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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Some sites have paper tiger paywalls that can be defeated by deleting a cookie. I don't post links to those sites because it would be too complex to tell users what to do to avoid having to identify themselves.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the imprisonment of Ukraine's former prime minister Tymoshenko was a political ploy, and that her trial was unfair.
Some strains of tuberculosis has developed resistance to all available drugs, and in today's insane political situation nobody is developing new ones.
The rate of honeybee death in the US was even greater this past winter, and this year there were barely enough honeybees left to pollinate California's almond crop. Next year there won't be enough. And that doesn't count the wild bee species, which are even more important for many crops.
It is time to try whatever drastic measures might help.
Right-wing Americans hate the environment so much that they will make a sacrifice to avoid protecting it.
Another cost of adapting to global heating effects in the next few decades: protecting waste-treatment plants from floods.
Beyond a few decades, some of these plants may need to be rebuilt on higher ground, along with the cities they serve. But there will not be money to do that, with agriculture collapsing and the seas mostly barren due to acidification.
Obama said it is not clear which side used chemical weapons in Syria.
I don't think it is a crucial question. There is plenty of reason to help a secular rebellion against Assad; what's missing is a plausible plan for how to do it, and without that, it is hard to do anything.
Obama says he will try again to close the Guantanamo prison.
We should support the effort.
A bill to deny "too big to fail" banks another bailout is getting support even from conservatives.
One group we know will not support it is the banksters, so ultimately the question will be whether they can buy Congress again.
Scientific experiments with psychedelic drugs are getting started.
Environmentalists are suing to block a uranium mine a few miles from the Grand Canyon. The mine could poison local water supplies.
Global heating threatens the survival of wild koalas.
Corrupt Mexican officials, and their relatives, threaten abuse of power in order to demand favors — but now they get caught.
The UK government made unemployed people fill out a bogus online personality test, giving them scores that had nothing to do with their answers, and threatening to punish them if they didn't do it.
The article does not say, but I suspect that the survey may have required running nonfree Javascript software.
Chen Guangcheng's imprisoned nephew has appendicitis and prison guards are blocking him from effective treatment.
India has imposed total surveillance on the Internet and telephones.
Agents will be able to listen to anything, with no restraints. I expect they will do some listening for private purposes; would you expect thugs in India to be more honest or scrupulous than thugs in the US?
Terrorism is a real threat in India, but it is a small threat compared with the violence of the Indian state itself.
Many US cities punish victims of domestic violence with eviction.
The same "blame the victim" attitude can be seen in laws that punish the homeless and in condemning people for being on welfare.
Google Now shows how much information Google has about you — which, for people that actually use Google services, is far too much.
The civilian contractors who organized torture at Abu Ghraib were never investigated, but victims are suing them.
The US is looking at ways to punish companies that run chat services and are not set up for real-time wiretapping.
Much of Japan's "foreign aid" takes the form of loans, and the debt repayments exceed the value of the "aid".
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev repeatedly said he wanted a lawyer, but the FBI kept interrogating him anyway.
In other words, the Obama regime is using him as an excuse to attack the rights of every suspect. That includes you!
21 Guantanamo prisoners are now being force-fed, a form of torture that amounts to a very slow death.
Pollution from China seems to be killing trees in Japan, and maybe people too.
"It's insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It's also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own."
Half the countries of Europe have no plans for adapting to the effects of global heating.
For a few decades, increasingly heroic measures could cope with these effects, but then it simply won't be possible any more.
UK Cuddles up to Gulf States — ignoring their cruelty to sell them more arms.
Marie Fleming, incapacitated by multiple sclerosis, asked Irish courts to permit her mate to help her die, but they refused her.
UK tax officials investigated a whistleblower about special tax deal given to Goldman Sachs as if he were a tax cheater.
This is reminiscent of Obama's war on whistleblowers, and shows how much the state has sold out to businesses such as Goldman Sachs.
Such deals may have excused big companies from lots of tax; they are now being investigated.
In the US, gun violence is only considered shocking when the victims are wealthy whites.
In some Muslim countries, the dress police attack women. In Gaza they are attacking young men.
The Israeli siege of Gaza gave Hamas its power there, and it will be hard to defend human rights in Gaza from Hamas's abuses as long as the siege continues to be the principal injustice to Gazans.
Thousands of chemicals are now used in products all around us, and several are associated with various kinds of toxicity, but manufacturers lobby against testing them.
Trademarks: the Good, the Bad And the Ugly.
The EU will ban neonicotinoid pesticides for two years.
These pesticides accumulate in the soil; I hope two years' ban will be long enough to verify the effect.
From Amnesty International: Guatemala: Scrapping genocide trial
would
strengthen impunity.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
It's Time to Shine a Light on the Poverty Creation Industry.
The ads for Facebook Home invite people to disconnect from their families and coworkers, effectively inviting people to have no relationships more substantial than a Facebook contact.
It is ironic that I, saying this, was a pioneer in using the computer at the dinner table. But the reason I did so was that people were having conversations around me which I was unable to understand, due to my hearing problems. I didn't choose to ignore them; that much was forced on me, giving me the choice to either hide that fact and be bored, or acknowledge it and do something useful. There was also the option of asking them to speak loud and slowly so I could hear, but that was so obviously burdensome to them that I couldn't do it very often.
The Icelandic Pirate Party has entered parliament.
Dubai thugs tortured three visitors to make them sign confessions they could not read.
Dubai is one of the countries I would refuse to visit.
Islamists kicked out of Mali are attacking Libya.
Facebook-Funded
"Child Protection" Event Turns Into Privacy Bashing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The article refers to "online child abuse", which appears to be nonsense. Such a thing isn't even a possibility without some unusual I/O devices that may not exist anywhere, and that even the most personal of computers don't generally have.
Iraq has banned 10 TV channels including al-Jazeera.
This happens as a violent uprising is going on, in which 180 people have been killed. I am surprised to see no other information about it.
Americans are recognizing that Congress obeys the rich, and only 15% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Congress.
Thugs in Buenos Aires rampaged when workers in a hospital blocked the demolition of a hospital building.
I read elsewhere that one of the reasons for the demolition of that building is that it had dangerous asbestos. Perhaps the demolition was necessary, but that was no reason for thugs to attack.
The US Chamber of Commerce is fighting to preserve the secrecy of what mining and extraction companies that are nominally American pay to other governments.
Meet the Curveballs of austerity, who falsify "economic research" to justify the policy that the plutocrats wanted to apply anyway.
A hoax tweet on an Associated Press account demonstrates the fragility of globalized systems optimized for speed and for efficiency in the usual case, but not for reliability.
US citizens:
call
on Obama and the EPA to block mountaintop removal coal mining
under the Clean Water Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
New York's thug commissioner Kelly is pushing for total surveillance, using the Boston bombings as an excuse for total contempt for privacy. The proper conclusion from the Boston bombings is that there is no need for more state surveillance. Meanwhile, Commissioner Kelly himself is responsible for plenty of human rights violations.
Leading cancer specialists condemn drug companies for price gouging.
The price gouging is made possible by patents. Patents should not be allowed on medicines needed to treat major illness. Most new drugs that save lives come from government-funded research, not from drug company investments.
Turkish editor Ali Ornek was convicted of "insulting the president" for accusing the president of corruption.
I don't know whether the Turkish president is corrupt, but if he fails to defend the right of Turks to make that accusation, we should treat the accusation as true.
Kuwait is considering a draconian censorship law.
The Tunisian Supreme Court
has ducked
the issue of religious censorship, allowing Jabeur Mejri to remain
imprisoned for publishing cartoons about Mohammed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
South Africa is on the verge of passing a law to punish journalists that publish secrets.
Everyone: call on Arkansas Governor Dalrymple
to veto
the bill to ban abortions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The San Francisco Gay Pride Parade's leadership says that expressions of support for Bradley Manning "will not be tolerated"; they are too busy supporting sleazy corporations that give money.
Greenwald shows in detail how the parade has been converted from an expression of real dissent into a bulwark of the establishment.
The Bangladeshis responsible for ignoring warnings that the factory might collapse have been arrested.
Meanwhile, protesters campaign to pressure Western companies to take responsibility for outsourcing work to circumstances such as these.
Everyone: sign this petition to make nuclear reactor companies responsible for damages they cause.
Indigenous people protested at Brazil's congress against a proposed law that would help ranchers take their land.
Brazilians are angry because the football world cup matches will ban local street vendors from selling local traditional food on the street outside the stadium.
This is part of the sports-industrial complex has converted the biggest sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, into engines of business power.
Hong Kong arrested a man for writing graffiti condemning the President of China. This has stimulated various sorts of opposition and resistance.
The virtual equivalent of writing graffiti on a company's advertisement, which is modifying the company's web site, is referred to by Western governments as a "cyber attack" and penalized heavily.
We must establish clearly in our own country that graffiti is not a crime, so we can condemn other countries for prosecuting it.
An citizen initiative in Finland proposes to make copyright law less harsh.
The European Parliament considers yet again a proposal
for filters
on the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to block Pebble Mine from polluting Bristol Bay and
ruining a major salmon fishery.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Prime Minister of Japan is trying to deny Japan's aggression in World War II.
When will the US admit that it launched a war of aggression against Iraq?
There was not much coverage of the Texas explosion, and much of that coverage was erroneous.
That's what I expected, a week ago.
US media and politicians together are using the Boston bombings as an excuse to attack rule of law in the US.
US citizens: call on your legislators to support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Privacy rights are under threat in the European Parliament.
It is important to encrypt data that is sensitive: in the US, it can be the only way to protect your data from the government.
Especially if you are a journalist, whistleblower, or possible target of a witch hunt.
Of course, the worst thing you can do is get into the habit of storing your mail or your writing on a company's server.
Why and how surveillance is harmful.
Poor Kids: Let Them Eat (and Empty) Trash Cans.
Lots of perfectly good food is thrown away in the US, and taking it from the trash is a useful thing to do. But poor people (children or not) should not have to depend on this. The statement by this Republican jerk reflects the true spirit of today's Republican Party, and a lot of the Democratic Party too.
Study: Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide Linked to Cancer, Autism, Parkinson's.
Law Requiring Warrants for E-Mail Wins Senate Committee Approval.
In the US and Bangladesh, dangerous work is often low-paid work, and workplace safety doesn't cost a lot.
Millions in the US face avoidable danger at work, and the lack of a union makes workers scared to report safety violations.
12 important programs that Congress has not rescued from across-the-board spending cuts.
Those cuts will also have a cumulative effect, setting back the whole economy and increasing unemployment.
Zuckerberg's political spending group, supposedly dedicated to immigration reform, is actually funding anti-environment causes. These include drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and building the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
It is not clear yet whether this was done with Zuckerberg's knowledge, but the fact that it was done by both of the groups funded by the organization suggests that that was not coincidence.
Burma is moving towards democracy, but also practicing repression to extract and export fossil fuels.
We need to leave around 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves unused to avoid global disaster, so it is pointless to open up more of them.
Haiti's government has stepped up the evictions of thousands of destitute refugees who have nowhere to go.
Saudi Arabia
has imprisoned
the founder of a human rights defense group.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Toxic benzene from the Arkansas tar sands oil spill has been found in Lake Conway, but Exxon continues to say it is not there.
With today's "balance" journalism, which mentions both "sides" and doesn't try to find out what's true, this sort of denial is effective even against well-established truth, and oil companies have lots of practice at it.
A US filmmaker in Venezuela has been arrested and accused of transferring US funds to the opposition as a destabilization campaign.
If his journalism is innocent, as it seems to be from this article, these charges might still be true. Or they might false. In any case, it is wrong to call such actions "terrorism".
Stretching the term "terrorism" when accusing people is practiced by many countries including the US.
The UK Labour party demonstrates its weakness of spirit by offering tax reductions for companies that pay a living wage, rather than penalizing the companies that fail to do so, or requiring companies to do so.
Schools attended by 3,000 children in Kentucky were shut down because of a threat posted on the Internet from another continent.
The remaining wild daffodils in Britain are threatened by hybridization with cultivated daffodil varieties.
This shows how GMO salmon can threaten wild salmon.
Human morality is the intelligent superstructure of our innate tendency to help and support each other, which we share with various other social animals including apes.
Artificial nanomaterials in food could be very useful — but we had better test the safety of each kind. I am not a technophobe on principle, and I suppose many of them will prove to be safe, but there will surely be some that are not.
Meanwhile, the general thrust of food technology in recent decades has been to make food that is more habit-forming, leading to widespread obesity. If nanomaterials provide a way to extend this, I think that is likely to occur.
DataCell (which accepted payments for Wikileaks) won its lawsuit against VISA. The court ordered VISA to resume payments to DataCell or face a fine of over a million dollars a year.
I think the US government won't give up now. Maybe the CIA will secretly pay the fine.
US citizens: call on the Secretary of the Interior not to negate the partial recovery of wolves in the US by removing protection from them.
US citizens: call
on the Senate to reject any cuts in Social Security, including
indirect cuts such as "chained CPI".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bradley Manning will be honored in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.
Later: the parade's governing commondreams said that this announcement was premature, and that the committee had vetoed the selection of Manning.
Venezuelan president Maduro has threatened to prosecute opposition candidate Capriles over protests that allegedly turned violent.
It is not at all implausible that the Venezuelan opposition would conspire with the US to overthrow the government. They did it before, and Obama has supported successful overthrows of governments in Honduras and Paraguay. On the other hand, if there is no evidence that Capriles did anything beyond call for protests, there is no grounds to prosecute him.
The Obama regime is giving companies immunity for otherwise illegal wiretapping without court authority.
Protest often needs to be rude to have any effect.
Facebook has censored political satire aimed at the UK unemployment agency and its associated organizations, apparently at the request of a target of the satire.
Slavery is banned, but it survives in many guises that are effectively comparable to the explicit slavery of the past.
Seattle and San Francisco have divested from fossil fuel companies.
The US was involved in the ouster of Paraguay's President Lugo,
and in the violence
that provided the excuse for ousting him.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Protesters at the opening of the Bush presidential library were violently arrested for stepping off the curb.
Let George W. Bush Discuss His Legacy However He Likes… from the Hague.
Israeli border guards were given official authorization to demand to search visitors' email.
Supposedly this is to be done in cases of suspected terrorism, but naturally it's already applied to political activists.
13 US workers die at their jobs per day.
Two days of this equals the number of major casualties in the Boston bombings.
US citizens: tell your senators to oppose CISPA.
Unemployment in Spain has reached 27%, and more cuts are planned, so it will increase.
If the US claims poison gas was used in Syria, it should show the evidence.
There have been false claims of this sort about various countries in the past.
The wounded from Boston illustrate that the US needs true universal health care.
Karzai has imposed Islamic censorship on Afghan TV, like Taliban Lite.
Why corporations
pretend to be "American" part of the time, and "foreign" part of
the time.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Hundreds of Chicago Students Walk Out of Standardized Test.
Tackling "Monoculture of the Mind".
Nitrogenous fertilizer damages soil microbes that provide useful nitrogen, forming a sort of addiction.
Bayer and Syngenta Lobby Furiously Against EU Efforts to Limit Pesticides and Save Bees.
Under the Obama regime, the whole world is a battlefield.
The Bush regime ran secret prisons in various countries; now the Obama regime interrogates people in secret prisons run by other countries.
US law distorts the term "weapons of mass destruction" by applying it to grenades and small bombs.
No wonder Dubya thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He surely had grenades.
A man in New Zealand was imprisoned for watching a video of fantasy beings' (elves, pixies, etc) having sex.
The excuses given for this amount to punishment of thoughtcrime.
Everyone: support Chicago retail
workers demanding a decent
wage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
On the
CIA's destabilization
campaign against Guatemala.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
UK ISPs are trying to hush up the proposed Internet surveillance bill.
A Chinese official was protested for his extravagant banquets, and then was fired for them.
China has a strong tradition of conspicuous consumption. The reason Chinese are wiping out the world's sharks to serve shark's fin soup at banquets is not that shark's fin tastes particularly good, but in order to show how much they are willing to spend.
It won't be easy to change this behavior pattern, but it would be good to do so.
Criticism of NYT editor Jill Abramson is a good illustration of sexist criteria.
Canada's minister of natural resources hopes to drown out James Hansen's warnings with loud lies.
US citizens:
call on
senators to fix the filibuster when they get a chance in 2 years.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
13 EU countries will require
special
labeling of products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian
territory.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bahrain has barred a UN official who was supposed to investigate repression of protesters.
Another instance of
mass
killing in a factory in Bangladesh.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
While the place and time of this collapse was an accident, at a larger scale it is no accident that factories in Bangladesh kill large number of workers. US (and European) companies have resisted the application of safety standards (and labour standards) to their suppliers. They lobbied for the system of globalization which encourages such arrangements.
In other words, this was part of the same broad practice of business-arranged weak regulation that led to the Texas chemical explosion and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
US citizens: phone your senators to support raising the minimum wage.
Also sign this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Israel is trying to force Palestinians into exile by destroying the solar and wind power installations funded by European governments.
Two Chinese local officials have died while prisoners of the anti-corruption police. One was apparently beaten to death.
Will the Boston Bombings Kill the Public Police Scanner?
US citizens: rebuke Charles Schwab for sticking a forced arbitration clause in its customer agreements.
US citizens: support the STOP Act, which would reform how the US military handles accusations of sexual assault.
Israeli forces destroyed 1,000 olive trees belonging to the Palestinian town of Susiya, which Israel intends to destroy.
Everyone: urge European countries
to block
Monsanto's patent grab over many non-GMO plant varieties.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Egyptian conscientious objectors face severe repression; they are
permanently barred from working, studying and travel.
They protested
in Cairo and expressed their solidarity with Israeli draft
resister
Natan
Blanc.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Chileans protest that Pinochet's privatization of water has enabled mines to take water and leave towns with none.
Over and over, attacks against US civilians have been motivated by resentment for US violence and torture against other civilians.
These small retaliatory attacks can hardly intimidate a great country, but the attackers represent the feelings of tens of millions of others. However, the real reason the US should cease its torture and violence against civilians is that they are wrong. As Carl Schurz said,
My country, right or wrong.
When right, to be kept right.
When wrong, to be set right.
The US policy of endless war needs to be set right, not drummed up.
Western governments admire Malawi's new president because she submitted to IMF austerity, bringing the usual suffering.
Burma has freed hundreds of political prisoners, but 300 more remain in prison.
Just like Burma, the US holds political prisoners (such as John Kiriakou) but says they are simply criminals.
Conservatives are clever in finding excuses to blame the poor for the consequences of their poverty.
In human medicine, patents directly obstruct scientific research.
A simple solution is to exempt research from patent law.
Lessons from Japan about how a country can put its economy in gear again.
A UN human rights review of Canada is an opportunity to challenge the human rights abuses of its mining companies.
The restrictions on protests in Montreal should be addressed as well.
As for the treaties that are being used to force mines on El Salvador and Costa Rica, those are forms of industrial colonization, like other free exploitation treaties, must be cancelled.
Greenpeace activists are protesting on a coal ship.
An alleged member of LulzSec could be imprisoned for 12 years for virtual graffiti.
Governments have taken advantage of a technological change to reframe "drawing a critical slogan on a wall" as "attacking and defacing", and punish it with years in prison. That's the War on Democracy for you.
Austerity in the UK is good for the banks…and for the food banks, too.
The EPA has the power to block mountaintop removal mining.
US
Cluster Munitions: 277 Million Boston Bombings.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US Green Party has appointed a
shadow
cabinet, borrowing a traditional opposition practice from the UK.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The TSA has backed down on exercising a little common sense.
Over a million comments were filed in the public comment request about the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline. Most of them were opposed.
Thanks to those of you who filed comments.
The libel reform law has been adopted in the UK, eliminating most of the abuses that attracted people from around the world to go there to sue.
The judge in the case considering the New York thugs' practice of searching people on the street without any basis for suspicion (other than the victim's racial background) says some witnesses have lied.
Given that many thugs were witnesses, I would expect as much.
US citizens: support the EPA's plan
to reduce
motor vehicle exhaust pollution and thus prevent around 23,000
children from developing respiratory problems.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Yemeni journalist Farea Al-Muslimi will testify in the Senate Judiciary Committee about the effects of drone bombing in Yemen: terrorizing the farmers, helping al Qa'ida recruit using martyrs, and closing all ears to anything favorable about America.
Katelyn Campbell launched resistance against abstinence-only sex miseducation in her high school, and stood up to intimidation from the principal.
UK participation in the imprisonment and torture of Shaker Aamer is being investigated for possible prosecution.
New York Mayor Bloomberg wants less freedom in the US.
Israel arrests large numbers of Palestinian teenagers, and even children as young as nine, and often tortures them to get false confessions or compel them to become informers.
The manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev vs
Americans' constitutional
rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The EPA rubbished the State Department's environmental impact statement about the Keystone XL pipeline.
Chinese are starting to flee Beijing because of the health-damaging air pollution.
Apple exploits the app developers mercilessly, aside from a few stars whose role is to give a misleading impression of what developers can expect.
I can't sympathize much with those app developers, since they are making proprietary software. They all deserve to fail. However, that doesn't excuse the way Apple treats them.
Liu Xiaobo's wife, held under house arrest for two years with no criminal charges and no trial, had a chance to shout "I'm not free" to onlookers when attending a the trial of her brother.
This could never happen in the US. When the US holds people prisoner without charges or trial, it keeps them isolated in Guantanamo and declares that everything they say is "classified".
When the UK imprisoned people without charges, even their names were secret, but now it keeps them under almost-house-arrest instead.
How Facebook Teams Up With Data Brokers.
George Monbiot: This faith in the markets is misplaced: only governments can save our living planet.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject CISPA.
US citizens: reject use of the Boston bombings as an excuse to attack our civil liberties.
Yemeni writer Farea al-Muslimi
asks why
the US used a drone to kill a man in his home village, an area
fully under government control, where it would have been easy to
arrest him.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US sanctions have made it impossible to send aid to help Iranians made homeless by earthquakes.
The sanctions are not supposed to block food and medicine, but the UK is blocking Shell from paying a debt by shipping food or medicine to Iran.
This shows that the blocking of food and medicine is an intended result, and US claims to the contrary are dishonest.
In principle, economic sanctions can be legitimate, but their main effect now is to give Iranians a reason to rally behind their government.
There are accusations that Assad is using chemical weapons.
I would not put it past him; at the same time, I would not put it past Israel to make false accusations against Assad. Thus, at this point I don't have a basis to either believe or disbelieve these accusations.
A UK businessman has been convicted of selling phony "bomb detectors" to Iraq, preying on superstition and paving the way with kickbacks.
An interview with Tim DeChristopher, who heroically stopped an illegal auction of oil drilling rights, then was convicted after a dishonest trial designed to suppress the facts.
Japanese thugs want ISPs to block use of Tor in some vaguely defined circumstances.
Elwood Osman shot his wife, Mildred, who was dying in a hospice, and then killed himself.
People speculate that he killed her at her request, and then killed himself so he would not have to live without her, or so that he would not face a murder trial. We can't be sure of that, but it's clear that current cruel laws can put people in that horrible position.
We don't know
whether the Boston bombings were terrorism, because we don't
know the motive. But people seem to assume that they were.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The use of bombs might be part of the reason. We expect terrorists to use bombs, and crazed killers to use guns. It appears that the older Tsernaev brother supported Islamist extremism, but we don't know whether that was the motive for the bombings.
Global Elites May Finally Realize Austerity Isn't The Answer.
Anti-abortionists imperil women's lives in America, and elsewhere too.
Microsoft is becoming
a patent
extortionist.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Everyone: condemn Nestle's attempt to patent the traditional use of fennel as a treatment for stomach upset.
A long history of cutting safety inspections has given the US a series of fatal industrial explosions.
The plutocrats' candidate won the presidential election in Paraguay, based partly on buying votes.
Lack of political understanding may have contributed. The woman who voted for Lugo, then was disappointed because congress would not pass his program, should have blamed congress not Lugo.
It's only April, but there's already a wildfire near LA.
Obama plans to break a pledge by "upgrading" nuclear bombs in Europe so that they effectively become new weapons.
We must protect the 2014 Boston Marathon from the temptation to ruin
it with crushing
security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square has been ruined by crushing security, so it is mainly attended by tourists who don't know what it will be like.
Now that the "economic" argument for austerity is known to be false, here's a simple solution euro-austerity governments could adopt.
Spain's government plans to privatize many public hospitals and treatment centers.
Most people would be unable to use them.
The US now admits that half of the prisoners in Guantanamo are on hunger strike. The true number might be more.
Egypt's justice minister has resigned, objecting to a bill that threatens to undermine the independence of the judiciary.
Events in Boston are being cited to justify increased surveillance in Germany.
The conclusion to draw from the Boston bombings is that our system dealt with them effectively. We don't need any more surveillance or security measures, and we should avoid damaging overreactions (such as shutting down whole cities for a manhunt).
The crucial point is that the level of terrorist violence in the US is so low already that no additional measures are needed or even useful.
Terrorist violence in the US is such a tiny fraction of all the violent death and injury in the US that it's the wrong place to focus, if your aim is to reduce violent death and injury.
The insidious psychological effect of terrorism does not result directly from terrorism. It results from a panicky overreaction to the events. We can curb this effect by maintaining a sense of proportion.
If you want to reduce murder in the US, enact gun control. (Bonus: with better gun control, maybe the Tsarnaev brothers would not have had guns.) If you want to reduce other violent deaths, enforce safety regulations on chemical plants, mines, oil drilling platforms, and so on.
We need to redirect the public discussion away from the useless focus on the few casualties of terrorism, and onto reducing the big causes of avoidable deaths and injuries.
Russia is resuming the Soviet practice of committing dissidents to psychiatric hospitals.
A Saudi human rights lawyer is being prosecuted for "offending the judiciary".
Any law against "offending" something, no matter what that something is, is an offense against freedom of speech. Most of the world's countries seem to have such laws; freedom of speech is in bad shape.
Israel is planning to evict
30,000
bedouin from their homes in the desert.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
America Cannot Assert Moral Authority While Guantánamo Remains Open.
Federal banking regulators have the authority to break up the big banks. Of course, they don't do this because the banksters might be displeased.
Americans overreact to the Boston bombings while underreacting to everyday gun violence.
The shutdown of Boston, which was the biggest overreaction, also protected Dzhokar Tsarnaev from being caught all day.
The US says Shaker Aamer can be released from Guantanamo, but only to Saudi Arabia which can be counted on to imprison him again.
He could testify to US and UK torture practices, and both governments would like to bury his testimony by burying him.
Economists present their conclusions as certainties, but they are often guessing.
The agricultural land-grab is not limited to Africa. It affects Europe too.
Mobile phone companies are now marketing data about where phone users live and where they go.
Count me out.
(The word "monetize" properly means "to put something into use as money". Using to mean "profit from" is disgusting, and deserves our condemnation too.)
US citizens:
call
for mandatory labeling of GMOs in foods.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Estonians are fighting back against US bullying for stricter copyright enforcement.
Greed, Fear and Other Barriers to Health Care as a Human Right.
Sandra Steingraber explains why she decided to go to jail rather than pay a fine, after her protest against an underground gas storage company that could pollute her area's water.
The price of staple foods is likely to double by 2050, and many people will starve.
Congress and Obama have quietly
gutted the
STOCK act, passed with fanfare a year ago to stop insider trading
by congresscritters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Uri Avnery reports on a meeting of Israelis and Palestinians, to mourn their dead together.
US citizens: tell the US government not to offer BP a cheap settlement for the Big Spill.
The US is looking at providing military equipment to Syrian rebels.
There is no sign of how they would provide aid to secular rebels and avoid helping Islamists conquer Syria.
ACLU Statement on Miranda Rights of Boston Bombings Suspect.
Raped? Take Money, And Shut Up! Says Indian Police.
I think the repressive nature of Indian culture is partly responsible for the amount of rape there. Ironically, this means Hollywood might be a good influence.
Spaniards are protesting near the homes of deputies from the ruling austerity party, and they want the protests banned.
In Belarus, even a photo contest is now banned.
Ai Weiwei: Every Day We Put the State on Trial.
Cory Doctorow's novel "Homeland", about fighting censorship, is the latest victim of DMCA censorship.
"Trusted" has become a newspeak word for "under repressive control".
US workers are cooperating with European unions to help unionize US grocery stores and warehouses belonging to a European company.
Jordan Anderson, non-Christian student, faces persistent persecution for trying to end religious indoctrination in his school in South Carolina.
U.S. Helps Push Privatization Scheme in El Salvador.
The
US ignores
homeless families — hundreds of thousands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Thugs' latest excuse for arresting photographers: they claim that portable phones are weapons (or could be weapons).
Accused murderer Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been captured. Now he should get a fair trial so that justice is done. But that is in doubt, because the US is taking advantage of this opportunity to continue undermining the rights of the accused.
Americans, "the accused" means you! Nowadays just about every Internet user commits felonies (thanks to the CFAA), and even if you don't, you could still be falsely accused.
Human Rights Watch calls on the World Bank to make sure it stops supporting projects that trample human rights.
Mexico wants to do fracking, but it is blocked by the lack of available water.
Of the world's top 20 industrial sectors, none would be profitable if it had to pay for its pollution and nonrenewable resources.
I share the writer's distaste for trying to squeeze something really important into the framing of mere economics, so I've chosen a way to state his point without doing that.
Peabody Energy placed its workers' pension responsibilities in a new spin-off company that was designed to go bankrupt.
Some of these ex-miners will die because they are cheated out of medical care. I think it is fair to say that Peabody's executives and lawyers will have murdered those men.
Google pushes back against advertising masquerading as news.
New psychoactive drugs are synthesized and tested on kids who hardly care about the risks.
It is a shame that many kids are so foolhardy as to take drugs whose harmful effects are unknown. However, prohibition is also to blame; without that, they could take something of known composition and strength, which probably would do them no harm.
Many UK parents did not let their children get vaccinated for measles, and the result is an outbreak that has become fatal.
Investigating allegations that Gaddafi funded Sarkozy's election campaign.
Former Pakistani military dictator Musharraf faces trial for when he arrested the country's judges.
I'd expect that to be a crime of some kind, but calling it "terrorism" seems to be stretching the word, which is a dangerous practice.
Belize's coral reefs, the second largest in the world, have been saved from oil drilling by a court which ruled that the drillers' environmental impact statements really did need to be studied.
This victory may help coral indirectly, too, by slightly restraining our pumping CO2 into the air, which threatens to kill all coral by making the ocean too acidic for it to live.
After a dentist demanded a patient assign copyright on any reviews he writes about the dentist, the patient fought back.
There's another way around this. Someone else can interview the patient, then write the review.
Reports are that the Boston bombings were carried out by a team of two brothers. Whether it was terrorism is a matter of their motivation, but their motivation may not be a crucial detail.
For several years, the FBI has run sting operations trying to catch and incriminate anyone who expresses interest in terrorism. Several groups of incompetent daydreamers have been tried and imprisoned, but these stings have never caught anyone who could really have committed any violence.
We now see that those who are capable of real violence are also smart enough not to blab about it. In other words, the stings enable the FBI to look like it's doing something, but don't achieve anything. There is no point in recruiting numerous informers in the US Muslim community, making everyone in them feel suspect, in order to imprison daydreamers.
The entire city of Boston has been shut down today, including the subway, but the state has not stated any reason for this. Apparently people are expected not to question even drastic orders. This reaction is the diametrical opposite of "Keep calm and carry on". It gives any terrorist the power to do enormous economic damage, far exceeding what he could achieve directly with weapons.
The Boston bombs are already helping to take away Americans' civil liberties: they were cited (irrationally) as a justification for CISPA.
How Obama's lies about the drone death squad were necessary to disguise its illegality under US law.
I propose a name for a country whose main industry is financial services to foreigners who are evading taxes or some other form of responsibility:
A bankana republic.
Developers hope to build houses on the hill where 2% of all the nightingales remaining in Britain now live.
Argentine president Fernández plans to impose indirect political control over judges by having them run for office backed by political parties.
Some states in the US have elected judges, and people say this means that people and companies with political influence (or the money to sway an election) get the court decisions they want.
Karzai says he wants to rein in CIA-controlled militias fighting in Afghanistan after one called for an air strike that killed a bunch of children.
This explains why his order for Afghan forces not to call in air strikes was ignored: this militia isn't really part of the Afghan forces.
An army at war kills civilians from time to time even making all due efforts to avoid it. (I don't know enough details to have any idea whether this militia unit took due care.) The people will accept these unavoidable casualties if they believe the fight is their fight and that defeat would be much worse.
Fossil fuel share prices face big losses because highly-valued reserves of fossil fuels must not be extracted and burnt as the owners would like.
3/4 of fossil fuel reserves belong to governments, and the governments which have large amounts of it oppose action to curb global heating.
A woman in El Salvador may be killed by the state through denying her a life-saving abortion.
This killing is being planned in order to preserve the "life" of a four-month fetus which is so defective it couldn't possibly live anyway.
This shows the murderous irrationality of religion, Christianity in particular.
A new step in Chinese censorship: quoting foreign media is prohibited.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support same-sex marriage.
Also sign this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Obama to have the EPA issue CO2 emission standards for new and old coal-fired power plants.
Congress is trying to destroy the US Postal Service to get at its union.
Bahrain is hosting an automobile race to create a positive image and distract the world from its repression.
Government regulation of recreational drugs fails to recognize that some drugs provide pleasure to their users.
Some drugs really are dangerous, but governments that wish to repress exaggerate the danger of other drugs.
Over 80 European organisations
demanded protection for Net
neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
They take the concept of net neutrality seriously — no filters or blocking of sites.
Egypt in Dangerous State of Limbo.
Kerry acknowledges that the possibility of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is being eliminated.
Unless he acknowledges and condemns the cause of this — the Israeli land-grab in Palestine — he's wasting his time.
Putin is taking control of the Russian social network VKontakte while persecuting its founder.
In the Chagos Islanders' lawsuit to get their islands back, UK judges have found an excuse to ignore the evidence of the relevant Wikileaks cable, while the UK government refuses to testify to the truth.
Nearly all the senators who blocked US gun control had received money from gun lobbyists.
World wide: join the March against Monsanto on May 25. There will be protests in cities around the world.
It looks like the individual city pages are on Facebook. If you get involved with this, please urge your city to put its page somewhere else, It is ironic and sad to support one monster corporation by protesting another.
The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded, probably accidentally, had not been inspected in five years.
The infrequency of inspection reflects the political power of business, which does not want annoying things like inspections because it does not want to follow annoying safety rules designed to prevent problems such as explosions.
I am going to make a prediction. My prediction is that this explosion will get much less media and political attention than the Boston explosions, even though the number of killed and the number of injured are considerably greater in Texas.
The reason I expect this is that attention to the Boston explosions tends to encourage increased ineffective security measures against ordinary people, and increased surveillance of everything we do, whereas attention to the Texas explosion would encourage increased effective security measures against businesses. The powers behind the media and the politicians want the former and don't want the latter.
Ammonium nitrate has caused bigger explosions before.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber in Baghdad killed 26 people. It wasn't the only bombing in Iraq this week.
Can Capitalism Tolerate a Democratic Internet? An Interview With Media Expert Robert McChesney.
Gun control advocates won't win until senators fear them as much as they fear the NRA.
WIPO continues threatening to issue a treaty creating new and absurd monopolies for broadcasters.
The privacy-threatening bill CISPA was approved by the house of representatives.
Here the EFF explains why the bill is bad. Obama has threatened to veto it, but with this margin, that won't be enough. So the battle is now in the senate.
A last-minute amendment to the UK's libel reform law could protect the ability of corporations to bully opposition with libel threats.
Paul Lamb, paralysed for 23 years, begs a UK court to let a doctor help him die.
Sydney University cancelled a talk by the Dalai Lama, apparently pandering to China.
The Supreme Court blocked a US lawsuit against Shell for carrying out torture and murder in Nigeria.
The Supreme Court shielded US companies in many cases from lawsuits over their crimes committed abroad.
Suing the UK government over spyware which it has made available to governments that respect human rights even less than it does.
Refuting bogus right-wing claims that the US needs a higher birthrate.
Given the high US level of resource usage per capita, higher than any other large country, any US population growth is a bad thing. In general, if you have no children, that helps civilization survive.
The IRS will correct its manuals that say it can get people's emails without a warrant.
An amendment added to CISPA fails to fix its threat to privacy.
If you are feeling mentally traumatized as a result of the Boston bombings, here are some suggestions for how to heal the trauma (or prevent one from developing).
Burying Thatcher is not enough; we need to
bury
thatcherism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Imagine offering as much compassion to a victim of US bombs as to a US victim of bombs.
Despite great investments in renewable energy, CO2 emission continues rising at 2% a year. This is because governments continue encouraging fossil fuel prospecting and extraction, and have done nothing serious to discourage its use.
The Canadian government didn't abolish environmental consultations.
Instead it set up a number of
hoops
to jump through before you're allowed to answer.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US law understands the danger of a monopoly, but fails to recognize that an oligopoly is almost as bad.
The Baghdad Burning blogger returns after 6 years of absence.
A mining company is working with the Indonesian government to strip protection from a large area of forest on Sumatra.
The company that handled privatized ability-to-work tests for disabled people in the UK, and rigged them in various ways to falsely say that people were able to work, has apologized but says it wasn't really responsible for anything.
I don't think this rigging was the company's own decision. Politicians must have requested it.
Surveillance drones may replace peacekeepers in Ivory Coast.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to raise the minimum wage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Bruce Schneier reminds us: the best reaction to an act of violence is Keep Calm and Carry On.
Thatcher's Mean Legacy: The Queen Mother of Global Austerity and Financialization.
How Thatcher made British trade unions weak while launching massive privatizations, based on a naive view of public finance.
By allowing tenants to buy apartments in public housing, she brought about the current shortage of public housing in the UK.
Italy is blocking from DNS the names of many sites that link to unauthorized torrents, although in some cases this is a tiny part of what the site does.
Severe land degradation affects 168 countries (nearly all of them).
Former US officials say the US needs
to use more
diplomacy with Iran, not more pressure.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The IRS is spending less on auditing business tax returns and focusing on ordinary people.
Clean
Energy Progress
Too Slow to Limit Global Warming, Warns IEA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A bill
in Congress would curb corporate tax evasion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this
petition to keep the interest on student loans down.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Some parents in New York City are boycotting high-stakes testing of their children.
The Constitution Project's report on "rendition" concludes that America's highest officials were responsible for the torture of prisoners.
Dubya must face trial!
An influential economics paper, which argued that debt levels above 90% of GDP cause a slowdown in growth, based its conclusion on a programming error. As well as other errors.
US mainstream media are trying to define Social Security cuts as the "center".
Perhaps they define "center" as "midway between most Americans and right-wing loonies".
The Boston Bombing Produces Familiar and Revealing Reactions.
Every time a person dies, it is a loss, but we should not lose our sense of proportion. About a hundred people died yesterday from car accidents in the US, and each of those deaths was as much of a loss as each of the three who were killed at the Boston Marathon, or the 42 who were killed by bombs in Iraq. Each day approximately 200,000 people die.
Every time a person dies, it is a tragedy that in a just world would not have happened. If you knew any of those people, I respect your grief. However, most of us did not know any of them, so we have no reason to be feel emotionally overcome. And we dare not allow that to happen — because if we do, politicians will take advantage of our weakness to swipe our civil liberties. (Last time, in 2001, we got the PAT RIOT act.)
That attack is coming, and we don't have much time. Rather than psyching ourselves into dwelling on grief, we must focus and prepare to defend ourselves. An easy first step would be to join the ACLU.
For your personal well-being, I suggest avoiding video coverage of the bombing. There were people who lived thousands of miles away from the Sep 2001 attacks, who watched the repeated broadcasts of recordings of the attacks and were lastingly traumatized into feeling inordinate fear.
After the Boston bombings, can Americans feel more empathy for people in Iraq and Syria?
Safer
Chemicals, Healthy Families calls for abolishing toxic chemicals
from our homes and workplaces.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
When everyone's guilty of some felony, hacktivists are the ones who get prosecuted, because the state finds them inconvenient.
Walmart lobbying procured a strange
corporate
welfare system in New York State.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Our Public Transportation System Is a Sweatshop on Wheels.
A Pennsylvania court ruled that corporations are not entitled to privacy (or any human rights) under Pennsylvania law.
The second half of the interview with Jeremy Grantham, including pointing out the disastrous flaw in capitalism as practiced today.
The European Parliament rejected a plan to make its carbon trading scheme start doing its job.
Australia is asked to define a new category of asylum for refugees from the effects of climate change.
Alexey Navalny is almost certain to be found guilty. His judge has only once found a suspect not guilty, and that verdict was overturned on appeal.
Whether he is in fact guilty is a side issue, since the crime he is accused of is nothing compared to what Putin is guilty of.
Indoor smoking bans have resulted in big reductions in hospitalizations for asthma. Evidently second-hand smoke has a big effect.
As Marketing to Children Intensifies, What Can Society Do?
One thing you should consider doing is not having children. You could spare yourself a lot of grief, and avoid becoming a puppet of money.
In addition, since we do not wish there were zero children, it is good to organize to restrict marketing to children. And if you do have children, push back against the marketers and teach them to do the same.
US citizens: call
on the US Navy to allow ships to pass by Pt Mugu Naval Air
Station, so that they won't collide with and kill endangered blue
whales.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US senators are proposing even tighter sanctions on Iran, explicitly in the name of "regime change".
A few years ago, lots of Iranians wanted regime change, and were imprisoned and even shot for it. That doesn't imply they will support this. And since these sanctions are largely aimed at other countries that buy Iranian oil, they will spark a trade war.
The US is number 26 (out of 29) in child well-being.
Sudan is back to its own censorship.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to cut the military budget rather than Social Security
and veterans' benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Since the US needs deficit spending now, any cut in the Pentagon should be matched by spending increases in useful activities such as renewable energy.
Dr Kress could not refuse when his patients implored him to help them kill themselves. So he testified in the Montana state legislature against a move to make this help illegal.
Obama's nominee for EPA Administrator is responsible for a tremendous
increase in the
limits
for radioactive material in drinking water after a nuclear accident.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
If that level exposure were to continue, a large fraction of exposed people would eventually get cancer. Depending on the cause of the radioactivity, it might decay rather than persist.
It may be that a better cleanup is more than the country could afford. If so, it might be a reason not to run nuclear reactors.
US citizens: call
on Congress and Obama to close tax loopholes used for tax
shelters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support a tax on financial trades. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Guantanamo prisoners say the US is denying them access to safe drinking water; judge responds, incredibly, that he has no jurisdiction.
The Israeli army decided, naturally, that its attacks that killed Gaza civilians were not war crimes. Human Rights Watch says the Israeli army was too quick to reach that conclusion.
Turkey convicted itself of disrespect for human rights by convicting Fazil Say of "insulting Islam".
Freedom of speech includes the right to mock or condemn any person, any institution, or any belief … even the Church of Emacs. Mocking religions is essential to keep their potentially dangerous power in check.
Three cheers for Fazil Say, and shame on Turkey.
Debtor's prison operates in Ohio today; poor people are often jailed because of small fines they can't pay.
The richest
200 people have more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. And
it is getting worse.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The UK's "employment minister" announced success for a campaign to pressure unemployed people in London to go back to work, by cutting unemployment benefits.
Given the high unemployment rate, anyone that has got a job got it at the expense of someone else, so that they will be replaced in the benefit rolls by others.
It makes sense that people who work should get more money that those who don't. You should not lose money by working. However, the decent way to implement this is by boosting wages, not by cutting benefits for the unemployed.
How Anonymous Have Become Digital Culture's Protest Heroes.
Some Antarctic ice melts every summer. Recently the rate of melting has set a record, with data going back a millennium.
Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel talks about his force feeding in Guantanamo, where he is in prison without trial for no reason.
An interview with Jeremy Grantham about global heating and related issues.
Was the fiscal crisis partly caused by cocaine?
Even if it was a factor, I pin the main blame on subservient governments that permitted banks to engage in abusive practices.
Chavez's vice president Nicolas Maduro narrowly won the election in Venezuela.
An environmental prize for Azzam Alwash, who led the Marsh Arabs to rebuild the marshes that Saddam destroyed.
It is relevant to mention that Bush I called on the Marsh Arabs to rebel, which they did, and then abandoned them after Saddam defeated them.
Universities in the UK are ending their connivance at sex segregation in Muslim activities.
This may seem like a small issue, but it is vitally important. Islam is full of unjust rules, and has a strong current of absolutism. If Muslims in the West are able to impose one of these rules, that success will encourage them to try to impose another. Conversely, Islam's possibility of adapting to exist within secular society depends on learning to accept that it cannot impose rules. The imposition of rules will strengthen the absolutist side, while the failure to impose them will strengthen the tolerant side.
MP George Galloway campaigns against the "canonisation of this wicked woman" (Thatcher).
Hear, hear!
Dalits living in the UK have asked for a ban on caste discrimination.
US
citizens: tell
Democratic Party organizations to stop supporting Obama's proposed
cuts in Social Security and Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Some US states collect data about all students, and give the data to
companies which use it for
marketing
purposes. This is supposedly to help the students, but it must be
a twisted definition of "help", like "help companies give you
personalized ads". If they really mean it as help, they should make
it optional for each student.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Everyone: speak up in support of the last abortion provider in Mississippi.
Threatened with imprisonment in Canada for posting a photo of anti-thug graffiti.
When right-wing political leaders die, their supporters aim to sanctify them. To stop this, we must trumpet the evil those leaders committed.
Google posts DMCA takedown notices it receives from movie studios, and the movie studios send takedown notices to demand deletion of those takedown notices.
In some parts of London, all the houses are owned by super-rich as investments; nobody lives there any more.
The article suggests that second homes (not someone's primary residence) are charged lower taxes in London. If so, that is partly responsible for the problem. The wise policy is to charge higher taxes for second homes. However, the UK may be too much under the thumb of the plutocracy for wise policies to be allowed.
Obama's persistent attack on human rights and the non-rich: a long list.
The Washington legislature gave Microsoft a big tax cut, so now dance clubs are being squeezed to make up for it.
Every legislator who voted for the tax cut is a sell-out, and deserves to get booted out. Can someone post a list of them and send me the URL?
Florida intends to imprison Frank Steese for parole violation,
notwithstanding the fact that his violation was
involuntary —
he was in prison in another state for a murder he was later proved
innocent of.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Even if he had been in prison and guilty, isn't that a good enough excuse for a parole violation? What if he had been kidnaped?
Shaker Aamer, prisoner in Guantanamo although he was "cleared for release" in 2007, describes his injuries, and says prisoners will soon die from their hunger strikes.
The pressure in China to marry and have children is so strong that gays often form phony marriages to push off the pressure.
This is why the one-child-per-family policy was necessary, and it is necessary still. However, it might be wise to construct an escape route: a way to satisfy parents' demand for a grandchild with some sort of substitute. Maybe one child could be adopted by various sets of parents in parallel.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say, "Vote against CISPA."
The ACLU agrees.
The vote can be in a couple of days, so call now.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
2012 set a record for "investor-state" lawsuits, in which a company sues a country for having a law that interferes with whatever the company wants to do.
These are one of the big injustices of many "free trade" treaties, and one of the reasons they should be abolished. This mechanism was used to stop Uruguay from requiring plain paper packages for cigarettes, and is now being used against Australia.
In other words, "investor-state" can kill.
A teacher was suspended for giving students an assignment to pretend they were in Nazi Germany and write an essay arguing that Jews are evil.
If the aim was to stretch their imagination, rather than to inculcate anti-semitism, it would have been more effective to ask them to imagine that they are in 2013 living in Afghanistan or Colombia and write an essay arguing that the US is evil.
Thugs in South Africa systematically torture suspects.
To cover it up, they destroy the victims' medical records and steal their security camera recordings.
It's a great way to get confessions, if you don't care whether they are true.
The US is bullying Spain into escalating the War on Sharing.
2000
celebrated Thatcher's death in London.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Thugs threatened to arrest protesters at Thatcher's funeral if they "cause distress", even by so much as turning their backs at the procession.
Thatcher's ideological heirs are causing plenty of distress in the UK today, but they are safe from arrest because they are using devastating deeds rather than mere words and gestures.
The US-Colombia free trade treaty includes provisions that supposedly were going to improve labor rights in Colombia, but death threats against union organizers keep going strong.
Martin Luther King Jr. told us about the "two Americas". Since his day, the disparity has grown.
Thatcher's support was very useful for Pinochet's murderous regime, and others.
I'm totally in favor of remembering and condemning what Thatcher did; I disagree only with the idea that her mere death is enough to celebrate. I will celebrate when her wrongdoing is ended.
The UK is expanding an airport near a nuclear power plant. What could go wrong?
Only a right-wing fringe of Americans want to cut social security and medicare, but mainstream media say this is the "middle".
Thatcher's rule increased the UK's poverty and unemployment.
Her ideological successors are now increasing them further.
When guards came to punish hunger strikers, Guantanamo prisoners
resisted.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
When the BBC played the top 20 pop songs this week, it took the unusual step of omitting one: Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead, which people are buying to celebrate Thatcher's death.
The article is mistaken when it says that Thatcher was not responsible for what's wrong with Britain today. The right-wing policies of the UK's major parties are outgrowths of her position.
A bill in Congress would give Israel the unique permission to discriminate among Americans.
Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists.
More information about the problem.
Russian opposition leader faces a trial designed to punish him for his activism.
Compare the case of US whistleblower John Kiriakou.
Gaza has
banned
journalists from working for Israeli newspapers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is not only a violation of human rights, it is also self-defeating to prevent Israelis from getting information about what their occupation policies do.
Virginia has imposed expensive and pointless building requirements on abortion clinics, only to try to shut them down of course.
Researchers seek information from people about their breast cancer genetic studies, to try to replace a secret data base.
It is sad that they offer, as a reward, a device that is defective by design.
Obama's budget proposals include small steps forward in regard to abortion rights.
Fix
The CFAA - Warning: before
you follow that link, disable Javascript!
Otherwise the page you get to will run Javascript code from
Facebook. We can't tell what that code does, but it is clearly
not free software.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Monsanto is exerting power over the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
US citizens: submit a comment to the State Department saying not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
The US admits giving Guantanamo defense attorneys' emails to prosecutors.
This is a consequence of the way the system for military kangaroo courts was set up. In an ordinary trial in an ordinary court, it could not have happened.
A proposed amendment bill in Washington State would allow companies to demand employee's passwords so as to search private communications.
US citizens: call
on the SEC to require publicly traded corporations to disclose
their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Everyone:
urge
Tribune Company's owners not to let the Koch brothers
take over their newspapers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: ask
your congresscritter to cosponsor H.R. 1523, the Respect State
Marijuana Laws Act, by which the federal government would respect
decisions by states to legalize marijuana.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
When a US bank fails,
its debt for
derivatives takes precedence over depositors, thanks to a law
procured by the banksters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US "aid" for Haiti's reconstruction after the earthquake was given to US companies and little was spent on needed real work in Haiti. Few Haitians were hired.
US citizens: help give Obama a million reasons to reject the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Jill Stein comments
on Obama's Grand
Sell-out.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
UK citizens: if you hate Thatcher's legacy, protest the parties that have extended it (Tory, Labour, Lib Dems). Support the Green Party.
3D films may be losing their novelty appeal.
I mention this as an occasion for another point. I get the impression that most people wish for the visceral impact of movies on a large screen (and 3D would be a part of this).
I feel the impact too, but I dislike it. For me, it feels that something is trying to push my emotional buttons, and I resent it.
Synthetic artemisinin means thousands of artemisia farmers will lose their livelihoods.
The Act V campaign is planning to undertake the elimination of malaria within less than a decade. If this succeeds, artemisinin will no longer be needed; thus, artemisia farming was perhaps heading for failure in any case. Of course, we do not want to preserve malaria to keep those farmers employed.
However, the issue is different with spices and fragrances. There is no reason to hope or aim for an end to the demand for vanillin. If vat production leads to an end of farming, it will be a big stroke of technological unemployment, coming at the same time as many other such strokes (for instance, millions of commercial drivers). If we develop vat meat that doesn't involve growing and killing animals and uses less fossil fuel, that great advance could put tens of millions of farmers out of work, perhaps hundreds.
In the US, the true number of unemployed has skyrocketed in 30 years. We have the same number of working Americans as in 1979 although the population is much larger.
We need to change the economic system so that not having a job no longer means living in poverty.
Copenhagen plans to become carbon-neutral by 2025.
The US has identified 18 Russian officials connected with the imprisonment and death of Sergei Magnitsky.
I am all in favor of this, but I think sanctions against US officials involved in imprisonment without trial and torture (in Guantanamo and in secret prisons) would be more to the point.
Worldwide: support protests on April 15 to reduce military spending.
How Thatcher helped sustain Apartheid.
US citizens: stand
up for protecting the wild bison of Montana.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Jewell to stop offering coal-mining concessions on public lands.
UK citizens: MP Edward Garnier is trying to remove a key part of libel reform that would limit libel lawsuit threats by companies against critics. Write to your MP to oppose this.
Three
Key Lessons from the Obama Administration's Drone Lies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Gitmo
Defense Lawyers Say Somebody Has Been Accessing Their Emails.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Morsi responded to leaks about military torture and killing of prisoners with exaggerated support for the military.
Two
Obamas, Two Classes of Children.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US media hardly mention corporate crime, although it does far more harm than all street crime combined.
As Butterball turkey farm staff in North Carolina plead guilty to cruelty to animals, legislators have introduced an Ag Gag bill to make sure no one else can be exposed.
Bangladesh Police Arrest Acting Editor of Pro-Opposition Paper.
Exxon got TV networks to censor a satirical critical ad.
US legislators are trying to keep the CFAA a threat to us all by pretending they could use it to punish foreign crackers. However, that's nonsense.
Cyprus will have to endure a 25% decrease in its economy and a "bailout" or leave the euro.
Monsanto's toxic history and political influence.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Egypt's army told soldiers to shoot protesters in Suez.
Russia blocks Wikipedia pages for absurd reasons.
A visit to one of the regular protests in Budrus against the Israeli occupation.
Apple's censorship has been outsourced to other agents, who have to second guess to make sure they are never less strict than Apple itself. It's the same with China's censorship.
It is unacceptable for a platform to control what apps people can install. For human rights' sake, this should be illegal.
Obama supposedly sent his new treasury secretary, who supported austerity in the US, to argue in Europe against austerity.
Obama endorses austerity (i.e., "balancing the budget"), which is surely why he chose a treasury secretary who also endorses it. I doubt either of them intended to argue seriously against austerity in Europe.
Thugs in Ukraine frequently torture prisoners and are not even investigated.
Chomsky: In Gaza, Dignity Is the Battleground.
The Liberals who supported Obama pretending he was a Liberal are now seeing what a mistake they made.
I hope they learn the lesson: vote for someone who really supports our views, not a lesser evil that gets more evil each time. We need a president prepared to defeat the plutocracy, not someone who will soften its fist slightly.
Apple's censorship has been outsourced to other agents, who have to second guess to make sure they are never less strict than Apple itself. It's the same with China's censorship.
It is unacceptable for a platform to control what apps people can install. For human rights' sake, this should be illegal.
Calls for armed guards for polio vaccinators in Pakistan and Nigeria.
The Egyptian Army attacked wounded protesters in hospitals, and had doctors operate on them without anesthetic.
Obama Administration Caves to Poultry Industry By Proceeding With Privatized Inspection.
This means more food-borne infections in the US.
'Time
to Rise Up': Oklahoma Grandmother Bike-Locks Herself to KXL Pipeline
Machinery.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Laws demanding drug tests for large classes of people are spreading across the US.
The War on Drugs is a harmful policy in general, and this is one of the ways that harm is manifested. Even for people who do safety-critical jobs, drug testing is the wrong solution.
Obama's pick for the Secretary of Energy is a crony of oil and gas companies, and in particular with tar sands companies.
It has been clear for a year that Obama intends to approve the planet-roaster pipeline, and is trying to create a framework of deception so he can pretend it is not wrong.
US citizens:
call on Secretary of State Kerry to recognize what the Arkansas
tar sands oil spill implies about the Keystone XL planet-roaster
pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Uruguay has
legalized
same-sex marriage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
I think same-sex couples deserve the same rights as different-sex couples, but rather than doing this in the form of the system called marriage, with its limitation to couples and its assumptions of sexual monogamy, it would be better to replace it with civil partnership that carries the rights and responsibilities that serve a social purpose. People could then call themselves "married" if they want to.
The judge in Bradley Manning's trial ruled prosecutors have to prove that he had reason to believe that his leaks would harm the US and help enemies.
Does exposing US injustices (such as wars of aggression) harm the US, or help the US? In the short term, it can thwart with US government activities and aims — unjust ones, that is, which deserve to be thwarted. You might call that harm.
In the long term, however, leaks may discourage the US from launching further wars of aggression, which would benefit the US both directly (not wasting US lives and money) and indirectly (less inspiration of hatred and terrorism against the US). It would also benefit the rest of the world.
Oil companies are lobbying state governments to pass resolutions in favor of the Keystone XL planet roaster pipeline.
Mexico's current murder rate is not high in historic terms.
The EU has demanded additional austerity measures from 13 countries, including France.
The UK government has extended Thatcher's agenda, but there is no focus for opposition.
Newark Students Walk Out To Protest Privatization Plans And Budget Cuts.
2 million Americans signed the petition calling on Obama not to cut Social Security.
Obama won't care; he listens to the plutocrats, not the people. (And he won't run for reelection.) However, other politicians may be impressed.
The IRS claims the power to read people's emails without a warrant.
It is proper, of course, to investigate tax evaders, but it has to be done with respect to the constitutional rights of suspects.
Monsanto is bullying states by threatening unjustified lawsuits if they require labeling of genetically engineered foods.
A horrifying article: US college students are provided with digital textbooks that they read through proprietary software that reports what pages they read and when.
I presume that these textbooks are stored in encrypted formats and can't be read except with that spy system. It may be impossible to read the books, impossible to study at those colleges, without using proprietary software. Which implies that you must not go to them if you value your freedom.
The worst part is that these students have become accustomed to being watched all the time. They do not feel indignant when they find out how much they are being watched.
Everyone: call on European governments to keep plants and plant breeding safe from patents.
In the US: Call on national supermarket chains to promise not to sell genetically engineered salmon.
3G wireless modems have a back door, and can be reprogrammed remotely with additional tracking functionality.
Of course, whenever the device is in use, the phone network knows roughly where the device is, just as it knows roughly where a non-GPS phone is.
UK citizens: call or write to your MP to insist on unblocking the libel reform bill.
Thugs in Little Rock Arkansas have been arresting and killing people for no reason, and lying to excuse it. Now they are getting exposed, and investigated for a "pattern of misconduct".
Egypt's military killed, tortured and disappeared people during the protests that pushed out Mubarak.
The victims included protesters as well as people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
China has arrested
people for posting statements about bird flu.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Whether they were false statements, or embarrassing truths, we have no way of knowing.
Leaked
documents show Obama has been lying about the criteria for making
drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Everyone: Tell famous US marketing companies to meet with representatives of the Bangladeshi workers that make what they sell.
Monsanto Claims to Ditch Herbicide While Selling More of It.
A man who got drunk on an airplane and started picking fights faces the threat of 20 years in prison.
This illustrates the tendency of US laws to disproportionate punishments. His conduct should be a crime, but it is absurd to threaten a rowdy drunk with more than 6 months in jail.
Winter sports champions warn Obama that global heating will make those sports disappear.
This is a minor problem compared with all the other things that are likely to disappear, such as polar bears, coastal land, coral reefs and reliable US wheat production, but if it gets the attention of some people with an inordinate fondness for sports, that's good.
NRA senators proposed a bill that makes it easier for people with serious mental illness to buy guns.
Half of Gaza's garbage collection trucks are broken down because Israel won't let spare parts or new trucks through.
US citizens: if you have a Democratic congresscritter or senators, phone and say, "If you vote to cut entitlement programs, I will support a Progressive primary challenge against you."
Here's more about
the issue.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The French health agency says that BPA in food and in cash register paper is a real health threat to the health of fetuses.
Society should take steps to eliminate this threat. However, in some US states the women could be prosecuted for eating such food or for working as a sales clerk.
Farmers world-wide are organizing to
fight
Monsanto.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Health insurance is taking steps towards tracking people's food purchases.
"Open access" has given way to phony scientific journals that will publish anything to get the author's fee. Some use other tricks and frauds as well.
In today's "journalism", companies sponsor articles, not just the ads.
Chicago is closing public schools saying it can't afford to run then, but it has money to start government-subsidized private "charter" schools.
Perhaps Chicago does need to have fewer schools in total, but the replacement of public schools with charter schools is another thing entirely. I think corrupt politicians have found an excuse for union-busting and profiteering.
Some cities now direct their thugs to wear video cameras all the time, and trigger them when dealing with the public.
In some ways, this is a good thing. It might even compel thugs to start acting like police officers. But there are also dangers that need to be addressed.
US citizens: Call on the Attorney General not to interfere with the state-by-state legalization of marijuana.
Obama reinforced his right-wing credentials by eulogizing Margaret Thatcher, the UK prime minister who attacked unions and imposed privatization. In US terms, she combined the worst of Reagan and the worst of Clinton.
She inspired admiration for her courage, and occasionally turned it to a good use, such as meeting the Argentine dictators' invasion of the Falkland Islands with a counterattack.
However, courage doesn't redeem injustice. Her main triumph was her defeat of British workers the British public. This led to B'liar's right-wing takeover of the former Labour party, so that even when the Tories lost power, the damage they had done was not corrected.
People across Britain are having parties to celebrate Thatcher's death. As in the case of Steve Jobs, another man who did great harm to the world, I will not celebrate her personal end. (I think that truly occurred some years ago, when she developed dementia.) Any person's death is a loss, even when the person has done great wrong, and since her dirty work is even now being extended, there is nothing to celebrate in the UK today.
I will celebrate when the UK gets rid of her bad works, which include today's Labour Party as well as today's Conservative Party.
If Washington takes as long to change its mind on CO2 emissions as it did on gay rights, Washington will be sunk.
As Budget Cuts Hamper Safety Measures, Over 500,000 U.S. Kids Now Have Lead Poisoning.
Nonetheless, lead poisoning is much less than it was in the 1970s.
About a third of US rivers contaminated with agricultural runoff. One quarter have fish with elevated mercury levels.
Paroled prisoner Daniel McGowan, convicted of arson against tree farms, was put back in prison as a punishment for writing about how he was treated in prison.
McGowan's crimes were
substantial,
but that doesn't alter the point at hand.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
These crimes caused only property damage. The crime that the oil industry is now committing, by keeping civilization stuck on the track to global heating disaster, will kill millions, maybe even billions. That's a different issue, but I mention it for comparison purposes.
The Corporate Betrayal of America.
Nonprofit organizations associated with congressional caucuses are used by companies to buy support from congresscritters.
US employers took advantage of this recession to make everyone work harder.
US citizens: sign this petition to preserve protection on black bears in Louisiana.
US citizens: sign
this
petition too, for Obama to take social security cuts out of his
budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is in addition to phoning the White House, which has more effect than signing a petition.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
How public intellectuals are corrupted into looking the other way and denying the political injustice they can't fail to see.
Law and Disorder: the Destructive Dynamic of America's Segregated Cities.
US citizens: submit a public comment about the danger of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The US
cites
women's rights as a justification for war, some of the time,
while also supporting misogynist religious extremists some of the time.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
I think the article errs in saying that US supported the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan. From what I read, the US supported other factions at the time, but they ware all rather Islamist and right-wing, including some that were almost as bad.
But this does not invalidate the overall point of the article.
Children who are effectively kidnaped and enslaved and forced to do illegal jobs in the UK are sent to prison, rather than rescued.
The cases where they are forced to grow marijuana will disappear if marijuana is legalized, as it ought to be, but the general problem will continue with other sorts of activities, including some that really should be illegal.
Portugal's government resolves to hit the poor again, rather than the rich.
Roundup-ready GMO crops led to increased pesticide use, and nearly wiped out milkweed, resulting in the precipitous decline of monarch butterflies.
The monarch population is now about 6% of what it was in 1996, and it's going to be hit even more by planned GMO crops. Meanwhile, global heating will kill the trees where they spend the winter.
Test Case of President Xi Jinping s Commitment to Fighting Corruption.
China Rights Review 'Shrouded in Secrecy,' Activists Pressured.
Public Knowledge asks Congress to make a small change in the DMCA's ban on breaking DRM.
Digital Restrictions Management means technology products perverted to work against their users. Instead of banning the people from breaking these digital handcuffs, a just government would ban companies from imposing them. So it is a shame that opposition to this fundamentally unjust law is timid and calls for only small changes in it. That is a strategy for making little progress. The way to win, in the long term, is by condemning what is wrong.
Consider, for comparison, the campaign for same-sex marriage.
They did not campaign for tiny changes; they campaigned for what they really wanted, and after a long fight it seems they are going to win. Whether or not you agree with that campaign, it demonstrates something about how to campaign to change a law that seems firmly implanted.
Please support our campaign to eliminate DRM.
Obama wants to pass some sort of gun control law, no matter how weak. This means he will have to accept whatever Conservatives will let him have.
If he were a Progressive, and focusing on the long term, he would make the Republicans vote against a strong bill and use that to get them voted out in 2014.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to allow reporters full access to Mayflower, Arkansas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Public Citizen: Time to Open the Books on the Political Intelligence Industry.
The Republican Party is being compelled by its political interest to abandon same-sex marriage as a scapegoat, but it will just create another.
Kerry is going to make a show of trying to resume the Israel-Palestine "peace process".
Palestinians show no interest because they have long recognized that these "negotiations" are, for Israel, nothing more than cover for the continuing land-grab. They would respond to a real offer from Israel, but they won't get one.
The Bureau Investigates will try to identify all the people killed by US drone attacks.
Google has made a deal with Universal (the music factory) in which Google promises to disregard all DMCA counter-notices.
Google is challenging in court the validity of a PAT RIOT Act secret search.
Israeli columnist Amira wrote that Palestinian schools should teach children how to resist occupation, and received lots of hate mail.
USA Today told Americans that "We're feeling rich" due to the high stock prices.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to promise
to veto CISPA. Also sign
this
petition, if you haven't.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Wikipedia France is being harassed by spy officials trying to force sysadmins to delete a certain page.
US citizens: phone the White House calling on Obama not to propose
cutting Social Security. Also sign
this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Americans made a bad mistake electing a president who is a Republican at heart. His natural tendency is to do harm. But we can still try to stop him.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Exxon has set up a little police state in Mayflower, Arkansas, and is keeping all reporters out.
It is clear why Exxon wants to do this: to suppress the truth. What I don't understand is how Exxon gets away with this. On what authority do they threaten to arrest reporters? Can't reporters arrest them instead?
The US government wants to make a database about who knows whom, ideal for investigation of future crime or dissent.
The Bahraini teacher and human rights advocate, Mahdi Abu Deeb, was tortured and then sentenced to 5 years in prison.
Walmart owners are giving millions to fund "charter schools", perhaps in order to destroy teachers' unions.
Thugs in New York City think that we'll be safer if all of us are being watched all the time. But they want an exception for thugs.
The thugs are a particularly dangerous sector of society, and since they have special powers to abuse, they don't need to have the same right to privacy that ordinary citizens deserve.
By 2050, estimates suggest the amount of US land hit annually by wildfires will double.
In some regions, it is forecast to increase by a factor of 5.
Ancient ice in Peru that took 1600 years to form has melted in 25 years.
25 years ago, this glacier had melted back to a point 4700 years old. Now it has melted back to a point 6300 years old.
US citizens: support New York fast food workers who demand higher wages.
US citizens: call on Exxon to tell the public the facts about the Arkansas oil spill.
Manned aircraft can do the same total aerial surveillance as drones, and when one plane can cover 15 square miles, it's feasible to watch everyone in entire cities.
If you watch everyone and everything with flying cameras, that's too much information to keep track of with humans. The US is developing software to do it. It will be used to suppress dissent.
Everyone: call on MIT to investigate Ernest Moniz (Obama's nominee for Energy Secretary) for concealing a conflict of interest in an MIT study about fracking.
Companies are funding right-wing "education" for US judges.
US Governors' Groups Rely Increasingly on "Dark Money" Affiliates.
Republicans Criticize Government Spending Unless It Lowers Our Wages.
The European Union held a bogus "consultation" designed to collect "support" for a predetermined conclusion: nastier copyright enforcement.
The use of the propaganda term
"intellectual
property" reflects the bias of the "consultation".
If you are 17 years old, and you read Seventeen magazine last week,
you
could have been prosecuted for it.
Senator Hatch wants the US to appoint a "Hollywood ambassador" whose
mission would be to
impose
unjust copyright laws on other countries.
The official proposed title includes the term
"intellectual
property", which is propaganda for the harmful goals this proposal
is aimed at.
US mainstream media have a long history of
covering
up facts that might embarrass the government, and planting
falsehoods.
Iain
Banks explains his participation in the cultural boycott of Israel.
I am not sure that refusing to publish a book in Israel is an
effective or useful method of action, but aside from that I mostly
agree with his view of the overall question.
Apple
deleted
an app from the app store because it provides access
to books that are banned in China.
Apple and China both practice censorship; they are made for each
other.
I suggest not referring to apps, or anything, as
"content".
Old-fashioned antisemitism is
coming
back in Hungary.
If Israel had made peace with Palestine, instead of using
"antisemitism" as a club to bash anyone that criticizes the occupation
of Palestine, condemnation of real antisemitism would be more
effective.
Pakistan bans candidates if they are not
"good Muslims".
This is in addition to imposing the
death
penalty for "blasphemy".
Most Muslim countries deny religious freedom in various ways. In
Malaysia, people of Malay descent are
legally
required to be Muslims.
A US court
overturned
the rule that young women must get a
prescription for the morning-after pill, saying it was politically
imposed in defiance of medical recommendations.
Theocratic Christians don't want women to get this medicine because
they see pregnancy as a punishment for sex. Anything that enables
women to have sex and avoid the punishment denies them the argument
that they want to make. That's the reason for their crusade against
abortion, too.
Fewer
Americans are employed today than at any time since 1979,
but Congress and Obama don't concern themselves with serious
efforts to create jobs.
This article errs in not recognizing the
progressive
caucus budget proposal. Sure, it has little chance of being
adopted, what with all the congresscritters that are working for the
rich, but don't claim that no member of Congress even has a rational
proposal.
Americans who abandoned their houses, often because a bank said it
would foreclose and didn't, face
big
bills and even prosecution.
Offshore Tax Havens
Cost
Average US Taxpayer $1,026 a Year, Small Businesses $3,067.
Afghan Villagers Flee Their Homes, Blame US Drones.
The myth of the free market as a force of nature lets companies pretend that their profits measure their own activity and their own moral worth.
Verizon's data about its customers' sharing is available for lawsuit purposes too.
Perhaps this was the intention all along of Obama's "six strikes" program.
Nuclear waste tanks in Hanford, Washington, could explode due to buildup of hydrogen gas.
The mayor of Buenos Aires warned that the disastrous floods will become more common with global heating.
Good on him for not forgetting this.
A former soldier testified that the current president, right-wing Otto Pérez Molina, was involved in atrocities during the 80s.
A new method of protecting rhinos: injecting into their horns coloring and a pesticide that makes humans sick.
If poachers develop a way to bleach out the coloring, but the pesticide remains, their customers will get sick. That will cut down on the trade too.
Most US fast food restaurants lead children into obesity. Here are the details.
Storing
oil-extraction wastewater underground, a technique similar to
fracking, caused a powerful and damaging earthquake in Oklahoma.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A man with neurological problems, who needs to carry lots of juice to avoid seizures, fights legally with the TSA which tries to stop him for no good reason.
Thugs harassed a 6-year-old in Ohio repeatedly just because she was walking to the post office, and are now trying to take her away from her parents.
When I was 6 years old, I walked to school in Manhattan — like most kids in my school. The fashion of child-raising in the US today is repressively overprotective.
My suggestion to her is, when captured, to respond to all questions about her with her name, rank and serial number.
The US seems to be hitting
increased
unemployment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A right-wing government in a depression tends to do this.
A court found that the US government conspired in the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Back then, there were no drone attack aircraft, so it had to be done with a handgun.
US citizens: sign this campaign to reduce the injustice of the CFAA, not make it worse.
One heroic blogger continues to cover the violence of the War on Drugs in Mexico.
Thousands of people that have secret bank accounts in the British Virgin Islands have now been identified.
Taliban attacked a courthouse and killed 44 people indiscriminately.
If Afghanis hated the Taliban for killing civilians the way they hate the US for killing civilians, they would defeat the Taliban. But they don't.
200,000 US workers are disabled each year due to toxic chemicals used in their work. OHSA focuses on sudden accidents and doesn't do much to prevent toxic exposure.
US citizens: call on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to give unemployed college graduates a feasible way to deal with their loans.
Notwithstanding Erin Brockovich's triumph, Americans still drink hexavalent chromium in their water, and the chemical industry pressured the EPA not to regulate it.
ALEC is pushing bills in many states to ban cities from requiring paid sick leave.
As a rough guide, any bill supported by ALEC is bad, and any elected official who belongs to ALEC is aiding the enemy. Big companies, and the politicians that support them, are the principal enemy of most Americans.
At What Point in Pregnancy Does a Woman's Personhood End?
Washington State is considering a law to require insurance companies to cover elective abortions.
It is amazing to see such a wise policy being considered in the US.
The NRA proposal to arm teachers would make students distrust teachers and fear arrest in school for minor things.
It might also result in more children shot.
Maine thugs torture prisoners with long-term solitary confinement, and spraying pepper spray on their faces while they are shackled.
In the US, if you're under 13 and you read news on-line, you could be prosecuted and imprisoned under the CFAA.
Making everyone a criminal, then prosecuting only dissidents, is the way of tyranny. We know that the prosecutors of Aaron Swartz looked at the matter this way.
Everyone: sign this petition calling for revocation of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.
The UK government is imposing its cruel policies without visible opposition because it has crushed all visible protest through violence and imprisonment.
Activists on Both Sides of Atlantic Denounce US/EU FTA as Corporate Power Grab.
All the "free trade" treaties since the WTO are corporate power grabs.
US citizens:
call
on your elected officials to support the
Public Lands Renewable Energy Development Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Euro-zone and UK austerity is giving the results an honest economist would have predicted: depression and unemployment.
Tunisia needs to reject the IMF-imposed policies that knocked it into poverty.
Four Iraqi newspaper offices were attacked by militia members dressed as soldiers. Perhaps they were real soldiers — in Iraq, that is not implausible.
Even Aurora Shooter James Holmes Shouldn't Get the Death Penalty.
Evidence suggests that the Chinese fishing fleet tells the UN about only 9% of the fish it catches, which adds up to cheating African countries.
Slavery takes different forms from in the past.
How to put an end to modern forms of slavery?
Using prisoners as low-paid employees for profit is also a modern form of slavery, and has the effect of reducing wages for free labor as well as encouraging more imprisonment.
Morocco tortured confessions out of protesters, then sentenced them to prison in military kangaroo courts.
Morocco's government has close ties to the US; perhaps they are following the path of Guantanamo.
I was told that, Around 2000, the current king granted additional human rights, but then he acceded to Bush's request by taking away some of them.
In India, thugs often attack journalists, sometimes killing them, and rarely face justice.
US citizens: phone the White House and say, "No cuts in Social Security,
Medicare or Medicaid, and no veiled cuts either." Also sign
this
petition, but a phone call will carry more weight.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
The legal requirement to offer paid sick days is slowly spreading
around the US,
due to one local struggle after another.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Fossil fuel protesters in the UK face imprisonment for their protests.
The "crime" they pled guilty to, after being denied a jury trial, was set up as a way to criminalize protest.
"Tiger parenting" is not effective at raising children's grades;
it is better to be supportive.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
As austerity pushes the euro zone into depression, Obama and the Republicans want the US to follow.
The Least Developed Countries bloc now accepts responsibility to join in cutting CO2 emissions.
There is a global push to discourage and even stop profit-shifting
that
enables companies to avoid taxes.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Climate scientists warn that Australia will face worse floods, droughts and giant fires unless global heating is curbed.
The Arms Control Treaty was approved by the UN, but it was weakened so it may not have any real effect.
The World Bank proposes to eliminate extreme poverty world-wide by 2030.
I think that it might be possible if there is political will, but population growth and global heating will make the job much harder.
A fish caught near Fukushima had a high level
of radioactive
cesium.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
One bite might not matter, but it would be dangerous to eat such fish regularly.
A former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is going to advise banksters. About how to hoodwink the SEC, I suppose.
The US needs a constitutional amendment so that people working in in decision-making jobs for any level of government are forbidden for ten years to work in or for the industry they made decisions about. This should certainly include elected officials.
Britons are signing a petition calling on a conservative minister to live for a year on the £53 a week he wants unemployed people to get.
I wish I could urge people to sign the petition, but it is hosted at a site that requires people to run nonfree Javascript code, and I don't want to encourage that.
The Taliban are refusing to negotiate peace.
I guess they expect to win the war.
Oil pipeline spills are sickening.
The US has a fund to clean up oil spills, but doesn't trouble oil companies with paying into it.
How the US fuels corruption in Afghanistan.
It's not all the US' fault: Afghanistan never had much of a tradition of resiting corruption.
Resisting corporate control of US food.
How North Dakota's public bank gives the state prosperity, insulating it from whatever the banksters do.
Germany Doesn't Get Much Sun. How Did It Become a Leader in Solar Energy?
More US college graduates are now working in low-wage jobs.
Now that going to college is likely to saddle you with tremendous debt that you'll never pay off, it is better not to go if your chances of getting a well-paid job afterward are not great.
Near Boston: rally in Boston to correct the injustice of the CFAA.
An important UK spy leader said she organized the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Cambodian women have taken the lead in fighting forced evictions.
The fact that the government permits these land-grabs in the first place shows it is not on the side of the people.
A Palestinian prisoner died of cancer because Israeli prison guards delayed his treatment until too late.
Israeli soldiers sometimes block ambulances from reaching injured Palestinians.
The New York City Thug Department chief said the purpose of searching people arbitrarily on the street was to instill fear in certain minority groups.
The Alaska legislature thinks oil companies pay too much taxes. Poor oil companies!
How drug companies delay generic drugs with bogus lawsuits, with the support of the Supreme Court.
Michigan voters repealed the law that let the state eliminate the government of a city, so the state government passed a new one just like it.
A record number of Americans are using food stamps now because a record number are living in poverty.
Congress is trying to direct the US into war with Iran.
Obama could alter the use of drone attacks to make them comply with US and international legal principles.
It still leaves the question about whether these would do more to strengthen al Qa'ida than to weaken it.
Hamas took another step towards Islamist cruelty by
segregating
the schools of Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US regulation of banks is designed never to find evidence to convict them.
The evil of Big Pharma is revealed in the threats Novartis made if India doesn't give it additional patent power. What nonsense, to claim that nobody thinks there is a simple solution! Here is one.
Novartis responded to the decision by threatening to arbitrarily withhold other drugs from India, causing sick people there to die. Presumably these will be drugs which are in fact patented, drugs not affected by this decision. That shows this is not a self-protective reaction, but a murderous threat.
In the absence of free exploitation treaties such as the WTO, India would respond to the threat by making those drugs locally. Novartis' death threats are mere bluster, unless the WTO gives them force; and that reveals the murderous nature of the WTO.
As for the pretense that the abuse of medical patents is "necessary" for the sake of research, we already know this is bogus. The big pharma companies spend more on advertising and corrupting doctors than on research, and little of their research goes into life-saving drugs anyway. Patents on drugs should be banned except in the wealthiest countries.
There is a very simple solution: get rid of the WTO. It undermines democracy and it does harm to people in many other ways.
While this is simple, but won't be easy. The obstacle is that our governments are controlled by politicians who have sold out to business, who see in Novartis' threats an excuse to surrender, rather than a reason to fight.
Indians can start turning funerals into protests, until they put in place a government prepared to kick out the WTO.
The term "intellectual property" spreads confusion by inviting people to suppose that patent law is similar to various other unrelated laws, including copyright, trade secrets, and geographical denominations. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.
UK Bush forces soldiers testify about tortures they witnessed in a US secret prison.
Obama personally intervened to keep Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye in prison.
Shaye exposed the fact that the US carried out a bombing in Yemen, and killed lots of civilians. This is part of Obama's War on Journalism.
30,000 have asked the Norwegian Nobel Committee to give the Nobel
Peace Prize to
Bradley Manning.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
It would correct the absurd mistake of giving one to Obama.
Providing gratis birth control to the poor is a great social investment; even ignoring the human benefit, it pays for itself many times over.
New technology that eliminates many jobs tends to produce recession and can cause lasting human costs; but a government minded to serve the public interest can prevent these problems through deficit spending.
(Our government doesn't do this because it is controlled by the banksters.)
With today's rapid progress in computing, the result is a series of crises, and no recovery ever.
The subtle difference "social security" and "welfare" plays into the hands of the right wing.
Novartis lost in its attempt to stretch Indian patent law.
Note, however, that the existence of patents on medicines in India, imposed by the WTO, represents a defeat for sick people around the world.
An interview with Nathan Blanc, who is repeatedly jailed for refusing conscription to participate in the occupation of Palestine.
How the EPA has stretched "conditional registration" for pesticides so far that a bus can drive through it.
Women in Egypt protest every week against the extreme patriarchal system which the government supports.
The root of this problem is the general condemnation of women who did anything sexually irregular (even when pushed into it by their families).
The next step in destroying the British NHS is to make doctors deny medically needed care in order to save money.
IVF in an overpopulated world is a double waste of resources, so the NHS should eliminate IVF services entirely. However, cataract operations enable blind people to see again. It is an outrage not to give the NHS enough resources to provide these operations to everyone that is likely benefit from them.
There is no real shortage of funds for the NHS. The Conservatives have cut its funding as part of their program of class warfare (austerity) and use those cuts as an excuse to mess it up.
Feminism has failed to help most women, by focusing mainly on a "glass ceiling" that most employees of either sex never get anywhere near.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the MARCH act,
which would
allow
women in the US military to pay to get abortions in military
hospitals.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
In my letter, I said this does not go far enough, that abortions should be gratis, but that this is an important step forward.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The film "Dirty Wars" tries to show Americans what US violence looks like to the peoples that suffer it.
Egypt's most famous satirist was arrested for criticizing the government.
This is part of a general attack on dissidents.
Freedom of speech includes the right to insult anyone and anything. To make it a crime to insult someone is repression.
Drone-defense clothing: a mirror-surface hoodie.
I am skeptical that it really works. The only way any clothing could stop heat-sending cameras from seeing you is if it blocked heat transfer, and that would make you awfully hot.
A drug company argues that NAFTA requires Canada to change its patent law because it doesn't provide the company with what it "expects".
The worst thing is that it might really win this case. And Obama wants to extend this kind of oppression to more countries through the TPP.
Geoengineering plans cause their own disasters if they cool the Earth unevenly.
Schemes to cool the Earth could in theory cancel out the global heating effect of CO2, but they would not even try to prevent ocean acidification and the effects of CO2 on fish.
Drone Manufacturers Whine That They Are Misunderstood.
The DMCA puts researchers in danger.
The DMCA anti-circumvention provision is fundamentally wrong, and hurts everyone who uses any sort of digital media. Our goal should be to repeal it entirely, and replace it with a ban on Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
Instead what we see are proposals for small changes, including this one, and the push to legalize unlocking of devices.
Each of these changes would reduce the harm done by the DMCA, but even taken together they don't go far enough. We should not demand less than what we really need. Instead of demanding several insufficient changes, let's make an alliance for what we really want, and the first step is to legalize making and using the tools to break digital handcuffs.
The NSA spent billions on a system for correlating everything it listens to, which (fortunately for us) never worked, but wasted' lots of our money. So Obama went after … the whistleblowers.
Temperature records since the 19th century show the Alps are steadily warming, and many ski areas are low enough that they are getting less snow.
In 50 years, there may not be much good skiing left in the Alps, but people won't complain about that; with the damage to agriculture and the environment, few people will be in a position to travel to the Alps anyway.
Chicagoans protest racist school closings.
US citizens: sign
this
petition calling for a senate vote on appointing
Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Also phone your senators (again).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
When factory fires kill lots of workers, typically because of blocked fire exits, who are the victims? The workers, or the factory owners that can't exploit them any more?
Chef Ahmed Errachidi was imprisoned in Guantanamo for 5 years and tortured, because the US did not bother to check the accusations against him.
Living now in Morocco, he is still not free: at the request of the US, Morocco bans him from travelling. After all, anyone who has been given such a good reason to hate the US might become hostile even though he never was before.
Errachidi says he would pardon the soldiers who tortured him, and wants only the ringleaders to be put on trial. I disagree, because "I was just following orders" is no excuse. The soldiers should be tried too.
A broad range of wild species in Britain are threatened by the unusually cold March and April.
These species won't go extinct this year, but the unusual cold is the result of melting Arctic ice, and global heating will make it happen more often.
The Chilean student movement for gratis education has resumed with a bang.
New York City will require all workers to have paid sick days. City Council Speaker Quinn has yielded to pressure and has dropped her opposition to the measure.
Quinn is running for mayor. She is rather right-wing, but gets Liberals to vote for her because of her lifestyle (she is openly gay). I appreciate her courage in standing against prejudice, but personal courage in an official is no substitute for good policies.
Women: if you are pregnant, make sure your family knows not to bring you to a Catholic hospital in case of medical emergency. It might kill you.
Falling Gasoline Use Means U.S. Can Just Say No to New Pipelines and Food-to-Fuel.
A study estimates that Dubya's wars will ultimately cost the US 4-6 trillion dollars.
Here's the full report.
Burma is getting lots of trade offers, but it still is fighting minority groups, and its government is promoting land grabs.
The UK's secret courts bill was passed, ensuring that mere justice cannot interfere with protecting US torturers.
EU distortion in presenting the relation between productivity and wages provides cover for pushing wages down.
Obama supports the coup-installed death-squad government in Honduras for fear people will elect another leftist if allowed to.
Perhaps years of running aerial death squads have endeared that practice to Obama.
A 1995 global heating forecast has proved pretty accurate.
If we reject the mythical ideal of the "free market", what do we put in its place?
The Golden Gate Bridge no longer accepts cash; it has been turned into a surveillance system.
A city in England will give emergency funds to the poor in a way that surveils their purchases — and forces them to buy at Wal-Mart.
I would not object if these funds could only be spent on certain sorts of products, like Food Stamps in the US. However, total surveillance like this is not required for that, and this total surveillance system doesn't even do that. It is preying on the rights of people too poor to say no.
Cost of Environmental Damage in China Growing Rapidly Amid Industrialization.
Islamists in Libya are persecuting Christians for speaking in favor of Christianity.
People have a right to state their views — even Christianity, even Islam.
Chinese revenge against Liu Xiaobo has extended to arresting his brother-in-law.
This repression is not unique. In 1995, China imprisoned the 6-year-old Panchen Lama and his family, and nobody has been allowed contact with them.
There is no proof that they are still alive.
Persecution of Egyptian dissidents sparked widespread fighting between secularists and Islamists.
A brave Korean legislator is trying to repeal the unjust "three strikes" copyright law.
Boston thugs are infiltrating music-lovers' society to shut down rock music performances in private homes.
This campaign must make people feel like they are living in a police state. It is amazing that something so nasty is being done for such a puny reason, and suggests that someone is on a power trip.
Boston needs to change this law, but that's not enough. If thugs will sow suspicion throughout society over one minor thing, they will find another excuse if this one is taken away.
Guantanamo hunger strikers say that US prison guards denied them water, and chilled them with air conditioning while denying them adequate clothing.
In principle, anyone can lie, but prison guards have learned to overcome the usual hesitation about doing so. Therefore, I believe the prisoners' accusations.
The EU is considering whether to trust companies to pseudonymize your data.
In Germany, a court rules ISPs cannot be forced to store data about customers for use in attacking them.
Another screw in the TPP: no more "buy American" requirements in government contracts.
If this were going to benefit poor and working people in other countries, it might be ethically a step forward. However, "free trade" generally helps the rich and hurts the rest, by undermining democracy.
The TPP could forbid public banks, too.
There is no legitimate goal for anything like the TPP. Americans do not need more "free trade". So all it can do is harm. We need to kill it.
Agriculture and fishing in the Mekong basin face two threats: dams and global heating.
United Arab Emirates prosecuted activists, and blocked observers from watching the supposedly public trial. And searched their hotel rooms while they were futilely complying with arbitrary rules.
Obama is much more subtle about secrecy in trials and covering up torture.
Corporate power is directing the Internet into something very bad.
Copyright Wars Are Damaging the Internet.
The FDIC is considering a plan to seize people's bank deposits and convert them into stock in the bank, stock which might never be worth anything.
For large deposits, which are not insured, this might be better than losing them entirely, as could happen if the bank failed. However, this plan includes the deposits up to $250,000 that are supposedly insured by the FDIC itself.
A further injustice is that creditors for derivatives have priority over bank depositors, for whatever money is left in the bank. And banks are reorganizing to help the derivatives creditors screw depositors.
Thus, it seems that the government is planning to deal with the problem of undead banks at the cost of bank depositors.
Some US companies are cutting workers' hours to avoid giving them health benefits.
Health care and other social benefits should not be connected with employment: that creates an incentive to cut employment.
Non-military use of surveillance drone aircraft raises a
wide
variety
of issues.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Attack drones are also being prepared for use in America's homes and streets.
Greg Palast says that oil companies blocked the privatization of Iraq's oil in order to keep the price up.
If so, it was probably a good deed. If oil were cheaper, we would be burning more of it. However, no war was required to achieve this goal.
The US economy seems to be improving, if you judge by totals. So why are people's lives not getting better?
The explanation for this paradox is simple: in a highly unequal society, totals mainly represent what's happening to the rich, and say nothing much about what's happening to most people.
A small fraction of Americans get half the total income. If income doubles for them, and is cut in half for the rest, the total will increase, while most will be worse off. There's nothing here that is hard to understand, except why journalists continue to treat totals as significant.
For meaningful economic measurements, away with totals, mean values and per capita values; use measures that reflect what's happening to the non-rich.
French President Hollande got bad news: his budget cuts won't satisfy EU demands for reduced deficit.
However, for France, the worst part is that Hollande is trying to cut the deficit, the exact opposite of what's needed when recession hits. He's not doing enough to push back against this euro zone requirement.
EPA Loophole Allows Flood of Pesticides to Litter US Ecosystems.
Protesters oppose replacing the UK's Trident nuclear missile submarines.
US citizens: Call for protection of the Mexican grey wolf (whose range includes part of the US), which is close to extinct.
Albert Woodfox has spent
40
years in solitary in a Louisiana prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
If he's guilty of the murder he was convicted of (there's some doubt about this, and his conviction keeps getting overturned), it justifies imprisonment, but not this.
An Egyptian blogger faces legal threats over Twitter statements — and not even his own Twitter statements.
Tyrannical states have developed organized systems of collaboration in repressing the people more effectively.
China has prohibited many activities for Tibetans, extending as far as urging protection of the Tibetan language.
Israeli violations of Palestinian media freedoms on the rise.
The US State Department plans to conceal the public comments against the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
It is clear now that Obama plans to approve the pipeline, and he is constructing a system of lies he can present as an excuse.
The biggest threat to US national security is when the US starts wars.
Sudan is massacring civilians in Darfur again.
How Big Corporations Are Unpatriotic.
When the CEO says, "This is my country", he means "This country is my property."
Manufacturers of neonicotinoids propose an
untested
"plan to help bees" instead of the ban on the pesticides known to
harm bees.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A French advertisement is being attacked for "glamorising prostitution". If so, it won't be the first time that prostitution in France was glamorous. The courtesans of the 19th century still fascinate.
Is prostitution exploitation of the prostitute? Sex work resembles work in general, in this regard. If you're a star, in great demand, you can be in the driver's seat and thus not exploited at all. If you are at the bottom of the heap, ill-paid and mistreated by your boss, you are exploited. If you are literally forced to do a specific job, that's more or less slavery. Meanwhile, there are many in middling conditions for which the job is tiresome or exhausting but tolerable.
It would be obvious nonsense to claim that restaurants should be forbidden to employ waiters because some people are forced to work in restaurants and exploited. Instead, we campaign to improve working conditions and pay for waiters.
Likewise, we wouldn't waste two seconds on the claim that domestic service work should be banned because some women are kept prisoner and brutally forced to do this work. We easily separate the issue of a particular kind of work from that of the abusive conditions and forced labor that occurs in some cases.
Strange that, once the discussion turns to prostitution, otherwise intelligent people become unable to make the same distinction.
Bruce Lehman admits using policy laundering via WIPO to impose the DMCA on the US.
It worked so well that Obama is now trying the same thing with the TPP.
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1111 and say you want strong human rights provisions in the Arms Control Treaty. Say that countries should have to do due diligence to make sure the arms they export won't be used for torture or death squads.
A majority of UN members has criticized the arms control treaty as too weak. The weakening is the deletion of provisions that would have required countries that wish to export arms to first check the human rights record of the government that wants to import those arms.
It's obvious why the US doesn't want this. Such a rule would stop countries from exporting arms to the US unless it ceases torture and assassination.
The US drought has eased slightly, leaving 50% of the US in drought, which is not expected to end any time soon. Wheat production is suffering greatly.
CIA Has Plan to
'Collect Everything and Hang on to it Forever'.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A former CIA analyst describes resisting pressure from Cheney to find nonexistent connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qa'ida.
Canada's government has forbidden government librarians to speak to the public.
Croatian weapons, apparently smuggled into Syria by European countries, end up in the hands of jihadi organizations in Syria.
Israel seized vital equipment from Wattan TV a year ago, and still holds it.
The ACLU is suing Pennsylvania prisons for
keeping mentally ill
prisoners in solitary confinement,
which tends to provoke additional mental illness.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US is investigating accusations that Microsoft bribed various countries to choose Microsoft products.
Prominent Cuban dissidents are no longer in prison, but many have been
exiled or face frequent harassment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
An Egyptian TV host faces charges of "promoting terrorism" for interviewing a dissident.
FBI surveillance programs are based on dubious assumptions about people's thinking. Research demonstrates that some are false.
Mahdi al-Behadili describes how British soldiers in the Bush forces captured him, then knocked him unconscious (breaking his nose), then handcuffed him and interrogated him while repeatedly hitting him. Then came the sleep deprivation...
I call them the Bush forces because Bush effectively hijacked troops from the US and UK to use as his private army. But there is a specific purpose in this name: to prevent Americans from thinking that their patriotism should lead them to excuse that crime.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose any "Grand Swindle" to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
Also sign Bernie Sanders'
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Massachusetts citizens:
call on Governor Patrick to raise the minimum wage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Israeli army has a long tradition of disregarding the Supreme Court. In 1951, the residents of Iqrit got a court order that they could return to their homes, but the army blew them up instead. Now some of their descendants are camping on their land.
I find it sad that the page they use to post their photos was Facebook. They could make them equally accessible somewhere else.
US citizens: support the progressive
Back to Work budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to stand firm
on
protecting the Izembek wilderness in Alaska.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Many US states are passing laws to hurt low-wage workers, sponsored by ALEC.
US citizens: tell Obama not to pour money
into missile defense
systems
of dubious efficacy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to make the CFAA less nasty, not worse.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: oppose the attempt to remove protected sea areas in New England, needed by fish species already overfished.
US citizens: sign this petition requiring congresscritters and senators to acknowledge corporate sponsors on their clothing.
US citizens: tell Senator Schumer to return the campaign money he got from private prison companies before he makes decisions about imprisonment.
US citizens:
sign this petition to ban Arctic oil drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: Call for a new FCC chairman who has the public's interests at heart.
Everyone: phone MacDonalds to insist it take responsibility when its stores exploit workers.
MacDonalds makes "fast food"; i.e., food meant not to be eaten. But that's a different issue.
US citizens: Phone the White House and ask Obama to defend insurance coverage for birth control for all American women. Also sign this petition.
US citizens: Call on Secretary of State Kerry to push for no oil drilling in Arctic seas.
US citizens: write to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to say that student loans should not require students to go to arbitration instead of court.
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1115195195191 and say you want strong human rights provisions in the Arms Control Treaty. Say that countries should have to do due diligence to make sure the arms they export won't be used for torture or death squads.
In the euro-zone, the more you obey the new colonial master, the more you get punished.
The overuse of the Earth's resources is a real problem. To correct it, someone was going to have to lose something. In an ethical solution, the rich would bear most of the losses, while others would have to use resources more efficiently and reproduce less. However, the rich seized on the problem as an opportunity for a power grab, causing unnecessary suffering for everyone else.
200 million years ago, massive volcanic eruptions appear to have caused the observed extinction of 3/4 of all species on Earth, by pouring CO2 into the air.
The research found there were three bursts of vulcanism in a 40,000 year period. This suggests that the first burst might have caused warming in just a few thousand years. Now we are going to do it in 100 years.
Sanders Bill Would Break Up Big Banks.
The appointment of a former UK minister to head the International Rescue Committee undermines the political independence of relief efforts.
They already face suspicion from some belligerents, which interferes with their relief work.
The political tide is starting to
turn against Too Big to
Fail.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is largely a matter of political courage — we need officials who zealously prosecute banks and banksters. It is also partly a matter of needing laws and policies that would it difficult for a large bank to continue to exist.
I have proposed a way
to convince large companies to split
up.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the
old
link was broken.]
Many unrelated organizations are backing AT&T's push to deregulate telephones.
It is because they have been bought.
Neocotinoids stop bees from learning to associate scents with nectar.
Neonicotinoid pesticides may be hurting birds as well as bees.
Greenland has curbed oil and gas drilling.
Sanctions against Iran may have backfired, encouraging Iran to speed up uranium enrichment.
The ACLU's arguments that the No-Fly list is unconstitutional.
A CIA agent that destroyed evidence of torture
is being considered
for an important post.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Not one senator spoke in favor of Obama's plan for disguised social security cuts.
The Ballooning Number of Corporate Kangaroo Courts Is Destroying Our Right to a Fair Trial.
A small amount of cell phone location data is enough to identify the person carrying the phone.
More reason not to have one.
The FBI wants to be able to monitor gmail and dropbox in real time.
To debate this request in terms of details is to miss the point. The US government has far too much surveillance power already. Any increase is a step in the wrong direction, regardless of details.
A man got fired for making jokes in Pycon that alluded to sex.
Making jokes referring sex, as such, is not wrong. Making a joke about "fork" or "dongle", as such, is not wrong. To criticize these things is prudery.
I don't know precisely what those people said; there might be more information in Richards' blog post, which I cannot access. Perhaps their words deserved criticism for some other reason I have not seen.
In the absence of that, they are the ones who were wronged. Pycon should not have criticized them for this (not even privately), they should not have apologized, and they certainly didn't deserve to be fired.
This appears to be an attempt to reimpose oppressive 1950s prudery. Richards and her supporters deserve to meet firm resistance. However, I would not have called for her to be fired for this, and sending her threats of violence was inexcusable.
Richards does wrong by publishing a blog in a site that won't let people even see the text without running nonfree Javascript. But, assuming you are wise enough not to run nonfree Javascript code, that will be her loss, not yours.
Crucial documents in the Bradley Manning trial are being kept secret. This reinforces the fact that his leak was a public service.
Guatemalans testified about massacres committed by soldiers under the orders of the former dictator Rios Montt.
Meanwhile, anti-mining activists are being killed.
If your camera has Internet capability, it will be used to watch you.
Krugman says Cyprus should leave the euro.
It is worth noting that the now-destroyed tax-haven banking industry of Cyprus was a bad thing. Eliminating it was a positive step, even though eliminating it inevitably means economic decline for Cyprus.
However, it would be better to do it in a way that doesn't cause so much poverty.
Lots of small investments can fund a small solar power project.
Monsanto and the
Seeds of Suicide.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Whether to allow patents to apply to growing plants is a public policy decision. It should be made in the best interests of society, and farmers are a bigger part of that than Monsanto.
Everyone: pressure Obama to allow a strong Arms Trade Treaty.
The Shame of America's Gulag: Its conditions are tantamount to torture, and prisoners are worked as slaves.
A prison thug who pepper-sprayed a shackled prisoner right in the face managed not even to get fired for it.
Israel government no longer just supports the "settlers";
it is the
"settlers".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Global heating helped a fungus attack coffee plantations in Mexico.
A threatened species of possum in Australia is likely to be made
extinct in a decade or two by global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
30% of Britons say they would pray for world peace if they prayed for anything. What does that imply?
The UK government claims each privatization will provide some rational benefit, but they are all excuses: for those politicians, privatization is an end in itself.
Israel's blockade of Gaza includes ordering fishermen not to go
more than three miles out — but fishermen get shot without warning
even less than three miles out.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Peru Declares Environmental State Of Emergency in its Rainforest (due to pollution from years of oil extraction).
Talking about the danger of global heating makes the public more concerned, but the public rarely hears about the issue. Thus, one right-wing lie is that the public hears about this too much and shrugs it off.
The US Senate went on record opposing cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The right-wing uses bogus moral issues about private life and sex to distract attention from issues of public morality that threaten all of us.
Supporters of the banksters
influence the views of US politicians
because the people
the politicians know are those supporters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A House committee proposes to extend the CFAA to make persecutions like that of Aaron Swartz possible in a wider variety of cases.
Russian exile Berezovsky appears to have died by hanging.
People do hang themselves inside locked rooms, but I don't think they cut themselves down afterward. Is that even humanly possible?When pork producers promise to end use of a practice, the promise is filled with so many hidden "except for"s that it adds up to nothing.
Internet companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple are increasingly putting iron curtains around their services, trying to make their users semi-captive.
Before MSNBC took
Phil Donahue off the air, it ordered him
to present twice as many Conservative guests as Liberal guests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Internet's total surveillance makes 1984 look like freedom by comparison.
I dispute only one of Schneier's claims: that it is impossible to do without all the snooping computerized services that he cites. I do without almost all of them, almost all the time. You can, too. See https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html.
This year's blizzards and cold waves are the paradoxical result of global heating. Here's how that comes about.
As heating progresses, it will cause more floods and more droughts.
Campaigning in Texas against explicit racial bias in executions.
The Obama regime wants to be able to read your email without a warrant on a variety of pretexts. But this is being spun as support for increased privacy rights.
The New York Thug Department arrests tens of thousands of youth for
possession of marijuana, mainly from minority groups,
and this does
considerable harm to them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
These same groups suffer from persistent low-level repression in the form of arbitrary searches on the street without probable cause.
With federal agencies doing very little to inspect US animal farms, and undercover private inspectors being banned by states, in effect there will be no inspection.
Perhaps undercover journalists will be able to publish their exposé of farms through Wikileaks, like Bradley Manning.
Palestinians in several villages are threatened with expulsion from their homes because the Israeli army declared the region a military training zone.
An interview with Mustafa Barghouti, one of the founders of Palestinian nonviolent resistance.
Morsi has arrested five prominent dissident leaders.
He is applying laws in a biased fashion: strict towards secularists, and lax towards his own supporters.
US-style SLAPP suits have hit Israel and are intimidating people who complain about companies or officials.
Two paths for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Tracking the movements of the most southerly population of polar bears finds that, as expected, global heating is hitting them hard.
Arizona is considering a law to require transsexuals to use public toilets in accord with the gender on their birth certificates.
If this law passes, transsexuals who visibly resemble their chosen gender could make an effective protest simply by obeying it. "If my presence makes you uncomfortable, don't blame me — complain to your state legislator." We could call this "civil obedience" ;-).
"We Have a Right to Heal": Campaign Demands Justice and Reparations
for Iraqis and Vets.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Teaching boys to be kind, rather than aggressive.
The Looming Threat of Water Scarcity.
US history books say almost nothing about the prevalence of rape by soldiers in Vietnam.
Investigating the World Bank's participation in forcing Ethiopian peasants off their land.
Poachers in Chad killed 86 elephants in a few days, a loss that would in normal circumstances take 20 years to replace.
A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying [Iraq] Veteran.
The disaster isn't over yet: al Qa'ida set off 12 bombs in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad.
One way is to prosecute Bush. The proper question is: What should a reasonably prudent president have known about the legality of launching a war, and why didn't that president know it?
The case can be based on a mountain of lies.
The Korean women who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese army still protest every week, those who still live, but Japan only condemns them.
The analysis in this article applies also to other cases, such as slavery and Jim Crow laws in the US. Today's Americans are not personally guilty for those wrongs, but the US owes compensation to today's descendants of the slaves, since they continue to suffer the consequences of the wrong done to their ancestors.
The Supreme Court upheld the right of first sale for copies people have imported noncommercially.
This is important for me personally, since I sometimes give the MIT library books printed in other countries. I am sure many of you will also find opportunities to exercise this right.
The Obama regime demonstrated its usual hostility towards readers and listeners when it supported the wrong side. I am glad to see it defeated once again, but this is not enough.
What we really need to do is to establish the right of first sale for all published digital works. Publishers should not be allowed to make you sign that right away. When you pay for a copy, no matter how they try to describe it, it should be your property, and you should be allowed to give it away, lend it, or sell it. (And share copies, too, but that's a different point.)
The NRA has succeeded in blocking the ban on assault weapons, but the ban on large magazines is still being considered.
"Better school security" probably means some harmful measure.
Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt is now on trial for the massacres carried out by his soldiers.
They killed around 250,000 in total, but the trial is about 1700 killings in a few specific massacres.
The US should apologize to Iraq for
the destruction it carried out
there.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
This implies paying reparations as well; but at present it is hard to see how to do that in an effective way while the violence continues.
A book of photographs and testimonies of soldiers in the Bush forces that came to condemn the mission they were sent on.
The article goes too far in claiming that "any action perceived as unpatriotic towards America was met with moral outrage, or even banishment by family and friends" at the time. I condemned the Bush regime as war criminal every week, expecting to rile supporters of the regime, but I can hardly claim that this required any special courage. It required moral firmness and conviction, but not courage, since I was in no danger.
However, the pressure could well have been greater on people in military circles.
James Goodale, who counseled the New York Times to publish the Pentagon Papers, says that Obama is a worse enemy of press freedom than Nixon was.
Cyprus has rejected the plan to cut people's savings.
Western officials admit that sanctions on Iran have failed to either force Iran to make nuclear concessions or provoke a rebellion.
It won't provoke a rebellion because Iranians blame the West, not their own government. A few years ago, they protested in the street against their government's tyranny, but now they are more angry at us.
The Boy Scouts of America's prejudice against gays is closely related to its prejudice against atheists.
A disabled Briton is suing to block a privatization she fears will ruin her life or endanger it.
The US is developing autonomous weapons that will choose targets on their own. Israel has already sold some to China.
Syrian rebels now have a government and have elected a prime minister, but it is not clear whether that will have any influence on events in Syria.
The Philippines will give women gratis birth control, but bans abortion and even emergency contraception.
New UK press rules threaten freedom of some blogs.
The prosecution of Bradley Manning threatens all US journalism with censorship.
The article ends by crediting al Qa'ida for the menacing censorship in the US, but al Qa'ida only provided an excuse. Those who hate our freedoms, politicians such as Bush and Obama, are responsible because they took advantage of the excuse.
A new coalition calls for extending the 4th amendment properly to people's digital communications like phone calls and letters.
Surgeons in Iran are running out of anesthetics due to US-imposed financial sanctions.
New York City will require stores not to display cigarettes.
I think it is legitimate to take measures like this to discourage use of dangerous, addictive drugs. But I fear that the WTO will try to stop them, on behalf of tobacco companies.
The campaign for divestment from fossil fuel companies.
Cambodian Workers Wrest Justice from Wal-Mart and H&M Supplier.
Importers should be required to document all their suppliers (including subcontractor), and those must provide whatever surety is needed to assure their workers are properly treated. Any treaty that stands in the way of this must be torn to shreds.
Arctic lands are turning into a temperate zone, with a shorter winter and three other real seasons.
"The types of plants that could go no further north than 57 degrees north 30 years ago are now found at 64 degrees."
Calling for the right to unlock any technology product, and the information needed to repair it.
Of course, all programs should be free software, and all repair manuals (and all other manuals), since they are works made for doing practical jobs with.
Big mining companies disposed of their pension obligations into a spin-off company designed to go bankrupt, as a way to eliminate those obligations.
Statistical modelling concludes that global heating has already made Katrina-style hurricane storm surge 2 to 7 times more likely.
In other words, each time it happens, global heating is the main cause.
Republican National Committee Plan: More Money In Politics, More Influence For Rich People.
The effort to blame the awful plight of the young on Social Security and Medicare is picking up steam.
Andrew Auernheimer was sentenced to prison for telling reporters that AT&T had a security hole.
The US government firmly defends large companies such as AT&T against everyone who doesn't bow down for them.
Obama plans to keep troops in Afghanistan for a long time.
It is no surprise that the US is saying that the Afghan army just got far more effective. It always says that.
900,000 US veterans are waiting for benefits, and some die because they can't get funds for treatment.
The ideological demand for unlimited movement of money and investment between countries may be losing its grip.
US
Aids Honduran Police Despite Death Squad Fears.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
This fits with the US's general policy, ever since the coup, of supporting the coup-introduced repression quietly and deniably.
The
True Costs of Industrialized Food.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
One smuggler was caught with over 10% of the population of an endangered species of tortoise.
Having a gun makes you more likely to be killed with one — but it's not only because someone can take your gun and shoot you. There are many causes. For instance, having a gun (or even seeing one) leads people to behave more aggressively.
The lesson of Cyprus for the US is that the US had better stop banks from taking dangerous risks.
That requires ending "too big to fail" and "too big to jail". The US should have 50 times as many major banks, all small enough that we can let them fail.
My proposal for a progressive tax on business income could help encourage banks to stay small. It is possible to apply this proposal only to banks, or to all business.
Russian thugs raided the Moscow office of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to help low-income US college graduates get out of
student loans they cannot repay.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Cyprus bank bailout ultimately protected insured savings up to 100,000 euro, and savings above that will only be partly lost.
Creditors and stockholders of the worst banks in Cyprus will bear a large part of the loss.
If people with lots of savings now pay more attention to whether the banks they use are solvent, this might in the long term be a good thing, restraining banks from taking large risks as in the past. Governments might think twice before accepting a stake in a bank that is headed for failure and thus burdening the public with that bank's losses.
However, countries thrown into depression by austerity measures (including Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal as well as now Cyprus) need deficit spending to get out of depression, and the euro zone rules won't let them do this.
The continuing resolution to fund the federal budget also has two give-aways to agribusiness corporations. One attacks farmers' rights; the other exempts GMOs from judicial review.
Corporations Are Behind The Common Core State Standards — And That's Why They'll Never Work.
The Dangerous Myth That Climate Change Is Reversible.
It's not reversible by cutting emissions, that is.
We could reverse global heating if we could actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere — but nobody knows a feasible way to do that at the scale that would be necessary. Plans for future "carbon capture and storage" are designed to operate on the exhaust of a power plant, where CO2 is much more concentrated than in the ordinary atmosphere and that makes it easier to do. Even CCS does work, all it will do is reduce the CO2 emissions from the plant.
The ACLU has sued to allow Guantanamo prisoners to publish information about how they were tortured.
Until they are permitted to tell us, we must make do with songs such as Guantanamero.
A Tennessee Republican calls for "making sure that [only] the right people are voting."
He means, people likely to vote Republican.
The US border patrol operates drone surveillance on "frontier" areas so broad that 2/3 of Americans live in them, equipped with radio listening devices and means of recognizing individuals. They allow all sorts of thugs to look through these drones.
Fighting to protect an unusual wild forest in Cambodia.
World Bank Must End Support for Honduran Palm Oil Company Implicated in Murder.
State legislators often vote on questions that affect their financial interests.
EU poverty 'eating into the heart of society'.
Three million in Spain are now in extreme poverty.
The Palestinians of Jayyus won a court order to move the annexation
wall to give them back more of their land, so annexationists settlers are
building
obstructions to stop them from from using it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
African journalists fear that UK press regulation will be encourage press repression in African countries.
I don't know what to think about the issue of UK press regulation, because I think it will be the details that make it good or bad, but the articles I see don't talk about those details.
The NSA divides its pervasive surveillance activities into little pieces so Americans don't notice what they add up to.
The effects of complete government surveillance can be seen in the imprisonment of John Kiriakou, based on searching his email to find something to accuse him of.
US citizens: call
on the owners of the LA Times not to sell
that or other newspapers to the Koch Brothers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US Trade Representative published misleading statistics to give the impression that the US-Korea "free trade" treaty is beneficial for Americans. This article exposes the distortions.
Free exploitation treaties are typically bad for most people in all the countries involved, and benefit mainly businesses. This one is no exception. Americans and Koreans should join hands to eliminate it.
Free exploitation treaties also often interfere with methods for managing fiscal crises.
Turkey's prime minister got a leading columnist fired. The columnist had printed leaks.
This nasty behavior is not as bad as what the US government did when it harassed a journalist's mother until he got upset and gave them an excuse to prosecute him.
A film student made a video of Greek neo-Nazis, the Golden Dawn party, some of whom spoke in favor of racism and even genocide.
Now they accuse him of secretly filming them, which is absurd since he was pointing a big videocamera at them. However, even if that had been true, it would not alter the fact that they said what they said.
Greeks have good reason to be angry, but these people are putting the blame on minority groups and immigrants instead of the powerful rich banksters. How convenient for the banksters! I wonder if that might, perhaps, not be a coincidence. Are banksters bankrolling Golden Dawn?
US citizens: phone your senators and say, "Legalize sharing (through bittorrent, for example, and please don't call sharing 'piracy')."
An EU study finds that music sharing does not reduce music sales.
If sharing did reduce sales, that would not justify the War on Sharing. Fundamentally, people must be allowed to share, regardless of secondary effects on anyone else. These data demonstrate a secondary weakness in the record companies' arguments for the War on Sharing, but we must be careful when we use it to avoid giving the impression that the war would be justified if it could be shown that sharing did reduce some company's income.
Please take pains to reject use of the word "piracy" to refer to sharing. That word is enemy propaganda.
Spain's government plans further attacks on sharing.
What the occupied Spanish people think about this is of no importance to them, not in this and not in anything else.
People in Minnesota who assisted the suicide of a woman who suffered from incurable pain face criminal charges, though the law against "advising" suicide was ruled unconstitutional.
To help people escape from suffering, at risk to oneself, is heroism. These laws are simple cruelty.
US citizens: call on Exxon to stop pretending it supports education, and instead pay its fair share of taxes for education.
Alexander Perepilichnyy appears to have been murdered by Russians for trying to track down the perpetrators of the giant tax fraud which Magnitsky reported.
Iraqi women's rights activist Hanaa Edwar says that things are not looking good.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, 400 "honor killings" are reported each year, but thousands more may occur.
49 congresscritters who call themselves "progressive" have refused to
take a firm stand against cutting Social Security, Medicare and
Medicaid. See if
yours is one of them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
If so, complain!
Climate defenders were
arrested
blocking a Transcanada office in Massachusetts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
As the Obama regime tries to crush protests, it will put many protesters on trial. The purpose of the jury is to stop the state from imprisoning people for "crimes" that the public does not consider wrong. If you are on a jury when a peaceful protester is tried, always vote "Not guilty".
The pipeline will cause many deaths, and that is a bigger crime than destruction of property. Thus, even sabotaging the pipeline will be justified, morally and legally, by the principle of necessity.
Most of the senate voted to endorse the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
If one of your senators voted for this, phone to rebuke that vote.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to stop prisons from gouging prisoners with amazingly high prices for phone calls.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Holder to end solitary confinement for minors.
I would rather sign a petition to end it for everyone, but this would be is a step forward.
An ACLU lawsuit upheld the right to use New York subways without an ID card and to take photos there.
If you are arrested for an unjust reason, don't feel humiliated! There is nothing shameful in being arrested — think of the great dissidents who have been arrested, and realize that you are starting to follow their path.
It is impossible to argue that Dubya was right in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, so US newspapers try to do the next best thing: to make it appear that Dubya made an honest mistake.
Israel hypes the Iron Dome anti-missile defense much as the US did the Patriot Missile during the first Gulf War.
In both cases there is doubt that they did any good at all.
The speech Uri Avnery wrote for Obama.
It can be compared with Obama's real speech.
Years after the civil war ended, Sri Lanka still keeps tens of thousands of Tamils in prison, including civilians, and tortures them. Thus, the UK faces pressure to boycott the annual Commonwealth meeting foolishly planned for Sri Lanka.
Scandinavian countries provide examples of
good
ways to handle failing banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A misguided copyright decision puts digital clipping services in danger.
CVS wants to compel its employees to hand over personal health details.
The UK conclusively rejected freedom of speech, by convicting protester Bethan Tichborne for carrying a sign that said Prime Minister Cameron has blood on his hands.
Meanwhile, the thugs that beat her up afterward have not been prosecuted at all. Typical.
It is the state which is guilty here — of criminalizing dissent using ridiculous pretexts, just like many other tyrannical states.
It's not yet spring, but
wildfires
in the US west have started.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Global heating is responsible for heat waves early in the year (though not for precisely where and when this one occurred), and increases the chance of droughts such as the one that prepared the ground for this fire to spread.
In a couple of decades, it will be much worse.
16 Giant Corporations That Have Basically Stopped Paying Taxes — While Also Cutting Jobs!
California's sequoia trees could be killed by global heating.
The UK government, after deciding to test the unemployed looking for excuses to kick them off government help, set targets for how many people to kick off.
Israel has apologized to Turkey for attacking the Mavi Marmara.
The apology says that errors led to killing the activists and does not admit wrongdoing.
I hope that Turkey will insist that Israel should end the blockade of Gaza rather than allow a weak apology as a substitute.
Global heating is helping to wipe out the traditional fish of Mumbai.
Hyped ideas of resurrecting extinct species, which are a long ways from really working, threaten to undermine the will to prevent extinction.
Some of the obstacles can certainly be overcome. We know how to raise orphan baby birds so they can be released to the wild, so the lack of parents of the same species could be overcome. However, other problems might be more difficult.
I am in favor of research into resurrecting extinct species, but we should resist over-hyping them.
Americans who don't obey the mainstream political line face personal attacks. For instance, Chomsky faces attacks against his style and mannerisms, as well as false accusations, all used to distract from his points.
You can see elements of this also in criticism of me. One can try to argue against my views based on reasons, without personal insults; but you'll find a number of forums where people repeat personal insults (often false) about me, deriding my views without addressing them in the hope of preventing them from being considered.
If you see that happen, I hope you will respond by bringing discussion back to the points about freedom that really matter.
US paddlefish (relatives of sturgeon) are now threatened by the practice of passing off paddlefish roe as caviar.
Fighting to repeal the Louisiana creationism education bill.
Libyan freedom-fighter Hassan Al Amin, first exiled by Gaddafi, has been forced into exile again. He says that militias have hijacked the revolution.
This has a bearing on what to do regarding Syria. Here's a proposal for a new way to intervene, neither militarily nor through economic sanctions.
A new plan for Cyprus protects bank deposits
up
to 100,000 euros.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
I think this plan is legitimate, because bank deposits beyond 100,000 euros can be lost if the bank fails. The modern idea that the state should dump the burden on the public rather than allow a bank to fail, is precisely what creates "too big to fail". This partial loss of deposits over 100,000 euros could be seen as a soft kind of bank failure.
However, this is only legitimate if the bank's owners receive the first hit.
Unemployed Britons who were ordered to work for no pay then sued the UK government and won. Now the UK government is passing a law to retroactively nullify the judgment, for no reason except that it doesn't want to pay this much compensation to the victims of the scheme.
Reportedly that article was originally published by an organization called Civitas, which then took it down, but someone else posted a copy.
I think it is legitimate for the state to retroactively annul arrangements that gave other parties power over the state, in cases where such power should never exist. For instance, Chicago's privatization of parking fees. It's a different story when what is annulled is a matter of ordinary people's rights.
Paying this judgment to unemployed Britons would be good for the UK anyway. Even if this judgment had not occurred, even if this imposed-work-for-nothing scheme had never been set up, it would be good to give the unemployed more. (And the working poor, too.)
Beekeepers and activists have
sued the
EPA to end the use of bee-toxic pesticides.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party has a
chance
of being allowed to participate
in the next Haitian elections, after being excluded twice as a
consequence of Aristide's forced exile.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Aristide was kidnaped by US soldiers and taken out of Haiti, when Bush decided to impose a more compliant regime there.
Obama may move some of the CIA's drone attacks to the Pentagon. This could impose more obedience to international law, but it might also reduce theoretical congressional oversight.
However, it won't apply to Pakistan, which is where most of the CIA's drone attacks are done.
In the US, poor people charged with misdemeanors may be told they must not dare demand to talk with a lawyer.
Human Rights Watch criticizes the Truth and Reconciliation law passed in Nepal, because it offers an amnesty to people that committed grave crimes in the civil war.
The idea of a Truth and Reconciliation procedure is to offer an amnesty in exchange for full confessions, to help the factions that fought make peace. This is one important goal; punishing criminals is another. Truth and Reconciliation sacrifices the latter for the former. I would not want to say that is wrong; it seems to have worked well in South Africa. I can't judge whether it is a good approach in Nepal, or generally.
Many public libraries block access to the torrentfreak.com, a news site.
What NAFTA has done to Mexicans.
On misplaced sympathy for Steubenville rapists.
It should be noted that part of what makes rape so painful is the tendency for family and society to be nasty to women for having been raped.
This is bad enough in the US, but even worse in some other countries. For instance, Samoan men rape unmarried women and then order their victims to come home with them; the victims obey because they expect to be rejected by their families afterward. In many Muslim countries, the victims might be imprisoned or killed.
To regard a woman as "damaged goods" is to treat her as "goods" rather than as a person.
The Internet needs to follow the same principle as postal mail: the messenger is not responsible for anything wrong with the message.
In the US: support the Arkansas Promise: college education for every student that does well in High School.
The US is prosecuting journalist Barrett Brown, who was investigating private spy and military contractors, by strained charges as it did to Aaron Swartz.
US citizens:
call
on the government to ban drilling in Alaskan Arctic seas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Why does the US want to protect dangerous business negligence by prosecuting security hole whistleblowers?
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to send you a copy of the TPP negotiating text.
You can't have one, and neither can they. That's the point.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell Conoco not to drill in the Arctic.
The Sultan of Oman has
pardoned
the dissidents imprisoned for the crime of protesting.
That's a positive step, but protests must be legal, and likewise
criticism of the government, of the sultan, and even of you or me.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis writes about being prosecuted for publishing the leaked list of possible Greek tax evaders.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to limit immigration detention to when it is
necessary and justified.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Everyone:
stand
with the people of Dryden to encourage them as they resist a
lawsuit from a billionaire who demands to be able to do fracking in
their town.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Pentagon is covering up the size of Guantánamo hunger strike. and is obstructing access for prisoners' lawyers and journalists.
US citizens: call on Obama to veto CISPA.
Obama, speaking in Israel, criticized the injustices of the occupation
and called on Israel to make a deal that allows a
real
Palestinian state.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
However, he called on Palestinians to negotiate for a settlement while Israel continues colonizing their land. Palestinians have recognized that such negotiations are harmful since they only give Israel cover for colonization.
Obama surely realizes that this speech will not make the useless "peace process" start moving again. It is only meant to communicate to the public. The denunciation of the occupation makes it a better statement than one might have expected, but getting Israel to entertain a real peace would require real pressure from the US.
Here is the whole speech.
Kurdish leader Öcalan has called for a cease-fire with Turkey, which seems to be negotiating major concessions to respect Kurds' human rights.
Land
Grabs Spread Throughout Developing World.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Beatrice Mtetwa, human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, was arrested responding to a client's request for help.
Tunisians face criminal charges for "libeling officials".
In Nigeria, an editor faces charges for an article that criticized someone important.
An activist sued the San Francisco Thug Department for searching his phone without a warrant.
How the tremendously increased inequality of the US
hurts
Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A protest in Afghanistan
demanded
removal of US special forces, accusing them of torturing people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Taliban kill more civilians than the NATO forces do, but they are not foreigners. Ultimately, if Afghans do not support the intervention, they will not forgive the damage it does to people.
The DMCA destroys cultural archiving, and can make our era's culture into a future dark age (except for whatever illegal copies may survive).
It is conventional folly that says, "Don't copy things without permission, and everything will be fine." Wisdom does not respond to an attack on our rights by surrendering without a fight. Wisdom says, "I always had, and still have in principle, the right to make copies, and with digital technology that right is more useful, so this sneaky method to deny it is intolerable."
More details about the ruling that part of the PAT-RIOT Act is unconstitutional.
The United Nations Development Program's head condemned the War on Drugs.
Federal prosecutors are again using the CFAA to attack someone for an annoyance that should hardly be a crime.
Right-wing pundits grasp at straws to find a sign that austerity causes something other than poverty.
Ecuador will formally cancel a trade treaty with the US, because oil companies are trying to use the "investior-state" provision that lets them sue Ecuador for doing anything that reduces their profits.
This is what Uruguay should have done, when a multinational tobacco company used the Switzerland-Uruguay free trade treaty against Uruguay's plain-packaging law for cigarettes. But Uruguay's government didn't show the courage and strength of Correa's.
Americans, do you think our government should give foreign corporations that sort of power over us? I call it treachery, a betrayal of our country.
The World Trade Organization's treaty doesn't have an "investior-state" provision, but it allows one country to sue another over laws such as the US ban on flavored cigarettes, so it comes to the same thing. The WTO represents a betrayal of our country and every other one that signed up to it, and when it bands public health measures, it can kill. The WTO must be abolished.
Due to an issue on stallman.org on Friday, March 22, the site had to be restored from a backup from a few days ago. Because of this, some notes that were posted are no longer up and are being restored now. There may be some other minor issues but everything should be back in order in a day or two.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators via 1-855-68-NO WAR and ask them to oppose the AIPAC bills that would push the US into war with Iran, and to insist that those bills go through committees.
US citizens:
tell
the U of North Carolina that complaining about rape
is not "being disruptive".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
submit a
comment to the FDA against approving
genetically engineered salmon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The US has agreed to pull its special forces out of a district of Afghanistan where they are accused of torturing prisoners.
One aspect of Cyprus' parliament's rejection of the bailout plan was that it wants Cyprus to continue serving as a tax avoidance banking haven.
Cyprus is looking for another way to rescue its banks, perhaps with help from Russia.
However, it might be best if the banks simply fail, since savers will be protected up to 100,000 euros. This will teach a salutary lesson to banksters: yes, your bank can still fail, so don't take stupid risks expecting to be bailed out if they go wrong.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to sign Rep. Lee's letter
against war with Iran. Also sign
this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on the Maldives to stop punishing women who are raped.
I do not like addressing the coup leader as if he were president, but I signed it despite that, for the sake of the issue.
Part of the New York Thug Department systematically left major crimes unreported while spending its time arresting people for marijuana.
The labor movement and the climate defense movement need to work together.
Everyone: sign
this
petition in support of Iraq Veterans Against the War's
request for a hearing to investigate the war crimes of the
Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Rwanda has dropped certain forms of press censorship, but journalists remain in prison.
A UN report on deadly Israeli attacks on Gaza concluded that one of the many fatalities in Gaza may have been caused by a Palestinian rocket that fell short. US coverage focuses on that one casualty, and ignores all the other casualties in Gaza that were definitely caused by Israeli attacks.
The revolving door for prosecutors explains why they don't prosecute banksters: they want to work as lawyers for those banksters.
They would rather prosecute easier targets, such as Aaron Swartz, even if they don't really deserve prosecution.
A New York state assembly member who voted against legalizing medical marijuana was caught speeding on the highway with marijuana in his car.
Crackers can now attack people by faking a 9-1-1 call to send a SWAT team to raid them.
This adds to the danger which the numerous unnecessary SWAT teams across the US already posed.
Greenpeace combats deforestation in China by campaigning against disposable chopsticks.
US citizens: join the Week of Action to stop CISPA.
March
Madness: The 5th Straight Year of Extreme Corporate Tax Avoidance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Teaching US school children to think the conquest and occupation of Iraq were good.
Social Security for the Next Generation? If You're Under 40, You Should Be in the Streets.
Syria's government bombards civilians, and
tortures
and kills prisoners.
The rebels also torture and kill prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Sugar causes euphoria in the same way heroin does.
Imprisoning people for using heroin is as absurd as imprisoning people for using sugar, but it makes sense to design policies to discourage excessive use of either substance.
In the UK, not only is protesting a crime; a gathering that the thugs think of as a protest is a crime too.
Zimbabwe is holding bogus elections again, with a ban on political meetings and short wave radios.
Iraq 10 Years Later: The Deadly Consequences of Spin.
Most journalists, like most politicians, decided to go along with the pressure. Those who decided not to do that easily saw the holes in Dubya's threadbare story.
US citizens: call for reducing the use of drift gillnets, which kill lots of sea life for each fish they are intended to catch.
Indoor pollution from stoves kills 4 million people per year.
The article described a plan to try to do something about it, but I have no independent information about that.
The UN agreed on a policy about women's rights, but the Catholic Church vetoed any mention of their right to an abortion or birth control.
The Cyprus "bailout" plan takes part of people's bank deposits.
The loss of some bank deposits is not shocking in principle. If a bank fails, deposits up to a certain amount (100,000 euro?) will be insured, and the rest might be lost entirely. The difference in this scheme is that even deposits under 100,000 euro will lose 7%. This is marginally worse for the non-rich. Why not let everyone keep the first 100,000, so they are no worse off than if the bank had failed?
Why not let Cypriotes and permanent residents keep their whole deposits, so mainly the Russian oligarchs get soaked?
Steubenville football team members were found guilty of raping a girl who had passed out drunk.
The people of the town had such an attachment to the football team that they defended the players. I think it is childish to feel so strongly about a mere game, or get that concerned about a struggle over no real issue.
I think it would be good to show US high school students something better to look forward to than getting drunk. But it is hard to do that when they know that their future is only crap jobs, while companies extract all the wealth from the US for the sake of billionaires, banksters screw them over, and frackers poison them.
The UK is removing global heating from the school curriculum.
Instead of addressing the problem, hush it up. However, it's a silly move. By the time the children affected become old enough to vote, or influence the opinions of voters, the disastrous effects of global heating will be visible to everyone.
Somali journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, who was imprisoned for interviewing a woman who accused soldiers of raping her and intimidating her into silence, has been freed.
There is some evidence that the new pope lied to priests who were driven into exile by the Argentine military dictators.
However, it does not prove he went so far as to betray them. I doubt there is a way to establish the truth, and I don't think this evidence is enough basis to conclude he was culpable.
However, it is a certainty that he opposes abortion, birth control and gay rights. That is plenty of grounds to condemn him.
Israel is building housing for Jews in the old city of Jerusalem, aiming to prevent any part of the city from being available as a capital for Palestine.
It would be justified to require Israel to hand these over to Palestine just as it is justified to require Israel to hand over all its colonies in the West Bank. However, another option would be to make Jerusalem the capital of both countries.
Thousands Rally in Budapest for Democratic Rights.
The government, which has over a 2/3 majority in parliament, is changing the constitution in ways accused of undermining the possibility of political opposition. I don't know enough of the facts to reach a conclusion myself.
Houston has banned feeding the homeless, and banned them from looking for food in garbage cans.
Like many US cities, Houston wants to make homeless people go somewhere else, such as the cemetery.
The Obama regime surrendered US agriculture to Monsanto, by declining to challenge the tactics that gave it a near-monopoly.
Debunking the rush to replace school lessons with computer games.
The article does not mention another problem with most of these games: they are proprietary software.
Teachers Make Handy Scapegoats, But Spiraling Inequality Is Really What Ails Our Education System
The UK will not turn back from austerity, even though (or, perhaps, because?) it is having its usual disastrous results.
The quandary about aiding the Syrian rebels.
It is horrible to do nothing, but it is not obvious how to do something with good effects.
US citizens:
call
on the FDA to let its scientists present their
knowledge and conclusions to the public without hindrance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
submit
a public comment calling for rejection
of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Obama to support a strong arms control treaty for guns.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
A hedge fund was fined $600 million for a $276-million profit based on insider trading.
At that rate of fine, hedge funds will do insider trading if they think they have less than a 45% chance of being caught.
I expect they are caught under 4% of the time, so to deter a repeat, the fine should have been over ten times as large. If the fund would not agree to pay that much, perhaps the SEC should have prosecuted it in court — shocking as that might sound.
Maryland will abolish the death penalty, but may still execute the people already on death row.
North Dakota is considering a law to ban abortions after 6 weeks, though not stated in so many words.
The legislators that vote for these bills know that they are unconstitutional under Roe v Wade. They are trying to create opportunities for right-wingers in the Supreme Court to reverse that decision.
The UK government obeyed agribusiness and torpedoed the EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.
Since the pesticide accumulates in the soil, it will take many years before bees can return to the areas where it has been used.
Thugs in Angola confiscated dissident music, then attacked a protest against the confiscation.
Egyptian thugs attacked two groups of journalists during protests.
ACLU: Five Reasons Why the Courts Aren't Enough to Ensure Drone Privacy.
How the CFAA developed into its current oppressive form, and how Obama proposed to make it even worse.
Court Says Obama Can't Talk About Drones and Still Call Them Secret.
The former head of the House ethics committee, Jo Bonner, says his trip in Kenya complied with the ethics rules he helped develop. That's exactly the problem.
New 'Costs of War' Report: Hundreds of Thousands Dead, Trillions Spent.
The UK government lost a lawsuit to unemployed people who showed they were unjustly penalized based on unclear rules. So the government is pushing a retroactive law to deny the claims of unemployed people.
Apparently Tories think that the unemployed can afford the loss but the state can't.
An ISP imposed 25 and 75-year contracts on entire housing developments in Virginia.
Fifteen Benefits of the War on Drugs.
E-book stores are considering various sorts of imitation restricted "lending" and "resale".
This would, if implemented, eliminate one of several reasons why the e-books are ethically unacceptable. However, the other reasons would remain: every copy is controlled by DRM, and it is impossible to read with free software. People would not be able to borrow or buy used copies anonymously under these systems where every transaction is under control of the central company.
This is still not ethically acceptable.
US citizens: call
on Obama to clean up dangerous waste dumps from factory farms.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to put banks on trial when they commit crimes.
Aaron
Swartz Lawyers Accuse Prosecutor Stephen Heymann Of Misconduct.
Every US prosecutor knows about the legal requirement to hand over
information that might help the defense. When they don't do this, it
is because they are trying to get away with a miscarriage of justice.
"Cyberwar" rhetoric
plays
into the hands of spies and military in whatever country.
Obama will visit Israel and Palestine but
will
not do anything significant to further the cause of peace.
Anything significant would require resisting the pressure from the
Israeli hawks' lobby.
The US has recognized that Shell's plans for drilling in the Arctic
are inadequate.
Nobody knows how to reliably clean up an undersea oil well leak
anywhere, and even less so in the Arctic; thus, any plan Shell offers
will necessarily be inadequate. However, if Obama remains "committed
to drilling for oil in the Arctic", we must worry that the US will
accept some other, more specific inadequate plan.
Since we must leave 70-80% of all known fossil fuel reserves
in the ground, any reserves that are particularly hard or risky
to get at (such as these) should be at the head of the list
to be left untouched.
A UK university has banned an Islamic group from holding events there,
after the group tried to impose
sex
segregation on the audience in a debate.
Obama told Republicans he is sincere about
selling
out the people who voted for him.
How Hugo Chavez
defeated
US plans to privatize and rip off Latin America.
The
Back
to Work budget proposes to get the US out of its recession.
I support this, but I think that even more spending should be done
because balancing the budget now is a misguided idea.
US citizens: sign
this
petition telling Holder not to hesitate to prosecute and jail
banksters.
The Catholic Church still does
great
harm in the world.
Genetically engineered corn and soy is
wiping
out milkweed, and monarch butterflies too.
Global poverty has decreased substantially since 1990, but
environmental degradation including
global heating threatens to throw
3
billion people into extreme poverty by 2050.
Two honest senators are trying to
break
up the big banks.
Alas, Obama like most of Congress has sold out to the
banksters.
It is now clear that JP Morgan
cut
off standard reports to bank regulators
just as it was hit by a big loss.
We cannot tolerate the existence of banks that dare to cut off reports
to regulators, and we cannot tolerate regulators who allow a bank to
get away with this. "Too big to jail", indeed. We must chop the
large banks into small ones, any one of which could perfectly well be
allowed to go out of business, and none of which dares defy regulators
for even a day.
William Leonard, head of the US Information Security Oversight Office
for most of the Bush regime, says successive US presidents have
abused
secrecy to grab increased powers.
"It is as if Lewis Carroll, George Orwell and Franz Kafka were jointly
conspiring to form official US policy."
The US
Conservative conference demonstrated the extremism and racism
that we know slink among them.
The biggest danger of this is that it will enable Democrats such as
Obama to move ever further to the right, and still win elections by
saying they are not as bad as the ones who admit they are
Conservatives.
A US district court
ruled
that PAT-RIOT Act collection of personal data without a warrant is unconstitutional.
There are several hurdles to cross from here to a real victory, but at
least it is a start. Bravo, EFF!
Just as most Indians despise and abuse Dalits, the
Dalits despise and
abuse the Thurumbars.
The Ambedkar quote is great: 'In Hinduism all are unequal, but some
are more unequal than others.'
The Muslim Brotherhood, in power in Egypt,
attacked
women's rights at the UN.
An Egyptian government internal report, commissioned by Morsi,
says thugs killed
800
protesters in 2011.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
Representative Markey's office and tell
him you oppose the "No Knives Act", which would ban common sense in
the TSA.
Markey is running for senator (to replace Kerry), so he has reason
to pay attention to anyone in Massachusetts, not just people in his
own district.
Tell Markey you are fed up with security theater and you appreciate
even this tiny intermission that the TSA has offered.
Indians in Peru and Brazil are
organizing
together against an oil company. Since we need to keep
70%
or 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, there is
no justification for trying to find any more.
Half the prisoners in Guantanamo are on hunger strike, but Obama's
response is to
cover
it up.
The Obama regime, confronted about
indefinite
detention in Guantanamo in the Organisation of American States,
responded by twisting the meaning of the term and denying the facts.
Indefinite detention means someone is imprisoned without a specific
sentence, and with no criterion for release. That is the case for all
the prisoners in Guantanamo, unless some have already been convicted
by military kangaroo courts — but I don't think any of those
have completed.
Obama refused
Democratic senators' request for information about drone
assassinations.
The senate should pass a law to restrict them.
US citizens: call 1-855-68-NO WAR and ask your senators and
congresscritter to vote against AIPAC's bills for war with Iran.
Dangerous, even carcinogenic artificial food colorings can be replaced
with
safe
color from vegetables and fruits.
25 governments are using the FinSpy malware program
to
get information from people's computers.
This includes regular human-rights violators such as Vietnam, Qatar
and the United States.
The
Cruel Gap Between CEO Pay and the Stagnant Minimum Wage.
A UK activist got a
court
order to delete his file from a database on
"domestic extremists", since there was never any evidence than he was
one.
However, so far nothing has been done to stop
thugs from accumulating
more records on him and other dissidents, or to punish them.
New
Gas Worth Nothing If We Take Climate Seriously.
Obama
Administration Excludes National Security Policies from
(supposed) Commitment to Transparency.
Even Democrats are
starting
to object to Obama's aggressive secrecy
and attacks on whistleblowing.
An activist mocked Sarkozy for an insult the latter had said to
someone, and received a criminal conviction for it. He appealed to
the European Court of Justice, which gave a
narrow ruling in his
favor: it was not a crime because he was satirizing Sarkozy.
When Sarkozy said the same words, that was not satire, so according to
this ruling, there was nothing to protect him from prosecution. Yet
he was not prosecuted, and still has not been. Apparently, the
censorship is applied in a politically biased way.
But Sarkozy should not be prosecuted for this, nor anyone else.
Personal insults, even serious ones, are part of freedom of speech.
France, and European countries in general, are greatly
lacking
in respect for freedom of speech.
US citizens: call
for showing Bradley Manning's trial on CSPAN.
Americans who are not rich get a raw deal when charged with crimes,
because they can't afford a lawyer who will do anything but ask
them to make a
plea
bargain.
US college students have to work so much for pay that they must
skimp
on studies, sleep, or both.
Camel's
Nose: Let's Outlaw Drone Strikes in the United States.
China's
Dead-Hog Scandal Is Gross — But So Are the Hog Feces in
US Waterways.
'Unmitigated
Disaster': Iraq's Pain Has Only Intensified Since US-Led Invasion in 2003.
The article describes how the US has imposed disaster Iraq for 40 years
since it helped the Ba'ath party take power.
I question a few of the points. There are charges that Bush I's
ambassador Glaspie encouraged Saddam to attack Kuwait, but we can't be
sure. When Bush I decided not to take Baghdad in 1991, that may have
been a wise decision, and we don't know what would have happened the
other way. Also, I don't think the sanctions regime counts as
"backing" Saddam.
But these don't invalidate the overall conclusion.
Car manufacturers
systematically
cheat on fuel efficiency measurements.
That's in Europe — do they cheat similarly in the US?
An imprisoned Cambodian dissident has had his sentence
reduced.
That's a step in the right direction, but framing dissidents is always
bad.
Leveraged
buyouts that saddled many companies with large debts
may cause those companies to collapse.
If the companies declare bankruptcy, those who bought them out will
lose all, which is justice, and the banks will lose some of what is
owed to them, which is also justice. But some of those banks are so
big they are above the law, and make a habit of dumping their losses
on the public.
US citizens:
call
on the Bureau of Land Management to maintain
protection of wilderness in Alaska.
Award-winning Lao environmental activist Sombath Somphone was kidnaped
at a thug checkpoint in Vientiane, and the state is
doing
nothing to try to find him.
All these facts support the conclusion that the kidnapping was
organized by the state, and that it wants to make Sombath die of cancer.
Some Iraqi Sunnis are
planning
a renewed civil war to take control of Iraq away from the majority
Shi'ites.
I find it unlikely that they can defeat the majority even with financial
support from Saudi Arabia. I think it is more likely that Sunnis will be
massacred.
Don't
auction off empty TV airwaves, SXSW activists tell FCC.
The US stripped human rights from non-citizens first, and
then
from citizens.
Paul Ryan's Connections
to Insurance Companies.
He has a personal financial interest in his attack on government-provided
medical funding.
Breaking
the Law, by Reading It.
Net
Neutrality Neutralised in France?
The US has stopped publishing
data on
drone attacks in Afghanistan, and (amazingly) deleted the data it
had previously published.
I don't think using a drone on the battlefield is worse than using a
manned aircraft or artillery. Indeed, drones might be less bad, less
likely to hit civilians for instance. What makes drones specially bad
is their use off the battlefield.
Nonetheless, this secrecy is part of Obama's dangerous campaign to
keep
the people in the dark.
Many US states are considering bills to ban
undercover
journalism to expose disgusting conditions in farms.
Liberal New Yorkers have been duped into supporting a conservative
candidate for mayor,
because
she is gay.
I am glad if New York City is unprejudiced enough that a gay person
can win election as mayor, just as I am glad that it is possible for a
Black to be elected president. But I wouldn't support a right-wing
gay candidate like Quinn or a right-wing Black candidate like Obama.
Intersectarian war is ramping up in Iraq, this time fueled by
rivalry
between political leaders.
An MD in Scotland, campaigning for
legalization
of assisted suicide, says he gave medicine and advice to various
badly ill people who for sane reasons wanted to kill themselves.
Advances in solar and wind energy are steadily
driving
the prices down.
Now if only we took away the subsidies from fossil fuel and nuclear,
and put it into renewable energy, we could make great strides in
curbing global heating safely.
Domestic workers have been mostly
left
out from workers' rights in the US.
40% of children in large parts of Asia and Africa are
stunted
in brain and body due to insufficient food when young.
We need to help their mothers have fewer children.
Fossil fuel burner EDF has dropped its UK
lawsuit
against environmental protesters.
Public
Pays for Fukushima While Nuclear Industry Profits.
The surging US stock market means nothing for American workers, since
the corporations with lots of money
don't really
want to hire people.
Our
'Government of Laws' Is Now Above the Law.
Norway
Calls the World to Ban Nuclear Weapons.
Brooklyn
Community Says 'Enough is Enough!' After Police Kill 16-Year-Old Boy.
Manning
Statement Audio Leaked in Opposition to 'Extreme Secrecy in Our Courts'.
Since 2001, there have been 750 complaints of torture or abuse of
prisoners of Israel.
Not
one led to a criminal investigation.
Israeli troops are shooting Palestinian protesters
dead.
Why
Today's "Cannibal Cop" Conviction Should Terrify You:
There is no evidence that he intended to carry out any of his fantasies.
US citizens: phone your senators and say to vote against SR 65,
which would encourage Israel to attack Iran by promising US support.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support the Democracy Is For
People constitutional amendment.
We also need the amendment saying that
human
rights, in general, do not apply to corporations.
The UK will
block
an EU plan to ban the pesticides that appear to kill bees.
A New York thug was
found
guilty of plotting to kidnap women and eat them.
However, the thugs
that attack protesters and then try to frame them
are usually
not even prosecuted.
If Corporations
Don't Pay Taxes, Why Should You?
The US has ignored the lessons of Fukushima. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
routinely
ignores accidents it is supposed to penalize.
Bloomberg's NYC ban on
large
sugary drinks was struck down by a court, but this victory for
obesity-promoting big business is nothing to celebrate.
To prevent antibiotic resistance from growing,
we
must change practices
that release antibiotics into the environment (farms, rivers etc.).
Phone manufacturers are surely funding a
lawsuit
to abolish a US law
requiring them to discover whether the minerals they buy from the Congo
are funding war there.
Proof that investment banks
cheated
companies when handling their IPOs,
in order to get kickbacks from clients that would buy the stock.
The European Union
needs
a way to expel member states that turn to
dictatorships.
It also needs to be, itself, a lot more democratic.
The US Trade Representative has a job of vital importance: giving
business
more power over the US. It just release a disingenuous
report pushing harmful goals justified by dishonest reasoning.
Former Presidents of Brazil and Switzerland say that
the War on Drugs
is an offense against human rights.
Corporate welfare outrage: proposing a
retroactive
tax break for a giant
and profitable company.
An Israeli landfill in Palestine is
spreading
toxins and carcinogens.
Caught on video: fanatical "settlers" beat up a teenage Palestinian shepherd
as soldiers
watched and did nothing to prevent the attack.
Israel's system of imprisoning Palestinian minors
systematically
violates their human rights, says UNICEF.
US citizens:
support the I am Not a
Loan campaign to free students from overhanging student debt.
Aung San Suu Kyi, now in the Burmese Parliament, supported a crackdown on
protesters
on
behalf of a Chinese-owned copper mine.
The local people will probably support the mine if (1) their
environment and health are properly protected from pollution and (2)
they get a fair share of the wealth that the mine will generate. This
is feasible, but the owners probably want to skimp on it so as to
increase their profits. There is no excuse to let them get away with
this. Aung San Suu Kyi and Parliament ought to tell the mine
investors to give the local people enough to convince them to
approve the mine.
US citizens:
sign
this petition calling on Obama to stand up for Tibet.
Wolves are a success story for endangered species reintroduction,
but several states are
trying
to eradicate wolves even though their
numbers are still few.
Somali journalists were
attacked
as they tried to cover a court case.
Peculiarly, the court agents wanted the press to cover the session,
but soldiers interfered anyway.
Afghan government forces members keep on
shooting
US and Afghan government
personnel.
In Iraq, civilians were killed frequently for driving near a US
convoy, after soldiers mistook them for attackers. Once soldiers know
an attack can take that form, it is natural that they protect
themselves. However, by doing so, they generate public hatred.
Unless the populace hates the guerrillas enough that they forgive the
soldiers, there is no way for the soldiers to win their hearts and
minds once this cycle gets started.
Many
things can be determined about a Facebook user, with pretty good
accuracy, from the user's published list of "likes".
If you do as I do, and reject Facebook, you are safe from this form
of snooping.
How can we get the news items that interest us, without telling a
server what criterion to use? Simple: download lists of items, and
have software on our own machine decide which articles to show. This
software can fetch additional articles (which it doesn't actually show
us) just to create a false trail.
One of the accused Delhi bus rape-murder gang
committed
suicide in prison, or was murdered.
Look at the ridiculous response of the victim's relative, who is
incensed that the man is dead because he wanted the man killed. There
are valid and sufficient reasons to punish rapists and murderers, but
sadism is not one of them.
If, however, the man was murdered, that is a different issue. The
state must not kill prisoners or let them be killed. However,
all people, even prisoners, have the right to commit suicide.
Ideas parents dislike "spread like a fungus" on the Internet,
so filters are being developed to
block
access to discussions about topics such as anorexia.
The article clearly shows the lack of clarity about the purpose of
these filters. Is it to prevent children from "stumbling upon"
something they don't want to see, or to prevent them from finding what
they do want to see? The former might be easy, because the child will
cooperate with it. The second is much harder, but I suspect that's
what parents really want.
If such filters ever work well, millions of parents will use them to
keep their children from finding out about evolution or the principal
reason for the current local drought, flood, big storm, heatwave,
agricultural plague, or other effect of global heating.
US citizens:
submit a
public comment against the Keystone XL pipeline
whitewash study.
If
(only) the Dalai Lama were Pope.
The Obama regime says it set out to
kill
al-Aulaqi after getting
Abdulmutallab (the underwear bomber) to inculpate him, but multiple
evidence shows it had already made this decision earlier, when reportedly
it knew nothing about him except that he was expressing hostile views.
Meanwhile, inculpation by a prisoner such as Abdulmutallab is hardly
a solid basis to conclude someone is guilty of anything.
Zerlina Maxwell, debating a right-wing show host,
rejected the idea
that women should carry guns to stop rapists, and said that we should
put the blame on men who rape.
Irate right-wing men sent her rape threats.
Amnesty International
condemned
the Iraqi government for continuing
disrespect for human rights.
EU Bans
Sale of Cosmetics Tested on Animals.
Two AIPAC-sponsored bills
would
push the US towards war with Iran.
Americans
for Peace Now explains how
they
are dangerous.
The Drone Question
Obama
Hasn't Answered.
The New York Times asks congress to
repeal
the 2001 authorization for
using military force.
Note that doing this "effective on withdrawal of US troops from
Afghanistan" might have no effect, since Obama wants to leave some troops
there permanently.
The movement to resist urban noise shows that popular opposition
to the effects of technology
can
force technology to change course.
How religious beliefs (probably Christian)
help
habitual criminals
silence their consciences.
Human
Rights Abuses Spiral in Iran: UN.
Obama has increased the rate of
refusal
of Freedom of Information Act requests
to a record.
In the [US] South and West, a
Tax
on Being Poor.
Tens of thousands are
marching
to Delhi to protest river pollution.
Senator Warren tore into the US bank regulators for their
lax attitude
towards their probable future employers.
The top US admiral in the Pacific Ocean says
the biggest threat
to the US there is global heating.
Hollywood now
bows
down to China much as it
bows
down to the Pentagon.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, oppose attacks on
birth control and women's health programs. Also sign
this
petition, but the phone call will have more impact.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call for
rulemaking about use of drones for surveillance
in the US by the border patrol.
A list
of many kinds of information that companies regularly collect
about most Americans.
They don't get most of this information about me, because I am a
surveillance
resister.
Everyone:
call
for protection of sea turtles in Baja California.
US citizens:
call
on the US to follow international law about assassination.
US citizens: call for the US to
stop
predatory "payday loans" that gouge the poor.
US citizens: Call
on Attorney General Holder to prosecute banks, not consider them
"too big to jail".
US citizens:
call
on Obama to work for a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.
US citizens: the Keystone XL pipeline, which would threaten civilization
in the long term, would first threaten caribou habitat.
Call
on the US to consider this issue properly.
Dubya's conquest and occupation of Iraq was arguably the
biggest US
foreign policy mistake in its history.
It was also an act of
aggressive
war: the crime for which German and
Japanese leaders were executed.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to end "too big to jail".
Tobacco companies and their submissive governments are
using
the World Trade
Organization to attack Australia's plain paper packaging law for
cigarettes.
They make the absurd argument that companies have a right to draw
further profit from their investments in advertising.
The WTO ruled against the US law against
flavored
cigarettes, too.
The World Trade Organization kills people by subordinating human lives
to profit. Let's kill it before it can kill again.
A proposed US-EU free exploitation treaty threatens Europe with another
attack
on democracy that could increment the political power of business
up to US
levels.
The US inspired hatred in Iraq using the
same
methods that were so effective in Latin America.
But the Pentagon isn't satisfied, and wants to do it again, this time
with no restraints.
The School
of the Americas is still operating; its name was changed
in the hope we would forget.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Arbitration Fairness
Act, which would stop companies from imposing forced arbitration on
customers and employees.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
A 6-year-old in the US was
arrested
for crossing a street, and for
going to a store on her own.
When I was 6 years old, I had to cross streets and avenues to get to
school. Avenues in Manhattan are several lanes wide and the cars go
rather fast. But this was nothing special — every child did it.
The UN Commission on the
Status
of Women is being undermined
by a right-wing leader who is bowing down to the Vatican.
The European Union is considering an
extreme
censorship proposal
in the name of ending prejudice against women.
I've seen porn on German TV stations, late night. I suppose
that would be banned too.
Having guns in your house makes you less safe. Allowing
concealed weapons
leads to more gun crime.
It is takes constant practice to use a gun well enough that you
could stop an armed assailant.
Google has obtained
a royalty-free patent license for the VP8 video
format (used in WebM), effectively for everyone.
I hope that some browser developers will now stop refusing to support
VP8 format.
Refuting
criticism of Chavez.
Biased, nationalist history considered as a
secular
counterpart of theology.
Teachers' unions recognize the closing of public schools, while
opening
nonunion "charter" schools, as simple union-busting.
O'Keefe, who destroyed the community aid group Acorn,
has
paid compensation
to an employee he smeared.
What disappoints me about this article is that it shows no hint of a
doubt that there is something bad about setting up a brothel.
Obama will
try Abu Ghaith in a civilian court.
This is the right way to do it. At least Obama has passed up one
opportunity to trash human rights. If he passed up more of them,
I might consider him a good president.
A sperm whale was
killed
by the plastic waste it swallowed.
Maimed London protester Alfie Meadows was
found
not guilty of "violent
disorder" after his third trial.
The government goes to great lengths to try to repress protesters.
Meanwhile, the thug who attack Meadows has not even been charged.
Another protester was convicted of arson for burning a wooden bench.
This is perversion of the word "arson" and shows, once again, the
repressive nature of law in the UK.
The UK government has
cut
support for poor people that have more bedrooms
than the state judges they need; but the UK doesn't have enough smaller
apartments to house all of them.
Even when they can find smaller apartments, the requirement to move
could cause them great hardship and expense.
The school-to-prison pipeline starts with five year olds that talk
about playing
with toy guns, or imaginary toy guns.
It might be better for parents to stop raising children in a way that
gets them used to guns; but not by threatening to punish the children.
New Report Exposes
How
High Frequency Trading Drains Investment and Jobs from the Real Economy.
A US appeals court ruled that border agents
need
"reasonable suspicion"
to search the contents of a traveler's laptop.
That is a step forward, but the criterion remains very weak.
The Justice Department intervened in
support
of a man who made
a video of thugs beating up men they were arresting.
Three cheers for this, but it doesn't look like lawsuits against
thugs
are enough to make them stop this. They should be prosecuted.
Some states may
resist
the New Generation Science Standards for religious
reasons.
Giving US thugs military weapons has resulted in many
killings of
innocent civilians.
Thus, SWAT teams make Americans less safe.
The problem is due to federal programs to fund SWAT teams. Once a
city has a SWAT team, it feels a need to use that expensive resource,
with the result that people are regularly exposed to the danger.
Even small cities with little crime have
armored vehicles
that are designed to fight other armored vehicles.
The ACLU is investigating to find
the
extend of the problem.
Why drones endanger
privacy
worse than helicopters.
How states are proposing
to regulate drones.
US budget cuts could endanger efforts to
control leaking tanks
of radioactive waste.
Stores track
customers' cell phones.
They can't see me this way.
Microsoft allows Skype to be censored in China, and
tries to make
this sound like normal business.
A bar has banned
Google Glasses to protect its patrons' privacy.
Why Chevron's multimillion political payment
was
apparently illegal.
Even if Chevron is fined ten times the amount it gave, that may do no
good since the payoff on political influence payments is often
hundreds or thousands of times what was given.
The loophole Chevron is trying to use — giving through one
subsidiary while contracting through another — should not be allowed
either.
The legal argument for allowing Super PACs to receive unlimited donations
from corporations is that they would be independent of the political campaigns;
but in practice
they
are hardly independent.
Even if they were indeed run independently, they would still tend to
buy the support of candidates, who know full well which companies want
which policies.
The bad US health care system
kills
around 50,000 people a year
because they can't afford care.
It also bankrupts many people — over 60% of bankruptcies in the US
were caused by medical expenses.
Solving this problem requires putting an end to many profitable,
exploitative businesses, including some that have the form of
"nonprofits" (as explained in Brill's article). Thus, we need
to steel ourselves to ignore the protests of those businesses,
as we change to a system that serves our needs. As for the
owners of those businesses, they'll live.
Global heating and other ecological degradation
threaten a global
collapse of civilization, due to food insufficiency among other things.
The greatest crimes known are genocide and aggressive war. The
companies and crony politicians now keeping civilization on track for
collapse are committing both of these. A global food insufficiency in
a few decades would be the biggest genocide ever seen, and will
trigger bloody wars between the desperate starving and the frightened
ones with some food.
I propose that people should assemble, now, a database on all those
responsible, both the leaders such as the Koches and the followers
such as Obama. With this database, they can be punished, and their
ill-gotten gains can be taken away from them or their
descendants. We should make sure they cannot buy their way out
of the catastrophe they are imposing on the rest of the world.
If we make this clear enough, soon enough, we might even scare them
into allowing measures to stop global heating.
100 women in Ulster have stated they have used abortion pills,
as a campaign
against restricting abortions there.
Combining "predictive policing" with a society of fools that allow
Internet services to know thousands of daily details about them
could lead to pre-emptive
arrests of people who somehow resemble past criminals.
I wonder what effect it had on the 13-year-old girl that the police
took her computer and turned her into an unintentional stool pigeon.
Ellen Brown praises Beppe Grillo's
economic
plans for ending austerity
in Italy.
Time magazine presumes that
war
with Iran is only a matter of time.
To the extent that this facilitates starting the war, the war would be
a matter of Time.
A Massachusetts bill would ban
Internet
services from data-mining
data stored by schools.
I am in favor of this bill. I don't care how it would affect specific
companies such as Google or Microsoft: it would be an advance in the
public's rights.
At the same time, I don't think it goes far enough. Even if this
becomes law, people should not store any private information on remote
storage services without encrypting it before upload.
The EFF supports a bill introduced to
tighten
rules for government access
to some sorts of people's digital information.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the
nebulous
term "cloud",
but its conclusions are valid anyway.
The US unemployment rate
would
be at 9.5% if we included the people
who have given up on finding work again due to the recession.
Keeping terrorism trials in US courts
works
much better than using
Guantanamo kangaroo courts.
What's more, it is closer to real justice,
There was a big
antinuclear protest in Japan, two years after the
Fukushima disaster started.
The cleanup may
take 40 years,
and let's hope there isn't another tsunami during that time.
Rich people are
investing
in profiting from global heating.
The danger is that those businesses will have an interest in global
heating and will lobby against efforts to reduce it. Some of these
businesses should be banned just to ensure that doesn't happen.
A shocking case illustrates the
dishonest
way the UK government
imposes privatization of state schools, over the wishes of the
community.
UK university students are
on
strike to block privatizations.
Death sentences for
accused
football rioters have led to an insurrection
in Port Said.
Rand Paul's filibuster
against Brennan's appointment got straight to the heart
of Obama's rationale for ordering assassinations.
New York thugs regularly
arrest
people for carrying a condom, if they
look suspicious. Supposedly that proves they are prostitutes.
Even if they really are prostitutes, that is an injustice. There is
no justification for banning prostitution. All that does is oppress
the poor.
Chicago's mayor claims
school
closures are a way to save money
but it looks like they are just union-busting.
The military/industrial/congressional complex is
spending billions
on planes that the air force does not need, which illustrates how
there is a lot of room for cuts in military spending.
The UK government is
corrupted
through links between ministers and oil
companies.
Antibiotic resistance is
spreading
in bacteria that live in people's intestines.
India's coal-burning electric plans
kill
around 100,000 people per year
and cause 20 million new cases of asthma per year.
At a debate in London between Islam and Atheism, the Atheist debater
refused
to speak unless women were allowed to sit wherever they wished.
Bravo!
Efforts to teach
Pakistani
drivers safe driving founders due to an
Islamic fatalism about death.
CITES has given
protection
to 5 species of sharks which were most
heavily threatened.
The ICC prosecutors have
dropped
the case against one Kenyan politician
after a key witness said he was lying.
I don't know enough to have any idea what the truth is in this.
Bush discouraged
public attention to the cost of the occupation of
Iraq, which facilitated corruption and waste.
In the UK, nuclear power plant operates keep their benefits but
shift the
cost of disasters to the public. This creates moral hazard, encouraging dangerous practices.
I recall that the US has a similar policy, though I don't have a
reference for it.
Gang rapes against women activists in Tahrir Square are
being hushed up
by Islamists.
US citizens: phone your senators and call for
moving
nuclear waste to medium-term dry storage, rather than leaving it
in pools next to reactors.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call
for the US to stop big banks from issuing
exploitative payday loans.
Uranium mining in Australia threatens the world's
oldest
rock art.
If that uranium is mined and put in reactors, it can damage more than that.
After NHS budget cuts, the UK government
criticizes
the demoralized staff. They want these overworked people to be at
the top of their form all the time, to make up for the insufficiency.
The British Commonwealth chose to have its next meeting in
Sri
Lanka, ignoring that government's systematic repression.
A Somali woman talks about the gang rape by Somali soldiers, followed
by
persistent
government efforts to hush it up and protect them.
A company handling UK medical care for the NHS has
lied
hundreds of times about the level of staffing it provides.
Privatization of an activity means a company extracts profit from it.
To find that profit, the company has to squeeze someone or something.
In this case, it's the patients.
The US is now
almost
as unequal in wealth as Brazil.
The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing to
end
use of solitary confinement as a punishment for prisoners.
One prisoner (at least) was punished with solitary confinement for
filing a lawsuit against the prison.
A woman who was badly sick got a late-term abortion but died anyway.
Now anti-abortion religious fanatics are
trying to attack her.
I've read they also want to cancel the surgeon's medical license.
If
women change their names on marriage, that hurts their careers as well
as perhaps their self-respect.
The article ends, sad to say, with an argument in favor of changing names:
to screw up use of Facebook. However, if you do the
right thing and reject Facebook, that argument disappears.
Venezuela after
Chavez must face the issue of the global heating
caused by its oil exports
Journalists in Tanzania
face violent attacks.
Australia's Climate Commission holds
global heating responsible for
the
record hot summer.
CITES voted not to ban polar bear hunting.
If polar bears are reproducing in plenty, but they can't all survive
due to the changed habitat resulting from
global heating, a certain
amount of hunting will not affect the future size of the bear
population — in effect, it will cause some bears to die instead
of others. I don't know what that amount is, or how it compares with
the 600 or so polar bears killed annually by hunters.
Sausages are a lot more dangerous that
horsemeat-contaminated chopped meat.
Two brave doctors in the US do late-term abortions. Here is a description
of the threats and hostility they must face every day.
Any pregnant woman in the US might find her life depends on these
doctors, if certain complications of pregnancy occur.
Kansas is considering a law to treat embryos as persons.
Birth Control and "The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition".
McDonalds is
working foreign students for no pay. So they went on strike.
What it Means that
Monsanto Holds the Patents on Life.
Gas from tar sands
oil extraction is poisoning people in Alberta.
The driver of the car in
which
Oswaldo Payá was riding says
that he made a false confession under duress,
and that the accident which may have killed Payá
occurred when a government car rammed his car from behind.
British Bush forces gave
no
painkillers to wounded Iraqi prisoners.
A hatred of Iraqis pervaded the
Bush forces;
this might be an instance of it.
Venezuelan politicians accuse the CIA of
causing
Chavez to get cancer.
I find it the accusation unlikely. It would not surprise me at all if
the CIA tried to assassinate Chavez. He was an enemy of the
banksters
that Obama generally serves, and Obama openly practices assassination.
However, the chemicals that can cause cancer do not act reliably or
quickly, unless perhaps if given in massive doses, and I think that
might cause other acute problems. Is there a carcinogen that might
plausibly be used for this?
Stability in Iraq depends
on
punishing US torturers.
Linking US-sponsored
torture
in Iraq to US-sponsored torture in El Salvador.
A US congressman says that Abu Ghaith
deserves
to be punished for propaganda praising the September 11 attacks.
Isn't expression of opinion supposed to be a constitutional right?
There may be other grounds to prosecute Abu Ghaith, but the US should
not punish anyone for mere opinion.
What the European Parliament and Rand Paul say about Obama's
assassination policy and his
evasive responses when asked to justify it.
Al Qa'ida is not an enemy army; it is a criminal gang. The US must
recognize this and treat it that way, and grant the usual respect for
the rights of the accused.
On the Legacy of Hugo Chavez.
How Chavez earned the
hatred of US plutocrats.
Over 200 people a year starve in UK NHS hospitals
because the staff are overworked and cannot attend to them.
This could easily be avoided — it just takes hiring enough staff.
Will plans to make
record-keeping
take less time help?
Maybe. This efficiency could be an opportunity to increase the time
staff can spend on patients. However, this could be used as an
opportunity to reduce the level of staff.
If the
NHS is effectively privatized, which one do you think the new bosses will do?
Hungary's governing
party is accused of taking the country towards
absolutism.
CO2 emissions rose in 2012;
it
was the second-largest annual increase
ever measured.
UK thugs pleaded guilty to
selling
information about celebrities to a newspaper.
Airline employees, irrationally concerned about minor dangers,
are pushing the
TSA
to cancel its common sense.
Could someone please run a national campaign to support the change?
How the Tea Party grew out of tobacco company PR that
denied the health danger of tobacco.
Relating
US snowstorms to global heating.
The Attorney General
openly said that some US banks are too big
to be prosecuted no matter what crimes they may commit.
These banks are mortal enemies of the independence of the United
States. Don't be distracted by pipsqueaks such as al Qa'ida —
fight the banksters.
I am sure they have killed a lot more than 3,000
Americas in the past few years.
US citizens: call
on Congress to close tax loopholes used by
corporations and the rich.
Everyone: call on Bayer to stop
selling neonicotinoid pesticides,
since they appear to be killing bees.
In the US:
tell Comcast to stop lobbying against paid sick days
for workers in Philadelphia.
Obama is
"reaching out to Republicans" again.
What could they have in common? Obama has
already said he wants to cut Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid.
This makes it all the more important for Americans to phone their
members of Congress to demand that they sign the Grayson-Takano letter
and promise to vote against any such "grand bargain".
Don't let Obama and the Republicans impose
any more sacrifices on poor
Americans.
Rich Venezuelans who live in Florida are celebrating the death of Chavez.
They hate him because he did not let them exploit Venezuela as they wish.
What this shows is that they have no shame about exploiting the poor.
Sad to say, they have come to the right country. The US would be much
better off economically if it had a Chavez as president. And our
human rights would be safer, too. Chavez famously violated human
rights on some occasions (and I have criticized them), but he's a
human rights hero compared with Bush and Obama.
Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden are
filibustering Brennan's appointment to head the CIA, in order to express their opposition to
Obama's claim to be allowed to kill anyone anywhere.
In the US:
tell
Target to stop selling clothing made by slave labor in
Uzbekistan.
Britons:
write
to MPs to save the libel reform bill.
US citizens:
thank
Obama for nominating Gina McCarthy to head the EPA.
US citizens:
tell
Obama to reject the State Department's whitewash of the
Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
A Venezuelan opposition leader faces
criminal
charges of influence peddling in 1998.
I won't assume these charges are false — this was the sort of
thing that politicians did. However, it seems like excessive to bring
such charges 15 years later.
Government officials warned in recent years of the danger of
dictatorship
in the US.
Laws are now effectively
secret.
The State Department's whitewash of the planet-roaster pipeline was
written in conjunction with a consulting company that also
works
with oil companies including the Koch brothers.
It looks like Obama has been bought and is constructing a web of lies
to serve as an excuse.
Vote for Benjamin Kallos for New York City Council
The "Internet of Things" is really a scheme to
morph everyday life
into a complex of marketing/surveillance activities presented as a new
form of friendship.
I don't want to have a "relationship with a brand". I don't want to
give companies any information about me when I buy or use their
products. I have
opted out almost completely from these twisted uses
of the Internet.
There are several different uses of the network that people call
"cloud" due to not understanding them. When an article says "the
cloud", the author means, "It uses the network, but I don't know
how or why; I don't know what I'm talking about."
Secular journalists in Tunisia
face death threats from intolerant
Islamists and obstruction from the state.
At least 8 billion dollars of
Iraq "reconstruction" funds were wasted
outright.
Much of the rest did little good.
Pentagon and Petraeus
linked
to Iraqi torture centres.
Zainab Al-Khawaja, Bahraini dissident, has been
imprisoned over and over for peaceful protests.
Obama showed some more assassination opinion memos to some senators,
but not to us.
Obama has
made Guantanamo even nastier than it was, and most of the
prisoners are now on hunger strike since they know they can't be
released.
Obama, like Bush before him, makes me ashamed of my country.
I am proud I didn't vote for either of them.
ALEC is pushing laws in US states to
lower
minimum wage.
The Supreme Court may
authorize
thugs to collect DNA from every person
who is arrested, on the pretext that it is for verifying identification.
Put this together with the school-to-prison pipeline, and they will
get samples of every American's DNA in the future.
Obama's
assassination rationale: "If a high official does it, it's not
illegal."
A More
Independent South America and the Chávez Legacy.
Tariq Ali
describes the Chavez he knew.
Google Glasses could
turn millions of people into data collectors for
Google, giving data about themselves and others.
If these devices were running free software, you could decide what information
to give to whom, rather than being used by them.
Citizens of the EU: protest
against austerity on March 13 and 14.
Efforts are being
made to clean up depleted uranium in Iraq.
I suppose the cleanup plans include only a fraction of the most
contaminated sites. The question to ask the US and UK military:
"If some enemy invaded your country, would you fire depleted uranium
shells?"
A UK thug is on trial for using the government's data base to
find
vulnerable women and push them into sex.
This
isn't
the first time.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to cancel the artificial crisis
that is crushing the US Postal Service.
US citizens:
Oppose
the proposal to allow aspartame in milk without
mentioning them on the label.
Aspartame isn't sugar, but it is associated with other health problems.
In addition, artificial sweeteners confuse a
brain-stomach
feedback loop, and that tends to encourage obesity.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to legalize unlocking of mobile devices.
President Chavez of Venezuela
has died.
Hugo
Chávez Kept His Promise to the People of Venezuela
Obama, naturally, used the occasion to repeat his perennial criticism
of Chavez. Obama works for the
banksters, and the banksters really
really want to get Venezuela back under their dominion. The US
senator, meanwhile, pretends that Venezuela's elections are less
democratic than US elections.
I have some criticisms of Chavez. I don't like his support for
dictators, the plan to
shut
down the main opposition TV channel, and the arbitrary punishment
of some opposition figures (recall that
the
US is at least as bad).
Overall, however, I think Chavez was a far better president than Bush
or Obama, in terms of the mission of the state: to assure the freedom
and well-being of the people.
A teacher at the Friends School in Ramallah was
barred
by Israel because she refused to become an informer.
When masked Israeli "settlers" attack and harass Palestinians, the
border thugs
typically support the harassers. Here's a photo showing
a
soldier shaking hands with a masked "settler".
The villagers of Yasuf have been blocked for years from access to
their farmland by fanatical "settlers", who also
burned
their mosque.
Many US "cloud storage" companies
check
the files that users store, looking for "illegal materials".
Today they check for known images of sexual abuse of children.
Tomorrow they could check for whatever the government wants them to
check for.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say,
"AIPAC
[the Israeli Hawks' lobby] does not speak for me — I am against
attacking Iran, and against Israeli colonies on Palestinian land."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Measuring the US development into a dictatorship:
only
two of the amendments in the Bill of Rights are still heeded.
This article details how the US government regularly makes monkeys out
of the rest of them.
Abu Dhabi has tortured 70 dissidents
I disliked Chavez's friendship with Iran and Gaddafi's Libya, but it was
no worse than western support for the regime in Abu Dhabi.
The TSA has decided to
permit
small retractable knives in the cabin.
A small bit of common sense.
The woman who died in a California nursing home apparently
did
not want CPR done to her.
To respect her wishes would have been correct, but the nurse on the
phone did not say she was doing that.
If you're going to do CPR, the sooner the better. Thus, the policy
she cited — to call an ambulance to come and do CPR —
makes no sense at all.
Thugs in Sydney
threw
a man on the ground and brutally injured him.
In usual thug
fashion, they plan to fabricate an accusation against him.
It may get thrown out by the judge, but it will do to protect the
thug from
facing justice.
Offensive language does not excuse attacking anyone. Not even if the
attacker is a thug.
Transcript:
Lawrence
Lessig on Aaron's Laws Law and Justice in a Digital Age: Section I
You're
Not Allowed to Use Public Transportation At All : A Report
from Israel's Segregated Buses.
A legal
victory for generic medicines in India.
I am not sure what the "Intellectual Property Appellate Board" is,
or even whether it is an Indian agency or an international one.
However, its name endorses a bogus concept,
"intellectual
property".
What the present
rise
in the Dow average
says about the US.
The
Sequester Is President Obama's Fault.
It is because he supported the right-wing idea of cutting the deficit.
Obama wants to raise the US minimum wage, but
not
enough.
Walmart billionaires are
trying
to privatize education in Los Angeles.
Their charter schools treat teachers like Walmart employees.
A marathon race in Gaza has been cancelled after
Hamas
refused to allow women to participate.
3 million years ago,
giant
camels lived on Ellesmere Island, at the edge of the Arctic Ocean.
We may get camels there again in a century or two, if we don't change
course now.
The UK and New Zealand plan to follow Australia in requiring
plain
packaging for cigarettes.
Uruguay adopted a similar law years ago, but a cigarette company with
headquarters in Switzerland used an
Uruguay-Switzerland
free exploitation treaty to force Uruguay to cancel the deal.
The executives of the Kabul Bank fraud got a fairly
light sentence.
Nonetheless, it is better than the way the US treated the perpetrators of
foreclosure fraud. Obama basically let them
off the hook.
South Korea has
decided to advocate a UN human rights review of North
Korea.
I think this is the right decision. Once in a while, keeping quiet
about tyranny makes it possible to do some good, but if this becomes
common, the effect is to help tyranny continue.
A nurse working at an old age home in California
refused to administer
CPR to a dying inmate, saying that the company had forbidden staff to
do this.
It would be proper to ban companies from having such policies, but it
would also be interesting to investigate whatever motivated the
company to adopt that policy. Perhaps some laws underlying that
motivation also should be changed.
2/3
of the forest elephants of Africa have been killed in the last decade,
and with increased poaching effort, they could be extinct quite soon.
The overthrown president of the Maldive Islands
was arrested
on apparently political charges.
How Niger, a neighbor of Mali,
avoided
problems like those of Mali.
The US stock market has surged up. Is it a coincidence that this follows
the massive
budget cuts of the sequester?
The budget cuts will hurt the real economy over coming months, but
gain for the rich are not tied to gains for the real economy any more.
For the rich, this disaster may be opportunity, and that may show up
in stocks.
There are effective and ineffective ways to cap bankers' pay.
The Swiss scheme seems to be a good one, but the
EU is looking
at a worse one.
Taxing financial transactions
would
help protect the US from Wall Street.
No wonder Obama is against it.
The Gates Foundation has
set
up a data base about millions of US
school students and made it available to companies.
Parents should organize to demand that their school systems not
participate.
A veteran of the Bush forces is
mortified
by the damage he helped do
to Iraq.
North Korea threatens to
cancel
the 1953 cease fire.
This seems like the usual North Korean bluster: it already launches attacks
at will, and has broken the cease fire many times.
CPR doesn't always do good —
often
it results in a short extension
of helpless life.
This argues against a policy of insisting on CPR. However, it is no excuse
for a company that orders qualified employees never to perform CPR.
Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike (force-fed) for 12 years to
protest India's repressive rule of Kashmir.
Now she faces prosecution
for attempted suicide.
This is ironic considering that the ruling Congress Party was once led
by a famous hunger striker, Mohandas Gandhi.
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I hope you will join me.
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Why We Must Resist Netanyahu and the Hawks' Reckless Push for War on Iran.
Ten years ago, Katharine Gun leaked evidence of US/UK spying on UN delegations, and prevented Bush from getting a UN resolution in support of his conquest of Iraq.
She was prosecuted for this, but charges were dropped.
Her only regret is that she was unable to prevent the war.
Chicago workers fought off two companies in succession that wanted to shut down their factory, and now have the chance to run it and buy it
Evidence was presented in court about torture and murder by the British Bush forces.
The UK secret courts bill passed the House of Commons. That will be used to quash lawsuits from torture victims.
Manta rays are endangered because of superstitious use of their gills.
If Switzerland Can Crack Down on CEOs,
Why
Not the US?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
BY 2050, ordinary ships will sail across the Arctic Ocean. Won't that be neat?
Ice-free Arctic water will mean a lot more heat is absorbed. Isn't it stupid to talk about the savings in shipping, as if that could be significant against the disaster this will cause?
Biden insists Obama is really prepared to start a preventive war with Iran.
Outside of a few specific issues, he is "Republic an lite".
US citizens: if your congresscritter
is in this list, thank him
for
signing the Grayson/Takano letter promising to vote against
any cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
If your congresscritter is not in this list, phone and say, Sign the Grayson/Takano letter! Defend our Social Security, Medicare
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Apple is reportedly making legal threats against a computer-controlled sex toy called the iGasm.
As far as I can tell, the only unethical thing about the iGasm is that it is made to work with an iThing. Can it be used from some other computer?
I'm informed that the device connects to an audio output and should work with any audio player.
A bill in New Hampshire would ban aerial photography entirely, except when carried out by the government.
The aerial photography that most needs to be regulated is that done by, or for, the government. This is because the government has the greatest power to hurt you with whatever it sees. However, as shown by the example of CISPA, if company collects information about people and hands that over to the government, it has the same effect as if the government collected that information.
In rejecting responsibility for cholera in Haiti, the UN betrays its own purpose.
However, the intervention in Haiti was also a betrayal of that purpose, since it only supports the US's goals in Haiti.
It is very important for you personally to refuse to use Facebook, especially if some of your friends do (or might), because that's how you influence them, for good or for ill.
Southern Company now expects to receive an 8-billion-dollar loan guarantee for building new nuclear power plants, after making a donation of $100,000 for Obama's inauguration.
There was a campaign urging Obama not to accept donations from companies for inaugural events, but he ignored it.
The motto of US business: invest in politicians, because there is no higher rate of return.
Former Libyan dissident Belhaj, tortured by Gaddafi with British help, says he will settle his case for 3 pounds and an apology.
Belhaj deserves an apology, but more than that is at stake. The UK government has a history of aiding nondemocratic regimes that torture, first Bush then Gaddafi. It will probably do this again, if we don't take steps to stop it. Therefore, we must make sure that future aid to torturers cannot be covered up.
If Belhaj wants to prove his goal is not his own enrichment, I think it would have been just as effective to pledge any possible compensation payments to charity.
An interesting Greenpeace protest: setting up a fracking rig in the constituency of a right-wing politician, to show his own voters what he has done to them.
Farm workers in Florida are pressuring supermarket chains to agree to decent wages and working conditions.
Toxic chemicals get get into food, particularly milk, through plastic implements used in milking.
This is one more demonstration that we can't expect people to protect themselves individually from toxins. It has to be done by regulation: by designing food processing to be safe for everyone.
Wall Street's incentive structure encourages traders to take wild risks that hurt their employers.
India's government, under world pressure, gave tribes rights over the land where they live. Now it is trying to partially cancel that.
Burma's proposed new press law
fails to adequately defend press
freedom.
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link was broken.]
Thugs in Port Said, Egypt, started by firing back at people who were shooting at them; but they continued firing for a long time, shooting at unarmed people. Egypt's government has not tried very hard to investigate.
Chicago's Board of Education creates a crisis, and charter school operators reap the benefits.
Cardinal O'Brien, who recently resigned under pressure from to accusations of sexual abuse, has apologized for them in a vague way which does not admit anything specific.
Perhaps his suggestion that priests should be allowed to marry was an attempt to do something to save future priests from a situation like the one he was in. If so, I am glad he made the attempt. I would not be surprised if that bothered the Vatican more than the sexual accusations against him.
Troops in Afghanistan
shot
two boys during a battle, taking them
for Taliban fighters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
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link was broken.]
Accidents like this will happen in war, despite the best efforts to avoid them. If the Afghan people were enthusiastic about the US-lead intervention, they would accept a certain level of accidents.
What bothers me most is that we can't count on US soldiers to try their best to avoid killing Afghan children.
PM Shinawatra says she will ban the ivory trade in Thailand.
A Somali woman who accused soldiers of raping her has been release from prison, but not the reporter who interviewed her.
Swiss voters approved a law to limit pay for executives.
This should be adopted world-wide, and any politician who does not support it is apparently working for the rich.
Here's an indication of how far politicians will go to support their paymasters.
The company Ernst & Young has made a deal to avoid being prosecuted for tax evasion, but some of its employees were convicted.
Obama's ISP-implemented system of punishment without trial for sharing has a secondary flaw: it is so bad in terms of security that it invites others to attack users in another way.
The Malaysian government paid US columnists to smear an opposition political leader.
I don't know enough to have an opinion about Anwar Ibrahim, but the Malaysian government tramples religious freedom by prohibiting Muslims from converting to another religion or to Atheism.
Apple's email service silently censors suspected sex.
US executives responsible for distributing food contaminated with salmonella are being prosecuted individually.
Uhuru Kenyatta, candidate for president of Kenya, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for stirring up violence in the previous election.
Global heating will fall especially hard on the Middle East.
Everyone: thank Bradley Manning for showing us what the US government was really saying and doing.
US citizens:
sign this petition to require background checks for
gun
purchases in the US.
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old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on Congress to cut its own salaries as other
federal
employees' salaries are being cut.
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"School choice" (vouchers) hurts more than just unions.
UK doctors accuse the government of trying to privatize the NHS by stealth.
Just about everything that right-wing government does that concerns programs to help the non-rich is a stealthy way of cutting them.
Uri Avnery: the torture of Arafat Jaradat might have been part of Netanyahu's attempt to provoke Palestinians into a third intifada, much as Ariel Sharon provoked them into the second intifada
Over 100 million Americans are regularly exposed to levels of trihalomethanes that can cause cancer.
It will be difficult to reduce the level, since chlorine needs to be added to drinking water to kill dangerous bacteria, and reducing farm run-off is a gigantic task (although there are other benefits from doing it).
Minnesota, the "land of 10,000 lakes", has overdrawn its aquifer for
years and
is now in trouble.
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Republicans are willing to crash the US economy to get what they want.
However, I will make a stronger statement (inspired by Naomi Klein's idea of "shock capitalism"): crashing most of the US economy is part of what they want. If they were in power, they would make most of the same spending cuts, with a few notable exceptions (corporate welfare).
US movies and TV systematically propagandize for the US military, and now for the CIA as well. They do not leave this to chance.
Did Arafat Jaradat Die
Under Interrogation?
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Protesters across Portugal chanted,
"Austerity kills."
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The Department of Homeland Security has spent
almost 800
billion dollars, but isn't using that money very well.
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The corporate media stand behind their economic quack remedy, pretending that government spending cuts will make the economy grow even though it repeatedly does the opposite.
They should try dowsing for buried coins instead. At least that might succeed, once in a rare while.
US citizens: tell
Obama to veto CISPA.
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Al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula now promotes
"open
source jihad".
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link was broken.]
This confirms I was right to decide not to support open source.
The government of Lagos, Nigeria, regularly bulldozes slum neighborhoods because poor people don't fit their PR goals. 30,000 people can be made homeless in a day.
The slumdwellers of Lagos could dig bulldozer traps and disguise them with real shacks. This would make the state think twice about its massive acts of cruelty.
US cities are also often cruel to the homeless, for the same callous and evil reason: they look ugly and are bad for business.
This is not to say that these poor people have no duties of their own. There is one thing they should not do: reproduce. However, we who are wealthier have a duty also: to pay for their effective long-term contraception, and abortions as needed.
The US State Department report on the planet roaster pipeline closed its eyes to the pipeline's environmental dangers.
In the US: join the rapid response protest team against the planet-roaster pipeline.
Since the Hindu fanatic party got into power in Karnataka, journalists there have been attacked and imprisoned.
Saudis protesting against imprisonment without trial were arrested and
imprisoned
without trial.
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They are protesting about the imprisonment without trial of previous protesters, who were themselves protesting imprisonment without trial.
This developed into a protest against the minister in charge.
Isn't it a shame that the US is an example of bad conduct on such an important issue?
Freedoms Online in France: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
Right-wing rulers of Canada and US are trying to resurrect ACTA.
The CISPA Government Access Loophole.
Government-imposed Chinese censors make extra money on the side by censoring on behalf of anyone who will pay.
Western countries are providing arms to Syrian rebels, including surface-to-air missiles.
Sharks need protection to prevent their being fished to extinction.
Roundup contains other ingredients besides glyphosate, and some of them are toxic too.
Obama wants a free exploitation treaty with the European Union.
The use of the term "intellectual property" shows that the plan is based on confused thinking. However, "free trade" treaties in general represent a surrender of state power to business, which makes them bad for all but the rich.
The right-wing wants to cap benefits for the poor, but not for the rich.
The US keep on expanding the growing of crops to make fuel, even though it has been clear for years that this is a wasteful and harmful practice.
The UN is investigating Sri Lanka's record of oppression and atrocity.
Suggestions from CITES about how to end poaching of large animals.
The US government shares the blame for the Big Spill, because its regulatory agency encouraged risky drilling.
This in no way exonerates BP, not even partly, because the oil companies were eager to do risky drilling and the regulatory agency was bowing to their wishes.
City must wake up to digital growth, says tech investor.
Perhaps it is better for Britons generally to discourage the replacement of the high street with Internet sales. The UK is not compelled to leave this question to chance or happenstance.
The South African thugs that killed Mido Macia have been arrested.
However, punishing the culprits of one thug attack is just the first step towards ending the thugs' reign of terror.
Bradley Manning's statement.
For millions,
Manning's
heroism is established.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
How to force registered sex offenders out of a city: build some tiny parks, leaving no place they can legally live.
HIV infection in the US is concentrated in states which don't offer proper education about how to avoid it.
As standardized tests constricts around children and teachers, teachers and students in one school have decided to boycott these tests.
Why is the US government not helping in the prosecution a former Haitian "president" (dictator)?
While right-wingers look for ways to "invest in the apocalypse", it is not too late to prevent it ... if we try.
For California condors to survive requires a complete cessation of use of lead ammunition, but the NRA opposes this.
January 2013 was the hottest month ever recorded in Australia, and this summer has been the hottest summer ever recorded in Australia.
In 40 years, this deadly heat wave will be normal for summer.
The UK government is deceitfully blocking EU action to protect bees from neonicotinoid pesticides.
Opposition party supporters in Bangladesh rioted after their leader was sentenced to death.
I have no knowledge to judge whether Sayedee and other defendants are guilty of those crimes. It might be so. At the same time, it might be that this is a politically-minded attack on the opposition party.
Even if they are guilty, they should not be executed.
The South African thugs that dragged Mido Macia from their van, and killed him, made up a bogus excuse: they said he tried to grab a gun from them.
This excuse is bogus in two ways. First of all, it's false: evidence shows Macia didn't do it. But it's bogus in a deeper way: even if Macia had done that, it would not have justified dragging him to his death. It would have justified arresting him and charging him.
If Macia had indeed try to take a thug's gun, that would be grounds to arrest him and charge him, but not to drag him on the ground from a car. No circumstances could ever justify that.
These thugs should be tried for murder, and perhaps this time they will be. However, most of the thugs that attack innocent people enjoy impunity.
Other acts of amazing brutality by South African thugs.
Women who had long-term affairs with police spies talk about the lasting harm that this does.
One change that should be made, to prevent this from happening again, is to stop treating protesters as gangsters or terrorists. The state should not try to protect businesses from the inconvenience of a protest.
Obama has intervened in favor of same-sex marriage in the Supreme Court.
US citizens:
call
on the National Marine Fisheries Service to do its job
and block Navy plans to injure an estimated 13000 cetaceans with sonar.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to oppose Graham's bill that would endorse an Israeli attack against Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call the White House and ask Obama to visit Bil'in and Budrus when he goes to Palestine
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Ethiopian immigrants on their way to Israel were pressured into taking somewhat dangerous contraceptive shots, which were continued afterwards.
This was apparently done for racist motives, and racism cannot be justified. However, a non-racist, uniformly applied policy of limiting reproduction can be justified. There is no room in our small planet for people to take the attitude that "to have a lot of children is to be rich."
Obama's signals suggest he is not really going to do anything about global heating.
There is an additional reason people should not have children now: they will probably be killed by in the global heating disaster, a few decades from now.
Spain's recession has got worse, falsifying the state's predictions that it would improve.
This will mean lower tax revenue, which will increase the budget deficit that Spain's government is destroying lives to reduce. So they will have to make more cuts, and so on until someone has the guts to stop the cycle and tell the EU to drop dead.
Meanwhile, the nationalized bank Bankia, made from merging the large banks that were failing, has become worthless.
Its only purpose, apparently, was to lure its customers into losing money.
Apple is testing software to block a widely used jailbreak program.
Although jailbreaking an iPhone has been explicitly ruled lawful in the US, that doesn't guarantee there will be a way to do it. Don't make this assumption — don't buy products that need jailbreak.
The decline of wild bees can devastate agriculture, since they do a better job of pollinating than honeybees do.
Bradley Manning pled guilty to 10 charges, and not guilty to the rest. This is a summary of what he said.
Glenn Greenwald says that Manning's statement demonstrates his heroism.
Manning's statement that he offered the material to prominent news media first will tend to hamper the Obama regime's plans to prosecute Wikileaks for encouraging Manning to leak the material.
The UK has secretly cancelled some people's citizenship, then targeted them for assassination.
US citizens: call on Chief Justice Roberts not to undermine the Voting Rights Act.
Human Rights Watch reports that the Sri Lankan military is still raping and torturing Tamils.
The Ethnic Cleansing of the Jordan Valley.
The FBI organizes more terrorist plots in the US than anyone else, its sting operations have never caught any who would have committed a real act of terrorism on their own. They catch only simpletons who they can lead into crime.
The Pentagon wants to spend a trillion dollars on a new fighter plane, the F-35, that probably won't work.
It is probably
obsolete,
compared with coming drones.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Its stealth technology is likely to become much less expensive due to advances in radar systems.
Some in Congress want to impose a biometric ID card on everyone who works in the US.
This is something we must fight. What it does to non-citizens is a side issue; imposing this on citizens is the injustice.
The UK government's response to the recession caused by austerity is to make austerity more brutal. This will make a bigger recession, and thus an excuse for more austerity.
I am sure they know this. They want austerity as a form of shock capitalism.
Haiti hopes to eliminate cholera through sanitation measures, but cannot get money to do it.
A UK court blocked deportation of Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka. The judge's decision shows how rigid and robotic the border agency's behavior is. That the UK still tries returns refugees to a state that is known to torture such returned refugees shows how far the UK stretches to ignore valid arguments for asylum.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for using subpoenas
to get Obama's drone assassination legal memos. Also send a message
through this
page.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The FCC is not planning to set up free WiFi across the US. However, it might do something that would help make better WiFi networks.
The NRA Wants to Keep Gun Records Secret From Everyone Except the NRA.
Jack Lew, ex-bankster, has been appointed Secretary of the Treasury.
Lew is in favor of budget cuts that are harmful.
Sugar consumption has been tied to adult-onset diabetes, even independent of obesity.
The European Union has imposed a limit on bonuses for banksters.
This is a step in the right direction.
Shell has decided not to try to drill in the Arctic this year.
Apparently it has decided to try to show more concern for safety to try to avert a decision banning Arctic drilling entirely. That decision is necessary anyway, however. We need to leave around 80% of the known reserves of fossil fuel in the ground, to avoid global disaster. So it makes no sense to drill in such places.
Drug Dealers Admit Berkeley PD Have Asked Them To Assault Cop-watchers.
Peterson's Puppet Populists.
Progressives warn that playing along with austerity
can sink
Obama.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Handcuffing 7-Year-Olds Won't Make Schools Safer.
Walling Ourselves Inside a Militarized-Police State.
9 surprising (and ugly) facts about US junk food.
Too Big To Fail gives the big banks effectively
83 billion
dollars a year. This is the same amount that the sequester
proposes to cut.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The article errs in calling Obama's position "Liberal". In the 1970s we had a word for people with views like his: "Republicans". It is a smear on Liberalism to associate it with Obama's right-wing views.
As a Liberal since the 1970s, I call for increased deficit spending so as to get Americans back to work, as well as cutting military spending in order to boost useful civilian spending even more.
The Progressive
Caucus's Balancing Act
does a large part of this. However, the US should entirely reject the
idea of reducing the deficit now. We should indeed increase
taxes on the rich, but then we should spend that money on something
important, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The ACLU has sued to overturn a new restriction placed on sex offenders forcing them to move.
The ACLU is raising an issue that can be raised in court, but ethically speaking this issue is secondary. This case reveals how the sex offender registry is a motor for irrational injustice. As usual with these laws, new restrictions are imposed on all the "offenders" because they seem necessary for some. Some sex offenders are a threat to children, but most are not. Having sex with a 17-year-old does not make a person a threat to anyone at all. In fact, it shouldn't be a crime in the first place.
Put that together with the widespread practice of pushing minors to plead guilty to "offenses" on strange pretexts, as part of the school-to-prison pipeline, and it adds up to a lot of injustice.
One Antarctic exit glacier could raise the seas two meters in a short period of time, once it gets going.
In the US, going to prison may be the only way to get a needed operation.
US banks waive fees for rich clients but gouge the poor.
Making this even worse, some states require people to get certain benefits through banks that gouge them.
The Bradley Manning trial has published some documents, responding to public criticism.
Repression of Bahais in Iran is increasing.
The ban on conversion tramples the rights of everyone who has ever been a Muslim. Similar disrespect for religious freedom is found in most Muslim countries.
The number of people in Syria that have been driven from their homes may soon reach a million.
Although this is very bad, what happened in Iraq was much worse. Iraq has 3/2 the population of Syria, but the number of people driven from their homes due to the Bush-B'liar occupation of Iraq was 4 times as many as in Syria.
In other words, if Iraq had suffered the way Syria is suffering now, that would have been less than what the US and UK did to Iraq.
Although wolves are now reestablished in many parts of the US, hunting them
could put them back into danger.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
More information.
The UK's cruel government has imposed a new tax on the poor, but most won't be able to pay it.
Big Pharma has cut off many medicines to Greece.
The Greek government should license local manufacturers for all the medicines that have been cut off.
The Copyright Propaganda Machine Gets a New Agent: Your ISP.
The French government proposes to impose SOPA-style filtering on ISPs.
The prosecution of Bradley Manning plans to belabor the point that al Qa'ida found his Wikileaks disclosures interesting. This follows a standard tactic of deception: prove the strong premise to distract attention from the invalid premise.
Of course, anything that shows wrongdoing by the US would be of interest to anyone who opposes the US. At the very least, it would provide reasons to criticize. If that was enough to make the leak a crime, by that logic any exposure of any wrongdoing by the US is "aiding the enemy".
Of course, supporters of Bush said exactly that. That is the attitude of a totalitarian state.
However, even if al Qa'ida had managed to get some other use from a piece of this the Wikileaks information, that would not justify the government's attempt to equate informing the public with "aiding the enemy".
Cory Doctorow suggests merging libraries with hackerspaces in a new synergy.
The major powers offered Iran some sanctions relief in exchange for limiting uranium enrichment, and Iran is eager for a deal.
Why didn't they make this obvious offer before? Is it that they didn't want to reach a deal?
Proposing a
US
Department of Peacebuilding.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Antibacterial consumer products can kill you, indirectly.
8% of the population of West Virginia is estimated to be addicted to
painkiller pills. Efforts to cut the supply are reportedly so
successful that they are
pushing
users to use heroin instead.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Heroin is not inherently very dangerous, but it is dangerous in practice because of the risk of accidental overdoses. Thus, these government activities threaten drug users with death — and imprisonment too, since possession of heroin is a crime. Great job, thugs!
I feel sorry for people who are addicted to painkillers, not just because they are addicted, but because of the dissatisfaction or boredom that must have inspired them to try those drugs. However, threatening them is not going to make things better.
Obama Promises More Transparency on Drone Strikes, Then Doubles Down on Secrecy.
Thugs in the UK systematically ignored accusations of rape in order to improve the statistics for their region.
Retired people will be a larger fraction of society as baby-boomers retire, but this will not be much of a burden for society if it is handled sensibly.
The EU has approved a ban on discarding fish of the wrong species that are accidentally caught.
This has the potential to result in less total fishing effort, and fewer fish killed, to deliver the same amount of food. Whether it achieves those goals depends on other details. Fishing companies will try to push in another direction.
Another environmental activist has been assassinated in Thailand, following 29 other activists.
60 years ago, creditors forgave half of West Germany's debts, putting Germany on the road to prosperity.
Now Greece, Italy and Spain need debt forgiveness, and don't forget the many poor countries that have been crushed by debt for decades.
Hagel was confirmed as head of the Pentagon.
I am not very enthusiastic about him, but it is good that the Israeli hawks' lobby has been defeated in its attempt to block him. This may pave the way for further defiance of that lobby in the US.
US citizens:
tell
your congresscritter to co-sign the Grayson letter,
firmly refusing to vote for any deal Obama might make that would involve
cutting Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The research practices of psychology need reform: they lend themselves to acceptance of error as truth.
Tony B'liar, desperate to defend the conquest and occupation of Iraq, asks us to assume that something worse would certainly have happened in Iraq if not for the invasion.
Something else bad might perhaps have happened — who knows? — but it would have had trouble being as bad as what has really happened to Iraq in the past ten years. The bloody civil war in Syria isn't as bad as what the US and UK did to Iraq.
What would happen to society if computers could tell when people are lying?
I don't know about you, but if I bump into someone and say "I'm sorry", I am not lying. When I say that, it means I think I was at fault and I really am sorry. I don't agonize about a minor error like this, but I am sincere in recognizing it.
I don't want people to conceal uncomfortable truths from me, and I don't do that to others. (I feel very uncomfortable when pressed to praise something I don't really like, because lying bothers my conscience.) But there are situations where concealing the truth is a moral duty — for instance, if agents of a regime that represses journalism asks you questions like, "Did you see so-and-so talk with Bradley Manning?" If you can't respond, "I don't remember," you could be forced to do a real wrong.
Wrongheaded Copyright Claim Blocks Online Posting of Important Technical Standards.
Proposed secret unfair "trials" can't legitimize US government death squads.
Using drones on battlefields raises no special issue not raised by artillery or manned attack aircraft. What makes drones a different issue is the practice of using them in places that are not battlefields, against people who are not fighting.
The death, apparently by torture, of Arafat Jaradat has led to protests in many places in Palestine.
A Palestinian child was
shot
in the head at one of these protests, and is unlikely to recover.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Israel freed many Palestinians as part of a prisoner exchange, but has made a secret law by which it can imprison them again based on minor pretexts — even traffic tickets.
Gangs of "settlers" frequently invade the Palestinian village of Qusra and attack the inhabitants. The army always protects the attackers.
Amazingly, one attack elsewhere in the West Bank has led to indictment of the "settlers".
This rarity of this exception shows how far the occupation forces normally turn their back on justice.
Palestinians fired a rocket at Israel for the first time in 3 months.
During those 3 months, Israel attacked Gaza daily.
About Israel's spy and assassination squads that dress and speak like Arabs.
A gang of Jewish youths
beat
up an Arab street cleaner in Tel Aviv.
He was badly injured and is in the hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
This is much like the way anti-semites used to beat up Jews, as described to me by my mother.
US citizens:
call
on Kerry to support taxes to reduce CO2 emission from
air travel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
As Wall Street profits rise, the banksters plan to cut thousands of jobs.
Do you think they will still call themselves "job creators"?
Italians voted to reject euro-austerity.
The main opposition coalition in Egypt will boycott the elections.
The UK government is covering up information tying Russia to the murder of Litvinenko.
The United Nations is responsible for killing more than 8,000 Haitians since 2010. And it's not even willing to say it's sorry.
The UN occupation of Haiti is the result of the US-organized coup that included kidnaping President Aristide. The current "president" of Haiti was imposed by the US after a bogus "election" in which Aristide's party, the largest in Haiti, was excluded.
Côte d'Ivoire: Revenge and Repression.
US citizens: call for taxing financial transactions as a way to avoid the stupid sequester deal.
Despite this, cuts in military spending would still be desirable. We could transfer those funds to useful activities.
Obama's dumb budget-cuts deal would cause immediate trouble for the overcrowded federal prisons. But the root cause is imprisoning too many people.
Of course, a large part of this is due to the War on Drugs.
The US Supreme Court upheld the catch-22 excuse to prevent judicial challenge of Bush's massive wiretapping program.
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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
UN's Water
Agenda at Risk of Being Hijacked by Big Business.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US
Food Industry Battles Against Regulation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The big blizzard in the US Northeast was
made
bigger by global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
the Violence Against Women Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
How the Bush regime had defense lawyer Lynne Stewart convicted on
absurd
charges of terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
giving illegal US immigrants a path to citizenship.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
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[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
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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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call
on Obama to protect caribou by canceling the Keystone XL pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Massachusetts colleges
to divest from fossil
fuels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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 2018-03-06 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.
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