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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 Obama to prioritize human rights for the rest of his term.
Guber in the UK must now treat its drivers as employees, pay minimum wage, and provide benefits.
This may be a great step forward on one of the many injustices of Guber, but it will do nothing about how Guber mistreats its customers.
Violent attacks against dissidents in Zimbabwe are happening around 2 per day.
The film I, Daniel Blake is fiction, but so true to life that it might as well be a documentary about the cruel Tory welfare system.
I was thinking of calling it "heartless", but that word is not strong enough.
Homelessness Can Only Really Be Tackled If People Have Somewhere to Go.
For the medium term, we need legal and policy changes to increase the supply of housing. This means discouraging practices that keep housing space vacant, as well as zoning laws that obstruct construction. We may also have to fund housing construction publicly.
For the long term, we must reduce population growth, which puts an unbearable burden in many ways (housing development is just one).
Can art help people confront the reality of curbing global heating?
A Netherlands politician faces a trial for "inciting racial hatred" for raising the question of how many Moroccans it is desirable to have as immigrants.
This sort of question — substitute any group, it doesn't matter which — is a legitimate question to ask.
More fundamentally, laws against "insulting religion" are blatant injustice. Freedom of speech includes the right to insult anyone or anything. Even you, even me.
The UK is offering various businesses special deals and exemptions from whatever new rules will result from its separation from the EU. This assures that the whole burden will be borne by those who have no special clout.
The injustice of "free trade" is that it gives business more power over governments and society. To reduce "free trade" can be good, but only if the government has the courage to insist on decreasing that power. The Tories, who are on the side of the wealthy anyway, don't even think of trying to do that.
Adam Crapser was brought to the US at age 4 for adoption, but his parents did not arrange to make him a US citizen. Now he is to be deported to South Korea, where he does not speak the language and will be treated as an outsider.
It is wrong to deport people who came to a country as children and have remained there. Though they are not literally natural-born, the difference is of no moral significance.
PISSI has made thousands of civilians in Mosul into human shields, forcing them to move to places where fighting is expected.
It is urgent to help the people freed from PISSI's control to visit Muslims around the world, to inform young people of what PISSI is really like.
While you're at it, if you have money in any of these banks, how about moving it to a small bank that lends money to your local businesses?
US citizens: call for
better regulation and testing of GMOs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
How the Federal Govt Is Using America's Concern with Bullying as an Excuse to Spy on Teens.
Perhaps that was justified. It seems wrong to accuse people of conspiracy for occupying some government facility.
The Bundy family places a burden on the world in two ways we can see: grazing too many cattle, and having too many babies. The latter is not illegal, but it is even more harmful that too many cattle.
Owning guns is not a human right.
An Indian charity enabled farmers to turn failing farms into profitable carbon sinks.
A noninvasive test for Down's syndrome eliminates the small risk of the old test. This might lead more women to get tested, and abort fetuses that have Down's syndrome.
According to Wikipedia, Down's syndrome is a combination of many kinds of medical misfortune. Thus, when carrying a fetus that is likely to have Down's syndrome, I think the right course of action for the woman is to terminate the pregnancy.
That choice does right by the potential children that would otherwise likely be born with grave medical problems and disabilities. As humans, they are entitled to the capacity that is normal for human beings. I don't advocate making rules about the matter, but I think that doing right by your children includes not intentionally starting them out with less than that.
When children with Down's syndrome are born, that's a different situation. They are human beings and I think they deserve the best possible care.
Homeless people in Berkeley have made a tent camp. The city government, representing the wealthy people and businesses that have no empathy for homeless people, keeps forcing the camp to move.
Republicans look beyond creating obstacles to voting and propose to legally disenfranchise most citizens.
Facebook lets advertisers direct ads at people selected by race.
Five Halloween Costumes for Digital Rights Activists.
Clinton finally made a statement about the Dakota Access Pipeline, and it was a series of platitudes designed not to take any stand.
If Obama takes action as he should, the conflict between pipeline protesters and thugs will de-escalate.
US citizens: call for an investigation of Clarence Thomas's other sexual assaults.
US citizens: phone the White House to call on Obama to protect pipeline protesters.
What happened to Koko the clown demonstrates why it is very foolish to talk with your clients through Facebook or to keep any important information in a Facebook account.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Syria live in areas under siege. Providing aid to them faces many obstacles.
A Russian who played Pokémon Go in a church as a protest could be imprisoned for years.
Laws against "insulting religion" are blatant injustice. Freedom of speech includes the right to insult anyone or anything.
Journalists in Venezuela now face violence and arrest when covering the large protests.
Israel's siege of Gaza involves frequent violence, occasionally fatal. By comparison, the rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza are rare, since Hamas is very effective at preventing them.
Everyone: Tell some large banks not to invest in fracked gas export terminals in Rio Grande valley.
Exxon's revenue is declining fast — even callous, selfish investors should get out.
Brazil's Congress has passed a law to promote coal.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Clinton advisor Mike Morelli, and his advice that the US should start a war with Iran.
Pipeline opponents protested outside Clinton headquarters, which refused to accept a letter from them.
Her silence on the issue most likely indicates support for the pipeline and for fossil fuels in general.
If you want real action to curb global heating, vote for Jill Stein. If you want real action to curb the plutocracy, vote for Jill Stein. If you don't want the US to attack Iran, vote for Jill Stein.
The bigger the vote for Jill Stein, the louder will be our message that Clinton will pay a price in the future for disregarding our survival and our freedom.
UN Votes to Start Negotiating Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons.
The US and Russia, as well as some other nuclear powers, voted against.
CIA whistleblowers who try to report lies and corruption through official channels face repression, and that practice has continued for a long time.
Hundreds of thugs with armored vehicles arrested pipeline protesters.
The Fetishisation of Work Is Making Us Miserable. Let's Learn to Live Again.
International Whaling Commission has narrowed the loophole that Japan uses to label whale hunting as "scientific".
The EU is considering big reductions in certain fishing quotas as populations are collapsing.
Nato and Russia Playing Dangerous Game with Military Build-Up.
These reciprocal gestures are probably good for politicians on both sides.
Africa is threatened by vulture capitalists, and the UK could be their tool.
Cage Prisoners defends the principle that everyone accused deserves a fair trial and the other rights of the accused — even those accused of being terrorists. For this it faces constant state harassment and is labeled by mainstream politicians as a "terrorist sympathizer".
Meanwhile, in the US, charities to provide humanitarian aid for Muslims are shut down by a state that claims, on far-fetched grounds, that they are "supporting terrorism".
Global heating will turn southern Spain into desert by 2100, except for the cities that will be inundated.
Republicans have a history of stealing elections. Dubya stole the election of 2000 through several forms of cheating in Florida. However, Nixon and Reagan tricked voters through treacherous sabotage of US foreign policy.
This year, Republicans are trying a broad range of different methods to stop Democrats from voting, from terrifying them at the polls to denying them the right to vote.
The FCC has tightened privacy policies for ISPs, but only as regards advertisers. While that will limit profiling somewhat, it changes nothing about the more important privacy issues.
It is still wise to browse through Tor or use a popular VPN hosted in a country that wouldn't cooperate with the US government on snooping.
US citizens: call on the Pentagon to investigate and disclose civilian deaths in Syria.
Everyone: call on major social networks to
stop helping monitoring companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Wallonia gained some changes that weaken CETA, perhaps making it less damaging, and providing more opportunities to kill it later.
US citizens: oppose the Millennium Bulk Terminal for coal export.
Washington State voters: support the carbon tax initiative, I-732.
There is an unfortunate dispute in Washington about what to do with the revenue from a carbon tax. I think it would be best to give part of the money to the poor and spend part of the money on green projects. But this detail is secondary: having a carbon tax is really important.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter again to oppose the TPP.
US citizens: call on the US to explain its policy and history regarding using depleted uranium weapons in Syria.
US citizens: call on Obama to stop military assistance to Salafi Arabia until there is a peace agreement in Yemen.
Internal documents obtained from the US Copyright Office show that its "neutral" advice about set-top boxes slavishly supported the copyright industry.
US And Allies Prepare to Take Raqqa from [PISSI] as Battle for Mosul Continues.
I wonder where they will find significant Syrian Arab forces that are opposed to PISSI. From Assad's forces? From other jihadis such as formerly-al-Qa'ida?
The pipeline security guards that set dogs on protesters may face charges because they didn't have proper licenses.
Anyone that sets dogs on people who are not presenting a violent threat ought to face charges, but it is absurd that this depends on the lack of some sort of a license.
In the long run, the only way to keep housing affordable is to make more housing in places where people need or want to live.
However, where many units are taken out of the housing supply as investments, a way to increase the supply of units available for living in is to heavily tax those that are not used for residence.
Don't Stigmatise Disabled People as Workshy.
Yemen's future is bleak, no matter what the outcome of the current war.
Only birth control can save Yemen. Lots of birth control.
More people are rejecting the idea of showing off company logos on their bodies.
(How foolish it is to identify your pride with something you bought.)
West's Failure to Reconnect Iran to Global Banks "Risks Breaching Nuclear Deal".
Clinton's leaning towards Salafi Arabia could lead her to make things worse.
Wallonia has surrendered to plutocratist pressure and dropped its veto of CETA.
Shouldn't young adults get the same second chance even if they're not white and wealthy?
Obamacare Made It Illegal to Deny Care to the Sick. Insurance Companies Still Do It.
By 2020, wild populations of vertebrates are expected to be only 1/3 of what they were in 1970.
Even worse than global heating, so far, is that humans are straining the Earth's carrying capacity. We need more people to avoid having children.
If we declare a new geological epoch, we should not call it "anthropocene".
The Tories have invented myriad excuses to cut off welfare benefits. A study of records demonstrates that this pushes people to go to charities for food.
Get the insurance companies out of the US health care system.
Coal is not a cheap way to reduce poverty — it causes poverty.
The latest bullshit for opposing legalization of marijuana is the mythical idea that children will be given marijuana cookies on Halloween. The article explains that no one has seen this happen, and for good reasons.
Logging in certain kinds of forests makes fires burn hotter.
Snowden: self-protection is not enough to make journalists safe. They need to campaign against surveillance.
The World Medical Association calls for divestment from fossil fuels.
Everyone: state your support for the protests of the students in the Beaumont Bulls football team.
Taskrabbit should be called Taskhamster, for the way it makes people run on a wheel.
Why it is very important to vote for Jill Stein for president.
One additional point that this article could have made is that Dubya wouldn't have even come near winning Florida in 2000 if not for disenfranchizing around 50,000 blacks, as revealed by Greg Palast.
In the name of "safe space", racial segregation is spreading in US universities.
If a certain group of students want to eat together, for whatever reason, they should have the right to do so. If a certain group of students want adjoining rooms in the dorm, that too seems within their rights. However, the school should not actively promote segregation, because that interferes with the goal that students learn tolerance for other groups.
Activists locked themselves to a pipeline under construction to prevent the danger of an oil leak into Indian Point nuclear power plant.
When the West Antarctic ice sheet slides into the sea, it will raise sea level by 12 feet.
The Tories have set up a system that provides countless oppornutities for mistakes, or shoddy work, to cancel people's welfare benefits. It takes months to win them back. It seems sadistic.
It systematically labels disabled people as "fit for work". This can even push people to commit suicide so their spouses can afford to live.
If your oppressors have pushed you to the point where you are ready to give up and die, don't die quietly. Use your death to strike a blow against your oppressors.
It's Time for Answers on Yahoo's Email Scanning.
President Duterte says he wants US troops removed from the Philippines.
This is surprising, given the dispute with China about control of the sea in between. The Philippines has historic reasons to distrust US influence, but it also has future reasons to distrust Chinese influence.
Clinton's favorite think tank calls for giving more support to Salafi Arabia and more hostility to Iran.
This is stupid (supports our worst enemies) as well as wrong.
Samsung has used DMCA takedown notices to delete mocking videos.
Those videos are clearly fair use — if indeed they copy anything at all. Samsung is demonstrating the injustice of the DMCA takedown system.
Trump is moving away from the "Trump" brand because it now arouses so much hostility.
Donald J. Trump Is a Libel Bully But Also a Libel Loser.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Lawyers wrote that article for the American Bar Association to publish. The ABA removed everything even slightly critical of Trump, including the title.
Trump wants libel law changed so he could win those cases, which would undermine freedom of the press.
US citizens: Call on Republican officials to
obey court orders and
allow authorized voters to vote.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the US to end cholera & aid elections in Haiti; protect Haitians in the US.
US citizens: Tell the Department of Justice to put a stop to strip searches of pipeline protesters.
AT&T keeps records of all phone calls since 2008, and sells search results to various thug departments, which then fabricate phony stories for prosecution so as to cover up what they are doing.
Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinians who were harvesting their olive trees.
Israelis demand release of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, imprisoned for a poem.
Natanyahu equates criticism of Israel's occupation policy with opposing Israel.
The Israeli human rights organization B'tselem is facing repression for criticizing the occupation policy; its director has been threatened with cancellation of his Israeli citizenship.
Another US oil pipeline has leaked, demonstrating the principle that we must expect them all to leak.
Even $15 an hour isn't enough to live on in the US if you have to repay student loans.
Among many other things, the TPP would undermine safety of important seafood.
Global heating is behind the increased emission of methane, which in turn increases global heating.
A large medical study found more evidence that sodas lead to diabetes.
Trump has a big financial interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Proposing that criminals up to age 25 should be treated as juveniles.
It is clear that people socially mature at an older age nowadays than 100 years ago, but I'm amazed by the idea that this is a physiological change.
Industries can be returned to cities with reductions in pollution.
Donald Trump Is No Outsider: He Mirrors Our Political Culture.
The Ethiopian government has been stealing Oromo people's land to sell it to foreign companies. The Oromo have now sensibly started attacking the facilities of those companies.
The business owners would like to say, "Don't blame us. It was the Ethiopian government that took their land, not us." But it is just as valid to say that the companies paid the Ethiopian government to do it.
The business owners are quoted as saying, "We can't change the world." Not true: they have already changed it, for the worse, by participating in the land-grab. The argument that "If we hadn't done this, someone else would have" does not excuse the ones who actually did it; rather it suggests that the system needs to be changed.
US citizens: call on the US to block the proposed ATT-Time Warner merger.
Police Viciously Attacked Peaceful Protestors at the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Lawmakers Need to Curb Face Recognition Searches by Police.
The only way these laws can achieve their purpose is if they limit the installation of cameras that allow remote viewing.
Species can now be protected in the US because they are expected to be threatened by global heating.
The Drug Policy Foundation
rates US congresscritter on drug policy issues.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Leaked emails showed something admirable: a plan to raise a lot of money to advertise against climate denialism.
However, a whole year has gone by since it was discussed. It appears that the plan failed to materialize.
Publication of data about complaints against thugs makes it easier to detect lies.
The ruling party in Poland is not a simple right-wing party. It is right-wing in regard to human rights, but socialist in regard to helping the poor. Its main opponents are austerity parties.
There should be room for a party that supports the same socialism but with human rights and strengthening democracy.
Helping former conscripted child soldiers recover from the horrible crimes they were forced to commit.
Half the 2015 increase in electric generating capacity was renewables. The other half was additional fossil fuel capacity, pushing the world along the path towards global disaster. Overall, we're doing worse than at the start of 2015.
When we see a rapid decrease in fossil fuel generating capacity, and other industries that emit greenhouse gases, then we will be able to conclude that we're on the right track.
New Zealand thugs set up a phony drunk test roadblock to identify people who attended a meeting of Exit International, a suicide advice organization. Thugs are also harassing members at home.
This seems to be political manipulation against a proposed law to legalize assisting suicide.
This shows the dishonesty of the organization's name, "Right to Life". An honest name would be, "No Right to Escape".
If you are a progressive, Gary Johnson is not a good choice for your vote. His party wants to eliminate Social Security, eliminate the minimum wage, eliminate bank regulations, eliminate public education, and eliminate environmental protection.
The purpose of democracy is to enable the many non-rich to be collectively more powerful than the rich. It is our most powerful defense against all the abuses that the rich get up to. "Libertarians" (a name we should take back from them!) basically say, that it's wrong to use this defense, that each of us should stand alone against the most powerful. We see already what happens that way, because a large part of it is happening due to plutocratic control over our elections and our government. However, as the list above shows, if we just throw up our hands and elect Libertarians, things could get a lot worse.
140 students were arrested in Ottawa for a peaceful protest against pipeline construction, in which they dragged a large blackboard with information about climate science.
Multinationals based in the US are pushing for a big tax cut which they are presenting as "reform".
How the US Armed-up Syrian Jihadists.
Massive protests in Poland respond to the new proposal for adding restrictions on abortion.
Noam Chomsky on the Perils of Market-Driven Education: it undermines the goal of an educated populace.
Proposed Miami Beach Ordinance Would Take First Step Toward Limiting Surveillance State.
Philippine Senator de Lima calls on the International Criminal Court to investigate President Duterte's murder campaign. She says that she receives death threats and is afraid she will be murdered.
Duterte said his murder campaign is aimed at drug dealers. You might think that the rights of drug dealers are unimportant; but even if you think they deserve to be prosecuted and convicted, that doesn't mean they have no rights at all.
Once a state decides that certain people have no rights at all, it isn't a big step to take the same stance about other people. If it was drug dealers last month, it can be senators this month, dissidents next month, and anyone that gets in the president's way a month after that.
Car companies convinced the European Commission to increase pollution limits. This pollution kills hundreds of thousands of people in Europe each year.
The European Commission constantly tells people to surrender freedom to reduce the very small danger of terrorism; but when it comes to the big danger of air pollution, it doesn't dare tell car companies to give up anything. That's because it respects the car companies more than it does human beings.
A study suggests that telling a lie tends to desensitize the brain so that it feels less guilty about further lies.
Imagine what repeated "testilying" does to thugs.
New Layers of Dirt on Charter Schools.
Right-wing US Catholics are so committed to their politics of global heating denial that their response to the Pope's concern about the issue is to distrust the Pope.
Now that refugees want to go to Hungary, Hungary should remember when Hungarians were fleeing as refugees.
Turkish soldiers are cooperating with, and fighting alongside, the Kurds in Northern Iraq.
I don't see anything bad about that, but it puzzles me since Turkey considers the Kurds in Syria as its enemies as it represses the Kurds in Turkey.
A school in rural Paraguay aims to help girls escape from patriarchal domination.
A municipal environmental official in Brazil was killed by gangsters, apparently for enforcing laws against deforestation.
If we said CO2 is "radicalizing" the atmosphere, would politicians take the danger seriously?
I don't think so. The planet-roaster politicians are not ignoring this because of a mental quirk. It's fossil-fuel money at work.
Tunisia is considering a law to curb violence against women. It seems to be even more frequent there than in the US.
In India today, as several times recently in the US, the mass media are pushing for war.
Australia's dumping of refugees on Nauru and Manus violates humanitarian treaties and human decency in several ways.
How Prof. Lessig responded when someone else's private message that insulted him was leaked by a cracker.
I agree with Lessig that there was nothing in those insults that made its publication important for the public. I don't know what else was in that message, or whether it contained something else significant that was important to leak. But I do call for responsible publication of leaks.
That said, the leaks have exposed big scandals and their publication was very important.
Reversing the Corporations United decision is not enough: the US election system is broken in many ways. We need public campaign financing to override the power of business to fund campaigns.
Thugs attacked protesters in North Dakota both physically and chemically, then arrested them and placed heavy charges against them.
Torture creates permanent mental scars. Two of the victims of CIA torture, unable to get any accountability from the US government, are now suing the psychologists who helped design the torture system.
America has brought guilt on itself through torturing people. As a patriotic American I feel the weight of this. For the US to recover its honor it must fully confess, and accept the appropriate punishment.
Along with the Black Lives Matter campaign, a campaign that indigenous lives matter is also needed.
Wallonia is standing firm against CETA, while European and Canadian plutocratist politicians use absurd emotional arguments to present this as a great tragedy.
The article does not even entertain the awareness of CETA's harmfulness. It is a typical example of elite-dominated journalism.
Officials of Wallonia, you're saving Europe and Canada from a disaster. Please say so!
Ethiopia has shut down internet access as part of a general offense against human rights.
US citizens: oppose bill HR 5732, which would push the US into war in Syria.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Justice to block the Enbridge-Spectra
pipeline company merger.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
tell
Congress, don't "modernize" policy to facilitate fossil fuel
export.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
A gas pipeline is being built close to Indian Point nuclear power plant. If the pipeline leaks, it could cause havoc at the nuclear plant.
Teachers and social workers in Nauru and Manus demand to be allowed to talk about the abuse that they witness.
For Australia to gag them, or anyone, from showing public the results of its treatment of refugees is an blatant act of tyranny.
An Oakland thug faces charges of being a customer of a prostitute, and warning her about which thugs might try to arrest her.
While in general I am glad to see thugs face criminal charges, that is a bad thing when that occurs under laws that are totally unjust, as these are. It should not be a crime to pay a prostitute, or to be a prostitute.
Some UK cities have proposed to fine homeless people a hundred dollars for sleeping in public. But the public reacted with outrage each time.
A British man and woman have obtained a civil partnership (instead of a marriage) by going to the Isle of Man, the one place in Britain where that is allowed.
The UK should allow it too.
Two sugar-sweetened drinks per day greatly increases diabetes risk.
Iraq and the US have not come near providing enough supplies to house and feed the million people that might flee from Mosul.
Geofeedia looks at several social networks, including Twitter, and combines the location tracking data. This makes it even more imperative not to let Twitter get your location.
(As for Facebook and Instagram, don't let them use you at all.)
Renewable electricity in the US is expected to grow from 8% to 9% by next year.
At this rate, it will take 91 more years to reach 100%. Earth's ecosystems can't wait that long!
One father made his front yard a place where children from the neighborhood are welcome to come and play.
A job which is stressful and gives you little control tends to kill the worker.
It takes more than public humiliation of one still-rich profiteer to teach business to stop cheating workers.
Activists are still trying to convince US immigration not to ask visitors for their social media accounts.
Ivan the Terrible is being rehabilitated in Russia because it is fashionable to want a strong (authoritarian) leader.
It is no accident that Trump admires Putin, since they follow the same approach: authoritarian personality seeks authoritarian follower personalities.
Ethiopia has arrested more than a thousand Oromo protesters.
Some of them were arrested for closing their stores or proposing strikes.
Almost a million people are short of food due to drought in Madagascar.
Activists in Detroit are trying to shut down an incinerator that produces toxic pollution as well as stink.
Polling Places in Police Stations? Why Civil Rights Groups Are Still Fighting for Voting Rights.
A UN special rapporteur warns that governments word-wide are "treating words as weapons", repressing journalism and dissent through laws that pretend to be aimed at "terrorism".
An exaggerated figure for deforestation in Haiti is often repeated. (The article uses the term "lie", but the argument is that it is erroneous, not that someone is intentionally lying about this.)
A study finds that the US carries out overt war against nondemocratic states but uses covert war against democratic ones.
Memo to the DOJ: Facial Recognition's Threat to Privacy is Worse Than Anyone Thought.
The EFF's proposed measures are only a good start. We need laws to prohibit systematic collection or recognition of people's faces, except in places where there is specific authorization such as a court order.
Other organizations call for an investigation too.
Iran's President Rouhani points to the Clinton-Trump debates as showing a kind of democracy no one should want in their countries.
Spain's "Socialist" party has agreed to a coalition with the corrupt right-wing "Popular Party", assuring several years of right-wing rule.
US citizens: call for
removing obsolete dams on the lower Snake river
to help wild salmon survive there.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Many kinds of tests show that wealthy Americans tend to have less empathy than the rest, for people that are having difficulties of any kind.
I wonder whether people who lack of empathy get richer, or wealth tends to induce less empathy, or both.
Why didn't civilians leave eastern Aleppo when Russia opened corridors?
The article presents proposed reasons, but what do the civilians there say?
An interview with Albert Woodfox, who says that US racism has changed little since he was imprisoned.
"It may be too late. In which case, hey, build the [Heathrow] runway. We might as well die prosperous."
Hawkish Hillary — the danger we will face if we don't elect Jill Stein.
10% of plastic debris in the sea comes from abandoned fishing nets. A company is now recycling discarded nets to reduce this.
This is a good way to call attention to the problem, but cannot directly fix more than a tiny part of it. Perhaps there should be a refundable deposit on plastic fishing nets, just as on plastic drink bottles.
Cash means freedom — beware the "cashless society". It's bad for you for the same reasons it is good for Apple.
Californians are voting on a big and expensive loan from a commercial bank. Using a public bank could save billions, over time.
Tesla has made it clear that "purchasers" of autonomous cars won't own them, by restricting them to Tesla's own competitor to Guber rather than Guber (or Lyft).
I expect that these systems will all require passengers to identify themselves and to run nonfree software.
The UK should go beyond pardoning those convicted in the past of homosexuality; it should apologize to those still living.
Amy Goodman: North Dakota thugs have given 140 arrested protesters a strip search, apparently for no valid justification, just as a form of bullying and harassment. Thugs have repeatedly arrested journalists covering the protests.
US citizens: call on Congress to defeat the Utah Public Lands Initiative, which would take land away from Indian tribes and give it to mining companies.
AT&T wants to buy Time Warner (the media company, not the cable company).
This is one of the rare points where I agree with Trump (at least what he says; you can't expect him to mean what he says). I wish I could expect Clinton to oppose mergers.
PISSI in Mosul is proving to be a wily opponent, using tactics that opposing forces were not ready for.
Some US universities are feeding patent trolls regularly.
Egyptian thugs raided the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, which takes cases about people killed and disappeared by Egyptian thugs.
Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, promised to repeal the surveillance law, but seems to have chickened out.
Companies that offer limited licenses for digital copies and invite people to "buy" or "own" those copies are misleading consumers. In the US, that is illegal.
I think we should go further and legislate that such licenses are legally void. Also, technical measures to restrict use of copies of published works — DRM, in other words — should be a felony.
The UK "Prevent" program assumes certain Islamist political views are a precursor for terrorism. So it makes Muslims who are not inclined to violence feel persecuted.
To advocate Islamist government constitutes opposition to basic human rights, because an Islamist state systematically tramples those rights. But people have a right to advocate that kind of government, just as they have a right to advocate Republican policies.
Everyone, especially Canadian and EU citizens: thank Wallonia for blocking the unjust treaty CETA.
Leave a message at
http://magnette.wallonie.be/contact
and send an email to
courriel@parlement-wallonie.be.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Also post publicly about your support and appreciation for blocking CETA.
The government of Venezuela has cancelled a petition drive for a recall election, and postponed elections for state governors.
Syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea are increasing in the US, and theocratic Christians are partly to blame. They have cut funding for the organizations that help people avoid STDs and promote unrealistic and ineffective abstinence-only sex "education".
The Pentagon made phony al-Qa'ida videos that subtly made al-Qa'ida look bad, and that reported who looked at them. Copies were left on CDs in houses in Iraq.
The US did very bad things in Iraq, such as invading it and strewing radioactive fallout everywhere, but just because this was done by the US doesn't make it wrong. It seems legitimate to me.
Since Zuckerberg personally decides when to make exceptions to Facebook censorship rules, he is functioning as the editor of the site.
Is it fair to condemn Facebook for being inflexible about its rules, then condemn it for being flexible? That would appear inconsistent, but both criticisms are valid. How can that be? Because the real wrong is the underlying wrong: Facebook has gained for itself too much power over world-wide publishing. There is no way to wield that power without doing harm. It is the size and power of Facebook that convert its general policies, and its specific decisions, to become in effect censorship.
We must take away Facebook's power.
A defendant testified that Chris Christie personally approved the "traffic study" that was apparently designed to cause traffic jams for Fort Lee.
Google quietly combined its ad-tracking profiles with its browsing profiles.
Trump has led a large fraction of Americans to dare to show their misogyny and sexism. It will be hard work to defeat that.
Like most pro-Clinton articles, this article presumes implicitly that the only possible cause of disapproval for her is a prejudice such as misogyny.
Not in my case. I am happy to vote for a woman for president. In fact, I voted for Jill Stein this week — for the second time.
I don't vote for Hillary Clinton, for the same reasons I didn't vote for Bill Clinton in 1996: they are not progressive. They support business-supremacy treaties. Ms Clinton doesn't intend to try very hard to avoid global heating disaster, and she kowtows to the banksters just as Obama does. Basically, she would give us four more years of Obama, only more warlike.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose HR 5732, which would push the US into war in Syria and undermine the Iran nuclear deal.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The ACLU talks about the danger thugs in schools pose for students.
The first step in solving this problem is to stop having thugs assigned to schools. However, the report shows that there is a secondary issue: when teachers should call for a thug, whether from inside or outside the school.
The UK has added some manufacturing jobs in the past few years, but they are low-pay, low-skill jobs.
A US appeals court ruled that torture is so clearly illegal that it is "beyond the power of even the president to declare such conduct lawful."
The US must prosecute all those that carried out or approved torture, especially Dubya and Cheney.
Trump supporters are using lies and trumpery to attack the women that accused him of raping or groping them. Their intention, apparently, is to scare off his other victims. No lie is too vile for them to tell.
We Never Voted for Corporate Rule. In no sense are companies entitled to the power, influence or profits that they currently get. So there is no reason we should not change laws so that they have to break up, make less money, and have less power.
How US elections really do get rigged or stolen.
The partisans of Russia and the partisans of the US present competing half-truths. Neither side deserves support.
35 US states have sued the manufacturer of suboxone, used to treat opioid addiction.
In the UK, many temporary employees are being forced to work through "umbrella companies" that take a cut of their pay. And they are forced to pay the employer's share of social security.
These "umbrella companies" are bad for workers. They serve only the ultimate employers, that can pay less for work, and the owners of the umbrella companies themselves. Therefore, they should be abolished entirely.
It is a fundamental mistake to charge any welfare benefits as a tax on employment. That creates an incentive for companies to employ fewer people. Businesses should pay for these programs through a tax that is not based on number of employees.
Everyone (but especially people in the European Union and Canada): show your solidarity with Wallonia in rejecting CETA.
Here are other ways to take action to stop CETA.
US citizens: call on the Fraternal Order of Police to rescind its endorsement of Trump.
"Inverted totalitarianism": a political analysis of modern plutocratic corporate rule.
Despite the murder of several many activists, and continued repression of protesters, the US State Department is satisfied that Honduras is improving its respect for human rights.
Well, it's not as bad as Egypt or Bahrain or Salafi Arabia. The US is "satisfied" with them, too, isn't it?
Mexicans in the US built a "wall" of taco trucks around Trump's hotel in Las Vegas, where he is trying to crush a union.
The UK gave advice to Bahraini thugs from the Special Investigations Unit about how to tell relatives of prisoners that were killed that the killers will not be prosecuted.
The Special Investigations Unit should perhaps be called the Phony Investigations Unit, since in practice its job is not to prosecute torturers.
Facebook banned a video made by the Swedish Cancer Society about breast cancer because it showed cartoon figures with circles as breasts.
It got Facebook to accept the video by putting in squares for the breasts.
The real problem here is not that Facebook draws the line at the wrong place (though it does). It is that Facebook has so much influence that organizations such cancer charities feel obliged to publish through Facebook.
If Only We Could Vote for Peace Instead of a 'Commander-in-Chief'.
Note: the president of the United States is, ex officio, the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces — not of the United States itself, or of US citizens or inhabitants in general. The point of a free country is that no one can command you.
Feds: Only Those Committed to Destroying Planet Can Bid on Fossil Fuel Leases.
Several executives of Backpage face unconstitutional prosecution in California because some of the adult ads that company publishes are, unknown to the company, for teenage prostitutes.
This case, if not dismissed, threatens our rights because it could force many platforms into intrusive censorship.
It also shows the danger of legal assumptions that twist the truth, such as "sex with someone under 18 is rape", "sex with a prostitute under 18 is enslavement", and "making a nude photo of someone under 18 is a sexual assault." In some cases, it is — but not always.
A woman who had a very late abortion, for vital medical reasons, urges people not to get the state involved in deciding for women.
Bravo! However, in having six previous children, she did something that was harmful for humanity and the natural world.
The British Empire was maintained, as late as the 1950s, through force. In Kenya, the empire crushed the brutal and violent Mau Mau movement with its own brutal violence.
What's amazing is that it was able to erase historical memory of this, even in Kenya.
500 British Muslim organizations are going to set up a program to avert terrorism by spreading the idea among Muslims that violence is the wrong way. The new program will not try to influence people on other questions or pressure them to become informers.
I am not an expert, but I think that a campaign coming from within that community and reflecting the views of most British Muslims (and most Muslims elsewhere too) will be less easily dismissed than one coming from the state.
Meanwhile, mainstream media give violent Islamists exactly the publicity they seek.
An interview with Bernie Sanders.
I never agreed 100% with Sanders, but 100% agreement with a candidate is too much to ask for. I agreed with him on the most important issues, and I saw his integrity and deep thinking; that was reason enough to support his campaign. I hope to have another chance to do so in 2020.
However, I am unpersuaded by his arguments to support Clinton now. I don't believe that Clinton will do the good things that he thinks she will do. More deeply, I reject the idea of voting for bad candidates because their principal opponent is worse. I decided in 2007 that Clinton was no progressive, not someone I could vote for. That her opponent this time is even worse does not make her acceptable.
I voted this week for Jill Stein for president.
A Perpetual Killing Field: South Sudan, where civil war never ends.
The western powers pressured Sudan's Islamist dictatorship to let the south have independence. But I have never seen an accusation that they exploited or oppressed people in South Sudan. The disaster does not seem to be caused by any western crime. However, I suspect that the civil war is fueled by oil exports.
Groups of Nuer and Dinka were perpetually raiding each other in the 1930s when Evans-Pritchard studied them. They stole cattle, and they took prisoners and sometimes killed them but not always. They used traditional weapons, not submachine guns, and neither group was united under overall leaders. It seems that things are much worse now.
Establishment politicians continue to pretend that the US debt is a serious problem. It's a great excuse for dooH niboR policies, such as cutting Social Security and Medicare.
Trump resembles his Italian precursor Berlusconi (il ducino).
Corbyn must reject the "allies" that go beyond criticism of Israeli policies to spout racism against Jews.
The European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of violating Garry Kasparov's rights, by fabricating charges against him long enough to stop him from travelling to a political rally.
This is part of a systematic pattern of abuses. Putin stopped Kasparov from organizing a political party by "convincing" every large auditorium in Moscow not to let them hold the meeting that is legally required for starting a political party.
Such conduct is not limited to Russia. It has occurred in the UK and in the US when a large protest in Washington DC was sabotaged by condemning its central organizing building to be unsafe, just as the protest was starting.
That was a protest against Bill Clinton for his support for business-supremacy treaties.
Ethiopia's dictatorial government, in which no opposition candidates win elections, has driven the Oromo ethnic group to the point of revolt.
The world's future hinges on supporting 10-year-old girls, says UNFPA.
A California judge is on trial for "willful misconduct" towards many defendants.
The judge says that thugs are always right, and defendants are always lying. However, it's the thugs that have lots of practice in lying on the witness stand. I would be very skeptical of testimony from a thug.
The judge admitted that the reasons for doing unfair trials was to squeeze money out of poor people, a practice that has spread around the US.
If 4 million Californians have lost their driver's licenses because they can't pay these fines, that amounts to 10% of the population of the state. Perhaps those 4 million were spread over a long period of time, but it still amounts to a crushing system of repression of the poor.
Spain's population is expected to decrease 10% by 2050. This is a good thing. The inconvenience of so many people over 65 can be dealt with: robots will do a lot to help take care of them, and elders who are still physically well can help too.
Political conditions are part of the situation and could affect the future age distribution.
For instance, many British pensioners live in Spain. If the UK goes ahead and leaves the European Union, the number of old people in Spain may be much less in the future.
Many young Spaniards have moved to other countries to find work. Policies of the right-wing Spanish government have driven down living conditions there. A progressive government might attract some of them back.
However, for the most part this is not a problem — this is a blessing. Global heating is turning Spain into a desert. It won't be easy to support so many people there; a decrease in population is a good thing, and sets an example that nearly all countries must follow in the future so as to reduce the burden that humans place on the world's natural systems.
US Citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to stop coal mining in Colorado.
Everyone: call on North Dakota to drop charges against journalists and protesters.
3/4 of Britons are in favor of land-based wind power generators, but the Tories have changed laws to put a stop to them.
I suspect that this is because wind power is so cheap that it isn't advantageous as a source of income to companies that lobby.
Air pollution in Africa kills 700,000 people per year.
A campaign to abolish the power of instant divorce for Muslim men in India.
Tens of thousands of women demonstrated in the rain in Buenos Aires to protest against violence against women. They were joined by thousands in other cities across Latin America.
Trump threatened not to accept the results of the election. This goes beyond his usual trumpery.
Gore and Kerry should have done more to challenge the fraudulent results of the elections in which Dubya "defeated" them. But Trump seems to be threatening to go beyond mere challenges. He is threatening armed terrorism or rebellion.
Australia has given permission to mental health workers (only!) to talk about the damage done by its offshore prisons for refugees.
Clinton voted in 2001 to make bankruptcy harder for poor Americans, and later said she did it because of lots of pressure from activists for women's and children's interests.
There was no such pressure: she did it for the banksters.
The ACLU calls on the US to release 23 secret legal opinions that are effectively secret parts of US law.
Two more Honduran activists have been murdered. The many murders of activists seem to be supported by the army, which took power with at least the approval of the US State Department under Secretary Clinton.
Melanesia depends totally on its ocean resources, but it is allowing development that destroys them.
Putting this in economic terms, as the article does, could break through the skulls of people who foolishly see all of life in economic terms. Unfortunately, it also helps train people to be foolish that way.
In parts of Georgia, the wait for early voting was 2 hours, and some people fainted from the heat while waiting.
This is one of many Republican measures for voter suppression.
Libya remains a mess, and continuing international intervention keeps stirring the pot.
The article doesn't recommend a solution, and I don't see one either.
Mountaintop-removal coal mining continues in West Virginia, and it continues to spew deadly pollution, both area where the coal is mined and where it is burned.
That's in addition to contributing to the coming megadeaths of global heating disaster.
Trump was so "smart" about bankruptcy that he screwed the employees of his casino.
He had encouraged them to invest their retirement funds in the casino itself, and they lost a lot of it.
Deia Schlosberg talks about the felony charges she and other reporters face for covering the climate protests in North Dakota.
The economic cost of medical problems due to toxic chemicals is estimated at 340 billion dollars a year in the US. And that's on top of the human suffering.
Tax the rich more — because they can't be trusted with money.
The UK is adopting a law requiring UK web sites to verify visitors' age by identifying them individually.
It won't succeed in cutting off teenagers from porn (nor should it), but it will be very bad for adults' privacy.
A lot of porn gives an unrealistic picture of what real women are like, what real sex is like, and what real sexual relationships are like. But there is no reason why most porn should be that way. Why not make other kinds of porn, to give teenagers a clearer and better picture of sex?
Leaks show that the FBI has an intentional policy of working with immigration agents to search and interrogate people from minority groups, without any individual grounds for suspicion. The initial interrogation then provides an excuse for continued harassment, designed to pressure them to become informers.
One bad policy of the Labour Party: more surveillance.
Senator Schumer, nominally a Democrat, says he will try to pass a big tax cut for corporations.
Disgusting, Yexx!!
Jewish journalists that criticize Trump have received lots of antisemitic insults.
Mobilizing to resist Trump's attempt to intimidate minority voters.
Untreated sewage is killing the wildlife in Lake Titicaca.
Jason Moyer-Lee: Why the Gig Economy Is a Threat to Us All.
The Iraqi Shi'ite militias are supposed to block communications between Mosul and Syria rather than enter the city.
Their not entering the city is wise, given that the inhabitants are Sunnis and afraid of being massacred by those militias. But the idea of blocking PISSI's fighters from fleeing Mosul seems absurd. That will encourage them to fight to the death, causing more casualties among the attackers and the civilians, as well as more destruction in Mosul itself. The intelligent strategy would be to encourage them to flee, those who will. Each one that flees will encourage others to flee.
Even if they return to fighting elsewhere, it is still an improvement to get them out of Mosul. Elsewhere, there won't be as many civilians.
Many of them would return to battle somewhere else after fleeing, but Indeed, it will probably be necessary to fight them somewhere else later,
UNESCO told Bangladesh to cancel a coal power plant that threatens to destroy the world-heritage Sundarbans, or it will declare that site threatened.
Establishment candidates who endorse business-supremacy treaties, and pretend those are good for the country, give Trump and other right-wing extremists an easy shot.
World's Mammals Being Eaten Into Extinction: over 300 species are threatened mainly by human hunters.
Large shipping companies have asked governments to impose "ambitious" emissions reduction goals on shipping.
I suppose the larger companies are better placed to implement reductions and expect to gain over their competitors. But that's a side issue: ambitious emissions reduction goals are needed urgently in every important area of greenhouse gas emissions.
Half of Americans age 18-35 said a meteor that destroyed the Earth would be better than a President Trump.
Almost 1/4 said that the meteor would be better than either President Trump or President Clinton.
I don't agree with them, perhaps because I am old. I think even a President Trump would not be as bad as the destruction of all life on Earth. Even global heating disaster, painful as it will be, will not be as bad as that. Perhaps 25% of existing species will survive, and in a million years evolution will be back to normal.
Expanding airports means global disaster, because planes can't operate on anything but fuel from petroleum.
If the UK expands an airport, it will be unable to meet even the emission reduction targets of its own laws, let alone what is really needed.
Expanding an airport is an investment intended to be recouped over a period of many decades. I expect that, by 2050, the effects of global heating will impact the global economy severely and there will be much less demand for flying.
Ecuador announced it has temporarily blocked Assange's internet access inside the Ecuadorian embassy, because he was interfering in the US election.
I agree with Correa that Clinton will do less harm to the US and the world than Trump. But she has already shown a propensity to support coups in Latin America, so the harm she does to leftist politicians there may not be limited to avoiding the Trumpish insults that strengthen their support.
Trump's campaign accepts donations from foreign lobbyists as well as large companies.
In America's "inverted totalitarianism", the two plutocratist major parties create pressure that can lead to fascism. Trump shows where that path starts.
Clinton, addressing representatives of construction unions, ridiculed climate activists.
Armored thugs surrounded five pipeline protesters who were praying by the side of a road, and "dispersed" those.
It seems petroleum attracts more than one kind of toxic dispersant.
The UK has closed the RT channel's bank accounts.
Girls that were kidnaped by Boko Haram, and refused to join, fear their families will reject them out of patriarchal bigotry if they return home.
Capturing Mosul may take months, but it will be easy compared with building peace in Iraq afterward.
On the complexities of reducing greenhouse emissions from fossil fuels.
An emissions tax. would put the market to work on this job.
Burundi will withdraw from the International Criminal Court to stop it from investigating the violence with which its president seized total control.
Too bad the US campaigns against the International Criminal Court.
Two Honduran environmental defenders survived an assassination attempt.
The coup-installed government there seems to privately support these killings. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State seems to have supported the installation of that government.
US citizens: demand candidates give their plans to end the war in Afghanistan.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to prosecute banksters.
Several women have accused Trump of grabbing and groping them. In many cases, when he first met them.
A study in New Jersey found that nearly all the minors prosecutors ask to try as adults are black or hispanic.
Wikileaks published an email showing that US intelligence reported to Clinton that Salafi Arabia and Qatar supported PISSI.
She regarded this as a problem, of course, but to stop treating those countries as friends was unthinkable.
I suppose this decision was not in her hands then. But what will she do if elected?
Basically, the policy of supporting Salafi Arabia and treating Iran as an enemy has backfired big time, as well as giving preference to the worse Islamists.
Clinton is trying to smear Wikileaks and distract us from the substance of the leaks by saying, "Russia, Russia".
Not all of these leaks were important issues, but some have been. The substance of these leaks is more important for Americans than who leaked them.
The UK imprisons people for possessing copies of drawings depicting an imaginary child in a sexual way.
The article is too timid: this law is flat-out injustice and is inexcusable. If we were to tolerate prohibitions of various kinds of art or writing because their ideas are deemed "dangerous", it is clear where that will lead.
What's more, it is an injustice to ban possession of a copy of any work or publication whatsoever. Such laws put everyone in danger.
Merely having a copy of an image that shows a crime taking place against a person should not be illegal either. Should thugs be able to ban possession of videos that show them committing crimes, on the grounds that their victim is wronged again each time the video is seen? They would be delighted to use that excuse, or any other excuse, to cover up their crimes.
Thugs in Austin, Texas, are violent more often against blacks and hispanics.
An investigation found that San Francisco's thug department was pervaded by racism.
José Bové, protester later elected to the European Parliament, was going to Canada to argue against CETA. Canada forced him to leave before the event, because of his past protests.
Bias in driving practice is part of the reason blacks in the US are more likely to be killed by car collisions than whites.
Pakistan's blasphemy laws seen as incitement to religious hatred.
People have a right to hate, for whatever reasons, and a right to say so. People have a right to hate religion, and a right to hate blasphemers like me. Neither group has a right to punish the other. All laws against blasphemy, or "offending someone's religion", are an affront to human rights and must be eliminated
Comparing the casualties of Russian and US-coalition bombing in Syria.
Trump demonstrates that feminism is still necessary.
Hardly any jobs absolutely exclude women nowadays, but that doesn't mean women, or men, can find jobs that they can live on. On the economic plane, rather than competing with other downtrodden people for a share of the diminishing pie, we must strive for victory over the plutocrats.
The "solution" that Trump pretends to offer for working-class Americans is a poor substitute for the real solution that progressives stand for. Trump can take advantage of increased poverty because most Democrats, including Clinton, are not progressive.
The Agony of Aleppo, 2012 to 2014.
A court extended Florida's voter registration deadline, against the will of the Republican governor, who hoped that the hurricane evacuation would stop some poor or old people from voting.
Can disgust with Trump enable the Democrats to overcome Republican cheating and take control of the House of Representatives?
The article mentions gerrymandering, which is one form of Republican cheating. It doesn't mention voter-suppression, the other form of Republican cheating. Their systematic attempts to stop people from voting make them enemies of the Republic itself.
Clinton advocates "no-fly Zone" in Syria, but privately she recognized that this meant a shooting war.
A No-Fly Zone for Aleppo Risks a War That Could Engulf Us All.
Appreciating Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson, who freed people who had been erroneously convicted, as well as prosecuting people against whom there was proper evidence of crime.
This was unusual since most people in the legal system would rather keep an innocent person in prison than admit that the system made a mistake.
Trump's defense of his "just grab them" statement encourages men to assault women.
Many sorts of statements have real effects. That's not an excuse for censoring them. It does mean that the statements carry a moral onus.
An athlete says that such nasty statements are not tolerated in his locker room.
US citizens: Phone the White House at 202-456-1111 and call on Obama to completely stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The main reason is that existing fossil fuel facilities are enough to produce disaster, so any investment in new facilities is going in the wrong direction at great cost.
But you can also mention other reasons, such as the substantial risk of polluting important water supplies such as the Missouri River when the pipeline leaks because the owners cut corners on maintenance and safety (they surely will), and that it destroys archaeological sites, some of which indigenous people consider sacred.
It is supposed to be illegal for campaigns to coordinate with Super PACs (created by the Corporations United decision). Leaks show that Clinton's campaign is effectively doing so.
Rumor has it that lots of candidates are doing the same, we just don't have proof yet.
Thailand is in a frenzy of attacking anyone who doesn't mourn the late king in a strong enough way.
Campaigners are suing Norway for allowing oil drilling in the Arctic.
Murderous right-wing terrorist groups thrive in some parts of the US. They are claiming that Clinton will unleash repression.
More likely she will just gradually increase the existing forms of repression, such as massive surveillance.
How warm seas powered two major hurricanes.
Absurd charges against Amy Goodman were dropped in court.
Will this be enough to make thugs ashamed to impose such absurd charges?
People remaining in Mosul want to be rid of PISSI, but are afraid of what Shi'ite militias would do if they got into the city.
A prankster posted a hoax confession saying he had destroyed absentee ballots that voted for Trump. Millions of his supporters will now believe that this really happened.
This joke played into the hands of Trump, and I think that is not funny.
China and the US have criticized Japanese politicians who visited the Yasukuni shrine to demonstrate their nationalist and pro-military orientation.
It is a bad thing for Japanese politicians to honor war criminals. The US should prosecute its own torturers, and those guilty of the crime of aggressive war, so that it is in a good moral position to rebuke other countries.
Australia's refugee policy is one of deliberate harm. And there's no claiming "We didn't know".
Assange says that Ecuador cut off his use of the internet inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
I applaud Assange for showing us information about wrongdoing of Clinton and (even more important) the Democratic National Committee, which should have been neutral but instead helped Clinton against Sanders.
What I criticize about recent Wikileaks actions is only that the data were not checked to avoid doxxing people.
A lawsuit attempts to ban the use of the name "Cleveland Indians" during a baseball game in Toronto.
There is a big difference between urging or pressuring a team to change its name because of a perceived wrong, and trying to prohibit it by law.
Security measures in schools make parents feel their children are safe, but make students feel they are in prison.
When you include thugs stationed in schools, they put students in clear and measurable danger.
A Florida court rejected voter-suppression provisions for absentee ballots.
Why did the Dominican Republic send soldiers into Haiti to "protect" food aid that is supposed to be sent a week later?
I don't know that all the accusations in that page are valid, but some of them are.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi, author of Guantánamo Diary, has been freed.
The Guantanamo prison will stain Americas honor until every prisoner has been released or given a fair trial.
Governments and even business-supremacy treaties support agribusiness plantations rather than farmers' livelihoods.
Giant profitable companies, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, make towns compete to offer them subsidies to locate data centers there.
The solution to this is to give each competing locality a veto over any local subsidy (or tax break, it is equivalent) offered to a company.
Don't let physical stores send you the receipt by email!
The US pays some companies to hire disabled workers and pay them very little. Vermont has shown that using the funds for investing in enabling disabled people to take ordinary jobs has much more effect.
CETA would require Canada and Europe to pressure other countries to increase privatization of seeds.
Ascendance of Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton equals big win for big business.
"As long as we have Citizens United, the polluters are going to be in charge of our country."
I prefer to call that organization "Corporations United", since that's what it always really was.
The idea of "true free market capitalism" is somewhat of a confusion, because (as this article shows) we need to regulate business strictly to protect ourselves from the systematic tendency of business to cheat and even poison the rest of us.
US citizens: phone FCC commissioners to adopt the proposal to limit ISPs' use of a customer's network contacts.
If you agree with me that ISPs should not even be allowed to record a subscriber's internet contacts without a specific court order, you can say that too.
Airbnb contributes to making cities too expensive to live in.
Many cities propose to use regulations to curb this. In New Orleans, Airbnb has broadcast deceptive ads against the regulations.
The UK government did massive illegal snooping for a decade.
In 2015, the practices were revealed, and now a court has ruled that they violate European human rights law.
I wonder, does Theresa May's new "snooper's charter" give permission for these practices?
Climate [mayhem] could drive 122m more people into extreme poverty by 2030.
This is because of forecast damage to agriculture in some parts of the world.
If we are more lucky, this harm would happen to only 35 million people by 2030.
Egypt has imprisoned Aya Hijazi for two years for running a charity to help homeless Egyptian children.
To Egypt's violent and tyrannical government, she is just a useful pawn.
Women on Web sends abortion medicine to women in Ireland who then use it illegally. It did a survey of the women it had helped. 98% said they would recommend that other women do the same.
This is to counter malicious rumors spread by antiabortionists.
Even with surgical abortions, the complications are small compared with those of having a baby.
An anti-nuclear candidate won election as governor of Niigata on the platform of blocking restart of the nuclear power station there.
European farms are making record use of the most vital antibiotics, which will surely make them fail to work for us when we need them, some years from now.
Someone did an arson attack against a Republican party office in North Carolina.
The Republican Party deserves condemnation for many reasons, but using violence only aids its opposition to the democratic republic we hope to maintain.
A lawsuit against Exxon charges "climate deceit".
The US will avoid war with Russia over Syria, it seems.
(A sigh of relief is heard.)
It can occasionally be correct to go to war to free people from a tyranny and give them freedom and democracy, but first we must make sure that (1) the people in question want to be helped in that way, and (2) freedom and democracy are likely to actually result. In Syria, (1) may be true for some, but I don't see any way to achieve (2) there.
Netflix may have trouble with its business model.
That business model is based on mistreating the public in three ways: DRM, tracking users, and imposing contracts that restrict the user (EULAs).
Any one of them would make it totally unacceptable. Flick off Netflix!
If we refuse to do business with Netflix, we might wipe it out!
Some states continue to resist the "Real ID" program which tries to make US state driver's licenses act as national ID cards.
I am disappointed with those states that have gone along with this.
The US calls for an immediate cease fire in Yemen.
Better late than never.
It was the US that kept the conflict going. When the US and Salafi Arabia intervened, the Houthis were rapidly defeating the previous government. If they had not intervened, the war could have been over more than a year ago. Iran is no friend of al-Qa'ida; the Houthis might have suppressed it there. And no one would be blaming the US for intervening.
Are small nuclear reactors a good idea?
Not needing pumps, they could be inherently safer than the traditional designs. But that doesn't mean they can't have spectacular failures. It doesn't necessarily mean they can't melt down, for instance. The high-temperature liquid in a reactor tends to cause corrosion. Structure which is quite safe can alter under the influence of corrosion and become unsafe. There is no way to see where things have moved to.
In addition, making 10 little reactors instead of one big reactor increases the opportunities to build one wrong.
The motive for Depleted (or Dirty) Uranium shells was to attack armored vehicles. Most of the time when A10 fighters fired them in the conquest of Iraq, they were aimed at cars and trucks.
This meant a lot of the fallout pollution was not even military useful: nonradioactive shells would have done just as well.
Posting this does not mean I think that Dirty Uranium are shells are legitimate at all. And would you want your army to pollute your country for millions of years in defending against an invasion?
Anti-Muslim terror-militias are rising in some US states.
People who reject the business-supremacy treaties are not against "trade", they are against the tyranny of business.
Democracy works very badly in the US, partly because most voters are very bad at thinking.
Look at the Trump supporters that have taken a stand that is almost opposed to the idea of rational thought.
Germany has extended its wind farms faster than its power grid; it can't transport all the power to people who need it.
There are ways to use the electricity, which while not optimally efficient are better than shutting off the wind turbines. Germany could build cables to sell this electricity to other nearby countries including the Netherlands and England, or use it to extract CO2 from the air, or extract CO2 from the air to convert into chemical fuels.
Superintelligent AI is a potential danger.
Here's my fictional idea for one way it might be made safe.
Any unarmed American is in danger of being shot dead by thugs (though mostly they do this to blacks), and there is no reliable way to avoid it.
Billionaires have funded surveillance of everyone's movements across a large part of Baltimore.
The private funds enabled thugs to do this without even telling the city government, let alone asking.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopted an ordinance so that city departments must get council permission for surveillance devices.
Amazingly, there is no federal law against gun trafficking.
Neoliberalism's decades-long attack on public universities.
Australia is paying refugees to move from Nauru to Cambodia, which might perhaps compensate for how difficult it would be for them to live there.
The big political argument being used against the UK's leaving the EU seems to be that multinational business will punish the UK for it.
What we see here is an example of the unjust domination of the world by business. Whatever issues ought to decide whether it is wise for the UK to leave the EU, "business won't like it" is not one of them.
What this says to me is that we must urgently take these businesses' power away from them.
One of the many ways they got this power is that the UK set out to attract international businesses by bowing to them and giving them extra power in the UK. And the Tories will certainly try to discourage them from leaving by bowing down to them even more.
Fighting with Russia in Syria would be crazy, but protests would do some good.
Filmmaker Deia Schlosberg, who was involved in making Gasland, faces charges carrying 45 years in prison for filming a pipeline protest.
One hopes these charges will be dismissed because they are unconstitutional, but just being charged with bogus charges does a lot of harm to a person's life. Thugs and prosecutors do this and think it is fun. When the victims sue, it is the city that pays, not the people responsible. To make them stop, we need a way to punish them personally.
Britain's National Health Service, the greatest achievement of democratic socialism, is on the brink of collapse because the Tories keep cutting the funds.
Trump said that not paying tax made him "smart". Tim Cook says that ordering Apple to pay tax is "political crap."
It's basically the same idea: "You little guys pay the costs of running our country. We powerful people and companies are too important to be bothered."
The Panama Papers show that UK lawyers are behind a large part of the international tax evasion schemes, and the Tories protect them.
I wonder if part of the motive for their insistence on taking the UK out of the European Union is so that the EU can't make the UK shut this down.
Farmers in India want to roast our planet so that they can put off their own Malthusian disaster for one more generation.
The problem is that they have been having too many children. They must stop.
Wealthy countries should help them stop, with donations of birth control products and sterilizations. But we must also deny our sympathy to those responsible for the overreproduction when they complain about the consequences.
US citizens: Call on the US army to
block the Dakota Access Pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Call on your senators to reject riders that authorize employment discrimination for religious motivations.
US citizens: Call on Congress to pull the US out of the Salafi Arabian intervention in Yemen.
A billion dollars in campaign contributions are trying to influence the US elections this November.
In general, this influence favors the rich.
In states where judges are elected, those elections give wealthy people and companies an opportunity to buy immunity from prosecution.
May Brown, in the UK, may die from leukemia because the government will not allow her sister to visit and donate stem cells to cure her.
It seems that the government is searching desperately for any excuse, no matter how cruel, by which it could reduce the number of immigrants, or even hypothetical immigrants.
The UK subsequently reversed this decision under public pressure.
The company that makes a drug to treat lead poisoning multiplied the price by almost 30 during 2014.
Thugs took a journalist's drone as he was making a video of the pipeline protest on Oct 10. They plan to prosecute him too.
Autopsy results show that thugs shot Keith Scott in the back.
Governor LePage of Maine, a right-wing extremist, said dissidents should be jailed for calling for a boost in the minimum wage.
It would be wrong to jail LePage for opposing this important measure, or even for being un-American (which he clearly is), because he has a right to freedom of speech. But people who want to continue American democracy should not vote for people like him.
A planned coal export terminal in Oregon has been blocked.
Bravo, because we need to end the use of coal, and soon.
Agriculture requires big changes in order to avoid global heating disaster.
1000 minors in the US were shot dead in gun accidents in the 912 days from 1 January 2014 to 30 June 2016.
In the US, the lack of effective regulation of guns poses a far bigger danger than terrorists.
Wikileaks reveals additional unjust requirements proposed for the TISA business-supremacy treaty.
Trump's support for a range of right-wing extremist causes has boosted neo-Nazis in the US that want to kill blacks and Jews.
The FBI infiltrated a right-wing terror group that was planning to use bombs to kill immigrants.
I am glad that the FBI is paying attention to right-wing terrorists as well as to Islamist terrorists. Reports say these people really had arms, not just pretend bombs supplied by their FBI operative, so they could really have carried out their plans.
The US has called for a cease-fire in Yemen and publicly ordered Salafi Arabia to support it.
It would have been better for the US not to help Salafi Arabia start the bombardment campaign, but this is at least an attempt to go in the right direction.
Anti-racist infiltrators reveal what KKK members say to each other.
A former Obama official that became a bankster is now offering Clinton advice on how to defeat progressive Democrats and impose a big tax cut for businesses.
The US and Salafi Arabia have acknowledged bombing a funeral in Yemen.
It is impossible to entirely avoid such accidents, though it appears that a lack of discipline enabled this one to occur, so this one might have been prevented through better control. However, there is no excuse for denying them when they happen.
Meanwhile, the whole US-Salafi bombing campaign has been an injustice since it first started.
Using Trump to explain "rape culture".
Interviews with people from Mosul: some still there, some who have fled.
A Brazilian court ordered blocking of access to Facebook from all of Brazil because Facebook refused to censor an account that published a parody of a politician.
On this one occasion, Facebook is doing the right thing. That's not enough to compensate for all that is bad about Facebook, however.
The judge, by trying to censor legitimate free speech, opposes human rights.
Pakistan has cancelled the travel ban on reporter Cyril Almeida.
The stronger Israel's strategic situation becomes, the more its leaders say it is in danger of being destroyed at any moment. They equate solidarity boats carrying peace activists to missiles.
They also equate Gazans that need treatment for cancer with terrorists.
Five activists were arrested for shutting off tar sands pipelines. People who came to make videos were arrested too.
It is true that the proposals of the politicians are all inadequate to prevent global disaster that is likely to kill hundreds of millions of people, if not billions.
Global heating is causing permafrost to thaw. This wrecks buildings in cities in northern Russia.
But that's a secondary problem. The big problem is that this melting releases methane, which exacerbates the global heating.
Clinton campaigned in Florida attacking Trump's global heating denial.
It is good that she focuses on the issue, but so far she has not shown a willingness to fight the fossil fuel interests and take the radical measures needed to avoid disaster after so much delay.
Quantitative easing has ceased even to work, as people and businesses don't want to borrow more money even at low interest rates.
In addition, it increases inequality.
"People's QE" appears to be a Keynesian version of QE: using it to boost government spending.
The US has started directly attacking Yemen.
This was a response to Houthi retaliation against US and Salafi targets for the 18-month long US-supported bombardment by Salafi Arabia.
Plutocratist state governments are undermining the Clean Power Plan.
Yahoo has presented, through a patent application, the idea of collecting data about people and cars passing by a location to choose what ads to display on a billboard.
The patent application itself is not particularly an issue (other than as an example of a practice, computational idea patents, that is bad in general). Collecting data as envisioned in the application is the issue.
The most important issue is not the use of these data for choosing ads, but collecting the data at all. We need laws to prevent that.
Japan is retaliating against UNESCO for recognizing documents about the massacre in Nanjing in World War II.
The world has agreed to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (powerful greenhouse gases) starting in 2024.
Short-sighted politicians wanted to start many years later, and India will not start until 2028. What idiocy!
Portugal plans a tax on sugary drinks. However, the tax rules might encourage companies to game the system by putting 79 grams of sugar in each liter. Why not tax per weight of sugar?
And why leave out dairy drinks and fruit juices? There is a lot of added sugar in many fruit juices.
A mining company lost its attempt to use a business-supremacy to sue El Salvador for banning a gold mine in the name of environmental standards.
More Americans are arrested for simple possession of drugs than for all kinds of violent crimes combined.
Poland's government dropped one anti-abortion bill, but is now developing another, which is likely to ban emergency contraception also.
Trump has used the psychology of group conflict to convince tens of millions of Americans to support him no matter what, even if he does things they would previously have condemned with outrage.
In the prosecution of Amy Goodman, the prosecutor argued that covering the attacks on pipeline protesters meant she was a protester rather than a journalist.
Not only is this false, but even if it were true, it would not justify criminal charges for making a video of a protest.
In the Chicago thug department, 69 thugs have received over 70 complaints each. The average thug gets 5 complaints in an entire career.
Even if some fraction of complaints are erroneous, it is clear that those thugs have a systematic pattern of wrongdoing.
Most thugs are not likely to beat people up or kill them. However, nearly all of them support the false accusations that other thugs make after beating up or killing someone,
Trump is the natural culmination of increasingly harsh Republican policies of the past few decades. Republicans who have participated in the development of this harshness cannot evade responsibility by criticizing Trump now.
Republican Senator McConnell, of West Virginia, has shafted the miners whose pensions were eliminated by coal companies that brought about bankruptcies.
If Trump Leaks Are OK and Clinton Leaks Aren't, There's a Problem.
Anas Abdalla was convicted in the UK of trying to go to Syria and fight for PISSI. It seems that UK agents put him under tremendous pressure to be an informer and harassed him when he didn't.
That doesn't excuse trying to fight for PISSI, but that harassment may have driven him to do it.
A US appeals court ruled that the president must be allowed to fire the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
This is victory for the banksters, who have too much influence on President Obama and would have too much influence on President Clinton.
Perhaps this 3-judge decision will be appealed to the whole appeals court.
A contestant on The Apprentice describes how she resisted Trump when he grabbed her.
Trump did not say that he could "grope and kiss women without their consent". What he said was that, due to his fame, all women would "let him do it". If that were really true, it would not be "sexual assault". It would be consensual sex.
However, his claim is apparently false. Lots of women are saying that they did not consent at all, and that they fought him off.
A Clinton speechwriter put a line criticizing the banks into a speech for Deutsche Bank, in case it ever got leaked.
I wouldn't call this dishonest — provided she really said that line in her private speech. However, it doesn't mean that she really will do anything against the will of the banksters.
The Tories are going to make the National Health Service collapse under the pressures they have imposed for 6 years.
In one scientific field, women PhDs get (in general) less enthusiastic recommendations for jobs than men PhDs get.
This doesn't prove that sexism is responsible, but one has to suspect that, given that sexism has been proved on so many other questions.
Two regions of Belgium have declared that they veto CETA.
Europeans must mobilize to support them against dishonest pressure from banksters.
Elizabeth Warren accused the head of the Security and Exchange Commission of being a sell-out to the businesses the SEC regulates, and said that she needs to be replaced.
Heterosexuals in the UK can now go to the Isle of Man to form a civil partnership instead of a marriage.
Coastal cities around the world are trying to figure out what to do about rising sea levels.
The real solution is what will solve lots of other problems at the same time: curb greenhouse gas emissions with dispatch. Trying to cope is not only harder, it is futile beyond this century.
"Before providing [DNA] specimens, patients are increasingly looking for compensation, commitments that useful medical information will be returned to them, or control over how their biological samples will be studied."
They are concerned about real problems, but proposing ineffective or useless solutions.
Under a well-run medical system, where advances in treatment and diagnosis are put to the service of everyone, and you don't risk commercial disadvantage or punishment due to whatever is in your sample, the chance that people will be cured because of one's contribution would be all the reason anyone needs to contribute. But instead we have a system with real problems.
One real problem is that under the US medical system, new treatments are in many cases too expensive for them. Another real problem is that insurance companies may use their DNA samples against them, and the state could accuse them of crimes based on those samples.
The "solutions" people ask for do very little to fix these problems, because they are individual "solutions" for a systemic problem. Any reasonable "compensation" for a DNA sample won't be enough to pay for an expensive treatment. Researchers could agree to provide whatever useful medical information they discover, but can't promise to discover anything useful for that particular patient. As for "how" the samples will be studied, it is hard to relate that to one's own interest.
The War on Pain Sufferers can kill.
A father was concerned that his daughter was sexting, so he asked thugs to convince her to stop. (The last thing your child needs is to have thugs involved in per life!) He copied the photos as evidence, so he was charged with possession of "child pornography" and labeled as a sex offender.
The "sex offender" list does little to protect anyone and a lot to ruin people's lives. But fundamentally it is unjust to prosecute people for having a copy of anything whatsoever.
The EU is paying the dictator of Sudan to keep immigration down.
The Houthis say they were not the ones that fired a missile at a US destroyer.
I have no basis for judging whether to credit this.
Facing public criticism, Canada decided that Jos� Bov� can stay and speak against CETA.
This demonstrates there was never any valid reason to keep him out.
How many attacks on various groups does it take to convince a Republican not to support Trump?
Russia is signaling that it would fight back against an attack in Syria by the US.
Google has warned some Russians that the Russian government is trying to crack their accounts.
Democrats are using disinformation against the documents that Wikileaks honestly releases.
Glenn Greenwald punctures the Democrats' invalid criticisms of the publication of the leaks.
I agree with Greenwald that Wikileaks should have omitted personal information that could hurt people and is politically irrelevant. However, the Democratic Party should focus on correcting its wrongs rather than on criticizing those that expose them. And it must stop arguing that people should help cover up those wrongs, because Trump.
The DEA is starting to reconsider its plan to prohibit kratom.
Maine Governor LePage said he supports Trump to provide "authoritarian power" because Obama is an "autocrat" (?!).
Australia is using the Paris climate agreement as an excuse to justify a new coal mine.
"Surely the government will make other cuts to cancel out the enormous emissions from this coal" is an absurd argument, given that in fact the Australian government is doing everything possible to keep emissions high.
The officials' strings are surely being pulled by the coal company's money, as part of a global plan to reject necessary cuts even though that is likely to kill billions. That the killing is not their goal, merely a byproduct, is no excuse for it.
The Financial Powers Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline Must Be Confronted.
The Philippine thugs' murder spree is aimed at more than drug dealers. Two disguised thugs were caught after murdering a woman described as an "anti-crime campaigner". They now face charges.
The system of trials is not entirely reliable for determining who is a criminal, but it is a lot more reliable than skipping directly to punishment.
Clinton (like Trump) refuses to take a stand regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline.
I think this means she supports it and she would rather not be criticized for that.
The fanaticism of Boko Haram has blocked polio vaccination campaigns for years in its region, so a new vaccination drive will try to vaccinate 41 million children there.
The UK's Tory government intends to put a hundred billion dollars on infrastructure projects that are pointless or harmful.
Facebook, its subsidiary Instagram, and Twitter, all gave special access to a company monitoring Black Lives Matter protesters.
"Official" US news misrepresents the situation in Syria.
A Nice-style truck attack in Reno was apparently an act of terrorism. Fortunately, this time, no one was killed.
Strange that the word "terrorism" is not being used. In the US, right-wing terrorists are as big a danger as Islamist terrorists, though neither one is large as dangers go.
18% of Muslim "violent extremists" in the US cited anger at US military interventions in Muslim countries as a reason. It was the most common single reason cited.
I expect the number of jihadis motivated by this in other countries is in the thousands or tens of thousands.
Some of these interventions initially had a justification, but it has evaporated. Some of them never had any justification. Either way, we need to stop these wars, for our self interest as well as in the name of justice.
Neoliberalism, putting everyone into harsh competition, is also making people suffer from loneliness that can kill. Meanwhile, replacing direct communication with digital communication adds to the problem.
Sumatran rhinos are likely to become extinct unless urgent action is taken.
A documentary, "Do Not Resist", shows how much US thugs have been militarized and how that spreads suffering.
Just Give Me Some Privacy — Anonymous Wikipedia Editors and Tor Users Explain Why They Don't Want You to Know Who They Are.
American Military Intervention Can't Save Syria.
The ACLU condemns New York Governor Cuomo's plans to fill the streets with face recognition cameras.
I am very glad to see the ACLU go beyond proposals to limit access to data already collected. Limiting the collection is what we need.
Clinton was on Walmart's board of directors, and when organizers asked her to try to get a raise for workers, her team consulted with Walmart about how to respond.
That shows whose side she's on.
Hungary's main opposition newspaper has abruptly closed and removed its archives from the internet. People suspect that Orban forced it to close.
US citizens: call on Bill Clinton to push to let José Álvarez rejoin his family in the US.
Álvarez lived in the US since age 12, without permission. He committed a nonviolent drug crime in 1995, served time in prison, and was released. Then he spent two decades in the US, gainfully employed.
When people who have been in the US just a few years commit serious crimes, I am favor of deporting them, provided it is done reasonably soon after the crime.
But it is an injustice to deport someone with decades of family ties in the US because of a crime decades in the past. It is an injustice to deport any adult who has lived in the US since childhood.
And most of these nonviolent drug crimes should not be crimes anyway.
Nobody should have six children, but that is a different issue and doesn't affect the conclusions on this one.
Big companies (and one union!) told the Democratic Party to cut down its (rather meager) progressiveness to get donations.
South Africa is trying to cure its long-term drought by killing invasive trees that use lots of water.
The FBI has outsourced handling of evidence for surveillance orders to a company.
Maybe this will lead to more whistleblowers.
If May wants to make the UK "work for everyone", she had better change the policies that are on the way to increase child poverty.
Some disabled people escape from denial of disability support by appealing against the denial. The UK now plans to limit appeals to sending paper documentation only, so that some obvious and absurd errors will not be corrected.
Cuban medical doctors are working in 1/3 of the world's countries, including Haiti.
A giant Australian mining company has paid no tax for a decade.
Rich bastards in San Francisco are funding a campaign to kick out homeless people.
They would be given a bus ticket to some place they probably can't remain.
Investors have told car manufacturers to reduce CO2 emissions.
Privatizing a part of the UK's NHS has already led to corrupt practices at the expense of the treasury. That's what privatizing state services tends to do.
The ACLU and Human Rights Watch call for decriminalizing possession of forbidden drugs.
The pressure to take a plea bargain even if you're innocent is so strong that only 2 accused in a thousand actually have a trial. It is impossible that so few of the accused are innocent. This is not a system of justice, it is a system of arbitrary punishment.
Republican Mega-Donors Ramp Up Efforts to Hold Congress after Trump Tape.
We need to be careful to prevent campaign finance restrictions from stopping people from publishing works through the usual publication outlets.
These outlets should not be held responsible for the content of the works they are used to distribute in the usual ways.
However, we can distinguish that from the case where a corporation pays for election publicity. If a company rents theaters to show a movie that is for or against a certain candidate, that is clearly a campaign expenditure by the company (but not by the theaters).
Republicans are horrified by the idea that women will be groped, but only if it is by male-to-female transsexuals. (They are probably not inclined to do such a thing.) But when it is done by arrogant men such as Trump, they look for an excuse.
Thugs are harassing pipeline protesters (and the general public in the vicinity of protesters) constantly, with cars, armored vehicles, and helicopters.
Women who have accused Trump of forcing himself on them.
Thug departments are switching to encrypted radio, but some have turned off the encryption, finding that concealing the information about their operations causes problems.
When the rebels took Eastern Aleppo, the inhabitants did not welcome them.
Allowing children to learn what interests them, in a nonstructured way, can give them tremendous life advantages.
Does it give good results in families that don't have a tradition of learning and curiosity, in deprived areas with no resources to stimulate minds and no libraries?
Striking US prisoners understand that the only effective action they can take is to refuse to be used as slaves.
Ethiopia is systematically crushing dissent, and kidnaped a dissident expat from another country who now faces execution in Ethiopia.
Giving Haiti the money it needs would be partial compensation for past injustice.
The US helped force Haiti to pay the ransom to France.
Congress may use the lame duck session (after the election) to make new tax breaks or subsidies for companies.
In California, for a prosecutor to alter or withhold evidence useful to the defense is now a felony.
Green Groups Warn Deal to Lower Aviation Pollution is 'Weak Shell Game'.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop the modern day Native American land grab.
The US is investigating Alabama's prison system for systematically mistreating prisoners.
Trump's tax-dodging was probably lawful. That doesn't make his actions right, or ethically legitimate, but it shows we must change the tax law.
"You know this is Thailand, it's like China. Not like Hong Kong!"
Don't visit Thailand on vacation. It is ruled by a tyrannical regime that has spit on human rights in many ways. Please don't spend your money there.
Junk food (probably mostly sugar) is causing rising obesity for children; tens of millions have diseases caused by obesity.
Various treaties either push farmers under the power of giant multinationals or protect their rights.
Florida Governor Scott won't give the people evacuating from Hurricane Matthew more time to register to vote.
Canada will allow refugees from Eritrea to sue the Canadian owner of a gold mine in Eritrea over how they were treated.
The Paris agreement could potentially be the beginning of the changes we need.
But it does not guarantee that they begin.
Former president Álvaro Uribe of Colombia procured disapproval of the peace deal with the FARC, using a campaign of false rumors. Now he is in a position to block any new agreement.
The FARC were Colombia's second-worst gang of terrorists. The worst gang, the paramilitares, had links with el Presidente Horrible. (as I called him — in Spanish, "Horrible" sounds fairly similar to "Uribe").
The government signed a peace deal with the paramilitaries, who were supposed to disband — but they didn't really do so.
Peace with the FARC might enable Colombia to put more pressure on the paramilitaries to really disband, but not if Horrible has anything to say about it.
While Horrible was president, Santos was the minister of false positives; the troops that murdered civilians for no reason except to produce corpses were under his control. I had a low opinion of him for this and because he supported the business-supremacy treaty with the US. However, I must acknowledge that he has sincerely tried to make peace with the FARC, which would be an admirable achievement.
Santos just received the Nobel Peace Prize for these negotiations. Some say that this might enable him to rescue the accord.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that thugs are not allowed to treat a black person's attempt to avoid them as a sign of awareness of guilt. It could just be a sign that person is afraid of being persecuted by bigoted thugs.
Whether the thugs in Boston actually practice racial profiling is a separate question. I don't know whether they do. However, the issue here is not what they do, but what a person has a rational reason to think they are likely to do.
Ticks are spreading geographically due to global heating. They transmit diseases to humans and pets.
Tick bites make some people allergic to mammal meat.
The Satanic Temple, a rationalist group which does not recognize the existence of gods or devils, now has an after-school program.
A possible basis for prosecuting the Wells Fargo CEO has appeared.
I doubt that the US government wants to prosecute a bankster.
The only thing that's new, with apparently Russian meddling in US elections, is that the US is the target. In the past, the US has often been the meddler.
Eduardo Cunha, one of the main organizers of Rousseff's impeachment, has been expelled from Congress for corruption and perjury.
Poland proposes a punishment of years in prison for using the phrase "Polish death camps".
I sympathize with the Polish government's wish to correct the error. Those Nazi death camps were located in Poland, but they were not Polish. However, this method won't be very effective against foreign media outlets, and meanwhile it violates human rights.
I wonder if quoting or describing this law in Poland, supposing it is adopted, would be a violation of the same law.
Joseph Stiglitz: The Problem with Europe Is the Euro.
That may be the biggest economic problem, but the European Union has another deeper problem: it is not democratic. Fixing or eliminating the euro could end austerity, but as long as the EU is not democratic it will be susceptible to doing new wrongs.
US citizens: call on Obama to end US participation in the bombardment of Yemen.
Everyone: call on NBC and MGM to release the Trump tapes.
US citizens: urge Senators Sanders and Warren to campaign against the new nuclear arms race.
A campaign in India tries to teach the idea that baby daughters are just as good as baby sons.
I agree — but in overpopulated India it would be wiser to celebrate each year without a baby of any kind.
The World Health Organization calls for a tax on all sugary drinks.
It seems like a good idea to me, but they should keep in mind that artificial sweeteners seem perhaps to contribute to obesity by confusing the brain.
Rome has cancelled its application to host the Olympic Games.
That is a wise decision. The city has more important uses for its money and should not suffer the other harms of the games.
Yahoo has blocked users from setting up mail forwarding to other mail services.
Apparently, this is a measure to stop users from switching.
It is becoming common for hurricanes to cause as much flooding as Hurricane Sandy did.
Forest fires have doubled. National parks are suffering from changing ecosystems.
In a few decades, much worse will be normal.
Ilham Tohti, Uighur imprisoned for life by China, wins major human rights prize.
On military issues, both Clinton and Trump have bad policies.
The UK and European countries are treating the question of splitting up as a matter of conflicting economic interests.
The EU cites four basic principles, all a matter of mere trade: "free movement" of goods, services, capital and labor.
I think any political entity should adopt, as its basic principles, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Health and Well-being. The European Union does not treat these as very important, so Europe must either fix the EU or get rid of it.
Nigeria has banned female genital mutilation, but the law is not well enforced and the practice is still common in some parts of the country.
The economic advisor that the world needs to follow is Keynes.
The criticisms of the 1970s were based on an evident mistake: supposing that typical consumers are foresighted. All those Americans who foolishly got second mortgages would be proof of that, if there were any doubt. Anyway, most consumers don't know enough about economics to suppose that a stimulus program will lead to a tax increase later. And those who have to choose between food and medicine each week will spend all the additional money they get.
Plans for oil drilling on Australia's southern continental shelf have been shelved.
Most Democratic candidates have granted legitimacy to funding of campaigns by the rich, and it shows in what they stand for.
Physicians for Human Rights documents the mental damage left by US torture and how physicians violated their oaths by participating.
Indonesia has passed a law against "cyberbullying" which turns out to be used to stifle dissent.
Of course, criminalizing "blasphemy" is prima facie injustice. Condemning or mocking religion is a part of human rights. But even laws against insulting people are intolerable.
The Amazon rainforest is getting less rain, and more fire, due to global heating. This speeds the heating.
A Texas company is forcing a fracked gas pipeline through the US northeast despite objections of people who may be endangered.
A message from the crew of the latest boat that tried to break the siege of Gaza.
A noted Pakistani journalist has been banned from leaving the country because of his reporting.
Clinton told Deutsche Bank that she had promoted fracking world-wide.
The refugees Australia forced into Manus Island face violence from local inhabitants.
"Aid" from wealthy countries could be redirected into loans or investment in companies in those countries.
That would be instead of building systems for health and education and vital infrastructure.
It wouldn't do as much to help non-elites in those countries, but it would be more profitable.
The US and UK are closely involved in Salafi Arabia's bombing of Yemen, and US officials have warned that this involves the US in the war crimes of the bombardment campaign.
Australia exports increasing amounts of natural gas, but collects little tax from the exporters. The tax system is designed so they can fiddle their accounts to reduce the amount they pay.
This policy encourages increases in the amount of exports, which encourages roasting our planet.
Fracking is a form of [global heating] denial.
The UK's Science Museum has rejected further sponsorship from Shell but has accepted sponsorship from Statoil.
Museums and science programs must reject the corrupting influence of fossil fuels.
The US and Russia have both helped to trash the Geneva conventions. Repeated violations have endangered the agreement that hospitals, medics and wounded people should not be targets in war. We must reestablish this.
Surprise! In Yemen, the Houthis and their allies are starting to fire missiles at Salafi Arabia and the US navy, the countries that have bombarded Yemen for no valid reason.
It was wrong from the outset for Salafi Arabia and the US to intervene in Yemen. The civil war in Yemen would have ended soon if not for that external intervention. The Houthis, who were winning, were no enemy of the US at that time.
Geopolitical rivalry with Iran was not and is not a valid justification for war.
As for human rights, Iran regularly violates them, but Salafi Arabia is far worse.
The longer this intervention continues, the more suffering it will cause in Yemen, and the more it will tend to spread. The US should end this intervention as soon as possible, to stop doing any more harm.
EFF: Yahoo Email Surveillance: the Next Front in the Fight Against Mass Surveillance.
There have been proposals for a "no-fly" zone or a "safe zone" in Syria. What would those mean, and what military means would they require?
After the explicitly rigged Wisconsin Supreme Court quashed the prosecution of illegal campaign funding, the equally-split US Supreme Court did not touch the case. Democracy in Wisconsin exists only so far as plutocrats allow.
Dissident Nepali editor Kunda Dixit has been driven into exile by the state.
Apes have the ability to deduce what another ape is thinking based on what it has and hasn't seen.
VR games used as advertising for cannons.
Americans are starting to reconsider whether the US ought to be allied with Salafi Arabia.
Thin communities, where people have hardly any contact with each other, are what global business wants.
Pakistan has closed the loophole whereby husbands and relatives that murder women for "shaming" their families could be pardoned by those same families.
Women in the US and Europe are starting to admit that they regret having had children.
Uganda has begun support grants to old people, and it turns out that small amounts of money are a big help.
Homa Hoodfar describes her interrogation and imprisonment in Iran for the crime of "dabbling in feminism".
The IMF and World Bank recognize that the world is heading for more financial trouble. They don't recognize that their own policies have contributed.
Obama should take some action to rebuke Netanyahu for his policy of colonisation and his contempt for the US.
In Chechnya under Kadyrov, no one dares point out anything that the government has handled badly.
Trump's counterattack: presenting women that accused Bill Clinton of rape, and one that accused Hillary Clinton of serving as court-appointed public defender for an accused rapist.
It is not clear what is supposed to be bad about Hillary Clinton's part in this. Accused rapists deserve legal representation, like any other defendant — even if they are guilty.
The reason I won't vote for Hillary Clinton is that she stands for right-wing positions, which right-wingers like to call "centrist".
What Happens When the Alpha Males Run Politics? Donald Trump.
Although it is stretching things to apply that term to humans.
US citizens: call on the Secretary of the Army to overrule solitary the confinement sentence for Chelsea Manning.
No, Hillary, young voters aren't naive. The system doesn't work for them.
A witness cited a close ally of Chris Christie of saying that Christie and Cuomo talked about making a false report attributing the bridge lane closure to a traffic study.
This couldn't be used as evidence in court against Christie, since it would be hearsay. But it adds to the piles of evidence to convince us that Christie did this deliberately.
Off-duty thugs providing "security" at the Kansas City Public Library in a public event spontaneously decided to arrest an attendee for trying to ask a follow-up question. When the library official in charge told them they were not supposed to remove people except at the library's request, they beat him up, injured him, and then arrested him.
Don't take the risk of having thugs at your events.
The US imposed a broad gag order on Open Whisper Systems in regard to a subpoena relating to Signal.
EFF: Tell HP: Still a long way to go to make up for breaking our printers.
The three demands here are valid, but the most important demand is omitted. HP should promise never to apply DRM to its printers. Why does the EFF so often make insufficient demands?
Nearly half all children in Sub-Saharan Africa in extreme poverty, report warns.
This is connected with the fact that the population growth rate there is so high. It is African's duty to have much fewer children, and our duty to give them what they need in order to carry out that duty.
After Hurricane Matthew, will aid predators ravage Haiti?
Florida disenfranchises 10% of the voting-age citizens because they are ex-cons.
A large fraction of those disenfranchised are black, and this is partly a direct result of racism: black are more likely to be prosecuted than whites, in similar situations.
Racism is also the motive for the policy, since it stops blacks from resisting various racist laws through political organizing.
An executive of Backpage faces criminal charges because Backpage carries ads placed by teenage prostitutes that pretend to be adults.
The laws in the US against prostitution are based on prudery and prejudice; if the goal is to help women avoid mistreatment, they make no sense.
Excerpts of Clinton's private paid speeches to banksters have been released by wikileaks.
I don't see anything shockingly bad here. We have known all along that Clinton is no progressive, and this doesn't change that significantly.
The EU is fighting the opposition to CETA with a nonbinding document that attempts to reassure sheep that it won't be used to shear them.
Canada's government seeks the power to identify internet subscribers without a search warrant, and is trying the usual excuses: first "pedophiles", now "terrorists".
This suggests that the real motivation for trying to grab this power is neither of the above.
Trying to choose foods to reduce their carbon impact is so complicated that it is hopeless.
We have a simple system for solving such problems: the market. If we apply a big enough carbon tax, the price of various foodstuffs will guide you to reduce your carbon impact.
The US has begun "reviewing" its support for Salafi Arabia's bombing of Yemen after the bombing of a large crowd at a funeral.
I hope this gives the US an opportunity to stop what it should never have started.
Thug unions support Trump, because he encourages thuggishness in everyone that has privilege and power.
Everyone: Demand an independent investigation of the killing of Tyre King.
Former Yahoo staff say that the NSA's email-scanner was actually a "buggy rootkit" that gave the US government (and potentially others) many kinds of access to Yahoo's servers.
However, supposing this surveillance was limited to the pattern-matching that was originally described, the government is claiming the power to search everyone's communications, then claim it hasn't searched your mail unless it found a match in your mail.
The ACLU poses questions about how far this surveillance power extends and who authorized it.
A Trump supporter tried to attack reporter Kurt Eichenwald by sending him a racist video that was designed to trigger an epileptic seizure.
Coca Cola has a list of dietitians that it has paid to give it supportive PR. Now they are tweeting to oppose proposed soda tax.
Wisconsin voters, now required to show state-issued photo IDs, are getting the run-around when they apply for one.
Sacramento thugs tried to run Joseph Mann over, but when he jumped over the median to protect himself, they got out of their car and shot him repeatedly until he was dead.
A union organizing effort at Wells Fargo helped uncover the pressure on employees to commit fraud.
It has uncovered a similar pattern at other big banks, too.
Where medical marijuana has been legalized, older Americans are less likely to be disabled and more likely to continue working.
The UK referendum encouraged violence against queers, not just against the ethnic minorities and immigrants that were attacked by the political campaign.
It seems that the "leave EU" campaign encouraged the spirit of hate in a general way, independent of the target.
Non-college white men in the US have decreasing incomes. Their support for Trump may be a foolish response to this real problem.
Dirty and deadly oil train projects meet defeat in California and Washington.
The US war in Afghanistan has continued 15 years. Politicians ignore it and have no rational plan to end it.
"Do something (in Syria)!" means, in effect, "Bomb something!"
But the US can't make things better by starting a war with Assad or Russia. On the contrary, a war with Russia could make things a whole lot worse.
Criticism of Trump is being used to promote prudish sexual morality.
Why shouldn't someone of age 64 make a pass at someone younger? No reason, except prudery and ageism. As for marriage and fidelity, that is natural for some people and not for others. Society pressures everyone to agree to that way of life, then criticizes them when they can't follow it.
What's bad about Trump's conduct is that he puts pressure on women when they don't want him. Because of his power, and his practice of retaliating against anyone who thwarts him (and not only in sexual matters), they may be afraid to talk about it (note how this woman said nothing about it for years), perhaps even afraid to say no to him.
What's bad about Trump's attitude is that he regards women as collectibles. He seems to have no idea of tenderness or kindness; he is all cupidity.
A Faux News reporter cited the Berlin Wall as an example of success.
15 years ago, Howard Zinn warned that attacking Afghanistan would not make things better.
The Taliban had offered to kick out al-Qa'ida to end hostility with the US, but the US was not interested.
The Taliban are oppressive rulers, especially to women. To overthrow such a state might be justified, if the people it rules want that. But RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, did not want US intervention, and the replacement Afghan government didn't respect women's rights much either.
Iceland has convicted 9 bankers from the failed bank Kaupthing for illegal transactions that they used to expand the bank.
The expansion was risky as well as illegal, and the result was the bank's failure when the crisis came.
Big Pharma is conspiring with US ISPs and other internet companies to block Americans from using foreign pharmacy web sites to order prescription drugs.
This illustrates that ICANN is being lobbied to serve the cause of censorship.
EFF: FCC helped create the Stingray problem, now it needs to fix it.
Sen. Mike Lee: U.S. can't bomb Syrian forces without congressional approval.
It would be foolish for the US to intervene against Assad because none of the armed factions deserves our support except the Kurds — and they are distant enough from Assad's forces that the two groups are not fighting each other.
Facebook wants to supply limited "internet" access in the US after having been rebuffed by India.
Kerry calls for war crimes investigations against Russia and Syria.
I think that is valid; but so is a call for war crimes investigations against the US and Salafi Arabia in Yemen.
Bogus excuses states use to shut down the internet.
Clinton's private speeches to banksters have been leaked.
She advocated the Simpson-Bowles proposal for tax cuts for business and postponement of social security, and said she needed to have a "public position" and a "private position".
This, of course, is what we suspected.
Democrats should now recognize that Clinton said she would be the tool of the banksters. The evidence is clearly visible.
If she is elected, she will have to betray the banksters or betray the public. Where do her real loyalties lie?
Combat vs. Climate: The Military and Climate Security Budgets Compared.
The US government is giving money to charter schools, and some of them are diverting money to private profit.
The US warned Americans to stay away from public spaces in Egypt.
Egypt imprisons and kills people for no reason whatsoever. The US should warn Americans to stay away from Egypt.
Berta Caceres' case file was stolen — from the prosecutor.
Fortunately there are copies.
Either the state is trying to protect her killers, or private parties more powerful than the state are doing it.
Trump was recorded boasting that he could grab women and have sex with them.
Trump has a long history of treating women as objects, prizes, toys … anything but human beings.
Many Republicans are disgusted, but only a few have dared to withdraw their support.
USA FREEDOM Act requires government to declassify any order to Yahoo.
Is Your Big Data Project a "Weapon of Math Destruction"?
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban toxic oil dispersants.
US citizens:
call on the IRS to
investigate ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Florida Governor Scott to extend the voting registration deadline to make up for the delay caused by Hurricane Matthew.
Everyone: call on Billionaire Polluters to stop supporting heating-denialist pressure groups.
A study compares the conduct of 8 large fossil fuel companies.
Indiana thugs raided and shut down a large voter registration activity, trying to blame it because a couple of people submitted invalid and perhaps fraudulent registrations through the activity.
Republicans could use this excuse to block others from voting and deny them the opportunity to register. Attacking operations that register marginalized people is a standard Republican strategy for attacking democracy.
I have to wonder whether the invalid forms were submitted by Republican operatives to create an excuse for the raid.
The UK convicted Conrad Jones of intimidating a witness because prosecutors hid the evidence proving he was somewhere else at the time.
California just made such actions by prosecutors a felony. The UK needs to take equally strong action.
The moribund Federal Election Commission has refused to take action on accusations of campaign finance violations by the Trump an Clinton campaigns.
The FCC's new version of ISP privacy requirements is weaker than the previous proposal.
I wouldn't — and I don't — trust those ISPs with my personal data. I connect through Tor. That's feasible for me, since the amount of data I transmit through them is not very much compared with most people.
Nowadays, bottled water can fetch a high price if it has some exotic inactive ingredient or comes from an exotic place.
Don't be a sucker — don't buy bottled water in the US or Europe. If you worry about lead in the water of your town, buy a filter.
Armed Ecuadorian police took over the headquarters of a union of indigenous peoples that oppose oil extraction in their territory.
We now have a very simple argument to oppose to any and all proposals to drill more oil wells: the world cannot survive an increase in fossil fuel extraction facilities, because just operating the existing facilities is enough to cause global disaster.
Thus, while I sympathize with the desire to give Ecuadorians (who are for the most part rather poor) a better standard of living, the world cannot bear it.
Prisoner Siddique Hasan faces in-prison punishment for giving an interview to National Public Radio about the US prisoners' strike.
Hey prison guards, you have no right of privacy in how you treat prisoners. They do have such a right — but when they want us to know, you have no business interfering.
Now that the inadequate Paris treaty is in effect, activists call for serious measures.
World Needs $90tn Infrastructure Overhaul to Avoid Climate Disaster, Study Finds.
Support for the death penalty is declining in Texas, among the population and its court of appeals.
The US has recognized that Israel is building a permanent apartheid state but supports it anyway.
A considerable fraction of young Americans don't want to have children.
This is great news if it means less population growth. Still, it is a shame that this is brought about by putting an unnecessary and irrational burden on mothers.
Low-emissions cars tend to be cheaper to operate, when counting maintenance costs.
Haiti has been hit by a powerful hurricane shortly before it was supposed to have presidential elections.
The storm destroyed houses, roads, and crops. The election has been cancelled.
The election would probably have been phony. The US more or less imposed President Martelly, after arranging the removal of President Aristide.
It doesn't mention that cholera was brought by a UN force whose mission (since there was no war in Haiti) was to maintain in power the elites that Dubya had put in power.
Eliminating cholera is not rocket science. It just takes money to implement systems for clean water and sewage treatment. The UN ought to accept responsibility and pay for these in Haiti, but it hasn't.
Arms sales to Salafi Arabia carry so much plutocratic weight that they distort US foreign policy.
Some of Clinton's Pledges Sound Great. Until You Remember Who's President (and how for 8 years he has hardly tried to do these things).
A UK minister set aside a local government's disapproval of fracking.
UK fracking decision is nothing short of hypocrisy.
Fossil fuel handling leaks 60% more methane than previously believed.
Global heating could cause 30-year droughts in the US, with conditions in the west resembling the 1930's dust bowl.
The US is not feeding the world's poor people. Hardly any of US agricultural produce goes to countries with many hungry people.
Instead, US food exports go mainly to wealthy countries. About half are meat or feed for producing meat.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has required digital payment systems to follow the same rules that apply to bank cards.
The Israeli navy captured the Gaza solidarity boat and forced it away from Gaza.
The only reason not to let it reach Gaza is to demonstrate Israel's power. It had no rational justification for using that power this time.
James Hanson says we need a carbon tax to make the price of fossil fuels honest.
Verizon has order its employees in Pennsylvania to replace copper wires with semi-functional links to the cell phone system. They can be fired for fixing a copper wire.
Some states are diverting welfare money to "crisis pregnancy centers" whose mission is to mislead women so they don't get abortions.
If there's anything a poor single mother does not need, it's another baby.
US citizens: Call on Congress to break up Wells Fargo and the other megabanks.
The CO2 we have already pumped into the atmosphere has made catastrophe inevitable, unless we manage to start removing large amounts of it. The question that remains is how big the catastrophe will be.
US citizens: Call on Congress not to reduce transparency for Pentagon contractors.
Bill Clinton made a statement against for-profit medical insurance.
Hillary Clinton has opposed making a public option. If she said what Bill Clinton has just said, that would be a good stand on this issue.
A college student was asked to make up a name. He combined a common given name with a common family name. The combination is the name of several people. One of them happened to be a nude model, so he was accused of sexual harassment.
Residents of Florida and those who visit Florida: call on Governor Scott to move for reexamination of the Sabal pipeline, in which he has a personal financial interest.
Urging Congress to allow some tax breaks for fossil fuels to expire instead of renewing them.
Frackers in Pennsylvania want to prosecute local officials for adopting laws to limit fracking.
73 US large multinational companies maintain 10,000 foreign companies in tax havens.
They have avoided $700 billion in US taxes by keeping money outside the US.
The world needs almost 70 million new teachers to provide universal education.
Protests made the Polish government reconsider its proposed total ban on abortions.
May this lead to reconsideration of the existing Polish near-total ban on abortions.
The Colombian government has ended the cease fire with the FARC.
Although the referendum rejected the peace agreement, I don't see why the cease fire has to end.
Thailand denied entry to a Hong Kong activist at the request of China.
If US victims of terror can sue Saudi Arabia, can victims of American terrorism sue the US?
It seems proper to me for them to be able to do so.
While there is no evidence that Salafi Arabia directly supported al-Qa'ida, it is certainly guilty of spreading fundamentalism (Salafism) across the Muslim world, and that contributed to all kinds of Islamism, both the violent part that commits terrorism and the more widespread part that merely advocates disrespect for many human rights.
Use of fitness trackers has an insignificant effect on most users' levels of exercise.
They do have a significant effect on the level of surveillance one suffers.
In Yemen, due to the bombing campaign by Salafi Arabia, children are now starving to death.
Duane Buck was sentenced to death for the specific reason that he is black.
Nobody, of any race, should be executed. The death penalty is unjust and we can easily do without it.
Honeywell has locked out a union that wouldn't agree to givebacks.
Has anyone got a plan to pressure Honeywell?
India has shut down the Kashmir Reader newspaper.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Teachers' bias against black boys begins with children of preschool age.
This prejudice directly harms the children, because children that teachers expect to do badly, do badly as a consequence of their expectation.
The German comedian who published a poem that satirized Erdoğan will not be prosecuted by the state. Erdoğan's private prosecution of him is still being considered.
Germany should repeal that law.
Nancy Doe is facing charges of "sexually exploiting" herself; the hateful DA wants to list her as a "sex offender" for years.
It sounds like the selfies she took would be acceptable in most magazines. But even if that had not been so, these charges would still be unjust.
I commend the courage of Nancy and her parents (presuming they have not pressured her) in refusing the "deal" where she has to admit guilt.
I think it would be appropriate for the boy who redistributed the photos she sent him confidentially to face some sort of punishment. Not a listing in the sex offender list. Not prosecution. Suspension from school would be too much. But the school should teach him that this sort of thing is not the way to treat other kids.
Everyone: call on Wells Fargo CEO Stumpf to resign for policies that pressured staff into fraud.
California's Proposition 61 would cut the cost of drugs bought by the state.
Erdoğan continues repression of the Kurds in Turkey.
He broke the years-long cease fire in order to get more votes.
Pakistan has expelled hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees back into the war zone which is their country.
When Gerry Williams was a homeless alcoholic in Toronto, he was fined over and over. He got sober, but USD 50,000 in fines made it impossible for him to live a normal life with work.
Pew Survey: Republicans Are Rejecting Reality on Climate Change.
The right-wing media are effective in convincing right-wing Americans to reject reality.
New Jersey, under Republican Governor Christie, plans to privatize Atlantic City's water.
In justice, Trump should pay the money that the city needs.
Suggestions for dealing with the UK's housing shortage.
I disagree with one point: taxes on the wealthy are too low already, so when anyone proposes a new tax break to encourage A over B, we should look for a way to increase the taxes on B to discourage it in favor of A.
If funds are needed to make more housing, taxing potential residences that are no one's primary residence is a good way to get that money.
In general, it is important to eliminate the laws that limit construction of housing — for instance, zoning laws that limit the amount of housing on a tract of land.
The US government ordered Yahoo to scan all incoming messages, and Yahoo did.
Here's more about what happened.
Other companies say they would have resisted this demand, but it is hard to know whether to trust them.
Corbyn's platform for the Labour Party is good, but 12,000 new public housing units a year is woefully insufficient.
Two states, California and Illinois, have taken state bond sales and investments (for pension funds, I expect) away from Wells Fargo. This is good, but really all the executives responsible for the pressure that made staff cheat customers should face charges.
Wells Fargo agreed to a fine for repossessing soldiers' cars without a court order.
This is good, but what about us civilians? We deserve rights, too.
US citizens: call on Congress to debate the question of war with Syria or Russia rather than just leaving hands off.
California has blocked "civil" forfeiture (seizure of a person's property without convicting per of a crime) in nearly all cases.
An anti-refugee referendum in Hungary failed because less than 50% of the voters voted. There was an organized campaign urging people not to vote.
The dense heart of the Pacific Ocean's plastic garbage patch is almost 400,000 square miles in size. It contains millions of large plastic objects that are slowly breaking down into microparticles.
Two years ago, plastic in the oceans was believed to weigh almost 300,000 tons. Perhaps now the estimate needs to be increased.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel the lame duck session.
US citizens: support a "public option" in health care for all Americans.
Mike Pence refuses to pardon a convict that has been proved innocent.
Pence, like the prosecutor Pence is protecting, defend the principle that The System Is Never Mistaken. When it makes a mistake, they deny the facts rather than admit the mistake.
The main debate about US foreign policy is between different excuses for pursuing global dominion.
America's main rivals are rather nasty themselves. China is a corrupt dictatorship that increasingly crushes human rights. Putin is an authoritarian ruler who does not permit serious opposition even though he is so popular he could win honestly.
It could well be true that most of the residents of the Crimea, before Russia took it over, wanted the Crimea to be part of Russia. However, the election Putin held after capturing the Crimea tells us nothing about the question, because he does not run elections honestly. If we are able to doubt the statements of Dubya, Obama, Clinton and Trump, why put more faith in Putin's? He is not trying to conquer the world, but that doesn't make him admirable. Most Russians support him, just as many Americans supported Dubya's wars — both countries were lied to.
The Earth's surface is hotter now than at any time in the past 115,000 years.
Back then, the sea was 6-9 meters higher, and it will probably rise to that level again if we don't drive the temperature down.
Is part of your city under 9 meters above sea level? Lots of Boston is.
Duterte boasts about how many drug dealers (or supposed drug dealers) he will arrange to kill, but meanwhile denies responsibility for the killings he organized before.
Should we call him President Do-dirty?
The investigation of the murder of sociological researcher Giulio Regeni has exposed the murderous nature of the Egyptian military state.
Its readiness to torture and kill people with hardly any rational reason reminds me of what I have heard about Stalin. Except that, unlike Stalin, the Egyptian regime has full support of the US.
Supposedly the Egyptian tyranny is the only bulwark against Islamist rebels. Of course, those disrespect basic human rights, those of men as well as those of women, those of Muslims as well as those of non-Muslims. That is the nature of the Islamist position. But the violent Islamist rebellion got a boost after the military coup, so I think that the military have done more harm than good.
Tenants in part of Berlin are trying to ban renovation of buildings so as to keep wealthier people from forcing them out.
The harm of housing bought as an investment and denied as a place to live is a consequence of unjust laws that regulate the housing market badly.
100,000 Polish women protested the new restrictive abortion law, which is even worse than the old restrictive abortion law.
President Correa says the US is organizing another campaign like Plan Condor, which organized assassinations of dissidents in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
A fairly recent law says that the US should collect statistics about killings by thugs, but the US proposes to collect them in an inefficient and unreliable way.
Tories propose to cancel most of the European Convention on Human Rights in regard to war crimes. As an excuse, for those inclined to accept feeble excuses, they pretend that accusations of abuse were all bogus.
Microsoft has obtained influence in the Linux Foundation, even as it uses patents to push proprietary malware programs into products with GNU/Linux or Android.
How Trump arranged to get a billion dollars from the banks, and pass the tax liability to a company, which subsequently went bankrupt.
Trump (or some advisor) was indeed clever at figuring out how to cheat the US.
As always, when someone exploits a system this way, the system is responsible for having the loophole and the exploiter is responsible for taking advantage of it. We should condemn the exploiter and fix the system's flaw. The question is, just what is the flaw?
There are other instances of cheating by creating a company that was intended to go bankrupt. For instance, Peabody Energy created a subsidiary and transferred pension liabilities to it, as a way of cheating its current workers and its retired former workers.
I think we need to make it much harder to create a company and transfer current or future liabilities to it in such a way that the company is likely to go bankrupt. The obvious way is to designate such conduct as a crime. There might be a more clever way which changes some procedures to put obstacles in the path of the operation itself.
"A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been 'fabricated'."
It continues, "Not only did the report find that many of the 'new' drugs awaiting approval were actually a combination of existing drugs, they also showed that many clinical trial outcomes were written before the trials had actually taken place."
The corruption has not reached that point in the US and Europe, but it does exist.
Some UK universities now employ their professors as subcontractors as a scheme of union-busting.
US universities have other methods for union-busting.
The US and Europe want to pour more money down the "nation building" drain in Afghanistan.
Spending money to help make Afghanistan stable would be justified if we could expect it to achieve the goal. In practice, when we tried it our billions of dollars mostly went into corruption and ill-conceived useless projects. Is there any reason to think it would be more effective now?
Clinton described herself to wealthy donors as "center-left to center-right".
However, what the Washington and media elite calls "center" is really right-wing compared with the views of most Americans, who support positions that are more "left". That is the real center. Thus, really Clinton is in truth center to right.
Stumpf deserves more than a slap on the wrist. He should be prosecuted.
EFF: HP Promises to Restore Printers' Functionality, But Questions Remain.
Private agreements of internet communication companies have the effect of imposing censorship on the millions of people that use those companies.
The EFF is going to court to protect security researcher Matthew Green who could be prosecuted under the DMCA for publishing his next book.
Arkansas thugs arrested two men for making a video of the thugs as they handcuffed a black driver. The thugs dropped charges against one of the men on discovering he was a state legislator, but the other, a civil rights lawyer, faces absurd charges.
Vancouver is trying various measures to limit housing speculation, and one already in effect seems to be doing some good.
I recommend a substantial monthly tax on owning a residential property that is not someone's primary residence.
Ostensibly, the builders of the UK's new nuclear power plant will have to pay to clean it up in 2083.
There are just two things wrong with that claim:
1/5 of fish for sale is fraudulently mislabeled, and this is used to disguise fishing practices that wipe out species.
Sweden is considering offering a tax break for repairing products rather than throwing them away.
I hope they legislate to give people the right to repair and require manufacturers to publish repair manuals.
Former Guantanamo prisoner Lutfi Bin Ali is now semi-imprisoned in a town in Kazakhstan where hardly anyone will or can speak with him.
Philippine president Duterte compared himself to Hitler and said he wanted to kill 3 million drug addicts.
If we can use gene therapy to prevent a genetic birth defect, we are obligated to do so, rather than produce a child with a "natural" handicap.
However, abortion is another way to avoid that unjust outcome.
Some schools in New Jersey have installed
fingerprint
scanners in the cafeteria.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the FBI director to explain why they have not prosecuted the banks and banksters involved in causing the 2008 financial crisis.
US citizens:
call
on Obama not to ban kratom.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
various
ways to take action against banning kratom.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: Call on the UN to kick fossil fuel companies out of climate negotiations.
US citizens: call on Obama to end militarization of US thug departments.
California farmers are competing to pump increasing amounts of water out of diminishing aquifers, as the rainfall remains low.
Global heating is expected to mean even less rainfall. I wonder how long it will take before some of those farms run out of water.
How Charter Schools Bust Unions.
US blacks become discouraged from calling the thugs for help when they see thugs kill blacks rather than help.
US citizens: call on the FCC to ban unlicensed use of stingrays.
This petition says it doesn't work with Javascript disabled, but that seems to be a bug — in fact, it does work.
Paramount and CBS are still planning to crush a Star Trek fan video, despite the efforts of the movie director to prevent this.
If he cares strongly enough, he can make it unbearable for those companies to continue their rampage.
Some women chess masters want to boycott the next world championship because it will be held in Iran. And that's not to mention the danger of being arrested on bogus charges.
FIDE should have known better than to hold an event there.
The Drug Enforcement Agency infiltrates the TSA as well as many companies involved in shipping and transportation, to get information about passengers bypassing the legal requirements for search warrants.
Turkey has just closed 20 more broadcast stations arbitrarily for political reasons.
Las Vegas has thousands of abandoned homes, but instead of making them available to destitute people, it uses harsh new laws to jail the destitute for trying to live in them.
When the homes are truly abandoned, the state should seize them and sell them off. When they are held vacant by some owner, the state should impose a high tax until they have people living in them.
In US prisons, private companies do the cooking and get their profit by skimping on prisoners' meals.
The children in Jordan Downs public housing have high lead levels, probably because the land was contaminated by previous industry.
The Justice Department defends the use of unreliable forensic methods such as hair matching and bite mark matching.
Americans want to get rid of the Hyde amendment that bans Medicare funding for abortions.
To get this through the house, we will need to overcome Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Senator Warren opposes allowing more charter schools.
As far as I can tell, most of them are schemes to divert public funds into wealth for a few.
Singapore Jails Teen Blogger Amos Yee for Anti-Religion Posts.
Can anyone find a transcript of what he said? I'd like to think about whether to say "right on!"
Thugs crushed a peaceful protest against the Dakota Access pipeline by menacing the protesters with shotguns.
Construction unions have great power inside the AFL-CIU and have pressured it to support fossil fuels.
For our survival, we need to disconnect the US labor movement from fossil fuels.
A study of several thug departments found that the consistent and predictable use of body cameras cut complaints about thugs' behavior by a factor of 10.
Both the thugs and the civilians seem to behave better knowing they are being monitored by an impartial witness.
Airlines are making air rage more frequent by reducing the space between seats.
Another reason why you shouldn't let web sites know who you are or what machine you are coming from: web sites are likely to move from targeted advertising to choosing what to show you in order to manipulate you to buy things.
Obama is worried that his successor will escalate world-wide drone warfare.
I agree, but he would have done well to try to limit the president's power to spread war when he had time and a better chance of success.
Canada has taken measures to curb speculation by foreigners in housing in Canada.
Canada's government has proposed a carbon emissions tax.
New York State ordered the Trump Foundation to stop fundraising in that state, as it has ignored laws about registration and auditing of charities.
It is also apparently guilty of diverting funds to Trump's private uses. He could end up in jail for this.
Greek thugs fired tear gas at a protest of a thousand retired people.
Old people are physically weak, but the thugs felt afraid because they have a moral weakness: defending an austerity government.
Black immigrants in the US are more likely to be deported after committing crimes than non-black immigrants, in similar cases.
CIA torture victims, later released, deserve compensation for the crime committed against them.
Tenants in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, fight to stop gentrification.
These struggles are worth trying, but what we really need is a lot more housing construction in our cities. To unlock this, we must eliminate the zoning requirements that limit how much housing can be built.
It is ok if the new housing is only for rich people, as long as there is plenty of it. That will drive down the price of the existing housing.
The tax on plastic bags in stores in the UK has been a great success in reducing litter. 90% of people carry bags with them all the time.
I've done that for several years now.
Colombians voted to reject the peace agreement with the FARC. The cease-fire remains in effect.
On top of rising seas, global heating will bring bigger hurricanes with bigger storm surges. There will be hurricanes in places where they don't happen now.
Apple is using forced labor in China and making people work 60 hours a week. Despite its enormous profits, it won't allow the expense of pushing workers less or attracting workers by choice.
The products being made oppress their users, too.
One reason why some working-class US whites feel Liberals don't understand them and don't care.
When it's a fact that some people feel this way, we can't argue with the facts. But I think they've drawn the wrong conclusion for who is responsible for what has happened to them. I say the ones to blame are the plutocrats that made the "waiting line" stall and move backwards. This is where distraction propaganda enters the issue: it focuses their attention on the blacks who were advanced in the line rather than on the billionaires that screwed workers in general.
Plutocratic politicians cause unemployment through macro-level policies. They promote the inadequate "solution" of job training as a distraction so people won't demand a real solution.
Plutocracy makes people sick: vaccinating chickens for salmonella in the US would prevent around 80,000 infections per year, but chicken farmers vetoed it to avoid the expense.
The system is culpable because it gives business this power, and the farmers are culpable for using this power.
Local journalists in Brazil were arrested for covering the massive eviction of slum residents whose homes had been demolished.
Trump is great at causing jobs to disappear. His casinos were "profitable" only because he used them to borrow money, then used bankruptcy to avoid paying it back.
On National Security, Trump and Clinton Found Plenty To Agree On.
In addition, they both condemn Snowden, which shows they're on the spooks' side, against journalism and democracy.
In many cases, invasive species flourish because some other competing species was wiped out by human action.
The hosting companies that run virtual servers for other companies are getting into the snooping game.
This means yet another reason why web site privacy policies are worthless: they apply only to the companies that publish them, which are the ones that use the virtual servers — not to the hosting companies that run them.
The US does not have a plan in place to meet the inadequate greenhouse gas reduction commitments it has made.
Facebook and Google enjoy so much power that it makes them dangerous.
I personally avoid being directly influenced by them because I almost never access them — but when they have influence over society as a whole, the consequences affect everyone. I can't avoid the effects of that influence, but I can and do avoid being an agent for their influence.
The Thai government stopped Amnesty International representatives from announcing a report on torture by the Thai police, by threatening to arrest them for "having the wrong kind of visa".
Despite the atrocious nature of Russia's attack on east Aleppo, it would be absurd for the US to intervene against it. Kerry wanted to do this, but Obama wisely refused.
Islamists such as formerly-al-Nusra (also formerly al-Qa'ida) are the main force on the other side, and it makes no sense to intervene in their favor.
The only force in Syria that deserves support is that of the Kurds, and it is far away from Aleppo.
The West Has to Look Beyond Aleppo's Agony.
Thugs attacked a protest in Ethiopia with tear gas, causing a stampede that killed 50 people.
They were protesting against the tyrannical nature of the government of Ethiopia.
Climate mayhem endangers puffins.
Perhaps we know why Trump doesn't want to show his tax returns: he claimed a billion-dollar loss in the 90s and may have used this to avoid paying any tax since then.
Wisconsin Republicans are defying court orders to cease voter suppression.
The Center for Political Accountability has pressured many large companies to adopt policies of reporting their political expenditures.
Student Ryan Turk is being prosecuted for "stealing" a milk carton from his school's lunch room. Although he wasn't stealing it, since he was entitled to milk with his lunch. The Authorities are unyielding; apparently they want to put someone in jail no matter how.
Parents, protect your children: insist on NO THUGS in your school!
The US government is investigating Mylan, manufacturer of the EpiPen, for misrepresentation to avoid taxes.
Quantitative easing keeps wages down, hurting workers, and keeps bank interest down, hurting the middle class.
The Justice Department found that Snowden was directly responsible for reducing the frequency of certain kinds of surveillance in the US.
Wells Fargo's pressure to sell its customers more kinds of accounts was established by 2000.
Integrating the US schools gave blacks a better education, and they came out better educated. Now resegregation has cancelled that out.
Mainstream economists keep reaching wrong conclusions based on bad theories, predicting that a plutocratist policy will have good results for people in general. When the opposite happens, they say, "What a surprise! Nobody could have predicted this!" Then the plutocrats forgive them so they can make more such predictions.
Obama (and US newspapers) think it is dangerous to let relatives of drone attack casualties sue the US, but want to allow foreign companies to sue the US.
About Syria's "White Helmet" rescue volunteers.
A deceptive ballot question in Florida surreptitiously aims at abolishing "net metering", which was set up to encourage people to invest in solar panels.
MSF asks Syria to please stop bombing hospitals.
Prison strikes continue in 40 or more US prisons.
"Prisons are the new plantations" — a scheme to convert many US blacks (and quite a few whites) into the equivalent of slave labor.
Trump harasses and intimidates non-Christians at his rallies.
The Trump Foundation operated as slush fund for Trump's personal needs, receiving money from people that had some reason to give it to Trump. But it never obtained state authorization to ask for donations, Trump may have to return all the money.
With US bombers and commandos fighting in Syria, how can they claim it is "not direct military intervention"?
The UN Human Rights Council abandoned the independent investigation of war crimes in Yemen.
Forget Paris, Scientists Say 'Radical Change' Only Way to Stay Below 2 Degrees (of global heating).
Some kinds of honey and oatmeal in the US contain significant levels of glyphosate.
Trump illegally spent money in Cuba looking for business opportunities there.
Certain types of trucks, that limit the driver's vision, are particularly dangerous to cyclists. London plans to ban them for safety.
Obama is trying to put the TTIP "back on track" to run us all over, and is still trying to impose the TPP on us.
The TPP is treacherous plutocratic poison. If they impose it, we will not surrender. We will fight until we eliminate the TPP, and we will end the political careers of the traitors that voted for it.
Canada has approved a new pipeline for natural gas export that would bust its greenhouse gas targets.
The world cannot afford to keep operating the existing fossil fuel mines and wells. Creating new ones is suicidal.
UK Government Works "Hand in Glove" with Arms Firms, Say Campaigners.
How to confront antisemitism in the UK Labour Party without defending Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Desalination of water from the Persian Gulf is making the water there saltier, so desalination gets more expensive.
The New York City thug department infiltrated a Black Lives Matter protest.
Sudan is using chemical weapons against people in Darfur.
Perhaps HP said it will retract its new printer cartridge DRM.
I can't tell for certain whether that is what HP has pledged to do. Does anyone know?
Why I do not support Gary Johnson for president.
A federal court ordered the Federal Election Commission to take action against blatant illegality.
The FEC is totally paralyzed, neutralized by Republicans that want no obstacles to their use of billionaires' money.
A civil rights museum refused Trump's requests for special treatment if he visited there.
Anyone that publicly accepts a meeting with Trump, and any institution that welcomes him, is being used by him.
An Israeli right-wing party leader suggested using the US election as an opportunity to annex Palestinian territory.
His idea is to make a monkey out of the US while candidates are falling on their faces pledging slavish loyalty to Israel.
Israel has already claimed to annex land around Jerusalem, and this claim shouldn't be respected either.
US citizens: support Obama's new rule that states can't arbitrarily block federal birth control funds.
Thugs in Maryland pulled a teenager off her bike, then pepper-sprayed her while she was handcuffed. Her "crime" was saying she didn't want help from the thugs, after her bike collided with a car.
Censorship spreads: part of Australia has made singing an "obscene" song a crime.
Alfred Olango in El Cajon was killed by thugs who didn't take the time to see that he was holding an e-cigarette rather than a gun.
The thugs said he was holding it "in firing position", but that is not the way people hold e-cigarettes, so I think they made it up.
A powerful storm knocked down part of the power grid in South Australia, and planet roasters are falsely claiming the cause of the blackout was too much use of wind power.
But even if their claim were true, their argument would be absurd. If we could save the world from global disaster at the price of an occasional blackout, what a relief that would be.
Australia proposes to make it a crime to re-identify anonymized data, but only data published by the state.
It is an interesting idea for protecting privacy. Of course, it should have limited exceptions for security testing and research in certain cases. But as long as it only applies to data that came from the state, it can't address much of the problem.
The European Parliament has approved arbitrary internet censorship, without even a trial, as an "anti-terrorist" measure.
FBI agent Parkinson reported other employees for breaking rules, and was fired. The Department of Justice is going to great lengths to screw him.
Using the FBI's plane for personal travel is defrauding the US treasury. It is valid to report that. However, when this person complains that someone uses the services of a prostitute, or watches porn, he is being a jerk. He should stop harassing other staff about their personal lives.
However, he shouldn't have been fired for that, or falsely accused.
The former intelligence head of Peru has been convicted of murdering three people in his headquarters. 15,000 others were disappeared in that period.
Congress overrode Obama's veto and passed the bill to end Salafi Arabia's immunity from lawsuits about supporting terrorist attacks in the US.
I don't know whether the Salafi state directly supported any such attacks. However, the Salafi sect, which it has spread around the Muslim world, is the basis for a lot of cruelty, and perhaps indirectly for terrorism.
Nearly all the asylum seekers that Australia dumped on Manus island are valid refugees in real danger of persecution if they return home. Australia cannot forcibly send them back.
So it is trying to coerce and bribe them into "voluntarily" going back into danger of torture or imprisonment.
Physicians for Human Rights says medical facilities in Syria have been attacked 400 times, nearly always by Assad's side.
Assad's men just bombed Eastern Aleppo's two largest hospitals — twice in one day.
Meanwhile, in Yemen it is Salafi Arabia (backed by the US) that attacks hospitals.
Russian journalist Denis Korotkov obtained from poll workers a sticker to let him vote many times. He used it, and reported on doing so. Now he is being prosecuted, but not the corrupt poll workers that gave out these stickers.
The UK's referendum about leaving the EU was preceded by an increase in attacks against Eastern European expats, and there were even more attacks after the vote.
US trade sanctions on Syria impede humanitarian aid, including medical supplies. The limits on funds transfers have encouraged an underground banking system, which PISSI finds useful.
Ukraine is considering a law to censor Russian books that criticize Ukraine.
What a horrible idea.
Wells Fargo executives will forfeit millions in pay, but they ought to be prosecuted for engineering massive fraud.
Governor Christie laughed when an official told him about the traffic jams caused by the bridge lane closures, as they were happening.
According to the World Health Organization, 90% of the world's population lives in zones with air pollution above safe levels.
The article says "92%", but I expect that is excessive precision.
Israel blocked Nadia Abu Nahla from travelling out of Gaza for a medical exam.
She needs the exam to see if her breast cancer is coming back.
Gush Shalom calls on Israel to allow the current Gaza aid boats to land.
Orly Noy explains why she, as a citizen of Israel, feels a responsibility to participate.
To save the Great Barrier Reef from short term threat requires protecting the forests of Northeast Australia.
The International Criminal Court has recognized destruction of cultural heritage as a kind of war crime.
Destruction of cultural heritage happens in many other situations, too. Salafi Arabia has destroyed much of Islam's oldest cultural heritage. The Dakota Access pipeline threatens to destroy cultural heritage, too.
What should we say about the Bush forces' carelessness which allowed the relics of the beginning of human civilization to be looted and their archaeological information scrambled?
Australia is forcing refugees it sent to Manus island to leave the former prison.
However, those who have tried to live anywhere else found themselves under attack from the local population.
A study suggests Earth could hit 9C of global heating (compared with 1900) within the next few thousand years.
If technological civilization survives, we will be able to remove the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Perhaps with tailored bacteria. But if global heating's consequences put an end to high-tech manufacturing and science, everything we are letting loose will develop on its own.
US citizens: call for the US to block the Monsanto-Bayer merger.
The US teen pregnancy rate is falling, as more teenagers use contraception.
But the US still has a higher teen pregnancy rate than other developed countries.
The Dutch investigation concludes that flight MH-17 was shot down by a Russian Buk missile.
The launcher was spotted various times on its route to the territory of the Ukrainian rebels.
Of course it was a mistake. No one involved in that war would have fired intentionally at an airliner.
It would be wrong to prosecute the soldiers that fired the missile for this mistake. Errors are frequent in the fog of war, and they should not be criminalized.
The UK government got court approval to impose a harmful contract on most of the doctors in the National Health Service.
They planned a week-long strike, met criticism because that could have harmed patients, and their strength was defeated by this. The end result is a victory for the plutocrats.
Fussing about the fraction of high executives that are women is not just irrelevant for most women; it is a systematic distraction from the systematic factors that keep most women poor.
Now that we have found several bodies in the solar system that have liquid water, we should look for life in them.
The US drives destruction of the Amazon rain forest by importing oil extracted there.
The UK must put empty buildings to use as residences.
Residential property that has no primary residents, or too few, should be taxed very heavily. A few millionaires may still keep them, while supporting the treasury usefully. The rest will sell off their investment properties, and people will be able to live in them again.
Our atmosphere has permanently exceeded 400 parts per million of CO2, on the road to climate disaster.
Even if human industry stops, it would take millennia for the CO2 level to come back down to the safe level of 350 ppm.
The UN may call for negotiations on a new nuclear disarmament treaty.
This would be a good idea. Mutually Assured Destruction could work between the US and the Soviet Union, but it doesn't work at all against underground groups.
Thugs in El Cajon, California, say they shot and killed a black man because he pointed something at them in a "shooting stance".
He did not have a weapon, and there is no information on what it was the victim was pointing. But a witness said his hands were up when he was shot. Sounds like thugs fibbing again.
Helmeted hornbills are being wiped out by poaching and palm oil.
The bill appears to be valuable only because it is rare. In other words, a stream of fools draws other fools to follow them.
New York City, staring inundation in the face, will increase its push for renewable energy.
What it really needs to do is to force the big banks to stop financing fossil fuel projects.
As oil was extracted from the indigenous Loreto region of Peru, the money was extracted too, but the pollution and spills remain.
No Fracking, Drilling or Digging: It's the Only Way to Save Life on Earth.
In theory there is another way, but it is hardly feasible.
Neural networks have been trained to recognize blurred and pixillated faces.
This means current blurring and pixillation are no longer adequate for making a face unrecognizable.
In Syracuse [jail], A [teenager] Can Be Thrown in Solitary for Singing Whitney Houston.
The people in jail are minors but they are not children. It is important to avoid infantilizing teenagers. However, the point of the article remains valid.
Testimony suggests that Governor Christie knew about the plan to harass Fort Lee and its mayor by causing a traffic jam.
Requiring children to be driven everywhere, rather than walk, is dangerous to them and harmful to society.
Republican state attorneys general met secretly with Exxon to plan how to protect it from prosecution for its fraudulent global heating denial.
A religious nut in the UK has been convicted of the crime of telling a woman she would "burn in hell" for wearing tight pants.
While that religious doctrine is cruel, people should not be punished for stating it.
Obama has effectively blocked citizens from petitioning for endangered species protection.
The new rules are so hard that they make it effectively impossible.
Protesters keep blocking the parts of the Dakota Access pipeline construction that the government has not stopped.
Trying to have a democracy where corporations can act in politics is like driving on a highway with long heavy trucks that think they own the road.
The beginning of what we need is to amend the US Constitution to say that human rights are for real persons, not for corporations.
Don't give your (real) birthdate to an online service!
Actually, if the service wants to know who you are, you are well advised not to use it at all.
Despite a lot of opposition to CETA, it is not dead yet.
China is under pressure to stop breeding tigers for selling the parts.
I wonder why poaching continues with so much tiger farming. Surely farmed tigers are cheaper than wild tigers, so why does anyone take the risk of hunting them and smuggling them?
Airlines want to use carbon "offsets" as an excuse to continue increasing their greenhouse gas emissions, or else biofuels to reduce them. But neither method is reliable.
Growing plants specifically to make biofuel is sustainable only if they don't need fertilizer, pesticide, or much cultivation. And the "offsets" are often fictitious, such as planting trees and hoping that they grow.
A distraction campaign for fossil fools: banning fracking would cause "decline of manufacturing" in the UK.
This "decline" is by comparison with an imaginary world, in which global heating was not happening, and offshoring and automation of manufacturing had not happened.
The latest US terrorist attack was carried out by a right-wing extremist.
Overall, right-wing extremists commit a large fraction of US terrorist violence. Don't assume that Islamists are more dangerous than Christianists.
However, terrorism from all sources is a small danger in the US. Don't worry about it too much.
Washing synthetic fabrics releases lots of plastic microfibers that harm marine life.
Australia and East Timor are disputing which one will have the right to extract undersea fossil fuels and help destroy civilization.
The only safe answer to a dispute about who can exploit new fossil fuel deposits is, "Neither of you! Nobody!"
Thugs in Pakistan intentionally kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of people every year, then claim they were "resisting arrest".
They also use torture to extract confessions. These confessions may easily be false.
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund defends US artists from censorship.
I endorse its firm stand on freedom of expression: there must be no legal limits of "obscenity" or "blasphemy" on what people can draw, write or say.
Wells Fargo workers who were fired or punished for resisting pressure to commit fraud are now suing the bank.
Wells Fargo has been using quotas to pressure staff into fraud for years, in various different areas.
Tony B'liar thinks it is a terrible shame that British soldiers face investigation and possible prosecution for possible war crimes.
What's worse, current ministers think the same.
However, one minister wants Russian officials investigated for war crimes.
I think both sides should be investigated.
The UK confiscated a Syrian journalist's passport because Assad's men said it was "stolen".
Section 702 of FISA supposedly authorizes massive surveillance of non-Americans' communications, but in fact it collects lots of Americans' communications too.
Unprecedented and Unlawful: The NSA's "Upstream" Surveillance.
While we talk about unjust massive surveillance of the internet, keep in mind that unjust massive surveillance is not limited to internet use.
A small but dangerous loophole in the Consumer Review Freedom Act needs to be fixed before it is adopted.
Switzerland's people voted to permit massive government surveillance.
That article doesn't state how the law allows too much surveillance.
John Kiriakou calls for Americans to push for peace, and reminds us that CIA torture was directly approved by Dubya.
A former UK soldier says that he planted listening devices in the homes of suspected IRA terrorists, and those devices are probably still operating.
And he says he was sent on a mission to shoot two of them dead, because they were believed to be about to go shoot soldiers.
It is legitimate for a court to order surveillance of specific criminal suspects, but I don't think the army bothered to make it legitimate in that way.
It is legitimate to take action to stop a killing, but outside of war, "kill them first" is the wrong action to take.
US citizens: call for the US government to pressure North Carolina to repeal its law restricting release of videos made by thugs.
The new law prohibits release of thug videos without a court order.
The ACLU explains why the thug videos showing the killing of Keith Scott ought to be published.
Trump promised fossil fuel executives he would give them everything they want. Even more than Clinton would give them.
Since Trump makes a habit of lying, he might have lied to them. But we cannot take that for granted.
Did Trump lie in a debate with Jeb Bush, or did he lie in court?
There is one other possibility: he could have lied both times.
Donald Trump's Police State … he wants to abolish the constitutional rights of blacks and Hispanics.
Bad laws lure US money into finance instead of useful industry, and the result is a large reduction of investment in real activity.
DuPont and Monsanto regularly violate health standards in their treatment of migrant workers.
The UK regularly deports people before they can appeal, and has made out-of-country appeal so expensive and difficult that hardly any of them can try it.
Some have been deported back to persecution.
The UK is starting to collect nationality data about children in school, which seems to be designed to catch children in school to deport them.
A little bit of progressive policy has boosted US wages for a significant fraction of workers.
Germany has ordered Facebook to delete the data that came from WhatsApp.
ICC Sentences Islamic Militant to Nine Years over Timbuktu Destruction.
A study estimates that China's air pollution kills a million people per year.
That would be 5% to 10% of all deaths in China
For those that want to boycott Nestle because of its water grabs, here is a list of brands that Nestle owns.
The Russian "bunker-buster" bombs used on Aleppo are so powerful that buildings collapse just from the shock waves of the explosions. Their inhabitants die.
The EFF takes a strong stance against HP's printer DRM.
The one thing I would add is, "We must change the law to make DRM a felony."
Thousands of Saudis Sign Petition to End Male Guardianship of Women.
Facebook closed the accounts of some Palestinian journalists, but reenabled them after public criticism.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 202-224-3121 in support of the bill to allow Americans to sue Saudi Arabia for terrorist acts, just as they can sue some other countries.
US citizens: call for closing the carried interest tax loophole.
US citizens: call on the Senate to vote on the Presidential Tax Transparency Act.
Everyone: call on Obama to pardon Snowden now.
Lenovo gratuitously made some new laptops incompatible with Linux, so the GNU/Linux system cannot run.
The Netherlands will end use of coal by 2030.
I fear this is still not fast enough.
Governments timidly approach the idea of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes:
"Please, sirs, could we have some less?"
The murder of editor Lasantha Wickrematunge is being investigated; an official is suspected of carrying it out.
65 Spanish banksters are on trial, accused of stealing from their banks. One of them was also a minister for the right-wing party that used to form the government.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate the
thugs that have harassed and framed people for recording the thugs'
wrongdoing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Immigrants Don't Steal Jobs or Wages. Billionaires Do.
One way all of us can can fight to curb fossil fuel investments such as the Dakota Access pipeline is to protest the banks that finance them.
The big banks hurt society in many ways, so let's take our money out!
The Clean Energy Future plan shows how the US can reduce greenhouse gases greatly while creating lots of jobs.
Alas, poor bankers, it won't give them the fossil fuel subsidies that they are getting now from enormous investments such as pipelines.
China has intimidated cinemas in Hong Kong so that they refuse to show a documentary about the protests there two years ago.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to fully stop the Dakota Access pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
for stronger regulations on on mountaintop removal mining and
requirements for local cleanup.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
What we really need is to ban it entirely, because continuing to burn coal means global disaster.
A Christian in Jordan was on trial for "insulting Islam". Even worse, he was assassinated before the end of the trial.
The Jordanian government, by prosecuting people like him, encourages violence.
Almost everyone in Nazi Germany took drugs, including the leaders, the soldiers, the workers, and the housewives. It was state policy.
Meth made blitzkrieg possible, but the long-term drug use surely ground everyone down. Defeat was almost inevitable, given enemies that didn't use amphetamines.
The latest effort to impose the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison is to present it as a form of global rivalry between the US and China.
To make us panic, they trace a chain of what-ifs leading to a possible conquest of Taiwan by China.
So, plutocrats — if there is something about the TPP that is so important, why don't you remove the unjust parts? Then no one would fight against it.
A new German law will crimp the sale of looted artifacts.
A hotel where Trump was going to hold an event arrested a journalist who was asking whether he would be allowed into the event.
The right-wing bigotry party in France is excluding some journalists from its rallies, too.
The Charlotte thug department released some videos of the killing of Keith Scott, which show he was not threatening anyone.
Most of the UK's brothels are connected to criminal gangs that are involved in other illegal activities.
This is the natural result of prohibiting brothels. When selling alcohol was a crime in the US, the underground alcohol trade was mostly controlled by mafiosi. Now it is mostly controlled by a few large companies, but they are not quite as bad as the mafia. (And our governments could and should have stopped the companies from merging.)
We should legalize them, and regulate them to protect their workers.
Senator McConnell and others are risking shutting down the US government merely to protect publicly traded corporations from being required to disclose their political spending. So not to this.
The UK is blocking a UN investigation of war crimes committed by Salafi Arabia in bombarding Yemen.
African gray parrots are endangered in the wild because of capturing them for use as pets.
The experience of being captured and caged is terribly traumatic for a wild parrot. Never buy a pet parrot without verifying it was raised by human breeders.
Assad's forces and Russia have reimposed the siege of Aleppo, and are bombarding civilians and rescue workers. They bombed the water supply station for the besieged half of the city.
Modern politically oriented crackers try to crack everyone's email in the hope of finding some dirt on some target.
The ideology of neoliberal globalization is losing out in politics to something even worse, exemplified by Putin, Trump, Erdogan and other authoritarians.
Watch out for a pitfall. The neoliberal elite (not to be confused with US Liberals, of whom I am an example) may be weakening politically, but the plutocrats who set it up and profited from it keep getting more and more power along with a bigger share of the world's wealth.
Clinton says she can destroy PISSI by killing its leader. That will be about as effective as killing bin Laden was for destroying al Qa'ida — not very.
Meanwhile, she proposes to "balance" privacy with surveillance, but I think the respect for privacy will be effectively only for show. The only real way to respect people's privacy is to redesign systems not to collect data about people.
Anthony Novak posted a parody of the local thug department's Facebook page. They charged him with a felony for this, and actually took it to trial. Now he is suing them.
Some US cities are taking action to limit how their thug departments use surveillance.
Ultimately the US sentenced Chelsea Manning to 7 days of solitary. That's not a lot, compared with what she endured in the past.
Solitary confinement as a punishment for a suicide attempt is an absurd idea, since solitary confinement tends to encourage suicide.
Perhaps the army wanted to drive Chelsea Manning to suicide, and then mostly backed down due to public criticism, but kept a token 7 days to save face.
Tawon Boyd called 911, and when the thugs came, one choked him to death.
Lobsters may be eradicated from US waters by global heating. Perhaps they will survive in the Arctic.
Corbyn won the Labour leadership campaign — with a higher percentage than last year. Labour's large right-wing fringe in Parliament must start acting constructively.
Egyptian thugs killed five people and accused them of killing Giulio Regeni, but now admit that they didn't do it and probably had nothing to do with it.
Britain is a tax haven and its foreign dependencies are even worse. Some Tory politicians already use them to dodge taxes.
Criticizing the idea of "parenting".
The UK government defines "non-violent extremism" as a threat, essentially a policy of punishing dissidents for being dissidents, and its example gives other countries an excuse to punish other kinds of dissidents.
A video shows Charlotte thugs were lying when they said that a gun fell at Keith Scott's feet when he was shot.
Apparently the thugs planted the gun there.
Protesters marched through the town demanding that the thugs release their videos.
SCROTUS rejected trying to limit campaign donations from foreign-owned companies.
Tar sands mining causes intense toxic local air pollution, as well as disastrous global CO2 pollution.
A Wells Fargo employee tried to report the widespread fraud, and was fired on a pretext.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Preventing Tragedies Between Police and Communities Act, to train thugs in de-escalation methods.
The Department of Justice says it will ignore the conclusion that some forensic methods, used in trials to convict people, are bogus.
The ACLU protects students when schools try to punish them for not giving positive endorsement to the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance.
Continuing to operate the existing fossil fuel mines and wells until they are exhausted would be enough to exceed 2C of global heating. To avoid disaster, we have to shut them down "prematurely".
Since exceeding 2C of heating would kill millions of people, I think that someone who destroys fossil fuel infrastructure should be able to claim the necessity defense (preventing a much, much bigger crime).
With each apparent act of terrorism, it takes less and less to excuse another attack on Americans' freedom.
Trump is the attacker now, but Clinton is not much of a defender of our liberty.
Under 8 years of Obama, the American people have forgotten the anti-war movement.
Brazil's acting president Temer admitted that the motive for President Rousseff's impeachment was her economic policies, not any wrongdoing on her part.
To end an injustice, you must campaign clearly against it. Resist the temptation to try to market yourself to the people who don't support the goal.
"Imagine if … Rosa Parks had said that … 'we understand the public's legitimate concerns' on desegregation."
Arguing that the only way to end poaching of elephants is to legalize raising elephants for their ivory.
I am not sure what will work.
Prisoners tortured by the CIA under the Bush regime describe the torture.
Germany's surveillance agency did massive illegal data collection and shared the results with the NSA.
"Free trade" cuts poor people's wages but not their cost of living. It tends to reduce the price of manufactured goods, but it doesn't reduce the price of food, and it can make housing more expensive. Poor people spend most of their money on food and housing.
The billionaire founder of Oculus is funding a project to spread irrational insults about Clinton, to support Trump.
I disapprove of Clinton's right-wing views, so I won't vote for her. But this tactic discredits those who do it, demonstrating that Trump is the candidate of the rich bastards without scruples.
Some US schools are firing teachers to pay for expensive high-tech "security" devices to "protect" against dangers so rare it is better to ignore them.
Belgium proposes to legalize massive surveillance with few restraints.
This is more dangerous to a free society than a few underground terrorists. By the way, now that Belgium is making a real effort to find terrorists, I think there will be few further attacks. The existing police powers are sufficient.
Trump defends the thugs that kill blacks.
He appeals to, and endorses (deniably, of course), every kind of bigotry or cruelty in the US that is widespread enough to get him substantial support. He should run on the Hate Party ticket.
Clinton, by contrast, is a more conventional Republican.
How global heating denialists can believe many contradictory "arguments" at once.
It is now clear that bicycle helmets cut the danger of a head injury in half, and the reduces the danger of a serious or fatal head injury even more.
Molly Crabapple comments about Trump, the sex fetish of the angry ignorant.
Professors and students in Ghana University want the statue of Gandhi removed, saying he was bigoted against Africans and endorsed the caste system (which he did).
I suggest they replace it with a statue of Dr Ambedkar.
Hydrofluorocarbons, used in refrigerators, are an important greenhouse gas.
"Paris climate goal will be 'difficult if not impossible to hit'." Especially since few if any countries are really even trying.
Thugs in Connecticut were recorded discussing what false charges to make against an inconvenient protester, after they illegally took away his recording device.
Poor countries borrowed lots of money, under the influence I suppose of banksters from rich countries that worked with corrupt governments or dictators. Now they won't be able to pay it back, and a financial crisis is feared.
This looks like an instance of what Naomi Klein calls the Shock Doctrine.
Now that the cease-fire is completely out of the way, Assad is attacking Aleppo.
Renters Unite to Demand Affordable Housing.
Trump's Ohio campaign manager claimed there was "no racism" before Obama was elected president. What, I wonder, was the NAACP fighting about 60 years ago?
US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to stop selling leases to extract oil and natural gas.
Soil cannot absorb as much carbon as scientists had thought. That means the situation is worse than we thought.
EFF: A Digital Rumor (such as an IP address) Should Never Lead to a Police Raid.
The killer of Terence Crutcher has been charged.
The "gig economy" means goodbye to the 8-hour work day, pensions, medical benefits, unemployment insurance, and coverage for accidents at work. And goodbye even to the minimum wage.
We can call it the universal sweatshop, with a large fraction of the income going to the parasites that own the platforms.
Some of the systems that helped full-time workers need to be redesigned to fit independent workers. However, beside that, we should use our democracy to make all the platforms treat workers decently.
Brazil's corrupt Congress tried to sneakily pass a bill to give the members of congress amnesty for the corruption charges against them.
Crackers broke the security in a Tesla car and took remote control of its brakes.
This is possible because the design of the car's systems does not make security a priority. If the car's computers were properly compartmentalized, the car's web browser would not be able to do anything to the brakes.
The US economy has not yet recovered from the recession of 2008. The real unemployment rate is a lot more than the official 5 percent.
The UK is almost finished adopting Theresa May's snooper's charter, which is vague in calculated ways. There is no way to tell whether the surveillance will be total or merely orwellian.
It won't prevent the occasional terrorist attack, or course, but it will be devastating to democracy and freedom in the UK.
Recognizing a Palestinian state in the whole of the West Bank doesn't require expelling the Israeli colonists or compensating them. Just invite them to stay — as expats.
Malik al-Qadi, imprisoned without charges or trial in Israel, has been on hunger strike for 100 days. He has decided to choose death rather that accept arbitrary imprisonment.
Israel has just put 36 more Palestinians in prison without trial.
The word "detained" refers to what happens to me frequently when someone in the street recognizes me and wants to talk. To use such a word to describe putting someone in prison is a ridiculous understatement, so I never use the word for that.
Facebook has censored a number of French anti-racist campaigners.
False-balance journalism has convinced half of all Americans that individual voter fraud is a significant problem.
Actually, the only voter fraud that is a significant problem is fraudulently stopping blacks and hispanics from voting.
The proper response to "But you need a government ID to buy medicine" is, "That's an injustice, too." The abuse of opioids does harm, but we can reduce that harm by legalizing marijuana and by eliminating the very high doses that are supposed to last a whole day.
US citizens: call for an investigation of the pharma company Gilead for tax dodging.
US citizens:
Oppose voter
suppression measures.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for adding a public insurance plan option to Obama's medical care system.
When parents are grief-stricken because their child died in a freak accident, they are likely to advocate very bad "safety measures". Let's not get our safety advice from people in that state.
Many thugs regard any large black man as threatening. Therefore they would shoot him dead given half an excuse.
Syrian aid workers say that the air attack on their aid convoy lasted a whole hour.
Russia is the chief suspect for the attack because it was done accurately at night — something Assad's air force generally cannot do.
Fitbit is not very good for helping people lose weight.
Meanwhile, it gives the manufacturer personal information (which it then offers to sell back to the user).
Thugs shot and killed Keith Scott, apparently because he tried to pull a book on them (though they claimed it was a gun).
I hope someone throws the book at them now.
The FBI inserted malware into thousands of computers based on an invalid, inadequate court order. The Supreme Court has already declared such orders valid for the future, which is dangerous to everyone.
8 suggestions for the next president to avoid climate mayhem.
Wells Fargo bank is set up to systematically encourage cheating customers, and this has resulted it cheating for years.
In Finland, children don't start school classes until age 7. Before that, they play — sometimes freely, sometimes led by a teacher.
After that, there is no need to struggle to get your children into a good school, because all the schools are good.
Another key to Finland's great educational system is a very good welfare system that ensures that hardly any children live in poverty. That saves them from stress that could contort their minds later in life.
To a large extent, the cause of bad educational outcomes is (1) insufficient funds for the school and (2) poverty in children's lives. Thus, when the US and the UK construct excuses to put the blame on the teachers, the teachers are being used as scapegoats.
Frackers dump toxic waste straight into the Gulf of Mexico.
In Arizona, bathing a baby or changing a diaper is now sexual assault. This is the natural development of the general US paranoia about anything that involves an adult and a child.
Officials surely won't prosecute every adult that touches a baby's behind — only those that officials dislike for some reason.
Curiously, I read that in the past it was common for Hopi mothers to rub male babies' penises to calm them down.
Some big US banks sponsored "climate week" to publicly endorse curbing global heating, but privately they still fund fossil fuels.
The banks are Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and BNP Paribas. Bank of America is funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Whenever a large company that is heavily involved with fossil fuels talks about reducing emissions from its own operations, it always strikes me as a distraction campaign.
Romanian gymnasts were brutally beaten by their trainers when they did not perform well.
The public option is not the same as a single payer system, and would not bring us the same advantages.
Thugs shot Terence Crutcher dead while he had his hands in the air. Various thugs have told lies to try to make the killing appear justified.
That's thugs for you.
Once Sanders conceded the Democratic nomination to Clinton, she cut down her mention of global heating by 50%.
Aside from a few schools which are especially violent, students are safer if there is not a thug in the school.
The Clinton Foundation is a real charity with some associated abuses. By contrast, the Trump Foundation is a pile of abuse with some occasional associated charity.
Trump used money from his "charity" to pay legal judgments against him.
Trump avoids losing support when these wrongs (perhaps crimes) are exposed by refusing to recognize that they are shameful.
Turkey plans to conquer a certain area of northern Syria, currently divided among rebels, PISSI and the Kurds, and settle Syrian refugees there.
The Israeli military does a lousy job of investigating itself for possible war crimes.
375 members of the National Academy of Sciences warn Trump that nature would punish his planet-roasting plans grievously.
The past year's global coral bleaching event might be an annual event 10 years from now, as the heating accelerates.
Bayer and Syngenta did research which determined that their neonicotinoid pesticides harm honeybee colonies, then covered it up.
Campaigning to encourage vasectomy world-wide can reduce population growth.
The US Senate failed to block the arms sale to Salafi Arabia.
China has imprisoned Ai Weiwei's lawyer
This is part of a general campaign to make it easy to ignore laws when persecuting dissidents.
Archaeologists and historians condemn the Dakota Access pipeline for destroying historical artifacts.
The SEC is investigating Exxon's climate deception as possible fraud against stockholders.
Kyler Davies, on the first day of school, found a knife in his backpack which had been purchased used. He turned it in, and was suspended from school.
Kyler and his classmates got a valid lesson about the injustice of applying "zero tolerance" in a school. But we do wrong to make students learn such things the hard way.
A coral reef used for lots of movies has 30% of the coral dead and more dying.
It is part of the Great Barrier Reef.
The countries in the UN have agreed to prioritize preventing antibiotic resistance.
To carry out this pledge requires changing laws.
Samsung, LG and Vizio TV sets are designed to be energy-efficient in government tests, but not in real use.
A radio device can detect people's heartbeat and determine their emotions from that.
It should be illegal to operate such a device in such a way that it could detect people outside your own residence without a court order limited to a specific place and time period.
Low-level programmers in San Francisco work 15-hour days and can rent a closet for $1500 a month.
Give it up and become an activist for Sanders — you have a better chance of a decent life that way.
Wage Gap Between White And Black Americans Is Worse Today Than in 1979.
The US still plans to punish Chelsea Manning with solitary confinement for her suicide attempt.
You have to be vicious to punish a person for despairing of life.
The US and China have released lists of their subsidies for fossil fuels.
I wonder when the planet roasters will propose a special subsidy for amphibious cars as the way to cope with the increasing floods caused by global heating.
Activist Andy Hall was convicted by the Thai military regime for investigating and reporting on enslavement of workers in Thailand.
We should suspect every company in Thailand of using enslaved workers, since the state will not allow people to distinguish which of them do and which of them don't.
Today's society is so isolating that people are starting to pay for dining companions and walks.
I don't see anything wrong with offering these services, or using them, but the need for them is a symptom of a deep problem which is very important.
I suspect the cause is so much use of digital communications.
The leaked text of the Trade In Services Agreement shows that negotiators are planning to directly oppose efforts to save Earth from global heating disaster.
The draft text calls for "energy neutrality" between renewable and fossil fuels, and a ban on subsidies for renewable energy.
Would it require an end to fossil fuel subsidies? I doubt it. The planet roasters will have set up some sort of loophole for themselves.
Italy's Supreme Court ruled that newspapers must delete articles after two years, if someone objects to them.
Haiti has cut down its forests; the Dominican Republic has preserved them. This makes a big difference.
However, don't think that Haitians chose the wrong path because of some absurd fault of theirs. The heavy burden of reparations, imposed by France in exchange for recognizing Haiti's independence, probably helped direct Haiti into a trajectory of permanent poverty, which the US has helped perpetuate ever since.
Facebook threatens to subsume newspapers and magazines, gaining unprecedented power.
When a company has dangerous power, it is irrelevant whether it got that "fairly" in a "in a competitive open market". We should not let that irrelevance distract us from what matters: protecting ourselves from their power.
Either Russia or Syria bombed UN food aid trucks, in a gross war crime.
Putin will surely try to equate this to the accidental US bombing of Syrian soldiers in a town besieged by PISSI. That's a typical Putinesque background lie.
A mother explains why she has stopped buying toys for her children, since they cause several kinds of harm.
Too bad the author doesn't apply the same ability to analyze and judge to the question of how she plays music. She would see that the modern "replacements" for CDs have problems comparable to those of Toys R Us.
UC Berkeley has reinstated the class on the occupation of Palestine after determining that it did not impose a specific point of view.
Matt Taibbi: Today's false-balance news stories exist because the public has encouraged that approach to journalism, and other bad approaches.
When people do things that cause harm, the first obvious idea is to call it "human error". They are clearly making bad choices. But we can look more deeply and ask, did the system encourage these errors?
When lots of people make a foolish choice, there is generally a systemic explanation. People don't choose clickbait because they like to be disappointed by the story they finally see. Rather the functioning of journalism is a system, and the system has a flaw that leads to results we find flawed.
People don't prefer clickbait because they like to be disappointed by the story they finally see. And news sites don't deliver clickbait, or horse-race journalism, because that's what readers people sincerely and deeply want. Rather, they are operating in a system which leads publishers and readers to go down that path.
Can we find a way to change the system of publication so that it gives different results?
Perhaps surveillance-based advertising is part of why the system works this way. We need to get rid of that anyway, for privacy's sake. Would that have the byproduct of encouraging better journalism?
Italy is considering a law that would fine web site operators for publishing anything that someone takes offense at.
The UK plans competition among water companies.
I hope it produces better results than competition among train lines.
The AFL-CIO takes a narrow view of oil extraction and pipelines: anything that makes jobs today is good.
The thugs that killed 13-year-old Tyre King probably lied when they claimed he pulled his BB-gun on them, because "more likely than not" he was running away when they killed him.
The [UK] Austerity Agenda Isn't Over. More People Will Sink Further Into Poverty.
Reich: Every Aspect of Trump's Trickle-Down Economic Plan Benefits Him.
Experiments on animals are essential, in some cases, for progress in medicine.
I am in favor of these experiments.
A soak-the-poor law in Chickasaw, Alabama, that made it a crime not to pay a water bill, has been repealed.
A soak-the-poor legal system in Ferguson led to systematic repression of the black inhabitants there.
The Syrian cease-fire has problems, but the US and Russia have not given up hope.
The other problem is that the US and allies bombed Syrian troops on one occasion, in a town besieged by PISSI. The US says that this was a mistake and that PISSI was the intended target.
Many car companies sell diesel cars that grossly violate NO2 emissions standards.
It's not just Volkswagen.
This pollution causes lots of deaths, but the EU does not seem to be taking the issue very seriously.
Peter Van Buren apologizes to his daughter for an America contorted and sickened by irrational fear of terrorism.
A statistical model suggests that air pollution from the forest fires in Indonesia last year killed around 100,000 people.
Those fires were set in order to destroy rainforest and create plantations.
Turkey is blocking Syrian refugees from accepting resettlement offers from the US simply because they have university degrees.
The motive may be a valid one.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to hold Wells Fargo executives accountable for the recently admitted massive fraud against large numbers of customers.
Experiments show that more CO2 than now won't help plants, but future higher temperatures will hurt plants.
Don't Just Pardon Edward Snowden; Give the Man a Medal.
Global heating is spreading plant plagues that are wiping out many species of trees and other plants in forests around the world.
"When Alexa is listening, what do you tell houseguests?"
I think you should unplug the device for the sake of your guests' privacy. You'd be a fool to believe it listens only at the times they claim it does.
When I stayed in a home with an Alexa device in the room where I often worked, I unplugged it.
Airport-style security theater has been applied to the Smithsonian museums and even Arlington National Cemetary. It does no good and lots of harm.
I might have wanted to visit some Smithsonian museums if I were ever in DC again, but not if there's a 30-minute wait to get in.
The author's conclusion is not strong enough: we are already far beyond the point where security measures compromises our principles. These searches are just a big annoyance, but it is no disaster to stay away from those places. Other "security" measures, such as massive surveillance, put democracy in danger.
I hope someone starts a campaign to withdraw these security measures.
U.S. Taxpayers Have Been Forced to Pay Over $3.2 Billion on Sports Stadiums.
Dams in tropical areas cause mega methane emissions.
David Smith was unable to get a job because a data base recorded a criminal named David Smith.
I agree that these data base checks should be more careful, but in addition, if we don't want to force all real ex-cons to pursue a life of crime, we need to make sure that lawful jobs are available to them.
A school thug handcuffed a 10-year-old kid for crying. Literally.
The Washington Post calls for prosecution of its own news source (Snowden, that is).
An Indian army base in Kashmir was attacked by suicide bombers apparently based in Pakistan.
Pakistan has a long history of supporting terrorism/guerrilla in Kashmir. However, not everyone in Kashmir that criticizes Indian rule is a supporter of terrorism. India's repressive laws in Kashmir are not that different from terrorism.
Around 1950, India promised Kashmiris a referendum about whether Kashmir would be part of India or not. India should hold the referendum and allow Kashmiris to decide the question in a peaceful way.
US citizens: Call on Democrats to push for a public option for medical coverage.
This was part of Obama's original proposal, but lobbying from private insurance companies pressure Congress to remove it. Now we see the results they were lobbying for.
Private insurance is the wrong model for medical care, since everyone needs that and we must make sure no one is left out.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate harassment of people that document thugs' violence, and train thugs to respect their rights.
In the Canadian Arctic, it is now sometimes warm enough to swim.
A gasoline pipe broke in Alabama and spilled a million gallons.
Through a great stroke of luck, this spill avoided polluting rivers and flowing down to the Gulf of Mexico. Next time, we might not be so lucky. Clearly the laws about pipeline maintenance have to be enforced strictly. If ever there was a place for zero tolerance, this is it. "Fail to check your pipeline every month, go to prison."
The FBI decided to allow agents to pretend to be journalists.
While that has a clear short-term advantage, in the long run it threatens journalism.
Photographer Edward Burtynsky says his photos show that: 'We've reached peak everything', as we overuse every major resource.
Our leaders go to war without real need, and without paying attention to the harm that it may cause a few steps down the road.
Uri Avnery says that peace can happen even between old enemies. He believes that a true Palestinian state can make peace possible in Israel/Palestine.
A large US project will direct more water into the Florida everglades.
To try to reestablish lost wetlands could be useful in the long term but only if we curb global heating. The whole of the Everglades are under 4 meters above sea level. If global heating continues, a large part of the Everglades will be inundated in this century, and the rest afterwards.
Trump announced a "press conference" in Washington DC which was really just publicity for his new hotel.
The US press are so obsessed with "balance" that they are putty in the hands of a bullshitter such as Trump.
Republicans in the Federal Election Commission killed a proposed rule designed to block foreigners from donating to US election campaigns.
Norway intends to kill 47 wolves out of a total of 68 living in the country.
It is always possible for a species to multiply out of control, but 22 wolves in a country the size of Norway can hardly be too many.
US citizens: call on Senate Republican leaders to vote on new federal judges.
Six former New York prison thugs have been sentenced to years in prison for beating up a prisoner.
Trump has returned to suggesting the idea of assassinating Clinton. Apparently he thinks his supporters are more murderous than hers.
Professor Plante teaches a course called Sociology of Sexualities, but she had to omit coverage of sexual violence because too many students said it triggered their trauma memories.
When New Jersey thugs take people's cash without charging them with a crime, they go through legal shenanigans to push up the filing fee to challenge the seizure. Victims have to pay more money to object than was actually taken from them.
My view is that "civil forfeiture", i.e. punishing people on mere suspicion, is unjust and unconstitutional. The law claims that it isn't a punishment, but the law is lying.
1/3 of Salafi Arabia's air attacks in Yemen have hit civilian sites.
When poor Americans get out of jail, typically broke, they are told they have to pay a fine right away.
UC Berkeley's administrators cancelled a class that was dedicated to studying and criticizing Israel's occupation of Palestine.
It is an error to equate criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism, but it seems valid that an academic course should not endorse a specific political position.
US citizens: call for an investigation of the Crosscheck scheme for disfranchising minority voters.
US citizens: call on Obama to make the EPA take quick action to protect pollinators.
Indonesia has made a deal with the EU to indicate the source of all timber. This is an attempt to end illegal logging.
European countries are sending Africa diesel fuel that produces extra high levels of toxic air pollution.
The US is increasing its annual donation to Israel to 38 billion dollars. The donation consists of US military equipment plus support for extension of Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
A company that makes internet-controlled vibrators is being sued for collecting lots of personal information about how people use them.
The company's statement that it anonymizes the data may be true, but it doesn't really matter. If it sells the data to a data broker, the data broker can figure out who the user is.
The Tories have made the NHS "junior doctors" back down from their planned strikes.
The term "junior doctor" sounds like a sort of apprentice, but that is not what it means. Those people are not trainees. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a clear, simple description of just who the term does include. These news articles never give even a hint.
The result of this is that the NHS will increasingly struggle to find doctors. It will have to use people that are less qualified, and run them ragged so they make lots of mistakes.
The Tories surely know this; surely they are banking on it as an excuse to say that the NHS is a failure. Then they can replace it with a US-style system that provides real health care only to the wealthiest Britons.
Specific everyday words are correlated, in the world's languages, with specific sounds.
Colombia has legalized medical marijuana.
US planes bombed some of Assad's troops. The US says this was a mistake; Russia says it was intentional, but that claim is absurd.
The claim is absurd because hitting Assad's troops in that one place doesn't serve any US interests. Putin is pushing another nutty conspiracy theory, hoping to be believed by people who will believe any accusation as long as it's against the US.
A dog or cat in a wealthy country uses a lot of resources.
Of course, having a pet is less long-term ecological burden than making another human being. But why not have a parakeet or cockatiel? They are delightful and sweet, eat only plants, and not a large quantity of those.
A refugee imprisoned on Nauru by Australia has severe heat disease and needs medical care he cannot get in Nauru. Australia decided to make him stay on Nauru.
We should not let the squabble for resources under the Arctic Ocean distract us from the magnitude of the global heating disaster that makes the squabble possible.
It is more important than ever to prevent oil extraction in the Arctic. To the risks of drilling for it and pumping it have now been added the certain disaster of burning it.
If someone can find a way to collect and ship the methane that will increasingly bubble out of the sea bottom, that would be a good fuel to use. It would cause less global heating (for the first several decades) burned as CO2 than in the air as methane.
Everyone: call for dropping charges against Amy Goodman.
Eritrea Is a Prison State — No Wonder So Many Are Desperate to Escape.
The description reminds me of the Soviet Union under Stalin, but even more so.
Does anyone know whether the US loves and supports the dictator of Eritrea?
The neighboring countries, Egypt and Ethiopia, are US-supported dictatorships. Ethiopia remains hostile to Eritrea. I wonder if it is possible for Eritrean activists to get Ethiopian sponsorship to organize to overthrow the dictator.
The Tories say the announced, pending cuts in welfare payments will be the last ones.
They have not promised to stop the policies that reduce public housing and drive up rents, or to stop sabotaging the NHS to convert it into a US-style system that will let non-wealthy Britons die like non-wealthy Americans.
Israel has created a secret agency to try to fight the Palestinian
boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign,
which
it calls "terrorism". It uses public propaganda, a network of
foreign supporters, and secret operations, and aims to set up laws
blocking participation in that campaign.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
The propaganda includes widely spread disinformation. For instance, the boycott does not apply to Israelis (human beings) at all, only to Israeli institutions and corporations under certain conditions.
I do not support that campaign overall, but I support the efforts to block Israel from crushing it with prohibitions. It is wrong to label this nonviolent campaign as "terrorism" or to equate it with antisemitism (a form of bigotry which which I condemn).
Israel has already adopted a law that punishes individuals and organizations that advocate the limited boycott of West Bank colonies and factories therein. Gush Shalom was forced to drop that boycott, lest it be destroyed through this law. I, as a supporter in spirit of Gush Shalom, continue to advocate this boycott, since I am safe outside Israel.
Some US colleges now nearly force students to rent textbooks from Amazon.
If you are a student at such a college, please refuse to buy from Amazon. Everyone should refuse to buy from Amazon.
An ACLU staffer suggests a way to respond if thugs ask for your DNA to see if you are a suspect.
Global heating could make people more inclined to violence.
California is trying to lead the way in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU Court of Justice ruled that operating an open WiFi network does not make one liable for damages to the copyright industry.
However, the court suggested that the enemies of sharing might get an order to put a password on the WiFi network. That may do just as much harm as was threatened.
I urge people in Europe to systematically operate open WiFi networks so that there are too many for our enemies to get rid of.
The Guardian published long articles about how the Senate investigators struggled with the CIA to get the truth about CIA torture. US media ignore the story completely.
Everyone:
sign
this petition opposing the merger of Bayer and Monsanto.
When Trump accepted that Obama was born in the US, he took the
opportunity to spread
additional
bullshit lies.
Everything he says about what he would do if elected is bullshit;
if you believe any of it, you're asking to be taken.
Bluetooth devices
frequently
announce their identities, even when on standby, making it easy to
track people by whatever bluetooth stuff they are carrying.
The Sioux word
"wetiko"
denotes a sort of hubris in which people think they can dominate
nature.
A plan for
bringing
an end to plastic pollution, particularly in the ocean.
Legalizing medical marijuana leads to a
decrease
in opioid use.
EU citizens:
sign the Change
Copyright petition.
I post this while holding my nose about some points in the formulation
of the petition. For instance, its mention of Facebook and Instagram
without condemnation grants them undeserved legitimacy. Also, it
describes publications as "content".
These are definitely not all the changes needed in copyright in the
EU, but they are needed and they are not bad.
The page malfunctions with LibreJS, but it does work when Javascript
is entirely disabled.
An Indian court recognized the true purpose of copyright law:
to
serve
the public.
Here's
my
explanation of that issue.
Wells Fargo executives claim, in effect, that the company is too big
to be managed. Thus, Public Citizen proposes the company
should
split up.
Drug factories release their wastes, including antibiotics, into local
waters —
promoting
drug resistance.
The simplest way to end this is to impose a rising tax on antibiotics
made in factories that have not certified acceptable waste handling.
The tax would start small, but it would be twice as much in the second
year, three times as much in the third year, and so on. Manufacturers
would make sure to correct their problem within a few years.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to revoke the permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The drug baclofen
seems
to cure a lot of patients from alcoholism. Some are permanently
cured.
Experiments find that MDMA
can
be very good for treating PTSD.
What makes a good leader? Perhaps having the
courage
to take unpopular stands that are vindicated by subsequent
history.
India blocked Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez from traveling to
Geneva to
submit
a report about Kashmir to the UN Human Rights Council. He was
then jailed arbitrarily for no stated reason.
Tens of thousands of prisoners in the US are probably on strike,
but it is
hard
for them to get news out.
Senator Warren called on the FBI to release its internal
investigations of banksters so we can see
how
they decided not to accuse them of crimes.
The thugs who killed Tyre King
claim
that he pulled out his airgun and pointed it at them.
Not a very plausible story.
Dakota thugs have
charged
nonviolent pipeline protesters with felonies. This is repression
getting serious.
Trump can't release his tax returns because
people
would find a lot to criticize.
Trump's energy policy is to
burn
everything in sight, fill the air with toxic pollution, and melt the
ice caps.
He doesn't say, but I guess he figures his family will buy its way out
of the resulting disaster.
Italian anti-fascist activists say that an undercover thug infiltrator
tried
to convince them to commit arson. They were not inclined towards
violence.
Chinese thugs beat up and arrested Hong Kong journalists who were
trying
to visit a town where people are protesting.
The Federal Trade Commission held a consultation about privacy with
researchers …
funded
by Google.
I fear that the questions considered will be minor details of a
fundamentally unacceptable system that collects massive data about
everyone.
The bird population of North America has
dropped
by 1.5 billion since the 1970s, due to human activities of course.
Full details on Scott Walker's ties to the "independent" political
action group,
Wisconsin
Club for Growth.
Culture exists to be
remixed
— reject any attempt to forbid remix.
Universities must be safe spaces for
free
speech.
The US government
underestimates
the number of poor people by setting the "poverty level" too low.
The UK is considering setting up a
national
internet filter to block malware sites. This is supposed to be ok
because the UK imposes filtering on the internet. However, that just
shows the injustice of the UK.
Here are
more
arguments against the plan.
For the second time, thugs in Ohio
shot
a tweenager for carrying an air gun.
It appears that they were so quick to shoot that they didn't bother to
check the situation. 911 was informed that the gun was "probably
fake". Did the 911 operators ignore this or did the thugs ignore
this?
The International Criminal Court will henceforth consider cases of
environmental
destruction or taking people's land.
ITT Tech charged students lots of money for degrees which did not
enable them to get the promised jobs. It has shut down, but its
former students are stuck with big debts for the loans to pay for the
worthless degrees. They have started a
debt
strike.
Thugs often legitimize the violence of Trump supporters against protesters,
and the major media
don't
mention it much any more.
US Marine Corps drill instructors go in for
frequent
brutality and hazing, sometimes causing serious injury, and drove
one cadet to death.
More on
why
the Monsanto-Bayer merger would be harmful.
Would the combined company be called "Monyer"?
If Trump becomes president, his business will turn into a pile of
conflicts
of interest involving foreign entities.
The Syrian government is
blocking
UN humanitarian aid in Syria.
I wonder how much the cease fire is holding, aside from that.
US citizens: phone your senators at (202) 224-3121 to support
SJ
Res 39, which is the resolution to disapprove the proposed giant
arms sale to Salafi Arabia.
This arms sale is meant to continue the
US-Salafi
bombardment of Yemen.
The population of the Marshall Islands are
fleeing,
a few at a time, to the US. It is clear the islands are doomed by
sea-level rise. They would all be wise to by the end of the agreement
in 2023, except for those who are likely to die anyway before the
islands are uninhabitable, which will take just a few decades.
The UK decided to build the
absurdly
expensive Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, which will produce
the most expensive electricity available and dangerous nuclear wastes
besides.
The tremendous expense will hold back investment in renewable
generation and power storage.
Everyone:
call
on debate moderator Lester Holt to focus on making democracy
represent everyone.
Junior Sterling, who needs a wheelchair, is housed in London in an
infested apartment with moldy walls. The shower is turned off, and
the kitchen can't be used. It is
not
easy for him to get down stairs to go anywhere.
A Philippine militia member testified that Duterte
ordered
him and his colleagues to carry out murder. They killed a
thousand people.
In the past 8 years,
just
9 prisoners released from Guantanamo have joined groups that fight
the US.
How many others joined those same groups because they were angry about
Guantanamo? Surely more than 9000.
We should release all the prisoners in Guantanamo, or in a few cases
give them a fair trial.
The staff at one Finnish company set up a sensor and computer system
to indicate vacant toilet stalls and to
see
where in the office their friends are working.
When the staff decide to do this, it is a good hack; but you know
it won't take long for employers or insurance companies to impose
total surveillance.
Doñana national park in Spain has
lost
most of its water supply to human activities, and the wildlife
there are in danger.
India hasn't enough water for all the human activity, and
riots
are breaking out about a decision of how to divide it up.
In Spain, the problem is due to business, but the amount of
agriculture in the world today is a problem because of human
population. With only one billion people, we would have no problem.
In India, the problem is directly related to overpopulation. India
must curb its population growth to have a chance of lifting its people
out of poverty.
Climate models now permit scientists to quickly determine
how
much global heating contributed to any particular weather event,
including unnatural disasters.
Everyone:
Call
on several large companies to remove deforestation from their beef.
US citizens:
urge
your congresscritter to reject anti-science riders in the budget
bill.
Feyisa Lilesa, Ethiopian Olympic runner,
made
a gesture of support for the Oromo people when he raced. Now he
has asylum in the US, as he would be persecuted if he returned there.
Many Americans respond to Colin Kaepernick's protest by trying to make
the US more like Ethiopia.
The Oromo are running into the combination of ethnic hostility and
state-supported
corporate landgrab.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to pass a robust tax on financial transactions.
While Trump makes rash threats of nuclear war, Clinton
avoids
the issue of how to deal with nuclear weapons.
I disagree with the idea that nuclear weapons are the number one
threat to security. The number one threat is
global
heating. Nuclear weapons may be number 2.
Greater Good Versus Lesser Evil: don't make the mistake of
voting
for an evil candidate.
In the two year period 2011-2012, thugs in schools made
64000
arrests.
From 2013 through 2015,
59
people were shot in schools and 124 were injured by shooting in
schools.
Even though they are not the same periods, it is clear that having a
thug in your child's school is hundreds of times as likely to ruin the
child's life as to protect it.
Chelsea Manning
gained
her demands for gender-change treatment and ended her hunger
strike.
Trump and the Republican Party Are
Doing
Big Oil's Bidding.
Why it is
difficult
and takes time to determine whether e-cigarettes are helpful or
harmful.
"Extinction is the
bycatch
of consumerism."
If you refuse to have children, you will do some good.
Household dust contains
many
chemicals known to be toxic to humans.
If it is in our products, it will get into the dust.
The Pentagon has decided to consider future global heating effects
in
every aspect of its operations.
Why don't the rest of us?
A study predicts computers will replace
6%
of existing US jobs in just 5 years. Even if it overestimates by
2, losing just 3% of jobs would be a disaster already.
The US has no plan for how to help the millions of newly unemployed.
As increasing numbers of people compete for fewer jobs,
plutocratist politicians will surely blame those who lose
for not being superior enough to win. Some will try to
organize whites to gang up to deny blacks a chance in these contests;
but that tactic, besides being unjust, won't suffice for long.
By 2030 there won't be enough jobs even for the whites.
Here's an idea: tax the use of automated drivers, customer service,
and other things, and use that money to give the unemployed a decent
life.
The UN Human Rights Council is sponsoring negotiations for an
international
treaty to restrain the power of international corporations.
Young Americans continue their lawsuit to require the US government to
protect them (and everyone else)
from
the disasters that global heating will increasingly cause.
Join Demonstrations
against DRM
in W3C standards.
Scott Walker's fundraiser directed campaign donations from
embarrassing sources to an "independent" PAC. This seems to
be illegal.
California has given farm workers the right to overtime pay.
Ex-president Lula faces corruption charges. The judge seems to be honest and nonpartisan.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the CFPB and Dodd-Frank law from the Republican attack.
Our extermination of large marine animals will disrupt ecosystems for millions of years.
Wisconsin Supreme Court judge Prosser voted to kill a state investigation
into suspected illegalities in his own re-election campaign's fund raising.
Some of the money came from Trump. That may not have been illegal,
but it should show Americans where Trump stands on democracy.
(He's against it.)
Maybe the DEA wants to ban kratom so as to have something to do
when marijuana is legalized.
Some cities give medals to cops (perhaps they qualify as police
officers) that de-escalate confrontations to a peaceful end, but one
thug department in West Virginia fired an employee for not killing a
man who was carrying an unloaded weapon.
Housing and Urban Development took a step to get rid of the local laws that evict people for calling 911.
Obama's medical insurance law reduced the number of Americans without
medical coverage by 40%, but that still leaves almost 30 million
people without coverage. Meanwhile, many who do have medical insurance
have to pay unaffordable amounts from their own pockets.
We need a national health service, like what Canada has. Nearly all
advanced countries have one.
Donald Trump's Not Anti-War, He Just Wants the U.S. Military to Focus
on Stealing Oil.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the TPP.
Monsanto wants to merge with Bayer, but this concentration in the seed
and pesticide business must not be allowed, and it would violate US
antitrust law.
US-based companies that leave cash parked outside the US should lose
all the legal advantages of being "US companies".
I disagree with Reich when he legitimizes contributions from corporations to
political campaigns. Even the companies that don't dodge taxes should
not be allowed to get in the way of democracy.
15 years of fear-mongering have made Americans so frightened that they
assumed the man giving away teddy bears must have a vicious intention.
But all he had was a pile of teddy bears his father no longer
wanted
to keep.
US aid funds, distributed in Afghanistan without much accounting,
boosted corruption there. Corruption was their tradition already, but the US gave them a lot more money to be corrupt with.
More about how sugar companies distorted medicine in the 1960s and continue trying to distort it now.
Governments now regularly crack anyone's computers to spy on them,
and they are rapidly discarding all effective legal restraint.
Please don't call security-breaking "hacking"; that is an insult to us
hackers. Please call it "cracking".
Five Deadly Sins of Big Pharma.
Donald Trump, After Blasting Iraq War,
Picks Top Iraq Hawk as Security Adviser.
Here's what it suggests to me: Trump wants to say one thing out loud
to the public and another thing quietly to the military-industrial complex.
Facebook is consulting with Israel about censorship of Palestinians.
The lines are drawn in different places for Israelis and Arabs.
Here is a summary of charges against Oakland thugs from their involvement
with non-adult prostitute Celeste Guap.
The first two — sex with a minor and engaging in prostitution
— should not be crimes at all. "Lewd act in public" should at
most be a minor crime. The others should be crimes.
Long Island University planned in advance to lock out all the
professors.
Administrators
have been ordered to teach as scabs in fields they are not
qualified to teach.
The students support the professors against the administration.
The Students for Justice in Palestine at City College, New York,
campaigns to end Israel's occupation of Palestine. As typically
happens, it was accused of supporting anti-semitism. An investigation
found that this accusation was
nearly
totally false.
The City College campus is not entirely free of anti-semitism, but
that and the SJP are separate.
1/3
of Gazans that ask for permission to travel for medical treatment
do not get permission. Most of those don't even get an answer.
Israel demonstrates its double standard when it legalizes houses built
without permission by Jews, and
demolishes
houses built without permission by Palestinians.
Libya has become a failed state in which there are
many
factions that don't trust each other at all. They also distrust
foreign support, for good reason. There is no obvious path out of
that.
A meta-analysis found proof that fluoridation
does
not cause cancer and does not reduce children's IQ. There is no
sign it does any harm.
If Americans could sue Salafi Arabia for the September 2001 attacks,
who
could sue the US?
Chile privatized its version of social security 35 years ago.
Now it turns out that the resulting pensions are barely enough to live on.
The private fund managers paid themselves big management fees and took
all the capital gains away from the retirees.
Trump spreads bullshit in regard to science, just as on other topics.
Clinton believes that the Federal Reserve is sacrosanct and that presidents
should not even express an opinion about its decisions.
Well, we already knew that she was inclined to obey the banksters.
The US government is recruiting teachers and therapists to report on
Muslims who meet vague and unsupported guesswork criteria suggesting they
might later be radicalized.
Some mental health professionals explain why they will refuse to do this.
US thugs intimidate people into "voluntarily" providing DNA samples for permanent inclusion in a massive data base.
Don't Punish Chelsea Manning — Release Her
Sony was sued by users after its firmware downgrade for the Playstation 3
took away the capability to run GNU/Linux on it. Now it will offer them
money as a settlement.
This is not enough to stop companies from making such changes in the future.
We should either make it a crime, or make sure it is impossible.
CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling was imprisoned for giving information to the New York Times. Prison treats him harshly because he is black.
Shame on you, Obama, for your war on journalists' sources. We need
to make digital systems safe for democracy.
The Tories want to reshape the UK's election districts to give themselves
an advantage in future elections.
Snowden presents arguments why Obama should pardon him.
Jill Stein supports the call.
Democratic socialism
is gaining support in the US.
The price for US "homeland security" is paid in freedom and in money.
If we consider only the money, it is a ridiculously inefficient way
to save lives, costing over a hundred million dollars per life saved.
We could save a lot more lives by spending the money on medical care.
Los Angeles and other cities give medals to police officers who
de-escalate a confrontation and avoid violence.
As for thugs, their representatives object to the very idea of honoring
or teaching such techniques. Thugs are supposed to solve every problem
by immediate killing.
This August was the hottest August ever recorded. It followed the hottest July ever recorded, which followed the hottest June ever recorded, and so on for almost a year.
The climate mayhem this process will cause has already started.
Republican state governments are still fighting hard to block minority and poor voters in November.
Citizens of California:
call
on Governor Brown to sign AB 2298, the bill to reform the Calgang
database.
Indigenous Environmental Network has
united
tribes around the US to oppose environmentally dangerous projects,
with support from other ethnic groups too.
If the Dakota Access pipeline is built, it would produce
100
million tons of CO2 emissions per year.
The very efficiency of the pipeline would make ending the oil
extraction very difficult, as the owners would do just about anything
to recover their investment. Our government lacks the courage to tell
a company, "We are going to shut you down to stop your pollution."
Blatant wrongs such as Facebook's censorship of photo of the burned,
naked Vietnamese girl are just the tip of the iceberg of
algorithm-based
injustice, and there is no way to measure what it adds up to.
When one town fires a thug for misconduct,
some
other town nearby will surely hire him.
Perhaps we need a "registered thug offender list" to prevent this.
The Trump Foundation
raises
money from others, not from Trump, but he lets people think that
the money it hands out is from him.
Jim Wright forcefully condemned the pressure put on Americans to
endorse all the bellicose or dangerous "responses" to the September 11
attacks. Facebook
censored
it, apparently for political reasons.
This shows the danger of depending on facebook.
Lionel Shriver
tears
the opposition to "cultural appropriation" to shreds. If
presenting the viewpoint of someone different from you were rejected,
storytelling would be impossible. But even the opposition that some
now demand would impoverish culture for everyone.
Here's a real example: Sikhs in the UK tried to stop a
Sikh-style
wedding between a Sikh and a non-Sikh. They made the claim that
the Sikh religious ceremony is the property of Sikhs, so no one else
has the right to hold such a ceremony. This possessiveness violates
the religious freedom of others. No matter what your religious
practices may be, you have no right to stop others from following
similar practices.
This applies to other cultural practices, too. Before my foot injury,
I enjoyed doing Croatian dances and Serbian dances, although my
enjoyment of them was shadowed in the 90s when those two countries
were at war. I am proud to cook Italian dishes and Chinese dishes,
even though I probably don't do them quite like a good Italian or
Chinese cook. I read that Iraqis in the 1960s used to cook the
Persian dish fesenjan, knowing full well that it was Persian. Bravo
for them — fesenjan is delicious. They are entitled to do this,
and so am I, and so are you. Culture is for imitating, and obstacles
to such imitation are an injustice.
There are fatuous ways to imitate. When a Mexican restaurant hands
out sombreros and customers wear them, the customers are being
childish, and I could criticize the restaurant for is leading them to
be childish. Do they enjoy that food, or are they only using it as an
excuse for a fantasy? And why should they need an excuse? If you
want to fantasize about being in Mexico, go ahead, but do you really
need a sombrero, or a restaurant?
It is possible to imitate a cultural practice in an embarrassingly
ignorant way, or even an insulting way. But there are lots of ways to
be embarrassingly ignorant, or to insult someone. That is no reason
to condemn imitation.
Why We Should Have Fewer Children: to
Save
the Planet.
Many churches block women from access to contraception and abortion,
effectively
forcing
them to have too many children.
There are
plenty of other
reasons why it is advisable not to have children under current
circumstances.
Canada has suffered greatly from NAFTA, and companies are
suing
because they have been blocked from fracking or mining to protect
water supplies and endangered species.
NAFTA
has
harmed Mexico even more, and
the
US as well.
The reason a treaty between three countries has harmed all three is
that it's a
business-supremacy
treaty. Its effects are to harm the environment and the non-rich
in all countries that sign.
The US would do well to stop obsessing with the September 2001
terrorist attacks. Pledging to dwell on them
perpetuates
the fear-driven errors and injustices of those years.
Where I was on September 11, 2001 is not important. What I did that
day would have been important, if it had succeeded. I started writing
an article about the next attack, which I foresaw would be
directed at
Americans' freedom by American officials in the name of
"security".
Oil drilling off the coast of South Australia risks
long-term
local damage at each step.
That's a high price for a certainty of adding to
global
damage.
Facebook
blocked
the account of activist Shaun King after he posted a racist email
that was sent to him.
Canadians are
banned
from visiting the US simply because they admit they used marijuana in
Canada — which is an absurd policy even if their usage of
pot was illegal in Canada.
The US has done much nastier things to Canadian visitors, such as
the
beating given to science fiction writer Peter Watts.
Every road in Canada that leads to the US should have a sign,
"Warning, Unprovoked Beatings Ahead."
The endangered species protection conditions that Australia imposed on
a new coal mine are
full
of loopholes.
Worse, the idea of "offsets for destroyed habitat" is
inherently
absurd.
But that's nothing compared to the inherent idiocy of allowing a new
coal mine. We
need
to shut down coal mining as quickly as we can.
The idea that corporations should put the owners' wealth above all
else repeatedly
leads
to great harm.
Contrary to the way it appears, that idea was not always accepted.
In the US, its adoption
dates
from the 1980s.
Many US teenagers are coerced into prostitution by their need for
food. In poor communities, there is
no
other work for them. Those not sexually attractive enough to
succeed that way have to resort to even more desperate measures, such
as stealing food or salable items, or selling drugs.
Stealing food should not be a crime when you need it to live.
Italy's court
made
a wise decision on that. But we are wrong to put people in a
position where they need to do this just to live.
It is clear who is to blame for this state of affairs: the plutocrats
that are taking an ever-larger share of our wealth and squeezing
everyone else.
Amy Goodman faces charges for covering the
private
thugs' attack on pipeline protesters.
More
information about that attack.
Nigeria is facing famine, especially in the northern area where
Boko Haram is a threat.
Is it possible for a party to replace a candidate in September?
I hope so. To be confident of winning the election, the Democratic
party should replace Clinton with Bernie Sanders.
Stingray devices that track all the cell phones in the nearby area are
extremely easy to use, and have almost no controls to restrain state
suppression forces from breaking laws at the spur of the moment.
A Salafi/US bombing attack in Yemen killed workers drilling a well,
then came back a few minutes later to kill the people who were
giving first aid.
This "double-tap" tactic is used by many terrorist groups.
The 10 biggest corporations have more income than 180 countries.
Influential research that downplayed the role of sugar in causing
heart disease was funded by the sugar industry, which also meddled in
the publication.
Insys Therapeutics gave half a million dollars to oppose legalization
of marijuana in Arizona because it has a pharmaceutical product that
contains a chemical found also in marijuana. It therefore may be a coincidence that the company also sells an opioid painkiller.
Which one do you think is more expensive, the marijuana-like artificial drug
or natural marijuana?
Trump supports school vouchers as a way to partly subsidize private schools
for families that can almost afford them. The money would
be taken away from public schools.
Protesters in North Dakota heard that they had lost their court case;
then, the same day, that various US government departments had
reconsidered the pipeline's permit.
Pittsburgh water has been contaminated with poisonous metals for years, and Veolia is being sued for mismanaging the system.
Don't agree to let anything authenticate you by your EEG, since the
system will also find out a lot about you.
The only way you can trust an EEG authentication system
is if you own it and it runs solely free software.
Paramount, the movie company, issued a DMCA takedown notice for a torrent containing Ubuntu GNU/Linux, claiming that it infringes the
copyright on a movie.
If I were sharing a Transformers movie, I'd be ashamed of myself, but
not as ashamed as Paramount should be for making it. But the War on
Sharing is much worse.
When Britons go to Syria to join the Kurds in fighting PISSI,
the UK government absurdly investigates them for "terrorism".
The BBC continues to treat global heating denial the respect it
doesn't deserve.
Farmers that ignored Monsanto's request not to spray dicamba on a GMO crop
have caused lots of damage to neighboring farms.
Ahmet and Mehmet Altan, novelist and professor, have been arrested in Turkey
on absurd charges.
They are accused of announcing the military coup with "subliminal messages", which is comparable to accusing the weather of making a cloud which reminded someone of a human face.
Brazilian thugs arrested students before protests.
Truck brakes and tires release dangerous particulate air pollution,
and the amounts have been increasing over the years.
Trump is winning support from former Democrats in deindustrialized
communities hit badly by
business-dominated
globalization and business-supremacy treaties.
The charity World Vision has
cancelled
all its activities in Gaza, apparently responding to accusations
that the funds were diverted to Hamas military groups.
US citizens:
call
on the DEA not to ban kratom.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to keep fossil fuels on public lands in the ground.
The UK's chartered deportation flight to Jamaica was
cruel
and unjust on every dimension.
Their families in the UK may never again see their dear, deported
relatives. Some face a likelihood of death as a result of being sent
to a country where they don't know anyone and can't get the medicine
they need.
I am always sad when I see that a petition I would like to support is
hosted on change.org. That site requires visitors to run nonfree
Javascript code in order to sign any petition. I won't publish a
suggestion that people do this. I wish the site maintainers would fix
that.
Alternatively, would someone who knows Javascript like to figure out
how the site works and write a free script or Web-extensions front end
for signing petitions on that site?
I wish I could sign the petition, but it is on a site that requires
nonfree Javascript code, so I will neither sign it nor suggest that
anyone else do so.
Trump
repeatedly
lies saying he gave money to charity which the charity did not
receive.
An East German skater describes how she was
given
doping drugs without her knowledge, which later caused her to develop
psychosis.
Trump praised the Chinese government's
bloody
suppression of the protest for democracy in Tian An Men Square,
and now associates closely with leading white supremacists in the US.
I think Trump was honest in what he said about China. He doesn't
support democracy, or freedom and justice for all; on the contrary, he
thinks the strongest should control everyone else.
The US and Russia have made a deal to
fight
PISSI and former al-Nusra, and push the other Syrian sides into a
cease fire.
Prisoners across the US
went
on strike on Friday against dangerous working conditions and
against wages as low as a few cents an hour.
I think it is legitimate to require prisoners to work to keep the
prison going, as long as the working conditions are not oppressive.
However, when they compete with free workers they should get a union
wage.
Otherwise, they are being used by plutocrats to drive everyone's wages
down.
The rate of serious or fatal injuries inflicted by US thugs has
increased
50% since 2001.
The kratom plant provides a mild high, and can help heroin addicts
stop taking heroin. Absurdly, the US government
proposes
to ban it, and ban research on it too.
Facebook
made
an exception to its censorship rules to permit distribution of the
photo of the Vietnamese girl burnt by US napalm.
This does not make it acceptable for Facebook to be in a position to
decide what news sites can publish.
As Trump keeps praising Putin,
RT
presses Trump harder than the feckless US media.
Maybe Putin doesn't love Trump. For me, Trump's admiration of Putin
is despicable regardless of what Putin thinks of Trump.
Trump has admitted he
expects
to get something in return for his investments in politicians'
campaigns.
Iran has sentenced Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe to
5
years in prison. Maybe now it will announce charges against her.
This reminds me of the Fannish Inquisition, where the first thing is
the verdict (always "guilty"), followed by the charges. Except that
the sentence came at the end (Eric Raymond was sentenced to fuck
himself to death with a computer, but given 50 years to do it).
Alas, in Iran it is no joke.
A Mississippi thug has been indicted for
killing
a black driver during a traffic stop. The thug said that the
driver pulled a gun, but since he had not turned on his body camera,
he has not been believed. Especially since it seems the gun was
planted by other thugs.
Israel is
trying
to instigate a Palestinian civil war.
I consulted with someone from the Israeli peace movement, who said
that the article is basically accurate but it is not clear whether
Lieberman can convince the army leadership to do what he wants.
Institute for Development Studies and Oxfam say that increased prices
for healthful foods
from
2008 to 2012 pushed millions of parents around the world to work
long hours for cash, and buy fattening fast food for their children.
Should we sell arms to Saudi Arabia
just
to keep arms manufacturing jobs going? Some numbskulls think so.
Violence in South Sudan
Orchestrated
by Government, UN Report Reveals.
US citizens: call for an investigation of Trump for bribery.
Everyone: call on Burger King to reject GMO apples.
The EU has already met its 2020 target for reduced fossil fuel use.
This shows that conservation efforts can be a success. However, the
EU targets are not really ambitious — even though they are better
than most of the rest of the world.
Rep. Barbara Lee warned 15 years ago that the Authorization to Use
Military Force was a "blank check to the president to attack anyone
involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without
regard to our nation's long-term foreign policy, economic and national
security interests, and without time limit."
Her only error was to make the statement too narrow. The words
"involved in the Sept. 11 events" need to be deleted.
Large fractions of Trump supporters agree with various racist views,
in some cases almost 50%.
The campaign to take the UK out of the European Union stirred up racist hostility towards people from Eastern Europe, and similar
forms of racism are increasing all across Europe.
Human Rights Watch calls on Brazil to respect protesters' rights
and investigate the attacks by thugs on protesters.
US elections are extremely vulnerable to rigging, through voting computers
and through dishonest (and illegal) practices.
Violence against women is a pervasive problem that is constantly met with distraction responses.
North Korea demands recognition as a "legitimate" nuclear power.
How the CIA attacked the Senate's report on CIA torture
and tried to justify torture.
Global heating has increased the prevalence of clean air turbulence
which can strike an airplane without warning and cause injuries.
The US regulation for automobile safety forced car manufacturers to
make changes that have prevented 3.5 million deaths and many millions
of injuries.
It was possible in the 1960s to adopt such a regulation because the US still
had a functioning democracy. Under today's plutocracy, business does not
allow this.
Use of DNA data from patients needs to be better regulated.
Recently published papers, formerly secret, show that UK thugs conspired to
attack a group of miners and frame them, with support from ministers including Prime Minister Thatcher.
Al-Jazeera broadcast the documentary about corruption in the Maldives,
and the tyrant responded by raiding a newspaper office.
The editor
has fled abroad.
A company that sells the opioid fentanyl is donating money to oppose legalization of marijuana in Arizona. Apparently the company's executives believe that they will sell
more addictive opioids if they can deny people a safer option.
Humanity is depleting soil at a rapid rate: 1/3 of all arable land has
been ruined in 40 years.
It is hard to believe we can avoid mass starvation in another 40 years.
Remember this if you ever think of having a child.
Perhaps regenerative farming can repair this damage.
Samia Shahid's father and her ex-husband conspired to kill her;
the ex-husband did the deed, expecting the father to "pardon" him
on her behalf.
Trump admires Putin because Trump admires all authoritarian rulers.
Trump admires them for squashing whoever gets in their way,
and never mind things like human rights.
In other words, Trump is un-American and hates everything the US
stands for.
Chelsea Manning has started a hunger strike to demand to be treated
as female, and an end to harassment measures.
Sanctions failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons,
but a world-wide rejection of nuclear weapons might be worth trying.
Everyone:
call on the American
Geophysical Union to reject sponsorship by Exxon.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Everyone:
call
on McDonalds and Walmart to pay employees a decent wage.
US citizens:
Thank
Kaepernick for his protest.
21 countries
stand
a good chance of eliminating malaria by 2020.
To get the rest of the world would mainly take a sufficient lump sum
of money.
"Texas is
violating
a court order intended to prevent it from suppressing the vote,
according to the U.S. Department of Justice."
UN Human Rights Chief Urges Action
Against
Western 'Demagogues'.
Between voter suppression and the possible rigging of voting machines,
and the design of the Democratic primaries to favor establishment
candidates such as Clinton, the mechanics of democracy are
under
attack.
Facebook's Instagram division
demands
that the activist campaign LitterGram change its name.
I hope LitterGram stands firm long enough for public pressure to come
to its support.
US TV network news has mentioned the pipeline protests just once:
less
than a minute, at 4am, and biased against the protesters.
I don't have a TV set, but I sometimes go to places where people are
watching them. I actively avoid watching mainstream TV news programs,
figuring that their purpose is only to poison our minds.
Clinton is
making
it very clear that there is nothing progressive about her.
Some of us never expected anything different of her. We should learn
to reject right-wing Democrats the way we reject Republicans. You
can't build democracy and give people in general a good life if your
main goal contradicts that.
North Dakota thugs want to arrest Jill Stein for spraying graffiti on
a bulldozer as part of a
protest
against the new pipeline.
No sign that they want to arrest the private security guards that
used dogs and pepper spray to attack protesters. These "laws"
are just instruments for plutocracy. Nothing here about democracy.
The reason toilets in many BART stations are closed is
paranoia
about terrorism.
It may be true, to some small degree, that the toilets are a security
risk. But there must be thousands of such small risks, and it is
folly to pay any real price to eliminate one of them. Thus, while I
am glad BART has found a way to convince itself that it has made the
toilets "safe", it made a mistake shutting them at all.
Catholic Herald published an article about "god's love" and declined
to mention that the author was a high official
responsible
for sending Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife to Libya for Qadhafi's men
to torture.
Then it refused to publish an article by Belhaj that asks for the
author to understand and apologize.
There is only one global civilization nowadays, and differences
between groups fall in the gaps between the many areas of
near
universal agreement.
"Increasingly the tech business is all about
making
good products artificially redundant and mediocre ones seem
relevant."
Facebook's power over journalism has morphed into
censorship
of the news.
The Prime Minister of Norway posted to criticize the censorship.
Facebook
deleted
his post.
It is dangerous for Facebook to have this much power. Instead of
trying to compromise, we should take it away.
Instead of the proposed "link tax" that would serve no valid public
purpose, I suggest passing a law that would stop Facebook from
distributing journalistic works published elsewhere. Perhaps this
could apply to companies that have over total of over 1 million user
accounts, or generally to all companies that run social networks.
These sites should be allowed only to make links to independent
original publication sites.
Another idea is to tax publication of each such article, with the tax
rate determined by the number of users the company has. To republish
a few articles each day would not cost them much; to publish thousands
would be prohibitively expensive.
Air pollution
causes
1/10 of all human deaths. The economic cost in lost work due to
illness is tremendous too.
The harm falls disproportionately on
poor
people and mistreated minorities.
The University of California is outsourcing IT support to India and
wants the employees that will be fired to
train
their own replacements.
If they have courage they will quit before doing that.
Germany
to
Pour Cash into Mass Surveillance.
Elizabeth Warren:
Apple's
Tax-Shirking Schemes Show Congress Must Reform US Code.
How
Apple Sells its Controlling Ways as Futurism.
Should we trust Apple? No way! I will not join the oppressive future
that Apple has in mind for us.
Ferguson protest leader Darren Seals was murdered, and the thugs were
visibly
careless about investigating the killing.
I have a feeling that thugs had something to do with his death.
Humans Have Destroyed
a
Tenth of Earth's Wilderness in 25 Years.
Don't assume it will take another 225 years to destroy the rest.
It will tend to accelerate, as people get increasingly desperate.
The crews of fishing boats operating around Hawaii are
forbidden
to leave the boats, as they have no US visas, so they are
effectively used as slaves.
Trump praised Putin as a
"leader".
Putin is indeed a leader — an authoritarian leader who spits on
the rights of Russians that don't want to follow him.
Trump plans to
reduce
taxes on rich people and businesses in five ways.
Makes it pretty clear whose side he is on.
Global heating made the record-breaking Louisiana floods
between
40% and 100% more probable.
Most teenage girls with smartphones habitually retouch their photos,
presenting
a fictional beauty.
The next step would be to avoid physically meeting anyone.
The Tories are cutting the
funds
that enable disabled people to live.
The TPP
would
make it essentially impossible to curb global heating as called
for in the Paris agreement.
Rory
Fanning is one of many veterans who sit, not stand, with Colin
Kaepernick.
Greece has been
showing
signs of resistance to the harsh conditions of the "bail-out" of
its creditors.
Google is trying a method of discouraging support for PISSI by leading
people who seem interested in its propaganda to
videos
made by witnesses to its oppression.
Another article, paywalled alas, suggests that the program is
effective at attracting people's attention.
The UK's new snooper's charter is being considered in the House of
Lords, and
nearly
all that was oppressive in it is still there.
It
might
take giant class-action lawsuits to defeat pervasive snooping by
the Internet of Stings.
The Tories have cut funds for tax audits, which enables rich people
and businesses to get away with more cheating. They even
allow
businesses to write laws to tax them less. Can treason be clearer
than this?
Not All Men Commit Abuse against Women. But
All
Must Condemn It.
The US presidential debates are
designed
by the two major parties to protect them and avoid serious
confrontation of ideas. Therefore they make sure not to admit
other candidates — but most Americans think they should admit
others.
The League of Women Voters used to run these debates, but after it
allowed a third-party candidate to participate, the two major parties
took the debates away from the League so that this could not happen
again.
Some leading US advisors are
advising
against a new cold war with Russia.
The reason we still see propaganda for making more US arms is, I
suspect, the power of the large companies that make the arms and that
want our money to go to them, rather than to more constructive
purposes (medical care, infrastructure, schools, public transit,
welfare, etc.).
A US court sustained Uber's practice of
barring
its drivers from class-action suits.
This law gives businesses more rights than people. It must be
reversed.
Republican state attorneys general
sold
their time to planet roasters for whom they are now attacking the
clean power plan.
Amitav Ghosh warns that global heating will lead to the
"politics
of the armed lifeboat", with rich countries fighting to keep
millions from fleeing places where they can no longer live.
Meanwhile, the rich countries have their own vulnerability: they
depend on lots of technical systems to keep functioning, such as
electric power supply, and don't know how to function when those fail.
I've pointed out the vulnerability of globalized manufacturing: a war
or disaster in one area can disrupt the whole world's production of
some part that is needed for various products. Climate mayhem is
already provoking wars, and disasters of the sort that used to be
called "natural", and this will tend to increase as the decades pass.
People in Oakland demand that some Oakland thugs be prosecuted for two
phony
"crimes" after they had sex with a teenage prostitute.
I am against giving thugs any special privileges, but I oppose
prosecuting them (or anyone) based on lies.
It used to be that one dishonest law defined sex with someone under a
certain (varying) age as "rape", which it clearly isn't. It is now
joined by another dishonest law that defines sex with a prostitute
under that age as "human trafficking", which it clearly isn't. These
laws establish a state policy of proclaiming a falsehood as truth, and
punishing people based on the falsehood. The lie is essential for
misleading the public into supporting these punishments.
When the law sets out to lie, it is worse than an ass. It is a
man-eating tiger.
Rain from a typhoon
melted
part of the "ice wall" that is supposed to keep ground water out
of the ruined Fukushima reactors.
With somewhat more rain, the contaminated water would have come out to
the surface and run along the ground. It appears that nothing can be
done to completely prevent water from flowing through the site and
becoming contaminated.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC to finish regulating cable companies' use of data about
what customers watch.
The FCC won't go far enough, but it is still a step forward.
US citizens:
call
on North Dakota to stop private violence against pipeline
protesters and investigate possible illegalities on the attackers'
part.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Justice to investigate Trump's voter
intimidation campaign and other Republican voter suppression.
A
recent
trend among plutocrats is the attempt to eliminate cash.
The rich can make large bank transfers anonymous by routing them
through shadow companies in tax havens.
Moral
idiocy — the tendency to think that morality does not apply
to one's own actions — is found in many of those who have pushed
the US into war.
Two
big US pipeline companies want to merge.
It should never be permitted for two companies that are among the
largest 10 in any industry to merge.
The UK is rushing to deport people to Jamaica even though all their
families are in the UK,
before
their appeals are even heard.
The real purpose of constantly testing children in school may be to
provide an
excuse
to call teachers failures and privatize public schools.
Texas proposes a text to teach about Texas's Mexican heritage. People
of Mexican background say it is
full
of insulting stereotypes.
The Maldives tyrant has
attacked
opposition leaders and a newspaper using the expected al-Jazeera
documentary as a pretext.
As predicted, Apple's latest iPhone has
no
headphone jack.
This is directly nasty, since it means users need to get special,
expensive headphones. It is also a preparation for possible future
DRM plans.
One reason you shouldn't buy this iThing is that Apple
dodges
US taxes by diverting its profits offshore.
Of course, you'd be a fool to buy or use a product that runs only
nonfree software, and has
malicious
functionalities such as censorship.
Trump now claims he
wants
to greatly increase US military spending and send the US Army to fight
PISSI.
Clinton is hawkish too, but this is even more hawkish.
Large companies, including Google, have signed
"climate
pledges" but give money to campaigns of global heating denialists.
We need to be concerned about protecting endangered species
even
if they are not cute or closely related to humans.
The most vital actions for wildlife conservation are (1) to cap global
heating and (2) to avoid increasing the human population. Global
heating will wipe out most species that live only in a limited range,
because that range will no longer be suitable for them.
Resistance to the last resort antibiotic,
colistin,
is developing in farms already.
Young supporters of the African National Congress marched on its
headquarters
demanding
that the whole leadership resign.
The ANC after Mandela has been totally disappointing.
Public defenders in the US are stretched so thin that many non-rich
Americans charged with crimes get
no
advice except "plead guilty".
Methane is
bubbling
out of the ground from melting permafrost in Belyy island.
It is unprecedented, but the danger is that it will become commonplace.
This is just part of how burning fossil fuels is
causing
disaster.
Air pollution from combustion
may
be contributing to Alzheimer's disease.
Protesters
carrying rifles appeared outside the home of Brock Turner in Ohio.
I find armed protests to be frightening. This group says it wasn't
threatening to kill Turner, but it is a step towards return to
lynching.
The idea of shooting a rapist in the act is absurd, since that would
never be necessary. For instance, anyone who was present at the scene
and determined to intervene could have made Turner stop without any
weapons. Just to confront an angry person, he would have found it
necessary to stand up.
Turner's punishment will continue for years, or perhaps the rest of
his life, since he has been put on the sex offender list.
That's another political issue.
After an organized gang of Irish teenagers beat up a gay man, the
Irish thugs
tried
to put the blame on him.
Most humpback whale populations
will
be taken off the endangered species list, as they have grown
considerably since the ban on whaling 50 years ago.
In this case, it may be safe to delist them, since whaling remains banned.
However, when wolves were delisted because their numbers in the US had grown,
that was the signal for several states to
encourage
hunters to kill them. This is likely to drive wolf numbers down
to the point that they will need protection again.
To prevent that, there needs to be an intermediate level of partial
protection.
The tyrant of the Maldives
threatened
to punish those who contributed to an al-Jazeera documentary about
corruption there, and thus intimidated the channel into not
showing the documentary.
The tyrant took power through a
coup
which ousted the elected president, who vocally championed acting with
dispatch to curb global heating. I therefore suspect that the coup
was organized by planet-roasters.
For a state to require a
special
visa for journalists is an injustice in itself. The US should set
an example by dropping that requirement.
Brazilian thugs
attacked
a large peaceful protest against the political impeachment of
Dilma Rousseff.
In 1970, a roomful of US soldiers who didn't know each other all
decided individually to refuse to stand for the national anthem, as a
protest
about how they had been used for injustice in Vietnam. The
article is written by one of them, an antiwar veteran.
The US has blocked Craig Murray, UK citizen, from visiting the US for
the awarding of the
Sam
Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence.
The US gave him no explanation, but it is hard to imagine any possible
reason other than his own inconvenient integrity.
Under
what circumstances is a famous person's sex scandal actually
significant?
Local Governments Are
Letting
Silicon Valley Skirt Public Disclosure Laws.
Protection efforts have
brought
several endangered species back from the brink.
That doesn't mean they can survive global heating, or a collapse
of civilization that could end organized protection efforts.
Germany is
proposing
to legalize massive surveillance even as an internal investigation
finds that its massive surveillance is currently illegal.
An estimated 750,000 asthma attacks each summer are
attributed
to burning oil and gas in the US.
Clapper says he is
investigating
the possibility that Russia seeks to cause chaos in the US
election in November by attacking computer systems.
That would be a very hostile act, but US and state governments have
been extremely irresponsible in adopting networked computers for
election purposes.
Turkey plans to subsidize
80
new coal-burning power plants.
This is almost an act of war against the rest of the world.
People in Indonesia connected with palm oil farming hired
100
nonofficial thugs to kidnap smog inspectors, who were taking note
of fires that were burning down forest to make more palm oil
plantation.
Australia
has
acted on 100 apparent tax law violators revealed in the Panama
Papers.
Thugs often
take
private jobs to work, in thug uniform, for some private employer.
Who are they supposed to "serve and protect" at such times?
13 million people in the UK are poor, and this is due to government
policies, which are
increasing
the number that live in poverty. But the British state could end
poverty by 2030 if it wanted to.
The Sydney city council has
voted
to divest from fossil fuels, and to pull hundreds of millions of
dollars out of banks that invest in fossil fuels.
Bravo! Other cities threatened by global heating should do something
similar.
The gender pay gap is not due to lack of assertiveness on the part of
female employees,
a
survey in Australia shows. Women there ask for raises as often as
men do.
Global heating in the oceans is already causing painful
disruptions
of sea life, in a foretaste of disaster that will develop over the
next few decades.
Asian typhoons are
50%
stronger nowadays than 40 years ago, due to global heating.
China forced 1/3 of the population of Hangzhou to go away as a way of
creating
a city with no one to interview other than the omnipresent
"security" as a bland and empty backdrop.
Connected cars
may
record personal information from the driver's mobile phone.
The article does not mention that it may have its own cell phone, which
means
the
phone company would track its movements.
Private thugs attacked the protesters blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline
by
throwing attack dogs at them, and with pepper spray.
The
"labor
question", how to assure workers get paid for the value of their
work, is connected with many of America's worst problems. Especially
since the plutocrats have been attacking the old solutions for decades.
The prevalence of bad employers that force workers to be independent
contractors complicates the labor question. Probably massive
technological unemployment threatens to complicate it even more. We
need other measures in addition to "help more workers unionize", but
we surely still need that.
Americans: Remember That Martin Luther King's Last Campaign Was
for
Workers' Rights.
Public criticism has
convinced
the AARP to stop supporting ALEC.
The French tradition of republican secularism is
being
distorted into a system of discrimination.
The loss of a satellite on the launch pad has not stopped Facebook's
attempt
to control internet access for users in poor countries.
Anti-radicalization campaigns in various countries fail, partly
because they are
based
on a false picture of who is likely to become an Islamist terrorist
and how.
It may be that a previous generalization of European Islamists
(typically not violent) developed out of more mainstream Islam.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are
quite
common in supermarket chicken and pork in the UK.
This comes from feeding antibiotics to masses of pigs and chickens,
and shows the urgency of prohibiting that practice.
Human population growth is already
starting
to overload the world's food capacity and fresh water capacity.
It is a very good thing to
have no
children, but we need to go beyond that and help reduce the
reproduction rate of other people.
The Italian state has
new
policies to urge Italians to have more children. What lunacy!
I sympathize with the criticisms given in the article, but they are
focused on secondary issues and avoid the crucial one. Italy's
birthrate, rather than being "too low", would be a big improvement if
the whole world adopted it. Decreasing population can cause to some
short-term dislocations, but it is easier to cope with those than with
the long-term effects of increasing populations.
Italy should present itself as an example for its low
birth rate.
Happy Labor Day!
There
Has Never Been a [large] Middle Class Without Strong Unions.
"It's time to reclaim Labor Day's
radical
spirit."
The article mentions the workers dangling from portable phones who
have little time they can count on not having to work. However, lots
of low-wage service workers have a similar problem: they can be called
to work a shift on short notice at almost any time.
To protect them, we should pass laws requiring overtime pay for any
shift that wasn't planned a week in advance. Also, these workers
should be entitled to declare time off in advance, whether for a day
or occasionally for a week, without worrying they might be punished
for not being available then.
I work every day … but that's ok since most of my work is
volunteer work anyway.
New,
forceful opposition politicians have gained seats in Hong Kong's
legislative assembly.
The elections to the assembly are
overtly
rigged, even worse than in the
US
House of Representatives, so there is no prospect that the
opposition can form a majority no matter how much popular support it
has.
Dalits and other castes despised by conservative Hindus have
held
a march to protest floggings, and plan a ceremony of conversion to
Buddhism.
One practical reason for the ceremony is that India registers people's
religions and conversion
requires
submitting a government form. Dalits have faced repression when
trying to do this, whether individually or in groups.
Korindo palm oil has been caught apparently
burning
forest in order to make more palm oil plantation.
Even when genetically modified crops are good in themselves, we must
not ignore the damage done by companies such as Monsanto that
permanently
subjugate farmers.
The efficiency of bt-cotton does not benefit all the Indian farmers
that grow it. A farmer always takes a risk that bad weather will wipe
out the crop. When farmers get loans to buy the bt-cotton seed, the
damage of loss of a year's crop gets worse. That
pushed
thousands of Indian farmers to commit suicide a few years ago.
Eastern Gorilla Now Critically Endangered Due to
Illegal
Hunting.
Australia's Climate Change Authority
weakened
its recommendations for the sake of "political feasibility" (i.e.,
bowing down to resistance from planet roasters in the governing
parties). Two members of the commission refused to sign the
recommendations, calling them inadequate.
When a real solution to a problem has no support in the legislature,
what should we do? The obvious approach is to advocate a change so
small that you might win it in a few years. The problem with this is
that it fails to show people why they should advocate anything bigger.
For a chance of a bigger victory in the long term, we must advocate
the larger change that we really want. (Or, in the case of global
heating, what we really desperately need.)
Fracking wastewater has caused many small quakes in Oklahoma. Now
the US Geological Survey is
investigating
whether it played any role in causing the recent strong and damaging
earthquake.
New Tory cuts
could
close most refuges for battered women.
Upend
the Tax Havens to Fund Clean Energy Revolution, says Friend of the
Earth.
Both of these steps are necessary.
Guber has organized in NYC something reminiscent of a company union
for its drivers, except it
isn't
even a union.
As insurance companies pull out of providing insurance plans in line
with Obama's medical care system, the system is
in
danger of failing.
The insurance companies are exploiting a systemic weakness that they
imposed on the system. Obama's original proposal included a "public
option" to compete with the insurance companies, but they lobbied
against it and
Obama
caved in. If the public option existed, the same insurance
companies could pull out but that would not cause such a problem.
The UN, in delivering humanitarian aid in Syria, is compelled to obey
strict limits set by Assad. This includes
routing
the aid funds through his cronies.
I don't blame the UN for this: I think its officials estimate that
they don't have the clout to make Assad back down from these demands.
Perhaps the US and Russia could agree that Assad has to change them.
Experts Raise Alarms as
US
War Hawks Push for Deeper Syria Intervention.
What makes this push especially dangerous is that it is supported by
Clinton.
Long before the US intervened directly, it
allowed
allies such as Salafi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to support Islamist
rebels
The quotation of Clinton's statement in the meeting in Riadh is from
this
State Department publication.
Washington DC has many private "special" thug forces that are
much
less accountable than the municipal thug department.
Contestant Sheena Monnin
reported
seeing proof that the Miss USA contest winners were hand-picked in
advance by contest owner Donald Trump. He sued her for ten
million dollars.
Family of Alan Turing to
Demand
Government Pardon 49,000 Other Men.
Russia tries to confuse Western political debates with
many
parallel currents of disinformation.
I've seen forms of this from time to time — for instance, articles
that claim Russia didn't take over the Crimea by force of arms, that
the Crimeans rebelled spontaneously and Russia just happened to
protect them.
This does not mean Sweden should join NATO. That is another question.
It also doesn't mean that the US is on the side of right. That is yet
another question.
Trump has
hired
for his campaign one of the architects of Corporations United,
which champions the cause to give corporations human rights.
The brother of Clinton's campaign manager (John Podesta) is
officially
representing Salafi Arabia.
This is not an isolated fact. It is part of a relationship that has
gone on for a long time. Salafi Arabia clearly expects to get things
from Clinton.
The FBI is
going
to try again to persuade the US to ban secure encryption. We are
supposed to let our guard down towards the biggest danger from fear of
secondary threats.
"State
spying helps to create extremists. My father was one of them."
With all other roads barred because he had supported fascism, his
father saw no path to anything except more extreme and focused support
for fascism.
For the board in charge of treating Puerto Rico like Detroit and
Flint, including cutting pension funds and medical care, Obama chose
four Republicans and three Democrats.
One of the Republicans has
campaigned
for privatizing Social Security. We can imagine what he will do
to Puerto Rico's pensions.
Obama showed his true party affiliation by gratuitously choosing more
Republicans than Democrats. And at least one of the Democrats is a
plutocratist.
Selecting employees through secret algorithms imposes
mysterious
prejudices as well as the predictable social biases.
No one verifies scientifically that the algorithms choose good
employees or that they reject bad ones. But they certainly reduce the
pool of choices, and for many employers, that's better than nothing.
A lawsuit in Germany aims to
block
the European Commission from imposing CETA on Germany without
waiting for Germany's ratification.
The US has
banned
some common antibacterial chemicals in soap.
Triclosan is dangerous because it is an
endocrine
disruptor.
Antibacterials in household products are also suspected of preventing
children's immune systems from developing properly, by denying them
experience with a range of bacteria. To avoid this, it won't help to
replace one antibacterial with another. Soaps and other such products
would need to be free of antibacterials.
More
countries must ratify the Paris climate agreement for it to take
official force.
I think that the US can't possibly ratify it this year, because that
requires the consent of the senate, and the Republican planet-roasters
won't give it.
However, what is worse is that the deal doesn't commit countries to
any minimum plan of action — only
whatever
each country decides to do. They
don't
plan to reduce carbon emissions enough to avoid disaster.
American blacks know better than to believe Trump would try to do
anything good for them, but they recognize he has a point when he says
that
the
existing power structure doesn't care about them.
I wish they had recognized that in January and voted for the one
major-party candidate who would have sincerely tried to fight racism
and inequality.
How to be at War Forever —
constantly
making "progress" but never winning.
To be fair, there have been some real victories against PISSI, such as
the recapture of cities. PISSI is first of all a state, and only
secondarily an underground terrorist movement; states can be defeated
militarily.
However, PISSI is the exception. Underground terrorist movements
are not defeated by killing their leaders.
People have been jailed in Russia for the "unauthorized protest" of
wearing
shirts
that criticized Putin's handling of the hostage-taking in Beslan.
I don't have an opinion about the events in Beslan, but it is an
injustice to punish people for expressing their opinions. Putin's
repression of dissent is not as harsh as that of the Egyptian regime,
but it is repression and wrong nonetheless.
Convicted sex offenders, as a class, are especially unlikely to repeat
their crimes, so the registration laws that
contort
their lives for many years afterwards are gratuitous harm.
By cutting those people off from society, their families, and work,
the registration system may increase the fraction that commit another
sex crime.
American
white supremacists love Trump's immigration speech.
The citizens of Oakland
blocked
a system for massive combined surveillance. They were aware of
how dangerous it is for the state to know everything.
Citizens everywhere need to realize that a state with such
surveillance power is more dangerous than any criminals or terrorists.
Some republicans in North Carolina
admit
that their voter ID law was for voter suppression. Amazingly,
they think that is legitimate; they say any party would do this, for
political advantage.
In effect, they have declared themselves to be unprincipled enemies of
the United States.
US citizens:
Call
for rejection of GMO Fuji Apples.
This petition has trouble when Javascript is disabled, but here is a
workaround for it.
After signing the form, you will need to replace the [URL] in the
provided page, including the square brackets, with the default domain
name, which is http://salsa3.salsalabs.com in this case. Copy this
edited URL into the address bar and visit it; that will make the
signature go through.
Note that 'URL' does not stand for some other URL. It literally
means the characters U, R and L.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to block the Dakota Access Pipeline.
US citizens:
Support
Colin Kaepernick's right to refuse to stand up for the US national
anthem.
Several
large Australian universities have divested from fossil fuels.
Milwaukee thugs blocked off a usual protest area, then
violently
arrested people merely for watching the events. Oops, one was a
state legislator.
The thugs must feel a little embarrassed, but they are brazen. Mere
embarrassment won't restrain them from abusing their power again.
Being jailed themselves might do the trick.
Amazon and Starbucks "pay
less
tax than a sausage stand".
Tax havens are estimated to deny governments
600
billion dollars a year in tax revenue, which is a large fraction
of what it would take to convert the world to renewable energy.
The Tories are
starving
the state school system. Many teachers are giving up because pay
is becoming too low. The remaining teachers have to work extra.
15% of Earth's land area is protected for wildlife conservation,
but
many
important ecosystems are not represented.
The deeper problem with wildlife conservation is that global heating
is going to mess up ecosystems around the world. Many species will no
longer be able to survive in the places where they are now protected.
Nauru told the Danish embassy that it
barred
some Danish MPs because they had criticized of Nauru's treatment of
refugees.
The question of who is morally responsible for what happens to
prisoners in Nauru is very simple. Australia pays Nauru to hold them
and subject them to rape, torture, injury and sometimes death.
Australia and Nauru are jointly responsible.
A Pakistani thug has been
arrested
for suppressing evidence and protecting the perpetrators of a
patriarchal murder.
Australians discussed the bloody elimination of aboriginals in
Queensland: a special thug department
murdered
tens of thousands of them.
I recommend The Other Side of the Frontier, by Henry Reynolds, for
an explanation of how this proceeded across Australia.
Clinton's Embrace of Republicans
Will
Harm Her Own Party's Future.
America's True Role in Syria … is
kept
secret from Americans.
Under Thatcher, a Tory, the well-off in Britain got a lot more income,
and
the
poor got nothing.
By contrast, under B'liar, the poor got more income, but the top 5%
got a bigger increase.
This confirms the point that New Labour worked mainly for the wealthy.
An
explanation
of populists: they say, "We represent the people, the real people
— because the real people are those who support us. All else,
shut up!"
The "revolving door"
tempts
idealless politicians in Europe just as in the US.
Vast marine "protected areas" may do little for conservation, since
most of area is far from shore, which means it
isn't
where most damage occurs, and will be hard to police.
They may be some help for species that live in the remote seas,
but they don't fill the big need.
Some 300 refugee minors now in France are authorized to live in the
UK, but the UK government
goes
to great lengths to keep them out anyway.
A
careful
explanation of the major injustices of TISA, a proposed
business-supremacy treaty that would yoke 49 countries to irreversible
privatization.
It could also indirectly permit foreign companies to sue governments
for any laws or decisions that limit the companies' income to less
than their wildest dreams.
A former ministers says that the Tories cut welfare for the poorest,
including public housing, because they
figured
this would weaken the Labour party.
Shame on the Catholic Church for
naming
parasite Mother Teresa a saint.
"I'm a journalist on the run from Erdoğan —
I
have no idea what I've done."
Clinton proposes a measure that
could
reduce the worst kinds of drug price gouging.
The US should permanently and universally legalize imports of
US-approved drugs from countries whose drug approval regimes are
reliable.
If the organization Our Revolution is to deserve and win broad
support, it needs to stand for clear and concrete goals, as Sanders
did as a candidate, and it
needs
to heed its base.
The dictator of Uzbekistan died, and the government
tried
to keep it secret for several days since his powerful cronies were
not sure what to do next.
Obama had already
resumed
military support to Uzbekistan. He continues the US tradition of
supporting dictators except when they get in the way of plutocratic
hegemony.
Anti-pipeline protesters
lock
themselves to machinery, expecting to be arrested.
The last US manufacturer of cluster bombs has stopped, but there are
still
plenty
of cluster bombs, doing plenty of damage in Yemen.
US Arms Makers
Invest
in a New Cold War. You can bet that their lobbying convinces
politicians and think tanks to say that a new cold war with Russia is
necessary.
Just because Putin does not respect
human
rights or
democracy
is no reason for a military confrontation.
Apple's scam: keeping cash outside the US, while
borrowing
money at interest in the US for its needs.
My
progressive
tax on corporations would put an end to that.
Brazil's new right-wing rulers have already started
attacking
public health and the environment.
Responding to apparent corruption by fossil fuel money, 35 candidates
for the Massachusetts legislature have
pledged
to reject campaign funds from certain fossil fuel interests.
I hope those companies don't negate the pledge by giving indirectly.
In Prison in Egypt, It's
Normal
to be Stripped, Beaten, Witness Torture.
A clinic tested 173 samples of street heroin and found that
90%
contained some fentanyl. Because fentanyl is much more powerful
than heroin, it often causes overdoses.
Overdoses are unusual when using heroin that is reliably made and
pure. That is why allowing addicts to get heroin from a clinic
greatly reduces the danger.
The people who die from heroin overdoses are casualties of the War on
Drugs. We should help that war get off drugs, so it will stop ending
and ruining lives.
Honduras's coup-derived government
continues
to permit murder of environmental defenders.
The army is
also
suspected of organizing the murders.
Tens of millions of workers in India have gone
on
strike for higher wages.
A sizeable fraction of India's population have comfortable incomes,
but the majority live in poverty just like decades ago.
The necessary long-term solution is to have fewer babies, but
redistributing some wealth is necessary in the short term and will
help encourage contraception.
A Malaysian minister acknowledged that the head suspect in a
giant
corruption case in the US is Prime Minister Najib.
Peruvian soldiers that massacred civilians have been
convicted
and sentenced to prison.
The Tories are flagrantly
selling
meetings with ministers. Aren't they obliged to resign for this?
In other human cultures, children learn to do a broad range of challenging
jobs by 5 years old,
without
being taught. It seems we are being overprotective.
New smartphones have a light sensor, separate from the camera. Web
sites can access that data to
identify
users and map their homes.
Browser developers should design them not to give sites access to this
data, or the battery charge, or many other things that help violate
privacy.
Get off WhatsApp now! Or you will be
pushing
other people to be used by Facebook.
Want Apple to Pay Its [US] Taxes?
Strengthen
US Tax Laws.
A woman in Illinois urgently needed her IUD removed, but
couldn't
get that done because her medical insurance was limited to
Catholic hospitals that refused to do it.
Hospitals should not be allowed to opt out of an area of medicine for
religious reasons. We should tell the owners of these hospitals to
change their rules or sell to other owners that will.
Business-imposed "wellness programs"
do
very little for employees' health. Their real purposes is an
excuse for businesses to cut the staff's medical care benefits by up
to 30%.
Nearly all models of car give less fuel efficiency than
reported by the tests. For some models, it is only half
the reported level.
1/3
less is a typical figure.
"Predictive policing" functions as a sort of
prejudice
laundering: a proprietary program tells the thugs to concentrate
in the places where minority groups congregate, but the prejudice is
hidden in the program so no one can be held accountable.
This, combined with thugs' tendency to jump to the conclusion that
blacks are guilty of something, leads systematically to injustice.
Angela Corey, "America's cruelest prosecutor",
lost
her bid for reelection.
11-year-old Brennan Hawkins was lost in the woods for 3 days. He
saw
people searching for him, and avoided them because he had been
taught to fear the mythical "stranger danger".
Teen pregnancy in the US dropped almost 1/4 from 2007 to 2012, and it
was
due
to using contraception more.
"Abstinence only" sex education is a
failure
in its own terms.
But even if it were a success, it would still be a gratuitously
harmful way to achieve the goal. It is cruel to teach people that
pleasure is bad.
The US intervention in Yemen (operated by Salafi Arabia) has
imposed
famine.
Although New Mexico has a law to prohibit theft by thugs,
Albuquerque's
thugs are still doing it.
The Albuquerque thug department is famous for
killing
people without justification, so the thugs must be shocked at the
idea they can't even steal cars.
Many US states put children in jail
when
their parents can't pay court fees or fines.
This seems to be part of the modern US practice of squeezing money out
of the poor, while letting the rich out of paying their fair share of
taxes.
Residents of Manhattan Beach, California, and nearby areas:
oppose
the plan for surveillance cameras to track all cars entering and
leaving Manhattan Beach.
"Georgetown University, which in 1838 profited from the sale of 272
slaves, will begin to award the descendants of those slaves
admission
advantages typically reserved for families of the Catholic
school's alumni."
Said descendants
insist
on being included in planning how this will be done. "Nothing
about us without us."
Apple says it will bring some of its billions of European cash to the
US, but this may be just a way of
pressuring
for a special "tax holiday" so they won't have to pay tax on it.
Politicians have been pushing that crazy idea for months. We need to
make companies pay more tax, not less. As always, they claim that
less tax and regulation will enable these "wealth creators" to "create
more wealth", hoping we will believe that they will let the rest of us
have some of it. What baloney!
Whatever companies offer us in exchange for reducing tax, it's sure to
be a bad deal for us if it is a good deal for them.
Panicky aerial spraying with pesticide naled killed
millions
of honeybees in one area of South Carolina. The authorities were
in such a foolish rush that they forgot to warn the beekeepers. The
beekeepers will sue, I presume.
This carelessness suggests that the decision to spray was not very
careful either.
Every shocking multiple shooting is
great
advertising for gun companies.
US military veterans are
posting
statements to defend Colin Kaepernick, who refused to stand for
the national anthem, against right-wing "patriotism".
There is nothing more patriotic in the US than to campaign for equal
rights and the well-being of all.
The FBI claims that every time someone looks at a photo of sexual
abuse of a minor, the minor suffers fresh harm. So
how
can it excuse distributing those images for months as a sting?
Wasn't this a bigger crime than the crime it was trying to catch?
If all we know is that a photo is prohibited, we should not assert it
is "child pornography". That may or may not be true.
We should not assume that the people appearing in those photos were
children. I suppose many of them really were children, but not all.
Surely some were minors (under 18) but sexually mature, thus not
children. Surely some were adults who looked like minors, or else the
photos were retouched to make them appear to be minors.
The US should close the
tax
loophole for bonuses for CEOs.
California, already short of water, gives extraction companies
permission to pollute certain aquifers, and it's
planning
to give more of these exceptions soon.
A killer thug has been
charged
with murder in Georgia. The state has repealed some of the
privileges that helped thugs get away with murder.
Although Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence was quashed, authorities
hope to kill him by
leaving
his hepatitis C untreated.
Publishers
Must Let Online Readers Pay for News Anonymously.
The impeachment of President Rousseff
leaves
the corrupt conservatives in control of Brazil.
US citizens:
demand an
end to laws that evict people for calling 911 for help.
Nude Selfies: What If They Are Just an
Ordinary
Part of Teenage Life?
In the UK,
2000
minors have been reported for "crimes" involving nude photos. We
must suppose that most of them either made the photos of themselves,
or received them from minors that photographed themselves.
(The article calls them all "children", but most of them are surely
teenagers, too old to be considered "children".)
I hope society relaxes and stops making a twisted fuss about nude
photos. As a plus, we wouldn't need to prohibit "revenge porn" if the
"victims" didn't care.
An
increasing
fraction of US parents believe vaccinations are "unnecessary" for
their children.
For diseases that infect only humans, it might be perfectly safe to go
unvaccinated if everyone you come near is vaccinated. Of course, that
is not what these parents really choose. What they choose is to
increase the population of unvaccinated children ready for an
outbreak.
Indonesia
faces
a challenge from violent Islamism.
It stirred up by years of
preachers
funded by Salafi Arabia.
Clinton intentionally supported the coup in Honduras, after the fact,
by
opposing
the reinstatement of President Zelaya.
This does not mention the argument that the US military must have
connived
at the coup in advance. Although the Secretary of State does not
control the military, the policy would surely have been coordinated
between the two departments.
The US military gave strong support to the Honduran military
in
the years following the coup.
Giving teenage girls a robot baby to take care of for a weekend did not
discourage them from getting pregnant. On the contrary, it
seems
to have encouraged that.
I suspect that a weekend isn't long enough to show them what a burden
it is to take care of a child. It could seem like fun, for just 3
days. If they did it for 6 months, day and night, while also trying
to do their schoolwork, perhaps it would teach a more realistic
lesson.
Liberia will allow a company to run some public schools, putting
teachers under
regimentation
redolent of the Amazon warehouse.
Teachers will be tracked by thumbprints, and their "every move" will
be monitored. No wonder they are talking about a strike.
Meanwhile, there has to be a catch. Who will these companies squeeze
money out of? They wouldn't participate unless they can squeeze it
out of someone.
Turkey's refugee deal with the EU has
fallen
apart; it depended on a subsequent visa deal that was never agreed
to.
"Pre-search" is a general
scheme
for circumventing the fourth amendment that prohibits unreasonable
searches and seizures.
The decline in level of union membership in the US means
lower
wages for employees in general, even those in jobs that were
non-union before.
The Trade in Services Agreement
threatens
to make every privatization permanent. The US would never be
allowed to set up a National Health Service, since it does not already
have one.
Aetna insurance is tremendously profitable, and would remain so if it
continued to participate in Obama's medical insurance system. It
doesn't have to pull out, but it
chooses
to.
Aetna's misleading PR doesn't end there — the article presents
more levels.
Lesson: don't let private insurance companies select the healthiest
patients. Set up a single payer system that will take the sickest
along with the healthiest, and which doesn't aim for profit.
US
states can now decide to keep the Common Core or repeal it.
Common Core
squeezes
literature to a narrow point of view: "What did the author mean"
is the one and only permitted question.
Calling on the Justice Department to
make
all US thug departments provide accurate and timely data about
their killings.
London thugs
intentionally
came down heavy on the Notting Hill Carnival.
Thugs searched some blacks because they came to look at the black man
who was kept in handcuffs after the thug said he wasn't accused of
anything. They searched others for no reason at all, except perhaps
trying to find some more-or-less harmless drugs.
African elephants are
heading
rapidly for extinction, because they don't reproduce fast enough
to make up for the rate of killing them.
Mylan has undone part of its price hikes for the EpiPen,
for
some patients only.
The EU has made its network neutrality rules more strict,
eliminating
a number of loopholes.
However, the new rules still allow ISPs to
interfere
with Bittorrent.
US citizens:
call for
ending use of privatized prisons for holding people that may be
deported.
Everyone:
call on
Google to stop running ads for phony abortion clinics.
We must stop manufacturers from limiting repairs to
"authorized
service providers".
The
Mbuti can protect their forests better than a Congolese state
human exclusion zone.
However, in a few decades, global heating combined with population
growth of the surrounding people is likely to overwhelm the Mbuti and
destroy them and the forest. When there are suddenly millions of
starving people desperate for some land, little can resist them in the
short term. It is essential to make sure those millions are not born.
Russian
crackers
are attacking US state election systems and have succeeded in
at
least two states.
These crackers didn't alter any data, this time. However, Republicans
are
systematically
challenging the voting rights of many individual Democrats.
The system pretends to check for people that are registered to vote in
two places. But its comparison is so sloppy that it often identifies
two different people as the same one. Nothing stops states from being
as sloppy as their Republican officials wish. Thousands of Jose
Garcias are likely to be purged, in those states where Republicans
want to purge Hispanic voters.
Old-fashioned
voter-ID
laws are still in use, too.
Australia's right-wing head of the environment committee
wants
to cut subsidies for solar power, and instead fund some sort of
long-range research.
More research can't be bad, but that's just an excuse to avoid
reductions in the fossil fuel sales. You can tell that that is the
goal because the man calls himself a "skeptic" (i.e., denialist). He
denies everything that real climate scientists know.
Microsoft is "embracing" various parts of GNU/Linux in a
bear-hug
of patents. Just which patents they are threatening companies
with is a secret.
Meanwhile, Microsoft
buys
itself keynote speeches in "Linux" and "open source" events, as
shallow propaganda.
The open source non-movement doesn't teach people why they should
regard this as dangerous. It does not say that there are principles
at stake, only
convenience. So they don't push back as they ought to.
When Microsoft releases free programs that do something useful in the
free world, they are legitimate contributions to the free software
community. But they do not compensate for Microsoft's aggression
against our community.
The campaign for abortion rights in Ireland is
gathering
strength.
Don't believe claims about
"superfoods"
— they are actually superstitionfoods.
The cleanup of Fukushima has cost
628
billion dollars, although it is still in the initial stages.
In 50 years civilization may collapse due to global heating's effects.
If the cleanup is unfinished, it may never be finished, and over the
subsequent thousand years some larger amount of radioisotopes may get
out and spread around a larger area.
Good jobs in the US are disappearing, and wages are going down in
absolute terms even as per capita production increases. We need an
automatic income for everyone.
Fortunately, evidence shows that
an
automatic income works well: people use it to improve their lives,
not to waste it on doping themselves.
I wonder, however, if we should tie it to use of birth control, to
bring about a decrease in population.
Torture victim Abu Zubaydah
pled
to be released from Guantanamo.
The officials who conspired to torture him are
the
ones who belong in prison.
67 Organizations Urge Justice Dept. to Improve
Data
Collection Mandate on Deaths in Police Custody.
Various Pentagon officials allowed staff or contractors to charge
lavish
personal entertainment expenses as government expenses, even after
they were warned to stop this.
It's wrong to charge personal pleasures to the taxpayers, never mind
what they are. Let's not make the mistake of thinking that a strip
club is worse than a symphonic concert or that a game in a casino is
worse than a game of golf or tennis.
A
psychological
experiment suggests that perhaps Americans overestimate the danger
of leaving a child alone for a while because they have come
to believe it is immoral for a mother to do this.
Of course, they derive the conclusion that it is immoral from their
exaggerated idea of the danger. The two ideas make an unsupported
irrational cycle.
Working single mothers would find it a lot easier to cope if they
could do as my mother did: give their children keys so they can
let themselves in at home.
The EU Competition Commission ruled that Ireland
gave
"illegal state aid" to Apple by charging it hardly any taxes.
This ruling means that Ireland is required to collect the missing
taxes.
Ireland chose to be a tax haven, which meant, in effect, choosing to
starve other EU countries of taxes they need in order to carry out
their missions. So it won't give up so easily. I think Apple and
Ireland together will look for excuses not to comply.
Meanwhile, the US
wants
to get some of the increased taxes.
Perhaps these taxes should be given to the countries they would have
been paid to if Ireland had not helped Apple dodge them.
Meanwhile, countries including the US should change the laws that
allow this sort of dodging.
As for Apple's claim that we cannot criticize it, because it obeyed
the law, that is morally bogus. We certainly can criticize actions as
nasty even if they are lawful — and even more so, when the actor
is a company that lobbied for the US and Irish laws that it "obeyed".
Nauru blocked a visit of Danish legislators
at
the last minute.
The visit was arranged some time ago, but once they arrived in
Australia, Nauru decided that a few of them were unacceptable. Rather
than accept this insult, they all refused to go.
Insurance companies demand that the G20 countries
end
fossil fuel subsidies by 2020.
If those governments weren't corrupted by fossil fuel companies, they
would end all fossil fuel subsidies next month.
In a thousand years, the Earth has never heated
as
fast as it is heating now.
Few
people want to be idle and collect a check; governments must stop
trying cruelty to the poor to "make" people work.
Those few people tend to be nobles or plutocrats — those are the
ones who, in the Virginia colony, had to be told, "If you don't work,
you don't eat." But they were brought up to think that way; it isn't
a natural human tendency.
The UK government is
going
all out to knock down wages and working conditions for sailors.
The decision to cut back on training Britons for maritime work makes
sense, since the government's plan is to hire foreigners for low
wages.
I suggest that foreign-flagged cargo ships be allowed to trade in our
ports only if they have made port in the flag country within the past
year. That will be no obstacle to the ships of countries that are
real trading partners, but will put an end to the "flags of
convenience" that enable so many ships to evade all sorts of labor and
safety regulations.
[Australian thugs] Using Journalists' Metadata to
Hunt
Down Whistleblowers.
The state of Victoria, in Australia, will
ban
fracking entirely.
This is a wise decision, which should be spread world-wide.
Erdoğan maintains the support of most Turks while
crushing
civil liberties.
I see one specific error in the article. Erdoğan did indeed
launch a pogrom against the Kurds, when he broke the truce which had
lasted for many years in order to boost his electoral results.
The article calls Erdoğan's practice a kind of democracy, but
it is closer to the ancient Greek idea of tyranny. Tyrants took steps
to win the support of most people, especially the poorer ones, but
they were ruthless against those who disagreed.
Erdoğan has
closed
another pro-Kurd newspaper. Surely not for participating in the
coup attempt.
The Tories
plan
to redraw electoral districts and might use this as an opportunity
for gerrymandering so that it can never be removed from power.
60%
of the groundwater in the northern Indian subcontinent is
contaminated and not safe to use.
A
progressive
tax on each person's total wealth, even occasionally, could help
reduce inequality.
Recovery funds for New Orleans were
directed
mainly at white inhabitants. 1/3 of the black residents from 11
years ago have not been able to come back.
I think it was foolish to rebuild New Orleans in the same flood-prone
spot while seas are rising. We should have moved it to high ground
where the city would be safe for a few centuries.
CETA
threatens
to bypass European food safety standards — just what
agribusiness companies in Canada want.
I suppose that the EU received a
"concession
in exchange", which would allow companies in Europe to bypass some
important Canadian regulations.
Everyone:
call
on the Harris County district attorney to resign.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats to cancel plans to pass the TPP in the lame-duck
session of Congress.
US citizens:
Defend
future car fuel economy standards.
The US says it is "unacceptable" that Turkey is
bombarding
the Syrian Kurds, not PISSI.
Erdoğan launched the offensive by taking Jarabulus away from
PISSI, but that was only a way of misleading people, and to get at the
Kurds on the other side of Jarabulus. Now that he can attack the
Kurds, I forecast that he won't bother with PISSI.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is
considering
ending use of private prisons to hold people facing deportation.
Argentina's right-wing president is
trying
to minimize the murders committed by the military government, in a
way that suggests they were not important at all.
The military regimes in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil
were secretly coordinated by the US, and they all claimed that their
victims were "terrorists".
Terrorism is bad, but it is small potatoes compared with an unjust
state. And we must take great care to stop governments from labeling
people as "terrorists" without proof.
With over 100 news sites and publications forcibly shut down, and 48
journalists arrested, Turkey effectively
no
longer has a free press.
Global heating effects
will
ruin half of today's coffee-producing regions in a few decades.
If 60 million people lose their livelihoods because we in the
developed countries burn too much fuel, how will we compensate them?
What will we do if they try to flee to the developed world?
We ought to provide them with reliable contraception now so that they
can at least avoid having babies they won't be able to care for.
A right-wing Russian politician
wants
to legalize domestic violence.
He previously championed a law to repress homosexuals. He apparently
advocates a very traditional kind of family consisting of a man, a
woman that he beats up, and children that he beats up.
A Pennsylvania man has been
imprisoned
for receiving nude photos from his 16-year-old girlfriend, and
will have to register as a sex offender, but "only" for 15 years.
The willfully blind law pretends there is no difference between
a teenager and a child.
Clinton's whole transition team is made up of
right-wing
Democrats that back invading other countries, bowing to the
banksters, and impoverishing most Americans. They support
business-supremacy treaties and privatization.
Clinton looks increasingly like another Bush, except on women's
rights.
"Rapidly developing technology exposes communities of color to
near-constant
surveillance and over-policing."
While campaigning for racial equality, we must remember that massive
surveillance is an injustice to all, and
threatens
democracy. Eliminating the racial bias in use of surveillance is
a misguided goal; we must eliminate the surveillance, too.
The US National Anthem Is a
Celebration
of Slavery.
The TTIP seems to be dead, as Germany says it
rejects
US demands.
Unfortunately, CETA is not yet clearly dead.
Europeans must mobilize now to defeat CETA.
Mariah Walton says, "I would like to see my parents prosecuted"
— for
denying
her needed surgery and condemning her to a life of suffering.
She is living (for the time being) proof that prayer is not effective
medical care.
I support your right to decline medical treatment for yourself, for
religious reasons. But not for others.
The German minister for control and repression
wants
to put facial recognition systems in airports, even train stations.
Pervasive state surveillance is more dangerous than terrorists.
Bangladeshi journalist Shafik Rehman is
in
prison with no formal charges. He might face the death penalty,
but he is likely to die from imprisonment before any trial is held.
The UK is concealing a study of Bangladeshi prison conditions, whose
release would probably put more pressure on Bangladesh to release him.
It's important to acquire general science and history
in
your own brain. Having the option to look things up (in
Wikipedia, or even Google if you must) is no substitute.
It is also important to avoid the mistake of equating internet search
with Google, or thinking of various web sites as "the cloud".
The war with separatists in Ukraine simmers along with
daily
skirmishes.
Experts Criticise
"Paternalistic"
Response to Schoolgirls' Sharing Explicit Images.
The concept of "slut" is not only sexist (since only females are
condemned in that way), it is also perverse (there are no grounds to
condemn anyone for liking sex). I have never used that word.
On the twentieth anniversary of Bill Clinton's "welfare reform",
we see that
twice
as many Americans now live in extreme poverty.
TANF stands for There Ain't Nothing Foryou.
In the Philippines,
Street
Justice Is No Justice.
Even mild head injuries to children
can
cause lasting mental problems.
The anti-Corbyn executives of the Labour Party are
purging
members that support Corbyn so that they can't vote for him.
Ortega is moving Nicaragua towards one-party rule by
interfering
with the main opposition party. This evil is gratuitous, since he
would probably have won the coming election fairly.
Ortega is also responsible for banning abortions in Nicaragua.
Uber's deficit was
over
$1.27bn in first half of 2016. A representative of Uber singled
out one of the company's expenditures (which Uber perhaps would rather
dispense with) as the supposed cause of the loss.
I hope you see that this claim makes no sense. A loss is caused by
the total of expenditures' exceeding the total income. No one
expenditure is responsible. If your expenditure exceeds your income
by $500 in a certain month, and you spent $500 on food in that month,
is it rational to say that your deficit was specifically due to food?
One could equally well say it's because you rented that large and
expensive apartment that costs you $5000 a month, when you could have
lived in another apartment that costs only $4500.
The reason Uber is running at a loss is that it charges too little.
The reason it charges too little is that its management is
intentionally running the company at a loss to wipe out the
competition.
Isn't that unfair competition? Uber should be prosecuted.
The Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro have saddled the city with a
permanent jump in surveillance,
on
the ground and in the air.
The rate of human use of resources is
increasing
much slower than the population and the economy.
This gives hope that if we cut population growth we could grow the
economy slowly while reducing our use of resources to a sustainable
level. But we have
quite
a ways to go to reach that point.
The Kurds in Syria have refused to pull back as demanded by Turkey, so
now Turkish bombardments are
killing
civilians in Syria.
U.S. Army
Fudged
Its Accounts by Trillions of Dollars, Auditor Finds.
The total error is more than the total budget, because the errors
overlap. Basically, they are falsifying so many figures that the
accounting means nothing.
It's absurd to evict hunter-gatherers from a wildlife refuge and then
invite in
diamond
miners.
Venezuela's right-wing opposition leader has been
arrested
and accused of planning violence.
The right-wing opposition launched a coup (endorsed by the US) around
15 years ago, but I doubt it would do that now since it seems likely
to be able to take power through elections. It seems more plausible
to me that President Maduro made it up.
The crucial requisite for success as an entrepreneur is to
start
with so much money (or your parents' money) that you don't need to
worry about what will happen if your start-up fails.
Fungicides are going the way of antibiotics: we have used them so much
on crops that they
no
longer work in humans.
The reason we can't preserve their effectiveness is that our
government cares more about agribusiness than about our lives.
Plutocracy can kill you.
Pennsylvania public health employees were
ordered
to ignore calls about illness possibly due to fracking, and not
talk with the callers.
Arguing that the closure of Gawker had nothing to do with
transgressions — rather, Thiel found a way to
bring
a lawsuit Gawker could not afford to properly defend.
He could destroy any other publication the same way.
Chicago thus' "predictive policing" predicts mainly who they are going
to harass. And that is a
self-fulfilling
prophesy.
Prosecutor Angela Corey has
prosecuted
children as young as 12 as adults. This means they are put in
solitary confinement awaiting trial, and if convicted of murder or
another grave crime, will have to spend many more years in solitary
confinement.
Sci-Hub, the
sharing
site for scientific papers, defies oppressive copyright law and
the scientific publishers.
Please don't repeat the publishers' propaganda term, "pirated".
Sharing is good; please join me in avoiding words that smear sharing.
Whether body cameras on thugs protect the people from them depends on
how they are used — and on
who
controls their use. Does the public have access to the
recordings?
New York's thug department has started keeping
all
information on investigation and punishment of thugs secret.
Children of the American Police State: what US public schools teach is
to
cringe
to arbitrary repression.
Joakim Eskildsen documented the
fiscal
and cultural poverty of disadvantaged Americans in 2011.
"I was sometimes thinking that I would prefer to be poor in Cuba than
in America, because there's a culture that is so present, even despite
the economic situation — there's another kind of life."
The Federal Trade Commission has
warned
Facebook not to take data from Whatsapp.
The problem with Obama's medical care system is that it
depends
on for-profit companies.
The NSA
twists
language so as to claim that certain massive surveillance programs
— PRISM, and snooping on fiber-optic cables — are
"targeted" surveillance.
More NSA
language-twisting.
We
Blight Children's Lives For The Sake Of Five Good GCSEs.
The root of this problem, I believe, is the shortage of jobs that pay
decent wages. There has to be some way of selecting those who will
get the few good jobs. Whatever it is, people will be
hypercompetitive trying to get it.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to end the offering of fossil fuel leases.
US citizens:
call on Obama
to do whatever he can to restrain price gouging on medicines.
Nike donates to a charity called "Girl Effect" to distract attention
from how it
mistreats
the women that work indirectly for Nike making shoes.
The US (and other wealthy countries) should make companies that sell
products legally responsible for the treatment of its indirect workers
no matter what country they work in.
Acclaimed Turkish novelist Aslı Erdoğan (no relation of
the tyrant) has been
imprisoned
for her political views, along with the rest of the staff of the
newspaper where she published her non-fiction.
Denied access to her medicine, she faces the threat of permanent
damage.
The Tories are going to cut welfare support for
250,000
children as an "incentive" for their parents (usually single) to
"find work".
It's "too dangerous" to let a third-grader
walk
across the school's field to meet her disabled mother in her car.
When I was in second grade, my mother didn't have a car; but if she
had had one, nobody would have expected her to drive to school to pick
me up. I just walked home, as did everyone in my school. It was only
five blocks, and there was a traffic light at every street corner
(since this was Manhattan).
On arriving home, I used my key to enter the apartment and enjoyed the
precious hours of solitude before she got home from work.
Clinton, as Secretary of State,
met
very often with donors to the Clinton Foundation.
One must suspect that their donations were, in effect, payments
for access to a high official.
Politicians leading the anti-EU campaign in the UK stirred up
racial
hatred.
Stingray Documents Offer Rare Insight into
[Thug]
and FBI Surveillance.
The Australian government is trying to persecute a leaker who
exposed
a waste of money, using special "national security" powers.
Eaten Fish, a cartoonist prisoner on Nauru, has received an
award
for courage from the Cartoonist Rights Network International. His
cartoons show what imprisonment in Nauru is like.
Colombia and the FARC have signed a
peace
agreement.
Now Colombia can face the even bigger challenge of dealing with a
much
worse terror group, the
paramilitares, which the article refers to as
"right-wing death squads".
The US government is
campaigning
in many ways to protect big companies from paying taxes.
Clinton, will you pledge to support the necessary measures to make
them pay a lot more tax?
People who live near frack wells are more likely to suffer
migraines,
severe fatigue, and persistent sinus problems. There is no
possibility that people vulnerable to these problems tend to move
where there is or will be fracking. It has to be that the fracking
causes these problems — along with asthma and prenatal problems.
To avoid global climate mayhem
we
need to leave 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground (as
well as all the now-unknown deposits). Let's include fracking in
that 80%.
Today's biofuels make
more
greenhouse emissions than gasoline.
The American Petroleum Institute runs
expensive
TV ads to convince people to support roasting Earth's ecosphere.
The planet-roasters' influence goes beyond ads. They have Obama
half-cowed,
too timid to acknowledge in Louisiana that fossil fuels caused the
unprecedented floods there.
Minnesota has
put
limits on pesticides that endanger pollinators.
Colorado is
considering
a ballot measure to approve single-payer health care.
Pakistani Law Could Enable
Sweeping
Internet Censorship.
Does the all-seeing eyeball make you feel
"connected"?
US Needs to Lead By Example on
International
Drones Agreements.
UK thugs refuse to say why they
pulled
three men out of a car and made them get down on the ground at
gunpoint.
Supposedly it was for some vague "firearms offense", but it can't have
taken long to determine that they were unarmed.
The thugs' human robot recited the official line as if it had
something to do with reality: "Officers follow the national authorised
professional practice, which define standards and tactics necessary to
maintain the safety of the public, the individuals themselves and the
officers."
Does "If you don't put that fucking phone down I'll blow your head
off" follow the "authorised professional practice"? Do they think
that a phone is a deadly weapon?
Rising Sea Levels
Threaten
Nearly a Trillion Dollars Worth of US Homes. That is about 2
million homes.
We can still stop it if we defeat the planet roasters.
Why it is
a
mistake to worry about the US national debt.
The problem the US faces is that government spending is too low. We
need the Green New Deal, which would boost the economy by funding
renewable energy. We could pay for the money through debt, but we
could also do it with less deficit if we make rich people and
businesses pay their fair share of taxes.
Worker-owned co-ops are an
alternative
way of running a business that does small service jobs for lots of
people.
However, in order to be ethical, it needs to offer anonymity to its
customers.
Massive
surveillance of the public can't be excused just because the business
treats its own workers well. I will never use Juno, any more than
I would use Uber, if I have to run a nonfree program to call for a
ride and/or let them know who I am.
Would anyone like to check whether Juno requires either of those
things?
The Dallas thug department has
changed
its policy of always waiting 72 hours to ask thugs why they shot
someone
Dallas seems to work pretty hard to reduce the thuggishness of its
cops.
The University of Chicago has
explicitly
rejected the idea of "safe space" and trigger warnings, for the
sake of academic freedom.
I read an article comparing trigger warnings to spoiler warnings, and
I think they are similar. Giving spoiler warnings is considerate and
helpful, but it is not a vital issue. No one is castigated for
failure to give a spoiler warning, especially not when any more
important subject is under discussion. Why not give trigger warnings
on the same basis, when it isn't difficult? But we must not grant
them more importance than that.
Many US cities have laws that stop unrelated people from sharing a
house. The result is to
drive
rents up and make it impossible for low-income people to live
there.
While I can understand that some people would like low population
density, we must give priority to the people who can't afford a place
to live. These laws, and zoning laws that limit the amount of living
units constructed, must go.
Neil Woods, retired undercover narc, found that the only long term
result of imprisoning drug dealers was that they murdered many junkies
they thought had informed on them. Meanwhile,
corruption
spread in the narc squad and was constantly covered up.
He advocates prescribing heroin for addicts, and legalizing all the
other illegal drugs.
Trump's campaign head has a
fraudulent
voter registration.
Maybe this is why Republicans make such a fuss about individual voter
fraud — because they practice it. (Note that requiring a
state-issued photo ID would not prevent this kind of fraud.)
US jails systematically trap poor women, even
more
so than poor men.
Indian women are standing up to feared harassment by
going
for unaccompanied walks in their cities.
Anna Neistat of Amnesty International says that that prisoners in
Nauru have
worse
trauma, in general, than people in the conflict zones where she
has worked.
The Tories have
cut
the UK's National Health Service to the point where it can't
continue, so now they plan big cuts and call it "transformation".
I've seen people refer to death as a "transformation", too, but that
doesn't convince me that I'd like to die.
The EpiPen "savings card"
won't
help most Americans that need them.
Mylan is
raising
prices on lots of medicines, not just EpiPen.
Fetal
exposure to PCBs correlates with autism.
Facebook bought WhatsApp and committed not to combine that data with
Facebook's other data. Now it is
going
to do just that.
For Facebook, any commitment is meant to be broken, after a delay for
people to forget about it.
In Honduras, reporter Ariel Armando D'Vicente has been sentenced to
years in prison
for
accusing a thug commander of taking bribes.
Old oil wells, made watertight, can be used for
temporary
energy storage.
Al-Baghdadi, now the leader of PISSI, was a prisoner in Abu Ghraib.
He was
likely
tortured by the Bush forces.
It's the clearest possible demonstration of how Dubya's crimes have
come back to haunt the US. We Americans should prosecute Dubya (and
his henchmen) for these crimes, not only because that will encourage
Iraqis to forgive the US for them, but because justice and our
country's honor demand it.
The Pentagon has lost track of hundreds of thousands of guns that it
shipped
to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I suppose PISSI got a lot of them in Iraq, while the Taliban got them
in Afghanistan.
The Burkini Ban Shows
How
Badly France Has Failed Its Minorities.
"French politicians should admit
beach-loving
Muslim women are allies in the fight against perverted [PISSI]
ideology."
Thugs in schools don't just arrest students and direct their lives
towards prison. They also
tase
them gratuitously in the process.
The EU may require encrypted messaging services to
decrypt
messages on demand.
The question is, what will happen when the software is properly
designed, so that the developers can't decrypt messages?
A thug
shot
and killed Daniel Kevin Harris for making gestures, which were in
fact sign language (he was deaf).
An explosion scattered radioactive waste inside the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant, and it will cost
nearly
a billion dollars to clean it up.
Where
have our school dollars gone? Gone to business, every one.
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.
Bangladesh has
arrested
a suspect in the murder of a secular publisher Faisal Arefin
Dipan.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, many people can't get enough food, partly because
they
can't
reach a grocery store.
In Texas, it is lawful to carry a gun in university campuses but
illegal to carry a dildo. Students are
protesting
by carrying dildos.
Sanders's new organization, Our Revolution, has been hit by a
management dispute: most of the employees quit because they
objected
to the chosen leader.
A rabid Trump supporter suggests that he in the habit of
getting
paid for votes, or at least considers the practice legitimate.
154
Australian scientists wrote to the prime minister calling for
curbing fossil fuel extraction before it is too late.
They
expect
him to ignore the letter, because he's a puppet of the fossil fuel
industry, but they have to try anyway.
Investigators
accuse Assad's men and PISSI of using chemical weapons in Syria.
People who appear to be Muslims or Arabs face bigotry that
manifests
as treating them as suspects based on nothing but readiness to
jump to a conclusion.
The same thing happens to blacks in the US, but they tend to get shot
for no reason, rather than pulled off an airplane for no reason.
Everyone:
call on
Enterprise car rental to quit ALEC.
Everyone:
call
on Mylan to cut the price of the EpiPen emergency allergy
treatment. At its new high price, people will die because they can't
afford it.
Here's
more
information.
US citizens: phone and urge your congresscritter to sign the
Lieu-Yoho-Conyers-Mulvaney
letter against the arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The Pentagon has admitted, and prohibited,
some
ways it used to spy on the antiwar movement.
As the EU considers whether
Apple's
tax dodging is illegal, the US threatens to "retaliate" if the EU
determines that it is.
The ironic thing here is that Apple famously keeps this money parked
outside the US so as not to pay any US taxes on it.
The US ought to retaliate by making European companies pay more US
tax; but that would require government by the people, for the people.
I expect our current government — by the corporations, for the
plutocrats — to do the corrupt thing: look for a way to hurt
Europe to make it keep Apple's taxes down.
Shame on you, Obama.
Baltimore's thugs are secretly using an airborne wide area camera
which enables them to
track
any person or vehicle's movements across the city.
We need to make it illegal for anyone, even the state, to carry out
systematic collection of images that enable such tracking.
The thugs say there was no "conspiracy" to conceal the airborne
surveillance — they just
didn't
bother telling anyone about it. Same difference.
They say people should not be concerned, because it's not different in
principle from their network of ground-based surveillance cameras.
That's true: those cameras should be eliminated too. We should not
allow anyone to systematically watch large numbers of people as they
go around the city.
George Lakoff: Trump chooses his words very carefully, even though
sometimes dishonestly, and
intentionally
communicates gruesome messages via hints he knows his supporters
will get.
A long commute
tends
to promote obesity.
Graduate students who work as teaching assistants or research
assistants in the US are now
allowed
to form unions.
I hope that adjunct professors unionize too.
The Theater of Security Agency suspected a child's external pacemaker
was a bomb, so they
searched
him all over and made the family miss their flight.
They said this was because he lacked a certain form that he had never
previously been asked for.
Bangladesh's proposed "cyber-security" law is actually a sweeping
censorship bill which would
imprison
people for stating certain unwanted views and opinions.
This resembles
what France
and Turkey have already done.
In France, repression as begun
against
women who cover their heads and arms and legs while at the beach.
Wearing a hijab is a provocation, like wearing a cross.
Freedom of speech (in the broad sense) includes the right to make
provocative statements. If you disagree, say something back.
However, that's not the worst repression here. Much worse is the
threat to punish people for posting photos and videos of the thugs at
work. Posting them is our only defense against whatever brutality
feel inclined to impose.
Foolish and Dangerous (and illiberal):
Europe's
Clothing Attacks Against Muslim Women.
This is ethically no different from Iran's clothing police that punish
women for not covering up as much as their oppressive
religion requires.
A century ago, a bathing suit like the burkini was illegal in the US.
It was
considered
too revealing.
Does anyone know whether the burkini is prohibited in Iran?
High Birth Rates And Poverty
Undermine
a Generation of African Children.
Ban Ki-moon
wants
information from the US, UK and Belgium to determine whether Dag
Hammarskjöld's plane was shot down.
Anthropogenic global heating can be detected in
measurements
from 1830.
Thugs in Newark ran after a child with drawn guns, and only a
human
chain of neighbors stopped them from killing him. The thugs said
he resembled a suspect they were looking for, someone who actually
looked nothing like the child — except that they had the same
skin color.
Some US high schools have special "homeland security" programs that
train
students for jobs imposing strict order on the US.
However, the security measures of the school itself strike me as even
worse. They are a lesson in subservience, ideal for a subject people.
The US has backed Turkey in
demanding
that the Kurds yield Manbij.
It makes me sad to see the US take the side of Islamist tyrant
Erdoğan against the secular libertarian Kurds.
Women imprisoned for a long time, awaiting a decision about whether
they can stay in the US, have temporarily stopped their hunger strike
because the prison thugs
threatened
to take their children away.
The prison is operating in violation of a court order not to hold them
for more than 20 days. Some have been jailed for a whole year.
This prison is not officially called a "prison". but that's what it
is.
Some Texas prisoners get half as much water as people normally need,
even though the
extreme
heat conditions inside the prison mean they need more than normal.
The heat can be deadly.
US citizens:
call
for protecting Big Cypress wildlife preserve from oil drilling.
Nine US national parks that are
likely
to be drastically changed in this century.
Zika damages fetuses' brains in many different ways. Even those that
don't develop microcephaly often have other
structural
abnormalities.
It may be too soon to know what effects those abnormalities have on
mental capacities.
Berkeley's tax on sugar-sweetened drinks
seems
to be working to reduce consumption of them.
Leading Doctor Calls Climate Change
Gravest
Health Threat of 21st Century.
Calling for Europe to send more election monitors to the US to
check
for voter suppression.
North Dakota has
cut
off water to the protesters blocking an oil pipeline that
threatens to ruin their water supply if it leaks.
That oil which does not leak will instead be burned, so it will
contribute to an even worse global disaster. We need to leave that
oil in the ground.
Likewise the oil not yet leased in the Gulf of Mexico, which if burned
would emit the
equivalent
of around 10000 years of operation for a typical coal-fired power
plant.
Obama visited Louisiana and
praised
FEMA's response to the floods. However, real leadership would be
to use these floods as an example to mobilize the country to build
renewable energy. Protesters understood this, as they
occupied
the office of the agency that does the leasing. "President Obama:
More Drilling = More Floods," they said.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a
long
backlog of species waiting years for an initial evaluation.
42 species have gone extinct waiting for protection.
I see the hand of business-dominated government at work.
As Wikileaks posts leaks en masse, not selectively, they often contain
private
information including people's medical records that are of no
political significance but can hurt people.
Wikileaks ought to make arrangements with the press to be selective
about what it publishes, as it used to do. This way of handling the
matter threatens to give all leaking a bad name.
UK MPs propose to
ban
plastic microbeads in cosmetics and toothpaste, because they harm
water animals.
New pun: Scranton again.
Half of the working women in the UK have been "sexually harassed",
using the
broadest
conceivable definition of "harassed".
The article equates "harassment" with "unwanted behavior". That
definition is too broad, because no one should be given the power to
prohibit absolutely any treatment that person considers "unwanted".
That is dictatorial power.
A study finds that constructing new nuclear reactors will tend to hold
back reduction of greenhouse emissions, by
sucking
up investment funds.
Donors to the Clinton campaign and foundation were able to get
meetings
with her for nasty clients, such as the coal company
Peabody
Energy and a prince from
repressive
Bahrain.
Under Erdoğan's protection, Gülen's followers infiltrated
and
took
over Turkey's military schools, and gained power in civilian
organizations.
This reminds me of
what
right-wing Christians did in the US Air Force Academy.
Non-Christian students organized to resist this.
Such religious influence is indeed dangerous. I hope Obama moved out
all the people in charge in he Air Force Academy, and ended the
pressure to be a fanatical Christian; does anyone know? It would be
legitimate for Turkey to do likewise with those who use government
schools to impose a particular religion.
But people should not be imprisoned for that.
As She Rakes in the Cash, Clinton Fundraisers
Still
Shrouded in Secrecy.
US farm policy encourages practices that are
wasteful,
and degrade land and water.
India is telling web users that merely
looking
at certain blocked web pages is a crime and threatening them with
three years in prison.
The UK government
refuses
to say whether it intervened to block prosecution of the officials
that turned over Libyan dissidents to Qadhafi to be tortured.
Mexican journalist Noé Zavaleta has been forced to flee
Veracruz by
threats,
after publicly criticizing the governor.
In Mexico, as in the US, people accused of minor crimes may be
jailed
for years awaiting trial.
Assad's forces are now directly fighting the Syrian Kurds, which
threatens
to lead to fighting between the US and Russia.
Climate mayhem is
already
hitting US national parks. As it gets worse, many are likely to
be changed beyond recognition or even destroyed.
US prisoners
trade
packets of ramen, because their food is so horrible.
125
years of records of Arctic sea ice show how fast it is
disappearing.
A leader of the Islamist extremist group that
destroyed
old mausoleums of Muslim saints in Timbuktu has pleaded guilty at
the International Criminal Court.
Malaysia banned a music video for supposed blasphemy, and the musician
has been
arrested.
I hope someone saved a copy of the original version, which apparently
was not intended to offend anyone. But even if it were, that wouldn't
change anything. Freedom of speech includes the right to criticize,
offend, insult or mock any person, any organization, any group, any
idea, any practice, and any belief.
Any person, group or organization that tries to impose repression on
those who would "disrespect" it is not entitled to our respect.
Iraq: Researchers Identify
Exposure
to Toxic Materials from Explosion of Munitions And Burning of Military
Waste by US Army as Cause of Birth Defects And Cancers.
Exercise,
for women and even for some men, has become an imposed impossible
beauty norm.
50 years from now, middle-class people will be able to buy pills to
get body shape they like. The fitness industry will become part of
the fashion industry, so each season a different body shape will be
fashionable.
Hundreds of thousands protested in Chile
for
pensions adequate to live on.
A WiFi router in your home
can
track individuals.
Make sure to convert your router to free software.
For Real Progressives, Jill Stein Is Now
the
Only Choice.
Developers seem to prefer code contributions written by women, when
they don't know the author's sex. But when they know, they are
prejudiced
against women.
An article
claims
that we exaggerate the hostility between Sunnis and Shi'a in Syria
and Iraq.
The comments say that the article leaves out a lot, but it may be true
that the two sects are not at each others' throats in Iraq as they
were 10 years ago.
Whitewashing
US support for the coup in Honduras and the subsequent big jump in the
murder rate.
Aetna's withdrawal shows the flaw in Obama's medical coverage system:
it was
designed
to depend on private medical insurance companies like Aetna.
Gender-based division of labor in marriage is
bad
for men and for women.
US citizens: call for an end to private prisons.
US citizens: call for prosecution of HSBC for its crimes.
US citizens: support the Pollinator Recovery Act.
Here is more information about it.
Hookup culture dominates US college campuses, but only around 14% of
students are enthusiastic about hooking up. Those who wish for a
loving relationship find that the very idea is socially unacceptable;
it is harder to ask for a date than to ask someone to have casual sex.
US national parks are under threat from a political system dominated by extractivist plutocrats.
The International Federation of Journalists condemned Israel for keeping
Palestinian journalist Omar Nazzal in prison without trial.
The US GDP is projected to be almost 1/4 less in 2100 due to global
heating. That is comparable to the great depression of the 1930s. However, global heating won't stop in 2100. Things will continue
getting worse.
Put this together with plutocrats' concentration of wealth, and the
impact on non-rich Americans is likely to be more than a quarter.
This will kill millions of Americans.
And much larger numbers of people in other parts of the world.
Governor McAuliffe of Virginia has restored the voting rights of 13,000 people previously convicted of felonies. He promised to do this for the other 200,000 disenfranhised people
in Virginia, but it is going to take time; some will miss the next election.
Republican policies amount to a war on the poor.
Joseph Stiglitz: Seven Changes Needed to Save the Euro And the EU.
However, this doesn't include the changes needed to make the EU a good
thing. To be a good thing, it has to be democratic.
Lots of French women want burkinis, and mostly not for religious reasons.
How Foreign Aid Became a Casualty of War: the UN agencies for
humanitarian relief have been integrated into making war, to the point
that locally targeted enemies fight against them.
The UK is going to cut its contribution to relief for civilians
affected by war, but not its contribition to affecting them.
Maybe teaching people about science is not the effective way
to defeat pseudoscientific superstition.
Sea Shepherd Will Keep Harassing Japanese Whaling Boats Despite US Court
Ruling.
Here's How Ferguson Has Kept Blacks off the Local School Board.
Teaching Americans about racist terrorism: The Equal Justice Initiative
investigates past lynchings to make a museum about the practice.
The word "terrorism" applies to lynching because these murders were
intended to intimidate blacks from protesting against the racist laws
of the South, and even from fully exercising the limited rights they
nominally had.
Turkey is helping some anti-Assad Arabs to capture Jarablus before the Kurds do.
Obama has sent a small number of US troops "temporarily" back to
Lashkar Gah.
I said, years ago, that the Afghan government did not inspire enough
loyalty to defeat the Taliban, and that the US could either keep
propping it up or let it fall. Perhaps Obama really thought it could
stand up without US forces. Or perhaps he wanted to let it fall,
but couldn't go through with it. In any case, the US once again
has the choice to either prop it up or let it fall.
Mexico's president learned to lie in law school: 29% of his thesis was plagiarized.
What the UN Must Do To Wipe Out Cholera in Haiti.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car has begun supporting ALEC.
I don't think it makes any difference that the support is
ostensibly about one particular issue. Any support for ALEC
makes ALEC more powerful.
US citizens:
call
on the FDA to get phthalates out of our food.
Everyone:
demand immediate release of the video of the killing
of Sylville Smith.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to ban export of tar sands oil by ship.
US citizens: call for taxing alcohol enough to
cover
the social cost of its use.
Australia is
sabotaging
UN efforts toward nuclear disarmament.
Liberals
need
to condemn the repressive aspects and varieties of Islam, while
refusing to treat Muslims as second-class citizens.
But that is not just for Muslims. Other religions have their own
oppressive
aspects and sects. We must not let any religion off the hook for
its oppression on the grounds that it is a religion.
Companies now want to
pay
to have mountains named after them.
Extra, extra! Trump makes a good point about Clinton:
blacks
can't hope for much from her.
However, that doesn't mean they should vote for Trump. That would
make as much sense as strapping on a big lead weight and hoping it
will make you float. Black Americans should vote for Jill Stein.
The military-industrial complex sees a bonanza in the
possibility of a new cold war with Russia, and
thinks
of Clinton as the road to get it.
It looks like Germany will ban face veils or masks in
certain
specific places, but not in general on the street.
For public offices, in court, etc., I don't have a quarrel with this
— but why, I wonder, do people need to see your face when you
are driving a car?
Photos
from a security camera show how the US abuses prisoners awaiting
deportation. 15 people were made to sleep in one cell, with no beds
or bedding, only mylar blankets (which don't keep you warm if they are
squashed against the floor).
Zoning laws are a
major
obstacle to building enough housing in the US.
Are Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon, Roger Ailes
Cooking
Up a Post-Election Media Empire?
That would make sense of Trump's actions, which seem more calculated
to build support for that business than to win an election.
The black ghetto in Milwaukee is a police state — all there is
for teenagers is
regular
harassment by the thugs.
Theresa May was going to act to reduce obesity, but
backed
down against the food corporations.
Inequality
is one of the causes of obesity, but Tories consider increased
inequality a sacred duty.
Even a Clinton landslide has no chance of overcoming
Republican
gerrymandering.
The American people no longer decide who controls the House.
Oracle is funding a pressure group that
demands
Google explain itself.
The cause is good, but should apply to Oracle too.
Low paid workers for a British bicycle delivery company organized and
defeated
an attempt to cut their pay. The workers of other companies could
organize, too.
US citizens:
call
for an end to use of private prisons for people facing
deportation.
Third Parties Aren't 'Spoilers'. They're at the
Cutting
Edge of Democracy.
How 'See Something, Say Something' Culture
Punishes
Innocent Muslims. Many Americans, when they see a Muslim,
perceive a terrorist.
The Department of Justice argues in court that it is
unconstitutional
to jail people for being too poor to pay bail.
Managers of France Télécom face prosecution for creating a work
environment that
pressured
employees to suicide.
However, this was just an extreme case of a general world-wide tendency
for work to become more stressful and cause more suicides.
The gradual disappearance of Arctic ice leads to
more
heat absorption and more methane emissions. We will soon have a
year where Arctic ice disappears entirely, and avoiding disaster will
be more difficult.
"Extinction tourism" in the Arctic
spews
lots of carbon that will hasten the extinction — of polar
bears, of Inuit way of life that depends on sea ice, and of the very
land that their villages are built on.
We need to see
Clinton's
speeches to the banksters, as well as Trump's tax returns.
Fear of wildlife is, in most cases,
more
dangerous than the wildlife.
An Irish activist is campaigning for abortion rights by
tweeting
about her trip to England for an abortion.
Whether a fetus is alive or dead, be careful not to call it a "baby".
That plays into the hands of those that wish to ban abortion.
Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Calls for
Climate
State of Emergency.
Congresscritters with special authority over banks get
more
favorable loan conditions, amounting to a corrupt gift.
How biased are UK media against Jeremy Corbyn? They
lambasted
him for not recognizing the names of some reality show hosts.
I don't recognize those names, either. Perhaps Corbyn, like me,
has better things to do with his time than keep up with trivial
details of things that completely don't matter.
Sanders' plan to make college education gratis would
remove
the major cause for increased indebtedness among working
Americans.
To fully end the increase in equality
requires
tax reforms too. Rich people get away with paying too little in
taxes.
Fire and flood in the US due to global heating have produced
100,000
climate refugees.
This is a foretaste of much worse to come, if we don't
defeat
the planet roasters.
Eric Ben-Artzi was offered 8 million dollars in reward for reporting
crime at Deutsche Bank, but he says he
will
give it to charity because the US didn't prosecute the top officials
who were responsible for the crimes.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on Massachusetts legislators not to shrink Monomoy National
Wildlife Refuge, a crucial rest stop for migrating birds.
US citizens:
call
on the Census Bureau to count prisoners for the places their homes
are, not for the where the prison is.
US political parties and campaigns collect so much data about voters
and donors that the possibility crackers will get copies of the data
is a
significant
danger.
I think this is a symptom of a bigger problem: campaigns have too much
data about people. That data can get misused in various ways. Even
the normal practice of campaigning suffers, because this invites
campaigns to say different things to different supporters, and
something else to the public.
Sanders and Activists Say DOJ Ban on Private Prisons
Doesn't
Go Far Enough.
That's true, but eliminating private prisons has to be done step by
step since various departments and state governments control the
decisions. This step could influence others.
Texas Republicans have
doubled
the maternal mortality rate by cutting funds for contraception and
prenatal care.
Boston thugs are
fighting
hard against wearing body cameras.
The wealth of the US doubled from 1989 to 2013, but the benefit
went
entirely to the wealthy. The median American gained nothing, and
the poor are generally deeper in debt that in 1989.
It is
illegal
in the US for Apple to void the warranty on an iThing just because the
user has jailbroken it, but the gutless FTC won't act to stop it.
Maybe users can start a class-action lawsuit about this.
One reason why it is necessary to jailbreak an iThing is to bypass
Apple's political and commercial censorship of apps. However, a
jailbroken iThing still trashes your freedom, and what you should
really do with an iThing is get rid of it, for your own
freedom's sake.
Strict reporting laws regulating distributors of porn now
endanger
anyone that posts sexually explicit photos of perself in the US.
When the NSA hoards vulnerabilities in widely used software, it
exposes
the users to attack by others as well as to attack by the NSA.
Some of the NSA attacks that were leaked by crackers are
still
effective.
The NSA
cracked
Cisco routers for many years.
Republicans want the US government to blind itself about how current
and planned facilities will be
vulnerable
to future global heating effects.
When I saw the new US courthouse in Boston, right on the edge of the
water and not very high above it, I thought, "What fools they are to
have built it that way. Don't they realize it's likely to be flooded
by 2100?" Apparently Republicans will advocate intentional folly
rather than acknowledge the facts.
Everyone:
Call on
Norway to allow Snowden to receive his prize there safely.
Guber's drivers recognize that they were
just
a stepping stone.
A very small victory for poor people in part of the US: state prisons
can't
demand they pay for their children's imprisonment after driving
them to bankruptcy.
Detroit
Ready to Sue Banks, Private Companies for Unpaid Property
Taxes.
Anarchist Group Installs
Nude
Donald Trump Statues in US Cities.
Maintaining the
Secrecy
of Ballots Returned via the Internet is "Technologically
Impossible."
"Ghost corporations" are set up to
disguise
the origin of donations to US political campaigns. Finding out
who really gave the money can take months.
Australia in 2001
seized
a Norwegian ship that had rescued refugees from boats, and forced
it to Nauru.
UC Davis Chancellor Katehi
spent
$400,000 of state funds trying to whitewash her net reputation.
PayPal
blocks
transactions if the word "Cuba" is used — never mind how or
why it is used.
Zephyr Teachout has challenged her Republican opponent's billionaire
sponsor to a
debate.
US citizens:
call on Obama to
cancel the coming Gulf oil auction.
Louisiana was badly flooded, due to global heating, and the more
oil we burn, the worse it will get.
Trump says he
"regrets"
some unspecified things he said, which "may have caused personal
pain".
I presume he means he regrets the statements that provoked replies
that caused personal pain for him, in a reversal of
Pseudolus's line that he is impervious to physical pain but "Not my
own!"
It doesn't matter what he means, because, as a bullshitter, he will
change his mind about it next week.
One more state has given domestic workers many of the
standard
rights of other workers.
The Democratic and Republican platforms are
belligerent
towards Iran.
Over 250 Sanders delegates to the Democratic Convention have
rebuked
Clinton's choice of nonprogressive Salazar.
In the United Arab Emirates, even sending someone the address of a
charity not registered in that country is a crime,
punished
by imprisonment.
This is one additional reason to refuse to go there, not even to make
a flight connection in the airport.
More than 10% of women giving birth in the UK have a
mental
illness associated with that.
The wife of deceased Chilean tyrant Pinochet is accused of stealing
properties valued at hundreds of millions of dollars
from
the treasury.
The "Independent Women's Forum" pretends to be "non-partisan,"
"independent," and "neutral," but its leaders privately say
that they are
right-wing
activists.
The UN has
vaguely
admitted its responsibility for bringing cholera to Haiti.
The Justice Department has
decided
to stop using privatized prisons.
Indigenous resisters against pipeline construction in North Dakota
don't
mind getting arrested.
Aetna tried to bully the US government into allowing a mega-merger by
threatening to pull out of Obama's medical coverage scheme unless
allowed to merge. Publicly, Aetna claimed it wasn't doing this, but
now there is
proof
that was a lie.
You wouldn't expect a megacorporation to tell the truth, would you?
The Koch brothers are
spending
a lot to defeat a South Dakotans ballot initiative for clean
elections.
As Clinton
Woos
Republicans, Sanders' Faithfuls Fear They Will Be Forgotten.
Lots of us understand she is no progressive.
Somalia has set up a program to
reintegrate
people who leave al-Shabaab.
California is considering a bill to
make
it a felony for a prosecutor to withhold or falsify evidence.
This seems to be a response to gross, persistent misconduct by
prosecutors in Orange County.
Such misconduct is currently a misdemeanor. I tend to think that the
prospect of being convicted of a misdemeanor would be enough to deter
prosecutors from committing this crime; but it seems they usually get
away with no penalty at all. Perhaps if it is a felony they will
really be punished.
Israel is planning another colony in the Palestinian West Bank,
which would
split the
West Bank into two disconnected parts.
This follows Netanyahu's strategy of making sure no Palestinian state
can actually function.
An Argentine judge is trying to investigate
the
killing of Federico García Lorca by dictator Franco's forces in
Spain.
Spanish courts shy away from this. A few years ago, Spanish friends
told me that Franco's supporters still had too much political power in
the right-wing party, which is currently in power again.
Bolivia Opens 'Anti-Imperialist' Military School to
Counter
US Foreign Policies.
The number of women in prison in the US is
rising
fast.
It could be a consequence of the spreading practice of jailing
people for habits typical of poor people, for having fines,
or for symptoms of mental illness.
In the 1980s, the MIT folk dance club performing group
performed in a women's prison. It appeared that a sizeable
fraction of the prisoners were taking medication.
The Australian minister in charge of abusing refugees claimed that the
leaked Nauru reports were phony — but Save the Children had
twice informed him and other ministers of the
same
spectrum of abuses.
Thugs can
take
your property (such as a phone or wallet) and call it "evidence",
then drop it into a bureaucratic limbo so that you can't ever get it
back.
Neocons retain their political influence in the US because the major
media
mostly
look away from the harm that they have done, over and over.
Policies
for land use and wildlife can reduce wildfires.
By 2084, if we don't curb global heating, nearly all cities will be
too hot
to hold the summer games. If a heat wave strikes, they would have
to be cancelled, and the risk would be too great.
The only candidates in the Americas will be San Francisco, Vancouver,
and Calgary.
But who are we kidding? With that much heating, the world will be in
such desperate straits that nobody could even think of holding a
world-wide sporting event.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to legalize federal funding for abortions in the US.
A new US rule will require newly built large trucks to be
40%
more fuel-efficient, as of 11 years from now. The require
increases will be applied in three steps, with the first step being in
2021.
This would be just the sort of thing we needed, if there were no hurry
about reducing CO2 emissions. But it fails to recognize
the urgency of the danger.
As Bill McKibben says, it's a real war,
not
just a metaphorical one, but he doesn't recognize that an
organized human enemy is waging this war against civilization. It is
led by the likes of the
Koch brothers,
Exxon,
ALEC.
the
US
Chamber of Commerce, and the
Heatland
Institute. Clinton showed her contempt for the issue by including
Ken Salazar, who resembles the anti-mobilization business magnates
McKibben describes from World War II, to lead her
"transition
team". Apparently she is planning a "transition" to a fried
ecosphere.
Progressive organizations had better start endorsing Jill Stein,
to show Clinton she can't take them for granted.
The US already bars people from visiting the US for
political
views such as advocating human rights and democracy.
Kuniyoshi Takimoto was wounded in the Battle of Midway. After World
War II, he campaigned against militarism. Now that Japan is turning
again towards militarism, he suspects that outside pressure is
why
a high school cancelled his speech.
US citizens:
call
for including more candidates in presidential debates.
Here is
background.
Everyone:
call on
Obama to push hard to provide relief to civilians in Aleppo.
The idea of "parenting" as a results-driven job that one has to do
with great care
tends
to crush children's creativity and spirit.
Tourists are rushing
to
see the Great Barrier Reef before we kill it.
Protests call attention to
the
crime scene.
About a billion people
will
lose their source of food in a couple of decades if ocean
acidification and heating continue. But the impacts of global
heating are not limited to the ocean. We have already seen crops fail
due to
heat waves,
droughts,
and
floods,
all of which will happen more often as drought heating goes on.
Billions of people are likely to lose their source of food by 50 years
from now — including you, if you are young enough to live that
long.
The rich planet-roasters must believe that their money will buy
protection, for their descendants and servants and guards, from the
billions of dying climate refugees, whose killing, at that future
time, is being arranged today by the same planet-roasters. In other
words, they are engaged in a scheme of mass murder for profit, what
Bill McKibben describes as a
war,
and they think their descendants will be able to use those profits to
lord it over what remnants of humanity they choose to save and reduce
to serfdom.
An empirical study found that body cameras
correlate
with a small increase in the rate of killings by thugs, especially
killings of unarmed people.
However, if the thug department studies the record statistically, that
correlates with a small decrease in the rate of killings.
I wonder whether these effects relate to the policy for when
recordings are made — for instance, whether the thug can turn
off the camera.
Nauru's president says that
leaked
reports of abuse of imprisoned refugees have been falsified.
Hey, president, why not
let
in journalists to make their own reports for comparison purposes?
Plants that live on cold mountains in Scotland have been
shifting
up the mountains, apparently chased up by other plants to global
heating.
Eventually they will run out of room to move up, and they will
disappear.
Some of these plants live in other lands further north. Are any
unique to Scotland?
Matt Taibi: The
US
major media are divided into Trump partisans that never criticize
him, and Democratic Party partisans that never criticize it. Neither
of those is honest journalism.
California is having
especially
bad wildfires this year.
Global heating has made the fire season almost 3 months longer. By
2050, the fire season could be most of the year.
Clinton's "transition team" will propose all her other appointments,
and its announced head, Salazar, is a
champion
of the revolving door.
We can expect all the officials he proposes to be pre-corrupted.
Vote for Jill Stein for president!
The Washington Redskins want a new stadium,
at
public expense.
We have to learn to say no to these extortionists.
Egypt has held about
500
protesters in prison for 3 years, awaiting trial on political
charges, while torturing them and making them watch the torture of
others.
Assad and Putin are
dropping
incendiary bombs on Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria.
Treating women as sex objects
interferes
with their activities. Men too can be treated as sex objects, but
it doesn't happen in a way that causes real problems for them.
Trump said, though not in so many words, that
people
like him should be blocked from becoming US citizens.
The US already has a very basic
ideological
test for those who wish to be citizens. The test seems legitimate
to me. There is no reason to welcome an immigrant that isn't
well-disposed towards the US constitution and domestic peace. But
note that Communist parties nowadays do not necessarily advocate
setting up a Communist dictatorship. I think that membership in many
of them is entirely consistent with support for the US Constitution.
I've suggested that would-be immigrants be required to make a
public
statement of support for certain human rights, including religious
freedom, as a visible rejection of the influences in their previous
country that might pressure them to oppose those human rights.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is
resisting
a pipeline that will endanger the water supply of millions of
Americans, while contributing to global heating disaster.
The Supreme Court ruled that thugs can
search
poor people at any time, provided they first stop the people and
discover they have unpaid fines. Since poor people in the US can't
afford to pay all their fines and survive, that approach will almost
always work.
The article also gives lots of other information about the systematic
injustice of the US legal system.
Gays Against Guns Activists Begin Campaign With
'Die-In'
at BlackRock HQ.
Muslims in the West face
continual
prejudice.
A Muslim woman's face veil, or even headscarf, is a statement of
endorsement of a specific religion. It's comparable to wearing a
cross, or a yarmulka. In all of those, any secularist can see the
seed of something that on occasion has grown into a dangerous
fanaticism, much as we can see in a stove or a candle the seed of
something that has devoured whole cities.
Field
surveys show that spraying oilseed rape with neonicotinoid
pesticides is in fact harming the kinds of wild bees that feed from
those flowers.
Argentina risks election fraud with digital voting machines, and is
about to
criminalize
investigation of security flaws in the system.
US presidential debates, controlled totally by the two major parties,
have become
twisted
in many ways.
Salafi Arabia
bombed
another MSF hospital in Yemen.
July set another monthly world heat record, being the
hottest
July ever recorded. It is the ninth straight month to set such a
record.
US citizens:
Sign
this anti-TPP petition also.
1/3
of New Zealand's children live in poverty. Right-wing politicians
have demonized the poor.
However, New Zealand workers launched a campaign against zero-hour
contracts, and pressured the right-wing parties so much that they
banned
the practice.
A persistent decline in snow in the Rockies is
causing
the dam-made Colorado lakes to shrink.
In a few decades, as drought gets worse, they may disappear, and the
dams become useless.
Portland, Oregon,
has
set up a school for children from families that don't have a
stable place to live.
It's a good band-aid for a problem that we ought instead to fix.
Three More Reasons
Why
[Europeans] Need to Stop CETA.
Thousands have formally quit the Mormon church in protest
against their
discrimination
against children of same-sex families.
Clinton shows that a female candidate can be
"just
as Machiavellian, just as ruthless, just as hawkish, just as corporate
and just as neoliberal as her male counterparts."
A methane leakage "hot spot" in New Mexico has been traced to
natural
gas extraction.
The US is having record floods again, this time
in
Louisiana.
Global heating has made floods bigger and more common, and the problem
will
keep
getting worse.
Salafi Arabia has
bombed
a clinic in Yemen
again,
with US support as usual.
Please
sign
the petition for Congress to block the arms sale to Salafi Arabia.
Milwaukee was on the verge of a riot, before Governor Walker
made
things worse.
Scott Walker is a corrupt Republican who
changed
the Supreme Court to stop an investigation of his corruption.
A mother was
horrified
to discover that she wasn't the only one snooping on her kids via
a camera in their bedroom.
The [US] Racial Wealth Gap Will Persist Until Neoliberalism and Its Peddlers Are Defeated.
The extent of inequality in the US, and the extent of poverty in the US,
are injustices even as regards whites — though they hit blacks harder.
Some errors in measuring and comparing ocean temperatures have been found,
and the result is that observations now agree better with climate models.
The US is supposedly required to release families from immigration prison in 20 days. Some mothers are on hunger strike after spending a year in that prison.
Note how the officials duck questions about what they are doing in the
name of "privacy". This is standard practice — indeed, it is amazing
how they discover the importance of respecting our privacy once
journalists press for information about how we were mistreated.
How can we defeat that excuse for stonewalling? I have two ideas.
Of course, officials can continue to stonewall despite these measures,
but they would lose the fig leaf that they now use to cover their
stonewalling.
Economic figures show that the Tories are stealthily but steadily privatizing the UK's National Health Service.
Australia criminalizes statements that offend someone based on race etc. There is now a push to repeal this law.
I agree that section 18C should be repealed entirely. It should be
replaced with a Bill of Rights.
US citizens: call on Congress to allocate funds for Zika and stop holding
its victims hostage.
Nearly every one of the unwanted immigrants that Australia imprisoned
in Papua New Guinea has been determined to be a legitimate refugee, fleeing persecution.
The International Criminal Court could prosecute the Australian officials
responsible for putting them there.
Marine heatwaves are happening more often, and this is messing up life in the sea and on the coast.
Social security's income is decreasing (in proportion to the GDP) as a
bigger fraction of income goes to the wealthy who are above the cap on
payments. Raising the level of the cap would fix the problem.
John Lott, a favorite source of "scientific" articles supposedly
demonstrating that guns are useful for self-protection, has been
exposed as a persistent liar and fabricator.
US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management to
cancel
all the 52 oil leases in White River National Forest.
Everyone: Tell Betagro to help the recently freed chicken-farming
slaves and check its whole supply chain to
free any others.
US citizens:
call on
Obama not to sell oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to block the arms sale to Salafi Arabia.
Trump is talking about
recruiting
people to try to intimidate voters in Pennsylvania. He seems to
be planning to accuse them of fraud, but really the fraud would be
his.
Clinton's adviser
gave
the advice: kill Russians.
Clinton insists she really really dislikes the TPP, but still
refuses
to help stop Obama from passing it in the lame duck session.
What this implies, for me, is that Clinton wants to see the TPP
adopted while pretending it was not her fault. In fact, she already
participated
as Secretary of State in getting it started.
The UN again
demands
Australia stop keeping refugees in prisons in Nauru and Papua New
Guinea.
A retired US Army officer says that the greatest threat to US national
security is the current perpetual war. He urges Americans to stop
idolizing soldiers and the military, and
urges
soldiers to report the injustice and corruption they see. (The
article also explains the many pressures that deter soldiers who
recognize wrongs from saying so.)
I agree, and I have refused to idolize the US military for as long as
this site has operated. That is why, for instance, I don't use the
term "gold star families". Captain Khan was an honorable
American—he's not the one that hijacked the US military to fight
an unjustified personal war. Trump did wrong to insult Khan's
parents, but we would make a mistake if we worship them.
The IMF's independent evaluation body has criticized the IMF for
participating
in abusive Euro-zone "bail-outs".
Many think tanks' are in the business of bias-laundering for
companies. The companies donate to the think tank, the think tank
does a study and publishes a report that is
slanted
to serve those donors, and the credulous media (which often
publish press releases with little checking) accept the report as
objective truth.
The Republican Party has for decades encouraged rabid right-wing
extremism while denying responsibility for it. Suggesting violence
against the state is a standard part of that. What Trump does is
bring
that rabidity into the heart of the party.
Zika has hit Puerto Rico
at
full strength.
Bangladesh Journalists Could Face
14
Years in Prison for Refuting Rumor.
PISSI's fighters reportedly took
2,000
civilian hostages while fleeing Manbij.
Muslim relatives of someone who is being radicalized may find it
useful to say, "Do you think that a gang that kidnaps people like us
as hostages is the model of Islam?"
A US air attack has
killed
the main leaders of the PISSI group in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I wish I could expect this to make a difference, but history shows
that killing the leaders of a guerrilla group means only that it has
to draw a new hand from the pack.
Baltimore thugs systematically mistreated women, sometimes accusing
them of prostitution just because of where they were, sometimes
ignoring
reports of rape.
Threatening to arrest women for "loitering" reminds us that the mere
existence of a crime of "loitering" is an injustice.
Although the Baltimore thug investigation demonstrates that the
accusations
of black residents are valid, residents doubt that local officials
will take adequate steps to change the cruel practices documented in
the report.
I agree that the administrative structure needs to be changed. Thugs
that lie or conceal evidence should be prosecuted, while thugs that
support other thugs in doing those things should be fired.
The US
needs
a national debate about austerity. A debate between Clinton and
Trump won't do the job.
People in the Florida keys distrust and oppose the plan to wipe out
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes locally with an
experimental
gene drive.
Using gene drive to wipe out a noxious species is potentially very
useful. It also carries imponderable risks, which might be small, but
it is not clear that we have done enough to be sure that is true. I
don't know whether we are ready to try the technique in the wild.
We could reduce these risks by including a way to deactivate the gene
drive. Here's one idea: make it depend on a promoter that detects the
presence of some harmless but unusual chemical which will disappear
from the the environment in a few weeks or months. We could strew
that around the experimental area, and continue providing it for as
long as needed, but stop if anything goes wrong.
All consequences considered, organic farming
can
be more sustainable than conventional.
Since many of the benefits are long-term and for society as a whole,
rather than for the farm in the short term, it is rational to pay
organic farms a certain subsidy for providing them. That would help
them increase and replace the farms that degrade the environment more.
But we should also work hard to encourage fewer births, around the
world. A population of 9 billion humans is not inevitable.
Implementing Obama's medical coverage law in Kentucky
improved
health care for people in that state. Now an extremist Republican
governor wants to make things worse again.
A South Carolina Student Was
Arrested
for 'Disturbing a School' When She Challenged Police Abuse, So We
Sued.
The root cause of this abuse was the presence of a thug in the school.
That's where we have to fix it.
A statement of The Movement for Black Lives is
being criticized for
describing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as "genocide".
I think that word is too strong. Israel is not acting so as to
destroy all or part of the Palestinian people.
However, when the same paragraph proceeds to describe the specific
wrongs of the occupation, it is accurate. Israel does
oppress
the Palestinians, and that includes
slow,
gradual ethnic cleansing in
parts
of the West Bank.
I wish they would correct that word, but the accuracy of the substance
is the more important point.
Shannon Morgan won a lawsuit against New Jersey officials who
refused
to give her a license plate saying 8THEIST.
Imagine if they rejected Christian-associated words claiming that
those are "offensive"!
Itemid Al-Mata was wearing a backpack and a face veil, so Chicago
thugs assumed she was a suicide bomber and manhandled her. They found
no bombs or weapons, so they
lied
to make an excuse to charge her with something.
A moderate sum, such as a thousand dollars, given at the right time
can save people from being homeless, which is
far
cheaper than helping them when they do become homeless.
The DEA uses spies inside airlines and Amtrak to find people they
suspect are carrying cash. Then agents
take
the cash, without charges or trial.
Accusing Clinton supporters of rigging the election by
stopping
young people from voting in Democratic primaries.
Ralph Nader supports passing a law to
bar
members of Congress from asking anyone for campaign contributions.
President Madison: No Nation Can Preserve Its Freedom
in
the Midst of Continual Warfare.
The EPA's advisory board said that the EPA's report on fracking (which
claimed fracking didn't tend to poison water supplies)
needs
to be corrected.
Everyone:
support
Amnesty International's pressure on President Erdoğan.
US citizens:
call
on federal judges to adopt a rule that they cannot accept gifts
from likely litigants.
US citizens:
call on
the Department of Education to protect students from commercial
college ripoffs.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to consider shifting funds from the military to
civilian needs.
Trump is quietly signaling the military-industrial complex that he can
be
as
militarist as Clinton.
Meanwhile, neither of them is concerned very much with
poverty.
They will probably both increase poverty, with policies that increase
dooH niboR.
A tape of a speech by Ayatollah Montazeri
proves
that Iran killed thousands of dissidents (and people who converted
from Muslims to anything else) in 1988.
What a shame that Khomeini was replaced by another cruel theocrat,
rather than by Montazeri who might have ended theocratic tyranny.
It appears that Assad's army
continues
using poison gas. The more this goes on, the more the idea of
chemical weapons may come to seem normal and acceptable.
However, it is hard to see how to punish Assad for this in the complex
situation of Syria.
A woman, who was in a peaceful protest in Baton Rouge when
the
thugs rioted, reports on what she saw.
The US has made it so difficult to survive legally without a
government ID that ex-prisoners can be
pushed
back into crime because they can't get one.
Elephants are on the
path
to extinction.
Tropical forest trees
depend
on elephants to disperse seeds. Thus, elephant poachers endanger
the whole forest.
One of the founders of Greenpeace has become a professional
greenwasher, now
working
to save Asia Pulp and Paper from condemnation for cutting down
large parts of Sumatra.
The US Registry of Copyrights is now
attacking
the rights of libraries and archivists.
Privatized US prisons are
more
violent and harsher than prisons operated by government staff.
It seems that the food and medical care are worse in the privatized
prisons, too.
US citizens:
call on the
US to condemn Duterte's murder campaign and cut military aid to
the Philippines.
Foreign women that join PISSI often regret it, but it is
very
difficult to escape.
We should invite those who do escape to give speeches about it rather
than putting them in prison.
Trump is un-American because he
attacks
the ideals that the US is based on.
Clinton
continues
to rebuff progressives.
The motto of US daycare, schools, and clinics when dealing with
children is to
assume
the worst about the parents. The staff are afraid they will be
punished if they don't do so.
Until this is fixed, it is inadvisable to have children in the US,
unless you are so rich that you will hire a nanny instead of using day
care and a private tutor instead of a school.
A guard at Australia's refugee prison in Nauru
knocked
a 5-year-old child down with a heavy blow, and the company covered
it up instead of firing him.
Cannes has
banned
Islamic bathing suits on the beach.
To me, this seems just as wrong as the attempts by fanatical Muslims
to ban women from wearing bikinis or from showing their faces.
Moreover, it is a clear case of punishing people because they might be
the targets of violence without actually doing anything wrong.
Human rights groups are
going
to challenge this.
Clinton's right-wing record started in the 90s with Bill Clinton's
welfare fraud, that
doubled
extreme poverty in the US.
Don't let the secondary issue of lies about secondary issues distract
you from that.
Workers at the Trump Taj Mahal casino are on strike after Trump's pal
Icahn
cut
their pay and abolished their pensions.
Trump said he might appoint Icahn to a cabinet position. He could be
even nastier than some of the
business
jerks that Obama has put
in
his cabinet.
If Trump wins, US workers will get the same sort of child care
services that Trump employees get:
fictitious.
Republican budget cuts are responsible for the
low
economic growth in the US since 2011.
Sad to say, Obama and the other right-wing Democrats didn't fight hard
against them. He made a deal which accepted the misguided goal of
"deficit
reduction".
The cease-fire in Syria
fell
apart in April due to an offensive launched by the US-supported
resistance in conjunction with al-Nusra (then still associated
with al-Qa'ida).
Exxon's ads
try
to distract people from its core business (roasting our ecosphere)
with lots of small side issues.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
New French
Pun: Bouddiste.
Warren and Whitehouse: Exxon Climate Scandal a 'Master Class' in Corporate Rigging.
Trump's real economic program seems to include driving wages down
for most Americans.
DOJ Report on Baltimore Police Is 'Stunning Catalog of Discrimination'.
Read the Most Blood-Boiling Parts of the Justice Department's Scathing
Report on Baltimore Police.
How Baltimore Police "Seriously and Systemically" Failed
Sexual-Assault Survivors.
(The word "survivors" seems like somewhat of an exaggeration.)
A thug shot a woman during a role-playing exercise. His gun was supposed
to contain blanks or non-injurious simulation shots, but instead it contained
a real bullet.
If the presence of a real bullet in the gun was not his fault, I can't
say he did anything wrong on this occasion.
The US "Priority Enforcement Program" is supposed to deport unauthorized immigrants who have committed serious crimes, but in fact half of the people
it acts on have no criminal convictions.
U.S. to World: Protect Dolphins, Whales or Lose Access to U.S. Seafood Market.
I support this policy — and I fear that the WTO or NAFTA will be used
as a lever to bully the US into cancelling it. Something like that
has already happened.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City is having a retreat. Protesters
booked hotel rooms in the same hotel, and the hotel cancelled them all arbitrarily.
This is manifestly corrupt.
Indian journalists face prosecution over an article accusing a Hindu
nationalist group of "trafficking" tribal children to indoctrinate them.
There is something fishy about that terminology, but this might be a
matter of kidnapping; that been done to indigenous peoples in many
parts of the world.
The law the journalists are being prosecuted under is patently
dangerous.
Freeing enslaved fishermen on boats that dock in South Africa.
"Trafficked" seems like the wrong word. It is not synonymous with
"enslaved".
Indonesia has started persecution of gays.
There is a broad Indonesian tradition of cross-dressing, somewhat
different from the US tradition, and it was surprisingly well
accepted. I speculate that we are seeing the influence of the repressive
preachers funded there by Salafi Arabia.
Obama is launching a last-ditch push to impose the TPP on the US during the lame duck session, and Clinton has not yet come out against it.
Obama said to think of Clinton as four more years of him. I fear it is true. So do many others.
Issa Saharkhiz, journalist in Iran, has been sentenced to three years
in prison for insulting the theocratic ruler of Iran.
Iran has a democracy, but the democratic parts of the state have no authority
over respect for human rights.
The housing crisis of Silicon Valley is so bad that a Palo Alto housing
official had to resign: she couldn't afford to live anywhere close enough to go to work there.
It's not enough for many people to know their neighborhood thugs.
Thugs should be held accountable for their crimes.
Bangladesh has jailed journalist Shafik Rehman for months without
charges. Perhaps because he champions freedom of the press.
Everyone: Tell Ivanka Trump, if you want to pose as a champion of working
women's rights, start granting family leave to your own employees.
Everyone: call on Facebook to stop censoring its useds at the requests of thugs.
By imposing century-long copyright on shapes of useful objects, the UK has carried out a preemptive attack on 3D printing.
I don't think people will hesitate to violate copyright law by printing
things for themselves. I fear there will be a big battle in the future
to remove DRM from 3D printers.
US citizens:
call on the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reject all proposed gas
pipelines.
US citizens:
call on
Obama not to end the ban on giving military weapons to thug
departments.
US citizens:
Call
on Kerry to oppose the removal of Brazil's President Rousseff.
Black patients face bias in the hospital: doctors are
less
likely to prescribe strong painkillers for blacks than for whites,
when they report the same level of pain for the same condition.
Aleppo doctors
beg
Obama to somehow stop Russia and Assad from repeatedly bombing
hospitals.
In the pervasive cruelty of Nauru, children are accustomed to
rape
and to suicide, and parents plan to carry their children into the
sea.
The private contractors (of course!) that run the Nauru refugee prison
cover up the situation by minimizing each incident. When doctors say
a prisoner needs urgent medical care, the government says no.
If Australia wants to avoid receiving many thousands of refugees, it
had better not try to cover up what it does.
A
defeat
in court for the FCC and municipal broadband; a victory for the
big (and often monopolistic) commercial ISPs.
Thugs systematically
arrest
and mistreat the journalists that make videos of their crimes.
It will take firm and reliable punishment to get through the thick
heads of these thugs and make them stop trying to terrorize people.
California wants to reduce the methane emissions from cows.
Unfortunately, the only way is to
reduce
the number of cows. If we want civilization to survive, that's
what we must do.
We can't keep raising so much cattle, and methane is not the only
reason. We can't grow feed for so many cattle, either. And it is
unhealthful to eat a lot of meat.
An American Airlines flight attendant harassed two Muslim passengers
who were complaining about being kept on the plane for hours with
little water. One took a picture of him, so he
kicked
her off the plane.
Hong Kong has started arbitrarily banning legislative candidates
because
they don't kowtow to China.
Even when they have a good medical plan, Americans have to pay
a
lot of money for even simple medical care.
Medicare for all would eliminate this.
Twitter
permanently
shut Luigino Bracci's account after he posted short video clips
that he took at the Olympic Games.
Investigating various means by which thug union contracts give thugs
impunity for their
crimes.
Now that many parents in the US routinely snoop on their children
digitally,
will
parents be punished for not doing so?
Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Opponents Should Accept That
Their
Failures Created Him.
When the B'liarites criticize Corbyn's imperfections, they are raising
secondary issues to distract from the primary one. A flawed leader
that heads for the right place is better than any leader that heads
for the wrong place.
If the Labour Party replaces its Tory-Lite MPs with people that want
the people's victory, rather than their own, it will develop many
leaders as ethical as Corbyn, and the members could then pick the most
effective one as the head of the party.
13
towns near St Louis are now being sued for operating debtor's
prisons.
How Trump's 'Populist' Economic Policy Hides a Payday for the Wealthy.
Call on Clinton to oppose a vote on the TPP during the lame duck session
of Congress.
Taxing greenhouse emissions can provide a base to help the lives of the non-rich and also rebuild infrastructure.
Certain toxic organic chemicals that never break down were released into the environment for years. Now 6 million Americans get them from drinking water.
A US investigation of the Baltimore thug department found systematic
illegal discrimination against blacks, including a pattern of gratuitous violence.
Just as Salafi Arabia resumes bombing Yemen, it is about to buy another billion dollars' worth of US arms.
The US Air Force participates directly in the bombardment by refueling the planes Salafi Arabia is bombing with.
A computerized vibrator snoops on its users through the proprietary control app. The app reports the temperature of the vibrator minute by minute
(thus, indirectly, whether it is surrounded by a person's body), and
the vibration frequency.
Note the totally inadequate proposed response: a labeling standard
with which manufacturers would make statements about their products,
rather than free software which users can check and change.
Dishonest mainstream politicians open the door to bullshitting "outsiders".
Shipping noise interferes with humpback whales' searching for food.
Agribusiness hires authors to write children's books that implant
a fairy-tale version of farming, to help them disguise what modern farms really do.
If Clinton wants to show she isn't Wall Street's pawn, she should
support a tax on financial transactions.
Trump hinted that gun nuts could assassinate Clinton if she is elected.
I have occasionally read obituaries with pleasure, when they are about
people who were doing continuing harm to the world and that harm was
ended by their death. People have a right to read Clinton's or
Trump's obituary with pleasure, or, for that matter, my own. However,
fomenting murder is going too far.
I will get pleasure from seeing Trump lose to a woman, if she is the
right woman: Jill Stein.
The UK's "environment agency" has been trained to close its eyes to persistent pollution.
Agencies that the Tories wish to kill, they first drive mad.
Billionaires experienced 5% economic growth last year. That's a lot more
than the world as a whole.
Canada has blocked hundreds of people from traveling to the World Social Forum, being held this time in Montreal.
The Chicago thugs that shot and killed Paul O'Neal as he was fleeing
appear to have turned off their body cameras intentionally, and then
celebrated.
Imprisonment on Nauru is driving refugee children crazy.
Ethiopia's dictatorship shot protesters in several cities
who
objected
to plans to take their farmland.
Ethiopia is
taking
farmland to give it to foreign corporations.
Trump seems to have been very concerned to change one part of the
Republican Party platform — to be
more
friendly to Putin.
I don't think the US should intervene militarily in Ukraine; that
would be playing Putin's game. Ironically, therefore, this seems to
be one of the few issues on which Trump actually has a sensible
position. But I doubt he has it for sensible reasons.
Trump
agrees
with almost everything neocons want, except a new cold war with
Russia.
But neocons say that Trump is a loose cannon and likely to do rash,
unpredictable
violent things if he were president.
By contrast, Clinton is likely to do
predictable
violent things, which neocons like.
Formerly secret files show that Kissinger undermined President Carter's attempts to get the Argentine military dictatorship to curb its killings.
Nagasaki Mayor: 'Come Find Out What Happened Under the Mushroom Cloud'.
As the Atlantic Ocean heats up, dangerous bacteria are spreading.
Sanders' political revolution has inspired many progressive candidates
to run for Congress and local offices.
The terrorist that shot people at a "Draw Muhammad" contest
had been goaded into action by an FBI agent who wanted to create
an excuse to prosecute him.
This is an unusual case. Most of the people that the FBI tries to
agitate into committing "terrorism" are incompetent, and the "crime"
they end up "committing" exists only in their imagination. This time,
the FBI was dealing with someone capable of acting, and the FBI
bungled it spectacularly.
The fertility of dogs has been declining annually since 1988.
Chemical pollutants are the suspected cause.
They affect humans, too.
Chinese fishing ships are depleting fish stocks around the world.
Think Tank Scholar or Corporate Consultant? It Depends on the Day.
Systems that are so complex that no one understands them are very
dangerous if anything goes wrong.
A thug beat up a woman and then told lies to incriminate her.
Unfortunately, he told them to the FBI, and has been convicted for it.
When thugs learn they are likely to be convicted for such lies, maybe
they will learn to be police officers instead.
Assange's advice to the Green Party: distrust the corporate media,
which will slant the news to attack Jill Stein.
Assange: Google's ties with Clinton would give it carte blanche if
she is elected. It would be a company that can't be regulated.
Violence And Displacements Lead to More Than 6 Million South Sudanese
Needing Humanitarian Assistance.
Mexico's president's wife
appeared to
be caught again in corruption.
It turns out that the apartment's owner is not a government
contractor. So this is not directly corrupt as first reported.
Despite (or because of) India's economic growth which has made many
billionaires, 500 million Indians have no access to a toilet
and are infected by diseases and parasites as a result.
Indian activist Irom Chanu Sharmila held a hunger strike for 16 years
protesting India's abolition of human rights in Manipur. She was imprisoned for some of this time and force-fed.
A new US regulation will require thugs to report all deaths related to arresting someone.
There's a sit-in in the office of Rep. Goodlatte demanding the House Judiciary Committee hold a hearing about the state of the Voting Rights Act.
A secretive Republican organization is paying people to follow Bill McKibben everywhere with cameras.
1/3 of Sanders supporters say they won't vote for Clinton.
President Correa: It's Neoliberalism, Not Socialism That Has Failed.
Assad's planes (or Putin's planes) bombed another MSF hospital.
The US attacked an MSF hospital in Afghanistan,
and its forces were too confused to call off the attack.
This was something to be ashamed of, but it pales compared
with Assad/Putin's repeated and clearly intentional attacks.
The Green Party has nominated Jill Stein for president, so I have endorsed her.
Trump announced a plan to cut taxes for the rich,
and as usual his bullshitting produced lots of falsehoods.
Trump is moving to standard Republican goals: tax cuts for the rich and fewer regulations to protect us from businesses.
Scottish thugs were ordered to pay damages to a journalist whose phone calls they listened to illegally.
Their motive for doing so was that he was investigating dishonesty by
the thugs.
A proposal to reassure Britons about the level of immigration
by giving everyone in the country a unique number.
They go for the most strained excuses!
The AARP has got millions of old Americans to join in exchange for
personal benefits, then
advocates
positions against their interest — including cuts in Social
Security and medical benefits.
It was also
quietly
supporting ALEC, the right-wing association of
businesses,
climate denialists and state legislators. In this way it betrayed
the interests of nearly all of the Americans that are members of AARP.
In response to a petition campaign, the organization said it would
not renew its support for ALEC. That is a positive step, but AARP
will have to do more to show it is worthy of support.
That organization used to be named the American Association for
Retired Persons, which was often abbreviated "AARP". However, it
renamed itself officially "AARP". I have a suspicion that this is a
way of distancing itself from its mission, making the mission
deniable. A name like "AARP" does not state a commitment to anything.
Some of Clinton's supporters are
accusing
everyone that opposes or criticizes Clinton of being a stooge of
Putin, in some cases based on falsehoods.
People who speak Arabic or appear to be from a typically Muslim ethnic
group face
systematic
harassment at airports in the US and UK.
It
takes
just 7 minutes to install the wrong software in a particular model
of US voting machine, and now people are starting to take the danger
seriously.
Some of us have been
warning about this for
years.
Voting on paper costs more, but don't you think honest elections
are worth it?
Finally, notice has been taken of the fact that airport expansion in
the London area is
incompatible
with climate target.
Waste of Resources Is
Biggest
Threat to Planet, Warns Scottish Environment Agency.
Here Are
7
Terrifying Charts That Show Exactly What We’re Doing to the
Planet.
California is considering energy use standards for computers and monitors
that could
reduce their energy
consumption by 50%.
Brutal repression of gays is spreading in Africa: Tanzania is starting
to
persecute
and censor them.
US farmers are
planting
wild prairie plants on some of their land to help it absorb
rainwater and remove pollutants.
It is useful that the prairie resists soil erosion, but I don't see
how it could reduce the rate of erosion on the land that is used for
farming.
60%
of the coral in the Maldives has been hit by bleaching.
An Australian senator says he will defy the census law to start a
test
case for privacy.
Israel will
exclude
foreigners that support the Palestinian BDS movement.
The BDS movement is nonviolent, but Israel is mobilizing its
supporters globally to repress it with
smears
and
partisan
laws.
Erdoğan and Putin are looking to upgrade relations to form
an
axis
of authoritarians.
Globally, Russia is not a superpower. While Putin can cause trouble
for neighboring countries, the US has no need to "contain" Russia and
it is foolish for Americans to think of Russia as a great enemy.
Meanwhile, the US alliance with Turkey is becoming more and more a
source of shame.
Several US states have prohibited colleges and universities from
limiting
freedom of speech to certain "free speech zones".
Israel has
more
than doubled its rate of making Palestinians homeless in a large
part of the West Bank (area C).
Defecting Republicans invite Clinton to shift her position in a
conservative
direction. I never believed that her
shift
to the left, to compete with Sanders, was serious.
A British woman was questioned by thugs because, in an airplane,
she
read a book called "Syria Speaks". Others in the UK
have been
imprisoned
there for having the wrong book. Politicians claim this is meant
to "protect" Britons from terrorism, but they are a bigger threat to
Britons than terrorists are.
Coca Cola Company has bought a monopoly of nonalcoholic drinks at the
Olympic Games, so in the athletes' quarters all they have are Coca
Cola products. Which means,
no
coffee.
Because of the
world-wide boycott, I never use
those Coca Cola Company products, including water, and I urge the
athletes to reject them too. I hope that at least
non-Coca-Cola-company safe water is available in their quarters.
AT&T charges customers more in exchange for making less use of their
internet connection records.
Comcast
wants to do it, too.
Let's be clear what is at stake here: true privacy, in which the ISP
does not check who the customer is talking with, will not be an
option. All customers will be tracked for Big Brother.
Meanwhile, a
Tor-based
ISP is designed to protect customers from tracking and censorship.
Don't throw the baby
(detente
with Russia) out with the dirty bathwater (Trump).
I disagree with the article's treatment of events in the Crimea.
Putin used disguised Russian troops that were supposed to stay in
their bases to conquer the Crimea, while
pretending
that they were not Russian troops. (He admitted the truth later.)
Since Putin
doesn't
allow free and fair elections in Russia, we can't give any
credence to the referendum he ran in the Crimea. It could be true
that a majority of people in the Crimea before Putin's takeover would
have preferred to be part of Russia, but a referendum run by Putin
afterwards is no proof of that.
And this doesn't change the fact that Putin conquered it militarily.
Trump's bullshitting exposed again: he saw some published footage and
claimed
it was an imaginary secret briefing showing an imaginary ransoming
of US hostages from Iran.
The US did return money to Iran after the nuclear deal:
money
that Iran had paid for US weapons that it never received.
Trump bullshits, not caring that it is unrelated to the truth, because
he knows that his supporters will say, "What is truth?"
If the US had ransomed those hostages, who would be responsible?
President Reagan. What President Carter did was
send
soldiers to free the hostages. The operation was
unsuccessful, but at least he responded courageously.
Reagan certainly ransomed other hostages later, taken in Lebanon by
allies of Iran. That's why I call him a traitor to his country.
Some argue that Reagan made a deal to get Iran to hold the hostages
until after the election.
Let's retire the idea that children are in danger on the street from
registered sex offenders. It has been scientifically disproved.
In some cities, there is almost nowhere that sex offenders can legally
live, because of the laws requiring their homes to be far away from
certain places children typically go. This is unnecessary trouble.
Australia banned a street mural showing Clinton in a bikini with hundred-dollar bills stuck into the clothing.
Australia lacks a bill of rights and fails to respect freedom of
political speech.
Federal prosecutors asked a judge to reduce the fine for a company convicted of lying to investigators about pipeline safety violations.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that refugees imprisoned
by Australia are attacked "on a daily basis".
On the difference between lying (as Clinton does) and bullshitting (as
Trump does).
US citizens: object to absurd charges against Chelsea Manning.
US citizens: Support the "Plate of the Union" initiative.
The commanders of the Israeli army still support some of the
humanitarian ideals that linger from when Israel tried to have
the world's most moral army. For instance, don't murder prisoners.
The trial of the Israeli soldier who murdered a wounded Palestinian
prisoner in cold blood has become an opportunity for the many rabid
Arab-haters to agitate to eliminate those scruples and make the army
as rabid as they are.
I fear that Israel will make the occupation ever more cruel and
murderous once the last restraints are brushed aside.
Journalists Speak Out Against Germany's Foreign Surveillance Bill.
State Department cables show that Clinton was directly involved in pushing for the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
The World Bank has officially rejected the idea that it ought to protect human rights in its lending.
As happens every four years, plutocratist democrats are saying that we
have to vote for their Republican-in-Democrat's-clothing or else a
worse Republican will win.
If we listen to them, we will never get anything better than
plutocratists.
Please don't call those plutocratists "Liberals". Clinton is no
Liberal, and neither is Obama. Liberals are people like me.
The Olympics are being used, around the world, to promote junk food with lots of sugar.
Trump supporters attacked a dissident, calling him "traitor" and trying to
rip his copy of the US Constitution out of his hands.
Russia's oil spills, mostly on land, sum up to twice the Big Spill each year.
The ACLU has forced release of the FBI's massive and inexplicable aerial surveillance of protests in Baltimore.
When employers require workers to be constantly tracked during work,
it can become a form of
oppression.
Americans in general have no interest in trying to increase the
productivity of work, because the benefits of such increases
go
almost entirely to the rich. So I think we should strictly
limit how such wearables can be used, and reject the idea that
"improved efficiency" can justify oppression.
The renamed al-Nusra
may
go on to impose Salafist or similar strict Islam on Syria, but it
may have a potential to become less repressive.
All Canadians' rights are in danger, when a comedian can be
fined
for calling someone "ugly".
The violent president of the Philippines has accused many local
officials and judges of complicity in drug trafficking, and has
cut
off their bodyguards.
Firing thugs and soldiers is legitimate. Investigating judges and
politicians, and perhaps subsequently prosecuting them, is legitimate,
given evidence. Putting them in danger of assassination is not
legitimate.
China succeeds in keeping out foreign service businesses by
harassing
them. The WTO can't stop it.
China does this for bad reasons, but there may be good reasons for
other countries to do likewise.
Clinton
Fundraises
With Frackers.
Unlike bullshitter Trump, who says whatever comes into his head at the
moment and may later claim he never said it, Clinton is a classic
lying politician who repeats a coherent system of falsehoods. I won't
vote for either of them.
Clinton has
rewarded
Rep. Wasserman Schultz for rigging the Democratic Party primary
process against Bernie Sanders.
Here's
detail
on one of the dirty tricks that Luis Miranda (in the DNC leadership)
carried out, trying to spread a false accusation about the Sanders
campaign while hiding its involvement.
Luis Miranda has resigned, but I suppose Clinton will reward him
somehow for his dirty work.
It is already too late to hold global heating to just
1.5C.
The UK
refuses
to admit it arranged to kidnap Libyan exiles and hand them over to
Qadhafi, or apologize for it, or apologize for lying about it before.
Trump's campaign web site is a scam: if someone has approved automatic
recurring payments, the site offers
no
way to cancel them.
That ought to be illegal; maybe the CFPB should take action.
Iraqi children's baby teeth show
high
levels of lead and other toxic metals.
These come from US weapons.
Women in low-paid jobs
can't
afford a child.
People in low-paid jobs should not have children. Children are a
luxury, and the world can't afford to make so many of them.
The Tories have forced the poorest people to pay local taxes,
and this leaves
hundreds
of thousands in penury.
A multi-ethnic secularist alliance led by the Kurds has
captured
nearly all of Manbij. This means
PISSI
has been cut off from Turkey, and can't get supplies or recruits from
there.
The Kurds and most of the other groups in this alliance are minority
groups in Syria. The next challenge for this alliance is to recruit a
lot more supporters; to grow large, it would have to recruit mostly
Arabs. Can the group grow that way while remaining secularist? That
would be a great development for Syria.
Danish society brings up children in a way that
makes
them live happier lives, but it's hard to do it the Danish way if
you're in the US.
The Olympic Games are a money machine that uses athletes to make big
profits,
whose
destinations are in many cases secret.
Israel says that the
Gaza
office of World Vision gave funds to Hamas for military uses.
The director of that office confessed after six weeks of being held
incommunicado. We have no way of knowing what the truth is.
To the UK state, a wedding is an opportunity to
deport
people.
Joseph Stiglitz has quit Panama's commission to investigate the
business secrecy system there, because Panama
refused
to promise to publish the commission's report.
Almost a million people in Virginia have suspended driver's licenses
because the state
uses
that to extract money from poor people. Many of them really don't
have money, so they drive with suspended licenses.
A former head of the CIA, who defended torture before, has
endorsed
Clinton.
The head thug of the state of Veracruz had to resign after it was
discovered that he had bought properties in the US worth millions of
dollars, which implied
lots
of hidden income.
This black woman, when she got a traffic ticket, was terrified: she
knew that the thug could murder her, lie, and get away with it.
Italy has followed France with laws to encourage farms, stores and
people to use leftover food.
Dinosaurs were not smart enough to prevent the global heating that
wiped them out. Are we smart enough?
In the US, children's exposure to lead paint poisoning is racially
segregated.
Arab members of the Israeli parliament expect that the new expulsion
law will enable Israel to put an end to Arab representation in parliament.
I can't understand why people make such a fetish of the corpses of
people who have died. When I miss friends who have died, the
question of what happened to their corpses hardly crosses my mind.
However, it is clear that promising to help relatives get the chance
to bury the corpses of dead terrorists is not "support for terrorism".
Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes, thousands of them, is
organized state violence.
The Palestinian-led boycott/divestment/sanctions movement cannot
hurt Israel directly. What it can do is puncture the myths Israel
uses to obtain world support for the occupation.
Obama will do anything to impose the TPP, and businesses are running
astroturf campaigns to try to elect legislators in favor of it.
Money is pouring into Super PACs via "ghost corporations" that disguise
where the money is coming from.
A bad Supreme Court decision gave US thugs near-impunity; all they had
to claim, to get away with any violent actions, was that they felt
threatened, and get some other thugs to say it was reasonable to feel
threatened.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing limits on
"payday loans" (short-term loans with high interest rates), but the
rules have loopholes which loan companies will use.
Some states have entirely banned these loans, with good effect.
Research finds that people who can't get payday loans general reduce
their spending instead — whereas paying the high interest of payday
loans would make them reduce their spending a lot more, over time.
Tinder users tend to have lower self-esteem.
We don't know for certain that Tinder causes this, but we do know
it is a nonfree program, which is enough reason to refuse to run it.
I've also heard that using Tinder has a prerequisite: being used
by Facebook.
Thousands of US military veterans have condemned Trump and call on
Republican politicians to reject him.
Big Pharma Plans Massive Ad Blitz to Fight Criticism of Drug Prices.
They spend their money on advertisements and fooling doctors,
or on research for drugs that alleviate (but do not cure) ailments
that lots of people have.
A Virginia thug was convicted of killing William Chapman,
an unarmed black man.
The copyright industry demands power over TV set-top boxes
in the name of the War on Sharing.
Why Say No to the TPP? [Because] Corporations Already Have Too Much Power.
With Clinton at Helm, Democratic Party Again a 'Plaything of the Super-Rich'.
Everyone: Call for referring PISSI's enslavement of Yazidi women to
the International Criminal Court.
If you have disabled Javascript, the petition may appear not to work
— but in fact it does work.
US Citizens: support these bills to limit lobbying and the influence
of big money in elections. Live up to the Promise of Democracy, Contributions and Expenditures to affect elections, We the People Act of 2016, Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 and Fair Elections Now Act.
US citizens:
call
on Kerry to tell Israel not to demolish the Palestinian village of
Susya.
US citizens:
call on
Trump to publish his tax returns, so we can see what business he
has with Russia.
Corbyn's
plan
for a fairer Britain.
When comparing Trump with Joe McCarthy, we should remember that each
of them was
elevated
by a vicious dishonest movement.
By the way, there are suggestions that Chambliss won his election
through rigging it with computerized voting machines, since
Cleland
had a big lead in the opinion polls up until election day.
Monsanto and Bayer
must
not be allowed to merge.
I think large companies should not be allowed to merge, period.
A new surveillance system is
designed
to determine the facial expression of everyone in a large crowd.
The possibilities for repression are endless.
An Australian has been imprisoned without trial in Singapore for years
for
posting statements on the internet that supported
PISSI.
Merely expressing an opinion should not be a crime, not even an opinion
in favor of PISSI. As a separate matter, imprisonment without trial
is an injustice, whether done by Singapore,
China,
Israel, or the
US.
Leaving the EU would allow the UK to reform farm subsidies
so that they
pay
landowners to protect nature and the environment instead of
paying
them to destroy it.
A group of thugs called the "skullcap crew" terrorized housing
projects in Chicago for years,
beating
up people who annoyed them, and received only praise from the thug
department.
We must punish the individual thugs responsible
when
the city pays damages on their behalf. And don't believe the
testimony of a thug, because they are habituated to what they call
"testilying".
Many middle-class Venezuelan women are choosing to get sterilized
because there is a
shortage
of birth control supplies.
They may regard this as a loss, but given the disaster that population
growth will lead to, I think it is good for humanity if more people in
all countries
choose to have
no more children.
It is already true around the world that "having a child now
[probably] means making him suffer", except for the rich
planet-roasters.
Three DNC leading officials have resigned
due
to the scandal of bias against Sanders.
Jeff Wood will soon be executed in Texas
for
a murder that everyone agrees he did not commit, because of
"accomplice liability".
The article argues that it is wrong to apply accomplice liability to
the death penalty. My position is different:
A UK fast food company arranged a phony meeting just to create an
opportunity to arrest foreigners working without legal permission.
The company was obliged to cooperate, but was it required to tell lies
for that cooperation's sake?
I have no objection to arresting and deporting foreigners who are
working illegally. If it is true that "no British person would do"
the same work, perhaps the company will have to offer a raise to
induce British people to do it. This might reduce some of the
fall in wages that the UK has experienced since 2007.
However, to stop these people from talking with their friends and
collecting their belongings before they are deported is a gratuitous
cruelty. At least let them call to ask friends to bring over their
belongings.
PISSI organizes large and repeated atrocities against civilians in Iraq.
The article calls on Westerners to "care".
I think we do care, but it is not clear what we can do to stop it. We
are supporting combatants fighting against PISSI in Iraq and in Syria,
but that can't be won by magic. It could be won faster by flattening
cities such as Manbij and Mosul rather than trying to capture them,
but that would mean a lot more civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, that victory won't immediately end bombings in Iraqi
cities. Sunnis have been planting bombs against Shi'ites in Iraq
since 10 years ago, long before PISSI. I don't know what anyone could
do to stop it. Dubya broke things in Iraq, and the US ought to fix them;
but if nobody knows how we could do so, pleas to do so are no use.
PISSI = Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Irag
At Democratic Convention, many Democratic officials see nothing wrong
in accepting donations from companies, lobbyists and PACs.
Of course, the Republican Party does the same thing.
The Democrats that think this is ok are the ones that won't help
make things less corrupt.
The head of Republican Women for Hillary, who spoke at the Democratic
Convention, was not just any woman. She is a lobbyist for the US
Chamber of Commerce, which fights against more or less everything that
would restrain plutocracy.
Her personal job is campaigning against the universal single-payer
medical system that Sanders advocated and that Clinton now opposes
(though she was in favor of it before).
I see nothing wrong in boasting of support from Republicans who can't
stomach Trump, but support from people in the US C of C is a sign that
a politician is on the wrong side.
Two Canadians led by the thugs to plant objects they thought were bombs
have been freed by a judge because it was a "police-manufactured crime".
The FBI manufactures lots of crimes, too, but it cleverly loses the evidence
to show that it did so.
The UK's NHS has been starved to the point where, out of 200,000
people with chronic hepatitis C, it will pay to cure only 10,000 a
year.
Of course, the World Trade Organization and its patent requirements
are responsible for making the drug too expensive.
I'm an NHS Ambulance Dispatcher And I Know My Service Is Failing You.
This is the predictable result of the Tory "bleed it dry, slowly"
approach to funding the NHS.
Linda Thompson was paroled out of prison against her will, which in
practice meant living on the street. So she robbed a bank and threw
the money in the air, just to get back in prison.
I wonder why she committed the previous robbery. Was she destitute
then too?
What kind of government makes life so bad for people that they are better
off in prison? In a prison that is likely to be a slave labor camp too?
Shame on the stingy rich people that control government in the US. And
shame on the politicians that cater them, including nearly all
Republicans and most Democrats.
Legislators that want to keep trans women out of women's bathrooms are
usually much less concerned about upskirt photography. This supports
the thought that they aren't really concerned for the non-trans women
in those bathrooms.
Those women do have a valid concern, which conflicts with the trans
women's valid concern. I am not sure what is best to do.
Men's desire to take upskirt photography puzzles me, because you'd see
many women wearing similar things openly on any beach. Perhaps they want
it only because it is prohibited.
Erdoğan has applied, to Turkish journalists, the US system of
arbitrarily labeling organizations as "terrorist" and making it a
crime just to be members of them.
The US did a great wrong to the world by legitimizing this tool of
tyranny in the "land of the free". Your bowling club could be labeled
"terrorist" tomorrow without a trial, and you could then be prosecuted
for belonging to it; the only question for the court to consider would
be whether you are really a member.
Whether an organization is labeled "terrorist" has sometimes become a
political decision, as in the case of the Mujahideen Khalq.
To label an organization as terrorist should require a trial.
James Lovelock, pessimistic, thinks humans are too stupid to curb
global heating before a disaster results.
He blames democracy for this, but I think he has it backwards. The
cause is that plutocracy has replaced democracy, allowing rich
denialists to block action. Exxon, the Koch Brothers,
and Transcanada
have corrupted our governments and our media.
So, are the planet roasters too stupid to end global heating,
or too callous toward everyone else?
Should I Stop Buying Clothes at Topshop?
Absolutely you should! Aside from the points in the article, recall
that Topshop itself dodges taxes, and was protested by UK Uncut.
Boycotting Mr Green's stores can punish him — take your business
elsewhere.
Some governments have adopted policies that substantially reduce
deaths and injuries from car collisions,
(Let's not call them "accidents".)
Trump claims there is a plan to rig the next election,
which is true. But he claims it's to be rigged against him!
As we know, Republicans plan to rig the next election through voter
suppression, using voter ID laws
and explicitly removing blacks from the electoral rolls.
Trump also suggested the US should compete with PISSI in vicious
treatment of captives.
Shane Bauer reports on Damien Coestly, a prisoner in the private prison
where Bauer worked as an undercover journalist. Coestly was considered
suicidal, and later did kill himself.
It appears that the prison covers up wrongdoing and does an inadequate
job of saving depressed prisoners from suicide. However, doing
"suicide watch" in the "correct" manner may not be a good thing,
because it is something close to brainwashing.
Should we consider the practice proper care, or torture?
Damien Coestly appears to have been somewhat crazy, but when he
decided to commit suicide rather than spend 20 more years in prison,
should we consider that crazy, or rational and sane?
A couple that worked in plastic factories, then opened their own, then
saw it close as manufacturing was moved to Mexico and China, now
support Trump.
What fools the voters who believe what Trump says he will do.
What fools the Democrats that voted to nominate Clinton.
The US needs to transfer spending from military to other uses,
but neither Clinton nor Trump wants to do that.
Military contractors have bought the support most members of Congress,
and given them a convenient excuse for that support by distributing
the work throughout nearly all the congressional districts in the US.
Congresscritters can simply say, "I support this military program
because it makes jobs in our town."
Clearly, their constituents would be better off if we spent that money
on something they could actually use.
Thugs in the Philippines have killed 700 people in the past three
months, without trial.
Supposedly they were drug dealers, or drug users. Maybe some of them
really did that. Maybe others didn't — the thugs could not know.
Besides which, is the penalty for using drugs supposed to be
execution?
The death penalty is wrong even when applied to someone convicted in a
fair trial.
New York City Thug Commissioner Bratton has resigned.
Bratton was responsible for very strict policies in New York City,
arresting people for small offenses and searching blacks repeatedly
on the street. He claimed this was responsible for the decrease in crime
of the early 90s, which however occurred all around the US,
and was clearly therefore due to other causes, such as the 1970s elimination of lead in gasoline.
Everyone:
call on Exxon to
drop ALEC.
US citizens:
oppose
bills designed to reinforce the impunity of the thugs.
A thug in Florida shot and killed a black man and
used
an unusual provision in the law to escape being tried.
The
legal
provision in question was not the "stand your ground" law.
The man killed was carrying an unloaded air rifle, and ignored
commands to drop it because he could not hear them. The thug claimed
he pointed the air rifle at the thug, but that claim is implausible
and we should not believe it. A priori, it is more plausible that the
thug made this up so to have a defense.
At a trial, this might have been brought out.
A thug in Toronto has been sentenced to years in prison for
shooting
and killing a teenager who was armed with a knife.
The court ruled that the thug was justified in shooting at first, for
self-defense, but that continuing to shoot once the victim had been
incapacitated was a crime.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to raise the minimum wage.
The US
proposes
to put Chelsea Manning in permanent solitary confinement, or
perhaps some lesser form of punishment, basically for trying to kill
herself.
Long-term solitary confinement drives people mad. But you don't have
to be mad to want to kill yourself when you've been sentenced to
prison for 30 more years.
Erdoğan has arbitrarily shut
over
a hundred radio and TV channels and printed publishers.
Taking shells from the beach
harms
the organisms that depend on shells. On a beach that many people
visit, this can add up to a big effect.
The UK's National Health Service is
cutting
back on some treatments for cancer patients.
Since the Tories do not give it enough money, it will be compelled to
let some people die who in the past it would have tried to save.
Terrorism in Western Europe is a
smaller
danger today than it was 25 years ago.
UK "grammar schools", which are supposed to help the most capable
students advance even if they are poor,
now
admit mostly the well-off. It is part of a larger system so
biased against the poor that a poor child must be exceptional in order
to do well in life.
This unfairness should of course be corrected, but just making the
selection for who gets a good life less unfair is only a step towards
fixing the problem.
The
state should give the poor more support, so that everyone can have
a good life.
On one site in Germany, the most hostile comments were
not
anonymous.
The Democratic platform's statements on foreign policy have
lots
of war talk and false accusations.
I am not a pacifist. I think that fighting PISSI makes sense, because
PISSI is a state: it
has
an army and controls territory. However, we need to end the drone
assassination campaign, which takes place away from battlefields in
the middle of civilian life.
Billionaire Polluters has renewed long-term sponsorship of several
prominent museums. Activists criticize the museums, because this
legitimizes BP's business and
helps
it win things such as subsidies.
To "really build and develop a partnership", as BP says it is "proud"
to do, makes the problem worse.
We need to
tax
these companies to support museums and lots of other important
things that need funds.
Russia could interfere directly in the US election by
cracking
voting machine security. We must change voting machines to stop
this.
Not only Russia can do this. There is evidence that the Democratic
primary in one state was
rigged
by manipulating voting machines.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to ban the "Enlist" pesticide combination.
Assange
timed
the DNC emails leak to hurt Clinton, saying that she is a known
enemy of freedom of the press (and Wikileaks), while he doesn't know
what Trump would do.
Trump says he
wants
to censor the internet.
We can't be sure he means anything he says, but we can hardly assume
he does not mean this.
George Monbiot: Sovereignty? This government will
sell
us to the highest bidder.
The minister in charge of new business-supremacy treaties advocates a
complete end to welfare for the poor, and worked with
ALEC
a few years ago.
MI5 admitted that rogue officers carried out searches about 20
prominent people with
no
apparent justification from their duties. The 20 people have not
been informed that they were targeted, and we don't know who they
were.
I am more worried about the thousands of searches that the officers do
for reasons that are officially approved.
MI5
systematically
resists legally mandated independent oversight of its bulk data
collection.
US agencies have developed
their
own ways to
make
a monkey out of laws
that are
supposed
to limit what they do.
Don't blame Sanders for
Americans'
reluctance to support another "centrist" Democrat.
The real political center, measured by Americans' views, is
to
the left of politicians like Obama and Clinton.
Trying to diagnose Trump as mentally ill is a bad idea.
Growing up bilingual helps children's minds develop faster in other ways.
Democrats that think it's fine to take money from plutocrats, and fine
to replace progressive votes with right-wing votes, will never make
America better.
US citizens:Congress, legalize marijuana.
Karzai said that US air attacks against the Taliban are bad for Afghanistan.
Australia has mostly cancelled the previously announced cuts in
funding for climate science.
Australians are resisting the census in reaction to the state's new
policy of retaining identifying data.
The FBI has caught a "terrorist" who is so retarded he can't even tie his shoes. The FBI guided him for at least 3 years into an action he believed was an act of terrorism. Why didn't it lead him in the opposite direction?
Another "terrorist" sent money to a friend (or rather, an FBI tool who
he believed was a friend) who said he had joined PISSI (against the suspect's advice).
Several Venezuelan high officials, and relatives of such, are accused
by the US of involvement in drug trafficking.
The people now running Venezuela seem to be corrupt and interested
mainly in power and money. Naturally, many Venezuelans want to kick
them out.
What is sad is that the likely replacements are corrupt in a different
way: they want to sell their country to multinational corporations and
would let the US government impose power over it. (Possibly some may
also be corrupt in the same way as the current rulers.)
The new leader that Venezuela needs is an honest libertarian
socialist, one that wants to fix the irrational policies such as price
controls, and encourage local farms and factories with profits, while
keeping the multinationals out.
Almost 15% of Americans have recently faced food insecurity.
Thanks to the Corporations United decision, there is now a manual for
any rich foreigners that want to donate to US political campaigns.
Many non-US-citizens have told me how unhappy they are that they can't
vote in US elections, even though the results affect them greatly.
But they can't use this method directly, because they are not rich.
Clinton's supporters imposed an appearance of unity during the
Democratic Convention by silencing and excluding Sanders supporters
and dissenters, and the media covered up what was left.
A secret Israeli document demonstrates the lies used to build one
of the first Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
If Israel can retroactively "regularize" houses that Israelis built
without permission on land stolen from Palestinian neighbors, it
should also "regularize" houses that Palestinians build without permission on their own land.
A new law in Israel bans mentioning the name of Israeli thugs or soldiers
that are accused of crimes against Palestinians. The purpose of this law is to give assured immunity to killers.
The soldier who murdered an incapacitated Palestinian suspect is being
prosecuted, but the leaders that encourage this sort of thing
are still in power.
Everyone: encourage Rep. Hank Johnson to keep raising the issue of the
Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
Palestinian prisoners of Israel, on hunger strike against imprisonment
without trial and cruel punishments, are subject to additional cruel punishments.
New York's Clean Energy Plan includes subsidies to keep nuclear power plants running.
Shutting nuclear power plants only to replace them with fossil fuel
power would speed us towards the climate cliff. What we must do is
shut them by building even more renewable generation and storage
facilities, or even more increases in energy efficiency (what Amory
Lovins calls "negawatts").
While Trump adores Putin, Putin is just using Trump.
The article shows, however, a real similarity in their approaches to politics: they
both bullshit to look strong.
US citizens: support the Automatic Voter Registration Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act.
US citizens: call on the US government to block the merger of Dow and DuPont.
Khizr Khan is the latest in a series of Muslims, lionized in the US,
who warned that US bombardment is making people in many countries hate
the US — but the US mass media covered it up.
Various
indications suggest that Russia cracked the DNC's servers and
leaked their internal emails.
But this is
not
a certainty.
However, it is a certainty that Trump and Putin support each other in
other ways, and that they are similarly autocratic. Trump has been
getting
a
lot of investment money from Russia for many years.
Given the way Putin has imposed control over Russia, this money must
be coming from Putin's friends.
No matter who leaked the emails, the real issue is the
dishonesty
of the officials of the Democratic National Committee, revealed by
them.
Olympic athletes and spectators have a
very
low chance of catching Zika, and need not be worried. Brazilians,
and other tourists, are at more risk.
It is good that the Olympics probably won't significantly spread Zika.
But they do
several
other kinds of lasting harm to the places where they are held.
Pokémon Go is a
harbinger
of the monopoly capitalism proclaimed by monster Peter Thiel,
which companies such as Google try to practice.
The article exaggerates when it claims that images on a phone screen
and reality will be indistinguishable. Most people will relearn how
to distinguish, because various forms of crime and misadventure will
teach them.
Meanwhile, some of us know better than to play such a game. I would
never even consider running the Pokémon Go game, since it is
proprietary
software which means it
tramples
the freedom of whoever uses it. I would never even consider
running the proprietary operating systems that it runs on, such as iOS
and
Android.
And I would never even consider tolerating the surveillance which that
game does, or the surveillance done by
any
portable phone.
If those injustices were fixed, I'd have no reason of principle to
refuse to the game. But I'd still have better things to do with my
time. Don't you? Isn't there some worthy cause you would like to
work for, if only you had time? Well, here's how to get the time: do
it instead of some other hobby.
The executives of more-or-less privatized UK schools are
living
a lavish life at the expense of their students.
Privatization tends to do this, and everyone knows it. The
politicians that advocate privatization pretend to endorse
mysterious
"efficiency" claims that turn out to be bogus. The way
privatization really generates income for owners and bosses is
at
the expense of their workers and the public.
A study shows that the natural gas extraction already planned for the
US would block the US from achieving its
CO2
reduction goals, which are
too
weak to avoid global disaster anyway.
The US proposes to
let
other governments subpoena data about people directly from US
companies.
The U SAP AT RIOT act already makes it
dangerously
easy for the US government to get data about Americans. This bill
would make things worse.
How the US meddled in the 1996 Russian elections.
Global heating will nearly wipe out the Adelie penguins, but according
to models some populations will remain.
Three DNC leading officials have resigned due to the scandal of bias
against Sanders.
The UK government proposes to discard information about failed companies
after only 6 years.
That would be very convenient for the owners of those companies.
Thailand will soon vote on a new constitution that would give the
military lasting power. Those who campaign for voting No face
10 years in prison if the military says what they say is "false".
George Monbiot: The climate crisis is already here — but no one's telling us.
Disney World wants to track customers by their feet.
When Erdoğan shuts a newspaper, he confiscates all its records. That means he can identify all sources listed in those records.
Even if the papers are someday allowed to reopen, it will be
impossible to undo this.
A Kentucky judge is facing punishment for rejecting all-white jury pools
for several cases.
An influential Tory, who was until recently in the House of Lords,
owns a bank in Belize that seems to have been set up specifically to enable
people to hide money from the US government.
A Palestinian youth orchestra visited England, but two members from Gaza
were missing because Israel would not let them travel.
School "reform" in the UK has created many "academies" and "free
schools" which generally have few disadvantaged or minority children.
Thus, they increase segregation.
Explaining the cruel and absurd new charges against Chelsea Manning.
Many US colleges have policies restricting freedom of speech.
A student was forbidden to distribute copies of the US Constitution
because he hadn't reserved the "free speech zone" in advance.
"Free speech zones" on colleges seem to be losing court cases.
Now we need to extend this principle outside of college.
Just recently the onerous and absurd restrictions on protests
at the Republican Convention deterred almost all protest.
Regarding "cultural appropriation", the concept is absurd. Imitation of others
is the basis of culture, and there is nothing wrong with imitating others.
If someone accuses you of "cultural appropriation", proudly say "Of course!"
There are some manners of imitation that amount to mockery or would
show you up as ignorant or foolish. You have a right to mock others,
but I hope you will consider whether they deserve it. You also have
the right to be ignorant or foolish.
Delaware's death penalty law has been found unconstitutional,
and the governor does not want to replace it. It is likely that this means one more state with no capital punishment.
An executive said that women in the advertising business don't reach
the top because they'd rather have a good life than compete
no-holds-barred for the top slot.
Maybe we should all learn from their wisdom.
Fast-Growing Corporate Evils That Should Be Media Issues...and Campaign Issues.
Dangerous climate records are being set all around the world, as sea
level rises, drought spreads on land, and ecosystems are driven awry.
Many children in the UK now go hungry, and repression is present in the
social institutions that enforce Tory austerity.
A Republican congresscritter has endorsed Clinton.
On the one hand, it is a good thing that Republican office holders
refuse their support to Trump. On the other hand, it was made easier
by the things that are Republican about Clinton.
"Virtual power plants" that shift between various sources, including
batteries and load reduction, reduce peak energy demand.
Russian News May Be Biased — But So Is Much Western Media.
Three bank executives in Ireland have been sentenced to prison for fraud.
The US government could do this, if it had a president that didn't
serve the banksters.
Billionaire school privatizers such as Bill Gates are campaigning to
replace a Washington State judge who ruled that the state cannot subsidize charter schools.
US citizens: call for an investigation of how AirBnB raises rents for
places to live.
The UK must legalize political protest that is visible enough to
have an effect.
Everyone: call for firing the thug that shot Charles Kinsey.
US soldiers that fled the occupation of Iraq are asking Canada for
definitive asylum.
Let no one accuse them of cowardice for refusing to join in an evil
act.
"Two recent reports on the state of the world's coral reefs appear to
contradict each other. But which is right?"
They don't exactly contradict each other, and the lesson from these
two studies is simple enough. To avoid an ecological catastrophe, we
must quickly curb global heating and protect reefs from local threats.
Alas, politicians that don't have the courage to do this
will invent many excuses for failure.
For inhabitants of the Rio shantytown of Complexo do Alemão, the
Olympic games mean repression by special units of thugs.
The infrastructure constructed for the Olympics is falling apart,
apparently badly built.
Using sports stars to sell sugar water: not good for people's health.
Some Chinese human rights lawyers seems to have cracked and "confessed"
after being held in prison incommunicado for a year.
Kuwait is raising the price of gasoline.
Nearly all countries should raise the price of gasoline.
Civilization's survival depends on burning a lot less of it.
Hundreds of millions of children alive today will suffer from hunger
or have to flee their homes due to global heating effects, before they
are grown up.
The far worse global heating effects of 50 years from now are likely to
kill many of them.
Protesters demand dismissal of NYC thug commissioner Bratton.
Methane emissions have increased since 2002, and US fracking is
probably to blame.
Methane has a very strong greenhouse gas effect, though it does not
last as many decades as CO2.
Jill Stein calls vaccines "absolutely critical" and therefore wants them to
be regulated by people who have no financial interest in them.
Why Do Democrats Keep Snubbing Atheists?
The answer is clear: because they take Atheists' votes for granted.
Sweltering heat in the Russian Arctic reactivated anthrax, which was
caught by 70 Siberian nomads.
The After School Satan Club aims to counteract proselytizing Christian
clubs in US public schools.
The Satan Club promotes rationalism and scientific critical thinking;
it doesn't actually worship Satan (or any other god).
The burger chain that tricked its staff into reporting for deportation
has been hit with protests: picketers outside, and lots of insects
inside.
The Tories have eliminated grants to help poor people to go to university,
replacing them with larger loans. For the moment, graduates will only have to pay those loans if they
get a sufficient income. But why wouldn't Tories change that too
in a couple of years? The Tories are lower than vermin, and we've seen
that they implement changes step by step so that each step is small.
The result could be a stratified society like the UK of 150 years ago.
Many models of diesel cars emit far more emissions than the official
tests indicated.
In Los Angeles skid row, constant harassment by thugs keeps down some
kinds of crime, but means street vendors can't have their addicted
wives come work with them (thugs pick on them too much).
Various Sunni anti-Assad groups say they have made progress towards
reestablishing communications with Aleppo. These groups include al-Nusra, which was until recently part of
al-Qa'ida.
Al-Nusra has broken formally with al-Qa'ida, but surely has the same
Islamist ideology as before. Does that make any difference? It might
become friendly with the West, in which case it would resemble Salafi
Arabia: still oppressive to anyone ruled by it, especially women, but
no longer directly advocating terrorism. This would remove one
obstacle to US support for coalitions including al-Nusra. Whether such
support in general is a good idea is a different question.
It has the option of rejecting terrorism against Shi'ites in the
region. This might show Sunnis in Syria and Iraq a preferable option
to PISSI.
Let's Talk about Tax as a Force for Common Good — or We Lose the Debate.
I am concerned about tax fairness. We should make rich people and
businesses pay the fair share, a larger share than now, which they can
easily afford. Then we can reduce taxes for the middle class and aid
the poor better. We can also invest more in making society work
better for everyone.
US citizens: call on Democratic leaders to oppose Paul Ryan's proposed
tax cuts for the rich.
A woman had a miscarriage and pleads for our sympathy saying that her "daughter died". Balderdash! She didn't have a daughter: a fetus is not a baby.
I am surprised the Guardian published this exaggeration, which is not only
ridiculous but dangerous to women. Don't they see that this legitimizes
the argument that religious extremists use to try to ban abortions?
For the sake of rights for billions of women, we must reject this plea
for sympathy. We could offer her some sympathy for her miscarriage,
if she ceases to package it with anti-abortionism.
Republicans want to abolish or neutralize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, because it is doing its job.
The US has begun bombing PISSI supporters in Libya.
As long as it is close air support, close to the battlefield, or
attacking military camps, I support the intervention, but Obama
should ask Congress for authorization.
There is a plan to eradicate goats and rats from an uninhabited island
in the Caribbean to save the native wildlife.
US law forbids a company from invalidating a warranty merely because
you opened the product or repaired it yourself.
Companies' collections of people's personal medical data are fueling the
development of secret algorithms that can treat people unfairly.
The article doesn't go far enough. Companies should not keep your
medical data in a form they can read, and when you do a search,
they should not know who is searching.
And your medical devices should make their data available directly
to you, and only to who you choose to allow to get them.
Corbyn proposes new laws to strengthen unions and prohibit zero-hour
contracts.
Companies will have to pay workers for being on call.
In some city governments run by whites, officials are systematically
challenging the voting rights of blacks, one by one, hoping that many
of them will give up and not vote.
Since this practice embodies explicit choice of their own power over
what the USA stands for, we can say that these people have declared
themselves un-American.
If a business won't accept cash, a few strong reactions can convince it to change.
So give them a strong reaction! Go in, and say, "I value my privacy.
Since you won't accept cash, I won't buy from you — ever." And
invite your friends to say the same thing in the same place.
These "Climate Inaction Figures" Celebrate The Politicians Destroying The Planet.
Arguing for banning SUVs.
UK workers today are treated as cruelly as in the first factories in
England, 250 years ago, because the business owners have won carte blanche.
Experiments with low-ecological-impact community housing.
A misogynist troll in Australia has been convicted of the crime of
sending offensive messages.
The things that the troll said are nasty and unjustified — the only
one they discredit is him. Their affect on my opinions of Ms Melville
and of Ms Newton is to inspire a certain level of sympathy for them.
However, to make this a crime, rather than something deserving of
reproach, is an injustice. Freedom of speech must include the freedom
to offend people, even intentionally.
The crime in question is limited to use of electronic devices. I am
not a lawyer and certainly not an Australian lawyer, but if this crime
was introduced as a new restriction for electronic communications, it
causes the transition from communicating in person to communicating
digitally to imply a loss of rights.
Tim Kaine is so nonprogressive that he wants to maintain the Hyde and Helms amendments which ban US funding for abortions.
In Armenia, a sort of uprising/protest has a lot of support for the resignation of the president, who is considered corrupt.
I visited Armenia a few years ago. It was a sort of Russian satellite
state, but Armenians seemed to appreciate Russia's support against
Armenia's principal enemies, Turkey and its ally, Azerbaijan. (Azeris
are ethnically closely related to Turks.) The Sassoun region was
under Turkish rule 100 years ago, and was subjected to the genocide;
no Armenians remain there.
Witnesses say that Ottawa thugs beat Abdirahman Abdi so badly while arresting him that he died shortly after.
A new concentrated solar power system stores solar energy as heat
and can dispense electricity later as needed.
Trump is an example of how Twitter is lowering the level of thoughtfulness of political debate. It is more of a playground argument than a debate.
Efforts to end transmission of HIV are failing because of social conditions where people (usually women) can't refuse sex or insist on using condoms.
US citizens: call on your senators to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling.
A wave of court decisions have overturned Republican voter suppression laws
in several states.
California is considering a giant floating wind power farm.
Scotland has eliminated the "right to buy" public housing, introduced
by Thatcher, which has created a terrible lack of public housing all
across Britain.
Australia has taken more action to discourage solar energy,
by cutting off the promised purchase of electricity from
homes and businesses. Whose pay are those politicians in? We can guess.
The Democratic Convention management unfairly managed the event to
favor Clinton, excluding Sanders supporters from the podium and
entirely excluding his volunteers (whom he was supposedly entitled to
invite) from the event at the last minute.
Gush Shalom maintains a list of products made in Israeli colonies
in occupied Palestine.
Gush Shalom can no longer advocate boycotting these products, because
Israel has made it illegal to call for a boycott of products of the
occupation — flagrant contempt for political freedom.
Since I am not in Israel, I can and do advocate this boycott.
Another casualty of thugs in schools: a 12-year-old boy who clowned in
gym class by burping was arrested and charged with a crime.
He was suspended from school for the rest of the year.
An important chain of stores in Britain has gone broke because its
owners pulled millions of pounds out of it, which it could not afford.
The workers are left without pensions as a result.
If Theresa May is serious about tackling cheater capitalist, here are
some suggestions.
Malaysia's authoritarian ruler has cut down human rights; he can now
declare insecurity areas in which people and places can be searched
arbitrarily, and thugs can kill them with total impunity.
Refusing the usual global heating denialist myths.
Purvi Patel's conviction for "feticide" has been overturned, but she
remains in prison for "neglect of a dependent".
Only a person can be a dependent. A fetus is not a person.
Republican voter-suppression suffered a defeat, as North Carolina's
anti-voting law was overturned.
It is possible to push back against the global sweatshop labor system
by deciding what to buy.
The full and complete solution is to make the front companies
that sell the clothing under their names legally responsible
for the treatment of everyone that works on the clothing.
Dareen Tatour is a Palestinian poet, formerly little known, who has
become internationally famous because Israel has put her on trial for
posting subversive poetry.
The supposedly criminal poem calls on Palestinians to "resist".
It is not specific about how. (Here is a translation.)
A free country does not prosecute people for stating opinions like this.
Assad has offered civilians in Aleppo "safe passage" out, but they
are afraid of being killed if they accept the offer. They also fear they will never be allowed to return.
The War on Pain Sufferers is hitting hard outside the wealthiest countries.
It is no accident that "wars" on crime and drugs provide an excuse to
vilify (and sometimes kill) blacks. Nixon and his men planned that
explicitly.
The NAACP has voted to oppose charter schools: they generally are not an
improvement.
The FBI tried to use a national security letter (secret PAT RIOT Act subpoena)
to investigate a Muslim political activist, not because of suspecting him,
but to try to force him to become an informant.
Prosecution of water officials in Michigan is focusing on the low-level
officials, not on the ones that gave the order. (I guessed it would be like this.)
On the Infantilization of Politics. The article relates it to short attention spans
and other causes.
New Zealand supports the poor so inadequately that teenage girls
skip school because they can't afford tampons.
The play, Bucket List, considers whether violent revenge is justified
for Mexicans whose lives have been ruined by NAFTA-fueled corruption.
(And other people in similar situations around the world.)
It seems to me that we can't rebuke the weak for responding with
violence to oppression when they are desperate. The stronger you are,
the more you are obligated to control yourself.
Fracking Hell: What It's Really Like to Live Next to a Shale Gas Well. The noise is a pain in the neck, but the fumes make some people
physically sick. And your home will become almost worthless.
Wikileaks made a serious mistake when it released a leak supposedly
containing documents from Erdoğan's party. It had no such documents,
but did have personal data about lots of Turks.
I agree with Snowden that Wikileaks ought to be more careful.
The latest pipeline leak in Michigan continued for three days
because the operators assumed the anomaly in their instruments was
nothing serious. They did not treat it as urgent to find out if
there was a leak.
Isn't that reckless?
Calling on the US government to stop issuing coal leases.
The European Union has copyright on furniture — and has just extended the
time span of this copyright by 50 years.
It is absurd to copyright furniture shapes, but at least they won't be
trying to stop individuals from copying them. That makes the issue
much less grave than the War on Sharing that is applied to books,
music, etc.
The article uses the confused and confusing term "intellectual
property law", which is an obstacle to understanding what copyright law says
as well as to thinking about what it ought to do.
Erdoğan has dropped charges on accusations of insulting him. However, he has made it clear that this does not mean he
respects freedom of speech more than before.
England's law requiring stores to charge for plastic bags has cut use
by 85%.
However, this is just a small fraction of the packaging we use.
How to reduce the plastic waste from other packaging?
Meet Some Sanders Delegates Who Plan To Turn Anger Into Positive Action.
Both the Democratic and Republican conventions used the Secret Service
for censorship of critical views.
An interview with Jill Stein, who I will probably vote for in November.
Lula will be tried for corruption, after a judge ruled there was sufficient
evidence for a trial.
We shouldn't regard dying in an unjust war as the measure of an
American's patriotism — not for Muslims, or for anyone else.
The Taliban are gaining ground against the US-supported Afghan state.
That state is too corrupt to win the loyalty required to defeat the
Taliban. The US can keep propping it up, but it will never stand on
its own.
The SWAT team of Pine Bluff obtained medals for "valor" for killing a
107-year-old man who refused to be removed from his house.
When the City Council found out about them, it voted to cancel the
medals, but the thugs refuse to give them up. I think Councilwoman
Thelma Walker put it just right — how could they be proud of such a
medal?
I wonder if perhaps they get some sort of benefit for those medals,
either more pay, or perhaps a contest of admiration with other thugs.
What Pine Bluff really should do is investigate whether it really
needs a SWAT team. In how many events per year is it used — and how
many events per year properly call for using it? Perhaps
they are so few that it would be cheaper to bring a SWAT team from
another city. It might be safer, too: they'd use a SWAT team only
when it is necessary, and that might save other people's lives.
Bernie's political revolution is not ending: we will continue the
struggle in many domains.
GCHQ snooped on Arab Spring dissidents.
We can only guess what it used that information for, but it would not
surprise me if they helped some of the regimes that protesters opposed.
Nine Michigan employees now face criminal charges for allowing
contamination of Flint's water supply.
I wonder if they include the high officials who ordered the toxic
decision.
A call to disconnect the Olympic Games from nationalism,
to reduce corruption.
"The IOC, Fifa and the rest are immune to criticism or accountability —
other than in the international press. They are tax-free cartels,
floating on a cloud of hyperbole and corporate sponsorship."
Protesters have occupied Chicago's Homan Square torture center
and demand that it be closed.
Clinton's prospective Pentagon chief proposes to defeat PISSI
by fighting Assad's forces (which means confronting Russian forces
directly).
The neocons have wanted to fight Assad since 4 years ago. They have
given various supposed reasons, but their lasting pressure must be
due to some other motive.
Salafi Arabia and Qatar are quite oppressive, and Turkey is heading
there. Not quite as bad as Assad, who intentionally bombs hospitals
— but does it make sense to support them in order to defeat Assad?
What would the anti-Assad "moderate" groups, some of which are
Sunni Arabs that hate non-Arabs and non-Sunnis, do if they win?
The only alternative to genocide or massive ethnic cleansing in Syria
is to divide it up. What will lead to a stable division with the
least fighting and least atrocity? I don't think that they are asking
that question.
ACLU Supports State of Utah in Legal Showdown With DEA Over Medical
Privacy.
Bubbles of air in Antarctic ice cores show that increases in air temperature
cause the biosphere subsequently to release more CO2 — and how much CO2.
This is a positive feedback, and it shows that the climate cliff is a little
closer.
A thug saw frosting from donuts and thought it was crystal meth. A
vague roadside drug test on the frosting reported it "contained some
illegal drug." (Sugar?) The driver was arrested.
Australia convicted a group of Croats of planning a terrorist bombing
in the 1970s — but the charges were false. They had been framed
by an agent sent by the Yugoslav state, with the help of thugs that
beat confessions out of them.
Union leaders are demanding that Clinton definitively oppose the TPP
after a supporter said she would endorse it with some changes.
To change the TPP into something that ought to be signed
would be like rewriting the Bible into The God Delusion.
In theory, that can be done, but the practical way to do it is to
delete the whole text and start from zero.
In Juba, South Sudan, soldiers rape women at will when the women go
outside the UN refugee camp, and the victims are afraid they will be
outcast if they report it. UN personnel do not intervene even when
they see a rape occur.
A UK MP accuses Pakistani officials of covering up the patriarchal
murder of a woman from her constituency.
I agree with Naz Shah that we should drop the term "honor killing". I
think "patriarchal murder" is a fitting replacement. Firstly, because
these killings are murder — usually planned in advance. Secondly,
because they come from a twisted patriarchal idea of "honor", which
treats a woman as property.
People in the Philippines hit hard by consequences of global heating
have accused certain companies (each responsible for a substantial
fraction of all fossil fuel combustion ever done) of violating the
human rights of people living (or formerly living) there.
The Mexican state of Veracruz will protect the "life" of fetuses
while ignoring the murder of real human beings (annoying journalists).
The UK's new generation welfare system, now in trial, has an automatic
delay of 42 days after a person is accepted. This is intended to give
the person a chance to end up on the street, go hungry, or go into
debt, before receiving any support.
That period starts after the series of bureaucratic screwups
is resolved. For one woman, that stage took 6 weeks, meaning she will
have to go without money for around 3 months before she gets
unemployment pay.
Facebook is forcing its useds to run a proprietary Messenger app to
get their messages, by making the web site refuse to provide them.
This is surely part of a multi-stage plan to use the app to exercise
more control over the useds — perhaps to show them ads that they
cannot block.
There are many reasons not to let Facebook use you. But even if you let yourself be used, don't run
proprietary software!
"Dark patterns" are misleading or obnoxious business practices that
trick or pressure people to pay for things they don't want, or allow
abusive treatment. It ought to be illegal, but often is not.
A project to provide contraception to poor women around the world
is running short of funds, because states are redirecting foreign aid
to support refugees.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is planning to regulate how
debt collectors can demand payment, and set up a way to contest the debt.
Obama says Clinton will be more of the same.
Right-wing Democrats, since Bill Clinton, have supported plutocratist
policies such as business-supremacy treaties and assumed the working
Americans that opposed them had "nowhere else to go". That worked
because Republicans supported the same bad things, even harder.
Now that Trump says he opposes them, they have "somewhere else to go".
Since Trump has no scruples about lying, they are making a mistake
in expecting him to sincerely oppose business-supremacy treaties. As his choice of Pence shows, he is happy to make a deal with the
Republicans who support them. We have no idea what Trump would really do.
Five non-fossil-fuel electric alternatives to the UK's new nuclear
power plant would be cheaper and safer.
Well-known car manufacturers are using mica paint made
in India with child labor.
Even though Uruguay was not defeated by Philip Morris, the system
which Philip Morris used keeps grinding countries down.
Just because it didn't score a hit on Uruguay this time is no excuse
for allowing it to continue. These business-supremacy treaties
must be killed!
Astronauts that travelled far away from Earth got a big increase in
heart disease many years later, compared with other astronauts.
The danger for them was the same as for the general public; but since
they were selected for special fitness, they should have had much less
heart disease, as other astronauts did.
They spent just one week away from Earth. Mars travellers, spending a much
longer time away from Earth, might see a much larger effect.
Terrorism, Trident, and Torture — a Valedictory Dispatch.
Puerto Rico has closed 150 schools under pressure from vulture capitalists.
Outside one school, the community has set up a protest camp to demand
reopening.
Puerto Rico gave hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies to
multinational GMO companies, while closing public schools due to
debts.
The motive for these subsidies, I suppose, was to get the companies to
operate there rather than elsewhere. That is the usual claimed
motive. In the small, it seems rational: one locality gets more
business. However, when this is practiced everywhere, the gain is to
the companies at the expense of the public. Each time a business can
play one locality against another, the business gains and both
localities lose.
States, and territories such as Puerto Rico, should not be allowed to
subsidize businesses (or give them special tax deals) to try to draw
their operations away from other localities.
I've suggested that the states should unionize to present a united
front against these exploitative businesses. The union could be
called the United States of America.
Puerto Rico has become a tool for tax dodging by "American"
multinationals such as Microsoft.
Although marijuana is legal in Colorado, people are in danger of being fired
for using marijuana even on vacation.
Companies should not be allowed to test employees for marijuana.
I would reject a job over that on principle even though I don't use it.
The Obama/Clinton aggressive stance Putin is a dangerous mistake, and
Trump is right to pull back from it.
However, he's doing it the wrong way. Detente with Russia is not
the same thing as giving Putin admiration and support.
To pressure allies to pay more for the costs of their defence is not
the same thing as saying you won't defend them if attacked.
Qandeel Baloch's brother murdered her from cowardice: he could not
stand up to being ridiculed about her by his bigoted friends.
Anti-war protesters chanted "no more war" while former Pentagon chief
Leon Panetta spoke at the DNC.
Greenpeace and 350.org, as well as 17 states, have rejected
congressional subpoenas designed as harassment to protect Exxon.
Exxon pledged in 2007 to stop funding global heating denial,
but it has given over 2 million dollars to denialism since then.
Now it is among the top sponsor of the ALEC meeting.
San Francisco is proposing to allow all residents with school-age
children to vote in school board elections, regardless of whether they
are US citizens.
That makes sense to me.
The War on Drugs continues to persecute Americans for using pot.
Wages in the UK are down 10% since 2007. The UK is among the worst
of the developed countries in this.
It would be even worse if you figure it against the tremendous
increase in rents — and include the decrease in benefits for poor,
disabled and unemployed people,
Some French news media say they will refuse to publish the names
and photos of terrorist killers, to deny them glory.
I think this would be even more effective for non-terrorist
multiple murderers, those with no ideology, that we have seen
many of in the US.
Climate models for the ocean have become very accurate in predicting
the global heating that measurements observe.
45 Palestinians, imprisoned by Israel arbitrarily, are on hunger strike.
One is shackled to a hospital bed.
A Hong Kong publisher and some employees have been sentenced to prison
in China for "running an illegal business". Supposedly this is not the publishing business, but rather another
unrelated business. The charges could conceivably be valid, but we have
to be skeptical.
Over 1/5 of the homes in the US have serious safety hazards.
PTSD is more common in countries where terrible things happen to
people less often, supposing we compare countries with the same
level of violence or major social disruptions.
This makes sense to me. Americans often seem to think that bad outcomes
can and should be entirely prevented.
I support government regulations that make frequent bad outcomes happen
substantially less. Especially when there are businesses that profit
by cutting corners and making those things happen substantially more.
The New York Thug Department is pushing hard to militarize even more. That will make it even more dangerous, especially when people want
to protest.
Trump called on Russia to get and leak the lost Clinton emails.
While Putin's men are at it, maybe they could get Trump's tax returns
and show them to us. Those tax returns are not a state secret, but
Clinton's emails might contain some.
Now I presume people will give Trump a taste of his own exaggeration,
with shirts that call Trump "traitor".
Trump's admiration for Putin is enough to make him qualify as un-American.
No thugs will be punished for risking (and ending) Freddie Gray's life.
Partly this is because the next thug to be tried has been made to testify
against another thug. It would be hard to try him now in a manner that
is constitutional.
How can we stop thugs from subjecting prisoners to "rough rides" that
can kill them?
Negative bank interest rates in the UK reflect economic decline caused
by the plan to leave the EU.
Ukrainian journalists who embarrassed the government have been hit with
a barrage of lies.
The white Christians that feel entitled to dominate the US have turned
to Trump (even though he is nothing like what they stand for), hoping
he will maintain their grip over some noncommercial aspects of life in
America, concerning race and sex.
Federally-funded "training" for increasingly militarized thugs may
contribute to their over-readiness to shoot people.
Many US coastal military facilities are under siege from global
heating and resulting rising sea level.
Some of them will lose a lot of land area in 25 years.
Cleaners working indirectly for the UK government are paid so little
that they need to claim tax benefits.
The UK government persists in offering giant subsidies for a new
nuclear power plant even though offshore wind power is now cheaper.
Many organizations that supposedly work for "development" are now openly
treating powerful businesses as the boss.
This corruption means that they will work to enrich business, and their
nominal aims will be forgotten.
We must not deny the fact that businesses wield power. If we advocate
democracy, we must recognize that fact by fighting to take power away
from them. To treat their power as acceptable or normal is not
"pragmatic". It is to abandon democracy and betray the people.
The article is right that we must not believe that businesses will
profit by treating the society around them right, because most of them
simply don't.
Neonicotinoids reduce the sperm count of male bees.
A queen bee mates once and saves the sperm for making many offspring.
For honeybees, a queen can make millions of offspring, and and nearly
of them require some of that stored sperm. If she got insufficient
sperm, she will be unable to make more workers.
Israel is planning a large housing development in Palestinian territory
supposedly annexed to Jerusalem.
The US Olympic Committee claims that companies that aren't sponsors
are not allowed to mention the games in tweets.
Please don't refer to trademarks as "intellectual property".
Trademark law is totally different from copyright law, and also
totally different from patent law. (And those two are almost totally
different from each other.) Use of the term "intellectual property"
is sure to spread confusion.
Human Rights Watch reports on how Turkey's state of emergency violates
human rights.
Basically, Erdoğan can have anyone punished arbitrarily.
No one in Turkey is safe.
Several examples of local or partial advances in democracy in the US
show that winning is possible.
The US needs a national health system.
Tim Kaine has switched from supporting the TPP to opposing it.
He's done this because he knows the voters demand it, which is better
than not doing it.
It took the EPA 9 years to recognize that airplane emissions contribute to
global heating and that we need policies to reduce those emissions.
The EPA plans to require airplanes to be more efficient,
but avoiding disaster requires reduced total emissions. It is necessary to tax flying so much that the emissions from flying
decrease substantially.
A British retain company that employed 11,000 people collapsed because its
owner bled it dry. And he robbed the workers of their pension fund.
It's the government's responsibility to prevent business owners from
doing that. Will the UK government fulfill this responsibility?
For a "socialist" like B'liar even to propose giving a knighthood to
a big business owner shows the extent of "New Labour"'s perversion.
Now Labour is divided between conservatives in the model of B'liar and
progressives such as Corbyn.
Erdoğan's PM says that coup participants have said the coup was
organized directly by Fethullah Gülen.
I believe they said this. Torture enough people and some will give
confessions — whether true or not. However, the claim that they said
this immediately upon their arrest stinks, to put it mildly.
I have no idea whether Gülen was involved in the coup attempt, but
testimony from prisoners in Turkish jails proves nothing at all about
it.
Yes, You
Have Something to Fear.
Poland's Rule of Law under Systematic Threat, Says EU Executive.
An oil pipeline leaked into a river on Thursday in Canada, and the
owner waited several days to shut off the pipeline. The town of
Prince Albert will soon be without a source of drinking water for months.
Two unarmed men were shot dead by the same Virginia thug, years apart.
The thug is now being tried for murder.
The debate about private fossil collection.
One reason to allow private fossil collection is that when a fossil
becomes exposed by erosion, erosion will destroy it if it is not
collected. In most wild places, most fossils are never noticed and
never collected; thus, the usual choice is private collection or none
at all.
Here's a suggestion: allow private fossil collection, but require or
motivate private collectors to cooperate with science. They can do
this by taking photos before, after and during the process of removing
the fossil from the ground, registering it in a data base, and
agreeing to a certain number of visits per year (when requested by a
specific organization) by scientists to examine the fossil.
A PISSI-inspired murderer in France was also half crazy
before he was radicalized in a short time. After that,
his family tried to pry him loose from PISSI's influence, but failed.
Massachusetts rejected a bill to punish companies that participate in a
boycott aimed at Israel.
One large container ship can emit as much toxic pollution as 70 million cars. The 15 largest ships may emit as much pollution as all the world's
cars. Of course, there are a lot more ships than that.
This pollution is estimated to kill 60,000 people each year.
A study reports that blacks and whites have the same likelihood
of being killed or wounded once stopped by thugs; however, a black is more likely to be stopped by thugs.
Yes, Britain is broken — in particular, because of businessmen that get away with injustice. What enabled them to get away with it? Plutocracy.
Transcanada wants to ship toxic tar sands oil along the whole US Atlantic coast
from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
Australian doctors are suing to invalidate the law that criminalizes
public disclosure of abuse of the refugees Australia imprisons in Nauru and Manus Island.
The most common age for someone to be labeled as a "sex offender" is
as a teenager. So the system of "registered sex offenders" causes
tremendous suffering, and most of them don't need to be "protected" from.
Having sex is normal behavior for teenagers. In the US, they may be
labeled as "sex offenders" for life because of this. Then they are
not allowed to go near children — so they can't live with their
families any more.
Amnesty International calls on Turkey to allow independent monitors
to visit prisoners to see if they have been tortured.
Some prisoners are being held incommunicado, with no access to
lawyers. Some have lawyers but their lawyers have not been told what
they are charged with.
The Republicans and Democrats have both adopted bad policies towards
Israel and Palestine.
When Trump talked about being neutral between them, that was one of the few
good things he has said. But he doesn't mean what he says.
Two unusual technologies for combusting coal give us just what we
don't need: more fossil fuel. Each investment in a plant to use these technologies creates an owner
that will want to use it for decades to emit more CO2
Everyone:
call on Exxon to
drop ALEC.
US citizens:
oppose
bills designed to reinforce the impunity of the thugs.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to raise the minimum wage.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to ban the "Enlist" pesticide combination.
The US government is finally
starting
to try to block insurance company mergers.
Revenge against US air terrorism is one of the main
sources
of support for PISSI, al Qa'ida, and similar groups. It is very
important for the US to stop this.
Rock
against the TPP!
Under plutocratic rule,
14%
of American households sometimes can't get food.
The Republican platform
calls
for eliminating campaign finance limits.
Another thug got away with impunity, after
knocking
an old man to the ground and permanently paralyzing him.
The victim was not of African ancestry but would have appeared to be
black if you didn't take any time to look. He did not obey the thug's
orders because he
did
not speak English.
Thugs will continue to terrorize Americans, especially blacks and
protesters, until they start getting personally punished for it.
The loss of Arctic sea ice around Svalbard
caused
a male polar bear to starve to death. That bear had been healthy
for many years.
Clearly many polar bears are being killed by global heating in the
like manner.
Trump led the campaign to execute five black teenagers that were
falsely
convicted of raping a woman in Central Park.
They had been coerced into false confessions. Later, the real rapist
was identified with DNA, but Trump insisted the five were guilty
anyway.
Oliver Stone
Links
Pokémon Go to Totalitarianism During Privacy Debate.
Peter Thiel
told
Republicans he is proud to be gay.
The anti-gay positions of the Republican Party do not bother him.
That is rational, for a person lacking in empathy. He must figure he
can always buy the support of Republicans for him personally, and he
feels no solidarity with gay people (or anyone) that is not as rich as
he is.
Thai thugs arrested the
wife
of a British journalist who criticizes the royal family, as she
was visiting her Thai relatives.
She didn't have anything to do with her husbands publications, but
threatening someone's wife must be effectively chilling.
Obama made
more
funds available to help some people install solar power systems.
Erdoğan plans to set up special courts to
prosecute
the thousands of people accused of supporting the coup.
It is not clear whether this will be limited to soldiers who actually
participated, whom it is legitimate to prosecute, or include the tens
of thousands of people who were quickly fired for supposed
associations with Gülen. Even if they really supported
Gülen, which is not certain, most of them surely had no part in
the coup.
Some countries, including the US and UK,
do
not convert economic growth into increased wellbeing for citizens.
One might propose that this is because the increase in income goes
mainly to people too rich to gain any wellbeing from it.
US border agents
tried
to confiscate the portable phone of a Wall Street Journal
reporter. She managed to convince them it would make too much of
a stink, and they backed off.
The DHS has enormous power to
intrude
into the lives of Americans that live within 100 miles of a
border, which is nearly everyone.
It uses this power on only a small fraction of the people who are
vulnerable to it, but the arbitrariness is still a bad thing.
The Republican convention speakers include Koch-sponsored politicians,
and the platform is
full
of things the Koch brothers want.
Antwon Golatte
has
got the beginnings of justice: an investigation ruled that the
Chicago thugs who shot him had no justification for doing so.
This cannot fix the irreparable nerve damage caused by their bullets.
What now? How to stop more thugs from doing the same thing in the
future?
Bernie
Sanders Diehards React to DNC Speech: 'He convinced none of us'.
This
is because
we understand what Clinton is, and we have rejected "lesser evil"
voting. It leads over time to worse and worse evils.
Minors in Australian prisons
get
treatment reminiscent of Guantanamo.
A
plan to use fake sea turtle eggs to track the sales chain of
poachers.
Anti-Pharma
Activists
Run Full-Page Ad in Philly Calling Out DNC and RNC On Their
"Buy-Partisan" Support of Drug Corporations.
Bruce Schneier:
The
Internet of Things Will Turn Large-Scale [Cracks] into Real World
Disasters.
He's right, of course, but this article shows the usual half-blind
tendency to focus solely on the danger from third parties that were
not supposed to have access to the system at all. It ignores the
danger that they will be misused by the companies that design, build
or sell them — a virtual certainty, if they contain proprietary
software.
Stay away from the Internet of Stings!
How did the South China Morning Post
manage
to interview Zhao Wei while the Chinese state was holding her
incommunicado?
Donald Trump
Is
a Unique Threat to American Democracy.
Australia
has
stopped anonymizing census results. This is dangerous and wrong,
even though anonymized records can be reidentified.
Greg
Palast's suggestions for Bernie Sanders and his movement for a
political revolution.
Why underground coal gasification
must
not be allowed.
Trump
wants to impose censorship on the internet.
The Texas thug didn't kill Breaion King,
he
just pulled her out of her car and threw her to the ground.
The high-level executives of big banks
sold
their shares in those banks before the crisis of 2008. In other
words, they knew their actions were provoking a crash, but they did
not consider that a reason to stop.
10,000 protesters
marched
at the Democratic Convention demanding a ban on fracking and lots
of funds for renewable energy.
A
parent learned from Snowden that she should stop acting like Big
Brother to her son. Bravo.
I hope she talked with him about the difference between things that
are bad, things that are dangerous because of their own nature, and
things that are dangerous only because someone persecutes them.
Sad that she is letting him use nonfree software, and social networks
that snoop on him.
A study found that around 1/4 of violent clashes in ethnically
divided places were
connected
to climate disasters.
In some areas,
more
paved space creates a danger of flash floods.
A wildfire near Los Angeles
caused
the evacuation of 10,000 homes. A firefighter official said this
is unlike any fire they have seen before.
In 20 years, if we don't curb global heating, this fire will seem tame.
The Democratic National Committee promised donors
access
to President Obama in exchange for their money.
Meanwhile, we know some of the corporations that funded the RNC:
Google, Facebook and other corporations, shame be upon them.
It
won't work to respond to Islamist extremism mainly by fighting.
Who
is paying for the Democratic Convention? The local organizer
refuses to say.
Erdoğan
has
ordered the arrest of 42 journalists, supposedly for participating
in the coup, but they include journalists that Erdoğan has
already tried to repress on bogus charges so I suppose these are bogus
too.
The main funders of violent jihadi groups, for a long time, were
citizens
of Salafi Arabia.
It
has made efforts to cut the flow of funds, but some other Gulf
countries have done less.
The Small Business Administration, which is supposed to give federal
contracts to small businesses, is
letting
most of them most of them go to large companies instead.
It has found many excuses to divert funds to large companies.
I consider that to be corruption.
Putin and Trump openly support each other.
The Panama Papers include hundreds of companies that do
mining
in Africa, showing how much of the profits from that mining are
hidden.
Treating
Muslim Children as Terror Suspects Does Not Make Britain Safer.
John Catt, nonviolent British protester,
has
asked the European Court of Human Rights to order the UK to delete the
surveillance files maintained about him as a "domestic extremist".
As he is 91 years old, it wouldn't be unlikely for him to die
soon. I hope the court won't drop the case if he does.
Tory measures to reduce the installation of solar electric systems
have been
very
effective.
The capital of Mauritania
is being flooded by
rising
sea level due to global heating.
Civilian casualties in Afghanistan have reached
record
level.
New Zealand has an
ambitious
plan to eliminate several ecologically disruptive introduced
mammalian predator species (but not humans).
A large rally for democracy
in
Istanbul.
Don't believe the claim that the Olympic games will locally inspire
people to practice physical fitness. This
failed
completely in London and more broadly in England.
Clinton
is
predictably taking a more right-wing stand, trying to attract
nonprogressive voters, just as she shifted to the left to compete with
Sanders.
Alas, I think this rightward shift is more sincere than the previous
leftward shift.
It will also fail to appeal to desperate working Americans who are
furious with the plutocratist establishment and think Trump might help
them. They know Clinton won't try to help them. They don't realize
that Trump won't try either.
San Francisco has
made
AirBnB responsible for arranging unauthorized rentals.
We must protect web sites from responsibility for opinions posted by
their users, but there is no reason to give such immunity to rental
agents.
A Republican Kansas official
is
pushing very hard to disenfranchise 17,000 voters.
With the demand for US coal falling, and coal companies going
bankrupt, now is a
great
time for the US government to buy the entire coal industry and shut it
down.
Oxfam reports that
coal
is bad for human health as well as the ecosphere's health, and
inferior to renewable energy for providing electricity to poor people.
China's coal use
peaked
in 2014.
The name
"Anthropocene" is
an ill-advised choice — people's eagerness to use it confirms
the argument.
Thinking of addiction as a disease
is
not the whole truth. Partly it is a habit.
There is some truth in this, but the idea that addiction is all in the
mind is definitely false. The crucial point about addiction is that
ceasing use of the drug causes physical symptoms.
The Munich killer was not ideological. He
wanted
to imitate other crazed killers.
As the US government
sells
more oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico, each one making it harder
to avoid global climate disaster, it is moving the sales to a web site
so that people have no place to protest any more.
Digital technology allows the powerful to act in secret
while enabling them to snoop on the rest of us.
An Spanish company has
bought
the firm that operates Australia's offshore immigration prisons.
Its directors and staff have been warned they could be prosecuted for
this.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz
says
she will soon resign as head of the Democratic National Committee.
Her persistent sabotage of the Sanders campaign, now revealed, shows
she was dishonest in office.
Unfortunately, she has already succeeded in her dirty work.
Israeli
soldiers destroyed Palestinian wells and the entrances of
buildings in Hebron.
When a pesticide contains two chemicals that are supposed to
potentiate each other, the EPA
judges
toxicity for each chemical separately.
Trump supporters are
desperate
for jobs that they can live on, and are desperate to support
someone who isn't part of the bipartisan establishment.
Cambodian dissident leader Kem Ley
was
murdered, and the state seems to have made someone confess and
give an incredible story.
A French thug says she was
pressured
by a government official to misreport and erase data about the Nice
attentat. The French minister in charge is suing her for saying
this.
Dallas thugs
had
no justification for using remote-control robot to kill Micah Xavier
Johnson, because they had no need to kill him.
Since they had him cornered, they could have waited till he fell
asleep, then captured him.
One good thing we can expect Clinton to try to do is to provide
federal
funding for abortions.
Congress is considering ways to eliminate
racial
bias in massive surveillance.
Massive surveillance
is
oppressive for other reasons, so the proper goal is to reduce it
to an acceptable level for everyone.
With Turkey
shutting
down many news sources, heroic journalist Can Dündar calls for
Europe to help defend Turkey's freedom, somehow.
A music festival
offers
to test people's drugs to warn of dangerous contaminants or
unexpected potency.
Trump's tax plan
is
an old, familiar right-wing flat tax scheme, designed to cut taxes
for the rich while offering insignificant tax cuts for the non-rich.
One more year of vaccinating every child in Nigeria
should
eliminate polio there permanently.
I hope that Boko Haram does not get in the way.
The Republican Party
officially
stands for more obstacles to voting.
Indian thug Thounaojam Herojit advanced from capturing and killing
guerrilla fighters in India to
shooting
unarmed people on suspicion. Eventually he felt compelled to
confess.
A US bombing in Manbij seems to have killed
73
or more civilians.
The US should not try to downplay the damage, but capturing Manbij is
a battlefield, and a crucial military objective for defeating PISSI.
Using drones for battlefield air support is legitimate.
Amnesty International is getting reports that Turkish soldiers accused
of participating in the coup are being
tortured
in prison.
Aleppo, under siege by Russia, is
running
out of food and water.
Assad's air force
bombed
five clinics and a blood bank, in and near Aleppo.
There are over 300,000 people in the city, and Assad might well kill
as many of them as he dares, since he regards them as his enemies.
But I don't see how the US could stop this without risking something
much worse.
Wikileaks
published
leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee. In addition
to somewhat scandalous efforts to undermine the Sanders campaign, they
also include
people's
personal data including credit card numbers.
I agree that Wikileaks should have deleted those personal details.
Both the Republican and Democratic platforms
support
restoring the Glass-Steagall Act. If only Clinton were in favor of
it, maybe it would happen.
Places in the Middle East have hit
record
high temperatures, exceeded
perhaps just once in Death Valley.
George Lakoff: Trump's insults are
calculated
to make certain people see him as "the winner" who can beat up anyone
else, so they want to be on his side.
Lakoff also explains how to counter that effect successfully.
If you get billed for a cavity search done on you without your
consent, you
may at
least get a lot of money for it.
Tim Kaine is
more
right-wing than most Democrats, on labor issues.
Trump
cheated
a painting contractor of $34,000 for work done. Now a court has
put a $300,000 lien on one of Trump's properties to pay the contractor
and his fees.
This is what the real Trump looks like.
Israeli extremists
condemn
the presentation on Israeli Army radio of a poem by Palestinian poet
Mahmoud Darwish, which presents rage against the occupation of
Palestine. The line quoted seems perfectly reasonable to me, for
anyone who is oppressed.
The fundamental, repeated distortion of Israel's Arab-haters is that
resentment against the occupation is no different from Hitler's
antisemitism. This is why we must be very careful to study campaigns
against antisemitism to exclude opposition to the occupation from
their targets.
Ieshia Evans described the persistent harassment by the thugs that
inspired
her to go to Baton Rouge and protest the killing Alton Sterling.
Thugs continued that system of persecution when they arrested her
there for standing on the sidewalk. She was standing there to
criticize them, and they think they have a license to mistreat people
for that.
Trump's daughter
used
her appearance at the Republican Convention as a marketing
opportunity.
Following the influence of her father, apparently. She also followed
him in spouting unbelievable claims about what he would do for the
American people.
Erdoğan, ruling by decree, has
shut
1000 private schools arbitrarily. Hospitals, universities and
charities have been arbitrarily closed too.
Basically, he has abolished rule of law and human rights in Turkey.
India should respect
forest
people's rights to their land so they can resist deforestation.
Clinton
picked
another non-very-progressive Democrat as her running mate,
confirming what we knew: she is going to obey the banksters.
I disagree partly with the article's stance. The choice of running
mate has little substantive effect; whatever choice she might have
made would not have altered my opinion of her.
Some people
think
it is shocking that photos of clothed women in public places are
being posted on Twitter. They seem to imply that this should not be
allowed.
I strongly disagree. When you are in public, people have a right to
occasionally take photos of you, and post them — whether you
like it or not.
One of the objections is that these photos often emphasize the clothed
breasts or public area of a woman. What exactly do they suggest as
the criterion for what to prohibit? That the breasts and/or pubic
area are part of the picture? (But how can you take a photo that
isn't a close-up without including them?) Or that the rest of the
body is not included? (Should cropping a photo be a crime?)
Is Obama's Recent Ban on Military Gear to [thugs]
Already
Coming to an End?
Want [thug] Reform?
Charge
Rich People More for Speeding Tickets.
This might cancel out the current tendency to pick on the poor to fine them.
Oil Lobby
Paid
Washington Post and Atlantic to Host Climate-Change Deniers at RNC.
The Pentagon has changed its manual of the rules of war, so that independent
reporters are no longer classed as belligerents or spies.
Another company has
committed
not to use its patents for aggression.
Rep. Pelosi said she will
fight
against a lame-duck approval of the TPP.
A UK union
leader
suggests
that government provocateurs are behind abusive attacks against
B'liarite Labour MPs.
A UK privatized prison allowed a prisoner to die by
ignoring
her alarm bell for two hours.
Perhaps they didn't hire enough staff — to make a profit,
they've got cut corners somehow.
An Atlanta thug was
charged
with murdering a driver who was clearly not threatening him.
Protesters did not have to fight to prosecute.
John Dewey: "As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big
business, the
attenuation
of the shadow will not change the substance." With Clinton, as
with Obama, we see this confirmed.
A study of 1700 coral reefs finds that
global
heating is the main cause of damage to them. Variations in local
conditions don't make much difference to the health of the reefs,
compared with the effects of temperature.
Michael Moore
thinks
that Trump will win.
Trump gets real appeal to people that hate
"free
trade" treaties, even though he's just talking and there is no
reason to believe he will really do anything for those people.
France has
ordered
Microsoft to make a substantial reduction in its collection of
personal data through Windows 10.
Jill Harth had "moved on" from pursuing Trump for groping her in 1997,
and even supported his campaign. (I can't understand what could have
possessed her to do that.)
Then he said she was a liar, and his campaign pressured her to
formally deny her past accusations. She
would
not stand for that.
Mugabe's supporters, the veterans of Zimbabwe's war of independence,
have
condemned
him for dictatorial tendencies. This seems to be a reaction to
economic problems, rather than to his dictatorial tendencies which
started decades ago.
Paris thugs say that Adam Traore died from an infection just after he
was arrested. If that's the truth, it isn't their fault. Thousands
of Parisians are protesting that
they
don't believe it.
Thugs lie so often that many distrust everything they say.
Will
Black People Ever Feel Safe Around Police? I Doubt It.
Brazil's largest newspaper did a poll which found that least 60% of
Brazilians would approve of the resignation of both President Rousseff
and interim President Temer, so as to cause a new presidential
election.
The newspaper then published that
only
3% want new elections.
Let's
stop
referring to car collisions as "accidents". A few of them are
accidents, but most result from careless driving that is predictably
dangerous.
I agree with the article's arguments, but I think the word "crash"
implies that a car is more or less wrecked. I think the right general
word for these events is "collision".
The Nice killer planned the attack for
over
6 months, apparently with accomplices.
Trump made
bogus
legal threats against the ghostwriter of "his" book. That is
Trump's way.
It is a part of the broader
resemblance
between Trump and Nixon. Nixon too threatened the press when it
said things he did not like.
[Thugs] Fetch High-Powered Rifle to
Kill
Family Dog at Child's Birthday Party. Then they lied about the
circumstances to validate the false claim that the dog was threatening
them. It was behind a fence and couldn't have got at them as they
walked to the door, coming to arrest someone who hadn't lived there
for 10 years.
The EFF has
sued
to overturn the DMCA's prohibition of breaking DRM, arguing that
it is unconstitutional.
Bravo, EFF, for this lawsuit! I am glad the EFF now states that the
DMCA exemption procedure is a worthless distraction.
However, the most dangerous part of the DMCA's DRM provisions is not
the one that prohibits breaking DRM — since that does allow some
exceptions — but rather the one that prohibits distribution of
tools to break the DRM, without which you can't break the DRM
even when it is lawful. Will this lawsuit, if successful, overturn
that too? I am not sure, but it makes a big difference for what this
lawsuit will achieve if it succeeds.
What we really need is a new law making it a crime to make, import,
sell, lease, rent, or invite the public to use any systems with DRM.
The US Chamber of Commerce
has
not decided whether to support Clinton or Trump.
The US Chamber of Commerce campaigns for
dooH
niboR and for eliminating the regulations that stop businesses
from
cheating
us or
poisoning
us. Whatever it supports is
almost
certain to be bad.
Any candidate that they consider supporting does not deserve our
votes.
Senior Donald Trump Adviser: Hillary Clinton
'Should
Be Shot For Treason'. This is because of the attack on the US
consulate in Benghazi.
Since he's a Republican, naturally he's making a mountain out of a
molehill. It's not clear that there was anyone she, or any US
official, could have been expected to do better.
Nonetheless, I think that Clinton, along with all officials that have
supported the TPP, have
betrayed
the people of their respective countries. When I call it the
Treacherous Plutocratic Poison, I am serious (as well as joking). And
this treaty is
not
the only one that constitutes a betrayal.
It would be wrong to execute them for this, because the death penalty
is an injustice. But at the very least we should not vote for any of
them.
Many computer-based systems are so complex that
their
designers don't fully understand them.
As explained in the book
Normal
Accidents, physical systems — even mostly-empty tanks that
normally hold chemicals — are so complex that the people who run
them don't fully understand them. From time to time, this leads to a
disaster which we cannot expect those people to know how to avoid.
When even the system's designers don't understand it, things are
even more accident-prone.
George Monbiot reports how people turn their eyes away from the
pollution
and wildlife destruction caused by farming, which on some
dimensions is bigger than that of any other human activity.
He focuses on dairy farming, but other kinds of farming also do a lot
of environmental harm. This is one of the reasons we need to reduce
the human birth rate.
Andy Davis was badly injured and has to struggle to walk. Enough
painkiller so he can bear the pain makes him drowsy. His doctor said
he is "unfit for work", but the UK government disagreed. Now he has
to spend
35
hours a week forever applying for jobs, although it is clear no
one will hire him, in order to get funds that are not enough for him
to live on.
The reason these fitness for work tests so often err in one particular
direction is that the government has put pressure on them to cut off
disability payments for as many people as possible. Some staff have
reported
being given quotas.
Turkish secularists, and even Kurds, are
glad
that the coup attempt in Turkey was defeated.
Trump says he
won't
necessarily support the Baltic states if they are attacked, but
said nothing about the
actual
problems that NATO causes.
Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of Kuwait because the US
ambassador
told
him that the US would not take action.
Cameron was unable to reject absurdly expensive
wasteful
spending projects.
Allowing growth in flights from London (or just about anywhere) is
harmful. To avoid global heating disaster, we need to start cutting
down on flying. When politicians prioritize arguments about local
growth over the survival of our ecosphere, they have the wrong
priorities.
The prosecutor investigating President Rousseff's supposed crimes says
they were
not
a crime. However, her
corrupt
enemies intend to to finish impeaching her anyway.
The German Social Democratic Party calls for reforming the European
Union to make it democratic.
Trump's Big Lie campaign now accuses Bill Clinton of rape. The Trump supporters figure that if they say it enough times,
it will pass as truth.
What Bill Clinton did to the poor people and working people
of the US adds up to a lot more wrong than one rape.
In Cleveland, security has completely vanquished protest. Most people have been intimidated into staying away from protests.
This does not augur well for democracy.
It turns out there is no proposal to prohibit movies in the US from showing smoking. Rather, the proposal is to give them adult ratings
if they do show smoking.
A Florida thug shot Charles Kinsey as he was lying on the ground and raising his hands in the air. Kinsey, a therapist, was trying to convince his autistic patient to obey the thugs' orders.
Kinsey was not killed, but that is no excuse for shooting him.
Peter Thiel says he wants to reduce democracy so he can get richer and
more powerful. He thinks Trump is the man to do it for him.
Thiel rejects the conservative idea of "small government". He wants a
government that does a lot to benefit the rich.
Donald Trump's Most Recent Attacks on Women Point to a History of Misogyny.
US-supported Syrian resistance groups intentionally kill civilians and
prisoners, though Assad's forces do it more.
One of them beheaded a captured enemy child soldier in cold blood.
The prisoner was just 12 years old — a child, not an adolescent. However, killing even adult prisoners is wrong.
A Hong Kong protest leader has been convicted — of protesting, more or less.
This is part of the Hong Kong government's increased repression of
opposition to Chinese censorship and power.
Some American action movies now have hardly any words in them.
They are aimed at the Chinese audience, and China permits violence,
but not much else.
Sections of Great Barrier Reef Suffering from 'Complete Ecosystem Collapse':
some species of fish have disappeared, and others are greatly reduced.
Bleaching of corals is continuing even though it is winter now.
Proposed Bill Would Prevent Your Employer From Accessing Your Birth
Control Schedule.
I support this, but why take such a tiny step? All of a person's medical
data should be unavailable to employers.
Texas has been required to change its voter ID law to avoid discriminatory burdens on poor voters.
Tim Kaine is making obeisance to Wall Street, perhaps angling to be chosen
as Clinton's running mate.
A vice president has little political power, and the choice of a
running mate is but a gesture. Gestures will not be enough to raise
my opinion of Clinton. I hope she does not choose a progressive
senator, since that would be a substantive loss for progressives.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been cleared for release from Guantanamo prison.
This doesn't legitimize imprisonment without trial of any of the prisoners
in Guantanamo.
Russia Asks For The Impossible With Its New Surveillance Laws. Since every company has to fail to carry them out, every company
will be vulnerable to arbitrary demands for anything else.
Due to welfare cuts, working Britons can't afford the child care they
need in order to work.
If enabling parents to work costs a lot of public money, maybe it
would be better to pay them to stay home with their children.
Tobacco companies and oil companies jointly develop the system of science denialism, starting in the 1950s.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to stop trying to hinder the creation of national
monuments.
US citizens:
call
on Clinton to stand aside so Sanders can defeat Trump.
US citizens:
support
full debt relief for students of private colleges that cheated
them.
Erdoğan's
massive
repression against teachers and professors in Turkey.
How Erdoğan
inspires
a large fraction of Turks to support him.
The article omits one other method:
starting
a civil war with the Kurds so he can pretend to be defending the
threatened state.
The New Tory Government Plans to
"Grind
[the UK's] Environment Into The Dust".
WikiLeaks published leaked emails from Erdoğan's party, so
Erdoğan
blocked
access to Wikileaks from inside Turkey.
I am eager to see a summary of what was revealed by these emails.
Corbyn's opponents in the Labour Party put a 25-pound fee on voting in
the leadership election, and has now
threatened
to expel someone who was raising funds to help non-wealthy Labour
Party members pay this fee.
Someone who is not a member could run a similar campaign.
Activists who worked for the Sanders campaign now have other ideas for
how
to reinstate democracy in the US.
Facebook is
forcing
low-income people out of the area around its headquarters. They
have to commute long distances to get to their jobs.
This means that refusing to be used by Facebook has a secondary
benefit for them, while also helping to
protect you and your
acquaintances from massive surveillance.
The US has
proposed
a separate business-supremacy deal with the UK, hoping that can
pressure Europe into approving the TTIP.
The Republican Party has revealed itself as the
White
Power Party.
Remember that the Republican Convention is sponsored by Google,
Facebook, Twitter and AT&T.
Paul Ryan advocates
eliminating
all federal government spending except for the military.
This would take effect 35 years from now, so he could promise it
and no one will ever rebuke him for not delivering it.
Paradoxically, powerful white men
often
feel they are persecuted and discriminated against.
Corbyn's challenger for leadership of the Labour Party was
formerly
a lobbyist that promoted more of a role for private businesses inside
the NHS.
While this is not exactly the same thing as privatizing the NHS,
it is a step in that direction. It shows an inclination unworthy
of the Labour Party.
Israel has adopted a law permitting
expulsion
of members of parliament for their political views.
This way, Israel will be able to pretend that Arab citizens have equal
democratic rights while in practice denying them the exercise of those
rights.
Why Is the World Bank
Backing
Coal Power in Europe's Youngest Country?
We're all in this planet together, and subsidizing fossil fuel use
anywhere puts the whole planet in danger.
US citizens:
Support
the Derivatives Oversight and Taxpayer Protection Act, which would
increase oversight of financial derivatives.
Financial derivatives can be designed to swindle their purchasers in a
way that is
hard
to spot if you aren't the bankster that designed them. Among the
victims are cities in the
US
as well as countries such as
Greece.
I think that each type of derivative should require advance approval
before it is offered for sale.
Theresa May believes poverty is a sign of a person's failure. When
she talks about fighting poverty, maybe she means
kicking
poor people when they're down and telling them to stand up.
Or maybe the argument it is meant only for public consumption,
as an excuse for
dooH niboR.
The man who shot thugs in Baton Rouge said,
"You
can't talk (or protest) the devil into changing his ways."
If that is meant to be about thugs, it is erroneous. Thugs are
humans, and humans' behavior is influenced by the humans and
institutions around them. Thug departments are governed by laws,
their policies, and their culture. All of those support brutality, to
a varying extent; but they can all be changed, given political will.
That's
what
Black Lives Matter aims to achieve. Let's give it our support.
Keep in mind that the brutality we must curb is not limited to the
incidents that are fatal.
Beating
up and
framing
protesters is not as bad as killing, but it is nonetheless
unacceptable.
James Hansen says
the
Paris climate agreement is a "fraud".
Sad to say, that seems to be true. What governments have pledged to
do is
too
little, too late.
And we know who
pays
to keep it that way.
Ambassadors from EU countries rebuked Israel for
taking
shelters that those countries built for Palestinian Bedouin,
calling this a violation of international humanitarian law.
Israel is trying to chase all Arabs out of that area, by refusing to
give them any building permits and
declaring
their houses, wells and other structures "illegal".
An army veteran in Baton Rouge, a member of a fringe group, decided to
kill thugs. He
killed
a few of them before they killed him.
Those particular thugs, at that time, were not doing any wrong to
anyone. There was no justification for dehumanizing them or wishing
them dead. I can't rebuke them for shooting back, since they had a
right to protect their lives.
However, we should not forget that the hostile feeling between US
blacks and US thugs, which inspired this violence, was provoked by
many unjust actions of many thugs. Obama seems to have forgotten
this.
"The president eulogises slain officers, but not those killed by
police. He needs to address the key issue — the
systematic
killing of black people."
That quote is an understatement, because killings are just the tip of
the iceberg of the unjust violence of thugs.
Perhaps a hundred thugs a year have killed a person unjustly is in the
hundreds, but thousands of thugs have committed lesser wrongs, and
many thousands of thugs have substantiated the lies told by other
thugs to frame innocent people.
That amounts to a small fraction of all the thugs in the US, but it
demonstrates that most thugs would support such lies if given
the occasion.
Moreover, thugs act collectively to preserve their impunity. When
they demand
contracts
and laws to protect all thugs from investigation if they commit
crimes
Thus, all thugs in the US (with perhaps rare exceptions) have directly
participated in the systematic injustice that provokes people to shoot
at them.
Now they cite the violence they have provoked as an excuse to continue
their own violence and impunity. Don't accept this excuse!
London will need to ban diesel cars and buses if it is to meet
air
pollution limits. Setting aside the limits is not a solution, as
the particulate pollution causes lots of
medical
problems.
Press Freedom Threats in the US
Prompt
Writers to Sign Petition.
Here is
the
petition itself.
If Clinton were a progressive, she wouldn't consider choosing Tom Vilsack
for vice president.
Hindu fanatics attacked Dalits in India because they were skinning a cow
that had been killed by lions. The attack was done in plain view of
the local thugs. This has led to large protests by Dalits.
I encourage Dalits to go ahead and declare themselves not Hindus.
June was the the 14th consecutive month of record-breaking heat, world-wide.
Every June for the past 40 years has been hotter than the average
for the 20th century.
This is one among many measurements that show the effects of global
heating.
Another record: the lowest ever annual maximum for winter Arctic sea ice.
One environmental activist explains why she will protest at the
Democratic Convention.
As for the Republicans, one expects only crap from them.
France's National Assembly voted to extend the suppression of human rights,
called the "state of emergency", because of the recent killings in Nice. Never mind that the state of emergency couldn't possibly help prevent such plans.
Families of UK soldiers that were killed in Iraq are raising funds
from the public to sue Tony B'liar.
Several US states have sued Volkswagen for intentionally cheating on US emissions tests.
Why a civil suit? Why not a prosecution?
Using Stolen Water to Irrigate Stolen Land.
Foreign Jews (mostly Americans) joined local Palestinians to prepare the site for construction of a movie theater in Hebron. It is in a lot that Israeli thugs have forcibly kept vacant for many years.
Fracking affects people with asthma: those who live near a frack well have
more asthma attacks than those who live further away.
Some counties in Mississippi are economically dependent on the jobs of
workers at prisons. With a decrease in the prison population, various
prisons are squabbling over which ones get enough prisoners to avoid
closing.
Making prisoners do work gratis takes jobs away from people that are
not in prison. These areas will adjust, in time, to the economic changes.
It would help, of course, if they got more tax money from businesses.
The Tories are grasping at straws for reasons to build new missile
submarines. The latest excuse is to deter a nuclear attack from North Korea.
The largest US teachers' union has voted to push for schools to
systematically reject "educational" materials that deny global heating and its consequences.
Is it constitutional to ban or limit smoking in movies?
Perhaps it is possible to ban cigarette companies from giving anything
to a movie producer in exchange for showing smoking in the movie.
The copyright troll that sues people for sharing Dallas Buyers Club
is being sued by the producer of that movie, who says the troll cheated him.
Trump's supporters openly make threats of political revenge against Republican
delegates that don't support Trump.
I expect lots of political machines operate by threatening people that way,
privately.
The ghostwriter of "Trump's" biography says he's ashamed to have
covered up how horrible Trump was.
Mike Pence gave a speech about the personal characteristics needed by
good president. Little resemblance between them and Donald Trump.
Trump says Clinton's support for the conquest of Iraq shows her bad
political leanings, but Pence's support for the conquest of Iraq is
insignificant.
Watch out for robot killers that use face recognition to find their
programmed targets.
The copyright industry lost its case in France, which aimed to force search engines to censor searches for "torrent".
I wish torrentfreak would stop using the propaganda term "pirated" to refer
to unauthorized sharing.
Invasive lionfish can wipe out other fish species. The only predators
that eat them are humans.
Guber drivers in the UK are suing to claim that they are employees of Guber,
not independent contractors.
I call it "Guber" because it pays drivers peanuts, but the worst thing
about that company is what it does to passengers' freedom.
Trump claimed he could finance his own campaign, but the Republican
platform would increase the cost of campaigns so that everyone needs a
bunch of billionaire sponsors.
On the other hand, the Republican platform also calls for reestablishment
of the Glass-Steagall law.
Republican legislators, in the pay of banksters, would never actually do this.
Erdogan has fired 15000 teachers in a McCarthy-style witch hunt.
Fresno thugs were very strict against Black Lives Matter protesters,
placing absurd charges to harass them. With white protesters, they
were very lax.
Shipping Air Pollution Causing 24,000 Deaths a Year in East Asia.
Ships release increasing amounts of CO2 as well, and there is nothing
to discourage that increase.
French Pokémon Go Player Arrested on Indonesian Military Base.
Melania Trump apparently plagiarized a speech by Michelle Obama.
Nuclear Weapons Contractors Repeatedly Stifle Whistleblowers.
President Kennedy's speech about the danger of nuclear war, in 1963,
puts today's presidential candidates to shame.
Increased wealth tends to lead to reduced compassion, and greater willingness
to take advantage of other people.
Drone attacks (away from battlefields) are murder.
There is one minor point I disagree with. If someone's job is to plan
terrorist attacks, I think it is legitimate to presume at any time
that he's planning terrorist attacks. But that doesn't affect the
overall point.
Mexico has altered its definitions of income and poverty so as to look better in published statistics.
This is comparable to how President Reagan changed the US government's
definition of unemployment, not to count people who are unemployed
and have given up hope of finding work.
How Urban Design Perpetuates Racial Inequality — And What We Can Do About It.
The Former Child Bride Who Is Using Her Story to Liberate Afghan Women.
Would it be legitimate for Turkey to send commandos to kidnap
Fethullah Gülen from the US? Or send drones to kill him and whoever
happens to be near him at the time?
US regulations adopted near the end of a president's term have, on the
average, been studied longer and received more review than usual.
In other words, the claim that they are generally hurried and careless
is calumny.
La Quadrature du Net calls on the French state to stop destroying
freedom in France in a futile and useless attempt to prevent terrorism.
Qandeel Baloch was assassinated for her courageous resistance to the
pervasive oppression of women in Pakistan.
Trump Backer Speaking at RNC, Billed as Boss of 100,000, Employs Zero Workers.
Trump's chosen running mate, Mike Pence, is a religious extremist with
a long history of attacking abortion rights.
He compared Obama's medical care law with the September 11 attacks.
The Progressive political revolution of the 1910s gave North Dakota
laws and institutions to resist corporate dominion, and they function
even today.
Bahrain is prosecuting a journalist for covering Bahrain for France24.
Another one of the thugs that killed Freddie Gray has been acquitted
of charges — by the judge.
There is no indication that the thugs expected their actions to kill
Grey, but there is no doubt that they knowingly did something that was
against the rules and that had a good chance of injuring him.
This should be reckless endangerment, right? But the court said it was not. If that isn't a crime now, then we need a new law to make it one. We must make sure thugs cannot enjoy impunity for practices that put
someone's life in danger.
Five Conspirators in the Eradication of the Middle Class.
Indian men out on bail awaiting trial for gang rape got together and raped the same woman again.
India's troops in Kashmir shoot "nonlethal" steel pellets at protesters.
When they hit someone's eye, that person may be permanently blinded.
The US is, in effect, keeping economic sanctions on Iran.
UK Becomes Only G7 Country to Increase Fossil Fuel Subsidies.
A new fund for global reaction to epidemics will pay for rapid
reaction to bring the epidemic under control while it is still small.
The UN has rebuked Germany and the UK for fossil fuel subsidies that
endanger civilization.
The Turkish people rejected the military coup, but the result
is to give Erdoğan more power than before.
The EU has once again allowed European citizens' data to be stored in
the US, based on a vague promise that the US will not disregard EU
privacy law, or at least not very often.
Computerized cars with nonfree software are malicious snooping devices.
In some housing projects in New York City, all the teenagers know each
other, so the thugs can call them all a "gang" and convict them all of
"conspiracy", based on evidence against some of them.
Sometimes a whole family gets kicked out and made homeless.
In Saint Anthony Village, where thugs killed Philando Castile, almost
half the arrests are of blacks. Blacks amount to under 7% of the population.
Google shut down an artist's blog, which had been going for 14 years,
denying the artist access to his own work.
US citizens:
call
on presidential candidates to pledge to respect the rights of
reporters at the party conventions.
US citizens:
stand
with the Union of Concerned Scientists against harassment by
Congressional Republicans.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
on legislature to protect early voting funding from the governor's
cuts.
Sheldon Adelson
wants
Nevada taxpayers to pay to move the Oakland Raiders to Las Vegas.
Teams promise the public lots of benefits from having a professional
sports team, and ask the public to pay for it. Then the money ends up
going to insiders, and the public loses.
A new law in North Carolina
restricts access to video from
thugs' body cameras to the point that evidence about crimes
committed by thugs can be suppressed.
The US
stores
nuclear weapons in Turkey. It is a dangerous place to keep them
— the US should move them elsewhere.
Will the attempted coup be Turkey's equivalent of the
Reichstag
fire, an excuse for abolition of human rights in Turkey?
It looks that way. Erdoğan has gone so far as to
arrest
judges of the supreme court.
Bahrain has
banned
the main Shi'a opposition group.
Some of its organizers have already been imprisoned or exiled based on
absurd accusations.
Bahrain ceased even pretending to respect human rights, but the US
keeps supporting the repression because it
has
a naval base there.
In the poor, black half of Baton Rouge, you're
in
danger from criminals and from thugs, and the thugs harass blacks
based on nothing but resentment.
Assad's forces have
surrounded
Aleppo.
Based on his father's precedent in Homs, it would not be surprising if
he kills everyone who remains in Aleppo.
Many of his opponents are jihadis, and just as bad. Lots of people
have called for the US to "do something", but there has never been a
clear something that the US could do in Syria that would result in a
good outcome.
A cigarette company lost its case against
Uruguay's
plain packaging law, which was filed in an arbitrary trade treaty
tribunal. But this doesn't mean the next such case will be decided
the same way.
Everyone: call for firing the thug that shot Charles Kinsey.
US citizens: call on Republican congressional leaders to follow
the Republican platform and re-enact the Glass Steagall law.
US citizens: Call on Rep. Wasserman-Schultz to oppose the TPP.
US citizens: call on all federal candidates to support a list of
policies to make more jobs in the US.
US citizens: call on Obama to veto the DARK Act.
Everyone: call on Senator Baldwin to oppose provision of cluster bombs
to Salafi Arabia.
Everyone: call on the WNBA basketball league to stop punishing players
that support Black Lives Matter.
US citizens: call on Tim Kaine to keep his pledge to take a stand
against the TPP.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to read the torture report,
and start thinking about prosecuting torturers.
Everyone: Tell Walmart to stop punishing workers for political activity
for a higher minimum wage.
US citizens: call on Obama to veto the DARK Act.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate thug departments that
don't protect blacks (as they're supposed to protect everyone).
US citizens:
call on the
House and Senate Judiciary committees to investigate the FBI and
DHS surveillance of activists and political organizations.
New York Police Officer Michael Birch is suing the thug department
because
his
commander told him to target blacks for arrest (racial profiling).
I think someone willing to push this hard against systemic racism
deserves the title of "police officer." But normally I reserve it for
those who refuse to support their colleagues in telling lies to frame
someone.
Thugs in Fresno killed Dylan Noble, who was doing exactly what they
told him to do, and then they
lied
about him (as usual).
A reporter was arrested while
covering
a protest in Baton Rouge. Apparently the thugs arrested him
because they thought he was African-American.
The charges against him were simply false, and the thugs had to know
this; however, as a famous thug said, "What is truth?"
Some coffeehouse customers
give
the name "Black Lives Matter", so that the staff will have to
shout "Black Lives Matter" when their order is ready.
I don't frequent coffee shops, since I don't like coffee, but I may
try this next time I am in a place where they will tell me when my
order is ready. I've already adopted the policy of never giving my
real name.
An anti-Corbyn Labour MP says, vote for
new
nuclear missile submarines for the sake of the people who will
have jobs building and running them.
Government spending on jobs is necessary now, but why not building and
running wind power systems and apartments for people to live in?
US citizens:
call
for a ban on tar sands oil export.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to veto the DARK Act.
PISSI
claims
responsibility for massacres, even committed by people it has no
contact with, in order to provoke a bigoted backlash that will
serve its purpose.
Newt Gingrich:
Merely
Visiting An ISIS Or Al Qaeda Website Should Be A Felony. He also
wants to deport anyone "of Muslim background" who "believes in
Shari'a". Together, these two policies would attack the human rights
of all Americans.
Islamic law (Shari'a) denies basic human rights; it is as odious as
the former US "Jim Crow" laws that denied equal rights to blacks, and
the ban on abortions that many religious fanatics seek to impose.
However, freedom of speech calls on us to respect people's right to
advocate policies we disapprove of, even those. The first step in
showing how wrong they are is to respect human rights ourselves.
However, foreigners don't have a human right to come to live in the
US. I therefore advocate requiring all immigrants to affirm a
commitment to human rights, as an audio/video recording that will be
published, as part of getting permanent residency in the US.
The Space Hijackers, a group which did gentle funny hacks to highlight
issues of use of public space,
won
damages against the London thug department which had arrested them
for wearing fanciful unrealistic thug uniforms for comedic purposes.
Sanders has
plans
for how to continue the campaign for a political revolution
(restoring democracy) without him as a candidate for president.
The
Email,
Data And Privacy Implications of Microsoft's Acquisition of
LinkedIn.
I suspect LinkedIn requires running nonfree Javascript code, or a
nonfree app, which can do nasty things such as upload he user's entire
contact list so as to add to the data.
A recent letter in support of carotene-producing rice was
signed
by Nobel laureates who were dead at the time. The GMO campaigners
that organized the letter apparently did not ask the "signatories" to
read the letter.
Dr Shiva also reports that the problem this rice would solve arises
from the agricultural practice of large farms producing monocultures.
You can get the same carotene from eating one carrot, one mango, or a
little spinach.
It's possible that some poor people with very limited diets might
nonetheless benefit from carotene-producing rice. Perhaps millions of
such people exist. I am not convinced it is impossible for that rice
to do some good, assuming it becomes widely grown.
That might have an agricultural downside, though. Perhaps your local
non-GMO strain is better adapted for your soil and climate, and you'd
have to sacrifice that benefit to switch to carotene-producing rice.
I still refuse to oppose all GMOs in a blanket manner. Some GMO might
be very beneficial. Gene drives to eliminate diseases might be
tremendously beneficial, supposing they are safe. But we can't trust
a business-corrupted academia to evaluate whether they are safe.
Pence, Trump's running mate, has persistently minimized the danger of
tobacco and
opposed
efforts to discourage use of tobacco. One might speculate that he
did so in exchange for campaign funds.
US business schools inculcate the ideology of
"extracting
resources from workers, taxpayers and the real economy."
Pennsylvania's fossil fuel power plants
killed
2300 people last year.
Other states' power plants killed people too.
Thugs made organized efforts to suppress video recordings of their
killing of Alton Sterling. They stole the security camera system of
the store where they killed him. They
attacked
and arrested the store owner just because he was a witness to their
crime.
The man who posted a video made by another bystander was subsequently
arrested by thugs in Georgia (far away from Baton Rouge, Louisiana).
Then they tried to frame him.
That thugs from Georgia conspired to attack and frame a witness to
protect thugs from Louisiana shows how organized, unscrupulous,
dishonest and dangerous the gang of thugs is.
Prosecuting only the few who kill will not be enough to break up the
gang. We have to prosecute thugs for lesser crimes, including
destruction of evidence and false accusations. When hundreds of thugs
are jailed, their reign of terror may end.
A Bahraini protest leader
confessed
to planting a bomb that killed a thug. Other dissidents say he
was tortured into a false confession.
Erdoğan has used the attempted military coup to
crush
what remains of independence of the judiciary.
"Turkey was already undergoing a
slow-motion
coup — by Erdoğan, not the army."
Everyone:
call
on the US major media to stop hunting for faults in the people who
have been killed by thugs.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on Governor Baker to sign the campaign finance disclosure bill.
The FBI and other agencies privately circulated a warning about
supposed violent protests planned by anarchists at the Republican
Convention, but the leaked document is
clueless
and seems to misunderstand the facts it cites.
UK state regulatory agencies are so
lazy
about punishing Volkswagen for its lies that it may actually get
away with them.
Big Pharma lobbies against legalization of medical marijuana, because
thousands
of people, when given the choice, choose marijuana rather than
prescription opiates to handle their pain.
The drug companies would rather these people buy opiates.
In other words, the easiest and kindest way to reduce addiction to
opiates is to legalize medical marijuana. There is no need for the
war
on people in pain.
Theresa May's snooper's charter
includes
a requirement for companies to turn off end-to-end encryption.
Deravis Caine Rogers was shot dead by
a
thug in Atlanta who had no idea who he was shooting at.
The newly elected mayor of London shows that Labour politicians can be
just as short-sighted as Tory politicians. He
wants
to expand a London airport. This is of no use unless air travel
continues to increase — but decarbonization calls for taxes that
will reduce the amount of air travel, making airport expansion a
wasted investment.
90 organizations are
responsible for the majority of carbon emissions over the past 150
years.
Increasingly, people are suing them for the damage that they have done
to the victims of their pollution.
A large Italian bank
needs
a bailout, but EU rules forbid the Italian state from giving it
one.
Governments should not donate money to banks. The state should demand
shares in the bank — lots of shares — in exchange for its
money.
T-mobile is
trying
to bribe its customers to give up on network neutrality by making
a special exception to data limits for the Pokemon Go game.
Since the data limits exist only for adjusting what they charge, there
is no difference between "We will charge less for B" and "We will
charge more for A and C."
A judge ruled that the US Department of Justice
"uses
aged computer system to frustrate Foia requests."
A Pakistani star whose videos outraged religious prudes refused a
demand from her brother to stop making them. So he
murdered
her.
The patriarchal treatment of women as property of their families was
found in many societies. Look up Verginia in Wikipedia for an ancient
Roman example — but you don't see many of these "honor" killings
in Rome nowadays. Most societies have reformed and at least partly
shed their patriarchal past.
We should demand that Pakistanis and Pakistani expats condemn this
practice firmly enough to make their compatriots feel ashamed of it.
"Obama says Black Lives Matter. But he
doesn't
ensure they do."
Robots for making shoes and clothing could eliminate
9
million jobs in Southeast Asia, pushing whole regions into
poverty.
Companies first moved these jobs from the US and Europe to poor
countries where they could pay workers very little, and now will
eliminate the jobs entirely.
In the past, advancing technology created new jobs while eliminating
other jobs. The net result was to pay workers more. No longer:
technology is eliminating so many jobs that there cannot be a real
replacement.
A socialist world government could solve the problem by reducing
working hours so that more people would be employed, and by taxing the
rich people that own the robot factories. However, today's
plutocratist governments will serve those owners instead of the
unemployed poor.
An appeals court ruled that the US Navy must avoid using
sonar
that can injure marine mammals' hearing.
A
part
of the Turkish armed forces attempted a coup against President
Erdoğan's government.
Reportedly some of the military units involved in the coup
fired
tank shells at civilian protesters, with many deaths.
A military government would be tyranny. The Erdoğan regime is
tyranny. Which one would be worse is a question I am unable to judge.
However,
the
secular opposition seems to have decided that the military coup would
be worse.
The Labour Party has imposed a
heavy
fee for voting in the coming leadership election. I suppose this
is to exclude the rabble, so that the decision will be made by the
well-to-do members of the party.
Some of Puerto Rico's loans, which were the occasion for a
Greece-style destructive "rescue", were usurious — Puerto Rico
borrowed 4 billion dollars from the big banks, and will have to pay
33
billion dollars in interest.
A bankruptcy, to drop those loans, would be justice for the banksters
as well as justice for Puerto Rico.
The Salafi Arabian ambassador to the US, in 2001,
gave
lots of money to a man who arranged the US visit of some of the
September 2001 hijackers, and may have given the money to them.
He got additional money by way of his wife and the ambassador's wife.
Six
bills, endorsed by the ACLU, to rein in the unjust practices of US
thugs.
US citizens:
Sign up
to help the ACLU defend the US constitution from Trump if he wins.
Here's more about the
constitutional
rights the ACLU would fight to defend.
In countries with "advanced" economies, over 2/3 of the people had no increase
in income in the decade from 2005 to 2014.
This is dooH niboR at work, because the richest .1% got a big increase.
In just two years, Illinois took $72 million from people
without convicting them of a crime. Many of those people were not even charged.
For US right-wingers, inflammatory speakers are responsible
for violence, but only if they are leftist or criticize those
with privilege and power.
New York City was forced to stop systematically searching blacks on the street
and stop infiltrating informers into Muslim communities. The result:
less crime than ever.
Sad to say, New York City has not abandoned massive
surveillance in general. That keeps getting worse. I fear that they
are setting up to track everyone around the streets by face recognition,
using the surveillance cameras that are supposedly to "protect" us.
The US Energy Information Administration projects that fossil fuel use
will hardly diminish by 2040. In other words, it projects humanity will make climate disaster inevitable.
That could happen, but only a fool will state it as a prediction
rather than trying to stop it.
When a nonprogressive Democrat such as Clinton or Obama gets elected,
the first task on per agenda is to dampen the voters' expectations
that the newly elected official will make things much better.
Contrast this with slogans such as "hope" and "change", designed to fool
voters into expecting some of the change they hope for.
After seeing the pattern a few times, you can learn not to vote for
them. I learned this from Bill Clinton.
Businesses that provide services people want in a hurry can get
themselves to the top ranking in local Google Maps searches, just by
paying
for fake reviews saying they are great. Sometimes the companies
listed are entirely fake, and people who call get passed along to some
other company for the service; that company may intentionally skimp
and do a bad job.
One positive side effect of my refusal to run nonfree software is that
I'm totally safe from this. Google Maps requires the visitor to
run
nonfree Javascript code, so it simply does not work for me.
Exxon continues to fund denial of global heating, its causes, and its effects.
Republicans in Congress are trying to harass the investigation of
Exxon's global heating deception, with subpoenas against the bodies that are investigating. These include some state governments, and the
Union of Concerned Scientists.
I am proud to give every year to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
You can give, too.
Instead of replacing the aging Trident submarines with new ones,
merely to give the appearance of being a world power, the UK should
take the opportunity to lead the world by eliminating them.
"Trident won't protect us from terrorism. But it will still be renewed."
A truck
driver killed
84 people in France by driving through a crowd celebrating the birth of the French Republic. It isn't certain
why he did this, but Islamist terrorism seems plausible.
Judged as a crime, this one was heinous. Considered as a cause of
death, it remains minor. For comparison's sake, cars and trucks kill
around 275 people in France each month through accidents.
People of France, don't panic! You don't away your freedom because of
road accidents, so please don't throw it away because of this.
Opposition politicians are criticizing President Hollande for failing to do the impossible.
He is responding to this idiotic criticism by saying he will try harder
to do the impossible — stepping up harmful, misguided "security" measures.
France can't stop individual suicide attacks through snooping,
intimidation and persecution of Muslims. But it can discourage them,
with a united society that condemns these killers as the enemy of
everyone.
After cancelling nearly all of the UK's policies that aimed to curb
global heating, the Tories are now abolishing the department which had the mission of curbing global heating.
The remaining activities are to be transferred to another department
for which carbon emissions and the environment are a side issue. This
is a way to cause the remaining policies, those not cancelled yet, to
be ignored.
China has a new form of disappearing people: giving false information about their whereabouts. Officials say that Zhao Wei has been released from prison, but no one can find her. They say she went to her parents' home, but it is empty.
Perhaps they imprisoned her parents too, and their "home" is another
prison.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to require publicly traded companies disclose political
spending.
The official government of Somalia controls most of the territory but
is
unable
to defeat al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab has become a terrorist organization, pure and simple.
In several European countries there are groups of volunteers that
harvest imperfect fruits and vegetables (which the farm did not
harvest) to
make
food for poor, hungry people.
Bravo for them, but shame on governments that don't feed people.
Accusations that North Korean diplomats are involved in
smuggling
rhino horn.
Amnesty International report: Egypt:
Hundreds
disappeared and tortured amid wave of brutal repression.
Israel has banned a peace group from
going
to Ramallah to meet with a Palestinian who is in charge of
"interaction with Israeli society".
In the vicinity of the Republican National Convention, toy guns are
banned
but
real guns are permitted.
I fear for the lives of protesters there. Right-wing gun nuts might
decide to carry out an act of political terrorism.
Thugs may attack them, too. The prohibition of gas masks is vicious,
and clearly inexcusable since they are not useful for attacking
anyone.
Here's a question: if a product is part gun and part gas mask, is it
banned because of the gas mask, or legal because it's a gun?
Donald Trump Praises Dictators, But Hillary Clinton
Befriends
Them.
He condemns Clinton for supporting the invasion of Iraq (and I agree),
but he
chose
a running mate who supported it too.
Zimbabwe Protest Leader
Calls
for More Strikes Against Mugabe Rule.
Microsoft has defeated a
US
subpoena for data held in Europe.
The EFF continues to demand that the W3C standardize DRM under a
rule
that protects security researchers from prosecution.
I do not support that demand, because the W3C would still be doing
wrong, and harm, if it standardized DRM with that exception. No small
exception can excuse support for DRM. The W3C should
refuse
to betray the users of the World Wide Web.
The EFF article uses the term "white hat" and "black hat" in an
unthinking way, assuming that trying to fix a bug is "right" while
trying to exploit the bug is "wrong". That's valid most of the time,
because most proprietary software does something to serve its users,
and most bug exploiters are
trying to hurt those users.
But there are exceptions, and DRM is one.
DRM software is pure malware: its purpose is to mistreat the users.
People who investigate bugs in malware in order to make it mistreat
people more reliably should be called "black hat". The white hats are
those that find bugs to enable users to break the DRM's chains. To
maximize the effect, they should release these bugs in the way that
will enable the largest possible escape from DRM.
New US regulations allow companies to
pressure
employees to hand over their medical data. It suffices to call
the pressure a "wellness program". The penalties for refusing to
participate may be severe.
As usual, the "privacy policy" for the data, once handed over, is
meaningless.
On over half the world's land, humans have destroyed wildlife habitat
to the point that wild ecosystems are
in
danger of collapse.
Americans
seem
to trust Trump more than they trust Clinton.
You can always trust Trump…not to mean what he says.
Clinton should stand down for the good of her party.
It's not too late.
The Minneapolis thug department used a DMCA takedown notice to censor
redistribution of its
embarrassing
recruiting video.
Assuming the video wasn't made by the federal government, it
doesn't have to be in the public domain; but this redistribution is
almost certainly fair use.
Use of copyright for censorship is
common
practice, and should not surprise us since our copyright system
was first established in England under Queen Mary as a system for
censorship.
A US court ruled that thugs
need
a search warrant to use a stingray to track someone's portable
phone.
I expect this will be decided later by an appeals court or the Supreme
Court. If the decision is ultimately upheld, it will only give us
back a little of our privacy, and I will still decline to carry around
a portable phone.
The Tories appointed bombastic bullshitter Boris Johnson as foreign
minister. The French foreign minister said, correctly, that
he
is a liar.
I don't have much respect for the French "socialist" government, which
is
selling
out French workers to kowtow to banksters. However, I am happy to
see this comment.
The
obtuse
absurdity of the Tories' cruel cuts: to give more money to the
rich, they have cut care for the disabled. A blind, quadriplegic man
has to pass hours in which he can't even go to the toilet, or get
something to drink.
The council, denying him this needed support, suggested he keep a pot
of tea nearby, although he would be unable to see it or lift it.
The evident purpose of transferring these funds to local council was
so that they would be spent on something else instead. That enables
larger cuts in other areas, since parts of those cuts will be
transferred to disabled people. Meanwhile, the government can claim,
deceptively, that it hasn't cut the funds for the disabled.
Thousands of Americans have been jailed by unreliable drug tests
used
by thugs who search them. When the test gives a false positive,
which happens often, the defendant is frequently
pressured
into a false confession as a plea bargain. Even if it were right
to imprison people for possession of drugs, which is
pointless
cruelty, it would still be wrong to imprison people for the
presence of a minuscule quantity too small to actually use.
The TTIP would make it harder to regulate the
technology
used to handle farm animals. That could make it harder to insist
on humane treatment of farm animals and
harder
to protect antibiotics that may save our lives. It could also
lead to monopolies, bad for farmers.
In the US, the TPP might do the same bad things. Among many
many
others. They are both
business-supremacy
treaties, so their goal is bad and they would achieve that bad
goal.
Chelsea Manning
attempted
suicide, and did not succeed. I feel for her; it must be
difficult to value life when that life must be lived in prison.
I hope that "close observation" does not mean the same sleep
deprivation that they applied to her
before
her trial, which was described as a "suicide watch" but was
intended to break her spirit.
A black former cop reports on how racist thugs
corrupt
the thug departments they work for, and how the myth that they are
noble heroes shields them.
Remember, though, that blacks are not the only group thugs
systematically have it in for. Protesters get it, too, in
many cases.
Nauru
revoked
the passport of an opposition member of its parliament. A year
later, he has got political asylum from New Zealand.
The fact that
"being
involved with protests" brings down a punishment shows that Nauru
is ruled by a tyranny. That makes it an ideal flunky for cruel
Australia.
Anyone that supports the draft Republican Party platform is an extremist.
Trump has chosen a running mate who is quite extremist.
The Brigham Young University thug department is granted the same power
as other thug departments; it should not have an exception from the
Utah open records law.
Half the criminal cases in US federal court are against Mexicans for illegal entry into the US. Some judges are saying that this policy must be ended.
Indigenous Brazilians are trying to take back their old lands;
this leads to fighting with the farmers that now own them.
Violent Islamist terror movements come from two factors:
marginalization making people desperate, and messianic outrage pulling them.
For non-Muslim Americans facing marginalization, Trump exerts a
similar draw.
If the "reasonable" political movements have visibly given up trying
to solve people's problems (because they have bowed down to
plutocrats), a wild "solution" may seem better than nothing
to desperate people.
White progressives should post Black Lives Matter signs to help
educate their white neighbors.
Blacks in the US are still second-class citizens.
The ACLU has sued the Baton Rouge thug department, asking the court for an order to let protesters protest, and citing several patterns of injustice.
El Salvador may imprison women for 50 years for having an abortion.
(Or a miscarriage which is taken for an abortion.)
Women in El Salvador will still get abortions, but they will have to
risk their lives to hide this.
Fox News makes workers sign an arbitration agreement and will probably
succeed in using that to crush the sexual harassment lawsuit against its CEO.
We need to change the law so that companies can't impose arbitration
agreements on employees, contractors or customers. At least those
that are human beings.
An experiment demonstrates that people will agree to nearly anything
in the terms of service of a web site they want to use. Including
giving permission to show all their personal data to employers and the NSA.
The terms they agreed to also involved promising their first born
child to the owners of the service — but those few who bothered to
read the terms perhaps recognized that this condition would
be legally unenforceable in the US.
Alas, permission to give the data to employers and the NSA would
actually be legally valid, as far as I know. (Not that the NSA would
hold back due to lack of permission.)
The lesson here is that the idea that "you are the owner of data about you,
and it can't be used without your permission," is the wrong approach.
We can't solve the surveillance threat that way.
We need to prohibit systems from even collecting data about users
beyond what we judge necessary for the job being done.
"Innovation" in the digital field means "clever ways of tracking,
manipulating and restricting people". We must stop assuming that
innovation is to be promoted.
Marcy Wheeler reports that her own investigations of 7 drone bombings
found 57 to 71 civilians killed. That is nearly as much as the total
that the Obama regime says it killed in over 470 drone attacks.
When thugs shoot and kill people, mainstream journalists use
"copspeak" in their articles to slant them to favor the thugs.
Workers on strike against Trump's casino held a protest at his office in New York.
A thug department in the UK says it will note down wolf-whistling as a
"hate crime", but we shouldn't worry because people won't be prosecuted.
Most of these unpleasant things, I myself would never do. But the
idea that it is wrong to take occasional photos on the street of
people you don't know seems very dangerous. Does that include thugs?
Now, taking the photo and identifying the person's face starts to be
menacing.
The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs might have burned a large amount of
oil, covering Earth with soot.
Boko Haram prevented normal agriculture in a substantial region which now faces famine.
Comparing Pokémon Go with
religion.
As well as the commonalities listed in the article, being used to lead
people to spend money is a point in common.
"I was a cop —
I
still don't know how to survive a police stop". Whatever you
might do could be the reason you get killed.
He also criticizes the way thugs think of themselves as a gang, and
the way thugs think of themselves as above most people. Perhaps he
was one of the few
police
officers, not a thug.
The IWW is taking a visionary step by
trying
to unionize prisoners as the workers that they are.
Floods have made over a million people in China homeless, but
China
demands
that all news about this be positive in tone. No criticizing the
inadequate response!
The Tienanmen Square museum in Hong Kong is
being
shut as a result of pressure from its landlord, which has harassed
visitors too.
There are office buildings in Cambridge and Boston that demand
visitors identify themselves. Mostly I refuse to go into them.
Sometimes I pressure a tenant to let me in without that.
A plan to make cheap fake rhino horn that is
hard
to distinguish from the real thing.
Defectors from PISSI say they were
horrified
by its brutality. This includes murder and enslavement of
families of people that work for groups PISSI fights against.
The
tendency
to think less of women without children is a reflection of a
deeper sexism.
The Democratic Party platform draft
endorses
a carbon tax, but Clinton opposes it.
A narrow study reports that blacks in Houston are no more likely than
whites to be shot by thugs — but the study is based on biased
data, because it accepts the
judgment
of the thugs themselves about how threatening each person was.
Due to unconscious racism, thugs systematically
tend
to see a black as more threatening than a white, all else being
equal.
President Trump Would Be a
Climate
Catastrophe. Sad to say, Clinton would not be much better. She
doesn't treat the issue with the urgency it requires.
Thumb-sucking children are
less
likely to have allergies when older, perhaps because their immune
systems encounter various antigens and are primed to deal with them
sensibly.
If that theory is true, antibacterial soaps may be bad for children.
The new prime minister of England is gung ho for war on drugs, and
on people who use them. She
legislated
a blanket prohibition that depends on scientifically undecidable
conditions.
Black Lives Matter protests continue, but thugs have
arrested
many protesters.
The thugs were violent, almost rioting, although the protesters were
peaceful
and disciplined. This demonstrates that the violence of thugs is
far more extensive than the killings.
Thug officials claimed that protesters provoked these arrests —
by chanting slogans that criticized thugs. This shows how
fundamentally wrong their basic attitude is.
The Dallas thug chief
criticized
the US for asking thugs to make up for a lack of other social
services
I agree. The US should tax the rich more and start funding the right
ways to handle those problems.
After Dallas, Black Lives Matter Is
More
Important Than Ever.
Sanders supporters succeeded in pushing some progressive clauses into
the Democratic platform, but Clinton's supporters
defeated
us on some crucial issues including the
TPP.
I think Clinton wants the TPP to be approved during the lame duck
session. This way, she will get the TPP (which I believe she still
supports although she reluctantly agreed to oppose it), and she will
have a chance to pretend it wasn't her doing.
But we will all know she helped make it happen, both before as
Secretary of State, and now by failing to oppose it with any vigor.
China
says
it has freed human rights lawyer Zhao Wei, but her husband can't
contact her and doubts the claim.
The US has an
inconsistent
approach to safety. On some issues, even the slightest identified
danger must be corrected, even if that requires tremendous expense or
imposes tremendous trouble.
Meanwhile, bigger dangers, such as
lead
in children's water supply, are completely ignored.
US thugs killed
1134
people in 2015. Young black men were 5 times more likely to be
killed by thugs than young white men.
I am sure some of those killings were done for valid reasons, but we
know
racism
is part of the cause.
Ceding to public pressure, the European Commission said it
would
not try to impose CETA on the EU without getting the approval of
national and regional parliaments.
This is a great victory because now it may be possible to kill CETA.
CETA is a business-supremacy treaty; its purpose is to
give
(foreign) businesses more power over every country involved. It
therefore represents a betrayal of each and all of the countries that
sign it.
The dispute about
dividing
up the South China Sea might be resolved by first asking all the
countries involved to agree not to extract any oil from those waters.
This agreement is necessary anyway, to reduce global heating. Once it
is made, all the countries will have less interest in how the
frontiers are drawn, and they might be able to resolve that dispute.
Indian soldiers have
killed
protesters in Kashmir who demand independence for Kashmir.
India promised Kashmir a referendum about being part of India, and
then
never
allowed the referendum to be held.
The UK's departure from the EU may paradoxically oblige the EU
to make bigger cuts in CO2 emissions.
This could be important for civilization's survival, if it is not
wiped out by the UK's subsequent actions.
Challenges for Labour, if it is to be effective opposition to
the Tories.
14 island countries in the Pacific Ocean are considering a strict treaty
to gradually end use of fossil fuels. They are in danger of being wiped out by sea level rise.
Their own use of fossil fuel is too little to make a difference either
way, but their taking a strict position may help influence other
countries.
Even US senators face discrimination when they are black.
Burundi: torture and economic failure. "Some of the torture
techniques that we have documented are so vicious it’s unbelievable
that anyone survives."
Donald Trump Used to Dog-Whistle Racism. Now He Just Yells It.
I fear this is a sign of how he has legitimized bigotry for a part of
the US.
New York City's corporate-run gratis wifi network means the city is selling the public's privacy.
The pay phones they are eliminating are useful. A local call costs 50
cents.
The WiFi replacement is worthless junk, since the price of use is your
freedom. It will (1) require registration and being tracked, and (2)
require running nonfree Javascript software.
Can anyone develop a way to connect using free software as a replacement
for their Javascript code? With that, I might be able to find someone
who will lend me per account.
The article also mentions the Domain Awareness System, a monstrous
street surveillance system that threatens to track cars and people
around the city. No one should be allowed to operate such a system;
every remotely viewable camera should require a specific court order.
US citizens: call for permanent protection of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge coastal plain from oil extraction.
The UK's system of school censorship and surveillance, supposedly to
prevent the spread of Islamist extremism, is instead making most
non-radical Muslim students feel persecuted.
US citizens: call on the US Army to protect the pallid sturgeon.
Thugs in Baton Rouge say they have discovered a plot to kill thugs. The thugs cite the plot as an excuse to defend their long-standing systematic practices that often lead to the killing of innocent blacks.
We should never take thugs' accusations at face value; this could be
one more fabrication. But what if it is true? In that case, the plot
is evidently a reaction to thousands of killings, and hundreds of
thousands of lesser injustices, committed by thugs over many years.
A small unjust response doesn't excuse continuing a giant unjust
system. The thugs ought to clean up their own violent conduct so as
to stop provoking violent anger.
George Monbiot: Billionaires bought the victory for "Leave the UK".
Namibia's drought is crushing —
exports and businesses are shutting down.
After Sanders Endorses Clinton, 'Political Revolution' Faces Hard Choices.
Theresa May Is No Liberal — And Her Rise to PM Is No Cause for Celebration.
Iranian demagogues have successfully adopted learned the bullshit tactics of Trump and UK, Leave.
It appears that around 1/6 of the food produced in the US is discarded
before it reaches the store, because it looks imperfect.
This adds to the 1/3 that is wasted by stores and by individuals.
To require supermarkets to give unsold food to the poor is just a
matter of overcoming their opposition to the measure. Food that farmers don't bother
to harvest is a harder problem. If the government offered to buy it
for a low price, somewhat more than what it costs farmers to harvest
it, they would do so.
One way to reduce food waste is to teach cooking in school.
India says it will reduce CO2 emissions faster than planned.
But its new coal mining plans threaten to do the opposite.
The international tribunal ruled against China's claim of most of the
sea between China and the Philippines. China said it will not respect the decision.
The reason those two countries, as well as Vietnam, Taiwan and other
countries, are so concerned about the issue is that they want the oil
that may be under that sea. But if anyone extracts that oil, it will
cause global disaster. We need to leave it under the sea where it is.
I suggest resolving the dispute with an agreement to leave the oil
untouched. Maybe then it will be possible to resolve the dispute
because all the countries won't care so much about which gets which
areas.
US citizens: support the campaign to "Urge Good Food Companies to Back
Good Food Policy".
The overall goal is to change the food distribution system in which
big companies push people towards unhealthy eating while putting farmers
over a barrel.
The Republican Party platform is shaping up as a compendium of evil.
Clinton joined Sanders in calling for closing the School of the Americas. That school, which now operates under another name, taught many
Latin American military officers how to torture.
Too many occupations in the US require workers to have a special license.
"How Globalization Divides Us" —
and how that relates to
whether the UK should leave the EU.
I find I agree with almost all of this article.
Current policies will fail to limit global heating to 2C.
US citizens: call on the Senate Judiciary Committee to stand for
firm use of antitrust laws against corporations that have too much
of the market.
When Israelis create colonies in the West Bank without Israeli government approval, they can pretty much count on getting approval
retroactively.
US citizens: Tell Congress: Denounce the Web of Global Heating Denial.
In Oaxaca, Reporters Covering Teachers' Union Protests Face Violence,
Threats.
Setting aside the error that made Pokémon Go demand full access
to the user's Google account,
the
program does a lot of surveillance and sends the data to various
companies.
Corbyn will be on the Labour Party's ballot, ex officio. The B'liarite MPs can't keep him off it.
Their arguments against Corbyn are fallacious and self-serving.
The response to the first is to recognize that the Labour Party is
pointless if it doesn't try to end plutocratic rule.
The solution to the second is to replace the Labour MPs who don't
want to achieve that goal.
The French president's labor "reform" law, that has been opposed by
nationwide protests and pushed through the assembly without debate,
was specifically imposed by the EU.
The euro-zone's budget deficit limit, which has pushed Greece into
a depression that will forever get worse, now threatens France too with
depression. But the commission agreed not to enforce the rule against France
in exchange for a temporary hold on enforcing that rule against France.
Trading a permanent change for a short respite is ruinous. If French
officials had any conscience, they would rally the people for a
counteroffensive against the European Commission instead of trying to
surrender the country on their behalf. France could probably make
the EC crack if it were willing to fight with no holds barred.
The European Union, and the euro, are instruments of subjection. If
it can't be fixed soon, the people must abolish it.
However, taking a country out of the EU under a plutocratist
government (such as the one in the UK) would only provide that
government with a chance to make things worse.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh's relatives say that FBI informants manipulated him
and then misrepresented what he said.
This would be another in the long string of entrapments of biddable
people that (1) are unjust and (2) don't protect us from any real
danger.
New pun: "Sculpture of Theresa May".
The snooper's charter, a bill to permit almost unlimited government
surveillance in the UK, was pushed by the same minister who is now
becoming prime minister.
Some in Parliament object that this would be a threat to journalists and their sources.
Of course it would be. That's part of the purpose.
Peace and human rights defense organizations in Israel are funded
mainly by European governments. A new law requires them to register
specially, and say in all their publications that they are foreign-funded.
The organizations for expanding colonies in Palestinian territory are
funded mainly by right-wing foreign billionaires, but they won't be required
to mention this fact.
Many transgender Americans go to great lengths to avoid using public toilets. A substantial fraction get sick as a result.
Armed remote-control devices can be very dangerous if their use is not
carefully controlled.
"Theresa May has vowed to unite Britain — my guess is against the poor."
Iceland may choose the Pirate Party for its next government.
US citizens: call on Obama not to fund thug departments that don't
respect the people.
US citizens: tell Congress: don't cut Medicare, expand it.
War on Prescription Drugs: What If You Depend on Opioids to Live a Decent
Life?
The UK government pressured the US not to prosecute HSBC for
Justice Department lawyers were ready to prosecute HSBC, but Attorney
General Holder vetoed the prosecution, then falsely claimed that there
wasn't a sufficient case.
If HSBC is too important to be punished when it commits crimes in the
US, we should not allow it to do business in the US. We should make
it sell off its US business to several smaller banks.
Sanders would have done this.
A student at Purdue University has been threatened with expulsion
for posting a dismissive comment about Black Lives Matter.
Needless to say, I don't agree with that student at all.
But he has the right to state those views.
US citizens: call on Obama to coal leasing on public land.
10 years after David Cameron talked about the danger of global heating,
his record shows a step-by-step campaign to get rid of efforts to protect Britain from that danger.
Competing with the speed of social media has swept away fact checking
and care for the truth from the major media. As a result, politicians
such as Trump and campaigns such as UK Leave can win via intentional
flagrant systematic lying.
The Democratic Party platform says almost nothing about lobbying.
Almost
half of former congresscritters now become lobbyists.
One possible way to reduce the influence of lobbying would be public
funding for candidates' campaigns.
The US has privatized the transport of prisoners between prisons. As
usual, privatization leads to various abuses,
sometimes
fatal ones.
When WIPO isn't trying to design new monopolies to interfere
with our lives, it is
busting
the union of its own workers.
How
law enforcement works when a white man starts making trouble with
a gun.
The rules for UK's bulk surveillance of phone call data and message
data are
so
secret that even ministers don't know what they are. Though the
government has been
pretending
the contrary.
Local jails in the US hold ten times as many slightly dangerous
mentally ill people as mental hospitals do, and
the
jails offer no treatment.
My take on this is that Russia is a real threat, but only in a limited
zone. Meanwhile, NATO's provocative acts are also threats. NATO
should stop trying to recruit Ukraine and Georgia.
It is better to leave them as neutral buffers, to reduce the chance of
conflict.
More
argumentation
and background.
In the US, the [top] 1% Are Recovering from 2008 Recession While
99%
Are Still Waiting.
The TSA's
bloody
attack on a half-blind, partly paralyzed cancer patient shows that
the price admission to the security theater is occasionally very high.
"TSA" stands for Theater of Security
Agency.
A sniper
shot
thugs present at a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas. (Initial
reports said there were two snipers, but there was only one.) The
protest was tranquil before the shooting started.
The sniper was
angry
about thugs' violence, with impunity, against blacks.
The thugs are more sinning than sinned against, but it's wrong to
respond to their occasional violence with intentional violence. That
conduct is as bad as the worst things thugs do.
However, the anger was and is justified, even though its expression
was wrong, and the thugs are morally responsible for their own wrongs
that provoke anger.
My anger at thugs began as I read about many incidents in which they
attacked protesters and framed them. They generally don't kill the
protesters, just beat them up and try to put them in jail, but that is
bad enough. This repression threatens all of society, because it
endangers democracy and justice.
Only a few thugs commit unjustified violence, and I think most would
not do it. However, when one thug commits brutality, and lies to put
the blame on the victim, the other thugs who were present generally
support the lies with their own mouths. That makes them, too,
thugs.
Very few cops resist the pressure to lie to support a thug. Those
few, I respect and admire, and I call them
"police
officers".
Thugs will now cite the Dallas killings to demand to maintain their
impunity and even increase it. Supporters of repression have already
seized
on this to attack the idea that Black Lives Matter.
"Bring the Dallas murderers to justice.
And
the killers of black people too."
The Sierra Club found terms in the TTIP that would sabotage
environmental protection. Here are details.
Fighting has broken out again in South Sudan, and it is not clear
whether the two leading warlords are still in control.
Investigating why people are homeless in San Francisco.
I suspect one of the causes, not mentioned in the article, is zoning
law that hampers construction of more housing.
Clinton and many other US politicians want more intervention in Syria, despite the big risks, and possibly lots more suffering. They seek
a victory over Russia, of a kind that hardly matters any more.
A few institutions continue to unite Israelis and Palestinians
despite all odds.
China says it has freed human rights lawyer Zhao Wei,
but her husband can't contact her and doubts the claim.
Members of the European Parliament say the TTIP (known through a
leaked draft) could "sabotage" the EU's climate policy.
This is no surprise — I expect that fossil fuel companies were
consulted in drafting it, while environmentalists were not.
'Now We Are Waking Up': Zimbabwe Protests Leader Seeks International Help.
An Australian island with substantial population is considering moving
to 100% renewable energy.
If our governments acknowledged the magnitude of the danger of CO2,
they would mobilize society for rapid conversion to renewable energy.
The massive death of mangrove shore forests in Australia will do away,
regionally, with many kinds of fish and even eliminate land. As global heating proceeds, this problem will spread.
Use of shark fin in China has declined greatly, perhaps by 80%. Campaigns to avoid the extinction of sharks are having some effect.
Shark fin has no particular taste, and its texture is not especially
interesting in the mouth. The reason shark fin soup is made is for
conspicuous consumption: someone is giving a banquet and wants to impress
others by getting expensive things.
Some US college students need food aid as well as tuition aid.
US citizens: Call on the Democratic Party to get serious about the climate.
US citizens: Tell the Pacific Fishery Management Council and
NOAA Fisheries to protect seafloor habitats.
US citizens: call on Obama to pledge no first use of nuclear weapons.
Segregation of ethnic groups in school creates a space for bigotry to grow.
The UK referendum unleashed hostility that may poison British tolerance for a long time.
Albanian Opposition Party Claims PM Illegally Funded Obama Campaign.
A man set fire to a Google Street View car, then said that Google was
"watching" him.
Google is indeed watching him, and the public in general, but not
literally in the way he thought.
On the other hand, there are systems such as planes that can track
people around a town, and cameras connected to face recognition,
which literally do watch everyone. So we should not be quick
to dismiss him as crazy.
The UK NHS has backed off its national medical records scheme,
because it didn't do enough to protect patient confidentiality.
Leaving the EU will cause economic mayhem in the UK. For the Tories,
this is an opportunity for more disaster capitalism: take everything from the poor and give it to the rich.
The UK needs everyone to be Robin Hood.
The company that makes special injectors for urgent treatment for
severe allergies has raised the price so much that many Americans
can't afford them any more.
"Smart" farming devices deliver data about the farm to companies
that want to sell it back to farmers.
It's just like the fitbit, only for farming instead of exercise.
Farmers should insist on devices run by free software so they, not
some other company, have control over their own farms.
Carl Malamud has campaigned for decades for the principle that the law
should not be secret. ANSI set up a corrupt process in the American
Bar Association to get it to endorse the opposite position.
The UK government defies a court order to release secret orders
to Chilcot that stopped his investigation from considering questions of legality.
A leading Cambodian opposition figure has been killed.
Israeli law professors object to the imprisonment of conscientious
objector Tair Kaminer as illegal.
US citizens: call on Texas to withdraw its anti-abortion booklet of
falsehoods.
US citizens: call on the FDA to get phthalates out of our food.
US citizens: call on Americorps to reconsider its decision to shut down its Community HealthCorps program.
This decision was made because a few people connected with Community
HealthCorps gave advice about abortion, against the rules. However,
the unjust law that prohibits US government support for abortion
cannot require shutting down the program.
Philippine thugs have murdered more than 100 people accused of being drug dealers or something.
I predict that the victims will come to include journalists, dissidents,
and people who were somehow "in the way".
A year of insufficient rain, perhaps caused by global heating, killed the mangrove forest along 700km of coast in Australia.
Sea otters are crucial to kelp forests, whose tremendous carbon absorption capacity we need. Humans have backed off from wiping out
sea otters, but now killer whales are eating them.
India's sexual conservatism is imposed with a system of repression.
In a rare victory against massive surveillance of everyone, New Jersey Transit turned off the audio recording on its trains.
The proposed Maryland bill sounds like a good approach to this issue.
Suburbs are changing from comfortable, boring dormitories for the
not-quite-rich into inescapable dead ends for those who can't afford
even a room in the city.
Shi'ite militias have spray-painted their slogans around Falluja,
while the inhabitants (Sunnis) have all fled.
It is clear that PISSI carried out a reign of terror there, like Abu
Ghraib but more so. But Shi'ite militias have generally oppressed
Sunnis in the past.
I wonder what the people who fled Falluja think of the matter.
Does the state allow journalists to talk with them?
Due to Israel's long refusal to make peace, the conflict between
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs has gone beyond a movement or a
guerrilla war; it has become an ingrained hatred.
Now the hatred is promoting religious extremist politics on both
sides: fanaticism that supports murder.
B'liarite Labour MPs want to oust Corbyn as head of the party by
forcing a new leadership election, then blocking him from running.
That would be flagrant contempt for the members of the Labour Party
who elected Corbyn and still support him.
Clinton has now
adopted
most of the points of Sanders' plan for funding college education.
Will
Democrats Get It Right on Climate Before It's Too Late?
I am sad to say I think Clinton is being paid to prevent this.
The Chilcot inquiry's mission
did
not include a legal judgment, so it did not reach a conclusion
about B'liar's legal culpability. But it shows he acted deceitfully.
There are ways to prosecute him, and that
is
called for.
The Chilcot inquiry
formally
recognized that the invasion of Iraq was "badly wrong", which we all
knew.
But this does not include
prosecuting
B'liar for the crime.
B'liar did other very bad things. He made the "Labour" Party support
neoliberalism and the principle of
giving
the banksters all they demand. He escalated the attack on the
traditional "Rights of Englishmen", which are now a shadow of their
former meaning.
His political heirs are now trying to kick Corbyn out of the
leadership of the Labour Party, because he wants to make it
more than Tory Lite.
Another
indigenous
environmental activist has been murdered in Honduras.
America's
Funding of Honduran [thugs] Puts Blood On Our Hands.
Support for the coup already put
blood
aplenty on Clinton's hands.The US says it is investigating whether
the Honduran army put Berta Cáceres's name on a
hit
list, but if you need an investigation to see the mass of crimes,
you must be trying pretty hard not to see it. I think this
investigation is just an excuse not to stop.
The right to bear arms theoretically applies to Americans regardless
of skin color, but in practice blacks are
likely
to be killed for it.
It may seem strange that the NRA has said nothing about this.
But its real purpose is to
promote
gun sales, and perhaps whites are the main market.
Police Officer Nakia Jones rebukes
racist,
killer thugs: "You have no business being a police officer."
My interpretation is that they are not police officers — they
are
thugs.
Citizens of the EU:
tell
the European Commission you demand network neutrality.
I suggest you state also that true network neutrality means that ISPs
are not allowed to inspect or save the contents of any communication.
You could also mention that your opinion of whether the European Union
ought to be continued or eliminated will depend on how it handles
issues such as this one.
Phone President Obama and urge him to veto the DARK Act.
Call 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 to leave your comment! The comment
line is open from 9am - 5pm ET Monday through Friday
I've seen a recommendation to say something like this:
Chilcot ignored the role of oil as the motivation for attacking Iraq,
and how the plan to grab Iraq's oil influenced the policies of the
occupation.
The Department of Homeland Surveillance released a report about encryption,
packed with falsehoods.
US citizens: call on Obama to veto the DARK Act, Monsanto's scheme to
prevent labeling of GMOs.
US citizens: call on the Department of Transportation to carry out two
plans for reducing carbon emissions from transit systems.
The European Union accepted a replacement vague US pledge to maintain
European users' privacy, and reauthorized businesses to send their
data to the US.
This could continue until another Snowden reveals how the US
violates that pledge.
Computer systems that take orders and respond by voice, as if they
were slaves, can train humans to treat humans as slaves.
US citizens: call on Senators to support the Climate Change Education Act.
The best thinkers estimate a chance of 10%, or 25%, or maybe 50% that
some event will wipe out humanity during this century, killing you among
others if you're still alive at the time. That is much more likely than
many risks that people take care to avoid, such as car accidents.
As for terrorism, the chance you will be killed by that minuscule.
For the most part, the threats of human extinction don't inspire us to
action because they are imponderable: we don't know what we could do
to protect ourselves from them.
However, there are two noteworthy exceptions. We know how to campaign
to abolish nuclear weapons, and we can campaign for strong action to
curb global heating. That would reduce two significant possibilities
for killing all, or a large fraction, of humanity.
Ashley Madison Admits Using Fembots to Lure Men into Spending Money.
Obama proposes to cooperate with Russia to defeat jihadis in Syria,
but faces internal opposition from officials that wish above all to
treat Russia as the enemy.
The European practice of mixing tobacco into your marijuana makes it
harder to quit marijuana — and harder to quit tobacco.
Israel killed Palestinian Awad Alareer by forbidding him to travel
outside Gaza to get medical treatment for his cancer.
Political prisoner Barrett Brown reports from prison.
Researchers Find Over 100 Spying Tor Nodes That Attempt to Compromise
Darknet Sites.
Poland has greatly loosened legal limits on spying on foreigners.
The law also authorizes internet censorship without a trial.
Both of these are world-wide trends in injustice. The defense of
human rights, in most places, is not strong enough to win very often;
governments that exaggerate the danger of "terrorists" usually succeed
in driving the public to give up their rights.
The law also makes it very easy for the state to demand fingerprints
and even DNA samples from foreign visitors. I think I will stay away
from Poland.
It even restricts sale of prepaid phone cards.
A real terrorist could surely steal one, but ordinary people
will feel the clampdown.
The Appeal of Torture: What I Learned from Teaching a Class on Terrorism.
Surely everyone has seen fiction in which the hero is being tortured
by people demanding information that the hero does not have. Surely
everyone can imagine being in this position. Why don't they apply
that imagination to the issue?
You don't have to be a hero, or do anything in particular, to be
falsely accused. It can happen to anyone.
A former Chilean officer has been charged with killing 15 dissidents.
The term "militant" might suggest these were guerrilla fighters, but
that would be a mistake. In Chile before 1973, leftist militants
campaigned for votes.
Unvaccinated workers at a US immigration detention center
caught measles and transmitted it to prisoners.
Just as food service workers are not allowed the choice not to wash
their hands, these employees should not be given the choice not to be
vaccinated. Other people's health is at stake.
Pregnant adolescents can be pressured into marriage in the US under
the laws of certain states.
I don't see anything inherently wrong in a sexual relationship between
a high school student and someone age 50. However, the marriage of a
pregnant 13-year-old is an indication that something fishy is going
on.
It is unfair to coerce someone by pregnancy into anything whatsoever,
including giving birth. Does the State of Virginia offer all pregnant
minors a confidential abortion at no cost? If not, it ought to.
As stated in the article, preventing forced marriage is not a simple
matter of checking age.
Two years after Israel's last bombardment of Gaza, the war
crimes on both sides have not been investigated.
A man in the UK has been ordered to inform the thug department 24 hours before having sex, including precisely who with and where. This because he was found not guilty of rape.
This effectively means a life of celibacy.
He also faces a lifetime ban from the internet, more or less,
and the state also demands to see the pin of his phone.
He is threatening to go on hunger strike.
Soldiers sent to fight for an unjust cause have been betrayed by their
government, and
they
feel this powerfully.
South Sudan Is
Destroying
Its Free Press, One Journalist at a Time.
Coal companies pay for
frivolous
lawsuits to disrupt the work of climate scientists.
Fracking
'Will
Break UK Climate Targets Unless Rules Are Made Stricter'.
Bornean Orangutan
Declared
'Critically Endangered' As Forests Shrink.
Cory Doctorow argues that we have passed the point of peak
indifference to privacy and snooping. Now we
need
to organize people as they discover the importance of the issue.
I wish someone with skill and available time were ready to start an
organization to campaign to
strictly
limit accumulation of data about people.
In the run-up to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro there is a
big
increase in killings by thugs.
Global heating means ever worse floods in the UK. People may not
appreciate how bad the effects can be; here is a
projection.
The invasion of Iraq was
not
merely a blunder. B'liar was warned about all the bad
consequences, and that the "intelligence" was a lie; he went ahead
anyway.
It wasn't necessary to be an expert, or have any inside information,
to recognize that invasion was unjustified. Even I could see it.
Philando Castile informed the thug that he had a licensed gun, but
that he was about to get out his ID as requested. The thug told him
not to, so he raised his arms instead — so
the
thug shot him and killed him.
Mr Castile was black. Maybe the thug was affected by
unconscious racism, but that is not an excuse.
In Madagascar most people are very poor, so they are making fun of the
president's wife's expensive dress. The government's response:
a
bill to prohibit insulting officials.
Madagascar has been hit hard by global heating effects, including
drought
sometimes and flooding sometimes.
90% of Madagascar's former forest has been cut down, and desperate
people are rapidly cutting down what remains, but that will only give
them a short respite before they die in large numbers.
I think this is a foretaste of what the whole world could be like in
2070.
Such a desperate situation calls for desperate measures. If the rest
of the world wants to help, I suggest offering a regular supply of
food to anyone under 20 years old who agrees to be sterilized in
exchange.
The US puts a lot of money into subsidizing housing, but
limited
mainly to the wealthy.
In postmodern politics (Trump, or the UK out of the EU), supporters
don't need to seriously believe the promised benefits or actions.
They enjoy the pleasure of
fantasizing
them for a moment.
The UK referendum has had one clear, substantial benefit for homeless
Britons:
some
housing prices in London have tumbled.
It isn't yet clear whether the effect will be widespread enough to
bring rents down for working people.
Oslo had a lucky scrape: the International Olympic Committee made
arrogant demands for holding the 2022 Olympic games there, which
spurred Oslo to
withdraw
its bid to hold the games.
While these demands are offensive, and in some cases rather
inconvenient, it is other Olympic Games policies that tend to do real
and lasting harm to the people of whatever city hosts them. For
instance,
heavy
taxes, new surveillance systems, nasty laws that interfere with human
rights, and clearance of poor people.
Tyrannical countries such as Kazakhstan and China probably already
have the tyrannical laws and surveillance that the IOC demands, and
they probably crush the poor already as much as it is feasible to do.
Today's Olympic games and today's tyrants are made for each other.
Corrupt members of the US congress are
determined
to buy an expensive ship that the Pentagon says it doesn't want.
Right-wing Israeli fanatics
admire
and defend the soldier on trial for killing a Palestinian prisoner who
was lying on the ground incapacitated. They revile witnesses for
testifying honestly in court.
If this is the new Israel, feh!
Clare Short, a former UK minister who criticized the invasion of Iraq,
calls for change in the system of decisionmaking that made it easy for B'liar to push the UK into war.
Katherine Gun reminds us that in 2003 the US wanted to spy on
representatives to the Security Council to try to pressure other
countries to vote for the invasion of Iraq, and asks why the Chilcot
investigation did not ask for her testimony.
Jill Stein, probable candidate of the Green Party, has invited Bernie Sanders
to join and even perhaps be the Green candidate.
I will be glad to vote for either Stein or Sanders.
As the right-wing plutocrats "take back control" of Britain, they will
hire plutocratic consultants to impose plutocratic treaties, perhaps even worse than the TTIP and CETA.
The ruling elite points to incoherent rebellions, such as support for
Trump and taking the UK out of the EU, as proof that the elite ought to rule.
Stop the Killing, in Baton Rouge Louisiana, tries to stop violence by
rushing to scenes of violent incidents and making videos. It was just
coincidence that the latest violence its people filmed was being committed by thugs.
The world's total global fish catch is approaching the limit of what is sustainable. Many specific fish stocks are still being fished unsustainably.
A virtual leash for parents to lock onto their children's bodies.
Controlled, naturally, by proprietary software on running on a proprietary
phone operating system — and if the app itself doesn't track you, the phone
certainly does.
After Philando Castile was shot, the other thugs rushed to comfort his
killer. They didn't bother to take Castile's pulse.
Many of the "reforms" adopted by the Baltimore Thug Department
are restatements of old, inadequate policies.
The UK government acknowledges that the expected cost of the planned
nuclear power plant has nearly tripled in the past year.
The financial arrangements for the plant assure that the public will
pay these extra costs, one way or another.
The same amount of money would provide far more energy if it were
spent on a mix of renewable generators and energy efficiency. The
Tory ministers who have pushed this plan have been so stubborn in
ignoring the matter that I can't see any possible explanation except
personal payoffs.
The Transcanada lawsuit illustrates why we need to reject the TPP, and cancel NAFTA too.
Israel has demolished the Bedouin village of Araqib 100 times in 6 years.
A Louisiana law gives thugs 30 days to get their stories straight
before they can be interrogated about a crime.
A US journalist faces 20 years in prison for a supposed false statement
in a request for public records.
It sounds like railroading to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Developers are evicting 670 people from a rent-controlled building in San Jose, California. This is the largest single eviction in the area's history.
Building denser housing is, in general, a good thing to do. Enough
such construction will bring rents down — but when the construction
is really a loophole to undermine rent control, it won't actually
help.
The Israeli right wing government is planning to label
foreign-supported human rights organizations such as Breaking the
Silence as
"foreign
agents", following a trail
blazed
by Putin.
Palestinian human rights groups get hit even worse. Israel arrested
Palestinian human rights defender Hasan Ghassan Ghaleb Safadi,
tortured him, and is
holding him
in prison without charges.
He works in an organization that tries to represent Palestinian
prisoners.
Israel is confiscating Palestinians' land at
more
than 5 times the rate of a year ago.
Israel is
planning to
accelerate construction of its colonies in the West Bank, and
threatens to declare annexation of them.
Other countries should diminish their commercial ties with Israel if
it does that.
In the past 5 years,
800
UK thugs looked at records about the public for personal reasons.
Hardly any were prosecuted.
So imagine what will happen as the UK government ramps up its general
snooping on everyone.
Chelsea Manning's lawyers were
unable
to reach her for 36 hours; the guards refused to say why.
Mohammed al Qawli wants the US to apologize for the drone attack that
killed his brother, who was a teacher in Yemen.
A Norwegian company warns that US oil reserves "will only last 70 years". This company seems to be unaware of global heating. Those reserves are enough to fry the Earth; what more do we need?
The UK's government wants to impose a 10-year prison term for
forbidden file-sharing.
Increasing the punishment for sharing is wrong because it is wrong to
punish sharing at all. Noncommercial sharing of published works
should be lawful.
The Yes Men published a parody NRA site that proposed to provide
"life-saving firearms" for "poor urban centers." The NRA had it disconnected
by falsely alleging trademark infringement.
The US government could prosecute violent thugs more effectively
if "reckless disregard" were added to "willful deprivation" of rights.
However, states have a responsibility to prosecute thugs' crimes, and
not just killings. Perjury is especially important to prosecute.
Israel now allows soldiers to arbitrarily search the body of anyone passing by.
As formerly in New York City, this applies theoretically to anyone,
but in practice only members of a certain minority group get searched
— over and over.
Key points from the Chilcot inquiry.
However, answers to some crucial questions have been left out.
US citizens:
call
for federal charges against the thugs that killed Alton Sterling.
And
Philando
Castile.
Everyone:
call
on KFC to stop selling chickens grown with regular use of
antibiotics.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to oppose H.R. 5538 for its
anti-environment riders.
US thug unions have won contract provisions that systematically interfere with
investigating and prosecuting crimes committed by thugs, including killings.
Trump's wealth draws support from Americans who are fed up with
the influence of campaign contributions.
Ironically, Trump is not rich enough to fund his own campaign.
He is raising funds from plutocrats too.
How supporters of a united Europe can propose a vision of same
that deserves people's support.
The documents cited in the Chilcot report show the UK's intelligence
agencies assumed without evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction in 2002, and did not consider the possibility he
didn't. Then B'liar exaggerated what they had told him.
The latter step already amounts to dishonesty on B'liar's part, but it
occurs to me that perhaps the spy chiefs had been instructed or led to
make that assumption, in a deniable way with no paper trail.
Hans Blix: Blair Told Me the Intelligence Was Clear.
In fact, as we see here, it was not clear, it was blind.
The speaker of Brazil's congress has stepped down as speaker
under pressure about his corruption.
Unfortunately, that doesn't cancel the impeachment of President Rousseff.
Out of 144 people that Obama has released from Guantanamo prison, the
number that subsequently fought against the US was between 8 and 20. This is despite the grave injustice that all of them have suffered.
I think this question is not fundamentally relevant to the ethical
question of Guantanamo. The US should free all the prisoners in
Guantanamo, or give them fair trials (those for whom there is
something to try them for). You can't justify imprisoning someone
because he might be so angry you imprisoned him that he wants
revenge.
Even if all released prisoners had gone to fight for PISSI, that would
be insignificant in terms of the outcome of the fight. Besides, the
continued existence of Guantanamo and its injustice has helped PISSI
and al Qa'ida recruit thousands of people to fight the US.
Tony B'liar claims that the conquest and occupation of Iraq were
beneficial to the Middle East and the world. Has he been taking lessons in chutzpah from Donald Trump?
This June set a heat record in the US.
13 consecutive months have set a global heat record.
Ocean heating has destroyed a vast kelp forest off Australia's western coast.
Two
officials have been convicted of helping to organize the 1994
massacre in Rwanda.
The Chilcot report shows B'liar was
informed
that the US was presenting distorted "intelligence" to justify
invading Iraq.
Declassified UK documents show that the motive for conquering Iraq was
not the fictional "weapons of mass destruction", nor Saddam Hussein's
real atrocities against some Iraqi minorities, but simply
oil.
It is ironic that the world now has oil so plentiful that it can
drown
its coastal cities.
Chilcot's Lessons on Going to War
Must
Be Enshrined in Law.
The US media, giving neocons the privilege of
unquestioned
support, enabled Dubya to launch the conquest of Iraq.
Here's a
timeline
of Dubya's lies, showing Cheney and Dubya said in March 2002 that
they had already decided to attack.
The Chilcot report shows that
B'liar
was indeed Dubya's poodle, and pledged him loyalty like a good
dog.
Income inequality in the US
got
worse during 2015.
The Chilcot report reverses a long string of British state coverups
intended to deny responsibility for anything bad that happened in
Iraq. Reg Keys says that this places the blame for the death of his
son, a British soldier in Iraq, squarely on
Tony
B'liar.
For the Anti-War Movement, Chilcot Is Not the End.
Blair
Must Face Charges.
The death of Tom Keys was the direct result of a specific bad
decision, for which other bad decisions paved the way. The UK
government appears to have been so embarrassed about them that its
"investigations" were cover-ups.
Thugs in Louisiana wrestled Alton Sterling to the ground, then shot
him several times, killing him. He was
not
threatening them.
That's murder, isn't it?
EU "farming" subsidies
pay
the owners of unproductive, exhausted farmland to keep wildlife off
it.
The result is to devastate wildlife.
Cleveland thugs
will
take off their body cameras if a "riot" starts.
Thugs are
known
to start riots.
Defining
college students as consumers of education is a recipe for
rip-offs and undermines education. Socrates took note of this 2400
years ago and it is even more true today.
Both Trump and Clinton are tied to for-profit colleges.
Thin strips with fictitious "fingerprints"
work
reliably for unlocking devices — and if the thugs are
attacking you, you can discard the strip.
The people of Zimbabwe held a one-day national strike which
shut
down nearly all business in the country.
Dubya and Cheney
have
not apologized for conquering and occupying Iraq. The US has the
duty to prosecute them, but has not even done an investigation like
the UK's Chilcot investigation.
Ralph Nader: US candidates
mostly
do not offer real solutions to the problem of global heating.
Nader urges Americans to start pressuring candidates to promise real
action. I think we should tackle this threat with at least the same
firmness that we employed for World War II.
One step we should start with is to reject the term "climate change",
which was
imposed
by Republicans to downplay the danger and hold us back.
Clinton
wants
more charter schools, but not for-profit ones.
The opposition to for-profit schools is good, but even schools that
are officially not for profit can become
money-grubbing.
Each
time Obama tries to get the TPP passed, he is effectively
campaigning for Trump.
Faisal bin ali Jaber demands that the Obama regime reveal whether its
minimized
figures for civilian drone casualties count his relatives.
The US has already issued
enough
fossil fuel leases to last until climate disaster, so issuing any
more leases is simply nuts.
The UK claims it will phase out coal mining by 2025, but it is
still
licensing new mines.
Some fishing boats in the US label each fish and put it in a data
base, so the eventual purchaser can check
what
it was and where it was caught.
It seems like a good idea (since dead fish are not entitled to privacy
rights), but I don't think it will entirely stop the fraud of
mislabeling. It won't be impossible for fishermen to put lies into
the system, or for supermarkets and restaurants to lie about what the
system said about the fish they are selling.
A portable, quick DNA testing probe would make it easy to hold the
whole system to account. They won't dare lie if they expect to be
caught and fined.
Private prison company CCA took over two halfway houses in San Diego,
claiming it would run them the same as before. Naturally, it didn't
do that. Instead it began
skimping
on all expenses.
Local activists demand the county cancel the contract with CCA.
Naturally, CCA began skimping. Since it is a for-profit company,
it "has to" make money, and the way to do that is by squeezing
someone, or everyone.
It should be illegal for for-profit companies to run prisons,
hospitals, schools, or any public services. Let those entrepreneurs
accustom themselves to a salary instead of dreaming of riches at
society's expense.
After several women in Sweden reported rape or groping at the
midsummer festival, initial reports said that the attackers were
foreigners. This was false, but the
racist
effect continues to spread.
Car traffic is choking and polluting Mexico City, and the city is
unable
to cope.
The obvious solution is to put a high tax on cars and gasoline, spent
on thousands more buses and on additional train lines. However,
people are reluctant to trust a government to collect the taxes if
they don't expect it to spend the money properly.
Trump
says
global heating is not happening, but the ocean keeps advancing
towards his Florida real estate.
Miami Beach isn't long for this world, and
large
parts of Florida may become effectively uninhabitable if the water
turns salty.
People such as Clinton and Petraeus are let off the hook for being
careless (or worse) with government secrets, but those without the
backing of the elite are
punished
horribly for the least violation.
Macy's department store used to arrest alleged shoplifters, put them
in cells, and "fine" them,
without
bothering to check the evidence (such as receipts proving they had
purchased the "stolen" products).
They hired real thugs to carry out these injustices.
Why
teachers in the UK are on strike.
The End of the Old Israel.
The characteristics of Israel that once inspired world-wide admiration
have been extinguished by a fundamental revolution lead by Netanyahu.
Today's Israelis generally accept bigotry, and are ready to dispense
with rule of law in order to eliminate dissent.
I don't see anything to admire in Israel as it is now, except
for the beleaguered dissidents.
Bookseller
Abductions: China Demands Lam Wing-kee Return from Hong Kong.
Global heating, about 150,000 years before the Chicxulub asteroid
impact,
wiped
out many dinosaur species, perhaps enabling the asteroid to wipe
them all out.
Governments pledged in 2010 to cut the rate of loss of biodiversity,
but they are
not
on track to meet the targets.
Large US ISPs trick or corrupt apartment landlords into
imposing
one-ISP exclusivity on the tenants.
This illustrates the dishonest, scheming nature of many businesses.
To stop them, we need to stop expecting them to act in good faith.
For instance, it should be a crime for a business to put prohibited
clauses in contracts with customers or employees.
500 women in San Cristóbal, Venezuela, pushed across the bridge
into Cúcuta (Colombia) because they
couldn't
buy any food in San Cristóbal.
When I went from Colombia to Venezuela that way, in July 2014, people
simply walked across the bridge in either direction, with no passport
control. I was required to go to an office a few blocks away from the
bridge for some official formalities, perhaps because I was a US
citizen and was going to travel further in Venezuela.
At the time, I heard that there was a lot of smuggling. Goods,
including gasoline, were subsidized in Venezuela, so people bought
them there and
sold
them in Colombia at the market price.
There were already some shortages in Venezuala, but they were only for
a few goods, and there were usually substitutes. For instance, you
couldn't find penne but you could find spaghetti. Now the shortages
have become a serious problem.
President Maduro is
doing
a lousy job on the economy, and increasingly
infringes
the human rights of the opposition. I support replacing him.
At the same time, I am concerned that the right-wing opposition would
sell out their country to the multinational corporations, and
introduce repression and murder like their counterparts in Honduras.
The proper replacement for Maduro would be someone like Hugo Chávez.
A
right-wing extremist assassinated an MP who stood for remaining in
the EU.
This was an
act of terrorism.
In the US, the danger of right-wing terrorism is roughly equal to that
of Islamist terrorism,
though both are rather small dangers for people
in general. The Orlando
massacre seems to have been a
mixture of the two.
Understanding the Death of Jo Cox Requires Nuance, Not Agendas.
Under Clinton, the Democratic Party is the war hawk party.
Murderous mobs in Bangladesh are targeting secularists, Hindus, and
anyone who the extremists find unsatisfactory.
Several banksters have been convicted of
falsifying
the Libor rate.
Put Away the Fireworks…
You
Don't Live in a Democracy Anymore.
Loyal Americans must fight to overthrow the plutocracy and restore
democracy.
Clinton
may
suffer politically for her private email server even though the
FBI says it was not a crime
I don't think that her private email server is a very important issue
in itself. As far as I can tell, she thought it was useful for doing
her job. Other secretaries of state have done
similar
things.
There was a chance that this issue could make Clinton step down, so we
could elect a non-plutocratist president. But then, Obama was not
going to allow any risk to his plutocratic treaty, the TPP.
"It's impossible to remove the
stigma
of addiction while drug use remains illegal."
Note also that drug users are not necessarily addicts. Marijuana use
creates tolerance to it, but this is not addiction in the usual sense
since withdrawal doesn't cause pain or cravings.
Thousands of Muslims are
tweeting
their accord to the statement that PISSI is a bunch of
psychopaths
PISSI is the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Trump posted a directly antisemitic image, then posted a variety of
contradictory
excuses to deny the antisemitism.
It turns out the image was copied from a Nazi site.
US citizens:
demand
a progressive Democratic Party platform.
Austerity in Greece has
led
400,000 people to leave to find work, and many of them are skilled
professionals.
Playing games on the street (hockey, in the case of Canada) used to be
a way that children could learn to organize themselves. Then parents
became
too paranoid and/or meddling.
A school in Berlin, which lets the children decide what to do,
graduates students that are
very
capable.
Research in the last few years has
increased
estimates of "climate sensitivity", meaning that a given amount of
CO2 will cause more global heating than previously
expected, so the climate cliff is even closer.
Here's the
Tory
roadmap for killing the UK's NHS — but MPs are considering a
bill to restore the NHS as it was.
Meanwhile, teachers are
on
strike to demand repair for the system of public education.
[Climate mayhem]: the
Missing
Issue of the 2016 Campaign.
Calling it
"climate
change" helps keep it missing.
Would-be Tory Leaders Pose as Champions of the Poor — After
Six
Years of Cuts.
The EU decided to
increase
fishing quotas, defying the science advisers who said reduced
quotas are needed to help the stocks increase.
If the EU can't resist business pressure on issues such as
conservation, what good is it? However, as the article shows,
national governments such as the UK follow the same short-term
line of thinking.
If civilization can't govern itself for long-term needs, it won't be
around to govern for much longer.
Thugs in the Philippines have started a rampage of
killing
alleged criminals without trial.
If the thugs' story is true, if they went to arrest a drug gang and
the gang members shot at them, the thugs were justified in shooting
back at them. But you can't assume thugs tell the truth about
occasions when they kill people. I wonder whether they killed every
last member of the group; I expect some would have tried to surrender
once they had lost the battle, so if all of them were killed, that
suggests the thugs killed gangsters who were trying to surrender.
A
conjecture
about Tony B'liar: he supported the conquest of Iraq because he
felt he desperately needed to keep Dubya's favor.
The article suggests that B'liar achieved something by getting Dubya
to seek UN approval for the war. If he had made UN approval a
condition of his own support, he might have achieved something real.
Furthermore, since the UN ultimately did not approve, this might have
prevented the war.
Even if the article's conjecture is entirely right, it doesn't mean
that B'liar didn't lie, or excuse him in any way.
Labour MPs hate Corbyn because he
wants
to give the leadership to the people instead of to them.
Reporters dislike him because he would change them from judges to
reporters.
As I see it, the party's democracy is a good means, perhaps a
necessary means, but the overall goal is to take power away from
the elites.
Some Syrian opposition groups have imitated Assad's regime
in practicing
kidnaping,
torture, and murder.
Vatical personnel accused of leaking scandalous church financial
information face
trial
and possible imprisonment.
Kenyan thugs appear to have
tortured
and murdered a human rights lawyer along with a client who had
been shot previously by thugs. The thugs grabbed them right in front
of the court house.
To Kenya's credit, some thugs have been arrested for this killing.
Turkey is sending aid to Gaza, and Israel is
allowing
it through.
A Burmese human rights group wanted to announce its
report
on the military's war crimes, because the places it was going to
hold the event both cancelled.
This is an indication of continued lack of human rights in Burma.
Human rights groups accuse the US of
falsely
up-rating Thailand for political reasons.
The US up-rated Egypt falsely in order to continue delivering arms to
al-Sisi's brutal regime.
After assassinating many Bangladeshis one by one, Islamist fanatics in
Bangladesh have turned to
attacking
groups of foreigners.
Reportedly most of the attackers were
already
on the wanted list.
Trump is
attacking
TPP hard, even though that alienates the plutocrats that prefer
Clinton.
The TPP is a
business-supremacy
treaty, and those who support it have taken the side of
plutocrats, against democracy.
Trump's opposition might have good results for the US. The danger now
is that the TPP will be approved by Congress in the lame-duck session,
and Clinton will then say, "I didn't support it, but I have no choice
but to reluctantly obey," while privately telling her bankster
backers, "Hooray, we won!"
But if Trump says, "If the TPP is approved in a lame-duck session, I
will rip it up," Clinton may have to oppose it for real.
Trump and Clinton are dishonest in different ways. Clinton has a
coherent system of lies, which are the difference between her
carefully planned real views and her carefully planned front. Trump,
on the other hand, mostly
says
whatever comes into his head, regardless of the truth of his
intentions.
"The Statue of Liberty was
built
to welcome immigrants — that welcome must not end."
These principles are still valid, but the world cannot afford for the
US to welcome very many immigrants. Americans live very
inefficiently, and immigrants who come to the US pick up most of this
inefficiency. The US birth rate is small enough that the population
would decrease, but immigration keeps it increasing instead. We
need to decrease the rate of immigration.
The state should also help make the US operate more efficiently,
which requires both more political vision and defeating rule by
the lobbies that want people to consume more.
A statistical study says that Clinton's campaign
stole
the primary election through computerized voting machines.
Here are the
details.
A European Commission scam aims to impose CETA, a business-supremacy
treaty, on EU member states for 20 years
even
if they never ratify it.
The EU still does good in some areas, but that continues by inertia.
The EU is now such a tool of the rich, such an enemy of democracy,
that the people need to defeat it.
However, it's not enough simply to break up the EU. That could just
as easily provide an opportunity for the plutocrats to exploit. The
EU needs to be broken up by governments willing to fight the
plutocrats with no holds barred, the goal being to break their power.
A proprietary program running on phones
aims
to make a database of all drivers to record who drives well and
who drives badly.
Perhaps it should be legal to record specifically and only drivers
that commit crimes. If so, that should be an exception to a general
rule that forbids all systematic schemes to use cameras to recognize
people in places where the public is admitted.
Smart Circle, a company being condemned in an anonymous blog for
exploiting its workers, is trying to use the DMCA to
censor
the blog and identify its author. It alleges copyright
infringement in drawings of company employees, drawn (it
appears) by the blog's author.
That the company could have a copyright on these drawings makes no
sense to me. Perhaps it got the cooperation of court staff that are
incompetent or worse.
The idea that journalism must be "balanced"
benefits
any political side that is willing to lie a lot.
The CO2 we are pumping into the oceans (via the air)
changes
the way molecules smell, for aquatic life. Many species depend on
this sense for activities and may die out as the smells change.
The Panama Papers revealed some information about a
circuitous
underground funding chain to pay for construction of Israeli
colonies in the Palestinian West Bank.
Although the chain includes illegalities in several links, the Israeli
government shows no intention of stopping them.
Australia's Biggest Banks Pump
Billions
into Fossil Fuels Despite Climate Pledges.
Artificial lawns mean carbon emissions instead of absorption, and they
eliminate
habitat for wildlife.
Everyone:
Call on UNESCO to oppose coal
power plants in the Sundarbans.
Officials from 20 rich countries were
unable
to agree on when to end subsidies for fossil fuels.
They are a bunch of fossil fools, playing "chicken" with the future of
the world at stake.
They really should end these subsidies a decade ago, but since they
can't manage that, they should end the subsidies tomorrow.
Trump is
continuing
to attack the TPP (and other business-supremacy treaties) while
Clinton continues to protect the TPP from defeat even as she says she
opposes it.
She is willing to risk defeat to serve her plutocratist masters.
We shouldn't suppose that Trump really means what he says, since he
has favored outsourcing before, and often shafts his own workers.
However, for this point, what's
relevant is what he says, not what he
would actually do.
Exposing
the closets in which the US conceals civilian casualties of drone
attacks.
US citizens:
explain
why you object to giving the FBI an exemption from standard rules
of the Privacy Act.
The Moral Economy
of Tech, or, the hubris of programmers who assume the global
"solutions" they impose on the world are doing good and not harm.
Mexican thugs made a systematic practice of
arresting,
raping and torturing women chosen essentially at random, then accusing
them of belonging to gangs.
Six months after cleaners at Dell's facilities won a union contract, they
have been
replaced.
Dell claims it has no responsibility because it interposes a
contractor and a subcontractor between it and the workers.
Proper protection of workers' rights calls for overturning this dodge,
so that workers that provide services to a certain company indirectly
have the protections they would have as its employees.
An international bank organization warns that the current practice of
promoting economic growth through low interest rates
risks
causing another financial crash.
The right way to promote economic growth is with more government
spending, which could be paid for by more taxes on the rich.
COMPAS purports to estimate how likely a criminal is to commit further
crimes. It has been used for enough years that it is now possible to
systematically compare its predictions with the subsequent facts.
The study reports that COMPAS
systematically
tends to overestimate the chance that blacks will commit more crimes,
and systematically tends to underestimate the chance that whites will
commit more crimes. It is programmed racism.
The article refers to COMPAS as a secret and opaque "tool", which
means it could be a
nonfree program or an instance of
Service
as a Software Substitute.
Those two cases work very differently, but ethically speaking they
have the same bad consequences. State agencies should never
use either proprietary software or SaaSS, precisely because both deny
the state control over its own computing, which it is supposed to do
for the people.
If COMPAS were a free program,
as
it ought to be, there would be no need for statistical analysis to
determine whether it implements racial discrimination, nor why.
The UK's vote to leave the EU is the
rejection
of the ideology of globalization, and condemnation of the EU for
subjecting Europe to the ensuing plutocracy.
Unfortunately, the Tories will rush to sell Britain out to foreign
investors even more and faster without the restraining influence of
some of the EU policies (mostly holdovers from before 2000).
Kenya is
covering
up news about the fighting with al-Shabaab, and has arrested a
journalist who tries to cover the events.
The victims of the civil war in Sri Lanka still wait for justice, as
the government
moves
to cancel its commitments to them.
A controlled experiment found one reason women tend to advance less in
engineering professions: they
more
often react to a setback by giving up.
This is not necessarily unrelated to sexism. If women have grown up
hearing things like "Girls can't do math", this could sometimes induce
them to interpret being rejected for an engineering job, or meeting
other students who are more able in math, as confirmation that "they
can't do math" and think it is rational to give up.
Clinton's supporters in the platform committee readily acknowledged a
variety of political problems, but they
rejected
all practical measures to do anything about them.
I'm a Former Marine Who Was on the No Fly List for 4 Years — and I Still Don't Know Why.
However, from the events he states, it seems pretty clear why the US
put him on the list: to pressure him to be an informant.
Israeli conscientious objectors continue to go to prison rather than
participate in the occupation of Palestine.
The US media downplay terrorism committed by right-wing extremists,
so people get the idea that such violence is committed only by Muslims.
Of course, terrorism of all sorts is a small danger compared with
the other dangers of life.
The ACLU is suing to overturn the CFAA on the grounds that it stops
people from investigating whether algorithms are discriminating illegally against them.
I hope it works.
As Palestinians suffer in a temperature of 38C, with no access to water,
the nearby Israeli colony has a full swimming pool.
Israel destroys their water pipes to try to force them to move.
Google is prepared to "fight Apple and Amazon for control of your
home."
How dare these companies fight for power over us? We should make
sure they all lose.
US citizens: call on the Democratic Convention to oppose TPP in the
platform.
Please sign this one too.
Israeli conscientious objectors
continue to
go to prison rather than participate in the occupation of
Palestine.
The US media
downplay
terrorism committed by right-wing extremists, so people get the
idea that such violence is committed only by Muslims.
Of course, terrorism of all sorts is a small danger compared with
the other dangers of life.
The ACLU is
suing
to overturn the CFAA on the grounds that it stops people from
investigating whether algorithms are discriminating illegally against
them.
I hope it works.
As Palestinians suffer in a temperature of 38C, with no access to
water,
the
nearby Israeli colony has a full swimming pool.
Israel destroys their water pipes to try to force them to move.
After a Campaign Scarred by Bigotry,
It's
Become OK to be Racist in Britain.
The campaign of bigotry has
boosted
right-wing bigotry elsewhere in Europe. These extremists express
themselves through terrorism as well as through insults.
Their movement feeds on the anger that responds to the increasing
power and arrogance of the rich, who then distract them to attack
scapegoats instead of the real villains.
Advanced political campaigning software raises various
ethical
issues.
A canvasser that is operating under the direction of a reactive script
will become a sort of terminal for the campaign's computer to talk
with voters, but will still appear to be a supporter communicating on
per own behalf.
As for the personalization of messages based on data collections, I
see the collection of the data as a bigger issue than that use of it.
The specific problem of campaign message personalization is that the
campaign can say special to certain selected voters, things which the
general public might find odious but would never see.
The campaign's use of this nonfree software treats the campaign
unjustly, in my view. (The candidates and their campaign managers
have probably never thought about this issue.) Worse, asking campaign
volunteers such as canvassers to use the nonfree software is an
injustice to all of them.
"Sky lanterns"
start
fires in fields and homes, and have caused power blackouts. They
contain wires that can kill wild and domestic animals.
Thus, I think it makes sense to ban them.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on state representatives to pass the gender pay equality bill.
The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights says that
Tory spending and aid cuts violate the human rights of poor people in the UK.
The US "report" on casualties from drone attacks continues the practice of underestimating the number of civilians killed.
The report is so weak on detail that one can't learn anything real from it.
This Person Exists: Transgender People Can Now Fight and Die For the Empire.
Eye-Fi cards, which connect cameras to WiFi, depend on proprietary
software which depends on servers — which the manufacturer will shut
down, making it impossible to configure the cards.
Using proprietary software always puts you under someone's thumb, more
or less. When it depends on a server, that is acute nastiness.
And that's the way the "Internet of Things" works.
If the purchasers of Eye-Fi cards were wise, they would have rejected the
product for this before buying it.
US citizens: call on the Democratic platform committee
to take a stand against the TPP.
Tesla admits it tracks and records when drivers use Autopilot.
I think this snooping is a much bigger issue than the accident itself.
In 2015, courts in the US authorized every single wiretap that was requested.
So either thugs and prosecutors never once tried to overreach, or the courts
are failing to do their job of protecting our rights.
Venezuela has arrested two opposition activists who were registering
voters for a possible referendum on President Maduro. They were charged
with unrelated crimes, then disappeared.
Chavez faced such a referendum. He did not interfere with it —
he won it.
The Baltimore thug department has adopted new rules limiting the use of deadly force and requiring thugs to try to de-escalate.
This is a step in a good direction and may prevent some killings.
However, it is not obvious how it would prevent killings like that of
Freddie Gray, where the deadly force used is disguised and the thugs
say it never happened.
The Trump campaign is illegally asking foreign politicians for money.
Google is prepared to "fight Apple and Amazon for
control
of your home."
How dare these companies fight for power over us? We should make
sure they all lose.
US citizens:
sign this
petition to the Democratic Party to unequivocally oppose the TPP.
The UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights says that
Tory spending and aid cuts
violate
the human rights of poor people in the UK.
The US "report" on casualties from drone attacks continues the
practice of
underestimating
the number of civilians killed.
The report is so weak on detail that one
can't
learn anything real from it.
US citizens:
call on the
Democratic Convention to oppose TPP in the platform.
Please
sign
this one too.
This Person Exists: Transgender People
Can
Now Fight and Die For the Empire.
Eye-Fi cards, which connect cameras to WiFi,
depend
on proprietary software which depends on servers — which the
manufacturer will shut down, making it impossible to configure the
cards.
Using proprietary software always puts you under someone's thumb, more
or less. When it depends on a server, that is acute nastiness. And
that's
the
way the "Internet of Things" works.
If the purchasers of Eye-Fi cards were wise, they would have rejected
the product for this before buying it.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic platform committee to take a stand against the
TPP.
Tesla admits it
tracks and
records when drivers use Autopilot.
I think this snooping is a much bigger issue than the accident itself.
In 2015, courts in the US
authorized
every single wiretap that was requested.
So either thugs and prosecutors never once tried to overreach, or the
courts are failing to do their job of protecting our rights.
Venezuela has arrested two opposition activists who were registering
voters for a possible referendum on President Maduro. They were charged
with unrelated crimes, then
disappeared.
Chavez faced such a referendum. He did not interfere with it —
he won it.
The Baltimore thug department has adopted new rules
limiting
the use of deadly force and requiring thugs to try to de-escalate.
This is a step in a good direction and may prevent some killings.
However, it is not obvious how it would prevent killings like that of
Freddie Gray, where the deadly force used is disguised and the thugs
say it never happened.
The Trump campaign is
illegally
asking foreign politicians for money.
US citizens:
call on
your congresscritter to extend Medicare, not cut it.
Your Favorite Website Might Be
Discriminating
Against You — if you like web sites that collect data about users.
I think it is wiser to reject them out of hand, discrimination or not.
Congress has voted to subject Puerto Rico to
unlimited
austerity to give its creditors priority over its people.
This sure shows whose side Clinton is on, if we didn't already know.
She will not get my vote.
The commander of NATO forces in Europe
strained
in every way to start a proxy war in Ukraine. This included
falsifying "intelligence" to create the appearance of a casus belli.
It's a good thing that Obama kept him in check. Clinton, however,
might be
eager
to go along with the next such plan.
News companies are
selling
companies interviews at the Democratic and Republican conventions.
I received a solicitation of funds from Harvard, and emailed back
Thank you for your generous gift and your continued support of
Harvard.
Please let me know if I can assist you in any other way.
San Francisco is
considering
a payroll tax to fund housing for the homeless.
Using taxation for this purpose is valid and probably necessary,
but basing the tax on payroll may cause perverse incentives.
Meanwhile, no amount of money will provide housing to the homeless if
there isn't enough housing. San Francisco should reduce the policies,
such as zoning laws, that impede increasing the housing stock.
GMO rice that produces carotene is reportedly effective at providing
vitamin A, and
may
be grown for real use starting next year.
I don't think we should oppose all GMOs in a blanket way. Each GMO
food is a separate case, and each one needs to be judged for several
possible downsides:
Russia and Iran are now using drones for air attacks in Syria,
following
the lead of the US. It is becoming very dangerous for journalists
there.
The US has a long history of deploying advanced weapons without
worrying what will result once other countries have them too.
Protesters in Boston
blocked
construction of a natural gas pipeline.
Building more fossil fuel facilities is a foolhardy risk. We don't
know how far it is to the edge of the climate cliff. We need to
reduce combustion, not increase it.
The UK referendum seems to have
encouraged
many Britons to display racism. In the past, I think they would
have hidden it because they expected to be rebuked if they showed it.
Some US states
bar
ex-cons from a wide range of careers, leaving crime as their only
recourse.
In Italy, Lisa
could
legally have stolen food to eat, and presumably also to feed her
baby.
She shouldn't have had a baby if she couldn't afford to take care of
one. And society should have made it easy for her to avoid it, by
providing easy access reliable contraception, as well as abortion if
necessary, and
real
sex education about them.
US citizens:
call
for a ban on oil trains.
Everyone:
call on
CNN to present more climate reporting than fossil fuel
advertising.
Facebook's victory over the Belgian privacy authority
may
not be final.
Many coal companies take the
International
Energy Agency's disaster scenario and present it as a "forecast"
of future coal demand.
Many countries now
arrest
people for criticizing officials on the internet. It's not just
Turkey
and
France.
As the Brazilian Senate tries President Rousseff, the Senate's experts
say she is
not
guilty of the charges that were the pretext for impeaching her.
Australians, if you want to prevent the Great Barrier Reef from being
destroyed in 20 years, you must
support
the Green Party. The major parties don't propose to try to do
what is needed.
Two whistleblowers that exposed Luxemburg's tax-dodging scheme were
given
suspended prison sentences by Luxemburg's court.
It is better than
the
way the US treats whistleblowers, but not good.
Just
five
prosecutors in the US convicted 15% of the people awaiting
execution, and they are accused of misconduct in office.
A
worst-case
projection of plutocracy and environmental destruction.
Shameless Obama regime officials continue to claim that encryption is
making everything "go dark", but
an
official report says the opposite.
In a summer camp in the US, 12-year-old girls were
not
allowed to do anything alone — not even go to the toilet.
A normal person of age 12 is not a child, but even children should not
be treated like this.
In San Francisco,
.5%
of the population is homeless and sleeps on the street. This
keeps getting worse, due to a shortage of housing and insufficient
government help for the poor.
The shortage of housing has various causes. One I would like to call
attention to is zoning law. I think we have an obligation to stop
discouraging construction of more housing space.
In a defeat for internet users' privacy, Facebook won an appeal
against an order to stop
tracking
the browsing of people that aren't useds of Facebook (have no
Facebook accounts).
Facebook does this tracking using Like buttons. The GNU Browser
IceCat blocks Like buttons and similar tracking tags.
Tycoons for Clinton is a big success. Too bad you
have
to be rich to be a member.
To reinstate democracy in the US requires changes that will make
businesses squeal and rage. That tycoons don't squeal and rage
against Clinton demonstrates she won't even try to do the job.
The UK adopted an
ambitious
greenhouse gas goal for 2030. However, long-term goals like that
are very far away from any real reduction. A real reduction requires
practical measures now, and
the
UK fails there.
People have reported finding a bug in Google's web DRM,
but have
refused
to reveal the details.
Rather than tell people how to use the bug to defeat Google's DRM,
they are keeping the details secret until Google makes its digital
handcuffs unbreakable.
What they should have done, to serve the public safely, was to leak
the details anonymously. But if they were too scared to do that, they
could at least have chosen not to tell the enemy (any implementer of
DRM is our enemy) about it. That way, the bug might remain unknown
until someone else told us about it.
The discussion quoted (from a Wired article) is based on perverse
support for DRM. It talks about sharing copies using terms such as
"hijacking" and "theft". It also refers deprecates the works that
might be shared by calling them "content". It is typical that the
supporters of DRM value the works they chain up only in terms of
money.
There is no excuse for implementing DRM. It ought to be punished
by imprisonment.
Bill McKibben: The Clinton campaign was ready to acknowledge serious
problems … but when it came to specific policy changes,
they often
balked.
US, Canada and Mexico Pledge
50%
of [Electric] Power from Clean Energy by 2025.
350.org explains why this sort of statement of a goal is
not
enough.
It is not enough to make Volkswagen pay money for its emissions fraud.
That crime
must
be prosecuted.
7 years after the US-supported coup in Honduras, the harm
continues
to propagate.
The spread of "failed states" may be related to
neoliberalism
and its weakening of states in general.
The UK now has a
policy
forbidding undercover thugs from having intimate sexual relationships
with people in the groups they are infiltrating.
That's good, but what about the question of whether to send thugs to
infiltrate dissidents?
Oakland's city council
voted
not to allow coal export. The developer of new port facilities
says he will sue.
I don't know the legalities of the matter, but when you consider how
many people are killed by emissions from burning coal, and that's not
even counting the effects of coming climate mayhem, I think that
blowing up a coal export terminal would be justified by "necessity"
defense (preventing a bigger crime).
The bank GE Capital has got out of tight financial regulation by
selling off parts of its business and thus
making
itself small enough to be exempt.
I agree that this is a success, but a big bank is a danger and the
tighter regulation is not enough to make them safe. We need to
make
sure all banks get smaller, one way or another.
The FBI's secret rules allow it to
subpoena
journalists' records without a court order.
This is part of the Obama regime's War on Journalism. Obama has
prosecuted
more journalists' sources (whistleblowers) than all previous
presidents put together.
Bernie Sanders:
Democrats
Need to Wake Up.
The referendum in the UK shows that people reduced to poverty by
globalization might grasp at any foolish straw of a false revolt, even
Trump, if no real better alternative is available.
Here's a commentary that relates the matter to some
experimental
psychology.
The annual ozone hole has been getting steadily smaller
thanks
to the treaty that ended production of chlorofluorocarbons.
This demonstrates that we can work together to end a global menace.
We could work together to curb global heating, too, if we defeat
the planet roasters such as the Koch brothers that bribe politicians
to keep it going.
Global heating has
increased
wildfires in the American west by 12 times. The fire season now
lasts 2/3 of the year.
How much worse will we make it before we stop (or it stops us)?
Trump has accused Clinton of
continuing
to support the TPP despite her claim that she doesn't.
It is disconcerting to find him agreeing with me, but
even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I think Clinton wants the TPP to be approved by Congress in the lame
duck session, so she can claim she wasn't responsible. But she was
already
involved
in it as Secretary of State.
Microsoft says it will
stop
pushing and tricking users into installing Windows 10.
The National Academy of Sciences is starting a study of GMOs, and
almost half the committee has
financial
ties to the GMO industry.
Cameron is resigning but not yet gone; he
can
still veto the independent torture investigation he promised in
order to get elected.
Cultivating
Empathy for the NEXT Crisis.
A leader of Jewish Voice for Peace explains
why
she supports boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel: it
is the only hope of making the Israeli government agree to peace.
I would support Jewish Voice for Peace personally except that it
always speaks for its supporters specifically as Jews, presuming that
they identify themselves as such. My ethnic origin is Jewish, but I
consider myself an Atheist and that is important to me.
The other problem is that I can't sign its petitions because they
require signers to run nonfree Javascript code.
Israel is taking even more of the West Bank's water, and has
reduced water
supply to the Palestinians it is stolen from.
End the
impunity
for Indonesia's mass murderers, who organized killing in Indonesia and
in East Timor.
Illegal fishing by ships from wealthy countries is destroying fish stocks
around Africa and
impoverishing
African fishers.
When global heating really gets going, a lot of those fish stocks will
disappear
entirely.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-888-894-1033 to oppose the bill
to defeat state requirements for labeling GMOs in food. The Senate
seems about to approve it, and the House already did.
The Center for Food Safety suggests saying something like this:
They further said:
Why is the Stabenow-Roberts bill so bad?
Instead of providing consumers with simple, on-package labeling of
genetically engineered foods, the Stabenow-Roberts bill:
Facebook silently changed its search system to
expose
the existence of hidden accounts.
In addition, Facebook goes to great lengths to hide some privacy
settings. Apparently it wants to claim users have that option
while making it so hard to find that people won't use it.
If anything suggests to you that you "must" have a Facebook account,
that is proof of the importance of your duty to refuse to
have a Facebook account.
Apple has conceived of
making
phones and cameras cease working when they receive a special infrared
code.
This would be like building DRM into physical spaces. As with any
DRM, it is conceivable only because of proprietary software.
College loans in the US have made thousands of students into
permanent
debt slaves. They can barely survive, and their debt keeps
increasing.
Don't take the risk of borrowing to go to college under today's terms.
Instead, study something that might be useful, such as political
activism.
Australia: Tragic Lack of Leadership
Puts
Red Hot [Global Heating] out in the Cold.
Around the world, people who want democracy think that democracy is
working
badly. Perhaps because we have focused it too narrowly on
elections.
However, any analysis of why democracy is working badly must cope with
the issue of plutocracy. A clique including rich people with
influence over unions and media manipulated the contest between
Clinton and Sanders. An effective reform of democracy needs to
address this.
Google now offers
a
way for account holders to find out what data Google keeps about
them. Or at least part of that, since there is no guarantee that
Google shows all it has.
The data you see ought to be a warning. If you use this data to draw
specific detailed conclusions about how to get the ads you want, I
think you've missed the point.
Look at the
cowardly
excuses and stratagems that Harvard uses to duck the issue of what
its fossil fuel investments do to the world.
If you are a Harvard alumnum (*), when Harvard asks for a donation and
you would otherwise have donated, I suggest you respond, "I gave to
350.org instead."
* That is the Latin neuter version of alumnus or alumna.
Most Labour MPs belong to B'liar's Tory Lite wing, and they are
trying
to force Corbyn out of the party leadership to which he was elected by
the party members. Since the party rules do not give them that
authority, they are trying in effect to go on strike against him and
the party members, until the latter vote them out of office.
It shows how hard plutocratists fight any movement against plutocracy.
How Candy Crush Saga is
tuned
to be addictive.
I am safe from it because, on principle, I won't install a nonfree
program on my computer. (And it doesn't run on GNU/Linux anyway.)
Nothing prevents a free (libre) game from being tuned to be addictive,
but it appears not to happen.
This is one additional secondary reason you should run only free
software. The main reason is that you deserve
control
over your computing.
Many governments
don't
want climate scientists to say how bad things are going to get.
The scientists themselves figure they need to present some hope, so
that people will keep fighting rather than give up. Continuing the
fight could make the disaster less complete.
I think that young people today should know that global heating could
cause collapse of civilization, which would kill most of humanity and
reduce most of the rest to destitution. The planet roasters are
planning to kill you. Nothing personal about it: the planet roasters
want more money, and if the way to get it happens to kill billions of
people and extinguish hundreds of thousands of species, they don't see
a problem in that.
Apple funds Paul Ryan's campaigns,
hoping
that it is buying a tax cut.
I call that corruption.
Solar electric installations in the US are
booming;
alas, not enough, since coal and gas-fired plants are still being
installed. We need to have less of them than now, a lot less.
The US should start paying for home batteries, so as to create a
sufficient market to make the price drop soon.
Almost 20 million Americans get water from systems with
high
levels of lead.
Clinton's solution for the crushing loans of US college students:
aid
for the founders of startups.
How pitifully small.
As Clinton ensures the Democratic Party
won't
try to end plutocratic rule, she shows she is not the president we
need.
Exxon's puppets in the US Congress are harassing Greenpeace, 350.org
and several state governments with
pointless
investigations.
French President Hollande says he will
veto
the TTIP.
A university department in Israel was going to give an award to
Breaking the Silence, but the president of the university
caved in to pressure
and vetoed it.
Breaking the Silence encourages occupation soldiers to state the
things they did and witnessed — things that the government does
not want us to know about.
When Palestinians get medical treatment in Israel, such as
chemotherapy for cancer, Israeli checkpoints
make
it impossible to get there. A group of Israelis volunteer to
drive these patients to the hospital.
Israeli drivers don't get stopped at the checkpoints on
Israelis-only roads.
Israeli "Settlers"
Set Fire to
Palestinian Agricultural Lands Near Nablus.
Liberman
crushed
a plan for cooperation between Israeli mayors and the Palestinian
Authority, by barring the Palestinian representative from entering
Israel to meet with them.
The ostensible reason was that the representative had engaged in
"subversion". In other words, an all purpose excuse that they
can always make and never need to justify.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
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[First reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, I think Jeff Wood should be freed and given compensation
for his time in prison.
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[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
I urge President Obama to veto the sham GMO labeling bill heading to
his desk from the House. The FDA has commented that this bill would
not even cover most current GMO foods. So it is a non-labeling bill
masquerading as a labeling bill. The bill is also profoundly
discriminatory. Instead of mandating clear on-package labels, this
bill gives corporations the power to hide GE labeling behind digital
QR codes that can only be read by smart phones.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
I decided to give to 350.org in honor of Harvard's refusal to divest from fossil fuel companies.
I got the following response
Perhaps the carotene rice will prove acceptable on all these issues.
If so, I will be in favor of it. But we have to consider each issue
skeptically for each case, since businesses are prone to cheat the
public when the public's back is turned.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
I urge you to reject the fake GMO labeling bill from Senators Stabenow
and Roberts, a substitution amendment to Senate bill 764. This bill
takes away the rights of states to label GE foods and sticks consumers
with QR code technology for smartphones or 1-800 numbers instead of
clear, simple, on-package labeling. But a substantial majority of
Americans would be deprived of their right to know if GE labeling were
done through QR codes. Don't hide information behind high-tech codes
and phone numbers. Please oppose this bill and support mandatory
on-package labeling that clearly states-in words-whether a food
product is genetically engineered.
Here's how senators voted on a test vote — you can
see
how yours voted. If they voted for it, tell them you insist they
represent the people instead of business (but don't curse them out, as
that would inspire them to oppose you).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
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