" referred to in the article does not come from conversation with thee candidates.
The brunt of the sanctions falls on ordinary Iranians, but they don't have enough influence on the Iranian government to alter its policy on such an issue — even if they wanted to surrender to foreign pressure.
LendInk, which connected users to practice the limited "lending" allowed by the Amazon Swindle and the Barnes & Noble Shnook, was shut down by a campaign of intimidation aimed at its hosting provider.
I would not endorse or support the use of LendInk, because to use it you'd first need to be a user of those freedom-trampling products. That's what you must not do. Something like LendInk was hardly enough to make the Swindle or Shnook ethically acceptable, so closing LendInk doesn't make them substantially worse than they were.
However, I mention this to underline how nasty those companies are. These products are the enemy of your freedom, and you should fight them until they are dead.
US citizens:
tell
the Senate, stick to the Pentagon cuts agreed on in the
2011 budget agreement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Bradley Manning's lawyer has asked for dismissal of all charges, on the grounds that he was illegally punished through humiliating treatment before his trial.
I don't expect the judge will do it, though.
The US government won't prosecute Goldman Sachs for
misleading
(effectively swindling) its customers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
If laws don't protect customers from such lies, is the US planning to change them? Obviously not.
EU governments want to set up an informal, extralegal mechanism to censor unwanted opinions without even a trial.
Freedom of speech means freedom to express any and all views. Even hatred has a place in our thoughts — for instance, that's what governments that practice censorship deserve.
US citizens: call on the EPA not to postpone or weaken its standards for pollution from cement.
US citizens:
Call
on Russia to free the members of Pussy Riot.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
A doctor has been charged with waterboarding
his daughter.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
When will Bush's torturers be charged?
A simple system of food labeling based on healthfulness turned out to be quite effective at moving people towards better eating.
I dispute what the article says about "illusion of control". It is not an illusion; it is real control. To have control does not require being immune to anyone else's influence (that would be impossible anyway, in a society). Looked at from the other side, saying things that influence people does not mean trampling their freedom.
This note doesn't deprive you of any freedom, but it may (or may not) influence you.
Gonorrhea has developed resistance to all but one antibiotic. Resistance to that one is surely on the way.
I think Christian theocrats will rejoice at this. They will be happy that thousands will be killed as long as it might make some people scared to have sex. If gonorrhea did not exist, they would want to invent it.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Romney to identify those who play an important role in his fundraising — the "bundlers".
US citizens: sign this petition to safe-seat Democrats asking them to help other Democrats win in Congress.
Cuban exiles plan to light fireworks to protest Internet censorship in Cuba.
US citizens: visit your congresscritter during the August recess, and ask for a $10 minimum wage.
Time for Romania to Face the Truth over Secret CIA Prison.
The
US will start cleaning up an Agent Orange depot in Vietnam.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
People are trying to challenge Obama's assassination policy through the UK.
Another plan to reduce paying employment in the UK: running call centers inside prisons.
I have nothing against hiring prisoners, as long as it isn't an excuse to reduce workers' wages. If they paid these prisoners what the workers make on the outside, I would not criticize it.
US citizens: Phone the White House at 202-456-1111 and say, "Fire Ed DeMarco now!"
Ed DeMarco is head of Fannie Mae, and is blocking mortgage relief for US homeowners for the sake of the banksters.
The last lawsuit against Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping scheme has been dismissed.
A bill proposed in Congress would require the government to get a search warrant to examine users' data stored in network services.
I think this bill is a good idea, but let's not use the nebulous term "cloud" to describe these network servers.
Indigenous people in the Philippines were kicked off their lands for a palm-oil plantation.
The Philippine government appears to be too corrupt to enforce its laws against companies. Sad to say, the same is true nowadays of the US government against the banksters and oil companies. Even arms smugglers pay a fine to avoid actual prosecution.
The ACLU warns that Maryland has set up an integrated system to record license plate scans indefinitely, and explains why this is dangerous.
A similar system in the UK has already been used to sabotage democracy by pre-emptively arresting dissidents believed to be on the way to a protest. The US already persecutes dissidents as "terrorists", so we can be sure the US will abuse this system.
A school in Louisiana illegally forces female students to take pregnancy tests, and expels them if they are pregnant.
I think schools should help and encourage students to use contraception and abortion, but punishing someone with a denial of education only makes a repeat of the problem more likely.
Everyone: Call
on the premier of British Columbia to block the tar
sands pipeline project that would run to the Pacific Ocean.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Tar sands pipelines carry fluids more corrosive than ordinary petroleum; when the pipelines leak, companies claim it isn't their fault.
This is not to mention the worst pollution these pipelines would give us: lots more CO2 in the air.
Everyone: Tell Kentucky Fried Chicken you don't like its use of paper made by cutting down rainforests in Sumatra.
US citizens:
sign
this petition calling on Romney to release more tax returns.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Half of Manila has been flooded; almost a million people have been driven from their homes.
Is this linked to global heating? We don't specifically know, but it is the sort of event that global heating is making far more likely in many regions. Also, global heating increases the amount of rain that storms can deliver.
Peru's exploitative mining, which threatens to permanently poison water supplies, could be corrected by proper government mining regulations.
The US needs stricter regulations too, on mining and oil extraction.
The Balinese language and Balinese gamelan music are threatened by the effects of mass tourism.
If you want to go to the beach, go to one nearby. Traveling to Bali is a total waste, for that.
The Wisconsin massacre shooter was a neo-Nazi, and was connected with white-supremacist groups that have grown fast in recent years.
I would guess that the tremendous increase in poverty and suffering in the US is partly responsible for this. People are naturally angry at the events.
When they don't grasp who is really responsible (the 1% and the politicians they have bought), perhaps because of propaganda that tries to discourage this awareness, or when they feel that blaming the true culprits is useless because they are strong enough to crush protests, some may place the blame on convenient vulnerable scapegoats such as immigrants. The harsh anti-immigrant laws in some states are another aspect of this.
New York City, working with another enemy of your freedom (Microsoft), has installed a new system of total surveillance. Everything caught by the cameras is recorded and accessible, so it is easy to backtrack and see where any car has been. Probably any pedestrian, too.
They say they will keep license plate data for 5 years, unless they feel like keeping it longer.
Note the deceptive description, "The purpose is to fight terrorism but we can use it for anything".
For "terrorism", read "dissent". Dissidents in the US are often accused of "terrorism". You can bet this will be used against dissidents if they dare to protest. The New York Thug Department, which runs this system, systematically practices violence against dissidents.
New York City has a long history of oppressive surveillance. Taxicabs in New York transmit the passengers' photos by radio to the thugs, so I never take taxicabs there. By contrast, car service cars only store passengers' photos; that system is tolerable since, if you don't attack the driver (something I never do), the photos are ignored.
Hotels in New York City demand photo IDs to report to the thugs. I refuse to stay in them — you should too.
Dissidents in Oman were sentenced
to prison for a peaceful protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Most US state ethics commissions powerless and underfunded, so they
can't
do their job, supposing they even try.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
As the US shreds the safety net, poverty for old people will become common once again.
Before Social Security, a large fraction of old people in the US were poor, even though most of them were healthy (because those who got sick just died).
Around the world, humans are emptying aquifers fast. This will cause major problems in a few decades, even as many areas become much hotter and more arid.
In the US, one forbidden painkiller pill can ruin your life.
And the War on the Suffering keeps on escalating. I dread what will happen next time I need surgery.
Oil companies are not acknowledging to their stockholders the risks of undersea oil drilling.
Republicans want military contractors to frighten all their workers with layoffs, though in fact the planned reduction in military spending increases would affect only a fraction of them.
Military spending is less efficient at creating jobs that other kinds of government spending, so diverting the planned increase in military spending to other uses would help the US make more jobs.
Colombia has taken one step away from the War on Drugs,
decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs and treating
addiction as a public health issue rather than a crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Experiments with LSD in the 1960s, before the US cracked down, enabled many scientists and engineers to make important advances, solving problems that had stymied them.
A Gambian dissident has been sentenced to life in prison for
anti-government t-shirts.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
This is a step or two beyond Putin, but he'll get there.
Record heat in the US is damaging highways, railroads, and airports.
James Hansen's latest study ties global heating to some recent droughts and heat waves.
This study did not cover the current year's US droughts, but they are most likely part of the general long-term trend. However, as long as the oil companies purchase the silence of the politicians and the media, Americans seem unwilling to open their eyes.
An increase in temperatures, even temporarily, holds back economic growth in poor countries. So far, heating does not affect economic growth in rich countries, even though extreme weather events cause damage. It may be that economic growth in rich countries is determined more by other factors.
Of course, economic growth is not guaranteed to benefit most people. The US has had plenty of economic growth since 1980, but the benefits have gone almost entirely to the well-off.
The government's refusal to recognize that things are changing (and will get even worse) is part and parcel of the shut eyes that are letting society continue towards the coming train wreck.
Thugs in Arkansas apparently shot a handcuffed man in the head and killed him. Then they said he had shot himself.
Thugs are so accustomed to lying with impunity that they expect even the most incredible lies to stand up. Horribly, they might be right, until we as a society learn to doubt whatever they say.
Obama's War on Leakers (read "whistleblowers") is going to absurd
extremes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Those extremes may be funny, but the general climate of fear and secrecy is no laughing matter.
A campaign to end the War on Drugs has massive support in Mexico.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Egypt's army is fighting with "Islamic" militants in the Sinai.
The mentality of these militants, attacking Muslims in a religious activity, must be rather twisted.
A Briton has avoided conviction under a censorship law against "extreme pornography".
The "extreme pornography" law is censorship for censorship's sake, banning ideas that someone found disgusting. Though some of the acts it prohibits depicting would do bodily harm this law is not concerned with whether anyone is harmed, since even animation is banned. Meanwhile, movies show much worse bodily harm all the time. Somehow brutality and even murder are ok, but combining them with sex makes them bad. (I don't enjoy watching even fictional bodily harm, but that is no excuse for censoring it.)
Low-paid prisoners have replaced regular workers in a call center in the UK.
This is a recipe for unemployment, which will encourage crime and more imprisonment, leading towards where the US is.
US citizens: tell Obama, please don't end protection for wolves.
A Honduran journalist who has faced attacks asked for asylum in the US embassy.
Since the US backs the coup-installed government that unleashed the violence, that is a strange choice of place to ask. I expect the US will tell him that everything is fine in Honduras and he doesn't have a case for asylum.
The States' Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act would stop the US government from interfering with medical marijuana legal under state law.
It is a brilliant idea to link this with "states' rights". Republicans will surely oppose this bill, but doing so will embarrass them.
US citizens:
thank
the House Democrats who have committed to end Bush's tax
cuts for the rich and protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Turkish repression of Kurds has killed 500 Kurdish children since 1988.
The latest one was killed by a tear gas cartridge shot to his head. This does not happen by accident; it is murder, because shooters are trained to fire tear gas away from people, and they are skilled enough to do it when they try. Israeli troops have killed Palestinians this way.
Support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar has turned the Syrian civil war into the sectarian conflict that Assad always said it was.
This article argues that the only hope for a non-oppressive Syria, rather than a choice between oppressive systems, would be in negotiations.
Egypt's president must take action against religious discrimination and occasional persecution that Christians face.
Western companies have sold total digital surveillance to the obvious tyrannies, but we are not safe anywhere from this surveillance.
A Republican study claiming to show a need for voter ID laws was written by a fraudster who just got out of prison.
The Taliban bombed a bus full of workers headed for Kabul.
Will this violence turn Afghanis against the Taliban? It would if they were logical and even-handed, but I suspect they are not.
The Great Impostors: In the Name of Saving Natural World,
Governments
Are
Privatizing It.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Is it ok to destroy a meadow (or a wetland) if you create another? Maybe in theory, but in practice it's no so easy to make them.
What happens if the new one doesn't come out right, or isn't really as good as the other because some species fail to thrive. Will the company paid to do the work recognize the failure and pay damages? Or will it say, "We did what we agreed to do, so don't blame us"? Or will it try to cover up the shortfall in results? That's what I expect, given the low level of honesty in businesses today. That's what happens with lots of carbon compensation programs; they plant trees that would absorb carbon someday, if they thrive and if global heating doesn't kill them.
Which means that this whole idea is a fraud.
Employees of Baidu were arrested for censoring the site for private companies.
Chinese might have trouble understanding how censorship could be forbidden.
Global heating and its effects on rainfall are projected to eliminate 7 million jobs in the US by 2050.
It will get worse after that.
A large for-profit hospital chain performed dangerous heart operations on patients that didn't need them.
Fighting California's GMO labeling initiative is the food lobby's highest priority.
When business considers it so important to keep us in the dark, that means it would be a great victory to pass this initiative.
The US finds it feasible to continue the prohibition of drugs because
most of the suffering caused by prohibition
falls
on other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
However, the suffering imposed on the US is considerable too, with on the order of a million Americans in prison for drug offenses. And prohibition does cause a substantial amount of corruption of thugs in the US.
US citizens: sign this petition to investigate Rupert Murdoch.
The US spiked the global arms trade treaty, but Amnesty International will continue to campaign for one.
Someone who participated in the start of developing the Arpanet (which turned into the Internet) explains why government support was the only way to get it going.
For the most part, he is right that the subsequent participation of companies was useful for extending the Internet to more people. However, when what they develop is proprietary software, it leads systematically to abuse.
Apple's iCloud service includes a back door that can be used to
attack
and wipe computers connected to it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The story describes several other bad practices, but this one takes the cake. (Please don't refer to the attacker as a "hacker"; that is derogatory to us hackers. I'd call him a cracker, or perhaps just a hooligan.)
New York thugs beat up and arrested a press photographer who covered an arrest.
It's not enough to sue the city. These thugs must be prosecuted and sent to prison; nothing less will end their reign of terror. Laws that protect them must be changed.
The US Senate may punish Ecuador for not overriding the legal decision against a "US" oil company.
Egypt demands the release of an Egyptian Guantanamo detainee.
Illinois has passed a law banning employers from asking for job
applicants' or employees
social networking passwords.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
YouTube automatically took down NASA's post of its own video
for supposed copyright infringement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
YouTube does this to lots of users. The idea of automatically detecting copyright infringement is absurd. Similarity can be detected, but determining the legal implications of that requires both intelligence and more facts.
Standard Chartered Bank ran a specialized group, designed to help Iran violate trade sanctions, for nearly a decade.
Ethnic cleansing by Islamists in Syria has motivated some Syrians to support Assad again.
The rebels shoot and torture prisoners.
The UK's right-wing government has instituted compulsory unpaid work programs; people are ordered to work for no pay (except their unemployment benefits). A court rejected a challenge to this on human rights grounds.
Unpaid work programs will not help unemployed Britons find jobs, because (thanks to the government's policies) there are few jobs to be found. On the contrary, as unpaid workers replace paid staff, there will be fewer paid jobs available, thus more unemployment. Business will pay less wages, and workers will have less income.
Could that be the real motive for these unpaid work programs?
The mother of a Vietnamese political prisoner set herself on fire and died.
This takes place as the US enjoys Vietnam's military cooperation and invites companies to exploit Vietnamese workers.
The Vietnamese government has a policy of complete submission to Western commercial demands — almost "Whatever you say, sir!" If the US government said it would cut off trade unless these prisoners are freed, Vietnam would probably free them
Existing renewable energy technology could provide all of the US's power needs.
It's just a question of spending the money to do it.
The US almost agreed with Russia on a UN resolution on Syria, then pulled back.
I am not sure what outsiders ought to do now in regard to Syria. Assad is a murderous secular tyrant, and al Qa'ida would be a murderous theocratic tyrant (even worse). Globally, Islamic extremism is a bigger threat to human rights than Assad. Is there a way Syria can become a democratic state that respects human rights?
Militants possibly from Gaza attacked Egyptian soldiers, then stole armored vehicles to crash Israel's border fence.
Hamas condemned the attack, following its usual practice: Hamas wants a truce with Israel and an end to the siege. It is Israel that doesn't want this.
Aid workers and the ICRC have been attacked in Libya.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
It is very tempting to keep running old nuclear power plants. The construction costs were already spent, so it's all gravy now, right? No.
These plants are slowly decaying, increasing the chance of a disastrous accident.
The techniques described in this article might be of some use, but the question is whether we want to bet on them against a disaster.
The US economy is working fine, for the banksters and Wall Street, because it's not working for the rest of us.
Airlines collect large amounts of information about their passengers, including everything they buy with the credit card that they used to pay for the flight. And they hand it all to Big Brother.
Organizers of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees in Palestine face persecution including imprisonment without trial.
Obamacare gives most US women birth control coverage without a co-pay, but it isn't free — they have to pay for the insurance.
The US funded a medical study using prisoners in China who probably were not given a real option to say no.
Apple wants to collect users' fingerprints.
The iThings are known for surveillance features — some delivered by Apple, and others delivered by apps. You'd be a fool to trust this; but then, you'd be a fool to use an iThing.
Spain's public broadcasting is firing journalists that criticize the government.
US citizens: Tell
Adidas to pay the laid-off workers in Indonesia
their back salary.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
NBC broadcast a two-hour greedwashing show which did nothing but praise JP Morgan Chase for giving to charity.
Plans for reducing electric consumption at peak hours would record all your electricity use, for the state or crackers to access later.
Assuming that Romney didn't give false figures on his tax returns, what might he be hiding? An income tax expert describes some possibilities.
The article ends with the absurd claim that "no one should begrudge Mr. Romney or his family the wealth they have earned". What Romney did to get this money hardly counts as earning it; it was an attack on Americans that a democracy would have stopped him from doing.
It's amazing how bad computerized voting machines can be. Here is a study of a machine that was used in New Jersey (and maybe elsewhere).
A flat-out provable lie from the Romney campaign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
What it took to unionize a chicken packing plant in Alabama.
A new approach to fighting global heating through US state courts.
As US and Canadian governors met to consider how to keep the austerity lid on people and extract more fossil fuels, activists protested outside.
Protests
in London targeted the sweatshops of Olympic games sponsor
Adidas.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Here's more information
about
the campaign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Wozniak is warning people about the danger
of the careless attitude induced by the vague term "cloud computing".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Drought and intense heat created a tremendous fire in Oklahoma.
Many species are endangered in islands that belong to the UK. And this is before the extinction that global heating will cause.
Aside from the 1% who are richest and have too much political power, around 1% of humanity are psychopaths. There is a lot of overlap between the two groups. How should humanity deal with the 1% who are psychopaths?
According to The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson, there is no clear sharp line between psychopaths and non-psychopaths. The condition is defined in terms of a group of characteristics, and people who have enough of them are diagnosed as psychopaths. This means that there are lots people on the borderline, perhaps numbering more than those who are clearly psychopaths. This would complicate the issue.
How the ITU's control over the Internet would turn it into a system designed only for accessing large commercial services that pay.
A Lockheed lobbyist resigned and was hired as staff for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
This ought to be illegal. Congress should not be allowed to hire anyone who has been a lobbyist, or in certain other relationships with a company, within the past 10 years.
US citizens: phone your senators to support Senator Merkley's bill (S. 3515)
to end warrantless US spying on Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The world's largest butterfly is now in danger of extinction due to cutting the rain forest in New Guinea for palm oil plantations.
I'd expect thousands of other species that live in that region are also endangered.
Idea: hold media pundits accountable by pointing out where they were wrong before.
The US is a democracy in form, but in substance it doesn't do what people want.
This is because the government is controlled by the rich. Its' not the same rich people for every issue; those interested in keeping medical care expensive are not the same ones that want the state to buy lots of weapons. But it's the same problem in both cases.
Walmart says it will sell GMO corn to humans.
Walmart is surely spending money to try to defeat California's initiative for GMO labeling. You can help the initiative by (1) contributing to the campaign in favor and (2) not buying from Walmart.
Thousands of children in India are sold into slavery each year by their parents, who have no way to feed them.
The children are promised a salary, then kept locked up for years and not paid.
The root problem is that poor people in India are having children they cannot support. India needs to reduce the birth rate; will fewer children, India would be able to provide welfare funds to give their families a decent life.
Physicians for Human Rights says that Bahrain is exposing protesters (and people in their homes) to unprecedented levels of teargas, which is making people sick.
Here is the Physicians for Human Rights report.
US citizens: Call on Romney to insist that Bain Capital
refrain
from shipping more jobs to China.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic Party to adopt marriage equality in its platform.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say that the farm bill should preserve protections for wildlife, as the Senate has done.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US proposes to finance gas export facilities in the Great Barrier Reef, and a big coal mine that could also pollute it.
It seems strange for the US to finance anything in Australia, but these things should not be built at all.
In addition to contributing to the destruction of civilization, they would also threaten sea turtles, which might offer a legal basis to block the projects.
Tunisia is considering a law to imprison people for mocking the "sanctity of religion". Maybe this means even Saint iGNUcius will be banned there.
Jordan has joined the countries that restrict foreign funding for human rights groups.
Many countries that violate human rights don't want human rights defenders to get help from anywhere else. Putin is doing something like this in Russia, and Israel is considering doing likewise.
Obama's is the most secretive US administration ever.
Subpoenaed Portland activists declare they will refuse to cooperate with a federal McCarthy-style grand jury investigation.
Meanwhile, a former political prisoner in Cuba was arrested
again, for no stated reason.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Special interests win in Senate panel's attempt at tax reform.
RIM says it will give the Indian government the keys to break the encryption in even corporate Blackberry systems.
Formerly RIM said that was impossible because the companies had control of these systems. I wonder what has changed. In any case, I expect companies not to trust blackberries any more.
Shafilea Ahmed's parents have been sentenced to life imprisonment. They murdered her because she wanted to live like a Westerner, instead of marrying the Pakistani they wanted to foist on her.
New York plans to privatize prisons in cooperation with Goldman Sachs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
It would make more sense to let the thieves go to work for Goldman.
Universal music wants to buy EMI, which would increase the concentration of large music companies.
A few years ago there were five of those; now I think there are three, which means this would reduce it to just two.
That they have even a ghost of a chance of being allowed to do this shows that US antitrust laws are too weak. Companies that are among the ten largest in any market should not be allowed to merge — period.
Social networking sites frequently suspend or censor legitimate users, and most of them don't have enough clout to get their accounts back, I have a suggestion. Don't use centralized network services for jobs that we can do with distributed systems.
Romney would eliminate subsidies for wind power. I presume he would maintain all the subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power, as any good planet burner would.
Subsidies for solar power have encouraged the installation of lots of capacity in Europe. The US ought to have them too. It's the beginning of what we need to avoid disaster, and even though not enough by itself, it could lead to more steps.
Brazil has succeeded in further reducing deforestation, but the data do not show what effect the recent weakening of the forest protection law will have.
"Ten Billion" is either a warning of where we are taking the Earth, or a cry of despair about the coming disaster.
To avoid this, we need to stop politicians from being
paid
to deny the danger.
A group of subservient governments in the Planet Burner Bloc propose
to replace the EU's airline carbon tax with
"voluntary caps".
The advantage of these caps, in their view, is that they would not
apply until 2020, which gives the airlines 8 years to look for a way
to avoid really making any concession even then.
EU, stick to your guns! Americans must do all possible to pressure
Obama to stop opposing carbon taxes. This tax alone won't avoid
disaster, but the battle over this tax is crucial because a positive
outcome for this carbon tax could lead to more.
On the
Steve
Dorkland affair.
Olympic games WiFi repression
bans
even setting up a personal hotspot.
US citizens: call on the US not to set off explosions in the Atlantic
that are likely to damage whales' hearing.
What Gore Vidal wrote after the Bush regime imposed the PAT RIOT
Act on the US.
Things have not gone exactly has he feared — there was
an election in 2004, although Bush appears to have
rigged
it in Ohio.
However, he was mostly right.
Everyone: phone
eBay to say, stop supporting ALEC.
Sofia Peeters' film demonstrates the sexist insults women receive
from strangers as
they walk down the street.
When I see a woman I don't know, and find her pretty, or sexy, or
both, the last thing I would think of is to insult her; the idea is so
strange that it makes no sense to me. (I could dream of chatting her
up and asking her to go out with me, but I would not expect success so
I don't try. I might attempt to find a way to give her a compliment.)
I can't understand why these men would want to insult women who have
never done anything bad to them. However, the facts can't be denied,
and these men's behavior is nasty.
However, being nasty must not be a crime. There are other ways
to teach men to act better.
Most defense witnesses were disallowed
in the Pussy Riot show trial. The defendants are being deprived
of sleep and food.
Colombian employees of General Motors have started a hunger strike at
the US embassy in Bogotá to
protest
the firing of employees who were on sick leave.
The Free Exploitation Treaty between the US and Colombia has provisions
to protect unions in Colombia, but they were not intended to really function.
Senator Robledo, a candidate for president, aims to cancel the Free
Exploitation Treaty. He says it is designed to promote monopoly.
Bahraini protesters, violently repressed by the state, are
turning
towards violence in return.
Maddeningly, the US implores the protesters to remain nonviolent when
attacked, while doing nothing to stop the regime's attacks. By now
most Bahrainis must hate the US.
That might be a long-term vicious US strategy, designed to generate an
excuse for supporting Bahraini government repression in the long term.
US officials have said, of people imprisoned in Guantanamo on false
accusations, "By now they hate us so much that if we let them out they
would seek revenge, so we can never let them out." The same officials
could easily say, a few years from now, "By now the Bahrainis hate us
so much that we can't ever let them get control of their country."
Neither argument is ethically valid.
Gaza's sole electric plant was damaged by Israeli bombs in 2006
and Israel will not allow it to be repaired.
Calling
on the US Congress to stop the arming of human rights abusers.
Julian Assange is right to fear US prosecution,
says
his lawyer.
An oil pipeline leak in Nigeria seems to be due to corrosion,
but Shell
claims it was sabotage. Shell always claims it is sabotage.
Given the terrible harm that Shell's oil extraction has done to
the people who live there, I cannot blame them for sabotaging oil
pipelines. But it seems Shell is lying about them.
US citizens: sign
this petition calling on Obama to make the TSA obey the court
ruling and hold public hearings on body scanners.
A stock broker company may
have destroyed itself through bugs in its automated trading software.
Everyone: sign
this petition asking the UK to pledge not to let Sweden
extradite Assange to the US.
US citizens: thank
the senators that stood up for privacy against the Cybersecurity Bill.
The Cybersecurity bill was defeated in the Senate, but only because
some senators opposed it for
reasons
other than support for Americans' privacy rights.
How the Cybersecurity Act was a surveillance bill in disguise.
US consumers' disgust forced an end to the use of "pink slime"
(fat processed with ammonia) in meat labeled as "ground beef",
but the US corporate media
grasped
at straws to support the meat industry against this pressure.
Pakistan's ambassador to the UK says that US drone attacks
undermine
democracy in Pakistan.
The family of Simon Rigg, killed by UK thugs, demand
criminal
charges against the thugs.
The thugs' lies hurt the feelings of Rigg's family, but worse than
that, they attempted to maintain the thugs' impunity to maraud through
society.
Congress is considering a bill to make patent holders pay the
defense's cost, in the IT field, if
the court rules the suit is frivolous.
This would be a small step in the right direction but would not come near
eliminating the problem of software patents. The most important thing
is not to let this distract us from demanding a full solution.
Do 3D Printers Make Prohibitions Impossible?
I am concerned states will try to ban 3d printers or require them to
contain DRM software.
Scientology's jail-in-an-office
for punishing executives.
Some have been locked up for years.
Anti-NDAA, anti-SOPA Candidates Running for Congress.
US citizens:
tell
your congresscritter to oppose the new attempt to undermine
insurance coverage for contraception.
Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the Green Party candidates for president
and vice president, were arrested in a sit-in protest against Fannie Mae.
The protest was because this US government mortgage lending agency
dishonestly supports foreclosures that could have been avoided.
Monsanto's Quiet Coup: Will Congress Limit Scope and Time for GMO Reviews?
A thug at UC Davis, who fired pepper spray at protesters who were
sitting on the ground, has been fired.
A committee of thugs tried to justify this attack.
Italy criminalizes insults, and a court ruled it is a crime to tell
someone, "You don't have the balls."
Whether this particular statement should be a crime is a minor
detail of a larger wrong. Insults must not be a crime.
Pretending that the threat to democracy in Latin America is not
US-sponsored coups but rather elected and popular leftist leaders.
Thugs in Kenya shut down an exhibit of photos that makes politicians
uncomfortable.
Craigslist makes users sign away exclusive rights to their ads,
meaning they are not allowed to post the same ad anywhere else.
It might be difficult for the same person to advertise a similar thing
anywhere else, ever.
I suggest refusing to accept those conditions and going elsewhere.
Global heating is damaging homes and hunting grounds in Greenland, but
now there is an opportunity for mining that could poison the
Greenlanders' land, water and society.
Business-friendly "neogreens" repackage
the comfortable but doubtful message that technology will save us,
so we need not take any strong measures to limit global heating.
I disagree with the article's suggestion too, however.
We need to take measures at the level of entire countries
if we are to alter our current path to disaster.
Arctic sea ice is melting at a record level, and a study determined
that the long-term decrease in sea ice is mainly
due to human activity.
The US is considering a law to forbid "American" airlines to pay
Europe's carbon emission tax.
If the US passes this law, Europe should respond that "American"
airlines are welcome to stop flying to Europe if they won't pay the
tax. However, Americans should not net things go so far. This is a
great opportunity to condemn the politicians who have sold their
support to the airlines, and bring global heating front and center.
A well-known band in Finland told people how to get around filters that block
access to the Pirate Bay.
It is too bad that they repeated the propaganda term "piracy", and
that they suggested that "selling music with little friction" would
make things ok. I don't think it ok to make people identify
themselves to get a copy of a record, or to make them sign license
contracts for copies, or force them to use nonfree software, as
music-screaming services such as Spotify do. Out, out, damned
Spotify!
US estimates of the cost of cybercrime are not based on facts.
I'm sure a lot of the supposed cost comes from when Chinese spy on
trade secrets of "US" companies. For Americans in the 99%, this is
not a loss for us. The idea that we Americans should care about the
success of "US" companies is based on the suppositions that "US"
manufacturing companies would employ Americans and pay taxes to the US
government and states. Neither one is true any more. Why should we
care whether the company that manufactures goods in China is "American"
or "Chinese"?
The new French government has decided not to implement a law that provides
for filtering the Internet — administratively,
without a court decision.
However, even a court decision can't justify filtering the Internet.
The Senate and the House disagree about whether to extend part or all
of Dubya's misguided tax cuts.
If they continue to disagree, those tax cuts will expire entirely,
which is the best thing to do with them. However, I fear both parties
are sufficiently controlled by the rich that they will find some
compromise. Perhaps Republicans in the House will practice obstructionism
and the Democrats will surrender to it as they generally do.
Over The Last Nine Years, Bush Tax Cuts Have Delivered $1 Million In
Tax Breaks To The Average Millionaire.
The Federal Reserve is aiming to keep inflation low, which is good for
creditors (mostly the rich) and bad for debtors (most Americans).
For the past few years, the Federal Reserve set interests rates very
low with the aim of boosting business. It may have increased the
profits of some business, but if so, that did most Americans no good;
the business owners pocketed it. Only deficit spending can get
America back to work. The deficit will be somewhat less if we raise
taxes on the rich and on businesses.
US citizens: phone the EPA say, don't let Shell get away with
disregarding environmental safety regulations in order to imperil
the Arctic and our atmosphere.
The UK government overrode its freedom of information law to conceal
a discussion between Dubya and B'liar about invading Iraq.
An Israeli soldier explains that the purpose of checkpoints, often plopped
down on roads in Palestine, is to
be unpredictable, so that Palestinians
cannot predict what they need to do in order to carry out their lives.
It hurts the soldiers in their humanity, but it hurts the Palestinians
much more.
Trying to help Palestinians through "positive investment" is futile
because Israel systematically prevents
the Palestinian economy from succeeding. Thus, the only way to
make a Palestinian economy possible is by putting pressure on Israel.
European pressure for Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid
projects in the majority of the West Bank territory.
Israel's handling of Area C qualifies as ethnic cleansing because it
is meant to oppress Palestinians to the point where they will flee.
Israel's attacks against domestic political opposition and
international aid organizations are both symptoms of the same disease.
In Silwan, adjoining the old city of Jerusalem (and, I suspect,
illegally annexed by Israel to Jerusalem), Israel uses every pretext
to destroy houses and confiscate land. The inhabitants
resist
stubbornly.
Each Israeli "settler" (colonist) gets 70 times as much water
a Palestinian.
Avoid drawing irrational lessons from the Aurora shootings:
being in a movie theater is less dangerous than driving to one.
Comparison of videos reveals a police provocateur in Anaheim protests.
Senator Wyden was given permission by executive agencies to make short
cryptic statements about NSA abuses, but not to tell us any details.
If he did, he would lose his security clearance.
US Farmers Urge Obama Administration to Suspend Ethanol Quota Amid Drought
The use of corn to make ethanol has always been foolish and harmful.
New US-funded projects in Afghanistan, intended to build support for Karzai's
government, have mostly not even got started.
I doubt they would achieve the intended result even if they were
completed. It takes more than an electric grid to convince people
to be loyal to a corrupt state.
The US Senate is considering harsher sanctions on Iran, but their effect
would fall mainly on the Iranian people, not on the tyrannical regime.
If the US were serious about uranium negotiations, it would offer to
terminate the existing sanctions in exchange for sufficient
commitments about nuclear fuel enrichment.
North Korea's agriculture has been repeatedly devastated by floods
and droughts.
Is this global heating at work? The fact that extreme weather became
common in the 90s suggests so.
Twitter has not fully explained why it suspended Guy Adams' account.
Although Twitter seems to be fairly well committed to freedom of
speech and to privacy, it is strange for questions about what hundreds
of millions of people in general can say to be decided by a company.
It makes a difference that there are so many users. If Twitter had
100,000 users, I would see no harm in its making and enforcing
whatever rules it might prefer.
The US media discuss Romney's distorted version of an Obama quote
without
caring what Obama really said.
The Twitter user who insulted athlete Daley went on to make real
threats. I think those threats justify legal action against him,
in a way that mere opinion would not.
I disagree with the article on one important background point. The
article suggests that limits to freedom of speech are valid as a
matter of law, as if any limits that some government chose to impose
would therefore be valid.
I think that the limits on freedom of speech are an ethical question.
The UK government restricts freedom of speech too much already, which
is why it was so plausible to think the state was trying to go even
further.
10 questions to ask Romney about his own foreign policy.
I too wonder why Obama is so popular outside the US. People don't
seem to be aware that he supports torture, assassination and
right-wing economic policies. Of course, Romney would be worse.
We need Jill Stein for president.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
telling Romney the basic facts of the
occupation of Palestine.
US citizens: support
offshore wind power in the Atlantic.
US citizens:
oppose
the abortion ban for Washington DC
that would threaten women's lives.
US citizens: tell your senators
to amend the cybersecurity bill
and vote against it.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Biggest New Spying Program You've Probably Never Heard Of.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending
arms to Syrian rebels.
Christians in Syria are fighting for Assad, because they fear
persecution by Islamist rebels.
Congress Wants to See Obama's "License to Kill";
but if they get it, they won't
be allowed to show it to you.
Romney calls the Arab Spring revolutions' governments enemies.
The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to
attack
whistleblowers and journalism.
Predatory privatization takes advantage of governments with
budget problems to do
permanent
damage to the state and the people.
Americans: Don't forget all the harm that Justice Roberts has done.
Then there's Scalia.
Global heating is causing bigger snow and rainfalls.
Chinese opposition to pollution is turning
nationalist, since one polluting business is owned by a Japanese
company.
Corporations have no loyalty to countries. Whether a company
is Japanese, Chinese, or American makes no difference to how
it would try to treat us.
South Africa is investigating journalists who are trying
to cover a giant arms sale scandal.
A Malaysian court endorsed
the arrest of a dissident cartoonist.
Malaysia does not respect freedom of speech, or religious freedom
(Muslims are forbidden to stop being Muslims).
Many journalists have been prosecuted in Turkey for writing
about human rights violations by the state.
A Russian protest blogger faces criminal charges that are
apparently
fabricated for political reasons.
Twitter reinstated the journalist's account, but will it own up to
the deeper implications
of this event?
Olympic games athletes complain,
"I am an investment vehicle and you're not letting my investors
profit."
Why should we care about a dispute among the investors in the
Olympics? All of them profiting at public expense, while imposing
surveillance and harsh laws. Let's cancel the whole thing.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Shareholder Protection
Act, which would require large companies to have shareholders vote on
any political activity. Also send them email through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
A Canadian government report labeled Greenpeace as radical and dangerous.
Actually it is the Canadian government which is radical, and its plans
are very dangerous. The collaboration of the US government in the
planet-roaster pipeline makes the plan even more dangerous.
Practices such as torture, assassination and mass surveillance, that
still seemed outrageous in US politics just a decade ago, have become
accepted.
March of Folly: The Debate We're Not Having and What it Costs Us
I take issue with one final point. If we stumble foolishly into world
disaster, only some of us will deserve it, but we will all get it.
Most married women in Gaza suffer violence from their husbands, and
most of them don't dare ask for help because they might be killed.
Add Argentina To The List Of Countries Looking To Censor The Internet
(For The Children, Of Course).
The UK hits a new low in human rights as a teenager is arrested
for expressing a harsh opinion on Twitter.
Interviews
with al Qa'ida fighters in Syria.
They could be worse than Assad.
Apple censors iTunes ebooks — banning all mention of Amazon.
People should not do business with Amazon, which mistreats authors,
publishers, its workers, and its customers. Ms Lisle's presupposition
that the goal of success is all that matters is not admirable.
However, that doesn't justify censorship.
Of course, publishing in iTunes was already bad for other reasons,
such as DRM, and requiring users to use nonfree software.
Rich executives are reportedly planning to
push Congress
to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in December.
Everyone: call on NBC to stop presenting war as a sport
and start showing what war does to real people.
Bloomberg has a campaign to encourage breastfeeding by making mothers
explicitly ask for baby formula in hospitals.
The claim that this tramples the mothers' freedom seems mistaken to
me, since they can still get the formula if they ask.
Twitter blocked a journalist's account, apparently for criticizing
NBC's coverage of the Olympics, at the request of NBC. Twitter's false excuse is no excuse.
This journalist was criticizing a minor problem of convenience,
and ignoring the bigger wrongs of the Olympics,
but that doesn't excuse censoring him.
US citizens:
oppose
CISPA's surveillance provisions in the senate.
The US gives churches many kinds of preferential treatment.
Bloomberg Sues to Keep NY Wages Low.
US citizens:
ask
Trader Joe's
to take a stand against indiscriminate
use of antibiotics in cattle.
Why The NSA Can't Be Trusted to Run U.S. Cybersecurity Programs.
The NSA director was being deceptive in claiming that the NSA doesn't
collect files on Americans. This according to whistleblower William
Binney, who quit because he saw the NSA wanted to spy on "everybody in
the country".
Austero-Erotic
Fantasies For The Elites, Terror For Everyone Else
The Pentagon wants to stop production of Abrams tanks for some years,
but the manufacturer's lobby is so strong that this can't be done.
This is a clear example of corporate domination of the state.
Frackers are corrupting professors to conclude academically that
fracking is safe.
Banksters Hijack Microfinance.
Privatization: The Big Joke That Isn't Funny.
At
For-Profit Colleges, It's All About Profits, Not Students.
London thugs besieged a monthly group of bicycle riders for hours,
then arrested them all.
Romania's election to remove the president from office because the total
number of votes was insufficient.
An acquaintance in Romania told me that the number of voters in Romania
has decreased greatly due to emigration since the last census,
which meant that the referendum needed considerably more than half
the current number of voters to be valid.
Sports drinks are "solutions" to a fictitious problem
invented by the companies that sell them.
Studies found there's no need to drink before you exercise;
it is better to drink as much as your thirst suggests. And water
is better for you than the sports drinks with their calories.
US medical insurance companies foist excessive
"wellness programs" on customers.
Of course, some amount of checkups and preventive medicine is useful
and effective. The right amount of this is not zero. But there's no need
for it to be monthly.
The part of the article's argument that I don't follow is why they
would rather spend money this way than on needed medical procedures.
The money that rich Americans have evaded taxes on
would cover the whole national debt.
People who don't use Facebook may face
suspicion
and accusations.
A hoax New York Times op-ed defending Wikileaks is reported to be
partly
the work of Wikileaks itself.
I think such hoaxes are fun, but Wikileaks and its leaders should steer
clear of participating in them.
US citizens:
stand
with the city of Oakland
in demanding that Goldman
Sachs stop squeezing money out of Oakland or forfeit Oakland's business.
The banksters' bailouts and tolerated frauds means that the idea of
private companies in a free market does not apply to them. If they
can go to the state to demand money and the state dare not refuse,
this should work the other way, too.
The money the Pirate Bay defendants were ordered to pay the music
factories to "compensate artists"
won't
go to any artists. Only to the war on sharing.
Olympian dishonesty:
bringing
in soldiers to fill empty seats, just to avoid embarrassment.
A new study, led by one of the few climate scientists who was
skeptical about global heating, found
1.5C of heating since 1800, with human activity as the apparent
cause.
Washington's law to punish sites that contain ads for child
prostitutes (even without knowing that that's what they are) has been
blocked
as possibly unconstitutional.
Punishing web sites is weak as well as unjust. At most it would make
the pimps find another way to advertise. If a state really wants to
put a stop to child prostitution, a few undercover investigators
pretending to be clients could actually do it.
Do tiger farms
hurt or help conservation of tigers?
Tiger poaching is organized crime. If poaching a tiger is cheaper
than raising a tiger, the poaching will continue. If the poaching is
fought strongly enough to make it more expensive, everyone will decide
to raise tigers instead. But I don't know how far away that point is.
I wonder whether fake tiger wine can be made convincing. Why would
a criminal use a real tiger if it is cheaper to use a fake?
Privatized US prisons hire illegal immigrants for
a dollar a day.
US statistics show the top 1% have an increasing share of the national
income, but show no increase in their share of the total wealth. How
can that be? Because they
put
their increased wealth into offshore tax havens.
Syrian War of Lies and Hypocrisy
A summary of Google's methods of surveillance, or at least
a
few hundred of them.
US citizens: tell the SEC to expose publicly traded corporations'
political spending.
As the US poverty rate approaches the highest since 1965 (when LBJ's
social programs started to reduce it), Republicans are trying their
best to make poverty even harder to survive.
Racist
motivation behind Arizona's "show your papers" law revealed.
Jurors in a New Jersey trial will hear testimony about the fallibility
of human memory.
If you believe you saw your brother, you wouldn't make a mistake about
that. But if you saw a stranger, and believe he is someone you later
came to know, you have a good chance of being mistaken.
Greenland melting events have occurred every 150 years or so, but with
temperatures high enough to feel warm to a human, Greenland sees lots
of melting every year.
The drought in the US midwest has got worse and spread.
Global heating created the likelihood for the lack of rain, and contributed
to the strength of the heat.
10 African countries have accepted aid to fight poaching (of
elephants, mainly).
Can elephants survive reasonably well in the wild de-tusked? If they
can, systematically removing live elephants' tusks might be a way to
make poaching unprofitable.
Captain Wilson of Sea Shepherd has fled to avoid extradition to Japan.
In Russia, any women who are musicians can become Pussy Riot,
and the intense persecution of three of them is making Russians recognize
what a tyrant Putin is.
HSBC has a Swiss branch whose business seems to consist of helping
rich in the UK evade taxes.
Harassment by animal rights campaigners is starting to
interfere with breeding lab
animals in the UK.
I defend their right to stand for their views, but I disagree with
their views. I support biological and medical research using animals,
as long as it isn't wasteful.
Tribal governments in Brazil arrested dam engineers for failing to
carry out commitments not to block the tribes' river traffic.
Haitian families, ordered to leave their land with compensation
inadequate to buy other land, fought back with stones against thugs
sent to evict them.
The bodies of the children who were shot by the thugs cannot be found.
Since the thugs tried to deny having killed anyone, I suppose they disposed
of the bodies secretly.
US citizens: call on Obama to work with Russia to take
ICBMs off immediate firing alert.
Corning complained that it was paying too much US taxes, while its
taxes amounted to zero.
John Scalzi, self-made man, writes about how government aid as well
as private assistance was vital for him to make a success of his life.
A minister in Norway explains the decision to prosecute Breivik,
right-wing extremist, for his murders through the
normal legal
procedure rather than making an exception of him (such as
assassination or military kangaroo courts a la US).
Violent movies don't make most people violent, but they shape the
expression of some people's insanity in a violent direction.
A Super PAC has been set up to attack politicians who
oppose the abolition of Super PACs.
Super PACs are the result of the Supreme Court's Corporations
United decision and the way to thoroughly override that is with a
constitutional amendment.
A surprising secondary consequence of San Francisco's persecution of
the homeless: they use BART escalators as toilets,
and shit gums up the works.
This inconvenience to BART riders must be added to the much greater
problems imposed on the homeless by a city that wants to chase them
out. But then, most of them wouldn't be homeless if our country were
run to benefit everyone. The people now homeless would be better off,
and so would the local merchants who regard them as unsightly
inconveniences to business. Only the 1% would have less.
Three states will vote in November on referendums to legalize marijuana.
In Colorado the measure has so much support it
can hardly lose.
Ayn Rand's version of Lord of the Rings.
US citizens: sign this petition calling
on Democratic leaders to support the Student Loan Forgiveness Act.
Interviews with Syrian rebels in Aleppo, and with a captured
Shabiha member.
Working while 8 months pregnant hurts the baby as much
as smoking.
Will Republicans with their "family values" try to prosecute women who
work that late in pregnancy?
Will they support providing these mothers-to-be with aid so they can
do without from working that late in pregnancy?
Obama is using the FBI and grand juries to threaten anarchists
in
the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Increased storms due to global heating endangers the ozone layer in
temperate zones, including the US for example. Destroying the ozone later causes more skin cancer, and can
also damage crops.
Since global heating means drought will more often cause crop failures,
this will mean a double blow to US agriculture. Caused principally
by US government policies.
Anti-pollution protests in China forced cancellation of a pipeline to carry
industrial waste.
Chinese are following the path of the US, where the middle class in
1970 recognized that pollution was doing great harm and that clean air
and water were worth quite a lot of expense.
Meanwhile, in Italy, a huge steel plant in Taranto was shut down
because its pollution was found to kill many people in the city.
Paradoxically, workers there demand reopening the plant even as it continues
to poison their city.
I think this reflects the fear that Italians feel due to the euro crisis,
which was inherent in the system behind the euro.
A popular protest movement is trying to overthrow the regime of
"President" Bashir.
This regime has repeatedly visited violence on Sudan.
In Mexico, attacks on journalists are hardly ever prosecuted.
Romney is advocating war with Iran.
I don't think this is a matter of seeking votes from Jews. Most US
Jewish voters are not eager for war and will not like this. Rather,
Romney seeks money from rich right-wing Jews.
Major network TV stations in the 50 largest US markets will have to
identify the purchasers of political ads on line starting next week.
I wonder if the plutocrats will make this ineffective by routing all the
money through shadowy organizations.
London's hydrogen-powered fuel-cell buses have been taken out of service
for the Olympics.
This might be security theater or it might be simple irrational fear.
Making gadgets that can't be repaired causes e-waste and oppresses
their users.
Israel's supreme court restrained a "pilot project" meant to pave
the way for a biometric database.
Israel plans to demolish 8 Palestinian villages to create a new
military training ground.
Here's more information.
Israel has no right to dispossess the inhabitants of occupied territory
under this or any pretext.
US citizens: oppose the Monsanto rider requiring automatic
approval of GMOs.
US citizens: sign this petition for a progressive budget.
US citizens: call on Boehner to remove bigoted Bachmann from
the House Intelligence Committee.
She hasn't got enough of it to qualify anyway.
US citizens: file a comment saying that environmental review
of the Keystone XL planet burner pipeline should take account
of its contribution to global heating.
Uri Avnery: Zionism can't resolve its contradictions because it ceased
to make sense once its goal, to create Israel, was achieved.
China arrested many network users for online fraud,
but it's possible that some of them were only criticizing the state.
It is common for states to lump dissent and political opposition
together with some other kind of crime, including "terrorism".
Even the US does this.
Paul Chambers won an appeal against his conviction for a joke that was
treated by the state as a threat to bomb an airport.
Chambers should not have been prosecuted, but he was foolish —
to conduct a private conversation in the equivalent of a newspaper.
If you are going to post something in a public place, write it for
publication. When you want to have a private conversation, do it
privately, not in Twitter.
California's proposition for labeling GMO foods
pits grassroots activists
against powerful food companies and store companies, and more.
Hua Yong tried to write in his own blood to commemorate the massacre
at Tiananmen Square, and was sent to a labor camp.
The year from July 2011 thru June 2012 is the
warmest July-June year
ever in the US.
The "War on Drugs" has
conclusively failed to make drugs less available,
but it continues to do tremendous harm in the US and other countries.
WIPO is working a treaty for a new monopoly, similar to copyright but
different, that would be handed out to actors in movies but they would
give it to the movie companies.
A study estimates that "stand your ground" laws in 14 states
lead to an extra 500 to 700 gun killings annually, but without
deterring any kind of crime.
Facebook asks its users to provide their entire list of other people's
email addresses.
This by itself is surveillance of those other people, but Facebook uses
it to go further and try to guess the relationships of people who are not
Facebook users.
That information must be worth some money to companies. It is surely
worth money to the secret police of any country that isn't democratic
enough.
However, principal wrong here is not that Facebook can guess which
non-users know you or me. It is that Facebook collects information
from its users about whether they know you or me.
I think we can formulate the principle that any social network that
asks its members for information about other people is abusive.
Facebook makes a practice of telling users to rat on their friends who
use aliases.
I think we can formulate the principle that any social network that
asks its members for information about other people is abusive.
Human rights groups filed a complaint against a French company
accused of helping Assad do surveillance on the Internet.
When will we prosecute the companies that help the US spy on the Internet?
The Michigan senate is considering a bill to harass women who get
abortions (or miscarriages) by requiring them to cremate fetuses and
have funerals for them.
US citizens: sign this petition telling the Secretary of Agriculture
to stop dodging questions about global heating.
Here's more information.
States that extend Medicaid save lives.
Extrapolating these statistics, doing so for the whole US would save
around 25000 lives a year.
More information about the military coverup of corruption at a hospital
in Afghanistan.
What makes this important is that such coverups could be a common
occurrence.
A thousand Vietnamese villagers are protesting at a government
building, demanding return of their land.
The government of Vietnam is a really nasty tyranny. For anyone
to dare protest is unusual.
Senior economists say the Republicans' "jobs package" will do nothing
to create jobs, but will make people sick.
Contact lenses can be used in iris scanners to impersonate people.
I am not going to try to impersonate anyone this way, but I might be
willing to let my irises be scanned if I could make sure this could
not be used to recognize me on the street.
If only I could overcome my terror of anything's touching my eye so as
to insert them.
The possibility of impersonation might be enough to deter governments
from demanding and using iris scans, but this is would only win one
battle against surveillance; it would not win the war.
The Washington DC thug chief established a surprisingly proper policy
about dealing with citizens that record the activities of the thugs.
The next day, a citizen in Washington saw thugs beating up someone on
the street and began to make a recording. A thug grabbed his phone
and stole his memory card.
I suppose these thugs will fabricate some false defense and will all
testify to it.
Explicit orders are evidently not enough to stop thugs from attacking
possible witnesses to their crimes and lies. The only way to stop
them is to punish them for their lies and abuses. When current laws
make it hard to convict them, we must change those laws.
Thousands of protesters surround the studios of a TV channel shown by
documents to have sold slanted coverage to the winning presidential
candidate.
Cuba's president Raul Castro invited the US to negotiations without
preconditions.
The US responded by criticizing Cuba for unjustly arresting dissidents,
disregarding the fact that this injustice is also practiced in the US.
Meanwhile, Castro defended Gaddafi and Assad.
J. William Leonard, who was in charge of government secrecy for Dubya,
says the government's system of secrecy is "dysfunctional".
The article shows how right he is. Meanwhile, the US government still
refuses to declassify the memos published by Wikileaks. It can't succeed
in denying that they are accurate, since it admits this by prosecuting
Bradley Manning.
Obama declared that Colombia had taken required steps to protect union
organizers, but Colombian unionists say it's false, and that murders
of union organizers there are increasing.
In effect, Obama treated these requirements as an excuse to get
an unjust treaty ratified, not as a real goal.
All "free trade" treaties since the one that created the WTO attack
democracy and therefore must be abolished in order to restore
democracy.
The world-wide boycott of Coca Cola Company started because of its use of paramilitary terrorists to murder
union organizers. The most recent murder was this year.
State legislators ask companies to pay for their travel
by laundering the money through ALEC.
Adidas signed a contract promising to apply a code of conduct to its
suppliers, and then hoped to forget it. But the University of
Wisconsin-Madison has gone to court to insist.
The Olympic Games leave surveillance systems in their wake, time and
again, and this threatens to occur in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Comparing Norway's response to terrorism with the US's response.
The September 11 attacks, even if not arranged partly by the
Bush regime, gave Dubya an opportunity to attack Americans' freedom in
a way he clearly wanted to do.
Catholic extremists say they will renew their sectarian violence in
Northern Ireland.
I have never understood why people who claim to be progressive
sympathize with these people. Why should the Catholic minority
have power there anyway?
Israel's colonization of Palestinian territory is accelerating;
the numbers have doubled in the past 12 years.
Ecuadorian officials say that both the UK and Sweden have been
unwilling to guarantee that Julian Assange would not be handed over to
the US.
The UK could insist Sweden not send Assange to the US, and refuses to
do so. This is more confirmation that they plan exactly that. The
quoted statements from UK officials, which pretend to reassure while
refusing to confront the issue, demonstrate bad faith.
Joseph Stiglitz warns Mozambique not to follow the IMF's devastating
advice.
The UN says US drones in Somalia are endangering air traffic and
violating the US arms embargo.
Al Qa'ida is worming its way into the Syrian rebels, joining Assad in
trying to make the conflict a sectarian one.
The US has 55,000 homeless female veterans.
I would guess there are half a million homeless male veterans.
Whichever the sex, this is a symptom of the US' failure to care for
people who are weak, hurt or unlucky.
Judge Garzon's task will be to aid Assange's asylum request.
The study of the New York Thug Department concludes that it violated
international human rights standards, and calls for the state to
prosecute thugs.
An extensive study accuses the New York Thug Department of persistently
attacking Occupy Wall Street protesters and journalists with unjustified
force and bogus arrests.
In effect, these thugs understood that their mission was to repress
democracy.
It's not a crisis in Europe, it's extortion.
This is to correct the previous political note about the Angry Syrians
game.
I presumed initially that the game was proprietary, because the Apple Store
does not allow any free software. However, the developer has released
it as free software. I corrected the note to reflect this.
Microsoft has changed Skype to make it easier for states to snoop on users.
Arguing that the boycott and divestment movement should target the
Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara as well as the Israeli
occupation of Palestine.
A court in Australia ruled in favor of the right to protest in a
privatized former public space, but only because video proved
the thugs were lying.
If the thugs are not punished, they might attack another protest
and hope there will be no video to contradict them that time.
Loss of Arctic sea ice "70% man-made" — at least.
Although Obama bows down to the banksters most of the time, Barclays banksters
endorse Romney with their cash.
A US general blocked an investigation into Afghan corruption because
the official in control of it was his personal friend.
Spain's right-wing government plans to ban abortion — even of
malformed fetuses.
Many Spanish women will be able to go to France or Portugal to get an
abortion, but since a quarter of the country is unemployed, they may
have to go there by hitchhiking.
Women forced to bear malformed fetuses should save them to give them
to the deputies responsible during their public appearances.
Big Pharma and the medical insurance companies are paying for large ad
campaigns against senators that support Obama's health care plan.
In the case of Big Pharma, this is interesting because Obama got their
"support" by giving them what they wanted at the outset.
As for the medical insurance companies, it is interesting is that even
the requirement for people to buy insurance from them is not enough to
make them accept being required to cover people despite pre-existing
conditions.
The US should abolish the private insurance business by adopting a
Canadian-style national health care system, and applaud as those
business lose everything.
Chicago thugs systematically tortured people into making false
confessions. Some spent many years in prison for crimes they did not
commit.
The city has paid $50 million in settlements to them.
Some of the thugs are in prison.
Facebook apps have access to the user's information — and the
user's ffiends' information, too. Thus, if you make the mistake of
using Facebook, even if you let a company access your data, any of your
ffiends can give the company access to your data.
(Although Facebook uses the term "friends", that is an abuse of
language; a user's "friends" are often not really friends, and being
"friends" on Facebook is not the way to treat a friend anyway.
Therefore I propose the replacement term "ffiends", replacing the "r"
with the "f" of Facebook.)
The major record companies' anti-listener attack organization, the
IFPI, aims to impose Internet filtering around the world.
Rich UK music stars demand a more aggressive war on music fans.
The reason these people have a financial interest in the matter is
that they are among the few artists who profit substantially from the
current system. In fact, they are already rich, but not satisfied.
The musicians that we ought to support more won't get much from this
war.
I think this calls for a boycott of those stars' music products.
Would someone like to work on organizing and promoting the boycott?
Citizens of the EU: call for a network neutrality law in the EU
rather than yet another consultation.
About 500 days after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, workers
are starting to remove some of the spent fuel from the storage pools.
Another earthquake and tsunami could happen at any time, so it is
crucial to make sure that the systems now in use to prevent further
disaster are protected from them. Also that these systems are
redundant and that plenty of fuel is available to generate
electricity. I don't know if this has been considered.
The House of Representatives passed a bill to publish an audit of the
Federal Reserve annually.
Unless there is some unobvious problem with this, it seems like a good
idea to me.
A Nasty TSA "Pilot Program".
On July 24 I flew out of Logan Airport and encountered a TSA "pilot
program" which seems to consist of asking every traveller questions
about the purpose of travel. We were warned that if we did not answer
we would be subjected to "extra security checks".
The information I was asked for is public knowledge — I was
travelling to give speeches — so I did not refuse to answer.
However, after the TSA agents felt me up (I refuse to go through X-ray
scanners because they are potentially dangerous),
I asked what the "extra security checks" consist of. I was told they
would feel me up (as had just happened anyway) and look through my
hand baggage.
In other words, the TSA is going to pressure Americans into giving
information about their activities on pain of being harassed.
In the 1930s, during a previous great drought exacerbated by the
banks, the US took effective action, with programs to help farmers
protect the soil and to regulate the banks.
When today's business-subservient officials try to pretend that the
only solution would be a rain dance, they are trying to distract us
from the government's failure to regulate the banks and stop global
heating.
A retired former Citigroup CEO advocated on CBS TV the breakup of the
big banks and restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act.
That the hosts of the show treated this as radical and shocking,
inviting him repeatedly to pull back to a position more approved by
Wall Street, bespeaks their own bias.
NSA Whistleblowers: They're Spying on 'the Entire Country'.
The latest right-wing Big Lie is that the Internet was developed by
private companies.
I was there too. The ARPANET was so called because it was funded by
ARPA (part of the Department of Defense). The MIT AI Lab was funded,
in the 1970s, mainly by ARPA. This included my work, such as the
development of the original Emacs editor, infrastructure that helped
many other projects both public and private.
Many of the hackers at the AI Lab were bothered by this funding, but
it seemed to me that funding from corporations was likely to have more
harmful result.
Note that the Wall Street Journal and Faux News, which are both
spreading this lie, are both owned by Rupert Murdoch's company.
The larger lie, that business executives are personally 100%
responsible for the success of their businesses, is false because they
depended on the society around them. But that's only the secondary
falsehood. The primary one is that the workers surely made some
contribution.
The right-wing denies both contributions to excuse the policy it
wants: for the executives and owners to take essentially all the
income, giving a pittance to the workers and nothing to society.
An Maoist political party, Movadef, challenges the pro-corporate
policy of the government of Peru.
Opposition says it will morph into a guerrilla movement, but I think
this is calumny. A political party is unlikely to start a violent
conflict. The state might start one, though.
The government of Peru declared an emergency in order to repress
people who want to protect their water supply from an international
mining company that the government supports. If Movadef organizes
people for nonviolent resistance to mines, crushing them with violence
would be the natural next move for the state. Then it might find the
people respond with violence. But there is no reason why they would
have to use tactics like those of Shining Path.
Judge Garzon will join Assange's defense team.
One thing not clear in this article is what case Garzon might work on.
Assange has already made all the possible appeals in the UK, and as I
understand it, that means there is no case left. If Ecuador grants
him asylum, there may never be one.
The UK's ridiculous budget cuts have resulted in the deepening
recession predicted by everyone whose eyes were not closed.
It looks like the US has effectively gutted the arms trade treaty.
This is easy to do in a negotiation based on unanimous consent. The
only check against it is for some state to say, "You have ruined this,
so we will cancel it entirely rather than pretend it is not ruined."
The Free Syrian Army, expanded by Syrian refugees returning,
now controls some regions of Syria.
This means that military support to the rebels could be feasible.
However, it is split by fundamental divisions, including that between
secularists and Islamist extremists.
The new head of the World Bank sets the goal of eliminating abject
poverty in the world.
It is a noble goal and deserves cooperation, but I fear that the
governments that control the World Bank will not permit it.
Abuse online may repel us, but it shouldn't be a crime.
The Greenland ice sheet melted faster this month than ever before.
US citizens: call for an increase in the US minimum wage.
US right-wing Christians are working in Africa to promote attacks
against homosexuals and abortion rights.
Claims that Hezbollah (backed by Iran) carried out the bus bombing in
Bulgaria rest on supposed similarity to a 1994 bombing in Argentina.
However, the assertions about that bombing are questionable, making
the comparison inconclusive.
It's not impossible that Iran is responsible. That tyrannical regime
is guilty of numerous atrocities, as well as blatant lies and
injustice, against people in Iran and elsewhere.
But there are others in the world that are equally unscrupulous, and
the West has a long history of pinning the responsibility for bombings
on suspects chosen for political reasons. Consider for instance the
Pan Am flight bombed over Lockerbie in Scotland: a Libyan man was
convicted and imprisoned of this, but always maintained he was
innocent; other evidence suggests Hafez al-Assad (father of the
current tyrant of Syria) was responsible, and the west blamed Gaddafi
for political reasons and fabricated evidence.
A unit commander in the Afghan government thugs defected to the Taliban
with some of the men in his unit.
Of 2000 peaceful protesters in Tel Aviv, thugs selected one to arrest,
apparently because he was a Bedouin.
A committee hand-picked by Netanyahu reached the absurd conclusion
that there is no occupation of Palestine. Is this preparation
for a huge annexation?
The committee's report pulls the rug from under the government's claim
that the 45-year-long occupation is "temporary" and that oppressive
measures are for "security".
US citizens: phone your senators to support two constitutional amendments:
one to say that human rights do not apply to corporations, another to allow
regulation of campaign spending.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Shortly after EU foreign ministers rebuked Israel's occupation
policies, murmuring about possible sanctions, they are about to offer
Israel increased access to European markets.
Israel demolished a 100-year-old Palestinian building in Jerusalem on
the grounds it was built without a permit.
Of course, Israel never gives Palestinians permits to
build. This demolition compounds the injustice, and reveals the
true aim of the occupation policies: slow ethnic cleansing.
Indeed, that's what Israel has achieved in a large part of the West
Bank (the part under direct Israeli control).
US citizens: sign
this petition to Obama and Romney to ban the sale of assault weapons
(i.e., rapid-fire repeating rifles).
An alliance of activist groups say that the thugs
have systematically damaged the freedom to protest in the UK.
They condemn the unjust thug tactics, including persistent spying on
dissidents, pre-emptive arrests, and besieging protests.
The article does not mention the law against "aggravated trespass",
whose purpose was simply to criminalize many kinds of protests,
but that too plays a part in the destruction of democracy in the UK.
A journalist reports
on a visit to Syrian rebels near the Turkish border.
The US and Israel blame Iran for the suicide
attack in Bulgaria, but offer no evidence for the accusation
The US and Iran might stumble into a hot war.
Soleimani Nia has been imprisoned in Iran, not for doing anything, but
for refusing to put his technical skills at the disposal of the
tyrants.
Olympics Labor Campaign Aims for Sweat-Free Games.
Anaheim residents continue their protest over a killing by thugs,
despite renewed violence by the thugs.
A 5-year-old was hit in the eye with a "rubber" bullet (I think they
are steel coated by rubber). A thug dog bit some of the protesters,
and the thugs said it got loose by accident. You can't trust what
thugs say about what happened at a protest; they have practiced lying
so much that it looks natural.
India is judged the worst of the G20 countries to be a woman in.
Ethanol Subsidies: Even Stupider Than We Thought.
US courts approve tens of thousands of phone and email surveillance
requests a year, based on very weak criteria, and the targets are
almost never informed they were surveilled.
A book printed in disappearing ink teaches people what's wrong with
ebooks today.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the Let Reckless
Corporations Do Whatever They Want Act, HR 4078.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Don't Regulate the Banks, Nationalize Them.
A Georgia man got a stay of execution at the last minute for being retarded.
The death penalty is wrong in general, and should be abolished, but for the life of me I can't understand why anyone thinks
that mental retardation makes any difference to the issue.
The US government accuses Bradley Manning of releasing real diplomatic cables
but refuses in court to acknowledge them as real.
Russian human rights activists are considering defying Putin's
new restrictions.
US citizens: tell Attorney General Holder to stop attacking
state-authorized medical marijuana dispensaries.
Assad threatened to use chemical and biological weapons if Syria faces
"external aggression".
Since Assad also says that the rebels are "external aggression", this
does not rule out using chemical weapons against rebels.
It seems clear that the rebels are almost entirely Syrians, but they
do seem to have received arms from Islamic extremist states such as
Saudi Arabia.
Staff at several Murdoch newspapers are accused of bribing officials
to get information.
Everyone: sign this petition on behalf of Sanal Edamaruku.
Turning vacant lots into gardens reduces violence as well as producing
fresh local food.
A system that commits atrocities is generally supported and implemented
by careerists whose goal is only personal success within the system.
Some referred to Dubya as King George, but Obama is King John.
Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá died in a car crash.
Payá attempted to invoke a clause in the Cuban constitution
which allows a certain number of citizens to demand a referendum. His
petition was for a referendum to establish certain basic human rights.
Although he submitted far more than the required number of signatures,
the state never held the referendum.
He appreciated some of the achievements of the Cuban revolution,
and did not seek to turn Cuba into a US-dominated tyranny such as
it was before Castro.
Your Corporate Democracy, according to The Invisible Hand.
The Yes Men tackle Shell and drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
US citizens: tell Congress not to make a loophole in the Volcker Rule.
Documents show that UK thugs did massive spying on peaceful dissidents at
the Glastonbury festival in 2009.
Cargill buys palm oil grown in plantations made by chopping down
forests where Orangutans live.
US Expands Failing Drug War to Africa.
The Big Spill combined with weather to kill lots of dolphins in the
Gulf of Mexico.
Global heating has enabled bacteria that infect humans to spread in the ocean
into temperate areas.
Is the WWF too close with industry?
This is a tricky issue, because both sides could be sincerely trying
to serve the same cause. WWF leaders surely think its deals with
business are inadequate, yet they could believe (perhaps rightly) that
these are the best deals it can get and better than no deal.
At least, they are better in the short term. They leave out the
question of whether endorsing a company that has gone part way towards
protecting wildlife is undermining the goal. If a company does only a
quarter of what it ought to do, maybe it should get only a quarter
approval.
Many well-known US companies fund right-wing attack ads. Take a look, and don't buy from them.
Gun interests have spent almost $100 million to buy congressional opposition
to gun control, since the late 90s.
Some Republicans who voted against the DISCLOSE act got a million or more
in campaign help from unidentified companies.
Copyright is starving Wikipedia for photos.
Guerrilla war is spreading in Syria's cities.
The US drought continues and will probably lead to very high food prices
next winter. I hope this wakes up Americans to the danger we are causing.
Journalists in Japan have been arrested for publishing how to copy a DVD.
A 2009 UN study estimated that global heating killed 300,000 people per year
and its effects cost $125 billion per year.
I expect they have both gone up tremendously since then.
The Liebor scandal, like many others, results from the systemic
effects of deregulation.
The article argues for breaking up the large banks and privatizing
some. I agree, but since part of the problem comes from complexity,
we need to simplify the system also. The obvious way to do that is to
ban most kinds of derivatives.
Savannah Dietrich believed her rapists were being let off lightly in court,
so she posted a statement about this and now faces jail herself.
Dietrich felt ashamed of having been raped, and afraid someone would
find out. That makes no moral sense — she was the victim, not
the perpetrator. She ought to feel somewhat foolish for drinking too
much, but I don't think it was about that. Because of this
unjustified shame, she suffered a second time, gratuitously. Who
taught her to feel this way? Anyway, at least she has overcome this
and is no longer ashamed to have been attacked.
Modern medicine, together with the obsession to use it to the last
gasp, implies years of dementia for a considerable fraction of the
population. The victim suffers for some years, and when he is too
demented to notice any more, it is the relatives' turn to suffer.
A change in the perspective of doctors would improve things, as the
article makes clear. They should stop encouraging people to bet on
unlikely chances and to grasp for more "life" even if it's demented.
But most important would be a change in the perspective of the
relatives.
When my father was demented, I visited him once. He was still able to
recognize me, just barely, and have very limited conversation, but he
would not remember the visit the next day. I concluded that my father
was really dead, even though his corpse could still walk and talk a
little. Visiting him was a pointless sacrifice; like any dead person,
he was beyond the possibility of doing anything for him. So I decided
not to see him again. If asked to take care of his corpse every day,
I would have flatly refused.
Why do many people go to such lengths to care for a demented parent
who is hardly even aware of them? There is unwillingness to face the
facts of loss: they don't recognize that their sacrifice is pointless,
because they can't bring themselves to accept that the person they
loved is dead. The breathing, defecating "living" corpse
superficially resembles that parent, and looks so lifelike that they
can believe that person is still alive. (This calls to mind the
ancient Egyptian mummification of corpses.) Even when they start to
recognize that the labor is pointless, they have trouble feeling
completely certain.
I am sorry for their loss, because anyone's death is a great loss, but
they need to face the facts and stop clinging to the corpse. It's not
a disloyalty to recognize that someone you loved is dead, and not a
disloyalty to let the corpse be buried. You can remember the
deceased, and honor that memory, in other ways.
London faces a shortage of school places due to population growth.
Instead of planning for growth, the government should plan to
discourage births.
Tax havens may store 13 trillion dollars in assets.
This leads to underestimates of economic inequality. The tax loss to
debtor countries could be enough to get them out of debt.
A TEPCO subcontractor told workers to cover their radiation dosimiters
with lead so as to falsely report their exposure.
What is amazing is that some of them obeyed this order, which means
they risked damage to their health. They must have felt very
intimidated by the employer.
BP's latest advertising campaign presents it as the "spirit of the
Gulf [of Mexico]".
Maybe this signifies that food in the Gulf Coast today contains a
little toxic something from a BP oil well.
A right-wing American moved to Canada and learned to appreciate
universal health care.
I must denounce her opposition to abortion. While abortion is no
pleasure, it does less harm on the average (to the woman or the world)
than having a baby. And if you have a baby today, it will reach
adulthood in a world probably entering disaster.
The War on Drugs is driving the spread of HIV.
The Colorado shooting spree demonstrates that the US needs better gun
control.
This is not so much to prevent shooting sprees like this one, since
they amount to few deaths in the US (less than 100 a year, I think).
Rather, it is to prevent all the other shootings, which kill some
30,000 people a year in the US (based on the statistics in this
article). Stricter gun control laws could put a dent in that.
One of Shell's Arctic drilling ships came loose from its anchor
in harbor, and drifted onto the beach.
Following the normal behavior pattern of those that think they enjoy
impunity, Shell seems to have subsequently tried to deny part of the
events.
This accident may not indicate Shell was particularly careless; such
accidents do happen with ships. Either way, it shows that Shell's
drilling plans are dangerous. Shell should not be allowed to drill in
the Arctic Ocean, and neither should any other company.
Meanwhile, every ship can be put out of action due to accidents,
especially in bad sea conditions. Thus, having just one ship
to deal with oil spills, even if it is properly equipped and totally
up to spec, is inherently inadequate.
(That's even assuming that we had reliable methods for dealing with
spills from undersea oil wells, which we do not.)
Massive fraud by banks was enabled by promotion of the regulators
who were supposed to stop it.
Lie-bor and other scams too have resulted in a wave of lawsuits and
criminal investigations. But we must look beyond the specific crimes
and correct the conditions that bred them.
Miners in West Virginia revolted in 1920 against a corporate-state
alliance that enslaved them and worked them to death.
The miners had every moral right to kill the "gun thugs" who had
killed so many of them, and to resist the state's forces when those
came to support the corporations. This conclusion simply applies the
principles stated in the US Declaration of Independence.
However, what achieved victory — for a few decades — was
not shooting, but voting for candidates who were enthusiastically on
the side of the many against the rich. Candidates determined to
defeat oppression rather than make excuses for it. Candidates
nothing like Romney or Obama.
Gratuitous cruelty is rampant in the US border patrol. These thugs
regularly torture illegal immigrants, sometimes to death, and
enjoy total impunity.
The true spirit of cruelty is the destruction of the water bottles
that No More Deaths leaves so that border crossers won't die of
thirst.
I don't criticize the policy of not allowing everyone into the US (or
whatever country). That is not the issue here.
The fossil fuel companies are the world's public enemy number one.
The present .8C of global heating has a bigger effect than was
predicted, casting doubt on whether 2C of heating would cause
disaster. But the world is on track to burn enough CO2 to reach 2C of
heating in just 16 years.
This means I might actually survive to be caught up in the disaster of
global heating. And if you are young, you will almost surely see that
disaster, unless you manage to defeat the fossil fuel industry soon.
Iceberg Twice Manhattan's Size Breaks Off Greenland Glacier.
This ice was floating, so its subsequent melting won't change sea
level. But the faster flow of the glacier will add to sea level rise
Romney's contradictory statements about his role in Bain reflect a
general lack of honesty in US financial circles, including contempt
for reports to the SEC.
In claiming to be a devout Mormon, Romney demonstrates another form of
hypocrisy.
Four federal spending myths that Republicans spread.
Namely, that the current US deficit is a big problem, that military
spending has been cut, that government health insurance is more expensive
than private insurance, and that Obama's health care bill will
cause a big budgetary problem.
The problem with Obama's health care bill is that it isn't going
to save a lot of money. It would take a national health program
to do that.
Republicans voted to cut funding for OHSA and block new programs
for safety in additional work areas.
SIGIR estimates that 6 to 8 billion in funds for Iraq reconstruction were
lost to waste, fraud and abuse due to careless accounting.
Lots more were wasted in other ways, such as building projects that were
ill-conceived and never functioned.
A Canadian senate report concluded, in effect, that Canada must do
more to gain a reputation for concern about global heating in order to
succeed in selling all its extreme oil and bringing about a global
heating disaster.
US citizens:
call
for an end
to mountaintop removal coal mining in
Appalachia.
High
levels of toxins have been found in the water in the vicinity
of mountaintop removal mines.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support
HR5864,
to increase protection against intrusive species that
can be damaging.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
A government study
found
lots of toxic chemicals
in the vicinity of mountaintop-removal coal mining.
The people who live in these areas gain next to nothing from the
mining (since it employs few people), and
they
are fighting to stop it.
Someone should tell Orem that companies are not citizens, not even
under the
Corporations United
decision.
And they don't want to be citizens. Rather, they want the rights
of citizens without the duties.
HSBC knowingly kept open the bank accounts suspected of money laundering
and that violated trade sanctions.
One can question whether a bank should be allowed to close an account
because it "looks suspicious", but violating the trade sanctions is
more clear cut. It is clear that HSBC sought the income from these
accounts.
After President Correa got convictions of Ecuadorian journalists
for printing false accusations against him, he pardoned them.
The pardons do not justify laws that make libel a crime,
but it does mean that Correa personally is not the demon
that the corporate media claim.
Across the US, thugs make prostitutes afraid
to carry condoms.
We ended the prohibition of alcohol, which was unjust and harmful.
The prohibition of prostitution is likewise unjust and harmful, and
must be repealed. If you don't like prostitution, nobody forces you
to do it.
A local
government solution to the mortgage crisis makes the banksters
very worried.
Libya held an election, but can its government restrain the violent
militias?
Anti-HIV drugs in Africa cost
much less than was previously estimated, and they reduce the rate
of new infections too.
Citizens of Massachusetts: ask
Governor Patrick to oppose the "3 strikes" law.
US citizens: call your senators to support further privacy rights protections
in the cybersecurity bill, but to oppose the bill unless it is improved.
Also sign this
petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The ban on showing a BBC program about the riots was to avoid
prejudicing a murder
trial, which has now ended.
The judge in this trial accused a very high thug official of lying
in court.
Thugs are accustomed to bearing false witness against others. I wonder
if any of them will be prosecuted for this.
When environmental activists in the Philippines are murdered, the
state looks
the other way.
Shell was unable
to get its act together to prepare a ship to try to deal with
Arctic Ocean oil spills.
This is not to mention that the ship would only be able to do this job
in the most favorable conditions.
New York State's environmental official in charge of fracking (and all
mining) says that CO2 emissions are "beneficial".
Big Corporations Are Making Huge Profits While Keeping
Their Employees Stuck At Minimum Wage.
Relatives of US citizens killed by US drones have sued
the government.
Putin's repressive judges denied
bail to the three protest musicians in the band Pussy Riot.
The new Senate cybersecurity bill is less dangerous than the old one,
but might still have nasty effects, such as allowing ISPs to block TOR.
Obama's response to whistleblowers goes far beyond prosecuting them.
It is accompanied by many strict
measures to prevent anyone from showing the public what the
government is doing.
London thugs went to great efforts to conceal Harwood's background of
unjustified violence. In fact, they played
games to keep him on the thug force despite being punished for
that.
Welfare recipients in the UK are supposed to be allowed to record when
they are tested for fitness to work, but they are being denied this
right based on absurd
excuses.
This fits with the perverse nature of the entire activity. What
difference does it make if someone is theoretically able to work, when
there are no jobs available? Would it be better if he got one of those
jobs and left someone else jobless instead?
These tests are evidently meant as an excuse to crush the poor, and
the company carrying out the tests is simply taking account of that
real mission when it judges people to harshly and denies them the
right to record.
Republicans want to kill the US navy's biofuel
project.
Unlike some biofuel projects, this one uses waste and algae, not
crops. It is a useful approach, and subsidizing it in the early days
could be the way to get production started.
That alone does not prove this project is well-designed, or even
honest. But I can't see who in Washington we could trust on that
question. Any politician that opposes the plan is most likely doing
so in order to help the oil companies.
How the Libor Lies were possible: banks
say what interest rate they would borrow at, but are not required to
borrow at that rate.
This sounds just like what enabled JP Morgan to cheat California on
electric rates: it said
it would sell electricity for a certain price, then avoided actually
doing so.
In other words, these systems assume banksters are honest. What suckers!
Syrian rebels are gaining military
strength, and territory.
Moshe Silman set himself on fire in Tel Aviv to protest
the government policies that left him unable to afford both his
rent and his medical bills.
Retired people in Berlin have occupied
their social center, which the local authority has sold to a
developer.
CBS's "weather expert" is a global heating denier.
The EFF calls for regulation of face recognition, such as requiring
a court order for its use.
Up to 10
million poor US voters could be disenfranchised by Republican
voter-suppression.
The ID office that opens only 4 days a year demonstrates the malicious
spirit of these laws. Disenfranchising the poor is their purpose, not
a byproduct, as a Pennsylvania
Republican admitted.
A European car rental company was fined for secret
GPS tracking of its customers.
This is a small first step, but more is needed. Many (all?) GM cars
have built-in cell phones by which they can be tracked. I think
Zipcar tracks everywhere the car goes (can someone find out for
certain)?
Western pundits and media bemoan the lack of a "Palestinian Gandhi"
but disregard the prisoners
who mount hunger strikes.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter in support of the FDA
whistleblowers who told Congress that the FDA was ignoring evidence
that certain drugs were dangerous.
For more information: whistleblowers.org,
but I can't recommend you sign your name there, since it requires
nonfree Javascript to work.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the State Department to grant
visas to two Afghan Peace Volunteers.
More info.
The UK will require sex offenders to take "lie
detector" tests.
"Lie detectors" don't really detect lies; they detect anxiety. It
looks like all the reported benefits of performing these tests come
from the convicts' expectation that the tests will work.
It might be a useful practice nonetheless.
US citizens: tell
the US government to stop obstructing the arms trade treaty.
US citizens: sign
this petition to remove the cap on social security tax.
US citizens: sign
the ACLU's petition against illegal targeted killings.
John Brennan, who stripped
to protest the TSA's naked body scanners, had his charges
dropped. The judge ruled this was legitimate political speech under
Oregon law. I don't know whether the same would apply in the rest of
the US.
A Cambodian broadcaster who supported
protests has been accused of "insurrection".
The US drought is getting worse, which means an agricultural
disaster.
In a few decades, this sort of drought will be normal, so US
agricultural production will go way down.
Ecuador has brought absurd charges against 24 indigenous protest leaders —
most commonly "terrorism".
It is disappointing to find Ecuador following the US lead.
The EFF is challenging the constitutionality
of the secrecy part of the U SAP AT RIOT act's massive FBI
surveillance provisions.
Debunking
The Dangerous "If You Have Nothing To Hide, You Have Nothing To Fear".
I can add an additional point: the state denies that this argument is valid
when applied to the state's own activities
Bahrain has allowed 100 Indian workers to leave after 6 years of
being effectively detained for quitting their jobs.
India should refuse to allow Indian citizens to work in Bahrain
until it changes the law that forbids foreign workers from quitting
and going home.
Evidence on the ground in Tremseh suggest a battle
between the Syrian army and rebels, not a massacre of civilians.
However, the fact that UN observers were kept out of the area for a
considerable time after the events means the possibility of a cover-up
can't be ruled out.
The New America Foundation publishes an inaccurate list of casualties
from drone attacks, one which omits
civilian casualties.
An Indian fisherman on the boat that the USNS Rappahannock fired at
says he knows what sort of warnings US navy ships give, and there was
none
this time.
The US national security complex cost only 13 billion dollars last
year, but managed to label 26 million
documents "top secret".
Even the IMF says that the UK government's spending cuts are dangerous.
So who are they making the cuts for?
Senator Franken calls for regulation of the use of face
recognition.
I agree.
Nokia's sell-out to Microsoft has turned into a big
loss.
This is good, but we need to get Apple too. And then we need
to get the Android devices that can't be rooted.
The thug who apparently killed Ian Tomlinson, a passerby at a protest
that was besieged, was acquitted. This
jury seems to have had some doubt about whether Tomlinson's death was
caused by the attack. Other thugs supported his testimony.
Since thugs generally lie for each other, the testimony of a thug
about what happened at a protest is always worthless. Other people
sometimes lie, but they are rarely habituated to lying like a thug.
The US drought (probably related to global heating) has pushed food
prices to a level comparable with 2008, but the real
problem is worse than that.
Making biofuel by growing crops that compete with food is an absurd waste, and the practice
should be ended immediately.
Most Americans should also eat less meat, both to reduce the burden on
the Earth and for their health.
Lawyers for torture victims accuse the UK of withholding
evidence about it.
The US does this too, but has done it so long and so
thoroughly that it no longer makes news.
For the first time, one of Dubya's torture supporters faces
consequences: embarrassment
he might not care about.
This is not enough. Torture is a heinous crime, and everyone who is
responsible for US official torture policies, from Dubya on down,
ought to be prosecuted.
Another treaty
that must be abolished is the one that requires prohibition of
marijuana.
While civilized and kind countries enable single parents to get by,
the US demonizes
them.
Meanwhile, the malign Christian interference with US real sex
education, birth control, and abortion increases the number of single
parents. US cruelty gets women coming and going, as it were.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop accepting payoffs from Hollywood in
the form of movie cameos and stop supporting the
nasty laws Hollywood wants.
Citizens of India: tell the Prime Minister to stop giving away India's
forests to be cut down for
coal mining.
Russia adopted a law to shut web sites if they are "harmful
to children". I think the site does not get a trial before it is
shut.
Of course, they won't shut the web sites that do harm large numbers of
children, by selling them toys and candy. But they might stretch this
to shut political web sites.
This is not as bad as SOPA, which was rejected in the US, but it is
still unacceptable.
The main beneficiaries of US "food aid" programs are three
giant agribusiness companies. I am not convinced that it is bad
to give hungry people food, as opposed to giving them cash to buy
food. The local elites would try to divert the cash; is there an
effective solution to prevent this?
Nor is it necessarily bad for the state to support farmers by buying
their surplus for use as aid. (The surplus could be cheap, if the
government looks for a good price, but this program seems to pay a
high price.) However, that is only a good thing when it supports many
small farms. Supporting big companies is not a valid goal.
The US could certainly buy the food for aid in a way that supports
farmers rather than the largest companies.
The UK government is hurting the poor so badly that food
banks have sprung up in many cities.
The winner in Mexico's presidential election was accused of money
laundering for his campaign.
There is already evidence he bought favorable TV news coverage.
US families — those that are not broke — are made
miserable by all their possessions, especially the piles of toys that
are used
for a short time and then ignored.
It is clear that Romney lied in a required financial disclosure form
when he asserted he was no longer involved in Bain "in any way".
President Clinton lied about an event of no public significance, not
speaking under penalties of perjury, and he was impeached for this.
Romney lied about a conflict of interest. Prosecute him!
Apple censored a game for the iThings called Angry
Syrians, which is a political parody of Angry Birds.
If Apple had accepted the game, it would have been unethical
because it would have been proprietary. But Apple
doesn't mind that. Rather, Apple said it was "defamatory or
offensive" — to the dictator Assad, apparently.
The government of Libya has held an election, but militias
continue to rampage around the country, arbitrarily arresting,
then torturing and even killing prisoners.
A political crisis in Romania: the EU accused the prime minister of an
unconstitutional
power grab, an attempt to change the rules for removing the
president from office.
If the IMF-imposed austerity program was "effective", that probably
means it was effective for making people suffer. Indeed, a friend in
Romania says that the president, when his party was in power, cut
pensions, cut education, cut medicine (and that 12000 doctors have
left the country), taught religion in schools, and stole lots of
money. However, he says that the prime minister's party is corrupt
too.
I hope Romania does break its deal with the IMF. IMF "rescues" oppress the people of the country they are
made with.
JP Morgan cheated the citizens of California by getting
paid not to generate electricity.
The system was stupidly designed, just waiting to be targeted by a
clever cheat. But that does not excuse the cheats.
Wikileaks has found a way to receive credit card payments, thanks to a
special contracts set up by the French credit
card processing system that say no merchant can be arbitrarily cut
off.
The whole world needs to establish such rights as a matter of law.
However, it's possible that the US will bully Visa and Mastercard
into breaking their contracts with Carte Bleu.
The Rise and
Fall and Rise of Great Public Spaces.
A bomb exploded in a bus filled with Israeli tourists in Bulgaria,
apparently meant for murder
of civilians.
The Iranian regime has carried out plenty of atrocities (mostly
against Iranians, but some against Israelis), so it might be
responsible. Nonetheless, it is would be a mistake to jump to a
hurried conclusion about responsibility for this bombing.
Meanwhile, this wrong should not distract us from the much larger
wrong of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the siege of
Gaza.
In an astounding blow against human rights, a UK court ruled in favor
of preemptive
arrests of potential protesters.
Apparently the thugs are allowed to make advance plans to arrest
anyone "preventively" without any court approval, let alone charges.
This is a sad day for human rights in the UK.
A Syrian
rebel attack killed two of Assad's principal henchmen.
I don't think their death is any loss to the world, but I worry about
where the rebels got their arms — and what that will mean if the
rebels win.
An anti-sharing group used a musician's work commercially and persistently
resisted paying him.
This group no doubt says that sharing music is theft because the
musicians don't get any money. (Not mentioning that in most cases
they wouldn't get any money if you bought their records.)
Everyone: support Peter Sunde's petition
for a pardon.
AT&T attacks network neutrality by trying to charge
specially for use of a particular communications application.
The FCC's network neutrality code is too weak, and anyway it makes a
special exception to be even weaker for cell phone networks.
True network neutrality means ISPs should not monitor or filter
your traffic unless it breaks the network.
Human Rights Watch: Iraq's
Cybercrimes Law Violates Free Speech.
This shows what sort of freedom Dubya gave Iraq.
A Saudi web site editor faces charges for allowing
public debate.
A doctor who was visiting Pakistan to give polio vaccination was shot,
apparently
by an Islamist fanatic.
The Pakistani Taliban are effectively holding thousands of children of
their own people hostage to demand an end to drone attacks. Whatever
one thinks of these drone attacks, and the US' policies that may
amount to war crimes, it
can't justify this.
Christian fanatics in Britain are denying
other children access to vaccination. They make the ridiculous
claim that their students don't have sex.
For typical Americans, actually reading privacy policies of web sites
they use in a year would take 76
work days.
It is not a problem for me. I almost never read any of these privacy
policies, because even when they seem to say the company won't do
something, it has a subtle loophole. Meanwhile, the US government can
collect all the data with the U SAP AT RIOT act. So I just assume every
privacy policy says, "We will use your data in ways you don't like."
I maintain my privacy by generally not giving any personal information
to web sites I visit.
The main exception is when I want to identify myself to the public,
such as by posting a comment. I don't want privacy for the comment I
post.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support amendments to
reduce military spending — such as Barbara Lee's amendment
— then vote against the spending bill.
You can also support a somewhat weaker amendment to reduce military
spending through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
For decades, Israel's governments have used the occupation and
"security" as cover for right-wing policies that impoverish most
Israelis.
They don't suffer as much as Palestinians, but still, it shows that
the occupation of Palestine by Israel is accompanied by the occupation
of Israel by the rich.
The Israeli wall was supposedly for the sake of "security",
but if security had been the real goal, Israel could have built it on
the frontier. Court cases and other evidence prove its real goal was
annexation all along.
Israelis were arrested for painting
over (erasing) racist "price tag" threats against Palestinians.
The occupation and its effects are turning the Israeli government into
systematic dishonesty, twisting laws into tools for political bias.
There are some exceptions, though. Nathan-Zada should have been
prosecuted for murder, not lynched, and the prosecution of those who
lynched him is the right thing to do, even though perhaps it is being
done for the wrong reasons.
Israeli soldiers locked up the market of Hebron and used
percussion grenades to push the people around in it, and inside
homes as well.
Israel announced it will
release the speaker of the Palestinian parliament from
imprisonment without trial.
However, another member of parliament was just arrested.
Israel promised the US 10 years ago to demolish the unauthorized
settlement "outpost" of Givat Sal'it, but now it is planning
to extend it instead.
I think this is one reflection of the general fact that Obama is more
subservient to the Israeli government than Dubya was. Dubya could openly
say no to Israel; Obama does not dare.
The government has also restored financial subsidies to some of these
colonies that it
had pledged to withdraw.
US citizens: call on the EPA not to make an exception to air pollution
rules for Shell's
drilling in Arctic waters.
Apparently Shell has been lying to the EPA for 2 years, planning
to get an exception at the last minute.
Israel makes deals but doesn't keep them. It promised to allow family
visits for prisoners from Gaza, but it only allows them for 25
prisoners, "experimentally".
And they can't see their children.
The 2012 Olympic Committee's web site claims that you're not allowed
to link to their site if you say something unkind about them. This
has inspired lots of creative
defiance.
It is unfortunate that the writers of this site use the sloppy term
"intellectual property" to describe this.
The Olympics impose a wide range of harmful policies,
which is why I urge people in Madrid, Tokyo and Istanbul
to organize against holding the 2020 Olympics there.
Some (not all) of these policies concern one of the dozen-odd
unrelated laws that some people speak of as "intellectual
property"; but it is misleading to lump them together using that
term. For instance, this link policy is not based on any of those
laws. (Or any existing law, for that matter.)
The only thing these policies have in common is the Olympics.
Israeli politicians are talking about annexation
of the West Bank.
A government-sponsored report even denies that the
West Bank is occupied by Israel and that Palestinians have a right
to their land.
What would then happen to Palestinians? Would they be given Israeli
citizenship, or exiled from their homes?
Perhaps this article
shows the answer: Israeli soldiers have joined openly in the
practice of destroying Palestinian farms, which formerly the colonists
in the "settlements" did (though the state did nothing to stop them).
And when the UN provides tents to Palestinian families whose houses
Israel has demolished, Israel
calls this "illegal construction".
Israelis
were arrested for painting over (erasing) racist slogans
threatening violence against Palestinians.
For the sake of kicking Palestinians out of the West Bank, the Israeli
government is converting rule of law into rule of the bully.
The European Parliament condemned this and warned sanctions may follow.
What a contrast with Obama.
The War on Drugs has crushed millions of people's lives but failed to
block the entry of illegal drugs; however, American drug users are
mostly switching to prescription drugs, rendering the War on Drugs irrelevant
as well as ineffective.
I'm afraid this will mean a War on the Hurt. Americans who suffer
from pain already sometimes have trouble getting medicine to treat it, thanks to the first
campaign against the Hurt. It will get worse. Meanwhile, those who
suffer from chronic pain will meet with systematic suspicion. The US
government already practices torture; why not torture them too?
A person can decide not to use cocaine and heroin, but nobody can
decide not to get injured. Nobody can decide not to need surgery.
Nobody can decide not to develop a chronic pain condition. We
Americans must organize now to block the War on the Hurt before it
tortures us.
Indian fishermen, whose boat a US naval ship fired at, say they were
given
no warning.
In the US: tell Verizon to respect users' freedom of speech, not censor
them.
US citizens: Tell the NOAA not to allow an oil survey that would be
done using airguns in the sea, which would injure whales with
their loud noises.
We can't afford to burn that oil anyway, so there is no point looking
for it.
Call on Israel to release Akram Rikhawi, Samer al-Barq and Hassan
Safadi, who are on hunger strike against
imprisonment without trial.
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Republicans — including state governors — attack Obama for giving states more leeway to provide aid to poor families.
This demonstrates that the Republicans' goal is to be cruel to the poor, and their arguments about states' rights are just an excuse.
The Gates Foundation is funding the development of patented GMOs for Africa, which would make African farmers dependent, if they could afford them at all.
A UK minister plans to veto a court decision in favor of publishing one of the memos where Dubya and B'liar talked about attacking Iraq.
A judge banned a BBC program which presents rioters' own statements and
did not say why.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Four Biggest Government Spending Myths Debunked.
France will restore the tax on companies that have workers work overtime, to push them to hire more employees instead.
I think this policy makes sense. The fact that Sarkozy cancelled it is also suggestive that it was a good policy before, since his goal was to help companies and weaken workers.
The UK government approved three schools that plan to teach creationism.
Youth in Malian towns ruled by Islamist extremists are starting counter-rebellions.
HSBC admits letting Mexican drug traffickers launder billions of dollars.
I've read that many banks do this, because that's the only way they can get enough money to stay afloat. Thus, if we end the War on Drugs, as we need to do, we will take the banksters down a peg too.
The European Union will push for
"open access" scientific publishing.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
I hope that they don't omit the crucial requirement of allowing redistribution and reuse of scholarly articles. That was part of the definition of "open access" in the Budapest Open Access Initiative, but more recent discussion often forgets this point since the word "access" encourages focusing on the secondary question of who can get the articles from the publisher's own site.
Now that squatting in abandoned buildings is a crime in the UK, young
people who reject a life of rent and debt are trying to squat
on land and farm it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The US is setting up dozens of small military bases around the world, each one prepared to expand in a hurry.
They are supposed to prepare for the wars that they might provoke.
A Romney campaign ad was censored by a bogus copyright claim.
Apps and web sites are designed to be addictive — society should recognize this as a problem to be corrected.
The problem goes deeper than he recognizes, since nonfree software is part of it.
Technology as such is not the cause of widespread poverty and unemployment in developed countries. Rather, the rich set political policies that took advantage of technological changes to divert wealth and power to the rich.
Syrian rebels have taken parts of Damascus and are holding them against Assad's army.
This makes it clear that the rebels have received lots of arms from outside. I wonder which rebel faction they are — Salafists supported by Saudi Arabia?
The American public want to cut military spending.
Republican politicians, however, are horrified by the idea. Is that because of the money they get from the military-industrial complex that a general, subsequently a Republican president, warned us about?
The Brand Police are crawling over London, and may even restrict the clothing that spectators wear.
I think the people who wear clothes with commercial messages (or even prominent brand insignia) are suckers, and their doing so increases the power of these brands, which is socially harmful. However, banning some of this in one place for branding reasons is hardly the way to oppose the power of brands.
Terms such as "abortion" and "morning after pill" play into the hands of the opponents of abortion rights.
I think the point is valid, but the article doesn't suggest an alternative to "abortion". (It sometimes uses the term "development prevention", which could be seen as an implicit suggestion of that term, but that doesn't seem like a very good term.) Any suggestions?
I also agree with the point that the "consumer frame" is not effective for defending people's rights.
New York thugs confiscate condemns from prostitutes, and prosecutors cite them as evidence. This has the effect of pressuring prostitutes to risk getting and transmitting HIV.
Prostitution ought to be legalized anyway. There is no excuse for banning it, and the ban only does harm.
ACLU: Your Boss Shouldn't Read Your Email.
I should add, neither should the state (whether it is your boss or not).
Democrats are hypocrites on outsourcing.
However, Romney says he wants to make it even worse.
The first article's specific points are valid and well stated, but I disagree with some background assumptions. For instance, the article equates "capitalism" to the present system in which business dominates government (i.e., the empire of the megacorporations). The US in the 60s and 70s was capitalist, but business did not dominate government as it does now. As a result, many laws were passed to do what the people wanted over the opposition of big business. That was democracy at work, which is what we now lack.
Thus, what I seek is not "an alternative to capitalism" but rather restoration of democracy (along with capitalism).
This is why I support Jill Stein for president.
A former Barclays executive says former CEO Diamond (who was in a lesser executive role at the time) ordered him to falsify the Libor information, and that Diamond said he was asked by the Bank of England.
Greenpeace activists protesting Shell's dangerous plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean have shut down Shell gas stations in London and Edinburgh.
Genetically modified mosquitos, whose children do not develop to adulthood (because they can't get tetracycline), could wipe out dengue fever.
I think the approach is basically legitimate, and if the use of the antibiotic tetracycline in livestock might enable a few of these modified mosquitos to survive one generation, that can be prevented through something that is necessary anyway: to ban the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock.
However, the company should be required to release any and all information about these mosquitos that is considered relevant to public health.
2/3 of the citizens who asked to speak in a meeting in Sendai (damaged
by the tsunami) opposed nuclear power. Of the 9 chosen to speak, one was an
employee of TEPCO.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Such coincidences happen, but I wonder what fraction of the speakers reflected the general attitude of the applicants.
Over 100,000 protested in Tokyo against restarting nuclear reactors.
Tens of thousands protest
weekly outside the home of Japan's prime minister.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
UK budget cuts included planned flood defenses; the result is millions in damage that was avoidable.
The budget cuts were a misguided policy in general, since they have caused worse recession, and the jobs that were not done are often important (as in this case).
Although Apple has joined EPEAT again, it does not cover the iThings — only the Macintosh.
Kindness releases oxytocin, which feels good and encourages kindness.
This suggests that my proposal for making it easy to send voluntary small payments to artists will work well.
The US gets more and more involved with the coup-installed regime in Honduras, supposedly for the "war on drugs", and now that regime plans to follow Mexico's bloody path.
According to http://quotha.net/node/2292,
there is no need for US government to hunt narcotraffickers at night
in the countryside. It need only look at the elites behind the
coup-installed government.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The FDA systematically spied on its scientists who were complaining to Congress about abuses in the FDA.
Jill Stein debated Romney once, and did very well. But she won't be in the presidential debates, because they have been rigged by the Republican and Democratic parties to exclude all other candidates.
In the corporate media, supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline are more visible than the critics.
The reason surely has something to do with the ads from the oil companies.
"It's not my phone, it's my tracker."
This is part of why I refuse to carry one.
Israel wants to block the UN agency that helps
Palestinians construct village facilities in the areas where
Israel doesn't want them to have any such.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Secular Tuareg rebels are making overtures to the government of Mali
by saying they only want internal autonomy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
A UK man forcibly removed from his home by thugs, apparently acting without legal authorization, has launched a private prosecution against them.
Bei Bei Shuai, who faces murder charges from theocratic officials for trying to commit suicide while pregnant, faces a further injustice: prosecutors are trying to punish her lawyer for requesting funds for her defense.
Who Decided? How Did the U.S. Military Get Into Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: if your congresscritter is on the House Judiciary Committee, tell him that Lamar Smith's "IP attaché" bill is a bad thing.
"Intellectual property" spreads confusion by lumping together a dozen unrelated laws. To be "for intellectual property" or "against intellectual property" is a foolish overgeneralization, and this bill is based on precisely such a foolish position.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Peter Sunde explains how Sweden pressed charges against the Pirate Bay under the orders of the US, and then he was convicted of "crimes" that were not crimes, by judges with corrupt ties to the copyright industry.
I am not sure whether advertising-supported unauthorized redistribution ought to be legal; I think of it as a borderline case. However, legal nonsense like this is intolerable. Swedes should demand that their government respect the rights of the citizens of Sweden.
If that means declaring independence from the WTO, so much the better. The WTO is a murderous organization and must be destroyed.
The dishonesty and subservience to the US in this case gives more reason to think that Sweden plans similar dishonesty with Julian Assange as well.
NRA threatens to use unidentified political ads against senators who vote to limit unidentified political ads.
By explicitly endorsing the Corporations United decision [spelling intentional], the NRA has set itself against the vast majority of Americans.
Pfizer stubbornly continues funding the Heatland institute [spelling intentional] even though it pretends that tobacco is not dangerous.
The people killed in Tremseh, Syria, may have been opposition fighters rather than civilians.
Rahm Emanuel is using Chicago's budget shortfall as an opportunity to privatize public schools and destroy the teachers' union.
The Spanish government, under pressure for deficit reduction when what Spain needs is the opposite, felt compelled to raise taxes. So it raised the value-added tax, which falls mainly on the poor, rather than the income tax on the rich.
ALEC, the US corporate lobbying organization, is pressuring some other countries not to take steps against cigarette marketing.
If the WTO indeed opposes these plans, that is yet another way that the WTO is a murderer and one of hundreds of reasons it must be terminated.
As for whether this plan would reduce smoking, that is a good question, but we should not trust anything the tobacco companies (or their stooges) say about the question. On the contrary, if they seriously object to the plan, that suggests it might be effective. If they really believed it would backfire and help them, they would not really try to block it.
UK thugs fabricated testimony to justify arresting and holding Rizwaan Sabir, a graduate student, for documents he had obtained for his research (he was studying al Qa'ida).
Thugs will be thugs, but the crucial point is that the charge they tried to frame Sabir on is an unjust law which effectively makes it a crime to be suspect.
A scientist's 90-minute theatrical presentation focuses on the damage that having 10 billion humans on Earth is likely to do.
We need to prevent this from happening. One method that will help is by paying women under 25 to get sterilized.
The fundamental problem of the "IP Attaché Act" is that it is based on the confusion embodied in the term "intellectual property".
However, its details are bad too.
Facebook and other chat sites use adaptive monitoring to try to stop adults from meeting teenagers for sex.
Normal teenagers don't use the net to talk with adult strangers. They mostly talk with people they know. Thus, the teenagers that an adult could pick up in a network chat are disturbed (probably due to family problems) and would like to meet adult strangers, one way or another.
It hurts to live in a disfunctional family. I am not saying we shouldn't care about these teenagers' well-being, but rather that helping them requires addressing these family problems. Even better, preventing them — for instance, correcting the right-wing government policies that cause material problems, and therefore stress, for many US families would help a lot. Reducing the hysteria about the danger of the Internet might help too.
Attempts to stop these teenagers from meeting someone to have a sexual adventure with are misguided since they don't address the underlying problem. They probably won't even be effective: if those teenagers can't flirt with adults in one way, they will do another way.
Wikileaks reveals that the US PR firm Brown Lloyd James continued
offering Assad advice about improving his image through at
least May 2011.
Will the NRA Kill a Global Arms
Trade Treaty?
A powerful solar storm in 1921 destroyed substantial parts of the
world's telephone networks. No subsequent storm has been so powerful,
but there will surely be another someday.
If a similar storm occurred now, it could destroy large parts of the
power grid, destruction that would take a long time to reconstruct.
Furthermore, nuclear power plants whose electronics are damaged by the
storm could have meltdowns when their backup generators run out of
fuel.
New Legislation Would Give Public Full Access to Congressional Reports.
Citing the goal of "protecting children" (which shuts off the brain of
many adults), Washington and Tennessee have laws making it a crime for
a site to let users publish an advertisement for prostitution that
"depicts a minor" (whether the site knows this or not).
This law would require the same sort of massive vetting for all
user-posted material that China
recently imposed on online video.
If states want to put an end to advertisement of child prostitution,
there is no need to smash the Internet — a few undercover agents
could easily arrest the pimps.
Even "free" countries prosecute "insulting" the head of state.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult anyone.
The Facebook "privacy settlement" about using its users' faces in ads
is so weakly written that it may not really
allow users to opt out.
However, some public interest groups that approve it will get substantial
funds (substantial for them, not for Facebook).
Witnesses in Tremseh say they were attacked by the Syrian
army and the Shabiha thugs.
Freedom = Censorship? That's what Verizon says.
Stores in some US states will be allowed to charge
extra for credit card purchases.
I hope this encourages more people to use cash.
A suicide bomber attacked a wedding party in Afghanistan, killing a member of parliament as well as officers and
politicians.
I suppose relatives and other invitees were killed too.
The Syrian opposition generates fake photos and videos of supposed atrocities.
US citizens: tell the senate to
make military health care cover abortions for soldiers that are raped.
The people most quoted on behalf of the Syrian opposition have long-standing close relationships
with Western institutions that have sought for years to get rid of
Assad.
Oman has imprisoned bloggers for insulting
the king.
Apple reversed its decision to drop the environmental standard EPEAT. The
article does not make it clear whether Apple will stop gluing the
batteries into iThings. I gather that EPEAT requires this, but I
can't tell whether Apple has decided to comply with the requirement or
whether EPEAT has made an exception for Apple.
The DISCLOSE Act's delicate balance:
protecting private citizens' anonymity while informing the public
about election money laundering.
Cheney hosted a fund-raising event for Romney, but reporters were
forbidden to photograph them together — Romney hopes to block the fact that they are associating
from reaching most Americans' attention.
It would be honest to take separate photos of the two of them at
the even and publish them side by side, along with the news that a
photo of the two together was banned.
And maybe someone who was there defied this order and took such a
photo anyway.
Sabu Williams tried to register voters in Florida on behalf of the
NAACP, and was threatened with
prosecution under Florida's voter suppression laws.
An Alabama judge ordered an end to the practice of jailing poor people for not paying fees in his town.
They were charged additional fees for being jailed, which meant
that they might never get out. The judge said that you could call it
"debtor's prison" but it really is an extortion racket.
Progressive organizations and others oppose the "sequestration" for spending on
civilian programs.
This is the cut that was agreed on as part of the law that set up the
supercommittee, because the supercommittee did not reach an
agreement. Since Republicans have already proposed to overturn the
military cuts, there is no reason to stand by the other cuts.
There is no reason to undo the "sequestration" for military spending,
because that has increased tremendously in the past 6
years.
Ethiopian journalists and opposition figures were sentenced to life in
prison for “conspiring with
rebels”.
This reminds me of the US government's accusation that Bradley Manning
"aided the enemy" by informing us about what our government was doing.
The Ethiopian government acts as a proxy army for the US and has full
US government support. No wonder they use the same forms of
dishonesty.
The US State Department says that the May 11 killers in Honduras were
the responsibility of the Honduran thugs and mercenaries involved, and
that the DEA agents were only their "advisors". However, the US
ambassador there said that those Hondurans under direct DEA
command. “They basically work for the DEA.”
The government in Honduras was installed by a military coup and represses journalists
and dissidents.
The presence of the DEA in Honduras is fishy in the first place,
since, according to these
writers, the main narcotraffickers are the elites that are behind
the new government.
Naturally the regime has the full support of the US, which may have
helped organize the coup in the first place. A state like this has no
moral legitimacy.
Secular Tuareg rebels couldn't stand rule by al Qa'ida, and split
with them, but al Qa'ida defeated them and took
total control of northern Mali.
Muslims and Christians are lobbying to overturn a German court decision that circumcision of babies
violates their rights.
I tend to agree that it is better to let them grow up and decide
for themselves, but I don't have a strong position on the issue.
The UK government plans to wipe out habeas corpus with secret courts, so that anyone could be arrested and
jailed at length, and not told why.
UN monitors confirm Syria used tanks and helicopters against the
town of Tremseh just before a massacre in the
town.
They saw this from a distance, but the Syrian army did not allow them
to enter the town to investigate the massacre.
Ask Romney: what are you hiding in the income tax returns you have not
released?
Here's background on the apparent conflict
between what Romney says to the public and what he said in testimony.
Response to Emily -- the NPR music intern.
Mexico's militarized war on drugs has resulted in more
violence.
Facebook sends political messages as coming from people who have clicked Like buttons.
Facebook recently settled a lawsuit, promising to stop a very similar
practice involving ads, but these political messages are not
considered "ads" and Facebook continues to send them.
A science writer who was sued for libel writes about his experience.
A class action suit targets copyright trolls.
US citizens: sign this emergency petition to the senate to
support the DISCLOSE act.
US officials try to justify secret assassination policy. Here are refutations of
their arguments.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support regulations against
business abuses. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121,
888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The wear in the San Onofre nuclear power plant is much worse than we
previously knew.
The European Commission bureaucrats seem inclined to push the rejected
ACTA provisions in the proposed treaty with Canada.
The current Canadian government is a complete sellout to business, and
inclined to harm the public interest in several different areas
including copyright.
Foreign "investment" to Haiti does no good for Haitians; it is an investment in
extraction.
Part II.
Iranian exile Yashar Khameneh posted text and drawings that criticize
a historical Imam. Thugs in Iran took his father hostage, and threaten
to execute him unless Yashar Khameneh takes down the page.
It is a good thing that Khameneh cannot do that. I hope his father is
not killed, but if the thugs gained their goal through this threat,
that would be a defeat for freedom in Iran.
The basic principle for dealing with hostage-takers is not to give
them what they want. President Reagan betrayed his country by selling
arms to Iran in exchange for release of hostages in
Lebanon. Naturally, the effect was to encourage them to take more
hostages. Taking down this page would have a similar effect.
Wall Street's crimes in 2008 may be impossible to punish due to the
statute of limitations, if the SEC does not act soon.
Of course, the failure to prosecute them so far was Dubya's choice
and then Obama's choice.
Global Fight for Natural Resources 'Has Only Just Begun,' say Experts.
I wish we could change US laws so that businesses have an incentive to
hire workers to replace some material resources.
More information about the Iceland court case about
Visa payments to Wikileaks.
For Datacell, this is not just a business issue (though the cutoff of
payment from its other customers caused damage to the business). The
head of Datacell supports Wikileaks as an ethical cause, which is why
he did not solve his own problem by abandoning Wikileaks.
Mexico's government signed ACTA even though its senate already voted to oppose it.
I got mail from a Mexican saying that the president hopes that the
new senators, to be elected, will ratify ACTA even though the present
senators oppose it.
Another bankster crime: charging higher interest rates to minority
groups.
Almost 6 million US citizens can't vote because of felony convictions. A
substantial fraction of these people were imprisoned for possession of
small amounts of drugs. Members of minority groups are much more
likely to be arrested and charged for this. Thus, one byproduct of
the "War on Drugs" is to systematically disenfranchise people from
minority groups.
Thugs in Madrid shot protesters at random with rubber bullets, injuring children and journalists as well as
protesters.
PayPal has appointed itself a copyright enforcer by imposing restrictive conditions
on sites it can pay.
We need online payments from which nobody can be excluded under any
conditions, just as nobody can be excluded from use of cash.
The US and France are trying to pressure the Palestinian Authority
into not exhuming Yasser Arafat's body to test for
polonium poisoning.
Congress wants to prosecute journalists who
publish leaks.
Iraq's new censorship law carries life imprisonment as a penalty for
vaguely defined crimes.
Indian Internet censorship restricts users in Oman too. They are also
restricted by Oman's Internet censorship.
Mobile phone users don't know how much information the phones collect,
nor how
vulnerable they are to its being collected by or transmitted to
others.
Australia plans total Internet surveillance a la
NSA, and perhaps imprisoning people that don't hand over
encryption keys (as in the
UK). Falkvinge suggests that the UK could imprison you for having
photos or astronomical data, if the state chooses to claim they
contain steganographic messages and demand you provide the key to extract
them.
Illegal Ivory Bust Shows Growing U.S. Appetite for
Elephant Tusks.
Many US states have imposed pointless restrictions on abortion for the
sole purpose of making abortion difficult.
Right-wingers often make the absurd claim that Liberal regulations on
business are meant to interfere with business (rather than protect
workers, customers and the environment). Why would they imagine such
dishonesty? Because that's the way they do things.
Obama has extended health insurance to seasonal fire
fighters.
This step, in itself, is a good thing, but what we really need is
universal health care not connected with employment. Obama didn't dare
speak in favor of that.
Meanwhile, Republicans are trying again to repeal
Obama's health care law, which is a step in the wrong direction.
A court in Iceland ordered the local Visa and Mastercard processing
company to resume processing payments to Wikileaks, but it is not clear
whether this will result in allowing people to actually send money to
Wikileaks.
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to send you a copy of
the draft TPP text. Also send them mail through this
page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121,
888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A charge against Bradley Manning is being interpreted with a looser criterion than the same charge against
prisoners in Guantanamo.
The deforestation that has already occurred in the Amazon is
expected to cause the extinction of a number of species of animals
because their habitat is now
insufficient.
Worse, in a few decades the rain will be insufficient, and what's left
of the forest will burn up just as the dead pine forests in the
western US are burning now. (These trees are dead because global
heating has allowed pine borers to survive where formerly they could
not.)
Obama is attacking state-approved
medical marijuana dispensaries just as Bush did.
The Pain in Spain Falls Mainly on
the Plain (Folk).
The Olympic Games are a publicly subsidized corporate-controlled
lockdown, but with major changes they could be something more.
Everyone: Call on the EU to prosecute the banksters for
lying for Libor.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq get very different treatment from al Qa'ida,
because the US apparently considers them “our
terrorists.”
As stated before, to label a group as "terrorist" and ban it by
administrative fiat is an attack on freedom of association. If there
is evidence that a group is planning terrorism, put it on trial!
US citizens: Sign this petition calling
on Romney to publish his tax returns.
China requires Internet sites to pre-censor
all videos.
US citizens: sign this petition to Obama not
to let Israel attack Iran.
US citizens: tell Democrats to support medicare for all.
The US is about to deploy lasers that can detect tiny amounts of various substances, such as
traces of explosives, traces of marijuana, or traces of hormones in
your body.
I suspect these can also identify and track people by the spectrum of
chemicals around them.
Lamar Smith tried to sneak one
provision of SOPA into another law.
The provision would involve putting dedicated personnel US embassies
to pressure other countries in favor of "intellectual property". Or
perhaps only in favor of copyright — by using the vague term
"intellectual property", the article fails to say what range of issues
this job would cover. However, we can tell it includes some bad
things.
Geithner, the "banksters' man in Washington", knew about the
manipulation of Libor in 2008 and did nothing.
45% of US mortgages are tied to the Libor rate, and were therefore
affected directly by this manipulation.
NOAA: the record-breaking drought in Texas last year can only be due
to global heating.
Obama and Congress give full support to Big Pharma's patents against life-saving compulsory
licenses in poor countries.
US court ruled that people operating wifi networks without passwords
are not
responsible for others' copyright infringement.
However, I fear that the unofficial persecution arranged by Obama will not pay attention to
rights like these.
A 2010 oil spill, the most expensive pipeline rupture in US history
and not cleaned up yet, was due to a company
policy of disregarding safety. This demonstrates that US
regulation of pipelines is too weak to depend on. The same will
surely be true for the Keystone XL pipeline.
If the individuals responsible were prosecuted and imprisoned,
including executives that pushed for cost savings and didn't insist on
maintaining safety standards, this sort of accident would not happen.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State reports how charter schools in
Texas use public funds to teach religion.
Seattle thugs broke down the door of some dissidents' apartment
— without asking
them to open it — and seized booklets that said "anarchist",
as well as a hoodie. It seems they did not find the goggles and gas
masks they were looking for, but if they had, so what? These things
are not useful for hurting anyone. What they are good for is
protesting despite state attempts to crush democracy. A state that
treats these as suspect treats the people as an enemy.
The science cuts in Canada include agencies that measure global heating and water pollution
— the perfect gift for oil companies.
Chevron refused to evacuate workers from a marine gas drilling
platform, keeping them on board until the explosion they expected killed some of them.
Portugal Doctors Strike over Budget Cuts.
Another nail in ACTA's coffin: Bulgaria suspended ratification.
Russia has adopted a law for Internet filtering, using “child pornography” as an excuse.
"Child pornography" is an ideal excuse for censorship, which is
nastier than works someone might want to censor. Here is an interview
with a blogger about the danger of this scheme.
Russian Wikipedia blacked out its site
as a protest.
Everyone: contact the UK home Secretary, Theresa May, to oppose the
extradition of Richard O'Dwyer.
email:
mayt@parliament.uk
The US wants to prosecute O'Dwyer for running a site with links to copyright-infringing torrents.
Thousands of coal miners are protesting in Madrid against
plans to shut the mines.
Someone in Spain told me that the miners demand is not necessarily
to keep the mines running (which seems like a waste) — some
other kind of work for their towns would satisfy them too. However,
the Spanish state is determined to dump more people into poverty so
that the banksters won't lose anything.
A Syrian diplomat has defected.
He is a Sunni, so this tends to confirm the sectarian form that
Syrian opposition has taken.
Religious extremists in the Israeli army, encouraged for years by
the state, implicitly
threaten mutiny if the state tries to undo the extremists'
colonies in the West Bank.
Melynda Gates decided to champion access
to birth control.
This is a truly worthy cause. I have more respect for her than for
the Gates foundation in general, whose "philanthropy" includes
"donating" Windows licenses.
The biotech industry is "helping" US science teachers teach children
that GMOs do not raise any issue to be concerned about.
Bankster economists describe Ireland as having brilliant prospects
and Argentina as a disaster zone — the exact opposite of the
truth.
Argentina has blocked its citizens from getting foreign currency,
or taking it out of Argentina. This is a pain for my friends, but it
might make the country less vulnerable to being emptied out by the
rich.
Tell
the EPA to heed its scientific assessment and not allow the Pebble
Mine.
Verizon claims that arbitrarily
blocking or discriminating between network sites is its "editorial
freedom".
The current US Supreme Court is so twisted it might even agree.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support continued
funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Also send a message
through this
page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121,
888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Both Israeli soldiers
and "settlers" have recently attacked Palestinian children.
Leaders of The Freedom Theater have been imprisoned
without charges by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority.
Under Israeli military rule, all Palestinian political parties are
illegal and carrying a Palestinian flag is illegal. Arrested
Palestinians have trouble seeing a lawyer and may not get a trial.
The Palestinian
Authority cooperates with Israel to arrest Palestinians thousands
of times a year. In effect, it is a security subcontractor for the
occupation.
Lamar Smith Looking To Sneak Through SOPA In Bits & Pieces,
Starting With Expanding Hollywood's
Global Police Force.
Thailand has pardoned an American who was convicted
of criticizing the king, hoping we will forget that this law is
still in effect and other people remain in prison.
The NSA's warrantless wiretapping is a crime, not
a state secret.
A Taliban leader says that "al Qa'ida is a plague" and that the
Taliban will have to negotiate
in order to have some political power in Afghanistan.
He represents one viewpoint within the Taliban; others are more
rejectionist.
One interesting side point in the article is that the US
assassination of Taliban leaders has brought about their replacement
with new leaders who are more radical. This could be because they are
younger and have less experience and maturity. Thus, it could be that
the US's tactics make a negotiated solution impossible.
Part of the US government may have wanted this result so as to
assure it could continue fighting in Afghanistan forever.
Americans are learning not
to trust TV news.
I hope they also learn not to trust TV political ads.
US citizens: tell the FDA to get rid of the "preventive"
loophole for feeding antibiotics to cattle.
With that loophole, the FDA's proposed regulation would fail to do
the job.
Massachusetts homeowners: phone Senator Brown to support mortgage
relief. Also sign this
petition.
I can't sign it since I am not a homeowner.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121,
888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
New York thugs who felt in the mood to hurt someone arrested a
couple for dancing in the subway. They were attacked, handcuffed, and
charged with "impeding the flow of traffic" although there was just
about nobody around to impede.
To be fair to the thugs, one of the couple also began to record
what the thugs were doing and saying. Thugs go crazy when people
exercise their rights.
Uruguay's President Mujica proposes to legalize
marijuana.
He does not propose to end prohibition on the other common illegal
drugs, but at least this is a start towards ending the futile and
devastating "War on Drugs".
The US officials campaigning to remove the Mujaheddin-e Khalq from
the official "terrorist list" may be breaking US law by representing a
foreign organization without
registering as its agents.
The US tactic of firing a drone bomb against the rescuers who aid
the victims of the first bomb has been categorized
by a UN official as a war crime.
This tactic was practiced by al Qa'ida in Iraq; I guess the US
copied it from them.
Swedish prosecutors are unable to explain why they
won't question Assange in London.
Families can't "Have It All", but paid maternity leave, denied only
by the US and
a few poor countries, would help them get closer.
Climate scientists have been able to link some recent extreme
weather events directly
to global heating.
Spain has been ordered to lay out a clear plan to impose further suffering on the poor, in order to get money to bail out the banksters.
It ought to wipe out the banksters in order to help the poor.
Bankrupting a few banks and compensating the insured depositors
would be a great victory.
UK
policies threaten to turn the squeezed middle class against the
poor.
I think that is no surprise to those who craft these policies: the
banksters and their political servants. They must be chuckling over
the idea that two groups of victims will turn on each other, rather
than unite and evict the banksters from the City of London.
Mahmoud Sarsak was freed
from imprisonment without trial and is back in Gaza.
Israeli claims that Sarsak is part of Islamic Jihad. That is
irrelevant to the issue, because imprisonment without trial by a state
is more dangerous to human rights than anything an underground group
could possibly do. If he has helped commit acts of civil violence, or
war crimes, Israel could try him for those. However, Israel's own war
crimes need to be prosecuted too.
The UK has made "intellectual property" an excuse to strip away a
basic human right — against self-incrimination.
"Intellectual property" is a generalization about laws that have
nothing in common, in practice — except when laws like this
create something bad that they have in common. Making policy in terms
of "intellectual property", like using that term in your thoughts,
tends to lead to bad results and this is a prime example.
Many nonfree mobile phone applications show ads that collect
information about the user.
The article calls these apps "free", but it must mean
gratis, since free programs would be fixed by their users not
to do malicious things like this.
Everyone: Tell American Airlines, stop squashing your employees'
right to vote.
US coal miners are getting black lung disease again, and even
younger than before, thanks to a widespread disregard
for safety standards.
Republicans are blocking
corrective action.
Dust safety standards are not
the only ones that coal mines disregard.
US citizens: call
on the EPA to regulate soot emissions, which cause asthma and
sometimes death.
A Bahraini dissident has been imprisoned for “insulting”
people in a political message.
The US has supported the Bahraini state through a year of
repression.
Nitrogen compounds from power plants are changing the vegetation in
Rocky Mountain National Park, which will be irreversible
if some species become locally extinct.
This can kill the trout, too.
The cost of the F-35 fighter has almost
doubled since the project was started, but US politicians haven't
the guts to cancel it.
US military power is so far above the rest of the world that this
project would be misuse of the funds even at the original price. And
that's not to raise the question of whether US military power is a
good thing or a bad thing.
How Big Music Threatened Startups and Killed
Innovation.
The European Commission is trying to use a free
exploitation treaty with Canada to impose on Europe conditions
comparable to ACTA.
The article is unnecessarily vague through use of the term
"intellectual property enforcement". That term refers to a dozen or
so unrelated
laws, and ACTA was only concerned with two of them (copyright and
trademark). So what are they trying to put in this treaty? Provisions
about copyright and trademark? Provisions about several of those
laws? About all of them? It would have been so easy to make the
article clear, if only Geist had not fallen for the chicness of
"intellectual property".
Of course, Europe should reject this treaty too. Will the European
Parliament have a chance to vote on it?
But this is not the only reason. This treaty will be bad because
“free
trade” treaties undermine democracy.
Indian soldiers disappeared 8000 Kashmiris, sometimes for no reason
except to collect a bounty from the government. Parvez Imroz traced
them to unmarked
graves.
India also practices imprisonment without trial, much like the US,
as well as torture that goes as far as cutting off people's limbs. All
this rather than permit the referendum India promised Kashmir at the
time of independence.
The UK banks spent around $150 million on lobbying last year. What
laws did they buy?
Canadian scientists will march in Ottawa to protest
the government's ideological attacks on environmental protection
and research.
Ocean acidification due to CO2 is hurting sea life
faster than expected because the CO2 is concentrated
in the upper levels of the ocean.
2000 scientists warn that urgent
action is needed to save coral.
A large fraction of sea life depends on coral reefs, and millions
of people depend on them for food. The loss of these reefs would lead
to massive extinction as well as lots of human deaths.
Despite heavy rain, groundwater in parts of England is still lower
than normal, and another
dry winter could cause drought again.
The UK is considering destroying plutonium in
nuclear reactors.
These reactors resemble the former proposed breeder reactors in
using liquid sodium instead of water as a coolant. This seems very
dangerous to me. Liquid sodium is highly reactive. If pipes break
and it escapes, it can cause a lot more damage, and make areas of the
reactor inaccessible for chemical reasons.
Tourist resort hotels in certain places are sucking up water, leaving
local people in scarcity.
The less
Islamist candidate has won the Libyan election, but then publicly
denied that his party is secular.
Taliban publicly murdered a woman they accused
of adultery in a town very near Kabul. However, Karzai's
government doesn't care much about women's rights either. To prolong
the war in hope of preventing this oppression is futile, and does more
harm than good.
Perhaps the only way to prevent the oppression of women in
Afghanistan is to give them a way to sterilize themselves so that they
can't be used to make more women.
It might do some good to arm Afghan women so they can kill men who
oppress women.
Afghanistan aid pledges hide rehashed
promises and familiar corruption fears.
US companies secretly funnel millions of dollars through
tax-exempt organizations that use the money for campaign ads that
pretend not to be campaign ads.
Putin is considering imprisonment
for libel, a injustice found in many countries including
France.
The US must respond to the Lie-bor fraud by reregulating and
splitting up the big banks — so they can't collude to do
this again.
Foreign
investment means more suffering, pain & death in Haiti.
If Haiti were an Arab country, its citizens would know how to make
the foreigners get out.
The people of Cajamarca condemn President Humala of Peru for using
a "state of emergency" to support a foreign
mining company that threatens to poison their water.
Education in the US is a lifetime
investment — for whoever provides student loans.
US cell phone companies receive over
a million government requests per year for cell phone tracking
data.
Scientologists want to get statements
critical of Scientology taken down by reporting them as abuse.
Global heating is visible in long term trends: the fire season in
the western US is 78 days longer
than it was in 1986.
The smoke from these fires is highly toxic, so they will kill
people over coming years through disease, in addition to the people
who die fighting these fires.
US citizens: support
the Voter Empowerment Act.
Here's more
information about it.
Jewish Voice for Peace reports on progress in the campaign
for divestment from companies that are associated with the Israeli
occupation of Palestine.
In the name of "protecting children", Orange blocks
access to all blogs.
This concept of "protecting children" is fundamentally
misguided. What children really need protection from is abuse and
poverty.
The requirement for a bachelor's degree for many jobs in the US has
turned into a system
of squeezing money out of the poor.
This article announces an ebook, but if you consider buying it,
first think about whether it is ethical.
An interview with the lawyer for Suleiman Abdallah, who was handed
over to the US in Africa for 5
years of torture in Afghanistan.
The new CIA base in Mogadishu is suspected of being a secret
prison.
Thousands have marched in Pakistan against
use of Pakistan for shipping supplies to NATO in Afghanistan.
Voter ID Laws Could
Block Thousands From Voting.
A strong
movement against Walmart is developing in the US.
A US court validated the EPA's decision to limit CO2
pollution and rejected
the denialists' arguments.
Morsi defied Egypt's generals by ordering
parliament to reconvene.
Some Italian thugs have been
convicted of falsifying evidence to protect their colleagues from
jail for their attack on sleeping protesters in Genoa.
The USPTO helps mislead Congress for
the sake of Big Pharma. Endocrine disruptors are present in
many products, and can cause horrible birth defects.
How peculiar that Republicans are not interested in protecting
fetuses from this.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
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UK phone: 020 7219 5206
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Christian fanatics are trying to push into Texas regulations some abortion restrictions that they failed to pass as legislation.
The term "fanatics" is justified because they are happy to kill women for their irrational campaign to ensure more people are born.
A very quiet company called Journatic farms out local newspaper
articles in the US to workers in the Philippines, who hardly write
English.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
They can't interview anyone, they can can only rehash press releases.
Journatic appears to be the journalistic equivalent of Walmart.
Big US banks are also involved in the Libor manipulation crime.
US citizens (and maybe everyone else): call on China not to
persecute
Chen Kegui and other relatives of Chen Guancheng.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Abandoned Walmart Recycled As Public Library.
Due to insufficient practical inspection, clothing often contains illegal toxic chemicals.
What we need is more frequent inspection; and manufacturers should be taxed to pay for it.
How international debt collection, food speculation and global heating
are spreading
poverty around the world.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: support ACLU-endorsed voting and registration reform.
Many Internet companies show their contempt for users by giving them no way to phone and talk to a human being.
New York City proposes to turn its star research library into a big Internet cafe.
Libya's elections were held successfully in nearly all the country, but armed opposition groups in Benghazi prevented some voting in a complaint about the distribution of seats in parliament.
It would be interesting to evaluate the system against usual objective criteria for allocating seats, to see who is right on that question.
Uri Avnery: Sharon had Arafat poisoned because Arafat could have led Palestine to make peace with Israel.
The Israeli state deserves to be punished for this assassination, and the ideal punishment would be to compel it to end the occupation of Palestine and make peace.
A whistleblower says that Barclays Bank's executives must have been told about interest-rate fixing.
The UK public responds by moving money to smaller institutions.
However, the response that is needed is to prosecute everyone who played any part, as well as the banks themselves. The resulting opportunity must be used to weaken them and take away their political power.
Women's rights are in danger around the world, as supposed non-right-wing world leaders failed to stand up against religious extremists.
England's drought has been ended by very heavy rains, causing widespread flooding.
This isn't the first flooding episode in the past month or two.
It is nice to have water available, but keep in mind that global heating is predicted to produce, in some areas, both droughts and floods.
Companies are driving Guatemalan farmers off their land to grow sugar cane for biofuel.
This demonstrates that the government of Guatemala has betrayed its people. However, it also shows the absurdity of growing crops for biofuel.
Biofuel is a valid approach only if it can be made without the use of farmland or farm inputs.
Apple has begun disregarding environmental standards for recyclability.
It appears Facebook spontaneously sends phone messages to people in India who have had no connection with Facebook. This user is trying to find out why.
Texas Republicans oppose teaching critical thinking, because that could lead students to question their "fixed beliefs".
Republicans' war on workers includes ending Federal unemployment benefits.
With thousands of expendable surveillance drones the size of maple
seeds, governments and criminals will be able to observe
just about everything people do.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
5 Ways Republicans Have Sabotaged Job Growth.
A true and courageous Democrat would have made the Republicans pay for this, but what we have is Obama, who is more of a Republican himself.
The EU is considering a directive to permit some use of "orphan
works", but as this article explains, the details are badly designed
and it will do more harm
than good.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The article ends by describing it as a "missed opportunity", which seems inexplicably weak as a summary of the article's specific points.
US trade sanctions against Iran have nothing to do with uranium negotiations, since a nuclear agreement with Iran would not end the sanctions.
Is it rational to use trade sanctions to achieve regime change in Iran? Iran is ruled by a peculiar tyranny that allows a little limited democracy. (That's what the US seems to be heading towards.)
A few years ago, many Iranians wanted to change their brutal regime. They protested but their protests were brutally crushed, much like those in the US last year. Can hurting them with sanctions enable them to succeed? That is not plausible. In addition, since these sanctions are imposed by the US, they could easily lead many Iranians to direct their anger at the US instead of at the Iranian regime.
US policy on Iran is simply stupid, in terms of US interests or stated US goals. It only makes sense in terms of the Israeli hawks' lobby.
Despite the attack on a student occupation protest, Guatemalans continue to oppose privatization of education.
House Farm Bill Would Kick Millions Of People Off Food Stamps.
A deep drought has destroyed much of the US wheat crop and may destroy the corn crop too.
I suspect this is a consequence of global heating. Of course, global heating by itself does not directly cause a drought in any given year, but it makes droughts more likely in many areas. It also makes floods more likely in many areas.
Burma has arrested student leaders pre-emptively because protests might occur.
US citizens: call
on the Bureau of Land Management to regulate fracking as tightly
as possible.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
In my message I pointed out that fracking causes forest fires (by way of global heating).
The consequences of treating a fetus as a person in Ireland.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for action to stop global heating. Also send mail using this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: write
to New York Governor Cuomo and call on him not to allow fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook deleted a statement by a human rights group, then said that was a mistake.
That Facebook invited the group to post the statement again — instead of undoing the deletion — demonstrates arrogance.
However, the problem here goes deeper. It is not good for human rights groups (or anyone's) statements to be posted using a platform where statements are censored.
A video shows US troops in Afghanistan singing before launching a bomb at possible Taliban fighters.
It seems there was good reason to think those men were fighters; digging in the middle of a road is not a very common activity for noncombatants. However, singing before killing people (even enemy soldiers) indicates dehumanisation of them, and that is not a good thing.
In the US: participate in anti-fracking protests in DC.
India has adopted a policy of distributing generic drugs, thwarting Big Pharma.
Republicans and Democrats argue over who is responsible for continued high unemployment in the US.
They both are. It takes more than just time to address the unemployment problem. It takes appropriate policies, such as government spending to stimulate the economy, and protecting workers' rights. Moving spending from the military field (where it generates proportionally fewer jobs) to other fields also helps.
Obama did stimulate the economy in 2008, and it helped. However, Republicans in Congress blocked further stimulus after that, and in 2011 Obama joined them by adopting the twisted goal of deficit reduction. Thus, the wrong started among the Republicans but covers both.
The UK is considering prosecution of the bank traders that manipulated interest rates.
I hope they will look for evidence that higher management knew about this practice.
Neighboring countries are sending 5000 troops to Mali to fight the Islamist rebellion in the north.
That rebellion ought to be defeated, but this intervention is likely to fail unless it is maintains the support of the inhabitants of that region. That will not be easy.
A mother in Phoenix, Arizona, was arrested for giving a tiny amount of beer to her child.
Cisco says it is undoing its attempt to push users into remote management of their routers.
However, if the firmware in a router can be updated, that means it is software installed on your computer and you should replace it with free software.
Does anyone know whether the current CISCO routers can be used with software loads that are free?
US citizens: tell the Senate to pass a law to prevent human trafficking of employees for US contractors.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Also phone your senators' offices.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
California has prohibited fraudulent and abusive foreclosures.
Drones that use GPS to navigate can be
hijacked by spoofing GPS
transmissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
This won't protect people's human rights if governments start using drones to surveil everyone's movements. We have to hope it helps to prevent that.
Carbon capture and storage causes small earthquakes. Even though these are mostly harmless, they might let the carbon back into the atmosphere.
US corporate media are bending over backwards not to talk about global heating when covering the giant fires.
Louisiana legislators want to provide state money to Christian schools, but not to Islamic schools.
No religion should get state funds of any kind, not directly and not indirectly.
US initiatives to declare fetuses "persons" have failed.
US officials including congresscritters got special discount mortgages from Countrywide.
Ron Paul and Rand Paul launched an initiative against government network neutrality regulations, and condemning campaigns in the name of the public domain.
We could have honest Internet access without such regulations if all Americans could choose between many ISPs. However, the only way most US Internet users could have a choice between many competing ISPs would be through government regulation.
Meanwhile, the idea that the government should be less involved in copyright issues is absurd. Copyright on published works is a federal law. Whatever copyright policies the US has will inevitably be chosen by the US government, except when it invites some international organization to deny the US the choice.
The UN Human Rights Council resolved that human rights should apply on
the Internet
the same as off the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
India's government showed its true allegiance by voting against this.
US law allows patents on drugs to be extended simply by doing an experiment on some other possible use of the drug.
Please don't fall into the bad habit of describing what patents do as "protection" — that is propaganda in favor of patents.
SELEX (Italian) and Intracom (Greek) worked around trade sanctions to finish a network project in Syria, according to Wilileaks documents.
Genetic engineering scientists report on the dangers, lack of testing, and ineffectiveness of genetically modified foods.
Most scientists in this field have a direct financial interest in the success of GMOs, and therefore cannot be relied on to honestly evaluate their possible drawbacks. Contrast this with global heating: few climate scientists would profit individually by ending global heating, but some global heating deniers have been paid by oil companies.
In addition to possible biological effects, GMOs covered by patents spread legal pollution.
Bahraini thugs attacked Zainab al-Khawaja with tear gas canisters and stun bombs, injuring her.
This trick has been used by Israeli thugs to injure nonviolent protesters, but it is just as deceitful when anyone else does it.
Delhi police came to arrest rationalist leader Sanal Edamaruku for
criticizing the Catholic Church.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Judge Posner threw out a patent case between Apple and Motorola, and recognizes that patents in software (and other fields) are often abused and might be a mistaken policy.
Angola is holding an election, and arresting large numbers of protesters.
TEPCO shareholders are suing to demand that TEPCO preserve
recordings of videoconferences in which
it discussed the Fukushima meltdown.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
It is amazing that TEPCO was able to stymie the Japanese government investigations on such absurd grounds as privacy of the people working for TEPCO. I wonder if that conceals another scandal.
Washington's Militarized Mindset.
New York City's electric company locked out its workers during the heat wave, demanding givebacks.
If you live in New York City and you're unemployed, why not offer to join them on the picket line?
Two Syrian generals defected from the regime.
Wikileaks Publishes the 'Syrian Files'.
I am hearted to see that Wikileaks is again fulfilling its mission.
An expert panel concluded that the Fukushima disaster was the result of "collusion" between the government, the regulators, and TEPCO.
More about this. The report is quite scathing.
Uri Avnery warned that Israel might assassinate Arafat.
A US official told Birgitta Jónsdóttir that the US has no wish to prosecute her or question her "involuntarily", but there is evidence suggesting this is not true.
Evidence that the US is looking to prosecute Julian Assange and others in Wikileaks.
The US Army admits it is investigating
the Bradley Manning Support Group.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
This group was formed after Bradley Manning was arrested to provide him with moral and legal support. Since when is that a crime?
The US urgently needs to regulate
the use of drone aircraft for spying on Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The claims that Iran is testing components of nuclear weapons at Parchin are self-contradictory and make no sense.
This looks disturbingly like the lies the Bushmen told in order to justify the conquest of Iraq.
In Mexico's presidential election, over 1/4 of the voters say they encountered coercion or vote-buying.
The EU's highest court ruled that purchasers of proprietary software have a right to resell their copies.
This does not make proprietary software acceptable. Software users deserve the right to change the program and to redistribute copies. However, I wonder if the court would make the same decision about the EULAs of ebooks. That would be a major victory. I also wonder whether the court would allow publishers to make a monkey out of that decision by means of DRM.
New York thugs printed up a "wanted" flyer about some people that often videotape the thugs searching passersby for being Black.
5 Shady Financial Tactics Employed By Mitt Romney.
Barclays Bank accuses the former Labour government officials of asking it to lie to manipulate interest rates. Those officials deny this.
We cannot count on banksters or ministers to tell the truth, so these conflicting statements are more reason for the most thorough possible inquiry. But which kind of inquiry is that?
Maybe both. Maybe there should be a quick parliamentary inquiry into manipulation of the libor rate, and a longer and broader judge-led inquiry into the banksters in general.
Mass
protests in the Chinese city of Shifang put an end to a metals
plant project that they feared would poison them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Will Americans have the strength to protest in such numbers against the Keystone XL pipeline, that is likely to poison people who live near it, then help fry our planet?
As capitalism veers towards fascism, marxism is experiencing a comeback in Europe.
The article creates a phony appearance of irony by saying that the workers are keeping capitalism afloat. Actually the governments that serve the banksters are doing this, by exploiting the workers.
We must not forget the lessons of communist tyranny, that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" turned out to be the corrupt dictatorship of the party leaders; however, if we firmly insist on democracy, a marxist perspective might help put an end to fascism.
US phone companies have convinced (paid?) 20 states to deregulate phone service.
Now in some places you can't get a phone line, or perhaps would have to pay a thousand dollars a year for one.
Michael Luick-Thrams has emigrated to Germany from the US because
he sees
no hope of restoring democracy in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
6 beach lifeguards were fired in Florida because they said they would save a drowning person outside the area which their job covers.
Any lifeguard who obeyed the policy would have to spend the rest of his life thinking about how he let someone drown. Perhaps this company should add "psychopath" to the job requirements.
The argument about liability is ridiculous; there is no reason to hold the company liable if a lifeguard tries and fails to save someone that wasn't the company's responsibility. However, if use of a subcontractors to hire lifeguards creates this problem, that is a good reason to ban the use of subcontractors to hire lifeguards.
Argentina is prosecuting the leaders of the army's baby-theft ring, which took the babies of female dissidents that they murdered, and gave them to right-wing families.
Only some 20% of these babies have been identified.
Some climate scientists warn that the June US heat wave is a picture of the future.
What used to be "extreme" still doesn't happen most of the time, but it is no longer unusual. It is becoming part of "normal".
In 20 years, these events will be frequent, and far worse events will no longer be unusual.
Of course, global heating doesn't explain why a heat wave happened at the end of June this year, or why it did not happen one week earlier or later. That is the randomness of the weather. Rather, global heating skews the probabilities so that heat waves happen more often.
The crucial question is not, "Was this event caused directly by global heating?" but rather, "Of the last 10 weather-related disasters (floods, droughts, fires, big storms), what fraction of the damage probably wouldn't have occurred without global heating?"
Many e-readers spy on their users and report.
Some notes on US independence day.
Thinking about the US, in which elections are more or less legally for sale to companies, I have to wonder whether anything but a moving dead body remains of the United States of America.
A Syrian TV news anchor has defected and said that his job was to report falsehoods.
Rather than shafting the non-rich, France plans to tax the rich and the
corporations to reduce its deficit.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
If you're going to reduce a deficit, this is the right way. However, the time for a state to reduce its deficit is when the economy is growing, as President Clinton did (he gave the US a budget surplus). A recession calls for deficit spending.
Alas, the Euro mechanism doesn't allow deficit spending when it is needed.
Americans must fight once again against national ID cards.
The National Body for the Reform of Information and Communication, in
Tunisia, has given up, saying
that the state has taken up censorship and disinformation once again.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The Japanese government is restarting nuclear reactors even though 70% of Japanese say no.
In this regard, it has come to resemble the US government, which practices numerous right-wing policies that most Americans oppose.
Peru declared a state of emergency in regions where local people are fighting against potentially toxic mining projects.
If people could rely on their governments to prevent these mines from poisoning water supplies, there would be no need to oppose the mines. But few governments are strong enough, and honest enough, to stop the mines from risking other people's lives and health.
Attempts to use US courts to limit required coverage of birth control have been defeated.
Poor people in the US are directed by courts into decades of punishment as a result of debts they cannot pay.
Why the Twitter subpoena decision disrespects civil liberties.
The European Parliament rejected ACTA, which is now effectively dead.
ACTA was an attempt to impose nasty restrictions on Europe and other countries in the name of “free trade”, which is a swindle in general.
This is an important victory, but it's a defensive victory. The people have not gained ground, only avoided losing ground.
Moreover, one defensive victory does not mean the threat is gone. The US continues to negotiate the TPP, which is far worse than ACTA, with other governments that want to give business increased control over their countries.
Defense is not enough. We need to roll back the existing "free trade" treaties that the empire of the megacorporations is based on. We need to deny businesses the chance to argue, "If you regulate us, we will move."
Feeding soybeans to farmed fish shares the harmful effects of feeding them to farmed animals.
US citizens: call on the EPA to block a giant proposed mine in Alaska from polluting surrounding waterways with toxic waste.
US citizens: call on the NOAA to protect bluefin tuna fully and carefully.
Recent Cisco routers have a universal back door allowing Cisco to forcibly change the software. The back door is active even if the user says "no" to "auto-upgrade".
That's in addition to spying on users and threatening to restrict them.
There are routers that can run free software. Replacing the software is the way to be safe from this.
For Americans who still have jobs, the stress of job insecurity is making them sick.
Joseph Stiglitz says, “Send bankers to jail.”
Apple practices planned obsolescence for the iBad — in just two years.
Did the US intentionally permit guns to be sold and brought to Mexico?
Maybe not. Another report says that, thanks to Arizona's weak gun laws, nothing
could be done.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Israel to free Palestinians imprisoned without trial.
A New York court ruled Twitter must hand over most of Malcolm Harris' data without a search warrant.
Baljit Singh, a Sikh from Afghanistan, was denied asylum in the UK and deported to Afghanistan. There he was imprisoned, in effect for being a Sikh rather than a Muslim.
Israel wants to build the annexation wall through agricultural terraces in use since Roman times.
Israel arrests one or two Palestinian children every day, and treats them very harshly, violating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Israel also threatens the relatives of Palestinians prisoners. The
Bush forces did that in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Former Israeli soldiers talk about the cruelty they inflicted on
helpless Palestinians, or that others in their units inflicted.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli Border Patrol is reputed to be the cruelest of the
cruel. One officer kicked a Palestinian boy who was being held by
another officer.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Israel has released five members of the Palestinian Parliament from prison.
However, 22 of them remain imprisoned.
How Israel denies Palestinians access to most of the West Bank's scarce water.
Israel plans to build a military academy in disputed Palestinian land near the Mount of Olives.
Everyone: call on the government of Israel not to demolish the Palestinian village of Susiya.
More about the repeated expulsions of these people from their homes.
The US and Iran are playing brinkmanship for war.
What the US has not done is offer Iran real concessions (such as lifting of oil sanctions) if Iran makes a real concession on uranium enrichment.
GlaxoSmithKline has been fined for bribing doctors to prescribe its products.
Will the individuals responsible be prosecuted?
Yasser Arafat was poisoned with radioactive polonium.
US citizens: call on Congress to give health insurance to the
people fighting the giant fires in the West.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
US schools cite the imaginary Loch Ness monster to disprove evolution
— and the
state of Louisiana pays for it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
I guess one myth deserves another.
Facebook settled a lawsuit by promising users will be able to reject use of their names and photos in ads shown to other users.
However, since this is "opt-out", by default users will still be exploited.
Several Palestinians imprisoned without trial in Israel are on hunger strike, and some of them are nearing death.
The Japanese legal system ensures that those who had to evacuate due to the Fukushima meltdowns will not be compensated.
Everyone: Tell Clinton that amending the old, inadequate environmental
impact statement for the Keystone XL pipeline is not adequate.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Sad to say, Obama is not just failing to confront the issue of global heating, he is going all-out to pour tar sand oil on the fire.
The Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization planned a nuclear
emergency drill, but excluded serious scenarios such as a meltdown
because they might make the public worry.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
This attitude — the public shouldn't worry about nuclear power — seems to prepare the road for accidents to occur.
(The planned drill was never held; the article doesn't say why.)
US citizens: call on Alabama Public TV not to broadcast right wing
disinformation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The prediction of peak oil has proved false, because high oil prices have made available so much inefficient oil that burning it is disaster.
Why aren't we all looking for ways to escape from the burning planet while the "authorities" do nothing?
Unfortunately, it is because none of us can escape. There is no way to save yourself from catastrophe on your own. Even a group can't do much.
We are all in one boat and we know it. Either we solve this problem together or the catastrophe will hit us all. The only actions that have a chance of success are those that could strip away the dominion of the fossil fuel companies over our governments. Any of those is a long shot too. Perhaps Americans need set themselves on fire near the White House; it could spark off a revolt, as in Tunisia.
Cancel ALEC's tax exemption, says the a former IRS enforcer of tax exemptions.
Facebook has automatically pushed users' @facebook.com email addresses (which they never asked for) into the contact lists in other people's phones.
The lesson here is that it is a fundamental mistake to trust a company such as Facebook to give anyone data about you. It will give them the data it wants them to have, not the data you want to give them.
A waste incinerator in Delhi that generates electricity threatens to end the livelihoods of 400 workers that manually sort garbage.
The horrible life of picking through garbage is better than what they had in rural India. Indeed, one of them manages to support several children on his small income.
Perhaps India needs a one-child-per-family law.
Canada's government is attacking environmental protection along a broad front.
It resembles what Republicans have tried to do in the US Congress.
Many cities in the US had record high temperatures, and it's only June.
The banks swindled around $30,000 per person from the UK, while doing very little to support the economy that they parasitize. The taxes they paid in a decade were wiped out by the cost of bailing them out.
I agree that the UK's goal must be how to stop them from doing this in the future. (The same goes for the US, except that our officials are so quietly servile that they don't intend to think about it.) When banksters say, "If you regulate us, we will move elsewhere," the response should be, "How soon can you be gone?"
Human Rights Watch concludes that Assad's regime in Syria systematically practices torture.
If we can make Syria stop, maybe we can make the US stop.
Illinois has banned the sale of shark fin, in an attempt to protect sharks. Several other US states have banned it too, notably Hawaii which has a significant Chinese population.
Shark fin isn't exactly a "delicacy"; that word implies that people appreciate it for the sensation of eating it. Rather, it is a form of conspicuous consumption; when you hold a banquet, you serve shark's fin soup to show you were willing to spend that much.
To end the killing of sharks for their fins we need more action to change this part of Chinese culture. In principle, anything else equally expensive could do the job — it is not crucial that it depend on a scarce resource from scarce animals.
Global heating threatens leatherback sea turtles, which are already endangered.
Sri Lanka's tyrannical president shut down two web sites for criticizing the government.
It looks like the murder of a famous editor was not enough to convince Sri Lankans to stop resisting.
The Declaration of Internet Freedom is well-intentioned but insufficiently specific.
Apple persists in disregarding the widespread blatant abuse of the workers that build its products.
Sweatshops are good for Foxconn (and for Apple), but not for workers.
Personal attacks against Julian Assange are used to distract attention
from the heroic achievements of Wikileaks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Ironically, this article itself exaggerates criticism of Assange by stating that the allegations against him consist of "rape" — they do not.
Many European countries signed an agreement for unlimited bank bailouts.
That means the banksters can take the wildest risks, knowing that the profits will be theirs but the losses will fall on the public.
What the Anglos did to the Amerindians in the 1800s, the 1% are now doing to all Americans.
Some Outrageous Facts about Inequality (in the US).
A bill in Congress would allow planting GMO crops if approvals are appealed in court.
The last broadened Israeli coalition includes a party that opposes attacking Iran. Mofaz, leader of Kadima, says that making peace with Palestine is more important than Iran.
The TPP would restrict US law to the point it can be considered a corporate coup d'etat.
Back-door subsidies from the US and states to big banks.
They prey on the the poor, the unemployed, the foreclosed.
Hundreds of thousands protested for democracy in Hong Kong, as another nondemocratically selected executive was sworn in by the president of China.
US research into the effects of radiation on humans and other life is
corrupted by coming from the agency that supports nuclear power. And
the US government is surreptitiously raising various standards for how much
radiation is acceptable.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
When a research contract at MIT studies the "difficulties in gainingthe broad social acceptance" of nuclear power, I'd say that
goes beyond the bounds of what universities should do. The project's
abstract clearly shows that the
goal is to convince the public to accept nuclear power.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
How the Barclays bank fraud worked — and how the psychology of power enabled traders to "seduce" other staff into giving false data to state regulators.
It is clear that each of the participants was consciously participating in fraud. Every single one should be prosecuted.
The UK set up a special court to try the large number of rioters and their small thefts. Maybe it needs a special court to expeditiously try all the banksters who committed these frauds.
More broadly, this suggests lessons for laws and regulations about how banks operate: structure them so that opportunities for such fraud do not arise.
The US is the world's defender of the right to sell arms to states that violate human rights.
Thus, the US does occasionally defend rights!
The Swiss village of Guttannen is threatened by mudslides due to global heating.
Sea Shepherd's statement about bogus accusations from Costa Rica
against Watson, the
head of Sea Shepherd.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
UN troops tried to invade the State University of Haiti, but students closed the gates on them.
The reasons the troops gave make no sense, so maybe they were not the real reasons.
10,000 protested Wal-Mart in Los Angeles.
Thousands continued protests in Israel against running the economy only for the rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The US government secretly offered loan guarantees for construction of new nuclear power plants.
Lucy Lawless talks about risking 3 years in prison by peacefully protesting against Shell's oil drilling in the Arctic.
Now the US Coast Guard has established a "no protest" exclusion zone around a Shell oil rig in the Arctic.
Obama is determined to make sure that nothing can divert the Earth from the road to disaster. We need a president who works for human beings, not for the oil companies.
Jill Stein for president!
WIPO is setting up a treaty to give actors and musicians something like a copyright only stronger.
It carries DMCA-like rules to censor software.
I agree with the writer on the substance, but must point that the article suffers from using "intellectual property" and "copyright" interchangeably.
It is nearly impossible to use the term “intellectual property” without falling into error, and it is misguided to try, since its use plays into the hands of those who would impose treaties like this.
President Carter rebukes the US government for turning against human rights.
The UK has a policy of rather brutally pushing people on unemployment benefit to look for work, which goes as far as requiring them to work for no pay. It seems that the real goal is excuses to cut off people's unemployment benefit.
It is obvious a priori that a scheme to push unemployed people to seek work when the problem is a lack of jobs can't be a serious attempt to address the problem. Now we can see what it is really meant to do.
Islamist extremists in Mali destroyed old shrines belonging to a different Islamic sect.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Dishonest UK banks are being sued by the stockbroker company Charles Schwab.
The EU recognizes that "smart meters" for electricity usage can be a threat to privacy.
South Carolina joins other states in banning cities from providing municipal broadband.
The state government is working for companies against the people of the state.
Everyone: Call on Bahrain to drop charges against the 11-year-old "protester" who faces imprisonment.
Online activists risk torture to challenge Beijing.
Global heating deniers say they will repeal Australia's carbon tax because it would be "a wrecking ball through the economy".
Before they use the term "wrecking ball", they should look at what global heating is doing to the US now, then imagine it twice as bad in 20 years. Then they should remember last year's floods.
Labour proposes to gradually renationalize the UK railroads so as to knock fairs down.
The privatization was a handout to business, and never served the public interest. Although in some cases there are competing train companies for the same journey, the effective competition is not enough to result in benefit to the passengers.
If B'liar hadn't been a right-winger in disguise, he would have nationalized the railroads.
The TPP would be America's fire-sale to foreign companies. It would be just as bad for the people in all the other countries that sign it.
Working conditions at Apple's other Chinese suppliers are even worse than in Foxconn.
Why Scalia should resign from the Supreme Court.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
He might be impeached if Congress were not on the same payroll as him.
Uri Avnery: Thugs in Tel Aviv violently attacked protesters because years of repression of Palestinians has trained them that way.
US citizens: call on Senator Rockefeller to hold hearings to investigate Rupert Murdoch for bribery and wiretapping.
Fires have been set in Sumatra to clear out forests for palm oil plantations.
There are some commodities whose importation needs to be limited or even banned because their production or extraction causes so much harm.
The debate about fracking mostly ignores what it will do to global heating.
The large US fires are the result of several effects of global heating
all working together.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Record hurricanes, record heat, record fires: this is what global heating looks like — in the early stages.
Next year might not be as bad. In 10 years, every year will be worse than this.
Meanwhile, Obama and Romney pretend special nothing is happening. Obama visited Colorado Springs and was reportedly shocked by the devastation of the fire, but apparently said nothing about global heating.
Threatening the band Pussy Riot with imprisonment is backfiring against Putin.
In Southampton, New York: protest the Romney fund-raiser set
up by the Koch brothers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Londoners will march to protest the Olympic Games, then hold "family-friendly People's Games".
If you live in Madrid, Tokyo or Istanbul, organize now to prevent your city from holding the Olympic Games in 2020. Don't wait for the decision to be made.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to stop aid to the military and
thugs of Honduras, and to suspend operations at the School of the
Americas. Also send a message via this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
New Cisco "smart" routers seem to have a back door for Cisco to
remotely install "upgrades". Users were freaked that Cisco seemed to
say it would monitor users' connections.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Cisco says that was an erroneous statement, but even if this is true, that doesn't make it rational to use these routers. The software in these routers is nonfree, and if Cisco can remotely change it, we cannot overlook it.
Google, Twitter and (of course) Facebook are working for the right-wing corporate-funded Super PACs.
The highway bill being considered by Congress is
a change for the worse in regard to honesty, maintenance, air quality,
public oversight, trains, and bicycles.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
You shouldn't use Amtrak anyway, since it requires passengers to identify themselves. I take buses instead of trains in the US.
The WTO ruled that the US is not allowed to label meat by the country of origin. In other words, the WTO stands for keeping people in the dark about their food.
"Free trade" policies such as the WTO undermine democracy, both indirectly (by allowing companies to threaten to move their business elsewhere if states regulate them as they ought to be regulated) and directly (with lots of rulings such as this). All these treaties need to be cancelled so that we can restore democracy.
Citizens of North Carolina call for climate sanity.
Unnecessary US Navy exercises would sink four ships, polluting the ocean with toxic PCBs that get into fish, and wasting metal that would be quite valuable if recycled.
Many US farms play games with the laws that protect farm workers from toxic pesticides.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Some questions for Obama about government secrecy and whistleblowers.
As Romney attacks Obama's health care plan, Massachusetts Governor
Patrick praises the results of the similar Massachusetts law passed by...Romney himself.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Rhode Island has adopted a
law to protect the rights of homeless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Persecuting the homeless is kicking the weak while they are down. There are bigger evils in the US, but none more mean-spirited. The demand for such policies comes largely from stores. People should identify the stores in their neighborhood that advocate such policies, and boycott them.
Most Blatant EU Pro-ACTA Campaign So Far Is A Copyright Monopoly Violation.
US citizens: call on Obama to push in the TPP negotiations for provisions that are good for American workers and American democracy.
70% of Japanese want their country to move away from nuclear power, but the New York Times doesn't want to admit that, so it says they are "deeply divided" about the question.
Musician Kevin Steinman explains how he is moving to Norway because
the US medical system puts an impossible burden on him.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support raising the minimum
wage. Also send mail through this link.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The latest tactic of "at all costs" antiabortionists: revoking the medical license of an abortion doctor for not forcing raped ten-year-olds to have babies.
James Watson signed the ACLU's amicus brief against patents on human DNA.
In the UK, many thugs have raped women or pressured women into sex.
This is not limited to the UK and is not new.
Morsi took his oath of office in Tahrir Square to defy the generals.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
He also said he would work to free Omar Abdel-Rahman from US prison.
That seems strange to me; I wonder what reason he gives for that position.
UK citizens: write to your MP in support of thorough and complete libel reform.
The proposed bill is missing crucial points.
Here's a campaign I decided I could not support, even though I agree with the basic idea.
It would be correct to take appropriate action so that lion poaching does not take off. Perhaps the sale of lion bones should be banned, but I'm not sure: that ban might encourage poaching by removing the existing legal source. In any case, I can't bring my self to say that I want to recommend tourism to South Africa. That is because it generally involves long-distance flights.
Demand-reduction through education of the users seems like a good approach here. Repeat users of illegal mind-effecting drugs at least know that they have a real effect. The users of these phony drugs are only imagining an effect. They should try viagra instead — then they would get their money's worth. If they don't know this, we should inform them.
I heard about a video designed to drive Chinese men off the superstitious idea that tiger bone, lion bone, or whatever absurd irrelevant thing, would be effective as a virility medicine. It showed tigers having sex, which does not take very long, and said something like, "Using tiger bone you can last a whole ten seconds." Why not play this on TV ten times a day all across China?
Ecuador has stopped sending soldiers for training to the School of
the Americas, which provided torture training.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support a strong treaty to control international arms
sales.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Julian Assange, Pursued for the Crime of Practicing Journalism.
Call on Thomas MacKenzie, who got a bonus of half a million dollars
from Northrop and then immediately went to work as a congressional
staffer, to resign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The UN ethics office hardly even tries to protect whistleblowers in the UN who report corruption.
The Supreme Court extended the Corporations United decision to state laws.
Thus, all elections in the US are now effectively for sale.
Everyone: send email to the European Parliament to oppose ACTA. The vote will be on July 4.
Republicans want to reduce the US minimum wage.
The US minimum wage has fallen drastically since 1970, taking account of inflation. This Republican initiative is simply a tactic to make the rich richer.
The US Forest Service approved a uranium mine near the Grand Canyon based on a completely inadequate environmental impact statement.
The US is massively expanding surveillance of all Americans — taking fingerprints and iris scans on the slightest pretext, including people stopped for speeding.
The goal is clear: a system of total surveillance that would be great for repression of democracy. As for crime, I doubt this will be of any use for preventing the most widespread and damaging crimes, such as foreclosure fraud or the purchase of laws that hurt millions of workers.
Bahrain has paid compensation to the families of some protesters who were killed, and has charged the killers with manslaughter.
This is correct, but Bahrain must above all stop its repression of protests. Amnesty International that Bahrain arrested an 11-year-old kid and bullied him into confessing crimes which are just a way of saying "protesting", and he now faces imprisonment.
NGOs call on Cambodia to stop torture, which is regularly practiced by thugs there.
Torture anywhere is monstrous, but as an American I am especially disgusted by the torture practiced by the US.
The US is exporting its practice of mass imprisonment to subservient countries in Latin America.
Libyan dissidents have sued the UK government and officials for handing them over to Gaddafi. However, the plans for secrecy in trials could deny them the chance for justice.
Every government data base about people is used by government employees for their own purposes. The only way to limit this is to limit what gets put in such data bases.
Of course, what's even more frightening is what the state will do to dissidents with all the data it has. While real non-state-sponsored terrorists do exist, the state itself is a much bigger danger to us and our freedom if its violence is not kept in check.
Neither civilization nor natural ecosystems can adapt to the amount of warming that cheap "unconventional" fossil fuels are driving us towards. The result will be a planet whose life has little resemblance to today's Earth.
Perhaps some country (it does not matter which) should begin bombing fossil fuel power plants and oil refineries around the world. Even if this war caused a million deaths, that would be hundreds of millions fewer deaths than climate disaster would cause. To be sure, this solution is unnecessarily violent and drastic, since a treaty could do the job and do it better; but governments refuse to sign such a treaty, so what's left to do?
Another Republican attempt to sabotage environmental laws about pollution and wildlife.
Republican officials say businesses deserve more freedom — to refuse to cover cancer treatment for their employees.
This represents nasty priorities, but more fundamentally, the question arises as a result of a misguided policy: linking medical care with employment. The US government should bypass this issue by funding medical care with taxes — for everyone, whether employed or not.
Contracted workers for the US government abroad are often trafficked from other countries and treated effectively as slaves.
US cell phone networks refuse to show customers their own location data.
Note the non-sequitur reason offered by Sprint: "We won't tell you your location data, because we're not allowed to tell you some other data." I don't believe they expect this nonsense to fool their customers. Rather, they expect that they will never be called to account for the irrationality.
Whether you can find out your own past locations is not the real issue. The real issue is that companies store them and will report on you. Being able to see how much information they store about you is indirectly relevant, because if you could see it, you might not stand for it.
I wonder if a state government could legally require phone companies to hand over this information to subscribers.
A simple model using yeast shows how a stressed population can reach a tipping point and collapse irreversibly.
Attempts at fisheries management that fail to take account of this possibility are likely to fail disastrously — and since we cannot determine where the tipping point lies, we need to be a lot more cautious.
How multinationals and the US were involved in the not-quite-legal impeachment of President Lugo.
Greg Palast: the euro was conceived so as to provoke a crisis which would be an opportunity to roll back social and workers' protections across Europe.
Thugs in Tel Aviv attacked a protest and arrested over 90 protesters for no clear reason. When a judge asked for their reports about why they had arrested the protesters, the thugs had nothing to say.
Here's more information about the protests themselves.
The police raid on Megaupload's founder's home was illegally done, says New Zealand court, and seized evidence must be returned to him.
"Share This" is a mechanism used to track users' browsing from site to site.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose attempts to roll
back Obama's health care reform. Also use this page to
send a message:
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the text I entered:
As your constituent, I urge you to oppose any further attempts to repeal or restrict this important law. The only change that should be made is to reduce our health care costs by establishing a single-payer system as in Canada. The parasitic health care companies, which secretly lobbied against this law while saying they were in favor of it, ought to be removed once and for all from our economy. Thank you.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The House of Representatives voted to declare Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to deliver documents about the operation "fast and furious" that allowed gun smuggling into Mexico.
Holder says he stopped the operation as soon as he heard about it. If so, he's not to blame for the operation itself. But that is no reason to withhold information from Congress about it.
Meanwhile, the War on Drugs has killed a hundred times as many people in Mexico.
Egypt's chief general defied the newly elected president by claiming
the posts of defense minister and supreme commander, attempting to pre-empt the president's choice.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Recall that the military hold hundreds (at least) of protesters prisoner after military trials.
Professor David Nutt calls on governments to allow use of psychedelic drugs in research on the brain.
Nutt was an advisor about drugs for the UK government until he offered advice that was too rational for the government to tolerate.
The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Obama's health care plan.
This law was a step forward in terms of health care coverage. The bad things about it are that it won't save any costs, because it fails to remove the grip of the health coverage companies and big pharma.
Nonetheless, the health coverage companies
tried to defeat the bill. They gave $100 million to lobby against
it, despite saying publicly they were in favor of it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ethiopia has convicted 24 dissidents of “terrorism”.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
When a government (including the US government) talks about doing something to "terrorists", read "dissidents" and respond accordingly.
Genetically engineered mosquito's are intended to reduce the spread of diseases that infect humans, but there are many uncertainties about what will result from them.
The War on Drugs promotes the spread of HIV.
Thousands protested in Kuwait after a court declared legislative elections void.
Climate safety activists plan direct action to block construction of the Keystone XL planet roaster pipeline's southern part.
Considering how many people would be killed by burning the tar sands oil, almost any action to stop the pipeline would be justified on the principle of necessity.
The EPA's power to regulate CO2 emissions was upheld on appeal.
However, it still faces threats from Republicans in Congress.
China returned North Korean refugees to North Korea, which executed them.
Because the US government continues to practice torture and protect torturers, the ACLU has launched a torture data base to record what is known about these crimes.
The US-installed Haitian government is evicting poor Haitians from a
shantytown, but they have nowhere to go.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The minister says the government "will" offer the evicted refugees new homes — in other words, at some time in the future, not now. I am sure these poor Haitians know exactly what a promise like that from the Haitian elite is worth.
A Silicon Valley insider since the 1960s contrasts the values of today's large tech companies and their founders with those of the 60s.
Things have gone a long way down.
Occupied Haiti: A Prefab President, Parliament and Constitution.
Massachusetts citizens: tell Governor Patrick to veto the bill that says supermarkets don't have to put the price on products.
US citizens: support a plan to require sea turtle escapes in all the nets used for catching shrimp.
Barclays Bank has been fined over half a billion dollars for manipulating interest rate markets.
If they don't put the executives in jail for this, it is a slap on the wrist.
32,000 have been evacuated from the vicinity of a forest fire in Colorado.
One idiot criticized the government for not putting out the fire sooner. Clearly the firefighters are doing all they can. What the government should have done sooner is stop the process of roasting our planet.
Top Five Reasons Why Caracol Industrial Park is Disastrous for Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A former Libyan official extradited from Tunisia may have been tortured and gravely injured. It isn't clear.
US citizens: call for senate hearings into
Republican voter-suppression laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Supreme Court decision on Arizona's "show me your papers" law did not rule that requirement was constitutional, only that the question must be considered later.
Republicans call any government policy that's inconvenient for the rich a "job killer", and the mainstream media repeat these mindless accusations as true.
Paid sick-leave is good for people's health and reduces health care costs, but the cruel US right-wing will stop at nothing to abolish laws that grant workers the right to paid sick-leave.
A German court has ruled that circumcision of male infants is illegal. It says that men should be free to decide for themselves whether to undergo circumcision.
Global heating deniers call environmental protection a “religion”.
The same smear is sometimes told about the free software movement, and it is equally irrational in that case. The operative idea in the smear is that any moral stand is merely arbitrary.
Refuting claims used to argue against sharing.
Europeans: ACTA isn't dead yet. Contact your MEPs to explain why ACTA is bad.
US citizens: tell the Navy to change plans that it predicts will kill almost 2000 whales and gravely injure
thousands more.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel has destroyed ancient Arab buildings in Jerusalem.
It should be noted that Israel is not alone in this; Saudi Arabia has destroyed many of the historical sites of early Islam.
The Palestinians of Susya have been expelled from their lands several
times. Their village now faces demolition. A group of Israelis
joined them in a nonviolent attempt to walk to their original homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The siege of Gaza has continued for five years, but it was planned by Israel long before. This shows it was not a response to anything done by Hamas.
Israel has broken its agreement not to extend the imprisonment without trial of Palestinian prisoners.
A Palestinian businessman says, investing in Palestine only supports the Israeli
military occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your senators to support the DISCLOSE Act. Also send them mail through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Facebook: the most congenitally dishonest company in America.
The news site torrentfreak.com is censored in thousands of access points.
Record high temperatures (surprise, surprise) are making large US fires spread even more.
Everyone: support Greenpeace's
call to save the Arctic.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel treats every Palestinian child as a potential terrorist.
The judge in Bradley Manning's case ordered prosecutors to hand over
documents that might help his defense.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: donate to Jill Stein's campaign now; she is close to qualifying for Federal matching funds and needs a little more.
The Mondragon Co-operative Corporation in Spain has 85,000 worker-members.
Mondragon is an alternative to the stockholder corporation as a way of organizing business, but we must distinguish that from free markets. The word "capitalism", used to refer to the two of them at once, obscures the point.
Members of Congress have proposed a bill to stop the use of "state secrets privilege" to stop lawsuits against the government.
This might make it possible for torture victims to get justice.
Modelling an economy that delivers prosperity without growth.
The new French environment minister tried to do her job, and was promptly removed from her post.
Denmark has resisted pressure to punish people for file-sharing, but plans to use Internet filtering and propaganda, and will try to get everyone to put passwords on WiFi networks.
Running a WiFi network with no password is the only way to resist being a footsoldier in the War on Sharing.
In Japan, downloading unauthorized copies is punished with years in prison.
This is what the copyright companies want to impose on all of us. I suspect that Obama helped pressure Japan to do this.
What should a person do, after seeing that business-dominated governments have decided to let business destroy civilization?
Republican state legislator admits the purpose of voter ID laws is to help Republicans win.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook is sneakily leading users to send email to other users via facebook.
The Supreme Court approved the nastiest part of Arizona's anti-immigrant law, the “show us your papers” part that attacks everyone's rights.
Libya accuses an ICC representative of smuggling a letter to Gaddafi's son.
People will be executed in Iran for drinking alcohol.
When alcohol is made underground, it becomes dangerous; that danger does not exist in the US, where alcohol is legal, but heroin which is illegal is dangerous due to contamination.
Los Angeles is crawling with license plate cameras, including fixed installations clearly intended for surveillance of everyone.
The data is kept effectively forever.
A new software package automatically follows anyone from one CCTV camera to another.
The next time Big Brother decides to bug your house it could be done with a flying robot bug.
Present trends suggest that the US will strew these literally everywhere, record all conversations in a complete behavioral dossier for each person, and argue about whether a warrant is required to listen to the recordings days or years later.
These developments demonstrate that the basic logic of US privacy law is inadequate. If it is acceptable to take note occasionally that a car or person passes by, that doesn't make it acceptable to collect a large dossier on every car's movements, or every person's.
I suggest making constitutional limits on systematic collection of information about people.
Diverse perspectives on aerial bombers, manned and unmanned.
US banksters are on trial for fixing prices of bond auctions. This seems to be a tiny piece of a much broader crime syndicate.
UK citizens: sign
the petition against extradition of Richard O'Dwyer.
The Iraqi government has closed 44 news
organizations, ironically including some set up by the US
government.
The Islamist candidate
Morsi was declared winner of Egypt's presidential election.
However, the generals have claimed independent power which threatens
the authority of the president.
The US East Coast will experience 1.5 to 4 meters
of sea level rise in this century, even in the unlikely case that
we cap global heating at 2 degrees C.
This will lead to frequent flooding in New York, and I suppose in
Washington as well.
US citizens: call for a law to require corporations to get permission
from stockholders for political campaign activity.
Bradley Manning's lawyer accuses prosecutors of lying to the court.
US citizens: call on
Obama to defend the right to sell what you've bought.
Military contractors are using their
employees as hostages to demand more US government military
spending.
The US Senate voted to cut food
stamps.
Billionaires are taking control of US public universities, thanks to state
policies that starve them of funds.
Just how dangerous is the ITU's proposal for
the Internet?
Right-wingers selectively use the argument about not imposing a debt on future generations: they use it
to argue for austerity, but ignore it in other areas such as avoiding
global heating disaster.
Republican senator: protect corporations from "harassment and
intimidation" by their supposed owners.
Lugo's impeachment was unconstitutional, and some other countries have
refused to recognize it.
Here is what
Lugo said about it.
The US is at a fork between the values of the enlightenment and the
irrationality of the middle ages. Alas, hardly any powerful people
or institutions are defending the enlightenment.
Romney tells voters “I feel your
pain”. Sure he does — he feeds on it.
An interview with Tony Nicklinson, petitioning for the right to a painless death.
I'm very impressed, and the world will lose something when he
dies. However, that's no excuse to force him to spend day after day in
futility.
Spanish coal miners and their families face
destitution from the closure of the mines.
I will not campaign to keep inefficient coal mines running, or even
efficient ones. However, the state has the duty to make sure closing
them does not force miners and their families onto the street.
Under Spanish law, the miners will have to pay their mortgages even if
they lose their houses. Since nobody will buy houses in a ghost town,
the seizure of their houses will hardly reduce their debt. Even if
they could find other work, unlikely in today's Spain, they could
hardly support their families and pay the mortgages on the lost homes.
They may thus be forced to join the thousands of "fiscally dead" who
can only work in the underground economy, because any legally
recognized earnings would be directed towards debts they can never
pay.
An article in Spanish explains how foreign
multinationals such as Monsanto procured the impeachment of President
Lugo.
This article from
2010 says that Lugo also bowed to the multinational land grab and
didn't defend the peasants who voted for him. However, if the senate
was against him, he may not have been in a position to defend them
alone.
US citizens: tell your senators and representatives, overturn the Corporations United decision.
The US sells mining leases
for
a pittance to a near-monopoly mining company.
The result is a loss of billions for the US treasury; at the same
time, this encourages the use of coal and consequent pollution of many
kinds including lots of CO2.
Toxic fluids injected underground, to force out oil and gas or simply
to dispose of them, are seeping
into ground water, which supposedly would never happen.
Churches intentionally violate US tax law by endorsing candidates and
the IRS does nothing.
Even though Obama is attacking whistleblowers as no president before,
Congress is considering a new law to
attack them with.
Here's more info about one whistleblower.
It appears that Obama doesn't want to prosecute all those who leak
information, only whistleblowers (those who expose government crimes).
Oil pipelines in Alberta have had 3
major spills in the past few months.
Of course, the main reason to reject the planet-roaster oil pipeline
is the oil that won't leak — the oil that will be burnt and push
the world into global
heating disaster.
Russia is attacking independent
news sites, citing the usual excuses ("protecting minors",
"pornography" and "extremist ideas").
We must reject those excuses for censorship, and any others.
Look at how the US government argues
that it's ok for DEA agents to put a gun to a child's head.
Aside the outrageous arguments and the factual falsehoods, worst of
all is the reprehensible moral distortion. To refer to grabbing a
person (child or adult) and throwing that person on the floor as
"assisting that person to the floor" must not be tolerated; everyone
responsible for making that statement should be fired for it.
Meanwhile, even though the mistake of raiding the wrong house might
not be anyone's fault, why shouldn't the state compensate the victims
for the lasting terror caused by this raid? Even in Afghanistan the
US compensates victims when it admits it attacked the wrong people.
US citizens: sign this
petition for a bill to prevent banks from being “too big to
fail”.
Israel,
the Palestinian Authority and Hamas all disrespect freedom of
speech.
CEO Romney Helped Outsource Manufacturing
Jobs To China.
Court decisions have ordered the FDA to limit the regular use of antibiotics
on farm animals.
President Lugo of Paraguay has been impeached and removed
from office.
This seems to have been political, like the attempt to remove Bill
Clinton from office. Whether it is really a disaster for democracy in
Paraguay, I don't know enough to judge. I don't know enough about him
and the situation in Paraguay to come to any conclusion.
He was interested in free software, and his aides invited me to Paraguay three times, each time saying he wanted to meet with me, but each time some other urgent issues arose and made him too busy. Since every "LUG" is really a GLUG, I wanted to ask him to change his name to Glugo ;-).
Jeffrey Sachs says business has destroyed the American democratic
system and transformed citizens into mere
consumers.
A new system is said to be able to read fingerprints from
20 feet away.
This makes me concerned that systems will read fingerprints without
our knowing. We may have to wear pads over our fingers in public to
prevent this.
The article claims that these systems will not be connected to the
FBI's fingerprint database, but that is beyond their control. Under
the U SAP AT RIOT Act, the FBI can collect all these fingerprints from
any company at any time.
Note how they suggest that you will choose to use this system so you
can buy from Amazon. You
should not buy from Amazon anyway.
World leaders agreed to express "deep concern" about the environment,
instead
of protecting it.
Thugs tased Amy Storm when she was helplessly
tied up.
Tasers occasionally kill, so this is a grave thing to do.
She did not complain at the time, because she did not know that a
video was made. She knew it was futile to complain about the thugs'
violence with only her word against their lies.
The Twilight of the Elites proposes to explain why the US'
institutions have gone awry and social
mobility has diminished.
US citizens: call
on Clinton to stop supporting religious profiling by the US and
Israeli governments.
The newest victims of the War on Drugs are Americans
that need painkillers.
Even before this attack, Americans with pain have encountered
difficulty in getting adequate medication.
Saudi Arabia plans
to pay Syrian rebels.
Support the "Robin Hood" tax on
financial transactions.
Movie stars joined with Greenpeace to try to block
oil drilling in the Arctic.
Protesters tore up a copy of the worthless
Rio “agreement”. Greenpeace, WWF and Oxfam condemned
world leaders for bowing
down to business at Rio and delivering "a new definition of
hypocrisy".
UK Prime Minister Cameron shamed a comedian out of using a
tax-avoidance investment, but what
about his cronies?
Why not change the tax law so that no one can do it?
The EFF should call for elimination of software patents, not
mere reform of them.
A NYPD thug shot a helpless woman in cold blood. She was pinned in
place by a car air bag, and pleading
"Don't shoot me!"
Chicago's torture commission established that Chicago thugs tortured
suspects, and the chief torturer has been convicted
and imprisoned.
However, the commission's funding has been canceled, so it cannot get
justice for those who were tortured into confessions.
Suing to block Obama's expansion
of oil drilling.
The Senate rejected
Imhofe's amendment to encourage mercury pollution.
Who are the 46 senators that voted for it?
The US is arming
Syrian rebel groups.
Ai Weiwei was not allowed to attend the tax hearing against his
company and its lawyers
have not been allowed to see the evidence.
For the US government, using contractors instead of employees is more
expensive.
Indian ISPs were allowed to unblock bittorrent sites after an
appeal rejected the broad censorship order.
The fifth European Parliament committee voted
to disapprove ACTA.
The only vote that counts is the vote of the full parliament, so
Europeans must keep their activism up.
Egyptian journalists are arrested and punished for bizarre
pretexts.
Why Julian Assange is justified
and rational in seeking political asylum.
US citizens: file a public comment with the EPA in favor of limiting
CO2 pollution.
The UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings says that US drone
attacks encourage other states to flout
long-established human rights standards.
I don't see any special controversy about using drones bombers in a
war zone where artillery or manned bombers might otherwise have been
used. Drones can kill civilians, but so can the artillery or manned
bombers. The issue here is when drones are used outside such areas,
in what fits the concept of assassination more than that of war.
Estimates of global CO2 emissions have been revised
upward.
US citizens: oppose the giveaway bill for big oil, HR
4480.
US citizens: call on the US government not
to label former conscripted child soldiers as "terrorists".
They were victims, not responsible for what they were forced at
gunpoint to do.
Call on President Correa to give asylum to Julian Assange.
Attorney General Holder is likely to be held in contempt
of congress for falsely claiming to be unaware of a policy that
allowed guns to be brought easily into Mexico.
It looks like the Egyptian generals are preparing to falsify
the result of the election to make their candidate president.
A psychologist says that one twisted mind — in a school, or in a
bank — can
push everyone there into harmful and nasty behavior.
Thug departments in the UK are looking at privatizing almost all of their activities.
Since these contracts won't create a competitive market for the
public, the only way they will make things "more efficient" is by
paying workers less or by doing a bad job. Compare, for instance, what
privatized parking meters have done in Chicago and what
prisons do in the US.
American society is reconsidering the question of what to do with the
demented aged whose maintenance requires tremendous
effort and expense (while they have no understanding of what's
happening).
If I reach the point where I can't learn anything new, or contribute
anything to the world, I think I would see no point on going on living
as a burden.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect bees from the threat of neonicatinoid
pesticides.
Thugs in Pennsylvania raided a protest camp blocking the eviction of
30 families for the sake
of fracking.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the political spending
secrecy requirements put in by the House of Representatives. Also
contact them through this
page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The US is blocking a UN report accusing
Rwanda of stirring up rebellion in the Congo.
Pro-EU parties won
the election in Greece.
Welfare cuts in the UK are expected to lead
people to suicide.
Uganda has arbitrarily
banned 38 organizations alleging that they promote homosexuality.
There is nothing wrong with promoting homosexuality, but more than
that, arbitrarily banning an organization without a fair trial
violates freedom of association. The US also engages in such arbitrary
bans, which are equally wrong.
The UK government reveals its irrational hostility to drugs by condemning
advice based on rational considerations.
Hamas retaliated with rockets for
an Israeli attack on Gaza. (This was inspired by a terrorist
attack that probably wasn't carried out by Hamas.)
Israel then re-retaliated with a fatal airstrike.
Israeli and international women dressed protested in Shuhada Street,
formerly the main shopping street of Hebron, which Israeli colonists
have turned into a Jews-only
zone. They were violently arrested.
This is the nonviolent action that Issa Amro was later accused of
helping to organize.
Everyone: tell the speaker of the Michigan house of representatives to
apologize
for gagging the female representatives.
Universities might track
students' Internet use to monitor their "mental health".
Anthony Graves, who was held in solitary confinement on death row for
18 years and then proved innocent, talks about how solitary
confinement frequently practiced in the US drives people mad.
Tunisian artists fear repression after the
culture minister sided with the mob that destroyed controversial
works.
A constitutional argument for the right to record what thugs do and
say, even
in private.
The proposed agreement for the Rio conference has almost
no commitments. It is just a list of wishes.
We can see the hand of the plutocracy in this. Governments have
surrendered to the empire of the megacorporations and fight for their
profits above all else.
Greenpeace says it will campaign to stop
banks from lending to fossil fuels and deforestation.
The world must move away from “grow
now, clean up later”.
When Jamie Dimon was asked by a congressman, “Why do you
deny the people cleaning your buildings a living wage?” he
did not give a real answer.
JP Morgan's Connections
to the House Finance Committee.
But there may be a deeper reason why the US won't touch JP Morgan: JPM
derivatives prop
up the US debt.
New York thugs lie
about crime statistics to the FBI. Of course, that's not
all they lie about.
Puerto Rico's thugs rampage
with impunity against citizens.
The US has made no response to UN criticism of repression
of Occupy protesters.
Now the UN Human Rights Council has called on the US to stop the secrecy
about drone bombings.
The Ethiopian dictatorship has forced tribes off their lands to set
up sugar plantations.
Thousands protested silently in New York City against the policy
of letting thugs search people arbitrarily on the street.
I don't care whether the people who are searched are brown, pink,
green, or purple. It's wrong no matter who it is aimed at.
JP Morgan receives $14 billion in benefit from special
low interest rates from the US government.
Romney plans a further
tax cut for the rich, and uses irrelevant arithmetic (distraction)
to disguise it.
Palestinian nonviolent protest organizer Issa Amro was arrested at a
border crossing from Palestine into Jordan, and accused of planning a
nonviolent protest.
Thugs arrested a man for
saying the word "cripple" in a park.
Whether "cripple" in particular ought to be grounds for arrest is a
side issue. the real issue is, this is entirely wrong. There is no
word which is so nasty that people ought to get arrested for saying
it.
US citizens: tell Obama, don't
attack Iran.
Residents of Nabi Saleh forced open the barrier that the Israeli Army
had placed across the
only paved road leading to the town.
Israel has agreed to release
Mahmoud Al-Sarsak from imprisonment without trial, and he has
begun eating again.
Israel said he was involved in terrorism but did not present
evidence. If the government really believes this, it should put him on
trial.
Right wing "settlers" are openly fomenting terrorism; will the Israeli
government charge
them?
Julian Assange is in the Ecuadorian embassy and has asked for political
asylum.
Assange is wanted in Sweden for questioning, although there are no
criminal charges against him as of now. Yet, when he offered to be
questioned in the UK by Swedish officials, they
did not take him up on it. UK judges twisted and stretched the law
to permit extradition even without an order from a Swedish judge.
The crime that they want to question him about is not rape. According
to published explanations, his alleged actions
would not be a crime in any other country. It is not nice
conduct, to be sure, but that is not the same as rape.
I have read that Sweden has an arrangement with the US whereby it
would hand him over to the US on a mere request. That would be a bad
thing.
It would be improper for Ecuador to shield Assange from possible sex
charges. I suggest that Ecuador invite Swedish officials to question
Assange in the embassy or in Ecuador. If he is subsequently charged
in Sweden, Ecuador could approve his extradition to Sweden on the
condition that Sweden not hand him over to the US, but rather let him
return to Ecuador if acquitted, or at the end of his sentence if he is
found guilty.
Tony Nicklinson, paralyzed except for some of his head, pleads in
court to
allow a doctor to kill him.
Nicklinson has justice on his side. I wonder, though, if there is a
way for him to get to Switzerland where he could lawfully be helped to
die.
US citizens: support EPA
regulations to limit mercury pollution.
Canada plans to use sensitive microphones to eavesdrop on travelers entering
or exiting Canada.
If it is "game over" for Earth's climate and human civilization, it is
because the business
ordered governments not to save them.
Japanese Gov't Hid Radiation
Information from Public.
Activists defending forests, rivers and farmland are being killed at
the rate of two
per week.
Obama wants the Rio summit to backtrack
from commitments made by Bush I, 20 years ago.
This shows how Obama is more right-wing than even Republicans used to
be.
Iran wants reduction of sanctions if
it is to make any nuclear concessions.
This seems reasonable, especially since Iran's uranium enrichment was
presented as the reason for the sanctions.
Citizens of Massachusetts: tell your state senators to insist on a
vote, not more "study", about extending
beverage bottle deposits to other beverages than soda.
Support Bernie Sanders' bill for anticorruption
reform of the Federal Reserve.
The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate appears to have won
the election in Egypt, but the generals are acting
to take total control.
Is anyone investigating whether the US supports the generals? It
occurs to me that the prosecution
of the staff of two US-funded NGOs might have been a demand from
the generals for more US support "or else".
Anti-women legislators in Michigan barred a legislator from the debate
because she
used the word vagina.
It is typical of power-tripping right-wingers that they claim certain
words or images are evil.
Dozens, or maybe hundreds, of people are in federal prison for a crime
that (it turns out) wasn't
a crime at all, but the government has no intention of telling
them about this.
Egypt's military government gave its thugs more
powers to arrest.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to sign the Miller-DeLauro
letter against secret negotiations for the TPP.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Uri Avnery condemns the pogroms
against African illegal immigrants in Israel.
Was the Houla massacre carried
out by opponents of Assad?
Here is a translation of the article from Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung.
What convinced me this was done by Assad's men was the testimony
attributed to an army defector. I wonder if it is possible to
confront him with these claims.
I don't think that the Christian religious orders are implicitly
trustworthy either. Assad protects them and they are afraid that
Sunni fanatics will kill them. This could lead them to lie about
massacres. At the same time, it reflects real danger from armed
Sunni groups that have been supported by other countries.
The nonviolent protests of 2011 were nonsectarian. Assad wanted to
turn it into a sectarian conflict, and outside Sunni states wanted the
same thing. Now they have both got their gruesome wish.
In the UK: participate in the Open Rights Group's training for action against
censorship and surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
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UK citizens: tell your MP that libel reform needs to be complete, with a public interest defense, and participate in the demonstration on June 27.
Israel plans to imprison illegal immigrants without trial, even if they are fleeing due to a valid fear of persecution.
The City of Oakland commissioned a study that criticized the violent attacks by the city thugs against Occupy protesters.
The report fails to criticize the worst thing about Oakland's response: the fact that it shut down the Occupy encampment and led the wave of attacks that eliminate the right to make protest camps in the US.
Many large banks continue investing in companies that make cluster bombs.
Who's the money behind the farm bill?
The US government's argument with victimized Megaupload users compared with a bull in a china shop.
An additional reason to reduce the normal working hours is to reduce the use of resources.
In other words, producing less is good for sustainability, provided that the loss falls on the wealthy (who would do fine with less), not on the workers.
The Taliban in Pakistan are holding the region's children hostage by banning polio vaccination.
Regional collective management plans can clean up large rivers and forests.
Republicans have attacked funding for sidewalks and safer bike paths.
The Republicans are funded by fossil fuel companies that want us to burn more fuel at any cost.
18 Federal Reserve directors personally benefited from the Federal Reserve's bailouts.
That's because they worked in financial companies that received 4 trillion dollars of bailout money. They personally probably got millions in bonuses out of this, as well as stock appreciation.
Too Big To Trust:
Banking
Reform and Financial Instability
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Karzai demanded an end to airstrikes against residential buildings
in
Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
But NATO is not listening.
Monsanto's Genetically-Modified DroughtGard Corn Barely a Drop in the Bucket.
If it were possible to engineer a kind of corn that used significantly less water to grow, it might be a big step forward if only it did not spread legal pollution in the form of a patent.
U.S. Supporting Rwanda as it Destabilizes the Congo — Again.
Movie companies are forcing cinemas to convert to digital
formats with DRM.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose approval of GMO corn designed to be
sprayed with a highly toxic defoliant (more or less, Agent
Orange).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Romney's plan to privatize US education and subsidize religious know-nothings.
Women in Saudi Arabia plan to protest by driving.
The danger of another terrorist attack against the US is mainly due to
the US' day-by-day
aggression against other countries, including against their
civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Did the Republicans deliberately crash the US economy?
They surely did, but Obama helped them along by failing to campaign publicly for stimulus policies, or for tax increases on the rich. Obama even endorsed the goal of cutting the deficit during a recession.
In the US: join the anti-fracking protest in Washington DC, July 24-28.
US citizens: tell your senators to support the EPA regulations on mercury pollution.
US citizens: call your senators to make
the farm bill support healthful food.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: protect the Clean Water Act.
Citizens of Massachusetts: oppose proposed policies to harass illegal immigrants and restrict welfare recipients.
US citizens: support the Student Loan
Forgiveness Act of 2012 (H.R. 4170).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Israel to free Mahmoud Sarsak.
Big high-tech fishing boats, designed to be very efficient in a sea full of fish, control nearly all of the UK's fishing quota, and the result is ecological damage.
The efficiency estimates come from this
study.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
How the world's wealthiest 10% are pushing the world over the sustainable limits.
The cease-fire monitors in Syria have been withdrawn because they are in too much danger.
The ACLU is trying to find out when the US government reads people's email without a warrant.
Maya's parents are worried that a software patent will yank away the program that she uses to generate speech.
Software patents put all software developers in danger, and this is an example.
A software patent is the immediate cause of this nastiness, but what gave it the opportunity to do so is something even nastier: Apple's unjust power over the iThings.
What put Apple in a position to decide whether her parents can get this app? The system software of the iThings is malicious, set up to let Apple decide what programs users can install. Apple practices arbitrary censorship, and not just in this instance.
What put Apple in a position to remotely delete this app? Another malicious feature, called a "back door", which is designed to let Apple remotely delete installed apps.
The iThings are designed as jails for their users. Gilded jails, but still jails. They were lured in by the gilding, but and now they see the door shutting.
If you want to fight against this, sign up at DefectiveByDesign.org.
Meanwhile, suppose the company that made the app loses the lawsuit or settles it with an agreement not to distribute that app. That too would stop Maya from ever getting another copy. Why is this? Because the program is proprietary software, controlled by that company and not by its users.
What Maya really needs is to replace that program with free/libre software, software controlled by its users.
Growing cocoa can encourage reforestation in the Amazon.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
However, success requires policies to pressure to grow cocoa this way.
It must be noted, however, that it is very hard to replant the Amazon forest, because the biodiversity there is enormous. The first goal must be to stop the cutting of the forest.
Egypt's military government wants digital ID cards. Of course, this is just for efficiency of operations, right?
Oman: Assault on Freedom of Speech.
ElBaradei warns Egypt it is letting a 'new emperor' take over.
The US-backed African army in Somalia has pushed the Shabaab out of the cities, and claims to be winning.
I will shed no tears for the Shabaab, who stand for cruel Islamic law, but will the government imposed by intervention receive any loyalty from Somalis? Perhaps it will, if it establishes peace.
The worm that turned Obama into a hypocrite (if he weren't one already).
Chicago Workers' Economic Plan: Go Co-Operative!
Blowback,
or Impossible Dilemmas of Declining Powers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
From what I've read, one small correction is called for: Al Qa'ida was set up by Pakistan's intelligence service to support the resistance against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, and was later turned to another purpose.
The Internet Archive is suing to overturn a law in Washington that could be used to prosecute web sites for third-party material.
This resembles the censorship of Thailand.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose CISPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Imprisoned journalists in Iran are on hunger strike.
Obama has legalized almost a million illegal immigrants who were brought to the US as children.
I am not sure what position to take on the immigration issue in general; I do not think countries are in general obliged to let everyone in. However, this policy is clearly right for those children who hardly know any other country.
Rupert Murdoch appears to have been caught lying to the Leveson inquiry.
Will he be prosecuted for this, or is he "too big to prosecute"?
Ban Ki Moon says that the Rio conference is too important to fail.
He is right — but that doesn't mean success is possible. Obama is staying away because he does not care.
Bahrain's regime confirmed the sentences of 11
medics accused of treating wounded protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Thanks to the Israeli siege, 10% of small children in Gaza have stunted growth and half have anemia.
Haiti is boiling with anger towards the UN army, which Haitians understand is an army of occupation that serves foreign interests such as the US.
A leak of the TPP shows that the US is pushing to give foreign companies special rights over the US government.
Turkey is constructing a dam that will threaten the ecology of the Tigris valley and destroy archaeological sites, primarily as a weapon against Kurds.
Legal guest workers in the US are often treated as slaves.
The EPA proposed stricter standards on soot (particulates), which is known to damage human health.
Of course, business lobbyists want to go on polluting, and never mind your lungs.
US citizens: call for solid protection for whistleblowers in the Public Health Service.
The state of Mississippi says it cannot make a privatized prison operator carry out legal obligations. It can only beg the company to do its job.
A sneak attack on the Clean Water Act, through the farm bill.
Agribusiness money is corrupting
research at US universities, and the National Academies of Science
want even more of this.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The root of the problem are that taxes on these companies are too low. The government should take money from them to finance this research, so that the companies get no control or influence over the research.
Julian Assange will be extradited to Sweden, and jailed there.
Senator Paul has proposed a bill to limit use of drones for domestic surveillance by the federal government. In most cases, a warrant would be required.
That would be a good start.
Mahmoud al-Sarsak, imprisoned without trial in Israel, is approaching
death from hunger strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Debunking Monsanto's confusion about “drought-tolerant” corn.
Indigenous activists for water access in Mexico were framed
on charges of car theft.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Putin's thugs arrested five journalists who protested against the state's threats to journalists.
The Spanish indignados are now running
food banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is a good activity, but this alone won't even start to free Spain from the empire.
They are also accusing a bankster of fraud.
US citizens: protect
abortion rights for soldiers who are raped.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Egyptian Supreme Court dissolved parliament, effectively giving all power to the military government.
The UK government sabotaged an EU energy efficiency plan.
The UK government is for fossil fuel and nuclear power, and opposed to renewable energy. It has weakened or canceled nearly all of Labour's programs to reduce CO2 emissions, but continues to pretend it is for renewable energy.
India's system of regulating mines is almost null, so mining companies pollute and destroy at will.
Proper inspection costs money, so mines must be taxed enough to pay for it.
Elinor Ostrom studied why commons don't always lead to overuse.
Israel shoots at Gaza fishing boats before they even reach the 3-mile limit imposed by Israel. And those inshore waters are fished out.
Peter Van Buren — being fired by the State Department for posting a link to a published Wikileaks document — writes about how Obama's persecution of whistleblowers is making the US like a military dictatorship he once lived in.
He warns us that the policy of "classify everything, then leak what makes the government look good" leads to a journalism which is effectively censored.
The UK government says it will reform banking, but it has softened the plans, undermining their effectiveness.
Australia's new marine reserves may not achieve their purpose due to exceptions made to cater to the fishing and mining companies.
You can see in the wheedling words of the prime minister why this happened. We can't protect nature (which means, human survival) and keep business happy at the same time. We need governments prepared to be as tough as Rambo toward any business that gets in the way of protecting the Earth.
Japanese whaling is running into an insuperable problem: people don't want to buy the whale meat.
US citizens: call on Obama to defend the
right of first sale in the Supreme Court.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
To allow US vendors to deny people's traditional rights by shifting production offshore would attack Americans in two ways at once.
US citizens: sign this petition to cut
tax breaks for companies that move jobs out of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to use diplomacy to resolve the issue of
uranium enrichment with Iran, and resist
being pressured into war.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your senators to protect rules for political transparency.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the US to support establishment of the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary.
Most of the world's governments support a plan to make web sites pay a tax to be viewed.
This would destroy stallman.org and gnu.org and nearly every web site, except for big companies that make big profits.
Ben Ali Gets Life in Prison, But Other Security Officials Walk in Revolutionary Martyrs Case.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Chicago protesters have been indicted on terrorism charges after irregular and unfair legal proceedings.
Bloomberg wants New York City to repeat Chicago's disastrous privatization of parking meters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Privatization of any state activity is wrong unless it leads to a competitive market for the public.
Coal's resurgence undermines fight against global warming.
Peasants blame Honduran insecurity forces for killing leaders of the peasants' rights movement and driving peasants off their land.
This is backed by the US, which in private effectively endorses the coup.
The US is fighting several wars across Africa, and building a military and intelligence network to do so.
How US drone attacks help al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
If you take US rhetoric at face value, and suppose that the US government wants to wipe out al Qa'ida, this would imply that the drone attacks are a self-defeating tactic.
However, what if that is just a pretense and the real desire of the US government is to have a war it can fight forever? An excuse to eliminate civil liberties and reduce most Americans to abject poverty without opportunity? Judged this way, the drone attacks would be a great success.
Charting the Cozy Connections between JP Morgan and the Senate Banking Committee.
These connections (and likewise with other banks) enabled the banksters to get away with tremendous crimes, with bailouts for a punishment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US economy cannot improve because the rich have sucked it dry.
Republicans sell their budget cuts to the Americans who they will hurt using an idea of the family as cruel tyranny.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Comcast has started fighting subpoenas issued as part of the War on Sharing.
Australia has established large marine reserves around the Great Barrier Reef.
Scientific institutions call on politicians to address the danger of population growth and high consumption levels.
The US government has 64 bases for drone operations in the US.
Help the EFF find out how your local thug department uses drones.
US sanctions against a Russian arms exporter were dropped in order to buy Russian weapons for Afghanistan.
Nuclear weapons companies have invested almost 3 million dollars to get more government spending.
As millions in New York can't afford healthful food, or any food, a group that feeds people asks the city to make a vacant lot available for farming instead of building.
Diesel exhaust recognized as carcinogenic.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A journalist who champions human rights has been arrested in Azerbaijan.
New Haven thugs arrested a woman for recording them and are keeping her phone as "evidence".
We need to imprison thugs who act like this or they will continue to terrorize citizens.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone the Speaker of the House at 617-722-2500 and call on him to allow the expanded drink-bottle deposit law to move through the state legislature.
Sanal Edamaruku is now a fugitive under threat of imprisonment due to religious censorship. Sign this petition to support him.
Rep. Issa's follow-on for SOPA is to elevate copyright and a dozen other laws to the status of human rights, with a “digital bill of rights”.
The presence of the term “intellectual property” is a give-away that this is a harmful proposal.
We must oppose this plan.
Two senators are blocking a bill to amend US digital surveillance law until the government comes clean about its surveillance practices. They accuse the executive branch of secretly stretching what the existing law permits.
A legal defense team sent by the International Criminal Court is imprisoned in Libya and accused of possessing a small disguised camera.
So what if they did?
International condemnation for South Africa's press suppression secrecy bill.
If only Obama would stop attacking press freedom in the US.
The UK government will write a blank check for total Internet surveillance.
The discussion of which data can be accessed under which conditions is a decoy from the real issue: the fundamental increase in surveillance which is going on: the policy of making a total dossier on each person.
UK Uncut can sue to challenge Goldman Sachs's favorable UK tax deal.
BT cotton turns out to be good for insect wildlife, compared with conventional cotton and all the pesticides it needs.
I am not against genetic engineering in general, but if we use it, we must protect farmers' rights.
Fires in the US southwest are straining the capacity to drop water from airplanes, which has been reduced due to budget cuts.
The cut in the budget for fire fighting has two causes: Republican tax cuts, and the perverse policy of cutting spending just when a stimulus is needed.
Tens of thousands (elsewhere I read 100,000) protested in Moscow against Putin's autocracy.
Fukushima residents filed a criminal complaint against officials in charge of the nuclear power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Nanoparticles pose special — or at least, different — health risks, which laws do not take account of.
The empire of the megacorporations will obstruct the necessary changes.
The UN monitors say that Assad's forces are torturing children and using them as human shields.
They cite testimony from children who were tortured, and from torturers.
CO2 emissions from China seem to be more than the government admits.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mines and factories in China have polluted a tenth of the agricultural land, or maybe more.
Along with the African land grab is a water grab.
The policy that spread obesity: replacing fat with sugar.
Campaigning for lower energy costs is misguided.
Feds tell Megaupload users to pay lots of money if they want to get their data back.
Compare that with a hypothetical example of a bank and safe deposit boxes.
This is an example of Stallman's Law at work: a change in technology is an excuse to reduce people's rights.
The Supreme Court upheld the US government's right to torture with impunity for "national security".
It also abandoned the rights of prisoners in Guantanamo, even though most of them are acknowledged to have been imprisoned for no reason.
Why should anyone hold the US government in higher esteem than the Chinese government?
Tribune Company Moves to Seize Occupied Chicago Tribune's Website.
Florida governor Scott is suing for the right to disenfranchise lots of Democratic voters.
In an apparent miscommunication, Karzai said that the US had agreed to stop bombing civilian residences, then the US said that wasn't so.
Spanish miners are on strike against government austerity.
A economics professor proposes that schools charge students on a publisher's behalf for the right to take a class based on a textbook, whether they buy the textbook.
The article confuses the proposed system with the patent. The proposed system is what matters. The patent has no effect on students, except that it might be an disincentive to implement the system. The only ethical issue about the patent itself is that it is a business method patent, which is a kind of software patent, and those should not exist.
What can we say about the proposed system? It involves corrupting schools, turning them into marketing agents for publishers. Any school that requires students to obtain a book in a specific way should be shut down.
Indian thugs banned a protest in Hyderabad, demonstrating that tyranny in India is not limited to the Internet.
Vulture capitalist (to use the usual term) Singer, who wants to use US courts to force poor countries to pay debts they defaulted on, wants help from the US Congress.
Coal in Australia threatens the Great Barrier Reef, but the provincial government of Queensland refuses to take steps to preserve it.
Burning that coal will kill the Great Barrier Reef and all other corals due to acidification of the ocean.
European governments are pushing for a world-wide Internet censorship scheme.
I doubt that "child" pornography, even when it really depicts children and not postpuberal teenagers, plays a big role in leading people to sexually abuse children, because adults have done this for a long time even though porn was not available. In any case, the main risk to a child comes from people in the family.
So I think this is simply an example of a common political phenomenon: a phony solution that allows politicians to pretend they are doing something, while serving other interests (the copyright industry) and harming the public.
There were anti-ACTA protests across Europe.
Exposure to common environmental pollutants during pregnancy results in various birth defects — occasionally gross and fatal, but more often subtle and seen in mental retardation years later.
Spain is getting an EU bailout for its corrupt banks, and paying the banksters millions, but the cost will be disaster for millions of people in Spain.
A credit agency in Germany plans to evaluate people's creditworthiness by who their “friends” are on facebook.
The lesson is that we should make sure that no activities collect information about lots of people's social networks.
The death of bee colonies has been traced to mites that transmit a virus, but also to neonicotinoid pesticides. They both contribute.
Here is how the neonicotinoid pesticides contribute.
Libya is splintering, and some of the parts are holding their own elections and even reducing corruption.
In Singapore, artist Samantha Lo faces yeas in prison for posting stickers.
Tourism is destroying the ecology of the Galapagos Islands.
Ironically, the unusual organisms are the main motive for anyone to go there.
Intel's Big Brother TV, that watches the users all the time, is stimulating resistance.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
The Awa tribe begs the Brazilian government to prevent logging on its land.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook's phony privacy referendum.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Building drones to observe the fighting in Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Vietnam proposes to require Internet users to register with their real names, and other nasty policies.
Students in Turkey have been sentenced to 8 years in prison as "terrorists" for carrying a banner calling for free education.
When a government talks about laws against "terrorism", read "dissent".
The Turkish government also applies the term "terrorist" to writers prosecuted for their writings.
North Carolina Senate decides to include science in sea level projections after all.
Indonesia's forests of corruption.
Some in Congress call on Obama to protect dolphins by resisting the WTO's decision on dolphin-safe tuna labeling.
A president worth voting for wouldn't need to be pressed to do this. Jill Stein for president!
States that cut funding for education a few years ago are using rising revenues to give tax cuts (mainly to the rich).
Vandana Shiva: The empire of the megacorporations, established by "free trade treaties", has undermined the achievements of the Rio summit of 20 years ago.
Of course, it also assures that the new Rio summit can't fix things.
Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality and the Myth of Opportunity.
In Congress: a bill to raise the US minimum wage to the same level it had in 1968.
Time was when the US extended the fundamental right of a fair trial even to people who had killed millions.
The Earth is likely to experience, in a few decades, an irreversible ecological tipping point which would cause massive extinctions and global changes in ecosystems.
In other words, if we do reach a population of 9 billion humans, it won't stay that high for very long.
European telecommunication companies want to use the ITU to make network sites pay for their visits.
The proposal would wipe out noncommercial web sites such as this one. I couldn't afford to pay anything substantial to run this site.
Canadians: campaign against the Internet surveillance bill.
NGOs and scholars call for an end to US support to the insecurity forces in Honduras.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-27 because the old link was broken.]
Documents show Mexico's main TV empire asked a right-wing presidential hopeful for money to slant its coverage for him.
Support actions around the US for local resolutions in favor of a constitutional amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision [spelling intentional].
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A mob attacked Egyptian women who protested in Tahrir Square for women's rights.
This puts the Muslim Brotherhood on the spot. It must firmly condemn this attack, and support those women, or else it will demonstrate that even "moderate" Islamists are sexist bigots.
The air strike that killed many civilians in Afghanistan was done in haste and without consulting the Afghan government.
And since the Afghan army had surrounded that house compound, it also reflected a lack of trust in that army.
There may well be good reasons to distrust Afghan troops, but refusing to trust them is surely likely to lead to problems like this.
Note how the US assumption that adult men can't be civilians pervades this article.
Almost 1000 politicians and almost 1000 soldiers are under investigation in Colombia for ties with the paramilitary terrorists.
One of Bahrain's political prisoners is an 11-year-old boy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Cybersecurity Act (S. 2105) Threatens Online Rights.
The FBI says you can spot terrorists because they practice civil disobedience, exercise their rights under the Freedom of Information Act, and meet in coffee shops.
This is part of a long-term campaign to label dissidents as terrorists so as to crush dissent.
Viruses spread by mites have been tied to the death of honeybee hives.
I wonder how this relates to the other work that showed certain pesticides kill large numbers of honeybees. Perhaps they are two separate dangers acting in parallel.
Obama actively defended imprisonment without trial in court, but lost.
Governments regularly disregard the environmental treaties they have signed.
By contrast, governments rarely ignore the nasty copyright treaties they sign. I suspect that's because business power wants the copyright treaties obeyed while it sabotages the environmental treaties.
Assad's men committed a massacre in a village that was at peace, then apparently fired at UN monitors trying to enter the area.
Illegal forest cutting in Brazil has dropped 75%, but the new forest law puts this achievement at risk.
Peter Gleick, who obtained damaging documents from the Heatland Institute [spelling intentional] through subterfuge, has been reinstated as head of the Pacific Institute.
Forced marriage will be a crime in the UK.
The issue of how not to make victims hesitate to report forced marriages is a tricky one, which I have nothing to contribute to, but in general I support this measure.
India censors the Internet for two unjust reasons: to attack sharing and to suppress controversial opinions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Anonymous calls for a general protest aimed at Indian government web sites, and explains that this is a protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The text scores an own-goal when it uses the term "attack" to describe these protests. I suggest that Anonymous drop the terms "DDOS" and "attack", and stick clearly to the terminology of protest.
Also, I'd appreciate it if, when they talk about the GNU/Linux system, they didn't call it just "Linux". See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/the-gnu-project.html.
Tunisian Bloggers Join Hunger Strike Against Violation of Press Freedom.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The issue also includes protesting the use of a military court for the case about protesters who were shot by government snipers during the revolution.
Osama bin Laden tried to continue directing Qa'ida, but its affiliate groups didn't listen to him, making him irrelevant to events.
This is more reason why his death was no real gain for the US.
He tried to focus the affiliate groups on attacking the US, but they instead focusing on attacking local enemies. Perhaps that's part of the reason why the danger to Americans from terrorism is so low as to be negligible. Americans are more likely to be killed by their own furniture.
But Obama is working hard to change that.
More warrantless wiretapping is Obama's “top priority”.
Lawsuits challenge the constitutionality of the nasty copyright law that the US imposed on Colombia.
Unfortunately they don't seem to include the nastiest aspect I know of: punishment without trial.
Bradley Manning's lawyers have won access to some government documents that might refute some charges against him.
Success in negotiations with Iran requires offering concessions on sanctions.
China plans to force nomadic Mongols to settle, so that they don't get in the way of destructive mines.
The US has similar destructive mines and doesn't support the people who live in the vicinity.
Israel threatens to demolish the school of Jinba cave village in the West Bank, as well as the solar power facility and road. But teachers can't reach the village to teach, there because Israeli soldiers took their van.
The area was declared a zone for military exercises, apparently as an excuse to get rid of the village because it isn't really used as such.
Peru's President Humala, who ran as a leftist, has continued the right-wing mining policies of his predecessor.
Russia is following the examples of Quebec and Chicago by imposing harsh penalties on protests.
When the US fails to defend the freedom to protest, it is easy for any other nasty regime to forbid them.
US citizens: support the constitutional amendment for public funding of election campaigns.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to defend the requirement for TV stations to say who paid for political ads.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand action for mortgage relief. Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Many states in the US have suppressed journalism about the treatment of farm animals by banning investigative reporters from lying on job applications. This means they cannot hide the fact that they are reporters.
Such harmless deception is legitimate and necessary in order to expose abuses by business.
The Rio+20 international conference for environmental protection has failed before it starts.
20 years ago, the power of business was less, and governments could make agreements to protect the environment. Today that is impossible because business interests won't let states cede an inch. They will fight to the end over whatever scraps they don't manage to destroy in the process.
Billionaire Polluters have compelled scientists who did research into the effects of the Big Spill to hand over their private emails. The scientists fear these will be taken out of context, misinterpreted, and used to attack them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I don't understand the logic of this decision, since the scientists were in no way involved in the events that caused the spill and therefore cannot be expected to have any special information about them.
Humanity's tremendous changes in the ocean mostly go unnoticed, because they are gradual. A book documents with photos how large fish were wiped out, across 30 years. It also shows how protecting fisheries can bring back stocks that are almost gone.
Although the details of fisheries management are complex, the basic idea is simple: give priority to the long term, and the fishermen must adapt to that.
The world's cities are making so much waste that it is hard to deal with.
We need to reduce the world's population.
Although the recall of Gov. Walker failed, one Republican state senator was replaced, so Democrats can now block Walker.
Gravely injured Québec are bitter but determined. One of them lost an eye.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A member of the provincial parliament was arrested along with many peaceful protests in a gratuitous attack on democracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Tien An Men dissident Li Wangyang appears to have been murdered, a year after his release from prison where he spent 21 years.
Human rights groups have asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the state-sponsored murder of over 3000 civilians in Colombia.
The US knowingly funded these murders.
Amnesty International calls for Israel to release or charge all the Palestinians imprisoned without trial.
Iran has fabricated 1/3 of its moderately enriched uranium into fuel for a research reactor.
Robert Grenier, former CIA official, says that Obama's lax approach to drone bombings against unidentified targets is only making more enemies.
The US is attacking people who come to rescue the victims of a drone bombing.
This tactic was used by other terrorists too.
South Korea has surrendered to creationism.
The US Supreme Court says thugs can use tasers on anyone, even those who are infirm and not threatening anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This despite the fact that tasers occasionally kill.
A US judge whose job includes issuing digital surveillance orders estimates that 30,000 are issued each year. In most cases the targets are never informed.
Israel destroyed a yogurt factory in Gaza, as well as houses and other businesses.
Michael Morpurgo, who visited Gaza for Save the Children, reports on seeing a child, scavenging ruined buildings, shot by Israelis.
Whoever shot the boy could not avoid seeing he was shooting a child. The fact that missiles are launched from Gaza, though also a war crime, is irrelevant to this issue.
Israel will not prosecute the orthodox rabbis who wrote that it is ok to kill Gentile children to stop them from growing up and killing Jews.
The author thinks that Israel's prohibition of "hate speech" is a good thing, and claims with regret that this decision has effectively made it null and void. I disagree, because that law is censorship. The wrong is not that religious speech is exempt from censorship, but that nonreligious speech is subject to censorship.
While I totally disagree with the views of these rabbis, just as I disagree with the cruel views of right-wing American politicians and Islamists, they all deserve the right to state their views.
Putting those views into practice is another matter. Israeli "settlers" are seizing land from Palestinians to expand their colony, and threatening the neighboring Palestinian children on the way to school.
Colin Powell, whose false accusations paved the way for Bush to invade Iraq, now falsely accuses his subordinates of not correcting them.
Israeli border guards demand to see "suspicious" visitors' personal email.
Just like the US, Israel presents this as protection from "terrorists" but mainly applies it to nonviolent criticism. That, in case anyone has not noticed, is lying.
The recall of Governor Walker has failed.
This is due to companies' money and its power of distraction.
Sri Lanka tortures Tamils denied asylum in the UK for telling about how Sri Lanka tortured them before.
A major Brazilian beef company is using illegally deforested land and stolen indigenous land.
China says that the US embassy in Beijing has no right to publish air pollution readings.
A cardinal in New York condemns gay marriage as "immoral" and against "natural law" is connected with paying pedophile priests to agree to a quiet dismissal.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mountain lilies and hummingbirds depend on each other, but global heating is pushing their cycles out of sync.
Another global heating positive feedback effect: tundra turns quickly into forest and reflects less sunlight.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israelis who built on Palestinian land, without even permission from the Israeli government, are protesting a Supreme Court decision to demolish their buildings.
Israel demolishes dozens or hundreds of Palestinian buildings every year.
A few highly visible crackpots have intimidated the Republican Party and then Obama into failing to prevent global heating.
What makes them so influential is the working of oil company money behind the scenes.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose Senators Inhofe's plan to stop the EPA from limiting mercury pollution from power plants.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell the Senate to insist on the military cuts agreed on last September. Call your senators, and sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
CAFTA has enabled a Canadian mining company running a never-approved mine in El Salvador to attack the Salvadorean state.
The US is using drones to attack Yemeni rebels that are mainly interested in fighting the government of Yemen.
In effect, that means the US is helping to prop up that government.
From Dreams to Drones: Who is the Real Barack Obama?
Peru needs glacier loss monitoring: dire UN warning.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign this petition
to prosecute the banksters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A Kuwaiti was sentenced to prison
for
insulting Islam and for insulting other states.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Two injustices in one.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats in Congress
to stand firm against extending
the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US and Canadian citizens: oppose the plan to negate environmental protection in Canada and harass environmentalist organizations.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone Governor Patrick at (617) 725-4005 and call on him to support a constitutional amendment to overturn the Corporations United decision [spelling intentional].
Tobacco companies are spending millions to defeat a referendum to increase cigarette taxes in California. They will say anything at all, figuring that they can get away with it.
Ideally voters will decide based on studying all the arguments and facts carefully. But if you have not got that time, here's a heuristic: vote against whatever big companies want.
Rwanda appears to be fueling a rebellious armed gang in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Profit-driven surveillance threatens to pressure most people to forfeit “voluntarily” what remains of their privacy rights.
To put legal limits on access to the information collected is not adequate to avoid the harm to our freedom, because even with such limits, the information will be a giant dossier about each person.
Stolen social security numbers are being used to get fake tax refunds from the US government.
Although this causes inconvenience for those whose tax refunds are delayed, it is good for the US as a whole because it puts money into the economy — just what the Republicans have blocked for two years.
What is unfortunate about this is that it encourages lying. It would be better to stimulate the economy by paying people to do useful public works.
Canada's right-wing government plans to nullify environmental planning requirements and harass environmentalist organizations.
A Libyan militia fought with the government over control of Tripoli's airport.
Chinese censorship is working overtime to suppress discussion of the Tien An Men massacre of students.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters commemorating the massacre were arrested, with violence reminiscent of Chicago and New York.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This article says that Uri Avnery oversimplified the situation in his recent article.
I think the point remains valid nonetheless.
Turkish women (and men) protested the plan to effectively ban abortion.
It would be banned after 4 weeks, but as reported, 4 weeks is too early to carry out the procedure.
Palestinian prisoners threaten to renew their hunger strike because Israel has not carried out its agreement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Various Bangladeshis are being prosecuted for insulting the prime minister or making accusations that the prime minister is responsible for crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
These laws contradict freedom of speech; Bangladesh's prime minister deserves to be put on trial for this prosecution.
Proposing a treaty to make ecocide an international crime enforced by the International Criminal Court.
Bhaskar Sunkara was questioned by Canadian border agents because he is a known journalist. Eventually they let him in for a short visit but ordered him not to write anything.
The US is much worse: it requires foreign journalists to get a special visa, and denied entry to a journalist from Australia who didn't have one.
The Libyan SSC, set up to rein in the militias, kidnapped and tortured a prominent human rights defender.
This occurred as he was on a mission for the health ministry to fire a hospital director. This seems to be part of a larger power struggle between the nominal government and the SSC.
How Obama Was Dangerously Naive About STUXNET and Cyberwarfare.
Mutually Assured Cyberdestruction?
Oklahoma doctor Refuses To Provide Rape Victim With Emergency Contraception.
The Turkish president says women who are raped should be forced to have babies.
Thus, both Christianity and Islam inspire oppression of women.
Bruce Schneier, debating Sam Harris, explains why profiling airline passengers makes bad security.
Sam Harris made an exaggerated statement which nonetheless has a kernel of truth:
As bad as Christianity and Judaism have been in the past (and may yet be again), only Muslims reliably work themselves into a killing rage over the mistreatment of a book; only Muslims murder their critics and apostates; only Muslims can be counted upon to riot by the tens of thousands over cartoons; and only Islam, with its doctrines of jihad and martyrdom, is perfectly suited to spawn a global death cult of suicidal terrorists.
The statement is quite an exaggeration. For instance, Muslims in general don't reliably work themselves into a killing rage about mistreatment of a book, or anything else; in fact, most of them never do any such thing. Properly stated, the point is that Islam is the only religion which reliably leads substantial numbers of adherents to into a killing rage about that.
Likewise, "only Muslims murder their critics" is misleading since most Muslims don't murder anyone. It must be replaced with, "Only Islam regularly motivates some adherents to murder its critics." Christianity may not be far behind, though, since it regularly motivates some adherents to murder doctors and condemn pregnant women to death from curable medical problems.
Most Muslims disapprove of terrorism; they believe killing innocent people is a sin. Most Muslims won't riot over cartoons or criticism of their religion, but many advocate censorship of such works. Many Muslims endorse the prohibition on ceasing to be a Muslim, even if they don't support killing those who try. We should not treat all Muslims as terrorists, but we need to press all Muslims to respect the human rights of people who disagree with them.
Lots of Americans' private medical data is being sold off or stolen.
The UK government has been secretly lobbying against renewable energy plans in EU decision-making, on behalf of the fossil fuel companies.
Just as Nixon's men hoped to personally discredit Daniel Ellsberg with stolen psychiatrist's notes, the US tries to personally discredit Julian Assange to distract people from the enormity of criminalizing journalism.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Nixon wanted to prosecute Ellsberg, too.
The Vatican wants to prosecute Gianluigi Nuzzi, the journalist who published leaked Vatican letters that reveal apparent cronyism and financial misdeeds.
The funniest political diatribe I recall ever seeing: George Monbiot skewers the UK energy bill that would encourage gas and coal power plants, and the minister who dishonestly champions it.
The UK government is working very hard to disguise its subsidies for nuclear power.
Five Facts That Put America to Shame.
(Many more can be found in the other political notes.)
In Europe: Protest ACTA and the “intellectual property” enforcement directive.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
When the term “intellectual property” is used in formulating a law, that almost guarantees it is bad.
Birth control chemicals coming untouched through sewage treatment plants interfere with the sexual maturation of fish, and can cause populations to shrink or disappear. Profitable drug companies don't want to pay to clean this up.
License plate cameras are being installed in New York State, near the Canadian border, by some government agency that officials refuse to identify.
The US ambassador to Australia claims the US "is not interested" in Julian Assange, and that having him in Sweden would not help the US extradite him anyway. Assange's supporters present arguments that this is false.
Parts of the ambassador's statements seem like potential weasel-words: "There is no such thing as a secret warrant" may be true, but there may still be a secret indictment which could be used later to get a non-secret warrant.
It is also possible that the ambassador was intentionally given false information. That is a common tactic of governments. It would be interesting to ask the ambassador if he will resign in protest if that Assange is sent to Sweden and the US then asks to extradite him.
Obama would be ultimately responsible for lying to the ambassador, but he is proud of lying and weaseling.
Pity the Poor Billionaires — taking heat for spending lots of money for bad laws.
Instead of banning large sodas, as New York City has done, it would be better to put a heavy tax on sugary drinks.
Mapping the glaciers of Africa, which are on the way to disappearing in two decades.
The endemic species on these mountains will be forced up to the peaks and then off into extinction by global heating.
Between overfishing, pollution and habitat destruction, humans are transforming the ocean disastrously. Maybe we can save it with firm action.
The article omits the danger of CO2 emissions. CO2 in the ocean turns into carbonic acid, and the increased acidity can wipe out molluscs and the coral reefs that many other species depend on.
A Syrian air force major defected after watching the massacre at Houla.
This leaves no doubt about who was responsible for the massacre.
Uri Avneri says that the Jews in Israel are a self-segregated minority who have nothing in common with most "Jewish" Israelis, so the two should be considered different ethnic groups.
Fazil Say, a Turkish Atheist, faces charges of “publicly insulting religious values”. Censorship is an insult to the human mind.
The UK's revised bill judicial secrecy bill will still suppress justice.
Malaysia has banned Allah, Liberty and Love because it "can deviate Muslims from their faith" and "insulted Islam".
Wherever Muslims have achieved political power, they have used it to intimidate or censor of criticism of their views.
Prisoners in the US are resisting inhumane conditions, with uprisings and with hunger strikes.
Google is trying to give Chinese users information about what searches are likely to be censored by China.
Using the term "kill list" to refer to those killed by drone strikes falsely suggests all the victims were known and selected in advance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government wants to cut subsidies for wind power enough that no more will be built.
This will finish the elimination of renewable energy projects in favor of fossil fuels, resulting in the least green government the UK has ever seen.
Former Egyptian President Mubarak was convicted of one charge that he might well reverse on appeal, and nobody was held responsible for the massacre of 1000 protesters.
Nearly all the profits from cocaine trafficking stay in the rich consuming countries, and are kept in the banks of these countries.
But the US government doesn't dare bother the banks because the banks dominate it. So it concentrates on putting the replaceable little guys in prison.
This shows the folly of prohibiting drugs.
Obama's "drug czar" offers irrational arguments for banning marijuana.
Fortunately, simplistic and misleading drug war rhetoric is losing hold, even in Texas.
Paul Krugman: Austerity is not intended to fix the economic crisis; rather, the crisis provides an opportunity for austerity whose purpose is to screw the non-rich.
Obama's men are proud of the "wiggle words" that allowed Obama to make deceptive promises.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This reminds me of the way Romney supporters admired the way he changes his position.
Why ask which of these two deceivers is better? Vote for Jill Stein, and you can be proud of your vote.
NGOs operating in Haiti with responsibility for water and sanitation have decided not to follow their usual standards.
1/3 of the US high plains will exhaust its ground water in 30 years.
Agriculture there will more or less come to an end.
Part of the reason for this is government corruption: the US sells rights to ground water for a pittance.
Pushing to investigate Sheriff Arpaio's men for killing a prisoner.
Workers have occupied a factory in Chicago and are making progress towards running it as a cooperative.
The US government blocked Florida Republicans' attempt to stop many citizens from voting by being careless in checking their citizenship.
Texas Schools See Big Money In Electronic Tracking Of Students.
This trains students to let Big Brother monitor everything.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Wall Street Trading and Speculators Tax Act (H.R. 3313, S. 1787) which put a tax of 0.03 percent on Wall Street transactions.
This tiny tax would be enough to reduce the amount of computerized rapid trading, while having no effect on investment.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The IEA says fracking according to the rules it recommends would lead to disastrous global heating. But it buried that in page 91, and the mainstream media have ignored the point — presenting these rules as if they were a solution.
A secret UK government report suggested Palestinian terrorists were responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.
Stuxnet was made by the US and was approved personally by Obama.
I don't think such an attack against Iran is necessarily wrong. However, it can backfire.
A carbon tax or energy tax would help reduce budget deficits while doing less harm to the people than spending cuts do.
How the Lieberman-Collins "cybersecurity" bill threatens Internet users' rights.
Calling this "security" is like calling the thugs "security forces": it is security for the state, but it's the opposite of security for the people.
New Mexico has a record-setting fire and it's only the start of June.
Maybe this will convince some thick-headed Republicans in the Southwest that it is past time to do something about the underlying cause.
Brazil's new forest law will pardon illegal deforesters, and do other harm.
A new record CO2 level shows that we are on an accelerating path to disaster.
The bureaucrats meeting to discuss inadequate plans, and not admitting that they still lead to disaster.
The term "technocrat" used in that article is misleading because it implies that technology motivates the decisions. If our politicians were really technocrats, we would probably see a solution being implemented. But they are something much worse than technocrats: they are sellouts to the companies that profit by keeping humanity on the path to disaster.
That article proposes that we lead from below with our own projects. As was recently pointed out, such actions cannot address the problem, because the relentless logic of the market will push emissions elsewhere. Only political policy changes can reduce total emissions. However, local projects might be a way to create the political motivation for the policy changes we need.
Meanwhile, how about putting banksters on trial for attempted negligent mass homicide?
What the ITU plans to do with the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US refuses to confront the problem of its population growth.
The new chief of the Honduran national thugs was suspected of running a death squad before.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
That's the sort of person that the US-backed, coup-installed government would want at the head of its thug force, which does not believe that dissidents or labor organizers have any rights.
The US is getting what it wants from the Honduran state: obedient assistance in the "war on drugs".
Egypt's "emergency" law has expired and won't be renewed, but the dissidents imprisoned under that law have not been freed.
The US is moving step by step into war in Yemen.
US citizens: call on Congress not to ban the US military from trying biofuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The extent of Republican support for the oil companies goes to an absurd extreme. However, the oil companies have bought Democrats too.
Everyone: urge Newark and Michigan to drop the plan to work with Nestle to encourage breastfeeding and healthy eating.
It's like recruiting the fox to run a project for the safety of chickens.
Reducing CO2 emissions would be a tremendous job creator, world wide.
Campaigners in the UK for laws to impede tobacco marketing are receiving threats from irrational tobacco proponents.
The laws being considered would not interfere with buying or selling cigarettes, they would only interfere with the marketing methods used to hook new smokers. Thus, smokers have no reason to object to them. Only the tobacco companies have a reason to object.
I therefore suspect the people making these threats have been indirectly encouraged or funded by the tobacco companies.
The Indian government must stop subsidizing fossil fuel.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, don't allow the Pentagon's propaganda to be used against Americans. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If California votes to label foods with GMOs, the whole US may get the benefit.
An analysis of the ruling against copyright on APIs.
I appreciate this thorough analysis of the ruling, but I take objection to one statement made in passing: "If Oracle wanted that, it should have gone for a patent."
Nobody should have the kind of power that software patents impose, and nobody "should" try to get such power. What should happen is the abolition of software patents.
Harsh discipline in California schools is doing harm.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Chicago officials and media are praising the thugs for "restraint and tolerance" because they didn't riot the way they did in 1968.
What a low standard.
North Carolina legislators want to require the state to underestimate sea level rise.
An interesting approach to global heating: require governments to pretend it is not happening.
The Orwellian basis of US drone attacks, imprisonment without trial, and other assaults on human rights: redefine terms so as to make human rights commitments meaningless.
The judge in Oracle vs Google ruled that the Java APIs (and APIs in general) are not copyrightable.
I expect Oracle will appeal, so the battle is not over.
House members hear why ITU can't be trusted with Internet regulation.
The oppression of Islamic law: Intisar Sharif Abdallah was sentenced to death for adultery.
Using evidence obtained by torture is an additional injustice. Of course, that is not limited to Islamic law: the US is trying to do that in Guantanamo. But it is just as bad in Sudan.
An interview with an Anonymous protester fighting Internet censorship in India.
The Defense of Marriage Act (which denied federal recognition to gay marriage) has been declared unconstitutional.
Spanish indignados have launched a distributed campaign to find evidence to prove the guilt of officials responsible for the crisis.
US citizens: call on the EPA to block a giant mine in Alaska which would generate billions of tons of toxic waste.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose two CISPA-like bills: the Cybersecurity Act and SECURE IT Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
China tortures Tibetans to pressure them to make declarations of loyalty.
500 lawyers protested in Montreal against the anti-protest law.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
When US companies are to blame for workers' deaths, OSHA is usually not allowed to impose fines big enough to make the companies change.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama personally directs US drone attacks to kill specific people.
The US bombing policy violates US law and international law (the Geneva conventions).
The US government presumes all men who were killed by bombing are “militants”. That is how the US reaches the conclusion that just about everyone killed is a "militant".
Hollande plans to cap the salaries of executives of state-owned companies, as well as increasing taxes for the rich to a reasonable level.
The US needs a president more like him.
Israel's leading investigative journalist, Uri Blau, is on trial for publishing leaked documents that proved Israeli officials preferred to kill Palestinians rather than arrest them.
The officials ought to be on trial, not the person who exposed them.
US citizens: Phone Obama and insist on trying to prosecute banksters.
US citizens (and maybe others): tell Clinton to make human rights a priority in the US's relationship with China.
Everyone: sign this petition to greatly increase the UN monitors in Syria.
It is not guaranteed to help, but it won't hurt so there is no reason not to try.
US citizens: call on the attorney general to block the attempt in Florida to disenfranchise thousands of (mostly Democratic) voters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US has the highest child poverty rate among developed countries.
The US congress is suspicious of the ITU's attempt to take control of the Internet.
I agree — it is very scary.
Human Rights Watch condemns Israel's prosecution of nonviolent protest leader Bassem Tamimi, as well as Belarus's prosecution of human rights lawyer Oleg Volchek.
The EU is trying to force Germany to implement the directive for storing data about each person's phone calls and internet contacts.
I've been told that Germany rejected this because it is unconstitutional.
Explaining the issue of search neutrality.
Murdoch's News Corp. (which owns the Wall Street Journal) is a member of ALEC.
Everyone: Phone Kentucky Fried Chicken to criticize its rainforest destruction policies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Obama to set up a do-not-kill list.
UK judges stretched the law with all their strength to find an excuse to deliver Assange to Sweden.
The French Internet surveillance systems company Amesys is being investigated in France for supplying surveillance machines to Gaddafi. Similar machines were installed in Tunisia, which is why I participated in an exorcism at Bull headquarters there. Amesys did not belong to Bull when those machines were installed, but I'm told Bull did the installation. This system in Tunisia is still operating.
Malaysia's new law says people accused of sending hate messages are guilty unless they prove they are innocent (which is often impossible).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is a secondary additional reason why it is wrong to punish people for the views they state, even views we don't like.
Tibetans continue burning themselves to death as a protest against Chinese tyranny and oppression.
Rhode Island is moving to decriminalize possession of marijuana.
A rookie in Toronto thought he had joined the Police Department, and did not realize he was supposed to act like a member of a gang.
Haiti's US-installed government wants to hand off mineral riches to rich foreigners. If this occurs, a few lucky local inhabitants will get horrible jobs. The rest will get only the pollution
Many large US companies secretly fund global heating denial although they pretend not to agree with it.
I suspect they are also paying candidates to do nothing.
Apple's code of conduct has made little difference in Foxconn.
The only thing that would make a difference is to show a willingness to stop buying from factories that treat workers badly.
Oppressive laws failed to discourage Swedes from sharing.
Let's make sure to counteract any social pressure that says that sharing is bad.
US citizens: sign this petition to Obama against "modernizing" (and undermining) poultry inspection.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to end the Bush tax cuts for people with incomes over $250,000.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
How rich people and rich companies really spend their money.
Obama tries to wind down large overt wars, but starts many quiet hidden ones.
Israel arrested the founder of the Palestinian Prisoner TV channel, and confiscated its equipment, giving no reason.
The UK decided to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Sweden has an arrangement to hand people over to the US without much legal protection.
The modern monetary system bloats the interest on the national debt of any country.
US antiabortionists (who hate women's rights) are trying to use rarely-practiced sex selection as a lever against abortion rights.
There's nothing wrong with deciding about abortion based on the sex of the fetus. Women should be free to do that. The prejudice against women in some societies is nasty and foolish, but that's no reason to restrict abortion rights.
Bassem Tamimi was freed after receiving a suspended sentence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is good that he is free and can continue to organize nonviolent protests, but Israel really ought to stop bullying teenagers into giving false testimony.
The Prime Minister of Turkey wants to ban abortion so as to make the population increase, thinking this will boost the economy.
What he will get, if he succeeds, is lots of unemployed young people, low wages, increased carbon emissions, and political instability.
Tunisia: Injured of the Uprising Urgently Need Care.
17 Months On, Government Failing Victims of Police Gunfire.
The people of Madrid have started a permanent noisemaking protest outside the headquarters of a bank that has refused to let pensioners move their savings to less volatile accounts.
I have to acknowledge that most people should not have put their money in what is effectively a stock mutual fund. They, like many others, made the assumption that stocks go up and not down. However, I suspect the banks encouraged them to make this assumption and the state probably did nothing to stop them, so the principal responsibility lies with them.
Israel is cutting back on Gaza's fuel supply, endangering water supply and sewage handling.
Israel is cheating on the agreement it made with Palestinian hunger strikers about imprisonment without trial.
While the continued imprisonment without trial is the greatest evil, giving Gazan prisoners fewer and shorter family visits than other Palestinian prisoners is the epitome of nastiness, because there is no plausible motive for it except malice.
Mahmoud al-Sarsak, imprisoned in Israel for two years without trial, has been on hunger strike for over 70 days and is losing consciousness.
Fanatical Israeli colonists in the west bank set fire to a Palestinian olive grove, then shot at the farmers who tried to put out the fire.
One of them is reported badly wounded.
The price of natural gas obtained by fracking could be so low that it kills renewable energy.
Of course, the price of the gas won't include the cost of polluted water supplies and sick people. Worse, it won't take account of the certainty of global disaster due to global heating, until it is too late to avoid that.
The available known resources of fossil fuel are far larger than what we dare burn. Avoiding disaster requires preventing most of that fuel from being burnt.
IKEA is cutting down old growth forests in Russia.
Tuna near the US west coast have radioactive cesium from Fukushima.
The disaster released a tremendous amount of radioactive material into an even more tremendous ocean. The density in the water is tiny, but living organisms concentrate it. The amount in these tuna is not dangerous, but each species is a different case, so all the species people eat may need to be tested.
If another larger disaster happens — for instance, if another earthquake or tsunami knocks down reactor 4's spent fuel — another release 10 times larger could easily occur, and that would bring the levels in tuna up to the current safety standard.
A Thai webmaster was convicted of the crime of not deleting comments that criticized the king.
The fact that she was given a suspended sentence does not excuse this unjust law. Thailand has failed the test for freedom of expression, and the king cannot evade the responsibility for this.
Many cities have set up microphones to detect and localize gunshots. But they can also record conversations on the street.
As long as these systems really only record when there is a gunshot, I think they are acceptable. But what guarantees that this will remain so?
If a city uses the company's service, in effect they are using Software as a Service. This means that the city and its citizens must trust the company not to listen to them.
Microsoft and SONY will make users sign contracts barring class-action lawsuits.
The Supreme Court decision which permitted this reflects the right-wing composition of the court, which is in favor of companies against people. Does anyone know whether the proposed amendment that human rights don't apply to corporations would reverse this decision?
Natural gas companies scored a great victory by getting the EU to label natural gas as “green”.
This comes on the heels of the discovery that leaking methane makes natural gas as bad as coal.
A woman who insulted passengers on the train in London was sentenced to prison.
Ms Woodhouse insulted people with no grounds, which is nasty as well as foolish. She also expressed naive political views. For instance, she condemns other Britons for using some of the insufficient public housing instead of condemning the government for allowing public housing to become scarce.
But that is no grounds for jailing someone. Imprisoning people for their opinions is tyranny.
A Russian journalist was lured onto the street and stabbed.
Unusually, this may have been done by an Islamist instead of by the usual government-related suspects.
Putting a monetary value on natural resources can backfire disastrously: it provides an excuse to let the rich buy them and destroy them.
To value a tropical forest at 30 million dollars can help protect the environment if it convinces the wealthy world to pay a million dollars a year to preserve the forest. But if that means allowing the wealthy world to pay 30 million to buy the forest and destroy it, it is does harm.
The idea of dividing up the total value of forests among the existing forest area is misguided because, if we lose half the existing forest, the remaining half will be even more precious than it is now.
To prevent public anger towards the way NATO soldiers behave, NATO has banned them from taking photos.
Forbidden file sharing spreads information in North Korea about what life is like outside.
The real difference between state-imposed poverty in North Korea and South Korea is great, but South Korean TV shows might give an exaggerated picture if they follow the same practice as the US: "ordinary" people on TV live in houses that are too expensive for ordinary Americans.
Florida is again trying to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
It was by disenfranchising 50,000 legitimate votes (mostly Democratic) that Dubya stole in the election in 2000.
The UAE paid lots of money to the Comoros Islands to give citizenship to stateless residents of the UAE. Now dissidents are being deported there.
Pakistani men and women were sentenced to death by an extremist cleric because they were accused of dancing together at a wedding.
The official says the accusation was false, but what difference should that make? These clerics belong in prison either way.
50,000 Moroccans protested against Islamist government.
Citizens defeated an ALEC deregulation bill in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut in parallel.
A state-controlled bank in the UK lent around 60 billion dollars for fossil fuel projects in the past six months.
The bank's responses amount to "Others do it too" and "It will be hard to stop." Neither of which is a valid excuse.
Since frackers don't collect the escaping methane, fracking contributes more to global heating than was previously thought.
The government of Peru fought protests against a large mine. The local people have evidence that it pollutes their rivers.
The state ought to suspend the mine and investigate whether the pollution really comes from there. If it does, the mine should be confiscated and someone else should have a chance to run it better.
Japan's former PM blames regulatory capture of the nuclear safety agency by business for the government's helplessness at the time of the Fukushima disaster.
Facebook's phone will give Facebook total information about the user's actions.
Last Friday Germany got 1/3 of its electricity from solar power.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This can't be done every day, because some days are cloudy. But it demonstrates that renewables can do the job when a large effort is made to install them.
Turning off nuclear power plants means more carbon emission in the short run, but what happens in the long run depends on many policy decisions.
Obama and Romney are using tracking of people's browsing in order to send them campaign messages.
The UK's new energy policy pretends to reduce CO2 from electric generation while in fact abandoning the effort.
Even new coal plants can be built, as long as they will supposedly be used with carbon capture some day (if that ever works).
If you're committed to driving head on into a wall, why not speed up?
The current system of manufacturing, subcontracting at every level, makes it almost impossible to avoid sweatshop manufacturing and exploitative mining.
I suspect this is no coincidence. Subcontracting is the consequence of business globalization, and business globalization was intentionally constructed by treaties and other state policies that were designed to favor business. Business got what it wanted, and what it wanted was to push production into sweatshops.
The fragmentation of subcontracting does harm in other ways, too. For instance, it interferes with pressuring manufacturers to sell machines that we can support with free software.
I think the remedy is to undo the policy changes and treaties that created this system of manufacturing. We should not allow businesses to make workers in the US, China and Vietnam compete on pay.
Afghan women fear that the Taliban will attack their rights, but put no faith in Karzai, so those who can are fleeing.
If they were prepared to arm themselves to fight the Taliban, they might give Afghanistan what it now lacks: committed, idealistic opposition to the Taliban.
The European austerity pact requires countries to reduce the ratio of debt to GDP each year. To try to do this by paying back the debt is hopeless, since that implies a spending cut which reduces GDP and increases that ratio.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
South Africa plans to require Israel to indicate which products are exported from colonies in the West Bank, European countries are considering a similar move.
It appears that B'liar cosied up to Murdoch and his media empire in much the same was as the Tories have done.
I think this demonstrates the danger of media concentration. Future politicians will follow the same path as long as the Murdoch empire (or its successor) has so much power. They will simply find cleverer ways to disguise it.
The real solution is to break up media empires.
The DEA is installing license plate scanners on major highways in the US southwest. All cars that pass get recorded.
We are fortunate that in Utah some legislators have made a stink, rather than surrendering as in Texas and California.
TED refused to post Nick Hanauer's talk which refuted the 1%'s claim to be the "job creators".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
TED subsequently posted the talk after public criticism.
Greg Palast describes how BP financed a coup in Azerbaijan to take control of the country's oil, and what life there is like under the corrupt Aliyev family that is allied with BP.
Compare this with Iran's history, the overthrow of Mossadegh which led to the oppressive Shah — whose oppression inspired the reaction that led to the even more oppressive Islamic Republic.
Remnants of Haiti's former army marched in the capital.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ezili Danto says this title represents colonial media's misleading bias, and her title would be "Martelly Militia, alongside US occupiers behind UN guns, march in the Haiti capital."
It is not clear who is really behind this or who is on what side.
A long list of ways in which privacy is being attacked by digital technology.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Many of them are things you can still refuse...but if you don't organize to keep the alternatives, they will disappear.
How Apple and Microsoft set up a giant patent troll.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This article confusingly treats "intellectual property" as a synonym for patents. That term should never be used because it spreads confusion.
Nortel got these patents "for defense", but they are being used for parasitism. If you work for a company that asks you to apply for patents "for defense", demand a deal like the one Twitter recently began offering, which promises to use them only for defense.
UK dissidents who were arrested preemptively are suing to stop thugs from doing likewise in the future.
Rich Arab countries are trying to arm Syrian rebels, with US help, and they provoke Assad's army into responding with massacres.
This does not excuse the massacres; Assad and his men are responsible for what they do, and Assad's family members seem to be personally involved. But it does mean that the rebels are playing with civilians lives.
The article says "it is thought" that jihadis are responsible for the May 10 bombing in Damascus, but those who think this must not have paid attention to the defectors who say it was Assad's false flag operation.
A NATO air strike killed 8 people in a family in Afghanistan.
The Taliban kill civilians too, even more of them, but Afghans resent the US bombings more. Why this bias? Why don't the killings of civilians by the Taliban make Afghans support Karzai?
Or perhaps the Taliban kill selected civilians that they suspect of collaborating with Karzai and NATO, and that gives civilians a way to be safe from them. But there is no way to be safe from NATO since it kills civilians randomly.
I don't know the answer, but it's clear that Karzai's lack of real loyalty is an important part of it. And that is why the US can't win in Afghanistan. It can only prop Karzai up.
The US government has dragged its heels in searching its files for evidence that might help Bradley Manning in his trial.
I don't think the trial can go forward without doing this, so why delay? Perhaps the government wants to delay the result of the trial. Perhaps till after the presidential election? That might make sense, but the trial was not expected to end before the election anyway. Thus, I can't see a plausible answer to this question.
The TSA broke a diabetic's insulin pump.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
One of the comments is from another person who uses an insulin pump, who wrote, "I have an insulin pump, and twice I have had to go through security with it, both times when I insisted on a manual inspection of my insulin supplies and a pat down due to my pump I was refused".
The EU is talking about forcing all countries to issue digital national ID cards.
Simply to have national ID cards is already an injustice.
The UK government wants to force more of the unemployed to work without pay.
This is supposed to teach them the right attitude to hold a job. That would make sense if the UK had lots of jobs offers but nobody ready and able to fill them. However, it does nothing about the real problem, which is a lack of job offers. It could even make that worse, since the companies that get work done for nothing might otherwise have hired people to do part of that work.
So it's simply a way of blaming and attacking the victims of austerity, while helping business yet again.
The New Economy movement is trying to reform the US economy from below.
Obama's rigid negotiating stance makes a deal with Iran difficult.
The Commencement Address That Won't Be Given.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
"Faster Than We Thought": An Epitaph for Planet Earth.
Methane is already leaking out of the Arctic permafrost, and as the Earth heats up, there is a danger this will release so much methane that it adds tremendously to global heating.
When Obama said he would be “transformative” for the environment, he seems to have meant he would transform our coasts into an oily mess and our land into a desert.
Obama won't be much less bad than Romney. The only candidate worth voting for is Jill Stein.
Census objectors in the UK will be allowed to sue to avoid answering intrusive questions.
They point to the risk that US companies involved in the UK census might be compelled by the U SAP AT RIOT Act to hand the data over to the US government.
It is clearly wrong for the UK to allow foreign companies to have any role in the census.
Secular Touareg rebels gave their support to establishing an Islamic (i.e., oppressive) state in northern Mali.
Meanwhile, the coup-created government of Mali is arresting and disappearing journalists.
Tony B'liar has taken a job doing publicity for the dictator of Kazakhstan.
The writer is naive to believe that the conquest and occupation of Iraq was a sincere campaign for democracy, but that doesn't invalidate the other points.
50 years after the publication of Silent Spring, we are damaging the environment more than ever, and the industrial forces that tried to smear Rachel Carson have more political power over our governments than they did then.
EU farm policies that eliminate meadows and wetlands devastate wildlife, in particular birds.
Although these bird species are hardly endangered, I'm sure that this is just one sign of general damage to nature, and it will have other effects too.
The pope's butler leaked secret Vatican documents to expose Vatican lies.
The Vatican, like the US, is more interested in punishing the people who reveal its crimes than in punishing the guilty.
I have seen no reports of the scandals themselves. Those are the more important issue. Can anyone find them?
Assad's regime launched an 18-hour attack on a town, killing many civilians.
It is clear that the UN's cease fire does not restrain him.
Meanwhile, the report that Assad released Islamist prisoners in November suggests that he sought to create the sectarian aspect to the resistance, which he claimed existed.
Chen Guangcheng's brother has disappeared, and the natural suspicion is foul play by the thugs.
Call on governments to require companies to offer a choice of operating systems for PCs.
Carbon aerosols and ozone, aided by greenhouse gases, are pushing the northward expansion of the tropics into the Northern Hemisphere.
I believe this means that the border, which is a parallel of latitude, between the easterly tropical Trade Winds and the temperate zone Prevailing Westerlies is shifting north.
The result is desertification of large areas.
Look at what can be deduced just from the records of your phone calls and your emails.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This information should not be retained without a search warrant.
Shafilea Ahmed was murdered by her parents for her choice of clothing and boyfriends.
Her brother and sisters watched as they killer her, and one sister has testified in court against them.
The two vicious attitudes underlying this murder are treating women as property, and brutal punishment. These are also the basis of Islamic law, which is cruelty incarnate.
China's auxiliary thugs, the chengguan, attack people on the street, arrest and jail them (without any authority to do so), and steal their goods.
Entrapped! Confessions of a Violent Consumerist.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
After 8500 accusations of corruption in the UK, only 13 thugs were convicted.
Now some of the anti-corruption squad are accused of taking bribes.
To avoid disaster if another earthquake or tsunami strikes Fukushima, plans to secure the highly radioactive used fuel rods need to be speeded up.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
CO2 emissions increased by 1 billion tons in 2011, to set a record.
This is because states have failed to implement policies to reduce emissions. Some have pledged to do so but did not carry out the pledges.
Romney wants to reform student loans to benefit the lenders. As for students, if they need loans they aren't rich enough to matter to him.
The danger of extreme traffic enforcement — based on tracking of cars.
This is not the worst of the consequences of tracking car travel. The worst danger is the threat to dissidents posed by recording everywhere people go.
Therefore, if this helps build anger against automatic tracking, we should consider that a plus.
Refuting some of the vague claims that purport to prove that Iran is developing nuclear weapons now.
I find it implausible that Iran would brave so much pressure and sanctions to do its own uranium enrichment if it didn't have something to do with making nuclear weapons. However, I'm persuaded by reports already cited here that Iran is not yet trying to build them, and the idea that Iran aims to be ready to design and build them and stop there seems like a plausible interpretation.
Tennessee allows thugs to take people's money based on vague suspicions, with no hearing (let alone trial).
Civil forfeiture has been a pervasive problem in the US, and I doubt Tennessee is the only state which carries out such injustice.
I've been told that thugs in the UK are authorized to presume that anyone carrying more than 200 pounds got them from a crime, and confiscate them. Would any tourist travel with less than 200 pounds?
Egyptians will have to choose between the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate and a former general.
African Voices Join With UK Farmers: GM Is a False Solution to Hunger.
Genetically modified organisms are not inherently bad. They can have biological harmful effects, but that is not inevitable. However, if farmers cannot freely breed them, they trample the farmers' rights, and that is what eliminates biodiversity. The cost of buying seed plus the chemicals they need puts farmers in danger of going broke and losing their land.
This is enough reason to ban them.
President Rousseff vetoed the worst parts of the Brazilian forest unprotection law, but allowed some parts to go ahead.
A whistleblower says one of the companies to which the UK is privatizing NHS operations has lied about its services.
Although the UK is not privatizing the NHS as such, contracting its operations to companies is still a form of privatization. Privatizing government operations, when it does not result in competition for the end user, is wrong in general.
The privatizers claim that businesses will increase efficiency, but in practice their profit usually comes from skimping on service, from charging more, from shafting the employees, or from fraud.
Such privatization is therefore a form of corruption, and when it has been done, it must be reversed.
The US-backed coup-installed government of Honduras said it was investigating the shooting that killed or wounded 8 boat passengers, but they don't seem to have tried very hard, since they didn't find the wounded passengers in the hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Reducing one's personal carbon footprint (or pressuring someone else to do so) is unlikely to have a big effect under any sort of market system, since a reduction in demand for petrol here will reduce the price and lead to more sales somewhere else.
What's needed is to take global actions that will reduce the total emissions.
That writer proposes the global action of sequestering as much CO2 as is emitted. That's one way to do it (though it wouldn't cover methane emissions, which also contribute to global heating), but as far as I know such sequestration is only in its experimental stages.
A sufficiently high tax on greenhouse gas emissions could also do the job. The money could be spent on sequestration if and when that technology is ready, but it would discourage consumption right away.
Cap-and-trade could do it too, if the system is set up so as to first limit and later reduce the net allowed emissions. Anyone doing sequestration could sell emission credits, and the eventual result would fairly similar in practice to what the writer proposed: most activities doing emissions would have to buy emission credit from sequestration.
Unfortunately, international negotiations about ending global heating have once again failed, apparently because the governments did not really want a deal.
Vint Cerf's statement how the ITU threatens freedom on the Internet.
When governments collect personal data, government employees frequently look at it for personal reasons.
This evidence is from the UK, but it happens in the US too, which reaffirms that the only way to prevent abuse of data is not to collect it.
US citizens: tell Obama and your senators to fight imprisonment without trial.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The WHO says that most people in the area around Fukushima got so little radiation that it won't significantly affect their health.
Note that this could be true even if a thousand of them are likely to die from it eventually, because that would be a small fraction of the people in the area.
Thousands of garment workers are on strike against a large factory in Phnom Penh.
The Senate Armed Service Committee voted to spend $90 million on tanks that the army does not need.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The stated purpose is to keep the plant open, but the army doesn't want to buy any more. So why not close the plant? It's not as if the US faced a threat of attack from a powerful tank army. This is only a cover reason, of course, but it's interesting that such a flimsy one is considered sufficient.
Spanish students and teachers from all levels of school went on strike.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hot US temperatures for the past 3 months have fueled major forest fires earlier than the usual fire season.
In ten years it will be considerably worse.
On Wednesday, thugs in Montreal arrested 500 protesters after besieging them.
They cited a new law that more or less bans protests. This law has motivated many more people to join the protests.
On Thursday, the thugs seem to have learned a lesson: they didn't try to enforce this law.
However, people should continue massive protests until the law is repealed.
A doctor in Spain who carelessly failed to abort a fetus has been held liable to pay for raising the child that was born as a result.
This seems fair to me.
Supporters of Bradley Manning, and journalists, have petitioned to make his trial more transparent.
One can guess the reason it isn't transparent is to partly conceal the general injustice of military trials.
Here's an article by one petitioner.
Chen Guangcheng's nephew as been charged with manslaughter after resisting torturers.
Israel offered compensation but no apology for the killing of unarmed activists trying to bring the Mavi Marmara to Gaza. The victims' relatives rejected it, and the Turkish state also says that it is inadequate without an apology.
Los Angeles will ban supermarkets from handing out plastic bags.
However, we still need to deal with the other levels of packaging that food tends to come in.
The officers who ran a container ship aground near New Zealand by cutting corners, and fouled many miles of beaches with fuel, have been sentenced to prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
That punishment is deserved, but if New Zealand wants to prevent repetition, it needs to punish every captain that does this — not just when there is an accident.
Nuclear negotiations with Iran have begun, but Iran offered no serious concessions. and the western powers didn't offer enough either.
The Dictator's Practical Internet Guide to Power Retention.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It's like an Internet appendix for The Prince.
An exercise for readers who live in a state that isn't normally considered a dictatorship: which of these methods are being practiced or proposed in your country?
US citizens: phone your representatives, if they are Democrats, and call on them to refuse absolutely to extend Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Senate version of CISPA.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the town where Sergeant Bales shot several civilians, an unidentified US officer threatened reprisals against civilians if another Taliban mine was exploded.
That's the way that war is fought. The Taliban do it too. Keeping Karzai in power can't justify sinking to that level.
New York Judge Reichbach begs the state to legalize medical marijuana.
Dentistry companies are doing unnecessary dental work on US children in school, and bilking the government for it.
This is the result of allowing private businesses to carry out public work.
New York thugs tried to frame journalist student Alexander Arbuckle, who filmed a protest to document how professional and law-abiding the thugs were. He has been acquitted after presenting proof that the thugs lied.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I hope Arbuckle's exposure to the dark side of the thug has taught him not to think positively of them.
Meanwhile, where are the prosecutions for perjury? The thugs will continue what they called "testilying" until they cease to enjoy impunity when they lie.
Byron Sonne, persecuted by thugs and prosecutors who twisted innocent facts into crimes, was found not guilty.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
We can't expect this one failure to dissuade governments from trying it again. It came pretty close to success, and even failing, did Sonne great harm (the loss of his marriage, and a year in jail).
A similar exaggeration and distortion campaign is now under way in Chicago, and since it alleges “terrorism”, they may have an easier chance of arranging an unfair trial.
The Irish national thug department is harassing and threatening journalists trying to catch thugs who have leaked information to the public.
Murder by treaty: as Bayer sues to block India's compulsory license for a cancer drug, Obama is trying to make the TPP forbid that practice.
The WTO is also murder by treaty; the US used it to make India to change its old, wise patent law, which allowed patenting improved methods to make drugs but did not allow patenting drugs. This encouraged the sort of research that India and other poor countries really need.
Obama's idea of "help" for Africa consists of helping the megacorporations take control of agriculture, but organic farming techniques are cheaper and can work better.
The African farmers may go broke as many Indian farmers did. I expect the result will be that megacorporations buy their land. Instead of killing themselves, as the destitute Indian farmers do, these destitute farmers might pick up guns and fight back.
Azerbaijan is hosting the prestigious Eurovision contest, and arrested protesters who shouted “freedom” outside the building.
Azerbaijan also preemptively arrested opposition leaders in advance, but instead of calling them “terrorists” as in Chicago, it just gave one of them a fine for “disobeying thugs' orders”, which is also a common excuse in the US for punishing protesters and halting protests.
US citizens: Tell Congress to end the $30 million per day given to fossil fuel polluters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose S.1100, the hypocritically named "Keeping Politics out of Federal Contracting Act", which would ban the president from requiring federal contractors to disclose their spending on electioneering.
Obama has not done this, despite many requests. This reflects the fact that he's on their side. But people are trying to pressure him to do it, so we need to keep Congress from blocking it.
Sick of being kept in the dark about TPP negotiations Senator Wyden proposed a bill to require the USTR to provide full information to all members of Congress.
He ought to go even further and block the US from participating in the TPP negotiations at all.
Occupy Wall Street has sued New York City over the books and computers that the thugs confiscated when they attacked the encampment.
Sea Shepherd is using the arrest of Paul Watson to campaign against shark finning.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support a bill to stop rewarding companies that ship jobs out of the US and start rewarding those that go the other way.
In the US: tell PBS it should stop letting companies use PBS shows for marketing.
PBS sold Chick-fil-A the right to use a PBS kids' show to market food to kids.
I am not surprised that PBS did this, because it has no principled stand on the matter. (Neither does NPR, even though it has not gone as far down the path of sellout.)
An organization that wants to get funds from companies and not be corrupted must draw a line and refuse to cross it. For the FSF, the line is that we will never present a nonfree program as a solution to any problem. Nonfree programs are the problem, not the solution.
An Atlanta region thug kicked a woman in the belly as she was trying to calm her brother. The police department said this was ok.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I don't think it matters that she was 9 months pregnant. It is wrong to do that to anyone.
Other thugs in the same town are being prosecuted for their
violence against helpless people.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The violence in Yemen must be understood against the background of a food shortage in which 10 million people don't have enough to eat.
It seems that this food shortage is permanent: Yemen cannot feed its population. The global price of food is likely to keep increasing (because of global heating, soil exhaustion, and other excesses of human activity), so the problem won't go away. A long-term solution must include birth reduction, to bring Yemen's population down to the number the country can support.
People who cannot feed their families should not have more children. It is inhumane to stand aside and let them starve, but it is self-defeating to help them make the problem bigger.
This suggests making the offer, "We will feed you for the rest of your life if you get sterilized now, but if you want to have children you're on your own."
Israel has discovered that 10 seconds of shooting protesters can outweigh hours of not shooting protesters, in the judgment of many.
What's amazing is the idea that there is something misguided about that judgment. Imagine a person on trial for shooting someone who argued, in court, "It's ok that I shot him, because at that point I hadn't shot anyone for many hours."
Two years ago, the Tunisian state censored books that criticized the regime. Now it censors books that criticize Islam.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Censorship also affects broadcasters and writers. A cartoonist had to flee into exile. I hope Interpol won't help Tunisian censors get their hands on him.
TV broadcasters are trying to crush a service that rents users a remote TV antenna that gets good reception.
While I agree with the EFF that this should not be illegal, but I see something that might make it ethically unacceptable. Does the service use DRM to communicate with the user? That should be illegal.
Afridi, who ran a vaccination campaign as a front to help the US find Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years in prison in Pakistan.
The reason that campaign was wrong is that it spread distrust of vaccination campaigns. That could impede the eradication of polio, since one of the few remaining areas where polio is endemic is in Pakistan/Afghanistan.
However, 33 years in prison is too much. It smacks of endorsing al Qa'ida, and Pakistan cannot do that and present itself as being in the right.
US citizens: oppose the plan to weaken the Clean Water Act.
Everyone: tell Kentucky Fried Chicken to stop buying from Asian Pulp and Paper, rainforest destroyer.
A Perfect Storm: How Government Will Dictate Your Search Results.
The fraudulent Facebook IPO shows that we need stricter regulation of IPOS.
The recent JOBS bill, which reduced government regulation of companies, facilitates such fraud.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
New York State legislators propose banning anonymous Internet postings.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to support cutting aid to the Honduran insecurity forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The "War on Terror" Guarantee: Profit and Destruction.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Bogus feats department: a man plans to "swim across the Atlantic", swimming only by day an sleeping on a boat each night.
This is like running a marathon, one mile a day.
I don't think a person can honestly claim to have swum across any particular body of water if he gets onto a boat sometimes. The only honest way to do this feat would be if you stay in the water all the way across. That might be difficult, even impossible without some better methods for resting. Being difficult is the point.
Facebook is accused of cheating some investors in its IPO.
Environmental organizations say, protect Antarctic ocean biosystems before we destroy them.
Renewable electric generation is subsidized in Germany, but the benefits to the country of cheap electricity and low pollution make up for the subsidy.
Wounded people in Bahrain dare not go to the hospital.
Bassem al-Tamimi, organizer of nonviolent protests, was convicted by an Israeli court based on evidence coerced from a 15-year-old.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Unjust governments occasionally admit they have imprisoned someone for political opposition, when they don't see a need to deny that they are tyrannical regimes. But more often they do wish to keep up the pretense. So instead of imprisoning someone for opposition, they fabricate evidence to convict the dissident of what pretends to be uncontroversially criminal. In Chicago, now, it's "terrorism".
Israeli colonists attacked a Palestinian village, first with stones, then with guns. Watching Israeli soldiers did nothing.
Kucinich: NATO Talks a Sham: War in Afghanistan is Not Ending.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A school in Australia admits putting malware in the computers that students take home, to spy on them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The article doesn't mention that these computers run Windows, which is malware due to spy features as well as other reasons.
An interview with a National Lawyers Guild lawyer who works for the protesters who have been framed in Chicago for "terrorism".
In the US as elsewhere, when a government says "terrorists", read "dissidents". When a law or measure is proposed to punish "terrorism" or support for "terrorism", read "political opposition".
The state uses this lie to create an excuse for its own violence. There was a real danger of violence in Chicago these past days, but it came from the thugs, not from protesters.
A "burn pit" incinerator next to Bagram airfield causes breathing problems for the soldiers there, and some might have life-long lung and heart problems.
The campaign to establish universal health care in Oregon.
Ten percent of all carbon stored annual in the ocean is stored by seagrass meadows, but humanity is busy destroying them.
A die-in protest around Boeing headquarters.
Protesters accuse Boeing of supporting war, aiding torture and oppression, while trashing the environment, busting unions, and taking subsidies while paying no federal income taxes.
Citizens of California: support the bill
to reduce penalties for possession
of forbidden drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Possession of drugs for personal use should not be a crime at all. There are some drugs I think it is foolish to use, but that is no reason to arrest people who use them.
"Tea party" Republicans who criticized bank bailouts in their campaigns are firm supporters of the banksters now that they are in Congress.
The Gates Foundation is promoting a scheme with connections with Monsanto to "help" Africa by introducing technology that African farmers can't afford.
Assad's men shot 83 captives after telling them to "run for it".
Let's end polluter welfare: instead of cutting aid to the poor, cut aid to rich fossil fuel companies.
An appeals court ruled that the CIA can conceal information about its illegal methods of interrogation (i.e., torture).
Ethan Kaplan, former record company executive, says it that more file sharing leads to more sales, and that this is obvious.
Seth Godin: the US system of public education was designed to mass-produce workers for mass production jobs that have left the US. It does this through fear and tyranny.
It needs change, not just in methods, but in goals.
This relates to John Holt's criticism of the compulsory public school as a sort of prison that crushes the spirit. (See How Children Fail, which may still be on sale from the organization he founded. Don't buy it from amazon!)
Here are URLs for two of John Holt's books
iwcenglish1.typepad.com/Documents/Holt_How_Children_Fail.pdf
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
http://gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys from Trash/Resources/books/insteadofeducation.pdf
John Gatto explains
the real curriculum of most US schools as six basic
lessons
and
describes four class-variants of public education
for students of various social classes.
The kind of education that helps people think critically and clearly
is offered mainly to the children of the elite.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
I had a small taste of it in a public high school, in an advanced placement history course. But that was the rare exception, even in New York City.
I disagree with Godin on one side point which I think is worth mentioning. Godin argues that since manufacturing and mass activity jobs have mostly moved out of America, and those that remain are lousy hourly pay jobs, people should all aim for the sort of job that calls for creativity.
Society could benefit from more people ready to be creative, and if you're like me you will want work of that kind. But not everyone has the talent for this, not everyone wants to do it, and a lot of the work that's needed isn't creative. So if everyone did look for creative jobs, only a fraction could get them. That is a solution for some, but not for all.
I think society needs to be arranged so that the people who can't do creative work can have a decent life too.
Alas, the article mentions the Khan Academy, which makes available nonfree educational videos on a site that uses Flash.
Vint Cerf, a leader in the launch of the Internet, warns that the ITU would try to destroy it.
The article uses the confusing term “intellectual property”, but without attributing it to Cerf. I wonder if Cerf stuck to clear terms such as "copyright" to avoid confusing unrelated laws, and the blogger undid that effort.
I agree that Anonymous should not use attacks — but that term should not include virtual protests ("DDOS attacks") or graffiti ("web site defacement").
US citizens: sign this petition calling on the government's student loan program to help, not harass, students who can't repay their loans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The culture of the banksters is, if you have already got 96 percent of what you want, why not take the remaining 4?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama, even in areas where he can act without Congress, has primarily been the banksters' friend and shield.
One small note: the deregulation that occurred under Clinton was not all his fault. From what I've read, Clinton vetoed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and Congress passed it over his veto.
Wild wheat and barley have evolved since 1980 to flower 10 days earlier.
Their genetic diversity, used in breeding improved domesticated wheat, has declined.
Coal mining on public lands pays the US government very little.
It is equivalent to a subsidy for pollution.
A study of 2,000 people convicted in the US and later proved innocent includes over 1,000 that were framed by thugs who planted drugs or weapons on them. However, for the rest, erroneous eyewitness identifications are common causes of conviction.
It is hard for people to reliably recognize anyone they saw for a short time but don't know.
Hamas and Fatah have made an agreement for holding another Palestinian election.
The US is spending billions to build an antimissile system on the West Coast to defend against hypothetical future North Korean nuclear missiles. Now Republicans want to build another such system on the East Coast for hypothetical future Iranian nuclear missiles.
The Hondurans who run the boat that was shot from helicopters say that their boat was, in effect, a river bus.
It's conceivable that one of the passengers had some drugs, just as on any bus in the US. Now imagine if the DEA shot at a bus with helicopters because there were reports that someone on the bus was carrying drugs.
They don't do this yet in the US, but in a few more years of increasing police state, it might happen.
An interview with Syrian rebels.
The regime's claim that al Qa'ida is operating in Syria was blown to shreds by the defectors who reported how the regime set up a false flag operation to look like al Qa'ida.
To undo the sectarian aspect that Assad has injected will be harder. However, if this means Syria must choose between oppression of the Alawite minority and oppression of the Sunny majority, the former is less bad. And it might be possible eventually to reconcile the groups.
The big obstacle to aiding the rebels is that they are not militarily in a position to be helped to win.
Alexis Tsipras visited Paris and warned central Europe that austerity will attack them all, if they don't join him to fight it.
Chicago thugs hancuffed journalists covering the protests at the NATO summit, then destroyed their computers' hard drives. Other thugs stole some journalists' car.
These attacks occur in places and times where there is no protest, no crime, no shred of a legitimate excuse. That demonstrates they are planned repression.
Journalists in Yemen have been attacked, arrested and prosecuted recently.
In Bangladesh, thugs attacked journalists covering protests against the arrest of opposition political leaders.
Ohio's proposed bill to regulate fracking is so weak that it would do little good.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
How the Ultra-Rich Betray America.
Of course, these ultra-rich believe the purpose of the state is to help them dominate and exploit everyone else. When they say "my country", they think it means "the country I own".
At the NATO summit protest, dozens of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans ceremonially discarded their medals.
Some apologized to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The activists arrested in Chicago were framed by undercover thugs who left weapons in the apartment where the activists were staying.
Lawrence al-Rashidi has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for insulting Bahreini's royalty.
Bahrain is not as powerful as Syria. It would not dare do this if Obama didn't support it.
Criminal sentences for insulting someone are fundamentally unjust, whether that someone be a beggar, a thug, a king, or a prophet.
Vermont Becomes First State to Ban Fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mohammed Abdelmawla al-Hariri in Syria has been sentenced to death for giving an interview to al-Jazeera.
It will be funny to see Assad try to claim that al Qa'ida imprisoned him or carried out the execution.
An interview with Sanal Edamaruku, who finds that religious persecution increases the interest in his secularist views.
Refuting the claim that violent video games inspire violence.
25,000 joined an anti-austerity protest in Frankfurt.
This is especially interesting given that Germany has mostly escaped the brunt of the austerity policies that Merkel has pushed hard to impose on Europe.
Pakistan quietly unblocked access to Twitter.
Richard Dawkins explains the moral lessons of the bible.
50 ways to wreck the network.
The African land grab in a Sudanese corner of Ethiopia is run by a Saudi who wants to export food. The inhabitants were rudely shoved aside.
Since the US is so friendly with Ethiopia, it would not surprise me if some of Obama's plan to invest in African agribusiness is directed to such activities.
Here's a general discussion of the global land grab, which covers over 1.3 million square kilometers in Africa. That's over 10% of the land area of the US.
The Heatland Institute [spelling intentional] has lost a large share of its funding and sponsors; even staff and board members quit in disgust at the unamomber billboard.
I call it the Heatland Institute because it has little heart, but wants to subject the Earth to lots of heat.
The Illinois Coal Association and the Heritage Foundation have taken up where previous donors left off. Now it will be possible to criticize those organizations for the billboard which they have effectively endorsed.
An investigation of Peter Gleick's published Heatland internal documents found that he did not (as alleged by Heatland) falsify anything.
Humans are pumping so much water out of aquifers that it is raising the sea level.
Pakistan blocked access to Twitter in an act of religious censorship.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has died. He was convicted of Pan Am flight 103 but claimed he was innocent, and even at the end called for continuing the legal campaign to clear his name of the charges.
There are reports that the blame was put on Libya for political reasons.
Chris Hedges, a plaintiff in the lawsuit to overturn the law for imprisonment without trial in the US, writes about their preliminary victory.
Lady Gaga has been banned in Indonesia and faces the threat of censorship in the Philippines.
I am not a great fan of her music, though I appreciate her hacker spirit. The article leads me to think that this song is a cheap attempt at shocking people (but I can't say I am sure of that; I have not heard it). But even if that's all it is, censoring it is wrong.
Laws punishing "insulting religion" are pure and simple injustice. So are laws punishing racial insults. It is foolish and sometimes nasty to judge someone else by her race, but people should not be imprisoned for folly or even nastiness.
Egyptian soldiers who captured protesters on May 4 tortured them afterward.
These people were protesting violence apparently started by the military which had attacked another protest on May 2.
The ITU, which hopes to take control of the Internet, is excluding civil society from its discussions.
The Dallas round of negotiations over the TPP (Trade Privilege Punishment?) agreement was another backroom deal, clearly intended to serve megacorporations.
If the TPP indeed has an "IP" chapter, its most basic error would be the use of the propaganda term "intellectual property", which frames whatever issues it is applied to in a confusing way favorable to the benificiaries of various diverse privileges.
I say "if" because, thanks to the secrecy, I don't think we know whether the TPP uses that term.
I am sure the rest of the TPP attacks the public interest in other areas. When a government participates in these negotiations, that indicates it has decided to betray its citizens to the megacorporations. You should only vote for candidates that are opposed to the whole idea.
Why do people show resignation to the copyright industries' will?
These people probably know the difference between corporations and legislators, but they are also aware that nowadays the legislators mostly take orders from the corporations. They are resigned to the continuation of this anti-democratic system.
But that is their error. It only continues because they don't rise up and put an end to it.
However, I think that if we are to end it, we must do so beyond the one issue of copyright. If we are to strip the copyright companies of their political power, we need to do the same to other companies.
The idea of democracy, since ancient Athens, is that the non-rich unite to be stronger than the rich and deny the latter any special political power. Democracy today is a hollow shell because it fails to do this. To restore democracy means ending the companies' power.
Chicago thugs arrested protest organizers and accused them of "terrorism" because they had apparatus for brewing beer. In response, thousands protested on the streets, and the thugs attacked them.
One thug committed a hit-and-run with a van against a protester.
More about the fabricated charges, and what motivated the thugs to try to frame these protesters.
The UN says Israel bulldozed dozens of EU aid projects in Palestine, and a hundred more are in danger.
Swedish Telcom Giant Teliasonera Caught Helping Authoritarian Regimes Spy on Their Citizens.
TEPCO has been nationalized, which means Japanese taxpayers will pay the costs of the Fukushima cleanup.
Once the disaster occurred, there may have been no way they could avoid doing so, since TEPCO was surely not going to have earnings to cover the cost of the work. The conclusion is, if your country allows nuclear power plants to be built, it is going to cost you a lot when something goes wrong.
The history behind the massive use of the pesticides that kill honeybees.
It looks like natural problems with the previous integrated pest management system for corn created trouble, and Monsanto jumped in to forestall solution within the scheme of integrated pest management.
Obama offers to "help" Africa through investment that will go to agribusiness companies, not to small farmers.
These are the same companies, I would guess, that will drive thousands of farmers off their land. The profit will go to companies like Monsanto. Thus, this plan is an orwellian scheme to hurt poor Africans disguised as help.
75 US journalists have been arrested since September. Mostly for making recordings of the thugs' actions in public places.
Even though courts and the Justice Department have upheld citizens' right to make recordings of thugs at work, the thugs continue to make bogus threats. I believe the only way to stop them is to prosecute each one.
Richard Dawkins endorsed a government plan to provide gratis bibles to UK state schools. He says that people who read these bibles will see how bad the book is as a moral guide.
The more repressive Ethiopia gets, the more aid its government receives.
The Ethiopian state persecutes journalists and political opposition, often calling them "terrorists" and imprisoning them without trial. And it sends armies into other countries. For the US government, what's not to love?
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty Interational called on Obama to try to change Ethiopia's nasty practices. That's ridiculous — Obama loves states like that. (Examples include Bahrain, Honduras and Uzbekistan.)
London thugs will extract and permanently keep all the data from the mobile phones of people they arrest.
Utah's Internet censorship law that restricted publishing anything "harmful to minors" has been ruled unconstitutional.
I am skeptical of the idea that talking about sex is "harmful" to minors.
A US base in Chile is designed to teach soldiers to repress the population.
China sent Chen Guangcheng into exile in the US.
A psychiatrist who claimed to have found it was possible to "cure" homosexuality has withdrawn that claim and apologized to homosexuals.
We should distinguish two questions here: whether some sort of intervention can turn a homosexual into a heterosexual, and whether homosexuality constitutes a disorder or problem.
If it were indeed possible to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, that would not imply that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Many conditions that are not disorders can be changed nowadays. It is possible to surgically convert males into females and vice versa, but that does not imply that maleness and femaleness are medical disorders.
Contrariwise, the fact that it isn't possible to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals does not prove homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Paralysis is clearly a disorder, and usually there is no cure for it.
The reason I do not regard homosexuality as a disorder is that there is no objective reason to consider it an impairment, and homosexuals don't consider it one.
Bank of America's victims got into its annual meeting.
The insecticides used on genetically modified soy beans in Argentina seem to have caused a high rate of birth defects and other diseases.
Tar sands oil is more corrosive and toxic than ordinary petroleum, so its pipelines leak more often and the leaks are more damaging and harder to clean up.
The article says simply "tar sands", but I'm pretty sure it really
means the oil extracted from tar sands rather than sand.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose the heartless "bombs not bread" tea-party budget passed by the House of Representatives. Also send them mail through this page.
Humanity is using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably provide. The result is steady degradation, and if it continues, we will find that the resources we want to use are no longer available.
Paul Krugman says that austerity will make the euro zone snap unless the EU offers hope of growth to the suffering countries of the euro zone.
I think Krugman is unfair when he describes anti-austerity Greek politicians as "extremists". First, because they are the new mainstream. Second, because their views simply consist of acting on Krugman's own point.
No Secret Why CIA is Now Romanticizing “Harsh Interrogation” Techniques.
US citizens: tell the USDA not to hurry poultry inspections.
In the US, one day's terrorist is another day's freedom fighter. It depends on who is the enemy today.
Orwell described this in 1984: "Oceania has always been at war with
Eastasia", until it decides to ally with Eastasia and then "Oceania
has always been at war with Eurasia."
Chen Guangfu describes how Chinese thugs tortured him.
Now take the disgust you feel, and apply it also to the CIA and the US
government.
American Dystopia: Welcome to the
2012 Hunger Games.
The UK went to great lengths to
cover up and legalize a 1948 massacre
in Malaysia. The victims were suspected Communist rebels.
Sounds like modern times.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The province of Quebec has adopted repressive laws against protests to crush the student strike.
A last-minute stealth amendment in the House's NDAA authorizes the Pentagon to apply its propaganda to the US population.
The corporate media are bad enough already without this change, as FAIR demonstrates every week.
Uri Avnery: a protest for social justice that renounces politics thereby renounces the only path towards achieving its goal.
Avnery says that Israel is sailing toward an iceberg: the effects of the occupation of Palestine. The world as a whole steers toward the bigger iceberg, as it were, of global heating. (Please don't mind the oxymoron.)
Cell phone tracking through cell towers can be more precise than GPS, so it needs at least as much protection from arbitrary use by the state.
In both cases, requiring a warrant for access to previously collected information is not sufficient. A warrant should be required to start creating such a dossier about anyone.
More on the bogus arrest of Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd.
EU fishing quota monitors say that Iberian boat crews try to bribe them, steal from them, interfere with them, deprive them of sleep, and even threaten to kill them.
Large fines have been imposed on Scottish fishermen for exceeding their quotas.
I suspect that others do likewise and have not been caught.
To allow many fishing boats but limit each one to catching far less than it could get is inefficient, both in terms of the effort put into fishing and the enforceability of the rules. I suggest reducing the number of fishing boats operating, and fix that number of boats by assuming each one catches as much as it can using lawful methods. Then enforcement could focus on illegal methods.
The world's efforts to slow global heating are so pitiful that hopelessly inadequate steps, such as using smaller cardboard rolls inside toilet paper, are presented as triumphs.
Hollande will push for a carbon emission tariff on goods entering the EU.
Malawi's new president will try to repeal the laws against homosexuality.
The EU will strengthen its policies against products made in the Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
Several recent reports purporting to prove Iran is developing nuclear weapons really don't prove much.
The US is lowering its definition of "success" in Afghanistan.
It is good when the government recognizes facts.
Republican leaders did not allow a vote on an amendment to the military spending bill (NDAA) which would have sped up withdrawal from Afghanistan because they thought it might get adopted.
The amendment to repeal imprisonment without trial was voted on but did not pass.
US citizens: tell the Federal Reserve Bank to keep the Volcker Rule strong and not allow a loophole for JP Morgan.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the bill to restrict abortion in Washington DC. Also send a message through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone your state senator to call for a vote on S.772, which would endorse a constitutional amendment to overturn the Corporations United decision that human rights apply to corporations
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Asthma, Baby, Asthma: House Energy Committee Eliminates Protection From Smog.
Chicago thugs arrested activists planning protests at the NATO summit and have refused to acknowledge holding them prisoner, let alone charge them with anything.
This reminds me of events in Russia and Egypt.
Facebook faces a large lawsuit over tracking users and ex-users.
Syrian defectors say that Assad arranged "terrorist bombings", which he blamed on al Qa'ida, including the big bombing in Damascus a week ago.
US citizens: sign this petition for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The sting was taken out of the congressional resolution against "containing" a "nuclear weapons capable" Iran, as its author clarified that a "nuclear weapons capable" Iran means one that has built and tested nuclear weapons as well as missiles that can deliver them.
This means the resolution does not interfere with plausible diplomatic settlements.
As the UN pretends to keep peace in haiti, the violence in Haiti is stimulated by the foreign forces that are taking the land for sweatshops.
Eduardo Saverin and Apple illustrate the elite of the 1%, that exploit all countries but belong to none.
The article errs when it concludes that "there is no easy way to do anything about this". Given political will, states could clamp down on the tax shelters that Apple and Saverin use.
The editor of Genomics resigned in protest against Elsevier's restrictions on the dissemination of scientific knowledge.
The inequality speech that TED won't show you: a rich capitalist says that people like him are not the job creators.
India joins Russia and China in proposing to give control over the Internet to governments via the UN.
An Indian parliamentarian argues against the proposal.
The "SonicWall" "child protection" filter blocks access to this page, which reports that "child protection" filters in the UK block access to the anti-violence charity Conciliation Resources.
Tens of thousands of students have returned to protesting in Chile.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel demolished a colony "outpost" (considered illegal even by Israel).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The oil companies' congressional strike force is trying to sink the US
navy's biofuel program.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Some biofuel production is self-defeating because it uses fertilizer (made from petroleum) and scare water to grow the fuel. That is true, for instance, with the ethanol made from corn in the US. I can't tell from this article to what extent the navy program is of that kind.
The prosecution messed up in the trial of Ratko Mladic by not showing some of the evidence to the defense.
Obama is pushing Europe to reduce its austerity.
An ex-minister in the UK faced criminal charges for criticizing the actions of a judge.
This is further criminalization of insults (or even criticism).
An experiment suggests that low-level radiation over a long period causes less DNA damage than the same total amount of radiation in a short time.
One way to avoid the filter bubble is to use a search engine that doesn't track its users.
To verify that a search engine really does not track its users would require more than just releasing the source code for the software it normally runs. The problem is that other programs could be placed on the machine to do surveillance.
Simply using a search engine and email run by different companies is a step in the right direction.
US district court ruled that the imprisonment-without-trial provisions of the NDAA are unconstitutional.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
We must continue to push for Congress to reject it too.
Romney's record as a job-destroyer.
A Mexican general and a former deputy minister have been accused of drug trafficking.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The War on Drugs can't destroy the drugs, but it can destroy everything else.
Southern Sudan, under aerial attack from Sudan, is facing famine and drought.
The UK government's argument for secret trials, that this is the price of continued intelligence cooperation with the US, is bogus.
Even if it were true, it would not justify a measure to cover up torture and thus encourage torture.
A study measured temperature in Australasia over the past millenium and found the last 60 years are the hottest ever.
The US is organizing to arm Syrian rebels with money from rich Arab countries.
This seems like a very bad idea to me. The Syrian rebels can't take an hold a region of Syria. All they can do is start a very bloody urban guerrilla. With better arms they could more often make Assad have recourse to shelling the entire neighborhood to rubble, but they can't actually win.
Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will protest the NATO summit and return their medals.
Here's an interview with one of them.
Strictly speaking, the point that they were searching for mines that wouldn't have been there if the soldiers hadn't been there is not conclusive. That's true of many operations in all wars. For instance, naval ships have anti-aircraft missiles to defend against enemy attack planes, but if the ship weren't there, no planes would attack it. That doesn't mean the anti-aircraft missiles and their crews are pointless. Their job is necessary, given that a war is being fought.
The real question is whether fighting the war is necessary and justified. To justify a war takes a strong reason, which in the case of Iraq never existed, and in the case of Afghanistan does not exist any more.
90 congresscritters call for speeding up withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Arctic Ocean is leaking methane into the atmosphere.
Apparently global heating is melting some of the frozen methane, which rises and eventually escapes into the air. This is positive feedback, because global heating causes more heating.
It means that the tipping point for disaster is closer than where it would otherwise have been. But we still don't know where it is, or whether we have passed it already.
The ACLU is defending a whistleblower in the State Department who is being vindictively fired.
The US maintains a fighter base and naval troop bases near Somalia and Yemen. They may be bombing and attacking in those countries.
Freedom of Indonesian journalists under threat.
Oxfam predicts that Colombia's small farms will lose (on the average) 16 of their income or more, due to the free exploitation treaty.
Oxfam says, "They are likely to take up coca cultivation, engross the files of illegal armed groups, or migrate to urban areas to join some 5 million Colombians — over 10 percent of Colombia's total population — forcibly displaced from the countryside over the last 12 years, the great majority of whom live in extreme poverty."
This is the evil that free exploitation treaties do.
The full study
Hugo Chávez can inspire Europe to reject the politics of the 1% as it has done in Latin America. Maybe he has already started to.
Chávez's administration is not good on all fronts. Some opposition candidates have been arbitrarily barred from running (though real opposition candidates do run). Opposition TV stations have been closed, though some of them were inculpated in the coup attempt. There continues to be a lot of corruption in Venezuela, though Chávez did not create it.
These criticisms of Chávez do not invalidate the point that his economic policies are a better model than the standard right-wing model.
The US kidnaped Khaled el-Masri in Macedonia and took him to Afghanistan for torture. Now the European court of human rights will hear his case.
Condoleezza Rice said any errors would be corrected, but the US has not given him an apology, let alone compensation. Perhaps dumping him in a lonely spot in Albania was the way they meant to correct it.
In the long term, humanity needs to end economic growth that involves use of natural resources.
How ALEC has legislators raise funds for it, funds which it then pays to legislators to attend ALEC events.
Both sides are corruption. Legislators who receive funds for ALEC are beholden to the donor just as if they had received a personal gift.
Wisconsin Governor Walker was caught on tape admitting that he planned to destroy unions there.
The US Department of Agriculture is very concerned about mad cow disease. Specifically, its media coverage.
Honduran thugs and US agents fired at a boat from a helicopter, killing 4 innocent people and wounding 4 others.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Even accepting that they believed these people were drug traffickers, that is no excuse for shooting them from a distance.
The whole War on Drugs is inexcusable in general.
Anti-Wall Street protesters at Morgan Stanley's annual meeting.
The Indian cotton harvest has increased, but it seems genetically modified cotton has not contributed.
Now the challenge is how to stop using it. If India cannot stop, that shows GM plants should be illegal unless they come with an escape plan.
Colonized by corporations: an essay about what a real revolution against an empire calls for.
The trial of Ratko Mladic has started. He is accused of masterminding and personally leading atrocities in Bosnia.
Russian thugs attacked an Occupy protest in a Moscow park, forcing them without letting them take their chairs and sleeping mats.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Maybe Putin is learning from New York Night-mayor Bloomberg.
Endocrine disruptor chemicals harm humans as well as wildlife, but businesses want their profits placed above everyone's health.
Nuclear reactors are a bad investment. UK electric companies have funny ways of saying that.
This discussion of the death penalty in the US ends with an interesting observation of where it is used and why.
If you want to discourage something, the effective way is to punish it most of the time. Punishing it severely but rarely tends not to work.
Carl Malamud campaigns to make US legal requirements publicly available on the Internet.
Hard evidence that sharing movies doesn't mean movies can't be profitable.
The article repeats the movie company propaganda by calling sharing "piracy". To use that term is to support the War on Sharing; please join me in refusing to use it.
Indian police have attacked women who reported violence. A protest against this was banned.
Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd has been arrested on apparently bogus charges from 2002.
Twenty years after the Rio Earth summit, our environment has got worse.
The Heatland Institute is taking plenty of heat for its absurd billboards that compared recognition of global heating to being a mass murderer.
It is a pleasure to see greedy bastards stumble, but those that wish to pay for global heating denialism will find another organ to use.
The US southwest had big forest fires in 2011. It looks like this year will be more of the same.
Global heating will make it even worse in the future.
Carlos DeLuna was executed by a state that persistently closed its eyes to the evidence that his lookalike Carlos Hernandez was the real murderer.
This calls for more than just abolition of the death penalty. Convicting the wrong person based on such reckless disregard for evidence must not happen again, not even if the sentence is a night in jail.
Finland joined the countries where operators of an open WiFi network are not liable for unknown parties' use of it.
This resists one of the methods of the War on Sharing.
The Catholic Church wants Sanal Edamaruku arrested, but doesn't want a hearing over its accusations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Don't Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon's Budget Could Boost the Economy.
Another journalist was kidnapped in Honduras.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops raided the Ramallah office of Stop the Wall, a nonviolent human rights organization, and took away computers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
After 20 years, a Palestinian family in East Jerusalem has prevailed in court against a plan to seize its home.
I wonder whether the false witness was paid to lie — or threatened.
In part of the West Bank, Palestinians are not allowed to build schools, and blocked from their own economic activity, so teenagers work for a pittance in Israeli colonies.
Israel's attorney general is considering prosecution of a Palestinian film-maker because his film makes Israel look bad.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Bil'in protest organizers told everyone not to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers. When young men they didn't know appeared and did so, the protesters asked them to stop.
Then the young men arrested the protesters. They were Israeli army provocateurs.
The US is going to resume selling weapons to Bahrain, effectively accepting its increased repression.
The US has encouraged repression in several countries under Obama, Honduras being another noteworthy example.
The Afghan army has vetoed some night raids.
It is good that they can do this, but they are not consulted for all night raids, only for some of them.
Congress is on the edge of adopting resolutions calling for war against Iran if it has "nuclear-weapons capability".
Does Iran's current ability to refine uranium constitute "nuclear-weapons capability"? I am not sure.
US military veterans mainly support Obama, because they think he is less likely to start another war.
Both veterans and the general public are against war with Iran, but Congress only listens to AIPAC.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support ending subsidies for oil companies. And sign this petition in support of the bill to do so.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the UK: support the campaign to restore freedom of speech by legalizing insults.
US citizens: tell the EPA to regulate power plant CO2 emission firmly.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition in favor of eliminating oil subsidies.
US citizens: oppose development in the Western Arctic Reserve.
The UN brought cholera to Haiti. This campaign calls on UN donors to eliminate cholera by donating clean water systems to Haiti.
They should also pull out the troops, who are in Haiti to maintain non-democracy there.
Nokia is turning into a software patent troll as well as a Microsoft suck-up.
Nerds, don't assume technical hacks will defeat government snooping and censorship. That is a path to defeat.
It looks like Greece will drop the euro.
Israel has granted many of the Palestinian prisoners' demands, in return for a commitment by the prisoners to avoid any support for terrorism.
The agreement limits Israel's practice of imprisonment without trial but does not eliminate it. Israel has further to go to properly respect human rights.
As for Palestinian terrorism, that is wrong when it happens, but it does not happen much any more. The main problem is the occupation.
An Iranian expatriate rapper has been threatened with assassination after being declared an "apostate".
Germany should announce it will retaliate militarily against Iranian government assets if Iranian-supported assassins attack him.
The Heatland Institute [spelling intentional] is campaigning to feed anti-net-neutrality material into the media, as well as for global heating.
A resistance movement in the 1980s eliminated mandatory fingerprinting in Japan. Now the job has to be done over again.
Censorship in the UK gets nastier: a man faces jail for describing a city council member using dirty words (probably "cunt" and "shit").
I have never called anyone a "cunt" because that implies that the person's flaws are based essentially in femaleness. It would never occur to me to say that, because I don't think of either bad or good personal characteristics as inherently linked with gender. Use of the word suggests this man was not thinking very clearly about his criticism
That's if indeed it was meant as a criticism. Maybe it wasn't; it appears he did not intend that people would know who he was talking about.
But even if he had stated the person's name, that is still no excuse for punishing anyone. UK law gives prudes a chance to go on a power trip trampling human rights.
Remember acid rain, and the ozone hole? You don't hear about these global environmental problems now — because the world took measures to address them.
Human Rights Watch acknowledges NATO did a good job of avoiding
civilian casualties in Libya, but calls on NATO to investigate the
ones that occurred and give compensation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama wants the US to export more. More arms, for more questionable
uses. And more subsidized GMO corn, to
destroy local agriculture in
other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Mother's Day was invented as
an occasion
for mothers to take political stands and be heard.
(This was before women had the right to vote in the US.)
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The World Wide Web is under attack from governments and giant companies at once.
What should a woman's place be in modern Japan?
Don't stop reading until at least 8 paragraphs in.
The IRS has started blocking tax-exemption applications from nonprofit journalism organizations.
When the article says "nonprofit", read "tax-exempt". Anyone can set up a nonprofit corporation; the IRS is not involved in that. However, IRS approval is required to get the 501(c)(3) tax exemption that they aim for.
Noam Chomsky: Plutonomy and the Precariat.
Of course, we know that the reason most Americans are getting poorer is that the rich, who control Congress, want to make them poorer. But it is good to be able to cite Citigroup for this.
Here are the most rich parts of the Citigroup memo.
Here's the entire memo.
The world's leading scientific institutions say there are three "global dilemmas": growing demands for water and energy, natural disasters, and carbon dioxide emissions. Behind the growing demands is growing population together with ascent out of poverty. We don't want to keep people in poverty, so we must reduce the population growth.
A Moroccan musician whose song rebuked the thugs' corruption faces imprisonment on charges of insulting the thugs, and for "showing contempt" for the state. Any state which does this deserves worse than contempt.
The video should have used a crocodile's head.
Thanks to the Republican War on the Poor, 230,000 unemployed Americans are about to lose unemployment payments.
The IMF thinks that the price of oil may double in the next decade. If so, countries ought to prepare by increasing mass transportation and other energy efficiency measures.
Spanish thugs in Madrid attacked journalists, then protesters. The protesters were not daunted.
The Yes Men infiltrated the negotiations for the TPP.
Malaysia found Dubya and Cheney and their advisors guilty for Guantanamo torture.
There is no doubt about this verdict, since Bush has confessed. However, it was wrong to try them in absentia; trial in absentia is fundamentally unjust. Malaysia should have put out an arrest warrant for them, but not go further until it had them in custody.
Malaysia violates human rights in other ways too. For instance, it demands fingerprints from visitors, it denies people labeled as Muslims the right to stop being Muslims, and it extradited a Saudi blogger to face execution without even an extradition hearing. However, none of that excuses Dubya's crimes.
The US should be ashamed if it leaves the punishment of its torturers to other countries.
The Catholic church performed same-sex marriages for over a thousand years.
The US navy says its sonar and explosives in Hawai'i might injure 1000 marine mammals each year.
The TSA has wasted over $100 million on machines it didn't use.
This is in addition to all the money it wasted on the machines it does use.
An 18-month-old baby was ordered off a plane, which means her parents had to leave too. Jet Blue and the TSA each say the other was responsible.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Lesson #1: don't be "embarrassed" when bullies mistreat you. If you let that embarrass you, you're a sitting duck for bullies.
A UK private investigator claims the thugs pay him to get information about people when they have no legal grounds for a search warrant.
Meanwhile, as regards personal data from databases, the proper lesson is: if they collect it, it will get misused.
Protesters against nuclear reactor construction in India face a range of absurd criminal charges, and the thugs even blockaded a village near the site.
Mass protests have begun in Spain on the anniversary of last year's protests.
The protesters peacefully dare the Spanish state to attack them as it has threatened to do.
London thugs attacked protesters camped near the Bank of England.
A UN effort, spearheaded by Spain, calls for compensating victims of terrorism. For instance, life insurance policies would not be allowed to make exceptions for death due to terrorism.
I agree with this change, but it focuses on a danger that is rather small compared with those of wars of aggression, austerity, crushing democracy, and global heating disaster. The Spanish government is guilty of the second and third of those right now.
When Obama says that Canada's tar sand oil will be extracted and burnt, in effect he takes future global heating disaster for granted. Obama is eager to please the frackers.
Uri Avnery thinks that the new Israeli coalition will reduce the tendency to fascism and war.
Some German schools block access to the German Pirate Party's platform statement.
The judge who ordered censorship of proxy servers in the Netherlands has corrupting financial interests in his decision.
Citizens of Portland, OR, oppose the plan to build giant coal export terminals because of the pollution that extracting and shipping it will cause in the US, and the pollution that burning it will cause in China.
ACLU Presses on With Challenge to US No-Fly List.
The Global May Manifesto of (many of) the indignados.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans have launched a War on Children to go with their War on Women, all for the sake of getting money for other wars.
A cartoonist in Iran faces flogging for insulting an MP.
The UK imprisons people for stating opinions about people, too.
Both cases are injustice; the difference is only in degree.
A scandal has developed about Romney; in high school he took the lead in bullying someone for being gay.
It would be foolish to criticize Romney for this. Children and teenagers are easily led into attacking any target of opportunity, but often they grow up afterwards.
We should judge Romney, like any other candidate, by his behavior as an adult. Romney wants to hurt everyone in the US who isn't rich.
Do we really need to add anything to that?
Putin jailed Russian opposition leaders on ridiculous pretexts reminiscent of the way Occupy protesters are treated in in the US.
I have doubts about a campaign to "democratize" Internet governance.
I cannot endorse this statement because it uses the confusion-spreading term "IP", treating the term as meaningful. But what about the substance of the issue?
The problem described here is real, no doubt. But I fear that "democratizing" the Internet means, in this case, letting many governments vote about how to treat it, and what would they vote for? Censorship, I think. Censorship on the Internet requires surveillance, so the same vote would be for surveillance.
I don't see a solution for this problem that I would have confidence in.
Obama is sending US troops to support the coup-installed government of Honduras.
That is the government that doesn't bestir itself to protect journalists and union organizers from being murdered, perhaps because the murderers are working for the elites that are the government's power base.
The US appears to have been in favor of this coup all along.
I think the situation is likely to lead to a civil war. I expect the US will support the government in the civil war, and that may be the real purpose of sending these troops.
Erick Martinez, Honduran gay rights defender, was murdered.
Many journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the coup, which the US has effectively endorsed.
Obama's Afghanistan policy presents itself as removing troops while not really doing so.
US generals say the Afghan army is making progress, but thanks to Daniel Davis we know that is not true.
The European Commission says that the EU probably will not ratify ACTA, the Anti-Citizen Tyranny Agreement.
We have not won yet! Citizens of Europe, please help La Quadrature du Net and other organizations achieve final victory.
Copyright law is already to restrictive and strict, so any proposal to make it more so is going in the wrong direction. We need to legalize sharing and adopt other methods to support artists, such as perhaps my proposal.
The Israeli Supreme Court is standing up to Netanyahu, who wishes to delay ad infinitem the court-ordered demolition of two colonies in the West Bank that don't have state approval.
In general, these "illegal" colonies get unofficial state support, although not as much support as the "legal" colonies get.
The Heartland Institute, a corporate-funded global heating denial campaign, argues that global heating does not exist because various detested people believe it does.
You could make similar arguments for 2+2 = 5. Didn't Hitler believe that 2+2 = 4, except perhaps towards the end when counting German troops?
In fact, there are global heating denialist tyrants too. For instance, those who staged a coup in the Maldive Islands.
Global heating denialism has not produced mass murderers yet, as far as I know, but just give it a few decades and it will make Osama bin Laden and even Bush look like small potatoes.
Fortunately Americans are starting to see the effect of global heating.
A courageous politician now could win a mandate for action to curb global heating. Alas, Obama doesn't know the meaning of courage, and advocates roasting the planet to keep gasoline prices down.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say, "Pass the Glass-Steagall Act again." And sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A poll finds
Americans want big cuts in military spending,
so why are even Democrats in Washington against it? The only answer
I can see is money.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The article says that most people polled are concerned that military cuts would cost jobs, but that's not true. Spending the money in other ways would support more jobs than spending it on the military, so the result would be a net increase in jobs.
JP Morgan's $2 Billion
Tumble Renews Call: "Break Up the Big Banks".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
"Too big to fail" is too big to be allowed to exist.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter urgently to support the amendment to remove imprisonment without trial from the NDAA. The vote will be later this week.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
South American countries will build cables so their communications don't pass through the US.
They know that the NSA watches all their traffic.
Tsipras was unable to form a government, but has held to is opposition to austerity and refused to join a government that would approve the deal.
This means a new election, and the people — seeing for once a politician with the courage to refuse to hammer nails into their coffin — are flocking to his party.
Professor Keridis represents the position that "What's good for the banksters is good for Greece" wants a "stable, long-term government" that can implement even bigger cuts and disregard the public. Such a government would have to be fascist.
UN guidelines about the use of farmland, fisheries and forests are intended to promote local food production.
The article was written by a UN official under whose auspices these guidelines were drawn up. I'd be interested in seeing what criticisms activists have of these guidelines. However, assuming they are better than nothing, the question becomes whether the WTO, World Bank and IMF will pressure countries to do the opposite.
Rotterdam is trying new methods to prevent inundation as rains get heavier than they used to be.
These methods can cope with rain, but most of them are useless against the rising sea levels due to global heating, except for the floating communities. For the rest of the city, the only way to defend against rising seas is with higher dikes. If they really can't do that, eventually they will have to abandon the city.
An unknown Italian anarchist group claims to have shot a nuclear power company CEO.
It is not impossible that this is true, but it could also be a lie. Right-wing Italian groups carried out bombings in the 70s so they would be blamed on leftists.
The mainstream media incessantly say that austerity is a solution rather than the problem.
ABC broadcast a "news" segment painting fracking as a bonanza for western landowners, which carefully did not use the term "fracking".
Some NATO countries want US tactical nuclear weapons removed from Europe.
In strictly logical terms, the presence of these weapons in Italy or some other country does not mean the US would necessary use them to retaliate if that country were attacked, and moving them elsewhere does not mean the US would necessarily not use them. The two questions are more or less independent.
I don't think that where these weapons are stored is a very important question in its own right, so it might as well be negotiated as part of a nuclear weapons treaty.
The
US government is worried that the new coalition in Israel could lead to
an attack against Iran "at any moment".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The European Environment Agency says that endocrine disruptor chemicals found in many household products may be responsible for cancer, obesity, autism and/or diabetes. It isn't certain yet. But the agency recommends taking a cautious approach to the use of these chemicals.
UK ministers were so subservient to Murdoch's empire that they asked for advice, or should we say instructions, on how to help it acquire another cable TV company.
JP Morgan's huge losses from gambling in the big casino show that the 2010 financial regulations are inadequate.
Bring back Glass-Steagel!
Everyone: call on governments to require companies to offer a choice of operating systems for PCs.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of the Interior
to fix the loopholes
in its fracking regulations.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
An Afghan army soldier shot a US soldier yet again. It was the 15th such attack since the beginning of the year.
The immediate effect of these attacks is that US troops can't trust the Afghan troops they are supposed to be working with (and, in some cases, advising or training).
However, the real significance of these attacks is that they demonstrate that the Taliban inspire loyalty and Karzai's puppet regime does not. That is why the US cannot possibly "win" the war in Afghanistan.
These events also confirm that reports of "progress" in strengthening the Afghan army are bogus. "Just give us another year and we'll get there", they have said, over and over. A year later they say it again. That talk is cheap, but the war costs money and lives.
The American public are learning not to believe the liars. But that won't lead to a pullout until we have congressional candidates willing to reject the lies.
Analysis: Why we must name all drone attack victims.
Companies are asking Obama to use the TPP to impose draconian laws.
The article doesn't really say what sort of laws, since it follows those companies in describing them with the vague term "IP". However, I expect that what the RIAA and MPAA want are draconian copyright laws.
Other companies might want stricter trademark laws, and maybe that is part of this same campaign; but since copyright law and trademark law are totally unrelated, it is a mistake to unify those two issues. The companies lump them together to discourage thoughtful consideration of either issue. To follow their lead on terminology plays into their hands.
ARM computers with Windows will handcuff users like the iThings.
Stallman's Law is at work.
Everyone: sign this petition to Brazilian President Rousseff to veto the forest bill that relaxes protection against cutting down the Amazon forest.
The cholera strain has evolved since its introduction, suggesting
it may be
permanently established.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
As mentioned before, the experimental vaccine Paul Farmer is not the right way to address this problem. The right way is to set up for clean water.
Israel ordered Palestinians to destroy 1000 olive trees on their land, which Israel declared a nature reserve.
Nature reserves are a good thing, but these people were not represented in the decision to establish one, and they won't get compensation for their farm.
Occupy protesters have set up a camp right next to the London Stock Exchange.
This is in the "City of London", a small borough with few residents, effectively controled by the banksters and used by them for political purposes. It must be abolished.
BP will start operating more drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico than it did before the Big Spill.
Although Obama made regulations a little more strict, he did not do as much as is necessary to eliminate the danger. But what the hell? The Gulf is already poisoned.
Around the world (including in the US), mining companies push the local people out of the way and pollute them to death. Strict regulation is needed to stop this.
Obama's is mainly on the side of the mining companies. His heart is made of oil and coal. Jill Stein for president.
China is building another dam on the Yangtze which is expected to cause the extinction of several species of fish.
In Peru, continuing to grow coffee may require great efforts for reforestation.
The departing CEO of JP Morgan said, "In hindsight we took far too much risk, the strategy was barely vetted, it was barely monitored. It should never have happened."
The solution is simple: don't allow banks to do risky trading.
China is punishing Chen Guangcheng's family for his escape.
The US is not clearly better than China on this score; the US has also been known to attack family members of targets. For instance, the Bush forces in Iraq sometimes got their hands on people by taking family members hostage.
Bernie Sanders, Keith Ellison Unveil Bill To End Fossil Fuel Subsidies.
Republicans won't let it pass the House of Representatives, but it would be nice at least for Obama to support it.
ALEC's next target is to undermine laws to promote clean energy.
Many US states have made libel a crime.
This has threatens freedom of speech.
The UK has established many "marine reserves", but since fishing is still allowed in them, they are "reserves" only in name.
In the US: call on the CEO of the biggest US private prison company to debate the ACLU.
Uganda's government threatens to ban Oxfam and the Uganda Land Alliance for revealing how the state chases farmers off their land to give it to corporations.
Keep Domestic Cybersecurity Efforts in Civilian Hands.
The solution to anything on the Internet that you feel might be bad for your child is for the child to view things together with you.
Australia allows its citizens can be arrested and extradited to the United States based on information supplied by Australian spies for breaches of US law on Australian soil.
In effect, Australia is converting itself into a colony of the US. That should be considered treason.
Philadelphia plans to destroy the public school system, replacing many schools with charter schools.
Charter schools are usually worse than the public schools they replace.
Congress does nothing to stop the FBI and NSA from collaborating to impose the idea that all of Americans' communications should be subject to government eavesdropping.
The Netherlands has legislated requirements for network neutrality, including a requirement that ISPs cannot disconnect a subscriber except on specific conditions.
This is a great step forward, except that a court has imposed very broad censorship to block access to the Pirate Bay. The censorship requires blocking access in a web proxy, and forbids even listing the names of unrestricted proxies.
To really block access to the Pirate Bay would require the equivalent of Chinese censorship.
Canadian journalists rebuke Canada's government secretive policies.
I think it is inaccurate to categorize this as a matter of freedom of expression. Rather it is a matter of government secrecy. But it is bad in any case.
Canadian journalists should write articles citing extragovernmental scientists' reasonable conclusions, then add, "No scientists at the Department of Pollution Obfuscation expressed disagreement with what Dr. Independent said." Eventually the state will decide it is better to let its scientists speak.
There was a massive terrorist bombing in Syria, and it is not clear who was responsible.
An appeals court rejected an Illinois law that banned recording the actions of the thugs.
The latest US idea for discouraging illegal immigrants is to deport
them if they get traffic tickets,
or even report crimes.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Senator Franken asked the "Justice" Department how many times it got
Americans' cell phone
GPS data without a warrent.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
To require a warrent for looking at saved past cell phone location data is obviously necessary, but it is not enough. A warrant should be required to start saving this data.
Turkey censors the mass media, with a hundred journalists in prison, but so far has less success in censoring the Internet.
Ecuador is close to passing a law requiring loan forgiveness
for first-time home buyers that go negative,
up to a certain
limit.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This is what the US needs, and any congresscritter who won't support it needs replacing.
U.S. Treasury Claim of Iran-Al-Qaeda "Secret Deal"
Is
Discredited.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Wall Street's Casino Culture Still Alive and Well.
The US should pass the Glass-Steagall act again.
Obama's agreement with Karzai presents an appearane of giving Karzai's
government control over night raids,
but it is a false
appearance.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The agreement envisages keeping US troops in Afghanistan till 2024.
But that's unlikely to put an end to the Taliban, so they will have to extend it till 2034.
US citizens: phone Obama at 202-456-1111 (9am to 5pm Eastern time) and tell him to fire Ed Demarco, the official blocking adjustment of mortgages for homeowners whose equity is negative, and prosecuting the banksters for foreclosure fraud.
In the US: rebuke Microsoft and Comcast for supporting the Heartland Institute, a global heating denier.
In the US: call on the CEO of the biggest US private prison company to debate the ACLU.
US citizens: call on the IRS
to crack down on Karl Rove's political
organization that wants to pretend to be a charity.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to vote to remove imprisonment without trial from the new NDAA bill. Also send email through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: support
the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike against
imprisonment without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: thank Obama for supporting
same-sex marriage.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is rare that he does anything progressive, but it is good to give positive feedback as well as negative.
Feds Bypassing Citizens to Massively Invade
Their Privacy.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Congress plans to give the Pentagon broad powers to carry out "clandestine operations in cyberspace".
Against the UK's new Internet surveillance plans.
An Israeli official admitted that imprisonment without trial isn't usually "necessary", even by Israel's standards.
Twitter is fighting hard to block the subpoena for an Occupy protester's private information, arguing that it belongs to him.
Twitter sets the standard for how a company should protect its users' privacy against subpoenas — a standard by which other Internet services fall short.
Protesters should use a proxy in some other country to talk to Twitter.
The IMF and World Bank have strangled Jamaica by pressuring the country to pay an impossible debt load.
Congressional intelligence leaders say the Taliban has got stronger since Obama's "surge" in 2010.
The US can prop up Karzai in Kabul, at great cost in money and lives, but there is no way to win this war.
The US has acknowledged that a bomb killed one Afghan family, but
never acknowledges the implications of activities that repeatedly
have
such consequences.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is true that wars generally kill civilians; even with the best efforts to avoid doing so, it will happen. When soldiers kill a civilian, it does not necessarily mean that they did something wrong. Sometimes they made the best decision they could, in a hurry, with their limited information, and it goes wrong. This is called "moral bad luck."
It follows that the decision to fight the war is responsible for those civilian deaths that the soldiers could not reasonably have avoided. This is why it is wrong to fight a war without a strong justification.
Most Americans in all parties oppose Obama's plans to continue propping up Karzai's government.
Even low doses of neonicotinoid pesticides harm honeybees and bumblebees.
Local US anti-wind-power groups are being organized nationally using funds from fossil fuel companies.
Global heating is causing fish species to move northward.
In a couple of decades, the species that now need the colder water will only be able to live in the Arctic Ocean. And in another couple of decades, they will be extinct.
The supposed underwear bomber was a CIA agent.
This seems to imply progress in infiltrating jihadi circles outside the US. That's the best method for dealing with them — much better than wars or drone bombings.
The jury deadlocked on the Oracle v Google trial,but its verdict is irrelevant anyway. The all-important question is whether copyright covers interfaces at all, and the judge will decide that. I expect that eventually the Supreme Court will decide it.
For the rich, America is "regenerating its strength", as it jettisons most of the population into poverty.
A proposal to extend transparency laws to corporations.
The CIA has blocked another attempt to explode an underwear bomb in an airplane.
It seems clear that the TSA had nothing to do with blocking the attack. The TSA has never caught a terrorist. Even though there is a real danger of attacks against airplanes, that doesn't make TSA security theater necessary (or useful).
US journalism is threatened by Obama's secrecy and spying, and by ISP's attacks on network neutrality.
Nestle is funding "water education" in US public schools, but it fails to teach them the social costs of bottled water.
The Fukushima reactors are not entirely stable. One suffers from a water leak that seems to be reducing the level of cooling water and could cause it to heat up.
If another earthquake occurs in the next few decades, it could cause the cooling arrangements to fail, leading to a disaster much worse than what already happened.
China has shut al-Jazeera's news bureau because al-Jazeera did not provide the favorable coverage China wanted.
Cate Jenkins, who was fired from the EPA for warning that the dust from the World Trade Center was toxic, has won a lawsuit and got her job back.
Now we need an investigation into why the EPA exposed hundreds (or is it thousands) of firemen to lung damage by failing to warn them or protect them.
Human Rights Watch rebukes Israel's practice of imprisonment without trial.
The Pirate Party has got 8% of the vote in various regions of Germany and stands a chance of doing equally well nationally.
Chen Guangcheng's relatives, friends and lawyers are being attacked by thugs and stopped from communicating.
I support China's one-child-per-family law. Given how much future load each child places on the world's limited resources, which are running scarce already, we must reject the idea that people are entitled to make as many more people as they wish. Some countries don't need to take action to reduce birth rates, but China did not have that good fortune.
Just because a law is necessary,, that doesn't justify enforcing it in the cruel Chinese manner. I agree with Chen Guangcheng in condemning that. If Chen Guangcheng opposes the one-child-per-family policy itself, I disagree with that position, but I defend his right to stand for it.
As Putin celebrated being "re-elected", the thugs visited cafes where dissidents gather and arrested people at random.
Putin does not allow serious opposition in his elections; the permitted parties were no real challenge. The US has two parties that can easily win elections, but neither challenges the power of the banksters.
The Syrian opposition boycotted the parliamentary election.
The in-laws of Sahar Gul, who tortured her to force her into prostitution, have been convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
To establish women's rights in Afghanistan would be a great thing. This goal is why I supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, when it required little bloodshed. But I don't think it justifies the level of bloodshed that will be required indefinitely to keep Karzai in power.
Investors in Billionaire Polluters may sue the company for misleading them by covering up previous drilling accidents.
Putin's thugs arrested 250 protesters after attacking many more, in a large protest against his phony democracy.
I wonder if the people who threw bottles at the thugs were provocateurs. The thugs attacked the protesters in general, not those people specifically, which suggests that they were provocateurs.
The leaders of the opposition were arrested and certainly
were not
among those.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
A right-wing foaming-at-the-mouth government minister sent 8000 thugs into Barcelona and shut a university, all to prevent an imaginary protest.
Even if the protest had been real, this would only prove he is an enemy of democracy.
The author writes "psychopath" but I think he meant "psychotic".
The same minister was in charge last year when plainclothes thugs were
caught infiltrating a large protest and starting violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
32 Iranian students are still in prison for political opposition in 2009.
The real job creators are consumers that spend, but austerity and
inequality imposed by cruel laws prevents
this from happening.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The flowering of various plants is getting earlier due to global heating, faster than was predicted by previous experiments.
Former chief Guantanamo prosecutor Morris Davis condemns the military
kangaroo courts
he was involved in.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Officials say these are preferable for a small group of prisoners. They fail to say that the preference is so as to conceal how they were tortured by the US government. Thus, these kangaroo courts are part and parcel of Obama's policy of covering up torturers.
Human Rights Watch published a report about the murder of opposition activists in Burundi, but was ordered by the state to stop distributing it there.
For more info, here is the report.
A glacial lake in Nepal burst, causing dozens of deaths.
Global heating makes glaciers unstable.
The idea that streets are mainly for cars, and not for people, was established by an organized corporate political campaign.
The consensus among Israeli military and intelligence chiefs opposes Netanyahu's desire to start a war.
Bahrain has arrested important protest leaders, one for planning
illegal protests and one for
insulting thugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
To make it a crime to insult someone is tyranny in itself.
The Philippine military kills, tortures and disappears people with impunity.
Sad to say, asking the US to get the Philippines to stop this is like asking the pot to pressure the kettle to get clean.
Anti-austerity parties gained ground in Greece; the government of occupation will have to struggle to impose its austerity plans.
Sarkozy lost the election for the French presidency.
Good riddance to him, but I don't think Hollande will justify the term "left-wing". I fear he will be centrist. He lacked the courage to oppose Sarkozy's tyrannical Internet and DRM laws.
Indeed, he says he will pursue austerity in France.
I fear that taxing the rich, though correct, won't be enough to prevent the disaster spiral that the rest of Europe is experiencing.
This article argues that Osama bin Laden had been put out to pasture, and no longer had anything to do with real operations of al Qa'ida.
Reportedly other al Qa'ida leaders considered him mad. However, he could not have been entirely mad if he was able to recognize that killing civilians was self-defeating.
The US government seems to thickheaded to learn the same lesson.
Many governments, including the US and UK, threaten Internet freedom in the name of "security".
Imperialism Didn't End. These Days It's Known
as International
Law
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Chinese imprisoned unofficially for going to Beijing to complain have gone on hunger strike.
Thugs in Togo attacked a journalist and took his camera while he was lying unconscious.
Sounds a lot like the US.
Heights of Hypocrisy: The Universal
Use of 9/11 in Politics
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Americans who celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden were focusing a minor enemy while the main enemy is robbing them blind.
US citizens: call on Rep. Pelosi to stand firm for Social Security,
Medicaid and Medicare.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Microsoft says it will make its datacenters carbon-neutral.
I am skeptical that this activity will really mean anything in practice. Electricity is carbon-neutral if generated without burning carbon fuel. However, what companies more often do is claim to compensate for their carbon emissions by funding carbon sinks. That is fine in theory; the problem is that those sinks (such as planting trees) are not guaranteed to absorb the carbon they are supposed to compensate for.
Of course, this issue is not limited to Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Microsoft will continue to hand users software that tramples their freedom.
Soldiers involved in the Batang Kali massacre said in a 1970 investigation that they were ordered to shoot prisoners.
The investigation was launched by the Labour Party, when it really stood for something, and was stopped by the right-wing Tory Party.
Alexis Tsipras, who will try to form the new government of Greece, declared the austerity deals void.
Everyone:
call on Honduras
to provide protection to journalist Dina
Mexa.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell Obama
to release all the photos of damage done by
the Big Spill, without further delay.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Portland Oregon high school students protested against cuts.
Obama has authorized air force drones to spy on Americans as long as they say it was an accident.
A London thug faces prosecution for attacking a handcuffed prisoner.
Western countries have done nothing to stop businesses from selling
deep packet inspection equipment
to dictators.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Part of the problem is that these countries themselves perform increasing surveillance of the Internet.
Iran's Internet filtering blocked distribution of Fearless Leader's fatwa about filtering.
Libya's interim government has adopted a censorship law worthy of Gaddafi.
Naomi Wolf asks whether the FBI is telling us the truth about the new underwear bomb, or just doing PR to sell more expensive scanners.
Someone will surely design a swallowable suicide bomb some day. It won't be possible to find that with body scanners.
Bank Vs. America: Protests Outside, Inside BofA Shareholder Meeting
Moving your money out of Bank of America is a good way to take action. Convincing companies, organizations and cities to move their money can be even better.
Fukushima released more radiactive fallout than Chernobyl , and has rendered almost 1000 sq km uninhabitable. And it may still get worse.
The World Bank calls for states to assign monetary value to natural capital.
Many have proposed this, and it might do some good if economic decisions take account of that natural capital. For instance, if corporations that diminish the natural capital are required to pay for it, they might not do it.
Charlotte, North Carolina, has adopted laws to prevent protests, and used the Bank of America's annual meeting as a test case.
The sea of garbage in the Pacific can alter the ecosystem.
Effects of global heating will result in total destitution for 30 million Bangladeshis in a few decades. And they know it.
Gouging workers has become standard practice for US companies even when they are tremendously profitable.
We should note that this isn't the only nasty thing that Caterpillar does. It is a target for divestment campaigns because it supplies equipment for Israel's annexation wall.
Debunking 5 tax myths spread by the 1%.
Another advantage of taxing financial transactions, not mentioned in the article, is that it would make a some short term speculation unprofitable while doing nothing to discourage long term investment.
All the Egyptian parties distrust the military and doubt it will hand over power.
Some Egyptian protesters say that people they did not know infiltrated the latest protest and started throwing stones at soldiers. It is plausible that the military sent provocateurs; it is a common tactic for the thugs.
Senegal has cancelled the licenses of foreign factory fishing boats.
Let's hope this is permanent — Senegal needs to protect its fisheries. If it keeps the fish stocks up, and the population down, it will avoid pushing itself into disaster.
However, disaster might come anyway. In a few decades, global heating could wipe out all those fish.
A GMO experimenter pleads for environment defender not to destroy an experimental field.
The article does not address the question of whether the use of these genes would spread patent pollution. If they would, then the work is not available for ethical use, so the experiment is pointless. If not, then maybe his arguments are valid.
Occupy protests were held across the US on May 1.
Daniel Chong wasn't charged with a crime, but federal agents put him in a cell, then nearly killed him by ignoring him for five days.
Kuwait Prepares to Crack Down on Social Media.
Refugees from North Korea describe the trivial reasons for which people
are
thrown into prison camps in which they can starve to death.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Mexican government is investigating and monitoring the leaders of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, a political organization calling for an end to the War on Drugs.
Thugs attacked a sit-in by students in Brooklyn College.
There is evidence tying senior executives of Billionaire Polluter to the coverup of the extent of the Big Spill.
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to revoke Rupert Murdoch's broadcast
licenses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Portland, Oregon, is using dirty tricks against Occupy protesters that face criminal charges.
The changes are bullshit in the first place, fabricated by thugs as an abuse of their power.
If you are ever on a jury, and thugs testify that a protester committed a crime, consider the testimony of any number of thugs worth less than the word of one protester. The thugs are accustomed to lying in court, and they plan their testimony together.
Three states have given ALEC a special exemption from requirements on lobbyists.
Dajaz1's lawyer says that domain name seizures are not authorized by US law.
The term "intellectual property" or "IP" is a uselessly broad generalization about many disparate laws. The generalization has a harmful effect on public debate and even on legislation, because it suggests choosing between simplistic foolish positions such as "for IP" and "against IP".
The name of the "PRO-IP Act" shows that it is based on this foolish thinking.
The Israeli army absolved itself of responsibility for killing 21 civilians in Gaza, who were in a building where Israeli soldiers had ordered them to go.
Israeli colonists in the West Bank
pollute the water supplies
that they haven't seized.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli army demolished a Palestinian farm ; the cows may die as a result.
Israel
destroyed the only road
to the Palestinian village of Khirbet Yarza.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is considering plans
to annex a large part of the West Bank,
and kick out most of the remaining Palestinian inhabitants not already
squeezed out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli agents admit infiltrating Palestinian protests and throwing stones in the direction of Israeli soldiers.
The reason to exclude the Israeli theater company Habima is that
by performing in a colony in the West Bank it
explicitly endorses the occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Kansas is considering a law that would require doctors to warn women about false "dangers" of abortions , and is also trying to regulate abortion clinics out of existence.
TestPAC is campaigning to defeat Lamar Smith, author of SOPA.
The Philadelphia thugs' union plans to expel Ray Lewis, retired thug,
for wearing his old uniform
in an Occupy protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
They even sought an excuse to charge him with a crime. Just like thugs.
The US government concealed photos of threatened animal species harmed by oil from the Big Spill.
False DMCA takedowns are being used for political censorship.
Frackers use legal strategems to gag people who suffer health problems due to fracking.
Videos of cover songs are an example of where copyright law is broken.
Steve Kardynal's remixes, Songs in Real Life, are censored now due to copyright.
To fix copyright law will require crushing the political power of the copyright lobby — in other words, the businesses that wanted to feed us SOPA. With their nasty practices, they don't deserve to make one red cent, not even when they do something that isn't itself wrong.
Obama supports a Senate bill that is approximately
as bad as
CISPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Egyptians protested at military headquarters, and fought with troops that tried to stop them.
Some of the protesters were captured and face military trials — some simply for participating in a forbidden protest.
The Heartland Institute has turned off its billboard that tried to smear concern for global heating by associating it with the unabomber.
The revised route for the Keystone planet-roaster pipeline still threatens to pollute water supplies.
This is in addition to the certainty of putting humanity on a path to megadisaster.
India has imposed Internet filtering on ISPs, blocking access to many unauthorized sharing sites but also to other sites.
NFL players often sustain repeated brain injuries that subsequently ruin their lives. The NFL denies this, so some players commit suicide and donate their brains to science to help prove it.
I don't even like to watch football because the violence fills me with revulsion. I wonder how watching such violence — real, not fictional — affects children and teenagers. To ban fiction is censorship, but it would be legitimate to regulate football violence in reality.
The UK's loony experiment of privatizing the London fire department is burning up badly.
Private fire departments will sooner or later find a way to squeeze money out of the owners of burning buildings, as Crassus did.
Privatization government activities is always bad unless it results in a competitive market for users.
The Guantanamo judge silenced a defense lawyer who spoke about how his client had been tortured.
Connell is entirely right to say that this kangaroo court is a "blight on America's international reputation and her commitment to the rule of law." Shame on you, Obama!
The European Union is considering regulating the scrapping of EU ships, even if it is done outside the EU, for the sake of workers' safety.
I am completely in favor of this. Why allow businesses that don't have proper safety rules to compete in our markets? And while we're at it, why allow sweatshops to compete?
I don't think it is wrong to employ workers in Bangladesh, or China, rather than workers in the US or Europe; but it is certainly wrong to replace safe working conditions and good pay with low-paid dangerous conditions. If you want to hire Bangladeshis, go ahead as long as it isn't an excuse for a setback for workers' rights and pay.
The UN suggests that the US should return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes in violation of treaties.
There is no denying that justice calls for this.
I also think the US ought to pay reparations for slavery to the descendants of slaves. They suffer today from the repercussions of the policies that denied them fundamental legal rights.
All US slaveowners are long dead, and most Americans today are not even their descendants. We cannot inherit personal responsibility for an old evil. However, the US government which denied slaves equal rights still exists. So do the state governments which until the 1960s had racist laws that denied all Blacks equal rights. These governments must take responsibility for those acts; they must pay reparations to the victims and their descendants.
Lincoln High School in Walla Walla has reversed the destructive trajectory of its district's problem students, by rejecting the cruel and punitive spirit of zero tolerance.
Many of these children's suffering could have been predicted in advance because they were born to problem parents. As an individual, you can't retroactively choose your parents, but society can influence how likely various people are to become parents. We need to do more to encourage these people to have no children, perhaps by paying them to get sterilized.
Obama has launched an all-out attack against medical marijuana, using any conceivable pretext to shut dispensaries and harass patients.
The UK government is trying desperately to build nuclear reactors, but this is running smack into its promise not to subsidize them.
The article considers a minimum carbon trade price as a kind of subsidy for nuclear power, but that is only half true. It is, rather a kind of subsidy for everything other than fossil fuels. Absent some other subsidy for nuclear power, I expect businesses to choose to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
When Democrats win, and when they lose, the corporate media say it proves they ought to become more right-wing.
They won't have my vote unless they become Liberals again.
The White Plains thugs will get off untouched after killing Kenneth Chamberlain.
It may be true the final step, the actual killing, was justified if Chamberlain was attacking his tormentors with a knife. But the whole dispute was provoked by the thugs. There no excuse for not leaving him alone when nothing was wrong, or for not allowing him to talk with his relatives.
Let's think carefully about the thugs' statement that they will "never run away from an emergency". There was no emergency except the one they created. In effect, their position is that once they create a problem they will not let it end. And they had to destroy Kenneth Chamberlain in order to save him.
The US government shut down Dajaz1.com in advance of hypothetical charges against it — then never filed any charges.
What US politicians say about Iran and nuclear weapons
is the opposite
of what thoughtful leaders believe.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Those thoughtful leaders include the main Israeli generals and intelligence chiefs. Against them is Netanyahu and his obsessions, together with US politicians intimidated into supporting him.
Look at the list of cruelties that a court said John Yoo couldn't be expected to recognize as torture.
A man who was seriously injured when Portland thugs shot him with tasers won a lawsuit against the city.
I am glad he won, but unless the thugs are personally punished, they won't learn to stop attacking innocent people.
A terminal at Newark Airport was completely evacuated because a baby had gone through security unchecked.
Lesson: always check your babies, rather than carry them into the cabin.
The band All Shall Perish was shocked to discover that a copyright troll has started suing their fans.
Who is to blame here?
The copyright troll is doing something inexcusable under any circumstances, but others are responsible too. The record company was negligent, at best, in selling the rights to a troll, and if it did so without consulting the band, that was abusive treatment of the band.
The band members were wrong in accepting a contract designed to forbid the public from sharing, but I understand that the record company pressured them to do it, so I would forgive them if they condemn the record company strongly enough.
Syrian subjection forces are massacring the inhabitants of Idlib.
The paramilitaries of Colombia are terrorizing journalists there.
While the state fights against the FARC, who are drug traffickers and kidnapers, it does little to fight the paramilitaries who are the worst terrorists in Colombia. That's because they have close ties to the ruling elite, including former president Alvaro Horrible.
Amnesty International condemns censorship
in Tunisia.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Human rights defenders must not be soft on Islamist censorship, Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize any one, any thing, and any idea -- including any religion and any church.
Palestinian, Israeli and International peace activists blocked the Israeli army from destroying 1400 Palestinian olive trees.
The National Academy of Sciences says parts of Obama's Europe-based
missile defense system
won't work and should be scrapped.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Since Obama is willing to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan in two years without a victory, why wait?
The full list of corporations that support ALEC.
They include Johnson & Johson, State Farm insurance, AT&T, eBay, Amazon.com, Yahoo, and Time Warner.
The FBI wants a law to require surveillance backdoors in web services and communications software.
I seem to recall reading that Skype already provides surveillance facilities.
I wish we had a government that only used its powers against criminals and not against dissidents, a government whose idea of the public interest were different from "Give that company whatever it wants."
A schedule of royalty rates for different kinds of Digital Restrictions Management threatens to become part of US copyright law through a backdoor.
Most Internet users are not aware that Spotify is DRM and must be fought. Please support our campaign against DRM.
Austerity in Europe, and lack of stimulus in the US, is pushing a lot of Europe into recession and has prevented recovery in the US.
We need FDR, not Obama.
Ms Londono Suarez says that the secret service agent who slept with her committed a horrible wrong because she could have gone through his papers to learn secrets.
I suppose she could have, but he was a bodyguard, not a diplomat or policy planner. He probably had nothing in his papers that would be very important to national security, and he probably knew this.
As far as I can see, the only thing he did wrong was refuse to pay her.
The motive for military kangaroo courts in Guantanamo is to cover up the crimes of torture committed against the defendants.
The US government wants to label as secret anything they say about their torture experiences at the hands of US inquisitors.
This is totally under Obama's control, and therefore totally his responsibility. Obama, stop shielding US torturers!
Greenland's glaciers have sped up by 30% since 10 years ago.
While this is not as bad as some imaginary scenarios, it is bad. We have no way of predicting how much worse it will get as temperatures rise even more. Global heating concentrates in the polar regions; the Earth on average has heated by about 1 degree C, but it's more than that in Greenland. And further heating will again be worse in Greenland than the average for the Earth.
Argentina's economic policies present an example for the downtrodden countries of the euro zone.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan now. Also sign this petition.
I don't think the fact that Osama bin Laden is dead makes any difference to the situation. There is simply no point propping up Karzai; that won't change next year, and it won't change in a decade. So there is no reason to continue the fighting.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
tell Obama
you demand criminal prosecutions of bankster fraud.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign
this petition
for the EPA to intervene regarding the
southern part of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
the Equal Rights Amendment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition
for sustainable fishing for canned tuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the Senate to reject anti-environment provisions in the transportation bill.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan now. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
I don't think the fact that Osama bin Laden is dead makes any difference to the situation. There is simply no point propping up Karzai; that won't change next year, and it won't change in a decade. So there is no reason to continue the fighting.
Egypts' generals said they were not responsible for the killing of protesters, and that they want to hand over power to civilian government, but it is hard to believe they were not responsible.
The US admits that drone bombings kill civilians, but still pretends they are very few.
Republicans are trying to cut social welfare programs and increase the military budget.
And they want to cut taxes even more for millionaires.
This is when we are handicapped by having Obama instead of someone who will denounce "trickle-down" as a fraud and a lie.
The Methodist Church voted to condemn Israel's occupation of Palestine but rejected divesting from the companies that supply equipment for it.
The files of the East German secret police say that Ikea used Cuban political prisoners to make its furniture.
Republicans now want to cut the children's health insurance program, as well as nutrition programs.
While fighting to protect fictitious babies, they are trying to kill real babies.
Correa's anti-austerity policies in Ecuador have extended education and reduced poverty by 25%.
US citizens: call on Energy Secretary Chu to end fracking.
Almost 400 US troops have died in Afghanistan since Osama bin Laden was killed. (I don't know how many Afghan civilians have been killed, but I'd guess it is more.) These deaths appear to have been for nothing.
For one week: US citizens, phone your senators to oppose CISPA.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Civil liberties amendments for CISPA were mostly rejected, but other amendments were adopted. Here's more detail about them.
Egyptian plainclothes thugs attacked a protest with guns as well as teargas, and killed several protesters.
I can't make sense of the stories about Chen Guangcheng. He left the US embassy, for unclear reasons but maybe he thought he had a deal with China, but now he wants to flee to the US.
It seems the US embassy told him about Chinese threats to harm his family members.
Passing on information about an enemy's threats is not the same as making the threats. It looks like Chen had prepared cleverly to escape from his village and get to Beijing, but was not prepared to deal with threats of that kind.
One must be prepared to tell hostage-takers, "If you hurt hostages, the evil will be on your head."
Inside documents show that the UK coalition is privatizing the NHS and will enable companies to get big profits by making big cuts.
The UK will end up with a system as bad for the public, and as good for busineess, as the US has.
Some US judges are resisting the tactics of the copyright trolls.
This shows why Hollywood and Obama are determined to force ISPs to punish Internet users: by avoiding trials and courts, they can evade the basic principles of justice that courts are supposed to maintain (and sometimes do).The head of the Senate commerce committee seeks information about News Corp from the UK.
The company, and Rupert Murdoch in person, have been described by the UK parliament as unfit — relevant because some of their broadcasting activities require licenses and companies must meet that standard.
Quebec student protests have spread into a broad social movement against austerity.
Bravo!
Professors are suing to stop skeletons 10,000 years old from being lost to science due to NAGPRA.
For a historical Amerindian tribe to claim these bones belong to their ancestors is absurd. The city of La Jolla has as much basis for such a claim as the Kumeyaay do.
US citizens: sign this petition to
require labeling of GMOs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Expert confirms EPA finding that fracking linked to
Wyoming ground
water contamination.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Therefore, Obama has a clever plan to make it hard to prove that future fracking has contaminated water supplies.
While the Republicans launch a cavalry charge crying "Death to the environment!", Obama tries to destroy it subtly and quietly.
There was a protest in DC against mass imprisonment in the US.
I support the cause, but I dislike the hyperbole of describing this as "occupying the Justice Department". It was a protest march.
EU's highest court ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted there.
Bolivia has renationalized its electric power grid, taking it away from a Spanish company.
Hooray, Evo! Privatization of such things is the act of a government that wants to give away as much as possible to business.
Obama, subservient to Netanyahu, is trying to delay the UN Human Rights Council's investigation of the occupation of Palestine.
A Pakistani court ruled that the government's Internet censorship plans are unconstitutional.
A US court approved Internet censorship by libraries, inexplicably disregarding Supreme Court precedent.
UN observers in Syria say both sides are violating the cease fire but that the violence is decreasing.
Obama continues to claim that the Taliban are losing.
Everyone: Obama's negotiators are trying to block global negotiations
to protect marine life and fisheries. Sign
this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for an investigation
of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. Also send mail through
this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
against allowing poultry processors
to do their own inspections.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Also please sign this petition, directed at Obama.
The Cambodian thugs who killed Chut Wutty arrested him first, and knew who he was.
Filter Schmilter: Libraries and Internet Filtering Software
Austrian human rights activists have organized street protests and a legal challenge against the universal surveillance of mandatory data retention.
Iran plans a totally controlled "Internet" with surveillance of
everyone
and no access to the outside world.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Malaysian thugs specifically targeted journalists covering protests for clean elections.
The thugs also destroyed or stole cameras which had evidence of how they were treating the protesters.
Aboriginal people trying to protect their land in South America often face charges of "terrorism".
When someone proposes an "anti-terror law", think "anti-democracy".
Vietnam arrested Nguyen Quoc Quan, allegedly planning a protest, and accused him of "terrorism".
Wouldn't it be nice if the US set a good example that we could urge Vietnam to follow?
In case anyone that speaks Vietnamese is reading this, is "Nguyen Quoc Quan" a patriotic pseudonym?
Even some thugs are participating in a campaign to end the war on drugs.
Mass protests covered Europe
on May Day.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
It is not enough to demand an end to austerity. Europeans must support parties that will take their countries out of the euro zone unless the rules are changed so the banksters are not in control.
A Pakistani legislator says her country is helpless against US drone bombings, and asks Americans to press for an end to them.
Detroit high school students, suspended from their school for protesting against the plan to close another public school, started their own "freedom school".
Coal ash is toxic, but the Republicans want to stop the EPA from regulating its disposal.
ALEC says its activities will focus on American working people. ALEC seeks to reduce their wages, cut their sick days, smash their unions, and undercut them with forced labor in privatized prisons.
However, ALEC won't really get out of the voter suppression and killing promotion field.
That was a pretense.
At ALEC meetings, corporation representatives speak and state legislators listen.
Israel ordered Palestinians to destroy 1000 olive trees on their land, which Israel declared a nature reserve.
Various European countries are putting pressure on Ukraine to stop torturing opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko in prison.
Mississippi has passed a law designed to force the state's only abortion clinic to close, through artificial requirements.
Aborting unwanted pregnancies is an admirable mission. It can prevent lots of suffering, in the short term and in the long term.
An EPA official who proposed to prosecute polluters energetically has resigned after Republicans criticized his colorful metaphor.
That was a typical weak Obama response, and symptomatic of his weak concern for the environment. A president who really cared would have corrected the metaphor and defended the goal.
Romney's choice for the Supreme Court is Bork, even more
right-wing than today's
conservatives on the court.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
Americans are imprisoned for debts they owe, and debts they don't owe,
through
various legal excuses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This may stop when imprisoned debtors decide to stay in jail rather that pay.
US citizens: tell the SEC not to let publicly traded corporations
hide
their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: rebuke the TPP negotiations: states and their corporate masters conspiring secretly against their citizens.
The Oklahoma initiative to declare fertilized eggs and embryos persons was blocked as unconstitutional.
The head of the Star of Hope Mission, which says it aims to help the
poor, endorsed a plan to fine anyone in Houston who gives home-cooked
food
to the needy without a permit.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
The supposed reason is to prevent unsightly homeless persons from making commercial properties unattractive. But it seems that part of the motive is to ensure homeless hungry Americans can't get help except from churches.
The US Patent Office wants to cancel the practice of publishing patent applications after 18 months.
The original purpose of patents in the US was to discourage trade secrecy. Inventors were offered 17 years of monopoly in exchange for showing others their technique. This exchange no longer really occurs, because patent lawyers have worked out how to get broad patents while concealing the most important knowledge.
Trade secrecy in 1800 was simple: you just didn't tell anyone your methods. That didn't depend on any government intervention. Nowadays, information can be distributed massively and still considered a trade secret, and laws have been passed to help maintain these secrets. In other words, with one hand the government facilitates and thus encourages trade secrecy, and with the other hand it imposes monopolies to reduce the harmful practice of trade secrecy.
What a racket!
An American woman let her breast cancer become untreatable because she
feared losing
her job if she got treatment.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
This story begins quite a ways down the text.
The suicide rate in Greece increased 40% from 2010 to 2011.
Rivers in India suffer from god pollution.
Most of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners appear to be subservient to the industry, and they seem to be undermining the commission head by provoking him into anger so they can call for his replacement.
This is an instance of the general corruption of the US government by business interests.
Elected officials and journalists sued New York City over attacks against
protesters
in Liberty Park.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-25 because the old link was broken.]
As jihadis conquer towns in Yemen, and imprison anyone who won't pray, the people flee.
But the army fails to fight them effectively, because the state is recognized as a US puppet.
ISPs in the UK will be required to block access to the Pirate Bay.
People in Britain will still be able to access the site through proxies, and its new data base format is small enough that they may simply get copies of it.
I believe that noncommercial redistribution must be legalized, but not necessarily commercial use of copyrighted works. Because the Pirate Bay gets money from ads, it can be considered a commercial activity; it is on the edge of what constitutes commercial. Thus, I don't necessarily object to shutting down such sites, as long as it is done with a fair trial.
Bahrain says Al-Khawaja can have a new trial, but will be kept in prison.
He may fast to death before the new trial occurs.
Mullah Omar, head of the Taliban, had a continuing conversation with Osama bin Laden and seemed to share his ideology.
In 2001, the Taliban were willing to cut their ties with al Qa'ida in order to have a better relationship with the US. If their position has changed, why did that happen? Clearly because of the war.
But it has not necessarily changed. This ideological sympathy may have existed already in the 90s. If that didn't stop the Taliban from making concessions for peace in 2001, it might not stop them now.
Two Russian dissidents who wanted to pray in the Moscow cathedral for Putin's removal were attacked by official thugs and a private gang.
Privatizing US education, which Obama favors, is a great business opportunity for makers of proprietary rote lessons.
Louisiana is doing this, with help from ALEC.
The presence of ALEC shows that the real goal is private profits. And the "school choice" delivered by vouchers turns out to mean "you can choose a religious school".
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