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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.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect funding for Planned Parenthood.
US citizens: tell Congress to reject the Schumer-Portman corporate tax giveaway.
A widened road in India would separate some tiger sanctuaries, making it hard for tigers to survive in any of them.
Baby foods in general are too sweet, to the point that they interfere with development of the ability to sense other tastes.
I would guess that this isn't the only kind of harm that results from baby food that is too sweet.
On the difference between bullshit and lies.
US SWAT teams hardly bother to check their information before they raid innocent people's homes.
Human Rights Watch says Saudi Arabia is using US cluster bombs in places near civilians.
If you access the video from youtube, please take care to avoid running the nonfree code included in youtube pages.
Britons in debt are collecting their state pensions in advance to pay the debt.
This will leave them destitute later, along with those who invested their pensions in pyramid schemes.
The US is making "improvements" in nuclear weapons and seems not to consider what the effects will be when Russia makes similar "improvements" in its own nuclear weapons.
Modelling suggests that the Middle Easy will face an increasing water shortage for the next 25 years.
That doesn't mean it won't get worse after that.
Drought, related to global heating, provoked the civil war in Syria. Drought in other places can cause more wars.
China to Relocate Almost 1,000 Chemical Plants in Wake of Tianjin Blasts.
Guatemala's president is likely to be impeached for corruption, but his wrongs started with mass murder in the army's US-backed dirty war to keep the indigenous peoples in submission.
Lexmark is trying to crush the US ink cartridge recycling business with patents, claiming that cartridges originally sold outside the US and brought by printer users into the US cannot be recycled.
I'd get rid of the problem by changing patent law so that Lexmark can't use patents to prevent independent manufacture of replacement cartridges for its printers. The business model which this supports — cheap printer but cartridges are expensive, or cheap phone but using it is expensive — systematically leads to nasty restrictions on the users. We should therefore get rid of the business model.
The article spreads confusion by using the term "intellectual property", which it is a mistake ever to use. That term incoherently lumps together a dozen or so laws which have nothing substantial in common. Even copyright law and patent law have very little in common except the one sentence in the constitution that those two laws spring from.
Calling all these laws "intellectual property" implies that they must be similar, which is an obstacle to learning what each of them really says and does.
It also uses other propaganda terms such as "protected".
200 people convicted in Baltimore, whose trials were based on cell-phone tracking that the state did not tell the defense about, may get new trials.
Thugs must not be allowed to weasel out of disclosing information that defendants are entitled to on the basis of signing a non-disclosure agreement. If they can't tell defendants when they used the cell-phone tracker, they should get rid of it.
Finally US gun nuts found one gun that they don't like — a gun that authenticates its user. They sent death threats to the seller.
The bankster's cruelty to Greece is a somewhat harsher version of what they are doing to other European countries.
How about copying North Dakota's pharmacy law in other US states?
The BJP, now India's ruling party, is tied to several massacres of Dalits.
China to Relocate Almost 1,000 Chemical Plants in Wake of Tianjin Blasts.
The sadistic Lord's Resistance Army is involved in ivory trafficking.
Norway is paying Liberia to keep its forests standing.
Banning child labor in making the products we use can have harmful secondary effects when the children live in poor families.
However, there may be a better solution than child labor, as we can see when a parent says, "[the children] are making money that is used to pay their school fees." Why are there school fees to pay?
In the 80s and 90s, World Bank "aid programs" imposed neoliberal "structural adjustments" that in many cases replaced gratis schooling with school fees. If we undo that externally imposed injustice, maybe children won't need to work for their school fees.
Indianapolis uses art projects to redistribute printed books.
Please don't use ebooks unless you're prepared to do something like this with them.
Chris Christie wants to track all visitors to the US all the time, so as to find them if they overstay their visas.
How could they do this? Implanting a portable phone into the visitor's body would work. As a bonus, they could listen to all conversations that take place near the visitor.
Doing this to visitors is a great wrong, but it would not remain limited to visitors. It would subsequently be extended to US citizens the next time some spectacular crime committed by a citizen provides an excuse.
Up to 200,000 defied the Malaysian state to protest demanding the resignation of the prime minister, who doesn't respect democracy very much.
Fortunately the thugs refrained from physically attacking them this time. That may be due to the participation of the former prime minister, who didn't respect democracy very much either. Is this really a factional power struggle? Is he trying to co-opt it into one?
Israeli veterans, shortly after the 1967 war, described the atrocities they saw, or carried out.
The loss of Arctic sea ice threatens the entire Arctic ecosystem. Many species may go extinct.
Don't sneer at people for the foolish wishful thinking that leads them to fall for a mostly-fraud like Ashley Madison. The same sort of foolishness leads people into other frauds.
Apparently many people don't understand the difference between folly and evil. They are fundamentally different. Being a tempting victim may be foolish but it isn't evil. It may be foolish to walk down a deserted street at 23:00, but it's not wrong. Therefore, if someone robs you or rapes you there, your foolish choice may be part of the cause, but it has no effect on the moral responsibility for the crime, which falls in this case entirely on those who carried it out.
This confusion supports the practice of blaming the victim (although people may have other reasons for wanting to do that).
In the UK, 80 people per month die shortly after being labeled as "fit to work" and losing disability benefits.
Do you think Cameron feels bad about their deaths? I don't.
The wild and useless response to an attempted shooting on a European train: identity checks for everyone.
There are so many places where you can find a bunch of random people to shoot that it makes no sense to take such measures on just one of them.
The NLRB ruled that some subcontracted temporary workers should be considered employees of the real employer, and have the right to unionize.
The use of subcontracting is largely an excuse to pay and treat workers worse. It's possible that this decision could reduce that harm.
The US crackdown on sex workers is driven by the state's desire to steal their money.
There is a general pattern in the US of governments using oppressive measures to take people's money. The Ferguson pattern of repeatedly fining and jailing poor people is one example. "Forfeiture" is another. The root cause is that we don't tax rich people enough, so governments are desperate to get money from somewhere or other.
Saudi Arabia has taken a small step towards recognizing women's rights by allowing them to vote and run for office.
Since the country is actually ruled by the king, the elected officials, no matter who votes for them, don't get to decide much. Still, they could provide practice for a future democracy.
The California Academy of Sciences has decided to divest from fossil fuel companies.
Now we must up the pressure on other important science museums.
Reports about some real women that used Ashley Madison.
It is painful to keep a secret from someone you love, but I put the blame on the possessiveness that makes it necessary to keep the other relationship a secret.
If you're black in the US, a thug might stop you for looking him in the eye. Or for not looking him in the eye.
Republican presidential candidates are know-nothings regarding the economy; in particular, in regard to potential or real economic crises.
That makes sense, because they're not working for Americans overall, only for the rich ones that donate their campaign funds. An economic crisis, as Naomi Klein has pointed out, is a great opportunity for them to take from other Americans.
Babies that were in the first trimester of gestation when Iceland had its financial crisis had, on the average, a lower than usual birth weight.
This diagnostic could indicate a higher rate of various problems.
United's WiFi service blocks many news sites.
I never sign up for United's in-flight wifi because it would require me to run nonfree software (Javascript in the page) and to pay in a way that would identify me.
China now attacks the Chinese developers of software for circumventing Chinese censorship, and seems to have pressured Github to delete them and others.
Did Github give way to that pressure? The article does not say.
Some software on Github is free, but most of it is not properly licensed and thus not free.
Will increasing gun violence motivate Americans to overcome the power of the NRA?
Monitor drones are being used in construction to identify workers that are slower than other workers.
This is part of the "push yourself harder for less pay" economy.
Egypt has sentenced Al Jazeera journalists to three years in prison, basically for the crime of reporting on the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood's political positions violated human rights, of course, since it was Islamist. But that doesn't justify prohibiting it or declaring participation in it a crime.
Europeans are considering imposing metal detectors at train stations after an attempted massacre on a train.
There are so many places someone could shoot people. It is silly to pile security on the last one someone tried to use, especially given that the dismal failure of this attack will probably incline the next shooter to try some other sort of place.
The private guards at Australia's immigration prison in Nauru handcuffed an 8-year-old boy prisoner as a joke.
This example is an outlier in its specifics, but it is typical of the spirit of the Nauru immigration prison.
A US court accepted the NSA's catch-22: if you can't prove you personally were spied on, you can't sue about whether they are allowed to spy on you.
Judges that twist the law like this are inviting everyone to spit on it.
An example of what happens when teachers are graded based on students' standardized tests.
In the US and the UK, this practice accompanies a push to replace public schools with privatized "charter schools". If the policy is to punish the teacher whose class tests lowest, or punish the school in the district that tests lowest, there will always be someone to punish, always some school that there is an excuse to close.
The Canadian government is trying to fire scientist Tony Turner for singing a song that criticized the anti-science pollutician Harper.
Harper has done many things to suppress science in Canada so it can't show the harm that his policies are doing.
US citizens: call on Senator Kirk to apologize to US negotiators for comparing them to "Nazi appeasers".
US citizens: call on the State Department to scrutinize the Upland pipeline approval carefully.
I gave this text:
Please carefully check the proposed Upland pipeline for danger of local pollution and harm. But you should block the pipeline in any case, lest Transcanada use it later to send tar sands oil into the US.
Everyone:
call
on Thailand to drop charges against Andy Hall.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
This page does work with Javascript disabled, although it does not show an immediate indication of that fact.
Candidates O'Malley and Sanders accuse the Democratic Party of limiting debates so as to favor Clinton.
The British Library didn't dare accept an archive of Taliban documents for fear of prosecution under UK censorship laws.
The fact that the question even arises shows that UK laws are far outside the realm of justice. Any law that makes it a crime to have a copy of some publication is inexcusable tyranny.
In the US and Russia, the government impersonates other organizations' sites to inject malware.
From January to June, oil companies spent 6 million dollars lobbying in California against laws to limit the damage they do to people.
As glaciers shrink and disappear, the water they used to provide in the summer ceases to be available for farming.
Turkey has arrested British journalists.
US beekeepers say that the EPA's pollinator protection plan is passing the buck to states that fail to resist the pesticide companies.
It appears that the US military is distorting intelligence about PISSI to give a false impression of success in fighting it.
The US military has made public claims about readiness to attack PISSI which I was skeptical about. The attack on Mosul, announced months ago, has not taken place.
Underestimating the enemy is a recipe for defeat.
Senator Cory Booker about how to reduce mass incarceration in the US.
Many poor Americans spend are in jail because they can't pay fines. Ferguson and many other US cities have set up this system to extract money from the poor because the rich have imposed Republican governments (often by cheating — gerrymandering or blocking Democrats from voting) and thus cut the taxes that fall on them.
Taxing the rich and businesses more will thus help reduce mass incarceration.
The Satanic Temple staged a counterprotest to denounce the lies of Christian extremists that protested against Planned Parenthood.
I am not merely "pro-choice", I am pro-abortion. For many women who get pregnant, abortion is a lifesaver, literally or figuratively. In addition, it avoids exacerbating human overpopulation.
North Dakota has permitted thugs to fire not-usually-lethal weapons from drones, due to the efforts of a drone manufacturer's lobby.
This increases militarization of thugs, which we rather need to decrease.
Some movie theaters in the US will present security theater as well as movies.
The security theater may occasionally keep out a few killers, those who don't have specific plans — but they'd be just as happy to shoot people waiting on line to be searched.
Denver thugs defied a court order by arresting activists of the Fully Informed Jury Association and seizing their pamphlets as well as their table and other property.
Two thugs have been fired after their accusations against a Seattle bus driver were proved false. The driver had made a recording.
The article shows several acts that were wrong. First of all, the thugs' false accusations were wrong. Mere firing is not enough punishment for thugs that make false accusations. They deserve prison for that.
It is also wrong, and cruel, to try to kick sleeping homeless people off a bus onto the street. The company is wrong to have that policy and the driver was personally wrong for trying to implement it. I have to salute those thugs for refusing to help. (Not that this excuses making false accusations.)
Meanwhile, the article makes a perverse fuss about using the word "fucking". What difference does it make if the driver said "fucking"? Are bus drivers in Seattle punished for saying that? Next they will be punished for saying, "artichoke", "sidewalk" or "disappointed". If the thugs got the driver in some sort of trouble based on this chickenshit "accusation", the thugs are to blame, but especially whoever listened to the accusation and tried to hurt the driver is also to blame.
Hilary Clinton's use of a private email account continued the practices of the State Department under the Bush regime, including Condoleezza Rice when she was secretary of state.
It was a bad practice, and should be changed; but Clinton is not personally responsible for it.
Colin Powell explains what normal State Department practice was like.
I still will not vote for Clinton, because she is in bed with businesses that it is the president's job to restrain from harming us.
The University of Kansas did Koch-funded pseudoscience research whose purpose was to undermine standards for renewable energy.
Seven forms of systemic racism in the US.
When the Bank Robs You: Wells Fargo Contractors Allegedly Stole Family Heirlooms Rescued From Nazis.
The WTO ruled against India's domestic-manufacturing preferences for subsidized solar equipment.
It is not clear that this will cripple India's solar energy program, but considering that that program needs to be much bigger, we should not let anything get in its way.
Jamycheal Mitchell was jailed for 4 months awaiting trial for stealing a few snacks.
If he had been convicted of such a theft, he probably would have been sentenced to less time than that. It is fundamentally unjust to imprison accused people so long. In the US, this is typically done only to the poor.
Most of the people imprisoned this way don't die from the experience. But Mitchell did. Jails tend to provide inadequate medical care, and grudgingly. In Mitchell's case, he seems to have starved himself to death because he could not stand being in jail.
Declassified CIA Documents Reveal How Disastrous America's Post-9/11 Plans Really Were.
For instance, it is clear that Dubya was seeking an excuse to attack Iraq even before the unrelated Sep 11 attacks provided an excuse.
The article ends by counting the "cost" of Dubya's wars, but it seems to include only the direct monetary costs to the US. It doesn't count the damage done to Iraq and Iraqis, or the existence of PISSI.
A novel approach to kicking poor people out of a city: harsh enforcement of lots of permit requirements on trailer parks where poor people can afford to live.
You'd think that they would fine the landlords rather than the people who live in the trailers.
A campaign to sweep Melbourne for unauthorized immigrants was cancelled in response to a protest about racial profiling.
The UK's planned repression against unauthorized immigrants is perfect for facilitating enslavement of immigrants.
More about how the coal-funded "Energy and Environment Legal Institute" harasses real climate scientists.
The funded denialists are the other end of the pincers.
According to the UK minister in charge of work, working is the best remedy for illness.
An analysis of the pit Gaza is stuck in, which seems to offer no way out.
Psychology, and other fields of science, need rules that will reduce the number of irreproducible results.
Papers that can't be reproduced, but which there is no reason to retract, should be transferred to the Journal of Irreproducible Results. The authors should find that quite a deterrent.
One county in Georgia admitted to Organized disenfranchisement of black voters, but surely it's not the only one.
Whereas Alabama, which requires a driver's license or similar ID to vote, is talking about closing most of the driver's license offices. The wealthy will be able to afford to get a driver's license. Pesky poor people won't.
Financial companies prey on poor US blacks, offering them a small lump sum instead of the compensation they are due, over a period of years, for having been brain damaged by lead paint.
Of the 5-6 million "women" in the Ashley Madison data dump, less than 10,000 actually used the site to talk with anyone. Essentially men paid the site for an imaginary opportunity.
It follows that hardly any of the male users ever arranged an affair through the site. (The few that did, probably found a prostitute rather than a real affair.)
Moreover, the site was set up so strongly to bring in men that it almost impeded real women from making accounts.
Germany Trades Citizens' Metadata for NSA's Top Spy Software.
Everyone: reprove Shell for drilling in the Arctic.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Chelsea O'Donnell left home and went to stay with an acquaintance, who has been accused of "endangering" Ms O'Donnell.
Her age is nominally 17 but perhaps really 18, not that it should matter.
It's par for the course that there is no information at all about what concrete actions his supposed "endangering" actually consists of, to justify the claim that the term "endangering" applies.
Perhaps the only substance behind this accusation is prejudice, or pandering to the anxiety of Ms O'Donnell's adoptive mother.
California cities have cut water usage by 30%.
That would be a giant step towards saving water for the future, except for one thing: most of California's water use is for farming and nonrenewable energy. If those keep using up water as if there were no tomorrow, cities may find in a year or two that there isn't enough left in the reservoirs even for their reduced usage.
By the way, if you call this "the drought of the century", specify the 20th century. But 21st century standards, this one isn't special.
Drought has also hit a large part of Europe, damaging the harvest there.
This too will become frequent due to global heating.
Melting ice in the Chukchi sea has forced walruses to crowd on the shore, which may be fatal.
As soon as PISSI's suicide bomb went off, in a group of Turkish Kurds and leftists that were headed for Kobani, Turkish thugs began attacking them.
The survivors are convinced that the thugs made a joint plan with PISSI.
Turkey helped PISSI plenty before.
A safety study of the design for packaging US nuclear waste for long-term storage found many problems with the proposed plant.
The Department of Energy suppressed the study while saying everything was fine.
Oxfam and other groups call for ending Israel's siege of Gaza.
Transcanada wants to export tar sands oil through the Bay of Fundy.
A single spill of highly toxic bitumen could destroy the marine life.
Even the noise from the numerous tankers' engines would harm the endangered right whales that live there.
If the bitumen comes from tar sands, its extraction (done with strip mines) destroys wide reaches of land, and burning it contributes to global heating disaster. So many bad consequences can avoided simply by not extracting the tar sands.
An AT&T WiFi hotspot was found to inject ads into browsing of unrelated web sites.
The US senators pushing the disguised surveillance bill CISA are planning to use it to make the CFAA more dangerous to future Aaron Swarzes.
The EPA underestimated the water pressure in the waste from the Gold King mine, and thus the danger of a big toxic spill into the Animas River.
It seems PISSI is using mustard gas taken from Assad's supplies.
The "transformation" of New Orleans worked by expelling most of the black New Orleanians.
Everyone: tell Warren Buffet to stop attacking Nevada solar energy.
Governments across the world are shutting down civil society organizations that defend the environment or human rights.
A Catholic hospital in the US was ordered by a court to allow a tubal ligation operation, since no other facility in the region was available.
This problem, that all hospitals in a region are associated with the Catholic church, affects increasing numbers of women. In some cases it endangers women who are brought to a Catholic hospital in an emergency.
Hospitals should not be allowed to have such policies. A hospital is not a human being, and is not entitled to deny medical care to human beings based on religion. So they should be required to permit the full range of operations for which they have suitable facilities and staff. If the Catholic church doesn't like that, it should sell the hospitals to some other organization.
Proposing new US mining regulations to put an end to mining waste spills.
To adopt these regulations, it will be necessary to defeat the polluticians.
Ferguson has agreed to change some of the policies that systematically lead poor people into heavy fines and jail.
I don't think this means that the recently prosecuted protesters will be let off.
Biden was a crucial supporter of mass incarceration and the death penalty.
Alaska's law defines prostitution as "sex trafficking" and says that the prostitute is a victim of that "crime". As a result, prostitutes can be prosecuted for "trafficking" each other, or themselves.
I don't know whether to describe this law as lying or delusional.
Denver thugs who told lies to justify brutality were fired — six years later.
This is not enough, because they will probably get jobs as thugs somewhere else.
An influential Iowa Republican proposed to enslave of unauthorized immigrants.
The US already uses convicts as slave labor, which drives down wages for Americans not in prison.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to cosponsor the Protecting Honest
Fishermen Act of 2015.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Malaysia threatens to crush an anticorruption protest rally with the army, after blocking access to the web sites that promote it.
Malaysia is one of the countries I will no longer visit because it demands fingerprints from visitors.
The warring tribal factions in South Sudan have signed another peace deal, but one cannot be confident it will hold.
Ukraine has received debt "restructuring", which means it can pay later and less.
Contrast with Greece.
Banksy, whose work famously criticizes surveillance, is demanding visitors to his theme show present their IDs.
The article does not say so, but it seems clear that people are required to give their names to buy a ticket. That in itself is wrong.
When event organizers ask their attendees to identify themselves, they participate in constructing a society of total surveillance. That is why the Free Software Foundation welcomes people to attend its events anonymously, paying cash on arrival. All events have a moral obligation to do this.
If an event which is open to the general public asks you to identify yourself, for freedom's sake insist they stop contributing to mass surveillance.
Only 37 countries still use the death penalty, but some of them are going at it like vicious demons.
Raising Your Child with Victorian Hang-Ups: a Guide for Parents.
Israel is trying to block a visit by the Berlin State Opera to Iran, which its conductor (who is Israeli) has been trying for years to set up.
The revolving door is spinning in Canada: Shell is applying for permission for drilling in the Atlantic Ocean to a board that includes a 30-year Shell employee.
A Hong Kong protest leader faces a clearly political prosecution.
Sea level has risen 8cm since 1992; probably it will rise almost a meter in this century, due to global heating.
It will rise a lot more in the following century.
Spraying neonicotinoids on leaves has been shown to harm bees.
We already knew that treating seeds with those same pesticides harms bees.
To see what would happen if the US eliminated birthright citizenship, look at the Dominican Republic.
Clinton is reluctant to endorse Senator Warren's bill to ban "golden parachutes" for company employees moving to government jobs.
The reason for this is clear: she knows she will be expected to appoint people to important positions who are receiving such payments that are equivalent in effect to bribes.
No matter what Clinton may say now, her past shows that she is in bed with arrogant business, just as Obama is. I am certainly not voting for her.
The Department of Agriculture helps GMOs by ignoring requests for public records about use of GMOs.
US citizens: Call on Democratic presidential candidates to pledge to choose a VP candidate that supports diplomacy with Iran.
Thugs of the United Arab Emirates tortured Ahmad Zeidan into confessing to possession of drugs, which were in the glove compartment of the car he was riding in. He signed a confession in Arabic that he could not read. Everyone in the car was convicted together.
All the others, who were not British, have been pardoned and released. He thinks the UK government is more interested in selling arms to the UAE than in pleading for unjustly imprisoned Britons.
I don't intend to visit the UAE, because no one is safe there from wild accusations and torture. Zeidan says he doesn't blame the emir whose thugs did this — he probably fears to criticize — but I am safe outside the UAE and I do blame the emir.
Comparing publication of two books by dead authors: the last Discworld book written by Terry Pratchett, and a Lisbeth Salander book written by someone other than Stieg Larsson.
I urge you to resist the marketing hype associated with these books. You might want to get them, but hype should not be rewarded.
I am mostly not a fan of Pratchett. I thought Small Gods was very good, but the other few Pratchett books I've read did not especially impress me. However, I am impressed by the stance of Pratchett's daughter towards honoring his memory.
By contrast, Stieg Larsson's family seems to be behaving in a sleazy manner. It seems that his mate really loved him but his relatives love his money-making potential more.
This illustrates the important difference between works of practical use, such as software, and works of art. It is a very good thing that others now continue the development of the GNU programs that I initially wrote. Their work is useful; they add features and fix problems. Whether their style is similar to mine is hardly worth thinking about.
But it is foolish to hope that someone else, even someone talented and skilled, can continue the work of a dead author of fiction.
We who condemn Israel's occupation of Palestine must strongly condemn antisemitism too.
In addition to being the right thing to do, because all bigotries are unjust, it also refutes the nasty claim that condemnation of the occupation is antisemitism itself.
To distinguish them clearly is why I speak of AIPAC as the "Israeli hawks' lobby". Not all Israelis support that position, and most American Jews do not support it any more.
By the way, when I condemn bigotry against gays, I do not call it by the tendentious term "homophobia". I call it "bigotry against gays". We should accuse bigots of bigotry, not a hypothetical fear.
The right-wing attempt to take over the Hugo awards by bloc voting has failed.
I hope they will give it up rather than continue ruining the Hugo awards.
I must acknowledge, even though I disagree with his politics, that John C Wright has written some great science fiction.
Obama apologized to Japanese premier Abe for the inconvenience caused by revelations of US surveillance of Japanese trade negotiators.
Obama did not, it appears, apologize for spying on them.
US thugs don't know how to deal with the mentally ill, and often end up killing them, skipping many other options.
Self-driving cars may do more than report on their passengers; thugs may be able to direct them by remote control.
LA Times' 'Independent' Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backers.
By legalizing force-feeding of prisoners, especially prisoners not charged with any crime, Israel endorses torture and follows the bad example of the US.
Israel continues its gradual ethnic cleansing of certain areas in Palestine by demolishing the homes of Palestinians.
US citizens trying to visit Palestine are regularly blocked by Israel if they are of Palestinian origin.
In fact, many countries do not recognize dual citizenship; US citizens that have citizenship in those countries are treated simply as natives. Israel's actions in this regard are not unusual.
But that doesn't excuse Israel' harsh and gratuitous policy.
US citizens: call on Obama to tell us how AT&T helped the NSA, and stop interfering with investigations of NSA spying on us.
Arizona's war on sex education is ridiculous, but very effective — at encouraging teenagers to get pregnant.
Most of the prisoners in Guantanamo were captured by Afghan warlords and sold to the US for a bounty. Even in the cases where there is an accusation with real evidence against some of the prisoners, it is hard to trust it.
Canadian [thug] Found Guilty for Mass Arrests During G20 Crackdown.
What If We Reported On Poverty The Way We Report On The Stock Market?
To see global heating, you don't need a climate model any more. It is visible already in patterns of weather, fire, illness and death.
Why, then, do so many stubbornly refuse to see it? Increasingly we learn that they have been paid not to see it.
Christopher Horner, who relentlessly harasses climate scientists, is funded by the fossil fool industry.
A now-bankrupt coal company gave money sneakily and indirectly to many fossil fool Republican candidates in 2014.
How Global Real Estate Giant RE/MAX Profits from Stolen Palestinian Land.
Everyone: call on SoulCycle not to use Goldman Sachs for its IPO.
The Tories are openly selling opportunities to meet with ministers, for campaign funds.
It might as well be called the Corruption Party.
If deforestation continues at its current rates, by 2050 tropical forests equal to the size of India will be destroyed.
This will cause extinction of many species as well as contributing greatly to global heating.
Preserving forests is crucial for limiting global heating.
A project to replicate and check the scientific publications of the few scientists that deny anthropogenic global heating found gross errors in them.
"Sexual harassment", or amusing risqué hack?
While I can see why the university didn't like this, I don't believe this public non-threatening joke should be considered "harassment", much less an "assault".
Increasing evidence that blasting loud noises from the top of the ocean down into the ocean floor is very bad for whales.
A thug in Alabama felt so "threatened" by a man wielding a big spoon that he shot him dead.
Heating especially endangers the unique endemic species of the Great Barrier Reef.
Now that Windows 10 admittedly spies on its users, Microsoft is
downgrading
Windows 7 and 8 to spy the same way.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
As expected, Turkey will have new elections.
Some suspect the reason for renewed attacks on separatist Kurds is to try to reduce the vote of the originally-Kurdish human rights HD party.
Fire fueled by drought, in turn caused by global heating, is burning up Washington state.
One fire complex now covers 400 square miles, larger than New York City.
The Koch brothers are spending millions to make sure this keeps getting worse.
Ted Rall's case shows how easy it is for thugs to get journalists fired, when news outlets are cowards.
How the Harper Government [in Canada] has Helped Mining Companies Plunder Africa.
Salim Alaradi has bee imprisoned without charges and tortured in the United Arab Emirates for about a year now.
Claims that uranium mining near the Grand Canyon would not pollute the water are wishful thinking, not science.
Los Angeles wants protester Steve-O to pay the cost of its irrational reaction to his protest against SeaWorld.
I don't know what sort of fireworks he used. If they were large and dangerous, that could justify prosecution. If they were firecrackers such as people light on July 4, those charges are bogus excuses.
The other charges don't justify much either.
Parts of Nigeria repress non-Muslims and terrify ex-Muslims; others harass non-Christians. Secularists have plenty of work to do.
UK thugs refuse to compensate the owners of the van that they vandalized. They considered it suspect for no valid reason, only because of the painted slogan, "Iran is Great".
The van belongs to a family that was delighted by the welcome they received when they visited Iran.
Canadians have become incensed at government spying on protest movements.
Eight thugs were convicted of murdering a man that they dragged from their thugmobile.
This was in South Africa. I wish the US could manage to convict murderous thugs.
The argument for eliminating odious debt.
Read protester Oleg Sentsov's speech to the Russian show trial, just before it sentenced him to 20 years in prison for imaginary "terrorism".
The Kyoto Protocol's carbon emissions trading scheme has been gamed so much that it has allowed a big increase in emissions.
This is why I think we need to impose a tax on emissions rather than a trading scheme.
The UK's NHS, even starved of funds by Tories that want to ruin it, still lets patients see their doctor sooner than many private insurance plans in the US.
PISSI has destroyed a unique temple in Palmyra.
If you are part of European or Middle Eastern culture, PISSI is attacking your history. This alone would be enough to justify the war to defeat PISSI — but only if it is fought in a legitimate way and has a chance of winning.
The only way I can see that has any chance of winning is to support the Kurds.
Today's unchecked form of capitalism allows the invisible hand to crush people and toss their corpses on the scrap heap.
The capitalism that the US had in 1970 was much better than the kind we have today. Thus, I don't conclude that any whiff of capitalism is bad, the way Ayn Rand thought about community. Rather, I say that capitalism must be compensated by community, and effectively regulated by democracy.
In the US, troubled kids are treated if they are white — and punished if they are black. A court will consider whether this is illegal.
Evidently the system is racist, but why? The people who decide how to deal with these children might be bigots. Or they might unconsciously make biased decisions, influenced by the child's race. Or they may judge some students harshly because of secondary characteristics that in fact are correlated with race.
Or perhaps the schools black kids attend tend to be underfunded, desperate, and harsh.
Was it stupid to make an account on Ashley Madison?
Yes, it was — but not because of that site's specific service. It is stupid in general to make an account on a digital service and give your name, unless it is for posting statements for publication.
(If the service requires people to give their real names, it is dangerous in other ways.)
US firefighters say global heating has made for fires like nothing they have seen before.
In 20 years, the fires will be like nothing seen today.
A megaproject is being considered to allow the Mississippi to once again feed sediment into the wetlands south of New Orleans.
This might work if the city only had to cope with the local problems that the article mentions. It might perhaps suffice for 50 years. It can't possibly cope with the 6 meters of sea level rise predicted for the 21st century if we don't cut global heating short.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Endangered Species Act.
Everyone: call on major US science museums to divest from fossil fuels.
For over a century, technology created many new jobs, which typically were more productive and were better paid than the old jobs that were eliminated.
But this hasn't been true since 1990 or so.
Nowadays, the new jobs are mostly low-skill jobs, and low-paid.
But nowadays, with insufficient jobs, workers don't get raises even when their productivity increases. That's because employers can get away with not giving raises. They keep the benefit of the workers' increased productivity for themselves.
The uncertainty of today's temporary, subcontracted and irregular employment imposes stress on many American workers.
This stress is especially bad for those who are paid little and thus always at the edge. My income is irregular, but I don't worry much if some months go by and no speech gives me a fee. Millions of Americans could go hungry if they get too few hours.
The article recommends a solution of imposing welfare systems on whichever employer pays more than half of a worker's income, but there may not be any such employer, and and if there is, it might be different from week to week. Instead of placing the load for a worker's welfare support on that one employer, I suggest we disconnect welfare systems from employment, and make companies pay for them through taxes that are unrelated to how many workers they employ.
That would, as a side benefit, remove one incentive to replace human workers with automation.
US citizens: support the Revolving Door Act that would ban ex-congresscritters from becoming lobbyists.
Belarus has freed some important political prisoners.
It is a step, but only a step, towards reduced tyranny.
Saudi Arabia is dropping cluster bombs in Yemen.
It's too bad people are afraid of irradiating food to kill germs and parasites.
US citizens: tell Democrats you will refuse to support them if they block the nuclear deal with Iran.
US citizens: call on states not to defund Planned Parenthood's health care.
Israel puts divorce under religious law, and all the religions are more or less unfair to women.
The bailout for Greece's creditors lasts only until October. At that point, Greece will fail to jump through the next hoop, which will serve as the excuse to impose further suffering.
But that's what this whole process has been, since the start: Greece must accept a series of a permanent losses, each one in exchange for a delay. In such a process, the sooner you rebel, the better. It would have been better for Greece to rebel in 2010.
Boston Public Broadcaster WGBH Files Bogus DMCA Notice On Public Domain Video Uploaded By Carl Malamud.
The UK government in charge of work and pensions just fired thousands of staff, they hired temporaries to replace them.
This shows what the Tories want to do to work and pensions.
The same department wanted to show how unemployed people appreciated lessons it taught them by leaving them broke for months. It couldn't find any real examples, so it made some up.
It would teach Tories a salutary lesson to make them live with no money for a year.
Dubya and Cheney are being sued for imposing total surveillance in Utah in 2002.
Migrants Overwhelm Security Forces at Macedonia Border.
An article about the three recently deceased Islamist militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The author describes the Taliban as a "religious, anti drug, anti-Communist movement," meant I suppose as praise.
The Taliban may well be opposed to Communism in principle, though it never actually fought Communism since it was founded after the Soviet Union had disintegrated. However, there is worse repression than post-Stalin Soviet Communism — look at Egypt, Saudi Arabia and PISSI today.
It may have started out anti-drug, but it got involved with opium production once it took power. Not that the War on Drugs is a good thing.
But it certainly is religious. That is the worst thing about it. Islamism means contempt for human rights, those of women especially, but also those of men.
The negotiators of the TPP (Treacherous Plutocratic Poison) were ready to consider supporting fair use instead of damaging it — but then the big movie companies started pushing the other way in Congress.
The TPP is meant to attack democracy. These fights about details only reinforce the point that we need to kill it, whether before or after it is signed.
A long interview with Varoufakis, who says that as Tsipras helps impose so many laws and decisions he considered wrong, he becomes twisted into believing in what he is doing.
It is a fundamental mistake to help a repressive government with the idea that you will mitigate the repression. What it tends to do is transplant the repression into your own heart, as you become a pillar to support it.
Many restaurant chains in the UK regularly steal from waiters' tips, or make them pay for the privilege of working.
I would make it a felony for any individual manager to participate in imposing such things.
A Philadelphia thug was caught on video demanding a bribe (though not personally for himself) in exchange for not towing a car.
Every Forest Biome on Earth Is Actively Dying Right Now. Due to human actions.
It makes a big difference whether we push them one step further or ten steps further, because each step could be too much for some of them. It makes a big difference whether the human population peaks at 8 billion, 9 billion or 10 billion.
Uri Avnery: "Binyamin Netanyahu is either incredibly shrewd or incredibly foolish."
Or perhaps shrewd in the small and incredibly foolish in the large.
Of two US presidential candidates whose polling figures are surging, only the arrogant billionaire interests the press.
The coup-derived president of Honduras, who won an election apparently using funds stolen from the state, now confronts a powerful opposition movement.
Obama did not say outright that he supported the coup, but there is plenty of evidence that the US did back it.
Nathan Hornes describes how the for-profit degree mill Everest College gave him a worthless "education", but leading a student debt strike gave him a real one.
A summary of how society in the UK has changed for the worse since the 1970s. Most of this applies to the US as well.
A considerable amount of this is due to Reagan and Thatcher, and their right-wing successors in both parties (including Clinton and B'liar). A considerable amount of this is due to business-dominated globalization, which was to a large extent intended to produce such results.
The Mexican government, or perhaps an allied gang, is using spambots to drown out protesters on Twitter.
Companies are recruiting teachers and schools to give them personal data about lots of students.
It makes no difference what the companies say about how they will use the data: merely letting them see it is a violation of the students' privacy.
Bare-chested protesters marched through Manhattan to protest the prudery of officials, who want to ban the body-painted women in Times Square that offer to pose with other people for a fee.
As long as they are not pushy to the point where it is difficult to say no, or hard to pass by, they are not hurting anyone.
More about Campaign Zero, which aims to end violence by thugs in the US.
In the wild, predation by humans is much more intense than predation by nonhuman predators.
Some US "churches" are effectively pyramid schemes which benefit from tax loopholes and a blind eye from the IRS.
This perverted form of Christianity says that being rich is a sign you're going to heaven. I presume it also says that being a camel is a sign you can fit through the eye of a needle.
Other perverted US Christians claim that they don't need a conscience because they are Christians — they say "god won't let me do anything wrong."
"Corporate welfare is often camouflaged in taxes that seem neutral on their face but give windfalls to big entrenched corporations at the expense of average people and small businesses."
Activists of the Fully Informed Jury Association are suing to establish that they won't be charged with felonies for handing out the organization's pamphlets about jury nullification.
Jury nullification is the reason we have juries: to hamper the state from imprisoning people based on laws that most people disagree with. This can be used for ill — for instance, jurors can acquit a thug charged with killing a black person because they are racist, or even for killing a non-black person if they have swallowed the myth that thugs are our heroes. Nonetheless, jury nullification is a vital safeguard of liberty.
The Court of Appeals of the First Circuit ruled that corporations can't be required to inform people about their use of conflict minerals, or basically anything, because it violates their "human rights".
We need to adopt the proposed constitutional amendment that human rights do not apply to corporations.
The idea of "unworthy poor", who are poor through laziness, provides an excuse to harden hearts towards people that society has swept into poverty by piling on more obstacles than they can handle.
Reducing the human birth rate should be a global priority, and that calls for giving all women reliable birth control (which, not by coincidence, requires no cooperation from their lovers).
The long-term campaign to clean up scientific publication.
Amazon's cruelty in its head office illustrates the attitude of many companies today: they consider workers replaceable and not worth any decency.
These companies demand total loyalty while giving none. Thus, what they deserve from their workers is sabotage, not loyalty. We need governments that will do whatever it takes to put the reins on how companies treat staff. First step, make it easy to unionize.
Thugs in North Carolina shot a man who was wielding a knife.
Didn't they have tasers to use instead of guns?
Sheet mica sells for over $1000 per kg. The workers that mine it, violating laws that India does not enforce, are paid about 25 cents per kg.
If India were to crack down on the illegal mining, approved mines would have to start, and pay workers more. But India is a very corrupt country.
Workers must fight against businesses that want to monitor their bodies.
Devices that monitor your body should report their data to you, and you alone. And if they have software that is to be changed, it should be free software.As in all cases of mistreatment by a company, it helps to have a union. If your country or state doesn't make it easy to unionize, make it an issue in your next election.
Universities including Harvard and Yale pay fund managers hundreds of millions of dollars a year — and do this in a way that relieves the fund managers of most of their income tax.
I'm not sure I agree with the article's spend-8-percent proposal. It would cause big problems when the stock market goes down. Rather, I'd suggest limiting the percentage that can be paid in management fees.
San Jose, California, proposes to put license plate readers on garbage trucks so as to scan all the cars in the city regularly.
This is far too much surveillance for a free society. Indeed, license plate readers as they exist today should not be allowed at all. License plate readers should be designed so that they do not even record having seen a plate that is lawful and not sought by court order.
Reporters find excuses to downplay the size of Sanders' support as expressed by rallies for him.
Courtney Canfield was fired from a government job in Kansas for not going to church.
After 29 years, the eradication of the guinea worm is almost complete.
WHO says it expects to finish the job this year.
Jimmy Carter was the last president of the US that deserved respect.
It's dangerous to have a gun in your home. Even living next to someone that has a gun is somewhat dangerous.
Ashley Madison got Twitter to delete a journalist's posting which is almost certainly fair use.
The company tries to mystify its copyright claim by calling it "intellectual property". Whenever you see a company talk about its "intellectual property", it is trying to be fuzzy about what legal grounds (if any!) its demand is based on. I suggest responding with, "Intellectual property is not the name of any law. Be specific about your claim or I will ignore you."
Unfortunately, the journalist fell for the confusion in that term, and even added to it by writing, "DMCA notices are intended to stop the spread of intellectual property and copyrighted material," as if "intellectual property" referred to something other than copyrighted material to which the DMCA applied. There is no such thing.
The term "intellectual property" has no meaning except confusion.
Please don't ever use the term.
Google and Facebook lobbied in India against network neutrality.
California's 40 years of aiming for energy efficiency show what would have been the easy way to avoid global heating disaster.
Now that tar sands extraction is failing even in its own narrow economic terms, Canada has a chance to reject extractivism and the anti-science policies that were created to prop it up.
Exposing the doubletalk of the defenders of the CISA bill.
Everyone: call on the governor of Oklahoma to stop the execution of Richard Glossip.
The petition's author says he "firmly believe(s) Oklahoma is about to execute an innocent man." However, that's not part of the petition itself. I don't have a basis to "firmly believe" that Glossip is innocent, but I think it is quite plausible that he is, and that's enough to make it honest for me to sign.
The death penalty is wrong even for criminals who are guilty.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote against the DARK Act.
Everyone: Call on Unilever to quit FoodDrinkEurope.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Consumer Reporting Fairness Act.
To Prevent Police Brutality, Overhaul Police Culture.
Chomsky: Iran is no strategic threat to other countries, including the US and Israel, and wouldn't be even if it had nuclear weapons.
The Iranian government oppresses women and dissidents, though not quite as badly as US ally Saudi Arabia. But that doesn't call for war.
The thug that killed Jonathan Ferrell was prosecuted for murder but the case ended in a mistrial.
Abandoned by the Labour Party, and despite repression and reprisals from landlords, non-rich Britons that rent housing are organizing to fight back.
The Bangladeshi government's repression puts secularists at more risk from murderous Islamists.
Toxic activities around the US have powerful defenders.
Seduction is labeled as "rape" to ruin someone's life.
Teenage boys may know they'd like to have sex, but that doesn't mean they can stand up to social and family pressure to claim it was a horrible damaging experience.
The American Red Cross tried to prevent a government inquiry into how it has spent its disaster relief funds.
Sensitive medical records including notes from psychotherapy, when put into computers, become available to other doctors, to governments, and to employers.
Should school principals wear body cameras?
Thugs' body cameras should have automatic control over when they do, or don't, record, to reduce their negative effects.
The same applies to any thugs stationed in schools — but they should be removed from schools, in order to shut down the school-to-prison pipeline.
Perhaps school principals should not wear body cameras, but if they do have body cameras, those should have automatic control too. The proper criteria for recording would be different for principals.
1/3 of the US veterans of the 1991 war in Iraq suffer from the effects of toxic chemicals.
Thousands of migrants tried to force their way across the border of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. They are trapped in the no-country's-land between Macedonia and Greece.
I don't think Macedonia is obligated to allow all these people in. The problem is in the policies and behavior that sends so many people fleeing.
Merkel says the "migration crisis" will define this decade. Alas, it will get worse in the next decade. One of the causes is the early stages of climate mayhem. In a few decades, we can expect to see tens of millions of people trying to flee from regions where they can no longer live. This has already touched off the Syrian civil war and brought about PISSI. Imagine what will happen as climate mayhem gets worse.
Another contribution is the global corporate land grab, which drives people off their land leaving them with no way to survive. That will get worse, unless we hand those companies a stunning setback (I hope we do.)
Then there is overreproduction. We must end the growth of human population. The first step is to make reliable birth control and abortion services available gratis to all women. If we are lucky, that will be enough.
The US has asked Australia and New Zealand for experienced firefighters to help fight wildfires that are too now big to handle.
Australia and New Zealand don't need their firefighters in August, but their fire season will start soon.
It will be a worse in each of these countries, 10 years from now. and it will keep getting worse as long as humans continue extracting and using fossil fuels.
Children of survivors of the holocaust inherited some stress-induced epigenetic markers from their parents.
The article did not distinguish between mothers and fathers. It would be useful to study them separately.
One danger of autonomous robot weapons is that they will obey illegal orders without question. But even semi-autonomous weapons, with a human in "ultimate control", could make it more difficult for humans to refuse illegal orders.
Californians are fighting plans to move more of the state's insufficient water to almond and pistachio plantations.
Britons that oppose fracking and coal mining due to local pollution understand the global heating danger too. Street protests will be the new way to campaign against this.
A new business offers clients a way to invest in Clinton and in all Republican presidential candidates, so that they can call in favors if any of those candidates win.
Those who stole and published personal data from Ashley Madison did a great wrong to the users of that site. I urge people therefore not to republish that data set.
Please do not call the people who did this "hackers". If they broke the security of the site, that is called "cracking" — but it's not clear that was done in this case.
The company has done many sleazy things both before and after the data were taken.
Now Ashley Madison is sending DMCA takedown notices for the data dump of its users data, invalidly claiming copyright where it does not have one.
I disagree with the widespread prejudice in favor of monogamy. If two people are happy loving only each other, I am glad for them; but if one of them wants another relationship, I won't say there is anything wrong with that. I never have, and never will, ask a lover to promise not to have other lovers; I would not want to stand in the way of her happiness.
Thus, in thinking about the Ashley Madison site, I do not formulate my thoughts using words such as "adultery" or "cheating". I do not think of it as cheating to break a promise imposed by unfair social pressure. I don't think the site's stated purpose was immoral.
Rather, what is immoral is setting up services and stores that require people to identify themselves. This incident reinforces my conclusion that we should refuse to identify ourselves when buying things — whether we are buying introductions, books, furniture, or whatever else.
Digital systems must be redesigned so that they do not accumulate dossiers about their users. In the mean time, don't be tracked — pay cash! That's what I do.
In the US, customers and helpers of prostitutes under 18 are now accused of "trafficking", under a law that is a liar.
High school students should not face random drug tests.
There is no reason to test anyone for drugs in this way. People who do jobs that require quick and accurate reaction should be tested every day to make sure they have quick and accurate reaction — not for drug use.
How the 'Sharing Economy' Forces a Movement Towards Privatisation. Pay toilets tend to eliminate unlocked public toilets, just as bottled water tends to eliminate water fountains.
I can't possibly use Looie, for the same reason I can't possibly use Guber or AirBnB: they require (1) running a nonfree cr…app on a tracking device, and (2) identifying oneself. But I have a special loathing for Looie, because making people pay to use a toilet is vicious in itself. I could afford the fee, but poor people can't.
I don't see anything wrong in charging for a taxi ride or for renting a room. My criticisms of Guber and AirBnB are about how they do this. For Looie, the business is wrong in itself.
I read a copy of Ceptia's Free Toilet Paper in the 1970s, and I concluded that concluded that pay toilets are a bad thing, but it did not seem like an important issue since I hardly ever encountered any in the US. The problem is much worse in Europe, which never had anything like Ceptia. I go to great lengths to avoid giving them my money.
You can consider me a member-in-spirit of Ceptia, and I hope you will join in spirit too.
I think that restaurants, which are legally required to have toilets, should be legally required to allow anyone to use them, and to have a sign on the door to that effect. Restaurant owners that are unhappy with the number of people that come in to use their toilets should consider moving to a place with less foot traffic. Of course, they won't do that: the foot traffic brings them business. They must take the bad of the foot traffic along with the good of the foot traffic.
The UK spied on famed writer Doris Lessing for 20 years.
The part of Syriza that holds true to its opposition to austerity has renamed itself the Popular Unity Party. I applaud them.
However, I do not criticize Tsipras for calling new elections. That is clearly the right thing to do.
I think Greece (and the rest of the world) needs a Wooden Stake Party dedicated to destroying the vampires that are attacking Greece.
July 2015 was the hottest month ever recorded.
US citizens: file a comment with the EPA through this page to call for an even higher efficiency standard for heavy trucks.
India's government argued that privacy 'not a fundamental right' so it should be ok to require people to have biometric ID cards. The Supreme Court continues to disagree.
Hunting of wild birds in the Mediterranean (many of them migrating) is making some species crash.
The War on Drugs in Peru now includes shooting down planes suspected of carrying drugs.
Perhaps they are getting advice from US thugs. "I thought that plane was reaching for a cocaine in its air pocket, so I shot it down."
EU Demands Google Forget "The Right To Be Forgotten".
Australia deported a refugee to Iran while his case was still in progress. Once in Iran, he was arrested.
PISSI bulldozed an ancient monastery with a very early church.
Mauritania has imprisoned anti-slavery activists.
US protesters demand stricter laws to cover the thugs.
Hear, hear!
A US Marshal says his office told him the policy was not to wage the War on Drugs against well-off people.
That exemption was wise and good, but didn't go far enough. They should extend it to everyone else.
Conservatives' double standard: small waste to the benefit of poor people is a scandal, while the Pentagon has lost track of 8.5 trillion and they don't care.
One of Obama's donors is a vulture capitalist who wants to eat the corpse of Puerto Rico.
Even as prison thugs were beating Samuel Harrell to death, they started making false accusations against him to "justify" the killing.
It appears they will get off without punishment.
Arguing for the nuclear deal with Iran.
After Republican state legislators resigned after sexual involvement and harassment with interns, their colleagues want interns to dress "modestly".
It's typical of right-wing religious prudes to blame their sexual proclivities (whether wrong or not) on the attractiveness of the victims.
A Nuclear Conflict with Russia Is Likelier Than You Think.
There are good reasons not to be precisely clear about what would be considered an invasion and would trigger a defensive alliance. A rigid criterion would invite an aggressor to come up to a millimeter from the criterion. And who can count on foreseeing everything?
On the other hand, a vague criterion invites audacious deniable attacks.
Either way offers opportunities that a cunning and audacious aggressor such as Putin can test.
Plane Stupid protesters who opposed expansion of Heathrow airport have been charged with "aggravated trespass", which is a "crime" invented as an excuse to punish protesters.
Like most "music screaming" disservices, Spotify is based on proprietary malware (DRM and snooping). Recently it demanded users submit to increased snooping, and some are starting to realize that it is nasty.
However, it was nasty all along. Any "service" that is based on not letting people have their own copies is a scheme to subjugate people. Once you submit, they are always ready to use that leverage to subjugate you more.
This article shows the twisted ways that they present snooping as a way to serve users better — never mind whether they want that. This is a typical example of the attitude of the proprietary software industry towards those they have subjugated.
Out, out, damned Spotify!
The US and Britain have done much in the Middle East that calls for an apology.
This does not excuse the wrong done by the various dictators and kings in the region, whether supported by the US or by the Soviet Union.
Abbott says that conservation groups are using environmental protection laws to "sabotage" dangerous mine projects.
In truth, Abbott wants to use the law to help him sabotage Australia's environment. And maybe he has been corrupted, along with other Australian polluticians, by the Indian billionaire that would own the mine.
"Polluticians" was a typo, but it seemed so fitting that I decided not to correct it.
The story illustrates the dangerous nature of the idea that elected officials should seek to "bring business to" their cities, states or countries. There is an inherent conflict between that and their real job, which is to prevent business from causing harm in their cities, states or countries.
US citizens: support the KOCH Act to make Super-PACs state who their donors are.
Some US right-wingers applauded Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to cut the budget of New Orleans and eliminate public housing.
The US must stop issuing leases for fossil fuel extraction from public lands. This would keep a large quantity of fossil fuels in the ground.
Since we need to keep 80% of known reserves in the ground, no one action of this sort will suffice — rather, many of them are necessary.
New Jersey thugs who shot a man with his hands up will not be prosecuted.
However, a Baltimore thug will face prosecution for murder.
Thugs will continue their rampage as long as they continue to enjoy practical impunity.
Americans convicted based on "bite mark analysis" have trouble getting out of prison, although this has been found to be junk science.
Climate models show that California will face increasing drought due to global heating, and that it has contributed substantially to the current drought.
Wave of TV Ads Opposing Iran Deal Organized By Saudi Arabian Lobbyist.
Interesting that Israel and and Saudi Arabia are making common cause.
Iraq War General Ray Odierno Cashing In With New Job at JP Morgan Chase.
Judge Garzón is campaigning for universal jurisdiction against multinational companies.
A large project aims to revitalize New Orleans.
It isn't helping the poor people very much.
Too bad they didn't move it to higher ground.
A study sampling US rivers found neonicotinoid pesticides in half of them, sometimes at levels that may have devastated the base of the food chain in the Netherlands.
Neonicotinoids have now been linked to honeybee decline in a field study.
The UK's lobbying to weaken air pollution standards represents the Tories' secret decision to support the worst parts of the business world.
The Saudi bombardment of Yemen is devastating the country, with US support.
Yemeni Children at Serious Risk after Bombing of Vital Port, Agencies Caution.
Bruce Schneier: "We're in Early Years of a Cyber Arms Race". He also says not to be quick to conclude who the attacker is.
CISA (formerly CISPA) supposedly allows companies to give your personal data to the US government "voluntarily", but "voluntarily" could easily be made mandatory by new regulations — without passing any new laws.
Among Middle Eastern countries, the worst troublemaker is Saudi Arabia.
The article does not mention that it promoted jihadis in Syria or that most of the September 2001 hijackers came from there (though I am not saying the Saudi government had any direct role), or that the country has spent billions to spread its strict and cruel variant of Islam around the world.
The privatizations imposed on Greece have nothing to do with repaying debt. These profitable assets would support Greece more if it kept them than if it sells them in a hurry for a low price.
Protesters confronted thugs in St Louis because they shot another man dead.
If it is true that the deceased pointed a gun at the thugs, I can't fault them for shooting him first. However, you can't trust what thugs say about the people they kill. They have lied so many times; why should we suppose they are not lying now?
Chicago Protestors Go on Hunger Strike to Save Their Last Neighborhood School.
The plutocrats consider most Americans disposable, so why bother educating them? Public education, for them, is just a cash cow.
The absurd charges against Chelsea Manning will provide an excuse to keep her in a more strict prison for years.
Vast Areas of California Are Sinking as Groundwater Is Pumped in Drought.
People's wells are going dry as corporations' farms pump tremendous amounts of water.
China's great achievement: it has nearly eliminated urban poverty.
UK students are going to college to compete for the few good jobs, but only a minority get them, and the rest are stuck with horrible debts.
Methane leaks from natural gas wells are 8 times what was previously thought.
These leaks are equivalent, over the next few decades, to dozens of coal-fired power plants, and falsify the claim that natural gas is safer than coal. We need to aim for renewable energy, not for coal.
Amazon's office hell could be the future of work in general, if we do not prevent it.
While some may think of begging companies to be nice, I think we need to force them — with laws, because that is what democracy is for, and with unions, which requires laws that make unions stronger.
We also need to eliminate the treaties that facilitate moving production to countries that allow companies to get away with oppression or even murder.
The US military academies produce careerists that promote arms sales, never win a war, and fail to tell the president when war is a bad idea.
Fires in the US west have exceeded the fire-fighting capacity; 200 soldiers have been sent to help them.
It will be much worse 20 years from now, if we don't stop heating up the Earth's air and seas. Will we learn our lesson now, and stop it?
We must not make the mistake of exaggerating either the capacity or the actions of PISSI.
A Ukrainian who protested Putin's takeover of the Crimea is now being tried for imaginary crimes that he was tortured into confessing to.
He says the trial is political and bogus. I don't think Putin would permit an honest trial.
I wish that the US could condemn this with a straight face. The US must eliminate the Guantanamo "military tribunals" that were set up to deny defendants their legal rights.
Companies use slave labor for their workforce in Eritrea, including a Canadian mining company. The government may not give them any choice about this, but it is wrong to operate in such a country.
PISSI murdered one of the greats of Syrian archeology.
I read elsewhere that he had refused to tell his captors where to find ancient artifacts that had been saved from them. That makes him a martyr for history.
Putin's antics are risible, but they are very effective politically.
When he talks about "Russia's roots", he's talking about the Kievan Rus, whose territory is known today as "Ukraine." But accuracy is not important to him.
The closest thing to him in the US is Donald Trump.
There is a real danger of a wider war in Europe, between Russian military provocations and strategic western threats such as proffered treaties with Ukraine.
US federal social welfare programs enable 40 million Americans to stay out of poverty.
That was in 2012, after Reagan, Clinton and Dubya had undermined these programs. However, things have got worse since the financial crisis; SCROTUS (Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States) have been attacking our social welfare programs steadily, and are attacking even harder now.
With public officials eager to end poverty, we could clearly achieve much more.
The Earned Income Tax Credit is especially effective. We should increase it. However, not at the expense of cutting other programs that support the poor. Americans in general have become poorer since 2007 and need more support, not less.
And it is no use encouraging poor people to look for jobs that don't exist. The rate of workforce participation in the US is much lower than it used to be, and millions of jobs are likely to be eliminated by automation in the next decade.
Ultimately we need to enable the millions of never-to-be-employed to have a decent life, while reducing the birth rate.
US citizens:
oppose
the Trans-Pecos Pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on your state governor to support the Clean Power Plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
It's far from sufficient, but the fossil fools will fight it anyway, and we need to overcome them.
The attack videos against Planned Parenthood provided an excuse for several Republican-ruled states to investigate. These investigations have found nothing wrong.
Although conclusive of nothing, the videos were quite useful in mobilizing public support among the anti-sex prudes, who are free to disregard the results of the investigations. Several states have already cut funding for Planned Parenthood to provide health care and prenatal care.
Russia said Eston Kohver was caught spying, but Estonia says Russian agents kidnaped him at gunpoint from a border crossing.
The lack of a proper trial suggests that Russia is lying about the facts.
More than one warehouse in Tianjin was illegally storing toxic chemicals.
Eritrian journalists were imprisoned 14 years ago and remain in prison.
Thugs regularly infiltrated Black Lives Matter protests in New York City and snooped on individual activists.
The US government may start to resist the criminalization of homelessness. Let's hope so.
Prison Education Reduces Recidivism By Over 40 Percent. Why Aren't We Funding More of It?
Overprotecting students against ideas that may make them uncomfortable is harmful to them, and turns unjust when it develops into "vindictive protectiveness".
I agree with most of the article's points, so I will mention the few that I disagree with.
However, that applies to only some of the "microaggressions" that are being condemned; others are not objectively insulting, so the article's points are valid for them. We must not condemn people just because someone takes offense at what they say.
Krugman: The Republican presidential candidates want to eliminate Social Security, because they bow down to a hundred or so rich families that want that.
Chelsea Manning was found "guilty" of absurd crimes, but won't be put in solitary.
While I am glad this political trial did not put her in solitary, it remains despicable to punish someone for having an expired tube of toothpaste or the Senate report on US government torture. This was a political persecution from beginning to end.
Two Georgia thugs face murder charges for tasing a handcuffed prisoner, who died from it.
Not-usually-lethal weapons are an improvement when they are used instead of guns; they are harmful when used instead of nothing.
Uganda and Jeb Bush share a PR flack. Uganda uses him to overcome the negative image it got from its repressive anti-gay law.
Africa's birth rate is dangerously high.
Two Albuquerque thugs will be tried for murdering a homeless man.
Mexico City now has a law that offers help to journalists that flee there from other parts of Mexico.
The record companies (operating through their instrument, the RIAA) want to make developers build censorship into torrent software and even web browsers.
We should make sure the big record companies get what they deserve: total elimination, as punishment for the many evils they have done to people who have shared music or might wish to.
Everyone: call on Goldman Sachs to return the half-billion profit it got from conspiring with the Greek government 15 years ago.
US citizens: call on Clinton and the DNC to reject private prisons and stop employing their PR representatives.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the merger between Charter and Time-Warner Cable.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Stop Arctic Ocean Drilling Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the World Bank to stop promoting privatization of water supplies in Nigeria.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
I added "or anywhere else" in my message.
Everyone: call on Subway to use only meat grown without regular use of antibiotics.
US citizens: join activities to convince legislators to support the nuclear deal with Iran.
The site's map engine depends on nonfree Javascript code,
so I hope you won't use it. However, the
search
engine works without nonfree software.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the Department of Homeland Suppression to stop surveillance of Black Lives Matter activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Florida to protect panthers from fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Varoufakis: the bailout for Greece's creditors is designed to help oligarchs solidify their power over what remains of the Greek economy, while multinationals snap up assets.
Germany has applied copyright, absurdly, to the appearance of food on a plate.
Copyright is increasingly tyrannical and needs to be cut back.
The NSA is trying to evade the constitution by saying private companies are responsible for the surveillance; but that is unconstitutional too.
Mass Migration Is No 'crisis': It's the New Normal as the Climate Changes.
This article shows why the term "climate change", which was foisted on us by Republican denialists, fails to do justice to the facts of what is happening.
Clinton's scandal-provoking private email server is a reflection of her general approach.
Being Edgy And Cool Doesn't Make Tech Companies Any Less Exploitative.
Prisoner Mohammad Allan regained consciousness and says he will resume his hunger strike in 24 hours.
He says he will not even take water, which means he will die soon.
Maybe that is better than life in prison without trial.
Bernie Sanders Proposes To Boost Worker-Ownership Of Companies.
World's Nuclear Facilities Vulnerable to Cyber-Attacks.
The EPA proposes regulations to reduce methane emissions.
This probably requires having fewer cattle. Also, to really make reductions we have to properly measure the current emissions, including leaks from frack wells.
Abbott's laughable double standard: using laws to block coal mines is "green sabotage", but if there are no laws to block wind farms he will rush to provide some.
Eritrea runs a campaign of harassment against dissidents in exile.
How Many San Francisco Thugs Does It Take To Subdue One Black Guy With A Prosthetic Leg? 14: Four To Assault Him, 10 To Block the View.
A tiny fraction (one in 3000) of families in public housing have had substantial increases in income since moving in, but have not moved out. The Washington Post tried to make a big scandal about this.
What the many poor urban Americans need is a lot more public or affordable housing in their cities — not the eviction of those.03%.
Militants in Bangladesh are accused of murdering two of the four assassinated secularist bloggers.
Working for Amazon makes staff physically and mentally ill.
Phone companies around the world are inserting tracking headers into unencrypted (http) browsing requests sent by mobile phones.
They can't insert these into https requests, only unencrypted http requests.
All "smartphones" contain malicious nonfree software, which is part of why I would not have one. But if you insist on doing web browsing from one, don't ever visit an unencrypted page with it.
Obama gave Shell full approval to create oil spills in the Chukchi Sea and convert it into the Upchukchi Sea.
They must figure that floating ice will cease to be a danger once they have melted it all.
Computerized work tracking is being applied to the modern workspace.
When these practices were applied to factory work in the early 20th century, a practice called "Taylorism", workers fought back … and unionized.
You will have to unionize too!
That means you must support candidates that will make it easier to form a union and give unions more clout against employers.
The "marauders and plunderers" are not the refugees who flee to Europe, it's the companies and governments that create the crises that make them flee their homes.
Occasionally the common people play a partial role by having more children than their lands can stably support. However, it's not always their fault; global heating is reducing the number many lands can support — in Syria, for instance.
Officials acknowledge that exaggerated reports of crime in New Orleans just after hurricane Katrina interfered with rescuing people, and led to murders by thugs.
It also provided the excuse for thugs to prevent a large group of poor and/or black people from crossing a bridge to get out of New Orleans.
Spreading poverty in the US, together with the lack of a proper medical system, is allowing "tropical" diseases to spread in the south of the US.
Global heating is probably contributing to the change too.
California farms are investing heavily in efficient use of water, but the drought is so bad that this isn't enough.
Some Muslim leaders have called for curbing fossil fuels, as did Pope Francis a short while ago.
I don't need to cite religious authority for this, but it is good to have their help. The Catholic Church in the Philippines is opposing coal plant construction there.
Even where growing and dispensing marijuana is legal, in effect it's legal only for whites.
How Martin Luther King Jr. responded when criticized for "going too far" by holding sit-ins in segregated stores and other facilities.
Hypersensitivity among US college students may be due to raising children overprotectively.
Lawyers meet with opposition if they reject jurors "because they are black", so they use a range of bizarre excuses, such as "because they live in a low-income neighborhood" or "have bad posture".
Black jurors might understand how the defendant is being railroaded or had no way out.
UN Deciding "How Best to Respond" After AT&T Helped NSA Spy on [UN] Headquarters.
The Congress of Racial Equality, once pivotal in the civil rights movement, developed in the 1970s into a tool for the Republican Party. Since 1990 or so, it has been an astroturf resource for hire.
Repressive Eritrea is so poor that even civil-war-torn South Sudan seems like a step up.
Large amounts of sodium cyanide were illegally stored in the warehouse that exploded at Tianjin.
The Chinese rulers say they want to punish corruption, and I think they really do; but they won't get very far while suppressing a free press.
"Coca Cola gave $1.5 million to scientists who say soft drinks don't cause obesity".
Egyptian journalists will be punished for "false" reporting. That is, for reporting what the state doesn't agree to.
The British right-wing promotes business practices that depend on constant fresh immigration of workers it can exploit, then scapegoats those immigrants.
The UK government plans to send unemployed young adults to a labor camp where they will do makework of filing job applications.
When there are not enough jobs, this is an exercise in futility.
Naomi Klein explains how Abbott repeats the slogans of the US coal mining companies, and relates global heating denialism to a "frontier mentality".
On the frontier, there is always more land to take from indigenous peoples.
A Ugandan court has ruled men can't demand return of the bride price when a woman wants a divorce.
I don't like the way the arguments given by the judge still treat a woman as property.
Rising production of beef is a major factor in the current mass extinction. Perhaps even more than global heating.
However, the two are related, since cattle emit methane, and cutting down forests to grow food for cattle releases the CO2 in the forest vegetation.
It is foolish to demand that the non-poor live as if they were poor. What we need from them is to support anti-plutocratic and anti-trickle-down policies that will give everyone a decent life.
I admire people who have a comfortable income and support politics to give poor people a comfortable income too. Rather than voting for their own narrow interests, they are voting for what is right.
Sanding Down the Rough Edges of Capitalism Is Not Enough.
Too much competitive pressure on students in school can break them.
The root of this problem is that only a small fraction of students can win a decent life.
The copyright trap in the Pacific Partnership Trance.
As the US cuts funds for national parks, they become marketing opportunities for companies to brand them.
It is wrong to let private individuals or organizations buy the naming of any public facilities or the use of their names or images for marketing but the facilities themselves. While this does not directly hurt people, it damages society by saying "In our city, or our country, everything public is for sale."
A journalist saw a Greek pensioner commit suicide by driving a car into the harbor, and complains that nobody tried to stop him.
Experience in other countries suggests that thousands of Greeks will commit suicide this year, because euro-imposed poverty has left them destitute. You may be able to thwart their suicide attempts, but that won't save them.
Assad's air force killed over 80 civilians in a market.
Human rights defenders say this was an intentional massacre.
Mexico has given away 10 million digital TVs. This replaces the circuses that ancient Rome put on to amuse the poor.
I wonder if those TVs have remote listening capability.
The Obama regime is winning the war for US public opinion about Edward Snowden.
We need to do more to express our admiration and support for Snowden.
Even outside the warehouse, Amazon pushes its employees to the breaking point.
This what happens when workers don't have a union and the boss is unscrupulous.
The US regularly puts children accused of crimes into solitary confinement because of a quirk in the law.
The NSA did commercial surveillance on Japan.
A protester in Hong Kong was convicted of assaulting a thug's hand with her breast. The judge, who apparently is bent, condemned her for maligning the thug by accusing him of a sexual assault.
In the US, the traditional charge made against a protester is bashing the thug's stick with per head.
Oracle demanded that its customers stop reverse engineering to look for security flaws in the code they are running. A day later, it got so embarrassed that deleted the threat.
Reverse engineering of software is a sign of injustice: nonfree software that doesn't come with source code you can compile for yourself.
A company pays scientists to cite the company in their papers.
This is a form of corruption.
US courts allow thugs to use drug-sniffing dogs to create probable cause for a search, which detect drugs whenever the handlers tell them to.
Sesame Street, conceived to boost the education of children in poverty, is now primarily available on a cable channel that they can't afford.
China is pushing hard to eliminate manufacturing jobs.
Perhaps there will be plenty of employment for working-age Chinese people taking care of retired and ill Chinese people. If so, it will work out well.
A Miami thug tried to stop a woman from making a video of a thug attacking a handcuffed prisoner. When she posted the video, the Miami thug union tried to smear her name based on unrelated issues.
They are very creative in repressing people who expose the violence of other thugs, which is why they all (with a few rare exceptions) deserve that name.
The fire season in Oregon started months early, and may continue until months late.
The new higher level of fires seems to be the "new normal", but not for long. In 20 years it will be considerably drier and measurably hotter.
Two Spanish thugs, even more arrogant than the typical thug, got a woman fined for posting a photo of their car parked in handicapped parking spot.
Perhaps their reason for parking there was legitimate. The fine certainly was not. The thugs are responsible for the fine, because they reported her to officials that were likely to fine her.
Now imagine the effect of that law when thugs beat, rape or kill citizens.
Intensive and sustainable farming in Mexico.
AT&T has been cooperating with the NSA for decades.
Why the mass media don't cover Bernie Sanders.
Israeli doctors are refusing to force-feed hunger striking prisoner Maazouzeh Allan.
The IMF insists that a bailout for Greece's creditors include substantial debt relief for Greece.
US citizens: call for dropping the bizarre accusations against Chelsea Manning (and not putting her in solitary confinement).
US citizens: call on the FCC to end gouging on prisoners' phone calls.
Kerry, visited Cuba, called for "genuine democracy".
That would be nice to have in the US. One useful step is to vote for Sanders for president.
How Suburban Sprawl Causes Segregation And Isolates the Poor.
Germany profits handsomely from the economic oppression of Greece.
Countries in the euro zone should set up an alternative emergency escape currency before they need it.
Tariq Ba Odah is badly ill after years of hunger striking. The US government has already decided there is no reason to keep him in prison; but it opposes his court motion to be freed, out of sheer perverse orneriness. The US defines hunger striking as a form of war, and the prisoner's release as a defeat.
I have a hunch that the US military defines Guantanamo prisoners' habias corpus motions as a kind of war, too. And any other human rights, when they get in the military's way.
It is noteworthy that, in Japan, even artists' and authors' associations oppose the stricter copyright that the TPP would impose.
This is noteworthy, but it's not crucial. It is a fundamental mistake to think that the views or interests of an artist should carry more weight in copyright issues that the views or interests of anyone else!
The purpose of copyright is to benefit the public, by influencing artists to make more works. But copyright also restricts and thus harms the public. It is up to the public to decide how much copyright price is worth paying to get more works.
In 2009, the question was whether Obama and Holder would prosecute the Bush regime officials that tortured around 100 prisoners to death.
Now we know the answer: no, they wouldn't. These murders are still a blot on the honor of the United States, and will remain so until those guilty (from Bush and Cheney on down) are punished. If the US won't do it, the UN should.
Former employees of Kaspersky say that the company sabotaged competitors by tricking them into recognizing normal files as viruses.
All these companies were making proprietary software, which is unethical in itself; I can't consider any of them an innocent victim. Microsoft, in particular, commits sabotage against its users.
That doesn't make it ok to do what Kaspersky is accused of doing.
The US Government Investigated Journalists 14 Times During 2014.
A chemical plant in Texas exploded, and people who live nearby say the gas from the fire made their eyes burn.
The risk of accidents can't be avoided, but many processes that use toxic chemicals could be replaced by other processes without toxic chemicals.
US thugs will go to any length to block people from documenting their crimes, even accusing a fragile woman in a wheelchair of "assaulting a thug" after knocking her down.
I think it must be made a felony for thugs to interfere with documenting their actions, with a special agency to vigorously prosecute them.
How Developing Countries Are Paying a High Price for the Global Mineral Boom.
I'm sure a wealthy minority in those countries are profiting from it.
The Indian government is trying to impose GMO mustard (used often for greens and oil as well as for a condiment) with the "terminator" that makes seeds sterile. It will also spread patent pollution to other farms.
In the process it is disregarding Indian laws as well as treaties.
Pope Francis condemned the use of GMOs to create monoculture plantations as found in Argentina and some other countries.
The most extreme Republicans now insult anyone less extreme.
A similar dynamic has been in place on the political left in some places; for instance, during the French revolution, and in leftist circles in the US in the 70s.
This dynamic can also be observed in Islamism, with PISSI as its ultimate extreme.
At this point, the practice may cause Republicans to be so extreme they are defeated. However, the practice of opposing non-extreme Republican candidates was very effective in shifting US legislatures to the extreme right, and in making them cheat with voter suppression and so on.
Many companies are using facial recognition on their customers, and there is no regulation on it in the US.
Even worse, US thugs are using facial recognition.
I think thugs should be allowed to use facial recognition only on people under arrest, or people identified by a special "search for this face" warrant.
I think companies should be required to get permission to take photos of customers or the public, with the exception of security camera recordings that normally are erased within a certain time and are not normally used in any other ways.
The argument about "Nordstroms", that customers will appreciate the convenience of being recognized, and therefore companies should be allowed to recognize people with no limits, is logically invalid. The correct conclusion from this scenario is that Nordstroms (or whichever store it may be) can ask each customer, "Would you like us to recognize you by your face and offer you convenient suggestions when you return?", and customers can say yes or no.
The rule that companies can do surveillance of any sort when customers "consent" is not in general acceptable. It is too easy for companies to pressure customers by saying, "Consent, or no service."
However, if the principal service is available without surveillance, and only secondary "conveniences" require accepting surveillance, I think that is safe. We who value our privacy can easily do without "convenient" suggestions when we go shopping. Indeed, I think just about everyone will decide to do without them.
Australian academics want to fight the parasitic commercial journal publishers.
Criticisms of Clinton's email handling focus on two messages which, depending on details of the situation, might be security violations or might not.
Hawks are using distorted "intelligence" to argue for war with Iran.
The Greek Parliament has acceded to the EU's demands, the preconditions for bailing out Greece's bankster creditors. In the process, it split the Syriza Party, which will force new elections.
We will see if Tsipras "has what it takes" … to be the EU's subordinate in charge for Greece.
Here's what the plutocratic rulers will impose on Greece.
Many of these items sound like changes for the better, and perhaps some really will be improvements (though that depends on details). Syriza's initial mandate included some of them.
However, reducing pensions by 1% of the GDP is an enormous cut in the support for old people who are now barely getting by. This will kill thousands.
And changing labor law will probably mean letting companies mistreat workers.
Reddit deleted a posting because Russia demanded it, and Reddit's management says it is Reddit's policy to do so.
Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled that executions violate the Connecticut constitution.
Making the case that Arctic Ocean oil must be off limits.
Shell's investment of billions of dollars in Arctic drilling can only be profitable if it pumps lots of oil there — and that means lots of global heating.
The thug that killed Christian Taylor has been fired because it became clear he had made false accusations (standard thug practice) against Taylor to try to justify the killing.
He should be prosecuted, indeed. But making false accusations is a vicious crime even when it isn't accompanied with killing. All thugs found to make false accusations should be prosecuted for perjury.
A university expelled a student for "rape", but the court ruled that the judgment was made in a way that didn't respect his rights.
The EU banksters recognize that the "bailout" will only increase Greece's debt, but insist on doing this to Greece anyway. However, they will have trouble doing it if the IMF won't join in.
Since Jeb Bush is proud of Dubya's torture policy, look at what that included.
"Microaggressions" refers to ways of speaking that might be minor insults. Here's an offered list of typical ones.
The author calls all of them blameworthy attacks, and many of them really are such because they reflect derogatory stereotypes. We should learn not to think about people in those ways.
However, I disagree about some entries in the list. A few of them amount to saying "I'm not a racist"; that claim may not be true (it is hard to avoid unconscious racism), but making the claim is not insulting anyone. Others of them say that "Society should not be racist"; that's not a insult, it's right.
Some people have trouble learning and remembering unusual names. It's not their fault and reflects no ill will.
A friend with an unusual ethnic background told me she has often experienced statements in the "Alien in One's Own Land" category, and the people who say them are generally either impressed or simply curious — not hostile at all.
Insulting someone must not be a crime. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult anyone, and not only in these indirect and minor ways. However, with a few exceptions where there is cause, it is better to try not to insult people.
US citizens: call on the EPA to protect monarch butterflies from pesticides such as Roundup.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: call on local public radio stations to push back against NPR's pro-fracking policy.
US citizens: ask Bernie Sanders to talk about the harm done by militarism.
Lifelong activist Bob Cole went to Switzerland so he could die peacefully, rather than painfully from lung cancer. With his last words, he called for legalizing voluntary euthanasia in the UK.
People in Azerbaijan who advocated a boycott of the European Games have been jailed on spurious charges after an obviously bogus trial.
The father of a British soldier, killed by B'liar and Bush, calls for Tony B'liar to be tried for war crimes.
Hear, hear!
An attempt to ban paternosters in Germany has been blocked.
I saw one for the first time in an English movie, and thought it was cute. I saw a real one at the University of Cambridge, and was scared until its safety systems were explained to me, but then it was fun. It would be a shame to lose them to absurd "safety requirements" aimed at a tiny danger.
Some of the small elevators of Paris are even smaller now, due to a law that required new automatic inner doors.
Thugs shot Radazz Hearns because he pulled his pants up as he ran away.
Even if he had pulled a gun from his waistband, he would have had to turn around with it in order to threaten the thugs. They would have had time to shoot, then, so they had no need to shoot prematurely based on a guess.
From the name "Radazz", I suspect that he is black and that possibly unconscious racism played a role in the thugs' decision to shoot.
Food Production Shocks 'Will Happen More Often Because of Extreme Weather'.
The US is not in a position to impose stronger sanctions on Iran.
It cannot get more concessions from Iran that way.
The supposed "economic benefits" of the TTIP would amount to just .4 dollars per day per person in the US, and .2 euro per day per person in the EU.
Of course, it's not that every American or European will get that tiny benefit. Rather, nearly all the benefits will go to the rich, and everyone else may actually lose.
But all this is secondary to the main effect of the TTIP: giving more power to companies. It is a corporate supremacy treaty, mislabeled as a "trade agreement" as a distraction.
Obama is permitting the US military to block the release of Shaker Aamer and other prisoners in Guantanamo.
Obama could change these rules, or replace the officers that get in the way, if he were determined to end imprisonment without trial.
Black men in the US have 5 years less life expectancy than white men.
Several young Americans are suing the US government for failing to prevent the predictable damage that global heating is going to cause them.
Suspects have been arrested in the murder of secularist blogger Niloy Chakrabarti.
500,000 abandoned US mines pose a threat of poisoning rivers.
Mines produce large bulk of toxic wastes, and current law does not require the mine operator to dispose of the waste safely.
New Hampshire's law banning taking photos of your ballot has been declared unconstitutional.
There may be few cases so far where vote-buyers have demanded to see ballot selfies. But if people can vote over the internet, I expect many bosses to require their employees to vote while the boss watches.
The article uses, gratuitously, the confusing term "intellectual property". If you think that term refers to something coherent, it has already led you astray.
Jeb Bush endorses use of torture, along with the myth that it could be "necessary" as well as the myth that it could be justified.
He does not seem to understand that torture is most "effective" for obtaining false confessions.
The ban on smoking in public places in the UK has substantially reduced the rate of stillbirths and the rate of deaths of newborns.
This joins other health benefits.
The hired private prison guard company that handles "security" for imprisoned refugees that Nauru holds on Australia's behalf followed a visiting Australian Green senator who was investigating prison conditions. Now the Greens demand that company's contract not be renewed.
This situation is one injustice piled on another.
Those guards seem to have been models of odious conduct.
Lenovo's BIOS reinstalls malware (with a back door) into Windows if it is no longer present (for instance, of the user has reinstalled a "clean" Windows).
Of course, a "clean" Windows installation is not really clean, since it contains Microsoft's spying, DRM, backdoors and censorship.
It appears Lenovo's method will not affect GNU/Linux.
An Australian man, jailed for flying under a false name, has been put in inaccessible solitary confinement.
He should not be in jail at all. People should not have to give their names for domestic travel.
He seems to be an Islamist and has connections with groups accused of having connections with PISSI. Those views are despicable, but freedom of speech applies to them.
The Thor project is developing a patent-safe free software video codec.It is disappointing that the project cites the term "open source" which avoids issues of freedom. But the code they release is free software, so the project's work will be a good contribution to freedom.
Most of the time, a large software project should be copylefted. However, this is one of the exceptions. We want nonfree programs to support this format.
The article says they ask people to "contribute their own 'intellectual property rights'" — which is gobbledygook.
I suppose they are asking for programmers to work on the code, and (as a separate matter) asking companies to provide patent licenses for the algorithms and techniques. They could say so, it would be clear and logical. Alas, they are committed to the incoherent concept of "intellectual property", which leads them to generalize about unrelated things to create a false appearance of unification.
Obama is trying once again to "close Guantanamo prison" by moving the prison somewhere else.
The Internet of Things — Who Wins, Who Loses?
Australia has made it a crime for researchers in the physical sciences to discuss their research with foreigners, or publish it, without approval.
In China, over 1.5 million people die each year from air pollution.
That must be roughly 10% of the deaths that occur in China.
Arguing that Thailand's current king accidentally shot his brother, the previous king.
I don't have enough other knowledge about the incident to assert that this is true, but I mention it because the Thai government doesn't like it to be discussed.
Former officers of Pinochet's dictatorship were convicted of murdering a dissident.
Proposed principle: 'Robots are artifacts; they should not be designed to exploit vulnerable users by evoking an emotional response or dependency. It should always be possible to tell a robot from a human.'
Part of China's economic advantage in production comes from a range of policies that don't value people's lives enough. The fatal explosion in Tianjin is an example of what that can do.
Corruption plays a role, too, in that regulations are not followed.
That happens in the US as well.
The Tories' "right to buy" public housing has produced the exact opposite of its ostensible purpose: a smaller fraction of Britons now own homes, and most of the homes purchased under "right to buy" are now private rentals charging a lot more than when they were public rentals.
Palestinian lawyer Mohammed Allan, who has been on hunger strike to protest imprisonment without trial by Israel, is now in a coma.
Israel says he is a member of Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad is a violent and terrorist organization, but if Israel accuses him of involvement in violence, it should put him on trial and prove that.
The bailout for the banksters that Greece owes money to abolishes rules that help local small businesses resist multinational chains.
It requires Greece to privatize water supply.
That will result in long-term hardship — it does, everywhere.
Three cheers for Linda McQuaig, the candidate who dares tell the truth about the effects of extracting and then burning Alberta tar sands.
How CIA officials tried to thwart the Senate's investigation of CIA torture, even going to the point of trying to get senate investigators prosecuted, and denying the conclusions their own internal investigation had established.
These officials are still at it — vile torturers!
Frack wells in New Mexico are spreading local air pollution that harms the health of the people who live there.
The covert videos of Planned Parenthood are nothing but hot air — they do not show anything wrong.
Japan carried out murderous medical experiments on Americans, Chinese and Koreans.
Compare with the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
At least the US has apologized for that. Japan should start apologizing wholeheartedly for its atrocities.
However, Abe explicitly stopped short of saying "apology" when he spoke on the anniversary of the end of World War II.
Some of the possible dangers of trusting robots.
We had better make sure the code in the robot is controlled by people that have the users' interests at heart — that is to say, the users.
http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html
To railroad Chelsea Manning into indefinite solitary confinement over having an "expired" tube of toothpaste,
the prison guards have blocked her access to the prison library.Amazon's management technique is vicious; secondarily, it often backfires.
That is actually a good thing, since it may help limit the use of this approach.
Obama blames Congress for blocking release of Guantanamo prisoners, so why did he oppose Tariq Ba-Odah's habias corpus petition?
Food Aid Cuts ' Making Refugees Targets for Isis Recruitment '.
An oil pipeline between Canada and the US, under Mackinac Strait, is now 62 years old and operated by a company we can't rely on much.
Glasses That Confuse Facial Recognition Systems Are Coming to Japan.
California's new water-saving showers will save a little water, but the way to save a lot of water is to stop fracking.
Coerced prostitution of minors in the US exists, but the victims appear to number in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands as sometimes claimed.
The US Civil War was about whether to end slavery. Everything else followed from that issue.
One SWAT team has been denied immunity for carelessly raiding some innocent people's home with less-lethal grenades.
Good, but if the victims win their lawsuit, it will be the city that pays.
Making cities pay damages for misconduct by thugs has proved insufficient to deter thugs from careless or bestial cruelty. We need to punish the individual thugs.
Bizarrely, a concern about prices has motivated UK air travellers to refuse to let airport stores scan their boarding passes.
I almost never buy anything in an airport except take-out food, because the stores in an airport are expensive. The exceptions are when something is hard to find in the US: I've bought chocolate, cheese, nama yatsuhashi, and occasionally a book. For my privacy's sake, I have refused to let any store scan my boarding pass. When the clerk insisted on that, I said "no sale."
Then one day it occurred to me to ask, "What do you do when a boarding pass fails to scan properly?" The clerk answered that they can manually enter the flight number in that case. Since then, I've offered this a couple of times, and the clerk accepted it instead of scanning my pass.
As for the question of how this affects the prices, I expect an airport store to be expensive, but there is no use fussing about that. I simply don't buy anything there that I could get elsewhere.
Ferguson's thugs had to surrender two Humvees, but not because of any plan to demilitarization US thugs.
Prison thugs in New York beat up prisoners, trying to extract whatever they knew about two prisoners who had escaped.
Refuting the main "rational" arguments against abortion rights.
There remains only the argument from religion, which attempts to prove that a fertilized ovum must already have a "soul". I've refuted that one.
The investigation of Scott Walker was not a fishing expedition. It was based on real evidence of a specific felony.
Obama has harshly punished government employees for "mishandling secret information", and Clinton hypocritically endorsed the harsh punishment of others for this, while she herself was doing it with her email server.
Note that Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning was not irresponsible in handling secrets; she heroically told the American public about US government wrongs. But Clinton had no such justification. She was irresponsible.
A US court ordered the Theater of Security Agency to set up an appeals process to get off the No Fly List. But this is effectively useless since the TSA refuses to tell people why they were put on the list.
This list is based on vague suspicions, not on the punished person's actual conduct.
Banning someone from flying is a denial of rights, and should not be done without due process of law, based on real acts.
Surely any danger that these people might conceivably pose could be avoided by special searches.
Amazon's management technique is vicious; secondarily, it often backfires.
That is actually a good thing, since it may help limit the use of this approach.
Iranian political prisoner Bahareh Hedayat has not been freed even though her sentence calls for her to be released now.
Unburying the history of genocide against the Jews of Ukraine.
People in old times did not smile for photographs; the idea would have struck them as daft.
I noticed this myself, several years ago, and decided to follow their example. Occasionally I have a contented expression, but I avoid the artificial smile that most people produce.
The UK is trying to weaken EU air pollution limits, for the sake of coal mining.
Australia (specifically Northern Territories) allows thugs to arrest people pre-emptively over possible minor crimes.
Thugs cite bad science to justify a delay before they report what happened when they shot someone.
The delay helps them "clarify" their stories, I'm sure.
The surveillance modules that insurance companies put in cars can be used by crackers to kill the driver.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act.
California's proposed bitcoin license bill is full of bad decisions.
Everyone: Call on Exxon to quit ALEC.
Republican presidential candidates have got 62 million dollars from fossil fool interests — companies and billionaires.
Egyptian thugs arrested lawyer Karim Hamdy and tortured him to death.
There is an apparent motive for this crime: he had defended people tortured by the police.
Criminalizing any aspect of non-coerced sex work makes sex workers more vulnerable to violence, harassment and stigma.
Thugs argued in California court that a video of their misbehavior should be inadmissible evidence because they thought they had destroyed all the surveillance cameras that were set up in the store.
We need a law authorizing anyone to record thugs that are on duty, in uniform, or exercising any official power.
On the two reporters charged with the crime of not double-timing out of a Macdonalds while covering the riot of uniformed thugs in Ferguson a year ago.
Disgusting as these charges are, many Americans serving on juries are willing to convict people of them, applying twisted moral standards when judges tell them they are supposed to. Peter Watts was convicted of "not obeying instantly"; the thug who beat him up was not even prosecuted.
Which is why every American needs to read about jury nullification.
Obesity Is an Incurable Disease. So Why Is the [UK] Government Intent on Punishing Sufferers?
It's an opportunity to demonize the weak, of course.
Video suggests that the youth shot by thugs in Ferguson this week was pulling a gun on them.
If that was really the situation, I can't fault the thugs for shooting him. However, since it is standard practice for thugs to make that claim falsely, we must treat it with the utmost skepticism.
No to Internet Censorship in Argentina.
The war games of NATO and Russia create sparks that could set off a real war.
The Texas thug that shot Christian Taylor has been fired.
This is a good first step, but not enough to do justice.
The Obama regime threatens to treat journalists as combatants.
Charnesia Corley accuses Texas thugs of sexual assault for their search of her vagina without a warrant.
Thugs declared an emergency in Ferguson and the surrounding county, and have arrested many peaceful protesters, as well as attacking them with chemicals.
White militiamen roam Ferguson with rifles while black men falsely arrested.
PISSI is aiming its boasting-of-savagery propaganda at the Taliban.
Charges Against Journalists Raise Troubling Questions About Press Freedom in Ferguson.
Amnesty International approved a position for decriminalizing sex work.
This is the right policy. Yes, many people are forced into sex work as slaves, but many people are enslaved and forced into other kinds of work. We need solutions to the problem of enslavement that apply to many fields.
See the enslaved workers page.
Around 10% of children in the UK can't afford a bicycle. And if by luck they get accepted to a university, they will get out with crushing debt, US-style.
If they don't go to a university, they will be doomed to a life of poverty, as there are no good jobs for those without a degree. But good jobs are hardly guaranteed for those with a degree. But those who borrow the money to attend may face a life of poverty together with crushing debt.
Meanwhile, the state is cutting back on secondary education, to reduce their chances of qualifying for university or graduating from one.
You can predict most policies of the UK government by assuming that its real goal consists of dooH niboR plus burning fossil fuels, but that it cannot admit this.
Canadian candidate Linda McQuaig dared to say that tar sands must be left in the ground, and was attacked by candidates on all sides who won't dare admit this basic fact.
Canada spent 30 million dollars on PR and lobbying for export of tar sands oil.
The killing of Zachary Hammond, by a thug who then apparently lied to create an excuse, is an example of one kind of evil of the War on Drugs.
However, the War on Drugs harms people and undermines social institutions in many other ways too.
Now that the US fights its wars without ground combat, it no longer faces an antiwar movement. It can deny civilian casualties and exaggerate enemy casualties with almost no checks.
Scotland has banned GMO farming.
Nutritionists Slam Coca-Cola Funded Scientists Over Deceptive Soda Message.
It is spreading denial through a front group, the "Global Energy Balance Network", following the tobacco industry model.
The US states with the most children also make it hardest for children to have good health and education.
This is partly because poverty causes more births.
Australia could reduce greenhouse emissions by 35% instead of 26% (for 2030) with a little more money.
In any case, the costs are small.
My memory is not the best, but isn't 35% by 2030 still too little, too late? All the pledges for the Paris conference are too little. Global heating disaster will have its own costs, tremendous costs in subsequent decades.
If "international permits" means what I think it does, that is likely to make the entire scheme ineffective. It is too easy for someone in another country to fake a future "reduction" and sell it.
Obama is taking back two Humvees from Ferguson.
Good first step — but this must be extended nationwide. Most US states should have only one SWAT team. A few large, populous states may need a handful.
Scott Walker of Wisconsin plans to fire University of Wisconsin scientists that produce results he finds inconvenient.
Humanity vs polio: superstition and Islamic extremism protect the virus but they are losing.
Windows 10 can be spying on you to your relatives, as well as to Microsoft.
Kansas is using suspect digital voting machines and fighting tooth-and-nail to block investigation of whether they cheat.
In the UK: oppose the plan to harshly punish people that noncommercially share files through the internet.
I think that the suggested responses are too weak, because they accept as legitimate the overall framework of the war on sharing; they oppose only this proposed escalation. If I were a Briton, I would say that they should go in the opposite direction and legalize noncommercial sharing of all published works.
The proposed law comes from the UK's "intellectual property" office, and is typical of the twisted ideas that the term "intellectual property" tends to encourage. That's why I refuse to use that term.
You can reject it too.
Kurds in Turkey believe Erdoğan is provoking a fight with the PKK so that he can reduce the vote for the Kurdish-associated human-rights-supporting HD Party in new elections.
Humanitarian Palestinians protected an Israeli thug from being shot at by Israelis — because she is a person.
A giant new mine in Australia may have no market because India plans to mine coal domestically instead.
Moving mining from Australia to India will remove one local threat to the Great Barrier Reef, but won't reduce the CO2 emissions that are going to kill all coral over time.
Pongsak Sriboonpeng has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for saying something negative about the king of Thailand. The state refuses to tell us anything about what he said, so we should not suppose it was really harsh.
Not that it would be justified to imprison a person for a mere insult even if it were harsh.
I decided a couple of years ago not to go to Thailand ever again, mainly because I don't know whether I'd be imprisoned for this web site.
Workers in the US sabotage robots that, they fear, will eliminate jobs.
I say Bravo!, although I agree that physical robots are a small threat to jobs compared with (for instance) sales terminals. Having robots do all the work would be great, if a sustainable human population all shared in what they produce. But robots as an excuse for spreading poverty ought to be destroyed.
Everyone: call for prosecution of Officer Encinia who arrested Sandra Bland.
US citizens: oppose fracking in Big Cypress National Preserve, which can poison water for the Everglades.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your senators to support the Clean Power Plan.
Everyone: Call on Malaysian Airlines to stop carrying shark fin.
US citizens: call for protecting Social Security from the artificial problem it faces.
Everyone: call for dropping charges against Ferguson journalists.
Poor people in the US lose medical care because they can't get to the doctor's office.
San Francisco's Proposition E would require internet streaming of all public city government meetings, and other technical advances.
I agree completely with what this initiative says, but it is silent about a crucial detail for protection for the public's freedom. The city tech staff would choose the streaming system with no requirement that it allow viewing without nonfree software. They would probably choose some popular commercial video streaming service which requires nonfree software to view the stream.
The issue may arise also for remote video testimony, maybe even for advance video testimony.
If this passes, another campaign will be needed to steer the city towards freedom-respecting video streaming and commenting. If you live in San Francisco and you want to start this campaign, please contact me — don't wait for election day.
Movie Studios Seek SOPA Power Through Broad Site-Blocking Order.
The US must cease its assistance to the Dominican Republic government, and especially to agencies carrying out expulsion of Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Ten Years Later, the "Halliburton Loophole" and America's dirty fracking boom.
It's now established fact that the target of the "John Doe" investigation, which Governor Walker ordered shut down, was Governor Walker.
The UK deports asylum seekers whose cases are not finished, to fill the seats in a chartered airplane.
It is easy to say that government agencies should do more to supervise companies that government functions have been outsourced to. However, it's a hopeless cause, because the companies seek ways to profit from doing the job wrong or cutting corners. We must consider privatization as a path to reduced government accountability.
Two UK thugs face charges for making a false accusation.
Alas, they are the exception, not the rule. They happened to pick a target who was an important politician. Would that all thugs that visibly make false accusations were prosecuted.
Al Qa'ida has declared a sort of truce with PISSI in Syria.
How Ronald Reagan dishonestly won the support of some unions, which he later crushed.
Unions should know better than to support anyone that isn't progressive.
Prisoners in Australia have been banned from smoking tobacco. They will be forced to withdraw cold-turkey from a drug that is harder to quit than heroin.
Tobacco is a deadly addiction, and it would be good to offer prisoners help in quitting, but forcing them (or anyone) to quit is cruel. Why not establish a smoking room for those prisoners who don't want to quit?
The Australian government commissioned a study to forecast the cost of curbing global heating. It gave them the disappointing news that big reductions would cost little more than small reductions.
Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping was disappeared a month ago and remains impossible to find.
A TV presenter faces punishment for a video that insulted Mao Zi Dong.
Similar disrespect for freedom of speech can be found in countries such as Thailand, Turkey and Spain.
The World Bank calls for shifting investment to renewable energy.
This voice will have some influence against the fossil fool interests, but the World Bank needs to make its actions match its words.
The factionalization of the Taliban offers an opening for PISSI.
India subjects Muslim citizens to Muslim family law, which is interpreted there as allowing men to divorce women instantly.
This is one among many ways that Islamic law tramples the human rights of women (and also men, to a lesser extent). It may have been a step up in the 7th century, but now we recognize that women should have equal rights.
The American Psychological Association voted to prohibit its members from participating in interrogation of prisoners of military or intelligence agencies, or consult about how to do so.
Ending deforestation-based palm oil depends on India above all.
It would be feasible to eliminate HIV by 2030, with a global effort of testing and treatment.
Donald Trump's insults against women arise from the sea of misogyny that Republican policies crawl out of.
The Black Lives Matter movement rallied in Ferguson, a year after the killing of Michael Brown launched it.
Another pattern in which US thugs endanger black lives: failing to investigate domestic violence and rape when the victim is black, or punish the victims.
A Texas thug shot and killed a black youth who was vandalizing cars that were waiting to be sold.
Vandalizing cars is bad, but it's not a reason to kill someone.
HTC phone fingerprint readers store the fingerprint image in files that any malicious app can get at.
Spying is normal practice for nonfree apps.
Corrupt politicians in Mexico murder journalists with impunity.
a man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for insulting or criticizing the king.
It is impossible to find the details as his "crime" is a secret.
What Would Justice for Sandra Bland Actually Look Like?
Effective defense of abortion rights must reject the right-wing premise that abortions are regrettable. Too many supporters of abortion rights accept that premise, which hands a victory to the anti-abortion campaign.
The term "pro-choice" is an example of that weakness. I say I am for abortion rights.
10 concrete policies for reducing US militarism.
The Republican candidates, in their debate, aimed to win the support of billionaires, not of the public.
Japan's government wants to restart nuclear reactors despite opposition by the majority of the public.
Nuclear power plants have grave accidents because they are so complicated that many things can go wrong. The same can occur in chemical plants, but chemical plant accidents don't spread lasting pollution across distances of 50 miles.
It looked like Brazil had saved the Amazon rain forest from deforestation, but now the problem is getting worse.
It is vital to limit Brazil's population, and in the human population in general. Its growth will have to stop, soon enough; let's stop earlier, and leave some wild places in existence.
Black Lives Matter protesters took the podium from Bernie Sanders, who gave them a chance to speak, but then they blocked him from speaking and insulted the Sanders supporters waiting for his address.
It is valid to call on Sanders to propose more specific actions to stop thugs from attacking blacks (and occasionally whites) for no good reason and make false accusations against their victims. However, attacking the progressives that want to do this is self-defeating.
Google search is the locus of a conflict between French law and US human rights.
This problem appears for Google because it is a service conglomerate operating in many countries. Duck Duck Go does not have to worry about French law.
Perhaps the ideal outcome would be to disaggregate companies such as Google. Some of the service could be replaced by separate services communicating through published interfaces. Others are SaaSS and should be replaced by running free software on your own computer. Some systems for communication should be replaced by distributed computing on various users' computers.
Ralph Nader's advice to Bernie Sanders.
Thug departments seeking military weapons and equipment stoke public fear about extremely unlikely terrorist attacks. In private, they say they will use the equipment frequently in other situations that are far less grave.
They also use this equipment to suppress protests, which is one reason it is a high priority to take it out of their hands.
Wearable technology threatens to control every moment of the lives of professional athletes.
Being a professional athletes is a fate that anyone can avoid. But the threat is not limited to them. It applies to nearly everyone, if insurance companies are allowed to offer discounts for using them that most people can't afford to refuse, or if employers are allowed to require their use.
An autopsy shows that the thug who shot Zachary Hammond lied about the circumstances.
Isn't it a crime to tell such lies?
Dementia is occurring at lower ages than before, surely due to some kind of pollution though it is impossible to determine what.
Canadian Filmmaker Fears for Creative Freedom Under the TPP.
There is a deep danger in focusing on how copyright can restrict authors and artists: it implicitly endorses the idea that they are more important than the rest of us. That is flat-out wrong.
Even if copyright laws were carefully designed so that they never interfered with making new and appreciatable works, that would not excuse forbidding people to share copies.
An anti-"piracy" harassment group is attacking everyone that has published a video with "pixels" in the title.
While these excesses are risible, let us not be distracted from the wrong of attacking people who share. "Piracy", for sharing, is a propaganda term of the enemy and we should not use it.
Shell has yielded to public pressure and stopped funding ALEC.
A large part of consumer capitalism is based on exploiting foolishness.
It would be a mistake to try to divide all transactions into "fool" or "not fool". If you want a TV and you spend $1000 when a $600 model would have been good enough, maybe that was 40% fool and 60% non-fool.
On the other hand, if that TV snoops on you, it was 100% fool.
The entrance to the school-to-prison pipeline: black children that misbehave get punished, while comparable white children get therapy.
Partly it's because black children are segregated and go to schools that can't afford therapy. Partly it's due to racism (perhaps unconscious).
Proper sex education helps teenagers start thinking about sex in a deeper way than porn suggests.
An indigenous activist has rejected Australian citizenship and everything that goes with it. He is in jail for driving without an Australian driver's license, and refused to acknowledge his former Australian name to get bail.
The original wrong here was by the British colonizers, who declared that Australian land was nobody's property so they could simply take it all. The indigenous have a valid claim for compensation and some sort of agreement to recognize their rights. However, letting them drive without taking driver's tests is not the solution, just as kicking out the Australians is not.
Right-wing media have had a substantial right-wing influence on politics, but liberal or progressive media, even when popular, do not have an effect.
The Fox Noise debate between Republican candidates turned interesting as the moderator pushed them hard on women's rights issues.
Donald Trump says he can and does buy politicians.
US citizens: participate in events to convince legislators to support the deal with Iran.
Entering of the zip code to find events fails if you have disabled Javascript (which I hope you do), but I think you can find the events here.
US citizens: call on the EPA to curb greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect funding for school meals.
A year after Michael Brown was killed by a thug, society is more ready to criticize thugs, but Ferguson is not at peace.
The "Robin Hood Foundation" is run by a bunch of hedge fund managers and billionaires. They lobby to continue an absurd tax break, and give to the charity about 2% of what they get from that tax break.
The Texas voter ID law was very effective: it blocked 9% of the voters in a Hispanic-majority district.
Several destructive proposals the US are pushing in the TPP, some in copyright and some in patents.
While all these proposals are bad, they have nothing in common aside from that. Copyright law and patent law are totally different and ought to be treated as separate issues.
The term "intellectual property" is harmful because it encourages combining those two issues; I wish the TPP's critics knew better than to repeat the framing that supports the TPP's unjust aims.
Due to the concentration of the seed market, for some plants it is hard for farmers to find seed without neonicotinoids.
The Syrian Kurds closed two broadcast stations for not supporting their official position about events.
This is disappointing, but given what the other powers in Syria are like, it still makes sense to support them.
The dishonesty of right-wing pols accused of sex knows no bounds.
Congresscritters want explanations of how Malaysia's human trafficking status got updated. They are following up accusations that Obama falsified this evaluation to clear the way for the TPP.
Ms Twitty, the court clerk who was fired by Ferguson for making racist emails, got a similar job in another nearby town.
There are many jobs she could have, where her racism would not threaten injustice to the public as they do in this official position.
US or Russian nuclear missiles could be launched when neither country wants to attack.
Bernie Sanders should start expressing his views on foreign policy issues.
The principal anti-lie-detector activist in the US has been convicted of helping someone prepare to lie to the US government.
If we had an effective lie detector, would officials allow it to be used on them as they make statements about policies?
Civil liberties attorney Jennifer Granick warns that "the dream of internet freedom is dying".
Supporters of abortion rights should stop talking about abortions as if they were terribly unfortunate events.
I suggest dropping the term "pro-choice". I'm pro-abortion-rights.
Activist Mark Iannicelli was charged with a felony for handing out information about jury nullification on the street near a Denver court house.
Due to paranoia about hypothetical sexual abuse, teachers in New Zealand (and elsewhere) are pressured never to touch a student. Even a pat on the back is considered dangerous.
The article proposes a more general idea of "risk society" in which most anything can seem dangerous.
Another Bangladeshi secularist has been assassinated.
This is definitely terrorism.
The right-wing UK government shut down an environmentalist festival in 2009 by using thugs to harass the management. Now it appears that an undercover thug infiltrator worked as a volunteer for the festival on previous years.
A small fraction of refugees that flee to Europe want to go to Britain, and it is typically because they speak English.
PISSI captured a town in Syria, then disappeared 200 civilians.
Guber appears to have stopped displaying phantom cars, without admitting they existed.
Jeremy Corbyn shows how to get young people interested in politics: champion the changes people need and want.
Like Bernie Sanders in the US, Corbyn is criticized as "too radical to be elected". What's the use of getting elected if you won't even try to correct the major injustices? And what's the use of the Labour Party if it is "Tory lite"?
His views are not as radical as is really needed. For instance, he wants to keep energy prices down, when what is needed is to raise the price of fossil fuel.
Abbott will grasp at any excuse to claim the world needs big new coal mines. Here's why those mines will not help poor and rural people in India get electricity.
I predict the next Abbott excuse: burning enough coal will end racism because the dust will give all of us dark skin.
Maybe Charles Koch doesn't understand the science on which predictions of global heating are based on.
However, it is also possible that he's cynically playing a delaying game, abandoning one line of denial and taking up the next.
Martese Johnson, who was violently arrested by Virginia thugs belonging to
the Alcohol Beverage Control agency, will sue them.
US citizens: call on Obama not to grant Shell the last permit for drilling in Arctic waters.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to support the nuclear deal with Iran.
Everyone: call on Unilever to compensate its poisoned ex-workers in India.
Division 30, the US-supported Syrian rebel group, declared a truce with al Nusra (a branch of al Qa'ida) after facing hard attacks from that group.
It is bizarre to refer to capturing an enemy soldier as "kidnapping". It is called "taking a prisoner". Al Nusra ought to treat these captives according to the laws of war, but I don't have much confidence in its ethical principles.
Division 30 was effectively compelled to do this, because it is too weak to do otherwise. The US has only managed to train around 50 rebels, and success would require thousands. I take this as further confirmation that this approach is simply futile.
A few years ago, I said that there was no effective way to intervene in Syria that would make things any better. All the sides were bad.
The situation has changed since then. PISSI (*) is worse than Assad, and we can support the revolutionary Kurds of Syria without shame (we need not suppose they are flawless). They welcome non-Kurds that accept their secular and egalitarian society.
The US should support the revolutionary Kurds of Syria vigorously.
PISSI"> * The Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Laws about privacy of medical records in the US are thoroughly inadequate.
It is a shame that the article uses the word "hacker" to mean "security breaker". To avoid giving us hackers a bad name, please use the word "cracker" when you mean "security breaker".
I think the central registers of drug prescriptions are a violation of patients' rights.
Data collected by medical devices should belong to the patient that uses them, and the devices should be designed to facilitate access via published APIs and not to send them to the manufacturer.
The software in the devices should be free, of course.
Children with ADHD often face harsh discipline in school, from teachers that don't understand their problem. Being handcuffed is not so unusual.
The FCC authorized phone companies to replace copper wires with fiberoptics.
The backup power systems offered, which customers have to pay for specifically, would last only a limited time.
It is not clear to me whether those backup power systems would be located in the subscriber's premises. If they are, it might be easy to replace the batteries in them yourself.
Greek tax revenues have fallen drastically.
This will make a mockery of any proposed bailout for Greece's creditor banksters.
British journalist Duncan Campbell writes about being prosecuted for espionage for trying to write about GCHQ.
If Clinton sent sensitive government information from her private email account, that was, at the very least, reckless disregard of the rules.
After Ted Rall wrote about how thugs attacked him, the LA Times fired him, repeating the thugs' claims that Rall lied.
But the thugs' own audio recording, when cleaned up, showed that Rall was telling the truth.
Explaining why the staff of the London Underground are on strike.
If trains and buses and taxis were driverless, that would solve the problem of driver strikes. But how would you propose to deal with the problem of massive unemployment?
Joseph Stiglitz: US trade treaties would block developing countries from making offered outside investment benefit their people.
BART has published an app for reporting "suspicious" activity. It has the effect of focusing the (perhaps unconscious) racism of passengers.
In addition, the app is surely nonfree software, thus directly unjust.
A recent leak shows that the TPP still has many unjust copyright provisions that would deny rights to the people of countries that sign.
Most of these provisions would not affect the US, which already has the unjust laws in question. But the TPP would be one more obstacle to changing those unjust laws, which we must do. So we must not adopt the TPP.
I urge people to avoid the mistake of using the term "digital locks" to refer to DRM.
See http://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
Movie companies (acting through the MPAA) are asking for extremely broad court orders cutting off sites from most forms of internet activity in the US.
Every "thing" in the "internet of things" will be a telemarketer, if we tolerate nonfree software in our "things".
A series of protests last weekend called for the US to support nuclear disarmament instead of rearmament.
The UK government is forcing the charity Kids Company to close, using an apparently false accusation of financial wrongdoing.
It started when the founder criticized government policies that hurt poor children.
In the US today, only successful professionals can afford to write about minimum wage poverty.
Deterrence does not guarantee safety from nuclear weapons. They may still be set off.
China's increased repression is hitting universities.
Germany's chief prosecutor faces dismissal for trying to prosecute journalists for publishing about the German government's massive surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
"Gay rights were the low-hanging fruits of anti-discrimination."
The TPP could undermine medical care by extending a form of monopoly that impedes generic drugs.
Greenpeace is playing music near Shell HQ to draw the staff's attention to the harm that Shell's Arctic drilling will do.
Proof of sex bias in judging fiction: the same manuscript, with the same cover letter, got a much better response when the author gave a male name than with a female name.
Imprisoned unauthorized immigrants are made to work for a pittance, effectively as slaves.
It is wrong to rent out convicts for work other than running the prison, as that drives down wages for people not accused of crimes.
The UK right-wing government has weakened unions to the point where it feels safe attacking their funding from their members.
Australia was prepared 25 years ago to act to curb global heating, until the fossil fool lobby confused people with funded propaganda.
One US appeals court has ruled that a warrant is required for state access to phone location records.
That is a step forward, but merely making and keeping these records already goes too far.
The possible new leader of the Labour Party refuses to rule out prosecution of Tony B'liar for starting a war of aggression.
Dubya is clearly guilty of this crime, and should be prosecuted too.
Want To Know Why DHS Is Opposing CISA? Because It's All A Surveillance Turf War.
The Texas voter ID law lost one stage in a legal battle.
It could take months or years to have a final result.
The SEC has finally implemented the Dodd/Frank provision that companies must publish how CEO pay relates to employee pay.
Feeding People on Our Stressed Planet Will Require a 'Revolution'.
I think we had better make sure not to make so many people to feed.
Puerto Rico's drought is extreme; 400,000 do not receive water normally.
Chicago thugs continue secretly interrogating people in the Homan Square torture facility.
Most of the 3500 people who have been interrogated there were black.
Inhabitants of Rio's shanty towns say say that "security" for the Olympic Games seems like military occupation to them.
Everyone: call on Australia to cancel the Carmichael coal mine and
protect the Great Barrier Reef.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Starbucks to stop making workers do "clopens".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
This means an evening shift and a morning shift, with insufficient time between them to sleep.
US citizens: call on your senators to cosponsor the CARERS Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Methane leaks from natural gas wells might be 3 to 5 times what was previously measured.
The UK government has claimed that very few of the unemployed were punished with cuts in their welfare benefits, while covering up the real figure — 1/6 of them have been punished.
Interviews with people who have been in solitary confinement for many years show lasting psychological damage.
With so many criminal banksters, prosecutions in the US are at a 20-year low.
The biggest PACs benefit legally from pretending to be independent of the candidate's campaign, then attract money by saying they are not independent.
China will set up "security" offices in internet companies to stop "illegal behavior" (such as criticism of the government).
The staff at the (privatized) US Senate cafeteria do not make a living wage.
They find themselves with no income whenever the Senate is not in session.
It is natural for companies to "trim the fat" in ways that cause great hardship for their employees or those they serve. Democratic government was invented to stop them. Our democratic government is failing to do its job.
There are other lessons to be learned here. For instance, people like the writer's mother should not have children.
Obama said he would "close Guantanamo prison", but he wasn't referring to the injustice of imprisonment without trial,
only the prison's physical location in Guantanamo Bay.
Agricultural runoff threatens safe drinking water in various parts of the US.
It is a waste of energy, too.
Government surveillance of peaceful Black Lives Matter protests carries on a decades-old bad tradition.
Seeing a gun makes people more aggressive, and this includes thugs.
The fact that US thugs generally carry guns may psychologically promote brutality at various levels (not just use of the guns themselves).
UK thugs mostly do not carry guns, but what about thugs of other European countries that kill less often? Can someone tell me?
Public incidents of multiple shooting are little more frequent in the US today than in 1990.
In other words, people's perception that the danger has greatly increased is misinformation.
Furthermore, 30 or so deaths per year in a country as big as the US do not amount to a danger worth worrying about. By contrast, car accidents kill around 40,000 people per year in the US. This is also a tiny fraction of the total number of people killed with guns.
I conclude it is harmful to traumatize millions of schoolchildren with drills about what to do in that exceedingly unlikely situation.
It is an exaggeration to refer to these incidents as "mass shooting": we should limit the term "mass murder" and its variants to cases where hundreds or thousands of people are killed.
India's government has retracted the filtering order against porn web sites.
MDs are suing to overturn a Florida law that prohibits them from asking patients whether they have guns, and whether children can get at them.
Asking these questions does not in any way interfere with buying or owning guns, but the gun lobby would rather they were not asked.
Teaching people to worry about obesity leads to overeating.
There are two ways Greece could have coped successfully with the recession in 2008: either through deficit spending, or through a national bankruptcy system that would allow it to reduce the debt it had to pay.
Birth control pills permanently help prevent certain forms of cancer, even decades after a woman stops using them.
The US Should Eliminate Its Nuclear Arsenal — Not "Modernize" It.
Land around Chesapeake Bay (including Washington DC) is sinking half a foot per century from natural causes. Adding this to the sea level rise caused by global heating means that inundations will come sooner.
Wonder of wonders, the Marine Corps held an audit — but it wasn't careful enough to do the job.
South Dakota's permit for the Keystone XL pipeline expired, and the renewal hearing is bringing its local dangers into focus.
Proposing a guaranteed annual income for Canada.
The US must recognize the right to let plants grow wild rather than maintaining a lawn at cost to the environment.
Thugs in Detroit seem to have been out to get Dominique Rondeau.
Delivery by drone is now in service for prisoners.
In India, the ruling BJP is scapegoating porn to distract attention from corruption.
Sanders advocates public campaign funding to take election power away from the oligarchy.
The US has public funding for presidential campaigns, but the amounts are small; plutocrats can give a lot more. Thus, plutocrat-supported candidates reject the public funding in order to accept the larger funds from plutocrats.
However, the government could provide so much funds, controlled by success in getting small donations from many people, that the plutocrats could not compete.
A thug in Alabama was recorded proposing to murder a "nigger", and was not even fired.
The US applies "zero tolerance" to students but bends over backwards to be forgiving to thugs.
G20 Countries Pay Over $1,000 Per Citizen in Fossil Fuel Subsidies.
The UK plans to make life intolerable for refugees denied asylum. Landlords will be imprisoned for renting to them.
UK citizens are already being denied housing in a pilot project.
In effect, this means the UK will have an unofficial national ID card.
Prison guards in Alabama terrified a prisoner with a snake. One was fired, but got another such job nearby.
People tried to kill a leading Burundian human rights defender.
Presumably they are working for the "president" who recently seized continued power.
10% of Australians can't afford to buy food.
The Taliban have split into factions over how to replace Mullah Omar.
Parts of Egypt have run out of water. In a few more years, it will be a catastrophe.
Egypt's population is growing, but the growth will inevitably stop — either due to disease and premature death, or through prevention of birth.
Great US civil rights leaders also campaigned to abolish nuclear weapons and against imperialism.
Massively removing CO2 from the air would not save the oceans. It would take millennia for the acidity and heat of the oceans to subside.
Thus, we need to stop increasing the CO2 level, and soon.
The end of government support for higher education has returned the UK to a class-based society.
A heat wave in the Middle East carries temperatures as high as 51 C (124F).
At that temperature, 37% humidity is deadly.
Glaciers are melting and retreating twice as fast now as 10 years ago.
The EPA has proposed regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
It's not enough to do the US's share of avoiding climate disaster.
Seen in plutocratist terms, the Irish economy has "recovered" from the crisis.
For the non-rich, there is no recovery. Perhaps the rich are enthusiastic about this outcome, having gained at the expense of the rest.
US citizens: support the Schedules That Work Act.
Here's information about the bill. It doesn't go far enough, but it is a step forward.
The negotiations on the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison were unable to reach agreement.
Delay is on our side, as the Canadian and US election campaigns will put legislators under pressure to reject it.
Scott Walker welcomed a group of young supporters, who gave him an imitation check for $900 million from Koch brothers for 'climate denial'.
Amnesty International is taking flack from prohibitionists for listening to sex workers.
Prudish disapproval finds many disguises, even passing itself off as "feminism".
Legalizing sex work does not have to mean deregulating it. Trafficking and enslavement are a problem in sex work as well as in various other fields. Proper regulations can interfere with trafficking.
239 Years Ago, Adam Smith Predicted Fury of Seattle Business at CEO Who Pays Workers Well. But perhaps "reported on" would be more accurate than "predicted".
The best part of the article is the list of quotations from Adam Smith that plutocratists would not like.
India's government has imposed filters blocking access to hundreds of "indecent" web sites.
Many dams in the US are unsafe and need maintenance to prevent disasters.
The US bombing campaign against PISSI has killed at least 459 civilians. The US dishonors itself by denying this.
It is impossible to have a war without killing and wounding some civilians. The enemy, PISSI, has intentionally murdered thousands of civilians. Compared with that, the unintended civilian casualties of US bombing are few.
Nonetheless, Sunnis living under PISSI's control may well feel safe from PISSI, and consider the US bombing the principal present danger. Thus, the US needs to reduce these casualties by not attacking cities.
Political Staff Overruled "Purists" at State Department Who Tallied Slavery Problems.
14 countries were given grades they don't deserve, including China and India.
US thugs handcuffed an 8-year-old boy. It could have been worse — at least they didn't go on to club him.
20 children have been killed by thugs that handcuffed them or tied them up.
SCROTUS (*) failed in the attempt to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.
* SCROTUS: Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Everyone: demand prosecution of the thug that arrested Sandra Bland.
Everyone: call on Flint, Michigan, to reconnect its water to Detroit.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on China to free the arrested human rights lawyers.
The "Tory lite" faction of the Labour Party can't understand why the party's members are about to vote for a leader who stands for real support for the non-rich.
Sharks are necessary to prevent ecosystems from getting out of whack. So we need to protect them.
Putting a safe on the internet creates the Internet of Thieves.
The most dangerous deficit is the environmental deficit, which measures the environmental unsustainability of humanity's current mode of existence.
If we don't reduce our ecological footprint, we are in for disasters that will do so by killing people or wiping out industries.
California wildfires are raging; one has have burned 84 square miles.
Thugs arrested Troy Goode and tied him up. Then they put him in a hospital, and stopped his relatives from visiting him until he died.
A genetic engineering project could eliminate the need for painful dehorning of cattle.
I don't see anything wrong in principle with this project, and maybe it is not wrong at all. However, one needs to check for various possible secondary problems. Meanwhile, if this spreads patent pollution, it could be harmful socially even if it is not harmful biologically.
Christians face persecution for their religion, even murder, in many parts of the world.
Alas, Christians often persecute others when in the majority. Nowadays it doesn't often go as far as murder.
Copying And Sharing Was Always A Natural Right; Restricting Copying Never Was.
Mexican Photojournalist Found Dead Was Likely Tortured.
A UK web site that bypasses government-imposed web censorship is among the most popular sites.
Saudi Arabia's bombing of Yemen has damaged UNESCO World Heritage sites, and destroyed a museum with an important research collection.
Ukraine is being subject to shock capitalism.
The dangerous practice of keeping state dealings secret, simply to protect companies from embarrassment about what they are doing.
Companies such as Google and Guber are trying to pre-empt laws that protect the rights of human beings, by charging in against them.
I would never consider using Guber, even if it paid drivers decently, because it is a surveillance system.
Surveillance by companies dwarfs the direct surveillance by many governments, and feeds government surveillance, so we must get rid of it.
If we do not want a world of total surveillance that forecloses democracy, we must make a point of not being surveilled.
Peru's president has decreed that the state can take 3 years of anyone's phone call records, without even a warrant.
Sounds a lot like the US.
Global heating is increasing the flooding danger in many coastal US cities.
For the euro-banksters, the Greek people represent an existential threat to plutocratic order.
The euro banking system includes a cut-off switch for the banks of any country.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Iran uses fabricated WikiLeaks cable to smear UN rights rapporteur.
What if copyright law were interpreted to cover neural copies — memories?
Guess what can go wrong with the Internet of Guns.
Hacking Team sold spy gear to US thug departments.
Housing segregation is taking over the US again.
Australia's pseudo-plan for cutting greenhouse emissions will allow the most polluting businesses to emit more.
The right-wing government is working for the fossil fuel companies and increasing emissions is its goal. Naturally, it replaced an effective reduction scheme with one that wouldn't reduce emissions much. What surprises me is that they have the nerve to increase them.
Israel will begin violating the human rights of Jews as it has always violated those of Palestinians.
This is a change for the worse: imprisonment without trial must cease.
In what is now Kerala, until the early 20th century, Dalit women had to pay a tax for permission to cover their breasts in public.
There have been places where no women covered their breasts, and nobody thought that they should, and nobody complained about it except foreign missionaries. But it seems that Travancore was a place where most women did cover their breasts, and Dalits were made an exception to humiliate them.
The [US] Government Doesn't Know How Businesses Are Using Tech That Tracks Your Face.
"The NSA has said it will delete its mountain of private telephone records belonging to millions of Americans — just as soon as people stop suing it for having done so."
One region of Germany has required Facebook to drop its "real name" rule.
It isn't clear to me whether this allows one person to get multiple accounts and use them for different purposes.
US thugs killed 115 people in July, in the deadliest month so far this year.
New training enabled the Philadelphia thug department to kill a lot fewer people.
The second-in-command of Burundi's "president" was killed in an attack with rockets. He was responsible for crushing the protests against the "president"'s seizure of unconstitutional power.
Part of the army rose up against "president" Nkurunziza, but was suppressed. It looks like some in the army have not given up the fight.
Whether the army would defend constitutional principles, or just give someone else the chance to seize power, I can't guess.
Many bookmakers in the UK systematically close the accounts of bettors that win.
I don't think it is very important whether anyone can bet on horse races, or whether races are held at all. I mention this as an example of how replacement of anonymous cash transactions with digital accounts changes the system to the disadvantage of the customers.
In some cases it leads to not offering everyone the same price.
China will give all citizens 50% coverage of medical care for critical illnesses.
This isn't up to the standard of advanced countries, but it surpasses what the US does. The US should provide universal medical coverage.
In China, millions of people confide in a glorified "doctor" program.
This is a dangerous way to find a confidant: the state is surely reading the messages.
Zambian Villagers Take Mining Giant Vedanta to Court in UK Over Toxic Leaks.
Watch out if you are invited to use fingerprints to identify yourself for a flight!
I don't mind if they offer this option…as long as it remains just an option. I will not agree to it.
How about checking some other part of the body, such as the inside of the elbow, which does not generally leave impressions where we go? I would not mind if the inside of my elbow were scanned several times in an airport, and another part of my body the following week in another airport.
Thugs in South Carolina claim a thug shot Zachary Hammond in self defense, but an autopsy suggests they are lying.
A statistical study found that media coverage of terrorist violence leads to more terrorist violence. The more coverage an act gets, the more similar attacks occur shortly after.
Massachusetts citizens: support the Massachusetts constitutional amendment saying that corporations are not people and allowing regulation of campaign spending.
US citizens: support the Clean Power Plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
And tell the Senate you support the Clean Power Plan.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
When I signed that, I said the US needs to do more than this.
US citizens: support Medicare for all citizens.
US citizens:
Phone the White House to object to Shell's drilling in Arctic waters.
A rainforest, normally the wettest place in the US, went up in flames.
This is just a taste of the disaster we are working on creating.
Three executives of Anglo-Irish Bank have been sentenced to prison for fraud.
A campaign to boost wages for US child care workers.
Greeks who have sold out to the banksters are making Varoufakis their scapegoat.
Even his defenders are criticizing him.
It reminds me of the way many people in the free software community feel obligated, whenever they say anything good about me, to insult me as well. The social pressure comes from certain people who sneer at me, and sneer at anyone else that doesn't join them.
Varoufakis tried to get a decent break for Greece, from governments that turned out to be dead-set on crushing Greece — but that was not clear in advance. To be timid, as fools recommend, would have meant giving up on any possibility of victory.
[Thug] Follows Black Family Home, Terrorizes Them at Gunpoint.
Two Men. One Armed And Violent, the Other Unarmed And Nonviolent. One White, One Black, One Dead.
An ex-thug attacked a 69-year-old man, and amazingly faces criminal charges for it.
They are ridiculously light charges, for what he did.
The Koch brothers have effectively taken control of the Republican Party's campaign infrastructure apparatus.
Israel has legalized force-feeding of hunger strikers, citing the US as an example to follow.
Protesters dangling from a bridge blocked Shell's ship in Portland harbor for almost two days.
The thugs cut some of them down from the bridge.
The fine on Greenpeace suggests that protesters must organize separately.
The "Institute of Peace" has become a lobby for war.
Taking notes with a computer really hurts your recall — more studies confirm this.
In Tunisia: Counterterror Law Endangers Rights.
Reporters Without Borders criticizes the decision to hold the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
I agree that it is not good to boost China and other tyrannical countries with Olympic games. The ironic thing is that the Olympic Games impose tyranny, and the places they do the least harm are in countries that are already tyrannical, such as China. The sort of repression that games impose already pervades China. The debt they leave behind won't make much as difference there.
Until the games are reformed, we must protect still-somewhat-free cities from them.
Meanwhile, Beijing already has the large facilities needed. It is more efficient to reuse them than build new ones somewhere else.
China has recruited 18 million people to post "positive energy"; that is, support the government's propaganda line.
A forest fire is burning near Sydney, Australia, in the middle of winter.
Alas, this is not a freak accident.
Surveillance of all citizens: French government has now carte blanche.
1/3 of Clinton's principal campaign donors are connected to banks.
Crypto Activists Announce Vision for Tor Exit Relay in Every Library.
The US government threatens to treat journalists like spies.
An effective vaccine for Ebola has been developed.
The next eruption of Mt Vesuvius could force millions of people to flee their homes for an indefinite period, or simply kill them.
AIPAC is treating congresscritters to a visit to Israel, all expenses paid.
Shouldn't that be illegal?
Pinochet's officers burned two dissidents, one of whom died. Pinochet personally had this covered up.
Time to End the Korean War: Lessons from the Past.
The North Korean dictatorship is among the most horrible on Earth, but we are not going to topple it with an invasion.
Civil liberties lawyers have recognized that repression of animal rights protesters is a matter of human rights.
I don't particularly support animal rights; in particular, I am in favor of farming of animals (though we need to do a lot less of it, for environmental reasons), and I strongly support medical experiments on animals. However, I do support the human rights of those that disagree with me on this issue. The law against so-called "animal rights terrorism" is on a par with the Ag-Gag laws: an attempt to put companies above criticism because of their clout.
Two thugs in Cincinnati that were recorded corroborating a false accusation against Sam DuBuse will not be tried. Apparently they retracted their lies when actually interrogated.
I am glad they saw the error of their ways, but I suspect this is because they found out that evidence would catch them in the lie, and not from any sudden attack of honesty. We need to teach thugs that lying leads to imprisonment.
The prosecution of two German journalists for treason, because they published information about massive surveillance, has been "suspended" in response to public outrage.
This is not a final victory, because the prosecution could still be resumed. Nonetheless, Germany is beating the US, where the government will not even "suspend" the prosecution of our hero, Edward Snowden.
The UK government wants to massively broaden the War on Drugs. The excuse: someone died from (mis)using nitrous oxide.
There are many pastimes which have a risk of fatal accidents. Strangely, no one calls for prohibiting mountain climbing, skydiving, or swimming with sharks.
Israel threatens to ban human rights and peace groups unless Europe stops funding them.
Israel is making some concessions to international pressure to investigate war crimes in Gaza, but it can't decide whether to strengthen HAMAS or weaken it.
Some areas in California literally have no water, except from bottles.
Obama is rushing to get the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison approved this year, to keep it out of the election campaign.
Homeless protesters in Manchester, England, are threatened with years in prison. Any homeless people in the city who make nests to sleep in could be imprisoned too.
I urge the protesters to dare the state to prosecute and be damned.
The UK fines accused people (in effect) for not pleading guilty.
The US system of plea bargaining is even worse.
Freedom of thought and freedom of speech must include freedom to present ideas others consider "radical" or "extreme".
People often call the free software movement "radical". I think they are exaggerating — an idea which calls for reforming one aspect of life is not big enough to truly be radical. But that doesn't stop them from making the claim. Will the free software be banned?
Fanatical Israeli "settlers" appear to be responsible for setting a Palestinian house on fire, which killed a baby. Three other family members were critically burned.
Netanyahu condemned it, but it's part of a pattern that Israel does not try very hard to end.
Massachusetts citizens, support contraceptive access and privacy bills.
US citizens: call on US Bank to rehire Israel Aranda.
The patents on Roundup-Ready GMO plants are expiring, just as weeds have nearly made them obsolete.
Aging Pipes Are Poisoning America's Tap Water.
Former National-Security Officials Now See the Peril of Weakening Encryption.
A US judge says Afghan prisoners of war need not be released, because the US is still fighting the war there.
How Windows 10 abuses users' personal data.
Spain's economy, measured in totals, has recovered from the crisis.
However, ordinary people in Spain are remain much worse off than before the crisis.
Israeli troops shot and killed Muhammad Abu Latifa, and apparently lied about what happened.
They are doing a thug's job, so they act like thugs.
Requiring Google to pay for aggregating a news article — upon which Google stopped doing it — has been bad for news sites in Spain. It turns out that being aggregated is good for a news site.
Lots of teenagers in the UK have watched porn, and quite a few fear they have been psychologically influenced by it.
This is a real problem, but rather than making porn more forbidden (and thus more attractive), I suggest giving them a chance to have real sex with real people, together with education on how to please your lover.
Sarah Lee Circle Bear died after she was arrested, because thugs ignored her when she said she was experiencing great pain and needed a doctor.
The article does not say why she was having such pain at that time, but I have to wonder whether the thugs had something to do with it.
US citizens: call for an end to Republican (and other) gerrymandering.
Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?
Dylann Roof Is Not a "Terrorist" — but Animal Rights Activists Who Free Minks From Slaughter Are.
I don't moan for farmed minks, or other animals raised for slaughter. Minks are carnivores, by the way, and they don't kill humanely. Releasing caged American minks in Europe introduced an invasive species; releasing them in America fortunately won't make much difference. I agree that it is legitimate to prosecute them.
But it is bullshit to call the act "terrorism".
Legal bribery of officials is normal in the US; simply pay after the official leaves office.
The IMF demands debt relief for Greece, and refuses to participate in another "bailout" without that.
The point is not to simply heap more debt on Greece to "bail out" the banks.
Sanders strongly supports Planned Parenthood.
To fight racism, protect the right to vote.
The thugs that committed, then covered up, the killing of Sam DuBose seem to have done something similar to another unarmed black man 5 years ago.
Hungary's government is turning far-right.
When the state gets a warrant to search a computer, should it be able to keep the data forever and investigate it at will?
NSA Tries to Blame Privacy Advocates for Keeping Americans' Telephone Records.
California cities have made great strides in conservation, but the real question is whether their water use is less than the rainfall available nowadays. If California literally runs out of water, it can cut off irrigation, but cutting off cities would mean disaster.
Even el Niño won't cure California's drought.
US politicians have admitted that money rules elections since before 1900.
US citizens: support the Schedules That Work Act.
Here's information about the bill. It doesn't go far enough, but it is a step forward.
US citizens: call on the EPA to enforce the Civil Rights Act.
These bills criminalize undercover investigations in farms to document cruelty to animals
It is an interesting contradiction that no Republican wants to criminalize undercover investigations in Planned Parenthood (whose videos don't really show anything wrong).
This is not the first time a law banning documenting the conditions of farms has been proposed.
There's a pattern: a black gets stopped for some traffic offense, then get scared of being jailed for debt, "runs" away, and gets killed for running.
In other words, debtors' prison is part of the cause of killings.
Journalist Saparmamed Nepeskuliev has been disappeared for weeks in Turkmenistan.
Oxfam says that coal is not good for humanity.
The World Bank is funding a land grab in Ukraine.
The US is giving fighter jets to Egypt's military government.
To say that Egypt is "delaying" on democratic reforms is an understatement.
Egypt continues the process of abolishing democracy there.
Occasionally it is necessary to fight PISSI and its offshoots, but in general it can't be defeated that way.
US citizens: call on Canadian mining company Nevsun to stop using slave labor in Eritrea.
See the enslaved workers page.
Massachusetts citizens: support the Massachusetts constitutional amendment saying that corporations are not people and allowing regulation of campaign spending.
Médecins Sans Frontières accuses Saudi Arabia (backed by the US) of targeting hospitals in Yemen, and says the naval blockade is killing people by blocking medicines.
Some Americans are learning to be wary of devices that can listen to their conversations. But some fools still care more about convenience.
A California senator, who is also a pediatrician, led the successful campaign to make vaccination mandatory for children in school. Now he faces a recall campaign.
I urge people to campaign against these petitions.
Guber (*) reportedly shows "phantom" cars on the map, giving would-be passengers the impression that a car is available close by.
Guber denies doing this, but I don't trust Guber.
Guber"> * I call it "Guber" because it pays the drivers peanuts.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Low Income Solar Act.
8 million Americans, age 50 to 64, are having trouble getting enough food.
Palestinian teenagers that throw stones will face 20 years' imprisonment by Israel.
Currently Israel may imprison them without charges for any length of time.
The Israeli Army seems to be looking for a way to back down from demolishing Susya.
Israeli uniformed thugs do nothing, or do harm, when Israeli bigots attack Palestinians.
Blood stains show Israeli soldiers lied about how they killed Muhammad Abu Latifa.
Israeli soldiers entered a Palestinian family house and shot a son, then the father and another son.
Two Cincinnati thugs were caught doing what thugs typically do: confirming another thug's lies.
This is why I call them "thugs" in general. Many thugs would not engage in gratuitous violence against the public. But nearly all of them will support the lies of their brother or sister thug who has done so.
The few who value truth above thug solidarity, who refuse to lie to get another thug off the hook for a crime, those deserve the honorable title of "police officer".
The number of thugs that lie is far greater than the number that kill, so punishing the liars is crucial.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to cancel Arctic oil drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: urge your congresscritter to vote to close the gun background check loophole.
On Human Rights, UN Committee Gives US Low Grades for Surveillance, Detention at Guantanamo.
Harlem Suarez, facing charges of "terrorism", is indeed another Walter Mitty terrorist, who would never have gone beyond daydreams unless encouraged by the FBI.
Clinton's big announcement about solar cells is totally inadequate if judge as a policy to prevent global heating disaster.
The thug that shot Samuel Dubose has been indicted.
Phil Gramm thinks it was an "outrage" that the CEO of AT&T got only 75 million dollars on his retirement.
Gramm may not realize that things can be worse. I once met a worker who retired with a lot less pension than that.
An increase of 2.4 billion people predicted by 2050 will cause many kinds of difficulties.
Here's more about those difficulties.
Pakistani Journalists Live in Growing Fear of Violence.
Netanyahu Approves More West Bank Construction.
The "Stop CISA" Week of Action.
Greenpeace protesters are hanging from a bridge to block Shell's "emergency management" ship from getting repaired in Portland.
Without this ship, Shell is not allowed to drill down to the oil.
The Texas jail where Sandra Bland died has persistently failed to follow suicide prevention regulations.
That's not directly pertinent if she was murdered.
South Australia proposes to ban certain groups, arbitrarily, and forbid more than two of their members from being together at any time.
This is a direct violation of the right of association. If those groups are criminal, the state should have to prove this, not simply declare them banned.
The Sheriff of Waller County is responsible for both of the actions that led to Sandra Bland's death, and should resign. The same man was thug chief of a city in that area, and was fired for bigotry.
SCROTUS (*) are promoting extinction by attacking the Endangered Species Act (as well as by promoting habitat destruction and toxic emissions).
* Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Democrats in Washington must stop thinking of "test and punish" education as a civil rights measure.
A Canadian mining company is trying to use an existing corporate supremacy treaty to punish Romania for not authorizing a giant mountaintop removal mine.
New corporate supremacy treaties such as the TPP and TTIP would open the doors to a lot more of this.
Calling them "trade treaties" is a misdirection — please don't repeat that term.
How the US "economic recovery"
isn't
a real recovery.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
The war in Afghanistan has got more complex, as the Taliban are rivaled by the even more vicious Pseudo-Islamic State.
The fossil UK government has succeeded in stopping the growth of solar power.
Solar power threatens the fossil fuel companies that the Tories consistently represent. They might have preferred to cut all support for renewable energy as soon as they first got into power, but that would have been obvious. By cutting a part at a time, and sometimes replacing a bigger program with a different but smaller program, they were more successful at denying what they were really doing.
Greenpeace India is threatened with shutdown through arbitrary cancellation of its charter.
Chris Christie promises to crack down on marijuana users and growers in states such as Colorado which have legalized it.
Experts say the deal with Iran is as good as could be hoped for and much better than no deal.
It provides an opportunity for the US to end its hostility towards Iran, which would be a very good thing.
Massachusetts citizens, support contraceptive access and privacy bills.
US citizens: call on US Bank to rehire Israel Aranda.
An off-duty (and not in uniform) thug in Massachusetts threatened to shoot a driver who perversely did not stop when being tailgated by him.
Patricia Cameron burned a confederate flag on July 4, at a rally in a park. A thug who habitually annoys her arrested her out of bed at midnight, weeks later, for using a grill in the park.
US prosecutors are desperately trying to defeat the SAFE Act, a bill that would end mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, on the grounds that we're winning and losing the War on Drugs and need every possible weapon for it.
I've posted action notes calling for support of the SAFE Act.
We don't need "tools" to fight the War on Drugs, because it was a misguided project from the start. We should end it instead.
When a war is on drugs, we must expect it to engage in random violence, and that's exactly what happens.
Varoufakis says that the Greek tax collection computer system is directly controlled by foreign creditor organizations, and that he had to crack the system to set up an alternative system.
The creditor organizations say it is not true, but I trust Varoufakis and not them. They could be twisting language.
Yanis Varoufakis Is Being Pilloried for Doing What Had to be Done.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination against queers in employment, business and housing.
Bombing a residential complex in Yemen, which housed only civilians. was prima facie a war crime.
Harlem Suarez faces trial in Florida for an alleged bombing plot.
The things he reportedly wanted to do were quite nasty, but this looks like another one of the FBI's fantasy plots. I suppose he really said at some time that he wanted to do those things. If he was yielding to the persuasion of an agent of the FBI, that will be suppressed. If at other times he said he didn't want to do them, that too will be suppressed. Would he ever have done or planned anything without the FBI's encouragement?
In any case, referring to a conventional explosive bomb as a "weapon of mass destruction" is bogus — an example of the way governments typically lie.
Hillary Clinton was asked where she stands regarding the Keystone XL pipeline, and replied "Elect me and you'll see." She pretends that she is not allowed to take a position.
What this tells me is that she is working for the fossil fuel companies.
Global heating is enabling ticks to boldly go where no tick has gone before, and spread diseases to additional populations of humans.
Russian prosecutors have quit their jobs rather than frame innocent people and/or dissidents.
Erdoğan wants to prosecute the newly elected officials of the HDP for supposed links with "terrorism".
"Terrorism" means nothing except an excuse to annul what the voters said.
Peru stalling new national park for unique amazon mountain range.
Fossil fuel industry still winning the investment war, experts say.
Divestment is a weak way to cut back on fossil fuels. It is worth campaigning for, since we can do so, but it is far from enough.
Russian censors threaten to shut down a business website for writing about bitcoin.
Russia leads the way in blocking access to anonymizing servers.
Russia is an overt tyranny that pretends (for fools) that it isn't one. Would-be tyrannical states, such as the US and UK, can't be far behind.
Perhaps Turkey bombarded PISSI in exchange for US approval of Turkey to make war on the Kurds.
Vulture funds, attacking Puerto Rico, recommend what the IMF has done to so many poor countries: push the people into poverty to pay them.
We must give the owners of those vulture funds what they are owed: to experience poverty and homelessness for a while. Perhaps they will feel more compassion.
A warning against beginning a " military AI arms race".
California citizens: call on Governor Brown to end fracking in California.
Massachusetts citizens: call on your state rep to override the governor's cuts in birth control and public health.
An ACLU lawsuit highlights the corrupting effect of civil forfeiture.
Thugs are accustomed to breaking laws. Teaching people to be subservient to them reinforces the injustice.
Everyone: call on Shell to quit funding ALEC's global heating denialism.
Republicans that want to eliminate Medicare pretend we can't afford it.
Complacent Americans are skipping polio vaccination for their children, which builds up gratuitous risk for everyone.
Reportedly, the head of a school in Saudi Arabia has been imprisoned for painting rainbows on the walls. The rainbow is considered a symbol of homosexuality.
The EU, in negotiations for This Treaty Is Plutocratic, proposed a vague change to the foreign company supremacy rule. It sounds nice, but might not change the substance much (or at all). This isn't good enough.
A Chicago official whose job was to investigate thugs for crimes of violence found some of them culpable. His boss told him to change his mind, and then fired him when he would not protect the thugs.
US citizens: call on the IRS to close the hedge-fund loophole.
To fix the US campaign funding system requires public funding. It can drown out even the billionaires.
Comcast constructed an excuse to pretend that its chief lobbyist is something other than a lobbyist.
Oklahoma thugs and prosecutor seized people's money and property. In a number of cases they went missing or officials took them for personal use.
When scientists do not publish the raw data, they destroy much of the scientific value of their experiments.
Offering fair-trade footballs (soccer balls).
Republicans are trying a broad range of voter suppression measures, hoping that each one will block a few thousand more poor, old, student or minority voters.
Russia is disqualifying opposition candidates using tactics reminiscent of Katherine Harris.
Massive surveillance comes to Americans' trash.
New evidence for the case that there is no longer a copyright on the song, "Happy Birthday".
I will continue singing a different version using the Volga boatmen's song melody, just because it's fun.
The company that extracts money from this is trying to keep the case alive.
UK school children get meals in school during the term, but go hungry for the summer.
Abbott has failed again to find an Australian university willing to take government money to host a global heating denialist's "academic" organization.
Many Americans overestimate how much people in general want or think about sex.
If you think that the US as a superpower is destructive, imagine what a totally tyrannical China will do as a superpower.
In the wealthiest countries, most people know about global heating but do not see how it threatens them.
North Korea is sending thugs to people's homes to find and destroy copies of prohibited publications.
In the UK they jail people who are found with copies of prohibited publications.
The MPAA and Mississippi's attorney general conspired on a campaign to smear Google in the mass media as an excuse to impose SOPA-style anti-sharing measures.
More about Georgia's copyright lawsuit against Carl Malamud.
Australia threatens to imprison a man for trying to join the Kurdish army.
How stupid, treating PISSI's secular enemies just like PISSI itself!
The NSA says it will destroy its records of all US phone calls.
This would be a great victory, except that this system of massive surveillance will be replaced with a different system of massive surveillance, where the phone companies keep the same records and let the NSA search them.
In fact, at least one phone company already does this, and the records go back 25 years (maybe 27 years now) instead of a mere 14 years.
India's New Net Neutrality Guidelines Suggest Facebook's Internet.org Is Just Glorified Collusion.
Humpback whales have rebounded in population, thanks to protection measures.
A for-profit prison in Texas mistreats children so badly that it amounts to abuse and torture, according to an ex-employee.
Opposition from city residents has killed Boston's bid for the 2024 Olympic games.
Opposition organizers held a celebration.
Hooray for the Boston area, but shifting the problem to some other city is not good enough. The Olympics must be reformed so that they are no longer do permanent harm to the host city. Perhaps that requires making the Olympic games much smaller, or dividing them into several smaller events.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose CISA.
It is basically a repetition of CISPA, which we defeated.
France is considering a law to outlaw discrimination against the poor. For instance, rejecting an (otherwise qualified) employment candidate because the candidate is poor would be prohibited.
It makes sense to me.
Corporations' "Social-Responsibility Programs" are ineffective.
Perhaps the motive for these programs is to prevent laws that would be effective.
A new study established that social mobility in the US is less than previously thought.
ALEC's antidemocratic and anti-science agenda.
In sending doctors to treat the world's poor people, the leader is Cuba.
Twitter and some vicious comedians say repeating a joke is "theft."
People have been repeating jokes they like for millennia. These comedians are making a power grab, and we should punish them with a boycott (at least).
Of course, the concept of "intellectual property" is pure nonsense, and we should consider any statement using that term as incoherent.
Negotiations for a treaty to impose duties on multinational corporations and outsourcers are not going fast.
By contrast, negotiations for treaties to give multinational corporations and outsourcers additional privileges are going really fast.
That's proof that most governments have betrayed the people for the corporations.
Hillary Clinton sent classified information through her personal email account and her government email account, according to a government investigation.
That information was not supposed to be sent on insecure networks at all.
Denialists use short-term fluctuations (noise) to distract attention from the long-term trend of global heating.
Obama visited Ethiopia, whose tyrannical government carries out land grabs for multinational companies and whose proxy invasion of Somalia (on behalf of the US) created al-Shabaab.
At least he criticized repression there.
A prominent Turkish journalist was fired for a tweet that accused President Erdoğan of being partly responsible for the danger of PISSI. I hope he won't be prosecuted for saying that. Journalists in Turkey have been prosecuted in the past for expressing forbidden opinions, and for criticizing Erdoğan.
The US and Turkey agreed to establish a border zone within Syria and exclude PISSI from it.
However, the Turkish army is now fighting the revolutionary Kurds in Syria, the only Syrian group that has been able to stand up to PISSI.
Only around 200 tigers remain in the Sundarbans.
The Sundarbans are basically a swamp filled with bayous. In 150 years it will all be inundated.
Texas's voter ID law almost stopped former House Speaker Jim Wright from voting.
The state was compelled to fix this, because it would be too big a scandal to block a citizen who formerly held such a prestigious post from voting. But he has only one vote. These laws succeed in stopping thousands of unprestigious old people, blacks, hispanics, poor people, and students from voting, and that's what matters to the Republicans that adopt them.
Everyone: oppose the TPP's copyright trap.
The inhabitants of New Orleans have rebuilt with a struggle after Hurricane Katrina, which was preceded by decades of decay.
I applaud them, but this can't last. 20 feet of sea level rise, expected in the 2100s, will swamp the new levees. Too bad they didn't take this opportunity to move the whole city to higher ground.
US citizens: Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and say, "I urge you to join Sens. Feinstein, Durbin, and Heinrich in publicly stating that you will vote yes on the Iran nuclear agreement."
US citizens: Call on Congress to protect sanctuary cities.
US citizens: Call on candidates to support banning companies from giving "golden parachutes" to employees moving to government posts.
US citizens: Call on the prosecutor to drop charges against Bree Newsome, who took down the confederate flag that formerly was flown at the South Carolina state house.
Everyone: Call on the New York Times not to publish smears against J Street for supporting the nuclear deal with Iran.
Arguing that advertising is a form of pollution and that would-be advertisers should be required to pay people for their attention.
It would be hard to apply such a rule to disguised forms of paid publicity, such as product placement. But it could be applied in some fields.
I am good at disregarding ads and using my time in another way, so I am not bothered much by the ads themselves. What I really object to is the surveillance that is behind many kinds of ads today.
Some of the regulations that creditors are imposing on Greece will make for more production efficiency, at the expense of less local production, less employment, and less local control.
Efficiency is a mistaken goal when the benefit goes to the rich.
The business campaign to privatize public education has global reach.
School vouchers to undermine public schools used to be proposed for poor children, but now they are going where the money is.
Religious nuts are trying to abolish Seattle's very effective birth control program for teenagers.
The UN rebuked the UK for its massive surveillance, lacking the protections required for human rights.
Varoufakis is "accused" of planning to set up a parallel tax payment system in case the Greeks banks were shut.
One might disagree with this as a policy, but I can't understand why it would be scandalous to make preparations for possibly doing it.
Everyone: call on prosecutors to drop charges against Laura Browder, who left her kids 30 yards away in the food court.
US citizens: Support Bernie Sanders' campaign for a US $15 minimum wage.
US citizens: stand with Planned Parenthood; urge Congress to resist SCROTUS' attempt to de-fund it.
US citizens: support closing the Charleston gun sale loophole.
US citizens: call for an end to gerrymandering.
Carbon Washington proposes a revenue-neutral carbon emissions tax in Washington state.
Students with disabilities tend to be over-punished in US schools.
Palm oil plantations use violence and lies to grab land and crush opposition.
The Ebola outbreak found the World Health Organization unprepared.
In the UK, 3/4 of the people caught viewing images of child abuse never do anything to children.
So don't presume that people who only look are guilty of harming anyone else.
The "internet of things" would extend the modern panopticon to every detail of our activities — if we let it.
I plan to keep my things firmly off the internet.
The US-backed Saudi bombardment of Yemen has become increasingly fatal to civilians, to the point that President Hadi, whose side is supposedly being supported this way, asked them to suspend it.
The Yuck Factor — What Planned Parenthood Smears, Homophobia, & Middle School Have in Common.
Obama, speaking in Kenya, called for equal rights for women.
About Turkey's former support for PISSI.
The piecework sweatshop economy means we must disconnect social welfare from having a single nearly-full-time job.
I don't use the term "gig economy" because fails to criticize it as it deserves. The term "social safety net" suggests a system that provides only temporary help when something goes wrong, in between nearly-full-time jobs.
US citizens: call on your senators to maintain funding for Planned Parenthood.
Also phone them! Don't wait — the vote could be very soon.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Republicans say to respond to a mass shooting in a totally ineffective way (prayer) rather than with something that might work (political action).
Los Angeles is intensifying the persecution of homeless people: it will confiscate their mattresses without notices, and other property with short notice. LA thugs also sometimes kill homeless people.
Trump's campaign falsely cites people as supporters.
Bernie Sanders joined sit-ins for the civil rights movement, but militant blacks today don't appreciate this.
Australia has charged a nurse who did medicine for PISSI for some sort of crime.
It is barbaric to prosecute medical professionals for giving medical treatment, no matter what the context.
Two billionaires have funded a campaign in US universities against divestment aimed at the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Two giant US medical insurance companies want to merge.
Companies which together have more than 5% of a market should not be allowed to merge. However, in this case, the merger would paradoxically take a step in the direction of single-payer health care. Once the major companies all merge, we could nationalize the merged company and presto: single-payer health care.
Animal rights activists who released thousands of minks from farms have been charged with "terrorism".
It is legitimate to charge them with property damage, and releasing animals in areas where they are not native can do permanent ecological damage. However, calling this "terrorism" is a distortion and an absurdity.
The New York Times rewrote a story about Hillary Clinton's private email account to cover up the fact that prosecutors want to investigate her, personally.
A prosecutor is already lying to claim Sandra Bland committed suicide.
In addition to the bogus claim about the drug test, and the claim that marijuana would encourage suicide is also bogus.
It isn't proven that she was murdered, but the prosecutor is clearly biased against her and for the thug.
It looks like Verizon wants to get rid of landline phones in large parts of the US.
Scotland violates human rights by allowing thugs to search anyone on the street without grounds. As elsewhere, this is used in discriminatory ways.
Puerto Rico's response to debt: suck up to billionaires.
How Colorado Has Tightened Its Gun Laws Since the Aurora Shooting.
Obama called on African countries to stop discrimination against gays.
He may have some influence with them.
Jamaica is about to extend copyright to last 95 years after the author's death.
Copyright lasts far too long in other countries. It should be shortened to last 10 years from date of publication.
The ACLU is suing to have Arizona's forfeiture law declared unconstitutional.
The US Constitution prohibits seizure of property without due process of law, forfeiture certainly does that.
The term "forfeiture" is blackwhiting, but at present I don't see a good substitute.
US citizens: call on True Value and Ace Hardware to stop selling neonicotinoids.
The "cybersecurity" bill would make people's data less secure against crooks (as well as against the US government).
UK intelligence agencies have illegally snooped on MPs.
Sandra Bland changed lanes because the thug (who later arrested her) had appeared behind her car. She was getting out of his way.
I suspect he was seeking an excuse to harass her from the start.
If you view the video from Youtube, don't visit the site directly.
Arizona subjected 87,000 welfare recipients to drug tests. Some 23 turned out positive and were cut off from welfare benefits.
It is fortunate that this injustice struck so few people, but that is no excuse for doing it at all. The state is supposed to help people that need help, not seek irrelevant excuses to abandon them.
Some US universities impose gags on rape victims and others.
By approving Shell to drill in the Arctic, Obama showed he doesn't really want to stop global heating.
In the UK, people can be imprisoned for the books they have — for instance, the Anarchists Cookbook.
Investors Could Lose $4.2tn Due to Impact of [global heating], Report Warns.
Burundi's president "won" a bogus election for an unconstitutional third term.
A thousand cab drivers blocked a road in Rio de Janeiro to protest Guber.
I call it "Guber" because it pays drivers peanuts, but the worst thing about Guber is that it tracks passengers. Of course, each passenger has agreed to be tracked — but if we get total surveillance because each person is convinced to agree to it, that does not reduce its danger to democracy.
We need to get rid of systems that amount to massive surveillance, regardless of whether each victim agrees to be tracked.
There are many reasons to refuse to buy from Guber.
Beppe Grillo calls for nationalizing the Italian banks to end the 'anti-democratic straitjacket' of euro zone.
It may be necessary to exit the euro zone as well.
United Airlines Requires You To Install Special Brand Of DRM To Watch Movies On Flights. And agree to its EULA. And install Flash Player.
State Of Georgia Sues Carl Malamud For Copyright Infringement For Publishing The State's Own Laws.
A Canadian thug has been sentenced to prison for perjury. Why don't thugs get prosecuted for perjury in the US?
Many in Nation Tired of Explaining Things to Idiots.
Olive oil production has been hit by disease in Italy and drought in Spain.
Global heating will mean more drought in Spain.
The Committee for Public Safety (aka Department of Homeland Security) snoops on Black Lives Matter protests.
If they are worried about potential violence, they should monitor the thugs instead.
The UN criticized the French total surveillance law.
The US may have promised Turkey that it would oppose the revolutionary Kurds of Syria.
They are the only group in the area that stands for human rights.
Tory Attacks on Green Policies Signal Dark Times Ahead for the Environment.
Here are the 9 green policies they have abolished.
The UK is looking for an excuse to prosecute the journalists that reported the Snowden revelations.
Journalist Khadija Ismayilova is facing trumped-up charges in Azerbaijan.
The Islamic state is a "postmodern collage" that takes advantage of medieval religious barbarism for shock value, but which exploits the moral void left by contemptuous neoliberal subjection.
An army general is one of 100 people charged with human trafficking in Thailand.
SCROTUS in the House passed a bill to negate EPA regulations for disposal of toxic coal ash.
The drying of Mesopotamia may have led to the start of civilization there.
US doctors have launched a movement to pressure pharma companies to stop gouging for lifesaving drugs.
The Northern Virginia Tea Party is in cahoots with well-funded fossil fuel lobbyists, but it claims to be "grass roots".
PISSI is fighting with Turkey, which is now sealing the border with the PISSI-controlled areas of Syria.
There were reports that Turkey quietly supported PISSI in the past. If that was true, it seems not to be true any more. The Turkish army is not a joke like the Iraqi army; PISSI will find it a powerful foe. Alas, the long-standing hostility between Turkey and the Kurds makes it unlikely Turkey will give the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds much help against PISSI.
Some of Pinochet's officers have been charged with the murder of Victor Jara.
Jara was a prominent supporter of President Allende, whom the military had overthrown in a US-backed coup.
Call on executives of Edelman (the biggest advertising company) to stop working on global heating denialism or else quit.
US citizens: Phone your senators in favor of the deal with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on Starbucks to reject deforestation-made palm oil.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose CISA, which is the new version of CISPA. This bill would encourage companies to "share" your personal data with Big Brother.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone:
call
on Rite Aid to stop using paper made by logging the North American
boreal forest.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to make federal contractors disclose political spending.
US citizens: call on presidential candidates to pledge to appoint officials that don't serve the industries they regulate.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject anti-environmental riders.
Everyone: call on Chris Christie to revoke the give-away settlement that he made with Exxon.
Everyone: call on Attorney General Lynch to indict the killers of Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham.
US citizens: tell Obama not to pass the buck on curbing global heating.
Obama granted Shell approval to drill oil wells in the Arctic.
The permission is currently inoperative because of the damaged emergency response ship, but that only delays the preparations for the predicted spill.
Turkey blocked Twitter to shut down criticism of the government.
I think the protesters are being irrational, in that no government can prevent specific bombings; at most it can make them more difficult and less common. I've seen accusations that Turkey secretly supported PISSI (*) in the past, and if that secretly continues, protesting against that would make sense, but that's a different issue.
PISSI"> * PISSI: Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
George Monbiot: The real 'struggle of our generation' is not terrorism — in fact, that's way down on the list.
SCROTUS (*) are embarrassed after being caught defending sale of confederate flags in US national parks. So the Democrats offered a deal: they will agree to stop trying to ban those flag sales, if the Republicans agree to fix the Voting Rights Act.
The Voting Rights Act, which was designed to stop racists from blocking blacks from voting, is substantive, whereas the flags are a symbolic issue. The Voting Rights Act effectively blocked some kind of voter suppression until the Supreme Court reinterpreted it. Changing the text of the law would restore that lost effectiveness.
SCROTUS"> * SCROTUS: Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States
US citizens: call for
marketing
each fish species under a different name so that people can tell
what they are buying.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on presidential candidates to commit to appointing officials that will firmly regulate and prosecute banksters as needed.
US citizens: call on presidential candidates to reject money from fossil fuel companies.
US citizens: Call on Texas to stop covering up slavery and discriminatory laws in history classes.
US citizens: call on Exxon-Mobil to publish its political spending to prove it does not fund global heating denial.
US citizens: support reinstating the Glass-Steagall act.
US citizens: support the Low Income Solar Act.
Burmese journalists were fined for "defaming the president". In fact, they criticized what the president said.
Australia's immigration authorities asked for medical records of imprisoned refugees for political purposes — to publish to make them look bad.
A perfect example of how the idea that people should be monogamous poisons people's lives.
If you think that it's a "betrayal" if your lover has sex with someone else, perhaps you are obsessed with possession.
On the danger of privileging centralized high-tech "magic bullet" solutions and disregarding other options.
Ocean acidification, together with heating, will cause an upheaval in phytoplankton populations.
Since phytoplankton do most of the world's photosynthesis, and generate most of the world's oxygen, this is playing with disaster.
China is thinking about permitting all families to have two children.
I think it would be a mistake to open the door to more population growth so early. The world population is still going up, and China's current population may be unsustainable.
The need for labor to care for old people will give China full employment if it does not ruin things with more births.
We must reject the idea that the state should be able to listen in on all conversations — even with a search warrant.
Racists have dominated the US one way or another since the US was founded — aside from occasional interludes.
The TPP threatens to impose the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act on several other countries.
This is an example of a characteristic mistake that activists make: they campaign against proposed changes for the worse, but don't campaign to reverse past changes for the worse. We need to eliminate the Berne Convention and all the other treaties that impose it (they are corporate supremacy treaties and bad for many other reasons).
Swedish prosecutors are dragging out the process of arranging to interview Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy. Ecuador says its law requires signing an agreement, but the prosecutors have not bothered to propose one.
The US decreased greenhouse gas emissions 11% during the recession, mainly caused by decreased economic activity.
I don't believe it follows that growth can occur only through increased emissions. An all-out campaign for renewable energy would produce lots of growth while reducing emissions. However, the fossil fool lobby won't permit this.
Thugs find ways to avoid shooting white motorists, even when they try to pull a gun on the thug.
Clinton talks about curbing banks' power in minor ways, but the banksters know she is still on their side.
The House of Representatives passed the DARK act, which would prohibit states from requiring labeling of GMOs in food.
A Tunisian editor faces charges of complicity in terrorism after he published information that must have come from an interview with a terrorist. He refuses to name his source.
Tunisia is considering abolishing human rights in the name of anti-terrorism.
If this occurs, the victory of the Tunisian revolution will be lost.
An LA thug has been sentenced to prison for kicking a suspect who was down on the ground.
The suspect asked for an ambulance, but the thugs delayed calling one, and it came too late to save her life.
Thugs arrested Julian Cole, and effectively killed him, but the UK government won't say anything about how.
Companies snoop on their employees' computers while they are not at work, and sometimes even sabotage them.
Another way of snooping on employees while not at work is testing for use of marijuana. It can't distinguish whether the marijuana was used while the employee was on duty or off, or even on vacation weeks before.
The Inspector General of the US Justice Department says that he can't do his job because information is being kept from him.
A study in Massachusetts collected samples of honey from beehives, and pollen collected by foraging bees. 70% of the samples contained neonicotinoids.
A study estimates that 1/3 of the recent increase in income inequality comes from adoption of digital technology.
Productivity has increased greatly, but that doesn't raise workers' wages because there are too few jobs and workers must compete for them.
Proponents of laissez-faire policies argue that automation inevitably spreads its benefits to everyone. Now we know that this claim is not merely dubious, but already falsified.
The roots of eating disorders in teenagers can be found in children as young as 8, who already feel dissatisfied with their bodies.
Senator Franken asked for an anti-trust inquiry into Apple's competition with other music-streaming services.
The major music-streaming services are based on DRM, tracking, and EULAs. While unfair competition is always wrong, "fair" competition would not legitimize these disservices. Please join me in rejecting all of them — insist on having your own DRM-free copy, so that you can share copies, and never agree that you will not share them.
Obama's visit to Kenya highlights the persecution of political opponents and gay men.
African forest elephants seem to be a different species from savannah elephants, and are headed faster towards extinction, while little effort against poaching is directed at them.
Artists symbolically resist hostile architecture in London.
I decided not to repeat the enemy's propaganda term, "defensive architecture", because that presents this bad practice in a favorable light.
Posting people's genetic code allows automation of various sorts of bigotry.
Pollution Isn't Colorblind: Environmental Hazards Kill More Black Americans.
What's happening is that the Americans with political clout don't see a need to reduce pollution because it's cheaper to direct it at those without clout.
"Thomas Jones" spied on various activities that criticized Seaworld, and activists present reason to suspect he wasn't the only provocateur working for Seaworld.
Malaysia Drops the Pretense of Not Censoring the Internet.
New York City thugs repeatedly hit Thomas Jennings with sticks, both before and after they handcuffed him. He never resisted.
New York City thugs are fond of saying that leaving small crimes unpunished creates the climate for bigger crimes. Jennings is not dead, but if thugs are allowed to get away with nonfatal senseless brutality, they will proceed to bigger forms. These thugs should be prosecuted as anyone else would be who did what they did.
Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, aims to record all IP packets travelling in or through Pakistan.
There is no reason to presume that ISI would use this power only against terrorists. ISI has been accused of supporting the Taliban.
In 1984, British thugs attacked striking miners, made false charges against the miners, then covered it up. The miners now demand an investigation into the actions of the thugs.
Dodd-Frank's Bid to Clean Up Extractive Industries Stymied by Oil Business.
Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are all using the same lobbying company to raise money from businesspeople.
Child Overprotective Services arrested a mother for leaving her children sitting 30 yards away where she could see them.
Tony Abbott's Fight Against Solar And Wind Power in Australia.
The published video of Sandra Bland's arrest, from the thug car's camera, seems to have been edited.
Chilean officers face prosecution for burning dissidents to death.
Due to cheep oil, per capita driving is increasing again in the US.
Lower prices for gasoline are convenient for the short term, but harmful for the long term.
35 killings in 3 days, in Manaus, Brazil, may have been carried out by thugs.
In Eritrea, essentially everyone is conscripted into lifelong slavery, and everyone is terrified of the state. 3% of the population has fled.
Rather than arguing about where these people should be resettled, I suggest grouping them in a neighboring country and arming them to capture Eritrea from its dictator.
Senators plan to make the CFAA even worse, explicitly criminalizing any violation of any service's terms of service.
People around the US describe the visible effects of global heating.
The EU warned Israel about "forced transfer" of Palestinian populations and housing demolitions.
Israel shut down the Palestinian TV station P48.
Bisphenol A can be ingested through the lungs, which means that release into the air is dangerous.
Arguing that we have a duty to develop computerized intelligence so that intelligence will not be limited to one solar system.
The UK thugs used warrantless digital snooping to find journalists' sources.
The UK must bury the R.I.P. Act which authorizes this.
5 years after the tar sands oil spill on the Kalamazoo river, the spill has not been cleaned up and the toxic chemicals seem to be affecting people's health.
Even 2C of global heating will make coastal cities such as New York, London and Shanghai uninhabitable. Parts of them will still be above water, but won't function as cities.
You can add Miami, Washington DC, New Orleans, Tokyo, Mumbai and many more.
If we get through this century with technological civilization intact, we may be able to remove lots of CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to plastic. Perhaps we could cut short the melting that way. But getting through this century will not be easy, so it behooves us to cut CO2 emissions as fast as humanly possible.
We also need to end growth of the human population. In principle, the idea that a person has the right to reproduce without limit is unsustainable.
After 5 years, 1/3 of the rules required by the Dodd-Frank banking reform law have not been implemented. The banksters have too much political power.
Varoufakis: the creditors did not want a mutually beneficial agreement ; they wanted to impose regime change on Greece.
In effect, they have succeeded, at least for the while.
Varoufakis was wise to resign. Tsipras should have done it, too. If you cannot defeat an invading army, it is better to retreat and remain hostile to it, than surrender and become a pillar for it.
Snowden's message to the IETF meeting: build anonymity into the internet.
SCROTUS are trying to stop the IRS from clarifying regulations for how 501(C)4 tax-exempt organizations can do political campaigning.
Wealthy (mostly Republican) donors fund such organizations, and want their money to buy the most possible plutocratic power.
Planned Parenthood's fetal tissue has helped develop treatments for diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Parkinson's. Planned Parenthood should take pride in helping.
The only thing I would criticize about Planned Parenthood's conduct is that it could have charged more, and used the money to finance treatments for poor women that insurance does not cover.
Brighton, England, is planning to ban smoking tobacco outdoors. Since smoking is already banned in indoor public places, this would make it almost intolerable for a smoker to be in Brighton for any length of time.
Tobacco is death, and I urge people to quit, but prohibition is going too far, and this is tantamount to prohibition if you are a visitor or work outside your home. People do have a right to kill themselves, slowly or quickly.
Modern US wars never really end. That is because there is no imaginable victory for the US, and the US doesn't accept defeat either.
Political leaders are slowly yielding to pressure to recognize global heating as a big danger.
This does not mean that they will take effective action to halt it. Many remain just as much under the control of the fossil fuel interests as they were before. One can see this in the UK's continued elimination of subsidies for renewable energy, while subsidies for fossil fuels continue.
AncestryDNA turns out to be a scheme to get lots of people to hand in their DNA sequence data to be correlated.
For some unlucky people, knowledge of their DNA sequences could lead to big problems (with insurance, for instance). However, I think tracking of people's movements and phone calls is more of a threat to human rights and democracy.
The University of Mary Washington gives each student an internet domain and teaches the student how to manage it. The student's work is there, under the student's control, and the student can keep it after leaving the university.
I like this very much — even though it's a shame they miss the chance to support an allied philosophy, by saying "open source" instead of "free".
Hossein Derakhshan was imprisoned in Iran for posting blogs. When he got out of prison, he concluded that social networking sites are swallowing and destroying the World Wide Web. Blogs were good for conversations and thought, but the social networking sites are a sort of television that manages people's ideas.
The Onion's satire — missiles
will make
a cranky Netanyahu calm
down — was imitated by reality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
A Planned Parenthood staffer discussed the expenses and methods for obtaining fetal tissue for research, and took a somewhat flip tone. Or at least it appears that way, in an edited video made by an antiabortion fanatic.
If the video accurately represents what the staffer said, it doesn't indicate anything wrong in what he does. However, the theocrats will try to spin the flip tone into a real wrong.
Japan is pressuring people to return to areas near Fukushima that remain somewhat radioactive, by cutting the funds that enable them to live somewhere else.
Shooting guns into the air to celebrate is substantially dangerous — to other people.
It might be interesting to make a "celebration gun" that fires the charge in a bullet, but has a hole in the barrel so that the hot gas escapes harmlessly and does not propel the bullet out of the gun. With that, you could have the fun of shooting bullets but they could not hit anyone.
How US-Saudi oil competition looks, from a shallow nationalist perspective that ignores the danger of global heating.
It's like two cars racing towards the edge of a cliff, each driver set on being the first one over the edge.
The EU and US have protested Israel's plans to demolish the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya.
I've posted about Susiya here before.
The EU is becoming an instrument of oppression.
George Monbiot: The euro's financial system is purpose-built to keep most people in poverty. What used to be done to third-world countries is now happening to Greece.
"Everything good about the EU is in retreat; everything bad is on the rampage." He is coming to think that it is a force for evil.
Every political structure that obeys the plutocrats magnifies their force for evil.
I have said since 2005 that the EU is undemocratic and should either be made democratic or abolished.
Exiting the EU would not guarantee an end to right-wing policies in any given country, but it would enable a country to make another choice.
The Oceans Are Warming Faster Than Climate Models Predicted.
2013 demonstrated that Arctic ice would rebound quickly if we can cool the Earth.
How to cool the Earth? One way is to invest in solar-powered CO2-to-fuel converters.
Revealed: How the Thai Fishing Industry Traffics, Imprisons And Enslaves.
The euro is the "new Coke" of currencies.
Since we mentioned Coke, remember the world-wide boycott of Coca Cola Company, called in response to that company's collaboration with right-wing terrorists in Colombia to murder union organizers.
The FBI claims to have blocked 60 PISSI-inspired shooting attacks in the US.
It could be true, but I am skeptical that these were real plans. Every time the FBI arrests people for "terrorist plots", they turn out to be fantasy plots led and arranged by agents of the FBI. These 60 "plots" could be more of that.
US citizens: call on elected officials to support the SAFE Act, which would fix some of the causes of over-imprisonment and make it easier for ex-cons to do something other than crime.
US citizens: support breaking up the banks that are "too big to fail".
Everyone: call on Sudan to end repression of women for their clothing.
US citizens: tell the IRS not to give hedge funds a tax loophole for offshoring.
US citizens: Call on Obama to remove the "have you ever been in prison" box from US government job applications.
US citizens: phone Obama and object to expanding a tar sands pipeline, which you might call Keystone2.
Corporations Push for Giant Repatriation Tax Giveaway.
A UK court overturned UK's data retention law.
The UK government appointed scientists to give advice that neonicotinoids are safe to use. It appears they were going to say "no", because the government ordered them not to withhold information.
What makes terrorism so bad is that it is war waged against civilians. Thus, attacking soldiers is not terrorism — it is war.
ShotSpotter detects gunshots automatically, but its microphones also record conversations.
The system should be redesigned to do enough local processing so that it can't transmit anyone's conversations over the net.
A British man will be imprisoned for year for distributing videos and a magazine presenting disfavored views.
What point is there in defeating PISSI at the cost of abolishing basic human rights?
When certain views are prohibited, mistakes will expand effect.
The US and Saudi-backed faction in Yemen has taken hold of the city of Aden. Since the Houthis hold most of Yemen, this defeat for them moves that country further away from peace or stable government.
Is this faction better than the Houthis? I see no reason to think one or the other deserves anyone's support.
China canceled concerts by a musical group as punishment for wishing the Dalai Lama happy birthday.
The quoted hostile comments were posted, I expect, by the state's troll army.
Stationing thugs in US public schools has a natural result: they attack students.
In addition to the school-to-prison pipeline, these thugs give us a school-to-hospital pipeline.
Goldman Sachs helped Greece hide part of its debt so it could join the euro zone.
The deal was expensive for Greece, as that part of Greece's debt doubled in a few years. But it got Greece into the euro zone, which was even worse for Greece.
The drought in California, and water shutoffs for poor people, are foretastes of the big shortage of fresh water forecast for 2030.
Obama called for ending mandatory minimum sentences, at least for nonviolent drug offenses, and for removing some of the obstacles for ex-cons to re-enter society.
Texas thugs attacked an anti-thug-violence activist on the street, put her in jail (for false charges, I would guess), then claim her death in jail was suicide.
Her friends don't believe it was suicide.
Nuclear power plant construction is gradually grinding to a halt, as renewable energy is clearly cheaper as well as much safer.
Netzpolitik, a German journalism site, has been charged with treason for reporting on German government surveillance of the German press.
La Quadrature du Net: We Must Support Netzpolitik Against the German Government Pressure!
German leftists have begun protests in support of Greece and plan to repeat them every week.
Right-wing German MPs object to further bailouts "for Greece", absurdly claiming that it is Greece's fault that the past bailouts "for Greece" did not reduce its debt. That's ridiculous — they never had a chance of reducing Greece's debt.
But in a way they are right. The proposed bailout of Greece's creditors will only increase Greece's debt, and it makes no sense to do that.
Following the Republican example, the Tories are planning to change voter registration so as to suppress opposition voters.
Jürgen Habermas, intellectual father of the European Union, calls it an undemocratic trap.
The euro-banksters' economic invasion of Greece was the act of tyrants punishing a rebel province. Suffering and humiliation are their goal.
The financial elite has shown off its power to spit on democracy, economics, and statesmanship.
I suggest that Greece and Europe need a political party consisting of real stake holders: the Wooden Stake Party, whose aim will be to put stakes into the heart of the vampire banks.
But I think it is a mistake to put the blame on Germany. The banksters are the culprits.
Clinton and Bush have got large campaign donations from lobbyists.
Vote for Sanders for president.
The already emitted greenhouse gases will keep heating the oceans for centuries.
Scott Walker's cronies on the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered an end to an investigation of Walker's illegal campaign activities.
The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency acknowledges that drone assassinations create more terrorists than they kill, and that the invasion of Iraq helped create PISSI.
The Arctic countries have agreed to ban commercial fishing in the Arctic Ocean. This does not prohibit other countries' ships from fishing there, however.
US youths are semi-enslaved to do door-to-door sales work. They are not literally forced to continue working, but stopping is very difficult.
Chinese censorship has mostly erased memory of the Tiananmen protests and massacre: most younger Chinese don't know anything about it.
The UK's government considers permanent disability as a personal failing. It subjects people with incurable conditions to repeated tests to see if they can theoretically work, although practically speaking the answer is clear in advance.
There are major mysteries in the arrest and death of Sandra Bland.
At least, they are mysteries for us; the thugs know most or all of the answers.
A town in Florida (and many other places in the US) ban growing vegetables in your front yard. Two residents are fighting back in court.
Protesters in Cambodia have been convicted of "insurrection" and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The media undermine female politicians by talking about their appearance instead of what they stand for. Regardless of what is said about their appearance, it costs them support, based on a foolish and irrelevant reason. I don't care what Clinton looks like, and I don't care what Sanders looks like.
High radium levels have appeared in water in Pennsylvania, and fracking is suspected as the cause.
Human Rights Watch: Israeli forces are choking, beating, and abusing Palestinian children as young as 11, arresting and coercing them into confessions without granting them access to lawyers or even informing their parents of their whereabouts.
Canada's Anti-Terror Legislation Faces Legal Challenge by Free Speech Advocates.
In addition to banning journalism, it gives the government effectively unlimited power for secret surveillance.
When you put this together with the government's attacks on science and the climate, it seems that the Canadian government has declared war on Canada.
Children growing up in poverty have less brain development in areas required for academic and professional success. After this, it won't be their fault if they are unqualified for good jobs. It will be the country's fault, for handicapping them in childhood through inadequate welfare support.
It is possible for an organic farm to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but in practice most of them don't do that.
A carbon tax would give a boost to the ones that do.
The population of New Orleans decreased after Hurricane Katrina, but the supply of affordable housing decreased even more. Many poor people now have to pay half their income for rent.
Most of the public schools have been converted into "charter schools", and the public mostly disapproves of the change.
The EU has agreed to ban imports of clothing with nonylphenol ethoxylates, which gets into rivers and harms fish.
Republican candidates are defending McCain from smears against his military record, but they eagerly profited from smears against Kerry.
2015 is on track to be the hottest year since human records began, judging from the first half of the year.
The main British scientific, engineering and medical organizations call for immediate and firm action to but the brakes on global heating.
Governments in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry are not listening. Ironically, only China plans to take firm action. In China, the fossil fuel interests are owned by "Communist" plutocrats that will feel the consequences if climate mayhem impoverishes China. In Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, the owners of the fossil fuel interests think they will get by ok if climate mayhem impoverishes those countries.
Street lights and interior lights are being designed to track people.
This ought to be prohibited on the double, on streets and in any place that the public is regularly admitted to (such as stores).
I don't think that the purpose of Ashley Madison (facilitating sexual affairs for married people) was bad in itself. However, the company did many sleazy things, going as far as to accept pay to delete people's profiles, then not really deleting them.
It also committed negligence that could leak data about its users, and the worst instance was keeping so information about them in the first place.
I feel no sympathy for the company, but I condemn the wrong that the crackers (please don't call them "hackers") have done to the users of the site in taking their data hostage.
I also disagree with the crackers supposed moral grounds for trying to shut the site down. I don't regard monogamy as ethically privileged. On the contrary, I disapprove of possessiveness and oppose the social pressure for people to agree to monogamy which doesn't fit them.
Therefore, I do not criticize having an affair, and I reject the label of "cheating" for it.
California is fining some farmers for using water after a notice to cut back.
It is too bad that crops and trees will be lost, but there is no way California can avoid that. All that can be done is to try to keep things running at a level that is sustainable.
Wisconsin, under Republican control, has made abortion after 20 weeks a crime.
Abortions that late are only done because of special circumstances.
The law is based on fantasy science; the anti-abortion forces claim that a fetus can feel pain after 20 weeks. This is impossible because the fetus's brain is not connected then.
The directly contradicts Roe v Wade, so it ought to be unconstitutional, but it is hard to count on that with today's Supreme Court. Doctors will be scared.
95% of US women who have abortions are subsequently content with their decision.
I wonder what fraction of women that have babies later regret it.
An expert who has interviewed many terrorists says that the details of the ideology they choose to fight for are secondary in recruiting them, and that focusing on ideology is largely missing the point.
Crackers have obtained personal information from a controversial dating site, Ashley Madison, and are threatening to release it unless the site shuts down.
My conclusion is that dating sites should not have users' personal information, except for what the users choose to publish.
Neocons see Iran as an opportunity for another US war.
UK welfare cuts will force poor families out of many regions of England.
ALEC takes aim at renewable energy, bees, and the ability to end a recession.
California's groundwater, what remains of it, is increasingly contaminated by nitrates and uranium.
A factory in the Philippines burned two months ago, and most of the workers were killed because the factory had no fire escapes. The government has taken no action against those responsible.
Local corruption was clearly involved, but business globalization took advantage of it.
RSF: Leaders who publicly threaten journalists.
I think they have been unfair to President Correa in including him in this list. If you look at what they say he did, it consists of (1) threatening to criticize one of his critic in the press, and (2) saying that some journalists repeat right-wing propaganda (which they do, in Ecuador, just as in the US).
London thugs want teachers to label protesters as terrorists.
This persistent tendency indicates bad faith. Right-wing governments are exaggerating the danger of "terrorism" to use the fear against democracy.
Anti-marijuana activists
are suing
the landlords, insurance companies, etc.
of state-legal marijuana sellers in Colorado and Washington, to drive
them
out of business.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
In Ivory Coast, adults and children are killed or tortured after they are accused of "witchcraft".
20% of children in the US live in poverty. For black children, that is 38%.
The US should be ashamed to leave any children in poverty.
The Gates Foundation held a meeting about seed policy for Africa, with seed company Syngenta, and international funding agencies — but didn't invite any farmers.
Farmers would have objected to plans to promote patented seeds.
Keep Body Cameras Off Public-School Educators.
Attacking the argument for government back doors in encryption.
The article does not mention another crucial point: when the state has a concrete reason to suspect someone, enough to justify a search warrant, it can snoop on that person's conversations in many other ways.
The "internet of things", for those who don't reject it, will be the greatest mass surveillance infrastructure ever.
The author fears (and I agree) that it will direct people towards being "intensely individualistic, segmented, micro-financialised" and "semi-autonomous, tethered beings." I too think this is a real danger.
The UK government plans to make strikes illegal, usually.
It also plans to interfere with union funding for the Labour Party.
Unions ought to fund a party that really stands for the non-rich, not the center-right party that Labour has become. But the right wing does not want unions or workers to have any power.
A year after a thug killed Eric Garner, mothers of various blacks killed by US thugs campaign to prosecute the killers.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has essentially destroyed Wisconsin campaign finance law, in a corruptly made decision that applies to the judges' own campaigns.
The Ku Klux Klan is no longer a political force, but it is a symbol of continuing racism in the US.
Uri Avnery: as Obama tries to bring Iran into an alliance against PISSI, Netanyahu is determined to fear Iran for no good reason.
I am skeptical of the idea of defeating PISSI with Shi'ite armed strength. When Sunnis are ruled by Shi'ites, that gives them the impetus to start terrorist groups.
Government agencies in Massachusetts unfairly hamper access to public records The law is weak, and agencies disregard it.
Euro-cutbacks were a "success" in Ireland, Spain and Portugal, from the viewpoint of the IMF and the banks. It's not clear they were a success for the non-rich.
Many US prisons don't feed prisoners enough. That might be good for the ones who are obese, but for the prisoners that are not obese, it is dangerous.
A Senate bill contains a clause to refrain from harassing parents that allow children to travel to school on their own.
Parents Dedicate New College Safe Space In Honor Of Daughter Who Felt Weird In Class Once.
Mining for rare metals on the ocean floor requires regulation for environmental protection.
The Philippines is accused of using a campaign of murder and torture against Communists, and social workers that help the poor, with US backing and guidance.
Mobile phone call and GPS records show, roughly, whether the user is depressed.
I might agree to enable such monitoring by my doctor if I had been depressed. However, allowing the state to monitor everyone this way is dangerous.
How stores plan to use customers' "smartphones" to learn more about them while getting them to buy more recklessly.
The devices invite dependence.
If you want to be really smart, join me in opting out.
The thugs who shot Caroline Small were protected by a thoroughly dishonest prosecution.
Some Canadian events are starting to forbid imitation native feather headdresses.
I think it is boorish to imitate the ceremonial clothing of some other people, while neglecting its meaning; but that should not be forbidden. Nobody has the right to own a mode of dress.
Greece has accepted the banksters' suzerainty; this will lead to ever-worsening disaster unless plenty of debt is cancelled.
Meanwhile, as the left has cracked, Greeks may try the neo-Nazis that blame poor immigrants instead of the banksters.
Varoufakis says that the foreign-imposed regime will fail.
A thug kept a chokehold on Jonathan Sanders for half an hour to kill him, apparently with malice aforethought.
The California beach oil spill contains many toxic substances.
Southern white culture is full of traditions with African roots; some of them were used by the original Ku Klux Klan.
A group of tourists, visiting Mongolia, were accused of "promoting terrorism" for watching a terror video about Genghis Khan.
Genghis was a real terrorist, just as bad as PISSI. His forces slaughtered the population of any city that did not immediately surrender, to terrorize other cities into surrendering.
Even watching or distributing videos depicting real terrorism should not be a crime.
Chris Christie
conspired
with the water industry to make a law
allowing cities to privatize water supply without a vote by the citizens.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Shell's emergency-handling ship was damaged severely in a collision with an uncharted reef, and has to go back to Portland for repair. Shell plans to drill anyway.
A Colorado thug threw a handcuffed woman to the ground, which could have killed her.
Cryin'air has pulled its base out of Denmark to avoid the laws that protect workers' rights.
It is a good idea to avoid Cryin'air ("Ryanair").
The head of an Egyptian journalistic organization has been arrested and accused of being supporting the Muslim Brotherhood — and of possession of video editing equipment!
The Muslim Brotherhood advocated trampling human rights — that's inherent in political Islamism — but it did not try to crush dissent or abolish democracy.
People who live near fracking sites are more likely to go to the hospital for heart or nervous system conditions.
Obama has offered to increase US military aid to Israel. This will enable Israel to bomb Gaza more often. It is already planning to devastate Gaza even more. The world has not pushed back very hard about the previous bombing.
It is interesting to see how Israel's tactical practices help PISSI supporters try to take over from HAMAS.
The US Chamber of Commerce is pressuring various governments around the world not to take steps that curb the use of tobacco.
The US Chamber of Commerce is poison — literally.
Our overuse of Earth's resources is putting a huge debt burden on future generations.
The authors do not realize that the term "anthropocene" encourages the problem they are concerned about.
Portland State University banned political posters because they might make some students feel uncomfortable.
I think this is related to a change in people's idea of the purpose of college: professional training, rather than developing the ability to think. For the latter, students obviously must confront uncomfortable ideas. For the former, ideas are an obstacle to some students' training.
US citizens: call for proper protection of red wolves.
We should not consider it "cute" when Pantone tries to monopolize use of a color through trademarks.
The article has a fundamental confusion: it confuses copyright law with trademark law by using the confusion term "intellectual property". Those two laws are totally different in what they do, and it is a mistake to generalize about the two.
Planned Parenthood collects tissues from aborted fetuses, if the woman consents, to facilitate medical research that can save the lives of human beings. You need to be twisted to see a scandal in this.
US oil companies pump oil in poor countries, then cheat the governments by not paying the royalties agreed on. The Dodd-Frank bill, which was supposed to make them come clean, is not being enforced.
The latest attack in the War on Sharing: a company chose people based on IP addresses to demand they agree to pay an amount to be named later.
Sharing should be legal.
Texas is denying birth certificates to children of immigrants.
John Pilger: the UK was planning to fund rebels in Syria "two years before the Arab Spring".
I don't entirely agree with him in regard to dealing with PISSI. Using air power to stop PISSI's advance was justified and effective. Recapturing Sunni cities with Shi'ite militias is a different matter.
US citizens: thank Obama for pursuing peace with Iran.
My overall opinion of Obama is that he is a flunky for the plutocrats, but on this issue he did the right thing.
Under Israeli rule, Arabs are imprisoned for statements on the internet, which are called "incitement". Jews do it too, but they are never charged.
Some of these kinds of "incitement" are properly crimes. Some of them are exercise of free speech, and would be protected in the US by the First Amendment.
Economic pressure on Israel expresses faith that it has enough democracy to be influenced by this.
Israel outright rejected political talks with Palestine.
Israel released Palestinian parliament member Riyad Mahmoud Radad after a year in prison for "enticing marches in support of prisoners".
What sort of country puts people in prison for leading protest marches?
Meanwhile, lawyer Shireen al-Eesawy is in solitary confinement in conditions that border on torture.
The "bailout" for Greece's creditors increases Greece's debt to 225% of GDP. That's almost double what it was before the previous "bailouts". However, all of the euro-zone is dominated by the banksters and it can all come crashing down under their deficit limits.
The IMF should veto the bailout for Greece's creditors, because the plan can't achieve the stated goal of reducing Greece's debt.
It would be easy to write off Greek debt to banks.
A low-cost, low-energy house in Wales will make money on electricity.
The UK had a plan to encourage building such houses, but the Tories cancelled the plan to preserve fossil fuel profits.
The penalty for "false" (i.e., disagreeing with official sources) information in Egypt will not be imprisonment, only a fine that few Egyptian journalists could afford to pay.
Altered in this way, the law will be a medium-sized step towards tyranny rather than a giant step.
The Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament approved data retention for many records about people that fly.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is sneakily changing rules to permit two felonious banks to continue selling certain government-guaranteed mortgages.
US citizens: support extending mandatory overtime pay to a lot more American workers.
The US is paying now, in the deal with Iran, for its duplicity in using inspections of Iraq's chemical and nuclear facilities as a front for ordinary spying.
Even weak moves to make the EU greenhouse gas emissions trading system function are running into opposition from lobbies.
This Tory Attack on Unions Should Remind Us How Much We Need Them.
I think the British unions should drop the "Labour" Party, which has no great concern for working people, and start another.
An article I disagree with argues against selling water in British Columbia (where it is abundant) for shipment elsewhere.
I think it make sense to sell water if you have extra water. However, you should stop selling water if you cease to have extra; any treaty that would make it hard to stop obviously must be abrogated.
As for fracking, which should be stopped for other reasons, it is valid to fight it by denying access to the giant quantities of water fracking needs, but that's not a principle, it's a tactic.
We should discourage the retail sale of bottled water, which is very wasteful, but that's not the only way to distribute water from other regions.
Commuting sentences must be followed by fixing the sentencing system.
Report Exposes 'Revolving Door' Within Corporate-Dominated TTIP Talks.
Greek MPs Pass Austerity Bill As Athens Police Clash with Protesters.
Another black man was choked to death by a thug.
Estimates of the sperm whale population could be skewed by falsified data reported by Japan from whaling in the 1960s.
Exxon said in 2007 it would stop funding global heating denialism, but it has continued.
Global heating is making flights take longer and burn more fuel.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to commute hundreds or thousands of sentences, not merely
dozens.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Mainstream media bias has convinced the public in some regions (including the US and Europe) that PISSI is a bigger threat than global heating.
The IMF says Greece needs more debt relief.
We can't solve the problems of homelessness and urban hunger by having poor people grow food in urban gardens.
Surgery is shocking to watch, and this includes abortions. The anti-sex crowd are trying to use the shocking videos to turn people against abortion rights.
A woman in Northern Ireland is being prosecuted for obtaining abortion pills for her daughter. Protesters have obtained abortion pills and will dare the state to prosecute them too.
Giving birth is risky; unless you want a baby, it is an act of folly. Giving birth also increases the stress that humanity places on Earth's ecosystems, including global heating. Discouraging abortion is the opposite of what the world needs.
China's artificial islands could cause fish stocks to collapse around the South China Sea.
This is a foretaste of what global heating and ocean acidification could do globally.
Videos showed thugs shot Ricardo Diaz Zeferino for no good reason. Apparently they were on a hair trigger.
They suspected Diaz of being a bicycle thief. If he were one, that would not justify killing him, but in fact Diaz was searching for the stolen bicycle. It had been stolen from his brother.
Due to reduced pesticide use, dangerous arachnids often arrive in bunches of fruit.
Suggestion: when putting the fruit in plastic bags, fill them with pure nitrogen or CO2. If it takes a few minutes for ordinary air to leak in, the arachnids may die in that time. If the nitrogen or CO2 was obtained from the air, and returns to the air, it won't do any harm there.
I'd love to find an elephant beetle in my bananas. They can't hurt a human and they must be spectacular.
The UK is increasingly using secret evidence in trials. The secret evidence is given by spy officials who are accustomed to lying — in the US, we have seen their counterparts lie to Congress and show no shame when caught in the lie.
Many teenage girls that harm themselves are somewhat autistic.
A man was charged in Arizona with "conspiracy" to have sex with a horse.
Why should it be a crime to have sex with a horse? In what sense is that wrong?
A human can't have sex with a horse the way another horse would. It's not possible. Whatever the human does, it won't seem like sex, to the horse. It will seem like being touched.
There is a wide range of possible sexual acts. Some would hurt the horse, and perhaps are prohibited by other laws. However, there are obvious ways to have sex that wouldn't hurt the horse. The horse would experienced being stroked, and might not mind it.
This law prohibits all of them, indiscriminately. Clearly it is not a matter of protecting the horse, whatever its defenders may claim.
What possible motive is there for a law like this? I can only think of one: perverse religiosity that hates sex and pleasure.
Because of the usual disparaging attitude towards sexual peculiarities, it is easy to make people despise those who have them, which facilitates putting them a prison or a mental hospital. That's what many countries still do to homosexuals.
Keep this in mind when you see laws against other kinds of sexual acts.
A model for solar variation predicts we are headed for a solar minimum which would reduce temperatures on Earth by around 0.2C, for some decades in this century.
Remember that we are fighting against the fossil fuel plutocrats to limit our heating of Earth to just 2.0C instead of the expected 5.0C. If this model is accurate, the temporary dip will give us a little bit of help, but it is not a substitute for what we need to do.
Some of the drugs Americans buy on dark nets are to save their lives.
If we had a Canada-style National Heath Service, we would not have these problems.
Everyone:
call
on UPS to drop ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the Department of Energy to stop its bias against renewable energy.
A large study finds that giving homeless families permanent, stable housing can be more cost-effective than shelters.
Bird flu has forced US poultry farmers to kill almost 50 million birds in an attempt to stop the outbreak.
Factory farms are especially susceptible to the virus.
Middle-aged people turn to social media to compensate for absent intimacy, but often it leaves them even more lonely.
Violence against women in the name of family "honor" is common in India and neighboring countries, just as in the Middle East.
Many Greeks regard Tsipras as a traitor for agreeing to crushing foreign rule after the Greeks voted to reject it.
There certainly are viable alternatives, if Greece is willing to tell the euro-banksters to go to hell. For instance, Greece could print lots more euros. Or it could print them with the word "drachma" across them.
Ireland did without its banks for half a year. Greece can do it too.
Russia sneakily advanced the "border" of "South Ossetia" further into Georgia.
A technology exists for converting CO2 in the air into fuel. It could be run by solar power in a desert.
This means that all it takes is money, to cancel out future greenhouse gas emissions and undo past emissions. The natural way to raise this money is by taxing fossil fuels.
Has humanity got the will to undo its harm?
Residents Fight Back Against Pittsburgh's Privatized Water Authority.
The deal negotiated with Iran includes many measures to block its progress towards making nuclear fuel, mostly lasting 15 years.
I think this is sufficient. In 15 years, the situation is likely to change so much that there is no point worrying now about what to do then. The US and Iran might be allies.
Republicans hate this deal, because they want a war instead.
Of course, the religious oppression in Iran is still outrageous, and oppression of dissent too; but not as bad as in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which the US considers allies. We should try to end those forms of repression, but we have little influence over Iran. One thing we know is that economic warfare doesn't help.
Without this deal, nothing could stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons if it tried to. I think that Iran did in the past intend to develop nuclear weapons, but the weakness and division of Iraq removed the main military threat to Iran, so now Iran would rather forego nukes and get the sanctions lifted.
A program designed to let schools snoop on and censor students' internet use turns out to let others snoop on them too.
The discussion of "encryption" suggests that the program sends personal data to the company. That ought to be a crime.
Seaworld infiltrated an employee into animal rights protests who acted as a provocateur, encouraging "aggressive" action.
US citizens: call on Nissin and Maruchan to stop promoting deforestation.
Everyone: call on world leaders to treat "trade" treaties transparently.
These treaties are not really about trade; their aim is corporate supremacy.
Everyone:
call
on State Farm to drop ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama not to appoint Wall Street cronies to the SEC.
Psychologists Could Torture Because They Have No Hippocratic Oath.
Syriza has surrendered; Greek democracy has been defeated.
It is not even a deal. Greece is required to pass laws to harm itself in a hurry; only then will the arrogant banksters begin to discuss what Greece gets.
This "rescue" ensures Greece's debt will become even more unpayable.
Greece could prepare for that by printing drachmas in advance.
Greece and poor Americans are victims of the same system of class warfare, even the same companies.
Out of the thousands of Americans serving long sentences for minor crimes, Obama has now commuted the sentences of 89.
Americans released from prison tend to become poor and homeless. This surely encourages recidivism; you might want to avoid further crime, but find there is no other way.
US teachers were shocked when the American Federation of Teachers endorsed Clinton without consulting them. Teachers seem to be almost entirely in favor of Bernie Sanders.
After more than 12 years of US drone assassination, it is clear that its use works against US strategic interests by causing suffering.
Robin Lee was arrested for stealing electricity — for charging his phone in the London metro.
When he pointed out that this was unacceptable behavior, they arrested him for "unacceptable behavior".
How to carry on the fight against plutocracy in Europe after the surrender of Greece.
The reasons that Greenland's ice is melting include the fact that heating causes more rain. When the rain goes under the ice, it helps the ice slide into the sea.
Theoretical models of how fast the ice will melt tend to be underestimates because the fastest melting mode may not be obvious, and if you miss it, you underestimate.
A proposed anonymizing wi-fi extender project has mysteriously shut down, leading to suspicion that the developers were threatened by someone.
What the UK's proposed reforms on mass surveillance do and don't achieve.
The research into problems is useful nonetheless. It shows, for instance, that driving under the influence of marijuana is not a significant social problem.
Laura Poitras has sued the US for persistent harassment when she entered the US.
Journalists in Thailand face seven years in prison for accusing military officers of being involved in human trafficking.
I have no facts about this, but it is a pattern known world-wide that smugglers often pay off the officials responsible for stopping smuggling. It happens in the US Border Patrol, for instance. It would be hard for any country to avoid this.
The pretext for this prosecution is that the information threatened national security. That's what governments say about reporting that threatens national embarrassment. Compare this with Australia's ban on disclosing how the state treats refugees and Spain's law against recording what thugs do.
The threat to kill journalists who do not report the "truth", reminds me of Egypt's ban on reporting any sources except official ones.
The bottled water lobby has been slowly eliminating water fountains in the US.
A friend pointed out that "spring water" is an inaccurate term for water pumped out of the ground — that is "ground water." If bottled water contains water pumped out of the ground and is labeled "spring water", it is false advertising.
Australian Woman Arrested in Abu Dhabi for 'Bad Words' on Facebook.
Though this involves Facebook, in this case the wrong is on Abu Dhabi's part.
The TSA found cash in a passenger's luggage, and called the waiting thugs to steal it.
The FBI has caught another "terrorist plotter". The information in the article suggests, though it is not enough to prove it, that he is one more in the series of fantasy terrorists who could never have done anything without the FBI's encouragement and help.
Curbing global heating is a good investment.
US citizens: call on your senators not to support Senator Murray for a leadership position.
Books by right-wing authors get on the New York Times bestseller list
because
right-wing organizations buy their books in quantity
and give them away.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Many human rights lawyers in China have been arrested and accused of being a "criminal gang".
Oakland is developing a law to restrict the thugs' use of spy devices.
The UK must come clean about what has happened from its use of military drones.
Iraq is trying to take Falluja from PISSI.
I predict this will be very difficult as long as the inhabitants of Falluja fear being massacred by Shi'ites. I suspect that one of the motives behind PISSI's massacres of Shi'ites is to stir up the sort of hatred that will make Sunnis feel their safety depends on PISSI. In any case, there is plenty of such hatred.
The challenge of fighting PISSI is to defeat it without becoming just as bad.
One year after Israel's unnecessary bombardment of Gaza, Gaza has hardly been rebuilt, and tens of thousands are still homeless.
Ellen Brown: ways Greece can create alternatives to the banks that the EU plutocrats have crippled.
21 US states have imposed obstacles on voting since the Supreme Court made this easier to do.
Romania's Prime Minister Questioned in Corruption Inquiry.
The effects of certain medications on people's level of concern for others are not simple.
A video confirms that Colonel Shomer shot fleeing Mohammed Kasbeh in the back, then made false accusations to defend himself.
This confirms the close cultural connection between Israel and the US.
An underground network rescues Yazidi captives from enslavement by PISSI.
Some of them teach Muslim students what PISSI really means.
It seems to me that the PISSI's recruits need to dehumanize everyone other than obedient, orthodox, PISSI-supporting Sunnis. If they have human feelings for any others, while realizing how PISSI would treat them, they will find themselves unable to support PISSI.
Fox News Freaks Out Over Seattle Clinics that Give Teens Better Birth Control but not Coca-Cola.
You shouldn't give anyone products of Coca-Cola Company.
If we don't destroy our civilization, in a few decades we will probably greatly extend the human life span. We will need a way to cope with the tendency towards population growth, which would make civilization unsustainable.
We may systematically underestimate the possibilities of massive nonviolent action: it might perhaps even have dissuaded Hitler from genocide against the Jews.
However, it doesn't always work. There were very large protests against Dubya's invasion of Iraq, but he did not care.
Serious
flaws pervade the US system of criminal trials.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
The EU was unable to accept Greece's offer of conditional surrender. Some countries' ministers want to kick Greece out of the euro, regardless.
European Parliament's TTIP Vote A Step Backward for Public Health.
Americans are regularly condemned to life in prison for selling small quantities of marijuana.
New York City plans a replacement for bail, so that poor people are not jailed for months or years awaiting trial.
For many American high school students, the only way to afford college is to join the military and pretend to be "serving their country".
Some of them figure out who they are really serving, but that requires overcoming intense psychological pressure to deny it.
Ukraine's army and right-wing extremist militia are fighting.
Banks in Ireland were closed for 6 months in 1970, by a strike. People got by, and concluded banks were less necessary than they appeared.
Israel has released Khader Adnan after he spent 56 days on hunger strike.
He was never accused of a crime, just imprisoned as in Guantanamo.
He was arrested again the next day for praying at the al-Aqsa mosque.
A broad coalition in Belgium calls for an end to negotiations on the TTIP.
An experiment using fictitious users demonstrates gender discrimination in advertising.
To protect fossil fuel consumption in Australia, the government has told the Clean Energy Finance Corporation not to invest in developing solar or wind power.
Those forms of energy are no good because they are clean.
The UK once again allows books to be sent to prisoners.
China has eliminated the internet as a system for people to communicate about anything socially important. This includes replacing the equivalent of Twitter with a communications service that makes it hard to talk to people you don't know.
The harassment campaign against the blogger who says he has been "re-educated" resembles what the US did to John Kiriakou, and tried to do to Thomas Drake.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel the Oak Flat mining deal.
Many countries are suffering from debt crises.
The current international system, designed to make states repay loans no matter what the cost to the people, creates a moral hazard: lenders are too ready to lend money, even for dictators to steal, because they assume there is no way the state can get rid of the debt.
Haiti was crushed for a century by a debt imposed by France in exchange for recognizing Haiti's independence.
A California study was unable to estimate the danger of pollution from fracking because, for half the chemicals frackers use, they can't find any data about their toxicity or biodegradability.
In effect, fracking is a massive experiment with the public as the test subjects.
The purpose of the experiment is to advance climate mayhem. Due to the pervasive methane leaks, fracking makes a big contribution to global heating.
If our government were in the hands of statesmen, instead of flunkies, we would ban fracking, thus designating those natural gas reserves as part of the 80% of fossil fuels that must be left in the ground.
The US has spent 3 billion dollars promoting "charter schools" (private replacements for public schools), with little benefit. Often these schools close in a few years.
Charter schools do not in general provide a superior education, as they were supposedly going to do.
I suspect Congress's real motive for funding them is a lobby connected with businesses that profit from them.
Some large UK charities make a practice of phoning people aggressively to press for donations.
Charities should not use businesses to do their fundraising. Those businesses tend to pay their employees badly as well as to be pushy with the public. But it endangers the charity, too: it can warp the organization's attitudes, make it think of donors as money sources, not as people who support a cause. Thus, I think no charity should ever outsource the requesting of donations.
Freedom of panorama has been saved in Europe.
The NSA still collects broad information about Americans' internet activity in contempt of the constitution.
What has made PISSI so resilient?
College students often have sex hesitantly, not quite sure what they really want, and often somewhat inebriated (though not unconscious). To call this "rape" leads to devastating their lives.
It might be a good thing to help students figure out more clearly whether they want sex. I am sure it would be good to lead them to drink less alcohol. But these are both more easily said than done.
The Netherlands proposes to authorize massive surveillance. Also, the spies will have the power to force anyone to decrypt anything.
So you can't trust a company in the Netherlands with your data, unless you live in a place like China whose government won't cooperate much with the Dutch government.
"Trading privacy for security" is a "false fad".
New Zealand's new censorship law, supposedly meant to protect people from online harassment, provides a great tool for online harassment.
Arguing that a fair monetary system has to be based on a universal redistribution system.
Fossil Fuel Industry Must 'Implode' to Avoid Climate Disaster, Says Top Scientist.
The UK government says it will "boost productivity" by producing the wrong kind of houses.
It's a distraction anyway, since the UK's problem isn't a lack of production, it is that the rich take it all.
Canada has passed a law to revoke citizenship of those convicted of "terrorism" in other countries. This applies even if they are convicted in countries like the US or Egypt, where dissent or journalism can be labeled as "terrorism" and courts don't follow the standards of justice.
This applies even to natural-born Canadians who had the bad luck to receive citizenship in some other country, perhaps without asking for it.
Are Foreign NGOs Rebuilding Haiti Or Just Cashing In?
A right-wing pattern: offer token support to the poor or downtrodden, so that right-wing supporters can tell themselves, "We're not really callous and greedy."
It is fatuous to judge whether a party can "run the economy well" without thinking about what that means. Do dooH niboR policies, competently executed and enriching the rich, constitute running the economy well, or running it badly?
The US background check for gun purchases should have stopped Dylann Roof from buying a gun, but the system failed.
He also claims that it is part of a scheme by Germany to pressure France.
After Greece voted no, the euro-banksters said that their previous demand wasn't oppressive enough; they now demand more. This shows they were not negotiating in good faith. They want unconditional surrender, not a solution.
So the Greek government has offered them more or less what they demanded, asking in exchange for some debt relief.
Varoufakis says that the euro-banksters had decided by January that they wanted Greece out of the euro.
However, the plutocrats of Europe now say that this is not good enough. They object to giving Greece any debt relief in exchange for budget cuts.
However, France is pushing for some debt relief.
Meanwhile, the Greek parliament may not approve the deal.
That article lists the main points of the deal. Many of them are not bad, but the new tax on foodstuffs and the reduced salaries will really hurt.
Delaying retirement might be fine if Greece had full employment, but what will it do to unemployed people who are fairly old but still under 67? They will never get another job.
26 different thugs attacked Tyree Carroll, at least some of them after he was handcuffed.
I can't see the video; please don't use nonfree Flash Player to watch it! I can only read what the article says.
It appears Carroll may be culpable for some violence, but that doesn't excuse hitting and kicking him once he was handcuffed and helpless. And if a thug put him in a chokehold, he had reasonable fear for his life.
Stopping someone for "riding a bicycle in the wrong direction" seems like looking for an excuse.
Got to Be Thwarting Something: FBI Claims It Stopped Unspecified Mayhem, Possibly on July 4.
That's the sort of argument the Obama regime uses to justify tracking and spying on us in everything we do.
Important political information learned from the Hacking Team crack and leak.
The irrational US response to allegations of "terrorism" has perverted every stage of the US "justice system", and the effect is not limited to "terrorism" cases.
How the American Psychological Association changed its rules to help its members collude in torture.
It obtained no useful intelligence, but boosted tyrants world-wide.
Some of these psychologists were instrumental in proposing torture methods. They may even be prosecuted.
However, Dubya and Cheney were the ringleaders and we must concentrate on prosecuting them.
60% of US highschool boys say they think video games treat women as sex objects too much.
The article shows a foolish blindness when it talks about " consuming media images". If playing a game consumed it, you could not play for very long.
Cities such as San Francisco with "sanctuary" laws, that refuse to report or help deport illegal immigrants, are safer — because these laws encourage illegal immigrants to cooperate in catching criminals.
Tourists say they still feel safe in Tunisia.
Why help terrorists damage the Tunisian economy?
The Michigan judge changed her mind, and sent the disobedient children (who refused to meet with their father) to a summer camp.
Judge Orders Pentagon to Get Guantanamo Force-Feeding Videos Ready for Release.
Amnesty International and two British human rights organizations call on the UK to investigate why GCHQ spied on them.
The Soviet Union built and tested a semi-automatic "doomsday machine" system for automatic launch of a retaliatory missile strike.
The Perimetr system was a response to the US's deployment of missiles that threatened first-strike destruction of Soviet missiles. Deploying those missiles was a far more aggressive and foolhardy act.
We now know that the doomsday machine was inherent in those missiles: even without a Soviet retaliation, they would have triggered a nuclear winter that would have destroyed civilization (and maybe humanity too).
Taxing renewable energy like nonrenewable is "saving green pennies, but spending nuclear pounds."
The UK increase in minimum wage (which falls short of a "living wage") is far too small to compensate for the welfare cuts.
In addition, only a fraction of those hurt by the welfare cuts will see a rise in wages.
Monroe Bird was shot and paralyzed for no reason by a security guard, but what killed him was the lousy US medical system.
Many US workers are surveilled so much in their work that the stress is making their lives hell.
A house in Seattle has a history that superficially reminds people of the story of the movie Up.
Hacking Team was one of five companies listed by Reporters Without Borders as the "corporate enemies of the internet" for helping governments (even outright tyrannical ones) snoop on computers.
Australian medical professionals are protesting the laws banning other medical professionals from reporting when their patients are mistreated.
Bernie Sanders has cheered the Greeks for voting no.
Greece Is the Latest Battleground in the Financial Elite's War on Democracy.
The US government wants the impossible: software with back doors that only it can use. Even if one assumes that the US would never do wrong using this power, the idea is nuts.
Of course, that assumption is a fundamental error. We must not suppose that state agents use their power only for good. We need a state, so we need democracy to keep control over it. If the state can track everyone's actions and communications, democracy is doomed.
The Global Commission on the Economy and the Climate report recommends a plan of 10 steps that would nearly go far enough to avoid more than 2C of heating.
Here is the executive summary of the plan.
However, even if we limit global heating to 2C, that could ultimately raise sea level by 20 feet (6 meters).
Is part of your city less than 6 meters above sea level?
The Senate's CIA torture report has made it possible for prisoners in Guantanamo to present part of the details of how they were tortured as evidence in military kangaroo courts.
However, some aspects of torture remain a secret of the torturers. For instance, we know that Abu Zubaydah lost his eye due to how the CIA treated him, but precisely how remains a secret.
Prominent economists call on Merkel to recognize that austerity is a misguided response, not a solution for a country's debts.
Four Ways ALEC Tried to Ruin Your State This Year.
Could the mass extinction we are causing lead to humanity's extinction?
I think complete extinction will be unlikely because humans are very flexible: some humans will survive, even if reduced to stone-age technology. The vast majority will die, probably during this century.
What [Billionaire Polluters]' $18.7 Billion Spill Settlement Means for the Environment.
The Greek referendum revealed how the EU has become an undemocratic instrument for imposing plutocracy. Here are details.
The UK killed another program for greenhouse gas reduction.
Jordan has jailed a journalist for reporting on terrorism.
West Virginia's science museum has made a mobile "exhibit" which is just propaganda in favor of fracking.
Now 60,000 Hondurans have protested calling for the coup-backed president to resign.
Big Tech Does Not Speak for the Internet.
In particular, what those companies say about corporate supremacy treaties does not speak for internet users.
How US corporations engineered Puerto Rico's unpayable debt.
The US military is preparing to "protect" Americans from a shortage of resources; but this is to be done by propping up US inequality.
U.S. Trade Policy Is Pro-Rich, Not Free Trade.
However, the "free trade" treaties are really treaties for corporate supremacy: trade is a side issue.
I don't think the US needs to have high tariffs; tariffs are a side issue. To the extent that these treaties implement free trade, that is harmful because it enables companies to shift production easily from country to country, this pressuring countries to compete for which will allow the worst abuse of workers.
That is the part of free trade that we need to get rid of.
Microsoft gave Windows source code to Chinese companies which are thought to have provided it to the Chinese government to search for vulnerabilities.
This combines the real danger of proprietary software with the mythical danger of free software: you can't get Windows source code, but someone who wants to attack you can.
Three siblings in Michigan will be jailed for years for refusing to see their father.
If the mother has poisoned them against him — such things do happen — that is her responsibility, not the childrens'.
The Obama regime has decided to deny Malaysia's human trafficking record, to bypass a legal requirement so that country can be included in the TPP.
The US has for decades misrepresented countries' human rights records in order to continue selling them arms.
The Sexual-Abuse-to-Prison Pipeline: many US girls from minority backgrounds are imprisoned for victimless "crimes" that are often a response to being sexually abused.
It is easy to say that they need help, not prison; but that's not strong enough. It would be better just to leave them alone than to imprison them.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on state officials to continue the program that promotes solar energy.
In the US: call on Metra, the Chicago region commuter railroad, to insist its car manufacturer reinstate the employee who was fired for raising safety concerns.
US citizens: call on Obama to cut massive surveillance now.
Uber in China tracks drivers and actively pressures them to stay away from protests.
The company could not prevent Chinese repression, but upholding it in this way is complicity.
Rats whose ancestors were underfed for 50 generations proved particularly susceptible to diabetes and obesity once offered a normal diet.
The experiment with the normal diet was continued for only two generations. I wish they had studied several more generations to see how long the effect lasted. If it is due to epigenetic changes, it would be likely to end in another generation or two.
Thomas Piketty:
'Germany
Has Never Repaid its Debts. It Has No Right to Lecture Greece'
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
A study found that living on a street with trees goes with better health, equivalent to having $10,000 more annual income.
European sea bass urgently need protection.
A common right-wing tactic is the idea that needing public assistance is some sort of personal failure.
Jeb Bush thinks the solution for US underemployment is for workers to "work more hours". As if they were underemployed by choice.
In a developed economy, there isn't room for everyone to do well. A certain fraction is forced to be poor, and if the society is humane, it will give them assistance.
The size of the fraction forced to be poor can be changed by changing laws and policies.
It is urgent to establish rules to limit use of face recognition software.
The case that is most important to limit is recognition by the state or for the state's use, because that threatens democracy itself.
The Wettest Place in North America Is Burning: Global heating has brought drought even to Vancouver Island.
If we keep it up, the island's rainforest and its unusual tree species could disappear.
Regional high levels of particulate air pollution makes floods more likely.
Those who cracked the Office of Personnel Management's computers obtained personal data on 21 million people.
Bumblebees are dying from heat in southern parts of Europe and North America, but they have been unable to colonize areas to the north.
One possibility that occurs to me is that they can't survive cold beyond a certain point. One of the effects of global heating in the northern temperate zone is an increase in very cold periods in winter. That might make those areas uninhabitable for bumblebees even though they now have a higher average temperature.
The US has spent a billion dollars trying to set up an honest system of justice in Afghanistan, but has achieved little.
Dubya collected $100,000 for a speech to a group of veterans after causing them to be wounded by sending them to occupy Iraq.
South Carolina Removes the Physical Flag: Can It Remove the Spiritual Illness of Racial Discrimination?
1/4 of the people in the "registered sex offender" list were added as minors for having sex with other minors.
There is a campaign of sexual repression that feeds on parents' irrational fears about their children — and unwillingness to recognize that they become sexual at different ages, often younger than the parents would wish.
New York City thugs encountered full disk encryption in .1% of their cases.
They did not keep track of in what fraction of those cases the full disk encryption caused a real impediment to the investigation. That might be a much smaller fraction.
Spain Government Goes Full Police State; Enacts Law Forbidding Dissent, 'Unauthorized' Photography Of Law Enforcement.
The Latest In The 'Collect It All' Collection: An Entire Nation's DNA.
Standard practice for insincere politicians is to accuse their critics of the bad things they themselves do. Senator Graham, after proposing endless war against Iran and PISSI, said that peace activists such as Medea Benjamin "make the world incredibly dangerous".
A bipartisan Senate plan to reduce taxes on US-based multinational corporations.
The UK's right-wing government is rushing to end support for wind turbines, which will cancel many planned projects.
This was probably inevitable — they were endangering the profits of fossil fuel companies, to which the UK's current government reports.
It will also assure that the UK fails to meet its carbon emission targets, which those companies don't want to meet. (Those targets are too weak, so meeting them is not enough anyway.)
This makes an interesting contrast with the government's stance on fracking. Lots of Britons want to block fracking locally, since it could poison their water, but the government has denied landowners the power to veto fracking under their land.
The government minimizes the danger of fracking and exaggerates the inconvenience of wind turbines. How strange — but it makes sense if we assume that the government is looking for excuses to boost the profits of fossil fuel companies.
US citizens: call on CVS to stop selling Antarctic krill oil. The catch of Antarctic krill is not sustainable.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to vote against HR 2647, a bill to allow too much logging in federal forests.
A restaurant chain will stop selling single-use bottles of water to reduce waste.
The drugstore chain CVS has cut its ties with the US Chamber of Commerce because of that organization's lobbying on behalf of tobacco.
Shell's Arctic drilling is delayed because a ship supposed to deal with ice and oil spills developed a large hole in its hull.
Operations in the Arctic are especially unreliable. That's acceptable for operations whose failure is not catastrophic. If the worst danger is a small chance some crew might die, as is always possible on the sea, they may consider that acceptable. But when the danger is pollution of a large area for a century or more, we must not allow them to risk it.
Tsipras says that a deal with Europe must aim at making Greece economically healthy, not just at supporting its creditors.
Campaigning to repeal the US ban on government funding for abortion.
It won't be easy to pass this through Congress dominated by SCROTUS (Sleazy Congressional Republicans of the United States), but the effort can advance the cause.
US citizens: urge Bernie Sanders to remind Clinton that Israel's colonies in the West Bank are not part of Israel.
Rwanda has had a free press for about two years — but now it is reimposing censorship.
The European Parliament voted in favor of the general thrust of the TTIP: plutocrats thrusting a sword into the belly of democracy.
New York State will set up a special prosecutor for killings by thugs. This is a step in the right direction, but not a guarantee the team will really try to put killer thugs behind bars.
A thug in the UK lied about a prisoner who died under suspect circumstances. Amazingly, the thug is being tried for perjury!
US citizens: urge your congresscritter to oppose the DARK Act, even nastier now — it would be a crime to label a product as GMO-free.
Due to concentration of businesses, and unimpeded mergers, overall competition in the US has declined. This may hold back increases in employment and wages.
With so many trains carrying oil in North America, it is no wonder that several explode every year.
Since Obama is about to visit Ethiopia, the government released around 1/3 of the imprisoned journalists.
Thailand returned Uighur refugees to China even though they may face torture or imprisonment for no reason.
Hacking Team Emails Expose Proposed Death Squad Deal, Secret UK Sales Push, and Much More.
In addition, they planned a campaign of deceptive denials in case these actions were found out.
[UK] Class Spite Wrapped in Spin Will Feed a Backlash.
The budget is mostly dooH niboR, with a few inadequate progressive measures thrown in.
Young people are hit especially hard.
Verizon is trying to force telephone customers one by one to move from copper phone connections to fiber.
I think the copper landline network should be maintained and extended, and that includes the lifeline services. States or the federal government should aggressively prosecute any attempt to pressure people to switch.
The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation developed a drug that treats that disease, then sold the patent rights for 3 billion dollars. The new owner will surely insist on extracting a much larger sum from the patent, which will make the drug so expensive that many people with cystic fibrosis can't afford it.
The option to do this in effect sets research charities against the sick people they raised money to serve. And it probably violates the expectations of those who donated to these charities.
An email proves that Exxon's management was aware of the danger of global heating in 1981.
Its response was to fund denial for 27 years.
Remember to pronounce the "xx" in "Exxon" correctly. It is not pronounced like a single "x".
Global heating denialism, when not done for pay, is associated with a general tendency to conspiratorial thinking.
Baltimore has fired its thug chief, who is accused of telling thugs not to arrest some rioters, and perhaps through similar policies conniving at the increased murder rate of the past few months.
I wonder what change has caused that murder rate. It is not likely that the mentality of many people inexplicably and lastingly changed in such a short time. Some practical action must be responsible, but what? Perhaps orders from the thug chief?
Berlusconi has been convicted of bribing a senator to change political alignment.
Tunisia's state of emergency threatens the human rights won by the revolution.
I can't see why finding underground terrorist networks requires limiting journalism or public gatherings, so it seems like a suspicious excuse.
The state of emergency is supposed to last only 30 days. If it really ends on schedule, Tunisia will survive it. But will it end?
NSA spying inside the German government has affected the staff of Merkel and her predecessors.
Britons protested the Tories' killer budget with a die-in in Parliament Square, defying a ban on protests.
Banning protests is itself tyranny.
The euro-plutocrats told the Greek government to "get serious" — that is, propose the sort of big budget cuts that the Greek people just voted against.
The banksters' politicians have increased their demands, making agreement impossible.
Tsipras presented a serious proposal, including debt relief, and they dismissed it out of hand. Greece has no partner for peace in Europe. All they want from Greece is surrender to further draining, which will make the problem worse (as it has done every year since it started).
The loans that Greece wants forgiven are those that were made as part of the "bailout" of the creditor-banks, which was supposed to give Greece a way out of the crisis but (predictably) made it worse.
Getting out of the euro will enable Greece to have an independent fiscal policy, which it needs.
However, that is not what most Greeks want. When they elected Syriza, they did not give Syriza a mandate to exit the euro. The referendum was about rejecting further bloodsucking by the banksters, but not directly about leaving the euro.
Thus, Tsipras is obliged to try his best to end the austerity while keeping Greece in the euro zone. He has to give the banksters a chance to accept this, so that if they reject it, it is clear that they are responsible and that he did his best.
I think that is clear, now. If the banksters continue punishing Greece as much as they can, I think Greeks will accept leaving the euro.
The EU required Greece to destroy its facilities for printing drachmas, preparing in advance a barrier to leaving the euro.
I have read that there is a euro printing plant in Greece. I wonder if Greece could use that to print a form of drachma. Or, more interesting, whether it could print euros. Real euros, indistinguishable from all the others.
Greece needs in the long run to get out of the euro zone, but printing euros as an interim measure would give Greece a way to teach the bastards a lesson.
The IRS permits nonprofit organizations to channel money into electioneering, failing to enforce the law against it.
The UK government has cancelled, one by one, nearly all the programs to promote renewable energy.
Something's Missing From Pope Francis' "Radical" Vision of Equality: Women.
The biggest threat to Australian wildlife is habitat loss, but government protection policies ignore that and tend to make that worse.
Public funding for US elections could enable large numbers of people to overwhelm the money that billionaires give.
Burma will have an election in November, but it won't be entirely free due to the perverse exclusion of Aung San Suu Kyi. We don't know whether it will be free in other respects.
Hacking Team found and secretly exploited bugs in many programs, including one in Flash Player.
The crackers should not have published this information; they should have sent it to the developers so the bugs could have been fixed. Nonetheless, the users will be better off (on a time scale of a month or more) having these bugs leaked and fixed, than having them kept secret and exploited for a long time.
The autopsy confirms that teenager Mohammed Kasbeh was shot in the back by an Israeli officer, who then made a false report of the circumstances.
Massachusetts citizens: support state bills for medical privacy, contraceptive coverage, rights of pregnant workers, and gender-equality in wages.
US citizens: tell CVS to stop the krilling.
US citizens:
tell
Bumble Bee to stop killing sharks when it catches tuna.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Corporate Capitalism Is the Foundation of Police Brutality and the Prison State.
I am not opposed to capitalism as such, if it is kept in check and under strict regulation by a democratic state. I refer to our current system as "extreme capitalism" or "plutocracy".
UK corporate welfare amounts to around 150 billion dollars a year.
The reason the government cuts welfare for the poor instead of cutting welfare for the rich is simple: its politicians are funded by the rich.
As Propaganda Rains Down in US, Real Bombs Kill Scores of Civilians in Yemen.
The July 4th "terrorism warning" proved as bogus as all the others.
The owners of Walmart run a large chain of private "charter schools", and lobby against applying safety or educational standards to them on the grounds they are private, but call them "public schools" when it suits them.
We should call them "public expense, private control" schools.
Robert Reich: Would You Rather 2 or 3 Big Health Insurance Companies, or Govt. Run Single Payer?
Why it is wrong, and probably deadly, to impose contact on isolated Amazon forest tribes.
We should also note that extracting oil from those regions implies destroying first the Amazon forest, then global civilization.
If we leave 80% of the fossil fuel reserves in the ground, as we need to, there is no reason to extract any from those areas.
Danish cities are tracking people by the MAC addresses of their portable wifi devices.
I avoid such tracking by keeping my laptop's wifi off except when I actually want to use it — and changing the MAC address each time I use it in a different place.
Kazakhstan's independent news site has been fined for libel for investigating corruption in the construction industry. This is likely to shut it down.
Egypt is about to make it a crime to cite any unofficial source about fights with Islamists. In effect, all journalism will be reduced to parroting the state.
Covering the trials of alleged "terrorists" will also be a crime. Of course, these people are not necessarily real terrorists. They might be real dissidents. In Egypt, they may have done no more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Aside from being an injustice in its own right, it will mean that we hardly know anything about what is happening in Egypt's Islamist rebellion. We will get only the lies of a government that feels empowered to lie.
It is now certain from Bill Cosby's formerly secret testimony that he gave women drugs to rape them.
Argentine author Pablo Katchadjian faces the threat of imprisonment for doing a Borgesian remix on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
I have not seen Katchadjian's story, and I don't remember "The Aleph", but "Pierre Menard: Author of Quixote" was great fun. It described a (fictional) activity which would be a literary hack, like this one. I think Borges had the spirit of a hacker.
After a year of legal marijuana sales in Washington state, the state has saved lots of money and obtained increased tax revenue, and lots of citizens have been spared arrest and imprisonment.
Meanwhile, use of marijuana has not increased. There's no downside, it seems, except for private prison operators.
Chile is moving towards partial legalization.
"Shark Week" targets the predators that attack poor humans in American cities: loan sharks.
The high expense of using "payday lending" is a secondary problem; the primary problem is that many Americans are paid so little they can't save any money and can barely get by. Other Americans use credit cards for the same thing. It's a bad practice, but but poverty puts people under stress that makes it hard for them to think clearly.
Notwithstanding Donald Trump, Mexican immigrants in the US tend to be less criminal than average Americans.
Robots make it possible to inspect narrow oil pipes for cracks, but that doesn't mean the cracks will receive prompt repair.
Clinton supports giving Puerto Rico's public agencies the right to declare bankruptcy.
Bernie Sanders supports this too, but reminds us that the underlying problem is austerity and that the real goal is to give Puerto Rico's inhabitants a better life.
With music streaming disservices such as Apple Play, the major record companies and Apple are arranging for suckers to pay a substantial amount every month to keep listening to the same music.
If the sucker ever stops paying, all the music will become inaccessible.
Don't be a sucker.
Icann Plan to End Website Anonymity 'Could Lead to Swatting Attacks'.
The US should end swatting entirely by limiting the use of SWAT teams to situations where they are really necessary. Most SWAT teams should be eliminated.
Bruce Schneier: David Cameron's Proposed Encryption Ban Would 'Destroy the Internet'.
It would destroy human rights in the UK, too.
The US is training a total of 60 Syrian rebels. No more than that could pass the admissions criteria.
The criteria are surely not overly strict. What the low number shows is that this approach isn't going to work.
It might be more effective to train westerners to join the fight among the Syrian Kurds.
A crack of the servers of Hacking Team obtained information proving it sells to repressive countries.
One of Hacking Team's sales partners, a US company, gets lots of help and support from the US government in selling to a repressive state.
Most of the operations SWAT teams do have no need for the armaments of a SWAT team.
The effect of using SWAT teams for them is generally to terrify people for no reason, and occasionally to kill them for no reason.
Building tall buildings using wood can greatly reduce the carbon footprint of their construction.
A tourist destination, ice caves near Seattle collapsed due to high temperatures that, in the past, were unusual.
The greenhouse gas reduction pledges that major countries have made add up to far too little to avoid disaster.
The UK Parliament wants the government to clarify its criteria for prosecuting UK intelligence agencies and staff for complicity in US drone assassinations.
The US does not kill individual civilians intentionally, but it intentionally attacks cities and roads in ways that inevitably kill civilians. Those killings are part and parcel of these wars.
Defeating a violent armed satanic cult, which is what PISSI effectively is, justifies some violence. But the US must limit its bombings to battlefields where their casualties are understandable and acceptable by the standards of Americans and Middle Easterners.
The Sahara desert is spreading in Burkina Faso as human climate mayhem reduces rainfall and increases temperature.
They shouldn't have so many children that they can't feed — the rich countries must give them help in the form of reliable birth control.
Thailand has freed a small group of student protesters on bail, but they still face prosecution by the military government.
The current coral bleaching event could kill 6% of the world's coral reef area.
Ocean heating threatens to kill corals in the north Pacific and the western Atlantic oceans, as well as in tropical areas.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congress to pressure the European Central Bank to support Greece during negotiations.
Here is how Bernie Sanders explained in 2003
why he was voting
against Dubya's plan to conquer and occupy Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
Senator Clinton voted for it.
He didn't have to be a super genius to see that the war was unjustified. Millions of people opposed it, and many of them protested in the street. What distinguished Sanders from people like Clinton was that he had the moral courage to oppose the powerful.
The vampire banksters' response to the Greek referendum is, "We'll punish you until you vote yes."
The US is trying to pressure them to compromise with Greece.
Compare this with the Marshall plan.
US citizens: support the Voting Rights Advancement Act.
US citizens:
tell the
White House we want to expand Social Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support Bernie Sanders' call to extend Medicare to all Americans.
A German politician who represents the line of the euro banks says that Tsipras must "rebuild trust" before negotiations begin. What this means is, Tsipras should start speaking in subservient tones to show they can "trust him" to impose their rule on Greece.
The writer continues by refusing to recognize crushing imposed poverty as an issue. He says the issue is making Greece more "competitive".
That's their code work for eliminating workers' rights and giving business a free hand. They do this in one country, which puts some other country where workers still have rights at a disadvantage, which creates an excuse to do it in that country. Thus all the countries compete to let businesses spread poverty. "Free trade" treaties also represent this idea.
His next piece of bullshit is the claim that this "reform" was "hugely successful" in other European countries where poverty and suffering are still in place. It's certainly not true in Spain.
That writer is the mouthpiece of the banksters, and the fact that he says these things suggests that the banksters are not willing to compromise. Apparently they still demand abject surrender.
The European banks are still trying to crush Greece with a shortage of cash.
I suppose this is meant to force Greece out of the euro zone quickly. Most Greeks don't want that, but I think they will accept it rather than continue this.
The euro-zone's austerity reflects its rejection of democracy.
About the debt crisis that is crushing Puerto Rico.
Varoufakis explains why the rulers of Germany benefit from perpetuating crisis in southern Europe.
Some of his sharp one-liners.
Bernie Sanders responds to policy questions and explains why he does not run attack ads against Hillary Clinton.
I condemn Clinton for her right-wing policies and actions.
Bernie Sanders Will End the IMF's Economic Violence in Greece and Africa.
Emails show the US state department under Clinton secretly supported the coup in Honduras, and she was personally involved in that support.
The US-backed bombardment of Yemen killed 45 civilians with one bomb.
Ex-attorney-general Holder has returned to the Wall Street consulting firm that he came from.
A person with a background like that is hardly likely to do the attorney general's job. Of course, Obama knew that. He didn't want someone to prosecute banksters.
10,000 protested in Toronto demanding "jobs, justice and climate action".
The right-wing government, opposed to truth and to human rights, won't willingly grant any of those.
It is very important to unite the Green cause with the Social Democratic cause.
Businesses evade blame for their practices by putting the blame on the technology they take advantage of.
China has rebuked the US for human rights violations, racial discrimination and callously strewing poverty.
A few of the points are exaggerated. For instance, shootings in schools are shocking but don't add up to a significant danger compared with other dangers such as car crashes. By contrast, violence against women by their spouses or lovers is a major social problem, but the government is not directly responsible for it; indeed, people are only exploring what sort of measures can put an end to it.
Nonetheless, the report amounts to a valid rebuke to the US. The fact that a similar report about China is even worse in many dimensions is not excuse for it.
It is still, on some occasions, legal to walk around in London carrying the flag of PISSI.
However, the person carrying it risks being arrested and imprisoned for the crime of being suspected.
40 current and former staff of Australian immigration prisons signed a letter daring the state to prosecute them for continuing to talk about mistreatment of the prisoners that they have observed.
More about how this law blocks people from carrying out moral and legal duties.
The Australian government has some absurd excuse to claim these places are something other than prisons, but if it smells like a prison, feels like a prison, and tastes like a prison, I'm glad I didn't set foot in it.
The UK started an inquiry in 2010 about how it handed over Libyan dissidents to Ghadhafi. Some of the answers turned out embarrassing, so it has buried the remaining part of the inquiry.
Greece's Fight Is for Democracy in Europe. That's Why We Must Support It.
The 22,000 residents of Highland Park, near Detroit, face impossible and sometimes false water bills. They are in danger of water shutoff and perhaps mass homelessness.
The Koch brothers are spending a lot of money to hold back the EU from resisting global heating.
Education for Girls All Over the World Is the Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time.
Note, however, that education for boys is also threatened in many countries, as the elites consider more and more people disposable and not worth educating.
Heaps of radioactive mining waste are scattered around Johannesburg, and the dust from them makes people sick. Poor people are especially hard hit, since they can't afford measures that can reduce the damage.
The European banks threatened Greece to procure regime change, and admitted it.
Backing Down on Greece's Debt Is the Safest, Most Rational Option (for European institutions).
Finance Minister Varoufakis has resigned to facilitate negotiations with the plutocratist European leaders. The government hopes this will help them bypass their personal resentment of him (for not surrendering) in order to negotiate.
I hope the banksters accept a limit on their power, rather than punishing Greece as much as they can. But the banks may not care about success or failure for European institutions. They may not mind causing a bigger crisis, since the rich profit from crises.
If they take further steps to crush Greece, they will inspire more hatred, until countries across Europe elect parties like Syriza.
The No vote in Greece is a rebuke to the banksters. If they press on on their arrogance, they risk even bigger defeats.
Greeks don't actually want to drop the euro, but they refused to be pressured by the threat of this.
The banksters lost the ability to maneuver people through fear, because they had already squeezed Greeks to the point where many had nothing left to lose, or could foresee that that would be the case by and by.
Syriza is being criticized for not saying concretely what the victory for No would lead to, but there was a good reason for that: this can't be known in advance. It depends on a number of things, including how the banksters respond to this rebuke. The only way that Syriza could have stated a concrete outcome would be to insist on the worst — but that is obviously not in the interests of Greece.
Mr Y lives in Britain an isolated and restricted life based on the decisions of a secret court for reasons he is not allowed to know.
You could think of it as Guantanamo lite.
US citizens: call on Congress to quash state ag-gag bills.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep anti-environmental riders out of budget and spending bills.
The US Border Patrol is deeply corrupt — even the US government recognizes it.
A Colorado thug has pled guilty twice to attacking prisoners. The more recent instance was gruesome, amounting to torture.
I am glad the thug has been convicted, but why isn't he in prison?
One more US state has put limits on "forfeiture", i.e. seizure of property for a "crime" without a criminal trial, and another state has abolished it altogether.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Is Accused of Pocketing Nearly $700 Million from a Government Investment Fund.
The witch hunt against teenage sex subjects people to punishment for life for actions that shouldn't even be illegal.
You can see from what the judge said that the motive for this policy is pure and simple hostility towards sex and those who enjoy sex.
The normal activity of human adolescents is sex. We should teach them how to avoid diseases and pregnancy, then stop interfering.
A security researcher reported on big flaws in voting machines in Argentina. The state is investigating … the researcher.
Craigs List sued a company, claiming that screen scraping was illegal unauthorized access, and won — and now is trying to buy public forgiveness for this attack on our rights by donating the money it got from this to the EFF.
Everyone: call on LG to uphold workers' rights in its supply chain.
Global heating is going to hit polar bears even worse than was formerly expected.
With coral already dying, and threatened by global heating, Fiji may lose its tourism income and much of its food supply.
Travel to Fiji for tourism contributes to the problem.
Giant Lake Urmia in Iran has nearly disappeared — people are taking too much of the water that flows into it.
Renewed American tourism in Cuba could destroy the environment there.
Companies are now 97% accurate at figuring out from use tracking that various computers are mainly used by the same person.
They do this with kinds of personal data that they never get from me. I block them by using Tor and by not identifying myself to sites.
Egypt is about to make it a crime to publish any disagreement with official statements about terrorism.
The government could say "There is no terrorism" and it would be a crime to report any. This censorship almost reaches the level of North Korea.
The same military government also plans to streamline executions. This in a country where courts sentence people by the dozens or hundreds in a cavalier fashion.
Heavy US bombing against PISSI in Raqqa killed a number of civilians.
PISSI shamelessly kills many civilians as a matter of policy. Syrians who choose dispassionately between the US and PISSI will have to conclude that PISSI is much worse. But I don't think many will compare in that way. Some in Raqqa hate PISSI and some are contented.
The people still alive in Raqqa today will only be killed by PISSI for some reason. It might be a vicious and evil reason, but it will be predictable. Most people will assume they can avoid doing the things that would motivate PISSI to kill them. They can't avoid falling foul of a bomb from an airplane.
The Republican party is proposing to hurt old people, so that once again most old people in the US can be poor, as was the case before Social Security.
The AARP (American Association of Retired People) hampers representation of old people's interests. It convinces most of them to join, for practical benefits, then often lobbies for business causes without calling the members' attention.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to resist the TPP firmly.
Urge Bernie Sanders to lead a filibuster against the "fast track" bill.
Also phone your senators to oppose "fast track".
US citizens: phone your senators right away against "fast track" for corporate supremacy treaties.
US citizens:
oppose
starting a coal mine near Bryce Canyon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
The Greek crisis has exposed the European Union for what it really is, invalidating the ideas on which it depends for moral legitimacy.
However, I think those ideas were initially more than a fiction. 30 years ago, social democracy and human rights played an important role in EU policies and law. Then the plutocrats and banksters took advantage of other changes to grasp increasing control. The rejected EU constitution, and the non-constitution (the Lisbon treaty) adopted in its place, are insufficiently democratic, which provided the banksters with a great opportunity. (This is why I called on voters to reject it and block it, where they had the chance.)
Nowadays the EU is a pliable instrument for plutocrats to subordinate human rights with. For freedom and democracy, a country must get out of it.
US citizens: call on the Labor department to cover more Americans with required extra pay for overtime work.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Lynch to investigate the practice of trying minors as adults and putting them in adult prisons.
Tunisia's president declared a state of emergency, apparently to suspend civil liberties.
I am skeptical that there is any valid justification for this.
60,000 people marched in Honduras demanding the president resign.
The reasons include corruption in the election campaign, which was run by the government installed by the US-backed military coup.
Billionaire Polluters will have to pay 18 billion dollars over many years.
However, most of this is tax-deductible so really Americans will pay it.
Four more Egyptian journalists have been arrested, accused with crimes including "spreading false information" and "working for al Jazeera".
Along the same lines, New Zealand has criminalized many sorts of on digital communications, including journalism.
One of the new crimes, punished with imprisonment, is "making false allegations" and "disclosing sensitive personal facts". It also criminalizes whistleblowing even against companies, since it is forbidden to send or post anything "published in breach of confidence".
Under "Principle 10", "denigrating" anyone based on various personal characteristics is also criminalized. Saying, "He's a Scientologist, so he's a sucker" seems to be a crime there now, and even "By believing in PISSI's version of Islam he has turned himself into a monster".
Urging people to say, to a business owner, "I won't buy from you any more because..." also seems to be a crime under "Principle 8".
Great job of repression, New Zealand!
Being bullied hurts, but nothing like being put in prison.
Koch-Backed Group Calls For No More National Parks.
Proposed natural gas facilities that would cost almost 300 billion will be pointless if we curb global heating enough to avoid climate mayhem.
The UK is slowing wind power development by replacing cheap land-based wind power with expensive offshore wind power.
The Western powers and UN intentionally abandoned Srebrenica and let the Bosnian Serbs systematically kill all the Muslim men.
I can excuse deciding to cede the territory to the Bosnian Serbs as a way of making peace, but they should not have allowed the mass murder.
Of course, this complicity does not in any way reduce the guilt of the Serbs who did the killing.
Western intellectuals must have the courage to subject religion to moral criticism, rejecting its demands to penalize or kill its critics.
One good example: Nazis were allowed to hold a rally in London, but a giant anti-fascist rally demonstrated rejection of their views.
Brazil Announces Massive Reforestation And Renewable Energy Plan With US.
It is heading in the right direction but not with sufficient urgency.
Truth or Deception: New Report Exposes How Industry Front Groups are Spending Millions to Shape the Story of Food.
UK lawyers are going on strike because the government pays them less to represent the indigent.
The EPA report on fracking and water supplies was incomplete because frackers keep most of the pertinent data secret.
It is clear why they want to do this, but there is no reason we should to permit them to do this.
Australia's carbon tax seems to have been effective at reducing electricity use. Use fell while the tax was in effect, and has risen again since the suppository of all pollution repealed the tax.
5 Ways Powerful People Trick You Into Hating Underdogs.
Russia
adopted
a "right to be removed from search results" law
much broader than the policy in the European Union.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
In some regions, 10% of Facebook useds don't realize that talking to Facebook is using the internet. And Facebook is directing millions of people into having no internet access except to Facebook.
This is the sort of thing that a democratic society should prohibit, for the same reason we prohibit other kinds of monopolies.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is only half as effective today as it was 40 years ago. Why so?
The NSA spied on German journalists and told the German government about what a press contact official told reporters.
It's not clear that the official should be called a whistleblower, since talking to the press was his job. But it is clear that this is part of the way state surveillance of the public is used to keep the public in the dark about what the state does.
The social democracy that Sanders stands for is an American tradition since before the founding of the United States.
Uri Avnery on the stupidity of Israel's blockade of Gaza.
The UK government has backed down on plans for official censorship of talks in universities.
How a Crusading Chicago Sheriff Convinced Visa and Mastercard to Screw Sex Workers.
It is very dangerous that businesses (and NGOs such as Wikileaks) face harassment through payment services.
Good riddance to the US Export-Import Bank, a system of corporate welfare. Next the Overseas Private Investment Corporation should be abolished.
How the US "anti-terrorism" apparatus applies itself to criminalizing dissent.
The absolute power that a torturer has over a prisoner leads to cruelty without bounds. Apologists excuse this cruelty on the grounds that torturers were "obeying orders".
That was no excuse for Nazis, and it's no excuse for the CIA. The US must prosecute the Bush regime's torturers, up to and including Bush.
Kenya has imposed real-time face-recognition tracking in its major cities.
And all internet users are required to identify themselves.
Americans: Don't listen to government officials who hype the "danger" of terrorism in the US. You're in a lot more danger from lightning or your bathtub.
The OECD says that new coal-fired power plants are the "most urgent" threat to the world's future.
The discount supermarket Lidl has benefited from almost a billion dollars in publicly funded loans.
The IMF now recognizes that Greece needs debt relief.
Greece is running out of food and medicines.
Jeb Bush made half a million dollars by investing in the success of Obama's health care program.
The UK quietly changed how welfare is indexed for inflation, resulting in a gradual cut that will keep growing.
The NSA spied on German ministries and cabinet members.
Germany swallowed the NSA's spying on heads of the government. Will this push it to the point of actually doing something?
A substantial part of the Greek debt comes from German arms that German companies bribed corrupt Greek politicians to buy.
We shouldn't blame all Germans for this, any more than we blame all Greeks. But it isn't fair to lay all the burden of these debts on poor Greeks. The German arms companies should pay some of it.
US citizens: phone the White House at 855-980-5638 and call for making federal contractors disclose their political spending.
The UK intentionally let exporters continue selling equipment for Saddam Hussein's poison gas factory in the 1980s.
TISA Leaks Part Deux: More Evidence of Concerted Attack on Democracy.
Iceland has repealed its law against blasphemy — a victory for the Pirate Party.
Tunisia's terrorist threat comes from local jihadis who fought in other countries and then returned. Often they train in Libya.
Prominent UK politicians ask Obama to free Shaker Aamer.
Baltimore thugs put a sign inside a van, threatening arrested people with mayhem like that which killed Freddie Gray.
Republicans in Wisconsin plan to weaken the state's open records law. Perhaps this is to shield the corruption that seems to float around Governor Walker.
Conservatives and Progressives should be able to agree that work should pay enough that employed people don't need a state subsidy.
One way to help this along is to stop charging the cost of social benefits for employed people to their employers. We should fund it from taxes on income or wealth, taxes which the rich and the businesses would have to pay regardless of how many human beings they employ.
Alas for the article, today's "conservatives" don't sincerely support anything except serving the rich by squeezing the poor.
The TTIP may imply massive oil export from the US and tar sands oil export from Canada.
In addition to many other bad things, which is why I call it This Treaty Is Plutocratic.
Goober has retreated from France under pressure from protesters.
Aerial attacks on PISSI in Syria can't do much good in the absence of a ground force that can fight PISSI in Syria.
Dutch thugs killed a tourist, and sparked off persistent protests.
A study predicts severe damage to ocean life by 2050 if we don't stop increasing CO2 levels.
Much sooner, a large nuclear waste depository in the Marshall Islands is going to be breached by the rising sea level.
We must set a goal of (roughly) zero greenhouse gas emissions, in a decade or two, not a century.
(I understand this as meaning zero net emissions, counting what the Earth can absorb in a steady state.)
The FBI has issued 40 "terror warnings", all 100% false. There was never a real attack, nor any evidence of a failed attack.
If they do enough of these warnings, by chance one of them will be coincide with reality, like a stopped clock.
Bernie Sanders stands up for Greece against the euro-banks.
He has done this before and he continues to do so.
Two brothers imprisoned for decades because Cleveland thugs bullied a child into testifying against them are suing the city and those thugs.
It is too bad that the thugs won't have to personally pay if the victims win.
It is easy for the UK to spy on organizations such as Amnesty International, since targets are approved by a political official, with no judicial scrutiny.
Drugs used to treat Parkinson's disease and depression affect people's moral judgment.
The UK government says it will block access to Facebook and Twitter because they offer too much privacy.
This is tyranny reminiscent of China and Iran. Universities will be censored too.
UNESCO's influence has proved insufficiently effective for protecting its designated "world heritage" sites from redevelopment and damage.
It's not UNESCO's fault that it doesn't influence PISSI.
California cities have cut water use by almost 1/3 since a year ago.
However, cities use just a few percent of the water used in California. If it doesn't cut water use in agriculture now, it will run out of water for next year.
If fossil fuel companies are required to invest heavily in carbon capture and storage, it might make a difference.
One way it would make a difference is by creating a big incentive to build renewable energy generation. But you could do the same with a carbon tax, or by eliminating their subsidies.
Former minister: India can't continue growth based on destroying its environment.
PISSI destroyed an old temple statue in Palmyra.
Destroying records of the distant past of civilization is an attack on humanity's memory.
Naomi Klein: On the Moral Authority of Climate Justice and a New Economy.
Americans are getting tired of the regressive experiment that Reagan started, which has made the US worse on nearly every dimension.
20 million people face starvation in Yemen as a result of the US-supported Saudi bombardment campaign.
The US is building medical facilities in Afghanistan, but can't keep track of where they are located.
The F-35 is not only way over budget, it is unmaneuverable in combat.
An Italian politician, a junior minister, has started a hunger strike in favor of same-sex civil unions.
The UK spied on Amnesty International.
It is natural for rights-violating states regard Amnesty International as a threat, but that doesn't excuse their spying on them.
Rep. Pelosi publicly took the side of the banksters against Senator Warren.
UNESCO Spares Great Barrier Reef 'In-Danger' Listing But Issues Warning. Australia has been given 5 years to show its protective measures actually protect the reef.
A town in Spain makes the residents communicate with the municipality through Twitter.
This means, in effect, that they have no privacy for their communication with the town.
My 'Colorblind' College Campus Is Still Racist. My White Peers Just Don't See It.
The US has failed for 80 years to protect workers from death from silicosis, mainly because it isn't trying very hard.
US Walrus Protections May Derail Shell's Plan for Arctic Drilling.
Let's hope so — drilling in Arctic waters is inviting a disaster that would take centuries to clean itself up, not to mention adding to global heating.
'Dollar Signs in Uniform': Why For-Profit Colleges Target Veterans.
Paul Krugman explains why Greece should vote no and reject further noose-tightening.
Laws denying human rights, aimed at motorcycle gangs, are getting Australians used to loss of human rights.
Maui's ban on GMOs has been invalidated by federal court.
UK thugs' snooping on Stephen Lawrence's family was known to (and therefore evidently approved by) the highest officers.
Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists, and the thugs tried to smear his relatives who were campaigning to demand justice.
The UK government has abolished poverty by renaming it.
Parents that live in poverty will now be rebuked for the aspects of their lives that make them poor. This will presumably be used as an excuse to punish them by cutting off funds and making them poorer. As a means to end poverty, this will backfire: poverty causes stress, that makes it hard for people to think. To get out of traps in their life, they need help, not more pressure.
The UK Children's Commissioners say the government is stripping children of their rights in the name of dooH niboR.
I do have to worry that "sexual abuse of children by other children" is merely a prudish way of describing "teenagers having sex".
Puerto Rico is collapsing under unpayable debt.
Schools, hospitals and even water are impacted.
As Israel considers authorizing force-feeding of Palestinian hunger
strikers (who are in prison without trial or charges), the
hospital
administrators refuse to do the job.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
The thugs that killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes were interrogated three months later, and said they couldn't remember.
Why the delay? Someone in charge was either incompetent or complicit.
Ma voisine parlait sans cesse.
US citizens: see how your congresscritter voted in undermining the EPA's plan to limit CO2 from coal-fired electric generation, and then tell your congresscritter what you think.
That plan is insufficient, but that's still too much for the fossil fuel companies that buy congresscritters.
US citizens: support the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
US citizens: Tell right-wing Democrats that progressive values and views are not "extreme".
In fact, most Americans support many of these positions. It is only in Congress that they appear unusual.
US citizens: call on the EPA to redo the study about fracking and water supply, this time not getting the data mainly from the frackers.
Tunisia has arrested a group suspected of two terrorist attacks against tourists.
A US fearmongering campaign focuses on July 4.
Airport expansion around London would aggravate local air pollution and global heating.
For the UK government, that's all worth while to burn more fossil fuel.
For the survival of civilization, making flights pay a carbon tax would eliminate the need for airport expansion in London.
Someone (a Palestinian?) fired at Israeli "settlers"; Israel punished this with reprisals against lots of Palestinians that live in the area.
Negotiations have made the EU "network neutrality" so vague and weak that it amounts to little.
PISSI-affiliated Islamist fanatics in the Sinai organized widespread attacks against the Egyptian army.
The arguments against multiple marriage (i.e., polyamorous families) are similar to the arguments against same-sex marriage that the US has rejected.
One traditional reason, in patriarchal society, why most men opposed polygamy (which always took the form of multiple wives for one man) was that it implied some men could not have wives. In effect, banning polygamy was a measure to improve equality among men.
But nowadays, as rich men have many ways to have multiple lovers and women have equality at least in principle, I don't think this ban achieves its goal very much any more.
Israel used tasers and beatings on the personnel on the Gaza aid boat Marianne.
In the US today, college teachers can be fired merely for speaking profanity.
Greenpeace had reason to return the land it used to block a new runway for Heathrow airport: the new plan for another runway is in a different place and that plot of land would not block it.
Democratic presidential hopeful Lincoln Chafee calls for pardoning Snowden and restricting general surveillance.
If this were the principal issue, I would support him; but I think defeating the power of the plutocrats is the most important political issue.
The CEO of Hardees and Carl's Jr claims that the social safety net "locks" people into poverty.
The social safety net permits his workers to survive while paid so little.
Tunisia must not respond to killings with repression of all.
Wall Street bankers say they would be happy with Clinton or Biden as president. They know those two are not on our side.
ACLU: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act should apply to personal lifestyle, but should not be a license for religiously-motivated discrimination against others based on their lifestyle.
I agree. I've been an ACLU member since 1989. You can join, too.
Catholic Organisations Call for People to Change Lifestyles to Help Environment.
Ironically, the Church is not in favor of the most important lifestyle change you can make to help the environment: to have fewer (or no) children. The way to do that is with contraception, plus abortion as needed.
PISSI has declared war on Hamas, saying it will try to take control of Gaza.
A Moroccan journalist and witness/source have been convicted of reporting about how thugs killed a prisoner.
In Australia, people reporting how thugs kill a refugee can now be sentenced to years in prison.
In 10 years, our CO2 emissions will make parts of the Arctic Ocean too acidic for some small marine animals to make their shells. The loss of those species is likely to wipe out other species higher up on the food chain.
The Department of Justice rebuked the Ferguson thug department for violating teargassing protesters in Ferguson with no justification.
How EU policies, especially those of the euro zone, pressured Greece to borrow.
Greece has defied the banksters' threats and voted no! By following this example of courage, the world can put an end to the banksters' rule.
A parody of the PISSI flag, using dildo shapes instead of Arabic letters, was carried in the London Gay Pride Parade.
Now when some people see PISSI's real flag, they see it as dildos.
US citizens:
tell
Congress not to undermine the CFPB.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to swiftly address the Supreme Court's objections and
limit toxic pollution from power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to go to the ceremony at Hiroshima and call for nuclear disarmament.
US citizens: call on Congress to condemn the IMF assault on Greece.
The Australian government plans another repressive law: removing the charity tax exemption from organizations that criticize the government's plans to trash the environment.
California has made childhood vaccination mandatory for children in school.
The banksters' own documents show that their plans would leave Greece under terrible debt in 2030.
The first country to eliminate transmission of HIV from mothers to children is … Cuba.
Cuba has set up an excellent medical system with very little money. It covers everyone.
What is the real "southern heritage"? Slavery under various names.
Three churches used mainly by blacks have burned in recent days, in an apparent wave of racist arson.
How Being Poor Can Lead to a Negative Spiral of Fear And Self-Loathing.
An Australian describes the abuses he has seen in immigration prisons in Nauru and Manus.
Starting tomorrow, even making a diary of these abuses would be a crime, so shameless is the Australian state in repressing human rights activists.
Angola is repressing the members of a book club.
Meanwhile, the UK is requiring universities to get permission for talks to assure that they present approved ideas.
That resembles Chinese policy.
Malian rebels and the government have agreed to peace with federalism.
It will be harder for Islamist lunatics to take advantage of this dispute.
When a Company Is Put Up for Sale, in Many Cases, Your Personal Data Is, Too.
(That's assuming you gave it any.) This is one of many reasons why anything a company says about how it will use people's personal data cannot be depended on.
I therefore refuse to give companies my personal data.
Evidence that Google distorts search results under the guise of "serving users better".
The European Union states are trying to eliminate all protection of network neutrality from a proposed EU directive.
The text is vague; there is no telling what it would mean.
A FARC sabotage attack caused a large oil spill which polluted rivers and may pollute the Pacific coast of Colombia.
This has to be considered a war crime. But don't forget that there are worse terrorists in Colombia: the paramilitares.
Human Rights Groups Denounce US Resumption of Military Aid to Bahrain.
Despite the "recovery", the UK economic crisis has a lasting effect: median income has fallen substantially, and the poor pay a higher tax rate than the wealthy.
Everyone: call on the Dominican Republic not to expel its citizens of Haitian origin.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to preserve Country of Origin Food Labels.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
This is a contest between democracy and multinational business. It's a part of the same war that Greece is fighting, although this battle is smaller and for smaller stakes.
Israeli soldier Shachar Berrin was jailed for talking about how carrying out the occupation makes Israel racist and violent.
Here is
what Berrin said.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
The US is once again the land of racial segregation.
Israel seized the Gaza aid boat Marianne in international waters. It is not yet known how much violence was used.
Anger Aimed at Troika's Ruthless Neoliberalism as Greece Exit Looms.
90% of the "bailout" money "for Greece" didn't go to Greece, but rather to the European banks.
The plutocratist politicians heading the EU continue telling Greece it needs "help" which only makes things worse. Joseph Stiglitz explains why he would vote no.
The plutocratists surely do know how harmful their "help" is. They could not help seeing it. They keep on maintaining their lies because that is what they serve.
Americans
discriminate
more based on political position than based on race.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
That's rational. A person's race, ethnic group, national origin, gender, etc., is not a moral issue; those characteristics are morally neither good nor bad, so there is no reason to judge them. By contrast, one's political stance represents a decision about basic moral values, one that people can change. It is valid to judge people for their politics.
Obama criticizes billionaires for trying to buy politicians and elections but declines to take actions to prevent them.
Political life in Greece today has taken on an unpredictable revolutionary form.
Rwanda's head of intelligence has been arrested in the UK to be prosecuted in Spain for atrocities.
A US court refused to keep a Muslim in prison for reading books by Islamist extremists.
There was no evidence that he himself planned any violence.
Israel's bombardment of Gaza destroyed Gaza's medical system, and the blockade has prevented it from being rebuilt.
US citizens: call for dropping all charges against Bree Newsome, who took down the confederate flag from the South Carolina state house.
The US Supreme Court blocked the EPA from limiting toxic emissions (mercury, for instance) of power plants.
Coal-fired power plants emit so much uranium that if they were nuclear plants they would be shut down immediately.
Iceland is catching whales defying the International Whaling Commission's ban.
Rich countries promised in 2009 to raise 100 billion dollars to help poor countries cope with climate mayhem, but they didn't do it.
This approach is hopeless anyway, since the costs of coping with the effects of global heating will keep growing. It's inevitable that the rich countries will stop, sooner or later.
There's only one way we can afford to cope with global heating, and that is to make the effort to stop it.
The President of Burundi, having disregarded the constitution and chased many officials into exile, is holding an "election" to win another term.
What might it be like to be robots' pets?
Imagine that your robot masters bring you to the "humane society" because fashions for pets have changed and they are no longer interested in taking care of you.
Most collective activities and civic institutions in the US are in danger of disappearing because people under 35 are not interested. Younger Americans are atomized, easy prey for the plutocratic state.
A Europhile asks, "Where is My European Union?" It no longer exists; "It is Amazon's and Starbucks'. It is the politicians' and the IMF's. But it is not mine."
Don't overreact to the violence of PISSI's recent attacks.
Racists, even neo-Nazis, are infiltrating the US military.
Christian theocrats already dominate some areas to the point of exercising repression on non-Christians.
Australia will deliver foreign aid via companies.
This may in certain cases be an efficient way to distribute medicines, and I have nothing against that; but I fear this presages a conversion of "foreign aid" into "aid to foreign companies".
Mohammad Hossein Rafiee is in prison in Iran for publishing an article that supported President Rouhani in aiming for a nuclear deal.
It strikes me that maybe he was imprisoned for advocating release of political prisoners, free and fair elections, and human rights, rather than for supporting a possible nuclear deal. That would not be any less unjust, but it would be less absurd.
The Palestinians of Hebron have been helped to return to the center of the city, despite systematic repression which had previously pressured most of them out.
Diversity of wildflowers in California is declining. This seems likely to be due to drought, caused by global heating.
Greece has closed the banks until after the referendum.
This is to stop people from moving all their money out in euros before the referendum.
Alexandra Elbakyan defies the scientific publishers by reposting large numbers of scientific papers without permission.
I'd admire her even more if she had started out with the aim of defeating them, but I admire her work in any case.
"The idea that Greece partly deserves its fate reflects an order in which wealth trumps democracy. We should fight a narrative that enfeebles us all."
As the European banks set out to punish Greece for its disobedience, it is the European banks that we must punish.
Greece has closed its banks until after the referendum. This is to stop people from moving all their money out in euros before the referendum.
Powerful EU plutocratist politicians beg Greece to vote yes to more of the "help" that leaves Greece weaker and poorer after each year — like a vampire begging his victim to continue the relationship: "You can't live without me!"
They say they can't understand what could bring patriotic Greeks to say no, and I think they are telling the truth. They are shocked, that Syriza did not cave in. They don't believe anyone would dare resist such a powerful empire.
I suppose Darius was equally surprised after the Battle of Marathon.
Combinations of many chemicals can be dangerous in low doses, even if the individual chemicals are safe in low doses.
Israel again forcibly stopped aid boats from going to Gaza.
Cosmetic surgery has become so common for women that they report social pressure to have it done.
The next step will be if women can't get any job unless they have cosmetic surgery.
London's house price bubble is converting everything good in London into apartments for the rich, many of which are empty, investments to sell to the bigger fool later.
When the bubble bursts, there will be plenty of living space in London but little reason to want to live there.
US citizens: call on Obama to stop granting oil leases on public lands and coastal waters.
US citizens: Demand that Time Warner Cable come clean about its surreptitious lobbying.
A strain of genetically modified pigs has a small genetic change that provides resistance to a disease.
In principle I don't see anything wrong with this project, but there may be dangers in the details. For instance, they included a gene for resistance to some antibiotic, as a diagnostic. Which antibiotic? Is it one that matters in medicine?
We Need Domestic and International Regulations to Prevent Corporations from Fleeing Overseas.
The world needs a globally organized tax.
The UK's right-wing government is moving into blatant political censorship, even punishing people for their views.
Facial Recognition Software Is Scanning You Where You Least Expect It.
Facebook can recognize people in photos from their bodies, even if their faces are hidden.
The murder in France, presumed to be terrorism, may have been just a murder.
Either way, one more murder isn't a reason to pass laws to attack human rights.
Split the Earth: 50% for Humans, 50% for Protected Biodiversity Zones.
Atheists in many African countries face repression, but some are starting to identify themselves publicly.
Defining "surveillance capitalism".
I have largely opted out of the activities surveillance capitalism enters into. There are a few that I can't avoid: flying and prescriptions.
The US Army exposed soldiers to mustard gas as a forced experiment and threatened to imprison them if they told anyone.
Later the Veterans Affairs department promised to compensate them, but isn't trying to find them, and denies them compensation if they can't prove they were test subjects.
"A passport to my lovely garden? Dream on, you wretched souls".
The Vatican invited Naomi Klein to advise about campaigning to curb global heating.
Raising the price of alcohol in British Columbia reduced violent crimes 9% and reduced drunk driving almost 20%.
White supremacists exercise significant influence in the Republican Party.
Obama has launched many specific executive actions against global heating.
If he had done this in 2011, they would have had more effect, both practically and in regard to inspiration.
Thailand banned a press event to announce a Human Rights Watch report about Vietnam.
In other words, military rule in Thailand also implies supporting other dictatorships.
Prospect of Warmer Winters Does Not Mean Fewer [winter] Deaths, Study Finds.
Arbitrary Arrests, Cybercrime, and Mass Mobile Adoption: Monitoring Digital Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Iran continues to repress users of the internet, with filters and imprisonment.
I think the president of Iran is not in charge of this aspect of policy.
'Writing Code Is Not a Crime': Jailed Iranian Web Developer Saeed Malekpour Turns 40.
The US pioneered making the writing of code a crime, with the DMCA in 1998. The US was the first to prosecute someone for writing a program: Dmitry Sklyarov.
Prosecuting a programmer for how others used his code was also pioneered by the US against David LaMacchia. He made a general purpose upload/download network server and was prosecuted because others used it for forbidden sharing. The government claimed (based on nothing) that he intended it for this purpose.
Of course, sharing should not be a crime either. One injustice was piled on another.
Collecting data on children in school is a booming business.
PISSI raided Kobani, and the raiders killed 200 civilians before they were killed.
Everyone:
call
on Wendys to make a real effort to stop causing deforestation, not
a pretend effort.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
I've Spent 2.5 Years Trying to Get the NYPD to Talk About Its Drone Program.
The danger of pervasive face recognition is becoming real.
Clinton, in 1993, said she wanted a Canadian-style national health system, but she ridiculed the idea of trying to establish one in the US.
I'm not criticizing her estimation that it would be a big and difficult fight. Rather, I am criticizing her readiness to give up without fighting, just because it is big and difficult.
One person was killed in a possibly terrorist attack in France.
One additional murder in France is insignificant compared with the background rate of violence, but because this murder is "terrorism", it gives politicians an opportunity to spread panic by looking tough, and pass more tyrannical laws.
In PISSI and other Islamic terror groups, the evil side of humanity escapes control; their violence is meant to shock us into panic. Hollande, never a very deep thinker, is playing into PISSI's hands, while perhaps telling himself that PISSI has played into his.
If we are wise, we will condemn and despise these murderers, but stay calm.
Meryl Streep is trying to restart the movement to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender.
I am in favor of it.
US progressives need to contest local elections to create a progressive wave in the Democratic Party.
Quand faut-il manger des crêpes ?
Uri Avnery: Israel's first war crime in the 2014 war with Gaza was starting the war. But it committed many more, because the Israeli army will kill hundreds of Arab civilians to avoid one Israeli casualty.
Australia's new law eliminated only one of the two issues raised in a lawsuit against sending refugees to imprisonment in Nauru.
It may be possible to preserve coral reefs by bringing in polyps that have a higher tolerance for heat.
The Greek government has called a referendum on whether to accept the banksters' ultimatum.
I urge Greeks to reject the ultimatum. It is better to suffer for a while from default than suffer forever from impossible debt.
Australia is considering exiling Australians accused of fighting for PISSI, making them stateless. Naturally, the government proposes to do this without trial. Any Australian could be arbitrarily exiled this way.
An Islamist attacked tourists in a resort in Tunisia. The goal of the attack was evidently to harm Tunisia, which has voted against Islamist fanaticism.
Tunisia must resist the lure of attacking it own human rights.
The US, the UK, Australia and France have failed this test, but Tunisia can still pass it.
Islamist terrorism in the US is so small, on the scale of violence, that it is not worth making a fuss about.
That is not true in the Middle East, of course.
The IMF's empirical research conclusively disproves the "trickle-down" theory that concentrating wealth will boost economic growth. On the contrary, redistribution to the poor boosts economic growth.
Of course, we already had plenty of informal proof of that.
Now those businesses that give workers a raise can call themselves "wealth creators".
A few words to Greece.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the sneaky Republican attack on network neutrality.
EU citizens: contact your MEPs to support freedom of panorama.
US citizens: call on Clinton to drop the Monsanto lobbyist from her campaign.
Even more important: support Bernie Sanders for president. This hire reflects what Clinton is (a Republican in Democrat's clothing) and what she stands for (power for the rich). She shouldn't be elected to any office.
In the US: call on New York Governor Cuomo to appoint a strong replacement for policing Wall Street.
US citizens: call on Senate democrats to block the abortion restriction bill with a filibuster.
What happens to a country when its territory is swallowed by the sea?
We can say that the visitors to luxury hotels in the Maldives (each contributing a lot to global heating for one person) are consuming those islands, using them up from under the inhabitants.
The people of the Maldive Islands knew what to do to save their islands, and they did it: they elected a president who began campaigning to curb global heating. He was removed then imprisoned by a military coup that I suspect has something to do with fossil fuel interests.
In the light of what Australia and Europe are doing to refugees today, I think that they will tell the inhabitants of island nations to sit down and drown. The dictator of the Maldives must expect to buy safety for his family when the rest of the population is drowned.
We had better stop doing the things that make so many people flee their homes.
Protesters in Nauru, including 3 opposition legislators, face criminal charges. Their protest was against the government's corruption and its suspension of democracy.
The government called the protest a "riot". Have you heard that one before?
Apple has banned iThing applications that show the confederate flag. Not only those that use it as a symbol of racism, but even strategic games that use it to represent confederate army units fighting in the Civil War.
It is absurd to interpret those games as an instance of use of the confederate flag as racist symbol today. But censorship is wrong; even censorship of racism. We can say we despise racist hatred, but we must not forbid people from expressing it.
This is not the only political position Apple has censored.
It is wrong for Apple to ban applications based on what they say, but the root of this evil is that Apple has designed the operating system for the iThings as a platform for censorship. That should be a crime.
10 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled that cities could seize buildings (including homes) to give to private development on the excuse that this would be "good for the community". The result was a popular movement that has mostly ended the practice.
Can we validly "presume" that governments "wouldn't be pursuing a development project in the first place unless they anticipated some benefit to the public"? Not at all. The idea that a handout to a company is "good for the community" was Scott Walker's excuse for handouts.
As this particular case shows, the whole idea of achieving a "benefit to the public" through a handout to the community is stupid. Companies make cities and states compete to offer handouts. Overall, the taxpayers lose and only the companies gain.
Why do so many politicians endorse these foolish ideas? Perhaps someone rich rewards them for it.
The UK welfare system ruled that Mark Wood was not disabled and was capable of working. Apparently it was mistaken, because instead he starved to death. He now has a posthumous art exhibition.
That wasn't the last time the system was wrong about this. Why does it make so many mistakes? Partly because it has quotas for various things it does to cut people's benefits.
Now it seems to have a quota for accusing poor people of fraud.
The unemployed who feel discouraged about finding work are now pressured to attend brainwashing sessions for this "psychological problem".
Whole Foods (or "Whole Paycheck" as some call it) shows a pattern of defrauding customers through mislabeling weights.
There are other unsavory things about that company.
Everyone: call on Mississippi to remove the confederate flag from the Mississippi state flag.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act.
Particulate air pollution kills around 4 million people a year, according to WHO.
Greenhouse gas pollution's effects kill only 400,000 people per year at present, but those effects will get worse, and kill far more, if we continue as we are going.
The Lancet: Fossil Fuels Are Killing Us… Quitting Them Can Save Us.
Scott Walker set up a "jobs program" that handed $124 million to businesses under his personal supervision, without review. The result was to "create" around 2000 jobs, meaning the State of Wisconsin paid a business $60,000 for each job.
The state could have made more jobs by hiring people directly.
The idea of paying companies to "create jobs" is inherently misguided. from the public's point of view. The state loses a lot of money and gets few jobs — many of which were not actually created, but rather taken away from some other state. The only thing it is effective for is giving money to businesses.
If legislators don't know this, the program is mistake foolish. If they know, it is corrupt and dishonest, I think Walker knows, don't you?
The effective way for the state to use money to create jobs is to give the money to poor people. They will spend it.
A group of 39 whales beached themselves one day in 2011. Scientists now say they did this because underwater bomb explosions damaged their hearing and navigation.
19 of the whales died; the rest went back to sea. Perhaps their hearing was ok and they only followed the others; or perhaps they didn't live long.
Underwater explosions for oil drilling can do the same thing.
Colombia has punished those who reported the army's murders, while promoting the generals in charge.
The current president, Nonsantos, was the minister in charge.
Activists are bringing solar panels to Gaza by boat, since electricity is limited there because Israel destroyed the generating plant.
One Palestinian member of the Israeli legislature is among the volunteers on the boats.
The same Israelis that impose the siege call him a traitor, to distract from the evil of the siege of Gaza.
A UK jobcenter demanded Nick Gaskin come to an interview about putting him into work, or else his support would be cut off. It would be difficult for Gaskin to work, since he is paralyzed from the mouth down, and can communicate only by blinking his eyes.
Everyone makes mistakes, but if this was an error, the jobcenter compounded it by refusing to recognize and correct the error when Gaskin's family reported it. The staff had clearly been told not to accept any excuse for not coming for a work interview.
The absurd case of Nick Gaskin is significant because of the general pattern it is an extreme example of. Jobcenters are constantly looking for excuses to conclude, never mind whether it's true, that disabled people are really fit for work.
Those unemployed who are fit to work (including the many who never claimed not to be) are frequently put through hoops, like requiring them to come to the jobcenter without giving them a way to get there, and ordered to spend many hours a week applying for nonexistent jobs using computers not available to them.
The reason is clear: the state seeks excuses to cut support for the unemployed, so it keeps creating new excuses to punish them.
Nigeria's army has
killed over 8000
prisoners since 2011.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That is more or less
comparable
with the number of people that Boko Haram has killed.
The US made Google turn over Jacob Appelbaum's email data, and forced
Google to keep this secret to avoid a
public
backlash.
Proposing
restrictions on the use of automated face recognition.
The hard part will be to limit the state's use of face recognition.
Facebook admits that it censors for various governments, but when it
censors
for the US, it covers that up.
Due to antibiotic resistance, we must end
densely
packed factory farms for the sake of our lives.
We should also reserve the most effective antibiotics for humans, and
perhaps pets; they should not be administered to farm animals under
any circumstances.
The
FDA's Livestock Antibiotic Policies Still Aren't Enough.
Americans imprisoned in 2001, on vague suspicion without charges, will
be
allowed
to carry out a class-action suit against the Bush regime officials
responsible.
As the UK government attacks the non-rich on
all
fronts at once, Britons must resist on the street.
Baltimore thugs have responded to public resentment of their killing
of Freddie Gray by going on an
unofficial
slowdown strike against poor neighborhoods.
Congress [has been] Warned That Drones Present '
A
Nightmare Scenario for Civil Liberties'.
Rep:
Maloney: "If we don't change our permissive gun laws, we'll never
end gun violence."
Debunking
myths
used to oppose gun control in the US.
Pope Francis's encyclical about the climate threat addresses a broader
issue,
criticizing
extreme capitalism, concentration of wealth for a few, and
frivolous throw-away consumption, which lead to suffering for the poor
as well as to ruining Earth.
It is
radical
at several levels.
Here are
some
quotations.
Overall, the Pope's support for the effort to overcome plutocrats and
curb global heating is a great help, but we must not forget the
areas
where he is mistaken. Women's rights receive skant attention in
the encyclical, and the danger of overpopulation is dismissed.
The Pope misrepresented the advocates of
contraception
and population limitation, pretending they are the enemies of
conservation.
In fact, we see that as a necessary part of conservation. Having
children contributes to humanity's future drain on limited resources.
Reducing reproduction means reducing future poverty, reducing future
pollution, and reducing future extinction.
Everyone:
call
on Oregon not to sell water to Nestle at a cheap price.
US citizens:
Call
on South Carolina to take down the confederate flag, symbol of
slavery.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to let the US Export-Import Bank terminate on June 30.
Don't renew this subsidy to big business.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to set up a commission to review laws and standards that
regulate thugs' violence.
US citizens:
urge the Department
of Agriculture and the Department of Health to resist industry
lobbying and recommend a lower level of meat-eating.
The US Supreme Court voted to legalize same-sex marriage across the US.
This is a victory for a good cause, but perhaps the plutocrats have decided to hand this issue to the progressives precisely because it doesn't reduce their power.
That seems to be what spy agencies are doing.
The Sleazy Congressional Republicans of the United States (SCROTUS), on behalf of the meat industry, aim to stop dietary guidelines from recommending people eat less meat.
I find all acronyms that use "OTUS" to mean "Of the United States" disgusting. I hope that "SCROTUS" will put them all in disrepute.
Goober is meeting resistance in many countries. It comes mainly from taxi drivers, and sometimes from concern about safety, but anyone who values privacy rights should campaign to get rid of Uber.
Facebook claimed it would relax the "real name" rule for the sake of cross-dressers, but never really did that.
Sweden is proposing to add a democracy criterion to its arms sales.
Not surprisingly, weapons companies complain that this might mean less income for them. Tough luck, weapons companies.
For the low-paid, being "self-employed" means getting no benefits, no holidays, being cheated by employers, and making less than minimum wage.
The real "benefits cheats" are employers that pay so little that their employees need government aid.
Jill Stein is running for President again for the Green Party.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2012. If Bernie Sanders doesn't win the Democratic nomination, I will vote for Jill Stein again.
California's drought has promoted wildfires, and makes it hard for firefighters to find water to drop.
Six regions around the world are hit by severe heat waves.
Killing a Nation With Euphemisms: TPP-Eats-Medicare Edition.
Most terrorism in the US is right-wing; only a small fraction is Islamist.
Women and children who fled central America to the US may be released from immigration prison.
Ferry workers in Scotland have gone on strike against privatization plans.
Nauru's excuse for censorship: protecting the imprisoned refugees from "hate speech".
The US government's stated reasons for gagging Google about the non-subpoena for Jacob Appelbaum's data amount to, "Don't show people why they should criticize."
The sort of order that was used instead of a subpoena is very dangerous.
A group of teenagers sued the state of Washington, and got a court to order the state to bring its policies in line with what the state knows about the danger of global heating.
Paying workers a living wage worked so well for Ikea that it is going to give them another raise.
Donald Trump demanded Obama release his birth certificate, but refuses to release his own birth certificate.
The elite in South Africa are so powerful that it has blocked holding anyone accountable for a massacre of miners on strike.
Switching to natural gas (methane) doesn't reduce ultimate greenhouse gas emissions compared with oil, because normally a substantial amount of methane leaks into the air.
Chemicals used in fracking can be toxic to humans or wildlife.
La Quadrature du Net calls on French citizens to resist massive surveillance.
La Quadrature is also resisting in court.
The EU Council (of representatives of states) is proposing to make privacy protections so weak that they are meaningless.
I don't trust privacy policies. Data, once collected, will be misused. We must resist the collection of the data.
The issues that remain for a nuclear deal between the US and Iran.
Embarrassed by statistics on children living in poverty, the UK government plans to reduce the problem by measuring poverty differently.
"Credit rating agencies are miscalculating risks of climate change."
These agencies are not impartial. They may have a business motive for this. Or perhaps they are only slow to adapt.
The Baltimore Thug Department invented an imaginary armed "threat" as an excuse to crack down on the protests over the killing of Freddie Gray by thugs.
These claims were rejected by the FBI, which reported there was no basis for them.
Thugs will keep influencing the public by lying as long as people are willing to believe thugs. It's hard to resist, since (as with any fraudster) most of what they say is true.
Thugs in Maryland killed an unarmed black man, and say they jumped to the conclusion from his posture that he had a gun.
That is effectively a confession of being too quick to kill.
The Champaign Illinois thugs' "officer of the year" is now facing trial for violent rape against two (perhaps three) women.
A heat wave in Pakistan killed 800 people and has put thousands in the hospital with heat stroke.
More ominously, weather conditions are occasionally approaching the point where human beings will die quickly without air conditioning. With a little more global heating, we will see heat waves that kill the whole population of a region.
Unnatural Disaster: How Global Warming Helped Cause India's Catastrophic Flood.
Self-driving cars create an ethical problem, which we could call the autonomous trolley problem.
After 13 years, a Colombian elected official has been sentenced for the murder of editor Orlando Sierra.
Oman is draining its aquifers, so that the ancient and still active system of water tunnels ceases to function.
Using data mining to find corruption.
Since the data being searched describes state actions with businesses, it does not raise any privacy issue.
Despite the terrible surrender on Fast Track, the fight against it has won smaller victories that might help defeat the TPP.
Since the 1950s, the number of large wildfires annually in Alaska has doubled. The fire season has extended a whole month.
This is due to the 3C (around 5F) increase in the average temperature in Alaska in that time span.
Details of the Republicans' three legislative attacks against network neutrality.
Choosing among job candidates by algorithm can avoid unconscious bias.
However, it depends on massive surveillance of the people being hired. If this method is to be used, it must be used in a way that doesn't centralize information about the candidates.
Existing job application sites have been massive surveillance systems for a decade, making them menaces to society in my view.
The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Obama's medical care funding.
That law is an advance, but next we need to replace the private insurance companies and cover everyone. This could resist the gouging of the hospitals and the drug companies.
As usual, Sanders takes the strongest position. But even single-payer is not ideal. Canada's national health system is better. Even the UK's system, undermined as it is by years of right-wing underfunding, is better on the average.
Nation's Wealthiest Families Behind the Effort to Kill the Estate Tax.
18 journalists are in prison in Egypt, where journalism is interpreted as "terrorism".
Egypt's journalists proudly proclaim they publish whatever the state says.
An Indian prosecutor says an official told her to stop prosecuting Hindus who attacked Muslims with a bomb, after Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party won the election.
In the solidarity fridge in Galdakao, Spain, people leave food for others to take.
Fifteen Most Outrageous Responses by Police after Killing Unarmed People.
Greenpeace bought land to block a new runway for Heathrow airport, but economically it was really a two-year lease rather than a permanent purchase.
Greenpeace did not pay again to renew the lease.
The world has an opportunity to eliminate HIV, but if it doesn't take that opportunity, the disease will spread more.
Jetliners pressurize the cabin with air that went through engine compressors. Sometimes toxic gases from the engine get into the cabin. Airplane flight attendants suffering permanent medical problems are suing Boeing over this.
Measuring all the US states against international standards for use of deadly force by thugs.
All of the Republican and Democratic US presidential candidates are harsh on whistleblowers. Sanders is the best of them, but still disappointing.
If Sanders wins, the spy establishment will pressure him to become as bad as Obama, but he might listen to a public campaign.
At large US companies, the pay for CEOs has risen 54% since 2009, but pay for workers is the same as then.
We should tax away that 54% raise.
How housing developers in London game the law to minimize affordable housing.
Three more Australian government lies: the results of a heating-denialist's "research" center will be called "consensus", and his denialism will be called "rational conversation".
Universities are being offered 4 million dollars in bait to endorse these lies.
26 people lived together in a 3-bedroom house in London. They could not afford anything better.
Soon those people will be living in a far more spacious place: the street.
An admired teacher in the UK has been sentenced to a long prison term for initiating teenage boys into sex.
It seems clear that those teenagers enjoyed their sexual relationship at the time, and actively participated in continuing it. Neither apparently claims to have been coerced.
These relationships cannot have been perfect; no relationship ever is. It is not unusual to get into a relationship and later regret it, but if that implies the relationship was harmful, then we would start imprisoning most people who have them.
I have the impression that someone convinced them, based on an ideological position, that some imperfect aspect means the relationships did them grave damage. I am not buying it. Your first relationship is almost sure to be flawed, and you learn from that.
I am sure I'd have had a far happier life if I had learned these things from a teacher when I was 14 rather than waiting years to learn them from someone else.
A regional assembly of a prestigious US church
voted to
oppose
the War on Drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Several Republicans have presented false quotes attributed to founders of the US.
Attaching shame to the confederate flag is worth an effort, but it is just a small step in eradicating systematic US racism.
It appears GCHQ illegally supported US drone assassinations.
Australia's plan for exile without trial could apply to whistleblowers.
It's supposed to be for "terrorists", but for "terrorist" read "dissident or troublemaker".
One ISP in the US is resisting part of its assigned role with the War on Sharing.
Thousands of known species live only in or near Antarctica. Human activity, especially global heating, endangers them.
Meet The Children Who Live In Ghana's Hellish Digital Dump.
We need to require manufacturers to design products for recycling.
In the mean time, computers last longer when you run them with free software, because the manufacturer doesn't have the power to make a hardware upgrade necessary by imposing harmful software changes.
As gentrification takes on the last affordable housing in Washington DC, the tenants' housing aid will become useless as there is nowhere they can go.
Chinatown will finish converting into a tourist trap. It won't have any good Chinese food, once there are no Chinese customers to insist on doing a good job.
The US House of Representatives has voted to strengthen regulation of toxic chemicals.
Unemployed people can be happy without work, if they call it "retirement" instead of "unemployment". Respecting the state of unemployment is crucial to helping society adjust to it.
Not everyone can imitate Money Mustache. It is vital to have no children, or at least that they already be grown. (You can decide to have no children.) But even then, there are difficulties. Not everyone is competent to repair a house. Not everyone has a house, and you surely can't buy one when you're unemployed/retired. Not everyone can ride a bicycle, especially not on roads with cars.
Respecting the unemployed/retired is a crucial step towards for deciding to give them the government help that many of them will need.
Detroit's bankruptcy was not inevitable. It was a political choice imposed by Republican state politicians for harmful ends.
Now other Republican state politicians want to do it to Chicago, but it won't be easy for them to achieve it there.
The cracking of the US government employee records was enabled by subcontracting.
It is a bad practice in general.
An Ethiopian dissident, handed over to Ethiopia without legal process by Yemen, is apparently being tortured into confessing a variety of crimes.
How Politicians, Media, and the Gun Lobby Enable Racist Terror.
Soldiers have been sentenced to prison for committing rape during Bosnia's civil war.
Armenian protests against increased electricity prices bloomed after thugs attacked the protesters.
I won't say that I agree with their goal of cheap energy, though. In general, the price of energy made from fossil fuel must be high enough to reduce its use.
Climate [Mayhem] Should Be Top Foreign Policy Priority, G7 Study Says.
An EPA study tries to estimate the cost savings for the US from curbing global heating. For instance, by 2100, heating is estimated to cost over 100 billion annually in lost work time due to heat.
Dutch people sued the Dutch government for planning to allow global heating to proceed to the point it would damage to their health and property. The court ordered the Dutch government to cut the country's greenhouse gas emissions 25% within 5 years.
A similar lawsuit is being prepared in Belgium.
Such lawsuits may be possible in many countries that have independent judicial systems. They wouldn't be feasible in China.
A French court ordered compensation paid to people who were stopped and searched by thugs for no reason.
Flying abortion pills into Poland by drone, for women's rights.
The ACLU and other organizations call for a special prosecutor to investigate CIA torturers and prosecute them.
The Department of Education should cancel all students' debt for Corinthian Colleges.
US government agencies are talking about judging homeopathic "remedies" by scientific standards.
Experiments show that marijuana does not impair driving skill very much; the current marijuana standards are in effect too strict when compared to the current alcohol standards.
Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush represent two groups of banksters.
That's one reason I won't vote for either of them. If Sanders is not in the race, I will vote Green.
Surveys find that only smokers use e-cigarettes more than occasionally.
The US has arrested 243 people who work in the medical industry for Medicare fraud amounting to 2/3 of a billion dollars. They are accused of billing Medicare for services they did not carry out.
Columbia University has decided to divest from private prison companies, responding to a campaign by students.
Divesting from them is the first step towards eliminating them.
The main Australian parties (including the "opposition") are rushing a law through to strip refugees of legal recourse. The government will be able to do anything whatsoever to them.
Absurdly, the Labor party calls this an act of "compassion".
Just after the French government approved pervasive snooping in France, it is outraged that the US has spied on French officials.
Will this teach Hollande the wrong in what he just did?
Graduates of teachers' college must consider ethical dilemmas raised by the systematic corruption of the educational system.
Russia's internet disinformation army is being sued by an ex-worker for illegal mistreatment of employees.
As conditions inside UK prisons degrade, the state's response is not to allow journalists to see them.
Human rights activists rebuke Obama for deciding to visit repressive Ethiopia.
Australia's definition of "terrorism", for the punishment of permanent exile, stretches to include almost anything.
Particulate pollution in Delhi is damaging the health of children there, perhaps doing life-long damage.
A US court is getting the blowback from the law's absurdity.
Todd Easter says he wasn't raped, because in the usual meaning of the word, he wasn't. The court, however, insists on pretending that he was. Sorry, judge, calling sex "rape" does not make it rape.
Calling willing sex "rape" is a lie. In this case, the lie leads to a retrial. In other cases, it ruins lives.
Easter's lover did do something that was wrong, when he threatened Easter with violence after Easter broke off the relationship. But that's a different issue.
Palestinians imprisoned without charge by Israel are making a hunger strike.
Rating various giant food companies for their policies about buying palm oil.
Israel's "culture minister" is proud that a screenwriter asked her for a list of censorship rules. She promised a precise list in a month.
As fish in the ocean decline, the trend is headed towards zero fish in 2048.
That is a rough, simplistic projection. I don't expect there will be absolutely no fish in the sea in 2048, even in 2148. The point is, there will be no fish available for us to eat, and other disasters as well.
Whistleblowers claim US medical insurance companies massively defraud Medicare.
Let's get rid of the need for private medical insurance companies.
Time Warner Cable is accused of violating the network neutrality rules.
Since "global warming" and "climate change" downplay the danger, we need to say something else. A writer proposes "climate mayhem".
A powerful current is sweeping away public use of confederate flags.
Less progress is being made on gun control, which would have bigger real effects.
Discrediting the confederate flag is merely symbolic, but it will have some real effects. However, for the defenders of racism, it is only a tactical retreat.
Google stuck code into Chromium, the supposedly free version of Chrome, to download and install a nonfree piece of spyware.
Because Chromium itself is free software, users have the power to change it to prevent the download of that module.
This highlights the difference in ideas between free software and open source.
Open source claims to yield practical superiority: better quality code. Free software is about an ethical, political superiority: the users have control over the program.
In this instance, open source did not achieve its stated benefit, but free software is vindicated.
Google has banned an app that protects users from surveillance by apps.
It should be noted that (1) if the Disconnect app is non-free, you can't trust it either, and (2) a portable phone reports your location to the phone company whenever it is communicating with the phone network, regardless of what any apps or ads may do.
GCHQ has a group that works on propaganda and deceit. It justifies existence by claiming to address foreign enemies and terrorists, then operates mainly against dissidents and ordinary domestic criminals.
Medical insurance companies, associated with employment, are starting to impose "wellness programs" that bully people. Disabled people will be penalized if they are unable to follow the orders.
In addition, they may demand you use proprietary spyware, such as the fitbit.
"All abortions should be safe and easy, including ones women have at home."
There's some chance the sun may be headed for a few decades of (slightly) weaker emissions.
Don't relax yet. It's only a 20% chance. And if it happens, it would only delay global heating effects by 2 years.
Journalist Ahmed Mansour says Germany has not explained why it enforced Egypt's arrest warrant.
The plutocratic party in the Senate defeated a filibuster against "fast track" for corporate-supremacy treaties.
I fear the final elimination of even the formal possibility for democracy in the US is approaching. Here's an example of the harm that the older, weaker corporate-supremacy treaties already do.
State harassment has made Russia's "satirical Wikipedia" stop operating.
It is not clear from the article whether it will stop displaying the existing pages.
The UK's intelligence oversight panel accepts spying on human rights groups and on attorney-client conversations, with a few minor limits.
Particulate air pollution seems to harm the brain of old people.
Prisoners in the US are fighting the prison-industrial complex by refusing to work unpaid.
In principal, it is not wrong to make prisoners cook the food that they eat, or wash the clothes that they wear. That's no worse than life for most people. Putting prisoners to work on public service activities can be a form of restitution and rehabilitation (if it isn't twisted into an excuse for cruelty).
However, making prisoners work unpaid for the state's profit, or private profit, is harmful to everyone. It cuts wages for people outside prison, which is likely to force some of them into prison.
Combine this with the system that gouges prisoners for everything, even medical care (which they are entitled to), and it makes sense for prisoners to refuse to work at all without a decent wage.
US prisons abandoned the idea of rehabilitation in the 1980s as part of massive incarceration, but what could be more effective rehabilitation for prisoners than giving them a real job for real pay?
The UN inquiry into Israel's attack on Gaza says that the violence against Gaza civilians seems to have been a policy ordered by the high command.
The US Congress is considering a bill to collect school records and subsequent income records for everyone that goes to a US college.
Justice Kennedy begs for a case to raise the issue of whether long term solitary confinement is cruel and inhumane punishment.
The UK is fighting to conceal data on how many unemployed people have been killed or driven to suicide by the government's cruel cuts.
The Tories are worse than vermin: they are murderers, covering up their crimes.
23,000 species are now listed as threatened.
A "compromise" between the French Assembly and Senate made the surveillance bill even worse.
Mixtures of chemicals can be carcinogenic even though the individual chemicals are safe. Some scientists suspect 20% of all cancers are caused this way.
Everything about the fossil fuel divestment movement.
Saudi Arabia is pushing hard to develop domestic solar energy, to save the oil for export.
Some courts in the US have found that adopting techniques from social work is better than traditional simple punishment for getting convicts to stop committing crimes.
Partly this is because some of those accused are accused of victimless crimes, such as taking drugs or homelessness. Social work and other kinds of help are what they needed. It's a shame that the only way they could get this help is by being convicted of a crime.
The best opportunity to improve human health in this century is to cut back on fossil fuels.
New York City prison thugs will be subject to new measures so that they stop routinely attacking teenage prisoners.
Will the FDA start treating homeopathic "remedies" as the fantasy drugs that they really are?
Turkish journalist Tolga Tanis, a reporter covering the US, is being threatened with prosecution by Erdogan for criticizing him in a book.
The book is in Turkish, published in Turkey, but that is no excuse for this.
The euro is an engine and excuse for reducing wages all across Europe. For any problem, the euro-zone plutocrats have the same answer: wipe out workers' rights so they will get less.
Parachute jumpers who jumped from the unfinished One World Trade Center have been convicted of various "crimes".
I challenge the state to show that this "endangered" anyone, or that it deserves to be considered a crime.
Australia has adopted a repressive anti-sharing law that requires ISPs to impose censorship.
It won't stop determined people from sharing files on the internet, but it will damage human rights in general.
I disagree with Senator Ludlam, though, when he claims that what we need is for publishers to "deliver content in a timely and affordable manner". And not only because, by referring to published works as "content", he adopts the contemptuous attitude that their publishers take towards these works. It is not enough for publications to be "timely and affordable" — they must also respect our rights once we buy them. Commercial internet music distributors don't do this and neither do commercial e-book distributors, which is why I will go to trouble to bypass them — or wait years — or go without — rather than accept their practices.
The Supreme Court ruled that hotels can refuse state searches of their guest registers without a warrant.
This doesn't mean hotels are obliged to protect the privacy of their guests, and mostly they won't. And they can't protect guests from NSA or FBI massive surveillance at all.
Thus, I will continue to mostly avoid staying in hotels if the hotel knows my name.
Germany released Egyptian journalist Ahmed Mansour, who it had arrested at the request of Egypt's military government.
Uber plans to snoop on users' locations and contacts all the time.
Uber has the technical possibility to do this because its app is nonfree: it is controlled by Uber, not by the user. In addition, snooping depends on a nonfree operating system. With a free system, the user could tell the system to lie to the Uber app.
Human Rights Watch: those who criticize World Bank projects for human rights violations often face repression from governments and companies involved in the projects.
Podemos plans to invest lots of money in renewable energy and create lots of jobs.
The law that requires women to stay 3 days in the vicinity of an abortion clinic is a tremendous hardship to those that are not rich.
Albuqerque thugs who killed a homeless man will be tried for second-degree murder.
The UN concluded that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes when Israel attacked Gaza. This will encourage the ICC to move forward in investigating them.
Another Indian journalist was burned to death after investigating corruption.
What this indicates is that the people culpable figured that the state is so corrupt they can get away with this.
Charging high fees for university in the UK (though not as high as in the US) has an effect, aside from leaving graduates in debt: they are more focused on money.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that the main purpose of education was to enable people to think better about issues of concern to society. This purpose is being jettisoned eagerly under the corporate pressure to convert universities into support for business, and the refusal of the elite to pay taxes for the education of other people's children.
Apple's emails inviting bloggers to distribute through Apple's news disservice claim to impose legal restrictions on them as a side effect.
The EU continues pushing to increase surveillance of airplane passengers.
Passengers on domestic or Schengen flights should not be required to identify themselves.
UK pig farmers have joined the call to restrict use of antibiotics on farm animals.
It is big political problem that such businesses can block laws needed for human health, but I am glad they may now support this particular law. However, that's not certain yet. It is well known that businesses sometimes say they support a law while working secretly to block it.
The US operates as a tax haven, along with Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. This article explains how tax havens work and how they give multinational companies an advantage over local competition.
I disagree with the rhetorical trick that occupies the first part of the article: buying from a company that uses tax havens is not morally equivalent to using a tax haven yourself.
Nonetheless, I have very little dealings with the multinational tax-haven-using companies mentioned as examples. Some I reject for other reasons (Apple, Amazon, Skype, most Google services, Microsoft, Facebook, big banks), while others sell things I don't need.
UK plans to block use of tax havens were watered down so as not to cover Luxembourg, Jersey or Switzerland.
Even worse, the plan creates a new tax-dodging scheme.
The UK government demands that EU countries compete to tax businesses less.
Scientific research driven by political concerns is good and often useful. What's bad is when governments disregard or sabotage science for political concerns — exactly what Republicans aim to do by condemning "politically motivated" research.
Thugs in Ohio considered a mother and children at a swimming pool a menace to the public. The mother was merely arrested, but one 12-year-old girl in a bathing suit got pepper sprayed and several of her bones were broken.
As usual, the thugs made false accusations against the victims.
There have been only 9 days this year when US thugs didn't kill anyone, but there are no official statistics about many vital questions about violence by thugs.
Unjustified killings by thugs are extreme cases of police brutality. Lesser levels of violence are far more common, and represent similar attitudes and habits. Thus, we can change thugs' attitudes and habits more effectively by punishing the more frequent lesser incidents.
Perhaps we should apply "broken bones" policing to the thugs, or even "broken word" policing by punishing them when they make false accusations against their victims.
DNA testing of the Kennewick Man skeleton shows that the deceased was related to modern American Indians, and suggests a relationship to the Colville tribe which claims the skeleton, but not conclusively.
I hope that further research on living people and other ancient finds makes it possible to get a more conclusive answer.
If a closer relationship were established, that would be very interesting scientifically, as it would show that a small ethnic group continued to live in the same area for 9,000 years.
Japan is planning to resume whaling in defiance of the IWC.
North Carolina Republicans, fearing their voter ID law may be found unconstitutional, added another option that is very difficult to use so that they can claim people can vote without ID.
"The Abbott government is paying lip service to the renewable energy industry because it knows speaking its mind would be unpalatable to the public."
Abbott is proposing new planning controls on wind turbines in Australia, based on fantasy science which claims that the noise from them harms people. There is no evidence this happens.
Meanwhile, he plans to reduce environmental regulations on projects such as mines which really can do damage.
The UK government is sabotaging an anti-austerity protest by ordering specific activists, some previously arrested though perhaps without real cause, to stay away.
The US has employed a similar practice of using bail conditions to stop people from protesting.
The [US] Government Is Putting a Pathogen-Research Lab in Tornado Alley.
EU citizens: call on your MEPs to defend freedom of panorama: the freedom to take photos outdoors, regardless of what is in the scene, and publish them as you wish.
I suggest that Wikipedia adopt a boycott of all entities that block Wikipedia from publishing free (libre) photos of the entities' buildings, and state that call to boycott in the pages about those entities.
Some US churches are using a face recognition system to identify people who come in.
The software might be recognizing and reporting for another master as well, and if the software is proprietary (as it surely is), there is no way to check what it does.
The right-wing government of Spain is repressing media criticism on several fronts.
The Charleston church murders were not an anomaly. They were part and parcel of the current of violence in the systematic racism in the US.
A racist group which the murderer says inspired him also donates to Republican presidential candidates.
The donations don't make those candidates personally responsible for the murders, but this shows how parts of that system interconnect.
"Smart cities" designed in a centralized way prove unappealing to live in. A truly smart city is one designed by its residents.
The UK government's imposed poverty has made people so poor that many are desperate for discounted food.
"The action of a minority of a group is often the unintended consequence of the practices of the majority, even if they would not support the action."
Wikileaks' release of Saudi Arabia's foreign affairs communications shows "little surprising so far … but the details will hurt a lot of corrupt people."
Saudi Arabia has asked its citizens to ignore the leaked documents, but the US went far beyond that in response to some of Chelsea Manning's leaks: it threatened to punish some government employees if they so much as looked at them.
Everyone: call for a
strong climate agreement
in Paris.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US to
sign the domestic workers' convention.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Here's the text of that treaty.
Santa Cruz County, in California, is considering punishing the big criminal banks by refusing to do business with them for 5 years.
It's a great idea. Beyond moving money ourselves, we should push for our cities to do so.
US citizens: tell Congress not to cancel women's health care and contraceptive programs.
The CIA spies on Americans, but we know very little about how much or how.
Alex Hern decided to actually read the terms of service for all the digital services he used. Here he reports on them.
It was a lot of work for him, because he intended actually to use the services so he had to read the whole terms.
It's a lot less work for me, because when I read the terms of use of a digital service, if I see anything unacceptable I don't need to read further. I just reject it.
In practice, the only digital usage terms I need to consider are for wifi portals, and that's only occasionally. Those terms are usually good enough for occasional use.
About 2/3 of the way through the article, it moves on to licenses for proprietary software. The author does not differentiate between a service (something you communicate with) and a program (something you get a copy of). However, the issues are completely different. You shouldn't even think about terms for running a program, because their existence means the program is nonfree, so you should reject it. When you have a copy of a free program, you are free to run it with no conditions whatsoever.
The author adopted terminology such as "content" and "intellectual property" from the usage terms, without questioning their validity. That's a mistake. Even using those in quotations promotes acceptance of them if you don't explain why they are misleading and wrong.
We should have laws to establish the terms for various common kinds of services.
The "author" of the Snowden-accusing article admits he only repeated what British spooks told to him.
Don't use Mother Teresa as an example of a good person. Here's what she really did.
A plan to develop 3d-printed imitation rhino horn and thus make killing rhinos unprofitable.
It could work, but preventing customers from detecting the fakes may be easier said than done.
Jeremy Daw thanks Berkeley thugs for showing him how thugs lie to hurt second-class American citizens.
Authorized tent cities in Seattle provide housing to a few percent of the city's homeless.
But that's not enough.
Meanwhile, making it impossible for people once convicted of possession of drugs to have a place to live is an injustice, and self-defeating for society. If you wonder why 2/3 of prisoners released are back in prison within 3 years, perhaps it's because there's no room in society for an ex-con.
Behind all forms of homelessness in the US is the fact that there isn't enough housing in the US.
The Catholic Church position on birth control makes for universal poverty and environmental disaster. We of the wealthier countries can share our wealth to lift others out of poverty, but they must limit the size of the job. They must not make an unending series of additional poor people that we then must lift.
I am glad to see the Catholic Church on the progressive and green side on many important issues. With its help, we may perhaps be able to overcome the planet roasters. But we must not forget about sexual freedom and curbing population growth.
Are wearable digital devices good for people? It depends who controls them. If the device is run by nonfree software, you must expect it to mistreat you. However, having control of the device's software and data is only the first step; it gives you the option of refusing to hand over the data to companies, but doesn't stop them from coercing or pressuring you to "agree".
Thus, we need to organize politically to stop employers or insurance companies from pushing people to accept snooping.
Vertebrate species are going extinct at 10 to 100 times the usual rate, amounting to the start of a sixth mass extinction.
Invertebrates and plants also seem to be suffering extinction, but it is harder to compare the rate since there are many species we don't know about yet. Nonetheless, a study about land snails found a comparable result.
This extinction is mainly caused by humans' destruction of the species' habitats. We need to curb the human population and the tendency for frivolous waste.
A UK court struck down the law permitting people to copy CDs, citing the unjust idea of the purpose of copyright in the EU Copyright Directive.
To use the concept of "compensation" for operating on a copyrighted work is already to swallow the erroneous purpose. Coupling that with "rightsholders" makes it worse. The right question, which we must raise instead of that, is how to support the artists.
I suggest that those who want to pull the UK out of the EU pledge to legalize sharing of copies of published works.
Germany has arrested an al-Jazeera journalist at the request of Egypt's military government. The journalist faces charges that seem absurd.
Most genes don't "determine" any visible phenotypic characteristic; they only affect the odds of various characteristics and outcomes. And most visible characteristics are affected by many genes.
Don't be misled by the few exceptions.
The civil war in Yemen seems to have become a stalemate. Is there any sense, other than the strategic interests of Saudi Arabia, in which this is better than if the Houthis had won in March?
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been implemented in a commercial power station. The practice is therefore feasible. Now what?
With solar and wind power, plus more electricity storage, we can eliminate fossil fuel electric generation. That would take time, and lots of money, but so would applying CCS. Which one can we do faster and cheaper? I don't have a calculation, but I think it is the renewable path. If so, developing CCS for attachment to fossil fuel power plants is a distraction from replacing those plants.
Fossil fuels have other drawbacks: extracting them spreads pollution and occasionally causes disasters, and burning them creates other pollutants besides CO2.
The form of CCS that could be more significant is the one that pulls CO2 out of the air. With money, that method could be applied in hot dry places to extract the CO2 made by burning fossil fuels for reasons other than electric generation.
That would be cheaper than suffering the CO2 to remain in the air.
A journalist who has interviewed people that joined PISSI reports on their motives.
Some Muslim women (especially teenagers) attach their hopes for safety or justice to PISSI. The loss of equal rights doesn't worry them because they live in stultifying communities where in practice they have few rights to lose.
US citizens: call on Congress not to cut food stamps.
US citizens: see how your congresscritter voted on "fast track" for corporate-supremacy treaties, then call to express praise or disgust.
Don't accept the description of the TPP, TTIP and TISA as "free trade" treaties. They are not about trade, they are about subjecting democracy to company power.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The dams, coal mines and machinery that move water to Arizona cities constitute a modern marvel, but the power plant that runs it spews air pollution that is a disaster; and global heating is reducing the water available for the system to move.
Note that water that seeps into the ground from Lake Powell and water canals may not really be a waste, if it helps refill aquifers that we are emptying. But I don't know the details of this.
A man whose car was in trouble on the highway made the mistake of appealing to LA thugs for help. They shot him in the head, then cuffed his hands behind his back as he lay on the ground bleeding from the head.
If you don't hang around with thugs or gangsters, you probably have little experience in responding to a command to "drop the gun." If you hear this command and you have a gun, you may understand it quickly. But if you have no gun, it may take you a couple of seconds to realize it refers to the towel in your hand. If thugs don't give you that much time, they have in effect decided to risk killing an innocent person.
This man is still alive, but he may die from the wound. If he survives, he may be permanently brain-impaired.
Some for-profit hospital chains in the US charge patients on the average over 10 times what Medicare pays hospitals for the same things.
The global corporate land-grab includes parts of Europe.
Manual cleanup of the California coast oil spill has cost 65 million dollars so far. The pipeline company is paying.
All pipeline operators should be required to demonstrate that they have the funds on hand to pay the costs of cleanup after a likely accident.
The US imposed a gag order on Reason magazine, aiming to deny the people who were the objects of a subpoena delivered to Reason any chance of contesting it.
The subpoena was absurd anyway, making the danger greater.
A tax on frequent fliers could eliminate the need to expand London's airports and reduce CO2 emissions.
Around 100,000 people protested in London against starve-the-poor austerity.
Most Labour Party MPs demonstrated the parties uselessness by not daring to participate.
The government dismissed the protest with contempt and will proceed with a massive attack against the British non-rich.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your legislators to improve Massachusetts's open records law.
US citizens:
Call on
NOAA to preserve fisheries protection policies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: thank Democrats for voting to stop "fast track" on corporation supremacy treaties.
Everyone: call
for dropping all charges against Kenlissia Jones for taking a drug
that may have caused her abortion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
An NRA board member blamed the people in the Charleston church for not carrying guns to "protect" themselves.
The fact is, in the US only whites are really allowed to carry guns. Even where carrying guns is officially legal — and even when they are toys, or air rifles — black people who carry them risk being killed by thugs.
But it would not really have helped if they had had guns.
To shoot a crowd of unsuspecting people, not caring which ones you hit, is easy. To shoot a specific person who's on guard, and avoid hitting anyone else, is much harder.
Republicans, working as usual for special interests, have stuck text in a spending bill to sabotage the FCC and negate net neutrality.
Clinton talks about tackling Wall Street, but we can't believe this given the money she and her private foundation have accepted in recent years from banksters and other big business.
When Bernie Sanders says these things, his life shows he means them.
By the way, I don't believe most of the people who are appointed or elected in the US government, or in lobbying companies, are seriously looking for the way to do good in a corrupt environment. I think they are looking for the way to make the most money, and trotting out silly excuses to pretend their actions are good.
Qatar Airways treats flight attendants as slaves, in effect. They are forced to stay inside their dormitory.
They can be fired for things as personal as marriage or pregnancy or hidden tattoo, or for things as minor as posing for a picture. Then they are trapped in Qatar.
The first simple thing we can do is never use that airline. I already won't, since I distrust Qatar's government so much I don't want to even transfer there.
Ukraine is at the edge of default, so it simply told its creditors, "Write down debt or don't get anything."
Contrast this with the situation of Greece.
In an act of racial hatred, a white supremacist shot 9 blacks in a church in South Carolina. He reportedly said he wanted to "start a race war."
It is certain that this was racist murder. Does that mean it is "terrorism"? Here is an argument that it is.
I am not sure. If terrorism means anything, it is violence against innocents meant to intimidate people so as to serve a political cause. We don't know whether these murders fit that.
We don't need to squeeze them into the word "terrorism" to say they were a heinous crime.
Another article argues that systematic repression of American blacks is "terrorism".
Systematic repression of blacks exists, and is very bad, and maybe in some cases it has been terrorism, but the two are not the same.
The word "terrorist" has ceased in practice to mean anything other than a smear.
The International Whaling Commission is pressuring Japan to justify its claim that its whaling operations are for scientific research. Japan's response is to stall by giving inadequate answers.
The thug that killed Nicholas Thomas said Thomas was threatening him. However, the autopsy shows he shot Thomas in the back.
That's typical of thugs: they kill you, they falsely accuse you, the other thugs support the lies, and they get away with it.
The officers that won't support the thugs' lies deserve the title of "police." But they face repression from the other thugs and from the state.
In Queensland, Australia, thugs who attacked a helpless handcuffed man face no charges, but the police officer who showed this to the public faces 7 years in prison.
The thuggery here is not limited to the thugs: it includes the prosecutors, too.
When Donald Trump announced he was running for president, he hired temporary actors to be the audience and applaud.
South Carolina flies the confederate flag, symbol of racism and slavery. After the the murders of 9 blacks in a church by an apparent white supremacist, protesters demand the state stop this.
The people who favor showing that flag surly have an argument to show it is not about racism and slavery. I found those arguments unpersuasive when I heard them.
Australia's strict new secrecy laws, covering everything relating to handling of refugees, forces the doctors that treat them to "choose between [not being jailed] and their patients".
The major browser developers plan to support a replacement for obfuscated Javascript code: binary files.
Bytecode as a platform for distributing and running proprietary software does not make it any less of a wrong. The bytecode might offer the opportunity to facilitate statement of licenses and corresponding source code.
"Charleston killings leave US reckoning with race and guns amid 'broken peace'."
A controlled experiment found that some fungicides harm bumblebees. The effect has been seen in agriculture too.
The problem could be avoided, more or less, by not spraying fungicide when plants bloom.
Rand Paul advocates tax cuts for the rich.
The US does not meet international standards for regulating use of force by thugs. None of the 50 states meets them.
British investigator Peter Humphrey "confessed" to crimes in China in order to get medical care he was denied.
TEPCO acknowledged privately that the Fukushima nuclear plants needed higher defenses against big tsunamis, but then did nothing for 2.5 years until one happened.
After the tsunami, TEPCO's management claimed that the disaster "could not have been foreseen."
A "text walking lane" on a pedestrian street in Antwerp was an instant success.
Mexico's tax on soda cut soda consumption 6% in 2014, and the decrease was growing toward the end of the year.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression calls on states to promote encryption and allow anonymous internet use.
I agree, but doing this in simple ways is not enough. For instance, if you use an anonymous cell phone more than just a little, you can soon be identified by who you call.
A progressive president can't change America alone; he will need a progressive mass movement and the progressive Congress that that movement can elect.
Washington Needs to Tell the Truth about Police Violence.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state legislators to support bills to defend and extend abortion rights.
Everyone: Call on the UN to ban big polluters from this year's climate negotiations.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to block Enbridge's new scheme for pipeline expansion.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Jerry Hartfield has been in prison for murder for 35 years, but his conviction has been overturned. Will he ever get out of prison?
Carlos Montero has been jailed for 7 years for a stabbing committed by his friend when Carlos was 17. He is still waiting for trial.
A "unprecedented" toxic algae boom running from California to Canada is probably partly due to the unusual heat of the Pacific Ocean.
The result is that people can't eat the seafood. Marine mammals, that have no choice, are being poisoned.
A decade from now, this temperature will be normal, and those seafood resources may be effectively gone. Later some of those species may go extinct because of ocean acidification.
45 former US drone pilots call on the current pilots to refuse to carry out assassination missions.
I don't think attack drones intrinsically raise a different issue from piloted attack planes, or artillery. The difference comes from using them to attack in civilian areas, away from battles.
The European Court of Human Rights dealt a blow to freedom of speech by making a web site responsible for comments posted by the public.
The Dominican Republic is creating concentration camps to imprison just about everyone born there of Haitian descent.
The UK government says it is going to run a budget surplus in normal times "for the sake of future generations", but doesn't recognize that borrowing is only one of many methods of taking wealth from future generations. The government plans to use other methods instead.
Protecting pensions for the old is a good thing to do, but what is there to protect the pensions from? Only their own plan to strew poverty. Meanwhile, the article doesn't mention that this poverty is likely to stunt children for life.
However, that's all small potatoes if they press on with global heating, since the inundation of coastal areas of the UK will be a big loss for future generations. The possible collapse of civilization would make all these gains and losses irrelevant.
Higher CO2 levels in the air impede some food plants' ability to absorb nitrogen. This will make food less nutritious for humans.
Another consequence is that extra CO2 does not stimulate growth as much as global heating excusers would like us to suppose.
The measurement of nitrogen really measures the amount of protein in the food. With less protein, the food is less effective for feeding people.
US citizens: phone your senators at 202-224-3121 and urge them to vote against the National Defense Authorization Act as long as it permits imprisonment without trial for those labeled arbitrarily as "terrorist suspects".
Also urge them to vote for these amendments:
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop the sneak attack on net neutrality.
Everyone, especially in the EU: tell the EU not to limit the right to make links to someone else's web site.
US citizens: call on the EPA to regulate methane leakage.
Thugs stole Charles Clarke's life savings on the grounds that his "luggage smelled like pot".
Michigan needs road repairs, so Republicans turn to the poor.
Why get money from the people who have plenty? Republicans would always prefer to take from those who have little.
An OECD study found that growth in a country's banking sector is bad for the country's overall economic growth.
Hong Kong Parliament Defies Beijing's Insistence And Rejects 'Democracy' Plan.
Multi-drug-resistant bacteria, dangerous to humans, has become common in meat in supermarkets in several countries — because the farms feed the cattle antibiotics.
Having it on your skin won't hurt you ordinarily, but if you get cut, or have surgery, you could be in trouble.
Reportedly the loss of Ramadi to PISSI occurred because a temporary commander ordered an unnecessary retreat.
Ukraine is considering a bill to imprison people for spreading "terrorist" ideology, by which they mean support for Putin, Russia or the Russian-supported rebel groups.
Belgium's Constitutional Court invalidated the country's massive snooping law for people's phone records and internet contacts.
Global heating already causes more rain in many parts of the US, and long droughts in other parts. This will get worse.
Ironically, it makes rain areas fall harder, in less time, so in arid areas more of the water runs off rather than soaking into the ground.
Yet the US continues encouraging construction in places that are likely to be flooded. As a short term response to global heating, we ought to stop.
However, what we really need to do is stop causing global heating.
Goldman Sachs has told interns not to work more than 15 hours a day.
Walmart's tax-dodging uses 78 "independent" companies in 15 countries to declare income in places it is not taxed.
The US is having trouble recruiting soldiers to train for the Iraqi army; it is running at around 50% of the intended rate.
This makes me wonder what the additional 400 US troops Obama just sent to Iraq are doing. Supposedly they were sent to assist in training and advising the Iraqi army, but clearly there are more than enough US troops for that already.
A bipartisan bill proposes to require US federal agencies to get a warrant before they do air surveillance over the US.
I hope the 25-mile "border exception" does not apply to the US coasts; if it does, most of the US's major cities will be left out.
UK cuts in support for independent living will stop many disabled people from working, or even going out of the house.
A Swedish court ordered the Swedish prosecutor to accept interviewing Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, but the prosecutor is trying to delay the interview as long as possible.
This confirms what we already had plenty of reason to believe: the prosecutor is more interested in messing up Assange's life than in the charges against him.
Minnesota has kept 700 convicted "sex offenders" in prison indefinitely after their sentences ended. A judge ruled that those who are unlikely to commit crimes again must have a real chance of release.
California has ruled that Goober drivers are employees of Goober.
I am not sure what effects this will have; it may may require Uber to pay them more than goobers (peanuts). If it does, that is very important.
But this ruling will do nothing about the wrong that Goober does to passengers: requiring them to identify themselves, and to run proprietary software on top of a portable tracking device (smartphone) with a proprietary operating system.
UK spooks say Russia and China broke the encryption Snowden used, then they claim they can't break it when terrorists use it.
The US has become rather repressive for people without government-issued ID cards. They are required for too many things.
Whistleblower William McNeilly, who exposed dangerous insecurity in the UK's nuclear missile submarines, was given a dishonourable discharge, but he refuses to let the matter rest.
Mary Lou Miller has been voting since 1934, but current Texas laws say she cannot vote this year.
Agricultural runoff is damaging the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem (as it does many other waterways).
Bruce Schneier: Russia and China probably got the Snowden leak documents, but not from Snowden. They may have got them directly out of secret US systems.
Delay Could Sink Fast Track, But Corporate 'Arm-Twisting' Not Over Yet.
Wild bees contribute billions of dollars a year to human agriculture.
Assignment of monetary value to natural ecosystems and their effects is misleading because it imposes an assumed linearity of value: the false 10% of the wild bees are worth 10% of the value of all of them.
We could cope with loss of 10% of the world's total wild bee population, but loss of 100% of it would be a permanent catastrophe, far more than 10 times as bad.
US stores demand the right to do face recognition without asking permission, because they want to look for known (or alleged?) shoplifters.
That is a legitimate goal, so here is a way to provide for it while preserving our privacy.
The state can provide a list of photos of convicted shoplifters, and legally authorize taking photos and comparing them with this list only, and the store must delete them immediately if they don't match. Furthermore, the cameras and computers that do this must have no connection to any network (because otherwise the US, China, Russia and 50 other governments will crack in and collect them all), only an I/O device to signal "alarm" with a communication bit rate of 1 bit per second.
The idea seems pretty obvious to me. I can't be the first to think of it. I wonder, was it proposed in these meetings?
I get the impression that the store companies really want more than to recognize shoplifters, and they are using that as an excuse to get more.
Turkish editor Bulent Kenes was convicted of "insulting the president". He suggested that the president's mother would be ashamed of his official actions if she were alive.
I know nothing about the political views she had, but I think every Turkish citizen ought to be ashamed of President Erdoğan for prosecuting editors for expressing their opinions. The people of Turkey deserve human rights.
Indonesia angrily presented proof that the Australian navy paid smugglers to turn around, just after Abbott, the suppository of all dishonesty, said the media were fussing about a nonexistent dispute with Indonesia.
Abbott must be taking lessons from Dubya in disregarding the reality-based community.
The sick joke of Nauru's government is getting even sicker: an opposition MP tried to leave the country, and thugs took him off a plane and told him his valid passport was no longer valid.
Privatized prisons make excuses to keep prisoners incarcerated longer, because that's what they profit from.
They hurt the convicts, to no positive end, and they cost the public money, so let's get rid of them.
The "news site" politic365 really presents news, but that's just to provide credibility to its campaigns against solar power and network neutrality.
The EU proposes "data privacy" law which will destroy data privacy and allow businesses to abuse the public.
Privacy activists
walked out
of a US government forum on regulating
business use of face recognition on the public, saying that it was
on the side of businesses that want to track people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Stiglitz: the world needs a bankruptcy law for countries.
This is not only so that countries can get out of unpayable debts, but to discourage predatory lending that encourages corrupt dictators to borrow.
US Border Patrol thugs kill both foreigners and US citizens, and don't get punished even for the grossest wrongs.
The Dominican Republic plans to deport everyone of Haitian origin, since they can't prove they were born in the D.R.
Since these people are not Haitian citizens, I wonder why Haiti will let them in.
The motive for this mass expulsion
is racism, which extends to
the point where the government condones lynching.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The US FDA is proceeding with a plan to mostly eliminate trans fats from foods in the US.
It would be an injustice to try to ban eating or cooking with trans fats (or with sugar); however, regulating their use in processed food products, or in restaurants dishes where currently you would not easily find out they are used, is legitimate.
I wonder whether french fries can be made without trans fats, and whether they would be equally unpalatable.
Nintendo Seizes "Pirated" Cookies to Protect Fans.
Supposedly these cookies are dangerous to people's health because they infringe copyright.
Kurds, together with some (I presume) Arab Syrian rebels, are taking a town from PISSI.
The article suggests that supplies flow to PISSI over the Turkish border through the town of Tal Abyad, and now the route is cut. That seems like good news, but it is fishy that Turkey allows these supplies to go to PISSI. If the Kurds can block them, Turkey can surely block them.
As regards Kurds in Turkey, I think that the HD party's electoral success in Turkey will offer Turkish Kurds an attractive peaceful democratic path towards equal rights.
"Associated Press Publishes Hit Job on Tamir Rice."
Current greenhouse gas commitments are way insufficient to prevent global heating disaster, says the International Energy Agency.
Facebook deletes postings for obscure reasons, and even denies deleting them. It is not safe as a platform for journalism.
By the way, I cannot understand why people make a fuss about just how they find out that someone they loved is dead. Compared to the fact of that person's death, such those details seem insignificant.
Israel is working on legalizing force-feeding of hunger striking prisoners, and says this is imitation of the US.
Canada's right-wing government is applying Republican-style voter ID to rig the coming election. It has also made it harder to investigate the sabotage that may have made the difference in the previous election.
Why are there so many thugs, and so few police officers? Because thugs punish anyone that shows concern over killing the innocent.
In most scientific fields, five companies control most publication of articles.
We need to get rid of these companies, for the sake of science.
Obama put 4 billion dollars towards financing advance in renewable energy.
Unfortunately, this may include biofuels. Biofuel in the US means ethanol made using petrolium-based fertilizer, which is not really renewable and doesn't reduce greenhouse emissions.
Renewable energy competes with fossil fuels. Removing 4 billion dollars of subsidy from fossil fuels would be almost equivalent to 4 billion in support for renewable energy.
The UK has returned to social stratification almost impossible for a non-wealthy child to overcome.
I conjecture that part of the cause is that the Labour Party ceased, over 20 years ago, to try to represent the working class. When rich people encouraged changes to ensure their children would dominate other children, no one had the power to prevent it.
However, industrial globalization probably contributed too.
A similar development has occurred in the US, but some details are different. For instance, it is based on wealth rather than class.
An opposition member of Nauru's parliament was arrested for protesting outside Parliament. The protest was about apparent corruption of the president and the justice minister.
The opposition MP may be imprisoned for ten years for this protest. However, perhaps the government will sentence him to two or three years and claim to be "merciful".
To this sick joke of a government, Abbott, suppository of all misrule, has handed the responsibility for imprisoning people for trying to flee by boat to Australia.
Tidal gates will protect Venice from damage by the regular high tides.
I am in favor, but if we keep melting Earth's ice caps, they will need to put a dam around the lagoon — and much of Italy's coast. Up to one meter of sea level rise is predicted for this century. While the predictions usually stop in 2100, the melting would continue.
Full melting of the ice caps would raise sea level by over 20 meters. Will your home be under water?
Sea gulls moving inland take over cities, attacking humans and other birds.
How about using a quad-copter drone to destroy the nests? Or perhaps to collect the eggs. Do gull eggs taste good?
An interview with the makers of the documentary, Merchants of Doubt.
Interestingly, it's not only the same methods that are used to deny the harm of one business practice after another. Often the same people are hired to do these various campaigns.
A team of IMF economists recognized that "trickle down" is a myth: to boost economic growth, put money in the hands of the poor.
Conversely, imposing austerity as in UK and the euro-zone tends to cause contraction.
Egypt has confirmed Morsi's death sentence about escaping from prison.
He was not in prison for any real crime; he was a political prisoner.
Global problems are the natural result of capitalism and plutocracy. No force exists that is strong enough to stop the selfishness of plutocrats from destroying millions of people and millions of species.
A study estimates that humanity has already wiped 7% of the modern invertebrate species.
Clinton refuses to take a stand about "fast track", and pretends Obama's business supremacy treaties are merely trade deals.
I can see only one possible explanation for this: she supports them and knows Democrats wouldn't like it.
A senior prom can be a lesson in how little value an artificially hyped event has, for those who don't know that already.
I didn't go to my school's prom. I had no girlfriend, and it was clear that being there would only rub the isolation in. But I think I had already learned the lesson it can teach about putting on the forms of rejoicing.
France has restricted sale of Roundup.
Islamist rebels in the Philippines have made peace in exchange for an autonomous region.
An autonomous region, as such, may not be a bad thing, but I was told there that this deal includes a separate Islamic "human rights commission" for it. That would almost surely mean disrespect for the human rights of non-Muslims and women, and perhaps for those of Muslims too.
Those Iraqis who have not been killed, or subject to PISSI's enslavement of women, are in bad trouble if they get sick.
Poor women in Texas, who can't afford to raise a baby, now also can't afford an abortion.
Republican abortion impeding measures have the effect of making an abortion so expensive that only wealthy women can afford it.
A study predicts that 40% of current work jobs in Australia will be eliminated by automation within two decades.
It is hard to be accurate in such predictions. Perhaps it will be only 30%, or perhaps as much as 50%.
Things are likely to be similar in the US.
It will surely be possible to replace the lost employment with other employment, if we don't care how little the new jobs pay. There is no assurance, however, that so many millions of people could find employment that will pay for food and shelter.
Therefore, we will have some mixture of rejection of automation, welfare payments such as a basic income, and massive suffering. The only question is how much of each.
I'm against the last one. Either of the first two is ok.
A study of tree rings from a forest in Siberia gives temperature estimates from 931 ad to 2005 ad. The hottest 20-year period was the last 20 years, and the hottest six years were the last six, about 3C above the long-term average.
UK thugs colluded with companies to blacklist workers until at least 2008, at least since the 1930s.
A Bahraini opposition leader has been sentenced to years in prison for political activity.
The Bahraini regime crushed opposition protests with the help of Saudi thugs and the support of the US government.
Obama has deported 260,000 foreigners who were convicted of drug crimes, in some cases for minor crimes such as possession of marijuana that shouldn't be crimes at all.
The US continues efforts to kill the leaders of al Qa'ida, though they will be replaced easily enough.
TSA Response to Universal Criticism of Behavior Detection: More Behavior Detection.
The Theater of Security Agency needs something to justify asking for more money. So it will work computers to track people around the airport, and use that on anyone who appears nervous.
The UK newspaper which published unsubstantiated an UK government smear against Edward Snowden demanded that The Intercept take down a photo of its article.
Legalization of marijuana for adults in some US states has not led to increased use by teenagers.
Indian journalist Jagendra Singh was murdered by thugs, apparently for accusing a state minister of corruption.
Another journalist in the same region was lured to a meeting with thugs (not the official kind) who tied him to a motorcycle and dragged him.
Two Moroccans face imprisonment on charges of standing too close together in public.
Proof that the US government buys exploits, and strong evidence that it buys them to use them rather than to get them fixed.
Greece's pension system is unsustainable, but it is more consequence than cause of Greece's economic woes.
"Kayaktivists" blocking Shell's oil rig were arrested by the US Coast Guard, and the oil rig is now on its way to pollute the Chukchi Sea sooner or later.
Obama does small, weak moves to reduce global heating, but most of the time he is the puppet of any large company.
Obama is considering appointing an SEC commissioner whose business is teaching companies how to hide political expenditures.
That's one way to get Republicans to approve the appointment.
Another piece of B'liar bullshit bites the dust: the Olympic games in London brought only debt and repression, not enthusiasm for sports.
2014 was the hottest year on record, but 2015 is beating it so far.
South Africa's president allowed Omar al-Bashir to leave South Africa, defying the ICC.
The Monsanto Protection Act is Back, and Worse Than Ever. Now it would ban all state oversight of GMOs.
After legalizing marijuana (whether medical or otherwise), we need laws forbidding the firing of employees for using marijuana while not on the job.
The real significance of Obama's defeat on the "trade treaty" TPP is that trade is only a side issue in that plan.
The TPP is a corporate supremacy treaty, and calling it a "trade treaty" is just a disguise.
How to Steal from the Taxpayers While Blaming the Poor.
As the world recognizes that coal investments are likely to lose their value, many pension funds are likely to lose big, as well as some billionaires.
The problem is that they are tempted to try to make the world "burn just a little more" by keeping the carbon bubble swelling. As usual with bubbles, the longer it lasts, the more financial damage its inevitable bursting will do; but this bubble is also broiling Earth's ecosphere.
The world is having the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
The Magna Carta, 800 years ago, was the basis for human rights around the world. As the British government celebrates the centennial, Britons must fight for them again.
Cameron is not a king, but he makes up for that by being far more devious and slippery than King John.
Australia's paying (apparently) people smugglers to turn back to Indonesia has provoked a dispute with the government of Indonesia.
China is charging even former members of a human rights organization with obviously fabricated crimes.
Hong Kong democracy activists have been arrested, accused of preparing explosives.
Since these are nonviolent dissidents, I suspect a frame-up.
Japanese people and jurists oppose the government's plan to allow the Japanese army to fight other than for defense of Japan.
Elite UK companies reject job applicants who appear to come from working class backgrounds.
Accent and other matters of style serve as indicators that are difficult for outsiders to learn — just as they did a hundred years ago.
The danger of overprotection: cutting risk out of children's life is bad for them in adulthood.
Remember heroic whistleblower Matt Diaz, who published the names of the prisoners at Guantanamo and thus enabled them to get lawyers.
Diaz was imprisoned for this.
Europe Must Save Greece to Save Itself.
The argument made by Baltic victims of the banksters, "We surrendered and some of us survived, so everyone else should suffer too," is particularly despicable.
The state of Montana saves money by providing gratis medical care to its state employees.
If the US were a democracy, it would do this for everyone, as Canada does.
The US claims to have killed an al-Qaida leader in Libya with an air raid.
There is nothing wrong in killing enemies that are waging war, but it is a mistake to expect to defeat a movement by killing its leaders.
A house where Dr. Ambedkar lived in London is being made into a museum about his life.
I admire Dr. Ambedkar tremendously.
The Tories' proposed welfare cuts would hurt the poorest 1/3 of the families in the UK.
A UK government-appointed panel studied the issue of massive surveillance, and recommended making ISPs keep records of all sorts of things internet users do.
The report included one recommendation that the government does not like: ministers would not be allowed to approve use of this data personally. Rather, a special court would have to approve these.
I have not made a link to an article about this recommendation because all the articles I have seen present this court as a tremendous step forward, calling it the "balance" that makes total surveillance acceptable.
I don't think so. The US FISA court has hardly checked surveillance at all, so why expect this one to do any more?
Anyway, government ministers are very unhappy about the prospect of losing this personal power. They want total surveillance and personal control of it.
The UK government responded, through a cronyish newspaper, with a story composed of leaks (!) by anonymous spook officials, claiming that that Russia and China both got copies of Snowden's files and decrypted them.
The article has several claims that are known to be false, and there is no reason to believe a word of it.
Liberty, roughly the UK equivalent of the US's ACLU, says that this is the standard deceptive practice of the surveillance state.
The global financial system is so permeated with corruption, it might as well have been designed for fraud.
Proposal: require UK landlords to include cooking facilities and refrigerators in apartments.
The lack of these means many poor people have to buy expensive prepared meals rather than cheaper ingredients.
There is also the question of what ingredients these people can find in stores. Some parts of London are far from any real supermarket.
The US House of Representatives blocked military aid to a Ukrainian militia because it is Nazi.
Sudan's tyrant Bashir has been arrested in South Africa at the request of the ICC.
Paulo Coelho has published two of his books on the basis of "download, then pay if you wish."
I would be happy to pay if I download a book, but the methods he has permitted are through companies that track the readers, which is intolerable. Amazon is truly vicious and iTunes requires Apple's nonfree software.
I wish he would set up an anonymous way to pay.
Thought control to be imposed on UK schools requires them to report students for "non-violent extremism".
The government has labeled non-violent extremism as "terrorism" on the grounds that it might create an "atmosphere conducive to terrorism". Indeed, that happens. Dawkins has pointed out that moderate believers in any religion, while not themselves fanatics, tend to protect fanatics and make excuses for their violence.
But if the state snoops on nonviolent believers, makes lists of them, and represses them for what their views might lead to, it has abolished religious freedom. The state will call the policy a success because of all the hypothetical terrorist attacks that didn't take place, but what it will really do is make all Muslim students regard teachers as spies that cannot be trusted.
The way to discourage fundamentalism among students is to show them the suffering that fundamentalists cause. That discussion can't happen in school if school is a place of repression.
The "USA Freedom Act" allows the NSA to demand the phone records of everyone that talked with everyone that talked with any specific party.
That's a lot of Americans in any one request.
Prescription drugs cost Americans twice what they cost in other developed countries, because the US lets pharma companies charge whatever they like.
Pharma companies say they need all this money for research, but the new drugs that cure formerly incurable diseases are developed mainly with government research funds. The companies spend more on advertising. They corrupt medical journals to overstate the effectiveness of drugs, so we must not leave the testing of drugs in their hands.
The TPP will impose a similar deadly policy on the other countries that sign it. That would amount to mass murder.
A Texas law to harass abortion clinics so that they must close was approved by an appeals court.
Explaining how the TTIP threatens digital human rights in Europe.
2000 Israeli artists condemned Israel's political censorship.
Even famous international writers face censorship when they speak in Palestine.
A rash of stranded, dead whales in California might be caused by Navy sonar. It is hard to be sure.
The TISA would hard wire the bad policies that caused the 2008 financial crisis.
An interview with an abortion counselor, who says that the procedure of abortion is a secondary aspect; what matters is helping pregnant women think about what they want (to have a baby, or not) and why.
US citizens: call on insurance companies to give women the legally required coverage.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA to stand firm behind the greenhouse gas limits for new
coal plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Bangladesh proposes to move Rohingyas to an "island" which exists only part of the time. Twice a day, at high tide, it becomes ocean.
Since Rohingyas are of Bengali origin, Bangladesh ought to integrate them.
Bangladesh suffers from severe and unsustainable population growth, but Rohingya refugees are just a small part of that. The country must bring its birth rate down in any case.
Azeri human rights defender Emin Huseynov found refuge in the Swiss embassy. Now he has been allowed to go to Switzerland.
It is no accident that the "European" Games are being held in a tyrannical state near the border of Europe — and no accident that the contestants don't talk and probably don't think about this.
I have never considered sports or those who play them to be a model of any kind. It is silly to put so much effort into a struggle with nothing important at stake, and for others to pay so much attention to the outcome. This article argues that high-level sports impose total political censorship on the athletes while disconnecting them from the political issues of life, so that they become unfit to participate in democracy.
Clinton's campaign has published a Spotify playlist, in effect endorsing DRM, corporate surveillance, and denying listeners the few rights that copyright law leaves to them.
Out, out, damned Spotify, and shame on Clinton.
The Islamist/authoritarian AK party in Turkey represents a channel for opposition to a corrupt old order. The progressive HDP can also channel this resistance.
Scientist Ron Naveen has counted penguins in Antarctica for 30 years. He says that global heating's effects are responsible for the decline of several species.
European countries are negotiating to send Eritrean refugees back to repression in Eritrea.
Unlike North Korea, Eritrea has no nuclear weapons. How about asking a neighboring country to arm Eritrean refugees to go back in and change their regime?
The investigation report of the killing of Tamir Rice has been published. The killer claims to have shouted a warning, but other witnesses say the killer shot before the warning.
Pioneering jihadi recruiters proclaim their regret for having opened the path that now leads to PISSI.
One says that the repressive nature of many Muslim families contributes to alienating their children.
US citizens: support the Fair Elections Now Act.
This would overwhelm billionaires' campaign donations with public funds for all candidates that show a wide base of support.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose the pro-ivory amendment.
Since Connecticut adopted licensing requirements for handguns, in 1995, the rate of gun killings has gone down by 40% compared with what would be expected by comparison with other states.
The reason why such research needs private funding is that the NRA has blocked federal research funds for the effects of guns. The NRA would rather that the public not get confirmation that gun control works.
Republicans in Idaho propose to use the bible for teaching pseudo-astronomy and pseudo-geology, as well as pseudo-biology.
US citizens: call on you congresscritter to oppose amendments to harm wildlife (wolves, sage grouse, elephants).
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to oppose "fast track" for the sake of the
environment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on Governor Baker to extend and expand incentives for installing solar power.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sign the letter to Kerry about protecting the rights of Palestinian children.
Tony B'liar and the UK government want to ban views they consider "intolerant". Islamists and Charlie Hebdo would both be criminalized for "group libel".
The UK has already narrowed freedom of speech too far. Of course, France is even worse.
Saudi Arabia has admitted its alliance with Israel.
One town near St Louis and Ferguson has made an agreement in US court not to jail poor people because they can't pay a fine.
I hope we don't have to establish this one town at a time across the whole US.
Americans, is the NSA transcribing all our phone calls? We can't find out.
A music festival in England subjects attendees to face recognition cameras and RFID tracking.
Stay away!
The ACLU is suing to get Mohamedou Ould Slahi released from Guantanamo, but the Obama regime is fighting tooth and nail to keep him there. (Obama, how can you close the Guantanamo prison if you don't let him out?)
Just to be cruel, it has taken away his books, photos, etc.
Some UK schools are already monitoring students' internet use looking for signs of "radicalization".
Will this stop anyone from becoming a supporter of PISSI? That depends on whether they find an effective way to convince students PISSI is wrong.
In the absence of an effective response, the monitoring will only arouse resentment, and that could backfire entirely.
If they find an effective response, they could present it to everyone and do without the monitoring.
Obama is probably trying to buy votes for TPP the way Clinton did for NAFTA.
The US is blocking Poland from investigating its own cooperation with CIA torture.
Racial segregation of housing is now widespread in the US.
A Saudi missile knocked down three buildings in the UNESCO-designated old city of Sana'a, without exploding. Saudi Arabia claims its allies were not the ones who did it.
Since the missile did not explode, I presume it can be seen right on the spot. Who can Saudi Arabia hope to fool? Perhaps those who have motivation to be fooled.
An Australian senator wants a law to recognize "adverse health effects" of wind turbines, although there is no evidence there are any such effects.
The advocates of roasting the Earth's biosphere have no respect for truth. They will use any and every fiction that serves their masters.
Canada's senate approved a vague repression and surveillance bill which several parties have pledged to repeal.
Debunking the "competing with China" myth, which businesses outside China cite as an excuse for mistreating workers, the environment, and anything else more important than their profits.
Since the article focuses on curbing global heating, it does not mention that the only reason western countries "need" to compete with China in permitting mistreatment of workers is due to the business supremacy treaties, starting with the World Trade Organization. I draw a different conclusion: we need to eliminate those treaties.
Japan killed a proposed agreement to end subsidies for coal.
Other countries should do this alone. Japan won't replace whatever subsidies they end, so the result will be good even if not as good as possible. Digging for coal is digging civilization's grave!
Mona Eltahawy links Islamic repression of women's rights to physical and sexual abuse of women.
I second her call for Muslim women to refuse to wear headscarves, because they symbolize the aspects of Islam that repress and abuse women. In the west, at least, it is safe to do this, and it promotes an important cause.
US prisons limit women's access to tampons, as a way to humiliate them.
NSA Backdoor Searches Would End if House Amendment Survives.
Egypt continues putting people on trial simply for protesting on the street, even for witnessing a protest.
Three Iranian activists were sentenced to long prison terms for their publications and activism, including insulting the supreme ayatollah.
The tactic of charging several different crimes for the same act was borrowed from the US, where it has been used against Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Aaron Swartz as well as many others.
The Tamir Rice killing shows how the system is designed so thugs can get away with murder and a variety of lesser crimes.
The London Israeli film festival chose to do without a film rather than exclude men from the showings.
This decision is right, for two reasons. First, because we cannot tolerate gender discrimination in public theaters. Second, because the demand to exclude men is the reflection and symbol of the charedi sect's repression of women.
London drivers working for Goober are organizing a campaign against the company.
I call it "Goober" because it pays drivers peanuts, but the worst thing about Uber is that it violates passengers' privacy by making them identify themselves. It also requires passengers to run nonfree software. As long as either one of those is the case, I will never use Goober, and I hope you reject it too.
Rich countries want to use a proposed corporate supremacy treaty to make India restrict generic drugs.
This would kill thousands or perhaps even millions.
Five Companies Control More Than Half of Academic Publishing.
An oligopoly falls short of monopoly but has harmful economic effects. We need laws to prevent oligopolies and pressure the largest companies in any market to split up.
The US has subpoena'd Reason magazine for information about who posted comments that expressed hatred for a judge.
Under US law, those comments are not threats and not illegal. So it seems the subpoena is either an attempt to reduce freedom of speech, or mere harassment.
Killings of black people by thugs are the tip of an iceberg of pervasive structural racism.
Most blacks don't get shot at by thugs, but they all experience frequent harassment, and intermediate levels of violence are common enough.
The other group that US thugs hate enough to attack them gratuitously is protesters.
France demands Google obey French "right to be forgotten" world-wide.
The Koch brothers are lobbying to eliminate financial regulations that protect against another financial crisis.
A similar occurrence in 1998 (repeal of Glass-Steagall) paved the way for the 2008 crisis. The richest can generally profit from disasters, as they did from 2008; Naomi Klein points out that they even provoke disasters.
US citizens: support raising the salary limit for mandatory overtime pay.
US citizens: tell the Surface Transportation Board to block the Tongue River coal railroad.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter (again!) to oppose "fast track," which would cover the TPP plus any other business supremacy treaties proposed by this president or the next one.
On Friday, the House of Representatives voted in favor of "fast track" but rejected another necessary bill, which also attacks medicare.
The plutocratic forces will surely discard their secondary attack to get their principal attack on democracy passed. We need to change the minds of several congresscritters who voted for "fast track" to make the TPP stay dead.
Everyone: call on Pfizer to stop buying antibiotics from factories that dump antibiotic-laden waste into rivers.
Here's more about the problem: that waste encourages bacteria in the rivers to evolve resistance, and bacteria can transmit the resistance genes to species that infect people.
Canada's [indigenous peoples] Push Back Against Centuries of Murder, Abuse and Neglect.
Iceland's people rejected imposed inequality and let their failed banks disappear. The result, after 7 years, is a triumphant success, for all except the banksters.
Today, banksters and their pet governments are pushing countries such as Greece to suffer imposed inequality.
When it is necessary to do this, it is helpful if banks have been kept small by preventing them from merging.
Executives of telecommunications companies, after years of claiming that network neutrality would impede investment in infrastructure, are now admitting it isn't so.
Don't Be Fooled: New Bipartisan AUMF Greenlights Endless War.
California is cutting water to agriculture.
It is painful, of course, but it has to be done. Now the question is whether we will curb greenhouse emissions so drought doesn't get even worse.
Why fundamentalist Christians tend to overlook or excuse sexual abuse of children.
A male college student in the US was expelled for committing "rape" while he was unconscious.
Seal team 6 has expanded into a berserk killing machine.
Thugs in Little Rock are so ready to see "threat" in any black man that they beat up a blind man. His crime: walking while black.
Shona Banda is threatened with 17 years in prison, denied marijuana to treat the pain of her disease.
How can her son avoid feeling crushed by guilt for having unthinkingly given cruel "authorities" an opportunity to do this to her? I think he could avoid it if he understands that it's not his fault, because it's their fault.
Crackers entered US government systems used for security checks and got detailed personal information about millions of present and former government employees.
Also about their friends and relatives.
A lot of this information interested the government because it might be usable for blackmail.
The ACLU has documented how Philadelphia thugs target poor people when they seize their money without convicting them (often without accusing them) of a crime.
London thugs are using stingrays, which track all cell phones in the vicinity and can listen to any of them, and they refuse to say anything about why, or who they are listening to.
Perhaps some of those uses are justified, but the secrecy is dangerous.
Americans are not happy with exchanging personal data for various services. Rather, they think they don't have a choice — that companies will get the data anyway.
Here are more details.
Those despairing people are right in a narrow sense: refusing to use one site, on one occasion, won't get them control of their data. But it is an error to conclude that it is hopeless to resist. Rather, you need to resist consistently — but that's not really hard. I do it, and you can do it.
Beyond individual resistance, we can organize to require companies to respect our privacy, even to stop asking us for data.
Hunting for [Crackers], N.S.A. Secretly Expands Internet Spying at U.S. Border.
Everyone: Call on Louisiana Governor Jindal to free Albert Woodfox without delay.
Everyone: Phone the Saudi embassy in your country and call on Saudi Arabia to free Raif Badawi instead of flogging him. His supposed crime is dissent.
US citizens: call on Obama to replace the head of the SEC with someone that is not a minion of Wall Street.
He won't do this, because he too is a minion of Wall Street, but putting pressure on him is desirable anyway.
Everyone:
call
on Hong Kong to put a stop to sale of the endangered totoaba fish.
Catching these fish also kills endangered vaquita porpoises.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to implement the legally required CEO pay disclosure
rule now.
The TPP is
designed
to make medicines as expensive in other countries as they are in the
US.
The US "charter school" (privatized public school) program was
designed to exempt charter
schools from any real accountability to the state or to local
elected officials.
A supposed "accountability" requirement added in 2010
was a pretense without substance.
They are not even accountable for what they do with the
US government money.
Bratton
says, it's not that blacks are forbidden to be hired as thugs, it's
that they are so hostile they won't apply.
I suspect it's both.
AT&T promised (to get a merger approved) to offer
DSL
service to everyone in its service areas, but refuses to install
new equipment to do so.
You can't expect a big company to keep its promises unless it is
punished directly when it doesn't. If AT&T were find $100,000 per
person per year, for each person entitled to DSL and waiting for it,
and the victim got half of that as compensation, AT&T would fix
this.
The greater sage grouse, an endangered bird,
protects
350 other species typically found in the same habitat.
There may be dozens or hundreds other species of microbes, protists,
fungi and soil-dwelling invertebrates that live in that habitat but
that we have not yet discovered.
China has allowed parents to sue a chemical plant for
high
levels of lead in the children's bodies.
Pakistan has closed
Save
the Children without even giving a reason.
This is not rule of law.
Abbott says Australia is considering paying
people
smugglers to take their passengers back to Indonesia. There is
evidence it has already done so, and Abbott refuses to deny it.
Abbott will soon hit on the idea of paying them to drown their
passengers. That is included in "stop the boats by hook or by crook".
When the government acts in secret, democracy depends on
whistleblowers. No wonder Abbott has imposed new punishments on
whistleblowers, and increased massive surveillance so as to catch
them. Instead of accountable government, it's "Don't look behind the
curtain" government.
Senate leaders tried to put CISPA (massive data given "voluntarily" by
companies to the state)
into a spending bill as
a quiet amendment, but this was blocked.
Israel cites
fantasy
evidence to excuse its attack that killed four children in Gaza.
Spain has offered citizenship to descendants of Jews
expelled
by Spain in 1492.
Jeb Bush went to Nigeria to promote a water pump company (while his
father was president of the US). The company was
subsequently
convicted of bribing Nigerian officials.
The US blocked a former prisoner in Guantanamo from
flying
to Canada, using the excuse that the flight crosses US air space.
Canada's acceptance of this should shame every Canadian.
Mourad Benchellali was prevented from giving one of his regular talks,
which teach Muslim youth to resist PISSI propaganda. Why interfere?
I think the US is trying to prove how rigid and mindlessly stubborn it
can be.
Regardless of whether Noel Carter ran away from the thugs, or even
resisted arrest — once he was
sitting
down and helpless, thugs had no right to kick and beat him.
A Russian oligarch advised Putin to
set
up two political parties that would agree on everything except
abortion rights, to distract the Russian people from other issues.
It is not true that the Democratic and Republican parties agree about
everything except abortion. But it was almost true in 2000. They
tended to disagree about whether to openly praise and serve US
oligarchs, or obey them in a veiled fashion.
Nowadays, most Democratic elected officials resemble what Republicans
used to be, and most Republican elected officials are out to sabotage
the country.
Fortunately nowadays we see an increasing number of progressive
Democrats.
The London Israeli Film Festival presented a film and
limited
viewing to women only.
I consider this just as offensive as barring women from seeing a film
would be, or barring them from driving their children to school.
Why do some charedi women want their film not to be seen by men? They
must have internalized the nearly-Islamic misogyny of charedi men. I
am sorry for them.
I would not try to compel them to act in a film that will be seen by
men, if they don't want to. However, gender discrimination must not
be tolerated in public events, and demands for it must be refused
flat-out. If actors demanded that the film-maker impose
discrimination, that is no excuse; the film-maker should have hired
other actors. If the film-maker demanded that the festival
discriminate, that is no excuse; the festival should have shown
another film.
An ALEC-member state legislator admitted that
lobbyists fund the
legislators' participation in the event.
"Investor-state" treaties that
allow
companies to sue national governments for interfering with their
profits were started by the World Bank to give rich countries
another advantage against the sovereignty of poor countries. Now
European countries too are blocked from protecting the environment or
anything more important than foreign investors.
It's not enough to reject new ones, such as the TPP. There must be an
international movement to nullify them all.
US citizens:
call
on Rep. Pelosi to oppose "fast track".
US citizens:
call on Congress to publish the TPP
draft. There are ways it can lawfully do so.
US citizens:
Call
on UNESCO to protect monarch butterflies.
US citizens:
tell Congress not to
raise the Social Security retirement age.
US citizens:
tell the
Democratic National Committee not to limit candidates' debates.
The German government's surveillance hypocrisy has
undermined
movement to reduce state surveillance there.
As China confronts automation of factories, it may be hit with
falling
employment.
Some manufacturing is also moving to India because wages there are
low.
A court ruled that Albert Woodfox should be freed, as
his
trial was unfair and a new trial is not feasible. Louisiana is
using an appeal to
delay
his release, to leave him as little time as possible outside.
Woodfox is 68 years old and clearly no threat to anyone.
PISSI started as a breakaway part of al Qa'ida, and PISSI's success
has turned al Qa'ida into a mere shell of its old self.
The
official leaders of al Qa'ida now regard PISSI as a bunch of
traitors
Latest TPP Leak Raises Burning Questions About
Implications
for U.S. Health Care System.
The reason so many Eritreans are fleeing to Europe is due to
extreme
repression there.
The thugs'
story
about killing Usaamah Rahim is fishy; the video provides little
information to substantiate it.
His own statements may indicate that he was planning to kill thugs,
or perhaps only that he was planning to sue.
Azerbaijan has
denied
entry to Emma Hughes because the human rights organization she
works for has criticized the regime's association with BP, and the use
of the European Games (which Azerbaijan is hosting in conjunction with
BP) to distract attention from repression.
Greg Palast has
reported
on that relationship.
Amnesty International has been
totally
excluded from Azerbaijan before these games.
It seems absurd to permit Azerbaijan to be a candidate for hosting
"European" games, even if its government were a beacon of freedom. It
is no more part of Europe than neighboring Iran is. Would they allow
Japan to host the European Games? South Africa? Brazil?
A
US-backed
Syrian rebel group captured an Assad regime military base.
At least there is one Arab rebel group that isn't al Qa'ida or PISSI
that has the ability to fight and win. I think the
secular
human-rights-defending revolutionary Kurds deserve support far
more, but I don't know whether there is a practical possibility for
Arabs to join them.
Saudi Arabia is
dropping
US-made cluster bombs on Yemen. As usual for cluster bombs, a
child picked up a pretty bomblet, and it exploded.
Cluster bombs
should
be banned.
Teenagers and young adults say
what
led them to care about the danger of global heating.
I don't call it "climate change" because
that
term was promoted by denialists. Why give them what they wanted?
Railroading innocent people for murder occurs
in
Pakistan as well as
in
the US.
US citizens: Call on your senators to
reject Cotton's
amendment 1605, that would block dismantling nuclear weapons or
reducing their level of alert.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to support an anti-torture amendment to the National
Defense Authorization Act.
Also phone your senators and say, vote no to the NDAA if it authorizes
punishment without trial.
Western
volunteers are helping Syrian Kurds fight PISSI.
We should encourage such volunteers. They will absorb the firmness
and esprit de corps of the peshmerga, which training Iraqi troops
hasn't a ghost of a chance of doing. Furthermore that boosts an army
not based on ethnic or sectarian bigotry, one that any Iraqi who wants
peace and justice would welcome in.
A tribe in New Guinea in which people ate the brains of their deceased
relatives, and thus transmitted prion disease down to new generations,
has
evolved
resistance to prion disease.
Lots of them died in the process; this is not a very desirable way to
deal with diseases.
The European Union should boost employment
directly.
Why doesn't it? The banks have too much power.
Los Angeles will increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour but
only
in 2020. By that time, $15 will be too small and another increase
will be past due.
Global heating denialist Willie Soon is in trouble for
hiding
the funds he received from fossil fuel interests.
Serbia's "exemplary" greenhouse gas pledge would allow emissions to
rise
15%.
An Egyptian thug was
jailed
for shooting and killing a protester.
The EU is investigating Amazon for possible
anticompetitive
deals with publishers.
That is good, as far as it goes, but it fails to tackle the worst
thing about Amazon: imposing the
unjust contracts and DRM on
users.
Someone is
spying
on negotiators trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran, through
hotel facilities. Probably some government.
The snooper is not necessary one opposed to the talks. It could be a
participant, such as the US, hoping to get a better deal by knowing
other countries' bottom lines.
Right-wing talk shows are now
opposing
the TPP, which they call "Obamatrade".
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It is our good fortune
that they are right on this.
The persistent incompetence of the TSA, combined with the complete
absence of attacks on US airliners, shows that
we
don't need so much effort at airline security.
Rosa Moreno lost both her hands in an industrial accident, working for
a contractor for a multinational brand. She was lucky to get help to
sue for compensation, but
lost
the suit on a technicality.
Ms Moreno is not entirely innocent. Lacking a sure income, she did
wrong to have six children. Indeed, it is
wrong
for anyone to have six children. But that is a separate issue and in no way justifies the way she has
been treated after her injury, nor the dangerous conditions maintained
at her workplace.
This is what "free trade" does: it enables the multinational to make
countries compete to attract production by allowing the worst possible
working conditions and workers' rights.
If Mexico had had a real compensation system for accidents at work,
the company would have maintained Machine 19 carefully and followed
proper safety procedures, and this accident would probably not have
happened.
That is the basic reason why we must get rid of those treaties. We
must require companies to situate their production somewhere and leave
it there, so that governments will respond to public pressure to start
protecting workers' rights.
Students at Cardiff University exonerated a real murder conviction,
enabling
a wrongly convicted man to go free. Now the group is working on
another case.
It is good to correct these mistakes, but there are so many mistakes
that we need to look at correcting the systems that so often produce
them.
A town in Portugal has started paying
substantial
bonuses for having a baby.
Spain has a similar policy. The satirical magazine El Jueves was
fined for publishing a cartoon showing the then crown prince (now
king) having sex with his wife and saying, "This is the closest thing
to working that I've done in my whole life."
Some countries, such as Iran, try to force women to have more babies
by making birth control harder to get.
In a world where
human population
growth combines with global heating to threaten the survival of
civilization
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That town is not special. To keep that town in existence is not important enough to justify taking any extra risk.
Ebola has resurged in Sierra Leone and Guinea.
You're not safe until it's 100% over. And not even entirely then; men who have recovered must use condoms for months to avoid passing on the virus.
Google, Facebook and Apple are so involved in distribution of journalism that they are in a special position to corrupt it.
Perhaps use of GNU Taler for paid anonymous downloads will help journalistic sites remain independent of those powerful companies.
Tony "suppository of all greenhouse gases" Abbott boasted of cutting the growth of wind farms, and says he wishes he could have cut them more.
It pretty much shows he was lying when he said he supported wind power.
This is par for the course with plutocratist governments. We have seen the same thing in the UK and, partly, with the Obama regime.
A refugee in Australia, facing imprisonment in Nauru, is considering an abortion to avoid raising a child in prison.
People in desperate circumstances should not have children, but that is no excuse for putting people in such desperate circumstances.
The Australian government is not concerned that refugees it imprisons on Nauru are raped.
Here's more about the Australian government's campaign against the president of its human rights commission.
This is a prime example of hounding a dissident over minor details of rhetoric to distract attention from important substantive issues. Critics of the free software movement use the same approach towards me.
Note also the way that they present their own hostility towards Triggs as if it were a failing on her part; for instance, by saying that they have "lost confidence" in her for criticizing them. It is another common pattern. Thus, articles about the economic war on Greece often say that "Greece has no more friends" when what is really happening is that various regimes and institutions (Spain, France, US, IMF) support the banksters.
Those criticizing Triggs back up their distraction campaign by keeping a large part of the Australian government's treatment of refugees secret, or hidden on Nauru. This makes it hard for her to raise the issues that really matter.
Feminists are disputing how to relate transsexuals to feminism.
It should be clear that "feeling like a woman" (i.e., being drawn to female gender) is a completely separate matter from "understanding what life as a (typical non-trans, in a given society) woman is like", or how such women experience that life. But that difference is no problem unless we make the mistake of confusing the two.
Journalists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan face repression.
Guatemalans are protesting against politicians accused of giant fraud, but there is no ethical alternative on offer.
Massive surveillance of everyone delivers so many terrorist suspects, only a few of whom will ever really become terrorists, that it isn't much use in finding those few.
However, it is great for sabotaging dissidents and imprisoning whistleblowers.
US citizens:
call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to close the
loopholes
in protection of migratory birds.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
A world agreement has been reached on Redd+, a plan to curb deforestation.
But it is likely to fail if it doesn't cope with the corruption that enables plantation land-grabs.
A UK man was convicted of forcing a woman to marry him. He filmed her showering (after raping her) and blackmailed her by threatening to publish the video.
Although the perpetrator bears full responsibility for raping and threatening her, what made her vulnerable to this blackmail was the twisted idea that it is shameful to be seen nude. It is not surprising to me that the victim was a Muslim, because that religion teaches women particularly intense shame about their bodies.
To propagate this shame is to aid future blackmailers.
Release the Congolese Activists Still in Jail for Planning Peaceful Demonstrations.
Guards at NYC's Rikers Island prison have been charged for killing prisoner Ronald Spear.
Hooray!
After Two Years, the Rana Plaza Fund Finally Reaches Its $30m Target.
An Indian journalist was murdered after accusing a minister of corrupt involvement in illegal mining.
Kenlissa Jones will not be charged with murder for causing herself an abortion, only "possession of a dangerous drug".
Charging others with murder for participating in an illegal abortion is just as wrong. A fetus is not a human being, just a potential future human being.
Western plans to "help" Ukraine actually aim at helping multinational businesses take control of Ukraine's resources.
Obama's idea for fixing up public housing is to start privatizing it.
I don't think President Sanders would do this.
The new thug chief in Ferguson spreads falsehoods to defend the thug department's treatment of Michael Brown and the protesters against Brown's killing.
A Turkish thug has been sentenced for teargassing a peaceful protester in Gezi Park: he will have to plant trees, then tend them for 6 months.
Thatcher's pro-business policies, deregulation for business and tax cuts for the rich, did not cause economic growth.
But they certainly transferred wealth from the nonrich to the rich.
The US State Department, when it was headed by Clinton, appears to have aided the coup in Honduras. That makes it likely she personally approved it.
Seattle protesters hope to block Shell's Arctic drilling this year by preventing its drilling rigs from setting out until the season has been missed.
Protesters suggest a "safety zone" around Earth, and that Shell should go wreck Venus instead. Venus is so hot because it has a runaway greenhouse effect; perhaps Shell has already wrecked it.
The Senate is moving to expand massive surveillance by "allowing" companies to give any amount of personal data to the US government "voluntarily".
We can imagine that the government has ways to make them volunteer.
Citizens have petitioned a judge to order arrest of the thug that shot Tamar Rice dead.
If teachers are aware that a student comes from a poor family, they tend to lower their estimate of that student's abilities.
Unconscious bias also operates based on gender roles: teachers systematically underestimate how good girls are at math.
Global heating threatens to flood US naval bases — the effect has already started.
The article says that the rebellion in Mali was caused by drought caused by global heating. The initially ethnic and secular Touareg revolt was co-opted by Islamist fanatics. As millions of people find their livelihoods eliminated by effects of global heating, US military contractors will get even more profits, while everyone else suffers.
The European Commission is pushing a "compromise" to undermine network neutrality.
I suppose they mean that the citizens should cede rights to "compromise" with the desires of the ISPs. The whole idea is misguided, and reflects the nondemocratic nature of the European Commission.
Condemning Elsevier's
latest attack
on libre scientific publishing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
When the weak resist arrogant power, they have no obligation to treat all arrogant powerful entities alike. It makes sense to single out Elsevier for a boycott.
Thus, I suggest to scientists, when asked to review an article in an Elsevier journal, that you respond by telling the editors that you won't do this for Elsevier. You can say it's nothing personal but you think that aiding Elsevier is bad for science.
Elsevier is also trying to shut down sites that provide access to scholarly articles.
Please do not use the smear term "pirate" to describe the sharing forbidden by companies such as Elsevier.
A UK oil company funded bribes to get Africans to drop their opposition to oil extraction in Virunga national park.
Detroit is going to be hit especially hard by global heating's extreme weather.
Global heating weather effects are already damaging children's health in Australia, and the problem will get a lot worse.
I presume this is true to of parts of the US as well, but I can't be sure.
This is not even considering the effects that heating-provoked wars around the world may have.
Revealed Emails Show How Industry Lobbyists Basically Wrote The TPP.
France has adopted the law permitting massive surveillance with hardly any oversight.
The Australian government has imposed extremely strict secrecy on everyone involved in dealing with refugees. The Australian senate gave some of them an opportunity to testify about the crimes they saw.
Salafists, Islamists more extreme than Hamas, exist in Gaza and are now at the point of fighting with Hamas.
Australia is falsifying its greenhouse emission forecasts so that it can achieve phony future promised "reductions" without really changing anything.
The UK prosecutors' office will have to pay the legal expenses of protesters that received an unfair trial, but the details of the culpable individuals are being kept secret.
This is no way to end the unjust practice.
A suicide bomber attacked tourists in Egypt.
The Islamist rebels in Egypt have mostly confined themselves to attacking armed agents of the military regime. I suppose this was due to scruples. If they change to attacking tourists, that will mean that tactics have taken over from their scruples.
The US made Sea Shepherd pay over 2 million dollars to Japanese whalers, after issuing an injunction on their behalf.
Shame on the US for protecting whaling. The US should make whaling a crime such that whalers cannot get such injunctions.
In the mean time, Sea Shepherd should move its operations out of the US jurisdiction.
The feedlot system that produces so much beef in the US is unsustainable, but eating that much beef is unsustainable for the human heart.
Interviews with people living in Mosul under PISSI. Some find it oppressive, while others say the Iraqi Shi'ie government was worse.
The widow missing one arm would do better to kill her daughters if she cannot get them out of PISSI's slavery.
Right-wing condemnation of disabled people as dead weight for society inspires increasing numbers to hate them, and sometimes to murder them cruelly.
The plutocrats are a much bigger dead weight on society.
A woman in Georgia has been charged with murder for allegedly taking an abortifacient pill.
Persecution of women is the heart of the Republican Party.
Right-wing school privatization made the Swedish school system less capable. Will the US and UK learn to stop following its bad example?
How Obama Went From Being a Peace Candidate to a War President.
He has used the US power foolishly, to no good — in many cases, not good even for US plutocrats (except military and surveillance contractors).
Obama will send a few hundred more trainers to Iraq.
I see nothing particularly bad about this move, but it is unlikely to make much of a difference. When the Iraqi army abandoned Ramadi in May, they did so in fear of the suicide bombings carried out in humvees that PISSI had captured from the Iraqi army in Mosul. Training alone won't make troops stand up to that. They have to be fighting for something they care about very strongly.
Kurdish peshmerga can do this; they are fighting to prevent a massacre of their people. Does Obama think he can convince soldiers to do this for the Iraqi government?
The EPA recognizes that greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft endanger human health, so it will implement an international plan to limit those emissions.
Too bad the proposed standard is so weak it will hardly do any good.
Greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, mainly through the risk of food shortages, spreading diseases, and war. We need to act on all the major causes of emissions.
The masters of the euro zone must accept that Greece will never repay its current debts. One way or another, those debts will be cancelled. Why not cancel them now?
The UK's right-wing government is planning big cuts in school funds for non-rich children.
Most of them will only be able to get crap jobs, and right-wingers will say it's their own fault — pointing, as they do, to the brightest few who overcame this handicap, as "proof" that the rest are no good.
Three medical marijuana growers in Washington were convicted by the federal government and now face sentencing.
If the bill to make the federal government leave state-legal medical marijuana growers and users alone is passed, I hope Obama will pardon everyone who was convicted for this.
The G7 made a stronger statement, endorsing big cuts in fossil fuel emissions by 2050.
It is not binding, and important emitter countries are not included, but at least it endorses an adequate goal.
The TPP would especially hurt American women. It may also make medicines, without which many people will die, a lot more expensive. We can't tell.
For the Associated Press, being shot by a thug makes you a "suspect", automatically.
The Mississippi school dropped charges against four people arrested for cheering at graduation.
The officials probably realized they must drop the charges, but delayed so they wouldn't seem like pushovers. They are looking ahead to future injustices that might not arouse enough public criticism to make them back down.
Sanders got almost as many votes as Clinton in a straw poll in Wisconsin.
To call Sanders "unelectable" is an attempt, by the plutocratists, to impose a self-fulfilling prophesy. What they mean is, give up on voting for anyone that their funds don't support.
Americans must vote only for candidates that their funds don't support. If you don't have time to investigate the candidates in your district, here is a simple heuristic: march towards the sound of the expensive TV ad campaigns, and do what they don't want.
Due to bad security in a drug pump, crackers could use it to kill patients.
The US wants a prisoner sentenced to 20 extra years on the grounds that some of his books suggest he is inclined towards terrorism.
The victim is an extremely unsympathetic character, an ideal weak point for an attack on the freedom of everyone in the US.
A report that Turkey and Saudi Arabia are cooperating to fund and arm jihadi groups in Syria to fight Assad. And Israel may be planning to join them.
I fear the ultimate victors will be PISSI.
An Australian Greenpeace staff member was blocked from entering India to meet with the staff of Greenpeace India.
This seems to be part of India's repression campaign against Greenpeace India, and anything that stands in the way of what the megacorporations wish to do to India and Indians.
Michigan's elimination of local democracy is spreading to other states, but Michigan residents are fighting back.
The government of Spain changed its law about war crimes, under US pressure, to end the prosecution of US soldiers for killing a Spanish journalist in Iraq.
US actions to shield its own war criminals have the effect of protecting all war criminals.
A study suggests Israel and Palestine would gain $170 billion by 2024 if Israel removes its colonies from Palestine and the two make peace.
Israel would gain $120 billion and Palestine would gain $50 billion.
US and UK parents have adopted the competitive pressure on children that Japan was once famous for, and it crushes the life out of the children.
The error these parents make is seeking better lives for their own children alone, through competition with other families. Only a few can win that game. If they all worked together, making society treat the non-rich better and reducing income inequality, they could all win together.
In other words, these parents have chosen the wrong aspirations.
The US will help students at Corinthian Colleges shed their debt.
Little pieces of plastic from cigarette filters kill marine animals.
Shell's Arctic Drilling Is the Real Threat to the World, Not Kayaktivists.
An Australian state agency "regularly" asked doctors at the Nauru prison to change the diagnosis of refugees imprisoned there. This was to cover up how sending refugees to Nauru harmed their health.
The minister in charge disregarded evidence of sexual abuse of prisoners as young as two years of age.
Cornell West connects massive surveillance with plutocracy, and says that dark skin doesn't excuse Obama for supporting them.
Identifying how the TTIP threatens digital human rights.
TTIP stands for "This Treaty Is Plutocratic".
The French constitutional court has doubts about the massive surveillance bill.
RIP, Obsolete Gadget You Once Thought Would Change Your Life.
Zambian Singer Chama Fumba Arrested Over Song That 'Mocks' President Lungu.
Making it a crime to mock the president, or anyone or anything else, is overt contempt for human rights.
PISSI is accused of selling captured girls as sex-slaves to its leaders and its recruits.
It could be true, but this is the sort of accusation that has been fabricated as propaganda before (for instance, against Saddam Hussein's army when it had occupied Kuwait). I hope we will get better evidence in the future.
The Australian government is orchestrating a campaign to smear the president of its Human Rights Commission, who criticizes some of Abbott's plans to trash human rights.
US thugs kill more people in a day than UK thugs kill in a year.
The US has six times the population of the UK, but the per capita rate of killings by thugs in the US is 60 times the rate for the UK.
The fact that the total US murder rate per capita is 5 times that of the UK may be related somehow, but I don't think it reduces the significance of that ratio of 60.
China Calls on US to Follow Its Lead in Eradicating Ivory Trade.
Two global heating denial organizations handed out $125 million in 2011-2013.
If you hear the absurd claim that climate scientists are faking evidence for global heating so as to keep their funding, consider which side can afford to buy more.
Republicans will refuse to confirm any of Obama's federal judge appointments, as a policy of obstructionism.
Obama's appointments are not necessarily good; they may be right wing.
Among the lesser dangers of global heating: shortage of beer, coffee, chocolate, and shellfish.
White thugs tend to dehumanize everyone that lives in poor (minority) neighborhoods, which creates the unconscious racism that leads thugs to shoot before thinking.
But one byproduct of the persistent prosecution of blacks, and in particular New York City's "broken windows" policy, is that it disqualifies many blacks from becoming thugs.
Farmers in Ghana are pushing hard against the seed monopoly law that rich countries want to impose.
Prohibiting farmers from saving and sharing seeds is as wrong as prohibiting you and me from sharing music.
Which is worse: an AI soldier or a human soldier?
I can imagine an AI soldier which firmly refuses to kill civilians or torture prisoners. On the other hand, if the AI is programmed by governments, we should expect a rich government engaged in counter-guerrilla war to do, in programming its AIs, what it does in drone assassinations: make them cover up and deny killing civilians.
Obama wants Greece to make "tough political choices".
Greece faces a choice between the disaster of surrender to the banksters and the disaster of defying them. It is a tough choice — if you think only of avoiding pain. Once you look deeper, the choice is not tough at all: it is better to suffer in freedom than in bondage.
Foreign Minister Wallström of Sweden stands proudly behind her criticism of Saudi Arabia and refusal to sell arms there.
She puts Obama and other "leaders" to shame.
People who have children tend to downgrade their concern about global heating. They don't want to think about how their children will make the problem worse, or what they are probably condemning those children to suffer.
"A prime minister who talks about caring for his disabled son is about to unleash a new wave of benefit cuts on Britain's most vulnerable people."
US citizens: support Bernie Sanders' call to start presidential debates this year.
Erdoğan's party has lost its majority in the Turkish election.
This doesn't mean it will lose control of the government, but I hope so.
Chris Christie believes there's not enough suffering in the US, so if elected president he would persecute medical marijuana users.
Note that the US government has not entirely stopped harassing state-legalized marijuana users and distributors.
Journalistic counting projects have found that US thugs kill two or three times as many people as previous figures suggested.
Across the US, thugs have attacked peaceful Black Lives Matter protests. This article describes an attack in Philadelphia.
The EPA's study of water contamination caused by fracking had a flaw: fracking companies blocked hands-on testing of what they are doing.
How big the flaw is, I am not sure.
The convicted murderer whose case Scalia cited to justify the death penalty has been pardoned. His trial ignored evidence that someone else committed the crime.
There is no word on whether Scalia has learned anything.
Since America's poor can't afford homes, should we really want houses to be even more expensive?
Syriza is continuing to defy the banksters that expected Greece to have to knuckle under.
What the international financial powers demand would be disaster for Greece.
I advise Greeks to choose defiance and resistance. Better to fight, and risk being crushed, than surrender to a certainty of being crushed.
Brad Martinez was healthy when Florida thugs arrested him. When they took him out of the thug van, he was in a coma, from which he died.
There is some sign they strangled or choked him.
When the NSA says it is keeping Americans safe (from a secondary threat) by taking away their freedom, the proper response is Patrick Henry's.
Republicans would rather kill sick Americans than let them receive help from the US government.
Russia has given itself the power to ban foreign-linked NGOs (and businesses) arbitrarily. It merely has to label them as "undesirable" — no trial is needed.
The US has already gone even further; it can arbitrarily shut down any NGO (or business) and imprison the people who work with it. It merely has to label them as "terrorist" — no trial is needed.
The relatives of Yemeni civilians killed by a US drone strike are suing for compensation.
Leaders of the European Parliament say they will reject the TISA and TTIP if those stop Europe from adopting its own regulations.
The thug that shot Walter Scott dead as Scott was running away has been charged with murder.
Since Scott was not threatening the thug, he had no grounds to use deadly force.
Charging killer thugs is an important step forward, but we are only seeing it begin. Meanwhile, convicting them will be hard, especially with all-white juries.
I think we should start prosecuting thugs for lying about what happened. That happens a lot more often. Convicting a hundred thugs for perjury and sentencing each one to 2 years in prison will have a bigger effect on the behavior of thugs than sentencing ten of them to 30 years in prison.
Selling product placement has become widespread in popular "music" just as in movies.
I think it constitutes corruption of the music itself. There is a moral difference between making money from music, and letting the money seep into the music. There is a step for the worse from trying to make music people like in order to make more money, and letting the money override the listeners.
Supply and demand economics doesn't work for medical care.
It used to be that medical insurance protected you from gouging hospitals. Hospital mergers have made some hospitals so big that even the largest insurance companies don't have the clout to stop the gouging.
Protesters call attention to the other pipelines being built to carry tar sands oil across the US.
The G7 countries agreed to end fossil fuel use — by 2100. They are planning to turn off the gas, but only after the biosphere is burnt.
2/3 of the public, in 79 countries, want the Paris climate summit to do "whatever it takes" to curb global heating. The difference between this, and what the G7 have agreed to, is stark.
Civilization may not make it to 2100 if we don't end fossil fuel use much sooner than that. And it has to include more than the G7 countries.
Some US cities have provided housing to all their homeless people, or at least to all the homeless veterans.
These programs show it can be done, but we will never do the whole job if we leave it up to each city to decide whether to do it or not.
Housing the homeless veterans is only part of the job. Veterans are particularly likely to be homeless, because of the harm that being in combat did to them. We ought to provide housing to them when they need it — and to all other Americans, as well.
Slave or Rebel? Ten Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny.
I disagree with him on one important point. Voting can make big changes. As recently as the 1970s, the US government passed laws that greatly restricted business, in response to public demand (for instance, to curb air and water pollution). Plutocracy is a condition, not the nature of democracy.
The TSA has mistreated millions of Americans looking for weapons, but it can't find weapons on passengers' bodies.
The TSA was sloppy in checking the backgrounds of airport workers.
TSA stands for Theater of Security Agency.
Anti-pipeline protesters are still being followed and harassed as suspected "terrorists" a year after the unwarranted investigation was formally shut down.
They think the US government is catering to Transcanada, the pipeline company.
It is Obama's duty to disallow the Keystone XL planet-roaster, and the fact that he has not done so leads me to think he is planning to approve it whenever he thinks he won't take heat for it. The heat will follow, a few decades from now.
New York's thugs have not abandoned (as promised) the "broken windows" scheme in which they look (in certain minority areas) for minor excuses to give people trouble.
This scheme contributes to the criminalization of minorities.
Bratton's claim that it was responsible for reducing crime in New York City was based on coincidence — it was implemented at just the time crime began decreasing all across the US.
Since Irish have won legalization of same-sex marriage, they can win legalization of abortion if they try.
Prisoners in jail in Savannah have a way of dying there. Matthew Ajibade seems to have been bludgeoned to death.
The thugs say he had violently attacked them. It could be true, though we can't take their unsupported word for it. If it is true, that justified jailing him, but did not justify killing him.
A US law which prohibits employers from asking employees for DNA samples is an example of the strictness required to protect privacy in the digital age.
The company whose corroded pipeline polluted the California coast had told the government that its pipeline was unlikely to leak and that its high-tech monitoring would detect any leak immediately.
That's business for you: lie when applying for permission, figuring that they won't get fined enough to take away all their profits.
Many US businesses bully their employees into supporting the boss's political candidates.
There are good reasons why someone might default on their student loans.
Among the isolated communities US Orthodox Jews, some find out about science and doubt their dogmas, but they don't dare admit this and they don't dare leave.
China's greenhouse emissions may peak in 2025.
If so, it is still not soon enough.
Militarized thugs are dangerous to the community even when they are doing a legitimate task. A SWAT team cornered an armed man who had holed up in a house in Colorado, and they blew walls to shreds in fighting him. The owner of the house is not happy.
The Marshall Islands are suing nuclear powers that signed the nonproliferation treaty and fail to carry out the commitment to work towards nuclear disarmament.
On the wisdom of firing teachers because they read poems that make some students uncomfortable.
If you are visiting someone in a US hospital, don't admit that you feel unwell. It gives the hospital an opportunity to gouge you.
Everyone in the US associated with abortion clinics, and their landlords, faces harassment from Christian fanatics.
A judge is investigating whether the US government destroyed evidence that it should have given to whistleblower Thomas Drake when it tried to prosecute him.
A minimum wage worker can't afford a small apartment anywhere in the US.
Coal as a weapon of mass destruction.
Five of the G7 countries increased their use of coal substantially since 2009.
Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans.
The CIA insists it did not drug prisoners in the 2000s, but it appears the CIA never conducted an investigation to determine this.
New York City has exempted multi-million-dollar apartments from property tax.
Well, not totally exempted, only 99%.
The end of "containment" of the Soviet Union in 1990 also left the US military uncontained.
Now it gets constantly more expensive, and (counting mercenaries) ever larger, and can attack anywhere — but victory is impossible.
An employee of the US Department of Veterans Affairs says that the agency spends billions of dollars without going through competitive bidding or contracting.
In California: pledge to boycott El Super for punishing workers that want to unionize.
US citizens: call on your senators to set up a trustworthy system for prosecuting rapes in the US military.
UK thugs are being prosecuted for lying about how they treated a prisoner who died.
US thugs do the same thing, but are not prosecuted for it.
The Federal Election Commission has been paralyzed, so it can't investigate any violations. That enables the plutocratist candidates to disregard campaign finance law.
An Australian medical body called for physicians to stop prescribing homeopathic "medicines" and for pharmacies to stop selling them. This is because they are medically inactive.
Several high-profile college rape accusations have fallen apart. What does this imply?
Germany's law that bans unlocked wireless networks is being judged by the European Court of Justice.
Running wireless networks without a password is an important contribution to your community. What's more, it is the only way you can refuse to be conscripted as an enforcer in the War on Sharing. Even if it is illegal, it is your duty. Don't be afraid of the punishment; it won't kill you, and it is unlikely enough that your expected cost is tiny.
Most Americans want to reduce economic inequality. 68% want to raise taxes on million-dollar incomes.
Governments of the World Agree: Encryption Must Die!
The US government, in trials of supposed terrorists, demands that defendants not mention the name Snowden, not raise issues of whether massive surveillance was used on them, and not accuse the government of entrapment.
Many of these cases are at least pretty close to entrapment.
The recordings they present in court may have been carefully selected to omit the conversations in which the FBI's agent led the defendant to join in the scheme (i.e., entrapped him).
Scott Walker wants the fathers of 20-week fetuses to sue when women abort them.
Late term abortions in the US require specific justification, either on medical grounds, or because the father committed rape. What kind of twisted man would feel "distress" with an operation to protect the woman from danger? Will the bill permit rapists to sue abortion clinics?
Meanwhile, what about the other side of this? Why not allow men to sue for a court order to insist on an abortion? A lot of men feel distress for very rational reasons at learning they will be forced to support an undesired baby.
A father was arrested for leaving his son in a car seat in a truck for two minutes. The child was in no danger, but try convincing panic-stricken Americans of that.
Americans freak out at the thought of allowing a child to be alone. Meanwhile, they are not very concerned about the poverty and stress that scar millions of American children for life.
The DEA avoids federal government rules for collecting evidence by working through state prosecutors that have lower standards.
The TISA would empower multinational companies to suppress democracy in a broad range of service businesses.
It would prohibit countries with real privacy laws from stopping multinationals from exporting data to countries such as the US that snoop on it.
Whether the quoted text would really prohibit a government from deciding to use only free word processors is not clear to me. I am not sure whether that situation falls under the category of "providing services related to" the word processor.
An EPA investigation found that fracking occasionally poisons drinking water but not most of the time.
For the US government's internet army, the distinction between law enforcement and cyber-war is fading away.
The result is that everything is treated like war.
Germany is pushing to impose mandatory data retention once again. It continues to be as useless and as dangerous as it was before.
The US imprisons unauthorized immigrant families in conditions that drove one mother to try suicide.
Jeb Bush's Super-PAC is called "Right to Rise", but based on its actions we could call it "Right to Raise (Money)". Here are some of its donors.
A new party in Turkey, which supports equal rights for women and various ethnic minorities, has a chance of weakening Erdoğan's congealing religious tyranny.
Rather than imprisoning so many people, many kinder approaches do a better job of reducing crime.
Part of London has retreated from the plan to fine homeless people for sleeping on the street.
The Saudi naval blockade is imposing starvation on Yemen.
80% of the population urgently needs food, water, or medical care.
The G8 countries are pushing laws in Africa that subject farmers to agribusiness.
Don't base wildlife policy on romanticizing animals.
I think preserving ecosystems (and thus species) is a more rational goal.
The US Government Could Count Those Killed by [thugs], But It's Chosen Not To.
Senator Warren says the head of the SEC is acting like a wall street crony.
A series of Republican leaders of the House of Representatives had secret sex affairs — all the while trying to impeach Bill Clinton for having oral sex once.
Too bad Hastert managed to keep his homosexual affair secret. Knowledge of it would have hampered his persistent efforts to repress other homosexuals.
Investigating Russia's internet disinformation department, which drowns out opposition in Russia with lies, and smears dissidents and journalists — and tries to cause panic in the US with organized hoaxes about nonexistent disasters.
Majid Khan says CIA agents poured ice water on his balls, held his head in ice water, and hung him from a beam for three days. They also shackled him with metal boots that cut into his legs.
This shows that the published parts of the Senate report on torture was "sanitized" to omit some forms of government depravity.
Quite a few unarmed Latinos are shot dead by US thugs — it's not only blacks.
Tanzania lost lost 60% of its elephants from 2009 to 2014.
40 Reasons Our Jails and Prisons Are Full of Black and Poor People.
More than 2C of global heating will cause a major reorganization of ocean ecosystems.
On the ethics of publishing leaked data.
The most important point I see in this article is that the prohibition of "child pornography" puts you (i.e., anyone and everyone) at the mercy of whoever decides to send you some.
Laws prohibiting possession of something that has been published, or sent to you, are intolerable tyranny. It makes no difference what things they prohibit, or why.
Microsoft's "transparency centers" are a poor substitute for the freedom that you get with free software.
Since the article uses the term "FOSS", I should point at the explanation of why that isn't a good term to use.
The nuclear powers, including the US, are disregarding the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and blocking movement towards elimination of nuclear weapons.
Anti-mining activist José Tendetza was murdered, and the Ecuadorian government seems to be covering up the reason rather than investigating.
Syrian rebels, and the US, claim that Assad's forces are helping PISSI in northern Syria.
This is a very strange claim, given that the two have been fighting each other near Palmyra, further south.
Here is a report that Israel and Saudi Arabia are helping PISSI defeat Assad.
I am not sure what to believe.
US thugs often say they have "no choice" about shooting unarmed people or people with knives. A retired UK thug official says that's nuts: UK thugs are trained to do so.
Texas Lawmakers Are Busy Making It Harder to Vote.
Don't believe Obama when he says that labor standards excuse "trade treaties". They are not really enforced.
Even if they were enforced, they would not excuse the TPP, because it's a corporate power treaty rather than a trade treaty.
Argentine grandmothers continue searching for the grandchildren taken away by the soldiers that killed their daughters. Occasionally they find one.
The repression in Argentina was supported by the US government.
I have a feeling that Laura Carlotto would dislike the religious filter through which her mother sees the reunion.
Austerity Isn't 'Good Housekeeping': It's Dogmatic, Risky And Unjust.
Australia is planning to permanently exile people that are suspected of somehow supporting terrorism.
This will start with people who have another citizenship, but the government already envisions extending it to those who "could apply for" citizenship in another country. Then it could pay Nauru to grant citizenship to, and imprison, anyone at Australia's request.
We have come to regard exile as an unacceptable punishment, and we should not permit it again; but even if we were going to legitimize exile, we should not accept any form of punishment without trial.
A universal basic income would be quite affordable for the US.
US citizens: call on the Department of Labor not to let banksters off the hook for their crimes.
The Obama regime cited part of the "USA Freedom Act" as an excuse to restart the bulk snooping on Americans' phone call records — precisely what that law supposedly was not going to authorize.
Don't expect killer robots to distinguish civilians perfectly, no matter how smart they are.
The Politwoop site, which showed politicians' deleted tweets, has been shut down by Twitter.
Journalists: when you cite tweets, do not display them by embedding from Twitter. Embedding tweets leads to two problems:
The wise method is to copy the quotations in your article, like any other quotation.
Facebook arbitrarily censors and closes the accounts of prisoners.
Israel is about to demolish the Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya, again.
Unusual bacteria in Pablo Neruda's corpse suggest he was murdered in hospital, presumably by agents of Pinochet's regime.
Another opposition leader was murdered later in the same hospital.
We now have proof that Pinochet's coup was carried out with US complicity.
Congresscritters asked the NSA for information with which to smear Snowden personally.
The forces opposed to encryption and bitcoin are now citing "child abuse images" as a reason.
The term "images of child abuse" is an open door for a witch hunt. It covers making pictures of raping a child; the rape ought to be a crime. However, the same term is used to describe images of young-looking 18-year-olds having voluntary sex, and drawings of fictional minors in fictional sex.
Australia's mining lobby asks the pro-mining ruling party to cancel the tax exemption of Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups.
Snowden says he sees a "profound difference" in people's opposition to massive surveillance.
Big European electric companies lost a lot of money due to investing it in coal.
Two ultra-orthodox Jewish schools have backed down from banning mothers from driving their children to school. The schools were going to implement the ban by not allowing the children into school if brought by their mothers in a car. They backed down because there is a law against such discrimination.
This should reaffirm our awareness that many religions pose a threat to human freedom. Christianity can be (and generally was, until a few hundred years ago) just as vicious as Islam, and Judaism also has the potential. So does Hinduism. Warning: Taking any church too seriously, even the Church of Emacs, can be hazardous to your health.
A former jihadi, who was in al Qa'ida until he concluded its terrorist methods were un-Islamic, says the way to hamper PISSI's recruiting is to spread awareness of the moral complexities that the PISSI line ignores.
Official harassment and repression has forced the Chinese women's rights group Weizhiming to shut down.
All-options pregnancy centers sincerely help pregnant women, whether it's a baby or an abortion they want.
This will help fight the dishonest "crisis pregnancy centers" that are funded to make those women have babies, by hook or by crook.
Drug Company Profits Are Literally Killing People — And Now Even Doctors Are Speaking Out.
Fraudulent lawsuits to collect student debt are booming.
How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti — and Built [only] Six Homes.
Tyranny and civil war in small countries are sometimes accompanied by internet shutdowns.
Russian troops and proxies in Ukraine are increasing the level of fighting.
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake says the "USA Freedom Act" is "a new spy program".
If UK repression is serious about banning encryption it can't break, it will have to ban lots of other things — such as computers.
When 73-year-old Leonard Batholomuesz bumped into an Australian thug, the thug pushed him to the ground, breaking his bones.
A man who takes out his frustrations with violence against innocent old men can't be trusted to walk around the city without a guard — even less, to carry a gun, a stick, or a badge.
The oil pipeline that ruptured in California had previously corroded, losing 80% of its thickness. Only 1.5 millimeters was left.
In other words, they recklessly invited this accident. If that isn't a crime, it ought to be.
Citizens of Massachusetts: ask your state legislators to end the "war on drugs" in Massachusetts.
Correcting some systematic measurement errors shows that there was no "hiatus" in global heating. It continued straight through the 2000's.
It was Leslie Cauley who first exposed the NSA's mass collection of Americans' phone call records. Snowden repeated the disclosure, and then the world took notice.
Tiny frogs that develop without a tadpole stage have been found in Brazil. Some of these species are limited to a single mountain.
Skipping the tadpole stage is amazing in evolutionary terms. They must have evolved from ancestors that did have tadpoles. This makes them especially interesting for research. I hope we don't render them extinct first.
Honolulu's ban on sleeping in the center of the city chased homeless people into other neighborhoods, so now it bans them there too.
The officials say this is ok because non-homeless people, even tourists, are also fined for sleeping on beaches and sidewalks. But that is no excuse for persecuting the homeless. If businesses find homeless people unsightly, they should pay for a place for them to live.
Shame on you, Honolulu.
Everyone: call for dropping charges against family members for cheering at the the high school graduation of their relative.
US citizens: call on Obama to fully admit the scope of CIA torture, and prosecute the torturers.
Everyone: call on Uzbekistan to free Muhammad Bekzhanov.
US citizens: tell the FCC to support cable build-outs, not buyouts.
Can't afford to buy a meeting with Hillary Clinton? Use Hillstarter to find 10,000 friends to buy it with you.
The juvenile "justice" system of Chicago seems to make things worse: its interventions seem to make teenagers more likely to be imprisoned later as adults.
"Why ban laughing gas? All the best things in life are psychoactive."
In Colorado, a school lunch manager has been fired. She gave adequate lunches to children with no money.
Denying children proper nutrition can stunt them for life. Republican legislators are responsible for this: stunting poor children for life is what their philosophy is about.
A London resident has been convicted of "terrorism" for making (while in Syria) antivehicle mines that were used by the Iraqi resistance against US vehicles.
That was not terrorism, that was war. It is ridiculous to lay charges of terrorism for making munitions for use for fighting soldiers.
If he is a UK citizen, perhaps it would be valid to accuse him of treason or aiding the enemy.
"No mother should have to fear that the police will harm her mentally ill child."
Most thugs, on encountering someone with a mental illness, adopt course of action that predictably advances to violence against that person. The sick person often ends up beaten, imprisoned, or dead.
Similar results occur when the object of thugs' attentions is sane but doesn't understand the local language, or is listening to music through headphones.
People have been convicted in court for disobeying thugs' orders that they cannot possibly have heard.
Pakistan is advancing against polio as its troops advance against the Taliban.
Former chairman of Shell calls for divestment from Shell and other fossil fuel companies.
Florida thugs killed a black man for carrying a BB rifle behind and across his back. Then they lied about the circumstances.
On seeing a man who apparently had a rifle, but not in position to fire it, why did the thugs shoot him?
Everyone: call on Ban Ki Moon to speak in favor of freedom of political activity in India.
The law is an ass again: a woman who invited a teenage boy to have sex (and he did, 4 times) has been sentenced to years in prison for "sexual abuse".
He did not live in her household. Evidently he repeatedly made arrangements to suffer this "abuse". The code word "grooming" probably means, in this case, what we normally call "asking for a date". While I can only guess the specifics, I speculate that he never complained about this "abuse", and the relationship was discovered in some other way.
I wish an attractive woman had "abused" me that way when I was 14. I would have learned many important things and had a much happier life.
The one truly bad accusation against her is that she tried to protect herself by claiming he had raped her. Nothing can excuse that betrayal; but if the law were not an ass about the other things, she would not have faced the temptation to do that.
Bernie Sanders' achievements as mayor of Burlington, VT, show how he directs growth in a way that helps everyone.
The Obama regime can prosecute you for deleting your browser history.
The FBI's policy statement about use of surveillance drones is worthless because it is vague and there is no accountability.
Parts of Professor Kipnis's article about how she was accused of sexual harassment for publishing an article about the unjust way universities handle such accusations.
She further describes a massive witch hunt that has professors self-censoring from fear.
College students should not ask or expect to be coddled in their studies. Whatever issues are discussed in class, they should not be grounds to accuse a professor, or a student.
The residents of Inkster will have to pay a special one-time tax to cover the costs of reparations to Floyd Dent, who was beaten badly by a thug.
If the residents don't like paying this, they should take steps to ensure thugs won't do such things again.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to support the McClintock-Polis bill that would make the federal government stop interfering with state-legal marijuana.
US citizens: tell Congress to preserve the Endangered Species Act, by rejecting Rand Paul's bill (and other bills) meant to render it ineffective.
US citizens:
ask your congresscritter to cosponsor
the Pathogen
Reduction and Testing Reform Act of 2015. It would enable the USDA to
order recall of chicken contaminated with some dangerous bacteria.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress
oppose undersea oil drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US Trade Representative to show us what he has been telling the banksters about the TPP ( treacherous plutocratic poison ).
US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to end sweetheart deals for Big Oil.
Obama has rebuked Netanyahu, saying that Netanyahu appears to rule out peace with Palestine.
Uri Avnery has told us for years that that is the case.
In response, Netanyahu hopes to convince the world to see the Palestinians' boycott campaign as a "strategic threat", rather than the nonviolent movement that it is.
Please do not be fooled. South Africa could just as easily have made the same absurd claim.
A major Indonesian paper company says it will stop destroying forests, but the government still has not acted.
Thugs with hammers attacked the office of the Committee Against Torture in Chechnya.
I call them "thugs" because they were surely working for the state.
The US tries to paper over PISSI's recent victories by counting its casualties.
It makes no difference how many PISSI fighters are killed if PISSI can recruit replacements for them. PISSI will have no trouble doing so as long as Iraqi Sunnis believe they have no other choice. Reportedly PISSI now includes all the forces that were fighting against the US-unleashed Iraqi government ten years ago.
To defeat PISSI requires giving the Iraqi Sunnis a safe way out. The Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi government is hardly even trying to do that.
Ukrainians search Russian social networks to document the soldiers that Russia has sent to fight in Ukraine.
Captured soldiers, fighting in uniform, should not be tried as "terrorists". They are prisoners of war. Stretching the meaning of "terrorism" is an affront to human rights, no matter which country does it.
US education, and political life, add up to a big scam.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 877-852-4710 to denounce all the proposed corporate power agreements including the TPP, TISA and TTIP.
"Free trade" is bad, since it makes countries compete to allow worse treatment of workers, when each ought to be doing its best to insist on better treatment for its workers. But these treaties go much further and therefore are far worse, since they give companies power over human beings.
A last-gasp attempt to present denial of global heating in scientific guise roves to be based on gross errors.
Paris Climate Pledges 'Will Only Delay Dangerous Warming by Two Years'.
Graduating students that accept jobs doing evil are choosing to be corrupted.
While the article refers to becoming a bankster, it applies just as much to going to work on proprietary software. The two evils are different in detail, but that is not significant.
The Erdogan regime, going a little beyond Obama's example, has charged an editor with espionage.
The Obama regime charges only their sources, not the journalists themselves, but the effect is the same.
Thugs suffocated Robert Minjarez by sitting on his back and squeezing the breath out of him. He managed to say, a few times, that he was suffocating, until he could not get enough breath to say any more.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro is not afraid to denounce Obama's subservience to business.
Sudan confiscated editions of ten newspapers, and shut four of them permanently.
Part of London is planning to fine homeless people for sleeping.
Since homeless people are generally broke and can't pay fines, I can only suppose this is meant as an excuse to jail them. Since the UK fines people for having been jailed, they will be jailed for life, or until the government decides to forget the accrued fines.
If thousands of homeless Britons choose to pack the jails, as blacks packed the jails in the south during the civil rights movement, they might force an end to this system.
The EFF prefers to see the positive side of the "USA Freedom Act": it represents a step in the right direction, compared with a week ago.
I see the negative side: it is a step in the wrong direction, compared with the actual situation today.
The result is that we have made only a small step in reducing the US government's power of massive surveillance, which threatens democracy.
Boston thugs say video shows Usaama Rahim was charging at them with a knife when they shot him.
Even practiced liars sometimes tell the truth, but they should show us the video rather than expecting us to take their word for it.
NATO bombing destroyed Libya's water management system.
I can't see proof here about whether it was intentional or careless.
The lack of electricity in Gaza can be fatal. It is always an injustice.
The FBI operates over 100 surveillance planes that capture video over US cities and sometimes track all cell phones.
US citizens: support reform of how GMO foods are regulated.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the 90 billion dollar Pentagon slush fund.
US citizens: support a constitutional amendment to roll back the Corporations United decision.
That case is usually referred to as "Citizens United" after the dishonest name used by the organization. I see no reason why we should repeat their falsehoods.
US citizens: phone the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and insist that it move away from extreme fossil fuels.
Watch out for eye-tracking devices; they could be used to put you at a disadvantage.
The Makoko Floating School prevented the slum clearance of the entire Makoko floating neighborhood in Lagos.
The extreme of criminalizing homelessness: in 2014, Albuquerque thugs shot and killed a homeless man for camping in the desert.
The US Supreme Court ruled that talking about doing violence to
someone does not count as a threat unless it is
intended
as a threat.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
However, it left unclear the question of how to decide what counts as a threat.
When thugs arrested Ginnifer Hency for possession of marijuana, they took away lots of her property, including her children's phones.
Charges were dropped because her medical marijuana is legal, but she can't get her property or her children's property back.
Without section 215, the US government still has tremendous surveillance powers.
Rather than surrendering to the fear Obama and his henchmen are spreading, we need to curb surveillance further. In some cases we need to make the state obey its laws.
The coup-installed rulers of Honduras are facing massive condemnation for taking social security funds for campaigns.
Protesters blockaded a coal conference in London.
US citizens: support requiring labeling of meat raised with routine use of antibiotics.
In TPP countries: Tell your trade minister, don't let TPP overwrite our laws.
List of TPP countries:
ACLU: NSA Surveillance: The Scandal is the Use, Not the Abuse.
"Echo chambers" with little scientific input enable politicians to close their ears to evidence about global heating.
This is not an accident, however; for a right-wing politician who as adopted denialism, it's a means to an end.
US citizens: phone your senators and tell them to reject any "compromise" to bring back some of the massive surveillance that was just ended.
Here's more about how this "compromise" would be a step back from where we are now.
Senator McConnell is trying to make it even worse.
50 years before John Kiriakou, Anthony Russo tried to report on how the CIA tortured prisoners in Vietnam.
However, his report never reached the public.
Clinton is selling meetings for thousands of dollars.
When people argue that a supreme being exist, what they really want is to believe someone powerful is going to make things come out ok for them.
Do mindclones deserve human rights?
I think it depends on how deep the cloning goes. A mockup of a person is just a proxy, but a download of a person is a person.
Shell sponsored an exhibit about climate in the Science Museum in London, then tried to use its influence to hush up the danger of global heating.
Meanwhile, the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History both have a Koch brother on the board of directors.
It is not too late to sign the petition.
The infamous Khan Academy, which develops online courses and releases them under a nonfree license, also applies for software patents.
They do NOT deserve your good opinion.
Russia has ordered ISPs to block access to a site that gives advice about how to get around internet censorship.
Instead of "compromises",
we need
a new Church committee
to get to the bottom of US intelligence criminality.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Comparing the response to computer security flaws today with the response to the Tylenol murders around 1980.
Colombia's former intelligence chief is being tried for helping a drug gang assassinate a presidential candidate.
Obama tries to take credit for ending bulk collection of Americans' phone calls, while refusing to reconsider that Snowden deserves merit for revealing the illegal practice.
Wearable or implanted, devices with nonfree software are a plan to data-mine your body. If you're fool enough to use such devices with nonfree software in them.
The Supreme Court ruled against a company that refused to hire a woman because she wore a headscarf for religious reasons.
US companies are far too intrusive about their employees' looks, especially about female employees. Nonreligious people need protection from this too.
Sweden is giving new fathers 3 months of paid parental leave, to go with paid leave for mothers.
The reason why parental leave is important is so that newborn people get a good start on life. Likewise for other programs that support families; skimping on a child's nutrition, medical care, education or causing stress can cause irreparable lifelong harm.
These programs may also encourage some people to have more children. This is a negative effect, but surely small by comparison with the good done for children. We can easily overcome it through birth control assistance to the poor.
Global heating is tied to the position of the jet stream, which leads to blizzards and floods in the US and Europe.
In the US, 15% of whites killed by thugs were unarmed. 32% of blacks killed by thugs were unarmed.
A one-off victory over NSA surveillance is likely to get smaller: the US Senate is on the way to pass the "USA FREEDOM Act" which makes inadequate changes.
But the NSA might not even obey these changes. If so, how will be find out? We will need another hero…another Snowden.
Phone call records tracking is just one element of massive surveillance. We need to organize a stronger movement to limit other forms of pervasive surveillance. We need to require redesign of digital systems so that they don't accumulate dossiers about people in general.
Please join me in rejecting Facebook and Amazon. Support your local physical stores, and protect your privacy, by paying cash to buy things.
Jeb Bush is in bed with coal companies.
Managers at Rana Plaza forced workers to enter the building despite visible cracks in its structure. They are being charged with murdering over 1000 of those workers.
Rwanda's government has banned local BBC broadcasting in objection to a documentary which suggested that the victims of the 1994 mass murder included Hutus as well as Tutsis.
I have seen claims that the distinction between Tutsis and Hutus was created by the British colonial rulers, who desired a privileged minority to help rule the rest of the population. I don't know enough about that subject to judge whether that is true.
Rwanda's government seems to manage the country well, but disrespects human rights.
Prisoners Australia sends to Nauru have only the most basic medical care.
Genetic engineering could be used to elevate the baseline happiness of humans, so that no one would suffer depression.
There may be some beneficial concomitant to the genes that make people vulnerable to depression. Otherwise they'd probably be eliminated.
The CIA punished one of its interrogators for cooperating with an internal probe of CIA torture.
"Go to any predominantly minority neighborhood in any major American city and you'll hear the same stories: decades of being sworn at, thrown against walls, kicked, searched without cause, stripped naked on busy city streets, threatened with visits from child protective services, chased by dogs, and arrested and jailed not merely on false pretenses, but for reasons that often don't even rise to the level of being stupid."
The fraction that get killed by thugs are the tip of the iceberg, but they keep civil rights defenders busy; millions of attacks and arrests of black citizens who can't do anything about it.
It starts with racist policies in thug departments, covered by the figleaf of "stop and frisk" policies, continues through systematic false accusations by thugs, and they bury complaints as a condition of dropping the false charges.
A UK thug has been sentenced to prison for attacking a student protester.
Many other thugs did likewise but have not been charged.
I would not believe any accusations that thugs make against protesters. A thug is simply not a trustworthy witness.
Landlords are driving the quirky unique stores out of the West Village in New York City, by raising their rents.
The landlords would rather have the store stay empty for many years, hoping to land the jackpot of a super-chic store. The result, ironically, is to eliminate what made the neighborhood desirable in the first place.
Bohemians can find another place to live, but it will probably be at the end of a painfully long subway ride followed by a bus ride or two.
Hackers did an intentionally incompetent scientific study, then used the real (but random) results to "prove" to mass media that chocolate helps people lose weight.
Chicago thugs appear to have deleted security camera video footage showing how thugs killed Laquan McDonald.
Republican tax cuts are bad for employment. They don't deliver the "trickle down" benefits that supposedly justify them. They don't even boost the stock market.
Of the ten US states where people are most miserable and discouraged, 9 are ruled by Republicans.
Bernie Sanders champions the "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions.
In addition to collecting money from speculators, it will discourage high-frequency trading, which will reduce instabilities in the stock market.
US politicians choose from a spectrum of possible falsehoods about Dubya's invasion of Iraq, because they don't want to admit that we knew at the time that it was wrong.
For nuclear powers to continue holding nuclear weapons is not "realistic" politics, rather an act of faith that we will never have an accident, or an accidental nuclear war.
If humans were "intelligently designed", the designer was incompetent.
Since Uber pays drivers peanuts, let's call it: Goober.
The US is advancing its plan to let one judge authorize the state to break security on any and all computers anywhere.
Santa Clara County pays dearly to repress the homeless instead of housing them.
Mohammed Soltan was sentenced to life imprisonment in Egypt for the crime of journalism. He launched a hunger strike, and after 16 months has been exiled to the US.
Many others imprisoned in Egypt for the same crime have not had such luck.
French workers fight to their 35-hour work week, more or less.
In the US, where the government has abandoned workers, the 40-hour work week has been lost.
Limiting the work week is a way to give employment to more people. If the minimum wage and other public services (including medical care and education) are sufficient, it reduces poverty.
With all the increased efficiency of 60 years of technological advance, should poor Americans have to work longer hours now just to get by? That is a sign of the wrongs of our plutocratic government.
Businesses argue, "If you do this, you will lose the competition against other countries that allow businesses to make workers work longer and spread poverty there." I turn this around, and ask, why do those governments serve their people badly? Obviously, because they are taking the advice of those businesses.
Instead of corporate-power treaties such as TPP, we need workers-power treaties that will punish governments that don't support their own people against dooH niboR (Robin Hood in reverse).
In the temperature and humidity of the Indian heat wave, physical labor without air conditioning is dangerous, but poor people can't afford to miss work. Thus, the dead are not limited to the old and sick.
We must politicize disasters, such as the floods in Texas, that result from political decisions.
The UK government changing the law to make it very hard for unions to strike. Also, harder for unions to donate to a political party (but it's easy for rich people to donate).
Stephen Hawking says that a student today with his medical problems would not get the support needed to be able to study.
Israel Thanks Obama for Sabotaging Nuclear Nonproliferation Deal.
What Moby Dick Can Teach Us About the War on Terror.
Professor Kipnis published an article about the injustice of Title IX sexual harassment accusations in US universities; in response, students filed Title IX accusations against her claiming that her article was sexual harassment.
I wish we could read her second article, which describes these events, but it seems to be paywalled. The article I've referred to is a stand-in for her inaccessible article.
T. H. White's book, The Making of the President 1960, led to intense scrutiny of insignificant details of the lives of candidates, which he later regretted.
More criticism of the effects of that book.
Bernie Sanders represents mainstream American views, rather than the right-wing positions of mainstream American media.
A woman called for help, non-emergency, for her boyfriend who was talking about suicide. She didn't say she was in any danger. Thugs with rifles responded, and shot him dead.
Washington Bans Political Ads From Public Transit.
[Hurricane] Sandy Victims
Say
Low-Income Residents Got 'Screwed' By
[New Jersey Governor] Christie's Recovery Programs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
America's Growing Inequality Worsens In One's Senior Years.
Budget cuts in the IRS have damaged its ability to handle and prevent increasing digital fraud against taxpayers.
Net Neutrality — Is The European Parliament Ready to Accept Complete Failure?
A disturbingly plausible AI story: The Counselor.
CRPE is a secretive right-wing-linked group of school districts that wants to pay less to school districts whose students don't do well.
To a large extent, the reason the students don't do well is that they grow up in poverty, in a neighborhood afflicted by poverty. Thus, this is another form of dooH niboR.
Verizon cable TV snoops on what programs people watch, and even what they wanted to record.
UK plans to limit welfare benefits threaten to push 40,000 more children into poverty.
The charges against ex-Congressman Hastert illustrate how the US has become over-criminalized.
Malware in phones can track people through the subway using accelerometers.
Nigeria has banned female genital mutilation.
A lot more struggle will be needed to end the practice.
The US corporate media are promoting the fear campaign to extend the PAT RIOT Act.
On the legal reasoning that led to the acquittal of Thug Brelo.
I would not say the reasoning is wrong. If the charge was that Brelo individually was the killer of the two passengers, indeed that can't be proved. Perhaps it was the wrong charge. Would "attempted murder" have been provable?
Is it generally the case that when several shooters hit a person who is killed by their bullets, none of them can be convicted of murder?
North Carolina's gag bill would go well beyond agriculture: it would criminalize investigation into nursing homes and day care centers too.
Most US schools have "shooting drills" even though being killed at school is almost as unusual as getting struck by lightning. When done vividly, these drills traumatize students.
I suspect that these drills spread the sort of irrational fear that leads to arresting parents that let children be alone.
Perhaps schools should have lightning drills instead.
France says that climate summits depend on fossil fuel companies' money.
This is ridiculous. Governments have the money for this. If they want to get these funds from fossil fuel companies, they should cut the subsidies to those companies.
After a contrived mixup in court, Rafael Marques de Morais has been given a suspended sentence over nothing, so that the government of Angola can imprison him any time he writes something disturbing.
Jeb Bush Cosies Up to Coal Industry Barons at Closed-Door Meeting.
Amnesty says that most civilian casualties in Sana'a are caused by anti-aircraft rounds that fall to the ground in some other part of the city.
I wonder what measures other armies take to prevent this sort of casualties which would most often happen to the civilians on their own side.
Chilean abortion rights activists make mock "tutorials" on dangerous ways to try to do an abortion without medical help.
An effective movement against poverty needs to be lead by people who have experienced it. Only they know how to win support from other poor people.
The article misses one point, however. An effective movement against poverty has to fight for abortion rights. Saddling a poor family with another baby is a sure route to poverty, and that extra baby will experience life-long the stunting caused by childhood poverty.
China will "phase out" manufacture and sale of ivory products. It will be good, if they don't take too long about it.
See how US senators and representatives voted on bills to hold companies accountable for their wrongdoing and limit their political influence.
Jeffrey Spector, age 54, lived in the UK, but he had to move to Switzerland to kill himself rather than become hopelessly paralyzed.
AT&T wants to violate network neutrality by having data caps count some video sites and not others.
Cattle and chicken farms promote, to children, a mythical picture of happy animals eating the locally produced sustainable plants.
Propping up this myth are the ag-gag bills that make it a crime to document how farms are really run.
Idaho's ag-gag bill was written by factory farm owners.
A UN report says that governments should respect and encourage encryption.
Women were blocked from voting in the most fundamentalist parts of Pakistan.
Restrictions on smoking in the UK seem to have avoided 11000 hospitalizations of children per year. This is because children are less exposed to second-hand smoke now.
Laws to protect whales apply to drones as well as to aircraft.
This seems correct to me.
Low oil prices are cutting back extraction of highly polluting tar sands oil. Protests and public opposition may be helping.
After the senate refused to renew the PAT RIOT Act, another bill proposes to "improve" it by giving the surveillance state even more power.
And there's another one.
Reddit censors comments in a subtle way: they are visible to those who posted them, but not to anyone else.
The UK plans to block sale of all "legal highs", as well as nitrous oxide.
Some of these chemicals are dangerous, but some are not. In particular nitrous oxide is hardly dangerous at all. There is no need to ban it, just educate people in how to use it safely.
The law would interfere with research into brain function.
This law would be incoherent; really they need to ban neurotransmitters.
In the UK: support the Open Rights Group's campaign against increased (and almost unlimited) surveillance power.
US citizens: call on Congress to fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Everyone: call on the World Bank to throw out the mining company's case against El Salvador.
US citizens: call on Bernie Sanders to talk about cutting the Pentagon budget.
The UK government has dismissed Seaman McNeilly's report of safety violations in nuclear missile submarines in a blanket, incredible fashion.
Media make a mountain out of the US debt, to distract from real mountains such as workers' need for more pay.
The Cleveland thugs have agreed to stop hitting people on the head with their guns.
In addition, thugs will be supposed to report when they point guns at people. Not counting the SWAT team, which probably does this most often.
Human traffickers now hold thousands of prisoners in cargo ships and ransom them to their relatives.
They have turned into the equivalent of ancient pirates, who captured people and either ransomed them or sold them into slavery.
Countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation got approval for arms deals from Secretary of State Clinton.
Proposed export restrictions for information about security holes could put security researchers in prison.
I think there should be some laws about how to give notice about security holes, but they should be designed so that honest security research is not criminalized.
I am disappointed that the article uses the term "open source" which is a way to talk about free software and downplay its implications about human rights.
In Japan, players are getting arrested for cheating at video games. So are developers of cheating software.
This is very dangerous, since next they will prosecute people for developing software to break DRM — as the US did to Dmitri Sklyarov.
If you have a program running on your computer, you must be free to change it.
News Flash: The Charter-Time Warner Cable Merger Will Benefit Execs, Burden the Rest of Us.
The SPEAK FREE Act would protect Americans from frivolous lawsuits aimed to censor them.
We also need protection from frivolous DMCA takedown demands aimed to censor us.
What should it mean to protect the privacy of students in school?
I think that schools should not be allowed to hand any information about any students to anyone, outside of certain specific exceptions (reports to parents, and responses to subpoenas). Even making an account in a student's name on some company's server violates the student's privacy.
Putin declared it is a crime in Russia to report the death of a soldier.
This is to repress reports from relatives of the soldiers that are killed fighting secretly in Ukraine.
The Sri Lankan army took the land of many Tamils, decades ago, and is using it for civilian business.
The Trade in Services Agreement would prohibit signatory states from insisting on running free software.
As well as other bigger nasty things.
Canada's Plan to Make Boycotting Israel a 'Hate Crime' is Stupid and Counterproductive. (It also violates fundamental human rights.)
It is important to note the difference between the boycott of Israel's colonies in Palestine and products made in them, advocated by Gush Shalom, and the Palestinians' BDS movement, which applies to all Israeli companies and all Israeli institutions except those that denounce the occupation. The Israeli government treats them both the same, and subjects anyone who advocates either one to the danger of being sued into bankruptcy.
Ireland is prosecuting a police officer for talking to journalists to reveal wrongdoing by the thug department.
By refusing to support thugs when they don't deserve it, he merits the title of "police officer".
A record-breaking heatwave in India has killed at least 1500 people.
Public opposition made Israel back down from its plan to exclude Palestinians from buses headed from Israel to Palestine.
The Israeli government includes many overtly racist ministers who completely reject the idea of a state of Palestine alongside Israel.
Israeli soldiers told a Palestinian family they would arrest the 14-year-old boy if he is standing outside his house when someone throws stones.
When Israelis throw stones at the Palestinians, the soldiers look the other way.
If you want to watch some of the youtube videos, please don't do it direct from the site — that involves running nonfree software. Instead, use the youtube-dl script as described in that reference.
Everyone:
call
on Mexico to bring torturers to justice.
How senate votes were
bought
for Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
The UK government wants the state to
monitor
the contents of your phone calls and other communications, not
only who you talk with.
This follows the examples of
Australia
and
France
in giving authorizing total state surveillance.
All these governments justify total surveillance by pointing at
smaller dangers, such as the occasional religious fanatic.
The EU Climate Commissioner's meetings are mainly with
fossil
fuel and heavy industry lobbyists.
Blacklisted
Workers Seek to Prise Open Secrets of Covert Police Surveillance.
A skull from 430,000 years ago shows
evidence
of murder with a blunt object.
The cave where 28 skeletons were found also shows evidence of funeral
practices.
This does not surprise me, since humans kill each other, and so do
chimpanzees. In the case of chimpanzees, it is typically a group that
does the killing, and that is common for humans too. It seems
plausible that the common ancestor of the two species did this also.
However, the different example of bonobos show that another way
exists.
Peru will
continue
to ban abortions for women who have been raped, as well as
refusing to give them emergency contraception.
PISSI said it
will
destroy only the statues in ancient Palmyra.
This is a sign of the beginning of willingness to compromise with
civilization.
Is Israel looking for a war to
kill
the nuclear agreement with Iran?
If accumulating arms were a crime, Israel would be as guilty as
Hezbollah. As for what they do with arms, both of them tend to commit
war crimes such as firing on civilians. Let's try to discourage them
from fighting each other.
Don't imagine that non-rich people ate healthy, home-cooked meals
before the 20th century. Even in Europe, food was
often
lousy and insufficient, and in cities it was often some kind of
fast food.
Italians often suffered from hunger until 1960, according to Delizia
by John Dickie; the first place that Italians who were not rich were
able to eat as they thought they should was in the US (but only for
Italians who had moved there).
This fact doesn't negate the real problems of today's food system.
US citizen Sharif Mobley was disappeared by the Yemeni government with
US backing, then his prison was bombed by Saudi Arabia with US
backing. In effect, the US has
arranged
to kill him.
Mobley faced charges in Yemen, but even if he was guilty, it can't
justify this.
Another Bangladeshi secularist has received
death
threats.
Norway's national pension fund said it would divest from coal, but
actually it
moved
the money from coal mining to coal burning (and increased it).
The German court case about
relaying
orders through Germany to drones bombing Yemen has been dismissed.
"Zero tolerance" at work: graduating students face
prosecution
for sneaking into school and releasing thousands of ladybugs.
The school's principal must be truly dedicated to cruel rigidly to
think that this called for prosecution, or any punishment.
Ladybugs do not hurt or bother humans; on the contrary, they eat other
insects. They are pretty, and most people are delighted to see them.
Seeing a school corridor with lots of ladybugs must be almost like
visiting the monarch butterfly sanctuary.
It is not clear to me why they thought they had to vacuum up the
ladybugs, rather than let them fly out the windows and eat other
insects in the neighborhood. Perhaps that too was an example of
mental rigidity: "The school has to be clean for graduation!"
American schools have become institutions to inculcate
subservience
to cruel and rigid authority. This example shows how
"zero
tolerance" feeds into the
school-to-prison
pipeline.
We must hold individual
banksters and
criminal banks accountable for their crimes.
They commit lots of crimes.
The Iraqi government labeled its attempt to reconquer Anbar province
with a
Shi'ite
sectarian slogan. This will reaffirm to the Sunnis of Anbar that
they have to support
PISSI.
It will be extremely hard to defeat PISSI except by giving Sunnis a
way to stop supporting it.
Requirements that make work "family-friendly"
can
have costs for workers.
Sometimes the policies are worth the costs; also, the article mentions
ways to fix the policies so as to avoid the problems.
An Russian opposition leader fell ill suddenly, and
poison
is suspected.
Memo
to Jeb Bush: Denying Human-Caused Global Warming Is Ignorant.
Several former State Department officials have resigned to become
lobbyists
for plutocratic treaties.
Time Warner Cable now proposes
another
megamerger.
When companies are this big, their mergers are harmful in general and
always be blocked in general. But we might be able to avoid the
problem entirely with a
progressive
tax on company income.
The war in Yemen has
destroyed
the water supply for 16 million people.
Global heating is expected to bring more droughts and bigger
rainstorms to many parts of the US. Texas got a
drought,
followed by floods.
The Tories' law, supposedly to protect workers with zero-hours
contracts, is so
weak
that their employers' will hardly notice it.
Dubya's lies, the excuses for attacking Iraq (and eventually creating
PISSI), were
worse
than ordinary lies. They played on the fears of Americans who
were already traumatized, thus doing wrong to them.
Shell wants investors to
"bet
against the world".
Ireland's vote to allow gay marriage has been a
big
shock to the Catholic Church. It can't see how to deal with this.
Two
previous mass extinctions seem to have included global heating
caused by burning lots of fossil fuel (all the world's forests).
It took millions of years for the ecosphere to recover.
A sex worker in Northern Ireland will
sue
to overturn the law making it a crime to do business with her.
I don't know whether her case has a chance, but I think
justice
is on her side.
Indian teenage women are
starting
to fight back against marriages arranged without asking them.
International banks are
refusing
to fund the new Australian giant coal mine.
Surely Australian banks realize it is against their interest to do so.
Why have they not ruled it out? Perhaps they are being pressured by
the Australian government, which will stop at nothing to destroy
Earth's ecosphere.
Officials of FIFA, the world football association, have been accused
of taking a
hundred
million dollars in bribes.
Bribery aside, FIFA and Qatar are
made
for each other.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to take firmer measures against smuggling ivory into the
US.
US citizens:
call on President
Obama to appoint SEC commissioners that are not subservient to
banksters.
Denton, Texas, is
not
going to surrender quietly to fracking.
Most
Glaciers in Mount Everest Area Will Disappear with [Global
Heating].
Outsourcing
Can Often Increase Public Service Costs, Not Cut Them.
In addition, it puts the company's owners in the position to profit by
making
the privatized functionaries do a bad job. It also
reduces
accountability, since the laws about accountability often apply
only to state agencies and state employees.
Now that US college graduates can no longer generally expect good
incomes, increasing numbers of them can't repay their college loans.
This creates a crisis for the school loan system. The US tries to
shore up the system by
getting
more rigid with students.
The UK likes to pass laws to authorize more surveillance and attacks
on people's computers in a quiet way.
Public
debate about these issues is called for.
If computers and algorithms control your life in
inexplicable and perhaps cruel ways, don't blame the computers.
Blame
the bureaucratic company or agency which set them up to impose its
goals and cloud its policies.
The
"opentable"
web disservice tracks people's use of restaurants while
encouraging them to spend more.
I'd reject opentable for its surveillance, but I suspect
that I'd have to reject it for
nonfree
Javascript code first.
A Canadian mining company's private thugs killed a Guatemalan community
activist; now
his
widow is suing that company.
The hope is that this will make international companies less arrogant
about the lives of local people.
Farms in California irrigate crops with toxin-laden
oil
field waste water.
Has it been established whether the food grown this way has
significant levels of toxins?
Stop calling the TPP a "trade" treaty. It's about
privileges
for foreign corporations.
The mayor of Oakland is serious about
limiting
local government surveillance to cases where it is specifically
justified.
The concept of an "Anthropocene" epoch has been seized on by a
cunning
distortion campaign which says it would be great for humans to
eliminate the natural world and control absolutely everything.
This is the danger that I warned of in the term
"Anthropocene".
India is planning to
double
or triple its use of coal by 2030.
The arguments in favor of this would be totally logical, if it were
not going to spike last chance of an agreement to avert global
disaster.
India won't be spared this disaster. Does it want to see Mumbai under
water along with its other coastal cities?
If governments of more powerful countries, such as the US, Australia,
Canada and the UK, were not in the grip of fossil fuel interests, they
could (and would) compel India to participate in carbon emissions
reduction. All it takes to build storage systems for solar
electricity is some money, and other countries should contribute to
that.
India also has a responsibility to curb its population growth, not
just project it up and up.
Hamas killed some of its Palestinian prisoners while Israel was
attacking, some of whom had been
previously
tortured.
Pipeline company Kinder Morgan
hired
off-duty thugs to "deter protests".
It should change its name to Unkinder Morbid.
Protests
have made the University of Edinburgh agree to divest from some large
fossil fuel companies.
This replaces a policy of "engagement" with them, an approach that is
as useless with those looters as it is with a gang of
narcotraffickers.
Making life nasty, brutish and short for the unemployed is a route to
doing
the same for most of those who are employed.
Many of the prisoners freed from Boko Haram were under 5 years old.
The group
uses
children as suicide bombers, so all children are now suspect.
Angola has
cheated
on the deal to drop charges against journalist Rafael Marques de
Morais.
The Worst of All Possible Worlds:
Did
Market Leninism Win the Cold War?
The Justice Department has imposed reforms on the Cleveland thug
department, intended to curb its
rampant
violence.
However, since the previous set of reforms imposed 11 years ago didn't
solve the problem, what would enable this new set to do a better job?
Poachers
Killed Half Mozambique's Elephants in Five Years.
On Saturday May 30, join UK Uncut's
protest
against dooH niboR — planned budget cuts aimed at the non-rich.
US citizens:
tell
your congresscritter to protect fisheries management by opposing
HR 1335.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to stop corporate tax evasion through "inversions".
US citizens:
Oppose
Republican plans for sexual discrimination.
Japanese historians and foreign scholars
call
on Japan's prime minister to acknowledge Japan's wartime atrocity
of forcing women into prostitution for the army.
Increasing numbers of poor Britons are given fines they can't pay.
They are already
struggling
to pay for food. Ferguson shows where that road leads.
Riots in Baltimore are the real life equivalent of the Hunger Games.
Yet many white Americans identify with the oppressed people in the
hypothetical future Hunger Games world,
but
not in Baltimore.
In the US (and Europe),
stop
drinking bottled water!
The US Justice Department published a report saying that section 215
of the PAT RIOT Act did not produce "any major case developments". On
the same day, Attorney General Lynch
claimed
the FBI desperately needs section 215 because it has been important
for major cases.
What Lynch is doing is called "fear-mongering" and "lying".
Russians targeted by the regime report on the
hate
messages and threats that people are paid to send them.
Jammers can
stop
radio car locks from functioning, and some cars have no manual
keys to substitute for them.
Tylenol or paracetamol is
very
dangerous, and many people don't get much help from it.
I mostly don't use it.
Austerity especially targets children, and the effects of growing up
in poverty can
stunt
them for life.
BP tries to cut costs by keeping rarely used equipment for handling
oil spills
far
away from the places it may need to be used.
That's very efficient as long as nothing goes wrong. But if a well
near Australia blows, it would take weeks to bring that equipment to
the spill. This would guarantee a regional disaster before they can
even try to act.
Even if the equipment were stored nearby, a spill could still cause a
regional disaster, as shown five years ago in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP and its contractors will surely cut costs in other ways, while
lobbying for weak regulations to "reduce costs" — their
costs. What this really means is that they get the profits and the
whole world pays the eventual costs.
We need to leave
80%
of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Let's start with
undersea oil in places where a spill would pollute a clean area.
Mexico
City Taxi Drivers Stage Mass Protest over Uber.
There are
many reasons to boycott
Uber, but even if Uber stopped mistreating everyone else, I will
refuse to use Uber as long as it mistreats the customers by tracking
them.
Bonuses for oil executives are
directly
tied to spending a trillion dollars on projects to extract
difficult fossil fuels that ought not to be extracted at all.
Medical research on animals, including monkeys, is
crucial
for advances in human health care.
Save
the World's Small-Scale Farmers.
Obama celebrated Memorial Day by
claiming
that the US is not currently in a major war.
That seems to disregard the US bombing campaign in Syria and
Iraq, and the drone assassination campaign around the world.
2015
Memorial Day: Praying for Peace While Waging Permanent War?
Valerie
Tarico: Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice.
I am even more pro-abortion than that. Having a baby is dangerous for
the mother, and it contributes tp the population growth that
exacerbates many global problems. I encourage women to choose an
abortion rather than a baby.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Self-driving trucks could push 10 million Americans into unemployment in a few years.
Truck driving is the last form of work that provides a good income to people without college or professional degrees.
Meanwhile, Watch out for self-driving cars; they may be a surveillance system. Any car made by Google, Apple or Uber will tell a company where you go. We must not allow vehicles that track us to become the usual mode of travel.
Uber is already a surveillance system, which is one of many reasons why we should refuse to use it.
See surveillance vs. democracy for more about this point.
Killing the TPP might lead to less corporate-power items in future trade treaties.
China Warned Over 'Insane' Plans for New Nuclear Power Plants.
The Welfare State Saved Me. To Need It Isn't A Moral Failure.
Poverty is principally the fault of systems that shoot poverty arrows. Those who are more capable can dodge better, but anyone can get hit. Right-wing policy is to shoot more arrows.
The UK government has started limiting the offshoring of sales income, and Amazon has given up trying to evade it.
Australia's budget cuts hurt the poor most.
The NSA made a plan to find Osama bin Laden by putting spies in medical devices that he might get.
These people don't seem to consider what social systems they might poison.
Due to treaties (like the TPP) that give foreign investors special rights, foreign investment is now a direct threat to human rights.
Palestinian minors report how they were tortured in Israeli prisons.
As "free" countries' governments arrest whistleblowers and hacktivists, their legal defense campaigns are hampered as companies refuse to raise funds for those campaigns.
Growth At All Costs: Climate Change, Fossil Fuel Subsidies And the Treasury.
The FBI interrogated Matt DeHart about charges of "espionage", apparently giving him drugs that caused psychosis (which he didn't have before), then charged him with "child pornography".
That was 5 years ago. His case is still in process.
To prosecute anyone for seeking, receiving or possessing copies of some publication is extremely dangerous to a free society because it is easy for the state to plant them on people. Thugs used to plant drugs on people to jail them; now they need only plant some "child pornography" in a memory stick.
We must reject this witch hunt, and the fear-mongering that supports it.
When the border agents searched the reporter's car, it is possible that they were installing something nasty in the car or one of its computers. She now lives in Berlin.
Michael Robertson tried to make San Diego give him the records about tracking his car by its license plate, but he lost.
A county in California has used a stingray (which tracks all cell phones in the vicinity) 300 times and never asks for permission.
Everyone: tell Dow to
cancel its new toxic herbicide,
which combines
Roundup with Agent Orange.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The UN, directed by most of the world's countries, is pushing for a system of bankruptcy for countries.
I think a distinction should be made between debts contracted by democratic governments and debts contracted by dictators. It should be easy to repudiate the latter; that will teach banksters not to rush to make loans for tyrants to put in their pockets.
US citizens: phone your congressional representative
to oppose the TPP. Then use
this page
to send a message. The capitol switchboard number is (202) 224-3121.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
An experiment will use underwear with sensors to monitor the mental state of inmates of psychiatric hospitals.
To judge this ethically depends on the guidelines for treatment of the mentally ill, which are more or less reasonable, and on guidelines for respecting people's personal data, which are far too weak. Society has failed to establish is guidelines for the rights of computer users in general.
Wearable sensors should make their output directly available to the user, and to no one else except if the user supplies it. Companies should not be allowed to ask for that data as a condition for services.
Meanwhile, if this sensor-clothing is skintight, it could be painfully hot. I would rip it off just because of that.
US citizens: oppose the TPP as an obstacle to saving the Earth from global heating.
Republican opposition to Obama's medical insurance program is based on one simple goal: denying the Democratic party a success that could win support from millions of appreciative Americans.
The fact that they turned against the Massachusetts system, that Romney himself turned against his own success, demonstrates this.
Obama's law failed to get the insurance companies out of the system, so it did not reduce the costs, but it does provide medical care to millions of Americans who couldn't get it before (though not everyone).
You will now find Republicans and other right-wingers attacking it for the high costs, which it did not cause. But none of them wants the solution that will really reduce the costs: a National Health Service.
Economists report on how a treaty to give foreign corporations more power, such as the TPP, can do economic harm.
This is in addition to the other forms of injustice, such as bad copyright law, and forbidding many sorts of protection of the environment and public health.
It's not enough to punish criminal banks and banksters, even if it were done properly. We need to regulate the system so that they don't have an opportunity for crime.
Part of the necessary change is to eliminate complicated financial derivatives. The reason banksters create these is because nobody knows how to regulate them well enough to prevent the banksters from using them to cheat people.
We need to regulate banks to the point that being a banker is not an opportunity for creativity.
US citizens: if your senator voted for the "fast track" bill, phone and rebuke the senator.
Then phone your representative and say to vote against "fast track" and against all so-called "trade treaties".
US citizens: call on Congress to
reverse the Corporations United decision.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Officially it's called "Citizens United", but we should not repeat the falsehoods of the plutocrats.
Everyone: support the German campaign to end the US-German drone relay.
US citizens: call for restricting for-profit colleges.
US citizens: call on the US government to defy the WTO and maintain the requirement for country-of-origin labeling for meat.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the Shelby bill that gives Wall Street whatever it wants.
US citizens: call for strict requirements for in-situ leach mining for uranium.
The process spreads toxic minerals and chemicals as well as uranium in the ground.
Jailing banksters for their crimes is difficult, but Iceland proves it can be done.
If the system makes it too hard to assign responsibility for bankster crimes to individuals, we should change it to make that easy.
Republicans are starving Amtrak to force privatization.
I will not campaign for Amtrak because I condemn its surveillance. In fact, I refuse to use Amtrak until it sells tickets anonymously and I hope you will do the same.
Ukraine has made it illegal to criticize past national liberation groups which fought against the Soviet Union, and fought sometimes for the Nazis. These groups helped kill tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews.
Of course, any law making it illegal to criticize some group, person, belief or practice is incompatible with human rights. Making it illegal to criticize communism, or capitalism, are equally wrong.
New home rental companies package houses as a kind of stock shares. They act like bullies whenever a tenant is even a day late in paying rent.
Large parts of the US are badly prepared to cope with the severe earthquakes that they are likely to experience once in a rare while.
The CIA will end the "Medea" program that allows climate scientists to use secret US data from submarines and spy satellites for scientific purposes.
They should have called it "Cassandra", since the fossils that control our government ensure that the warnings climate scientists generate will be ignored.
The UK government, in the name of reducing poverty in other countries, donates money to help megacorporations take control of their economies.
One more indication of who that government really works for.
Court-imposed radio tracking of people is a sort of digital house arrest, and the tracking device causes injuries.
The article ends by changing the subject, suggesting that no one should ever be deported. This appears to claim that anyone who wishes to live in the US (or country C, whichever it is) must be allowed to do so. I don't agree with that position at all.
The UK right-wing is planning a new kind of "small government": it is small in spirit.
Edward Snowden says that eliminating section 215 of the PAT RIOT Act is only the beginning of what we need to do.
Here's my view of what we need to do.
Vietnamese children are smuggled into the UK as slaves. Probably into other countries as well.
I wonder why Vietnamese parents do not learn will really happen to their children if they accept this temptation. Who spreads the misinformation, and why isn't it countered?
The Treacherous Plutocratic Poison would give fossil fuel companies more power to block clean energy measures.
Joseph Stiglitz tears austerity to shreds.
It is interesting that, even in brute terms, the UK's economy is still doing worse than it was in 2007. But we should not make the mistake of thinking that per capita GDP is a good measure. When inequality is increasing, as nowadays, it overestimates the picture.
The US Secretary of Defense says that the Iraqi army abandoned Ramadi the same way it abandoned Mosul — it lost the will to fight.
I am glad to see frankness from the Obama regime for a change. Obama is resisting pressure from hawks that want the US to send an army to fight PISSI. That would be as futile as it was in 2005.
The only way to defeat PISSI is to give Sunnis in that region another alternative.
Senator McCain mocked Obama for calling [global heating] a worse threat.
Obama is right. What McCain ignores is that the civil war in Syria was caused by the effects of global heating. That gave the PISSI a place to move to, when it could not succeed in Iraq.
PISSI is an example of the wars that global heating will create, around the world, if we don't take the danger seriously.
Too bad Obama isn't taking the danger seriously in his policies.
Assad's TV says that PISSI has massacred 400 people in Palmyra.
That is not a reliable source, but I'd expect some massacres.
Assad has used chlorine bombs 35 times.
Unfortunately, "three strikes" laws apply only to people, not to banks.
Ethiopia held an "election" but the opposition is getting harassed.
There were large protests around the world against Monsanto and genetically modified crops.
Burma will put a limit on how often a woman can have children, in areas of high population growth.
It is wrong for people to have too many children, and it is irresponsible for poor people to do so. Thus, this law is basically justified. However, perhaps it is wrong to discriminate among people based on which region they live in.
If the state plans to enforce this, it had better provide women with modern, reliable birth control, and gratis abortion when necessary as a backup. It is wrong to punish people for something they are not in a position to avoid.
Many avenues are being pursued to reduce, eliminate or cure dengue fever.
One idea for stopping poaching of rhinos is to flood the market with artificial imitation rhino horn.
If the imitation is good enough to fool people, sellers will all switch to it. Since they are willing to wipe out a species illegally, they won't mind lying about the origin of their product. However, making the imitation that good may be difficult.
Qatar forbids Nepalese workers from going to Nepal for the funerals of their relatives.
Saudi Arabia and some other Middle East countries are sending lots of weapons to the non-PISSI enemies of Assad's Syrian government, which include al Qa'ida.
The head of an opposition party in Burundi was assassinated during a protest.
Some cities in the UK want to fine people for sleeping on the street.
Most of these people don't have money to pay the fines, so what will the cities do? Jail these people for a while, then demand they pay fees for being jailed, I suppose. Then they can jail these people again for not paying the fees.
Ira Glass, a major star on National Public Radio, wants stations to stop asking listeners to donate, and become "capitalist" instead.
This would formalize and complete the conversion of NPR into merely another business-controlled network. The change has already happened to a large extent; I noticed 20 years ago that NPR was playing commercials, and stopped donating.
Identifying and refuting common ways that US media sneakily advocate censorship of opinions.
Uri Avnery: The Israeli right wing is pushing Israeli democracy to the wall: intimidating the Supreme Court, breaking the media and converting schools into right-wing propaganda outlets.
Jews who want to live in a democracy need to find a new homeland.
Maryland's governor spent 30 million dollars on a jail for minors instead of schools.
With better schools, they might not need this jail for minors. But Republicans don't want to reduce crime — they want to be cruel to criminals. If there were no teenage criminals, they'd be unable to demonstrate toughness against them.
Existing "trade treaties" allow countries to sue against good laws, such as limiting tobacco to plain packaging and labeling meat by the country of origin.
New "trade" treaties will empower foreign companies to sue directly, if we don't defeat them.
Ireland voted to legalize same-sex marriage, with a majority of 60%.
Next step: freedom of abortion. Irish women are not incubators, any more than the rest of the world's women.
The US says PISSI is recruiting supporters in Afghanistan, and the Taliban does not like that.
In Michigan, fraudulent phony insurance agents swindle poor families, then the thugs complete the process by seizing their cars.
A thug charged with shooting dead two passengers trapped in a car that couldn't move has been acquitted of the ridiculously weak charge of involuntary manslaughter.
The legal system gives thugs so many levels of protection that it is hard to hold them responsible for even murder.
An Israeli judge ruled the army is allowed to expel the whole population of a Palestinian village. He lives in a nearby Israeli colony that grows by dispossession of Palestinians.
US citizens: call for a special prosecutor in Pasco to investigate the killing of Antonio Zambrano-Montes.
Union leader Gilberto Torres, who was kidnaped by Colombia's paramilitaries, is suing oil companies related to the Colombian company that arranged it.
The paramilitaries, which have support of the army and parts of the civilian government, are the worst terrorists in Colombia, much worse than the FARC.
The extinction of large animals in the Americas, Australia and Europe has been an ecological disaster. Humans helped kill them off. Now we are doing the same thing to Africa and Asia. The absence of large animals has drastic effects on the growth of forests.
Israel's foreign minister says the Palestinians' land belongs to Israel.
France will require large supermarket chains to give to charity whatever food they do not sell.
Google, Twitter and Facebook face pressure to impose censorship and surveillance for Russia, or else be totally blocked there.
Will they have the courage to refuse?
Opposition parties in Australia are organizing against the TPP.
A vulnerability in HTTPS servers was due to NSA meddling that weakened some of the software.
US citizens: call for banning elected judges from personally asking for campaign funds.
I think judges should not be elected at all.
US citizens: call on TV producers whose shows laud torture to say they recognize torture doesn't "work" to get the truth.
Torture would be wrong even if it did "work".
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban use of plastic microbeads in cosmetics and
products for people's skin.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama not to approve oil drilling in Arctic waters.
US citizens:
call on
Congress not to permit discrimination against employees for things
such as having abortion, using birth control, or doing in-vitro
fertilization.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to disapprove genetically engineered salmon.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: pledge to boycott Nestle water and tea until it stops bottling water in California.
Nestle water is sold under many other brands including Acqua Panna, Perrier, Poland Spring, San Pellegrino and several more.
All six of the thugs involved in the killing of Freddie Gray now face charges.
Being bankrupted by medical costs taught one Republican to support a national health service, and to stop being a Republican.
A woman in California could be cured of hepatitis C, but insurance won't pay for the superexpensive cure because she isn't sick enough yet.
To put an end to this, the US need a national health service.
The US pressures other countries to bow down to Monsanto, while Monsanto seeks an opportunity to stop pretending to be an American company.
Russian "public opinion" consists of lies that Putin's millions of supporters repeat, because they are happy to lie for Putin.
By contrast, US right-wingers really believe Dubya's lies about Iraq.
French Feminists Demand Rewording of 1789 'Rights Of Man' Declaration.
I've been bothered by this too, so speaking recently in France I decided to say "Droits de l'Humain" instead.
However, even more important than the sexist wording is the French state's failure to respect fundamental human rights, by making it a crime to insult some state officials or express certain opinions. Now a law to permit total surveillance is being pushed through.
One of the special advisors permitted to read the text of the TPP says that Obama is being more secretive about it than Clinton was about NAFTA. Even these advisors are not allowed to see the changes that are being made.
Their specific criticisms are private; in public, they are only allowed to say very vague things, so Obama dishonestly rebukes them for being vague.
This is where Obama shows he is an enemy of the American people.
NAFTA was a disaster. If the TPP is no worse than NAFTA, only bigger, it will be a bigger disaster.
An Australian law, to come into force in 2016, appears to ban teaching about encryption algorithms.
This could well prohibit hosting a mirror of any real GNU/Linux distro in Australia.
A proposed UN resolution would demand that Israel and Palestine agree on peace in 18 months.
It is not clear what the resolution would have the UN do if peace is not achieved in that time.
As Israel explicitly rejects peace, and tolerates advocacy of genocide against Palestinians, Canada says it will have "zero tolerance" for pressure on Israel.
Global heating's heat waves won't kill a lot of people directly in temperate zones.
That doesn't mean you should feel safe. Poverty kills a lot more people than heat waves.
Israel is contemplating attacking Hezbollah again, and has prepared its excuse to for killing and wounding lots of civilians.
The proffered grounds for the war are that Hezbollah has got more arms. Would it be legitimate for Hezbollah to attack Israel because Israel has more arms now? I don't think this excuse is valid in either direction.
Israel has ordered a whole village of Israeli Arabs to move so that it can settle Jews there.
Another Bedouin village in Israel has been demolished 83 times; each time, the inhabitants rebuild. Now they have been ordered to pay for the demolitions, which they can't possibly do.
This is like the fines for being jailed that keep poor people in Ferguson (and cities across the US) down.
The diplomatic and conceptual support of Israel's occupation of
Palestine is
the
pretense that Israel and Palestine have a symmetric relationship.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Refugees permitted into Australia are afraid to speak publicly about how Australia treats refugees.
PISSI has captured Palmyra and will probably soon destroy it.
This means PISSI now controls half of Syria.
The US Senate blocked extension of the "collect all business records" section 215 of the PAT RIOT Act. However, the leadership is pro-surveillance and will try again to push it through.
The big US banks pled guilty to tens of thousands of instances of perjury, but the penalty is a fine they can afford.
We need to jail these banksters.
An unofficial group puts voice recorders in cafes in New York, listening to people in the name of the NSA.
Wire snares set by human hunters maim animals from chimps to elephants.
Courts are slow to recognize that women that kill the men that abuse and enslave them are acting in self-defense.
Maryland's governer vetoed a bill to limit forfeiture (seizure of people's property without convicting them of a crime).
The governor said he was against "government over-reach".
A week after killing Tamar Rice, the thugs drew up a charge sheet of bogus accusations they would pretend to make against him.
In the UK, more than 2 million children's families have cut back on food, clothing or heating due to government cuts in welfare.
South Africa is proposing a law for arbitrary internet censorship orders.
Obama's task force on education recommends starting to step away from the "zero tolerance" attitude.
The article presents an instructive example of how zero tolerance turns into oppression.
The Wall Street Journal continues to promote the thoroughly discredited claim that punishing lots of minor infractions was responsible for the decrease in crime in NYC since the 90s.
The decrease occurred just as much in cities which didn't adopt that policy. Recently, as the thugs reduced their arbitrary searches of people on the street, crime continued to go down.
The Taliban and Iran are trying to reconcile their differences.
The UK government plans to impose prior censorship of TV broadcasts.
PISSI is using Palmyra to consolidate its grip on the surrounding region.
A long-time Guantanamo prisoner, recently freed, has died of kidney failure, apparently caused by his imprisonment.
Meditation has different effects on different people. The effects are not always good, and when good, they may not be very large. We don't know enough to forecast the what the effects will be for any particular person.
US fear-mongers and Hezbollah fear-mongers use the same arguments.
The Netherlands plans to ban face veils on public transport.
The details have not been written, but I fear they will ban hiding your face from face recognition software.
Science Seeks to Unlock Marijuana's Secrets.
RFID-sending trash cans could offer cities a new way to raise funds from inhabitants, and business will just love to sell them the technology.
Obama's new limits on military equipment for thugs turn out to mean nearly no change. Out of the 7 items he removed from the list, 6 have not been distributed recently anyway.
The military equipment that thugs use to regularly endanger citizens is still authorized.
Navy war games in the Arctic will harm the sea with toxins and loud sonar that damages whales' hearing.
The University of Hawai'i will divest from fossil fuels.
The EU was going to regulate or ban pesticides that contain endocrine disruptors, which cause illnesses in humans, but the US used the proposed TTIP deregulation treaty to kill the project.
Microsoft used its R&D facilities in England as weapons to pressure MPs against adopting ODF format.
The oil pipeline leak in California is much bigger that was thought. Many kinds of sea animals are being killed.
The operator, Plains All American, has a history of leaks and safety violations.
The spreading oil
will soon reach
threatened birds nests.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Dubya's CIA Deputy Director Morell said that Dubya misrepresented the CIA's intelligence briefing when he claimed that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.
That wasn't the only intentional lie used to justify conquering Iraq.
President Goodluck Jonathan, though he did not win reelection, succeeded in reforming the Nigerian army enough to start defeating Boko Haram. What the army needed was discipline and leadership.
However, it seems that Boko Haram is not defeated yet. It still holds thousands of female captives.
What about abortions for the females that have been freed? It is hardly a rescue if they are forced to give birth to rapists' babies.
Amnesty says Qatar has not improved much for foreign workers.
Revealed: BP's close ties with the UK government.
Sexual repression in Uganda is increasing; a singer faces prosecution for a music video clothed a la Lady Gaga.
Louisiana Governor Jindal made an executive order legalizing discrimination against same-sex marriage.
Books translated for publication in China may be quietly censored, without informing the authors.
Los Angeles has adopted a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
Charges against Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais have been dropped.
The FBI used the PAT RIOT Act to get "large collections" of data about Americans.
In the period 2007-2009 this was done 51 times.
A paralyzed man can control a robot arm usefully via a chip in his brain.
I wonder if this could work for people who are "locked in" and unable to communicate.
The Southern Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet started melting in 2009 and is now raising sea level by .16mm per year.
Obama recognizes that only Iraqis can liberate Iraq from PISSI.
Peter Greste is likely to be convicted of "terrorism" in absentia in Egypt; so he wants to testify by video in the hope of getting a just result.
To hope for justice in an Egyptian trial is silly, I must say. It is better for the rest of the world to spit whenever Egyptian trials are mentioned.
Writers call on Bangladesh to prosecute the murderers of writers and provide security to others.
Ukraine has banned advocating communism, and officially supported the pro-Nazi militias of World War II.
Russia is operating surveillance over Ukraine.
We must end deforestation before it pushes global heating to the point that it kills the remaining forests.
Gradual heating, at a time before humans filled the world's surface, would have caused forests to move. But no forest can move into a place occupied by agribusiness. Those forest species will instead go extinct.
Fossil politicians distort science about global heating, and compare the denialists with Galileo.
The comparison is interesting, because Galileo represented science, and the powers of the time were trying to suppress it. Today, nearly all climate scientists are Galileos and the powers, the fossil fuel companies and their pet politicians, are trying to suppress it.
Children who are bullied are more likely to be obese in middle age.
Executive stock options encourage executives to take foolish gambles with the company, since they gain if the gamble succeeds, but don't lose if the gamble fails.
It would be wise for Canada to abolish its tax exemption for executive stock options, but why not prohibit them entirely?
The US federal death penalty was largely a recent political creation, to enable Clinton to look tough. The result, recently, was to impose the death penalty on Massachusetts.
LA Minimum Wage Campaigners Target Nearby Cities After Winning $15 Fight.
An abortion harassment law in Tennessee requires doctors to give false information to women, then keep them waiting 48 hours.
The EU's latest plans endanger net neutrality in Europe.
Canadian scientists have publicly called on the government to stop
gagging them.
A lawsuit intended to force backpage.com to stop carrying escort ads
was defeated.
This is good, because the aim of the lawsuit was to hold the company
responsible for the fact that some escorts were trafficked. If the suit
had succeeded, no one would be able to publish ads for escorts that
are not trafficked.
An Iranian women's rights activist who criticized plans to restrict
birth control has been brutalized in prison and will probably be
sentenced to a long prison term.
Making it a crime to insult someone, whether the supreme leader, the
president of the republic, or you or me, shows contempt for freedom of
speech. Few countries properly respect freedom of speech.
The thug accused of killing Freddie Gray threatened witnesses with
violence, to stop them from taking note.
A program that gives a poor family some assets and some coaching
seems to make a long-term improvement in the family's life.
The NSA planned to use Google's app store to inject malware into
Android phones, and send dishonest messages to them to cause havoc.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to give a preference in federal contracts to companies
that treat workers better.
Please don't use "who" in reference to companies;
companies are not people.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to hold a debate with Senator Warren about the TPP.
US citizens:
sign this
petition to kick the big polluters out of the climate
negotiations.
US citizens:
Call
on the Senate to debate military spending publicly.
Massachusetts citizens:
urge your
state representative to support bills for abortion rights.
If all bees die, that won't wipe out humanity, but you will really
hate
the
loss of so many foods.
Heating tends to kill the
oldest,
tallest trees.
Their replacement with shorter trees will tend to feed more
CO2 into the air, in a positive feedback.
Many dolphins died in the Gulf of Mexico after the Big Spill.
Autopsies now
tie
their deaths to the oil.
Republicans say that government regulation is always bad…except
as regards
abortion.
William McNeilly published a list of dangerous and insecure practices
in the UK's
nuclear missile
submarines. He says that they threaten accidental nuclear war, as
well as other lesser
accidents.
It seems he will not be prosecuted, as an effort to
avoid
court investigation of the problems he reported.
India's tiger census uses a method that is
fundamentally
unreliable, so we have no idea what's really happening to the
population.
Republicans criticize Obama for not
catering
enough to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is the root of most of what is bad in Islam today; its
money has promoted fundamentalism around the Muslim world. It is no
accident that most of the September 11 hijackers came from Saudi
Arabia.
Ironically, these same Republicans claim there is a war of cultures
between the west and Islam.
Wars nowadays are
increasingly
deadly.
Amnesty International says, torture of suspects and dissidents is
standard
practice in Morocco.
Morocco
banned
a man from journalism for ten years; now that the ban is over, it
is stopping him from starting a newspaper by denying him a national ID
card.
National ID cards are generally
a
form of oppression.
South
Korea's New Law Mandates Installation Of Government-Approved Spyware
On Teens' Smartphones.
Crowdfunding of medical care is no substitute for a proper public medical system.
It even gives Christian fanatics power to block others from donating for abortions.
Australia remains directly responsible for the wellbeing of imprisoned refugees, even if it sends them to another country such as Nauru and hires a company to guard them.
Damage to ecosystems is tied to global heating and GMOs.
A Turkish singer was shot by men who didn't think singing on TV was an acceptable activity for a woman.
Israel will ban Palestinians from Israeli buses to the West Bank; they will be for Israeli citizens only.
The Palestinians will have to go home through checkpoints, which will take hours of extra time.
Seeds in a seed bank are better than nothing, as long as we do not suppose they substitute for diversity in agriculture.
What is reducing diversity? Partly globalization. Partly it is larger farms. Partly it is seed companies. And partly it is the laws that seed companies impose: plant variety monopolies, patented genes in plants, even laws against distributing seeds of unapproved varieties.
In the European Union, for instance, it is forbidden to sell seed varieties not specifically approved.
Hong Kong to Get New Crowdfunded Independent Newspaper.
It looks like the Senate will pass the tiny reforms of the "USA Freedom Act". But we should keep fighting to oppose that.
The death penalty, seen by a "mitigation specialist" who finds reasons for the jury to see a convict as a human rather than as a monster.
Arizona has limited welfare benefits for families to a maximum of one year.
This is a consequence of Clinton's welfare "reform", which progressives called "welfare fraud".
This should be a lesson about military interventions: they tend to create secondary problems, and sometimes those are bigger than the one the intervention was supposed to fix.
How the Right Deliberately Confuses the Loss of Power with the Loss of Liberty.
While the Pentagon says that global heating threatens US security, the FBI calls protesters against the Keystone XL pipeline as threats; strangely, it considers that proposed pipeline "vital to security" rather than as the threat to security that it really is.
The FBI should stop acting like Keystone Cops.
Establishment Journalists Pride Themselves on Staying on the Official Rails.
Intense measures are being considered to protect the Hainan gibbon, which is nearly extinct.
Black Americans still suffer the effects of slavery and the legal discrimination that followed it.
The WTO ruled that the US law requiring labeling of meat by country of origin is a forbidden "trade obstacle".
The WTO is an undemocratic organization that exists to impose the demands of businesses on the countries involved.
The Canadian government, a stooge of business, claims that the "Volcker rule", the US's weak replacement for the Glass-Steagall law that prohibited banks from making risky investments, violates NAFTA.
We must abolish NAFTA and the WTO, and we certainly must not sign other treaties that would extend the dominion of foreign companies over the US and other countries.
The Obama regime proposes to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act so that citizens' petitions for protection of species become almost prohibitively difficult.
The process is already too slow: 40 species have gone extinct while protection for them was being considered.
Radio Shack collected lots of information about its customers (but not me — I refused). The store said it would keep this information private, but now, in bankruptcy, it wants to sell some of that data.
The Rohingya crisis is a foretaste of what will happen around the world as global heating ramps up the difficulty of the game of life. Instead of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing, we may have hundreds of millions.
Palmyra is part of the memories of humanity; a part of human heritage that we must defend for the sake of future generations of humanity.
A whistleblower and a journalist are being prosecuted for leaking information about how Luxembourg helps companies evade taxes in other countries.
These maneuvers are legal, but that doesn't make them acceptable; rather, it inculpates various states that have failed to prohibit them. We must reject the idea that whistleblowing, to be legitimate, must limit itself to revealing crimes.
Burundi dissidents are fleeing into permanent exile after death threats from organized supporters of the ruling party.
An oil magnate tried to pressure the University of Oklahoma to fire scientists that were demonstrating a relationship between fracking and earthquakes.
1000 Japanese have sued their government for planning to impose Treacherous Plutocratic Poison on their country.
Republicans in Florida demand federal funds for health care, but refuse to take them under the title of Medicaid since that's Obama's law.
The Egyptian government has made sexual violence a part of its strategy of repression.
Documents pin mass murder in Zimbabwe on Mugabe.
The Rise And Rise of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement.
Only 1/4 of the world's workers now have permanent contracts.
This measures the extent to which steady jobs and a stable life have been replaced by precarity.
Various ways of countering deforestation.
In Canada and the US, massive deforestation is occurring because trees have been killed by drought or insects, both brought by global heating. For instance, many trees in California have been killed by the current drought, and the drought will also promote fires that will burn them up and release their carbon as CO2.
The South African government stands to be embarrassed by publication of an investigation into the massacre of striking miners by thugs.
Scientists are on the verge of making GMO yeast that produces morphine.
Some day it will be possible to get bacteria that will live in your gut and steadily produce whatever drug you like. Using them might not be wise.
Shell plans its business on the assumption that global heating will not be curbed, and will proceed to global disaster.
Because these giant companies have so much influence, whatever they assume about the future is as much a decision as a forecast. If you suppose that global efforts to avert disaster will fail, that is pessimism; when Shell supposes this, that is sabotage.
This shows that the fossil fuel companies recognize what CO2 will do to the Earth, even as their pet politicians deny it.
Koch henchmen are repealing US state laws that support renewable energy.
Rand Paul says the government should not meddle in your life — unless you're a woman and you don't want to have a baby.
Hong Kong ostensibly has no censorship, but China has imposed de facto censorship of books through influence on a few big bookstore companies.
Cartoonists face repression around the world.
Everyone: reject Facebook's fake internet.
Citizens of Massachusetts: support a Massachusetts law requiring medical insurance to cover contraception.
US citizens:
support
and protect the CFPB.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Pizza Hut to keep its pledge and stop its franchised operator from deforestation in Sumatra.
Everyone: Call on McDonald's to pay workers $15 an hour.
A militia in Ukraine claims to have captured two Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
To confirm it calls for letting independent journalists examine the proof. If this is confirmed, it will provide additional proof that Putin provides the muscle for the rebels. We already have clear proof of this.
Reportedly these Russian soldiers will be put on trial for "terrorism" and might be sentenced to life in prison.
This is ridiculous. Enemy soldiers are not "terrorists". By all means capture them if you can, but don't put them on trial simply for fighting.
Trigger Warning: 10 Shocking Truths about Gun Violence.
Internet.org Is Not Neutral, Not Secure, and Not the Internet.
Texas has imposed fracking state-wide, denying towns and communities control over whether to permit it.
The state government has shown that its first loyalty is to the fossil fuel industry, above its citizens.
The US population is shifting to areas where global heating is going to hit badly.
It's not wise to buy a house in those places unless you plan to sell it pretty soon.
New Evidence That Global [Heating] Will Hurt US Wheat Production.
Obama has reduced the range of military equipment available to US thugs.
However, thugs have already learned to act like an occupying army, and this alone won't teach them different.
"Trigger warnings" about sexual violence in fiction may rule out a lot of literature.
It won't be easy for Shi'ite militias to capture Ramadi. The inhabitants, Sunnis, fear them just as they fear PISSI.
Burundi's president declares that protest is rebellion so protesters will be punished as rebels.
The coup has nothing to do with the protests, except that both opposed the same president. To equate them is blatant contempt for logic, such as we frequently see from right-wing politicians in the US and the UK.
Some "trade treaties" require certain minimum standard of rights for workers, but the US government hardly enforces them; it says that even repeated assassination of union leaders doesn't count as noncompliance.
Qatar invited a BBC team to observe its progress in improving the treatment of foreign workers, then arrested them for two days for not sticking to the official tour.
Perhaps some improvements have been made, but most of the unjust system remains in force.
Baltimore is shutting off poor people's water, while businesses get away with owing much larger water bills.
A Russian exile in the UK appears to have been killed with a rare poison.
Politics in Britain is all about distraction. For instance, shock and alarm when a union openly makes demands on the party that is supposed to represent working people, but it's normal for businesses to make demands of the party they sneakily fund.
In the US, it's basically the same except for details.
Japanese Government Intimidating the Media, Says The Economist.
Fossil fuels cost the world 5 trillion dollars a year beyond what users pay to burn them. Or perhaps even more; about 1/4 of that figure is due to CO2 emissions, but the estimate of the cost per unit of CO2 may be too low.
Greece should drop the euro rather than surrender to euro-austerity; in a few years it will be better off out.
The Department of Transportation's new rules for oil tank cars are weak and inadequate to prevent fires.
The conviction of Megan Rice and other protesters against nuclear weapons have been reversed on appeal.
The judges ruled that the protesters' symbolic acts, followed by surrender, could not be considered a serious attempt to harm US national security.
They rejected the government's outrageous claims, such as that putting up a banner, hammering on a concrete building, or embarrassing the government for its incompetence, can count as damaging national security. However, the fact that officials made such claims is damning in itself. Those officials are trying to make the US a police state.
Iraq plans to send Shi'ite militias to reconquer the Sunni city of Ramadi.
Scientists: Earth Endangered by New Strain of Fact-Resistant Humans.
One of Putin's judges has accused an anti-torture group of trying to change state policy. This is an admission, in effect, that torture is state policy in Russia. But Putin does not want to admit that.
The US has at least admitted that torture was state policy, which is the first step towards making sure it won't recur. (The next step is to punish the torturers.)
Of course, the idea that it is a crime to try to change state policy is directly against democracy. By making that an accusation, Putin commits an even larger crime.
US citizens: support Senator Sanders' proposal to break up big banks.
Sea level rise has accelerated steadily over the past two decades.
Bernie Sanders has opposed the PAT RIOT act since it was first proposed.
The Open Rights Group will fight to block the UK government's planned attack on human rights on and off the internet.
Falkvinge: You Can't Defend Public Libraries and Oppose File-Sharing.
Today's publishers, far from defending public libraries, are corrupting them into retail outlets for DRM.
Myrna Arias is suing her employer for firing her; the company had demanded she let the company track her 24 hours a day through her phone.
I don't think the phone company should be allowed to track people, and neither should their employers. Companies should not be allowed to treat their employees badly merely because people are desperate for jobs.
Official Syrian documents provide a basis to prosecute Bashar al-Assad for imprisoning and killing opposition in 2011.
What makes the situation in Syria so difficult is that Assad and PISSI both deserve prosecution for many grave crimes, yet hurting one helps the other. I don't see how a government that doesn't deserve prosecution could emerge in Syria, let alone win.
A judge rejected the idea that federal officials can seize a laptop without a warrant just because someone is leaving the US.
An article about the Bakken pipeline which will endanger water supplies in Iowa.
Since that article was published, they have made petitions to the Iowa Utilities Board. Here's a newer article.
Here is a statement of why the pipeline should be blocked.
You Can't Read the TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can.
After so many "trade" treaties have not fulfilled the politicians' promises, Americans are fools if they believe the TPP will benefit America's trade.
However, trade is a secondary aspect of the TPP: its main purpose is to give companies (especially foreign companies) power over the US and Americans, and that is so bad that it trumps any trade effects.
The US has put 3 billion dollars into building up charter schools, following a system designed to make it easy for that money to be wasted or siphoned off.
I think this explains why there has been so much hype about charter schools and so much political support for them.
Part 2 of the article.
The North Carolina thug that killed Nijza Lamar Hagans appears to have told a false story to present it as self defense.
We cannot trust their claims that he had a gun (which in any case he never used).
A party in Denmark proposed permitting stores not to accept cash.
In the US, there is no regulation about this, and there are some sellers that don't accept cash. What is really dangerous is to reward them. Since I only pay stores with cash, I never buy from them. Please join me in insisting on paying cash — and don't back down when a store refuses to take cash.
The proposal in Denmark was rejected, but in my speech there I urged people to insist on paying cash.
The water rationing in San Juan, Puerto Rico is so strict now that people have water supply only on alternate days.
ACLU of Virginia Sues Fairfax Police over Illegal License Plate Tracking.
Burma has put many of the Rohingya, Muslims whose home is in Burma, into concentration camps.
Going by Wikipedia, the Rohingya are mostly descendants of Bengalis that moved to Arakhan during the time of British rule, before World War II. It follows that nearly all the Rohingya living today were born in Burma. Some have fled to Bangladesh but apparently Bangladesh does not let them integrate into the population.
Genentech is blocking the use of Avastin for treating macular degeneration, by not applying to license it in Europe, apparently so as to pressure countries to use another drug for which it charges far more.
I think the basic mistake is the system of letting companies be in charge of obtaining approval for new drugs.
The US is about to fine 5 big banks for felonies, with fines too small to dissuade them from repeating, then exempt them from laws restricting the actions of felonious corporations.
We need a way to break up these banks, either as punishments for the giant crimes that they are regularly caught committing, or as a precaution.
1% of the population of the Republic of Macedonia is protesting in the capital, calling for resignation of the government. Massive state surveillance is one of their grievances.
They say their protest will be peaceful, but the thugs are preparing for violence.
China's planned cross-South-America railway threatens to wipe out indigenous peoples and indigenous species.
Boko Haram sent a 12-year-old suicide bomber to kill people randomly at a bus station.
A professor says he has developed long-range iris scanning, which means cameras could recognize everyone who walks down the street.
Iris scanning can help governments imprison whistleblowers, which can enable governments to get away with killing thousands or hundreds of thousands, but he thinks he's going to "save a life". Well-meaning but sad.
The professor makes a calculatedly ambiguous statement that "people" are being tracked in other ways. Indeed, many people carry portable phones and pay with credit cards, so they are tracked in other ways. Many people, but not all!
Some of us protect our privacy by refusing to do those things. It is still possible to do this. Many people do this, part of the time.
If his statement is criticized, he can claim that he didn't say "absolutely all people". He only said "people", which means "some people". Strictly speaking, that statement is true — but it fails to support his conclusion. This gap makes his argument false.
It is true that people are under strong pressure to do those foolish things. Due to that pressure, we cannot dismiss the harm of those practices by saying "They do those things voluntarily". We need to take that pressure off people in general. But at the same time, it is also false to argue that "Everyone does them, so further surveillance does people no harm." That's equivalent to, "He has cancer, so if we give him pneumonia on top of that, that will do him no harm."
Can we develop technology to protect ourselves from iris scanning?
The internet data companies have become feudal lords, and today's ordinary use of the internet requires submitting to one or another of them.
The article errs in claiming that it is impossible to refuse to submit. The title, in its use of "we", inspires me to respond, "What you mean 'we', white man?" I refuse, and I am not the only one.
Of course, we must go beyond resisting individually: we must organize to require redesign of internet systems so that they do not track us. But this activism often springs from individual resistance, so endorsing the idea that individuals cannot refuse to submit is debilitating for resistance.
Economists find that banks deserve their reputation for injustice.
US citizens: tell Congress not to cut Medicare to compensate for a small part of the harm that that the TPP would do.
That the "victory" Democrats won is as much harm as good shows how twisted their ideas are. The wrong of Treacherous Plutocratic Poison would be immense, and retraining a few workers would not come near compensating.
The Great Grief: How To Cope with Losing Our World.
The US finances Saudi Arabia as it devastates Yemen and represses its own citizens.
A motorist in New York State objected when a US not-just-border patrol immigration checkpoint wanted to search her car for drugs without cause, and forced her to wait for a drug-sniffing dog which failed to give them anything.
Laying assault charges against the victims of thugs' assaults is the standard arrant dishonesty of US thugs. In the case of the not-just-border patrol, they can beat people up for no reason too.
The US still owes Peter Watts an apology for its vicious treatment of him, which we should never forget.
In the UK, some courageous young people raised as Muslims dare to reject their religion, braving pressure from family as well as potential threats from fanatics.
We scorn the Church of Scientology for systematically making members ostracize ex-members; Islam deserves the same scorn for that.
For Muslims to have a place in a free society, they must learn to fully respect the right to have other views, including the right to leave their religion, just as every other belief system must.
This is what we should demand of Muslims, rather than a "reformation".
When Is a Campaign Not a Campaign? When It's a Super Pac.
Burundi's president-turned-tyrant is starting to repress journalists.
Naturally, he calls protesters "terrorists".
Shellfish will be hit hard by human-emitted CO2 in the ocean. Those not killed outright will be shriveled and small, which could make them vulnerable to predators as well as not useful for us to eat.
How
Climate Change Could Increase Ragweed Allergies, Air Pollution, and
Asthma: 2015 Update.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Stranded: How America's Failing Public Transportation Increases Inequality.
In housing for old people, residents hide developing impairments from fear the staff will take away their autonomy.
Those who can still take care of themselves are terrified of being labeled as "memory impaired", and tend to shun those who are closer to death as if fearing magical contagion.
I sympathize totally with the former. The latter is an unfortunate mistake; associating with those who are dying won't speed your own death, but irrational fear of contagion is a general human error tendency.
Those who fear that the staff are watching them (and listening to them) may well be right.
We have seen details about many NSA massive surveillance programs, but
adding them up to get an overall picture is difficult.
Most Americans still don't realize how far the NSA has gone.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-11 because the old link was broken.]
Washington State is being hit by drought along with California; agriculture is at risk.
Duke Energy's record fine, for pollution by coal ash, is still not enough to deter further crimes.
The Cult of Youth Cheats Young And Old Alike. Let's Reclaim Adulthood.
Edward Snowden's most famous leak is now vindicated by the appeals court which ruled that his revelation was a violation of constitutional order.
I didn't need an appeals court to recognize that Snowden is a hero.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose reauthorization of parts of the PAT RIOT Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to
respect Washington, DC's law against discrimination
based on abortion, contraception, and pregnancy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to
reroute shipping in California
to protect whales.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US to ban use of glyphosate on federal land.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block the Republican ban on some abortions.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the KOCH Act.
US citizens: state your
support for Bernie Sanders
for president.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support the KOCH Act.
Everyone: call on the Associated Press to
stop calling global heating
denialists "skeptics".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: help stop the TPP in the House of Representatives.
US citizens: support the Community Broadband Act.
6000 boat people have been denied entry to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
This reminds me of what happened to a shipful of Jewish refugees on the MS St. Louis trying to escape Germany in 1939.
Making the Labour Party good for something depends on bottom-up community organizing. Acting like a right-wing party produces a right-wing party.
Perhaps instead of revitalizing the Labour Party, Britons should go Green.
Texas is considering a bill to require thugs to get a warrant for body cavity searches, so they can't arbitrarily do this to people at traffic stops.
The Obama regime is stirring up fear again, while trying to get the PAT RIOT Act renewed.
It is using generalized fear to make the US a nation of snitches.
Facebook threatens to take control of how suckers read news and other publications.
The US Senate turned around and allowed "fast track" to pass.
Apparently some senators wanted to claim they tried to defeat the TPP while actually surrendering to it.
A Tory-chosen economist proposes to pay pharma companies a bonus for developing new antibiotics.
It is worth spending our money on developing new antibiotics, provided we make sure they won't be ruined soon by feeding them to animals as a default practice. However, the method proposed is simultaneously a system for subsidizing big businesses wastefully.
Big pharma companies don't do much lifesaving research anyway; that's usually funded by governments. So let's fund the whole process, and make the new life-saving antibiotics available with no patents to save lives of poor people too.
For Qatar's Foreign Workers, Global Scrutiny Is Working — to a Point.
This example of a country without labor laws shows why we need them.
Part of the army of Burundi held a coup to stop the president from ending constitutional government.
I expect that neither side is acting in accord with the constitution, but there is no way to follow the constitution.
Now the two sides are in heavy combat.
Indonesia requires female recruits to the military to be virgins, on the bizarre grounds that non-virgins have "bad mentality".
Strangely, Indonesia makes no attempt to determine whether male soldiers are virgins. I wonder what sort of "bad mentality" they think goes with having sex.
India's "labor reforms" show how far neoliberals really want to go: restricting unions, allowing gender discrimination, legalizing child labor.
This goes with attacking NGOs that stand against abusive practices.
30,000 people in Detroit face homelessness because they have not paid taxes on their houses. Unlike companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google, these people don't pay because they are poor, which is why the state of Michigan is cracking down on them.
The UK's right-wing government plans to end the overt subsidy for wind power.
No doubt they will say that subsidies distort markets, but preventing worldwide disaster justifies a lot more subsidy than now.
Meanwhile, they show no sign of ending the much bigger subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which distort markets too.
The thug that shot Tony Robinson will not face charges. He says that Robinson attacked him with fists and he was afraid of losing consciousness, and that he had been informed that Robinson was intoxicated.
Intoxicated people are not effective fighters, and a trained officer should not feel fear of an unarmed intoxicated person.
Californians are pouring scorn on rich water-wasters.
The spirit of plutocracy is that the rich should not have to share the sacrifices imposed on society by their expensive life styles. In 40 or 80 years, the plutocrats will try to buy their way out of the problems that their fossil fuel policies are causing.
When Australia sends refugees to imprisonment in Nauru, their conditions are atrocious. Their toilets and water supplies are so far away that those who are pregnant can't walk that far.
Some of them may be pregnant because they were raped by the prison guards.
I wonder if their prison offers reliable contraception to prisoners. I have a hunch Australia doesn't want to pay for that.
Nauru is a repressive state maintained by Australia as a place to make refugees disappear.
Canada's plutocratic government is extending copyright on musical recordings as a rider in a spending bill, with no public consultation.
Plutocracy means businesses pull the strings and the state obeys. Plutocracy is not a legitimate system of government.
GCHQ was being sued by victims of computer intrusion, so the UK government passed a law to retroactively legalize that.
Former President Morsi has been sentenced to death.
It is not clear these charges even make any sense. What does it mean to accuse the president of "espionage"? But that's Egypt for you: people can be sentenced to death for just about anything.
Greenland's glaciers are flowing faster — increased crevasses demonstrate how much faster.
Colombia will stop spraying glyphosate to kill coca plants.
In the UK, you can divest from fossil fuels by moving your money out of the five big banks.
In the US, people moved money out of the big banks after they caused the financial crisis. It's still a good idea to do that.
Nepal has been very effective at blocking poaching of rhinos. The population has increased for 10 years.
I fear that poachers will take advantage of the distraction of the earthquake to come back in.
Banning mobile phones in school seems to help students succeed in school, especially those from disadvantageous backgrounds.
I will not support campaigns to increase Amtrak's funding while Amtrak continues to demand ID from passengers.
Facebook's corporate-only news feed both directs users away from independent journalism and tracks their reading.
The copyright lobby is trying to bring back SOPA through a different path.
California proposes to review "computer crime", inviting thugs, prosecutors and businesses only.
Climate scientists have been intimidated by denialist campaigns into presenting facts as uncertain.
Thugs in Minneapolis pepper sprayed protesters without warning, which is something thugs do. This time, one of the protesters was 10 years old, so people are noticing.
The president of Burundi, who has staged a sort of coup himself, defeated the military coup attempt to remove him.
Counting the cost of America's wars usually doesn't consider the hundreds of thousands of soldiers disabled by wounds, and more hundreds of thousands driven half-mad by their experiences.
PISSI is advancing in Ramadi against the Iraqi army, although that is not crumbling.
Canada has let tar sands oil override its previous pledges to reduce greenhouse gas.
The US refuses to recognize that its bombing of PISSI kills civilians.
That sort of denial breeds hatred, and it isn't necessary.
The copyright industry gained very little benefit from shutting down a forbidden sharing site in 2011. Mostly, the public had less access to published works for a while, until replacement sites arose.
The article uses propaganda terms such as "pirate" and "consume" that we should avoid.
Two Palestinians who had fled Syria were trapped in Dubai airport as no country would let them in.
Facebook is under legal pressure in Europe for its practices of tracking people's browsing through Like buttons.
Global heating in the upper troposphere has been found, as predicted.
US private water companies are seeking an excuse to raise rates in the continuing bad economy and government situation.
I think governments should raise water rates to businesses, including farms and bottlers. Just not to poor people.
Saudi Arabia is about to execute a dissident.
Rand Paul wants to jail people for attending political speeches.
Wyoming has made it a crime to collect a sample of pollution, or even take a photo of it, to show to a government agency.
This is typical of laws adopted by plutocratist politicians. They don't make any sense except as a reinforcement of illegitimate rule. The first one I know of was the DMCA, which made it a crime to break DRM.
DefectiveByDesign.org
At the site of the big spill, an area of sea floor is covered by a two-inch blanket of oil.
It's going to stay there for a long time. Microbes consumed 5/6 of the big spill. What's left spill is the part that was too toxic for microbes, mixed with corexit making it even more toxic. That will remain for a long, long time.
Meanwhile, the US gave another company a lease on the same area and it is going to start drilling soon.
The EU has a "research" fund that subsidizes coal mining, about 15 million dollars a year.
The Larsen B ice shelf is expected to break up by 2020. This will remove an obstacle that slows the flow of ice from the nearby land-based ice sheet into the ocean, and that will lead to faster loss of ice — faster sea level rise.
Russian repression has promoted the spread of HIV infection.
The name "heartbleed" was coined as a PR move by a company closely related to Microsoft.
Apparently the PR goal was to direct special public attention to one of the many bugs discovered each year in various programs, free or nonfree.
Facebook wants to give millions of poor people access to a small part of the internet.
The danger of such censorship (and tracking, since it doesn't include access to a VPN) is more important than any good of giving people internet access sooner. (They will get access by and by.)
The journalist that revealed torture in Angola is being prosecuted for libel.
To make libel a crime is prima facie injustice.
The US also jails people for revealing US torture practices, such as John Kiriakou.
The House of Representatives passed a weak NSA reform bill which is far less than what is needed.
The City of Portland has killed a fracked gas export terminal.
They will look for other places to put it, and other terminals are planned.
The Emerging Populist Agenda (in the US).
The US must convert its decaying suburbs into more like the newly desirable cities.
The "luckwarmers" accept that humans are causing global heating, but want to bet civilization's future on the chance that it won't be as bad as it appears.
It is a mistake to compare these postures with personal grief. These people are not acting out of a sense of loss. The loss has not yet occurred, although climate scientists tell us that it will. These are not stages in grief, they are stages in a campaign of persuasion that abandons an untenable position to take the next line that will justify the conclusion it wants.
A school for doing sex well has opened in — of all places — Kyrgyzstan.
The UK's new government is planning tyrannical measures to repress opinions that are "anti-democratic" and/or "spread hatred".
I wonder whether that will include condemnation of "democratically" imposed austerity and hatred of tax-dodgers. Would UK Uncut's protests be banned, and its leaders forbidden to speak in public?
30 years ago, thugs in Philadelphia dropped a firebomb on the home of a radical black group called Move, then chose to allow the whole block to burn down. 250 people, mostly or all blacks, were left homeless.
A judge ruled that US agents can't search a computer without a warrant just because its owner is near a border or flying out of the US.
Labour basically accepted Tory austerity plans aside from a few details, so there was little reason to support it.
Bernie Sanders challenges Clinton on the TPP and global heating.
The continuing drought in Queensland (the northernmost part of Australia) is even bigger than it was a year ago.
Europe is considering a ground intervention in Libya to block smuggling of people from there to Europe.
It will be hard getting approval of the two competing governments of Libya, which are in civil war.
Cuts in support for the disabled make them more disabled — it can take away their ability to leave the house, or even to leave the bed.
Nauru, where Australia has forcibly sent refugees, is planning to make protesting a crime. The conditions of their exile give them a lot to protest about.
Torture Still Routine in Chinese Jails, says Human Rights Watch.
I wish the US were in a position to criticize this with moral authority.
French President Hollande acknowledges France has a debt to Haiti because France demanded Haiti pay dearly for ending slavery and colonization.
Arresting people for being homeless, or for doing things homeless people must do, turns out to be very expensive as well as cruel and unjust.
The US seizes prescription of records of hundreds of people at a time to fish for something to charge them with.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Added Hidden Fees to Hospital Claims, thus defrauding its clients.
The ACLU's court victory against NSA's massive phone surveillance was
an incremental step forward, but decided
only
parts of the issue.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Ending this kind of surveillance will depend on Congress to let that part of the PAT RIOT Act expire.
Meanwhile, there are many other surveillance systems and more are being created.
Conscientious objectors in South Korea face persecution.
Israelis of Ethiopian descent protested after thugs beat up one of them (a soldier, as it happened), and the thugs attacked them violently.
Apparently racism against blacks in Israel is comparable to that in the US.
Whistleblowers' evidence shows that ALEC is violating tax law by pretending to be a charity. Will the IRS prosecute?
Under Bernie Sanders' proposed socialist policies, the US would be in danger of becoming like Scandinavia. Look how bad that would be.
The US is facing criticism of its human rights record in a periodic UN review.
A black man who tried to use a gun to fight off robbers made the mistake of calling 911. A thug came and shot him, because their standard assumption is that a black man with a gun must be a criminal.
I expect that the thug perceived a black man with a gun as a threat due to unconscious racism.
Everyone: call on Wal-Mart to stop bottling water in California.
Even if you shun Wal-Mart in general, that doesn't stop you from signing.
US citizens:
protect
marine mammals by supporting a ban on driftnets on the West Coast.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Death of bee colonies is at peak levels again in the US, and ominously many colonies died last summer when they would normally thrive.
Monsanto, a giant seed company, wants to merge with Syngenta, a giant pesticide company.
This shows an inadequacy in today's antitrust law. A merger of large companies can be very harmful when the companies make coordinated products rather than competing products. The state should forbid such mergers.
Hawaiians are protesting the construction of another large telescope on Mauna Kea.
The article claims that astronomers have "expressed doubts about the project", but these doubts are not about its merit. Some scientists feel they should cater to religion.
I don't agree: advancing real knowledge is more important.
The Free Software Foundation is looking for possible candidates for a deputy director.
Greatest Threat to Free Speech Comes Not From Terrorism, But From Those Claiming to Fight It.
Michael McAlister has been pardoned and will not be imprisoned for life as a "sex offender" for the rape it is established he didn't commit.
He was caught in a loophole where he couldn't be freed unless he confessed to the crime.
A US government agency acknowledged that the war in Afghanistan is not going to end in the foreseeable future.
Online Voting Is Convenient, But If the Results Aren't Verifiable It's Not Worth The Risk.
Simply using computers for voting is already unsafe; to even consider doing it over the internet is the work of clowns.
Thugs present a possibly imaginary medical condition, "excited delirium", as an excuse for the death of prisoners.
Even if "excited delirium" is real, it is quite likely that the taser contributed to her death.
Americans spend 70 billion dollars a year on lotteries, a tremendous waste, and half of it comes from people who can't afford it.
You can think of the lotteries as a "tax on stupidity", but it really is more like "encouragement of bad decisions".
States use lotteries to raise money because there is resistance to using taxes for this. But the taxes could be aimed mainly at the rich and businesses that can afford them.
John Deere Clarifies: It's Trying To Abuse Copyright Law To Stop You From Owning Your Own Tractor, Because It Cares About You.
Sharif Mobley found a smuggled phone inside the prison in Yemen, and said that guards were attacking him.
The US government helped Yemen's government capture him, 5 years ago, and has protected Yemen's disappearance of him.
The Australian government is frantically trying to stop Unesco from recognizing how its policies threaten the Great Barrier Reef.
Google and the movie and record companies work together to automatically enforce false copyright infringement claims; one victim is suing.
Thousands of people have signed a petition asking to include northern England in an independent Scotland.
Does this make sense? It wouldn't be Scotland any more, if it included part of England.
I wonder if people in southern England would also prefer to be part of Scotland.
This demonstrates the idiocy of the "English identity" that the Tories want to promote. It also suggests that Scottish nationalism is a stand-in for rejection of plutocratic rule by the City of London.
Texas Republicans think poor people should feel ashamed of getting a subsidy for health insurance.
It's the Texas Republicans who should feel ashamed of wanting to make poor people sick or dead.
When non-rich vote for the right-wing, they are "turkeys voting for Christmas" (or, in the US, for Thanksgiving, which is when we tend to eat turkeys in the US).
The article also shows, almost without intending to, a crucial part of why they do this: right-wingers in control of the state have done them harm over and over, and taught them to blame this on the state rather than on right-wing government. Thus they give up on the only avenue that they could use to stop this.
It's not the only reason many poor people didn't support the Labour Party. The article is right that it didn't try to offer them much.
US politicians, to give more money to rich idlers, want to cut support for poor people that work (or can't find work, or are disabled).
PISSI is close to capturing Palmyra, which it would then destroy.
US citizens: tell Obama to stop smearing Senator Warren.
A Palestinian journalist from Jerusalem reports on what it's like to be arrested "by mistake" while covering a protest. It's even worse than in the US.
Several Israeli army policies combined to guarantee killing lots of civilians in Gaza. For instance, after they dropped leaflets on a large area, they presumed that anyone left there was an enemy combatant — never mind that that wasn't true. And once the "target bank was depleted", their policy automatically called for firing closer to civilians.
The Palestinian village of Khirbet Susiya faces imminent demolition as part of Israel's campaign of ethnic cleansing of the land near the Jordan River.
Detroit's imposed, nondemocratic government is planning to cut off water for 25,000 people who are too poor to pay their water bills.
The city demands that they pay even more to avoid a shutoff, which evidently they can't do.
A teacher brings his students to visit a prison, one of the few that still allow visits.
The long-term and harsh prisons are so cruel that they don't want anyone outside the system to see what they are like.
The Canadian company that wanted to run a mine in El Salvador, which was blocked because it might pollute the country's main water supply, is suing in an international kangaroo court established by a corporate power treaty. A delegation of Salvadoreans is visiting Canada to teach them about how dangerous this is for all countries that get involved in it.
Former ministers of EU countries called for stronger measures to pressure Israel and the Palestinians to make peace. Each side should be pressured when it rejects peace.
The best part is that they dismiss the pretense that Netanyahu negotiates sincerely for peace.
The US college class of 2015 is the most indebted ever, but that record will surely fall a year from now to the class of 2016.
In Iowa, a pipeline company is facing opposition which is promoting a law to stop the company from using eminent domain.
Verizon's Just the Latest Big Evil Media Conglomerate Waiting to Happen.
DEA agents took $16,000 in cash from a black teenager who was heading to LA to make a music video with it. The DEA says it presumes "the money is guilty".
Money is not a moral actor; it can't be guilty of anything. It is the person whose money they took that they treated as guilty, without trial. What the government calls "civil forfeiture" is really arbitrary confiscation.
Washington State has required thugs to get a warrant before they can use a stingray cell phone detection and attack device.
Note that they can also get the location data of cell phones from the phone company.
The US Senate rejected "fast track" for the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison (and other corporate power treaties — the bill is a blank check for a certain time period).
Since Syriza says Greece will kill This Treaty Is Plutocratic, we may have fouled off this round of attacks on democracy. But we can't depend on fouling off all the corporate power treaties they pitch at us, one by one, forever. We need to elect a congress and president that reject the idea of making treaties to give companies power. Then we can campaign to abolish the existing ones.
Bernie Sanders for President!
Michelle Obama affirmed that racism against blacks is still real and still doing harm. Reactionary whites condemn this as "reverse racism".
Identifying and condemning bigotry is not an instance of bigotry.
Many of the NSA's Loudest Defenders Have Financial Ties to NSA Contractors.
In 2012, Shell tried to drill in Arctic waters and is safety equipment (among others) malfunctioned. It is not much better now.
Avoiding climate disaster will require converting 1/3 of humanity's energy use to renewables by 2050.
Edinburgh University proposes to "engage" with fossil fuel companies rather than selling stock in them.
It sounds nice, but I don't think Edinburgh University's investments are so big that these companies will make concessions to keep them.
Basically, "engagement" with fossil fuel companies is a way to keep supporting them while pretending to others, and/or perhaps to yourself, that you're getting them to change.
Friends of Boris Nemtsov have published a report on the details of how Putin sent Russian troops to fight in Ukraine: something like what Nemtsov was reportedly working on when he was assassinated.
The report is a summary of information already published, and doesn't contain surprising new recommendations. I don't think anyone would have had Nemtsov killed to avoid the publication of a report like this. Thus, I wonder whether Nemtsov had other information that died with him.
Most e-waste is discarded illegally.
Only one male northern white rhino remains, and seems unwilling to mate, so it appears the species will soon become extinct.
Do we know how to do artificial insemination on them? In-vitro fertilization?
The FBI spied on protesters against the Keystone XL pipeline in disregard of its own rules.
If the FBI and its head don't pay a penalty for this, why won't they do it again?
Refineries of big oil companies are getting big subsidies in the US, thanks to politicians that these companies support generously.
Upper caste villagers attacked a Dalit's wedding procession with stones. They say he wasn't supposed to ride a horse as upper caste Hindus do.
When Charlotte Campbell-Stephen was raped in Kenya, the state told her it was pointless to try to prosecute. She had to struggle to get them convicted of violent robbery, since it is impossible to convict anyone of rape in Kenya.
Senator Sanders exposes the top corporate tax-dodgers and job-exporters.
Florida Governor Scott admits he was lying when he said that he had come to appreciate the value of extending Medicare.
He justifies the lie by saying it was meant to trick the US government with a deal he did not intend to keep.
Sri Lanka will fund coastal women to protect all its mangroves.
Rick Falkvinge: You Can't Defend Public Libraries and Oppose File-Sharing.
The paucity of black lawyers in the US has legal repercussions
for blacks who are accused of crimes, or victims of crime.
Manicurists in New York City are being cheated of their pay
and are using chemicals that injure them.
Women face discrimination in the workplace for being pregnant,
and then are pressured not to talk about it.
Jeffrey Sterling, accused of telling reporter James Risen about the
failed CIA attempt to deceive Iran about nuclear weapons designs, has
been sentenced to over 3 years in prison.
A sentence of 20 years was proposed.
Two independent lines of research lead to the same conclusion: Osama
bin Laden was being kept under house arrest by Pakistani intelligence,
and an inside source leaked the information to the US.
Thus, the official story about how he was found was fabricated (
to protect the inside source, I suppose) with the side effect
of connecting polio vaccination with US war and turning fanatical
Muslim idiots against vaccination.
Chelsea Manning has proposed a law that would protect journalists from
repression and make the government more transparent.
Here's an analysis of the specific provisions.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to require public companies to disclose political
spending.
US citizens:
call
for a ban on oil tank cars that easily catch fire.
Bangladeshi Atheist blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was
stabbed
to death by a gang of masked men.
Forget the rumors: Keurig has not said it will get rid of
its
DRM. It plans only to relax it a little bit, and hopes people
will now accept it.
Keep on rejecting Keurig, and all products designed to restrict you.
Satellite measurements show that West Antarctica is losing ice
faster
than previously believed.
UK Labour was defeated because instead of having a vision of a country
that offers everyone a decent life, it
chased
after the label of "center".
The
Oil Industry Is Pumping Toxic Chemicals Into California's
Aquifers.
We
Need a Full, Transparent Review of the US Targeted Killing
Program.
Alas, I think a panel appointed by Obama will be a whitewash.
The UK government
plans
to reject European human rights principles.
The appeals court's rejection of the NSA's massive collection of phone
call records also endorses fundamental arguments of the
opposition
to the "we can collect anything and everything" stance of the
Obama regime.
Norway will impose a
national
biometric ID card.
An anti-austerity group plans a
summer
of protests in London.
Protection of green sea turtles in Florida has been a great success,
but it
took
decades, since those turtles take 40 years to mature.
The ACLU has sued Virginia about
storing
data from license plate readers. This was used in 2008 to track
people attending election rallies.
The EU is considering a trade secret directive that
would
prosecute journalists for publishing companies' secrets.
It would also make it dangerous for employees to move to
a competing company.
Under the EU's pitiful excuse for democracy, if the Parliament
amends the directive to fix these things, the Commission can change
them right back, and it is hard for Parliament to resist that.
The only safe thing for Parliament to do is reject the directive.
US citizens:
call for a
ban on uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.
Syriza may be unable to keep Greece in the euro zone without
breaking
its commitment to end austerity.
Greeks wanted to end austerity and stay in the euro zone, and believed
it was possible. If that is not possible, it would be treachery for
Syriza to surrender to austerity and become a government of
occupation. I am glad that Tsipras says he will ask Greeks to vote on
which of those two goals to give up.
The article's author takes for granted that surrender to austerity is
the right choice. That reflects an attitude of defeatism in
confronting the tyranny of the banksters. I think Greece should do
whatever hurts the banksters the most; in the long run, that is best
for all the world except the banksters.
Belize plans to allow undersea oil drilling in places
near
UNESCO world heritage sites and the world's second-largest coral
reef.
Some senators called on CIA director Brennan to
admit
he lied to them.
US spook leaders
bring
out their standard fear-mongering to claim, yet again, that
massive surveillance is needed to prevent a minor terrorist attack
that was stopped by security personnel.
Glenn Greenwald, in an interview,
relates
the NSA snoops to the Baltimore thugs.
He also says that Loretta Lynch is likely to do a bad job as Attorney
General, based on her record. While it is good to show that a black
woman can have that office, what matters most is what an official
does, not what group the official belongs to.
Macedonians protested after learning that high officials plotted to
cover up
the
state's responsibility for a murder by thugs.
A thug from Delaware faces charges for
kicking
a man unconscious.
Comcast
demands
customers sign an NDA before giving them a refund.
It ought to be a crime for a company even to ask for this.
You'll note that I often suggest laws to make it a crime for a company
to do certain things. Companies have power to intimidate mere people,
so we have to treat them like gangsters.
New pun: bread.
New pun Digital
Church.
In Ayotzinapa thugs and/or gangsters attacked students with guns for hours.
The state's story about what happened to those students seems to be fabricated, perhaps to cover the involvement of the army in their disappearance.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to suspend use of glyphosate now that it is suspected
of causing cancer.
Everyone:
call
on Chik-Fil-A to cancel firing employee Ashante Rush for wearing
her hair in braids.
EU citizens:
call
on the European Parliament to take firm action against use of
conflict minerals.
Indonesia says it will allow foreign journalists into West Papua,
and has
freed
some political prisoners. Many more, including nonviolent
independence protesters, remain in prison.
Former military dictator Hosni Mubarak has been
convicted
by the current Egyptian military government.
Now that an appeals court
ruled
that the NSA is going beyond the excessive latitude of the PAT RIOT
Act, the US must apologize to Snowden and welcome him home as a
hero.
Singapore has
shut
a news web site, claiming it harms "the public interest, public
order, and national harmony."
When unjust regimes repress dissent, sometimes they give excuses like
that, and sometimes they fabricate accusations of unrelated real
crimes such as fraud, tax evasion, sodomy, etc.
The US government
paid
football teams millions to "honor" local soldiers. This is part
of what convinces so many Americans that they have to "support the
troops" (which, in practice, means don't criticize wars).
The most important support Americans should give US troops is not to
send them to fight a war that isn't morally imperative. They signed
up to serve their country, not to build somebody's empire. War is
hell in any case, but war for an unjust cause is hell at two levels.
I refuse to endorse some secondary kind of "support" which serves as a
distraction from this essential one.
The Baltimore thug department posted
false
reports that it was under attack from the public, apparently to
stir up fear and demonize protesters.
You can't blame Baltimore blacks for
responding
to violence with violence.
1/4 of US greenhouse gas emissions come from
fossil
fuels extracted from public land. The US should charge for this
based on the harm that the emissions will cause.
A major US TV news show, whose host is "obsessed with elections",
mentioned many possible presidential candidates, but not
Bernie
Sanders.
Apparently someone powerful doesn't like him. Which is why I am going
to vote for him.
The New York Times presented various Republican candidates, but
mentioned
no Democratic candidate other than Clinton.
A
summary
of Snowden's recent talk about the range and methods status of NSA
mass surveillance.
The Republican-dominated government of North Carolina is doing
something to
obstruct
voter registration by citizens applying for food stamps.
This appears to violate a federal law, and various organizations will
sue.
A Georgia thug
shot
a woman, who may yet die from her wounds, and claimed it was a
"training accident".
Growing up in a US better neighborhood
greatly
aids a child's success, independent of what the child's parents
are like.
US citizens:
call
for enforcement of the law that medical insurance companies must
cover birth control.
Citizens of British Columbia:
oppose the tar
sands oil pipeline.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the REINS Act that would block regulatory
agencies from doing their jobs.
Everyone:
call
on Paraguay to allow the raped 10-year-old an abortion.
Customers of Wells Fargo Bank are suing the bank for fraud. It seems
that bank staff were pressured to open
phony
accounts in customers' names. When they were caught doing so, the
bank hardly punished them.
If our government were not working for the banksters, it would
prosecute the bank and specific executives.
US thugs are aware that videos
threaten
their ability to commit crimes with impunity; they often attack
the people who make the videos, frame them, and steal the equipment to
erase the videos.
We need to prosecute and jail the thugs that attack the citizens'
truth squad.
Banks are studying the idea of using clients' phone call and location
records
to
decide about loans.
The algorithms used to evaluate the call records would be created by
"machine learning", meaning they are opaque. Thus, a bank could
easily develop an algorithm that effectively discriminates based on
race, without making it explicit. It would be easy for some algorithm
to use the phone data to produce a result 99% equivalent to "You're
black" or "You live in neighborhood X".
We must make it illegal for banks to ask for or obtain these data.
Arrogant Baltimore thugs threaten to sue prosecutor Mosby,
claiming
she is "unprofessional". By their definition, a "professional"
prosecutor would never prosecute a thug.
Edward
Snowden Says Australia's New Data Retention Laws Are 'Dangerous'.
The US government
claims
its right to secrecy is absolute, that courts cannot order release
of any secret materials even if they are being concealed only to cover
up wrongdoing.
Thug Brian Rice, charged with the killing of Freddie Gray,
demanded
the arrest of his ex-girlfriend's husband, who he had previously
threatened to kill.
The US is providing millions in training and investigation support to
Mexico, but it doesn't check the
spread
of massacres by the army.
Obama held a fund-raiser at a company famous for outsourcing to
spread
his bullshit about the TPP.
The wave of US foreclosures hit mainly racial minorities, and caused a
big
increase in racial segregation.
Keep in mind that many of these foreclosures were
carried
out by fraud.
Universities must defend
the
right to criticize Islam (or any other religious position), not
cater to sensitivities of those who resent being criticized.
Muslims are a paradoxical case. In Western countries, they are a weak
minority, sometimes targets of discrimination and bigotry. Meanwhile,
in countries where they dominate, they often
punish
anyone that criticizes their views and
deny
religious freedom to ex-Muslims. We should defend minority
Muslims from bigotry, while insisting they (like everyone else) learn
to live with freedom of speech, so as to give no comfort to the
oppressive policies of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia and so many
more.
The latest spin maneuver of the educational testing industry is to
claim, falsely, that only affluent whites are against these tests.
A record 38 million people are now refugees within their own countries.
I can't trace this directly to human overpopulation and resource shortages,
but I think that must be indirectly responsible.
A Baltimore thug kicked Geremy Faulkner, stepped on his hand, and
jailed him for almost two days for making a video of Baltimore
thugs pursuing an alleged looter.
He is not alone.
Thugs that mauled people must be prosecuted even when they do not kill.
USA Today tries defending the TPP and gets the numbers wrong.
Drought has killed 12 million trees in California, fires are coming next, which will pour CO2 into the air and cause
more heating and drought.
India wants to be thought of as working to curb global heating
without committing to really do so.
The Theater of Security Agency plans to use the privilege of shorter
security checks (TSA-PRE) to get Americans to hand over lots of
personal information, as well as their fingerprints.
One anomaly is that I got TSA-PRE without applying for it.
I wonder how common that is.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to protect NASA climate research.
What
Can the Lusitania Teach Us about the Fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight
MH17?
Protesters in Seattle are using kayaks to
block
Shell's Arctic drilling plans.
The ACLU wants to know what the
surveillance
planes are doing over Baltimore.
Water privatization is the point where Irish are
resisting
plutocratic rule.
Recycling oilfield water for irrigation sounds logical until you
wonder whether pollutants from the oil are getting
into
the food. Without more investigation, there is no way to tell
whether this is a significant danger.
Omar Khadr has been
freed
on bail in Canada while he appeals his conviction by a
US kangaroo
court in Guantanamo.
It appears that Khadr was a child soldier fighting against US forces.
If he didn't throw a grenade at US troops, he presumably wished to.
That was a valid reason to take him prisoner. It would have been a
valid reason to shoot him, if he hadn't been incapacitated already.
That's war.
However, prisoners of war are not supposed to be accused of a crime
for waging war against our troops. And they are not supposed to be
tortured — not even adult soldiers. (Khadr's "confession",
extracted by torture, counts for nothing.) As for child soldiers,
they are all victims. It appears Omar Khadr does not want to fight
that war any more.
As for the Canadian government, when it called for keeping a Canadian
in prison to cater to a foreign government, it reached a low point of
servility.
German intelligence says it will henceforth spy for the NSA
only
when given specific reasons for specific targets.
Why did the US use Germany to
spy
on Airbus? Perhaps so that the US can say "our agencies don't spy
for companies" without an outright lie.
Cody Wilson has
sued
to affirm his constitutional right to post instructions for making
a 3D-printed gun.
In the case of weapons, there is a valid public interest argument for
prohibition, though it has to contend with freedom of expression.
The US already has a law prohibiting publishing code to do a certain
job: the DMCA, which makes it a crime to publish a recipe for breaking
digital handcuffs. There was never a public interest argument for
this prohibition; this law was a simple sell-out to media companies.
I am concerned that the DMCA, which is pure injustice, will be cited
as an argument in Wilson's case, and that if he loses it will be used
to legitimize the DMCA.
Range voting
seems to be better than other systems for voting.
There is no system of voting that satisfies all the criteria
that we intuitively believe elections should satisfy.
Every system has an imperfection.
In the case of range voting, the imperfection is that it does not
strictly satisfy the majority criterion: a candidate A preferred by
the majority of voters must win. With range voting, another candidate
B can win, if most voters say that B is nearly as good as A, while a
fraction strongly prefers B to A. That seems like a reasonable
outcome to me, given those stated preferences.
Plutocrats are happy that their party
won
the UK election.
For disabled, unemployed and working people, it means life will get
worse, and many will give up on voting.
The prosecution of the murderers of Farkhunda may mean a step forward
against the
oppression
of women in Afghanistan.
However, the reaction disregards the fact that this murder was an
instance of religious intolerance as well as an instance of misogyny.
To say that killing Farkhunda was wrong because she didn't in fact
burn a Qur'an is to suggest that it would have been ok to kill her
if she had done so.
Burning a Qur'an is anyone's right, just like burning a Bible, a copy
of the US Constitution, or a copy of my writings or your writings.
This is what freedom of speech means.
We must be careful not to legitimize religious intolerance for a
religion that is deeply entwined with misogyny.
The US labeled a prominent journalist as a member of al Qa'ida
because
he interviewed some of them.
The US
will
investigate racist practice of the Baltimore thug department.
Baltimore thugs arrested 49 children, of whom
39
should legally have been released.
The US government makes forecasts about future use of energy sources,
and they
repeatedly
underestimate growth of renewable energy.
How much renewable energy is used in the future depends on government
policy decisions. Thus, these forecasts are to some extent a
self-fulfilling prophecy that we will stay on the road to disaster.
Science
explains why the right-wing lie machine works: the only effective
way to correct a false rumor is by someone perceived to be on the same
political side.
The Department of Transportation decided to allow current oil tank
cars to be used on railroads for
8
more years, even though they continue to catch fire in
derailments.
Senator Sanders introduced a bill to require
breaking
up "too big to fail" banks into smaller pieces.
I think a variant of my
progressive
tax proposal would do a better job since it would induce them to
split up without requiring the government to take action on each one.
The US still
has
not corrected the policies that permitted banksters to cause the
2008 financial crash.
This is demonstrates the extent of banksters' control over the US
government. They don't have total power over it, but they have far
too much.
A US appeals court ruled that the NSA's mass collection of phone call
records is illegal,
not
authorized by the PAT RIOT Act.
More court procedure is required before the NSA may be ordered to stop.
And only a future Snowden will tell us whether the NSA really did stop.
If it instead invented another pretext, only a future Snowden
will enable us to find out about it and sue again.
Keep in mind that there are many systems of massive surveillance. To
make journalism and democracy safe, we must curb
all
of
them.
The Clintons and Their
Banker
Friends.
A US-supported ground intervention in Yemen is
on
the way.
Chicago
will pay compensation to people tortured by the thugs in the 70s
and 80s.
It appears that torture by Chicago thugs
continues
today.
India wants to build 100 "smart cities" on confiscated land, appoint
businesses as their local governments, then require everyone in them
to wear a tracking ID all the time.
"Smart" is a pretty face for "elitist, authoritarian and oppressive".
"Friendship", when quantified and managed on the internet, becomes a
tool to introduce the market into personal relationships.
America Needs More Government Surveillance — On Fish.
Fish are not entitled to human rights, so surveilling them to any conceivable
extent is not an injustice.
Just What the Doctor Didn't Order: More Media Consolidation.
The Earth's atmospheric CO2 level has now exceeded 400 parts per million.
The rough limit for (probably) avoiding disaster is 350 parts per million.
We need to cut emissions drastically so that they are less than the Earth's
natural absorption.
Human rights organizations called on the UN to end the "war on drugs".
When a war is on drugs, you must expect it to victimize people
indiscriminately.
Clinton is going to great lengths not to take a stand about the TPP.
Perhaps she hopes the issue will be resolved before the 2016 election.
That might indeed happen. Perhaps she is waiting to see how much money
she can raise without giving explicit support to something the plutocrats
want very much.
Either way, this confirms that she cannot be relied on to protect
Americans against plutocracy, and is therefore unfit for public
office.
Texas is considering a bill to abolish use of "prison snitch" testimony,
in which a prisoner is effectively bribed to testify that someone else
confessed to a crime.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
Invasive 'French Patriot Act' Moves Forward, Spurring Privacy Concerns.
A UN tribunal ordered the UN to reinstate Anders Kompass, who leaked a report about rapes committed by French peacekeeping troops.
How about telling the thugs that "violence isn't the answer"?
Dams on the Mekong river could be devastating to fish populations.
There is one good thing in which the US is still number one: protection of freedom to express views that others find offensive.
European "free" countries frequently punish people for expressing their views; remember the Frenchman who was prosecuted for saying, "Sarkozy, I see you", to criticize a government policy.
We weaken freedom of speech at great peril.
South Carolina is sitting on the gruesome video in which thug Justin Craven repeatedly shot unarmed Ernest Satterwhite as the latter was sitting at the wheel of his car.
Everyone: call on AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to quit ALEC.
2/3 of America's winter vegetables come from the hyper-dry Imperial Valley. It gets irrigation water from the Colorado River, which is very low due to drought.
Hillary Clinton Isn't Ready to Disclose Who's Funding Her Campaign.
Indian citizens: demand that the government
unfreeze Greenpeace
India's accounts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
Obama challenges opponents of the TPP to state exactly what text they disapprove of.
After Ramsey Orta recorded the thugs' killing of Eric Garner, thugs stalked him until they found an excuse to arrest him. In jail Orta refuses to eat, expecting to be poisoned — and other prisoners have found rat poison in their food.
Militarized thugs' new tactics for attacking protests.
The National Lawyers Guild says that Mumia Abu-Jamal is being denied medical care for a life-threatening illness.
Officials looked at the medical records of Veterans Administration whistleblowers, apparently looking for a way to discredit or harm them.
After the US-Korea "free trade agreement", US exports to Korea have decreased and imports from Korea have surged. In terms of national competition, the agreement was "bad for the US". In those same terms, you could say it was "good for Korea."
However, if we look beyond national competition, we see that the agreement gave companies additional power over both countries. It was bad for both.
A toxic fracking chemical has appeared in Pennsylvania drinking water.
Arctic ice is melting faster than expected, and the winter peak was the smallest ever observed.
The heating of the Arctic Ocean endangers arctic cod, seals, and polar bears. Worst of all, the loss of ice speeds global heating, since liquid water absorbs sunlight that would have reflected from the ice.
The USDA is accused of harassing its own scientists whose research is inconvenient for agribusiness. Specifically, they have found danger in pesticides or GMOs.
Greenpeace said that experts agree fracking won't cut energy prices. The UK government said this was a false claim because the prime minister says that it will.
He is no expert on this; his field of expertise is serving plutocrats, not energy prices.
The question is a distraction anyway, since short-term savings in costs could not justify fracking.
The Keystone 1 pipeline suffers
from dangerous
corrosion after just two years of carrying tar sands oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
That's not coincidence. Tar sands oil is very corrosive. Spills are a certainty. The Keystone XL would spill oil too.
Extending Europe's financial transactions tax to the US would raise substantial funds while stabilizing markets — a double win.
Stability was the reason that Tobin gave when he proposed this tax.
A bunch of whites protested Baltimore racism by violating the curfew in an affluent area to demonstrate that the thugs would treat them differently.
Computerizing citizens' interface to government services is a systematic recipe for injustice to people with disabilities or principles.
I expect some day I will be denied legal rights for refusing to run nonfree software, refusing to carry a portable phone, and so on.
I think there should be a general rule that algorithms can never make a final decision about a person's rights: there must always be an appeal to a human who can override the computer.
In addition, the criteria to be judged by the computer should be published and chosen democratically. We would not allow humans to deny people rights based on secret criteria; why permit a machine to do so?
Baltimore thugs arrested Kevin Moore, who made a video of the violent arrest of Freddie Gray.
They also arrested his visitors from Ferguson who had come to set up a branch of Copwatch.
People are starting to travel on foot in downtown Los Angeles, but thugs leap at the chance to fine them.
It would be an awful shame to use pedestrians as an excuse to repress homeless people more. If you live in LA, please oppose this.
It appears that the fine of nearly 200 dollars for crossing a street is a scheme to squeeze money from the people who are too poor to push back the Ferguson spirit at work.
In addition, it is inexcusable to judge the question of jaywalking by when the pedestrian starts to cross. This is an example of a law that's an ass.
Obama said the war in Afghanistan is ending, but the government argues in court that he didn't mean it.
Integrated pest management is effective for producing more food with less pesticide.
US farms often used integrated pest management before GMOs became prevalent.
Even "not for profit" universities in the US are being pervasively corrupted by the everything-is-business market society.
US Tops for Income Inequality and Incarceration, but Near Bottom for National Health.
A group of Dutch people are suing the government for failing to protect the citizens from the disaster of global heating, which threatens to inundate their country.
US citizens: phone Rep. Pelosi's office at (202) 225-4965 and call on her to oppose "fast track" (for the TPP and other proposed corporate power treaties).
US citizens:
call
on Obama to preserve country of origin labeling for food.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The government of India is forcing Greenpeace India to shut down by freezing its funds.
The government is trying to serve the large companies that wish to trash the environment in parts of India. Greenpeace India has been an effective obstacle.
The Tories have not said how they will cut billions from welfare benefits, but all ideas for doing so are crushingly cruel.
The Green Party would put Britons back to work implementing renewable energy and energy efficiency.
A Ukrainian oligarch (comparable in power to the Koch brothers in the US) claims that he arranged for Poroshenko to win the presidential election by persuading his main opponent to step aside.
That is a little stronger influence than US oligarchs exert; they normally don't pressure someone not to run, only make it hopeless to win.
Two innocent blacks were shot dead by Ohio thugs, months ago; neither one is getting justice.
In both cases, the thugs rushed to kill. If they had taken a couple of seconds to observe, they might have seen that the victims were innocent and not threatening anyone.
Something must be done to teach US thugs the habit of waiting a couple of seconds before they shoot. This does not necessarily mean prosecution. If the killers were not thugs, and did not enjoy that special immunity that incites thugs to kill and lie, and supposing that the victims were white, would charges be brought against them? I don't know; can anyone tell me?
Perhaps this is what the "stand your ground" laws are about.
Heat waves cost Australian businesses 8 billion dollars a year. This does not include the danger to people's health, agriculture, fire, etc.
Pregnancy is dangerous for a 10-year-old; Paraguay's government is not just oppressing her by forcing her to give birth, it may kill her.
Human Rights Watch says that Saudi Arabia is dropping US-made cluster bombs on Yemen.
Cluster bombs scatter lots of bomblets. Some of them remain unexploded and kill children in subsequent years.
Amnesty International finds that Assad's air force is dropping barrel bombs on Aleppo.
The Department of Education refuses to forgive the debt of most Corinthian students, and recommends they transfer to other for-profit colleges.
A bogus viral video stirs up false fear of kidnaping of children by strangers (which almost never happens in the US).
When thugs tased Natasha McKenna to death, she was handcuffed and her legs were shackled.
Thugs took Freddie Gray on the long ride, during which he was fatally injured, when they were two minutes away from the station where they were supposed to take him.
People are starting to recognize that it is an injustice to imprison 16-year-olds for sexting.
It should not be a crime to make a nude photo of yourself or your lover. Perhaps it should be a crime for anyone other than the subject to distribute copies without explicit written permission of the subject.
The NSA can automatically transcribe phone calls, so it can convert all calls to text and search them.
Standard Chartered bank says it does not fund fossil fuel projects but it has lent 2/3 of a billion dollars for a new coal mine in Australia.
The UK Greens reject the practice of scapegoating immigrants for the country's problems.
Plutocracy is responsible for them.
Two gunmen attacked a "draw Muhammad" cartoon competition and were shot dead.
The attack was announced in advance by a tweet which proclaimed it as an act of religious terrorism.
Either the attackers were real murderous fanatics, or they pretended to be murderous fanatics (but that is implausible).
The organizers of the cartoon contest were deliberately provocative, but not violent.
Ms Geller is wrong about some things. There are millions of moderate Muslims. Even fanatics don't suppose they can impose Islam on the US in the short term.
What Muslim fanatics typically demand, in Europe and the US, is "respect" for Islam, respect to a degree that no person or belief is entitled to.
Many Muslims who do not engage in violence nonetheless support this demand. While their methods are not wrong, the demand is still wrong. Persistently exercising the right to criticize Islam (and any other religion whose adherents demand to silence criticism) is a valid way to defend that right.
If we don't cut greenhouse emissions soon, we will commit the world to perhaps 17 meters of sea level rise, though it will take a few centuries to occur. By 2100 we may get 3 meters of rise.
These models are uncertain. Should we bet the world's major cities on the possibility that the real rise is less? We would lose parts of nearly every coastal city.
Why did it take so long to catch Corinthian Colleges for its illegalities and shut it down? Its political and lobbying donations may be the reason.
If you want to feed birds, take care that your feeder doesn't encourage introduced species at the expense of native species.
You might want to set up a bat house to shelter insectivorous bats, if any live in your area. They are really great for keeping the mosquitos down.
The BRIC Nations' Response to [global heating] Is Critical to the Fate of the Planet.
Reducing pollution and environmental degradation in India is a big challenge combined with reducing poverty.
The comparison between India and China is partly misleading. Large parts of China are deserts, and the size of "China" probably includes Tibet.
Nonetheless, India is clearly overpopulated. The article has a blind spot in treating population and population growth as beyond control. Population growth is not a natural phenomenon; it is the result of failure to make birth control and abortion easily available to women.
India's law against sex-selective abortion, to the extent that it is enforced, promotes future population growth. It will be limited by the number of women; men that don't have children won't contribute. Thus, parents that choose to have boys rather than girls will reduce the size of future generations. We should not discourage them from helping to reduce the pressure on one side of the vice.
The predominance of bicycles in Dutch cities is due to an activist campaign that started in the 1970s.
A solar-powered lamp that costs $25 can pay for itself in fuel savings in under two months.
Evans Wadongo is doing a great job as an individual alone. But he has only distributed 50,000 solar lamps in Kenya in 10 years. At this rate it would take millennia to reach the people that need them in Kenya alone.
If the world were on a war footing to save itself from the danger of global heating, it could easily have provided them to billions of people by now.
A judge on Burundi's Supreme Court fled into exile, citing death threats demanding he approve the president's unconstitutional attempt to run again.
Qatar's minister says he "hopes" its semi-slavery system for construction workers will be abolished this year.
I guess this "hope" is meant to substitute for real change.
The Uphill Battle to Better Regulate Formaldehyde.
A Mexican drug gang is fighting the state in what is nearly a war.
Mexico needs to legalize drugs; that is the only way to stop fueling these gangs.
Most of the world's countries (not including the US) are meeting to reduce the use of various persistent toxic pollutants.
It should be noted that Asbestos and mercury are not organic: they don't contain carbon.
Shell has agreed in court to start cleaning up some oil spills in Nigeria.
Whether it is actually possible to clean them up is less clear.
The EPA's proposed CO2 emissions limits would have the byproduct of preventing thousands of deaths and heart attacks each year.
Pregnant 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Denied Abortion by Paraguayan Authorities.
Once collected, that data will be available to the NSA and also by subpoena for anyone's divorce case. In addition, as the article says, others might get the data by cracking the company's system.
If we don't want privacy to be a luxury available only to the rich, we need laws to limit what data companies can collect.
CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Calls on Journalists to Tell 'Full Story' of US Torture.
The TPP is more bogus trickle-down economics.
Politicians advocate trickle-down economics because, directly or indirectly, they are paid to do so.
US citizens: call for ending mining companies' access to cheap coal on US public lands.
Shawn Carrié reports on his arrest in Baltimore by thugs that knew full well that he was a reporter. And on his 49 hours in jail, during which time everyone's requests for water, toilet paper and medical attention were denied.
More soldiers' testimony about atrocities in Gaza. Some violence shocked Israeli soldiers as gratuitous, but nobody was punished.
GOP House Leaders Create "Action Group" To Seize And Sell America's Public Lands.
Rand Paul is the latest target of Youtube's "content ID", which automatically deletes posted videos in a way copyright law does not require.
US citizens: oppose the weak "USA FREEDOM Act": insist on letting the PAT RIOT Act expire.
Think twice before letting a company analyze or store your DNA.
Run a Wi-Fi Network? HBO and Showtime Want You to Police Your Users.
Israeli soldiers say they were ordered to consider anything in Gaza as a valid target. Some were ordered to shoot any anyone looking from a window at Israeli forces. Others were told to shoot at any adult man.
When the US kills people in Pakistan, it labels all adult males killed as "enemy fighters". Israeli forces went one step further when they labeled two unarmed dead women as "terrorists".
Sometimes Israeli soldiers shelled buildings randomly, out of hatred or as revenge for a dead soldier. They also had a scheme for intentionally shelling protected areas (such as UN compounds) and disguising their acts in official logs.
Here are quotations from the soldiers.
The UN climate chief says there is no room for new coal development.
China's large construction projects are threatened by global heating, as China is heating faster than most of the world.
I suppose agriculture will be threatened too.
Prisoners of Boko Haram said that the fanatics killed the captured men and boys immediately, then took the women and girls into the forest where many died from insufficient food. Even after rescue, a few of them have died from the effects of privation.
US citizens: thank DA Mosby for prosecuting the killers of Freddie Gray.
Most buildings in Kathmandu need repairs before they can be safe to live in.
I fear the available construction crews would take years to do this work. If so, it will be necessary to bring in Indian construction workers.
Assad's air attacks kill Syrian civilians, too.
US thugs killed twice as many people in March 2013 as UK thugs have killed since 1900.
That is not a typo. US thugs are killing people at 2000 times the rate of UK thugs.
Of course, the US is more populous. Its population is four times that of the UK. So US thugs are killing people 500 times as fast as they would in a country like the UK but as big in population as the US.
US citizens: call on newly confirmed Attorney General Lynch to end "too big to jail".
Madison, Wisconsin, has banned discrimination against Atheists.
Religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion, and laws against discrimination based on religion should be interpreted as including a prohibition against discrimination against those without religion.
Xnet's positive agenda for copyright law.
US citizens: stand by senators Brown, Sanders and Warren in calling on Obama to publish the text of the TPP and other so-called "trade agreements".
We know that these treaties are nasty. If they weren't nasty, they wouldn't serve the interests of the plutocrats. However, not everyone follows that reasoning. As long as the text is secret, we can't point to specific nasty things in it, and that enables Obama and the Republicans to get away with misrepresenting it.
Since it looks like the world is ready to give ICANN temporary control over internet addresses and protocols, ICANN is demanding that that be made permanent or it will go on strike.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to immediately investigate candidates such as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, who are pretending not to be candidates and claiming that excuses their violations.
Bernie Sanders says the US needs a "political revolution" against the billionaire class.
Note that he did not say that candidates for federal office are billionaires. Most of them are merely millionaires. The point is that they work for and report to the billionaires.
Run a Wi-Fi Network? HBO and Showtime Want You to Police Your Users.
Think twice before letting a company analyze or store your DNA.
The UN climate chief says there is no room for new coal development.
Israeli soldiers say they were ordered to consider anything in Gaza as a valid target. Some were ordered to shoot any anyone looking from a window at Israeli forces. Others were told to shoot at any adult man.
When the US kills people in Pakistan, it labels all adult males killed as "enemy fighters". Israeli forces went one step further when they labeled two unarmed dead women as "terrorists".
Sometimes Israeli soldiers shelled buildings randomly, out of hatred or as revenge for a dead soldier. They also had a scheme for intentionally shelling protected areas (such as UN compounds) and disguising their acts in official logs.
Here are quotations from the soldiers.
China's large construction projects are threatened by global heating, as China is heating faster than most of the world.
I suppose agriculture will be threatened too.
Prisoners of Boko Haram said that the fanatics killed the captured men and boys immediately, then took the women and girls into the forest where many died from insufficient food.
Even after rescue, a few of them have died from the effects of privation.
Most buildings in Kathmandu need repairs before they can be safe to live in.
I fear the available construction crews would years to do this work. If so, it will be necessary to bring in Indian construction workers.
Assad's air attacks kill Syrian civilians, too.
US thugs killed twice as many people in March 2013 as UK thugs have killed since 1900.
That is not a typo. US thugs are killing people at 2000 times the rate of UK thugs.
Of course, the US is more populous. Its population is four times that of the UK. So US thugs are killing people 500 times as fast as they would in a country like the UK but as big in population as the US.
Madison, Wisconsin, has banned discrimination against Atheists.
Religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion, and laws against discrimination based on religion should be interpreted as including a prohibition against discrimination against those without religion.
Xnet's positive agenda for copyright law.
Since it looks like the world is ready to give ICANN temporary control over internet addresses and protocols, ICANN is demanding that that be made permanent or it will go on strike.
Bernie Sanders says the US needs a "political revolution" against the billionaire class.
Note that he did not say that candidates for federal office are billionaires. Most of them are merely millionaires. The point is that they work for and report to the billionaires.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop feeding the Pentagon slush fund.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to forgive the loans of students of Corinthian Colleges.
Freddie Gray's relatives called for an end to rioting in Baltimore; having thugs charged with crimes is a path towards justice.
Tunisia is considering a law that would imprison whistleblowers for 10 years for revealing state secrets including crimes such as torture, criminalize making a video recording in a jail or police station, and criminalize insulting the army (on vague conditions that don't protect human rights).
Reference
in French.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
The USA Freedom Act: a step in the right direction, but doesn't eliminate all the wrongs in the PAT RIOT Act.
Even if the PAT RIOT Act were eliminated and FISA were made just, other systems collect data about people in general and make digital dossiers that threaten democracy and human rights.
Big Banks Claim Reform Will Hurt the Economy. If We Don't Fix This House of Cards, It Will Fall on Us Again.
Some mentally ill fanatics fantasize about terrorism. The FBI, rather than help them steer away from this, pushes them into making concrete plans — so it can imprison them permanently.
Meanwhile, fear of prosecution causes communities to eject such people, which can encourage them to move towards real terrorism.
UK politicians expect voters to expect them to break their promises. Therefore they now try out special terminology for "promises meant to be kept".
In a minority or coalition government, parties won't be able to do everything they wanted to do. Recognizing this, we should choose politicians with the right priorities, who will do their best to fund the important programs and collect enough taxes for them.
If you feel the need to ask a politician to make a concrete promise about a specific program, that is because you suspect that politician doesn't give it as much priority as it deserves. If you're right, that suggests you should vote for someone else with better priorities.
We must not reduce art to a "creative industry" whose mission is profit.
South Africa proposes to legalize sale of lion carcasses because its lion population is thought to be increasing under protection.
There is some logic in the idea of selling excess lions, but the danger is that this will fuel the demand for poaching lions elsewhere. The demand for lion parts is based on ignorant superstition, and a campaign of education could put an end to it.
Proposed state laws could make thug body cameras fail to do their job.
The question of when and how these recordings can be used requires regulation, but it has to be the right regulation.
Astronauts heading for Mars might suffer severe brain damage caused by cosmic rays.
Wikileaks has its submission system working again.
Rep. Lieu dismissed spies' demands to eliminate encryption: "Just follow the damn Constitution."
A Lego store in the US arrested a boy for coming there with money to spend it — alone.
I hope he decides to spend his money somewhere else from now on.
Storage sites for toxic coal slurry, a byproduct of coal mining, are potential accidents.
The Iraqi government isn't officially theocratic, but it oppresses women as if it were. And that's not even counting PISSI.
Forest fires are destroying California forests faster than they can regrow, making them a source of greenhouse gases.
Vietnam still suffers the damage of Agent Orange, which the US knew at the time was toxic to humans. The US has never paid compensation.
Thug unions recently defeated Maryland bills to increase the accountability of thugs who commit murder or mayhem.
Six Baltimore thugs have been charged with the killing of Freddie Gray.
Genetic editing of human embryos ought to be permitted, at least to get rid of disease-causing genes, once the technique is reliable and safe.
Prosecutors say Scott Walker is lying as he tries to sabotage the criminal investigation of his campaign finance.
The US National Petroleum Council is an oil company lobbying organization pretending to offer neutral advice.
Australian TV commentator Scott McIntyre made controversial tweets that criticized Australia's official self-image about its wars, on the day reserved for boosting that self-image.
The minister in charge of Australian public TV was outraged, so the head of the channel fired him immediately, claiming that to question the official story constituted "disrespect" for the audience.
I mostly don't agree with McIntyre's statements. First of all, I see nothing immoral about the Gallipoli landings. They were run badly, and failed, but that's not immoral. (The allies' armies suffered generally from bad and rigid leadership.) The use of the atomic bomb against Japan is a complicated subject when it applies to the US (bombing of cities with military installations was considered normal at the time) but Australia was not responsible for it.
However, it is important to respect the right to criticize the nation's conduct even if one disagrees with the criticism.
The feature is a good one; what will be its price in privacy? If the phone is on all the time, and ready to make a call, it will be tracked all the time.
This could be prevented by turning the phone on only when it needs to call. But will they do that?
Jane Goodall: apes could be wiped out by global heating. They can't adapt to very different environments.
Humans can't be wiped out by global heating; we are good at adapting to many different environments.
What might get wiped out is technological civilization based on global trade. That is rather fragile. I expect a few hundred million humans could survive with low tech agriculture and fishing, once 6 to 9 billion have died.
Heating won't make solar power stop working, and won't make computers stop working. But the wars it stimulates can destroy the globalize manufacturing system, so that solar cells and computers can't be replaced when they break.
The Tories' gradual privatization of the NHS is taking a big leap as companies will be invited to provide "services" directly to patients.
As usual, the Tories deny that they are privatizing and destroying the NHS. They hope that some will be foolish enough to believe this claim and fail to resist.
The US has had a series of systems for oppressing blacks: slavery, segregation laws, and now repression by thugs leading to mass imprisonment.
The victims don't have to be limited to blacks. Rather, when economic pressure is the motive force, it catches whatever groups are easiest to catch. That often tends to be the groups that are already in a weak position, perhaps because of lingering effects of an earlier system of oppression.
To the extent that bigotry is practiced (consciously or not) by thugs, the target group must be one they can recognize. But that doesn't mean it has to be a racial group. It can be the poor, if they can be recognized as a group by how they dress and where they are found.
Baltimore thugs arrested legal and medical volunteers at a protest.
Journalists in Kenya are threatened by repressive laws and murderers.
Clinton is trying to appeal to progressive voters by
I don't trust her. If she doesn't condemn the TPP, she is a bogus
progressive like Obama.
Obama's push for the TPP ( Treacherous Plutocratic Poison
) demonstrates once again that a right-wing "Democrat" is not
much different from a Republican. Shame on Americans who fall
for this trick again.
I support Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination,
and if he wins it, I will vote for him for president.
If Clinton wins the nomination, I will vote Green.
The UK has pardoned Turing for the "crime" of homosexuality.
Now it should pardon 49,000 other people convicted of the same "crime".
UK thugs are trying to starve out activists who have seized a disused
bank building to shelter homeless people.
Has any political party said anything?
Nepal denies blocking aid in customs, but it appears that private
aid convoys are being stopped and seized.
Kerry says Yemen is not a failed state…yet.
The Saudis are still working on it.
A US air attack in Syria killed 50 civilians.
It is not clear from the article whether the target was in a battlefield.
Ralph Nader: Obama, if you want Americans to believe you that the TPP is good, you had better prove it.
Colorado's IUD funding program reduced teen pregnancies by 40%
and teenagers' abortions by 35%, but Republicans voted to cancel it,
citing a strained excuse.
Republicans value every embryo more than a real human being.
Liz, in Kenya, campaigned successfully for her convicted rapists to
get sentenced to more than cutting the grass; but the rapists'
families, standing up for the rapists, drove her and her family to
flee into hiding.
Aid for Nepal is piling up at the airport, government agents insist on
inspecting it slowly.
The Maldives arrested all the leaders of the opposition, after a protest calling for freedom for overthrown president Masheed.
US citizens:
call
on Bernie Sanders to help get the sneaky endorsement of Israel's
colonies in Palestine out of the "fast track" bill.
Of course, Sanders opposes "fast track", as everyone should.
But he may still be able to do this.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to pay attention to predictable flood damage
due to global heating.
US citizens:
co-sign
the anti-Keystone Unity letter.
US citizens:
call
on the FDA to ban genetically modified salmon.
These growing these salmon can
endanger
wild salmon populations.
A robot has been developed to
debone
chickens.
This article repeats some of the usual bogus arguments businesses make
to get their own way. They cite economics in these arguments then
ignore the economics that refutes them.
If profit margins are small, that implies nothing about automation
since automation won't change that. In such a Red Queen's race, no
advance in efficiency is objectively necessary. If one competitor
adopts an advance, the others must; but once they all adopt it, their
competitive situation has not changed much. Meanwhile, if the advance
did not exist, or were prohibited, none of the competitors would miss
it.
Concerned about whether workers can handle an expected increase in
chicken production? No need to be; they certainly can, if the
companies hire more workers in proportion.
Do workers suffer from fatigue and repetitive strain? If so, slow
down the line and hire a few more workers. A non-plutocratic
government would require this. It would increase costs per chicken a
little, but since that increase will apply to all competitors, they
will cope easily by increasing prices a little.
If it were solely a matter of how to debone chickens, I'd rejoice if
people no longer had to do this grueling, dangerous and gory job
— provided they were not made homeless as a result. Under
plutocratic austerity, that's the probable outcome. We must not
permit more automation until we provide decently for those whose work
is not needed.
This is why I shout out to people using the automated self-checkout
machines: "If you use those machines, you are putting Americans out of
work."
Yesterday, an employee stationed near the machines at a Safeway store
responded with "Yes". Someone got the message.
Iran's foreign minister claimed that Iran does not imprison people for
their views. In response, people posted many
examples
of people in prison for their political views or for their
religion.
It is standard practice for any state that calls itself "Islamic" to
trample
freedom of religion.
Tesla's battery may smooth the path to
using
solely renewable energy.
Even though this product may be very important, it should not have
been given an exemption from income tax. That should be forbidden
entirely.
Aden is besieged by street fighting as
Houthis
continue trying to take the city.
If not for the Saudi intervention, the Houthis might well have won
this war already with much less violence. But now the fighting is
likely to drag on indefinitely, with no winner but many losers. It
could end up like Iraq, with a cycle of massacres back and forth.
Even if it does not reach that point, it will be another failed state
in which al Qa'ida will have every opportunity. I have to wonder, is
the US making sure its favorite bogey man remains threatening? Is the
US being macchiavellian, or idiotically incompetent?
Poor
Britons have to walk miles to a food bank because they have no
money for a bus, and some have to return spaghetti because they have
no money for electricity to cook it.
This is what austerity means: slowly starve the poor and pretend it is
their fault that the rich are getting paid instead.
The Tories plan to make it
even
more cruel. Anything to give those billionaires more billions.
Global heating will impact coffee. It won't be extinct in 2050, but
the
supplies will be limited.
UK police are
monitoring
the public speaking of a Green Party candidate for MP.
Colombia's ex-president Alvaro Horrible faces investigation, accused
of organizing a spy ring that
snooped
on his electoral opponents.
Horrible is also associated with Colombia's worst terrorists, the
army-sponsored
paramilitares.
The Church of England
will
divest from some fossil fuels.
Republicans aim to eliminate NASA's climate research.
Like tobacco companies before them, the fossil fuel companies want to pretend that their products may not be dangerous. One way is to hamper efforts to observe the results.
Paul Krugman: the world has demostrated (yet again)
that government
spending cuts make a recession worse, but US and UK politicians
still insist on more cuts.
Krugman theorizes that this is a front for knocking down the poor.
That helps business by making workers desperate to accept low wages and precarious conditions.
This year's US May Day events called for ending racism and thug violence as well as better working conditions.
The TSA's PreCheck Program: a Whitelist or a Blacklist?
Erdogan crushed the annual May Day protest in Istanbul to prove the Turkish state is serious about repression of protest.
Many governments have responded to the Charlie Hebdo attacks with
cenorship of one kind or another, demonstrating how freedom of the
press remains threatened.
$200 million in fraud by charters schools has been identified, but the
investigators think they have barely scratched the surface.
Perhaps this explains why state legislators have been so eager to
create charter schools.
Marx pointed out that the crucial issue for everyone is what relationship to have with capitalism.
Unlike the author, and unlike what he supposes "we" want, I do not
make "reward and leisure" my goals. I want to do as much as I can to
make the world better, while avoiding extremes of pain and insecurity.
Unlike the author of the article, I don't think I'm a hypocrite, and
it's not so hard to avoid. You can avoid it too. Refuse to be drawn
into consumption for the hell of it or for competition.
The moose populatoin in Minnesota is crashing. It is not clear why,
but global heating is suspected.
Baltimore thugs claimed that the other prisoner said said Freddie Gray
intentionally injured himself. The other prisoner says this was a
lie.
The lie was in a document that was leaked.
Perhaps the leak was intentional.
What path exists to lead from the insufficient Paris agreement to
a chance of avoiding global heating disaster.
The UK offered an easy amnesty to known rich tax evaders.
The condemnation of Baltimore riots by whites is part of the system
that
drives
the blacks of Baltimore to riot from despair.
Robert Liese wasn't killed by a thug, he only got a
broken
spleen that had to be removed.
Income inequality is killing Americans: since Reagan instituted
plutocratic government, the US has fallen behind other advanced
countries in
survival
rates for young and old.
The article exempts globalization from blame, but that was no natural
phenomenon; it was a policy crafted by the plutocrats and imposed by
right-wing politicians such as
Clinton,
and
Obama.
A thug
entered
Terrance Kellom's home with no warrant, shot Terrance dead in cold
blood, then procured a warrant and claimed Terrance was attacking
him with a hammer.
Jimmy Carter says he couldn't have afforded to run for president under
today's
corrupt system.
Spain is now enjoying a "recovery"
for
the rich alone, like the US and many other countries.
That's what happens when a government aims to create "economic growth"
according to totals by means of policies to knock down workers.
Banksters call this worthless "recovery" a
"shining
example" for other countries that knuckle under. Have faith in
trickle-down, they say, and pretend you're getting a share of the
plutocrats' loot.
The
UN attacks whistleblowers, just as many governments do.
Governments and other large organizations need powerful schemes to
protect whistleblowers.
The mayor of Ankara accused the US State Department of hypocrisy for
criticizing Turkish repression in Gezi Park and
failing
to criticize US repression in Baltimore.
His argument is right; his conclusion is backwards. They both deserve
to be condemned.
1/6
of living species face extinction due to global heating.
Here are
some
examples.
Many more species face extinction due to other human activities such
as destruction of habitats.
Mohamed Nasheed's trial was a
sick
joke, an excuse to imprison someone politically undesirable.
Rand Paul is
trying
to kill the FCC's net neutrality regulations.
SETI has looked for galaxies showing signs of highly advanced
civilizations filling their galaxies with Dyson spheres, and there are
none.
Perhaps every intelligent species soon learns to live with lower
energy use or wipes itself out.
Or perhaps Dyson spheres are not feasible.
The Albuquerque district attorney that is prosecuting thugs for murder
has been warned
thugs
might murder her.
They already tried framing her son.
Global heating is causing icebergs to break off and move away from
Antarctica. They
scrape
the sea bottom clear, eliminating life much the way a trawler
does.
Many US medical insurance companies
violate
the contraception requirements of Obama's health care law.
Men involved in planning the assassination of Malala Yousafzai have received
long prison sentences in Pakistan.
US citizens:
defeat
Obama on "fast track" — phone your congresscritter today to
oppose it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
tell Congress
to let section 215 of the PAT RIOT act expire.
We must
eliminate
the PAT RIOT Act's massive data collection, not try to "fix" it.
US citizens:
call on
Obama and Kerry to quash Enbridge's pipeline development that was
approved secretly in an illegal manner.
US citizens:
call
on Attorney General Lynch to prosecute US torturers.
Everyone:
call
on Maryland Governor Hogan to have the state attorney general
investigate the killing of Freddie Gray, and to step back from
militarization of thugs and repression.
Republicans have crafted an
excuse
to hamstring the EPA: to prohibit it from considering the results
of scientific studies unless all their data and software are
published.
In medical studies, the data is personal medical data that and can't
be released. Aside from that, ideally the studies should be published
as specified here. The problem is that the EPA looks at some
50,000
studies each year, and the EPA does not run them, so it would have
to disregard them.
If Congress wants to improve scientific publication standards, it
should require funded researchers to publish more of their data,
methods and code, and provide funds to do this.
The US Congress has sneakily voted to
pressure
European governments through TTIP not to boycott or label products
made in Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory.
This would add one more to the many reasons why the TTIP must be
defeated. That Treaty Is Plutocratic.
People arrested at protests in Baltimore are having
high
bail imposed; most will therefore be jailed until trial, perhaps
months in the future.
Does Maryland charge people fees for being jailed? Some of these
people may spend their whole lives in jail because they can't pay the
fees.
However, the state backed down on one point, and
freed
those who were not yet charged with anything.
The
House Just Passed a Major Expansion of Government Surveillance in the
Guise of Cybersecurity.
Pope Francis offered the Vatican's archive to help Argentines find out
about the
fate
of their disappeared relatives.
Prosecutors in St Louis have
dropped cases to avoid
disclosing Stingray capability in court.
A Pennsylvania law effectively
bars
convicts from publishing statements about their cases (or anything
else that victims dislike).
This means they can't say they are innocent, or ask for help proving
they are innocent.
300
female captives were rescued from Boko Haram last week. Some of
them had become supporters of Boko Haram.
I am not sure what conclusion to draw when captives say that they had
been treated well. What is the boundary between brainwashing and
recruiting?
Facebook
Is Eating the Internet.
German
Measles Declared Eradicated from North and South America.
Fossil
Fuels Are the New Tobacco When It Comes to Health Risk.
The
conditions
in Baltimore that led to the killing of Freddie Gray and to the
riot as a response.
More.
Joseph Kent, Baltimore activist, was snatched by thugs and
disappeared
for 16 hours until a lawyer found him.
Martin Luther King Jr. explains black rioting: by taking property, the
rioters shock a society that
values
property more than it values some people.
A UK intelligence court ordered GCHQ to delete its
recordings
of discussions between Libyan plaintiffs and their lawyers.
Some on-line universities
make
students install proprietary spyware to take tests.
If you are considering taking an online course, I urge you to verify
in advance whether it will require this or any other nonfree software
— and, if so, complain and don't sign up.
Many US states have laws giving
special
privileges to thugs who are being investigated for wrongdoing.
A few of these ought to be rights for everyone that is interrogated;
most of them should simply be eliminated. What is clear is that we
must not shield criminal thugs, and we must facilitate civilian review
boards for thug departments.
Because libel reform in the UK did not cover Northern Ireland,
the
entire UK is still subject to libel censorship; for instance, the
film Going Clear which exposes the Church of Scientology cannot be
broadcast there.
However, self-defeating licensing arrangements are part of the cause
of the problem.
Japan has increased its greenhouse reduction targets
It is a good step, but the proposed pledges are still terribly inadequate.
The bulk of evidence points to a higher "climate sensitivity".
It appears doubling the air's CO2 will cause 3C of heating, not just 2C.
Bernie Sanders is running for president.
He's going to have my vote.
Indonesian Government Must Halt Road through Orangutan Reserve.
The American Psychological Association ran a conference together with the CIA, back in the days when the two cooperated on torture.
I thank the APA for changing its rules back and banning its members for participating in torture. Other US institutions such as the US need to take firm steps against torture, too.
German intelligence spied on French and EU officials' data for the US.
Germans were incensed that the US had spied on German chancellor.
I hope they draw the ethical conclusion (we shouldn't do this to each other) rather than the cynical conclusion (if they do it, why not us).
Pakistan has launched a criminal prosecution of a CIA official believed to be involved in planning drone attacks.
I am sure they will probably not be able to catch him, but this will have a political significance anyway.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-25 because the old link was broken.]
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