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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.
A court document shows how much information thugs get from searching people's mobile phones without warrants.
A New York thug is on trial for accessing state databases to select women to kill and eat.
The politics of austerity are based on stigmatization of the poor, pretending that poverty is their fault.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to support the
Private
Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act, to help graduates who have
big student loans and no job.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
How global heating makes heat waves
longer
as well as hotter.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: tell major US ISPs not to punish their customers on behalf of the copyright industry.
This scheme threatens to wipe out free WiFi in cafes around the US.
US citizens: call for protecting and extending the Voting Rights Act.
US citizens: call on the US government not to offer BP a deal, but rather to pursue it for the maximum possible amount of damages.
Feminism cannot win if it limits itself to what won't annoy male privilege (i.e., doesn't rock the patriarchal boat).
We can transpose most of this directly to the free software movement: it can't win if it limits itself to what won't annoy the developers and users of proprietary software.
US citizens:
call
on Cablevision to rehire the workers they locked out
and make an honest deal with the union.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
China refuses to publish the results of a study on soil pollution, figuring that it doesn't want people to know how bad things are.
Compare this with coverups of global heating by other governments.
Rating big food companies on how they treat farming communities and workers. They do a bad job.
The real solution has to be through laws and treaties.
Getting under 6 hours of sleep for several nights affects the functioning of many genes, including some affecting the immune system.
I've learned that I tend to catch a cold if I miss sleep for a few nights.
A baby died in the UK after getting inadequate treatment because a privatized medical service overloaded the insufficient number of doctors.
It is not certain the baby would have been saved with proper treatment, but it might have been, so the problem was a real one.
Privatizing the implementation of a government service generally leads to such results. The company, to get a profit, has to squeeze someone — typically either its employees or the public that the service is provided to. Worse, privatization is often presented as a way to "reduce costs", which means the company is under pressure to squeeze.
The only case in which privatization is legitimate is when it enables the public to buy in a market with effective competition. But that is not necessarily a good option in all activities: there are natural monopolies, where it isn't one.
The Catholic Church's hostility to homosexuality is fueled by large numbers of repressed homosexual priests.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to cut the Pentagon, not civilian spending. Even better, increase civilian spending by the same amount that the Pentagon is cut, since we need deficit spending to end the recession.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The biggest US banks effectively get all their profits from the unfair advantage of being too big to fail.
Drones Over There, Total Surveillance Over Here.
A Better Plan Than 'Endless Growth': Enough Is Enough.
US citizens: call on Amgen to give back the 500 million dollar giveaway extracted in the "fiscal cliff" deal.
US citizens: call on Congress to cut the Pentagon.
The trial of Billionaire Polluters has begun.
This could be an exception to the modern rule that the US never actually takes a company to court. But it is just a civil suit: nobody will go to jail for willfully inviting regional disaster.
The
2013 Hypocrisy Oscars.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
How
the Fed Could Fix the Economy and Why It Hasn't.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
What would Americans think if Iranian thugs waterboarded an American?
Bright light on the street at night is reputed to reduce crime, but it's not clear that this is true. However, the light can harm health of people and wildlife.
It could be that a bright light on one block makes street criminals prefer to attack on another block, but that bright lights all across the city have no overall effect. Anyway, street crime has gone down greatly in the US. The main danger of crime for Americans today is from banksters.
Blackwater executives faced
serious
criminal charges, but were let off with a slap on the wrist.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Indian government helps corporations take land from the poor in Ethiopia just as in India.
A corporate land grab is just as bad when the corporation is Indian as when the corporation is Chinese or American.
Vandana Shiva: seeds must be in the hands of farmers.
Global heating will make working in New York summers
harder
than working today in Bahrain.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: rebuke Coca Cola Company for campaigning against deposits on beverage bottles.
If you participate (as I do) in the boycott of all Coca Cola Company products, that is no reason not to sign this petition (I signed it).
The UN declared itself not responsible for Haitians infected or killed by the cholera brought to Haiti by the UN intervention force. Here are arguments against the validity of the UN's dictate.
Lions are following tigers towards extinction, due to expanding human land-use which destroys them and their prey.
This is one of many reasons why it is vital to stop the growth of human population, in Africa as elsewhere.
Explorers of the deep ocean floor find that human trash has preceded them.
The cruel UK government has created an excuse to cut support to the disabled. Disabled athletes are using their fame to campaign against the cuts.
Every "reform" that this government makes in social welfare is simply a veiled way to take from the poor and give to the rich. They combine each cut in welfare with a reorganization that is supposed to provide some improvement in efficiency, but that is a mere distraction since the real point is the cut.
Two Egyptian parties have decided to boycott the coming elections.
A Norwegian prison that runs like a village achieves amazing results: only 16% of the prisoners reoffend after their release.
The US used to treat prisoners better, but in the 1980s the number of prisoners was enormously increased and rehabilitation was discarded as a goal. Nowadays the prison-industrial complex, which includes private prison companies and the use of prisoners as cheap labor to undermine wages for other Americans, stand in the way of any attempt to reduce the number of prisoners and redirect prison towards reducing crime rather than sadism.
Islamist fanatics in Bangladesh attacked journalists in several cities at once.
Water torture and other torture was widely used by US prison guards in
Vietnam. The victims included
enemy
prisoners and US soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
What does it mean when the state defines this as normal?
The US and other countries are developing autonomous robot killers.
Karzai ordered US special forces to leave one province after reports that they tortured and disappeared civilians.
It appears Israeli thugs tortured a Palestinian prisoner to death.
Then they tried to cover it up by claiming he had had a heart attack, but it is very unusual for a 30-year-old man to get those.
The US and UK have very low social mobility, and cutbacks in support for education are making it worse.
As a result, the wealthy in the US and UK got that way mostly by being lucky in their parents.
NRA stands for "No Research Allowed" (about gun violence).
Louisiana planning has underestimated sea level rise, which proves to be effectively higher there than anywhere else, because the land there is sinking rapidly. The result is that new flood protections will be inadequate when they are finished.
Human Rights Watch calls on Israel to end imprisonment without trial.
It would be so much easier to pressure governments around the world to end imprisonment without trial if they did not have the bad example of the US to cite.
Indonesia is considering a law to ban mass organizations from criticizing the constitution or the state-mandated religious views.
The law would also allow the state to "suspend" organizations arbitrarily, a violation of human rights that imitates the unjust policy of the US.
Three magic words for a Wall Street lobbyist: "innovation," "complexity" and "liquidity".
Complex innovation in finance is an opportunity for cheating, so banning it should be an explicit political goal. Innovation brought us the economy that serves only financial tycoons, so let's ban those innovations and make the economy simple enough that we can regulate it properly.
A Honduran officer threatened journalists that cover land grabs, as well as those who try to oppose them.
The ones who truly besmirch the image (and honor) of the Honduran nation are the rulers of that country, who carried out a US-supported coup.
Everyone: sign
this
petition to free Hassan Ruvakuki.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Thugs attacked Burundian journalists who protested the imprisonment of another journalist, Hassan Ruvakuki, for interviewing a rebel leader.
The state later confirmed the fundamental injustice of its actions by claiming that the journalists were making an illegal demonstration.
More information about Hassan Ruvakuki.
"Owlcatraz" and 9 Other Terrible Corporate-Named Sports Venues.
What's really wrong here is that selling the naming of a stadium to a company expresses the idea that the whole city is for sale. The impetus for this comes from taxes that are too low.
A newspaper in Brazil has used copyright to
shut
down a parody site.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
As global heating protesters marched on the White House, Obama was in Florida playing golf with fossil fuel executives.
Claims that US fracking will only provide natural gas for 25 years.
Since continuing to burn fossil fuels leads to disaster, we need to cut back anyway.
When we consider obesity in the US, let's not forget the political injustices that pressure many Americans towards obesity and ill health.
New technology encourages various kinds of permanent low-level conflict.
Large food processing companies continue to encourage women to give babies formula rather than their own milk.
Inhabitants of the region around Fukushima experience continuing psychological stress. This wears away at their families.
Farms in the UK are being wiped out by repeated flooding.
Global heating is responsible for the frequency of flooding in the UK, and it is expected to get worse.
The prosecution of Bradley Manning is
terrorizing
others who have witnessed abuses in the US government.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The prosecution of Aaron Swartz was motivated by government opposition to his political views.
Obama continues to be public enemy number 1 where copyright is concerned.
Egypt proposes to
ban
NGOs from having "contact" with "international entities" and
restrict protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Yemen's suppression forces attacked peaceful protesters again.
Fazıl Say, prominent Turkish classical musician, is facing prosecution for "religious defamation", along with thousands of others.
US citizens: encourage the Governor of Maryland to push for abolition of the death penalty there.
Questions about TPP that Obama and Abe will not want to hear.
A US court has openly discarded the principle that a contract is valid only if the parties had a "meeting of the minds".
The reason given was that exploitative imposed contracts are too important to be doubted.
Facebook cooperates with store purchaser identification cards to track users' purchases.
You can confuse them using someone else's discount card or number.
Bradley Manning's 1000th day in prison was marked by worldwide protests against Obama's attack on journalism.
Prosecutors have admitted that they would accuse anyone publishing leaked secrets, such as the Pentagon Papers, of "aiding the enemy". Effect, the US equates the public with "the enemy".
Genetically engineered mosquitos could block diseases, but they could backfire too.
US citizens: call on Obama to file a brief for marriage equality in a case facing the Supreme Court.
Venezuela appears to be planning to close the main opposition TV station by excluding it from the move to digital broadcasting.
A Palestinian political cartoonist has been imprisoned in Israel without charges.
Spanish locksmiths and firemen are refusing to participate in evictions, saying they are not puppets of the banksters.
Imagine that China used a drone to kill the Dalai Lama — what would we say about it, and what does that imply about US drone-based assassinations?
A study found organic tomatoes nutritionally superior to conventionally grown tomatoes.
I won't take the conclusion as established by one study, but it is interesting.
The committees of the European Parliament are undermining data protection law at the request of Internet companies.
As Republicans find ever more dishonest ways to stop poor and minority Americans from voting, they are asking the Supreme Court to reduce the protection against these dirty tricks.
The New York Times accused President Correa of expanding the power of the president and threatening the independence of the press.
Funny that it doesn't say the same about Bush and Obama, who have really done these things. I never heard anyone accuse Correa of claiming the power to order assassinations.
The latest bogus excuse for the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline is to avoid getting oil from Venezuela.
Venezuela would simply sell the oil elsewhere, and the only way it would hurt Venezuela is if the price of oil went down due to an oversupply. That would be an even bigger global disaster, since it would result in increased combustion of fossil fuel.
Obama has ordered federal agencies that support substantial amounts of research to set up a system to make all the research results available to the public within a year.
This is an important advance; however, it could easily have been better. The use of the term "open access" has led to an omission: this regulation says nothing about releasing these articles under a license that permits redistribution or other reuse.
Boat people fleeing Burma say a Thai navy ship took the engine out of their boat and left them to drift, without water supplies.
I am not sure I believe it. Removing the engine from a boat is a big operation, unless it was an outboard motor. And a boat that had room for 130 passengers probably wasn't equipped with an outboard motor.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to protect state-licensed medical marijuana
providers and users from federal prosecution.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell
Senator Graham that referring to the occupation of Palestine as
"apartheid" is not hostility to Israel; many Israeli ministers have
said exactly that.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama not to appoint Ernest Moniz, fracking supporter, as head of the Department of Energy.
The trial of Bradley Manning demonstrates the extreme secrecy one would expect to find in a state that prosecutes journalists.
Printer ink cartridges are a rip-off due to DRM in the printers.
This sort of forced tying of products should be banned by law.
5 Ways The Sequester Could Make You Sick.
The Case for a Higher Gasoline Tax (in the US).
Many FBI employees have been punished for a wide range of disobedience.
It is legitimate to fire employees whose activities make it hard for the office to get work done. On the other hand, to criticize staff for using a computer to do something other than work is too strict. Harmless off-duty activities, such as doing business with a prostitute, are none of the employer's business.
Keystone XL decision will define Barack Obama's legacy on climate change.
Computerized monitoring of employees, second by second, makes work like prison.
In the US, these companies don't have to care about the effect of stress on the employees, who will be fired when they can no longer keep up; and then they can die of stress for all the company cares.
A travel blogger was kicked off a United flight for taking a photo of his seat. Apparently this made a flight attendant decide to lie to get him kicked off the plane.
The author was the victim of the system that allows any crew member to kick anyone off a plane for no reason at all. That makes every passenger vulnerable to any jerk who wants to feel powerful or compensate for anxiety.
My special rebuke is for commenters who said things like "Using that word was not very smart." We should never criticize people for failing to kowtow to unjustified demands — not even if the demands are predictable. The premise of that argument is legitimization of an injustice.
Instead of demanding an apology to this person, we should demand United change its policy for all of us.
Advances in 3D printing will be off limits due to many patents.
How junk food companies unlocked food marketing that inevitably drives humans towards obesity.
How a system of multiple levels of gouging makes US medical bills so high that most Americans can be bankrupted by a medical problem.
The solution is clearly Medicare for all Americans.
Here's the full story.
The EPA delayed regulations to protect Americans from hexavalent
chromium at the recommendation of a committee of scientists with
financial
interests in that decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This is effectively a kind of corruption, and it is very common, since the EPA only makes a show of trying to avoid it. I suspect that too is the result of business influence in the EPA (regulatory capture).
US citizens: call on Congress to save the US Postal Service, not destroy it.
I added this statement:
Voting by mail creates a risk of vote-selling, and should not be encouraged. However, that doesn't alter the need to save the USPS.
US citizens:
tell
an agribusiness company not to destroy rainforest in
Cameroon for palm oil plantations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Egypt has bought 140,000 teargas canisters, upholding increasing repression of protesters.
The governor of Florida has agreed to accept federal funds to extend medicaid.
Working 40 hours in 4 10-hour days was a great success in Utah.
Reportedly there is a group of gay cardinals in the Vatican and some are being blackmailed about it.
The Pentagon has chosen to implement the sequester cuts in a very painful way as a sort of suicide threat to demand more money.
Iran sanctions have pushed up world gasoline prices.
This is good, since it will cause people to use less. The US government ought to impose a windfall profit tax so that the treasury gets some of this money.
Fracking can destroy organic farming, as farms won't be able to get clean water.
US citizens:
call
on Walmart to enforce its standards for suppliers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Companies often wish to establish these codes so they can convince people they are "socially responsible", then ignore them.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect water supplies from waste from factor farms.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose CISPA. Also send message through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Microsoft wants copyright on programming interfaces.
Everyone: pressure the government of Somalia to prosecute the rapist instead of the rape victim.
A corporate looter wants to loot the Social Security system.
To do it, he has created the appearance of a diverse grass-roots movement.
Society provides plenty of incentive to develop new products, but nobody has much incentive to check whether they cause harm.
Independent bookstores have sued Amazon and large publishers saying that their ebook contracts restrain trade.
Australia's biggest export is fossil fuel, and the results have come back in the form of a record-breaking heat wave.
I disagree with one point: if the emission tax was passed on by power companies to their customers, that is not a bad thing. That is intended. The intent of the tax is not to reduce those companies' profits but rather to discourage use.
Thugs in Zimbabwe are seizing radios so that people cannot get news.
Is the FBI's Community Outreach Program a Trojan Horse?
A drone carrying the ARGUS camera will allow Big Brother to track everyone's movements in a city.
Individuals use cheap camera drones too, and they too raise a privacy issue.
What we need to avoid is the path of restricting the general public while giving Big Brother a free hand.
A one-day general strike shut down Greece, and even usually
conservative farmers
supported
it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Blocking Keystone XL would be a good way to punish Canada's right-wing government for anti-environmental policies.
The thugs of South Africa are rampant killers, and openly demand impunity.
How the new "breakthrough prize in life sciences" is misconceived at several levels.
George Galloway walked out of a debate about the occupation of Palestine on learning that his opponent was an Israeli.
The opponent, Eylon Aslan-Levy, advocated an end to the occupation through a peace treaty. I think that would be a good outcome, though as Uri Avnery has explained, Netanyahu wants negotiations for such a treaty only with a view towards dragging them out and never reaching an agreement.
Thanks to a boycott by European companies, US states cannot get poison to carry out executions with.
Around the world, environmental activists have faced violence.
A temperature rise of 1.5C (from past baseline) would cause Siberian permafrost to melt, triggering massive additional long-term release of greenhouse gas.
It appears humanity lacks the political will to hold short of 2C of heating, which means this is going to kick in and make it worse.
A US government strategy document classifies Wikileaks as a
criminal
spying organization.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Chinese political thugs use compulsory informal interrogations to intimidate dissidents.
In India, controversial ideas are met with censorship, even imprisonment.
The Nigerian Supreme Court ordered compensation of $240 million for a town whose population was killed by soldiers.
A private prison company hopes that sponsoring a school football team will give it a favorable image.
Two documentaries about the Israeli occupation of Palestine
are competing for the
Best
Documentary award.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A California bill would ban people from driving for a week after they smoke pot.
In the US, it is misguided to have a lawn.
Obama Maneuvers to Keep Kill List Memos Permanently Secret.
Both Democrats and Republicans say that US aerial death squads are justified because the US respects human life.
On the contrary, the death squads show that the US doesn't respect human rights or human life. Ms Pelosi should realize that there is nothing to prevent her from being the next target. Perhaps that would be more likely when there is an officially Republican president, but that will happen.
Palestinian director Emad Burnat almost couldn't get to the Oscar award ceremony because US agents would not believe a Palestinian was being considered for an award.
Police in one part of Canada began giving "positive tickets" to youths for doing various good things.
I think this has a chance of working where teenagers don't have a valid reason to think that the thugs aim at repressing them. It would have trouble functioning in New York City, for instance.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are now cooperating to catch Taliban leaders.
A coal plant company in the UK aims to crush the right to protest by suing when the protest is effective.
Those accused of crimes in Dubai are often tortured into signing confessions they can't read.
US citizens: join a rally on Feb 27 to cut the Pentagon rather than cutting what Americans need.
The 2008 financial crisis cost Americans (not counting banksters) over 10 trillion dollars, and banksters want to make sure it happens again.
The US Supreme Court is planning to abolish individual campaign
donation limits, which were
found
constitutional by the Supreme Court 40 years ago.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
'You Profit, We Pay': Greenpeace Launches Global Campaign Against Nuclear Industry.
In most of Latin America, governments show that using the state to benefit the non-rich works well.
They use policies that, according to right-wing economists, should lead to disaster, and over and over show that they bring benefits. Why are the economists so wrong? Perhaps because they are biased.
Donald Trump is trying to intimidate a person who is running a petition asking Macy's to stop promoting Trump's business.
I had never heard of the issue, and I have no opinion about Trump otherwise, but this sort of threat deserves punishment.
Tunisia's Islamist prime minister has resigned.
The execution of a mentally retarded man was postponed in Georgia; an appeals court will consider whether it is just to require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is retarded.
That law should be abolished because it is mean-spirited, but I don't see any reason why the ethics of the death penalty should depend on a person's intelligence level. The death penalty is simply wrong. It is wrong to execute people of low intelligence, or normal intelligence, and even people of superior intelligence.
Overprotective adults have made many children fear to leave the house.
Iraq appears heading for unending sectarian strife.
Assad holds on to power by treating all civilians as hostages.
A UK power company pressured ministers to punish protesters more heavily or it would withdraw investments.
The crime of "aggravated trespass" was invented to punish protesters, so it ought to be abolished in the name of democracy.
US citizens: tell Congress to oppose CISPA.
The Israeli occupation creates tremendous obstacles for Palestinians to export agricultural produce.
Palestinians held protests in support of prisoners on hunger strike, and soldiers shot at them.
An Israeli suggestion for peace: release Marwan Barghouti from prison so he can lead Palestine to an agreement that will hold.
Netanyahu won't do it, of course. The last thing he wants is peace, because he'd have to stop the land grab.
With the theft of Palestinian land and water as the example, Israelis cease to be shocked when soldiers steal money from Palestinian homes.
The Palestinian village of Jayous got a court order to reroute the annexation wall so it would confiscate only a part of the village's land. So colonists built an unauthorized "outpost" to block the new route, with the dishonest army helping.
US citizens: sign this petition to strengthen protection of endangered Florida panthers.
The corporate media largely ignored the march against the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to co-sponsor HR 198, to repeal the authorization for worldwide military attacks against anyone connectable with al Qa'ida.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
How Latin America became the only inhabited region of Earth where
the CIA
couldn't
get cooperation for torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Canadian military-industrial lobby
wants another
war.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The New York Times covers how people keep traffic moving on the Mississippi despite the drought, but doesn't mention that people caused the drought.
It has become standard practice in major US media outlets to present advertisements as journalism.
US citizens: pledge
you won't vote for candidates that support "all of the above" for
energy including fossil fuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A BBC comedy series is designed to mock Craig Murray, with the help of the UK Diplomatic Service from which he resigned in protest.
In 2012, the US and NATO reduced the civilian casualties they cause in Afghanistan, but the Taliban caused more civilian casualties, and seem to target women.
The Pirate Bay Reports Anti-Piracy Outfit to the Police.
US drug companies say the sky will fall on them if Obama succeeds in reducing their payments back to the previous level.
What would happen if we did what really needs to be done, and block their corruption of medical science?
US citizens:
tell
Obama to end the intervention in Afghanistan soon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating is making heavy rains heavier, globally.
The opposition in Papua New Guinea protested against feared electoral fraud.
In Gaza, Hamas represses dissent and oppresses women.
How billionaires funnel money to right-wing "think tanks" that really function as political propaganda fronts. This include over a hundred organizations that oppose efforts to stop global heating.
A border guard in Belarus was sentenced to prison for failing to report a plane that dropped teddy bears with human rights messages.
In one Syrian town, rebels and regime soldiers have made a local peace.
A senior Egyptian editor who resigned says he was forced out by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Part of the pressure for the Keystone XL pipeline is that the Koch brothers' oil refinery wasn't designed for US crude oil. It was designed for crude oil from Venezuela.
Despite an injunction in the US, other countries' branches of Sea Shepherd continue blocking Japanese whaling.
The Indian government ordered ISP to block a long list of articles that criticise Indian Institute of Planning and Management, which passes itself off as an accredited school.
The US now admits, as official policy, that some companies are so big that they can get away with breaking any law.
A central bank can create money to pay for energy efficiency improvements, and boost the economy while reducing CO2 emissions, and without giving the banksters a cut.
Nissan manufacturing in the US is using nasty pressure and threats to try to stop unionization.
This shows that the US needs laws to support unionization.
Arguing that school privatization works well in Sweden.
It is noteworthy that in Sweden it did not involve crushing unions. I wonder, though, whether a large fraction of the non-state schools there perform religious indoctrination and get church subsidies.
An Israeli sniper posted an image of a Palestinian child's head as seen through a sniper rifle sight.
The posting of that image was not an evil in itself, it was a symptom. The image may have hurt some feelings, but if posting an image were the worst thing that the Israeli army did to Palestinians, they would be much better off. What oppresses them is the occupation. This image reveals the hatred that expresses itself more frequently through killing.
For the cult of the Invisible Hand, anything that works badly is not "true capitalism".
Actually there are many kinds of capitalism. The US in 1970 enjoyed the benefits of capitalism with democracy. Today it suffers the rampage of capitalism with plutocracy.
Wealthy countries should cut meat consumption in half.
Cooperation with rich country NGOs is helping poor people around the world resist land grabs.
Guantanamo defense lawyers explain how both voice and written communication with their clients appears to be being monitored, and say it means they cannot carry out their responsibility.
They have a duty to resign if so. But there is another factor that constantly pressures them not to do a proper job: the likelihood they will be punished if they succeed.
New York City (and other big cities) can cut their CO2 emissions by 90% using energy efficiency techniques.
35,000 protesters opposed the planet-roaster pipeline in Washington DC.
US citizens: phone your senators and call for a vote on the nomination of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to end subsidies to companies that don't
pay a living wage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama not to allow the Keystone XL planet roaster pipeline.
After part of London removed public benches so as to harass homeless
people, citizen volunteers put in
new
benches.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Combining multiple genetic modifications in crops gives unpredictable results — it seems they interfere.
Foreign Christians face the threat of execution for proselytizing in Libya.
I suppose the government will make a deal to expel them instead, rather than face foreign displeasure. Nonetheless, this shows how most Muslim countries do not respect religious freedom. Pakistan threatened to kill secularist Dr. Younus Shaikh for "blasphemy". Even Malaysia, which in general seems less extremist, forbids anyone of Malay origin to be anything but a Muslim.
Next time someone objects to burning a Qur'an, or to a cartoon about Muhammad, the simple response is to point to this and say, "Here you see our way of criticizing a religion — we think this is more civilized than arresting and killing the people who promote it."
Islamic law is oppression, especially of women but also of men. If Libya turns to Islamic law, I will conclude that the Western intervention against Gaddafi only made things worse.
The revolving door swings vigorously between the SEC and large
companies. Obama's choice to head the SEC has been a
lawyer for
companies that the SEC regulates.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
So either she will now use her knowledge to stop them from getting away with highway robbery — or she will use it to help them do more of it.
Based on Obama's track record, I expect the latter.
The suicide of ex-soldiers is partly due to moral injuries from horrible choices they were compelled to decide.
These situations are known as "moral bad luck".
The BBC demands the power to control your operating system.
Obama wants harsh punishments for people who share.
The worst typhoon ever recorded is just part of what global heating is doing to the Philippines.
Remember, the temperature rise is going to accelerate, as the CO2 level rises and positive feedbacks operate.
It looks like Pakistan is not trying to pursue the Sunni fanatics that
regularly
massacre Shi'ites.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Buddha statues are now banned in Iran.
A new planting technique enables Indian farmers to get far higher yields with fewer seeds and less fertilizer.
Unknown gunmen tried to assassinate an opposition journalist in Sri Lanka, following a pattern of such attacks, that clearly must come from the state.
The push for the UK secret courts bill comes from the spy agencies it is designed to protect from justice.
Amendments made in the House of Lords to compensate for part of the harm have been removed.
Karzai is in a quandary about using NATO air power. Without it, his troops
have trouble fighting the Taliban. With it, they
kill
civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A nuclear waste depot at Hanford is leaking, again.
Prominent Obama supporters now admit that they support Bush-league assaults on human rights when Obama is doing them.
To trust a person with power to imprison and kill at will, whoever that person may be, is to establish a dictatorship. The US tree is rotten in the core with dictatorship, but it has not yet shown in all the leaves.
The NDAA authorizes Obama to arrest anyone, hold him in military
prison, and hand him over for torture in another country. Reports
from the trial (which found it unconstitutional) show
how
the Obombers are arguing for that power, and how far it might be
stretched.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
There is a nationwide Republican scheme to rig the next Presidential
election by
playing
with the system of the Electoral College.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
GMO seeds have boosted
3
companies to control over half the world market for seeds. When
they sell seeds, they demand farmers meet excruciating condition in
addition to not saving the seeds.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This for seeds that soon won't give any particular benefit since superweeds have evolved to neutralize their benefits.
Taking thickness into account, Arctic sea ice in summer is just 1/5 what it was in 1980.
It follows that the ice will soon be gone in summer, and since liquid water absorbs a lot more light than ice, the Arctic will heat up even faster.
The high price of quinoa means the indigenous growers get more money, while other indigenous that want to eat it can't afford to. But, beyond that, it has led to a massification of production that undermines ecosystems.
More about how Japan can borrow lots of money at low interest from the Japanese people, and how paying the interest on this debt effectively boosts the economy by supporting the people.
Kashmir is totally locked down. People are not allowed to travel.
Local newspapers, TV news and mobile Internet access are shut down.
For decades now, a special law allows Indian soldiers to kill with impunity in Kashmir.
India promised Kashmiris a referendum so they could decide whether to be in India or not. But it has never allowed the referendum to be held.
Indian rule of Kashmir is oppression. Being part of Pakistan would be oppressive too (as it is for everyone there). Imposing Islamic law would oppress all women (and sometimes men). Is there a path for Kashmir that avoids oppression?
Imprisoned dissidents in Oman are on hunger strike.
Israel gives bogus answers when the Committee to Protect Journalists asks why Israel targeted journalists in Gaza.
A company at the center of the horsemeat scandal is controlled by multiple levels of front company, and the real owner cannot be determined.
Corporations Advise School Closings, While Private Charters Suck Public Schools Away
Many US charter schools assure their "success" by selectively admitting
students
who won't cost them much.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A UK thug official in charge of a borough was arrested for giving confidential information to journalists.
It is interesting to contrast this case with those of whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg. They revealed grave government misdeeds that were being covered up. This and other recently arrested UK thugs gave information about private individuals, some of whom were being investigated, and others were not. That means there was no such public right to know in these cases.
US citizens: oppose CISPA.
The CISPA bill was reintroduced, even though Obama did the job without trashing Americans' privacy.
US citizens: tell your elected officials, no more unconstitutional drone killings.
Facebook's Multi-Billion Dollar Tax Break.
The
battle to keep women in Tahrir Square.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Basic misconceptions about the copyright monopoly.
See also Misinterpreting Copyright — A Series of Errors for fallacies in thinking about copyright policy.
Obama wants to kick radical views off the Internet, but to avoid passing unconstitutional laws banning radical views, he will have companies informally censor them.
Nikon has stopped selling parts to independent camera repair stores.
The government of Sri Lanka cleverly manipulates social media, while threatening dissidents secretly to hush them up.
Evidence now shows that the lies Dubya used to justify the conquest of Iraq were deliberately sought in advance.
London
court ruling could have grave consequences for free speech online.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Alameda County Sheriff wants to buy a drone and have no real limits on its use for surveillance.
To make it ok, he will avoid using the word "surveillance" to describe what he wants to do with it.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, raise the minimum wage. Also send a message through this web page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Shah Khamenei said once again that he
does
not aim for Iran to have nuclear weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
There is evidence that the IAEA has been politicized by its current head, so the dispute between Iran and IAEA may be just an excuse to pressure Iran. On the other hand, I see no reason to trust the word of Shah Khamenei, who presides over a tyranny that threatens the relatives of dissidents until they lie.
However, it would be rational to put him to the test. If the US offered an end to sanctions in exchange for a deal on enrichment, would he accept it?
Senators Sanders and Boxer propose a bill to tax large carbon emitters and end subsidies.
Europe does things badly when 27 governments have to negotiate a common policy.
Elizabeth
Warren Embarrasses Hapless Bank Regulators At First Hearing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Intolerant, violent Salafis cause problems for everyone in new Arab democracies.
The correlation of Bisphenol A with medical problems may be coincidence: Bisphenol A comes with bad eating.
Twenty prisoners held in secret CIA prisons cannot be accounted for.
From Dorner to Waco to MOVE Bombing, A Look at Growing Militarization of Domestic Policing. And why the use of pyrotechnic weapons against Dorner was clearly wrong.
Republicans plan to make every state in the US like Mississippi.
Over 12,000 Florida schoolchildren were arrested in school, mostly for minor things such as violating a dress code.
Thugs in British Colombia have a pattern of violence against indigenous women.
Human rights organizations call on Iran to free former presidential candidates.
Vietnam has imprisoned 30 Internet dissidents.
Public pressure made the right-wing Spanish government protect debtors from eviction.
Thawing permafrost in the Arctic is contributing more CO2 to the air than was previously thought. This means we are closer to disaster than was previously thought.
Global heating is starting to create conflicts, and the world is not thinking about how bad that will get in a few decades.
What Actually Happens When You Raise the Minimum Wage.
Guantanamo defense lawyers charge that their meetings with their clients are being spied on.
For many reasons, these trials are nothing like justice.
A bill would require a court order to use a drone for a criminal investigation in the US.
Ellen Brown explains how Japan can easily sustain a national debt of twice its GDP without collapsing: it borrows from the Japanese people through a state-owned bank.
Bill Gates is backing crop research in Mexico, and it may include GMOs.
Will farmers be free to use and breed these crops? It is not clear.
A new space telescope, not government-funded, will detect the small asteroids that could produce substantial disasters if they hit Earth.
Secret US Army investigation files prove that US soldiers in Vietnam regularly committed atrocities, with their commanders' approval and even under their orders.
Officers told men to kill prisoners (often civilians) so as to increase the body count.
Biotech and pesticide companies have a plan to make the public like GMOs by recruiting known environmentalists (not necessarily experts in this field) to praise them. And they may be doing it.
I am not necessarily against GMO foods in all circumstances, but their safety for humans and the environment must be verified by a skeptical government (few and far between, nowadays), and they must respect farmers' rights to breed their plants and animals.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir campaigns against Internet filtering in Iceland.
UK health service whistleblower claims he was forced to quit then gagged.
Did airline deregulation lower air fares? It is not clear.
The Koch brothers' history of buying and destroying politicians, so as to escape from a series of criminal charges.
Don't Be Fooled: "Six Strikes" Will Undoubtedly Harm Open Wireless.
Iranians mostly blame the West for sanctions, not their own government, and mostly want to continue uranium refining.
There's nothing like a foreign threat to boost popular support for a lousy government.
The leaking of a memo about drone assassinations invigorated Senate oversight of the issue.
Senator Rand Paul will block Brennan's nomination until he gives a straight answer to whether the CIA has the authority to kill Americans in America without a trial.
He is doing the right thing. I wish some Democrats did it too, so that we would not depend on Republicans for this. And I wish the senate had not voted to allow imprisonment without trial, too.
Reuters correspondent David Rohde was almost hit by a drone missile while a prisoner of the Taliban. He says, "Just the force and size of the explosion amazed me. It comes with no warning and tremendous force It's a serious military action."
Drones must be treated like artillery, and used only on battlefields.
Canada systematically treats environmentalists as terrorists and calls their protests attacks on nationals security.
A gang of thugs within the L.A. Sheriff's department boasted of killings.
The victims may well have deserved to be put in prison. It is even possible that shooting some of them was justified. However, thugs that boast of killing are a bigger threat.
Turkey's principal opposition leader says Prime Minister Erdogan wants the power of a dictator.
The government of India has decided to let "major infrastructure projects" cut down forests without review.
In effect, it is a free pass for mines to destroy the environment and take people's land. The victims will have no defense except to join the Naxalite rebels.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, Please insist that Obama publish the text of the "TransPacific Partnership", a dangerous proposed free exploitation treaty.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
tell
your senators to support the Access to Birth Control act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
How President Correa made life better for Ecuador's poor, by rejecting the advice of other economists.
He even got debts cancelled because they were invalidly contracted. I expect many governments, betraying the people, imposed debt on their countries illegitimately. Maybe they only need courage to get some of those debts cancelled.
I have posted criticisms of some of Correa's policies, but we should not forget that those are the exceptions.
Victor Gregg, who witnessed as a prisoner the firebombing of Dresden, insists it was a giant war crime.
Crowded Singapore plans to increase its population by 30%, and natives fear loss of jobs.
It makes sense for Singapore to accept immigrants — that is much better than encouraging births — but Singapore should help workers get better pay, and subsidize adequate housing for all.
Beware of simplifying and politicizing casualty estimates for the Syrian civil war.
Among civilian casualties, we can expect that roughly half are female and half are male. 7.5% of the recorded casualties are female. If all females are civilians, 7.5% of the casualties are female civilians. That suggests male civilians are also roughly 7.5%, so that roughly 15% of the casualties are civilians.
There is evidence of massacres of civilians, and war zones are not safe places in any case. But this suggests that the fighters on both sides are mostly fighting each other, not massacring civilians.
Anonymous billionaires fund "grass-roots" media campaign organizations, with misleading names, that oppose renewable energy efforts and deny global heating.
Obama uses his skin color to shield his right-wing positions from the criticism they deserve.
Iceland is moving to impose filtering on the Internet, on the absurd pretext that pornography "hurts women". In effect, equating "possibly offends" with "hurts".
Censorship hurts men and women alike.
"Freedom doesn't simply mean letting it all hang out".
The common thread for these annoyances (not counting Sun page 3, which, as pointed out, nobody has to look at) is that business imposes its commercial messages on public space. To regulate this is not censorship of people's freedom of speech. The UK must show more respect for people's freedom of speech, but at the same time it could could regulate these commercial messages.
Instead it fails to enforce existing requirements. Why? Because government kowtows to business. It desperately sells ads to business because it doesn't have the courage to tax business enough.
1/5 of reptile species face extinction.
If we keep increasing our population and the atmosphere's CO2 concentration, we will wipe out half of them or more.
Giant protests 10 years ago failed to stop the invasion of Iraq, but set the stage for condemning it afterward.
Senate Republicans blocked a vote on Hagel's nomination, demanding Obama give them more information about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
The worst things that are likely to be revealed by more information are possible mistakes and confusion. Thus, they are not really very important; Republicans are making a mountain out of a molehill. But it can't hurt to scrutinize them, so Obama ought to hand the information over.
A specific meat company has been accused of passing off horsemeat as beef.
It is proper to prosecute the companies that lied; I hope they are not too big to prosecute. However, the real problem is a system that has a tremendous number of points of vulnerability, and weak inspections to try to catch them.
Brooklyn College President Karen Gould's letter standing firm for academic freedom, including criticism of Israeli policy.
Deadly superstition: a woman accused of killing by magic was
burnt
to death by a crowd in Papua New Guinea.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for cutting the military budget before Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare.
Here's the message I sent.
As Keynes taught and FDR demonstrated, ending a recession calls for deficit spending: to cut the deficit now is going in the wrong direction. But it would be even worse to cut the deficit by cutting spending that efficiently benefits the people, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If you cannot prevent cuts, cut the spending that is unnecessary and that makes the fewest jobs per dollar: military spending.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on the company building the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline to fix the holes first.
The anti-anxiety drug oxazepam gets into rivers in tiny quantities, but even those tiny quantities make some small fish so insouciant that they are likely to get eaten.
A desperate man, illegally in Italy,
set
himself on fire.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Can anyone find out why he thought deportation back to Ivory Coast was worse than death?
Ben Emmerson, UN rapporteur for human rights and counterterrorism, says he thinks that Brennan could offer Obama a chance to restrain the CIA's violence.
Reportedly Brennan wants the CIA to
transfer
all drone assassinations to the military.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This makes sense in principle, since the only legitimate context for drone bombers is a battlefield, and CIA drone operators that kill could be accused of being "illegal combatants", which the Bush regime says is grounds to put someone in prison.
However, according to the second link above, the US military is running out of control too.
The US government is failing to protect itself from global heating, which endangers its property and causes financial exposure.
Poor defendants in the US often plead guilty because they can't make bail and are jailed (for months) until trial.
Bahraini suppression forces attacked protesters, and killed a teenager with shotgun fire.
Iceland's refusal to bail out risky banking has been vindicated.
The euro-austerity recession is starting to affect Germany.
The recession causes austerity, because of the euro zone's rule that limits deficit spending, and the austerity causes recession (as it always does). So far, the German government has blocked any way out of this. Recession in Germany might perhaps lead to the replacement of Merkel with someone who wants to fix this problem.
Burmese suppression forces attacked protesters with phosphorus shells. They were protesting a mine that causes environmental damage.
Chinese-funded fishing is wiping out the sharks and mantas from Mozambique's coast.
US citizens: call on the Senate to release its report on CIA torture.
More on
the risk of Birgitta Jónsdóttir's visit to the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
UN's Water
Agenda at Risk of Being Hijacked by Big Business.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The US National Park Service has dragged its feet on designating new wilderness areas. One plan is 29 years overdue.
Obama, tell Iran that you'll
end Iran
sanctions as part of a satisfactory nuclear deal.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US Food Industry Battles Against Regulation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's lawyers claim in court that the very existence of the CIA's assassination program is still a secret.
This might seem like irrational bullheadedness, but it is much worse than that. The Obama regime is attempting to override truth with naked lies. Remember when the Bushmen asserted they were more powerful than reality? That's what the Obombers are doing now.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to take the specific steps needed to really
implement his stated intention to curb global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Thugs in Atlanta were arrested for protecting drug dealers.
This is one of many ways that the War on Drugs hurts all of us.
Some drugs are dangerous, but if you avoid taking them, they can't hurt you. You can't avoid the danger of the War on Drugs.
Former LA thug Brian Bentley says that the bigotry reported by Dorner is standard practice in the LA thug department.
The LA thug department still acts like an occupation force, and that is what Dorner reacted to.
Canada is considering a law to allow companies to sneak surveillance software into people's computers.
The irrational response of US schools to school shooters is to persecute anyone who responds with weirdness to the oppression of school.
Movie companies bullied and bribed New Zealand into union-busting. An official has ordered publication of pertinent documents, so movie companies threaten not to do business with New Zealand again unless the state somehow prevents this.
The proper response to those companies is, "Good riddance to you!"
The US border patrol appears to have shot a Mexican teenager (across the border fence) in the back 11 times, as he was lying on his belly.
Agents say he was throwing rocks at them, but the terrain suggests he could not possibly have been doing so.
A Canadian publisher has sued a university librarian who said its books are generally not very good.
Has democracy fallen into a strange attractor where no change is possible?
Anonymous donors funnel money to numerous global heating denialists, including the Heatland Institute.
Google countersues BT over patents.
This useful article has a flaw that could have been easily avoided: it uses the term "intellectual property", which confuses patents with a dozen other disparate and unrelated laws. That term should never be used. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
Florian Müller's question is answered in the article itself: Google isn't a non-practicing entity (aka patent troll), and generally has been the victim rather than the aggressor in patent battles.
However, the crucial point about software patents is not who is suing whom. It's that they should not exist at all. It is lunacy to issue patents that restrict software. http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/richard-stallman-software-patents/ explains a way to correct this problem.
The EU's unitary patent scheme is an indirect way of authorizing software patents. See unitary-patent.eu for more information about the danger of this scheme.
The defense lawyer for Israel's Prisoner X says that he said he was innocent of undisclosed charges against him, and may have committed suicide because of the pressure of the interrogation.
I suspect that his interrogators aimed for that result. If it was so important to silence him, what way better than death?
Companies that tried to use failed tax avoidance schemes will be banned from UK government contracts.
That is how it should be, but what about the tax avoidance schemes that have not yet failed?
Mexico says a gang of rapists have confessed, but are they the culprits?
The possibility of forcing the "usual suspects" to confess is quite real. Recall the two UK women who championed the case of the man who was falsely convicted in Jamaica of raping them — they said all along he was the wrong man.
LA thugs say their tear gas canisters accidentally started the fire that burned down the house Dorner was staying in. However, burning the house was a predictable result of using weapons that catch fire.
The UK government invited a scandal like the current horsemeat "beef" scandal, by cutting back on food inspections.
The UK government plans to abolish confidentiality of whistleblowers that talk to reporters.
An Italian spy official has been sentenced to prison for helping a CIA kidnaping.
The US prosecutes "unlawful combatants", but when the CIA operates drones, it is also an unlawful combatant.
The NRA is lobbying to weaken the Arms Trade Treaty even though that treaty would have no effect on Americans' right to own guns.
The NRA has been called a lobbyist for gun manufacturers, and this campaign supports that claim.
The world is entering an era of food shortage, squeezed between global heating and population growth.
We need to reduce both global heating and population growth.
Obama's cyber-security order avoids the privacy threats of CISPA, but there is still a possibility for harm when the details are worked out.
Charges were dropped against many Occupy Boston protesters, who had been strung along for over a year.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, protect the EPA's authority to limit global heating. Also sign this petition.
While you're at it, you can say something stronger as well.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Obama's reported choice for Secretary of Commerce is a predatory bankster.
Brennan, when pressed, refused to rule out using drones to assassinate US citizens in the US.
Bahrain's regime continues to imprison protesters and dissidents.
The Stingray phony cell phone tower is designed to do exactly what the Fourth Amendment was designed to prohibit.
Human Rights Watch reports 18 Israeli airstrikes in November that seem to have been war crimes.
Secret courts will let UK security services off the hook for horrible wrongs.
A new surveillance threat: a portable iris scanner that works from a meter away.
If thousands of soldiers will have them, they surely won't be the only ones to have them. They will be tracking everyone, everywhere.
A man with links to Israel's spy agency was imprisoned secretly in Israel. And he is said to have killed himself in prison, despite being watched to prevent suicide.
Protests around Europe aimed at ending the sales of plant products grown in Israeli colonies in Palestine.
Here's an example of what the inhabitants of these colonies do to Palestinians that live near them.
Israeli soldiers attack Palestinians with total impunity: of 105 soldiers that were investigated in 2012, Israel indicted 0 of them.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support gun control
measures: requiring background checks and banning large magazines.
Also sign this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Saudi princes demand secrecy in a UK court, threatening to punish the state if it publishes corruption accusations.
The only elected president of the Maldive islands has
taken
refuge in the Indian embassy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The battle for abortion rights in Hispanic America is making very slow progress, with many women as casualties.
It looks like two large US airlines will merge.
It happens regularly in the US that large competitors merge, creating a company that is the largest in their field. The smallest competitor tends to find this difficult, so it proposes another merger, and the cycle leads to ever fewer competitors.
The state should ban mergers of companies that together have more than 5% of any market.
The Philippines government is negotiating an autonomous zone for Muslims in Mindanao.
Autonomy for a region might be a good outcome, but it must not be an excuse for Islamic law that tramples human rights. The autonomous region should have to promise to respect religious freedom, including the freedom to stop being a Muslim, as well as women's legal equality.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to support the Grayson-Takano letter,
which commits to opposing any bill that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or
Social Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Also affirm your support for it. (This shows the letter itself too.)
Obama is pushing more of the "free trade" poison that has already done so much to hurt working people.
It is good that homosexuals have the right to marry, but must they (and heterosexuals) force themselves into the mold of heterosexual tradition?
Obama gave
strong
words about curbing global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
It's a good start, but what's needed now is action. Does he have the courage to cancel the planet roaster pipeline?
There is evidence that the LA Thug Department deliberately started a fire that killed renegade ex-thug Chris Dorner.
Some are calling Dorner a hero. I don't think so.
Dorner was fired from his job as a thug because he reported that his partner had kicked a homeless person. The partner denied it, but since attacking the weak and lying about it is a common thug behavior pattern, I find the accusation plausible. If the accusation was true, Dorner was fired for whistleblowing, and he could be considered to have been a hero at that point.
However, his rancor subsequently developed into a murderous hatred, directed against people who were merely related to those involved, which we can only call madness. Killing someone for revenge is wrong; killing someone's children for revenge is wrong squared.
Chile has asked the US to extradite the accused assassin of protest singer Victor Jara.
US citizens: call on the Secretary of the Interior to resist building a road through wilderness in Alaska.
Of the Sri Lankans denied asylum in the UK, and deported to Sri Lanka, 15 later got back to Britain and demonstrated they had been tortured.
The European Parliament is drafting law on data protection with text from the companies it should be protecting citizens against.
These companies are trying to weaken existing protection, not just prevent stronger protection.
The main issue in the UK horsemeat scandal is that animals not raised for human consumption are getting into the food. They might even have been sick.
A campaign in China against eating shark fin is reducing sales.
The ironic thing about shark fin is that there's no real reason for anyone to eat it. It has little taste; it has a distinctive feel, but it is hardly a special delight. The point of shark's fin soup is only to show the guests at your banquet that you spent enough to serve shark's fin soup. Anything else that is rare would do the same job.
Cambodia has banned lawyers from giving media interviews.
Obama has also started a crackdown on talking to reporters.
An EU negotiator who tried to defy parliament over ACTA is working on other free exploitation treaties that might repeat the same oppression.
What the war on women means for pregnant teenagers.
Many states require parental approval for a teenager to get an abortion. I have never understood the rationale for this. Giving birth is more dangerous than an abortion, and raising a baby is much harder than not having one. So if we think that there is something in the aftermath of pregnancy for which teenagers should need parental permission, it would not be abortion, it would be having the baby.
Yemen's investigation of a massacre of protesters turned into a whitewash of the government.
The CIA intensified its drone bombings in Pakistan in January 2013, and the Taliban retaliated against the Pakistan's army.
The civilian casualties are the Taliban's fault. Islamist extremists in Pakistan, as elsewhere, are guilty of monstrous violence, and I think Pakistanis are starting to recognize this and condemn the Taliban. But this has a long way to go.
Japan is rejecting the plutocratic opposition to deficits and using deficit spending to re-engage the economy.
A man who says he killed Osama bin Laden complains about the lousy treatment he got when he left the Navy.
This man boasts about shooting killing a suspected criminal who was unarmed, and should have been captured and put on trial. He admits no shame for this wrong — indeed, he says we ought to admire him.
As others point out, the problems he encounters are not unusual. Lots of US veterans have similar problems — and that's the real issue here. Where he criticizes treating the person who shot bin Laden so badly, I say veterans in general deserve better treatment, and that even applies to him.
Barclays Bank will close its tax avoidance guide division, whose services helped large businesses move billions of dollars in profits so that they would not be taxed.
Even if Barclays sincerely refuses to facilitate business tax-avoidance from now on, that won't stop it. Many now know how the tricks are done, and if one bank doesn't do them, another will.
To really address this problem requires changing tax laws so that these tricks don't work any more.
In many wars, soldiers rape women as a tactic of war, but the US has pressured the ICRC not to give them abortions.
A study found Americans are concerned about a likelihood of civilian casualties from a military operation, just as they are concerned about a likelihood of US military casualties.
How much this concern expresses itself in practice will depend on how the issue is framed and how the choices are presented. Deceptive language, such as labeling all adult men that aren't elderly as "combatants", can fool people.
New York school bus drivers are on strike because they face getting
replaced by non-union drivers
who would be paid even less.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The concept of "high impact" journals, which helps publishers keep restrictive journals going, is bad for science in other ways.
Boston has a parade on St Patrick's Day, to please the Irish-Americans, but lets a right-wing veterans group run it. So there is an alternative parade on the same day, for the groups excluded from the main parade.
I doubt I'd want to march for a Catholic saint, but if you feel like doing that, you could join the alternative one.
One of Assad's ministers is proposing talks with the rebels based on planning Assad's exit from government.
Birgitta Jónsdóttir will visit the US despite the danger she will be prosecuted over Wikileaks.
Bhutan plans to ban artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Ironically, global heating may interfere with the plan.
To live in harmony with nature has one more requirement: keep the population down. Nature can absorb most kinds of waste, in limited quantities.
Islamists invaded Gao and fought with Malian and French forces.
Iraqi Kurdistan (effectively autonomous from the Iraqi state) imprisons opposition leaders, and prosecutes journalists for political and religious leaders.
The freedom to insult someone powerful is a central part of freedom of speech.
Everyone: support the International Day for Privacy on
Feb 23.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Imposing Internet filters on US libraries turns them into agents of censorship.
I don't entirely agree with the response that compares filters with abortion, because that is unfair to abortion. Ideally no women would have unwanted pregnancies and therefore none would ever want an abortion; however, having an abortion imposes less burden on the world than having a baby, which creates a reason for encouraging abortions. One should be a lot more negative towards Internet filtering.
250,000 US soldiers have had brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A study modeling random gun attacks together with using guns to kill attackers finds that an armed public is an effective defense against shooters (as the NRA proclaims) if there is a ban on large magazines. And even then, it is valid only when shooters attack a large crowd.
If the NRA really wants everyone to carry a pistol, it ought rationally to support the assault weapon ban so that its argument becomes at least partly valid. But it still may not be valid enough, since most shooters don't attack large crowds.
Elton John struck a raw nerve in China's rulers by praising persecuted artist Ai Weiwei.
They now appeal to a perverted idea that musicians' honor requires being apolitical.
What UK companies are doing to avoid tax.
It is possible these tax rules are biased against poor countries in some way, but their biggest problem is that they are biased against all countries, and in favor of businesses.
No state should wait for agreement on changing these rules. Any country that unilaterally breaks with them will be doing itself a favor.
Violent Islamist extremism threatens possible Arab democracy.
Iraq's slow intersectarian war churns on, with
over
4500 killed in 2012 (often civilians).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Indiscriminate bottom-trawling scours the seas and leaves them barren. There is better way, which involves stewardship of the sea bottom.
Bottom-trawling maximizes the efficiency of extraction, the amount of seafood that can be taken with a given amount of work. It may have also increased the total catch, when that was limited by human capacity to collect it.
Now the total catch is limited by ecological factors, so more efficient fishing just means less human employment in getting the same catch. Society is beset by unemployment, so what we want now is for fishing to employ more people. Thus, banning bottom-trawling makes does good in two ways.
Raytheon's "Riot" program tracks everyone through social networks — just the thing to find dissidents or protesters and pre-emptively attack them.
It won't find out much about me, because I don't give information to these sites. When people take photos of me, I ask them to delete the geolocation data from them. I have now decided to also ask them to change the dates.
The company that owns Twinings Tea practices tax avoidance in Zambia, starving that country of revenue.
YouTube has been banned in Egypt as an act of religion-based censorship.
India executed a professor for supposedly leading an armed attack on Parliament, after a joke of a trial based on contradictory evidence.
An Israeli soccer team that signed up two Muslim players suffered an arson attack.
The environment and life of the high seas require protection from human activity.
US Internet connections are slow and expensive because there is no competition. The few companies that exist have divided up the market.
An even worse consequence of the paucity of US ISPs is that Obama was able to get them to punish their users on behalf of the copyright companies.
Real network neutrality does not include an exception for usage some ISP decides to consider illegal. Only a court can decide that an internaut's actions are illegal.
The lack of competition in US Internet is an example of the domination of the US government by business. There are examples in all areas of life that businesses are concerned in. The absurd adoration of the market is not a random phenomenon; it is promoted by corporate PR because it increases the base level of business power over government.
In the US Northeast: petition weather presenters to explain the role of global heating in the blizzard.
Also call
local weather presenters and ask them to do this.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The big blizzard in the US Northeast was
made
bigger by global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Factory farming is a big contributor to global heating.
Nigerian thugs shoot hundreds of people every year, and the victims often don't get identified, let alone medical examination.
Pope Pius XII, criticized for not opposing the rise of Nazism, seems to have secretly organized efforts to save Jews from being massacred.
The Catholic Church was prejudiced against believers in Judaism: Jews who converted became ok as far as they were concerned. Hitler's antisemitism was based on descent: if you had a Jewish grandparent, he hated you regardless of your religion.
I read a book called The Rome Escape Line, by Sam Derry, which described how allied agents or soldiers — downed aviators, I think, but the memory is not clear — were hidden in the Vatican. Maybe Pius XII ordered that too.
US citizens:
boycott
Hershey's and Dagoba chocolate.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition in favor of industrial hemp production.
Global heating is
wiping
out coffee production in Guatemala.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support the Violence Against Women Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The US banned distribution of the Iranian state English TV channel.
I suppose that channel is worse propaganda than the US mainstream media, but that still does not make it legitimate to censor.
The Putin regime has blocked access to a journalistic blog site, with a ridiculous excuse of course.
Israeli soldiers destroyed a Palestinian tent city protesting plans to take more land.
The US Committee for Public Safety — no, make that Department of Homeland Security — has concluded that searching people's laptops at the border is perfectly legitimate, based on arguments it won't disclose.
A protest against TSA "security" searches in Boston subways.
I hope I can find out about the next one before it happens.
In discussions in Washington, all the important US economic issues are ruled out.
The Seattle thugs got set up to use drones, but citizens of Seattle reversed the decision.
Obama's arbitrary tyranny would not let Saadiq Long fly home to the US, but eventually relented so he could visit his sick mother. Then it surprised him by not letting him fly back to his job in Qatar.
The no-fly list is arbitrary deprivation of rights, and therefore inherently unjust.
The Supreme Court will decide whether farmers are liable for patent infringement when they unknowingly plant seeds contaminated with patented genes.
If Monsanto wins, it will be nearly impossible to grow soybeans in the US and not be liable to Monsanto.
Hillary Clinton did
a lot of very
bad things as Secretary of State.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
I might argue with a fraction of the points in the list, but that wouldn't change the conclusion. Remember this if she runs for president.
US citizens: call for thorough, loophole-free regulation of commodities derivatives.
US citizens:
support Obama's deal to give access to contraception
to women employed in nonreligious jobs by church-linked organizations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Articles about scientific fraud were deleted after a obscure site plagiarized them, and sent false DMCA takedowns.
TEPCO personnel lied
to the government to dissuade the government from
investigating damage in the Fukushima reactors.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
There were reports of an Israeli attack on Syrian anti-aircraft missiles being transported, but none of the information is reliable.
Horsemeat in UK beef turns out to be part of a large system of fraud. It can also be dangerous if the horses were given certain drugs.
Obama's Orwellian justification for drone bombings makes assassination the first resort, effectively forever, against effectively anyone he can associate somehow with the al Qa'ida brand name.
Studies of medical treatment effects are biased by not publishing unfavorable results. And laws meant to stop this have not been enforced.
US citizens:
call
for an increase in minimum wage for workers that
now depend on tips.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
EU budget cuts will contribute to spreading recession in Europe.
Now is the time for deficit spending, not cuts.
Thieves use false license plates to defeat the UK's system that tracks all car travel.
However, the system will work fine to track dissidents. UK dissidents don't think of breaking laws merely to keep their movements secret from the regime. Maybe they need to start.
Malian soldiers that support the new government fought Malian soldiers that support the pre-coup government.
The Department of Energy wants to recycle
metal
slightly contaminated with radioactivity. This means recycling it
into metal used in everyday products.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
I am concerned that in 50 years the US government will not have the capacity any longer to take proper care of nuclear sites. If global heating leads to disaster, with major coastal cities swamped, seas dead, and agriculture failing, will there be money and attention to spare for it?
4/5 of US antibiotics use is in farm animals, and the systematic result is resistant bacteria.
Why we must establish that all the Constitution's human rights are for people, not for corporations.
Most gun deaths in the US are suicides. Is this due to US plutocracy?
Then there are the Americans killed by their jobs, or by pollution.
Australia's experience suggests that a ban on assault rifles is likely to reduce murders, so it is worth doing, but the US government should not neglect its responsibilities to protect other aspects of people's well-being.
US law threatens EU citizens' privacy, study warns.
The article stretches the word "freedom" by applying it to "being able to access data from anywhere". "Being able" to do something is not freedom, it is convenience. People 70 years ago could not access digital data at all, but that did mean they lacked freedom. What they lacked was an aspect of convenience. Labeling convenience as freedom is a common fallacy. However, this doesn't undermine the point of the article.
The article also uses the term "cloud computing", which is so nebulous that in general it spreads confusion. Here it seems to mean "remote storage services".
Obama is escalating the War on Journalism: a massive US investigation is trying to find officials who have talked to reporters, then investigate their private email accounts.
Islamist fanatics in Nigeria
killed
polio vaccination workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
If it is feasible for an intervention to suppress these child-cripplers long enough to vaccinate everyone (if not longer), I would support it.
The fundamental wrong of Obama's assassination system is the idea that a terrorist attack constitutes war and that the proper response is war.
Brennan, interviewed by the Senate, says he was not responsible for torture policies or kidnapings. However, he defends the assassination program, saying US officials suffer "agony" in deciding whom to kill.
If they spoke to relatives of the victims they might find out what "agony" really means.
5 Questions John Brennan Dodged in His CIA Confirmation Hearing.
Waterboarding is not the only form of torture that the CIA used. It is the only one that Obama ordered the CIA to stop, so the others may continue. Did anyone ask Brennan whether chaining a person in a position that causes pain and bodily damage is torture?
US citizens: call on the FCC to make TV political advertisers say who really pays for the ads.
China has resorted to arresting the friends of protesters.
Secular opposition in Tunisia plans a general strike after their leader was assassinated.
Indian women who accept offers of domestic work in Arab countries are often effectively kidnaped and forced into prostitution there.
Perhaps it would help to set up a reporting system, where domestic workers gone abroad must contact someone at home once a month, or else will be presumed to have been enslaved and trigger a state investigation.
The vote on California's GMO labeling initiative was close, and a local official blocked a recount by charging too much for it.
US citizens: sign
this
petition against cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Japanese "scientific whaling" has done nothing for science, and they no longer sell the whale meat either, so it is an expensive harmful boondoggle.
Scholars hid and saved most of the old manuscripts of Timbuktu.
US citizens: sign the
petition to fire prosecutor Heymann (as well as
prosecutor Ortiz).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Saudi Arabia: 36 Days in Jail for a Human Rights Sign.
The Philippines follow where Russia leads: Carlos Celdran was sentenced to a year in prison for the crime of "offending religious beliefs".
Young women in Kashmir who play in a rock band have received rape threats and a fatwa from oppressive Muslims.
Protesting sexual harassment in Tahrir Square.
Amnesty International
comments
on the issue.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Preventing the extinction polar bears may require drastic measures. Proposals include providing seals as food for some of them, and killing those that are too starved to survive.
If global heating were to stop in 15 years, we could continue doing this. However, in 50 years I think the effects of global heating on human society will be so devastating that no state will have money for this, and no person will have time for it. Then polar bears will be wiped out anyway.
The UK government was too cheap to clean up mussels on a shipwreck, so the lobsters around Tristan da Cunha will probably be wiped out.
A new system for encrypted communication is intended to protect dissidents.
The goal is admirable, and is just as important for the US as for other countries. If John Kiriakou had used encrypted communications with reporters, he would not be going to prison for telling us about US government torture.
However, this system raises two questions:
They may not even know if it is used against them. I'm told that the FBI typically gives a "national security letter" to an employee who has access to the data, forbidding him to tell the rest of the company. Thus, if the data are now stored in the US, they cannot expect to find out if the PAT RIOT act is being used against them.
US citizens: call on Obama to push strongly for gun control.
Reverse-Engineered
Irises Look So Real, They Fool Eye-Scanners.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
I have no wish to disguise my irises as someone else, but we will all need to disguise them regularly as we travel about town if iris scanners can recognize people from a distance.
The Ethiopian state is forcing thousands of peasants off their land for foreign investors to set up plantations.
A planned dam will do likewise to many herders.
The WTO is trying to speed up reduction of red tape that impedes international trade.
This might be good for business, but it's bad for people.
The WTO has done harm to the world by making it easier for any company to threaten a state with moving its business somewhere else. This increases the political power of companies over the state, which is the worst political problem in the world today. It is the root cause of "too big to fail" and many other problems.
I suspect that any further step in that direction will make things worse.
Removing barriers to trade leads to more efficiency. More efficiency is desirable if it benefits everyone -- but the WTO will never allow that. The increased political power of business ensures that most people lose.
Obama will show assassination legal opinions to the Senate intelligence committee, but not to us.
Whether the drone base is in Saudi Arabia is a minor detail. Just because bin Laden cared about it is no reason why anyone else should. Let it not be a distraction from the issue of assassination.
US citizens: call
on Senate Majority Leader Reid to reopen
the issue of filibuster reform.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
for designating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
as wilderness and thus preventing oil drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this
petition to Obama to support of the constitutional amendment to
reverse the Corporations United decision (to call it what it really
is).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
As the Boy Scouts of America considers admitting gay scouts,
it ought to end its
religious
discrimination — against Atheists.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The growing US scandal:
one justice for
banksters, and another for the rest of us (such as Aaron Swartz).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: stand up for academic freedom in New York City.
Over half of US farms that grow Roundup-resistant GMO crops now have Roundup-resistant weeds.
I suppose Monsanto is happy that the farmers now buy a lot more Roundup. However, the basic premise of these crops, that they would make it possible to eliminate weeds easily with a small amount of pesticide, has been invalidated.
It occurs to me that if they had started with crops resistant to two different pesticides, and if all farmers had used both pesticides together, it might have been impossible for weeds to develop resistance to both in parallel. This is the same logic as that behind multi-drug treatment for HIV infection. However, I don't think all farmers would have followed the regime.
The former prime minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, was imprisoned apparently for political motives. Now her lawyer faces charges.
The charges seem to be an absurd grab-bag.
Why let the state decide the rules for marriage?
The public library in Friern Barnet was officially reopened, thanks to squatters and protesters who occupied it and ran it unofficially.
Obama's
target for cutting US CO2 emissions requires bold
new initiatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
However, it is crucial to cut US exports of fossil fuels as well. Sending them to be burnt elsewhere puts the CO2 in the same atmosphere.
The EU Parliament voted for sustainable fishing.
However, this is not the final decision.
When the US carries out assassinations, the crucial question is not whether the victims are US citizens, it is whether assassination is legitimate at all.
I think it should be considered equivalent to sending a squad of soldiers and a tank to attack the same place.
Venezuelan prisons are ruled by armed gangs of prisoners.
The US does not have a deficit problem. Its problem is inequality and resulting poverty. Thus, deficit cutting is an excuse for making things worse.
US citizens: tell the IRS not to weaken its whistleblower protections and incentives.
European countries that helped CIA kidnap flights could face prosecution in the European Court of Human Rights.
Journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim was sentenced to prison for interviewing the Somali woman who accused soldiers of raping her.
A principal Tunisian opposition leader was assassinated.
Privatization of UK care for old people killed one person when the company was shut down.
Soot from diesel engines and burning coal causes babies to have low birth weight.
Thugs invented the term "testilying" to describe what they typically do on the witness stand.
Thus, if a case comes down to the word of a thug against the accused, you really should not trust the thug.
Even if it is ten thugs and they all agree, that changes nothing. They always have a chance to collude and coordinate their testimony.
This explains why thugs will go to such lengths to prevent video recording of their actions: it can make their testilying ineffective.
The US is back to what George I called
"voodoo
economics".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
There's a funny spelling error in the article: it says "mother load" but it should have been "mother lode".
Two Years Later, The Florida Bar Takes Action Against Foreclosure Baron David J. Stern.
The US continues giving bin Laden what he wanted.
A Congressional report says that the high rate of imprisonment in the US is damaging to the prison system, not to mention millions of Americans.
Campaigning for strong privacy legislation in Europe.
This campaign faces opposition from the companies that do Internet surveillance, including Facebook, Google, and other advertising companies.
Congress estimates that tax havens deny the US up to 150 billion dollars a year in tax revenue. The amount seems to be growing, but it is hard to measure.
The world-wide problem is that companies and the rich pay too little tax. They do this by playing one country against another. Thus, they convinced the Netherlands to "attract corporate money" by reducing taxes, and now they want to convince the US to respond by reducing taxes and thus exacerbate the global problem. Every reduction in taxes for the rich adds to society's problem, so all solutions must involve increasing their taxes.
I've proposed a
new
kind of tax designed to pressure large companies to split up.
It involves treating related companies, even in different countries,
as a unit for determining the total size.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
How Obama stretched the concept of an "imminent attack" to excuse killing people considered to be hostile.
The report on Julian Assange's speech at an award ceremony at Oxford smeared him, by falsely claiming that no supporters of his could be found. It also ignored the work of Dr Fingar, who received the award — for stopping US intelligence from being distorted so as to start a war.
A group of senators have asked Obama to
show
them the legal opinions that supposedly justify Obama's aerial death squad.
Calling
on Obama to ensure that sanctions against Iran do not block
food and medicine.
In theory, the sanctions do not apply to medicine. In practice,
they
do.
10
Questions Congress Should Ask Killer Drone Policy Architect John
Brennan.
Half
of major US cities persecute the homeless.
New way to protect schools: deploying armed pseudo-thugs without
training. Some of them have
records
of violence.
High-tech surveillance is spreading around the US. This article describes
several
forms of increasing surveillance.
The article focuses on the companies that build the surveillance technology,
but that seems secondary to me.
The European Commission is studying copyright licensing but intends
to please
only
the copyright industry.
Here is the
full
statement by La Quadrature du Net.
Israel clings to the claim that Palestinian textbooks demonize Jews,
rejecting the study that found
it
was not so.
Israel sentenced Palestinian teenagers to
long
prison sentences for breaking a "settler"'s car window.
Contrast this with the impunity that the "settlers" regularly enjoy for
all
sorts of crimes against Palestinians.
Israel has recently
arrested
several members of the Palestinian parliament.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Bayer to withdraw neonicotinoid pesticides from sale, to protect bees.
US citizens: support HR 499 to end federal prohibition of marijuana.
Everyone: call on Panama to support
protection of endangered
sharks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
How business prevents cities and states from pushing for stronger regulations: federalize the issue, by passing a weak federal law which blocks cities and states from doing anything stronger.
Agribusiness is
about to use
this on labeling of GMOs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
10 years after Colin Powell's speech of lies led the US into war, don't forget how he did it — or how Kerry supported it. The same thing may be done with Iran or Syria.
Although the FBI says it is very concerned about possible home-grown Islamic terrorism, in fact mass shooting are a much bigger danger.
However, other murders (not done by mass shooting) are a much bigger danger than that.
At attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria has reportedly been linked to Hezbollah.
Someone shot at Lars Hedegaard, underscoring his warnings against attempts at censorship in the name of Islam.
Global heating increases the number of earthworms, which results in more greenhouse gas emissions from the soil.
Obama published a redacted version of his legalistic excuses for ordering assassinations, but it's enough to point out multiple outrages.
"Cooperation" between Israel and Palestine about allocation of water supplies, set up by the Oslo agreement, turned out to be a way to legitimize robbery.
The text of Julian Assange's remote speech at Oxford.
Malaysia handed Chinese Uighur refugees back to China.
Asian Pulp and Paper says it will stop cutting down Indonesian rainforest to make paper.
This is in response to public pressure — you've seen the campaigns in the urgent notes on this site. It took considerable pressure, which shows the business is very profitable. Thus, I expect that Asian Pulp and Paper will try to start again as soon as our backs are turned. Perhaps not directly — perhaps it will sell the business to someone else, or subcontract it. Businesses have many ways of disguising responsibility.
A woman in Somalia who accused soldiers of raping her faces charges of insulting the state.
Most countries reserve that particular injustice for dissidents.
The Somali government was effectively imposed by the US, after a US-backed Ethiopian intervention destroyed the Islamic Courts government. Islamic law is vicious, but after years of warfare I don't think Somalis wanted to return to several years more of it. No once again they have less fighting (I wouldn't yet call it peace), and they probably appreciate that, but this government doesn't seem to be better than the one they had a few years ago.
54 countries appear to have cooperated with CIA kidnapings, including Iran. Apparently, making a deal with Iran is not out of reach for the US.
This article perversely claims that aborting fetuses because they have Down's syndrome (a major birth defect that affects intelligence) is unfair discrimination, arguing that it is equivalent to aborting fetuses because they are female.
That equivalence is valid, but the proper conclusion is the opposite of the author's position. Aborting fetuses selectively is ethical regardless of the criterion.
A woman is not an incubator. She is entitled to abort a pregnancy for any reason, or for no reason. It is legitimate to abort a fetus because it is female, because it is male, because it is blond, or because it was conceived in a month with a "u" in its name.
It is only against persons that discrimination can be unfair. A fetus is not a person. If it is aborted (for whatever reason), it never becomes a person, thus no person is discriminated against by the abortion.
In fact, many people selectively abort female fetuses because they are prejudiced against females. If you are female, you have good reason to rebuke that prejudice, which is aimed at you too. But don't endanger your own abortion rights by attacking theirs. Their abortions don't wrong you; their prejudice does.
I think we should celebrate the fact that fewer people have birth defects nowadays, thanks to abortion rights.
If you drive, 15 years of gasoline adds up to buying a car. Thus, a fuel-efficient car is a very good investment.
How companies betray American workers,
step by step.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Government support for research is not a bad thing, in and of itself. It is an example of how companies get tremendous benefit from the public that they shaft — but we need not depend on that argument to show that we should not tolerate their present-day behavior.
Indian film-maker Kamal Haasan says he will go into exile after his latest film was censored by the state in response to Muslim intolerance.
Paradoxically, the caste system gives some Dalits economic security although they are despised as a result.
When foreign companies use servers in the US, they let the US snoop on all their communication with their clients via Bush's originally illegal massive surveillance program.
This article uses the vague term "cloud computing", which is so vague that it is meaningless. In this article, it means that companies host their services on servers in the US. In some other article, it will mean something else. You need to be an expert to tell what it means. Let's make our statements clear, not cloudy: let's shun the term "cloud" in the computing field.
Drones can be used for stalking and private spying.
It is obvious that privately owned drones can be used this way. The same will happen with government drones. The people who run them will use them for personal, unofficial purposes too.
Malala Yousafzai is recovering well enough to return to activism for women in Pakistan.
Greek thugs tortured bank robbers, then tried to cover it up by altering their photos.
I used to think that it was wrong to rob a bank, but I can no longer see a reason to criticize it, now that banksters rob us over and over and are not even charged with a crime.
Egyptian thugs appear to have tortured a protester to death. There may be many more victims.
Organizing to keep San Francisco thugs from having tasers.
The US president
must
not be allowed to order pre-emptive cyberattacks on his own.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
How the Bush regime had defense lawyer Lynne Stewart convicted on
absurd
charges of terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The UK orders banks to separate their risky investments from their banking, threatening to split them up if they don't do this.
It would be both simpler and less risky to make them split up now, so I suppose the banks don't want that. Perhaps they hope to sneakily hold on to some of the benefits by not really separating these activities.
Vietnamese dissidents were sentenced to
long
prison terms. Another was put in a mental hospital, Soviet-style.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The UK gives oil companies a billion pounds of subsidy.
Like Russian spies, UK thug infiltrators generated phony identities based on children who had died.
Both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks show no border between Israel and Palestine.
And both teach very little about the other culture.
Investigators suspect hundreds of soccer matches in Europe were rigged.
A proposed agreement to cover Arctic oil drilling has a safety
requirement so vague that it is
not
even a serious effort.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A giant stick-insect, thought to be extinct, has been found on a tiny island. It could be reintroduced to its principal home if only the rats there were eradicated.
I think it won't be hard to love insects that (1) don't bother humans in any way and (2) form lasting couples.
After Egyptian thugs stripped and beat Hamada Saber, they forced him to say they were helping him.
Indians stubbornly resist the Kudankulam nuclear power plant.
Female genital mutilation is increasing in Indonesia, pushed by radical Muslims and doctors that want more business.
Fighting oil drilling and fracking in Colorado.
Since 80% of known fossil fuel needs to be left in the ground, anywhere the local people want to do this, their preference should be heeded without question.
How Israeli censors journalism and political advocacy.
Pyo Chang-won, forensic psychologist, is being sued by South Korea's intelligence agency for criticizing its actions.
Spain reacts to the corruption at the center of the right-wing ruling party.
The government of Honduras has set up a "security" agency that will operate with little control.
This government was set up by a coup that was probably approved by the US.
Fixing too big to fail
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters in Portugal are prosecuted for presenting pamphlets.
Russia begins extreme censorship of the Internet, imitating recent satire.
Human Rights Watch gives advice about how to build a state that respects human rights, once a dictator has been overthrown.
Obama plans to allow prospecting for oil in Atlantic undersea canyons that are rich for fishing.
The "all of the above" strategy is a way of exporting lots of fossil fuels for other countries to burn, so even as the US's own emissions decline, it will contribute to increasing total global emissions.
The family of teenager Ramarley Graham are suing the New York thugs, saying that after they killed him, they threatened to kill his grandmother too.
The War on Drugs systematically results in such killings. It does other bad things, not quite as fatal, to a lot more people and has led to imprisoning millions of Americans. We have to stop it.Iran demands a clear offer of some advantages in exchange for concessions on uranium enrichment.
That seems like an invitation to make a deal that would put the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons off the table. Countries that say that this possibility is frightening ought to offer substantial concessions in exchange for avoiding it.
Are drone assassinations the latest form of a death squad?
The world makes enough food — hunger is caused by a scarcity of democracy.
US government "do not track" proposals evade the real issue of mobile phone surveillance.
Charging that the US cultivates concern about genocide to create excuses for war.
This argument is partly valid; "genocide" can be an excuse for intervention. However, it is one of many excuses that are used. The possibility of false charges of genocide does not mean we should ignore it when it is real.
Another moral flaw in the article is the attempt to equate leaving a group vulnerable to a massacre with carrying out a massacre.
The article claims that genocide comes from war, but that was false in the case of the massacre of Indonesian Communists, and more false than true in the case Hitler. In any case, war does not automatically cause genocide; they are two separate things.
Ultimately, we cannot consider national sovereignty a source of moral value — states deserve value only a means to ends, such as freedom and well-being for people. When they cease to serve valid ends, as the US government has mostly done, they no longer command our value.
On the pitfall of idealizing primitive peoples' practices as a form of paradise.
They are just as prone to cruel or self-defeating practices as we are.
The film Inequality for All may spur resistance to the plutocracy in the US.
Unions in New York City are supporting an anti-worker Democrat because she is right-wing enough to maybe beat a Republican.
In the short term, that can maybe win an election. In the long term, as shown by Clinton and Obama, it is the road to losing on the issues.
It is even worse in the UK: major unions support the mildly right-wing "Labour Party".
Work in the US, in many areas, is morphing into sweatshop labor as businesses take advantage of high unemployment and an anti-union climate.
Atlanta thugs framed Kathryn Johnston (age 92), shot her dead, then decided to frame her some more. They went to prison thanks to an informant they tried to use, who informed on them instead.
Land of the free? Home of the brave?
Not
much any more.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Teaching children about the many dangers of coal.
Cathrynn Brown doesn't want to prosecute raped women who get abortions. Only the doctors who do the abortions.
US citizens:
Call
on the SEC to make publicly traded companies
publish their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Julian Assange explains how telling Facebook about your friends is effectively working for Big Brother.
The response from Facebook appears superficially like a denial, but don't be fooled — really it only says that Facebook has no choice about giving data to the US. And that is true, under the U SAP AT RIOT Act: once they make the choice to invite people to give you this data, they have no choice about handing it over.
This ultimately supports the argument that collecting the data is bad.
In the UK, education has become so expensive that only rich children can dream of entering a profession. For the rest, it is more rational to dream of being a sports star.
The US got there long ago, except that it offers college loans that will be a weight around a person's neck for life.
Genetic engineering of food, under control of agribusiness, has failed to contribute much to world food production.
Perhaps that's because companies like Monsanto are interested in taking control of agriculture rather than in improving it.
US citizens:
urge
the senate to offer a road to citizenship for the illegal
immigrants in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
New York politicians seek to impose politically biased limits on talks at Brooklyn College.
The campaign is led by Alan Dershowitz, who makes false claims exposed in this article.
Marriage doesn't foster foster social stability and economic prosperity. Rather, it needs them in order to succeed. Thus, right-wing pressure for marriage is an excuse to attack and endanger working women, who lack that stability thanks to other right-wing policies.
Journalists have been banned from battlefields in Mali, so we don't really know what is happening and can't verify claims about casualties.
Reporter Daniel Lainé exposed prostitution and human trafficking in Cambodia, so the Cambodian government has sentenced him to 7 years in prison for doing business with prostitutes, and is using Interpol to persecute him.
Lainé's secret trial reminds me of US injustice standards. Meanwhile, to make it a crime to do business with prostitutes is wrong in itself, even when that law is not used against journalism.
US companies are moving 10 to 60 billion dollars a year into tax havens.
The US is considering new biofuel requirements that could cause diversion of food as fuel.
The lingering polar ozone depletion seems to reduce the ocean's ability to absorb CO2.
A video showing Egyptian thugs strip and beat a protester has invigorated protests against Morsi.
Individual banksters will have to pay the Libor fine imposed on RBS.
Of the many things on the Internet that upset children, porn and bullying are not particularly bad.
Of course, it is ridiculous to think one should, or could, keep all upset out of a child's life. We can try to stop gross or persistent mistreatment, because a life without that is possible at least in principle. However, a life without upset is an impossible goal.
US citizens: ask Congress to amend the CFAA so it couldn't be used to prosecute violating terms of service.
Here's the EFF's comment on Rep. Lofgren's latest version of the changes.
US citizens:
support
newly introduced constitutional amendments to say
human rights are for people, not corporations, and authorize limits
on campaign spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The NRA lobbies for laws banning doctors from explaining the danger of having guns at home.
The prison where Pussy Riot dissidents are held is as bad as the Soviet Gulag. However, not as bad as the conditions in which the US put whistleblower Bradley Manning.
A mainstream media TV host says Obama should trick Republicans by advocating a right-wing policy (budget cuts).
What planet is he on? Republicans would hardly be caught off balance this way. Obama has tried this trick so many times that they must expect it by now.
Scarborough's comments on Krugman sound like the way supporters of open source often criticize me. If you appreciate my work, one way you can help is by saying "free/libre software" and avoiding the term "open source".
When US mainstream media report on intelligence claims that the Syrian army is preparing chemical weapons for use, they take for granted that the claims are accurate.
The US has received false intelligence claims before.
A reaction to capitalist privatization: the movement to establish and defend commons, with usage rules different from private property.
In the US economy, the "invisible hand" is obsolete, replaced by the tangible hands of corporate dealmakers. In the case of Goldman Sachs, we can sometimes see whose hands they are.
The US allows criminal convictions to be procured through testimony of anonymous "experts".
Anyone could be convicted of almost anything, that way.
Shari'a law in Mali, as elsewhere, means mutilation and killing.
Anyone who advocates shari'a law is advocating this.
Google has settled a dispute with French newspapers about posting links to news articles, or perhaps about quoting their titles.
The dispute raises several important issues which this article only hints at.
Don't Surrender the Privacy Battle.
Many US soldiers are killing themselves, often based on various kinds of guilt.
A waitress was fired for the indiscretion of posting a statement written by a client expressing resentment for a mandatory service charge.
A restaurant has a valid reason to fire a staff person who embarrasses customers in connection with that restaurant, regardless of details. If she had made it impossible to determine the restaurant's identity, the restaurant company probably would not have cared, or heard.
However, this article's larger point is valid: the system tipping imposes stress on waiters.
I dislike tipping, and I firmly refuse all requests to introduce it into areas of work where it is not already customary, such as in shops. However, I tip waiters and cab drivers because I know that this is how they are expected to get paid.
I would much rather that restaurants eliminated tipping, and were expected — and legally required — to pay their staff adequate wages. I rather that the price in the menu be the amount I will actually pay.
A former employee is suing BP alleging that BP manipulated the natural gas market.
I wonder, is the US or a state investing this alleged crime, and will it be prosecuted if possible? Or will "prosecutorial discretion" be employed yet again to let the big companies off and focus on human rights defenders?
The UK government boasts of success in protecting the short-term profits of the fishing business against its (and everyone's) long-term viability.
The copyright lobby's bullies have begun fining sharers in New Zealand.
Although USD 500 is not enough to bankrupt most people, it big is enough to frighten most people — and they might be able to impose bigger fines too.
This victim made a public apology granting legitimacy to the the system that attacked her. She probably did this for a reason, such as hope that it would reduce her fine. And that may well be true. This is part of the nasty effect of the system: the victims are pressured into praising the oppression.
Thus, the rest of us, those who are not being threatened, must condemn this system, and the entire war on sharing.
Stephen King tells gun owners why they should support Obama's gun control plan.
The article advertises a longer version available from Amazon in a way that doesn't respect users' freedom.
US gun owners say a lot about their freedom to own guns. I hope they value their freedoms as readers also, and will for that reason refuse to buy that story or any literature from Amazon.
Or any other products either, given the way Amazon treats its warehouse staff, and the fact that you can't buy anonymously.
Cats (including pets, but especially feral cats) are a big threat to bird life, to the extent that the presence of a cat-eating predator in the neighborhood causes a visible increase in bird life.
I would be in favor of trapping and killing feral cats — they don't have the right to life — but trapping and sterilizing them would be an advance also. However, to make this approach effective, it needs to cover pet cats that go out of the house.
Global heating leads to colder winters in Europe and Asia, by means of a weather pattern that sends Arctic air south some of the time.
Thus, if you're in Europe and seeing more snow than normal, it doesn't mean the Earth is ok.
Obama has protected the rights of female employees and the preferences of churches, at the expense of insurance companies.
It seems good to me.
Wolverines will be labeled as endangered, because global heating is destroying their habitat.
16 of the principal monks in Tibet were arrested by the Chinese and are being held incommunicado.
The US Copyright Office is tightly linked to the companies in the copyright lobby.
US citizens: call on your state legislators to resist ALEC's attempts to discourage renewable energy.
US citizens: tell Congress to cut military spending, not civilian needs.
Everyone: call on Maryland to revoke the charter of HSBC for participating in organized crime.
"Development" often means governments force inconvenient poor people off their land.
Lunatic Christians go far beyond denying evolution. The UK government accredits "Christian Education" schools which deny that fusion occurs in the Sun.
Australia has promised UNESCO to
protect
the Great Barrier Reef from ships carrying coal for export.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Great Barrier Reef is made of coral. CO2 emitted into the air dissolves into the ocean, making it more acidic, and at a certain point not far away, it will be too acidic for coral to make its exoskeleton.
Thus, while exporting coal might cause local damage to the Great Barrier Reef, burning the coal will destroy it all.
US CO2 emissions have fallen to the level of 1995, due to conservation and renewable energy sources.
This is an advance good, but if the US extracts lots of coal and gas for export, that will cancel it the advance.
A thug in Bahrain has been
sentenced
to 7 years in prison for shooting a protester.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
For thugs to face justice for their crimes is rare in any country, so seeing this occur in repressive Bahrain is a big (and positive) surprise. Unfortunately, this alone does not mean the repression of dissent in Bahrain has ended.
A proposed Turkish law would make abortion impossible for rural women through artificial impediments.
Gun companies license their trademarks to video games to pre-market their guns to teenagers.
US citizens: boycott Woodstock Foods for union-busting, and phone to complain.
How VISA supports ALEC (though the details are secret).
Malian soldiers filled in a well so that people can't tell if Touaregs they arrested were shot and dumped in it.
Mali needs an accommodation with Touaregs so as to keep the Islamist freaks down.
Even in the ice-free seas off Britain, Shell has several oil spills a month.
US agribusiness hires illegal immigrants so it can subject workers to horrible conditions.
The US should put a stop to this so that farm workers can have the same rights and protections as other workers. The reason we can easily afford it is that those workers get a tiny fraction of what we pay for food.
The dishonesty of theocratic Christianity is revealed in proposed laws that would teach "critical thinking" — but only of science that Christianity doesn't like.
What can we say about a church whose attitude is, "By hook or by crook"?
Religion's denial of evolution can kill people, since resistance to antibiotics is evolution in action. Let's teach critical thinking about religion.
The European Union is moving to implement a two-year ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.
It would be good to explain why two years.
A local government blocked the UK plans to set up a permanent nuclear waste disposal site.
The UK plans to privatize search and rescue, now performed by the navy and air force.
The private contractors will have to squeeze profits out of the staff, the equipment, and the people who need rescue. Imagine how they will ask people who need to be rescued, "Can you make it worth our while to go out? How many millions can you offer?"
Privatizing a government service is generally harmful unless it gives the public the benefit of buying in a competitive market.
Senators are grasping at straws to oppose Hagel's nomination.
One senator accused Hagel of "extreme views far to the left even of this administration". Obama, more right-wing than Nixon, is no Liberal, but right-wingers like to pretend he is.
It is too bad that Hagel won't admit that Bush's "troop surge" in Iraq was ineffective.
The EFF proposes improvements for the reform of the CFAA law.
Prime Minister Rajoy, who has inflicted poverty and repression on Spain, appears to have funneled secret funds to leaders of his right-wing party.
ACLU-PA
Files Suit On Behalf Of Woman Illegally Detained By ICE.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A 7-year-old withstood 10 hours of interrogation by New York thugs.
Schools should take action to stop bullying and protect other children, but handing possible bullies over to bigger bullies is not the way.
Respect for tradition can be an excuse to deny human rights.
Morocco remains repressive despite its new constitution.
Equifax has bought personal data about the employment of 1/3 of American workers from their employers.
Don't make the mistake of assuming mental illness implies a tendency towards violence.
The contracts that Internet users mostly accept without reading must be replaced with laws spelling out citizens' rights and responsibilities as Internet users.
Many models of security camera video recorder have very weak security and crackers can easily take remote control of them.
Please don't use the word "hacker" to mean "someone who breaks security". That's unfair to us hackers.
Besides, with these machines, no security-breaking is needed.
Clinton pretends that "Al Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb" is the same organization and even the same people that were in al Qa'ida in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
As has been explained elsewhere the two are separate organizations, with only some ideas and a name in common. They are both bad, because of those ideas, but they don't add up to a global threat.
In the US:
call
on Verizon not to kill free WiFi in restaurants
and other public places.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
PBS drone coverage was sponsored by a manufacturer of drones.
US citizens: sign
this
petition for legalizing unlocking of phones.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The business model of selling hardware cheap, then charging people as they use it, generally leads to trashing users' freedom. Rather than prop it up, a good government would aim to stop it.
Iraq has arrested a journalist for taking photos in a "restricted area" — on the street, it seems.
Maybe Iraq's government is imitating US practice.
The UN Human Rights Council says Israel could be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court if it does not abandon its colonies in occupied Palestinian territory.
The purpose of these colonies was, all along, to annex territory and prevent a real Palestinian state. Israel hardly denied that.
Just how easily the US could have left Aaron Swartz alone is demonstrated by how the US treated Piers Morgan, after he admitted manipulating stocks at the expense of his readers.
Everyone: support the boycott of SodaStream, which manufactures in an Israeli colony in Palestinian territory.
US citizens:
call
on the US Navy to stop deafening whales with sonar.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
giving illegal US immigrants a path to citizenship.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
In Guantanamo kangaroo courts, even topics that might come near torture are squelched.
US citizens: tell Obama, pay attention to the matter of Prosecutor Ortiz.
An example of misunderstanding the danger of computing idea patents is
this
petition, which is aimed at only part of the problem: the patents
that would probably not hold up in court.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A real solution needs to protect software developers and users from all computational patents.
Facebook graph search is an ideal tool for
sophisticated,
targeted phishing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This proposed constitutional amendment blocks corporations from claiming rights as humans, and also assures that campaign funding regulations are allowed.
Shell was found responsible for one oil spill in Nigeria, but not at fault in several others.
A victim of the "child porn" witch hunt condemns the idea of these accusations on principle.
The CEO of Whole Foods has views about his customers' health care that they might not like to support.
Forget 1984 and Conspiracy Stories, This is the Real Thing.
The US government wants to give the navy carte blanche to endanger whales.
Death of birds is used as an excuse to oppose wind turbines, but the big danger to birds is from pet cats.
Gatorade will stop containing dangerous brominated vegetable oil.
Drinking an artificial beverage, more than very occasionally, is an unnecessary risk. If it doesn't have sugar, which makes people fat, then it probably has diet sweeteners, which studies have found to confuse the brain (since some sugar receptors notice them but then they don't provide the calories that the brain was expecting). And they have lots of other additives, each of which might be safe or might be dangerous.
I rarely drink anything but water and tea.
AT&T is trying to use a previous bad FCC decision — that IP networks don't need to be regulated — as an excuse to argue that switching to Internet should mean total deregulation of telephone networks in the US.
Only someone who wants to be fooled would be fooled by this. However, government officials often have practical reasons to want to be fooled by a company.
Some UK retail companies have stopped selling neonicotinoid pesticides.
However, industrial use amounts to far more. It is crucial to stop that.
The Spanish economy is crashing due to austerity policies.
It is only what we must expect from austerity.
Due to rising seas, Bangladeshis who fled the shrinking island of Kutubdia will soon have to flee their new homes.
Millions of people will be driven into exile over the next few decades.
The Sundarbans, which is principal remaining habitat for tigers, is also being destroyed. At current rates, it will be gone in 50 years, but we know it is going to accelerate.
US prosecutors found Aaron Swartz a tempting target for exaggerated accusations, but hardly dare prosecute a giant bank for giant fraud.
This demonstrates the need to eliminate such large banks. We must make sure that no bank is so big that its failure would be important to anyone but its owners.
Guantanamo defense lawyers ask to be locked up for two nights to experience the prison.
Not allowing the prisoners to meet with their lawyers is one injustice among many in the Guantanamo kangaroo courts.
Big banks charge Americans millions to access their unemployment benefits.
As part of the War on Pain Sufferers, the US government wants warrantless access to people's prescription records. Oregon is trying to resist, with support from the ACLU.
The Catholic Church says a fetus is not a person if calling it one would cost the Church money.
Owning lots of guns is neither necessary nor sufficient for getting rid of tyranny.
The prosecution of Aaron Swartz and others who campaign to inform the public is part of a broader government plan to keep the public in the dark.
US citizens:
support
Ron Grijalva for Secretary of the Interior.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
I support him because Dennis Kucinich endorsed him. I trust Kucinich.
Nobody knows a reliably safe way to deal with waste from nuclear power stations.
This is made worse by the great probability that technological society will collapse in 40 years or so under the pressure of agricultural failures due to global heating. A globalized supply chain can be shut down by a localized problem almost anywhere.
Half the world's coal combustion is done in China.
Iranian journalists are being arrested for continuing relationships with journalist friends who have fled into exile.
The intervention in Mali has chased the Islamists out of the towns and dispersed them.
This means things are more or less back to the way they were a year or so ago, except that the ancient Islamic manuscripts and shrines of Timbuktu are lost forever. I hope other Muslims recognize that the extremists are enemies of them as well as enemies of everyone else.
If France gets out quickly, and if the Malian government (or what passes for one) makes some sort of autonomy deal with the Touaregs, things may remain more or less stable.
Israel is the first UN member ever to refuse to participate in a review of its human rights policies.
An unauthorized Israeli settler colony was built without permits on private Palestinian land.
When Palestinians build homes, schools, wells, or corrals on their own land without a permit, Israeli soldiers knock them down. What will they do to this colony? Probably find an excuse to authorize it.
Israel has put the Palestinian village of Beit Iksa under siege, not allowing people or supplies in, and not allowing people or garbage out.
This is to punish the inhabitants for protesting the theft of their land.
The Israeli government continues planning to forcibly relocate the Bedouin of the Negev.
Israeli draft resister Natan Blanc refuses to take an easy way out: he keeps refusing to be conscripted to enforce the occupation of Palestine and keeps getting jailed for it.
This is what Natan refuses to do.
Everywhere: support global rallies against violence against women on Feb 14.
The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy.
A competition to destroy Berlin's surveillance cameras.
When will someone try this in London?
State prosecutors wanted to give Aaron Swartz probation without a conviction, but US Attorney Ortiz decided to make an example of him.
The article also shows how Ortiz has tried to stretch the practice of civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture is inherently unjust, but this case takes the cake.
Some members of Congress have called for an investigation of why Aaron Swartz was prosecuted so heavily.
In the US, it remains legal to jailbreak a phone (but not a tablet). Unlocking from a phone carrier is what is prohibited.
Insurance companies charge lower premiums to rich drivers who have accidents than to poor drivers who don't.
Just the last year's increase in wealth of the 100 richest billionaires could lift everyone out of extreme poverty — with 3/4 left over.
A documentary investigates Obama's night raids in Afghanistan, and covering up when civilians were killed.
US citizens: Sea turtles in the US Atlantic may soon be wiped out
because higher temperatures will mean all are born female.
Call
for action to curb global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Earth's temperature has increased before, but the increase was slower, giving many species time to adapt.
In the past, information that was not strictly private was often hard to collect, and this obscurity was effectively a kind of privacy.
An article I won't link to (because of a coming paywall) points out that Facebook's graph search does not reduce privacy in the strict sense, but does attack the obscurity of much of the personal information on Facebook that isn't strictly private.
An even larger problem is that a state armed with digital surveillance will collect and index all the obscure personal information, totally eliminating obscurity. Internet surveillance will track all interpersonal communication, and face recognition will track all our physical movements, unless we organize politically to stop it.
The Internet makes it much easier to doubt religion, and helps people leave churches too.
However, in order for people to use the Internet safely to discuss leaving a powerful church, they need to be able to talk anonymously. This is one area in which the "real name" policies of Facebook and Google+ are dangerous.
I hesitate to predict that religion will disappear as a result. History has had lots of surprises and it could easily have more.
Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon together give employment to only 150,000 people. Meanwhile, computers are eliminating large numbers of jobs and threaten to eliminate more.
In other words, high tech will never replace the jobs that computers eliminate.
Thus, society faces two possible futures. In one, people's livelihood will not depend on working. In the other, the rich will drive the unemployed into constantly greater suffering.
When I go to a store in the US that has self-checkout machines, I refuse to use them. I go near them and shout, "If you use these machines, you're putting Americans out of work." Then I join the line for a human sales clerk.
Please do as I do! By sacrificing a few minutes, you can stop a greedy corporation from increasing unemployment.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for an end to civil
forfeiture. Also send mail through
this
page (which offers more information).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This problem developed as part of the War on Drugs, and can be seen as part of the harm that drug prohibition does to society.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The World Bank's support for lumber business has amounted to a handout for the rich.
The fairy tale that blames the poor for their poverty is promoted by the rich that spread poverty.
Although Islamist extremists threaten violence and tyranny in Muslim regions, "al Qa'ida" as a global actor is moribund.
The various groups that use the name "al Qa'ida" are effectively independent and operate locally with their own aims.
What were you afraid of in 2004? In October 2001? I was afraid that the people who hate our freedoms, Bush and co., would take them away — they did. Now Obama is hammering the nails in the coffin of several essential human rights.
The former US-supported dictator of Guatemala will be tried for genocide.
US citizens:
tell
KFC to stop buying paper from Asian Pulp and Paper.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the European Parliament to ban the pesticides that kill bees.
New Paper Finds that the IMF is Promoting Socially and Economically Harmful Policies Broadly Across Europe.
Strangely, the one exception seems to be the UK, where the IMF has asked for less austerity.
The international plutocracy resembles a colonial elite: around the world, it feels no loyalty to whichever country it occupies.
Racist citizens of Memphis lionize Confederate general Forrest, who
massacred
Black Union troops who had surrendered.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to pardon John Kiriakou.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
The Chagossians, exiled in the 1960s for a US naval base, will get another hearing in a UN court thanks to Mauritius.
UK construction firms conspired to blacklist environmental campaigners as well as union organizers and safety whistleblowers.
Will these companies be prosecuted?
Islamists in Mali, before leaving Timbuktu, burnt the library of ancient manuscripts.
Apparently they valued their own history not at all, and thought of it only as something westerners would mourn.
Right-wing adoration of the fetus has led to widespread persecution of
pregnant women, often imprisoning them, and in one case
killing a
woman through forced surgery that doctors warned would kill her.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Up to 30,000 drones could be watching the US by 2020.
Mainstream US media say Obama is too mean to Republicans.
Naturally Republicans call Obama a flaming Liberal — that is their standard verbal tactic. In the 70s and 80s they attributing to Liberals extremist views that hardly any real Liberals agreed with, so that the word "Liberal" seemed derogatory to many Americans. Then they turned it around and started calling anyone a "Liberal" who disagreed with them in any way. Even Obama, whose views are to the right of Nixon and would have been "moderate Republican" in the 70s.
Goldman Sachs profits greatly from massive crop failures through food speculation.
The US Committee for Public Safety — oops, Department of
Homeland Security — is
pushing
again for the CISPA law that was defeated last year.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The problem of vulnerability of infrastructure is real, and I am sure there are ways to improve their security without threatening ours. However, If there's one thing we can trust US "security" agencies to do, abusing their power is it.
The biggest threat to Americans on the Internet comes not from foreign governments but from the US government.
Berlusconi il Ducino
disclosed
his true allegiance with praise of Mussolini.
Many Iranian journalists have been
arrested,
perhaps on suspicion of cooperating with foreign journalists.
Obama's
war on journalism is leading is heading down the path which leads
there.
Journalists and other protesters for human rights were
arrested
in Baku, Azerbaijani.
If the Olympic games are held in Baku, at least they can't increase the
repression beyond what is already there.
City heat warms
large rural areas of North America.
This warming is not dangerous by itself, since it will not tend to
increase while the cities stay around the same size. By contrast, if
we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at the same rate,
global heating will increase with the CO2.
France is quickly "winning" the war in Mali, but it seems that the
Islamists are
melting
away rather than defeated.
Given that only a minority supports them, this could be sufficient, if
Malians can keep the lid on them without continuing outside support.
The drug trafficking cannot be stopped, and it would be idiotic to
try. However, ending the War on Drugs would make it cease to be a big
financial support for anyone.
Morsi launched a police crackdown over
riots
that combine football hooliganism with protests against him.
22 Nepalese journalists flee after
threats.
The hoax call radio hosts seem to have been
unofficially
punished with cancellation of their show.
I don't see anything wrong with that hoax call. It was not a threat
or an attack. The overreaction of the nurse who took the call is not
their fault.
Israeli soldiers keep
shooting
unarmed Palestinians dead.
Our Dumb
Democracy: Why the Untied States of Stupid Still Reins Supreem.
I presume the misspelling of "reigns supreme" is intentional.
Chinese dissidents have been arrested arbitrarily because of
a
government meeting.
Vietnam put
a dissident in a mental hospital. Putting dissidents in mental
hospitals was common practice in the Soviet Union.
Washington DC thugs simply ignore
almost
half of all rape accusations.
Comparing today's copyright war with the wars over
control
of printing presses.
Colombia's Supreme Court
rejected
the US-backed law that would have banned breaking digital handcuffs.
Please don't refer to digital handcuffs as "protection" measures —
that whitewashes an evil.
As freedom of speech is under threat across Europe, we must remember
that its central point is the
freedom
to express views most people don't like.
The FBI is
using
massive access to records of communications to
investigate many officials and many reporters for reporting on the
Stuxnet virus.
What we have come to is that investigation of secret US wars will have
to be done by journalists outside the US, as was formerly necessary
with the Soviet Union.
The FCC is still
planning
to let Murdoch buy more newspapers. Public pressure made it hold
off, but we have not won.
Uri Avnery comments on the Israeli election:
Netanyahu
suffered a grave loss to center/left; he may still be prime
minister, but he won't be as powerful as before.
Hungarian student protesters face punishment by
various
"authorities".
The US has made it illegal to
unlock
a phone from a phone network.
Even worse, this will weaken popular resistance if US phone networks
take steps against
network
neutrality, which the FCC has failed to defend for mobile phones.
The business model of selling hardware cheap, and making back the
difference by restricting usage, leads generally to trashing users'
freedom. Rather than prop it up with decisions like this, a good
government would make it cease to work, so as to put an end to it.
Comparing Obama's inauguration speech with
his
record.
The US right-wing calls even small signs of disagreement "liberal"
and shocking.
US citizens: call for a strong
Arms
Trade Treaty.
Horsemeat in UK "beef" burgers came from a
plant
in Poland.
With so many more channels of trade, globalization greatly increases the
opportunity for any sort of contamination, which might be with something
really dangerous.
Google's secret tracking of browsing on iThings could give millions
grounds
to sue.
I think, however, that having the telephone network know what pages
you visit is already too much surveillance; if a second company knows
too, that's just a second reason to reject those devices.
Since the US government routinely keeps many activities secret,
whistleblowers are the only restraint on what it does. No wonder
Obama is fighting a
War
on Whistleblowers.
Citizens of Barcelona
demand
an apology from Italy for Mussolini's bombing of that city.
Diesel fumes are
more
dangerous to health than gasoline engine fumes.
Carl Malamud is
looking
for recruits for Aaron's Army.
The US Senate made
minor
changes in filibuster rules, wasting the opportunity to stop
Republicans from systematically blocking its activities.
I don't advocate eliminating filibusters entirely. I supported the
campaign to make them take real work, so that senators would use them
only when they feel very strongly.
The Sierra Club has
endorsed
civil disobedience for the first time,
because global heating is an urgent threat.
Most of the euro-zone economy has agreed in principle to adopt a
financial
transaction tax.
Report:
Chemicals
Most Countries Ban Still Permitted in US Foods.
Fake ingredients are increasingly common in the US.
A US navy ship contemptuously entered protected Philippine waters,
disregarding a warning, then
ran
aground on a UNESCO-recognized coral reef.
The ship may be salvaged but I am not sure the coral reef is salvageable.
Progressives and progressive organizations must not overestimate
the value of a little
progressive
talk by Obama.
Obama has a history of
smearing
progressives that ask him to keep his promises.
If Obama does something progressive, I will say he acted rightly on
that occasion. I will say I was pleasantly surprised. But I won't
expect a lot of such surprises.
The UK government is
cutting
funds for school sports, thus cancelling out one of the few
benefits the London Olympics were supposed to provide to the UK
people.
The Olympic games leave in their wake surveillance, repression, and
public debt. In exchange, they give the people brief entertainment,
which most will only see on TV, just as if the games had been held
somewhere far away. It's a screw and a swindle, promoted by the
businesses that hope to gain from it.
If you live in Madrid, Istanbul or Tokyo, don't wait — organize
now to defeat your city's bid to hold the Olympic games.
The Stern review in 2006 expected long-term temperature rise of 2 or 3 C,
but the author says we are now
on track for 4 degrees C.
The Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government army
shot
protesters in Falluja who attacked an army road block that was set
up to block a protest march.
It is interesting that Muqtada al-Sadr supports the Sunnis who oppose
Al-Maliki. Al-Sadr always resisted hatred between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
"Job piracy" is
when
states offer special deals to companies to get them to move jobs from
other states.
Through this practice one state may gain a little while another loses
more. If the US government were not dominated by businesses, it would
prohibit states from competing for businesses with special deals.
Egyptian football fans rioted after
some
of them were sentenced to death on account of a previous football
riot, in which people were killed by a stampede against a locked gate.
Death sentences for human beings are unconscionable, but it sounds like
those sentenced this time did not commit murder.
US mainstream media exaggerate
how much the US is divided on abortion rights.
I think they generally exaggerate the strength of right wing views.
A paradigmatic example of the unfair right-wing criticism of Hugo Chavez:
condemning him for making an abandoned skyscraper
available
for poor people to live in.
I criticize some of Chavez's policies that violate human rights, but I
wholeheartedly support these policies. The US ought to follow his
example in helping the poor.
The ancient
manuscripts of Timbuktu must be protected from the
fighting in Mali.
The invasion of Iraq resulted in
destruction
of precious archaeological sites, which wiped out information of
civilization's beginnings, as well as the
looting
of the National Museum of Iraq because no one bothered to protect it.
Even banksters oppose the
UK
austerity policies.
I suppose that what they gain by taking from the poor, to give to the
rich, is less than what they lose by economic shrinkage.
The Pentagon
continues
to censor repetition of information already published,
calling it "secret".
The US is
lobbying
against enhancing privacy protection in the EU.
I have no sympathy for companies whose business model is based on
surveillance. They should set up a way people can pay anonymously for
services.
Aaron Tobey, who was held by airport thugs for having text from
the Fourth Amendment written on his chest,
will
be permitted to sue.
Yahoo has joined Google in
demanding
search warrants for handing over users' email.
US citizens:
call on
the EPA to halt use of the pesticides tied to the death of bees.
Russia's congress
voted to ban Gay Pride parades, calling them
"homosexual propaganda", as religious fanatics attacked protesters
with impunity.
Distributing information on homosexuality to minors is also banned, which
probably means all publication is censored since there would be no way
to deny the information to minors.
Americans
do not consider public libraries obsolete.
A penniless refugee in the UK was caught stealing food to eat. Then
the security guard attacked him, and he
fought
back, fearing injury.
Modern societies, dominated by the rich, consider a large fraction of
citizens superfluous, and refugees even more so. People who are
starving when surrounded by plentiful food have a right to take it and
eat it.
The US will now allow women into combat jobs, but the biggest violent threat
to women in the US military is
sexual assault.
Apple found
106
cases of child labor among its suppliers.
Since it was Apple itself that found them, I won't condemn Apple for them
directly. I suppose Apple did not specifically ask for these children
to be hired, or for the other abuses listed in the article.
However, the use of multiple layers of subcontractors invites
these abuses, and
more, by creating price pressure that impels them, and making it hard for
either the ultimate seller or unions or laws to prevent them.
Subcontracting is central to the evils of today's manufacturing.
Relating misogyny to other
structural
problems of our society.
The clash between
two
versions of Hinduism.
Women are not the only victims of conservative Hinduism.
Dalits
and tribals are frequently attacked, raped or killed.
Life expectancy for some categories of Americans — unprivileged
ones —
fell
from 1990 to 2008.
I would expect it has fallen further since then. Obamacare might help
counteract this, to the extent that it gets them some medical coverage.
US citizens:
sign
this letter calling on Obama to take firm action
to stop global heating.
Larry Breuer, who let banksters off the hook without prosecution, is
stepping down from the Department of Justice after a media
investigation showed
how
little he had tried.
This kid-gloves treatment of a big company contrasts with throwing the
book at hactivists.
US citizens:
call
on President Correa of Ecuador to protect an
indigenous people in Amazonia from oil extraction.
A UK MP commented on the irony of oppression of Palestinians by Jews
who had fled Nazi oppression, and now faces
accusations
of "anti-semitism".
I think he erred in speaking of what "the Jews" did, as if "the Jews"
were a single corporate body rather than an ethnic group of millions
of people. Notwithstanding that, his statement is basically accurate.
Since he says he did not mean it as criticism of all Jews, I think it
would be a mistake to let that locution distract attention from the
valid point.
If the EU does not destroy its environmental protection laws, UK
conservatives
threaten
to take Britain out of the EU so they can destroy
environmental protection locally.
User
rejection pushed TechCrunch to stop making people use Facebook
to post comments.
This is a small victory. Nasty comments are unpleasant and add
nothing, but surveillance a la Facebook is worse than merely
unpleasant.
The complex
market situation of quinoa.
Thousands protested in Egypt against Morsi, and
thugs
fought with them all day.
The new oppression of today's capitalism is making Marxism respectable
again, now that people have
ceased
to associate it with Communist dictatorship.
Obama is still pushing the
REAL-ID
plan for more information about Americans, and may be threatening
to crack down on states a few at a time.
John Kiriakou was sentenced to
2.5
years in prison.
Supposedly this is for mentioning another CIA agent's name to a
reporter who did not print it. Really it's for exposing CIA torture,
and demonstrates how they can find charges to lay against anyone
when they try hard enough.
This is one answer to the question, "Why should you mind surveillance
if you didn't do anything wrong?"
French and Malian troops are
advancing
rapidly.
This could mean that the rebels are being beaten, but they could be
dispersing following usual guerrilla tactics. If the government
recaptures the main towns, only time will tell how much that really
means.
Mali was not entirely tranquil in the past. Demanding that it become
entirely tranquil in the future may be too strict a standard for
judging the results.
The Greek government claims to have "conscripted" striking metro workers
and says it
will
imprison them if they do not resume work.
I hope that the workers have the courage to go to prison rather than
surrender.
'Shameful':
UNESCO Warns Australia Over Destruction of Great Barrier Reef.
US citizens:
sign
this letter to Obama about global heating.
The UN has
launched
its investigation into the US and Israeli drone
attacks.
Mali's army has
killed
Touareg prisoners in several places.
In addition to being wrong, this will
obstruct
a diplomatic agreement with the Touaregs who want to negotiate.
Andrew Auernheimer faces
the
prison term Aaron Swartz might have got.
We should campaign for him as well as for Swartz.
It is regrettable that the article uses the words
"hacking"
and "hacker" to refer to breaking computer security.
The EU's carbon emission trading system is failing because the
price
of emissions is so low that it does not encourage conservation.
To result in conservation, the amount of emissions permitted must
decrease fast enough to keep the price up.
Iran goes to
extreme
lengths to discredit exiled journalists.
This includes
fake
Facebook accounts, and threats against their families.
By having an office in Ireland, Twitter has exposed itself to
EU
libel laws and to outright
censorship
as well.
The issue affects Facebook and Google+ also, but
you
should not use Facebook or
Google+
for other reasons.
Discount "beef" hamburger meat is not regular chopped meat at a lower
price. It purpose-made with
lots
of fat and additives.
Commonly used pesticides, used in the normal way, are
very
toxic to frogs.
1/3 of the fish near part of the English coast have ingested
plastic
microbeads. These don't endanger humans, but being so prevalent,
could stunt the growth of the fish.
Report:
'Big Food' Infiltrates Nutrition Association.
Previous natural episodes of global heating raised sea level by
30
feet, and perhaps more.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was warned in 2007 of the danger of
the sort of meltdown that happened at Fukushima, but
did
not act to protect US nuclear plants.
Deactivating silo-based nuclear missiles is a way to
reduce
the chance of accidental nuclear war.
In the US, conservative Christians who reject abortion have
lots
single mothers. It looks like their anti-abortionism backfires
against their "family values".
If this increases US population growth, it is
very bad for the
world as a whole, since Americans consume so much.
Mercenary companies, also known as military contractors,
cut off
accountability for both money and conduct of war.
Drug research is not working on new antibiotics, so resistant bacteria
could kill
large numbers of people.
Building a new highway through a neighborhood can cause
substantial
amounts of lung disease for children growing up there.
It follows that electric cars have yet another advantage,
and so does good mass transit.
Calculations suggest airlines
made
over a billion dollars collecting surcharges that far more than
covered the EU's tax on their fuel — which they ultimately got
out of paying.
The crucial point is that airlines would have no trouble if they did
indeed have to pay this tax. Shame on the EU for backing down, and
double shame on US politicians for opposing a tax that is obviously
necessary.
South African farm workers say,
don't
buy wine or fruit from South Africa.
The government of Laos says it doesn't know what happened to dissident
Sombath Somphone after he was
stopped
by thugs at a checkpoint.
Mugabe's land reform in Zimbabwe was ultimately a
success.
Kenyan journalists were
attacked
by thugs who stole their cameras. They dared cover a riot.
What George Orwell would say about UK plans for
secret
evidence and universal Internet surveillance.
Steve Jobs
threatened
Palm with a patent suit to pressure Palm into
an illegal pact
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
I like imagining a world in which the US government enforced laws vigorously against the powerful; this could have landed Jobs in prison.
The UN will investigate US drone attacks.
Why the US 2001 military force authorization does not cover Mali.
The US ISPs' plan to punish users for sharing may wipe out free WiFi networks in the US.
Obama's "new rules" for remote assassination are supposed to count as "due process of law". It appears that neither the public nor senators will be allowed to see these rules, so they signify nothing but spin. The secret rule might say "Chant eeny-meeny-miny-mo... as you proceed around a circle of cards representing dissidents, and where the chant ends, kill that one." The secret rule might say, "In Mali, kill the target with light skin."
But even if we could see the rules, and judge how much they try to be legitimate, it is hard to justify condemning people to death without a trial not on a battlefield.
In Obama's war on medical marijuana, state-licensed growers are
imprisoned
for having guns to protect their crops from theft.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Note the creative twisting of the law involved in saying that having armed guards on the premises solely to prevent crime consists of "using a gun" in the drug sales. It reminds me of the charges against Aaron Swartz. It is mean-spirited of Obama even to try to prosecute these people, using them as pawns in a jurisdictional squabble.
Maybe the growers would do better in court if they hired off-duty state thugs to keep thieves away. Federal prosecutors might have a harder time convicting the growers for that; it is fun to imagine the conversation with the thug on the witness stand. "Why were you present at the store with your gun?" "As a police officer I always carry my gun when on private duty." "What duty were you hired to do there?" "Discourage breaking of state laws at the store."
The Pentagon (and its contractors) says cuts in military spending will be unbearable, but they can't keep track of what they are spending now, so how could they know?
Facebook's graph search puts many users in danger.
Keep in mind that Facebook has access to this information regardless of privacy settings, and (thanks to the PAT RIOT Act) Big Brother has access to all of it too.
Morocco plans to repeal the law that forces rape victims to marry their rapists.
The fault is in the patriarchal idea behind the law, which treats unmarried women as property of their families.
The founder of photographyisnotacrime.com was attacked and choked by security guards, for taking photos.
Did the vegetarian Facebook user really "like" MacDonalds, or did Facebook make it up? In fact, Facebook invents phony "likes", and worse, falsely suggests people liked specific text that they had never even seen.
Lessig's rebuke to prosecutor Ortiz.
An Afghan girl who secured conviction of her rapist was sent to a shelter. The employees there raped her.
Bangladesh's annual flooding pattern, the basis for its system of agriculture, has changed with devastating results.
If out-of-season floods continue, it will probably mean that global heating is at work.
A Thai editor was sentenced to
10 years in prison for an article
criticizing a fictional character considered to stand for the king.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The participants in sit-ins faced small fines, but modern equivalents, participants in virtual Anonymous web protests, face felony charges.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to give high priority to curbing global heating
in the State of the Union address.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
CREF members: file a motion to divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Greenpeace says giant fossil fuel projects will increase world emissions by 20%.
As a result partly of global heating, mackerel fishing has increased to an unsustainable level.
Obama must now confront the decision about the planet-roaster pipeline. But he doesn't want to confront it soon.
Republicans criticize Obama for not offering them any concessions in his inaugural speech.
I don't know whether it's true — I had no reason to read the speech — but if so, it's a step in the right direction. Today's Republicans see compromise as a sign of weakness.
Pregnant women in the US face the danger of arrest and prosecution, and even death, in the name of protecting fetuses.
I think it would in principle be legitimate to penalize actions likely to cause a baby to be born with serious defects. However, I don't see any need for such a law in practice. Very few women will intentionally try to have damaged babies, so there is no point prohibiting that.
Perhaps the state should do more to encourage abortion of fetuses that are clearly going to have irreparable birth defects. However, there is no need to get punitive about it.
I would expect that the main way that women do damage their babies is by using tobacco or alcohol; but they mainly do this because they can't stop, and the way to reduce this is with help, not threats.
In terms of international law, Palestine has been recognized as a state. The fact that it does not have control of its territory makes a big difference in practice but doesn't negate its recognition.
Hagel is under pressure to confirm the Iraq war "surge" myth.
Don't blame vegetarians for all the demand for soybeans. Most of the demand comes from feeding cattle.
Shoshana Hebshi will sue various governments for arresting her based on her name.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to give priority to fighting voter suppression
and disenfranchisement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
It looks like the Mega cyber-locker service will have two grave flaws.
The encryption and decryption are done inside Mega's server. That means the server can save a copy of the unencrypted file without telling you. If you want encryption to give you security, you must do the encryption yourself, on your own computer, with a free/libre program. And later, do the decryption likewise.
A second apparent problem is that the service will require you to run nontrivial Javascript code.
Either of these problems means you shouldn't touch it.
Ethiopia is forcing a million families to move into villages, and turning their land over to foreign companies.
The UK's standard for undercover thugs is not really the same as James Bond. It's much worse.
Dropping olivine dust in the ocean could absorb CO2 and counter acidification. But it creates another danger to the oceans: it could change the balance of species. It would be worth trying as an emergency measure, but we should take action now to reduce CO2 emissions so we don't get there.
Background to the war in Mali.
The Vatican hides a billion dollars worth of real estate behind multiple layers of holding companies. They got the money from Mussolini.
Chinese workers took their bosses prisoner in the factory to protest nasty work rules.
A Japanese minister called on old people to "hurry up and die" to save the state money.
US Republicans have the same idea when they propose cutting Social
Security and Medicare, and with their
death
panel of governors who blocked expansion of Medicaid in their states.
The ACLU agrees that
not
only children deserve privacy on the Internet.
Criminalizing minor school misbehavior in parts of the US has produced
a school-to-prison
pipeline.
More about the danger caused by
having
thugs in a school.
Obama talks about ending "perpetual war", but he intends to end only
the
most overt aspects of it.
How MIT started the
prosecution
of Aaron Swartz.
I see, behind these events, the strains caused by the restriction of
access to scientific literature, practiced by JSTOR on behalf of the
journal publishers.
What we need is to implement
free
scientific publishing.
Ex-Army
Officer Accuses CIA of Obstructing Pre-9/11 Intelligence-Gathering.
Barring domestic spying by the military is a good policy, and it seems
to me that the fault was the failure to fully and properly transfer
the operation to an appropriate civilian police agency such as the FBI.
UN Report
Finds Torture, Disappearances in Afghan Jails.
The Extremist
Cult of Capitalism.
I call it the worship of the invisible hand.
Martin
Luther King Was a Radical, Not a Saint.
Banning smoking in public places in England led to a
20%
decrease in asthma attacks in children, evidently because the smoke
caused attacks before.
The government of Turkey demands return of ancient artifacts while
destroying
archaeological sites.
I don't think there is any importance in returning artifacts to
countries from which they were removed long ago. What is important is
to properly excavate sites so that humanity gets the information they
contain about human past.
Five crucial decisions with which Obama will
tackle
global heating or surrender to it.
Ahmed al-Khabaz reported a security flaw in his school's student information
system, and when he later tried to verify they had fixed it, he was
threatened
with prosecution and expelled from school.
If it were in the US, I would expect him to sue the school.
The push to reverse the Corporations United decision is
gaining
strength.
Compared with 17 other industrialised countries, Americans' health is
worst.
US citizens:
submit a comment against fracking to export natural gas.
US citizens:
support
the campaign to prevent repeats of the prosecution of Aaron Swartz.
The Australian heat wave has set a record for
breadth
and intensity combined.
Remember Martin Luther King's
condemnation
of US militarism.
7
Ways for Obama to Really Earn that Nobel Peace Prize.
15
human rights lawyers were arrested in Turkey.
The European Food Safety Authority concluded that imidacloprid (a
neonicotinoid pesticide) should be used only on
crops
that honeybees don't visit.
Other bees are important too; I am not sure whether there are any crops
that other bees visit but honeybees don't.
The capture of the Algerian natural gas plant may have been planned
before French intervention in Mali.
Aaron
Swartz: cannon fodder in the war on internet freedom.
Global heating contributes to the desperation of the hungry in Saharan
Africa, where the current choice of desperate move is
Islamic
fanaticism.
In such an unstable situation, any local change has a chance of
provoking violence there or in related areas. Gaddafi's defeat in
Libya had such an effect in Mali, but if he had defeated the rebels,
that could have provoked violence somewhere else. And since the
source of the instability is various kinds of pressures that increase
on their own, trying to keep everything from changing won't avoid
violence either.
However, on the longer term, reducing the pressures could have
a positive effect.
The Malian army has
tortured
and killed unarmed prisoners from northern ethnic groups.
The Islamists also have carried out grave crimes against human rights.
In a city likely to be attacked at any time, arresting suspected
infiltrators is justified, but that should not mean killing them.
Obama is developing new rules for assassination, but
CIA
attacks in Pakistan will not be covered by them.
If these new rules are secret, or involve killings away from battlefields,
they will remain unacceptable.
Obama's inauguration ceremony invited businesses to make
large donations.
I'm sure most of the "donors" expect they are buying something more than
just tickets to a ceremony.
The UK government is keeping papers secret about striking workers that
believe they were falsely accused in 1972 for
political reasons.
I wonder why Labour governments did not reinvestigate and/or publish
these papers.
U.N.
report finds torture of Afghan detainees, secret sites.
Bahrain
Police Attack on Woman Stirs Anger.
China:
Google's Quiet Withdrawal of Censorship Warning Raises Questions.
US citizens:
tell
Obama to stop Shell's Arctic drilling.
An MIT student was threatened with a lawsuit by Microsoft, and
not
supported at all by MIT.
The UK's horsemeat scandal shows that EU-proposed further cutbacks in
food inspection will open the door to
pathogens
in meat.
The old British idea of
fair play is dead; the approach now is to get away
with as much as you can.
Thus, letting UK business "police itself" is simply a way to let
business get away with shafting people, in between occasional
scandals. The
LIBOR scandal
shows where that leads.
Why
internet music "sale" is a bad deal.
A Venezuelan oppositionist was accused of "terrorism" and his home was
raided because he allegedly
claimed on Twitter that Chavez is in a coma.
They seized his computers, apparently on the pretext of looking for
proof he was the one who made the tweet. A little more,
in Spanish,
confirming he was accused of terrorism.
Whatever he said about Chavez, and whether it is true or not, saying
it is not terrorism. If he presents it as fact and has no evidence,
that could be dishonest; but if he presents it as a suspicion, that
cannot be called dishonest.
Either way, it is no grounds for the state to seize his computers.
Scientists should
firmly
reject restrictive scientific publishing, and not back down.
Why I call it
free
scientific publishing and not "open access".
Islamists in Mali took advantage of an opportunity created by
decades
of bad governance.
The national borders of Africa were drawn by colonial powers a hundred
years ago and in many cases have no relation to the ethnic groups.
Perhaps it doesn't make sense for the north of Mali to be in the same
country as the south.
That doesn't change the validity of supporting Malians against the
Islamists, but it could make a big difference to establishing peace
afterwards.
The Yasuni forest may have the most unknown species of any region
in the world, and Ecuador wants to preserve it, but there is
pressure
to extract oil and destroy it.
To avoid global heating disaster, we need to leave
4/5 of the world's fossil
fuels in the ground. There is no reason that shouldn't include
what's under the Yasuni forest.
Adulteration of cheap "beef" burgers in the UK was caused by an
economic system in which the supermarkets pressure producers into
cutting corners, together with the
rising
world price of beef.
The rising price of beef has good effects. It will encourage many
people to eat less meat, and thus help their health, as well as reduce
their burden on the Earth. Unfortunately, if the price is rising
because more people want to eat beef, then production is probably
going up, so the total burden is increasing.
We need to stop feeding cattle on farmed crops and limit them to the number
that can be supported eating grass.
Israeli officials accuse the US of
interfering
in the Israeli election.
This is news because it is "man bites dog". Everyone is used to
Israeli interference in US elections.
Florida has tried to reconcile religion in schools with the US constitution
by letting students choose any sort of religion.
Satanists
celebrate the new opportunity to proselytize.
I think Satanists ought to have the same rights as any other religious group,
but I am not sure many students would invite them.
US citizens: sign this
petition to oppose Republican attempts to rig the electoral
college via rigged congressional districts.
Rich executives that want to cut Social Security are
connected
with companies that lobby to preserve their own government benefits.
Note the exaggeration in their claims about problems in Social Security.
Retirement in your 60s hardly means a 25-year career.
However, perhaps we need to make a 25-year career normal,
if technology means there will be no jobs for a large fraction of
the working-age population.
US unemployment figures don't count the people who would wish they
could have a job but have given up on looking for one. Paradoxically,
shortened
unemployment benefits cause people to give up sooner and thus
reduces the official unemployment rate, without really improving the
employment situation.
Although a trillion-dollar coin is a gimmick, it would also return to
the practice of
creating money
without boosting the income of the banks.
The prosecutor of Aaron Schwartz tried to justify herself. This shows
what
she said and why it is bogus.
A 5-year-old was called a "terrorist" by her kindergarten for threatening
to shoot another child with a
bubble
gun.
If the school officials had misunderstood what she said, this would be
a mere error, and it would have been corrected by now. Clearly they
really believe that threatening to shoot a soap bubble at someone must
be punished.
EMI is taking down videos of I Have a Dream
on
behalf of Martin Luther King's heirs.
A Thai political organizer was sentenced to prison for criticizing
a
man he said he did not dare identify.
The judge decided that could only mean the king, and I think he is
right about that. But it's ironic that the decision effectively
acknowledges that the king practices censorship that Thais hate. I
wonder if reporting of this court decision will be punished as
criticism of the king.
Recognition is spreading that the Keystone XL pipeline must be stopped
precisely because it would lead to
extraction
of lots of tar sands oil.
A right-wing US adviser
openly
called for the US to back Arab tyrants,
and his arguments are logically invalid.
The US sometimes supports freedom and democracy around the world.
However, it often supports tyrants. How should we respond?
I think we should condemn the US when it works against freedom and
democracy, and praise the US when it works for them. The US often
does wrong, but that doesn't mean it's automatically wrong even when
it does right.
Obama continues to attack
state-licensed
medical marijuana dispensers.
US citizens:
call
on GM to meet with and compensate its disabled Colombian workers.
The US has blocked air and sea smuggling of drugs from South America,
so shipments now come by land, which is
causing
violence in Guatemala.
Oxfam says that the wealth of billionaires is
the
other side of world poverty.
Amazon's
complex
financial arrangements bypass UK credit card consumer protection.
Feminism
shouldn't be about telling trans women they're not female enough.
Aaron Was a
Criminal and So Are You.
Water
Grabbing to Follow Food Speculation in Africa?
Given someone's genetic sequence, it is
easy
to find out the person's identity.
Ministers of EU countries give targeted advertising priority over
Internet
users' privacy.
Neelie Kroes yields to operator pressure and
sacrifices
network neutrality.
The proposed "right to be forgotten" could be a good thing when
applied to data in business data bases about people, but must not
apply to your diary or your blog.
Kim Dotcom makes his new cyberlocker site an opportunity to
condemn
the War on Sharing.
It is a mistake to use the term "cloud computing", because it means
too many different things. "Cloud storage", by contrast, is concrete
enough to be a meaningful term — and it is safe to use,
provided you encrypt the data on your own computer with free
software before you upload it, and decrypt it on your own computer
with free software after you download it.
Use encryption performed on a remote server or with nonfree software
is best described as "clown storage".
Obama announced a review of
Shell's
Arctic drilling plans.
This is a step that might lead to a victory, but we have to keep the
pressure on.
The UK has adopted the James Bond standard of acceptable
police
conduct.
The UK government stubbornly refuses to stimulate the economy with
investment
in renewable energy.
US prison:
back
to the 19th century for the mentally ill.
We can trace this to two causes. One is financial pressure on
prisons, due to the US practice of imprisoning too many people,
squeezing against the fact that the rich have more or less escaped
from taxation.
Extraction
of money from privatized prisons may contribute too.
The other is a vindictive attitude toward prisoners, which has (among
other things) got rid of rehabilitation as a serious goal in prison.
Sure, prisoners are being punished, and for some fraction of them
there is good reason for this. (Many are merely
victims
of the War on Drugs.) However, imprisoning someone should not mean
seeking to inflict the worst possible suffering. Such cruelty is not
necessary to deter others, totally irrelevant to keeping a dangerous
person away from us, and not the best way to reduce recidivism when
the prisoner is released. It could well have the opposite effect.
The TSA is
getting
rid of X-ray scanners, but not because of the danger that a
software mishap could expose a person to an
overdose
of radiation.
Fish loaded
with radioactive cesium show that fallout from the Fukushima
meltdown continues seeping into the ocean.
After the Supreme Court limited use of GPS trackers without a warrant,
the FBI is performing massive surveillance in other ways and
keeping
the methods secret.
Algerian troops stormed the gas installation that had been taken over
by Islamists, and
freed
most of the hostages.
Some hostages were killed. I don't blame the soldiers for that;
perfection is too much to ask.
The UK government doesn't sell selling privileged access to ministers,
no siree! For companies that are big enough, it
gives
away privileged access.
In Canada and Russia, killing wolves is a ploy to
disguise
harm humans are doing to wildlife.
A large part of the Amazon rain forest has had a lack of rain for 8 years,
due
apparently to global heating. Large trees are dying.
Austerity typically includes firing government inspectors for various
sorts of things. The UK has cut back on food inspection, and thus
invited a
food
scandal.
The Karzai regime tortures prisoners, so NATO has
stopped
handing over prisoners to his government.
What, however, will NATO do when it pulls out?
Although US unemployment has fallen just a little,
luxury
car sales are way up.
The US trained units of the Malian army, which
defected
to the Islamist rebels.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to listen to common sense rather than to the NRA.
US citizens: sign
this
petition against genetically modified salmon.
Senator Sanders will introduce a bill for
strong
measures against global heating.
Congressional staff (or congresscritters)
use
office computers for unauthorized downloads.
When the congresscritters start doing this, we may get sensible
copyright laws.
After studies connecting bisphenol A with cancer, diabetes and other
illnesses, industry began replacing it with bisphenol S. That
might
be dangerous too.
US citizens: sign
this
petition against allowing fracking near national parks.
Ralph Nader's
open
letter to the CEO of Walmart.
The ACLU criticizes the
NRA/Obama
proposal to put additional armed thugs in schools.
The NRA focuses on protecting the
gun
rights of accused criminals, accused terrorists, etc.
On one point, I probably agree with the NRA. Forfeiture in the
absence of conviction is a prima facie injustice, so if the NRA
opposed that even for twisted reasons, it was a good thing
US-made Internet surveillance equipment has been
sold
to oppressive regimes.
If the NSA's equipment for
copying
all Internet traffic was made in the US, then it is another example.
A class teaching Chinese people to use the Internet for making
complaints was raided by thugs, and the
teacher
and computers were taken away.
A group
of rich CEOs are pushing cuts in Social Security.
Naturally, their proposed solution to any problem is to hurt everyone
who's not rich. Merely being rich does not imply someone is an evil
greedy jerk, but these people are evil greedy jerks.
The prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to death had earlier
prosecuted
a man for translating al Qa'ida statements.
In other words, she chose to spearhead a campaign against freedom of
speech in the US.
Many UK women activists are suing because
thug
infiltrators formed long-term sexual relationships with them.
Since 8 out of 9 known thug infiltrators did this, there appears to
have been a general policy to encourage them to do so. The thugs
dropped their lovers them without warning when their missions were
over.
Can anyone tell which accusations are going to be heard in the
special secret court?
A mass protest movement in Iraq is aimed at
al-Maliki's
corruption.
Some secularist Syrian rebels say
they
consider the Islamist rebels an enemy.
A protest march for eliminating corruption from Pakistan's elections
did
not achieve much.
Bradley Manning will not be allowed to present
a
defense based on public interest or his motives.
The judge works for the military command, including Obama, and knows
his career depends on making the decisions that he command structure
wants. The deck is stacked against Manning.
17% of the donations to Super PACs were routed through
shell
companies, and their real origin is unknown.
Treating farm animals humanely will also
improve
people's health and help protect the environment.
Many US restaurants offer
large
portions of fatty foods.
US citizens: sign
the ACLU's petition for the Senate Intelligence
Committee to release its report on CIA torture.
Rep. Lofgren proposes to
modify
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
so it could not be used to prosecute people that violate web site
or Internet gateway terms of service.
The NRA, with help from ALEC, has passed bizarre laws
banning
some states from destroying guns obtained by "buy-back" programs.
In Guatemala,
diversion
of land to making biofuel for the US is causing a food shortage.
Population growth would eventually lead to a similar food shortage
— to prevent that, all possible must be done to facilitate and
encourage contraception and abortion — but that is no excuse for
causing an artificial food shortage now.
Internet-age copyright enforcement directly
harms
writers and artists who are not stars.
The article is partly based on assumptions that I disagree with. For
instance, it uses the adversary's propaganda term "piracy". I do not
believe that our freedom to share published works can legitimately be
limited even if non-star artists did stand to gain. Nonetheless, its
point is interesting.
A famous American football player who committed suicide suffered from brain
damage probably caused by
shock
to the head while playing football.
He's not the only one: thousands of former players are suing the league.
I don't know whether the league did anything dishonest, but it is clear
that rules must be changed to protect players in the future.
The CIA torture films that
won't
be made.
Another Kuwaiti was given
two
years in prison for criticizing the ruler.
Some of his tweets are very hostile, and I understand why the emir
feels insulted. However, insults must not be a crime.
Kuwait is not the only country that criminalizes insults. I wonder
if these tweets would be a
crime in the UK too.
A US judge
refused
to look at secret evidence that the US government wanted to show
him and take away.
He's hearing the case of a woman who is suing to get off the secret
no-fly list.
The central Church of Scientology is pushing harder to raise funds
from its local branches, and this is
creating
resentment among long-term participants.
There is so much irony here — for instance, in the idea of
criticizing that church for "changing the original teachings of L. Ron
Hubbard", as if those teachings were anything but an experiment in
exploiting gullibility.
Many churches violate IRS rules for tax-exempt organizations.
Why shouldn't they have to be audited and report their dealings
just as the FSF is required to do?
A US soldier will be punished for the crime of
pissing
on the corpse of a Taliban fighter.
It makes practical sense to order soldiers not to do that, and punish
those who disobey. But it is perverse to punish this and leave
torturers scot-free.
Kucinich will become a
commentator
on Fox News.
This has the potential to do a lot of good, but could also backfire.
So I won't fault him for trying.
Obama has decided to push for
real
gun control. Most of this plan is good, and it is vital to propose
more than the opposition will eagerly accept.
One bad element is the
plan
to put more thugs in schools, supposedly to curb gun violence.
This loony NRA idea would do more harm than good. Shootings in
schools are rare, but
thugs put students in a lot of danger.
African Islamists kill civilians intentionally
for
revenge. Even though Obama's assassination policy is not as bad as
this, we must not make al Qa'ida our standard of comparison for judging
the US.
Facebook's new search interface enables users to poke at other users' data
in new
ways. The ethical import is that it shows how Facebook itself, and
the US government (which can get Facebook's entire collection of personal
data without a court order), have always been able to poke around in it.
The US "Justice" Department is
keeping
its legal opinions on GPS tracking secret.
The imprisonment of John Kiriakou, torture whistleblower, is focusing
opposition to
Obama's
protection of torturers.
Kiriakou and Swartz were both prosecuted based on laws used as excuses
to get someone.
Obama has
refused
for years to show Senator Wyden the secret US
assassination guidelines, which Obama claims are meant to constitute
"due process of law".
Coca Cola says that its false health claims for sugar water with vitamins
are not
illegal because no reasonable person would ever believe them.
In other words, Coca Cola says, "Don't believe anything we say."
You should not buy any Coca Cola Company products, even water without
sugar and vitamins, as part of the
boycott in response to the killing
of union organizers in Colombia and Guatemala.
The IMF helps bury awareness that
government
borrowing can be a good thing.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to reform the CFAA, which makes it
easy to prosecute people for violating arbitrary "terms of service".
The popularity of quinoa in the US and Europe has made it so
expensive that
poor
people in Peru can no longer afford it.
This is a common kind of problem: when the wealthier countries twitch,
they can bounce poor people in other countries onto the floor.
The only solution is for them to establish governments that will make
sure that their economic growth benefits everyone.
Iran plans to ban single women from travelling without their male
guardian's permission.
Why did the
Secret
Service get involved in investigating Aaron Swartz?
Mark Lynas used to make irrational fear arguments against GMO foods.
Now he recognizes his own objections were irrational, so he supports
GMOs and
ignores
the rational objections.
The persecution of Aaron Swartz was an instance
of a general US pattern of
twisting
the law to punish dissidents
while giant acts of corruption and tyranny go ignored.
Liberating
articles from JSTOR in honor of Aaron Swartz.
Eight
Things I Miss About the Cold War.
An Israeli high school principal
may
lose his job because he published
an article supporting left-wing parties that sometimes advocate peace.
Refuting
the myth that Dubya's "surge" in Iraq was a success.
The real success was recruiting Iraqi Sunnis that didn't want a civil war.
Senator Wyden demands that Brennan show senators the
assassination
rules that Brennen drew up for Obama.
That is a step forward, but I think they ought to publish the rules
by which they decide who to kill.
Governor O'Malley of Maryland will try to
abolish
the death penalty.
Destruction of dunes by Hurricane Sandy has left much of the East Coast
vulnerable
to flooding from ordinary storms.
Reducing
soot
emissions from engines could buy time against global heating.
Interviews
with Malian refugees who fled from the Islamists' Shari'a law.
Musicians also
welcome
French intervention.
The Touareg revolt in Mali was fueled by former Gaddafi soldiers who
fled Libya. There are some who claim this proves that Western
intervention in Libya was harmful or wrong. I don't think so. Every
action in life has many consequences, and in every case some of them
are bad. Libyans are mostly glad that Gaddafi is gone.
Besides which, the Toureg revolt did not create the Islamists.
Rather, they took advantage of the resulting power vacuum.
This information has the potential to be an overall success as long as
most Malians view it as helping them throw off oppression. If they
come to think of it as killing them for no reason, then they will
resent it and eventually kick it out.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed student Samir Awad
as
he was running away from them.
Pakistan's prime minister has been arrested on
corruption
charges.
Indian reactionaries cite rape as the reason to "protect women" by
oppressing
them with restrictions — in effect, an outgrowth
of blaming the victim.
This irrational reversal is not limited to India. Some European
countries "protect" prostitutes by
arresting
their
customers, and most of the US "protects" prostitutes by arresting
them. All of which is designed to make these women do
something they dislike more than prostitution.
French President Hollande
recognized
the desperate urgency of cutting CO2 emissions.
Explaining the intervention in Mali, and why Malians support it, and
how
it could go wrong.
Cuba has allowed Cubans to
travel
freely abroad.
The UK government is trying to eviscerate EU regulations on Arctic oil
drilling on the grounds that
oil
spills "may be effectively dispersed"
on their own.
I am sure that happens occasionally, especially for small spills, but
in order for this to be a valid reason, it would have to occur
always and reliably. To be persuaded by this argument,
someone would have to overlook that flaw.
Who could overlook such an obvious flaw? Either an idiot, or someone
who has a reason to act like an idiot. I don't think idiots do these
negotiations.
The PDF protest in honor of Aaron Swartz involves
posting
paywalled journal articles on Twitter.
The contractors working to clean up fallout from areas near Fukushima
have
not been taught what to do.
As a result they often either move the fallout around
or expose themselves to it.
The neoliberal economic faith has led to disaster, but is still invoked
to justify
rewarding
those responsible for the disaster.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to pass gun control to limit massacres.
Planned Parenthood will no longer describe itself as
"pro-choice".
I think it was a short-sighted mistake to advocate "choice" rather
than "abortion rights". In the long term, that position is timid,
and that grants undeserved validity to the opposition.
I am not pro-choice, I am pro-abortion-rights. But even beyond that,
I am in favor of abortion. An unintended pregnancy is regrettable; an
abortion is not.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to take action to stop global heating.
A former CIA agent asks why the CIA cooperated with Zero Dark Thirty
while
keeping the real photos of dead Osama bin Laden secret.
I think I can answer her question. This movie depicts and justifies
US government crimes, but since it is fiction, passing as journalism
only when that suits it, it is not proof of anything. The photos of
bin Laden might be evidence of some US government crimes.
Islamist fanatics in Mali launched another front with a
surprise
attack closer to the capital.
The UK will take a small step towards freedom of speech, decriminalizing
vague general insults
but
not specifically targeted ones.
Frequent eating of burgers correlates with
asthma
and skin problems in teenagers.
Fast food was made for fasting, not for eating.
A simple experiment proves the
presence
of sexism in hiring scientists.
Burma's government talks of democracy, but protesters
face
charges.
Right-wing
proposals seek to cut the entitlements that non-rich Americans
depend on, while preserving the entitlements for the rich.
When it is time to cut the deficit, we should cut the entitlements for
the rich. But it's a mistake to cut the deficit now. We need deficit
spending to get out of the recession.
Aaron Swartz was threatened with
more
prison time than killers, slave dealers, and bank robbers. Even
helping al Qa'ida develop nuclear weapons carries a lower penalty.
I think this reflects the high priority given by the US to the War on
Sharing.
US corporations spread influenza (and other diseases) by
denying
workers paid sick days.
Soot in Beijing air has reached an
acutely
dangerous level, provoking open criticism of weak government
enforcement of pollution regulations.
The soot is produced by burning fuel, which also emits CO2.
A massive conversion effort to renewable energy is needed,
both for the short term and for the long term.
The Taliban in Pakistan have destroyed many schools, so that
60,000
children can no longer get an education.
The Pakistan army also takes away their schools for uses as bases.
Islamic extremists in Pakistan massacred
100
members of a Shi'ite minority group.
As official America stands firm to protect torturers, opposition to
torture is
relegated to the Oscar vote.
Please do not watch Zero Dark Thirty in a way that would give Sony any
money. To do so would be to reward it.
Please
don't
give Sony money for anything else, either.
US citizens: sign the petition calling on Obama to
fire
prosecutor Carmen Ortiz, who was in charge of the
exaggerated
charges that drove Aaron Swartz to suicide.
Shannon McLeish was surprised to find herself
listed as a terrorist
suspect, but since she is active in political opposition in the US,
perhaps
it is only normal.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
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[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
There is no reason for the US to cut Social Security or Medicare, and lots of reasons not to cut them.
The imaginary need for cuts was invented by right-wingers who want an excuse to transfer more wealth to the rich.
The best way to cut US health care costs, while improving care, is to adopt a Canadian-style national health service.
Why the Massive Wealth of the 1% Could Ruin the Economy.
John Brennan must commit to getting the CIA out of the killing
business before he is confirmed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Naveen Soorinje faces absurd fabricated charges in India for photographing a mob of Hindu extremists in the act of bullying women on the street.
These Hindu extremists are just as bad as the Muslim extremists in Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The Iran financial sanctions have left hundreds of thousands unable to get medicine for serious illnesses.
When medicine is available, people often don't have money for medicine and food. (That happens in the US too.)
Meanwhile, the Iranian government has no incentive to make a deal about uranium enrichment because the US would not be able to remove the sanctions as part of the deal.
How global heating will devastate agriculture: predicting the decreases in production of crops such as maize, wheat and soy beans.
Defiance of censorship over the cause of Southern Weekly is spreading in China.
Here's more information about the editorial, the censorship of
which
sparked the movement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Vietnamese dissident bloggers have been sentenced to as much as 13 years in prison.
US citizens: sign this petition in favor of legalizing DDoS.
I am disappointed that the petition uses the term "hacking" apparently in reference to breaking security, but it is still good enough to sign.
Here's what I wrote about it.
Family blames US attorneys for death of Aaron Swartz.
A proposed tidal power system in a river in England is facing objections on behalf of fish that could be harmed.
I am skeptical that anyone can reliably create new habitats for a specific marine ecosystem, and also that these turbines will be safe for all the fish that try to go through them.
Nonetheless, if this tidal power scheme will replace a lot of CO2 emissions, it might harm marine life less than ocean acidification does. So that is the crucial question, it seems to me. Will the state make sure that this is instead of CO2 emission? Or will it be instead of some other, safer form of renewable generation?
The use of digital medical records was supposed to reduce US health care costs, but it has not done so.
In addition, this usually means dependence on proprietary software.
Microsoft is
pushing
users to switch from its Messenger service, which
can be used with free/libre software, to Skype, which requires a
proprietary client.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Don't do it!
As the damage done by global heating becomes manifest, the US is heading for increased oil extraction.
India has vanquished polio; but as long as polio remains in the world, it can come back.
Afghan women fear the return of the Taliban, but the current situation is not much better.
I supported the conquest of Afghanistan for the sake of Afghan women, since at the time it appeared possible to defeat the Taliban. However, it is futile to continue the war indefinitely with no prospect of winning it.
We might be able to do some good by giving Afghan women guns and instruction in accurate shooting. That has some chance of denying the Taliban real victory. When Afghan men can expect to be killed by the women of their families for oppressing women, things may start to improve.
Netanyahu arrested the Palestinians in their tent village protest, defying an injunction from the Supreme Court.
Declaring the area a "closed military zone" is the standard all-purpose excuse for arbitrarily banning any Palestinian activity.
Mubarak and some officials of his suppression forces will have new trials.
France and other countries are joining in the fight against the Islamists that have taken control of northern Mali.
Even local Muslims feel oppressed by them, and they have destroyed irreplaceable cultural relics.
A revolt of the Touaregs started this fight. The Touareg rebels were not Islamist fanatics, but made common cause with them. They may have valid grievances, and catering to those could help defeat the Islamists.
Why the US government was out to get Aaron Swartz: he was
fighting
for us all.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
thank
Obama for legislation and orders to protect workers
of US contractors operating outside the US from enslavement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Human activity has doubled the level of toxic mercury in the upper levels of the oceans.
Various tax deductions, special lower rates, and absence of some desirable taxes, cost the US treasury 3 trillion dollars a year.
I am not sure absolutely all of these changes should be made. There may be valid reasons for some of the current policies.
However, the list does not include a carbon emissions tax, which would be a very good idea.
The Progressive Caucus in the US Congress lacks the firmness to reject Obama's right-wing laws.
Bolivia succeeded in winning an adjustment to the UN anti-drug treaty, for its law allowing the traditional practice of chewing coca leaves.
This is a form of victory, but since that treaty demands so much injustice, I think that it would have been a bigger victory for Bolivia to reject the treaty permanently.
Foreign workers in Saudi Arabian homes are in danger of execution after ludicrous trials.
13 US airports have runways likely to be inundated due to global heating. And that's just the beginning of the damage.
How About Gun Control for the Pentagon?
The Many Killers of Aaron Swartz.
Weinstein is confident that DRM will crumble. I wish I could be so confident. I fear that services such as Spotify and Netflix, which distribute works over the net with DRM and never allow a person to own a copy, or gain access anonymously, together with malicious hardware such as HDCP, may erect a seamless DRM jail that nobody succeeds in breaking.
Thus, we need to fight them — and above all, refuse ever to use them. Please support DefectiveByDesign.org.
The world promises lots of money for Haiti, and spends a fair amount, but the money doesn't do what Haitians need.
The alternative of giving money to the Haitian government — so corrupt that the US imposed a president — is no panacea.
US Surveillance Law May Poorly Protect New Text Message Services.
The text message servers that are good to use are those that don't record what messages people send.
Aaron Swartz succeeded in liberating a large fraction of US legal judgments through a hack.
This might be part of the reason that the prosecutor was determined to get him. It might also be part of the reason that he thought of trying to liberate journal articles in a similar way. However, the two hacks had differences also.
Brennan is on record defending torture, but the New York Times creates a false appearance of doubt by calling that an "accusation".
To whip up hatred of Planned Parenthood amongst people who disapprove of abortion, a right-wing demagogue disregards most of its work so as to claim it is nearly all abortion.
If Planned Parenthood's work were mainly abortions, it would still be a good thing. Given the world's dangerous overpopulation, abortion is good because it avoids a birth.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to confirm Hagel as Secretary of Defense.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to tell the Navy to allow San Francisco shipping to protect blue whales.
US citizens: tell your elected officials you support adequate gun regulation.
Every branch of the US government is complicit in the prima facie injustice of the Guantanamo prison.
New Hampshire plans to subsidize religious schools with millions of dollars of tax money.
Obama is reprising Dubya's plan to make the TSA study a lot of data about air passengers.
New York City Ties Doctors' Income to Quality of Care.
In addition to the possible problems described in the article, I wonder whether payments are the best way to lead doctors to try their best.
Aaron Swartz, founder of Demand Progress, killed himself.
Swartz faced the threat of years in prison for what must have been a scheme to liberate scholarly articles published behind a paywall.
I didn't know Swartz personally, so I have no knowledge about the extent to which he was depressed, independent of his legal situation. But apparently that alone wasn't enough to kill him.
Having a tendency for depression does not mean one is impervious to reality. The reality of the US attack against him surely contributed to how depressed he felt.
So we have reason to think the US government drove Swartz to it. This was not murder; the US did not aim to kill him, only to ruin his life on behalf of the copyright industry. But it probably did kill him.
US citizens:
urge
Biden's gun violence commission to stand firm against NRA pressure.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery endorses Hagel for Secretary of Defense. He says this could be a sign that the Israeli hawks' lobby is just beginning to lose its grip over the US.
US citizens: call
on the National Marine Fisheries Service to maintain
protection for the southern resident group of orcas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call
on Obama to protect caribou by canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, there are more important reasons to cancel it, but we may as well support this campaign too.
Major French ISPs are limiting the capacity of communications with Google, demanding payment from Google for carrying its responses to users.
An Islamist Syrian militia captured a major airbase.
Geithner has served the big banks well during his four years as Secretary of the Treasury.
Pakistan demonstrates the endpoint of the practice of assuming medical recommendations are a plot.
Old medical recommendations such vaccination, and iodized salt, are not plots. Unfortunately, new medicines often are a plot — though not the sort those Pakistani fools believe in. Pharma companies plot to get medicines approved even if they are not really effective, or not really safe. We must do whatever it takes to end their ability to corrupt medicine.
Why hasn't that been done already? Because the pharma companies use their political power to stop it. Thus, this is an instance of the general political problem that affects many areas of life: the political power of business.
US "aid" to Haiti follows Hillary Clinton's idea of "economic statecraft": it is designed to benefit US business interests, not Haitians.
The draft treaty on mercury emissions is so weak that it won't do its job. The US and EU helped weaken it.
Record heat and disastrous fires are making Australians realize that global heating is a real danger.
The US will also experience great heat-waves in the future. This report spells it out.
Amazon's new service, that offers you an MP3 for CDs you bought there, respects your rights less than ripping the CDs yourself. Don't use it.
General McChrystal says that possession of drones leads the US into arrogant behavior that stimulates hatred.
Rep. Barbara Lee calls for withdrawal from Afghanistan and reduction of military spending.
US citizens: support Senator Warren's push to end AIG's tax breaks.
Here's how outrageous AIG has become.
The Obama regime says it would prosecute whistleblowers that leak information to a newspaper.
PEN Turkey faces charges of "insulting the state" for criticizing the repression of writers in Turkey.
A large anti-corruption movement in Pakistan demands precautions to assure a free election.
An explanation about amok — are some mass shootings in the US the same phenomenon?
Why the platinum coin would have to be made of platinum: a law authorizes special platinum coins of any face value.
A trillion-dollar copper coin or aluminum coin would work just as well, if the law authorized those.
The new Japanese government wants to keep using nuclear power.
US citizens:
sign this petition
asking the Senate to make filibusters take real work.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Farmers protested at the White House against the Monsanto GMO empire.
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif died in Guantanamo prison after 11 years of imprisonment without being charged with any crime. He is said to have perhaps committed suicide taking a drug overdose, but the autopsy results are secret. Perhaps they conceal some sort of crime committed by the US.
The only obstacle to releasing some Tunisian prisoners from Guantanamo is the unjust law recently signed by Obama — the same one that permits him to imprison anyone without trial simply by accusing that person of working for al Qa'ida.
YouTube's approach to fair use is, in effect, to let copyright holders decide what qualifies as fair use.
US citizens: tell
Interior Secretary Salazar to cancel Shell's permit
to drill for oil in the Arctic.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The grounding of the Kulluk shows that Shell will impose extra risk of severe environmental damage just to save a few million dollars. To put that attitude together with the risk of a major and irreparable disaster is asking for trouble.
Malalai Joya tells the US, NATO, and Afghan leaders: Get out.
The article calls this a "simple message", but it turns out not to be so simple. As seen in the full interview, she condemns both the Taliban and the warlords as power-hungry misogynists. I am sure they are misogynists, and if she says they are all power-hungry, I will take he word for that. She condemns Karzai as a sellout who has done little for women's rights.
Then she condemns US efforts to convince them to make peace between those factions. I can't follow her there. Afghanistan can have peace only if the fighting between those factions stops.
She hopes that democratic, modernist Afghans will instead defeat all those factions. That would be the ideal result. I don't see how it can happen, because those people seem to be too few, and not armed.
Here are the current
actual US
plans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Over half the prisoners in Guantanamo are "cleared for release",
but they may
never be allowed to leave.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US domestic workers are often paid less than the usual minimum wage, and may be cheated as well.
If the infirm non-rich would have trouble paying domestic care workers better, perhaps the state should tax the rich more and pay those workers directly.
A "redacted" report in an unusual secret UK court proceeding demonstrates how such proceedings lend themselves to covering up torture.
The UK plans to train an Ethiopian thug unit noted for torture, rape and murder.
The CIA's double standard on secrecy.
Just after Barbara Mahaffey died, as her just-widowed husband was arranging for collection of her body, thugs invaded the house without a warrant to seize her painkillers.
This is part of the perversion called the War on Drugs. It seems to be having a bad trip.
A Chilean judge has called for the extradition of a man
accused
of murdering singer Victor Jara on behalf of General Pinochet,
who launched the
US-supported
coup against President Allende on Sep 11, 1973.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans falsely accused Obama of planning "death panels" that would condemn sick people to death. Ten Republican governors are really doing it, by rejecting federal funds to extend Medicaid.
They know this kills poor people, but they are ready to sacrifice other people's lives to the principle that government should not help people.
Obama's education agenda turns education into a privatized commodity.
Sex education in the US is often woefully incomplete, even inaccurate.
In addition, it almost never includes the important practical aspects: how to please your lover(s).
Interview with Sami al-Hajj, the al-Jazeera journalist who was a prisoner in Guantanamo.
Al-Hajj says that his captors knew very quickly they had arrested the wrong man, but they kept him in prison to hush up how they had tortured him — in Afghanistan and again in Guantanamo.
This is exactly the sort of thing that happens when torture is covered up. The cover-up continues: the Guantanamo kangaroo courts are designed to stop the defendants from telling the world about US government crimes. No matter what those people may have done wrong — and it's plausible some of them did — it can't excuse these US government crimes.
The
magician's con: Renewing FISA and the NDAA under cover of the
Fiscal Cliff debates
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Obama has ways to play hardball regarding the debt ceiling and assault weapons.
So if he makes a dreadful compromise with right-wingers instead, it will have been by choice.
National security is just as political as Social Security, but pretends not to be.
US mercenary companies whose employees helped torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib got off with a small fine.
No one will go to jail for it.
Exposure
to lead may be the cause of the high teenage pregnancy rates
that the US saw from the 60s through the 90s.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This suggests that Clinton's harsh "welfare reform", supposedly meant to dissuade poor unmarried American women from having babies and handing the bill to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, was unnecessary as well as unfair to the poor, since the supposed problem was solving itself.
Republicans cancelled funds to treat children with high lead levels. They'd rather let these children grow up to be criminals or single mothers, and provide an excuse for harsh right-wing "solutions".
Meanwhile, the world is not trying hard to stop mercury emissions, produced by the growing number of coal-burning power plants from causing the same sort of problem.
The US accusations against Bradley Manning would make anyone that gives information to reporters about military affairs guilty of "aiding the enemy".
In effect, they equate the public with "the enemy".
Bob Woodward's sources have nothing to fear, however, because this draconian policy will be selectively enforced.
Haitians can't move out of tents because rich families control the land near the capitol, and control the state too. Many of these homeless families are too poor to rebuild.
President Aristide could have done it.
Those accused of the Delhi rape-murder say they were tortured and raped by the thugs.
It is plausible to me. If they committed the crime, they should be punished for murder and rape (but not executed). However, rape and torture are not justified against anyone, not even rapists and murderers. The thugs ought to go on trial next.
US citizens:
support
the Violence Against Women Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Nokia phones redirect "secure" HTTPS traffic through their own proxies, which means they get access to the unencrypted data.
The student who was suspended for refusing to wear a card with an RFID lost her case.
Her objection is based on superstition rather than ethics, but I am disappointed that other students have not objected. The schools must have turned them into sheeple. If all the students said "No RFID" and refused for just one day to wear them, the school would give up.
MIT ID cards have RFIDs, so I don't have one. The building that my office is in has doors with pox locks, controlled by those RFIDs, so I have to get in using various other methods.
Fossil fuel companies have used various means to distort research on effects of fracking, including funding the research and private relationships with the scientists. As a result, we lack reliable independent study of the issue.
Rumor says Obama will appoint another bankster as Secretary of the Treasury.
Twitter is resisting pressure from France to help prosecute people who made racist remarks.
I hope Twitter will remain firm against censorship. But means that opening an office in France is dangerous!
Obama's
Partial Sellout.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US telephone companies want to eliminate voice telephone networks and replace them with VOIP, and use this as an excuse to eliminate the regulations that protect phone subscribers' rights.
They say this is ok because Internet service is a competitive market, but that's not true.
Most Americans have very few options. There are so few important ISPs that Obama was able to arrange for all the important ones to join in a deal for unofficial punishment without trial.
Unlike the imaginary "fiscal cliff", the debt ceiling is a real threat.
However, we can't let the Republicans use this to cut off old and sick Americans. The right thing is to do what Clinton did: let the Republicans shut down the government until they couldn't stand the consequences.
"Economic" decisions cannot rationally treat nature as something to be exploited.
However, simple ideas for changing this, by calling natural systems "assets" and giving them monetary values, don't address the problem, because they tend to make it easy for companies to destroy any "natural asset" by paying the assigned "value".
A further danger arises if we give separate similar natural systems independent valuations. For instance, if we divide the world's wetlands in two equivalent halves, their "values" would be equal. That doesn't fit the facts.
The scarcer wetlands become, the more desperately we need those that remain. The damage from destroying one half (leaving the other half) might be a trillion dollars, and the damage from destroying the other half (leaving none) might be a hundred trillion. We can't model this by giving some value to each parcel of wetland independently. Is there any way to represent this in economic terms?
Hagel's hawk critics harp on minor issues because they don't want to admit what they really oppose: a willingness to support peace.
2012 was the hottest year ever recorded in the US — 1F hotter, on average, than the previous record year (1998), and 3F hotter than the average for the 20th century.
For over a decade, right-wing pundits have proclaimed that Venezuela is heading for economic disaster, but it's wishful thinking.
The real economic danger comes from the regimes that can't stand up to the banksters, as in the US and Europe.
The Pacific bluefin tuna is down to 1/20 of what it was a few decades ago, but instead of giving the species a chance to reproduce, people are desperately catching the immature ones.
If we were trying to eradicate them, this is what we would do.
The US will review Shell's Arctic drilling plans for safety.
Unilever has agreed to stop putting tiny plastic beads in beauty products.
A decision by one company or even ten companies probably isn't enough; these ingredients need to be banned.
Stuart Lawrence accuses the UK thugs of stopping him 25 times on suspicion of Driving While Black.
This offence is well known from the US. Even Walking While Black is treated as a crime in places such as New York City.
The UK conservatives want to privatize the work of supervising convicts on probation.
There are many state activities that cannot achieve 100% of their goals, due to the nature of the job. Preventing criminals on probation from committing crimes is such a job. Thus, politicians can always claim that the activity is being done badly, whether or not it really could be done much better.
Privatizing a government activity generally makes things worse, except when it gives citizens the benefit of direct competition. There is no room for such a benefit in privatizing probation enforcement, so it will make things worse, somehow.
The companies will get their profit by mistreating the employees, the probationers, or both. Then the executives will say that the company is "more efficient", meaning that it costs less because the workers get less. And it will lobby to sentence more people to probation, which would be a good thing if it opposes the lobby for more imprisonment. However, if the two lobbies combine to demand more convictions by establishing new crimes, we will really be sunk.
Bradley Manning's judge ruled that Manning was treated illegally in prison, but decided that that will hardly affect the trial's outcome.
I expected this. Obama is Judge Lind's commander and she knows that Obama hates whistleblowers more than anyone else. Manning will be sentenced to many decades of imprisonment, as Obama wishes.
Let's all celebrate Bradley Manning Day next December 17.
Three months before John Brennan insisted that US drone strikes did not
kill civilians, the US government received a
protest from
Pakistan about killing a large group of civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Sony may plan to put RFIDs in disks to implement a scheme that
allows
each disk to be read by only one computer.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Getting a patent on this nasty scheme is not the same as implementing it, so it is not clear that Sony actually plans to do this. But Sony has done other nasty things before.
Samer Issawi, resident of Jerusalem, was imprisoned for "leaving Jerusalem" after he was found in a locality that Israel calls part of Jerusalem.
Israel may never have to confront the self-contradiction, since
the
court can consider secret evidence, and in any case there is
no
rush to hold a hearing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Issawi has now been on hunger strike for 160 days.
The CIA, apparently responding to public pressure, has reduced its drone attacks in Pakistan, and been more careful about targeting.
This doesn't eliminate the problems of drone attacks in Pakistan, but does make them less.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with drone bombers as weapons of war, when and where a war is openly being fought. They are less indiscriminate that artillery, and no worse than manned attack planes. However, drone attacks in Pakistan, where the US is not fighting a war, has the same problems as sending kill squads into Pakistan.
Oh wait, the US did that too.
In the US:
Protest
Jan 11 against the Guantanamo prison and imprisonment without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: submit a public comment about Governor Cuomo's fracking plan for New York State.
Brian Terrell faces 6 months imprisonment in the US for a peaceful protest.
This punishment is not at the level of Cambodia and Bahrain, but it's heading that way.
US citizens:
call on Obama to nominate Paul Krugman for the
Secretary
of the Treasury.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama to pull us back from the Climate Cliff.
US citizens: call on the SEC to require publicly traded companies to publicly disclose their political spending.
US citizens:
sign this petition to Obama to support a
constitutional
amendment declaring that corporations are not entitled to
human
rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Massachusetts colleges
to divest from fossil
fuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The makers of Zero Dark Thirty responded to the criticism that they legitimized torture by attacking a straw man and evading the real issue.
It's true, in general, that depicting torture is not necessarily endorsing it. The wrong of that film is in the way it depicts torture, as an effective and legitimate method, and in the way it aims for the effect of journalism while justifying falsehoods as fiction.
US citizens: call on the Senate to question Brennan about drones.
As automation takes away the jobs of more and more Americans, blind optimists assume most of them will find new, better jobs.
What is really happening is that wages are going down and unemployment is going up. Here's why.
We need to subordinate efficiency and technical progress to the goal of ending poverty.
Disneyland will now teach Americans' children to enjoy the convenience of surveillance.
The US bank bailout was based on lies, and its result was to strengthen the banksters' grip on the US government.
A study found that alcohol affects development of teenagers' brains more than marijuana.
I don't think this affects the debate about marijuana — there are plenty of other reasons to legalize marijuana for adults. Rather, if it is confirmed that alcohol use by teenagers causes lasting harm (visible effect is not necessarily harm), it would be a reason to make more efforts to convince teenagers to avoid alcohol intoxication.
A US judge ordered the New York Thug Department to stop its practice of searching passersby with no specific cause in certain parts of New York.
The Davos economic forum (an organization of the rich) reports that it considers global heating very dangerous.
However, the rich who attend that forum don't seem to be using their influence to get governments to correct the problem.
Gabrielle Giffords is leading a fundraising campaign to counter the NRA.
What does it mean to compare the
Iraq war to Vietnam?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Over 90% of Africa's lion population has been wiped out in the past 30 years, and they are now extinct or almost extinct in many countries.
Cory Doctorow on the madness of trying to charge for all positive externalities.
The word "monitize" reflects that attitude, which is why I find it disgusting and refuse to use it.
I would go a little further than the article. Positive externalities make life good, so a good society will make sure they are copious. I suggest that we seek to support any given activity with the minimum possible interference with its possible positive externalities.
I think Doctorow made a mistake in using of the term "digital RIGHTS management", which is propaganda in favor of that noisome practice. By calling it "digital RESTRICTIONS management", we can adopt the viewpoint of the victims rather than that of the perpetrators.
Cruel teenage girls publicly insult other teenage girls by accusing them of having sex.
The victims may need someone to defend them publicly against the insults, but who can do this in a way that they will take to heart?
Religious prudery creates the ground for this form of insult to hurt. Once at a party I heard a conversation between two women in which one condemned a somewhat famous person for making no attempt to follow fashions. It was only later that I realized I should have said, right then, "Did you just condemn a woman for not letting the fashion industry manipulate her? You are making yourself an instrument of their oppression!" It's a different issue but I think the same recommendation implies.
The mirror image of the scorn for sexually unreserved women is the scorn for men who are not sexually aggressive.
A UK man with an exhibitionist name got an injunction against publishing photos of him "semi-nude".
I don't object strenuously to this law, but I can't particularly sympathize with him either. Society will be better off if we all get used to having nude photos published, and those who have chosen exhibitionist names should lead the way.
Forest fires have burnt hundreds of square miles in Australia.
They are fueled by record high temperatures.
Now imagine it is 40 years from now and the temperature is 2C higher.
The leader of the NRA's campaign for schools to have armed guards is connected with a company that wants to provide them.
Around 60% of Congressional Republicans stand for the ideas of the John Birch Society, though some try to disguise this in running for office.
I would not say, however, that these two disputing parts of the Republican Party are two parties. They still cooperate for some purposes. It would be better if they did openly split, which is why they don't.
The complex issues of using the name "Blær" in Iceland.
In Spanish, some well-known names for females are masculine nouns: "Consuelo", for instance, is masculine and singular. Stranger still, "Dolores" is masculine and plural (though it seems cruel to name someone "pains" — perhaps Iceland's name commission would ban that one). It would be very surprising for a man to have one of these names; but many men do have "María" as a name (not the first name, though). Iceland could adopt the practice of declining the name "Blær" as masculine notwithstanding the person's gender.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to let the EPA block the Pebble Bay mine,
which the EPA has recognized would cause tremendous ecological damage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Facebook data is easily available to prosecutors, but defense attorneys have trouble getting it.
Women in India who make our clothing are paid under a dollar for a 12-hour work day.
I suspect it is no accident that the global brands' production uses unpoliceable subcontractors so much — I think that part of the reason for the practice is that these subcontractors can screw their workers without accountability. (I've read reports that in some countries they often shut down and leave workers unpaid, etc.)
Therefore, I suggest laws or campaigns against use of subcontracting in production.
China says it will "stop using" the infamous
labor
camps, but it is not clear what that implies in practice.
Dissidents have often been put in these labor camps
without
charges or trials, as in US Guantanamo prison. However, these may
not be the only such prisons in China. The Panchen Lama and his
family disappeared and have not been heard from since; I doubt they
are in a labor camp where other prisoners could see them.
China is apparently replacing the labor camps with a
new
system of secret prisons for dissidents.
"Free trade" with China, the fault of President Clinton, cut US
manufacturing jobs by
almost
30%.
It may also be responsible for the tremendous
inequality
in China.
"Free trade" tends to increase total income, but that's not
necessarily desirable. The US has plenty of total income; what it
needs is to distribute that income better. And even China needs
fairer distribution along with increased total income.
Over half the Republicans that voted against aid for those harmed
by Hurricane Sandy had
voted
for aid for their own states.
A protest
against nomination of John Brennan for head of the CIA.
Another writer won't bother to protest Brennan this time, regarding
Brennan's nomination as "symptom" of the fact that
Obama
is Bush in Democratic guise.
Brennan is a
persistent liar: he repeatedly claimed that drone
bombings did not kill civilians.
Just as a certain Republican candidate believed a raped woman's body
has a way to neutralize sperm, Brennan apparently believes that a
civilian's body has a way to neutralize shrapnel.
FBI "counterterrorism"
agents investigated the Occupy protests.
The FBI says that they did not do this investigation "based solely on
First Amendment activity". Instead they follow a two-step process:
where there is substantial "First Amendment activity", there is a
possibility of terrorism, so they investigate. The practical result
is the same, however, and protesters'
brewing
equipment
can later be presented as bomb equipment.
If you believe that a corporation is a person, will you believe that
having
it in your car allows you to drive in the carpool lane?
I think courts will take the escape route of saying that the
corporation is not physically located in a car just because its
charter is in the car. Nonetheless, this case helps ridicule
the
Corporations
United decision (to call it what it really is).
Big US banks agreed to fairly small fines for foreclosure "abuses",
but the
victimized
former homeowners won't get any of it.
Obama is generally
on
the side of the banksters.
Kuwaiti blogger Rashid Saleh al-Anzi has been
sentenced
to two years in prison for "insulting" the ruler.
Even supposedly "free" countries such as
England,
France
and
Italy
make mere insults a crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on H&M to stop buying cotton from Daewoo, which gets it from slave laborers in Uzbekistan.
US citizens: protest the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline
on Feb
17.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The ACLU explains the danger of broad subpoenas to Twitter about protesters.
Making things in school is an important part of education, f the school can surmount the obstacle of focusing mainly on standardized tests.
An Israeli research farm is making great advances in applying medical marijuana.
US parents are now invited to give their children sugar or water instead of medicine. It's called "homeopathy".
Here are some famous books, songs and films that would be
entering the
public domain now in the US, if recent laws had not attacked our
rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Big Silicon Valley companies have built on land that is below sea level and protected by levees that rising seas are likely to lap over.
Much as I would be glad to see Facebook flooded out of existence, this would hardly compensate for the millions that will be rendered homeless by the same sea level rise.
It may be narrowly rational for these companies to ignore the issue, since the effects of global heating in 50 years may be so powerful that humans no longer have a civilization capable of making digital technology. But if they were wise, they would campaign for the measures needed to avoid that disaster.
Environmentalists plan to confront Obama over and over to stop the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
The sad thing is that while building and using the pipeline would make disaster certain, cancelling the pipeline is not nearly enough to avoid the disaster.
A mound of evidence shows that the high crime rate of the 60s-90s,
around the world, was caused by the effects of lead on children's
developing brains.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, the US could prevent future violent crime far more effectively, and at less cost, by removing what remains of the lead, than by running such big prisons.
Of course, the prison-industrial complex and the War on Drugs are responsible for keeping so many Americans in prison. The US will have to defeat them to adopt an intelligent policy on the issue.
And why does the UK still allow tetraethyl lead to be manufactured and exported to stunt minds and cause crime in other countries?
Protests against newspaper censorship in China are spreading across the country.
Aceh plans to prohibit women from riding motorcycles the usual way.
The idea of requiring women to conceal their appearance is closely linked to the idea that rape is ok women if the victim did not conceal her appearance.
Bahraini protest organizers have been sentenced to life in prison.
Obama is trying again to appoint torture advocate John Brennan as director of the CIA.
The first time, opposition to torture convinced Obama to drop Brennan. Since then, Brennan has helped develop the US assassination policy; perhaps Obama considers that further proof of his suitability to run the CIA — or perhaps Smersh.
A protest in China against censorship of a newspaper.
The euro zone has boosted Germany companies' exports, but this involves billions in automatic loans to the banks of other euro zone countries, with the paradoxical result that poverty in Germany is growing along with exports.
Another cause of this problem is the way exports are being boosted: through German government policies that keep wages down.
A Muslim in the UK beat her son to death because he failed to memorize the Qur'an.
According to the on Bureau of Labor Statistics the US has 1.5 million heavy truck drivers, 176 thousand city and intercity bus drivers, 477 thousand school bus (and similar activities) drivers, and 166 thousand taxi drivers.
An additional 770 thousand work as delivery drivers. In cases where the customers can go to the delivery truck to pick up the deliveries, these might be automated too. And there are half a million drivers that work in factories, warehouses, etc. Many of these jobs might be replaced too.
Self-drive vehicles therefore threaten to put between 2 million and 3.5 million Americans out of work — and today's economy will not generate other decent jobs for them. To avoid an economic disaster, we must either limit the adoption of self-drive vehicles, or change our economy to give people a decent life even if they don't have work.
Obama is aggressively prosecuting state-legalized medical marijuana growers and users.
Is there any legitimate reason to ban e-cigarettes and push people to stay with real tobacco?
E-cigarettes could cause health problems, especially if they lead
people to
become nicotine addicts, and they then start using tobacco.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps selling e-cigarettes like tobacco, and keeping it away from teenagers, will be enough to keep this problem to a low level. In any case I don't see why airplanes should object to them.
200 Kuwaiti dissidents face
criminal charges for opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
China's Facebook-like Internet rules have chilled Internet use there.
John Kiriakou will go to prison for having an ordinary conversation that officials have with reporters.
No excuse is too small for Obama's War on Whistleblowers and Journalists.
A member of the Russian national police, accused of participating in the scam that led to imprisoning and killing Magnitsky, is suing for libel under the UK's perverse libel laws.
Obama will nominate Hagel for Secretary of Defense, defying the Israeli hawks' lobby.
The UK is prosecuting a Nepalese officer for committing torture during that country's civil war.
This is the right thing to do, and it should be applied to the torturers of other countries, including the US and the UK.
Obama's slow and unsteady approach to CO2 emissions is typical of movements for social change. Unfortunately, physics won't let us have the time this will take.
What About The Sex Crimes Against Untouchable Women?
The article shows clearly the attitudes that make frequent rape persist: the unjust condemnation of victims (and even their relatives), and the patriarchal attitude towards women's sexuality.
One US natural gas well is leaking so much methane that it is worse for the climate than coal.
Krugman comments on the partial budget deal.
One point he does not mention is that the deal raises the payroll taxes on working Americans, which is a regressive tax that gets progressively less on the rich.
A mine that straddles the Argentina-Chile border has been given such
great
concessions that it verges on being an independent nondemocratic
state.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
For the New York Times, cluster bombs that kill civilians are a lot worse when used by Assad than when used by Obama.
Mainstream media concocted an apparently imaginary link from some guns found in New York to Occupy Wall Street.
The locksmiths in one city in Spain have agreed to refuse to work on foreclosures. This adds to other forms of resistance.
Violence against someone who is killing you is legitimate. When people are at the point of killing themselves, because they are going to be out on the street and broke and in debt, in effect the banksters are killing them. There is no ethical reason they should go down without fighting back.
A privatized NHS office let a patient die because there was "no ventilator available".
Why was none available? I suspect the company did tried to get by with fewer of them in order to reduce costs and increase profits.
US citizens: sign the
Jobs not Wars petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
There is some evidence that brominated vegetable oil in soda can make people sick.
It is not certain, but do you want to risk it?
Islamists in Pakistan are now murdering teachers and health workers.
An alphabet soup of patent trolls is threatening end users with lawsuits.
Suggestion: Obama should appoint Paul Krugman as secretary of the treasury.
Glenn Greenwald endorses Chuck Hagel to run the Pentagon.
I recently signed Jewish Voice for Peace's
petition
to Obama, which takes no position for or against Hagel, but which
opposes the neocon opposition to him.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Gambling machines are sucking money out of some poor areas of England.
I don't believe in banning gambling, but regulations to make it less easily accessible, or reduce the amounts, could be a big help to people who don't have the self-control to limit what they bet.
US citizens: call on corporations to distance themselves from ALEC and its campaign to sell more guns.
The US 'War on Terror' is designed to go on forever, and officials want it that way.
Protesters passively blocking the construction of the planet-roaster pipeline were charged with felonies.
Compare with Pussy Riot.
Legalizing pot may make for safer driving.
How the US Supreme Court has undermined the safety of the public domain.
We should try turning its position around, and argue that if Congress can take a work away from the public, it can also give a copyrighted work back to the public.
A letter to Kathryn Bigelow, apologist for torture.
LA thugs are being investigated for forcing women to have sex in order to avoid jail.
Swiss bank Wegelin pled guilty to helping Americans evade taxes, and will shut down.
US drones, and maybe Saudi fighter planes, are killing civilians in Yemen, and all the governments involved are covering up what happened.
If Yemen is fighting a civil war against al Qa'ida, and requests military support, maybe it isn't wrong for the US or Saudi Arabia to provide that. But it is asking for trouble, since it is making Yemenis hate the US.
US citizens: sign
this
petition asking the Senate to make filibusters take
real work.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A contest for a free song to replace the nastily copyrighted "Happy Birthday to You".
A US appeals court ruled that giving a finger to a thug is not grounds for arrest.
Europe should learn from this lesson.
Israeli soldiers shot Palestinians who protested a
disguised
arrest raid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Food poisoning on a global scale.
Obama's die-hard War on Drugs is targeting Mendocino County's medical marijuana patients.
How No Child Left Behind and the test-them-to-death mentality
have made US schools
rigid
and crushing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
2/3 of the UK are struggling to pay housing costs.
This is the predictable result of policies that bow down to the banksters.
Malala Yousafzai has been able to leave the hospital.
Violent crime in New York City continues to fall, but violent crime by the thugs is rising.
European politicians' tendency to support the US too much is dangerous.
Republicans in the House extended their War on Women by not renewing the programs that help women who are victims of domestic violence.
Both parties are more interested in helping robber barons on Wall Street, but the Democrats would like to help women also, whereas the Republicans would rather beat them down.
December's big snowfall did not relieve the drought in the Midwest. That would require eight such storms, roughly.
US citizens: tell the FCC not to let Murdoch take control of more newspapers.
Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong.
Wall Street is preparing for the battle to impose more poverty on America.
A new Republican plan to use their gerrymandered congressional election districts to gerrymander presidential elections too.
New Linguistic Swifties for Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.
Possibly the first Grav-mass card ever made.
Transocean, one of the companies responsible for the Big Spill, has agreed to pay a fine that amounts to a slap on the wrist.
US companies that trample the public habitually turn their fines into tax deductions.
Gerard Depardieu seems to be planning to accept Russian citizenship in order to renouce French citizenship.
To regard this as a defeat for Hollande is right-wing spin; in fact, it shows that Depardieu loves tyrants more than his country. Hollande should publicly tell Depardieu, "If you don't like democracy, move to Russia!"
The foofaraw about the unconstitutionality of the tax plan is interesting because Sarkozy also encountered such a rejection when he passed the French law (HADOPI) that inspired the UK's Digital Economy Act. He revised some details and put it through, which is what Hollande will do.
We continue to campaign against HADOPI, but its initial rejection was never presented as a big embarrassment for Sarkozy. Why the double standard? We must suspect that the right-wing media are spinning it.
Peru plans to extract natural gas from an area inhabited by isolated native peoples, which could wipe them out.
Burning the gas will contribute to wiping all of us out.
Obama's New Year's Resolution: Protect the Status Quo.
Israel covers up
suicides
of soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
"Debate" over a two-state solution is meant to divert attention from
the real story:
Israeli
annexation of West Bank.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Michael Moore on the hypocrisy of saying "I support our troops".
When Bush invaded Iraq, an unjust war based on lies, I refused to consider the invasion forces as "our troops". They had started out as the US Army, but Bush had stolen them to use for his own vendetta, so I referred to them the Bush forces.
The campaign for mandatory labeling of GMOs, defeated in California by misleading ads, now moves to Washington state and others.
Concord, Mass. has banned sale of water in plastic bottles of 1 liter or less.
It is a little drastic, but may be good overall, especially if the result is to make it easier to get a glass of water.
A Dutch law banning foreigners from buying pot in "coffee shops" is not going to be enforced in Amsterdam, and maybe not the rest of the Netherlands either.
If the rest of Europe adopted the Dutch policy towards marijuana, the Netherlands would not need to be concerned about whether foreigners buy it.
US senators will investigate the CIA's assistance to the torture-legitimizing film Zero Dark Thirty.
Indians claim their culture reveres women, but that's merely a veil for unfair treatment.
Reverence as a front for mistreatment reminds me of the way pre-feminist "gentlemen" in America were supposed to treat "ladies".
Journalist Mauri König is in hiding after he reported on corruption of the thugs in his city.
Tony Nicklinson's widow is continuing his right-to-die court case.
Most people have ways available to commit suicide if they really want to. Nicklinson's demand was only to have the same. Surely anyone who persistently says he wants to die ought to be given the chance. Put whatever safeguards you wish, to prevent people from being pressured into suicide; people in Nicklinson's situation would jump through any hoops, as long as this does not mean physically jumping.
There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
Granted, children may not dare say no to an older relative, or may not realize they could say no; in that case, even if they do not overtly object, the relationship may still feel imposed to them. That's not willing participation, it's imposed participation, a different issue.
Some videos on YouTube that criticize Obama have been taken down by the Committee for Public Safety (oops, I mean the Department of Homeland Security).
One of the videos is available on archive.org:
Has anyone found out what on grounds the government claims to do this?
The context of repeated Rwandan interventions to take the mineral wealth of DR Congo is the weakness of DR Congo's state, controlled by a man who rigged the last election.
It looks like Kabila runs the state for his own short-term enrichment, which ensures its weakness for anything else.
House Republican leadership backed down after public condemnation, and agreed to a vote on aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Helping them is the state's duty, but it must not mean helping them rebuild where they surely will be flooded again. This flood was not a freak accident; in coming decades, it will happen over and over. The flooded areas will cease to be inhabited; the question is how much resources we will waste before yielding to the inevitable.
Can You Fight Poverty With a Five-Star Hotel?
The World Bank's activity is in effect a handout to wealthy foreign businesses.
The ACLU's lawsuit to demand publication of Obama's assassination policy was defeated.
Colleges' web sites invite students to enter personal data to get an estimate of the cost of attending that college. Lots of personal data.
China admits using organs from executed prisoners for transplants. There is considerable evidence that Falun Gong prisoners have also been killed to get organs for transplant.
China says it will stop using organs from executed prisoners.
It looks like public pressure is working. We should keep up the pressure.
Some observers say they are not convinced China specifically targets Falun Gong prisoners; it could be that they simply make up a substantial fraction of the available prison population. I don't think this detail makes much difference to the ethical judgment of the practice.
The partial fiscal deal managed to extend tax breaks for profitable businesses such as Hollywood and NASCAR.
France's censorship demands to Twitter are more dangerous than "hate speech".
Many Israeli politicians are calling for overt annexation of large parts of the West Bank (including the area near the Jordan River), in which Palestinians have been heavily oppressed for years; for instance, forbidden to build houses, wells, schools, etc.
Greek workers will face retroactive wage cuts that will mean they are expected to keep working without pay. I suppose many will simply walk away and do something that might bring an income, such as begging.
The idea of "growth through austerity" is absurd, and the banksters knew this all along. It was a form of "shock capitalism", meant to enrich the banksters. The "successful" privatization campaign in Greece was part of the grab.
America's secret government is ballooning into a giant complex, dwarfing what it was in the Cold War. It operates global war and assassination, and spies on all Americans just like Dubya's proposed "Total Information Awareness".
Torture is not effective for getting information, but it can "work" if the goal is to destroy a person's mind.
Writing the history of China's great famine, in which Mao killed 36 million people or perhaps 45 million.
It's not only in India that rape is frequent, and frequently unpunished.
I am skeptical that the rape rate per capita is actually 4 times as much in England than in Delhi. It could be that the real rate is the same, but women in England are more likely to report the rape.
Although the Senate/Obama deal is not bad in itself, it shows that Obama will make concessions even where he holds all the good cards. This bodes ill for what will happen in two months, when the US government reaches the debt ceiling.
Clinton responded to a similar threat with courage: he let the Republicans shut down the government, and when they saw how much Americans loathed them for this, they gave in. The right thing for Obama to do is the same thing, but he is not one to fight for most Americans.
Has EPA chief Jackson quit because she knows that Obama plans to approve the planet-roaster pipeline?
The victory
for contraception in the Philippines came from
advocating small families as good for the country as well
as for the families themselves.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
We need to do this in the US too. The US "choice" rhetoric is weak.
Positive thinking as such is ineffective, but you can change yourself to a certain extent by certain kinds of gestures.
If you wish you were more persistent in contributing to a worthy cause, such as free software for instance, working on the activity might put you in a more persistent frame of mind.
Zuckerberg's sister is upset that a friend got a photo she had posted on Facebook and posted it elsewhere publicly.
As the article points out, abuse of what people post is the heart and soul of Facebook.
In China, the descendants of the eight principal communist leaders
of 1976 have become the
rich elite of corrupt capitalism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Millions of poor people live in Saudi Arabia, but the state punishes people who show it.
The tremendous population growth is largely responsible, and that in turn is due to the patriarchal system that prevents women from limiting their births.
The poverty has the beneficial effect of protecting some children from Facebook, but that could be done in other ways.
Euro-austerity is pushing Spain into lasting poverty.
A Shell drill ship, being towed,
broke
loose in a storm and ran aground.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
This particular accident caused no disaster, but it illustrates the tendency for accidents to happen in any operation at sea. It also shows that Shell's approach is based on tolerating a certain level of accidents rather than arranging for redundant safety measures. In some activities, that is rational and efficient, but not where one accident can cause a disaster.
The US seems to be adopting a deal that raises taxes on the rich (though not enough) and preserves the (already reduced) unemployment benefits.
This deal, as far as it goes, is pretty good. It does not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, for instance. However, Obama says he would like to reduce the deficit, which if done during a recession means a bigger recession.
Bush created the deficit expecting that it would later provide an
excuse
to cut government spending that helps people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
A reporter tells how he was harassed by the Church of Scientology while investigating it.
A former Hostess baker explains the give-backs and thefts that cut his wages by more than 50%, and convinced him and his fellow bakers that it was better to stand tall and make the company shut down than to surrender.
A series of cuts in unemployment insurance are driving tens of millions of Americans into poverty.
The article falls for the "fiscal cliff" myth, but there's no real cliff, not even in regard to unemployment insurance. Congress could retroactively extend unemployment insurance next week or next month. The problem is only that Republicans want to make Americans suffer.
Farmers in the UK want "extreme weather insurance." This is a pipe dream.
The idea of insurance is that the few who have bad luck are compensated by all the rest, who didn't. This spreads the cost to so many people that they can bear it.
Extreme weather is the face of global heating, and its costs will grow until they impoverish society. Using insurance to spread these costs will not make them bearable for long. We need to keep the costs down, by limiting CO2 emissions.
2012: the year we did our best to abandon the natural world.
Even when a protest is small, Putin arrests the protesters.
In the US, small protests on the street are not usually repressed. Protests big enough to change something are the targets for repression.
Ukraine appears to be letting Russian, Israeli and Uzbek agents kidnap political refugees from Ukraine in order to torture them.
This resembles the US practice of kidnaping people and torturing them, or giving them to Libya or Syria for torture.
How the US
should cut military spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
12 Republicrat lies about the US economy, its problems, and the solutions.
1/4 of Liberia's land has been sold to logging companies, threatening devastating deforestation.
Employees of fossil fuel companies work inside the UK's Department of Energy.
The Pope's meeting with the Ugandan politician that wants to kill gays is the culmination of an ever-escalating sexual tyranny.
Relief for Haitians made homeless by the earthquake has wasted most of the money and done next to nothing for Haitians.
Egyptian activists protested a government deal with Microsoft and demanded free software.
Unfortunately, they seem to misunderstand the term "free software" and think that "free" means "gratis".
If someone in Egypt reads this, could you tell them that "free" in "free software" means "hurra"?
US Whistleblowers on Being Targeted by the Secret Security State.
The Taliban use torture to obtain confessions from suspected informers, then execute them.
I hope Americans are uncomfortable with how similar this is to the US.
The new Japanese prime minister and education minister want to make Japanese education more nationalist. They also deny that Japanese occupying troops forced women from the conquered peoples into prostitution.
The book Perawan Remaja dalam Cengkeraman Militer (Teenage Virgins in Military Camps), by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, describes how the Japanese invited bright Indonesian girls to travel to Japan for supposedly college, but actually took to them to various military bases outside Indonesia and forced them into prostitution. Those girls who survived were too ashamed to return to their families — which reflects the patriarchal cruelty of their own culture, but does not lessen the Japanese wrong.
From what I've read, history in Japan goes back around 1500 years; anything older is known only from archeology.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled that Haneen Zoabi can run again for the Knesset.
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's racist politician, resigned to face fraud charges.
Syria could end up like Somalia if its civil war drags on.
2012 set a record for rain in England.
Global heating leads to heavy rains and to severe droughts, sometimes alternating in the same place.
Vietnam's war on dissent: bloggers are arrested, then prosecuted on bogus charges. Compare this with the US repression of Occupy. Thugs and corporations worked together nationwide to smash protests using physical attacks and bogus charges.
Jacob Appelbaum on Resisting the Surveillance State.
Extreme weather caused by global heating extends into winter, as a
big snow storm's tornadoes
set a
record for Dec 25.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The Idle No
More movement of Canada's indigenous people is important
to everyone, because indigenous people's legal resistance can stop
devastating plans, such as dangerous pipelines to export shale oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
The right-wing government's attempt to weaken the treaties that they depend on is what sparked the movement.
Congress is on track to reapprove imprisonment without trial of
absolutely anyone, and Obama won't help, but a
court case
is challenging the constitutionality of this law.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-05 because the old link was broken.]
Many liberals hoped and believed that Obama would become progressive in his second term.
They should have voted for Jill Stein.
US citizens: call on the FDA not to approve GMO salmon, which has not been adequately tested.
Cambodian dissidents are sentenced to prison after sham trials.
The US could set a good example if it ceased using bogus trials (as in Guantanamo) and imprisonment without trial.
In Ireland, environmental taxes have caused big reductions in trash and CO2 emissions.
The quoted complaint, "what's being done with [the money] to help the environment," misses the point. The environment is helped by the incentive created by the tax, which is independent of how the money is spent.
The NRA is blocking the global treaty to control the international trade in handguns and rifles.
Regarding shopping as a modern replacement for magic.
I don't need to agree with Christianity or Judaism to agree with this article's point.
A small increase in taxes for the rich will not give most Americans a decent life. We need to increase wages.
Halloween decorations from Sears/Kmart came with a letter from a worker telling about his prison conditions in China.
Of course, the company says that such production is against its rules, but these companies don't try very hard to enforce such rules.
The labor camps in China are often used as political prisons.
The US Congress has made a monkey of the 4th amendment by renewing the secret electronic snooping bill without the slightest safeguard for Americans' rights.
The Koch brothers are bullying Congress into opposing relief for victims of hurricane Sandy.
The Koch brothers deserve the hatred of every American, but we should not let that distract us from what needs to be done. We need to change our political system so that rich people can't have so much influence. And we need to tax them more heavily for all their income, including capital gains.
The US has the most expensive health care system in the world, but it delivers less than other advanced countries' systems do.
Obama and Senate Republicans, helped by anti-human-right Democrats such as Feinstein, voted to reauthorize wireless wiretapping, and used the same fascist arguments that Cheney and Nixon used.
The US has used Guantanamo as a legal black hole for over 20 years with different groups of people.
China has imposed a "real names" policy on Internet users. This is obviously for purposes of oppression, and that should make people see injustice in services such as Facebook and Google+ that demand people's real names.
People in the UK have been arrested for leaving a pig's head outside a Muslim community center in England.
This was a crude and nasty way of expressing what they thought of Muslims' views. However, there are worse ways of criticizing someone's views: for instance, to arrest people for expressing them. The pig head was not a threat, just an insult, and insults must not be a crime.
Airlines want to charge different fares for different people, based on a wide variety of personal information, and keep the price hidden until possible buyers jump through a lot of hoops.
Republican senators are not satisfied with voting for imprisonment without trial; they want to argue for it in the Supreme Court too.
Across India, thugs have attacked anti-rape protests as well as the journalists who cover them.
Big business money is corrupting scientific research in many fields, including agriculture and fracking — not just pharmaceuticals.
To fix this, we need to tax rich people and businesses more so that the state can find this research.
US veterans have to wait months for pensions and disability benefits;
often
they die first. Some of them commit suicide because they don't get
the support they need.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
In Italy it is a crime to say that someone "has no balls".
I will say something much stronger and more harsh: Italy has no human rights.
Wal-Mart in Mexico was an "aggressive and creative corruptor".
Many Syrian rebels are fighting each other over loot.
Thatcher promised to preserve the UK's National Health Service, then proposed in secret to replace it with a system of US-style insurance.
The current Tory government is more subtle: destroying the NHS slowly by underfunding it and "reforming" it.
TEPCO cannot pay the damages for the Fukushima meltdowns,
which are now estimated at
38
billion dollars.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Egyptian women protested in Tahrir Square against the new constitution.
Zainab al-Khawaja calls on the US to
stop
supporting the brutal Bahraini regime.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
On a Wyoming Ranch, Feds Sacrifice Tomorrow's Water to Mine Uranium Today.
The UK is considering punishing the customers of prostitutes, which would do harm to prostitutes and their clients, and help no one.
The root of this campaign is the labeling of prostitution as "violence", a twisted half-truth.
Some prostitutes choose that line of work and are happy to profit from it. Whatever they are, they are not victims of violence. Others are forced to be prostitutes, often by means of violence (actual and threatened) by traffickers and pimps. The violence they suffer and fear is not metaphorical; it is not another word for sex with their clients. This violence consists of beatings, kidnaping, imprisonment, and sometimes even worse.
The government's mission ought to be to assure that those who wish to be prostitutes can do it safely, while those who wish not to be prostitutes can avoid it safely.
What makes it difficult for someone to avoid being a prostitute? If it is violence and threats from a pimp, offer shelter. If it is kidnaping and enslavement, offer escape. If it is poverty, offer another option. Austerity, in the UK and the Euro zone, has surely convinced tens of thousands to reluctantly become prostitutes.
A safety drill at the Sellafield (formerly called Windscale) nuclear facility showed that its resources for responding to an accident were grossly inadequate.
Judge Afiuni, awaiting trial in Venezuela, has been denied exercise and medical care.
While this is not as extreme as what the US did to Bradley Manning, it is nonetheless wrong.
Noam Chomsky has called on Chavez to free her on humanitarian grounds because she has cancer.
Granting bail to the businessman Cedeño seems foolish, and since a judge could hardly have failed to realize he might flee, it generates the suspicion that he corrupted Judge Afiuni. I don't know what other evidence there is against her, but the charges against her seem plausible.
Hamas has ordered Palestinian journalists in Gaza not to give reports to Israeli media.
I think this is both wrong and harmful.
MDMA ("ecstacy") shows promise for treating PTSD, and did not seem to do any harm to the patients.
It is quite possible for the drug to be safe when used in one controlled way, and dangerous when used in other ways (perhaps with higher doses).
US citizens: call for a ban on sale of lion meat in the US.
A senior Al Jazeera journalist has quit, denouncing political slant imposed by Qatar.
Just 6
companies control most of the US major media, and the FCC wants to
reduce that even more.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Li Yiqian, who campaigned against diversion of funds for repair after the Sichuan earthquake, has been sentenced to 5 years in prison for a crime which consists essentially of protesting.
The UK also has a crime, "aggravated trespass", which consists essentially of protesting.
Human Rights Watch has condemned Hamas rocket attacks against Israel. The fact that Israel carries out war crimes against Gaza does not excuse Gazans to carry out war crimes against Israel.
Two species of seals have been given
legal
protection because global heating
is expected to be devastating to their way of life.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
First Sale Under Siege: If You Bought It, You Should Own It.
Morsi signed the Islamist Egyptian constitution, approved by 21% of the eligible voters.
Obama continues trying doggedly to make a bad budget deal.
Paul Krugman explains why nothing much will happen on Jan 1 in the absence of a deal, because the real effects are longer-term, and why it is better to wait till after Jan 1 to address them.
Video game companies are marketing real weapons.
Using surveillance drones to spot rhino poachers.
Yemen's government cooperates with the US to deny US drone strikes that killed civilians.
Hitting the wrong target is a kind of accident that tends to happen from time to time in war. There is no way to completely avoid it. When the people support the war, they recognize this and sustain the accidents. When they don't support the war, they don't.
Noam Chomsky: America, Moral Degenerate.
I think his evaluation of Libya exaggerates the negative, but the rest seems valid.
Nanotechnology is being strangled by patents.
The article uses the term "open source" in a confusing way, very different from "open source software". Of course, I am not a supporter of "open source software" and never was, but I still don't like to see people distorting its meaning.
The article also uses the confusing term "intellectual property", equating it to "patents". The confusion is because another article you read tomorrow will say "intellectual property", except it means copyrights. And another you read next week will say "intellectual property", except it means trade secrets. Each of the articles would have been clearer if it had avoided that term.
Israel is accelerating the construction of colonies in the West Bank, and Netanyahu is considering admitting that he is against a future Palestinian state in principle.
Don't Surrender the Privacy Battle.
US citizens: sign this petition saying a bad fiscal deal is worse than no deal.
Why do certain rock stars die young? Childhood suffering, which may have driven them to seek fame, also makes them susceptible to drug addiction and other medical problems.
In a world with a smaller, stable population, and fewer children, we could protect all children from many of the causes of suffering.
In the film Zero Dark Thirty, inside the false claims that torture helped the US find Osama bin Laden is the message that torture can be beautiful.
I am not going to watch it to "judge this for myself". That's precisely what the film-makers and the CIA want us to do. Don't be lured by them; join me in shunning it.
Another armed Afghan government agent shot a US soldier, but the only reason it's news is that the shooter was a woman.
Women in Burma are kidnapped and taken to other countries where they are forced to work as slaves.
The UK must hold a public inquiry into systematic torture in Iraq.
Otherwise it will continue to pretend that it was just a few "bad apples", while refusing to punish most of them.
Saudi Arabia: Website Editor Facing Death Penalty.
The US and Russia are at odds on most issues, but agreed to cooperate in attacking people who share.
West Antarctica is warming twice as fast as was thought.
Supposedly the Islamist Egyptian constitution was approved, but only 30% voted and the opposition says the election was not honest.
The FBI investigated Occupy Wall Street as "Domestic Terrorists, Criminals" even before its protests began.
Occupy showed what democracy looks like. The US showed what the first levels of repression look like.
The UN is playing
arsonist
and fireman in Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Don't scapegoat Nancy Lanza for her son's murder spree.
We don't know enough to conclude that she did something wrong.
Protests in Delhi demanding action against rape were attacked by the thugs.
The idea of the death penalty for rape is a foolish one, as well unjust (since execution is always unjust). The problem in India is that rape is usually not punished at all. Increasing the theoretical penalty would make little difference; the death penalty is not a better deterrent. What India needs to do is make punishment likely.
Large banks have become so pervasively corrupt that large fines are merely a cost of doing business.
A little tinkering can't fix this. Banks need to be restructured so that they are limited to simpler operations in which corruption is not a possibility.
New Israeli colonies are designed to divide Bethlehem from Jerusalem.
The annexation wall already separates them.
Up to 1/3 of anti-malaria drugs in parts of Africa are fake.
The UK is looking for a technicality to avoid paying compensation to torture victims in Kenya.
Sanal Edamaruku on
previous
end-of-the-world prophecies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Oakland fired city employees so it could keep paying the Raiders football team to stay in that city.
"Raiders" may be an appropriate name for them.
The thugs who were fired may have attacked protesters in 2011. Perhaps with fewer thugs, Oakland will have more democracy. However, that doesn't invalidate the main point: that we must stop businesses from playing US cities and states against each other.
European Human Rights Court Finds Turkey in Violation of Freedom of Expression.
What's in Egypt's draft constitution that threatens human rights.
US citizens: tell Wells Fargo to stop its tricky excuse for foreclosing on the homes of widows.
Israel is considering a bill to escalate the War on Sharing, which would block access to web sites based on an absurd pretense of a trial.
Still, it's not as bad as the US, which "seizes" domains with no trial at all.
8 ethical ways to reduce the US deficit.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Reducing the deficit during a recession is a bad idea, but some of these measures are beneficial in other ways. Tax increases could be used to fuel stimulative spending on crucial needs such as renewal energy.
Krugman: In poker terms, no matter how strong Obama's hand is,
he
folds anyway.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Krugman assumes that Obama is sincere in wanting to preserve benefits for disabled and old Americans. But Obama is not stupid, and he has to know what he's doing. So I conclude that he wants to cut benefits and blame it on the Republicans.
Some proposals for solving the real problems of the US economy.
Reality filters could be used to facilitate racism and other prejudice. But also perhaps to discourage them.
Meet the Press tried extra hard to find a right-wing anti-gun-restrictions guest. OK, but why don't they look for people who advocate removing troops from Afghanistan, or criticize a big bankster bank?
How to present a Social Security cut as something else.
The FDA is moving to approve genetically modified salmon, without sufficient research into its effects.
Billionaire Polluter has agreed to pay around 8 billion dollars to those who lost money due to the Big Spill.
I think this does not cover those who were made sick by the oil.
Egyptian artists fear Islamist rulers could censor them more than Mubarak's regime, using the old censorship systems that still exist.
The killings of polio eradication workers have inspired rage throughout Pakistan.
Anastasia Hagen asks for political asylum in the Czech Republic. If forced to return to the Ukraine, she faces prosecution for appearing in porn.
I don't think there is any ethical difference between making and distributing porn and appearing in porn. There's nothing wrong with either one.
She argues that she had no choice in order to get money to take care of her child. The state ought to offer indigent people sufficient support, but her poverty would be be no excuse if she had done something really wrong, such as robbing people or making proprietary software. However, no excuse is needed for making porn.
By contrast, if she achieves her ambition of having many grandchildren, she will have done a substantial blow to the future of civilization.
US citizens: call on Obama not to interfere when states legalize marijuana.
One reaction to the Newtown massacre is misguided suspicion of people with certain variants of autism.
Instagram reversed its changes in policy for using users' photos, under pressure from massive rejection by users.
The article speculates Facebook will try some other nasty scheme instead.
I would not mind paying to view a photo, as with Pheed, if I could pay anonymously. But if Pheed requires users to identify themselves, count me out.
In New York State: submit a comment by Jan 11 in Governor Cuomo's rushed decision process about fracking. Rally on Jan 9 in Albany against dangerous fracking.
Massive surveillance by aerial drones is becoming established in the US, and there is pressure to deploy assassination drones too.
The European Parliament approved the
Unitary
Patent scheme, which gives the European Patent Office effective
autonomy to decide whether software patents are valid in Europe.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Valid prophesies from the modern Maya.
The army doctor who covered up torture of Baha Mousa has been banned from working as a medical doctor.
This demonstrates the need for more investigation into UK torture practices during its participation in the Bush forces.
The fight for GMO US labeling goes on, now in New Mexico.
Tanzania will limit foreign land grabs.
Hundreds of Indian political candidates face accusations of sexual violence.
Russia says that surveillance of an opposition leader is justified
because
he
criticized surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
The article describes US surveillance as it was long ago. Thanks to William Binney, we know it is now much worse than the Russian system described here: the NSA copies down nearly all Internet and phone communications in the US and saves them in a giant database.
See http://publicintelligence.net/binney-nsa-declaration/.
US citizens:
sign
this petition calling on Congress to amend the Constitution to
overturn the Corporations United decision
(calling it by what it is rather than by right-wing spin).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose the right-wing and AIPAC's condemnation of
former Senator Hagel for Secretary
of Defense.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Hagel has the support of Americans for Peace Now.
Political leadership's new low in Italy: only Berlusconi dares to criticize the austerity and control of the euro system, now that the left has given up. But he won't try to fix the problem, only use it to get himself elected.
Tea-party Republicans blocked Boehner's tactical gesture to preserve the Bush tax cuts for all but very high incomes.
It looks like we may avoid a Grand Sellout because the Republicans won't compromise to get one.
Giving to organizations through telemarketers is a scam; the telemarketers get more than the organization, and the organization may even lose money.
The Senate changed video rental privacy law to cater to Facebook, but killed the plans to upgrade people's right to privacy over their email that is stored in a business's server.
If you must use a commercial email server, use a company in a country that is (1) not friendly with your own country's government and (2) not interested in anything you are doing.
The US has made improvements in privacy rules for web sites targeted at children, but that fails to protect the privacy of a large class of Internet users: adults.
New York thugs want to spy on everyone's email looking for signs that someone is preparing to commit mass murder.
This could really mean plans to entrap people, most of whom would never have tried to kill anyone. Even psychiatrists can't predict which of the many mentally ill people are the tiny fraction that will become violent; but the NYTD won't try to predict so much as to entrap them all.
Unrestricted state surveillance is a bigger danger than individual mass murderers. The NYTD has been accused by the UN of systematic violence against dissidents.
The FDA does not publish the information it collects about use of antibiotics on healthy farm animals.
In general, the US caters too much to the wishes of companies to keep secrets. Whenever there is a public interest at stake, the desire of companies for secrecy should be rejected.
US citizens: oppose the plan to remove endangered species protection from wolves.
A thug chief in India said that women should avoid rape by not travelling after dark.
His other suggestion, to arm themselves with chili powder, is not insulting.
Guatemala has made great strides in protecting the rainforest in the region where ancient Maya cities stood.
Pussy Riot could be a success as a mere band, but decided to aim for something much more important. Even going to prison, they won a victory.
The UK's settlements with over 200 Iraqi torture victims show that torture was standard practice.
Canada's aboriginal peoples have launched a broad protest movement.
Murdoch proposed to use his media empire and money to make General Petraeus president, but Petraeus was not interested.
Rather than focusing on Murdoch's personality, we should make sure no one has a media empire that could be used in this way.
The UN
approved
intervention against the Islamist fanatics that have captured northern
Mali.
The EU continues to choose its fishing quotas based on
short term gain,
ignoring
sustainability.
The issue of
microphones
to record our conversations in public places.
I agree with the ACLU that the proposed Maryland bill could be adequate,
if drivers really implement it as intended.
The planet roaster Keystone XL pipeline
won't
use top-of-the-line leak detection.
This even though its oil is especially caustic and likely to leak.
France has required doctors to
provide
contraception gratis to teens aged 15-18
and forbidden them to tell their patients' parents.
The NRA arranged to end to US funding for scientific research into the
phenomenon of gun violence. And one researcher says he has received
personal
death threats.
The words in the law don't actually say that the CDC can't fund such
research. That interpretation of them is rather strained — but
that strained interpretation is the one government officials follow.
I am sure there is a systematic reason for that, that it is not chance
or a quirk, but I don't know what it is.
Here's more on how the NRA has made US agencies
bend
over backwards not to fund research into the social effects of firearms.
Colombia has required ISPs to implement back doors for
state
surveillance.
This is a pro-terrorist measure; the biggest terrorists in Colombia
are the paramilitaries, which are connected with the state.
US citizens: tell
Washington to cut the Pentagon, not benefits for Americans.
Monsanto GMOs were
supposed
to reduce herbicide use, but the opposite result has occurred.
14% of US households are in "food
insecurity".
That amounts to around 40 to 50 million Americans, depending
on the average size of the households that have this problem.
Some 8 million old Americans have
trouble
buying food, and 1/4 of America's children.
A spectacularly brutal case of rape highlights
how
ineffective India is at punishing any rape.
I can't imagine even wanting to do such brutality even to politicians
that support torture.
Kraftwerk sued another band for copyright infringement over
the
use of a two-second sample.
Copyright law needs to be changed to make this unambiguously legal.
But in the mean time, that a law gives someone the possibility
of doing wrong like this is no excuse for actually doing it.
Shame on you, Kraftwerk!
Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of war crimes for
attacking
journalists in Gaza.
A UK man has
escaped
prosecution for posting a photo that expressed contempt for the
memorial of soldiers who died in wars. However, another man
was fined for doing so.
I do not agree with the views stated in these protests. Most of those
soldiers died in World War I, fighting for a good cause even though
incompetent generals wasted their lives, and in World War II, fighting
for a good cause again. Some 500 died fighting an unjust war in Iraq
for B'liar and Bush, and there have been other unjust wars too; but
criticizing those wars does not require expressing contempt for the
loss that their families feel.
Whether we agree with their views or not, we must defend their right
to state their views. People have a right to protest anything and
mock any position. Arranging for this man to meet some soldiers may
have been a good idea, but he should not have had to fear prosecution.
Britain is
flooded
again after heavy rain.
Such floods have happened repeatedly this year. Global heating is
directly
responsible for the tendency to have lots of rain there.
UBS's Libor manipulation was broader and deeper than Barclays',
and extended to
bribing
other companies to lie.
The author concludes that this part of the banking business is so corrupt
that there is no room in it for an honest man.
Two of the banksters face
prosecution.
The UBS corruption extended to
Hong
Kong.
Victoria's Secret tried
to use copyright to censor a parody ad campaign.
Everyone:
call
on companies to reject products made by slave labor.
Corporate-Occupied
Government: A 'Redistribution Machine' for the Wealthy.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for him to publicly
oppose Obama's proposed cuts in social security.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The Swedish Pirate Party has pressed charges against Swedish banks
that have
blocked
payment to Wikileaks.
Meanwhile, the Freedom of the Press Foundation has been set up to
provide a middleman to
receive
donations for journalistic activities that the powerful do not like.
Germany says Facebook's policy of demanding users' real names is
illegal.
I hope Facebook loses this fight.
Theocratic minds think alike: Huckabee and Khamenei agree in
blaming
mass murder on a lack of religion.
However, mass murder is enshrined in the Bible, which both of them
say they venerate, and mass murder has often been carried out in
the name of religion.
Violence has only a
small
correlation with mental illness, and psychiatrists can't predict
which few of the mental ill will carry out violence.
Use of (some) drugs, and alcohol, have a lot more to do with violence,
and I suspect the connection is due more to prohibition than to the
effects of the drugs.
The former ban on "assault weapons"
did
not cover the rifle used in the Connecticut massacre.
It follows that the ban needs to be made somewhat broader.
Meanwhile, a ban on large magazines might have applied directly.
India's legislature is working on a bill to make its unjust
anti-terrorism law
even
worse.
In most of the world, when they say "terrorist" you should read "dissidents".
It's a shame that the US has
set
a bad example in regard to freedom of association.
Human Rights Watch calls on the UK to
reject
secret courts.
The "War on Drugs" means seizing people's money, homes and cars on
mere suspicion. But when a big bank is guilty, it gets a fine it
can easily pay, and
no
person gets punished.
This war must be on drugs.
A new planned Israeli colony between Jerusalem and Bethlehem
has met with
strong
condemnation from the EU.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to stop talking about cuts in Social Security.
Australia banned assault weapons, then bought back the ones already sold,
and it
succeeded
in preventing massacres.
In the US: call
on Whole Foods to label whether produce was grown
in sewage sludge (which can be toxic).
Here's more information.
Wafa Sultan, who grew up in Syria, describes the unending violent
oppression of women that she saw, and
condemns
Islam and its associated culture for this.
Ms Sultan refers to the case of Lars Hedegaard; he was convicted of
the crime of saying, more or less, that
Muslim men
have no respect for women and often abuse young female relatives.
At least that's what he's accused of saying; I've only seen a
summary, which Hedegaard says was written by the prosecutor and
doesn't reflect his words. I don't know what Hedegaard really said,
and I don't know whether he was right or wrong. But that isn't
the issue here.
The Danish censorship law makes it a crime to criticize a religious
group even if the criticism is valid. In a free country, you're
allowed to make such a statement even if it is false. In Denmark,
honest discussion of that question is forbidden a priori. This
demonstrates how little freedom of speech exists in Denmark.
Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was
fined
in Austria for calling the Qur'an
"evil" and saying that "Muslims want war".
To say that "Muslims want war" is a gross oversimplification, like
"Christians want war" or "Atheists want war". There is evil in lots
of religions' holy books. But whether she was right is not the point.
The point is that a free country does not prosecute people for
political statements.
We must defend everyone threatened by state or private violence for
criticizing any religion or its adherents, either in theory or in
practice.
China has
arrested
500 followers of a cult that says the world will end this Friday.
It might be appropriate to force them to walk around on the street on
Saturday wearing signs saying "I said the world would end yesterday.
Laugh at me!" However, it is not right for a state to impose any
punishment on stating any sort of prediction, even really dangerous ones
such as "Earth is not going to get any hotter."
The bank UBS has been fined over a billion dollars for
Lie-bor
manipulation.
Even these huge fines will not end corruption in banks that believe they
are "too big to fail". The banksters will only look for more subtle
forms of corruption and hide their plans better. What is needed is
to knock down the profitability and size of banks.
Protesting
students in Chile have forced a corrupt minister to resign.
The Mexican government says that attacking the heads of drug trafficking
gangs caused them to fragment, meaning
more
fighting between them.
Campaigning for US universities to
disinvest from coal.
The five
ways Christmas hurts people who practice it.
As an Atheist curmudgeon, practiced at refusing to do things merely
because "that's what everyone does", I am safe from all of them.
The EU has proposed a
ban
on flavored cigarettes.
The US banned flavored cigarettes with the exception of menthol,
but on the basis of that exception, the WTO condemned it as a trade barrier.
(Does anyone know how the US responded to that decision?) The EU proposes
to ban menthol flavoring too, perhaps in response to that decision.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban assault weapons.
Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping
tells
Santa Clauses to stop doing the devil's work.
US citizens:
tell the
NRA to stop opposing gun regulation that can prevent massacres.
US citizens:
call on
CEOs to pledge zero tolerance for slave labor.
Women's rights for contraception and sex education took a
medium-sized
step forward in the Philippines, but Catholic cruelty continues to
hold them back. For instance, Catholic are determined to punish
teenagers with pregnancy.
Amnesty International
calls
on Iraq to stop executions, saying that they often follow
confessions obtained by torture.
Given who set up the Iraqi government, it is no surprise.
Egyptians call for a rerun of the constitutional referendum,
criticizing
widespread wrongs in
the voting process.
A crackdown on
Omani democracy activists.
When thugs off duty
moonlight
for banks, what effect does that have on protests against banks?
If the banksters commit a crime, will the thug feel paid to close
his eyes to it?
What
If Children Mattered No Matter Where They Lived — and Died?
Wealthiest Kissed, Weakest Kicked: Obama's Ugly 'New Deal' Offers to Gut Social Security.
The EU had a contest for carbon capture and storage, but
no
candidate was good enough to win.
A UK extremist candidate proposed mandatory abortions for gravely
deformed fetuses, and gratis euthanasia for old people,
to
reduce medical costs.
I don't believe such decisions should be made based on medical costs.
Inviting people to die to if they can't pay is
what
we see in the US, and now in Greece.
However, these two policies would be good ones for other reasons.
Requiring abortions of gravely deformed or incapacitated fetuses is
ethical so that the people who are born won't gave to suffer with
those deformities or handicaps. And anyone suffering from a painful
or debilitating disease that can't be cured or made bearable even with
the best of care deserves our help in escaping into death.
If a suffering person wants to escape, loving treatment means helping
him escape. To force him to stay alive, to prolong his horrible
suffering to avoid grief for ourselves, is selfish treatment.
A review of 2012's extreme weather and other indications of
how the Earth is hotter than before.
To avoid the probable location of the climate cliff, we must
shut
65% of coal-burning power plants by 2020.
We can't see the climate cliff; we can only estimate where it is.
Maybe we are lucky and it is a little further away. Or maybe it is
even closer. Want to find out the hard way?
Assad's militiamen kidnaped a TV team, which was then
freed
by rebels.
US citizens:
Phone your senators and say, "Oppose any cuts
in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The 'fiscal cliff' is a myth,
so don't attack us in the name of avoiding it. Follow Paul Krugman's
advice; what the US needs is no deal in December."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Burning of coal is likely to increase in the next five years
unless measures are taken to
stop
it.
Even the low estimates of sea level rise will lead to
tremendous
liability to flood damage in cities such as New York and Miami.
Air pollution killed
over
2 million people in Asia in 2010. The death rate due to pollution
is growing rapidly there due to a big increase in cars.
Since the population of the regions in question is on the order of 3
billion, and around 50 million of them die per year (rough estimate),
this is not a large fraction of all deaths, but it is a
significant fraction.
Billions of dollars have leaked from Zambia to tax havens via
dishonest
corporate accounting.
Mass murders by Americans kill
a
lot more children in Pakistan than in the US.
The argument for secret courts in the UK is based on a dubious
premise: that without this, the US would
cut
off intelligence sharing to avoid leaks. It is not credible that
the US would really do so.
But what if it did? Protecting torturers cannot be justified.
Americans have
fallen
for the "fiscal cliff" bogeyman, which was invented to create
pressure for a Grand Sellout that would cut benefits for most
Americans. Now Obama is prepared to compromise part of the tax
increase for the rich, an issue on which he could win completely by
waiting two weeks.
Instagram, now under
Facebook control,
demands use of people's photos for
sale
and advertising.
Instagram later
tried
to reassure users that this didn't mean it would
"own" their photos.
That is a red herring — the issue is that photos in Instagram
will be used in advertisements whether the user likes it or not.
Hollywood is
postponing
the showing of some violent movies. The producers think people
might just now perceive them in relation to real life violence, so
they will wait a few weeks for Americans to mostly forget about it.
I don't need to have a recent school shooting in mind to react to
gruesome movie violence that way. I always react that way. I found
the violence in Pulp Fiction so disgusting that I won't watch anything
by Tarantino.
I cite that film to argue against the idea that we should censor some
works merely because we find them disgusting. No matter how
disgusting a work might be, censorship is more so.
Nonetheless, I can't understand why anyone wants to wallow in gruesome
fictional events. With gruesome real events, such as school
shootings, or the bigger practice of torture
carried
out and
facilitated
by the US regime, there is the argument that we have a responsibility
to face the facts so we can put an end to the practice. No such
argument applies to the fictional events imagined by Tarantino.
Haneen Zoabi, an Arab member of the Israeli Parliament, may be
banned
from running again due to her political views.
Note how Israeli fanatics refer to the Mavi Marmara, an unarmed ship
carrying relief supplies whose personnel were
killed
by Israeli soldiers, as a "terror attack". This blackwhiting
exemplifies the distorted way they view all the pertinent facts.
An Ethiopian journalist was sentenced to
18
years in prison under "anti-terrorism" laws.
When a law says "terrorism", understand "journalism" or "dissent".
Muslim fanatics
shot
several polio immunisation workers in Pakistan.
It is the most perverse example of the cruelty of religious
intolerance.
Greeks who stated support for the neonazi Golden Dawn party
attacked
a leftist MP.
Meanwhile, Greeks who are ill can
die
from austerity.
Some who will die from untreated cancer may still be fit enough to
attack the politicians and banksters who have killed them.
Thugs in the Maldives who participated in overthrowing democracy there
and have
attacked
opposition protesters and journalists.
What we
have lost in the World Wide Web in the past five or so years.
He pulls the rug out from under his feet at the end, by saying that
Facebook is a "great site", and judging it and others in terms of the
"value" they "give", and accepting the idea that maximizing profit
should decide how the Internet works. However, since I don't accept
those points, I don't pull the rug out from under the text up to that
point.
The Pope publicly blessed a Ugandan politician who
champions
the imprisonment (and possibly execution) of gays.
US citizens:
call
on Congress and Obama to tax financial transactions.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say,
don't
weaken the safety and security measures for US nuclear weapons labs.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Insufficient funds have been donated for mosquito nets in Africa, and
this is likely to lead to an
increase
in malaria.
The UK thugs are
attacking
their own whistleblowers.
One thug was arrested for unauthorized release of "information". That
is a rather vague description; what was this "information"? Was it
personal information about a member of the public, or was it
information about wrongdoing by thugs? Ethically, that makes a
crucial difference.
An Israeli thug shot a Palestinian teenager, then claimed the deceased
had asked for it by
pointing
a toy gun at another thug.
No one would do this except to commit suicide.
There is no way to prove what really happened, because the thugs stole
witnesses' cameras and deleted photos. But nobody who knew the victim
recognized the toy gun.
The story so fishy, on so many levels, that it would be a candidate
for the Thugs' Tallest Tale Prize.
The Connecticut school massacre was carried out using weapons of the
sort that were once banned, but were
legalized
by the Republicans 8 years ago.
An investigator resigned from a secret UK investigation into abuse of
prisoners, saying she found it was a
cover-up.
The EPA has put
limits
on agricultural runoff that fuels dangerous algae
in Florida waterways.
New regulations will end
overfishing
of menhaden in the Atlantic.
New York State has decided to
rush
its decision about fracking,
which means a health effects inquiry will not have time to reach conclusions
in time to be heeded.
Secular Egyptians accuse Morsi of
rigging
the vote on the new constitution
which places religious limitations on human rights.
Islamists and secularists are increasingly
in
conflict in Tunisia.
The UK's cooperation in torture came to light by chance, but justice
would be
totally
suppressed if the secret court plan is adopted.
China's rulers are starting to consider changes in the
labor
camp system, in which people can be imprisoned without trial for
getting in some corrupt official's way, then forced to work for a
pittance.
The US also uses prisoners as slave labor making products to sell to
the public,
paying
them a pittance, and puts a
larger
fraction of its population in prison than China does.
Medical doctors in the US are paid
more
than in other advanced countries. Is cutting their income the way
to reduce medical care costs?
When cutting income, I suggest we start with the rich, rather than
doctors.
Large, old trees are
rapidly
disappearing around the world. This puts many species of animals in
danger.
Human activity is to blame for this in many ways, including via global
heating, which causes worse forest fires and spread of pests.
Calling on the EU to put
export
control on Internet surveillance and
censorship technology.
The former ban on "assault weapons" and large magazines would have
prevented the killing of so many children in school. Senators are
pushing
to reinstate it.
A UK army doctor who seems to have
closed
his eyes to the fatal injuries of tortured Baba Mousa was found
guilty of covering it up.
Students at Newcastle University are
organizing
against the imposition of fingerprint scanners for their classes.
US citizens:
call on Obama to start a national conversation about gun
control.
Also call
on the NRA to compromise with gun control.
Gun control does not have to mean that most people would be banned from
having any sort of gun.
In addition to gun control, the US
needs to
provide mental health resources as a community so that people can
get care.
Other
practices that may have contributed to the number of
gun killings in the US.
The UK government
wants
to block increased protection of cod in the North Sea,
even though they are not clearly safe.
This is a surrender to the short termist attitude of fishing businesses.
A UK thug broke ranks to denounce other thugs for
how
they treated striking miners in the 1980s.
He reported the abuses privately at the time, but the thug commanders
ignored them. I suppose the government had told them to break the
strike, and never mind how.
The New York Supreme Court's decision, in a case about gang members
that killed members of a rival gang and were accused of "terrorism",
demonstrates the
system
of inferior justice that has been created to
punish anyone accused of "terrorism".
African Elephants are being rapidly slaughtered, with even
military
planes joining in. At this rate, in a decade they will be
effectively extinct.
Can elephants survive in the wild without tusks?
Extreme poverty in the US: millions of people survive, somehow, on
less
than 2 dollars a day.
The study
says that this amounts to almost 1.5 million households, which might
be 2-4 million people. Many of them live on the street.
Thanks to Clinton's welfare "reform", the state has mostly abandoned them.
And they have no chance of getting the
IDs
that Republicans want to demand to let them vote.
A Swedish political web site that publishes information obtained via
freedom-of-information requests has been
shut
down arbitrarily by its hosting provider, which refuses to answer
calls.
The
PSY Scandal: Singing about Killing People v. Constantly Doing It.
The statement that the US "embraces and props up the world's most
repressive tyrants" is perhaps too strong. The US embraces and props up
some of the world's most repressive tyrants. Others, such
as the regimes of Iran, China, Syria and North Korea, get no US support.
However the larger conclusions are unaffected by this correction.
Sara Reedy who was raped by the man who stole money from the store
where she worked. The thugs accused her of inventing the story, and
prosecuted her for stealing the money. They
did
not bother to check her fingernails for the rapist's DNA.
(Even if they could not have identified the rapist, they could have
determined there was tissue that came from a male.)
I am glad that she won a large settlement, since the false accusation
caused her to lose her job. However, it is the city that will pay the
settlement. Unless individual thugs are punished for acts like this,
they won't stop.
A Canadian safety review of tar sands oil pipelines seems to have
catered
strongly to the fossil fuel companies.
The massacre in an elementary school has
increased
the pressure for gun control in the US.
Does anyone know whether the shooter used an assault rifle
of the sort that was prohibited for a while?
Russian opposition leaders were arrested for participating in an
illegal protest.
The US also declares many protests illegal and
arrests their leaders.
US citizens:
oppose
renewal of Dubya's (now Obama's) warrantless
wiretapping program.
On the Maya and their calendar, and
what
is most interesting about them.
Anyone who thinks he could escape the end of the world by moving to a
particular spot in it might be dumb enough to believe that someone
1500 years ago could forecast a non-periodic event today.
The Obama regime has
called
for "regime change" in Venezuela.
Chavez has some bad policies, such as arbitrarily blocking some
candidates from running for office, and imposing surveillance over all
purchases in stores. Corruption is high, but that was true before
Chavez.
However, I've never seen anyone accuse Chavez of launching wars of
aggression, holding people in prison for years without charges, or
torture. It's the US that needs regime change.
Zimbabwe is arresting human rights and democracy advocates on
strange
pretexts.
US citizens:
tell
extremist Republicans to stop blocking renewal
of the Violence Against Women Act.
Although Bhutan's practice of measuring and advancing the total
national happiness is an interesting idea to imitate, Bhutan is not
good in all ways. It has committed large atrocities, such as
forcing
all inhabitants of Nepalese origin into exile.
The Wikipedia page on
Bhutan
gives more information.
The World Bank recognized the danger of global heating, so why does
it keep
financing
coal mines?
The record companies and movie companies apparently plan to top off
Obama's "six strikes" scheme with a
seventh
strike: suing sharers once again.
This could once again lead to rising hatred for them.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted for
Senator
Franken's location privacy bill.
Limiting location tracking by companies is a good idea, but it won't
address the principal threat to our freedom: location tracking by the
phone network, whose results are easily available to the state.
Karl Rove's corporate political ads campaign promised the IRS it would
spend
"limited" money on elections.
I guess that meant, "limited by what donors give".
Costly
Oil Subsidies Drag Us Down; Clean Energy Investments Will Build a
Healthier Economy.
US media say very little about the US brainwashing of Bradley Manning
or what
this means for freedom of the press in the US.
The
Swindle, the Shnook and the iBad enable Big Brother to tell what
users read.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to put the US on course to cut its oil use in half.
The Union of Concerned Scientists presents a plan for how to do this.
US citizens: tell
rogue Democrats that support cutting Social Security,
Medicare or Medicaid that they will be sorry.
Bangladesh processes a lot of leather in
conditions
that kill most of the workers before age 50.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to order protection for some wilderness areas.
The US is trying to
separate the Syrian majority of rebels from the jihadis,
but that is difficult since the jihadis are the most effective fighters.
It would be great to get rid of Assad's oppression, if the replacement
is not Islamist oppression.
Arguing that the Doha climate negotiations
made
progress on many important points towards a deal that would
become effective in 2020.
I presume that the points in the article are accurate, but isn't this
time scale too slow?
Should the UK give Turing a pardon, or should it
ask
him for one?
Israeli soldiers grabbed Reuters journalists in Hebron,
robbed
them, stripped them, then attacked them with teargas.
The journalists were accused of documenting human rights abuses
— as if that were wrong. Compare this with the attacks and
sabotage of journalism used by thugs
against
Occupy, and the attempts to to
shut
down Wikileaks; what we see is a systematic pattern of
repression against those who try to report on the evil actions of the
state.
While the victims of US torture are gagged in their trials, a Hollywood movie
presents a thoroughly false picture of facts,
designed
to glorify torture. This on top of a one-sided propaganda view of
the conflicts that the US is involved in, conflicts which the US has
most often been the perpetrator of violence.
The film was made with CIA help and under effective CIA control. It is,
in effect, a US government propaganda film.
The great drought in the Midwest is lowering the Mississippi to the point
where shipping
may soon be stopped.
Global heating makes both floods and droughts more likely, so we're going to
see much worse in 10 years.
The ITU sneakily wrote and voted for on a treaty
giving
governments more control over the Internet, which some countries
may sign, though many others will refuse.
It is not clear to me what practical effect this treaty would have,
since many governments already surveil, censor and block the Internet.
The ITU executive acted deceptively towards the national delegations
and violated previous promises.
Such rigged negotiations have been reported from global negotiations
before, but then they were
rigged
by the US and other wealthy countries.
I wonder why this time the manipulation was done to cater to the
other countries.
Global heating deniers posted a draft of the next IPCC report,
and are trying to create a bogus scandal about
one
sentence whose meaning they have twisted.
Their job is to create an appearance of doubt. They don't care
whether there is any rationality in what they say.
Here are the
details
of the twisting.
Kucinich:
Throw out the NDAA, End the Wars and Start Nation Building at Home.
In addition to his arguments, there is the issue of
imprisonment
without trial.
Even if natural gas obtained by fracking causes less CO2
emissions than coal it appears to replace,
the
coal will be used elsewhere, so the result is still an increase
Since we need to prevent burning around 80% of the fossil fuel
that we can get at, we must apply limits to its use. A tax
is a smooth kind of limit.
6 billion dollars intended to aid Haiti has been
dispersed
without accountability.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say that the climate cliff
is the real cliff we need to worry about. Also sign
this
petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Shaker Aamer, imprisoned in Guantanamo without a trial, will
sue
the UK government for accusations it made against him to the US.
British women raped in Barbados campaigned successfully to free a man
that the state
falsely
accused of being their rapist. They say that the thugs just wanted
to claim they had caught the perpetrator and made no attempt to find
the real rapist.
A
Eulogy for Occupy. The article discusses the flaws of Occupy Wall
Street as well as its virtues. It also has an interesting analysis
of the mentality of thugs and its causes.
I find the use, by the thugs, of special flashlights to sabotage
photography of special significance, because even if all the false
accusations against Occupy were true, and even if the violent
suppression of the protests were justified, none of that could excuse
a measure specifically to prevent the press from taking photos of what
was going on. It is prima facie evidence to convict the government of
a crime against democracy.
France is talking about eliminating punishment of sharers by
disconnection, but proposes
other
forms of repression as a replacement.
As South Africa adopts a secrecy bill
to
attack whistleblowers and journalists, it
cites the US (though not by name) as an example.
A Russian company provides governments surveillance equipment to
recognize
people by their voices and faces.
The article's unsupported accusation that Ecuador violates human
rights is bogus, though surely there is corruption there, as
elsewhere. I am more frightened about the use of this technology by
the US.
The ANC is morally bankrupt, and maintains its support through
inertia
based on ending apartheid 20 years ago.
The al-Saadi family has accepted compensation from the UK for their
handover to Gaddafi for torture, figuring that the
UK's
proposed secret trials would not give them justice.
The European Court of Human Right condemned the
handover
of Khaled el-Masri to US agents in Macedonia.
Here is more about
what
Macedonia and the CIA did to el-Masri. This will make it harder
for the Obama regime to get the cooperation of governments in Europe
to hand over people for torture by the US. But the US government is
still determined to cover up its torture.
A US judge approved the plan to
censor
statements by defendants in Guantanamo kangaroo courts about how
they were tortured.
These "military tribunals" are fundamentally unjust for many reasons.
These trials are just for show, since even if a prisoner were
found not guilty, he would suffer life imprisonment anyway.
The only real significance of these trials is to make the US
more orwellian.
US citizens: phone your senators telling them not to cut
Social
Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Movie star Jackie Chan
wants
less democracy in Hong Kong.
The UK has
authorized
fracking, with "precautions" to avoid causing tiny earthquakes.
Will these precautions prevent poisoning of water supplies?
Using fracked gas would cost the UK
more
than renewable energy. And even if it produces less CO2
than coal, it is a lot more CO2 than renewable energy.
Obama has approved a clone of
Total
Information Awareness.
This attitude towards our rights is one of the reasons I did not vote
for Obama.
The Afghan government facilitates taking
large
amounts of money out of the country. The term "smuggling" is
hardly applicable.
The secret donor behind some US campaign ads was a
Saudi
oil group.
The proprietary software in some medical devices
functions
as spyware too.
An inter-ethnic group of Afghans has started a
political movement for an honest and modern state.
70%
of Pakistan's politicians did not file tax returns last year.
US citizens:
call on
congress to stop accepting campaign funds from the
student loan system.
Hollywood has made a new propaganda film that
extols
US torture.
Companies have manipulated US states into $80 billion per year of
tax breaks by
playing one
state against another.
Most Americans are squeezed between
robots
and robber barons.
Increasing
evidence ties neonicotinoid pesticides to the death of beehives.
The pesticide can build up in the soil over a period of years, and kill
bees that nest in soil.
Secularist protesters in Egypt accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of
seizing
them and torturing them, while thugs looked on.
The UK's Prime Minister admitted that the state colluded in the murder
of a Belfast lawyer in 1989, but
his
family wants a real investigation.
I have no sympathy for the minority in Ulster that wants to detach
Ulster from the UK and add it to the Irish Republic, but they are
guilty of lots of violence too, but that doesn't justify this.
One of the UK's legislative houses has voted to
legalize
insults.
The people of Nabi Saleh continue their protests even though Israeli
soldiers
arrest
them, murder them, shoot and hit them while they are
lying on he ground injured, and spray "skunk" directly into their houses.
Since the Israeli Army's investigation into the killing (clearly
intentional) of Mustafa Tamimi has
mysteriously
made no progress in a year, activists have denounced the soldiers
responsible.
A Kremlin-controlled Russian TV station bleeped out the names
"Putin",
"Medvedev" and "Church of Christ the Savior" when they appeared in a
song.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA not to permit use of toxic methyl bromide.
US citizens: sign
the Jobs not Wars petition.
Guilt in the US and UK over failing to intervene against the genocide
in Rwanda have
paralyzed them
as Rwanda sponsors mass murder in the DR Congo.
Kagame is also accused of
rigging elections in Rwanda itself.
The two main obstacles to an agreement to save the Earth's climate are
the
US and China.
The Federal Reserve Bank is trying to boost the economy through
extremely
low interest rates.
The right tool for the job is deficit spending, but right-wing deficit
cutters have blocked that since 2009, so a less effective tool is
being used instead.
Republicans
complain that Obama is not willing to compromise to avoid the
fiscal downramp that would start on January 1.
Perhaps this provides a glimmer of hope that he will do the right thing
in December:
no
deal. But I am reluctant to expect anything good from Obama.
US citizens: call
on Obama to protect the Clean Water Act.
One commercial
ebook publisher offers books on terms that are in no way
inferior to printed books. You can even subscribe anonymously.
See also Non-oppressive Commercial Ebooks.
How the UK came to ban torture — and
how
easily the US has discarded that and other ideas of justice.
The Committee to Protect Journalists rebuked Israel for
attacking
journalists in Gaza.
If the "fiscal cliff" were real, it would be nothing compared to the
climate cliff.
Mumbai's
Catholic archbishop is personally connected to the
prosecution of Sanal Edamaruku for blasphemy.
If you raise taxes on the rich, only a few of them move away to avoid it.
Most stay put
and pay.
Ivory traffickers are such big business that they
outgun
the government anti-poaching agents that they can't bribe.
It is interesting to contrast this with the War on Drugs. At the
level of production and transportation, they are very similar.
However, there is a major difference at the consumption end.
The War on Drugs attacks users "to protect them", and both retail
sellers and users are often imprisoned. Thus, legalization of use and
providing some legal way for addicts to get drugs eliminates most of
the problem.
In the case of poaching, the problem is extinction. The users
are not being prosecuted, which is ok since the drugs experience
suggests that would not help anyway.
Another difference is that drugs really do something for the user.
(Never mind whether what they do is desirable, a question on which
people disagree.) Elephant tusk and rhino horn have no effect at all;
the users are being gypped. A fake substitute would do them just as
much good.
US citizens: call
on Obama to push for wetlands conservation in the farm bill.
Israel destroys Palestinian cisterns, both ancient ones and modern
EU-funded ones, to make
life impossible.
How Israeli bombardment of Gaza
fails
the criteria of international law. It was meant as collective
punishment, not defense, and Israel's statements effectively admit this.
Hamas's missiles fail these criteria too, but Israel's crimes must
take priority, both because they do far more harm and because it was
Israel that decided to have a war by assassinating the Hamas military
leader as he was about to agree to a truce. Israel and Hamas both
committed war crimes, and both say they are ready to commit more, but
the Israeli war crimes are central to the problem.
Israel keeps
changing
its explanation for bombing the al-Dalou family home, but none of
the justifications is valid.
Although Israeli Arabs are allowed to vote and run for the Knesset,
their candidates are
often
banned from running.
Hakamada Iwao was sentenced to death in 1968 after thugs tortured him
into a false confession.
DNA
evidence supports his innocence.
Syrian rebels captured an
alleged
Russian intelligence agent
and threaten to kill her unless they get a huge ransom.
It's possible she really was a Russian agent. It's also possible she
was pressured into a false confession. But even if she was an
intelligence agent, that is no excuse for killing a prisoner, and even
less for demanding a ransom not to kill her.
Now that Obama has formally recognized a Syrian rebel sort-of-state,
does he have leverage to stop this?
The end of Facebook's
meaningless
elections reveals the hard fact: to avoid being mistreated,
don't use Facebook.
Leveson wants
strict
regulation of what people say in the Internet.
Either he is ignoring the fact that most Internet publication occurs
outside the UK, or he is assuming that the UK can impose its power on
the whole world.
Louise Thomas resigned from the UK investigation of accusations
that Bush forces troops tortured prisoners, saying she found it was
meant as a
cover-up.
Israel
raided
the office of Palestinian human rights defenders.
Obama wants to spend
far too
much on "security"; most of which is military and repression.
Some of the foreign aid -- that which isn't just an instrument
of US foreign policy -- should be a separate discussion.
But that is so small that it doesn't alter any of the conclusions here.
The US seems to consider the big banks
too
big to prosecute.
In effect, they are above the law, so they must be abolished.
Non-oppressive Commercial
Ebooks
US citizens:
call
on Obama to support same-sex marriage in the Supreme
Court.
Will
Congress Rein in Warrantless Spying on Americans?
A charter school in Massachusetts plans to subject students to rigid
discipline all day without a
moment's break.
It might succeed in getting them to better grades, but it seems like a
horrible price in freedom of spirit. Meanwhile, the goal is to get
into college, but in the US today getting student loans is asking for
a ball and chain for most of your life.
The Clean Water Act: a
triumph
of national will, shows what it means to have a government for the
people instead of for business.
The reason such a law could not be passed today, and the reason why a
law to address agricultural runoff cannot be passed to day, is that
business has taken control of our state. The "tight budgets" of today
are not the cause, but another result of the same underlying problem.
Contrast this with the
more
recent government policies that allowed
fracking to poison water supplies.
Canada's right-wing government is
abolishing
part of its protection for lakes and rivers, with the exception of
about 100 of them surrounded mostly by right-wingers.
Bradley Manning's lawyer has demonstrated that the officers in charge
willfully and
perversely
disregarded US military prison rules in order to oppress Bradley
Manning.
Will those responsible be prosecuted? I doubt it.
The US is organizing humanitarian aid to Syrians
through
the Syrian National Coalition, which seems to me intended as an
alternate government for Syria.
The first question that occurs to me is how much of that aid money
will go to help needy people in Syria and how much will line these
people's pockets. Can the US do anything to increase the former?
One pawn is being prosecuted for helping murder journalist Anna
Politkovskaya, but the authorities are
protecting
whoever arranged the killing.
Berlusconi's campaign to rule Italy again is based on criticizing Monti's
austerity measures — never mind that
Berlusconi's
party supported those measures when Monti enacted them.
This reminds me of some of Machiavelli's advice for a prince who had
conquered a city: put a governor in place to take harsh measures to
beat down opposition, then at a suitable time heed the people's
complaints by removing the harsh governor, as an act of pretend
magnanimity.
The latest bombardment of Gaza has
traumatized
the children.
An Afghan law
meant to stop violence against women has been
enforced to some extent, but has not achieved its goal.
Banksters have been
arrested
for Libor manipulation.
The European Parliament
voted
very strongly for net neutrality.
The University of Texas withdrew a study which concluded there is no
evidence that fracking poisons water supplies, and the head
investigator resigned, after it became known he was
on
the board of an oil company and was paid handsomely by it.
The US
could
end homelessness with the cost of Christmas decorations.
Secret
Farm Bill Threatens An "Environmental Cliff".
Falkvinge: don't say you "got" or "downloaded" a copy, say
you
"made" one.
I am not totally convinced yet, but this may be a good point,
especially about "got". As for "download", since it is a very
specific term for a technical practice, perhaps we should simply
remind ourselves that it creates a local copy rather than moving one.
US citizens: phone your senators to call for
support
for Senator Merkley's bill to end warrantless snooping on Americans.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Mechanically tenderized steaks are a
health hazard.
More journalists are in prison than at any time
since
record-keeping began in 1990.
China is the center of the
world's
trade in illegal timber.
The Lib Dems
oppose
the proposed UK snoopers' charter but suggest a rewrite of the bill rather
than killing the whole idea.
This scheme does not involve handing over all phone calls and
emails immediately to the state, but
having
them stored by the phone company or ISP is almost as bad.
The Department of Homeland Repression is putting
bugs
as well as cameras in public buses.
All of them can be accessed remotely over the Internet, so if their
security is broken, others besides Big Brother would be able to listen
to the passengers' conversations.
US citizens:
tell Congress not to shut down its ethics office.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to
support
Rep. DeFazio's letter opposing Monsanto's GMO power grab.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Michigan's right-wing government voted to allow hospitals to refuse abortions
to women who
will
die as a result.
What is happening in Afghanistan
as
NATO troops start to leave.
Many apps designed for children are
dishonest.
Many of the gifts people give on obligatory gift holidays are
not
meant to be of real use for even a minute.
This doesn't apply to me — I swore off obligatory gift giving
holidays once I realized I didn't want gifts from others, I use
clothing until it wears out, and the rest of what I buy is mostly food
or books.
If you are in the habit of hating government, here's
who
you really should hate.
Why Is the
Failed Monti a 'Technocrat' and the Successful Correa a 'Left-Leaning
Economist'?
How the revolving door gave medical companies
influence in Obama's
health care bill — and he does not seem to object.
The Internet is in as much danger from
corporate
censorship as from state censorship.
This is because people use commercial platforms to communicate and publish
on the net. These companies should not be allowed to censor, any more
than the phone company is allowed to disconnect your phone call because
it does not like what you say.
The residents of Detroit are fighting a plan to sell off a lot of
the city's land, at a
fire-sale price.
A female official in the Afghan government was
assassinated.
Since her predecessor was also assassinated, it looks like the Taliban
are expressing their Islamic hatred of women.
The "University" of Phoenix, a for-profit company, lobbied the Arizona
legislature
to stop
nonprofit community colleges from competing with it.
A massive months-long squat-in protest in France aims to block an
unnecessary new airport that would
destroy
an ecologically important forest.
In the 1980s, the World Bank built a hydroelectric dam in Guatemala;
soldiers
killed
hundreds of local people, and raped women, to kick them off their land.
Now Guatemala is stuck in debt, and seems planning to do more of this.
The radio broadcast of the prank call, which led a nurse to
commit suicide, might have violated some
radio
regulations and laws about recording phone calls.
Perhaps some action should be taken, for those general reasons.
However, it should not be be unusually strict just because a freak
accident occurred this time.
US citizens:
pledge
to hold "rogue Democrats" that support right-wing
deficit reduction plans accountable for their wrong.
Turkey is considering a law to ban
"misrepresentation
of historical figures", perhaps inspired by the French law that
bans denying the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.
Any law that bans expression of a view about history is directly
contrary to human rights.
Rich Arab states such as Qatar and Abu Dhabi are
investing
lots of oil money in renewable energy.
Thugs bullied Damon Thibodeaux into a
false
confession of murder, and his lawyer was so bad that
inconsistencies in his confession were ignored.
He has been freed after 15 years thanks to DNA testing, but he was
lucky that DNA could be tested. What about the other people falsely
convicted of murder (or other crimes) due to false confessions?
The Greek opposition leader
calls
for a Europe-wide debt conference
to reduce the debt of the European countries being crushed by austerity.
It is a good idea, but I'm afraid that there is little chance of this
unless he can bring back the Soviet Union to point to as a bugbear.
Meanwhile, many non-European countries could use debt reduction too.
Feminists in Europe are
crusading
for prohibition of prostitution.
This would be as harmful and nasty as prohibition of alcohol was in
the US. Some prostitutes are mistreated; if we want to help them,
surely we can do it in a way that would cause less misery to others.
For instance, victims of trafficking may not ask for help because they
fear being stigmatized, especially if they come from Asia. It would
be useful to offer them a way out. Others don't know how to escape.
Perhaps every prostitution-age female visitor entering Europe for the
first time should receive a booklet written in her own language
explaining what she should do if someone takes away her passport and
forces her to do sex work. Or domestic work — that problem
exists too. And this sheds more light on the issue. People generally
think it is wrong to enslave people and force them to do domestic
work, but don't despise domestic workers and don't suggest a ban on
domestic work. Why should sex work be different?
Perhaps because of an irrational disgust. I would not feel horrified
if a relative of mine were a prostitute or the client of one, but
apparently many people feel that way. That disgust may be the real
impetus for this campaign.
Morsi got elected with support from secularists who now feel he has
betrayed
them.
That doesn't necessarily mean the majority of Egyptians are on the
side of secularism and human rights. But I hope they are.
South Sudan's army killed
10 protesters.
The people of South Sudan are better off out of Sudan's repression,
but that doesn't automatically assure they will escape domestic repression.
The IMF chief is promoting the
myth
that something horrible would
happen to the US if there is no Grand Betrayal by Jan 1.
Paul Krugman
explains
the fallacy and why it is better to have no deal.
Walmart plans to
cut
off health coverage for most of its employees
on the excuse that it won't let them work more than 30 hours a week.
On rumors that Obama would make bankster Sallie Krawcheck head
of the SEC, business journalism praised her for side issues,
disregarding
her
bank's role in the crisis.
Saudi Arabia
seems to be planning to fund Islamist extremists
in Afghanistan as it does already in Pakistan.
Americans often forget that most of the Sep 11 hijackers were Saudis.
The Saudi regime surely didn't intend anyone to attack their friend
Bush, or their ally the US; but after so much effort to promote
violent religious extremism, such effect was not mere coincidence.
However, the victims of this extremism are usually in
Asia and Africa. Terrorism in the US is almost nonexistent.
The Doha negotiations have agreed on
partial
compensation to poor countries from the rich countries.
The US fought to water this down.
To make multinational corporations pay tax fairly, they
must
not be allowed to treat foreign subsidiaries as separate companies.
Here is what secular
Egyptians demand of Morsi.
Egyptian thugs attacked journalists who were
covering
a protest.
Not content with ruining our water and contributing to atmospheric
CO2, the US government wants to frack even more, for
export
of natural gas.
US citizens: Protest on Jan 19 for a constitutional amendment to
reverse
the Corporations United decision (written that way to say what it
really was).
We
cannot
trust what US officials say about Assad's preparations for
using chemical weapons.
Whether this matters depends on what is proposed. If this
"intelligence" were offered as a reason for a war of conquest, it
would count for nothing. However, if the idea is to attack Assad's
chemical weapons facilities if he starts using them, then the
"intelligence" about preparations only sets the scene for a
conditional threat. In that case, it doesn't matter than much
whether we can trust it.
As for the general idea of intervention against Assad,
I see nothing immoral about it, but avoiding a bad outcome
may be tricky.
US citizens: call your congresscritter for renewing tax breaks for
sustainable bioenergy.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Turkey's repression of the press is
constant,
mostly invisible, and perverts journalism in that country.
I am not sure this directly affects Leveson's proposals, since there
are many intermediate possibilities between repressing criticism of
the state and allowing them to break into people's phone answering
machines. I have not studied what he proposed.
Morsi
revoked
his decree that gave him emergency powers, but still plans to push
for a quick referendum on a constitution that doesn't respect human
rights. Meanwhile, he plans to legitimize arrests of civilians by the
military, one of Mubarak's nasty tactics, as a result of which many
protesters are in prison.
Maybe Egypt needs to commit in advance to fixing its constitution with
a Bill of Rights, as the US did.
The British have
forgotten
how to protest really hard.
Exfoliants in cosmetics contain tiny particles of polyethylene that
end up floating in the ocean and
hurt
certain species of animals.
Il Ducino
will
try to rule Italy again.
If he succeeds, it might protect him from
going
to jail.
Hamas's leader, Meshaal, in visiting, called Israel illegitimate, and
announced
the goal of taking all of it back. Thus, Hamas is about as
impossible as a "partner for peace" as the Israeli state.
Meshaal's boasts about launching missiles at cities match Israel's
boasts about bombing houses. Israel had a chance to make peace with a
secular Palestinian state, but decided to grab land and water instead;
this is the result.
As for the Hamas plan to take more Israeli soldiers prisoner and
exchange them for other prisoners, I don't see anything wrong in that
particular tactic. Taking enemy soldiers prisoner for no reason
except that they are enemy soldiers is legitimate. Imprisoning
civilians for no reason, as Israel does, is what's wrong.
Egypt sentenced those who made "Innocence of Muslims" to
death,
in absentia, for "harming national unity, insulting and publicly
attacking Islam and spreading false information".
Thus Egypt demonstrates the lack of freedom of thought and speech.
The film might be lousy, stupid and insulting, but that is no excuse
for criminal charges.
Verizon claims that freedom of speech means it can
censor
your Internet communications arbitrarily.
Sounds like blackwhiting: censorship is freedom.
In many countries around the world, murder of journalists is used
for
censorship.
A change
in the adjustment for inflation could be a sneaky way to
cut Social Security benefits.
The EFF defeated a Washington law that would have
punished
web sites if any of their pages appeared to be ads for
prostitution.
In the US: join
protests on Monday December 10 against any Grand
Betrayal that would cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
Companies are correlating browsing and activity patterns to
tie
together the same person's computer use on different computers.
Since they use cookies to do it, this appears to be another way for
permanent cookies to be harmful.
Reportedly the Taliban are using children to do
combat-related
jobs.
The US has imprisoned many Afghan teenagers, perhaps thousands,
calling them combatants — even when they were
captured
unarmed in their own homes.
Fighting or capturing enemy combatants, properly speaking, is
legitimate in war. However, the fact that some adult men are Taliban
combatants does not justify pretending that any and all Afghan adult
men who are killed were combatants. And if some Afghan children are
combatants, that does not justify treating Afghan children arbitrarily
as combatants.
UK Uncut launched many
protests
against Starbucks Coffee for its low taxes, but the real target is
the government that helps companies such as Starbucks avoid taxes and
takes it out on the poor.
The UK also needs to have sit-ins to repeal the "aggravated trespass"
law whose specific purpose was to ban many kinds of protests,
including sit-ins.
Famous rapper Psy made a humble
apology
for his hostile verbal attacks in 2004 against the Bush forces.
It was wrong for Psy to call for killing the innocent relatives of
Dubya's torturers, but the crimes of the Bush forces — the
torture, and the wanton killing — went beyond mere words.
Nowadays, Obama protects those guilty of war crimes and aggressive
war, from Dubya (who has confessed to his role) all the way down.
Obama, not Psy, ought to be the first to apologize, but he must do
more than that: he must prosecute them.
In the US:
tell
Applebee's not to cut workers' hours to avoid
responsibility for health care.
Students are occupying a building in Cooper Union to protest the
plan to
charge
a tuition fee for the first time.
Student loans in the US have become an oppressive
permanent ball and chain,
so lots of Americans should not pay for college
under these circumstances.
The suicide of a UK nurse who received a prank phone call created an
example of
why
we must reject the proposed "right to be forgotten".
Although I feel sorry for that nurse, who must have felt horrible pain
if it led her to suicide, I don't think the people who made the prank
call were morally responsible for this unlikely consequence. We must
not let all of life be oppressed by fear of freak accidents and
overreactions.
The outgoing legislature of Michigan passed a last-minute
union-busting
law.
US citizens:
call on
West Virginia Governor Tomblin to save Blair
Mountain from mountaintop removal coal mining.
The latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
publicly
defends censorship.
He got the prize for literature, not for defending human rights, so
this does not mean he doesn't deserve the prize. It only means he is
contemptible slime.
Billionaire Polluter will acquire a supercomputer
to
model rock structures, and says this will make undersea drilling safe.
This system might (if they are describing it accurately) make
certain accidents happen less often, but that doesn't make
undersea drilling safe — especially if they continue
cutting corners on safety.
Soot from Arctic wildfires seems to have caused
increased
melting of Greenland ice.
Global heating will tend to increase Arctic wildfires in the future,
leading to more acceleration of melting (and sea-level rise). This
means the melting will be more than current models predict.
Greece is turning back lots of
Syrians
trying to cross from Turkey.
Since Turkey welcomes fleeing Syrians, I am skeptical that they face a
likelihood of abuse from the Turkish state, so I don't think many of
them have a valid argument for asylum in the Schengen zone. I think
they are would-be economic migrants.
Is Assad preparing to use
chemical
weapons against Syrian rebels?
It's possible — I don't supposed he has scruples against this
(or anything). However, he might be restrained by other
considerations.
Former
Defense Officials Call For Military Spending Cuts.
Wall Street Bank Cuts 11,000 Jobs After Paying Ousted Executives $14
Million.
25
countries have agreed to take action on short-term greenhouse gases.
Action against black carbon — that is, soot — is
important
for people's health, but as regards avoiding climate disaster
CO2 is more important than these short-term gases.
Instead, the US
pretends
to have planned more CO2 reductions than it really has.
Biodiversity offsetting means you can destroy a species' habitat in one place
if you
say
you will build another somewhere else.
The idea is bogus because building a new habitat for wildlife is an
uncertain activity, unlike building houses or streets.
US citizens:
oppose
ITU regulation of the Internet.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support HR 5959
(Appalachian Communities Health Emergency, to stop mountaintop removal
coal mining) and HR 1084 (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of
Chemicals, to end secrecy about chemicals used in fracking).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
ITU censorship proposals may come to naught, but we
can't
count on that.
US citizens:
oppose the use of corn designed to grow with use of toxic
Agent Orange defoliant.
How Social Security cuts in the 1980s were
misrepresented
as "raising the retirement age".
How Time Magazine
gave
up on factchecking and objectivity.
The NYC poster hacker who made
this
was tracked down and arrested. Perhaps not with drones.
Many manufacturing companies are
moving
production from China to the US. Amazingly, wages in China have
risen to the point where this is profitable.
Nonetheless, this will never provide full employment in the US.
We must provide, as a society, for the people whose labor is not needed.
US citizens:
call on Congress to cut subsidies to fossil fuel
companies and preserve or increase spending for green energy and to
protect the environment.
US thugs want phone companies to accumulate a years-long dossier of
each
person's text messages.
This would fill a gap in the total surveillance of people's communications
which they are setting up.
How the Koch brothers' money
bought
control of the US government and turned
it into an enemy of saving our climate
Israel demolished the mosque in the village of
Mufaqra…again.
Gush Shalom argued in Israel's supreme court against the law that
imposes
unlimited damages on anyone calling for a boycott of products
of Israel's colonies in the West Bank.
In Gaza, Israel intentionally bombed a house with a bomb that
flattened it and destroyed several neighboring houses.
10
people were killed.
The Israeli military said this was to assassinate a supposed visitor.
Israel considers a massive civilian death toll justified by the merest
hint of a military target.
By that logic, the presence of soldiers or military-related offices in
Tel Aviv would justify launching missiles against Tel Aviv.
Israel's
newly
announced colony construction would split the West Bank
into two parts.
This would completely spoil any idea of a real Palestinian state, if
we presume none of territory Israel has effectively annexed is
returned. In practice, though, that does not really mean a Palestinian state
is harder to achieve, because in practice that state requires return by Israel
of most of the land and water it has seized control over.
Lebanese thugs demanded access to the
email
and social media passwords of everyone in Lebanon.
The court rejected the demand.
New Jersey drivers
risk
accidents to avoid being caught by red-light cameras.
US citizens:
call for dismissal
of the judge who decided not to send a convicted thug to prison.
The thug groped a woman in a bar, and the judge says it was the woman's
fault for being there.
US citizens:
sign
this petition to protect Social Security, Medicare
and Medicaid from cuts.
It can't hurt to sign several of these petitions.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to move ahead with strong limits on soot pollution.
In addition to killing people directly, soot adds to the absorption of
sunlight and thus slightly increases global heating, which will kill
lots of people.
ALEC and the Heatland Institute (spelling intentional)
are teaming up
to try to repeal state
laws that require utilities to buy a certain minimum of electricity
from renewable sources.
Climate campaigners called on the University of Wisconsin to
divest from fossil fuel
companies.
No
warrant, no problem: How the [US] government can still get your
digital data, and you may never find out about it.
The FBI has its own access, via snooping, to almost
all the email sent and received in the US.
Military drones are frequently used for
surveillance of civilians in the US.
The Republican Party staffer who
published
a note suggesting copyright reform as a possible Republican policy
has been fired.
He certainly won't find a home in the Democratic Party. Both of those
parties have sold out to big business, on this issue and many others,
which is why I won't support either of them.
An
Economy That Works for the Middle Class Won't Happen on Its Own.
US citizens: ask
your congresscritter to sign a discharge petition
for an explicit vote on ending Dubya's tax cuts for the rich.
America, tax
the traders!
Stabilizing financial markets was the original motive for the Tobin Tax,
or Robin-Hood Tax, but collecting more money from a lucrative and exploitative
sector of the diseconomy would be good too.
Increasing the Medicare age threshold would
cost
patients twice the amount that the government would save.
The loss would be gain for some businesses. Maybe that's why
politicians want to do it.
Bradley Manning's jailers violated military prison rules
on
several occasions as they kept him in conditions
comparable
to North Korean brainwashing.
US citizens: phone your senators to support Merkely's
Protect
America's Privacy Act (S. 3515).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Two Thai politicians face murder charges for
ordering
repression forces to shoot protesters.
Typhoon Bopha, now hitting the Philippines, is their equivalent of
Hurricane Sandy. The Philippines representative cried as he described the
storm and
begged
the world's representatives to get serious about limiting global
heating.
This year
set
a record for decrease in Arctic ice and snow.
International
criticism convinced South Korea to back down from the
plan to start killing whales.
An organizer in the UK was convicted for organizing an
Internet
sit-in.
This illustrates how translating physical activities to the Internet
serves as an opportunity for states to take away traditional rights.
Islamists attacked secularist protesters in Cairo, leading to
street
fighting.
Arguing that Morsi
continues Mubarak's authoritarian tradition: this is not a new
fight, but the same old fight.
The
Obscenely Rich Men Bent on Shredding the Safety Net.
New Zealand, like Michigan,
pays
unconscionably to get movies made there.
The price included unjust laws affecting
movie
industry workers and the
general public.
U.S.
Commandos' New Landlord in Afghanistan: Blackwater.
Obama is still trying to attack digital freedom around the world
via
the TPP.
The TPP probably contains injustices for other areas of life, too.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 888-497-9539 to say, "No
cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and let the Bush Tax
Cuts for the richest 2% to expire."
The multiple
levels of legal invalidity of "shouting 'fire' in a
crowded theater" as a precedent.
The other fallacy in this argument is generalization. The idea of
"shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" is that the audience members
don't dare take time to verify whether there is really a fire. They
have to try to get out immediately. In nearly all real censorship
situations, this argument would not apply anyway, because people
have time to think before doing anything.
Another
petition
for a good cause that I could not sign.
It asserts that women (and men) in the US military are "fighting for
our freedom." I know of only one man in the US military recently that
I can confidently say this: Bradley Manning.
India's government has
chosen
Wal-mart over employment.
Greece
is the most corrupt country in Europe, as perceived by its citizens,
and this is due to bad laws that fail to obstruct corruption.
If we take a wider definition of "corruption", including buying laws
and regulations that suit companies, the US is very corrupt.
It seems countries are
starting
to negotiate about the necessary greenhouse gas cuts.
Is it true that this treaty that would not come effect until 2020?
That is like planning to let the horses out of the barn and then bar
the door.
In any case, it is stupid to argue about whether increased effort must
be made by the richest countries or the other large emitters. The
answer is "both". Both must confront this issue like an invasion
if they are to survive.
Reconnaissance drones will be used to
track
poachers that kill rhinos, elephants and tigers.
Is
Your Pension Fund Taking Land Away From African Farmers?
US citizens:
call
on Obama to campaign for a constitutional amendment
to correct the Corporations United decision.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to stop Shell from drilling for oil in the Arctic next
year.
We already have 5 times as much oil reserves as we dare to burn; there is
no point in using the deposits that are hard or dangerous to reach.
The methods of India's Green Revolution have become
unsustainable.
Groundwater is exhausted, pesticide pollution is spreading, and burning
of rice plants is making people sick.
The burning releases CO2, but if that CO2 was
drawn from the air by the plants, it does not add up to any increase
in CO2 concentration.
World food demand is expected to
almost
double in the next 40 years, but global heating is expected to
reduce food production. The result is that food prices will double,
and many children will be malnourished.
The solution must include gratis contraception for everyone. We can
avoid having 9 billion people if we act firmly to reduce the birth rate.
UK troops shot Afghan teenagers and a boy at close range while the
latter sat
on
the floor drinking tea.
IMF Suggests Lowering Global Financial Speed Limit.
An Ecuadorian "white hat" who cracked the security of the government's
records about individuals, and published news of this to call for
security improvements, was imprisoned 45 days until
President
Correa personally had him released.
It is good that Correa understands the difference between an attack
and constructive criticism, but the rest of the state needs to know it too.
Border
Agents' Power to Search Devices Is Facing Increasing Challenges in
Court.
Note also the injustice of punishing someone for dating a person who was
15 years old.
In the US today,
terrorism
is a minuscule danger. Repression by the state is a big danger and
these searches are part of it.
The ITU approved a standard requirement for
deep
packet inspection facilities (snooping) in future networks.
US states give 1.5
billion in tax breaks to the movie companies,
supposedly to create jobs, but it makes very few jobs.
These states are in a bidding war trying to take jobs away from other
states. In other words, the movie companies are playing one state
against another. Even if the promised jobs were real, the practice
would still harm the country as a whole.
Movie companies
demanded
Google censor their own sites.
134 Nobelists called on China to
free
Liu Xiaobo.
Investment in offshore wind power would make
more jobs than fracking.
OECD says civilization is on a
collision
course with nature.
1000
Rwandan soldiers joined the Congo rebels for the capture of Goma.
I am not sure what to think about these rebels. Previous rebels in
that region were brutal towards the civilians and were mainly
interested in capturing control of vital minerals to sell to the
developed world. This batch might be the same, or it might make a
real effort to replace the DR Congo's parasitical president with some
better government. The former deserves only condemnation; the latter
could deserve support.
Civilians in Mali are forming a militia to
fight
the Islamists who captured the north of the country.
We can't trust the US or even European governments not to approve something
nasty in private at the ITU meeting.
Fracking destroys
farms, with inadequate compensation, and can make the
local farmers sick and drive them out of their homes.
Absurdly, the frackers burn the methane rather than collecting it for
some use.
If this were the worst problem caused by fracking, it could be
corrected by requiring compensation for these other problems.
However, the global heating from burning this gas will do damage
beyond all compensation.
How an excessive gift to a homeless man
turned
into an excuse to despise the homeless.
Was the whole thing set up as a way to distract from the
persistent
human rights violations of the New York Thug Department?
The UK's homeless are
up
23% in the past year, mainly among the very poor who can't cope with
even a temporary reverse.
The UK's plans for fracking violate its
CO2
emissions reduction law.
Decade
of US 'War on Terror' Yields More 'Terrorism'. Just not in the US.
The UN has voted to rebuke Israel for
not
allowing IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities. Israel
appears to have scuttled a conference about nuclear disarmament in the
Middle East, which Iran was willing to attend.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Shaheen Amendment
to extend abortion coverage to military women who have been raped.
There is also a petition, but I couldn't sign it because of its
"drivel
about serving".
I wish the US government used its military in the service of the
country and the world, but it more often uses them in the service of
the megacorporations.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call on
Pepsi to take a clear stand in Uganda against
the bill for increased persecution of gays.
US citizens:
call
on the US to suspend Billionaire Polluters from
federal contracting for five years (not for a short time).
The Japanese tunnel collapse was apparently due to
negligence
by the private company that operates the road.
Allowing private companies to operate roads is asking for trouble.
They always have an incentive to skimp.
A very
large solar power plant will be built in Ghana, thanks to a policy
incentive for renewable energy.
Developing countries such as India, Brazil and China
must
cut emissions too, or we're doomed.
Of course, the US must also do a lot more.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, Sign Rep. Lee's letter
calling for a prompt withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to enforce US laws about how Israel uses US
arms.
Julian Assange explains, in an interview, how the Obama regime has
started to treat journalistic publication of US government leaks,
anywhere in the world, as a crime.
Another disqualification for Susan Rice: she
supported Dubya's
invasion of Iraq.
A considerable fraction of Americans had the sense to recognize that
the invasion was wrong and stupid; anyone who didn't see this should
not be in an important foreign policy post.
Washington's
Serious People Are on the War Path — against us.
The purpose of absurd cuts proposals, such as Corker's corker,
is to make smaller cuts that are merely cruel and unjust look like
"reasonable compromises".
The survival of civilization now
requires
the destruction of plutocracy and the revival of democracy.
Americans, you will regret you didn't vote for Jill Stein.
The European right-wing movement to
criminalize
squatting: "If they
have no homes, let them live in prison."
Life expectancy in South Africa has
increased
by 5 year due to anti-HIV drugs.
The spread of HIV has gone down.
Former heads of state call on Europe to
clearly label products made in Israeli colonies in
the West Bank.
Since these colonies are all illegal under international law, I don't see
why Europe should stop with labeling them. It should ban them.
A survey attempts to explore the
perceived
benefits that motivate people to use illegal drugs.
Reductions
in methane and other short-lived greenhouse gases are no substitute
for reducing CO2 emissions.
The US and Europe
oppose
compensating poor countries for the damage that global heating will do
to them
Many people in poor countries are likely to die after a few more years
of floods or droughts.
The Simpsons illustrates the extent of
censorship
in Turkey.
A breakdown
in talks may save America from a harmful deal that might
cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The term "fiscal cliff" is Republican spin, and
"no deal" is the best
outcome for the rest of this year.
Starbucks in the UK has
cut
lunch breaks and sick leave, but argues that this is ok because it
was not a response to possibly having to pay its fair share of taxes.
Autonomous killer robots should be banned, but the US is
proceeding
with them, and the "precautions" are inadequate.
CO2
emissions rises mean dangerous climate change now almost certain.
By "dangerous" they mean "far worse the damage we have already seen".
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to enforce cleanup of cement plants,
and not give them two more years to continue polluting.
In some parts of the ocean, sea snails' shells are dissolving due to
increased
acidity from CO2 in the water.
2200 square miles of Appalachia have been
destroyed
by mountaintop removal coal mining, and companies want to destroy
more. Now one mining company has been forced to turn back to
underground mining, which doesn't destroy the whole terrain, by the
cost of the damage it did.
We need to slow coal mining down, because civilization can't survive
burning a lot more coal.
Republicans want to force Twitter to
block
the accounts of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Censorship on such an important forum is dangerous no matter what
is being censored.
Asylum-seekers in Canada are
nearly
all imprisoned, held by a private
prison company, unless and until they give up and leave.
Some
suggestions for how to get rich people's money out of US elections.
An antisec hacker says: giving
information
on security holes to the
public, or to the software developer, only helps those who want to
exploit the holes.
The article doesn't say this is about proprietary software, but seems
to take for granted that the software is proprietary. It even argues
for "armored executables" designed to prevent reverse engineering,
which presupposed users can't read the source code.
The author recommends giving the security hole info "to an individual
whom you know (through personal experience) will act in the interest
of social justice."
I wouldn't give a proprietary software developer any sort of bug
report; since proprietary software is fundamentally wrong, it doesn't
deserve help. Free software deserves help, because it upholds social
justice within its own sphere.
A peasant leader in Paraguay was
assassinated.
He was a leader in a movement whose other leaders were either killed
or arrested by thugs, and this was seized on by the elite as an excuse
to remove President Lugo from power. His killers were surely
associated with the elite as well.
Kuwait's opposition
boycotted
the elections for parliament, after the regime changed election laws.
I do not understand the change enough to have an opinion of it,
but the strength of the boycott shows the strength of the people's
opposition to the regime.
Morsi has called for a referendum in 2 weeks on a
constitution
that doesn't respect human rights.
Egypt's Supreme Court was
shut
down by Islamist protesters.
Israel punished the Palestinian Authority for its UN success by
refusing
to hand over the funds it is supposed to collect for the PA.
The plan to construct of more housing for Israeli colonists is
supposedly also "punishment", but since it is no different from what
Israel has done all the time for years, that is just a pretense.
More about Susan Rice's
big
conflict of interest.
A tunnel collapsed
in Japan, trapping cars which caught fire.
The idea that cars would catch fire from collisions is a movie
cliché, but I thought it was pure fiction. Apparently it
does occasionally happen. Should car designs be changed to prevent it?
(Of course, people will investigate why the tunnel collapsed.)
Leaked documents show how soon-to-be-ex Senator Lieberman
used
threats to make PayPal, Visa and Mastercard cut off payments to
Wikileaks.
They also show that "European" Mastercard and Visa pretend to be
European-owned but are in fact controlled by their US counterparts.
The European Commission is acting to protect the US-imposed shutoff,
even though the European Parliament has voted to endorse rights for
Wikileaks.
The factory in Bangladesh which burned down, killing 120 workers
who couldn't escape because of locked doors, was
making
clothing for many global brands.
These companies say they had had policies against using this factory
as a subcontractor, but the policies are clearly not effective.
A North Korean assassin carried
deadly
weapons disguised as pens and a flashlight.
Soviet bloc agents used similar poison weapons to kill defectors in
the 1970s.
US citizens: call
on Senator Reid not to block Elizabeth Warren from
the Senate Banking Committee.
Everyone: call
on the president of Uganda not to sign the bill
to kill gays.
US citizens:
urge
the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to
push forward with offshore wind power.
Censorship laws in the West, including punishment of blasphemy or Nazi
ideology, are regularly
cited
around the world to justify other sorts of censorship.
The UK also has laws censoring statements that people should be free
to make, including
anything
likely to cause offense.
I don't know enough about the Leveson commission's proposals to have a
position on them. If a new press law amounts to censorship, that
would be wrong. If it only helps put a end to certain abusive
methods, such as breaking into people's answering machines, it might
be good. As for the issue of attention to people's private lives, I
think that those who enjoy fame and great wealth should accept the bad
with the good.
Tobacco companies have hired big PR firms to
lobby
against laws to require plain packages for cancer sticks.
They have
used
"free trade" treaties against this for years.
A carbon tax is
quietly
being considered in Congress to eliminate the
US budget deficit.
Eliminating the budget deficit is a misguided goal; the US needs
deficit spending to get people back to work. But the carbon tax is a
great way to move towards renewable energy. It's not enough by
itself, of course: most Americans now have no money to invest in
reducing their future energy usage. Schemes must be established to
facilitate the changes that will reduce emissions.
Kosovan prime minister Haradinaj was prosecuted twice by the Hague war
crimes tribunal, and
found
innocent twice. Advisors to the
prosecutors told them in advance that the evidence (provided by Serb
intelligence) was insufficient, and the prosecutors went ahead anyway.
Haradinaj claims that a deal was made with Serbia to prosecute him in
the absence of grounds. He now plans to reenter politics.
Why is the war crimes tribunal allowed to prosecute someone twice?
Many common food ingredients have been spuriously linked with cancer
based on insufficient studies.
In 1984, UK thugs who attacked striking miners and then made
false accusations
against them.
They also arrested strikers' relatives and made bogus charges. And they
pressured
miners to accept bail and plea conditions that banned them
from picketing.
Clearly this was simply a scheme to break the strike, and never mind the
costs to the idea of justice.
The victims ask only for erasure of their unjust criminal records, but
I think that justice requires jailing those thugs (and any officials
who told them to do this — too bad Thatcher is not alive to be
jailed).
Correction: Thatcher is demented but nominally alive. However, it comes
to the same thing.
Assad has
reconnected
Syria's Internet.
I wonder if the outage was in order to install some new surveillance
equipment.
The Rwanda-supported rebels in DR Congo have
withdrawn
from Goma.
I have a feeling that there is more going on here than is described in
the article, but I don't know enough to guess what.
Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" measurement seems to have produced
big improvements
in life there — but global heating is already
destroying its agriculture.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to give priority to climate protection.
Just like Dubya, Obama believes (with the support of his followers)
that
legal
limits on assassinations are are not needed as long as he's
the one in charge of them.
The Leveson commission's proposal for preventing press abuses (such as breaking
into people's answering machines) ignores the issue of
how
the people who promoted these abuses got hold of UK media.
What to expect
later this century if we don't take firm action
now to protect the climate.
Uri Avnery sees upgraded UN recognition of Palestine as a
path
towards peace.
The New York Times supported militarism by regretting at length the
departure
of retired Senator Lieberman, who advocated bellicose policies and
led the US government attack against Wikileaks.
It also published a
low
estimate of casualties from Obama's drone
attacks in Pakistan, from an organization sponsored by Lieberman.
US citizens: call
on the US government to reconsider its politically biased
decision against selling Plan B (oral emergency contraceptive) without
prescription.
Major
New U.S. AIDS Plan Disallows Funding for Family Planning.
In other words, Obama has made yet another gratuitous surrender to the
theocrats who normally vote Republican.
The Caribbean island of Barbuda is facing
truncation
due to global heating.
Congress is proposing
additional
sanctions against Iran without any way to lift them as part of a deal.
This is not designed to convince Iran to make concessions; it is designed
to provoke war.
Eastern Europe is fighting a cruel war on drugs, left over from
the Soviet Empire, which
spreads
diseases without even reducing the use of these drugs.
US courts can order compassionate release for prisoners in special
circumstances, such as if they are terminally ill, but the Bureau of
Prisons rarely allows prisoners to reach the court.
It throws most prisoners' petitions in the trash and forgets them.
Jordan is
putting
protesters on trial in a special repression court, for crimes that
basically consist of being dissidents, after torturing them.
This court shares the flaw of the
Guantanamo kangaroo courts:
a lack of independence.
Jeb Bush is
pushing
school privatization based on the apparent success
of mostly different measures that worked well for a while while he was
governor of Florida.
The measures actually tried included increased spending, for a while.
Department store dummies whose eyes are cameras bring home the
outrageous
nature of surveillance.
Obama condemned Republicans for threatening a
"Scrooge Christmas".
However, he too is a Scrooge, since he has already offered to do part
of the harm Republicans demand.
The idea of making a deal with the Republicans is misguided;
the term "fiscal cliff" misrepresents the situation and creates
the
false
impression that a deal is really needed.
Thugs in Brazil have a habit of
killing
people and faking firefights as justification.
Obama and his supporters, including the US mainstream media, treat
everyone that exposes
US
war crimes and torture as "the enemy".
Atheists in Santa Monica have put an end to the
use
of town property to promote Christianity.
Alas, this means that town property also can't be used to promote
Gravmass, but at least
it is fair.
Anxiety
about changes to prevent global heating lead many people
who recognize the danger to avoid thinking about the issue.
This combines with the problem that, to paraphrase someone famous,
everyone wants a stable climate, but nobody wants what makes for a
stable climate.
I agree with the recommendation to avoid campaigns based on individual
guilt, because individuals are not to blame. We can't solve this
problem by making changes individually; it requires
state
action.
In the US,
most
individuals now recognize global heating as a danger,
and want the government to take the necessary action to prevent it.
The state can do this in a way that might provide more benefit than
suffering for working Americans.
It is the sell-out politicians,
including Obama and much of Congress, that are guilty.
Australia has adopted
strict
rules for cigarette packages to prevent them
from being attractive to young people.
US citizens:
Sign
this petition in support of the fast food workers on strike in New
York City.
US citizens:
sign
Bernie Sanders' petition: no cuts in Social Security,
Medicare or Medicaid, and no tax cuts for the rich.
US citizens: object
to appointing Susan Rice as Secretary of State,
since she has invested in companies that will profit from the Keystone
XL planet-roaster pipeline.
I gave this comment:
When 9000 women in St Louis were offered gratis use of long-term
contraceptives, the pregnancy rate for teenagers among them went
down to
under
1%, and the abortion rate dropped dramatically too.
A US Senate committee adopted a
partial
limitation on imprisonment
without trial, prohibiting it for US citizens and permanent
residents when captured in the US. Immediately, the senators totally
opposed to human rights began trying to twist its meaning to claim
that anyone can nonetheless be imprisoned without trial.
10 Corporations That Still Get New Gov't Contracts, Despite Alleged Misconduct.
With international agencies and business consultants warning that we
are on the
edge
of too late to avoid climate disaster, powerful
countries such as the US continue to obey the dictates of the oil
companies. What can make them stop?
DuPont is following Monsanto in
attacking
farmers who save their seeds.
Farmers' right to save and trade their seeds must be protected
from all interference, aside from health and environmental concerns.
The article was flawed by using the vague term
"intellectual
property"
instead of the clear and precise term "patents".
Relatives of Adnan al-Qadhi ask Yemen, and Obama, why they killed him
when they
could
easily have arrested him if there were any grounds.
Julian Assange summarizes what the Wikileaks cables showed about the US's
tentacles of
repression
and death.
Morsi is pushing for a quick vote on a hurried constitution that
doesn't
respect human rights.
A Pentagon lawyer suggests it is about time to
declare
al Qa'ida destroyed, and regard whatever remains as criminals
rather than a military enemy.
This goes against Obama's actual behavior which is to
expand
the drone bombings supposedly aimed at anti-US "terrorists" to
other targets.
US citizens: support
the fast food workers' strike.
New Zealand used the
threat
of offshoring as an excuse to take away the rights of its film
workers.
This is the evil logic of
"free trade":
countries compete to see which one can give businesses the most power
over the people.
US citizens:
tell
Congress, cut military spending, not the spending
that helps people.
Haiti wants the UN to
pay
for clean water facilities, so as to get rid
of the cholera brought by the UN colonization troops.
Oh, they call themselves "peacekeepers", but their purpose is to maintain
US-imposed
rule on Haiti, so "colonization troops" is more accurate.
US citizens:
call
on Obama not to accept corporate funding for events connected with
his inauguration.
A home
water purification scheme in Kenya is funded by carbon offsets.
Many
carbon offset schemes are bogus — for instance, planting
trees might absorb CO2 over the next 20 years, but they might
die instead.
Currently if a company says, "We're good because we offset
or emissions", I would not trust that that means anything. However,
with suitable regulations to ensure these schemes produce real
emissions reductions, they might become meaningful.
An experiment suggest that the dispersant that Billionaire Polluters
poured into the Gulf of Mexico helped the oil penetrate deeper into
beaches, and now enables
toxic chemicals to last longer.
Senator Graham wants to make it explicit that the US can imprison
absolutely
anyone forever without trial. I can't imagine anything more un-American than that.
The paradoxical battle between Morsi, the Islamist, and the courts, full
of Mubarak supporters,
leaves no easy path to democracy and human
rights.
The UN General Assembly named Palestine
as a "non-member
state".
This means it can refer Israeli war crimes to the International
Criminal Court. I can't see any other way to reduce the oppression of
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Asking the PA to negotiate
with Israel is like asking a lamb to negotiate with a lion about
which limb to eat next.
The UK will make
sure state-supported schools teach evolution
and not creationism. Some web sites track how the user
moves the mouse (even without
clicking).
I consider this inherently abusive. Browsers should be designed so it
can't be
done at all.
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If Susan Rice knew that she had invested were in companies likely to
benefit from the planet-roaster pipeline, that alone should disqualify
her from any important government post.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
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Thugs in Colombia arrested a journalist who was photographing a protest, then beat him to death.
Then, like good thugs, they made false accusations that he attacked them.
Most Japanese no longer want whale meat, which has turned Japanese whaling into a drain on the government treasury.
I am sure Japan can find other ways to spend the money that would create more jobs and without doing any harm.
Russia is considering a nationwide ban on "homosexual propaganda".
I don't think Putin really cares about gays one way or the other, but that is a convenient excuse to officially establish censorship.
A new campaign has been launched to
reform the City of London
which serves as a lobbying and political influence arm for the
banksters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese dissident's relative was sentenced to prison for fighting unidentified men who broke into his family home — who turned out to be thugs.
He was put on trial with "defense lawyers" imposed on him by the state. Access to the trial was effectively restricted.
Sounds a lot like Guantanamo.
Sen. Sanders: Wall Street CEOs are
the 'Faces of Class
Warfare'.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
McJobs Should Pay, Too: Inside Fast-Food Workers' Historic Protest For Living Wages.
It appears the US uses drones as a general-purpose weapon to fight against rebels opposing US-supported governments, while claiming that the targets are "terrorists".
A senate committee voted for requiring search warrants for any access to people's email and other remotely-stored data.
Big Pharma companies are trying to use ridiculous patents to crush generic drugs in India, but so far India has thwarted them.
The only reason patents on drugs exist in India is that they were imposed by wealthy countries including the US, through TRIPES, the Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science.
The supporters of that harmful treaty call it "TRIPS", which uses their propaganda term "intellectual property". Since that term spreads confusion, using it does harm; therefore I go out of my way not to use it.
After Australia conscripted all ISPs to snoop on their users, it sparked a movement for use of encryption.
Afghan clerics want to impose Islamic law on Afghanistan and abolish women's rights. They have asked Karzai to do this.
The Netherlands has repealed its law against blasphemy.
ALEC is pushing to privatize US public schools, together with a specialized organization called FEE.
Both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice, and it is accelerating.
Assad has cut off Syria from the Internet.
America Needs To Stop Sucking Up to Generals.
The treaty banning landmines is having a significant effect
even though the US refuses
to sign it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Governor Walker wants to abolish same-day voter registration in Wisconsin because that makes it too easy for poor people to vote.
US schools are much like prisons; in Arizona, privatized prison guards go on raids in schools and help arrest students.
Arresting people for possession of marijuana is always an injustice, and many states have put an end to the practice.
Privatized prisons should be abolished too, because they create a lobby for more imprisonment.
The UK seems to have got serious about promoting renewable energy.
However, the model is Germany. To avoid climate disaster, the world must push for renewable energy as Germany is doing.
James Hansen: we must introduce a fee for emitting greenhouse gases.
A sports analogy highlights the irrationality of common arguments for pseudoscience.
Quantico Psychiatrist: those in charge of imprisoning Bradley Manning disregarded his advice.
For a prisoner facing a likely long sentence, as for a totally paralyzed person, suicide does not indicate insanity. It is a rational way to escape.
A leak supposedly from an IAEA report from a year ago, which purported to demonstrate Iranian progress towards a nuclear weapon, is bogus according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The UK forces in Afghanistan cannot turn their prisoners over to
Karzai's men
because they are likely
to be tortured.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
After 1000 Tibetan students protested,
some were beaten and
injured.
The rest have been imprisoned in their school.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Most couches in the US have chemicals that cause cancer or nerve trouble. The chemicals get into dust and can be inhaled.
The FBI escaped defending entrapment in court when the three anarchists pled guilty to an imaginary bombing plot organized by an FBI informant. But it was rebuked by the judge.
The ITU is only one threat to the freedom of Internet users. Tyrannical states don't need ITU's endorsement to mess with the Internet, and neither do the "free" and "democratic" countries.
However, the worst thing is when they work together for the purpose of surveillance of "terrorists" (read, dissidents). And the ITU could encourage that.
Austerity in Greece has destroyed the middle class, as well as the poor. And it is now set to get worse.
It is a mistake to say that EU funds "prop up the economy" of Greece. All they prop up is debt repayment.
Countries should not accept responsibility to pay back loans made to a former dictator.
If this policy were adopted, another benefit is that dictators would have trouble getting loans.
Oakland thugs beat protester Kayvan Sabeghi, ruptured his spleen, then left him in jail without medical care for 18 hours.
The thugs claim they called an ambulance for him, but that must be a lie; if it were true, he would have gone to a hospital.
Why aren't they charged with the crime of gross bodily harm?
Russian prison guards kicked a handcuffed prisoner.
Sounds like the US, but not quite as bad, since most of the guards were fired or arrested.
Syrian rebels obtained surface-to-air missiles from captured army bases and used them to shoot down two of Assad's aircraft.
The US was reluctant to give them missiles, fearing that some might get into the hands of al Qa'ida and be used to attack US planes, perhaps airliners. It is a valid concern. However, the same danger exists now, but the US can't prevent it. I wonder if this means the US should have given them these missiles a year ago.
Anti-drone protesters in upstate New York have been threatened with seven years' imprisonment if they come near the gate of the drone base.
9 Greedy CEOs Trying to Shred the Safety Net While Pigging Out on Corporate Welfare.
The Heatland Institute (spelled that way to reflect its goals) wants to mostly wipe out the EPA.
An anti-science Koch-funded Republican will chair the House Science Committee. Perhaps we should call it the House Pseudoscience Committee.
Government background checks on contractors' employees have exposed them to identity theft.
When a cell phone is reported stolen in New York, the thug department collects the victim's phone call records, even afterward — and can do whatever it wants with that information.
Pesticide companies are using secrecy and nitpicking to prevent action to protect bees from neonicotinoids that appear to kill them.
A new
law gives strong protection to some whistleblowers in the US government.
Protesters who called for shutdown of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant
were denied
the opportunity to present the necessity defense.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say,
"Don't let the FCC allow Murdoch to take over more US media".
Here's info I got from Free Press (I have no URL for it):
More info on
this bad plan.
Polls continue to find that
60%
of Americans want to tax the rich more rather than cut support for
the poor.
So why are politicians looking for a deal to do exactly the
opposite? I suspect they get money from rich people who want
to screw the masses.
In Louisiana,
state "education" money funds teaching of creationism.
Chinese feminists are protesting against
gender
bias in China.
Obama signed a bill that
tries
to exempt US airlines from paying Europe's emissions tax.
I don't see how the US can legislate such a question. Ultimately
every airline will have to pay or stop landing in Europe. However,
Obama's efforts to stall this show what side he's on: the fossil fuel
companies' side.
Campaigners
threatened
to sue the Environmental Protection Agency to
make it regulate carbon emissions from cars, planes and off-road
vehicles.
The fossil fuel companies are trying to delay action as long as
possible to that we get stuck with the need to burn lots more oil.
They don't care about the disaster this will cause. The oil
millionaires must suppose their children will buy a way to survive it.
If we can show them that's impossible, maybe they will realize they
must help avoid the disaster.
Brazil has made great strides in
reducing
the rate of deforestation.
The EPA has temporarily suspended Billionaire Polluters from new US
contracts for its "lack
of integrity."
It is not clear how long this will last. However, the worst flaw in
US oil policy is that it has not made sufficient reforms to prevent a
similar accident — and it is allowing drilling in Arctic waters
where such an accident is more likely and more catastrophic.
A campaign for an
arms
embargo against Israel.
Corruption in Afghanistan: Sherkhan Farnood had an Interpol notice
about financial crimes, but the Afghan state not only didn't arrest him,
it let
him start a bank (which then collapsed due to corruption).
On the
need of rebuilding differently after a flood that is likely to
recur.
A mere change in building techniques may not be enough. The house
should be rebuilt elevated, or rebuilt somewhere else.
US tobacco companies have been ordered by a court to publish
ads
saying they lied about the dangers of smoking.
UK officials in charge of nuclear energy received
lots
of treats from lobbyists.
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter, and say, "Don't
make any deal that continues Dubya's tax cuts for the rich, and don't
make any deal that cuts Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on Walmart to join a union-supported fire safety program
for Bangladesh.
US citizens:
call
for a farm bill that supports healthy food.
In accord with the cease-fire agreement, Israel has
relaxed
restrictions on Gaza's farmers and fishers.
Why
Israel didn't win the short war it started with Gaza.
The most interesting point is that Israel, which called itself the
only democracy in the Middle East, worked hard to ensure there were no
others, but has for the moment failed.
A leader of Hamas says that it only wants a Palestinian state in the
pre-1967 borders, and suggests it would recognize Israel
in exchange
for recognition of Palestine.
I am in favor of an independent Palestinian state at peace with
Israel. However, Palestinians deserve more than that: they deserve a
democratic and secular Palestinian state that respects human rights.
Hamas may cooperate with the first part but would oppose the second
part. Success for the Palestinian Authority's UN recognition
campaign, and bringing Israeli war crimes to the ICC, would improve
the chances of both.
The Washington Post rejected
pressure to apply false balance to the fighting in and around Gaza.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to appoint a new SEC head who will hold
Wall Street accountable.
Why the US and Israel should support the Palestinian Authority's move for
UN recognition.
Everyone:
sign
this petition against the ITU's takeover of the Internet.
US citizens:
sign
this petition against teaching children they should
massacre without question on the orders of the celestial tyrant.
Our climate models do not take account of
methane
leaking out of Arctic permafrost as it melts.
Poaching of rhinos in South Africa is running at
600
a year, and accelerating.
China is planning to reduce its population through
fracking
without safety precautions.
Although burning natural gas releases less CO2 than burning coal,
I've read that there is no reduction in CO2 once the emissions due
to fracking itself are counted.
Sea level is rising
60%
faster than was predicted a few years ago.
Germany is about to
prohibit
sex between humans and animals, apparently based on sheer bigotry.
Many kinds of animals sometimes want sex with humans. I've read that
female apes sometimes ask human males for sex. Male dolphins just
love human females. Dogs can be convinced to lick almost anything by
smearing on something that tastes good to them. A parrot once made
love to me, and I hope I get another chance.
When the US and other states pressure the Palestinian Authority to drop its
plans to take Israel to the International Criminal Court, the PA replies,
"To
oppose us is to support Hamas."
100,000 protest in Egypt
against
Morsi's decree.
1000 students
protested
in Tibet, which is not easy given the harsh
response of Chinese thugs towards any protest.
Although we have not heard much about dirty
depleted
uranium weapons, they continue in use, and the US government
refuses to recognize any problem.
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter to say, please support
the Lee-Jones bipartisan letter calling for an accelerated withdrawal
from Afghanistan.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Predictions of increased US oil extraction are
presented as
good news. The same predictions imply global disaster but they
don't talk about that.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to make publicly traded companies
publicly disclose their political spending.
US citizens:
tell
CBS evening news that its coverage of Dubya's tax
cuts for the rich, and proposed cuts in aid to the non-rich, should
include someone who disagrees with the rich CEOs.
US citizens: visit your congresscritter's office
on Wednesday Nov 28
and drop off a letter saying, "Don't extend Dubya's tax cuts for the
rich, and don't cut benefits programs that the non-rich depend on."
If you can't do that, phoning is good too (though not as powerful
as a visit).
Documenting
how fracking in Pennsylvania damages public health locally.
The Kyoto Protocol was a success, in that it
reduced
overall
greenhouse gas emissions from the countries that participated in it.
The UK government appointed an ex-Goldman bankster
to
govern the Bank of England. This suggests that crucial reforms
will be omitted.
The world natural gas glut has enabled Germany to put
pressure
on Putin's contempt for human rights and democracy.
Every bad event has some good repercussions, but the evil of Putin
is not as much as what burning all that gas will do.
Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill no longer carries the death penalty
but
legalizes
murder of gays.
The bill also violates freedom of speech, by banning "advocacy"
of homosexuality. It looks like this bill would ban any attempt to
campaign to repeal it.
Samsung admits its suppliers include sweatshops, but gave them
two
more years to cease the abuses. They could stop in a week if they
wanted to, so giving them two more years is Samsung's attempt to help
them stall. If we made Samsung liable for its suppliers' illegal
treatment of labor, it would make them stop in a week.
Assad's forces are using cluster bombs
on
urban areas.
Rich countries pledged funds to help poor countries cope with the
effects of global heating, but they are
not
following through.
I suppose this is due to the bad economic situation, but that is not likely
to get any better.
Imagine that a country likely to suffer many deaths due to global
heating, such as Bangladesh or many islands, bombs CO2-emitting
equipment in the US, China, or some other wealthy country that is
increasing its emissions. Would this be permitted under international
law as self-defense against a deadly attack?
Germany's CO2 emissions are actually
getting
smaller, thanks to a great effort to move to renewable energy.
This shows that any wealthy country can do it, if only it gives
priority to the goal.
An Australian court found a search engine liable
for
referring to web pages that someone took issue with.
This means that a search engine must avoid doing business in Australia
if it is to do its job properly.
The official Congo government's army is accused of rape and looting, and
the
UN concurs. The rebels seem better, but it's not clear how much.
It's a Great Time To Be a [Bankster] in America.
In the UK:
help
the Open Rights Group fight the Snoopers' Charter.
35%
of the US GDP goes to the banksters as interest.
This drain on the treasury is part of the reason why everything else
in the US is going bad.
Bereaved Israelis and Palestinians
working
together for peace.
The rich countries must now agree on how to
avoid climate disaster.
Companies that
conceal
their boards of directors are used to conceal
commerce and avoid taxes.
Obama plans to draw up a new rulebook for targeted assassination via
drones, but with
no
indication that he plans to publish it or follow international law.
A man who climbed on a statue in London and stripped has been charged
with
possession
of an offensive weapon.
I've heard it referred to as a weapon, but I thought that was metaphorical.
Catalonia's election has been turned into a
referendum
on secession from Spain.
Anti-independence forces threaten Catalonia with exclusion from the EU
and the euro, but that's exactly what Catalonia needs. Exiting the
euro could enable Catalonia to adopt sensible economic policies
instead of austerity.
This is what all of Spain needs, but supposedly it can't get there
from here. I can suggest a way: all the regions of Spain could secede
and each establish its own new currency. Then they could reunite and
merge their currencies, while keeping them separate from the euro.
If nobody sees a simpler method, this is better than none.
(Ha Ha Only Serious.)
Garment workers in India are frequently
threatened
and beaten if when don't meet the impossible quota.
Nothing can excuse the behavior of these employers, but population
growth also contributes to the problem, and that is an important avenue
for correcting it.
A popular
movement in Afghanistan for women's rights.
The world needs to work out how a country can
declare
bankruptcy.
UK austerity will cut more than 30% of the income of the poorest families,
but the government is trying to disguise this by
shifting
things around.
The government held a "consultation" about privatization of the health
service, but worked with a lobbyist to assure an
appearance
of public support for the plan.
For names typical of Blacks, a US web site advertises
"find
out if this person was arrested".
In the US, a Black is more likely to get arrested than a White if they
both do certain common activities, in particular possessing drugs.
Maybe that is the real root of the problem. Legalizing possession of
drugs might fix it.
Reporters Without Borders criticizes the Italian Senate for its
flip-flop
on abolishing the crime of defamation.
Hooray for
Andrea
Hernandez, who is resisting a demand from her school
to wear an RFID tag.
However, even more sinister is the school (mentioned in that article)
that puts RFIDs in students clothing.
A new,
stronger
campaign to end the War on Drugs.
US citizens:
oppose Obama's "Grand
Bargain" sellout to the Republicans.
Human Rights Watch campaigns to ban autonomous killer robots
before
they are developed.
Vulture capitalists seek giant profits by suing debtor countries in
US courts. Argentina plans to
defy
the vultures.
Lobbies
killed Brazil's bill to establish important rights for Internet users.
A German court subjected participants in the Retroshare encrypted
communications system to
unlimited
liability for other people's sharing.
The same pretext could be used to ban Tor.
Israel emphasizes how precise and "surgical" its air attacks are,
but they still kill
plenty of civilians.
The US is
much
wealthier than it was when Social Security and Medicare
were set up, but greedy rich people use bogus figures to justify
dumping the old and sick into poverty.
If Walmart paid a living wage, the whole US economy would
benefit.
In the Congo, murderers and rapists enjoy
impunity, as rebels and in the
government army.
Mining of tin brings Indonesia lots of money, but the mining companies
don't mind
killing
workers and destroying the environment.
Even in the US, mining companies get away with
murder.
Finnish thugs
confiscated
a young girl's laptop because she download music from the Pirate Bay.
This was after her father had refused to pay a thousand-dollar
unofficial fine and shut up.
The means used here are not the only injustice. The goal, stopping people
from sharing, is the root of the injustice.
Egypt's supreme court has gone
on
strike against Morsi's decree nullifying its powers.
Thousands of secularists are
protesting
in Cairo.
The European Parliament
pre-emptively
rejected any form of ITU or UN regulation of the Internet.
I support this wholeheartedly, but I think it is sad that the UN is not
a force for good in this area.
Hundreds of Walmart workers went on strike on Friday, along with a
thousand
protests across the US.
This is a good start but not more is needed to win decent working
conditions at Walmart. I refuse to shop there.
Uri Avnery comments on on the
effects
of Israel's latest attack on Gaza.
I wonder if the US secretly pressured Israel to accept a truce.
I can't see any other explanation.
The BBC has a
history
of bias on issues important to the UK government's
interests.
Syrian rebels have captured
several
of Assad's army bases, and with them, large numbers of small arms.
Now that the rebels control substantial territory, it would be
feasible to aid them militarily. There is no arms embargo against
Syria, so a country recognizing the rebels as forming the legitimate
government of Syria could send weapons and even troops, as far as I
know.
The challenge is how to do this in such a way that the Jihadists
will not come out on top, and so as to avoid rebel atrocities.
Thousands of people are held for years in Mozambique's prisons
without
trials or even charges.
The real story of
Thanksgiving
(three articles; the second and third are deeper than the first).
It should be noted that Amerindian groups fought each other for land
too, and often tortured their prisoners; the English colonists were
one more rival group, perhaps no worse than the rest.
Instead of thanking a "creator" that wouldn't deserve thanks if it
existed, perhaps the US should celebrate a
national
day of atonement.
As Shah Khamanei's thugs torture and kill Iranian activists and their
relatives, families are speaking up to
condemn
the regime.
Israeli soldiers
broke
the truce by killing a civilian in Gaza who
was approaching the border fence.
When a woman leaves Saudi Arabia, the state
electronically
informs her master.
One consequence of Israel's isolation of Gaza is that young adults
there have never met an Israeli, and
have
no idea of Israelis as human beings. And vice versa.
Operation Fix Toshiba:
Help us write repair manuals.
There is a legal confusion in the article. The problem here was not
an "extension of copyright law" — all repair manuals are
copyrighted, and that has been true for a long time. Toshiba's nasty
act consists of using the copyright it its manuals to block
their availability to the public.
This does not alter the ethical issue; it does not excuse Toshiba's
action in the slightest. However, while we're talking about it, we
may as well give people correct information about the legal situation.
Secret repair manuals add to
planned
obsolescence and e-waste.
Rare earth elements are found mixed with uranium and thorium, and the
refining companies
poison
people with radioactive discards.
Ecuador has raised about
10%
of the money it asked as compensation for
keeping a large oil deposit in the ground.
Sanal Edamaruku, in exile in Finland,
campaigns for Western pressure
against blasphemy laws in India and elsewhere.
Campaigners
vow
to fight against San Francisco's new ban on public nudity, which
polls say the city's population opposes.
The UK's welfare-sabotage minister says that
the
social welfare programs
he plans to undermine discourage poor people from taking risks.
Society should help poor people avoid risks. You shouldn't gamble
what you can't afford to lose, and poor people can't afford to lose
anything. Social welfare programs should help them get into a
position where they could afford to take a risk.
Exiled opposition candidate Andrei Sannikov says the West is
"too
complacent" about dictator Lukashenko.
China has
rejected
any intention of reducing its CO2 emissions.
Mere improvements in efficiency of fuel use are insufficient to avoid
disaster. The world needs to reduce its total emissions, and that
must include China, which is now the biggest total emitter.
The EU has
closed
the loophole that has permitted catching sharks and keeping
only their fins.
This practice, world wide, threatens the survival of sharks.
Everyone:
take a
stand against Uganda's propose law to execute gays.
Italian reporters have gone
on
strike to protest the criminalization of defamation.
The Taliban are
killing
Shi'ites in Pakistan.
Syrian rebels have captured
major
military bases, ejecting the regime's forces from one province.
President Morsi caused a constitutional crisis by
preemptively
decreeing that the Supreme Court cannot challenge any laws passed
since he took office, or the constituent assembly.
The constituent assembly is accused of planning an
Islamist constitution.
The scarcity of medicine in Iran amounts to
"wartime
conditions".
The US supports Kagame in Rwanda even as he
supports
rebel armies in the Congo.
Some Things Never Change: Governments Still Present Biggest Threat to Open Internet.
Pentagon
Wants to Keep Running Its Afghan Drug War From Blackwater's HQ.
The USDA took the side of GMOs against organic farms, telling them
that they are
on their
own against proprietary genetic pollution.
In the US: participate in the
National
Opt-Out Week protest against the TSA.
The scanners that were not properly tested are the
X-ray scanners.
You should always refuse to go through those; I always do. As far
as I know, the millimeter wave scanners are not dangerous; if you know
of some danger in them, please write to me with a reference.
Israel's
short-sighted
assassination.
Gaza
escalation: there was another way.
School
Principals: Students Have Privacy and Free Speech Rights Too!
Gush Shalom's
statement
about the announced Gaza cease fire.
Obama's regulation of CO2 emissions from power plants is so weak
that it
will
hardly change anything.
US citizens: call on Obama to
make a priority of amending the Constitution
to reverse the Corporations United decision.
Pledged carbon emission cuts are ever more
inadequate
compared with what would be needed to avoid climate disaster.
Spelling out how 4°C of warming would be a
catastrophe.
US citizens:
participate
in a rally supporting striking Walmart workers.
You can also sign
this
petition, but attending a protest will contribute a lot more.
Phoning
Walmart is another useful method of action.
US citizens: phone your senators saying the government should need to
get a search warrant before it can read your email. Also send mail
via
this
page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Hamas and Israel have agreed on a cease fire, together with some
relaxation
in the siege of Gaza.
The main gainers from this war are
Hamas.
The cease fire does not mention measures to stop Hamas from getting
more rockets, but given how rarely they hit anything, and given
Israel's increasing capability to intercept them, this is not crucial
for Israel. They don't even deter Israeli military action. Their
main real effect is to make Hamas guilty of war crimes and to provide
Israel with a pretext for bombing Gaza.
I suppose the reason Hamas wants to launch rockets is to make itself
look strong and gain support in Gaza. This is the mirror image of
what
Netanyahu is doing in Israel.
Sattar Beheshti's family, and witnesses to his torture,
face
intimidation to silence them.
It is not the first time — this is standard Iranian cover-up practice.
US citizens:
call
on Zara to stop selling toxic clothing.
The Committee for Public Safety (oops, Department of Homeland
Security)
wants
to double its fleet of Predator drones for use in the
US.
Morsi has not fully addressed the case of the
children
that were arrested and tortured by Egyptian thugs.
Lessons from Florida about the
wrong
way to rebuild New Jersey and New York.
US citizens:
pledge
not to shop at Walmart on Friday.
I suggest going even further and not shopping at Walmart at all.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to block the
Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. Also sign
this
petition.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
A bill to improve users' rights over their email was modified in
Senate committee to do the
exact
opposite.
350
economists call for spending to get the US out of recession
— not budget cuts.
Some
additional
countries have joined the TPP, which remains
just as oppressive as before.
The article uses the term
"intellectual
property", which spreads
confusion and harmful bias. The perpetrators of the TPP use that term
because it helps them. That they use it is no reason for us to repeat
it!
Amnesty International calls for an
arms
embargo on Hamas and Israel.
ACLU: Obama, tackle the
homeland "security" budget.
The article falls into the error of speaking of a "fiscal cliff"
rather than the "Republican extortion".
US retailers could
easily afford to give workers a raise.
But we might need to force them to do so.
Now two
kinds of plant-attacking worms have developed resistance to
genetically modified corn.
Partly this is due to carelessness in the use. When farmers started
using GMOs, they dropped all the other measures that they used to
control pests.
Israel
Hasn't Grown Up Since The Last Gaza War.
What Israel does to people who are useless and "in the way"
(Palestinians) could be a
model for what
the US elites will do to most
Americans who are useless to them and "in the way".
The torture applied in Iraq and the violence used in Afghanistan could
be applied at home.
In other words, if you're an American, there is a good chance
that Obama and Congress are planning your death, starting with
the Grand Sell-out that Obama has proposed.
The EU's greenhouse emissions cap-and-trading scheme is being
gamed
by Chinese companies that run highly-polluting plants in order to sell
lots of emission credits by upgrading them.
For a company to pay companies in other countries to cut emissions is
not necessarily a bad thing. If the companies paid to do the cutting
really do cut, this is how cap-and-trade was supposed to work. The
problem is that some of the credits that are sold do not correspond to
real cuts.
Cap-and-trade systems would be effective if they could not be gamed.
But we have seen over and over that they are gamed. I advocate a
carbon tax because that is hard to game.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to renew the Wind Production Tax Credit.
Israeli soldiers
shot
dead two protesters in the West Bank.
Israelis
debated
whether Palestinians could get justice in Israeli courts.
Several former officials and even former judges said it is impossible
by the nature of the occupation.
Artist Geoffrey McGann was arrested for trying to board a plane while wearing
an ornate
watch covered with switches and wires.
Even though a bomb squad determined it contained no explosives, and
that he had no explosives, the thugs imagined this watch might be
convertible into a bomb timer, which could make it dangerous if only
there were some explosives.
Charges against McGann were dropped, but thug sergeant Nelson said
that it was McGann's fault that his watch was regarded as a bomb by
thugs who must have forgotten all their training about what bombs look
like. However, nobody can anticipate all the screwy mistakes thugs
might make, and it's not their responsibility to even try. When thugs
are wrong, it is their fault.
How a PR firm paid by Russia
"placed"
op/ed articles in major web sites, but concealed this from the editors,
and the public.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support
copyright reform.
I suggest saying that the House Republican Study Group's proposals did
not go far enough — call for legalizing peer-to-peer sharing
and banning DRM.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Every
month for the past 28 years has been warmer than average.
(Average for the 20th century, that is.)
Women in India were charged with a crime for
criticizing
the amount of fuss dedicated to the death of a politician.
Many in Catalonia, which is wealthy compared with most of Spain,
advocate secession because they
resent
the use of their funds to support poorer areas of Spain.
I think it is right and proper to tax the wealthy to aid the rest. It
is possible that these measures tax people in Catalonia who are not
wealthy, and that spreads resentment. It is also possible that separatist
feeling is the basis for the resentment.
Maybe the real wrong is Spain's austerity, which abandons the poor.
"Israelis talk about fear, we Palestinians talk about death."
Armies must not make
bases
in schools.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC not to allow more media concentration.
Murdoch, the owner of Faux News, wants to buy more newspapers.
Why all drug testing funded by pharma companies
must
be published and made free.
More
than 1000 new coal-burning power plants are planned, around the world.
They would be equivalent to another China, in terms of their contribution
to global heating.
A global heating denier in the UK parliament has
major
financial interest in an oil company.
Oil companies will go to
any
lengths to prevent action against global heating
because the required action is never to burn about 80% of the oil reserves
that they claim as their main assets.
CO2 in the atmosphere reached a
new
record in 2011.
Major global investors
call
for action to reduce global heating.
UK independent bookstores condemn Amazon for
not
paying taxes as they do.
Amazon
mistreats publishers, authors, workers, readers, and the nation.
The former prime minister of Croatia was sentenced to prison for
taking
bribes.
Pakistan dropped
blasphemy
charges against Rimsha Masih, but she faces the danger of assassination.
US citizens:
join
the boycott of "natural" and "organic" foods from
companies that paid to defeat the California GMO labelling initiative.
Natan Blanc states why he chose to go to prison
rather
than participate in attacking Palestinians.
Attention
WalMart Shoppers: Cynical Manipulation In Aisle Two.
Netanyahu prevents any cease fire in Gaza
by
demanding the condition that Hamas not be allowed to rearm later.
Imagine if Hamas demanded that Israel not be allowed to acquire any
weapons. That would be a a non-starter, and it is the same in the
other direction. Worse, it would entail closing the tunnels between
Gaza and Egypt, thus destroying what economy Gaza has.
The reason for this non-starter, I suspect, is to enable Israel to
pretend to seek an end to the fighting while in fact choosing to
continue the fighting as long as it wishes. In other words,
these
talks are a sham, just as Israel's peace negotiations with the
Palestinian Authority were a sham.
Israel has
speeded
up the killing of civilians in Gaza.
Drone bombings of towns in Mali are
not
the way to defeat the foreign Islamists who have taken control of
them.
The UK government has
slashed
the legal hearings for local projects,
describing local control as "bureaucratic rubbish".
Cameron also plans to
abolish
appeals of asylum decisions, which means people will be deported
to countries where they face torture or murder. People have been
spared this in the UK at the last minute
by
appeal.
Accusing the American Red Cross of being totally
ineffective
in real disasters.
Obama is preparing to throw
Americans off the austerity cliff.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Lee-Jones letter
and to speed withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Also
send
a message through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
EMI
sued
the band Thirty Seconds to Mars for terminating its abusive
record contract after 9 years, as California law allows the band to
do.
Women who were lured into sexual relationships with UK undercover thugs
are suing the thug chiefs. The thug chiefs are trying to use a
secret
court to block justice.
Astounding
facts about inequality in the US.
The battle against fracking in New York State, carried out through
local
zoning rules.
Calling for a national campaign for awareness of
digital
tracking.
A fallacious
argument concludes that passwords are inadequate
for security.
The reasoning is logical, but note the assumptions it is based on:
that we are foolishly trusting all manner of network services for
important data and activities, typing passwords at them to identify
ourselves to them, that we link these accounts together, and that we
are using software so shoddy that exposes us to having our machines
cracked through mere browsing.
There are plenty of reasons to stay away from those network services.
And GNU/Linux is much safer since it doesn't run programs that arrive
in files.
I type my important passwords only at my own computer. No company
knows them, so no company can bypass them, change them, or hand them
out. Since my computer does not allow remote access, no one can even
try to guess them except typing on my computer. I think it is safe.
US citizens:
call
on the US to be completely severe with Billionaire
Polluters.
People have
tried
to kill Haitian human rights defender Evel Fanfan.
Thugs in Italy investigated protesters last year so thoroughly
that they knew
how
many protesters were coming in each bus.
The House Republican Study Committee
proposed
reforms to reduce copyright power. They don't go far enough, but
they go in the right direction.
The copyright lobby objected, and they took down the report within a day.
This shows that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are in
the pockets of our enemies.
Air pollution may damage old
people's thinking capacity.
Activism against the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline has
renewed
vigor thanks to Hurricane Sandy.
To
Climate Scientists: Be Persuasive. Be Brave. Be Arrested
(if necessary).
Hostess, the company that makes twinkies,
massively
increased its executives' pay, then blamed its bankruptcy on the
union.
Israel
bombed
TV news offices in Gaza.
Obama says he is trying to reduce the fighting in Gaza, but gives
Israel a
blanket
endorsement for whatever it does.
Since Netanyahu wants war, and
planned
this war carefully, he will do
nothing to reduce its intensity, just as he does nothing to move
towards peace with Palestinians generally. The only thing that can
end the fighting is pressure on Israel. Since Obama bends over
backwards not to pressure Israel, he is not sincere about wanting to
end the fighting.
French President Hollande
rejected fracking.
The War on Painkillers: since some people die from prescribed
painkillers (often combined, or taken with other drugs),
there is
pressure
to make it hard to get them.
If that campaign succeeds, people will die from suicide instead.
CourseSmart e-textbooks (distributed for major publishers) will
track
users' reading.
Can anyone confirm that accessing them requires nonfree software?
Do they have DRM, too?
US citizens:
join the
opt-out campaign to protest the TSA.
Russia has proposed that the ITU encourage countries to
take
format control over the Internet.
However, I am not sure that tyrannical governments need any ITU help in
order to impose censorship and surveillance on the Internet. They
seem to be doing it perfectly well without any ITU support.
PayPal users:
"opt out"
of imposed arbitration requirements so as to preserve your legal rights.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to suspend Billionaire Polluters
from new contracts.
Everyone:
call
on Behrain to free Nabeel Rajab.
The UK court which found Samsung had not copied the design of Apple products,
and ordered Apple to publish a notice saying so, has punished Apple for
trying
to obfuscate the message.
Explaining why filibuster reform has become a
pressing issue.
The OSCE criticized the US for repeatedly
violating
the rights of protesters.
We've just learned that the FCC may try to hold a secret vote to allow
more media consolidation in the U.S. [1]We need you to call Congress right
away to help stop this vote.
Last week, you took action to stop the FCC from allowing Murdoch to gobble
up more media. Since then, groups like the ACLU, the Rainbow PUSH
Coalition and the National Organization for Women have joined you in
protesting the FCC's rush to give away more to big media.
But so far the FCC hasn't flinched.
When the agency tried to push through similar rule changes during the Bush
administration, Congress told it to back off and the Senate even voted to
overturn the FCC rules.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
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Syria's cyberwar against dissidents
(and the resistance).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Most of this malware enters through nonfree programs, which tend to be particularly vulnerable because they are set up to run programs that arrive in files that users consider to be "data".
According to the corporate media, Obama's big mistake is the failure to fawn publicly before CEOs.
Israel killed Hamas commander al-Jabari just after establishing a truce with him.
Uri Avnery explains how the attack was pre-planned by Israel, and how it relates to the coming election.
The truce-breaking attack came as al-Jabari was trying to negotiate a longer truce.
Avnery expected Israel not to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, but now it appears to be preparing to do just that.
500 missiles have been fired by Hamas. Hardly any of them has hit anything but earth or sea, but since they are not aimed at military targets, each one is a war crime.
Israel has a better excuse, in legal terms, for most of its attacks, saying that they are aimed at destroying missiles. (I don't think this applies to bombing offices and houses.) However, that excuse is no justification, because Israel is fighting by choice.
US psychiatrists propose to define repeated outbursts of anger as a "disorder".
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sued the IRS for allowing churches to endorse candidates in violation of the tax laws.
As part of the War on the Homeless, thugs in Sarasota arrested a man for charging his phone in a park.
The mean spirit of this attack is displayed by the accusation that this was "theft of utilities".
The US public is showing signs of becoming less cruel and punitive.
US citizens: rebuke Apple for
phony
improvements in factory working conditions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
The German policies that are moving rapidly to renewable electricity.
Obama's "grand bargain" is based on a Republican lie. With no chance of extending Dubya's tax cuts for the rich, all this bargain can do is help business at the expense of most Americans.
What the US needs is to use tax increases and military spending cuts
to raise spending on
useful
activities (that also make more jobs).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
Senator Sanders says that riding over the "fiscal cliff" is better than a bad deal.
The US has no wish to prosecute confessed torture conspirators such as Dubya, and Canada protected him too. Will the UN act?
Billionaire Polluter's big fine is not really so big when compared with the extent of its military contracts.
International trade, seeking small increases in profit, puts whole forests and other ecosystems at risk from invasive species (including fungal infections).
A UK man sued his employer and won, after he was fired for publicly stating his opposition to same-sex marriage.
I support same-sex marriage, but I support Smith's right to state his views, so I applaud this decision. Sad to say, the US does not have similar protections for workers freedom of speech.
UK thugs who attacked striking miners and then tried to frame them
face a
criminal
investigation.
US wages have remained stagnant for a decade, and are
lower
than in the 1970s.
US citizens: call
for filibuster reform: require senators to really speak
on the senate floor to filibuster.
Some fish in the ocean near Fukushima may be
too
radioactive to eat for 10 years.
Romney says that serving most people's interests was
"bribing"
them.
Walmart workers planning
to strike ask for community support.
Apple dropped from iTunes the erotic novel, The Proof of the Honey,
saying
it is because of the cover.
Repeated acts of censorship are an additional reason to condemn
iTunes, but not the only one. Even if there were no censorship,
you ought to refuse to buy from iTunes because it
tramples the rights
of its own users.
Gravely wounded civilians Gaza may die because the hospital is
running
out of fuel for its generators. And the ICU is already full.
More people could die from routine medical procedures
as
antibiotics lose their effectiveness.
True
Amount of BP Settlement Will Depend on Hidden Tax Giveaways.
Three distinguished Nobel laureates
condemn
the prosecution of Bradley Manning.
US citizens: support
insurance coverage for abortions for females in the military who get
pregnant via rape.
A town in Colorado
voted
to ban fracking, despite heavy advertising spending by frackers.
Now the state is pushing to overturn this law, since the governor
has been paid by frackers.
Officials should be dismissed for
harming
the public interest, not for sex.
Gas from fracking is so cheap in the US that it has
destroyed
the market for renewable energy generation.
A carbon tax would fix this problem.
The UK prime minister has given his approval to
treacherous
maneuvers
against his own Tory party, and against his coalition partner, for the
sake of fossil fuel companies.
A Tory opponent of wind power admits in private that he
has
no basis for an argument he makes in public.
Will he resign, or is he shameless?
Will increased
trade with Burma wipe out its forests?
BP will pay a fine of
4.5
billion dollars.
I am not sure this is enough, even with damages added, to fully
dissuade companies from taking such risks. However, the worst part is
that the individuals who decided on dangerous policies won't face
personal prosecution.
US citizens: call
on Senate Republicans to allow confirmation of judges.
A Republican state senator
bemoaned
the failure to disenfranchise 300,000 legitimate voters in
Wisconsin.
Proposing
divestment
from fossil fuel companies as a means to fight back against them.
US citizens: call
for improved privacy laws about digital communications.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats in Congress to refuse to extend Dubya's
tax cuts for the rich.
US citizens:
tell
Obama to reject the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Two people in Spain have
killed
themselves when faced with eviction.
Others are responding in a more effective fashion, organizing to block
evictions.
Al Gore on the planet-roaster pipeline and how fossil fuel companies
suppress
awareness of the danger of global heating.
Obama
says
he will take personal charge of action to limit global heating,
but seems to reject outright the measures that would be firm enough
to do the job.
When UVA fired its chairman, that may have been the influence of
global heating deniers who had already
blocked
the university from hiring Michael Mann as a professor.
Genetically modified eucalyptus trees are
proposed
as a way to cut global heating.
Since people won't eat them, and they don't affect wildlife, they don't
have some of the problems of other GMO crops. However, they could still
cause concentration of business, and the artificial genes could pollute
other people's eucalyptus trees and lead to their being sued.
If some GMOs are biologically safe,, this problem needs to be
corrected in order to make them legally safe.
Dutch environmentalists plan to sue the government if it does not take
firm
action against global heating.
Israel launched a
massive attack on Gaza.
Uri Avnery said that Netanyahu did this is to manipulate the coming
Israeli election.
This
article says more about it.
I wonder why so many missiles were
launched from Gaza in the past few
days. Launching missiles at nonmilitary Israeli targets is a war
crime, and cannot be justified, but I suspect some Israeli attack
provoked the launches — and was likewise unjustified.
UK thugs confessed to persuading people to make false confessions
in order to
fill
quotas for solved crimes.
Burma's government made a dishonest goodwill gesture, freeing 450
prisoners including
zero dissidents.
Ecuador is running a
massive
campaign to eradicate rats on the Galapagos Islands.
The "grand bargain" Congress is considering would
cut
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to protect
corporate welfare.
Wind
Energy Could Provide One-Fifth of World's Electricity by 2030.
US textbooks don't talk about
the
commons or its history. Some even present enclosure (driving
tenant farmers off their land) as progress.
The
Petraeus Legacy: A Paramilitary CIA?
The
American
Anti-Corruption Act is a collection of proposed law changes
to reduce the corruption of elections and legislation in the US.
These changes look good to me, except for 1.2, which seems to require
members of Congress to vote in committees only to the disadvantage of
anyone they have got money from. Aside from the question of whether a
law can or should specify which way a member of Congress should vote
on a question, it would be difficult to tell whether a given vote
violates this law. Whether the vote helps or harms a particular
interest is often a subtle question, and understanding it may depend
on information not available to us.
It would be better to forbid members of Congress from taking any action
in regard to bills that specially interest their donors.
What the Petraeus scandal reveals about the lousy state of
US
email privacy law.
A UN agency suggests that
access
to contraception should be a human right.
Israel
Throttles Palestinian Television.
60%
of workers in Spain participated in a general strike
against austerity.
Some mayors have
moved
city funds to punish banks that foreclose homes.
Soup kitchens in Spain
can't
handle all the need.
Savita Halappanavar died in Ireland because of
restrictions
on abortions. Ohio is considering a similar ban, but even worse.
Unsafe
Abortions Threaten Thousands in Eastern Europe.
Restricting abortion
pushes
many women into poverty.
Senator Wyden has blocked an "intelligence" bill that forbids many
US employees from speaking to the press.
Israel's army continues
demolishing Palestinian buildings.
The excuse is that they "don't have a permit". But Palestinians
almost never can get a permit to build in areas under direct Israeli control.
AT&T's
misleading
tactics for abolishing all regulation of telephone lines.
Israeli military rule prohibits all protests in the West Bank, and
specifically prohibits the weekly protests in several villages by
designating them as "closed military zones". Now The army has gone to
special
pains to threaten Israeli activists who join those protests.
The UK government cancelled Labour's plan to make a database about all
children, then
started its own
secret plan to do the same thing.
Don't believe the myth
that banksters and corporate raiders (such as
Romney) operate based on sophisticated math.
The
Real Scandal: Crimes of War, Not Passion.
Despite the irony that the "national security" surveillance system
caught the head of the CIA, it remains a threat to freedom for all of us.
350.org is starting a
student
campaign for schools to divest from greenhouse gas activities and
invest in energy efficiency instead.
Energy efficiency gives a better return, but it would be necessary
even if not for that.
A project collects testimony from the Israeli soldiers of the war of
independence about
how
they attacked and expelled Palestinians.
Arabs also committed crimes against Jews in Israel in that period,
and the Jews had reason to fear they would be killed. That is not
a total and universal excuse, but it does affect things.
Why the world must confront
Israel's
apartheid system.
Ayman Sharawna, imprisoned without charges, has been on hunger strike
for 130 days, and is too weak to stand up, but Israeli guards
refused to let
him be taken to a hospital without shackles.
US citizens: Paul Ryan is still in Congress;
fight
his attack on women's health care and birth control.
Tony B'liar gave a speech on a university campus in the UK and was met
with accusations of
"war
criminal".
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to reduce air
pollution, especially green house gases, and promote clean energy.
Also
sign
this petition.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to defend Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and not to renew Dubya's tax cuts for
the rich. Also
sign
this petition.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
The United Arab Emirates adopted a
repressive
censorship law for the Internet.
Several Cuban dissidents were
arrested
as they went to work on a petition
for human rights in Cuba.
Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks says that Islamists are winning the
war
against freedom of speech.
Activists dressed as Robin Hood held a
sit-in
in Senator Durbin's office.
Durbin, a leading Democrat, is suspected of planning to join Obama in
selling out to the Republicans.
A lawsuit against Rumsfeld, accusing him of being
responsible
for torture, was dismissed.
A web site invites people to
pay
to have their nude photos taken down.
This business model depends on the nudity taboo. If everyone posted
nude photos of themselves, we'd all say "Ho hum" if anyone else
posted some.
Mainstream US journalists reporting on General Petraeus's resignation
feel obliged to
express
regret, because it is unacceptable to make a
general look bad — or to raise the question of whether he (or the
CIA) is guilty of something more grave than a love affair.
US citizens: call
on Senate Majority Leader Reid to put Elizabeth
Warren on the Banking Committee.
US citizens:
support
Amnesty International in calling on Obama to make the US respect
human rights.
So much fuel has disappeared from the thug office in Helmand
that the Afghan government has
stopped
deliveries.
I expect that corrupt thugs were involved in the disappearance.
The Internet Governance Forum should stop holding its meetings in countries
such as Azerbaijan that
don't
respect human rights.
Mountain gorilla populations are increasing, thanks to
decades
of conservation work.
However, a species with such a limited range will always be vulnerable
to many chance events, and overpopulation in Africa creates a motive
for people to take over their land. To avoid wiping out that species
and thousands of others around the world, we need to curb global
heating and cut the human birth rate to achieve population decrease.
2,444 UK thugs are being investigated for the
Hillsborough
coverup, in which thugs blamed the victims of their errors, then
covered up the truth.
The IMF wants some of Greece's debt to be forgiven, but
Germany blocks it.
What this article does not state — though it is reflected in the
cited figures — is that the high debt-to-GDP, the excuse for
additional EU-imposed austerity, is the result of the present
austerity. Austerity has cut Greece's GDP while the debt remains
about the same. More austerity will do even more of this.
Al Gore calls on Obama to
push
for a carbon tax.
I agree, but I would be stunned of Obama carries out such an about-face
as to even try.
A new Syrian opposition coalition has gained somewhat
more
European support.
This might be a step forward, but overcoming the influence of the Islamists
among Syria's opposition will not be easy.
The natural gas market in the UK has allegedly been
manipulated
with false information, much the way Libor was.
Some people that appear to be in a vegetative state may be conscious
but unable to take any action.
Brain
scans offer them a way to communicate.
I wonder if people would like to develop free software that would help
them communicate more effectively.
Major companies that pay little tax in the UK were called to account
in Parliament, but Amazon and Starbucks executives gave
bullshit
instead of explanations.
The new Russian censorship law, supposedly intended to block sites
relating to drugs, suicide and pedophilia, has already been
used
against political criticism.
This is a world-wide tendency, and shows why any censorship of the Internet
is intolerable.
Even with good will, filtering the Internet for some humanly meaningful
characteristic cannot be done reliably, so it
causes
tremendous trouble while not achieving its goal.
However, one can rely on governments.
China is facing a labor shortage which is leading to improved wages
and working conditions. Factories are
looking
for robots.
I think this demonstrates the wisdom of China's one-child-per-family policy.
Automation and the resulting improved efficiency is good for everyone,
as long as it doesn't result in millions of people who have nothing
useful to do and are condemned to poverty. There is no immediate
danger of that in China — but it could be happening in the US.
I refuse to use computerized self-checkout machines in stores, because
I don't want automation to kick millions of sales clerks into
permanent unemployment. Imagine what will happen in ten years if
self-driving cars eliminate all bus, truck and taxi drivers. Will
there be some new kind of job for these people to do? I doubt it.
In a meeting in Cambridge, some ten years ago, a person said,
"Production without workers requires consumption without money. In
other words, if the robots make it, we've gotta take it." One way or
another, making people work in order to have a decent life ceases to
be acceptable when society doesn't have any work for millions of
people to do.
Of course, there's also the disaster capitalism approach: let all the
superfluous people die.
Glenn Greenwald: The real scandal in the Petraeus affair is how far
the FBI pushed an investigation with no apparent crime, and the fact
it was able to
get
people's private information with no search warrant.
Global heating
threatens
to eliminate coffee plants in the wild, which
means the loss of many varieties with unusual flavors.
A medical journal says there is no
evidence that tamiflu has a beneficial effect on humans that have the
flu, and calls on Roche to release all the data it has.
Drug companies make a practice of
suppressing studies whose results
displease them. I know of no evidence that Roche did this in the case
of tamiflu, but we need to change the system of drug evaluation so it
can't be done at all. The reliable way to do that is to remove drug
companies from the system. Instead of letting them fund these tests,
we should tax them and use the money to pay for the tests.
Global heating is
devastating
Italian agriculture.
Venice will be inundated permanently after a few decades of sea level
rise, along with hundreds of historic cities that dot the
Mediterranean. The only way to protect them from a two-meter rise in
sea level would be to dam them off from the sea. A world suffering
from the effects of agricultural failure will not be able to do that.
Much of our past will be lost.
A group of Israelis that live near Gaza called on their government to
start
serious negotiations with Hamas, rather than continuing war.
Both sides call most of their attacks "retaliation", but it was noted,
a few years ago, that it was usually Israel, not Hamas, that
first
violated the truce and ended periods of calm.
Thousands of Kuwaitis protest against
voting
changes which were designed to make pro-monarchy candidates win.
Some US medical clinics are using palm prints to identify patients, and
push
patients into giving their palm prints without telling them
it is not required.
A shallow article in the New York Times, which cites experts explaining
how stupid Internet voting would be and then effectively disregards them
to present it as democratic paradise, has inspired a number of
me-too
articles.
It takes years, perhaps decades, to discover the flaws in a voting
system. The voting system includes more than just the technology; the
social system that the technology functions in can have flaws too.
But if the flaws are security holes exploited by viruses, it would be
hard to determine this is happening, so how would we ever know?
Many Americans, like Romney, don't realize
how
little help the US gives to the poor,
and how little it costs to help the poor.
The UN is
campaigning
to end violence against women and girls, which
many states do not wish to treat as a problem.
An Israeli film explains the
complex
of Israeli, British and Turkish laws that has been designed to
reliably find Palestinians guilty, and to take away their homes and land.
Everyone:
call
on South Korea not to start hunting whales.
Israel is a
pioneer
in the use of medical marijuana.
China has
barred
UN human rights observers from Tibet.
US citizens:
oppose
the idea of appointing SOPA supporter Howard Berman as Secretary of State.
Obama has always been on the side of the copyright lobby
against you and me.
How deregulation of local Spanish savings banks turned them into a disaster,
and will
benefit the big banks and harm everyone else.
Global heating is
likely
to wipe out the habitat of giant pandas.
Obama begged the Palestinian Authority to postpone its
bid
for partial UN recognition — in effect, to continue the
pretense that there is a real peace process. The Palestinian
Authority refused.
Uri Avnery has explained why the "peace process" is a sham meant to
distract attention from Israel's gradual takeover of most of the West
Bank.
The EU
suspended
its tax on airline CO2 emissions for a year in the hope
of encouraging a world-wide deal for such a tax.
Twitter has created a new form of mass folly: when celebrities die,
lots of people who didn't know them express
intense
public grief.
Among those celebrities, there are some whose work I appreciate, a few
whose work I loathe, and a majority that I never heard of. (I am
proud not to have a TV set, which insulates me from much of popular
culture.) But I didn't have a personal relationship with any of them,
so I don't feel grief for them. I resist social pressure to express
an emotion I don't feel.
I grieve for the friends I have lost.
The US could boost oil production and become
self-sufficient
in oil.
However, it would have trouble remaining self-sufficient in food after
burning so much oil roasts the Earth's biosphere. Known fossil fuel
reserves are 5 times the amount that we could dare to burn.
Meanwhile, Labour in the UK wants to postpone a small increase in fuel taxes
because of the
pain
it might cause.
You might as well postpone a visit to the dentist when you have a
toothache — or the oncologist when you have a strange lump.
In the UK, posting a picture of burning a poppy is
prosecuted.
The freedom to insult people, even personally but especially by
rejecting their ideas, is central to freedom of speech — a
freedom that is
in very bad shape in the UK.
After a
petition
with 60,000 signatures against a China-Canada investment treaty,
sumofus.org reports that ratification of the treaty was cancelled.
Treaties like this subordinate the citizens of the country to foreign
companies. They are inherently unjust, regardless of which countries
are involved. The fact that Canada has a number of such treaties
(with countries other than China) proves only that its government has
repeatedly betrayed the country.
Canada needs to abrogate all these existing treaties. So does every
other country. Each time some government signs one of these treaties,
it harms its own people and the people of another country. By
abrogating the treaty, it helps the people of the other country as well
as its own people.
Toshiba keeps the service manuals for its laptops
secret
— advancing the abusive treatment of customers.
Remember the old saying, "The customer is always right?"
In high tech business today, the customer is always a mark.
The legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington could be the
beginning
of the end of the War on Drugs.
Privatization of water in the UK has led to
inadequate
development at a tremendous cost to the treasury.
The UN has a
punishment
list for individuals, and it puts people on the list without trial.
70%
of Americans now believe that global heating is happening,
and this is beginning to affect election results.
However, the dirty fuel companies are not defeated yet, and they will
go on using dirty tricks to block the necessary action to slow down
the use of their product.
For instance, gas companies have paid for a smear article to appear in
searches
for Robert Howarth's research into the environmental damage
caused by fracking, and now few graduate students want to work in
his lab.
The UK government says it needs secret courts because otherwise
torture
victims would get too much money in damages.
Why not instead stop protecting torturers?
Scientists have figured out
why
Antarctica is gaining some sea ice.
Since this is much less than the decrease in Arctic sea ice, it still
adds up to a net increase in sunlight absorption, a positive feedback
in global heating.
Obama has a second chance on
human
rights. Will he use it?
Same thing for
privacy
vs surveillance.
Investigative journalists in Spain who documented corruption in Catalonia's
medical system were
convicted for calling it "robbery".
Strictly speaking, corruption is not robbery, but the difference is not
enough to be a crime.
5000 Tibetans
protested
for equal rights for Tibetans.
Why
a carbon tax would work where Kyoto has failed.
The 48 least developed countries
beg
the US and other big economies to slow global heating.
Those countries will be hit hard soonest because they have no
resources to cope with disasters even if the disasters affect just part
of the population. Wealthy countries such as the US will be able
to hold out for longer before they too are drained.
Many of the ash trees in Britain will die of a fungus infection; in
2009 the government
cited
"world trade rules" as an excuse for not keeping the disease out.
I suggest that Britons put signs on ash trees, saying "killed by 'free trade'".
The US military
recognizes
what global heating will do, but all
it can do in response is plan to move bases as they are inundated.
Republicans propose to "save" the economy for future workers by
shortchanging them, but what our grandchildren's generation really
needs is a
healthy
biosphere.
Chocolate production in Africa is being
damaged
by global heating.
If there were just one burst of global heating, people would find new
places where cocoa will grow. However, as global heating continues,
no place will stay good for very long. It takes five years for a tree
to start producing. If the good places to grow it shift every five
years, it can't be grown at all.
We will lose many things in this way.
Karl Rove's money
mostly
failed to get right-wing candidates elected.
However, big money and lies
defeated
California's initiative to require labeling of GMOs.
Price Waterhouse Cooper
advises
businesses to plan for global heating to reach 6°C in this century.
That is ridiculous — no business and no state can survive the
cataclysm which will follow from that much change. They can think
about moving the New York Stock Exchange to higher ground, but the
society it depends on probably won't keep functioning after that point.
Chances are you won't survive this either.
The plutocrats are trying to use hurricane damage as an
excuse to
privatize New York's infrastructure and ram in Walmart.
Glenn Greenwald: what Obama's
betrayal
of Social Security will look like, unless Liberals in congress
find some courage.
Corporate media is so desperate to present "balance" that it feels
obliged to
claim
that the Romney and Obama campaigns lied equally much.
Public Citizen describes bills it will campaign for in the coming
"lame duck" session of Congress, and many
nasty
bills it will campaign against.
Occupy Wall Street's new plan:
buy
bad US debts of poor people for a tiny fraction, then forgive the debt.
Noam Chomsky on the
embargo
of Gaza.
The most significant point is that the aquifer is becoming salty and the UN
reports that life in Gaza may be impossible by 2020.
Even without a disaster, Shell has trouble
removing
its oil equipment from the Arctic site where it wanted to drill.
4000 people voted for Charles Darwin instead of their unopposed
anti-science
Republican congressman.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to enforce US arms export laws on Israel.
Amazon's tax avoidance means it
sucks
money out of your country's economy.
In addition, the ease of using the site leads some people to spend more
than they want to spend. While this can happen in a physical store,
you don't spend all day there.
The head of the CIA has resigned for
the
dumbest of reasons — he had an affair.
The real ethical issues of the CIA's actions — torture and
assassinations — are not raised.
The US media have a double standard for
whether an election
victory is a mandate. As you'd expect, the threshold is lower for
Republicans.
The crucial point, however, is that both Obama and Romney
reject progressive positions that most Americans support.
An Indian Internet user was arrested for accusing
a politician of corruption.
If you accuse an Indian politician of corruption, chances are you're
right. I have no proof that that one politician is corrupt, so I
won't make that claim. Nonetheless, insulting someone should never be
a crime, not even when it is mistaken.
Carlos Miller was acquitted of the crime of videotaping the thugs at work,
and now
plans
to sue them for deleting his video.
UK intellectuals condemn the conversion of universities into
commercial
factories for what business needs.
Everyone:
condemn
Apple for using its control over iThing apps
to censor information about US drone bombings.
This power shows what proprietary software means and leads to.
Nobody should have this sort of power.
US citizens: reject
the right-wing claim that America is broke
and only screwing the poor can save it.
A judge
acknowledged
that the US has a criminal investigation against Wikileaks.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to protect wildlife.
Australia's proposal for Internet filtering has been
dropped,
but maybe this only means censorship will be imposed via ISPs
without a new law.
US citizens:
pledge
not to buy anything online on "Cyber Monday" to
protest the horrible working conditions imposed by Walmart, Amazon and
others.
There are many reasons never to buy anything from Amazon (https://stallman.org/amazon.html)
and Walmart. There is also a good
reason not to buy via e-commerce: to avoid letting anyone track your
purchases. However, the petition doesn't require you to say that
you would buy from these companies on other days.
US intelligence agencies will
search
for poachers in Africa.
Global heating is following
the
more severe predictions among the various models.
AT&T wants to abolish
regulation
of phone lines, which would mean it could charge any amount, and
cancel service arbitrarily.
In exchange for customers' rights, the company offers to spend money
on material investments. Does AT&T think it can buy our
congresscritters so easily? Oops, it probably can.
US citizens: call
on Obama to make it a priority to get big money out of politics.
An Iranian
dissident was tortured to death.
Greek MPs voted for further austerity, while outside protesters said,
"They are drinking our blood."
US citizens: call on
Congress not to extend Dubya's tax cuts for the rich.
Civil conflict continues Libya, which to a large extent is still
divided
between various militias.
Is Tunisia stagnating on human rights, or
regressing?
Sabotaging Black voters in Ohio by
giving
them absentee ballots during early voting.
Hundreds of thousands of Korean teenage girls
run
away from home and then become prostitutes, because they cannot
bear the pressure and competition of school.
California's initiative for labelling GMOs was defeated after a
giant
ad campaign by agribusiness said labelling would make the sky fall.
Colorado and Washington have
legalized
marijuana.
The US government vainly vents its anger against Wikileaks by
blocking
searches for the word "Wikileaks" in the National Archives.
This is in addition to blocking access to articles about Wikileaks
from various agencies' computers, and firing employees that even refer
to articles published by Wikileaks.
Nigerians who protested peacefully for an independent Biafra were
arrested
and charged with treason.
A couple in Pakistan murdered their daughter by pouring acid on her,
because she
looked at a
boy who rode by on a motorcycle.
They had apparently planned this for some time, because they had the
acid ready.
Their punishment should include the worst dishonor anyone
in Pakistan could imagine — so that nobody will again imagine
that this is a way to "avoid dishonor".
Greece has been
unable
to pay for a cancer treatment drug, so supplies
have been cut off.
Thus, austerity will kill sick people in Greece as it does in the US.
A beer conglomerate is
replacing
imported beers in the US with lousy domestic substitutes, to save
money.
I don't like any beer, but this is what typically happens in any field
when large conglomerates are allowed to buy other companies.
That general practice should be banned.
The bishop of Green Bay claims that anyone who disagrees with the
Catholic Church on certain
issues does not believe in "the common good or the dignity of the
human person."
I score five out of five on the bishop's list of horrors. I support
abortion rights, euthanasia for those who want it, embryonic stem cell
research and same-sex marriage. And I don't see anything inherently
wrong with human cloning (though with our current technology human
cloning would risk causing avoidable medical problems for the clones).
I reach these conclusions because I value the dignity of the
human person (and the golden rule).
Shame on the bishop for this calumny against people who disagree with
his church.
The Church of Emacs endorses cloning of programs, but says abortion
should be mandatory for nonfree software projects. But we don't say
that those who disagree can't value human dignity. We only say they
are wrong.
The last-minute patch in Ohio election systems was, it appears, not in
voting machines themselves, and was not dangerous. But this
does
not mean computerized voting is necessarily honest.
The article is too quick to conclude that there is no danger from
computerized counting machines for paper ballots.
It was reported after the 2004 election that computerized ballot
counting machines in Ohio were
apparently
biased: areas that counted
by hand got results that agreed with the exit polls, but those that
used these machines to count the paper ballots got results that swung
towards Dubya by around 2%, and that this was enough to give the state
to Dubya.
In principle, a recount by hand of the papers could have corrected the
error, but it was not done. I don't know why. Perhaps there was some
pressure to accept the machines' count.
If such pressure is still operative, computerized ballot counting
machines could still rig elections now.
Green Party candidate Robert J. Fitrakis sued over
Ohio's
plan to install a last-minute change in computerized voting machines. Can anyone tell me the outcome?
Republican-spread confusion has hit the US election.
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California forced one election money-laundering organization to reveal its funding sources, but they were other election money-laundering organizations.
Israelis shot a man in Gaza, then kept ambulances away for hours as he bled to death.
Activists plan to sail a ship out of Gaza containing
export
goods.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
I wonder how Israel will claim that this is dangerous. Perhaps all the world's rockets are in Gaza and this threatens to put rockets in the hands of the rest of the world.
Israeli annexationists have started building
new
colony "outposts".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
They do this without official government permission, but often the government subsequently approves these outposts as new colonies
South African Jews have organized a protest calling on a toy store to stop supporting the Jewish National Fund.
Israelis have destroyed half a million Palestinian olive trees since 2001.
The Israeli army has done little to stop this, and actually harasses Palestinians trying to harvest.
The ICRC refutes Israel's attempt to distort international law.
Israel pretends that it is not occupying the West Bank and that international law does not apply to voluntary population transfers into an occupied territory.
A computerized voting machine interpreted clicks on Obama's line of the ballot as votes for Romney.
Apparently only one machine malfunctioned in this way. It should have been investigated to find out why it did this — and whether someone intentionally sabotaged it, and if so, who. Instead they "recalibrated" it, which probably means that they reloaded the relevant data, thus erasing the evidence that should have been investigated.
The "Internet of things" is an opportunity for the CIA to spy on the people who allow it into their homes.
Fear of what the Leveson inquiry might do is chilling British journalism.
US citizens: pledge to campaign for prosecution of US election rigging, if that occurs.
Many US smart meters allow anyone to
determine
easily whether people are at home.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Sunday TV shows to address global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
The UK lent hundreds of millions of pounds to dictators in several countries so they could buy arms to repress the people.
The UK government continues to press the people of those countries to pay back the loans.
Thugs in South Africa planted weapons on striking miners they had killed, then claimed the miners were responsible for the violence.
Some miners were apparently murdered, shot in the back. Others were tortured.
Oakland's thug chief set a spam filter to block all emails about
Occupy Oakland. This led him to ignore an
email
from a court-appointed monitor.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
He says he never intended to ignore email from the court-appointed monitor. He only intended to ignore emails from the public he is supposed to serve.
As a UN agency visits Western Sahara to investigate, the Moroccan
occupying forces are
terrorizing
those that might want to criticize them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
The US and other countries are rushing into Internet voting. Here is why that is dangerous.
Russia's Internet filters block a list of sites, but the list is secret.
I read that the same is true of Denmark's Internet filters.
The US cannot easily find allies in Syria that would stop atrocities, or reject al Qa'ida.
Bassem Tamimi's 16-year-old son was arrested for protesting in Nabi Saleh.
Obama's main grass-roots support groups are planning to fight him if he tries to sell out poor Americans in December by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The US provided a standing authorization to export certain medicines to Iran, but it is not effective since banks refuse to handle the payment.
Miami's Republican mayor made people wait a long time to vote on Sunday.
Another Republican dirty trick in Ohio: a "data base error"
blocked
tens of thousands from voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-03 because the old link was broken.]
New Jersey invited email voting to cope with the effects of Hurricane Sandy, but this is very dangerous.
Because of technological advances, we must establish
privacy
rights that used to be taken for granted.
The
Kafkaesque World of the No-Fly List.
Republicans in Florida have been sued for
interfering
with voting.
US citizens:
call on
Attorney General Holder to investigate falsified
environmental analyses done by Pennsylvania to cover up poisoning from
fracking.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
falsified
analyses of water contaminants to cover up poisoning from fracking.
The governor of Pennsylvania seems to have been paid to do this.
A nasty trend in Internet services: arranging
relationships between people in a way that maintains control over
them and prevents them from contacting each other in other ways.
For example, look what happened to a user of Airbnb.
Everyone:
urge Nigeria
to enforce the large fine against Shell Oil.
Mexican underground armies have kidnaped engineers to build extensive
secret
cell-phone networks.
40,000 poor New Yorkers
face
cold weather while having no heat due to damage from Hurricane Sandy.
This is a medium-size disaster. Katrina was much worse, and much of
the population of New Orleans had to scrabble for a place to live
somewhere else. Such a storm in 20 years could leave a million people
without heat and power, which might strain the repair capacity so that
it might take years to repair.
Mass protests in Kuwait against
unfair
election laws were attacked by thugs.
Apple paid just 2% US tax on its
non-US
profits of almost 37 billion.
Syria's rebels captured
the
oil field that provides fuel for the regime.
A group of masked men carried out a carefully planned attack on
gays dining in
a private room in a club in Moscow.
This series of attacks seems to be related to the laws against "gay
propaganda" in Russia.
Such a large current of activity, involving regional governments,
could not happen in Russia without Putin's approval. Therefore,
he must be behind it.
How the US criminalized activism for animal rights by
labeling
it as "terrorism."
I only support the animal rights cause to a limited extent. I am in
favor of medical and biological experiments on animals if they advance
science.
But that is a side issue. The business-driven persecution of animal
rights activists is being used as a wedge to attack human rights for
activists for any cause that the plutocrats don't like.
Meanwhile, those same plutocrats are planning to kill hundreds of
millions of people by keeping global heating on track to destroy
civilization. Americans will not be spared. If you are young, they
may kill you, though perhaps only when you are middle-aged and you
can't afford treatment for sickness caused by fracking, or tropical
diseases that will have spread to today's temperate zones. Your
children will have it worse: they may die from food shortages or civil
war.
So who are the real terrorists?
The MPAA argues against allowing Megaupload users to download the
material that they previously uploaded,
claiming
it would cost Hollywood something.
I can't see how. Even in the case of Hollywood movies uploaded
without permission, those who uploaded them had a copy already.
Nearly all of them still have it. If not, they could get another
copy in an easier way.
The works people really care about downloading back from Megaupload
are their own lost works.
I don't advocate legalizing commercial redistribution without
permission, for artistic works. Since Megaupload was commercial,
I am not necessarily against shutting it down. However, the people
who used Megaupload to share should have been allowed to do this
noncommercially.
Dubya's FEMA director, who famously let people suffer in New Orleans,
criticized Obama for
moving too fast to help areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
There is plenty to criticize about Obama, but Republicans act like
stupid robots that will say absolutely anything as long as the
conclusion is that Obama is bad.
Thugs in Florida raided a
poker
game in which people do not bet any money.
The organizers believed the game was legal.
Putting aside the questions of whether the Florida law really
prohibits Nutz Poker, and whether it is right to prohibit Nutz Poker,
that the thugs attacked with drawn weapons in a situation where common
sense says a phone call would have sufficed is an example of a problem
spreading around the US.
A thug in New Mexico shot a 10-year-old with a taser for
refusing to help clean the thug's car.
The taser did not kill him but did wound him seriously.
The US Patent and Trademark Office is famous for issuing absurd patents.
Turns out it issues
absurd
trademarks, too.
At the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, which was shut down for refueling,
flood
waters came close to damaging a pump needed to cool
the used fuel pool.
The pump did not flood this time, but it came close. In 20 years, the
ocean level will have risen and storms will be stronger. Nuclear
disaster is inevitable there sooner or later. Will they build a
backup cooling system that is safe from hurricanes and tsunamis and
can run for months? Or will they skimp to save money?
Drug-sniffer dogs are
not
impartial — their handlers can tell them
to "find drugs here".
The UK Supreme Court ruled that handing over Yunus Rahmatullah to the US
was illegal.
How Obama is planning to betray
Americans to the Republicans.
Most London thugs who responded to a survey said
the London thugs do a bad job.
US citizens: you can
get
Greg Palast's last book in PDF, with no EULA,
and pay whatever amount you wish.
I'm told the site works fine with Javascript disabled (though it says
that it won't work).
Iran says it has suspended uranium enrichment as a goodwill gesture to
encourage negotiations to end the trade sanctions.
An EU official warned that breakaway independent European regions would
start
from zero if they want to become members of the EU.
Van Rompuy is right that independence for a region makes little sense
if the region wants to be part of the EU. However, independence
provides an opportunity to get out of the EU, the WTO, the Bern
Convention, and all sorts of other international injustices.
UK thugs bullied survivors of the Hillsborough disaster into
changing
their stories so that the thugs would not be blamed.
The UK government is aiming for natural gas
at
the expense of its emission cuts targets.
US nuclear reactor operators say
the
absence of a nuclear accident in this hurricane proves they are safe
already.
Examples of foolhardiness:
"That no bullets hit me in this fight proves I don't need body armor."
"That I didn't get HIV this week proves I don't need to use condoms."
"That this storm caused no accident proves we don't need more precautions."
US citizens:
call
on Whole Foods to stop selling chocolate made by
child labor.
Uri Avnery: Netanyahu has joined forces with Israel's fascist leader,
the Putin-admiring Lieberman, whose propaganda against the Israeli
political system follows the lines of Nazi propaganda.
If they win, it could be the end of democracy in Israel.
Global heating
causes hurricanes like Sandy just as smoking causes
lung cancer and the American diet causes obesity.
No wonder that the oil companies are using PR techniques to confuse
the issue that were used by the tobacco companies and
sugar companies.
Debunking the myth that the election is about "small government" vs
"big government".
New York City has greater wealth inequality than Brazil,
and this
had its effects
in the consequences of the hurricane.
This also shows that decades of tuning the economy and essential
services for efficiency has resulted in very little excess capacity.
How many exploded transformers could the US replace in one year?
Anything that causes one more transformer than that to explode
could result in abandonment of large parts of a city.
Rectification of names,
replacing
lies with truth, is essential for a
political movement. This includes the movement against the planet-burning
plutocracy.
One Internaut accused of insulting the king of Thailand has been freed,
but only because
there
was doubt the account was really his.
When a law is fundamentally unjust, as this one is, administering it fairly
prevents only part of its injustice
When the electricity go out, food
stamps and welfare benefits delivered by fancy new digital systems
stop working.
US courts should learn to hear lawsuits about illegal government spying;
other
countries have done so.
A long
list of union organizers endorse Jill Stein.
Apple points the way to America's
low-wage future.
US citizens: tell
Obama and Panetta to retract their assertion
that communication with the public constitutes "aiding the enemy".
In effect they are trying to admit, and regularize, their policy
of regarding the people as "the enemy". We must not stand for this.
Jill Stein for president!
US citizens: Call
on Holder to stop delaying the whistleblower protection
cases for the people who reported fraud and theft committed by FBI agents.
The weather system results from climate, so all
the weather we observe now is the result of the changed climate caused
by human-made global heating. Natural weather — weather not
influenced by global heating — no longer exists.
However, it is still the case that many weather events we see now
would have been normal and frequent under natural weather. And some
events that happen occasionally now might have happened once in a long
while under natural weather.
Ralph Nader suggests how to decide on
elections
for positions other than president.
US citizens: The mainstream media are silent about the damage caused
by Hurricane Sandy (and that others will frequently cause) and global heating.
Sign
this petition calling on them to confront the issue.
Kostas Vaxevanis says that the media in Greece are controlled by the
corrupt clique that rules Greece, and that
corrupt
politicians protect
the rich from prosecution for crimes such as tax evasion.
US government spending cuts are pushing towns into
disastrous
privatization.
Councilor Eichenwald is right to smell a rat. The only way a company
could profit by taking over the town's water or sewage systems is by
squeezing someone else. It could screw its workers, the water users,
or the environment.
This privatization is the opposite of investment: the town would lose
in the long term in order to avoid short-term trouble. A society
which does that is foolish. Allowing the plutocrats to rule is the
foolishness.
We must learn to treat corporate-funded criticism of progressives as a
sign we should vote for them. They show that the companies fear
losing power if we elect that person. Even if the criticism is true,
it is unimportant. Suppose a progressive poisoned his mother -- he's
better than a right-winger who would let a company poison thousands or
millions of people. What counts about any candidate is: will you,
if elected, act steadfastly to abolish the power of the rich?
A Brooklyn school makes its
oldest
students choose between voting and failing the year.
The Romney campaign has trained poll watchers to
impose
nonexistent voter ID requirements. In two different states.
This is part of an extensive plan
to steal the election, which is a backup to the corporate plan to
take the
election via PR.
James Hansen
accuses
the Democratic and Republican parties of selling
the Earth's future to the fossil fuel companies.
Kuwait has repressed a series
of protests.
Faced by a lawsuit to return one user's data from seized Megaupload
servers, the US government wants to
establish
hoops so high and numerous that hardly anyone would try to jump
through them.
Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, who
faced
charges for publishing a leaked list of accused tax evaders, has been
acquitted.
An Indian man faces three years imprisonment for tweets
vaguely
alleging corruption of some government officials.
Tsar Putin imposed Internet
filtering in Russia, with the usual excuse
of "protecting children", but the system is also used to protect his
regime from dissent.
The komissar for telecommunications says he expects Google to censor
YouTube according to their rules.
Due to flaws in the Kimberly Process,
diamonds
that fund war crimes committed by governments such as Zimbabwe and
Israel are certified as ok.
The military budget cuts called for by the 2011 budget deal
would be no problem for the US. A report suggests
how
to implement these cuts.
The cuts in other spending would do a lot of harm.
A video shows Syrian rebels
killing government soldiers they had
captured.
I can understand hating Assad's men, but we must not accept
that as justifying killing them once they are captured.
A study concludes that legalization of marijuana in three US states
could
cut
the profits of Mexican drug gangs by as much as 30%.
There are no legitimate grounds to prohibit marijuana. Marijuana
can
hurt teenagers' developing brains, but it is safe enough for adults.
There are many reasons why we must end the War on Drugs. It corrupts
thugs and officials, gives them an easy way to frame whoever they
don't like, ruins lives through botched drug raids, exposes all of us
to government seizure of our possessions without a trial, and puts
millions of Americans in prison. It means that drug purchases support
gangs that do other harmful things instead of providing tax revenue.
Let's get that war off drugs!
Bahrain sentenced someone to prison for
insulting
its cruel monarch on Twitter.
Kuwait has planned a rigged election and imprisoned an opposition
leader for criticizing its cruel monarch.
NYC
Hospitals Lose Power Once; in Gaza, it is a Constant Crisis.
On the
Orwellian
effects of Argentina's high-tech surveillance.
SIBIOS is why I decided not go to Argentina again.
Andrew Norton:
Is
it Time to Police the Police?
I think the first step is to root out the attitude that presumes
they are right.
Iranian political prisoners have started a hunger strike to
protest
degrading body searches.
Israel has
imprisoned
nonviolent protester leader Bassem Tamimi again.
Two of the three charges against Tamimi amount to "dissident political
activity". As for the other, "assaulting a thug", that probably
means hitting the thug's stick with his head or something similar.
US citizens:
call
for investigation of American Tradition Partnership for violating tax laws.
The World Bank recommends "reforms" that
attack workers' rights.
Tracing Romney's silence on global heating to
seeking
endorsement from the Koch Brothers.
ALEC routed 4 million dollars in corporate money to state legislators,
effectively
buying
their support for the right-wing laws ALEC pushes.
US citizens:
call for real
measures to stop global heating.
The UK's right-wing government is making poor people choose between
rent
and food.
Torture accusations against Mexican thugs have
increased
500% under the last president.
Barclays Bank has been
fined almost
half a billion dollars for manipulating California's energy market.
Rather than relying on prosecution and fines, we should limit the use
of derivatives which are susceptible to manipulation. However, the
banksters, knowing they would lose opportunities to get away with
subtle tricks, use their political power to block this change.
The junk food megacorps are
buying
influence with the World Health Organization.
The Battle Against Big Energy's Rush to Ruin Our Planet.
Everyone: call
on Domino's to stop buying pork made using gestation
crates.
Romney lies
about many aspects of his record as governor of Massachusetts.
The top
11 Republican dirty tricks, so far.
The Republican Party considers a free and fair election as an obstacle
to be crushed. It is un-American.
Blue Coat says
it didn't intentionally sell equipment for
monitoring and censoring the Internet in Syria.
It was meant for monitoring and censorship in Iraq.
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