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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.
It seems that the nytimes.com paywall will let you view any number of pages following links from stallman.org, but there's an exception: if the paywall has blocked your attempt to view a certain page, that page remains blocked for you for the whole month no matter how you else try to access it. Despite this exception I think it is ok to make links to nytimes.com.
The US Conference of Mayors unanimously called on the Obama regime not to impose its War on Drugs against state legalization of marijuana.
Justin Carter is threatened with 8 years in prison for a "threat" that was followed by "lol, just kidding".
Note how the "authorities" look for excuses to disregard part of the truth in order to twist something into a crime.
US film studios collaborated with Hitler's regime in the 30s, changing films to avoid losing revenue from Germany.
We've seen a similar pattern of US businesses' catering to China and Chinese censorship in the past decade.
The people of southern Sudan won freedom from the government of Sudan. Now the government of South Sudan is oppressing journalists that criticize it.
The island of Barbuda is destroying itself by sand mining to get short-term income.
Lots of irreplaceable things on Earth will be destroyed forever in this century, on the same logic. If we invest in sustainable activities, we can reduce this — but part of that is having fewer children.
Besides which, these beaches, this sand, will probably be inundated in this century anyway if we don't stop causing sea level to rise.
Now that Republicans and Democrats have created a shortage of jobs in the US, Republicans blame individual Americans for having no work.
What It's Like to Get a "National-Security Letter"
(that is, a demand to give data to the state secretly and you'll be imprisoned if you ever tell anyone).
Some plutocrats are drawn to geoengineering schemes to try to compensate for our CO2 emissions.
The sulfate scheme is toxic and fails to prevent the other harm done by CO2: ocean acidification, which can kill a large fraction of the life in the oceans.
Removing CO2 by fertilizing plankton would prevent both problems. It might be better than allowing the disaster to happen.
However, we could still probably prevent the disaster through renewable energy, which would be better than stopping it using drastic measures.
Republicans' response to Obama's climate plan is to extract more fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, Obama's plan isn't very different from that.
New York's night-mayor Bloomberg, and the thug chief Kelly, are still trying to defeat the bill to limit arbitrary searches.
The bill would also increase civilian control over the New York thugs, who have been found to systematically repress human rights.
Bloomberg explicitly advocates increased racism in these searches.
Such racism is wrong, but it's a secondary aspect of the wrong. The root of the wrong is allowing thugs to search people arbitrarily.
The UK says that anyone carrying out a demonstration at the site where a soldier was killed will be arrested. So much for political freedom in the UK.
Whether we agree with those people's politics is beside the point.
Hospital patients throw away 82,000 meals every day in the UK, because the food is so lousy they don't want to eat it. The staff say they would not eat it either.
This is the result of the budget cuts which are intended to ruin and then destroy the NHS.
US national security advisor Susan Rice downplayed the effect of Snowden's revelations. We will cite this when someone says they "hurt the US".
Of course, what such officials mean by "the US" is the power of the state, not the collectivity of Americans. We Americans are "the enemy" that people like Bradley Manning are accused of aiding.
"Biometric cars" will monitor their users in many ways, and of course the data will be warehoused for companies to hand to the NSA via PRISM.
We must insist on free software in our cars.
Iran's new president says he wants to reach a nuclear settlement with the US.
I hope the US looks for a settlement, and offers an end of sanctions as part of the deal. We can't take this for granted. Netanyahu will use his influence to prevent any settlement, because he wants the US and Iran to go to war rather than resolve differences peacefully.
The Iranian regime is a disgusting tyranny, which oppresses women and sometimes men too. But the US can't change this by conflict with Iran; the sanctions drive Iranians into supporting their government. Resolve this dispute, and the state will have nothing to distract the people with.
Everyone: thank
Wendy Davis for defending women's rights with courage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
The New York City Council adopted some limits on arbitrary searches of people's persons by the municipal thugs.
"Stop and frisk" without reasonable grounds for suspicion should not be allowed at all.
Everyone: please sign the Washington Statement on privacy rights and data.
In the US: join
a human
chain protest on Tuesday against disguised cuts in Social
Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Wendy Davis's filibuster won't permanently stop Texas Republicans from passing the law to close most abortion providers. But it may reinvigorate supporters of women's rights in Texas.
Germany and the UK blocked stricter EU fuel economy standards.
The German PM was obeying orders from car companies — a form of corruption common in the plutocracy. Companies powerful enough to issue such orders must not be allowed to continue to exist.
26 senators have demanded that the NSA come clean about its massive surveillance based on "secret law".
The mother of murder victim Stephen Lawrence says it will take time for the thugs (who tried to smear her and her relatives) to regain her trust.
Mere time should not suffice: unless they stop their violence and lies, and their sabotage of democracy, nobody should trust them.
The US mainstream media are pushing a federal shield law that would protect only the journalists of the mainstream media.
These are the same media that call Snowden a traitor; not much use for telling us what the government is really doing.
Global heating is wiping out forests in Oregon. When trees burn, they don't come back.
Obama is finalizing a rule that will require insurance to cover contraception for employees of most employers.
The policy as originally proposed was better, but this is pretty good.
The issue of "religious" employers would not exist if not for the misguided US policy of associating health care with employment. This causes several problems:
We
should tax
companies based on their income, and use the money to provide
health care for all Americans whether employed or not.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the
old
link was broken.]
With a big effort, one very harmful US software patent was invalidated.
One down, hundreds of thousands to go. It is a shame to talk about "bad patents" as if only some computational idea patents might be good.
Trying to make software safe from patent extortion by fighting patents one at a time — under the patent system's current rules — is like trying to make people safe from malaria by swatting mosquitos (and only the ones that come within reach of your hands). We need to get rid of them all, and I've proposed the way.
A Liberal like
me responds
to a mailing he received from Rand Paul.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
I agree with most of his points, but I disagree on one of them. I don't think we should disparage abortion as "the last resort", because human population growth is a big danger to life on Earth. I encourage people to have an abortion rather than a baby.
NYC fast food workers accuse their employers of stealing pay and obscuring it by making it hard to determine what what they were owed.
The US Army is blocking access from its computers to the Guardian's coverage of the NSA spying scandal.
It is afraid that soldiers who see the unapproved side of the story will be tempted to take the people's side instead of the government's side.
If you know anyone in the US military, offer to show that person the pages that are blocked.
Why Ecuador Would Be an Ideal Refuge for Edward Snowden.
Criminalizing libel is an injustice, but lots of countries do it, including the UK, France and Italy. A man was arrested in France just for saying "Sarkozy I see you" when he witnessed an injustice. We should campaign to abolish these laws, in whatever country suffers from them, but in the mean time this is no reason to condemn Ecuador.
Heavy rain in the Indian Himalayas is not unusual, but human construction and deforestation turned it into a disaster.
The UK says it will draw up a "national pollinator strategy".
I hope it is a serious attempt to protect pollinators rather than an excuse to keep using neonicotinoids for longer.
Dependence on fracking is a foolish policy even if it offers riches to those who get the profits.
President Rousseff has abandoned Lula's commitment to participatory democracy, human rights and popular movements, while focusing on increasing Brazil's economic strength — which has the effect of increasing the wealth and power of Brazil's rich.
UK citizens: sign this petition against the expulsion of Trenton Oldfield.
The NSA extracts data from the whole world, often through the idiotic cooperation of other governments.
Please don't call this "hacking" — it's an insult to us hackers to compare us with the NSA.
Everyone: rebuke Walmart for firing striking workers.
http://action.sumofus.org/a/walmart-firings/2/3/
http://afl.salsalabs.com/o/4023/c/33/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=6782
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
(Why not sign both?)
Obama is trying to punish
someone
who told us about the Stuxnet cyberattack.
The dead zone in Gulf of Mexico has reached the
largest
extent ever observed.
It is caused by nitrogen from sewage and fertilizer.
A cell
culture from an aborted fetus has "no doubt saved the lives of
millions of people" through development of important
vaccines. However, even if the abortion had not led to such tremendous
benefits, it was a good thing, because the woman who was pregnant did
not want another baby.
We must firmly reject the idea that there is something ethically
dubious about using aborted fetuses for research. These ideas come
from people who want to ban abortions, typically based on religious
dogma; they hope that tainting everything that relates to abortions
can help them achieve that nasty goal. If they kill millions of real
people along the way, that's just collateral damage.
I don't think there is any reason to require a patient's consent for
research use of removed tissue unless that research might somehow hurt
the patient. That is starting to become a possibility, since genetic
analysis of that tissue might reveal things about the patient which
could cause that patient to be denied health insurance or denied
employment. However, the same analysis can be done for other reasons
and cause the same dangers; meanwhile, those dangers can be prevented
entirely with proper health care laws.
Likewise, the idea of paying the patient from whom the tissue was
removed is absurd. What we need from medicine is not the chance of a
windfall on the rare occasions when our cells are used in a big enough
way that we'd get a significant sum. What we need is for important
research to be done, and for the resulting treatments to be available
to all those that need them. We can easily have this, if we resume
taxing businesses and the rich sufficiently.
The demand for this income comes from people who face the effects of
growing inequality that forces many down into poverty. If they joined
the campaign against plutocracy instead, we might all win.
One way to block a cell phone listening device from listening to you and
transmitting the conversation is to put it in a refrigerator, which
blocks
the radio signal.
However, if the programmers of the spy software are clever, they might
make it compress and save the audio and transmit it later when it gets
signal. Thus, blocking the signal is not reliably sufficient.
Blocking it from hearing you is more reliable, if you can be sure the
audio blockage is adequate.
George Orwell's birthday was celebrated in Utrecht by putting
party
hats on the surveillance cameras.
Foreign protesters released from prisoned in Tunisia describe the
horrible
conditions of the prison there.
Their apology deserved to be withdrawn, since it endorsed the idea
that their protest was wrong. However, it was bad that they
apologized for it at all. I understand how this might have required a
sacrifice they could not make, but it still would have been better to
refuse.
President Erdogan
accused
a reporter of treason for covering the protests in Turkey.
I wonder if examples of similar claims from the US against journalists
such as Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald encouraged him to think he can
get away with this.
A Sustainable
Energy Future is Within Our Grasp.
However, governments that kowtow to fossil fuel interests
won't grasp it.
The surveillance state, faced with inevitable unrest because of the
increasing poverty it encourages combined with the effects of
global heating,
will almost inevitably become a
terror
state.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to pardon Snowden.
Facebook shut down some pages about protests in Turkey
because they had
"fake
profiles". No surprise that people protesting in Turkey may not
want to tell the Turkish state who they are.
This shows why any communication system that requires users to
identify themselves is inadequate for democracy. That means Facebook
and Google+ are no good. (Google+ allows pseudonyms, but since Google
has an office in Turkey, Google would have to tell Turkey the user's
real name.)
Chilean thugs
removed protesting students who had occupied schools that are
supposed to be used as polling places.
Even if there are problems with the electoral system, or no good
candidates, I don't think occupying polling places is a good idea.
The Support, Don't Punish campaign aims
to restrain
the War on Drugs from boosting the spread of diseases.
Massive US infiltration of dissident groups is covered by limits that
turn out to
be quite
weak. And there is evidence that infiltrators have intentionally
started violence to discredit protests.
The New York Thug Department gave CIA agents
an excuse
to spy on Americans. And their attitude is, the more people they
spy on, the better.
Ecuador stood up to US threats to cancel a trade treaty
by cancelling
it unilaterally.
In addition, Ecuador offered the US aid in human rights training.
Mass
protests are called for Sunday in Egypt, by the group that has got
15 million signatures on a petition for Morsi's resignation.
James Comey's threat to resign blocked the NSA's massive surveillance
only until
it found
another legal excuse for that surveillance. That one, he
accepted, it appears.
The NSA
systematically collected
email metadata about everyone in the US for two years under Obama.
This apparently included every communication between people whose
identity the NSA did not know (since in that case it would not have
known that either party was a US citizen).
The UK's program to get disabled people to work
is failure
at its stated purpose. However, it was quite effective at
fabricating excuses to cut off benefits
by falsely
claiming that people were not disabled.
Glenn Greenwald gives suggestive evidence
his Skype
conversation was monitored.
Someone started violence before 100,000 started a
peaceful mass
protest in Chile.
I wonder if the violence was organized by thugs as a provocation.
That is standard thug tactics.
US citizens: call on the EPA to follow its own conclusions
and protect
Bristol Bay, by banning Pebble Mine, if you haven't done so
already.
The Koch brothers are recruiting lots of people to submit comments in
favor of the mine. Please help cancel them out!
Deregulation of logging in part of Australia
could wipe
out endangered species.
A report suggests that people across
Russia dislike
their government, but the Moscow-centered opposition failed
because it lacked a connection with people elsewhere in Russia.
The article seems to present this as a personal failing of the
opposition activists. I think that criticism is unfair; they can only
use what they have. However, this is something that activists in
Russia should think about.
Turkey
threatens to block Twitter unless it submits to Turkish
censorship.
It is ironic that "insulting Ataturk" is cited as a reason for Turkish
government censorship, since President Erdogan is the worst insult to
Ataturk that there could ever be.
This example shows that German censorship of Nazis sets a dangerous
precedent for other censorship. I detest the views of Nazis —
they would kill me just because of my ancestry — but censoring
any political views leads to spreading repression.
Texas Governor Perry called a special session of the state legislature
to try again
to pass
the anti-abortion bill.
If companies know all about your purchasing practices, and can offer
you prices based on that
knowledge, they
will stop competing. They will each arrive at the same price to
offer you.
Everyone: call on CNBC
to stop
denying global heating.
Everyone: ask President Correa
to give
Snowden asylum.
US citizens: call
for repeal
of the dangerous parts of the PAT RIOT Act.
Texas continues
eagerly executing people even though some of the people executed
were almost certainly innocent.
The EU has made provisions for future bank bailouts to be done at
the expense
of the banks.
This is how it should be, but a proper system also requires (1) making
sure that no bank can get too big, and (2) limiting the ways they deal
with each other so that failure of one bank can't pull down other
banks.
Almost 1/3 of the campaign funds in US elections now come from
the richest
.01% of Americans.
And this is without considering all the corporate money allowed by the
Corporations United
decision; a large fraction of that is surely under
these people's control too.
Brazil's president Rousseff has
proposed transport
improvements and other reforms to try to satisfy the protesters.
Snowden
Saga Reveals a Broken Whistleblower System.
The NSA deleted the dishonest "fact sheet" from its web site
but refuses
to acknowledge this.
A UK politician says that UK spies have found excuses to
ignore
legal limits on what they can do.
Mother Teresa exploited India's poor sick people,
raising
money but spending none of it on medical care for them.
It would not
surprise me if spies are just as bad.
US citizens: call
on Congress to approve Obama's global heating reduction plan.
It is not sufficient, but it is necessary.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to repair the Voting Rights Act.
Glenn Greenwald presents the
minor
issues that mainstream "journalists" want to use to smear him,
hoping we will be distracted from important issues such as how the
government spies on us.
The civil war in Afghanistan has an
ethnic
dimension, and is also a proxy for the rivalry between India and
Pakistan.
US citizens:
Thank
Wendy Davis for blocking the Texas anti-abortion law.
US citizens:
Support
Obama's plan for reducing global heating.
It is not enough, but we need to fight those who will oppose it anyway.
Please sign
this
one too.
The Supreme Court
gutted
the Voting Rights Act, opening the way for Republicans to block
millions of Americans (mostly black, Hispanic or poor) from voting.
The election of Obama has
mistakenly convinced many Americans that
there is no racism.
But even if Republicans are not racist, they are unscrupulous.
They don't need to hate blacks or hispanics or poor people
to try to disenfranchise them.
Thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, contractors employed for
torture in Abu Ghraib
can't be
sued in the US by their victims.
Drones make war, or assassination, so easy that leaders are very
tempted
to do it.
The article also shows in detail how Obama's criteria for approving
drone assassinations are deceptive and mean the opposite of what
they appear at first glance to mean.
Guatemalan peasants are being
uprooted
by big companies that grow sugar cane.
The EU proposes
substantial
penalties for the individuals and firms that distort market
indices such as Libor.
The Supreme Court
invalidated
the Defense of Marriage Act, saying that same-sex couples legally
married in any state are entitled to whatever benefits the US
government gives to married couples.
Republicans want to force Americans to go to work when sick,
and skip visits to the doctor
so
they won't be fired.
Clapper must be fired for
intentional
premeditated lying to Congress and the public.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
oppose
relaxing requirements for wiretapping.
The UK needs
a public inquiry into the thugs' systematic practice of spying on
and smearing people who get in their way.
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis
personally
spoke for almost 11 hours to block approval of an anti-abortion
law.
I have supported the campaign to reform the filibuster in the US
senate to require senators to personally speak on the senate floor as
long as it takes. I have not supported abolishing the filibuster
entirely, because it's a good thing that this form of resistance is
available when legislators are willing to go to great personal lengths
to do it.
The UK adopted long-term CO2 emissions targets but its actual policies
are insufficient
to achieve them.
A long-term target is a handy a way to avoid real action.
The Supreme Court made
it harder
for states to protect wetlands and other aspects of the
environment, giving landowners priority.
If taxes on the rich and business were high enough, we could afford to
"compensate" landowners when their land must be protected.
The German government objects strongly
to UK
spying.
It has a duty
to protect
its citizens from this spying.
The Espionage Act in the US
is much
harsher than the laws of other countries about leaks to the
public.
For the NSA, having an EFF sticker on your computer is considered a
"warning
sign".
Australia has taken Japan to the World Court for
its "scientific"
whaling.
US citizens: support a constitutional amendment
to assure
voting rights.
US
citizens: sign
this petition in favor of a constitutional amendment to reverse
the Corporations United decision.
(It is hypocritically referred to as the "Citizens United" decision,
but I prefer to call it what it really is.)
300 untested recreational drugs are
now being
sold, legally.
Some of them might be safer than tobacco or alcohol. Some might even
be as safe as marijuana or MDMA, but some might be more dangerous than
those. It would be better to steer people towards the safer drugs
that are now illegal.
US mainstream media
choose state
power over journalism, featuring "journalists" that demand the
arrest not only of Snowden but even of Glenn Greenwald.
US citizens:
tell
Israel's ambassador to the US that you oppose Israel's plan to
force 40,000 bedouin out of their homes.
Everyone else:
sign
this petition about the same point.
The UK government persistently
sends
asylum seekers back to be tortured, even if they were tortured
again since the previous time they were denied asylum.
If the state would rather not give them asylum, it should do more
to discourage torture in their home countries.
Obama stated possibly significant
plans
to reduce CO2 emissions, but the details will determine
whether they amount to anything.
If he is honest, he cannot deny that the Keystone XL pipeline will
greatly increase CO2 emissions. But he may yet look for an excuse to
pretend
it is not so.
The Natural Resources Defense Council
supports
the plan, and so does Greenpeace,
but even if it is carried out in a substantial way, it
won't
go far enough to prevent global heating disaster.
A former Bush forces
soldier in "intelligence" committed suicide
because he could
not bear to think of the suffering of the widows and orphans he had
made.
His guilt makes rational sense (I won't claim to understand it
emotionally, since I have never had an occasion to feel that way),
but I think if he had thought more calmly he could have found a better
response. For instance, he could have published the details of the
atrocities he felt guilty for, before committing suicide. Then his
death would have helped to make the world better. It's even possible
that the awareness that he was doing something to compensate for his
past wrongs might have assuaged his guilt enough for him to face
continuing to live, perhaps in Ecuador.
The sad general point is that so many soldiers sign up for the US
military based on the myth that they are going to "serve their
country". Many naive teenagers have never heard anyone question this.
If the idea of serving their country were 100% false, it would fade
away; but occasionally it is true, and that real complexity keeps the
simplistic myth alive. Young people who are indoctrinated in it are
easy to manipulate into thinking that's what it's going to be like for
them, and when they find out the truth they are caught and their lives
are more or less ruined.
The main witness in the murder of Stephen Lawrence suffered a many-year
campaign by UK thugs to
smear
him and frame him.
The Supreme Court made it
much
easier for states to disenfranchise minority group voters.
The Supreme Court not only denied the existence of racism, but the existence
of callous Republican by-hook-or-by-crook
voter
suppression efforts.
That's the Republican strategy for holding power: by turning US
elections into a sham.
Assad continues
prosecuting
nonviolent dissenters as "terrorists".
If only the US were an example of something better.
Lithuania:
Reopen Investigation Into Secret CIA Prisons.
A rally in Egypt for nonviolence was the opportunity for
violence
against journalists.
Recent "advances" in computing technology
deny
any possibility of privacy. But fools will tell you to rush to
use technology that spies on you and controls you, because otherwise
you'll be left behind in the 90s.
If you're foolish, you can heed their advice. I don't use these
"advances" — I think about the freedom and privacy implications
of Internet services before I use them.
The article uses the term
"cloud"
to encourage people not to think carefully about new technology. For
the sake of clear thinking, please don't use that either.
Arguments for banning tipping and
paying
staff a decent wage instead.
A senate amendment to the immigration bill calls for
extreme
militarization of the US border with Mexico.
I have to oppose this bill now, because of its requirements
for every American to be listed in a government data base
to be able to have a job.
Postcard from
Ecuador: A Living, Breathing Democracy.
With UK thugs,
innocent
people have everything to worry about. A special unit was set up
to smear innocent people, to suit the state or the
thugs themselves.
The UK's banksters are setting up a
new
tax haven in Kenya, even as they veto serious action against tax
havens in British territories.
This uses the pretense of denying the power that the UK government exercises
over those territories.
Israeli
authors campaign against expulsion of Palestinians from their
villages in the South Hebron hills.
US citizens: call on Congress
to ban
the toxic pesticide atrazine.
Netanyahu demonstrated his contempt for Kerry and the US-supported
"peace process"
by visiting
a school in an Israeli colony in Palestine a few days before Kerry
came to see him.
Saeb Erekat: The Israeli government has officially declared
the death of the
two-state solution, and says the international community must
"face reality".
Netanyahu acknowledges that Israelis who engage in pogroms against
Palestinians qualify
as terrorists, but says it would be disadvantageous to admit this.
I don't like stretching the word "terrorist", so I'd call them
"violent bigots".
In any case, the official Israeli
thugs protect
these unofficial thugs.
Demolition of Palestinian homes is the constant
background noise
of the occupation.
The UN
accuses Israel of killing and wounding Palestinian children, using
them as human shields in battle, and torturing them in prison.
Israeli journalists condemned the army
for arresting
Palestinian journalists.
GM Crops:
the Genetic
Colonialists.
Senator Warren attacked the head of the FHFA for
supporting high
interest rates for student loans.
The EU's broken emissions trading system
will negate
progress towards renewable energy.
A race rower opposes expulsion of the man
who protested
by stopping a UK boat race.
The US subpoena's Herbert Snorrason's email from gmail.com because of
his past
connection with Wikileaks.
Thousands joined the
latest Moral
Monday protest in North Carolina.
A Chinese state-run newspaper praised Snowden for
"tearing
off Washington's sanctimonious mask".
US condemnations of China's human rights abuses are typically valid,
and China's condemnations of US human rights abuses are typically
valid too. These two governments increasingly resemble and deserve
each other, but both Americans and Chinese deserve something better.
The IRS used various phrases to choose groups to study carefully,
but studied them all by the
same
criteria.
The IRS also looked for some
keywords
associated with progressive groups for special scrutiny.
The US infiltrated anti-war activists as "domestic terrorists";
this is proved because
one
infiltrator confessed.
UK thugs infiltrated
groups
that criticized the behavior of thugs (for instance, corruption
and apparent killing of prisoners).
The UK human rights group
Liberty
demands an investigation of whether it has been spied on.
Berlusconi has been found guilty of paying an underage prostitute,
and then
using
his official powers to cover it up.
I don't think it should be a crime to pay an underage prostitute. (It
should be a crime to force anyone into prostitution, but Ruby
Heartstealer was not being forced.) However, his misuse of power
deserves punishment.
It is important to treat prostitution as a normal part of society
because that will help protect prostitutes from violence, disease, and
extortion. In addition, reducing the stigma on prostitution will make
it easier for prostitutes to switch to some other line of work.
A 100-sq-mi wildfire in Colorado was
fed
by global heating in three ways: lots of hot weather, drought, and
trees killed by beetles that have spread due to higher general
temperature.
A UK man has been sentenced to prison
solely
for having copies of publications.
This is tyranny.
Senators demanded the NSA correct
misleading
statements in its "factsheet" about surveillance.
The US is threatening countries around the world to try to
stop
Snowden from reaching asylum.
The US seems to have
known
for a long time about oil in Haiti. Its puppet government in
Haiti may be intended to help the plutocrats take that oil for a
pittance.
Senator Sanders has proposed a
bill
that would narrow some of the PAT RIOT act surveillance powers.
I can't tell without more information and advice whether this would be
sufficient to make that law good, but it looks like a substantial
change in the right direction.
Bob Brown faces
100
years in prison, either for exposing a conspiracy to falsely smear
Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, or for the rant he posted when he
couldn't bear the government's threats about that.
There has been no investigation of the conspiracy he exposed.
This selective prosecution shows the government regards laws
as means of imposing its power.
Genetically modified crops
destroy
African agriculture by trying to impose inappropriate US
agriculture in its place.
Banksters in Ireland
lied
to sucker the state into giving them a bailout.
A Palestinian children's
puppet
festival in Jerusalem was shut down by Israel because it was
funded by the PA.
"Don't
tell me my affair with a teacher was abusive — I'll be the judge
of that."
The author dares to resist the pressure to pretend that Forrest is a
predator and that his lover was his victim, saying that we should
listen to her (she does not think so).
Everyone:
call
on Obama to refrain from foul play against Edward Snowden.
In the UK:
support Defend
the Right to Protest.
Misleading articles say global warming has slowed, but really
it's just that the
heat
retained by greenhouse gases is mainly going into the oceans in
recent years rather than into the air.
America's worst charities are less than 10% efficient in serving
the causes they raise funds for.
Here's
a list.
UK massive surveillance violates
the
European Convention on Human Rights, and EU law may make it
possible to force the UK to stop.
Arguing that the hardened power structures today's states are based on
make public opposition
inevitable.
The long drought in the US southwest is
destroying
forests there, through fires and through sheer dryness of the air.
A large fire can replace forest with grassland, and it can take
centuries for forest to spread back in, even assuming the climate
still permits trees to grow there.
The Heatland institute is
using
concern about bald eagles and condors to try to block wind farms.
We should make sure to protect eagles adequately as a species,
but if wind farms are not a significant threat to them, that is
no reason to stop building wind farms.
The biggest threat to California condors is the
lead
bullets in the carcasses they eat. That is where we need to put
the effort to protect them.
Oil companies will cease using noisemaking devices that injure marine
mammals' hearing, in some areas of the Gulf of Mexico, for
2.5
years.
Well, it's a start.
David Mery writes about how London
thugs arrested him because they
found it suspicious he was wearing a jacket in summer and did not look
at them when entering the train station — then
charged him with
"public nuisance" because they overreacted and shut the
train station.
The mere fact that "public nuisance" carries a potential
sentence of life imprisonment is already a reason to
convict the UK state of the crime of repression.
Radioactive waste has apparently
leaked
out of a double-shelled tank at Hanford, WA.
Increasing human population is leaving
no room
for many mammals and birds.
An Australian who was jailed for a nonviolent protest in the UK
will be further punished by
expelling
him.
I suppose his British wife and child will follow him into exile.
This is the War on Democracy at work.
The German parliament voted for a
resolution
against software patents.
Banks point out that they can't keep stimulating economies through
artificially
low interest rates.
The right way to stimulate the economy is with deficit spending.
A pregnant woman in Spain dropped her baby down a drain, because
she could
not afford an abortion.
It should not cost anything for a poor person to get an abortion.
An undercover UK thug
infiltrator says the state asked him to find a
way to smear
the family of a black teenager who was murdered by racists, so as
to blunt the pressure for a proper investigation.
The Egyptian army threatens proposed mass rallies against Morsi,
"if
they become violent".
The army can make them "become violent" whenever it wishes, and
has made a practice of
trying
protesters in military courts.
The population of Egypt is estimated at 84 million.
For 15 million to sign a petition is amazing.
Miami will be
inundated,
probably before the end of this century, due to the CO2 we have
already put into the air.
At least a third of south Florida will vanish with it. And if we don't
curb the greenhouse gases soon, more of Florida will vanish. And good bye to
any chance of restoring the Everglades, too, if they are under water.
The State of Florida does not recognize this, and I can guess why: the
current landowners want to sell their land to someone who doesn't
realize it will melt away. This is comparable to the
carbon
bubble.
Margaret Doughty was
given
US citizenship.
She was
in
danger of being refused it because regulations say that
conscientious objectors have to present an endorsement from a church.
Labor
Group: Walmart Fired Five Workers For Participating In Strikes.
House Republicans want to shift federal education funds
away
from the poorest schools.
US citizens:
support
the Udall amendment (saying that human rights don't apply to
corporations) and the Tester amendment (affirming the right to
regulate spending on elections).
Edward Snowden left Hong Kong (which refused to detain him) for
Moscow,
reportedly to head for another country for asylum.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to take strong steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Noam Chomsky: NSA surveillance is an
attack
on American citizens.
More of what
he said.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter via 1-STOP-323-NSA
and call for an open investigation of the NSA's spying programs.
Erdogan insists he is not authoritarian, even as he sends
thugs to
break up a
memorial
for protesters who were killed by thugs.
A large
Redd project in Indonesia might protect orangutan habitat.
If Birute Galdikas thinks it is good, I'm inclined to trust her.
US citizens: call for Louisiana water projects
to protect
brown bears.
In the US: call on PBS
to stand
up to Koch brothers money and show Citizen Koch.
Why Britons should care whether
their DNA
is in the national registry.
If you allow grocery stores
to track your
purchasing habits, in some cases they use that to charge
you more.
The latest argument of supporters of massive surveillance: we must let
the state take away our freedom because otherwise there will be a big
terrorist attack and
the state
would then take away even more freedom.
Can you spot the unstated pernicious assumption?
Some Western clothing sellers
are agreeing
to safety requirements for their factories, but Walmart is still
marred and the Gap is a gap.
Once "security" surveillance breaks loose from control by the public,
it
can mission-creep
without bounds.
Julian Assange
asks, who is
the real traitor to the US?
The US risks
getting stung
by Stinger missiles again.
(Warning: be on the lookout for sarcasm in the article.)
Unapproved genetically engineered wheat is
probably present
in small quantities in the US seed supply.
If wheat is not exposed to Roundup, this modified wheat would have no
advantage over normal wheat, so it would probably propagate but not
increase as a fraction of the total supply.
"Keep Calm and Carry On" is the proper response for terrorism, but
not for
plutocratic government. That calls for massive protests.
Republicans want to require the NSF to fund only research that will
have very
important results.
This is ridiculous, since we can't tell in advance which lines of research
will turn out to have very important results.
Moroccan thugs regularly convicts dissidents in occupied Western
Sahara of crimes based on
torturing
confessions out of them.
Sometimes they forcibly
push a man's hand against a fabricated statement to "sign" it.
On the great inequality and poverty in Brazil that motivates the
protests.
This inequality and poverty occur despite strong programs to help the
poor, which have reduced poverty in recent years. The US, by
contrast, is getting worse under the plutocracy. I hope most
Americans will put a stop to plutocracy before it makes them as poor
as most Brazilians.
Canada threatens to imprison anyone
wearing
a mask during an "unlawful assembly", which threatens prosecution
of anyone protesting with a mask if the thugs say the protest is
forbidden.
US citizens: call
on the EPA not to raise the allowed levels of glyphosate.
Some new discoveries associating glyphosate with
harm
to human health.
It will take more time and study to be sure what level of harm
glyphosate causes, but since the issue is in doubt, we should treat
it cautiously.
This is in addition to
other
dangerous substances in Roundup.
The Supreme Court is bringing back
Lochnerism,
the discredited doctrine that laws can't limit what sort of contracts
companies can make with workers or customers.
It seems to me that even rejecting the idea that corporations
deserve human rights does not go far enough — because even
if your employer is a human being rather than a corporation,
it should still be possible for laws to limit what he can put
in a contract with you.
The corporate concentration of the Internet is
ideal
for massive surveillance.
The NSA isn't satisfied yet — it wants Congress to give
legal
immunity to companies that help the NSA spy on people.
One variant of UK
Internet filters does not (as first thought) block YouTube by
default. But it does block things such as the Jargon File (i.e., the
Hacker's Dictionary) and a bunch more surprising sites.
They might correct these specific problems, and the errors vary from
one scheme to another, but these censorship schemes are always full of
errors. After all, there are too many web pages to have humans judge
them all, so the filtering has to be computed by algorithms.
Even if there were no errors, censorship is an injustice. Remember
that the government wants to impose these filters on everyone except
those with private Internet connections.
The
NSA can easily afford to store recordings of all the phone calls
made in the US.
The Snowden Principle — and how
the authorities and their pets
respond every time it is applied.
The accusations against Snowden say his revelations will "be used to
the injury of the United States", but Obama's
War on Journalism is
what's doing the US injury.
A
journalist reports of a visit to Guantanamo, where he was not
allowed to talk to any prisoners and hardly even allowed to see them.
The guards say the prisoners are lying when they talk about the horrible
conditions, but did not allow the journalist to check for himself,
so I believe the prisoners.
I'd like to clear up some erroneous information about
where I stand
that is circulating on 4chan and perhaps elsewhere.
Obama lied
when he said, "I can say unequivocally is that if you are a
U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls and the NSA
cannot target your e-mails."
By contrast, Clapper this time played a word game, making a statement
that didn't really mean what it appeared to mean.
The NSA saves all communications that it "happens to collect" that are
encrypted
or use Tor.
If you are using encryption because you're discussing committing a
crime, and you never want it to come out, that might be of concern to
you. As for those of us that use encryption on general principles to
reduce massive surveillance, I don't think we should let this deter
us.
Bills in Congress would
declassify
the decisions of the FISA court; legislators don't like being kept
so much in the dark.
US citizens: call
on Congress to protect endangered species from
global heating.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to protect whales from undersea oil drilling
in the Arctic.
US citizens: call
on Obama and the EPA not to let frackers' friends substitute
themselves for the EPA in investigating fracking.
Guantanamo guards have adopted
two
new tortures for prisoners on hunger strike.
Obama is not "working on" releasing Shaker Aamer and the other
prisoners. There is no "work" for him to do. He can order them
released at any time, and the remaining bureaucratic work would be for
others to do.
What's happening is that Obama refuses to release them, and wants to
pretend he is not responsible for the decision. Quite a change from,
"the buck stops here."
How global heating
is expected to affect New York City in
this century.
Obama has ordered
criminal
charges against US government employees who don't report someone they
suspect might be a whistleblower.
The example of Snowden shows that this won't stop real whistleblowers,
but it will sow the atmosphere of a police state throughout government
agencies.
Once they are used to living in it themselves, they will see no
reason to hesitate to impose it on the rest of us.
There are doubts about evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria
because of
unclear
chain of custody of the evidence.
That doubt is only significant if the evidence could have been faked.
I don't know whether it would be feasible to fake it.
However, it is not crucial, because there is
no
way to intervene in Syria and expect a good result. Even if Assad
has used chemical weapons, it would be a mistake to intervene.
In the US: tell
Domino's Pizza to stop firing workers who
try to organize.
Supermarket purchase-tracking cards make shopping more expensive,
but that's
just the
beginning of the harm.
Roundup contains other "inactive" ingredients besides glyphosate,
and one of them
appears
to be toxic.
Don't believe Comey is a supporter of human rights. He
supported
waterboarding, wire-tapping and imprisonment without trial.
Obama says that the "Privacy and Civil Liberties Board" will keep
massive surveillance in check, but that board seems to have been
stacked with
people
who won't try very hard — if it does anything at all.
GCHQ, the UK equivalent of the NSA, is recording
phone
calls and emails as well as metadata from undersea cables.
The system of oversight is more
loophole
than substance.
Companies are withdrawing ads from Facebook to pressure it to
block
mysogynist material, including photos of women who have been
attacked.
I expect I would find those photos unpleasant to look at, and I would
prefer to avoid them. I understand that advertisers don't want their
ads shown next to those photos.
However, if commercial pressure makes Facebook delete certain
material, that would be censorship. When a single company is as
powerful as Facebook is, its decision to refuse to publish something
qualifies as censorship.
In other words, it is wrong for the range of material you can publish
to be decided by what companies want to have their ads appear next to.
Corporatizing
National Security: What It Means.
If the NSA stopped outsourcing its work,
some abuses would be prevented, but we must
also limit what the NSA can collect about us.
Unsurprisingly, the World Food Prize was
given
to genetic engineers. The Food Sovereignty Alliance says their
work goes in the wrong direction for ending hunger.
Cities should use
public
banks, not big banks.
Aside from this, Americans must demand increased taxes on the rich,
and on businesses. They must pay their fair share, which is larger
than the fair share of anyone less rich or less powerful.
Mining US students'
school
records and personal data, thanks to the Gates Foundation.
Some US workers are being
forced
to pay bank fees to get their pay.
2
million people have joined the protests in Brazil.
When Chen Guangcheng arrived at NYU, he was given phones and an iBad
which had
special
spyware. That was perhaps intended to make them report his
movements to China's Big Brother was well as to the US Big Brother.
Metadata is more convenient than the "content" of our communications
for building a
dossier
about each one of us.
One of the authors of the McLibel leaflet was an
undercover
thug.
Comparing Obama with Bush is a distraction — we need to compare
both of them with
the
Constitution and the standard of human rights.
The first cluster bombs were dropped on England in 1943. Deadly bomblets
still
show up occasionally.
More recently,
the
US has dropped large numbers of cluster bombs
which often kill children that play with them.
Massive forest fires in Sumatra, in many cases set for the purpose of
deforestation (probably bad in itself), are making the
air
in Singapore unbreathable.
Increasing CO2 in the air seems to be causing
spiny
bushes to take over Namibia, making survival difficult for
farmers' cattle and for cheetahs.
US citizens:
sign the Education
Declaration.
The US Supreme Court allowed big businesses to impose contracts
denying their clients (small businesses) the
right
to class action lawsuits.
The US had a similar problem in the first third of the 20th century:
the Supreme Court persistently opposed attempts to limit what
contracts could require, and that gave businesses dangerous and unjust
power over workers.
Genetic engineering
fails
to help feed the poor. Given the requirements for pesticides, it
may not be sustainable either.
Jeremy Forrest was
convicted
of "abducting" his pupil, who wept as she heard the verdict. Evidently
they still love each other, and this is a typical legal lie.
I am glad for her that she has tried to help his case, because even
though she failed to save him from conviction, she will know she did
the right thing, and will not have to feel guilty.
From the information published, it appears that Forrest is not good at
relationships, and doesn't have as good judgment as most adults. A
teenager of 16 may not know her mind either. If these two were let
alone, I would be surprised if their relationship were to last a year.
It would probably have ended by now — and that would have been a
much better outcome, for both of them, than what the court has done.
But that failure is not a certainty. Their relationship might last
despite the adverse circumstances, or even because of them.
When the NSA taps Americans' communication "inadvertently",
which it does often, it is allowed to keep and use the recordings
on a
wide
variety of grounds.
The monetary cost and practical burden of the present soccer world cup
and the coming 2016 Olympics are a
substantial
grievance in Brazil.
It may henceforth be
more
difficult to get countries to agree to host them. (That article
suggests that world leaders trust Skype and Facebook; I guess the
author doesn't know how foolish it is to trust them.)
If you live in a democracy and your city is proposing to hold
Olympic
games, organize now to scupper the bid!
Bruce Schneier:
has
the US started an Internet war?
One Congressman has been
allowed to see the TPP. He
described it as a "punch in the face to the middle class of America."
The TPP is likely to undermine drug safety and food safety
regulations, and make medicines
more
expensive.
In broad terms, it
would
put businesses above governments.
The TPP would be the culmination of a long process in which
businesses have negated state power in order to use the state
against us.
Democracy means that the many non-rich unite to be stronger than
the rich. To restore democracy, we must establish a state that
will keep businesses under firm control no matter how they squirm.
US citizens: ask
your elected officials to oppose intervention in the Syrian civil
war.
The Supreme Court ruled that federal anti-HIV funds
cannot
be conditioned on taking a pledge to condemn prostitution.
The president of the Associated Press warns that Obama is
winning
his war on journalism.
Senators Wyden and Udall say that the NSA director is
bullshitting
us when he claims that massive surveillance prevented attacks.
However, even if it had, mass surveillance is the bigger danger.
Everyone: support the strike by Chicago fast food workers.
[archived link]
I saw an
article which makes a false assumption that calls for criticism:
it equates recognizing some negative characteristic in a
person with despising or mocking it.
Friendship does not call for denying facts about a person, not even
the fact that you find something about your friend annoying. Denial
isn't required. You can even criticize them constructively. However,
being a good friend means not sneering at the annoying characteristics
that you find in your friends.
Republicans helped
defeat
the farm bill. They realized their constituents wouldn't stand for
cutting food stamps as the Republican leaders wanted to do.
Professionals must not store information about their clients in
servers that might
yield
that data to Big Brother.
The lesson is, store your data on your own computers, not in some
service.
The article uses the term "cloud", but that term
clouds
the issues. I think we should avoid it.
US house prices are increasing, but it's
big
real-estate businesses that are buying; Americans who want a place
to live can't afford them.
Food production is increasing
more
slowly than the human population.
We need more effort in reducing birth rates.
The US is on the brink of another
"war
of choice".
Children are better off in countries that
(1)
give better care to old people and (2) give less profit to the
banks.
"Free trade" was
never
really about trade. That's why I call them
"free
exploitation agreements".
Israel says it takes 7 minutes to pass through a checkpoint in the
annexation wall, but empirically it takes
28
minutes — on a good day.
On a bad day, it can take an hour; but this does not count the hours
waiting in line. Nor does it count the radiation from the body
scanners (we don't know what sort of radiation they use).
The FBI is starting to use surveillance drones
in
the US.
(European) Data Protection Responses To PRISM
"A
Smokescreen".
Karzai's
complaints scuttled the planned meeting between US and Taliban
representatives.
Afghan women are worried that the Taliban will deny them
what
rights Karzai's regime has established for them.
The US should have armed Afghan women. Who knows what sort of gun
a woman has under her burqa, and if a woman kills a talib, there will be
no way to identify her afterward. Eventually the Taliban would be forced
to order women not to wear burqas.
The commander at Guantanamo intentionally responds to the hunger
strike with
extreme
cruelty.
30%
of women suffer violence from their lovers at some time.
Everyone: support
the Right to Heal initiative for a hearing into the human rights
and health impacts of the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Mimi and Eunice
calendar.
Protesters in Brazil say that
education
is more important than football.
Of course, that is true, but it is amazing to see large numbers
of Brazilians come to their senses and recognize this.
The FBI's "time-tested" way of judging whether shooting an unarmed man
was justified:
wait a while
and say "yes".
US citizens:
thank Senator
Udall for opposing US involvement in Syria.
Jim Hightower says,
repeal
the PAT RIOT Act.
US citizens:
Call
on your senators to confirm Gina McCarthy as head of the EPA.
US citizens:
call
for sanctions on Iceland for killing whales.
US citizens:
call on
the senate to investigate intelligence gathering by the FBI, NSA
and CIA.
Mali has
reached
a cease-fire with Touareg separatists.
A UK man has been
sentenced
to 11 months in prison for refusing to wear clothes.
What horrible damage his nakedness must do to anyone in the vicinity
;-). I will spare people the sign of my naked body, but I admire his
indomitable spirit.
U.S.
Airports Face Increasing Threat From Rising Seas.
Look
Out Below: Antarctic Melting From Underneath.
Illinois
Adopts Nation's Strictest Fracking Regulations.
Laws like this, if enforced, will give Americans a fighting chance
to protect their drinking water from fracking. However, there's
also the issue of CO2 pollution.
Republicans are
very
creative in finding ways to cut food stamps and condemn Americans,
who are increasingly poor, to hunger.
An interview with George Annas, M.D., about
force-feeding.
Among the 48 men that Obama plans to hold prisoner without trial,
there are
5
that Obama would like to try in civilian courts.
Imprisonment without trial negates the idea of human rights. Every
one of those prisoners deserves to have a fair trial or be released
promptly. They deserve this because they are human beings. They
deserve this whether they understand the idea of human rights or not
— because the US is supposed to understand it.
If an honest and decent president told Congress, "Permit trying these
people in civilian courts, or I will have to release them," Congress
would probably allow them to be tried. Has Obama ever been honest and
decent as president?
Bank of America Whistle-blower Bombshell: "We Were Told to Lie" to
Rip
Off Borrowers.
This will give us another chance to see which US officials
are on our side and which are on the plutocrats' side.
Is
the Spying Comey Approved More Important Than the Spying He Opposed?
How Can Any Company Ever Trust Microsoft Again?
Collecting metadata is
worse
than listening to you. Instead of what you say, it records what
you do.
The latest Republican idea:
teach
gender stereotypes in elementary school.
He need not bother. These stereotypes (and lots of others) are taught
informally to everyone.
Glenn Greenwald explains with great care, and shows how the FISA court
"oversight" is
so
weak it is effectively none.
The ACLU has sued the New York Thug Department over its
systematic
infiltration of Muslim groups.
US campaigns for "Internet freedom" in other countries — a
laudable goal — have been undermined by seeing the US
contempt
for Internet freedom at home.
US citizens: support the
Citizens' Climate Lobby.
US citizens:
call
for banning neonicotinoid pesticides in the US.
An increasing fraction of Israelis, now almost 1/4, say they favor
evacuating Israel's colonies in Palestine in exchange for
peace
with Palestine.
Google is
challenging
the restrictions on reporting the extent of government
surveillance under the PAT RIOT Act.
US citizens:
ask
your senators to push for transferring nuclear waste from "spent
fuel pools" to dry casks.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
for a Massachusetts law to require labeling of GMOs in food.
Almost
a thousand Israeli soldiers have gone to Breaking the Silence
to confess horrible things they have seen or done in the occupation of
Palestine.
The army responds with excuses for not investigating these reported
crimes.
Ishmael Coovadia was incensed when he received a certificate saying
that the Jewish National Fund had planted trees "in his honor",
on
top of an erased Arab village.
US citizens: tell
Congress the EPA should continue making mines pay for cleaning up
their toxic messes.
Israeli colonists in Palestine burned
1000
olive trees last Saturday.
Racist vandals
attacked
cars and wrote "Arabs out" in the Arab village of Abu Ghosh.
Abu Ghosh is full of restaurants that cater to non-Arab clients. On
my first visit to Israel, my Israeli relatives brought me there for
dinner. They told me that the that the residents of Abu Ghosh were
considered allies of the Jews in 1947.
Israel made a deal with Palestinians so that they would not
ask for UNESCO protection of the old irrigation works of Battir.
Once the UNESCO deadline was passed, Israel
cheated
on the deal.
For Palestinians whose homes or land fall in the "seam zone"
between the annexation wall and the border of Palestine,
ordinary
activities require military permits which the Israeli military
makes rather hard to obtain.
A different form of oppression is opposed on Palestinians in
"area
C", which contains a large fraction of the West Bank.
The EU is considering placing a
limit
on biofuels made from food crops. Agribusiness companies are
trying to prevent this, so that they can go on with wasteful
production and make poor people around the world go hungry.
The most popular candidate for mayor of Jalapa is
Morris
the cat. (Not the same Morris that was used in an advertising
campaign.)
Jalapa gave its name to jalapeńo peppers, which are too spicy
for me to eat. It is home to a museum that displays fascinating Olmec
sculpture.
In the 1970s, Woodstock the cat ran for head of MIT's student
government, with the slogan, "A good lack of student government
requires a good lack of students." MIT called the votes for Woodstock
"spoiled ballots" and refused to say how many of them were cast;
however, some calculations show that Woodstock almost certainly won.
Woodstock was run over by a car a couple of years later, in what was
suspected of being political retaliation. Watch out, Morris!
However, who is mayor of a city ought to make more difference than
who was the head of MIT's student government.
Global heating
will devastate agriculture in parts of Africa and Asia
within
20 years, throwing millions (and then hundreds of millions) into
poverty.
A Russian official proposes Russia should arrange to
imitate
the US in Internet surveillance.
China has imposed tighter censorship on Tibet, by
requiring
all Internet access and mobile phones to be identified by people's
official names.
This shows why restriction of anonymous commenting is a dangerous
injustice.
The UK Supreme Court told other courts to
limit
their use of the new "secret court sessions" law. This does not
mean that the danger of that law has been eliminated.
The
World Food Prize, Brought to You By Monsanto.
High levels
of radioactive substances are in the groundwater near the
Fukushima nuclear reactors.
The NSA continues offering
fear and
vague claims to justify massive surveillance.
The latest Moral Monday protest in North Carolina had
1000
participants.
More about these
protests
against right-wing cruelty.
The US has a long history of
applying its
spy mechanisms to domestic dissent: it's in the nature of such
surveillance to wander off its original target.
Fisa
Court Oversight: A Look Inside a Secret and Empty Process
US citizens:
tell
Congress to support Meals on Wheels.
Republicans reminded US women of their
hostility
to abortion rights.
I hope women will respond appropriately, and that means more than just
voting for candidates that support abortion rights. If you go out with
a Republican, you're asking to be mistreated.
Doctors call on Obama to allow Guantanamo prisoners
independent
medical examinations.
A UK report has proposed
substantial
changes in punishing banksters for misconduct.
On the causes
and demands of the protests that have spread across Brazil.
"Beewashing": pesticide companies are hosting events about how to
"save the bees", and inviting some serious scientists to them, to
focus the public's attention on
all avenues
except the one that leads to their pesticides.
The US (and Karzai) will enter
negotiations
with the Taliban.
Using a mobile phone while walking appears to be
dangerous.
Assange says he
would
not dare leave the Ecuadorian embassy even if
Sweden dropped its extradition request; his lawyers say the UK would
extradite him to the US instead.
Germany is
trying
to weaken new EU rules for automobile emissions.
Everyone: Call on Israel to allow students
to leave
Gaza for study.
Destabilization
is propagating
between countries in Africa. The overthrow of Gaddafi allowed
Islamist fanatics to get arms.
Should we have helped Gaddafi crush the uprising and stay in power? I
don't think so, but the countries threatened by Islamist fanatics
deserve help in fighting them off.
US thugs
are using drivers' license photos to identify people from
photos
in many
kinds of circumstances.
Turkish
thugs attacked
marching union members in Ankara.
Some banksters involved in Libor
rigging have
been charged.
However, they seem to be small fry.
An Ethiopian project to dam the Nile could
leave Egypt
short of water.
A segment of Ethiopians, in cities,
have found
prosperity.
But that doesn't excuse letting companies drive poor
Ethiopians off
their land.
Africa 'Ripped
Off Big Time' by Foreign Resource Firms, according to the head of
the African Development Bank.
The demand for elephant ivory
is destabilising
central Africa.
UN Challenges Australia
to Protect
Great Barrier Reef.
After thugs attacked, Turks turn
to protesting
by standing silently.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
tell
your legislators not to give the state increased power to spy on
us.
US citizens: tell
public officials, don't let the G8 spew more austerity.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to
repeal
parts of the U SAP AT RIOT Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on the Chief Justice to apply the usual ethical code for US judges
to the Supreme Court.
Brazil's biggest cities are
overrun
with protests sparked by an increase in bus fares.
Greek public broadcasting will
continue
operating while it is restructured.
The next crucial question is whether the restructure provides an
opportunity to increase political control over what they broadcast.
Big Food is finding clever
new
ways to market junk food to children, including various sorts of
computing that you ought to reject anyway.
The Obama regime has published the
list
of people that are being held
indefinitely without trial in Guantanamo.
Clearly identifying the injustice can be the first step towards
correcting it. But if we don't push hard, it could be the next
step towards making it "normal".
A 100-acre spill in Canada of water tainted by
petroleum
toxins killed every plant there.
The NSA program
"BLARNEY"
appears to collect data from all the communications flowing through
certain major Internet hubs.
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been
imprisoned
for a year, while awaiting charges of "blasphemy" that could get
him killed.
US/North
Carolina: Don't Deter Workers From Reporting Abuses.
SNAP, which helps many Americans avoid extreme poverty, is
being
cut by Congress.
Fracking
Is Already Straining U.S. Water Supplies.
Publishers plan to alter the words in individual copies of e-books
as a
sort of watermark.
This technique depends on making people who get copies
identify themselves. Since you should never identify
yourself when acquiring a book, this won't affect you
if you are protecting your freedom properly.
Corporate-written US textbooks have
forgotten the
significance of the Pentagon Papers, and don't tell students that
the US lied about the war.
The US will
consider a marine reserve for the Bering Sea.
US citizens:
call
for passage of employment nondiscrimination protection for gays
and transgenders.
A major Thai shrimp farm company
uses
child labor, and abuses their workers. US companies such as
Walmart have various ways of disguising and whitewashing what's going
on.
Shrimp farms cause
other
problems, too.
Food aid does a short-term job, but building
long-term
food sustainability is also necessary.
Unfortunately, US government and plutocratic actions have the opposite result,
in
Haiti and
in
Africa.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to support reasonable gun control
legislation.
The
5 Uncontrollable Urges of the US Security State.
Explaining how free exploitation treaties enable powerful companies to
make
sustainable development impossible.
The Green Shadow Cabinet calls on everyone to
oppose
the TPP.
It's democracy or plutocracy.
The US and EU are planning a new
"trade"
agreement that would surely involve preventing governments from
protecting citizens from abuses by businesses.
Cameron pretends
that it would create jobs.
That's what they say about every proposal to increase the plutocrats' power.
They use one-sided reasoning to try to justify it and hope it gives
the bought legislators enough of an excuse.
Snowden's revelations have invigorated the
campaign
for strict protection in users' data in the EU.
Bono's ONE campaign, and the Gates Foundation, are supporting the "New
Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition", which pressures African
governments to permit
corporate
land-grabs and patented seeds.
Any nutrition and food security resulting from this plan will be exported
to the wealthier inhabitants of the wealthier countries, while those
dispossessed (often by force) from their land face precarious lives
or start guerrilla wars.
Morsi appointed a member of an Islamist militant group as the
governor
of Luxor.
His
answers when asked about what access the NSA has to record your
phone calls are not entirely clear.
As US employers pay less and less, so that workers
need
food stamps, sneering Republicans cut food stamps saying they help
shirkers.
The idea that "If you don't work, you don't eat" is pure injustice
in a country like the US that doesn't offer enough jobs for everyone.
The Chinese government
praises
Snowden while Chinese people try to hint, despite censorship, that
China is no better than the US.
An Israeli minister has
openly
proposed annexing part of Palestine, rejecting the very idea of
making peace.
Jeremy Forrest's teenage girlfriend said in court that she was going
to run away in any case, and he
went
with her so she would not be alone.
Obama
says he will
unblock shipment of medicine to Iran.
Obama
Needs to Show Some Spine on Guantanamo Closure.
However, Obama only has spine for attacking whistleblowers.
There are good and bad ways to close Guantanamo.
Moving the prison to US territory while continuing imprisonment
without trial is what Obama
tried
before.
New York Times editors and columnists think Snowden should have obeyed
orders
instead of his
oath to defend the Constitution.
The surveillance state has an excuse to block every avenue to find out
what it is doing. If we could count on the president, congress, or
the courts to keep it in check, we would not depend on whistleblowers.
Why
Our Schools Are Broke: Five Years of Corporate State Tax Avoidance.
The latest generation of sincere
American
patriots choose the principles America is supposed to stand for,
against the government's contempt for them.
Syria is awash with weapons, except for heavy ones, and any that are
sent to the rebels will be
traded
to jihadis.
Everyone:
Tell
Monsanto to provide real information on the side-effects of
Roundup.
Nevada has decided to replace a pollution-spewing coal-powered
electric plant
with renewable
generation.
This is a step in the right direction, but if the coal is exported to
be burnt elsewhere instead, this won't make a difference as regards
global heating.
We need to reduce the total amount of coal mining in
the world, and drastically.
The UK
spied on diplomats' messages at G20 meetings in London in 2009.
It planned to snoop on
a Commonwealth
meeting too.
More polio
vaccination workers were shot in Pakistan by Islamist fanatics.
This parallels the Christian theocrats that keep girls ignorant so
that they get pregnant, then kill them by denying them abortions.
However, this is even more deadly, since it could keep polio a real
danger world-wide.
How Google and Silicon
Valley Screw
Their Non-Elite Workers.
Tibetan singers who praised self-immolation protests have
been sentenced
to prison.
A Tunisian singer was sentenced to prison
for "insulting
the police". He called them "dogs"; I think "thugs" is a more
accurate description of how they attacked people at the end of the
trial.
Residents of Burlington, Vermont
say thousands
of people will lose their homes if the F-35 is based there,
because it will subject their homes to unacceptable noise levels.
TransCanada gave US thugs training
in treating
pipeline protesters as "terrorists".
When the US government talks about how it "protects us from
terrorists", remember that this means protecting TransCanada from the
Americans it threatens.
Vietnam
continues arresting
bloggers.
Vietnam depends on the friendship of the US, which apparently does
little to pressure it not to be a tyranny.
The UK will
impose filtering
on all public wifi access points, supposedly to "protect
children".
That means anyone who isn't an Internet subscriber will be "protected"
by censorship even if he is not a child. And since these filterage
lists are full of errors, lots of material that isn't porn will be
blocked.
15 reporters have
been attacked
in Guinea since elections were announced.
The IRS tracks lots of
people's financial
transactions.
Too bad this will only catch the small fry. The big tax evaders, such
as Apple, have procured laws to let them get away with it.
US thugs
are building
up large DNA databases.
Brazilian thugs
attacked nonviolent protesters against a raise in bus fares.
The Government Accountability Project discusses the issue
of Snowden's
whistleblowing.
Obama built
a slippery
slope in Syria and is now sliding down it.
Margaret Doughty is being denied US citizenship because
her pacifist
views are not based on religion.
A discussion between a congressman and an official suggests that NSA
analysts looking at people's metadata are allowed to
decide
on their own which of those people fit a pre-approved general
criterion, and then wiretap them.
This supports Snowden's statement that he could listen to anyone's
phone calls. Perhaps he would not have been authorized to do this
arbitrarily, but he could have done it.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to let the Yemenite prisoners in Guantanamo go home.
US citizens:
call
for an end to "signature strikes", a term used, perversely, when
they don't know who is being attacked.
Sectarian warfare killed
1000
people in Iraq in May.
This is the continuation of Bush's invasion, so the question of
how many Iraqis he killed has an answer that keeps changing.
Now that one of the Koch brothers has
bought
a plaza at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, how about an
installation of the permanent pile of tar sands waste that his company
makes?
Wall Street Is Winning the Long War
against Post-Crash
Regulation.
The riots in Stockholm were caused
by kicking
the poor out of the center of the city, which caused segregation
and despair.
Uri Avnery: Israel's greatest victory turns out to be
its greatest
problem.
US citizens: object to prosecuting the man who collected evidence
against the Steubenville rapists,
who faces
more imprisonment than they got.
Microsoft and
others tell
the NSA about security-related bugs before publishing fixes.
Ecuador's new media law
imposes punishments
on reiterated criticism of anyone.
While this is not as bad as punishing a single instance of criticizing
someone, it still violates freedom of speech.
Libyans who published a cartoon in favor of women's rights are being
charged
with "insulting Islam", plus similar crimes that amount to excuses
for censorship. They could be executed.
If this is what Islam means, mere insults are not enough to do justice
to it.
We should not defend them by arguing that the cartoon did not mention
Muhammad, since that grants undue legitimacy to the idea that they
would be wrong if they had.
The Australian state
has removed
13,000 aboriginal children from their families, accusing various
kinds of mistreatment or neglect, but without trying to help the
parents much if at all.
The population of Australia is around 23 million, so the aboriginal
population is around 600,000. If 1/4 of them are children, that means
almost 10% of these children have been taken away from their families.
That's not an entire "generation", but it is a large fraction.
John le Carre, a former spymaster, explains how
they manipulate
politicians as well as the agents they run, and how the UK's
secret courts would be unnecessary except to cover up torture,
kidnaping and killing.
Just now, as the NSA says "If you knew what we know, you would let us
monitor everything about everyone", we must challenge them "Prove it
or shut up."
US telecom companies operating outside the US
have given
the NSA back doors.
A soldier who fought in Afghanistan says the US
must try
hard to get some sort of agreement as it withdraws troops.
Unfortunately, the Taliban have no reason to think they need to agree
on anything.
The UK's deal for ending tax havens will help investigate specific
companies but won't be of much use
for preventing
corrupt cash flows.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter
to oppose
increasing the US military budget.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Jihadis in Syria now have
shoulder-launched
anti-aircraft missiles.
Erdogan's thugs
attacked the protesters in Gezi square, and drove them
out with
tear
gas and blows.
Misguidedly loyal Democrats defend massive surveillance
because
Obama likes it; meanwhile, some Republicans have started
condemning it, and never mind that they loved it when
Dubya was doing
it.
A whistleblower claims Microsoft has
hired
people to vote on Reddit in Microsoft's favor.
Leaked: the NSA's suggested talking points
in
support of massive surveillance.
The House of Representatives voted once again
in
favor of imprisoning people (even Americans in the US) without
trial.
They have effectively declared war on the US.
The US government's massive collection of data is useless for catching
terrorists because it makes the haystack bigger for the needles to hide in.
More precisely,
they
can't begin to evaluate all the data they get. They got very
suggestive evidence about the September 2001 attacks and did nothing
with it.
Obama's war on leakers is selective: it
targets
only the leaks he doesn't like.
A 14-year-old who was raped, then under the influence of fanatical
Christianity decided not to have an abortion, is now
shunned
and alone
after receiving sneers from other victims of fanatical Christianity.
Thus, Christianity has hurt her twice.
US
journalists that condemn Snowden are traitors to journalism.
A fanatical
Republican congressman said Glenn Greenwald should be prosecuted
for publishing Snowden's revelations.
With so many laws that nobody knows how many,
you
always have something to hide. You just may not know what it is.
Given complete information about everyone, our plutocratic state will
always find an excuse to imprison whoever it wishes to imprison.
The
fishing
expedition against Kiriakou was an example of this.
US hospitals often charge out-of-state patients
illegally
high fees.
Another argument for single-payer.
A psychologists points out how metadata could enable Big Brother
to determine
who
his patients are, and how well they are doing.
Using
Metadata to find Paul Revere.
This method works just as well to
find
key people in peaceful democratic
protest organizations, and the US is surely using it, since it calls
them "terrorists".
In the 1960s they investigated
civil
rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
Verizon wants the next free exploitation treaty to
limit
privacy protections for the sake of its profits.
The House has probably passed, by now, a
loophole
to let US banks get out of the weak existing regulation.
When businesses say, "Deregulate us so we can compete with foreign
businesses", the right response is, "Let's regulate what they can do
if they want to sell here."
Chemical weapons experts say they are
not
convinced Assad used chemical weapons. The evidence is not clear.
I don't think it makes much difference; if there were a good way to
intervene in Syria, it would have been justified already.
Russia is passing a law similar to SOPA but
crazy
as well.
US generals are struggling to preserve impunity for rapists.
People should not give up on political change just because it isn't easy.
Egyptian Ahmed Duma was
sentenced to prison for calling Morsi
"a criminal and murderer".
The US is still somewhat better than Egypt: many Americans have called
Bush a war criminal and we have not been charged with a crime for
that. On the other hand, journalists and their sources are being
attacked over and over.
Bad population news: Africa's birth rate is
higher
than was expected.
This could lead to a human population of 11 billion, instead of the
expected 10 billion.
It's not just Africans' fault, it's our fault too. The US and Europe
ought to give poor women (in Africa, and at home) effective birth
control, which poor women can't afford.
Environmentalists say the proposed Nicaragua Canal would
endanger
nature reserves and damage water supplies.
Spanish scientists
marched
to protest spending cuts on research.
Spain should spend more on research, on medical treatment, on helping
people stay in their homes, on food for the poor, and lots of other
things. Deficit spending is the way to get people back to work, and
science is a fine way to spend part of that.
Researchers have found particular kinds of
nerve
damage in veterans who report Gulf War illness.
This does not tell us anything about what caused the illness, or by
what mechanism. All human thoughts, knowledge, and tendencies have a
biological basis in the brain, so it is not inconceivable that this
damage results from certain thoughts or experiences. However, brain
damage usually results from trauma or exposure to certain chemicals.
Either way, we now see that the veterans have a real illness; the
Pentagon should stop accusing them of malingering or imagining things.
A demonstration in Hong Kong calling for not extraditing Snowden
attracted
hundreds despite heavy rain.
From
hope to fear: the broken promise of Barack Obama.
US
'Military Support' in Syria Will Lead to Full-Scale War, Critics
Warn.
Exxon has been sued for the
tar sands
oil spill in Arkansas, which made people sick.
Tar sands oil is particularly corrosive and thus particularly likely
to spill. If the
Keystone
XL pipeline is built, or
Enbridge's
stealth pipeline, we will have a lot more spills.
Remember that "xx" stands for the letter exx, which appears in the
Exxon logo and is pronounced like "j" in Spanish. Don't pronounce the
name as if it were "Ekson". People would think you're talking about
part of a gene.
There is some
evidence
that BPA makes pubescent girls fat.
US citizens: sign
this petition calling for an end to Obama's
"signature strikes".
That doesn't go far enough; drones should not be used to attack
outside of battle zones. But it is still good to sign.
US citizens: ask
your congresscritter to make sure the farm bill
protects the wetlands in which northern pintail ducks (and lots of other
less visible species) live.
Facebook and Microsoft have published some
aggregate
data about US government
surveillance, while Google is pushing to be able to give more information.
Getting information on 19,000 or 31,000 accounts in these companies
with millions of users does not amount to general surveillance. But I
do not trust Facebook, Microsoft or the NSA to tell the whole truth,
even if they are not lying.
(Clapper
perjured himself on this very question just months ago.)
Even if those figures are the true answers to a question, there may be
some sort of trickery in the question. For instance, these numbers
might count only orders that demand something beyond "metadata", while
some other general surveillance scheme collects metadata about all
users.
Unless we can get to the bottom of things, we don't know what if anything
this means.
The Education Declaration opposes
the business-driven
plan to privatize public schooling and thus ruin it.
Growing concern
about India's
'cyber snooping agency'.
Europeans feel threatened by the US push
to expand
high-tech surveillance and warfare without limits on their use.
It's Not Just About US: How
the NSA
Threatens Human Rights Internationally.
A man with a
rifle killed
four people in Santa Monica, and wounded others. This attack was
comparable in magnitude to the Boston bombing.
Angelinos clamored immediately for the whole Los Angeles metro area to
be shut down, like Boston, but Hollywood told Obama not to do that.
So he responded with a plan called Keep Us Really Safe Everywhere, or
KURSE, which would implant a radio-transmitter ID in every person in
the US and put a detector on every door.
Senator Feinstein said, "Once we put a KURSE on every American, nobody
will be able to attack you, unless he does it through a window."
This levity is not intended to make light of the deaths and injuries
in Santa Monica, nor those in Boston. Any person's death is a
tragedy. The point is to ridicule the idea that certain killings in
Boston were far worse than all others.
Glenn Greenwald talks about
the attempts
to demonize Snowden, and how loyal Obama supporters defend massive
surveillance because it's Obama's policy now.
He makes an interesting point that if PRISM is really nothing more
than a streamlined way for companies to hand over what they had been
handing over since 2001, its supporters could hardly claim it makes a
tremendous difference.
Tax cuts for the rich played a major role
in creating
the income inequality of the US today.
If we could roll back all changes in the US since 1980, with the
exception of useful advances in technology and the few advances in
human rights (such as gay rights), we would be a lot better off. The
other changes created the plutocracy that now owns our government.
The US government
is worried
about "domestic disturbances" caused (for instance) by climate
disasters or energy shortages, and spying on environmental activists
seems to be part of its response — along with martial law.
As the Earth heats up, "disturbances" will happen by and by in many
countries, including the US. (Food protests have happened
in some
countries in the
past few years.) Rather than prevent them by curbing
global heating,
the US government plans to respond to them with repression.
Erdogan has made a compromise with the protesters about
the fate
of Gezi Park, but this by itself will do nothing to reduce the
creeping censorship and repression in Turkish society.
Song
parody: Edward
and the NSA.
In an exhibition of art in tribute to Mike Brown, an artist convicted
of obscenity, a collage was seized and
the artist
may be charged with "child pornography".
From the description of the collage, it must be unmistakeably clear
that no real children had sex in the making of it.
This is part of
a long
pattern of censoring art in Australia.
If Australia extracts its coal, it
will doom
itself and the rest of us.
Implications of the US decision
to arm
Syrian rebels.
I think this is a mistake, and never mind the possible Russian
response, because there is no reliable way to support the secular
rebels and avoid helping the Saudi-supported jihadi fanatics.
It looks like this is developing into a war between Sunnis and
Shi'ites, and it would be bad for the US to take a side in that war.
Both sides produce theocracies (Saudi Arabia and Iran) that are among
the most evil regimes on Earth.
Why you should care
about privacy.
There is one additional reason. You should care that people who talk
to journalists have privacy, because otherwise nobody will dare tell
us how the state is lying to us.
Unusual ecosystems are found around Rockall, and
a ban
on fishing is needed to preserve them.
To make this ban reliable and easy to enforce, it should be simple: no
fishing within X km of Rockall.
On the implications
of killer
robots and bee drones.
If the developer of the bee drones really believes their main use will
be to find people in collapsed buildings, he is a fool. They could be
made to kill, perhaps with a poison needle. But even if all they do
is take pictures, the NSA could operate hundreds of billions of them
to watch everything everyone says and does. We'd have to sweep our
rooms frequently for faux bugs.
Snowden
has achieved
his initial goal: a real debate about massive US government
surveillance. Even some legislators say they appreciate his help.
Walmart is moving increasingly
to temporary
workers, who get no benefits.
It continues to get clothing from factories it
said it
would reject on grounds of worker safety.
Attacks on Edward Snowden follow the standard pattern
of retaliation
against whistleblowers.
TIME
Magazine Equates
Whistleblowers with Spies in Cover Story on Snowden, Manning &
Swartz.
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.
The UK government
could force
Bermuda to expose tax evaders, but it might prefer to fail and
say "See, we tried."
Pakistan has
had extreme
heat waves in recent years; the Indus river has run dry and this
is spreading waterborne diseases. Hundreds at least have been killed.
Global heating
is partly responsible, and will make things much worse.
A horrible incident has pushed the Nepali government to take action
against domestic
slavery.
It's Booz Allan and its former employee Clapper
that we
need to investigate, not Snowden. Clapper lied to Congress just a
few months ago.
Our government should get off the Booz.
2/3 of the population of
Haiti can't
get enough to eat. It was caused by US-imposed policies, followed
by extreme weather that global heating will increase.
If starving people surround the presidential palace, they could take
it; soldiers would only be able to kill a few thousand before running
out of ammunition. Then they could kick out
the US-imposed
"president" and Haitians could have a real election.
Part of the excuse for the expense and oppression of the Olympic Games
in London was that it would encourage people to play sports. However,
participation
is down.
A man charged with bank robbery has tried
to subpoena
his own phone records from the NSA to use in his defense.
Danielle Powell was
kicked
out of college for being a lesbian, and the school then demanded
she repay the scholarship money she was given, and is holding her
credits hostage.
The copyright claims over Happy Birthday to You will be challenged
in
court.
Analyzing Snowden's revelations as a
conflict
of asymmetric courage.
One detail in the article superficially appears to be an error. It
says that the US security state has no law. In fact, it does have law
at its disposal. It has plenty of laws, designed to allow it to spy,
imprison and even kill effectively without limit, and
cut
off all roads for us to find out what it is doing (except with the
help of leakers such as Snowden), let alone control it. However, this
amounts to a declaration of lawlessness, so that detail is correct
when not interpreted with rigid literalism.
Clothing factories use toxic substances which
pollute
rivers.
Before globalization, these were banned, but companies have moved
production to countries where they can pollute. Any treaty by which a
country pledges not to ban the importation of clothing made in a way
that threatens health of workers or people who live near the plant
ought to be abrogated just because of that.
The EU is surrendering to US and corporate pressure
to stop protecting
citizens'
rights over their personal data.
Canada's tar sands companies are
failing
to clean up toxic waste ponds.
Colorado's most destructive wildfire in recorded history is burning
out
of control.
Global heating
is part of the cause. Human population growth is also
directly implicated (as well as pushing
global heating).
US citizens:
tell
Obama and the USTR to negotiate "trade" treaties in full public
view.
When poor single mothers work, their children do
better.
Compare
Obama today with Obama in 2008.
US citizens:
support
Senator Warren's call for release of the draft of the TPP.
We don't need to see it to know it is horrible, but
secrecy is what helped them make it horrible.
Everyone:
tell
the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil that cutting down forests
is not sustainable.
US citizens:
call
on the US not to remove protection for wolves.
US citizens:
call
for an end to selling adulterated honey in the US.
Massachusetts citizens: support the extended bottle deposit bill.
[archived link]
Pollution
from uranium mines is causing birth defects in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
Journalists and human rights defenders that investigate secret uranium mining
get threatened or killed.
Turkey has held defense lawyers prisoner
since
January without charges, apparently for defending people that the
state wants to railroad.
Senators report that massive surveillance goes
far
beyond what recent leaks have disclosed.
Ironically,
narrow
French business interests may thwart a proposed free exploitation
agreement between the EU and the US.
Any such treaty would
favor
large companies and harm people in the US and Europe. Preventing
it, in any manner, would be a triumph. How disappointing that no
government in Europe is prepared to oppose it on principle.
The UK government is thinking about making student loans
more
expensive.
US Republicans are
doing
just that.
Erdogan threatens
to attack the remaining protesters in Istanbul.
The US says it
has confirmed
that Assad has used nerve gas.
This might be more of a reason to intervene against his rule, if there
were a rational and constructive way to do
so. But
there isn't.
FBI head Robert Mueller claims
that total
surveillance is what the US needed in order to prevent the 9/11
attacks.
It is well known that some of the 9/11 hijackers aroused suspicion,
which the US government perversely ignored. Evidently, raw data such
as the state now collects about all of us not the kind of intelligence
that government officials lacked.
Thugs in Thessaloniki,
Greece, regularly
arrest transgenders and accuse them, on no particular grounds, of
being prostitutes.
There are two injustices at the root of this. One is bigotry against
transgenders. The other
is persecution
of prostitutes.
Suppose the US
were #1 in
peace rather than in military power.
UN: Drones Have
Caused Permanent
Fear & Affected Wellbeing of Children.
In some places children don't dare go to school because of fear of
drones.
The US Supreme Court
ruled human
genes are non-patentable, which means the tests for certain genes
(including those that make breast cancer very likely) can become
cheaper.
Patenting any sort of medical procedure can have the same deadly
effect.
In the US, if you want an abortion and can't get one, your health and
your way of life
are likely
to suffer.
The Nile countries
are heading
for a war over water.
A journalist in Gezi Park reports on
the strong commitment to
nonviolence and decorum that he has observed among the protesters
there — completely the opposite of the suppression forces.
He also reports on the many journalists who told them that their
stories are censored if they criticize the state.
A Turkish activist I know
comments
on the situation.
The tyranny of Iran is trying
to crack
tens of thousands of gmail accounts.
The US secrecy
system is out of control, with congressional "oversight" set up as
a rubber stamp. Thanks to the use of company contractors for spying,
dissidents can now be threatened by companies as well as by the state
itself.
Yanis Varoufakis, who was blacklisted by the government from appearing
on Greek public TV and
radio, condemns
its shutdown anyway.
The government plans to create a replacement organization, filled with
its supporters of course.
An MEP proposes to make Europeans'
data vulnerable
to US spying so as to avoid "stifling business."
Stifling abusive business practices is one of the purposes of
government. Ready, aim, stifle!
In the UK, workers' pay has suffered more from the current austerity
attack than in
the Great
Depression.
The Taliban
threatened
to kill school principals as blackmail.
Israel has passed a law for imprisonment without trial
Anyone suspected of planning "terrorism" (which would include also
resistance against the occupation) or even generally encouraging it
could be imprisoned without trial.
Putting this in a "law" is no excuse for it.
Ralph Nader:
Society's
Decay Rewards Wrongdoers.
Snowden says that the NSA regularly
cracks
into Internet backbone computers around the world, in order to
look at lots of people's and organizations' data.
I won't criticize the NSA for spying on other countries this way, but
the US should not criticize China so much for doing the same thing.
More on
non-domestic
spying on the Internet.
US citizens:
co-sign
this letter supporting public funding of election campaigns.
As part of the witch hunt against "child pornographers", a UK man was
charged for
having photos
of his nude grandchildren playing in the backyard pool.
Another dangerous giveaway to business in
the Totally
Preposterous Plutocracy treaty — this time, exempting big
agribusiness from US food safety rules.
What sort of people
become whistleblowers,
and why?
I am not a whistleblower, but I am somewhat like that profile, and
that probably has to do with why I started
the free software
movement (which is
very different
from the "open source" that some others support) and
the GNU
operating system.
"Corporate Pirates": How "Fix the
Debt" CEOs
Plan to Make Billions in Offshore Havens.
Edward
Snowden: Change
You Can Believe In.
"Organic berries from our farm in Oregon" turned out to contain fruit
from several other countries, and some of
them came
with Hepatitis A.
The Obama regime, trying to defend massive
surveillance, makes
bogus claims that this surveillance prevented one terrorist plot
and led to conviction of an accomplice to another.
Even supposing massive surveillance prevented a real attack once in a
while, that is small potatoes compared with the harm of trashing
everyone's privacy, and the
even greater
harm of catching leakers and thus concealing or facilitating the
government's enormous crimes. Those
crimes dwarf
the crimes of non-state-supported terrorists.
The US government is stretching facts and laws
to persecute
the leader of the Anonymous group that found and published the
evidence that led to conviction of the Steubenville rapists. He is
threatened with a much bigger punishment than the rapists got, over an
insignificant excuse.
The Greek public are protesting the
sudden closure
of public broadcasting.
The staff
have occupied the building and are broadcasting anyway.
This is part of
a broader
attack on critical journalism in Greece.
In parts of the
UK, half
the honeybee hives did not survive the winter. Overall, 1/3 of
them died.
The specific cause was unusual weather, which will become more common
in the future due to the effects of
global heating. We can reduce
this with the well-known measures that businesses order states not to
do.
The same
weather also hit agriculture directly, with a bug failure of
harvests.
We've seen similar failures in Russia and the US.
Professors of medicine have called on the doctors at Guantanamo
to refuse
to participate in force-feeding in the name of medical ethics.
It is naive to think that examining metadata
won't reveal
your most intimate secrets. For instance, people have found this
allows identification of people who are gay and don't say so.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to keep student loan interest rates low.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to debate Edward Snowden.
Everyone:
thank
Edward Snowden for informing the public about government spying.
The Israeli state wants the Supreme Court to leave the
constitutionality of the anti-boycott law undecided so that all
Israeli organizations must be
afraid
it will be applied to them.
This is the law that allows any colonist in Palestine to collect
large damages from any Israeli that calls for a boycott
of products of those colonies.
US policies continue
forcing
Haitians into hunger despite millions in supposed "aid" that keeps
them poor.
Israel disregards its obligations as an occupying power, by managing a
large part of Palestine for the benefit of Israeli colonists and
making
life very difficult for the Palestinian population.
Israel
imprisoned,
without charges, the Palestinian minister for prisoners. He was
just released after two years.
Israel has demonstrated contempt for peace and Kerry by
accelerating
the construction of its colonies in Palestine.
Kerry calls
on American Jews to tell Israel that it needs to make peace; that
continuing the occupation of Palestine will lead it to disaster.
Without privacy, there is
no democracy.
Those web site terms that she talks about signing, you don't have to
sign. I almost never sign — I won't use most such services.
For those that I do consider using, mainly WiFi portals, I check the
terms before agreeing to them. And in any case I don't identify
myself to them.
Bloomberg proposes a
megaproject
to protect New York from the effects of global heating, for a few
decades.
However, by the end of this century it
may
need to be surrounded by levees, as New Orleans is today. And so
will Newark, Boston, DC, and many other US coastal cities. And you'd
be crazy to live in them if you had any choice.
It would be cheaper to launch a national crash program for renewable energy
and then lead the rest of the world. Shanghai will be in the same boat and
likewise in danger of being swamped; when the Chinese rulers realize that,
they will do whatever it takes, if the US is with them.
Hong Kong human rights NGOs plan a
rally
in favor of Edward Snowden.
I a glad they support him, but I am not sure if this is a wise
strategy for influencing Hong Kong's government.
US political campaigns spend
lots of
money on data mining and surveillance of the electorate.
The right-wing UK government will push for Europe to allow
more
genetically engineered food crops, based on the thoroughly refuted
claims that they are "more efficient" and "sustainable". GM crops
have been proved to be neither of those.
Then there is the ridiculous claim that otherwise Europe will be "left
behind". If you are surrounded by a crowd of idiots who are jumping
into a fast-moving, dangerous river, left behind is exactly where you
should aim to be. No legislator is such a fool as to be persuaded
by this childish argument, but those in the pocket of business might
find it useful to pretend they were.
I do not consider genetic engineering as a violation of something
sacred. In principle, if done right, and available on ethical terms
(no patents), it might do good in some cases. However, you can be
sure that Monsanto's genetically modified crops will do harm,
by increasing that company's power over society.
Soot from combustion is making the ice on Greenland darker,
and that has caused it to
melt
faster than ever observed before.
This means that sea level could rise, in this century, much more
than the one or two meters now predicted.
Thomas Drake: All you need to know about so-called oversight is that
the NSA was
already
in violation of the [PAT-RIOT] Act by the time it was signed into
law.
He also explains, from his own experience, why it is totally useless
for whistleblowers to take such complaints to the "chain of command".
A French teacher was
suspended
for showing a gruesome horror film to 11-year-old students.
I don't think children should be pressured to watch such a thing.
Some can handle it, and some can't, so we should make sure they can
easily avoid it if they wish.
I would not want to see it, myself. I avoided the film Alien because,
fortunately, I saw the story in a less impactful comic book form and
knew what the film would do to me.
However, the fact that some of us find a work disgusting and painful
to see is no excuse for censorship.
David Nutt:
International
drug prohibition amounts to scientific censorship.
Before the US prosecutes Snowden, other
bigger
questions must be resolved.
France's current system of punishing people who share has been
ineffective for making people pay the record companies, so they plan to
replace it with a
modified
system of punishment for sharing. Sharing is good, and must be made
legal.
An appeals court ruled that Monsanto's statement that it would
not sue anyone whose crops were contaminated by patented pollen
was legally
binding.
The Australian fossil fuel industry has whipped up a rash of
apparently psychosomatic health problems attributed to wind
generators, as a
scheme
to impose a regulation that would make them too expensive to use.
Even if this were a real problem of wind generators, it would have to
be compared with the health problems due to the likely alternative,
coal-burning generators. We know that their pollution (which includes
radioactive fallout)
kills
lots of people today, and that is not to mention the global
heating disaster it contributes to.
Coal-burning power plants in Europe cause
22,000
premature deaths each year, in addition to making a much larger
number of people sick.
Despite recent revelations, we
still
don't know much about how the NSA spies on us or how much.
A whistleblower discloses a
"culture of
noncompliance" in pipeline construction in a part of TransCanada,
the same company that wants to build the Keystone XL planet-roaster
pipeline.
Obama has fired the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
for
supporting better regulation of banks.
As usual, Obama is the banksters' tool.
NSA massive spying is part of a general web of militarism
that has
trampled most
of the amendments in the Bill of Rights.
A former US prosecutor turned dissident has
sued
Obama and the NSA over surveillance.
ACLU
Files Lawsuit Challenging Constitutionality of NSA Phone Spying
Program.
NSA whistleblower William Binney:
"On
a Slippery Slope to a Totalitarian State".
Snowden says he and other staff of private NSA contractors
can
monitor anyone.
A former NSA director describes these companies as "Digital
Blackwater".
A British girl who ran away to France with her teacher is
being
used to convict him of "abducting" her.
Their plan to run away was foolish; even if they had not been pursued,
they could not have made a life together that way for very long. Each
one of them ought to have been able to recognize this.
However, joining in foolishness is not the same as being kidnaped.
That absurd claim is one of the many lies that the legal system uses
to smear people.
Since she ran away with him voluntarily, testifying against him now so
he will be imprisoned for it is an act of treachery. I suspect that
her family has brainwashed her into it. Her former lover will suffer
from it for years, but she will suffer even longer, because she will
find it difficult to admit to herself what she has done.
California thugs
beat
David Silva, who was lying on the street, and did not stop
although he begged for his life. After a few minutes he stopped
begging, because he was dead.
Then thugs began
confiscating
the phones with which a crowd had made videos of the killing.
They said this was to protect the evidence, as if the people who made
the recordings would want to suppress them; but the
thugs seem to have
already started erasing videos.
Clearly the thugs intend to lie about their actions. Thugs are
habituated to lying, even lying in court, which they call
"testilying".
In 2003-5, 38
people were killed by US thugs while shackled. I can't find the
total number killed by thugs
while helplessly subdued in any fashion.
Schools
subject
their students to surveillance if they lead the students to store
data on company servers.
Parents are falling for the bait of the convenience of the associated
SaaS facilities, which are in themselves
unethical.
Both houses of congress
want
to cut food stamps, just as many Americans are starting to need
them.
NSA and GCHQ:
Mass
Surveillance Is about Power As Much As Privacy.
Snowden's example shows that loyalty to the US Constitution
may
require revealing government secrets, even if it is illegal.
Unions have
invited
international monitors to Ulster in case the UK government crushes
the right to protest.
Several senators have proposed a
bill
to publish the opinions of the Fisa court.
The growth of the banks
drains
the rest of the economy.
Can Oz: I
Can Never Trust the Turkish Police And Government Again.
Turkish thugs
attacked protesters in Istanbul after a group of thug
provocateurs, pretending to be protesters,
staged
a phony attack.
Some of their excuses, such as that police would clean up litter,
were also used by the Obama regime against Occupy Wall Street.
The protesters
fought
back for many hours.
Thugs also
dragged
away lawyers who protested at the main courthouse.
Clapper seems to have
lied
in his testimony to Congress about massive US
surveillance.
Thugs
attacked
protesters who occupied an empty building in London.
Russia is going to make it a
crime
to advocate gay rights, and to "offend religious feelings".
US whistleblowers enhance US security, because
government
secrecy has killed lots of Americans and harmed the country's
interests.
A proposed
bill would help put an end to wage discrimination against women in
the US.
GMO companies'
false
claim: that their crops help the poor.
The US Constitution was always a piece of paper, but it
had
real power while people respected it.
Instead of a social contract, what we have now is a
business-to-business contract.
US citizens: Gene patents kill;
call
for ending them.
Ai Weiwei
condemns
massive US surveillance, saying it resembles what he knows in
China, but he is shocked to find it in the US.
India is
shutting
NGOs funded by private foreign donations if they have associated
in any way with antinuclear protests.
Unemployed Britons, who were illegally forced to do unpaid work and won
compensation in court, and then were denied this compensation by a
retroactive law, are
suing
to overturn that law.
A UK judge disregarded the leaked evidence that the Chagos marine reserve
was created to keep the Chagos islanders from returning, then
ruled
that this couldn't possibly be true.
The
Listening Tree, by NSA.
In reality, it's not trees that have microphones, it's buses, taxis
and lampposts. For practical purposes, in a city, that makes little
difference — what this cartoon warns about is
already
true.
Republican pressure is making Obama start to talk about
changes
to the PAT RIOT Act. Ironic, given their previous support for
various kinds of government surveillance.
However, this will not be enough to do the job. We need to make it
possible to be an anonymous whistleblower.
Obama has ceased trying to block the
unlimited
sale of emergency contraception drugs.
Daniel Ellsberg:
Edward Snowden:
Saving Us from the United Stasi of America.
The rules of Catholic hospitals
endanger
patients, amounting to medical malpractice in some cases.
We must not forget that
states
can do important work for the good of society. What makes the US
government dangerous today is its subservience to business.
The article errs in thinking that Labour might try to change this in the UK.
It is clear that Labour aims to get into power while
changing the cruel
status quo as little as possible.
A former British soldier in Kenya says he was ordered to shoot unarmed
people
and
then say they were "terrorists".
How
many people could Richelieu hang with the data that the NSA
collects about most people today?
If the world does not take steps now to end
global heating, it will be
on a path to
5C
of heating.
Great
whistleblowers talk about Edward Snowden.
One of them, Ian Foxley, thinks Manning and Snowden should have taken
their information to their chain of command. That makes sense for
situations like Foxley's, where the commanders may feel they are the
victims of the scam. However, when the evil comes down from the top,
that probably would have got them arrested without being able to tell
the public.
Rich parts of China are
outsourcing
their carbon emissions to poorer parts of China.
A greenhouse gas tax is the best way to stop this. If it were applied
to all of China, it would stop this outsourcing within China. If it
were world-wide, it would also block international outsourcing.
Although it ought to be world-wide, one should not wait until all
countries agree to participate before starting the system. It needs
to start somewhere.
The UK government and the NSA have a
clever/stupid
excuse to trash the rights of people in the UK, in the name of
protecting them of course.
The US is
developing semiautonomous
robot soldiers, and nothing would stop them from being made to
shoot people.
The Judicial
Lynching of Bradley Manning, explaining how Manning's trial has
barred the most important defense arguments in advance.
Mining companies are trying to use a free exploitation treaty to force
El Salvador to let them
take water
supplies away from the people.
Can anyone tell me which treaty it is?
A law in New York State making it
a felony
to "harass" a thug is tailor-made for the false accusations thugs
frequently make.
Protests each Monday in North Carolina against
the state's
attack on education.
The massive surveillance Snowden has demonstrated is a repeat of the
massive surveillance of
dissidents practiced
in the 60s and 70s, updated for the Internet.
In the first public event in support of
Snowden, hundreds
rallied in New York City.
Some questions to ask about the meaning of
Obama's "counterterrorism"
speech.
The US
Congress ought to want to talk with Snowden — about how the
NSA has misled it.
Snowden
is not
necessarily safe in Hong Kong.
Tear gas is presented as a safe weapon, but it
regularly kills
people or makes them badly sick.
Eve of
Destruction (or How to Destroy a Planet Without Really Trying).
Chomsky: How
to Destroy the Future.
The World
Economy Is a Ticking Time Bomb (and The Fuse is Burning).
Users with "cloudy" minds allow themselves to
be serfs
of the feudal lords of computing.
Where the article errs is when it claims that some sort of "advantage"
can justify serfdom, and that we don't have a choice. That sort of
defeatism is what leads people to serfdom.
What We Don't Know About Spying on
Citizens: Scarier
Than What We Know.
US citizens: Call
on Obama and Congress to stop spying on Americans.
US states are selling data about patients, weakly anonymized so that
the
patients can be reidentified.
Even if tech companies have not made back doors for the US government,
they have made it
easier
for the US government to get data from them, with a potential for
abuse.
The Obama regime claims that
NSA
snooping on everyone is no different from your bank's knowing
about your checks.
US citizens:
call
on the Armed Forces Network to stop broadcasting Rush Limbaugh.
What makes Turkish media especially vulnerable to government censorship
is that they are nearly all
part
of conglomerates with other business interests.
Obama is not the only one that punishes whistleblowers. A rail union
accuses a UK railway construction project of
blacklisting
whistleblowers and union representatives.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden
fled
to Hong Kong before providing his information to the press.
Isn't it a shame to the US when people who reveal government
oppression must flee to China?
Here is an interview
with Snowden.
This man is a hero comparable to Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning.
With Democrats and Republicans bought by fossil fuel money,
the Green
Party is the only way to influence US politics against global
heating.
Keystone XL isn't even built yet and already it's
faulty.
House votes on approving the planet-roaster pipeline were clearly
purchased
by fossil fuel companies.
Germans worry about
US
data surveillance. Everyone in Europe should.
Net
Neutrality Is Still a Chimera in the EU.
Everyone:
Tell
Turkey to stop using excessive force against peaceful protesters.
US citizens:
call on the
senate to oppose intervention in Syria.
Everyone:
recommend
Bradley Manning for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama said he would end illegal surveillance, but it was a trick
what he did was
attempt to
legalize it.
Staff of some political NGOs in Egypt have been given
prison
sentences.
Several of the NGOs that were shut down are directly financed by the
US, and one by a right-wing German political party. It might be
reasonable for a country not to allow that sort of foreign
organization to operate.
However, it is absurd to imprison the staff. And other NGOs,
not funded by governments, are another matter.
A Libyan militia
shot
protesters calling for militias to disband.
Why didn't Obama tell us before the last election that he would run
on a total-surveillance-to-make-us-feel-safe
platform?
Bills to require court orders to access people's email and phone call
records have
strong
support.
However, these bills do not go far enough. They restrict government
access to company-held personal dossiers, but don't prevent companies
from accumulating these dossiers over long periods of time. These
dossiers might consist of records of years of phone calls, or backups
of old emails. The state could collect this retroactive information
so as to fish for something to accuse you of, as it did with John
Kiriakou.
We need to limit the dossiers that can be kept, not just limit access
to them.
The crucial criterion for any proposed change in these laws is, would
it have protected John Kiriakou from the intense investigation that
strained to come up with a crime to charge him with?
Women of the
World's Largest Peasant Movement Call the Shots.
There are many Turkish media companies, but they were all intimidated
by threats
from the state.
This calls to mind the
US
intimidation against all the services that wikileaks used.
Liu Xiaobo's brother
was convicted
on ridiculous charges and imprisoned.
A stealth
project to build a tar sands oil pipeline effectively equivalent
to Keystone XL.
US citizens: call for cans of Glade
to list the
chemicals it contains, some of which seem to be toxic.
The US Postal
Service photographs
every piece of mail.
While it is useful to be able to identify the person who sent these
ricin-laced letters (perhaps giving a new meaning to the term "poison
pen"), the extension of pervasive surveillance to our physical mail
worries me more than the ricin.
Reminding Senator Spy Feinstein that the Fourth Amendment
is not a mere
suggestion.
The EU says
it no
longer advocates "austerity", but doesn't plan to increase
euro-zone deficit spending, so in fact it will still practice
austerity. However, now it wants to attack workers' rights too.
Even though PRISM does not allow the government direct access to
servers, the government's spying represents a direct
threat to the
US Constitution and American values.
I disagree with only one point of that article, but it is an important
one. Even though big Internet companies sometimes oppose
government spying, they are nonetheless part of the problem. If these
companies did not collect so much information about Internet users,
the government would not be able to make them hand it over.
"Your Smartphone
Works for the Surveillance State".
I'm glad to see others say what I've been saying: today's digital
surveillance is worse than in the Soviet Empire, and it is taking us
towards tyranny.
I wish he didn't assert that "we" do all sorts of foolish things. I
don't do them. I hope you don't either.
People in wealthy
countries must
eat less meat, to reduce pressure on the world's growing capacity
and for their own health too.
When I am at home, I eat little meat on most days.
Massive
Internet surveillance
in India, together with censorship of opinions that displease,
adds up to a step towards oppression.
A "virtual"
Iranian presidential election offers Iranians the chance to vote
for candidates who were banned from running.
The system described is ripe for fraud, by voters and by the ones
carrying it out. It should never be used or a real election.
However, it is ok for this sort of use.
Mali
has tortured,
killed and disappeared prisoners.
France will continue
its ban
on fracking, taking note of the harm fracking has done in the US.
Studying the
spreading Sunni-Shi'a
conflict.
Both variants of Islam regularly oppress women and trash the human
rights of dissenters and atheists. That doesn't mean this war is
likely to make things better for anyone. I think it is more likely to
make both sects more fanatical and more oppressive.
Blacks in the US encounter systematic, frequent and occasionally
deadly violence
by thugs.
Spy Feinstein says force feeding of Guantanamo prisoners is
"safe
and respectful".
When Obama (and Feinstein) talk about "closing Guantanamo", they do
not mean ending the injustice of indefinite imprisonment without
trial, or that of torture. What they mean is shifting the same
bestial treatment to the US itself. That's what Congress refused to
approve.
Slot machine technology has advanced, making them
more
addictive.
Just goes to show how foolish it is to make "innovation" the primary goal.
Who will decide which innovations will be used in your life? You,
or someone else?
If what the addicts want is the feeling of flow, can't they get the
same feeling in a way that doesn't cost them money? Perhaps with a
free software slot machine program that pays off in Roulette Rupees
instead of real money?
How supermarkets get data about their customers, and
what
they do with it.
You can protect yourself by (1) not using a buyer's card, (2) paying
cash, and (3) not using any coupons that are given to you by the store
when you purchase. (You could trade them with someone else and confuse
the store.)
US citizens:
call
for a racist federal judge to be disciplined.
It appears PRISM refers to a
system
by which the US government demands information from companies, and
not a back door for direct government access to the companies'
servers.
Nonetheless, many companies
went
out of their way to make it easier to give the data to the
government.
The US can do plenty to spy on Internet traffic to these companies
even
without their cooperation.
The government should be able to get information from individuals and
companies for investigations. That part of things is not what's
wrong. What is wrong is that Internet sites collect so much
information about nearly everyone, which can then be handed over
to the US government for an investigation of "terrorist suspects"
such as dissidents or whistleblowers.
Obama will allow death squads to target
wolves
too.
Government officials
condemn
heroic whistleblowers and call for investigations to find the
"reprehensible" people who told us about how much the US government
spies on all of us.
These investigations will, naturally, require spying more on all of us.
Obama has ordered preparation of a
list
of possible targets for cyber-attacks.
I do not consider contingency planning in advance to be an outrage,
but Obama has already shown an inclination to launch pre-emptive
attacks.
The US
needs
a new Church Committee to deal with the NSA's massive
surveillance.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that
a
warrant is required to install a GPS tracker in a car.
That's the way it should be: tracking cannot be started without a
warrant.
Unfortunately, for anyone who has a portable phone, the tracking is
done all the time, and the data can be collected (with or without a
warrant) retroactively. This is tantamount to maintaining a dossier
about every person, which the state can look at retrospectively at
any time.
Various experts and activists consider how to reconcile the leak about
PRISM with the
statements
by company executives that they have not allowed the US to
establish back doors.
What the US government gets when it tracks
"metadata"
such as URLs visited and phone numbers called.
If you're a whistleblower, it also finds out if you phoned a reporter.
329
charges against a kidnaper shows how prosecution in the US has
become absurd.
From what I've read, he kidnaped and raped three women, and ought to
be charged with this. He ought to get a fair trial, which I suppose
would result in his conviction based on the testimony of the victims.
However, anyone who faces 329 charges, even if innocent, is unlikely
to ever get a fair trial because he will accept a plea bargain.
Obama personally has
pushed
the use of executive privilege to shield massive surveillance from
the courts.
This is the same man who said we should trust courts to limit
surveillance.
The "hunger summit" is a front for
corporate
colonization and land grabs in Africa.
If agribusiness succeeds in boosting food production in Africa, it is
likely to be exported, while those dispossessed of their land
are forced to cities to look for work.
Some European fisheries are recovering after fishing was banned
— even cod.
Cod in the Grand Banks are recovering slowly also, but have far to go
before fishing should be allowed.
The victims of British empire war crimes included
Israelis, too.
Senators Wyden and Udall say that PAT-RIOT Act surveillance
has never
proved necessary, and call for the government to publish more
information about it.
Facebook deleted
pages calling
for protests in Turkey.
States must respect anonymous communication; here are
the basic
requirements.
I don't think these go far enough, because there are other ways to
restrict and surveil people on the Internet.
Republicans in Wisconsin are trying to rush through a law to apply
many know voter
suppression and election corruption techniques.
The US
is funding
death squads in Honduras.
Big Brother
has collected
information about credit card transactions, but we can't tell how
often.
It amounts to Total Information Awareness by another name.
A US spy official acknowledged the practice of collecting information
about all
phone calls of millions of Americans, and secret back doors into
servers of many companies.
As usual, he condemned the patriots who told us how our government is
setting up a surveillance state. He's on the side of the bad guys.
The UK government is using
this same
program to spy on UK citizens, which could mean disregarding and
nullifying their legal rights.
It is strange that the NSA confirms this program but executives of the
companies involved deny participation. I wonder if employees were
coerced into setting up the surveillance without telling their bosses.
I have it on good authority that that is the way the US typically
handles PAT-RIOT act seizures. It goes to a sysadmin and telling him
to hand over the data and not tell anyone else, or be imprisoned.
Everyone: call for action
to stop tax havens
from functioning.
On
the heroism
of whistleblowers, and the villainy of the Bush/Obama regime in
trying to attack them.
Summarizing what we know about
the NSA
spy program, Prism.
European companies and government agencies should not be allowed to
make any personal information available to a US company under any
circumstances.
Found US nuclear power plants have been closed as they have
become more
expensive than other energy. Even renewable energy is cheaper.
Nuclear energy is tremendously expensive, and only massive subsidies
make it feasible. With similar subsidies, renewable power would take
off tremendously.
Holder says he
will not
prosecute any reporter for doing his job. He aims rather to make
the job impossible, by drying up all their sources.
Turkey's president calls the protests foreign meddling and says he
wants
to crush them.
He cites
European repression of protests to justify his own.
It is true that countries such as
the
UK and
Italy
have repressed protests. So what? Injustice in one country does not
excuse injustice in another country.
However, this should be a lesson that European countries and the US
must not tolerate repression and lying thugs at home.
Obama
says
he's not responsible for agencies that report to him; their
supervision should be left to Congress and courts.
Of course, no sensible American trusts the FISA court to defend our freedom.
Whether Congress will do so has yet to be seen. But what good is a president
who passes the buck on our freedom.
Peak
Soil: Industrial Civilisation Is on the Verge of Eating Itself.
Problems like this must happen sooner or later as the population rises.
In addition to eating less meat, and especially less beef, we
need
to reduce the birth rate so that the population starts to go down.
An Indigenous group in Peru vows not to allow oil extraction, citing
the
way other areas' rivers have become polluted.
Air and water pollution in China are
rapidly
getting worse.
Privatized trains in the UK have been a rip-off, resulting in
little
private investment, old trains, and high fares.
The profits have come from what are effectively state subsidies that
go to the businesses.
Even though this privatization does result in a limited amount of
competition for the business of individual passengers, it was not
enough to bring about a good result.
Tear gas is a
booming
business, along with oppression in general.
Internet activism sometimes does bring about changes in
offline
activity.
I don't sign change.org petitions because signing them requires
running a nonfree Javascript program. I wish change.org would change that.
A passenger on a train in the UK is being sought for prosecution for
calling
a black passenger a "monkey".
Here we see how racism operates. A believed B had woke him up, but
instead of rebuking B for doing that, he saw that B belonged to a
racial minority and insulted him for that entirely irrelevant point.
That was stupid and irrational, as well as nasty.
However, it should not be a crime.
Naomi Klein:
'Anti-Shock
Doctrines' Show the Way to Resist.
Some scientists say that Monsanto's supposed tests to find GMO wheat
are flawed
and cannot be relied on. In other words, we don't know how widespread
those genes are.
US citizens: help convince 10 senators to switch their stand and
support state laws
to require
labeling of GMOs.
US citizens: call for
a tax
on financial transactions, to support education.
Such a tax can support lots of things we need.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate Obama's massive tracking
of our phone calls. Please sign both
of these
petitions.
US citizens: thank the senators that
have put
pressure on the persecutors of Aaron Swartz.
A project
to make
genetically engineered plants that glow in the dark is getting
funding on Kickstarter.
Synthetic biology outside the lab needs to be regulated, and fairly
strictly — "Then company told us they knew it was safe" is not
enough, not here and not in general.
Plants that glow in the dark could have an effect on ecosystems, so it
would be unwise to let such genes loose into the wild. But can these
genes spread into the wild? The facts which determine this are
probably known, and I wish the author had checked and told us.
The UK
government approved
torture in Kenya at the highest level.
Fossil fuel industry bosses really
do say
the darndest things (to deny their contribution to global
heating).
Bosnians protested
because babies
can't get national ID numbers.
They ought to protest against laws that make them need these
numbers.
The European Central Bank recognizes that the recession in Europe will
get worse this year, and proposes to do something about it
by keeping
interest rates low.
However, as the US has shown, super-low interest rates are not an
effective way to make the real economy better. They let
banksters make
big profits but don't put people back to work. Thus, they are the
choice of governments under the control of the banksters.
Putting people back to work requires deficit spending.
1/4 of the prisoners in
Guantanamo are
now being force-fed.
Unsurprisingly, the Department of Homeland Security (formerly called
the Committee for Public Safety) concluded
that searching
people's laptops at the border for no reason is a good policy. It
based its conclusion on the premise that even a shadow of a
possibility of preventing some crime (which could well be an act of
journalism) is more important than your freedom. That premise, which
the Obama regime seems to hold with increasing vigor, leads in only
one direction: to a total surveillance state.
Patent trolls are
only part
of the harm done by the patent system.
US citizens:
sign
the ACLU's petition calling on Obama to stop
massive tracking of Americans' phone calls.
Bush and Obama have used a long series of
legal
tactics to keep their tracking of all telephone calls secret from
Americans.
The US government has made sure that
nobody
is allowed represent the Americans that the US proposes to spy on,
even when that is all Americans.
Senator Spy
Feinstein says this tracking has been going on since 2006, if not
longer, and we should just accept it.
"This is called protecting America," she said, and she's right —
that's exactly what Big Brother calls it.
Obama recently nominated Cornelia Pillard to the Court of Appeals of
the Federal Circuit. I looked her up in Wikipedia. I can't be
certain from what it says there, but she seems to have argued for
several positions I think of as dangerous.
It looks like she is a supporter of mandatory arbitration clauses,
which many companies impose so they can get away with mistreating
customers and employees. This is a crucial area for US courts, and I
would not want someone with these views to be on track for possibly
being on the Supreme Court some day.
It appears she has also participated in efforts to bend over backwards
to give thugs impunity, and limit the right to a jury trial.
In other words, she is the sort of candidate that I'd expect someone
soft on like Obama to nominate. I will not sign the petition urging
the Senate to vote on her nomination.
Obama has nominated two other candidates for that court. With the
small amount of research I can do, I did not get enough information to
have an opinion about them. Maybe they would be good people to put on
the bench, but I'd like to see if someone has actually evaluated them
from a progressive viewpoint before I support them in any way.
Cameron D'Ambrosio has been jailed without
bail, accused
of "terrorism", for his song lyrics.
The UK wants to let
people veto
wind generators in their vicinity, which they might consider
unsightly, but not fracking that could make them sick.
14 Turkish journalists have
been injured
by thugs while covering protests.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media continue ignoring the protests much as
US mainstream media ignore Occupy Wall Street.
President Erdogan remains
totally, absurdly
defiant.
UK activists, accused of a crime that is tantamount to "holding a
protest",
received
light sentences for their protest at a fossil fuel plant.
A California bill
would penalize
Walmart for each full-time employee that ends up depending on
Medicaid.
This is a good idea, but if it applies only to full-time employees it
will be ineffective. Walmart is making just about all employees
part-time.
The FBI
demand to require a back door in communications software would
enable all sorts of bad actors, not just the Obama regime, to spy on
everyone.
If such a law applies to free programs, it would ban the distribution
of versions that are not malicious.
A UN report recognizes
how massive
surveillance and freedom of expression are incompatible.
Health professionals call on Obama
to ban the
massive use of antibiotics in farm animals, so as to protect
humans from drug resistance.
Irrationally overreacting flight attendants and congressional
fearmongers made the TSA back down
from applying
a little common sense.
This one decision is not terribly important in itself — it means
one annoyance more, rather than one annoyance less — but it
demonstrates how vulnerable the US remains to appeals for repression
in the name of a minuscule amount of "security".
This inability to weight different dangers bodes ill for the US
response to the bigger threat of total monitoring of phone calls,
which is also supposed to be for "security against terrorists". (Of
course, the most important of those so-called "terrorists" are really
dissidents and whistleblowers.)
US citizens:
call
on Obama to give US workers a living wage.
Governor Walker has snuck radical
ALEX-sponsored
changes in education into a budget bill.
How the massive US "counter-terrorism" apparatus of "fusion centers",
which was probably not necessary in the first place, has been
redirected to "all crimes", including above all the crime of taking
democracy seriously. When a citizen sent email to the Phoenix
thug
department asking the thugs not to harass Occupy protests,
the
fusion center investigated him too.
The FDA must immediately
make one form of emergency contraception available without an ID.
A gold
rush in Uganda probably means a corporate land grab is coming.
Malnutrition is the
main
killer of children under five.
Global
heating is making food prices rise, and is expected to do so
further in the coming decades.
The world economic system favors the rich; we need redistribution of
wealth. But we also need to stabilize the population, which means,
reduce the birth rate considerably. We should provide modern
effective birth control gratis to women who can't afford to raise
children properly.
The Obama regime is secretly collecting records about
all
phone calls made on Verizon Business Services. I expect it's the
same for other major phone companies.
This has been going on
since
2006.
These records allow the government to find out
who
you know and who you talk with.
These records allow the regime to catch any whistleblowers who might
talk with reporters about the regime's dirty work. That's the effect
that really matters. If this makes it possible to catch some
criminals as well, that's a minor side issue. Small benefits cannot
justify great harm.
I am glad that the mainstream media are starting to recognize that
limiting the use of information the state and corporations collect
about you is not enough. We must limit the information that they can
collect.
Estimating that austerity has led to
10,000 more
suicides in Europe.
The IMF has privately
recognized that imposing austerity in Greece did harm.
Thugs in Bangladesh
attacked
protesting workers from the factory that collapsed.
The reason for Abu Nusaybah's arrest was
making
statements of his views and helping the publication of other
statements.
Comparing his opinions with those of the Conservative Party, which are
worse? Both advocate oppression, and call for acts that can kill
people, but which one is likely to oppress and kill more? Obviously
the Conservative Party.
Robert Bales pled
guilty to murdering 16 Afghan civilians during night raids.
A report calls on the Centers for Disease Control to do research into
the patterns
of US gun violence.
Such research has been
blocked
by NRA lobbying.
Turkish thugs arrested
people for tweets that encouraged or aided protests.
In Dresden, 11 years after the "flood of the century", there is
another
flood.
This makes me suspect that global heating is at work.
Journal editors call for pre-registration of experimental studies
before
the results come in.
Protecting privacy by distributing "anonymized" data is ineffective
because it proves
easy
to re-identify the subjects.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to oppose trampling the environment in
immigration legislation.
Connecticut has passed a bill
requiring
labeling of food with GMOs, but it will only go into effect when
four other states pass such a law.
Obama is trying to make it possible to
fire
civil service employees arbitrarily if they are in departments
related to "national security".
Don't confuse the nation's security with the regime's security.
Over 3000 protesters in Turkey have been arrested, and
over
1000 were injured.
US wildfires burn
twice
as much land annually as they did 40 years ago.
Fires spread much faster now, which means people have much less time
to evacuate.
Bradley Manning's trial is a show trial, complete with rehearsals,
and secret
witnesses will provide the basis for conviction.
Amnesty International
rebuked
the court for not allowing Manning to argue based on public
interest.
American
Gets Targeted by Digital Spy Tool Sold to Foreign Governments.
It appears to have leaked to a non-state underground movement,
which is no surprise.
The UN gave cholera to Haiti, but its plans to eradicate cholera there
are effectively
imaginary.
U.N.
Panel Reports Increasing Brutality by Both Sides in Syria.
How
the US Can Facilitate Peace in Syria: Talking to All Sides including Iran.
Obama's proposed "trade deal" is
much
more (worse) than a trade deal. It is an agreement to adopt
oppressive laws — a
Free
Exploitation Treaty.
The US Supreme Court approved a state law that allowing thugs to
take
DNA samples from everyone arrested for "serious crimes".
Greece is systematically
attacking freedom of the press.
Israeli soldiers post
threatening
signs aimed at Palestinian children.
Everyone:
support
Latin American leaders in breaking away from the War on Drugs.
Israel tries to force Bedouin into towns with
no
employment, by declaring their homes illegal.
A series of civilians were brought into a US/Afghan base, and emerged
as mutilated
corpses.
An Australian plan to compensate for CO2 emissions by
planting lots of trees
cannot
possibly work.
As UN Warns of 'Human
Costs,' US
Sends More Weapons to Syria Border.
America's biggest tax breaks amount to around
a trillion
dollars a year, and most of it is for the rich.
Why the purchase of Smithfield by a Chinese company
is dangerous
— for reasons having nothing to do with nationalism.
The government of Turkey has
bought 62
tons of tear gas in the past 12 years. I guess the government
recognized that its repression was likely to provoke resistance.
Foreign Shi'ites are going to
Syria to
fight for Assad.
If this keeps spreading, it could involve the whole Muslim world in a
sectarian war.
Lawyers in the UK blocked a road
to protest
cuts in legal services for the poor.
Israel
is demolishing
more Arab homes in Jerusalem.
and seizing land near
Nablus.
The fanatical "settlers" are
now burning
Palestinians' cars as well as destroying other kinds of property.
"Cancer
villages" are spreading across China, as polluting factories are
built around them.
They exist in the US, too, due
to factory
pollution from years ago.
Old or new, they result from a failure to regulate business properly.
The April
Texas fertilizer
plant explosion was another consequence of the same problem.
The root cause is that plutocrats dominate the
state. Ag-gag
laws are another manifestation of the same cause.
Kostas Vaxevanis faces double jeopardy
for publishing
the Lagarde list in Greece.
Burning fracked gas rather than coal has decreased US CO2 emissions,
but methane leaks from frack wells may
be cancelling
out the decrease.
Meanwhile, US coal extraction has not gone down. The coal not burned
in the US is exported instead — so really nothing good has been
achieved.
The Lord's Resistance Army is
now financed
by elephant poaching.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the
2001 Authorization
for Use of Military Force.
The Palestinian Authority and Kerry both tell Israel
that bad
things will happen if it refuses to make peace.
New York has sued HSBC
for illegally
shafting homeowners.
Bravo! But what we really need is to stop banks from reselling loans
divided up into parts. Anyone who gets a mortgage from a local bank
should have a right to a local office to discuss an extension with.
Turkey's government has given people plenty of practice
in fighting
back against violent thugs.
The debate is on in Portugal
about leaving
the euro zone.
It is not the euro as such that causes the problem, but rather the
deficit spending rules of the euro zone.
A country outside the euro zone could still use the euro as its
currency. Panama and Ecuador use the US dollar as their currency, and
the US cannot stop them (and probably would not want to, given the
advantages to the US of the use of dollars in commerce elsewhere).
Likewise, Portugal, Greece or Spain could leave the euro zone and
continue using euros.
However, this would have disadvantages as well as advantages. some of
these countries may want inflation to reduce their debt, and if they
tried to inflate the euro they would arouse much bigger hostility.
Eating
Pacific bluefin tuna is safe, with less radioactivity than any
normal banana. But the fish numbers are greatly reduced by
overfishing and they ought to be protected.
Years of
government contempt
for every aspect of the environment have fueled the protests in
Turkey.
Can you see any resemblance between these tricks and what your
government does?
To understand
Google+, think
of it as The Matrix.
I never identify myself to any web site, except to post comments
— but people and server-side scripts actually do that for me, so
commenting never connects my name with machines I connect to the
Internet from. If I were posting comments myself, I would do it
through other machines or via Tor.
Chinese find
clever indirect
ways to talk about the Tian An Men massacre, which leads the
censors to block searches for all sorts of words, even "today".
Everyone: sign
this petition to the Walmart CEO in support of striking workers.
Jordan
has imposed
filters on 200 web sites, including such prominent ones as al
Jazeera.
The UK is
planning more
network filtering too.
In the
US: oppose
uranium mining on Mt Taylor in New Mexico.
In Iowa, blacks
are 8
times more likely to be arrested than whites for use of marijuana.
Of course, nobody should ever be arrested for using marijuana. It
should be legal.
US citizens:
call
on the US Department of Agriculture to ban field trials of
genetically engineered crops.
The TSA has
eliminated
X-ray scanners. The article is confused, and focuses on certain
software for displaying a certain kind of simplified picture of the
passenger. However, elsewhere it is clear that switching to this
software required removal off all the X-ray scanners.
It's a good thing, because those scanners are potentially dangerous.
How bizarre that we could not get them removed because of danger
but could get them removed because of a nudity taboo.
From 2005 to 2011, sea level rose around
2.4mm
per year (about 1/10 inch), and it was mainly due to melting ice
in Greenland and Antarctica.
That melting will surely speed up considerably over this century,
but we don't know how much.
Vigorous
efforts might just succeed in saving the Schaus swallowtail
butterfly from extinction.
By the second half of this century, governments struggling with
failing agriculture won't have resources to put into protecting
species or habitats.
Some vital
US government programs undermined by the sequester
that you might not have thought of.
Jordan has imposed
censorship
on news sites.
Taiwanese Internet users protested and blocked plans for a
SOPA-like
law.
They ought to demand that the government abolish the "intellectual
property" office. Any activity based on that
propaganda term
tends naturally to turn out bad. And why allow any public funds to be
spent on pushing for unjust laws?
I do not say all the various laws some refer to as "intellectual
property" are bad through and through. Since these laws are
totally unrelated, it is unlikely that anything can be
validly said about all of them, except that they are all laws.
The world's airlines have decided to
make
a show of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, hoping this
will convince Europe not to take real action.
It appears that Tea Party groups were just
a fraction
of the organizations subject to special scrutiny by the IRS on
suspicion that they were really political.
Google is trying
to block
face-recognition applications for Google Glasses, which is
laudable in spirit, but can only be done by censoring applications, as
Apple does — which is hopeless as well as wrong.
Laurence Tribe says that charging Bradley Manning with "aiding the
enemy"
is dangerous
to freedom of speech.
Julian Assange rips into a book by Google's leaders, pointing out how
digital surveillance technology is leading the world
towards "titanic
centralizing evil".
The Democratic Party will do the people no good as long as
it runs
on funding from plutocrats.
Obama is using the IRS
to crush
state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries.
School administrators insist on a permanent blot on the record for the
kid
who chewed
a pastry into the shape of a gun.
Miami thugs
choked a teenager, then said he threatened them by staring at them
the wrong way.
These thugs seem to be acting much like teenage toughs I knew in
school.
The site of the G8 meeting has had
a Potemkin
village make-over presenting it as prosperous.
The funds were provided by the UK government, and perhaps the intend
to disguise the harm done by austerity is meant to affect the outcome
of the meeting.
In a symbolic attack on journalism and the public's right to know, the
court
barred stenographers hired with donations from Bradley Manning's
trial.
Jellyfish
are overrunning
the world's seas. Global heating and overfishing are part of the
cause.
Puffins in Maine
are in
trouble because there are no longer herring in the area to feed to
their chicks. The problem may not be limited to Maine, and global
heating may be the cause.
World
Faces Lost Decade of Joblessness, ILO Warns.
Projections of improvement by 2017 neglect the likelihood
that many
more jobs will have been automated.
China (and Laos) send North Korean refugees
back
to North Korea.
Greenpeace in Istanbul is providing medical aid to injured protesters,
and its building has been
attacked with
tear gas.
In the US: call
on Students First to stop praising anti-gay legislator
John Ragan.
How many climate refugees will result from
global heating?
A middle scenario might lead to
hundreds
of millions at a time.
More confusion results from the term
"intellectual
property": research into a virus identified in Saudi Arabia in
2012 is being impeded because the lab that isolated the virus is
making other labs sign contracts not to redistribute the virus to other
labs.
These contracts are about physical objects (virus particles),
but some of the people cited have confused this with a patent.
The contracts may be harmful, but they are not a patent.
Tunisia, like the US and other countries, stretches the definition
of terrorism and
uses
it against dissidents.
Taiwan is considering a
version
of SOPA.
Everyone: tell
Nestle to stop bottling water from an area of Ontario
which is suffering from drought.
US citizens: rebuke
the Democrat senators who voted for corporate
welfare rather than avoiding food stamp cuts.
A long series of studies show that acupuncture does not deliver
significant real pain relief. It is
nothing
but a placebo.
The article includes terse explanations of various sources of error
that explain the occasional study that show a positive effect, and why
those are to be expected in studies of any popular ineffective treatment.
UK cuts in the National Health Service undermine public health including
the ability
to respond to any outbreak of disease.
Syrian fighting has spread to
Lebanon.
It looks like this will develop into a war between Shi'ites and Sunnis
across the Middle East.
Dissidents in Azerbaijan and Russia
all
seem to be drug users, according to the state. Similar frame-ups
occur in
Canada too.
One of the many ways in which prohibition of drugs is harmful is that
the thugs can use this very easily to frame people.
More generally, the practice of prosecuting dissidents for crimes that
are ostensibly nonpolitical extends also to
Canada
and the US.
Hypocrisy
Lies at the Heart of the Trial of Bradley Manning.
10,000 brave Ethiopians protested in the capital, demanding
freedom
for political prisoners.
Supporters of one of Iran's presidential candidates were arrested
and told
not to campaign very hard.
A massive corporate land grab in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand
has forced
400,000 people off their lands. It is financed by Western banks.
More about continuing
protests in Turkey.
In the US: stand
with striking Walmart workers.
US citizens: call on
Obama not to deport Antonio Venegas for joining in a strike.
Everyone: call
on Canada not to allow dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic.
Thugs set off the Stockholm riots by
killing a man and
then lying about the circumstances.
US drone attacks in Pakistan
boost
support for the Taliban and make people regard the government of
Pakistan as a tool of foreigners.
In the end, the US does not gain from this. But US politicians gain,
because they can say they are "tough on 'terrorists'".
Most
Americans say they want high taxes on the rich, to help out
everyone else.
Thus, most of our legislators are shown to be working for the rich,
not for us.
Cruel
UK policies will force migrant and trafficked children onto the
street or into the hands of anyone that wants to take advantage of
them.
The same government advocates censorship to "protect children", but
clearly it doesn't really care about children. Sometimes it makes
children suffer. Sometimes it cites children as an excuse to
persecute someone else. As long as someone is demonized and made to
suffer, right-wing politicians are happy.
When a government's only tool is a hammer, it begins seeing people as
nails.
A search
for prior art for a totally absurd patent that is being used
to threaten podcasters.
It describes using a web site (or anything somewhat similar) for an
activity comparable to publishing a magazine. No sensible person
would consider this an invention. The fact that one needs to look for
prior art to invalidate this nonsense demonstrates that the US Patent
Office still applies ridiculous standards. (And not only in
the computing field.)
However, even a "well run" patent system would still be
harmful
in the computing field, because patents cause grid-lock in any field
which involves combining many ideas in one work or product.
To protect against patents by invalidating those that can be
invalidated is like trying to protect yourself from malaria by
swatting mosquitoes. By all means do swat them, but we need to go
beyond that. The US can protect software from patents by
exempting
them specifically.
Universal Music bullied four mayors in Denmark for whom a company
had made a take-off on Gangnam Style, by
demanding
an unreasonable sum within a day or else it would demand even more.
I suggest that presenting legal ultimatum of this sort, which gives
the target insufficient time for proper consultation with a lawyer,
ought to be penalized as a crime.
Ibragim Todashev's father:
FBI
'bandits' murdered my son.
I think the word "thugs" fits them better, since "bandit" implies
"thief" and they were not trying to steal.
It appears to be confirmed that the thugs lied to make up an
excuse for killing him.
Confronted by Activists at This Year's Shareholder Meeting, McDonald's
CEO
Don Thompson Lied And Lied.
1000
people protested for Bradley Manning at Fort Meade.
The US surveillance machine tells reporters
that protecting
their sources is now impossible, so great is the level of
surveillance of all our communications.
To maintain control over this rogue state, we must put an end to that
surveillance.
Moreover, the article shows that businesses also have ways of cutting
off information to reporters. A democracy would legislate to block
those methods.
US citizens: tell the Bureau of Land Management
to adopt
strict safety rules for fracking on public land.
Prominent UK right-wing think tanks have accepted funds from Big
Tobacco
to advise
the government not to require plain packaging for cigarettes.
The EU
has made a great advance in fishing policy, with a strict 5% limit
on fish discards. At the same time, it has blocked Italy from banning
disposable plastic bags.
Thus, both good and bad come from requiring governments to get
permission from other governments which are generally subservient to
business.
Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman says
that Aaron
Swartz was not depressed, in the usual general sense, and would
not have killed himself except for the prosecution.
I would not claim that his decision was a mistake. Prison may be
worse than death.
Global
heating deniers use several fallacies to deny the fact that
climate scientists overwhelmingly agree humans are causing global
heating.
The US military
denies injured veterans the treatment they need, and if they
complain, they get punished with false discharge.
Thugs in France, like thugs in the US and
elsewhere, use
tasers and other supposedly nonlethal weapons too much.
Germans are protesting in Frankfurt to show that
they don't
approve of what the German government is doing to Greece and the
rest of the euro zone.
New FBI Director Set
to Preserve
"'War on Terror' Mentality".
Inhabitants of the Thames river valley face big increases in water
bills, thanks to
the privatization
of water supply.
The claim that improvements "would never have been possible under
public ownership" presumes a government that fails to tax companies
enough. This privatization should never have been done, and it should
be reversed now.
The Tien An Men Mothers, relatives of those killed or mutilated by
soldiers in Tien An Men Square in
1989, continue
to call for justice.
It will take decades more for China to cause this to be forgotten.
Obama, take note: you can't cause US torture to be forgotten either.
In Ohio, the governor will be able
to veto
Medicaid funding for abortions for women who were raped or could
die from pregnancy.
Christian fanatics want to force these women to have children, or die,
because they think women deserve to suffer.
Turkey's government, increasingly Islamist and repressive,
has generated
large opposition.
After police repression that blinded one student and left three
critically injured, a protest by thousands of anti-Islamists was
allowed
to proceed.
US
citizens: oppose
new surveillance requirements that the FBI wants.
When whistleblowers
need to use spy tradecraft to inform the public, our surveillance
is tantamount to a police state. We need to put an end to practices
that accumulate an electronic dossier about each person.
Everyone: tell a Texas judge not to force a couple to split up through
a "morality
clause" in one's divorce papers.
A "no-fly" zone in Syria
would require
bombardment and an aerial battle to establish, and would not do
much good.
Oil
companies inject
hydrofluoric acid into oil wells to "melt rock" and let oil flow
out.
Hydrofluoric acid will burn you terribly if it touches you. Fluorine
is very reactive. I don't know whether this endangers people.
Perhaps all of it reacts with rock and hardly any of it escapes.
Perhaps tiny quantities do no harm to humans. But is this known for
certain?
Teaching high school students about
the 1920
pogrom against blacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and how it relates to
race-based wealth disparity in the US.
I would suggest using median wealth levels rather than average to
measure wealth disparities, because the average is skewed by a small
percentage of rich people and does not reflect life for most people.
We occasionally get a glimpse of how US "homeland security"
organizations spy
on environmentalists to aid fossil fuel interests.
I suspect they do this all the time, and only rarely does it leak.
The US government has been systematically corrupted by various kinds
of businesses. This includes banks, armament companies, fossil fuel
companies, Big Pharma, the copyright industry, and agribusiness, to
name a few. Each kind of business, in its area of interest, has
turned the state against the people, and each gets various sorts of
help from the executive branch. The corruption goes all the way up to
Obama.
As a result, in practical terms the US no longer practices democracy.
Democracy means that the many non-rich join together to become more
powerful than the rich, and stop them from exercising power
commensurate with their wealth. What we have in the US is plutocracy,
an unjust and illegitimate form of government.
California shipping lanes have been moved so
that ships
will kill fewer whales.
Italy's criminal libel law
is coming
under fire.
To make libel a crime is unacceptable.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia
has imprisoned
a journalist without charges for days for covering mass evictions.
Over 1000
were killed
by sectarian violence in Iraq during May.
The Iraqi government has the form of a democracy but
it isn't
much of one.
US citizens: urge your congresscritter
to support
the bill to extend to renewable energy certain business privileges
that fossil fuel companies have.
US citizens: sign this petition
to repeal
the Monsanto Protection Act.
Turkey has woken up from its sleep
during
the AKP's fascist regime
(published on stallman.org at the author's request).
The US stock market is going up, and housing prices are rising,
but wages
are continuing to fall.
Chile's head negotiator for the Trans-Pacific
Partnership resigned
and called for its rejection.
For right-wing extremists in the
US, no
form of hypocrisy is too much.
Calling less extreme right-wingers such as Obama "Liberals" is another
dishonest tactic that they have used since around 1990.
They use the same tactic regarding
our right-wing
Supreme Court.
British
Columbia rejected
a tar sands oil export pipeline.
Seafood
May Be Gone by 2048, Study Says.
The World
Bank pressures
governments to deregulate, but they are organizing to fight back.
Europe is heading for something like
the Great
Depression if it does not change its austerity policy to a job
creation policy.
If the US reads your
email, would
you ever find out?
Maine's legislature is working on a bill
to require
a warrant for cell phone tracking.
I can't tell whether this bill would allow the phone company to
continue to keep a full location dossier about someone without a
warrant. If it does, it is inadequate.
New York City plans
to close
60 local public libraries.
Australian politicians want to use one killing in London as an excuse
for new
laws to trample people's rights.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to pardon John Kiriakou.
I signed this, not expecting Obama to do it, but to add
to public condemnation on people who tell us the nasty
things that the government is doing to us.
Australia's National Party is directly funded by
big
mining and agribusiness.
You might as well vote to sell the whole country to them.
An NPR story on viable plants exposed by melting glaciers mysteriously
failed
to say why they are melting.
You don't need to be near sea level for your house to be
threatened
by melting glaciers.
El Salvador has
given
up on stopping a badly ill woman from aborting a fetus that has no
brain and would die shortly after birth.
A Florida school took iris scans of students without getting
permission, in order to
track
their movements around school.
Of course, they say this is for "safety", but this has
almost nothing to do with real safety.
Cancer has become so common in Basra that half the population will get
cancer, and the only likely cause is
dirty
("depleted") uranium (DU)
from US weapons.
This only scratches the surface of the US war crimes in Iraq.
Obama protects the criminals.
US allies should realize that they do not dare let the US defend them
from attack, because it would spread cancer there too. Likewise,
if the US ever had to fight an invasion, it would poison its own
population.
People fear Qatar's planned new "cyber crime" law will
trample
freedom of speech.
Note that making libel or "false news" a crime is an injustice
directly, aside from what its consequences for journalism might be.
States often claim that true news reports are false.
It's even worse
in other nearby countries.
If we describe a search engine as a journalistic investigation engine,
people might see why its
reports
should not be censored.
DNA people leave behind on cups and chewing gum can be used to
produce a
probable
model of the person's face.
In general, the threat that the state will do this (to dissidents,
labeled of course as "terrorists") worries more than the the danger
that someone else will do this.
Trade
sanctions deny secure communications to Iranian and Syrian
dissidents.
David House won a personal victory against the US, which will
delete its copies of
material
seized from his laptop.
This does nothing to limit the US power to investigate and harass
dissidents at the border.
The Turkish government attacked
thousands
of human rights protesters in the center of Istanbul.
Guantanamo prisoners being force fed point out that they
cannot
trust the doctors involved in this to treat them, and call on
those doctors to examine their consciences.
Holder told a few journalists,
in
a restricted meeting, that he would not repeat the searches of
journalists' communications.
If he really means this, he should announce it publicly. I do not
trust Holder, or Obama, in any issue of human rights. We should not
let them off the hook without a clear end and reliable to the War on
Journalism and the War on Whistleblowers.
Comparing reducing use of fossil fuels with
quitting
tobacco.
This looks at individual decisions, but fossil fuel use is mostly
controlled by government decisions, and the fossil fuel companies have
more power than the tobacco companies ever had.
The last political prisoner from the Tien An Men protests has been
released, after
23
years.
The UN Committee Against Torture has
40
criticisms of UK policies.
Has it examined the US recently?
Everyone:
call
on Nike to commit not to buy cotton picked by slaves in
Uzbekistan.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama not to intervene in Syria.
With or without using chemical weapons, Assad's regime is a horrible
tyranny, and if it were opposed by rebels we could confidently expect
to be better, they would deserve our help. However, the strongest
rebels groups are would-be Islamist tyrants, and replacing Assad by
them would not be a step up.
Everyone:
call
on the Netherlands to block the planned slaughter of fin whales
for dog food by refusing to let the meat through.
US citizens:
support the
bill to require a warrant for the government to access your email.
Everyone:
state
your support for striking Walmart workers.
Imprisoned whistleblower John Kiriakou writes about life in prison,
including how the
US government violates an agreement approved by the
judge in his case, and how the guards tried to trick him and another
prisoner into fighting, by lying to them both.
Once he gets out, I hope he will dedicate his life to organizing
opposition to the dishonest and secretive regime that has taken
control over the US.
The US distorts the concept of "weapons of mass distraction"
for purposes of political confusion.
A Canadian thug
was caught on video threatening to attack a man and
frame
him for carrying cocaine.
In response, the thug
force "disciplined" him, but did not even fire him.
It is a real shame that no witness will step forward to get tried and
jailed.
However, if the only thing they can accuse him of is "assault with a
weapon",
that means the laws are weak. Is it not a crime to threaten to frame
someone?
Guantanamo prisoners remain on hunger strike, not believing that Obama's
speech
will change anything.
Why it is crucial to divest from fossil fuel companies,
as a step towards stopping them from destroying the biosphere
Obama's pick to
head the FBI was part of the team that justified
illegal wiretapping for Bush. He also supported the decision to
hold a US civilian in a military prison without charge for 3 years.
Don't be fooled. Where human rights are concerned, Obama is no better
than Bush.
Companies want to bribe people to accept TVs
that keep
track of where they are looking while watching.
I am glad the article takes account of the difference between getting
a patent on a technique and using it. The patent, as such, does not
mean Microsoft uses or will use this technique. It only enables
Microsoft to sue anyone else that uses it.
Alas, we can't count on Microsoft to use that to protect us from this
abuse. It is not altruistic enough for that. More likely it will let
everyone else do this in exchange for paying Microsoft.
I don't think they will stop with "bribes" — like the "savings"
from identifying yourself to a store, by and by it will morph into
paying extra for not being monitored. And eventually they will try to
turn off other options.
This won't affect me: I don't have a TV, because I'd rather spend my
time on other things. However, if I were inclined to have a TV, I
certainly would not accept one like this.
I wonder what these systems do if you block the camera, put a photo in
front of it.
US banksters
ordered their subservient congresscritter to pass a bill
to reduce
the weak US regulations on banks.
Everyone: call on Google
to disclose
its political spending and stop funding the US Chamber of
Commerce.
US citizens: support Senator Harkin's bill
to increase
social security payments.
How Apple locates itself in Ireland
and arranges
not to be considered resident either there or in the US.
It's easy to see how to change US law so that this particular trick
won't work — if the US government represents Americans rather
than Irish companies such as Apple. Just require that a company can't
have a US tax exemption based on being located in some other country
unless it is treated as resident by that country.
But Apple uses other tricks too, such as the "unlimited companies".
The US could make that stop, too, with a similar condition on taxes.
Here's
Apple's bullshit
excuse, compared with facts.
Lessons
from the suffragettes for feminists and other activists today.
India has established
certain rights
for dolphins and whales, including the right not to be captured.
Julian Assange explains how Stratfor is part of
a dangerous
centralization of power under the rubric of "national security".
Visa Iceland has found a new excuse
to cut
off donations to Wikileaks and nullify its court victory, but
people can donate easily through June 30.
After that, indirect donations will still be possible, and not very
hard.
Attorney General Holder appears to
have lied
to Congress when he said had never "heard of a potential
prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material."
Egypt is considering a law to
control
NGOs strictly, which threatens to stop international human rights
organizations (such as Amnesty International) from operating there.
A strain of GMO wheat that was never approved for commercial use
was found
growing in
a farm in Oregon.
UK thugs, operating as auxiliaries for Hollywood,
arrested
a man and then let Hollywood's flunkies interrogate him.
Bernie Sanders:
What
Can We Learn From Denmark?
Israeli soldiers frequently
harass
and block Palestinian students at school or trying to go to
school.
The Obama regime has investigated so many officials, as well as
so many reporters, that officials now
refuse
even to take calls from reporters.
Attorney General Holder was directly involved in
seizing
records from a reporter.
What did the
Wall Street bailout cost Americans?
The costs are still mounting up.
The countries
where the rich have gained the most are also the countries where
their taxes have decreased the most.
Religious censorship in Turkey has reached the point of
imprisoning
people even for criticizing the boundaries of religious censorship.
Anyone who thinks that that statement should be punished
for "insulting religious values" deserves to have his religion
insulted every five minutes.
Ugandans protested the forced closure of newspapers and radio
stations, so the thugs
attacked
journalists covering the protest.
These newspapers and radio stations were closed because they
reported a plot by the president to set up a dynasty, effectively
eliminating democracy. I conclude that the report was accurate.
In Djibouti, a website technician was jailed for "defaming the police"
because he posted
photos showing the thugs breaking up a demonstration.
Strange how governments and thugs blame the people who show their
despicable acts to the public, instead of blaming themselves for
carrying out those acts in the first place. A lot like criminals.
Singapore has imposed its censorship for mainstream media on
some
Internet news sites.
Bosnian Croat leaders were convicted of planning the
ethnic
cleansing of Bosnian Muslims.
The masters of European austerity have given several prostrate countries
more
time for their next round of required budget cuts.
The article is right that this, in itself, is no big change. But
there is hope that the banksters
will be compelled to keep giving them
more time, and more, and it will result in effectively cancelling the
requirement.
Amazingly, Republicans have started attacking Obama for his
War
on Journalism.
What's amazing is that they are attacking Obama for something that is
actually bad.
Obama's idea of "reviewing" the War on Journalism is to
let
the Attorney General review his own conduct.
Farming tends to
breed
the useful nutrients out of plants, even if that is not
specifically intended.
Israel has built
16,000
housing units on Palestinian territory in the past 3 years, and
attacks against Palestinians and their property are increasing too.
Prohibition of fairly safe drugs fuels the invention of
legal
mimics that might be dangerous.
A man who knows Adebolajo, one of the Woolwich killers, was
arrested
in the UK just after giving a broadcast interview about Adebolajo.
He was accused of "terrorism" but believes he was arrested for saying
things
that the state finds embarrassing.
One article refers to this man as Abu Nusaybah, while the other refers
to him as Ibrahim Hassan, but they clearly both mean the same man.
I don't know why the discrepancy in names.
Thugs in Toronto
broke
a man's ribs and arrested him because he filmed their excessive
violence against someone else.
It is clear that their accusations, at the time, were dishonest and meant
solely to intimidate someone from exercising his civic rights and duties.
It's not enough for the city to compensate their victim.
These thugs need to be jailed.
Members of Femen
were arrested
for a topless protest at the "justice" ministry in Tunisia.
The charges are a clear sign of tyranny.
US citizens: call
for continued
protection of wolves.
The charges against Kiera Wilmot were dropped, but she remains
expelled
from school for no good reason. She writes about the
consequences, including going to a school that wastes the time of any
intelligent student.
I hope she learns to feel more indignation.
"Zero tolerance" means declaring rigidity the highest principle.
Israel
keeps demolishing Arab homes in Jerusalem even when Israeli courts
say not to do it.
A gravely injured Palestinian, in danger of death from his wounds,
was blocked
from treatment all day by Israeli paperwork.
If Palestine were not occupied, a Palestinian hospital would have been
equipped to treat him.
Another Palestinian boy of 13 was attacked by Israeli colonists while
on his land, and broke his foot. Israeli soldiers captured him and
tortured him for
hours, keeping
him from medical treatment.
Genetically modified salmon can hybridize with brown trout and the
hybrids
can outdo
natural populations.
Proposing a moratorium
on autonomous
killer robots.
Burmese men in Thailand
are forced
to work as slaves on fishing boats, and murdered if they try to
escape.
The UK holds around 90 prisoners in Afghanistan, and won't hand them
over to the Afghan government
for fear
they might be tortured.
Combatants captured in a war zone can legitimately be treated as
prisoners of war, which means they don't have to be accused of a
crime, and are also not supposed to be punished, let alone tortured.
However, I'm not sure what international law says about people
captured and called combatants who say they were not involved in
fighting.
I don't see a right answer to this issue.
A lost 1967 Brazilian report
which exposed
the genocide of indigenous people, using chemical and biological
weapons as well as bombs and torture and starvation, has been found
and parts leaked.
No one was punished for it then, and the impunity continues today,
with indigenous people under the
most furious
attack since the military regime ended.
Around the
world, poor
people are being pushed off their land by foreign purchasers who
give them no choice.
The companies grow food for export, and the people are forced to flee.
Jeremy
Hammond pled
guilty to extracting Stratfor's files for publication, but
courageously refused to apologize for trying to inform the people.
Stratfor, which was one of Hammond's targets is more dangerous to
Americans than Hammond. It is part of the tendency for
the US
government to work secretly with corporations against Americans,
which also shows up in other forms.
However, I do not approve
of using
people's credit cards that were obtained from Stratfor.
Russia
Evacuates 'Drifting' Arctic Research Station As Ice Floe Melts.
Loss of biodiversity is a
threat to
humankind's survival, and agribusiness corporations are a
substantial part of the problem.
Teacher John Dryden faces punishment for
reminding
his students of their Fifth Amendment rights before giving them a
non-anonymous survey that asked about their drug use.
Note the absurdity of claiming that the survey is "proprietary
business information" — that is, a trade secret — after
showing it to hundreds or thousands of students. But this sort of
impudence is normal for business today.
The school says the survey results "won't be shared with police", and
maybe that describes the school's intentions, but the school is not
really in a position to keep the state from getting these surveys.
I wish I could sign the petition in support of Dryden, but the site it is on
requires running nonfree Javascript.
Colorado has
passed
laws regulating marijuana sales, which are now legal.
I'm not sure there is a reason to limit how much a person can have,
or driving under the influence of marijuana (it doesn't seem to lead
to car accidents), but they are a minor issue compared with the evils
of prohibition.
But we can expect Obama to attack with cruel force, just as he has
done against medical marijuana.
A campaign convinced Facebook to
ban
images that endorse violence against women.
The photos described sound really disgusting, but the censorship
power that Facebook has is what frightens me most.
After disasters, most people stay calm and help each other, and
crime
generally goes down. However, the major media (and Hollywood)
spread the myth that riots and fighting (and even disease) are normal.
By the way, I see nothing even slightly wrong with taking food from
food stores after a disaster that prevents the stores from opening.
To criticize this seems like Randian nonsense.
Sireen Khudiri Sawafteh has been arrested without access to a lawyer,
because Israel considers her Facebook page a
"danger
to security".
Ireland will require
plain
packages for cigarettes.
The arguments against this measure are full of obvious holes; they
will convince only those who don't want to think carefully about them.
US citizens:
file
a comment opposing a giant coal mine on US public land.
What lessons can be learned from the case of teacher Lucy Meadows,
hounded
by the press after having a sex change operation?
Keeping such a thing secret is impossible, and censorship is
disastrous, but society can learn to recognize that a sex change is
nothing for adults or children to be afraid of.
A UK private prisons company is accused of keeping people
in solitary
confinement for years, and denying them medical treatment.
Their denials are not credible. If someone is put in a private cell
for his own protection, there is no reason to make that a harsh
regime.
Twitter threatens to become
a monopolistic
outlet for all major news media.
Reconnaissance
drones are useful for tracking destructive logging, poaching,
fishing and and farming activities.
However, they can also see whatever you do in your backyard.
Google plans to show
people "customized
maps" as a way to pressure stores to pay to be visible — but
the harm can go far beyond squeezing money out of all retail
businesses.
If you ever do a search through Google, do it from a machine shared
with many others, and make sure you have no permanent cookies at the
start of your session. Best of all, do it from a machine from which
you have never identified yourself to any web site. Many sites report
all their visitors to Google through Google Analytics, so if you
identified yourself to any of them, Google knows.
Several Americans that use medical marijuana to cope with grave
physical conditions are about to
start long
prison terms.
I hope Duval destroys his house, making it worthless, before the US
government can seize it.
Mental Disorders
Should Not
Be Hastily Defined.
It comes down to a philosophical question about the meaning of
"healthy". There is more than one way to interpret the same facts.
Another
pesticide, fipronil,
has been found to harm honeybees.
Hundreds of Syrian rebels have been treated
for damage
from chemical weapons.
Global heating's effects could
make 200 million people
refugees by 2050.
Of course, this is a rough estimate. It could be less, or it could be
more.
The "smart city" threatens to
be too
smart for the residents' good.
The extent of Americans' outrage and empathy for various acts of
violence
is not
proportionate to the acts themselves.
At least 460
were killed
in Iraq in April.
Ironically, the first article starts out by endorsing Americans'
inordinate feelings of anguish and fear about the Boston bombing, and
claiming falsely that we "all" feel it that way. The reason many
Americans do feel that way is because they are bombarded by messages
telling them that they should and that everyone else does.
To get Americans on the right track, we must urge people to feel more
concern for other victims, but also stop encouraging a spirit-sapping
excessive reaction to one comparatively small act of violence. Every
death is a loss to the world, but if you don't know the person who
died and you don't have a chance to prevent the death, don't let it
overcome you.
The euro zone's next plan is to
attack
the rights of European workers.
In other words, they want to get rid of the laws that make Europe a
better a place to live, for most people, than the US.
The Swedish government is
cutting
taxes on the rich and hurting the poor.
Rioting is unpleasant. Under ordinary circumstances, it is not
justified. However, the wrong that is being done to these people is
much worse than the wrong they did. We must focus on ending the
deeper wrong, the original wrong.
The UK has accused two passengers of "endangering an aircraft", but
the alleged crime consisted of
making
empty threats with no real substance.
It is legitimate to punish threats of violence, but empty threats are
not a real danger and it is dishonest to claim that they "endangered"
anything.
Austerity in the UK has meant a boom for banks, but it is about to
break
the food banks.
Obama's speech allows progressives to imagine that Obama supports
their goals, and allows hawks to imagine he supports theirs, and
does
not say much about what he will actually do.
That means we have to keep pushing.
Pressuring the UK to stay in the EU so it will
suffer
from a new free exploitation treaty.
The treaty is likely to include a
nastier
version of ACTA, as if the Digital Economy Act were not unjust enough.
Escaping from this will require every country to leave the EU.
The rest of the treaty will be harmful as well. In general, "free
trade treaties" give business increased power over the government.
What does business do with this power? It imposes austerity, evades
taxation, trashes the environment, and hurts workers. The exact
opposite of what the UK and all countries need.
Thugs crushed
a protest in a Cambodian sweatshop by people working directly or
indirectly for Nike.
Google has dropped support for federated XMPP chat, in a move that
tends to lock
users in.
The change also hurts users' privacy and downgrades the use of free
software clients. It is better to use other XMPP chat servers
which continue to federate and thus don't lock people in.
Thugs in Houston blocked street presentations of a rap video by
threatening
to arrest the fans.
Swedish thugs' oppression of blacks is
surprisingly
similar to that of US thugs.
There is a
serious
proposal to install a ladder on Mt Everest to avoid a bottleneck
in the climb.
This demonstrates that Mt Everest has become an amusement park rather
than a real adventure. How silly to put so much effort and money into
such a thing.
The US copyright industry is not satisfied with imitating dictators;
now it
wants
to imitate gangsters.
You could tell the report was going to spout nonsense simply from the
terminology used to refer to the act of sharing copies.
"Intellectual property" is propaganda; worse, it spreads confusion
because it misrepresents various unrelated laws by treating them as a
single thing. See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
"Theft" is a falsehood: copying, even when unauthorized, is not theft
under any legal system I know of. See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Theft
Robert Reich: with exploiting corporations playing one country against
another, peoples
and states ought to unite against them.
His reasoning is applicable when states, if united, use their power
against corporate dominion. (Sometimes the EU does put real limits on
corporations.) United, they can be stronger, in principle.
However, what is usually lacking when states ought to confront
business is not strength, but political will and firmness. That does
not require a large country, and it does not benefit from union with
other states whose governments don't have political will and firmness.
Exiting the EU can in principle be a good thing, if it gets a country
out of a free exploitation agreement that the EU imposes, or an unjust
EU directive such as the Copyright Directive that requires countries
to ban DRM-breaking programs. Exiting the EU might be absolutely
necessary if it is the way to escape a disaster such as the euro's
deficit limit. However, it could also be a path to an even more
abject surrender to corporations, as Reich suggests.
The
full,
sad details of systematic US infiltration and obstruction
of anticorporate protests.
This demonstrates that the US government is on the side of the
plutocrats, and the enemy of the plutocrats' victims (most Americans).
Bahrain continues to respond to a peaceful protest movement
with repression which
goes as far as
torture.
The Oklahoma tornado
killed
24 people and injured almost 400.
What fools, Americans, to be far more worried concerned about smaller
events such as the Boston bombing, especially since extreme weather
events are more common as well as more dangerous.
Deforestation in Indonesia goes with
taking poor
people's land.
Get
Apocalyptic: Why Radical is
the New Normal.
The US government
officially and
openly gives big corporations precedence over people.
US citizens:
support
the ACLU in calling on Obama to stop using drones as death squads.
The European Parliament approved the
worst
kind of negotiations for a free exploitation treaty with the US.
Texas is on the way to pass a law
requiring
the state to get a warrant before it can look at phone location
data.
While this law would be a step forward, it is far from adequate,
because it is simply intolerable for anyone to accumulate a complete
dossier about your movements regardless of what limits are placed on
subsequent access to the data. When the state wants to attack
dissidents, journalists and whistleblowers, it will get a warrant.
Masturbation
Is at the Root of the Culture Wars.
US citizens: phone your senators about
amendments
to the farm bill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Here are some Nasty
things in it.
The UK government wants to block access to web sites because
of the views
they express.
Two
million people protested Monsanto's growing domination of the
global food supply.
The USDA responded to a WTO ruling against labeling meat by country of
origin
by requiring
more information rather than less.
It is good to see a little bit of defiance of the empire of the
megacorporations, but real defiance would mean putting an end to the
WTO. Its "benefits" are for the rich anyway, and we could do without
them.
The Syrian civil war may
trigger another
Lebanese civil war.
The patent office granted
a patent
on a simple matter of timing in IVF.
I agree that the patent office should not stretch what is patentable.
As a practical issue, the BRCA1 and BRCA2 patents do far more harm,
because they kill people. These patents prevent births but do not
kill.
In an age when human population growth threatens to cause the
collapse of civilization, and destroy most of the natural world either
before or just after the collapse, nobody should be doing IVF. If you
yearn to raise a child, adopt one. Channel your instinct in a
direction that makes the world
better, not
worse.
Why Should Apple Have Access to Consumers If It Refuses
to Pay
Its Fair Share of Taxes?
The
austerity myth: there has never been any evidence that it was
eventually good for most people.
However, its purpose was to be good for the plutocrats, and the myth
was needed only as an excuse.
If you buy the book, don't
get it from Amazon!
Walking Activist Fights
to Reverse
Our Love Affair With Cars.
I wish writers would stop saying a mistake is "ours" when I refuse to
make it.
Indonesia welcomes multinational companies
to seize
forest from indigenous peoples and cut them down.
Half of the forest in Sumatra and Borneo has
been cut
down in a short time.
The "moratorium", which only covers new approvals, is like Israel's
current "moratorium" on new colonies.
The NAACP in North Carolina
is launching
large civil disobedience protests against the Republican War on
the Poor.
Exxon
persistently lied
about pollution from its tar sands oil spill in Arkansas.
These companies lie when accidents happen, which helps them get away
with downplay the danger of the systems they are asking for permission
to build.
Hezbollah says it
is fighting
to stop the US, Israel and Salafists together from taking control
of Syria.
This is ridiculous, since Salafists and Israel could never cooperate,
but there's a grain of truth in it, in that they all seem to be
opposing Assad.
Scripps reporters
branded "hackers".
What a gross error — whoever accused them of breaking security
meant to say "crackers". However, the point is, these reporters did
not break any security.
Prosecuting unwelcome access even though no security was broken is a
common practice in the US; it was applied to
Aaron Swartz
and to Weev, who was actually
convicted.
And Republicans want to make things
even
worse.
US newspapers quoted an anonymous US government spokesman claiming
that there are Iranian soldiers fighting in Syria,
and presented
it as certainty.
Criminalizing
homelessness, Houston style: it is a crime to get food out of a
dumpster, or give food to the hungry.
The most ironic thing is that the people responsible for this are
Christians, and yet they have criminalized acting the way Jesus was
said to act.
The US is the only wealthy country
that doesn't
require paid vacations for workers.
Uganda's president is trying to
institute dynastic
succession and shutting newspapers that criticize.
Green Shadow
Cabinet: What
must be done about the Monsanto Corporation, and why.
Joe
Arpaio Racially Profiled Latinos in Arizona, Judge Rules.
One of the Koch brothers is on the board of two major PBS stations,
and used that
to block
broadcast of the movie that criticized him.
Prohibitionists still scrape the bottom of the barrel
to try
to make pot seem dangerous.
China plans
to ramp
up Internet repression by tying Internet users' IDs to all other
activities.
People won't dare lend their accounts to dissidents if that means
lending their bank accounts too.
The US copies most of
the repressive
tactics used in China, so I expect the US to copy this one, though
it will require several steps and many years.
Amnesty International explains why Obama's talk about drones and
Guantanamo
is still
insufficient.
Burma has imposed
a limit
of two children per family on Rohingyas in the region where most
of them live.
Limiting on the number of children per family is legitimate. People
cannot be fundamentally entitled to have however many children they
wish, since that can lead to predictable disaster. However, such a
limit should not be applied selectively to a second-class group. It
should be applied to everyone.
Two photographers
were arrested in Spain, not at a protest, but in their homes
because the state is out to get them.
David Simon
says legalizing
solely marijuana is a misguided goal, because it would help
American whites while allowing the War on Drugs to continue oppressing
blacks who take and sell cocaine.
He also says that they need to sell cocaine because that's the only
work available to them.
I am not convinced. I think each time we deal a setback to the War on
Drugs will help get rid of the rest of it. Meanwhile, if cocaine were
decriminalized enough to end the oppression of the War on Drugs, it
would also become far less lucrative. It would no longer be able to
support all the blacks who can no longer find any other industry.
What we really need to do is end the oppression of the surplus
Americans. A lot more Americans are going to become surplus in the
next decade due
to robots
and AI.
It is the plutocrats who have decided to condemn these people to
poverty, so we must redirect the War on Drugs into a War on
Plutocracy.
An art exhibition in China aims
to raise
awareness of global heating.
The Chinese government decided to allow this exhibit, since it would
close anything it regarded as unfriendly. Ironically, the Chinese
government may be more resistant to plutocratic control than the US
government. The Chinese rulers are the plutocrats, rather than the
servants of the plutocrats, and they realize that China as a whole
(including them) will be poorer if the environment is destroyed.
Human Rights Watch: regarding "War on Terror" and
Guantanamo, Obama
should follow international law, which the US has so far ignored.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to repeal
the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call
on Obama not to support a bill to require
back doors in all communication software.
US citizens:
call
for dropping charges against Kaitlyn Hunt, accused of having a
girlfriend a few years younger than her.
While I am prepared to believe that bigotry against gays was part of
the motive for this wrong, the wrong is independent of that. the
prosecution would be equally wrong if either or both of the teenagers
involved were male.
Some web sites attract users by not tracking them, then
sell
out to companies that will track visitors heavily. Tumblr seems
likely to be the next example.
To end this problem, we need to shift the Internet from an
advertising-and-surveillance model to a pay-for-access model
with an anonymous payment scheme. Perhaps one can be built
on Bitcoin.
Vladimir
Putin's Goal Is to Destroy Russian Civil Society.
Thugs in the UK stole
homeless
people's possessions.
Why are they being "criticized" instead of prosecuted for theft?
UK gas companies
falsely
claimed there was a gas shortage emergency, for speculative
profits apparently.
Isn't this a crime?
The unnecessary one-day shutdown of Boston caused around
200
million dollars of economic damage (see
note 1).
This was directly harmful, since it shows any future terrorist how to
magnify the effect of his attack. Aside from that, was that money
well spent?
200 million dollars could pay for vitamin A supplements for a year for
all the 190 million children that need them, world wide,
which would save the lives of
600,000
children, more or less.
350,000 additional children would be saved from blindness. This costs
one
dollar per child per year, so 200 million is exactly the amount needed.
If we limit our consideration to American lives, it costs around
100,000 dollars (very roughly) to treat cancer. This means with 200
million dollars we could save
2000 Americans who
have cancer and can't afford treatment.
Every year,
10000 Americans
with no insurance get cancer and can't afford treatment.
Obamacare may correct some of this problem, but not all; they may not
be able to afford the deductible and their food.
How stupid to spend over 200 million dollars to avoid the unlikely
chance that a wounded man, on the run and with few supplies, might
kill another handful. And if we don't reject the idea that this
was a wise decision, it will be repeated over and over, doing
damage each time.
1
I got the same order of magnitude estimate in two ways. First,
assuming that 1/4 of the Boston metro area's population (4 million)
could not work that day, and that the loss per person equals cost
1/250 of the annual per capita GDP ($50,000), we multiply and get $200
million.
Second, the economic cost of a snowstorm that shuts down all of
Massachusetts is
estimated
as $265,000,000 per day, and since Boston-Cambridge-Quincy have 85% of
the state's GDP, it would be around 220 million for them.
The actual shutdown was for Boston, Watertown, Waltham, Newton,
Belmont, Cambridge, Allston/Brighton, and Brookline. Perhaps it was
justified to shut down Watertown. How Waltham, Newton, Belmont,
Allston/Brighton, and Brookline compare with Quincy, I don't know, but
this line of reasoning points once again at roughly 200 million.
Obama plans to "fast track" more
free
exploitation treaties.
Bigger than genocide is terracide:
killing
off the earth for profit.
I suggest setting up a web site to record the identity and deeds of
the terrarists, so they can be punished later, perhaps by taking the
ill-gotten gains away from their descendants. If they see that their
descendants won't be able to buy their way out of sharing the fate
they impose on the rest of humanity, they may decide not to go down
that path.
Everyone: call
on the Israeli parliament not to pass a law
to force 40,000 Bedouin from their homes.
Everyone: urge
Tribune Company's owners not to let the Koch brothers
take over their newspapers.
76
countries have drones. Would the US government like to see other
countries use them the way the US does?
US citizens: support Senator Warren's bill to give student loans
the same
interest rate that the big
banks pay when they borrow.
The US government is trying to make
universities ban
and punish all "unwelcome" sex-related speech, even "dirty jokes".
US citizens: call on Kerry to push Israel
to release
conscientious objector Natan Blanc from prison.
US citizens: call on the
senate not to endorse
arming the Syrian rebels.
Kim Dotcom becomes
a patent
aggressor, with a rather absurd patent.
US citizens: call
for proper
funding for US national parks.
Honduran Victims of US Drug
War Still
Await Justice.
Banksters are trying
to weaken
the Dodd-Frank law by policy laundering through free exploitation
treaties.
Did
the Pentagon
cry wolf over sequestration?
The US military budget could and should be cut a lot more. The US
ought to increase government spending to get people back to work, but
military spending makes fewer jobs than other kinds of spending, so it
would be advisable to transfer money from the military to programs
that are really useful and make more jobs.
The Boy Scouts of
America voted
to allow gay boys as members.
That is a reduction in discrimination, but when will it allow
atheists?
Everyone:
Encourage
the president of Indonesia to turn his conservationist sentiments
into practice.
Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill which would
avoid an immediate rise in student loan interest rates but would
let
them increase even more in the future.
Most of humanity will face a water shortage in
two
generations.
Ruining water sources with fracking is really dumb.
A local government in Peru is
building
an illegal road through the biggest national park.
Indigenous people in Panama say that Redd, intended to encourage
forest conservation, instead
threatens
their control over their land.
A court
ruled the UK must conduct inquests into the killing of prisoners
in Iraq.
Free US workers are
losing
their jobs to prisoners.
This practice forces poor Americans into crime, whereupon they
become prisoners. It's great for the privatized prison industry.
Privatized prisons should be banned, because they give companies
an interest in putting more people in prison. Prison laborers should
be payed a fair wage.
US citizens:
call
on the Forest Service to carry out its plan to end old-growth
logging in the Tongass National Forest.
Everyone:
support
the boycott of Intercontinental Hotels (which includes
Holiday Inn) for building a hotel in Lhasa.
The US government pays big bucks for secret descriptions of software
vulnerabilities — not to fix them, but
to
exploit them.
Not very different from gangsters, ultimately.
First the US came for brash leak sites, and I said nothing because my
newspaper was not a brash leak site.
Then
the US came for me.
If Obama wins his War on Journalism, the
government
will decide what Americans are allowed to know.
That way leads to corruption, even atrocities.
The ACLU explains the
weasel-words
in Obama's proposed legal criteria for drone attacks.
Journalists have sued to end the
extreme
secrecy in Bradley Manning's trial.
Congress: From "Starving the Beast" to
Starving Real
People.
Proposing a treaty to
ban armed
drones.
The article points out that the Ottawa Treaty that banned
antipersonnel landmines has been fairly successful even though the US,
China and Russia have not signed it.
Proposing a constitutional amendment to guarantee
in a positive way
the right to vote.
Tibetan activists have launched a
boycott of
Intercontinental Hotels for building a luxury resort in Lhasa.
A Dutch meat-processing
plant included
horsemeat and putrid old beef in its shipments for five years,
processing them outside normal working hours to keep the secret.
It used migrant workers who would communicate little with anyone
around them.
The Senate seems to have no problems with Obama's
billionaire bankster
crony Pritzker.
I guess they suspend their usual obstructionist approach when it comes
to actions that will benefit their masters.
Ukraine banned
the annual gay pride rally.
Malaysia
has arrested
opposition leaders for "promoting hatred against the government".
A government that arrests people for this, deserves all the hatred
people choose to give it.
One single murder is being cited in the UK as the reason for
massive
surveillance.
US citizens: tell Big Oil
to stop
fighting the SEC's transparency requirements.
Do Americans have the right to
know how our
food is produced?
If Americans do not condemn the absurd overreaction of the shutdown of
Boston,
it risks
to become standard practice. That would crush Americans' human
rights, while handing any terrorist or madman a lever to cause
tremendous damage.
NOAA predicts
an unusually
severe hurricane season for the US east coast.
Obama
proposed steps to control drone attacks by law, and steps towards
reducing the number of prisoners in Guantanamo.
When we know more, we will see if these are steps forward. However,
they certainly don't go far enough. Any prisoners in Guantanamo that
ought to be tried should have real trials, not military kangaroo
courts.
Greg Palast:
My big
fat Greek minister.
Israeli
soldiers in Gaza shot and killed Muhammad al-Dura, age 12, in
2000. A cameraman make a video, which was broadcast. Now Israel
claims that the whole thing was faked — but Muhammad's father
asks, "If he's alive, where is he?"
Nowadays, in
Syria, anonymous
rebels fake video of atrocities. It is not absolutely impossible
that Palestinians in Gaza would have done so. But the death of one
Palestinian was so common that there was no need for anyone to fake
that. (Israeli troops shot the ambulance driver!) This video was
made, and sworn to, by a respected journalist. So the Israeli
accusation has no credibility.
Methane hydrates under the ocean bottom could offer
many times the
existing fossil fuel reserves.
What good is that? To burn that fuel is disaster.
We already
need
to leave 4/5 of the known reserves in the ground,
to have a good chance of avoiding
global heating catastrophe.
If we find more, we can't use it.
Everyone: join protests on
Saturday against Monsanto and
GMOs.
In the US: call for dropping charges against
Cameron D'Ambrosio.
His rap rant was twisted by thugs into a terrorist threat, and he
faces
20 years in prison.
US citizens: call
for legalization of growing hemp.
US citizens: call on Obama to
keep
fracking out of US national forests and national parks.
US citizens: call on Obama to
close the
Guantanamo prison.
US citizens: Call on Obama to act now to
cut CO2 emissions.
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Everyone: sign this petition calling on Columbia University to fire Elizabeth Lederer.
Prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer bullied people into false confessions for a murder even though DNA evidence suggested the culprit was someone else.
This was a callous disregard for justice, not a mere mistake, so it deserves punishment. For her to be fired from teaching is not an adequate punishment for this, but it is better than nothing.
Everyone: call on the president of the Maldives to change the
law under which a
teenager
was sentenced to flogging for being raped.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
This change is just a first step, because it is also wrong to flog people for having sex voluntarily. (Or for anything else.) This is just one part of the systematic injustice of Islamic law, and the elimination of that form of cruelty must be the goal.
US citizens: call on Obama to require US contractors to
pay
workers a living wage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition to repeal the Monsanto Protection Act.
Mount Everest's Glaciers have shrunk 13% in 50 years.
The Taliban destroyed the Buddha statues of Bamiyan. Karzai is letting a Chinese mining company destroy the ruins of Mes Aynak, but at least they will be studied archeologically first.
However, leaving the site unguarded could be even worse.
The FBI shot and killed a suspect who was under interrogation in his home.
It sounds to me like "shot while trying to escape".
Reportedly he was suspected of murder. Reportedly he expected to be shot. Reportedly this was not the first interrogation, yet apparently he did not have a lawyer present. Did the FBI read him his Miranda warning?
Men armed with knives killed a British soldier in London, then said it was revenge for killing Muslims.
The jihadis' theocratic agenda is horrible tyranny, but they have a valid grievance about US-UK violence. On this occasion they attacked a military target, so if you want to think of this as war, the attack was not a war crime. However, they threatened to attack civilians, which would be a war crime.
The US admitted that four US citizens were killed by US drone attacks.
The US and UK should stop killing civilians around the world. Whether they are Muslim (as is usually the case today) or Christian (as was typically the case in the 70s and 80s) is an insignificant detail.
Monsanto's new Omega-3 soybean was engineered to offer what hemp seed offers naturally.
I wonder if Monsanto is paying congresscritters to oppose legalization of hemp.
A high school student faces prosecution for having a younger girlfriend.
This sort of "protection" is not good for anyone.
PBS cancelled the showing of a documentary to avoid offending the Koch brothers.
Right-wing policies in Sweden have led to growing inequality, which
resulted
in riots.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Humanity is on a course to run out of fresh water.
The problem will show up mostly in poor countries at first. Many of them have rapidly growing populations. A comparatively small investment in birth control and sterilization could avoid a good part of this problem.
Or would you rather see the population held down by diseases spread by drinking unsafe water?
Mapping the CIA's global kidnap and secret detention program shows the participation of other countries.
A documentary shows how Italian thugs attacked protesters while they rested for the night in a school in Genoa, then tried to frame them
A significant publisher has stopped selling through Amazon.
In Malaysia, rapists avoid punishment by pressuring the victim into marriage.
Yerachmiel Kahanovich says he shot Palestinian civilians in 1948, under orders, and drove out the population of villages.
When he says he fired one or two shots at a village, I can't tell whether he means he shot a couple of people or fired in the air.
The Arabs sought in that war to expel the Jews, and initially they seemed to have a real chance of succeeding. The two sides were roughly in moral parity. How different from the situation today, where Israel is not threatened at all but calculatingly continues its land grab.
The IRS had good reason to question the tax-exempt status of some right-wing groups.
The US Green Party
calls
for education to be free.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Lake Malawi is running out of fish, and drying up.
This is due to human activity, including global heating.
"How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up," asked Senator Warren.
A Dutch criminal investigation puts companies on notice that they may be prosecuted for collaborating with the construction of Israeli colonies in Palestine or the annexation wall.
Israeli soldiers keep on destroying Palestinians' crops and irrigation systems, and demolishing their buildings.
The default policy of the Israeli army, when colonists commit crimes against Palestinians, is to defend the culprits and aggravate the crimes. Sometimes they arrest the victims too.
Apple arrogantly demanded the US reduce its tax rate, and then Apple will deign to allow some of its foreign income to be taxed.
The Home of the Brave would punish Apple for this by doing exactly the opposite of what it wants: taxing foreign income anyway.
How America could become a third-world country.
The UK will use a secret hearing to try to snuff out Abdel Hakim Belhaj's lawsuit about handing him to Gaddafi for torture.
Hollywood companies are sending fraudulent DMCA takedowns for a documentary about the Pirate Bay.
Green Party:
Obama's
misuse of AUMF is unconstitutional, unconscionable.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Peru ordered a mine to clear up lead pollution that poisoned many children, so the company is using the US - Peru free exploitation treaty to sue Peru.
All the free exploitation treaties starting with the WTO are an injustice, and the ones with this "investor-state" provision are the nastiest of all. Countries must free themselves from these treaties.
Before Deadly Tornado Hit, Oklahoma Senators Worked To Undermine Disaster Relief.
This greedy bastard called recipients of food stamps "unwilling to work", which is lie, given that his plutocrat cronies have left the US with too few jobs.
Confronting the prospect of massive unemployment, as robots replace human workers while doing a worse job.
The ACLU and others are suing a recruiting company that lied to recruit Indian guest workers.
Isn't this fraud? Can't it be prosecuted as a crime? I guess the "Jusrice" department has its hands full prosecuting so many whistleblowers and journalists.
"Telecom companies that rush into Burma before rights protections are in place risk complicity in illegal surveillance, censorship, and other repression."
It bothers me that these things happen in Burma, but as a patriotic American, it bothers me more that they happen in the US.
Russian technology for mass surveillance is in use in the US.
The UK's plan to "encourage creativity" is rote memorization.
To make sense of this apparent idiocy, first recall that the only thing the government really wants in regard to schools is to cut expenditure, and whatever it says is an excuse. An idiotic excuse is fine if people accept it. I suspect that somehow or other this will provide an excuse for cuts.
US citizens: call for marine reserves in the Bering Sea.
It's bad enough that corporations lure people to give out lots of personal information. Even worse, states are going to join in luring or pressuring people to do so.
The "Internet of Things" is one of the stratagems.
The invisible elephant in the room during Rios Montt's trial was the support that a string of Guatemalan dictators got from the US government.
US citizens: phone the White House and say, arrest the bankster, not the protesters against "Too Big to Jail".
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Julian Assange got notes that a UK spy agency had about him, in which the spooks speculated that the charges against Assange were trumped up.
New York thugs violently arrested a woman who was making a video of them, and her boyfriend. They tried to steal the video, but they got the wrong video card, so they were busted.
How often do they steal the right video card and get away with their crime? Shouldn't they be prosecuted for obstruction of justice whenever they destroy evidence?
Analyzing the sectarian fighting in Iraq.
Hundreds of Afghan women are in jail for fleeing forced and abusive marriages.
Others are in jail for being raped.
Instead of propping up Karzai's government, we should arm Afghan women.
Guatemala's constitutional court says that part of Rios Montt's trial has to be done over.
Iran holds 2600 political prisoners, and it's actively looking for more.
Corporations have become a marauding force for destruction and suffering around the world.
Apple and such are too busy causing our worst problems to bother trying to solve them.
The giant US "counter-terrorism" apparatus was systematically aimed at surveillance of Occupy Wall Street and other protest movements, in close cooperation with corporations being protested.
More "security" means less democracy. It's not just a theoretical possibility, it's an established fact.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state senator to support the extended bottle bill.
US citizens: call
on the EPA to follow its own conclusions and protect
Bristol Bay, by banning Pebble Mine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
In the US: call on UnityPoint Health to stop deporting unconscious injured patients to avoid treating them.
[US] Military Quietly Grants Itself the Power to Police the Streets Without Local or State Consent.
West Virginia proposes to "protect" girls from the risk of embarrassment due to sexting by piling punishment on top.
When sex is concerned, we see many proposals to punish those who are mistreated in one way or another. I think that this is just prudery at work — the talk about "helping" or "protecting" is just a disguise.
If we really want to help people, we need to think about why they get hurt. The US has a ridiculous taboo on nudity, and women who show their sexuality are sneered at. This is tied up with sexism, mysogyny, and religion. If a girl feels hurt due to publication of a nude photo of her, this stigma is probably why it hurts.
One way to destigmatize something is to get lots of people doing it. I made the suggestion that Facebook should require every user to provide a nude photo. This was a joke — no one should use Facebook! — but also serious. If lots of teenagers post nude photos, so that it becomes normal, the stigma will be gone.
On the hurdles peace talks for Syria face.
And even more hurdles.
The Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in Iraq has killed 230 people in the past week.
Kerry keeps saying he is trying to restart Arab/Israeli peace talks, even though Netanyahu demonstrates total contempt for the idea of peace.
The FBI read a reporter's email to find his source, and claimed his investigation was a "criminal conspiracy" because he was asking the source questions.
That reporter and his source tried to conceal their communication. This was presented as a sign of guilt, but it is simple common sense for journalists working in a state that persecutes journalists. It is a shame they did not follow best secrecy practices.
I am glad that Obama's War on Journalism is finally getting condemnation. When journalists investigate what our government is doing, they and their sources our country and protect it from the biggest internal threat it faces: the national security state which is dominated by plutocrats.
Apple has routed billions of dollars in profits to subsidiaries that claim to belong to no state and pay no taxes.
I've proposed a
way
to cut through this problem.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the
old
link was broken.]
If you look Arab and you carry a pressure cooker, watch out!
Farming in Kansas is running into a brick wall: the aquifer is running empty in many areas.
Alaska provides an initial test case for moving communities to higher ground, so we can learn and prepare for moving millions of people from cities like NYC and Washington.
Global heating is expected to force hundreds of millions of people to try to migrate from land become uninhabitable.
Humanitarian goals now provide the excuse for massive collection of biometric information.
Thousands of teenagers and children,
marching for
freedom and equality and getting arrested in large numbers, won a
crucial victory in the civil rights movement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
It's too bad Americans don't have this sort of spirit nowadays to campaign for freedom and equality.
Green Party: firing Edward DeMarco was
too
little, too late.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-08 because the
old
link was broken.]
Obama is following Nixon's footsteps in attacking journalism that investigates what the state does in the name of "security".
A bill in Louisiana proposes to end the teaching of real biology in public schools there.
Half the land in Indochina has been deforested in 40 years.
Many species will be wiped out before we know they exist.
The Obama regime accused a journalist of
committing
a crime by asking questions.
Thus, the War on Whistleblowers is growing into a War on Journalists.
Pakistan is short
of electricity as people try to use air conditioning to cope with
temperatures of 40C (104F).
As global heating
continues, things will get much worse.
Oil is structuring the reshaping of Iraq and perhaps Syria
along
ethnic and sectarian lines.
A planned episode of Mythbusters which would have exposed the lousy
security of RFID payment systems was cancelled by the channel because
advertising
clients didn't want this exposed.
James Hansen says, ignore global heating deniers' attempts to cause
confusion by
picking
at minor and short-term details.
It was recently understood that in the past decade,
global heating did
not slow down; rather, a larger fraction
went
into the ocean rather than the atmosphere.
US hospitals are raising prices rapidly, though their
costs
have not increased much.
The burden of these increases
falls
hardest on those with no insurance.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left a note saying the Boston bombing was
meant
as retaliation for US violence in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It won't be the first time people attacked Americans with that motive.
To some extent, his idea is simplistic. The US intervened in
Afghanistan on the side of some Afghan groups against others. Once
the Taliban started fighting back, the US and the Taliban
both
started killing civilians.
Islamists tend to blame the US for when it kills civilians,
and not blame the Taliban for doing likewise, even when the Taliban
do it more deliberately. So we get this sort of response.
The US aerial
death squad merits condemnation for other reasons. It is in the
practical interest of the US, as well as its moral duty. to shut it
down.
A Saudi was
arrested
for getting flustered when asked why he was bringing a pressure
cooker into the US.
This is the sort of thing that happens when fools demand that the
government make them perfectly safe from dangers which are so small as
to be negligible in the first place. About 4 million people die each
year in the US, and the fraction of those deaths due to terrorism is
minuscule.
James Hansen tried to convince UK ministers to end their secret
support
for EU
acceptance of tar sand oil.
Journalists in Ukraine
were attacked
by a pro-government mob as thugs did nothing.
The rat
poison d-CON
is killing birds of prey that eat the poisoned animals.
US citizens: tell HHS Secretary Sibelius
to make
Plan B available with no limitations.
Banks' latest
nastiness: refusing
to let porn businesses have bank accounts.
Global heating
is expected
to kill around 30 people per year in Manhattan in the 2020s, just
via the direct effects of heat.
In subsequent decades it will get worse. And this is only one of the
ways that global heating will kill.
Reporters Without Borders
presents recommendations
for a shield law to protect journalists from investigation for
doing their job.
Right-wing government in the US
has weakened
the protection for safety at work.
Lax State
Rules Provide
Cover for Sponsors of Attack Ads.
A Tibetan writer
was sentenced
to five years in prison for his writings.
US unemployment insurance is being "reformed"
to push
people into lower-paying jobs.
This is part of the plutocrats' plan to use the crisis to reduce the
general standard of living of most Americans. The GNP is up, but the
rich are unwilling to share that with the rest.
US citizens: tell the Bureau of Land
Management not
to allow fracking on public land.
Imposing
accountability on Wall Street (i.e., the banksters) is the root
cause behind many causes we need to fight for.
Evidence
that human hunters wiped out mammoths.
The EU has
decided
to buy oil from Islamist fanatics in Syria.
It is a mistake to speak of "al Qa'ida" as if it referred to a single
coherent organization. The Islamist fanatics in Syria probably don't
regard the US as an enemy, but they would like to oppress everyone in
Syria that isn't a Sunni male, and even those are likely to face
repression.
In the US:
call on
fast food companies to stop ripping off their workers' wages.
How the remnant structure of Herod's temple has been
used
politically throughout history.
Assad said, in an
interview,
that it would be impossible to make an agreement with the rebels
because they are fragmented and nobody speaks for them all.
It is not quite impossible; if a few main rebel groups reach an
agreement, they could perhaps prevail on the rest. But it would
certainly be difficult.
Syria is degenerating into warlordism. One writer claims that
this
is what the US wants.
When that happened in Afghanistan, religious fanatics (the Taliban)
received popular support, even though most people did not like their
religious strictness, because they offered a chance to end the
constant fighting between warlords. A similar thing happened in
Somalia. The same might happen in Syria.
Latin American governments have pushed for a global
rethink
of the War on Drugs.
Human Rights Watch asks Syrian rebels to secure the evidence in
a government
torture chamber.
Another nasty pollutant from Alberta tar sands
oil: piles
of carbon, not safe to burn because of sulfur contamination, and
hard to dispose of.
Global heating affects the ocean, and this is
making many
fish species move to different areas.
Some fish species, that need other special conditions as well as a
particular temperature range, won't find any place they can move to.
They will go extinct.
US citizens: support
food stamps for poor veterans.
The ice
on Mount Everest is melting, since the temperature has gone up by
1C.
Obama
Administration Caves
To Fracking Industry in New Proposed Rules.
But frackers are still not satisfied: they
want carte
blanche.
Years of corruption combined with cowardice have taught businesses to
expect the US government to take orders from them.
US
citizens: sign
this petition to raise the minimum wage for restaurant workers.
"Liberal"
pundits said Obama should break a union, to show he is as tough on
workers as Reagan was.
This illustrates how the mainstream media often presents a spectrum of
views stretching from extreme right wing to not-so-extreme right wing,
and calls the latter "Liberal". The views of most Americans, on many
scales, are much more Liberal than that whole spectrum.
What we need is a president who is tough against the powerful that are
doing tremendous harm, such as the banksters, Big Pharma, the
copyright lobby, and fossil fuel companies.
Thierry Vrain, a scientist who promoted GMOs for the Canadian
government, states why
their testing
is inadequate, and how science has found they are dangerous.
Blogger Writes about Predatory Publishing,
Is Threatened
with $1B Suit.
Lawmakers Introduce
Bill Requiring
Court Order to Seize Phone Records.
This is a partial step forward but not adequate. Obama's War on
Whistleblowers could surely get a court order to pursue the next
Ellsberg or Manning.
Obama's proposed law to "shield" journalists would really make
journalists (and our right to know what the state is
doing) more
vulnerable.
To get back our privacy rights, we need to end the practice of making
complete dossiers of everything we say, to be looked at later.
US citizens:
state
your support
for the Home Defenders League, who are
pressuring the Department of Justice to prosecute criminal
banksters.
Here's
more about their week of action,
now in progress.
California
is suing
JP Morgan for fraudulent and illegal practices in thousands of
lawsuits against people who may or may not really have been in arrears
on their credit cards.
Has your doctor
received gifts
from Big Pharma?
Twisted theocratic Christians in the US teach their children
to feel
they are being discriminated against if they do not dominate all
social institutions.
There you have it: Christian values say you're oppressing Christians
if you don't let them dominate everyone else.
Twisted Islamic fundamentalists in the Afghan
parliament blocked
a law to ban the selling of women, saying it violates Islamic
values.
There you have it: Islamic values call for treating women as property.
Everyone: call on United Airlines to stop opposing world-wide measures
to reduce
CO2 emissions from aviation.
US citizens: call on the EPA to reduce, not increase, allowed levels
of roundup
in animal feed.
US citizens: call on Congress
to resist
Monsanto and not ban states from requiring labeling of GMOs in
food.
It is ironic that Republicans who used to claim they were for "states'
rights" support a measure like this. Really they stand for nothing
except the companies that get them elected.
Monsanto wants Congress
to ban states
from requiring labels on GMOs.
The Obama regime admits it plans
to continue
"war" for a decade or more against a vague association of
terrorist organizations, many of which are not interested in the US at
all.
During that time, some of these organizations will be wiped out, but
US killings of civilians will inspire new ones. By ten years from
now, freedom in the US will be an irrelevant platitude, and there will
be new enemies to justify endless war.
Paul Krugman explains how psychology predisposes people towards
mistaken
moralistic economics which treats a depression as punishment for
previous "excesses".
Keynes's discovery, that governments can end a depression with deficit
spending or else perpetuate it, delivers useful advice instead of the
morality play that people are looking for. This plays into the hands
of those who profit
from a crisis.
The New Yorker magazine has set up a
new secure
leak-receiving system that was developed by Aaron Swartz.
A supposedly factual program about wildlife in Alaska got a big
audience by falsely claiming that wolves and even wolverines are a
real
danger to humans.
I wonder if the interests that want
to eliminate
protection for wolves in the US had something to do with making
this program.
As climate change heats up, the UK
has cut
its team planning for how to cope with the effects from 38 people
to 6 people.
If you are rich, you will take care of yourself; as for the rest,
losing their homes will help make them poorer.
The UK government
has suppressed
evidence about the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in order to suck
up to Putin.
Litvinenko was killed by a dose of radioactive polonium, and the
suspicion is that it was given to him
by Russian agents.
The Obama regime's new Arctic policy is to take advantage
of disappearing
ice to extract more oil.
As we roar towards the edge of the cliff, he wants to step on the
gasoline.
Denial of human-caused global heating is
a zombie
theory, dead in scientific terms though it seems alive when viewed
through mainstream media.
It's fossil fuel money that keeps the zombie moving.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to sign the Arms Trade Treaty promptly.
Canadian artist Franke James was censored by the government for not
toeing the tar sands party line. She obtained the
emails
discussing how to censor her, and turned that into worse
embarrassment for the state.
The pope condemned the
"cult
of money" of the banksters which legitimizes their political
power.
The "six strikes" anti-sharing organization CCI has run into
legal
trouble and has had to suspend activities.
I don't think this will kill the scheme, though.
The UK agency to investigate crimes committed by
thugs has admitted
that it made mistakes when not prosecuting the ones that
killed
a prisoner.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to cooperate with the Senate investigation report into
CIA torture.
Microsoft accesses URLs mentioned in fools' Skype
chat
messages.
I say "fools'" because non-fools use other communication methods.
People who want to leak information about government crimes must now
follow
spy tradecraft so as not to be caught by Obama's War on
Whistleblowers.
Nixon was famous for secrecy, but
Obama
is worse.
When a business practice kills people, the resistance to necessary
regulation follows a
predictable
pattern.
The austerity grab is
killing
people in poor countries, too, as they are forced to cut spending
to help the poor, on public health, and on agriculture.
Although the IRS was wrong to choose groups to investigate based on
their political affiliation,
those groups'
applications showed dishonesty that called for action.
A bigger IRS scandal is not doing enough
to scrutinize
all such applications.
US citizens: call your congresscritter
to support
the SANE Act, which would cancel expensive "upgrades" to US
nuclear weapons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The "Internet
of Things" means total surveillance.
A poll finds most Chinese would join protests
to protect
the local environment.
They are not yet sensitized to the greater long-term world-wide danger
of global heating.
An MD whistleblower says that the UK's privatized tests of whether
disabled people are fit to work
are systematically
biased.
Florida wants
to speed
up the death penalty so that doubts about someone's guilt don't
need to cause embarrassment.
The Catholic Church is taking control of
a growing
fraction of US hospitals, and makes those hospitals deny various
kinds of health care.
I think that general hospitals should not be allowed to deny care
based on prejudices. Limited-duty clinics, which don't accept
emergency patients and do not count as a hospital, perhaps can be
allowed to do so.
Corporations
that spend
money on state judge elections effectively buy themselves
immunity.
200
unstudied new drugs are being sold in the UK.
This is partly a side-effect of prohibition. If the basically safe
drugs, such as pot and MDMA, were legal, most people would stick to
them.
Some of them might be dangerous, while others might be fairly safe.
Even those that are safe, in themselves, might become dangerous due to
prohibition, which means you can't be sure what you're getting or how
much.
There are some young people that will try any drug. A few such people
were present in the AI lab in the 70s. The rest of us told them this
was foolish.
US citizens: Tell your senators you
support 50
States United for Healthy Air.
The UK medical doctors' union condemns government austerity as
cruelty
to children.
It is blindness to discuss the topic of child abuse without including
the abuse that is done by the state.
Has Big Data Made
Anonymity
Impossible?
This applies to people who use digital technology in the
surveillance-prone ways many people do. If you use technology the way
I do, people get far less data about you.
US organic farms are
suing
Monsanto to protect themselves from
being sued if patented genes contaminate their crops.
We are asked to believe that the distribution of child pornography
— and I mean real child pornography — leads people to
commit sexual abuse of children.
But evidence
suggests it's not so.
There are two arguments for prohibition of "child pornography". One
is that "it was made in a real act of sexual abuse". In some cases,
that is true. However, in many countries, the "child" may be an
adult, or even nonexistent, since the censorship extends even to
drawings. Meanwhile, in the US, the "child" may be 17 years old and
taking the photos. This argument does not apply to those cases.
The other argument is based on the supposition that looking at these
images leads people to commit sexual abuse. The article casts doubt
on that supposition.
Making child pornography through real sexual abuse of real children
can be prosecuted without censorship. Likewise selling it in a
commercial arrangement with those who made it. There is no reason for
the censorship which has generated a witch hunt that has ruined the
lives of people not even alleged to have harmed anyone.
The digital revolution turns out to be
a gift
to the power of the state, and those who exercise the power are
the ones who determine its limits.
We need to make sure there are lots of people who are not going to be
easy for Big Brother to spy on, on line. We also need to reject the
"Internet of things", which means in practice that the appliances in
your house keep records for Big Briother to access, with or without a
subpoena.
Almost half
the EU is in recession thanks to austerity policies.
"Recessions
can hurt, but austerity kills".
If oppression drives you to the point of suicide, why not die fighting
your oppressors instead?
Congress, fussing
about artificial scandals, shows no interest in real Obama
scandals involving stretching US and international law about use of
armed force.
In the case of Libya, one can argue that Congress effectively approved
the aerial intervention by not objecting to it.
Amazon stretches
UK tax law to the breaking point.
Republicans plan
to cut
food stamps but continue big handouts
to big
agribusiness companies.
The US government
has banned
a particular kind of bitcoin trade.
US citizens: Support
the bill to increase social security benefits.
Several people were killed when a Cambodian shoe factory
collapsed.
They were killed by psychopaths (corporations). Americans should
cease their inordinate preoccupation with a comparatively small
killing in Boston, which is unlikely to be repeated, and focus on
these bigger killings which we know will be repeated.
A small Alaskan town is forced to relocate as
rapid
erosion is making the town fall into the adjoining river.
This is a more important issue than it might seem, because it's going
to happen to millions of Americans (and millions of others) as global
heating makes sea level rise and make storms stronger. The proper
response would be to curb global heating, but our governments,
corrupted by fossil fuel businesses, lack the political will to save
us.
A mass protest was held in China against a new chemical plant
suspected
of planning to produce paraxylene, which is carcinogenic.
Maybe this plant won't produce paraxylene, but with governments and
companies so dishonest (and not only in China), how can anyone believe
that? Everyone is better off if states force companies to be honest.
US citizens: sign
this
petition for Congress to investigate the threat to journalism
posed by the investigation into Associated Press journalism.
Christian fanatics are trying to shut the only abortion provider
in North Dakota by imposing
impossible
arbitrary restrictions.
The clinic is suing to overturn them.
A New York thug who
killed
an unarmed teenager in his family home had charges dismissed.
It is quite difficult to hold them responsible, and partly this is
because the rules give them lots of excuses.
Arkansas plans to use untested drugs for executions, but
the
manufacturer won't sell any more for that use.
I condemn the death penalty, but I don't expect it can be stopped this
way. European companies won't be able to maintain control for long
over how drugs are used once sold to the US.
Boko Haram is forcing people to join
or
be killed.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say
to sign Rep. Grijalva's letter that urges Obama
not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The Israeli government is
demolishing
Palestinian homes in Jerusalem to force Palestinians out.
Norman Finkelstein, who was fired from a tenured US professorship for
condemning Israel's policy of occupation, says that he no longer needs
to do that because
American
Jews now understand the issue and no longer support Israel's
conduct.
Israel pretends to have halted settlement construction, but really is
allowing
construction to go ahead.
Israel makes Palestinian teenagers incriminate other Palestinian
teenagers, on charges that are
sometimes
absurd. When accused in court, they don't understand what they
are accused of, but they know it doesn't matter.
Arab neighborhoods formally included in Jerusalem, although outside
the annexation wall, have to
pay
the same taxes as the rest of the city, but they don't get vital
services such as sewers or garbage collection.
It reminds me of the way Chicago treated minority areas until
Mayor Washington.
Israel demolished an "unrecognized" traditional Bedouin village
in the Negev, for the
15th time.
China is closing the
microblog
accounts of influential people who have posted criticism.
Murong Xuecun, one of them, writes about what it is like to be
"reincarnated"
on the Internet.
Student
Debt and the Crushing of the American Dream.
Education is one of the things the US needs to support more
by taxing the rich and the companies more.
The more government
agencies surveil
thousands or millions non-suspects, the more blame they will get
when one of them surprisingly commits a crime — but they won't
be able to anticipate who.
Note the contrast between
the weak
US reaction to the shooting in New Orleans and the exaggerated
response to the bombing in Boston.
The UK government
wants Europe
to import tar sands oil from the Keystone XL pipeline.
Israel forces Palestinian prisoners
to pay for their medical
care while in prison.
Missing from the Arab peace plan:
an Israeli
partner.
The Arab peace plan is quite similar to what the US government has
advocated for years, but the US does not pressure Israel to accept it.
Walmart refuses to sign the
agreement requiring
safety inspections of factories in Bangladesh.
I hope this leads to a public pressure campaign.
In the US: call on Wendy's to sign up
to treat
tomato farm workers decently, as other major US food chains have
already done.
The IRS
must increase
scrutiny of political spending (but not in a biased way).
Amazon staff in Germany have gone
on
strike.
Amazon abuses its staff in
the US, but the US government gives less support to workers.
BP and Shell have been accused of fixing prices
for
a decade.
Since this is in Europe, they may actually be prosecuted.
Westerners are in a tizzy about a Syrian rebel who
ate
part of the corpse of a dead government soldier, for revenge.
Such ado about so little. Whatever you do to a corpse, it can't
really hurt anyone (except you, if you catch some disease from it).
The worst it can do to others is offend their feelings.
What worries me about the Syrian rebels is what they might do to
living people, if they set up an Islamic tyranny like the one in Saudi
Arabia.
The UK austerity policies are
designed
to fall mostly on the poor.
Massive youth unemployment in the UK is
making
young men hate themselves, and they take it out on the usual
scapegoats such as women and gay men.
Vermont has legalized assisted suicide, but only for those who are
terminally
ill.
It is a shame to limit this to people whose suffering is going to end
soon anyway, and exclude those in unbearable pain that could continue
for decades. So it is a mistake to use the slogan "death with
dignity", which presumes we're talking about someone who will die soon
in any case and the issue is only how. We must advocate the right to
give assistance in suicide to those who want that assistance.
The
similarities
between AP-gate to Watergate.
Unlike the writer, I will not give Obama the credit of supposing
he was in any way reluctant to do the bad things he is doing.
Major "American" companies' profits are up, mainly because they are
paying workers
less.
The Supreme Court ruled for Monsanto and against a farmer who bought
seeds from a
grain
elevator (many of which contained a patented Monsanto gene).
This means that Monsanto has been given control over all ordinary seed supplies
for the plants that are effected.
Roundup is not directly toxic to humans, but it can
harm
human health indirectly.
US oil production has increased greatly and is
expected
to increase more.
This is something the world cannot afford.
Why the subpoena against AP phone call records is
dangerous
to freedom of the press.
Of course, the entire thrust of Obama's war on whistleblowers
is not merely harmful to our human rights, it is aimed directly
at them.
Presidents since Roosevelt have used the IRS for
politically
motivated investigations.
It looks like Obama did not ask for the IRS to target tea party front
groups. However, some years ago I saw reports that right-wing
churches illegally endorse candidates and that the IRS had failed to
make them stop.
University research centers
sponsored
by oil companies provide the latter with a form of legitimacy that
they cannot buy in any other way.
Cables show that the US has
actively
pushed countries around the world to accept GMO crops.
US citizens: call
on Obama and Holder to prosecute the banksters.
Everyone:
call
on the President of Indonesia to protect rain forests from a plan
to cut them down for palm oil.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to preserve conservation requirements in the farm
bill.
Everyone: object
to giving Henry Kissinger an award for defending freedom and
democracy.
China is trying to stop prostitution by
torturing
accused prostitutes into confessing.
There is nothing ethically wrong with prostitution, so the state's
only legitimate goal in this area is to make sure nobody is coerced
into prostitution and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases
by prostitution. Prohibition and repression of prostitution
get in the way of those goals.
A broad movement condemns
force-feeding
of prisoners in Guantanamo, which is very painful and degrading to
the prisoners.
In addition, the prisoners are now forced to undergo a strip
search before meeting with a lawyer.
The Obama regime collected two months of the Associated Press's phone records
to
try to find the source of a leak.
Several Western clothing chains have signed on to fund
safety
inspections in Bangladesh.
This will probably do some good, and the proposed changes in laws could
do more good. However, what we really need is to change the free
exploitation treaties so that they no longer pressure countries to
compete to offer
the worst working conditions.
More nasty
applications for face recognition.
Some in the European Parliament propose to protect the
"right" of businesses to
secretly make money out of your data.
Deforestation of the Amazon will mean less rain, which means giant
hydropower programs will
provide less
electricity than expected.
It will also mean disaster for agriculture in Brazil.
If current trends continue, humans will emit enough CO2 to probably
cause
a catastrophic
4C rise in temperature by 2041.
However, if the climate system is more sensitive than that, the
catastrophe made be locked in by 2021.
A candidate for mayor of New
York denounces
the thug department's "stop-and-frisk" practice for its evident
racial bias.
However, it will be difficult to prevent the decision to search a
particular person from being based on race, unless the
thugs must show
a specific justification for each instance. In other words, searching
a person must require probable cause.
Street crime is much less than it was 20 years go, perhaps due to the
removal
of lead from the children's environment. Even if there was once a
reason to allow thugs to search people arbitrarily, it is gone.
Comparing today's US with the fictional world of Atlas Shrugged makes
a strange
contrast.
Bangladesh has made
it easier
for clothing workers to unionize.
Interventions in Syria's civil war may
be motivated
by oil pipelines, part of the root cause was the effects of global
heating.
The road to the victory
over access
to Plan B: "We followed a cardinal rule of the radicals of the
1960's Women's Liberation Movement: we demanded what we really wanted,
rather than toning down to be respectable."
This is my rule too. Many others demand small changes in the DMCA or
DRM, or talk about "open source", and say it's because they don't want
to be dismissed as "radical". It means they can't reach for much.
The US has
several bad
or difficult options to choose from if it is to intervene in
Syria.
Systematic reasons cause thugs to prioritize the War on Drugs
over
investigating reports of kidnapped people.
If thugs demand additional "security" powers, remember that they
have lied
about this before.
"Security" measures are only addressed to a narrow part of the
spectrum of crime. The biggest and most damaging crimes in the US are
committed by banksters,
and the state refuses to prosecute them even
when they are caught. The "security" apparatus did nothing to the
perpetrators of foreclosure fraud even though their victims number in
the hundreds of thousands (at least).
US citizens: call on the EPA
to ban
neonicotinoids.
1/3 of all animal species will
be hit
by effects of global heating.
In
Palestine, prejudice
against prostitutes combines with circumstances that leave some
women no other way out. This drives many to suicide.
Such contempt for women that is found across the Muslim world, and
partly continues to exist in the west too.
UNESCO
is trying to save the Great Barrier Reef from damage from coal
shipments, but half its coral is dead already due to environmental
degradation and global heating.
Ocean acidification will kill all the rest, if we burn all that coal.
Murder
out of superstition didn't disappear after the Salem witch trials.
It still occurs today.
Many Iranians can only support
a fictional
candidate for president.
In the US, things are not that far gone. We can vote for candidates
that stand for good principles; we just know that it would be a
miracle for one of them to win.
Can't the US
keep guns
away from children?
Global
heating threatens
to destroy cassava, the principal food of millions in Africa, via
insects and disease.
US citizens: tell the EPA not to
let oil
companies block new pollution standards for cars and trucks.
The UK's 100 largest companies
are running
8000 tax dodges.
I would expect that most of them are lawful, and take advantage of
laws that need to be changed.
How Colleges
Are Selling
Out the Poor to Court the Rich.
ACLU: President Obama, Don t Let the CIA Control
the Torture
Narrative.
Pakistan's high court ruled that US drone attacks in Pakistan
are war
crimes.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Local Farms,
Foods, and Jobs Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The House of Representatives passed a
bill
to end overtime pay in the name of "flexibility" and "caring".
A US-educated
minister has been added to the politburo of the Vietnamese
Communist Party.
I guess that means more crushing of human rights to cater to global
business.
America's contradictory
attitudes towards children.
The Pentagon has
punctured
the pretense that the UK government is trying to rescue Shaker
Aamer from Guantanamo.
The conservatives have cut the NHS to the point where
hospitals
no longer have enough nurses to keep patients safe.
Now that Rios Montt has been convicted of crimes against humanity, we
must look at
the evidence that the US under Ronald Reagan knowingly supported
those crimes.
In the US:
call
on Publix to join the agreement to demand decent working
conditions for the farm workers who grow its tomatoes.
Hollywood influence threatens to block a proposed treaty for a
copyright
exception for books for blind people.
I have mixed feelings about this treaty. Blind people deserve to escape
from digital handcuffs, and so do the rest of us. A treaty that
removes some of the harmful effect on blind people is a step towards
that goal, but it might also serve as an excuse to resist the further
change needed to free the rest of us.
I think, therefore, that we should direct our efforts towards
the cause of abolishing DRM, not this treaty.
Offering a little psychotherapy to people who go through a trauma
is unnecessary, and
some
methods actually tend to make people suffer more.
"American" corporations get a special
tax deal for
foreign earnings, which favors them over real citizens.
The point is not that we should give people the same deal; rather, we
should take it away from corporations.
Chad has arrested
many
opposition journalists and bloggers.
Corruption drains wealth out of Africa,
twice
as much as it gets in foreign aid.
Extremists' violence was unable to prevent Pakistan from holding a more
or less democratic
election.
Uri Avnery:
why
the "one state solution" is a myth.
A right-wing politician
embarrassingly
acknowledged the real motive for austerity in the UK.
In response to many public complaints, the USDA has decided to do a
full environmental impact study on proposed
multi-herbicide-resistant
GMO crops, rather than approve them without one.
A year after signing the US-Korea free exploitation agreement, US exports
to Korea have gone
down 10%.
In other words, this treaty failed even to provide the benefit the US
was supposed to get. Of course, it did the other harm these treaties
always do.
You can pretty much count on a free exploitation agreement to boost
profits and reduce wages. Nowadays they also directly attack the
rights of the citizens of both countries, with "investor-state"
provisions that privilege foreign companies over the country's
citizens.
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter to co-sign Rep. Grijalva's
letter to Obama
opposing the
Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to
take two important steps towards ending imprisonment without trial.
The "American Federation for Children" spent millions to support state
legislature candidates
that want to
privatize public schools.
This is the kind of predator that US parents really should be worried
about, since they can hurt a lot more children than any other kind of
predator.
A Wikileaks cable shows how
the US planned to meddle
in Venezuelan politics to try to defeat Chavez.
I don't agree with all the opinions in the article; for instance, I
think he's bending over backwards to defend North Korea, which is as
nasty a tyranny as you can find on Earth.
A woman in El Salvador has asked the Supreme Court
to let
her have an abortion, because otherwise she is likely to die from
her pregnancy.
The sacred fetus that the Catholic Church would kill her to save
cannot survive anyway, because most of its brain is missing. But even
if it were healthy, she should not be forced to bear it.
Campaigning against
an autodestructive
response to the Boston Bombings.
The FBI
screwed up testing evidence against 137 people, but only informed
the lawyers of 30 of them. Others have languished in prison for
years.
How Facebook leads people to forget all the different sorts of people
they
are giving
their information to.
This is not to mention Facebook itself, a perpetual lurker whose
presence is dangerous to overlook.
Some Newtown officials voted
to tear
down and rebuild Sandy Hook elementary school at the cost of 57
million dollars. In these days of austerity, surely there is something
more useful to do with that money.
I think that it was a mistake to move the students to another building
after the shooting, because that encouraged them to feel they should
be unable to cope with being in that building, which is why people are
considering spending 60 million dollars replacing the building. When
you fall off the horse, you should get right back on it, and that
applies here too.
New Zealand has passed a bill
to reject
software patents, more or less.
I hope that lawyers don't succeed in gaming the new law by cleverly
writing the applications to squeeze around it. Also, if there are
existing patents in New Zealand that cover computational ideas, I
don't think this law gets rid of them.
I recommend
a more
thorough and immediate solution.
A bill has been introduced
to fix
one of the injustice of the DMCA, but it is limited to unlocking
devices.
This would be a substantial step forward, but not enough to fix the
DMCA, because the broader prohibition on breaking digital handcuffs
would remain. Digital Restrictions Management ought to be banned
outright.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Arbitration
Fairness Act (H.R. 1844, S. 878), which would stop companies from
imposing arbitration on their employees and customers.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Food processing companies have imposed
unsupported
safety standards in California, which endanger wildlife.
On the foolish
and absurd attachment many people feel toward corpses.
While criticizing this attachment, the article supports it by using
terms such as "laid to rest". I never use such terms, both because
they endorse superstitious ideas and because euphemisms strike me
as encouragement of cowardice.
The New York Times Magazine labeled as the "center" the place
between
a right-wing extremist economist and a somewhat right-wing economist.
US citizens: Once again,
call
on the SEC to require publicly traded companies to disclose their
political spending.
The Irish government is
shielding
the companies that sold horsemeat as beef.
If the Irish government intended, in February, to put meat businesses
gently on notice so they would cease this practice, that's not wrong
in principle. It was a way to put an end to the practice. However,
blocking an investigation is going too far.
I see nothing wrong in principle with putting horsemeat in a burger,
as long as it is processed safely and announced on the label. The
same is true with the
other
kinds of filler that are normally included in cheap burger
patties, whose purchasers typically assume they are buying pure
beef.
The UK
plans to privatize public defenders, which implies that executives
will pressure the lawyers to do a hasty and inadequate job.
The result will be that one company can "represent" you, give you bad
advice, then
be paid
to run the prison they put you in.
US
citizens: sign
this petition to support the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act,
which would charge student loans the same interest rate that big banks
get.
Recommendations on
a healthy
farm system, from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Encryption in the
iThings can
be broken by Apple.
US citizens: Call on Hagel to tell the navy to take precautions
to avoid
killing an estimated 1000 marine mammals through deafening
underwater sound.
Greg Palast interviews Karzai's advisor, Yahya Maroofi, about the
prospect
of peace with the Taliban.
There is no reason why the Taliban and the US have to be enemies.
They are likely to continue oppressing Afghan women, and if I imagine
myself magically transformed into an Afghan women, I would be thinking
about how to kill Taliban. However, the other parties in Afghanistan
are not much better, not enough to continue the bloodshed over.
The Prime Minister of Japan
persistently refuses
to acknowledge Japan's aggression in World War II.
This is not excused by US officials persistent refusal to acknowledge
US aggression against Iraq.
Are the FBI and IRS
Secretly Reading
Your Email Without a Warrant?
Against
Connecting Terrorist 'Dots'.
As Bruce Schneier pointed out, the metaphor of "connecting the dots"
is misleading; only in hindsight can one distinguish the dots that
connect from the millions of other dots
that don't
add up to anything.
Right-wingers dehumanize
the poor, so that many people see them as "other" and thus not
worthy of help.
Forced into deeper poverty by budget cuts, the poor may look more
unsavory, and some may try desperate methods to get a little money.
These can provide more excuses to step hard on the poor, and the cycle
continues.
What's the purpose of this? Politicians can get elected by demonizing
someone, and the poor may be a handy target, just like an ethnic
minority. But there is a specific motive, too: to knock down wages
and help businesses impose worse working conditions.
US-supported Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt has been
found guilty
of crimes against humanity.
Dubya's crimes are far worse; when will he be tried?
US citizens:
oppose
military intervention in Syria.
Biometric
Database of All Adult Americans Hidden in Immigration Reform.
I am more concerned with this issue than with immigration as such.
FBI's
Latest Proposal for a Wiretap-Ready Internet Should Be Trashed.
The article has some errors. It uses the nebulous term "cloud" as if
it meant something coherent. It recommends "secure" services that use
encryption which users can't trust, because they require a
nonfree
client program — that is, a program not under the control of
its users.
The article also has the bizarre idea that using encryption
you can really trust is only for criminals, and that they will
have to write it for themselves.
Everyone who wants to communicate confidentially on the Internet needs
trustworthy encryption, but you don't need to write it.
The GNU Privacy Guard, free/libre
software for encryption, has been available for over a decade. Unless
you're a sucker with a clouded mind, GPG is for you.
Enron fraud king Skilling has got himself out of prison
in exchange
for not suing his victims any more, and paying them money he won't
miss.
It appears staff in the State Department told UN Ambassador Rice to
change
her description of the Benghazi attack, so as not to give
Republicans ammunition.
I don't see anything wrong here. UN speeches are public statements,
and we should expect any government to plan carefully what to say in
them. As far as I can tell, the changes were not lies and did not
cover up any facts.
It's not as if intelligence agencies had been pressured to misinform
the rest of the government, as was done to fabricate an excuse to
conquer Iraq.
There are plenty of good reasons to condemn Obama, but you can
rely on Republicans to find bad ones.
Fast-food workers' protests
spread
around the US.
Of course, fast food was never meant to be eaten in the first place.
It was meant for fasting, not for eating.
More about the
censorship
order for the 3d-printer gun design.
Bahraini blogger Ali Abdulemam describes how he was
tortured
and convicted in an absurd "trial", then released, and then had
the good fortune to be out protesting when the thugs came for him
again.
Obama downplays the repression in Bahrain, which his regime supports.
Fossil fuel companies have sabotaged all political efforts to stop
global heating. Governments have been
corrupted
and stopped from really trying.
Only a surprising technical advance — that is, amazingly good
luck — can avert global catastrophe if governments fail to try.
In the US: participate in
Jobs not Wars rallies.
A salmon farm as overwhelmed a Scottish lake with
high
levels of pesticide.
A large conspiracy stole 45 million dollars from banks by
counterfeiting
prepaid debit cards.
In the past, I would have said this was wrong, but now that banks are
robbing people every day, I don't care if banks get robbed.
A woman was found alive in the
rubble, 17
days after the collapse of the factory in Bangladesh.
Credulous crowds shouted, "God is great," but what about the thousand
workers who were killed? If you believe that a god decides who
personally will live and who will die, it must have decided to kill
all those people. Shall we shout, "God is lousy"?
I'd rather say, "There are no gods."
UK police
corruption protected the murderers of a private detective who was
investigating police corruption.
A UK lawyer
speaks in favor of Stuart Hall, saying the crimes he is accused of
are minor and should not be prosecuted at all.
I don't know whether I agree, because I don't know in concrete terms
what Hall has been accused of. In the articles in the Guardian, all
specifics are hidden behind abstract terms equivalent to "something
sexual which is considered nasty". Does that mean rape? Making a pass?
Stealing a kiss?
"Transparency" is
a two-edged
sword when applied to governments and data.
Keep in mind that Obama is also an enemy of transparency, as regards
anything the US government does for our "security", up to and
including death squads.
I think the proposed European "right to be forgotten" is ok as long as
it is limited to databases and does not apply to anyone's works of
authorship.
Here's what the ACLU got for a FOIA request for
a document
stating general policies (not information about any specific
case).
Rating states for their "business climate"
has no economic
validity; it is just right-wing propaganda to pressure for
deregulation.
Cutting
down the Amazon rainforest to plant soya will be self-defeating:
it will change the local climate, making agriculture less productive.
Another species
driven to extinction — all three mangarahara cichlids known
are male.
Parts of the Marshall Islands face
a shortage
of drinking water due to drought.
I can't assume that global heating
helped cause this drought, but it
is expected to make for worse droughts in general. However, in a few
decades these low islands will have plenty of water, all the time.
The US
government censored
the publication of 3d-printer gun plans by claiming vague, broad
censorship power.
I am not particularly in favor of homemade guns, which can
be dangerous
to their users as well as to everyone else. However, censorship
power like this is a bigger a threat.
Angola's
war on the poor: evicting them and demolishing illegal homes to
make way for the wealthy.
For the long-term, Luanda needs a smaller population. I am sure many
women there have more children than they want. Donating reliable
birth control would go a long way.
US citizens: support
strengthening the law requiring women get equal pay for equal work.
In the US: call
on major US stores to stop selling neonicotinoids for home use.
Stephen Hawking
withdrew
from a conference hosted by the President of Israel, after
Palestinians colleagues urged him to do so.
I upheld the academic boycott during a visit to Israel and Palestine
sponsored by Palestinians, but I don't advocate a complete academic boycott.
However, this conference is not an academic event. It is
state-sponsored
business boosterism.
Obama recently repeated that he wants to "close the Guantanamo
prison", but what he actually tried to do was continuing
holding
prisoners without trial indefinitely — just not in Guantanamo.
Obama's statement, "When we transfer detention authority in
Afghanistan, the idea that we would still maintain forever a group of
individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are,"
condemns imprisonment without trial regardless of details. I can't
read it any other way. I don't see any weasel-words in that sentence,
but when will he start acting accordingly?
ALEC's latest meeting was
surrounded
by protesters that outnumbered the attendees.
But that is not enough to stop the corporations and the sellout
legislator from making corrupt deals.
To conceal them, ALEC encourages its member legislators to
defy
requests under state freedom of information laws for copies of ALEC
model bills.
500
US children per year are killed accidentally with guns.
Usually they are killed by a child (the same one, or another)
who finds a gun at home.
Everyone: call
on Asia Pacific Resources International Limited
to stop destroying rainforest in Sumatra.
Previously such campaigns were directed against Asian Pulp and Paper.
Greenpeace says that company has agreed to stop destroying its parts
of the rainforest.
The Syrian Islamist extremist group al Nusra is
attracting
fighters away from the non-Islamist rebels. This is due to its
successes, which are in turn due to the arms it received from
countries such as Qatar. The fighters joining al Nusra can probably
get better arms too.
Reportedly the US wants to attack al Nusra, but why did the US
not pressure Qatar into not arming al Nusra?
I don't think it is possible for any small intervention to
enable any other force to win in Syria.
The last time Earth had as much atmospheric CO2 as it has now
was 3
million years ago, and it was 8C hotter than now.
Sea level was 40 meters higher (120 feet). So if we don't get this
CO2 out of the air, we're sunk!
Two Chileans marines have been
convicted
for the disappearance of a leftist priest who was killed by Pinochet's
men.
The US won't keep permanent bases in Afghanistan, but will continue
to run 9
bases until hell freezes over.
A common tactic in the Obama regime's war on whistleblowers is
to retroactively
declare information secret, then prosecute the whistleblower for
disclosing that.
Tory historians are trying to whitewash the racism, violence and
torture of
the British
empire.
An academic who studies the effect of privately imposed labor
standards says
that they
don't do the job: workers need the support of governments.
Progressives promote the privately imposed standards approach because
the globalization "free trade" led governments to effectively abandon
their workers to the mercy of the plutocrats. Of course, progressives
fight against free exploitation treaties too, but so far the only one
we have (mostly) defeated was ACTA.
Alas, the private standards are often not really enforced. This study
shows we need to end "free trade" as a system, so that governments go
back to serving the people instead of foreign business.
Assata Shakur was convicted of murdering a
thug, though someone else
killed him, but she escaped and received asylum in Cuba. Now the FBI
has labeled
her as a "terrorist".
It appears Shakur wanted to launch a rebellion of US blacks. I don't
support that cause, but rebellion is not terrorism. She may have
committed violent crimes; if so, that doesn't excuse the dishonest
effort to pin other crimes on her, or shooting her when she had her
hands up, or falsely claiming she then fired a gun (it's probably
false given her wounds made her unable to even try).
The US military is pervaded by an attitude
that encourages
and excuses rape. Hardly anyone accused is prosecuted. Since
soldiers can get away with rape through influence with their
commanders, it is not a big surprise that the officer in charge of the
Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office was arrested
for sexual assault. He assumed he could get away with it.
The UK
government, trying
to destroy the National Health Service, has cut preventive and
home care; the result is so many emergency cases that the system can't
cope.
3d-printed
guns could
shatter when fired, and kill the person that fired them.
The New York Times gives
its full
backing to uncertain claims that Assad used chemical weapons, just
as it did to Dubya's claims that Saddam had chemical weapons.
An "earth
sciences" lab at Oxford, funded by Shell, could be a pathway for
Shell to corrupt climate science.
Campaigners against female genital
mutilation face
threats from people in their communities that want to keep the
practice secret.
A fire
in a Bangladesh clothing factory killed only 8 people because it
occurred when not many were at work.
By contrast, the Boston bombing killed only 3 people, though several
others were permanently injured.
China
is investing in
education, and working hard so that everyone does well, not just
the smartest students.
Half the world's population could be dependent
on expensive
food imports by 2050.
In effect, a
preliminary
half-capacity Keystone XL pipeline is already being hooked
together.
Sabotaging this pipeline would be morally and legally justified under
the principle of necessity — preventing a bigger crime. Global
heating is
forecast
to kill a hundred million people by 2030 (and larger numbers later
on). This pipeline would not be the whole cause but it would be a
substantial cause — more than .01%. If destroying the pipeline
prevents even .01% of those deaths, that would mean ten thousand lives
saved. Surely that would be enough to justify the action.
Spain has
rejected
the Swiss request to extradite Herve Falciani, who leaked the "Lagarde
list" of possible tax evaders.
The death toll from the Bangladesh factory collapse was
over
800.
I suppose there were also many serious injuries, but I have not seen
figures.
By comparison, the Boston bombings were a minor thing.
Chinese thugs
arrested
activists campaigning for officials to disclose their assets.
Whistleblower
Ellsberg to SF Pride: Manning Should be Lauded as "Hero That He Is".
Chinese
Mines Pollute Tibet's Rivers, Streams.
The US stock market is zooming, although for most Americans there is
no
recovery.
This demonstrates that the US stock market is no measure of how the
real economy is doing. It may be the other way around: the sequester
cuts that will shaft most Americans could be boosting stocks because
they are good for the plutocrats.
The Zaro family complained to the Israeli thugs about
"settlers" who repeatedly trespassed on the family's land,
so the thugs arrested
the family.
Palestinian human rights defender Shawan Jabarin is
arbitrarily
barred by Israel from traveling, so he has been unable to travel
to receive an award in Denmark or to meet with Human Rights Watch in
New York.
Everyone:
call
on US clothing brands to pay for inspections of foreign factories.
The UK budget for caring for old people has been
cut
by 20% by the current government, which means people who need help
to do ordinary things won't get that help.
The State of Georgia has gone from
extreme
drought to floods. These are two sides of the same global heating
coin.
Elizabeth Smart found out how abstinence-based education
teaches
people to feel worthless if they have been raped.
She dedicates herself to teaching kids that mistreatment by others has
no effect on their worth.
The principal of Orchard Gardens primary school fired the security
guards and
spent
the money on art education. The school improved academically, and
no longer has any apparent need for security guards.
A school thug
beat up Ashlynn Avery (she needed a cast afterward) and
then arrested her — for
falling
asleep while waiting in a punishment room.
I don't think the fact that she is diabetic makes a crucial
difference. This treatment would be just as wrong if done to a
non-diabetic student.
China is blocking
the next edition of a magazine that published an exposé of
forced labor camps.
Opposition activists were
arrested
at a peaceful protest in Afghanistan. That shows how well we have
done at giving Afghanistan freedom and democracy.
The Saudi regime is
repressing
the founders of a new human rights group.
Algeria convicted a human rights defender of the "crime" of
handing
out leaflets criticizing unemployment.
Automated
License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy.
The UK has a network of license plate readers that track all motor
vehicle traffic in the country and make a complete dossier about each
vehicle. The US does not say it is setting up such a network, and
maybe has no plan for a complete network, but the proliferating
automatic license plate readers have the effect of approximating one.
All automatic license plate readers, no matter who operates them,
should be required by law to ignore any plate that isn't on
a specific list. And a plate should get on that list only by
court order.
The plutocrats' elected servants want austerity, so now that the
economic excuse they cited has been shown to be false, they invent
other ridiculous
excuses.
The Bush forces
intentionally planned to keep Iraqi sects divided,
and the US may be
planning
the same thing for Syria.
That this had the effect of strengthening forces linked to al Qa'ida
was not considered a problem.
The torture-apology movie Zero Dark Thirty
was edited
under the direction of the CIA.
A report predicts that 1/4 of the children in the UK in 2020
will live
in poverty, thanks to cuts in aid to the poor.
Obama (and Pritzker)
did
it for the money.
US citizens: sign this petition supporting the bill to make
large
banks hold bigger reserves.
This does not go far enough — we need
to break
up the big banks — but it is a step in the right direction.
Some states and cities
have restricted
discrimination against people with a criminal record unrelated to
the job.
However, at the same time, there are many official forms of
discrimination against everyone with a criminal record, in employment,
education, and housing.
The practice of selling a technology product for less than cost, and
making people pay the rest of the price over time through
tied
services, is resented by users.
It is also a major obstacle to making the devices run free software,
because they are designed to require the user to use the specific
services tied to their sale, and proprietary software is what imposes
that restriction.
I hope users will resent this enough to start paying for the devices
all at once and insisting on control of them.
Bangladesh faces
a shortage
of safe water to drink, and the aquifers it uses are rapidly
emptying and will salt up with sea water. Meanwhile,
global heating
has reduced the rainfall.
Part of the problem is caused by having too many children. There are
limits to what is possible, and if they keep making the problem
bigger, they will sooner or later reach an impossible point. There is
not much further to go.
Peace activists who entered the Oak Ridge refined uranium storage
facility as a
protest face
30 years in prison.
I do not advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament for the US, but what
I have to say is independent of whether I agree with them. It is
tyranny to punish peaceful protesters that way.
Partly this is to express resentment that they exposed weak security
that results from privatizing the security.
The single guard who was sent to investigate the intrusion was
scapegoated and fired, which caused him to lose his house. Few
Americans work as guards in nuclear facilities, but many are in
the same vulnerable position, and that is the fault of government with
the wrong priorities.
US citizens: phone your senators and ask them to confirm Gina McCarthy
as head of the
EPA. Also sign
this petition, but a phone call carries more weight.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588
Ocean
acidification (due to the CO2 we pump into the air) can wipe out
brittle stars, as well as coral and crustaceans.
Islands in the western Pacific are expected
to lose
marine resources due to this, as well as due to effects of global
heating.
Protesters in Bangladesh,
demanding
prosecution of "atheists", fought
with the thugs.
It appears the thugs
attacked first, which is bad, even though the cause
these protesters support is pure injustice.
I suspect that the "atheists" are not really atheists, just secular,
but still deserve freedom of speech anyway.
Leopoldo Garcia Lucero was
maimed
by Pinochet's torturers; his case
will be judged by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
The Boston bombings are not a reason for
more
government surveillance.
The Privacy-Invading Potential of
Eye
Tracking Technology.
That Unemployment Form Might
Violate
Your Civil Rights.
The Texas fertilizer plant that exploded benefited from a program
for "streamlined"
inspections (which turned out to mean none at all).
The US condemned repression of journalists, but didn't mention the
journalist imprisoned in Yemen due to
a request
from Obama.
What the Framing of a Terror Suspect Says
About GOP
Attacks on Due Process.
Rich people want austerity because
they profit
from it. Erroneous economics that supports austerity received
widespread acceptance because it gave the rich an excuse to pretend it
was good for others as well.
This demonstrates that money corrupts economics just as it does other
fields of science where money is at stake,
such
as medicine
and public
health.
Not everyone goes along with the
corruption. Paul
Krugman champions economics that remembers what the banksters want
forgotten.
Citizens are right to distrust the politicians, but what the
politicians did wrong before was obey the
banksters. They let
banksters
create bubbles and dangerous derivatives. Now, with
austerity, they continue obeying the banksters.
We must support politicians that will treat the
banksters as a threat
to society. Of course, there are good ways to fight them and bad
ways; hurting the banksters
is not a sufficient condition for a wise
policy. However, it is a necessary condition.
George Monbiot:
Why
the Politics of Envy Are Keenest Among the Very Rich.
A UK official supported a plan to discredit a tax whistleblower
by
telling lies to the press.
A Mexican journalist's sons were
murdered
by gunmen who chased them in a car.
It is unusual to kill a journalist's relatives instead of the journalist.
Maybe it had nothing to do with their parents.
Around 20,000 protested in Moscow, demanding the release of
political
prisoners who protested a year ago.
Time To Demand
All Birth Control Pills Be Sold Over-The-Counter.
I agree, as far as that goes, but daily birth control pills are not
the modern reliable method of birth control. We need to focus on
encouraging the use of the more effective forms — and a major
barrier to their use is the expense.
The four million Ahmadis in Pakistan are
effectively
excluded from politics by discriminatory laws, and face execution
for blasphemy if they make a misstep.
It is rather strange to claim to be a Muslim while denying one of the
principal tenets of Islam, like claiming to be a Christian and saying
Jesus never lived. But Christianity and Islam are full of claims that
are hardly rational, and religious freedom includes the freedom to
believe any or all of them. Islamic governments generally
do
not respect people's religious freedom, and Pakistan is one of the
worst.
This is why Pakistan is on my list of countries I would not visit.
Most Americans think of Sallie Mae as a government institution. It
was one. Now it is a
privately-run
bank which is nasty to the students that have borrowed, and is a
member of ALEC.
The Tsarnaev brothers may have got their inspiration from
jihadis
sponsored by the CIA with the idea of weakening US rivals such as
Russia.
The US says that those accused of felonies must be given legal
representation, but the public defender system is so understaffed
that they
cannot
do an adequate job.
Totally aside from problems with the legal system, it is absurd for
such things as putting your feet on a seat in a train to be prosecuted
as crimes at all.
It is silly to expect the FBI to detect would-be terrorists, or to
criticize when it overlooks one, because the significance of the data
is not
clear except in hindsight.
"Trying harder" (by invading our freedom even more) would not make the
effort much more successful.
Fortunately, the casualty rate from terrorism in the US is so tiny
(compared with other causes of casualties) that "trying harder"
is not necessary.
A pesticide formerly used on bananas in Guadeloupe and Martinique has
washed into the sea bottom, and now makes seafood around the island
unsafe t
o eat.
It will remain unsafe for decades more.
Billionaire
Burglar Breaks into Obama's Cabinet.
Rep. Barbara Lee proposed a bill to
repeal
the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Some senators are also
reconsidering
it.
200,000 protested in Paris to call on Hollande to replace his
centrist policy with a
progressive policy.
Public banks, and other
alternatives
to the US Federal Reserve Bank.
A UN army has been
sent
to the D.R. Congo to suppress a rebel army that commits
atrocities.
Many Russian dissidents face prosecution
for
protesting against Putin.
A 50-year coverup of British repression in Kenya is being
exposed.
Obama has nominated
wealthy
bankster Penny Pritzker as Secretary of Commerce.
She is also known for
union-busting
and closing public schools.
For this Obama calls her a "distinguished business leader", perhaps
distinguished by how much she contributed to his campaigns.
Public
Banking as an Answer to Artificial Scarcity.
Companies are fighting to deny the toxicity of chemicals
used in
products
we are all exposed to, just as companies previously fought to deny
the toxicity of asbestos and lead.
Refuting the right-wing argument in favor of
sweatshops.
I think the article concedes too much to that argument. I agree that
safety standards should apply the same to all countries, but I don't
agree that replacing a high-wage job with a low-wage job is good
merely because the low-wage job is in Bangladesh. That's a big loss
for one worker, and a tiny gain for another worker, and the difference
goes to the owners.
Companies that want to produce for the US in poor countries, and pay
less than US wages, should be required to pay considerably more than
the usual wage standards of those countries, as well as taxed for
doing this, so that most of the benefit goes to workers and only some
to the owners.
Prominent gay activists have published an open letter in
support for
Bradley Manning.
For me, the fact that he is gay is a side issue. He is a hero for
resisting tyranny.
Dubya's assistant in regard to drone policy
criticized
Obama for using drones to kill people rather that arresting them
and putting them in Guantanamo.
Killing people might be more humane than putting them in Guantanamo
for life, but why limit the choices to those two? Outside of true war
zones, the right thing to do with someone suspected of planning
terrorism is to watch him until there is enough evidence to try him,
then arrest him and try him in a regular court. No drones, no
Guantanamo.
Having children typically leads people
to subordinate
the future of society to the success of their own offspring.
In other words, taking care of only your own family is just a kind of
selfishness.
Congress needs
to repeal
the "Authorization for Use of Military Force" that permitted Dubya
and then Obama to attack people around the world.
The UN, after bringing cholera to Haiti, has failed to carry out its
own recommendations
for preventing
that sort of UN gift to other countries.
Independent news sites in Malaysia face raids by
thugs and blockage by
filters on the Internet, as well as the virtual equivalent of
state-organized
"spontaneous protests".
A privatized prison in Ohio
has become
a disaster.
The company needs to make money somehow.
Ecuador's legislature is moving
to cancel
a trade treaty with the US, and is organizing resistance
throughout Latin America.
Hooray, Ecuador! With this example, it will be easier to knock out
the rest of them.
The US government, subservient to Big Pharma, tries
to punish
governments that make exceptions to medical patents in order to
save the lives of people that can't afford monopoly prices.
It is unfortunate that the article cites
the propaganda
term "intellectual property" without condemning it as propaganda.
Prestigious US newspapers and magazines set up events
to sell
companies access to politicians.
JP Morgan manipulated its accounts in order
to cheat
on requirements for backing its risky investments with real
assets.
Uri
Avnery: Kerry,
trying to restart Israel/Arab peace talks, will find that Israel
will negotiate ad infinitem, just as before. An agreement will
require pressuring Israel to make a deal.
Facebook is offering a paltry settlement to the people
whose names
were used in advertising without their permission.
A Guantanamo prisoner on hunger strike explains the
series
of sufferings caused by force-feeding.
Former Guantanamo prisoners point out that the US
continues
to abuse prisoners in Guantanamo, and call on doctors and nurses
to refuse to cooperate with force feeding.
Subcontracting to sweatshops is the clothing industry's
intentional
business model. (They call this "flexibility".)
The famous brands' response to the resulting disasters is, in most
cases, to try to avoid association with them rather than to prevent
them.
However, disasters that kill hundreds of workers at once are a small
part of the suffering caused by sweatshops. People are regularly
overworked until they develop medical problems. Their pay is small,
and often they don't receive that pay.
To eliminate these problems, we must eliminate the flexibility of
subcontracting. We must tell companies, "Put your factory where you
wish, but it has to be your factory, the workers must be
employees of your company, and you won't be able to move it
easily." The exception would be for commodity subproducts not made
specially for one company.
In the UK, people are being
fined
for mere insults.
The article criticizes the absurd examples but grants unjustified legitimacy
to the general practice. Racism is nasty, but you can't stop racism
by banning insults, and insults alone do not generate violence.
US citizens: support
the Job Preservation and Sequester Replacement Act.
Here's
more
information about the bill.
US citizens:
ask
your senators to support the Safe Chemicals Act.
Human Rights Watch: Libya's proposed law to bar former Gaddafi officials
from many kinds of jobs is
too
broad and lacks safeguards.
Bloomberg news has published
a list
showing the ratio of CEO pay to workers' pay, for some US companies.
Everyone: express
solidarity to the LA Times workers who announced they would quit
if the paper is sold to the Koch brothers.
In the US:
support
Guitar Center workers in unionizing against Bain Capital.
US citizens: call
on the US Forest Service not to approve uranium mining near the
Grand Canyon.
Hamas is "Talibanising"
Gaza, step by step, and inspiring resistance.
Democracy activists in Azerbaijan
get little
support from the West.
Greg Palast has described how
the government
of Azerbaijan works hand in hand with international oil companies.
That's why the US cooperates with Azerbaijan's dictator, and tries to
destabilize Venezuela.
If you love listening to birds sing, remember
that humans
are wiping out songbirds through pesticides and global heating.
Women in
Pakistan face
threats of attacks if they try to vote.
Even after libel reform, UK libel
law prevents
publication of books available in the US.
In Copenhagen,
a safe
room for drug injections protects addicts while reducing theft.
I am sure it also reduces transmission of HIV.
Investigation of the Bangladesh factory collapse leads
to suspicion
of corruption at many levels.
The practice of outsourcing to local contractors facilitates
corruption because the Western companies that sell the goods can
disclaim responsibility. If American companies ran their own
factories in Bangladesh, they could be prosecuted in the US for paying
bribes there.
A wild fire in Ventura county, north of Los Angeles, has
burnt 43
square miles.
Due to the severe drought, wild fires are burning already with the
intensity usually observed in September. By this September they will
probably be even worse.
And global heating will make it even worse.
In the
US, where
have all the jobs gone?
The article cites various causes of lack of jobs, but the root cause
is that business dominates government policy.
When the article states that more global trade is good, it is only
half right. More international trade means more total wealth, and
that's good all else being equal. But all else is not equal.
Globalization gives
business more power to dominate government policy. If obstructing
global trade is necessary to strip business of its power, so be it.
1/4 of Americans aged 25 through 34
are now
unemployed.
The solutions suggested by this article are inadequate, even useless.
Not everyone has the ability to practice an educated profession;
society must offer a decent life to the rest, also.
We can't reduce unemployment much by helping workers improve their
skills. Even if every worker or would-be worker in the US were to
become more employable, that would have only a little influence on the
total number of jobs. To increase that requires other government
policies.
College is too expensive now for most Americans anyway, because
governments have ceased to support it. Many Americans are saddled for
life with college loans
they cannot pay
back or get rid of. It's a risk I would not advise anyone to take.
Improving workers' productivity does the workers little good under our
current anti-worker political system. American workers' productivity
has increased greatly in the last 30 years
with no
increase in wages.
Among many other nasty things, Iran's
government prohibits
labor unions.
US state governments
are moving
in the same direction.
China has adopted a law about hospitalization of the insane, but that
law won't
help dissidents
that are put in mental hospitals.
Jordan
is prosecuting
dissidents for their words.
Norway is considering a law to impose
pushing Internet
filters to block sharing.
If you are Norwegian, please try to fight this.
UN
Finds Little
Appreciation for Human Rights Among US Businesses.
"It's a sad thought that our politicians are so crooked that we have
to ask the United Nations for help, but no one else will listen."
US drone
attacks destroy
traditional moral codes in the victim societies and in the US.
I don't think it makes a difference directly whether people are killed
by a remotely piloted plane, a manned plane, an artillery shell or
bullets. Any of them can kill innocent people, depending on how much
the soldiers care to avoid this. However, drones are easier to use in
places around the world where there is no war going on.
An ex-FBI agent confirms that the US records all phone conversations and
emails so
as to look at them later — universal wiretapping by Big
Brother.
This is more dangerous than a few people running around with bombs.
The ruling party in Malaysia
seems
to be cheating in the election.
In modern civilization,
children have no
freedom — they are either kept isolated or regimented, and
never free to do things on their own.
This reaches an extreme in the US, where parents are rebuked if they
allow their children to go anywhere on foot, but resent the need to
constant drive them around. Of course, the resentment is taken out on
the child.
Enemies of sharing often rant about "copyright theft", a term that
they use in a misleading way. Here's a
real
case of alleged copyright theft.
You can point to this example to refute their misuse of the term.
Sibel Edmonds says secret government documents she translated showed
that
the US
government worked with Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri until
3 months after September 11, 2001.
What were they doing together? Supporting terrorism
(destabilization).
Everyone: call on the government of Egypt
to drop
charges against dissidents.
US citizens: sign another petition calling on Obama
to close
the Guantanamo prison.
The inconsistent history of US opposition
to chemical
weapons.
US citizens: sign this petition to
support closing
the Guantanamo prison.
US citizens: call on Congress
to pass
stricter gun control.
Morris Davis, formerly chief prosecutor in Guantanamo kangaroo courts,
calls
for giving real trials to those prisoners who deserve prosecution,
and releasing all the rest.
I will not recommend signing his petition on change.org, because that
site requires running nonfree software. Instead, I've recommended
other on-line petitions for supporting this cause.
The law adopted by Dryden, NY,
to ban
fracking was upheld on appeal.
Abortion rights activists in Ireland risk imprisonment
by distributing
abortion information in violation of censorship laws.
Pressuring environmentalist organizations with large endowments
to divest
from fossil fuels.
Although it is clear that British troops in the
Bush forces tortured
Baba Mousa to death, a farcical trial ensured
that no
one would be held responsible.
Supporting the right to die, by showing people
what
it's like not to be allowed a comfortable death.
The UK let Goldman Sachs off 20 million pounds of tax owed
to
avoid "embarrassing" a pro-bankster minister.
Piracy is
almost
nonexistent.
China is investing heavily in renewable energy, but its CO2
emissions are
growing
greatly anyway.
Teaching Africans to be
proud
of having apes in the nearby forest.
Chomsky:
The
Boston Bombings Gave Americans a Taste of the Terrorism the
U.S. Inflicts Abroad Every Day.
Chomsky's statement that "There are few in Boston who were not touched
in some way by the marathon bombings on April 15 and the tense week
that followed" is true, but only because of the ridiculous shutdown of
Boston's transit system on April 19, together with the media blitz.
If not for those, only a fraction of the population of Boston would
have been affected. It would have been good to spare the rest.
Notwithstanding this small point, I agree with Chomsky's conclusions.
I can feel sad and angry on behalf of the victims of any injustice,
but what really preoccupies me is that these events will lead to
injustice against all Americans — if they are used as an excuse
to curtail our freedom.
US employers often
steal
their workers' wages. If once in a rare while they get caught and
fined, it's just part of the "cost of doing business" for them.
The Mozilla foundation threatens legal action against the company
whose spy software
pretends
to be Firefox.
The secret FISA court has not said no to any surveillance requests in
2011
or 2012.
This laxity probably encourages the FBI to make such requests without
good reason. Meanwhile, the requests are formulated in such broad
terms that each one permits the FBI to wiretap almost anyone.
Obama can get most of the way towards closing Guantanamo
without
any help from Congress.
So Obama should start doing, not merely talking.
5-Year-Old
Boy Killed Sister With Gun Made For Kids.
If you have a gun in your house, even if there are no little kids
there, it is still much more likely to kill you than to protect you.
Exxon has recovered
less
than half of the tar sands oil that it spilled in Arkansas.
North Carolina's ALEC-corrupted Republican senators are so determined
to pass a bill to wipe out a clean energy program that they
falsified
a committee vote on the bill.
New York State, and other states, plan to hand over all students'
academic records to a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, and many related
companies too, for
data
mining and commercial abuse.
This new intrusion is an indirect consequences of the US imposition of
oppressive
standardized tests, which does other kinds of harm directly.
Thugs in Grand Rapids
arrest
people without warning for "trespassing", even drivers resting in
their cars in a gas station.
I wonder if they choose the people to arrest based on their race.
I have no information about the race of these victims, but that's
a common behavior pattern for thugs in the US.
In
Violation of Constitution, Ethiopian Blogger Will Face 18 Years in
Prison.
Expel and Arrest
the Best Students: The USA's Road to Ruin.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to reject the new neonicotinoid-like pesticide,
sulfoxaflor.
The US is considering this new pesticide while
refusing
to take action against existing neonicotinoids.
The chemical-heavy industrial agriculture system is a
major
contributor to global heating.
US citizens:
call on the
Senate to fix the filibuster.
Neonicotinoids may
kill
birds as well as bees.
The US government is
failing
to take the bee loss crisis seriously.
The government study
shielded
the neonicotinoids by citing other
factors that contribute to bee colony collapse.
What if that study is right? What if the varroa mites are the main
cause of the problem, and neonicotinoids are a secondary factor?
We don't know how to get rid of the varroa mites, and we urgently need
to save the bees (not just domesticated honeybees). If the only
factor we know how to eliminate is the neonicotinoids, we had better
do so forthwith.
Some people appear to be driven
to seek
a certain level of risk of danger; as a result, measures to make
life safer around them can backfire.
Not everyone seeks danger. Thus, I am skeptical of the conclusion
that automobile seat belts are self-defeating. Many drivers (and
passengers!) use them without looking for other dangers to replace the
avoided danger of a car accident.
However, if some people seek danger, we should try to help them get
the danger they want in a way that does not endanger others or cost a
lot. Identifying the best methods may be a subtle question.
UN
officials condemn force-feeding of hunger strikers in Guantanamo.
Maryland's governor, who is thinking of running for president, signed
a bill
to abolish
the death penalty.
400 Bangladeshis (actually 500) were the latest casualties of the
global business pressure
to mistreat
workers and cut their pay.
Pope Francis continues to condemn
the greed
of the rich as a major world evil.
USAid was connected with a 2008 attempt
to overthrow
the government of Bolivia.
CEOs Pushing Austerity
Enjoy Taxpayer-Subsidized
Pay.
Banksters absolutely hate the bill
to make
big banks maintain reserves to avoid a bailout.
If they didn't hate it, that would be a sign it was ineffective.
However, it does not go far enough. To address other evils of big
banks, such as their ability to conspire to defraud the rest of us, we
need
to break
them up.
The US pressured Mexico to imprison corrupt officials, so
it picked
some officials and framed them.
Who Served Their Country
Better: George
Bush or Kimberly Rivera?
Dubya deserves a life sentence for the crime of aggressive war.
French President Hollande is
trying
to encourage the election defeat of Merkel, the queen of
euro-austerity.
That's the right thing to do, and yet the article derides him
for having "bad relations" with Germany, which is an inevitable
consequence of trying to do this. It's like criticizing a vaccine
because the needle hurts.
Arctic sea ice is melting
faster
than expected, which means the extreme weather effects already
caused by reduced Arctic ice will get even worse in a few years.
This means food will get more expensive, world wide. People in poor
countries will die of this, and since millions Americans already find
it hard to pay for food, some Americans may die too from it too.
Everyone: sign the
petition
against the eviction of Jacqueline Barber, whose pension won't pay
for her cancer therapy and her mushrooming mortgage payments.
Everyone: call
on Mark Zuckerberg to stop funding ads that endorse the Keystone
XL planet-roaster pipeline and drilling for oil in the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge.
Indochina has lost
1/3
of its forests in 40 years.
With increasing population, the rate of loss is likely to increase
if the cause of the problem is not corrected.
In regard to Syria, the first principle is
"Do no
harm".
Repeal the
Sequester — And the Insanity Behind It.
Americans
have forgotten
Iraq now that Americans are not dying there, but plenty of Iraqis
are being killed.
Blocking a certain chemical in mouse brains makes
them live
10% to 20% longer.
I predict we will eventually find that humans have already pushed this
life-extension mechanism to its limit. Mammals' life spans tend to be
inversely proportional to their heartbeat rate, but humans are the
exception, with a lifespan four times that of other mammals with the
comparable heartbeat rate. This long life is the result of
adaptations in whatever mechanisms could adapt easily. That means
that simple means that extend the lifespans of other mammals have
probably been used already in humans.
Too bad.
The Greek xenophobe
party plans
to hand out food to the hungry, excluding those they don't
consider Greek.
The state wants to ban this food distribution, but that is the wrong
response. The hungry in Greece deserve food. The proper response is
for the state to pre-empt the neonazis by offering food to everyone
who is hungry. That is the state's responsibility, after all. It is
the state's failure to carry out its responsibility that gives the
neonazis this opportunity.
It would also be legitimate to legislate that anyone distributing food
in a public place must not discriminate: all orderly persons must be
offered food just the same, and if a price is charged, it should be
the same for everyone.
Civil
war is destroying Syrians, while Assad's regime hangs on. The rest
of the world ought to do something, but is there anything effective
that could be done?
US agencies connived at a scheme
to avoid proper
environmental impact review for genetically engineered salmon.
Plutocrat-funded organizations advocate a
radical shift of the burden
state taxes from the rich to the poor, so that smaller shifts will
appear to be "the center".
Measuring
impunity for killers of journalists: the "impunity index".
Imidacloprid one of the neonicatinoid pesticides that Europe has just
decided to ban on certain crops, has been linked
to low
numbers of aquatic insects and molluscs.
Once used, it gets into streams. The EU pollution standard is too
weak; even streams that meet the standard show reductions in wildlife.
Some streams were so polluted that their water could be used as
pesticides.
Furthermore, the case of imidacloprid was approved shows that the way
pesticides are judged for approval in the EU is totally inadequate.
Obama is appealing the court ruling to
make emergency
contraception available without a prescription to people of all
ages.
One of the problems with the FDA's decision is that it makes emergency
contraception unavailable
to someone who has no government-issued proof of age. People
under 18 normally have no need for that.
Alec, the organization that recruits state legislators to pass laws to
please business, is now actively
concealing
the draft laws it sends to its members.
Everyone: implore
the Governor of Tennessee not to sign an ag-gag bill.
Profiteers
invite US parents to spend thousands of dollars on bulletproof vests
for their children, to protect them against the minuscule chance of
shootings in school.
The American children that face the largest chance of being shot
are the ones whose parents can't afford such protections.
A Florida high school student faces
felony
charges for a chemistry experiment that caused a small pop.
The "authorities" try to justify their conduct by appealing to
strictness for strictness' sake.
Americans, your choices have consequences too. If you freak out about
comparatively small acts of violence, just because they are called
"terrorism", and you demand that the government do "everything possible"
to punish people who do anything like that, it will cause this sort
of result.
President Morales has
expelled
USAid from Bolivia, accusing it of funding opposition groups.
The danger of a US-organized coup is quite real.
People in Spain are
committing
suicide from poverty, but other movements are fighting back
against austerity.
The right wing politicians hardly dare show themselves in public, but
they continue to push the country into suffering.
The woman who set herself on fire in a bank was reported in the
Spanish press, but they did not give her name. I think the name
reported here was spurious, since "Inocencia Lucha" means "Innocence
Struggle". Anyway, it's too bad the bank didn't burn down.
The SEC is supposed to require publicly traded companies to publish
the ratio between the CEO's pay and the workers' pay, but it has
dawdled for
three years, catering to those companies' lobbyists.
Another danger in proprietary software: employers can use it to
monitor
employees 24/7.
Endless economic growth
is neither
necessary nor sufficient for general well-being.
The full text of Ibrahim Mothana's speech in the US Congress about
the effect
of drone bombings in Yemen.
International logging companies in
Africa corruptly
utilize logging permits meant for local inhabitants.
In some places, wind or solar electricity
is cheaper
than gas or coal, or would be if not for the subsidies given to
fossil fuel.
The CIA has been
dropping large
bags of cash in Karzai's office since 2003.
Thus, the CIA is
the "biggest
source of corruption in Afghanistan".
This made
sense in the short term, as a way to oust the Taliban, but was not
the way to build a state that could stand up to a long-term guerrilla
campaign.
The CIA has handed
out "ghost
money" to overthrow governments in various countries.
I wonder if they include Honduras and Paraguay, victims of recent
US-arranged coups.
Prison in the US often means
being raped,
beaten, driven mad by isolation, or killed by denial of medical
care.
Ground turkey in the US
is contaminated
with dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In response, the US
government plans to reduce inspections.
Do
Young People Care About Privacy? Yes, they do.
The sequester is harmful, but Democrats cannot deny
their share
of the blame.
Recall that the sequester results from a deal that Obama agreed to,
after he adopted the Republican goal of deficit-cutting.
The politicians that deserve our support are those who rejected this
goal.
Austerity
kills, and makes people sick.
Despite heavy rain and consequent flooding in some areas,
almost half
of the US remains in drought.
Banks colluded to
rig
more interest rates, just as they colluded on the Libor rate.
This means that making the big banks protect themselves, so they won't
need a bailout, is not enough. We must break them up into a large
number of smaller banks — at least 10 times as many.
There is a campaign to extend background checks for gun purchases
to block
people in the secret "terrorist watch list".
Being placed in a no-gun list, or a no-fly list, is a denial of a
person's normal rights, so it must not be done without due process of
law.
The US no-fly list is an injustice. People are placed on the list
without a hearing, perhaps based on false rumors, and they do not
discover this until they arrive at the airport and are not allowed to
travel. Then they have no recourse. They have been denied their
rights arbitrarily in secret.
What's proposed here is a second similar injustice. Anyone can be
"suspected" of terrorism, perhaps falsely — even you. US
dissidents are frequently accused of terrorism, and investigated on
that pretext.
The "terrorist watch list" works like the no-fly list: people are
placed on the list without a court hearing, are not informed about it,
and have no way to get off it. That's acceptable if the list is only
a way for the FBI to remind itself to pay attention to that person.
However, denying people rights on that basis would be another form of
secret arbitrary punishment.
The US needs stronger gun control, but it must be done in a way
that respects basic principles of justice and the rule of law,
not secretly by decree against specific people.
First
"Ag-Gag" Prosecution: Utah Woman Filmed a Slaughterhouse from the
Public Street.
Thanks to a strong public response, the charges were dropped,
but not
irrevocably.
We must not be complacent. Ms Meyer could be prosecuted later. So
could others. These unjust laws, designed to shield businesses from
investigation of practices that are nasty, illegal, and/or threatening
to public health, can still be enforced elsewhere, and more states
are attempting to pass them.
Will face recognition software be tested at the Statue of Liberty? A
journalist reports
the
developer tried to bully him into silence about
the question.
I think we must pass laws about the use of face recognition technology,
especially by or in cooperation with the state, so no person can
be included in the data base except through due process of law.
The investigative group Muckrock
asks
for volunteers to help them continue to file Freedom of
Information requests in all states of the US.
Ireland proposes
to legalize abortion, only in cases of medical necessity.
It is a small step forward, but may provide a base for further
advances.
The "morning after" contraceptive pill will be available in the US
without prescription to anyone
age
15 and over.
Is there a medical reason for that age requirement, or is this the
last gap of the "pregnancy is your punishment for having sex"
political philosophy, perversely applied to a group that we strongly
hope will avoid pregnancy?
Cyprus's legislature voted to accept EU-imposed austerity rather than
leave the euro, but the vote was
quite
close.
Opposition parties are demanding to leave the euro. That means that
suffering Cypriots will have an alternative to vote for, next time
around.
Israeli soldiers revel in
arbitrary
dishonesty when helping colonizers steal Palestinian shepherds'
grazing land.
They do this
in
defiance of Israel's high
court.
After Israeli colonists attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Jareer,
the people held a protest, which was then
attacked
by Israeli soldiers.
Part of the protest was nonviolent. The part that involved
stone-throwing youths was violent, but less so than the
state-tolerated attacks against Palestinians.
Israeli colonists in Palestine have accused human rights defender Issa
Amro of terrorism and
asked for him
to be imprisoned without trial.
Is Israel no better than
Saudi Arabia?
US citizens: call
on Congress to repeal the sequester.
The Israeli army
continues
demolishing Palestinian homes.
Demolitions have made 355 Palestinians homeless since the start of
this year.
Austerity in Greece has
made
sales fall by 30%. This means tax revenues have fallen too.
This demonstrates the futility of trying to satisfy the euro-zone
limit on national budget deficits through spending cuts. The effect
of the cuts is to make the economy smaller, and the deficit bigger.
What Greece needs is to increase government spending.
If that requires leaving the euro, it must leave the euro.
Workers in Bangladesh need our support as they organize for
decent
wages and working conditions.
What they get from the US is just the opposite. I am sure it is no
coincidence that the Bangladeshi government attacked unions (and
therefore Bangladeshi workers) with non-union "export processing
zones" at the time "American" companies started outsourcing production
(and therefore ceasing to be American). The US government helped them
outsource, so I expect it helped pressure the Bangladeshi government
into attacking workers.
I think we also should make western outsourcer companies legally
responsible for any injuries to the workers of their suppliers, and
require them to declare all suppliers (including subcontractors) in
advance. That will help end the practice where a subcontractor folds
when there is a disaster, or shuts down owing workers back pay.
How
to End Over-Testing in Schools: Kids Should Answer Only Half the
Questions.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?"
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.
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.
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?
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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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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.
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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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on Congress to cut its own salaries as other
federal
employees' salaries are being cut.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
"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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
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?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Protesters across Portugal chanted,
"Austerity kills."
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Department of Homeland Security has spent
almost 800
billion dollars, but isn't using that money very well.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
Al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula now promotes
"open
source jihad".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-06 because the
old
link was broken.]
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.
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