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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.
A Brazilian court ordered Apple, Google and Microsoft to delete the Secret app (and a similar one) from their app stores.
Nobody should use that app; it is proprietary software, so the users don't control it and it may well be malware (as many proprietary programs are).
The Apple and Microsoft operating systems are proprietary and full of malware, too, as is Google Play which is part of Android.
Notwithstanding that, this court decision is oppression, pure and simple. But what makes the decision so damaging is that Apple and Microsoft have built censorship of apps into their operating systems. Now Brazil is using their censorship systems for its own purposes.
In 1950, the UK establishment confronted democracy to maintain its power. Nowadays, it has achieved such superiority over democracy that there is nothing to restrain its power.
In the US, the confrontation dated from 1932 to 1980, and some details of the establishment are different, but the result is the same.
This is why none of the major parties proposes measures that would give poor Britons decent housing.
Kerry called for a "global coalition" to fight ISIS.
Fighting ISIS in a way that is effective in the long term is not such a simple thing. Previous interventions backfired, and ISIS is the result.
Although fighting ISIS can hurt it tactically, in the long term military opposition that enrages foreign Sunnis is what ISIS thrives on.
The leaders of ISIS seem to want to encourage a big US intervention, and that is why they publish provocative videos of real or pretended beheadings.
They also want to encourage Shi'ite hatred that will frighten Iraqi Sunnis.
Hillary Clinton went to a GMO convention and gave GMOs her full support, repeating the false talking points of the GMO companies.
In the US: petition major organic dairies to drop out of the organization that is supporting the lawsuit to overturn Vermont's GMO labeling law.
Women report that men's verbal confrontation is occasionally followed by their physical aggression, often enough that the verbal confrontation makes them scared physical aggression will follow.
I don't understand those men's attitude towards women. It seems to be a mixture of desire, hatred and contempt. I have never felt that way towards anyone, but I am compelled by women's testimony to believe that some men do.
Nonetheless, expressions of emotion are not physical attacks. The two are not morally equivalent. If some insults lead to an assault, that doesn't mean an insult is as bad as an assault.
Uri Avnery: The War for Nothing.
It is interesting that the rockets fired from Hamas, although they rarely injure a person, made life so unpleasant in the farms near the border of Gaza that people began to move away.
Israel has no right to order Gazans to stay away from the border on pain of being shot without warning. Israel does have the right to evacuate the land on its own side of the border. If Israel wants a buffer zone, that is the legitimate way to make one.
A UK man was sentenced to about 3 years in prison for redistributing copies of a movie.
Someone pointed out that this is as much as the usual penalty for convicted rapists.
This redistribution was done commercially. I don't advocate legalization of commercial redistribution of copyrighted works without authorization. Works made to be used in a practical way should all be free but this was a work of fiction, not a functional work. So I don't think what Danks did has to be legalized.
However, the companies that the UK government caters to would have told it to jail him just the same if he had not tried to make one penny.
Please don't refer to unauthorized copying with the smear term, "piracy". Movie piracy is what you see in Captain Blood.
Most Americans want it to be illegal to allow children to play outside alone.
This shows how far the American insanity about children has gone.
Another foolish overreaction: a foreign tourist who climbed a tower on the Brooklyn Bridge faces criminal charges. He is likely to be jailed for years before trial.
Canadian scientists are required to get
9
levels of approval before they can tell the public how much Arctic
ice has melted.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs knew Shannon Renee McNeal was the wrong person, and so did the court, but they insisted on jailing her anyway.
Anyone can make a mistake, but there should be zero tolerance for insisting on mistreating someone based on a mistake that has been recognized. All the people who did so should be fired.
States which had legalized medical marijuana, in 2010, had significantly fewer deaths from opioid pain-killers.
A
US hedge fund appears to have given Mugabe the money for his
terror campaign that undid the opposition's electoral victory.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
A thug in Texas killed a teenager who reasonably thought the thug was an armed thief and tried to drive away. The thug faces no charges.
An executive order made by President Reagan, which ostensibly allows spying on foreigners, is used today mainly to collect data about Americans.
The article repeats the absurd nostrum that terrorists such as al Qa'ida threatened the existence of the US. This is a ridiculous exaggeration — what they could directly do was too small to eliminate the US, and the only way they could do great harm was if the US reacted self-destructively (which it did). Since this ridiculous exaggeration was the excuse for Dubya's attacks on US human rights, and on Iraq, we must not let it pass as true. We must refute it even when someone else mentions it only in passing.
President Reagan other horrible things. He betrayed his country by supplying weapons to terrorists as ransom for the hostages they had taken. He attacked the non-rich, setting the US on the path towards today's plutocracy and expanding poverty.
Republican candidates for the senate met with rich donors and
confessed
their undying gratitude and loyalty to the money.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for an end to
tax
write-offs on penalties to corporations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Many US thug departments are planning to deploy drones, perhaps with infrared cameras to see what the eye could not (such as, whether someone is home).
We certainly can't trust thugs to follow rules, or laws.
Some major social networks tend to silence a dissenting few, on any issue.
This is why it helps us greatly if you insist on calling the GNU/Linux system "GNU/Linux" and refuse to be intimidated by those who erroneously call it "Linux".
Intimidation by Imran Khan's opposition party is driving a Pakistani TV station mostly off the air.
The ICC says that it can investigate war crimes in Gaza if it gets a request from the government of Palestine.
I don't know whether it really needs that request or is passing the buck. I am sure the US is putting pressure on Palestine not to give the ICC jurisdiction.
ISIS uses waterboarding on prisoners, following the US example.
Intelligence agencies have every reason to overestimate the danger of terrorism.
Not to mention that it provides an excuse to do to us what they want to do anyway: spy on everyone's communications and movements.
Ferguson protesters and bystanders attacked by thugs have sued the thug department for 40 million dollars.
I hope they win, but if they do, they will only get compensation from the city. The guilty won't be punished.
US citizens: call on state officials
to ditch
ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
On US TV, the political "debate" shows don't invite, or even mention, union leaders.
The libertarian ideology stubbornly opposes all solutions to problems such as public health and global heating.
US sanctions against Iran continue to make necessary medicines unavailable there.
The UK says that Russia has sent 80 tanks and lots of soldiers into Ukraine.
Hong Kong has launched accusations of bribery against a media mogul that campaigns for democracy.
Plutocrats want the benefits of socialism for them, plus "small government" to strand the rest of us.
The number of manatees in Florida has increased greatly since they were protected, so the question is whether to designate them as "threatened" rather than "endangered".
A species can't survive if its habitat is wiped out. The US often protects one endearing endangered species as a way of protecting the whole ecosystem, including many other species, that it lives in. It seems that manatees are an example of this. The existing restrictions enable manatees to coexist with human water activities, but this redesignation would permit land development that could wipe out all of them.
E-Cigarettes Should Be Called 'Nicotine Sticks' to Curb Appeal, Experts Say.
I suggest calling them "nicotine inhalers" and designing them to look like the inhalers for other drugs — totally un-cool.
US citizens: tell Hillary Clinton to stop supporting Monsanto and GMOs.
Syrian rebels have taken UN peacekeepers hostage.
The GMO industry is trying to get Reuters journalist Carey Gillam fired or transferred, part of a general pattern of trying to silence criticism.
Due to global heating, a brain-eating amoeba is spreading north from Louisiana.
Getting just one in your nose can be fatal.
Victims of US-managed kidnaping and torture call on Obama to release the Senate's torture investigation report.
ISIS killed 200 Syrian soldiers that it had captured, according to its supporters.
Even supposing the report is inaccurate, it shows what ISIS would like to do.
A prohibition on cohabitation, effectively Mormon polygamous marriages though not saying so, has been overturned in a court.
There is a secular polyamory community, which I support. We believe that polyamorous relationships are legitimate; we know they can be happy, and don't lead particularly to problems. I see no valid grounds for the prohibition that was just overturned.
However, the critics of Mormon polygamy say it is a system of oppression of women and children. Are they right? If so, how can those facts be reconciled with secular polyamorous experience? Are these relationships bad in a hidden way? Is there a crucial difference, that causes secular polyamory to have better results than Mormon ones? Is it a matter of different ways of judging whether a relationship is good or bad?
Elizabeth Warren is right wing in regard to Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Muslim and Jewish leaders in Britain say, let's export peace to Gaza.
Australia's next offensive for the fossil fuel companies is to eliminate new spending on conversion to renewable energy.
Market Basket's old CEO, that customers and workers supported, has returned.
How the US government's basic error leads to underestimating the CO2 emissions from Keystone XL.
Renewable energy now generates 22% of electricity, but politicians are working hard to slow the growth rate.
When you compare the cost of renewable energy subsidies with the damage global heating will do, the former is clearly less. It's also much less than the fossil fuel subsidies, which the same politicians don't complain about. Clearly that cost is not the real reason.
I think the reason for this is fossil fuel company money.
The Australian government's next excuse to step on the downtrodden: punishing those who miss a job interview.
The Ukrainian army says that the Russian army has invaded and is attacking the city of Mariupol, after weeks of bombardment from Russian territory.
It appears that Putin has decided on a real covert war of conquest, not the provocation/distraction from Crimea that I thought this was.
Not all safety advice constitutes victim-blaming.
The question of whether to intervene in Iraq includes questions about what sort of intervention it would be, and with what goal.
The Obama regime, obedient to the banksters as usual, fined Goldman Sachs for fraud, but will allow Goldman Sachs to deduct the fine from its taxes and recover 1/3 of it.
Shaker Aamer, held without charges in Guantanamo, is now being beaten daily by the guards as punishment for protesting his imprisonment.
Suggestion: the US has no more obligation to fight Assad in Syria than it has to fight the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, etc.
When Assad faced a campaign of peaceful protests for human rights, that campaign merited support on ethical grounds. Today's situation is totally different.
When a violent uprising started in parallel with that campaign, Assad said it was started by Islamists, and that may have been true. Once the fighting started, various Sunni groups, reportedly less fanatical, joined in; but they have been eclipsed by the jihadi groups funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
That the US does not have to fight all these dictators does not mean it must or should give them strong support, as it does now.
The reasons the US government has stated for supporting so many Arab dictators and monarchs are: to oppose the Soviet Union (obsolete), and to promote stability. Ironically, this practice has had the effect, across decades, of enabling Islamist fanatics to win the support of those who oppose the dictators and monarchs for other reasons.
The indefinite cease-fire in Gaza includes some relaxation of the siege, but not entirely.
The UK thugs didn't bother investigating the murder of Ricky Reel, apparently for racist motives, because they were too busy investigating his family as they campaigned for a proper investigation of the murder.
Universities were once considered a way to benefit society by spreading learning and giving the non-rich a path to advance; now they mainly maintain the elite status quo.
The US equivalent of Iraq Body Count has found that US thugs kill about 3 times as many people as the FBI reports — around 1100 a year.
In an Australian state, one party proposes to escalate the war on drugs.
I think it is a bad idea to use methamphetamine, but the war on drugs does worse harm than the drugs.
New coal-fired electric plants in Europe threatens to wipe out all its savings in CO2 emissions.
If solar power and more advanced batteries catch on, these plants will be lost investments. I suspect that the owners are getting a subsidy to build them, or a loan from the state that will never be repaid if the plants become unnecessary.
Everyone: call on Burger King to drop its tax dodging plan.
US citizens: call for protection of monarch butterflies, whose numbers have fallen by 90%.
Please don't distort the formerly useful word "decimate". It means killing ten percent of something. (The Romans used this as a punishment for military units that mutinied and then surrendered.) What we have done to the monarch butterflies is far worse than decimation.
The ban on GMOs in Kaua'i was overturned in court.
A Koch brothers front group claims that net neutrality is "marxist".
The Koch brothers figure that any absurd claim will pass for true if they get enough organizations to say it often enough.
Three Vietnamese activists who protested for democracy were jailed for "obstructing traffic".
Did Vietnam bring in thugs from Ferguson? This sounds awfully like what they did to some journalists.
The UN reports on the atrocities in Syria, committed by Assad's army and by ISIS.
Protester Ellie Mae O'Hagan, CS gas sprayed by a wild thug for no reason says that the years-late apology from the thug department is no substitute for holding thugs accountable for their actions.
The City of London has a police force that fights the War on Sharing, illegally.
The City of London is a small part of London that acts as a political arm of the banksters. It is the enemy of democracy.
The UK has very little no social mobility. Here are some of the causes.
The situation in the US is similar overall. Social mobility has gone way down since 50 years ago.
A security guard in Australia was declared a "security risk" for having a sign on her car that criticized the danger of coal dust.
The greatest irony is that these ports endanger the security of Australians far more than any individual could.
Global heating denialists claim Australia's record-breaking summer heat is a lie.
New pun in spanish.
US citizens: call on the Department of Transportation to recognize that Americans drive a little less every year, and stop wasting money on unnecessary roads.
Detroit has resumed disconnecting poor people from water supply.
Some people have restored their own connections. Bravo!
Greg Palast: oil companies destroyed the swamp that protected New Orleans from hurricanes, and an oil company shut down the research center that tried to warn people of the danger.
The IPCC reports that global heating is already a source of danger and it may be impossible to reverse.
A woman in Indiana faces many years' imprisonment for taking drugs to cause an abortion.
Young people who were in Fukushima at the time of the meltdown show a high rate of thyroid cancer.
Bus deregulation in the UK (outside London) resulted in high fares and bad service.
This suggests to me that buses need a subsidy, and that deregulation meant elimination of the subsidy. Does anyone know?
How
the Brutalized Become Brutal.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Countries and criminals around the world are tracking people's movements through portable phones.
This is why I don't have one.
The NSA can figure out that two people know each other by seeing that their cell phones are in close proximity.
Pipeline protesters in Michigan locked themselves to trucks to block construction of an oil pipeline.
A Florida thug dumped a mostly paralyzed man onto the floor by tipping his wheelchair.
This incident is unusual, both for callousness, and because the thug's superior condemned it and apologized. It is not a basis for judging thugs in general.
But I think it is the extreme manifestation of an attitude that many thugs have in a less egregious form.
How AT&T buys the support of grass-roots organizations for its campaign against net neutrality.
Wisconsin Governor Walker actively raised funds for supposedly independent groups that were going to use the funds to promote voting for him.
Russia admitted its soldiers were in Ukraine, and reporters trying to investigate reported secret graves in Russia of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine were attacked.
Hypersonic weapons now being developed by the US, China and Russia would put the world on a hair trigger and could even be mistaken for a nuclear attack.
It would be smarter to sign a treaty to ban them, but the US government generally refuses, assuming it will have the advantage.
Everyone: phone Lisa Kershner, General Area Manager of Oakland Marriott City Center and Oakland Convention Center, at 1-510-466-6410, and say you object to their support for the "Urban Shield" event which promotes military weapons for use on US streets and in US homes.
Spanish women are protesting a mayor who warned men that women would make false accusations of rape.
The mayor's statement combines two points which don't really fit together. The suggestion to be careful where you go at 06:00 is wise, not just for women, and not just in regard to rape. There are places in Cambridge where I hesitate to walk when it is dark or deserted, because I don't want to be robbed.
To give this advice for avoiding rape does not excuse rape, any more than giving this advice for avoiding robbery excuses robbery. Safety advice does not inherently involve blaming the victim.
But sometimes it does. In the case of that mayor, for instance. When the mayor combines safety advice with claims about unlikely false accusations of rape, it is clear that he intends to attack women and is looking for pretexts.
Palestine calls on various countries to investigate the participation of their citizens (who are soldiers in the Israeli army) in Israel war crimes.
Dalit women who refuse to collect toilet waste face threats of attack from higher-caste people who demand this service.
WHO calls for
regulation
of e-cigarettes.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine says its army has
captured
Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine alongside rebels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's total destruction of tall buildings in Gaza is an intentional collective punishment of civilians. This is proved by the fact that Israel can, and in the past did, attack particular apartments without destroying the whole building.
If Argentina surrenders to the vultures, it may be forced to surrender a lot of land to foreign powers.
The UK government is fabricating absurd excuses to evade responsibility for undercover thug infiltrators that formed sexual relationships with activists, much as it is fabricating absurd excuses to evade responsibility for aiding US torture.
Thugs' shooting black people is the current instantiation of lynching.
A prominent Tory wants to apply "guilty unless proven innocent" to anyone that goes to Syria or Iraq.
The NSA maintains a huge database of who talks with whom, including Americans as well as foreigners, and makes it available to several government agencies for all sorts of investigations.
Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian human rights defender and feminist and member of the Palestinian parliament, has been arbitrarily exiled by Israel's army from Ramallah to a distant part of the West Bank.
ISIS massacred Shi'ite prisoners in Mosul after telling them they were about to be released. This lie reminds me of the lies Nazis told to Jews to get them to cooperate with being killed.
I suspect the purpose of this massacre was to provoke Shi'ite militias to massacre Sunnis and thus force Sunnis to support ISIS.
Germany may be forced to allow euro-austerity to stop.
A former Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector says that the NRC is ignoring its safety guidelines regarding the safety of the Diablo Canyon reactor in case of earthquake.
In Macao, an unofficial poll of citizens satisfaction with the chief official was shut down forcibly, based on an absurd pretext as usual.
Strong and harsh reactions to the spreading of Islamist ideology can backfire (not to mention that they can violate human rights).
Short-term events and cycles explain the short-term discrepancy in heating of the Earth's surface since 2000, showing that the climate models were correct overall for the long term.
Cameron wants to grab at the ISIS provocation to start another open-ended "war on terror".
As the article says, this is strategically foolish; but it's a great excuse to smash what remains of civil liberties with "anti-terrorist" laws which can then be turned against dissidents, journalists, and journalists' spouses.
The University of Illinois confirmed that it cancelled its faculty offer to Steven Salaita because he had criticized on Twitter the Israeli occupation pf Palestine.
I asked someone to find me a sample of his tweets; these are what I received.
I try my best to remember that we don't just stumble into political consciousness; it's better to teach than to berate or shame.I don't see anything here that legitimately justifies taking away a teacher's job."Hamas" is the biggest red herring in American political discourse since Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction."
When will the attack on #Gazaend? What is left for #Israelto prove? Who is left for Israel to kill? This is the logic of genocide.
Members of the Knesset routinely call for the elimination of Palestinians, so #Israel can spare us the bullshit about restraint in #Gaza.
#Israelgets billions in aid, arms, and financial subsidies from the US, yet most Americans condemn imaginary Black women for welfare.
Rednecks need a new slogan. Instead of "kick their ass and take their gas," how about "#Gazais a disaster, but Netanyahu is my master"?
Republicans are such tough guys, eager to kill 4 God and country. #Israel slaps around the US of A, though, and all they do is ask for more.
The dude who wrote the genocide is permissible article has an egg avatar. Total hasbara troll.
I just got an email condemning my "slander of holy Israel." I reckon I can accept "slander," but "holy" seems a bit out of place.
As Scotland votes about independence, one Englishman is envious, wishing England had the chance to escape from its sham democracy.
What this says to me is that independence for Scotland is a side issue. All of the UK needs to real democracy.
Entrenched systematic bigotry means that
fatal accidents
systematically happen to the group on the receiving end.
Harbors around the world have
plastic
fibers in the water, which can harm fish.
It will take a lot of work to find out how these fibers affect various
species of fish.
David Barron, now Federal Judge Barron, was in an awful rush to
approve
killing
a US citizen with no criminal charges based on nothing but
intelligence reports.
We know how a president can
shape
intelligence reports around whatever result he seeks, so this is
little limitation.
35%
of young Britons would be happy to show their social media
profiles to employers if pressured to do so.
The report says "in exchange for job security", which sounds like a
benefit; but since employers can reduce job security to zero if they
wish, in practice it means, "If you don't show us, you'll be fired (or
never hired)."
It should be illegal for employers to even ask.
The outcome of trials in Florida is affected by the race of the people
in the jury pool,
in
a strange way.
If all the jury pool is white, black defendants are more likely to get
convicted than white defendants. But if at least one black person shows
up for the jury pool, the disparity disappears — even a jury is
made up only of whites.
I think it would be legitimate to arrange for partial racial balance
in jury pools if that eliminates demonstrated unfairness in trial
outcomes.
The study that found damage in animals that were exposed to Roundup,
or that ate Roundup-ready GMO corn, has been
published
again.
The journal that published it first later
retracted
it in suspicious circumstances.
Thugs killed another black man in St Louis, not far from Ferguson.
Video shows that there was no reason to shoot him, let alone shoot him
12
times rapidly without waiting as much as 15 seconds.
It could well be that those thugs really believed he was threatening
them. Part of the effect of racism is that it leads people to
perceive a black male as potentially violent. If the thugs are
allowed to cite this as an excuse for killing someone, their murder
spree will go unchecked.
Racist thinking is associated with the bad logic of "essentialist"
thinking, but specific
kinds of experiences can lead people out of such thinking.
Racist assaults, often by thugs, are frequent occurrences for blacks
in the US,
which teach
them a justified rage.
Learning to control so much justified rage is not easy. It would help
if they could get justice.
The Shi'ite militias that resist ISIS, where the Iraqi army is
incompetent to do so, hate Sunnis
and intend
to expel them from any areas they capture from ISIS.
This is likely to force Sunnis to support ISIS even if they detest
ISIS's oppression and cruelty. Unless they have somewhere else to
turn, and at present they don't.
US Republicans want the US
to intervene
against ISIS in Syria.
I don't think the killing of one US journalist, on top of so many
others murdered by ISIS, is particularly important. I don't think
ISIS is close to attacking the US itself. Whether this sort of
intervention is right depends mainly on its effects on the region
itself. I can see the reasons in favor, but I also worry that things
can go wrong in ways we are not likely to anticipate.
US military support for Kurdistan makes sense because Kurdistan is a
nation fighting a conventional war. It has an army that is loyal to
something more than its pay. In addition, Kurdistan is not likely to
fall into brutality comparable to that of ISIS or the Shi'ite
militias.
The use of drones to attack ISIS poses no special ethical issue
because the targets are military units, typically equipped with
unmistakable military vehicles or heavy weapons — not cars,
houses and groups of people standing around, that might well have
civilians in them.
Can/will Kurdistan protect Sunni Arabs that wish to join it? Can it
offer them a way out of support for ISIS?
Tony B'liar's business accepted a lot of money to advise the dictator
of Kazakhstan on how
to damp
down the bad publicity he got from shooting a bunch of protesters and
crushing the opposition.
Google seems to be aiming slowly
to make
the World Wide Web effectively its proprietary product.
Israel's shift to right-wing racism means
that Liberal
Zionism among Jews elsewhere has hit a dead end.
Liberal Zionism means support for a Liberal Israel which no longer
exists; Israelis who would support it
are met with intimidation, even repression. No wonder 40% of Israelis
are thinking of emigrating.
UK cuts in support for local government
are focused
on the poorest areas.
When thugs do something violent, and get fired,
they frequently
move on to some other town that doesn't care.
Campaigning against the practice
of putting
sugar in lots of foods where you would not expect it.
The Ferguson thugs confirm
that a
thug shot at Michael Brown as he was running away.
Apparently that shot did not hit Brown, but that miss is no excuse for
shooting at someone who was no threat.
After they shot Brown,
the thugs
did not allow a nurse to perform CPR.
That amounts to deliberate murder.
The head of the Missouri Republican Party thinks it
is shameful
that voter registration booths have been set up in Ferguson.
Republicans can't count
on voter-suppression
laws to prevent black citizens from voting; some of them will
succeed in voting if they try.
The government of India
has permitted
the entry of GMOs, disregarding its own laws over and over.
Various states and parties in the Muslim world are
declaring
their opposition to ISIS.
Beijing
Independent Film Festival Shut Down by Chinese Authorities.
Austerity
Has Made Europe's Depression Longer Than In The 1930s.
Economic growth used to require more energy use, but now it is
possible to invest in energy efficiency leading to
growth
with less energy use. Many governments don't do that, because
they have surrendered to the fossil fuel companies, which won't permit
it.
The black citizens of Ferguson
do
not expect justice for Michael Brown.
Israel
completely
destroyed two large buildings in Gaza, saying that Hamas was using
space in them.
One of them had 44 apartments. Hamas should not have used one of them
for warlike activities — if indeed it did so; I would not take
Israel's word for that. But if Hamas did so, that doesn't excuse
destroying the building.
Islamists took control of Tripoli, bringing about the
semipermanent
fracture of Libya.
From
Gaza to Ferguson: Exposing the Toolbox of Racist Repression.
The US has seen cycles of racial segregation and desegregation in
different areas. Segregated areas for blacks tend to be ruled by
whites, with thugs that
repress
the black inhabitants on various pretexts.
Ferguson became poor, where people can barely get by from week to week
and people can't afford education, as a
result
of companies' moving manufacturing out of the US.
Being poor, they are continually harassed by the US legal system,
which in 2013 delivered
three
warrants per household in the town.
Genetically engineered eucalyptus trees won't directly hurt people,
but they have the potential to do
great
ecological harm and encourage land grabs.
The ACLU says that
the
First Amendment was "suspended" in Ferguson; the right to protest,
or report on protest, was loaded with impossible requirements.
It points out that journalism in the US is
under
general attack.
The reason it is so unpleasant to deal with Comcast is that
call
center staff are under pressure to sell something, regardless of
the purpose of the call.
The Obama regime
argues
in court that the Nuremberg trials are legally irrelevant to the
culpability of Bush and his officials for the crime of aggressive war.
It is easy for US law to define US officials as legally immune
from prosecution for whatever crime it may be. The moral argument
is harder for them to win.
A lousy US university has imposed
censorship
on network access for students and others on campus.
Satellite observations show that the melting of Greenland and
Antarctic ice sheets has
doubled
since 2009.
Don't buy land within a few meters of sea level!
US thugs are
campaigning
to continue receiving military weapons and gear.
A thug from the vicinity of Ferguson was "relieved of duty" after it
was seen that he had made a
bigoted
right-wing speech in an organization primarily of thugs and
soldiers.
The thug has not been fired.
Despite Abbott's mystification,
his
policies clearly reflect the intention to push global heating to
the max.
Ferguson's
Black Community Must Not Be Given the Same 'Justice' As Trayvon
Martin.
The Center for Media and Democracy, which often reports on ALEC's
lobbying, believes
that a
right-wing operative is trying to do a hatchet job. He's the one
who destroyed ACORN by publishing a misleading video.
Everyone: tell Starbucks
to offer
employees a fair and predictable work week.
The Lac Mégantic oil train explosion
was a
disaster waiting to happen, due to weak safety rules granted to
railroad magnates by an evidently corrupted government.
A Hamas representative living in Turkey said that Hamas was
responsible
for kidnaping and killing three Israeli teenagers.
However, there are doubts about whether the Hamas leadership really
ordered the kidnaping is not clear.
Australia's proposal for increased surveillance is written so broadly
that the spy agency would
be allowed
to access any computer on the internet.
The government says wiping out privacy is supposed to be legitimate
because "we're protecting you". The usual stupid excuse of tyrants.
The US may be funding compensation for civilians killed in Yemen
while refusing
to admit killing them.
What Britain would
have if
it had avoided Tony B'liar.
Ferguson
relates to net neutrality, which enables people to spread the word
about what the thugs are doing.
It also relates to censorship by Facebook
and now
Twitter too.
Two different ocean cycles coincided
in sinking
Earth's acquired heat for the past decade, so that the atmosphere
didn't warm all that much.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service
to list
the northern long-eared bat as an endangered species.
US citizens: Americans, comment to the EPA
to support
regulation of pollution from oil refineries.
The UK
must nationalize
the trains; privatizing them was wrong.
Privatization of a government service is generally harmful unless it
allows the public to buy from a free competitive market. Otherwise,
the private owners increase their profits by shafting the public, the
workers, or both.
Everyone:
tell Google to stop supporting
ALEC.
ALEC lobbies for damaging laws in US states and cities, but you don't
need to be a US citizen to put pressure on Google.
US citizens:
Sign
this
petition to stop providing heavy weapons to thugs.
Uri Avnery on
why
Israel wants to keep fighting in Gaza.
Avnery suspects that the three rockets supposedly launched from
Gaza weren't really launched from Gaza.
Shi'ite fanatics attacked a Sunni mosque in Iraq,
killing
almost 100 people.
Aside from being an atrocity, this will help ISIS gain support and
commit atrocities.
Why
Hollywood treats abortions as shocking and shameful — in
contrast to the 1980s, when it treated them as no big deal.
The US is
not
giving much information about its fighting in Iraq.
Drone weapons turn out to be convenient for suppressing journalism.
In Dubya's invasion of Iraq, the Bush forces pressured nearly all
journalists to "embed", which both limited their movements and
pressured them to bias their coverage. But there's not even room for
an embedded reporter in a drone.
Privatization in Britain has followed the path of privatization in
Russia, leading to an
immense
transfer of wealth to the new owners.
Most of the Russian "humanitarian aid" trucks entered Ukraine
without
inspection.
Putin would never go to such trouble for humanitarian purposes. This
must have some harmful motive.
US right-wing racists are
raising
funds to support the thug that killed Michael Brown, cheering on
the killing of more blacks.
A teacher in the US was
punished
for allowing students to reenact two controversial killings, which
the students themselves selected as important current events.
I don't see why students should not learn about these events in that
way.
A Palestinian mortar rocket
killed
an Israeli child.
Firing mortars at towns is a war crime, just like the Israeli
bombardment of Gaza.
Pranksters accused of painting the side of a building in Moscow
are
threatened
with 7 years in prison.
They say they did not do the painting, but the more important point is
that whoever did the painting should not be imprisoned.
The school-to-prison pipeline at work: a student in South Carolina was
suspended from school, then arrested, for writing a
story
about shooting a pet dinosaur.
The thugs say he was arrested for his reaction when the thugs threatened him.
Of course, being threatened by armed thugs who
can
put you in prison by lying about you is enough to rattle most
anyone. It takes training and experience to avoid giving them
something they can twist into an excuse to put you in the wrong.
India has
censored
a film about the assassination of Indira Gandhi because of the
political slant of certain scenes.
This shows
where
the UK will get to if it continues down the path of political
censorship.
A censorship board that does its job "honestly" is a bigger threat to
human rights than one that can be bribed not to censor.
The UN human rights chief says the Security Council's ineffectiveness
on Syria caused
hundreds
of thousands of deaths.
However, there is was
no
proper action the Security Council could have taken in regard to
Syria, even if it had not been paralyzed between the US and
Russia.
The US and UK are now being drawn by necessity into
allying
with Assad in Syria against ISIS.
The only chance for supporting opposition to Assad with good results
was when the opposition was not jihadi. I think Saudi Arabia and
Qatar are to blame for the
jihadists
in Syria.
The public school reality that white Americans won't see: cuts in
spending, especially on schools in poor neighborhoods,
track
the children (mostly minority groups) into bad lives (or
prison).
The various "education reform" programs that the US has seen since 2000
in effect pretend to compensate for these cuts with burdensome handwaving.
The result is that poor American children have been forced into what
we might call
"reform
school".
US citizens: call on the FCC
to reject the
Comcast-TWC merger.
Everyone: call on McDonalds
to pledge
to reject palm oil made from deforestation.
I have never eaten at McDonalds, because I don't need to repeat
someone else's mistake in order to learn from it. McDonalds makes
fast food — food for not eating.
The UK government is planning
a massive
giveaway of public land, a requirement to extract all fossil
fuels, and abolition of local planning.
Thailand has made its military coup effectively permanent
by declaring
the head general to be "prime minister".
US citizens: tell the
USDA, don't
import apples from China.
Hamas supports
Palestine's joining the International Criminal Court. This would
expose Hamas and its agents to war crimes prosecutions, as well as
Israel and its agents.
UK immigration prisons
are paying
prisoners a pittance to cook and clean. Ironically, those
prisoners are not allowed to work in the UK outside prison.
This practice hurts not only the prisoners but all workers in the UK.
Whoever does this work should be paid a decent wage.
The Green
Party condemns
many systematic injustices in the policing of the US.
Corporations Spy
on Nonprofits (that criticize them) with Impunity (in the US).
Oakland
Protesters Hold
Up Mirrors to Police Officers in Ferguson Solidarity March.
Thousands rallied
in New York City.
Bank of America agreed to pay a fine for mortgage fraud,
but it's
much smaller than it appears to be.
Congress should insist that
Obama consult
Congress before military interventions such as the bombing campaign in
Iraq.
Obama has taken steps
to protect
insurance coverage of contraception from the Hobby Lobby decision.
US citizens:
submit
a comment to the FCC opposing the merger between Comcast and Time
Warner.
That two companies with such large share of any market should not be
allowed to merge ought to be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, the US
goverment has been turned into a zombie by businesses, and has trouble
with no-brainers.
Everyone:
call
on Marriott to stop supporting Urban Shield, the main US event to
promote militarization of thugs.
Everyone:
call
on DA McCulloch to appoint a special prosecutor for the killing of
Michael Brown.
Sweden sentenced an artist to prison for
"racist"
art.
I share their disapproval of racism, but censorship threatens
everyone.
The World Bank and friends say that they are eliminating poverty,
but it's more like
redefining
poverty.
Canadian professor John Smol
rebuked the
government for trying to gag him from talking about his
measurements of pollution from oil sand strip mining.
The US "war on terror" has not only failed, it has
backfired.
The US "economic recovery" is lopsided,
leaving
low-paid workers poorer than before.
Earnings for Britons under 30 have
fallen
around 10% in 4 years.
UK censorship expands to politics with a vengeance; the government
threatens
anyone redistributing or even watching an ISIS propaganda video.
The National Guard is
being
withdrawn from Ferguson.
I hope that the protests do not peter out soon. Nothing fundamental
has been corrected.
The trial of Sharif Mobley is blocked because the Yemeni government is
holding
him in a secret prison and won't allow him to see the court or his
lawyers.
Protests have occurred in NYC, Los Angeles, Oakland and elsewhere
against
the killing of local people by thugs and in solidarity with
Ferguson.
The Russian humanitarian aid convoy is
starting
to enter Ukraine after Red Cross inspection.
Putin could have got all these trucks inspected by the Red Cross
days before, and into Ukraine without conflict, if he had wanted to.
Venezuela
plans
to use a biometric card to ration subsidized products so they
won't be smuggled into Colombia and resold.
Switching to a system like food stamps would solve this problem pretty
well.
It's right to make thugs wear cameras in public, but why do that to
meter
maids?
Twitter undermines its history of respect for freedom of speech by
censoring
a bloody ISIS propaganda video.
Operators of Diaspora hosts are reportedly
threatened
with punishment if people post the ISIS propaganda on their hosts.
I think this is censorship as dangerous as ISIS. Your opinions are
next on the list.
Tests prove that many kinds of
weapons
and explosives can be smuggled through the X-ray scanners that
were formerly used, untested, for "security" in airports.
Even worse, if one of these machines were to break, it could give a person
a
dangerous
radiation burn. Once I learned that, I opted out every time. I
said, "Please feel me up."
Protesters
explain why they shut down an Israeli weapons factory in the UK.
The crime of "aggravated trespass" is a synonym for "annoying
protest". To accuse anyone of that crime is a sign of an
antidemocratic government.
A neighborhood in Liberia has been
quarantined
to block spread of Ebola.
I don't know whether this sort of measure is effective enough to
justify the loss of liberty it involves.
Repression of the homeless in Australia: in Melbourne,
begging
is a crime.
As the Australian government proposes to cut the support for the
unemployed, especially those under 30, it will make more homeless
people that will be forced into "crime".
Richard Dawkins says that
women
have a moral duty to abort a fetus that has Down's syndrome.
I completely concur. Having a baby with Down's syndrome does harm to
someone (that baby). An abortion does no harm to anyone.
The US military says that
employees will be
punished if they read The Intercept.
This prohibition would be ludicrous if it were not so dangerous. It
covers millions of people, soldiers and civilians, many of whom will
obey the prohibition. Then they will base their thoughts on, and
spread, a warped world view which they have taken for truth.
Ferguson protests respond to
systematic
repression and disenfranchisement.
Thugs in Ferguson raided a church that was providing
medical
care to protesters who were suffering from tear gas.
Mobilizing Canadians against the
Atlantic
substitute for the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens:
Help End Domestic Slavery.
With Javascript disabled, this page does work
even though it appears to have failed.
Israel is
blocking
the staff of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from
going to Gaza to investigate war crimes.
A town in the Solomon Islands
has
to move to higher ground as sea level rises.
The US must start planning to move parts of Boston, parts of New York
City, parts of Washington DC, and all of Florida. This move won't be
needed for some decades, but it will take decades to do.
The
hidden
costs of fracking are tremendous.
New York gubernatorial candidate Randy Credico was
arrested
and given a little gratuitous torture in New York City for making a
video of thugs' arresting someone else.
I hope he wins and starts jailing thugs for such conduct.
Activist Hedy Epstein, age 90, was
arrested
for protesting in Ferguson.
Her supposed "crime" was simply continuing to protest.
Thugs in Ferguson repeatedly offered to "help" some reporters by
taking
them far away from the protests, "for their safety".
Considering that the only danger to them is from the thugs, this is
really half of a threat.
A new Australian coal mine was
allowed
to dicker down the compensation it would have to pay for predicted
damage to the Great Barrier Reef.
For
several
reasons, this mine should not be allowed at all.
The Real Looting of Ferguson:
Its
Black Citizens Never Had a Chance to Get By.
Here are the
embarrassing
secrets for which Obama plans to imprison James Risen.
A former Israeli gun crew chief says he
does
not believe Israel's claim to have tried to minimize civilian
casualties in Gaza.
US corporations
claim
that corporation taxes are too high, but really they believe that
since they got one tax amnesty they are entitled to tax amnesties ad
infinitem.
A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle
remember
less of the events.
I think issues like this are less important than the
injustice of the
Swindle.
They claim that military weapons and equipment for thugs are
"surplus", but
1/3
of them are new.
I think there are multiple motives for it. Repressing racial
minorities and the poor is one reason.
Feeding
the manufacturers is another.
In the US, or where US TV networks are available: Call on TV networks
to stop choosing McCain as
a pundit.
US cities, and senators, are asking the FCC
to override
state laws purchased by ISPs that ban municipal broadband
networks.
Saudi
Arabia's role in creating ISIS, the monster that it can no longer
control.
Someone in
Gaza fired
rockets at Israel, breaking the cease fire. Israel responded by
killing the family of a Hamas leader, and another family.
US
thugs keep
on killing unarmed black men, then fabricating excuses.
Here's What
Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men.
White Supremacy Is
the Real
Culprit in Ferguson. The Excuses Just Prove It.
Dennis Kucinich explains what is needed
to undo
militarization of US thugs.
Israel kills
Gazans all the time, not just when there is a war.
Israel is
systematically campaigning
to undermine international humanitarian law — the treaties
about war crimes which Israel has been condemned for violating.
Israeli soldiers arrested
64 Palestinians from the West Bank, clearly for political reasons.
Israeli
soldiers demolished
a Palestinian home in Jerusalem without warning, and did not allow
the inhabitants to take out any of their property.
An Israeli sociologist tries to explain the psychology of fear that
enables Israelis
to see
themselves as humane while dehumanizing Palestinians.
The article also offers explanations for how Israel became almost
entirely hawkish, racist and right-wing.
If 40% of Israelis wish to emigrate, I suspect that it's because those
who are more or less secular expect the religious fanatics to take
over and oppress them.
ISIS
is advancing
territory in Syria using weapons captured from the Iraqi army.
It seems the West must attack ISIS in Syria to protect Assad.
Murderous as he is, letting ISIS defeat him would be even worse.
US citizens: call for the US
to tighten
rules on ivory, to protect elephants.
Two artist/hackers who put white flags on the Brooklyn
Bridge fear
they will be permanently excluded from the US.
It sure looks like the US has no sense of humor.
The Iraqi
government failed
in an attempt to retake Tikrit; Isis soldiers gave hard
resistance.
US air strikes are easy and effective in open country, but not in
cities.
If Tikrit is indeed controlled by Baathists and Sunni militants, as
the article says, it should be possible to make a peace with them.
They can't be very happy with Isis; they must regard it as a last
resort to get out from under the Maliki's sectarian rule. The
challenge will be to convince them that a new Iraqi government won't
be equally bad.
US citizens: call on the DOT
to protect
Americans from oil trains.
Australia is going to "unthinkable" lengths
to force
Syrian refugees back to Syria, where they face torture or death.
The Australian state of Victoria proposes
US-style seizure
of possessions on a system of guilty-until-proven-innocent.
ICANN is considering giving governments
almost total
power over its decisions.
A
journalist reports
on his arrest in Ferguson. Thugs shot him first. They did not
really care why he was there; they were arresting anyone who could be
found.
Note the sleazy excuse for denying the journalist the right to phone
his lawyer. Just the sort of behavior I'd expect from a thug.
Then a press photographer was arrested,
for not
standing where the thugs wanted photographers to stand. These
thugs think they are entitled to control protests and control the
press.
I am glad that some of the protesters tried to control random violence
by other protesters. That sort of indiscipline leads to defeat.
While it is less serious, intrinsically, than the thugs' violence, it
gives the thugs an excuse to pretend that they are protecting the town
rather than occupying it.
Some suspect that
the few
violent protesters are outsiders.
The next night,
they arrested
78 people, protesters and bystanders and journalists I suppose.
Other countries that trample human rights more than the
US find
in Ferguson an opportunity to retort.
I wish the US would clean up its act so it could criticize oppression
without making people laugh.
The Committee to Protect
Journalists Condemns
Ongoing Harassment, Arrests of Reporters in Ferguson.
The Man Who Ran Contra Propaganda for Reagan
Is Guatemala's
New DC Lobbyist.
US citizens:
support
the bill to make firing union organizers a matter of
discrimination.
It's already forbidden, but this would make it easier and faster to
enforce the ban.
The UK's environmental department is
lobbying
the EU to keep a very dirty coal power plant running.
One of the thugs who
accused
Henry Davis of "destruction of property" for bleeding on their
uniforms is now a city councilor in Ferguson.
The wealth of the 1% is
literally
beyond measure, because they hide so much of it. What they
sequester has prevented economic recovery for the rest.
The UK ambassador to the US has been
lobbying
the US Senate since 2012 to conceal the UK's complicity in CIA
torture.
A gang of thugs (not cops this time)
attacked an editor in Sudan that
had advocated normalizing relations with Israel, and trashed the
newspaper office.
Two Iranians
will
be whipped for criticizing a book published by a local official on
artistic grounds.
M. L. King:
A
riot is the language of the unheard.
Ukraine
and rebels accuse each other of firing rockets at a convoy that
was evacuating civilians.
I expect that neither side attacked them intentionally, but this is
the sort of thing that happens in war, and even more so when care is
not taken.
However, firing the inaccurate Grad rockets into urban areas is a war
crime, and I have seen accusations that Ukraine regularly does that.
Ten
Facts About Police Violence in Ferguson Sunday Night.
Arms
companies have effectively paid Congress to support militarization
of US thugs.
The
pollution
and resource scarcity problems that humanity is creating can be
seen as a failure in coexistence with the natural world.
Civil liberties organizations in Australia warn
that human
rights are threatened by the new "counter-terrorism" proposals.
There is very little danger of terrorism in Australia. It's just an
excuse to attack human rights.
Extreme capitalism is the idea
that every
aspect of society has to be run as a business. This is a major
cause of what's wrong in US education and health care.
US citizens: support Amnesty International's call for the Ferguson
thug chief to respect
the rights of peaceful protesters.
Republicans
are blocking
federal funds for processing the backlog of "rape kits" containing
evidence from complaints of rape.
Those right-wingers don't care much about any sort of rights if they
are for women.
Richard Nixon faced impeachment
for undermining
the Constitution with illegal spying and dirty tricks. Under
Bushbama it's even worse.
Aug 19
is "Earth
Overshoot Day", the day when we've used, since the beginning of
the year, as much resources as the Earth can sustain for the whole
year.
Just 14 years ago, that point was reached in October.
Irom Sharmila has been in prison and on hunger strike for 14 years
after witnessing a massacre by the Indian Army.
I think she was never given a trial, but
a court
now ordered her release.
Bringing home the fact that you don't control your mobile phone,
there's an app
to give
someone else remote control over it.
Obama is stretching the facts
to avoid
asking Congress for authorization to use military force in Iraq.
Congress should not accept this stretching. What's at stake is the US
Constitution.
Everyone: call for your country
to defend
the rights of the Tibetan people under repression.
When 100 Tibetans
protested, Chinese
thugs shot several, then arrested them and denied them medical
treatment
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Amory Lovins claims we can switch entirely to renewable energy without on-grid storage by using time-shifting to make demand fit the momentary supply.
We need to be careful to set up these systems so that they don't collect information about what systems we are using.
For instance, if the goal is to tell 1/4 of the air conditioning systems in a substantial area to shut off, it isn't necessary to find out which ones happen to be on at the moment. Statistically, the result would be roughly the same if you make the decision based on which houses have such air conditioning.
Update to On Hacking to recognize that "hacking" is not supposed to cover wit and art.
A desperate woman in Ireland was forced to have a cesarean section, when she threatened to starve herself after being denied an abortion.
She was pregnant because of a rape committed before she reached Ireland.
Abortion is a basic right.
The Iraqi Kurds recaptured the Mosul dam, with US air support.
Michael Brown's autopsy report says he was shot 6 times, all from the front.
Even if the thug's actions after stopping Brown were not wrong, it seems clear he would not have stopped a white man.
US thugs will let you walk around with a weapon (in some states) … if you're white. If you're black, they order you to drop it, and shoot you before you have a chance to comply, even if it's a toy.
In other words, "open carry" laws potentiate the effect of racist attitudes.
Now that the UK charges workers almost $2000 for filing a discrimination case, complaints have gone down by 80%. Only well-paid workers can afford to complain.
The EPA has failed for 30 years to issue legally required rules to make polluters pay to clean up their pollution.
Just living near a place where coal ash is handled or dumped can give people asthma.
The US is pressuring the ICC and Mahmoud Abbas not to request an investigation into Israeli and Palestinian war crimes.
Australia's government said it would maintain the renewable energy target but is clearly making plans to create an excuse to eliminate it.
Explaining the background of ISIS in radicalization of Sunnis.
10,000 Israelis demonstrated for peace with Gaza.
It was a good try, but I think it will take more than 10,000 to influence the government, and the Arab-hating people.
Western news media have a superficial view of many countries, because reporters nowadays don't stay in a place long enough to know what's what.
The curfew in Ferguson was obeyed by recognized leaders and organizers, but hundreds of people stayed past midnight in pouring rain rather than let thugs chase them out of their town.
This article says the thugs did use tear gas.
Over 100 SWAT raids occur each day in the US, and most of them are for nothing more serious than searching a house for drugs.
This is accompanied by training thugs to act like an occupying army. If they expect to shoot people down, they will find opportunities to do it.
Here is data about the military equipment that the US has given to thugs.
Facebook is ordering users to switch to a different Messenger app which demands access to lots of personal information.
It's proprietary software, thus inherently untrustworthy, so using it is an act of folly. The same is true of Facebook's main app, and the nonfree program (in either iThings or Android) for accessing the app store where it is released.
In Android, that program is called Google Play, and it has a back door that is more or less universal.
Of course, you shouldn't be used by Facebook at all, because it extracts personal data that nobody ought to know.
A mob attacked a clinic in Liberia and drove out 29 people infected with Ebola.
Now they are likely to infect other people. Way to go, idiots!
The patients have been found and brought to another clinic.
Australian PM Abbott's plan to stop promoting renewable energy would amount to a 10 billion dollar gift to the fossil fuel companies he serves. And without even achieving the promised insignificant side benefit of a reduction in electricity prices.
A Jewish Israeli woman converted to Islam and is marrying an Arab. This has brought out various sorts of racists.
I find it hard to imagine a greater folly than for a woman to convert to Islam. But she has a right to do it, and a right to get married.
A US woman accused in Indonesia of murdering her mother says that thugs are beating her and threatening to deny her water unless she confesses.
I have no opinion about whether she is guilty of those charges. There may be valid reasons to prosecute her, but suspects should not be tortured.
The slogan "We don't talk with terrorists" is often an excuse to continue war.
Negotiating ransom with terrorists is what one should never do. Negotiating peace, that's different.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect farm workers from dangerous pesticides.
On Race, America Has Far to Go. Ferguson Won't Be The Last Flash Point.
Union activists blocked an Israeli ship from docking in Oakland as a protest against the bombardment of Gaza.
Australian thugs are trying to arbitrarily ban a protest against an Israeli film festival in Australia.
US citizens: sign these two petitions to stop militarizing US thugs.
French MPs propose to require supermarkets to donate unsold but still edible food to charities.
In principle, the idea seems good.
Poisonous algae in Lake Erie seem to result from a change in the form of phosphorus used in fertilizer.
Afghan thugs raided a coffee shop because women and men were allowed to sit and talk there.
Ecuador's foreign minister asks why the Swedish government fails to use the opportunity to question Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, and thus denies justice both to Assange and to the women who made a complaint against him.
Of course, we can infer the answer easily.
California "Kill Switch" Bill Could Be Used to Disrupt Protests.
Advocates of greater regional autonomy in Russia have been arrested and their demonstrations banned.
I think it is proper for wealthier regions to support the development of poorer regions; thus, I disagree with demands for independence from the wealthier regions based on objection to this; for example, in Catalunya because its taxes help poorer parts of Spain.
If Siberia is proportionally richer than other parts of Russia, I would object likewise in Siberia's case. But I don't know whether that is so, and I don't know what Putin is doing with the tax money.
James Risen Calls Obama 'Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom in a Generation'.
US citizens: thank Obama for rethinking weapons deliveries to Israel.
US citizens: call on Obama to eliminate the tax incentives for companies to move their headquarters outside the US.
UK thugs want to be allowed to look at people's confidential medical records without getting a warrant (let alone permission). They cite "vulnerable" people as an excuse, but the loss of rights would apply to everyone.
Perhaps it is, in a sense, about vulnerable people. When undercover thugs infiltrate a dissident group, if they could check the medical records of everyone in the group, they could quickly find which ones are vulnerable to being pressured into a sexual relationship.
How US media spin the civilian casualties in Gaza — including claiming that civilians working for Hamas in non-military roles count as combatants.
Apple is storing the data of iThing users in China on servers in China.
Since Apple can extract lots of personal data from an iThing remotely, I think Apple will have great difficulty refusing when China demands that it do so.
China released human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng from prison, starved and with smashed teeth.
His teeth fell out because he was given limited food. He was tortured both physically and mentally. Now he can hardly speak.
Al Sharpton exhorted Ferguson protesters to avoid weakening their case by engaging in crimes such as looting.
This is wise advice: blacks of the 60s won advances in civil rights through discipline, and protesters today need discipline too.
Since then, a curfew has been imposed. I don't expect the protesters to disperse quietly just because someone told them to.
A Ukrainian rebel leader claims to have 1200 soldiers who were trained in Russia, as well as 30 tanks.
They could not have captured 30 tanks from the Ukrainian army in that area. If the claim is true, most of those tanks must have come from Russia. Perhaps Russia captured Ukrainian tanks in the Crimea and sent them to Ukraine.
Communities, Individuals, and the Long Fight Against Poverty [in the US].
This fight would not be nearly so long if not for the rich that defend poverty for everyone else.
US citizens: Call for approval of the
constitutional
amendment to reverse the Corporations United decision (to call
them what they are, not what they pretended to be).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Rabaa massacre, one year later.
Michael Brown has been accused of stealing cigars from a store shortly before he was killed. The thugs have given conflicting stories about whether his killer knew about that.
The news of this ended the temporary peace between the thugs and the people of Ferguson, as the people took this as an attempt to smear the victim.
Ferguson's Days of Unrest Expose Stark Reality of a Segregated Society.
One white resident says about black drivers who get stopped: "Tires gone, lights out, no insurance, pieces of junk, that's why."
Perhaps it is true that black residents of Ferguson tend to have cars that are nearly junk, and leave things unrepaired. I wonder why. Perhaps because they don't get enough work, or their unemployment benefits were cut off, or they get paid minimum wage which is worth less and less, or they were victims of fraudulent foreclosure. Or their relatives have these problems, and they have to help their relatives rather than get a nice new car.
James Risen is epitome of how Obama (continuing Dubya's policy) threatens freedom of the press in the US.
The main group of Yazidis, on Mt Sinjar, escaped the siege of genocidal ISIS, but smaller groups caught in villages are being massacred.
Fracking under the sea threatens coastal ecosystems.
Malaysia demonstrated contempt for human rights by threatening to jail a citizen for three years for "liking" a Facebook post that praises Israel.
Being a used of Facebook is foolish, but expressing opinions there should not be a crime.
Algorithmic filtering can affect history, not just hide history. Facebook's filtering algorithm suppressed news about the thug riot in Ferguson until after it became national news.
The UK government has blocked publication of the report into the cause of horsemeat in the "beef", because it will point the finger at the government's cuts in inspecting food.
The deeper cause, which the report may not mention, is the EU's deregulation that makes it easy to ship meat from one company to another, in different countries, in a long sequence. Make the supply chain long enough, and there is sure to be a cheater in it at some point.
The US wants to do both of these things: undermine inspections and deregulate meat imports.
Fraud is profitable, so when business determines the laws, it often legislates for fraud.
Ferguson thugs' previous caper: they arrested the wrong man, jailed him even after they became aware of this, kicked him in the head, then charged him with the crime of damaging thug department property (bleeding on their uniforms).
Maybe he didn't bleed on their uniforms at all — the thugs later said they had made it up.
These thugs committed perjury. Why are they not in prison for that?
Uri Avnery: Eyeless in Gaza.
A big spill of mine waste in Canada has led to repercussions against the mine.
Australia's National Security Proposals Will Criminalise Journalists, Says Union.
Australia plans to tell asylum seekers they should go to Cambodia instead.
It might be a valid response, except that Cambodia treats asylum seekers almost as badly as Australia does.
The widely acknowledged (though not officially) "Hannibal Directive", by which the Israeli army risks killing its own soldiers to make sure they are not taken prisoner, means that the Israeli government will kill Israelis to avoid annoying negotiations.
When you get accustomed to dehumanizing the enemy, you tend to dehumanize your friends too by force of habit.
US frackers continue injecting diesel fuel even though it is illegal.
A California Hospital Charged $10,000 for a Cholesterol Test.
This is an extreme case of a standard practice of gouging people who don't have an insurance company to push for a lower price.
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which monitors violations of Palestinians' human rights and called for peace in Gaza, has been singled out for punishment by the state because of its peace advocacy.
This fits into the general pattern in Israel of repression of those that oppose the occupation. Israel boasted of being the only free society in the Middle East, but it isn't much of a free society any more.
Due to militarization of US thugs, Ferguson looks like Iraq.
For US blacks, being killed by thugs is not unusual, and being harassed by thugs is an everyday occurrence.
However, while racial profiling is unfair, that's not the central issue here. It's a fact that the people killed by thugs for no reason tend to belong to certain minority groups, but that's not what makes these killings wrong. The killing of Michael Brown would have been equally wrong if he were of some other ethnic group.
The unjustified violence of thugs, exacerbated by their militarization, is the central issue.
The Australian government hopes a meaningless apology will mollify those it intends to push into poverty on the street.
Making thugs wear cameras is just part of what is needed to curb their violence.
These cameras won't stop other abuses, such as searching people without grounds.
A leak shows that the secret proposed Canada-EU free exploitation treaty, CETA, has investor-state injustice comparable to TPP and TTIP.
For instance, if a city privatizes its water, it would be unable to make the water public again.
We should not be distracted by precisely where lines are drawn. All such treaties are fundamentally inimical to democracy, and we must abolish them, not sign more.
New York City is directing some of its spending towards worker-owned co-ops instead of businesses that profit mainly the boss.
Even if the page you visit isn't malware, various governments can replace it with malware.
Iraq has a new prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, but is there any chance he can win support from all sectors of the country?
The US proved it is possible to buy the support Sunni clan leaders, but it's not enough to pay them for a couple of years; one needs to keep paying them permanently. That may be worth the price.
Michael Brown's Death Was No Anomaly. We Cannot Stay Silent.
We must somehow end the impunity of thugs that attack citizens.
Verizon is harassing phone customers to make them switch from copper lines to fiber cables that will be useless in a protracted emergency.
Modi focused a speech on condemnation of rape in India and calling for better treatment of girls.
US citizens: call on the EPA to require disclosure of the chemicals used in each frack well.
Everyone: call on Detroit to implement the 2005 water affordability plan and switch on everyone's water.
Creeping privatization of Britain's National Health Service is resulting in corruption, waste, and injuries to patients.
Children are more likely to encounter bullying and harm while at school than on the internet.
Busted: the myth that winning the soccer world cup leads to some economic benefit for a country.
Even if that were true, this would be a lousy way to make most people better off, since only one country can win. There are lots of better ways to use that same amount of money for the general good.
The main cause of glacial shrinkage nowadays is human activity.
Way to go, homo sap! This will lead to growing scarcity of fresh water in the areas that get their water from glacial runoff, such as California and northern India.
The UK government talks up community wind energy co-ops but has tightened the rules, blocking new ones.
Public pressure, criticizing cruelty to whales, has made SeaWorld agree to change some practices. Will it do enough?
How the thugs in Ferguson
intentionally
attacked TV crews.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Azerbaijan's tyrant has arrested human rights activists.
The excuse about NGO funding has been used to suppress civil society in several other countries, most recently Russia.
A new commander convinced the thugs in Ferguson to stop attacking the protesters.
"Stand your ground" laws have lead to an increase in number of killings, and in a racially biased way.
Customers of Market Basket: demand restoration of the CEO that treated workers and customers decently.
The US
continues
to oppose the proposed treaty against weapons in space.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The black residents of Ferguson report that the city government is controlled by whites that persistently oppress them.
Abbott's business adviser prominently called climate science a hoax and warns of an imaginary threat of global cooling.
I suspect he is being paid somehow to do this by the coal industry. I wonder if he has ties to those suppositories of all climate folly, the Koch brothers.
Thugs, some armed with assault rifles, attacked protesters and journalists in Ferguson.
The thugs fired rubber-coated steel bullets at a protester with his arms in the air, and at journalists. They arrested journalists too.
Firing tear gas canisters at people's bodies is a tactic well known from Palestine, where soldiers sometimes succeed in killing people with these "nonlethal" weapons that way. That's not how tear gas canisters are supposed to be used, but try telling thugs that.
The repression in Ferguson highlights the effect of the general militarization of US thugs since 2001.
Thugs with military weapons now create a war-zone atmosphere at protests they wish to repress.
The thug in Ferguson who arrested a reporter, and bashed his head against a car window, was wearing armor that prevented identifying him. Handy, if you want to hurt and injure people and get away with it.
These thugs are the nascent occupying army of the plutocratic state. As the state imposes more "free trade" treaties to cement the power of big business and serve the interests of the 1%, it needs to repress the people somehow. Just stopping poor and minorities from voting may not be enough.
Why research ethics are necessary even in the midst of an epidemic.
"Social media" seem to make many people more narcissistic.
Comcast seems to have a systematic practice of telling customers that some repair will be gratis, then charging for it anyway — unless the customer has a recording to prove it.
Interviews with the enslaved foreign workers building Abu Dhabi's branches of the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum and New York University.
In Many US Communities, Cops are the 'Terrorists'.
The US wants school children to eat vegetables, but won't make the effort needed to prepare them to be edible.
Shipping lots of oil by train is dangerous even at low speed, but US railroads want the trains to travel at 60mph.
Poor people have cultural patterns, but the "culture of poverty" is a fabrication designed to prove that poverty is caused by bad habits.
Exposing Walmart spin about its economic power.
When a musical recording is released solely under iTunes, it is off limits to libraries… and oppressive for individuals too.
The only way you should ever accept copy of that recording is by file-sharing, so that you do not agree to their unjust contract.
The NSA's automatic counterattack device presumes that the NSA is intercepting all internet traffic into the US.
Comcast and Time Warner are putting lots of money into "honoring" the FCC commissioner in charge of reviewing their merger.
To such large companies in the same field should never be allowed to merge. That ought to be a no-brainer.
Child Asylum Seekers' Rights on Nauru 'Systematically Violated'.
We may be able
to stop
the TPP, but we must reject Democratic pressure to "give Obama a
victory" which would be a defeat for the American people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Russian military vehicles were seen crossing the border into Ukraine.
Appeals for "calm" are not enough; the occupation of Ferguson and other parts of the US by armed thugs must be ended.
Police Brutality Must Be Punished If We Want Real Justice for Michael Brown.
We need to unmilitarize the thugs, too.
Everyone: call on the Justice Department to investigate the thugs of Ferguson.
Everyone:
call
on Bumble Bee to take positive action to avoid killing sharks when
it catches tuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Egypt Is in the Grip of a Violent Tyranny — with the West's Backing.
Nitrous oxide, as sold on the street, is hardly dangerous at all, so why so much effort to get rid of it?
Perhaps it is unsightly, like a hungry homeless person. Cities try to ban them, too.
Snowden says that Syria's disconnection from the internet was due to a mistake that the NSA made while trying to install spy software.
Guatemala's president, formerly a general who implemented US-backed repression has hired a US lobbyist to get more military "aid" from the US.
The current outbreak of Ebola virus continues spreading because of fundamental problems in the medical system in Sierra Leone which result in lots of avoidable deaths from less exotic diseases.
Satellite observations find that the amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere has increased over 30 years, as climate models predict global heating to cause.
US citizens: Tell Congress
you object
to letting company reps choose their staff.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
It occurs to me that Putin may have provoked the rebellion in eastern Ukraine with the goal of firing up Russians to support him while he imposes Chinese-style censorship on the internet in Russia.
Professor Schabas, appointed to lead a UN investigation of war crimes in Gaza, has said that Netanyahu deserves to face the International Court.
The information given does not justify the conclusion that Schabas is anti-Israel, but does suggest he has a preconceived view of the issue to be investigated. I agree with view, but his having it in advance may mean the investigation is biased.
Confirmation: Nixon and Kissenger sabotaged a cease-fire in Vietnam in order for Nixon to win the presidential election of 1968.
Whether this literally constitutes treason, or just a betrayal, I am not sure.
I've seen accusations that Reagan's men sabotaged an agreement with Iran to free the US hostages in 1980 so that he would win the presidential election that year. I don't know whether this is true, but he certainly betrayed his country later by ransoming hostages Iran-supported Lebanese kidnapers by selling arms to Iran.
More than ever before, Israel represses both Jews and Arabs that oppose the war.
Hamas has always used its tunnels against Israeli soldiers, not against civilians.
The article also mentions several Israeli claims about the tunnels that were erroneous or fabricated.
Right wing demonstrators in Israel boast of killing all the children in Gaza. (That is not in fact the case, but apparently they wish it were.)
A peace demonstration was banned, but hundreds came anyway.
The DEA bribed an Amtrak secretary for 20 years to get passenger name records rather than try to subpoena them.
I refuse to take Amtrak because it demands passengers show ID. Please join me in taking buses that don't demand ID instead of Amtrak for the distances for which ground transport is possible.
Israel agreed to allow Gaza a seaport, but has violated the agreement thus far.
Maybe EU control of shipping offers a compromise to open commerce and travel by sea.
Chinese research seeks to develop a computer system to detect people who are feeling stress, so as to arrest them.
Knowing about this system of surveillance will make some people feel stressed.
US citizens: call on the EPA to make power plant CO2 rules tighter.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to adopt the rule to make publicly traded corporations
declare political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on state governors to stop transferring prisoners to private prisons out of state.
The UK government quashed torture lawsuits by saying that admitting the facts would embarrass the US. Then it began lobbying the CIA to stop the US Senate from acknowledging the torture, because if it did, that would pull the rug out from under the UK's self-serving argument.
Human Rights Watch accuses the Egyptian army of intentionally massacring protesting Morsi supporters.
Some Australian cities allow businesses to vote in local elections.
This is the logical progression from the Corporations United decision*. In fact, why allow mere humans to vote at all? Allowing businesses to appoint officials directly is the logical end of plutocracy.
* The organization is officially called "Citizens United", but I prefer to call it what it is rather than repeat its falsehood.
The Obama regime is citing the supposed "threat of terrorism" as a reason to keep undocumented migrants in prison rather than release them while their cases are heard.
Because I believe in equal rights, I don't think that this is even worse for being applied to women and children. It is equally bad to do this to men.
Uri Avnery: the war between Israel and Hamas has come out a draw, and now Israel has to negotiate with Hamas.
Ukraine says that Russia's "humanitarian aid" convoy will be allowed into Ukraine if the Red Cross inspects and approves its contents.
Authoritarian Erdogan won the election for president of Turkey, by less than was expected.
The seed library in Pennsylvania may in fact be legal, but these laws need to be changed to protect sharing of nonpatented seeds.
In the US today, if you're black or Latino, having a thug assume you're committing a crime is a rite of passage.
A CIA and NSA-funded company made a report claiming that al Qa'ida learned about resisting tracking from the Snowden revelations, though in fact it was developing countermeasures years before.
A curfew in Baltimore seems to presume that anyone under 16 who is out at night is being neglected by her parents.
The UK government is firmly determined to "reform" welfare to the point where the poor will starve, and claims that they are great for the poor.
1.3 Americans have died per day from fighting wars, since 2001. 120 die per day from lack of medical care. Why don't the latter get as much concern?
The thug that shot Michael Brown seems to have fabricated a false accusation as an excuse.
Police officers are simply not credible witnesses about such events, because they are accustomed to lying in court.
Ferguson thugs shot protesters and bystanders with wooden bullets that wound people.
The UK says it will suspend some arms exports to Israel if Israel resumes fighting in Gaza.
At the Goldcorp (Canadian) mine in Guatemala, a local man who tried to complain was burnt alive by the company thugs.
The smallest porpoise species, found in the Sea of California, is facing extinction due to gill netting.
US citizens:
Tell
the USDA not to allow 2,4-D resistant corn.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Spells of heat or rain that lasts for weeks have become twice as common since 2000, due to measurable changes in the behavior of the jet streams.
All this is due to global heating.
Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, organized as militia units, are leading the attack against pro-Russian rebels.
Bullying is bullying, on the internet or off it.
Perhaps teenagers would self-harm less if our society did not make life so precarious.
Who does the US save, and who does the US allow to be oppressed?
More than 65,000 people in Gaza are homeless because their homes were destroyed.
Can you tell which statements were made by Clinton and which by Netanyahu?
No Safe Place: How [US] Cities Are Making It Illegal to be Homeless.
Iran has banned sterilization in a
campaign
to pressure people to have more children. It will fall most
heavily on those who can't afford to travel abroad for an operation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
I can understand that people would not want to have children in Iran. What if they are daughters?
Israel's identification of criticism of the occupation of Palestine with antisemitism was meant to suppress the former using the odium of the latter. It worked for a while, but now it has backfired: the odium of the occupation is boosting antisemitism.
A new analysis estimates that the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline will result in 120 million tons of extra annual CO2 emissions, not merely 30 million.
This is because it would result in a lower price for oil, which would encourage users to burn oil rather than invest in alternatives.
Although this is a small fraction of what the human world emits, it is an investment in increasing the emissions, when what we need to do is invest in decreasing them. We must also end the subsidies for oil. Better an increase in price now, than a big jump in price in 5 years.
Amnesty International criticizes the US for whitewashing killings of Afghan civilians.
That the Taliban are even worse is no excuse, because they are no standard of comparison.
A large part of US bottle water is shipped from California, which has a severe drought.
I just about never buy a bottle of water in the US or other countries where tap water is potable. Why pollute the environment by being a sucker?
The tiny fraction of climate scientists who deny that human activities cause global heating report much more media coverage than the ones who agree with the consensus.
Obama tried persistently to unite Iraq under Maliki's government, but he has recognized that this won't work.
Kurdistan makes a much better ally, since it is a nation and has an army that will fight for something other than pay or hatred.
The Bangladeshi workers on hunger strike received their back pay.
The article does not mention one of the reasons these workers are mistreated so much: the "flexible" system of subcontracting that makes it easy to move production from one subcontractor to another. We must make the shell companies that put their names on these goods responsible for the actions of their supply chain.
The Australian Liberal Party registered domain names that use "Abbott lies", acting like the "pregnancy counselors" that try to distract women away from abortion clinics.
A thug in St Louis shot an unarmed black teenager for no obvious reason, triggering a big protest in his neighborhood.
Indigenous women organize to fight extractive industries promoted by governments that have sold out.
Don't lump boycotting Israel together with antisemitism.
Pakistan's government has banned an opposition protest march.
The UK censored a report on house prices, apparently to cover up the effect of fracking.
The UK government is not as blatant in its support of fossil fuels as the Australian and Canadian governments, but it is persistent.
Racism still exists the US, but people grasp at straws to argue it isn't really racism.
Facebook tracks everyone's browsing through "Like" buttons. A scandal has erupted because Facebook says it will use that data to choose what ads to show people.
How Facebook uses that data is a distracting side issue. The real injustice is that Facebook (and other companies) collect this data at all. That practice should be prohibited by law.
You can protect yourself from this particular surveillance mechanism by using a browser such as IceCat that blocks the things that do the surveillance.
10 years later, the New York Times recognizes that torture is really torture even if committed by the US government.
Russia has joined China in requiring all users of internet cafes to show their identity. This policy is part of repressing dissent.
If you are in Russia, you can help resist Putin's repression by leaving your own wifi network unencrypted.
The EFF is developing a system that allows you to have your private encrypted wifi network plus a secondary unencrypted one for anyone passing by.
I am somewhat unhappy that they call it "open", but it's a good project despite the name.
Hamas threatened to increase its ineffective rocket attacks on Israel unless the siege is ended.
It suits both Hamas and Israel to treat these rocket attacks as a big danger.
Naomi Klein: 'Our Economic Model Is at War with Life on Earth'.
20,000 or more besieged Yazidis escaped from Isis encirclement.
It is not clear whether US attacks helped make this possible.
What the world needs now is secularism, and urgently.
When Obama talks about "banning" torture, which is illegal, and fails to prosecute torturers, the effect is to undermine the law against torture and make torture a mere matter of policy.
China has excluded some Apple computers from the list approved for government purchases, on grounds of insecurity.
This is very wise. Apple computers have no security against Apple itself.
Some US Christians are as vicious as ISIS.
US casinos get most of their money from slot machines made so addictive and "smooth" that people can get lost in them for hours or days.
I have sometimes wanted to get lost in playing a machine. Rather than going to a casino, I played a game on a computer — that cost me nothing. Free software games are available for this.
The idea of raising money for a state by legalizing casinos and taxing them made some rational sense for the first few states to do it. People from other states came there and spent money. Now that most US states have legalized casinos, this effect has disappeared; the result is that people spend money on casinos instead of some other business that also pays taxes.
It's amazing how shortsighted politicians can be when that enables a business to make money.
Since Colorado legalized marijuana, the rate of car accidents has continued its general downward trend.
ISIS gets its funding from US "allies": Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
This seems to have been going on for longer than the article says: it seems that some of them were behind the start of the armed uprising in Syria, back when Syrians where still holding nonviolent protests for democracy.
Amnesty International says there is mounting evidence of intentional Israeli attacks on medical facilities and workers in Gaza.
The US has repeatedly squandered opportunities to make the world less vulnerable to nuclear destruction.
The article has a certain one-sidedness, as is often found in articles whose main point is to criticize the US. For instance, it tries to suggest that the US was in the wrong in planning for war with Japan in 1941 (though nothing forced Japan to start that war). Japan in 1941 was in the process of conquering China by means of a stream of atrocities; that's why the US stopped selling Japan the materials Japan needed in order to continue that conquest.
Chinese companies now offer censored computing services to people outside China.
Egypt banned the Muslim Brotherhood's political party.
I would hardly agree with that party on anything, but banning a party is an act of tyranny.
US citizens: call on Obama to block corporate tax-deserters.
In the US: join or support the
People's Climate March.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Mexico has made the disastrous decision to privatize oil extraction.
If this needs "investment", I am sure the Mexican state would come out better by doing the investment itself. This sort of claim is the basis for most privatizations, and nearly all of them do harm to all but their investors.
Decommissioning reactor 3 at Fukushima will be more difficult than supposed, because it appears that nearly all the fuel rods melted down.
The four main US ISPs are accused of violating the one network neutrality rule that remains in effect.
Ukraine fired inaccurate missiles at a rebel missile launcher operating near civilians, and this killed civilians.
Drugs that many humans take, and excrete, wind up in waterways and harm wildlife. Perhaps we should choose drugs with a view towards reducing these effects.
Airline prices are falling and this will cause an increase in CO2 emissions caused by flights.
Hamas refused to extend the temporary cease fire, demanding an end to the siege of Gaza.
A siege is an act of war, just as much as firing a rocket or dropping a bomb. Declaring a free-fire zone inside Gaza and shooting at anyone who goes there is also an act of war. If Israel wants a buffer zone, it should create that buffer zone inside Israel's borders.
The tunnels built by Hamas could be used to attack civilians or soldiers, but Hamas uses them to attack soldiers. And taking soldiers prisoner is not "kidnapping". However, the rockets launched by Hamas against civilians are war crimes.
More about the dishonest terminology used by Israel and Hamas.
1600 Bangladeshi clothing workers occupied their factories because they have not been paid for months.
The thugs are on the company's side.
The US is trying to subject parts of Africa to Walmart domination.
This generally results in lower prices paid to farmers and other producers because they have to accept what Walmart is willing to pay them.
The verbal tactics right-wing politicians use when an aggressive falsehood is caught out.
Many Europeans are responding to Israel's repeated aggressions by hating all Jews.
Antisemitism was suppressed for decades because it was condemned by a large part of society, in response to Nazi genocide. My mother told me about the regular antisemitism she experienced in New York in the 1930s, but I have almost never encountered it. (I am Jewish by ethnicity, and the fact that I am an Atheist would not make antisemites forgive me for that.) Now it seems that suppression has ended, antisemitism has come back. Israel's actions are to blame.
It is not rational to condemn all Jews for Israeli aggression. When people with a valid cause attack an illegitimate target, it makes the situation worse. Israel's killing of Arab civilians did that, and antisemitism will do it again.
Obama Defends CIA Chief John Brennan Amid Resignation Demands.
Max Schrems' persistent fight against Facebook's monstrous surveillance engine.
Temple University distanced itself from the bogus study that found false "savings" from private prisons. That's not enough — universities must not allow their professors to do false research for pay.
Even opponents of abortion rights don't really believe that abortion is murder.
They use the slogan to talk themselves into a frenzy so they can aggress against women's rights.
Americans should stop freaking out when they see children in parked cars.
The US has a general pattern of smothering overprotection of children.
It is normal for children to leave the house and play together without adults. It used to be normal in the US for children to walk some miles to school by themselves.
Reports of evidence that Malaysia flight 17 was attacked by cannon fire from fighter planes.
I have not seen these claims anywhere else. If they are confirmed, it would change everything about the issue.
Wisconsin's supreme court is not conservative, it's right-wing radical.
Isis is conquering parts of Kurdistan with the help of heavy US weapons captured from the disintegrating Iraqi army.
Who Are the Yazidis And Why Is Isis Hunting Them?
Obama announced he will launch air strikes to prevent genocide.
That is a valid reason for war, and supporting Iraq in defense makes it legal as far as I know.
I worry, however, that this US intervention will backfire just like the last one. In the long term, it would make more sense to give heavy weapons to the Kurds. They probably can be relied on not to lose those weapons to Isis.
Ireland formally accepted that an abortion is better than a woman's suicide, but seems to be trying to take it back.
Making palpable the hopelessness of survival after a nuclear war.
What could possibly have excused dropping a nuclear weapon on Nagasaki?
Israeli troops left shit and words of hatred in Ahmed Owedat's home after destroying the appliances and stealing his life savings.
They did similar things in a girl's school while occupying it as a base to destroy houses all around.
These acts fit the general hatred of Arabs expressed by Israelis today.
Demand in China for shark's fin has crashed, as many Chinese refuse to eat it out of concern for the danger of driving sharks to extinction.
Maybe similar education campaigns could end the demand for tiger bone and rhino horn.
Obama could save Argentina from the vultures with a simple order, but he has already capitulated to them.
Edward Snowden will be allowed to stay in Russia three more years.
I am sure he would rather be in Bolivia, but the US wants him to be in Russia.
A giant coal mine in China is illegally eating up a nature reserve.
To make sure Chinese people can't complain about this, China is imposing tight control on all Internet communications.
The UK government edited Wikipedia to downplay cases where UK thugs shot people dead.
Walgreens gave way to the pressure campaign and decided to keep its headquarters in Chicago.
One factor that may tend to encourage US companies to move their headquarters elsewhere is to take advantage of "investor-state" lawsuit provisions in existing and proposed free exploitation treaties.
Almost half the people in the US list of terrorist suspects have no connection to any known terrorist group.
Since that the US designates groups as "terrorist" arbitrarily, without a trial, some "known terrorist" groups may not really be terrorist groups.
Dozens of major US corporations are planning to move overseas to dodge taxes.
Any politician who refuses to change laws to undo the effects of this is working for those corporations — which is treason.
The Obama regime crossed out so much text in the Senate's CIA torture report that it becomes unreadable.
Senator Feinstein threatens to punish the CIA by not publishing the report?!?
Isn't that exactly what the CIA would prefer?
If the senate is serious, it should stick an amendment into some must-pass legislation giving the senate full control over what it publishes in this report.
Mothers of murdered Argentine dissidents are finding some of their kidnaped grandchildren.
Israeli dissident Gideon Levy, who criticized the Israeli air force for callously bombing civilians, is receiving death threats from powerful right-wing politicians.
Mercury pollution from industry and burning coal accumulates in the oceans near the surface and gradually poisons marine life.
Workers and customers have joined to fight against the change in management of Market Basket supermarkets.
Civil war in South Sudan continues and aid workers are being killed.
Even Wall Street Thinks Income Inequality Could "Capsize" the Economy.
The US Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to obey pollution laws with its dams.
US citizens: tell the Fish and Wildlife service not to reduce protection of manatees.
40,000 Iraqis of a minority sect are stranded without water, but face mass murder by Isis if they leave their mountain.
Mohammed said it is legitimate to lie if someone forces you to convert to some other religion. I agree: lying is less bad than killing, so when killing in self defense is justified, as in a case like this, so is lying. By this standard, the trapped Yazidis could agree to "convert", flee the area, then say they lied under coersion.
They would have to stay out of Isis's hands, however. Muslim fanatics do not apply the Golden Rule to their own fanaticism.
Australia orders dismissal of Save the Children staff teaching children Australia for expressing sympathy with protesters.
The US owes reparations to Guatemala's poor for the repression that it financed for decades.
I don't think that these reparations must obligatorily take the form of allowing Guatemalans to move to the US in large quantities. It would be fine to give them the means for a decent life at home.
Everyone: call on Coca Cola Company to stop opposing laws to label GMOs.
US citizens: oppose Obama's plan to allow oil drilling in Arctic waters.
US citizens: call on the US to stop giving out coal leases that are effectively give-aways to mining companies.
Illustrating the evil of making it a crime to possess pornography, a man in the UK was convicted of the crime of not knowing how to delete all copies of a disgusting video sent to him by a stranger.
I don't understand the pretext for banning pornography involving animals. If extreme animal rights activists demanded that, at least there would be some sense in it.
"Child pornography" should not be illegal either.
I wonder how long it will take for thugs to start carrying around kids they can fondle as they arrest people and beat them up. Then any photos of the brutality would be "child pornography", and the photographer would be sent to prison.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA you support its decision to block Pebble Mine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for continued protection of wild bighorn sheep from the danger of disease transmitted by domestic sheep.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA that Americans are ready for strong action to reduce
CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a prisoner in Guantanamo, has been approved for release to Uruguay, but since that might not happen for years, he is hunger striking basically to death and suing to end force-feeding.
If you are sick of a market-driven world, maybe you still have some values that aren't aligned with plutocracy.
Right-wing militias now helping Ukraine's army fight rebels might become dangerous once that is over.
Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson call for the UN to order an end to the siege of Gaza.
There is a 72-hour cease fire at present, but converting that into peace will be difficult.
5 infectious diseases that are more dangerous in the US than Ebola, in terms of how likely it is that you will get one and die of it.
India blocked a proposed trade treaty because it threatens food security for poor countries.
The argument that a "free trade" treaty would good because it "adds to the world's wealth" is fallacious even if it really does add to total wealth: these treaties, in today's plutocratic system, assure that all the increment goes to the plutocrats. It's another form of the "trickle-down" swindle.
Democracy is at stake in Obama's threat to imprison reporter James Risen.
You can still sign the petition.
Why was a SWAT team sent to disarm a Texas grandmother with a shotgun?
A news site indirectly owned by Comcast deleted an article about Comcast-funded astroturf organizing against network neutrality.
Russia threatens to block the BBC web site for an interview with Siberians who wanted to march for Siberian independence.
I can understand why they don't want to be ruled by Putin, but why leave the rest of Russia behind?
Global heating is hitting Europe's forests hard.
Unemployed Britons describe the impossible hoops of the "jobcenters" that were set up to create excuses to punish them.
I think they would advance their rights more if they got together and held a sit-in in front of a jobcenter, demanding to be put in prison. Civil rights protesters showed their contempt for unjust law by filling the jails; why not the unemployed?
But they have to refuse to do any work while in prison that the state would profit from.
Abbott proposes a broad attack on human rights in Australia in the name of "fighting terrorism".
Most of the chicken sold in the UK is contaminated with campylobacter, which causes stomach illness that is sometimes fatal. Hygiene standards are evidently not good enough.
Either it is the same in the US, or it would be the same if standards are lowered. This is part of the reason why the US proposal to reduce inspection standards is so bad. Only under plutocracy are such crazy "economies" proposed.
A class-action lawsuit against Facebook for violating privacy adds up to 8 million euros.
I agree with the plaintiffs in spirit, but the victory they aim for would take the form of limiting the use of giant data bases. That isn't enough to give us privacy where we really need it. We need to prevent the accumulation of giant data bases about people.
In particular, don't be a used of Facebook at all.
Fertilizer runoff has led to a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie.
The waste of fertilizer will haunt us too, as supplies of some chemical fertilizers are running out.
Libraries around the US are starting to lend traditional seeds as well as books, but Pennsylvania says it presents a danger of "terrorism".
In the US, for-profit home health care agencies working for Medicare cost more and provide worse care.
This is natural. Their profit has to come out of the patients and the public. Privatizing a public service is nearly always harmful unless it enables the public to buy directly from a competitive market.
New figures from the Commerce Department show that US inequality growth is even more than was believed.
ALEC is recruiting states to try to block the EPA from regulating CO2 emissions from electric plants.
ALEC is funded by fossil fuel companies and the Koch brothers, and their agenda is to make us burn as much fossil fuel as possible and run at high speed into climate disaster.
US citizens: support the Marshall Islands in demanding an end to nuclear weapons.
The Satanic Temple demands a religious exception to laws restricting abortion.
The US is developing a palm-sized surveillance drone.
Chris Hedges describes systematic Israeli lies about types of violent events he witnessed.
US citizens: Support protecting Puget Sound from oil tanker traffic.
A cunning loanshark sells furniture to US soldiers at elevated prices, lending them money, then sues them in a state where they can't go, so that they always lose.
UK activists report that undercover thugs harassed them to become informers. One says thugs threatened to prosecute her if she told about this.
Alan Gross, sent by the US to try to give Cuban Jews internet access and imprisoned for it, aims to die within a year if not released.
I have little general sympathy for US meddling, which is often done with an evil intent, but Cuba's interference with people's right to communicate is wrong in any case.
The only reliable way to get a good grade on US standardized tests is to get the latest textbooks from the three publishers that make the tests.
Wealthy areas can afford to provide these books. Poor areas can't. So the tests are an excuse to call poor children stupid, and a scam to benefit those publishers.
US citizens: Support extending
the Pacific
Remote Islands National Marine Monument.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of criminal convictions were based on bogus hair comparison "forensic analysis" by done the FBI.
Reportedly other kind of forensic analysis also turned out to be bogus.
Perspectives on media bias over Ukraine and Russia.
The UK government is determined to re-privatize a railroad line that made a lot of money for the treasury.
The income undermines the government's ability to claim it can't afford programs to help the poor.
The US imprisoned Yunus Rahmatullah in Afghanistan for a decade without allowing lawyers to talk to him.
Australia's chief immigration psychiatrist says the treatment of asylum seekers is designed to make them suffer, as a form of mental torture.
And not only mental, when you consider the confiscation of medicines, the violence, and so on.
The intelligence services, effectively a fourth branch of government, continue to enjoy effective impunity while spying on all of us.
New York's jail for minors is a hell of violence.
Australia's proposed austerity budget would hurt the poor most.
That's what it was intended to do. Tony Grabbit is evil, but not incompetent.
The UK will reexamine each planned weapons sale to Israel to ensure they don't support attacking Gaza.
Whether this is serious, we will see by the results.
Getting to grips with the danger of manipulation of the public through digital media.
Using mass media to manipulate public opinion and launch wars started before the 19th century. Remember the Maine, which sunk in Havana harbor due to an internal explosion, then provided the excuse for a media frenzy that pushed the US into war with Spain.
Many Americans don't have the choice to boycott Walgreens, because medical plans require shopping there.
Some Facts that Poverty-Deniers Don't Want to Hear.
Alabama's latest attempt to close abortion clinics has been overturned by a court.
US citizens: call on Obama to fire CIA director Brennan and CIA agents that spied on Congress, and launch an investigation to prosecute them.
US citizens: call for a suspension of executions in the US.
This should be a first step towards ending the death penalty.
Republican-controlled states that rejected Obama's health care plan have a lot more uninsured people, and it costs them a lot of money.
A US court overturned Obama's decision to offer tax credits for signing up in these states. This is going to cause suffering for a lot of people.
Republican legislators want to make life precarious at any cost, because the plutocrats profit from the desperation of potential workers. If this causes a state deficit, they will use that as an excuse to cut some other program that helps the non-rich.
A resource for Canadians:
hundreds of nasty
things that the Harper government has done.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Unemployed And Applying for 40 Jobs a Month: If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry.
In the UK, only the Green Party is prepared to reject the idea that billionaires' wealth is good for everyone.
How Israel engineered and provoked the war in Gaza.
Americans can use jury nullification to protect future Aaron Swartzes and Edward Snowdens.
It's worth a try, if you find yourself on jury duty. But we need to push for more reliable solutions too.
Foreigners are being evacuated from Libya, which is collapsing into chaotic war.
The USDA has modified a little its plan to let poultry companies inspect their own products.
It is a step in the wrong direction, and making it smaller won't make it ok.
The UK government is trying to censor the US Senate torture report when it talks about the UK's participation.
Canadian Charities Will Survive Chilling Audits Of "Political Activities".
Russia wants Apple to provide secret source code.
This would show Russia how to extract data from an iThing just as Apple does.
By Expelling Isabella Acevedo, the [UK] Home Office Tears Another Family Apart.
The UK government is stretching and even breaking its own immigration laws to deport exactly the people it should be most willing to allow to stay, for no reason except trying to prove how harsh it is to migrants.
An organization that pretends to represent US small business owners does right-wing lobbying for the Koch brothers and big insurance companies without telling its members.
The AARP acts similarly — it lobbies for right-wing causes that its members, who are Americans old enough to retire, might not approve of. This is why I refuse to join the AARP.
The Keystone XL pipeline is facing increasing opposition and increasing legal defeats.
I am not convinced that Obama really has decided to block it. If he had, why hasn't he done so? I think he is waiting for 2015 to approve it.
Regenerative organic farming can cut a large fraction of humanity's greenhouse has emissions.
We would have to eat much less beef. I think we would all accept that inconvenience if we understood what the alternative is.
Dissidents opposed to the war in Israel are facing persecution at every level: mob attacks on the street, threats of punishment at school, exclusion from employment, and threats of state punishment.
It reminds me of what I've read about McCarthyism in the US.
The New York Times accepts Israeli censorship of reporting about Gaza.
Reporters in Gaza, reporting by channels that bypass Israel, can report freely as far as I know.
The New York Times says that anyone who couldn't distinguish a passenger plane from a military plane was "irresponsible and stupid" and "a war criminal". Except when the person is an officer in the US Navy.
100 economists called on the US government to take action to thwart vultures from attacking Argentina or any other country.
US citizens: support the Stop Corporate Inversions Act.
US citizens: call on Kerry and Obama to impose an end to the siege of Gaza.
US citizens: support access to contraception for women in the US military.
Australian officials told the boat people, imprisoned at sea, that they would be forcibly put into lifeboats which they would then have to navigate to India.
While imprisoned on the ship, they did not get enough food.
Israel bombed another UN school full of civilians.
Human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko writes to Obama asking for support. Maseko is in prison for criticizing the government and the courts of Swaziland.
Israel spied on Kerry's communications while he was making his futile efforts to broker a cease-fire in Gaza.
Netanyahu is treating the US with overt contempt, believing he has the US government on a leash. A couple of days ago he essentially told the US, "Shut up, you have no right to question Israel's decisions." The US government does not seem to have listened.
US
citizens: support
the Schedules That Work Act
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
California has declared a fire emergency, with fires now at the level usually seen only in September.
In 30 years, that will usually arrive in June, due to global heating.
The ignorance of right-wingers knows no bounds. A language teacher in Utah was fired for writing an article about homophones.
How the US
empire weakens
the US and harms Americans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Uri Avnery: Israel keeps changing the "aim" of the attack on Gaza, so there is always a reason to keep attacking.
To keep it going, the US has just sold Israel more ammunition.
The latest "war aim" is to destroy Hamas tunnels, which Israel claims are meant to attack Israeli civilians. Never mind the fact that they have only been used to attack soldiers.
It's not clear the Iron Dome rockets are effective at destroying Hamas missiles (which seem to pose little danger in any case), but they are great for making loud explosions that get Israelis scared.
Israeli civilians have talked themselves into a frenzy of fear based on a danger that is tiny. That frenzy is, in objective terms, no justification for them to inflict great harm on civilians in Gaza.
The casualties (killed and wounded) in Gaza, around 10,000 people, amount to half a percent of the population of Gaza (1.8 million). If 30,000 Israelis were casualties of Hamas attacks, Israelis would face the same level of danger as Gazans, and I'd agree they had a valid reason to be frightened.
Vandana Shiva explains Monsanto's world-wide attack on food safety laws.
In the US: call on Walgreens to remain a US company.
The UK Labour Party is terrified that people might think it is planning to tax inherited fortunes.
That would be a tax on wealth. Taxing wealth is just what Thomas Piketty says we need to do.
With the Earth's surface heating, and ice melting everywhere, it was a mystery why sea ice around Antarctica was increasing. Part of the explanation is that the increase is less than was thought.
In order for fracking to have a chance of leading a transition to cleaner energy, it would need a coherent plan to end use of coal and oil.
There is no such plan, because the backers of fracking don't really want to reduce fossil fuel use. They only want to extract more and faster.
This is aside from the point that fracked gas releases a lot of methane which makes its greenhouse contributions much higher.
Global heating is visible in the change of which fish species live around Britain.
A Hindu-nationalist politician claims that rape accusations in India are a "fashion", in effect asserting it is unthinkable that rape could really occur in India.
Australia forced the Tamil boat people onto a plane to Nauru with no warning and without informing their lawyers.
People who committed crimes while drunk show a pretty good rate of staying sober under the monitoring of a sobriety bracelet.
This use of surveillance is legitimate because it is specifically targeted and because it is imposed after due process.
25,000 people in Detroit are cut off from water supplies, and it is not clear that the mayor is going to treat the poor any better than the bankruptcy manager.
The US denies citizenship to Muslim permanent residents and refuses to tell them why.
US citizens: oppose mergers of big companies such as Comcast.
Hungary's government is slowly extending censorship, much as Putin did until a couple of years ago.
Wall Street Has Raked In Almost A Billion Dollars Helping Companies Move Overseas To Dodge Taxes.
72 companies have stopped funding ALEC, but ALEC still gets plenty from the Koch brothers, tobacco companies and Big Pharma.
Lots of Earth-broiling companies support ALEC.
Did Google ever stop funding ALEC?
A US court continues to demand that Microsoft hand over a client's emails stored in Ireland, without consulting Ireland.
Ireland could stop Microsoft from complying, if it had the guts.
The Great Barrier Reef is already sick, and the new coal mine that Australia plans to create will attack it in several ways, probably killing it.
The GAO says big US banks are still "too big to fail".
Uganda's latest anti-gay law was struck down as unconstitutional, but only on a technicality, and the old one that was imposed by British colonialists remains.
The unknown spider species we are driving to extinction today might save your life if it survives. And wiping them out could make us starve.
The Palestinian Authority should call on the International Criminal Court to prosecute the war crimes in Gaza.
Although Israel claims that Hamas uses UN schools for military activities, so far there is no evidence that it did so in the schools where civilians are sheltering. The UN reported finding rockets stored in UN schools that were closed and not in use.
The "social" aspect of multiplayer video games is an unhealthy society, totally structured to get people to play and pay.
While we have seen such things before, such as shopping malls as places to hang out, and the increasing number of holidays structured around socially-pressured gift-giving, they do involve a lot of social interaction on which no structure is imposed. This is a change for the worse; it could be producing millions of people who don't interact with their "friends" outside of the imposed structure.
The UK government, which does not want climate negotiations to succeed, has cut the budget for its climate diplomacy by 1/3 in recent years.
The UK government is working for fossil fuel companies and intends to prevent an agreement. That does not require much staff work.
The inhabitants of Mosul are resisting ISIS.
Israeli artillery practices are a recipe for hitting civilians.
Are the gunners sloppy and incompetent, or do they just not care about killing Arabs?
The Obama regime and CIA torturers are censoring the Senate investigation into CIA torture.
Some prisoners in Guantanamo said they would accept force-feeding done in a way that doesn't amount to torture. Obama would rather torture them.
Japan's Yushukan war museum says that Japan was never an aggressor, and that Japanese troops never committed atrocities. It was always all the other side's fault.
Japan is not the only country to whitewash aggression and massacres in this way. Today Israel and the US do it. It is noteworthy how the Japanese army defined all Chinese men of military age in Nanjing as soldiers in civilian disguise; thus it can claim their execution was not a massacre. Did Bush and Obama get the idea from there?
US citizens: call on Congress to end bulk use of antibiotics in factory farms, before the resistant bacteria kill us.
Russia has prohibited anonymous comments on web sites.
It has also imposed many other limits on Internet use, including arbitrary blocking of inconvenient web sites.
Of course, Russia is ruled by a tyrant, and this is what tyrants do. (I pity the poor fools in the Crimea that wanted to be under Putin's power — if indeed they were more than a bunch of armed gangs he had set up.)
What is more dangerous is that governments of "free" countries such as the US, France, Italy, and Finland also block web sites, and have laws such as the DMCA that lend themselves to political censorship.
A UK committee wants to ban anonymity on the internet.
Extreme weather in Siberia has impacted salmon, causing bears to attack humans.
Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court struck down the law criminalizing defamation.
However, Cambodia is moving in the other direction.
Scientists have found more coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico that have been badly damaged by the Big Spill.
They say that not all reefs in the area were harmed. It makes sense that the oil was carried by currents in certain directions and others were spared. It makes for a good comparison.
40 million US workers don't get paid sick days, and ALEC is fighting to keep it that way.
CIA Admits to Spying on Senate Staffers. And breaking the security on Senate computers, too.
But worst of all is that they lied about it.
The CIA needs to be investigated by another Church Committee.
India has suspended trials of genetically modified foods for the sake of protecting its food security.
US electric companies are paying ALEC to push laws to obstruct installation of solar generation in homes and businesses.
An unidentified London thug will be charged with murder for a scandalous killing 9 years ago.
Massachusetts has replaced its "buffer zone" law with a
different
way of preventing harassment of patients and doctors at abortion
clinics.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Australia's prison for boat people is intended to make future boat people stay away, so it is intentionally cruel. About 1/3 of the prisoners have mental health problems.
One epileptic had seizures because the government took away her anti-seizure medicine and did not supply more. Some children are described as having given up eating because it was not worth living.
The prisons are cruel to people with non-mental illnesses, too. This article (mostly overlapping) informs us that the thugs confiscated eyeglasses and hearing aids too.
The Australian government representative was shocked people could doubt the benign intentions and good judgment of the government, which are of course beyond question.
The "public inquiry" into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko will not really be a public inquiry. Even its conclusion will not be entirely published.
Some of the Greeks who shot the immigrant workers whose pay they were stealing were acquitted of human trafficking.
Uganda's repressive anti-gay law is being challenged as unconstitutional.
Israel intends to increase its attacks on Gaza, and is buying more ammunition from the US to kill more Palestinians.
Politicians want NATO to "respond" to non-armed "attacks" which might be nothing but propaganda.
If the response to a non-armed "attack" is made in kind, without arms, it does not require the formality of NATO, or any treaty. It would be nonmilitary cooperation between governments, which they can do without NATO.
It follows that this proposal is really about permitting NATO to launch a war in response to non-military action. That seems very dangerous to me.
The UK's dooH niboR government is proposing a new tax cut for the rich.
It will grasp any excuse to claim it has no money for the poor, the NHS, and so on.
Colombia's army and the government-supported paramilitares continue their terrorism and repression, with US support.
Genetically engineered corn that makes Bt toxin has ceased to repel insect pests, in Brazil and in the US. Brazilian farmers demand compensation for the extra pesticides they had to use.
Yonas Fikre says the US had him arrested and tortured in the United Arab Emirates and apparently collaborated with his torturers.
It is not clear that Fikre can't return to the US. The article does not say he faced arrest (let alone torture) in the US. Perhaps therefore Sweden's decision not to grant him asylum was correct, since he can safely return to his home country.
But that doesn't excuse the US for collaborating in torture.
Former US intelligence officials call on the US to show its evidence about Malaysian Airlines flight 17, or else stop claiming to be certain about what happened.
Above all they criticize the tendency to condemn Russia as if the rebels had intentionally shot down the plane (which it is clear they did not do).
Israel bombarded a UN school again in Gaza, and has tried to pretend that Hamas attacked the school.
It is standard practice for the Israeli government to deny the facts to duck the blame for killing innocent Palestinians — one may as well assume such claims are false.
Australia will punish the unemployed if they don't apply for enough jobs or if they send "unsatisfactory" applications.
If there are no jobs available in your field, you will inevitably be punished.
New Zealand's mountains have lost 1/3 of their snow and ice since 1978.
Wikileaks reveals that the Australian government is covering up a bribery scandal by banning all public discussion of it.
Delaying Climate Action Will Carry Heavy Economic Cost, White House Warns.
It's true, but the fact that one must cite economic losses as a reason to prevent worldwide disaster is a testament to plutocracy.
More explanation of the report.
What is "terrorism"? Hamas uses tunnels into Israel to attack soldiers — which is war, not terrorism.
Israel bombards civilians, homes of the families of Hamas members, hospitals, and power plants — which is terrorism, not war.
The unregulated "shadow banking system" vitiates the regulations that were intended to make banks more stable.
Pervasive surveillance in the US forces journalists and lawyers to use spy techniques to communicate with their source and clients.
Although the Senate is now considering a bill that would make it harder for the NSA to collect records in bulk, that would not prevent targeted investigations aimed at a journalist to find the journalist's sources. The approach of limiting access to giant digital dossiers is simply not capable of solving the problem. We must stop the creation of these dossiers.
Comparing the Senate bill with the toothless House bill.
In the
US: tell
Southwest Airlines not to gag passengers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Several European countries now ask stores
to label
products from Israeli colonies in Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
They ought to go further and ban commercial importation of all such products.
The US sells coal for a pittance to mining companies, effectively a subsidy so they can export it to boost global heating.
Buy Low, Sell High: How Big Coal And The BLM Treat Taxpayers Like Chumps.
How Capitalism Is Cheating Young Americans. (And young Europeans too.)
Israel has arrested 400 Israeli Arabs for protesting, or planning to protest, or relaying postings about a protest, or just being near a protest. Some get beaten bloody, some get interrogated without lawyers.
People who support peace are called traitors by the right-wing majority.
David Grossman (mentioned in the above article) still has hope that Israel will "grow up" as a result of this war.
Stranger things have happened, but having "the left" understand the majority right-wingers better is not the sort of progress that will help.
If TaskRabbit Is the Future of Employment, the Employed Are Fucked.
The US is providing the Afghan government with more weapons than it can use, and many could fall into the hands of the Taliban.
Republicans passed a bill to let taxes for poor families increase but reduce them for fairly wealthy families.
A court settlement requires the US government to investigate how dangerous 5 pesticides are to endangered wildlife.
General Mills has given Oxfam firm commitments to cut deforestation.
I'm generally skeptical that commitments by businesses are lip service, but if Oxfam thinks this will really solve the problem, maybe it will.
In the US mainstream media, you can get in trouble by showing too much concern for the killing of 1000 Palestinians, but it's fine to say that Hamas is "forcing" Israel to kill Palestinian children.
This is, of course, totally false. Israel could easily protect itself from the tunnels, and the rockets rarely hurt anyone.
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to stop issuing licenses for offshore oil drilling.
Mississippi's attempt to close the state's only abortion clinic has been declared unconstitutional.
However, there may be more appeals.
Israel destroyed Gaza's electric plant. This will make Gaza totally dependent on whatever electricity Israel chooses to supply.
Florida bans doctors from discussing the danger of guns with their patients.
OkCupid did an experiment telling users they were compatible when its scores said they were not.
These pairs carried on with conversations, apparently not noticing their supposed incompatibility. I wonder how many of them formed relationships and how those worked out.
It's possible that this experiment constituted lying to the users, but I don't know whether that is true. It depends on what promises the site makes to users about how it judges compatibility, which are facts I don't know. If "flip a coin" is as good a method as its usual one, perhaps it satisfies the promises.
However, if a dating site's claim to being useful is its method for estimating people's compatibility, and that method turns out to be little better than chance, it seems to imply that the site is pointless.
More information about the experiment.
US citizens: Don't send back child refugees without hearing their cases.
After an oil train derailed in Washington state, activists blocked the tracks so no more could follow.
A former Israeli air force officer says that Israel's moral standards have collapsed. Actions that led to soul-searching 12 years ago are now done without a second thought.
Verizon offers customers "rewards" in exchange for more tracking.
This is why I think it won't achieve much to adopt a law that people "own" their personal data as property — it is too easy to convince them to sell it.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA you support limiting CO2 emissions from coal
power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
ALEC is promoting state laws to remove all regulation from private "charter" schools and ban enrollment in Medicaid.
Why We'll Still Be Fighting About Religious Freedom 200 Years From Now!
Solitary confinement often causes mental illness.
In addition, it must make dementia more likely, since it has been established that exercising the mind tends to delay dementia.
A diary from Gaza under bombardment.
A Spanish union plans a protest in Gibraltar against its use as a tax-dodge haven.
I support their campaign against tax havens, but under the circumstances it can't help being confused with mere nationalism. If they could join with UK Uncut, they could separate it clearly from nationalism.
Despite a year of pressure, Qatar has made little change in its laws that more or less enslave migrant workers.
Domestic violence is a system of permanent enslavement, and the victims need special support in order to leave.
US citizens: Call on the FCC to hold public hearings around US about net neutrality.
US citizens: call on Obama and Holder not to imprison reporter James Risen.
Risen is ready to go to prison to avoid putting a whistleblower in danger. The US government is wrong to try to make this necessary.
Qatar World Cup: Migrants Wait a Year to Be Paid for Building Offices (for the event). The contractor went bankrupt and never paid them, so they are trapped in Qatar because they have no money to leave, and could be imprisoned because they no longer have the right to be in Qatar.
This is part of a general system that treats migrant workers so badly that some of them die from it.
You can punish the Qatari state personally by not taking flights on Qatar Airways, which is owned by the government of Qatar.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU say that lawyers' and journalists' work is threatened by US massive surveillance.
For the lawyers, encryption of the contents of email could be enough of a solution. However, journalists also need to protect their sources' identity, and surveillance of their communication metadata is enough to ruin that. I've stated the solution.
The UK government admits, under pressure, that fracking causes environmental damage, but is mad to go ahead with it anyway.
Isn't it strange that people say we need robots to care for the old and sick because there aren't enough people to do it, when so many people are unemployed?
This is prejudice and plutocracy at work, a desire to replace people with machines and leave more people destitute.
We should ban automation of many jobs, thus preserving work for people, until we institute an automatic personal income so that people don't need jobs.
Everyone: tell the US NFL to treat domestic violence as a serious offence.
The UK covered up massive losses in World War I with censorship and lies.
These losses were due to incompetent generals who lacked the moral courage to a plan when it had clearly gone wrong. With honest reporting, perhaps they would have been sacked.
The decline of wildlife is now causing a food scarcity which increases to war, crime and child labor.
There isn't enough Earth for so many humans and the wild world too. While we can do various things to assuage the conflict, we humans must reproduce less so that we stop overburdening our planet.
Neonicotinoid pesticides are prevalent in waterways in the US midwest and sometimes reach toxic levels. They also persist from previous years.
Obama's proposed regulations for shipping crude oil by train are too little and too slow.
An additional reason to distrust the report of the official investigation of the September 2001 terrorist attacks is that they were based on evidence obtained by the CIA using torture.
This is in addition to the fact that the investigation was corrupted.
So please support the campaign for a proper investigation.
A Colorado judge ruled that promotion of mining takes precedence over human health in Colorado law.
Destroying
Hamas would
make room for a more extreme replacement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
A mob of fanatical Muslims in Pakistan
lynched
a "heretical" grandmother and two of her grandchildren.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs say they could not stop the mob. Will they arrest any of the murderers?
The government of Pakistan encourages this violence with its law against blasphemy, which violates basic human rights.
This stems, in turn, from the general arrogance of Islam, which we see also in the actions of ISIS.
Even businesses object to plans to make unemployed people waste their time filing hopeless job applications.
Research on bees is tainted by involvement of pesticide companies.
The non-plutocratic way to fund this research is to tax the companies more, just as we must tax the pharma companies more and not let them fund tests of the effects of drugs.
Australia approved a new coal mine which will be the world's biggest. Thus we speed towards global disaster.
Tamil boat people who were imprisoned at sea have been brought to Australia, but it is not clear how their asylum cases will be held.
In particular, it is not clear why Australia wants Indian officials to interview them.
Arizona is hitting record temperatures, even at night.
One of the effects of greenhouse gases is to prevent the ground from cooling off at night by radiating infrared into space.
UN Warns Countries With Draconian Abortion Bans That They re Violating Human Rights.
Given the danger posed by human population increase, governments should provide abortion gratis and conveniently.
The Everglades are now threatened by invasive plants and pests.
Has anyone noticed that global heating will drown the Everglades, over time?
The World Bank proposes to shred its environmental protections by allowing governments to opt out from them.
ISIS has imposed
Saudi-style
oppression of women, ordering them to cover their faces and hands
and not to travel without a man.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Women in the area oppressed by ISIS should carry guns under their mandatory loose clothing, and shoot ISIS supporters opportunistically.
The UN reports that life is getting more precarious around the world.
The US is conspiring with Yemen to keep Sharif Mobley disappeared in a secret location and refuse to tell his lawyers where to find him.
I expect they are torturing him too.
The FBI conducted a mandatory study of how drones threaten civil liberties and privacy, and now refuses to tell the public its conclusions.
This is one more element in the US government's systematic contempt for the Constitution and human rights.
Israeli bombardment has leveled entire neighborhoods in Gaza.
Central American leaders implore Obama to spend billions to help them end gang violence, rather than on repelling the children fleeing from it.
One thing they need is to tear up the plutocratic treaty CAFTA.
The US closed its embassy in Libya due to the fighting between militias.
The practice of evidence-laundering allows the US government to use NSA surveillance information secretly and secretly deny Americans fair trials.
Was Kenneth Trentadue suspected of being the second bomber in Oklahoma City?
It may be true that someone said "suspects", plural, from confusion and that there was never video evidence of two people. People often make mistakes.
Whether or not there was a second participant in the bombing, it seems that Kenneth Trentadue was murdered in prison.
The US published satellite photos with evidence that Russia is firing rockets to attack Ukraine.
The Energy-Efficient Way to Punish Putin — And Protect the Planet.
The Israeli peace movement is a small remnant of what it used to be, as overt racism and right-wing hatred takes over the country.
Peace campaigners face not only physical violence but also legal repression.
The Ukraine crises convinced the UK government to stop blocking the public inquiry into Russia's assassination of Alexander Litvinenko.
However, the UK still needs a government that won't pander to anyone with money.
Piketty's proposal for global tax on wealth is his idea for saving the world from growing concentration of wealth that will lead either to a bloody revolution or the world of the Hunger Games.
Pakistan's biometric ID
system oppresses
most people but has not prevented false IDs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Phillip Morris, the tobacco company, continues trying to bully Uruguay (and by extension many other countries) into retreating from policies to discourage smoking.
This campaign is capable of killing millions of people.
The article alas spreads confusion when it uses the term "intellectual property". That term is pure confusion and should never be used. The tobacco companies use it as propaganda, and to repeat it is to support their propaganda.
How Paul Ryan's poverty plan would be effective at increasing poverty.
The US is conscripting universities into the War on Sharing.
Even if a university is unable to resist the pressure to bully its students this way, that does not excuse the university for failing to apologize and condemn the pressure.
The article repeats the enemy's propaganda term "piracy". Please don't refer to sharing by a term that means attacking ships.
Australia's wrecker government now proposes in addition to escalate the War on Sharing.
Mandatory internet filters were rejected when proposed for obscenity, but now they get another try.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop listening to the Chamber of Commerce and broaden, not reduce, incentives for business whistleblowers.
Israel did not need to invade Gaza and destroy the tunnels. It had many humane alternatives.
Even at its worst, an attack through the tunnels would have been tiny compared with the devastation of the bombardment of Gaza.
A student in Colombia is being prosecuted for sharing an academic article, under a law imposed on Colombia by the US.
Colombia should tear up that treaty.
A leak shows that TTIP will work against food safety and animal welfare by subordinating them to the convenience of companies.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty is Plutocratic". Corporations have too much power already, so any new "free trade" treaty is going in the wrong direction. We should instead cancel the existing ones.
The US ranks near the bottom in energy efficiency.
The funded campaign to keep use of fossil fuels as high as possible is evidently quite successful.
US citizens: call for more Social Security offices, not fewer.
Uri Avnery explains what is needed to end the Gaza war once and for all.
He also points out how Arab dictators' support for Israel is likely to create pressures for more extreme Islamism, a la ISIS.
ISIS blew up an old mosque that is a major pilgrimage site. It is intolerant of all variations from its own form of Islam.
Saudi Arabia has been doing the same sort of thing.
In the US: ask Trader Joe's to commit not to sell meat made from animals raised using antibiotics.
US citizens: ask Congress
to protect
intelligence whistleblowers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans in the US Congress distrust climate models, and to make
sure they can continue to do
so, they
voted to eliminate funding for validating climate models.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Sooner or later, China's puppet substitute for the Panchen Lama will try to appoint a new Dalai Lama.
US citizens: Tell the RESTORE Council to get moving on restoring the damage from the Big Spill.
Describing the NSA's cooperation with Saudi Arabia's oppression.
Seven-Year Jail Term for Saudi Photographer. And many other journalists and dissidents.
In a 14 year dry spell, the US west has been losing ground water fast.
The More Male-Dominated a Field, the Less It Cares about Domestic Violence.
People with Ebola infections have appeared in African cities.
Iran has arrested four journalists, including three Americans, for no obvious reason.
A solar storm in 2012 could have destroyed most electrical equipment on Earth, except it wasn't pointed at Earth.
We need to develop precautions, because sooner or later one will head towards us, and it could happen at any time.
Israel set the stage for wars in Gaza by pulling out settlers and ground troops while maintaining the occupation in every other way.
US citizens: call on the US government to investigate Amazon for possible violations of competition law.
In the US:
sign
up to boycott Walgreens if it moves its HQ outside the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
support
Amnesty International in calling for an arms embargo on Israel,
Palestine and Hamas; ask US govt to stop arming Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Why Average Internet Users Should Demand Significant Section 702 Reform.
Reforming law for snooping on our internet traffic is only a part of what we need to do to prevent a society of total surveillance.
The UK has adopted a formal policy of moving files to ODF format.
Over 50 Israeli Reservists Declare 'We Refuse to Serve'.
The NFL punishes players more severely for smoking pot than for domestic violence.
I don't see why the NFL has any business punishing a player for using pot. Using a performance-enhancing drug might be considered cheating, but that doesn't apply to pot.
Privatizations of poultry inspections in the UK led to widespread unsanitary conditions, so that most chicken is contaminated by bacteria that can make people sick if the chicken is not properly cooked.
So why does the US government want to follow the same path?
US states trying to execute prisoners using medical drugs find it often does not work as intended.
I oppose the death penalty in general for other reasons.
Israeli soldiers shot 100 protesters in Nablus, killing several.
The US terrorist watch list now has over a million names, and the White House can add people to it wholesale.
The definition of "terrorism" is so broad and weak that the list could be full of people who were never even suspected of terrorism, only of "terrorism".
These different watchlists and their different uses raise different issues. The no-fly list is punishment without trial, and could only be sustained in the US by tying the Constitution into a pretzel. (Sad to say, the Supreme Court is full of judges willing to do that.)
Asking a foreign country to torture someone is a grave crime, which by the way Obama pretends the US has stopped doing.
Making a note to scrutinize a particular person more in ways that don't require probable cause may be legitimate.
Israel now admits it shelled another school (in use as a refugee shelter) in Gaza.
As usual, Israel says it was because some Palestinians were firing from the school. I am skeptical; I don't think they could have done that without being noticed by the UN staff.
Supposing there are Hamas fighters shooting from a school, which is a war crime, that would not mean Israel is entitled to target the school with any and all weapons. Israel would have to use methods, such as direct fire, that are not likely to stray off target to hit civilians elsewhere on the grounds.
Israel justifies attacks on hospitals and schools by claiming that Hamas has facilities near them, but Israeli army headquarters is also near a hospital.
Russian opposition leaders have been sentenced to prison for the minor rioting that resulted when thugs attacked their protest.
There was a rumor that ISIS ordered genital mutilation for all females, but ISIS says it never did this.
I doubted the rumor, as I knew that Islam does not require FGM.
An interview with Naomi Oreskes about the methods used by organized and funded global heating denialism.
A gate agent for Southwest Airlines forced a passenger to delete a tweet that called the agent "rude", on pain of missing the flight.
Airline employees have the power to kick any passenger off a flight arbitrarily — all they have to do is claim they feel threatened. This power goes to the heads of some of them.
It's the same sort of impunity that thugs enjoy.
George Monbiot: Putting a price on natural ecosystems is nonsense because the prices are fictitious, but it serves as an excuse to destroy these systems in favor of a business "worth" more.
More deeply, valuing everything in terms of money promotes the destructive values of plutocracy.
The UK government is cutting subsidies for renewable energy so can give more to nuclear power and fossil fuels.
France has proposed a law to attack many human rights at once in the name of "fighting terrorism".
Reporters without Borders condemns it.
Glyn Moody: ISPs that want to sort traffic into fast and slow lanes might join with Big Brother to ban encryption.
The American Council on Science and Health is a corporate front group that spreads spin about scientific issues that affect business interests.
UK thugs systematically spied on families campaigning for justice after relatives were killed or maimed — in many cases, by thugs.
It has a certain logic. People whose relatives you've shot might be plausible nuclei for opposition and you might want to sabotage their campaigns.
A Yale professor reports that the dynamic of elite US universities, and the competition to gain admission to them, produces students who don't dare risk failure or stray from a narrow path. He describes this as a bad education.
Israel shelled civilians sheltering in a UN compound.
Wild monkeys 40 miles from Fukushima have blood disorders and some radioactive cesium.
The level of cesium they have might not be enough explain their blood disorders.
Texas has started asking for fingerprints from everyone that renews a driver's license.
People are not required to give all the fingerprints, but the state tricks them into thinking so.
Demanding even one fingerprint is an injustice.
One of Israel's motives for war in Gaza is so it can advertise weapons exports as "field-tested".
Texas invested $200 million in businesses to "create" 1600 jobs in Texas. It turns out that some of the companies don't really exist, aren't in Texas, don't pay their taxes, etc.
As a way to boost employment, this is ineffective. As investment, it wasn't very good either; it made only a little money for the state.
Raising the minimum wage would create a lot more jobs, but that would not please the employers that want workers to be desperate.
Paul Ryan says the US government should eliminate welfare requirements and give money to states to use to help the poor. Texas will give this money to companies to "create jobs", thus ensuring that the poor gain nothing from it.
When ISIS forced Christians to leave Mosul, it stole their houses and even their portable property.
The European Court of Human Rights convicted Poland of aiding CIA torture kidnapping flights, and ordered payment of compensation to the victims. The court ruled that US "rendition" (kidnaping for torture) is fundamentally illegal.
Unfortunately, this won't get them out of Guantanamo prison.
These men are accused of serious crimes which merit prosecution, but they deserve a fair trial, not a Guantanamo kangaroo court.
Obama offered to help negotiate a truce between Israel and Hamas.
Either this is a sick joke on Hamas, or Obama intends to pressure Israel to let the fighting stop.
Citizens of Massachusetts: contact specific state legislators in favor of three privacy bills. If they don't pass by July 31 they will be dead for this year.
Oh, Great: Robots Are Set to Conduct National Security Clearance Interviews.
San Diego has set up a network of state and private cameras that any thug can watch at any time.
File sharing sites that governments blocked the name of the world cup have remained blocked and will probably be blocked permanently.
This is another incidental form of oppression dealt out by the world cup.
New York City is moving firmly in response to the thugs' killing of Eric Garner, but not questioning the deeper policy of jailing people over any minor crime.
When legitimate work is hard to get and pays too little to live on, poor people are compelled to break laws to survive. Plutocratic government uses that as an excuse to oppress them.
The only way to reduce annoying crime and black-marketeering is to stop running the economy for the rich. Everyone who can't work should get enough aid for a decent life, and jobs should pay a living wage.
Anti-abortion activists use bogus science to claim that medical abortions are dangerous, while pushing women into amateur abortions that really are dangerous.
I don't use the term "pro-choice" because it fails to defend abortion rights firmly. I also refuse to accept the term "pro-life" that opponents of abortion chose as a way to insult us.
Moroccan women protested the prime minister who told them to stay home and not work.
Jonathan Schell: how the US chose war, and declared its readiness to overthrow any government to impose plutocratic rule.
B'tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, explains why the homes of the families of Hamas members are not military targets, so bombing them is a war crime.
The UN also criticizes Israel's war crimes in Gaza.
Note the Israeli representative's bogus claim that those families are "human shields". That would only be true if the homes were legitimate military targets.
In addition to bombing hospitals, Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza's civil infrastructure such as water and sewage facilities.
In the village of Zanna, every house was damaged by Israeli attack.
Shooting the water tanks had no possible motive except to make civilians' lives miserable. People in Gaza can't afford to replace the water tanks; replacements may be impossible to obtain.
Perhaps Israel destroyed Zanna as preparation for declaring it a free-fire "buffer zone".
A government whistleblower warns that the NSA grabs massive amounts of Americans' data, including email contents, by breaking into servers and communication links outside the US.
Citizens of Illinois, Maryland and New York:
oppose state
bills that would attack the right to boycott Israeli institutions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
More about why HIV researchers call for decriminalization of sex work.
Israel, backed by the West, responded to the Palestinian unity government with repression, which helped get the current war started.
How America Finances the Destruction in Gaza — and the Clean-Up.
Everyone: call on Obama to pressure Israel to end the siege of Gaza as part of a permanent nonaggression agreement.
It is widely noted that the rockets launched from Gaza are an act of war and a war crime. The siege is also an act of war and a war crime. Let's end them both.
An ID card to identify you as a human being.
Turkish thugs have been accused of illegally spying on Prime Minister Erdo an and others, using falsified papers.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the resolution that would endorse the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Anglophone countries are the world center of global heating denialism, perhaps due to the effect of the Murdoch media.
Hamas rockets rarely seriously injure a person, but they have acquired economic clout by causing cancellation of many international flights to Tel Aviv.
Maybe now Netanyahu will agree to end the war that he started.
The whole of the Great Barrier Reef is contaminated by toxic coal dust from Australian coal export.
A Hindu-nationalist MP in India tried to force food down a fasting Muslim's throat.
Even if you believe the MP's claim that this was only a complaint about the bad quality of the food served, shoving it into someone's mouth is hardly justifiable.
At least he did not try to do it via a tube through the man's nose, as the US military does.
Japanese officials ordered removal of a memorial to Korean forced laborers.
India wants to interview the Tamil boat people who are imprisoned on an Australian ship.
Australia's government is cutting funds for public transit to build more roads instead.
It's a natural choice, for a government that intends to boost fossil fuel use.
The US military is responsible for around 5% of world greenhouse gas emissions.
The idea of a "type A personality", with health problems due to stress, was constructed by the tobacco industry.
How opponents of same-sex marriage distort the history of marriage.
Protesters
blockaded
a tar sands mine in Utah.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Iran has finished the promised
dilution
of its most enriched uranium.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Koch brothers spend hundreds of millions to influence politics, through a maze of twisty channels all different.
The US is stranding Yemeni-Americans in Yemen by confiscating their passports while they are visiting there.
Then they have to wait as much as a year before they are allowed to return to the US.
The UK government demonstrated its contempt for the environment yet again by appointing a fracking flunky to head the Environmental Agency.
US citizens:
tell Subway to stop
making staff work while sick and stop firing them for going to the
hospital.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell Secretary Vilsack to publish the proposed rule for poultry inspection, and hold hearings on it.
The very idea of a secret rule proposal is offensive.
Al Jazeera says Israeli troops fired at its building in Gaza.
How UK's Terrorism Law Targets Words, Not Just Guns And Bombs.
Two UK MPs will ask a court to reject the UK's "emergency" surveillance law.
Time Magazine says the US economy is doing great, judging based on the rich and the fossil fuel companies.
China is using fake Twitter accounts, masquerading as famous people, to promote its occupation of Tibet.
June 2014 was the hottest June on record.
Giving Up Beef Will Reduce Carbon Footprint More Than Cars, Says Expert.
President Obama Signs Executive Order Protecting LGBT People from Workplace Discrimination.
Violent pogroms against Arabs are spreading in Israel as many say they want to exterminate the inhabitants of Gaza.
Gush Shalom calls for an end to the bombardment of Gaza.
It turns out that climate models accurately model the rate of Earth's surface heating, when not fooled by El Niño/La Niña.
If you stand for freedom or resist the rich, you have something to fear from an omniscient state that supports the rich.
Some right-wing global heating deniers are driven to their delusion by an ideological opposition to using collective action to solve any problem.
Collective action through the state is also the way to stop plutocrats from pushing most people into poverty, which is another reason those plutocratist politicians hate collective action.
The UK plans another attack on the natural world, both wildlife and the Earth's climate, proposing a legal requirement to extract the maximum amount of fossil fuel.
Human Rights Watch finds that most of the high-profile terrorist plots that the US prosecutes were stimulated by the US government, and the "perpetrators" were often reluctant.
The effect is systematic injustice, but it suits those that hate our freedoms and are in a position to take them away by changing our laws.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Republican plans to block new US National Monuments.
How the Internet makes it easy to create antedated "predictions" for fraud.
US citizens: support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
More information about it.
Coral cover in the Great Barrier Reef has fallen by half since the 1980s.
Israeli attacks killed 100 Palestinians in one day, many of them civilians.
This included shelling a hospital.
Israel's tactics guarantee lots of civilian casualties. One must question whether defense against attacks that might kill a few civilians justifies a response that kills hundreds of civilians.
Ukrainian rebels have not protected the jetliner's crash site from looting or disturbance of evidence.
I regard this as proof of guilt.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of state manipulation of the media, most Russians believe the downing of the Malaysian jet was a plot against Russia.
This is comparable to the global heating denial campaign which has convinced so many Americans to support political fantasy.
India's censorship law is being used to persecute a critic of Modi.
Google has abolished the "real name" requirement for Google account.
This might mean that Google+ is acceptable to use. But I am not certain, because I don't know the answer to two follow-on questions:
7
Reasons Why the Internet of Things Is Doomed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Actually, some of them are reasons why we should kill it, which do not necessarily imply it is doomed on its own.
A "smart house" project Japan is a scheme to impose total surveillance and tracking.
This demonstrates the danger inherent in such schemes.
RJ Reynolds has been hit with 23 billion dollars in punitive damages for advertising designed to make minors smoke.
The article says "children", but adolescents are not children, so I won't use that word. Advertising tobacco to adolescents is arguably even worse than advertising it to children, since children are not likely to start smoking whereas adolescents may well do so.
Even in Isolated, Pristine Tasmania, Pressure to Allow GMO Farming.
The US keeps lots of information about everyone's airline ticket purchases and appears to keep it for at least 10 years.
US citizens: Support postal banking.
The Rising Global Movement That Calls for #noTTIP.
Syria says it is stupid to support the rebels and calls for the UK to support Assad.
The sad thing is, that is true. When the main Syrian rebel groups joined with the Islamists, they became enemies of human rights just as much as Assad is. Here's an article that argues that Israel and Saudi Arabia have promoted the violent rebellion in Syria, even as far as directly supporting jihadis.
I wonder if Israel supports ISIS too.
State legislators that support voter-ID laws show a strong statistical tendency to discriminate against Latinos.
All The Big Broadband Players Support FCC's Proposed Rules... Which Says All You Need To Know.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them not to block diplomacy with Iran.
US citizens: tell Congress
to support
the Hide No Harm Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Some Israelis go to hills near Gaza to cheer at the deadly bombardment. A journalist suspected of not sympathizing with them was threatened with violence.
US journalist Cokie Roberts bemoans the fact that everyone around the world does not obey the US government.
I think most governments fear the US too much; they let the US pressure them into unjust plutocratic treaties.
In the 90s, when I used to listen to National Public Radio, I loathed Roberts' right-wing criticisms of right-wing "Democrat" Bill Clinton. They showed me that NPR is actually rather right-wing, contrary to the reputation it gets by contrast with the extremely right-wing commercial US media such as Faux News.
Journalist Andy Hall faces the threat of imprisonment for revealing slavery in Thailand.
Making it a crime to publish an accusation of abuses is prima facie injustice and inexcusable.
The UK is saving emails of lots of people, without warrants, in case it might be interested in them in the future.
The R.I.P. act (for Rip Internet Privacy) was an injustice even with its previous interpretation. The UK must repeal it.
An arrogant plutocrat threatens San Francisco workers with being replaced by an oppressive computer if they demand decent wages.
In the short term, the workers should simply repeat the demand, to show they are not scared.
In the medium term, they face the threat of being replaced by computers in any case, so they should organize to prohibit that. Why should stores be allowed to replace human sales clerks with computers? It should be banned by law. Until then, I make a point of refusing to use those machines, to push back against them.
In the long term, everyone should get a guaranteed income, obtained by taxing the owners of the robots. This should perhaps be conditioned on not having children; however, anyone who adopts a child should get a big subsidy.
A wildfire in the state of Washington has burned 340 square miles.
Israeli soldiers are in streets fighting in Gaza.
Thousands of civilians are trying to flee, but no place is safe.
WHO calls for an end to treating drug users as criminals.
A Russian radio station reports that rebels sent the Malaysian plane's black box to Russia.
The "investigation" by Russia cant be trusted, but this meddling confirms it was the rebels or Russia that shot down the plane.
The article also provides evidence that Russia is firing lots of short-range missiles at Ukraine. Unlike the ineffective missiles that Hamas fires at Israeli civilians, these are a real threat to Ukrainian troops.
Everyone: Call on NBC News to let Ayman Mohyeldin go back to Gaza.
Russia has a paid internet propaganda and troll army.
The US is funding research on how to manipulate people through social networks.
Uri Avnery comments on the fighting in Gaza.
Why so many children flee from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador can be traced to what the US did to those countries.
"Counter-terrorist" tactics can be effective against a small underground group, but not against an insurgency with popular support.
Israeli tanks are firing flechette shells that hit everyone in a large area 300 meters by 90 meters, and using them in towns where civilians are likely to be hit.
Gazans say Israel is using some sort of
poison
gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors in Gaza suspect Israel is using experimental weapons that
rip human
bodies to shreds.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for protection of habitat for ocelot and jaguar.
Even northern Canada is suffering from a rash of wildfires due to unusual heat.
These fires are due to global heating, and they fuel more global heating. This is positive feedback at work.
US citizens:
oppose
oil drilling in Arctic waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands
to March in Detroit as 'Heartless' Water Shut-Offs Continue.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
NOAA summarizes the continuing slide into global heating.
A
study
forecasts that 100 small nuclear weapons would cause drastic global
cooling and reduce rainfall for more than a decade, as well as
damaging the ozone layer.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
An interview with Edward Snowden.
A transcript.
US citizens: Call on the Senate not to interfere with diplomacy with Iran.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Call on the state to check for methane leaks from pipelines.
US citizens:
Tell
Congress to cut the F-35 fighter plane.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
ISIS declared Christians must be
second-class
citizens, expressing the tyrannical nature of Islam in pure form.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Why employers prefer that workers have no safety net.
The EPA blocked the Pebble Mine to protect salmon.
The number of leading AIDS researchers killed on the downed flight was much less than previously believed.
Independent ebooks without DRM seem to sell more copies.
That's helpful for the cause of getting rid of DRM, but since DRM is an offence against readers' freedom, if it did increase sales that would not be an excuse for it.
New York thugs killed a man by putting him in a chokehold. They had no reason to attack him in the first place.
Israel plans to turn a third of the area of Gaza into a free-fire zone.
This plan represents a compromise with world opinion. Left to itself, Israel's government might prefer to declare the entirety of Gaza a free-fire "buffer zone". Or you might say that it has unofficially done so.
Florida Governor Scott is raising lots of money from a private prison owner.
A passenger jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing everyone aboard. Around 100 leading AIDS researchers were on the plane.
A leaked tape reportedly shows pro-Russian rebels in the Ukraine shot down the jetliner, thinking they had attacked a military transport plane.
This sort of thing is what happens in war. US drone attacks are called "surgical strikes", but they often do the military equivalent of amputating the wrong leg. A US ship shot down an Iranian jetliner, also by mistake. Israeli bombs in Gaza are supposedly aimed at "terrorists" but many hit schools, hospitals, wells and homes.
However, when Russia handed high altitude SAMs to rebels without rigid checklists, it made this sort of accident rather likely.
A reporter resigned from Russia Today to protest its absurd claims that Ukraine fired the missile.
Obama approved the plan to injure 100,000 whales and dolphins to find more undersea oil that we can't ever dare extract.
Ethiopia plans to imprison some dissidents on bogus charges of "terrorism".
What the US and UK do, other countries imitate.
Niger activists opposed to a secret uranium mining deal with France face charges for holding a press conference.
The Open Rights Group will challenge the new DRIP surveillance law in court.
US Accused
of Forcing EU to Accept Tar Sands Oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Food Industry Lobby Groups Behind the New School Nutrition Standards.
What convinced the Guantanamo nurse that force feeding is wrong.
Blanket digital surveillance is a start. But how about a camera in every bathroom?
The UN has condemned massive surveillance as a violation of human rights.
This includes data retention such as the UK is in the process of reimposing.
US citizens: Tell Obama to make Detroit turn the water back on.
US citizens: call for a requirement for fracking companies
to publish
the composition of the fracking fluid.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's army has attacked Gaza. This included bombardment of a hospital.
Israeli accusations that Hamas stores arms in civilian buildings were proved partly valid: the UNRWA found missiles in a disused school building.
Whether they store arms in civilian buildings that are actually in use is not proven.
In the secret US prison at Bagram, the prisoners frequently have to go on hunger strike to get clean water to drink or to see the ICRC.
Your portable tracking and surveillance device can now also inform about changes in your behavior pattern.
How America Fails the Rule-of-Law Test.
Everyone: call on Obama not to let Israel bomb the Wafa rehabilitation hospital.
Since Reagan, the US has allowed monopolies or oligopolies to spread across the range of businesses, subjecting Americans to unchecked power of businesses.
This was done in the name of "free markets", but really it was "laissez faire". Due to the inherent instability of the free market, removal of the regulations that protected it allowed it to be converted into something more like feudalism.
Campaigning against TTIP, This Treaty Is Plutocratic, another instance of the oppression of the TPP.
Efficiencies in agriculture could in principle feed billions more people. But the total meat production would have to go down pretty far.
Introducing efficiency into agriculture is much more easily said than done, and global heating will interfere greatly as it means that weather changes from year to year and the proper agricultural methods for a given area cannot be predicted.
NBC yanked correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza because he did a good job of covering the main effect of Israeli bombing.
Brazil allows people to censor all publication about them, and many biographies have been banned. A bill proposes to correct this.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would stop the FCC from making municipal broadband legal.
Syrian mothers force their daughters to marry, as young as 13, fearing that they will otherwise be raped. One said she expected her male relatives to murder the daughter if she is raped.
Rape is common in war, but Arab culture converts rape into a sentence of death. What barbarism! Having daughters in such a society should be considered committing a crime against them.
The RIAA shut down a radio archive that has operated almost 20 years.
I hope people set it up again in some other country.
Censorship in France: a blogger has been fined for publishing a negative opinion of a restaurant.
Reportedly Hamas and Islamic Jihad have offered a
10-year
truce in exchange for Israel's ending the siege of Gaza and ending
its isolation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
These terms seem reasonable to me. Most of the issues in dispute between Israel and Palestine are left out, which is appropriate since this proposes a truce rather than a full settlement.
A military nurse at Guantanamo has refused to participate in force-feeding on the grounds that it is inhumane.
I expect the Obama regime to repress this nurse.
Republicans
blocked
the bill to correct the Hobby Lobby decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is attacking wells and sewage systems in Gaza.
Netanyahu stated publicly that he will never permit a Palestinian state to function.
An Obama representative rebuked Israel for maintaining the occupation of Palestine and rejecting peace.
It's a small sign of the courage that could have a chance of making Israel agree to peace.
Hamas says that Egypt and Israel did not discuss the supposed cease-fire with Hamas before announcing it.
One of the few left-wing terrorists in Greece was captured, but the right-wing terrorists of Golden Dawn are still rampant, and the boot of the banks is still on Greece's neck.
A prisoner in New Mexico is threatened with 90 days in solitary confinement for having a Facebook page.
I think being a used of Facebook is punishment enough.
Australia has repealed its carbon tax, cementing a plan that will kill tens or hundreds of millions of people.
Australia's right-wing government plans to imprison journalists for publishing what whistleblowers report about spying on the public.
These journalists are, of course, the ones who have the "sense of responsibility" that Abbott says journalists should have.
The prohibition is so sweeping that almost any reporting about a secret government action could be covered. For instance, when dissidents identify their lovers as undercover thugs, they could be imprisoned.
Peace demonstrators in Tel Aviv were attacked by right-wing hate protesters.
US border patrol thugs brutalize people at will for grudges, and they are spreading their power to a ever further from the borders.
Don't forget how they beat up Peter Watts, then prosecuted him for not obeying fast enough.
That thug should be in prison.
Immigrant activist journalist Jose Antonio Vargas was arrested when he tried to fly out of a US city near the border with Mexico,
Vargas came to the US from the Philippines as a child, and found out many years later that he did not have permission to reside in the US. I don't believe that countries are obliged to admit everyone that wants to move to them, but people who came as children — before they were responsible — and remained for many years should be allowed to stay.
The west's foreign aid to Africa
is less
than what the west takes out of Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Overprotectiveness is stunting the mental growth of a generation children — in particular, denying them contact with nature.
The article refers to the UK but I have seen similar attitudes in the US.
Too-big-to-fail banks exist because
of Bill
Clinton's deregulation of banks, and their incomprehensible
maneuvers are also permitted due to his deregulation of banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Hillary Clinton is in the same camp; she works for the plutocrats.
Contrast with Elizabeth Warren helps Democrats see Obama's right-wing nature.
Joseph Stiglitz explains how the World Bank, IMF and WTO combined in the 90s to wreck countries' economies, impoverish most people, and transfer their wealth to the international elite.
Clearly this continues in recent times, as can be seen in austerity in Europe.
RT has an obvious slant which comes from Putin, but Michael Hudson is a western economist who accepted this opportunity to communicate to the public.
The US government aims to be omniscient and omnipotent.
This makes its unquestioning supporters comparable to theocrats.
US citizens: phone your congresscitter to support HCR 105 to remove all US troops from Iraq by the end of the year.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US government has too few meat inspectors, as part of the cockeyed plan to let companies inspect themselves.
What the World
Cup Can Teach Progressives About Corruption.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israel accepted a ceasefire proposed by Egypt, but Hamas rejected it.
Both Hamas and Israel had reasons to want some inconclusive fighting in Gaza Apparently Israel has had enough fighting to achieve its aims, while Hamas has not.
The Obama regime argues in court that US companies must hand over foreign data to US courts regardless of foreign laws.
The UK's NHS is grudgingly rationing out hip replacement operations. I suppose this is because of the shortage of funds, by which the right wing want to make it so bad people will accept privatization.
Citigroup will have to pay 7 billion dollars for misleading investors, but it's not enough to discourage a repeat, and the executives responsible won't be punished.
Non-star writers are paid very little by the existing copyright-based publishing system. In the UK, the median income for working authors is a pitiful 17,000 or 18,000 dollars a year.
The existing copyright-based system mainly supports the publishing companies as well as the stars that have clout with them.
Abstinence-based sex-non-education is telling lies to keep virgins ill-informed; it puts them in danger.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses described the results of this in 1782, so there is no excuse for ignorance.
Florida's Republicans drew congressional districts illegally to favor Republican candidates, but they hope it is too late to fix the problem for this year.
Washington DC has banned styrofoam containers for food and drinks.
As usual, plastic companies lobbied against this step forward. You would think that some stockholders would be wise enough to say, "People will always want plastic, and we can go along with selling it over a longer period of time to keep our rivers and seas clean." I suspect that the corporation structure systematically leads executives to be extremists: to demand to maximize their profits no matter what the cost to society.
Perhaps some reorganization of the structure of a corporation could alter that tendency. That would a great thing.
The Citibank payment is peanuts compared to what it received in bailout funds.
Australia is holding a boatful of asylum seekers in prison on a ship.
A Japanese artist has been arrested for distributing art: a 3D printer model for a boat designed from her vagina. She has campaigned for years to end the taboo on the image and even the word for "vagina". I think sexual taboos, which censorship preserves, are the cause of many sexual obsessions and hatreds.
The UK government still officially has carbon emission reduction targets, but has ensured it will not meet them.
Wild cheetahs are being wiped out by taking the cubs for pets.
An interview with an Armenian former soldier who volunteered in Moscow to go to fight for the pro-Russian side in Ukraine.
How Bill Gates's money was used to fund and organize "grass roots" support for the Common Core.
This makes me think of how Tea Party "grass roots" groups got funding from rich sponsors.
Two westerners face a secret trial in China.
Think of this when the UK talks about secret trials.
Around half the children in India are stunted, as if they did not get enough food, because of exposure to germs from human excrement.
Nuclear weapons relate to global heating in a number of ways.
South Africa is on the verge of adopting a state secrecy bill that would force journalists to name their sources, and imprison whistleblowers. Following the unjust lead of the US.
The soccer world cup
will leave
Brazil saddled with a debt of perhaps 14 billion dollars.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The world cup of soccer should no longer be given a tax exemption.
I am not sure that change is sufficient to make the world cup cease to damage the host country. If you live in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, the US or Morocco, I urge you to campaign against your country's bid to hold the 2026 world cup.
What the US
has lost since September 2001.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli bombing in Gaza has destroyed or damaged almost 1000 houses.
UK spy agencies have repeatedly bugged elected officials.
They also have a big catalog of tools for distorting and sabotaging public activity on the internet.
Three Israelis have been charged with kidnaping and killing an Arab teenager.
This is as it should be, but it is the exception. Israelis kill many Palestinians every year, and almost always have some sort of official cover that gives them impunity.
In advanced countries, with the exception of the US, strong unions correlate with high productivity.
So don't believe the executives when they claim that unions destroy productivity.
Missouri plans to execute a man convicted of
murder disregarding
evidence that he was probably innocent.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Hillary's Candid Motto for Democratic
Party: "Represent
Banks".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell
the US Trade Representative to reject "investor-state" provisions
in treaties.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The UK accesses records of medical visits to find illegal immigrants.
Drones are in use for private spying on behalf of idiotically jealous spouses.
On occasion, these uses achieve a positive result, but I don't think they should be permitted loosely.
Protesters from a march in Paris, condemning Israel's bombing of Gaza, tried to attack a synagogue.
The people in the synagogue are not the ones launching the attack. They may not even support it. The standard Israeli way of dismissing all criticism of its occupation policies is to call it "antisemitism". Apparently these protesters really are antisemitic, but their bad example will help Israel label all of us as "antisemitic".
There is a substantial amount of antisemitism in France among the right wing.
"Natural" disasters happen 5 times as often as they did in the 1970s, because now they are mainly artificial.
Obama is trying to use the "state secrets" privilege to quash the case of a man who is suing to get off the "no fly" list.
The "no fly" list is punishment without trial, obviously unconstitutional, but we can't count on the pro-authoritarian US Supreme Court to care about this.
Jo Beecham is dying of cancer, but has gone to great lengths to prepare to commit suicide without help rather than be helplessly subject to a medical system that will refuse to let her escape short of death.
British American Tobacco has tried to use its giant market power to blackmail a Ugandan MP who has sponsored a European-style bill to discourage smoking.
This sort of blackmail is common, and it is one reason we need to break up large companies. If BAT were replaced by 50 companies, and the biggest of them were 5% the size of BAT, they would not have this power.
US citizens: Support the bill to authorize Clean Energy Victory Bonds.
Raising taxes on the rich would be better than borrowing money, but either one is a lot better than failing to promote clean energy.
US citizens: call on the US government to firmly oppose whaling.
WikiLeaks has shown us that western democracies are now ruled by market forces that debase the very notion of freedom.
Do e-cigarettes lead people away from smoking, or are they a new way to get teenagers hooked?
Perhaps they should be available only by prescription, to smokers who want to quit.
The UK's surveillance bill threatens to punish companies world-wide if they do not obey UK surveillance orders. And it requires some web sites to track their users.
Haiti's cardinal condemned Voodoo, saying that that religion distracts believers from real solutions to their problems.
Religion generally tends to do that, but I am skeptical of the claim that belief in Voodoo is what typically leads poor Haitians not to use the services of doctors or lawyers. I suspect that poverty is responsible for that, and they turn to Voodoo as an affordable substitute.
Islamists in Libya have gone on the offensive.
An
analysis of
the development of the world's global problems since 1945.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The software patent war has extended to data centers.
Israel killed 50 more Palestinians in Gaza, including 22 from one family.
Both Israel and Hamas desire fighting in Gaza for political reasons, expecting the situation to be unchanged when the fighting stops (except for the casualties).
Hachette put itself at Amazon's mercy by insisting on Amazon DRM for ebooks.
The right-wing undermining of Britain's NHS is increasing the time it takes for ambulances to reach people.
The UK needs to increase taxes on the rich and on businesses so it can spend enough on the NHS.
Ted Postol says that the Iron Dome missile interceptor nearly always fails to destroy the missile's warhead.
Republicans finally allowed an actual poor person to speak about poverty but could not accept what she said.
US citizens: remind Obama that children that arrive in the US alone are often valid refugees.
Mary Anne Grady Flores has been sentenced to a year in prison for photographing a protest against drones at Hancock Air Base.
The US government concocts all sorts of excuses to quash dissent.
In the US, workers are punished for spending over 6 minutes a day in the toilet.
In
UK, Big-Labor
Strikes and Low-Wage Struggles Jockey for Future.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Reagan's destruction of US antitrust law paved the way for consolidation in every industry, which transfers wealth to the new monopolies from everyone else.
In a dangerous decision, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state can order a suspect to decrypt files on his computer.
A California highway thug beat up a homeless woman who was walking by the side of a highway, but was recorded on video by a passing citizen.
It is true we don't know what they said to each other. So ask yourself, can you imagine anything she might possibly have said that would give a thug a valid reason to beat her up? The thug may be asking himself the same question.
If you want to view the video, you can access it without free software by running the youtube-dl script with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-J-yVKxXrY as argument.
Warning: viewing that video on Youtube in the usual way entails running either Flash Player or nonfree Javascript code.
Tepco continues building the "ice wall" to keep ground water away from the ruined Fukushima nuclear plants, despite various problems.
What I don't understand is why they want to use this untried method, rather than building a pair of solid concrete walls with a replaceable plastic filler between them.
China is concerned about spying via an iThing feature that finds locations that a person often goes to.
The UK government is looking closely at some documents about its participation in US torture flights.
Russia has adopted a law requiring web sites that Russians use to keep data about Russians in Russia.
This will make their data safe from spying by the US, but easily available for spying by Russia.
If this law applied only to only to stores and such, it might be a net improvement for Russians. However, blocking Russians from communicating through a foreign web site is oppressive.
An ethical communications system does not insist that people give their real names or their real locations. Such a system may not know if you're in Russia.
Desmond Tutu spoke up for the right to assistance in dying.
The bill being discussed is a step forward, but inadequate, because it is limited to people who probably will suffer for no more than 6 more months even without help. People condemned to decades of boring helplessness should also have this right.
From the Marshall Islands: Why the next climate treaty is vital for my country to survive.
A future contraceptive implant could last for 16 years.
I don't see a tremendous benefit in being able to turn it on and off without removing it — how often would you want to do that? I expect most women will want to use contraception until they decide to have children, have some, then use contraception for the rest of their fertility (or get sterilized). The easy way to space their children would be with shorter-term contraception, perhaps one-year implants. This way, the long-term implant would only have to be removed once, which it requires anyway.
What worries me is that they might design it to require nonfree software to communicate with it.
Luxembourg is Europe's biggest tax-dodger enabler, and Juncker, the new head of the European Commission, worked hard to make it so.
As president, he will have the power to sabotage the commission's investigation into what he set up.
Americans are using less gasoline, so the US government wants to fund highways from sources other than the gasoline tax.
It is good that we are driving less, and good that cars are more efficient. We should raise the gasoline tax rate to give Americans even more incentive to drive less and use more efficient cars. And we can mostly stop building new highways (though the old ones need proper maintenance).
The New York Times continues
boosting
wars, despite claiming it has learned its lesson from the
disastrous results of boosting Dubya's conquest of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell Obama, respect freedom of the press: don't jail James Risen.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose CISA, the new and nastier version of CISPA.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US Supreme Court has made and approved a long string of decisions allowing thugs to do almost anything with impunity.
This includes the ruling that the president can have anyone imprisoned without trial by calling that person a "terrorist suspect".
The recent decision that they can't search arrested people's phones and computers without a warrant is an exception, but one exception isn't enough.
Since "drug-sniffing" dogs are mentioned, I should point out that a dog can easily learn to react the same way to a cue from its handler as it does to the smell of drugs. Then it can give the handler an excuse to search whoever the handler wants to search.
The biggest origin of minors trying to enter the US without visas is Honduras; they are driven by the effects of the US-supported coup.
An Israeli drone attack targeted a building which was a residence for disabled people. Some were killed.
The family home of an enemy fighter is not a valid military target either. A large fraction of Israelis are military reservists; does that make their family homes legitimate targets for missiles?
William Binney says the NSA records at least 80% of all phone calls, and lies about it.
One weakness in most geoengineering schemes intended to counter greenhouse heating is that their effect is temporary so it is necessary to keep doing them forever. If any other catastrophe occurs, making society unable to continue the geoengineering, catastrophic heating (much faster than today) would start within a few years.
Most of these geoengineering schemes fail to do anything to stop ocean acidification, so there would still be a catastrophe anyway.
The US continues billions of dollars of subsidies to fossil fuels.
A large meta-study found that organic fruit and vegetables tend to have more antioxidants and less pesticides and cadmium.
Metastudies are tricky, and if this tendency is real, it is not certain whether it translates into a health benefit. But it plausibly could.
In the UK, tax dodging has been simplified so that even working class heroes that get famous can do it.
The Obama regime stated that it had not known that the UK was going to make The Guardian destroy the computer that a copy of the Snowden leaks, but in fact the highest US spymasters were informed.
Uri Avnery: Israelis for the most part hate Arabs so much that they hardly feel any disgust towards the people among them who kidnaped and burned an Arab teenager.
I suspect that a secondary purpose of the bombing of Gaza is to distract attention from that crime with a bigger crime.
Here's a report from Gaza.
If Palestinians are situating military activities in homes with civilians, that is just as reprehensible as Israel's attacks on those homes. But they can't be launching missiles from homes, and Israel doesn't really need to attack anything except missile launchers.
Indeed, Israel hardly even needs to attack missile launchers. It could slap the missiles away, as it does, and not bother to retaliate, saying, "Are you tired of acting out? Done with your tantrum?" Israel's forbearance would make Hamas look like fools.
But that would not satisfy crowds that shout, "Death to Arabs." And it might create a situation where peace seems reasonable, which is the last thing Netanyahu wants.
The idea of stripping people's names from their data from their histories and passing that around turns out not to work: it is too easy to figure out who they were.
All the more reason why digital systems must not collect people's histories.
A Republican candidate that advocates "abstinence only" as a substitute for sex education ended up with a pregnant teenage daughter.
What do you call people who teach their children "abstinence
only"?
Grandparents.
Deforestation by humans may be responsible for Ebola outbreaks in humans.
US television showed a bombed-out Gaza family and said they were Israeli.
It is part of a standard pattern of greatly exaggerating Palestinian violence and excusing the much larger Israeli violence.
Citizens of Detroit blocked water shutoff trucks, and were injured by the thugs that arrested them.
I hope the next protest will involve thousands of Detroiters.
The ACLU is suing to put an end to investigating people for non-reasons.
An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me
Down Because
I Took a Picture of This.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Chris Christie gave a state subsidy to a company run by a Democrat as part of an agreement not to oppose each other.
A proposed New Jersey law to ban political donations from companies that get state subsidies is just a part of what is needed to end political cronyism, a.k.a. plutocracy.
Clinton and Kerry want Snowden to submit to a trial that imitates the mockery of justice in Alice in Wonderland.
Senators that say freedom of speech covers billionaires' money also want to amend the Constitution to ban flag-burning.
The World Council of Churches calls for divesting from fossil fuel.
The Caliph of ISIS may have been radicalized in a US prison in Iraq.
One can say this serves the US right, but Iraqis do not deserve the oppression of ISIS.
Due to global heating, parts of Miami Beach are regularly inundated.
The Turkey Point nuclear plant will become an island, and will be vulnerable to a Fukushima-type disaster.
As the sea advances, millions of people will have to leave Florida, perhaps in a few decades. The Florida Keys may be submerged during this century.
I suspect that Florida land interests are behind Florida politicians' denial. Fools continue to buy buildings that are likely to be drowned, while somebody else extracts profits to move out of Florida before everyone else wakes up to it.
In 50 years, when the price collapses, will those fools' heirs sue Senator Rubio's heirs?
The US government refuses to repudiate torture, and continues to practice it, and US mass media treat it as admirable.
Nanomaterials: a new range of substances that might be put in food, and some of them might have toxic effects.
A given chemical in the form of nanoparticles might have different effects from the same chemical in a different form. It could even depend on the size of the nanoparticles being used. I suppose most chemicals that are ordinarily nontoxic will not be toxic in nano form either, but there will be exceptions to stumble upon.
Climate saboteurs are shifting from denial of global heating to minimizing the expected consequences.
It's a delaying campaign to keep the money flowing unabated to fossil fuel companies as long as possible.
Where censorship of sex is permitted, gay-friendly materials are likely to be censored — not just in Singapore, but in Canada too.
A Greenpeace parody attacking the Shell/LEGO marketing partnership was taken down from YouTube by a vague copyright claim.
Using the DMCA for political censorship is not unusual. It could be considered common practice.
The Kurds have dropped out of the Iraqi government.
This seems to be a push to make Maliki quit. However, since the Kurdish region aims for independence, perhaps Iraq could kick its representatives out of Parliament; then maybe it could form a government.
How the UK is involved in US kidnapping for torture, and how it blocks public inquiry into this complicity.
US citizens: call on the FDA to stop the ruining of antibiotics by feeding them to farm animals en masse.
New pun judge in space
US citizens: Support the Senate bill to fix the Hobby Lobby decision.
The complicated tax-dodging scheme of Nando's Chicken.
The US is spending a trillion dollars on the F-35 fighter whether it works or not.
Karzai approved a UN plan to check the ballots of the Afghan presidential election.
I hope that this makes it possible to find the real winner before the candidates start trying to defeat each other militarily.
An Australian judge faces irrational attacks after saying that sex between siblings might not be inherently bad.
He seems to be talking about sex done willingly. Why should willing sibling sex be associated with "abuse"?
Alas, Judge Neilson is partly mistaken: some apparently still have a taboo about this, and they attack him for questioning the taboo. The attacks are blatant non sequiturs, claiming that sibling sex is bad because it's "disgusting" and because it's illegal.
Environmental defender Jonathan Moylan faces sentencing for posting a Yes Men-style hoax announcement that a bank had pulled out of a coal mine project.
If you are in Australia, you might want to move your money out of ANZ bank permanently as a protest against its destructive investments.
"Sports drinks" have a considerable amount of sugar, and unless you're doing hard exercise for a long time, you're better off drinking water.
Some studies suggest
certain
farm pesticides increase the chance of autism; a pregnant woman
who lives near a fields where they are used has a higher chance of an
autistic child.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congress is about to vote on a terrible new cybersecurity bill which gives the NSA more spying authority.
Here's more detail.
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are rising as the Taliban increasingly fight in towns.
Afghans don't get as angry when the Taliban kill civilians as they do when US soldiers or drones kill civilians.
Children facing deportation need lawyers.
The fine for poisoning water supplies for 300,000 people: just 11,000 dollars.
Obama's lawyers argue that prisoners in Guantanamo don't deserve the same religious freedom as a corporation.
A one-day general strike of public workers shut down a lot of the UK, in response to a proposed law intended to make it hard for unions to strike.
Part of the motive for privatization of government services is to weaken unions, which helps drive workers' pay down and facilitates cheating them.
The Virginia thugs have given up on making child pornography of a teenager threatened with imprisonment for sending a picture of his penis to his lover.
The laws against "child pornography" are unjust, and this is one of many reasons.
Half the people killed by bombing Gaza are women and children. A good fraction of the men killed are probably noncombatants too.
The EU has deplored the bombing, while the US tries to shield Israel.
Big signs in Washington DC encourage whistleblowers to talk to exposefacts.org.
I asked an expert, who says that the site is good to use but reminds people to use https to communicate with it.
The FBI treated Nelson Mandela as some sort of Communist threat after he was released from prison.
Helsinki plans an integrated system of public transit that would make it obsolete to have a car.
This would be a tremendous advance, except that they plan to build in total surveillance as part of the fine print. Every portable phone is a tracking device, and if you have to pay through one, that means identifying yourself to the system. That would be a big step backwards for privacy.
If we don't want to live in a world of total surveillance, we must reject and oppose every new system that collects data about all users. We must insist on designing systems so that they do not track or identify people. Helsinki's transit system should provides ways to call for a ride by calling a number, and allow paying cash.
See http://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html for more explanation, and practical recommendations.
I did not sign a petition to make the FISA court stop profiling based on religion and a couple of other personal classifications because I think the real problem is that the FISA court is a rubber stamp for spying on people.
A Thai editor was jailed for a Facebook posting.
The UK plans to rush new surveillance requirements into effect without debate.
The UK plans to build a new nuclear plant at the cost of a tremendous subsidy, including buying the power for decades at an artificially high price.
I think the "compelling power" that won parties' support for this deal probably emanates from someone's money, but that gives me no clue about how.
The European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to pay compensation to two journalists that were imprisoned for a year with no grounds. However, they are on trial for publishing information about a supposed coup plot.
"Don't be shocked that the US spied on American Muslims. Get angry that it justifies spying on whomever it wants."
UK documents about its cooperation with CIA kidnapings
were destroyed
by "water damage".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
They could be telling the truth. Maybe they flushed these papers down the toilet — that would certainly lead to "water damage".
US citizens: Call on Congress to penalize US contractors with a history of cheating workers out of their pay.
Of course, there should not be so many contractors' employees — their numbers have been swollen due to privatization. Most of that privatization was perverse. We should reverse perverse privatization, moving the work back to civil service workers.
A jury put blame on the thugs for shooting an innocent woman in London who then died of her injuries, 29 years ago.
The real question is, what will be done to keep the thugs accountable today so that they do not continue such practices?
Hong Kong's press freedom has got worse over the past year.
Citizens of Massachusetts: sign this petition to boost the Massachusetts minimum wage to $15.
Everyone: Call on Uganda not to punish Rev. Senyonjo for refusing to preach hatred of gays.
China has given a big tax exemption to electric, hybrid and fuel cell cars.
Israel's bombardment of Gaza has killed over 70 people. Targets included family homes (8 dead) and a cafe where people were watching soccer on TV (6 dead).
Israel has a recipe for killing Palestinian civilians with a built-in excuse: claiming it was aiming at military targets, and that it was "retaliating" for rockets.
The rockets, when aimed at civilian towns such as Sderot, are a war crime too, or more often an attempted war crime, since these rockets almost never hit anyone. But Israel intentionally started this battle, so it cannot plead "retaliation" now.
Hamas may have cynical motives for giving in to the provocation.
Natural gas under the sea is part of what the fight is about.
I don't think any amount of Israeli attack will make the people of Gaza reject Hamas. Its effect will be to make them cling to it more tightly.
Iraqi women
organize
secretly to protect women from oppression from religious bullies,
including ISIS.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US stopped operating a plane that beamed radio transmissions to Cuba, which were nearly always jammed.
The programs contain a mixture of US government propaganda plus facts correcting Cuban government propaganda. That the Cuban government jams these transmissions indicates its own injustice.
Arsonists Posing
as Firemen: How GOP Sabotages Government for Fun and Profit. This
article explains how Republicans' sabotage brought about several
problems which they now attack Democrats for.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
How oil companies try to
steamroll
local governments that oppose their projects.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Germany has caught another spy that first worked for the CIA, then tried to contact Russia.
A study links neonicotinoids to falling populations of birds.
Broad Coalition Urges 'Full Public Accounting' for Government Surveillance of U.S. Muslim Leaders.
The US government and states gave fossil fuels 37 billion dollars of subsidy last year, and this has increased 45% since 2009.
Without this, renewable power would grow more.
I Filmed the
LAPD Assaulting Me at Pro-Israel Demonstration.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The OECD predicts economic growth will almost cease by 2060, but inequality will keep increasing.
That's before counting the losses that global heating will cause; the report treats that as uncertain.
The report presumes that we will keep increasing productivity by automating more work. But I don't think this increased productivity is good at the cost of more unemployed poor people — not if the benefits go to the rich. It would be better to limit the automation and keep more people employed.
We do not have to allow inequality to increase. The growing inequality is due to policies that can be changed.
The Earth Institute shows how we can still keep global heating down to a painful 2 degrees C, if we act firmly now.
The report offers specific targets and plans for the 15 most-emitting countries.
The report assumes substantial use of nuclear power, but I am sure the target can be met without that at the cost of some extra money.
38 Journalism Groups Urge President to Stop Excessive Controls on Public Information.
Obama's administration seems to be the most secretive ever.
Meet the Muslim-American Leaders the FBI and NSA Have Been Spying On.
The NSA does this without breaking the law, because the law is putty in its hands.
Feinstein's senate committee adopted a "cybersecurity" bill that allows increased state surveillance.
The cease-fire in South Sudan is allowing the beginning of recovery but there is a shortage of food, medicine and doctors.
The Israeli government had information showing that the three kidnaped teenagers were dead, but used censorship and lies to make the public believe they were being held as hostages by Hamas, and manipulate public feeling so as to attack Hamas.
Citizens of the UK: phone your MPs to oppose surveillance legislation being rushed through Parliament so fast there will be no time for it to be thought about.
https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/no-emergency-stop-the-data-retention-stitch-up
One of the Koch brothers was a Bircher in the 60s and put money into fighting against civil rights.
US citizens: call on Hillary Clinton to stop supporting Monsanto.
US citizens: Tell the EPA
to suspend
use of neonicotinoid pesticides. There's plenty of evidence tying
them to colony collapse of bees, and since they accumulate, it will
take time for them to decrease in the environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops confiscated the computers of Palestinian cultural magazines.
On the social demand for collective mourning for people one did not know.
I rejected the collective mourning for those who died in the September 2001 attacks; while Americans were supposed to feel angry and afraid, I focused instead on resisting the coming attack on our freedom.
The former speaker of the Israeli Parliament asks for a nonviolent Palestinian movement to pressure Israel into accepting peace.
[Australia's] Asylum Secrecy on the High Seas Is Designed to Foil the Enemy Within — The Law.
A minister sees no sign of torture in Sri Lanka. In effect, he says he saw many Tamils who are not in prison or being tortured.
Some imprisoned asylum seekers have attempted suicide hoping to improve their children's chances of receiving asylum.
This suggests that those are economic migrants, aiming to get their children into Australia rather than fleeing persecution.
State legislators acting as tools for ALEC copied the error from ALEC's model bill.
The bill would be just as bad if they had been more careful, but this shows they are tools of ALEC, and not even very competent ones.
The Arab Peace Initiative proposed a peace plan which still
offers a
direction for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians are
still
organizing nonviolent resistance, but they need the rest of the
world to notice it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Those who refuse to recognize Snowden as a hero, and attack him for
showing secrets to the press, are now
compelled to
admit that the NSA can't be trusted to keep its data about you and
me private.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, Snowden did not give this data to just any reporters. He chose reporters who would take care against harming the people mentioned in those data.
The Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies parts of 8 US states, is being
depleted
rapidlyThe spreading drought (which will get worse due to global
heating) is speeding this up.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Congresscritters are resisting an investigation by the SEC of accusations of insider stock trading.
Doctors:
TPP Would Trample Access to Medicines.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
TPP stands for Treaty for Plutocratic Power.
The extent of Israel's collective punishment response to three murdered civilians amounts to a far bigger wrong to Palestinian civilians.
Chinese writer Murong Xuecun asked the Chinese thugs to arrest him as they had arrested his friends.
The Afghan presidential election preliminary results declared Ashraf Ghani the winner, but Abdullah Abdullah accuses Ghani's campaign of ballot-stuffing and says he will set up a parallel cabinet.
I have no way to judge what the truth is, but running an election properly includes preventing opportunities for ballot stuffing.
Israel has created an opportunity to invade Gaza again. This gives it a chance to kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians, with an excuse to shield the killers from prosecution.
This is retaliation for rockets launched from Gaza, generally not by Hamas. These rockets are quite warlike but almost never hurt anyone. Effectively they are like a raised fist, which Israel generally responds to with attacks that kill plenty of civilians.
This cycle of violence started with the murder of three Israeli teenagers, to which Israel responded by arresting hundreds of Palestinians unrelated to the murder (generally without charges), and sending troops into Arab areas to harass large numbers of people. This predictably inspires young Palestinians to throw stones, which is an opportunity to shoot tear gas, which often injures people, and also an opportunity to shoot bystanders dead. It's even possible for a soldier to kill Palestinians with rubber-coated steel bullets or tear-gas canisters.
Israeli civilians living in colonies ("settlements") in Palestine are launching attacks against nearby Palestinian villages.
Here's Juan Cole's analysis.
US citizens: Call on the FCC to choose complete network neutrality.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate pollution from recycling plants.
US agents seized Roman Seleznev, son of a Russian MP, in the Maldives.
Either the US agents kidnaped him without informing the government of the Maldives, or the government of the Maldives handed someone over to the US illegally without an extradition hearing.
Whether Seleznev is guilty of breaking computer security (please don't call it hacking!) is a different question. I know nothing about it; maybe he is, or maybe he isn't. But that seems like a secondary issue compared to the way he was grabbed.
Arctic heating: a study of several bird species found they are breeding 4 to 7 days earlier than a decade ago.
An ex-TSA agent ridicules the rule requiring powering up every computer. He says it is not likely to stop terrorists, but is sure to cause many people great upset. I suspect that one passenger a week will explode in violent rage at the confiscation of a computer that happened to be empty of power. The sadists will have a great excuse to imprison these people and really ruin their lives, and say they are doing it to protect us.
Hillary Clinton Flaunts Her Surveillance State Baggage.
The UK has secret quotas for kicking disabled people off benefits.
Cruelty to the weak is what it stands for.
It seems Obama is reaching for the bottom of the barrel to propose corrupt schnook Ahmad Chalabi to govern Iraq, or at least pretend to.
A former chief British spy says that ISIS is not interested in attacking the West, and that publicly calling it a threat is self-defeating.
ISIS is a threat to human rights in the Middle East, and that makes it very bad. But we should not let governments make this an excuse for universal surveillance.
Everyone: boycott Eden Foods for attacking access to birth control.
Millions of US veterans suffer from physical and psychological problems, and many commit suicide.
Being in a war that you can't justify to yourself requires a special sort of nihilism.
China cancelled American Tibetologist Elliot Sperling's visa, apparently because he spoke up for the imprisoned Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti.
Mapping US states on a spectrum from "tight" (repressive) to "loose" (tolerant).
63 of the women kidnaped by Boko Haram escaped and walked to freedom.
The article explains how politics has hampered the fight against Boko Haram.
Médecins Sans Frontières reports that most humanitarian aid agencies have adopted bad priorities and do little to help real refugees.
Canada is holding negotiations about the TPP in a secret location. The government is evidently scared of the people's disapproval of its plan to betray democracy.
Legalizing marijuana has reduced violent crime in Colorado as well as creating jobs and increasing tax revenue.
Most importantly, it means an end to a system of prohibition that ruins many lives and spreads corruption.
Alas, we still have the "war" on other drugs. Some of those drugs are really addictive and/or harmful, but prohibition does even more harm.
CIA employee Jeffrey Scudder tried to go through channels to have old articles published — which was in fact his job. His reward was to be framed and then forced to resign.
Here's more information.
This is the route various authoritarian politicians (including Hillary Clinton) think Snowden should have taken.
A former general associated with a massacre in East Timor, who has stated his opposition to democracy, may be elected president of Indonesia.
A study finds that the UK's policies intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have not decreased the total economy.
It could be that this is because the policies are not strong enough to avert disaster. However, disaster is not in any country's real economic interest.
Governments must act to assure development of new antibiotics.
Of course, they must also act to end the wasteful ruination of antibiotics once discovered, but they have not had the courage to tell meat producers to jump in the lake.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to regulate
pollution from refineries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The global heating denial industry grasps at thin straws of sea ice to hide the overwhelming fact of heating.
Comparing the ending of fossil fuel use with freeing the slaves in the US.
The similarity is not complete. Enslaving one person is an injustice, whereas burning one gallon of gasoline would hurt nobody if that were the only gallon burnt. But there are similarities.
US States That Raised Their Minimum Wages Are Experiencing Faster Job Growth.
The privatization of soldiers and intelligence agents creates armies of lobbies to increase the spending on them.
Tony Nuttall describes how UK thugs violently attacked aged and/or disabled people who rode a train without paying to protest the plans to end the travel discount for old people and disabled people.
If the UK government were not so stingy with its support for old people and the disabled perhaps it would not be important to give them a discount on trains. Anyway, the conduct of the thugs is disgusting regardless of whether one agrees with the protesters.
Australia has admitted handing over boat people from Sri Lanka to the Sri Lankan navy.
Sri Lanka will hand them over to the thugs, and they may be prosecuted for departing Sri Lanka without permission.
Australia's high court ordered the state not to hand over another boatload.
The World Bank is considering relaxing standards for loans to large projects that can involve fossil fuels or other dangers to the public.
Ralph Nader asks Americans
to support two
progressive candidates for US Congress, one independent and one
Green.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Capitalism is having a recovery for the rich, but making this benefit the non-rich requires changing the system.
Some US hospitals are buying personal data to warn people they might get sick.
I see no harm in this particular practice. If it seems creepy, that's because it is the consequence of something that really is creepy: the collection of all that data about people. That's what's really wrong.
I would not mind if my own computer kept a log of my purchases. I might find it useful to run a free program to look through them for things to warn me about. I don't want a data broker to have that data, which is why I always buy anonymously, paying cash.
Leaks show that NSA calls all Tor users "extremists" and makes them targets for spying.
Reading some Boing Boing articles is also enough to make a person a target.
I don't know whether reading THAT Boing Boing article would make you a target. Just to be careful, you should access it through Tor.
If it is true that a second NSA whistleblower has followed Snowden's path, I wonder if he was inspired by reading my emails. My emails say,
[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
There is a t-shirt you can use to declare yourself a
TORrorist.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
If you have blocked nonfree JavaScript code, you will not be able to pay through Stripe. Please don't enable JavaScript; please pay with Bitcoin or some other method.
Nobody should have expected Facebook's conduct to be ethical.
Exxon
bullied
the major US TV networks into refusing to present a paid political
advertisement that criticizes Exxon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
All I can say is, Yexx!
If you want to watch the PSA, which is hosted on YouTube, please do not access the site directly! Use youtube-dl.
The owners of Hobby Lobby provided medical care including contraception coverage, voluntarily, until a group of right-wing Christians suggested this was a way to the secularity of the law.
Now Hobby Lobby demands to ban insurance from paying for doctor visits in which patients even discuss contraception. And the Supreme Court may have given it to them.
The battle over contraception is the central battle of the war for women's equality and emancipation.
US TV lionizes the CEO of Hewlett Packard for continuing to cut jobs despite the "economic recovery" in the US (thus helping insure it's not a real recovery for the American people).
One incidental detail, irrelevant to the issue, is that this CEO is a woman. It's irrelevant to the issue because a male CEO could have done the same, and it would be equally wrong. The wrong here has nothing to do with her gender. It was right of FAIR not to mention that.
I mention it, though it is irrelevant to this issue, because there are feminists who campaign to have more female CEOs. I think they are being distracted by an irrelevancy.
With regard to CEOs, what matters most for working women isn't whether their chance of becoming one of those CEOs is one in a million or one in ten million. It is curbing the CEOs' power to harm them. Never mind how women CEOs get paid; focus on how women workers get paid.
The UK government has come up with two new excuses to maintain surveillance of everyone.
What they amount to is, "If we can't watch everyone all the time, somewhat more crimes will happen." That's true. But if we allow the state to prevent crimes at any cost, it will oppress us. A state that the people do not control is a bigger danger than the crimes it fails to prevent.
The state itself commits frequent violence when it shows contempt for the people.
Sea-level rise is hitting Virginia so hard that even Republicans can't deny it.
It's not wholly due to global heating. The US east coast is slowly sinking, and this adds locally to the worldwide rise of the ocean caused by global heating.
Hillary Clinton
praised
Angela Merkel, Germany's right-wing leader who refused to
relax the austerity that has crushed Greece, Portugal, Spain and
Italy. This shows where Clinton's sympathies lie.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Massachusetts Legislature Advances Key Electronic Privacy Proposal.
An Ethiopian farmer says UK aid to Ethiopia funds the land grab campaign that chases thousands off their land and forces them into artificial villages where they can't get food.
This land grab is probably for the benefit of some global company.
Snowden gave journalists a sample of intercepts. The Washington Post says that 1/9 of them were from real targets and 8/9 were from bystanders.
They show that the NSA lied again.
WildEarth Guardians are suing the US for approving coal mines without taking account of the pollution the mines and the coal will cause. The US government says the US can't afford to interfere with all that coal mining.
In the long term the US can't afford to let the mining continue, but the US government is more concerned with the short term interests of mining companies than the long term interests of the whole country.
Tariq Abu Khdeir says that Israeli thugs attacked him out of the blue, and video shows them beating him while he was motionless.
Thugs around the world do this to the people they hate. In Israel, the thugs hate Arabs.
Freedom of
religion is
mostly obsolete, because most of it is included in freedom of
speech and thought.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
I am not convinced it is 100% obsolete, because religion includes some practices of worship that people should also have the right to do, within reason (as long as they don't violate others' rights). For instance, the Religious Freedom Restauration Act was adopted so that people wouldn't get fired for their (lawful) religious practices. That's not included in freedom of speech and thought.
However, if the US banned firing people over things irrelevant to their jobs, this aspect of religious freedom would also be superseded.
Everyone: join the People's Climate Mobilization
Australians protested the dooH niboR budget proposed by the Australian Cruelty Party.
In Cambodia, patriarchy and poverty push mothers to make their daughters prostitutes.
The way income, when it arrives, melts away on various necessities of relatives (on whom one depends for aid in turn) is typical of life for poor people in the US, too. This makes getting out of poverty much harder that the non-poor suppose it is.
Israeli
thugs arrested
then beat up a Palestinian teenager, who is a US citizen and a
cousin of the teenager who was burnt to death.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The US government has criticized Israel for this.
Meanwhile, Israel has arrested suspects in the murder of his cousin.
It is unusual for Israeli civilians to kill a Palestinian, just as it is unusual for Palestinians to kill Israelis. In fact, lots of Palestinians are killed by Israelis, but usually the killers have impunity because they are soldiers or thugs.
US citizens: call on Obama to make an executive order to override the effects of the Hobby Lobby decision.
80% of California is now in "extreme" drought, but Californians should get used to this as global heating will lead to more and worse droughts.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of protecting some businesses
whistleblowers from retaliation, but
not
completely.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Germany has arrested someone who was spying for the US.
Ikea supported dictatorships in the Soviet Empire in the 80s.
I think that this is comparable to buying cotton from Uzbekistan today.
Clinton continues calling for Snowden to submit to a US trial while evading the issue that he won't be allowed to argue that his actions served his country.
A new ethical issue about Facebook's experiment: Facebook gave researchers data about its useds without getting the useds' consent.
The growing movement to reverse privatization of public services.
Public pressure forced Syngenta to retract its request for "emergency" permission for massive use of neonicotinoids in the UK despite the EU's moratorium on their use.
If the EPA approves toxic 2,4-D as a herbicide for new GMOs,
over 5000
schools in the US will be rather close to the spraying.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Orwell's Dystopian Future Is Almost Here: A Conversation With Glenn Greenwald.
Romania is rushing a massive surveillance law to require all communications to be registered.
Nuclear Nightmares:
Securing the
World Before It Is Too Late.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
The Arab teenager kidnaped in Jerusalem was apparently burnt alive.
Arabs on buses and streets are facing harassment that gets to the point of violence, though other Israelis sometimes try to protect them.
Dark dust, from fires, deserts and machines, is melting ice around the world, even in the Himalayas.
Religious Activists Have Too Much Say Over Our Right to Die.
America's national parks are already being changed by global heating.
In a century, they may still be parks (if there is still a state that can maintain them as parks), but aside from bare rock they will change beyond recognition.
Chris Christie vetoed a New Jersey bill to limit magazines to just 10 bullets.
One of the researchers in the Facebook emotion experiment has been funded by the US government to study the spread of dissident ideas.
Denmark plans to impose a nationwide system to track cars.
Such systems should only see cars that are being specifically sought, or are not properly licenses.
The FDA has proposed to require food labels to state the amount of added sugar. The food companies are lobbying against.
Obama's head of the SEC has turned out rather susceptible to the wishes of the companies it is supposed to regulate.
Hong Kong arrested the leaders of the large democracy protest.
A way to find out whether a web site is blocked by ISP censorship imposed by the UK government.
Although some nuclear power advocates claim that the Chernobyl meltdowns did not directly hurt the public, some groups that were nearby show high levels of certain diseases.
An Ethiopian "terrorist" (i.e., opposition party leader) faces execution after being extradited by Yemen.
The UK does not want to protest about such threats to air travellers making connections because it intends to endanger them similarly on similar excuses.
Everyone: call on Temple University to tighten its standards for disclosure of researchers' conflicts of interest.
Two professors there did a study which purported to find that private prisons are great improvements in efficiency; it turns out they were funded by private prison companies, and the study is biased.
In India today there are thousands of temple prostitutes, given to the temple as children by their families. For the most part, they are treated with the same contempt that other prostitutes receive. (I don't understand why many men feel that sort of contempt for prostitutes.)
US corporations are using nondisclosure agreements to gag whistleblowers.
US Confirms Years-Long "Secret" Military Presence in Somalia.
The UK government's policies are curbing the installation of better heat insulation in homes.
This will help the government's patrons meet their targets for sales of fossil fuels.
More evidence that you shouldn't rely on "cloud"y thinking about where to store or transmit data: SoundCloud says it will profile users, and has given the music factories direct censorship control.
Don't use big web sites to distribute files — to the public or to specific people.
US citizens: tell the Fish and Wildlife Service to regulate oil and gas drilling on US public land.
Everyone: Call on CNBC to apologize for seeking to publish a denial of global heating.
The Heatless Party's government in Australia has stopped refugee boats from arriving, at the cost of contempt for refugees, the UN, the press, the Supreme Court, the Australian public and the truth.
Supreme Court Rules JCPenney Allowed to Sacrifice Employees to Appease Cthulhu. (I think this is a satire.)
New pun in french.
US citizens: call on Obama to drop the Trade in Services Agreement and other treaties that put businesses ahead of people.
A crazy proposal to transfer massive quantities of coal from ship to ship in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.
Pollution is certain to spread, but hey, if you're going to burn that coal the reef is doomed anyway.
Calling for speed limits for ships near the Great Barrier Reef to protect whales from being killed by collisions.
In Australia, only right-wingers are allowed to suggest using physical violence on those they disagree with.
Abbott surely deserves to spend many years in prison for his treatment of Australian poor, foreign refugees, and all future life on Earth. But not death, because the death penalty is never justified.
The UK thugs have refused to investigate how thugs cooperated with others (journalists, etc.) to spy illegally on individuals.
An argument for eliminating private business from the development and manufacture of medicines.
I am not sure we need to go that far. I advocate eliminating private business from the testing and approval of medicines.
Freedom, Power, and the Conservative Mind.
The One-Sided Culture War against Children. Whether US parents are too lax, or too controlling, the "solution" is always "impose standardized tests to fire teachers."
I find that US parents tend to be too lax on some issues (they can't say "Don't be used by Facebook!" or "Don't sign an EULA that says you are not allowed to give that to someone else!"), and twistedly strict on others (kids never get to be home alone; parents think that would kill them). But the "solution" of "impose standardized tests to fire teachers" is never going to help.
One of the Peruvian soldiers convicted of killing journalist Hugo Bustios says that Peru's current interior minister Urresti ordered the killing.
Australia gives some asylum seekers a cursory screening and sends them back.
It does not matter a priori whether this is done on land or on a ship, but doing so on ship facilitates "accidental" errors which, at a systematic level, are not accidents.
While the government refuses to admit this, it effectively admits it by trying to pretend that Sri Lanka does not torture dissidents.
Australia's plans show that its goal is to keep refugees out no matter what the situation.
Pennsylvania told state health officials not to return phone calls from people who had health problems due to fracking.
Attacking the Pakistani Taliban provides an opportunity to attack the disease they protect: polio.
Carbon offsets are fueling land grabs in Africa.
Indian soldiers and thugs in Kashmir have been officially given impunity for torture, rape and murder. The mothers of the disappeared have organized in response.
Nigerian Atheist Bala has been released from the mental hospital thanks to a strike by doctors, but now receives death threats from fanatical Muslims.
Islamic law is incompatible with human rights. I've posted examples from Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran, Saudi Arabiaand Sudan. I am sure there are more. Most "Muslim" countries forbid religious freedom to anyone who was once considered a Muslim.
Nigeria must insist that human rights apply to the whole of the country and that no local system is allowed to pre-empt them.
Improvised explosive devices killed 53,000 people in 2011-2013, most of them civilians.
I don't see much hope of stopping this practice as long as the groups that set these bombs are tolerated by their communities.
Everyone:
pledge to boycott
Hobby Lobby.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for continuation of the "temporary" ban on drones in national parks.
Ahmed Abu Khatallah's lawyers say the US government has given them no information about the evidence against their client.
A little information about the 7 Palestinians killed recently by Israelis. 4 of them teenagers.
Killing people who are not hurting anyone is wrong no matter who they are. However, Western politicians seem to care only when Israelis are the victims.
The "Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board" turns out to be the Privacy and Civil Liberties Overboard.
A court ruled that UK thugs must answer when women ask in court whether their lovers were undercover thugs.
Spain is punishing striking workers.
A new FCC rule will require US TV stations to
show who pays
for political advertisements.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
It is a good rule, but we still need this default rule: Vote for whoever is criticized by the expensive attack ads! (Unless you have time for careful study of the accusations against ALL the candidates.)
A debate about whether Capitalism inevitably produces great inequality or merely tends to do so.
I think that the great inequality is not inevitable, but avoiding it takes firmness that requires true democracy (government policies chosen by the people in general to keep the rich in check). Once the rich replace democracy with plutocracy, it is a sure thing that the policies necessary to prevent tremendous inequality won't be practiced.
Ecuador drew up a plan in 2010 to build a power plant in Yasuni to support oil drilling there.
It is not certain that the plan to leave Yasuni oil untouched was dishonest. This could have been a contingency plan for what to do if the world failed (as indeed it did) to contribute the money Ecuador requested for leaving that oil untouched.
In any case, Correa deserves credit for trying something that no other world leader has even tried. If other countries had provided the reasonable sum he requested, he would surely have gone ahead with the deal.
Dwindling water supplies are crucial to the military outcome in Iraq and Syria. Control of a dam means use of the water in its lake, use of the electricity it generates, and the chance to use the water to drown people downstream.
A multi-year drought caused the protests against Assad.
Global heating will eventually make it impossible for the current population of Iraq to survive there.
Our actions that cause global heating are a wrong that we must stop. Iraq contributes to these actions by extracting oil for us to burn. Iraqis also contribute to the problem by having more children than the region can support. One way of reducing population growth is to give women more control over their reproduction. ISIS will clearly do the opposite of that, but so do the religious Shi'ite groups.
Perhaps the world will need to adopt the principle that climate refugees must get sterilized as a condition for asylum. Not as a punishment (they are not personally to blame), but as a sustainability measure.
ISPs from various countries have sued GCHQ for attacking their computers.
Malaysia refuses to let a diplomat accused of attempted rape use diplomatic immunity as a shield.
Tony B'liar plans to help al-Sisi gain more business opportunities for Egypt.
Since Egyptians won't be allowed to think about politics or freedom, or enjoy satire on TV, I guess business is all they will be left with.
A Palestinian teenager was, it appears, kidnapped and killed as an act of explicit revenge for the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers.
The killers of those three teenagers probably thought that was revenge, too. Israelis kill lots of Palestinians each year, including teenagers and protesters. They also torture Palestinian teenagers.
These killings are wrong on both sides, and I insist on condemning them the same.
The permanent stress caused by
poverty causes
children's brains to develop improperly. With almost 1/4 of US
children living in poverty, this creates a permanent handicap for the
US, as well as an irremediable injustice to those children.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
Chomsky: America's Real Foreign Policy: Global Corporatization by Force.
We are sucking the oceans dry of small fish to feed fish farms, but farmed fish can grow on vegetable food too.
It will take laws to stop the overexploitation of the oceans. We will have to defeat the business forces that want to wipe them out. Perhaps we should ban the sale of farmed fish that are fed animal products.
Caribbean coral reefs will be lost within 20 years. Pollution and overfishing will get them before the CO2 does it.
Two Chilean officials have charged with murdering two Americans in Chile, with the help of the then head of the US military mission.
This was done shortly after the US-organized September 11 attacks.
Poor families in the UK can't afford to rent more than a shed to live in.
It could be worse: they could be homeless as in the US.
The UK has enough rooms of housing, but policies encourage the rich to use up a lot of space, pushing purchase and rental prices up and leaving the poor with too little.
Global heating doesn't hurt everything. It helps locusts, for instance.
Detroit Citizens Vow Direct Action to Protect Their Right to Water.
Increasing CO2 levels make damselfish unable to recognize other fish that they know.
Iraq's parliament has given up on forming a government, without even trying.
Partition of Iraq may be the way to avoid unending civil war. (I advocated this a decade ago.) However, avoiding unending war also requires that the Sunni regions be ruled by people that are not fanatics.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of the French law that bans wearing masks.
This law is typically thought of in connection with a tiny minority of Muslim women, but that is a side issue. Wearing a mask is the only way to protect yourself from being tracked by face recognition cameras. If such cameras are not banned, masks must be allowed as a defense.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens of Hong Kong marched for democracy despite rain and heat.
Afghanistan has accused Pakistan for years of sheltering the Afghan Taliban. Now that Pakistan is attacking the Pakistani Taliban, it accuses Afghanistan of allowing them bases there.
No US soldier starts out wanting to shoot children, not even once, but the dynamics of occupation lead to making that standard practice.
The US is making foreign banks in many countries report US citizens' holdings.
Protests stimulated by the World Cup show that Brazil's democracy is under long-term threat.
In the US: call on Kroger Supermarket to stop selling unsustainable fish.
The FDA is looking for nanomaterials to make animals grow faster.
In principle, this is a great idea. In practice, things may go wrong.
Animals will eat these materials in large quantities, then excrete them; what will happen then? Sewage treatment and water treatment plants were not designed with them in mind, so whether they get into our water will be a matter of luck. If they do, will they increase human obesity?
Egypt's most popular satirist said he will terminate his TV show, implying that the regime will not allow him to continue it.
The US Supreme Court found an excuse to deny some American women access to contraception.
This decision makes no sense in its own terms, because the whole point of a corporation is that it is a separate entity from its owners. They can have religious beliefs, but the corporation cannot. These particular owners, in aiming to impose their views over employees' rights, want to have it both ways. "When the corporation pays for medical coverage, it's really us. If the corporation loses money, it's not us."
This case is part of a general campaign to eliminate access to birth control on the part of Christian fanatics that resemble the Taliban in their misogyny and intolerance.
This question has a real effect because the most reliable forms of birth control involve a big expense once in a while. Getting insurance coverage for them makes a real difference for many US women, especially now that the same right-wingers have made more of them poor.
Congress could amend the Religious Freedom Restauration Act to fix this decision, but it would be better to amend the Constitution to state that human rights in general do not apply to corporations.
However, the clean solution to this problem (and many others) is to disconnect medical care totally from employment. Making employers pay for medical care for employees has the side effect of encouraging companies to eliminate full-time US jobs in favor of foreign operations, part-time subcontractors, or robots.
Instead we should make wealthy people and businesses pay for health care for everyone, employed or not, through a progressive income tax.
Some US states are still trying to teach bogus "science" instead of evolution.
Former NASA Chief Scientist: "We're Effectively Taking a Sledgehammer to the Climate System".
Car exhaust makes it hard for certain moths to find flowers.
[US] Court Blocks Coal Mine Expansion For Not Counting The Costs Of Carbon Pollution.
It's not clear why jellyfish are becoming more prevalent in the ocean, but they are. Sometimes catastrophically so.
I'm sure some aspect of human activities is responsible. We are changing ocean ecosystems in so many ways that it would be a bizarre coincidence if none of them contributed.
Blackwater quashed a US investigation by threatening to kill the investigator.
The US created this situation by sending mercenaries to Iraq and failing to impose accountability on them. For instance, they got away with rape.
The US ought to extend to mercenaries the full spectrum of laws that apply to soldiers. Better yet, it should stop using mercenaries at all.
Mysteriously, US CEOs are paid
much more
than CEOs in other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
It would be interesting to find out what difference enables CEO pay to balloon more in the US than in Japan and Switzerland. I suppose that CEOs play one company off against another, but they would do that everywhere if they can. Why is it they can do so more in the US?
Federal Court: No Impunity for Abu Ghraib Torturers.
A plutocrat writes: The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats.
Plutocracy kills poor people by the thousands, maybe even by the hundreds of thousands. Through global heating, that will become millions, then tens of millions. They are justified in fighting for their lives. The longer this battle is delayed, the more destructive it will be.
On the other hand, if we build up the anger and the movement fast enough, maybe we can restore democracy without violence, and end the killing.
Pakistan seems to be serious about fighting the Islamists of North Waziristan.
The US has pressured the Japanese government into "reinterpreting" its constitution to permit fighting war on behalf of allies.
The Australian government rewrote advice about fires and heat waves to cover up their relationship to global heating.
Many Americans despise poor people, not realizing that they too are very likely to be poor some day.
Poor people don't deserve contempt for asking for help. We must give poor people what they need in order to have a decent life. All children deserve good food, a good education, and everything else children should have.
However, poor people have a responsibility, too, as well as rights: they must not act so as to increase their needs. Specifically, they should not have children. Reproduction is a desire, not a necessity. For most people, of all the things they do, reproduction is what puts the biggest ecological burden on the world.
36,000 Egyptians have been arrested for protests since the coup against Morsi.
Deforestation in Indonesia is booming, even faster than in Brazil.
Atlantic City casinos are closing as the region hits "casino saturation".
Gambling does not increase wealth, it only redistributes wealth. Atlantic City casinos were touted as a way to redistribute wealth from other states to New Jersey. However, that's not the sort of redistribution than the US needs.
The US needs to redistribute wealth from the rich to the rest. Unfortunately, casinos redistribute wealth from the middle class and the not-totally-broke working class, and a substantial fraction goes to the casino owners. It's a false solution, offered to reduce demand for a real solution.
Australia's government wants to eliminate tax exemptions for environmental protection organizations and forbid them to carry out boycotts.
It is understandable that the Australian government is concerned about donations to charities that help the poor and the sick, since it proposes a budget that would make poor and sick Australians dependent on those charities.
However, in the long term, protecting the environment is crucial for everyone's well-being.
Global heating is going to cause a revolution in US and European forests.
US citizens: call on the WHO to help tackle the ebola virus outbreak without delay.
The three missing Israeli teenagers were killed and buried.
There is no indication of who killed them, but Netanyahu is using their deaths as an excuse to attack people all over the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel's reprisals have killed 6 Palestinians so far, and imprisoned 400 people. Israel has not bothered to charge them with any crime, and clearly has no evidence to relate them to the three murders. Clearly most of them were not involved.
Is Israel no better than Egypt? Al-Sisi at least has courts "convict" those he wishes to kill or imprison. The "trials" are not serious, but that provides an opportunity to pressure Egypt to do better. Israel does not even bother with trials.
ISIS has proclaimed a caliphate.
While directly this means nothing, it may convince lots of young foolish Muslims to support ISIS.
The biggest advantage of ISIS thus far seems to be that it is more cruel, bloody and unscrupulous than its rivals. I fear that this monstrous ideology will kill millions before it is stamped out. If you are a Muslim and you don't want your community destroyed by violent fanatics, you had better organize now to keep them out.
The Chinese government has been compelled by events to recognize that industry without pollution control has poisoned lakes and soils with heavy metals that cause cancer.
Nonetheless, people who campaigned to stop this are still treated as enemies of the state.
Facebook experimented with putting happier or sadder material into its useds' feeds, and found that had a tiny but measurable effect on their emotions.
I don't see an ethical problem in the experiment as such. It seems to me little different from trying different text on your web site's front page, except that they wrote a scientific paper about it.
However, Facebook's power to influence people does seem dangerous.
Here are many reasons not to be a used of Facebook.
Emperor penguins are threatened with eventual extinction due to global heating.
US citizens: call on the Surgeon General to report on the health effects of sugar consumption.
Americans: see how your senators and representatives voted
on
holding corporations responsible for their actions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-19 because the old link was broken.]
California's teachers' unions are failing to fight back against pension cuts imposed by Democrats, but Chicago's teachers organized public support, struck, and won.
The FISA court's standards for NSA surveillance are extremely permissive.
We also know that the NSA has deceived the FISA court.
Dredging a coal port near the Great Barrier Reef could cause even more damage than previously thought, because currents can cause the millions of tons of debris to spread.
Australia has secretly handed over a boat full of Tamil refugees to Sri Lanka's navy, which is sure to torture them.
The Australian government cannot shield itself from condemnation by refusing to admit its actions. That can prevent us from getting proof, but we don't need that standard of proof to condemn a state for evildoing. The state's refusal to say what happened is enough basis to declare it guilty.
It is different when a human being is prosecuted. For instance, when the minister is put on trial for his role in this, he will be entitled to be considered innocent unless proved guilty. However, at that time it will also be possible to subpoena the evidence to see if it proves his guilt.
None of that applies now, because a state is not entitled to human rights.
Russia has found an excuse to ban most foreign and non-conservative literature: a prohibition on certain dirty words.
Obama's military kangaroo courts for Guantanamo prisoners are getting stuck on the issue of how the CIA tortured the defendants.
Some of those people may be guilty of real crimes, but if the US can't give them a fair trial because the US tortured them, it has to let them go. Let that be a lesson to us: no torture!
Some fraction of those released may fight the US, but we should not overestimate the importance of that. Violent Islamist groups have thousands of members; a few more won't make much difference. What mainly affects their strength is their ability to recruit.
Guantanamo serves them very well as a recruiting tool, and so does the US refusal to face justice for its torture. Try as they might, a few ex-prisoners won't be able to do the US the sort of harm that the US does to itself.
The US must stop betraying what it stands for, so that it can inspire honest friendship and support around the world, instead of inspiring people to join Islamist fanatic groups.
Kiribati has purchased high ground in Fiji as a place to move once the islands of Kiribati are swamped by rising seas.
Does the US government have plans to move the graves of the US Marine cemeteries on Tarawa Atoll?
I don't think there is any intrinsic importance in how corpses are treated (including my own, after my death), but soldiers tend to consider this very important. Many US veterans are right-wing and some are global-heating denialists. This question might offer a way to make them face the facts.
Greenpeace urges Lego to drop a marketing arrangement with Shell.
A clever unknown protester added labels to dresses in a store, saying "'Degrading' sweatshop conditions" and "Forced to work exhausting hours".
The law proposed in this article would be a good step forward, but really we should make the marketing companies that subcontract manufacturing responsible for the working conditions of their whole supply chain.
They should also have to register their subcontractors to all levels, which will have the salutary effect of impeding them from changing their supply chains so often.
Peru has given thugs a license to kill protesters.
Starbucks announced a "scholarship program" for its employees, but it turns out that Starbucks is contributing no money to this, just extracting publicity from it.
The case for paying reparations to US blacks for slavery and oppressive racist laws.
The book Inequality by Design, by Claude Fischer, explains how forcing a group into second-class citizenship affects their descendants too. Thus, I believe the US owes reparations to the descendants of people who suffered a racist denial of equal rights. My ancestors did not participate in doing this, but the reparations must be paid by Americans of today. That includes me.
Of course, the reparations should come mostly from the rich.
The drone assassination memo that the Obama regime released, redacted and incomplete, depends on a body of secret law.
Insane overprotection of children in the US has gone beyond social pressure and reached the point of physical threats. A father was arrested in Ohio for not stopping his son from walking to a store.
The store was half a mile away from his home. When I was 8 I walked around that far to school and back every day, in Manhattan.
Texas women must now get their abortion medicine on the black market.
Rich people in the US get a far greater return on their stocks than middle-class people.
Guantanamo propaganda teams describe hunger strikes as a tactic to discredit the prison authorities and the US government.
This is the twisted logic of someone who adopts the moral premise that "No matter what we have done, it can't ever be wrong."
The prison propagandists also habitually accuse the prisoners of being terrorists, even though none has been convicted of this, and the government says half of them should be released.
Republicans in Congress have spent 20 years sabotaging Congress's ability to study issues.
It makes sense. Right-wingers don't want careful study of their proposals; such study might find flaws in them before they are adopted.
Foreign construction workers in Qatar, who have to work 14 hours a day, rioted when security guards attacked them for trying to go to the toilet and get water.
The UK has come up with a definition of "domestic extremist", which when combined with the misleading definition of "serious criminality" allows them to label anyone who might plan a large sit-in as a "domestic extremist".
A new scheme for voting on levels resource usage encourages people to vote what they think is good for society.
A Green Party candidate and community organizer in the US
is facing
felony charges that seem to be fabricated by political opponents.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US thugs' latest excuse for operating military weapons: hypothetical violent attacks by combat veterans.
US combat veterans received horrible treatment while dishing out horrible treatment to the inhabitants of some other country. Some of them are psychologically wounded, but only a handful have expressed this in the sort of violence that the thugs imagine an excuse. The US could handle that problem with perhaps 6 regional SWAT teams, all of which would spend most of their time waiting for a call.
Biometrics Nightmare: Coming to a Street Corner Near You.
A study shows in detail
that investments
are in great danger due to global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, this had to be true; as global heating degrades ecosystems, it will undermine many industries.
The Australian government refuses to say what it is doing to the people on two boats of refugees that were trying to reach Australia.
The Australian government is trying to hurry complex changes in support for poor and disabled people.
I suppose that the real aim of these changes is dooH niboR, the complexity is meant to disguise and distract, and the haste is so people can't get to the bottom of things in time to demonstrate this clearly.
A radio show host was fired for mentioning that Mohammed had sex with his 9-year-old wife (Aisha), which by today's usual standards would be called pedophilia.
As far as I know, 9-year-olds don't generally want sex with anyone. Mohammed's marriage to a child reflected the general practice of treating girls and women as property. Western countries have mostly rejected this, but many parts of the world still practice it.
By today's prudish standards, having sex with a 17-year-old would be called pedophilia too. These standards go too far in the other direction.
While around 16% of Americans were poor when surveyed in
2012, most of
them are poor for periods of months, not for years.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Almost 1/3 of Americans were poor for a period of months in the last few years.
We ought to provide the help needed by those who are temporarily poor, and also help for those who are poor for years.
It is superfluous for right-wing politicians to tell the unemployed to feel ashamed of being unemployed, because they do so anyway.
I can't understand why anyone is ashamed to be poor or unemployed, unless it is that person's own fault. For instance, if it is the fault of a system that inflicts poverty on many, why be ashamed of that? It's the culprits who ought to feel shame. Don't feel ashamed, organize!
Fortunately for me, I have never felt the slightest need to base my self-esteem on being seen to spend money. I don't care if I can treat people to drinks, return a financial favor, or give a "suitable gift" to meet a silly social obligation. I reject the holidays that businesses have converted into occasions when one is supposed to give gifts. When I have a birthday party, I ask people to bring food and desserts for all to enjoy, not gifts for me.
I suggest that poor people feel equally unashamed, so they can organize instead.
Everyone:
Call
on Egypt to stop sentencing dissidents to death.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
PRISM, Local Edition: NY DA Employs 381 Secret Orders to Gather Complete Digital Dossiers from Facebook.
YouTube has made private deals with the copyright industry to censor works that are fair use.
If Google intends not to "be evil", it must stop this.
The US and the EU will fight to the end against a treaty to restrict human rights abuses by corporations.
Facebook, as an "experiment", collected the text its useds started to enter as status updates and ultimately did not send.
Facebook also announced it planned to track mouse movement even in the absence of a click.
These work by means of malicious Javascript code.
Central banks, and especially China's, are creating money simply so they can buy up world assets.
5 absurd arguments US ISPs are making for ending net neutrality.
The Eastern Caribbean faces long-term drought.
In Mexico, women who fight back when raped are often put on trial.
Rising seas have left thousands of poor people in Liberia homeless.
This is no accident: over coming decades it will become millions.
Russia imprisons drug users without medical care.
The US has repressed drug users, but it is starting to soften a little.
US citizens: call on your senators to oppose the bill to stop the EPA from extending the Clean Water Act to more waterways.
US citizens: call on Obama to end Navy sonar training exercises in areas where they kill whales.
Obama's lawyers cited the global-war law (the Authorization for Use of Military Force) as an excuse for killing al-Awlaki.
Surveillance Lessons from 1971 Still Resonate Today.
The NSA says it queried its massive phone phone call records for 248 people in the US during 2013.
The NSA makes up its own meanings for everyday words, so we can't assume this statement means what it seems to mean. If we knew all the facts, the number of people in the US that we would say they looked at the phone records of could be up to 248 million, for all we know.
Obama Requests Nearly $60 Billion to Continue Endless War.
Most Americans falsely believe that racial prejudice has ceased to make the lives of American blacks difficult.
In fact, racial prejudice against blacks extends to actions of the state, from searching arbitrary people on the street to imprisoning them.
The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies.
My views were not influenced by reports of atrocities against babies in a hospital, because I did not see those reports. I don't watch TV. I was surprised later to read about this.
I think my views were influenced by the reported threat to attack Saudi Arabia, which according to this article was a fabrication.
I have to raise the question of whether the Kuwaiti government's request for military support against an invader ceased to be valid once its territory is totally conquered.
Chris Christie has given over a billion dollars to companies that support Republicans.
The UK proposes a law to treat its undersea fossil fuel reserves solely in business terms; it would require maximizing income from them.
Egypt has held Khaled Al-Qazzaz in prison without charges for a year based apparently on his having a government job under Morsi.
Libyan human rights advocate Salwa Bugaighis was assassinated.
Poachers in Africa are using poison that kills vultures. It is so effective that the vultures could be wiped out.
Urging people to "cheer up" when they are miserable makes them feel worse.
I have always found it frustrating to be subject to that sort of "help". I understand it as a demand, "Stop being a downer!"
Pro-Russian subversives in Georgia tried to fund a "Gay pride" rally to provoke attacks from bigots, which (they hoped) would create friction between Georgia and the west.
Georgia can make itself invulnerable from this direction by teaching Georgians that bigotry against gays is bad for the nation.
Detroit's water shut-offs are being aimed at poor blacks, while rich companies get away with not paying their bills.
Water shut-off workers attack those who cite laws against them, while the city thugs act like Israeli troops watching settlers attack Palestinians.
Soon they can change the city's name to Detriot.
Assad And Maliki Unite against Common Enemy, ISIS.
Meriam Ibrahim has been banned from leaving Sudan, but has been received at the US embassy in Khartoum.
Now the question is whether she will be trapped there like Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Someone is paying Russians to fight in Eastern Ukraine. If they get killed, their bodies get spirited away to Russia and disappeared, as a cover up.
Human Rights Watch presents satellite images that show where ISIS murdered 160 or more prisoners.
Ashraf Ghani claimed victory in the Afghan presidential election despite charges of rigging the election.
Land Taken Over by Foreign Investors Could Feed 550m People, Study Finds.
The American Red Cross, asked how it spent the money raised for aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy, said this was a trade secret.
UN rapporteurs condemn Detroit's disconnection of poor people's water.
This must be preparation for a bigger nefarious scheme; if they just wanted to collect water bill debt, they would go after the businesses that owe large arrears.
A special inquiry will look for cases in which withholding of evidence by UK undercover thug infiltrators led to unfair trials of dissidents.
The availability of killer drones encourages the US to enter wars which it would otherwise have stayed out of.
In "post-Constitutional America", the constitutional limits on government searches have mostly been negated through a web of excuses.
Modern Slavery Will Continue If Corporations Keep Passing the Buck.
We must prosecute marketing companies if they fail to control the working conditions of their production.
Protesters Launch a 135-Foot Blimp Over the NSA's Utah Data Center.
Chinese forged official seals to block evictions in their town.
They have been imprisoned for it, but they did some good.
Tony B'liar has been allowed to push absurd policies in the Middle East, but now it seems he has been using them for his own enrichment.
Republicans are campaigning to allow school staff to grab, hold down, tie up and choke students.
Some US cities want to deal with annoying unsightly homeless people by giving them one-way bus tickets to someplace else.
Many pollinators are in danger, not just honeybees.
Boner says he will sue Obama for making executive orders that exceed his authority. Boner did not mind when Bush did that.
The Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts law that bans protest within 35 feet of an abortion clinic.
35 feet is not very far. Anti-abortionists have a right to present their views, but they can make themselves heard at the clinic door even from 35 feet away.
Republicans are holding highway repair hostage to attack the environment, workers' pay, efficient cars, disabled workers, children, and safety on roads.
They set out to sabotage America by hook or by crook.
A private campaign aims to use drones to expose inhumane and dangerous practices of factory farms.
Pakistan's attack on the Pakistani Taliban has led half a million people to flee the area.
Mayor Bloomberg's ban on large sugary drinks was overturned by a court, leaving the question of how to protect millions of people from obesity and consequent sickness.
US TV network news shows say more about billionaires than about poverty.
Accusing Assad of helping ISIS build up as a rival for his other enemies.
Obama wants to train "moderate" Syrian rebels in Jordan.
It sounds like a good idea in theory, but I suspect that in practice the alliances are fluid and it won't be easy to find the right people to train.
US citizens: call on the SEC to require public companies to disclose all political spending.
US citizens: ask the FTC to make CarMax stop claiming its cars are safe without carrying out manufacturer recalls.
Evidence proves that the National Research Council of Spain blacklists anyone that complains of unfair treatment.
I know someone who was employed as a teacher by a different part of the Spanish and was cheated of pay, but did not dare complain for fear of being blacklisted.
GMO companies are spending heavily in Hawai'i to override popular pressure to regulate or ban GMOs there.
Pesticide experiments in part of Kaua'i threaten endangered wildlife species that live only on that island.
Repairing UK infrastructure to cope with global heating for a few decades will cost most of a trillion dollars.
US citizens:
tell
the Dept of Education to stop dealing with Sallie Mae.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the FDA to require food labels to mention GMO content.
US citizens: call on Obama not to appoint right-winger Ward Armstrong as a federal judge.
According to Daily Kos, Ward Armstrong voted to abolish Obama's health care law, supported allowing handguns in bars, voted to close Virginia's abortion clinics and supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
A peculiar Chinese tactic against non-famous dissidents: forcing them to take an all-expenses-paid vacation.
Mubarak Bala was put in a mental hospital in Nigeria for saying he is an Atheist.
The Supreme Court's decision on searching arrested people's cell phones applies to computers and any other digital devices.
Ukraine
Due to Ink Austerity Pact with EU.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
American Hindsight: Wars Aren't 'Worth It'.
Some wars are worse than a mistake, of course.
About half the "bee-friendly" plants on sale in the US and Canada contain neonicotinoid pesticides which kill bees.
A coal baron got himself elected to the Australian Senate, and now blocks Abbott's plan to crush renewable energy in Australia.
Greenpeace is embarrassed because its director was commuting by airplane. However, questions of which technologies to eschew personally for the sake of the environment are not so easy to answer.
We can't end global heating by choosing to fly less. We need to convince millions of others to fly less, for instance with a higher tax on flying such as the EU tried to impose.
Burning fuel is not an act of oppression; it only becomes harmful because of the amount we burn. This makes the right decision about Greenpeace's own fuel use less clear. In the end, I think it is important for the director to take trains, not because it will save significant energy, but so he can set a better example.
In the free software movement, campaigning for users' right to control their computing, we face questions that at first sight look similar to those Greenpeace faces, but there is a crucial difference. Nonfree program is not a form of pollution, it is an injustice. If you run a nonfree program, the injustice towards you is independent of who else runs it. Thus we say nobody should run a nonfree program and nobody should develop one. For us to legitimize nonfree software would be self-contradictory.
Human destruction of habitats threatens the survival of apes in the wild. (Along with thousands of other species that are less fascinating to us.)
The road that passes the front of the Chinese embassy to the US
may
be renamed after Liu Xiaobo.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I am in favor of this. If China does not like to be embarrassed by its own conduct, it can retaliate by renaming the street where the US embassy to China stands. How about "Guantanamo Road"? "Edward Snowden Avenue"? "Dubya's War Crimes Boulevard"?
Look at the twisted "advances" that store owners want to inflict on you.
Many US writers have authorized censored editions for China.
While a large fraction of black US men are in prison, a similar fraction of black US women face eviction.
1/5 of Hong Kong's voting population held an unofficial referendum to call for democratic elections in Hong Kong.
If it were a real referendum, you couldn't trust the outcome, because it is being done over the internet.
Now that the UK has partially banned neonicotinoids, one manufacturer has asked the UK for a giant "emergency" exception.
The malware that the US and many other governments inject into computers to spy on them.
US citizens: call on the EPA to go ahead
and limit
carbon pollution from existing power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Warning: the FBI's new biometric database threatens Americans with total tracking on the street.
How the US
is Fueling
Military Repression in Honduras.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Meriam Ibrahim got a passport from South Sudan because her husband is
from there. So Sudan
has charged
her with "forging a passport".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
This charge is absurd even denying the passport's validity. It represents malice, nothing more.
Genetically modified corn and soy have created a web of harmful consequences not anticipated when they were first used.
Obama is moving towards imprisoning children and teenagers that cross the US border without papers.
The crucial point is that it is feasible to expel these people without keeping them in prison while their cases are decided.
If the US wants fewer minors from Central America to cross the border, it might be more effective to run a campaign to inform the public in Central America that getting over the US border does not, as they have been told, give you permission to stay in the US.
Global heating and overfishing threaten irreparable damage to the ocean.
Striking platinum miners in South Africa have won a raise.
Most US Republicans still believe Dubya's lies that were excuses for attacking Iraq, and reading corrections of these lies only reinforces their beliefs.
They are, in effect, insane.
Many countries systematically persecute Christians.
The ACLU reports that SWAT teams are used nowadays mainly for minor matters when the targets are nonwhite.
Towns acquire military weapons for thugs in the name of "protecting" people from danger scenarios that are theoretically possible but hardly ever happen. The consequence is to expose us to real danger.
It's the same with stationing thugs in schools.
The Obama regime's memo on drone assassination shows the flaws in its legal reasoning.
The IMF recognizes that tax dodging businesses hurt the whole world.
The US government never tested MCHM for toxicity, but a city in West Virginia became the guinea pigs for an unplanned experiment.
The Thai military regime used a malicious Facebook app to trick people into giving their email addresses and passwords when they try to visit banned sites.
Massachusetts thugs lured school children into giving iris scans.
The US Supreme Court ruled that thugs need a warrant to search the phones of people who are arrested.
Showing how the sugar companies have intimidated medical criticism of the effects of eating so much sugar.
Toxic neonicotinoids spread through dust and water to affect wildlife off the farm.
A US judge ruled that the "no fly list" is unconstitutional punishment without due process.
This will surely be appealed, and I have no faith in our current Supreme Court to defend human rights in a meaningful way except for corporations.
Calling on UK employers to pay everyone a living wage, and on the UK government to require this.
The work needed to curb global heating would boost the economy as a side effect, according to the World Bank.
In addition, a lot of this work generates more employment than other ways of using the money.
The bank's report also endorses a carbon tax.
The UK minister of repression says that what the UK does isn't mass surveillance, and asks for laws to increase it.
A Secret Plan to Close Social Security s Offices and Outsource Its Work.
It is wrong to outsource any government service unless people are better off getting the service directly from companies in a competitive market.
Iraq is still about oil. Maliki increased the oil income and directed it to weapons purchase and serving Shi'ites only.
NJ Governor Christie seems to have imposed a deceptive and illegal funding scheme for some bridge improvements.
Julian Assange's lawyers have two new grounds to challenge the warrant that orders him sent to Sweden for questioning.
We know the warrant is a phony pretext because the Swedish prosecutors are welcome to question Assange at any time; they need only visit him in the Ecuadorian embassy.
Six (absurd) Flaws in the Case against Three Jailed al-Jazeera Journalists.
A more fundamental flaw is the idea that "endangering national security" by journalism is a crime.
Reportedly the Shabaab, Islamist terrorists in Somalia, get most of their funds from illegal timber made into charcoal.
This makes me wonder what part of the trade flow the Shabaab control. Is it the transport of charcoal into Somalia for sale there? Or some other part?
If it is the former, it would be easy for the US to wipe out their funding by selling cheap charcoal in Mogadishu.
Everyone:
call
on Wisconsin Governor Walker to resign immediately.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
As UK thugs arrested some aged protesters, they forced a reporter to delete footage of the arrest by threatening to arrest him under "anti-terrorism" laws.
These laws expose us to the greater danger of government repression, so a large part of them must be repealed.
Hundreds of FARC soldiers have deserted; the Colombian government has programs to encourage this.
The FARC started as a rebellion against tyranny after a leftist presidential candidate was assassinated, but it subsequently degenerated into a sort of crime syndicate. Its disappearance is to be wished for, all things being equal; but what will Colombia do to eliminate Colombia biggest and most harmful terrorist group — the paramilitares?
The paramilitares have been closely linked to the government.
They work for companies such as the Coca Cola concession, killing union organizers, which is why there is a world-wide boycott of all Coca Cola Company products. I therefore reject Minute Maid juice, and their various brands of bottle water.
The right-wing approach to parents in poor, bad neighborhoods is to offer them lectures in doing the impossible, or punish them.
Some of them could be validly criticized for having children without being in a position to raise them properly. But not all: some of them may have had good jobs back then, and reasonably expected they could afford to raise children. Anyway, society failed to teach them this precept; society therefore shares the responsibility for the current problem.
Whoever's at fault, it's not the children. Society should provide the real help that their parents need.
The UK continues forcing ISPs to keep data about their users' contacts in defiance of the European Court of Justice.
The scientists who reported that Roundup causes cancer in mice stand by their results.
Fossil-fuel company denialists have led most Americans to think that lots of climate scientists doubt that humans are causing global heating.
Obama asked al-Sisi to free political prisoners, but al-Sisi sees no need to heed this request.
Al-Sisi knows that Obama's request was for public image only, since the US supports other repressive regimes, notably that of Bahrain.
Belarus has released human rights defender Ales Bialiatski from prison.
Separatists in Ukraine agreed to a cease-fire, encouraged by Putin.
About General Haftar whose army or militia may take over Libya.
Environmental protesters against a mine in Malaysia could be imprisoned for two years.
Fuel Subsidies 'Drive Fishing Industry's Plunder of the High Seas'.
May 2014 was the hottest May for as long as sufficient records are available (since 1880).
People living in southern Arizona regard the US Border Patrol as an occupying army because it oppresses them constantly.
The Border Patrol can search and molest people in a wide strip of territory extending 100 miles from each border and each coast. 2/3 of the US population lives in this strip, which the ACLU refers to as the "Constitution-free zone".
Strictly speaking, it is not supposed to do this on a whim, but in practice it can act arbitrarily.
The University of Dayton has divested from fossil fuels.
The lunatic
theocrats of
ISIS are, figuratively, the ghosts of the Iraqis that Bush and
B'liar tortured and killed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Sudan released Meriam Ibrahim from prison.
But when she tried to leave Sudan, she was arrested again.
Ms Ibrahim was sentened to death for calling herself a Christian despite having been considered Muslim at age 5.
Neonicotinoids put the world food supply at risk by poisoning ecosystems.
Not only bees are being harmed, but other insects too, and worms, and birds.
By imprisoning journalists, al-Sisi also showed contempt for the US, which he expects will support him fully no matter how arbitrary he is.
The UK has banned schools from teaching creationism as science.
A study finds that high pay for a CEO correlates with low profits for the company.
This means the FSF should be in great shape since its president gets no pay at all.
A bill being considered in California would require all portable phones to have a "kill switch". The EFF opposes this because it is tantamount to requiring a back door with which someone could remotely sabotage the phone.
I am concerned also that it would require phones to be designed such that it is impossible to replace the operating system with a free system such as Replicant.
Now that videos of force-feeding prisoners in Guantanamo threaten to embarrass the US government, it has stopped making videos of this.
What grounds can the US government offer for declaring these recordings a state secret? Obviously the only reason is that they are proof of the state's wrongdoing. For a state to keep secrets for that reason is prima-facie wrong.
Medicins Sans Frontieres says that the outbreak of ebola virus is spreading and that it has run out of resources to send teams to new sites that have sick people.
UNESCO rejected the Australian government's plea to remove 270 square miles from the Tasmanian world heritage forest in order to chop it down.
Australia plans to require phone companies to engage in massive data collection about the public.
The UK government stops unemployment benefits for people who can't prove they are spending 35 hours a week looking for nonexistent jobs.
What is the sense in requiring the unemployed to spend 35 hours a week this way? It's not going to find them jobs. It seems to be designed specifically to make sure they have no more free time than if they were employed.
Wouldn't it serve that purpose just as well to let them volunteer for a nonprofit organization? Then their 35 hours would at least serve some constructive purpose.
Al-Jazeera journalists in Egypt have been convicted of "aiding terrorists" and "endangering national security" based on TV broadcasts as evidence. Some of the broadcasts were not even about Egypt.
The court's reasoning must be similar to the reasoning by which a UK court endorsed the interrogation of David Miranda as a "terrorist suspect" in order to attack journalism.
The US has resumed military support to Egypt.
How the US Government Helps McDonald's Sell Junk Food.
The unpopular right-wing Australian government is trying to privatize state assets as fast as possible, and the Labor party is not resisting very hard.
There is no need to let someone strip the treasury to get money to spend on public works. Making businesses and the rich pay their fair share of taxes will do the job.
Reducing poverty in the US can't be separated from ending plutocracy.
There is evidence of big fraud in the Afghan presidential runoff.
U.S. Funds Terror Studies to Dissect and Neutralize Social Movements.
Labeling dissidents as "terrorists" is a pervasive characteristic of oppressive governments world-wide.
Total surveillance at work can lead to more efficient systems.
However, in other cases, privacy for workers can improve productivity.
It would be a mistake to make productivity the main criterion in judging the monitoring.
Monitoring can be a tool to make workers work harder for the same pay (because the high-unemployment plutocracy of the US does not do raises). As for the benefits of higher productivity as such, those will go mainly to the rich.
The people of Albuquerque held a 'People's Trial' of the city thug chief.
US citizens: support reform of the 19th-century US mining law that gives away public resources to private companies.
Scientists Predict Increased Rain, Floods for [US] Northeast.
Bigger floods will transport toxins in piles of waste — from fracking, for instance — into water supplies.
The rebellion against the Common Core has made the Gates Foundation hesitate in pushing it.
Dick Cheney joined with Dubya to destroy Iraq, but now has the gall to blame his disaster on Obama.
Blair should be lecturing on Iraq from the dock at the International Criminal Court.
The NSA surely knows about all the financial conspiracies that have wreaked tremendous harm on the US. Strange that it doesn't try to stop them or punish them.
About NSA facilities in Germany that snoop on the communications of Europeans.
If there were no monopolies on ideas, lands, or natural resources, advances in technology that improve efficiency would automatically benefit everyone.
The article is somewhat misled by the overgeneralization symbolized by "intellectual property". It stands for various things that are not similar and should not be grouped together.
Patents and copyrights are artificial systems and could be abolished just by deciding to do so. Abolishing trade secrets is not so simple, though abolishing punishment for leaking one would reduce the prevalence of them. As for trademarks, they don't prevent people from making comparable goods without the same markup; only people in thrall
Putting the term in scare quotes is not enough to avoid the confusion it causes. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
Meanwhile, natural resources including arable land and fresh water are in short supply. We can't make more of them by abolishing property rights on them.
We may need to compensate for this tendency of physical property rights rather than abolish them.
Arguing that
humans can,
and should, prevent a technological singularity from occurring.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Peace Now: Israel must look at its own wrongs, not just Palestinians' wrongs.
70% of Australians now recognize that global heating is occurring, and they think their government is doing a lousy job of dealing with the problem.
Everyone:
Tell
Indian PM Modi to condemn the politicians that defend rape.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: protest July 5-12 against "human rights" for corporations.
Egypt has its own Guantanamo/Bagram prison.
As with Guantanamo and Bagram, they are controlled by the military and the state denies them the rights of suspects. As in Guantanamo and Bagram, they are tortured. As in Guantanamo and Bagram, some were arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The torturers come from al-Sisi's part of the Egyptian army.
The Supreme Court doesn't understand that every algorithm is simply mathematics.
T-Mobile Uses Data Caps to Manipulate Competition Online, Undermine Net Neutrality.
Low-wage janitors working at (but not for) the University of London went on strike and got a small raise, but now their jobs will be eliminated and they will all be fired.
Contracting out work instead of hiring people to do it must be regulated such that it does not provide a means to make the work precarious or undermine workers' rights.
50,000 protested in London against austerity.
They need to launch a party to replace Labour, which has turned into a center-right party.
Obama has recognized that US intervention in Iraq can't solve Iraq's problem.
Ukraine's president declared a unilateral cease fire. Rebels have
continued
to attack with heavy weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Right-wingers pretend that Bush's "surge" won the war in Iraq.
Measles does no lasting harm to most people, but it can occasionally maim and even kill. Spread the word that it is important to vaccinate children.
The Presbyterian Church voted to divest from three US companies directly connected with the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The Obama regime is dumping surplus military supplies on thug departments across the US.
The thugs say they are buying equipment which they hope will never be used. But once they have a SWAT team, they make rules to use it frequently, and it creates an opening for fatal mistakes.
Larry Lessig argues that only public funding of election campaigns can cut the influence of the rich over US elections.
I am in favor of public funding of election campaigns, but reversing the Corporations United decision and abolishing "human rights" for corporations are necessary too. I think he is mistaken in claiming that the Senate vote on the proposed amendment is useless if it won't pass; it can help replace senators who want to keep the Corporations United decision with senators that will vote to overturn it.
Meanwhile, the text of the amendment has problems too.
These will need to be fixed before there is a vote where it may pass.
Governor Walker has been tied directly into a criminal conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws.
Right-wingers got a judge to try to shut down the investigation.
A giant right-wing foundation supports political
efforts
to stop the investigation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Turkish Censorship: Swedish Built, by Royal Appointment.
(Right-wing UK ministers) Blame the Feckless Parents — As Long As They're Poor.
Comparing Obama's dilemma in Iraq with Kennedy's dilemma in Vietnam.
Increased CO2 in the ocean makes phytoplankton sick. They become less nutritious and more toxic for all the higher levels of the marine food chain.
Their numbers might be affected, and they provide half our oxygen supply.
The House of Representatives voted to stop two NSA surveillance activities by restricting its funding.
A court in Canada ordered Google to remove a particular site from its search results world-wide.
The plan to end Australian federal environmental management and let states decide is a plan to let companies trash and plunder the national heritage.
The leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and almost 200 supporters have been sentenced to death.
They are being held responsible for a protest in a far-away town which was a response to the thugs' murder of many protesters in Cairo. As usual, the thugs have not been charged for that.
Neutrality Begins At Home: What U.S. Mayors Can Do Right Now to Support a Neutral Internet.
Obama said he would fix the harmful parts of NAFTA, but instead he is trying to spread them around the world.
Miami Sues
Banking Giant Over Predatory Mortgages.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The FISA court renewed the NSA's permission to collect records about nearly all phone calls in the US.
US citizens: Tell Congress to provide abortion coverage for Peace Corps volunteers who are raped or face death from pregnancy.
Most internet users value privacy; why don't they act rationally to protect it?
My conclusion: society as a whole must make the internet respect everyone's privacy.
Everyone: call on the Chicago City Council to make reparations to the people who were imprisoned after thugs tortured them into false confessions.
I think those thugs should be prosecuted, too.
US citizens: support continued protection of the endangered red wolf.
Obama launched a "task force" to think about how to protect bees.
It seems like an excuse to delay taking the necessary action
How to find out if your US congresscritter is a capitalist crony (i.e., for sale).
I am not sure this criterion will catch every capitalist crony in Congress. It is a sufficient condition but not a necessary one.
The EFF asks you to run a WiFI net with no password. It also provides free software to put in the router so others can connect through it without slowing or seeing your own traffic.
The copyright industry doesn't want you to do this, and that's exactly why you should: to avoid being conscripted as an enforcer in the War on Sharing.
GM Wants You to Creepily Text Drivers by Scanning Their Plates.
Thugs have been finding women from their license plates for decades. This is not quite as effective since it doesn't show her address.
A drone has been designed to spray protesters with pepper spray. It is being offered to help oppressive South African mining companies crush strikes.
The US government asked Florida thugs to lie to judges, and the thugs did.
How Politicians Are Using Taxpayer Money To Fund Their Campaign To Sell Off America's Public Lands.
Interviews with Iraqi Sunnis, some of whom want a sectarian war while others fear it.
The number of refugees world-wide has exceeded 50 million for the first time since World War II.
I fear it will grow greatly in the future due to the effects of global heating. Many areas will become too hot, too dry, or too wet to live in.
Large numbers of people from Central America are arriving at the US-Mexico border and asking for asylum in the US.
It's the US "war on drugs" that creates the violence that they are fleeing.
Abandoned oil and frack wells leak methane, and may amount to as much as 13% of Pennsylvania's contribution to global heating.
Israel has
killed
two Palestinians while searching for three missing teenagers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK is waking up to the fact that its censorship jails people for stating views that are considered offensive.
Azhar Ahmed was convicted of the crime of expressing rage against British soldiers for killing civilians. Here is what he wrote.
He said "all soldiers", which literally means all the soldiers in the world, but it seems likely he meant a smaller set of soldiers. It surely includes the British soldiers in Afghanistan, at least.
His words did not threaten violence or call on anyone else to commit violence. This was nothing but a moral opinion, but the UK is a tyranny that makes moral opinion a crime.
Los Angeles's law against living in a vehicle was struck down as vague because it was written to be very broad.
While this is a victory, society must help homeless people, not harry them.
US citizens: call on the senate to reject a plan to undermine the Clean Water Act.
A committee of the UK parliament wants to require explicit UK approval for US activities such as rendition of prisoners.
I think this wouldn't go far enough, because B'liar would have given approval for whatever the US wanted to do. The UK government already uses strange shenanigans to conceal its decisionmaking about Iraq.
Decades of Thatcherite propaganda have convinced most Britons that jobless youth who get welfare are exploiting the system. Even the Labour Party proposes to cut aid for them.
What a convenient way to distract people from those who are truly getting more out of the system than they put in: the rich. The number of millionaires in the world is growing fast, proof of how effectively today's policies concentrate wealth.
The rate of poverty in the UK has doubled since 30 years ago, even though the size of the economy has doubled and the population has not.
That's right-wing economic policy for you.
So many minors are crossing the US-Mexico border that the US border patrol has trouble coping with the ones it catches.
The article says "children", but it is clear the article means "minors". Only some of them are children. But how do 6-year-olds cross the border illegally? Not alone, surely.
Another interesting question is what has caused so many minors to cross Mexico to get to the US.
Conservatives try to blame bad US education on incompetent teachers to distract from more important influences such as poverty.
A World-War-II Japanese torturer became a monk to express his remorse. His British victim was able to forgive him, but did not entirely heal.
So far, there are no reports that Dubya feels remorse over torture.
A study estimates the value of ecosystem services at around 140 trillion dollars a year.
It would have been around 165 trillion if not for the degradation of various systems since 1997.
These figures shouldn't be pressed too far. We can't afford to dispense with a trillion dollars in ecosystem services even if it would gain 2 trillion in production of something. If we lost all the world's ecosystem services, we could not replace them, we would just die.
India has closed a Coca Cola plant for extracting too much water.
King George's abuses inspired the Bill of Rights as a response. Bush and Obama have set it at nought by committing similar abuses.
The US and EU (and various other countries) are negotiating a treaty to deregulate banks. As if they weren't too deregulated already!
That is because these countries' governments are subservient to banks.
The treaty draft was published by Wikileaks. Hurray for Wikileaks!
US citizens: phone your senators to support the amendment to end US attacks on state-legalized medical marijuana.
A measure like this has passed in the House of Representatives so there is a good chance of success.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
10 years after invading Iraq, the US released information about the whereabouts of some 3% of all the dirty uranium (DU) shells that were fired.
The data shows that ttroops often fired them in civilian areas and at non-armored targets, although they were ordered to avoid this so as to minimize the harm that the DU would do.
This might be because they were careless, or because they were short of other ammunition at the time.
On Labour's contempt for the British youth for whom there are no jobs.
Iranian Child Bride Faces Execution for Killing the Man She Was Forced to Marry.
Hungary's method of fighting homelessness: jail the homeless.
A NATO official says Russia is supporting the campaign against fracking to keep Europe dependent on Russian gas. In response, Friends of the Earth suggested Russia may have infiltrated the UK government to cancel renewable energy plans, to keep Europe dependent on Russian gas.
Neither one is impossible, but they wouldn't make fracking any less dangerous or renewable energy any less necessary.
Tesla cars allow the company to extract data remotely and determine the car's location at any time. (See Section 2, paragraphs b and c.)
The company says it doesn't store this information, but if the state orders it to get the data and hand it over, the state can store it. Your car should not allow anyone to remotely determine where it is!
Wisconsin Governor Walker is connected to violations of campaign laws.
Blocking people with a history of violent mental illness from buying guns substantially reduces their likelihood of shooting anyone — but those people are so few in number that it makes a tiny difference in the total number of shootings.
The article suggests other approaches that could have more effect.
According to Bowling for Columbine, Canada makes it easy to own a gun but puts lots of safety restrictions on how to store them and how to take them out of the house — and has a much lower rate of gun crime. Perhaps this is a good approach to follow.
Banning large magazines seems to have common sense, too.
Detroit is shutting off water for tens of thousands of residents who can't afford to pay.
Governments imperil people's access to water by allowing companies such as Nestle more influence than people in their water policy decisions.
Providing fresh water to every human being is squeezed between resource grabs by the rich on one side, and population growth on the other. We need to end both of them.
Other governments including Germany and Denmark let the NSA run taps on cables.
Chinese anti-corruption activists have been imprisoned.
It seems corrupt officials in China are too big to embarrass, much as corrupt banks in the US are too big to jail.
The US hounds Wikileaks and Assange because they punctured the pretense that the US respects human rights.
The rebellion in the Ukraine is not over, although Iraq has displaced it from the immediate news.
The US Congress's misguided Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qa'ida does not apply to ISIS, because those two groups are enemies.
Uganda's president/monarch, who plans for his son to succeed him, excluded a TV station from his events because it showed him asleep during an event.
In the US, presidents exclude reporters from White House events if they ask probing questions.
The UK thugs won't say how many politicians are in their "domestic extremists" list.
Iran's women rebel little by little against the regime's clothing monitors, who have given up on harassing men.
US citizens: Call on Congress to reopen the Social Security offices that it has shut down.
More US Bombs And Drones Will Only Escalate Iraq's Horror.
A Murdoch newspaper in Australia published a report claiming that plain packaging for cigarettes has increased sales. It seems to be a false report.
The fact that the report is backed by the tobacco companies shows it can't be true. If this policy really did increase cigarette sales, they would favor the policy.
One of the distortions from the Australian has infiltrated the Guardian article: the term "intellectual property rights". That term is a misleading generalization about unrelated laws, and it's used to suggest these laws represent a bogus "principle" that never existed in the first place.
Every statement formulated using "intellectual property rights" should be distrusted. I take care not to use the term. I won't even cite it without denouncing it as bogus.
See http://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
The UK thugs placed two Green Party legislators on the "domestic extremism" surveillance list.
"Extremism" means "failure to uphold the ruling extractivist regime".
A US drone attack in Pakistan seems to have
targeted
enemies of the Pakistani government, rather than terrorists that
might attack the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
That does not necessarily make it worse, because I think that's the wrong question to ask.
If the government of Pakistan is fighting rebels on the battlefield and asks the US for military help in the form of drone bombers, providing that help would not be an outrage. It would be no more horrible to do this with drones than with crewed aircraft or an armored division. (Other questions would remain, such as whether such help in a given situation is necessary, justified, and wise policy.)
What makes the drones particularly threatening is that they are used for assassination away from battlefields.
According to this article, the UK court decision allowing blanket surveillance of social media includes even private messages and data, if they are mediated by a server outside the UK.
I am not impressed by the supposed "earnestness" of the snoopers to protect Britons from "terrorism", because in the UK that term has been stretched to include whatever the government wants it to mean. Sometimes it means possessing a book the state considers suspect. Sometimes it means a journalist's lover making a connection in an airport.
If the Magna Carta originally protected mainly barons, that does not lessen its importance: it was the origin of our ideas of the rights of those accused of crimes.
The UK government's two-decade attack on those rights endangers everyone in Britain, and elsewhere too as the UK's rejection of the "rights of Englishmen" may influence other states.
Since there is
no
evidence about what happened to three Israeli teenagers, Israel is
using their disappearance as an excuse to imprison lots of members of
Hamas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is also wreaking vengeance on prisoners who are members of Hamas, who are the most unlikely suspects in the whole territory of Israel and Palestine.
Meanwhile, Israel kidnaps hundreds of Palestinian teenagers every year.
Nominally these teenagers are "arrested"; but since most of them are beaten and not told charges against them, it is more of a kidnaping than a proper arrest of a suspect.
Iraqis suspect their army was told to surrender territory to ISIS and to the Kurds.
The UK experiences the humiliation of being ruled by politicians that think their job is to attract foreign investment.
Parts of the US need to start recycling water or they won't have enough.
One issue not mentioned is that waste water has lots of medicines and endocrine disruptors. Ordinary sewage treatment does not do anything about them.
American 'Healthcare' Exceptionalism: Highest Costs, Worst Care.
US mainstream media are presenting advice about Iraq from the same neocons whose advice 12 years ago was a disaster.
UK legislators invited nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu to a meeting in parliament on protection of whistleblowers. Israel did not allow him to travel.
Solitary confinement is a form of brainwashing. Vanunu has demonstrated his strength of mind by standing up to it. And what kind of state stops citizens from traveling to foreign meetings? Remember when the USSR did that?
There might be hope for peace in Iraq if the government allows Sunnis to be equal citizens.
Researchers retracted their paper about medical harm due to eating cassava because a company objected to the conclusions.
Groups demand respect for Julian Assange's human rights.
The US spent 40 billion dollars on a ballistic missile defense system that does not work.
Superstitious
resistance to whooping cough vaccination has left many children in
California vulnerable to the disease, which can be fatal for children.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Claims that the US encouraged Kuwait to carry out economic warfare against Iraq around 1990.
This would have stimulated Saddam Hussein to attack Kuwait. In addition, the US ambassador appears to have encouraged this by telling Hussein the US would not object.
Perhaps Bush planned to create an excuse for war with Iraq.
I am not convinced that all the claims in that article are correct.
The US Supreme Court supported the vulture capitalists that are hounding Argentina to pay debts that they bought for pennies on the dollar.
The vulture capitalists seek to profit from suffering. They deserve to lose everything they own and find themselves homeless.
Perhaps Argentina can arrange this by borrowing a technique from the US handbook. Argentina can to pass a law making it a crime to receive interest from debt which has been handled in this way. Then it can send agents to capture the vultures and render them to Argentina for trial.
In the UK: join the march against austerity in London on June 21.
Revealed: Germany is Ground Zero for NSA's 'Secret Surveillance Architecture'.
The world's policy focus on economic growth is a relic of the pre-Reagan period when growth reduced inequality (because the rich hadn't reduced the rest to trickle-down).
Today what we need is to spread the wealth, and that fits the need to reduce humanity's ecological footprint.
Brazilian thugs attacked a protest camp with pepper spray, and shot a journalist rubber-coated steel bullet for no reason.
US officers are reluctant to bomb ISIS forces, saying they don't have the intelligence to identify them.
On the battlefield, friendly troops tell you where the enemy is. Their supply columns are easy to recognize. This leads me to think that the US is considering assassinations rather than a military operation.
If you need intelligence to recognize the enemy, an air strike is the wrong approach.
An Iranian journalist has been imprisoned for working with the BBC, although she never did.
An Afghan presidential candidate alleges election fraud.
Argentina has a scheme for paying all its creditors except the vultures.
Oakland City Council Votes to Divest from Fossil Fuel Companies.
Why Bush and Blair Should Be Prosecuted for War Crimes.
Reagan
made US health
care costs shoot up by opening the door to for-profit hospitals
and for-profit medical insurance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
What he did can be undone. We don't have to allow for-profit health care.
Obama says he will greatly extend no-fishing marine zones.
The Pakistani Taliban run unofficial courts that many people prefer because they are less corrupt than the state's courts.
US companies are using a tax loophole to duck US taxes by locating their headquarters outside the US.
Clearly the US tax law needs to be changed so this does not work.
How Corporations Became People (sic) You Can't Sue.
Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites got along ok for hundreds of years until the disagreement was politicized by Saddam Hussein.
This reminds me of the situation between Serbs and Croats, who got along well enough until politicians used the split to build their careers.
In both cases there was a violent dispute in the past, which people had stopped making a fuss about, but the politicians were able to take advantage of it.
Obama sent some US troops to Iraq, supposedly not for fighting.
The "ice wall" barrier to keep ground water away from the ruined Fukushima reactors is not working: they can't keep the ground cold enough.
Why not make a concrete wall, or a plastic wall? Digging into the ground is not that hard.
A UK court ruled that the state is allowed to read what people publish in social media.
If you publish something, you must expect anyone and everyone to read it. Thus, society should reject the practice of publishing the intimate details of people's lives, and especially details of other people's lives.
If you post on social media, don't talk about your friends; whether to say what they do or think is up to them.
Charities that help the poor in the UK are being threatened with closure if they talk about the political cause of poverty.
San Francisco is on track to recycle or compost all waste by 2020.
In addition, sale of water in plastic bottles will be banned on public property. I think this is a good idea, but there should be a hefty tax on small bottles of water no matter where sold. I carry a water bottle with me, and refill it when I find potable water available.
24 US states have denied poor people US-funded medical care based on ideological opposition to allowing poor people to get help from the state.
Helping the poor is one of the purposes of having a state.
The Texas agency that regulates fracking has gagged its staff, perhaps to support an apparent coverup of the danger of methane leaks from frack wells.
These companies are taking the world to frack and fruin.
145,000 people in California live at less than 3 feet above sea level, which means lots of flooding in coming decades due to global heating.
But it will go far beyond that. Some are predicting sea-level rise of 3 meters (10 feet) by 2100.
Shall we start designing the Golden Gate dam?
How the "internet of things" could become a nightmare just by carrying out its stated purpose.
However, in order to become widely used, this technology would need a "social" element: social pressure to use it because otherwise nobody will like you, or nobody will hire you. The designers will surely come up with a way to put pressure on people to suffer the various nastinesses of "smart homes" (including spying and reporting to companies and the state).
You will be well advised to start practicing now to reject addictive technology.
Microsoft is a patent aggressor against free software (in Android).
Economist Friedrich von Hayek accused democracies of doing the nasty things that fascist plutocracies really do. His contrary-to-fact theories have been repeated by generations of Libertarians.
On the other hand, there's a little truth in what he says about how the masses can be led by propaganda — when those who issue the propaganda own most of the media and corrupt the elected officials, which is what those who make use of Hayek do today.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been found in squid for sale.
This bacterium is not dangerous to healthy people, but bacteria exchange genes even with different species.
We need to stop feeding antibiotics massively to farm animals, since that is a major cause of resistance.
A publisher of academic journals ordered the editors of a journal not to publish a paper about the high cost of journal subscriptions. The editors unblocked it by going on strike.
This debate addresses a significant problem, but takes a shallow view of it. It focuses on price rather than freedom, and discusses "open access" which is too weak a goal.
Most Americans still distrust Atheists on principle and would refuse to vote for one.
What fools — it's the religious people that are dangerous.
Timberland has created a Kafkaesque policy to prevent prisoners from exchanging defective boots.
Published opinions of the US Supreme Court are being surreptitiously changed.
Detecting this is useful, but the real question, I think, is why it happens and why it isn't stopped.
The US military has adopted a policy of covering up war crimes by declaring photos of them "secret".
Urinating on a corpse does no real harm to anyone — it is an insult, not an injury. (If someone pisses on my dead body after I'm dead, I won't even notice it.) I don't see why that should be considered a war crime. However, the same policy would apply to covering up real crimes, including killing and torture.
Broadband for America, an astroturf group funded by the big ISPs and set up to oppose network neutrality, created a false image of broad community support by listing many organizations as supporters without asking them.
Private Wealth, Public Squalor: America's Dilemma.
The Tea Party challenger that defeated Rep. Cantor campaigned condemning plutocracy too.
So the plutocrats have a new lie: claiming that social programs to redistribute wealth to the many paradoxically cause poverty. It's nothing but Reagan's "trickle down" stated in a different way.
Rebels in eastern Ukraine seized a gallery / cultural organization, apparently to shut it down.
A school in
Texas has
banned sunscreen, causing students to get sunburnt. They say
sunscreen is a drug.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
This would be merely ludicrous if it were not the natural result of the "zero tolerance" idea that makes strictness (no matter how unreasonable) a goal in itself.
Meanwhile, sunscreen is not enough to avoid skin cancer, over the long term. People with a special susceptibility to melanoma really need to avoid activity in the sun.
The National Academy of Sciences found that many methods of identifying people from traces at a crime scene are bogus science, but juries think crime labs can do no wrong.
As a result, they are an excuse to imprison the "usual suspects" (for instance, blacks).
A medium-size quake near Fukushima reminds us that a bigger quake could release all the radioactive material in the ruined nuclear plants.
US citizens: tell your state governor you want to know when fossil fuels are shipped by rail.
US citizens: Call on the EPA not to approve using Roundup together with 2,4-D.
Extreme Acts of Greed Against the American People.
The Guantanamo kangaroo courts may have been undermined because the
FBI
infiltrated the defense team.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Nearly all the countries with nuclear weapons are developing new launch vehicles. There is little interest in disarmament.
So we will all run hard just to stay more or less in the same place. However, it may not be exactly the same place. New weapons systems may be more destabilizing. In principle, they could also be less destabilizing, but that isn't likely to happen.
It appears that China has secretly tried and sentenced an Uighur academic for criticizing the government.
This is the sort of system that the UK wants to set up for people accused of "terrorism", which in the UK can mean nothing more than owning a book that is considered suspect.
The kidnaping of three Israeli settler teenagers has provided an excuse to arrest lots of Palestinians, even members of parliament.
Genetically modified bananas are designed to provide poor people in Africa with enough vitamin A.
This might be a good thing, if there isn't a catch. Any possible health problems will probably be less than the health problems these will prevent. Is there a legal catch, a patented gene?
This can postpone the need to curb human population growth, but not eliminate it.
Australian Premier Abbott has been a global heating denialist for many years.
Chelsea Manning explains how the US military uses embedding to procure favorable press treatment, covering up "bad news" such as Maliki's repression of the authors of articles that criticized him.
The fraction of energy made from coal has risen to the same level as in 1970.
However, the absolute level must be much higher now than in 1970.
We need a carbon tax to put an end to this.
Pakistan's army has attacked the Pakistani Taliban.
I don't think this is meant to wipe them out, rather to teach them to lower their profile.
The US and Iran are effectively acting as allies.
The revolutionaries of Iran, in the 1980s, hated the US. They had grounds, however, so I can't blame them for that. However, I condemned and still condemn the Iranian regime for its repression of non-Muslims, women, and to a lesser extent men. The details are different, but Iran and ISIS represent the same theocracy.
A Republican senator calls for allying with Iran as the "lesser evil".
Maybe he's right, but there was a more effective lesser evil in Iraq, who was Iraqi in addition: Saddam Hussein. Like Iran's regime and ISIS, he was a murderous dictator, but at least he wasn't a theocratic murderous dictator.
Due to drought and heat (both caused by human activity), California is delivering juvenile salmon straight to the sea.
Office workers and professionals are losing their jobs to automation.
We must establish a basic income based on taxing the companies that own the automation.
The Obama regime threatens to prosecute border patrol agents that talk to journalists about how immigrant children are treated.
The UK's plans for a mostly-secret trial use the competition between news outlets to manipulate them to go along with it.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors can and should represent all Americans, not just banksters.
Bush And Blair Said Iraq Was a War on Islamic Fascism. They Lost.
Making the case to Europe not to allow fracking.
ISIS seems to be murdering captured Iraqi soldiers en masse.
Transport workers in Philadelphia say they are happy with the arbitration process that Obama started as part of ending their brief strike.
UK Uncut is protesting Vodaphone for its tax dodging.
Murder of rainforest defenders in Brazil, at the rate of one a week, is one face of the rich business of deforestation. The other face is its arrogant political and lobbying effort.
Will Brazil use its new "organized crime" law against these plantations, or only against protesters?
Three Israeli teenagers disappeared on the way home from school to Israeli colonies in Palestine. The government assumes they were kidnaped by Palestinians.
With neocons pushing for the US to enter the war in Iraq, remember how mistaken their advice was in 2002.
Some neocons
aimed to split
up Iraq to weaken it. The current civil war is almost what they
wanted.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Iranian troops are going to the aid of the Iraqi government, since its own troops hardly fight.
The UK Conservatives have another method of sabotaging the UK's National Health Service: by cutting doctors' pay so that they can't maintain staffing levels.
Brazilian thugs are labeling protests as "organized crime" to arrest protest leaders preemptively.
Ibiza is united to fight against oil drilling in the waters near Ibiza.
If you ignore the coming global heating disaster, it would be a matter of weighing the sea life that could be destroyed by a possible disaster against the value of the oil. But given that we must leave 80% of known reserves unextracted it is totally useless exploring for more.
US citizens: support the RAISE Act to broaden social security benefits.
A US judge demanded that the Obama regime hand over secret FISA court opinions.
Protests in Washington read the stories of the long-term unemployed.
Obama, why aren't you participating?
The US says that Russia is letting Ukrainian separatists collect obsolete tanks and surplus multiple rocket launchers, which they take into Ukraine.
Egyptian President al-Sisi is leading a campaign against sexual violence.
Although there are reasons to doubt whether he can or will make progress on this, I think we should give him a chance to succeed. However, we must not let this distract us from his repression. Jailing rapists it is no excuse for jailing journalists and dissidents.
US citizens: tell Obama, don't bomb Iraq.
In US media, the crisis in Iraq is because the Bush forces left, not because they invaded.
A future historian writes about how 21st century civilization allowed itself to be destroyed unresisting by global heating.
It is an understatement to say that "Western" civilization faces destruction. Civilization will be hit globally. China will not escape; Shanghai and Suzhou face inundation.
I say "global heating", not "climate change", because the latter term was coined by the denial lobby as a way to downplay the threat, then adopted by environmentalists as a fundamentally misguided attempt to "compromise" with denialists.
Today's Republicans feel no shame about being factually wrong.
Sand for fracking is obtained by eliminating farms in Illinois.
Perhaps it does not matter — global heating will make those farms nonproductive anyway.
The unceasing rise in sea level shows there has been no pause in global heating.
Condom Companies: Twitter Is Censoring Us.
Uri Avnery: Israel, like Prussia, is an army that has a state.
Why you should not use Uber.
Obama says he might conduct air war against ISIS, but only if there is a workable plan for reconciliation between the various ethnic groups in Iraq.
This may serve as a reason for the US not to intervene. But even if a plan looks workable on paper, it may be pure fantasy.
Coca Cola Company (perhaps its subsidiary Minute Maid) is passing off Apple and Grape juice as "blueberry pomegranate", while POM makes dubious health claims about real pomegranate juice.
US mainstream (i.e., right-wing) media are blaming the disintegration of Iraq on Obama for pulling out the Bush forces, rather than on Bush for sending them in.
Obama sets himself up for such criticism by failing to condemn Bush for sending them in.
As Obama considers some sort of military intervention in Iraq, McCain has the gall to claim the Bush forces won the war there.
They didn't win in any military sense. They made Iraq calmer by paying support to the non-jihadi Sunni leaders thus separating them from al-Qa'ida, after which the Iraqi government refused to give US troops immunity from prosecution for war crimes and the US removed them rather than allow them to be prosecuted when they commit war crimes.
US citizens: call on Obama to authorize federal contract workers to unionize.
The EU
will limit
production of biofuels from food crops.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Unfortunately, the limit is too high, and would allow the amount of food diverted for fuel to increase.
Tesla Motors has followed Twitter in adopting a policy of nonaggression with patents.
Obama has transferred 12 of the 50 non-Afghan prisoners from the secret prison of Bagram.
Who they are is a secret, where they were sent is a secret, and whether they are now being tortured is a secret.
Nuclear power in Europe will
be more
expensive than solar and wind power in just a few years.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The expense of nuclear power comes partly from the expensive procedures needed to make disasters less likely, but even with them it is more dangerous than solar and wind power.
Estimating that the financial crisis and austerity have caused 10,000 suicides.
There will also be people who died from consequences of poverty, such as homelessness, stress, and lack of medical care.
US citizens: call for no US intervention in Iraq.
LinkedIn is being sued for miss-using people's entire list of email contacts.
Pu Zhiqiang, who defended Ai Weiwei, was arrested on absurd charges of "creating disturbances" and "illegally obtaining personal information".
The joke is in China, since arresting someone for "creating disturbances" is as tyrannical as arresting someone for "being a human rights lawyer" or "criticizing government policy".
Don't expect Clinton to do anything to reduce massive US surveillance of everyone.
In addition, she supports the plutocracy on economics and supports imposing plutocratic regimes elsewhere.
The Thai military rulers are quietly carrying out the agenda of the red shirt protesters that represented an elite minority that lost every election.
In the US, killers are called "terrorists" only if they are Muslims.
Everyone: encourage the Presbyterian Church to divest from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
US citizens: Call on the US to allow inspection of the prisons for immigrants facing deportation, and respect human rights of children in these prisons.
US citizens: phone FCC Commissioner Wheeler to support net neutrality.
The Iraqi army has proved to be a paper tiger as soldiers deserted en masse.
Ironically, it's not the first time. It happened in 2003 when the Iraqi army had been built by Saddam Hussein.
The US is absurdly fighting supporting Maliki in Iraq against ISIS, while looking to overthrow his ally Assad and imposing sanctions on his ally Iran.
Oxfam takes action against poverty and hunger, but many Britons think that it should not campaign against poverty and hunger created in the UK.
Their rebukes often start from the ridiculous right-wing claim that there the UK has no money to help the poor. The UK has plenty of money, but lets the rich have it.
Australian PM Abbott called himself a conservationist.
I guess this means he hasn't finished destroying the ecosphere quite yet.
How many levels of falsehood are there in that claim?
Stores ask for customers' email addresses for surveillance purposes: to unify their purchase record with their browsing record.
I don't identify myself to stores. I pay cash anonymously.
Obama is considering a bombing campaign against ISIS.
I shed no tears for ISIS, but bad things could result. For instance, civilian casualties could help ISIS win support among Iraqi Sunnis. This isn't a conventional war against an army: ISIS defeated the far larger and better equipped Iraqi army because the latter had no will to fight.
Dividing Iraq into a federation of regions might enable it to have peace.
A petition to grant Snowden asylum in France has got 150,000 signatures.
I would have urged French citizens to sign it, except that it is on a site (change.org) which requires use of nonfree software to sign. Since I learned about that problem, I never recommend petitions there.
Rescuing Iraqi feminists and vulnerable women from the advance of ISIS.
Militarized funding perverts the social sciences in the UK.
In Charts: How a Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax Creates Jobs, Grows the Economy.
A Palestinian professor who brought Palestinian students to Auschwitz to help them empathize with Jews was hounded into resigning.
US Jews that condemn Israel's occupation practices often get hounded similarly.
Maliki pushed Iraq's Sunnis into the hands of ISIS by rejecting them as politicians and as protesters.
For instance, the Sunni vice president was prosecuted and forced into exile.
The Vietnam War still casts its shadow over the US, in the form of readiness to go to war.
Indian students have been arrested for comparing Prime Minister Modi with Hitler and bin Laden.
Whether that comparison is valid is beside the point: to punish them for stating their views is tyranny.
The EU says it plans to reduce CO2 and methane emissions but it will give a subsidy of around $150 million to fracking.
This is excused by the fallacious claim that fracking reduces greenhouse emissions, but that conclusion was drawn by ignoring the methane leaks from wells.
Australia sent boat people to a prison in Manus Island (part of Papua New Guinea) so that they would not be "in Australia", then claimed that Papua New Guinea was responsible for their imprisonment although in fact Australia had control.
The first part resembles the US excuse for the Guantanamo no-human-rights zone.
Wildlife reserves in Africa face the death of a thousand cuts.
Tar sands mining threatens migratory birds including the whooping crane.
Extracting oil from tar sands is a sort of strip-mining which involves deforestation of large tracts of land.
Some Iraqis are happy with the takeover by ISIS.
I get the feeling that no feminists were asked.
Interviews with three inhabitants of Mosul.
STUDY: Economic Hardship Makes People More Racially Biased.
Anne-Marie Cockburn's daughter died from a freak consequence of taking MDMA that was twice as strong as usual. She calls for drugs to be legalized and regulated in potency, to prevent such accidents.
UK PM Cameron objects to any organized pushback against Charoen Pokphand prawns; is it a coincidence that he hobnobbed with its CEO and tried to hush it up?
Since the 1970s, US politicians have created a cult of the US soldier, calling them "warriors" and "heroes" in a way that wasn't done before. This goes along with the increasing general authoritarianism of the US.
5 nutty anti-science theories of US conservatives.
The rate of violence in US schools has been declining for 20 years, following the decrease in lead in gasoline.
The multiple killings every week or two are shocking, but don't amount to a lot of victims compared with the other sorts of violence among teenagers, and that has been going down in the US.
Even small amounts of lead make children less intelligent. That leads them to be violent, because sometimes they can't see a better response. But lead-induced stupidity would affect all sorts of decisions, including voting. I wonder if the effects of lead poisoning lead people to believe right-wing "solutions", such as Reagan's "trickle-down", and the idea that cities ought to lure businesses away from other cities by offering them subsidies.
An Umbrella in the Hurricane: Apple Limits Mobile Device Location Tracking.
US citizens: Call on the US government to convert its own buildings to solar power.
The Mormon church is moving to excommunicate dissidents.
I cannot criticize a group which stands for a position on some question for expelling members that disagree with that position. That's a separate question from whether I criticize the position itself.
The Canadian government has banned government-funded weather forecasters from discussing global heating.
That government is denialist and in thrall to the fossil fuel companies.
Squatters have received hospitality in a church where the Pope regularly visits, after they were chased out of a disused office building.
Los Angeles is trying to divert education funds into expanding its school thug force.
Wang Yam was convicted of murder in the UK, after the state imposed secrecy on his defense. He wants to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but he is forbidden to present his case to the court.
The secrecy is a real factor because, as stated, pertinent witnesses who might exonerate him are unable to know that they are pertinent witnesses.
Poor parents are not more likely to hurt or neglect their kids. They're just more likely to be punished for failings both real and imagined.
The exception is what the complexities of coping with poverty don't allow parents to give their children care by the ideal standard. This provides an excuse to punish them.
Everyone where Faux News is available: call on that channel to make its global heating stories fit science.
For First Time, Appeals Court Rules Warrant Is Required For Cell Phone Location Tracking.
More analysis of the basis of this decision.
It's a step forward but it isn't enough. I expect the NSA will still get all of this data about you if you carry a portable tracking device. (I won't!)
What we need is for the system not to start recording your location data without a warrant.
The International Commission of Jurists says that Venezuela's system of justice is weak because judges lack independence from the executive.
The ICJ has also criticized the judicial system of the coup-installed government of Honduras.
The condemnation of the post-coup regime is stronger in the
full
report in Spanish.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Big US companies are starting to run schools (combined high school and community college), steering people to work for those companies.
This is part of propagating the myth that plenty of job openings exist in the US but people are not trained for them.
The one that's run by Microsoft surely teaches people proprietary software, which is wrong for a school to do.
The coal industry has successfully misled people in a coal region of Australia about how many jobs it supports.
ISIS aims to take Baghdad, and it is not clear the Iraqi army can prevent this.
The Iraqi Shi'ites will fight back with their own militias, though.
A study on mice finds that even the strongest sunscreen does not prevent melanoma, it only slows the development of melanoma.
A tan is a signal meaning, "Don't mate with me, I subordinate important things to superficial things."
Canadians are protesting the plan to export tar sands oil through Quebec.
India's Intelligence Bureau accused Greenpeace of undermining the economy.
This is the standard right-wing argument against environmental protection of any kind: that it gets in the way of the easy profits available by tearing up the ground and by poisoning air and water.
Children as young as 5 cross into the US from Mexico alone, and are treated horribly by the US border patrol.
Governor Walker's program to increase jobs by handouts to businesses claims to have created 5000 jobs at the cost of 200 million dollars.
State handouts to business, supposedly to keep or create jobs, enter a Red Queen cycle where ever more handouts are required just to stay in the same place. We should cut all of them out.
"Reformist conservatives" are another variation of the same old right-wing falsehood.
Fracking poisons water pollutes air: more evidence that this can't be prevented.
Businesses are suing with a range of excuses to overturn Seattle's minimum wage law.
The NSA told a US court it is unable to preserve evidence about its operations.
Paid spies infiltrated the protesters opposing the proposed Maules Creek coal mine in Australia, and told thugs how to sabotage every protest plan.
90% of lemur species are threatened with extinction, mostly because humans have cut down most of the forests where they live.
The Australian "social services minister", whose aim is to abolish social services as far as possible, says that welfare support for the poor denies people the opportunity to learn to be "virtuous".
However, it's the opposite. Contemptuous policies like his tend, in the long term, to teach values of contempt for others.
For the short term, many Australians remain virtuous, and demonstrate this by protesting in their thousands against these plans.
The UK's "terrorism" trial will be held only partly in secret.
Aside from the question of whether those two men are guilty as charged, there is the even more important question of what the supposed crime consists of, and whether than ought to be a crime at all.
Indian thugs raped a woman who would not pay a bribe.
The bribe was supposed to be to get her husband, also a thug, out of jail. The article doesn't say why he was in jail, or whether they wanted the bribe to follow the law or to break it.
Most governments have done nothing in response to Snowden's revelations of how they are spying on us and other governments are spying on them.
A Japanese antinuclear activist faces prosecution for a tweet that criticized a nuclear industry lobbyist.
Another example
of repression
of antinuclear protesters in Japan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
He was released after 21 days in jail.
When Boris Johnson gets himself "hit" with the water cannon he wants to aim at protesters, will he keep to a very safe distance and choose safe surroundings? The protesters won't have that choice.
Hillary Clinton has apologized for voting for the conquest of Iraq, but only in the hope we won't hold it against her.
It was easy enough to see that the invasion was an evil scheme and that the arguments for it were bogus. Millions of people saw that at the time. Has Clinton learned to reject the sort of thinking that enabled those bogus reasons to determine US actions? Surely not, so she should not be president.
The victims of sexual violence in war should get reparations.
First of all, they are entitled to abortions, without charge or fuss, so they are not compelled to bear the child of a rapist who may also have murdered their relatives or friends.
A legal requirement on manufacturers to register their mineral supply chains has prized 2/3 of the mines in the Congo away from warlords.
This suggests that registration of the supply chain could also put an end to other forms of gross industrial wrong, such as deforestation and exploitative factory conditions.
San Francisco will vote on raising the minimum wage.
The Iraqi army is collapsing before attacks by Isis.
There is a dispute about whether the troops ran away or corrupt officers pulled them out.
US corn production is in danger from global heating.
Egyptian freedom Alaa Abd El Fattah has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for leading a protest.
Many governments imprison people for protesting. In the US, the thugs attack protesters and then accuse them. Egypt openly admits that the crime is protesting, thus declares its opposition to human rights.
How Ukraine's Tax Cheats Stole Billions from the Country's Coffers.
London plans to equip its thugs with water cannon as a symbolic statement of readiness to repress possible resistance to plutocratic rule.
Chris Christie's policy, offering a tax subsidy to every company that threatens to move jobs out of New Jersey, has done a lot of harm to state income and hardly any good for the state's economy.
In general, when governments compete to make handouts to businesses, the businesses gain and the people lose. When a politician says he thinks his job includes handouts to companies if they put their jobs in a certain district, state, or company, that means he has the wrong political outlook.
US citizens: call on Kerry to support the UN plan for ocean sanctuaries.
Correction: the Islamist fanatics that have conquered Mosul are not al Qa'ida. Their group, Isis, is even more cruel and vicious than al Qa'ida.
The UK threatens to deport a Tamil refugee back to Sri Lanka for the second time. The thugs raped and tortured him after his first deportation.
He says he will die rather than be sent back there again.
It is not an accident that the UK does this. The legal system has been designed to create excuses to reject refugees, and that systematically leads to results like these. If he comes to the point of killing himself, I hope he does it in a spectacular way that will shame the officials (both the British and the Sri Lankan) who will have driven him to it.
Public pressure has made an oil company drop plans to drill in Virunga national park (where half the world's mountain gorillas live).
Congresscritter Cantor was defeated in the Republican primary by a tea party extremist.
This could cause Republicans to become even more bent on sabotaging the US government than they were last year.
Haitian quake survivors used as 'slaves' in building of World Cup stadium in Brazil.
Haitian migrant workers are being worked into the ground building stadiums for the World Cup in Brazil, and the subcontractors that hired them don't pay them.
Everyone: call on Nike to stop union-busting in Indonesia.
Garment workers in Eastern Europe are forced to work overtime just to make a minimum wage.
They work for subcontractors of big name brands. This problem is the result of the deregulation that made it possible for a famous company to become a shell that outsources its production to contractors that outsource to subcontractors, etc.
The solution is to make the shell companies legally responsible for the wrongdoing of the subsubsubcontractors.
US citizens: call on Senator McConnell to allow a vote on more funding for the Veterans' Administration.
The inhabitants of Camden, New Jersey, have no access to supermarket, but they grow produce and even chickens.
It seems to me that every city ought to arrange a place where people can buy produce and a wide variety of groceries. If private business fails to do the job, why should the city leave people to cope on their own?
Mathematicians Urge Colleagues To Refuse To Work For The NSA.
Many US government agencies now have their own police, even their own SWAT teams.
iiNET, an Australian ISP, calls on the public to fight back against the War on Sharing.
The US Veterans' Administration is trying to subpoena the complaints about the Veterans' Administration received by the Project on Government Oversight through its anonymous tip line.
POGO argues that the subpoena is invalid and says it will not hand over the information, but will tell the VA about the problems reported.
Here is POGO's response.
New York City will pay half a million dollars to some Occupy protesters that were arrested for no valid reason.
We know from sad experience that fining the city for crimes by thugs is no deterrent to recidivism. We must prosecute these thugs and put them in jail.
Iraq has fallen into all-out civil war.
A proposal to require US states to select legislative districts through a nonpolitical system.
Gerrymandering undermines democracy, and these committees might be a good idea. I am not sure the federal government has the power to impose this on states.
However, it is a mistake to say that gerrymandering allows "politicians to draw their own districts". Rather, state legislatures draw the districts for the House of Representatives. They sometimes do this so as to kick a real hero such as Dennis Kucinich out of Congress.
A Ukrainian film director who was in Crimea when Putin's forces took it over is being prosecuted on absurd charges, Putin style.
The US imprisons a large fraction of teenagers for minor "crimes" such as not going to school.
The US would rather imprison teenagers than educate them; the school-to-prison pipeline feeds this prison-to-crime pipeline.
Perhaps it makes inhumane plutocratic rational sense. The plutocratic state sees the non-rich as nothing but instruments for the rich to use. A large fraction of the population is no longer useful to them as free workers, but it still finds them useful if forced into slave labor. The system has evolved to convert many youths into criminals so it can imprison them again as adults and make them work for a pittance.
Tibetan film-maker Dhondup Wangchen was freed after 6 years in prison for making a movie of interviews with Tibetans.
In the US, the states that lean right-wing are also most dependent on federal government spending.
It is not obvious what this implies. My theory is that the governments of those states have imposed laws that impoverish people, causing them to get more federal aid per capita.
Serbia is threatened by censorship — and not just on the internet; people who criticize state actions face threats for "ruining the reputation" of the government.
Big Data has inherent biases from the system that collects it.
Everyone: tell Walmart
to stop
paying wages so low that employees depend on public assistance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US
citizens: call
on the EPA to ban neonicotinoids, which have now
been tied
very clearly to colony collapse disorder of bees.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Human Rights Watch says the killing of two Palestinian teenagers by Israeli troops was a war crime.
US citizens: call on Congress to preserve requirements for vegetables and fruits in school lunches.
Google's Right to be Forgotten — Industrial Scale Misinformation?
I just have one small point to criticize: it says "breaching US intellectual property law", but I think this really refers to copyright law only. By using "intellectual property", the article spuriously drags in patent law, trade secret law, trademark law, publicity rights, and others.
If it had said "breaching US copyright law", it would be shorter and clearer &mdash and correct, too!
Resistance to
standardized testing in the US, Canada and Mexico.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Legalization of marijuana makes it possible to require products to provide the dose they say they provide.
A plan to protect New York City from rising sea levels uses enlightened methods rather than levees that are dead space.
Any protection that we build will work only up to a certain amount of sea level rise. What amount of rise is this project intended to cope with, and roughly when will it cease to be enough?
Genetic Testing of Citizens Is a Backdoor Into Total Population Surveillance by Governments and Companies.
Businesses are arming drones with not-always-lethal weapons to attack striking workers.
Right-wing policies of cruelty spread selfish right-wing values, which ultimately make the people in a country more unhappy, even those who aren't poor.
The boats that catch feed for Thai prawn farms are crewed by slaves, who are beaten and even killed at the whim of the owners.
Islamist rebels in Iraq, affiliated with al Qa'ida, have conquered Mosul.
At one point, the Bush forces managed to separate the traditional Sunni leaders from al Qa'ida by paying them. Maliki dropped the practice, and now the fanatics seem to rule the Sunni areas uncontested.
Why you should root for the World Cup protesters.
I won't pay attention to the games themselves — I don't care who wins them.
Australian medical cuts will force old, sick and poor people to do without medicine.
How ironic is the Russian admiration of Stalin as a sort of great fascist.
A Belarusian politician, from Belarus's short period of democracy, says that Soviet-style government is making a comeback.
Democracy still exists in parts of the old Soviet Union, such as the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia, and in Ukraine more or less. In addition, Kyrgyzstan has a fragile democracy.
Extraction of oil is becoming too expensive for oil companies, so the rate of extraction will have to decrease.
Some companies are writing off substantial amounts of supposed reserves, but this is not yet proceeding at the rate needed to eliminate the carbon bubble.
The Koch brothers will try to force the US to move towards toxic coal rather than towards renewable energy and efficiency improvements.
The US government puts non-citizens into special privatized prisons where they are treated horribly.
Americans, how would you feel if some other country gave special bad treatment to prisoners who are US citizens, because they are foreigners? This is the same.
Australia and Canada have made a boil-the-Earth global heating axis.
The intervention in Libya has had a lot of bad consequences. I say this as one who supported the intervention.
Would it have been less bad to do nothing and let Gaddafi crush the rebels? Was there some other way to prevent this that would have led to a better outcome? I don't know.
A fatal collision between a Walmart truck and a bus was caused by a truck driver that had not slept in 24 hours.
I wonder why the driver had not slept for 24 hours. Was it perhaps that his employer puts drivers under pressure that in practice requires them to do this to get by?
Where Is the Signboard to Warn of a Climate Catastrophe?
In addition to attacking our rights and undermining regulation of business, TAFTA aka TTIP would lead to only a tiny amount of economic growth.
That growth would not go to workers, because treaties like this give business more power to drive down wages and hurt working conditions. The plutocrats would grab all the benefits, and more, leaving workers worse off than without the treaty.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty Is Plutocratic".
TAFTA (its other name) stands for "Turn All Freedom To Ashes".
Mental health care in the US is totally inadequate.
The cause, of course, is insufficient funds, which in turn is caused by plutocracy.
Under Hillary Clinton, the State Department has become an auxiliary of US military action.
Japan intends to resume killing whales despite the court order.
I can't understand why Japan's government insists on continuing an activity whose economic importance is so small, that is unpopular even in Japan, and inspires ill will around the world (as if it were Japan's Guantanamo).
A study by economists concludes that 60% of French public debt is illegitimate — imposed on the country by looters.
The percentage will be much bigger in poor countries that were easier for the looters to push around.
So the next step is to cancel the illegitimate debt. Is it possible to distinguish legitimate bonds from illegitimate ones so as to cancel only the latter?
Global heating threatens fruit and nut trees in California's central valley.
Jack DeCoster owned 10% of US egg production, and repeatedly committed fraud as well as mistreatment of employees. His company's illegal practices were responsible for making at least 2000 people sick with salmonella.
The fact that the company was able to continue operating for 14 years after it was first caught demonstrates that inspection needs to be stronger. We must treat companies with the suspicion we would give to gang members and juvenile delinquents.
Time for Congress to Investigate Bill Gates' Role in Common Core.
It is interesting that Republicans have said little to oppose the effective cancellation of states' rights in the area of education.
A 13-year-old boy has passed the Turing test.
With Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike to protest imprisonment without trial, Israel plans to force-feed them, and cites Guantanamo as an example.
When the US practices torture, it spreads torture around the world.
Modern urban design and architecture is systematically designed to deny homeless people a place to lie down, so that the callous and successful will be spared the ugly sight of them.
The article also explains how aid-cutting right wing governments develop bureaucratic excuses that systematically refuse homeless people any help in finding a place to sleep. This goes hand in hand with the policies that make so many people homeless.
Pakistan's Taliban attacked Karachi airport with suicide bombers and accused the government of using peace negotiations as a sham.
The basis for that accusation seems to be that the government did not cease fire during the talks. But if no cease-fire was agreed on, continuing to fight while negotiating was not dishonest.
Air conditioning is making US cities substantially hotter, leading to more use of air conditioning.
China
has quashed
the hopes that it would push for cuts in world CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I guess losing Shanghai and Suzhou is not that important to the rulers of China after all.
US citizens: support the EPA in reducing CO2 emissions from power plants.
US citizens: call
for ending
the overuse of antibiotics on farm animals.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government will fall far short in its supposed effort to reduce child poverty.
That's because its important policies are designed for dooH niboR and increase child poverty.
The corrupt association of Western governments and Western companies supported the monarch of Qatar in luring hundreds of thousands of migrant workers into semi-slavery.
This has proved fatal to hundreds of them, and left a far larger number trapped or maimed, but it is an injustice to each and every one.
I suspect that the government of Nepal declines to act because it wants the foreign exchange that the migrants send home.
The high expense of college in the US relates to a change in attitude: treating college as a ticket to the middle class rather than as a way to give society educated citizens.
US citizens: call on Congress to authorize postal banking.
Send comments in favor of network neutrality to the FCC at openinternet@fcc.gov. Give the Proceeding Number, which is 14-28.
US citizens:
Urge
Obama to fire DEA administrator Leonhart.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Texas Republican Party has endorsed conversion therapy which is supposed to convert gays to straights.
Their position is not real family values, it is correct-family-only values.
After Australia leaked the names of 10,000 asylum seekers, it has given them just 14 days to explain why that leak might put them in danger if sent back.
Former Israeli soldiers describe the repetitive cruelty, humiliation and even murder of the occupation of Palestine.
Uri Avnery: Netanyahu says the Palestinian unity government, made of of ministers not aligned with Hamas or Fatah, is unacceptable because it makes Hamas responsible for Palestine's conduct towards Israel.
As Avnery points out, this precise point means that Hamas now upholds peace with Israel day by day.
Vermont senators have proposed
a bill to
facilitate worker-owned cooperative businesses in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US continues to allow meat imports from certain countries even though they have privatized their meat inspection systems.
A US appeals court found an excuse to sidestep a lawsuit on behalf of young Americans for the harm that global heating will do to them.
This harm is quite likely to include an early death.
The economic loss caused by destruction of coral reefs has been estimated at around 12 trillion dollars.
And that's just one of the big damages that our CO2 emissions will cause.
Matching chemical signatures show that the contamination in Steve Lipsky's well is coming straight from Barnett Shale's frack well.
Global Citizens to Elites: Join Climate Fight 'Or Step Aside'.
Meet the Press's Snowden Debate: Traitor or Criminal?
I haven't had a TV set since 1970, and I've almost never watched Meet the Press or the other mainstream TV shows that claim to present political debate. It would be a hassle for me to see them. But it appears that they are propaganda outlets for the plutocratic state in all but name.
The New York Times thinks there is a mystery about why US economic growth since the 1970s has not reduced poverty.
The overall answer is, right-wing dooH niboR policies, but the Times is not supposed to acknowledge that.
Right-wing distortions claim that 1/3 of the freed Guantanamo prisoners have "returned to the battlefield" although only 4% of them were reported ever to have been on a battlefield before.
Even if this claim were true, it would not justify imprisonment without trial. Captured enemy combatants should be treated with the respect due to prisoners of war.
The Golden Dawn party has become openly Nazi and a force for anti-semitic violence.
Why do they blame powerless poor foreigners rather than the powerful businesses that have Greece in a stranglehold?
Tutsi women who were raped by those who murdered their families sometimes hated their children.
Abortions should have been part of the aid that the world gave to Rwanda after the genocide.
Everyone: call on India to protect forests from mining companies.
The Geo News TV channel in Pakistan has been shut off as punishment for criticizing the country's spy agency, the ISI.
The ISI has reportedly sponsored the Taliban in Afghanistan.
More about how governments spy directly on Vodaphone customers.
India is working on that sort of spying directly on all communications systems.
It appears civilization will fail to stop global heating and global disaster.
But we should not give up fighting, because we can still reduce the scope of the disaster.
Edward Snowden comments on the first anniversary of the surveillance debate that his heroism made possible.
US citizens: pressure Republicans to raise the minimum wage.
US citizens: tell the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to maintain the fishing regulations that protect right whales.
In the US:
call
on PBS to make WGBH remove a Koch brother from its board of
trustees.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the USDA not to allow a massive cut of old-growth trees in the
Tongass National Forest.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thailand's military rulers are cracking down on online dissent.
Senator Warner gets the government to admit that the USA Freedumber Act would expand the NSA's access to data about American's phone calls.
Nonviolent opposition to Assad's rule continues alongside the armed rebellion.
In Harm's Way: The Dangers of a World Without Net Neutrality.
Israeli thugs attacked the studio where "Good Morning Jerusalem" was being broadcast and arrested the personnel and an interview guest.
They were accused of dissent.
Nigeria's "war on terror" has involved killing over a thousand prisoners. Several journalists have been arrested and tortured.
When the CIA jokes that it "can't confirm or deny", it's a sick joke.
Use of diclofenac in animals can wipe out vultures in Europe as it did in India.
The new president of Ukraine says he will not accept Russia's conquest of the Crimea and will not agree to a federal structure for Ukraine.
I can't see any sense in being stubbornly opposed to a federal structure. As for Crimea, it would be proper to have an honest election in which those who don't want Russian rule can safely vote.
Global heating has its macabre side:
floating
corpses out of their graves.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A study finds that GMO corn in the US is the main cause of the decline of the monarch butterfly.
As Brazilians protest the Brazil's support for the soccer world cup for spending money on businesses instead of people, the government's response is to compound the wrong by spending more on security against the people.
New York Governor
Cuomo's inadequate
and unambitious energy plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Florida to stop sending youth offenders to privatized prisons.
Cable Companies Are Astroturfing Fake Consumer Support to End Net Neutrality.
Privatizing government services hurts the whole community as well as the workers. The supposed "cost savings" don't include the costs of the government assistance that the employees of these contractors will need because of their low pay.
Legalization of marijuana in Colorado seems to have led to
a substantial
decrease in crime, and no increase in use by teenagers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
We need to end the cruel War on Drugs.
The Vostok Battalion of pro-Russian rebels seems to get money from Russia but maybe not arms.
Defamation Suits Used to Bludgeon Southeast Asian Bloggers and Independent Press.
Most of the Fortune 500 companies are using tax-avoidance schemes.
US citizens: call on your senators to cosponsor Merkley's bill to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan now.
Everyone: call on Obama not to jail James Risen.
He is threatened with imprisonment if he does not identify a whistleblower who would himself probably be sent to prison for many years.
US citizens: support the Students Emergency Refinancing Act.
Chris Christie has rewarded campaign supporters with 200 million dollars in state money for their a new shopping mall.
The mall is apparently directed at the wealthiest customers. In the new US of increased inequality, they can buy more, while others struggle.
China will deport Guo Jian to Australia.
Guo Jian was jailed for an art work that criticized the massacre of hundreds or thousands of students at Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Elephant poaching in Kenya is run by organized crime gangs under the control of local elites that are "too big to prosecute".
A forecast says that US oil extraction will start falling in about 10 years.
In London, many poor people can't see a way to get by except by stealing. When caught, their are fined, and the fines are deducted from the already-inadequate welfare payments.
Christian and Jewish religious extremism can be seen in works of art that continue to be admired as classics.
At present, these works do not seem to inspire suicide bombers, but I won't take for granted that can't ever happen.
The technological "advances" that make the difference between J Edgar Hoover's FBI and today's total surveillance state.
Vodaphone says that several governments tap into its phone calls directly.
Europe's top court ruled against the publishers' "irrational" claims that looking at web pages is copyright infringement.
George Monbiot: The Farming Lobby Has Wrecked Efforts to Defend Our [UK] Soil.
Jamestown, the first known English settlement in the US, is being inundated by rising sea level.
Part of the rise is due to global heating.
Geithner's autobiography is full of gaps, inconsistencies and falsehoods, all contrived to present the arsonist as a fireman.
The debt deal that Argentina got is not really such a good deal for Argentina.
The elected leader of Tibetans in exile calls on China to relax the repression of Tibetans so they will stop burning themselves to death.
Counterfeit medicine has helped malaria evolve resistance to the drug used to cure it.
A US report says that BP's system to protect against a blowout was not suitable for the purpose, and the same inadequate system is in use today.
The US has not adopted rules to prevent a repetition of the Big Spill. This reflects the political power of the oil companies: these dangerous beasts are too big to cage.
The UK government not only proposes to have a secret trial of anonymous suspects, it also wanted to forbid the press to report on the fact that this was going on.
Once a state accepts the principle of trampling human rights in the name of "security", its natural tendency is to keep going further until people have no rights that it can't deny them. We have seen the same in the US, where the president can imprison anyone forever without a trial.
A state that escapes from the people's control is more dangerous than any underground group. If we are not willing to risk our lives for democracy and human rights, we won't have them for long.
US citizens:
ask
your Senators to support the Sunshine in Litigation Act, requiring
courts to publish information that is crucial to public safety.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Daniel Ellsberg: Both Manning & Snowden Exposed Government Secrecy to Proper Debate.
The predicted El Niño event will damage coral world-wide, and due to the higher "normal" temperature, they will be less able to recover.
Coral is also endangered by ocean acidification, and if it is extinct by 2050, many other marine species will also be extinct, and a large fraction of sea food we eat will disappear.
When US thugs use phony cell phone towers, they cover this up by deceiving courts.
Falkvinge: activism alone won't suffice; we must compete in elections.
Four ways Edward Snowden changed the world — and why the fight's not over.
The "authorities" want to shoot the messenger and bury his message.
A Message From Edward Snowden, One Year Later.
The ACLU sued Florida to get records of surveillance through phony
cell phone towers, so US
thugs
seized the records to make the Florida court impotent.
Now Sprint and T-mobile, two large US phone competitors,
want
to merge.
Such large companies should never be allowed to merge. Instead, we
should break up their larger competitors, in this case Verizon and
AT&T.
The Challenge
of Sustaining Our Oceans.
US
citizens:
phone your senators to oppose the USE Freedumb Act, the
house-passed caricature of the USA Freedom Act.
Everyone: tell Canada
to stop
plans to attack Canadians' rights with the TPP.
Thugs
carried a fake cell phone tower from door to door to find a
suspect's portable phone.
We want criminals like that one to be caught. I think it would be
reasonable for a court to give permission to use a similar device,
which would be programmed with one phone number, to locate that
particular phone in this way.
Readers of the Boston
Globe: ask
the Globe to stop printing letters that deny global heating.
It
takes more
than an election to make a democracy.
The Koch brothers have asked the Supreme Court
to rule
against "union shop" requirements for public sector workers; this
would lead to low wages and bad working conditions.
Australian
politicians helped
write lobbying materials for businesses that wanted reduced
regulation in planning buildings.
Nauru
has expelled
5 opposition legislators to protect Australia's domination.
Israel has announced
a plan
to build 900 more housing units in occupied Palestinian territory.
Wait a moment, does Netanyahu think the "peace talks" are still going
on?
Facebook could control an
election just
by selectively deciding who to urge to vote.
The article repeats a common historical myth, the idea that Dubya won
the 2000 election in Florida. In fact, his campaign stole the
election. Katherine Harris falsely disenfranchised around 50,000
black voters based on the similarity of their names to names on a list
of felons. The voters disenfranchised were not felons, but Harris
vetoed checking who was really a felon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is an increase in the rate of thyroid gland symptoms in children living in the area around Fukushima.
It might be a real problem caused by fallout, or it might just indicate more thorough examination.
China has pledged to limit CO2 emissions.
Perhaps the government has concluded that drowning Shanghai, Suzhou, and the whole surrounding region would be a big loss.
US citizens: Ask senators to change the proposed constitutional amendment, SJR 19, to do the whole job — to reject the idea that human rights apply to corporations.
Everyone:
support Divest Harvard,
the campaign for Harvard to divest
from fossil fuel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Today's Big Brother seduces fools into encouraging everyone to watch them.
Families of Americans killed in US drone attacks in Yemen have given up on suing for damages. US courts have stonewalled them for years.
However, a class action by prisoners in solitary confinement will proceed.
Before you tell the unemployed to "get a job", you had better find some jobs they could get.
How did Kerry manage not to understand that Israel had no interest in making his peace talks a success?
Israel sent bulldozers to destroy half the Palestinian village of Id'eis, which is located in the region near the Jordan that Israel wants to ethnically cleanse.
Meanwhile, fanatic settlers are building another "illegal" colony — that is, one that supposedly has no government approval — with support from the army.
Israel has put 60 hunger-striking prisoners in solitary confinement.
China plans to level over 700 mountains.
Humanity is on track to exhaust crucial resources during this century, as predicted in 1972 by the Club of Rome.
LinkedIn has imposed Chinese censorship on users world-wide.
Perhaps the US should not allow US internet companies to do business in a way that would subject them to foreign censorship laws.
The UK government plans to try people whose identity is secret, in a secret trial. They are accused of possessing books, and unspecified other things.
Could Stalin have done worse?
Tim DeChristopher, who went to prison for sabotaging an oil auction,
rebukes baby-boomers
for not having the courage to resist the system
that is carrying us toward global heating disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Discredited claims
that the NSA keeps making.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Arabs like the US better as a result of Obama's
reduction in the visible US military profile
in the Middle East.
Hardly anyone wants the US to attack Syria or Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Yemen, where the US is carrying out drone bombings, was not one of the countries surveyed.
The people who raped a Dalit girl (who then killed herself) have threatened violence against her father for rebuking them.
A 30-year study of 800 poor children who started school in Baltimore in 1982 has found very little social mobility: if your parents were poor, you almost certainly end up poor.
The struggle to free the innocent people convicted by lies from the FBI crime lab.
Noam Chomsky: the US surveillance state provides the secrecy to shield abuses of US power.
Some crackers' latest prank is to generate a false report of an incident and get a SWAT team sent to an innocent person's address.
These people are crackers because they break computer security. They are hackers because they are practicing playful cleverness. Unfortunately, being playful and clever does not ensure that an activity is ethical. This prank is not innocent: SWAT raids kill innocent people.
However, the prank is merely the trigger for the danger; the root cause of the danger is the policies that use SWAT teams too often.
Koalas have adapted to increased temperature in Australia by cooling their bellies against trees.
This will get them only so far; eventually the heat will kill them.
Biodiversity offsetting is the risky practice of compensating for destruction of some wildlife habitat by constructing replacement habitat.
The main flaw is that the habitat we destroy is sure to be destroyed, but it will take years to see whether the replacement habitat really functions. And what do you do if it doesn't?
This system of offsetting provides the opportunity for developers (and their state backers) to propose replacements without even trying to scrutinize the plans carefully. By the time it becomes apparent that the replacement habitat was never really used by the ecosystem it was meant for, nobody will be accountable.
Activists in Albuquerque held a sit-in in the mayor's office to protest the many killings committed by thugs.
One thug pushed a protester to the wall and charged the protester with attacking him. Typical thug behavior. What's unusual is that the thug said in advance he would do that. This proves it is an intentional act to lie and frame someone. Will this thug be prosecuted for perjury?
Obama is going
to revive
the "domestic terror task force".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I suppose this will be another scheme for investigating dissidents and journalists, as well as once in a while one of the real right-wing extremists. Thugs generally feel sympathy towards right-wing extremists as long as those have not reached the point of actual killing.
Governments are investing too much in fossil fuel use and not enough in renewable energy.
Everyone: call on Monsanto not to sue Vermont for its GMO labeling law.
Everyone:
support
Premier Clark of British Columbia in rejecting a tar sands oil
export pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Why Chiquita Is Lobbying Against a 9/11 Victims Bill.
The USA Freedumber Act actually expands massive surveillance
in
several
ways. It has been converted into a blow against freedom.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
6th Graders
Seeking Payment for Taking Common Core Field Tests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Is Absolute Computrace a trojan horse in the BIOSes of millions of computers? We can't tell, because it is proprietary software.
The point is, precisely because we can't tell, we should never trust proprietary software. It is software for suckers.
Here's the bombshell for which the Obama regime is going to put James Risen in prison.
Do you think Americans should find out when the US government does such stupid things and the result is harmful? The US government thinks it should be able to cover them up so it appears perfect.
Now that Obama has claimed the right to release prisoners from Guantanamo with no notice, nothing is stopping him from trying or releasing every one of the prisoners.
He must shoulder all the guilt for imprisonment without trial in the US.
Disappointingly, Pope Francis urges people to have children. Just what the world doesn't need.
Although the Church opposes artificial birth control, that does not require urging people to have children. He ought to urge people to have humanitarian projects. That way, you won't feel alone when you are old.
The US will work with the Palestinian unity government.
Netanyahu is finding himself a little less able to extract support from the US government.
Obama has proposed limits to require reduced CO2 emissions from existing power plants.
The solution would do a lot of good, but it won't reduce emissions fast enough to avoid disaster.
Carbon offsetting is an unreliable method of reducing emissions.
We could easily to a lot more.
Gush Shalom welcomes the Palestinian unity government.
Thousands of illegal migrants are trying to get from Africa into Europe by any means possible.
More and more people flee Africa, due to population growth, the corporate land grab, wars over conflict minerals, and global heating. Population growth is mostly the fault of poor Africans; the other causes are not.
Australia's maverick party leader threatens to reverse Queensland's privatizations.
Hooray! Privatization is an assault on the public's assets, carried out by the state as a surrender to the new owners. Those owners must get punished.
The fighting in Ukraine — and the aggressiveness of gas supplier Russia — should make Europe wake up and move faster to renewable energy.
Governor Chris Christy got New Jersey law changed, which permitted a big state payoff to a friend who donated to his campaign.
Even if these changes were not made specifically for the purpose of giving a payoff to his friend, they still help rich people at the expense of the state.
Seattle has approved the increase of minimum wage to $15 an hour, disregarding the usual claims by businesses that the sky will fall.
Sargent Bergdahl, freed by the Taliban in an exchange, apparently had left his post because he was disgusted with the dishonesty of the war.
The constitutional amendment that the Senate will vote on would reverse the Corporations United (*) decision but would not reject the idea that corporations are people. They are proposing only a half solution.
* Officially called "Citizens United", but I'd rather call them what they are than what they claim to be.
Don't Copy Our Welfare Cuts, New Zealand Experts Warn Australia.
Indonesia refuses to resume diplomatic ties with Australia without a commitment not to spy on Indonesian leaders.
What about the other Indonesians? Spying on other countries' leaders can be justified; spying on everyone is when it becomes Orwellian.
Karzai is angry that the
US made a
deal to exchange prisoners but has not made a peace deal with the
Taliban.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I don't know whose fault it is that the peace talks have failed.
The US Supreme Court sided with the government against James Risen.
He will now go to prison to defend the confidentiality of his source.
In the UAE, people are tortured into confessions and imprisoned for possessing tiny quantities of drugs.
Ahmad Zeidan was imprisoned for possessing 1/20 of a gram of cocaine. It was in a car glove compartment; there must be a doubt about whether he knew it was there.
There's also the man who was imprisoned for a flake of marijuana on the sole of his shoe.
I do not make flight connections through Dubai or Qatar. The risk may be small, but there is no need to run that risk.
Proposing taxes to restrain the housing price in London and make space available cheaply for rent.
In the UK, people will be punished for providing services to people when they had some "reason to suspect" they were helping a criminal group.
I'm afraid this means that lots of people won't be able to hire a lawyer or rent space, even though they are not criminals, because people will be scared to deal with them.
How right-wingers in the National Rifle Association foisted a reinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment on the US.
A SWAT team threw a flash grenade into Bou Bou Phonesavanh's crib, causing terrible injuries.
The US government has paid lots of towns to set up SWAT teams even though they have no real need for one. Rather than leave the teams unused, they make rules saying that on conditions XYZ the SWAT team must be sent "just in case". That creates lots of opportunities for the team to injure or kill people, in situations where nothing bad would have happened without the SWAT team.
I hope that Bou Bou dies from these injuries, because living with them would be horrible.
Poor Americans lose their jobs because they are jailed, then are ordered to pay for jailing them.
I hope Mr Papa and thousands like him tell the state they will never pay a cent, and dare the state to jail them until it chokes on them.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the medical marijuana amendment adopted by the House of Representatives.
Everyone: call on T-mobile to respect workers' rights in the US.
The NSA collects millions of face pictures from internet communication.
They could get your face from Skype, if you use that.
An interview with Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh.
She was freed before the end of her sentence thanks to international pressure, but is still banned from practising law.
The Australian government's class war can be understood in terms of the very wealthy constituencies where its leaders are elected.
Fossil fuel companies are trying to use the new right-wing anti-EU MEPs to destroy green energy targets.
The effects of growing US plutocracy and inequality harm society as a whole.
A Chinese democracy protester, who got asylum in Australia after the Tiananmen massacre, returned to Beijing to make an art work referring to the massacre. He was imprisoned for that.
The concept of
"sexual
entitlement" explains part of misogyny.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Boat people seeking refuge in Australia, and sent to Christmas Island, have underlined their hunger strike by sewing their mouths shut.
Stopping Witch Burning in Kenya?
FCC Commissioner Wheeler repeatedly says he supports network neutrality,
yet he
repeatedly
acts against it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Palestine's unity government has been sworn in, despite Israeli interference.
The Oslo Agreement called for many things that Israel has not done. I recall there was supposed to be a corridor for communication between Gaza and the West Bank. Perhaps both sides should finish implementing that agreement.
Why It's Best Not to Know Your Baby's Sex.
Russia's new method of pressuring Ukraine: requiring prepayment for natural gas.
Australia's right-wing government plans to increase college tuition fees and the interest for college loans. However, graduates whose income is low will not have to pay back the loans. So it will still be a lot better than the system in the US.
Australia has suffered the hottest two-year period since records started.
Sri Lankan refugees in Australia would rather die than be sent back there, and one set himself on fire because he couldn't stand the uncertainty about being sent back.
Everyone: Thank Pope Francis for recognizing the cruelty of the occupation of Palestine.
US citizens: Call on Congress to oppose HR 4752, which would ban the simple right way to restore network neutrality.
The Desert of Maine shows what's in store for us if we don't stop farming practices that cause erosion of topsoil.
The US government plans to make a database with lots of intrusive information about everyone in the US that has a mortgage.
It is possible private data brokers already have all the same information about them. Does anyone know?
Religious repression in Israel and Arab countries requires couples to go to Cyprus to marry.
On two occasions there are connection between Islamists fighting in Syria and murder of Jews.
This is still a fringe phenomenon, but all Islamists advocate repression that violates freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In particular, the religious freedom of anyone they decide is supposed to be a Muslim.
Ma Jian, who was a protester at Tiananmen Square 25 years ago, describes what happened there and the Chinese repression of all reference to it.
The Egyptian trial of three reporters for "endangering national security" shows that the prosecution is a sick joke.
The UK government ha given around 4 billion dollars in tax subsidies to fossil fuel extraction in the North Sea in the past few years. This while cutting the subsidies for renewable energy.
The current right-wing government has shown all along, by its policy changes, that it was working for the fossil fuel companies.
The UK has had a lot of problems recently with flooding. Global heating is going to make that worse.
Protect your ears from loud music!
A Somali refugee who became a British citizen is harassed and threatened every time he reenters the UK by agents that want him to become a spy.
Lavabit's fate, and the privacy of all its users, was decided in a secret hearing in which founder Ladar Levison was not allowed a lawyer.
The despicable juridical shenanigans of putting him in contempt of court without giving him a chance to object are redolent of a banana republic.
The Internet With A Human Face (an interesting speech).
Due to insufficient funding, the UK's National Health Service consigns mentally handicapped people to prisons, and the prisons treat them inhumanely.
One committed suicide because he was bullied.
Looting ancient sites in Egypt has shot up since the revolution against Mubarak.
A bankrupt data broker that collected data about students may sell the data as an "asset".
A missive from an anti-drone protester about the multiple levels of lies and secrecy that surround US drone assassinations.
Investigating the effect of antibiotic usage on people's bacterial biomes, which might be part of the cause of increasing rates of various chronic medical problems.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Tyson Foods Anti-Farmer Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject bills that endanger the Endangered Species Act.
The idea of "digital natives" is a confusion when applied to children or teenagers. They have learned to use digital technology but that mean they understand what's good or bad.
The thugs of Brazil's military dictatorship went to England to learn torture/brainwashing techniques that did not leave physical marks.
Iranians set up a phony news site to attack computers of US officials and journalists.
Attacking computers does not mean these people are "hackers". That's an insulting usage of the word.
It sounds like some of their methods were playfully clever, so maybe they really are hackers, but not because they were attacking computers.
Don't believe the claim that Meriam Ibrahim will be freed, say her lawyers.
6 Cleveland thugs are being prosecuted for shooting and killing two people in a stopped car.
Erdogan sent thugs to pre-empt the expected protests on the anniversary of the start of protests last year.
The US exchanged 5 Afghan prisoners in Guantanamo for one captured US soldier.
I am glad the US soldier is free, but having five fewer instances of national shame is a bigger step forward. The US must either try or free every one of the prisoners in Guantanamo.
A Congressman funded by the major ISPs has filed a bill to effectively ban the FCC from establishing network neutrality.
Not Forgotten: Street Art to Remember the Victims of the School of the Americas.
Getting the Innocent out of the NSA's Shadow Database.
The rich, by not paying taxes, are dragging the whole US economy down.
Laying out the danger of transporting lots of oil by train.
We require every car driver to have insurance. Why not require every tank car to have insurance too, to cover the small but significant chance of a fatal explosion? This way, tiny shipping companies won't be able to go bankrupt and avoid liability, as happened after the Lac Megantic fire.
Humans are causing extinction of species at 1000 times the natural rate.
US citizens: call on Obama to remove US from Afghanistan now, not years from now.
The NSA released one email from Snowden, which raises subjects relevant to NSA lawbreaking but doesn't allege wrongdoing. Snowden says that this is only part of what he said to the NSA headquarters.
The forces of total surveillance and intimidation will tell one lie after another. Three cheers for Edward Snowden!
The UK Chilcot inquiry into why Bush and B'liar invaded Iraq will release passages and summaries of their conversations, rather than the real text.
The case for hope in the fight to curb global heating.
El-Sisi threatened to fine Egyptians that did not vote, but they still stayed away in large numbers.
Keeping US troops in Afghanistan through 2016 means keeping secret prisoners disappeared in Bagram through 2016.
Prisoners in Berlin have set up a union to demand payment at the minimum wage for their work.
This cause is important for everyone. Do you want slave labor undermining your job?
The government of Niger is taking action against traditional hereditary slavery.
Why geoengineering does not offer a cheap fix for global heating, or even any fix at all.
On the problems in the Veterans Administration.
Indeed, veterans would not need so much care if Dubya hadn't fabricated an excuse to conquer and occupy Iraq, but that's a separate issue. The veterans exist, their wounds and illnesses exist, and the VA owes them treatment.
While dishonesty about waiting lists is inexcusable, the root cause of the long waiting lists is failure to spend enough money to provide all veterans with proper care. That is the fault of plutocratist politicians, mostly Republican but some Democrats as well.
Global heating effects are already starting wars. The US government is ready to respond so as to maintain and extend world plutocracy.
Crashing Down
To Earth: On 21st Century Copyright Extremism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Various illnesses in children seem to be associated with exposure to glyphosate; for some children, removing glyphosate from their food and water leads to a remission of the illness.
To get clear proof that glyphosate causes these symptoms requires a more systematic experiment, but this is enough reason to treat it with great suspicion.
Gun-rights extremists in Texas harass anyone that opposes them.
Banksters have kicked 10 million Americans out of their homes, and when communities organize to resist, cities send thugs and even SWAT teams to carry out the eviction.
This is all the more reason to demand that your city get rid of its SWAT team. It's unlikely to do anything good for the city's residents, and has a good chance of killing them from time to time.
New York City Councilman Kallos has introduced a bill to encourage use of free software in the city government.
It is not the strong requirement that every government should have, but it is a start.
New Orleans has closed all its public schools and forced the students into a segregated system of privatized schools with inexperienced teachers.
A tar sand oil extraction mine in Utah will threaten to pollute the Colorado River.
Another mine operated nearby 30 years ago; the site is still a dead zone.
The protests in Syria were triggered by a 6-year drought, for which global heating was probably one of the causes.
The Cowardly Tax Pursuit of Britain's Poorest.
When Tony Abbott was criticizing the previous government, he recognized a reduction in planned future spending increases as a "cut", but now that he makes the policy he insists they are different.
Abbott is becoming the suppository of all sophistry.
Google is using its dominant position in one market to muscle into another, something that a few decades ago would have been prosecuted.
The other music streaming services are unethical because of their DRM. Will Google's be better, or just like the others? If it is better, then we should root for Google to get rid of them. If it will be unethical like the others, then we should call for a pox on all.
770,000 households in the UK face the danger of losing their homes in 2 years when interest rates rise.
New pun, Irish constellation.
The US government is threatening security researchers with prosecution.
This suggests that the "security" state has chosen a weak and insecure internet it can spy on, rather than a secure one we can use.
Who is
backing Haftar in Libya, and what is he doing?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Egyptian election proves that Sisi's support is not the overwhelming majority that he claimed, but — given his repression — nothing more.
A group of former Russian soldiers has taken control of a building in Donestk.
Perhaps they are still, in effect, Russian soldiers.
Delivery of humanitarian aid to people in Syria has been a failure.
I wonder what else can be done. Would it work to air-drop food packages to areas Assad won't allow aid to reach? Or would Assad drop bombs disguised as food?
US citizens: tell Congress to let Medicaid keep drug costs down.
Everyone: tell CNN to stop presenting "debates" on global heating by having two denialists converse.
US citizens: call on the FHFA to stop foreclosures and start helping homeowners achieve reduction of principal.
Everyone: call on Facebook not to listen to sound through the used's computer's microphone.
China's annual repression of anything that alludes to the Tiananmen Square massacre of students is especially harsh and broad this year.
Jordan is censoring web journalism by imposing licensing of web sites and making sites responsible for readers' comments.
Obama and the EU seem to have given their blessing to this repression.
Saudi Arabia has imposed total censorship and repression, labeling any sort of dissent as "terrorism".
The US and the UK are moving along the same path, but have not gone so far.
The NSA has admitted that Snowden tried to go through channels to report massive surveillance. However, officials systematically quash such attempts to raise an issue. The surveillance state created a Kafkaesque blindness to systematic violation of the Constitution and human rights.
How the spying-industrial complex encouraged the buildup of the US total surveillance system.
US citizens: call on Obama to Keep funding nuclear weapon security programs.
US citizens: call on the government to block the AT&T-DirectTV merger.
US citizens: support proposals for specific increases in the extent of Medicare coverage.
Kerry called Snowden a coward for not returning to the US to be imprisoned and silenced.
Kerry's idea of loyalty is surrender to the US government, while Snowden defends America as a land of freedom where laws restrain government power.
There are many important jobs for which we need a state, but the state must respect human rights.
I suggest that Snowden offer to surrender for prosecution if Bush, his torturers and those who protect his torturers (such as Obama) do likewise.
The people of Barcelona responded forcefully when the city tried to demolish an occupied social center (a squat that serves social purposes) that has functioned for 17 years.
A year later, the Gezi park protests have shown Turks the possibility and need for disputing with the state.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, people dying of cancer in Senegal can't get morphine.
Lots of other people who have surgery surely suffer unnecessarily from the lack of morphine.
North Korea says it will investigate again what happened to the Japanese that its forces kidnaped secretly from Japan.
Elizabeth Warren called on Obama to appoint people to the Federal Reserve Board who will regulate the banks strictly.
Obama won't do it, of course, but it is good to make him take heat about that.
Workers are being exposed to nanoparticles, some of which may be toxic, but the workers don't even know.
Moms to EPA: End Monsanto's Poisoning of America.
The Obama regime's motive for imprisoning James Risen may be that he exposed a grave nuclear mistake.
Is it good for the country to allow the government to intimidate journalists that write about government mistakes?
Various states are
considering bills
to limit CEO pay, or tax companies more if their CEOs get too much
pay.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US inequality has increased within the 99% too.
The advice to get a college education would be good advice, but higher income is not a sure thing. You might find yourself unemployed and saddled with debts that will ruin your life.
Warning: fossil fuel companies that plot to keep global heating going can face liability in the future.
Moral Monday protesters
were arrested
after a sit-in in the North Carolina Republican legislator's
office.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Is David Koch Getting a Tax Writeoff for Dropping $900K on the [Wisconsin Governor] Walker Race?
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act, to stop convicted perpetrators of those crimes from buying guns.
Inclusive Capitalism Initiative is Trojan Horse to Quell Coming Global Revolt.
If the rich want to save capitalism, they can do it — by ending plutocracy. Free the mass media from corporate control by abolishing media concentration. End voter suppression. Increase the taxes on the rich, and spend the money on education, medical care, infrastructure, and support for the poor.
Or maybe, as the author believes, this is just a front meant to convince the gullible that there is no need to defeat the plutocrats.
A US judge says he thinks somewhere between 1 and 8 percent of defendants plead guilty although they are innocent, to escape long mandatory sentences.
The government of Canada and that of Alberta are attacking science, journalism and civil society to protect the tar sands oil extraction from criticism.
This includes calling Greenpeace "extremists", firing and gagging scientists, spying on environmental groups, and deporting journalists.
We think of oil wells as occupying a small spot on the ground. We don't realize that extracting tar sands involves massive deforestation. It seems to be a kind of strip-mining.
The head of the IMF says that income and wealth inequality is harmful, recommending that states provide education and health care, tax the rich more, and regulate banks strictly.
Will any governments listen when the IMF says such things?
A giant forest fire is burning in Alaska, 243 square miles in size. And it's not even summer yet.
You can guess what caused this.
Frequent strandings of humpback whales seem to be caused by malnutrition.
I can see various ways in which effects of global heating could be contributing to this. For instance, it the whales giving birth could have moved away from the equator for the temperature and perhaps there is not enough to eat in the place they have moved to.
This is a hunch, not a certainty. The certainty is that global heating will mess up lots of ecosystems.
Polar bears in the area around Svalbard are having 1/3 as many cubs as usual. Probably because receding ice has made it hard for them to find food.
The lost Malaysian airliner apparently did not crash in the search area; the pings detected from that area appear to have been a red herring.
The idea that the pilots flew the plane over remote ocean until it ran out of fuel has always seemed implausible to me, mainly because that does not fit with the calm way they seem to have diverted the flight. What motive could they have had for this? If the satellite tracking data is truly conclusive, that must be where it went. Otherwise, I suspect that they landed the flight somewhere in Asia.
Even if that is so, I doubt that the passengers are still alive. It seems unlikely that anyone who arranged the hijacking would be so principled as to keep the passengers alive as prisoners for months rather than killing them.
The global plantation land-grab puts food supplies at risk, since the plantations produce less food per hectare.
It's due to maximizing profits rather than minimizing hunger.
In the long run, hunger will take most people if we don't stop human population growth.
The EU plans to replace Russian gas with fracking, when it ought to reduce its need for gas.
The Australian government is moving to seize the homes of workers fined for striking.
Privatization of prisons is
an obstacle to accountability
about how they are run and respect for prisoners' rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Transcanada does an incompetent job of pipeline construction.
Chicago's gun violence — which is less than some parts of the US — is fueled by lax gun laws in nearby states.
Cambodia's Draft Law Turns Free Speech into Cybercrime.
Pushing everyone to be a "micro-entrepreneur" (aka "the gig economy") is a disguise for making workers precarious.
Entrepreneurs are often praised for "taking risks". The successful ones say they deserve reward for the risk they took. So what does it mean to force everyone, even people who have no savings, to be entrepreneurs? An old adage says, don't gamble what you can't afford to lose. Most Americans are barely getting by and are already in debt. A social system that requires them to "take risks" is one that makes life insecure.
Don't let concern for treating mental illness let guns off the hook.
Transportation between the Atlantic and Pacific via the Arctic opens new risks of spreading invasive species that can wreak ecological havoc.
Here's a small example of what that can do.
Kudzu in the US is a bigger example.
El-Sisi extended Egyptian voting one more day because the turnout is surprisingly low.
It looks like a lot of Egyptians don't like the candidate(s) on offer and are protesting in the only way that is still allowed. I wonder what will be done on the extra third day to make more people vote.
Tristan Thomas describes the web of fear that intimidates many from criticizing the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
When Palestinians condemn Hitler's mass murder of Jews, Israeli politicians get angry because that's supposed to be an Israeli PR asset.
The Israeli government plans to
revoke the tax exemption
of Physicians for Human Rights for criticizing the treatment of illegal
African
immigrants in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Netanyahu boasted to his supporters about how much he extended Israeli colonies in Palestine, and ridiculed the supposed "peace talks".
Those who read Uri Avnery's articles knew all along that Netanyahu did not take these talks seriously, which made them something between a desperate long-shot and a sham.
Dozens of Palestinian hunger-strikers in Israeli prisons have been transferred to hospitals due to medical problems they have developed.
They are demanding basic human rights for prisoners, and an end to imprisonment without trial.
Students at DePaul University defied dishonest lobbying to vote to call for the university to divest from companies that provide weapons or surveillance systems to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
It is a very narrow boycott, since it does not include companies that profit from the occupation. Still, it will be a good first step if the university adopts the policy.
Various sorts of boycott of Israeli companies and institutions are spreading.
I support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli government institutions and companies that support or profit from the occupation. I don't advocate the broader boycott of Israeli institutions that some Palestinians propose, though I adhered to it during the trip in which they brought me to speak in Palestine.
The US judge that stopped an investigation into Governor Walker's dark money has regularly accepted lavish "seminar" trips funded by right-wing groups.
A performer on trial for alleged sexual assault years ago apologizes for an affair with someone younger than him.
I don't know whether his statement is true. What I can say is that if it is true, there is nothing wrong in it. Criticism of the relationship described here is evidently based on ageism and various sorts of possessiveness. That would be equally true if the girl had been 17 years old instead of 18 at the time.
US citizens: call for no mining in a wild area straddling the California/Oregon border.
US citizens: call on the FDA to make food products report the amount of added sugar.
Mexico's right-wing government is planning to privatize fossil fuels, but Mexicans are pushing for an initiative to reverse this.
In Iran, foreign fossil fuel companies lied about their revenues so as to cheat the treasury. They are no more honest now.
The US-established Iraqi government has repeatedly fired US-provided missiles and shells at the hospital in Falluja.
The US-installed Haitian government used
US-supplied water cannon
against a protest of schoolgirls who called on the government to pay the
teachers
so that the teachers will go back to work.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Iranian journalist Saba Azarpeik was arrested for criticizing the repression of journalists in Iran.
The Wall Street Journal published an editorial which denied not only global heating but the fact of climate scientists' consensus about it.
This is part of an organized and funded campaign to cause hundreds of millions of deaths (a predicted 100 million by 2030 alone), which is a plot for mass murder.
Obama says he will remove most of the US soldiers from Afghanistan by 2016, but this would not count US-paid mercenaries.
Apparently they will still engage in combat whenever they label an enemy as "al Qa'ida".
A woman in Pakistan was killed by her family for marrying someone of her own choice. Her father has been arrested. I hope he never sees the outside of a jail for the rest of his life.
US university presidents are taking
ever-bigger
salaries while paying their teachers ever less.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Chinese government criticized the US for massive snooping.
Of course, China snoops too, as part of its system of massive censorship.
Both of these governments need to learn to respect human rights.
Is Progress in Technology Always Beneficial?
If a new technology will kill 1/10000 of the people who use a product, it's not a big cause of death compared with others. Rather than ban lots of technologies that may kill a small fraction of people, it would be more efficient to check technologies when they get in a position to affect a lot of people, and then require steps to make them safer — much like OHSA.
Chile's President Bachelet proposes to reject neoliberal for-profit educational policies, ending public funding of private schools and providing gratis primary and secondary education for all.
Help Wanted: Slow and Expensive Corporate Accountant.
A Modest Proposal: Stop Spying on Dissidents And Invest "Homeland Security" Money in Climate Change Response.
Calling it "climate change" is a mistake, but I agree with the proposal. Alas, the plutocrats' lackeys that rule the US don't want to do either one.
Keep your wifi network without passwords!
A fugitive minister of the pre-coup Thai government gave a surprise press conference and was arrested.
Is the "supreme leader" of North Korea a despot or a puppet? Or both at once?
China is taking stern measures to limit pollution from cars.
In the US, car companies veto such measures.
Confirmed: it is a mistake to talk about "climate change" if you want people to appreciate the disaster it stands for. "Global warming" gets the issue across better.
I use "global heating" instead because it is stronger.
Iran is imprisoning people for political statements on Facebook.
A new "citizen politics" party in Spain has won several seats in the European Parliament.
Fossil fuel companies are following the path of the tobacco companies in marketing heavily to poor countries.
The NSA records nearly all phone calls in Afghanistan.
Maybe that's acceptable during a civil war, which Afghanistan is experiencing. But if the US claims to be supporting that country's government, it should ask that government's permission.
The Koch brothers are now attacking a plan to rescue Detroit from bankruptcy while preserving workers' pensions.
A coal company blocked a vote in St Louis, against public donations to companies that do unsustainable energy, by citing the Corporations United decision.
The united corporations called themselves "Citizens United", but I call them what they are, not what they claim to be.
Global heating will damage roads, bridges, railroads and power lines.
Under a plutocratic state whose masters won't pay enough taxes to maintain the infrastructure, this will mean lots of expense that will probably be met by starving more poor people.
Apple has banned a game about growing marijuana from the iThing app store.
Games about other crimes such as killing people are still permitted. Perhaps Apple considers them to be less heinous.
In the US: tell Scott you will boycott its products until it drops the Roundup-ready grass.
This GMO grass, engineered to be resistant to Roundup, will not be eaten by humans. But the Roundup could poison people who play on those perfect lawns.
Meanwhile, it will get into all the grass around the US, making organic beef impossible.
The chief of Australian Customs refused to tell a senator whether a chart of a ship's entry into Indonesian waters is accurate.
Republicans in Kansas have imposed a policy on the state university that professors can be fired for tweeting anything the university chooses to consider harmful.
Evidence that the US is still trying to prosecute Julian Assange.
The European Commission is negotiating an antidemocratic "trade treaty" in secrecy, and turned water cannon on 1000 protesters in Brussels.
Based on previous treaties we have ever reason to expect these negotiators to be trying to attack democracy and human rights. The burden is on them to show they have changed their spots. Surely their most violent attack on the public is the treaty itself.
The FBI will start making recordings of interrogations.
A renowned burn surgeon has confessed to taking money to make false testimony to support laws requiring use of flame retardants.
The X-ray scanners that exposed American airplane passengers to the risk of dangerous radiation have been moved to prisons.
The prisoners, I suppose, can't opt out, and if a malfunction in prison causes a radiation burn the prisoners might not get proper treatment.
Two counties in California are suing drug manufacturers alleging that misleading advertisements have provoked overuse of addictive painkillers.
A psychiatrist says that the definition of PTSD is being stretched to the point where everyone who has been through a disaster gets that diagnosis. Of the Bosnians she treated after the war, most of them had other problems that called for other treatments.
US citizens: Call on the EPA to reject the 2,4-D herbicide that is likely to be very toxic.
US citizens: urge Congresscritters to sign the letter urging Obama not to send portable antiaircraft missiles to Syrian rebels.
What Thomas Paine wrote in the 1770s is applicable to plutocracy today.
Some economists attack Piketty's arguments by ignoring the wealth that the wealthy have hidden from records.
This may be the real purpose of some luxury goods: to hide wealth.
In European Parliament elections, voters swung to a variety of anti-establishment parties, mostly right-wing.
This article says that the European Union requires fundamental reform. I've been saying so for years: it needs more democracy, and that lack of democracy makes it difficult to change the plutocratic policies of the euro zone.
Donetsk rebels seized the local airport, and Ukraine immediately counterattacked with air power.
I continue to believe that the Crimea is what Putin really wanted, and that he stirred up trouble in the Eastern Ukraine to draw a line under the seizure of the Crimea.
The Santa Barbara shootings demonstrate the consequences of NRA lobbying.
The Thai military government has imposed strict censorship of dissent.
Republicans fight to shield corruption of science by businesses following in the footsteps of the Tobacco companies.
Some academics are concerned that companies such as Elsevier are tracking and manipulating their activities.
A large fraction of the Aboriginal children in Australia have been taken away from their families to "protect" them.
It is possible they really need this protection, but if so, that is a sign of the stress that their families feel, and poverty and racism probably play a role in causing that.
The government of Sudan plans to execute Meriam Ibrahim for marrying a Christian, but only later. In the mean time, she is kept shackled in prison while she waits to give birth.
When you read about "Islamists", think of this barbarity — this is what they stand for.
Colombia faces a run-off between the current
right-wing
president, Santos, and a foam-at-the-mouth right-wing opponent.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Neither of them would free Colombia from the bondage of its treaty with the US.
An Australian senator is angry that a surveillance camera captured his meeting with someone.
I share his indignation, and I claim that you and I deserve the same respect that he deserves, in the absence of a specific court order.
Coordinated protests against Chevron were held in 16 countries.
There is a project to breed chickens that won't be killed by the future heat waves we are in the process of causing.
To prevent damage from global heating, we would need hundreds of thousands of programs like this. It would be so much easier and cheaper to install renewable energy, and efficiency improvements, and thus curb global heating. But that requires putting an end to plutocratic government.
US citizens: sign
this
petition to restore the Voting Rights Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign
this
petition to the FCC for network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Overcoming the what-the-hell effect.
Large internet companies are suing for permission to disclose the number of national security letters they receive.
What we really need to know is how many people's data they give to Big Brother.
World food prices are close to the 2008 record level, and this is exacerbating the shortage of food in Somalia caused by bad harvests.
Global heating will make both of these factors worse, and a study predicts it will kill a hundred million people by 2030. After that, it will get much worse.
Obama said he would end torture by the US, and pretends to have done so, but he did not.
The US Department of Agriculture is planning to corrupt the standards for organic food.
The UK government changes laws to encourage fracking, which the public hates, and hamper solar energy, which the public loves.
I see only one plausible explanation: ministers are working for the fossil fuel industry rather than for the public.
Millions Worldwide March Against Monsanto.
The Connection Between The Copyright Industry And The NSA.
Obama Administration Sued for Refusing to Disclose Data on Student Loan Debt Collectors.
US media pundit David Brooks advocates reducing democracy in the US, so elites can impose the right-wing dooH niboR changes he claims Americans want.
In fact, few Americans want those changes; it's the elites that want them.
His most basic falsehood is the idea that the US has a lot of democracy now. Democracy is fighting a last-ditch resistance to the plutocracy that Brooks supports. We use our remaining shreds of democracy to oppose the changes he seeks.
Thailand's military rulers are now arresting journalists and academics as well as politicians.
Our society's misogynist strain seems to have inspired mass murder by a young man who hated women for rejecting him.
We can't ban misogyny, but organized efforts could lead many men away from it. Proper gun control could reduce the number of victims one man could succeed in killing.
I felt pain like that for years and years. While I was in college I never had a real date, only rejections. However, unlike him, I never hated any women, not even the women who rejected me. It was my fault that I did not appeal to them, or did not know how to make them comfortable. Where he demanded sex with a woman, I yearned for cherishing love with a woman, which is incompatible with hating.
Thus, while I understand and feel sorry for his pain, I don't understand his hatred. But it seems to be connected to certain standard patriarchal prejudices. He interpreted his pain in terms of those prejudices, and it became mysogyny.
The pain is the result of the tendency of teenage society to make some into idols and others into outcasts. Outcasts never get a chance to learn anything, so they are stuck as outcasts. If only teen society could be structured so that the most popular youths would introduce the outcasts to sex and dating, the outcasts could start to understand relationships and could cease to be outcasts.
Erdogan fired the aide who kicked a protester, after first trying to defend him.
Fighting Poverty
Wages.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Big Credit Suisse's Sweetheart Deal.
Uri Avnery: Obama has given up on the hopeless peace process, but not on supporting Israel's increasing colonization of Palestine.
NBC TV's "Meeting America" series presents more of the right-wing white voices that NBC considers underrepresented.
NBC belongs to Comcast.
The Books-A-Million chain of bookstores has a systematic policy of right-wing bias. Ralph Nader is trying to change it.
Without Keystone XL, the company threaten
to transport
the tar sands oil by rail.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Comcast has 100 lobbyists working for approval of its planned merger. It is also lobbying against network neutrality and supports ALEC.
US citizens: Call on the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to expand protected ocean habitat for the North Atlantic right whale.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to protect
bees from neonicotinoid pesticides.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The House of Representatives voted to continue limitless war. Here is how representatives voted.
The Oregon legislature's sellout to Monsanto.
The UK government blames the thug union for various dishonest practices and plans to use them as an opportunity to attack the union.
It may be true that the thugs use the union to strengthen their cover-ups for attacking people, but some of their wrongdoing is unrelated to the union and obedient to their commanders.
A commercial college in London is even more predatory than commercial colleges in the US.
In Canada, predatory economics is making people sick, even
killing
them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Queensland, a part of Australia, has made it harder for the poor to vote and easier for the rich to buy elections.
Istanbul thugs started shooting at protesters, but hit a mourner at a funeral. Tear gas prevented people from treating him, and he died.
Israel is trying to smear the Palestinian teenagers shot by the army by saying the video recording was fake. B'Tselem says it is real.
The Pentagon is trying to manipulate Americans to condemn Snowden by spreading imaginary fears based on documents he says he doesn't have, assuming they were released in a way the journalists wouldn't do.
Calling for an international effort against antibiotic resistance, which presents a danger comparable to global heating.
Imagine if we let companies block our response to this as they block our response to global heating. No, you don't have to imagine — they are doing it.
The UK has a scarcity of available places to live, but maybe not a shortage of housing space as such. Rather, the wealthy use more than before, leaving little or none for the poor.
The article argues that the cause is government-given incentives to invest in housing rather than something productive. The US also has such incentives (the tax deduction for mortgage interest), and it might cause problems in the US too.
EFF Dismayed by House's Gutted USA FREEDOM Act.
The FBI collects US data for the NSA; then the NSA's data (including what GCHQ gets by spying on Americans) is used for prosecutions that have nothing to do with terrorism or national security.
US thugs are quick to attack leftist protesters, but they leave right-wing "tea party" protesters alone.
Clinton's "welfare reform" has (as predicted) wiped out aid to poor families. 6 million Americans get no income except from food stamps.
Most US drone attacks in Pakistan are
aimed at houses,
but this is hidden because the government calls them "compounds".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The military coup in Thailand is related to the effects of global heating and increasing oil prices.
The UK government has decided to impose fracking by taking away landowners' legal right to reject it.
US mainstream media are supporting the criminalization of journalists such as Glenn Greenwald.
Everyone:
call on Massachusetts Attorney General Coakley
to investigate the role of Massachusetts thugs in the killing of Ibragim
Todashev.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Why did GCHQ
destroy certain specific chips
in the Guardian's computers, such as the trackpad controller?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ranking the world's countries in terms of treatment of workers.
The US is embarrassingly low on the list.
Twitter has bowed to Russian political censorship without even being subject to Russian law.
US citizens: tell Obama to order US contractors to give their employees paid sick leave.
85% of US online consumers oppose Internet ad tracking.
They are focusing on the symptom (ad tracking) rather than the disease (massive surveillance), but it is a step forward.
The US has ignored pedestrian safety for decades in building roads, and it shows.
Compare the 60,000 pedestrians killed since 2000 with the 3,000 killed by terrorist attacks. And that's just in the US! Wouldn't it be more useful to have a Global War on Pedestrian Fatalities than a Global War on Terrorism?
Revealed: [US] Gov't Used Fusion Centers to Spy on Occupy.
Here is more detail.
A US court ruled in favor of force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners on hunger strike.
This is wrong — for any prisoner. Everyone has a right to die.
Teachers in Nigeria protested the government's weak response to Boko Haram.
Other Nigerians are resisting terror by preventing sectarian violence.
Helping Iran
move to solar power
could be a win-win solution
to the political problem caused by Iran's enrichment of uranium.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Taking Action on
US Genocide in Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Russia is about to impose a penalty of up to 5 years in prison for separatism.
Even advocating a referendum for secession would get this punishment.
Information about Haftar, the commander of the militia that is trying to take control of Libya.
If he were doing this against a civilian government with a history of really governing the country, it would be a military coup. In fact, Libya's government is little more than a coalition of militias.
Kafkaesque proceedings have put a 16-year-old transgender in Connecticut in solitary confinement after a life of horrible treatment.
US citizens: call on Congress to stand up to the National Restaurant Association and support restaurant workers.
Everyone: Tell General Mills and Kellogg to reduce their carbon emissions.
US citizens: tell Obama, don't kill the internet.
US citizens: call for an investigation of the Veterans Administration, not a witch-hunt.
A Chinese investment project in Jamaica would destroy a nature preserve with unique species, as well as many local people's livelihoods.
The NSA Bill That Just Passed Is So Weak, Original Backers Voted Against It.
Israeli troops uprooted 1,500 fruit trees on the Nasser family's farm to deny international volunteers the chance to harvest the fruit.
Global heating is a Weapon of Planetary Destruction that can destroy many of humanity's greatest cities, and the fuse is already lit.
The New Populism challenges plutocracy in the US.
Don't be embarrassed by being in debt, but here are smart techniques for getting out of debt.
'Not Lovin' It': Low-Wage
Workers Met
by Riot Police Outside McDonald's HQ.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The former president of Guatemala has been sentenced to prison in the US for taking bribes.
Ahmed Rabbani, imprisoned without charges in Guantanamo for 10 years, got an infection from forced feeding and vomited blood.
A US government report says recoverable US shale oil reserves are just 40% of what was previously believed.
Sea level rise could wipe out lots of farm land in this century.
The Pakistani TV station that barely escaped being shut down has been accused of blasphemy.
The Thai army has converted martial law into a coup.
Landmark sites in the US threatened by rising sea levels.
Confronting
the prejudice against abortion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
While China approaches 10,000 miles of bullet train lines, the US builds expensive advanced weapons (trains of bullets).
I rode the Chinese high speed rail from Beijing to Hangzhou; it took just 6 hours. I'm sure lots of air miles are being avoided. The nasty thing is that passengers are required to identify themselves, but the US is becoming ever more like China in that regard.
A doctor will be prosecuted in Egypt for carrying out female genital mutilation.
The Senate confirmed David Barron as a federal judge.
Just seeing his murder memo was only the first step. The next step should have been to study it in order to determine his fitness as a judge.
The US seems to have made an extensive library of recordings of force-feeding prisoners in Guantanamo.
Visiting Syrian refugees in camps in Jordan.
In terms of human rights, both Assad and his Islamist enemies are horrible. I don't see how any other side could win. Perhaps that means the best thing to do is help Assad win sooner, thus reduce the bloodshed.
A crucial question is, who is responsible for the civil war in Syria? Was it Sa'udi Arabia? Qatar? Did the US help them?
Contraceptives damage the fertility of freshwater fish, but cleaning them out of wastewater looks to be very expensive.
It would be good for more women to switch to IUDs.
The UK's right-wing government is condemning the MDs of the National Health Service for being overworked.
Why are they overworked? Because the government won't hire enough of them.
A Chilean activist abolished the student debt of a failing university by burying the notes that prove the students' debt.
The NFL gave players dangerous painkillers to keep them playing despite injuries, say former players.
I think people have a right to engage in activities that have a high risk of injury, but I don't get any pleasure from watching them do it.
A study confirms: ending people's unemployment benefits does not push them into employment. It only condemns them to hardship.
After the chemical spill, the jail at Charleston WV gave each prisoner as little as 2 cups of clean water per day. When the jail went back to using tap water, prisoners claim it was still contaminated.
Here Are 5 National Landmarks Facing Climate Threats.
Intimidation in college classrooms: some students demand "trigger warnings" before discussing readings whose material could make someone feel uncomfortable.
Education should help people think about right and wrong actions, and that requires encouraging people to think about wrong actions. The idea of trying to shield people from thinking about them is misguided.
A year after Obama was confronted in a speech about imprisonment without trial and the drone assassination campaign, he has done next to nothing to end them.
Both sides in Ukraine intimidate, attack and kill those who disagree.
Google made a trademark threat against a parody site that criticizes Google's activities.
Two counties in Oregon have banned growing GMO crops. However, the state government may stop one of the two counties from implementing this.
Median income has increased in Canada and Northern Europe, and now exceeds the US, even though US workers have to work harder.
The reason is clear: US workers fail to organize (through unions and government) to stop the rich from taking all that is produced.
Ukraine has arrested a reporter for Russia Today.
Egypt's former president Mubarak has been sentenced to prison for corruption.
I expect he is guilty but I doubt his trial was fair.
What makes certain video games compulsive (i.e., addictive).
I have the same psychological mechanisms as the people who get hooked on these games. But I have learned to sit back and think, "Do I really want to spend a lot of time this way? Is there something else I'd rather do?" I have developed the ability to decide to stop.
Thousands of Australian students protested against gratuitous dooH niboR budget cuts.
The mines in Soma, Turkey, systematically hide unsafe conditions for the occasional visits of corrupt inspectors. The workers don't dare report violations.
It is useful to continue to refute pseudoscience even though fools will systematically fall for it.
US
citizens: sign
this petition against "investor-state" provisions that authorize
companies to sue governments for laws that protect the public
interest.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the Senate
to support
the climate resilience fund.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama
to reject
the Cove Point gas export project.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is trying to squeeze out the remaining residents of Nabi Samuel by putting them effectively under siege.
Israel has arrested several Palestinian defense lawyers.
Israeli
troops attacked
Palestinian homes and a hospital near Jenin.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
An Israeli call to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, arguing that nothing else can create the political will to remove the nationalists that have colonized the West Bank.
An Israeli blogger was grilled by the intelligence agency after he requested on Twitter that people tell him the identities of the agents that torture Palestinian children.
The European Union shows what it is like to take the mission of preserving competition seriously.
Everyone: sign this petition to make sure the UN's Green Climate Fund supports only renewable energy.
US citizens: rebuke the 20 democrats in Congress who supported the big ISPs against network neutrality.
The Thai army imposed martial law but did not overthrow the government.
A study finds that the climategate "scandal" had only a transient effect on global heating denialism.
Does experimenting on virulent viruses pose a risk to humanity?
The direct murderers of Anna Politkovskaya have been convicted, but
whoever
hired them is still getting away with it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Journalism in the UK doesn't talk about the Green Party.
Violence towards the common people is established in today's Turkish leadership.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed Palestinian teenagers with not even a shred of an excuse.
The teenagers were far away from the soldiers and doing nothing in particular.
Looking Back One Year After the Edward Snowden Disclosures - An International Perspective.
The reconstruction effort in Haiti managed by the Clintons
has
been terribly mismanaged.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK wants to cut funds for watching for overuse of antibiotics in animals, which can be deadly for people.
The melt rate of Antarctic ice has doubled in just a few years.
With a few degrees of global heating, all sea turtles will be born female. Unless they move to beaches further away from the equator.
The NSA records all phone calls in the Bahamas and stores the data for a month, not for defense against attack, nor even to prevent terrorism — just to prosecute the War on Drugs.
Canadian protesters shut down construction of a tar sands pipeline.
Credit Suisse pled guilty to helping Americans evade taxes, and got a slap on the wrist; its stock price went up afterward.
The bank was not even required to disclose the names of those Americans. It shows the US government still does not dare to get firm with the banksters.
Teaching poor Americans how to organize politically for the rights and well being of the poor.
A bill intended to stop advertising of coerced or "underage" prostitutes would create a much broader system of censorship.
I am in favor of taking effective action to end coercion of prostitutes.
The US imprisons so many black males that long-term medical studies are left with few black male subjects.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has hired a company of copyright bullies to attack authors that post their own papers.
Shell denies the carbon bubble by projecting increasing use of fossil fuel.
In other words, Shell's projections blithely assume we will not stop baking our planet. Which really means Shell is determined to keep us baking it.
This is a scheme for mass murder bigger than the world has ever seen.
Russia will veto a UN resolution to ask the International Criminal Court to prosecute war criminals in Syria.
Everyone: Call on Human Rights Watch to shut the revolving door to the CIA.
Even though the amended USA Freedom Act would be only a small step against massive general surveillance, the NSA is already looking for ways to twist the meaning.
The US says it will no longer use vaccination programs as a cover for spying.
I fear this will not be enough to convince the Taliban to permit vaccination.
US Republicans in many states have passed laws to encourage theft of wages, reduce minimum wage, weaken unemployment insurance, and generally attack workers' rights in favor of business.
US citizens: thank Obama
for committing to peace
with Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Turkish mine company executives are accused of deadly negligence. People have various suspicions about the relationship between Erdogan's party and the mine.
Obama's proposed trade treaty with Europe would increase exports of
natural gas to
Europe, leading
to more fracking in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Supporters of fracking claim it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but these estimates neglect the methane that leaks out of the frack wells.
Cecily McMillan has been sentenced to three months in prison.
She reports on the reasons other women were put in jail with her. The reporter who interviewed her was not allowed to bring in pen or paper.
Putin says he will withdraw Russian troops from the border with Ukraine.
I have suspected ever since the crisis there began that Putin instigated it so as to draw attention away the Crimea.
Baha'i leaders in Iran have been imprisoned for 6 years simply for having an unauthorized religion.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support bills to limit US use of military force in specific ways.
The eurozone rules remain economically harmful, and there is no political will to fix this in either direction.
Now that young people don't understand the meaning of "selling out", artists turn their work into advertising and convince themselves it is ok. Even when they satirize advertising, it is real advertising.
This is the original reason why there is no advertising here or in gnu.org and fsf.org. Of course advertising based on tracking people would be even worse.
Pankaj Mishra: Narendra Modi and the new face of India.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say, don't sign Gene Green's letter because it opposes network neutrality.
I got the info from this article, but you shouldn't report your call to them because the page requires nonfree Javascript code.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: Support Oregon's referendum to label GMOs.
Abbott admits one of his lies about budget cuts in hospitals.
The cuts will hurt working age adults and single parents the worst.
Why not target the rich with tax increases instead?
A Libyan warlord's forces attacked Parliament, saying they were attacking Islamist/terrorist MPs.
Right-wing legislators in US states are trying to make divorce more difficult.
Right-wing theocratic Christians want to force their rigid idea of sexual morality on everyone. This is part of that, as their opposition to sex education, birth control and abortion. Banning abortion (de facto, if not de jure) is their first target but they intend it as the edge of the wedge.
US citizens:
call
on the Dept of Interior to investigate ALEC for undermining
federal land use policy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell McDonalds to pay workers a decent wage.
US citizens: Call for making ISP service a common carrier.
Organizing against the toxic local effects of fracking in Pennsylvania.
When fighting fracking, we should not forget global heating. The fact that 80% of known reserves must be left in the ground is crucial to this issue because it means we really lose nothing by not extracting that gas.
Today's radical rich have come to think like an aristocracy, regarding the non-rich as their inferiors and whatever they pay the non-rich as largess.
Bill Clinton has joined the class war on the side of the plutocrats. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton stays mum, apparently hoping for a chance to rule the US on their behalf.
War depends on lies. If we can stop the lies, we can stop wars.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block the judicial nomination of David Barron until Obama publishes his drone assassination legal memos.
Why the Super-Rich Should Pay Super Taxes.
Militarization of "policing" is supposed to "protect" us, but it is the visible face of a government that serves the plutocrats.
The Post-Constitutional Era: now that the US government can imprison anyone based on handwaving, nobody really has any rights.
Arguing for a federal Ukraine, in a hurry.
Cecily McMillan was convicted of attacking the thug who groped her.
The fact that the same thug attacked several other protesters was suppressed. I doubt any witnesses were allowed to testify about the general predilection of thugs to lie in court.
Al-Jazeera journalist Abdullah Elshamy has been on hunger strike for 100 days in an Egyptian prison. He has been held without charges for most of a year.
The Four Biggest Right-Wing Lies About Inequality.
The leader of Boko Haram says he
intends to sell the captured
schoolgirls
as slaves, and claims that Islam legitimizes slavery.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
In the US, the Southern Baptist church was founded so as to endorse slavery.
The Most Important Economic Number Isn't GDP or Unemployment. It's Wages.
Decreases in the full extent of unemployment do tend to translate eventually into higher wages.
In the past, stimulating economic growth was an effective way to decrease unemployment and increase wages. But this is not true any more, as the US in recent years has seen lots of growth in total economic figures with little benefit for workers. We need to stop measuring the economy with total wealth, total production, etc.
The visible effects of plutocratic regime change in the US.
Religious fanatics in the US make abortion unobtainable
pretending to
be assuring they are safe. The effect is to endanger pregnant women,
who are forced to choose between risky underground abortions and
risky childbirth.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Instead of the inheritance tax, that millions of fools oppose because of some irrational taboo against "taxing the dead", how about taxing bequests as ordinary income?
The US's reputation for
freedom of the press is suffering from
Obama's War on Journalism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Google, Pay your taxes!
US citizens: ask your state officials to support clean energy and oppose the Koch brothers.
Mathematicians, refuse to work for the NSA!
Thomas Piketty has demonstrated that the world is moving beyond rule by an oligarchy of acquired fortunes, to rule by an entrenched oligarchy of inherited wealth.
Australia is trying to pressure Syrian refugees to return to Syria, and has imprisoned them separately to weaken them.
One of them has gone mad from captivity.
Congress is considering a bill to turn the Voice of America officially into a state-controlled propaganda outlet.
The US has resegregated its public schools, and privatizing them makes segregation even worse.
Many "charter schools" are effectively prisons, preparing black youth for other prisons.
South Sudan faces famine and genocide.
I don't know what can be done about it. Is outside influence fueling the fighting?
Students in Kano, Northern Nigeria, continue to defy Boko Haram for education.
However, the same spirit of oppression has already conquered Kano in the form of Shari'a law, with a "morality police" that enforces a code of prudery that has nothing to do with morality.
Several African countries agreed to joint military action against Boko Haram.
Algeria is not in the list. I linked to an article that claimed Algeria has stimulated Islamist violence in North Africa. I found that claim surprising because the government of Algeria fought such an Islamist movement in the 1990s (after suppressing an election which the Islamist party won).
If someone can show me more information about how Algeria relates to this, I'd appreciate it.
Two senators have proposed a law to protect the privacy of student records that schools let companies hold.
This is a step forward but does not go far enough. It protects students from some kinds of commercial abuse, but that's all.
Schools should keep their own records, not entrust them to companies. They should store nothing but encrypted data in any off-site server.
US corporate media ignored the study that demonstrated US laws are controlled by elites, demonstrating that the corporate media are also controlled by those elites.
A defector from North Korea says that Kim Jong Un is a figurehead for a group that does not talk about itself, and that most people in the country don't know exists.
Not surprisingly, the Putin-supporting Russians that took over Crimea are torturing and killing Tatars that oppose the takeover.
It's possible that the people of the Crimea would have voted in a free and fair election to become part of Russia. The Tatar minority would be disappointed, but they would not be entitled to a veto.
But there was no such election, only a Soviet-style charade.
The pro-Putin forces in Donetsk used intimidation to "win" their "election".
It appears that the US and other governments that favor use of fossil fuels interfered with the latest IPCC report, weakening the "summary for policymakers" to understate the danger.
A few years ago, global heating deniers fabricated a phony scandal based on the leaked emails of climate scientists, distorting their words to claim that the scientists were overstating the danger. It will be interesting to see whether they condemn the intervention of much more powerful parties.
An aide to would-be Turkish tyrant Erdogan kicked a protester who was being held by two soldiers acting as thugs.
Erdogan is right that mines have a long history of fatal accidents — but why? Often this is because the mine companies skimp on safety, which they can do because governments fail to do their job and force the mine companies to do the job right.
Sudan has sentenced a woman to death for marrying a non-Muslim.
The death penalty is always a injustice, but not the only one. To punish this in any fashion represents denial of human rights.
Muslim countries typically do not respect religious freedom. The oppression is greatest on non-Muslims, but, as this article shows, they oppress Muslims too.
To punish her would be equally unjust if she had had an affair instead of a marriage. Neither one is wrong.
Religion-based electioneering is illegal in India and a BJP candidate is being investigated for this.
I am of two minds about this law. It is a limit on freedom of speech, but not for people in general, only for electoral campaigns. It is comparable to limits on campaign spending. Religion is to India as money is to the US.
Privacy International has sued to end GCHQ's practice of breaking computer security (cracking).
Please don't call it "hacking".
Cyber-bullying is Canada's excuse for abolishing anonymity online.
A similar law in South Korea was repealed because of its oppression.
The Obama regime's approach to Snowden's reports: "la la la I can't hear you."
The Obama regime calls various countries' public-interest policies "trade barriers". These policies protect health, privacy and financial stability.
The US should adopt many of these measures, but you can't expect that to be done by someone who favors "free trade".
I sent a message to Senator Markey's office opposing the TPP, and received a message saying that he judged trade treaties in terms of gain or loss of US jobs. While that may have made sense back when trade treaties affected mostly the amount of exports and imports, it is absurd today. Nowadays the main effect of trade treaties on employed people is that they help the executives and owners get a bigger share and pay the workers worse. The treaties also attack our rights by abolishing public-interest policies and giving business more power. Finally, they undermine democracy by giving business lobbies an additional lever to use.
So I phoned his office and said the senator was too soft on trade treaties.
You can phone your elected officials, too.
A very careful scientist rechecked his own discovery of gluten-sensitivity and found the problem does not really exist.
US women that advocate gun control are persistently harassed and threatened by gun nuts.
As major US ISPs threaten to stop investing if we don't let them discriminate on the internet, they have been cutting investment for 7 years.
Female CEOs are more likely to be fired that male CEOs, an indication that prejudice is operating.
We should not let the treatment of female executives, or even female not-chosen-as-executives, distract us from the far more larger issue of the rights of female workers and female unemployed.
Some Americans are planting milkweed so that monarch butterflies can continue to exist.
In a few decades, I expect US agricultural land use to diminish due to global heating.
A US appeals court ruled that APIs are copyrightable.
Here's why that is dangerous.
I've seen reports that this isn't a precedent and won't affect many other cases, but even if it is not certain disaster, it is a danger of disaster.
The Australian government has launched an army of lies to justify its attack on the poor and the environment.
Thanks to Snowden, we know Obama regime officials lied to the Supreme Court.
US citizens: Oppose fracking near Chaco Canyon.
In the US: tell Lumber
Liquidators, don't
buy lumber from places in Brazil where most lumber is illegal.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Skeptics on NSA
Reform: Beware
the 'Backdoors and Loopholes'.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
We can't solve this problem by limiting how the NSA is allowed to access massive dossiers about everyone. We need to prevent the accumulation of those databases.
ABC News in the US presented a "debate" about Snowden, with two guests that agreed in supporting massive surveillance and lying about Snowden.
The US announced plans
to increase
shipments of arms to the "moderate Syrian opposition".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Whatever kind of arms they get, a fraction will fall into the hands of al-Qa'ida groups that will either buy them (they are funded by Sa'udi Arabia!) or steal them. There is no way to support a just outcome in Syria by arming rebels.
Assad, evil as he is, is the lesser evil in Syria today. He is also winning, so opposing him means prolonging the war.
For the sake of the future, we should investigate whether the US helped or allowed Sa'udi Arabia to foment war in Syria, back when Syrians were doing peaceful protests for human rights.
Obama has allowed medical insurance plans to limit what they will pay for a procedure, dumping the rest of the cost on the patient.
US hospitals regularly gouge patients, and the only thing that limits what they charge is that insurance companies push the prices down. If this decision means that insurance companies won't do that, the result is that most Americans will be gouged, losing the biggest part of the benefit of medical coverage.
Uri Avnery on Palestinians' expulsion from Israel and their right to return.
Roundup seems to combine with metals in the soil (present in some regions) to cause kidney damage to farm workers.
A report condemned the
way thugs
in Quèbec attacked student protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A mask is now available to fool face recognition cameras.
Some countries and some US states have banned masks, essentially making people helpless to resist surveillance by face-recognition cameras.
With most Britons owning houses, none of the main political parties cares about the suffering inflicted on the poor (who don't own houses).
Almost half the world's population lives in countries where it is a crime to be homosexual.
US citizens:
Tell
the government to protect parrotfish and endangered corals in the
Caribbean.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US government to block federal funds to Texas until Texas implements federal requirements to protect prisoners from rape.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to stop US government raids on state-authorized medical marijuana providers.
In Pakistan, people accused of "blasphemy", and lawyers that defend
them,
are murdered
by Muslim fanatics.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I propose to the US (and any country) to require all immigrants, perhaps even visitors, to make public statements on video saying "I affirm people's right to criticize, mock, even insult any religion or view about religion, no matter who believes in it, even if you or I believe in it." Without making this statement, they would not be allowed entry.
This way, those unwilling to reject religious intolerance will not be allowed to bring it with them.
Portugal has obeyed banksters' orders to drive wages down, but the
banksters
say it has to knock them down even further.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
China has adopted an enlightened policy against financing foreign projects that damage the environment, but Chinese banks disregard the policy.
An organized media campaign continues fabricating a false appearance of doubt about global heating.
Net Neutrality-Defender, Barack Obama, Missing in Action.
Obama is no fool. Why did he appoint a telco man to head the FCC? He must have expected this to attack network neutrality. No wonder he fails to defend it now.
He's not just "missing in action", he has defected to the enemy.
Never Forget: Grandson of Auschwitz Commandant Fights For A Nazi-Free Europe.
Global Inequality and the Destruction of Democracy.
Taking wealth from others gives a higher rate of return than producing wealth. We have to change that.
Millions have been killed by fighting between factions in the Congo, and the US keeps stirring it up because of the minerals there.
The major US ISPs threaten not to make any more investment if the FCC maintains network neutrality.
This article says they are bluffing.
If we give in to threats from businesses, they will push us around. We must treat them like any other bully and tell them that we will never give them what they want for threats. If they threaten us, we will make them regret it.
We could do as some other countries do, and separate the physical cables from ISP service. That way we could have a lot more competing ISPs that communicate over the same cables.
Microsoft lets the US government snoop directly on its "SkyDrive" storage system.
Letting a company keep your data is for clods. We could call it a clod storage system.
Coversnitch: snooping on the public as art.
In San Francisco, buses have microphones. In Canberra, taxis have microphones. Lampposts with microphones are being sold; where they have been installed, I don't know.
The US kept Briton Yunus Rahmatullah prisoner in Bagram Prison for 10 years with the connivance of the UK government. He has just now been freed.
10 admirable things about Uruguay's President Mujica.
Guantanamo prisoners' lawyers have sued
to stop
the Obama regime from destroying videos of force-feeding them, as
well as the brutal way the guards grab these very weak memn from their
cells.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A new US demand seems likely
to make
the nuclear negotiations with Iran fail.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to protect network neutrality from the FCC.
US citizens: tell your senators
to vote
against Michael Boggs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US obsession with an imaginary idea of "sexual predators" inspires policies that deny teenagers the chance to learn to deal with sexuality, while not helping much against real exploiters.
California voters: vote for Proposition 42 (local government transparency) on June 3.
US citizens: tell your elected officials not to listen to the National Restaurant Association's lobbying.
US citizens: call on your senators to support renewable energy measures in the EXPIRE act.
US citizens:
call
on the government to protect parrotfish and endangered corals in
the Caribbean.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US depends on Russian rocket engines which its own sanctions now forbid importing.
China's oil drilling in a disputed area has sparked deadly anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam.
Priests in Chile stole newborn babies, telling the unmarried mothers that the babies were born dead.
This wrong grew out of an underlying wrong. I expect that a considerable fraction of those women would have chosen to have an abortion, but abortion was banned by unjust laws. I think that remains the case.
Lawyers for the al-Jazeera journalists on trial in Egypt have been told it will cost them $150,000 to see secret "evidence" against them.
A report says the rate of US honeybee deaths decreased last winter, but it is still so high that it threatens to wipe them out.
Massive surveillance of Americans by the US government is linked to orders allowing military intervention against possible riots caused by likely future environmental disasters.
I've said that the US government is effectively a government of occupation, subjecting Americans to rule by the rich. Now it has a force of 20,000 soldiers to fight the American people on behalf of the rich.
California fires are behaving in May the way they normally would in October, due to heat and drought.
Now imagine it's 70 years from now, 4C hotter, and even drier, and firefighting equipment has broken down and we can't afford to replace it.
Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Corporate Media [are] "Neutered, Impotent and Obsolete".
The FCC is pushing ahead with its plan to kill network neutrality despite tremendous opposition.
It is not by mistake. That is their mission.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the SAME Act which would make Social Security recognize all legal marriages.
US citizens: call on Obama not to permit export of crude oil from the US.
The US is #1 in bad treatment of new mothers.
We need to know why DHS is an NSA intelligence "customer", and what that means.
South Korea has started ordering ISPs to block web sites without a trial.
Victims call for regulation of air emissions from gas and oil wells.
Anonymous US officials reportedly admitted in an interview that Israel is blocking peace.
Big oil companies no longer bribe officials directly — they do it in subtle, indirect ways.
Ukraine is following a dangerous course by recruiting volunteer militias to fight separatists. They could so easily turn towards atrocities. Also, neo-Nazis will join these units even if the units are not officially aligned with neo-Nazis.
Fast-Food Workers to Protest in 30 Countries in Support of Higher Pay.
For Australia's dooH niboR government, no lie is too absurd.
I suspect they will try to buy the electorate's favor with some sort of spending or short-term tax cut 4 months before the next election.
Prisoners in Guantanamo accuse the US of falsifying the number of hunger strikers and using force-feeding as a punishment.
In the US, workers doing the hardest and lowest-paid work are successfully organizing even though officially they have no right to unionize.
US citizens: call your congresscritters and senators to oppose HR. 6 and S. 2083, bills to authorize liquid natural gas export facilities.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Canadian mining companies harm the environment in Latin America, after bullying governments to allow it.
Israeli forces demolished some "illegal" settlement housing.
The fanatical settlers have generally got government support for their construction even for houses the government deems "illegal". (All the Israeli colonies in the West Bank are illegal under international law.)
Boko Haram: six reasons why the Nigerian militant group is so powerful.
Arguing for a tax on high-frequency stock trading.
Of course, one could go further and put a tax on all stock trading. Why not?
The International Criminal Court is investigating war crimes by the British Bush forces, based on evidence that the crimes were carried out following orders, not by rogue individuals.
Illegal logging is racing in Brazil, with the lumber passed off as legal.
In one state, over 3/4 of the timber is illegal.
Illegal logging is facilitated by a change in law imposed by arrogant business interests a few years ago.
Qatar admits almost 1000 foreign workers have died over the past two years.
California is emptying an aquifer, and this might cause a big earthquake.
The FBI agent who shot and killed Ibragim Todashev while interrogating him was a former thug with a history of violence.
If Todashev really attacked them, why did they have no video to show it?
Plutocratist politicians such as President Clinton smear supporters of democracy by comparing our position to "blood lust".
The latest educational fad in the US is trying to teach children better character, but there is no evidence that it works.
Israel used to reject negotiations with the PLO because it didn't represent all Palestinians. Now it rejects negotiations because the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation means the Palestinian Authority represents them all.
Israeli troops keep on shooting Palestinians even at a considerable distance inside the Gaza border.
US citizens: call on Holder to prosecute Wells Fargo for its foreclosure fraud.
On Press Freedom Day, Palestinian journalists held a protest against Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists. Israeli forces attacked the protest.
The Jewish National Fund gives lots of money to Israeli colonization of the West Bank.
Palestinians are moving back to making houses of earth and roofs of straw. It's easier to rebuild if the Israeli army demolishes the house.
In the US: action against dirty fuels.
How the FCC will handle the issue of rules for
network
neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US women die in childbirth at three times the rate in Britain, due to lack of prenatal care, and government interference with abortion and birth control.
Abortion is considerably safer for the woman than childbirth. Forcing large numbers of poor women to go through childbirth when they wanted an abortion will kill a substantial number of them. But not most of them.
Most of them will begin raising a child they did not want and can't afford to take care of — which is going to cause lots of suffering.
Egypt has
disappeared
Abdullah Elshamy, an al-Jazeera journalist who has been imprisoned
most of a year without charge.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US also holds prisoners never charged with a crime who are on hunger strike, and tortures them every day.
Ukraine is starting to consider a federal approach to restore peace in the eastern region.
Now that the Endangered Species Act has enabled the recovery of the wolf population in parts of the US, the US government has decided to let hunters wipe them out again.
The return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park was not enough to enable willows and beavers to return. The problem is, each one has trouble surviving if the other is not present.
The coal company government in Australia says it will cancel many research projects in clean energy and conservation.
Also it will stop concerning itself with how coal mines pollute water.
Anything at all for the coal companies.
Teenage tobacco-pickers in the US become nicotine addicts by absorbing it through their skin. They often get sick — perhaps from pesticide exposure.
US citizens:
Call
on congresscritters to co-sponsor the bills for single-payer
health care.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US transportation infrastructure is falling apart because Republicans reject increasing the gasoline tax to make drivers pay for fixing it.
Of course, the fossil fuel lobby is at work here. Increased tax on fossil fuels would lead to using less of them, so if you aim to keep consumption at a maximum, you would naturally oppose that tax.
A free software activist finds that around half the emails he sends go to Gmail addresses, and that gives Google too much data about him.
Some people will look at this and argue that we should give up. That's bad logic. Keeping half your email away from companies that do tracking is a good first step, in any case. The point is, we need to go further.
Before we start a campaign for people to move their email to a service other than Gmail, for the sake of their friends' privacy, we need to find a good replacement to recommend. Running your own email server is good but too difficult for most people. The Freedom Box project aims to make that easy, but it isn't entirely ready.
The easiest thing would be an email service like Lavabit in a country that won't cooperate with snooping by the US government or the government of the country where you live.
Thugs are lobbying across the US to be able to conceal how they snoop on Americans.
Calling these thugs "law enforcement" gives them excessive respect, which is self-defeating for any attempt to restrain their power. It also misrepresent facts, such as that thugs frequently commit crimes, often gross bodily harm followed by perjury, and then enjoy impunity.
A plan shows how the US could convert to nearly 100% renewable energy for electricity and heating, by 2050, if the Koch brothers don't stop it.
1/3 of Americans fear they would be tortured if arrested — and they have reason for fear.
Miami thugs shot and killed two criminal suspects, sitting in a car, who had their hands up and were trying to surrender.
Since one had perhaps committed robbery with a gun, it was legitimate to treat them as probably armed and dangerous. That doesn't excuse using them as shooting gallery targets.
A study finds that heavy users of mobile phones are 3 times as likely to get brain cancer as other people.
Whether this is important depends on how frequent these types of brain cancer normally are. If the phone changes a .01% chance into a .03% chance, neither one is really worth worrying about.
Tax data confirm UK economic growth benefits only the top 1%.
This is what the plutocrats' economists call a "recovery" which is why economics students rebel against that sort of economics.
China is arresting dissidents because the 25th anniversary of the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square is approaching.
In Australia, everyone will feel the pain of the new budget, but it falls mostly on the poor.
That's what plutocratists do.
The UK government is trying to accelerate the inundation of London by cutting subsidies for solar farms.
The European Court of Justice ruled that Google Search must stop showing links to old personal information about people that demand it.
This is not going to amount to substantial censorship.
Indeed, it could point the way to limiting massive surveillance.
A US coal mine with a history of violating safety rules killed two miners.
This is part of the general US tendency not to inspect industrial facilities including mines, chemical plants and perhaps soon chicken processing plants.
Putin threatens to retaliate for US sanctions by
ending
cooperation over the International Space Station.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Search engines have substantial influence over elections — enough to control the outcome in races that are only fairly close.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "Don't give portable anti-aircraft missiles to Islamist fanatics in Syria".
The last US president who did this was Ronald Reagan, who encouraged terrorism against Americans by rewarding Islamist hostage-takers with similar missiles.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Glenn Greenwald: from Martin Luther King to
Anonymous, the
state targets dissenters not just "bad guys".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
It's not just in digital surveillance that the state attacks dissidents. Look at how the US repressed unions.
The New York City thug union is blocking measures to reduce the thugs' random street harassment of pedestrians there.
While the tendency to harass predominantly members of minority groups demonstrates the nastiness of the practice, random harassment would not be any more legitimate if it were done equally to people of all races. And it would still fall disproportionately on the non-rich.
Israel regularly puts Palestinian children in solitary confinement.
It probably makes them confess — whether guilty or not.
In effect, the US has returned a substantial fraction of blacks to slavery by putting them in prison. Privatized prisons in the US make $20,000 a year from each prisoner by using them as slaves.
The US is failing to inspect thousands of oil and gas wells.
This is the result of the insufficient taxes on business, together with pressure for a "small state" which won't protect us from business.
Pesticide companies are using tobacco business tactics to distort science and mislead the public.
Australia asked the US to spy on Australians.
The Free-Trade Regime: Oligarchy in Action.
If Obama were not the oligarchs' man, he would not be supporting the TPP.
FCC Commissioner Wheeler was shocked by the opposition to his plans to attack network neutrality, so he is proposing cosmetic changes to confuse the matter.
The one who is really at fault here is Obama, for appointing someone who was a lobbyist for the telecom companies that this plan favors, and apparently still considers himself one. Obama should have known Wheeler would try to do the wrong thing. I expect Obama did know, and intended this outcome.
Glenn Greenwald: how the NSA tampers with US-made internet routers.
The increase of poverty in the US has increased domestic violence against women.
Florida Couple Fined $746 For Crime Of Feeding Homeless People.
By enforcing this unjust law, thug chief Chitwood makes himself personally responsible for the injustice he carries out. He ought to quit rather than enforce that law.
The heartless people that passed the law are probably Republicans and responsible for the cruel policies that make people homeless. Then they kick those people when they are down.
They deserve to be sentenced to a year of homelessness.
Low-wage work keeps workers busy for so many hours that they have no time to study new skills. (Even supposing they can afford to.)
It is unethical for universities to entrust their computing and email to Microsoft services because this exposes them to surveillance.
In addition, letting someone else's server do your computing means you lose control over that computing. This is known as Service as a Software Substitute.
Microsoft services also involve running nonfree software.
By the way, the article falls into confusion when it calls services "products". A product is something physical that you buy, own, and take home.
Toxic chemicals that can cause breast cancer are all around us.
The boat to carry exports from Gaza will be repaired.
Global heating effects will hit three regions of Africa especially badly.
Estonia is using internet voting, and naturally its security is ludicrous.
You must not trust a computer for voting, not even a computer inside a voting machine.
Endocrine disruptors in food packaging and toothpaste interfere with human sperm.
This is very useful since it could help curb human overpopulation. That will help avoid the collapse of technological civilization. We will then be able to replace these ingredients, once they have brought the human population down to a safe level such as 500 million.
US citizens: Support Senator Warren's college finance bill.
This would
tax the
rich a little to relieve student loan debt.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama and Holder not to imprison reporter James Risen.
Risen is ready to go to prison to avoid putting a whistleblower in danger. The US government is wrong to try to make this necessary.
US citizens:
call
on the USDA not to approve another neonicotinoid-like pesticide.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating is strengthening a specific southern wind pattern, reducing the heating of Antarctica but exposing Australia to drought.
Some US states ban people from wearing masks in public.
In the age of massive surveillance, such laws are an intolerable injustice. Ban surveillance systems or legalize masks!
Zero-hours contracts tend to intimidate workers so they abandon their rights.
The truce in South Sudan did not last long.
I Went to the Nutritionists' Annual Confab. It Was Catered by McDonald's.
Many professional organizations, and even organizations for worthy causes, have been corrupted by money from business.
Investing in energy efficiency is a way to reduce pollution while boosting the economy.
Iranian women are protesting religious oppression by posting photos of their unveiled faces.
Gentrification of slums in Rio de Janeiro has forced thousands of poor people into squatting.
This requires a two-pronged solution: increased house construction and reduced birth rate.
Recent research dispels the last hope that the complexities of the Earth's system would reduce the heating caused by a given amount of greenhouse gas.
To avoid catastrophic heating we must emit less greenhouse gas. However, the heating-denial machine keeps rolling on to make sure the Earth does not escape the Koch brothers' intended doom.
The Western Antarctic ice sheet is melting, and it will eventually raise sea level up to 4 meters (13 feet).
It will take centuries, but many great cities will be drowned. I think Miami will be little loss, but New York, Washington DC and Boston will be a shame, not to mention London, Amsterdam, Shanghai and Tokyo.
The East Antarctic ice sheet may go too.
Way to go, Koch brothers. Can the landowners that will be flooded out sue you now for the decrease in their property values?
US citizens:
oppose
exporting natural gas from the US.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support the Smarter Sentencing Act.
The UK has
authorized
export of repression equipment to several repressive regimes.
As part of Obama's War on Journalism, Barrett Brown pled guilty to
being an
"accessory
to unauthorized access" to Stratfor's computers.
He was reporting on what was found.
China is
following
Obama's example: a journalist is being imprisoned for publishing
leaks.
Amazon demonstrates its dangerous power by
punishing
one publisher.
This is one of many reasons you should not buy from
Amazon.
We defeated SOPA/PIPA, but legislators that serve the copyright
industry are trying to
bully
advertising networks into dropping clients accused of facilitating
sharing.
While I oppose this intimidation campaign, those ad networks are evil
because
they
track people.
One ISP has
consigned
the FCC's web site to low speed access as a form of protest
against the FCC's attack on network neutrality.
This demonstrates how any ISP will be able to slow down access
to sites it does not like.
On the
background
of Boko Haram.
The idea of Algeria's supporting that organization and other Islamists
seems implausible on its face. Is there any other evidence to support
the claim?
One Israeli soldier was disciplined, apparently, for embarrassing the
state by
abusing
a Palestinian while a camera was watching. Thousands of soldiers
responded by expressing support for the soldier. They openly say
nobody should be punished for abusing Palestinians.
On ABC television,
Disney
advertising counts as news.
The Koch brothers are
prepared
to spend over a hundred million dollars to buy the next US
election.
Obama's Orwellian order: US intelligence officials are
forbidden
even to acknowledge the fact that Snowden told us something.
Food
Defenders Protest Corporate Takeover of 'Organic' Standards.
Legalization of prostitution in Germany
has not
ended mistreatment of prostitutes by their employers, including
forcing them to work too much, stealing their pay, and stopping them
from quitting.
We should see this in the context of a general pattern of abuse of
workers in fields
ranging from
fast food
to manufacturing
to construction
to domestic
service
It should not surprise us that this happens in prostitution also.
I don't think this is a reason for criminalization of prostitutes or
their customers, any more than it is a reason to criminalize factories
or their customers. Rather, governments must do more to prevent abuse
of all kinds of workers. In some cases this requires additional
regulation of employers designed specifically to prevent abuses.
The Mozilla Foundation proposed a weak halfhearted network neutrality:
to
declare ISPs'
connections to servers a common carrier but not the connections with
users (the ISPs' customers).
The intended result of this is to block one specific abuse —
discrimination by ISPs among web servers — without blocking other
abuses directly against internet users. For instance, ISPs would
still be allowed to punish their customers at the request of the
copyright industry.
No thanks, Mozilla Foundation.
A summary
of what
the US is in for if global heating is not curbed.
Alexander Aan, imprisoned in Indonesia for saying he was an Atheist,
has
been released from prison. He still faces the threat of murder
from Muslim fanatics.
Punishing the victims of religious hostility for "instigating" it is
like punishing women for "instigating" rape. Oh right, these
religious fanatics would probably do that too.
Before his sentencing, Aan let down the cause of religious freedom in
Indonesia by apologizing for his "crime" and officially converting to
Islam. Like
Chelsea Manning's apology, that gave the enemy a victory that it
could never have got on its own.
Right-wing ideology calls for a "small state" in regard to help for
the non-rich and regulating business, and
a "big
state" in regard to welfare for the rich and punishing the rest.
Justice
is the
opposite on each of the four points.
Israel's fanatical "settlers"
are starting
to clash with the state.
Usually they attack
Palestinians, and
the "security" forces support them.
The "referendum" in Donetsk seems to
be neither
free nor fair.
It is Putinesque bullshit.
After the
Crash, We
Need a Revolution in the Way We Teach Economics.
The article doesn't mention that neoclassical economics tends to
promote policies that harm the non-rich.
Bottles are being
made using
plastic retrieved from the ocean, but this is a tiny fraction of
the plastic waste that continues to enter the ocean.
Uganda's anti-gay law
has encouraged
harassment and violence against gays, at a rate far exceeding the
application of the law itself.
US
citizens: oppose
legalization of natural gas exports from the US.
Glenn Greenwald writes about
the decision
to reveal Snowden's name, and what happened after he did.
With hindsight, I think it would have been advisable for them to wait
for Snowden to reach a safer refuge before revealing his name.
No Sense of Urgency: Obama's
New Solar
Energy Commitments Are Still Just Baby Steps.
US citizens: call on Congress
to repeal
the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
A worker in the Walmart that Obama visited reports what it's like to
be unable
to rent a place to live or pay for medical tests because Walmart is so
bad to workers.
In the US: call on Home Depot and Lowe's
to stop
selling neonicotinoid pesticides, since they endanger bees.
In California:
vote for Ellen Brown for state treasurer.
Big pharma companies
free
ride on public research funds while dodging their own taxes.
Rating global heating
commitments
and actions of various countries.
To make giant "US" corporations pay their taxes instead of "deferring"
them, we could
impose a tax
on deferring taxes.
Jail the
Bankers? Obama Has Been Their Staunchest Defender.
Most of Europe has submitted stupidly to the power of the European
Patent Office, which imposes software patents, but
Denmark
has a chance to escape.
A publisher
tried
to force law students to rent a textbook for a year and then
surrender it.
For the moment, the publisher has backed down, but we need to organize
to
stop
publishers from distributing ebooks this way. The right of first
sale should be extended to ebooks.
It's fatuous to ask whether massive surveillance "works" for some
purpose (even preventing real terrorism), because it
oppresses
people's ability to think.
Studying the underpinnings of
unconscious
prejudice.
AT&T
Claims Common Carrier Rules Would Ruin the Whole Internet.
Some servers collect so much information about users that they
can
anticipate what users want.
If your own computer, running free software, made these
suggestions, it would not be dangerous.
A Hong Kong publisher of books banned in China has been
imprisoned
in China for "smuggling industrial chemicals".
I wonder what evidence they could possible have to prove that he has
smuggled these chemicals on multiple occasions. Did they repeatedly
inspect his baggage? Or are they making it up?
Albuquerque residents tried to do a
citizen's
arrest of the city's chief thug.
Giant Indonesian companies use
shell
companies in British colonies for tax evasion.
The full solution is for the victim countries to change their tax laws
so that businesses can't send their profits out without paying tax.
In the US:
call
on Yahoo to stop dishonest ads for crisis pregnancy centers.
More CO2 in the air promotes plant growth, but it also
promotes microbes that convert soil carbon into CO2, and
they
cancel
out.
Nigeria had 4 hours' warning that Islamist fanatics were planning to
kidnap schoolgirls, but
did
not try to stop them.
Rebels in South Sudan and the government have
signed
a truce.
Calling for a
boycott
of the ice hockey championship that will legitimize the dictator of
Belarus.
If Putin keeps attacking human rights in Russia, Belarus may cease to
be special.
A controlled experiment ties the death of bee colonies directly to
neonicotinoid
pesticides.
Pope
Francis Calls for 'Legitimate Redistribution' of Wealth.
The US government report on
global heating and
its effects, present and predicted.
A
map
of how US temperatures have been changed.
A committee of UK MPs calls
for reorganization
of the oversight of intelligence agencies, citing Snowden as the
impetus.
A Republican federal judge is trying to shut down an investigation
into corruption
in Wisconsin Republican fund-raising.
The UK government's opportunistic attacks on benefits
have pushed
the rate of evictions to a 10-year record.
One of the 16,000 political prisoners in Egypt is a US citizen.
Mohamed
Soltan has been on hunger strike for 100 days.
California considers
an additional
tax to build up a reserve to spend in bad times. A public bank
could do the same job.
Pressuring the US government to try to rescue the girls kidnaped in
Nigeria can
do harm rather than good.
It appears that the peoples
that consume
the most feel the least concern about what they do to the natural
world.
The UK
is making
an intensive effort to end female genital mutilation; agents talk
with families that seem to be leaving on a trip to carry this out.
I wonder if similar efforts might be effective against human
trafficking. Often that relies on victims' ignorance of what is
really likely to happen to them.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to protect
endangered Florida panthers from oil extraction.
The petition for a referendum to ban drilling in the Yasuni
was rejected
on the grounds that many signatures were invalid.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to defeat the "Regulatory Fairness Act".
US citizens: phone your senators to block David Barron's confirmation
as a judge until Obama complies with the court order to
publish the gist of the assassination memo Barron wrote.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
It is useful to report the results of your calls
to Just
Foreign Policy, but their pages sometimes fail to run with
Javascript
turned off. Please turn off Javascript before you try to report
your call, or
use LibreJS, and
complain to Just Foreign Policy if the page does not function that
way.
Alberta (Canada) is holding required hearings on a new oil extraction
project but has
barred
environmental groups and indigenous peoples.
It's equivalent to saying, "Favorable testimony only," but without
admitting that's what it is.
The Alberta government has taken the side of the oil companies against
the people. It is that simple.
Stanford University has
pledged to
divest from 100 companies whose business focuses on coal.
9
of the 12 jurors in the Cecily McMillan trial have written to the
judge asking him not to sentence her to prison.
The EFF explains why the USA Freedom Act, just approved by the
Judiciary Committee,
falls
way short of what is needed to protect privacy in the limited context
of phone calls.
More about the
"Section
702" excuse for surveillance.
Snapchat has admitted its messages
can
in fact be saved.
The attempt to prevent them from being saved is a kind of DRM. In
effect, the goal of Snapchat is to give the message's sender control
over what the message's receiver's computer does with the message. As
always, that requires nonfree software and a secret communications
protocol.
A poll finds
half
the people in eastern Ukraine dislike the EU and the US, and slightly
more dislike Russia.
They should distrust all three.
US
companies participated in the US snatch-and-torture network in
Africa.
Pope Francis has not given support to the
US
nuns that are being punished for focusing more on social justice
rather than on attacking abortion.
Business lobbyists have gained a lot of influence in the European
Parliament, and a revolving door has started where
ex-MPs
become lobbyists.
We should demand our candidates pledge not to work for business
lobbies after they leave office.
A
trillion
dollars is being invested in oil projects that will be worthless
(because they won't be used) if global heating disaster is averted.
If the investors were in danger of losing their money, we would have
no reason to care about that. But they won't give up so easily. They
have a lot of money, and they are using it in
many
ways to make sure we remain on track towards global heating
disaster.
Obama joins Republicans in
endorsing the
myth that charter schools are good for students.
What they are good for is profit.
Right-wing members of the US Supreme Court tend to uphold free speech
preferentially
for the wealthy and right-wing.
The USA Freedom Act was
approved
by the House Judiciary Committee, somewhat weakened.
It is a significant step forward, but
nowhere
near enough to restore privacy rights on the Internet.
Although Seattle has approved a $15/hr minimum wage, greedy bastards
in business are still
fighting
to delay and undermine the policy.
Measures to help working people (more generally, regulation of
business) can backfire, but often they are very helpful. However,
each time a measure is proposed, the greedy bastards will always come
up with an excuse to claim that it will backfire. Occasionally the
claim is valid; usually it is bogus.
They construct a bogus claim by cherry-picking the evidence and the
arguments, adding some lies when they think they can get away with it.
When it becomes clear, later, that the claim was bogus, they pay no
penalty.
Therefore, we must never believe claims by a business or its
mouthpieces that regulating the business will hurt the public. They
are inherently untrustworthy on the matter,
To find out which measures really might backfire, we must get advice
from someone they have not corrupted.
An increasing level of CO2 makes many food crops
less
nutritious in iron, zinc and protein.
This won't affect the world's rich; we get plenty of iron and zinc and
too much protein. But it will be a disaster for billions of poor.
Raif Badawi has been sentenced to
1000
lashes of the whip, and ten years in prison, for starting a web
site to discuss (i.e., question) the role of religion in Saudi Arabia.
I am not sure whether a sentence of 1000 lashes is fatal, or whether
it is meant to be fatal. Does anyone know?
Saudi Arabia needs regime change.
Update: 1000 lashes are usually not fatal if they are done
50
per week. But you might wish you were dead.
After a marijuana legalization campaign meeting in Australia,
the thugs
arrested
86 people for driving under the influence of marijuana, on the
pretense that doing so is dangerous.
There is no evidence for that claim,
no
indication that marijuana makes driving less safe.
Getting a driver's license in the US takes a lot of time — and
poor people often
can't
afford to do that just to vote. The point of voter ID laws is to
take advantage of this.
US pot farmers are
putting
Mexican pot farmers out of business.
A study of unauthorized sharing computes by extrapolation that the
fines demanded by the copyright industry total about
6
times the world's GDP.
It is not valid to extrapolate from Finland to the whole world. I
expect that at least half the world's population has never received a
copy of any song or movie over the internet. But even if we suppose
that only 16% of the world's population behaves like Finns, the fines
would still equal the world's GDP.
Please don't refer to unauthorized sharing as "piracy". That's a
smear term promoted by the publishers that make these bogus claims
about "losses". Every time you refer to sharing as "piracy", you
give them very helpful support.
I reserve the term "pirate" to refer to someone that raids ships.
Using the word "steal" to refer to making a copy is likewise
propaganda, as well as evidently false.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
Comcast is trying to destroy the
practice
of billing that makes competing ISPs possible. And the Comcast
merger would give it more power to do this.
A new surveillance and security threat: the US government's
one-size-fits-all
internet
ID.
EFF:
Join
Students and Scholars In Speaking Out About the Effects of Mass
Surveillance on Campus.
When universities cease to run their own email servers and force
students onto gmail, that is part of massive surveillance on campus.
The W3C is
mostly
ineffective at resisting the demands of businesses to pervert the
World Wide Web.
Putin said that the referendum pro-Russia separatists plan to hold
about
secession
of Eastern Ukraine should be postponed.
I don't see anything wrong with adopting a federal structure in
Ukraine, offering that and other regions more autonomy. It could
result in more democracy, in addition to possibly satisfying the
concerns of ethnic Russians in the eastern part.
I speculated some weeks ago that Putin was
provoking
this second crisis so that, by eventually giving in, he could get
the world's attention off the Crimea.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republican and Democratic populists are converging on common political points.
End the failed "war on drugs", say five winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
I'm glad they have had the daring to speak up.
US citizens: phone your senators to
oppose the nomination of Michael Boggs
as a federal judge.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
He voted for a state bill to interfere with abortion.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Two thugs in Dallas shot, separately, people who were no threat to them or anyone, then made false accusations against them.
This is not news; this is standard practice. What's news is, these thugs are being prosecuted.
Israeli Arabs face repression for criticizing the government on the internet.
Israeli holidays are accompanied by total curfew on Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Arab-Israeli journalist Majd Kayyal remains under house arrest for visiting Lebanon.
Non-Arab Israelis that visit Lebanon don't get prosecuted.
Israeli soldiers arrested several Palestinian youths armed with video cameras who were suffering harassment from Israeli expansionists.
Israel's "security forces" regularly treat Palestinians with the sort of prejudice and dishonesty that the New York Thug Department applies to protesters and black males.
One Israeli politician sees
hope for peace
in the reconciliation of
Fatah and Hamas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A village of Bedouin shepherds near Jericho faces expulsion by Israel, which has been squeezing them for 8 years.
Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes doesn't always ignore Israeli law. Sometimes it proceeds by stretching the law.
Of course, the law itself is unjust.
US citizens: call on the EPA to establish stricter standards for exposure to pesticides.
The Thai constitutional court ordered Prime Minister Shinawatra to step down.
The US and UK are offering support to fight Boko Haram.
I doubt that rescuing these girls, as such, is possible. Defeating Boko Haram might be possible somehow. I am in favor of it in principle, but it is easier said than done.
Australia tows boat people into Indonesian waters after putting them into lifeboats from which some safety equipment has been removed.
The threat to the Great Barrier Reef from planned dredging is even greater than previously reported.
Is Ben and Jerry's still campaigning against this? Can anyone tell me?
Australia's government is eager to cut support for the poor so it can maintain subsidies for fossil fuels.
If plans are carried out, there will be 400 dams in the Amazon region. Their ecological consequences have not been studied.
Specific examples of how global heating is damaging agriculture around the US.
Emily Letts posted a video of her abortion to show how safe it was.
In Afghanistan, abortion substitutes for birth control.
Merger Would Let Pfizer Duck A Billion Dollars In U.S. Taxes Each Year.
The merger should be blocked, as all mergers of large companies should be blocked, for the sake of competition and to reduce lobbying power. The right fix for this reduction in taxes is to eliminate the tax deduction that this merger would take advantage of.
If companies were taxed at a
progressive
rate, it would give them an incentive not to merge.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
A proposal for restoring peace in Ukraine.
Is facial recognition arriving at the point of total tracking of people on the street?
Global heating is inundating the land of some native peoples in Alaska, leaving them nowhere to go.
Global
heating threatens
electric power generation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Poaching in Africa is enabled by corruption of the officials who are supposed to prevent it.
Unfortunately, anything that is illegal and sells for a high price tends to encourage corruption. (As illegal drugs do.)
Since the drugs really work, and some are addictive, while neither is true for ivory and rhino horn, I hope it is easier to reduce demand for the latter two.
An Australian organization that raises funds for the right-wing ruling party from business advertises it is selling the opportunity to meet with Australia's treasurer. But he says he's going to sue a newspaper that said he was for sale.
It appears that NATO countries are regularly bombing in Libya.
Global heating effects in the US are causing harm in areas from agriculture to allergies.
The Top Ten Global Warming 'Skeptic' Arguments Answered.
Norway has admitted snubbing the Dalai Lama to suck up to China.
Poverty And Inequality, Not Teachers, Are the Drivers of Deficits in Education.
Uighurs in China, who were resisting Chinese domination, are turning to terrorism and might take up Islamist extremism too.
Mubarak's party's leaders have been banned from running for office in Egypt.
They probably discredited themselves, but no more than al-Sisi's supporters have.
Ukraine's
neo-Nazis continue
to play a role.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
How the RIAA and its masters, the record factories, shaft older musicians while using them as an excuse to attack.
A lot more detail about the trial and conviction of Cecily McMillan.
It appears that the jurors voted to convict her because the video did not seem to support her statements of what happened. Reportedly it might not be clear enough to show what happened.
A arrogant Brazilian politician boasts of representing the political power of agribusiness, and says they will destroy anything and everything that gets in their way (indigenous people, rain forests, wildlife, probably human rights).
These are the sort of people that would tear Earth's ecosphere to shreds trying to get a bigger share for themselves.
Australia's offshore prison for boat people is a hell-hole.
US TV stations are supposed to require political advertisers to post information, but many stations are ignoring the requirement.
It appears that some Canadian telco is giving the government access to each and every packet that is transmitted.
US telcos do the same.
How NBC and Our Reactionary Media Perpetuate the War on Drugs.
They say "smart" phones are addictive, but maybe it's just that businesses force their staff to use them all the time.
The article shows evidence that this practice makes employees less productive. If that convinces some companies to stop making their employees work an 80-hour week, that's good. But protecting workers from exploitation should not depend on convincing employers that exploiting them is counterproductive.
What we really need is a labor movement strong enough to force companies to stop exploiting workers, as we saw recently in France.
The problem of interruptions only occurs if you are notified immediately when a message arrives. I spend all day reading my emails and answering some of them, but I only get new mail when I connect and ask for it. Thus, it never interrupts me.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them
to allow
master limited partnerships for renewable energy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens, and anyone in medical fields: call on the American Pharmacists Association to stop its members from supporting inhumane executions.
Everyone: call on Shell to stop working with Gazprom and stop undersea Arctic drilling.
US citizens: call on Obama to protect the habitat of sage grouse. This will also protect other species that live in the same habitat.
A little more global heating could unlock 3-4 meters of sea level rise. It will take millenia for all of this rise to happen, but it will be unstoppable even if we lower the CO2 level back down.
A spinoff of the RIAA is illegally lobbying for stricter copyright rules for radio stations.
Ms Clinton's false statements about Edward Snowden and pertinent US laws.
The idea that she made these statements out of ignorance is unbelievable. She must have thought long and hard about what she would say, and these statements represent her allegiance to the security state.
Her support for unjust power extends to other issues too, so I will not support her or vote for her. If she is the Democratic nominee for President, I will vote Green.
An employee of WIPO accused a director of misconduct, but WIPO has wiped the report off the net by threatening lawsuits.
Almost 1/3 of US women who survive breast cancer have lost their jobs in 4 years.
The right-wing party governing of Queensland (Australia) has put a coal company in charge of its environmental policy since 2012.
Piketty has neglected the detailed causes of the temporary 20th century setback for the power of the wealthy. Studying them suggests ideas for how to repeat that setback.
Faux News explicitly asked a guest on a show not to talk about climate change (global heating).
Toddlers have an impulse to help others. Modern materialistic society can teach them to lose it.
US citizens: phone your senators to give renewable energy the same tax benefits that fossil fuels get.
I would go further and suggest taking these benefits away from fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject subsidies for charter schools.
E-cigarettes can make nicotine less dangerous, but they might also encourage people to continue or resume smoking.
Perhaps this can be changed by making e-cigarettes conspicuously different from cigarettes.
Human Rights Watch says that many protesters in Venezuela were abused after arrest. 150 were held incommunicado. Some had their bones broken.
Even if the US organized these protests as part of a destabilization campaign, that doesn't justify this.
Obama nominated as a judge a lawyer whose secret legal memos purported to justify Obama's assassination drones.
Putin gave medals to 300 journalists that cover the situation in Ukraine in accord with his wishes.
The Pope is stepping up the campaign against those who "follow Jesus for money".
Introduced small snakes are destroying the wildlife of Gran Canaria, where they have no predators.
Global heating, pushing up sea level, has already drowned one atoll in the Pacific. The inhabitants of other atolls wonder, who's next?
The Ukrainian army is fighting rebels around Slavyansk. The rebels have heavy weapons including mortars and armored vehicles.
Are these the armored vehicles that were taken away from the Ukrainian army a couple of weeks ago, or are they different ones?
Reporters interviewed one rebel militia unit and found only Ukrainians who favored Russia, no representatives of the Russian government. Also no mortars or armored vehicles.
Ukrainians, and not those living just near the Russian border, should be afraid of IMF shock treatment. But you'd have to be nuts to prefer Putin's dictatorship.
Economics students around the world have condemned the way economics is taught, focusing on the easily falsified neoclassical approach to the subject.
Thug departments and others around the US store license plate camera data in a private data base which aggregates all the data.
Furthermore, the clients of this company are forbidden to talk about their use of it. (It should be illegal in general for any public body to bind itself to secrecy about its use of a company's services.)
The New York Times has been working hard on
pro-Kiev spin
in covering fighting in Ukraine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is, nonetheless, plenty of support for the conclusions that the rebel militias in Eastern Ukraine are organized by Russia, that they are armed (and with more than small arms), and that they are trying to drag their region by force under the power of a tyrant that lies without hesitation.
US citizens: tell Congress that raising the minimum wage will strengthen social security too.
US citizens: Hold predatory career colleges accountable for abusing students and ripping off taxpayers.
Everyone: state your solidarity with
Harvard students calling for divestment
from fossil fuel companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on your state legislators
to oppose ALEC's agenda for outsourcing public services.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
2013 was a bad year for freedom of the press, in "free" countries as well as others.
It's not just due to evil regimes: religious fanatics that believe they have a right not to be offended are also responsible. Until not that long ago, Christian fanatics censored through prosecution and violence, just as Muslim fanatics still do.
The US National Climate Assessment will recognize that global heating is already causing changes in the climate, some with very harmful effects.
Energy efficiency could create 600,000 skilled jobs in the US while saving 17 billion dollars and burning a lot less fossil fuel.
The Odessa thugs allowed a pro-Russia mob to rescue pro-Russia prisoners arrested after the battle at the labor union building.
The NRA builds up fear of gun violence to facilitate gun violence, but institutionalized racism and inequality contribute to the fear.
Iranian right-wingers are pressuring to reject a nuclear deal with the US, saying the deal would not offer Iran enough.
Complex supply chains for food products, together with governments that do little to inspect, mean that fraud is rife.
The root of this problem is that governments are subservient to the food companies, so have ceased to inspect them. Frequent inspections at the food processing company's expense would create an incentive to simplify the supply chains.
Thomas Piketty and others propose a common eurozone income tax and a joint eurozone debt, to take over the debt of austerity-stricken countries such as Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.
This seems like a step forward, but I think that an element of direct democracy is needed too. The European chamber could be unnecessary if the people vote directly as the second chamber.
If such a big change is done, it would be a good opportunity to allow governments to create money without borrowing it from private banks, which is greatly profitable to the owners of the banks at the public expense.
Intelligence agencies and workers rights:
political surveillance at its
worst.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Obama is trying to increase the effective extent surveillance by giving companies immunity for caving and handing over data on people in response to invalid subpoenas.
ALEC is organizing owners of coal-fired power plants to fight against EPA limits on CO2 emissions.
This is in addition to many state bills intended to keep the consumption of fossil fuel as high as possible. Their arguments are based on comparing the costs of avoiding global heating disaster with an impossible fantasy future.
Poor people in the UK have to pay cash in advance to get electricity or gas, so when they can't afford both heat and food, their heat gets cut off immediately.
A thug crashed his car into Tanya Weyker's car, gravely injuring her. To evade blame, he accused her of driving while drunk.
It was convenient for him that her injuries precluded testing her for alcohol at the time.
We need to put take these thugs off the streets and put them in prison.
Uri Avnery: the reconciliation of Hamas and the PLO is a crucial step towards peace between Israel and Palestine. No wonder Netanyahu is screaming.
Australians are pressuring the big banks with a campaign to move their money if the banks continue supporting fossil fuel projects.
The twisted system of medical research mostly avoids searching for new antibiotics. It's merely life-saving, not lucrative enough.
For decades, most new drugs that save lives were not developed by Big Pharma. We should tax Big Pharma heavily, and use the money to fund medical research that aims at curing diseases.
US citizens: call on the Federal Bureau of Prisons to bring back education for prisoners.
US citizens: call on Scalia to recuse himself from the case about dishonest "crisis pregnancy centers".
Shale gas (fracking) and shale
oil can't
keep the US supplied with fossil fuel for very long.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
But even if it could, we would destroy ourselves by burning that much.
Obama and the mainstream media assiduously flatter and fawn on the young plutocrats that are going to inherit billions.
On the morality of video games which involve rape of a nonplayer character.
Video games raise another moral issue: if they contain nonfree software, that attack your freedom. I won't have a nonfree video game program on my computer. But that's an orthogonal issue, so let's assume the game software is free.
I think that there is something disturbing about enjoying these games, but it is not limited to them; it extends to games involving killing of nonplayer characters, too. But it does not include all ways of enjoying them.
I've played such games, and enjoyed them, because I dissociated myself from the killing aspect, considering those shapes on the screen as nothing more than shapes on the screen. Thus I saw the game only in terms of a tactical challenge. If I had imagined the shapes vividly as people dying, I would have neither wanted to play nor been able to focus my mind on winning.
Thus, the killing of fictional characters in a game can elicit (at least) two different reactions: the player can dehumanize shapes on the screen, or imagine them as humans and dehumanize both shapes and humans.
When a game displayed the "death" of the nonplayer character in a graphic way with a gory corpse, that made it more work to completely dehumanize the character. I did so anyway, but I considered the gore a drawback of that game. But maybe it means that players, competing to win, face the challenge of learning to disregard the gore. That could be a good lesson.
Our imagination can leap large gaps. The game of chess is an abstraction of battle; most of the pieces stand for people. A player could imagine the taking of a chess piece vividly as killing a fictional personage, and wallow in emotion about it. Such distraction from the moves would not help one win at chess.
The US has
a long history
of torture; it did not start in Abu Ghraib.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The People's Assembly vows to bring down UK's austerity government.
They are starting in the right direction, but could use a positive program as well as a negative one.
Australia's right-wing government has broken so many campaign promises that it sets a record for lies.
An armed pro-Russia militia took over a building in Odessa, and were defeated in battle by armed pro-Ukraine militia.
Ukrainian troops are attacking two cities.
I am not very impressed by the pleas of the unarmed separatists that try to block the army in support of the armed separatists. This is not a protest movement, this is a rebellion or an invasion, and one that has imitated Putin's dishonesty at every turn.
Obama compares opponents of the TPP to "conspiracy theorists".
The criticism of "conspiracy theory" is applied to claims that certain parties have planned to cooperate, when there is no evidence that they have done so.
In the case of the TPP, the governments involved do not deny that they are secretly discussing planning joint action (i.e., a conspiracy). The only room for uncertainty is about what they will do.
Cheat Fresh: Subway Is The Biggest Fast Food Wage Thief.
Too Big to Jail Continues: DOJ May Charge Two Banks with Criminal Acts, But Not Hold Them Criminally Accountable.
Ann Moody, homeless grandmother, has been arrested 59 times in Los Angeles for sitting on sidewalks.
If 100 homeless people did that, the thugs would give up trying to stop them.
Many US cities persecute the homeless. Callous selfish people demand this. San Francisco has prohibited parking RVs on the streets because some people were living in RVs they own.
Many parts of the US prohibit giving food to homeless people; the idea is that they should starve to death rather than make the city look messy.
Vermont is considering adopting single-payer health care.
The Bangladeshi RAB has assassinated 700 people since 2004.
Who
is selling it cell phone surveillance equipment?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A local leader of al-Qa'ida in Arabia was killed in a fight with the Yemeni army.
The world is better off without him, but we should not get our hopes up that this will do great damage to al-Qa'ida. Underground organizations depend most of all on their ability to recruit.
If US drones are providing air support, this is much better than the usual use of war-drones — assassination, far away from any battlefield. People will understand and forgive the use of arms on a battlefield, and civilians usually won't be threatened because usually they will have fled the area.
The ANC, which nobly fought apartheid, has since become corrupt through and through.
The UK Labour party proposes to undo the privatization of British Rail.
I'm in favor, but what's crucial, in the economy, is to make the rich and businesses pay more taxes.
Protesters convinced Condoleezza Rice to cancel a highly paid speech at Rutgers.
Yahoo announced it will disregard "Do Not Track" settings and profile users anyway.
"Do Not Track" does not really mean users are not tracked. Sites that honor that system agree to limit how they use the tracking data, but they do not stop collecting it, so it does nothing to reduce the dossiers available for Big Brother to view at will. Thus, I have mostly not paid attention to Do Not Track.
However, this defiance by Yahoo might heat up the surveillance battle.
Reading on paper seems to be better than reading ebooks, even in a direct practical sense.
This point is interesting, but doesn't go beyond the shallowest of values: what it's like to read. Ebooks affect other values that people have considered important.
For instance, when technology and EULAs block and prohibit people from giving or lending books freely to others, they damage our social relationships. Most commercial ebooks are like that.
When ebooks are designed for products that snoop on users' reading, and permit a store to remotely erase their books, they damage our human rights. Most commercial ebook readers are like that.
See https://stallman.org/ebooks.pdf for more details.
Even acquiring a copy means being snooped on, if you have to identify yourself to the store. That's massive surveillance. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html.
I've read some ebooks on my computer's screen, and it's ok. But I'd never get an ebook under the limits that commercial ebooks impose today. I won't let the question of what it's like to read distract me from what it's like to lose freedom.
Apple's patent aggression against Android resulted in a loss for free software, even though Apple did not get the big money or the injunction it sought.
Software should be exempted entirely from patent law.
The Heatland (*) Institute worked long and hard denying the harm that tobacco does to health, before it took its expertise to denying global heating.
* Officially the "Heartland" Institute.
US citizens: phone FCC Chairman Wheeler and demand real net neutrality.
Seattle's
$15 Wage Plan Proves Power of Radical Pressure.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Flagrant racists such as Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy should not
distract us from pervasive
everyday
institutional racism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine's army attacked rebel checkpoints, and set up its own, encircling Slavyansk.
Rebels attacked helicopters with surface-to-air missiles, which confirms they are really soldiers armed by Russia.
The Syrian rebels are evacuating Homs under truce.
Educating Israelis about the expulsion of Palestinian civilians during and after the Israeli war of independence.
We should not forget the context in which these expulsions occurred: Arab armies had just failed in the attempt to conquer Israel and expel the Jews.
Both sides committed massacres, too.
The only thing to do about those massacres is for both sides to acknowledge them and apologize for them.
Eco-defenders can be though of as an "indicator species" for the ecological health of a region.
Global heating denialists claim that global heating is not happening, and (simultaneously) that humans are not responsible for it, and (simultaneously) that it is beneficial.
A right-wing Australian politician says he will prosecute Ben and Jerry's for false advertising for saying that the dredging of a coal port threatens to damage the Great Barrier Reef.
What Ben and Jerry's says seems to agree with all authorities, except those working for the coal companies. In effect, these right-wingers are following the Putin path: lie, and accuse their enemies of lying, and threaten to punish them for bogus crimes.
I hope that Ben and Jerry's responds with an attack.
In the Boston area: May 4 teach-in on police militarization.
US citizens: sign
this
petition against the ALEC agenda.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign in support of amending the constitution to overturn the Corporations United decision. It's usually referred to as the "Citizens United" decision, but I prefer to call that organization what it really is rather than what it pretended to be.
The full harshness of No Child Left Alone has fallen on every school in Washington State.
After Naji Mansour refused to work for the FBI, the FBI had him tortured in Sudan.
A transcript of his conversation with the FBI.
The US has had at least 8 US citizens imprisoned, even tortured, by other pliant governments, and one of them has been sentenced to life in prison based on a worthless confession probably tortured out of him.
Tennessee passed a law to punish drug addicts that get pregnant.
The ideal solution for such situations is an abortion, but the same Republicans who want to punish these women for getting pregnant are also trying to deny them the abortions that would enable them to become un-pregnant, and from the contraception that would enable them not to become pregnant. These religious fanatics want a chance to make someone suffer, and they have seized on the weakest possible victims: the babies they can force pregnant addicts to have.
Vladimir Putin calls for Ukraine to remove Ukrainian troops from southeast Ukraine.
How about withdrawing the Russian troops from southeast Ukraine, eh Putin?
Ukraine says it will impose conscription to build up its army.
It would take 6 months to a year for this to have any practical effect. I expect that the crisis will be over by then.
Parents of girls kidnaped by Boko Haram protested for the Nigerian government to take action to rescue their daughters.
A large part of Amazon's success is due to exploiting a tax loophole.
A study reports that US corn yields are increasingly vulnerable to hot, dry weather — which is exactly what global heating is making more frequent in large parts of the US.
Meanwhile, global heating also makes
intense
storms and flooding more likely.
Global heating threatens to leave amphibians in the Rocky Mountains
no
refuge from introduced trout.
Google has
agreed
to stop profiling students based on their scholastic accounts.
That does not make it ok for a school to give student data to Google.
Doing so facilitates government surveillance of those students.
Everyone:
thank
Google for deleting the phony ads from "crisis pregnancy centers"
whose purpose is trick or pressure women into not getting abortions.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass Senator Warren's 21st Century Glass-Steagall
Act.
Everyone:
push against Sodastream
for supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
US plans to end inspection of chickens means
more
chemicals that make workers sick.
Greenpeace protesters tried to block the arrival of the Russian ship
carrying
oil from the Arctic Ocean.
If Europe wants to punish Russia for real, it should invest more in
efforts to reduce its use of fossil fuels.
Australia's right-wing government believes that most Australians are
too well-off, and the rich need more. So it
proposes
a wide range of dooH niboR measures. Everyone in Australia will
have to make do with less,
except
the wealthy.
Wages will be
reduced.
College students will have to pay more.
But it still won't be as bad as in the US: unemployed graduates
won't owe lots of money that they will never get
The UK's "recovery" is a fraud: people's
real
incomes are expected to continue declining through 2018. And
that's ignoring the danger of another crash.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
It appears that the Lusitania, sunk in 1917 by a German submarine, really was carrying munitions for Britain.
1/3 of the women in the US military get raped. And then they get denied veterans' benefits for treating the consequences.
Global terrorism increased 40% in 2013, perhaps partly because US assassination drones motivate people to join terror groups.
The Australian ruling party is selling businessmen access to the prime minister.
Human trash in the ocean accumulates in the deepest marine trenches.
Most of it is plastic; the plastic can be toxic to marine organisms or get them tangled up.
The World Health Organization warns we must take action to keep antibiotics effective before it is too late.
Others have warned about this for years. Will WHO be enough to motivation governments to act against the deadly lobby of agribusiness?
Nanoparticles in diesel engine exhaust do considerable harm to human health.
The Sultan of Brunei is imposing cruel Islamic law. This includes punishment for not participating in prayers.
Contempt for religious freedom is standard in Muslim countries. Christians also have a tendency to impose their religion through the state.
Ukraine's Government Has Lost Control of East, Says Acting President.
One man has personally bought control over a large part of Missouri's political system.
Japan, ordered to cease hunting whales in southern waters, has started hunting whales in the North Pacific.
Afghan poppy production is higher than ever.
The "internet of things" means tracking every thing you possess (and reporting everything about them to a data broker and Big Brother).
Whatever inducements are offered, don't accept spy products into your life. Of course, the first spy product is the portable phone, which you might already be using, if you have not energetically defended your freedom.
A most peculiar peace proposal:
give Israel a mostly deserted piece of Texas
in exchange for making peace with Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I wonder what the inhabitants of that area would think.
Italian thugs vociferously support three thugs who were convicted of killing a young man.
Don't forget how Italian thugs attacked a school full of sleeping protesters and lied about them.
The campaigners for a referendum on drilling in the Yasuni reserve say that Ecuadorian officials are sabotaging their signature drive.
Three Ecuadorian opposition politicians face imprisonment for making accusations against President Correa.
Regardless of the validity of those accusations, it is unjust to put people in jail for making accusations. Many countries have such unjust laws, including France and Italy.
We need laws to restrict the use of face recognition.
Bigotry against homosexuals in Africa was instilled by colonial powers.
That doesn't excuse Africans' bigotry today.
The European Union
is stopping
Apple and Samsung from suing each other for patent infringement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Unfortunately, its "solution" is a terrible mistake: imposing "reasonable and nondiscriminatory" terms. In practice, this means patent licenses that discriminate against free software by charging license fees per copy, which free software developers can't possibly pay. There is nothing "reasonable" about that.
A study estimates that 4% of the prisoners on death row in the US are innocent.
The point is that many prisoners on death row have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, and once that happens, they get no aid in proving their innocence. Thus, they are not counted in figures for number of exonerations. However, if the same care were taken for those cases, they'd probably be exonerated at the same rate as those whose sentences were not commuted (if not more!).
Verizon will plant cookies in its subscribers' computers so as to link their (non-Verizon) desktop browsing with their mobile browsing.
Kerry has retreated from using the word "apartheid" in connection with Israel. But then, Kerry does not know as much about apartheid as Desmond Tutu.
People who fled to Australia seeking asylum will get asylum in Cambodia instead.
At an abstract level, the substitution may be acceptable: they will be allowed to settle in a place where whoever threatened them before can't reach. However, will they face destitution there?
The US and UK are trying an experiment in arbitrary punishment, pressuring banks to close the bank accounts of people involved in work that the government disapproves of — for instance, pornography.
This highlights the danger of massive surveillance. If the government finds out what work you do, it can arbitrarily get your bank account shut.
A boat being built in Gaza, to carry exports for sale, was attacked with a bomb in an act of terrorism, presumably by Israel.
The Israeli excuses for attacking boats sailing to Gaza, while not really valid in that case, are totally nonsense for boats sailing out of Gaza. The only motive for this is to cause suffering.
US citizens: call on candidates to take the "people's pledge" to resist outside campaign spending.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for a vote on repealing two unjust surveillance laws.
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