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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
A 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 thugs' "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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
Here is more information about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
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.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-30 because the old link was broken.]
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.
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.
Through Friday
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.
Trying to diagnose Trump as mentally ill is a bad idea.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 i 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.
Everyone:
call
on the Pentagon to give Mustafa al Hawsawi the medical care he
needs to cope with the lasting damage done by US torture.
He also
deserves
to be given a fair trial or released.
Internet-connected devices with bad security are
just
great for botnets.
Anders Kompass explains why the persistent corruption and human rights
violations he saw in the UN
led
him to feel obliged to resign.
When Facebook sees two useds are in the same physical location, it may
suggest
that the two "friend" each other.
This can cause lots of trouble for people in certain circumstances.
But remember that
the
NSA is doing the same thing, and doesn't let you opt out —
except the way I do, by not carrying a mobile phone.
Christy Sheats was a gun nut who claimed she needed lots of guns to
keep her family safe. Then she
shot
her daughters dead, and was killed by a thug when she wouldn't drop
her gun
In general, you're
safer
if you do not have a gun at home.
Some of the anti-EU voters were grasping at a chance to rebel against
the politician system, and
didn't
really want that choice to win.
Serious consideration of arguments was undermined by a general sense
of vague distrust of logical reasoning, which made wishful thinking
seem as valid as sober thinking.
The "Vote Leave" campaign
promised
great practical benefits. After winning, it deleted them from its
web site.
US cities
with a
large percentage of black residents tend to make a practice of
fining people to raise money.
Tyrannical bullies of the world, unite!
Erdoğan
is trying to mend relations with Putin.
At the same time, Erdoğan has made a positive achievement by
gaining permission from Israel to deliver humanitarian supplies to
Gaza. But that good is small in comparison with the evil of his
repression in Turkey itself. There are a lot more Turks than Gazans.
Erdoğan could surely have got permission to help Gaza without
repressing Turks.
Germany is
planning
to restrict cooperation between its spy agency and the NSA. The
NSA was using it to spy on European officials.
2/3 of Americans in a poll said that the economy is
rigged
against them.
Most of them were not impressed by Trump or Clinton. It is too bad
they didn't get Sanders nominated.
The Democratic Party platform
will
oppose Sanders's universal single payer medical care program,
obeying Clinton.
The US
will
give all federal thugs and prosecutors training to try to curb
implicit bias.
I don't know whether there is a demonstrated method for doing this
job, but it is good that they are trying.
Thugs in Oaxaca massacred teachers protesting the government's
preparations for privatizing schools, but
the
teachers are not cowed.
Denouncing Violent Tactics of 'Political Mafia,'
Tens
of Thousands March in Mexico City.
This sort of state terrorism, visible in US in the CIA torture and
Guantanamo prison, is more dangerous than foreign-organized or
underground terrorism. The measures that are proposed to block the
latter are exactly what enables the former.
Reckless domestic violence has been ruled
grounds
for denying someone the right to buy or own guns, just like
flat-out deliberate violence.
If this law had been enforced, it would have prevented the Orlando
massacre.
A journalist working in a CCA private prison reports that the way CCA
extracts a profit is through
low
pay and understaffing. The guards can't stop prisoners from
stabbing other prisoners.
His training class explicitly taught him
not
to try to stop prisoners from attacking other prisoners.
Perdue says it
will
pay the cost of improving conditions for chickens that are raised
for it to sell.
The UK political situation reflects the fact that
politicians
almost completely ignored the people, as well as the serious
political issues that affect them.
It is not an accident that this has become the norm there, and in the
US. It is a result of plutocracy, which uses the media to spread the
idea that resisting the actions of the plutocracy is "unrealistic".
India is
imposing
biometric identification on the whole population, including
fingerprinting and iris scans.
It may be possible, or it may become possible, to recognize people on
the street by iris scanning from a distance, turning this into a
horrible orwellian system.
We tried to resist this.
Chen Yunfei, survivor of the Tiananmen protests in 1989, has tried to
spread awareness of them in China. He is now
being
tried on charges of saying what the State wants people to forget.
Labour MPs from B'liar's "New Labour" sellout era demand that Corbyn
resign as the party leader, but
don't
dare face him in a vote of the membership. Corbyn and his backers
have threatened to replace them in the next election, which could be
this year of four years from now.
A Chilean officer of the 1970s was found liable in a civil suit for
the
murder
of singer Victor Jara. If he is convicted in a criminal trial,
that would be really something to cheer.
The US was behind the
military
coup after this murder took place.
The Obama regime is pressing the Senate to pass a bill to
"protect"
Puerto Rico from default.
However, I've read
elsewhere
that this bill would give Puerto Rico the same nondemocratic treatment
as
Greece,
and
Detroit
and
Flint.
Google is
trying
to "help" cities provide public transport. The threat is that
public buses will be eliminated and replaced by Guber, which
tramples
passengers' freedom.
It sure looks that way. The Democratic Party just
rejected
a proposal to rule out a "no fly" zone in Syria. Such a zone
would be a direct confrontation with Russia.
Last time the neocons had a president on their side, they
started
the gratuitous war that engulfed Iraq and
created
PISSI. They also gave the US torture and imprisonment without
trial: that is, national shame.
If we prosecute the neocons responsible for these crimes against
humanity, we can turn them into cons, and eventually into ex-cons.
We need to convert the neocons into ex-cons.
Fake fingerprints make it easy to avoid using your real fingerprints to authenticate.
To make sure you can dispose of them quickly, they need to be edible
and digestible.
The US plans to ask visitors to declare the locations of their "online presence".
This seems dangerous to me, since there will be no limits to the
pressure for self-censorship. Even if the US applies this only to
keep out terrorists, other governments will follow the same approach
to exclude human rights defenders.
Systematically some will be led to give their passwords too, by mistake.
The UK's departure from the EU would remove one obstacle to reforming it.
To take advantage of this opportunity would require electing parties
committed to such reform in many EU countries.
A users sued Microsoft and collected $10,000 damages over the imposed
installation of Windows 10.
Disney "princess" marketing teaches girls a limiting gender image and
is bad for their self-esteem.
US citizens: Phone Rep. Pelosi to oppose a lame-duck vote on the TPP.
Australia's right-wing government wants tax cuts for business, heavily
oriented towards foreign investors.
What this shows is that the right-wing parties are functioning as a government
of occupation for the plutocrats.
A CEO of privatized prisons says his company will do just fine
with either Clinton or Trump in the White House.
Sanders would have tried to put a crimp in their business.
Egyptian Authorities Ban Feminist Mozn Hassan from Travelling to Beirut.
To stop someone from leaving a country is in itself a mark of tyranny.
Airbnb and similar services have caused a big drop in NYC's rentak vacancies.
This must be driving rents up for people who live in the city,
adding to the effect of other pressures.
South African journalists have been fired for covering protests.
Everyone: call on CNN not to hire Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager.
"Austerity is the cause of our economic woes. It's nothing to do with the EU."
The EU is also a force for austerity, but mainly in the euro zone.
This did not touch the UK because the pound is independent of the euro.
Most British campaigners either for or against the EU focused on
short-term superficial effects.
A former San Francisco thug chief proposes policies to curb violence by thugs in San Francisco.
The US Supreme Court overturned the Texas abortion law that tried to
impose pointless restrictions only so that clinics would be unable to comply.
The decision is broad, and constitutes a big setback for fanatical
Christians that want to deny women the right to an abortion by hook or
by crook.
Clinton's recent speech indicates she plans to give the multinational
corporations a big tax cut.
Eastern Europeans in Britain now face the danger of violence by bigots.
US citizens: call for legalizing federal support for research about gun violence.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act and extend civil rights legislation to genderqueer people.
"In pushing for Brexit, the powerful have exploited marginalised
people's fears and needs. The left must help them to take back control."
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic Party to take a stand against expansion of
Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory.
US citizens:
call
on the House of Representatives to adopt several gun control
measures.
I support this version of the "suspected terrorist" provision because
it calls for giving suspects due process, rather than the arbitrary
watch list used now. If this passes, maybe it could provide a basis
to insert due process to the no-fly list, which is currently a system
of
punishment
without trial.
The bills actually proposed are well-meant but
unjust.
The UK government is
going
to great lengths to shut down a civil suit by Libyan dissidents
about its participation in handing them over to Qadhafi for torture.
The British working class, deindustrialized and impoverished,
seized
on the EU referendum to attack an elite that had demonstrated
decades of not caring about them.
However, bollixing some of the elite will not result by itself in
defeating the plutocratic elite. What they need is a party that
stands for them.
The EU is getting paid back for its
lack
of democracy.
Not only the European Commission is undemocratic; so are the banks
that the euro zone has elevated to cruel and tyrannical power
as
seen in Greece.
The bombastic former London mayor is
likely
to be the next PM of the UK.
The other likely candidate is the
chief
advocate of massive surveillance.
I can't judge which is worse.
How
progressives in Britain could respond to the UK's leaving the EU.
A million Britons have already
asked
for another referendum.
Nazanin Zaghari is a prisoner in Iran, and her daughter is effectively
a prisoner too. She can't return home except with her father, and he
dares not go, fearing
he
too might be arrested.
Nazanin is charged with
helping
design a web site for protesters.
Oakland
Proposes Ban On Coal Handling.
The military regime in Thailand has arrested people for
handing
out leaflets urging people to vote no in the referendum on the
military's proposed unjust constitution.
Small oil spills
keep
happening in California and surely in other places that oil
pipelines run. While a small spill like this is not a regional
disaster like the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the damage of their
small spills accumulates over time. And if the spill gets into a
river, it can
ruin
drinking water for a region.
Internal
data from Guber show that it really pays drivers peanuts.
Transcanada, the company that was going to build the Keystone XL
planet-roaster pipeline, has sued the US under NAFTA for 15 billion
dollars for
denying
it the profit it "expected" to get from the pipeline.
This one of the "investor-state" lawsuits that the TPP would extend to
many other countries. That's exactly why we must defeat the TPP and
cancel NAFTA.
In general we must abolish the
business
supremacy treaties.
The Democratic Party
rejected
a platform statement against the TPP.
Leftover "New Labour" MPs took the referendum outcome as the
opportunity for their long-planned
attempt
to oust Corbyn as head of the Labour Party. Corbyn has responded
vigorously.
The Labour rebels are part of the elites whose
disregard
for British working people led many of them to give up on the
party and scapegoat immigrants.
PISSI has lost Falluja; even more important, it
may
soon lose Manbij, the border city that anchors its line of
communication to Turkey.
Without the Manbij corridor, PISSI won't be able to bring in recruits via
Turkey, or trade arms and oil with Turkey. Recall that Turkish
journalists have been prosecuted for revealing how Turkey
delivered
arms to PISSI.
I expect PISSI to collapse within a year if it loses Manbij.
I hope we will get more news of the civilians of Falluja. PISSI
killed
those that tried to flee, and some of those who succeeded in
fleeing were
imprisoned
and abused by Iraqi forces.
Sanders
said
he will vote for Clinton, to stop Trump.
It would take more than that for me ignore the
bad
things about Clinton.
The daughter of a murdered man is a leader in the campaign to keep the
death penalty abolished in Nebraska.
Snowden's lawyer will launch a new campaign for Obama to pardon Snowden.
Turkish [Thugs] Use Teargas Against Gay Activists in Istanbul.
The prime responsibility of the state is to plan and manage, but plutocratic states refuse to face the responsibility.
Australians have privately organized a mass battery purchase to advance home battery technology. The state should have done this. In fact, I proposed such a thing
in a legislative hearing in Massachusetts a year ago. Ten years ago,
states were doing the same sort of thing for solar power cells.
The neoliberal ideology is both an excuse for this refusal and a way
of covering up contrary actions. Every market is regulated; a market
can't exist without some regulations or other. The market mechanism
could be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if regulated with a
carbon tax. If the state instead subsidizes fossil fuels, then it's
managing society so as to run off the carbon cliff; but it can pretend
that "the invisible hand is doing this — we are only watching."
Neoliberal ideology is also an excuse to cut taxes to the point where
all spending projects are impossible, again denying responsibility for
the policies that are adopted.
The US already has a law that could be used to stop domestic abusers from
buying or keeping guns. We have failed to enforce it.
Researchers have broken a watermarking code for e-books. Here's the developers' statement.
Watermarking used as a scheme to stop people from sharing is wrong
because its goal is wrong. Sharing is good, and ought to be legal. However, the scheme presupposes another injustice: making people
identify themselves to buy a copy. To defend my privacy, I refuse
to identify myself to a bookseller. I pay cash and only cash.
The FBI stretches the unjust PAT RIOT Act, and small companies often
don't know how to resist. Meanwhile, bills in Congress threaten to
give the FBI more power.
If the UK leaves the EU, Scotland is likely to secede from the UK
and rejoin the EU.
Ironically, both the Scottish nationalist movement and the movement
to take the UK out of the EU are similar false revolts. People who
had been dumped on by the rich elites signed up for a rebellion
aimed at something else.
The government of Nicaragua is crushing the opposition and criticism.
Russia's congress has approved a law to require phone companies and
ISPs to record a person's calls and communication, and to hand over encryption keys to the state on demand.
This is what the FBI and the NSA want in the US.
They are the enemies of American's freedom; they are Putin.
Everyone: call on Senator Reed to drop his support for cluster bombs,
and specifically for exporting them to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to adopt public funding for elections.
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to ban trade in shark fins.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to permit drug test requirements for food stamps.
Are these idiots trying to make addicts quit by starving them?
Or punish their children?
The UK voters voted 52%-48% in favor of taking the UK out of the EU,
but
actually
doing so will be very difficult.
The referendum has no direct legal effect; it is just a
recommendation. I tend to think that Parliament will ultimately
decide to disregard the recommendation, because the small margin was
not a real mandate.
The vote reflects a broad level of
dissatisfaction
with the EU all across its territory.
It is a shame that the dissatisfaction is being
mobilized
by right-wing nationalists playing on racism, with a
fake
revolt, rather than by progressives who would instead aim to
free
the EU from control by business and plutocrats.
The Fraudulent Case for a Syrian Escalation: US war hawks are wallowing in wishful thinking, and hoping that Clinton
will give them a chance to test it against reality.
The NYC thug department's inspector general concluded that the "broken
windows" theory of policing, famously applied by those thugs, has no
empirical basis and that its harshness is gratuitous.
Republicans are still trying to win in November through voter suppression.
By requiring expensive ID cards based on expensive birth certificates,
they have effectively brought back the "poll tax" that once stopped poor
people from voting.
Some graphics cards manufacturers have been tricking reviewers
by changing the clock parameters in the products they send to reviewers.
The ACLU has sued to stop the US from contracting medical care for
underage refugees to religious organizations that deny them access to
contraception and abortion.
Right on, ACLU!
Tina Louise Rothery joined an anti-fracking protest and was ordered to pay
55,000 pounds to the fracking company. She refuses to pay, and challenges
the British state to jail her.
Germany has banned fracking.
The Dispossessed [in the UK] Voted For Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn Offers
Real Change.
Fear of Immigration
Drove
the "Leave" Victory — Not Immigration Itself.
Dramatic House Sit-In on Guns Is Undercut By Focus on Secret, Racist Watchlist.
The ACLU's statement opposing use of arbitrary "watch lists" to decide
who can buy a gun.
Trump's cruelty and vindictiveness
are
highlighted by his actions in Scotland.
"Here he intimidate[d] ordinary people;
he
made outrageous promises to hoodwink the gullible; and he showed a
breathtaking disdain for the environmental toll..."
Satellite surveillance can now report illegal logging "almost in real
time".
Sanders: his political revolution is "just getting started".
Thugs have been visiting dissidents in Cleveland to ask them about planned
protests for the Republican Convention, apparently for intimidation.
Nauru says it welcomes "respectful, objective" journalists but not
"extreme left activist" journalists. In two years, only two groups have been sufficiently "respectful"
to get approval. The visa fee is enough to convince most journalists
not to ask.
Nauru is "sovereignty" makes it a convenient and deniable proxy
for Australia.
The Real Threat to Britain's Borders Is the Flow of Dirty Money.
Elif Shafak: "Turkey's LGBT community is fighting for freedom. That's
why Erdogan
targets
it."
One of the thugs involved in killing Freddie Gray was acquitted. It was impossible to prove that the treatment which caused Gray's
death was an intentional attempt to kill or injure him.
Of course, the thugs and their allies present this as a personal
failing of DA Mosby, rather than as their own success in maintaining
impunity.
Putin plans to exclude opposition parties totally from Russia's legislature,
through repression.
Dissidents face repression too.
Clinton says she opposes the TPP, but she refuses to take action to
prevent it from being adopted later this year.
Establishment delegates gagged the Sanders delegates inside a
Democratic Party meeting in New York State, and physically attacked
one of them.
Apple is planning to eliminate headphone jacks from new iThings so
as
to impose DRM. A secondary benefit for Apple is that it would make
users buy additional hardware.
As Quietly as Possible, the Government is Renewing Its Assault on Your Privacy.
"Privacy" is an understatement. What Big Brother's men are trying to do
is reinterpret the fourth amendment into nullity.
Some US states use secret, proprietary algorithms
to
decide on sentences for convicted criminals.
This illustrates the general point that the use of nonfree software by
the state violates sovereignty and human rights. Using an algorithm
for this purpose could be legitimate if it is published so that people
can judge whether it is just.
US citizens: Phone both your senators to oppose S. 2609, which would
override state laws to require labeling of foods with GMOs. The
senate will vote some time next week.
866-772-3843
The UK seems to have disenfranchised many British expatriates from the
EU referendum by
sending
their ballot papers late.
Student
protesters at UC Irvine are the latest to face persecution for
protesting Israel's occupation policies.
Their protest did not disrupt anything, but the university called the
thugs, who referred them for prosecution.
The Democratic Party
now
has a debate about changing its unquestioning support for the
occupation.
A Turkish cartoonist has been
convicted
of insulting Erdoğan.
Shame on Turkey for having laws that make insults a crime.
Shame on Erdoğan for applying them.
US citizens:
call
for government measures to reduce the price of pharmaceuticals.
US citizens:
tell
the DNC: Gov. Malloy must stand up to the insurance industry now.
Canada has a law
requiring
any online service to give you whatever data it has about you.
This is a good law, in that it helps users find out how much they are
being snooped on. But it is not enough. Important services must be
required to offer you a mode that doesn't surveil or track
you. For instance, Guber must allow people to request a
ride
anonymously and pay anonymously.
Cleveland's strict restrictions on protests near the Republican Convention
prohibit
anything people could stand on, but allow guns.
This is what the ACLU
has
sued about.
Hillary Clinton's Likely Pentagon Chief Already
Advocating
for More Bombing and Intervention.
Imposing a "no-fly" zone in Syria would mean a direct confrontation
with Russia.
The only party in Syria that is not monstrous is that of the Kurds.
But Arabs tend to distrust them, so
they
directly can't become a government of Syria. For the rest, there
is no one to support.
The FARC and the Colombian government have
agreed
on a cease-fire.
The FARC started out as a left-wing rebellion after the assassination
of a presidential candidate showed that the elite-controlled system
would
never allow itself to be replaced by mere voting. However, they
degenerated over the decades into a criminal gang.
Colombia's even nastier criminal gang, the paramilitares, is
tightly
associated with the government. It will not be so easily
convinced to stop its violence.
Israel's new "anti-terrorism" law will
criminalize
wearing a t-shirt or chanting a slogan as "terrorism".
"A stone-throwing Arab will become a terrorist, while a
stone-throwing ultra-Orthodox Jew will not."
This law includes some of the injustices applied in the US,
such as
prosecuting
humanitarian charities despite their making every careful attempt
to comply with US laws.
The law also perversely defines fighting the army of occupation as
"terrorism".
Americans, do you think the Minutemen were "terrorists"?
US citizens:
support
the Stop Mass Cracking Act to block the FBI's plan to facilitate
authorization to crack people's computers.
Actually, the bill uses the word
"Hacking",
but its substance deserves our support.
US citizens:
call on various
corporations (including Google and Facebook) not to sponsor the
Republican National Convention.
Everyone:
tell 13
Republican attorneys general not to campaign to protect Exxon's
dishonest global heating denialism.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on your state representative to support S.2138 (confidential
health care for teenagers covered by their parent's family insurance
plans).
US citizens:
call
on your representative to cosponsor HR 5474, the Berta Caceres
Human Rights in Honduras Act.
The UN is about to celebrate
War
on Drugs Day (not its official name). It should take its own
advice, and start listening to the reasons why that war is futile and
destructive.
The quiet gradual privatization of nursing homes in the UK has been
bad
for the workers and the patients. It must be good for the owners
of those businesses.
UK spy agencies have been given
total
secrecy and total impunity from torture; the government obstructs
all attempts to hold them accountable for the most gruesome crimes.
The EU pays a subsidy to anyone who owns land and
clears
the wildlife off it.
Strange to say, those who want to take Britain out of the EU
say they won't take advantage of that by ending this subsidy.
The Global Commission on Internet Governance report includes many admirable principles.
However, it fails to include two principles that are necessary for a
freedom-respecting internet:
Users must have control over the software that does their
computing (it is free software).
Systems must collect the minimum possible data about users.
The Pakistani Taliban assassinated a prized Sufi singer.
They are intolerant of any version of Islam that isn't cruel and hard.
"An organisation that judges women on how attractive they are to men
has publicly humiliated its own winner for going on a TV show all
about being attractive to men."
The House of Representatives rejected an attack on the "lifeline" program
that enables poor people to have telephones.
Due to global heating, beetles have killed 66 million pine trees in
California. These dead trees, together with drought and heat, could
lead to giant wildfires.
Supreme Court Says Illegal Police Stops Are OK as Long as They Find an Outstanding Warrant Afterward.
The Tamil refugees that Indonesia proposes to return to Sri Lanka
were tortured there before.
Demand for Abortions Soars in Countries Hit by Zika Outbreak. Unfortunately, these abortions are in many cases illegal.
US citizens:
call
on Clinton to choose non-hawk Larry Korb to head the Pentagon,
instead of belligerent Michele Flournoy.
US citizens:
oppose
the DARK Act yet again.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose SCROTUS' 6 different
campaigns to attack
communications
freedom and access, and push media concentration.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Plutocratist Democrats are once again
using
"lesser evil" to claim we owe them our votes.
I won't vote for an evil candidate. Whoever I vote for need not
be perfect, but must at least be good.
That means either Sanders (as a write-in) or the Green candidate.
IMF Warns that US
Needs
to 'Urgently' Tackle Poverty.
Oakland's Latest Top Cop Was Reportedly
Ousted
From His Last Job After 11 Months, for his "military style of
leadership."
Clinton has returned to right-wing
deficit
FUD.
Another
success for the ICC: Congolese militia commander Bemba has been
convicted of allowing his troops to systematically commit rape.
Another reason industrial concentration is bad: it
stifles
new competitors.
This is in addition to giving the companies lobbying power so that we
can't pass laws to stop them from mistreating the public.
Talking with non-fanatical gun owners: they point out that
only
a tiny fraction of guns are misused.
Nonetheless, that fraction adds up to a measurable increment in danger
for those
living
in a house with a gun. They are right that background checks
would not stop all gun killings, but background checks would not do
much harm.
I think people should need to get a license to own a gun. All the
checking would be done when you apply for a license; then the check at
the time of buying a gun would only be to verify that your license is
still valid. The license could require training in safety practices.
If substantial evidence appears that you are connected with terrorism,
a court could cancel your license.
The head of the UK's doctors' association accuses the Tories of
planning
to destroy the NHS: "The agenda of the Tory party is to wash its
hands of the NHS".
The Unidos Podemos party in Spain sets an example of
opposing
plutocratic policies instead of blaming immigrants.
Spain's right-wing Minister of the Interior, whose portfolio includes
thug departments, was caught
plotting
against politicians that advocate independence for Catalonia.
I do not support independence for Catalonia. The advocates of
independence say it is unfair for Catalonia to subsidize development
of other parts of Spain. I think that's exactly what the wealthiest
regions of a country should do for the poorer regions.
The US Senate just
barely
defeated a proposal to give the FBI increased power to track
Americans' internet usage.
Venezuela is suffering from devastating
shortages
of all sorts of commodities including food.
Chavez decided to subsidize food for poor people, which the US does
too, but his method operated at the store level and offered low prices
to everyone for unlimited quantities. This led naturally to
shortages.
The US food stamp program, by contrast, applies only to poor people
and only to a limited amount of purchases. Its main problem is that
not all poor people are included, but it does not cause distort the
markets for the food products, so it does not cause shortages.
The NSA is investigating how it will spy on internet-connected "smart"
gadgets and appliances in the homes of people who make the mistake of
having such things.
If the device has proprietary software in it, it does not deserve to
be trusted. The software's proprietor might design it to snoop on you
or mislead you. However, even if the proprietor doesn't put in a
malicious feature, the software is likely to have security flaws, and
users won't be allowed to release corrected versions for you
to install.
A considerable number of college students in London are homeless. Some were given state housing in a place so far away they can't get
to their classes.
I can't for the life of me understand why students, or other people
with imposed disadvantages, interpret this as their own personal
failing. That is very convenient for the ones whose moral failing is
really responsible.
A failing school in England became a great school with real actors
teaching performance of Shakespeare's plays.
I really like the way the history class teaches students to question
Shakespeare's bias, too.
Russia plans to require a back door in all messaging applications. They could easily enforce this on proprietary apps offered in Russia.
The article doesn't make it clear whether this law would forbid
individuals to install and use trustworthy free software applications.
We should tell the US politicians that want to impose such laws
to "go to Russia".
Some want to use a small Universal Basic Income as an excuse to
eliminate other forms of support for the poor, or to encourage people
to work for a pittance.
I would support a UBI if the money comes from taxing the rich
and supports people at more than a rudimentary standard of living.
Perhaps the UBI should be tied to having no children.
Australia's 1996 gun laws, introduced to stop mass shootings,
greatly reduced all gun killings and gun suicides.
For Americans with chronic pain, the crackdown on narcotic painkillers
potentially threatens to drive them to death.
Palestinian officials propose compromises on the right of refugees to
return to territory that is now Israel.
Israel attacked Palestinian fishermen, captured them, didn't treat
their wounds, and took their boats.
US air power has proved to be ineffective for winning wars.
The Endangered Species Act has been very successful for birds:
85% of the protected birds have maintained or increased their populations.
I wonder what is causing the failures with the other 15% of birds.
Wall Street vultures are suing Puerto Rico, asking the US to make
Puerto Rico
prioritize
paying them over caring for its citizens.
However, the "PROMESA" bill is
not
a solution. It is repression as seen in
Detroit
and
Greece.
A defector from the Honduran army says that a
US-trained
unit was ordered to kill Berta Cáceres.
This is not unusual for US-trained Latin American military.
US-trained officers participated in
torture
and murder of dissidents in the 1970s.
Presidential candidates don't talk about
cutting
military spending, but that is essential for the US to do other
more necessary things.
Mexican Police Unleash
Deadly
Violence Against Protesting Teachers.
Some fracking waste is radioactive enough to
set
off alarms at landfills.
Marginalised Tunisian Youth
Encouraged
to Choose Graffiti over [PISSI].
PISSI
= Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq
Erdoğan's men have arrested journalists, including the Turkish
representative of Reporters Without Borders, on charges of
participating
in a campaign to defend a pro-Kurdish magazine from legal
repression.
Sounds a lot like
China
to me.
A model forecasts that, with 4C of global heating, the coast of the
Persian Gulf will have fatal heatwaves every decade or two,
starting
in 2070. "Fatal" means that all humans exposed to the
outside air conditions will die.
Humans could survive using air conditioning, but if they had a power
failure they would die in hours. These heat waves could last for many
days.
A large underground chamber might be more reliable.
Hong Kong publisher Lam Wing-kee tells about how he was imprisoned,
and that his jailers seem to be
trying
to learn where the publishers got information about Xi Jinping's
attempts to subvert the internal political process of the Communist
Party.
Brexit Is a
Fake
Revolt — Working-Class Culture Is Being Hijacked to Help the
Elite.
The British mogul that removed around $800 million from his company
and wrecked it has
spent
around $200 million of that on a yacht and a private plane.
Plastic microfibers, released by clothing, abound in seas, rivers and
lakes, and
poison
aquatic life.
A
new
fatal kidney disease seems to be caused by hard work in high
temperatures. Global heating will make it spread.
Conservationists will move 500 elephants from a place where numbers
are growing to a sanctuary for eventual
repopulation
of other areas.
The head of the CIA agrees: bombing PISSI
has
not reduced its ability to inspire terrorism, and probably can't
do so.
Fortunately, terrorism is not a big threat to anyone in the US, except
right-wing terrorism against abortion doctors. We can cope with the
danger by treating it like other street crime (just as long as we
don't wink at it the way Obama winks at
foreclosure
fraud).
We should not panic and surrender civil liberties because of
terrorism.
The Liberal Democrats will try to reduce the danger of the UK's new surveillance powers.
China aims to cut the level of meat consumption in half, both for health and to avoid global heating.
Trump and Thiel are blatant in attacking the free press in the US, but they
are part of something much bigger and broader.
France now requires companies to give food to poor people
rather than throw it away. Other countries could do it too.
Democrats' War on Due Process and Terrorist Fear-Mongering Long Pre-Dates Orlando.
US parents should relax: kidnaping of children by stranger remains just as unlikely as always, and nearly all of those few children
are returned safe.
The banksters told Clinton: no money if you pick Senator Warren as your running mate.
Mainstream media often print anonymous insults about Senator Warren.
I phoned Senator Warren's office to implore her not to run for Vice
President. I said that she'd have less influence to resist Clinton's
plutocratism as VP than she has now in the Senate.
You might want to call also.
When women and men work together on engineering projects,
the men tend to hog the exciting parts of the job and dump the less exciting parts on the women.
Billion-Dollar Brain Training Industry a Sham — Nothing But Placebo, Study Suggests.
PISSI's forces are withdrawing from Falluja, and lots of civilians have been freed, but Iraq has not done enough so far to feed them.
"Does [Clinton] think that [former] Secretary of Defense Gates was
wrong when he said creating a no-fly zone
starts
with going to war? Or does she think going to war against Russia
is just fine?"
The head of the CIA agrees: bombing PISSI
has
not reduced its ability to inspire terrorism, and probably can't
do so.
Fortunately, terrorism is not a big threat to anyone in the US, except
right-wing terrorism against abortion doctors. We can cope with the
danger by treating it like other street crime (just as long as we
don't wink at it the way Obama winks at
foreclosure
fraud).
We should not panic and surrender civil liberties because of
terrorism.
In a victory for Assange, the Swedish prosecutors say they want to
accept
the invitation to question him inside the Ecuadorian embassy.
They have had this option ever since he sought asylum there,
but didn't take it.
The Growing Case for Massive Taxes on the Rich.
Plutocrats are so brash that they pay Congress to cut IRS
investigators so they can cheat more.
A Brexit Won't Stop Cheap Labour Coming to Britain.
US citizens: call on the EPA to
ban
neurotoxic pesticides.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bill to
treat Puerto Rico like
Greece.
US citizens: call for an
action
plan for reducing ocean noise that harms marine mammals.
Various forms of evidence support the claim that Sri Lanka dropped cluster bombs on civilians in rebel Tamil areas.
A theoretical NASA model suggests that modern civilization could easily collapse.
Other studies suggest that a major survival crisis could happen in 15
years.
In Oakland, California: rally on June 25 against coal export through
Oakland.
A report from Norway, where American-style paranoid parenting has not
arrived.
Funds can preserve the disused houses of St Kilda, but nothing can
protect the seabirds that are dying off due to effects of global heating.
An extensive empirical study of racist behavior by thugs
leads to measures to reduce their racism.
The Failure to Stop Orlando Shooter Was Not a Surveillance Gap, So Reject
Calls for More.
US citizens: call on Rep. Pelosi to resist approval of the TPP
in a lame-duck congressional session.
Many US newspapers and news sites have supported Freedom of the Press
Foundation's lawsuit demanding to know the rules for secretly
demanding information from journalists with "National Security Letters".
This is one of the tyrannical aspects of the U SAP AT RIOT Act.
Current Intel processors are completely untrustworthy because
of the "management engine" back door designed into them.
Here's an explanation of why people trying to write free software
to run in the management engine are totally stymied.
Well-paid Americans are compelled to work painfully heavy hours, while
Americans with low wages can't get enough hours to make a living.
Google Fibre has followed the evil practice of AT&T and Comcast by
making customers agree to mandatory arbitration instead of lawsuits.
This calls for state laws to bar the practice.
Britons decided to send supplies to immigrants parked in Calais (not
allowed into Britain), and France blocked the convoy from entering, citing incredible grounds of "security".
A few dozen activists tried to hold a forbidden Gay Pride march in Istanbul. Hundreds of thugs attacked them.
Chewing helps people resist the effect of advertising.
The supermarket system is designed to cause food waste at home as well
waste food directly. And digital ordering tends to make it worse.
As often happens, the people who participate in the system are less
responsible for its behavior than the large, concentrated actors that
more or less buy the regulations they operate under.
The politicians who want to take Britain out of the EU are bare-faced trumpish bullshitters.
Immigration causes problems in neighborhoods where poor Britons live
because of cruel plutocratic policies that force all the marginal people to compete with each other. Rationally, they should unite against their real enemies, the plutocrats.
The EU is also to a large extent a tool of the plutocrats. A Britain ready
to crush the banksters might do well to get out of the EU.
Right-wing Catholics are campaigning against rights for queer
people, and for women in general, at organizations such as the OAS.
Released documents show CIA torturers knew they were committing crimes,
and that they tortured people harder for protesting that torture violated
their rights.
Limiting global heating to 1.5C might prevent the permanent loss of all
Arctic ice, and might prevent the melting of the Arctic tundra which would cause a lot more global heating.
It might also save the Amazon rainforest from drying up.
Everyone:
call on big banks
to stop financing fossil fool projects.
US citizens: phone senators McConnell and Grassley to
oppose
the DARK act.
US citizens:
call for continued protection of Yellowstone's grizzly bears.
Descriptions of some people being
prosecuted
by the FBI for aiding PISSI.
Some of these people were entrapped by the FBI. (If the legal
definition of entrapment does not apply, it is too narrow.) However,
others were not entrapped, at least according to the facts in the
article.
That is a step up for the FBI. I congratulate the FBI for starting to
catch people who really did provide material support to PISSI, or
really tried to do so, without the FBI's guidance.
13
months in a row have broken heat records.
Other
temperature and related records have been set this year.
What will it take to enable us to overcome the planet roasters?
US banksters
seek
to continue falsifying documents for illegal, fraudulent
foreclosures.
Indonesia has apparently
arrested
1000 protesters who were supporting independence for West Papua,
which Indonesia conquered by force.
Indonesia has a long history of repression there, as well as bring
colonists from Java.
Robotic trucks could
eliminate
the jobs of millions of truck drivers in the US, and millions of
others that serve truck drivers food and coffee.
There is no inherent merit in a more advanced technology; technology
is good or bad depending on how it affects people. If the principal
effect of robotic trucks is massive unemployment, we should not allow
robotic trucks. As for the bosses that want to save money by not
employing people, they can jump in the lake.
The purpose of democracy is to allow us to decide together about
issues that affect us, such as this one.
David Eggers waited three hours in line for a Trump rally along with
thousands of others, to find that the audience was
interested
in Trump mainly for entertainment value and left before he
finished speaking.
US citizens: stand with queer community against violence and hate.
US citizens: call on Sanders to continue his campaign till the convention.
China shows how far TV camera surveillance can go: outside dissidents' doors, in classrooms, in the halls of college dormitories.
Americans are not safe from this.
The US tends to follow China in issues of human rights.
Pregnant 12-year-olds in Queensland have to obtain a court order in
order to get an abortion.
The law has this exactly backwards. If 12-year-olds are not quite
prepared to have an abortion, they are far from prepared to raise a
baby.
The FBI has face photos of over 170 million Americans from drivers' licenses,
and others from other sources, and uses this for face recognition with no regulation.
While the article says that it does this matching for criminal
suspects, that could be stretched to include everyone. Does anything
stop the FBI or state thugs from doing this to photos of everyone walking
down the street?
Illegal Abortions Are Killing Women And Aid Restrictions Are Just Making It Worse.
Politicians exploited the attack in Orlando dishonestly in order
to defeat a plan to limit massive surveillance.
Islamist bullies attacked Radiohead fans in a record store in Istanbul.
These bullies believe they are entitled to impose their religion on
others.
How Politicians Helped Create a Climate of Hate for LGBT People.
The climate of repeated abusive statements against female politicians is pervasive, and can inspire physical violence.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say one hates a person, or a
group. (Among sensible people, those who say they hate a group will
tend to discredit themselves.) But it doesn't include threatening
violence. If you see people threaten violence against someone online,
please show that this impresses you negatively.
The US should follow Australia by banning the guns that are handy for
killing lots of people, and instituting thorough background checks for people that want to buy guns.
On the other hand, renting an apartment or enrolling in a school
should not require such a background check. You can do fine
without a gun, but you're really handicapped if you can't get education
or a place to live.
Cornel West discusses Sanders, Clinton and Trump.
Charter school money joined fossil fuel money to elect right-wing Democrats in California primaries.
Segregation in the US makes it easy for whites to tell themselves that blacks get a fair shake.
Amnesty International says that Indonesia must allow Sri Lankan
boat people to request asylum, rather than forcing them back.
Oakland Loses Third Police Chief in a Week Amid Scandals.
The thug department has a "toxic, macho culture" which includes
racism. This most likely leads to serious wrongs against non-thugs.
However, having sex with a 17-year-old prostitute is not one of them.
The article says that thugs "took advantage" of her.
Perhaps that was the case, if they pressured her.
But if she did this by choice, perhaps wanting extra money,
it is wrong to blame her customers.
It is possible that she was raped; it is possible she was
trafficked. But when the law claims that being her customer
constitutes "rape" or "human trafficking", it lies. We must
not let these lies pass as truth.
Istanbul banned a gay pride march because right-wing extremists threatened violence against the marchers.
In effect, the city government made itself an accessory to the extremists.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to release his tax returns.
US citizens:
call on the Democratic Party to adopt a platform plank to
legalize US support for organizations that do abortion.
The US
cannot
protect itself from violent Islamist fanatics by fighting wars in
Muslim countries.
California legislators are
trying
again to stop thugs from taking people's money without a trial.
US pesticide companies are lobbying effectively to
block
efforts to protect pollinators.
US citizens:
call for
reforming the way coal companies arrange to pay for cleanup, so
that they can't evade the obligation.
Here's what I said.
The likelihood that coal mining will decline, as we put a stop to the
air pollution it causes, will increase the temptation for coal
businesses to adopt a short-term attitude that encourages cheating.
A secondary benefit of this change will be to discourage coal mining
and coal burning. We need to make coal mining decline faster, for
public health (coal emissions are toxic) and to help curb global
heating.
US citizens: urge Sanders to
continue his
campaign till the Democratic Convention.
Secularists in Bangladesh are threatened by imprisonment by the Islamist state
as well as murder by Islamist fanatics.
The ACLU is suing to allow visible protests at the Republican National
Convention.
US history teaching assumes the civil rights movement was finished,
victorious, in 1965.
This disregards subsequent desegregation and resegregation
and today's racism.
The US Chamber of Commerce lobbies for tobacco and for global heating,
while getting its funds from companies that say they don't support
those campaigns.
Microsoft wants medical marijuana dispensaries to use its servers.
I suspect it intends to collect data about all the patients.
Whatever commitments Microsoft makes about how it will use the data
are not worth paying attention to; the data, once collected,
will be misused. They will be misused by Microsoft (using
loopholes in the misleading assurances), by rogue employees, by
crackers that steal the data, and by the state (which will demand
access to it all).
I hope people will campaign for dispensaries not to use this or any
similar system.
Another coup-installed minister in Brazil has resigned for corruption, because a politician turned state's evidence and testified against him
and various other politicians.
SCROTUS helped Obama continue providing cluster bombs to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens: phone your senators to support gun control measures but
not
based on a rumor mill such as a watch list.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The US has placed so many obstacles in the way of employment for
ex-cons and people convicted of felonies that it amounts to a
substantial
drag on the economy.
The EU has taken a
baby
step to prepare to regulate endocrine disruptors.
Facebook exposes lovers to lots of information about each other
which can
stimulate
jealousy.
Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee describes his imprisonment in China
and how he was
forced
to recite a scripted confession for a video.
China sent him back to Hong Kong to return with records about
customers who bought their books (which accused important Chinese
politicians of corruption). He says he will not do this; I suppose he
or his family will face some sort of reprisals for his non-return,
which makes it a heroic act.
Never let a book store know your name! Especially,
don't buy books from
Amazon.
A judge in Kenya ruled that requiring an anal exam
to
see if two men had been penetrated anally was not torture, and a
required blood test for two sexually transmitted diseases was not
degrading.
I agree with this ruling. I had a colonoscopy and it was not bad.
I've also had blood tests, and they don't actually hurt. I don't
feel degraded by either of them.
The real injustice here is the criminalization of homosexual sex.
The great internet swindle: powerful monopoly intermediaries that
suck
the wealth out people while accumulating personal data about them.
My simple rule of paying cash, which I adopted to protect my privacy,
mostly means I don't deal with those companies at all. And that's how
I want it.
Abuse or maltreatment of children tends to have specific effects on
the
development
of the brain. It is also known to make later mental illness more
likely.
Many government programs can help protect children from the stress
that can hurt their development. Welfare funds for families, good
funding for public schools, shelters for victims of domestic violence,
as well as providing contraception and abortion (you shouldn't have a
child if you feel unready to take care of one).
Apple
lobbies
against "right to repair" laws.
Why
being
on a "watch list" should not disqualify a person from buying guns
(or anything else).
However, there would be no such problem with barring those convicted for
domestic abuse from buying guns, or continuing to own guns. That
would
have disqualified the Orlando murderer. It would also save lots
of women from being
shot
by their spouses or lovers.
Ignoring People for Phones Is the New Normal.
I sometimes ignore people for my laptop, but never for a phone (since,
to resist surveillance and nonfree software, I refuse to carry one).
We should reject the proposal to reinstate the House Un-american
Activities Committee, as well as other injustices such as imprisonment
without trial, torture, the no-fly list, and massive surveillance.
US citizens:
Tell
Congress: "Oppose House Republicans' attempt to block the
designation of a new national monument in the Maine woods."
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 to say to
support
the Conyers amendment to ban the transfer of cluster bombs to
Salafi Arabia.
Is it right or wrong to publish voter registration lists —
including their addresses —
on
the internet?
I expect that companies can afford to scrape the physical copies that
were traditionally published, so the real question I think is whether
to publish addresses and party affiliations.
Democrats Embrace
Secretive,
Flawed Terror Watchlist in Fight Against Gun Violence.
If there is concrete evidence that a person sympathizes with a
terrorist group, it could be legitimate to deny per the right to own
guns for that. However, doing so based on rumors is wrong.
As for the no-fly list, that is punishment without trial and
must be abolished.
The CIA's Office of Medical Staff
provided
detailed advice for torture. The doctors who provided this advice
betrayed their oath as physicians.
The American Psychological Association
changed
its professional standards to rule out such participation by its
members.
Some Catholic orders (of monks or nuns) in Australia have
publicly
announced divestment from fossil fuels.
Both of the major Australian parties are
too
close to the planet roasters and fail to propose sufficient
actions to curb global heating.
Clinton says she
would
give her husband another chance to manage the US economy for the
rich.
Dupont is merging and splitting, and that
may
be a scheme to bury its liability for past environmental poisoning
in places from which no one can collect.
The way a non-plutocratist government could block this loophole is
pretty obvious.
Thugs in Scotland have for years enjoyed access to bulk surveillance
data through a surveillance station that the government of Scotland
says
it did not know about.
Biologist E. O. Wilson proposes that we
set
aside half of Earth for nature, to avoid mass extinction.
That goal requires that we also curb
global
heating and
ocean
acidification. In practice, we also need to curb the human
birth
rate.
Switzerland is prosecuting someone who works for Mossack Fonseca,
apparently accused of being the one who leaked the data.
With oil now cheap, recycling of plastic in the US is almost dead.
A heavy tax on petroleum — which we need to do anyway — would solve this
problem.
Norway has decided to aim to be carbon-neutral by 2030. However, that plan is based on using carbon offsets to cancel out emissions.
These schemes are in many cases somewhere between fraud and self-delusion.
The decision does not include reducing exports of fossil fuels.
Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng wrote an account of his imprisonment and
torture, and smuggled it out for publication.
The Orlando killer worked for G4S, a company that operates private prisons
among other things. The company helped him buy weapons, and ignored
reports from coworkers associating him with bigotry and Islamism.
A service called "Tenant Assured" wants to help landlords demand and
get all the private data in a potential tenant's social media
accounts, including private messages.
It should be illegal for landlords or employers to ask for such
access, directly or indirectly.
Brazil's Giant Dams Risk Destroying Heart of the Amazon, Says Greenpeace.
Surveillance agencies prefer to present the Orlando murders as
Islamist terrorism rather than as an anti-gay hate crime,
because the former suits their agenda of control.
WHO concluded that the Olympics probably won't cause Zika to spread more than it would otherwise have done.
The British elite call on Britons to reject the "European elite" so that the
British elite can have full power over them.
A threat to leave the EU might be useful for Britain if done by a government
led by Corbyn.
George Monbiot: the UK's plutocratic system is even worse than the EU's plutocratic system.
Tens of thousands protested the new "labor flexibility" law in Paris.
Once a state begins trying to compete with other countries to woo
companies by allowing them "flexibility" to treat workers worse, it
joins those countries in a race to the bottom — exactly what
plutocrats want.
This
article expresses why I dislike video.
I won't even try to watch a video unless I am very very interested in
seeing it — for instance, at rare intervals a movie I expect to
like.
The Orlando killer had
visited
gay bars and gay dating apps for quite a while, and he had shown
sympathy for Islamist terror attacks as early as 2001.
US Republicans have resolved their dilemma about the Orlando murders
by
taking
the side of the gay men (who they habitually mistreat) in order to
condemn Muslims.
Hundreds of people and companies that Trump hired to do work have
sued
him for not paying them. Even hourly workers have sued him for
not paying them.
The article cleverly states that if Trump's claim that they all did
bad work is true, he must be incompetent in business.
Alternatively, his "competence" in business is really a great skill in
using his wealth to shaft people that work for them.
"Security" measures for the Olympic Games have
turned
Rio de Janeiro into a panopticon. Quite handy for crushing
protests against the pseudo-coup.
Other Olympic measures
oppress
the poor residents of favelas on various pretexts.
For-profit school companies from the US and Europe are
drooling
about Africa.
African countries funds for education are insufficient, but these
companies would like to divert some of that to their profits.
1/6 of all workers in England and Wales (most of the UK) are in
insecure work, such as
zero-hours
contracts. They cannot count on enough hours to make money to
live on.
The FCC's network neutrality rules
stood
up to a legal challenge in federal appeals court. However, the
major ISPs are rich and will surely try to appeal further.
In addition, they are lobbying for a law to roll back the FCC's
policies.
The FCC's neutrality policies are not strong enough. The ISP should
not be allowed to examine the packet in any way, only to transmit it.
The UK is
moving
to decriminalize sexting for teenagers.
The article contributes, however, to the general practice of
infantilizing them by calling them "children".
Some Brazilian journalists have been gagged after they
revealed
that some judges are paid an illegally high salary.
This May set
another
heat record.
Each month this year has set a heat record.
Both Trump and Clinton propose to respond to the Orlando murders by
bombing
Syria.
Defeating PISSI is a desirable goal, but bombing other than on
battlefields tends to kill civilians rather than enemies.
As the article points out, this won't prevent individuals from
carrying out attacks, especially if their real motivation is personal
and the religious "cause" is only an excuse they make to themselves.
Stanford Sexual Assault: Records Show
Judge's
Logic Behind Light Sentence.
Some of these reasons seem valid to me, but I see a general injustice
in the policy of giving privileged people lighter sentences for a
whole range of crimes. What it means is that the legal system is
intentionally biased here against the poor. Of course, it's biased
against them in other ways, too: many have to
spend
months or years in jail awaiting trial, and their public defenders
are
overloaded
and can't put much time into each case.
A new kind achievement for humanity: we have caused the extinction of
a mammalian species indirectly through global heating alone.
When the other ways we destroy species are included, our record
includes over 450 species of vertebrates extinguished by human action
since 1900.
Scientists estimate that 1/6 of the existing species face extinction due to global heating.
The Orlando killer apparently had closeted homosexual leanings.
Perhaps he was taught a strong stigma about that, such that he hated
himself for his sexual orientation; murder could have been his twisted
way out.
It wouldn't be the first time a person's life was crushed by that
stigma, nor the first time it inflicted great suffering on others.
Plutocracy at work: the UK is very strict toward poor who refuse to
pay a little tax, but lets the rich get away with major rip-offs.
Everyone: Oppose government-imposed internet shutdowns.
Giving up Beef Will Reduce Carbon Footprint More Than Cars.
This isn't all-or-nothing. I had beef today, but not Thursday,
Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
An influential Muslim legal group in Pakistan made a fatwa against
killing women for marrying freely.
When officials demand encryption back doors, their reasons are bullshit.
US citizens: call on the EPA to reduce air pollution in national parks.
Repression against queer people has been
inspired
by Christianity and Judaism as well as Islam.
Paris summit carbon pledges 'are
not
enough to stop temperature rise'.
Thousands
of Germans protested US drone bombings outside Ramstein air base,
which relays the drone control data.
Chelsea Manning: We
must
not let the Orlando nightclub terror further strangle our civil
liberties.
Peabody Energy funded
dozens
of global heating denialist front groups.
SCROTUS have now been
paid
to take a stand against the carbon tax that is necessary to slow
global heating.
It is a mistake to make the carbon tax revenue-neutral, because the US
needs to spend more money on many things. We should provide increased
help to people with low incomes, so that they can cope with the new
tax, but we should aim to tax the rich a lot more.
How America's Mass Shooters
Now
Use Weapons of War.
Here is
what
Australia must do to save the Great Barrier Reef.
Greenpeace accuses palm oil company IOI of illegally converting
protected
peatland into plantations.
It is not unusual for companies'
"social
responsibility" policies to be
meaningless
noises.
A Dutch woman visiting Qatar reported that she was drugged and raped.
In accord with Shari'a law, she now faces
charges
of adultery.
Shari'a law is especially cruel to women, but it is
unjust
to men as well. To advocate Islamic law is to oppose human
rights, which is why Salafi Arabia opposed the universal declaration
of human rights.
We must respect people's right to advocate that system, but they
deserve our disgust as well as our opposition.
The EFF campaigns for laws to restrain face recognition surveillance, but what we need is to ban systematic face recognition of people
in public places, except under a specific court order.
A thug gratuitously tased Bryce Masters 5 times in a row, causing him
a heart attack (not usual at age 18) which led to permanent brain
damage. To make things worse, the thug then dropped him on his face,
breaking lots of his teeth.
Afterwards he falsified records to create an excuse.
That thug was sentenced to 4 years in prison, but many others
get away with it.
But there is another factor: thugs have been taught that tasers are so safe
that they don't need to hesitate before using them.
A UN human rights committee ruled that Ireland's ban on abortion violated
the rights of a woman who had a nonviable pregnancy.
US citizens: tell Congress to reject the TPP as it is an environmental
disaster.
House [of Representatives] Poised to Advance Privacy and Defend Encryption...If Allowed to Vote.
Opinion: Your Data Needs More Protection from Shady Debt Collectors.
Buying groceries from Amazon is a bad road for society to go down.
UK (and US business) aims to take money by hook or by crook, from citizens or from the public.
"Business ethics" has become an oxymoron.
I distrust the idea of addressing the problem with the help
of hypothetical less-greedy business owners. I doubt they can
be relied on, and they may not exist.
Bangladesh has arrested thousands of people accused of killing nonconformists.
The massacre at a gay bar in Orlando should not be used as an excuse to promote hatred or attack human rights.
The killer had a firearms license, but a ban on large magazines might have hampered him from killing so many people.
Right-wing bigots must be rather perplexed now, trying to decide whether to side with the victims (gays) or the killer (a Muslim).
Perhaps we could use this event to teach a lesson against judging
people based on such categories.
Assange points out that the FBI might blackmail a President Clinton
to get more concessions against our constitutional rights.
The [Sanders] Revolution Isn't Over: Here's How It Can Be Sustained —
and Why It Must Be.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on the state legislature to ban fracking.
Constituents of Nancy Pelosi:
phone
her office to demand no lame-duck vote on the TPP.
Everyone:
call
on Illinois to allow prescriptions for 12 months of birth control
pills.
US citizens:
Call
on your senators to reject the House-passed substitute to the
Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 (S.2012)
The war on predatory debt collectors
may
come to resemble the "war on drugs".
I think the underlying problem is that we make it too tough
to get by, as a poor people. Various progressive policies
would reduce their need to borrow just to get by. Eliminating
the paranoid "protective" regulation of children would also help.
The US is
delaying
publication of Clinton's TPP-related emails until after the
election.
Germany demands information about UK undercover thugs that
infiltrated
political groups in Germany.
Google supports the TPP because of
three
mostly-evil provisions that would benefit Google.
Shame on Google!
The reason why so many patent suits are filed in a particular court in
Texas may be
a
judge who was corrupt through family ties.
A woman who
left
two children safely in a parked car for 10 minutes was arrested
and charged with an absurd "crime" and made to post $25,000 bail.
Theoretically, when you post bail, you eventually get it back.
However, she probably did not have $25,000 on hand for this. So she
probably had to pay $2,500 to a bail bonds company, and she will never
get that back.
For a typical American family, an unexpected expense of $2,500 can
mean bankruptcy and homelessness. Arresting struggling parents is
therefore far more dangerous than leaving kids in a car.
Nearly all oil companies have
abandoned
their leases for drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
So why not put an end to it?
If the US allows offshore drilling, the monetary costs for the public
could be as much as
180
billion dollars.
Obama ordered US troops in Afghanistan
to
increase their direct participation in combat.
The corrupt Afghan government can't inspire soldiers to fight hard to
defeat the Taliban. The US can keep propping it up, but the Taliban
will remain, so the US will have to prop it up ad infinitem, or else
stop at some point and let the Taliban win. Sooner or later, the US
will have to do that.
I think Clinton would not feel bad about keeping this war going for 4
or 8 more years. But this achieves nothing except to continue the
deaths.
US companies use severance pay to
coerce
employees to train their own replacements and to shut up about it
after they are fired.
I think it should be a felony for managers or executives to
participate in such schemes (either of the two kinds), and employees
that testify publicly about such felonies should be given a large
reward.
Internet-connected
mobile devices may be interfering with people's capacity for
reflecting about what they are doing.
The
coming
anthropogenic mass extinction will be different from the six
previous mass extinctions.
If technological civilization survives the coming disaster, the human
population will probably be less than half what it is now (the rest
having perished). Humanity could allow half of today's farmland to
become wild again. It will be possible to remove the excess carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere using solar energy.
It won't be possible to repair the extinction, or the effects of
flooding the world's coastal cities, toxic factories, and
archaeological sites.
Start
School Day at 11am to Let Students Sleep In.
I sure wish they had done that when I was young.
1/4
of the population of Yemen is starving as a result of the
persistent civil war.
The civil war drags on because of Salafi Arabia's intervention, which
is possible because of
US
support.
Clinton won the California primary, and
will
probably get the Democratic Party nomination.
She will not get my vote, however. I consider her a Republican, based
on her support for banksters, welfare cuts, business-supremacy
treaties and wars of aggression.
I will decide later whether to write in Sanders' name or vote Green.
As for the fact that the US has now nominated a woman to represent a
major party, I think it is good that the US can do that.
If
in addition she were a progressive, I'd vote for her. However,
her sex is no milestone for me: I have already voted for a woman for
president
(Jill
Stein, Green Party, 2012).
I felt the same thing when the US nominated a black man for president
for the first time: he was
clearly
no progressive so I did not vote for him.
200
retired Israeli army officers called for accepting the Arab peace
plan.
That
plan is reasonable one, so it makes sense for them to agree.
What's surprising is that support for it comes from that direction.
But it is not really so surprising. Soldiers that have fought in war
have a basis to understand how bad war is, and soldiers who have
actually fought understand how occupation duty damages an army for
fighting a real enemy.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
support
the bill to give people medical confidentiality from their
parents.
The UN says Britain's welfare cuts
violate
children's rights.
Muhammad Ali shows by contrast the
vacuousness
of celebrities which are adulated today where in the past people
admired heroes who had really done something.
This change was one of many pointed out by Daniel Boorstin's book, The
Image.
The Drug Repression Agency wants to collect massive amounts of
prescription records in order to place
charges
against people taking too many painkillers.
Some of them are suffering from horrible pain. Some of them are
addicts, but prosecuting them is not going to help at all.
The Koch Brothers are
lobbying
to stop adoption of electric cars.
Citigroup Is Suing AT&T For
Using
the Word "Thanks"
Trade marks are basically a useful system, but the US implements them
without taking proper care of public interests.
The article foolishly uses the term "intellectual property" which
confuses several unrelated laws and treats them as a single subject.
Please
don't ever generalize
about these laws.
UN Head Admits He
Caved
to Threats in Removing Saudi Coalition From Blacklist.
Chemicals meant to kill slugs
get
into drinking water for humans and poison pets.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of Justice to require all thug departments to report
when they kill people.
Everyone:
call
on California Governor Brown to pardon Jasmine Richards.
Racism is demonstrated in some UK universities'
admission
policies.
In 2010, UK massive snoopers warned that they were
collecting
so much data that real terrorists were needles in the haystack.
UK thugs were
closely
involved with murders committed by paramilitaries in Ulster in the
90s, including one case which today would be called an act of
terrorism.
Alaska is suffering from
record
heat, and drought.
Tesla is reportedly making customers sign nondisclosures about a
dangerous
technical fault.
The plan to establish a conservation zone in the Ross Sea, off
Antarctica, is
being
blocked only by Russia.
I would sign the petition in favor of this conservation zone, if only
Avaaz made it possible to sign without running nonfree Javascript
code. I asked Avaaz to do this, but I alone was not influential
enough. How about if you too ask them?
Does
immediate
delivery train people not to develop the ability to defer
gratification?
Clinton has a past history of raising money "for other candidates"
and
using
it on her own campaign.
The enemies of abortion rights don't scruple at
mixing
flat-out falsehoods with their religious hooey.
At the heart of the Democratic Party apparatus are some elected
officials that are in the
habit
of giving businesses what they want.
Brazil's corrupt new rulers have been
plagued
by leaked tapes showing their corruption. Their response is to
plan a law to prohibit publication of these leaks.
The NSA wants to use people's internet-connected pacemakers to
spy
on them.
Secret US documents suggest that Ayatollah Khomeini
asked
for US help in returning to Iran, and received it.
Netanyahu and even Lieberman are
talking
like Uri Avnery in 1969. Alas, says Avnery, they don't mean it
— it is only a trick.
Gawker has been forced into bankruptcy by the
lawsuit
funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel says his goal is to
prevent further disclosures. It seems that billionaires want to make
sure no one dares publish what they don't like.
The acceptance of Trump's shameless unending lies makes a
strange
contrast with the politicians whose careers were ended when they
were caught in minor lies.
But then, some of their lies were about sex. Americans seem to go
nuts about politicians' sex lives.
Jill Stein urged Sanders to
run
in the Green Party.
Apple
opposes
right-to-repair laws that could reduce e-waste.
Released NSA internal documents show how Snowden
tried
to raise concerns about illegal snooping inside the organization,
and was rebuffed.
They also belie the official efforts to smear him falsely.
Global heating made the recent floods in Paris
twice
as likely to occur.
An art auction business in San Francisco sprayed water on the
sidewalk,
wetting
homeless people's belongings. Let's hope the company gets fined
for wasting water.
'Gene-Drive' Organisms
Require
Far More Research, because of danger to various wildlife.
Schemes for biological control of pests have often backfired.
Gene drives raise issues beyond the danger of extinctions. There are
also
militarization,
food security, and commercial power.
You may like cats, but don't let them outdoors! Cats kill
millions
of wild birds.
"It isn't lack of drugs preventing us eradicating AIDS, but
inequality."
The UN talks of seeking to eliminate HIV, but
refuses
to acknowledge groups such as gay men, sex workers and intravenous
drug users which it would have to support so as to achieve that
goal.
The Register of Copyrights is supporting Hollywood's worldwide
campaign to impose something even worse than the censorship-ridden
DMCA takedown system. This would require computers to
block
fair use on internet platforms, even though nominally people would
still have that right.
Fifteen years ago there was a strong campaign to pin back the wrongs
of the DMCA, with some supporters in Congress. This campaign has
fizzled
away. The lack of a campaign for improvement weakens our
resistance to this attempt to make it worse.
We must now avoid making the mistake of defending the status quo. We
must quickly organize a change to reduce the harm of the DMCA's
notice-and-takedown system.
Two Palestinians shot at Israelis in a mall, killing some and wounding
some. Cops
shot
them to disarm them, then arrested them.
Bystanders urged the cops to murder the killers, but they refused and
did their duty instead. It seems these cops were police officers, not
thugs. The killers will presumably stand trial.
Iran has imprisoned another visiting expatriate,
Professor
Homa Hoodfar.
Her family speculate that the mullahs' special thug force is using her
as a pawn against president Rouhani.
Although I am not an Iranian expatriate, I still consider Iran too
dangerous a place to visit. It is one of the countries I refuse to
enter.
Paul Ryan says he has a new plan for poverty in the US:
making
more of it. Except that it isn't really new. It's the same as
before.
The US is making an unwise choice in prosecuting a defector from PISSI.
Oklahoma thugs
can
take money from people's bank accounts on mere suspicion.
This may work only with debit cards.
Libya's western-created government says it has taken all the territory that PISSI held.
However, some PISSI soldiers are still fortified in parts of Sirte,
and others may have melted away, guerrilla-style.
The Los Angeles School Thug Department has acknowledged, after a long
campaign, that having armored vehicles to launch tear gas, and
carrying automatic rifles, is fundamentally a bad idea.
That is a change for the better, but I suspect that most students that
on the school-to-prison pipeline got there through an arrest in a
school by a single thug. Will the school district recognize that having
thugs in schools is dangerous for the students?
Urgent action is needed to reduce air pollution, which is expected to kill 9 million people per year over the next few decades if not reduced.
This danger dwarfs that of terrorists and jihadis.
Even PISSI in Syria can't kill people like that.
Former dictator Hissène Habré of Chad, recently
convicted of crimes against humanity, was installed and supported by
the US. The US leaders that supported him
are not
on trial.
The UK officials behind kidnaping Libyan dissidents and handing them
over for torture will enjoy total impunity.
Trump inspires school bullies all across the US.
Trump is a school bully that never grew out of it.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to limit arms for Salafi Arabia and Syrian rebels (in
different ways).
US citizens:
call
on Congress to provide aid for civilians fleeing Falluja.
Everyone: please write to
AddUp@sierraclub.org and
webmaster@sierraclub.org
to request in a respectful tone that the Sierra Club make
sure that people can sign its petitions without running Javascript
code.
That used to work. It could certainly work again, if they decide
to make it work.
If, as is the case with me, you support some of their petitions and
would sign them if you didn't have to pay with your freedom to sign,
I suggest telling them so.
Israeli soldiers attacked several different Palestinian protests, and
nine
protesters were shot.
New Traceability Rule
Doesn't
Go Far Enough to Stop Seafood Fraud in US.
It only affects certain cases, and those are not the majority of
fraud.
Report Details How US-Backed Coup
Unleashed
Wave of Abuses in Honduras.
Specifically, it was Secretary of State Clinton who
winked
at that coup.
The UK's blanket spying law has
passed
the House of Commons. It gives legal permission for the illegal
snooping that GCHQ has been doing.
It's
not
really accurate to call addiction a disease. However, that's a
lot better than calling it a moral weakness.
A bill being considered by the Senate
would
give the FBI additional power to snoop on most Americans secretly.
This is the opposite of what we need. The US has too much power to
track people, and for democracy's sake, we need to knock down the
surveillance, across the board.
The UN removed Salafi Arabia and its allies from the list of countries
that maim and kill children, apparently
as
a political decision.
US citizens: phone the White House at (888) 848-4824
and call on Obama to make an executive order requiring
federal contractors to announce their political spending.
China systematically erases history or replaces it with a modern
imitation. Many "old" temples and monuments are modern replicas.
Lancôme cancelled a concert in a store in Hong Kong, bowing to
pressure from China. People in Hong Kong protested this, and the
company
shut
its stores.
I hope they protest until Lancôme learns a lesson. Western
businesses that sell in China often betray human rights globally to
cater to China.
EFF Urges Senate Not to Expand FBI's Controversial National Security Letter Authority.
Last weekend, before the AP's premature announcement that Clinton had won the nomination, the Clinton campaign was already arranging what it would say about that announcement.
Well-known and previously respected US universities are outsourcing their online remote education to companies, making them in effect almost
equivalent to for-profit colleges.
This goes with adopting some of the sleazy practices of those.
Salafi Arabia organized allies through the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation to pressure the UN to remove it from the list of countries that are killing children.
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted a law that
requires "law enforcement agencies" to get approval for their purchases of surveillance technology.
This is not strong enough, but it is a good step.
A Russian performance artist who set fire to the door of the spy agency FSB has been freed with a fine.
I wish the US could be counted on respect dissent this way.
Erdoğan can now
prosecute
and remove opposition MPs. With them gone, he will be able to
change the constitution and make himself effectively dictator.
Next he wants to allow thugs and soldiers to kill people with official
impunity.
In 2015, estimated human greenhouse gas emissions decreased.
This is like learning that the car you're riding in, which is heading
for a cliff you can't see, has stopped accelerating. Now we need to slow
it down and turn it around.
Something Ain't Right About Bill Clinton Eulogizing Muhammad Ali.
I don't care about athletics or people's success in them.
But I admire Muhammad Ali for refusing to join the US Army
to help one dictator fight another dictator for power in Vietnam.
"Papua New Guinea's students have a point. [Prime Minister] Peter O'Neill
should talk to them, not send police."
When Chinese human rights lawyers are disappeared, they go into a smaller prison.
A mother reports how she has to expose her children to danger every
day in a parking lot, because she fears to be prosecuted if she leaves
one of them alone in the car for a couple of minutes.
Some reptiles grow up female if their eggs are in a warm nest.
Maybe this means global heating could make them all female, resulting
in extinction of the species.
Many companies adopt "diversity programs" to overcome bias in hiring,
but they don't reduce the bias, they
only
convince the staff that there is no bias.
Burma's military still impose injustice: a
protest
march of students was attacked by thugs.
Governor Cuomo
imposed
a New York State boycott of all companies that boycott Israel,
even if they do so to demand Israel change its occupation policies.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli soldiers
murdered
two Palestinians in Hebron on March, but one killing happened so
suddenly they were unable to record video of it.
As a Worker on the Great Barrier Reef I'm
Ashamed
to Look My Children in the Eye.
The sounds of the natural world are
being
silenced as human activity destroys habitats and eliminates
species.
Don't Fear
Pig-Human
Embryos — They Could Revolutionise Our Old Age.
Iran has imprisoned musicians
for
expressing forbidden sentiments.
Mossack Fonseca did more than shell companies; it
helped
some Americans disguise income.
We need to be able to recognize a tragic accident where there is no
one to be blamed, so we
don't
blame parents whose children suffer such accidents, and oppress
all the other parents.
Why
Should We Not Be Allowed to Choose When We Die?
Closing
the Louvre as floods approach it demonstrates that culture is in
direct danger from climate mayhem.
French thugs
have attacked
protesters in France recently, much as US thugs attack
protesters here. An investigation has been launched.
Four leaders of the party of Brazil's acting president are to be arrested
on corruption charges.
The UK's kafkaesque system for testing disabled people is a disaster, leaving them stuck in their apartments without the ability to move, or making them work when they are falling down.
The dictator of Burundi has arrested students for writing something on photos of him.
If civilians in Falluja escape being killed by PISSI, they face
getting tortured or killed by Shi'ite militias.
The Associated Press prematurely declared the Democratic nomination race over, one day before the California primary.
This looks like an attempt to convince voters not to bother to show up and
vote for Sanders.
The Associated Press was counting how superdelegates have said they
will vote; but they are free to change their minds until the
convention.
'Free Trade' Will Kill Climate Movement, Hundreds of Groups Warn Congress.
Three Years Later, the Snowden Leaks Have Changed How the World Sees NSA
Surveillance.
The Clinton Foundation serves as an opaque fund-raising arm for the Clinton campaign.
Violent Islamists in Bangladesh have now murdered a Hindu priest.
They are making it clear they want to kill anyone that disagrees with
their views. Other Islamists don't go in for murder, but they too
seek to convict and punish anyone that disagrees with or disobeys
their religion.
Before you think of them as an "oppressed group", remember that their
intention is to oppress everyone else.
Requiring men to wear ties is nasty enough, but women's dress codes are far, far nastier.
For the Free Software Foundation staff, we have a very simple dress code:
a propeller beanie is required, but all other clothing is optional.
However, we never enforce this code.
Fictitious medical "cures" benefit from endorsements from real celebrities (for pay, I presume); here are endorsements for real cures from fictitious celebrities.
For additional ridicule of homeopathy, see my song, Poppycock.
US citizens:
Call
on the Democratic Party to adopt a platform against fracking.
US citizens:
call on the
EPA to ban neonicotinoid pesticides before its too late for bees
and the plants they pollinate.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic National Committee to support Sanders's
progressive agenda.
Religiously
inspired irrational fear of making genetically modified human
embryos threatens to intimidate scientists out of doing important
research.
There are no real ethical issues at stake here. An embryo is not a
human being, and neither is a fetus. It could grow into one, and if
it did it would deserve human rights; but that will not happen in
these experiments.
Gene editing on real human beings raises real issues, because it could
go wrong and lead to humans with various medical problems. However,
one issue we probably need not worry about is that these problems
would be inherited. By the time such a person is old enough to have
children, we will have no difficulty making a corrective change for
those children.
Direct
proof that neonicotionoids kill honeybee colonies.
Other causes such as the
varroa
mite may contribute to the problem,
but that changes nothing. We have no choice about whether the varroa
mite exists. On the contrary, we can get rid of the neonicotionoids,
though it will take time for the amounts
accumulated
in the soil to wash away.
"Open source" gun plans test the boundary between
freedom
of speech and gun control.
I support freedom of speech, and gun control. Thus, I believe it
should be lawful to publish these plans, but making a gun from them
can be regulated as appropriate.
A gun is a dangerous thing to own. Overall, you're
safer
if you don't have a gun in your house.
Music stars generally advertise the products that
make
people (especially young people) fat.
I lose respect for people that advertise products (any products) for
pay.
Brazilians are
marching
for the ouster of corrupt acting president Temer, who has just
been sentenced to 8 years exclusion from running for office.
What
If Trade Agreements Helped People, Not Corporations. (A list of
suggestions towards that end.)
Germany has "reformed" its electricity laws so as to
slow
the installation of home solar generation.
This is the
same
"reform" that has been imposed through lobbying in some US states.
It is true that utilising and buying the surplus solar electricity
that buildings generate imposes costs on the utility. The utility
should charge those costs to customers buying electricity.
I wonder if someone can design an electric-powered device to store
chemical energy. For instance, to make ethanol and oxygen out of
water and CO2.
More
info about the government's snooping on defense counsel activities
in Florida. The lawyers charge that this was standard practice for
ten years.
Tory cuts in welfare benefits for the unemployed
make
it less likely they will find work.
The Tories will find some other excuse to keep on driving poor people
down.
Judge Curiel
has
given Trump great leeway so he can have a fair trial. He has
grounds to declare Trump in contempt of court, but doesn't.
SCROTUS are
trying
to remove funding for US science programs that study the details
and causes of global heating.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Chiquita corporation in Colombia supported the government-supported
right-wing paramilitares;
relatives
of the people they killed are now suing Chiquita in the US.
Sanders to Clinton: Yes, Trump's Foreign Policy Ideas Are Scary.
But
So Are Yours.
Clinton, meanwhile,
misrepresents
her own foreign policy to hide the really bad parts.
Thailand's famous "tiger temple" was a node for
smuggling
tigers and tiger parts to fools in China.
Reportedly other tiger farms and "sanctuaries" do the same thing.
I find it surprising that the farms are unable to pass off cultivated
tiger parts as "wild". Clearly they do not mind lying. Is there
anything that could help them do this?
The European Union has
recruited
internet communication companies to delete "hate speech".
I disapprove of this policy, for different reasons
from those of EDRI.
It is legitimate to prosecute incitement to violence,
and this is a crime in the US, although inexplicably
Trump is allowed to get away with it.
However, people have a right to hate, and to say so, even when it is
irrational, unjustified and foolish (for instance, based on race,
color, etc.) When Europe's laws against "hate speech" prohibit this,
they go to far. The US does not prosecute people for this, when it
doesn't go as far as inciting violence.
What does it mean, then, for US companies to agree to a policy
of quickly deleting such statements? I fear it means censorship
imposed on the to satisfy an EU law.
Everyone: call on Walmart to
give employees decent
pay, full-time hours and proper working conditions.
Residents of California:
call
on Governor Brown to block coal trains to the port of Oakland.
call
on Congress to sign the Conyers-Love letter which calls on the UN
to take the necessary steps to eliminate cholera in Haiti.
It was the UN's uncalled-for intervention in Haiti that
brought
cholera there.
Google Voice Search
Records
And Keeps Conversations People Have Around Their Phones.
The user can order deletion of the files, but this surely won't delete
any copies Big Brother has already saved.
Reagan got himself elected president using
dishonesty
somewhat like Trump's.
Trump has been involved in an
unusual
number of lawsuits for a rich real estate developer, and they show
his tendency to bully with his money.
Putin is
imprisoning
people in Russia for posting criticism of Russia, even in abstract
and nonviolent ways.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz
put
an MPAA lobbyist on the Democratic Party platform committee, where
he will certainly campaign to attack us.
The "vulnerable 20" countries, which
will
suffer the most and soonest from climate mayhem, have organized to
try to stop it.
Brad Birkenfeld reported to the IRS 19000 Americans' bank accounts at
the Swiss bank UBS, which they had not reported to the IRS.
Secretary of State Clinton directly negotiated a settlement with UBS,
which
allowed
it to keep most of the profit and conceal most of the names,
including the "politically exposed people".
Then Birkenfeld was imprisoned for reporting the crimes to the US
government, and UBS increased its donations to the Clinton Foundation.
Another study says that medical error in the US causes
only
around 1% of deaths.
This disagrees with
another
recent study. If this one is correct, the problem is not
tremendously grave.
US citizens:
tell Trump
to release his tax returns.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic Party to oppose expansion of Israel's colonies
in Palestine.
Everyone:
call
Amazon executives and say, don't sponsor Trump's convention.
SCROTUS
demanded
that Greenpeace, 350.org and the Union of Concerned Scientists hand
over privileged legal communications about investigating Exxon's
global heating fraud.
They demanded this in the name of a bogus "Congressional
investigation" which is just as fraudulent as Exxon's denial.
At an anti-Trump protest in San Jose, some of the protesters
attacked
Trump supporters who were leaving.
It was foolish to physically attack the Trump supporters, and wrong,
but Trump is also responsible through his preaching hatred and
violence.
Philadelphia Water Department
Faces
Class Action Lawsuit over Water Testing. (The tests were done
wrong so as to underestimate the amount of lead in the water.)
A prisoner in New York's Rikers Island jail has been waiting 6 years
for trial.
New Jersey needs Bernie Sanders's political revolution so it can end
the extreme inequality that has made 1/3 of the population struggle.
Microplastics Killing Fish Before They Reach Reproductive Age, Study Finds.
The US continues to protect the Chilean officer accused of murdering
Victor Jara, but he faces a civil suit.
Chomsky evaluates Obama's presidency.
Federal prosecutors in Florida are accused of persistently snooping on
a defendant's privileged legal communications
Specific subsidies for corporations in the US amount to $250 billion since
2010, and that doesn't include the general loopholes that they all use.
Plutocratist politicians are helping companies pay so little that the
workers need public assistance, then bashing them for receiving it.
We need to recognize that they have chosen the side of the enemies
of our country.
Robot milkers are much more comfortable for cows, but the result of
advancing farm automation (not limited to dairy farms) will be to eliminate
most of the jobs that remain there.
There will indeed be a need for people to repair robots, but I'd
expect to see only one repair job for dozens of today's milker jobs.
And jobs reprogramming robots will be fewer still.
Add this to the automation of other kinds of work, and it leads to
economic disaster.
Eventually most of the automated farms will cease to be needed,
because the people who still have an income won't need a lot
of farm products.
China and several other states (including Vietnam and the Philippines,
which are US allies) dispute control of the sea between them. Part of
what makes the dispute hot is that the area contains lots of oil.
In other words, lots of opportunities to risk local disasters (oil
spills) in order to contribute to global heating disaster.
If these countries sign a treaty to leave that oil in the sea bottom,
perhaps it will become easier for them to agree on how to divide up
the sovereignty.
The US International Trade Commission predicts that the economic "benefits"
of the TPP will be so small as not to matter.
Even if these "benefits" were larger, they would not be significant for
US workers, since they would mostly be for the rich.
Ralph Nader: call him "Cheating Donald" since he has cheated so many.
I like "Treacherous Trump" better, because of the alliteration.
India is considering a censorship law that would imprison people for
publishing maps that disagree with India's disputed territorial
claims.
An honest map would describe disputed territory as disputed, and also
show where the actual boundaries of physical control lie.
The Canadian post office has given up on trying to use copyright to
block the distribution of an independently compiled list of the
geography of postal codes.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the term "intellectual
property" since that term confuses the issue. It is a mistake
to generalize about copyright law and those other laws, since
each one is more different from the others than similar.
In the US, this database would be uncopyrightable since it is a mere
statement of facts rather than a creative choice of details. Canada
should adopt the same principle.
Journalists covering a protest in Caracas say that people stole their
equipment and the thugs refused to intervene.
An oil train in Oregon derailed and caught fire, fortunately not near
a town, but rather near the Columbia River.
Will the river be polluted, or will all the oil burn?
The fact that a slow train derailed suggests that the line was badly
maintained. Either that was illegal, or the legal standards are
inadequate to assure safety of oil trains.
Investigation Shows GCHQ Using US Companies, NSA To Route Around
Domestic Surveillance Restrictions.
Specifically, it can collect the emails of members of Parliament
this way, because they pass it through Microsoft.
Tattoo Recognition Research Threatens Free Speech and Privacy.
Here are some ways these computerized systems could be used, and why that
could be harmful.
Face recognition technology is dangerous in many of the same ways.
What's more, many of us have no tattoos, or none that would generally
be visible, but everyone has a face.
Trump's 100-million debt to Deutsche Bank would be a giant conflict of interest
if he were president.
Environmental crime costs the world at least 90 billion dollars a
year, perhaps 3 times that.
Addictions Are Harder to Kick When You're Poor.
The EU was going to legislate to reduce air pollution. The UK
government, working as usual for business against people, weakened the
directive.
This is expected to mean 14,000 additional deaths per year by 2030,
when the reductions will have been implemented.
Some pranksters make videos of saying things to women that annoy them
or simply confuse them.
Some of the pranks are not particularly bad in themselves, but the
nasty messages that the women receive afterward are inexcusable.
In England, 1 in 5 young children is reported to a state agency by
someone who suspects the child is being neglected or abused.
This creates a reign of terror for parents.
Uri Avnery: the extreme right wing is forcing all parts of the Israeli
state and all other influential institutions into line.
Thank Sanders for forcing Obama to endorse expanding Social Security.
A Canadian of Libyan origin, held for two years and tortured in the
UAE, has now been allowed to leave the country.
A few others have been freed from prison, but still remain in the
greater prison of the UAE.
James Hansen's paper, now transparently peer-reviewed, presents a
process that would cause several meters of global heating over the
next century, together with much more powerful storms in the North
Atlantic
Essentially all coastal cities would be destroyed.
Natural gas export from southern Peru has been a disaster for the indigenous
people that live in the Camisea region.
If that's not bad enough, think of what it is doing to Earth's whole
biosphere. This gas export terminal isn't needed if we take the
required steps to prevent global disaster — so it should be shut
down.
Trump's response to the evidence that his "university" cheated students
is to say the judge is biased because of his Mexican ancestry.
This is the standard Trump response to anyone he can't buy.
He has already bought off the attorneys general of Florida, Texas
and other states.
Harvard is has
made
new investments in fracking companies in the past two years.
The Australian government and an NGO
dispute
how to present how much coral in the Great Barrier Reef has died.
But they might agree that the deaths amount to 25% of the coral in the
whole reef, concentrated closer to the equator.
After 20 years more heating, the subsequent el Niño event will leave
much less coral alive.
The Democratic Party is
illegally
trying to give some primary voters in California "provisional
ballots" that probably won't be counted.
Médecins sans Frontières
condemns
several governments for systematically bombing hospitals or
supporting the states that do.
Make
Building Standards Top Priority for Tackling [Global Heating],
Says IEA Chief.
The term "climate change" was chosen by Dubya's officials to downplay
the danger; we should not keep following his choice.
After Clinton stopped giving expensive speeches for companies in order to
run for president, her husband Bill Clinton continued, and took funds
even from the lowest of the low: an
asset-stripping
"vulture fund".
Flint had a way to cheat on tests of lead in the water:
doing
the tests in areas which don't have lead pipes.
Even with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new rules,
payday loans continue to carry
very
heavy interest.
The real causes of the problem include (1) too low pay for workers in
the US, and (2) insufficient government help (because the rich and
businesses have escaped from paying tax), and (3) banks' sending
credit cards to young adults, encouraging them to get deep in debt.
One of the reasons not to pay by credit card is that people tend to
spend more money that way.
A Syrian Arab says he wants to fight PISSI,
but
not under coercion from Kurds.
Ukraine has put sanctions on Russian journalists which it accuses of
"stirring hatred",
banning
them from entering Ukraine or owning property there.
One of them is actually a Ukrainian citizen, and plans to challenge
the sanctions legally.
I wish the US would stop making journalists apply for
special
visas to report on the US.
Google Maps
collects
a history of everywhere the user has been, and calculates the
locations with several methods to make them extremely accurate.
Catching some criminals is a good thing. Ten years ago I would have
said that catching a bank robber was good. Now that banks have stolen
so many billions from people around the world, and the US government
has
let
them get away with it, I hesitate to condemn someone for stealing
from banks. Nonetheless, there are other crimes for which I would
support catching the perpetrators.
But this method can be used for all sorts of reasons, including
catching whistleblowers. It is
dangerous
to allow the existence of
any system which tracks people's movements.
The OECD now
recognizes
that governments should end austerity and spend more on public
works.
Increased benefits for the poor would help too. They would spend the
money on food, transportation and medicine.
Poland Gets
Official
Warning from EU over Constitutional Court Changes.
More information about the changes and how they
endanger
rule of law.
Everyone:
call
on Walmart to stop selling tuna caught in ways that kill
threatened sea life or caught by enslaved workers.
Germany has officially recognized the genocide of the Armenians,
so
Turkish
officials are freaking out and threatening "bad relations".
I approve of this resolution because its statement is true; that it
irritates Erdoğan is a bonus.
33
US cities cheated in lead tests to hide excessive levels of lead
in their drinking water.
They have
agreed
to stop.
Tajikistan's "president" for life has
jailed
the leaders of the opposition, hammering the lid on any chance of
democracy there.
Students at Brooklyn College who took the microphone at a faculty
meeting to talk briefly about Palestinians' rights have
vanquished
false accusations of antisemitism.
In three years since the Rana Plaza factory collapse, work safety
conditions for garment workers in Bangladesh
have
not substantially improved.
People tried to put pressure on the western middleman companies that
control the garment trade, and some companies promised to vet their
supply chains, but they are doing it so lackadaisically that it has
not changed much.
Sweden
Should
Keep Coal in the Ground, Not Sell It Off.
Statesmen serve their countries by making the necessary investments in
the future rather than spending on today's pleasures. The most
important investment today is in cutting down greenhouse gas
emissions.
Street lights
attract
moths to fly high, out of reach of the flowers they should be
pollinating.
A
25-year
plan to clean up the oil spills in the Niger delta has begun.
It is a lot cheaper to avoid polluting an area than to clean it up.
Fires in Alaska, caused by global heating, add to global heating.
This is one of the positive feedbacks that scientists have warned about.
If enough of these feedbacks start, the planet roasters will have won
a final victory.
Syrian Troops Are Looting Ancient Palmyra, Says Archaeologist.
A study of long term marijuana use found only one tiny physical health effect:
a small increase in the chance of having gum disease.
When US soldiers attacked a friendly family's celebration and killed
seven of them, perhaps it was a mistake. A military investigation says so.
The "fog of war" frequently leads to mistakes.
However, nothing could excuse the cover up that followed.
The investigation arbitrarily ignored this.
A US appeals court ruled that thugs can collect people's cell phone
location data for any length of time from the phone company without
a court order.
The other decision would not be enough to respect people's privacy.
The phone company should not be allowed even to record your
location data without a specific court order about you. Tracking
everyone's movements is a threat to democracy as well as each person.
The European Commission seems to want to change copyright law
to benefit publishers at the expense of authors and the public.
When the article says "editors", it means "publishers". This
could be a mistranslation from the French.
It also seems to be hostile to the freedom to take and use photos on
the street with buildings in view ("freedom of panorama").
The two governments in Libya are introducing different forms of paper
money.
This is not, in itself, a problem. The UK has various kind of paper money
made by different banks. But the US wants to make it out to be a problem.
Reusing water through fish tanks enables agriculture to use much less
water and produces useful fish.
The 'Avon Ladies' of Pakistan Selling Contraception Door to Door.
Some US women, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have used dangerous
abortion methods because they were barred from safe legal abortion.
If this amounts to 2% of all US women, which is the lower bound the
researcher suggests, that would amount to millions.
Foreigners can donate to US election campaigns via US-based front
corporations. It's not a crime, but it ought to be.
The world installed 147 GW of renewable energy capacity in 2015, despite the bigger subsidies for fossil fuels.
This would be good news if we had decades to wait, but we don't.
President Obama, Pardon Edward Snowden And Chelsea Manning.
"Biodiesel" fuel in Europe now includes palm oil.
Instead of CO2 from burning petroleum, it emits CO2 from burning
tropical forests.
Anti-gentrification protesters in Montreal set off smoke bombs in a
grocery for the rich, as well as swiping fancy food.
In principle, I don't see anything wrong with gentrification. The
problem is when the former residents of the area have to move
someplace lousy and far away.
It appears Chinese thugs occasionally kill prisoners and lie about it, much like thugs in the US.
Digital newspapers spy on readers, tracking how much time a reader
spends reading the paper.
They have no right to collect such data about readers. Please join me
in rejecting digital systems that give anyone the power to track what
you read.
Many prisoners in the UK take hallucinatory addictive drugs to make
the months pass in a blur.
The drugs are bad for them, but they can't resist.
Mothers of students killed by China in 1989 at Tiananmen Square
continue to rebuke the state.
The deputy thug that killed Eric Harris has been sentenced to four
years in prison for manslaughter.
Trump University (not a real university) was Trump's dry run for the
dishonest practices he is now using in his campaign.
Trump University's predatory business practices lured students to
pay thousands with their credit cards based on exaggerated promises of
future riches. A personal message from Trump poured on the pressure.
No wonder New York State and students are suing.
Here are some details of the dirty sales methods that the company used.
Former staff say that the company was a "total lie".
The parents of a child that climbed into a zoo's gorilla enclosure
are being investigated by thugs.
The thugs seem to demand that children be kept on leash at all times.
Congress' Treachery, the FBI's Double-Crossing and the American
Citizenry's Cluelessness: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
US citizens:
support
a permanent ban on providing cluster bombs to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to close the carried interest loophole that lets hedge
funds pay little or no tax.
Three gun control measures would greatly reduce the rate of killings
with
guns: universal
background checks in buying guns and ammunition, and ballistic
fingerprinting of guns.
However, this won't prevent your toddlers from killing you or
themselves unintentionally with your gun. Especially if you follow
the NRA's
cockeyed
advice to keep a gun in your child's room.
I expect people will still be safer with no guns in the house,
as
is the case now.
Two giant beer companies are merging. The combination will be
much
larger than any of its competitors.
Mergers so large should be absolutely blocked.
Digital payments carry an
increasing
likelihood that you'll be the victim of fraud, as well as a
certainty that you'll be the victim of snooping.
Extending women's reproductive rights world-wide is an
effective
way to reduce global heating.
New York State has sued Domino's Pizza (and its franchisees) for
systematic
theft of employees' wages.
Belgium now gives people the right to
force
newspaper archives to delete articles about them.
This is terribly dangerous censorship.
Former Attorney General Holder
admits
that Snowden's revelations were a service to the nation, but wants
him to meekly submit to imprisonment for it.
He is not such a fool as to put himself totally at the mercy of
officials that persecute whistleblowers and only then
negotiate a deal.
Scientists Say Canada's Proposed LNG Port
Threatens
Paris Climate Accord.
Censorship in the UK
extends
to harsh opinions. A man has been charged with the "crime" of
saying good riddance about the 96 soccer fans killed by UK thugs.
Even the name of the crime he is charged with is a vicious smear,
since it uses the word "threatening" and "harassment", but the words
he said contained no threat or harassment. Imagine making it a crime
to "kill or tickle" someone, and charging a tickler with "killing or
tickling".
The UK spits on freedom of expression
in
many other ways, too.
When people talk about punishing "hate speech", they advocate
censorship of opinions. Censorship is dangerous to society and
democracy.
That is why I see danger in the recent agreement by three
multinational companies to work harder to
delete
"hate speech".
If Facebook respects journalism, it will
disconnect
from Peter Thiel.
Mohammed Sheikh Mohammed's lawyers accuse the military kangaroo court
of destroying evidence in its favor, then
pretending
to have ordered its preservation.
Each of the prisoners in Guantanamo has a right to a fair trial
or to be released.
The IMF's researchers acknowledge that neoliberal economic policy exists,
and that it's
lousy.
Using facial examination to guess people's character traits is
dangerous
when it is unreliable, and unjust when it is reliable.
In Loomis Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef,
nearly
all the coral has bleached and half of it is dead. The fish that
used to live there are now gone.
The extractionists that rule Australia might respond, "Since the coral
is doomed anyway, and the billion people who depend on it will soon
starve, so why not burn all the coal?"
But it is not too late to prevent this act of mass murder, if we curb
fossil fuel use with dispatch.
The Thai military government has given itself the
power
to spy on all internet traffic in the country.
Leaks suggest that it intends to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks
to spy on use of foreign web sites through https.
Several "US" companies have
signed
a pledge to censor "hate speech", which is a crime in many
European countries.
This includes statements of views that are protected in the US.
We must not ban expression of opinions just because we find them
disgusting.
Erdoğan has
officially
labeled Gülen's movement as "terrorist". (Apparently they
tried to explode Erdoğan's overinflated ego.)
This is meant to try to pressure the US government to hand Gülen
over to Turkey, but I expect it will be an excuse for more persecution
in Turkey.
President-elect Duterte of the Philippines
advocates
murdering "corrupt" journalists. It appears that "corrupt", in
his mouth, means anyone that criticizes him.
Thugs in the Philippines have already started a wave of murders, with
his encouragement. They are killing suspected drug dealers. If they
kill some suspected dissidents too, maybe those will be lost among the
suspected drug dealers.
A German court has
approved
a form of fair use for short music samples.
Good news — and shame on Kraftwerk for opposing this!
Assad's air force
bombed
a hospital in Idlib.
They have bombed quite a few hospitals.
The UK's ban on nearly all psychoactive drugs
will
drive people to more dangerous drugs such as alcohol. It is the
result of a misguided choice of goal: promoting abstinence, rather
than reducing harm.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to block the sneak attack on Net
Neutrality.
US citizens:
call on everyone
to reject China's future puppet Dalai Lama.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on the legislator to vote on GMO Food labelling bill and pass it.
With Javascript disabled, the signing process won't work all the way
through automatically. Instead, it will terminate showing you a long
URL with [URL] in place of the domain name.
If you replace [URL] with http://salsa3.salsalabs.com, and visit the
resulting URL, that will finish signing.
The worst possible argument for talking Britain out of the EU:
reducing
tax on heating oil.
It would be easy for the state to help poor people cope with these
costs: increase welfare benefits for the poor, to an extent that
covers what the poor pay in VAT on oil. (Or even more, why not?)
For the poor, this would be equivalent; meanwhile, the wealthier
would still pay the tax, and the poor would still have an incentive
to use less fossil fuel.
The idea of cutting taxes on fossil fuels, instead of cutting their
subsidies, reflects a planet roaster.
Azeri journalist Khadija Ismayilova, freed from 18 months as a
political prisoner,
will
resume investigating government corruption.
The "transparency, monitoring and control" minister of Brazil has quit
after a
leaked
recording tied him to plotting to end the "lava jato" corruption
investigation.
The whole point of the legal coup, as we now know, was to end that
investigation and protect the
extremely
corrupt officials who plotted it.
In the US, poor and middle-class families' incomes
dropped
(on the average) from 1999 to 2014.
In addition, the middle class shrank, with a few of the departing
families becoming wealthy and most of them becoming poor.
The study analyzed the
229
metropolitan areas for which data were available, and perforce
omitted 152 other areas for which it wasn't.
Here's the
full
report.
India asked YouTube and Facebook to take down a
satirical
video that mocks two Indian celebrities.
The UK made a
secret
agreement about dealing with the nuclear waste from its absurdly
expensive planned new nuclear power plant.
It seems that frequent viewing of porn
often
leads men to sexual difficulty, but it could be a matter of how
and how often they masturbate.
A universal basic income
would
not solve all of society's problems. We would still need
democratic control over important social issues.
However, I don't think this means that the universal basic income is a
bad idea. And even though plutocracy and business-dominated
globalization have an important role in inequality, that doesn't mean
there is no technological unemployment.
Women in general
frequently
need to de-escalate confrontations with pushy men, and most men
don't even know about the problem.
I agree with the writer's position except on one point: about being
looked at. No matter what the reason, you don't have a right to
demand that people not look at you. Just being too young to have a
driver's license doesn't entitle you to tell people where to point
their eyes.
Hissène Habré, former dictator of Chad, has been
convicted
of crimes against humanity including torture and summary
execution.
Now we need to put Dubya on trial for torture, in Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo, and someone (Obama?) on trial for the summary execution of
Osama bin Laden (who deserved a trial for the murders he was accused
of).
The UK referendum about whether to leave the European Union is a
dispute about
"which
is the better way for citizens to be ripped off, as part of the EU
or as an independent UK?"
Like many other referendums, it is a recognition that democracy has
been corrupted so much by the elite that we can't trust it to work for
the public good.
I love the last sentence: "Whether you back red or black in the
tawdry, crumbling casino of neoliberalism, and whatever the slimy
croupiers of the mainstream media urge, it's the house that invariably
wins."
We the People need to take control of our house. Any politician that
the plutocrats are happy with is not on our side.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
on Governor Baker to sign the public records reform bill.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support the Sentencing Reform and Corrections
Act.
CETA the Canadian Sea Monster would impose essentially the
same
injustice as the TTIP on Europe. All the regulations that protect
the public from dangerous actions of business would be vulnerable to
being swept away.
El Niño Is Over — But It
Leaves
Nearly 100 Million People Short of Food.
Companies such as Fitbit and
trying
to scare parents into paying the companies to collect data about
their babies.
These devices should cause parents lots of anxiety about how that data
will be used.
A product to monitor a baby's health might be a reasonable thing to
use if it is run by free software and all the data remains under the
control of the parent.
Australians: see how projected sea-level rise will affect
cities,
beaches, famous buildings, and your home (or the home you might be
thinking of buying).
To understand why the TPP is bad,
stop
believing that it's a "free trade agreement".
Why Sanders's economic policies
make
sense.
As world temperatures set record after record,
society
and the state seem hardly to notice.
Bill
Would Expand FBI's Warrantless Access to Online Records, Senators
Warn.
The US government seems to have been coordinating with the architects
of the coup in Brazil
while
they were setting it up.
When a US drone bomber killed the leader of the Taliban, he was riding
in a taxi. The bomb
killed
the taxi driver, who did not know who his passenger was.
The French finance minister says France
will
make Google and McDonalds pay all the tax they owe.
"Software audits", checking small or medium size businesses for
unauthorized copies of user-subjugating software are a form of
organized
bullying. They demand gigantic penalties in order to make the
users collapse in fear.
The author of the article endorses the official position that
proprietary software is legitimate and using unauthorized copies of
proprietary software is doing wrong to the developer. He even calls
that practice by the smear term,
"piracy".
I think all that is mistaken. It is foolish to use proprietary
software, whether authorized copies or not; but making and using
unauthorized copies of proprietary software is not wrong. Rather, the
wrong is in trying to STOP people from sharing and using software. In
other words, the wrong is proprietary software.
These audits are just a part of
the injustice
of nonfree software. Your business can be safe by rejecting
nonfree software.
The US Trade Representative
threatened
Colombia with cuts in support for peace with the guerrillas if it
went ahead with licensing generic versions of a cancer drug.
If not for the murderous World Trade Organization, Colombia could
simply legislate that there are
no
patents on medicines.
Here is
more information about
this issue.
It is disappointing that KEI uses the spin term "protection" to
describe what patents do. There is no reason to use that word except
propaganda for the drug companies.
Raising taxes on the rich
does
not lead most of them to move somewhere else for lower taxes.
A subgroup of Anonymous
digs
up financial dirt on some big companies.
Some of the boat people set to Nauru by Australia have attempted
suicide, and the usual fraction of them are homosexual. For their
sake, Nauru has
decriminalized
homosexuality and suicide. Some other positive reforms have been
made.
This doesn't correct the basic wrong, though.
If you buy tropical fish, think about
which
species to get. Some are wild-caught, which is harmful, and some
will get too big for your tank and will be physically maimed.
Florida Brewery Creates
Edible
Beer Holders to Save Marine Life.
Unlike ordinary
"biodegradable"
plastics, these really do degrade in a reasonable time, floating
in the ocean.
Some in Spain are
starting
to talk about the mass murders committed after the civil war by
dictator Franco and his army.
People in Spain told me, ten years ago, that Franquistas still
held positions of power and that they blocked efforts to remember
their crimes.
Australia silenced the UN report to
cover
up danger to Kakadu and Tasmanian forests as well as the Great Barrier
Reef.
There is no cure for Tas-mania, but at least the sufferers can apply
for Addle-aid.
Clinton's
changes
in the paperback edition of her memoirs are illuminating,
especially about the TPP.
The UK
blocked
EU regulations on fracking.
The Tories are lower than vermin, and they plague all of Europe.
One factor that makes oxycontin dangerous is that its manufacturer
claims its effect lasts for 12 hours, and
refuses to
recognize evidence that people need it more often.
Instead, the company wants patients to take bigger doses every 12
hours. These bigger doses are dangerous.
US citizens:
call
on the IRS to publish how much tax money the US loses through the
carried interest loophole.
US citizens:
oppose
plans to convert US national parks into promotion for companies.
We should get funds from these companies for upkeep of parks —
by taxing them!
SCROTUS are blocking the Federal Election Commission from
investigating a case where a
company
owner ordered employees to contribute to the company's PAC.
In general, the FEC has become useless because Republicans protect
all abuses by the rich and powerful. In effect, the Republican
Party has become the Crush Democracy Party.
21
questions for Donald Trump. Some of them point at possible
involvement with organized crime gangs.
Chinese may face the loss of
hundreds
of thousands of jobs as factories replace workers with robots.
The jobs being lost are grueling, and we should have stopped companies
such as Apple from moving to this sort of manufacturing. Having the
jobs automated, in a world of spreading poverty, is not a solution.
US governments use algorithms to predict which arrested people are
likely to commit crimes again. The algorithms are secret, but they
appear to be
biased
against blacks.
The government should be required to publish these algorithms.
The Niger Delta Avengers are
blowing
up oil facilities to demand compensation for the harm done by oil
extraction and pipelines in Nigeria.
The "US" Trade Representative was
working
closely with Goldman Sachs in the TPP.
That official officially represents the US, but in fact represents
the banksters and other plutocrats instead.
G7
Wants
to Kill Fossil Fuel Subsidies by 2025, But We Could Do It 'Twice
as Fast'.
Governments could end them this year, if they were not dominated
by the planet roasters.
Verizon workers have
tentative
agreement on a contract that they are happy with.
Portable phones make people helpless and dependent, and they
lose
the concept of making plans.
I've seen that when people get used to depending on GPS navigators,
they lose the ability to keep track of where they are.
IMF economists criticized the neoliberal policy of
spending
cuts to reduce deficit.
Even they see it!
Facebook will compete to target ads on other web sites
even
to visitors that are not useds of Facebook, based on other ways of
tracking people on the net.
This includes "Like" buttons. If you see a "Like" button in a page,
Facebook knows that your computer visited that page. This is why
we made the GNU Browser IceCat block the "Like" buttons.
The
rigid
rules for protests at the Republican National Convention keep
protesters far away from the convention, from the delegates, and
mostly from the public as well.
PISSI is attacking Syrian rebel groups that have been
weakened
by Russian attacks.
Technology billionaires buy lots of privacy for themselves
using
the money that they got from snooping on millions of others.
The EU decided to
require
research it funds to publish results without paywall.
I don't know whether this means it will be published under a free
license, but unpaywalled papers usually do that.
The ACLU wants to know
whether
the US government is asking Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to
censor people.
UK Weapons Sales to Oppressive Regimes Top
$3bn
a Year.
Uber
Knows
Too Much About You. And so do many other companies.
Many billionaires believe
"real
journalism" means praising them, and that they are entitled to
crush the press when it doesn't do that.
Billionaires have several methods to hush up media criticism.
They can
pay
someone to sue a media outlet, or they can
buy
it.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC to adopt real privacy rules for ISPs.
In my message, I said that the ISP should not be allowed even to
keep any records of what a customer has connected to, except
based on a warrant issued about a specific customer for a specific
reasonable period of time.
Everyone:
call on some
companies to cancel their support for Trump's convention.
US citizens:
call on the
Pentagon to free Mohamedou Slahi.
US citizens:
support
the WATER Act.
Massachusetts citizens:
call
on Governor Baker to sign the new public records access law.
House Republicans Again Target Net Neutrality With
Budget
Attack.
Justin Shafer found medical patient data available on the internet and
reported it to the government. So the company that was leaking the
data (on an anonymous FTP server)
SWATted
him.
Facebook and Google are
trying
to weaken Illinois' law on collection of face data.
The fungus in the air vents in the Rikers Island jail makes the air so
sickness-provoking that a guard
begged
a prisoner to file a complaint. The guard was afraid of being
punished for complaining.
Similar problems are found in many US jails and prisons. The fungus
can cause permanent illness.
Here's
Why Our [US] Infrastructure Is Crumbling and Our Recovery Is So
Weak.
Everyone:
call
on the governor of Missouri to veto the "stand your ground" law.
The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has
given
up complaining to military courts about the crimes of occupation
soldiers. These courts are so biased that reporting crimes to
them is useless.
Millions of girls live in cultures where menstruation is taboo, and
they
don't
understand what is happening or what is best to do. Some have to
sell sex in order to get pads to wear.
Some skip school while menstruating, because they would be sneered at
in class.
This is patriarchy at work, aided by its faithful servant, religion.
Abul Kamal Azad was lured into borrowing thousands of dollars to get a
job in London. There his sponsor
enslaved
him. He couldn't refuse, because his sponsor could have him
deported at any time.
After he and his fellow slaves testified against their enslaver, they
were threatened with deportation. But if they went back to Bangladesh
without paying their debts, the money lenders might kill their
families.
That threat is the other key to the situation, as it makes almost
any resolution hopeless.
Other injustices appear in the background. What enabled him to sell
his wife's jewelry — was he trampling her rights so he could
lose her money as well as his own?
In an overpopulated place like Bangladesh, circumstances will
inevitably put many people into desperate situations where they feel
impelled to take bad risks. Some will end up destitute; the only
uncertainty is whom and how. To have children in such a situation is
simply wrong. What Bangladesh needs most is a lot
fewer
children.
French people are still protesting and striking against a
proposed
law to reduce workers' rights.
The president has adopted a standard right-wing position and justifies
it with standard right-wing arguments: he claims this will benefit
workers by giving employers the "flexibility" (i.e., more power over
the workers). How could that be? Implicitly, he assumes France is
competing with other countries to attract businesses by letting them
mistreat workers more.
Millions of US teenagers live in places that have a permanent curfew.
They
can
be arrested just for being outside.
Aside from being repressive, selective enforcement creates a way
to direct minority group children into a life of legal difficulties
even when they don't commit any real crimes.
British dissidents jailed for their acts of protest describe the
repression
and dishonesty they encountered in prison.
Typically their "offenses" are not real, just excuses the state finds
convenient.
Some found their resolve strengthened by the experience.
A UK teacher writes about being
threatened
with dismissal for violating an unwritten requirement to wear a
tie.
I reject ties both as a matter of comfort and as an act of rebellion.
If it were just a matter of personal preference, I wouldn't need to
talk about it, I'd just do it. However, many men are forced to wear
ties, basically as a symbol of submission, and that makes it an
ethical issue.
I hope that my refusal to wear a tie will help clear the path for
others to refuse.
Trump
chickened
out of debating Sanders after Sanders accepted the challenge.
Trump was apparently bluffing, and did not know what to do when
Sanders called his bluff.
Trump
claimed
that there is no drought in California.
Sunscreen
Contributing
to Decline of Coral Reefs, Study Shows.
This could explain why massive tourism tends to harm reefs.
The US is
wasting
its stockpile of helium, and ought to start charging a lot of
money for it.
A court in Argentina has sentenced various various military murderers
who participated in Operation Condor, and found that this
collaboration
in repression between 6 different countries in South America
really did occur.
Of course, it was organized by the US.
US citizens:
call on Congress to support
the Take On Wall Street agenda.
Everyone:
call
on Washington State to cancel the Millennium coal export terminal.
Australia convinced the UN to drop Australia from a report on
environmental damage, so as not to highlight how Australia is
destroying the Great Barrier Reef. A draft of the report has been
leaked,
and it is bleak.
Meteorologists Are Seeing Global [Heating]'s
Effect
on the Weather.
It is becoming more common for weather patterns to get "stuck" in one
spot, which could mean a lot of rain, a lot of snow, a long heat wave,
a long fire, whatever.
Women
as well as men join in storms of tweets and use misogynistic
insults against women who are being criticized.
Since Clinton refuses to debate Sanders before the California Primary,
he may
debate
Trump instead.
But Trump seems to be
trying
to create an excuse not to do it.
The environment minister of France warns that
hundreds
of millions of people will be forced to try to migrate by global
heating.
If we consider late in this century, I think that is an underestimate.
Even
in the Supreme Court, men tend to interrupt women.
Chile is considering a copyright law that
would
prohibit any sort of sharing license for audiovisual works.
The FBI massively collects data about millions people. A legal action
directed specifically at
biometric
data, including photos of non-suspects going about their daily
lives, demands the FBI follow standard US government privacy
rules.
A victory in this would be just a small first step towards making the
US government respect our freedom. For democracy's sake, we need to
prevent
even the accumulation of most of that data.
The proposed Trade in Services Agreement would give businesses
broad
and detailed power over over countries and people. For instance,
a town would not even be allowed to impose a limit on the size of
stores.
The proposed reform of US chemical safety law is just a
small
step towards what really ought to be done.
A
report
on the prevalence of sex trafficking of minors in Ohio is not only
a series of exaggerations and worst-case assumptions, it is also based
on false concepts: equating "engaging in prostitution" with "being a
victim of trafficking".
The result is to scare parents in a way that encourages unjust laws.
Here's another example: Canadian parents are supposed to be terrified
because
three
girls per year are kidnaped and killed.
Those murders are grave crimes, like any murder, but the danger they
amount to is insignificant compared to life's other dangers.
Illinois thugs seized
$72
million worth of property without official criminal charges during two
years, and $50 million has not even been legally adjudicated.
The military tyranny in Thailand now
intends to
imprison people if they take note of criticism of the state without
denouncing it.
Christian extremists in the US are
using
surveillance-advertising networks to harass women in Planned
Parenthood clinics through their phones.
They send ads for one of the phony abortion counseling services that
claim to offer help but really distribute misleading information.
They also find out enough information, in many cases, to identify
the person.
I think this is an instance of the general injustice of the
surveillance-advertising system.
Chelsea Clinton's husband's investment fund got a
big
investment from the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
I suspect the CEO doesn't mind that the fund lost money and shut down.
He probably thinks of this as an investment to be repaid by a future
President Clinton.
G7 Nations Pledge to End Fossil Fuel Subsidies by
2025.
Why such a rush?
Obama has finally
rejected
the Keystone XL pipeline.
What reluctant "leadership"!
Google Should Not Be Allowed to
Secretly
Collect Private Medical Data.
A call to arms against the Australian parties that have
sold
out to the mining and fossil fuel companies.
Many web platforms systematically manipulate users to give the company
what it wants. Here are
some
of the techniques used.
The way for users to have control over
such activities is to replace those disservices with distributed
social networks implemented by free software.
Apple censors games,
banning
some games from the cr…app store because of which political
points they suggest. Some political points are apparently
considered acceptable.
Clinton was found to have
violated
security rules while Secretary of State, in a way that created an
espionage risk.
This carelessness was a far lesser wrong than the really bad things
she has done (supporting coups, helping plutocrats), but it might
convince Democratic superdelegates that they had better choose
Sanders.
The IMF
backed
down from demanding debt relief for Greece. This means the
euro-banksters are proceeding with their scheme to "rescue" Greece to
death.
The "bail-out" isn't for Greece, but rather for the creditor banks.
Each step imposes more poverty, supposedly so that Greece will have a
surplus and pay back the ever bigger debt. However, the actual result
of the poverty is further economic contraction, so there is no
surplus, and that "justifies" the next step.
This economic warfare is killing Greeks, probably by tens of
thousands. When people die in Greece as a consequence of poverty, I
suggest Greeks turn their funerals into rallies to denounce the
banksters that killed them.
A copy of
the TPP text, with
annotations saying what harm various parts can do.
The "war on terror", in the US, has harmed Americans and their rights,
but
does
not seem to have done even the slightest bit against the few and rare
terrorists in the US.
Abuse victim and habitual criminal Kelly Webb faces deportation from
Australia to the UK, because she was
brought
to Australia at age 2 and was never naturalized.
I understand why Australia wants to expel foreigners that commit
crimes, and for most cases such laws are legitimate. However, people
who were brought to a country as children should not be deported to a
place where they have no roots.
The world won't be a better place if Ms Webb is sent to the UK.
Some US universities have
made
all toilets nongendered.
If the students want it this way, I won't argue against it. In
principle, there is nothing wrong with it. However, if this is
applied to toilets with urinals, I'm concerned that women might feel
uncomfortable, or that
some
males might be accused with exposing themselves for using the urinal
when a female enters. This is not just my imagination.
The leaked conspiracy conversation demonstrates that the
impeachment
of President Rousseff is a coup against democracy in Brazil.
Prominent Britons say: counter-extremism bill
puts
our rights at risk.
Many Chinese academics are
fleeing
China, where censorship is becoming ever more pervasive.
Vietnam systematically jails people that fled Vietnam and asked for
asylum, after they are
forcibly
returned based on promises they would not be punished for leaving
Vietnam.
Some California farmers are
relearning
to grow crops without irrigation. They can even grow tomatoes
that are worth eating, unlike the usual commercial US tomatoes.
I doubt that all crops will work this way. California may have to
stop growing almonds, for instance. I will miss them.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi's brother, a German citizen, wanted to go to the
US to advocate for Mohamedou's release from Guantanamo prison. The US
denied
him entry, after questioning him for hours about his family.
The US could easily have blocked him from boarding the flight, but
that would have been insufficiently nasty.
Since imprisonment without trial is tyranny, the US must release all
the prisoners in Guantanamo, or else charge them with crimes and give
them fair trials.
The head of Victoria's government has apologized to the men
convicted
(in effect) of being gay.
Victoria is a state in Australia. Some years ago I proposed people
should start a magazine to reveal corruption in Victoria; it could be
called "Victoria's Secret".
Twitter is sending messages to people that tweeted identifying
names behind the "celebrity threesome injunction",
pressuring
them to delete their tweets "voluntarily" and warning them of
legal action.
According to this not entirely trustworthy newspaper, such messages
are
going
to people in the US and Spain, where the injunction does not apply
and British courts have no authority.
"Austerity" means more than spending cuts. It is a scheme to transfer
wealth from the poor to the rich. It includes
selling
everything public to the rich at a cut-rate price.
The budget deficit that is the excuse for these policies is no
accident. It is the result of not taxing the rich enough.
Thus, past plutocratic injustice is being used as the excuse for even
more plutocratic injustice.
Professor Zaki was
fired
by a hospital in Saudi Arabia for doing his duty: reporting the
unknown virus that was killing his patient.
The article suggests research that should be done to figure out how
people catch this virus.
Iran has sentenced Narges Mohammadi to
10
years in prison for campaigning to abolish the death penalty.
Unlike many other oppressive regimes, the Iranian regime does not
fabricate a phony crime as an excuse. It openly admits its contempt
for human rights. It is made up of religious fanatics that label
disagreement with their views as evil by definition.
Unemployed people in Detroit are excluded from work by
stores
that require people to apply for jobs only by internet.
I am concerned that applying requires (1) running nonfree software
too. And almost certainly it provides lots of personal data to data
brokers
The right solution is not to require job applicants to hand
over so much personal data to a computer data base. We should not
allow employers to demand this.
Meanwhile, public agencies, at all levels of government, should offer
sufficient public computers for people to come and use to carry out
their dealings with the state.
NSA officials set on ruining Thomas Drake's life
went
as far as to destroy documents that would help his defense,
according to Pentagon Inspector Crane.
Crane
wants
the legal system to protect internal whistleblowers from being treated
like Drake and Binney. He hopes that this way they won't need to
report government wrongdoing to the public.
I see his heart is in the right place, but he's trying to solve only
part of the problem. I think whistleblowers should tell the
people what the state is really doing, because we are supposed to
be in charge of the state. Accountability, in the state, means
accountability to us .
The interview also reveals that the officials who are supposed to
investigate accusations of retaliation (against other officials, for
resisting corrupt or illegal practices) are afraid they will face
retaliation for doing their job.
Fracksters
gained
approval for test fracking in part of England. Their
representative compared a frack well to a human baby, in effect asking
counselors to suppose it would grow into something admirable.
Due to the prevalence of fracking in the US, there is no mystery about
what
a test can grow into or about
how
they will try to cover up the local damage. A sprouting weed
might be a better comparison than a baby.
Clinton, as Secretary of State,
worked
to encourage fracking world-wide. Fracksters claim that fracking
as a "bridge" to renewable energy, but this is based on ignoring the
methane links. The way to get to renewable energy is by building
renewable energy systems. It's not hard if we spend enough money on
it.
Preventing global disaster is worth a lot of investment.
Former President Nasheed of the Maldives has been
given
asylum in Britain. Nasheed was
deposed
by a coup for demanding action to curb global heating before the
Maldives are inundated.
Nasheed got permission to go to the UK for medical treatment, then
asked to stay. This means he broke a promise to the tyrant. The
tyrant has no standing to complain, because he has done much worse to
Nasheed and threatens to do more of it. He deserves whatever bad he
gets.
However, one can debate whether this endangers the chances of other
political prisoners that might in the future seek permission for
medical care in a foreign country.
US citizens:
support
the Financial Services Conflict of Interest Act which would partly
close the "revolving door" that admits corrupt people as officials.
A proper president would never appoint people like that.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of Labor to investigate cruel working conditions
imposed on poultry workers.
Trump's men are winning the support of Muslim Republicans by
saying
that they shouldn't believe anything Trump said during the
campaign.
One US judge ruled that the FBI, to use in court evidence obtained by
cracking a computer,
must
show the malware code to the defense. The effect was that the FBI
abandoned use of that evidence.
This makes legal sense, but I suspect the FBI will resort to lying
instead: using the evidence obtained by cracking to find other
evidence, then making up a false explanation of how that other
evidence was found. That is illegal, as I understand it, but
hard to detect.
China's coal trucks produce
giant
traffic jams.
There are strikes all across France
to
oppose the "socialist" government's labor flexibility bill.
Americans, global heating is
likely
to damage the Statue of Liberty.
But don't worry, damage to the Mall of Convenience won't come for a
few more decades.
Dropbox wants users to install a
kernel
module written by Dropbox. This would allow Dropbox to spy on, or
interfere with, anything the computer does.
The nonfree Dropbox Javascript code is
already a
step too far.
India
might
use Iris scanning to identify airplane and railroad passengers, as
well as everyone filing a tax return.
They are already arranging to track all the poor by welfare benefits,
but even for the middle class, there would be no escape.
Iris scanning is currently not as nasty as fingerprint identification,
because people don't leave iris prints in places where they go. But
there is a
danger
that iris-scanning cameras will in the future identify people walking
by on the street.
We Need to Know the
Algorithms
the Government Uses to Make Important Decisions about Us, but most
US states make excuses to conceal them. In some cases, the algorithm
is a company's trade secret. This is a case where, in effect, code is
law — and the law must be published for all to see.
In fact, US states have
laws
that belong to companies.
Sanders has
good
reasons not to throw in the towel to Clinton.
US citizens: call on Congress not to impose a nondemocratic austerity
government on Puerto Rico.
The EU is working on another "trade treaty", with Japan this time.
People had better find out what's in it, because it could be as nasty
as the other proposed "trade treaties". Even worse, it could be only
half as nasty, in the hope that taking smaller steps towards plutocracy
will provoke less resistance.
NO "trade treaty" made by plutocratic governments can be expected to be
good for people other than plutocrats.
Unemployment And Austerity 'Increases Cancer Mortality'. Hundreds of thousands may have been killed this way by the effects of the financial crisis.
That crisis was provoked by banksters, and the austerity response was
demanded by them. The banksters are responsible for these deaths.
Families that escaped from Fallujah, sometimes running at night
without shoes so PISSI would not shoot them, say that the people who
remain there are starving.
I have to wonder whether they are starving because PISSI keeps the food
for its soldiers, or starving because the Iraqi army won't let food in,
or both.
Almost 1000 people have been killed in two years by attacks on hospitals.
Amnesty International in Global Programme to Decriminalise Sex Work.
The criminalization helps maintain the stigma which is part of a patriarchal
idea that women are supposed to be good little properties of men.
13 US states have banned all abortions after 20 weeks, based on questionable assumptions.
I think they aim to do anything possible to impede abortions.
The basic reason to avoid online banking is that the banks leave users holding the bag for security failures. In fact, there is sometimes
pressure to treat them worse.
Currently, customers are reimbursed for some online frauds committed
on their bank accounts, but not all. I don't want to take the risk
of being one of those reimbursed.
How the Politics of Extreme Energy Lead to the Criminalization of Social Protest in Argentina.
Fracking in Argentina (like fracking anywhere else) immediately
threatens the Mapuche that live there, but in the long term it
threatens all of civilization, by smoothing the path to more global
heating.
I wonder if the dispute over the Falkland Islands could be settled
with the help of an initial agreement not to extract any oil from the
sea around them.
Today's "digital assistants" are also spies.
For them not to be spies, they would have to be (1) entirely local and
(2) entirely free (libre) software.
A thousand Americans have been convicted of shaking their babies
because the babies appeared to have "shaken baby syndrome", but it
seems that syndrome may be an erroneous theory and perhaps those
parents did not really do anything.
Studying big data leads to slanted results when the data are systematically biased, and often they are.
How to get unbiased data? I fear that today's scientists will support
industry and government in trying to forcibly monitor everyone.
However, many people will give data voluntarily if it is collected in
an anonymous way and can't be reidentified.
An in-depth article about Ada Colau, the radical mayor of Barcelona.
I find her admirably firm in her stance.
The US and China are in a nuclear arms race.
As with the US and USSR in the 70s and 80s, an advance by one side
often puts the other side in danger of losing its deterrent capacity.
Wiser heads should negotiate treaties to limit the advances on both sides.
The head of Brazil's senate has conspired with the new acting
president to pardon people facing corruption charges.
Will London Stock Exchange Bar Firm over Amazon Deforestation?
A student in middle school in Virginia was harassed by a thug
for getting some milk in the lunch room, then arrested for "stealing" it, though in fact he was entitled to get it.
This is the start of the school-to-prison pipeline.
We've got to get the thugs out of the schools.
When Dubya was elected, Exxon tried to pressure Congress to cancel a series of presentations on global heating.
Government monetary shenanigans such as negative interest rates, even
threats to prohibit cash, are bad substitutes for what's really needed:
more government spending.
Indonesia has denied many requests for palm oil plantations.
UN Expert Calls for Tax on Meat Production
Since eating meat is not the best thing for human health,
and places a big burden on the environment (including global heating),
it makes sense to discourage it this way.
US citizens:
call on the Senate to pass
the Email Privacy Act without weakening riders or exceptions.
US citizens:
phone Senator
Stabenow to oppose the DARK act and protect state requirements for
labeling of GMOs in food.
Microsoft continues more or less
forcing
"upgrades" to Windows 10 onto users that don't want the change.
That this is even possible shows how much unjust power Microsoft
exercises over its users. How slow they are, most of them, to
recognize that the problem is pervasive in Windows and this is just
the culmination of decades of it.
A method for commercial monitoring and manipulation of millions of
people: profiling their way of thinking from their
facial
expressions in Youtube videos.
Meanwhile, states are planning to try to figure out people's feelings
and thoughts from watching them with computer programs.
The municipal government of Rome is
begging
companies to donate to preserve ancient monuments.
This is what happens when companies don't pay enough taxes for the
state to do its job.
Poland's right-wing government
has
begun its plan to cut down a large part of the Bialowieza forest.
If a fanatical or extractivist government gets just one turn at power,
it can destroy things that can never be replaced. Forests are
especially vulnerable to this. Perhaps destruction of natural forests
or wetlands should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.
Obama's visit to the Ise shrine along with Japan's prime minister
could support his
efforts
to use Shinto as a vehicle for nationalism.
Shinto is basically an unreformed ancient religion, comparable to
ancient Greek paganism, which believes that kamis (powerful spirits
such as gods) can be found everywhere in nature.
The last US political leader to support Shinto was Senator Joe
McCarthy. He too believed that kamis could be found almost everywhere,
including Hollywood and the US State Department ;-}.
The US is trying to wipe out the ash borer with
four
species of parasitic wasps.
This might actually work, but can we really be sure these wasps won't
find other prey once the ash borers are gone?
Across Europe, the "mainstream" parties are
losing
strength.
I would say this is because they are too timid to denounce plutocracy
and people are getting sick of what plutocracy does to them.
How Russia's Independent Media Was
Dismantled
Piece by Piece (over a period of five years).
Non-tenure-track teachers in UK universities are on strike because
they get
low
pay and no job security.
US universities have the same problem.
Varoufakis says Australia is living on a bubble and condemns its
tax
exemption for people that own existing expensive houses.
Trump said he would donate money to help veterans. Later his
spokesman said he had donated, but wouldn't give any details. Turns
out that was a lie, and they
rushed
to actually donate once the press started investigating.
A
proposed
US law would provide for sanctions against people in other
countries accused of important human rights violations.
It is a good thing in principle, but I fear that the US will apply
this selectively, sparing various tyrannical rulers because they are
US allies. The US
already
does that.
People from Cajolá in Guatemala have been
ruined
by foreign farm plantations and cheap grain imports. Their only
hope is to try to get into the US to work.
The US does not have an obligation to admit them as workers. It does
have an obligation to get rid of the practices that have ruined their
lives at home. I expect that the Guatemalan government allowed these
practices due to US pressure in the first place.
Indian women attribute domestic violence to alcohol and
want
it prohibited.
I understand where they are coming from. I saw a small version of
that progression in my father, and it convinced me to lead a life of
sobriety (which doesn't conflict with occasionally drinking a little
wine).
However, prohibition of an addictive drug is likely to do more harm
than good. The people who are dependent will get it through crime
syndicates.
"My father
warned
Exxon about climate change in the 1970s. They didn't listen."
Florida's escalation of the War on Painkillers drove
abusers
to use heroin instead.
The overall effect is likely to be dangerous. The painkillers are
made in regulated labs and the pills always the same contents. Heroin
is made by unregulated labs and typically diluted with who-knows-what.
Russia and Ukraine traded prisoners of war, which both countries had
put
on trial.
The IMF puts social spending targets into many
"aid"
contracts, but these are usually not actually followed, and they
have little effect compared with the crushing austerity the IMF
imposes.
US retail company executives admit that the updated overtime requirement
won't
lead to (more) loss of jobs.
Elsevier, the continual copyright aggressor, has
bought
SSRN where papers are posted for gratis access. There is plenty
of reason to worry.
With proper antitrust laws, this purchase would have been blocked.
An
analysis of the acquittal of one thug that was involved in the
killing of Freddie Gray.
The person quoted who claims that thugs are "no more or no less honest
than the vast majority of witnesses" is surely mistaken: we know that
they are habituated to lying in court, and that
they
lie as standard practice to protect each other. Other witnesses
do lie but it's impossible that they lie as much as that.
I don't know enough about the situation to have an opinion about
whether this particular thug was guilty.
We need to change the policies that give thugs
almost
100% impunity.
Erdoğan now believes he can make the EU bow to his demands,
with his
power
to grant or not grant help in keeping millions of Syrian refugees
away.
I don't think the EU will give in this far, though.
SCROTUS want to treat Puerto Rico
the
way they screwed Detroit.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Atheism is not a matter of faith
However, the claim that gods exist is not merely devoid of supporting
evidence. When argued as clever theists argue it, it becomes
unfalsifiable by any evidence, and therefore void as a statement about
the real world. That constitutes valid grounds to reject it outright,
not merely to doubt it.
Reportedly mass-market toys nowadays are almost all media tie-ins —
that is, ads that you pay to show your children. Meanwhile, what children mostly use to play are proprietary games afflicted with DRM.
Australia sent refugees to prison in Manus Island, and demands they be
allowed to settle in Papua New Guinea, but it is impossible for them to live there.
Some who tried are begging to be allowed back in to the prison.
Trump acknowledges global heating when it serves his own business interests.
Mohamed Alaradi was arrested and tortured in the United Arab Emirates
along with 9 other Libyan expats. Six of them, including his brother,
have been imprisoned over two years. They now finally have a trial, which is alleged to be unfair.
The US ought to call on its ally to stop doing this sort of thing, but
if it tried to, the example of Guantanamo would make the position
hypocritical. Meanwhile, I wonder if the US is partly responsible
for their arrests.
A reform agenda for Wall Street that we can try to pressure Clinton to endorse.
The UK says it will investigate the evidence that Salafi Arabia dropped UK cluster bombs on Yemen.
To the UK's credit, it has prohibited the manufacture, sale and use of
cluster bombs. In that specific department, there is nothing more it
should do. But the UK should not support Salafi Arabia's bombardment
of Yemen. If it has to recognize that Salafi Arabia is using old British
cluster bombs, it may be forced to stop that support.
The birth rate for US teenagers has reached a record low, thanks to education
and access to birth control.
The rate of abortions has fallen too, since fewer girls get pregnant
without intending to have a baby.
Malian Jihadi to Plead Guilty in ICC Cultural Destruction Trial.
I am glad to see progress made in the prosecution of people who
desecrate human heritage.
In Barcelona, evicting a 5-year squat which turned a former bank into
a community center has provoked rioting.
If the city government can't prevent this eviction (except by paying
ransom), then I don't think the city government should be blamed
for it. But I do wonder if there is more that it could do, such as
to threaten the evicting owner with public criticism and pressure.
For the first time, Mauritania has convicted people of enslavement.
Celia Oyler published another teacher's criticism of a widely used US
school exam. The article quotes a few short questions quoted from the
exam. The company that made the exam threatened to sue her for
copyright infringement, and has got Google and Twitter to censor
discussion of the issue.
I don't know whether I agree with the article about the exam itself.
I don't see, off hand, why inclusion of a few questions that are
harder than the overall exam would be bad. But I'm not an expert on
education or testing, and I don't need to have any opinion about that
question.
US citizens: phone your senators (each of them) at 877-429-0678 to
oppose proposed funding increases for the Pentagon in S. 2943.
Also say that such a decision should not be made with a voice vote.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
Support
Sen. Eldridge's amendment to close a campaign finance loophole in
Massachusetts.
British-Made Cluster Bombs Are
Turning
Up in Yemen. Will Cameron Tell Us Why?
Cluster bombs are already killing children in Yemen, and may continue
to do so for decades.
One of the thugs that collectively killed Freddie Gray has been
acquitted
of charges.
The judge seems to have pushed for a narrow interpretation of the laws
he was charged under.
Burning all currently known fossil fuels would lead to
10C
of global heating, according to a model. That's on the average
— some areas would be heated more, and others less.
Many regions would be entirely uninhabitable for humans. We could
only visit them with multiple backup air conditioning systems.
A
leaked
conversation among key Brazilian ministers shows that they plotted
to remove president Rousseff specifically to quash a corruption
investigation that threatened them.
One said he had corrupted most of the Supreme Court.
"Biodegradable" plastics
don't
biodegrade in the ocean.
Fraudulent DMCA takedown notices impose a plague of
censorship
on the internet. Even the most absurd false claims are taken at
face value, making censorship nearly risk-free.
Big publishers are lobbying constantly for an even worse system, one
that would require web sites to check for anything that had been
the target of a takedown before.
Right-wingers are so set on privatizing that they
will
do it even when it's a loss of money for the state.
Which just goes to demonstrate their real motive.
World-wide
protests against Monsanto.
New Yorkers
blocked
construction of a pipeline for natural gas (which would probably
be from fracking).
In poor countries, women are
still
in danger of developing fistula in childbirth. Then they are
typically ostracized. It is easily fixed with surgery, but no surgery
is available to them.
Seeds of dangerous weeds are
for
sale on the internet.
I think few people would order these if they knew what a problem they
cause.
After the US government persecuted internal whistleblowers such as
Thomas Drake, it also persecuted John Crane, an official who
tried
to insist on treating whistleblowers according to the law, Crane
believes that the office which was
supposed
to protect confidential whistleblowers instead helped persecute
Drake.
In Any Humanitarian Crisis,
Educating
Children Must Be Part of the Response.
The current round of tax increases and privatization imposed on Greece
include plans for additional automatic cuts when (the banksters say
"if") the current round causes so much contraction that Greece
still
doesn't have enough surplus.
Plants have a kind of intelligence that operates at a slow timescale,
so that humans usually don't notice except through
careful
study.
Occasionally people do notice. There is a kind of tea from Taiwan
which is made only from leaves that an insect has started to chew on,
because those leaves taste different.
Although plants make complex decisions, no evidence has been presented
that any plant engages in conscious thought. Without conscious
thought, I don't think an organism is entitled to the right to life.
Isn't it silly how people find it hard to call it a crime to wipe out
a species unless the individual members of it have rights? Wiping out
a species is a wrong of a different kind, a crime against the world,
regardless of whether the individuals of that species have rights as
individuals.
A US drone attack killed the leader of the Afghan Taliban. I expect
it will make little difference to the situation in Afghanistan, except
for
political
repercussions.
What ultimate effect it will have is imponderable. But the main point
is that you can't defeat an insurgency with substantial popular
support by killing its leaders. They will appoint new leaders.
How Big Tobacco
Lost
Its Final Fight for Hearts, Lungs And Minds.
A second year of drought in southern Africa
threatens
to kill up to 50 million people.
Droughts nowadays are only partially natural in origin. I suspect
global heating contributed to this drought.
Exxon says it will
cut
its support for 9 heating denialist groups. That will leave
around 24 more that it will apparently continue to fund, including
ALEC.
Canada has
approved
sale of genetically modified salmon.
I find it entirely plausible that eating these salmon is safe.
The concern for these salmon is that some might escape and transmit
the modified genes to wild salmon. Just one escaper might cause
permanent and irreparable harm.
Supposedly the modified salmon are sterilized, but how reliable is
that process? 99%? 99.9%? There are systems to prevent the salmon
from escaping, but how reliable are they? 99.9%?
Is that reliability maintained when thousands of low-paid workers have
to run those systems, under management that doesn't want to
immediately fix everything that breaks? The US has no Federal Salmon
Agency to make sure every salmon farm gets an annual inspection
and certify the people who maintain it.
If just one modified salmon in a thousand is not sterile, and just one
in a thousand escapes, and the modified salmon number millions over
the course of years, escapes of fertile modified salmon are almost
a certainty.
WHO's statement that glyphosate seems to be safe was
written
by a committee whose chair and co-chair work in another organization
that got a lot of money from Monsanto.
Whether the amounts of glyphosate that people actually ingest actually
cause significant danger to humans may be a hard question to answer.
Whether Roundup is dangerous is a different question, since there is
some
evidence
that other ingredients can harm people. But it is clear that
Roundup
endangers
wildlife, and that patented GMOs promote
concentration
and corporate control of our food.
300 interviews conducted by International Alert lead to the conclusion
that the main factors leading Syrian youths to extremist groups are
"personal experiences of
trauma,
loss of economic and educational opportunities, and a desire for
vengeance against the Syrian government."
The way "loss of opportunities" does this is that they join for the
pay, regardless of whether they entirely agree.
I wonder where groups such as al-Nusra get the money to pay them.
If robots are the future of work, where do humans fit in?
We are nowhere near being able to scan and emulate a human brain,
and nowhere near being able to make the emulated brain run faster
than the original. But these issues may arise even without that.
US citizens: Verizon, settle with your workers.
In the US: Verizon, be fair to your workers.
Also say you stand with striking Verizon workers.
Northern Irish Women Ask to be Prosecuted for Taking Abortion Pills.
William Hager could no longer afford the medicine for his wife's many
painful illnesses, and she told him repeatedly she wanted to die. He
shot her, then called the sheriff to arrest him.
I feel sorry for them both, but especially for him, since he may
now have to spend years in prison.
I wonder if he considered bringing home something she could take to
kill herself. That way, it would be clearly her act and her
responsibility, and he would perhaps not face prison.
It would be so much better if Florida gave people in her situation the
option to formally ask for a humane death. However, most such laws
are limited to people with a terminal illness. The article does not
say she had one; her future could have been many years of increasing
pain.
The EFF has appealed Chelsea Manning's conviction under the CFAA,
which interpreted that law in the most dangerous way, criminalizing
any violation of terms of service.
"I love abortion the way I love liver transplants and antidepressants."
In perfume, use of natural ingredients can be very harmful ecologically
because growing them is terribly inefficient.
India is taking measures to stop Monsanto from impeding the cultivation of non-genetically-modified cotton.
Kenyan opposition supporters are protesting repeatedly against expected rigging of the 2017 election.
Boulder, Colorado, represents what a good future for the US would look like.
I don't believe it is inevitable that the US (or any country) will make a good
choice for its future. If we want that to happen, we have to work for it.
Australia's National Sorry Day is an apology to the aboriginal people
who were massacred, often in cold blood, by British colonists.
I can think of some other countries that should have a National Sorry Day.
For instance, the US. Also Argentina, in which the intentional killing
of indigenous people en masse continued into the 20th century.
A Scientist Weighs Up the Five Main Anti-Abortion Arguments.
As always, it is a mistake to repeat the spin term "pro-life" with
which the enemies of abortion rights twist the issue. I support the
right to life for human beings as much as they do; many of them
support that less than I do, since they are in favor of the death
penalty.
Boston used face recognition systems to try to identify every visitor to a large concert.
This was a test. If and when it works, they might use it on every
street corner. We need laws to limit how the state and private
entities can use such systems to accumulate data about people.
Protesters in Paris, when their banned protest against killer thugs was
attacked by thugs, fought back and set fire to a thug car.
Fortunately, the thugs in the car got out.
I can't blame people for fighting back when attacked, but one should
not escalate so far. If you sink to the level of thugs, you will be
no better than them.
A list of congressional and gubernatorial candidates known to have Koch backing.
Should Trump be excluded from the UK for having encouraged violence
against protesters?
I think he should be prosecuted when he does that, no matter where.
World Headed for Irreversible Climate Change in Five Years, IEA Warns.
Norway has approved oil drilling in new areas of Arctic waters.
Since sea ice comes into that area, it is asking for a spill.
When you look at the supposed benefits of this crazy decision,
you can see that the decision completely ignores the disastrous
downside.
US citizens: phone your senators to block attempts to forbid
states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
San Francisco's thug chief Suhr has resigned after another gratuitous killing by a thug.
Members of Congress that serve trucking companies persistently try to
allow those companies to make truck drivers work over 80 hours a week.
Sleepiness of the driver is a significant cause of accidents.
After thugs in Ferguson arrested journalists to prevent them from
doing their work, and lied about it, prosecutors used invalid charges as leverageto get the victims to agree not to sue the city.
I'd call that a successful act of state terrorism.
The article points out that many other victims plead guilty to false
charges because they can't afford the cost of defending themselves
from even the most absurd accusation.
Denmark is adopting a total tracking system for paying for public transit.
A new anonymous card costs 10 euro, creating a strong disincentive
against getting a new card. However, trading cards is feasible
if there is a way to find the balance on each card.
Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau lost his temper and started hitting MPs from other parties. He banged one MP in the breast with his elbow,
hard enough to cause her pain.
He apologized for this, but his misogynistic followers are now
sending her hate mail.
I wonder what in the world he thought he was doing by trying to drag
an opposition MP away from an official activity. Was there any legitimate
grounds for that, or was it an act in opposition to Canada's constitution?
I don't know.
Sanders
is clearly beating Clinton in campaigning for the future views of
Democrats.
Some prominent Democrats
call
for replacing the Democratic Party if it chooses Clinton.
[US Thugs] Nationwide Are
Secretly
Exploiting Intrusive Technologies With the Feds' Complicity.
Protect Myanmar's Marine Resources from
Being
Pillaged To Point of No Return.
Freedom of expression is in danger world wide from France's
demand
to censor searches world-wide.
Unlike the author of that article, I think that limiting searches is
less of an issue than limiting the contents of articles. However,
allowing countries to impose global limits of any kind is intolerable.
ALEC is
campaigning
to stop "net metering", the practice whereby utilities must buy
from homeowners the surplus electricity that they generate from solar
power systems.
Leading Democratic politicians in Colorado
oppose
the ballot initiative for a single-payer medical system in that
state. However, the opposition campaign is funded mainly by
companies that profit from the current system.
Everyone:
Call on
Oklahoma legislators to reject SB 1552 which would make abortion a
felony.
Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP that resists the War on Sharing,
reports that 27% of state demands for subscribers' identities are for that purpose.
That is more than any other purpose.
Europe is rushing the design of an "anti-terrorism" directive,
using a process that will run secretly until it is too late
for the public to influence anything.
The "sunbathing partly undressed woman" argument against drone cameras
is convenient, but omits the most important part of the danger flying cameras pose to all of us.
Nonflying cameras on the street pose much of the same danger, except
the part about being partly undressed (except if the camera can be directed
to look in your window, which is the case for some of them).
Fossil fuel companies are spending heavily to oppose Colorado ballot
initiatives to limit fracking, and plutocratic Democrats are helping the companies.
Around the world, both within countries and internationally, rule of law is increasingly rejected. Democracy and the UN are unable to handle the problems they face.
I conjecture this is because of national and international
plutocratic control that makes democracy fail as an instrument
for the people to get anything that the plutocrats don't approve.
With Obama taking it slow, and Big Oil fighting to make it slower,
the growing world-wide climate protests are our main chance of speeding up necessary action.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to defend the recent
extension of
overtime pay requirement to more workers.
The big danger of violence in Oakland, California, is its thug department.
US citizens: Call on Congress to support the Lautenberg Act and give Americans systematic protection against toxic chemicals.
US citizens: call for saving Wyoming's wolves.
US citizens:
Keep
Oil and Gas Drilling out of the Wyoming Range.
US citizens: phone Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair Norman
Bay at 1-800-571-2435 to
rebuke him for
excluding the public from the meetings at which they gave fossil
fuel companies what they wanted.
US citizens:
support
Senator Gillibrand's bill to reform prosecution of rape in the US
military.
Ever larger cruise ships
spew
ever more air pollution.
The largest are estimated to emit "more sulphur than several million
cars, more NO2 gas than all the traffic passing through a
medium-sized town and more particulate emissions than thousands of
London buses." The air in some port cities is making people sick.
Making
bricks
from industrial waste.
US citizens:
Support
allowing the Veterans Administration to recommend marijuana to sick
veterans, in states which permit medical marijuana.
US citizens:
call on the
Republican Party to denounce Trump's repeated harassment of women.
Turkey has
eliminated
immunity from prosecution for members of parliament.
This is a scheme to allow trumped up charges to remove the
representation of the party that stands for human rights for Kurds and
Turks. It would be the culmination of the plan that Erdoğan
started when he
launched
a civil war against the Kurds in order to get a better election
result.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to stop oil leasing off ALL US coasts.
US citizens:
Tell
Democratic leaders: Don't Help Republicans Gut Wall Street Reform.
Poland's extractivist politicians
threaten
to maim, kill or imprison environmentalists opposed to cutting
down Europe's last primeval forest.
One turn in power is enough for extractivist government to destroy
forever something irreplaceable. The Polish government's plan to cut
this forest, and the Australian government's plan to destroy unique
forest in Australia, must be compared with PISSI's destruction of
ancient buildings in Palmyra.
We should establish heavy world-wide punishments for crimes against
world heritage.
The extremists that occupied the Malheur wildlife reserve come from a
movement of
kooks
who want to privatize large amounts of land in the American west,
and believe that they are entitled to own it.
In fact, private development is
spreading
rapidly in the west, though it would take centuries at this rate
for all the land to be built over.
"Roughly
half of the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize
recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison
guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to
which they have become so deeply addicted."
The same reasons they oppose the measure are reasons why the public
should support it.
Many older Americans don't dare retire, because they are
supporting
their children or grandchildren.
The National Science Foundation concludes that genetically modified
foods are
not
particularly dangerous, nor particularly important for our food
supply.
It is clear that the widely grown GMO foods generally do not hurt the
people who eat them. If they did, medical records would show it.
That doesn't mean they don't hurt wildlife. The widespread use of
Roundup, generally with GMO food crops, has done a lot of
harm
to milkweed and to monarch butterflies. However, each kind of
modification is a separate different issue as regards environmental
harm.
So far, we don't see instances in which a certain crop has several
quite different alternative forms of genetic modification. If that
starts to happen, consumers might want labels to indicate
which genetic modifications are used in a given food.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to follow science, not fossils, on the issue of
fracking and water pollution.
US citizens:
stop
the Dakota Access Pipeline.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to lift the ban on research into the phenomenon of gun
violence.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to publish his tax returns.
The UK, France and Ireland are adopting a requirement to sell
cigarettes in plain drab packaging, that has less to arouse desire and
less to
distract
attention from the warnings that tobacco kills. Studies in Australia suggest that this contributes a small but
significant amount to decrease in smoking, but it will take more years
to get a clear picture of the results.
The article doesn't mention that Uruguay tried to impose plain drab
packaging of cigarettes, and was
forced
to stop by means of a
business
supremacy treaty.
The US is allowing the Pentagon to
provide
military weapons to federal thugs now, as well as local thugs.
The militarization of thugs in the US has led to a large number of
SWAT teams, and they need practice, so they are
used
when not needed. Each time they are used, there is a chance they
will kill someone for no good reason.
Successful Americans
systematically
deny the role that luck played in their success. This threatens their self image, which is
that
they are self-made and that they earned every penny, including what
they got from welfare, public education, or
their
parents.
Stop using ineffective "shareholder engagement" with Exxon as a substitute
for divesting from Exxon!
Even hawks are not welcome in the Israeli government, unless they have
a Trump-like contempt for any idea of restraint and decency.
Uri Avnery describes the takeover of Israel by the bloodthirsty right
wing, followed by forcing all institutions into line.
He compares it to the takeover of Germany by the bloodthirsty right
wing, which he witnessed as a boy.
Senator Warren proposes necessary extensions of US labor law to cover
people who work irregularly for something like Guber.
Does the minimum wage already apply to such work? If not, it needs to.
The Koch brothers are already giving lots of money to congressional
candidates.
US State Department Gave Egypt Passing Grade on Human Rights for Military Aid.
Michigan Republicans have shifted taxation from businesses to
individuals (mostly to the non-rich ones); corporations will pay zero
tax there this year.
Trump has increased his lead over Clinton in the polls,
but Sanders still beats Trump as before.
2/3 of Americans would have a big problem coping with an unexpected
expense of just $1000.
They are also afraid of being shafted if they lose their jobs.
They are not destitute, but their lives are precarious.
A bill in Congress would require training thugs in de-escalation, so
that they know how to do something with black suspects other than shoot
them dead.
Trump and his supporters look aside from, and even excuse, the threats
of violence against a reporter who published a negative article
against his wife.
Brazil's new acting president is imposing right-wing austerity and
privatization.
Foreign powers have set up a new "government" in Libya, and now plan
to send it arms, but it hardly has real existence.
Who will end up with those arms?
There is another government in the eastern part of Libya, and both
now plan to issue money — different money.
Temperatures in parts of India have reached 51C, a record in that
country. People are demanding that the government do something about
this.
The first thing it should do is to prevent things from getting worse.
India must stop burning coal for electricity and invest heavily in
renewable generation and storage.
Public schools in many US cities are becoming racially segregated,
due to segregation in where people live.
Adding to the harm this does is the fact that the racial minorities tend to
be poorer, so their school districts have less funds.
A large part of the civil rights battle of the 1960s needs to be
fought again. In addition, we should stop the practice of funding
schools from local taxes. We need to tax the rich and businesses more.
Clinton, if elected, will put Bill Clinton in charge of the economy.
His right-wing policies in the 1990s, including support for business
supremacy treaties, are why I began voting for Ralph Nader and Green
candidates.
A new treaty tries to interfere with sale of catch from illegal fishing.
Old messages show that Billionaire Polluters issued directions about
exhibits, in exchange for the money it gave to the Science Museum in
London.
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, 25 years ago, fixed
various ecological problems that humans had created by wiping out the
wolves decades before.
Due to this success, and the lack of harm to humans as a result,
many Americans are coming to appreciate wolves instead of fearing them.
I'm in favor of having wolves in the rural parts of America.
A new surveillance robot carries microphones and cameras, and can scan
the license plates of all the cars it sees.
It sends the data it collects to a company's server, which means the
data can be misused by the company, by the state, and by whatever
criminals get into the data base. That is the worst possible
scenario, but it is standard practice.
Listening and watching systems such as this should be prohibited by law,
except when authorized by a court for a specific place and time period.
Privatizing parts of the UK's foreign ministry was supposed to save money
but cost money instead.
Privatizers typically claim that it will do the same job and cost
less, for some theoretical reason such as "investment" or "improved
methods" or "economy of scale". Over and over, the result is the
opposite. Do they then respond, "It was worth trying, but it failed,
so let's now unprivatize that"?
Never. Because those theoretical reasons are merely excuses.
Some blockbuster Hollywood movies are now designed principally to
make viewers feel they have to see the prequels or sequels.
They don't need to have a meaningful plot any more, and they don't
need to please the audience, only convince them to see other movies.
We can change this: don't watch a movie unless you think it is likely
to be good (by whatever criterion of goodness you use). Otherwise,
you know in advance that you're wasting your time (as well as your
money). Don't be a sheeple and watch crap just because your friends
are in the habit of settling for that.
If you use this opportunity to practice refusing to follow the
crowd, eventually you will get good at that, and you can apply
it to other things too.
Only a small fraction of patients that use opioids ever abuse them.
It is a mistake to panic about them.
People who can see where you made social media posts can easily figure
out where you live.
This is not just a reason to ask Twitter not to tell others where you
were when you posted. It is a reason not to let Twitter know where
you posted, by connecting through Tor.
Implanted brain-computer interfaces would bring
digital
insecurity to people's brains.
The necessary starting point for Computer security is free software.
Security for brain-computer interfaces requires insisting that the
software that controls the interface be free. This includes not only
the firmware in the device itself, but also other software that will
tell the firmware how to influence your brain.
For the paper referenced there, see
http://sci-hub.cc/downloads/ef93/pycroft2016.pdf.
The European Union is an instrument of plutocrats. "Staying in the EU
means hitching ourselves to an undemocratic project run by and for a
remote elite." To change that, is it better to leave the EU, or to
try to reform it? It is not easy to decide.
Unfortunately, the UK is run for an elite that is nastier and nearer
to Britain. I think it would be a mistake for the UK to leave the EU
in such circumstances.
If Corbyn's Labour comes to power, that might be a good time to either
do this or threaten it.
Chinese officials make almost 250 million personal social media posts
per year, typically praising the government to drown out all
criticism.
Basically, if you're in China, you may as well consider that any
praise of the government means nothing unless it comes from someone
you know.
Humans Damaging the Environment Faster Than It Can Recover, report finds.
The UK's junior doctors' strike won some improvements in their working
conditions, but the NHS continues to decline as the Tories continue
giving it insufficient funds.
I believe that the Tories aim to destroy the NHS as we know it,
perhaps making it comparable to what you can get in the emergency room
in a public hospital in the US. The firmness of the doctors has dealt
them a setback, but hasn't defeated them.
A review of the effects of marijuana.
The Australian government sent thugs to raid the offices of opposition
party politicians suspected of leaking true but embarrassing
information of problems the government wanted to conceal.
Some EU countries are proposing a mini-TTIP within the European Union.
They are obeying the demands of companies based in the EU, which
demand the same power over European governments that the TTIP would
give to foreign companies.
Would-be frackers demand that the UK approve fracking projects faster,
threatening that otherwise they might take their money home and not play.
If this is true, it offers a great opportunity to Britons: they can
block fracking entirely by simply delaying it.
Or the investors could be lying.
Members of the US military that complained about sexual abuse
(including rape) were often punished with an arbitrary diagnosis
of "personality disorder".
Climate Scientists, Mourning Earth's Losses, Should Make Their Voices Heard.
Most US states have given up on the estate tax, and this costs them a
lot of money. It is part of what makes college education in the US so
expensive.
The US can excel in lots of areas if it stops trying to be number one
in blood and gore, and imitates the countries that do peaceful things
well.
Great Barrier Reef Needs $10bn for Chance of Survival, Scientists Say.
The funds would be to clean water pollution so as to help the coral
cope with global heating.
However, ocean acidification would eventually kill the coral, all of
it, if we don't reduce that.
50,000 people die annually, in just the US and UK, from resistance to
antibiotics.
To a large extent, this is due to factory farms that keep animals in
crowded conditions and give them all antibiotics to avoid the diseases
that would result. They are killing us.
The UK has launched a program to reduce or eliminate indiscriminate
antibiotic use in farm animals.
Finally, political will to confront the issue.
As new antibiotics are developed, it should be absolutely forbidden to
use them in animals.
Obama has decided to allow oil prospecting in the Atlantic,
although that
will cause injury and even death for whales.
All this to get more of something we
already have far too much of!
A prisoner in Auschwitz says that
nobody at the camp could have been
ignorant
of the mass murder —- the stench alone would have told them.
Compare And Contrast: Treatment Of Thomas Drake & Hillary Clinton For
Having Classified Info.
Is
duckduckgo.com
partially enforcing the "celebrity threesome injunction"?
The US can excel in lots of areas if it stops trying to be number one in blood and gore, and imitates the countries that do peaceful things well.
The replacement leader of Brazil's lower house of congress is being
investigated for attempted murder.
America's 500 Top CEOs Pocket 355 Times More Than Average Workers.
US citizens: Saturday May 21 is "Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There" Day.
US citizens: call for making election day a holiday.
Australia sent asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka without even listening
to their claims for asylum.
US citizens: Oppose building the Millennium coal export terminal.
Fraudulent foreclosure continues in the US.
That the banksters are not prosecuted and jailed for this fraud demonstrates the power of the plutocrats.
Trump's insults of journalists must be taken seriously.
He is leading a harassment campaign and pretending not to.
Chelsea Clinton's husband owns a hedge fund.
He is shutting it down because he lost most of its money.
I don't feel much sympathy for him or his investors; they gambled,
they lost, and I expect they aren't broke. However, the most
important point is what it implies about Clinton family values. They
are plutocratists.
In regard to a pipeline that ruptured near Santa Barbara in 2015, the company that owns the pipeline and one of its employees are being prosecuted.
The FBI put microphones in a courthouse without a court order, and listened
to everyone's conversations (even with their lawyers) for 10 months.
Investigating corruption is a good thing for the FBI to do, but it
should not do this by listening without a warrant, or in a way that
allows it to snoop on everyone at the court rather than particular
suspects.
This Isn't a Google Streetview Car, Its a Government Spy Truck.
"We will lose the battle against HIV without LGBT decriminalisation."
For four days last week, Portugal generated all its electricity from
renewables.
This milestone shows what can be done, but it doesn't mean Portugal
has eliminated its carbon emissions. More development will be needed
to be able to generate all electricity from renewables on most days of
the year.
That still won't be enough, because it doesn't count the burning of
fuel in cars, trucks, factories, and maybe homes (if homes in Portugal
ever need heating).
Why There's an Uproar Over Trying to Increase Funding for Poor [US] Schools.
Venezuela is in an economic crisis, with shortages of food and other
everyday products.
This is partly because price controls tend to cause shortages, but
also partly the result of political struggles between the state and
businesses run by plutocrats. For instance, the state might have
stopped Polar from getting foreign currency to buy malted barley
because that company is run by someone who supports the right-wing
takeover, which was probably organized with help from the US.
Corruption surely plays a role too.
Spending more on girls' education is a great investment for society's
benefit.
The Israeli government is trying to wipe out Breaking the Silence by
making it identify its sources, soldiers who testify about crimes
committed by themselves or other soldiers.
The principal aim of Breaking the Silence is to show the persistent
general cruelty of the occupation of Palestine, which Israel
systematically denies.
Environmental Groups Demand End to Logging of Australia's Native Forests.
The wildfire in Alberta that burned through Fort McMurray
has
now covered over 1300 square miles. Only 10% of Fort McMurray was
actually destroyed, but the rest of the city is not safe.
Ironically, the fire is now destroying a tar sands mine. If only Canada
had the sends not to rebuild it later.
Israel delayed the trial of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy until he
was 14, so it could try him as an adult.
He was convicted of murder, based on no evidence except that a mob
assumed he was involved in it, and beat him nearly to death.
The Israeli state issues uses hundreds of gag orders to prevent press
discussion of events and topics that might make political difficulties
for the government.
As the article mentions, it once used gag orders so it could get away
with attacking Palestinians based on a false pretense.
Democratic Party insiders in Nevada rigged the choice of some delegates
in favor of Clinton, by imposing new rules at the last minute and overriding
the representatives there through a falsified voice vote.
One of the nonresponsible international "tribunals" created by
business supremacy treaties rejected Philip Morris's complaint against
Australia's plain paper packaging law.
This is good, but take not of the reasoning: that Philip Morris had
set up a front in Hong Kong merely to take advantage of the treaty.
If the US and Australia ratify the TPP, US companies trying to
obstruct Australia's public health policies (or environmental, or
economic, or anything else important) would not lose for that reason.
Note also that it would have been easy for the same tribunal to ignore
this point. I suspect that the decision was partly in response to the
great deal of political attention that this particular point received.
Among philosophers of ethics, hardly anyone objects to abortion
except those that use religion as a starting point.
The term "pro-life" was chosen by the antiabortionists to misrepresent
the views of us proabortionists. It's a smear, and we should denounce
it, not adopt it.
Robert Parry: The Democratic Party is facing a deep split
between
the supporters of war (Clinton) and peace (Sanders).
I think that the split between plutocracy-as-usual (Clinton) and
new-new-deal (Sanders) is bigger than that split.
Democratic Party insiders in Nevada rigged the choice of some
delegates in favor of Clinton, by
imposing
new rules at the last minute and overriding the representatives there
through a falsified voice vote.
Muslim
States Block 11 LGBT Groups from Attending UN Aids Meeting.
Money can't directly buy happiness, but it
can
buy human company, and avoiding loneliness is important for
happiness.
Iran continues repression of Bahá'ís, and
even
to talk with their leaders can be dangerous.
A former Facebook journalist employee says it was per
"most
toxic work experience".
A new study claims that glyphosate in food is
probably
not dangerous to humans, but the researcher in charge has a
big
conflict of interest that suggests this result needs to be checked
for gaps.
Meanwhile, the
other
chemicals in Roundup might be part of the danger. They could make
glyphosate more toxic. They could be more toxic than glyphosate.
The manufacturers of those chemicals try to prevent anyone from
studying their effects. There should be a legal requirement for the
manufacturer of an industrial chemical to make it available for
experimental study.
Dust pollution spread in the air by human activities
cause
dead zones in the ocean thousands of miles away.
Psilocybin
lifted
depression for weeks in several patients that nothing else could
help.
Evidence that psychedelics can cure the most refractory cases of
depression has appeared before, and there is now
some
idea of how it works.
JK Rowling Defends Donald Trump's
Right
To Be 'Offensive And Bigoted'.
That's what I've been saying. Censorship is not the answer.
World-wide protests against
fossil fuels.
Corruption in poor countries is in many cases
suborned
by businesses in rich countries.
Bribing a politician is a crime, in most places. Bribing the state is
not. When a business offers a government, "Support our policy
initiatives and we will spend a million dollars a year in your
country", that's probably not a crime, but it is just as corrupt as
paying that country's politicians a million dollars a year would be.
Women are
harassed
for giving suck to babies, while surrounded by ads showing breasts
that are hardly covered at all.
This may be ironic, but it is no coincidence. Our taboo on breasts,
and especially nipples, makes it effective to hint at them in ads, and
leads to repression of women that use them.
In Auckland, New Zealand, even working people
can't
afford a place to live. They are stuck living in tents as winter
comes, and winter in Auckland is cold and rainy.
Moving the collection of everyone's phone call records from the NSA to
phone companies
changes
nothing in regard to the government's power to learn about all
Americans' lives through that data.
Salmon farming might be the cause of
Chile's red
tide of poisonous algae that have made seafood inedible on long
stretches of the coast.
The Tories have for years employed careless and slipshod evaluations
to deny sick people welfare benefits they need. Most sick people who
appeal these decisions, win. So now the Tories have
hired
lawyers to argue these appeals against the sick people and make
sure the cruel and vicious goal is achieved.
The Tories are
lower than
vermin.
Consolidation
Is Eating [America's] Food Economy.
A St Louis thug faces murder charges
for shooting
Anthony Lamar Smith. The thug appears to have planted a gun in
Smith's car to frame him.
Environmentalist Tim Flannery
calls
on Australia to make it an election issue to save Great Barrier
Reef from global heating.
US citizens:
Tell
the Army Corps of Engineers to reject coal exports.
US citizens:
support
the campaign for a minimum wage of $15 in Washington DC.
US citizens:
object
to using the defense authorization bill to attack conservation for the
sage grouse.
Everyone:
Call
on Thailand to drop the charges against Andy Hall.
The Afghan "army" in Helmand is
almost
half nonexistent "soldiers".
Achieving this required corruption at every level of the army
as well as the connivance of other officials.
Moreover, the lack of food for the real soldiers is probably not
because the government has no money for it, but because officials and
commanders have diverted that money. But then, most of the soldiers
have joined the army only for the money.
The use of drugs by the soldiers reminds me of the US army in Vietnam.
They had low morale, too.
The US can keep propping up the Afghan government as long as it wants
to keep spending the money, but it can't defeat the Taliban that way.
Japan
plans
to replace shuttered nuclear power plants with coal burning.
In addition to the short-term pollution that will kill people,
these will contribute greatly to global heating. Tokyo is very
close to sea level; does Japan want it flooded?
Japan should invest in renewable power.
The US government
conceals
its practice of cracking computers, which prevents courts from
judging whether they follow the constitution.
The article uses the word "hacking" to mean security breaking and only
that, which insults us
hackers.
Please use the word "cracking" when what you mean is "breaking
security".
What Are The Congresspeople Whose Districts Will Be Underwater Doing
To
Stop
[Global Heating]?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali reminds us of
how
Islam systematically oppresses women.
It is absurd to say that no one but Muslims can criticize these
injustices. Imagine claiming that no one but Christians can criticize
the injustice of fanatical Christians — how absurd!
Recording everyone's phone call "metadata" is a
substantial
threat to everyone's privacy.
Researchers used basic phone logs to identify people and uncover
confidential information about their lives.
Syrian Arab opposition militias are
committing
war crimes against Kurds in Aleppo.
These crimes are small compared to those committed by Assad's
supporters and PISSI, but it won't be easy to unite the groups that
oppose those two.
The reason why US workers are
not
allowed to go to the toilet is that we have allowed unions to
become too weak.
How Donald Trump
Emboldens
Bigots Across the World.
A
jury will be asked to decide whether reimplementing the Java APIs
is fair use.
The decision by this appeals court (the CAFC) was stupid and
dangerous, but few copyright cases will be covered by that court.
The FSF urged the Supreme Court not to take the case, because the
danger was it would extend the decision to the whole US.
The Tories' proposed "British Bill of Rights" is more likely to be a
Bill
of No Rights.
Trump has
endorsed
deficit reduction as a goal. That means surrender to the
plutocrats. Everything important that the government does would be
cut, rather than make them pay taxes as they ought.
Unsafe Sex Threatens Girls' Health Worldwide. The Prescription?
Feminism.
A study projects that this year's coral bleaching (and death)
could
be a normal annual event in the Great Barrier Reef in 18 years.
Occasionally there will be a much worse bleaching event
which might destroy the reef entirely.
Want to Know What Facebook Really Thinks of Journalists? Here's
What
Happened When It Hired Some.
Using computers frequently for reading
can reduce
your ability to understand information abstractly.
The "connected car" is the
dumbest
idea in automobiles ever, or at least since the Edsel.
There is the danger that someone unauthorized will break the security
of the car. And the even greater danger, to society as a whole, that
this will be used to track where you drive. Remember, there is no
such thing as "the cloud" — that's a misleading name for
"someone else's computer".
Let's organize now to stop either the state or companies from
pushing society into using "connected cars"!
It turns out that
children's
learning really suffers when they don't get a good breakfast.
Government policies that squeeze the poor often mean that children don't
get enough to eat at any time. These policies hold children back
for their whole lives, in this way and other ways, including
lead
poisoning and
other
effects.
The plutocrats then point at the consequences of this to
claim
that those people deserve to be poor.
Australia's "direct action" scheme to support renewable energy
investments
mainly
funds schemes that were going to go ahead anyway.
It might nonetheless do some good, since it will effectively
subsidize those schemes and make them easier to set up.
However, a carbon tax would do a lot more.
The Western-created "unity government" in Libya is
neither
unity nor a government.
Given the violent chaos and extremism of Libya today, even an
externally imposed government might be a step up — if Libyans
generally accept it. If only a minority support this "unity
government", they will do it mainly for western money, and it will be
a phony that needs to be propped up ad infinitem like the Afghan
government.
This April was the
seventh
month in a row to set a temperature record for that month.
The NRA misleads its members, and misrepresents them. (Most of them
support some additional gun control measures.) The NRA has close
connections with gun companies, and a lot of its effort is
dedicated
to boosting the sale of guns.
The European Union's antitrust case against Google
raises
a small part of a big issue.
Perhaps the search engine should be split off from Google and made
into a regulated monopoly.
The CIA
told
the apartheid regime how to arrest Nelson Mandela.
US citizens:
tell
Federal Reserve to stop its 7 billion dollar subsidy to the big
banks.
The UK construction workers who were blacklisted
demand
an investigation of the construction companies for trying to cover
up the evidence.
Proposing
measures
to protect debtors in the US from the cruelty of collection
agencies.
An Australian study has again recognized that
copyright
gives companies too much power.
The same report also examined patent law and concluded that patents
give companies too much power.
It is a
mistake to study
these two different laws together, but in this
case I agree with both conclusions.
A
new
system would make it easier for Big Brother to monitor people
through thousands of surveillance cameras.
It's a great example of what happens when researchers fail to consider
the ethics of their research.
Lack
of Online Privacy Has Chilling Effect, U.S. Department of Commerce
Says.
100 Egyptians were
sentenced
to years in prison for a peaceful protest.
It doesn't matter that the protest was over a fatuous and confused
issue of nationalism. People in Egypt deserve the right to state
their views, even confused views.
Australia is planning to get rid of invasive foreign carp by
releasing
a virus that attacks only them.
This weapon may be useful, but using it alone is likely to provide
only a temporary effect. Australia tried to get rid of rabbits
(another invasive species) with the myxoma virus, and it killed over
80% of the rabbits, but since then they have developed resistance.
Surely carp will evolve resistance to this virus.
If they apply several measures at the same time, maybe they could
eradicate the carp from Australia.
The US is becoming
increasingly
repressive to anyone that doesn't have official government
identification.
This is what right-wing officials want. While these IDs for
immigrants and homeless people are a good thing, it is wrong to
require people to have IDs in order to fill prescriptions, to vote, or
do other daily things.
Dishonest sales and marketing practices are
rife
on the internet.
Queensland, a state in Australia, is considering
prohibiting
tobacco smoking permanently for everyone born after 2001.
Tobacco is a deadly, addictive drug, but they are cocky fools if they
think that prohibiting a drug is simply going to result in its
non-use.
The House Science Committee Hates Science And
Should
Be Disbanded.
Disruption
of natural ecosystems is part of what causes new epidemics for
humans.
The UK government
plans
to impose broad censorship of publications and individuals
considered "extremist".
This "protection" is more dangerous than the Islamist extremism it is
aimed at. Sooner or later, "extremist" will be stretched to include
opposition to plutocracy.
The UK Tories are trying to eviscerate an EU directive to limit
dangerous
particulate air pollution.
The Tories are
lower than
vermin.
California residents:
support the ballot initiative
for some sensible gun control measures.
Everyone:
call
on Walmart to pay workers $15 an hour and give people full-time
work.
Citizens of Minnesota:
tell
your state legislature to reject the dangerous extension of
publicity rights into a form of censorship.
If you know anyone in Minnesota, please spread the word.
Most people won't find out about this issue.
The WWF says half of the world's wild animals have been
wiped
out in 40 years. (This doesn't cover small animals such as
insects and worms.)
It is part of the general extractionist approach that our society
takes: use everything up fast, and let the future go hang.
Facebook deleted
without explanation the page of a publisher in the UK that had
posted articles about publications that criticize Erdoğan.
The article shows that Facebook has censored on behalf of
Erdoğan before.
7-11 underpaid its workers and was ordered to pay what it owed them.
Then it was unhappy with the independent adjudicators who agreed to
workers' claims, and acted to interfere.
Minnesota is considering a law to make publicity rights perpetual, and so broad
that it would constitute censorship.
I think that publicity rights, in basic form, are legitimate.
Massachusetts thugs beat up a man who had surrendered; he had never
threatened any violence.
Around the world, freedom of speech and publication is being attacked
by governments.
In "free" countries, the usual excuse is "national security" — in
other words, sacrificing our freedom in the name of protecting our
lives. In principle, that's backwards! But it's also bullshit: these
assaults on our freedom are generally not necessary, and rarely even
useful, for protecting anything but unjust power.
Trump has threatened an anti-trust investigation of Amazon as retaliation
for investigation of Trump by the Washington Post.
Both investigations ought to be done as a matter of course. The fact
that they are being pursued for specific political reasons, rather
than as a matter of course, reflects the dangerous power of plutocrats
such as Bezos and Trump.
Taking power away from them, and changing the system not to concentrate
wealth and power, go hand in hand.
As schools impose "learning management" systems to track what students
do, they collect lots of data about students. There is no evidence
that this snooping contributes to education, but it is obviously an
injustice.
If some sort of snooping ever does contribute to education, the school should
leave all the data in a per-student memory which the student can wipe when
classes end.
In the US, people are jailed as a result of trials in which they
had no lawyer.
Often this is for nonpayment of child support.
It is legitimate to make fathers with money provide some of that
for their children. It is nonsensical to do this to poor people;
they can't pay what they don't have.
The right solution for this problem is (1) to improve the welfare
system so that no child has to grow up in poverty, father or no
father, and (2) help and encourage people that can't afford to raise
children properly to use reliable birth control.
If the "Ferguson effect" is real, what conclusions should we draw?
US blacks have good reason to fear that thugs will kill them and/or
frame them. To a lesser extent, so do other Americans. If the thugs
want to be trusted, they should start being trustworthy.
Confronting the threat of massive technological unemployment combined
with allow plutocratic.
As someone said in a public hearing in Cambridge, some 20 years ago:
"If the robots make it, we've gotta take it."
Proposed mergers, such as Bayer with Monsanto, would increase
concentration of the seed supply and other industries related to
farming.
Monsanto seems to have too much influence with the EPA's decisions.
A US senate committee staffer made threats to try to stop Colombia
from approving a license for an generic, affordable cancer drug.
Of course, the threat used the propaganda term "intellectual
property", which not only carries spin in favor of the drug companies,
but also impedes understanding of any issue because it confuses
several unrelated laws.
What is sad is that the article uses that term too. The author, who
criticizes the staffer's actions, probably does not realize that the
term gives implicit support to them, as well as impeding clear
thinking about any specific law (in this case, patent law).
That term should never be used. I object to it every time
I hear or see it. You can, too.
The temporary president that is replacing Dilma Rousseff has himself
been convicted of illegal campaign activities, and there is just as much
basis to impeach him as to impeach Rousseff.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
support
full health insurance coverage for contraception, with no gaps or
loopholes.
US citizens:
call
for a ban on transferring cluster bombs to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
support
the Atlantic Seismic Airgun Protection (ASAP) Act.
Civil
Disobedience Is the Only Way Left to Fight [global heating].
It is a mistake to use the term
"climate
change"; that term was imposed by Dubya to downplay the
danger, and it works all too well.
New Zealand is
very
useful for tax-dodging businesses.
Toddlers in the US have
shot
at least 23 people this year.
Over 1/3 of the people shot were killed.
Hundreds of companies in the London Stock Exchange are
based
on tax havens connected with Britain.
Call
on the Democratic Party to oppose any vote on the Treacherous
Plutocratic Poison until the next president takes office.
Real Trump supporters are very much motivated by his
opposition
to business-supremacy treaties that Clinton has supported.
It's no accident that Sanders polls better against Trump than Clinton
does. These people would be potential Sanders supporters.
The UK government makes it easy for people to block nearby windfarms
but
rams
fracking (and possible future poisoned water) down their throats.
Solar-thermal power plants store heat during the day, and
can
convert it into electricity at any time. In some areas, they are
competitive with fossil fuels already.
These plants could replace a large fraction of fossil fuel use in a
few years, but for inertia and fossil fuel subsidies subsidies.
Governments could overcome both, if not for the power of the
planet-roasters.
McGill University graduates are returning their diplomas to
demand
divestment from fossil fuel companies.
The GAO says that the US is failing to monitor the use of
anti-civilian
weapons it has provided to Egypt.
Protests are aimed at Olive Garden restaurants,
demanding
better treatment of their workers and that they stop selling meat that
contributes to antibiotic resistance.
The Olympic Games in Rio could spread the Zika virus
to
poor countries that could not cope with it.
Oxfam says that US poultry packing workers have to wear diapers
because they are
afraid
they will be fired if they ask to go to the toilet.
Billionaires threaten Britain: if you end secrecy rules,
we
will sell our mansions in London!
That would drive down housing prices in London and make the city more
affordable. Two birds with one stone!
Ammar al-Baluchi says the US wants to prosecute him using statements
he made under torture,
asks
for a UN investigation.
I don't think the US is likely to grant that.
The US should release all the prisoners in Guantanamo prison.
Even if some of them really did commit terrorism, they have been
punished enough. It is wrong to punish people without trial,
and in order for the US clear its name, it has to stop doing this.
Egyptians refer to the tyrannical regime as
"the
zombies".
The British colonies that live on tax dodging make the argument that
stopping them is futile
without
stopping the US too.
Of course, we must prevent tax dodging in all these places, but if we
have an opportunity to do it in some places, we should take it The
argument, "Don't stop us before you stop others", is simply invalid.
The fewer such states remain, the easier it will be to concentrate
pressure on those.
Repression in the UK: a man has been jailed because he didn't keep his yard clean, and for having visitors after 9:30pm.
Half of all species of crocodilians are in danger of extinction due to human activity.
The latest victim of Muslim fanatics in Bangladesh was a Buddhist monk.
Many Muslims are willing to tolerate dissent, but the current of
disrespect for others' religious freedom goes back to Muhammad.
Many species of rhinoceros are close to extinct. How can we save them?
The vaquita porpoises are being swiftly wiped out despite Mexican navy patrols.
The cause is one of the many superstitions typical of Chinese medicine.
Most WiFi router models sold in the US will soon block users from installing their own software, supposedly because of FCC regulations. However, the one exception demonstrates that the FCC regulations don't actually require this.
They use the term "open source" because they don't want to endorse our ethical principles.
Pfizer has forbidden US states from using its drug products for executions.
The death penalty is an injustice, and if this stops states from doing them,
that is a good thing. However, I don't think manufacturers should have
control over how their products are used. The industry consolidation
that made this blockage possible is also, in general, a bad thing.
We should stop the death penalty with a decision to abolish it, not
by letting companies have such control.
Both Clinton and Trump are connected to Goldman Sachs.
Tax Experts Push IRS to Expose Multinational Tax Dodging.
The EPA has proposed rules to reduce methane leaks from new facilities, but still has not tackled the existing facilities.
The right thing to do with new fossil fuel facilities is not build any.
Obama's new rules about secrecy of corporations may be meant to forestall stronger action being considered in Congress.
The US has an addition to war, and tends to engage in ever more war regardless of details.
I am not a pacifist: I think that fighting PISSI is legitimate
provided it is done in ways that don't tend to cause lots of civilian
casualties. I don't trust the US government to limit itself to those ways.
In other cases, such as supporting the bombardment Yemen, the US
hardly bothers to offer a reason.
Clinton is not likely to do anything to restrain the increase.
Trump says he will do so, but what such a liar says means little.
Fracking in North Dakota
has caused widespread pollution of water.
Post-Truth Politicians Such As
Donald Trump And Boris Johnson Are No Joke.
Some aspects of society and law tempt people to be corrupt. However, other aspects make it very hard for a poor person not to be corrupt.
French women are rising up against a pervasive culture of sexual harassment
by male politicians.
Israel
has banned Omar Barghouti from travelling abroad, apparently out of disapproval of the views he advocates while travelling.
It's Official: [US] Employers
Can't Force You To Be Happy.
US citizens:
call for ending the
cap on Social Security tax.
US citizens:
call
on the Peabody Energy CEO to stop fighting the Clean Power Plan.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
oppose
new infrastructure for using fracked gas.
I my message, I stated that gas that requires fracking should be left
in the ground.
Delhi and five other Indian cities are in the top 10 for pollution,
which
shortens
people's lives. Nonetheless India has not changed its
plans
to increase coal combustion.
To end corruption, start with the US and UK.
They
allow it in broad daylight.
The British banks are in effect the hub of a global network of
organized crime.
It is telling that Mossack Fonseca claims to have done "due diligence"
to check the legitimacy of an average of 37 new corporations per day.
Their definition of "due diligence" is clearly inadequate.
Nader: The U.S. Political & Media System Is
Designed
to Obstruct, Silence Third-Party Candidates.
Wealthier US families with children are boosting segregation by
squeezing
into neighborhoods with better schools, forcing poorer families to
the worse schools.
Voter ID laws are effective at
voter
suppression, against students and Latinos.
The reward structure of science
encourages
publication of many papers of so little interest that they are never
cited.
Brazil's senate has
impeached
President Rousseff, who will now be temporarily replaced in office
during her trial.
Dominicans of Haitian ancestry, who were stripped of citizenship
retroactively and expelled to Haiti, remain
in
camps near the border, with no medical care, no work, and little
food.
"Enforcing high heels in the office is the height of
workplace
sexism." Especially since they are bad for the feet.
The UK has rejected the cases of Iraqis
mistreated
by UK soldiers occupying Iraq, on the excuse that Iraqi law says
they brought the cases too late.
Tax Havens 'Serve
No
Useful Economic Purpose': 300 Economists Tell World Leaders.
This conclusion is valid if you look at the stated goals of
governments and businesses. But those tax havens do serve the
goals of the rich people that these governments really obey.
The
burning
of Fort McMurray was effectively arson committed by the planet
roasters.
After the Fort McMurray fire, now is the time to talk about
how
to stop our global heating practices.
When people tell us, "Now is not the right time," we must respond,
"The right time was 10 years ago, and now we are very late. Don't
suggest we wait another day!"
Each part of the world has a mission it must do to prevent global
disaster. For Alberta, that mission is to stop the tar sands
extraction.
Trump has
attacked
Clinton for her readiness to attack other countries.
However, he too supported the invasion of Iraq, ignoring all the
obvious
reasons
it was wrong.
The president we need is Bernie Sanders.
A member of the 9/11 commission says that Salafi Arabian officials
provided
support for the hijackers, though not with approval of their
government.
He called for release of the suppressed part of the commission's
report.
The prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib are
still
seeking justice in US courts, while those responsible are seeking
legal excuses to make the issue disappear.
Chomsky: repeating the approach of
taking
a sledgehammer to vulnerable societies plays into al Qa'ida's plan
to draw the west into a quagmire.
The proposed autonomy agreement for areas of Mindanao in the
Philippines
may
now never be ratified.
An autonomous zone for a specific ethnic group is sometimes a good way
to resolve disputes — as long as human rights are protected.
In the Philippines, I was told that this proposed autonomous zone
would be allowed to set its own definition of human rights. I fear
this means trashing human rights in accord with Shari'a law, against
women and against those who want to stop being Muslim. Thus, I do not
regret the failure of this agreement. I hope they negotiate another
agreement that respects the human rights of everyone in the autonomous
zone, not only the males that want to be Muslims.
We Need a Debate on
Drone
Killings — Whether They Should Be Happening At All.
The legitimacy of targeted killing (assassination off the battlefield)
is in question as well as that of the unintended victims.
Some local communities in Australia are
pushing
hard for renewable energy even against the
national
government's push to continue fossil fuels.
Tourist boat operators are
trying
to conceal the damage to the Great Barrier Reef from politicians
and reporters.
This is the same short-term spirit as the fossil fuel companies carry
out. It's easier than preventing further damage, but it won't work
for long.
If encryption software is "munitions", does the Second Amendment guarantee
the
right
to bear encryption software?
Punishing abortion
does
not reduce the rate of abortions. (It does put women in danger.)
However, access to modern contraception does reduce the rate of
abortions, because it avoids unwanted pregnancies.
Legal
Action against the French Surveillance Law (of 2015).
Note that the repeatedly extended "state of emergency" in France makes
the surveillance even worse than what this law authorizes.
Germany
will
repeal one repressive measure that is part of the War on Sharing:
punishing owners of unrestricted WiFi networks when they are used to
share.
This is an example of collective responsibility, which in general is
what states do to enforce laws that the people in general do not
support. A democratic government would put an end to the War on
Sharing, and adopt
non-repressive
means to support the arts.
The article uses the word
"piracy"
to refer to sharing. Since that derogatory word carries spin that
supports the War on Sharing, we should reject it.
Trump now
ties
with Clinton in polls.
Peabody Energy
argued
global heating denialism in court, and lost.
Everyone:
call
on big banks to stop financing Exxon's global heating denial.
An experiment which randomly chose which students could use computers
in class found that
those
who did not use computers got better grades.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ask the US to appoint a special representative to
protect Palestinian minors in Israeli prisons.
Some of those minors are so young that they really are children.
Others are adolescents, and I don't think we should call them
"children", but it is still wrong the way Israel treats them in
prison.
For-profit colleges in the US regularly
make
their students agree to contracts that impose arbitration instead of
lawsuits, and in some cases require them to keep their complaints
secret.
No company should be allowed to impose such requirements on its
customers. Meanwhile, for-profit colleges are a bad idea, and a big
risk; don't spend your money on them.
Farming the sea for plants and shellfish is a
sustainable
food production method.
Exxon is
still
spreading climate disinformation, including via ALEC.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Now that the War on Painkillers is in high gear, the
War
on Diarrhea Medication may come next.
An Arkansas thug
took
Guillermo Espinoza's $20,000, assuming that if he had so much
money it could only be from selling drugs. Then, when prosecutors had
second thoughts, the judge approved the grab anyway.
There is a
long
history of dealing with issues of segregation (racial or gender)
in public toilets.
The leading hedge fund managers were paid an
average
of half a billion dollars each in 2015, even though most of the
funds actually lost money.
Regulations and voluntary policies to avoid sending toxic e-waste to
poor countries for manual recycling are
failing
a lot of the time.
The Democratic Party has invited
business
executives and lobbyists into the heart of planning the Democratic
Convention.
Prisoners in Alabama, who are on strike, say
the
prison is now trying to starve them into surrender.
The heat of the ocean has
killed
all the coral in large parts of the Great Barrier Reef, and made
it useless as a shelter for the many species of fish that depend on
it.
The thug that killed Walter Scott faces federal charges:
obstruction
of justice, and deprivation of civil rights.
Two French whistleblowers
face
prosecution in Luxembourg. They exposed how Luxembourg eagerly
helped multinationals to pay very little tax.
Turkey has
refused
to allow UN human rights investigators to visit.
US bee keepers
lost
44% of their colonies in a year.
Global heating effects may be part of the cause, because they
reduce
the fraction of protein in the pollen that bees eat.
Everyone:
Tell CNN to
stop the climate negligence. Show climate coverage, not fossil fuel
ads.
US citizens:
call on the
SEC investigate "toxic swaps" that drain US cities, and make the
banksters return what they have taken.
A
confused
claim that global heating wasn't really responsible for submerging
some of the Solomon Islands.
Looking closely at this article, it appears that heating really is the
main responsible factor. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, being
cyclical, can make such events happen a few years sooner or later, but
doesn't change anything in the long term.
Emails Reveal Navy's Intent to Break Law,
Threatening
Endangered Wildlife.
Mexicans say state agents
tortured
them to make them support the state's (demonstratedly false) version
of events in the disappearance of 43 students. Independent
examinations found evidence of this torture.
They say state agents even threatened to murder their family members.
The US government has
abandoned
its effort to close two medical marijuana dispensaries in
California.
Duke Tran is suing Wells Fargo Bank, saying his boss fired him because
he told the truth to a mortgage-holder that the bank was
trying
to cheat.
The boss told him and other staff not to admit to customers that the
bank had lost their contracts (or perhaps had
never
had them).
Anti-Zionism
Does Not Equate to Antisemitism, say British Jews rebuking the
claims of the Chief Rabbi.
Rooting out antisemitism from various British political parties
requires carefully
distinguishing
condemnation of the occupation of Palestine from antisemitism.
Confusing the two, which defenders of the occupation persistently try
to do, is likely to encourage antisemitism.
The Lummi tribe
won
a court case to block the construction of a coal export terminal at
Cherry Point, Washington.
"I decided not to have children for
environmental
reasons."
Especially the well-off Americans, who consume so much per person,
should have fewer children.
The fire that burned parts of Fort McMurray has
cut
Canada's oil production by 1/3. Alas, it is only temporary. If
it were permanent, it might help avoid even worse fires in the future.
Thailand
arrested
another person for "defaming the king", and the US has condemned
it.
A refugee forcibly sent by Australia to Nauru had a heart attack, and
died
waiting to be sent to Australia for treatment. He apparently had
tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of medicines.
Nauru does
not allow journalists unless they are totally tame.
Meanwhile, the Australian staff face
threats
of imprisonment if they talk about any sort of mistreatment of the
prisoners. Australia is running a vicious scheme that allows it
to conceal any abuse.
The Iraqi army is
still
incapable of taking Mosul.
The UK government's cruelty towards welfare recipients is
pushing
low-paid workers into desperation. Some have to steal to eat.
Some children can't afford to go to school.
If the Tories seriously wanted workers to work more hours, or get
higher pay, they would make employers give workers longer hours and
higher pay. That would be effective. But Tories don't really want
those changes to occur, they only want an excuse to harass and punish
workers.
This adds to other injustices to the
disabled and the
unemployed.
The real purpose is to demonize the non-rich as an excuse for dooH
niboR (Robin Hood in reverse).
An organization of British authors
condemns
Britain's test-based education.
A success for fishing diplomacy:
Atlantic
mackerel are now managed sustainably.
EPA scientists published a study reporting that the pesticide atrazine
seems to harm wild plants and aquatic animals. The EPA
deleted
it without saying why.
The CO2 level is now
reaching
400 parts per million, yet willfully blindness continues. For
instance, look at
the
plan to build another runway in a London airport.
It would be a wasted investment, because they could not keep using it
for enough decades to recoup the cost.
Note how the discussion of the effect on the "environment" is limited
to the local area around the airport. CO2 emissions are
ignored completely.
"The UK government’s failure to build new homes that are energy
efficient
will
see future generations dealing with our costly mistakes."
The same can be said about many other places.
Facebook's team of editors for "trending topics"
altered
the list of stories based on their own biases, and based on
instructions from their bosses.
This is little different from what happens in US mass media generally.
Most of the US media
shut
Bernie Sanders out entirely until he started winning some state
primaries, while
one
TV network hyped Trump because his crudeness attracted viewers.
It's wrong, however, for Facebook to do this if it claims that it
isn't selecting stories, just showing what its useds are looking at.
However, another German was ordered not to say that Erdoğan
should be shot.
Some Turkish citizens are already fighting Erdoğan's men, since
last summer
when
he started a war against them.
Former sex workers speak against
plans
to make sex workers' customers criminals.
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic National Convention to give Sanders supporters
fair representation on the platform committee.
Everyone:
call
on Google and other tech companies not to support the Republican
National Convention.
US citizens:
call
for thorough testing of genetically modified mushrooms whose sole
justification is that they stay whiter for longer.
Women who regret having had children face
strong
social pressure to shut up about this, but some are daring to say
so.
The lack of freedom of speech in Scotland is demonstrated by the
prosecution
of someone for posting a video considered "offensive".
I can't tell from the description who it is thought to offend. Jews?
Nazis? Either way, that should not be a crime. Freedom of speech
includes the right to offend, insult, mock or condemn any person,
group, organization, belief or activity.
Clinton is the new darling of banksters, now that the Republicans they
supported are out of the race. In March,
over
50% of banksters' campaign contributions went to Clinton.
Journalists in the Democratic and Republican conventions will be required
to get
background
checks from the Secret Service. This is a dangerous form of
censorship.
Uganda has
banned
coverage of opposition protests.
Mordechai Vanunu faces new criminal charges, but they are nothing
except violating the
outrageous
controls that have been placed on him.
These controls are an
excuse
to pretend that Vanunu is a monster who would justify them. The
charges are absurd anyway.
Putin is
trying
to capture some of the admiration for the Cuban Five.
The Cuban Five were convicted of "spying" in the United States, but
they were never accused of spying on the United States. They spied on
terrorist groups sponsored by the US that carried out attacks in Cuba.
By prosecuting them, the US made a mockery of its supposed opposition
to terrorism.
I gave my support to a campaign to free the Cuban Five, but what
did Putin do for them? Probably nothing, until he got the idea
of inviting them to Moscow so that some of their glory would rub
off on him.
Don't Compare Trump And Duterte — the Philippines Leader Is
Far
Worse.
The Panama papers reveal
heavy
use of New Zealand for purposes of dodging taxes and more.
US courts are gradually going dark, with
secret
evidence and even secret cases.
Less
than 2% of US doctors are responsible for half the medical
malpractice insurance payouts. If state medical boards stopped
protecting doctors that repeatedly screw up, the US would not have a
medical malpractice problem.
Although the euro-boas have backed off demanding a new round of
squeezing Greece, the current round is still being enacted, and it is
likely
to crush people to death.
Meanwhile, they are currently
proposing
only to tinker with secondary aspects of Greece's debt burden. I
wonder whether the IMF will make them go further.
The article repeats a common falsehood by saying that there is a
bailout "for Greece". The bailout is
really
for the boa-banksters.
They launder the money through Greece and pretend they are doing
Greece a favor.
Turkish Border Guards
'Continuing to Shoot and Beat Refugees at Border',
according to Human Rights Watch.
Egyptian Satirists Arrested for Mocking President.
The newly elected president of the Philippines promises to abolish human rights and assassinate those he considers criminals.
What this means is, if he puts you on his list, you will not get a trial.
If any democracy at all survives this, it will be by luck.
The
TPP would impose enforcement of non-competition agreements on
employees. Technology companies want this, but it would be bad for
people who work in technical fields, and perhaps bad for technology
industries over all.
Please don't use the word "protection" in relation with copyright law or patent law. That term is propaganda for those that want to restrict us.
Tory rule has been effective in
quashing renewable energy investment in the UK.
Sea-level rise has submerged some small uninhabited islands in the Solomons. Worse, inhabited parts of some larger islands have been
inundated permanently.
1/5 of the world's plant species face extinction in the short term due
to habitat destruction.
Those involved in UK drone attacks targeted at specific people could
be
prosecuted for murder.
Reddit's Technology Subreddit Ponders Banning Wired & Forbes For Blocking Adblock Users.
What they call "ad blockers", I call "surveillance blockers",
and that's what's important about them. I don't care about seeing an ad,
as such; I object to surveillance and I will block surveillance.
I encourage the redditors to ban sites that are egregious supporters
of surveillance.
SEC And Chuck Grassley Still Trying To Stop Email Privacy Act That Got UNANIMOUS Support In The House.
The Tories want to
impose political control over the BBC.
More information about
the
damage the TTIP would do to Europe.
It would do damage to the US as well, but perhaps not the same damage.
If you see good articles about this, please email them to me.
Offshore front companies are not just for tax-dodging:
swindlers
use them too.
Mossack Fonseca practiced a formal sort of
"due
diligence" with its eyes wide shut.
The Theater of Security Agency is short of staff and is
causing
big problems for air travellers in the US.
Scanning old physical works of art gives museums an opportunity to
try
to impose copyright on them.
The article uses "intellectual property" as a synonym for copyright.
That is a confusing practice, since in another article "intellectual
property" will be a synonym for some other law. The term
"intellectual property" adds nothing to any discussion except a
false
generalization, we should reject it every time it appears.
Ferguson employs private lawyers to prosecute people for imaginary,
even fantastic infractions, and
they
refuse to obey orders to stop.
Fire them?
The
unpredictability
of Chinese censorship may be intentional, to make people generally
timid.
The FBI is menacing a core Tor developer,
trying
to make her answer questions without a lawyer present.
Digital Restrictions Management is an injustice in itself, but it has
a tendency to develop into sabotage — occasionally some
DRM-afflicted works
stop
functioning because a company decides they are "no longer
supported".
Since DRM is an injustice, so are the laws that prohibit breaking DRM.
These laws' purpose is to give certain businesses power over the
public. That purpose is evil, and the laws' effect is evil. It
follows that these laws have no moral authority, and violating them is
not in any way wrong.
If the government wants to teach people the habit of obeying laws, it
should repeal laws like these.
In addition to being an injustice in itself, DRM implies a
security
vulnerability.
The article doesn't say it, but the vulnerability has a name:
"nonfree
software."
It would be better to avoid using the term
"digital
locks" to describe DRM, since that fails to express why DRM is an
injustice.
UK construction companies will pay millions of dollars to the workers
that they
conspired
to blacklist.
Noam Chomsky comments on the
world
geopolitical situation.
Massachusetts citizens:
Oppose
a new subsidy for natural gas.
In my message I called for ending existing subsidies for fossil fuels.
Everyone:
call on the mayor of
San Francisco to fire Thug Chief Suhr.
Everyone:
call
on the governor of Alabama to veto anti-abortion bills.
US citizens:
call on the
Department of the Interior to protect Joshua Tree National Park
from a nearby dam.
Megumi Igarashi, who distributed 3d printer plans for a kayak modelled
on her vagina, has been
convicted
of obscenity.
Prohibitions like these create a sense of taboo about female genitals.
I think that contributes to various sorts of sexual ignorance and
confusion.
The large fire in Alberta
may burn for months.
represent.us campaigns to
limit
corrupting campaign finance at the local level.
A Swedish ISP head has attacked
proposed
laws to criminalize people who share files.
Hundreds
of US hospitals follow rules imposed by the Catholic Church that
put womens' lives and health in danger.
I believe hospital owners should not be allowed to impose such
rules. The Church should have to back off on these rules or sell the
hospitals.
The Panama Papers whistleblower has accused specific political leaders
of protecting offshoring and tax dodging, and
fears
those same leaders will try to prosecute per (the whistleblower) for
exposing the practice.
The 1965 massacre of perhaps a million alleged Communists in Indonesia
left the military in a position of total impunity. Now it uses this
impunity to protect the companies that
burn
thousands of square miles of rain forest to create palm oil
plantations.
I don't think that a massacre of people for their political views
should be called "genocide". The victims were belonged to various
ethnic and religious groups. A massacre is bad enough; we don't need
to call it "genocide" to condemn it.
Brazil is considering a law that would lead to
lots
of Internet censorship.
Lead water pipes laid in some cities in 1900
caused
higher crime rates in those cities in 1920.
It has been three months since Clinton
made
flimsy excuses for not releasing the text of her highly paid
speeches to banksters.
While we do not have proof "beyond a reasonable doubt", for the
standards of politics we are entitled to conclude that she thinks we
would not like what she said.
Groups of heavily armed poachers
regularly
fight the rangers that try to protect elephants at Virunga Park.
Techdirt: Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us
Over
A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment.
The European Commission head said that
Greece
has suffered enough.
This is an abrupt change: just recently the boa-banksters wanted to
squeeze Greece harder. (When they say "reform", it means "squeeze the
people".)
The article says that the IMF "demanded more reforms". However, a
few days ago the IMF did just the opposite: it refused to go along
with further squeezing, pointing out that additional "reforms" would
increase Greece's deficit, just as the "reforms" so far have done.
Has the IMF forced the boas to stop constricting Greece? Or is
this too good to be true? Is it plausible that the IMF has actually
done something good?
US citizens:
call
on the US to demand justice for Berta Caceres and stop supporting the
coup-installed government.
US citizens:
Ask
your state legislator to support automatic voter registration.
US citizens:
support
Human Rights Watch's call for the US to stop producing cluster
bombs and stop giving them to Salafi Arabia.
Over a thousand protesters blocked tracks to stop a coal train.
while
hundreds
blocked Newcastle, Australia, harbor to stop coal ships.
Sea level rise and loss of land are
eating into Louisiana and Alaska.
Syrians' principal motive for joining PISSI is that they
need
to get paid.
The US should be able to offer them more money than PISSI can.
When the FBI
directs
local thugs to create alternative stories to hide the fact that they
actually used a stingray
Computers may soon be able to
recognize
the location of all outdoor photos.
"Colorado Springs
will
pay back destitute people it illegally jailed because they couldn't
pay court fines, the city announced Thursday."
European Greens Present Draft Law On
Protecting
Whistleblowers.
US voters:
you
can ask Democratic "superdelegates" to vote for Sanders.
Fortunately for him, he was not actually removed from the flight.
Perhaps airline personnel are starting to have a slight glimmer of
intelligence in dealing with panicking idiots.
Part of Australia has allowed courts and even individual thugs to
impose
punishments on people based on mere suspicion, no evidence needed.
SCROTUS want to make children of poor families
pay
for school lunch.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
They want to make poor people poorer so as to enrich the rich people
they serve.
The
Guardian repeats the Pentagon's take on Yemen, saying that US
troops and Salafi Arabian bombardment are supporting "Yemen's
government" against al-Qa'ida.
However, the main enemy of the US-supported "government" is the
Houthis, who are Shi'ites. Al-Qa'ida is no friend of theirs.
Everyone:
call
on Google not to sponsor the RNC now that we know it will promote
Trump.
Sadiq Khan, a progressive Muslim, was
elected
mayor of London, defeating a Tory whose campaign was based on
bigotry.
I agree with what this article says about that Tory, and Tories in
general. But not solely because they use one racism while condemning
another, both crassly for political gain alone. Their worst bigotry
is against the non-rich of whatever religion or race.
President Marcos of the Philippines
pioneered
the use of tax havens and secret dealings to conceal billions of
dollars in wealth that he stole from the Philippines. Many other
governments, including the US, protected the Marcos family in exile,
so only a fraction of what he and his associates stole has been
recovered.
The Philippines is investigating the responsibility of 50 large fossil
fuel companies for
human
rights violations in the form of global heating and is present and
future disastrous effects.
"TSA Precheck" functions as a system to
pressure
Americans to submit to background checks.
It can morph smoothly, just like a store discount card, from "You can
save by using this" to "You will be penalized for not using this".
I am not going to enroll.
Social media monitoring doesn't pry into anyone's secrets, but it
gives the state (or business) that uses it
power
that threatens democracy.
More Australian species are now on the endangered list, and the main
reason is government's laxity in protecting their habitat from
commercial
destruction.
Rep. Issa Calls Out Civil Asset Forfeiture As Letting
'Cops Go Treasure
Hunting'.
I think the word "cops" is too nice for them, but otherwise I agree.
The fire that rages through Fort McMurray is part of a world-wide
trend towards bigger and longer wild fires,
caused
by global heating.
This article
implores
our sympathy for the people of Fort McMurray who have lost their
homes to global heating effects.
It is a good clear example of distraction spin.
I don't strongly object to anything in the article. We can sympathize
with the displaced people of Fort McMurray, along with the hundreds of
millions of others who will be rendered homeless or killed by global
heating effects. There is no point condemning people for taking jobs
in fossil fuel extraction, since mostly they are not responsible for
the decision to extract the fuel. (That changes if they campaign
politically to keep the practice going — through that, they make
themselves into planet roasters, co-responsible for attempted
genocide.)
But Canadians should not let that distract them from the vital point:
Canada must curb fossil fuel extraction as fast as possible, along
with the rest of the world.
Canada should care for the displaced people of Fort McMurray
elsewhere, and make sure there is no more tar sands extraction to draw
any of them back. Since that wasn't the town's only reason for being,
some will go back for other reasons, and that's fine.
Burning Kenya's ivory
must
be followed by changes if we are to end elephant poaching.
I should point out two of the important reasons why life in Kenya is
"difficult" for most people.
Clinton
may
get the support of Republican Neocons that will encourage her to
shed lots of blood.
She is
already
leaning their way.
Most US press coverage of foreign events is
dictated
by the White House.
China
used its influence to cancel the Shen Yun dance troupe's shows in
South Korea.
This illustrates the danger that we face outside China when
businesses depend too much on exporting to China.
I watched a Shen Yun show once, and enjoyed the pieces that were
not tendentious, but disliked those that were heavy-handed propaganda.
They put me off even though I agreed completely with their point,
which was to condemn the Chinese state's repression (which has got
much worse since then). My friend who went with me said, "It preaches
too much."
Tyranny in Turkey: reporter Can Dundar and bureau chief Erdem Gul have
been
sentenced
to five years in prison for reporting on Turkey's support for
Islamist extremists in Syria.
The
Panama papers leaker wants to cooperate with prosecution of tax
evaders, if person can be sure governments won't prosecute per.
This article's use of "they" in singular shows how confusing it is,
and how wrong it reads. I reject it. I think we should use Marge
Piercy's gender-neutral third person singular pronouns,
"person", "per" and "pers", which work like "she", "her" and "hers".
They fit the English language well.
Indian prisoners sentenced to death will probably not actually be
executed, but
regularly
face torture and solitary confinement and are stopped from seeing
their lawyers.
8 million Britons suffer from food insecurity, and almost 5 million
regularly pass a day without eating because they
can't
afford food.
This is a measure of the Tories' success in taking from the poor to
give to the rich (dooH niboR).
The Tories
are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
The US has asked Bahrain publicly to
release
dissident Zainab al-Khawaja.
But it is not putting any real pressure into this request.
Bahrain would have trouble resisting any real US pressure.
Many students in London are participating in a
rent
strike against universities that charge dorm rents so high only
the rich can afford them.
Sanders vs Clinton is a battle for the spirit of the Democratic Party.
Sanders
would return to the New Deal and the Great Society programs that
sought to make sure everyone in America has a decent life. Clinton
would continue Bill Clinton's quasi-Republican policies.
Many
prisons in the US are eliminating in-person visits. The prisoner
is cut off from the outside except for very expensive video calls that
require proprietary software.
With such tenuous human contact, recidivism is sure to increase.
However, the right-wingers in control of most US states don't
want to reduce crime. They want to show how tough they are.
Clinton and Trump are
personally
too close to offshore tax-dodging for us to believe that they
would really try to stop it.
The
IMF has vetoed the boa-banksters' plan to "rescue" Greece,
pointing out that it will only create the need for a series of
increasingly destructive "rescues".
Confirmed: the
"bailout
of Greece" was really a matter of supporting the euro-banksters
that Greece owed money to.
It's
Time to Extend the 14-Day Limit for Embryo Research.
The claim that suicide is "selfish" is a form of
victim-blaming.
AirBnB creates an opportunity for
racial
discrimination that is outlawed for hotels.
Americans' debt is
mostly
due to dooH niboR, not to frivolous purchases.
Most Syrian refugee minors can't go to school, and many of them are
forced
to work in sweatshops instead.
As the Alberta fires continue to grow in "unseasonably hot" weather,
the
Guardian's coverage avoids relating this to Alberta's oil exports.
French thugs complain that criticism of them is unfair, but plenty of
people can testify about how thugs
attacked
protesters.
I criticize any protesters that start avoidable violence against
thugs. But don't be too quick to assume that isn't the fault of the
thugs. Those "protesters" might be thugs, acting as
provocateurs to give the protesters a bad name. I don't know whether
this is happening in France, but it has happened in other places.
Protection of grizzly bears has enabled their population to increase,
but they are now
threatened
by global heating effects, so it is a mistake to remove the
protection.
It seems to me that there needs to be an intermediate status of
partial protection for species that seem to have recovered. They may
not need the full protection that enabled the population to recover,
but they need some protection so we don't wipe them out.
Noam Chomsky Predicted the Rise of Trump
Six
Years Ago.
Elif Shafak: "In Turkey we
can't
even laugh at our politicians any more."
If Europe wants to halt the spread of Islamist extremism, it should
prioritize stopping that in Turkey.
After attacking other candidates for taking money from other rich
people, Trump now
says
he will do the same thing.
Sanders is mistaken on one issue:
taxes
on sugary drinks.
This issue is small compared with the major issues on which he is
right. I hope he will get some good advice about it, though.
It is
not
too late to investigate the British thugs' violent attack on
striking miners in 1984, after which the thugs tried to frame the
miners they had arrested.
Iraq holds a thousand prisoners who are perhaps supporters of PISSI,
and keeps them in
tiny
cages.
Maybe there is a good reason to keep hold of them prisoner, but even
Iraq can build a prison where prisoners have room to lie down and walk
around.
McDonald's,
the Corporate Welfare Moocher.
Clinton talked about ending use of coal, but now she
says
she didn't really mean it.
Detroit teachers are on strike because
officials
refuse to promise they would get paid if they did work.
A high-school student faces felony charges for
pulling
his pants down momentarily for a photo that was put in the
yearbook.
Plans for Coal-Fired Power in Asia Are
'Disaster
For Planet', Warns World Bank.
Assad's forces or allies
bombed
a refugees camp inside Syria.
Careerist Republican politicians — the majority of Republican
politicians — are
changing
their positions to agree with Trump.
Trump as Republican nominee is intensely embarrassing to Republican
candidates for other offices. Some have already
blatantly
contradicted themselves.
This may result in their defeat, but we should not count on that.
Republicans can forgive their politicians all sorts of hypocrisy, as
long as said politicians attack those who are weak, different or poor.
2000
US doctors call for universal health care.
Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fawzy, arrested by Egypt for being
somewhere near a protest,
may
be forced to return to Egypt and prison because he no longer has a
US work visa.
Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta: Rush for Mega-Mergers
Puts
Food Security at Risk.
Why
give the Tories a free pass on racist remarks?
Governments have made unprotecting a national park so commonplace that
"protecting"
them gives little protection.
Thousands
of Egyptian journalists, and even newspapers, have joined a
campaign "Journalism is not a crime."
The UK NHS has
given
Google a copy of lots of patients' data, without public scrutiny
of what Google will be allowed to do with the data.
In Pakistan, tribal council members that were the ringleaders in burning
a teenage girl to death have been
arrested.
Her relatives who agreed to the killing were also arrested.
I fear that Pakistan will execute them. In addition to the general
wrongs of the death penalty, this risks enabling them to claim status
as martyrs for the murder they did. I suggest instead punishing them
in a way that will make them the object of public contempt. That way,
others won't be tempted to follow their example.
Eduardo Cunha, one of the leaders of the campaign to impeach President
Rousseff, has been suspended from Congress for
trying
to intimidate corruption investigations directed at him.
Justice for Telecommunications Consumers Act Would
Thwart
Unfair Arbitration Clauses.
Naomi Klein says that war, dooH niboR and global heating are
three
aspects of the same problem. We should unite the struggles
against them.
Everyone:
call
on he EU to stop paying to cut down US forests for Europe's fuel.
US citizens:
Tell Obama to halt new and
expanded fossil fuel leases on public lands.
US citizens:
tell
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau you support a regulation
barring banks and credit card companies from imposing arbitration on
customers and barring them from filing class action suits.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to stop the secret plan for the NSA to hand over its
snooping data for prosecuting Americans.
Everyone:
oppose the new EU plan to
impose a tax on hyperlinks.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to work towards nuclear disarmament by cancelling plans
to spend a trillion dollars on new generation nuclear weapons.
The breakup of Florida's barrier reef, previously forecast for 2050,
is
already
happening. The cause is human-generated CO2 that
dissolves in the ocean and makes it more acidic.
This is expected to wipe out all coral,
later
in this century. The result of that would be the extinction of
thousands of species and a collapse of fisheries that hundreds of
millions of humans depend on for food.
Leaked documents about the TTIP show that
This
Treaty is Indeed Plutocratic. Even more so than we thought: it
would give the US and foreign companies a veto over EU regulations.
The leaked text of the TTIP
has
made the French government reject it. That could kill it
entirely, but we cannot take that for granted. The rejection was
phrased in nationalist terms. The US might propose "more concessions"
(nominally, to France; actually, to the plutocrats and banksters) and
France might support it again.
We have to kill it dead. And CETA. And the TPP.
Clinton denounced the TPP only because she needed to compete with
Sanders. She has supported business-supremacy treaties for decades.
If she wins the Democratic nomination, I expect she will find a way to
push for such treaties again.
Due to unprecedented heat, all schools in Delhi have been
closed
for the summer.
It is not clear that the students will be any safer at home.
Although the "president" of the Gambia's men arrest and shoot
protesters,
people
keep protesting.
It is a mistake to let racist gaffes
overshadow
the substance of racism.
Conservative Think Tank President Says Voter ID
Helps
Conservatives Win Elections.
Republicans have imposed voter suppression on
33
states.
The leader of a group of Israelis that burned a Palestinian teenager
to death has been sentenced to
life
in prison for murder.
A wildfire in Canada is
consuming
the town of Fort McMurray, which ironically is the origin of tar
sands oil extraction.
The fire is the result of "unseasonably hot" weather, but it's only
"unseasonable" by 20th century standards. Global heating is making
this (and the drought) the new normal.
You could call the destruction by fire of that town poetic justice, if
the harmful effects of their oil sands extraction were limited to
them. However, as we know, they will hit the whole world. Canadians,
you must put an end to tar sands oil extraction.
A study estimates that
almost
10% of deaths in the US are caused by a medical error.
Cameron's new censorship plan pretends to be aimed at "violent
extremists", but actually
targets
all sorts of political opposition.
Wise entrepreneurs can still
offer
stock to their employees.
Climate-Exodus Expected in the
Middle
East and North Africa.
Human life will become difficult as very hot regions become even
hotter. Tens of millions could start to flee, maybe hundreds of
millions.
Global
Water Shortages to Deliver 'Severe Hit' to Economies, World Bank
Warns.
In the US, using biometrics instead of a password
cedes
legal rights.
The FBI acknowledged officially that its "hair matching" forensic
technique was
worthless.
2500 trials must now be checked to see whether they were miscarriages
of justice.
Obama's "Common Core" education reform has
failed
to improve education.
We may as well get rid of it, and "No Child Left Alone".
LA thugs have
redefined
prostitution as "human trafficking" to make arresting prostitutes
and their customers appear justified.
SCROTUS supports Obama's new nuclear weapons plan so much that they
don't
want to find out what this will cost.
Obama and the Republicans are both part of the Plutocratist Party.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Honduras has
charged
suspects with the murder of Berta Cáceres.
Given their job descriptions, I don't think they would have acted on
their own initiative.
Egypt's journalists are
holding
a sit-in next to the journalists' union after thugs raided it and
arrested two journalists.
It takes real courage to protest in Egypt under General al-Sisi.
Labour has suspended two local officials for "antisemitism" because of
statements
that really only criticize the occupation of Palestine.
Those two people may or may not be antisemitic, but these statements
don't indicate that.
Neither of the quoted statements appears antisemitic to me. One said
that European support for Israel's occupation of Palestine helped to
provoke terrorist attacks in Europe. This is surely true. The
statement criticizes Israel, but does not express hostility towards
Jews.
The other one compares Israel's occupation policies with Nazi
genocide. To equate them would be an exaggeration — Israel is
not trying to kill Palestinians, only to ethnically cleanse them from
certain areas — but
Uri
Avnery sees a similarity. Unlike us, he saw real Nazis before his
family fled Germany.
The FBI
imposes
secrecy about use of stingrays (fake cell towers for snooping on
people) on state and local thugs, even when this requires cases to be
thrown out.
However, it is quite possible that this secrecy enables them to
illegally deny the use of stingrays in cases where they did use them.
Turkish Journalists Accuse Erdoğan of
Media
Witch-Hunt.
Some European countries have
isolated
jihadi prisoners to stop them from spreading their ideology to
other prisoners.
Isolation from other prisoners does not have to mean isolation from
everyone. In principle, this does not have to be solitary confinement
— it could be like the prison Anders Breivik is in (which seems
acceptable to me). In practice, it tends to be almost solitary
confinement.
Trump, the
union
buster.
What Trump says doesn't mean much, but we can get an idea of how he
wants to treat workers from the way he treats the workers in his
hotel.
Chelsea Manning describes her horrible solitary confinement, in which
she was
constantly
watched and forbidden to lie down or sit against the wall for 17
hours each day.
Australian thugs imprisoning an Iranian refugee (whose husband
recently set himself on fire and died) are acting like kidnapers,
threatening
to punish her if she looks out the window since she might be seen.
When she cries, they inject her with sedatives.
They are trying to bully her into going back to Iran, where she faces
a danger of persecution.
Apparently Australia's policy for keeping refugees away is to threaten
them with worse persecution than what they are fleeing from.
The tuna fishing business can be
wiped
out by overfishing unless the fishing countries make an agreement
to preserve the stocks.
Mothers of jihadis now offer family counseling to
help
mothers dissuade their children from becoming jihadis.
I think this has a chance of working, unlike the heavy-handed
government surveillance/repression campaigns. In addition, this won't
give large numbers of young Muslims grounds to feel resentment.
The European Commission is
inventing
and distorting evidence to justify a new regime of censorship for
the internet.
It's for the sake of the War on Sharing, of course.
US insurance companies, and the data brokers that serve them,
must
be strictly regulated about what kinds of data they can collect.
US citizens:
oppose
SCROTUS's attack on support for healthful school meals for US
children.
The Republicans are working for the billionaires, who are confident
that they can afford good food for their children and judge
that poor people are superfluous.
Uber has
changed
the regulations that cover charging passengers for making cars
wait.
This decision itself may not be objectionable. Taxis typically charge
for making them wait. But that regulation is set by a city agency
which is at least somewhat responsible to the people. Uber is a
business headquartered somewhere else, which accepts no responsibility
to the people of any city.
We should not allow a company to privatize the making of the
regulations that create our social order.
Abu Omar, who was kidnaped by the CIA in Italy and sent to Egypt for
torture, says that former agent Sabrina De Sousa is
one
of the small fry and shouldn't be prosecuted.
The real culprits are higher-ups and not on the list to prosecute.
Poaching of tigers in India is now going at
4
times the 2015 rate.
To reduce poverty, stop obsessing about what poor people do to
survive, and more attention to
making
the rich pay enough taxes.
Angola is worse than Ferguson for jailing the poor: A man who fell
asleep in a stranger's minivan has been
in
jail 8 years awaiting trial.
Global heating is destroying many towns in the Arctic, and will cause
a wave of
climate
refugees.
Wisconsin prosecutors have
appealed
to the US Supreme Court to reopen their investigation that is
likely to touch Governor Walker and his henchmen.
The investigation was shut down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court,
which Governor Walker had packed.
A prisoner in Nauru, who was raped, needs a surgical abortion which
might have complications. Doctors say to send her to Australia for
this, but
the
state won't allow it.
She cannot communicate with the public, and her name has been replaced
with "S99".
Despite all efforts to keep Australia's outsourced immigration prisons
secret, and the prisoners incommunicado, some footage has leaked out,
and
some
whistleblowers are willing to risk imprisonment to recount the
cruelty they have witnessed.
I hope Ms Orner is finishing this film in a safe place, far away from
Australia.
Farm workers in Yolo county, California, have
inadequate
nutrition because of their low pay and other limitations.
The US teen pregnancy rate has fallen substantially, due to
reliable
long-term contraceptive methods.
Why Do
Progressives
Cling to Hillary?
Sanders asks the Democratic Party to think about which side it's on:
the
rich and powerful, or the rest.
Which is
more
realistic, Sanders or Clinton?
Chomsky measures the corporate corruption of US media by
the
way they dismiss Sanders, who stands for mainstream America, as a
"radical extremist".
Plutocracy is pushing for
cuts
in workers' pensions, while retired executives get lavish
retirement pay.
Fracking: Environmental Groups Sue EPA in Call for Strict Rules on Waste.
Fracking might not be so attractive if frackers had to take responsibility
for the various kinds of environmental damage that it causes.
Trump has gained the Republican nomination;
other candidates have given up.
Kasich eschewed the I'm-toughest-cruelest-extremest rhetoric that Cruz
and Bush used, but his actions make him a right-wing extremist.
Bill Clinton's 1996 "antiterrorism" bill continues to prop up
miscarriages
of justice
Apple
refuses
to pay taxes to maintain Cupertino's infrastructure. Residents
are getting angry.
In Uganda, women known as gay just get murdered. In Somalia, they are
given the choice between marriage (a form of slavery) and death.
Queers in Kyrgyzstan are persecuted; bigots murder them with impunity.
Rising seas (due to global heating) will release pollution from
coastal
landfills.
Who's making sure the Saudi bombs keep falling on Yemen?
The
Tories.
(Plus Obama, of course.)
Increasing numbers of Dalits in India are
converting
to Buddhism.
57 lakh equals 5.7 million.
In winter under Tory cruelty, families must choose:
heating
or eating.
The second in command of the Israeli Army warned that Israel was
taking
up Nazi traits.
Death
by GPS is the extreme case of a very common problem:
using a GPS makes people helpless at orienting themselves.
I'd rather use a paper map.
A woman in solitary confinement speaks to the world through a play
that shows how solitary confinement
crushes
the spirit.
White
House Releases Report on How to Spur Smart-Gun Tech.
Numerous
reasons to reject a cruise ship vacation.
Another reason is that they are as artificial as a resort hotel. (I
know this because I was once hired to give talks on a cruise —
I'd never spend money to go on one.) All the specific pleasures
available on them, you can find closer to home and much cheaper.
I think that what people mainly like about them is the idea of being
on a cruise. They think they gave themselves a prize. Well, you can
pick almost anything and think of it that way.
Over
70% of Britons expect the NHS to deteriorate.
Of course it will: the Tories are trying to kill it.
Only a callous rich bastard can rationally vote for a Tory.
A study estimates that the UK could prevent 80,000 deaths annually by
better regulating
pollution,
workplace safety, and food safety.
Rep. Ryan
wants
to make cancer treatment unaffordable for many Americans by
changing a crucial point in Obama's medical care funding law.
Crackdown in Turkey's Kurdish South-East Turns
Journalists into 'Terrorists'.
This is so Erdogan can cover up the continuing atrocities against
the Kurds in Turkey.
Climate protesters
blocked
the largest coal mine in Britain.
Everyone: support
clemency for Leonard Peltier.
Puerto Rico is defaulting on its debt, because
vulture
banksters lobbied Congress not to allow Puerto Rico a form of
bankruptcy.
If everyone lived like Americans, the human world
would
have already exhausted its fresh water supplies.
Erdogan wants to prosecute members of Parliament for
"terrorism".
Will they be able to find asylum in Europe?
Snowden
analyzes the difference between whistleblowers' leaks and the
establishments' leaks (which often damage security interests much
more).
Britain has a long history of
real
antisemitism.
This needs to be rooted out. Note, however, that none of these
examples had anything to do with concerns about Israel's occupation
policy.
Global [Heating] Is
Starving
West Coast Waters of Oxygen.
The
EU
proposes that web sites should require visitors to give their
national ID numbers.
Stop waiting for the
"right
moment" to curb global heating. The right moment was 15 years ago!
People, and especially women, who carry guns are
far
more likely to be shot with a gun.
A part of this may be because people who feel more threatened are more
likely to get a gun. But surely that is not the only cause.
The
Feinstein-Burr anti-encryption bill would ban the distribution of
free encryption software in the US. All distribution of free systems
would have to move out of the US.
Italy's supreme court ruled that
stealing
food to eat is not a crime if you are desperately hungry.
NSA and CIA Double Their
Warrantless
Searches on Americans in Two Years.
US citizens:
call
on the SEC to make Wall Street banks return the money they got
from cheating American cities.
US citizens:
call for maintaining
funds allocated for coping with future Ebola outbreaks.
The UK regularly deports Romanian prostitutes by
claiming
they are not working. In fact, they are working, but they have
trouble proving this.
A large British retail chain has gone bankrupt because
its
main owner drained it constantly of money.
Parents Shouldn't Spy on Their Kids — it is
bad
for them, as well as unjust.
It was
dangerously
easy to make profiles about everyone in the Netherlands based on
data available to the public.
Inequality
Will
Get Worse Until There's a Revolution.
Electing Clinton, Trump, Cruz or Kasich sure won't help.
Bernie Sanders Is Right:
Poor
People Don't Vote And It's a Problem.
One significant obstacle is logistical: coping with poverty is so hard
that they have no time to vote. Another is Republican interference
with voting.
Many teenage girls in the US today have been
convinced
they need plastic surgery on their genitals in order to be
attractive to boys.
Wang Yam was convicted of murder in a secret trial. Now his
conviction has been put in doubt because the
thugs
concealed evidence that could have helped his defense.
There is other evidence of official shenanigans in connection with
this case.
Islamist
murderers have spread terror in Bangladesh.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to pass the Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act.
US citizens: call on the Democratic and Republican parties to
stop
advocating use of fossil fuels.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to repeal the gag rule that AmeriCorps volunteers are
not allowed to give information about abortion.
Obama's Controversial Offshore Drilling Proposal
Rests
On Research Funded By Fossil Fuel Industry.
This policy is based on a refusal to recognize the fact that oil is
now cheap, and the knowledge that we need to keep 80% of known
reserves in the ground.
This shows an example of the standard way businesses corrupt science
nowadays. Businesses fund professors, who know what they have to say
in order to get more support in the future. They also support "think
tanks" in which those professors can meet and produce reports to say
what the businesses want them to say.
Then the same businesses' pet politicians can cite these studies as an
excuse to do what these businesses want.
The first step in putting an end to this is to make businesses get
smaller.
Shame on states that
force
totally incapacitated people to suffer years of futile pain.
A group of young people sued the state of Washington, demanding that
it protect them (and everyone else alive decades from now) from the
danger of climate mayhem. The court has
ordered
the state to do more to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The US crime of "conspiracy" is so vague that people can get
long
prison sentences for crimes they didn't know about and had only a
tenuous relationship to.
FISA:
the
surveillance court that never says no.
Everyone:
call
on US Chamber of Commerce to stop lobbying against better pay and
working conditions.
US citizens:
call on legislators not
to take money from oil companies.
Brigham Young University expelled Madi Barney when the administration
found out that she had reported being raped. So she
launched
a campaign to pressure the university to change the "honor code".
The current policy is totally logical if you believe the idea that
"honor" consists of staying far away from sex. I'd say that idea is
the root of the problem.
Exiled Soviet, then Russian, dissident Vladimir Bukovsky says he is
being framed for possession of "child pornography". He has
started
a hunger strike just as he did in the gulag.
Stanford University
rebuffed
persistent protests, refusing to divest from fossil fuel
companies.
The cited reason was simply "Let's take it slowly", which is exactly
the attitude that is now fatal.
Disentangling
real antisemitism in Britain from right-wing misrepresentations is
sometimes a difficult question.
Some of the accusations are based on statements taken out of context
or misinterpreted.
Was the bombing of the MSF hospital in Kunduz a
war
crime?
Reckless action can be a war crime, but I think it is a stretch to
equate confusion to recklessness. Especially since confusion is
almost ubiquitous in war. For instance, US Army officers try very
hard not to kill their fellow soldiers, but that happens anyway
— through confusion.
Ted Cruz is behind a bill to support
state
bans on municipal WiFi access.
In effect, he is trying to give more power to the merged
Charter/Time-Warner.
In resisting a movie company's claim to have a copyright on the
artificially constructed Klingon language, an amicus brief
cites
proverbs in Klingon.
If you are using Tinder from an iThing, your parents or your ex could
be
snooping
on your use.
It must be the case that either Tinder or Apple offers some interface
for snooping.
Muslims in the US are
often
treated as terrorists, just because they are Muslim and talk with
someone in a language other than English. Sikhs face the same
harassment, since ignorant Americans think they are Muslims.
Indians are
dying
from drought and heat, and also from the fires that have been
caused by those.
Will India learn its lesson and start cutting back on fossil fuels?
Shafik Rehman, Bangladeshi editor that supports an opposition party,
has been
charged
with plotting to murder the prime minister's son. It seems he was
investigating someone who was alleged to be planning this.
The Bangladeshi state is more interested in
imprisoning
secular writers than catching those who kill them.
Global heating
could
deoxygenate large areas of the ocean within 20 years.
This would mean no more seafood in some parts of the world, and
perhaps extinction of some (or many) species.
Arguing for
taxing
the wealth of the rich, not only their income.
SCROTUS are
trying
to attack the protection of endangered species through the
military spending bill.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
US citizens:
call
on Senator Baldwin & Rep Gwen Moore to end sending cluster bombs
to Salafi Arabia.
A Florida thug is being prosecuted for battery; he
attacked
a handcuffed woman who was being put in jail.
She tried to kick him, which was a provocation. But since she was
handcuffed at the time, she was unable to really hurt the thug, and he
could have handled the situation without brutality. He should have
controlled himself. That's the job — of a police officer.
A court ruled the FBI
needs
to get a warrant to inject malware into someone's machine. It
can't just set a trap for whoever visits a certain site, without the
authority of a court order.
However, the FBI has written new regulations for itself,
saying
that one court order can authorize it to attack an unlimited set of
computers, if they are using Tor.
Senator Widen
will
try to cut this back.
I think it is legitimate for the state to install spy software in
suspects' computers, with a court order; but these orders must be
limited in scope so as not to threaten everyone.
The hot water that is killing much of the Great Barrier Reef is
due
to El Niño on top of global heating. By 20 years from now,
continued global heating could make this temperature normal, and the
reef certainly won't survive.
Tony B'liar did sales work for Salafi Arabia's oil business while
ostensibly the UK's
"Middle
East peace envoy".
We must stop putting
minors
in solitary confinement. (And mostly adults, too.)
An Iranian who tried to go to Australia but was sent to Nauru couldn't
stand being there. He
set
himself on fire, and later died.
He could not get proper medical care in Nauru, so Australia moved him
to Brisbane in Australia, but this took a long time because Nauru is
4500 miles away from Brisbane. Who was responsible for forcibly
placing him so far away? The Australian state.
His wife, who accompanied him to Brisbane, is being held incognito.
The Australian government uses a variety of unjust means to suppress
information about the various cruel things it does to would-be
refugees. For instance,
making
it a crime to report those things. and sending them to a place
(Nauru) where
independent
journalists are excluded.
Thugs in Paris
violently
attacked Nuit Debout protesters to force them out of the Place de
la République.
I spoke there two weeks ago about
free
software and
how
massive surveillance threatens democracy.
The response was very favorable.
US citizens:
tell the
Senate to protect America's coastal national parks.
US citizens:
tell the
Forest Service: Don't renew Nestlé's water withdrawal
permit.
Students at many US universities are
holding
protests, in some cases sit-ins, to demand divestment from fossil
fuels.
Today's college students have a good chance to be killed by global
heating in the second half of this century. Planet-roasters are
spending millions to make sure this happens. It is rational for the
students to take big risks and make substantial sacrifices to try to
overcome the planet-roasters.
The US has adopted in Iraq the technique of exploding a missile above
the roof of a building as a way of
"warning"
civilians to leave the building (which is scheduled to be bombed
shortly thereafter).
The problems are that (1) the people don't necessarily recognize what
the explosion means, or even that it was an explosion, and (2) the
actual bombardment may come so fast that people don't have time to get
their children or elderly parents out of the building.
Giving this sort of warning cannot as such be bad, but if it becomes
an excuse for predictably killing civilians, that is bad.
Arizona has earmarked
5
million dollars for the Koch brothers' right-wing propaganda
institutes. That's because many politicians there are already
their henchmen.
Don't the Koch brothers have enough money to fund their own
propaganda?
Bruno Kramm of the German Pirate Party was arrested for
quoting
part of the famous poem that insults Erdoğan.
Some towns in Australia find some slogans on the sides of vans
offensive and
want
to institute a regime of public censorship against offending
anyone.
Many US companies
overstate
their profits by using misleading accounting.
A thug working as a security guard at Walmart accused Tyrone Carnegay
of stealing a tomato. Rather than allow Carnegay to show the receipt,
the thug
broke
his bones with a stick, then arrested him.
This thug should spend 200 times as long in jail as Carnegay had to
spend.
Why are people in Western countries
buying
less? Is it a cultural shift influenced by Buddhism?
I have a different theory: so many people have reduced incomes, or
live in a very small space, that they simply can't buy a lot of stuff.
Israel's
Covert
War Against Palestinian Media.
The Dalhousie University student union has
decided
to divest from certain companies that directly aid Israel's
occupation of Palestine.
Israel is
confiscating
land from Palestinian farmers.
10 states with lots of sun have obeyed fossil fuel companies by
discouraging
solar power.
A vehicle for billionaires' disguised political spending
openly
flouts US campaign finance law.
The FCC has
authorized
the merger of Comcast and Charter Cable. After this merger, only
two companies will control 2/3 of US subscribers. No industry should
ever be allowed to get that concentrated, unless it is a tightly
regulated monopoly.
Mitsubishi
Lied
About Vehicle Emissions for 25 Years.
Obama's Offshore Drilling Proposal
Based
on Fossil Fuel Industry Research.
Everyone:
call
on Walmart to make sure its canned tuna was caught without killing
sharks; also to make sure all the workers involved are treated
decently.
Luxembourg is prosecuting
two
whistleblowers and a journalist for revealing how Price Waterhouse
Coopers helps companies dodge taxes.
Three Iranian journalists have been sentenced to many years in prison
on thinly disguised charges of
saying
things the mullahs do not like.
Under Iran's peculiar system of repression, the mullahs are above the
elected president, so he can't do anything when they arrest his
supporters.
The
richest
0.1% are the ones who really have the influence in the US. Even
the others in the 1% are starting to be treated like prey.
David Miscavige, head of the Church of Scientology, threatened to sue
the publisher of a forthcoming book which rips him to shreds —
written by
his
father.
Scientology has torn many other families apart. That it is doing so
to the Miscavige family is sad, but poetic justice.
The Tory in charge of crushing the National Health Service comes from
a background of such privilege that he has
no
compassion either for patients or the doctors that treat them.
All he understands is life in the class that gains from dooH niboR.
Abortion is
still
a crime in part of Australia, except when "necessary" for the
woman's health.
India's Drought Migrants Head to Cities
in
Desperate Search for Water.
Nobelist Randy Schekman says his lab
will
boycott the most prestigious journals to protest practices that
harm science.
One of those practices is the paywall, but he cites other harms as
well.
The effects of marijuana legalization
in
Colorado.
A new victory for those who
want
to pour lots of money into US election campaigns anonymously.
Aid
to the Eritrian tyranny in the hope that it will drive fewer
Eritrians into exile is fatuous.
How about providing aid to refugees from Eritria just outside the
borders of Eritria?
Do you want to think of Shakespeare as a
"content
provider"?
If not, please don't call anyone that. And please don't
call works or publications
"content".
If you are in solitary confinement, the thugs can do all sorts of
nasty (and prohibited) things to you and get away with it, because
they
can prevent you from telling anyone about it.
Thugs in the UK (and the US)
continue
to demonize large segments of society, and are ready to maim or
kill them given any excuse.
Pervasive surveillance inhibits masses of people: after Snowden showed
everyone how much the US tracks people's browsing, there was a
20%
decrease in visits to Wikipedia pages about topics relating to
terrorism. Evidently a large fraction of people are terrorized by
surveillance.
The rate of visits to those pages remain depressed three years later.
Netanyahu
rejected
a French plan for a peace conference in which other countries
would have tried to pressure Israel and Palestine to agree.
Netanyahu has no wish to make peace with Palestinians; his only use
for peace negotiations is as an
excuse
for continuing the occupation indefinitely.
Uri Avnery: Israel needs a new leftist/peace movement
of people that are
proudly
both Arab-lovers and Jew-lovers.
Global heating has already
increased
the rate of heat-related injuries, but we ain't seen nothin' yet.
UK thugs whose official job was to investigate "extremists" planning
violent crimes were in fact investigating dissidents,
including
Green Party politicians. A year ago they "promised" not to do
this any more, but they continued anyway.
A Green Party leader explains
why
they do this.
Protesters are
camped
outside a thug office in San Francisco to protest killings by the
thugs.
I don't think we should stretch the term "hunger strike" to include
taking sugar or vitamins. A hunger strike is so powerful precisely
because the striker goes to the utmost limit of nonviolence.
Why
So Many Iranians Have Come to Hate the Hijab.
That repression (freudian pun intended) is what the hijab really means
— its purpose. People have a right to wear them, but we should
not give the practice any respect.
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Thus, I think Jeff Wood should be freed and given compensation
for his time in prison.
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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.
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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).
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Please reform the law so that coal companies cannot sneak out of their
obligation to pay for cleaning up mines. There must be no way they
can arrange to spin off a subsidiary to go out of business and evade
the responsibility. They should not be allowed to do self-bonding;
they should have to buy insurance.
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