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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.
Everyone: On Jan 3, make a sign saying "Edward Snowden", go to an airport, and wait for him to arrive.
Thug infiltrators tried to get Occupy Austin protesters to commit violence, but the protesters firmly refused. So the infiltrators gave them "lockboxes" — basically tools to strap themselves together for a sit-in so that removing them would be more work — then accused them of a felony, "possessing a criminal instrument", even though legally lockboxes don't qualify.
Next time you think about how Putin threatens nonviolent protesters with years in prison, remember that the US does it too.
The charges about the lockboxes were eventually dropped.
It's not clear whether the court ultimately acknowledged that it is absurd to call lockboxes a "criminal instrument".
The UK government has taken another substantial step towards making the National Health Service nonfunctional.
If the Labour party still stood for the non-rich, this taste of what the rich do in power would give it every chance of winning again.
Gang wars in Central America are sending large numbers of refugees fleeing to Mexico.
Ending the War on Drugs would cut off a lot of the money that fuels the gangs.
The human tendency to stigmatize those who are unusual gets whipped up in times of hardship.
Plutocrats find it a useful way to distract people from them.
44 Iraqi Sunni MPs resigned in protest of state attacks against Sunni nonviolent protesters and the home of an MP.
Iraq has been unable to establish a state that can hold the sects together peacefully. I think that can only lead to more war.
India continues to fight against drug patents that threaten to kill millions.
FAIR's year-end list of 2013 US media distortions.
If you grow chickens in a city garden, watch out for lead in the eggs!
Tech companies that boast "disruption" as their goal are on the way to being hated by the 80 or 90% of Americans who will be left with only precarious employment.
President Reagan's "welfare queen" was a real woman whose life was crime after crime against most everyone she came in contact with. Her frauds against the welfare system were illegal already.
She was sentenced to prison for some of these frauds, and it looks like she deserved it. However, Reagan and Clinton used her as the excuse to punish all poor families in America, and they did not deserve this punishment.
It is important to reduce the rate of births by teenagers, but instead of doing this the cruel Conservative way, which consists of pushing poor people's children into worse poverty, let's do it the kind Progressive way: offer taxpayer-funded reliable birth control to every teenager.
Benjamin
Franklin set an example of leaking, 240 years before Manning and
Snowden.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
South Dakota is a tax haven for any rich person that sets up a trust there.
Officer Vagnini, who committed illegal anal searches against a series of people, was sentenced to only two years in prison. That's not much of a sentence for a serial rapist. Meanwhile, the other thugs that supported his crime wave received very light sentences.
A federal judge ruled that the NSA's collection of phone records is lawful.
This directly contradicts another judge who ruled it was an Orwellian violation of 4th amendment. Either or both could be overruled on appeal.
The reference to the September 2001 attacks is mistaken, because we know for a fact that phone surveillance would not have been necessary for preventing the attacks if the US government had been paying attention. The US government had various warnings, including the flight student that wasn't interested in learning to land the plane, but ignored them. Dubya had told the FBI to reduce the resources into counterterrorism.
It is also irrelevant as a reason. If the state were allowed to monitor everything and search everything, it could prevent many kinds of crimes, as well as many kinds of dissent and whistleblowing, but that doesn't invalidate the 4th amendment.
Psychological evidence shows that plain paper packs, not covered by
"cool" branding, make cigarettes less attractive and
encourage
quitting.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
That is supported by a study in Australia which compared smokers that got plain packs with smokers using the same cigarette brands in attractive packs.
There is no direct evidence yet about whether it reduces cigarette consumption. That would take more time. However, it is unlikely to hurt.
The UK censorship filter blocks more than porn. It blocks access to sex education sites, even help-lines.
It also blocks many free software sites, and even amnesty.org.
These schemes always make mistakes, and this is proof that that continues to happen. But let's not be distracted by the mistakes. Even if they could fix all the mistakes, which they can't, that would not make censorship acceptable. Fixing 90% of the mistakes, which maybe they could do, would not make it acceptable either. Down with censorship and the tyrannical rulers that impose it!
Al Jazeera correspondents in Egypt have been arrested for interviewing members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
When a government accuses someone of publishing "false news", or says it is illegal to interview someone because he's been declared a terrorist (or even convicted in a fair trial of a terrorist act), that's manifest tyranny.
The US-backed government of Yemen did something similar to Abdulelah Haidar Shaye, imprisoning him at Obama's request for interviewing people in al Qa'ida.
Resisting and reversing the privatization of water systems.
TED is based on the assumption that all we need is a clever new idea.
SD cards (and other memories) have processors whose programs can be changed.
If it is normal to change that software — for instance, if users are sometimes given upgrades — then it is an injustice that these programs are proprietary. However, even if it is not normal to change that software, this is a dangerous vulnerability to viruses, the NSA, etc.
New Zealand offers an example of regulating prostitution that really does make prostitutes safer.
It seems to have worked out well there, based on anecdotes and official reports.
Meanwhile, the US keeps prostitution illegal and maintains a stigma against prostitutes, with predictable results.
As the damage of global heating on poor countries becomes increasingly large and irrefutable, the rich polluting countries will have to pay compensation.
Many Americans have been led to believe that the prime culprit of the financial crisis was the government, rather than the banksters.
The right wing strategy is, after each thing they do to hurt Americans, to get Americans to curse the government for it, rather than recapture the government and use it for democracy.
This article makes a common mistake in its rhetoric: it says that "we" have done some foolish thing, in a way that implies we have all participated in it. That's not only unfair, it is also defeatist.
The background of the Dinka-Nuer conflict in South Sudan.
Obama keeps selling arms to Saudi Arabia despite its repression of human rights activists.
A drone combat analyst explains that the image is so fuzzy that they can't tell whether someone is armed.
A judge ruled that the FBI was allowed to arrest an air passenger for no reason other than carrying flash cards for learning Arabic.
Is studying Arabic more suspect than already knowing how to speak Arabic? If not, then how about arresting people only for knowing Arabic?
Egyptian thugs stormed the country's main university, attacking students and burning a dormitory.
Ukraine's government cites the UK as an example of violating human rights.
Chinese schools are designed for producing great test-takers, which makes them look good when their students are judged by a standardized test, but lousy in other respects.
However, US "school reformers" seem bent on pushing US schools in that direction.
Iraq's Sunnis have been protesting for a year against the Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government. The state sent troops to arrest a protest leader, and his guards fought back.
I have no way of judging the claim that the protesters support al Qa'ida. It might be true. Al Qa'ida calls for wiping out the Shi'ites.
This unending sectarian war is Dubya's gift to Iraq. Ironically, Dubya found a way to wind it down: buying the support of the Sunni clans. But the money was cut off as the Bush forces left Iraq and the Shi'ites don't seem ready to employ it.
The UK has started charging non-citizens for births and antenatal care, so women who can't afford this give birth at home without aid.
The financial "savings" achieved this way will lead to bigger financial costs, as well as injuries and deaths. That's part of the goal: to accustom more people to poverty. Once this is the norm for immigrants, it will be applied to Britons.
Many internet sites are requiring commenters to identify themselves.
I am happy to post comments under my name, but I can afford to because I am in a pretty safe position. I don't have to fear that I will be fired if my boss does not like what I say.
Turkish prosecutor in charge of the corruption investigation says the
thugs
interfered with the investigation. Meanwhile, the ministry has
removed him from the case.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
If Snowden were tried in the US, all evidence about the good he has done for the country, or intended to do, would be inadmissible.
Poor people in the UK can no longer afford heating, so their walls are getting wet and moldy, which triggers asthma.
Almost 900 people died in US jails in 2011, often because the thugs in charge disregard their medical problems.
Plutocracy leaves most Americans with two choices: to exploit or be exploited.
Even so, you can still campaign for progressives against the illegitimate plutocratic government.
Some of the things that e-book stores have learned by tracking the suckers that use commercial e-books.
Don't be a sucker — reject these malicious products. Insist on using only e-books that respect your freedom as much as ordinary printed books.
A Persian exile accuses the West of supporting Khomeini's return to Iran and his plan to establish a fundamentalist regime.
I don't know that this is true. I would like to see proof.
The French and Russian teams that examined Yasser Arafat's remains say he was not poisoned with polonium-210. These reports contradict the findings of the Swiss team.
The French team found polonium-210 and said it was of "natural origin", which does not make sense, as polonium is exceedingly rare and found only in uranium ore.
Ten States Have Banned Cities And Counties From Passing Paid Sick Days.
LA thugs' latest power trip is against pedestrians.
Global heating is causing scarcity of water and food.
Maintaining Nuclear Arsenal To Cost $355 Billion
(over 10 years, but still it is a ridiculous waste).
A journalist in Ukraine was pulled out of her car and maimed by unknown men after accusing a minister of corruption.
That minister is probably in charge of the thugs, and people accuse him of sending thugs to carry out this attack.
Pharmaceutical Extortion: Pay Up, or Die.
The root of this injustice is patent law, combined with the failure of the US to do what other advanced governments do: directly negotiate the price of pharmaceuticals.
In addition, all countries must remove the funding of studies of drug effects from the hands of the drug companies, since they corrupt the results.
The fossil fuel agenda is anti-business (as well as anti-civilization and anti-your-survival).
I hope that this argument wins some support, but the fact that it even needs to be made demonstrates a fundamental flaw in our current political system: plutocracy, the political power of business.
It's due to plutocracy that the fossil fuel companies have the power to keep humanity stuck on the path to global heating disaster. Why do Republicans in Congress deny global heating and its effects? It's due to fossil fuel money.
That's not the only area in which plutocracy oppresses us. Plutocracy is why governments propose laws like SOPA. Plutocracy is why the US government proposes to let poultry producers inspect their own products. Plutocracy is why the US government doesn't label GMOs. Plutocracy is how the banksters abolished the Glass-Steagall Act and then fraudulently take many Americans' homes and get off scot-free because they are "too big to jail."
And they are planning treaties to give them increased power.
It makes sense to appeal to these illegitimate powers to see when their interests are threatened by something that threatens us too. But we must take care, when doing this, not to grant any legitimacy to their rule. We need to replace plutocracy with democracy.
Troubling Pattern as De Blasio Taps Goldman Sachs Exec.
Haitians in a shantytown are being
evicted
with no help or place to go.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
They moved to that shantytown after their homes were destroyed in the earthquake after which large amounts of "aid" from wealthy countries were offered but put into preparing sweatshops rather than helping homeless Haitians.
The Swarthmore Hillel society has
rejected
the parent organization's ban on speakers that criticize Israeli
policy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
This in response to Harvard Hillel's cancellation of a speech by a former Israeli parliamentarian who criticizes Israeli policy.
Israel arrested the leader of nonviolent protests in Kafr Qaddum.
How lead got put into gasoline: a series of corrupt influences led to nationwide suffering.
The Egyptian government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a "terrorist group", an excuse to say every member is a criminal.
Declaring groups "terrorist" without a trial is a gross violation of human rights. The US must cease this practice to set an example of respect for human rights; if it does not, other countries such as Egypt will surely take inspiration from the US' bad example.
A US court ruled that prisoners in Bagram in Afghanistan have no right to habeas corpus.
It is legitimate to capture enemy soldiers and hold them as prisoners of war. (If this were not allowed, prisoners would instead be shot.) Being a prisoner of war is not punishment for a crime, and no trial is needed. Of course, prisoners of war do have rights, and torture violates them.
However, the 2010 decision, about people kidnaped in other countries where the US was not at war, and then transported to Afghanistan just to hold them in prison, was wrong. Those cases are exactly like Guantanamo.
US citizens: Call on Senator Sherrod Brown not to support the bill to sabotage diplomacy with Iran.
After pressure, Obama allowed congresscritters to look at the text — without staff to help them understand the implications — but they can't tell us what they saw.
The only plausible reason to negotiate a treaty like this is that Obama is planning to sell out his country, like Dubya before him.
Americans hit by cuts in food stamps tell their stories.
Snowden says that he did not set up an "insurance packet" for release if he is killed, since that might have tempted various entities to kill him so as to cause that data to be released.
Many computer manufacturers have adopted a new way of subjugating users: keeping the repair manuals secret.
Unfortunately, the iFixit manuals are not free. The article says they are, but it means they are gratis. I tried to convince Kyle Wiens to release them under a free license, but failed. I hope he will change his mind.
Hakan Yaman was tortured by Turkish thugs who mistook him for a protester. (Not that it would have been justified to torture a real protester.) They gouged out an eye and threw him in a fire: attempted premeditated murder.
The government is has been unable to find the thugs who were responsible. Perhaps it has not tried very hard.
This case is among the most extreme, among the general repression of the protesters.
The Israeli siege includes
denying
Palestinians with cancer access to medical treatment, like a cat
toying with mice.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The European Union is trying to pressure Israel and Palestine to make peace, but Israel and the US insist on a continuing occupation of 1/4 of the West Bank, which would give Israel control over Palestinian travel and commerce.
An everyday war crime in Palestine: Israeli troops ransacked a
Palestinian family's house and
stole 5 years of
savings.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The US Export-Import Bank is planning to fund a project in Australia that is likely to damage the surrounding environment, but the environmental impact study ducked the question.
Everyone:
encourage
the proposal for systematic anti-trafficking policies in Scotland.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA is helping the Colombian government kill and torture FARC members.
The FARC is a rebel group which has also financed itself through drug trafficking and kidnaping. However, the most vicious terrorist group in Colombia is the paramilitaries that are linked with the state.
Teenagers are fleeing Central America to the US because they are threatened with conscription into criminal gangs.
The War on Drugs seems to be ultimately at fault.
A former BP geologist says that we have reached Peak Oil, and that the rate of oil extraction will decline from now on.
Whether this is a bad thing depends on how humanity reacts to it. The high price of oil reduces demand: Americans drive less, nowadays, than they did when oil was cheaper. The high price of oil encourages investment in other energy sources — some renewable (solar, wind, geothermal) and some polluting (coal, fracking, nuclear).
If only our governments pushed for renewable energy rather than polluting energy.
We could use a lot less energy for heating and for transport if we pushed harder to achieve that. Amory Lovins showed years ago that a small fraction of what we now use could do the job. And mass transit uses a lot less energy than travel by car.
The extent of economic inequality in the US is so great that our main need is not increased production of things, but rather a way for everyone to get a share. If the US produced only half as much, we would get along ok if the poor got a bigger share.
Violent Islamists in Egypt carried out a car bombing against a municipal thug office. There have been a series of such attacks.
It is clear that they are inspired by the violent suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Extra, extra! Netanyahu admits he doesn't want peace with Palestine!
He did not say it in so many words, but that's the inescapable implication. For Israel to demand release of an American who spied for Israel — or any other unrelated concession — says, "Peace isn't something we seek, just something we might do for the US in exchange for something we want."
Palestinians shot an Israeli who was working on the fence around Gaza, so Israel retaliated with bombs, killing children in Gaza.
Although the Israeli who was shot was not a soldier, he was doing a job that is not entirely civilian in nature, like the Iranian nuclear scientists that Israel killed a few years ago. The Palestinian children, by contrast, were simply being children.
Millions of American families received a Christmas gift from Congress: hunger.
Snowden says that Obama's NSA review panel proposed "cosmetic" changes.
I think they might be slightly more than cosmetic, but they are far from sufficient. In this interview, Snowden explains what he thinks is needed.
What I think is needed is to redesign digital systems so that they don't amass data about users in general.
Supporters of Israel's occupation of Palestine are pressuring US universities to boycott the American Studies Association. Meanwhile, members of the association are receiving hate mail.
This demonstrates the courage required in the US today to oppose that pressure group.
I am sure the ASA will not yield to this pressure, but what happens to the ASA will influence others. Thus, it is important to urge universities not to cease their support for the ASA.
Pardoning Alan Turing and him alone is not enough: 75,000 Britons were convicted of homosexuality, and they all deserve the same apology.
If the UK wants to deserve a pardon, it needs to go further.
Australia has approved a coal mine that will destroy a wildlife reserve, replacing it with "offsets" that are just an excuse to proceed.
Obama may be operating under fear of threats from the CIA.
The appointment of Dulles to the Warren Commission is extremely suspect because there is no other plausible reason for it except to enable him to cover things up.
Miami and Los Angeles have sued big banks for racism in application of subprime mortgages.
Republican governments in 23 states have blocked Obama's extension of Medicaid, which will leave around 5 million Americans without health care.
Afghanistan is imposing biometric ID cards.
As a temporary measure for the war with the Taliban, they could be excuses. Such circumstances justify measures that normally must be condemned. But they will surely be meant as permanent.
100 Years Is Enough: Time to Make the Fed a Public Utility.
Rosewood in Madagascar has been nearly wiped out by illegal logging, while the government hardly bothers to intervene.
Assad's air force
is bombarding
civilians with shrapnel bombs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The two members of Pussy Riot just freed will launch a campaign for humane treatment of prisoners in Russia.
This is good, but as an American I wish they would extend their campaign to aid prisoners in the US.
They also called Putin's amnesty, which led to their release, a "PR move".
The absence in the Bay of Fundy of right whales may be due to global heating.
Senator
Warren's opposition
to the Keystone XL pipeline shines a light on Clinton's support for
it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
RSA Inc responded to the disclosure of its secret contract with the NSA with a cunningly worded announcement that appears to say it wasn't true. However, a careful reading shows it doesn't really say that.
When cooking food in US prisons was privatized, Aramark started serving food that is spoiled or unfit for human consumption, prepared in unsanitary conditions.
The only way such a company can make a profit is by mistreating someone.
Unemployment is painful, but long-term unemployment is a disaster.
"Open carry" of guns is asking for trouble, because just seeing guns causes fear and encourage aggression.
Debt costs the Philippines far more than typhoon Haiyan. Many of these loans represent the corruption. The "aid" for rebuilding often consists of more loans.
The Philippines should decide that these loans were predatory and therefore don't have to be repaid. The predatory lenders should be taught a lesson by losing their money.
While rich celebrity musicians spread a weak form of feminism, other musicians have rejected the record companies' manipulation.
Calling for an anti-austerity movement at the European level.
French companies are being fined for paying women less than men.
Hear, hear!
Everyone: call on Chick-fil-A to stop harassing the artist that makes "Eat more Kale" shirts.
Everyone: call for elimination of the National Football League's tax-exemption.
Here is the background.
The
new
style of apology from a politician that gets caught.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Many telemarketer calls use canned voice recordings, and a human selects which response to give next.
I don't see telemarketing as particularly bad, just wasteful and annoying. I have never bought anything from a telemarketer, and I don't let the call go on for more than a few seconds, because I don't want to spend my time on them.
It is useful to train yourself out of applying normal ideas of politeness — for instance, that it is rude to hang up on someone — to a commercially-motivated call from a stranger.
I think it might be good to legally require telemarketing calls to start by playing a recording that says, "Stay on the line if you wish to talk with a telemarketer."
Mariah Carey is entertaining a dictator again.
Leaders of the protests that brought down Mubarak have been sentenced to 3 years in prison.
The Consumer Finance Protection Board receives anonimized credit card purchase data from a company; that company gets it with names, which might facilitate misuse of the data.
Of course, the underlying problem is that the banks and the stores get to identify their customers when they pay by credit card. Thus, it is better to use an ATM to withdraw money and pay cash.
FDA action on antibiotics on farms is inadequate.
A Florida student was denied his prize for a speech, when authorities discovered his speech was about injustice in the name of religion.
US pharmacists frequently give teenagers false information telling them that they are not allowed to buy emergency contraception.
Obama's health care program could be an opportunity to move towards treating drug problems instead of punishing them.
The Obama regime pretends that what Snowden told us is still secret, and had the chutzpah to tell a judge that there's no proof the NSA is spying on everyone.
Surveillance cameras which record audio are being put on buses & trains.
The TSA is funding this.
Here are the specs on some bus camera and microphone systems.
There is no possible excuse for microphones in buses. The arguments in favor are arguments for listening to everyone everywhere.
It's not just the NSA. These systems must be removed and banned.
A study found that states with more guns have higher murder rates, and the two rates vary together over time.
Obama's review of the NSA called for substantial changes.
However, they involved limiting government access to dossiers, not limiting the accumulation of dossiers, and this can't be sufficient.
The Chinese communist party desperately tries reform and censorship.
A study in which researchers interviewed people at home found that the rate of domestic violence in England is substantially more than was known. Many are afraid to tell anyone what is happening to them.
Report on the living conditions of migrant workers in Abu Dhabi.
Some individual stories.
Allowing an employer to hold a worker's passport is the gateway to abuse.
Everyone: call on Uganda's president to veto the bill to punish gays even worse.
More
about this law.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the FDA we need forceful action against feeding antibiotics to farm animals other than to treat infections.
One flaw in Obama's health care law is that, for many people in the lower middle class, it doesn't make health care affordable.
This is no surprise, however. The law was designed to offer medical coverage to many of the uninsured poor, while catering to medical insurance companies. To reduce costs for others would have required the public option and big savings would have required a single payer plan.
Catholic school students in Seattle went on strike to protest the dismissal of a teacher because he had entered a same-sex marriage.
Scientific journals must start insisting that authors provide the raw data, so it does not get lost.
8 Down,
Thousands To Go After Obama Commutes 'Unfair' Crack Cocaine
Sentences.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Many writers self-censor for fear of NSA surveillance.
Proper government regulation could ensure that chemical products are not toxic.
The US government is aiming to radically advance facial recognition software.
If that is used against journalists and protesters, it will be curtains for democracy.
The Renault Zoe
forces
the owner to "rent" a battery which can be turned off remotely.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
As usual, the EFF advocates a remedy which doesn't go far enough. It's not enough to make it legal for car owners to defeat these vicious schemes. The schemes themselves should be illegal, period.
Explaining the loophole the NSA uses to search Americans' communications while "not targeting Americans".
The article advocates the USA FREEDOM Act, which would limit the government's right to access digital dossiers. This would be a step forward, but nowhere near enough.
The anti-democracy protesters of Thailand's "Democratic Party" decided
to
boycott
the coming election, which they know they would lose.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Five Ways to Curb Your Child's Materialism This Holiday Season.
US student activism against racism and various forms of oppression.
Morsi now faces
absurd charges of conspiring with Hamas and Hezbollah.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The Muslim Brotherhood is a Sunni theocratist group. Hezbollah is a Shi'ite group, militant but more concerned with defending Shi'ites' political interests than with religion. The idea that they would work together is as ridiculous as the idea that Saddam Hussein and al Qa'ida would work together — but Dubya found it useful to claim they did.
As for the charges of escaping from prison, at that time state agents went around arresting (and sometimes killing) people for political reasons. Zero-tolerance for escapes, and immunity for the captors, is hardly justice.
Kansas says state universities can fire professors for saying anything the university administration says is "contrary to the best interest of the university".
A woman is suing because thugs in Texas subjected her to medical procedures including X-rays, without her consent. Then the hospital tried to make her pay for $5000 for this.
Oakland installed a combined surveillance system, supposedly to fight "crime", but its operators were only interested in suppressing protests.
The ACLU is making a mistake by using timid words like "troubling" to describe this. This surveillance is un-American tyranny, and any the community should demand shutting it down.
Awards for the most thuggish thug activity in the US.
The UK's internet censorship scheme blocks sex education sites and sites that help rape victims.
Maybe these are mistakes, but every such censorship scheme makes such mistakes.
Anti-pipeline protesters displayed a banner, and some glitter fell off it, so the thugs charged them with a "terrorist hoax".
TransCanada, the company that wants to build the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline, is working with local thug departments and encouraging them to accuse nonviolent protesters of "terrorism".
We need to pass a law making it a crime for officials to make absurd charges against anyone.
Shaker Aamer gently ridicules the inexplicable book censorship of the Guantanamo prison guards.
A recently freed ex-prisoner says the prisoners were subjected to
"meticulous,
daily torture".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A Snowden document says that the NSA paid RSA Inc. to make the NSA's ineffective key generator the default option.
More
information.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
If the program is not free, its users are defenseless against malice at all sorts of levels.
Imagine what TV would say if someone bombed a wedding party in the US; now contrast that with what US TV said when the US bombed a wedding party in Yemen.
A Murdoch paper made a joke out of it.
Uri Avnery: Israel puts African refugees in a sort of prison which it pretends is not a prison.
It reminds him of how other countries treated Jewish refugees trying to flee from Nazism.
In the long term, the way to end mass migration for economic motives is to end the wealth-concentrating policies that keep most people poor.
Organizations campaigning to continue global heating received .9 billion dollars a year in funding over the past 8 years.
Not all of that money was used to promote global heating; it is not possible in some cases to separate out what was spent on that and what was spent on other right-wing causes.
Americans whose health insurance plans were recently canceled will not be fined if they don't get new plans.
Obama's health care plan is, overall, a step forward, and this flexibility is welcome. But it does cost some people substantial money because it was designed to cater to the insurance companies and the drug companies.
The US economy is not "back on track" to give most Americans a decent life.
The NSA and GCHQ spied on Unicef and Médecins du Monde, in addition to European officials.
In the Colombian Amazon, oil and highways mean destroying the forest after poisoning the people.
The Nukak people lived in the forest by themselves, until their forest was cut down for coca plantations.
A UK judge quashed Libyan dissident Belhaj's lawsuit, saying that the he had a valid case against the UK for handing him to Gaddafi's men, but that this was unimportant compared with sucking up to the US.
A former prosecutor found that he couldn't get NYC thugs to arrest him for minor crimes, apparently because he's white. They just ignored his crimes.
Once he finally got himself arrested, for spray-painting on city hall, the prosecutors demanded outrageous and unusual punishments, even violating standard penal policies, apparently out of pure spite.
Tax meat to discourage its global heating contribution.
Most Americans would live longer if they ate less meat.
Everyone: call on Lend Lease not to build a coal port near the Great Barrier Reef.
The London School of Economics has concluded that Jesus & Mo t-shirts do not have to be censored.
UK law goes too far in prohibiting expressions of opinion. If it is even plausible that pictures of Mohammad are illegal on the grounds that someone might take offense, freedom of speech is too weak.
New York City residents are paradoxically hurt by Obama's health care program because they have a much better program available from the city.
Some Republicans in the House of Representatives asked for investigating Clapper for lying to Congress.
I support this call. He deserves to go to jail.
Democratic Senators are again looking for a way to block diplomacy with Iran.
Uganda has adopted a law punishing homosexuality with life imprisonment.
Like many other unjust laws and policies, this one is supposedly "to protect children".
Doctors sent by Australia to treat the imprisoned refugees on Christmas Island describe the atrocious conditions the refugees are subject to.
The West must not ignore the repeated messages that its wars stir up hatred.
There are two ways to consider terrorist attacks such as those in New York in 2001 and in London in 2005: as crimes or as war.
To consider them as crimes means responding by hunting and prosecuting the perpetrators — not by launching wars. If we view the issue in terms of crime, the attack on Rigby was a crime too and prosecuting its perpetrators was legitimate. However, invading Iraq was not legitimate and we have a duty to prosecute those responsible.
On the other hand, if we consider those terrorist attacks as war and say they justify war in response, the enemy can say the same. Viewed as war, the killing of Rigby was an attack by a guerrilla force on a military target. The US has committed plenty of war crimes, and so have the Taliban and its supporters, but attacking Rigby wasn't one.
We can't have it both ways.
South Sudan is being torn apart by tribalism.
A mother writes about joining an anti-fracking protest because of the threat to her children's lives from future global heating.
If you are a young person today, there is considerable danger you will be killed by global heating — not soon, of course, but when it reaches the point where millions are starving, and fighting over food, globalized supply chains could break down, which would make a lot of technology and industry stop working world-wide.
We can't predict what will happen, as there are too many imponderables. Maybe some lucky surprise will avert the disaster, but do you want to bet your life on that? If we are to avoid it, we have to curb the greenhouse gas emission now.
Belgium requires ISPs to actively seek out mirrors of the Pirate Bay and censor access to them.
In other words, it is copyright uber alles.
Iraqis believe that their government, set up by the US, is responsible for a lot of the violence that the government attributes to al Qa'ida.
The Internet Giants Oppose Surveillance— But Only When the Government Does It.
The FCC could make TV stations say who pays for the ads but it doesn't bother.
Although the UK government has effectively killed all followup for the Gibson report, the report is enough to prove plenty of wrongdoing.
20 years of NAFTA shows the
harm
that "free trade" treaties do.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The plutocrats are not satisfied; they want even more.
This year's NDAA makes progress on two issues: prosecution of rapists in the military, and releasing prisoners from Guantanamo.
Can anyone find out what has happened with the most un-American part of the NDAA, the provision that allows the military to imprison anyone without trial if the person is accused of being a "terrorist"?
Uri Avnery: Netanyahu's "security concerns" about the Jordan valley are obsolete and militarily irrelevant; their only purpose is to provide an excuse not to make peace.
If Kerry could satisfy Netanyahu on this issue, Netanyahu would fall back on the next excuse.
Canada's Supreme Court has ruled that restrictions on prostitution are
unconstitutional.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
In the midst of a blizzard, Israeli soldiers are demolishing the shacks and tents Palestinians live in.
In Gaza, donkey carts are used to pick up rubbish, because there is no fuel for garbage trucks, or even for pumping water.
Israeli soldiers shackled Palestinian children aged 6 to 9 who were playing with burning tires and asbestos.
Burning tires makes fumes, and I suspect breathing them is not good for children. Asbestos is quite toxic. However, that was no reason to shackle the children.
The Australian government has disregarded its previous commitment to send a coast guard vessel to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet.
Christian extremists say that secularists are fighting a "war on Christmas", but the real War on Christmas is the one waged by business.
Speaking as a secularist, I am not fighting a war on Christmas. I have no conflict with what Christians do for Christmas, as long as they don't try to get the government to promote their religion above my nonreligion.
What I strongly resent is the commercial version of Christmas, which blares out at me in every store.
People who get trafficked into the UK and then forced into growing marijuana get prosecuted rather than helped.
This particular problem is ultimately the state's fault, since the right approach to growing marijuana is to legalize it. However, that would not eliminate the issue of trafficking; that needs to be addressed by itself.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, plutocrat turned political prisoner, has been pardoned.
The Warsame case shows that civil courts can handle captured terrorists.
The ACLU approves of his prosecution, but criticizes holding Warsame prisoner in a navy ship.
A poll finds most Americans say it was a mistake to invade Afghanistan and want US troops removed faster.
I am not sure it was a mistake. The results were good in the beginning, and if Bush had not invaded Iraq, perhaps things would have turned out well in Afghanistan.
However, things are totally screwed now in Afghanistan and the US is not achieving much by keeping the fighting going.
Obama boasts about increasing extraction of fossil fuels.
The EFF criticizes the weak recommendations of Obama's review of NSA massive surveillance.v
To make democracy safe, we must put an end to the massive accumulation of data about Americans.
"Zero tolerance" means the idea of childhood has been swept away by fear.
The first step toward obsessive fear was when parents started thinking that children could never be left alone. I remember how happy I was, when I was 8 or so, during those periods when I was home and I could read without being annoyed by my mother.
Meanwhile, no one freaked out about the fact that I, and the other students in my school, walked to school and back on the sidewalks of Manhattan.
The Gibson report says that UK agents were directed to help cover up US kidnapings and torture.
The Islamists that have taken control of parts of Syria are practicing their usual cruelness, flogging and executing adults and teenagers after cursory "trials".
I don't see any feasible way to dislodge them.
An engineer at the Big Spill was convicted of obstruction of justice for deleting messages in which the spill rate was estimated.
Everyone: urge Argentina to reject the proposed Monsanto GMO seed factory.
US citizens: call for increasing Social Security and rebuke Republican hostage-taking.
US citizens: call on Kerry to cancel the review of the Keystone XL pipeline by ERM, which has been found in even more conflict of interest.
High speed trains in Europe are so expensive that, for long distances, they push most travelers to flying.
I general prefer to travel by train if it is feasible, partly because I don't have to identify myself, and also partly because, with my luggage, "low-cost" airlines are not cheap.
The C+= language project, a funny parody of the form of speech of some feminists, is getting kicked off various web platforms in an act of political censorship.
Later I was told that BitBucket had deleted it too.
Equal rights and equal pay, regardless of gender, are causes I support. I've condemned patriarchy and proposed a way to make Spanish gender-neutral.
I also support satire, even satire of causes I support.
I will not support censorship.
Trashing human rights is everyday practice in Australia.
Everyone: call on banksters
to give
their holiday bonuses to the people they made homeless.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The world may be hitting Peak Food.
The human race needs to hit Peak Population soon, or we're asking for trouble.
Why Taser Is Paying Millions in Secret 'Suspect Injury Or Death' Settlements. When Does "Less Lethal" Actually Mean "Deadly"?
Being tased is surely less dangerous than being hit with a bullet. If we think of tasing as a substitute for shooting, tasing probably results in less harm. But if tasers encourage people to shoot, on the basis that they are safe, tasers could result in more harm.
Alberta is considering a law to criminalize suggesting that public employees go on strike.
South Korea bans all publications from North Korea, and even access to a site that analyzes North Korea's internet presence. (See last paragraph.)
A bill that is supposed to regulate lobbying in the UK will tie up citizens' campaigns in red tape.
I suspect the problem is due to not distinguishing business funding from other funding.
Edward Felten analyzes the strained language that Obama's NSA report uses to give the impression that the NSA has not put back doors into software people use. If the statements are literally true, they are full of loopholes.
They might also be false. If the NSA officials will lie to Congress, why wouldn't they lie to us?
It's not just the NSA: the FBI also snoops on Americans unjustly.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to grant Snowden immunity.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Volcker Rule
Made Meaningless by Abundant Exemptions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Three different disasters in Asia come from the same cause: the political dominance of business.
To change this, we should abolish the institutions such as the WTO that cement their power.
The coroner in charge of investigating the death of Alexander Litvinenko says that the government won't allow him to investigate properly whether Russian agents murdered Litvinenko.
If someone were accused of the murder, that person would deserve a fair trial, being considered innocent until proven guilty. However, for these political purposes, we can presume the Russian state is guilty.
In China, prostitutes are sentenced to labor camps that use them for profit.
A US official in Vietnam
told
journalists not to believe anything US officials say, because they
lie all the time.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Catholic hospitals in the US try to excuse their contempt for women's rights by claiming that they serve the poor. Not very true nowadays.
The Indian state has not punished the perpetrators of a pogrom against Dalits, so the Maoist dissidents are killing them.
Buddhism in India, by Gail Omvedt, argues that Dalits are the descendants of India's Buddhists, from the time when the nobles suppressed Buddhism.
An aborted inquiry into UK rendition of Libyan dissidents to Gaddafi's hands says there is a case to be investigated.
Italy will shut or block access to sites without trial if they are accused of facilitating sharing.
Republicans' method for reducing the unemployment rate is to cut unemployment benefits. In North Carolina, this made 77,000 people give up looking for work, so they are not longer counted in the "unemployment rate".
It is a mistake to judge the success or failure of government policies by the official unemployment rate. The real measure of unemployment is number of people who are of working age but not working or in school, and not independently wealthy.
Israeli troops
shot
a Palestinian in the back, but said he was shooting at them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Cows in the US are fed litter from chicken cages, and that includes beef.
This creates a danger of spreading mad cow disease.
One of the missions of the Environmental Defenders Office in Australia is to make governments implement legal requirements to protect endangered species.
Officials, perhaps in bed with mining or logging interests, seem to wish to let these species be wiped out.
China will require journalists to take an
ideology
exam.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government has given up on pursuing large companies for around 60 billion dollars in dodged taxes.
A Swedish man was fined $600,000 for distributing a movie through a torrent site.
The copyright industry wants to imprison people for this. It is part of the War on Sharing, which we must put an end to.
Most Americans want the government to reduce economic inequality.
Though the plutocrats have failed to convince most Americans, they still have other strategies to prevent Americans from exercising control over the state.
Spain's right-wing government will vary its attacks on the non-rich to attack women instead, by banning abortion with very limited exceptions.
Senator Warren's push to increase Social Security seems to have made it politically impossible to cut Social Security.
This was very important, but we also need to increase government revenue by increasing taxes on the rich and on businesses. Also, while we are in a recession, we need deficit spending.
TAFTA, the proposed business deregulation treaty for the US and Europe, threatens to give many businesses increased power. For instance, it could blow away the just-established Volcker Rule, ban labeling of GMOs, make medicines more expensive, and stop countries from protecting data from spying by other countries.
TAFTA stands for "Turn All Freedom To Ashes".
Morsi faces another prosecution on improbable charges of a terrorist conspiracy including Iran.
Facebook carefully studies all the text that its useds type in and then don't submit.
Glenn Greenwald told the EU that the NSA's goal is to eliminate privacy, world wide.
Putin hopes that amnesty for some political prisoners will wipe away the shame of having imprisoned them (and others) in the first place.
On the Front Lines of Class
War: Why the
Fight for a Livable Wage is Everyone's Fight.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US Budget Deal: the Good, Bad And Stupid.
The UK government, through deregulation and privatization, has allowed vital industries including food and banking to shrug off rule of law.
The latest censorship proposal: ban saying that someone is fat.
Once you accept in principle the idea of forbidding some sort of insult, there is no natural stopping point; any statement that might hurt someone's feelings is likely to be banned.
I do not feel offended when people call me "fat", if they do not mean it as an insult, since it is undeniably true. If someone does mean it as an insult, that indicates a mental confusion on that person's part. Being fat is not an ethical failing.
It is amazing that Ms Lawrence is so sensitive to insults to her appearance — as if Einstein felt crushed if anyone said he was stupid. This bespeaks an inner insecurity that disregards objective reality. That insecurity is her real problem, not the insults.
Let the Sun Shine In: The Rightwing Attack on Our Solar Future.
It's perfectly logical: someone who wants to sell as much fossil fuel as possible, and cares nothing about the rest of the world, would try to discourage, even prohibit installation of solar generators.
Trapwire files for "suspicious events" show both idiocy and unofficial racial profiling.
The Big Spill made dolphins sick, some fatally.
The UK government will smother the inquiry into rendition by handing it to a picked committee of Parliament instead of a judge.
The UK government apparently fears people's opposition to fracking, so it says frackers need not inform the people who live above the wells.
This way, if they get sick, it won't occur to them to suspect fracking is the cause.
Turkish thugs that dared to arrest well-connected people for corruption charges have been fired and rebuked by President Erdogan.
How can pressure be put on Putin, and other Russian anti-gay bigots?
Ultimately, the 2012 Olympics did nothing to spur exercise in England. Their legacy to England consists of repressive laws and benefits for the rich.
The ACLU praises Edward Snowden as an American patriot, and refutes the state's attacks on him.
The Australian government will cease funding the offices that advise people on protecting themselves from polluting industries. This is to help businesses get away with illegal pollution.
Australia's Human Rights Commissioner proposes to abolish one kind of censorship, which penalizes some "offensive" views.
This right-wing politician appears to have little real love for human rights. Nonetheless, Australia should abolish this censorship if it has an opportunity.
The UK government has rejected EU funds for food banks.
After working so hard to make Britons so poor they cannot afford food, why would the government let the EU help them escape? That would spoil everything!
US citizens: phone your senators at 202-224-3121 and say, no new sanctions against Iran — give diplomacy a chance.
The arrogant international "tribunal" set up by a US-Ecuador investment treaty has already twisted the law and the treaty to make excuses to declare Chevron the winner against Ecuadorians.
I wonder why Ecuador has not withdrawn from this treaty. Even if the treaty should not properly apply to this case at all, other cases will arise in the future. The treaty can do no good, only harm.
Australia plans to imprison refugees on accusation, without trial, by requiring them to sign a "code of conduct" in which they promise not to commit crimes.
This means that if they are accused of crimes, rather than trying them like anyone else, functionaries can decide they have "violated the code of conduct," cancel their visas, and imprison them right away.
Meanwhile, the government has changed another "code of conduct", for ministers, to allow them to own stock in businesses.
Since these ministers were chosen to serve the interest of business anyway, if they have another personal reason to do that it might change nothing.
Greg Palast: the Nelson Mandela Barbie doll.
Schools in Puyallup, WA, are installing palm scanners for students to identify themselves with.
I think palm scanners are much less bad than fingerprint scanners, because people don't leave palmprints on everything they touch. Perhaps the palm scanners are ok, if the state can't get any personal data from them.
The US government plans to deploy a laser scanning system that can detect even tiny quantities of chemicals in people's clothing and people's bodies.
The publisher of a Turkish edition of a raunchy book by Apollinaire is being tried under censorship laws.
An alleged food fraud gang in France has been arrested. They took the meat of horses that had been used in medical experiments and labeled it as beef.
The members of the American Studies Association have approved the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
Palestinians call for this boycott because Israeli universities have direct connections with the occupation of Palestine.
A global campaign aims to secure cheap anti-hepatitis pills.
The obstacle is the WTO, which requires countries such as India to allow patents on drugs.
This murderous policy is one of many reasons that the WTO must be abolished.
Amazon's warehouse workers in Germany have gone on strike.
Bravo!
Voicing the People's Anger, Yemen Parliament Calls for Drone Ban.
Zoning limits are pushing poor people out of US cities to far-away places from which commuting is hard and expensive.
I've opposed housing density limits since I saw this happening in Cambridge Massachusetts.
Around the world, buses are not funded enough, because rich people don't take buses.
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, on trial in Guantanamo, keeps trying to tell the judge that guards make noise to keep him from sleeping.
This is a military kangaroo court rather than a proper trial. Is that supposed to make sleep deprivation of the defendant ok?
Obama's record on global heating: with few exceptions, he supports it.
The European Commission objects to UK plans to subsidize nuclear power plants.
America's Greediest: The 2013 Top Ten.
Many economists say that the inequality that results from this greed costs even the rich, because it reduces the total economy.
Not that it matters ethically. Hurting the poor couldn't be justified by enriching the rich.
211 Journalists in World's Jails in 2013. The worst country is Turkey.
2013 was filled with extreme weather events.
Billionaire Polluters has found a large new oil field in the Gulf of Mexico.
Shall we celebrate?
Libyan dissident Ziad Hashem was imprisoned without trial in the UK, apparently based on information that Libyan torturers extracted from Abd-el-Hakim Belhaj after the UK and US delivered him to them.
If extraditing Abd-el-Hakim Belhaj secretly without the usual hearings was "approved by ministers", it demonstrates that that is insufficient as a safeguard.
The Los Angeles Airport shooter has been accused of "terrorism".
This attack does seem to be premeditated murder, but I think it is stretching the term "terrorism" to apply it here. Stretching strong words such as "terrorism" is a form of inflation that devalues them.
A British former headteacher (school principal, in US terms) has been convicted of sexual assault on 5 students, all before 1970.
The victims must have resented this for decades, which pretty clearly implies they were unwilling at the time. Thus, I think those acts do deserve to be crimes.
Human Rights Watch reports various forms of repression used in Saudi Arabia.
It's December, normally the cooler and wetter season, but a wildfire destroyed houses in Big Sur.
It isn't proven yet, but one must suspect that this reflects the effects of global heating, which is expected to alter the base conditions towards the hotter and drier.
A vocational school in the UK gave radio transmitter tags to its students and staff for several years without telling them.
I think it is misleading to call these "RFIDs" because what they do is very different. Their signals show exactly where the wearer is located.
The Indian state of Maharashtra has passed a bill to ban harassment by people who claim supernatural power.
However, the bill is weak.
This is in response to the murder of a rationalist campaigner.
Bank of America played tricks to avoid modifying American homeowners' mortgages, so it could foreclose them instead.
The US Senate should release its report into Bush regime torture practices.
A lawsuit against NSA bulk collection of phone records has more or less won at the trial court level. The judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the NSA to stop collecting this metadata.
However, it's not really in effect because it will be appealed. I expect this case to go to the Supreme Court before anything really happens.
An Italian protester that kissed a thug's helmet has been charged with "sexual violence" and insulting the thug.
The first charge is blatant distortion of the facts, but the second shows blatant disrespect for freedom of speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult anyone, especially including officials. A state that denies this right is clearly in the wrong.
US citizens: support Senator Warren's bill to forbid employers to look at job candidates' credit reports.
US citizens: Tell Congress, don't go on vacation without extending unemployment benefits.
The FDA will move to ban anti-bacterial soaps unless they demonstrate health benefits.
The bactericides can cause harm, and there is a possibility that the killing of bacteria may lead indirectly to the spread of asthma because people's immune systems don't get trained as they should be.
60 Minutes Is Now in the Spin Business.
Everyone: call on
Philadelphia not
to allow advertising in its public schools.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US border thugs interrogated two New York Times reporters about their journalistic activities as they were returning to the US. Now the Committee for Public Safety (oops, Department of Homeland Security) says it has no record of this.
An Indian diplomat in the US faces criminal charges for paying a domestic servant less than the minimum wage and lying about it in her visa application.
The servant is also Indian. Indians should cheer that the US is doing something to protect poor Indians from exploitation by the Indian elite. Reportedly it is a long time since an Indian diplomat was arrested. It has probably been an even longer time since Indian servants' wages were protected in this way.
The strip search seems excessive, however, for the nature of the accusation.
Senator Warren's bill would stop employers from discriminating (in effect) against poor people.
This bill would be a change for the better, but we also need to make more jobs, which calls for increased government spending. I'm sure Senator Warren is in favor of that too.
Spineless in
Bali: Fooled Again by the WTO.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
50 sailors on a US navy ship that brought aid to the Fukushima area have got cancer, and are suing TEPCO.
The ship carries around 3000 sailors. For 50 of those healthy adults, mostly in their 20s, to get cancer in under 3 years is amazing.
The ship is named after President Reagan, and his name should not be mentioned without reminding people how he harmed the US. He gave arms to terrorists in Lebanon to ransom hostages, to get funds to illegally fund terrorists in Nicaragua. He also launched the campaign to impoverish most Americans, which continues to this day. His supporters called him the Great Communicator, but Great Swindler would fit better.
Neonicotinoid pesticides cause brain damage to mouse fetuses, so they may harm human fetuses too.
AT&T's latest method in the War on Sharing is a new user-profiling scheme to identify sharers, whom they call "pirates."
Please don't call them "pirates" — that is propaganda for the enemy.
Falkvinge: Our Free Society Stands Or Falls With Our Defense Of Sharing Knowledge And Culture.
The Sad Decline of '60 Minutes' Continues With This Week's NSA Whitewash.
Seven Ripoffs That Capitalists Would Like to Keep out of the Media.
JROTC uses lots of money to convince American teenagers to join the army. It's instead of teaching them American history.
Nelson Mandela's funeral has finished, after serving to illustrate the political issues of today's South Africa and how the US helped the apartheid state to capture him.
I admire Mandela's fight for freedom, and his personal courage, as much as before, and I reject the idea that he'd have to be perfect to deserve our admiration.
However, I am disappointed with the fuss that people make about his death. Why fetishize a corpse that used to be the body of a great person? A dead body is not a person anymore. It's not Mandela's corpse that deserves our admiration, but rather his life.
Everyone: call on the Washington Post to acknowledge it is owned by the owner of Amazon, which has a big contract with the CIA.
The American single mothers who depend on food stamps have been forgotten by the mainstream media.
Suing for the right to plant vegetables in your front yard.
Snowden writes to the people of Brazil asking for asylum there.
Refuting the NSA falsehoods that CBS presented on 60 Minutes.
The UK's system of Internet censorship has been inaugurated.
People who use the Internet via public access points, schools, and so on will have no way to turn the censorship off.
People passing through Dubai airport are imprisoned for having microscopic amounts of marijuana in their pockets or even on the soles of their shoes.
I wonder how they detect these microscopic bits of marijuana. Are they using the inspection laser system that the US has been developing?
Some years ago it was reported that most US bank notes had traces of cocaine. I wonder if they will start imprisoning people who have US money on them.
Don't be a fool — reject all flight transfers in Dubai. Don't even think of flying on Emirates.
Fracking appears in many cases to leak endocrine disruptors into water supply.
Scientists Explore Paths to 'Radical' [CO2] Emissions Reductions.
I do not think we need to consider the digital ration cards for carbon emissions, because a tax on carbon emissions could achieve the same reductions without the oppressive surveillance.
Mother
Teresa gave
sick poor people no painkillers and little medical care, because she
believed that their suffering was "beautiful". This cruel sadist
raised hundreds of millions of dollars, but didn't spend it to help
them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The media campaign to promote her has fooled many Americans into thinking that she was a great example of charity and goodness.
Chile's new President Bachelet promises reforms to spread the wealth and make education more accessible.
A European couple in Egypt was jailed for a month, accused of a crime they couldn't possibly have committed, apparently only to pretend to the Chinese embassy that a complaint had been dealt with.
If this is how the Egyptian state treats foreigners, I shudder at what it must do to Egyptians.
Advertising of prescription drugs in the US is leading to greater and often improper use of the drugs.
The Boston Thug Department's automatic license plate recognizers collected millions of records about lawful vehicles, but they repeatedly ignored one that was stolen.
Which reminds us not to judge surveillance technology by the official purpose but rather by its side effects.
Some nuclear power experts call on Japan to hand over the handling of the Fukushima nuclear plants to an international team.
The cleanup also needs to have plenty of funds. TEPCO is hiring the cheapest workers it can get.
It appears that substantial amounts of radioactive cesium are continuing to leak out of the damaged reactors.
Salt on roads in New York State is coming from oil and gas wells, and it tends to be more toxic than ordinary salt.
Amazon "sold" someone Disney Christmas videos, but not physical copies; subsequently Amazon, at Disney's command, cut off access for Christmas.
This demonstrates why we should not trust remote hosting disservices. Insist on having your own copy which is yours.
USaid rejects all support to abortion in poor countries, and fear of this leads many women's health clinics in poor countries to refuse to do abortions at all.
32 Privacy Destroying Technologies That Are Systematically Transforming America [and the world] Into A Giant Prison.
A Genentech scam against Medicare: selling a very expensive drug Lucentis where cheap Avastin would work just as well.
The article extends too much sympathy to pharma companies. They have corrupted the medical system in many ways, rip off Americans so much, and lobby for deadly patents in countries with lots of poor people, so they don't deserve sympathy.
Viewing the fighting in Syria as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
I don't think Saudi Arabia is likely to use its influence to hold back Islamist extremists, since it has spent years funding and supplying them. There have been reports about this all along, and the US government must have know about this. The US ignored the Saudi connection as al-Qa'ida, boosted by Saudi money, took over the Syrian resistance to Iran's friend. What kind of strategy was that?
"Affluenza" is a new excuse for letting wealthy people escape punishment for crimes such as vehicular homicide.
I doubt whether a 20-year prison sentence is the best way to teach a 16-year-old not to drive while drugged and drunk. However, I agree with the article that, whatever society's best response is, the culprits should not be allowed to pay their way to more favorable treatment.
The ANC, on abolishing apartheid, abandoned its plans for socialism to share the wealth with the impoverished. Did Mandela have a choice?
I don't advocate a Communism that would abolish private property and business. However, the decision to have private business still leaves a wide range of possible societies. Cruel societies such as today's US and Mexico are one option, but today's Scandinavia is also an option. Some socialist elements can make society much better for the non-rich while most work continues to be done by private businesses.
A US Navy study predicts that before 2019 global heating will melt all the ice in the Arctic Ocean every summer.
This will cause global heating to accelerate, since the water surface will absorb more light, which currently the ice reflects out to space.
Three Ways the Super-Rich Suck Wealth Out of the Rest of Us.
Seymour Hersh: When Obama threatened to attack Syria, the US government did not know whether Sarin was used by Assad's men or by al-Nusra the Islamist fanatics. And it still does not know.
The destruction of chemical weapons is a good outcome, and I continue to support it. Cherry-picking intelligence to support a military attack is the sort of thing Dubya did.
Dredging Australia's new coal port is likely to wipe out several protected, endangered species and poison part of the Great Barrier Reef.
Burning the coal will kill the whole thing.
Ukraine is split between a European-leaning western part that was and a Russian-leaning eastern part.
The split mainly derives from the partition of Poland in the late 1700s, when the Russian empire took the eastern part and the Austrian empire took the western part. However, the eastern part was under Mongol rule for centuries before Poland took it.
Palm oil producers continue destroying Sumatran rainforest. Few orangutans remain.
Giving legislators a raise, in the European parliament, resulted in their being less committed to their work.
I don't think this one study can justify concluding that higher pay necessarily causes less dedication.
The US budget deal is cruel to the poor, and panders to the rich and business.
It is a compromise between mainstream right-wing and extreme right-wing.
The practice of making computers to last a short time and be replaced tremendously increases the quantity of toxic e-waste.
This also increases the demand for certain minerals to the point that armies fight over mines in Africa.
Banning the shipment of e-waste to poor countries is proving ineffective. Requiring a 3-year warranty for every computer sold might do a better job. Many of the purchasers would demand warranty service, so the manufacturers would have to make their products cheaper to repair. In addition, a lot of the waste would end up in the hands of authorized service agents. Regulating its disposal by them would be easier.
The next threat from Facebook: using AI to figure out more about you.
If you refuse to be one of Facebook's useds and tell the AI about yourself, it will do what it can with the data it gets from Facebook surveillance — plus what other people tell it about you.
The Islamist fanatics in Syria greatly outnumber the secular rebels and are better equipped. Thus, if Assad's regime is replaced, the replacement will be worse.
Tobacco companies pay corrupt governments to use trade treaties to block anti-smoking measures.
These murderous treaties must be destroyed!
What the state could find out with location data from tracking you and other people you know.
PBS Budget Debate: Wall Street, the Right and the Further Right.
Karzai's conditions to allow some US troops to remain in Afghanistan: end air attacks (including drones) and facilitate peace.
Freedom of political speech is widely threatened across Europe.
For instance, Spain is now considering a law to make it a crime to "insult Spain".
This is not to mention the censorship of specific views in many countries.
A US drone attack killed 15 people on the way to a wedding in Yemen.
This is a consequence of using drones as death squads, in places that are not battlefields. A wedding party would not travel through a battlefield; people would recognize the danger and stay under cover.
Australia's gun regulations could be a model for the US.
The population of barn owls in the UK is crashing because of various human activities.
Use of rat poison is one of them. Another is global heating, which paradoxically makes Britain colder in the winter.
The government of Colombia makes sure right-wing gangs can get away with rape so as to keep foreign companies happy.
The oppressive treaty with the US is another plan to keep foreign companies happy.
US citizens: urge your senators
to oppose
attempts to weaken the Endangered Species Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery on the latest Israeli excuses to reject peace with Palestine.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to cut subsidies to
agribusiness, not food stamps.
Also send
mail through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on India to abolish the law against homosexuality.
Brazil may allow use of "terminator" seeds (biological restrictions management or BRM).
Fracking Hell: What It's Really Like to Live Next to a Shale Gas Well.
Mass graves of Albanian
Kosovars give
the lie to claims that the Serbs did not commit atrocities there.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating leads to extreme weather disasters, and those lead the victims to be trafficked.
Too Many Secrets: Fixing the Government's Broken System for Classifying Information.
Some NSA officials said they would consider amnesty for Snowden if he stops revealing secrets.
This seems to be pure PR. They know that Snowden is no longer revealing any US secrets. He no longer has any! Before going to Russia, he divested himself of all copies so the data would not fall into Russian hands. Journalists have the data now.
Thus, what the NSA officials really proposes is to make Snowden a hostage to make the journalists stop publishing.
ISPs in Venezuela have been ordered to censor access to sites that publish the black market exchange rate between dollars and bolivars.
This is stupid as well as wrong. However, when judging the policy, keep in mind that many countries have similar (and equally wrong) policies, including quite a few in Europe.
Price controls tend to cause shortages, so they are generally an unwise policy. But they are not unjust like censorship.
Schools put students' personal data at risk by entrusting them to companies.
No matter what these companies might put in their contracts, centralizing data from schools in one company inherently makes them more vulnerable. In addition, these technologies increase the amount of data collection about a student.
The student's data should be kept on a physical memory that is the student's property, on loan to the school. Teachers should be allowed to look at the data when there is a valid reason, and the physical memory should be wiped after the term, leaving nothing but the grades.
US schools routinely terrify and traumatize kids in the name of protecting them from terror and trauma.
If we banned large magazines and guns that repeat at a high rate, much of the problem will go away.
I fear that these lockdowns will teach many children to think in the direction of shooting a lot of people, in school or elsewhere. When that's what you know (or think you know), you will think of that.
Poor People Deserve Digital Privacy, Too.
Companies have pushed workers to act like machines, which makes them very vulnerable to being replaced by a machine.
I think there is some truth in this article. At the same time, the approach it recommends won't put millions of long-term-employed back to work. If society does not need these people to work, it must offer them good lives anyway.
It is incoherent to say "If you don't work, you don't eat" and "There is no work for you" at the same time.
A "small" nuclear war between India and Pakistan would produce a small nuclear winter. The loss of food production could endanger 2 billion people.
The UK's cruel cuts force many poor Britons to live on 3 dollars a day for food.
It is no surprise that these policies have not helped people find work. That was never a real goal, just an excuse to hurt people.
The reason these people are unemployed is that there are no jobs for them, and that is due to the spending cuts.
Illegal gold mining is driving deforestation in Peru.
I think such phenomena demonstrate the importance of sharply cutting the birth rate. People will find ways to get money through extraction, especially if they have little other opportunity.
Greenpeace declares it will continue protests against Arctic oil drilling, even in Russia.
In companies where Domino's Pizza operates: tell the company
to reinstate
the workers who were fired for complaining about illegal low
wages. Note, this campaign was successful.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this petition to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama not to gag his new advisor John Podesta regarding the Keystone XL Earth-roaster pipeline, especially given that corrupt interests are operating unimpeded.
Documents show that ALEC presented itself to companies as making their profits its primary goal.
Renewable energy is growing rapidly in South Africa, but coal interests want to tie the country permanently to coal exports.
The Australian government is abolishing environmental protection by handing approval power solely to individual states.
The tyrant of North Korea executed his uncle, calling him "despicable human scum". Well of course — he was an official in North Korea, so how could he not be despicable human scum?
Controversial
Anti-Protest Law Challenged in Ugandan Court.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
500 prominent writers have published a manifesto for restoring privacy by curbing digital surveillance.
I agree with their manifesto, because it doesn't insist narrowly that the solution consists of limiting state access to massive dossiers while continuing to accumulate them.
It took me a while to find a place to refer to it, because the reference I saw was to a page I could not even view, on change.org. When I tried to view that page, all I got was a brief message saying the site requires Javascript and cookies even to see a page.
In addition, they ask people to endorse the statement on change.org. I won't do that, or refer others to that, because of the requirement for nonfree Javascript software.
So I am stating my agreement here.
Everyone: Urge German PM Merkel
to give
asylum to Edward Snowden in exchange for his testimony.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Japanese continue protesting against the new state secrets law, which over 80% condemn.
The FDA is looking at stopping the indiscriminate use of some antibiotics in farm animals.
Victoria (a state in Australia) will legalize sexting by teenagers but only in narrow age bands. This is a step forward but not enough. No one should be punished for sexting, and the recipient of the sext shouldn't be punished either.
The law will also ban sending nude photos of someone else without that person's consent. That part seems ok to me.
Israel has abandoned the plan to force Negev Bedouin off their lands and into artificial villages where they have no livelihood.
However, the victory won't necessarily last.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose "fast track" for the
TPP.
Also send
mail through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US government has decided to keep hunger strikes in Guantanamo secret to avoid the odium they shed.
A researcher studying plastic in the Pacific Ocean found that plastic has a larger presence than living organisms.
It turns out to be difficult to count the plastic in the ocean, and difficult to filter it out without catching the plankton.
An unarmed man who did nothing worse than walk into the street has been charged with shooting people — who in fact were shot by the thugs.
To hold the criminal responsible for the consequences of the crime is valid when the crime is comparably grave. For instance, Dubya and B'liar should be held responsible for all the killings in Iraq caused by their invasion, including the killings carried out by the Sunni and Shi'ite militias as well as by the Bush forces.
However, putting a hand in a pocket is hardly grave enough to justify blaming anyone for other people's shootings. In addition, it gives the shooters immunity, which encourages them to shoot again.
The Theater of Security Agency shows no sense of shame after confiscating a two-inch-long toy pistol that was to be put on a puppet.
The idea that there is a principle that requires harsh, strict and pointless application of rules is a collective folly known as "zero tolerance". "Zero tolerance" is the basis for the school-to-prison pipeline. We must condemn the general idea, every time it comes up, and not only its crazy excesses.
The former prime minister of Thailand has been charged with murder for ordering snipers to shoot protesters.
Coca Cola Company is trying
to teach US
waiters to discourage people from drinking tap water.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
I usually have only tap water in restaurants, except in Chinese restaurants where large pots of tea are usually provided.
See also the boycott of Coca Cola Company.
Israel, Palestine and Jordan made an agreement on a joint desalination project and will divide up the water.
Heroic whistleblowers call on spy agency employees to become whistleblowers.
New Zealand border thugs took all of Samual Blackman's computers and disk drives.
They kept him incommunicado, and demanded he give them his passwords.
Blackman suspected this was because he went to a meeting in London about massive surveillance. The thugs said it is for some kind of censorship. We should not assume they told the truth, but if they did, that is no better. Censorship is evil too.
Today's law in Australia (and the US) would have made it a crime to send funds to "terrorists" such as Nelson Mandela, and maybe even to teach anti-apartheid activists how to use a photocopier. But that's not enough for right-wing politicians, who want to imprison protesters that interfere with business.
I guess those right-wing politicians support Putin's plans to imprison Greenpeace protesters.
It is a fundamental injustice to allow functionaries to label a group as "terrorist" without putting the group on trial and convicting it of that crime.
The Volcker rule is so complex, and has many exceptions; it might not do its job very well.
An Egyptian teenager has been imprisoned for having a pro-Morsi symbol on a ruler and notebooks in school. Many others have been punished for displaying the banned symbol.
Even though I disagree very strongly with what the symbol stands for, I am against this censorship.
US citizens: Tell Congress to reject the Scrooge budget deal.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on the Massachusetts senators to support diplomacy with Iran.
The Australian government's malice against foreigners has reached the point of denying a short-term visa for medical treatment.
Australia imprisons boat people in Papua New Guinea, where homosexuality is illegal, and the prisoners have been told that any homosexual acts will be reported to the local thugs.
AT&T offers a discount on broadband in exchange for snooping on users' browsing.
Another way to put it is, even a shadow of privacy costs extra.
I think this demonstrates the fallacy trying to address the problem of surveillance by saying users "own" the personal data that companies want. Companies have so much clout that they can get people to "sell" nearly anything — especially with mass unemployment and falling wages making people desperate.
Google uses a third-party cookie to track users from one site to another. The NSA looks at the same cookie to do the same job.
It's wrong for the NSA to track people in general, and wrong for Google to do it. We need to change browsers so they do not cooperate with this. GNU IceCat blocks most third-party material in web pages.
As for the cooperation that the NSA gets from portable phone apps, you should accept nothing less from proprietary software.
When lawyer Eric Crinnian told thugs they couldn't search his home without a warrant, a thug threatened to exercise the warrant at night, breaking down his door and kill his dogs, gratuitously.
That shows thugs' attitude towards our rights. If these threats by thugs are not illegal, we need to make them illegal.
Furthermore, the thugs should be required to carry audio recorders at all times when on duty. If when accused they don't present recordings to show the accusation is false, courts should take the citizen's word over the thug's word.
Students held protests around the UK against anti-protest violence by the thugs.
Earth's awesome rate of CO2 emission, and what it means.
Pollution from coal burnt in China kills 250,000 people each year.
Fraudulent food is a widespread organized crime practice in the UK.
I attribute it to the deregulation that makes it easy to change the supply chain frequently.
Aetna shareholders have sued the company for misleading them about its political spending.
Apple appears to be censoring all bitcoin apps for iThings.
It should be illegal to make or distribute computers which are platforms for censorship.
The UK thugs systematically cancel domain names without trial by quietly intimidating domain name registrars.
They do this in the name of the bogus concept of "intellectual property", propaganda that conveys a misunderstanding of the various unrelated laws it is applied to.
Israeli thugs attacked protesters against the plan to kick the Bedouin of the Negev out of their homes and force them into villages where they have no livelihood. The thugs attacked even children with violence.
China is considering a ban on smoking anywhere in public.
I am strongly in favor of discouraging smoking, but I don't see a justification for going so far.
Focusing on whether a few women have an equal chance to be executives and board members is a distraction from how most women (and men) are treated by society.
The Pakistani doctor that helped the US find Osama bin Laden faces repeated bogus accusations, and his defense lawyer has been driven into exile by death threats.
To use a vaccination program as a front for a manhunt was extremely harmful because it fed suspicion of vaccination programs. This has impeded the eradication of polio.
However, that doesn't make these bogus charges valid.
Islamist fanatics in
Syria seized
supplies that the US had provided to non-Islamist rebels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Is it lawful for the USPS to record the outside of all envelopes?
Global heating of even a few degrees will affect bats' ability to echolocate.
In the long term, many thousands of years, bats could evolve to cope with this. But the heating we are causing today is too fast for evolution to adapt to.
Ice loss on West Antarctica is causing Antarctica, the continent, to shift.
An alpine glacier that was stable for thousands of years is warming up and melting rapidly.
Repeatedly watching TV coverage of a bombing can cause more stress than witnessing the bombing.
I know someone in California who was so traumatized by watching coverage of the Sep 2001 attacks as to become afraid to go outside.
That morning I made an intentional decision not to watch the coverage. It would have been both boring and anxiety-producing; all in all, I preferred to work on an article talking about the danger of sacrificing our freedom for "security".
Saudi Arabia has expelled a million foreign workers, treating them horribly.
To tighten rules for allowing foreign workers, and expel some, is not in itself wrong. To kill them, or even to physically abuse them, is not excused by the decision to expel them. Denying them the chance to sell their property is also wrong.
Thugs attacked protesters in Ukraine.
The proposed deal with the EU might have traps in it. However, being dominated by Russia is very bad, and rejecting that does not require submission to the EU's temptation.
Uruguay has legalized regulated sale of marijuana, but the people may not support it.
Marijuana is not addictive like tobacco and alcohol; ceasing use of marijuana does not cause withdrawal symptoms.
Homosexuality
is once
again a crime in India.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
In the UK, children have the right to opt out of biometric data collection.
A British man is being prosecuted for having sex with a teenager who said she was having voluntary sex with him and asked please don't prosecute him.
His defense, as reported here, would be vile if anyone were likely to believe it. Since no one could take it seriously, I can't condemn him for saying it, but I don't see what the point is.
Overall, this is another example of "protecting" "children" in a way that does nothing but harm to everyone involved. They will probably say that he "raped" her.
Brazil's President Kubitschek was murdered by the military dictatorship which pretended he had been killed in a car crash.
UK thugs persistently infiltrated and snooped on anti-apartheid campaigners.
Former treasury
secretary Geithner
is now a bankster.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Previously he was the "banksters' man in Washington."
The Australian government is trying to intimidate the Australian public broadcasting organization ABC so it won't publish news such as that Australia was spying on Indonesia.
The accusation of "cannibalizing local media" might be true, but if so, the solution is not what the right-wing government would want to do.
The FBI has launched prosecutions of prison guards in LA.
I am glad to see the statement that they will prosecute even though these abuses have become institutional. If only they adopted the same policy towards banksters.
US citizens: urge Senator Rockefeller
to co-sponsor
Senator Sanders' universal health care bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your senators to renew credits for renewable energy.
You might as well call on them at the same time to cut subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
Obama pardons turkeys but hardly ever pardons human beings.
"Corporate social responsibility" practices can psychologically influence executives to adopt antisocial policies feeling that they already did their good deed for the year.
One study is not enough to prove this is true, but if it is, it suggests that we need to tax companies more to pay for social needs rather than inviting companies to make donations.
Chinese agents kidnaped human rights activist Wang Bingzhang from Vietnam, and imprisoned him for life after a secret trial. He has been in solitary confinement for a decade.
This is what the US calls "rendition".
The Washington Post warns that Senator Warren might pull the Democratic Party "away from the center" by championing progressive policies.
This is despite the fact that Americans generally agree with them.
This "center" is only a "center" in the sense of being located in between the two mainstream right-wing parties. It's used to suppress what most Americans want.
In the US:
call
on Suffolk University to reject politicized funding from the Koch
brothers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say you oppose any new sanctions on Iran now — give diplomacy a chance!
Then report your call.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
European governments have used the euro crisis as an excuse to wipe out workers' rights and adopt US-style precarity.
It adds up to a campaign that attacks workers' rights in one country at a time.
Australia is likely to need twice as many firefighters by 2030 due to effects of global heating.
US "zero tolerance" reaches new heights of insanity: a child is threatened with expulsion from school for miming the shooting of an imaginary arrow with an imaginary bow.
The NSA snoops on chats between users of online games.
How schools teach gender stereotypes.
How unemployment benefits create jobs.
Finally the US
will adopt
the Volcker rule to restrict banks' speculation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
I am worried that the complexity of the rule will make it hard to enforce. We will see.
As for the possibility that this will reduce banks' speculation, I hope so. Too large a fraction of the US GNP goes to banks.
Who will put the bell on the cat? You!
Canada wants to claim the seabed at the north pole for the fossil fuels there.
Oil and natural gas from the north pole have no value because they will never be used. To extract even 30% of the known reserves will lead to global heating disaster. Before civilization gets to the point of extracting the expensive fossil fuels from the north pole, it will collapse.
However, Canada and companies can pretend these fuel reserves have value, thus adding to the carbon bubble.
Movement Rises to Kick 'Corporate Reform' Out of Public Schools.
Why does bankrupt AIG get a bail-out while bankrupt Detroit and Chicago workers get pension cuts?
The Thai government called new elections to cater to
protesters'
demands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Edward Snowden won the Guardian's person of the year election.
When I talk about surveillance in my speeches, I call for "three cheers for Edward Snowden." You might think this is superfluous because everyone knows that he deserves our admiration. Not so! US politicians (especially those that support massive surveillance) continue trying to demonize Snowden. We have to defeat them, and the way to do it is by showing our views.
The Over-Policing of America and Criminalizing Everyday Life.
In the US:
call on
Verizon and AT&T to support transparency about government
surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell Congress to support diplomacy with Iran, not to sabotage it.
Senator Warren rejected the idea of formulating the issue of Social Security in terms of how much to cut, and proposed ways to fund increasing it.
Cutting social security is a right-wing idea that most Americans reject. Please don't grant it a sort of legitimacy by calling it the "center". It is only "central" between the two right-wing major parties.
The American Studies Association voted to join the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
This follows a debate at a meeting in which over 80% of the speakers (randomly chosen from those who asked to speak) supported the boycott.
The full membership is now voting on the resolution.
Uri Avnery: Kerry is making the mistake of taking Israel's obsolete "security concerns" seriously.
The K Street Perversion of Cost-Benefit Analysis.
Amnesty International will sue the UK about probable phone call snooping.
The UK government has created excuses to ignore such cases by hearing the evidence secretly.
Solar Would Be Cheaper: US Pentagon Has Spent $8 Trillion to Guard Gulf Oil.
Without the large government subsidies for fossil fuel, solar would be cheaper anyway.
Life is more fun in a society with more equality.
Japan Reacts to Fukushima Crisis By Banning Journalism.
The US
has given up
resisting a merger between American Airlines and US Airways, which
will mean even less competition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The European Parliament wants to talk with Snowden by video.
I am surprised that Snowden is willing to do this. A couple of months ago, he refused to speak remotely with the German Parliament; he insisted on getting a safe-conduct to go there.
US citizens: Phone Nancy Pelosi's office to pressure her to take a clear stand against "fast track" for the TPP.
The radioactive material leaking from the Fukushima
meltdowns will
kill people, including an estimated 800 eventual deaths (not soon)
from eating contaminated fish.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
This is 800 out of the millions who are likely to eat some of that fish.
800 deaths is a large number to result from a single accident. It is important to try to stop more radiative material from leaking into the ocean from Fukushima, since that as it continues leaking, it could kill more hundreds.
On the other hand, the danger to any individual from these leaks is minuscule; there is no point taking any trouble to make sure you never eat even a little of that fish.
US citizens: call on the FDA to ban menthol cigarettes. Menthol in cigarettes encourages people to start smoking.
Humanity
is unprepared
for possible abrupt climate impacts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
In the US:
call
on the Consumer Goods Forum to require its members to stop getting
palm oil from deforestation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Phone Senator Warner's office to
demand
a hearing about the Keystone XL pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The American Library Association has denounced NSA surveillance.
I think libraries should adopt a system that makes it difficult for the library to find out who has borrowed a book unless the book becomes overdue.
12 Mandela Quotes That Won't Be In the Corporate Media Obituaries.
I think it is very important for outside observers to monitor elections in most countries, and perhaps the US needs them too.
We're supposed to be concerned about anonymous web sites because some of them distribute violent porn.
I don't want to watch violent porn, or violent non-porn, but neither should be censored.
However, if a business sells videos of real rapes or other real crimes and pays or rewards those who commit the crimes, the business participates in those crimes. That is valid grounds for prosecution.
I am surprised that the credit card payments can't be used to trace the business that runs the site.
Mainstream media commemorations of Nelson Mandela's life often falsify him, pretending that he stood for nonviolent resistance.
Mandela was right: nonviolence is not the only ethical way to resist oppression. Those oppressed with violence are entitled to fight back with violence. Of course, the founding fathers of the United States said the same thing about resistance to British oppression.
Here Mandela explains the ANC's motives for adopting first sabotage, then guerrilla warfare.
Chief among them was that the state's crackdown on dissent had closed off the possibility of nonviolent resistance.
Shanghai's solution to frequent bad air quality is to >raise the threshold for alerts.
A large leak at a uranium mine in Australia has been contained — for now.
The error behind claims that male brains and female brains are wired very differently.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "Don't play Scrooge
— extend unemployment insurance." Also sign
this
petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: state your support for
cuts
to the military and the people's budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
insist
that Congress have the chance to approve or reject any agreement
to keep troops in Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The
Great Corporate Tax Shift.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
La Quadrature du Net: Net Neutrality: EU Parliament Must Amend Kroes' Dangerous Proposal.
A UK soldier has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing a prisoner in Afghanistan.
However, the UK government is trying to quietly bury most accusations of killing prisoners.
Some chicken sold in the EU has 30% added water.
Barbie dolls have changed: now all their outfits are hypersexy.
The House of Representatives passed a bill discouraging the use of patents whose validity is questionable, and some other abusive practices.
This bill would be a step forward, but it fails to address today's biggest patent aggressors, such as Apple.
The real solution to the problem of patents in the software field is to take software out of the scope of patents.
How right-wing political "think-tanks" operate, perhaps mislead the IRS, and are tied to ALEC.
Journalist Abdulelah Haidar Shaye, imprisoned in Yemen on request from Obama himself, was given the Alkarama Human Rights Defenders award.
The mainstream media that supported Dubya's conquest of Iraq, treating weak evidence as sufficient, now downplays the danger of global heating, treating powerful evidence as dubious.
I suspect that both show oil money at work.
This site alleges that John F
Kennedy Jr. was killed by a bomb in his plane, which was followed by a
US government coverup effort, and alleges this was done by Israeli
secret agents because he was about to publish secrets of their
involvement in the assassination of Israeli Premier Rabin.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
This extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof, and this article isn't enough. So I am not convinced this claim is true. But I think it is not immediately dismissable. To verify the truth of the facts cited would be a lot of work. I don't have time to do that.
Thus I have decided to point readers at his report without saying I believe any of it.
Some pro-Morsi protesters were released with suspended sentences, meaning that if they protest again they will automatically be imprisoned.
The UK uses a similar nasty trick, giving accused protesters bail with conditions banning them from coming anywhere near a protest.
Apple
will invite
fanboys to let it track them around the Apple Store.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Geoengineering could lead to war between countries that have different needs for how to engineer the Earth's climate.
Any geoengineering method that aims to affect temperature directly will not do anything to stop ocean acidification due to dissolved CO2. This threatens to destroy all coral reefs, along with all the other species that depend on coral reefs. The result could easily be the loss of most of the sea food that a billion humans depend on.
In experiments, CO2 affected the behavior of some species of fish too — they ceased to hide from predators. That could wipe them out.
Suspended student protest leaders in Sussex University say they refuse to surrender to the privatization of the university.
Thugs in London punched student protesters and pushed them to the ground.
One student leader said he thinks this was a planned tactic intended to pre-emptively intimidate other students who might potentially join protests. Instead it inspired a "cops off campus" protest.
Of course, it's not the only one, but that is no excuse.
A Move Towards Generalised Internet Surveillance in France?
Many states are launching preemptive attacks to abolish privacy rights before people get motivated to defend them.
Wikileaks activist Sarah Harrison has been warned not to go home to the UK because its laws can label any sort of protest as "terrorism".
ALEC says it is in favor of "local control", but many of its proposed state laws are designed to prohibit local regulation of business, even prohibit local municipal broadband.
US citizens: call on your senators
to support
bills to reduce harsh minimum sentences for nonviolent drug
crimes, including for those already in prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on CBS to present the success stories of Obama's health care law.
Social movements criticize the WTO agreement.
Conservatives' cuts in health care are subjecting old people in the UK to pain and danger by delaying needed operations.
Pakistani anti-drone protesters have blocked US supplies to Afghanistan for 10 days. They say they will continue until the US stops the drone attacks.
As weapons of war, drones are not very different from bombers with human crews. Drones raise a special issue when they are used away from battlefields, in countries where the US says it is not fighting — Pakistan, for instance. In these cases, they more resemble death squads or terror campaigns than a war.
Senator Warren called for the big banks to disclose their contributions to "think tanks" (which in many cases are really right-wing pressure groups).
Suffolk University denounced a right-wing think tank that it hosts for a politically-minded campaign to undermine regional greenhouse gas reduction initiative.
A network of right-wing "think tanks" campaign for right-wing laws in many US states.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to cut the military budget. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on Senator Warren to endorse the deal with Iran.
Another apology that deserves an apology: Martin Bashir's apology for what he said about Sarah Palin.
Bashir said that if anyone deserved the punishments that slaves received, it would be Ms Palin. The use of "deserved" indicates a counterfactual: Bashir explicitly avoided saying that she, or anyone, deserves those punishments. He was criticized wrongly for a palinode that was entirely justified.
US citizens: call on your senators to oppose Senator Feinstein's bill to increase NSA massive surveillance.
Everyone: call on a mining company not to sue Costa Rica in the World Bank.
US citizens: call on all companies
to stop
funding ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Rahinah Ibrahim's daughter, who is a US citizen, was supposed to go to the US and testify as a witness in Ms Ibrahim's lawsuit. The US government blocked her return by putting her on the no-fly list, then lied about it in court.
This article says that the list Rahinah is suing to be removed from is the no-fly list.
The government's lawyers are claiming that the government can exclude "secret" information from the case even if it has been published. We've seen this contempt for reality in the Obama regime's attitude towards secrets revealed by Wikileaks and Snowden.
Over and over we see that US government agents are willing to lie to achieve their missions. Some lie to Congress, while others lie in court. These lawyers should be disbarred, just as Clapper should be jailed for contempt of Congress.
Toys-R-Us tried to replace the idea of Thanksgiving with the idea of "I want more".
The World Cup has provided an excuse to evict 19,000 poor families in Rio de Janeiro and move them up to 25 miles away.
Five bloggers have been arrested in Iran for publishing criticism of the theocratic tyranny.
Brazil will attack protesters' legal rights on behalf of the World Cup.
Everyone: Sign this petition calling on Google, Facebook and Yelp not to fund ALEC.
Isa Muaza, who has been on hunger strike more than 100 days, won a new court hearing about whether he can stay in the UK.
Prisoner Carol Lester was put in solitary confinement for advocating proper medical care for other prisoners.
The privatized prison can't make a profit without squeezing someone, so it has a reason to isolate those who complain about the squeezing. But non-privatized prisons use solitary confinement eagerly too.
After the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology published a paper reporting that GMO corn caused cancer in rats, it hired a new editor who used to work for Monsanto, and he retracted the paper.
The article links to change.org, which is unfortunate since you can't sign an article there except by running a nonfree program. The same with links to vimeo.
The Egyptian military government has shown clearly
that repression
isn't just for Islamists.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The proposed new constitution allows various sorts of repression.
Sussex University sparked strong student resistance by suspending 5 students, including some who participated in an occupation protest, and at least one who didn't participate.
Note the standard bullshit statement from the university administration saying that it has to do this to protect "students, staff and visitors" from disruption or (in their imagination only) worse.
This is part of a broader pattern of students' campaigning for decent treatment of workers, and increased repression by the state which advocates bad treatment of workers.
The former head of Israel's secret service said that the biggest threat to Israel's security is its refusal to make peace with Palestine.
Uruguayan President Asks for World to Support His Marijuana Legalization Plan.
States should withdraw from that 1961 UN treaty.
The methods now being developed to obstruct access to "child" pornography will enable blocking anything in the future, such as perhaps the revelations of the next Snowden.
US citizens: sign
this
petition calling on Obama to support reform of the ECPA to require
the government to get a warrant to examine people's email.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
This is a fairly small change: under current law, the warrant is needed for recent emails (those that arrived in the last 6 months), but not needed for emails that have remained for longer.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the wave of TV station mergers.
Everyone with a relation to the US: tell Third Way to publish the names of its financial sponsors, so we know the origin of its "advice" to Democrats not to be real Democrats like Elizabeth Warren.
Everyone: tell companies that quit ALEC not to join it again, not even under a different name.
Scandals revealed by the ALEC leak:
The NSA collects 5 billion cell phone locations per day, from hundreds of millions of phones.
The NSA uses this to determine when people meet each other physically. Thus, if you are going to a meeting, take the batteries out of your phone well before you get to it, as a courtesy to those you will meet with.
Here are some significant conclusions.
We did not know that the NSA was tracking phones world-wide, but we have known all along that they were being tracked by phone companies, and the governments that control them, and often by Apple and Google too. That's already unacceptable.
I have never "connected to our modern communication system" because I refused to be tracked. I have refused for 15 years now. This does not require me to "live in a cave". In my travels, if I need to make a call in a train or on the street, I ask whoever is there to call for me.
A horrible typo was fixed in Why We Need a State. It incorrectly said "the many non-poor" when it should have said "the many non-rich".
The next "advance" in exploiting people through their computers: ads tuned based on people's emotional state.
These ads are typically shown by software and services that are malicious in other ways — for example, a game server that monitors you might also show ads based on figuring out when you are vulnerable, or a car might monitor your emotional state using proprietary software you can't change.
Be skeptical of attempts to invent evolutionary stories to justify cultural practices such as sexism.
It is very difficult to tell whether a widespread human behavior pattern is genetically determined or not.
The UK could win independence from the banksters simply by exiting the EU.
Then it would be able to tax businesses including Amazon that extract money from the UK.
Gas companies are suing cities that have imposed bans on fracking.
We need a national ban on fracking. Most known fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground, and the first to be left are those whose extraction might poison water supplies.
Riot thugs attacked anti-fracking protesters in Romania so that Chevron could start fracking, and kept journalists away so they could hide their dirty work.
Large animals in the Sahara has been devastated — many are extinct or remain in only a small part of their former range.
Philadelphia should reject
commercial
advertising in schools.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A whistleblower in the EU team of election monitors in Honduras says most of the team wanted to report the election was rigged, but the team leaders insisted on approving it.
Detroit has been allowed to declare bankruptcy. This is likely to mean drastic pension cuts for present and former city workers.
Rahinah Ibrahim, formerly a student at Stanford, is suing to get taken off a US "terrorist watch list", or at least find out if she is really on it.
I can't tell whether the list in question is the "no-fly" list or some other list. Does anyone know?
Chicago's subways make it very expensive not to be spied on, and the City Colleges of Chicago demand biometric ID from the staff.
I would be willing to use a biometric system to get my pay, if it tested some part of my body other than my finger tips.
The French government says that the EU, supported by the UK, are blocking stricter traceability requirements for meat.
Ethical questions for custodians of the natural world.
I don't think that animals in general have a right to life — not even whales. I don't think, for instance, that we have a duty to stop orcas (one type of whale) from killing other whales as we would protect humans from being killed. I don't think we have a duty to stop chimps from killing other chimps.
But it is important to prevent the loss of species and ecosystems, because that is an irrecoverable loss.
Everyone: sign this petition opposing the TPP.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to end the sequester which is killing more jobs every year.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: Once again, tell the SEC to move forward with requiring public companies to disclose political spending.
The SEC said it would do this, then quietly dropped it.
Noam Chomsky: America Hates Its Poor.
He explains how the "tea party" idea that "We want the government off our backs" is used to distract working-class Americans from organizing for Liberal (social-democratic) that they favor when asked.
Canada's legislature is quietly pushing a law to impose nasty copyright punishments.
Please don't follow this article by using the term "intellectual property" to formulate your thoughts or your words.
The NSA gave its staff "talking points" to tell their families, praising the NSA and its massive surveillance. This article refutes them.
The new chairman of the FCC in his first speech endorsed network neutrality as a principle, then advocated selling privileges to certain web sites, although that directly conflicts with network neutrality.
The government of Australia wants to give refugees arriving by boat temporary visas instead of permanent visas, but since the opposition blocked the law to make this change, the government has decided arbitrarily not to give visas to asylum seekers at all.
In effect, it is holding recognized refugees hostage to ram through that law.
An important Japanese politician,
defending
the proposed anti-whistleblower law, said protesters' shouts were
in essence much like terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A survey of climate scientists suggests most expect sea level rise to be more than the IPCC predicted.
How much sea level rises will depend on unknown aspects of global heating but also on how much greenhouse gas we emit.
Former CNN correspondent Bob Franken says that the Obama regime is the "most hostile" to journalists in US history.
Prohibition of "child pornography" led to charges against journalists that published a video of two students having sex in a classroom alongside an article
I wish I knew who made the video, who distributed it, and whether the students in it approved of doing so. Depending on those facts, someone might have done something wrong here, but probably not the news site.
A study projects that 2C of global heating in the short term would lead to considerably more later.
Thus, it is not an adequate target for curbing short-term heating — and yet it is almost unattainable.
The EFF argues in court that full-time video surveillance of a home for a long period of time should require a warrant.
Amnesty International criticizes Israel's plan to imprison asylum seekers.
Catholic hospitals in the US endanger womens' lives rather than abort pregnancies.
Even more absurdly (I won't say "worse", since it isn't actually worse), they do this if the fetus is doomed anyway.
Hospitals should be required to provide all services including abortion, and if the Catholic Church doesn't like that, it should sell the hospitals.
The leader of protesters in Thailand demanded that six TV channels cease broadcasting government statements and broadcast only his side.
This suggests that these "protesters" think they have a lot of power behind them. This is not a popular protest movement even if it looks like one.
The European Court of Human Rights is considering the case of two prisoners in Guantanamo who accuse they were tortured in Poland by US agents while held in a secret prison.
The US does not allow these prisoners to testify. It should try them or release them. Maybe they are guilty of crimes, but so is the US in torturing them.
A French team says Arafat was not poisoned, disagreeing with the Swiss team that found radioactive Polonium that implied he was murdered.
This disagreement begs for further investigation to discover the reason for it.
Netanyahu pretends Israel is going to attack Iran, so as to keep his supporters in the US Congress activated to sabotage the US-Iran nuclear treaty.
Israeli troops attacked foreign journalists, shooting at their heads with rubber-coated steel bullets, and shooting them in the back.
This is not the first time Israeli soldiers have shot to kill and then denied it.
In Gaza, families have trouble getting fuel for cooking, and water.
Israeli forces used bulldozers to destroy wells in Palestine. They also bulldozed tents that Palestinians lived in.
This is part of a long-term campaign of ethnic cleansing to evict Palestinians from a large slice of Palestine near the border with Jordan.
Alec lost 40 corporate sponsors after the killing of Trayvon Martin, but it is furiously planning how to get them back into a new organization with a different name.
One sponsor it has not lost yet is Google. Please sign the petition calling on Google to stop supporting Alec.
Australia arrested a former official who was going to be a witness at the Hague, and raided his lawyer's office for legal documents.
The case concerns Australian spying during negotiations with East Timor for a treaty over fossil fuels. The witness was going to prove that Australia bugged the Timorese negotiating team. Apparently the current Australian government is so subservient to fossil fuel interests that it will trash traditional civil liberties for them.
The court should regard the witness's claims as proven conclusively by his arrest. That will serve the cause of justice in this case. Repairing the damage to civil liberties in Australia will take rather more.
A witness says Mark Duggan was surrendering, with his hands up and a phone in his hand, when a thug shot him.
Google funds many right-wing campaigns in the US, including ALEC and tea party nut Senator Cruz, and "tax reform" that would tax the rich less.
Intense business lobbying — for false solutions or just against real ones — helped make the Warsaw climate negotiations a failure.
It's too bad the report uses the nebulous term "intellectual property". I suppose the companies reported on used that term, because the confusion it spreads serves their purposes; those who oppose them would do well to pull that veil aside.
With cuts in food stamps, many families are in trouble if children are dismissed from school before lunch.
A book spells out what 4C of global heating will mean for Australia — what it is going to experience if it does not join in cutting emissions.
A new sweater changes color depending on the wearer's feelings.
Imagine wearing this sweater while playing poker.
Now imagine hacking one to show whatever color you tell it color to show, and wearing it while playing poker.
Denmark offers child care to all young children, and it isn't overprotective.
American children used to organize their own play, too. They didn't need help from adults.
Repeatedly, caste Hindus that attack Dalits in Bihar, India, are given impunity.
A study reports people who measure success by material things fall into a "loneliness loop" and then have trouble coping with reverses.
US citizens: support the bill to allow renewable energy projects a sort of tax benefit available to fossil fuel projects.
We should withdraw this form of public assistance for fossil fuel projects, because they must be discouraged.
As US nuclear plants age, and various parts rust or become brittle, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission keeps the plants open by reducing safety standards over and over.
Nikkei Shimbun reported that US pressure for Japan to continue using nuclear power plants came from Obama himself.
I don't think we need to worry about occasionally eating seafood caught near Fukushima. The level of radioactive material in it is small compared with the radiation we are normally exposed to.
The US government has a persistent habit of treating journalists as terrorists, and refused to promise not to prosecute journalist for publishing interviews with terrorists.
ALEC is considering proposals to attack the rights of workers, patients, customers and students, vis-a-vis employers and businesses.
Small pieces of plastic in the ocean are harming worms that are food for many other species.
Pieces 5mm in size shouldn't be called "microplastics". Perhaps some pieces are small enough to deserve that name.
Once the worms have a low level of toxins, the animals that eat the worms will accumulate higher levels, and the animals that eat those will get even higher levels. The same thing happens with mercury, which is why tuna have so much mercury that they are dangerous for humans to eat.
Australia's digital spying agency offered to share raw, complete data about Australians with the US. This practice may have been directly illegal.
The agency discussed including medical and legal information too; whether it went ahead and did so is not stated.
UN investigators say Bashar al-Assad is tied directly to war crimes.
I hope there is an investigation of what led to the armed uprising which supplanted the initial nonviolent protest movement. Was it funded by Saudi Arabia?
How massive surveillance affects us all.
The Corporate Bully Whose Front Groups, Willful Distortions and Hate-Mongering Has Poisoned U.S. Politics.
Most Americans today consider other people untrustworthy. This has major effects.
Americans' purchases of gifts for their kids are part of overconsumption that endangers the world they will live in.
Massachusetts is considering a 10-year moratorium on fracking.
A permanent ban would be safer.
A Canadian writer was barred from the US because she had been hospitalized for depression. She wonders how the US found out about this — whether the Canadian government illegally gave her records to the US.
It is absurd for the US to bar people for depression. It is not communicable.
Research confirms that removing DRM boosts sales of copies of music, except for the biggest sellers, which are not affected at all.
Please don't call sharing "piracy"; it is propaganda for our enemies. A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that "piracy" and "theft" are smear-words.
A new threat to your privacy: programs to recognize facial expression.
If the program that recognizes expressions does not record the video, that doesn't make it ok. Indeed, another program might run at the same time to do that.
41
Leading Scientists Call on EPA to Protect Our Forests And Climate.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The population of migrating monarch butterflies has plummeted from 60 million last year (already a record low) to a few million.
This is because US agriculture has dropped conservation as a priority and switched to new pesticides.
The US plans to sell more advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia while Saudi Arabia arms Islamist fanatics in Syria.
Saudi Arabia also organized the repression in Bahrain.
Christian extremism correlates with global heating denialism.
Exposing rats to certain pesticides can cause damage to their
descendants
3
generations later.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A glossary for NSA massive surveillance.
Canada approved producing GMO salmon eggs in quantity.
I don't think it is likely these salmon would hurt people that eat them. Their danger is to wild salmon.
Maybe these are safe for the environment if raised in Panama. But fish eggs and young fish can drift a long way in the ocean. They would be much safer if they were engineered to be sterile. When there's a small chance of a big and irreparable harm, we need multiple lines of defense, each of which ought to be sufficient by itself.
Uri Avnery, regarding Israel's position on the US-Iran deal: "The fools would have been amusing, if they had not been our fools."
Everyone: call on Walmart to pay a decent wage.
Everyone: call on the governor of Washington to block a proposed giant oil terminal.
Shipping the oil, by train and ship, would endanger the Columbia River and cities including Spokane and Vancouver. Burning the oil would endanger everyone in the world.
Current US robotics research turns out to be just what's needed for autonomous killer robots.
China's "re-education" forced labor camps have been changed into
"drug
rehabilitation" forced labor camps.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Most US prisoners had the option of a trial, though most get pressured into a plea bargain so they didn't have a trial. And the US puts a larger percentage of its population in prison than China does.
Repression of pro-EU protesters in Ukraine mobilized 100,000 of them.
The background for the protests in Ukraine.
Xiomara Castro accused election fraud in Honduras, which seems plausible given that 30% of the registered voters were invalid and that the difference between her percentage and the establishment candidate's percentage was less than 30%.
What did the exit polls say?
France has copied Sweden's harmful policy of punishing the clients of prostitutes.
I am not surprised that this law repression prostitution, but that is no help to those who choose (or might have chosen) to become prostitutes. It could discourage human trafficking that forces people to become prostitutes, but there are other ways to do that: (1) interviewing possibly trafficked immigrants in private in their own languages as they enter the country, (2) giving them advice on how to get help if they find they have been enslaved, and (3) visiting them once or twice a year for a private conversation to ask and check whether they have been enslaved.
It appears that these methods have not been tried.
Helping those who wish to leave prostitution is a good thing, but doesn't excuse the rest.
In Thailand, anti-government mass rallies have started fighting with mass groups of government supporters.
The anti-government crowds have seized various government buildings, one after another.
Pretending a Name Is Still Secret — in the Name of the Cult of Secrecy.
A giant conglomerate, Blackstone, has bought 40,000 houses across the US, using money obtained from a wacky new financial instrument.
The housing subsidiary, "Invitation Homes", bullies renters for "late fees" when it makes a mistake collecting their rents. Many companies do this nowadays. It should be a felony to ask for any sort of extra fee from someone who has a contract for service.
If the new financial instrument goes belly-up, the company could fail. That could knock 40,000 US families out of their rented homes all at once.
Government in the US hasn't gone broke by spending too much. Rather, it has been robbed — by business.
Visiting activists from West Papua were not arrested at the independence rally in Papua New Guinea, but three citizens of Papua New Guinea were charged with "unlawful assembly".
Charging anyone with "unlawful assembly" is a crime by the state. Of course, it is possible for protesters to do things which are properly prohibited. But assembling, as such, must not be prohibited.
Several Latin American countries are working to make the UN accept ending the War on Drugs.
The cosmetics company Lush, which refuses to sell through Amazon, has sued Amazon for trademark infringement because searching for "lush" there finds other products.
I sympathize with Lush's motivation, but I think it is wrong on this case. "Lush" is an English word and everyone has the right to use it as such. If Amazon's search facility searches for any English word, it would be wrong to ban this one as an exception. However, I see no harm in requiring Amazon to present a clear statement that these products are not made by Lush, and that Lush does not sell through Amazon.
In directory.fsf.org, if you search for names of nonfree programs, we don't show them (they don't qualify to be listed); instead we show their free counterparts. It would be unfortunate if we were banned from doing this.
I think Lush is more entitled to prevail in regard to Amazon's adwords articles.
The use of the vague term "intellectual property" where "trademark" would have been clearer added avoidable confusion to the article. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for why that term spreads confusion.
See stallman.org/amazon.html for many other reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon. See stallman.org/ebooks.pdf for why the Kindle and Kindle ebooks are an attack on your freedom.
The UK attempted to suddenly deport Ifa Muaza before he could fast to death, but Nigeria did not allow the plane to land, so it brought him back to the UK.
"You proved your toughness at the expense of your humanity" — well said.
Another form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been found on poultry.
Even though this strain is not very dangerous to humans, the next one might be. Have we got our eyes shut towards dangerous business practices?
The Venezuelan congress voted President Maduro powers to legislate by decree on economic matters.
This is in accord with the constitution, but that doesn't mean it is a good idea. Price controls tend to cause shortages, and Venezuela already has shortages. I feel no sympathy for store owners that gouge, but preventing future gouging requires changing the system that generates the gouging.
The corruption accusations against Asambleadora Aranguren are not inherently implausible, but this still seems fishy. The alleged corruption took place before she ran for election as a supporter of Chavez. However, the accusations were made in September 2013, after she had switched parties, and when her vote became inconvenient.
It is proper to take action against corrupt legislators, but it should be done in an unbiased way, not selectively based on their politics.
The British Red Cross is launching a food drive for hungry Britons, for the first time since World War II.
1/4 of the population has had trouble getting enough food this year, due to the poverty that the government has inflicted.
A behavior pattern found in Canadian women helps men dominate them.
The article errs when claiming the experiment described is proof that this behavior pattern is "hard-wired". The experiment does not tell us whether it is neurological or cultural.
The UK government asked UK energy companies to keep prices stable for a while (through the next election) in exchange for the abolition of taxes meant to pay for energy efficiency.
In other words, the ruling parties want to give the public a short-term pleasure (cheap energy for the moment) in order to avoid investing in the country's future.
US hospitals have a new trick to charge medicare patients a lot more: put them on "observation" when they ought to be admitted as inpatients.
Judges say Berlusconi paid witnesses to lie in court.
A US bomb killed civilians in Afghanistan, and Karzai demands greater efforts to avoid such casualties.
Accidentally hitting civilians is an inevitable part of war: bombs do miss, even despite the best attempts to hit the target. Thus, this event is not a war crime.
I wish, however, that the US made the best possible efforts to avoid killing civilians and that it owned up to civilian casualties when they occur. It does not.
A protester in the UK faced criminal charges for calling the MP behind the anti-squatting law a "coward".
The fact that such charges could even be brought demonstrates that the UK does not respect freedom of speech.
I don't know whether that MP is a coward, but it is clear that he is cruel and chooses to make the poor suffer. Which, in my book, is much worse than being a coward.
The US sent the Dominican Republic an ambassador who is gay and in a same-sex marriage.
Around 20 years ago the US sent a black ambassador to South Africa, which was surely intended as rebuke to racism. I don't know whether this choice was meant as a rebuke to bigotry; it might be he was promoted due to merit and given the next available country.
In either case, now that religious bigots are demanding that the US accede to their bigotry, it must not do so. Bigotry is not the sort of "local custom" that deserves respect.
The battery for the Zoe electric car has to be rented, and when the rental contract runs out, the battery can be disabled by remote control.
Cars are full of nonfree software, and it is common for nonfree software to be malware.
Public Citizen will sue on behalf of the customers whose credit rating was ruined when Kleargear "fined" them for publishing a criticism.
Los Angeles finds homeless people unsightly and plans to ban giving them food from a truck.
If it bothers you that there are homeless people in your neighborhood, remember that their lives are much more unpleasant and dangerous than yours. The reason they look unsightly is that they don't have much money and they have no place to keep clothing while not wearing it. If they defecate in the street, they surely feel rather uncomfortable doing so, but they have no practical choice.
The excuses that these anticompassionate people give are full of holes so obvious you have to shut your eyes to fail to see them. If the neighborhood homeowners are annoyed that the homeless people don't have a proper place to defecate, they should set up a toilet. If they are annoyed that the homeless people sleep in the bushes, they should set up a camping space.
US research contracts to German universities seem to be aimed at weapons development.
The Ganges is so polluted now that nobody can drink from it.
The NSA obtained embarrassing information against "radicalizers" so as to discredit or blackmail them.
If these techniques are applied to foreign enemies of the American nation, I could not criticize it. But they can just as well be applied to Americans, and to democratic political activists of other countries, at which point the practice resembles J. Edgar Hoover's blackmail (which focused on US politicians).
Global heating has caused a 40% decrease in the moose population in New Hampshire in just 5 years.
They are not endangered yet, but with 30 more years of increased heat, maybe they will be.
A proposed African "cybersecurity" treaty could turn into censorship.
A stress expert, looking at an undercover report about an Amazon warehouse, says these conditions make physical and mental illness more likely.
Alex Saleh installed a video camera in his store to protect his customers and staff from persistent, repeated harassment by thugs.
One of Saleh's employees was arrested 62 times for "trespassing" in Saleh's store.
A thug in Pennsylvania was caught on video tasing a handcuffed prisoner and laughing about it.
Protesters oppose Japan's new secrecy bill.
Everyone: tell Walmart to give workers a raise.
Chinese business power has prevailed over the UK government, which will shun the Dalai Lama.
Politicians that approach international relations prioritizing exports over all else are despicable.
Ukraine's
thugs attacked
protesters who object to the president's decision to align with Russia
rather than the EU.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Ukraine appears to be repressive, but rejecting the "trade" treaty may be wise. I have no information about what it says, but quite likely it contains unjust requirements, since that's normal for "trade" treaties.
An independence activist from West Papua has been threatened with arrest in neighboring Papua New Guinea for planning a peaceful protest for independence.
Soldiers sent to fight wars, then return to become thugs, may contribute to violence at home.
High School Student Tasered in School by Cop Is in a Coma, Mother Says.
After the Gates Foundation pushed Microsoft's competitive staff ranking system on US public schools, Microsoft has abandoned it, concluding it was harmful to rank the staff.
I don't think the US politicians who imposed this system will regret it. They don't want public schools to achieve anything; they just want to spend less on them and destroy teachers' unions.
Boeing machinists voted down a contract with give-backs.
Technological "progress" now means more cunning tracking of people's purchases so as to offer different prices to different people.
In Afghanistan, the killers of journalists enjoy impunity.
The EU
should not allow personal data to be sent to US companies unless
they follow a data protection regime as in the EU.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Canadian opposition politicians are outraged that Canada's spy agency, legally barred from spying in Canada, did such spying by outsourcing it to the NSA.
Several prominent Egyptian secular freedom activists have been arrested.
US law requires cutting off aid to the Egyptian military, as was pointed out in August. Will Obama continue to deny that there has been a military coup?
Two British women who went to Zanzibar to teach English as volunteers were attacked with acid, apparently by a stranger.
Since it seems the attacker did not know them personally and did not rob them, only an ideological motive remains. I suspect it was motivated by hostility to foreigners, or to women not dressed as strict Muslims.
Britons protested at a right-wing MP's office against the law criminalizing squatting, while the UK's empty buildings could house the country's homeless.
I'm delighted that this time the thugs did not intervene, as they so often do, on the side of the wealthy and against the downtrodden.
This cruelty contributes to the fast-rising housing prices.
Obama has proposed strict rules against electioneering by tax-exempt organizations. This is good because it will hinder the rich and corporations from contributing lots of money secretly to campaigns.
Portugal has descended to even greater austerity measures.
The euro imposes a vicious circle: its rules require budget cuts to reduce the deficit, but these shrink the economy so tax receipts fall, and the deficit continues despite them.
Portugal's austerity is killing people.
The ACLU has sued to demand publication of information about the CIA's torture practices.
Once again, Muslims try to impose their religion on everyone else — this time in Nigeria.
An experiment shows that fertilizer runoff does great harm to coral, and that the coral can recover quickly if the fertilizer runoff stops.
A port in Canada says it plans to "survive" by taking advantage of global heating to bring oil in by train for export, thus causing more global heating. How narrowminded. This attitude, "We are going to 'survive' (i.e., maintain our business) by killing people elsewhere", is why the world does nothing to escape disaster.
The trains will from time to time explode and kill people.
This is the sort of behavior that should lead the rest of the world to forcibly stop it.
Karzai says Afghanistan will not use execution by stoning as a penalty for adultery.
What will Afghanistan do to people who have sex outside marriage? Something else almost as nasty?
Businesses spying on activists can buy the support of the FBI and CIA for their War on Democracy, which in many cases is part of their War on the Ecosphere.
US
citizens: oppose
"trade" treaties that give businesses more power.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A panel to propose ways to protect the Australian endangered Leadbeater's possum is controlled by the lumber industry, and refuses to consider any serious plan to protect their habitat.
An attempt to sue Apple for designing the iThings so that apps could
easily snoop on the user failed
because the
requirements for winning are so strict that it would be almost
impossible to meet them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
What this shows is that the US lacks proper privacy law.
People in Dubai have been arrested for posting a parody video and for posting a video of a man battering another on a bus.
This policy is one reason why I absolutely refuse to go to Dubai.
In the US, you might get arrested for making a video of an attack, if the attacker is a thug. And even in that case, you can probably prevail in court.
The US military manipulates news coverage of wars, and turns movies into war propaganda, with devastating effects on politics.
Research suggests that deforestation in Amazonia will contribute cause increased drought and fire in the western US.
Global heating is making the western US dry out anyway, but since it also threatens to dry out Amazonia, this will mean even more aridity there.
Jeremy Hammond believes that the FBI was running the Antisec group to crack security of systems around the world for the FBI's sake.
WordPress joined two bloggers to sue over use of the DMCA for censorship.
US citizens: call on Hillary Clinton to endorse the deal with Iran.
Regarding the possible prosecution of Julian Assange, the Obama regime is trying to have it both ways: on the one hand, spreading rumors that Assange is "unlikely" to be prosecuted; on the other, keeping the prosecution option open.
The nastiest part is when people condemn Assange for prudently refusing to bet the rest of his life on the truth these rumors.
UK Internet censorship will cover some political views.
I don't like those views much either, but freedom of speech means the freedom to say things that you and I and the UK government don't like.
I wonder how long it will take before the UK blocks access to stallman.org.
Alexis Tsipras, head of the anti-austerity Greek opposition, will run for president of the European Commission to galvanize opposition to austerity across Europe.
The UK's clever "bedroom tax" is supposed to make people move to smaller apartments, but no smaller apartments are available, so it really amounts to an excuse to squeeze the poor.
Someone has to suffer to enable banksters to take home more pay.
Greek journalist Kostas Vaxevanis, prosecuted for publishing a list of suspected tax evaders, has been acquitted.
A broad coalition opposes the requirement to demand ID from everyone that connects to the Internet in Ecuador.
The wording of the law would require you to record the ID and make a video even if you let someone use your network at home. I campaigned against this measure when I was in Ecuador in October.
But this is the first I heard that Peru had adopted this nasty law. I will have to think twice before going there again.
The Supreme Court plans to consider a case in which a company's owners claim that paying for health care that covers birth control violates their religious freedom.
I fear that this Supreme Court will rule for that company. It has granted companies absurd "human" rights on other questions.
Belgium is on track to approve
voluntary euthanasia with no age limit.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
I am in favor of this. The safeguards must be quite careful so that children are not pressured into a decision they are not sure they want.
If we can allow minors the choice of dying, it is ridiculous to deny them the far less drastic choice of having sex. That too should be permitted, with suitable safeguards; for instance, that the minor would declare in advance an intention to start having sex.
Berlusconi has been ousted from the Italian senate because of his criminal convictions.
The EU demands that the US stop spying massively
if
it wants US companies to hold data on business in Europe.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
This not strong enough, however.
On the problems of
building
public parks based on tax-deductible donations from the rich.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
If we taxed them enough, we would not have this problem.
Pope Francis condemned trickle-down economics and the greed of the plutocrats, and called for action on income inequality.
As a supporter of this cause for many years, I welcome this additional support.
79 Egyptian secular dissidents have been arrested under the new ban on protests.
Ever since the massacres of Morsi supporters protesting on the street, it has increasingly appeared that the military was taking Egypt towards another military dictatorship.
Polar bear populations in Canada are falling due to the effects of global heating, but the minister in charge is a global heating denier.
The Real Fix for Obamacare's Flaws: Medicare for All.
US citizens: call your congresscritter to
pass
a farm bill that protects wildlife.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641, and 888-355-3588.
In the US (or any country where Kmart operates): rebuke Kmart for ordering workers to work during Thanksgiving.
US citizens: call on the USDA not to approve genetically modified apples.
The UK government has repeatedly blocked investigations into a massacre of Malay civilians by British soldiers.
It appears the RBS bank forced small businesses into bankruptcy to buy up their assets.
This is a natural result of the culture of competing to be less ethical than the other banks.
Larger banks are doing the same thing to states, most notably Greece but many others too.
The Polish government gave 11 companies special access to the ineffective Warsaw global heating negotiations, including some that lobby furiously to keep burning fossil fuels.
The "ETS" is the emissions trading system, which was meant to pressure industry to reduce emissions, but has fallen flat on its face.
PR Watch: Return to Nixonland: How the NSA Slipped its Leash.
The UK government has finally silenced the investigation into the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko.
The dictator of Angola regularly has dissidents shot, or feeds them to crocodiles, but since he controls lots of oil, he buys international support.
Anti-Shinawatra protesters in Bangkok have attacked journalists they consider unsympathetic to their cause.
These protesters do not represent the majority, but seem to be
an
influential
minority.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Interpol's system is used by repressive regimes to catch dissidents and refugees.
Putting a financial value on parts of nature invites companies to pay that much to destroy them.
The US, in pushing development drone weapons, is failing to consider what will result when its enemies have drones too.
Rather than censorship, the way to end abuse of real children is with social workers that help real children.
Since poverty often brings out the worst in people, ending austerity would help a lot too.
A road planned to go through a rainforest in Sumatra, for coal export, could wipe out many endangered species.
Everyone:
tell
Google to stop supporting ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
ALEC is a right-wing scheme by which businesses twist state legislators to pass the bills those businesses want.
Everyone:
rebuke
US Airways for kicking a blind man and service dog off a flight.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
If you've flown a while, you know that flight crew can act like little tyrants when they take it into their heads to push passengers around, and that when they say he was "disruptive", that is an exaggerated way to say "He talked back to us."
IMF harshness helped spike Ukraine's deal with the EU.
How a Shadowy Network of Corporate Front Groups Distorts the Marketplace of Ideas.
An iPad on Every Desk: A Trojan Horse, Teachers Say.
They don't realize this is true in the computing sense too.
Ralph Nader:
Corporate
espionage undermines democracy.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
A former Wall Street mathematician describes how his job was to invent complex financial instruments so as to dupe customers, and all managers participated in the pressure to be more deceptive than the competition.
Proposed cuts to US food assistance will cancel out all voluntary food donations to the poor.
From Quebec to Spain, anti-protest laws are threatening true democracy.
The more government becomes a mechanism for control by the plutocrats, the less it can tolerate protest or democracy.
A French couple, age 86, committed suicide together, leaving behind a manifesto for legalization of the choice to die.
Assad and his Syrian enemies will have negotiations.
It will not be easy to find anything they can agree on. Meanwhile, the goal of the original protesters, a secular democracy, has been completely ruined by Assad and Saudi proxies.
Global heating has encouraged an insect pest to wipe out the lavender crop in France.
The wealthier the country, the less its people care how they treat the natural world — perhaps because of the industry of pointless consumption.
Busting Eight Common Excuses for NSA Mass Surveillance.
When you decide to help fight against massive surveillance, remember that we need to go beyond limiting the state's access to the data companies collect. We need to reduce the accumulation of data about everyone.
Biofuels made from food crops are a "crime against humanity".
A thug who is proved to have lied, claiming he heard Andrew Mitchell call another thug a "pleb", will face prosecution.
Thugs often lie to put someone in the wrong; they think they are privileged to do so. I am glad that they get prosecuted when they do this to a powerful politician. I wish they got prosecuted when they do this to other people.
The world media don't mention the massive corporate lobbying effort that has sabotaged negotiations that were supposed to curb global heating.
US banks threaten to charge for savings accounts because interest rates are so low.
Why are they so low? To promote "economic growth" of the sort that benefits companies but not workers. The effective way to promote true economic growth is with deficit spending, but Republicans have blocked this since 2010, so the Federal Reserve uses "quantitative easing" as a substitute that doesn't quite work.
Ioane Teitiota, from Kiribati,
was denied
asylum in New Zealand as a global heating refugee.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
He asked for asylum because his home is certain to become uninhabitable due to rising sea level. The court denies the danger. It is clear that he is probably safe in Kiribati this year and next year. It is equally clear that they will be inundated.
Reportedly growth of coral is enlarging some of the islands at present. However, in a few decades the coral will be killed by ocean acidification, and the islands won't be able to grow after that.
Will people be accepted as climate refugees when inundation gets closer?
What about the millions who live at low elevations in Bangladesh?
Everyone: call on world
leaders to
reject the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Prisoners in Guantanamo can get
out, if
they have strong enough al Qa'ida ties, by turning informer. On
the other hand, if you were captured for being in the wrong place at
the wrong time, you may never get out.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
I have no objection to infiltrating al Qa'ida. Unlike the dissident movements that the thugs usually infiltrate, al Qa'ida supports neither human rights nor democracy. What does bother me is that this might be part of the motive for the oppressive practice of imprisoning people indefinitely without a trial.
The NSA employs over 1000 crackers and has infected over 50,000 computer networks with malware to be activated later.
(Please don't use "hackers" to mean "people who break security".)
Poverty in the US is not only painful, it is deadly.
A driver in Ohio faces charges of driving a car which has a secret compartment in it. They simply assume his intent was to smuggle drugs.
The UK government wiped out a large offshore windfarm project by talking about cancelling previously promised subsidies.
I don't think this is a stumble, and I don't think the UK government's ambitions run in the green direction at all. It has given plenty of signs that it is subservient to the fossil fuel companies. I think it did this to keep fossil fuel use high.
Despite success of efforts to protect some endangered species, each year more species are under threat.
UK visa law leads directly to slavery for immigrant domestic workers.
Why pass a law that is so obviously unjust? Who would ask for such a law? Evidently the people wealthy enough to employ live-in servants. In other words, plutocrats legalized domestic slavery in the UK.
Deaths from AIDS have gone down, except in teenagers.
I have a hunch that prudish attitudes contribute to this.
Everyone: support Walmart workers'
protests
on Nov 29, and pledge to
boycott
Walmart on Nov 29.
[References updated on 2018-03-12 because the old links were broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition in support of the Affordable Care Act.
US citizens:
say
no to trusting Transcanada to avoid oil spills on the Keystone XL
pipeline notwithstanding its horrible maintenance record.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support diplomacy with Iran.
NAFTA and US Farmers — 20 Years Later.
I just got a new passport. It came with a brochure whose front page says, "With Your U.S. Passport, the World Is Yours."
What a claim!
Nonviolent protesters against the JP Morgan Chase bank face charges in the US carrying a year in prison.
Their protest criticized the company for bankrolling massive environmental damage that is going to kill thousands, maybe millions of people. Of the forecast of a hundred million human casualties from global heating by 2030, to be followed by larger numbers afterward, surely JP Morgan Chase will be responsible for at least 1%.
We see increased repression of environmental protesters, in the US as in Russia. I predict it will increase steadily, because the fossil fuel companies will demand ever more repression to keep a lid on the people who see the current system is going to kill them.
A high and stable carbon price is needed to avert disaster.
I will go further and assert that this must be implemented via a carbon tax. A cap-and-trade system is easy to game.
Correcting myths about retail jobs.
Now imagine what these people will do if they are replaced by automated sales machines. Beg on the street? That is why I refuse to use those machines, and call on other customers to refuse too.
Technology is not the main cause of increased poverty in the US. Mostly it is due to policies that favor the rich.
Nonetheless, eliminating millions of jobs through technology will add to the problem. The US does not need more efficiency, it needs to support everyone better.
Antibiotic-resistant bladder infections are linked to bacteria found in chicken treated with antibiotics.
We must end the regular use of antibiotics in farm animals, and if the result is to make meat more expensive, we'll probably eat a more healthful diet.
Vandada Shiva: How Economic Growth Has Become Anti-Life.
The Warsaw climate summit achieved little except to decide to decide on something later. If indeed they do so.
The Afghan government plans to bring back stoning (a form of execution) and flogging as punishments for adultery.
I supported the intervention in Afghanistan to end the Taliban's oppression of women, but it has been creeping back for years, and accelerating recently.
A crusader writes about her experience fighting and defeating a revenge porn site.
Revenge porn achieves its intended effect because of a neurotic taboo against nudity. Why fire someone for making a nude photo that gets posted by someone else? Why fire someone for making a nude photo and intentionally posting it? Why fire someone for stripping in a bar, or in Central Park? It is all gratuitous cruelty, and that cruelty makes Moore's cruelty possible. In effect, his activities are part of the harm done by the taboo.
We could make it illegal to fire people such as Jill the teacher. That would be better than nothing. However, the real solution is not at the legal level. Rather, we need to get over the nudity taboo, so that nobody thinks of firing such people.
Facebook could do something good for society (for a change) if it required each of its users to post a nude selfie. After a few months of that, revenge porn would no longer succeed in bothering anyone. Victims would say, "Oh, you're going to post another nude photo of me? Please tell me the URL so I can link to it." The Hunter Moores of the world would have to search for some other way to harass people.
The wrong of the taboo does not excuse revenge porn — or any company that argues, "What we're doing is lawful, and you can't criticize us for anything that's lawful and profitable." Yes we can! That the nastiness is lawful is no excuse, ethically. In general, someone who exploits a flaw in a system to hurt people is responsible for his actions, and the system is also responsible if it could be better.
United Airlines, after nearly killing a woman's dog, offered to pay the vet bill, but only if she signs a confidentiality agreement.
I flew on United a few days ago. Before the usual safety announcement there was an ad showing staff (or perhaps actors) talking about how good service was their priority. I didn't pay it much attention, but it occurred to me for a moment to think, "Don't tell us — show us!"
I think there should be a law invalidating any confidentiality commitment made to a business by a client.
New Pun - sushi.
US citizens: support a basic income for all citizens.
Feeding antibiotics to turkeys has led to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in turkey meat.
LG said its Smart TV was sending back filenames found on USB drives as part of an unfinished feature to search for other things "you might also like".
We are fortunate it was not finished, or they would have presented it as a reason not to remove the feature.
Egypt's military-controlled government has banned protests (without special permission).
A poor person in the US explains how poverty makes it hard and expensive to do things middle class people think ought to be easy and cheap.
Urgent efforts are needed to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
Part of the urgent effort Australia must make is to extract less coal.
Companies with valuations based on the carbon bubble must warn investors.
Anti-drone activists who protested at Hancock Air Force Base were acquitted of charges after demonstrating they were actually helping the US to follow the constitution.
The US and Iran have made an interim agreement limiting Iran's uranium enrichment.
The deal calls for diluting Iran's 20%-enriched uranium, which would put any possible nuclear weapon further away.
Netanyahu hates this deal, for understandable reasons: it will deny him the chance to get the US and Iran into war, and he will no longer be able to cite Iran to distract attention from the occupation of Palestine.
Uganda illustrates the repression that theocratic Christians want to impose on homosexuals everywhere, including in the US.
Thanks to the UK's deregulation of planning, the iron age hill fort of Oswestry will be covered by new housing.
The UK took money from funds for normally local charities and spent it on the Olympic Park. At the time, the government promised to make up the loss, but it seems to be breaking that promise.
The Olympic Games leave behind debt, surveillance and repression; if there is a proposal to hold them in your city, organize now to push them away.
There is evidence that the South African thugs who massacred striking miners had met with the mine management and made a plan to break the strike. This was designed to promote an ANC-associated union and block the acceptance of an independent and more vigorous union.
I don't think the ANC has done anything good since Nelson Mandela ceased to be president.
An "independent" organization run by a relative of a minister of Azerbaijan corrupts UK MPs with expensive vacations and parties.
Floating windfarms are cheaper and can be located further away from the shore.
The sponsors of Politico's "Playbook" seem to get favorable "news" coverage there that agrees with their ads.
Carl Malamud is being sued for posting official German safety standards, which the state is charging substantial amounts to see.
Two students at the London School of Economics sold atheist and secularist books while wearing Jesus and Mo shirts, and met with censorship from the university and the student union.
I think the article generalizes too far about leftist students; I am sure many of them are not inclined to support such censorship.
Many registered voters in Kansas have been blocked from voting in state elections.
40% of workers for US businesses get no sick days and can be fired if they miss a day of work for getting sick.
Bills are being considered in 10 states to ban cities from taking steps to protect workers from this.
The US government is a government of occupation on behalf of the plutocrats.
China lends pandas to countries as bargaining chips for dirty trade deals.
Obama has shut out press photographers almost 100%.
Aid for Syrian refugees is serving as a test platform for
iris
scanning biometric ID, which is almost compulsory for them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Internet freedom in India is under attack from all directions.
US citizens: tell the FDA not to approve GMO salmon.
These fish could cause harm to wild salmon.
With all the massive surveillance it does, the NSA was not satisfied. In 2012 it established a strategy to collect even more data about everyone.
Three women released from 30 years of slavery in a house in London were shown an iPad, inviting them to enter into a more subtle form of submission.
Greenpeace protester Anthony Perrett says that if Russia imprisons him he will not regret his protest.
The activists freed on bail must be glad, but if they talk by Skype, another regime is surveilling them.
The residents of Lafourche Parish voted to fund libraries rather than a new jail.
The ebooks they are talking about are, apparently, commercial. It is a shame that these libraries promote commercial ebooks. They should reject those on ethical grounds.
Lafourche county's existing jail would be perfectly adequate if they stop fighting the War on Drugs.
Hawaii legislator Tom Brower boasts of crushing the belongings of unsightly homeless people.
People who are hungry in the midst of plenty of food are morally entitled to steal food. And if Brower doesn't like their use of shopping baskets to carry around their few possessions, he should provide them with some other way to store those.
Oil companies plan to create enormous toxic lakes full of waste water from tar sands oil extraction.
There is no way of knowing how far the toxins will spread. At low temperatures they may degrade especially slowly. (Toxic metals last forever, unless they happen to be radioactive.)
If the cost of proper disposal of these toxins were included in the cost of that oil, it would be so expensive that nobody would buy it today.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Attempting to Undermine Anti-Bribery Law, Public Citizen Report Shows.
Senator Franken asks for a federal investigation of commercial use of face recognition.
I think this is a positive step, but what we really need to investigate, and limit, is the use of face recognition by the government, and its ability to collect images to recognize.
A House committee rejected a small step towards greater accountability for civilian casualties of drone attacks.
Half a million UK students from poor families will suffer from a new budget cut.
This and more austerity in the UK stem from subservience to businesses that want to extract money from the country and pay little tax.
Corporations claim US taxes are too
high. Here's
how that is a lie.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Nadia Tolokonnikova endorses the boycott of the Olympic Games in Russia.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service
to protect
some species of bats that face the danger of extinction from
white-nose fungus.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: call for accurate and non-prudish sex education.
Corporate Espionage and the Secret War Against Citizen Activism.
Companies implicated include Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald
A Republican Congressman will be sentenced to probation for buying cocaine, which he called a "disease" in his own case, but he voted to impose drug tests on Americans that get food stamps and for punishing them harshly.
Thousands Protest in Japan against New State Secrets Bill, which would punish whistleblowers severely.
There a world-wide wave of increasing government surveillance and secrecy power, as various governments preemptively attack human rights and democracy before the movement builds up to defend them.
The FBI acts as a buffer to keep Internet company staff unaware that they are working for the NSA.
The EU proposes to ban sale of unregistered seed varieties. Registration is so expensive that many varieties (especially for home gardeners) will disappear, along with the small seed companies that sell them.
Isa Muazu is fasting to death in prison in the UK rather than return to Nigeria.
I don't know whether Muazu has a valid claim for asylum — in particular, this article does not show whether he has a real reason to fear being attacked by Boko Haram. However, a system that is rigged so that people with a valid claim can't prove it is prima facie unjust.
The Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to take effect, which imposes restrictions on abortion designed for no reason except to make it unavailable.
This is not a final decision about the law's constitutionality; that remains to be considered. But it seems to imply the court is considering declaring it constitutional.
In effect, the right-wing US Supreme Court has found a way to negate the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, by allowing states to ban it indirectly.
If you think 3D-printed guns are dangerous, consider an automated virus synthesizer.
The contractor responsible for the failing Healthcare.gov site is making lots of money from doing a bad job.
I suspect this is because the system was delivered to the US as nonfree software so that no other company could even try to fix it.
Tony Blair let the American NSA Spy on Millions of Britons and Store their Private Data.
Here's more detail of what the UK allows the NSA to do to UK citizens.
CNN broadcast a misleading and one-sided pitch for breeder reactors. Here are the problems that it did not mention.
A militia or militias have taken over the Central African Republic and kill helpless people for no obvious reason.
Google might be able to smash Chinese internet censorship, if it dares try.
Prime Minister Cameron privately called investment in renewable energy "green crap".
Russia threatened economic warfare against Ukraine to make Ukraine break off plans for a closer trade relationship with the EU.
Russia is not alone in this. The US uses threats of economic warfare to bully countries into imposing anti-sharing laws that repress their citizens.
Walmart workers plan protests now through "black Friday", Nov 29.
The ironic history of decades of war in Afghanistan.
How the inhabitants see the US today.
The latter article refers to the former for the claim that the Mujahedeen were ideologically united with the Communists by hatred for the US, but I can't see any sign of that in the former article.
Everyone:
call
on Google to change YouTube policies to prevent people from sabotaging
a channel via false complaints of copyright infringement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on your senators to oppose Senator Hatch's bill that would ban
regulation of fracking on public lands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The US, UK and Australia failed in the attempt to undermine and sabotage a UN resolution affirming privacy rights.
When a woman accused a Florida State University quarterback of rape, detectives tried to protect him and pressure her to drop the charges.
US citizens:
support
the Green Party's budget approach.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
European Parliament Members Explore Decriminalizing File-Sharing.
Spain's right-wing austerity government plans to impose heavy fines on protesters, without trial.
You can send your images of Spanish thugs to me; I will find a way to publish them.
Joseph Stiglitz:
The Insanity
of Our Food Policy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The US Senate has abolished filibusters for presidential nominees.
This will put an end to one form of systematic Republican obstructionism: blocking all Democratic appointments, not bothering to judge them individually.
The UN client negotiations now have corporate sponsors, in effect corrupting the negotiations directly in addition to the older indirect corruption through governments.
Irish women asked the UN to denounce Ireland's restrictive abortion law.
Nicaragua's is even worse.
UK thugs use blackmail and bribery to recruit informers in activist groups.
Kuwait: 5 Years for Tweet 'Insulting' Prophet.
India's greatest hero of freedom and justice, Dr. Ambedkar, tends to be ignored by upper-caste Hindus.
Norwegian ministers say the NSA falsely told them it wasn't doing massive surveillance of activities of Norwegians.
Sweden plans to give thugs and various agencies unlimited and unchecked power to tap any and all phone calls and emails.
Campaigns to divest from fossil fuels are moving at 400 US colleges and universities.
Canada's Refusal to Protect Polar Bears Scrutinised.
It is a rational policy in a way. If you are determined to run our whole planet off the climate cliff, and destroy most of the existing species before human civilization ceases to be capable of causing more heating, why spend any money on a doomed attempt to protect one of them?
Men can reject the social pressure to be "masculine", meaning tough with themselves and cruel to women.
Greenpeace and other organizations warn governments to expect rebellion around the world if they do not curb global heating.
They and other organizations held a walkout protest at the climate talks because of the visible lack of ambition to avoid disaster.
It is still possible to avoid 2C of global heating, but it will require denying the plutocrats the increased riches they want.
But we have to start right away — which Australia, Canada and the US will not allow.
GCHQ is in trouble for helping the NSA spy on Britons.
Everyone: call on Cambodia to free housing activist Yorm Bopha.
Everyone:
Pledge to
boycott GAP, Old Navy and Banana Republic until they sign the
agreement to enforce fair labor standards in Bangladesh.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your congresscritter to support the Women's Health Protection Act. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: support Elizabeth Warren's pledge to expand Social Security.
132 poor countries have walked out of the global heating conference in Warsaw because the richer countries refused to discuss compensation.
The poor countries want compensation for the tremendous cost of weather disasters caused by rich countries' CO2 emissions, such as 5 billion dollars to rebuild in the Philippines after just one superstorm.
A billion Africans face dangers such as hunger and flooding, and likely resulting war.
With rich countries cutting their CO2 commitments, it looks like the talks are failing entirely and we are on a track towards almost 4C of heating.
It has been clear for several years that the rich countries' governments, in thrall to fossil fuel companies, are determined to continue making this problem worse. Negotiating with them is useless, and serves as cover for making things worse, much like the useless "peace process" between Israel and Palestine.
Overt rupture might be good since it would show the world that we are heading for disaster.
Massive surveillance developed in the US because a pliant court operated in secret.
Students don't want to pay to study neoclassical economics, especially now that it has catastrophically failed.
Neoclassical economics is a pseudoscience cult that gives academic respectability to Reagan's bogus trickle-down economics. How did university departments end up hiring mostly cultists? Influence of the rich, that trickle-down was meant to serve, must have played some role. I think it would be interesting to investigate how this occurred.
Making a monkey out of European data protection law, Luxembourg ruled
that Skype is
allowed
to send data to the US and the NSA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Will the EU Parliament Enable Discrimination Online or Uncompromising Net Neutrality?
Obama says he's for legalizing unlocking of cell phones, but he's pushing for the TPP to insist on banning it.
Senators joined a lawsuit, claiming there is no evidence that massive metadata surveillance is "useful".
We should not base our argument on the claim that this can never do even the tiniest "good". It's hard to keep batting exactly zero forever even if you're totally inept, so maybe someday this surveillance will turn out to be helpful for something positive. If that happens, that won't be enough to justify it.
A report accuses the forces pushing for bankruptcy in Detroit have greatly exaggerated the city's debt.
I suspect some persons or businesses hope to make a lot of money from this bankruptcy. Who are they?
Trafficking and forced labor follow patterns which could be followed to put an end to the practice.
I suspect that the reason the UK does not trace these patterns and put an end to the practice is a lack of will. For instance, the major supermarket chains pressure farm to cut prices, and the supermarkets will be happy if farms do that by means of forced, trafficked workers — as long as the supermarkets are not punished for it.
If supermarkets were fined 100 times the retain value of any products they sell that are found to have been made with forced labor, they would put an end to the practice for sure.
A network of 64 right-wing think tanks received over $80 million in money of mysterious origin.
Most foreign exchange trading is speculation; for stability, we need to tax these trades.
90 companies are responsible for most of global heating.
Many businesses are recognizing the costs that fossil fuel and global heating will impose on them.
Investors are also pressuring fossil fuel companies to report on how their profits would be affected if we cut emissions drastically by 2050. I think the fossil fuel companies have already investigated this and that their behavior — making governments cancel or sabotage policies meant to reduce emissions — is their response.
The US should pass the International Violence Against Women Act.
Poor people in the UK are suffering from increasing indebtedness, which is also true in the US.
The next excuse for snooping on everything on the Internet will be "child" pornography.
The term "child abuse images" is deceptive: I think in practice it includes teenagers labeled as "children", and stretches the word "abuse" too. However, some of these images will show real abuse of real children.
The government should focus on protecting the children themselves, not on censoring (and surveilling) all communication.
In the US:
call
on WGBH to remove the Koch brother from its board.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone Congress on Dec 12 to end austerity and close tax loopholes.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on JP Morgan to pay its penalty and not shift it onto taxpayers.
US citizens: sign this petition against "fast-track authority" for the TPP.
I've recommended several actions against the TPP; please do them all. This is so bad that it's worth a few minutes of your time.
US citizens: call on the EPA to remove lead from aviation fuel.
Iceland's initiative to protect journalism may be rendered ineffective by massive surveillance that scares off sources.
The NSA defied the FISA court by providing information to other agencies.
The Kenyan anti-terror thugs are accused of killing and disappearing people.
New estimate for rebuilding the Philippines: 5 billion dollars.
In the US, "Socialism" is no longer tarred with the association of Communism.
Nowadays, it's the US government that's spying on everyone, even worse than the Soviet government did.
Rich fossil-burning countries ought to pay for the costs of the weather disasters they impose on poor countries.
A clear summary of why the TPP is harmful and unjust.
Most Americans will lose economically, as well as losing freedom, since these exploitation treaties transfer wealth from workers to business owners.
The two central ideals of the Gettysburg Address are under threat today.
Some LG "smart" TVs send surveillance data to the manufacturer.
A friend commented:
Note the article makes a mistake: that the destination page returns a 404 error means nothing. First of all, it's extremely easy to fake an error code (I know that in PHP it's just one line of code!). Second, even if it's indeed missing, all the data is still going to the server logs anyway, and it wouldn't be hard to retrieve it from there (in fact, using this would make the load on the server much smaller as no script ever gets executed).
Canada's "natural resources" minister charged that labeling tar sands oil as highly polluting would "stigmatize" Canada.
Ready, aim, stigmatize!
Something that stigmatizes Canada even worse is its policy of encouraging other countries to help fry our planet.
Oil spill expert Simon Boxall says a devastating oil spill is inevitable if Russia drills in Arctic waters.
US citizens: call on your senators to end filibusters on judicial nominees.
US citizens: Call on Congress to defend Obama's health care reform.
What we really need is a national health service, but the right-wing demand to undo what Obama did would make things worse.
US citizens: phone your Congresscritter to oppose bills that pander to fossil fuels. Also send email through this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on your senators
to support
Senator Levin's bill to facilitate releasing prisoners from Guantanamo
or trying them in civil court.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A Walmart is soliciting food donations for its employees, because they can't afford a Thanksgiving meal on low Walmart wages.
Thousands of Haitians protested demanding the resignation of the president, who was more or less imposed by the US.
The EPA is reducing the amount of corn-based ethanol to use in US cars, but it should reduce this to zero.
The Gates Foundation talks about giving everyone in the world a toilet to use, but its solutions are ridiculously expensive.
Waleed Al-Shehhi was sentenced to prison in the UAE for tweeting about the trial of Islamist dissidents.
Proposing state laws
to turn
off cooperation with NSA massive surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
If this effort is serious, it should start by deactivating the "fusion centers" by which state and local thug departments share information with the FBI about "terrorist suspects" such as Occupy protests.
Drones, tanks, and grenade
launchers: Coming
soon to a [thug] department near you.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Boston thugs are outraged that the city plans to put GPS trackers in their official cars.
These cars belong to the city, and their used for official work, so personal privacy is not involved here. Anyway, thugs while on duty are not entitled to the same privacy rights as an ordinary citizen.
The Supreme Court rejected EPIC's challenge to the legality of massive NSA surveillance of American's phone calls.
Abusing copyright powers must be punished at least as hard as infringing copyright.
A US blogger has been imprisoned for disobeying an unconstitutional prior censorship order.
Interview with the organizers of an anti-Assad militia in Syria.
How humans are changing the sea — disastrously.
When Pope Francis looks good, it is in contrast to the Church's record of bad, bad, bad.
UK universities are working with thugs to repress student protest at the root.
I think Michael Chessum made a mistake accepting release on the condition that he not engage in protest in or near his university (let alone others). That neutralizes him semipermanently.
I would urge him to tell the court that he rejects the conditions and will go to jail and be a political prisoner rather than legitimize this repression.
The UN climate chief told the World Coal Association that most coal reserves must be left in the ground.
Bravo! But unless our governments stand behind this, coal will kill us.
The NSA's Global Threat to Free Speech.
International agencies are demanding even more austerity in Greece, despite the objection that this might cause a revolution.
Shaker Aamer was interviewed on 60 Minutes, and demanded to be freed.
Aamer and the others like him conclusively refute the claim that "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from the US government." The US government owes them an apology and compensation, but most of all it must make sure not to repeat the offense with anyone else.
David Hicks deserves an apology for the torture and unfair trial that the US gave him.
Everyone: Call on Shell to pressure Russia (actually Gazprom) to free the Greenpeace 30.
"Healthy aging" is an oxymoron. Aging is nothing other than the tendency for bodies to become less healthy.
Economic growth does not require growth in CO2 emissions. US per-capita economic production has doubled since 1970 but per-capita CO2 emissions have gone down (though not enough).
The politicians who say this is impossible may be under the influence of the fossil fuel companies.
David Hicks deserves an apology for the torture and unfair trial that the US gave him.
The dead hand of dictator Pinochet, in the form of screwy election rules, continues to block important legal reforms in Chile.
Since Pinochet's rule was not legitimate in the first place, one could argue for following the previous constitution.
Companies are selling sophisticated surveillance equipment, even able to tap fibre cables.
No one can reconcile one thug's testimony, that Mark Duggan had a gun in his hand when he was shot dead, with other thugs' report that they found that gun 20 feet away, wrapped in a sock, on the other side of a wall.
It seems that Duggan could not while dying have thrown the gun over the wall, but above all, he could not have put a sock over it at that time.
I suggest that Duggan had no gun, that the one thug is mistaken in saying he saw one, and that another thug placed the gun to be found.
The funds provided to help poor countries survive global heating are almost exhausted and little more is being given.
Mainstream media can't find real climate scientists to deny global heating, so they present "experts" with no scientific experience in that field.
The death toll from Typhoon Haiyan is at least 3,900, and the repair will cost half a billion dollars (or more).
US citizens: stand behind Yeb Saño, Philippines negotiator at the climate summit.
US citizens: call on Senator Warren to withdraw support from the FDA's plan that would ban states from requiring labels on GMOs.
The Afghan army has reportedly killed a lot of Taliban, but (as usual) that has little effect on how the war is going.
The UK tracks diplomats through 350 important hotels around the world, so as to spy on them.
A Nepali worker in Qatar describes the abusive treatment by employers.
Amnesty International says these abuses amount to forced labor.
The trees uprooted by Typhoon Haiyan may never be replaced if more big storms keep coming through. If so, they will give global heating a permanent boost.
The UK government wants the power to cancel citizenship, leaving people stateless and exiled.
The government of Ireland proposes to make freedom of information requests so expensive that hardly anyone would dare make them.
All states
should regulate
automobile insurance the way California does.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
In addition, they should ban insurance companies from collecting from drivers any information about the car's location over time, or that would enable deducing the car's location.
Christians teach lies about sex in US public schools.
Geithner will now receive his reward for years of loyal service to Wall Street as Secretary of the Treasury.
How Our Public Schools Became a "Communist Threat".
Why
Taxpayers Shouldn't
Fund Private Schools.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Note how these two forms of plutocratic pressure line up ironically.
Anti-Drone Movement Speaks: 'End the Secrecy, No to Kill List'.
In North Carolina, the thugs spying on protesters offer the excuse that they are "anarchists".
Remember when it was "terrorists"?
Obama has jailed another whistleblower.
This one was found by massively searching journalists' phone records.
Jeremy Hammond and the Need to "Promote Respect for the Rule of Law".
I wish they did not equate "hacking" with "breaking security".
Spanish protesters are threatened with long prison sentences for throwing pies at an official.
This reflects the general attitude of the right-wing party that rules Spain, which seeks to abolish democratic rights in practice even though not in theory.
The new Xbox has a body scanner that can make a very sharp image of your body under your clothing.
When you enter someone's home, ask if there is an Xbox present and, if so, insist on seeing it unplugged.
Ralph Nader calls on the Washington Post to set up a structure to maintain editorial independence from its owner, also the owner of Amazon.
Amazon mistreats nearly everyone involved with books, including its customers.
A nefarious company, Kleargear,
makes
customers promise never to publicly criticize the company, and
"fines" them if they do. The "fine" is probably not legally
enforceable, but poor people lack the resources to fight back.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
One solution: someone else who has never done business with Kleargear can post the condemnation.
If the TPP passes, foreign companies would be able to sue the US government if it enforces the first amendment against such behavior.
Businesses have a history of forecasting that regulations will destroy lots of jobs…but, in the end, that never seems to happen.
What does destroy jobs? Austerity. Prioritizing efficiency over jobs.
The Maldives held a democratic election. The
right-wing
islamist won.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
We will see how human right are treated subsequently.
A Greek group, never before heard of,
claimed
responsibility for killing Golden Dawn supporters as retaliation
for a Golden Dawn's supporter's murder of a left-wing rapper.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The highest priority policy goal of the Australian government is the fossil fuel industry's priority, which is to ensure humanity uses the maximum amount of fossil fuel in the shortest possible time.
Prisoners with cancer in Arizona are denied medical care and told to pray instead.
That's religion for you.
Jeremy Hammond says that the FBI directed him (via its tool, Sabu) to crack web sites in Brazil, Iran and Turkey, and the FBI then took advantage of this.
Will the FBI be investigated?
US citizens: tell Congress to expand Social Security.
US citizens: Tell Congress to respect the progress in the Affordable Care Act, and vote on expanding Medicare to all Americans.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose Feinstein's fake fix for government surveillance.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The women in Texas "colonias" near the Mexican border can't travel far enough to get an abortion, or a cancer test, or any other health care. Even when they can afford the treatment, they are afraid of being deported while traveling for care, even if they are legal US residents.
Richard Falkvinge says the TPP is the United States' way to reassert its role as a world bully.
Republicans are blaming Obama for the medical plans that insurance companies choose to cancel, and the ones they created just recently knowing they couldn't continue.
Setting aside those, which are the insurance companies' fault, Obama's health care claim (that people can keep their old insurance plans) is true.
China: Abolition of Labour Camps Must Lead to Wider Detention Reform.
Alongside the TSA security theater, we suffer from the MPAA's theater security.
The EFF supports the USA FREEDOM Act as a first step, saying it does not go far enough.
The EFF says that additional measures are needed to limit the government's access to data in private hands, and I agree about those points. However, that too fails to go far enough, because it does not limit the government's own direct collection of data about people (for instance, with license plate recognizers, surveillance cameras, and microphones in places such as buses and lampposts) or business collection of data about people. Once data is collected, it will be misused. We therefore must strictly limit the systematic collection of data about people.
Both the US and the UK governments are trying to spike the UK's Iraq war inquiry.
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to apply to itself the ethical standards for all other federal judges.
Everyone: sign this petition against the Trans Pacific Partnership.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block the attempt to ban abortions after 20 weeks.
Such late abortions are only done when something goes gravely wrong.
Everyone: stand in support of Philippines Climate Commissioner Yeb Saño, demanding strong action to curb global heating.
Cameron, embarrassed about having attended the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka, now calls for an international inquiry into Sri Lanka's human rights abuses.
UK lawyers plan to go on strike against plans to cut payments to defense lawyers.
Anonymous activists have been
accessing
US government computers, putting the shoe on the other foot.
Strangely, the US government doesn't like being treated the way it
treats us.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
It would in general be wrong to take money from individuals' bank accounts; I hope these crackers are honest enough not to do that.
A UK journalist in Sri Lanka reports that the government sent crowds to block him from travelling to the north to observe the conditions in the Tamil areas.
Uri Avnery says it must be Ariel Sharon who ordered the assassination of Yasser Arafat.
Jeremy Hammond received a 10-year prison sentence, which he calls a political act.
He said that the suggestions for which sites to target came from the FBI tool, Sabu.
I do wish he would not use the word "hacking" to refer to security breaking. That confuses the public about the activities of hackers like me, which don't involve security breaking.
A Libyan militia shot and killed unarmed protesters calling on the militia to disband.
Eternal Austerity Makes Complete Sense — If You're Rich.
The CIA is collecting the financial records of nearly all Americans.
Right-wing extremist parties are gaining strength in many parts of Europe.
These parties are willing to fight hard against the immigrants that they blame for the spread of poverty, while parties on the left are generally timid about confronting the plutocrats that are really to blame. People who are willing to fight, and don't have a firm grip on who the enemy is, may choose the right wing parties just to see a real fight against someone.
Sri Lanka's government tried to take control of the Commonwealth Foundation's charity events.
The UN rapporteur on freedom of expression accused UK political leaders of verging on tyranny by calling the Guardian's journalism a crime.
US
citizens: call
for reform of the ECPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Sign this petition against the TPP.
Everyone: tell Nestle to stop drying up part of Pakistan for bottled water.
US citizens: tell ex-senator Blanche Lincoln to stop representing Monsanto.
Japan has effectively abandoned its plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The presumption that people looking for food to survive after a disaster are "looters" regularly provides an excuse to repress them.
The search for informers in dissident groups on UK college campuses is part of a broader pattern of repression.
A US judge rebuked the US government for not prosecuting any banksters for their frauds.
Deforestation in Brazil
sped
up greatly in the past year, partly due to a change in forestry
law that people
campaigned
to stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The plutocrats of Fix the Debt wrote op-eds for austerity and got right-wing students to submit the text as their own writing.
A rare possum in Australia is threatened by clearcutting.
A chapter of the TPP has been leaked, covering a wide range of topic including copyrights, patents, ISP censorship, and international tribunals that don't care about human rights.
Not surprisingly, the US government takes the harshest position towards people (including Americans). However, there is no possible good to be achieved by such a treaty; all it can do is harm.
This would attack our freedom in many unrelated ways, but the most basic attack, which paves the way for the others, lies in lumping together so many unrelated laws and issues and calling them "intellectual property" as if they had some coherent relationship. That term spreads confusion, and if we repeat it when criticizing the details of the chapter, we're undermining our own side.
The TPP's an
attack on
public health.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
13 US cities held protests against the TPP.
A technique helps people get more information from FOIA requests to the FBI, so the FBI wants to shut down all FOIA requests for 7 years.
The FBI says that these requests threaten national security. I think the FBI threatens national security and doesn't want us to find out about it.
The campaign for more gun control in the US has been blocked.
There are good reasons to condemn the US government — for catering to the rich and failing to help the poor, for instance — and right-wingers are surprisingly good at twisting this anger to their own uses. Owning a gun won't protect you when you can't afford medical care, when you can't get a job, when a bank commits fraud to take your house, when the government forces you to have a baby, or when the government signs a free exploitation treaty that gives foreign corporations privileges over you. The way to protect yourself from that is to vote for progressives.
The UK Conservative Party deleted lots of old speeches from its web site, and set up a robots.txt file to tell the Internet Archive to stop distributing its copies.
A friend at the archive told me they removed the robots.txt file subsequently, apparently in response to public criticism.
UK conservatives advocate permanent austerity, permanent suffering for most of the country.
The UK opposes a European investigation into the flaws deliberately put into our computer systems.
Australia seems to be planning to sabotage negotiations aimed at preventing global heating.
Alas, so is the US (in a subtler way).
Devout Muslims want their brain-damaged father, who has more or less ceased to be conscious, kept alive with heroic measures so he can suffer.
They say that suffering brings him "closer to god". I guess that god is a sadist — which would fit the amount of suffering in the world.
Corporate America's New
Scam: Industry
P.R. Firm Poses as Think Tank!
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The US is bullying the UK to conceal Dubya's discussions with B'liar, which would indicate how much B'liar shared responsibility for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Watch the World's Forests Disappear on Google Earth.
If you are thinking of trying to use Google Earth yourself, be sure to disable Javascript first, or install LibreJS. If a site doesn't work with LibreJS enabled, you should not use it.
US citizens: support the Drone Strike Transparency bill.
The EFF and other opponents of the TPP challenged the NSA to affirm it is not spying on their work.
How the NSA has converted the Internet into a device for injecting malware.
New street lights have audio recording, video cameras, and cell phone tracking. Because they connect to the Internet, they are unacceptable surveillance.
Worse, the proliferation of sensors threatens a regime of 100% enforcement of lots of petty rules, that would leave people feeling they are ruled by robots.
Trademark Law Does Not Require Companies To Tirelessly Censor the Internet.
US citizens: Chris Christie condemned the previous governor's methods for balancing the budget, then used the same ones.
He has not done a good job economically in New Jersey.
One point in that article is questionable. Is it good for a state to have a "business-friendly" tax policy? Often it is bad.
US citizens: call on Obama
to block
fracking on public lands.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
A court ruled that Google Books is fair use.
Google tried first to get special permission by making a settlement with a few large publishers. Many authors, including me, objected to this deal, and the court rejected the settlement. Thus, Google was forced to argue that this is fair use, which means we are all free to do this.
A UK thug was filmed trying to recruit an activist in at Cambridge to report on students for dissident behavior.
This shows the real reason they want to spy on everyone. The "terrorists" they want to catch are the dissidents, often labeled as "terrorists" by the enemies of democracy.
The US government keeps track of who purchases books about lying and polygraphs.
The US wants the TPP to require ISPs to monitor and punish their customers, and narrow down fair use.
Even one of these would be a disaster, so we must defeat the TPP.
More nasty stuff: requiring
patents on medical treatments, raising prices of medicines (this will
kill people!),
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Watch out! That article is steeped in enemy propaganda terms such as "intellectual property" and "protection". Using these terms helps the enemy.
The article also assumes that the unjust requirements of the WTO will be maintained. Thus, it disregards one big injustice in the TPP: making future copyright reform impossible.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to oppose the bill to end regulation of fracking on government land.
The UK government condemns Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed's escape, but the UK kidnaped him after helping to torture him, and then denied him justice. Why shouldn't he escape?
He might have despicable Islamist views that don't respect other people's human rights. But that is no excuse for torturing him, kidnaping him, or suppressing his lawsuit for torture.
When a government is accused of crimes, and the same government obstructs justice, that is grounds to declare it guilty as charged.
Canada encourages other countries not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This shows that Canada's government has the explicit goal of frying our planet. Canada already has a clear policy of trying to increase its own fossil fuel exports, but this goes even further.
Countries greatly threatened by global heating, such as Bangladesh and Spain, should regard Canada's conduct as an act of war. It can kill millions of people.
Crime gangs are worried that Pope Francis will interfere with their corruption of the Vatican Bank.
More Than 3,200 Serving Life Without Parole [in the US] for Nonviolent Offenses, Finds ACLU.
A football player who sued his team in Qatar for not paying his salary
has been blocked from leaving Qatar by
denying
him an exit visa.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
It is a fundamental injustice to require people to get an exit visa to leave a country. The Soviet Union did this. But what else would you expect from a country that works foreigners to death?
I think you'd have to be a fool to go to Qatar.
Occupy has found a new method of freeing Americans from debt.
Since bankruptcy is available to clear most kinds of debt, but not student loans, I wonder if it might be a good idea to apply this specifically at student loans.
Guantánamo 12 Years On: How the Media [Are] Missing the Point.
Protections for cod in the North Sea are starting to raise the population, so we need to keep them in place until the numbers get high enough.
Protecting fish stocks generally entails overcoming the short-termism of the fishermen.
Violence between Israelis and Palestinians is
increasing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
As usual, most of the victims are Palestinians. The article doesn't say, but I suspect that the Palestinian perpetrators are punished but the Israelis are not.
Palestinians are
attacking
Israeli soldiers with knives, apparently retaliating for increased
violence by Israelis against civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Morsi called the head of the military government a "traitor" and refuses to cooperate with the trial proceedings.
Relatives of the people whose murder Morsi's accused of inciting placed the charges before the coup. I won't say that Morsi can't be guilty of this; I don't know the facts. If he is guilty, that justifies some sort of prosecution, but doesn't justify a military coup.
23 Petty Crimes That Have Landed People in Prison for Life Without Parole.
Support the campaign to ban autonomous killer robots.
Costa Rica's public banks have shielded that country from the worst damage, even through US economic warfare that subjugated the economy in every other aspect.
By the way, the world urgently needs some countries to default on their debt, so as to teach predatory lenders a lesson. At present they have every reason to suppose they can profit heavily by leading a country into international debt.
De facto segregation has returned to US schools. Where in the 1950s it was segregation between schools in the same school district, now it is segregation between school districts.
This seems to be a consequence of de facto segregation in housing.
When combined with the practice of funding education mostly from local property taxes, the result is that the schools where poor children go are badly funded.
ALEC's latest nasty proposal: an agency to streamline privatization of any government services, including any and all roads.
This would naturally lead to a new form of massive surveillance of drivers.
In most US states, child care costs more than college.
This may have contributed to the big increase in discouraged workers, as parents find that the costs of going to work leave them with no gain from working.
If it were feasible for these people to work, that would not create jobs for them. Rather, they would appear in the unemployment rate, and thus make the harm done by anti-employment anti-poor policies harder to disguise.
Growing up in poverty can permanently stunt a person, so the US policies that augment child poverty are causing irreparable damage.
US school "reform" turns weak evidence into "proof" that their methods work.
Palestinian journalist Mohammed Abu Khdeir was secretly arrested when returning from Egypt. In Israel it is forbidden to report the arrest.
To force 15,000 Palestinians out of the territory Israel has annexed to Jerusalem, Israel plans to demolish 2000 housing units. Some of them are slated to become parks.
The Israeli
army ordered
Palestinians to uproot their olive trees because an Israeli colony
is being built nearby on their land.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The government says the colony is illegal, but it nonetheless receives government support. The state is trying to have it both ways.
The attacks against Palestinian agriculture proceed constantly, with the tacit support of the Israeli army and state. They get so little attention that Palestinians despair of reporting them.
Armed Israeli colonists attacked a Palestinian villages farms, and Nadel Shafiq Taher Shatiya photographed them. When soldiers came, they took his cameras and gave them to the colonists, who later returned them broken.
The army generally does not dare confront the violent colonists.
An unofficial investigation found that Israeli troops shot and killed Ahmad Tazaz'ah while he was doing nothing in particular, in violation of their rules of engagement.
22 organizations report that people are now afraid to phone them for help, fearing NSA surveillance.
These organizations are now suing the government.
The New York Times endorsed the Trans Pacific Partnership sight unseen. How's that for bowing to the plutocrats?
Inside The Chinese Labor Camp That Made Halloween Decorations Sold At Kmart.
KMart says it has different suppliers now, so if any of the present suppliers are using political prisoners as workers, KMart can remain ignorant. That's how flexibility of the supply chain makes room for sweatshops, factory fires and slave labor.
It should be KMart's legal responsibility to know these things, to ensure that it isn't using prison labor.
Employees of G4S, one of the main privatizers of government services in the UK, have been accused of forging papers to thwart someone's case for asylum.
In South Africa, G4S operates a prison and has been accused of giving prisoners electric shocks and forced injections.
Reporter Francesca Borri: In Aleppo I only survive by looking Syrian.
Iraqi women had far more rights under Saddam Hussein than they do now.
Afghanistan is growing a record opium crop.
US citizens: call on the US border patrol to limit its use of deadly force — use it only when necessary.
This doesn't mean they can't defend themselves. It means they shouldn't shoot someone in the head — and 8 more times, once he is flat on the ground — for throwing rocks.
Everyone: call on Obama to meet with Walmart workers that are on strike.
In Paris: protest Nov 24 against the proposed free exploitation treaty, TAFTA.
The UK government wants even more surveillance power, showing contempt for freedom.
Many Democrats, revitalized in demanding progressive policies, condemn Clinton as a servant of Wall Street.
Elizabeth Warren rebuked federal regulators and Congress for allowing banks to remain "too big to fail".
American writers say they self-censor because of NSA surveillance.
The New York Times tries unremittingly to believe NSA excuses.
UK spies used a man-in-the-middle network switch to create fake LinkedIn profile pages so as to insert malware into the computers of employees of Belgacom, a Belgian mobile phone company.
This is how the GCHQ spies described their "vision" in 2011: "Any mobile device, anywhere, anytime!" Mobile phones made today all have a universal back door: if you carry one, you're a sucker.
Some areas near Fukushima will be considered uninhabitable for many years.
Israeli soldiers occupy Palestinian homes as "training".
The global campaign to give women access to contraceptives proceeds despite opposition from prudish religion.
The global heating denialists' cosmic ray theory bites the dust.
I'm sure they will find another straw to grasp at — there are so many candidates, and the pay is so good.
Theft of food from stores in the UK is rising due to increased poverty. It is noteworthy that a substantial fraction is stolen by staff. Perhaps these stores should pay their staff better.
I don't think there is anything wrong in stealing food if you're in a place where there is sufficient nutritious food but you can't afford it. However, that argument doesn't apply to stealing luxurious food.
Oil Espionage: New Leak Reveals Spy Agencies Tapped Int'l Oil Group.
How does this relate to stopping terrorism, which is the supposed excuse for NSA general surveillance? Well, Saudi Arabia is a member of OPEC, and most of the Sep 2001 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. Is that the excuse?
How GOP Governors Are Preventing Millions Of Low-Income Diabetic Americans From Getting Medical Care.
The Republicans in Georgia, by refusing to extend Medicaid to poor people, are also cutting off funding for hospitals that do treat the poor.
As the US argues in court for tracking everyone's phone calls, it seems to have quietly retracted the claim that this is "indispensable" for finding terrorists.
This is significant because that claim was the reason the FISA court approved this tracking.
Texans fear an old oil pipeline will leak again and pollute their reservoir.
5 million Americans have given up on finding a job since the crisis 6 years ago.
Those who still have jobs are worse off: the median wage has declined 4%.
US thugs, courts and jurors accept the death of cyclists due to collisions with cars as normal.
Punishing the few drivers that hit a cyclist while following usual driving practices will not change the usual driving practices. It will strike jurors as unfair to punish someone for doing what "everybody does".
To change these practices requires adopting clear rules that will make cyclists safer, then punishing violations of these rules whether or not a cyclist was hit.
The world's ten worst toxic sites.
None of them is in a wealthy country. Wealthy countries have for some decades offloaded their pollution onto poor countries.
How the Koch Brothers Organized the Federal Shutdown.
Heat waves could kill 2000 people a year in the Eastern US by 2060.
If global heating leads to a collapse of today's technological systems and air conditioning ceases to be available, that might go up to 20,000 a year, or more.
The US plutocracy funds weapons even if they fail in tests, but calls successful programs to help the poor "failures" in order to cut them.
Software is being developed to try to diagnose a person's state of health from voice.
Will there also be software to change your voice to hide these problems?
Palestinians accuse Israel of denying Palestinian prisoners proper medical treatment for diseases such as cancer.
The Democrats' list of tax loopholes to be
closed inexplicably
omits the tax subsidies for fossil fuel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
We must promote climate-friendly farming before it's too late.
Al Qa'ida is recruiting suicide bombers in Turkey, and parents are afraid their sons will be recruited and die.
People say the government turns a blind eye to it.
One of the "new atheists" wrote that moderate religion contributes to the crimes of extreme religion by protecting it from criticism. This seems to be a good example of it. Any form of Islam makes a person vulnerable to infection by the jihadi mind-virus.
A designer drug could give the pleasure of alcohol without some of the damage.
This new drug might be less addictive than alcohol, but that's not automatic. Addiction results from the body's physiological adaptation to the effects of the drug. Whichever receptors respond to the new drug as they do to alcohol, they would tend to adapt and produce addiction. Meanwhile, whichever body systems are not affected by the new drug would not develop addiction; that might reduce the total addictive effect, but how much that occurs would have to be seen.
The Philippine government is planning how it will cope when global heating gets even worse.
But since that will become impossible in a few decades, it is also pushing for strong action to curb global heating.
The negotiations with Iran seem to have failed over a rather small disagreement, which gives hope that further discussions could bridge the gap.
Can we stop using disposable plastic cutlery by bringing our own?
It will be hard for travelers to do this unless they can bring their cutlery onto an airplane. Given that there is no real danger in this, the TSA ought to permit it.
Genetically engineered yeast have been designed to produce medicines, flavorings and other useful things.
Although "in principle" the substances that are made ought to be safe, that can have exceptions — and each case is a different issue.
Sweden is closing prisons because of increased emphasis on rehabilitation and a relaxation in the War on Drugs.
If the US tries to do this, the owners of private prisons will sue.
Newspapers in Sri Lanka urged the UK not to proceed with a royal charter to regulate the press, lest states like Sri Lanka cite it as a precedent.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote for independent courts for accusations of rape and sexual harassment in the US military.
President Maduro has sent state agents to enforce low prices in some stores in Venezuela.
In general, price controls cause shortages and are not a good idea. However, if applied only to certain stores which were given permission to buy dollaws at the low "official" exchange rate, they can be seen as a condition of getting that permission, and they should not cause shortages.
Venezuela has had shortages of certain products. No one I met there could tell me why, but it did not seem to be due to price controls.
The US will ceremonially destroy its stockpile of seized ivory, as part of a campaign to end legal sales of ivory.
An Australian senator and a New Zealand MP went to Sri Lanka on a fact-finding mission to judge whether their countries should attend the Commonwealth Summit. Sri Lanka made the answer quite clear by arresting them.
This ham-fisted attempt at repression would be funny, if it were not for the seriousness of the repression when it is aimed at Sri Lankan dissidents and journalists.
The poorest South Africans organize for housing rights, against the corruption of the state, and despite repression that goes as far as murder.
US citizens: sign this petition to respect the rights of prisoners who report on prison abuses.
Seven Things Veterans Need More Than a Holiday.
The US attracts youths into the army by telling them they will "serve their country". As we know, that's only occasionally what US soldiers are used for. If we spread the word about what they are really likely to do, it might do some good.
Bloomberg News censors stories about China.
The liquid bomb terrorists were originally accused of planning to mix liquids to make the explosive TATP in a plane, but that would be impossible.
However, later it came out that their plan was somewhat different, and not impossible, merely very difficult.
Banning the practice of discarding "by-catch" (fish that the fishermen did not aim to catch) is not enough to enable overfished stocks to recover.
The only way to protect fish stocks is to defeat the political power of the fishermen, who are generally short-termist.
Australia keeps setting high temperature records, but the government, totally subservient to coal interests, says it will reduce plans for CO2 emissions cuts.
These long-term targets sound impressive until they are cancelled without having been achieved. The way to get real results is with a carbon tax.
The business-ridden UK government invited a gas company employee to write its energy policy.
Note how the ministry claims that conflicts of interest are a minor matter compared with the "knowledge" that business employees have. I'm sure they know plenty about what policies will serve their employers, but knowledge can't compensate for bad goals.
Typhoon Haiyan killed over 10,000 people, perhaps much more.
Many of the dead were drowned because the storm drove a 6-meter wall of water onto the land.
The rise in sea level, for which global heating is directly responsible, surely increased the height of the storm surge and therefore increased the death toll. Global heating also played a role in making the storm so strong, which also increased it.
One study forecast that global heating would kill a hundred million people by 2030.
Economics classes in the UK continue teaching right-wing myths that the 2008 crash demonstrated were false.
Of course, this was not the first sign that they were false.
I think that an investigation of why these falsehoods are taught would come across the influence of plutocrats' money.
It seems Israel has convinced France to block a first-stage nuclear deal with Iran.
Everyone: tell Warren Buffett to stop threatening rail workers that want to unionize.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support raising the minimum wage to $10. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on your senators to call for the US to allow a free election in Honduras.
Friends of the Earth lists many reasons to stop the Trans Pacific Partnership. This is in addition to the probable injustice against people who share.
Geophysicist Brad Werner says "Earth is Fucked" if we continue under plutocracy. We can save the biosphere from global heating disaster, but to do so, we must break out of plutocracy's rules.
A right-wing US appeals court temporarily reinstated the Texas law to make abortion unfeasible. Some women have been unable to get an abortion as a result. The abortion clinics have appealed directly to the Supreme Court to try to reverse this.
Ladar Levison has been threatened with prosecution for closing Lavabit rather than deceiving all its customers.
Why Does Congress Think It's OK for Working Americans to Go Hungry?
Organizations of private schools in Pakistan have banned Malala Yousafzai's memoir from school libraries. The book is not in accord with their religious views, and dissent is not supposed to be allowed.
This sort of disrespect for basic human rights is typical of Islamic countries.
Leopoldo García Lucero, tortured by Pinochet's men after the US-supported coup in Chile, received a judgment against Chile in the Inter-American court.
Nothing can heal the wounds he received, but he is glad to have gained a precedent in the fight against torture and tyranny.
Hillary Clinton's official actions have served the plutocrats, not the people.
I'm fed up with right-wing Democrats like Clinton, Clinton and Obama. It takes lunatic Republicans to make them look good, but that's not good enough to get my vote.
Will valuing "natural capital" lead businesses to preserve it?
If corporations were inclined to manage their resources for long-term capital value, they might do this to natural systems based on their natural capital. However, corporations today typically don't look beyond the stock price 6 months from now. they are more likely to loot natural systems than manage them.
A BIOS-level virus that spreads by infecting the firmware of USB sticks.
Coca Cola Company said it would stop buying sugar grown on land that has been taken away from people.
I am not sure whether this applies to the companies that bottle Coca Cola in countries other than the US.
Caribbean islands demand compensation for the slave trade from the European countries that ran it.
The book Inequality by Design, by Fischer et al, explains how discrimination against a minority group has a pernicious effect that continues to affect their descendants. The descendants of the slaves are still suffering today from the crime committed against them.
The country that most deserves such compensation is Haiti. Haiti was made to pay a lot of money for its independence, which is why Haiti is so poor and indebted. Haitians deserve to get all that money back.
Suggested arguments for convincing people to support action to curb global heating.
Local thugs in the US
are joining
in massive surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Power Plants and Other Vital Systems Are Totally Exposed on the Internet.
Polio is spreading to the Middle East from Pakistan, where religious lunatics kill vaccination teams.
Even in states which have legalized pot, people get fired for using it.
One disadvantage of the US is that companies can fire employees for almost anything, with a few special exceptions.
U.S. Manufacturing Only Has Jobs for the Skilled Few.
Self-driving cars cut put 2 or 3 million Americans out of work, if we allow them to. Why not ban them?
The UK government is dishing out cruel treatment to children of illegal immigrants, as a scheme to discourage immigration.
US citizens: phone Attorney General Holder and say, don't let JP Morgan get a tax deduction for its penalty.
Everyone: demand that Russia
say what
has become of political prisoner Nadya Tolokonnikova.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama to drop his opposition to Mike Bishop's case against the Keystone XL planet roaster pipeline.
American voters prove vulnerable to manipulation when companies launder money to pay for political advertisements.
Voters approved many other progressive ballot initiatives.
Americans need to learn that expensive political ads represent their enemy.
US citizens: tell the EPA you
want strong
limits on CO2 emissions from new power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The US government gave civil society organizations a chance to comment on the dangers of TAFTA, if they can afford to fly to Brussels on one week's notice.
TAFTA stands for "Turn All Freedom To Ashes", and if you are not in favor of that goal, they don't want to hear from you.
Everyone: call on Pepsico to follow Coca Cola Company and commit not to buy sugar from land-grabbers.
Biomass as an energy source is renewable in principle, but if that means burning wood, it could also mean deforestation.
IPCC chairman: Are we prepared to "pass on a lousy, spoilt and defiled planet"?
US citizens:
support
the Stop Subsidizing Multimillion Dollar Corporate Bonuses Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
oppose
a proposed coal export terminal in Washington State.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to pass the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act, which the Senate just passed. Also send a
message through
this
page.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The scandal about NSA spying in Europe has temporarily thwarted plans for a new, unjust trade treaty between the US and Europe, TTIP.
This proposed treaty is also called TAFTA, or "Turn All Freedom to Ashes", and it is likely to be similar to the TPP. Any "trade" treaty that the US government proposes nowadays is likely to be an instrument to give business more power and undermine democracy.
While Poland hosts negotiations to consider perhaps saving the Earth's biosphere, it also contemptuously holds a coal industry forum.
More on David Eckert's forced colonoscopy.
I think it is abuse of language and common sense to stretch the word "rape" to include a forced medical procedure. Rape is not the only sort of wrong; if we want to criticize something, we don't need to scrape up an excuse to call it "rape".
Walmart workers held the largest protest ever.
I nearly always avoid Walmart.
Eckert wasn't the only person in Deming whose colon was searched for drugs based on no evidence.
Might
Netanyahu launch an attack on Iran to sabotage the possibility of
a nuclear agreement?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The food industry wants the US government to
ban states
from requiring labeling of GMOs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Tony B'liar's advice on "good governance" has not led Kazakhstan to respect human rights any better. It has got worse since he started.
The argument that Kazakhstan is "an important country" is a red herring.
Sheik Yassin Kadi was declared a "terrorist" by the US and then by the UN, without a trial, based on accusations kept secret from him.
This is the natural result of the laws that ban organizations by declaring them "terrorist", without a trial. Such laws are inherently unjust and all of them must be repealed.
Several governments are learning to reject unjust trade treaties.
Too bad the US is not one of them.
US citizens: tell the Coast Guard not to allow toxic fracking waste to be shipped on rivers. A barge accident could pollute water supplies.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter and senators to oppose a bill to deny the EPA
the power to regulate carbon pollution from power plants.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to judge the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline
honestly and not join the State Department's greenwash.
US citizens:
call
for enforcement of the law to protect marine mammals from fishing.
Leaked
IPCC Report Links Climate Change to (coming) Global Food
Scarcity. The problem is already affecting food production in the
US.
Judge
Demands US Gov't Hand Over Secret Docs Detailing Gitmo Torture.
I understand the ICRC's reason for not publishing its reports
on how states treat prisoners.
I'm not convinced that the ICRC's reputation for confidentiality
will be significantly impugned if a state publishes
the report that the IRCR made about that state.
The UK intends to quash a torture case using a
new
secret court procedure, in which the state can present evidence to
the judge while concealing it from the torture victims and their
lawyers.
The government's witnesses, testifying in secret, could lie like a
Clapper, confident that no one will have the chance to investigate to
find facts to put up against their testimony.
MPs ordered the heads of UK surveillance organizations to testify in
Parliament, and squandered the opportunity by
giving
them easy questions.
The spymasters told us nothing, just
repeated
their usual bogus arguments in favor of spying on everyone.
Saudi Arabia is funding a
new
group of Islamist Sunni rebels in Syria, this time excluding al
Qa'ida.
This exclusion of al Qa'ida removes one reason why the US would oppose
it, but they would seek to oppress Shi'ite, Christian and secular
Syrians with a tyranny comparable to that of Saudi Arabia.
A proposed giant coal mine in Borneo could cause deforestation
locally,
wiping
out orangutans (and many other species), but the revenge on the
rest of the world will take the form of global heating and
ocean
acidification.
We need to
end
the War on Drugs, and not just for marijuana.
What horoscopes would look like
if
astrology were really valid.
Bill de Blasio, New York's first day-mayor
(*) in several decades,
will have to deal with
protecting
New York City from the effects of global heating, as well as the
problem of housing used by rich people for vacations * Giuliani and Bloomberg were
night-mayors.
The NSA instructed its speakers to defend massive surveillance with
a vague
reference to the September 2001 attacks. In effect, an allusion
to the idea that we're supposed to believe their spying on all of us
protected us from something more dangerous than a nondemocratic
government.
The Government Accountability Project says that
other
NSA staff are revealing information, inspired by Snowden.
Solitary confinement produces
hidden
mental scars, and in New York State prisoners are put in solitary
confinement for ridiculous arbitrary reasons.
Five
reasons to ban depleted uranium from weapons and armor.
If the US were ever invaded, we could not dare use tanks with depleted
uranium armor, or fire the DU shells — it would be less damaging
to surrender.
What's the right strategy
to end
deforestation in Sumatra?
The Philippines was
just struck
by the strongest hurricane ever recorded over land.
Global heating
causes increasingly
strong storms and rising sea level, which combine to cause ever
more damage.
A UK marine
was convicted
of murdering a prisoner in Afghanistan.
Global heating denying celebrities stem from
the corporate-funded
astroturf "wise use" movement in the 80s.
With their bogus scientific claims rejected, they move to the free
market fundamentalist think tanks of the cult of the invisible hand.
("Whatever the market does is right, by definition, even if it makes
everyone suffer.") Those circles don't care if the science is wrong
as long as it supports their faith.
Egypt's military
government announced
a schedule for elections next year.
I hope this is sincere, but I would not count on it.
Netanyahu
is making
wild threats over the possible nuclear deal with Iran.
A school in Canada
has prohibited
children from touching each other. The game of tag is not
allowed.
Google is using spyware in apps
to track phone
users into physical stores.
A list of facts that show
how unequally
divided wealth and income are in the US.
US citizens: support
the Stop
Tax Haven Abuse Act.
Here's what
the bill does.
More info about
a previous
version of the bill.
"Unreasonable Force" In Chicago Evidently Does Not Mean A Probably
Drunk
Cop Killing
An Unarmed Guy Lying On the Ground By Shooting Him 16 Times.
Two proposed mines in Australia would emit
almost 4
billion tons of CO2 or equivalent.
This happens as investors
are questioning
fossil fuel companies about high valuations based on the carbon
bubble.
Governments' large subsidies to fossil fuel companies are in effect
the
opposite of a carbon tax.
Right wing governments are trying to skew funding even
more in
favor of fossil fuels.
These subsidies are a form of corruption: the fossil fuel companies
have "invested" in looting the treasury.
Greece closed its public broadcasting system and fired all the
employees, while starting a new public broadcasting system with
different personnel.
The fired employees occupied the building for five months, publishing
over the Internet, but the state has
now sent
thugs to force them out.
This move was equivalent to firing everyone and hiring other people.
Why do that? Perhaps to pay them all less. Or to choose people who
have less character, ethics or scruples.
The lies that appear to have
defeated GMO
labeling in Washington.
The FARC, Colombia's second-worst terrorist
group, has
reached a peace agreement in principle with the state.
The end of the guerrilla war between the FARC and the state would be a
step forward, but I have to wonder what effect this will have on the
fight against the Colombia's principal terrorist group, the right-wing
paramilitares, which was closely associated with the previous
president Alvaro Horrible.
Also, I am concerned that boosting President Santos might hurt the
chances for electing a president that will tear up the
unjust free
exploitation treaty with the US.
Amnesty International
says Shell
lied about damage caused by oil spills in Nigeria.
US citizens:
phone
Senator Durbin's office and call on him not to cut Social
Security, Medicaid or Medicare. No Grand Sellout!
US citizens:
tell Congress not
to sell our national parks.
US citizens:
oppose
a plan to allow even more oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
New York City's jail
keeps
mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement, sometimes for
years on end.
That's likely to make them sicker.
Thugs got "doctors" to search David Eckhart's intestines
6
times just because he was seen clenching his buttocks.
The colonoscopy procedure has a certain degree of danger. That danger
is worth while for people who have an a priori risk of colon cancer,
but that cannot excuse applying it to anyone else.
US citizens:
send a message
to your congresscritter and senators to oppose the TPP and
especially oppose "fast track" for it.
Here's the
true
nature of the TPP.
US citizens:
call for an end to
the federal loophole that undermines state laws intended to stop
thugs from confiscating people's property at will.
British journalist Sarah Harrison has
gone
into exile fearing she will be accused of "terrorism" if she
returns home.
A French court ordered Google to
delete
certain foreign web pages from search results.
This seems like dangerous censorship to me.
A scientific-sounding article brushes quietly over
reasons
to reject genetically modified foods. It looks thoughtful but its
reasoning is invalid.
It is clear that today's widely used GMOs are safe for most people to
eat. If they caused harm to a substantial fraction of people, it
would have shown up in medical statistics by now.
This does not imply that they don't cause allergies in some people.
(I linked to a
different
report of such allergies.) Labeling GMOs is just what's needed to
enable people with those allergies to avoid the problem — even
if most of us can safely ignore it.
Meanwhile, today's GMOs cause big environmental problems.
"Roundup-ready" plants have led to an
increase
in pesticide use, while Bt-toxin plants kill other insects besides
the
pests
they are meant to kill.
If we wish to reject these crops to protect the environment, we should
have that option. Why should agribusiness be allowed to conceal use
of these crops from the public?
The veil comes down when the article makes a patently absurd claim
that the probable defeat in Washington should affect our goals. That
defeat shows the effect of agribusiness' millions, but has nothing to
do with the question of what is good policy.
The lies that defeated GMO labeling
A
high
level of polonium 210 was found in Yasser Arafat's corpse,
suggesting he was killed with that poison.
Israel has a nuclear reactor (and nuclear weapons), and could easily
make polonium 210. Arabs would find it difficult to obtain.
UK
secrecy
about communications between B'liar and Dubya is blocking the
report about why they decided to invade Iraq.
Large palm oil companies are
disregarding
the ethical commitments they made, and destroying forests in
Africa and Asia.
Human Rights Watch calls on the US to investigate 18 killings in
Afghanistan in which US troops
seem
to have killed prisoners.
New York State has issued a "protective order" to
block
protests against a drone base.
Global heating
will
make dry regions drier, and this will undermine the life of the
soil.
Geoengineering schemes designed to reflect sunlight away from the
Earth would
reduce
global rainfall.
They would also fail to save the oceans from
acidification
which is likely to wipe out coral reefs and all the species that
depend on them.
Why Big Pharma
Won't Stop Breaking the Law.
A lack of biodiversity in the nearby environment correlates with
different bacteria on your skin, and a
greater
incidence of allergies.
Queensland (a state in Australia) has extended the unjust model of banning
organizations by fiat, previously applied to supposed terrorists, to
supposed
motorcycle gangs.
Ireland bankrupted itself by agreeing
to pay
for the losses of private banks. This led to austerity which only
made things worse.
The Washington initiative to require labeling of
GMOs has
probably been defeated.
Companies put many millions into ads against labeling.
Protesters gather around the world
for Million
Mask March.
A Google security expert accuses GCHQ
of "subversion
of judicial process".
The state has subverted its own judicial process for the sake of
snooping
of various kinds.
4 Foods
That Could
Disappear If New Food Safety Rules Pass.
Lots of "foreign
aid" is
neither foreign nor aid.
I think cancellation of a poor country's debt is real aid, and
urgently needed too. However, encouraging external investment is
business in a country is not real aid, since investment tends to be
predatory and subjugating (it leads to pressure to sign treaties with
"investor-state" provisions
that damage
human rights).
Oil commodity traders say they will prove that big oil companies
including Billionaire Polluters and
Shell have
fixed prices for a decade.
So, will our plutocratist governments jail the people responsible, or
just fine the companies a small fraction of what they made from this?
Progressive Democrat Bill de
Blasio has
been elected mayor of New York. This is a victory, though we will
have to wait and see how much of one.
China is pressuring Hollywood movie
companies to
join its PR force.
Yet another reason we shouldn't go out of our way to help Hollywood
— such by as tolerating nasty copyright restrictions and the War
on Sharing, or by competing with other countries to offer movie
production the biggest tax cut.
Everyone:
call
on the Dominican Republic to restore citizenship for people of
Haitian descent.
The US shut down its listening post in Berlin, so now it has to listen
to the German government
via
the UK embassy.
Although US spying on foreign officials makes those officials angry, I
consider that practice more acceptable, and less scandalous, than US
spying on you, me and everyone.
After reporters exposed theft by soldiers, Kenya's congress passed a
law to fine or shut news media if they violate a
"code of
conduct" which will be decided later.
Even if the code is not unjust at first, it could be changed easily
later.
Snowden,
Assange, Manning, Vanunu — The True Heroes Of Our Time.
Anat Kamm should be listed in the title, too.
Israel has announced
plans
to demolish the homes of 15,000 Arabs in the areas Israel calls
part of Jerusalem.
Gaza's electric plant is shut down because there is
no
fuel.
Some Palestinians tried to go to their farm land, but
Israeli
troops attacked them because Israeli colonists have built
greenhouses on that land.
Sometimes the colonists even
attack
Israeli soldiers, and get away with it.
Israel applies
one
law to Israeli children and another law to Palestinian children.
Norwegian journalists in Sochi were repeatedly
arrested
and threatened with imprisonment, for no obvious reason.
The American Psychological Association is
soft
on torture.
The UN reports that the CO2-reduction targets of the
countries in the world won't be enough to avoid global heating
disaster.
Much
more cuts are needed by 2020.
An OECD study found that a
carbon
tax is the most efficient way to achieve cuts of whatever level.
More about the
surrender
of the M23 rebels in the DR Congo.
If advertising tobacco to children wasn't bad enough, now
loan
companies
are doing it.
The UK
snoops
on many undersea cables from its base in Cyprus.
Argentina's
New Biometric ID System Ignores Right to Privacy.
This system (SIBIOS) is
why
I decided not to go to Argentina again. (Sorry, that article is in
Spanish.)
Six
Journalists Given Life Sentences in Turkey.
The rebellion in the Congo (DRC)
seems
to have ended.
The fighting in that region tends to be due to rivalry between
mineral-trafficking gangs that supply the demands of users in
wealthier countries. Some of these gangs are known as "governments"
while others are called "rebels". The fighting flares up when the
gangs disagree about what share each gang will get. People are better
off when the gang structure is stable and nobody is getting shot.
Mike German, former FBI agent,
refutes
the bogus arguments for massive surveillance.
Even if general surveillance did protect us from terrorists, it makes
us vulnerable to a much bigger danger: the rogue state.
Greek
Protesters Rally Against IMF And EU Inspection.
China's plan to reduce smog by replacing coal will result in
doubling
the CO2 emission the coal was producing.
The death of honeybees has caused a
drop
in almond production in California, and a shortage.
UK massive surveillance appears to violate
European
human rights law.
Edward Snowden's
open
letter to Germany.
On Snowden's prospects of being given
asylum
in Germany.
Amnesty International says that
prosecuting
Snowden would make him a political prisoner.
Kerry asks Europe not to let the dispute about NSA surveillance
interfere with joint plans for a
trade
treaty to render democracy powerless.
Richard Dawkins raised a public issue that affects all of us, using
his bottle of honey as an example; people
criticized
him as if he only cared about that bottle.
The human rights lawsuit against undercover UK thugs, by the lovers
they tricked, has been
buried
in a secret court that is designed to be unfair in favor of the
state.
Planning to cut
US poverty in half over the next ten years.
The question is whether we can reduce poverty faster than the
plutocrats can crank out more.
Obama's
sellouts to the meat industry.
Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega has been
imprisoned
for 18 years for calling for democracy, along with many other
supporters of human rights.
The
Employment Non-Discrimination Act is not strong enough; it has a
religious loophole.
It's not just gay staff that face the threat of discrimination when a
secular hospital merges with a religious one; the patients do, too.
We should require religious hospitals to provide all sorts of care
that patients are entitled to, including abortions; if the church
doesn't like it, it can sell the hospital to a foundation.
The Marshall Islands' inhabitants
are trying
to live sustainably, and hoping that the rest of the world will
follow their example rather than inundating them.
New Zealand has passed a US-style
law requiring
telecommunications companies to implement interception facilities.
I don't think such facilities are bad in themselves; however, the
state must not be able to use them unmonitored.
Democracy activists in the Maldives
are calling
for a tourist boycott to pressure the state to allow a free
election; meanwhile, the state has made it a crime to advocate that
boycott.
This reminds me of the Israeli law
that threatens
to bankrupt anyone that advocates the boycott of products made in
Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory.
Judging Obama's drone attacks against international
law finds
that many of them are crimes.
Offering men paternity leave to match women's maternity leave could
indirectly reduce
employment discrimination against women.
A former congressman
was denied
a voting ID under the state's tough new voter suppression law.
Brazil is
being accused
of hypocrisy for minor forms of surveillance such as following
foreign diplomats' cars.
I don't see anything wrong with the practices described here, which
are aimed at specific people that there is a specific reason to be
suspicious of. It isn't wrong for the US to do this sort of
surveillance, either. What makes US surveillance an injustice is that
it is massive and general, aimed at all Americans.
Global heating
is making
polar bears starve, so in part of Canada a few of them try to eat
humans.
We can't blame the polar bears. They don't understand global heating;
we do.
An Iranian "reformist"
newspaper has
been closed, reminding us that even if Iran makes a deal about
uranium enrichment, it will still be a theocratic tyranny.
ALEC's "transparency"
initiative omits
important information, compared with what as been obtained in the
past through open-records requests.
Cowardly leftish politics: instead of adopting a livable minimum wage,
"reward"
the businesses for paying enough.
If we keep on giving employers tax cuts instead of requirements, soon
they won't have any tax to dodge, and we'll all be taxed to pay for
their "incentives".
Everyone:
call for
holding China to account as it seeks to join the UN Human Rights
Council.
US citizens:
show support for
negotiation with Iran.
One of the Greenpeace 30 reports on
prison
conditions in Russia.
Note how the Australian government refuses to help him.
That's because it works for the fossil fuel companies.
Morsi, on trial,
condemned
the military coup.
He may very well be guilty of some crime, but the military's crimes
are so much bigger that they make this trial absurd. The Muslim
Brotherhood advocates disrespect for human rights (for instance, the
right to change from being a Muslim to being anything else), but
shooting protesters dead on the street is also violating human rights.
An organization of doctors says the US government
told
doctors and psychologists to participate in torture of prisoners.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was given for
unfounded
economic hypotheses that economists like to believe because they
support right-wing conclusions.
James Hansen calls for development of
"safe
nuclear power".
I respect him, but that is easier said than done. Some of the dangers
would be addressed by using
Thorium,
but not all.
Imprisoned Iranian human rights defender
Abdolfattah
Soltani has started a hunger strike.
Religious conservatism leads its believers to think that seeing
anything sexual is dangerous for children,
but seeing
violence is no problem.
The NSA collects Americans' contact lists on the pretext that this is
all "foreign intelligence", citing the authority of
an executive
order that has been kept secret from Congress.
The European Union plans to give foreign companies
a stranglehold
over all areas of law, through an "investor-state" treaty with the
US.
To establish such a treaty in a democracy is treason.
America's rich
are abandoning
America, after extracting what they could get.
A new
study forecasts
23 meters of sea level rise by 2100. Large parts of Boston would
be under water, as well as Shanghai, Mumbai, Miami and more.
And that's just considering the normal sea level, not high tides and
hurricanes.
Drug prohibition
is blocking
brain research in the UK; promising treatments cannot be studied.
The situation is similar in the US.
In the US, drug prohibition
also attacks
the use of existing medicine.
The
Great Austerity Shell Game, which is the only way out until you
tax the rich enough.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government's decision to interrogate David Miranda and threaten him with imprisonment was based on a document that equated publication with terrorism.
There you have it. Measures that strip people of their rights in the name of "fighting terrorism" will be used to attack freedom and democracy. These measures are far bigger threat than terrorism.
North Dakota Oil Spill Spotlights Obama Delay on Rules (about detecting leaks).
Why prosecutors to prosecute heroes like Swartz and Kiriakou, rather than banksters.
By the way, this also shows us why proposals to "reduce crime" by putting cameras on the street are missing the boat. If they want to make a real dent in crime, they should put the cameras in bank executives' offices.
Resistance to plant variety monopolies and other restrictions of crops
is spreading in Latin America.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
This generally admirable article falls for enemy propaganda when it treats the term "intellectual property" as if it were a principle. It is nothing but a way of lumping together various unrelated laws, one of which is the law of plant variety monopolies. These laws don't have anything meaningful in common, but the propaganda term leads people to think that they do, or should. Therefore, I never use it, and when I see it used, I explain how it is misleading.
See for more explanation,
The paradigm of economic growth, as typically understood today, is anti-life.
It is not inevitable for economic growth to be anti-life; but if people formulate their thoughts in terms of economic growth and never mind how, it could come out that way.
Going to shop in Tesco's? Wear an Anonymous mask.
The fossil fuel industry's pet government in Australia has approved a giant coal mine, never mind that running it will cause a local water shortage.
As many as two million workers are on strike in Indonesia.
The UK plans to deport a witness to sexual intimidation of immigration prisoners before she can testify about it.
UK thugs say they arrested and interrogated David Miranda as a suspected "terrorist" because he stood for a "political or ideological cause".
UK Claim That 'Journalism Equals Terrorism' Sparks Outrage.
The law they used is ripe for such misuse because it gives the state far too much power to begin with. The idea of limiting its use to "real terrorists" is a pipedream. The powers must be reduced.
Blasting people with loud sounds (even if it's music) is dangerous. It can even cause permanent injury.
Cancelling Americans' health care plans rarely received news coverage until it got connected with Obama's health care law.
The government of Sri Lanka says that defending freedom of the press is "anti-government activism."
Since they said so themselves, there's no room for doubt.
Looking closely at NSA statements, it's not clear that the massive collection of phone call data of people in France and Spain is entirely made with the help of the governments of France and Spain. The NSA may do some of the collection directly.
This detail doesn't alter the wrongness of the activity, or even who's culpable. It only affects what fraction of the practice the French and Spanish governments are culpable for.
A Palestinian teenager faces the threat of life in prison for throwing stones at Israeli occupation soldiers.
Whether the teenager really threw stones, we have no way of knowing, since the torture and brainwashing applied to Palestinian children in Israeli prisons can easily lead to false confessions.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject proposals to sabotage negotiations with Iran.
The built-up housing of the Israeli colonies in Palestinian land are just a small fraction. Lots of farm land has been taken too.
Jewish activists who went to Hebron to oppose segregation met with repression and arbitrary arrest by the thugs.
The purpose of laws is to prevent the state from acting arbitrarily. In Israel, they don't achieve that.
Mustafah Barghouti,
MD, leads
a nonviolent secular Palestinian movement that goes up against Fatah
and Hamas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The Jewish National Fund does not only help implement expulsion of Palestinian villages, it also participates in choosing the plans to do so.
A statement by the activists facing prosecution in France for advocating a boycott of Israeli products.
The page contains the text in French, followed by the English translation.
Netanyahu's party is campaigning based on racism against Israeli Arabs.
Israeli colonists attacked Palestinians who were harvesting their olive crop, including beating one of them with a metal pole.
Since the time and place of harvesting were predictable, the Israeli thugs and soldiers were able to be elsewhere during the attack.
Other Palestinians can only get to the fields with the help of Israeli peace volunteers, whose presence compels the thugs to restrain their cruelty just a little.
The Israeli thugs have found the culprits for around 3% of the reported attacks against Palestinians' olive trees.
Putin's unpredictable and slow repression has crushed opposition.
The enforcement of abortion restrictions (which are unjust in themselves, of course) leads to further oppression of women.
In the US: call on AAMCO to stop supporting Rush Limbaugh.
Revlon threatened to sue the Breast Cancer Fund for running a petition criticizing carcinogens in Revlon products.
I don't know whether there is a significant problem with those products, but this response is a wrong in itself.
The exploitative "tradition" of engagement rings was created by a marketing campaign during the 20th century.
Like many exploitative "traditions", this one takes advantage of some people's vulnerability to competitive consumption.
I've always felt an intuitive revulsion for such practices, the things that you're supposed to do "for" people you know whether they do any good or not. At some point in my teens I opted out from birthday presents and birthday cards. Not only did I resent the pointless effort of giving them, I didn't want to impose on anyone the pointless effort of giving them to me.
Chinese reporter Chen Yongzhou included a hint in his confession to show it was false.
Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef faces censorship by the TV channel as well as prosecution by the military government.
Uri Avnery speaks about what kind of Israel will exist in 90 years.
When Did "To Serve & Protect" Become "To Seize & Profit?"
Use of supposedly pest-resistant GMO cotton has led small Indian farmers to use more pesticide, and has not increased their production. They used it because the Indian government effectively pushed them to use it.
The House of Representatives voted to exempt derivatives from bank regulations, using a text written for them by Citibank.
Too bad Obama doesn't want to confront the banksters strongly. He is more on their side than ours.
Many women in Saudi Arabia endorse the extreme sexism of their own society.
It is clear that these women occupy rather privileged positions. Most Saudis are not rich, and the women who are not rich are not treated like queens. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see how patriarchy convinces women to support patriarchy.
NIST says it will audit all its encryption-related standards to see if the NSA has sabotaged them.
US citizens:
call for action
to stop unfair dismissal of pregnant workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Senate Republicans to stop the filibuster against the gender identity nondiscrimination bill.
US citizens: sign this open letter to maintain and increase social security benefits.
Egypt's military government is punishing use of a symbol used by Morsi supporters, and investigating TV comedian Bassem Youssef.
Relatives of disappeared journalists and dissidents in Sri Lanka asked the UK to put pressure on Rajapaksa's government, which they suspect was responsible.
Several European countries have developed mass surveillance in cooperation with the UK's surveillance agency GCHQ, which also helped them shrug off legal limitations.
Income-segregation in the US has increased greatly in the past few decades.
Economics students call for education in models other than neoclassical.
Neoclassical economics is based on a
long
list of assumptions that are often not true in real life.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
The grandchildren of Mamana Bibi
testified to
the US Congress about the drone attack that killed her.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Reportedly Chinese water boilers have been found with WiFi devices designed to do some harm.
A survey of the harm that ALEC-supported laws have imposed on ordinary Americans.
Congress should arrange to give Edward Snowden amnesty.
He deserves the highest possible honors from the US and every country.
The UK government plans to pay public defenders to betray their clients, rewarding these lawyers for every guilty plea.
Attendees at a summit meeting in Russia received official gifts that try to invade their computers.
Can anyone verify whether GNU/Linux systems are safe from them?
In Australian media, almost 1/3 of the articles that mention global heating cast doubt on its causation by human activity.
Uruguay is
removing
its troops from the UN force that keeps Haiti down.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Hamburg has a plan to cope with the effects of global heating by helping people walk and bicycle around the city.
An article by one who joined the protest that stopped New York Thug Commissioner Kelly from speaking at Brown University.
The event celebrated repression, surveillance and attacks on democracy.
It deserved a protest. The information in the article suggests that some part of the university has sold itself to the forces of repression. I think a long-term campaign to change that is called for.
Despite that, I don't think that they should have prevented the speech from occurring, because that turns into censorship.
Hillary Clinton was probably paid $400,000 for speeches at Goldman Sachs.
We can hardly expect her to do anything about the banksters' political power. I am almost certain I will vote Green again.
A US court has imposed secrecy on a report that some product might be dangerous. The public can't tell what product it was.
Can Congress, Hawks and the Israel Lobby Wreck the US-Iran Talks?
The US government is trying to stop someone from selling shirts with parodies of logos of certain US government departments.
ACLU: The US government spreads around any strange rumor that citizens call in as "suspicious" for whatever reason.
The complication of the servers in Obama's health care program reflects the wasteful complexity of the law, which results from Congress and Obama's unwillingness to set up a national health service.
The web site does not protect people's personal data from third parties.
Of course, it doesn't protect them from the state either. Although the US does not have the benefits of a national health service, its digital health records are quite easily available to the state.
US citizens: tell the US Department of Transportation not to allow dangerous oil trains.
Egypt's equivalent of Jon Stewart is threatened with prosecution for "insulting the military."
For insulting someone or something to be a crime is always an injustice.
Coastal hunting of porpoises and small whales in Japan kills thousands of them and could endanger some species. Some species may already have been hunted so far down they can't recover.
They may take revenge on people who eat the meat.
Another Snowden document says that the NSA has tapped cables connecting various Google and Yahoo data centers.
Syria's
chemical
weapons production and packaging facilities have been destroyed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-12 because the old link was broken.]
Destroying the weapons that already exist will take longer.
The UK will cut off one avenue for tax dodging, by requiring all companies to inform the public who really owns them.
This is important progress, but there are many other avenues for tax dodging.
A survey of panhandlers in San Francisco found that most of them get under $25 per day. Less than half take drugs or alcohol.
The US should be ashamed of doing so little for the poor that they need to do this.
Thailand's new Internet bill would allow the state to shut sites without a trial.
Sad to say, something like this is already happening in the US.
Saudi Arabia has arrested a columnist who speaks in favor of women's right to drive.
In the US, the maternal death rate is rising.
One possible contributing factor is the various attempts to discourage women from taking the safer course: an abortion.
Thugs brutally shut an exhibit in Bahrain showing how protests were crushed.
The US continues supporting the Bahraini regime, and has done so all through the suppression.
Documents show how Spain gives the NSA lots of information about people in Spain.
This does not excuse the NSA, it only inculpates the Spanish state.
Italy proposes to shut web sites if they don't delete material on demand within 3 days' time.
The ACLU says that The USA FREEDOM Act would take substantial steps to limit the use of general surveillance.
It is not clear is that this would limit surveillance enough to prevent whistleblowers from being caught, and that means it is not enough.
US National Public Radio is accepting lots of money from natural gas companies. (Nowadays this means fracking.)
In my experience, NPR typically runs advertisements in return for this money. (NPR calls the advertisements "enhanced underwriting" so as not to admit that they are advertisements.)
A Texas voter-suppression law tends to interfere with women voters.
Persistent drought, partly caused by our CO2 emissions, is destroying agriculture in parts of Texas.
Everyone: call on the New York Thug Department to investigate arrests for "shopping while black".
Divestment from fossil fuel companies is spreading.
In Australia, students from poor families are falling into a life of poverty because of low skills. I would expect it is the same in the US.
This may be partly due to insufficient spending on their education, but the fact that there are no longer decent jobs for most people could also to blame.
Honduras is about to have a presidential election, but the coup-installed government will rig it, more or less.
Clandestine gold mining in the Amazon is causing accelerating deforestation.
Glenn Greenwald discusses honesty in journalism and the factors that degrade it.
The witch hunt against pedophiles led a mob to kill a man.
This is an unusual extreme, but the same spirit that whipped up this mob can be found in other measures taken against adults that have sex (or even head in the direction of sex) with teenagers.
Another accused man was found dead at home when he was supposed to go to court.
Either anxiety killed him, or he committed suicide, or this was an unlikely coincidence.
In all such cases, the official accusations carefully suppress the distinction between rape and willing sex, even love. First they define willing sex as "rape", and then they try to bury all knowledge of whether it was willing sex or not. We're invited to judge all these men as rapists, which some of them are and some are not.
The most important point about bugging the phones of politicians in Germany, Spain and elsewhere is that the NSA was keeping Obama and Feinstein in the dark along with all of us.
To stop snooping on a few allied leaders is not sufficient remedy. The US should stop snooping on Americans, too (except those for whom there is a specific, constitutional court order).
Feinstein, aren't US citizens' rights as important as Merkel's?
Polio has broken out in Syria.
Hamad al-Naqi will be sentenced to 10 years in prison in Kuwait for tweeting insults.
Making insult a crime is an injustice, whether it's in Kuwait, France, Ecuador or Britain.
Congress plans to cut almost a million US veterans from food stamps, and other people too.
Only part of Texas's law to make abortion effectively impossible has been rejected in its first appeal.
People Who Live Downwind Of Alberta's Oil And Tar Sands Operations Are Getting Blood Cancer. The connection is not mysterious, given the measured levels of pollutants in the air there.
The NSA says that its massive collection of information on phone calls in Spain and France comes from intelligence agencies in those countries.
It's not clear whether France reports to the NSA about phone calls in France while Spain reports about phone calls in Spain, or whether France reports on those in Spain and Spain reports on those in France.
If someone wanted to present the situation as "US bad, Europe good", this would put a spike in it. But I think the issue is that states are massively surveilling their citizens, often with the help of other states, and this news only indicts more governments as participants.
Perpetual War: How Does the Global War on Terror Ever End?
The German government is tapping Skype calls, and is raiding Pirate Party politicians to try to find the leaker.
Everyone: tell FIFA to insist on no slavery in building facilities for the world cup in Qatar.
US citizens: tell
Congress not
to allow banksters to hold derivatives in FDIC-insured bank
subunits.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell
Congress not
to cut life-saving foreign aid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
What dish combines cocoa and eggplant?
Australia's PM argues against the danger of global heating using a fallacy so dumb that anyone can see through it.
It's not that he's stupid, but rather than he is confident that support for his statements will drown out all attempts to point out the flaw in them, thanks to the influence which the fossil fuel companies exercise over the mainstream media along with him.
A free and fair election requires freedom before voting day, as well as during the voting.
Over a million British children live in houses that are too cold for their health.
The Tories are working hard to increase the number, and Labour is aiming to maintain it.
Even Senator Feinstein, supposed to "oversee" the NSA, says she has been kept in the dark.
In general, Feinstein supports massive general surveillance, so an investigation won't do much good if controller by her and her like.
Investigating and exposing North Korea's crimes against humanity in the hope of convincing China to demand some improvement.
Australian thugs search the lunchboxes of asylum seekers' children on the way to and from school, and they don't say why.
US citizens: call on the FERC to stop rubber-stamping oil and gas pipelines and other dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure.
US citizens:
tell
the US government not to approve oil drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Since a spill there could be impossible to clean up, and its effects would make shore and marine life sick, we'd have to call the region the Upchukchi Sea.
Mexican popular militias try to suppress gangster murders where the state is no use.
Honduran dissident photographer Manuel de Jesús Murillo Varela was murdered, having been threatened for years and not given the protection that he needed.
A citizen planted flowers in unused flower boxes
in the DC Metro.
Someone
tore them out. Perhaps the Metro tore out the flowers because
they were unauthorized and unapproved.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
With JPMorgan Under Spotlight, Growing Calls to Jail the Banksters.
Obama seems to want planned Syrian peace negotiations to start an Oslo-style process of endless negotiations that arrive nowhere.
This reflects the fundamental problem of the Syrian rebels: they are divided, and the strongest factions are as vicious as Assad's regime.
The Taliban committed a Bush-style wedding massacre, and the villagers took revenge on a suspected Taliban sympathiser.
If enough Afgans feel this way, the Taliban will lose; but there's a long way to go before that happens.
A pessimistic view: plutocracy is entrenching itself to the point that it will cause a revolution.
I fear that that revolution would be the opportunity to eliminate all the people whose work is no longer needed by the elite.
If Obama Didn't Know About Merkel Spying, What Was It For?
The Greenpeace 30 illustrate the horrible conditions faced by Russian prisoners in general.
Don't forget that the US keeps thousands of prisoners in conditions which are similar except that solitary confinement is added.
"Rent to own" computers spied on their users.
With proprietary software, spying is only to be expected.
Obama has one more chance to show due attention to the growing danger of global heating: by blocking Keystone XL.
Dean Baker: Alan Greenspan Owes America an Apology.
There is no way to produce "sustainably" as much as humanity is producing now. We need to reduce wasteful consumption.
The article shows how the EROI (energy return on investment) for fossil energy is declining, because we have already extracted most of the easy-to-extract fossil fuel. However, it errs when asserting that renewable energy's EROI is part of the decline.
The EROI for renewable energy is increasing with advancing technology; meanwhile, we have a long way to go before it must decline because all the easy-to-collect renewable energy flow is already being utilized. Even when that happens, we will be able to continue steadily drawing the same amount of renewable energy each year at the same efficiency, as long as the Sun keeps pumping it out as now. In other words, the idea of sustainability does make sense when applied to renewable resources.
I don't think this invalidates the article's overall point however, that we must reduce overall resource use greatly rather than just make some activities "sustainable".
Articulating opposition to Islamist fundamentalism from a Muslim perspective.
US citizens:
call for an end to
gouging prisoners on phone calls.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Cholera has spread from Haiti to Mexico. It was introduced into Haiti by the UN "peacekeeping" forces that are actually there to keep control for the US.
Everyone:
call
on Denver not to ban the smell of marijuana.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Massive NSA spying on France, and not just "terrorists".
Google is using anticompetitive measures to prevent the manufacture of devices that are sold with any forked version of Android.
(The crucial point is on page 3.) This is even more important than the steady replacement of free apps with nonfree.
The important aspect is that includes any free version of Android, such as Replicant. This is not quite the same as the way Microsoft abuses its power in the PC market, but it has comparable effects.
Of course, if you want freedom, you shouldn't use any of the Google APIs, and Google Play (offering so many nonfree apps) is something to run away from.
The article talks about "open source" rather than "free/libre software", seeking as usual to avoid ethical opposition to nonfree software. Please don't imitate that practice! The way to encourage other people to think in terms of freedom is to raise the freedom issue visibly whenever it is relevant.
The UK allows some companies to impose filtering to block whatever sites they wish by calling them "pirate".
Even if a site really does do unauthorized redistribution, that is no justification for Internet filters.
US citizens: call on the FDA not to impose impossible burdens on fairly small farms.
The working American's lifestyle tends to lead people to spend money on things they don't need.
I'm happy to say that I don't buy anything to keep up with the Joneses, to fulfill a childhood vision of what my adulthood would be like, or to broadcast my status to the world. I do get some things to cheer myself up — mostly chocolate — and that cheers me up when I eat it.
Faux News is said to use sock-puppets against blog postings that criticize it.
US-based VPN companies discuss whether you can trust them not to serve as tracking arms for the NSA.
Thousands Demand End to Government Spying.
Organized crime is
involved
in recruiting workers for the Fukushima cleanup.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Since they skim the workers' pay, they reduce their effective wage. These dangerous and delicate operations need the best workers they can find.
US citizens: sign
this additional
petition to defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid against
cuts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
US thugs
invade
people's homes at night without identifying themselves, and if the
people prepare to fight the intruders, the thugs often kill them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
In 5 years, we will have a battle when Hollywood tries to extend copyright again.
We should shorten copyright instead.
Why AT&T shouldn't be allowed to end telephone regulation.
Companies say they will make some food products with less saturated fat, but the real danger may be from the sugar in them.
The witch-hunt for "pedophiles" has inspired overeager vigilantes to try to catch some — and if they don't find real ones, they make false accusations.
If an adult and a real 15-year-old agree to meet in a cafe, and if they later have sex, that doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong. That 15-year-old is clearly not being coerced or pressured. People should let them alone.
Remember the British school girl who ran away to France with her teacher, and later said, when he was on trial for "abducting" her, that she had asked him to run away with her so they could have some last time together?
That prosecution represented an attempt to impose a prejudice on reality. These vigilantes are motivated by the same prejudice.
Dick Cheney Feared Assassination by Shock to Implanted Heart Defibrillator.
Cheney's worries were entirely justified.
Rape is regularly used as a tool of cruelty in Syria.
Of all the loathsome acts described in this article, the second worst is that of the man who rejected his wife because she was raped. The worst of all is that of her father. Their attitude also inspires the rapes.
Film production in LA is disappearing as other places lure it away by offering tax breaks.
Cutting taxes to win business away from other jurisdictions is a form of "beggar thy neighbor": businesses play states and countries against each other to the detriment of all of them. Plutocrats' pet politicians might call this outcome success, but those that are loyal to their country should instead propose a treaty to ban competing via tax breaks.
France
refuses
to play this fool's game.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
A Chinese journalist confessed to making up stories about corruption, saying he was bribed to write them.
Next will he confess to making up false confessions?
Many companies are now exercising "investor-state" provisions that give them more rights in other countries than the citizens of those countries.
We can call them the "unequal treaties", and all of them should be abolished.
Forever war is forever profit — for some.
The right wing is winning the battle in Washington on a basic question: what is the economic problem that the US faces.
This relates to the political influence of plutocrats' money.
The voting principle for Americans should be, "Punish every expensive right-wing campaign." You can't go far wrong by marching towards the sound of the TV attack ads.
Of course, that heuristic is not guaranteed to be right all the time, but is usually right. The nasty things the ads accuse are probably misleading half truths. But even if once in a while the accusation is spot on, it is a side issue. The fact that the rich are paying to attack a candidate is an overwhelming point in her favor. Anything bad about her is secondary.
Thus, if you don't have time to study an issue or a race in depth, vote for the progressive side that the plutocrats attack.
California thugs shot a 13-year-old who was reportedly carrying a pellet gun that looks like an AK-47.
We can't take their word that this is what happened; the facts must be independently verified.
If the facts are as stated, I can't blame the thugs this time. If you carry a realistic replica of a deadly weapon, people will treat it as real. To give a child such a replica is terribly foolish; to have one is foolish too. If this starts to happen often enough to be more than a rare fluke, it would make sense to ban them. But I doubt that will happen.
Time for the Truth about 'Targeted' Killings and US Drones' Civilian Victims.
Why reinstating Edward Snowden's passport is an important issue.
About bills under consideration in the US Congress to curb general surveillance.
What the EFF recommends would be a step in the right direction, but in order to really stop general surveillance we need to prevent the creation of a massive dossier about each person.
Censorship is a bad way to try to address social problems, even really bad ones.
A Wisconsin court went to great lengths to respect human rights for a fetus, but not much for the woman it is in.
To take drugs that could cause abnormalities in the fetus is a grave act if the fetus develops into a damaged human being. It's legitimate for the state to take steps to prevent this, but imprisoning the mother-to-be doesn't seem very constructive, and neither was imposing conditions that caused her to lose her job.
The absence of universal medical care in the US seems to play a role in the problem. This woman can't afford to see a doctor.
However, there is a point I don't understand. When she was invited to take her drug under medical supervision, she declined. That sounds like gratuitous noncooperation, and doesn't make sense. But maybe she had a reason — for instance, would she have had to pay for it, which she could not afford?
Stores want to track customers by their mobile phones' WiFi MAC addresses. The EFF says that a proposed opt-out system is an inadequate safeguard.
As far as I'm concerned, just having a phone company track me (or you) is too much.
Japan is on the verge of passing a law to ban informing the public about government secrets.
Maine has found a way around US drug gouging by allowing reimportation of drugs exported from the US for sale in Canada and some other countries.
US officials' focus on the misguided goal of cutting the US deficit reflects the money they get from rich funders.
Reportedly the planned US-Europe free exploitation treaty, TAFTA, is going to include an "investor-state" provision that would elevate foreign companies above each of the countries involved.
TAFTA stands for "turn all freedom to ashes".
US citizens: sign this petition too against cuts in Social Security and medical care.
Due to changes in urban architecture, cities no longer offer places for children to play outdoors.
There may be other factors, including exaggerated fear of declining street crime.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Save America's Pollinators Act.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to put strict limits on CO2 pollution from
power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
A new scientific study estimates that 450,000 Iraqi civilians were killed as a result of the Bush invasion, through 2011.
Uri Avnery compares and contrasts the situation in Israel with apartheid in South Africa.
Bushbama's extension of NSA surveillance recapitulates Nixon.
Here's my idea on how to address this problem.
Letters about the flaws of neoclassical economics, which is economics as designed to justify the policies that rich people want.
An initiative petition in Switzerland proposes limiting an executive's
pay to
12 times
the least paid staff of the company.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
I agree with this in principle, but I fear it will lead to more subcontracting of the lowest-paid workers. Thus, it needs a companion measure to prevent a change in that direction. Since contracting out work is an avenue for so many abuses, including some that endanger workers' lives or encourage fraud, we need to limit it in any case.
Meet the Private Companies Helping Cops Spy on Protesters.
Murdoch's newspapers turn the facts upside down, condemning the US for fining fraudulent banks a small fraction of what they gained.
I've moved out most of the money I had in (what had merged into) a big bank. Have you?
Iraqis think their country should be united, but nobody sees how that could happen.
Iraq's divisions have been sucked into the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict, which is itself largely the result of Bush's invasion of Iraqi.
Robert Fisk says the US is taking the Sunni side, but the recent Saudi outburst seems to indicate that the rulers are not satisfied and want the US to do so even more strongly.
Hotter summers are killing people in Sweden, as well as China and the US.
Imagine how bad it will be when the average global temperature is 4C hotter, or even 6C hotter.
Canada is on track to exceed its 2020 CO2 emission target by almost 20%.
Report: Governors Engaging In Crony Capitalism Disguised As Economic Development.
Another earthquake caused a tsunami that
hit
the Fukushima area.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Fortunately it was small and did not affect the nuclear plants. But what about the next one? The cleanup will take decades. If a big tsunami comes in the coming year, it will wash away the used fuel that remains on the site. It could even cause a fission reaction if it pushes the used fuel rods, stored in a pool, together and causes criticality.
Have they built a tsunami defense dam to protect against this?
The head of the NSA said that the US should shut down journalism about massive surveillance.
Every NSA staffer, including him, has sworn to prevent the government from doing that.
GCHQ feared public and legal backlash if the extent of its spying on the public became known.
New Spanish pun about Christopher Columbus.
Egypt's military-dominated government proposes to legalize the killing of protesters, which is already its practice.
Monsanto's GMO corn failed in South Africa, as pests developed resistance, so now it is trying to push the same corn in the rest of Africa.
A thug who shot a schizophrenic man in Dallas, then tried to frame him, faces criminal charges.
It's standard practice for thugs to frame people; a fraction are caught, but even most of those are not prosecuted. Perhaps Chief Brown deserves the title of "policeman" instead of "thug".
Chinese torturers are on trial after they tortured a suspect to death.
ExxonMobil knows what effects global heating will have, and considers them an opportunity to extract more hard-to-get oil, which will cause even more heating.
You'd think they lived on another planet and didn't have to share ours.
Australia was warned years ago that global heating would lead to increased bush fires.
US citizens:
call
on the US to prosecute JP Morgan instead of negotiating with it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: rebuke CNN for its one-sided documentary to promote nuclear power.
US soldiers and officers in charge of nuclear weapons repeatedly show a shocking lack of discipline.
Israeli soldiers
shot
a Palestinian cameraman in the head with a rubber-coated bullet,
and he's now in the hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Israel has greatly increased the construction of colonies in Palestine.
Israel moved chemical plants into Tulkarem in Palestine so they could
spew
unregulated
pollution.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Former soldier Peter Van Buren's letter asking for a reduced sentence for Chelsea Manning (fka Bradley Manning).
The Israeli legislature is considering many bills to attack the human rights of Palestinians, and in some cases Israeli Arabs too, as well as a bill to rule out any territorial concessions in Jerusalem (which I suspect would include the nearby Arab towns that have been annexed to Jerusalem) and thus assure there is no peace agreement.
US citizens: call on Obama to reduce, not expand, arms sales.
US citizens: take the Social Security pledge.
US citizens:
tell
your Congresscritter to support banning brokers and investment
advisors from requiring their customers to agree to mandatory
arbitration.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
French advocates of boycotting Israel have been prosecuted and acquitted for this, over and over.
A Liberal Zionist calls for anti-occupation Jews to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions too.
The world's global heating negotiations won't dare confront the crucial point that there's a limited budget of carbon that we can afford to emit.
When Figueres says that allotting part of the carbon budget to each country "would presume that there is no advance in technology [to reduce emissions]", that is an error. It is just the opposite: if the US is allowed to release X more tons of CO2, and through advanced technology it cuts the CO2 release of a certain activity in half, it could therefore do twice as much of that activity.
The thoroughly fossil Australian government is burning a straw man to distract attention from a painfully hot fact: pumping greenhouse gases into the air makes for ever worse forest fires.
On a given day, causing "bushfire weather" does not imply causing a fire. However, over any length of time, causing more bushfire weather implies causing more fires.
Australian leader Abbott endorsed Indonesia's brutal colonization of West Papua.
Leaked documents show that Pakistani agencies cooperated with the CIA on drone attacks while the government of Pakistan denied this.
Nabeel Khoury, formerly of the US State Department, says that each drone attack gives the US 40 t0 60 new enemies.
A company bludgeoned Scottish workers into accepting big givebacks by threatening to shut the plant instead.
In such a situation, a government on the workers' side would have nationalized the plant for the depreciated value of the equipment, then resold it to the workers.
Movie companies are trying to play countries against each other to escape taxation.
For countries to compete in this way leads to loss for everyone. The whole idea is self-defeating and foolish — unless their real goal is to enrich the rich more, in which case it is a roaring success.
Rep. Grayson says, "Congressional oversight of the NSA is a joke".
Two Roma who accepted a baby from a woman who couldn't support another child now face charges of "child abduction".
That woman ought to have had an abortion rather than bring a child into the world that she could not support. However, to call these events "abduction" is a lie. When a law asserts a lie, that doesn't make the lie true, it only makes the law a liar.
Saudi women plan to protest by driving for the right to drive.
How members of the US Congress and their families profit from their "campaign contributions".
US citizens: tell Congress, cut the Pentagon, not Social Security or Medicare.
US citizens: call on the
senate not
to let Senator Cruz impose his will on the FCC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: join a protest on Nov 5 against Intercontinental Hotels for its collaboration in the occupation of Tibet.
US citizens: call on Obama
to remove all US
troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the US not to let JP Morgan deduct any of its penalty (for fraud) from its taxes.
Everyone: Rebuke McDonalds
for buying
a luxury jet while paying workers so little they need public
assistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
If McDonald says competitive pressures don't let it give workers a raise, it should support an increased minimum wage so that its competitors will have to do likewise.
Refuting the UK government's pro-GMO misinformation.
The UK government sold its post office for 40% of what it was told it could get.
Bad for the treasury, but great for the purchasers, whoever they were.
Their campaign to destroy the National Health Service by underfunding it is going great guns, as staff at many hospitals say the cuts threaten patients' safety.
$40 Million Allocated for Drone Victims Never Reaches Them.
India wants to legalize copying textbooks.
The third Koch brother, a fossil-fuel billionaire, is leading the fight against Cape Wind.
If he can prevent offshore wind power from taking off, his companies will be more profitable, and as they raise the temperature, his family will buy a way out of it.
How Much of JP Morgan's $13 Billion Fine Will Taxpayers Pay?
The absurd charge of "piracy" with 15 years imprisonment against the Greenpeace activists and their embedded journalists has been reduced to the absurd charge of "hooliganism", for which the penalty is 7 years.
At least it's a step forward.
Don't forget the US protesters who face 30 years in prison for their purely symbolic "damage" to a US nuclear base.
'Big Dollars, Little Sense': Community and Student Groups Debunk Charter School Mythology.
Senator Warren agrees: prosecute the banksters who committed fraud.
The lure of royalties from Chinese publication has corrupted many authors into approving political censorship of their books.
Global heating threatens beer, apples, and maple syrup. The end of American football would be a good thing, but not good enough to justify global catastrophe.
US textbook publishers stood up to demands from Texas Christians to undermine evolution in biology textbooks.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer says that air pollution is definitely linked to cancer.
Presently business-funded pundits will start grasping at straws to cast doubt on this conclusion.
US citizens: oppose cuts in food stamps.
US citizens: support Rep. Grayson's push for stricter regulations on large banks.
Corporations Claiming "Religious Liberty" Try to Infringe on Their Employees' Religious Liberty.
Prisoner Russell Shoatz, held in solitary confinement for 22 years, has asked the UN to investigate the practice, which is very widespread in the US.
NSA spying on Germany's highest officials has cost the US yet more international support.
Germans should be concerned about snooping by their own government, as well as by the US government. German snooping on them could be directly dangerous for them, whereas US snooping can only harm them on special occasions.
One brand of Sunni Islam says that women who don't have genital mutilation are "impure".
In the 2012 election, Obama received tremendous support from companies in digital and communication industries, perhaps explaining his continuation and intensification of Bush's surveillance.
Three UK thugs who lied about politician Andrew Mitchell (saying he called them "plebs") are getting repeatedly disciplined.
They should be punished, but what about when thugs lie about someone who isn't a Tory politician?
Countrywide, a major US mortgage company, has been convicted of fraud.
Hooray! But there are many other banks that committed fraud, and Obama let most of them off the hook.
Politicians like privatization of services because it enables them to duck responsibility for subsequent bad service.
Facebook graph search is the harbinger of many dangers if lots of people can analyze "big data" about other people.
The Canadian government sent thugs to attack nonviolent Native American anti-fracking protesters; the mainstream media are spinning it in favor of fracking.
The Theater of Security Agency is checking airline passengers' background extensively before they get to the airport.
If there is a serious reason to suspect someone might be of planning terrorism aimed at airplanes, it is more just to search him carefully than to arbitrarily stop him from flying. But such searches presume there is a real reason for concern. The TSA privately admits there isn't any, that the airport security operation is mere security theater, but they are prepared to spread distrust through society to carry it out.
A Problem With Discipline: The Guys In Charge Of Our Nuclear Arsenal Are Napping, Gambling and Otherwise Screwing Up.
Big clothing companies still have not agreed to pay compensation to the victims of last December's Rana Plaza factory fire in Bangladesh.
We should not leave this up to those companies. We should make the company that imports the goods and/or commissions their production responsible for (1) keeping track of subcontractor in its supply chain, and (2) applying Western standards of working conditions to all of them.
The issue applies also to palm oil production.
25 years of evidence show that global heating is increasing the danger of wildfires in Australia, but Australia's PM brashly denies the facts.
He could not have won the election if he were stupid, so the explanation must be something worse.
Meanwhile, Faux News promotes denial through false balance, which validates denialists even more than if it presented only them.
Everyone: call on Pakistan
to repeal
its deadly blasphemy law.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The prospects for Americans who work for a living (or need to) are getting ever worse; but methods to reverse these developments are known.
Canadian citizens: support the lawsuit against massive surveillance.
US citizens: tell Senator Durbin not to cut Social Security or medical care.
The siege of Gaza, which
forces
people to extract too much water from the local aquifer, will make
it permanently salinified and useless in a few years.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Islamic extremists in Egypt attacked a wedding celebration and killed people.
The Bush forces did that in Iraq, with far more casualties, but not intentionally as this time.
It appears that the violent massacre of the Muslim Brotherhood protesters has lead to a spreading violent Islamist uprising. The Islamists were not the initial aggressors; the military attacked them first. However, the Islamists' choice of targets shows that it doesn't take much to get Islamists to kill innocent people that they have dehumanized.
I think this will lead most Egyptians to hate the Islamists even more. I won't blame them for that, but they will be playing into the military's hands if they don't aim for democracy.
The US executive branch has lied to the Supreme Court about NSA surveillance, as well as to Congress and the public.
Major Loopholes in Privacy Regulation — EU Parliament Must Stand For Citizens.
Data Protection Vote — One Step Forward, Two Big Steps Backwards.
While Australian politicians talk about the cost of avoiding global heating, Australia is experiencing the high cost of the early stages of global heating.
The pesticides used on GMOs in Argentina seem to be causing a surge in
cancer,
birth defects, and other diseases.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Some US cities are reversing past privatizations of important services such as water supply.
Obamacare's startup IT problems were caused by rip-offs by private contractors.
How Apple makes it easy for the NSA to collect users' address books.
Experian sold personal data on 500,000 people to a company that made them available for "identity theft".
Ivan MacFadyen sailed across the Pacific and found it a desert filled with human junk, where he used to find fish.
Endorsement of fructose in food is based on mistaken science.
An EU Parliament committee voted to stop exempting US data processing companies from EU data protection laws.
This is one step in a long process, but it is a good one.
The trail of horsemeat in discount "beef" burgers in the UK is quite complex.
The same complex business arrangements lead to contaminated food in the UK, and factory fires in Bangladesh. For public safety, we must not allow supply chains to be so complex. We must require registration of these details such that business can't shift around so easily. It might also be wise not to allow chopped meat to be shipped internationally.
I wonder if the reason such complex supply chains are frequent is because they provide opportunities to hide abuses. Otherwise, each level would tend to increase costs.
US universities impose broad and intolerable surveillance on students and staff.
The US military is so powerful that no rival can defeat it, but when used, instead of a victory it achieves devastation.
China is extending hydroelectric power by leaps and bounds.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that US drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan are war crimes.
They also warn that others are getting drones and will use them against Americans.
What Fine? Why JP Morgan Is Laughing All the Way to the Bank.
Bankers should go to jail for those crimes.
The Australian wildfires are causing hazardous air pollution in a large area.
A list of food companies that paid secretly to defeat Washington state's initiative for GMO labeling.
Some scientific journals now refuse to publish research sponsored by tobacco companies, which have in the past tried to spread false doubt based on distorted science.
Let's Get This Class War Started.
'Shock Doctrine' Americana: Endless War as the Ultimate Business Model.
The Food and Agriculture Organization says that 75% of crop diversity was lost during the 20th century.
The use of GMOs is now destroying even more.
The TSA (Theater-of-Security Agency) tested passengers' drinks for explosive — drinks they had purchased inside the terminal.
Of course, the imaginary would-be terrorist could easily avoid this obstacle: he only had to wait until getting on the plane before mixing the hypothetical dangerous substance with water received from the flight attendant. Good thing he doesn't exist.
Another clever TSA trick: ordering all the travelers in the security check area to freeze instantly, and menacing them if they don't.
Reports from more victims: http://www.infowars.com/confirmed-the-tsa-is-ordering-travelers-to-freeze-on-command/
The reason is, there's no telling what they might have to do to stop the imaginary would-be terrorist, so they must drill us into unthinking instant obedience as a precaution.
Now that we know that would-be terrorist does not exist, let's make the Theater-of-Security Agency not exist.
Argentina: Case Study in Perils of Pesticide-Heavy GMO-Crop Boom.
Although "Roundup-ready" corn supposedly permits the use of a small amount of herbicide, the amount needed has been increasing as weeds develop resistance, and previous techniques employed a clever combination of methods to avoid pesticides.
Considering ethical issues raised by AI programs applied to people's medical records, or to driving cars.
The ethical issues mentioned in this article are not the biggest ones that these technologies raise.
For medical records (including prescriptions), the biggest issue is not whether IBM's program should be allowed to chew on them, but a logically prior issue: whether everyone's medical records should be put in a centralized data base where the state can trivially look at them, even in less sophisticated ways.
For driverless cars, assuming are as safe as human drivers, who to blame for the occasional accident will be a side issue. The biggest issues will be whether they construct for each person a travel dossier that GCHQ or the NSA can study years later, and whether they condemn today's millions of paid drivers to the underclass of the permanently unemployed.
In the times of increasing unemployment, and redistribution of wealth to the rich, efficiency is a misguided goal.
Report on the torture of political prisoners in Ethiopia.
The US also forces prisoners to hold painful "stress positions".
Just as negotiations with Iran offer some hope of success, the US congress wants to impose additional sanctions.
I think it is clear what's going on. The powerful Zionist lobby, backed by the money of lunatic right-wing Christians who think they can cause the second coming of Jesus if they rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, wants Iran to remain an enemy of the US, would like to prevent any deal.
NSA massive surveillance of French phone calls has created a diplomatic incident.
Massive surveillance of citizens is just as bad when the French government does it as when the US government does it.
It's awfully ironic that Hollande threatened the US with blocking a treaty that threatens democracy and that no country should ever sign.
Nuclear energy's string of broken promises shows that the the UK's new nuclear reactors are a stupid deal. Now they have promised many sorts of subsidies, while pretending they are not subsidies.
I wonder who convinced them to do this, and how much it cost.
The Pebble Mine in Alaska is not dead.
"Constant agony": Anti-Torture Activist Undergoes Public Force Feeding To Protest Gitmo.
Uranium Ore Tempts Tanzania to Dig Dangerously.
The Yes Men Pose As Oil Executives.
Right-wing states have denied medical coverage to 5 million poor Americans.
Washington State has sued the Grocery Manufacturers Association for disguising payments to campaign against the state's GMO labeling initiative.
Fukushima cleanup workers are badly paid and their morale is suffering. That tends to provoke mistakes, which are occasionally very dangerous. For instance, any mistake in handling the very hot and dangerous "spent fuel" in Fukishima #4 could lead to spewing far more radioactive material.
Ralph Nader explains how the Democratic Party has faded to the point where it has no positive program to offer.
A few Democrats, such as the two new senators from Massachusetts, do have good positive programs.
Most, including Obama, endorse the harmful goal of budget cuts, which serves only the rich.
A report from a journalist who spent a day with a thug patrol in London, watching how people are searched.
It appears that some sort of grounds are required to search someone, that searches are not totally arbitrary. That is a step in the right direction; I don't think New York thugs need any grounds to search someone on the street.
I expect the thug department picked a model officer for the journalists to follow, and that he was on his best behavior. Thus, the usual facts are probably worse than the picture this article presents.
JP Morgan may have to pay 13 billion dollars as a penalty for various crimes connected with the housing and fiscal crisis.
I wonder how this compares with what it gained from the crisis.
Ransomeware programs encrypt all the data on a computer, then demand a payment to get the decryption key.
When the article says this "only affects PCs", I think that means it only affects Windows and that a PC running the GNU/Linux system is safe.
However, the crucial technical question is about your mail-reading program through which the program is introduced. If you ask to see more than a one-line summary of the message, will that run programs in the message? We've known for years in the free software community that that must not happen.
With my mail reader, Rmail in Emacs, I'd have to go out of my way to copy the program into a file to get it to run. I would hardly do that for a program sent to me by a bank.
Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President's Email.
"Investor-state" treaties, which allow companies to sue governments in kangaroo courts, are theoretically unjust. Now the practical harm is showing up around the world.
GMO agriculture inherently lowers the diversity of crops, and makes agriculture more vulnerable to biological and climatic disasters.
An Irish environmental group will sue the UK for planning to build a nuclear power plant just 150 miles away from Ireland.
Ireland will be vulnerable to fallout emitted if the plant has a disastrous accident, if the wind is from the east. Of course, the UK will be vulnerable if the wind is from the west.
The promise to pay twice the going price for electricity represents a giant subsidy. No one wants to build a nuclear power plant without a giant subsidy.
Half of young Japanese women (and a large fraction of young men) have no romantic relationship. The result is a big decrease in births.
I am sad for the people who have despaired of finding love. I understand how women reject marriage if the price is losing their careers. The characteristics of normal Japanese marriage strike me as very unpleasant, and well worth avoiding; but a couple could decide together to have a different sort of marriage. As for the decrease in births, given that the human population is increasing, I think that is a good thing.Smooth Criminal: Chevron Sues Rainforest Communities It Contaminated.
Many Egyptians admire the head of the army for his violent suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood. He may run for president and win honestly.
Explaining how mediums and ouija boards fool people, and how unconscious decisionmaking fools people too, in a sense.
As the Australian right-wing government goes all-out to fry the world, Australia is already burning. The Labor Party seems to have made the carbon tax a fundamental position.
A partially communist village provides a spot of hope in the state-imposed despair of Andalucía in Spain.
Earthjustice reports several court victories to protect whales, coral reefs, and the environment in the US.
Mexico has prohibited genetically modified corn. And other victories against hidden GMOs in the US.
3D-printed guns, good for just one shot, might really be dangerous.
It would be silly to make a fuss about the possibility of bringing such guns into airplanes or trains. There are other deadly weapons that current airport security won't stop, such as a strong thread with which someone might be strangled. With either weapon, a killer might manage to kill someone before being overcome by other passengers, but this danger is too small to be worth much protective effort. It's only barely worth worrying about bringing real guns onto an airplane, since the shooter couldn't crash the plane; if he just wants to kill some people, a shopping mall or city street is a softer target.
However, assassinating an official with a printed gun might be a significant danger, and might call for new security measures on government offices.
Ecuadorian Women March in Defense of the Amazon.
Corruption in Peru Aids Cutting of Rain Forest.
The US has still given no explanation of why it barred German anti-surveillance activist Ilija Trojanow from visiting the US for a conference.
He has personal experience with being spied on in East Germany, where his family was suspected of supporting freedom and human rights. Now the US is following in East Germany's footsteps.
US citizens: call on Congress to abolish the debt ceiling.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call for ending the required minimum quota for imprisoning illegal immigrants.
US citizens: Call on Secretary of State Kerry to restore Snowden's passport.
Russians seem to hate the Greenpeace protesters irrationally.
These Russians have been fooled, like the non-rich Americans that think they will be better off if we burn oil from the Arctic Ocean. In the latter case, they have been fooled by media manipulation.
In the Russian case, it is Putin's media manipulation.
Inefficient systems are often preserved because someone benefits from them, and sometimes the benefits are not obvious.
What's needed for compassionate care for old people.
UK dissidents will sue the state for keeping records on them as "extremists".
Thousands of poor Britons are being sued for new tax payments they can't afford.
The court notices urged them not to attend the hearing so that they would lose by default. This reminds me of the way Republicans spread lies about the time and place of voting so as to sabotage poor voters.
Australia's government is looking for budget cuts, and first in line are research grants for clean energy.
This will knock down the economy, as well as making it harder to avoid burning fossil fuels, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Statistically analyzing surveys from different parts of Amazonia suggests that there are 16,000 different species of trees in the whole forest.
1/3 of these species are estimated to have under 1000 members. Practically speaking, there is no chance of identifying them.
Think of that when people talk about preserving species outside their ecosystems, or perhaps preserving tissue or DNA. If the Amazon forest dries out and burns up, it will never come back.
Apple's iMessage Security Claims 'Basically Just Lies', Say Researchers.
Here are technical details.
In the crushing tyranny of Iran, even walking a dog is dangerous.
Research into the historical climate of today's Sahara desert shows that it dried up in just 100 or 200 years.
This rapid change, about 5000 years ago, was caused by a much slower change in the Earth's orbital parameters. The crucial point is that a slow increase in heat coming in can make a rapid change in climate.
We're now causing a much faster change in heat coming in (or, more precisely, a faster reduction in how much heat can escape into space each night). Maybe regions will become deserts in 10 years.
Nebraska's requirement for parental consent forces teenagers to have children because they are "not mature enough" for an abortion.
A secret TSA document admits what its critics have said: its airport security activities are mostly security theater. They would be ineffective against the supposed threat, which fortunately does not exist anyway.
This implies that the TSA recognizes that the supposed reason for the no-fly list is invalid. Meanwhile, Senator Feinstein called for putting people on the no-fly list based on a secret tip from relatives.
That the TSA concealed this from the court is even more outrageous than the way it treats us.
Let's roll down the curtains on the TSA!
A Moroccan editor has been imprisoned for posting a link to a news article that linked to a "terrorist" video on YouTube.
The fact that the video is on YouTube, a US company, adds additional absurdity to the accusation. However, posting links should never be a crime.
I've been told that Morocco liberalized its laws around 2000 to respect human rights more, but Dubya pressured Morocco to retract part of the change. In general, "anti-terrorist" laws are more dangerous than terrorists.
Bullying often results from being bullied.
The UK Labour Party is promising to be harsher towards the poor than the Tories.
The unions should kill off the Labour party and make a new one.
The UK government is trying to ruin the National Health Service by cutting funds. Sometimes there is a 7-hour wait for an ambulance.
US citizens: urge Obama not to negotiate with
Republicans about
cuts in Medicare and Social Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
How the campaign to free Canadians Tarek Loubani and John Greyson from nonsensical imprisonment in Egypt worked, and what it tells us about Egypt.
They got out after two months. Many innocent people imprisoned by the US in Guantanamo are still there.
The population of monarch butterflies has crashed.
Snowden learned the hard way that reporting problems to management was useless, when he reported a security hole in the CIA's software to his boss and got slapped down as a troublemaker.
The Drone Paradox: use of drones seems to be more tolerated than would be use of manned bombers or cruise missiles, even in the same situation.
A CNN TV program asked rich CEOs what to do about the high level of economic inequality in the US. Naturally they suggested not doing anything about it.
Don't believe the New York Times when it says that defaulting on loans generally harms a country.
TSA Loudspeakers Threaten Travelers With Arrest For Joking About Security.
Perhaps this is meant to refer to threats as jokes, not jokes in general. If so, they should say so.
Another Canadian oil train has exploded.
Fortunately, this time the inhabitants of the town were not killed, but I fear their houses were destroyed.
Libya is on the verge of breaking up.
There is nothing sacred about the frontiers of Libya, which was created artificially after World War I, fusing together various provinces of the Ottoman empire. However, renewed war would be very bad. I hope that they reach some sort of settlement without a lot of bloodshed.
Is it better to farm rhinos for their horns, or keep a ban on trading their horns?
I've read that it is possible to inject something into the horn that makes it unsalable while not hurting the rhino. Isn't that the ideal solution?
Using Facebook graph search makes it a lot easier to find details of someone's life in order to attack him.
Chile: Led by Students, Tens of Thousands March for 'Free Public Education'.
Turn
Back the Clock on FISA Courts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
NSA surveillance was used to find Hassan Ghul, an agent of al Qa'ida, and send a drone to kill him.
I would not criticize the US government for spying on the foreign communications of specific people for specific reasons in order to catch people such as Hassan Ghul, or thwart their plans. However, spying on all of us is a different issue. It has nothing to do with finding someone in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, drone attacks are bad for other reasons.
The remaining US family farms
are waiting
to be sold to agribusiness if nothing is done.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The Wall Street Journal blocked reporters from reporting on the scandal of journalistic spying by Murdoch's other newspapers.
Puncturing Feinstein-NSA claims
about massive
surveillance and one of the Sep 11 hijackers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The US government ignored warnings about that hijacker, which would have provided grounds to tap his phone.
The Republicans' US government shutdown has done tremendous damage to scientific research, in many cases causing a lasting setback.
The Republicans probably consider this a victory, because they consider science a threat to their fantasy world.
It would be useful to prepare a reserve fund to preserve strains of lab mice, for when the Republicans try it again.
The Republican Party pretends to represent black Americans, in addition to pretending to represent white Americans.
Snowden explains how he made sure Russia could not get any US secrets
from him: he
got rid of all his secret files before he went to Moscow.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
He also explains why reporting the injustices of the NSA's massive surveillance to the people responsible for doing it would have been completely futile.
I admire Snowden tremendously. He recognized what needed to be done, and he planned it with the greatest care. Thank you, Snowden!
Only one thing went wrong: he got stuck in Russia. He must hate receiving shelter from Putin.
isoHunt, a search engine for torrents, was compelled by an MPAA lawsuit to shut down.
Since isoHunt was a profitmaking activity, it was is on the border of what I think should be legalized. Perhaps its shutdown is not wrong. But any victory for the MPAA is a defeat for Internet users.
There is no pause in global heating, but if you ignore 98% of what's going on, you can pretend there is one.
UK ministries are illegally keeping millions of old files secret.
A movement has emerged against privatization of trains in the UK.
High school students in Paris went on strike after one of them was deported.
In general, I don't think any country is obliged to accept as an immigrant anyone that wants to move there. However, it appears that Leonarda Dibrani is an example of a special case: people who have been in the country since such a young age that they don't know any other home.
Albert-László Barabási: Scientists must spearhead ethical use of big data.
The idea that you should "own" your personal data sounds nice, if you wish to think of human rights as deriving from property. I think that is perverted: human rights are more important and fundamental than property. In any case, it is clearly insufficient to protect us from dangerous surveillance. What you own, you're entitled to sell, and businesses are adept at getting most people to "voluntarily" give up enough data to make a tremendous dossier.
We need to ensure that systems do not ask people to surrender such data.
How Ronald Reagan's bogus idea of "trickle down", which George I called "voodoo economics", threw the US into decline and debt.
As a means to achieve its stated, supposed aims, Reaganomics was a failure. But he probably wasn't sincere about it anyway. Considered as a scheme to enrich the rich and screw the rest of us, it was a great success.
The Strange Stalinization of the American Right.
Stalinist political authoritarianism has little to do with the political questions that distinguish right-wing and left-wing.
It does not surprise me that the Tea Party has revealed that its true colors are the confederate colors of a slave system. But that does not mean they are racist. They are equal opportunity rip-off artists, eager to impoverish most Americans of whatever race.
Captain Swenson received the medal of honor for saving wounded soldiers, after having been subject to many lies as a whistleblower.
The Hungarian government has tried repeatedly to shut an art exhibit in Austria that compares a racist right-wing Hungarian party to Nazis.
I don't generally compare the parties and officials I criticize to Nazis, because they usually don't deserve it. The article suggests that that party does deserve it.
Ian Dunlop, former coal executive, asks shareholders of a mining company to make him their representative in the annual meeting so as to accuse the company of sabotaging environmental protection.
Everyone: urge the leaders of Brazil, India, South Africa and the EU to pressure Russia to free the Greenpeace protesters facing absurd criminal charges.
US citizens:
call
for an investigation of a judge who denied a 16-year-old an
abortion from his personal bias.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
It is crazy to demand that minors get permission for an abortion, but not get permission to have a baby. The abortion is safer in every sense.
In 17 states, most students in public school are from poor families.
I wonder what fraction of school-age children in those states are from poor families. That fraction has increased quite a bit thanks to plutocratist policies.
Progressive Insurance misleads people about what it can do with the data it gets from its in-car tracking device, and the data might cost drivers dearly.
Some of the arguments in the article seem mistaken to me. Even though "telematics devices" commonly include GPS, it doesn't follow that everything which is called a "telematics device" has a GPS. The fact that the patent cites the possibility of a GPS also doesn't imply this device has one. Perhaps the company is telling the truth when it says there is no GPS in the device.
But it's a fact that cell phones are tracked all the time by triangulation even without GPS. Sending reports in real time by a cell phone connection makes this device an injustice; that practice ought to be illegal. The data should be saved in the device, which the driver would hand in from time to time.
I refuse to carry a tracking device on my person, and I would not allow one in my car either.
In addition, the device should not record any data except the data that are supposed to be used. If it is meant to check for certain risky driving practices, it should only record those. For instance, if the issue is accelerating very rapidly or braking hard, it should record instances of those, but should not record acceleration or breaking when they are not excessive — or the speed.
With these changes, the device would be acceptable.
An Australian legislator plans to sue the author of ad that pointed out how he changed to support coal mining and trash the Great Barrier Reef, and suggested that "they got to him" to change his mind.
This change of position must have an explanation, and he has not presented a plausible one.
Australian scientists are considering trying to relocate wildlife to new areas as global heating makes their existing habitat uninhabitable.
Organisms do try to shift their range, but they run into trouble because many of them can't shift fast enough to keep up with heating at the rate it is occurring.
The UN joins Malala Yousefzai in concluding that US drone attacks are unjust and fuel hatred.
Wildfires have destroyed hundreds of homes in Australia, and it's still early spring.
"Normally" the fire season would not even have started yet, but thanks to global heating, this is likely to become the new normal, until it gets even worse.
Baltimore tried to ban protests in the city center. The ACLU made it change policy.
Blogger Arrested for Posting Cartoons of Algeria's President.
Obama, enemy of the fourth amendment as usual, asked the Supreme Court not to consider a case about NSA surveillance, claiming it has no jurisdiction.
EU citizens: tell the European Parliament you want strong data protection.
Amory Lovins describes the tremendous potential for improvements in energy efficiency in cars and homes.
The government of Gujarat, which is Hindu nationalist, is trying to harass the Dalits that converted to Buddhism.
The law claims to protect "religious freedom", but its real aim is to try to stop Dalits from officially ceasing to be considered Hindus.
How the Bush regime forced the ouster of Jose Bustani a head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, then lied about it.
Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance.
Collecting a dossier of everywhere every car has been is too much surveillance; it should be illegal to make or operate such equipment.
Is the NSA blackmailing officials?
The UK government will invite Chinese companies into planned UK nuclear power rectors.
Do they want these plants to have accidents?
I'm not the only one who sees danger in this.
Fossil fuel companies want us to celebrate because there is even more fossil fuel than was previously believed.
The only problem with them is that burning them would cause global heating catastrophe.
The UK government wants to promote oil extraction in the Arctic.
This is what Naomi Klein called "extractionism": they regard nature and other people as resources to be used up. It's a murderous plan.
Human agriculture needs the genetic diversity provided by small farms, but unjust laws have wiped out 75% of the crop diversity that we once had.
If plant variety monopolies reduce crop diversity, they are doing the opposite of their purpose, and that is sufficient grounds to repeal them. Of course, the treaties that require these monopolies must be torn up, for many other reasons.
A study estimates that vehicle exhaust and factory fumes cause 230,000 cases of lung cancer annually.
The first survey of slavery says that 29 million people are enslaved. Half of them are in India.
The UK thugs who accused a politician of calling them "plebs" seem to have lied in multiple ways.
There are plenty of true reasons to condemn Tory politicians, but that doesn't justify lying about them.
How "stand your ground" laws give everyone a license to kill.
A student was suspended from school in South Carolina for bringing to school a drawing of a nonrealistic bomb, imitating a video game.
"Zero tolerance" is a damaging practice, and it deserves condemnation in general. What it means in practice is, "We have to be idiotic because we made an idiotic rule and now we have to follow it."
Note how the school officials duck the question of whether their actions are legitimate by claiming to protect the privacy of the victim. That's a standard symptom of abuse of power.
The students now have a great chance to take those officials down a peg with an "I am Spartacus" response. Imagine if 50 of the best students hand the principal similar bomb drawings and say, "I'd like to take a few days off from school, so now you have to suspend me!" They would find a way to change this idiotic rule.
Everyone: call on the New York Times to explain budget figures as a fraction of the total.
Everyone: call on Coca Cola and Pepsico to stop buying sugar from land grabbers.
Some US towns created by wealthy people to cut their taxes tried outsourcing the entire town government to a company. Of course, they got shafted.
Privatizing government services is generally harmful, since the company has to mistreat someone in order to make a profit. The main exception is when the privatization results in giving the public a competitive market with a considerable number of providers.
Although these towns have stopped outsourcing their whole governments, they continue to abandon the rest of their county, and the rest of their country, with the typical callousness of the rich, who wish poor Americans would crawl away to the cemetery and drop dead, after extracting from them whatever useful labor can be got from them.
Those rich people deserve to be slapped down. When non-plutocrats retake control of the Georgia legislature they should put those towns back into the counties they have tried to abandon.
False balance — giving crackpots equal prominence with real experts — gives the crackpots even more influence than presenting them alone.
This is what makes the theocrats' scheme of "teaching the controversy" about evolution so harmful. The fossil fuel companies' paid global heating deniers use it too.
Poverty isn't due to welfare, any more than sickness is due to hospitals.
Snapchat photos can only be seen for a short period of time by their intended recipients, but if the state gets them first, it can see them as long as it wants.
Note that this system depends on nonfree software. The feature that makes them disappear is a form of DRM.
Global heating seems to be devastating the moose population.
Global heating endangers the colorful fall foliage of New England.
Already leaves are turning color two weeks later than they did 30 years ago, but future effects may be more than a mere change in schedule.
Kaua'i has passed the law requiring information about pesticide use.
The EFF is suing to uncover hidden government use of telephone metadata surveillance which was concealed when people were put on trial.
Obama has given weapons manufacturers a big gift by eliminating limits on arms exports.
The corruption of the UK government by banks is being extended to Chinese banks.
The UK needs to recover its sovereignty from these banks, which would include abolishing the City of London which serves as their political instrument.
10 reasons not to trust claims national security is threatened by leaks.
Besides, we can't trust anything they say. We know they are ready to lie whenever it suits them.
Republicans appear to have caved in and allowed the US government to resume operations.
The ability of Democrats to face them down is potentially good. Now all we need is to elect Democrats that stand for most people's interests and freedom, unlike Obama.
In the US:
demand
that US fast food chains pay their workers $15 an hour.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your senators to oppose CISPA.
Yes, that monster has come back to life. Politicians such as Senator Feinstein, that want total surveillance, are pushing it again.
The US is harassing the friends of Ibragim Todashev, who was shot dead by an FBI agent while several agents were interrogating him in his home.
The false accusation that he tried to attack them (he'd have to have been crazy to try, under the circumstances, unless he had super powers) is standard practice for thugs.
We have no way of knowing whether Todashev really confessed to involvement in murder. It might be true, or it might be another lie. If it's true, he deserved a trial, not summary execution.
The US had no obligation to extend his girlfriend's visa; deporting her straightaway for overstaying would have been legitimate. However, to extend the visa, then cancel it because she gave an interview to a magazine, is dangerous injustice. Never mind whether it is fair to her: it attacks journalism, and that threatens all Americans,
Perhaps Todashev revealed, when interrogated, some sort of knowledge that the US government did not want us to find out, and killing him was a way to suppress it. Perhaps an FBI agent felt insulted, lost his head, and shot Todashev in the heat of anger. Perhaps the agents wanted to pin a murder on him and did not want him around to deny it. We have no way of knowing, but it's clear that that agent must be prosecuted.
The FBI has a "time-tested" procedure for investigating shootings by its agents, which always concludes they were justified.
The plutocratist extremists of "Fix the Debt" are now trying to use the government shutdown (engineered by plutocratist extremists) to justify their attack on Americans' retirement funds.
Plutocratist extremists in Congress are attacking them too.
Under public pressure, Israel cancelled a plan to force Palestinians to leave their homes for a military training exercise.
BMW and Daimler used the complicit German government to
block
an EU requirement to limit the CO2 emissions of cars.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Half the fast food workers in the US depend on public assistance.
Many other low-paid workers are in the same boat. We need a higher minimum wage, and it must include all workers.
But more change is needed: businesses should not be taxed more for employing more workers.
The UK spy agencies misled Parliament when they wanted a law to allow broad surveillance, concealing the fact that they were already doing it.
A couple of state departments in Illinois are getting into hot water for trying to teach kids to love coal.
Dear President Obama, What Have You Fixed by Meeting Malala?
What Obama can't stand about Snowden is Snowden's patriotism. It's the same patriotism that compelled other whistleblowers to act.
Colombian farmers trying to recover land that was extorted from them by the paramilitaries face threats, even murder.
The paramilitaries are right-wing thugs that were linked to cronies of former president Alvaro Horrible. They were the worst terrorists in Colombia, and maybe still are.
Russian opposition politician Navalny will
be barred
from elections for many years.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Real wages in the UK continue falling due to austerity policies.
The UK government is pushing for an investigation of the Guardian for publishing Snowden's disclosures.
The principal threat to the freedom and well-being of Britons is the UK government, with its austerity and its total surveillance.
Related wild plants and forgotten crops offer a way to achieve the results that some hoped to get from genetic engineering.
Iran has proposed a plausible framework for an agreement on uranium enrichment.
Ireland will prohibit one form of tax avoidance scheme.
If you come across an analysis of how much effect this will or won't have, I'd be glad to see it.
A Tamil refugee in Australia, imprisoned on suspicion without a hearing, tried to commit suicide.
If I understand the article right, he despaired because the new government cancelled plans to give hearings in such these cases.
The Sandy Hook elementary school is being demolished under tight security.
This seems like a silly waste of money to me. It can't help the people who were shot; nothing can help the dead. As for their families, it doesn't really help them either; it only encourages them not to recover.
The constructive thing would be to repair the building and put it back to use, or turn it into a memorial to campaign for better gun control.
Google+ users are protesting Google's plan to use their names and faces in advertisements by putting Eric Schmidt's photo in their profiles.
I post this because I find it a good hack; but if you use Google+, I suggest that rather than joining this hack, you stop using it. Communications services that require users to give their real names are a threat to privacy. I urge you to join me in rejecting Google+ until they change that policy.
Everyone: tell Yelp's CEO to stop supporting ALEC.
ALEC is a right-wing scheme by which businesses twist state legislators to pass the bills those businesses want.
US citizens: campaign to protect Washington State and the Earth's atmosphere from a planned giant coal export terminal.
Everyone: sign this campaign to abolish weapons of mass destruction world wide.
Unregulated US chemical plants keep exploding, sometimes killing bystanders. There are 500 plants in which one accident could threaten 100,000 people.
This dwarfs the danger of terrorism. So why does the US spend so much on the Committee for Public Safety (better known as the Department of Homeland Security), and hardly anything on inspecting and regulating chemical plants? I suspect a few reasons:
The level of soot pollution correlates with low birth weight.
Japan pressured Indonesian tyrant Suharto
to ban
an Indonesian book about the Indonesian "comfort women".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
I read about 1/3 of the book, as part of practicing Indonesian. Many of these women were so ashamed of how they had been treated that after the war they didn't try to contact their families, which simply regard them as lost.
How absurd it is to be ashamed because someone else did wrong to you! But that's the twisted idea that patriarchal society teaches to women.
The NSA has collected millions of email address books, buddy lists, etc.
Mistakes at Fukushima may be the result of poor morale of workers.
TEPCO could fix the problem by paying them more and giving them good benefits. Hiring through contractors is generally going to lead to bad morale.
Americans parents have stopped insisting that their children contribute to household chores.
A sonar system used to map the ocean floor seems responsible for causing 100 whales to strand themselves on Madagascar.
Some sonar systems produce extremely loud sound that can deafen whales or drive them frantic to escape. The sound does not penetrate the air, so I suspect that stranding themselves is a way to escape the sound. However, when whales strand themselves, it is usually fatal.
The threat to democracy is not subversion but superversion by the plutocrat class that has seceded from all countries.
The UN Committee on World Food Security has sold out to biofuel interests.
Specifically, the kind of biofuels that substitute for growing food, and use so much fertilizer that they don't reduce fossil fuels.
Other biofuels that don't compete with crops might be a good thing, but they aren't ready for production yet.
China conscripts students to work under inhumane conditions in factories making Apple products, Playstations, and other computer products.
A freak early blizzard killed tens of thousands of cattle in South Dakota.
I wonder if global heating had something to do with it.
Qatar arrested two German journalists who took video of the working conditions of migrant workers.
At least they were released later. Obama is not so forgiving to whistleblowers, and compare this also with the ag-gag laws of some US states.
The London riots were set off when thugs shot and killed Mark Duggan, whom they had found in a taxi. They say he was holding a gun and looked threatening. The taxi driver says Duggan had no gun, and was running away.
The driver also said that a thug threatened to shoot him if he kept looking at Duggan. It looks sounds like the thugs are testilying again.
The rioters were imprisoned for their rather small physical looting. The big looters, the companies that pay no taxes, have been left alone. Will the thugs be prosecuted at all?
José Bustani, former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, says Dubya engineered his ouster because he wanted to investigate Iraq to see if it had chemical weapons.
Clearly Bush did not want any facts getting in the way of his fictions. This will add to the case to convict Dubya of the crime of aggressive war, following the Nuremberg example.
40,000 anti-nuclear protesters marched in Tokyo demanding the end of nuclear power in Japan.
General Electric repeatedly gives the US the shaft, but the US government still panders to it.
Republicans have changed the reasons for their extorsionism; now it's budget cuts.
The US needs to increase government spending in order to get out of recession. For the past decade, spending has focused on war, which produces nothing that people really need, and isn't even good at creating jobs. Spending on clean energy would do wonders.
However, Obama has been weak on this front, and even adopted budget cuts as a goal, which is why we have the destructive sequester.
Egypt and Israel are combining to starve Gaza. Food, water, and electricity are scarce, and construction has nearly stopped.
Hu Jintao, former president of China,
faces
prosecution in Spain for genocide in Tibet.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The actions of the Chinese government in Tibet qualify as tyranny and oppression. To call them "genocide" seems like a stretch, since they are not aimed at exterminating the Tibetan people or anything close to that. They are somewhat comparable to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Obama met Malala Yousafzai, and she told him that drone attacks are fueling terrorism.
What it's like working in a Bangladeshi sweatshop with a 9-year-old mentor.
If we organize to force wages and safety conditions up, the parents will make enough money without sending children to work. And if we distribute gratis contraception, that too will help a lot.
The TSA has it in for passengers with medical devices attached to their bodies.
Journalists note the chilling effect of Obama's War on Journalism.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on the danger to press freedom around the world — and now, thanks to Obama, in the US as well.
In New York City, undercover thugs infiltrate just about every dissident activity — even Occupy Sandy, which helped people who had been rendered homeless by Hurricane Sandy.
An undercover thug in California bullied vulnerable students with "special needs" into buying pot, then got them expelled and even jailed.
This is part of the school-to-prison pipeline. A school should not allow undercover thugs to prey on students.
The NSA head has effectively admitted that the US gains no real security against terrorist attacks from massive general surveillance.
Posing the question in terms of whether massive surveillance has ever prevented any violence in the US is a gratuitous concession to the NSA.
The suppression of leaks is extremely dangerous, in the same way a nuclear power plant is dangerous: there's a small but substantial chance it will cause a massive catastrophe (fallout, for the nuclear plant; tyranny, for the War on Journalism). The September 2001 attacks were a pinprick compared with this.
Even if massive surveillance prevented one attack on that scale each decade, that would not justify massive surveillance. 300 additional deaths per year, set against the population of the US, is a tiny risk. In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we can pay that price to maintain our freedom.
The CDC was unable to track an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant salmonella because part of its operations were shut down.
Irreplaceable transgenic mice will die if they are not fed, dealing a setback to medical research.
Most of the US military is less essential to our safety than the CDC and those mice. In fact, most of it isn't necessary at all.
The Japanese government pledged to investigate the complaints of WWII
"comfort women" (foreign women forced into prostitution for the
Japanese
army), then
decided not to do it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
When the Indonesian government complained, a Japanese official said this was "tantamount to saying that Japan was not trustworthy". Indeed.
Companies working on the Fukushima nuclear reactors
are disregarding
requirements for medical tests for the workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
An opposition politician in Ecuador has been sentenced to prison for making a harsh accusation against President Correa.
For the most part I admire Correa; this is the one exception. Respecting freedom of speech means, above all, respecting the right to say things we dislike. Freedom of speech includes the right to condemn any person, any activity, and any belief — even Correa, even me, even you.
How to prepare for future global heating in the future in the UK.
It will be different in other places. In many parts of the US, you should prepare for drought, extreme heat and lots of fires.
The Gates Foundation's newest gift to American students: collecting lots of their personal data to help market nonfree software to them.
They also envisage recommending e-books, some of them surely covered by DRM and/or unjust contracts.
The InBloom software is described as "open source". I suppose this refers to some software used to access the site, and I also suppose this software is free but not copylefted so as to encourage using it in nonfree programs to foist onto schools and students.
A free, noncopylefted program is not an injustice in itself, but it is a weak point, making society prone to injustices.
Teachers don't need fancy software to "customize lessons in real time". They just need to listen to their students. But such adaptation is only possible if the class is small enough, and that would cost money. You'd have to start taxing the rich again.
The US is returning to 19th century in politics, human rights, and work.
The lawyers for Libyan dissidents, who are suing the UK for handing them over to Gaddafy, say that GCHQ is spying on their privileged emails with their clients.
Who should decide whether spy agencies' dirty work should be published? The state which runs them, or newspapers?
US citizens: tell Congress you will work to replace anyone that votes to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The UK and would-be-independent Scotland are competing to pander to oil companies extracting what's left of oil in the North Sea.
I speculate that each of them wants the oil companies to help buy votes in the coming referendum about independence for Scotland. I think the question of Scottish independence from the UK is a side issue; what matters in Scotland, and everywhere else, is independence from corporate power. If I were a citizen of Scotland I'd probably vote for whichever side the oil companies don't support.
Kalaya'an Medoza of Amnesty International writes about US drone attacks and the "Game of Drones" campaign to end them.
Regulation of the UK press, proposed to deal with reporters' snooping in people's answering machines, may be used to censor reports about government snooping instead.
US whistleblowers who brought Edward Snowden an award for integrity praise his heroism.
Illegal tree cutting is creating a catastrophe in Aceh.
It is mostly for producing palm oil, which does harm world-wide.
By 2050, "normal" weather will be outside today's normal range.
Oppressive Canadian copyright law will wipe out VPNs in Canada.
Hollywood and the music factories would like to eliminate VPNs as part of their goal to monitor all communications.
Microsoft proposes having the government protect our privacy by imposing DRM to control companies' use of it.
There are just two gaping flaws in this plan. First, the DRM is a gratuitous part of the scheme. If we have regulations on what companies can do with the data, the threat to punish them for violations would be why they obey the regulations. The DRM really changes nothing.
More fundamentally, this would do nothing to protect us from abuse by the government or its agents, which are the most dangerous abuser of personal data because their abuse threatens democracy itself.
US house builders keep the mineral/fracking rights for the ground underneath the houses, and try to lull buyers into failing to notice.
US citizens: call on the US government to tell Honduras to drop the absurd charges against Honduran activists.
The US government supported the coup that put this right-wing government in power in Honduras, so it is a proper place to put pressure on about this.
UK austerity will make the next generations of middle class people and the poorest suffer lives that are worse than their parents'.
Not everyone will suffer — the 1% are doing quite well.
The elections in Azerbaijan were rigged to the point of being a joke.
Thugs
attacked the protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
US forces in Afghanistan arrested a Talib while he was talking with Afghan intelligence agents who were trying to recruit him.
So are they incompetent, or trying to keep their enemy around to justify fighting?
Citizens of Kaua'i are campaigning to
require
companies to tell the public what pesticides they use.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Congress and the President: Just Because You Were Bullied, Don't Take It Out on Our Seniors.
Atomic Energy Unnecessary, Uneconomic, Uninsurable, Unevacuable and Unsafe.
I'm currently reading Normal Accidents, by Charles Perrow. You might think that accidents involving several independent things going wrong in combination would be so unlikely as to be negligible. That's if you expect nuclear power plants to be maintained at a very high standard. The book explains that it is usual for various valves and devices and meters to be broken. To have just one thing wrong is normal; for several to combine is not rare.
A right-wing strategy to crush people's spirit: say government can't do anything good, paralyze government so it really can't, then convince people to give up on trying.
The US government has done great things: for example, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Endangered Species Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Voting Rights Act, and many more.
What's broken is not the government itself, but rather our political system, and the fault is that people give credence to what the right wing says. That's because they've found ways to buy officials and the media with plutocrats' money.
The UK Labour Party pledges to be almost as harsh towards the unemployed as the Tory Party is.
Punishing all those non-workers is a convenient way to distract people from the reason so many people in the UK don't work: not enough jobs. Boost the economy, tax the offshorers, and spend the money on useful activities; soon there will be plenty of jobs. Most of the unemployed eagerly go back to work, because they'd really like to get more income than benefits provide, and only the disabled will remain unemployed.
What can justify tasering an 8-year-old?
Or prosecuting a 10-year-old for sexual abuse?
Or punishing a 15-year-old for life, for streaking?
Here's chutspah: "Guns Save Lives Day" celebrates the anniversary of the Newtown shootings.
They're wrong, though: the facts show that more guns means more deaths.
Let's stop saying that Columbus "discovered" the Americas — they were inhabited, not "empty", and their inhabitants knew about them.
Much of the Americas was, in fact, nearly empty a short while after the Europeans came, but that was because smallpox killed 90% of the inhabitants.
John Greyson and Tarek Loubani have been released from the Egyptian prison where they were imprisoned for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and subject to beatings.
They were freed, eventually, because they are Canadians — thousands of Egyptians are suffering in similar conditions for similar non-reasons, and with little hope of escape.
Once freed from prison, they were blocked from returning to Canada by the Egyptian no-fly list. These lists represent punishment without trial; the US uses its no-fly list as an excuse to bully and intimidate. For justice's sake, the US must abolish the no-fly list.
US citizens: Rep. Ribble wants to convert retired Americans' lives to Rubble. Sign this petition calling on Congress to resist.
We could also send Ribble a Ribble'd suggestion for what he can go and do with himself.
Ten thousands Dalits will meet to convert to Buddhism.
In India, this requires filling out a form for the state, which records each person's religious identity.
My contact says that many of them will practice Dr. Ambedkar's rationalist Navayana form of Buddhism.
Indian Dalits face violent oppression. Uppercaste Hindus who murdered 26 Dalits inhabitants of the same village were recently acquitted in court, and the survivors fear they will now be attacked with impunity.
The US is using grand juries to destroy dissident movements, questioning dissidents suspected of nothing but dissent, demanding information about other dissidents suspected of nothing but dissent, and them with threatening potential life imprisonment.
Everyone: call on Warren Buffett to make POSCO Steel respect human rights in India.
Even 3-month-old babies display ideas of right and wrong.
Researchers accuse WHO of politicizing research to deny the effects of US depleted uranium in Iraq.
There is plenty of evidence of the birth defects that the WHO report denies, and reasons to associate them with DU.
Austerity's effects can be seen in both wealthier and poorer countries, in the form of squeezed wages and unhealthy conditions for everyone.
Four the fourth time in a month, apparent Afghan soldiers shot at US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Eating popcorn in a movie theater makes advertising ineffective.
If their explanation is correct, eating anything would do the job, even carrot sticks or celery. And perhaps just thinking and subvocalizing something else, such as "No" or "I don't need this", would also do the job, as long as you don't forget to do it. These methods might be effective against advertising in other situations such as watching TV. It would be interesting to test these conjectures.
"The nation has been modified…"
Mary writes about being homeless in New York City.
She lost her job, then her apartment. Without an apartment, she can't possibly get either a job or an apartment. Our right-wing government, that doesn't dare tax the rich, won't do anything for her. Republicans say her homelessness is proof she deserves it, and Democrats don't face the issue.
Sri Lanka's ruler is protecting a crony who appears to have shot and killed a British Red Cross worker.
The tyrant has had dissidents and journalists killed, so he must use his cronies to do this; protecting them from accusations must be normal practice.
When banks generate loan offers for individual applicants, that opens the door for them to do redlining indirectly and avoid punishment.
A new NIST hash code standard now being developed is suspected of NSA corruption.
Google and Microsoft are developing new systems for tracking users from one device to another.
Facebook cancelled the search opt-out for users that had it enabled.
Unfriend Facebook today!
The US broke the Guantanamo hunger strike with harassment and torture.
India's Supreme Court ruled that the national identity card cannot be mandatory for government services.
This is because the Indian constitution provides a right of privacy.
US citizens: demand that the Border Patrol free the protesters it arrested.
US citizens:
tell
congressional Republicans to stop playing games and putting our
country at stake.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The Committee for Public Safety (officially, Department of Homeland Security) is preparing for armed repression in the US — perhaps the next time there is a financial crisis. The US has not taken the necessary steps to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2008.
In the US:
tell
major newspapers to follow the LA Times and stop publishing
letters that deny known facts such as global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
A study of smokers' health records found that even 10 cigarettes a day is very dangerous. On the average, smoking costs 10 years of life.
The Red Cross will resume food distribution in the UK. Evidently right-wing austerity policies are very effective.
Insurance companies pay drivers to report the car's location all the time.
This is typical of the sleazy ways that surveillance technology is foisted upon those not determined to reject it.
US citizens: tell
Congress, "No
fast track for the TPP."
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
"Fast track" would amount to putting Congress in a trance.
Seriously, here's why "fast track" is dangerous.
Israeli colonists in Palestine continue their violence, this time setting fire to cars.
Rio Blanco
Dam: Honduran
Rights Defenders to be Jailed while Transnational Investors are
Above the Law.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's War on Journalism is making officials scared to talk to the press.
The main US media "experts" asked about whether the US should attack Syria had a financial stake in it, which the media usually did not disclose.
The "gay testing" proposed by Kuwait is meant only for migrant workers, but it's proposed for several neighboring countries too.
Either way, it is medically impossible.
Everyone: call on Louisiana
to free
Albert Woodfox from prison unless/until he is convicted in a
proper trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
South Africa's Department of Basic Education seems to have been bought out by Microsoft: use of free software in school is banned.
The Russian
state pays
Internet trolls to pounce on dissent and criticism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Fracking hurts US climate change credibility
NASA says that Chinese nationals are treated no differently from other foreigners, and are not banned from the coming conference, but they were told by mistake that they were banned.
Now they know they are not arbitrarily banned, but it is too late now for them to get security checks before the conference.
France's ban on fracking is now fully legislated.
Who's responsible for the government shutdown? Who was responsible
for the financial
crisis? Randian
plutocrats, says Slavoj Žižek
How right-wing
media disproportionately
cover the few scientists that deny anthropogenic global heating,
and supplement them with nonscientists and by misrepresenting real
scientists, to present a false impression of balance.
They are doing something
similar with
the US government shutdown.
The reason is clear: the same right-wing machine is at work, first
creating bogus arguments that sound reasonable in a sound bite, second
giving the spokesmen lots of air time.
Skype is
being investigated
in Luxemburg for snooping for the NSA.
The Oakland thugs, already guilty of repeated
violence, tricked
the city council into approving funds for an exercise for SWAT
teams from around the US and the world.
The US government encourages the creation of SWAT teams by offering
funds for them. Thus, the US has far too many of them. But once the
team exists, it needs practice, so cities give them practice by
sending them on a routine basis to apply shock and awe to people
asleep in their homes. If they don't shoot you dead, they can give
you a fatal heart attack.
The rate of non-police violence in the US has gone way down since 20
years ago. The US does need some SWAT teams, but I think 40 of them
would suffice if each could travel by helicopter: one each in the
biggest 30 urban areas, one in Hawaii, one in Alaska, and 8 more to
scatter around the less populated parts of the country.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled
that web
site operators are responsible for defamation in anonymous
comments, and maybe all comments.
If this is not reversed, it will stop most sites from allowing
comments.
"Free countries" around the world are suppressing protests. This
article presents
9
examples including the US.
European austerity, and the unwillingness of the left to defy it, is
boosting
support for right-wing extremists across Europe.
Chomsky summarizes
US
dishonesty in dealing with Iran, with Syria's chemical weapons,
and massive NSA snooping.
The UK government wants to restrict the rights of supposed potential
"sexual risk to the public" even
without charging them
with a crime.
The governments of the US and Canada are censoring and corrupting science
for
the sake of the fossil fuel industry.
The Virginia State Thugs made a data base about millions of cars using
license plate cameras, and
specifically
recorded everyone that went to political rallies.
India's Supreme Court ruled that electronic voting machines
must
generate voter-verified paper ballots.
3,000 US companies have promised to handle EU citizens' data following
EU data protection rules, but 30% of them are not following these
rules … and
neither is the NSA.
Libyan premier Ali Zeidan was
kidnaped
by men among his own guards, who said they had "arrested" him.
Baby formula in the UK has a
substantial
concentration of aluminum; a group of scientists says this is
dangerous.
I wonder if US baby formula has a similar amount of aluminum.
Iranian thugs arrested at least 17 partygoers and
accused
them of being "homosexuals and satanists".
Special gyms for members of Congress are
considered
"essential" during the shutdown, but
experimental
cancer treatments are not.
When the company being audited pays for the audit, and selects the
auditor, that's a conflict of interest. Redesigning the system
works
wonders for catching violations.
This conflict of interest is comparable to the one involved in
having
would-be drug manufacturers pay for experiments to test the drug.
This also shows why the current US plan to let chicken farms do their
own inspection is really stupid.
The trial of BP (Billionaire Polluters) for the Big Spill shows
points
where federal regulations need to be tightened, and have not been.
AT&T wants to convert all residential phone lines to VOIP, and
take the opportunity to abolish the
regulations
that protect subscribers from abuses.
Using a technical advance as an opportunity to deal people a legal
setback is an instance of
Stallman's
Law.
Most Americans have very few choices of ISPs. We should take the
regulations for phone companies and apply them directly to ISPs. If
we make ISPs common carriers, they won't be allowed to discriminate in
any way.
The death of 363 boat people near Lampedusa was no accident, but
the result of
intentional policies, including past prosecution of fishermen for
rescuing drowning migrants.
I don't think any country has an obligation to admit any and all
people that wish to move there. But every country has an obligation
to overcome the plutocratic system that is responsible for driving so
many people to flee their homes.
How
the NSA deploys malware. Its much like the way other attackers do
it.
The article treats Flash Player as legitimate, but in
fact it
too is malware, with a surveillance feature and digital handcuffs.
This should be no surprise, since commonly used proprietary software
is often malware. The fact that the program is proprietary means it
is controlled
by one "owner" and not by the users — which is reason aplenty to
refuse to run it.
Republicans and Democrats
again threaten
a "grand bargain": trading retired Americans' pensions and medical
care to the plutocrats in exchange for campaign support and other
favors.
The UK construction workers who
were illegally
blacklisted (with state help) will receive compensation.
Libya's prime minister
was kidnapped
by armed men, who released him a short while later.
This reflects
the general
weakness of the Libyan state.
Resistance to US demands
is intensifying
across Latin America.
Everyone: call on African governments
to uphold
the International Criminal Court.
Yelling insults at children and
teenagers can
do lasting harm, much like striking them.
A California law
requires notifying
reporters when their records or data are subpoena'd from third
parties.
This should apply to everyone. Storage that a company provides to you
or holds about you should be treated, in regard to searches, like your
property, just as an apartment you rent is treated as your property.
But that alone is not enough to protect whistleblowers. We need the
right, and the practical opportunity, to communicate, without being
systematically tracked unless there is a prior court order to justify
it.
Red Cross: austerity in Europe is
creating protracted
poverty, unemployment, and despair.
Stiglitz: the US and European financial system
is still
badly broken and fails to serve the needs of most people.
I'm a Keynesian all the time — and you can be, too. It just
takes recognizing that the anti-Keynesians are the plutocrats.
Obama will punish Vietnam for its arrest of dissidents with
a deal
to build nuclear power plants there.
It is a clever scheme, but has a big flaw: the Vietnamese who will
suffer from future accidents and wastes won't be the elite that order
the arrests.
The US
left some chemical bombs in Panama, and Panama wants the US to get
rid of them.
"Revitalizing" cities through
gentrification does
not help the poor inhabitants — rather, it pushes them out
to someplace further away.
I like it when cities are pretty and safe, and have lot of places to
buy little luxuries such as cupcakes, but that must not erase the
issue of poverty from our minds. We need a society where everyone can
enjoy those treats. We need to tax the rich more, and use the money
to lift people out of poverty.
Bangladesh has installed
a
million solar power systems, and is installing hundreds of
thousands of new ones per year.
"One solar energy system every four minutes" in the US sounds
impressive, but it amounts to only some 130,000 a year — far
below what we could achieve if policies were set up to encourage it
instead of obstructing it.
California electric utilities are
trying to
obstruct local solar electric generation.
The excuse that the utilities give is incoherent. Suppose someone did
get energy from the grid to charge a battery, and sold it back later.
If the prices are unvarying, he'd lose money on the deal, because the
utility would sell it at a higher price and buy it back at a lower
price. Therefore, the systems would be designed to avoid this.
If, however, the price of electricity varies from moment to moment
according to usage and availability (which is a recommended practice),
people would have an incentive to charge their batteries when
electricity is cheap and sell the electricity back to the grid when
electricity is expensive. And this is exactly what society needs to
reduce the problem of peak demand.
Members of Congress were
arrested
along with other protesters supporting immigration reform.
I support most of these immigration reforms in principle, but part of
the plan is something I oppose: an increased surveillance requirement
placed on employers.
Haitian cholera victims and relatives have
sued the
United Nations, which was responsible for introducing cholera to
Haiti.
They are suing in the US. I fear that the US court will find an
excuse to dismiss the case.
A school in Wales punished a student who shaved his head to raise
money for charity, until
250
other students went on strike to defend him.
Bravo for all these students.
The school head claims that this punishment was a matter of
maintaining "high standards". He said nothing to explain how a shaven
head is less "high" than an unshaven one. Is he measuring "height of
standards" based on the height of the student's hair? Perhaps that
school would be better off if its head were shorn.
Miriam Carey, who was
shot
dead in a car chase in Washington DC, believed President Obama was
electronically monitoring her home.
If she had a cell phone in the home, or a "smart meter", that
particular belief was true! She may well have been insane anyway.
An
interview
with a religious lunatic who is, alas for us, on the US Supreme
Court.
Some kinds of prions (infectious proteins that cause brain degradation)
can be taken up in plants, and then
infect animals that eat
those plants.
Kuwait says it has a
medical
test to detect gays, and will use this to prevent gays from
entering the country.
The US National Football League has
concealed
for 15 years the knowledge that the head impacts football players
undergo cause brain damage.
If even an 18-year-old high school player shows signs of this brain
damage, high schools should not have football teams.
If you are worried about the small danger that your child might be
shot in a school, but you're not worried your child might play
football and suffer brain damage, maybe you played too much football
yourself.
Obama has
cut
military aid to Egypt, recognizing that the military has set up a
repressive regime.
Putin's men
claim
that the Greenpeace protesters are guilty of piracy because they
had recreational drugs on the Greenpeace ship.
Aside from apparently being a falsehood, this claim is also absurd.
Possession of recreational drugs is not be piracy. And since the
Greenpeace protesters had no intention of talking their ship into
Russia, it would be none of Russia's business.
Putin defies logic openly, as a form of intimidation: "See, when I
feel like putting you in prison, I won't hesitate to do so based on
claims that are obviously false."
Although many western clothing retailers have signed up to require
inspection of clothing factories in Bangladesh, the
fabric
factories have fatal fires too.
US citizens:
tell the Supreme Court you
are incensed about giving more political power to businesses.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to extend clean water rules to smaller waterways.
Greek fascists' did the killing, but those really responsible are
plutocratist officials.
Keeping Abu Anas al-Liby prisoner on a ship
violates
Geneva conventions; it is not as bad as other recent US treatment
of prisoners, but still not right.
If Abu Anas is not a prisoner of war, then he can only be a criminal
suspect under arrest. Was he informed of his Miranda rights before
questioning?
The interest in the state health coverages exchanges set up by Obama's
health care bill exceeded expectations, and the
servers
in many states could not cope.
The CDC can't track down an outbreak of salmonella because its
employees have been
furloughed.
Nelson Kanuk is suing Alaska for
failing
to cope with global heating.
Harvard Business School outrageously says its restrictive
subscriptions for university
licenses don't
allow classroom use.
Librarians, you must organize to fight back against nasty terms with a
boycott.
Profiting from the
Poor: Outsourcing
Social Services Puts Most Vulnerable at Risk.
Nestlé pumps water out of the ground in places where water is
scarce,
forcing
inhabitants to buy their water back.
In Pakistan, it is not safe to drink water straight from the faucet
But you can boil it or filter it, and that's much cheaper than buying
it bottled.
World Bank
Admits: 'Economic
Growth' in Africa = Resource Extraction, Inequality, Poverty.
Taiji, Japan, invites tourists
to swim
with dolphins then eat them.
Faux News tries to condemn Obama for the shutdown while claiming
we'd
be better off with much less government.
I am not an anarchist, and it's not merely because I have a pro-state
gland. It's because there are many important things we need
governments to do. For instance, to provide food and shelter to the
poor. To fund scientific research and tests of new drugs. To provide
education and health care to all. To build roads and passenger
trains. To take care of national parks. To inspect many sorts of
businesses to make sure they don't injure their employees, their
customers, or bystanders. To impose a decent minimum wage and help
workers form unions.
Of course, the state needs to pay for this, and that requires taxing
the rich, as we used to do.
Everyone:
demand
that the World Food Prize Organization stop giving its prizes to
dangerous biotech.
Proposing a carbon tax to raise
money to
pay for the cost of weather disasters caused by global heating.
Hundreds of would-be
migrants drowned
in a boat trying to reach Italy. What are the implications of
this?
Bills Offer Clear
Choice: End
Bulk Collection of Americans Data or Endorse It.
A nonviolent Moscow protester
was convicted
of "calling for mass riots" and sentenced to indefinite
imprisonment in a mental hospital.
Russia bans books by labeling them "extremist", and
even imprisons
people for having copies.
The UK
also imprisons people for having copies of books, but in the UK
there is no list of which books are banned, so one can't tell.
20% of the world's cities now have plans for monumental and expensive
adaptations
to protect
themselves from the effects of global heating.
This won't protect our food supply from global heating. We ought to
be cutting down CO2 emissions so that we never reach that disastrous
point.
Malala Yousafzai reminds Obama that he needs
to negotiate
with the Taliban.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan soon.
US citizens:
tell
the government to stop treating mining in public lands as more
important than visitors.
Washington's Warring Brothers: the
Republican
and Democratic Parties.
Karzai demands respect for
Afghan
sovereignty over military action as a condition for letting
foreign troops stay any longer.
A divestment
campaign is putting pressure on fossil fuel companies.
UK boy and girl scouts will
no
longer have to take a religious oath.
The Boy Scouts of America still requires that.
The Catholic Church supports the shutdown of the US government in
order to
attack
birth control.
Lunatic Texas right-wingers plan to
make
textbooks teach that the Garden of Eden story is science.
Turkey is considering a law to allow pre-emptive arrests of suspected
protesters,
without a
trial.
That would be an overt rejection of human rights. It reflects the
fact that the Islamist party feels it can get away with absolutely
anything.
UK thugs are accused of
editing
their video footage of the Hillsborough disaster, presumably as
part of their
campaign
to put the blame on the victims.
Brazil has
accused
Canada of spying on Brazil's Mining and Energy Ministry.
That ministry probably does not engage in "terrorism" in the usual
sense, but it does something worse: pouring CO2 into the air.
However, Canada's government is not trying to stop that, rather to
compete to fry our planet even faster. This would be industrial
espionage, pure and simple.
"Advances" in profiling users enable surveillance companies to
determine
that several computers belong to the same person.
Netanyahu's latest speech
claims
that Israel's colonies in Palestine are not an issue. This shows
that he has no intention of making peace with Palestine, and that
Israel's participation in peace talks is only a pretense to continue
the slow ethnic cleansing and land theft.
I think Netanyahu calculates that he will lose nothing from displaying
the truth, because his political control over the US government is too
strong for it to resist in any way.
For several years, manta rays in the Maldives have
hardly
ever tried to reproduce.
Violent
Islamist rebellion is spreading in Egypt.
This is a natural response to banning the Islamist political party.
When the Army says that all protesters will be treated as foreign
agents (i.e., put on trial), they are likely to rebel.
Most Egyptians had come to oppose Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The army could have rebooted democracy by allowing the Muslim
Brotherhood to compete in new elections (and win seats in parliament
but without controlling the government). Instead it chose to exclude
them from democracy, setting up what is effectively military rule.
The central point of the IPCC report is the carbon budget:
how
much more carbon we can burn without provoking disaster.
Some Greenpeace protesters
are being
kept isolated 23 hours a day.
Prisoners in
California went
on hunger strike over such treatment.
The thugs in the US
are increasingly
equipped like an occupying army.
Joe Nacchio as CEO of
Qwest resisted
government pressure to spy on customers. So the government denied
Qwest other contracts, which may have created the pretext to prosecute
him. And he was forbidden to mention this in his trial.
Going tipless enabled the Linkery to
provide better
service for a lower price and pay its staff well.
I am entirely in favor of eliminating tips and paying the staff a
decent wage.
More
explanation, including how the system of tipping is racist and
sexist.
The story has 6 parts; I think the last two are most important.
Government policies to redistribute income and wealth
are extremely
effective, as demonstrated by the US.
Since the start of this century, the Nobel Peace Prize committee
does not dare
to displease the US.
The World Bank
is promoting
privatization of water supply.
Neural stimulation research is approaching the point where
it may
be used on soldiers and prisoners, perhaps even brainwashing
soldiers not to tell the public about government crimes.
The Sudanese dictatorship is confiscating newspapers in bulk, thus
driving
the papers out of business.
The history of conflict
between Haiti
and the Dominican Republic.
This article argues that the details of Richmond's eminent domain plan
are
a profit
scheme for an "advisor" company.
If this is true, it ought to be corrected, but it does not invalidate
the basic idea.
Former minister Chris Huhne, who was in the UK's National Security
Council, says he
was kept
in the dark about GCHQ massive surveillance.
Afghanistan's voter registration system is a
shambles, ideal
for fraud.
Companies are cutting workers to part
time, to
exploit a loophole in Obama's health care law.
This is because the law does not go far enough. The state should
provide health care for everyone, employed or not, and get the money
(which will be much less than it costs now) by taxes that have nothing
to do with employment.
Social Security should also be handled this way. Taxing businesses
based on employment in the US gives them an incentive to employ fewer
people in the US.
Once Obama won the 2008 election, he ditched his progressive economic
advisors
and appointed a new
team of the banksters' men. They then made sure Obama did nothing
to protect us from the banksters.
US citizens:
call on
the US Trade Representative to stop pressuring Europe to deny the
dirtiness of tar sands oil.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to resist Republican demands to approve Keystone XL in exchange for
release of hostages.
In the Boston area:
call
on WGBH to show Citizen Koch.
US citizens:
call on Republican
congresscritters to support a motion to end the shutdown.
The Democratic Party joined the Republican Party in opposing a plan
to make an
independent
documentary about Hillary Clinton.
US citizens:
put
pressure on the renegade Democrats that voted with the Republicans
to shut down the government.
The UK's zero-tolerance policy on racist statements has
collided
with soccer fans that insist on chanting "Yid army" as an
expression of pro-semitism.
I call it "zero-tolerance" because it resembles, in its gratuitous
harshness, the "zero-tolerance" policies of US schools that form the
entry valve of the
school-to-prison
pipeline.
Campaigning for
single-payer universal
health care in the US.
Russia is installing NSA-like
Internet
surveillance facilities. Sochi, where the Olympic games will be
held, is getting the new facilities first.
The Olympic games have a pattern of imposing surveillance that does
not go away afterward.
US Inequality
Is Simply a Function of Political Power.
Thus, no policy is likely to benefit the non-rich, while the rich keep
taking ever more away from us.
In the UK, any joke that refers to a group of people can be labeled as
a
"hate
incident".
That's where it leads when people are prosecuted for expressing
opinions. Even odious opinions must not be censored.
Jailing people for sharing
has
not boosted music sales in Japan.
Even if it had done so, that would not justify it. Sharing is good,
and sharing is our right; if the copyright industry tries to deny
this right, we must crush it so it can no longer threaten us.
However, the fact that this did not achieve its supposed goal
might be useful in convincing politicians that care more about
the copyright industry's money than about people.
On the other hand, they might instead try executing anyone that
shares.
A foreign student in Florida faces prosecution for
running
onto a soccer field to embrace the victorious player he admires.
He could be kicked out of school and deported.
The player begged the prosecutor to drop the charges, but the
prosecutor does not care. He has an opportunity to ruin someone's
life, legally, and he's not going to let it go to waste.
However, this power-tripping prosecutor
(remember
Aaron Swartz?) is only the trigger for a much larger standing
injustice: that many systems are designed to further and permanently
punish anyone who has ever been convicted of any crime.
The tyrannical government of Sudan is
buying
up all the newspapers so as to control them.
Sad to say, unauthorized sharing is
not
destroying the copyright industry.
These companies lobby for nasty laws, while paying a pittance to the
artists (aside from a few stars). I hope we do away with them.
Meanwhile, I've proposed
new
systems for supporting artists better than the current system
does.
The freedom to criticize officials is
threatened
in some countries in South America.
Obama has decided to end the US intervention in Afghanistan, aside
from thousands of troops that will remain. The supposed benefits
for Afghanistan turn out to be
mostly
fictitious, but the dead will stay dead.
In the US: protest against massive
surveillance in Washington DC on Oct 26.
The Naming
the Dead project aims to identify and describe all the people
killed by drone attacks in Pakistan.
Republicans use bullying tactics because this
has worked for
them over and over.
Edward Snowden thanks the European Parliament for addressing the issue
of massive surveillance,
saying "The
work of a generation is beginning here."
The NSA's bogus claims that massive surveillance thwarts lots terror
plots
get
coverage in the mainstream media. Refutations get ignored.
Even if massive surveillance did thwart some terrorist plots, they
would be those of the small, minor terrorists. The biggest terrorist
is the US government, and to put a stop to its terrorism we need
whistleblowers and protests — which means, no massive
surveillance.
US citizens: Tell Congress
to pass
the farm bill.
Celebrities, the Police,
and Surreptitious
DNA Collection.
Piracy in Somalia has been
mostly
suppressed, through the use of the method I suggested:
armed
guards on ships.
The
Scary Truth About Antibiotic Overprescription.
The funded global heating denial campaign is
rampaging
through the mainstream media.
Let's
Be Honest — the Global Warming Debate Isn't About Science.
US media pay little attention to the
50
million Americans that live in poverty.
This is what suits the plutocrats who more or less control the
mainstream media.
The head ayatollah said President Ruhani
went
too far in reaching out to the US.
He's right that the US can't be trusted, and right that US policy
towards Iran is largely
controlled
by the lobby that backs the Israeli government. What he has done
in Iran is
even
worse, but his point is true nonetheless. The onus is on the US
government, to show it can be trusted and can defy the lobby.
Anti-fracking protesters drove away frackers from one site after a
persistent
campaign.
The UK's safeguardless, automatic extradition treaty with the US
is still causing
injustice.
More
about what's wrong with it.
The US is now
#1
in oil and gas extraction. Is each country to compete in pushing
the ecosphere off the climate cliff?
(Why does the article call it "production"? We're not making
these fossil fuels.)
An absurd US law forbids Chinese people from entering any NASA
building, and many US scientists are
boycotting
a NASA conference about exoplanets because of its exclusion of
Chinese scientists.
US citizens:
Call
on Kerry to dismiss ERM, the company responsible for the attempted
whitewash of the Keystone XL pipeline's dangers.
US citizens:
oppose
the plan for a large fracked gas storage facility near Seneca Lake in
New York State.
A study finds that widespread sharing of copies has not harmed
publishing businesses and in some cases
benefits
them.
Getting our sold-out governments to pay attention to this
rather than obey the copyright industry will take a big fight.
Fracking is already causing
tremendous
environmental damage in the US.
The
NSA's
attacks on the internet must be made public — that is the
only way to make it secure.
We
Are Terrifyingly Close to the Climate's 'Point of No Return'.
How US mainstream media would report on the government shutdown
if
it were happening in some other country.
The Japanese government is drawing up a state secrecy bill.
It published a draft —
entirely
blacked out.
Dissidents in the US face imprisonment for 30 years for a
symbolic
act of protest.
A revised constitution in the Dominican Republic
threatens
to leave many inhabitants of Haitian descent stateless.
A bogus scientific paper served as an experimental apparatus to test
the effectiveness of peer review. It
did
not show up very well.
The article uses the term "open access". I think that term tends to
lead to bad results, and we should campaign instead for
free/libre
scientific publishing.
Snowden's papers say that the NSA
can't
generally break the Tor network, but it has attacked the
Tor
browser bundle.
The US has blocked military aid to Rwanda because of its support
for a rebel group in the Congo which
uses
child soldiers.
Rwanda's president has done a good job in many ways, but he
persistently
intervenes in the Congo causing bloody instability there.
In addition, he
interferes
with dissent.
Thousands protested in Cairo support of the Muslim Brotherhood, and
soldiers
shot at them.
I totally disagree with the Muslim Brotherhood's political ideas, but
I defend their right to protest peacefully for them.
The NSA is
Making Us All Less Safe.
Remember where al-Shabaab came from:
Bush
decided to wipe out the new Islamist government that had established a
modicum of control over Somalia.
At the time, it was described as an Ethiopian intervention, but I
reported the
evidence
that it was backed by the US.
The US
continues militarizing Africa and this could cause cause more
such blowback.
Xi Jinping, the new head of the Chinese Communist Party, has turned
out to be
a stricter
and nastier tyrant than the previous one.
An imam in Kenya with indirect links to
al-Shabaab was
shot, and Muslims say the thugs shot him.
Progressive Americans have
gained two
significant victories recently over Obama: Summers and Syria.
Non-orthodox Jewish women in Israel face oppression from orthodox
sexists that try
to impose
segregation on public buses.
Farming flies on waste
products, to
make food for farming fish.
Amnesty International concludes the Turkish
govt committed
gross and even deadly human rights violations against protesters.
A surveillance state is one in which
the surveillance
establishment can look at anything it wants to. Do we want to
live in a surveillance state?
French wineries are
already planning
to move production to cooler areas to flee global heating.
The US
is prosecuting
13 members of Anonymous for participating
in Internet
protests, which the government calls "attacks".
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to
support
the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Everyone: tell US mass media
to stop
pretending that both major parties' are equally to blame for the
government shutdown.
Everyone: urge the Burlington VT city council
to reject
stationing the expensive and non-functional F-35 fighter plane
there.
Journalist Raymond Bonner knows
the FBI
got his phone call records from when he was in Indonesia from some
US company, trying to track down a minor detail he got from some US
official.
Everyone:
hold a vigil
at sundown on Oct 5 in support of the Arctic 30, nonviolent
protesters charged with "piracy".
US citizens: call for dropping the false charges against protesting
CUNY students and
investigating
the thugs who falsely accused them.
Everyone:
call on
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Associated British Foods to make sure their
sugar doesn't come from land grabs.
Private "virtual schools" in the US do a bad job of education, but
claim
lots of money from US cities for students who are not even
attending.
I suspect that they are also teaching the kids to use nonfree malware
such as Windows or MacOS. This is wrong —
no school
should teach nonfree software.
Everyone:
call on
Google to stop listing sales of ivory.
Court papers show that the FBI
demanded
to attach its own computer to collect data from Lavabit.
The closure of the Silk Road site will
mainly
benefit narcotrafficker gangs.
In Thailand, even quoting and rebuking a statement that criticizes the
king is a
crime.
Angola has imprisoned a teenage dissident for
trying
to make t-shirts that criticize the regime.
UK surveillance faces a court challenge at the
European
level.
The Hyde Amendment, which banned Medicaid from covering abortions, was
the
initial
wedge of the right-wing campaign to abolish abortion rights (and
contraception, and then other sex-related rights).
Democrats in the Senate are in the position of defending the status
quo against a persistent enemy. That is always a weak position
because the enemy can always suggest, "Meet us half way today (and
tomorrow we'll demand more)." It is stronger to make a
counter-demand. They have already got too much.
Senate Democrats should stop passing bills to resume government
spending and do nothing else. Rather, they should put repeal of the
Hyde amendment into these bills — and offer to compromise on
just extending the spending limit.
A dissident Iranian filmmaker's passport was
confiscated,
so he cannot go to Europe to collect an award.
He faces a future sentence of imprisonment already.
I would guess that this part of the state is controlled by the
ayatollahs and not by the president.
Vehicle exhaust fumes react with chemicals in some flowers,
so that
honeybees
can't smell them.
Heat waves can kill, and they are
occurring
in places that rarely had them before.
People in poor countries will be unable to much to cope with the
problem. This is why
100
million deaths due to global heating are predicted by 2030.
Global heating on one side, and logging on the other, threaten the
survival
of wild koalas.
Koalas are worth a lot of money to Australia, but the rich will figure
out how to preserve them in captivity for the tourists while wiping
them out everywhere else.
The US barred entry to German citizen Iliya Troyanov, apparently
because he
launched a
petition condemning NSA surveillance.
For-profit prisons
gouge in
myriad ways, from prisoners' phone calls to medical care.
The NSA stores
everyone's
metadata for up to a year.
The War on Drugs has failed, if
judged by
its ostensible goals.
However, it seems to have done a good job of enabling politicians to
say "Look how tough I am!"
Greenpeace protesters and a journalist have been
charged
with piracy even though Putin recognized that these charges are
absurd.
Our CO2 emissions have made the ocean
more
acidic than ever in the past 300 million years (or more).
The article does not make it clear whether the ocean was more acidic
300 million years ago, or it's merely that our data go back only 300
million years.
New Puns in Spanish.
Wastewater from
fracking sometimes
contains a lot of radium, and it can make fish dangerous to eat.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyers say he
is being
held in total isolation except for lawyers' visits.
This is clearly cruel and unusual punishment, except that quibble that
it isn't a punishment.
Canadian activists are doing a great job
of blocking
the Keystone XL pipeline and out-PR'ing its would-be constructor.
Vietnamese dissident Le Quoc Quan
was convicted
of tax evasion after an unfair trial.
Some of Assad's troops report
that rebels
massacred Alawite civilians after capturing their home villages.
Republican attempts to cut Americans' retirement aid are spread by
NGOs
that falsely
claim there is a shortage of funds for it.
Hundreds or thousands of
Chinese rushed
into Tienanmen Square with petitions for the government, and were
arrested.
80,000
Ethiopians protested
publicly against the "anti-terrorism" law which has (naturally)
been used to imprison journalists and dissidents.
WTO negotiations are heading
towards penalizing
the farmers of poor countries.
The Greek government says it has
proof linking
Greek fascists to violence and threats. The testimony of people
who tried to leave the party and were then threatened would constitute
real proof.
Greeks have every reason to hate some foreigners —
foreign banksters and eurocrats. Rather than hating a poor immigrant
who would like nothing better than to take a job, they should hate the
rich plutocrat who takes away thousands of jobs.
Obama's health care law is expected
to extend
medical coverage to 25 million Americans, but leave 31 million still
without it.
This is part of why we need a national health system. The other part
is that single-payer would save a large fraction of the cost —
as much as half.
Some of the people injured by the Boston bombers were given gifts that
they can't accept because they
would lose
their public health care.
Many large environmentalist NGOs have been
partly corrupted
by working with companies.
The Egyptian government continues
to support
businesses against workers.
Hungary's government has allowed localities to
make homelessness
a crime.
Many US cities do something more or less like this.
New song - Poppycock
With the accelerating rate of
poaching, wild
rhinos could be extinct within a decade.
22,000
Indians face
eviction for a new steel plant, and a forest would be cut down for
it.
Destroying mosquitoes and preventing
diseases by
means of tilapia.
A Kiribati man seeks asylum in New Zealand from
the inevitable
slow inundation of his home, caused by global heating.
Sooner or later, it will be impossible for anyone to live in Kiribati.
This will be the fault of the rest of the world. What will we do?
More fraudulent
arguments of global heating denialists.
Curiously, economists whose theories have much weaker scientific
support don't
face similar opposition.
Perhaps those who fund global heating denialism in the mainstream
media are happy with those economic theories.
Nuclear power reactors in Sweden were shut down
by jellyfish
in the coolant pipes.
Various human activities contribute to causing jellyfish blooms.
Overfishing can do it.
Republicans have forced
the shutdown
of the US government, if they don't get their demands to keep some
20 million poor working Americans from getting heath care.
Mexico suffers
from widespread
and continuing violence and threats against journalists. The
government gives the matter low priority.
ACLU: several FBI activities that should
be cancelled
entirely.
The Boston Thug
Department investigated
nonviolent anti-war groups for no valid reason, and still has not
come clean about the practice.
US citizens: phone and email your congresscritter, if he's Republican,
saying
to stop
trying to hold the US hostage.
The NSA is cagey when asked whether it collects
Americans' cell
phone location data in bulk. Apparently it does this and wants to
pretend it does not.
Everyone: demand that Wendy's sign up
to decent
working conditions in tomato farms.
Netanyahu asked Obama
to reject
any deal with Iran.
No surprise there. Will Obama have the strength to disobey?
EFF to standards
organizations: The
Law Belongs To Everyone.
The NSA keeps every person's metadata for at least a year, and uses it
to profile the person's
"pattern
of life".
A Chinese teenager faced
prosecution
for his microblog postings, but was freed in response to public
protest
If he has learned to check the facts before posting, that's not a bad
lesson. But under a government that doesn't value truth, annoying
facts may be labeled as
"malicious
propaganda".
The article leaves me wondering whether the man who was found dead
really committed suicide, and whether there will be an investigation
to determine this.
More casualties of the War on Drugs: they thought they were buying
MDMA but
it
wasn't
Protesters
in Sudan demand the resignation of the tyrannical ruler.
The world's governments must agree on a
"carbon
budget", dividing up the amount of additional greenhouse gas
emissions that the world can stand.
An
audio
recording pretends to be Chavez saying he is still alive.
I can readily believe this is part of a US-lead destabilization
campaign, since it
would
not be the first.
A UN team will soon go to Syria to
identify
and then destroy Assad's chemical weapons.
The Colombian farmers' strike was provoked by the treaty with the US
that
required
them to use only GMO seeds.
CUNY students
protested
against hiring General Petraeus as a professor, so New York City
thugs attacked them and made false charges against them.
NSA documents describe political opposition to US drone attacks as a
kind of
enemy
action.
The idea that people deserve "due process of law" before they are
assassinated is described as enemy propaganda. The list of "adversary
propaganda themes" also includes several points I've made: that
terrorism is a small danger compared with others (including that of a
rogue state such as the US), that drone attacks stimulate hostility to
the US, and that drones kill lots of noncombatants. According to the
NSA, reality is the enemy.
RSA warns users to stop using certain pseudo-random number generators
in its products, concerned that the NSA may have deliberately made the
standard weak.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to redirect the loan funds for new nuclear power plants
into the cleanup of the Fukushima disaster.
US citizens:
call
on Senators Warren and Udall to change their stand regarding FDA
rules on GMO labelling.
The repression of abortion rights in the US has created demand for
underground
distributors of abortion pills.
I do endorse these activities. If women can't get safe and legal
abortion, at least they should be able to get this kind of help.
In the US, non-rich people accused of any sort of sexual crime get
advice to make a plea bargain for "civil commitment", which in
practice means
indefinite
imprisonment.
The US Joint Strike Fighter is tremendously behind schedule with
big
cost overruns, partly due to being ill-conceived at several
levels. And it is not what the American people really need.
Thousands of Egyptians — protesters, journalists and bystanders
— have been
imprisoned
without charges for months, and some foreigners too.
Yale
had a Brazilian reporter arrested. She sought to speak to a
Brazilian judge, who was in a seminar there, and who did not want to
talk with her.
He doesn't have an obligation to talk with her, and Yale has no
obligation to let her into a private event. But she did not try to go
into the event; she only entered a building which the public was
apparently welcome to enter. That was no reason to arrest her.
Two Saudi Arabian women
will
be imprisoned for trying to bring food to a woman who (they had
been told) was locked up with her children and had run out of food.
Giving food to the needy is banned in some parts of the US, too.
https://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/08/26-1
gives a recent example from South Carolina. Members of Food Not Bombs
faced felony charges in San Francisco in the 90s for distributing
food, and one was in danger of imprisonment under the "three strikes"
law.
These US laws are not meant to protect patriarchal power, but rather
business profits. Homeless people are unsightly, but feeding them
would cost something, so businesses try to sweep them away, so they
will starve where people can't see them or boost the profits of
privatized prisons.
The US should stop leaving it up to people to volunteer for organ
donation in the event of their death.
Over
6000 Americans die every year for lack of an organ to transplant.
I criticize Rall's decision to protest the inequities of the US organ
transplant system by refusing to donate. Such refusal exacerbates the
lack of organs which causes those inequities. I signed up as an organ
donor when I first got a driver's license.
I disagree with one of his statements. That someone believes in a
religion does not imply the person is an idiot. What these people
lack is not intelligence, but rather the moral courage to face the
painful likely truths. Some of them go to extreme lengths of
cleverness to construct arguments that bury the fallacy where it is
hard to see.
However, I agree with his conclusion, and with the point that we
should stop being superstitious about corpses. This means, in
particular, that we should stop making a fuss over the corpses of the
deceased. This fuss is strongly encouraged by the mainstream media,
and that could lap over into the issue of organ donation.
Tunisia's Islamist government
will
resign so new elections can be held.
Pre-teen Indian girls are sold, tricked or kidnaped into prostitution,
then
kept
in small cages until they are broken.
I post this link because the issue is important — but don't get
the "interactive e-book" that it advertises! That is nonfree software
combined with DRM. It requires using an iThing! This attacks the
freedom of whoever reads it.
Using an iThing is not as bad as being kidnaped and raped, but since
it's
easy to avoid, you'd be a
fool not to avoid it.
Bank holding companies such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are
not
allowed to own ordinary businesses, so why doesn't the US make
them sell those?
Solar and wind power vary, sometimes unpredictably, and this requires
cycling fossil-fuel generators on and off more often. Modeling shows
the costs of doing this
are just
a few percent of the savings in fuel costs.
The US uses the no-fly list
to bully
people into giving information, offering to take them off the list
if they report on some enemies.
This demonstrates that it has nothing to do with suspecting that those
people would attack an airplane. The no-fly list is not being used to
flights, merely as a handy way to harass people.
The drug mix called "krokodil"
reportedly damages
the user's body and brain, but feels like heroin and is cheaper,
so desperate users turn to it.
From what I've read, people can use heroin for decades, fairly safely,
if they can get it in a pure and reliable form: the danger comes from
impurities. If registered heroin addicts could get their supply from
doctors, they would be safe and nobody would use krokodil.
The FBI
has been flying drones for surveillance since 2006.
It is true that they are not qualitatively different from looking at
people from aircraft. They are a big quantitative increase in the
amount of surveillance that is feasible.
US insurance companies have no doubt about the danger of global
heating, and
are starting
to lobby for a carbon tax.
The "independent" panel that will supposedly investigate the NSA's
civil liberties violations is a swindle: it is
effectively controlled
by the same office that the NSA reports to.
Certain kinds of US corporate
welfare amounts
to $6000 per family.
I don't think this includes all the forms of corporate welfare.
As Senator Cruz carried out his mini-filibuster against Obama's
imperfect health care
plan, 200 or
so Americans died from lack of health coverage. If Obama's health
care plan were in effect, it would have saved many of them. But
single-player health care, a national health system, would save them
all and save money too.
Another improvised piece
of containment
technology at Fukushima has failed.
Senator Wyden and others have proposed a
bill
to limit NSA massive collection of phone and email records.
However,
Senator
Feinstein is pushing to continue the massive surveillance.
The NSA
tracks
Americans' social networks, and Facebook is just one of its
sources.
Thus, if you talk about your friends in Facebook, you're ratting on
them. If you say that you saw John and Arthur, you tell the NSA that
John knows Arthur. If John and Arthur are dissidents, or journalists,
your information will help the government suppress dissent or
journalism.
Don't do it!
NRA
Tried To Stifle Study Showing Gun Retailers Support Background
Checks.
Any little twerp can use the DMCA to shut down a web site he does not
like with an invalid
takedown
demand.
If scientists had said that an asteroid had a 90% chance of hitting
the Earth in a few decades, we'd be going all-out to deflect it.
Contrast
that with humanity's weak response to global heating.
Part of the difference is that no big companies would profit by
keeping the asteroid on its collision course.
The Haitian government is painting the houses in a shantytown
to improve
the view from an expensive new hotel.
Global heating changes some plants such that
their flowers
can't be pollinated.
US Republicans are considering
making abolition
of network neutrality one of the goals of their extortion
campaign.
Google will be fined in France
for not
telling users how it uses their personal data.
A study concludes global heating
will increase
the number of severe thunderstorms in the US.
Record heat in China
is enabling
deadly hornets to spread.
In Fragmented
Forests, Rapid
Mammal Extinctions.
So if we don't maintain large tropical forests, we will wipe out many
species.
The New IPPC Climate Change
Report Makes
Deniers Overheat.
Schools in the US and elsewhere
are tying
themselves in knots for useless "safety" measures.
These foolish measures only waste time and scare children. Having a
thug in the school tends
to ruin
children's lives.
Mainstream media found
an excuse
to lump heroic whistleblowers together with mass murderers.
China's move from burning coal to burning natural gas won't reduce CO2
emissions, because
the gas
will be obtained from coal.
US citizens: tell
Congress not
to spoil the possibility for accord with Iran.
Everywhere: support the
Global Frackdown on Oct 19.
Everyone: tell Barilla you
will boycott
its products until the owner takes back what he said about gay
people.
Everyone: call on Verizon
to clean
up its act in regard to Internet freedom, and help send it soap to
do this with.
Detailing the effect of climate disaster on
Australia: the
Kakadu wetlands will cease to exist, being inundated, and so will many
species.
Since Australia has already experienced temperatures of 50C, it can
expect to experience temperatures of 56C by the end of the century.
That is 132F. It's almost as high as the highest air temperature ever
measured on Earth (in Death Valley: 57 degrees).
US citizens:
call on the
US Trade Representative to stop pressuring other countries to
import tar sands oil.
Everyone:
tell
Facebook, Google and Yelp to quit ALEC.
ALEC is a right-wing scheme by which businesses twist state
legislators to pass the bills those businesses want.
Farmers around the world see the effects of global heating,
in
weather, in water supplies, and in pests.
Global heating
will
hit poor countries hardest, with floods here and droughts there.
The h-bomb accidentally dropped over North Carolina got ready to fire,
and only
one
unreliable switch stopped it from detonating.
Migrant workers in Qatar are worked to death —
400
die every year, and it could rise to 600 a year due to
construction for the soccer world cup.
The International Labor Organisation says that the Qatar government
allows this to happen, because it
does
not properly inspect the working conditions of migrant workers.
The deadly heat of today's Qatar will be found in many more parts of the
world if we don't limit our CO2 emissions.
Todd Ashker, California hunger strike organizer, says the prisoners
will
resume their hunger strike if they don't get humane treatment.
He managed to unite prisoners of different races, overcoming the
foolish racism that divides them and makes them easy to manipulate.
The guards say that solitary confinement is a punishment for belonging
to a gang, but they label someone a gang member on the flimsiest
pretexts, and the only way to get out of solitary is to
accuse
others (truly or not).
The IPCC report concludes that human-caused global heating is
virtually a certainty.
Here are the
main
points.
Melting sea ice means that traditional travel routes in the Arctic are
now
unsafe.
How
human
greenhouse gas emissions relate to the heating.
Why the deniers' arguments are
bogus.
It comes down to, how big does a danger have to be before you try to
save yourself?
The leaders of the Greek fascist party have
been arrested
and charged with "founding a criminal organization".
These charges may be true, if they planned to provoke the violence
that their followers have carried out. However, political views in
and of themselves, even fascist views, can't justify labeling a
political party a "criminal organization". If they could, the
Republican Party would qualify, since its purpose is to help
businesses rip off most Americans.
30
years to global heating disaster, says the IPCC.
Mocking the need to cut back on fossil
fuels, governments
continue to push to extract more.
Here's an example of
the stupid
short-term thinking.
If every government says "We don't want to be in the lead", none will
go anywhere.
Rouhani is making every possible effort for
a reconciliation
with the US.
Uri Avnery: for Netanyahu, Rouhani is the most horrible possible
president of
Iran, because
he doesn't do or say anything hostile.
An additional reason to reject non-cash payment:
it encourages
spending without realizing how much you're spending.
This is in addition to avoiding being tracked.
US citizens: support the congresscritters
that joined
a protest to defend Social Security.
On October 8: join a protest in the
US against
the attempt to further undermine US campaign contribution limits.
When government activities are privatized, the company has to squeeze
somewhere to make its big
bucks. Here's
how private prisons do it.
US
citizens: oppose
the TPP plans to impose tyranny on the Internet.
Why
would anyone sign such a thing?
Two Democratic Senators have asked the FDA to finalize
a deceptive
plan for "voluntary" labeling of GMO foods — one that would
block state requirements for mandatory labeling.
The copyright industry
is designing
a massive propaganda campaign for US schools.
Thousands of Turkish protesters
are still
suffering from the tear gas.
11 were maimed by tear gas canisters shot at their faces by thugs that
sought to cause bodily harm.
The tyrannical Turkish government is not content with this. It plans
to make it a crime for doctors to treat wounded protesters.
Texas's voter ID law
is disenfranchising
people because of bureaucratic hoops they can't jump through.
Rich people can solve such problems; it's the poor who get blocked.
In the US: call on the US government
to stop to
recording absurd suspicions reported by people made paranoid by "If
you see something, say something."
That campaign should be stopped, because its main effect is to provoke
an inordinate fear of terrorists — inordinate given the real
risk of being harmed by terrorists compared with other real dangers.
Obama's health care law
has improved
US women's access to birth control, but schools often mislead
teenagers about it.
In the US: tell NBC news that its job is
to correct
politicians' lies, not just repeat them.
Everyone: give Yelp a bad review for
supporting ALEC, the business-driven machine for right-wing state
laws in the US.
The new right-wing government of Australia is so beholden to coal
companies that it is rushing illegally
to shut
down a successful initiative that has boosted investment in clean
energy.
Australia's targets for greenhouse gas reduction
are hopelessly
inadequate.
Any target set for 7 years in the future, not accompanied by a
specific implementation plan, is an excuse for doing nothing.
US citizens:
email
your congresscritter to oppose the Monsanto
Protection Act.
The Senate just rejected it, so we have a great chance of winning, but
it isn't automatic.
Sudan's cruel government responded to protests by
shutting
off the Internet and then killing protesters.
A Malaysian artist's works were
seized
because they criticized various politicians.
Many states in the US are
running
out of drugs for executions.
The UK government did a study on
how
to make the public feel good about wars.
Breaking
the link between palm oil and deforestation.
If
We Fear an Iranian Bomb, We Should Back Hassan Rouhani.
Ahmed Ben Ahmed, Tunisian rapper, has been
sentenced
to prison for a song that criticized thugs.
Somalis in Kenya
fear
reprisals for the terrorist attack.
There must be some way for Somalis in Kenya to organize against
al-Shabaab, thus both demonstrating their opposition to terrorism and
helping to defeat al-Shabaab.
Japan's government is rushing a harsh secrecy bill that would
punish
reporters and their sources.
US citizens: call on the US to require all states
to recognize
spousal benefits for same-sex couples involving National Guard
members.
US
citizens: oppose
a hasty plan to allow mining in Oak Flat without public hearings.
The US
spied on the phone calls of the highest Greek officials in
2004-2005.
The US could solve several financial problems at once by having
the post
office become a savings bank too.
The NSA
spied in the 60s on phone calls of Martin Luther King Jr, as well
as other political activists and journalists.
The EU
proposes relaxing
rules designed to make sure pilots don't fall asleep at the wheel,
but the existing rules don't always prevent it.
Facebook
censored an ACLU post about censorship.
This is a further reason why Facebook is the wrong place for your
posting.
The DEA Thinks You Have No Constitutionally Protected Privacy Interest
in Your
Confidential Prescription Records.
We
Live Under a Total Surveillance State in America — Can We
Prevent It from Evolving into a Full-Blown Police State?
Surveillance
devices can
track all the phone calls in an area, even thousands. Some just
get the identifying numbers while others record conversations.
"If you see something, say something" turns out to mean, in practice,
"Help
build a database about anything vaguely suspect about everyone."
Playboy is making legal threats
to shut
down a parody campaign that criticizes it.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to oppose all cuts in food stamps.
The imaginary voices that schizophrenics hear are different in
different cultures — and one study found it is
possible
to influence the voices so that they become gentler.
Time Warner is signing up building superintendents to
rat
on building residents as the price of a cable hookup, instead of
money.
I have a suspicion that cable boxes nowadays snoop on their users.
Nowadays, they talk over the Internet. Any computer that is inside
your home and not yours is a possible snooping point.
An Australian politician from the party that controls the state
proposes
to ban boycott campaigns.
It shows the true colors of the right wing: "All power to the rich".
The UK's Green Party MP faces criminal charges for a
nonviolent
protest.
Perhaps she will be accused of "piracy".
Facebook is designed to get users
addicted
to vanity.
Mines in South Africa will have to pay compensation to
miners
who got lung disease from their work.
This will not only pay for their medical treatment, but compel the
mines to take precautions for the health of other miners in the
future.
Putin says that the Greenpeace activists are
not
pirates after all.
However, he
has
not told the prosecutors not to charge them with piracy.
US citizens:
call
on Attorney General Holder to fight hard against voter suppression
laws.
Everyone:
call
on Utah not to permit strip mining for shale oil in a wilderness
area.
US citizens:
Tell
Obama you support his refusal to bow to Republican threats over
the debt ceiling.
A double-blind study found that
wearing
magnets fails to reduce the pain of arthritis.
The fact that so many people believe the magnets help them testifies
to people's tendency to be misled by cures. I suppose ancient
Egyptians were quite convinced that their magic amulets reduced the
pain of arthritis.
Two FISA court judges separately asked the Department of Justice to
investigate NSA officials for misleading the court. But there was
no
investigation.
I suppose they used their influence to avoid one.
Subcontracting food service to Sodexo cheats students, soldiers, whoever has
to eat it — and
the
public too.
Some shoppers waiting in checkout lines are so
absorbed
with smartphones that they become resistant to manipulation aimed
at provoking impulse buying.
The article insults our intelligence by pretending that we are all
suckers both for marketing and for portable phones. I don't know
about you, but I resist them both pretty well. Nonetheless, I linked
to the article because it has an interesting point about advertising.
Let's pass laws to ban retail stores (and hotels) from using computers
from using sensors to recognize anything about their customers except
that they are shoplifting, and from interfering in any way with
communication to their computers. There is no reason these companies
should be allowed to do whatever they wish to people.
In negotiations about chemical weapons in Syria and possible future
Iranian nuclear weapons, the US must recognize
chemical
weapons in Israel and Egypt, and real Israeli nuclear weapons.
The Israeli army destroyed a
Bedouin
camp; previously it had destroyed the village that they lived in
before 1967.
UK border thugs
interrogated
a Yemeni human rights activist who was coming to give a speech at
a conference. This is apparently because he helps to represent
victims of drone attacks.
The supposed reason for the interrogation was suspicion of terrorism,
but what they actually asked him about were the plans of the British
human rights organization Reprieve that he works for. This is prima
facie evidence that the UK government dishonestly abuses this power.
Although Rouhani refused to talk with Obama at the UN, his speech was a move
towards
future negotiation, which will begin between
foreign ministers.
Putin
threatens
to declare Greenpeace activists guilty of "piracy" and imprison
them for 15 years.
The excuse for this charge, that Russian troops chose to imagine that
the Greenpeace protesters carried a bomb, is ridiculous, but it is
also irrelevant. Under Putin, show trials issue whatever verdict
Putin tells them to.
I expect Putin will try to use the threat to negotiate for some sort
of concession from Greenpeace which would corrupt its spirit for the
long term. That would be a much bigger victory for him than putting
some activists in prison. I hope Greenpeace has the firmness to
refuse any long-term concession.
The Greenpeace protesters were nonviolent, but when a tyrant puts
nonviolent protesters in prison, violent action against the tyrant
ceases to be wrong.
Fazıl Say was retried and again
sentenced
to prison for "blasphemy".
Evil religious tyrants!
Egypt
has banned
the Muslim Brotherhood.
The US
puts drug addicts in prison and offers them nothing to do except take
drugs, for which they get sentenced to more time in prison.
Over 700,000 people were arrested in the US last year
for possession
of marijuana.
Economic
conditions have
made US nuclear plants close, and more may follow.
Cruel right-wing Americans
say people
who get food stamps should get a job. Alas, many of them already
have a job and they can't live on the low pay.
So how
about raising
the minimum wage?
Victims of drone attacks in Pakistan are coming to testify in
Congress, but their lawyer seems to have
been intentionally
blocked from accompanying them. The victims are reluctant to come
without their lawyer.
Obama asked Kerry
to lead
nuclear negotiations with Iran.
This opens the possibility of a negotiated end to Syria's civil war. I
am glad Obama has recognized the US wrong in overthrowing Iran's
democratic government in 1953. I hope this will lead to apologizing.
Playwright pursued
by Lebanese authorities for his play on censorship.
US citizens: call on the "Defense" Department
to change
Navy plans to avoid killing an estimated thousand whales by deafening
them.
Angolan
thugs beat
up and arrested journalists who covered the release of protesters
who had been arrested.
Department of Homeland
Security funding
surveillance on the local level.
Everyone: call on Israel
to free
human rights lawyer Anas Barghouti.
Whistleblower Donald Sachtleben has
been convicted
of giving information to journalists. He was identified through
the seizure of the phone records for 20 staff of the Associated Press.
He was also convicted of possessing "child" pornography, which is
defined to include images of anyone under 18. You shouldn't assume
that having those images is in any way wrong — but even if in
his case it were wrong, it would not justify prosecuting him for
giving information to the public.
Leena Jawabreh writes about
the treatment
she and other Palestinian prisoners encounter in Israeli prisons.
Pakistani
Taliban killed
85 Christians leaving church, saying this it was a reprisal
against US drone attacks.
The drone attacks ought to be stopped, because they kill many innocent
civilians. However, what these fanatics do is no better.
US citizens: phone your senators
to oppose
the Monsanto Protection Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
Merkel
Victory a Blow to Europe Reeling Under Austerity's Thumb.
Planned coal mines in Queensland, Australia, would suck up so much
water that they would
devastate
local agriculture.
Burning the coal would devastate agriculture world-wide, but that
would take more time.
A Palestinian shot an Israeli soldier, so as punishment, Netanyahu
sent
colonists back into a disputed house in Hebron (where Israelis
have
pushed
Palestinians out of important parts of the city).
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot says that that women in her
prison are
forced
to work 17 hours a day and get only 4 hours of sleep.
Microrefuges may enable some cold-adapted plant species to
avoid
extinction due to global heating.
Whether they can hang on depends on how much global heating occurs.
If the Earth heats up by 8C on the average, in the Arctic it will be
more.
A UN agency urges decriminalization of sex work so as to end
transmission
of diseases.
In principle, I see nothing wrong with requiring use of condoms or
requiring that sex workers get regular tests for diseases they might
spread. It is normal to have safety standards on various kinds of
work, including food preparation, for the sake of public health.
How could this do any harm? Only if there are people who desperately
need to do sex work; but that implies the state is failing to take
care of people who are poor and ill.
An EU
diplomat tried
to deliver tents to Palestinians whose homes had been demolished
by Israeli soldiers. More soldiers attacked them, and took away the
tents and the truck they were brought in.
Incredibly, the Israeli government condemns the diplomat for punching
a soldier in the face after they had
thrown
her to the ground.
And they did the same thing again to a group of other diplomats, and
to the Red Cross.
These arrogant bastards think they are entitled to do anything they
like to anyone, then condemn even the slightest resistance.
Here's
what
Gush Shalom has to say about it.
Americans are recognizing that their lives are getting worse and that
government
policies are responsible.
Obama's chosen "trade advisors" continue to tell him that unjust trade
treaties will boost US exports, though the
facts
say otherwise.
They say this because they represent the businesses that want these
treaties, as Obama well knows.
How the treaties affect US exports is a side issue — what's
important is that these treaties give companies
more power
to hurt people.
Users are suing LinkedIn for
surreptitiously
collecting their email address lists for spamming.
LinkedIn can figure out the name to associate with your email address
by finding it
in other people's address lists, where they may have associated it
with your name.
Note that if they get this data from Gmail, then your correspondents
have already told Google to associate that address with your name, and
that's bad too.
Cutting fossil fuel combustion would save
millions
of lives, over the course of the century, from reduction in air
pollution — over and above avoiding global heating disaster.
US citizens:
call
for prosecution of the Halliburton employee that destroyed
evidence about the Big Spill.
This is
not
enough but it is better than not prosecuting him.
The billionaire bailout society, and
how
to get rid of it.
I think that a tax on gross income of the big banks might also help.
The US Green Party
praises
the whistleblowers Manning and Snowden.
The mayor of Chicago apologized for a police unit that
tortured
many suspects to frame them.
Journalist Michael Hastings
said
he was afraid to drive his car, but he did anyway, and promptly
got killed in what looked like a car accident.
A declassified US document says that an h-bomb that fell from a
disintegrating B-52 bomber was
one
switch away from exploding, and that switch could have triggered
accidentally too.
For those who won't run the nonfree Javascript in this page, I have
posted two screenshots:
page
1,
page
2.
The right-wing tax on anyone who gets welfare support and has an
"extra" bedroom is theoretically supposed to make housing more
efficient, but in some cases it
forces
people to move far away from their families and leave their houses
empty.
Working people that vote for a plutocratic party such as the
Conservatives are asking for suffering, but they still don't deserve
it.
A
list
of arguments we can use to overcome the idiotic position of those
who want total surveillance.
The UK government has imposed a
prohibitive
fee to stop women illegally denied their jobs after maternity
leave from defending their rights.
Health workers in Syria are
in
danger from Assad's army.
"Pink
pork" often carries the hepatitis E virus, which can be fatal to
humans.
The Senate's bill to shield journalists has become
a
little closer to adequate.
But it is still
far
short of what is required.
The latest iThings are
a
step back in terms of environmental friendliness and
recyclability.
The UK tried to take over the computers of
Belgium's
national telecommunications infrastructure.
Belgium is supposed to be an ally of the UK. The Belgian government
is now
very
angry.
House Republicans voted to
cut
food stamps drastically, and to
eliminate
funds for health care.
Cleaning workers in the London subways
went
on strike to block fingerprint-checking timeclocks, and defeated
the plan.
Children working on farms in North Carolina have to work for
10
hours a day, without protection from pesticides.
Gangs
kidnap
poor children and teenagers in Delhi, and sell them into slavery
in nearby rural areas.
The thugs' lack of interest suggests to me that they are getting
bribed.
The US uses
"military
cooperation" programs to get around human rights laws and
encourage military coups and militarist regimes in Latin America.
Colombia
and
Honduras
are the clearest examples.
The IPCC will warn governments that
it's getting
too late to save Earth from over 2C of heating.
The other explanations advanced by
denialists have
been refuted.
To have a good chance of avoiding
catastrophe, we
need to fight hard to defeat the denialists.
The anti-sharing industry is trying
to push
search engines into "voluntary agreements" to censor links to sharing
sites.
How
Spain forgets Franco's atrocities.
The Shabaab, Somalian
Islamists, took
over a shopping mall in Nairobi and shot many of the shoppers,
after letting Muslims go.
The "spent
fuel" pool at Fukushima 4 is a time bomb, and how to defuse it is
not clear.
Covering fuel rods with a flammable material strikes me as criminally
negligent.
US citizens: call on
Obama not
to allow drilling in Arctic waters.
The US violates a labor treaty
by denying
farm workers the rights that most workers are entitled to.
This article claims that videos of victims the chemical attack in
Ghouta,
Syria, were
falsified.
I have not seen the videos — that would be a lot of work. So I
have not judged these claims — I only pass them on.
The US mainstream media talked a lot about the chemical weapons treaty
as a reason to attack Syria,
and very
little about the UN charter as a reason not to do it without UN
approval.
I don't judge issues of right and wrong, generally speaking, based on
laws. Making a law against sharing copies of works doesn't make
sharing wrong. Having a treaty against going to war doesn't
necessarily make war wrong. But since war tends to kill lots of
people, it generally is wrong, and only very strong reasons can make
it right, in this comparison points out a weakness in the arguments in
favor.
In another cowardly surrender to the
US, Spain
is considering amendments to criminalize commercially making links to
torrents.
"Naming the Dead" aims
to identify
the people killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan.
The UK government
will destroy
centuries-old forests for the sake of business interests, and uses
legal bullying to get its way.
Nearly half of US jobs could
be eliminated
by computerization in the next two decades.
Textile manufacturing is returning to the US, but it makes little
difference; it
is so automated that it provides few jobs.
The improved efficiency of automation would be good if we all shared
in the benefits. But the plutocrats won't allow that. There will be
no new jobs for most of these Americans; they will be driven into
poverty, and death when they get sick.
Plutocratic politicians will try to prevent the tens of millions of
unemployed from voting, while provoking the other Americans to sneer
at them.
Facebook hopes to use AI
to learn
even more about its useds.
I think the word "users" is misleading in this case: Facebook uses
them more than they use Facebook.
In our computing security, the sky is not falling
— it
s fallen.
The
Poorest Americans are Children and the Poorest Children are Black,
Hispanic and Under Six.
US citizens:
call
on your state legislature to move your state from military
industry to civilian.
Everyone: tell TV "journalist" Chuck Todd that
journalism
does not mean treating Republican lies as the equal of facts.
As the rate of non-bankster crime falls, US states are
bound
by contract to keep the private prisons full.
Here's
more
detail.
Since the
banks
and the banksters are not prosecuted, this policy is ineffective
against the most harmful crimes.
I think privately run prisons should be banned entirely.
Prison guards must be accountable to the state.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau caught JP Morgan cheating
customers and made it pay them back
$300 million, plus a fine.
The fine was not large enough; it should have equaled the restitution.
Opposition newspapers in Venezuela say they are going to be shut down
by a
shortage
of newsprint, which has to be imported, because they are not
allowed to buy dollars to buy it with.
It would wrong to shut down opposition this way, but it may not be
political, because even the government is running into the
paper
shortage. Venezuela has stopped issuing passports because it has
no paper to make them with.
I went to Venezuela in June and observed peculiar shortages. For
instance, there was no butter, though cream cheese was available.
There was no short pasta, but there was spaghetti. I can't understand
what could make it possible to import or make spaghetti but impossible
to import or make penne, but that's how it was.
Why can't all forms of paper be made in Venezuela? It has plenty of
trees and land for tree farms.
Citizens of Cambridge, Mass:
come to the
hearing Sep 26 to oppose increased surveillance on Cambridge
streets.
In the US:
tell
the Russian ambassador you demand release of the Greenpeace
activists and their ship, and an end to drilling in Arctic waters.
Putting
Leash on World's Private Armies No Easy Task.
A former minister in the Taliban's government
says
that Mullah Omar wants to negotiate peace, but is unable to say so
because the threat of assassination by drone has forced him into
hiding and isolation, and a few extremists issue statements in Omar's
name.
It might be partly true, but there is a part I find implausible. Omar
surely sees the statements that are issued in his name, and if he
found them to be lies, he would do something to change the situation.
After four years of squeezing by the banksters, Greece is on the brink
of a
military
coup, a civil war, or a revolution.
This is what Naomi Klein describes as "shock capitalism" at work.
A mass shooting in Chicago used a
high-capacity
magazine.
Making these magazines hard to get would have hindered it.
The EPA has proposed
limits
for CO2 pollution for new fossil-fuel power plants.
New coal-burning plants will have to use carbon capture. It will be
difficult to do that at the scale required to make a difference.
I wonder whether the rules count greenhouse gas emissions from
extraction or the fuel. This is important because fracked gas
involves
substantial
carbon emissions, and
leaks
methane.
The argument that this won't do any good while India and China
increase their emissions is fallacious. The US (like every country)
needs to set an example to convince other countries to do more.
As for putting coal miners out of work, that's simply necessary in
order to use less coal. The mining companies, by using mountaintop
removal, put far more miners out of work.
The Arctic Ocean is still
on
track to have no ice in the summer, in a few decades.
The decrease in sea ice is harmful not only to species such as polar
bears and seals, but especially because it increases the amount of
sunlight that is absorbed and thus advances heating even further.
14 UK thugs face charges of
"serious
perversion of the course of justice".
US Republicans demonstrated their hostility to science by
blocking
a vote on a US science laureate.
Two French thugs face prosecution for chasing two youths who then got
electrocuted.
The charges are that the thugs failed to aid the youths who were
hiding in an electric substation. Maybe the thugs were innocent of
this. What strikes me as culpable is that they chased those youths
merely because they ran away when they saw a thug van coming. People
in groups that are the object of prejudice have good reason to fear
thugs regardless of whether they have done anything wrong.
Downsizing the US military and
boosting
spending on people's real needs.
The WHO commissioned a report about the health dangers of dirty
depleted uranium in 2001, but has never published it. The report's
main
author alleged
that the WHO suppressed the report due to political pressure.
The privilege given to derivatives in US bankruptcy
law can
force companies into bankruptcy when they might have avoided it.
There is a possibility this could cause another crash.
The California law requiring companies to verify working conditions in
their subcontractors has had
only limited
effect.
It turns out that sweatshops and slavery are not occasional
"excesses", but rather the basis of the globalized system of
outsourced production.
Argentina has asked
for extradition
of Spanish fascist torturers.
Spanish friends have told me that it is hard to draw attention to the
crimes of Franco's dictatorship (even if it is not a matter of
prosecuting them) because some of his lieutenants still have political
or military power.
There is a plan to exclude problem customers from clubs in Sydney
by tracking
everyone that enters.
The goal might be ok, if people are put on the exclusion list by court
order. The proposed means are intolerable, and unnecessary. The
system could be set up so it doesn't record seeing anyone who is not
on the list.
Especially laughable is the idea that the system is ok because
only the state will see the personal data that the system
collects.
The right-wing government in Australia
has abolished
the Climate Commission, to deny the public honest information
about the danger of its plans to increase coal exports.
Everyone:
send a message of
support for the Greenpeace activists that have been captured by
Russian troops.
Rarely cited experiments from the 70s found that
rats
given plenty of space and things to do did not get addicted to
morphine as rats in small cages do.
Experiments on rats don't prove anything about humans, but there are
results about humans that suggest similar conclusions.
80 to 90%
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This suggests that the pressure and pain of being poor in modern society, made worse by the impoverishment of plutocratic rule, are a big factor in the heavy use of narcotics.
The ACLU has obtained files showing that US "fusion centers" keep records on people for the flimsiest of reasons, such as being middle-eastern, or taking photos on the street.
Russian soldiers have boarded a Greenpeace ship protesting oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
This drilling risks an oil spill that would poison the coast and take decades or centuries to dissipate.
Naturally, the Russians said the Greenpeace protesters were terrorist suspects.
The US also treats protesters as terrorist suspects.
Islamists in Syria are now occasionally fighting and defeating the non-Islamist enemies of Assad.
Republicans threaten again to shut down the US government if they can't kill Obama's health care plan.
US citizens: Call on EPA administrator Gina McCarthy and Obama to reopen the investigations into environmental damage from fracking.
The funded campaign to deny global heating is spreading lies pre-emptively, to undermine the coming IPCC report.
It is erroneous to call these denialists "skeptics", because they cling stubbornly to their pre-chosen conclusion in the teeth of the facts. Many of them do this because they are paid to.
Russia's official in charge of protecting children wants to ban sex education and expose them to AIDS.
Defending the legality of sex-selective abortion.
An underground newspaper dares challenge the censorship of Eritrea, where all private newspapers are banned.
After three months of penalizing poor Britons (mostly disabled) who live in apartments bigger than the state considers they "really need", half of those families are in debt.
They can't move to smaller apartments anyway, because those are not available.
Studies measuring Arctic sea ice for in the past few thousands of years find it was never, during that period, as little as it is now.
The relentless destruction of sharks by humans damages coral reefs too, indirectly.
As much as 40% of the fruit and vegetables in the UK is wasted because it is "ugly".
They could be required to give it to the poor.
UK undercover thug Peter Francis wants to testify about thug wrongdoing, but faces the threat of prosecution if he does.
Libya remains divided into fractious local enclaves.
Egypt is convulsed with xenophobia, and the military regime seems to promote it.
US phone companies are citing general policies of secrecy rather than confronting their failure to oppose PAT RIOT Act collection of phone call records.
People find all sorts of excuses to sneer at people who get welfare payments, often they are based on questionable suppositions.
Right-wing media encourage people to blame real or imaginary "welfare cheats" to distract people from the big cheaters: rich people that pay to change laws so they can leave the rest with an ever-shrinking fraction of society's wealth.
10% fewer births are being recorded in Greece now than 4 years ago.
To some extent, this is because poor women can't afford the fee for registering a birth. How self-defeating it is for a country to charge for that! To some extent, the lack of prenatal care causes miscarriages. To some extent, people are deciding not to have children.
It is generally good when people have fewer children, but inducing that decision by imposing general poverty is horrible.
Some "slow" forms of greenhouse gas feedback, disregarded in IPCC models, could have a substantial impact during this century. The IPCC's worst case (continuing to increase fossil fuel usage as now) could lead to 8C of heating instead of 6C, by 2100.
Obama has taken the side of the vulture capitalists against Argentina and all indebted countries.
The sequester is mainly hurting non-rich Americans, and will continue to do so until it is eliminated.
The sequester was a bipartisan initiative. So much for the supposed virtue of bipartisanship.
Overfishing is reducing the numbers of sea bass; protection is urgent.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation challenges the US government to promise it won't digitally search, subpoena or arrest journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras if they return to the US.
Greek fascists murdered a well-known Greek rapper.
Countries with more guns have more gun deaths.
This demonstrates that guns don't make people safe from violence.
The Israeli army closed off a region of Palestine, blocking all
travel, for several days and
ordered
100 families to leave their homes.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Executives whose companies caused the financial crisis are doing very well.
Limited diets based on diet fads can cause real disease. Some parents impose these on their children.
Milgram's famous experiment, claimed to show most people would obey orders to punish another person horribly, may not have been reliable.
The proper response to doubts about the validity of those results is to try to reproduce them, and to do other related experiments. It is a shame that the APA has declared them unethical. Maybe this can be done in some other country.
The FBI makes a practice of asking companies to put back doors in proprietary software.
In Guantanamo, visiting journalists are brought on tours of show-cells, the guards say that force-feeding is voluntary, prisoners are called "detainees", and even sketches of them are forbidding.
I see more Orwell than Kafka in this. It is the most horrible evil, disguised with all the ability of the modern PR industry.
Released government documents show that the US uses "border protection" as an excuse to search people's laptops when it wants to investigate them for other reasons but has no legal grounds.
A Colombian radio journalist who attacked corruption was assassinated.
Reporters Without Borders has criticized the gag order placed on Barrett Brown.
The main charges against Brown are for his journalistic activity: posting a link to a web site where data obtained from Stratfor had been published.
"Holy water" in many sites in Austria
is contaminated
with bacteria and excrement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
In other words, it's not wholly water.
This year's Arctic ice minimum is not as low as in 2012; it is back to the 2009 level. Nonetheless, the last 7 years have all shown less ice than ever before them, reflecting the long-term trend that the ice is gradually disappearing due to global heating.
The Papuan hosts of the Freedom Flotilla have been threatened by the Indonesian military.
Palestinians in Jenin say Israeli
soldiers shot
a sleeping Palestinian in cold blood.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: ask Obama to appoint Janet Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve.
Senator Warren supports her.
No US phone company has tried to resist orders for massive collection of phone call records.
The Palestinian village of Beitin has been economically wiped out by barriers that make it accessible only by a roundabout route.
It's an indirect consequence of Israeli colonies established in the vicinity.
Larry Summers' refrain, as an official, was "What would Goldman say?" By proposing to appoint him, Obama shows he was listening to Goldman Sachs.
The Israeli supreme court gave some Palestinians their confiscated land back, after the colony built on it was officially eliminated. But some colonists still occupy the site.
The Colorado floods may spread pollution from oil wells and fracking wells.
Aaron Alexis had no difficulty buying a gun and getting a "concealed carry" permit in Texas.
The ACLU says that the FBI has become an unconstitutional surveillance machine after stretching its powers on many dimensions.
The UN inspectors affirm that chemical weapons were used in Syria. An expert from Human Rights Watch says they could only have been used by Assad's men.
Gemma O'Doherty, a leading Irish investigative journalist, was fired, apparently because her reporting made some important people uncomfortable.
A censorship filter imposed by court order on isoHunt.com blocks lots of authorized redistribution too.
Obama has waived legal requirements in order to arm Syrian rebels.
To be fair, if a country's government supports terrorism, that is no rational reason not to arm rebels against that government. What matters in that case is whether said rebels are connected with terrorism — but these are!
The head of the doctors that treated the victims of the navy yard shooting please with Americans to put her trauma center "out of business" — with gun control.
In Australia, an Uphill Battle to Rein in the Power of Coal.
The NSA spies on credit card payments outside the US.
This is in violation of an agreement made between the US and the EU.
Australia's policy of towing boats of refugees back to their point of origin will be brought to the UN Human Rights Council. For refugees that are in fact fleeing persecution, it means delivering them back to the persecutors.
An investigation reports that North Korea is guilty
of systematic
execution and torture of prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
I am all in favor of taking action against this, but let's not limit it to North Korea. The US systematically executes and tortures prisoners too.
The DEA has rehired a highly paid informant who confessed to perjury in previous operations.
A US judge ruled that the TSA is allowed to lie in response to FOIA requests.
A killer pleads self-defense, arguing that the US government has stretched the meaning of "imminent threat" for everyone.
The Occupy protests were crushed, but their impact continues.
I applaud Bill Blasio for saying that he as mayor would not have shut down Occupy Wall Street, but the right to protest must not depend on sympathy from the officials of the day. The Plutocratic Party used the protest camps to damage the right to protest in the US. Now we must demand laws to restore it.
After two weeks, protests in Romania against a proposed gold mine are getting even stronger.
US citizens: Phone your congresscritter to oppose bills such as HR 3102 that would cut food stamps.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose renewal of the Monsanto Protection Act. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter saying to expand Social Security, not cut it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Obama to negotiate with Rouhani.
In the US:
call
on WGBH to remove David Koch from its board of directors.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Resistance to antibiotics kills 37,000 Americans per year.
That's almost as many as automobile accidents. The loss of years of life due to antibiotics is going to be less, since many victims are old, while the victims of car accidents tend to be young. Still, it is a lot of people. Both of them dwarf the effects of terrorism.
So when are we going to ban the foolish practices that generate antibiotic resistance? For instance, regularly giving antibiotics to farm animals.
A WTO judge who ruled against the US Clean Air Act said that almost any law to reduce global heating can be challenged in the WTO.
Greenpeace reports on the
organized
and heavily funded denial of global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The Taliban are systematically killing Afghan policewomen. The government doesn't seem to be trying hard to protect them.
We have won a major victory over the Pebble Mine plan, but it isn't dead yet.
The campaign against Larry Summers succeeded.
The 5 stages of global heating denial, starting with "it's not happening" and ending with "it's too late to stop it."
The focus of the denial is not on global heating itself, but rather against taking action to stop it. That's probably because the activity gets funding and media platforms thanks to the fossil fuel companies, and their goal is to keep on selling fossil fuels as fast as possible regardless of the consequences.
Government scientists are protesting across Canada against the ban on talking publicly about their work.
In Gabon, people are regularly killed or mutilated to get body parts to use in rituals.
In Ghana, people are accused of witchcraft based on other people's dreams, and driven out of their homes.
Germany will allow registration of a baby's sex as indeterminate.
US citizens: stand up for credit unions — the banksters want to wipe them out.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to hold more public hearings about the plan to end protection for wolves.
Everyone: call on McDonald's to pay workers a living wage.
The NSA is using fake HTTPS security certificates to masquerade as Google servers in a man-in-the-middle attack.
Texas has restricted use of photography drones by citizens, but left it
wide
open for the state.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Texas set up a phony "conservation plan" for the dunes sagebrush lizard, which consists of letting oil companies lie about ongoing threats.
Egyptian Islamists took control of a remote town and carried out repression against Christians.
A teenager who posted a fantasy video of shooting his classmates
faces
charges of "terrorism".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Fukushima radioisotopes leaking into the ocean: how significant?
Caesium-137 from the Fukushima meltdowns can make fish in the region near Fukushima dangerous to eat, but when it disperses into the larger ocean, it is diluted to insignificance. The total amount is trivial beside the amounts released by nuclear weapons tests and previous accidents.
Strontium-90 is potentially worse. It accumulated in bones, including fish bones. It could make small fish such as sardines, commonly eaten with the bones, dangerous to eat.
I have found no information on the level of strontium-90 in the ocean off Fukushima or in fish there.
Torture: The Use of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons.
Force-feeding hunger strikers is torture too.
AT&T threatens to cut off ISP services to people if they are accused of forbidden sharing.
It is a shame that this article repeats the propaganda term "pirate" for people who share copies.
E-Z Pass toll payment RFIDs get read at lots of places other than toll booths, for a scheme to measure traffic flow.
Ironically, the readers in this scheme are (according to the reports) designed not to save any personal data — an example for all digital systems (assuming the reports are telling the truth). The invasion of privacy from E-Z Pass comes when it is used to pay tolls. The information about people's movements that this records is available not only to the government but to anyone that wants to sue.
Although Amy Webb intended not to post any photos of her daughter, she made the mistake of using SaaSS to edit photos, and they eventually leaked out.
The lesson is, don't use SaaSS to do your computing tasks (such as photo editing).
Reporter Domenico Quirico describes being the hostage of Islamist bandits in Syria.
Obama has accepted Bush's legacy of war and made it his own.
Richmond, California, has approved its plan to use eminent domain to seize homes with "underwater" mortgages.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is on the wrong side. Obama is in charge of that, and he could reverse the policy. Perhaps a citizens' campaign could make him do so.
The rich in the US have taken a bigger share than ever before.
In the US: call on the CEOs of Home Depot and Lowes stores to stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides, and plants that have been treated with them.
There is a revolving door for staff between US government propaganda agencies and corporate media that repeat the propaganda.
The record-breaking flood in Boulder is in line with what is expected from global heating. The prediction is that the average level of rain will decrease, but that it will also occur in bigger bursts (which would further decrease the effective availability of water for agriculture).
Winter nights in Norway and Sweden are warmer by 2C than they were 60 years ago.
Global heating will upset the balance of algae in the ocean, promoting cyanobacteria.
Pakistan's censorship now extends to a ban on phone chat for men and women to meet.
The European Commission has modified its draft Internet regulations to
weaken
network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Bill Maher: The US: World's Policeman Or Schoolyard Bully?
A school revoked an art history assignment because students restaged a performance that included walking on a US flag.
I side with the courts that have insisted on respecting the freedom to do this. The freedom to condemn the US is part of the American ideals that I love.
The US and Russia have agreed on a deal to take control of Syria's chemical weapons stocks.
A lot of things could still go wrong.
US nuclear weapons are vulnerable to being set off by collisions or fire, which means they could explode in the base where they are kept.
Chomsky: Instead of "Illegal" Threat to Syria, U.S. Should Back Chemical Weapons Ban in All Nations.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter not to block the Interior department from regulating fracking.
US citizens: call for network neutrality to preserve what is good about the Internet.
Everyone:
pressure
Texas not to put creationism into science textbooks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone:
call
on the Washington, DC, city council to override the mayor's veto
of the bill requiring large companies to pay higher wages.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
The sequester has cut the
rental
assistance that enables some poor US families to have a place to
live.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
In Thailand, anyone could get you jailed by claiming that you insulted the king in a private conversation.
Even when applied to public statements, this law is fundamentally unjust.
A study predicts how much US workers' incomes would decline due to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The treaty's proponents claim it will make tiny increase in the US GDP, but the loss for workers as their wages are transferred to the rich would more than wipe that out.
The article uses an iThing as a standard of contribution to the GDP. This demonstrates how the GDP is a misleading measure of benefit: it does not count the oppression of the iThings.
The US-Korea "free trade" treaty has worked out badly for the US.
Considered in non-nationalist terms, however, a bigger wrong is that it benefits the rich in both countries while cutting the incomes of everyone else. And the even worse wrong is the way it attacks democracy.
A mob of Greek fascists attacked Communists who were handing out papers, and left them gravely injured.
The fascists seem to be trying to terrorizing various "enemies" in order to look strong. The thugs generally support them by letting them get away with it.
A FISA court ruling has moved the ACLU closer to winning release of various documents about surveillance, and grudgingly credited Snowden with launching necessary debate about the issue.
A survey found people are affected in many parts of Asia by the effects of global heating.
The anti-worker right-wing Polish ruling party has to love Solidarity, which helped bring down the Soviet empire, but finds it embarrassing that Solidarity is a real union and defends workers' rights today.
To make drugs safer, teach kids how to use them safely.
It would also help to legalize and regulate their sale, so that they are not unpredictable in strength, mixed with poison, etc.
Juan Garces, who organized pressure on Chilean dictator Pinochet
from outside Chile, says that the US today uses
methods of
oppression that resemble those of Pinochet.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to preserve the Lifeline program that allows millions of
poor Americans to have telephone service.
The UN warns poor countries to
stop
focusing on competing to export to the less-poor countries.
Greenpeace reports on the
organization,
history and methods of the funded denial of global heating.
International
cartoon exhibition shut down by Turkish authorities.
The
Demise of Unions [in the US] and Why We Need to Revive Them.
Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam
are attacking
Internet freedom.
Nguyen Bac Truyen told FIDH about
how Vietnamese
thugs attack bloggers.
How the NSA uses a weakness in its surveillance schemes as
an excuse
to keep more data about more people.
Obama's insider panel which will supposedly consider changes in NSA
surveillance held
its first meeting.
It did not even broach the subject of limiting surveillance.
The FCC's failure to declare ISPs "common
carriers" may
undermine its weak network neutrality policy.
IANAL, but I suspect that this failure is also what makes possible the
deal that major ISPs made with the copyright industry to punish their
customers on mere accusation.
Using fingerprints as passwords could have a devastating legal
byproduct in the
US: people
could be required to use their fingers to unlock their data.
This is because the fifth amendment, which forbids requiring people to
incriminate themselves, does not apply to biometrics.
In Mauritania, the blacks were traditionally slaves of the Arabs.
Theoretically this has stopped,
but in
practice it continues.
Washington DC's
mayor vetoed
the bill to make large companies pay a higher minimum wage.
DC workers will suffer twice from this decision: they won't get a
raise, and some will lose their jobs. Walmart brings a decrease in
jobs because it replaces other stores that employ more people.
Furthermore, most of its employees are temps and get no benefits.
South Africa's
president vetoed
a dangerous secrecy bill.
UK thugs interfere with journalism
by accusing
unarmed journalists of "intimidating" men with rifles.
The journalist in question was trying to report on the badger cull. I
have no opinion about the badger cull. I don't know whether the cull
will help prevent bovine tuberculosis (its stated purpose), but it
clearly won't drive badgers or any other species extinct.
I have no special feeling about badgers, but I smell a rat when thugs
make false accusations against journalists.
Analyzing Putin's
article: insults
to Obama, presented as support.
Some "open source" supporters used to offer me similar "support".
Most of Putin's points, as described in this article, are valid.
Ironically, its points against him are valid too; Putin is a bigger
enemy of democracy than Obama. But that doesn't make his points
wrong.
If only the US and Obama were a good example to contrast such tyrants
with.
Officials responsible for the Hillsborough disaster may
be prosecuted
for manslaughter.
I think it is even more important to prosecute the thugs that covered
up their wrongs by falsely accusing the spectators. That was a
separate act, and a worse one in my opinion. Whoever were responsible
for the conditions that resulted in the death of spectators surely did
not intend to kill; their misdeed was one of negligence. By contrast,
those who carried out the cover-up acted with full knowledge and
intent.
The non-prosecution of the killers of Baba Mousa, and those who helped
cover them up, shows that
the army
can't be trusted to investigate war criminals.
The principal charges against Barrett Brown
are meant
to attack the whole Internet.
The article quotes someone using the word "hacking" to mean "breaking
security". Please don't use the word that way — it is unfair to
us hackers. Hacking is playful cleverness. When you're talking about
breaking security, whether you think it is right or wrong in the given
instance, please call it "cracking".
US citizens:
phone
the White House and demand Obama reverse the USDA's plans to let
chicken factories inspect their own chickens.
To trust these companies is as silly as trusting teenage delinquents
with an attitude.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Oxfam warns that EU austerity will
"entrench
poverty for a generation".
But it won't end with this generation, because by the 2025 global
heating will cause much bigger losses.
The NSA disobeyed the FISA court's requirements
for
3 years.
It took 3 years for the court to find out, because the NSA kept it
secret.
A former Microsoft employee says the FBI asked him to put a back door
in a Microsoft local encryption program, and he
refused.
We cannot verify whether his successor was more compliant.
We can't
trust proprietary software because we can't tell whether it is
malicious. Some proprietary programs are malicious, and some are not,
but we usually can't tell which is which. (The exception is when we
find out some program is malicious.)
UK conservatives say that if you're poor and can't afford food, it's
your own fault. Look at
some
examples.
The EU approved a
very
weak biofuels bill.
UK thugs altered the statements of witnesses to the
Hillsborough
disaster. This was to cover up their own responsibility.
It's still winter in Australia, but bush fires have already started
because winter has been
unusually
warm.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to reject any amendments to weaken the
Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency and antipollution bill.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support legislation to stop the US government
from interfering in state-legal marijuana use.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
oppose
warrantless surveillance at the state level.
Egypt and Israel are now
working
together to besiege Gaza, leading to many shortages.
Hamas, which won the last Palestinian election that could be held, has
imposed some
oppressive
policies in Gaza, but starving people and blocking them from
traveling for education or medical care is not going to weaken Hamas.
The Indonesian forestry minister wants Harrison Ford deported for
raising
embarrassing questions in an interview.
Enforcing forestry laws in Indonesia is surely quite complicated. So
many rich companies that object, so many bribes one might have to
return.
Exposing
falsehoods and
manipulation in Susan Rice's speech trying to build support for
bombing Syria.
Dennis Kucinich exposes other
manipulative
war propaganda.
Although cameras showed that protester Bassem Abu Rahmeh was
hit
by a tear gas canister, Israel decided there is "no evidence" for
any action against his killer.
Things like this don't happen by accident. Soldiers are trained to
aim their tear gas weapons at the ground, not at people; when the
canisters hit people, that's not a minor error but gross misconduct.
Deadly misconduct, in this case. The army investigators know that and
choose repeatedly to disregard it.
A former US marine, imprisoned as a spy in Iran, says in a letter that
he was
tortured
into making a false confession.
The horrible thing, for an American, is that the US
often
does that to prisoners.
The NRA
removed
gun-control state senators through a referendum in Colorado.
American reporter Charles Horman was killed by Pinochet's men shortly
after the US-backed September 11 coup in Chile. Horman he had
witnessed
the involvement of US ships and men in the coup.
Since only US officers knew this, they must have played a role in his
execution too.
After coup, the right-wing UK government infiltrated anti-Pinochet
solidarity groups and tried to
manipulate
the media in favor of Pinochet.
Thousands
Attend Anti-War Vigils in 165 Cities, Urge Congress to Oppose Syria
Strikes.
The US-imposed "peace talks" between Israel and Palestine are a
sham, as
predicted;
a smokescreen for Israel to steal more land in Palestine.
Israel's defense minister
ridiculed
the talks.
UK
thugs arrested
hundreds of peaceful anti-fascist protesters on tiny pretexts,
demonstrating their intention to make peaceful protest impossible.
A plan
to disguise
spy drones as birds of prey.
This should be forbidden by treaty, as it will lead soldiers to shoot
down real birds of prey, which may be endangered.
On
the implications
of the Johns Hopkins censorship scandal, in which the university
ordered Matthew Green to delete his blog post from the university
server or face legal action.
Kerry and the US
have embraced
Putin's proposal of putting Assad's chemical weapons under
international control.
Kerry mentioned the idea, not as a suggestion, but as a hoop that
surely Assad would not jump through. Putin then proposed it for real.
(I wanted to say he made it a "serious proposal", but the pun seems
distracting.)
Obama's insistence on attacking created the situation where this
proposal could be supported by the Security Council. But I see no
sign that Obama aimed for this result. It was a fluke.
If Congress had not resisted Obama's demand for
war, he
would have attacked already and this diplomatic solution would not
have been considered.
Obama deserves a little praise for being willing to switch from war to
diplomacy when diplomacy shows a good chance of success. But he and
his supporters are trying
to badmouth
the plan even while accepting it.
Naomi Klein explains how some environmental groups responded to
Reagan's attack
by "partnering"
with companies, and ended up becoming their tools.
George Monbiot: Obama's rogue
state tramples
over every law it demands others uphold.
Grenada has passed a law making it a
crime
to offend anyone on the Internet.
If you have children, protect their digital privacy:
don't
post any photos of them on Internet sites.
Everyone:
Call
on Indonesia not to demand that high school students pass
"virginity tests" or be excluded from school.
In the US:
participate in a protest on Sep
21 against the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
In a survey, nearly 25% of men in some Asian countries, including
China and Indonesia,
said
they have committed rape. This includes rape of a spouse.
Nearly
25% of Indian men also say they have committed rape.
Many girls of Asian origin in the UK are raped, and keep it secret
because their
relatives
would punish them if they knew. Sometimes relatives force them
into an unwanted marriage to get them out of the family.
The condemnation of females who have sex, even involuntarily, reflects
the patriarchal idea of females as valuable property of the family,
rather then as persons who matter for their own sake.
Human Rights Watch reports
evidence
that Assad's army fired rockets with chemical weapons.
I'm linking to
Naomi
Klein's speech again to urge you to read it. It is brilliant.
Klein identifies the "extractivist" regime that oppresses us, and
shows how all the traditional battles that progressives fight tie
together with the fight against global heating.
Commercial baby foods are full of sugar and
low
on other nutrients.
Cigarette butts left on the beach are
toxic
to wildlife.
The NSA and GCHQ, apparently in parallel, have named surveillance
programs after
battles
in the civil war.
Specifically, they are named after the first battle in the American
civil war, and the first battle in the English civil war.
Code names for secret activities are usually chosen to be meaningless.
For them to be chosen for a meaning, in the spy agencies of two
countries, is definitely significant.
Others interpreted this as declaring war on the people. In other
ways, such as in the prosecution of Chelsea (née Bradley)
Manning, that's what the Obama regime seems to have done. However,
the meaning I see in these names is that one part of the country is
fighting another.
A strange attitude, given these agencies are supposed to be defending
the country against foreign threats.
Johns Hopkins ordered a teacher to delete a
blog
post speculating about what the NSA might be able to do in the
area of decryption.
Tens of
thousands protested in Mexico City to oppose the president's tax
plans.
I support parts of this plan, including making gasoline more
expensive. Taxing the middle class more is not necessarily bad,
but they should focus on taxing the rich more.
However, allowing foreign investment in oil is very bad.
Thousands
of Romanians have been protesting for a week against a planned
gold mine that could poison them.
They convinced the prime minister to
cancel
the plan.
Note how the mining company threatens to use trade treaties to attack
Romania. These treaties are
tools
of plutocrats and must be abolished.
The opposition in Cambodia accuses the government of
rigging
the latest election.
China has
arrested
hundreds of people recently for statements on the Internet.
20,000
protested in Berlin against massive surveillance.
Putin proposes to insist
that Assad
hand over all chemical weapons to "international control".
This would deal with the problem, if it works. And if it doesn't
work, all the other responses that are available now would still be
available. So why is Kerry trying to talk it down? The reason,
whatever it is, can't be good.
If Obama does accept this, his war-talk will have had a good result by
getting Putin to agree to this.
China plans a
tremendous increase
in coal-fired electric generation, but a lack of available water
might stop it.
That's good, because this coal-burning would cause global disaster.
Snowden files show that
the NSA
is spying on the Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras.
This is scandalous because it is clearly meant for commercial
advantage, not for defending the US against attack.
Many products such as facial cleansers contain plastic microbeads.
After
use, they
end up in waterways and harm various forms of life.
I don't think they degrade in any short time.
Citizens of Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Ohio,
Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Minnesota and
Wisconsin: remind
your progressive senators that attacking Syria is not progressive.
About 500 Americans die per year due to
the unpleasantness
of TSA airport security.
US citizens: call on Obama to have the EPA pressure chemical plants
to convert
to safer processes that won't explode.
German intelligence reports say the chemical attacks in Syria were
made
by Assad's army but without his approval.
We must not put much confidence in these reports, nor in the
vague
reports from the Obama regime, nor in the
reports
cited by Thomas Drake & friends saying that rebels are
responsible. We are not really in a position to know.
Many Tor nodes are still using 1000-bit keys that the NSA can
very
likely crack.
John Gilmore, a GNU developer, describes the
NSA
meddling he observed in the IPSEC standardization process and the
cell phone encryption spec design.
2013 might not set a new record in loss of Arctic sea ice, because the
process is not steady; but it is
continuing.
The NSA
can
tap data in smart phones, including iPhones, Android, and
BlackBerry.
While there is not much detail here, the fact that BlackBerry was
temporarily not accessible suggests that this is not done using the
universal back door that nearly all portable phones have. It may
involve exploiting various bugs.
Once again, the Afghan government and locals say a bomb killed mostly
civilians, while
NATO says
it killed only enemy fighters.
Civilian casualties are inevitable in a war. You can try to avoid
them but it is impossible to succeed completely. Deciding to fight a
war implies accepting these casualties. Sometimes that is justified,
but the reason needs to be very strong.
The Taliban
kill a
lot more civilians than NATO does, but the Afghan people don't
resent it as much. Either they support the Taliban at some level, or
they are not strongly motivated to fight them. As long as that is the
case, defeating the Taliban militarily is almost impossible.
The UK
officially
approves of pre-emptively arresting suspected protesters.
The arrests were made on
dishonest
pretexts.
Phone your elected representatives via 1-STOP-323-NSA and say you
want them to stop the government from snooping on us.
Phillip Morris has hired
160
people to lobby to delay and thus kill regulation of tobacco
marketing.
Morsi will face charges on the crime of
"insulting
the judiciary".
To make it a crime to insult someone — no matter who! —
is in itself injustice.
However, jailing journalists is even worse.
A prize-winning Egyptian journalist has been
arrested
for "publishing false information".
The jailing of Abu-Deraa shows there is every reason to
distrust what the Egyptian government says about its attacks in the
Sinai, just as we distrust what the US says about drone attacks in
Pakistan. There may be some real Islamist terrorists there, but that
doesn't mean the government's story is true. We can't be sure that
the shells allegedly found on railroad tracks really existed. If they
did, they might have been planted by the army to be "found".
Meanwhile, this article also shows that Egypt is now joining Israel to
besiege Gaza.
The US government deficit is now
back to
normal levels, which is bad since what we need now is deficit
spending to get people back to work.
Rep. Grayson says the US government has shown him
nothing
that ties chemical attacks in Syria to Assad's men.
Kerry and McCain are citing an "expert" who is a
paid lobbyist
for the anti-Assad forces, and connected with a right-wing think
tank that generally wants military escalation.
What Obama and Kerry say now is "just trust me", but former US
intelligence professionals say they are misleading us.
Here's
why.
I will trust Thomas Drake,
a
heroic whistleblower, over Obama or Kerry
on anything at any time.
In the US, it's
easier
to buy an assault weapon than to vote.
Prize-winning Swiss journalist Ludovic Rocchi has been
arrested
for writing about plagiarism in a Swiss university.
Independent of the facts of this case, for "defamation" to be a crime
is injustice in itself.
The Lord's Resistance Army is
killing
elephants for ivory.
It used to
kidnap
children and conscript them.
Public
Radio Journalists in Tunisia Go on Strike to Protest Political
Interference.
Tunisian rappers were
sentenced
to prison for a song that criticized the thugs. Before arresting
them, the thugs beat them up. Whatever the criticism was, the thugs
probably deserve it.
Snowden's disclosures underscore the importance of correcting some
flaws in the
Electronic Communications Privacy Act, even though it is not
enough to make email respect our privacy.
Poor people lack more than money — they lack bandwidth to
confront all the stressful problems of their lives, and that
leads
systematically to bad thinking.
The US has
failed to
show valid arguments to conclude that attacking Syria is
"necessary" to avoid a worse evil.
If "big data" surveillance records become available to everyone,
many
people will misuse them much as the US government does now.
When trafficked children in the UK are "rescued", they
often
run away with their slavemasters within a couple of days.
It seems to be because they don't think they are safe once "rescued".
Some of them experience being jailed — not likely to make them
feel the state will protect them.
Rush Holt has proposed a bill to
forbid
the NSA to introduce back doors into encryption systems.
It is a good first step, but it must apply to all parts of the
government and their contractors. If it applies only to the NSA, the
activity will be shifted elsewhere.
Glenn Greenwald: One big problem the NSA and US government generally
have had since our reporting began is that
their
defenses offered in response to each individual story are quickly
proven to be false by the next story, which just further
undermines their credibility around the world.
An
Egyptian labor lawyer was arrested and released.
Other liberals suspect this was a trial balloon to gauge public
support for imprisoning activists.
A man in Kentucky is likely to
be charged
with murder, after he shot his wife at her request. She couldn't
bear the pain of terminal cancer any longer.
I wish she could have asked for a gentler sort of death, but since the
state forbade her that, I think he was right to grant her request.
This article talks
about Syrian
rebels that were attacked with poison gas.
Here's a suggestion: the US should give the Syrian rebels plenty of
gas masks and systems to detect poison gas.
If Assad's men are using poison gas, this will thwart them somewhat.
If they aren't using poison gas, this will do nothing.
The US
destabilized Syria and Iraq starting in the 1940s, which led to
the dictatorships of Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad.
The article links to a number of things (videos?) and encourages you
to enable JavaScript and load Flash Player in order to view them. I
hope you know better than to do either of those things!
Is there any way to see the videos without doing that?
27
states are doing face recognition using the data base of drivers
licenses and similar state IDs.
Thus, the march of laws requiring state IDs for more and more
activities — boarding a flight, opening a bank account, buying
sleeping pills and pain killers — is, in effect, pressure to
subject people to face recognition.
US citizens: call on OHSA
to inspect the Texas
chemical factories that refused fire inspections.
The
Wealthy "Make Mistakes", the Poor Go to Jail.
The government of
Azerbaijan threatens and
jails journalists and dissidents, like many others. What's
unusual is that it gave apartments to 150 journalists to buy their
favorable reporting.
Fiji's government is planning a constitution
that doesn't
uphold human rights.
Experts
Warn NSA Has Compromised the Entirety of Internet.
In my view, corporate data-collection on users, and data retention by
ISPs and phone companies, and deep packet inspection encouraged by the
copyright industry, took big steps to compromise the Internet.
Everyone: call on major Internet companies
to demand
a full public investigation of US Internet surveillance.
Everyone: tell
Gerber not to allow GMO apples in baby food.
Naomi
Klein proposes a
new agenda for the left, based on stopping global heating, and
fighting all the other abuses that interfere with doing so.
The UN's climate study says we
have little
time left to avert a mass extinction of species and the danger of
destroying civilization.
By ignoring what global heating is going to do, our society is living
a lie. This lie
has various
psychological manifestations.
1/5 of the workers in British companies are
on zero-hour
contracts.
Are there similar employment schemes in the US?
Tens of thousands protested in
Tunisia, demanding
that the Ennahda (Islamist) party step down.
Tokyo was elected to bear
the burden
and harm of the 2020 Olympics. Madrid and Istanbul have escaped,
for now.
The Olympic games leave behind nasty surveillance, unjust laws, and
huge debts. Large companies get the profits
while keeping
local small businesses and street vendors out.
A US soldier
reported
a security hole to the army, and the response was to tell him not
to talk about it, since the army does not intend to fix it.
This same attitude appears whenever someone reveals US government
dirty deeds. Rather than concluding, "We should have thought twice
before doing something like this," the state concludes, "Anyone who
talks about this is our enemy and should be punished."
86%
of US internauts do something to cover up their Internet use from
snoopers.
Attacking Syria is
likely to
cost a billion dollars, and could cost far more.
If we could expect it to result in an important change for the better,
it might be worth that cost — but we can't expect that.
Intervention in Syria against a tyrant could be justified if
Citing the US as an example, Kenya's parliament
voted
to withdraw from the International Criminal Court.
The US has
broken
the Internet's social contract. Internet and software engineers:
if you have helped corrupt the Internet, tell Bruce Schneier about it.
More
information about the NSA's corruption of encryption software
world-wide.
Production of iThings is
using
a sweatshop again.
The right-wing UK solution to a lack of jobs is
to punish
people that don't work enough hours.
Perhaps some of them have zero-hours contracts
which don't
give them enough hours and forbid them to work for anyone else.
Fruit juices and fruit drinks appear healthful but
the fructose
can be bad for your health.
Some Internet censors in the UK block VPNs
because "they
are a way to evade censorship".
The New York Times reported on the horror of cluster
bombs, "maiming
and destroying indiscriminately", when dropped by Assad's men.
It doesn't talk about how bad they are when used by the US.
Six
alternatives to military action in Syria.
These are in addition to the alternative I've asked everyone to
support, which is
for Obama
and Rouhani to negotiate.
Kerry is
pretending he did not support the invasion of Iraq.
With "free trade" treaties,
the US
government aims to policies resembling the British ones that provoked
the American Revolution.
The difference is that this time the whole world is colonized by the
rich.
The
Startling Size of US Military Operations in Africa.
Obama's claims about the use of chemical weapons in Syria need to be
probed to check their validity, just like Bush's claims that Saddam
Hussein had such
weapons. Here
are many specific points of doubt that members of Congress should
demand answers for.
An analysis of
the possible results of attacking Syria, showing how it could go
very wrong.
The US "unemployment rate" fell, but
the number
of Americans not in the work force increased by half a million.
The Federal Reserve has tried to boost the economy by buying bonds,
but it
is not
clear this does any good for the economy of most people.
The right way to stimulate the economy is
with deficit
spending; but with Republicans and Obama accepting the harmful
goal of deficit reduction, nothing can be done about unemployment.
Israel charges the inhabitants of Shu'fat refugee camp taxes
but gives
them nothing, not even sanitation.
Victims of undercover thug infiltrators in the UK
are boycotting
an internal inquiry run by the thug department, and demand a
public inquiry.
Floor tiles that generate electricity
also track
where people are walking.
I think these are acceptable in heavily trafficked areas, but they
should be designed so they cannot distinguish one person's step from
another's.
South
Korea banned
fish imports from a large section of the Japanese coast due to
fears over radioactive contamination.
The fears may be exaggerated, but Japan is paying for its failure to
provide good information about the extent of contamination, which
might be due to a desire to cover it up.
US citizens:
call
on the US
to insist on full abortion coverage
in the health care for congressional staff.
Everyone:
call
on presidents Obama and Rouhani to negotiate
peace in Syria.
Everyone:
call
on Eritrea
to identify all the prisoners in its secret
prisons, and charge them with real crimes or release them.
University presidents
are demanding
skyrocketing rates of pay, like business CEOs.
Collecting
the voices of anti-fundamentalists Muslims.
Some things Obama should do if he were serious
about reform
of massive government snooping.
Genetically engineered rice, touted as a supposed solution to Vitamin
A shortage in parts of the world,
has not
been tested enough to be sure it really helps, or even is safe.
US
citizens: support
reform of the US mining law, to reduce pollution and make mining
companies pay.
In the Majuro declaration, Australia and New Zealand agreed to the
need
to end
greenhouse gas emissions.
There is no way to eliminate them completely; we breathe out
CO2. (The biosphere can absorb a certain rate of
emissions.) However, the goal of eliminating the emissions is correct
as a first approximation.
The US
continues to protect right-wing murderers, including the man
accused of murdering singer Victor Jara in Chile as part of the
US-organized coup.
The US does not mention this when it criticizes countries that protect
Edward Snowden.
Some countries
have banned
selective abortion based on the sex of the fetus. They mean well,
but this is as bad as any other attack on abortion rights.
When women decide on abortion based on the sex of the fetus, that
usually reflects bigotry against women, which we should oppose.
However, the worldwide conservative assault against abortion rights
(and, beyond that, contraception, homosexual rights, and more) must be
opposed too. To support any plan to restrict abortions supports that
assault and puts all sorts of sexual freedoms in danger. If intended
as a way to oppose bigotry, it may backfire, since the religious
groups that oppose abortion tend to be very sexist.
We should denounce and oppose sexist bigotry in other ways, not this
way.
There
is no
way to prevent the FinFisher repression software from falling into the
hands of repressive states such as Bahrain.
The article says that FinFly can attack "any" computer, but in fact
that depends on what system is running. Perhaps it attacks mobile
phones through
the universal
back door that they all have.
Republicans still pretend that the poor in the US are "unwilling to
work" as
an excuse
to cut the food stamps that they depend on.
Of course, they are responsible for the policies that result in not
enough jobs and low pay. They kick Americans coming and going.
Nigeria plans to follow the US example
with unlimited
snooping on portable phones.
Taliban
murdered an Indian woman who wrote about her escape from
Afghanistan in the 90s. She returned to Afghanistan later.
The Taliban's oppression of women is the reason that I supported the
conquest of Afghanistan in 2001. If I could snap my fingers and kill
all the Taliban, I would do it immediately — but there is no way
to do that, and with no better leader than Karzai to oppose them, it
is impossible to defeat them in Afghanistan. Defeating them would
require many Afghans to be determined to fight them, not just to
dislike them.
An army of Afghan women, who would prefer death to surrendering to the
Taliban, might have been able to defeat them.
Forget Red
Lines: Obama Should Eat His Words on Syria.
US public libraries are under government pressure
to install
filters, and these filters often block quite a lot. You can push
back against this.
The NSA has worked with companies to
introduce
weaknesses into commercial encryption software.
If the US government stood for the American people, and this coup had
been achieved against enemy governments, I'd congratulate the NSA in
principle (and I'd be glad if we did not find out about it). But the
US government works for the plutocrats, and the victims of this are
us.
This
article covers the same issue but has some different information.
The UN inspectors
will
do a more thorough job of testing for use of chemical weapons.
Accepting
Whistleblower Prize, Snowden Declares This Belongs to the Public'.
China has introduced
extremely
strict measures to cut air pollution in Beijing.
Prof
Séralini's study found that rats exposed for two years to
Roundup, or to Roundup-ready corn, die younger.
The studies used as the basis for approving GMOs last too short a time
to test for this effect.
Pat Robertson is accused of a massive fraud: raising millions for a
nonexistent
medical aid campaign for Zaire.
With help from from the US, the organization that regulates airlines
has
mostly
defeated the European attempt to make them pay for CO2
emissions.
This is in exchange for a small step towards a weak tax that may never
even go into effect.
This shows that Obama is on the side of the companies that want to fry
our planet.
Air pollution
kills
200,000 people a year in the US, and they lose around 10 years of
their lives.
In the US:
call
on investors to drop private prison companies.
US citizens:
oppose
Obama's plan to bring back SOPA.
A right-wing Republican billionaire wants Obama to attack Syria,
apparently because he's a supporter of
Israeli
expansionism.
All countries should ratify the Domestic Workers Treaty, which
gives
domestic workers the same rights that other workers get.
Are
other European countries surveilling the Internet like the US and
UK?
The president of China called for an
aggressive
campaign to have people spread stories that support the
government.
Global heating is making the Great Lakes
shrink.
Travis McCrea of the Canadian Pirate Party
apologizes
to the US border guards agency for misunderstanding them, over and
over, while they held him prisoner for two hours.
Would
Bombing Syria Deter the Use of Chemical Weapons?
US citizens: call on US officials
to pressure
Iceland to stop killing whales.
Assange has filed a complaint
against illegal
US espionage and perhaps theft carried out in Europe.
Kerry, Should
We Fall Again for "Trust Me"?
There seem to
be many
leaks of radioactive water at Fukushima, and only straws to grasp
at to stop it from leaking into the ocean.
Iowa has interfered with attacked abortion rights
by banning
use of telemedicine — only in regard to abortions.
US citizens:
Support
government measures to limit "for-profit colleges" from driving
students into debt.
The Obama regime is
trying
to forbid journalist Barrett Brown (and his lawyers) from talking to
the media.
Brown's charges mainly have to do with
posting
a link to a web page where data obtained from Stratfor had been
posted by others.
He also posted a page of violent threats against a US agent who was
hounding him. Brown he seems to be guilty on this one point, so I
cannot claim he has done nothing wrong. However, the other charges
raise a more important issue — Obama, as usual, is attacking
freedom of the press.
Even if they gag Barrett Brown, others including me will continue
informing Americans about the injustice of this case, and that Obama
is the enemy of journalism and democracy in the US.
Later:
the gag
order was issued.
We can make the US government regret this
by talking about the case even more.
The US is
using
a manipulable international organization to stop the EU from
taxing airlines for their CO2 emissions.
A US appeals court decided in favor of vulture funds that are betting
they can
destroy
plans to restructure the debt of bankrupt countries.
The Egyptian military government arrests
any
sort of dissidents, even leftist, and people who get in their way,
on the pretext that they are "Islamists".
The tanks holding contaminated water at Fukushima were
built
in a hurry, with quality control set aside.
Maybe the haste was necessary at the time — but, if so, they
should have built more solid replacement tanks once the water was
initially contained.
Even
higher
radiation levels have been found near the tanks.
It is impossible to keep the cost of nuclear power down, given
all
the risks.
It is an exaggeration to describe a nuclear reactor as a "slow motion
detonation", like describing your metabolism as a "slow motion fire".
But that doesn't invalidate the conclusions.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is
suing for
release of US videotapes of the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani.
The EU is considering a
plan
to put speed limiters on all cars.
Making the system warn the driver could be a good thing; making it a
hard limit would be nasty, as speed limits on some roads are too low.
I worry also about whether this system would do surveillance. Having
a camera recognize speed limit signs would not inherently imply
surveillance, but if the system keeps a history of the signs it sees
or the speed of the car at each time, that would effectively add up to
surveillance. As for the vaguely described satellite-based system,
that might involve surveillance depending on details.
Israel is cheating the Palestinian Authority of
300
million dollars a year.
Don't believe the whitewash of Larry Summers — here's a
series
of times when he supported harmful or unjust economic policies.
Richard Falkvinge: "child porn" laws aren't as bad as you think
— they're
much
much worse. They cause a litany of injustices, including
interference with journalism of the most socially important kind.
The complexity of the
parallel
Syrian conflicts, and why US intervention could not thread the
maze.
In December 2012, Israeli troops killed Palestinian journalists
(noncombattants) with a missile. Israel still
refuses
to explain why.
A Palestinian family in a suburb annexed to East Jerusalem has
moved
to a cave which used to be their stable, after soldiers demolished
their house.
Israelis
protested against the government's plan to destroy Bedouin
villages in the Negev.
Israeli human rights groups call for an end to
shooting
rubber-coated metal bullets at protests. These bullets, while
promoted as nonlethal, have killed many people and a sharpshooter can
maximize that chance.
Uri Avnery discusses
what
is needed for peace between Israel and Palestine, including most
controversially that Israel must apologize for the catastrophe that
Zionism caused for Palestinians.
Jeff Cohen:
My
Surprisingly Inspiring Trip to the West Bank.
In 2009, Sri Lanka's forces killed perhaps 70,000 Tamil civilians;
then they massacred captured rebels. The government is
stepping
up the repression of Tamils and dissidents.
The article mentions the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge, whose
posthumous
last editorial accused the state of killing him.
Global heating is predicted to change rainfall in Brazil and
damage
agriculture.
Obama is
proposing
a larger intervention in Syria to win Republican support.
I would support intervention to topple Assad if his likely replacement
were not Islamists.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to
oppose
attacking Syria.
Also use
this
page to write to your congresscritter about it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
People should have a chance to value work itself,
not
only as a way to get money.
The chronic stress in the lives of poor people makes them
vulnerable
to predatory lending with enormous interest rates.
The slowdown in atmospheric heating since 2000 fits a model based on a
climatic
oscillation in the Pacific Ocean with a period of a few decades.
This oscillation drives the extra heat down into the ocean so that it doesn't
all remain in the air. This half of the cycle won't last forever.
Serious negotiations with Iran
might
help make peace in Syria.
Afghan government forces are taking
heavy
casualties as the Taliban attack.
To defeat the Taliban would require a determination to win, which I
don't think that Karzai's corrupt government can ever inspire.
Assad is moving forces into schools to
shield
them from a possible US attack.
I think this violates the Geneva conventions.
Some reports attribute chemical weapons to Assad's men and others to
the Sa'udi-supported al-Nusra Islamist group.
Neither can be
proved.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to oppose bombing Syria.
Facebook will
no longer allow users to decline to let their names be used in
advertisements. More than ever, Facebook is really Suckerberg.
In addition, Facebook secretly collects users' phone numbers. The
article says it is not clear why. Perhaps it's a favor for the NSA.
Egypt is
jamming
al-Jazeera transmissions.
This is in addition to
impeding
al-Jazeera from broadcasting.
Explaining to
Francois
Hollande what it means to be Obama's new poodle.
A study of 600 crop pests finds they have been spreading away from the
equator at
almost
2 miles a year, on the average.
The spread is not uniform. Some pests, in some regions, have spread
hundreds of miles northward.
AT&T maintains a complete database of cell phone call records
going
back to 1987 for the US government to examine at will.
Hundreds
of thousands protested government corruption in the Philippines.
The US government is fundamentally corrupt too, selling laws to the
businesses that bid the most.
In Germany, a newspaper faces prosecution for mentioning the
name
of a web site that facilitates unauthorized copying.
The Greek fascist party has put a Jewish communist
on
trial for a violent-sounding statement, but the fascists are not
tried even when they commit violence.
The leader of a Burmese protest against imposition of a mine has been
sentenced to
two
years in prison. The charges amount to "protesting", under other
names.
In Burma, the mine is Chinese-owned, but similar protests are
occurring in
South
Africa and Peru
(and elsewhere) against mines owned by Western companies.
The Indonesian
regime forced
indigenous leaders in West Papua to sign away land to a large
agribusiness, threatening to label them as "separatists" and
punish them otherwise.
I don't know whether they are separatists, but they have every right
to be. The inhabitants of West Papua have no cultural or historical
relationship with Indonesia, which took over the region by force.
Subsequently
it sent
large numbers of Javanese to colonize the area.
GCHQ
snoops on nearly all of Europe's Internet traffic.
A video made inside an Angolan prison
shows guards
kicking and beating prisoners who were sitting on the ground,
perhaps as a nonviolent protest.
Prisoners in California
are protesting
against long-term solitary confinement which is effectively equivalent
to torture.
Neelie
Kroes Pushing Telcos' Agenda to End Net Neutrality.
Even before 2009,
the rich in
the US increased their wealth while most Americans lost. (Since
2009, this process has gone even further.)
High
radiation levels have been found near a water tank at Fukushima,
and it is not clear where the radiation came from.
The company failed to notice this high level of radiation before
because
the measurements
maxed out the meter that was used.
Budget
cuts prevented
measures that might have retarded the spread of the fire near
Yosemite.
Obama's men say that
he refuses
to treat Congress's vote on whether to attack Syria as binding.
If Congressional opposition is strong enough, he may give way to it.
The essential point:
In the US: insist that schools and teachers
should not
promote (let alone require) specific brands of products to their
students.
US citizens: call on the Japanese government
to apologize to the
women who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army, and
give them compensation for this crime.
You'll note that I call for prostitution and associated activities to
be legal, when they are done voluntarily. This is basically because
there are no grounds to ban them, but the change would also help
protect prostitutes from various wrongs, including the wrong of being
forced into prostitution.
As Roman emperors managed the people with bread and circuses,
the modern
state distracts people with rooting for sports teams.
Uri
Avnery comments on Obama and Syria.
Avnery's arguments that Assad's men would not have used poison gas at
this time seem valid. However, it seems rather unlikely that the
rebels have poison gas rockets, and somewhat unlikely they would have
been so unscrupulous as to kill lots of civilians on their own side.
This leaves me unable to attribute the attack to either side.
I also can't envision what a good outcome in Syria would consist of.
Assad is an oppressor and the Islamists would be oppressors; Syria
should not be ruled by either of them, but I don't see how any other
government could arise. The unending war between them is horrible,
but fighting to help one oppressor beat another is horrible too.
Perhaps in time the two camps will divide Syria and the fighting will
taper off.
The example of sea otters demonstrates
how eliminating
one species can have disastrous results on an entire ecosystem.
Humans change ecosystems in many ways. When Europeans first visited
what is now Sydney, the forest was sparse — because the
aborigines kept burning it. Large trees lived through the fires, but
bushes burnt up. The Europeans did not allow fires, and this led to
dense forests.
The people of endangered islands in the Pacific Ocean
are converting
to renewable energy, hoping the rest of the world will follow this
example before their homes are underwater.
Journalist Anabel Hernandez braves threats
to document
how the Mexican state is tied to the drug cartels.
If they legalize the drug trade, this will become only as bad as the
domination of the US by businesses.
The US shift towards low-pay dead-end jobs is triggered by
technological
"advances" that we might be better off without, combines with
government
policies that serve the rich.
Ukrainian thugs
planted
an old gun and grenade in the headquarters of Femen.
Terrorists can kill people, but to threaten the survival of a free
nation as the US or UK requires
"anti-terror"
measures.
J Edgar Hoover's
persistent
surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.
Dissidents
and human rights lawyers in the United Arab Emirates have been
sentenced to long prison terms.
As Obama talks about punishing Assad for using toxic weapons, we
should not forget that the US has done this too,
repeatedly.
Assad cannot excuse use of chemical weapons by saying "The US did it
too." Both Assad and the US are wrong. If we put Assad on a list to
be "sent a message", the US government should be at the top of the
list.
1000
Iraqis were killed by terrorist attacks in July.
The US and UK directly aided Saddam Hussein's
biological
and chemical weapons programs.
The Finnish supreme court ruled in favor of
censoring
a site that published a list of the sites that are censored in
Finland.
Tobacco companies will be able to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership to
block
measures to reduce tobacco addiction.
Americans, let's defeat this treaty now, so that we don't have to
protest like Colombians.
https://stallman.org/trance-pacific-partnership.html
The claim that North Dakota has benefited from fracking is mostly
hot
exhaust gas.
The Colombian people have been devastated by the unjust trade treaty
with the US, and
massive
protests continue despite government repression.
"Free trade" treaties
systematically
weaken democracy; they are generally good for some businesses, and
bad for everyone else.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to raise taxes on business and protect social security.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse displays
total
ignorance about marijuana.
What drugs are they taking?
Ralph Nader:
Obama,
You Cannot Start a War by Yourself.
Obama said he will
consult
Congress before attacking Syria, but did not say he will abide by
Congress's decision.
Assad
Is a War Criminal, But an Attack Will Do Nothing for the People of
Syria.
In Saudi Arabia, operating an "unregistered organization" is a crime.
This evidently unjust law is used to
attack
human rights groups.
A Pakistani TV network faces prosecution for
broadcasting
pictures of a rebel attack.
Google
deleted
two anti-oil videos from YouTube.
I would guess that both removals were based on strained, invalid
copyright claims.
A Tunisian journalist faces five years in jail for
filming
when someone threw eggs at a minister.
A proposed
law in Bangladesh might threaten human rights defenders.
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It's hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire
than having one's national "credibility" depend upon periodically
bombing other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-11 because the old link was broken.]
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