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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Everyone: urge the Chicago City Council to eliminate from the contract with the thug union the provisions that protect them from prosecution when they kill or brutalize people.
US citizens: phone your Democratic senators at 1-866-665-4470 and urge them to fight hard against the revised Dontcare bill that SCROTUS will propose in July.
Sekulow, the troll's lawyer, raised millions of dollars for his own relatives under the guise of "donations" to a Christian organization.
Dubya sent US special forces to 60 countries. Obama to 120 countries. Now the troll has extended that to 137 countries — about 2/3 of the countries in the world. They win battles, but they never win a war.
It seems the troll is looking for an excuse for war against Assad in Syria, and then against Iran.
I wouldn't put it past Assad to launch a chemical attack. But I have no reason to believe he will do so. The troll's assertion means nothing.
Calling on China to allow Liu Xiaobo to go home for treatment or to go get treatment outside China.
The US has never figured out how to get Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The troll plans to try an unsubtle approach.
Plastic debris in the ocean doesn't all stay in the ocean. It also washes up on the shore and endangers wildlife there.
A large fraction of the world's food shipping passes through a few "chokepoints" which are vulnerable to global heating.
A Catholic bishop in China has been disappeared.
Engineers present further arguments that World Trade Center 7 could not have collapsed as it did without inside help, and that the official investigation skipped over that part of the issue.
I don't have the expertise needed to reach any conclusion about this. I can't judge the arguments of the various sides. The only conclusion that I can reach is that we should have a full, complete and honest investigation of what caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse.
One thing we can be sure of is that the actual investigation was corrupt. One of the members quit and said so.
US citizens: phone Republican senators that might oppose the Dontcare bill.
US citizens: call on Congress to defend press freedom.
US citizens: Senate, reject torture designer Steve Bradbury.
Brazil's corrupt president has been formally charged with taking bribes.
The UK's National Health Service outsourced its mail handling, and guess what? Over 700,000 letters with medical information for patients went undelivered.
The Senate's version of the Dontcare bill would cut off medical coverage for a mere 22 million Americans instead of 23 million.
Some "smart" meters send information as often as once every minute. That's plenty for monitoring people in the home and what they do.
The troll as rendered the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board inactive by not appointing a quorum of members.
Theresa May's contempt for human rights laws gives aid and support to tyrants.
The Supreme Court permitted a part of the troll's partial ban on Muslims to take effect temporarily, but it will not make any final decision until October.
In the mean time, many court cases will be required to work out the precise boundaries of the temporary rule.
Around 400 buildings per year collapse in Egypt because they were built in a shoddy way, due to widespread corruption.
The FERC, as usual, made a biased decision to approve a pipeline.
Women in Afghanistan are treated so badly after a divorce (if they can get one) that they turn to suicide to escape from violent husbands. Some try to burn themselves to death.
Aisha is quoted as praying for death. Did she want treatment, or did doctors pressure her to accept it? If she really still wanted to die, compassion requires us to cooperate with that.
Smoke inhalation probably hurts a lot less than burns. A woman might be wiser to set the violent husband on fire, then inhale the smoke.
A UK court overturned a government order banning local governments from participating in divestment and sanctions against Israel.
The Koch brothers have cut off the pay of the Republican Party until they pass some sort of medical care sabotage.
Republicans would sell their own children to get their pay — and Americans' children too. They know voters will hate them for this, but they will think they've already given up public approval. They are now owned by their corrupt masters, and will have to bet that their masters' money (plus voter suppression) overcomes public memory.
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been nominally released from prison. This occurred a few years early because he is dying of cancer.
Prisons are known for denying prisoners needed medical care. Often by refusing to believe the problem is serious. US prisons do this, Australian prisons do this, and Chinese political prisons are probably even worse.
Activists say that China systematically (though deniably) limits political prisoners' medical care, hoping that prisoners will get sick and die.
They may not have knowingly refused to recognize Liu's cancer until it was too advanced to cure, but they shut their eyes just in case. Shall we call this Chinese Prison Roulette? It is a form of murder (though without actually breaking a law).
His supposed release from prison may be a sham. His hospital room may be a form of prison. Things the Chinese government says often have as little relationship to reality as things the troll says.
The US government ought to be a shining beacon of contrast to China's repression, but that is ever less the case.
Correlating the different systems that have been used to measure temperature in various parts of the oceans, and overcoming various biases, a study confirms that oceans have been getting hotter.
The residents of London housing project that burned down were concerned about the danger of fire, but the Tories had limited legal aid funds so that there was no way they could demand action.
A report assigning the Great Barrier Reef an economic value of 56
billion dollars
If the Dontcare bill kills people, will that be
murder?
When discussing whether something is or isn't murder, outside the
context of a legal accusation, to cite laws is to miss the point.
The word "murder" has multiple related meanings. In law, it is the
name of a crime, with a definition that varies between jurisdictions.
Courts, trying someone for murder, should follow these definitions.
The word also has an everyday meaning that is more basic than laws,
and is independent of the details of the laws of one place or another.
It means knowingly killing people in the absence of certain morally
valid justifications.
Unless "crushing the poor to give to the rich" is a morally valid
justification, the Dontcare bill's killings will be murder by the
ordinary meaning.
The UK is
demonizing
anyone that imports a sex doll with a childlike body shape.
It would be ludicrous to claim that some child was harmed by making
the doll, so they don't bother offering any justification for the
prohibition. The mere idea that these dolls are "sickening" is
supposed to justify making it a crime.
Here's an Idea:
Guarantee
Every Child an Excellent Education.
Half the coffee-producing land in Ethiopia
will
become unsuitable as a result of global heating.
Worst of all, the wild strains will die out. Their genetic resources
will be forever lost.
Progressives say that candidate Ossoff lost to a Republican, despite
millions in support from the Democratic Party, for the same reason
Clinton did:
failure
to stand for progressive change.
The progressive candidates for Congress lost too, but they got little
support from the Democratic Party — because they were
progressive.
Philando Castille made every effort to comply with the thug's orders
and assure safety. The thug's response — first incompetent,
then violent, then dishonest — turned it into
murder.
Video that was kept secret until after the trial shows this
clearly.
The thug's acquittal shows the bias of our legal system on behalf of
thugs. It bows down to them with more respect than we give ordinary
citizens. That respect enables them to get away with murder.
How can we change that? One way is by setting a visible example of
denying them the excessive respect they claim. That's why I call them
"thugs". It is not just a way to vent emotions. It is a way to teach
not to give them so much respect.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to preserve the Johnson Amendment: don't allow
churches to spend money on election campaigning.
A proposed US mandate for all cars to transmit information about
their movements would make it easy to
track
all cars' movements, all the time.
The article explains why we must fight each new proposed surveillance
system no matter how many others already exist.
A universal basic income, in today's economic conditions,
would
not replace state-funded medical care or support for the disabled.
In a hundred years, if we avoid global disaster and we end human
population growth, and if medicine advances so far that no treatment
is very expensive, that may change.
Meet
some
of the Americans SCROTUS are trying to kill.
A mosque in Berlin that aims to reform Islam will not close even
though its founder receives
thousands
of death threats.
Her relatives in Turkey fear they will be used as hostages, but she
courageously refuses to let that defeat her.
Corbyn inspires activists
in
Mexico.
Should You Be More Afraid of Carjackers — or the
Zippers
on Your Pants?
English "fishing villages" are
turning
into theme parks; there are few real fishermen, and the
tourist-oriented restaurants don't buy fish from them, so fishermen
cannot afford to live there anymore.
This is a world-wide pattern that every place that is interesting or
special becomes more and more like a theme park.
Mélenchon's party's small bloc in the French Assembly is
going
all out to oppose Macron's labor "reforms".
These "reforms" are intended, in France as elsewhere, to enable
business to pay workers less and send plutocrats more.
High rents and insufficient welfare benefits are projected to push
a
million British families out of their homes by 2020.
North Korea is not the only place where prisoners wind up in a
permanent coma. It happened this year
in
New Jersey.
North Korea says little about how Warmbier got
into a coma. New Jersey likewise says little.
North Korea should come clean, and New Jersey too.
The California single-payer medical system bill passed the California
Senate, but was
quashed
in the lower house by the speaker.
Previously I thought it had been passed by both houses and that it was
on the verge of becoming law. Sorry for the mistake.
In Yemen and Eritrea, forces of the United Arab Emirates torture
prisoners to
get
them ready for US agents to interrogate.
Then the US agents say, "We didn't see any torture."
People are becoming concerned about "smart" meters as a
surveillance
system.
I understood the idea of a "smart" meter to include allowing the
utility to query total energy usage at any time. That would allow
moment-to-moment monitoring.
If French "smart" meters report electric usage only once per day, they
are not much of a privacy threat with that limitation. The utility
could determine whether someone was home, perhaps estimate how many
people were home, but nothing more.
Are "smart" meters in other countries designed with that limitation?
The Republican Party is the
party
of ungovernment.
The troll
reportedly wants to
get rid of special investigator Robert Mueller, but that
would require a complicated procedure.
Remember when the troll "saved" jobs at Carrier by giving it a tax cut?
The were not saved for long: they are
being
offshored now.
A black thug, off duty, came to assist a white thug. The white thug
shot
him.
Apparently no black is safe around white thugs.
Protection of the Siberian tiger since the 1930s has enabled its
numbers to increase by 20 times. But the total is still
only
500.
A thug
killed
a teenager by shooting at a violent dog.
A biting dog is dangerous, but wouldn't a taser have done the job?
Why did they pull out guns first?
Google's blacklists give it tremendous power. It
can
cut off any website from being visited by nearly all internet
users.
A list of all the troll's lies
since
his inauguration.
US citizens:
tell
Senator Schumer to stop supporting pro-coal Senator Manchin with
pro-coal ads.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to handle infrastructure development the progressive
and useful way, rather than through privatization giveaways.
UNESCO says that local efforts can't save coral reefs;
curbing
global heating is the only way.
Senator Paul proposed a Senate rules change to require a pause before
voting on a bill, of
one
day for each 20 pages of the bill's length.
I think it is a good idea.
A thug was given "qualified immunity" by a US court even though it was
proved he
lied
about facts to try to convict an innocent man.
That decision was perverse. Tentatively disregarding some discrepant
facts is sometimes justified, but lying about them can never be
excused.
After a thug killed Philando Castile, prosecutors
got
his girlfriend's phone records to try to throw dirt on her for
criticizing the thug.
Despite President Temer's surprise veto, the Brazilian Amazon is
not
safe yet from loggers and miners.
Parents of badly disabled children have brought them to Congress to
show the staff what medical care those children need. The Dontcare
bill
would
cut it off.
Medical care,
Republican
style: give them less and make them think it's more.
Ireland is effectively
sneaking
in a national ID card.
The troll and his staff are
illegally
deleting their communications, which by law must be preserved.
If CREW wins its lawsuit, is there anything it can do to make the
troll and his staff follow the law?
Reportedly the CIA told Obama about a range of Russian attempts to
interfere with the 2016 election, and Obama
waited
for Republican cooperation in responding.
These reports come from intelligence organizations that have their own
antidemocratic agendas. The facts may not be 100% accurate. Recall
that Assange said that some DNC email leaks came from insiders, not
from Russian crackers. But let's assume they are broadly correct.
What then?
Obama, as usual, asked Republicans to cooperate. When they showed
their usual attitude, aiming to take control of the US by hook or by
crook, he didn't understand the idea of fighting back. He waited for
their cooperation until it was too late. What a sap!
Russian interference with the election was hostile to the US, but the
damage it did is far less than what the Republicans did on their own:
the
big gerrymander and
voter
suppression. That was also hostile to the US, and it still is.
That was also hostile to the US, and it still is.
"Clean coal" is now even more mythical, as an experimental
CO2-extracting power plant turns out to
have
to burn only natural gas.
A substantial part of the greenhouse gas emissions of using natural gas
come from
methane
leaks before the gas gets to a power plant.
Mexican journalists were
spied
on through their portable phones, which were turned into listening
devices (as commonly occurs).
There is no proof of who did this, but the obvious suspect is the
Mexican state.
2C of global heating will spread deserts around the Mediterranean.
The beginning of this is
already
visible. Other parts of the world face other broad disasters that
are already starting.
Tall buildings for public housing don't have to be dangerous. It is
plutocracy
and its child, dooH niboR, that make them dangerous.
Everyone:
call on UNESCO to protect world heritage sites
by pressure against locating coal mines near them.
A private blacklist database,
accumulated from complaints that are hardly
verified at all, causes activists to be denied jobs and bank services.
The troll wants to increase US military spending by 10%, by
gutting activities that Americans depend on.
Since the US spends as much on the military as the eight other most powerful
armies together, it could do with transferring a lot of this spending
to activities that are really useful.
Sessions wants America to forget
about the Tuskegee syphilis study,
in which blacks were left to suffer untreated syphilis even after we
had a cure.
Protester
Ken Ward was sentenced to two days in jail
for turning a value to shut down a tar oil pipeline.
Missouri is moving a bill to allow employers to
fire women for using birth control.
Women could also be evicted for using birth control or for not using
birth control (i.e., getting pregnant).
The bill also hampers abortion with pointless harassment requirements.
Women will have to lie to employers and landlords about their birth control
and abortion practices.
Elsevier reaffirmed the injustice of today's copyright law
by winning a lawsuit against the article-sharing site Sci-Hub.
But it can't collect the 15 million dollars, since the site's operator
isn't operating for a profit, and it can't shut the site down.
Please be careful not to use the term "pirate" to describe sharing.
It requires special attention to avoid following someone else's example,
such as after reading an article like that one.
Banning VPNs is dangerous,
in Russia or anywhere else.
The Senate's Dontcare bill opens a sneaky method for insurance companies
to
gouge Americans with preexisting medical conditions.
The troll is pushing to increase surveillance of the US and everyone
in it,
for the sake of deportation.
Chinese censorship descends openly on Hong Kong:
signs criticizing
China's repression or its repressive ruler have been banned from his
parade route.
Dark Money Turns Elections Into Trench Warfare.
When the Theater of Security Agency makes travelers remove papers from their
bags, that will lead naturally to
unofficial censorship of reading material.
Italy has a fairly efficient system of
monitoring and discouraging
potential ideological terrorists.
Killing People For Tax Cuts
(for the rich only).
The West must respect the nuclear deal with Iran,
or that deal may
fall apart.
In particular, this means no more military provocations.
Turkey has surrendered to ignorance as well as tyranny:
schools will no longer teach evolution.
China is turning Xinjiang into a totalitarian system of repression.
This is presented as a scheme to crush Islamist terrorism (and Uygur
separatism, which is not the same thing). But this sort of repression
is much worse than terrorism.
Americans, take this as a lesson of what the US will be like
if we don't stop it.
The heat wave is
causing physical injury to homeless people
in Arizona.
A century from now, with higher temperatures everywhere, such injury
could cover large parts of the US. In some places, heat waves
could be
fatal to all humans not protected by air conditioning or
underground shelters.
Ralph Nader:
[plutocrats are] Closing Democracy's Doors Until the
People Open Them.
House Logging Bill (HR 2936) Guts Federal Environmental Laws,
Literally
Privatizes Public Lands, Creates Logging Free-for-All.
Senators
Drafting Secret Health Care Bill
Backed by Insurance and Pharma
Campaign Money.
The US should
do an "autopsy" on a specific retired nuclear power
plant,
to see what flaws the other similar plants may have.
US citizens:
call for justice for Charleena Lyles,
killed by thugs after
she called for help.
Almost half the accounts
tweeting in Russian about politics are
pro-Putin bots.
The US is drifting towards
war with Iran,
encouraged by the troll.
Some survivors from the apartment building fire in London are afraid to go
to the hosptal
because they fear they will be deported.
Saboteur Pruitt of the EPA has
fired most of the real scientists
from its
scientific advisory committees, and made them inactive.
The Department of Homeland Subjugation has
illegally started submitting US citizens to face recognition
as they board some international flights.
US citizens:
phone your senators
to oppose the Dontcare bill.
It is useful to urge them to delay the vote until after the July 4
recess. More time, more public scrutiny of the bill, will improve
our chances of blocking it.
The Senate's Dontcare bill is basically
just like the one passed by the House of Representatives.
Its cuts to Medicaid start slower but eventually go deeper.
Hong Kong's non-democratically elected chief says that China can arrest
or kidnap publishers whenever it likes.
It's fine with her.
Some of Clinton's fund raising leaders are
now lobbying for oppressive Republican policy proposals,
such as abolishing network neutrality.
Given Clinton's pro-business (plutocratist) leanings, this doesn't
surprise me. When I was young, we had a name for politicians like
Clinton: "Republicans".
Natural gas is not a safe replacement for coal — to avoid global
disaster, we will have to
cut its use fast.
Instead of investing in use of natural gas, we should invest in
renewable energy.
Just as the apartment house fire occurred, the UK was studying a plan
to "get rid of red tape" by
eliminating the fire-safety regulations
about materials to use in construction.
In the UK, fire is potentially a far bigger danger than terrorists.
It is not a bigger danger in practice today, simply because
regulations have done a pretty good job of preventing fires.
Guardian: Germany to Quash Convictions of 50,000 Gay Men under Nazi-Era Law.
A nuclear power plant operator is squeezing various states for
billions of dollars to
keep some nuclear plants operating.
If we spent the money on batteries to store solar power, we would be investing
it in a better future.
The main business of Amway is not getting people to resell real
products to their friends. It is
getting people to pay high prices for seminars,
that will supposedly teach them to be a success in
reselling products to their friends, but really just say how to push
their friends to pay for seminars.
It sounds like EST and its descendants.
A high school valedictorian's speech was terminated by cutting off the
microphone when
he criticized in a general way
some of the school's personnel.
He said the opposite of what he meant to say, by using the wrong word
"authoritative" when he should have said "authoritarian". However,
everyone understood the intended meaning.
What shocks me most is the comments that rebuke him
for his mild criticism of the school authorities.
Is this a sample of the authoritarian follower personality?
The troll's plan to deal with the unpayable high prices drug companies
charge for medicines is to
let them do whatever they like.
Norway will
eliminate
its foreign aid to Brazil if Brazil does not stop deforestation.
That was on Friday. Perhaps that's why President Temer
decided
to let a model convince him not to sign the bill that would allow
a lot more deforestation.
The copyright industry
want
to use the renegotiation of NAFTA to increase copyright oppression
in Canada, Mexico and the US.
You can tell they are up to no good by their use of the
confusion-spreading term
"intellectual
property".
The Pentagon
keeps
its eyes firmly shut in regard to civilian casualties from its
bombings, then reports that it has seen no evidence of any.
Lessons
of 2016 for U.S. Election Security.
Given the resistance that Jill Stein encountered when trying to get
recounts in the 2016 election, we can't trust computerized optical
ballot counters in the US.
The troll admits that his talk of taping conversations with Comey was
a
lie for intimidation's sake.
Too bad. Those tapes could have inculpated him.
The beginning of the end for PISSI's territory in Syria and Iraq has
unleashed a
conflict
between the US, Russia, Iran, and their various local clients over the
spoils.
I would guess that the US participation in Salafi Arabia's
bombardment of Yemen, and the provocations between Salafi Arabia +
supports and Iran + supporters, are part of this.
I feel no sympathy for any of the groups of plutocrats that want to
fight about this. It is not worth a war.
Seattle's law that raises the minimum wage has
not
led to reduced employment.
The carbon tax measure supported by polluters
disguises
a plan to eliminate their liability for all the damage they have
done.
The US and Russia
continue
military provocations.
The thug that
killed
helpless Sylville Smith was acquitted.
There was no need to shoot Smith again, since he had thrown away his
gun. But since he had been a real threat less than 2 seconds before,
perhaps the verdict was justified.
The world's human population is
predicted
to reach 8 billion, just 6 years from now.
It is a good thing that one billion of those people will be over 60
years old, thus too old to reproduce further, but that by itself won't
end the population increase. With population increase squeezing from
one side, and global heating effects from the other, humanity and the
natural world are both likely to be crushed.
How foolish of the article to refer to decline of population as if it
were a problem.
When Palestinians attack Israeli occupation forces,
that
is not "terrorism". Terrorism means making war on civilians.
We must
change the US law that protects killer thugs
as long as they
say they thought the victim was a threat to them.
Even
absurd reasons for feeling threatened are accepted
when they come from a thug.
As long as the law remains this way, uniformed thugs will be able to
murder blacks with impunity.
And
injure protesters
with impunity, too.
Republicans make it standard practice to undermine civil government
and honesty in order to get their way. They have been doing this for
decades, and it
gets worse over time.
A few notes are required:
• I won't take US intelligence's word that the email leaks of the
Democratic National Committee were arranged by Russia — though that
may have happened.
Whoever was behind those leaks, what matters most
is that they served the public by demonstrating how the DNC had
sabotaged Sanders' campaign in favor of Clinton.
• It should be noticed that most Montana voters had already voted
when
Gianforte attacked reporter Ben Jacobs.
Also,
Gianforte apologized
and pled guilty.
However, other Republicans alluded to the attack by
inciting more violence.
• ALEC does not "bypass" state legislatures. Rather, it helps
corporations organize legislators and sometimes to buy their votes.
• Republicans recently banned using the term "climate change",
but 15 years ago they told government employees to say "climate change"
instead of the clearer and more concrete
"global warming".
Guardian: Over 170 Years After Engels, Britain is Still a Country That
Murders Its Poor.
The troll has said nothing about the terrorist attack on Muslim in
London,
tacitly expressing his acceptance
of random violence against them.
Don't think of war as
a remedy for the death
of Otto Warmbier. War would be much worse.
It is clear that the North Koreans did not kill him intentionally. If
they had done that, it would not have looked like this.
We don't know why he died,
and — most strangely — his family has
forbidden an autopsy.
Exxon and several other large companies endorsed a carbon emissions tax, but
in exchange they
demand abolition of other policies
designed to reduce
CO2 emissions.
Whether the tax would do a better job depends on whether the tax is
big enough. I have no way of judging that question.
Brazil's corrupt president Temer decided to veto a bill to unprotect a
2300 square miles of the Amazon rain forest, after
an appeal from a supermodel.
New corruption evidence
against Brazil's President Temer offers once again a possibility he
could be removed from his ill-gotten office.
The survivors of the London fire feared having their
welfare benefits cut
for missing their jobcenter appointments.
That's not an unreasonable fear after the absurd excuses Tories have used
to punish people. Indeed, it occurs to me that perhaps the Tories
would have punished them for missing their appointments, if not for the
publicity that the fire has drawn.
The US is shooting down drones that are
flying over Syria,
presumably by Assad's forces or their allies.
The drone's approach did not mean it was about to attack, so the US
attack was preemptive — begging for a war which could still be
avoided.
Where the Amazon rain forest still exists, loggers are degrading it
by cutting down trees that are
hidden by the upper canopy.
Rating
the world's big banks about how much they finance fossil fuel
projects.
Scientists have taken a core sample from a glacier in Bolivia that is
expected
to disappear entirely due to global heating.
Technology combined with neoliberalism adds up to replacing all public
services with
massive
surveillance systems that work for dooH niboR.
We must defend the public services, to reduce inequality and in some
cases to defend our privacy.
Some refrigerators and some TVs
use
a lot more energy in real life than their energy ratings claim
they use.
Be suspicious of Samsung and LG.
The Kellers, convicted in 1992 of supposed satanic murders and child
abuse, have been
declared
innocent — these crimes never happened at all.
The US State Department, run by Tillerson,
condemned
Salafi Arabia for its blockade of Qatar.
This comes after the Pentagon, run by the troll's appointee Mattis,
agreed to sell fighter planes to Qatar.
Either some executive branch agencies are simply disregarding what the
troll wants, or the troll's statements in favor of Salafi Arabia were
lies.
That the troll would lie to us is in no way surprising.
Lying to the Salafi Arabian monarchy is another matter. They are
disgusting by our standards, but they are not fools that beg to be
lied to.
A
series
of Chinese billionaires have been secretly arrested. One of them
either jumped or was pushed out a 12th floor window.
I don't have a basis to judge whether these arrests were justice or
injustice. Anyone that rich is likely to have done something very
nasty, whether or not it is illegal, and in China I would guess that
corruption played a part. There may be good reasons to investigate or
prosecute those billionaires.
By the same token, I would expect China to be so corrupt that the
state would never bother billionaires unless they start becoming
dissidents.
The latest White House "press briefing"
banned
reporters from recording anything.
Since what they say is pure bullshit, let's not be distracted by them.
Many US states exclude ex-prisoners from many kinds of jobs. This has
the measurable result of
forcing
them to go back to crime.
The air inside airplanes is contaminated with toxins, and a
substantial
fraction of flight crew have illnesses that might relate to this
pollution.
In the US:
participate in a
Resistance Summer Community Cookout.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-334-5514 and say they should
not have
imperiled the nuclear deal
with Iran by voting for more sanctions.
This applies to all senators except the two, Bernie Sanders and
Rand Paul, that voted against the sanctions.
For more info:
http://act.moveon.org/go/10694
Otto Warmbier has
died
from the injuries he sustained in prison in North Korea.
The troll is against torture when it's done by North Koreans, but
in
favor of torture by US government agents.
A special coat for homeless people
converts into a
sleeping bag.
Republican fanatics, given leave by the troll and other officials,
have
directed
death threats at many US theaters.
The Republican Party is the Party of the Lie. Republican activists
are proud of "creatively"
spreading
deception.
The iman of Finsbury Park mosque helped to catch and then protect the
terrorist murder suspect. As a result, the murderer will stand trial.
The iman also
calmed
down the crowd.
The Dupes of PISSI: they
attack
Muslims and thus help PISSI radicalize a few of them.
A study of nine countries found that
propagandists
were successfully manipulating Twitter and Facebook to spread
propaganda.
Iran and Salafi Arabia are
at
the brink of war.
I distrust both of them, and I won't presume that either one has
honestly reported its claims against the other.
US citizens:
call
on Senate democrats to do all they can to block the progress of
the Dontcare bill.
To do this all the time would be sabotage, and wrong. As a response
to the sabotage manner that Republicans are using to push the Dontcare
bill through fast without scrutiny, using this approach for a few
weeks is justified. Once people have a chance to confront them on
what the bill says, and what it would do, the Democrats could go back
to usual practices.
1/3
of the human population faces deadly heatwaves. By 2100 it will
be half, or more.
The UK describes
bigotry
against Muslims as "extremism" and called an attack on British
Muslims with a van "terrorism".
By joining together to condemn all the flavors of violent hatred,
we can stop them.
But do remember that hatred for the poor — manifested in Tory
and Republican policies — is far more deadly in the west than
all the terrorists put together.
The corporate mainstream media are
working
hard to disparage Bernie Sanders.
This attack by big business (through its media) shows they think
Sanders will really try to protect us from them. Sanders for
President!
It was
wrong
to convict a person for killing someone by means of repeatedly urging
the person to commit suicide.
For decades, rural Americans have been getting screwed
much
like poor Americans in cities. Towns are dying, and everyone has
to drive a long way to find groceries, gasoline, clothing, or any sort
of job.
They already blame corporations, and business-subservient government.
Many voted for the troll but don't expect him to do them any real
good. I see a great opportunity here for progressives that can
propose realistic solutions.
The loss of most of these towns may be inevitable; the economic reason
for them has disappeared. However, the secondary suffering might be
reduced greatly by feasible policies. I can think of two right now:
(1) funding schools from the state budget rather than local property
taxes, and (2) helping people move closer to the remaining towns.
South Korea's new president
plans
to get rid of nuclear power and coal power, though not in a hurry.
When workers aren't replaced by robots, they are often
run
like robots.
Cockroaches have been turned effectively into robots with
brain
implants that make them go one way or another. The difference
between that and what is done to workers today is substantial but it
may not alter the injustice much.
The article is mistaken in saying that the state can't legislate
against this. Use your imagination!
Will the troll allow neocons to launch
the
war with Iran that they have wanted for many years?
North Korea accused US agents of
stealing
a diplomatic package from North Korean representatives to the UN.
You don't have to admire North Korea to see that such behavior attacks
the UN and international peace.
DeVos wants to make civil rights protections for students inoperative
by
cutting
the funds for enforcing them.
One part of this change, that concerning "sexual assault" accusations,
might be an advance — it seems that school procedures
deny
the accused the legal rights that anyone accused of a crime is
entitled to.
The rest is entirely bad.
In the US:
tell Kroger to stop
food grown with neonicotinoids.
The troll's saboteurs are working with Big Pharma on
a plan to deal with high drug prices
— but the measures they are discussing would not help.
A Republican has called for Democrats to be arrested and
the Democratic Party to be banned.
Sessions is unfit for the office of Attorney General
because of his failing memory.
David Brin argues that impeaching the troll would be a tactical
mistake, because
it would enrage his base,
and Pence would be just as bad.
He has valid points, but I see one on the other side. The troll's
bullshit seems to be necessary to keep some of his base from waking up
to the truth. I don't think Pence could do that the way the troll does.
Also, Pence may avoid doing some bad things out of stupidity or wild idiocy.
Some UK stores now "randomly" search people leaving. Of course, it
isn't really random — it is
based on their ethnicity and how they look.
Right-wing US quilters
organized secretly to try to harm
the careers
of progressive quilting artists.
Some "nonprofit" charter schools are effectively business owned by
their founders, and their founders
get paid lots of money
in direct and indirect ways.
The Kensington and Chelsea council squashed its poor residents so hard
last year that
it had a surplus
— which it divided among the wealthy residents. This is not
unrelated to the fatal fire.
The author of the article donated per rebate to charity, feeling it
was blood money.
Greece blocked the EU from
condemning China's human rights violations.
I agree this is a dishonorable vote, but Greece had to bow to China
because of the EU terrible wrong the EU did to Greece.
In the US:
join
a rally in favor of Planned Parenthood on June 21.
More events:
https://resistancenearme.org
Also, keep phoning your senators to oppose the Dontcare bill,
even if you phoned before.
Women plan to hold
sit-in
protests in Republican senators' offices.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the CARERs Act, which would stop federal
prosecution for marijuana-related activities that are legal at state
level.
US citizens:
Free
Fate Vincent Winslow — sentenced to life in prison for
agreeing to carry $20 of marijuana from a seller to a buyer.
US citizens:
call on
more representatives and senators to join those suing the troll
about his unconstitutional foreign income.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban former members of Congress from becoming
lobbyists.
One concrete example
is concrete proof that the Dontcare bill would
destroy Americans.
As the ACLU encourages cities to limit thugs' snooping equipment,
only thugs are opposed.
New "dockless" bike rental schemes admit that they
track the user's movements
all the time with GPS.
These schemes would work even better, and without spying on people, if
the bikes allowed anonymous use limited to a certain area.
The Supreme Court and other courts have given US thugs
unchecked power to mistreat anyone,
effectively at will.
A new US law redirects NOAA's funding
towards weather forecasting.
Since it doesn't give NOAA more money, this money has been taken
away from something. What, I wonder? Could it be climate science,
perhaps? Is the idea to make good 2-month and 2-year forecasts,
at the expense of the 20-year and 40-year forecasts our civilization
will live or die by?
Privatization of UK woodlands is
happening by the backdoor.
Might this be Tories at work?
Surveillance by internet businesses is dangerous and the
chilling effect applies to most of what people do.
It is misleading, however, to treat commercial surveillance and state
surveillance as seriously distinct. Under the PAT RIOT Act, the
databases companies accumulate are immediately and totally accessible
to the US government. I consider the companies to be data collectors
for the corporatist state.
Resistance against the troll is mounting and has
thwarted most of what he wants do.
This is not complete success, however. Resistance has not thwarted
putting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court,
nor the
deregulatory sabotage
of
many agencies.
Pulling out from the Paris climate agreement
is purely symbolic, but the troll has already canceled
the measures that the US was using to
carry out its inadequate pledges.
I am not confident we can stop the
Republican election-rigging
that
enabled the troll to "win" the election.
Sheriff Clarke has
decided not to accept a post
in the Department of Homeland Suppression.
Here's why he aroused so much opposition.
I speculate that public pressure and investigation had something
to do with his decision.
The big fire was the crowning event of a long history of contempt for
poor people
by the Tory-run local council of Kensington.
And, behind them, Tory
deregulationism and unwillingness to redistribute wealth
to the poor.
PISSI has
captured territory in Afghanistan near Tora Bora.
Maybe the US should make an informal alliance ally with the Taliban
to keep PISSI out.
Techdirt: Australia's Attorney General Says The Public Will Be
Cool with Encryption Backdoors
Because They Use Facebook.
The argument is fallacious, but it might appear rational to someone
who squints at it hard enough. You can pull the rug out from under
this fallacy by getting off Facebook.
You ought to do it anyway!
US customs seized lockable travel bags,
calling them "drug paraphernalia".
Some US stores demand customers show a photo ID to return merchandise.
This is not just to know who the customers are. The stores scan the
ID, and all the data goes into the
database of Retail Equation.
This is an unjust surveillance system. While it is less than the surveillance
of an online retailer, it is still too much. Before you buy anything you might
want to return, verify that the store does not use Retail Equation, at least
if you have the receipt. (You can keep the receipt.)
Republican senators are
totally
at a loss when asked what benefits the Dontcare bill is supposed
to give the US.
Women
dressed
as fictional handmaids are protesting against abortion rights and
medical care for women.
Sweden's largest pension fund has
decided
to divest completely from six important fossil fuel companies,
including Exxon and the pipeline company TransCanada.
The Dontcare bill could cause
27
million Americans who get medical coverage from their employers to
lose it, or find that it covers less.
The Espionage Act
needs
to be reformed so it can't be used against reporters. Sessions is
itching to try.
A proper reform ought to protect whistleblowers, too.
Another dangerous merger:
Amazon
and Whole Paycheck.
Simply making companies so large gives them more lobbying power and
more power to defy enforcement of regulations and laws.
ACLU: The US Intelligence Community
Can
Share Your Personal Information With Other Governments, and We're
Demanding Answers.
Several US states
plan
to make it impossible for the public to get thugs' body camera
videos.
Access to the images should be limited somewhat, so that neither the
public nor the state can see it unless there is a specific
justification. But when the justification is good enough for the
state to look, it is good enough for the public to look.
A new Japanese "anti-terror" law would
treat
sit-in strikes as "terrorism" and make it easy to snoop on
dissidents.
Such laws are far more dangerous than terrorism itself.
The thug that killed Philando Castile was
acquitted.
Unconscious racism leads many thugs to immediately suppose their lives
are in danger, when confronting a black man is armed, even if he acts
in the most calm and reasonable way. As long as juries accept that
irrational and unjustified fear as a get-out-of-jail-free card, thugs
will get away with unjustified killings. To put an end to this reign
of terror, we have to change the system. Where can we change it?
Polls show that Americans
mostly
support positions that are typically called progressive.
Democrats that call themselves "centrist" are actually moderately
right-wing. Only progressive candidates represent Americans.
The European Parliament is
on
the verge of either protecting digital privacy to some extent or
destroying it completely.
The US had a program to try to discourage recruiting by violent
white-supremacists and Islamists. The troll has canceled it and
plans to redirect it only against Islamists.
The troll and his supporters openly support right-wing violence; naturally
they don't want this program to get in the way.
A Republican senator ordered journalists to get permission from
one specific Republican staffer
for interviewing any senator in the halls of the senate.
I suspect that the staffer will give permission to interview
Republican senators, not Democrat senators.
Republicans condemned a production of Julius Caesar in which Caesar
looked like the troll,
misconstruing it as advocacy of assassination
(which is not what the play says).
For Republicans, the truth is unimportant since they they lie with
impunity and no shame.
U.S. has only acknowledged a fifth of lethal drone strikes,
a new study finds.
US border thugs followed border-crossers to a well-known camp
that provides medical care and water,
in order to arrest them there.
The camp has been rendered unsafe; border-crossers will die as a
result.
The fire that engulfed a tall building full of poor people shows
clearly how the various cruelties of neoliberalism
came together fatally.
Dare to rebuke the Tories with words that do justice to their nature.
Dare to believe that you can change the rules that keep the plutocrats
on top. I suggest that protesters dare to chant, "Lower than vermin!"
A US appeals court
blocked the FCC's efforts
to stop prison phone companies
from gouging on prisoners' phone calls.
The EU will
move to regulate Bisphenol A
to reduce people's exposure to it.
The Tories
drastically cut the funds
for fire safety inspection of
buildings.
Houston is hit often by big floods, and
global heating will make it worse.
A bipartisan bill could stop US cities from
using tax-free bonds to finance stadiums.
This would tend to interfere with the harmful practice of subsidizing
stadiums, which overall hurts the public around the world.
Gas drilling near the Frisian coast
may cause sand banks needed by migratory birds to sink out of
existence.
US prosecutors are
trying to recover 1.7 billion dollars
stolen from the Malaysian state's funds by its prime minister.
The apartment building fire has made many people homeless in London,
adding to thousands already homeless. To house them,
seize the empty apartments that were bought as investments.
In Rhode Island, some schools think they have
the right to spy on
students
with school laptops.
Let's not forget to mention that other companies,
including Google,
also think they have the right to spy on students.
The troll is making US "aid" to countries in Latin America
increasingly military and increasingly secret.
People convicted of drunk driving are being ordered to install additional
proprietary software in their computers (mobile phones): specifically,
the nonfree apps for Uber and Lyft.
The one for Uber
spies on the user.
I wonder what the judge would do when the defendant has no mobile
phone. I fear this judge might order the person to carry a mobile
phone. Mobile phones' movements and usage
can be tracked and monitored
by absolutely anyone, so being required to carry one is a big
injustice.
There are occasions when it is legitimate for a court to require
someone to wear a tracker, but such an order should always be explicit,
not camouflaged behind "always have a mobile phone."
A British arms and surveillance company
secretly sold massive surveillance gear to Salafi Arabia
and some other repressive countries.
The IMF backed down and let the Euro-banksters impose terms on Greece
with little or no debt relief.
For Greece's creditors there will be an additional bailout. For
Greece, there will be increased cruelty, lasting at least 5 years,
together with even more debt that will be as impossible to pay as the
existing debt.
Maybe Greece should start printing its own 100-euro bills.
That would be a more effective defense.
Gene Simmons filed an application for a
trademark on the "rock hand" gesture.
Israel's legal trap for the Palestinians of Al-Amniyr: to keep their
land they need water, but Israel
destroys
their cisterns and water pipes.
12 of Erdoğan's bodyguards
face
arrest for their violence in Washington, DC.
The use of flammable insulation materials has
created
a danger of big fires in apartment buildings.
We had better make sure insulation is not flammable.
In Chicago, arbitrary confiscation by thugs
tends
to hit low-income neighborhoods most.
A court has
blocked
operation of the Dakota Access pipeline, saying that the study of
the effects of a potential oil spill was inadequate.
Of course it was inadequate. That's how the machine works: when
wealthy interests want a project done, public agencies tend to try to
cover up the harm it will so, by making shoddy reports that close
their eyes to the unpleasant truth.
Tropical waters are losing their fish populations, as they become
too
hot for most of the fish species that live there.
Republican officials work with petroleum interests to fill
schoolchildren's minds with petroleum. They have been doing this for
decades, with the help of ignorant teachers that love to get any
"educational"
videos.
The children being mistaught today are very likely to die prematurely
from the consequences of global heating, which seem headed to include
disease,
famine, and war. If that happens, the disinformation campaign
described here will be partly responsible for killing them.
After the troll was criticized for a couple of ineffective military
actions that he ordered, now he has
told
the generals to do whatever they wish.
The troll is sending 4000 more troops to Afghanistan, supposedly
to train the Afghan army better.
I expect that they will participate in the fighting, too.
This added support might push the Taliban back, but that effect will
be only temporary.
To defeat the Taliban, better training for the Afghan army is not
enough. Better artillery or air support is not enough. What's needed
is better morale in the Afghan army, and really caring about victory.
The corrupt Afghan government is
not likely ever to inspire such loyalty.
The Republican definition of "freedom"
is "Free to buy any product —
if you have money. And if you're destitute, you're free to live on
the street, starve, and die if you get sick."
The Republican party serves the rich, and that's what the rich want
everyone else's life to be like.
Wall-Street Democrat Cuomo, the governor of New York, wants to
privatize Penn Station.
Privatizing anything tends to result in bad service for the users and bad wages
for the workers, but some rich cronies will profit.
Democratic politicians are more hawkish than the voters that support
them. Democrats should start pushing for
diplomacy instead of war.
Macron pledges
to cut 120,000 public jobs, reduce spending by 60
billion Euros, jettison the 35-hour workweek, raise the retirement
age, weaken unions’ negotiating strength, and cut corporate taxes.
All the standard neoliberal "trickle-down" policies that really
represent dooH niboR.
This will lead to more unemployment and more inequality in France.
The rich will get richer, but nothing will trickle down to the poor.
Youth unemployment, the lack of a future to hope for, tends to be
concentrated in minority groups. In France that means Muslims.
That's the exact opposite of what is needed to discourage Islamist
radicalization.
Let's hope it is Mélanchon rather than Le Pen that gets the support
of the victims in the next French election.
Telegram is cooperating with Iran on censorship
of certain topics
including "anti-religious" material. Maybe stallman.org.
Isn't Telegram supposed to offer end-to-end encryption? If that works, how can it tell whether messages are anti-religious? How can it tell whether they are pornography?
The answer:
Telegram does not offer end-to-end encryption unless you use secret chats. A lot of people do not use secret chats and so the company can read their messages.
Business wants to
expand fracking in the US,
and export the gas in ships to Europe, to make plastic.
This is so wasteful it is crazy.
The oil that is made into plastic is not burnt; it doesn't turn into
greenhouse gases. But fracking leaks methane, so it adds to the
greenhouse effect.
Since plastic gets into the ocean and kills sea life, we need to make
less of it. A higher price would have that effect.
The UK made a political decision not to prosecute a thug that
shot an unarmed man dead.
The government admitted its decision was made to avoid disapproval by
other armed thugs. If that is accepted as a reason not to prosecute,
it will give thugs carte blanche to kill.
Everyone:
call on the new president of South Korea
to start
negotiations with North Korea about nuclear disarmament and peace.
Naomi Klein warns that Republicans will now try to
equate all opposition activities,
such as protest and resistance, with murder.
US citizens: call on Senator Richard Burr to
stop interrupting Senator Kamala Harris.
Saboteur of Education DeVos
sabotaged the new rules
to protect students
from for-profit colleges.
Not surprising that the troll wanted this, since he owned such a
school. He
settled with the students who were suing him
for cheating them.
The "education" offered by such colleges
is often lousy and useless
for any career.
The saboteurs of land management arbitrarily
delayed the new limits on methane emissions
from oil and gas wells.
The troll's saboteurs are doing permanent damage to the US and the
ecosphere by
selling more fracking leases.
This sort of sabotage is very hard to undo.
WIPO is still trying to set up a super-copyright
covering any group's cultural traditions.
Culture is for appropriating. The injustice is that companies such as
Disney can for such a long time stop people from appropriating
commercially generated important parts of world culture.
The Democratic Party can only win if it becomes Liberal again
instead of following the phony "center".
This requires defending the word "Liberal" instead of attacking it.
That is why I refuse to call plutocratist politicians such as Clinton
"Liberal", and why I disagree when people attack "Liberals" (which
includes me) based on what right-wing Democrats do.
Those who argue that firing Comey wasn't obstruction of justice
are
focusing on minor details
and then stretching their significance.
Republicans want to allow banks to
gamble with our money,
dump the
losses on us, provoke new global financial crises, lay traps with
mortgages, commit fraudulent foreclosures again, and disguise their
racial bias.
In Denmark, riding a bike to school alone is not merely permitted,
it's
an explicit goal of urban planning.
The troll regime is now
deporting authorized immigrants,
Christians from Iraq, back to Iraq where they face almost certain death.
Governor Snyder
evaded possible prosecution for Flint's poisoned water
by refusing to talk to investigators.
Forensic psychological profiling is unscientific, and useless for
finding criminals,
according to psychologists
who have studied the practice.
American student Otto Warmbier visited North Korea and was imprisoned
for some meaningless "crimes". Recently he was allowed to return to
the US, and it was discovered that
he has been in a coma for a year.
I am no neurologist, but I get the impression it is unlikely he
will ever be conscious again.
Were you thinking of visiting North Korea? I am curious about it,
but I won't take the foolish risk of going there. I can learn about the
place from what others write, and I recommend you do the same.
This sort of treatment is not limited to North Korea. US prisons have
practices that systematically
deny prisoners needed medical care,
such as saying it is too dangerous/inconvenient/whatever to let
them see a doctor, refusing to believe they are sick, or insisting
they have only minor ailments rather than cancer until it is too late.
But they don't go as far as covering up for a year that a prisoner is
permanently unconscious.
The US mainstream media are trying to convince Americans to
regard Corbyn as unclean and suspect.
They don't want is influence to help Sanders.
A decades-long right-wing campaign has produced a
perverse variant of Christianity
that cites the bible to argue for contempt for the poor.
The European Court of Justice gave a
victory to the copyright industry
by equating torrent trackers with actual redistribution of copies.
The result might be to enforce blocking of torrent sites. That would
be very unfortunate for people in Europe.
Aside from sharing copies between people, the only form of
distribution of movies today that is not oppressive is by sale or
rental of DVDs. That is just barely not oppressive, because there is free
software that can play a DVD.
Some parts of
the US just got a taste of very hot weather
that will be
common a few decades from now.
The troll's planned EPA cuts will
hit America's most vulnerable.
Millenials were taught to take initiative and not trust their
employers.
Naturally, they keep leaking.
The US will sell fighter jets to Qatar, after the troll
just endorsed the Salafi Arabian blockade of Qatar.
The Republicans, led by the troll, have
encouraged political violence
against Democrats since almost a year ago.
One suggested using guns to do it.
They are also repeatedly
violent against reporters,
too.
Today someone who opposes the Republicans shot at some SCROTUS, and
some Republicans have
the gall to claim Democrats fomented this.
It's clear what must have happened, though. The shooter loathed
Republican policies, and had violent tendencies; after seeing plenty
of right-wing violence and Republican incitement, he turned it around
at them.
If Republican leaders have human decency, they will learn the lesson
to stop inciting political violence.
Gianforte's humble apology
set an example that others can follow.
I don't expect many will do this, because it would require a complete
reversal of attitude.
Republicans have rejected the Golden Rule, dehumanized everyone else,
and set out to take and hold power no matter what damage it does to
America and Americans. Probing how far they can go in violence is
just one part of that.
Everyone: call on the Golden State Warriors sports team
to refuse to visit the troll
at the White House.
But they shouldn't simply stay away. They should hold a protest
across the street!
US citizens:
sign this petition
calling on Senate Republicans to show us their revised Dontcare bill.
Everyone: call for
full pursuit of justice
against the thugs involved in killing Jordan Edwards.
In the UK, officials often tell homeless immigrants their children can
have housing
if the parents give them up.
When the same officials are confronted about this, they deny it, but
it's clear they are lying.
Many of these immigrants can get permission to live in the UK, after a
lengthy process during which they have to
starve on the street.
This is the standard Tory pattern of
kicking weak people while they are down:
rather than make a careful decision, seize any excuse to be
harsh, and
inflict cruel punishment.
US citizens:
phone your senators
to object to the Republicans' secret Dontcare bill.
Guns are dangerous,
to the people that carry them and to others who
are near them.
Considerable fractions of the troll's supporters are
having doubts about him.
If this continues, it will encourage SCROTUS to protect him less.
Every Democrat should
support Medicare for all.
US citizens: Call on all US elected officials to
defend press freedom.
New York rushes to enact terrible
right of publicity law.
Australia will pay any amount of money to cover up its
cruel treatment of boat people.
Deporting foreigners before they have a chance to appeal
has been ruled illegal in the UK.
Michigan officials have been charged with involuntary manslaughter
for poisoning the water in Flint.
I suspect Governor Snyder was equally involved, and that the lower
officials are protecting him.
Tory austerity was
part of the cause of the fire
that raged through a
large apartment building in the UK.
Tory
"ripping up red tape"
was another part.
Turkish opposition politician
jailed for 25 years on spying charges.
He helped publish the news that Turkey was sending arms to jihadis in
Syria.
We see that the US disapproval of countries that "support terrorists"
is essentially arbitrary.
Some stores want to
use vision systems to personalize ads
according to demographics.
In terms of the threat of massive surveillance, this peculiar system
might be acceptable, if we could be sure that no one (not the state,
not crackers) could have access to collect its images.
Senate Republicans are secretly developing their plan to
drastically cut medical care
for millions of Americans.
The Soviet Union developed disinformation
as a form of attack in the 1920s
and practiced it intensively since then.
Ignoring sanctions against Russia,
European countries are building a pipeline to buy gas from there.
Analysis of leaks from banks shows that rich people are hiding around 30%
of their wealth. This implies that
inequality is bigger than was formerly believed.
Families in England
go without beds, cookers, clothes, even meals,
because of debt. Many of them consider suicide.
US citizens: Tell Saboteur Pruitt
not to cancel proposed regulation
of toxic pollution from exhaust and waste from power plants.
"If we stopped poaching tomorrow,
elephants would still be in big trouble."
It looks like the
US artillery is using white phosphorus
as an incendiary weapon in Iraq.
Sessions avoided inculpating the troll by
not really answering most of the questions.
Tillerson said that
Cuba has to improve its respect for human rights.
I agree that Cuba should respect human rights more. However, for Cuba
to be as good as the US on that issue, it only needs to wait a few
years for Republicans to bring the US down to Cuba's level.
Astroturf social media campaigns, to make bullshit appear accepted,
are
so cheap that any political group can use them.
The Secretary of Defense admitted
that the US is not winning in Afghanistan.
To recognize the facts is a step forward, but he can't possibly come up
with a strategy to defeat the Taliban, because the corrupt Afghan government
lacks the capacity to win no matter what the strategy. The US can prop it up
by continuing to fight there, but that will not lead to a victory.
The Taliban are perverted enemies of human rights, and I wish it were
possible to defeat them conclusively, but we have to recognize that we
can't.
Navalny was sentenced to 30 days jail
for launching a protest in Moscow.
Hundreds more were arrested and some face prosecution.
Getting permission for a protest in Russia is not easy.
Democrats
have proposed a bill
to tax businesses to cover the costs of any public assistance their
employees are eligible for.
I hope it covers indirect employees and supposed "independent
contractors". If not, it will encourage uberization.
The right-wing double standard:
supporters of the troll demand that
nobody insult him, and exaggerate the slightest reference to call it
"incitement." Meanwhile, they flaunt their own threats, and actual
violence.
The troll is making Republican officials give him
personal public obeisance.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand an independent
commission to investigate the connections between the cheater
and Russia.
With reports that the cheater is
thinking about firing special investigator Mueller,
this is absolutely necessary.
Worldwide use of coal declined 1.7% last year.
If it continues at this rate, in 20 years coal use will decline 30%.
I don't think that's enough to rejoice about.
The Tories' "assessments",
to determine whether disabled people are really disabled,
are idiotic and ignorant.
The idiocy makes sense when you understand it as one of many means
intended to advance the Tories' unstated goal: every penny less for
the disabled, the poor, the homeless, and the hungry is one penny more
for the elite.
Factories that make rayon in countries without effective laws
poison the air and water
because they don't bother to prevent this.
One possible partial solution is through import regulation. If all
importers of rayon are required to tell customs when they make an
order, and then every shipment is held until a certain period of time
has elapsed from the order, there would be no more pressure to speed
delivery. If a tax is imposed on every order of rayon, and it goes to
antipollution measures in factories that make rayon, the pressure to
cut costs would no longer boost pollution.
In order to be able to do this, and a thousand other things, we need
to replace plutocratic government with democratic government. We need
officials who are prepared to tell businesses, when they say they
"need" to be cruel in order to compete with other cruel businesses,
"For all we care, you can go broke. You're the 'risk-takers', right?
When you take a risk of making people sick, you henceforth take a risk
of going broke."
Oslo is
eliminating street parking in the center city
with the idea of
getting rid of most car traffic, to reduce CO2 emissions.
If this is accompanied by good enough public transportation, all
usable anonymously with cash, I'd be in favor.
US citizens:
Protect Bristol Bay salmon
from new giant mine.
Children growing up in poverty in the US find it hard to afford to see
a dentist.
Occasionally one dies from this.
Lesser disease problems are widespread.
What the working conditions are like
making clothing for Ivanka Trump
to sell.
France and the UK both want to
force tech companies to impose censorship
according to their specifications. This time the specific target is
Islamist ideology, but the use of words such as "inflammatory" shows
they aim to suppress more.
They also want to work together to abolish privacy of communications
world-wide.
Once privacy and freedom of speech are rejected as principles, what
target will be next? Corbyn? Quoting
Aneuran Bevan?
Will saying that global heating is likely to kill billions of people,
and that the victims have the right to fight to prevent killing them,
be forbidden too?
There could be one good effect. Since global heating denial promotes
mass murder, that too could be censored. Austerity policies kill far
more people, in the US and UK, than terrorism. (It may not be true in
France because it is not so right-wing — but Macron may establish
that.) If publications arguing for austerity and neoliberalism were
banned, it might become more difficult to radicalize people to become
Tories or Republicans.
Even so, I am still opposed to censorship. Respecting freedom of
speech includes letting people say things that we despise.
Maryland and Washington DC have sued the troll
for violations of the Constitution. They demand release of the
troll's tax returns so that the violations can be measured.
Democrats in Congress are suing too.
Jeremy Corbyn has won the first battle
in a long war against the ruling elite.
US citizens:
Phone
certain key Republican senators to oppose
the Dontcare bill.
The US military is
trying a secret briefing
to convince senators to support arms for Salafi Arabia to bombard
Yemen. Doing it in secret means they can present a one-sided picture
and no one else will be able to call them on it.
By its secrecy,
the FBI blocks us from judging
whether through incompetence it allowed the massacre in Orlando to
occur.
Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Russia,
after Navalny.
Ben Jacobs responds
to Greg Gianforte's sentence and apology for
attacking him.
The Tories plan to continue
crushing the NHS to their last gasp or power.
Britons are dying from this. I suggest to their families and friends:
don't mourn, organize!
Argentine women whose fathers murdered dissidents in the 1970s
have condemned them publicly,
to counter a wave of support for the military
government.
Gianforte pled guilty to a fairly minor crime. Should immigrants be
deported for such crimes?
The UN special rapporteur has criticized Japan
for political pressure on journalists.
The UN recognized once again that
Ireland's abortion laws violate human rights,
specifically in the case where they apply to a fetus
that will be born dead.
In many countries, including the UK, women riding bicycles
frequently face condemnation and violent attacks.
Several European countries want to
force companies to censor the public.
Fearing huge fines, they will censor in the strictest way they can
imagine.
EU citizens: The European Parliament is considering a directive that
could attack computer users' freedom in several ways.
Please call your MEPs!
Records show girl begged for her life as officers
dehydrated her to death.
It's standard practice for US prisons to find excuses to deny prisoners
medical care, then lie about it when that results (as it sometimes does)
in death or permanent injury.
Facebook's app listens all the time, to snoop on what people are
listening to or watching. In addition,
it may be recognizing their conversations.
The troll admitted in court that he made a practice of telling
journalists — falsely — that he was taping their interviews, and said
it was to "intimidate" them.
I don't think it is wrong for the interviewee to tape an interview.
After all, journalists generally do so. If you worry about being
misrepresented, taping the interview is an effective precaution. I
don't see why this should intimidate, but that's how the troll saw it.
Amazon delays order processing
for customers that have not paid a subscription fee for "prime"
delivery.
Cars concentrate toxic pollution, often to a level ten times that in
the outside air. Thus, being driven to and from school
harms children's health,
and their ability to concentrate.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to repeal PAT RIOT Act Section 702
which allows for mass surveillance, in practice even of Americans.
Russia arrested Alexei Navalny
half an hour before his protest rally was supposed to
start. Meanwhile, they couldn't rent a stage and PA system, because
the government told every company to refuse to rent to them.
This sort of contempt for democracy has been standard practice for
Putin
since 10 years ago.
A Republican senator tried to pretend that if you say "I hope" when
trying to stop an investigation,
it isn't obstruction of justice.
Paul Ryan said
we should forgive the troll because he's "new to this".
However, bullying and threatening is nothing new for him.
The troll threatens to wipe out iconic species
by allowing development in their migration corridors.
People connected with the oil industry
just don't get the point.
Analysts think they are predicting a good future when they forecast .5%
annual growth in use of oil.
Spreading paranoia to American parents keeps getting more and more
exaggerated —
including fear of totally nonexistent dangers.
Excessive weight, even when it doesn't reach the point of obesity,
kills millions of people each year.
If only it were not so hard to avoid.
The Tories say that only they are "strong and stable" enough
to fix the messes they keep making.
A year ago, the richest 8 men owned as much as the poorer half of
humanity.
As inequality grows,
the richest 5 men now own almost as
much as the poorer half of humanity.
Those men claim to deserve this great wealth because of the benefit
that their work has provided to humanity, but the benefit is not so much
and they depended on others (some of whom they ripped off).
The article embodies confusion and ignorance where it uses the term
"intellectual property".
I think the events in question involved
copyright, and only copyright.
Finland works, quietly, to
bury its nuclear reactor waste.
Texas prison thugs killed a prisoner
by boiling his brain, as the heat
in his cell gave him a fatal fever.
The water in the prison is unsafe to drink, so drinking more to stay
cool is dangerous too.
Statistics from a few years ago showed that around 50 people a day died
from effects of heat.
Fishing and and toxic wastes (including CO2) endanger species that live
in the deep ocean.
Soon mining may do that too.
One mine, at a volcanic vent, could wipe out a species that lives only
there.
Deep sea mining can be very useful — it could end some of the wars
over "conflict minerals" and reduce the pollution of the land.
But only if it is done safely.
Perhaps we should limit deep sea mining to collection of nodules by
robots that can pick them up one at a time. Not by dragging nets
along the sea bottom!
US citizens: Support
the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
The UN special rapporteur condemned Australia
for "inhuman" treatment of boat people.
Don't let Islamists, even nonviolent ones, go unchallenged
in speaking to or for Muslims in general.
Tillerson called for an end to the blockade of Qatar; immediately after,
the troll spoke in favor of it.
I don't suppose Tillerson liked this. If this continues, he might
resign, or turn state's evidence.
The troll
meets the standards for impeachment charges
that were asserted against Nixon and Bill Clinton.
How the troll's active supporters post blatant lies and
then spread them around the internet.
This is what protects the body of his supporters from all the scandals
the troll regularly produces: they don't believe the truth.
Those supporters include crackers, who
steal the Twitter accounts of real people
and use them to spread their lies, attributing them to
other real people.
Please don't use the word "hackers" to refer to people that break
computer security.
Facebook's new patent suggests that Facebook may be planning to use
the computer's camera
to detect its useds' emotions.
It might already be doing so.
US citizens:
tell the Senate
to reject the Poison Our Waters Act.
Massive surveillance enables the few real potential terrorists
to hide in a haystack of data.
This injustice is sold to us as a way to catch terrorists, but even if
it really worked it wouldn't justify the offense against our freedom.
Since in fact it doesn't work, let's end it with no further ado.
The sensible way to find the few terrorists
is to listen
when their friends and relatives warn that they are dangerous.
Puerto Ricans voted almost entirely to request statehood in the US,
but since only 23% of them voted at all,
it doesn't really signify much.
Right-wingers think freedom of speech includes
freedom to intimidate others
into silence.
On Saturday there were rallies in the US to condemn Shari'a law.
Some civil rights groups denounced the marches.
Here's an idea for another response: suggest that other people join
the rallies to condemn, more generally, religion-based denial of human
rights. Then it would cover the intolerant Christians, Hindus and
Jews as well as intolerant Muslims.
There could be more of these broadeners than the number of right-wing
division-spreaders.
For Labour to win the next UK election, the "right-wingers" that tried to
remove him as leader must accept him as the leader, and his policies
too, and
stop trying to find fault with him.
If they had given him support before, Labour might have won this time.
They have now more or less recognized he can lead the party, but some
of them are still attacking his traditional Labour policies and
demanding more right-wing policies. Corbyn can surely judge better
than I, but it seems to me that they will never really support the
revived Labour party.
We have a similar problem in the US, with the right-wing "centrist"
establishment Democrats. Sanders says
they have learned nothing
from their defeat, and are still fighting to keep Wall Street in
power.
NAFTA has a special provision
that says Canada cannot reduce its oil exports to the US.
Saudi Arabia is destabilizing the world.
And especially Indonesia.
I call it "Salafi Arabia", for spreading the harsh and rigid Salafi
form of Islam.
Why the UK
should not allow the bully to visit.
It is misguided, though, to worry about danger to the "special
relationship" between the UK and the US. The name of that kind of
relationship is "submission", and it facilitated Dubya's conquest and
occupation of Iraq.
British condemnation
was too much for Trump,
who has put the visit to the UK on hold.
The sex offender registry treats any sexual crime as
far worse than murder.
US citizens:
call on the Senate
not to cut off US medical care funding.
US citizens:
Oppose anti-abortion nominees
for federal judgeships.
Naomi Klein's latest book aims to show people
how to fight the troll.
She previously explained the way plutocrats exploit economic and
social shocks. The troll makes his own shocks every day, to give them
something to exploit.
A study of many body camera recordings
show that Oakland thugs are generally polite to whites, and generally
much less so to blacks. Although circumstances affect their behavior,
that starts from the racist base.
A team of thugs in Georgia entered a high school with no warrant,
locked 900 students into rooms, then
sexually assaulted many of them.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to demand answers from Sessions about
his relations with Russia and his involvement in the Flynn scandal.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to start now to impeach the saboteur-in-chief.
Thousands of families in Flint are
threatened with eviction
because they
can't afford the high prices charged for water that made them sick.
This is what Republicans do when they get a chance. It was Governor
Synder and Michigan Republicans that imposed a non-accountable
government of occupation on Flint, and the occupation officials
poisoned the water to save money. Now they plan to make families
homeless to save money.
Delaware has repealed
all state-level restrictions on abortion,
including allowing teenage women to get abortions without anyone
else's approval.
Chicken processing companies claim that
their own inspections
will maintain safety better than government-run inspections. But
they evidently are not confident of this statement, since they want
the fact that they run their own inspections to be secret.
I think that the US government is putting the fox in charge of our
hen house. Note that this started under Obama. While he wasn't a
bully and a bigot like the troll, he was no great shakes for defending
people against abuses by businesses. I am proud not to have voted for
him.
The troll could commit a crime
if he keeps trying to punish
or intimidate Comey.
A Pakistani man has been
sentenced to death for a statement
that supposedly insulted Muhammad. I wonder what he actually said.
Can anyone send me an English translation? If you encrypt it to my
GPG key (stallman.org/gpg.html), and mine alone, and put something
irrelevant in the Subject field, no one in Pakistan will be able to
tell what you sent me.
People should stay away from Pakistan except for vital humanitarian
missions.
Cambodia has
charged Australian documentarist James Ricketson with spying.
Oil and gas companies
must stop burning the fossil fuel that isn't
worth collecting.
We should require them to collect all the hydrocarbons that come out
of the well, and if that makes the well too expensive to run, they
should shut it.
Of course, we should charge them a lot more than that.
We need a carbon tax.
People in the US that don't have government ID are
locked out of many
aspects of life. Even visiting government offices to try to get
replacement ID.
To require people to prove a permanent address to get ID is a direct
and intolerable injustice to homeless people. But the injustice here
is deeper and broader than that. The US is being converted, step by
step, into a state where everyone must be identified. To fix this
problem we must eliminate the ID requirements for many of these
activities — starting with visiting government offices.
The US government is leaving it up to big IT companies to decide
the
future of computing — to their advantage over us.
The article doesn't go far enough. We need to do more than just
participate
in the development of AI, through our democratic state (as it ought to
be);
we need to legislate to stop it from being used to subjugate people.
As British Muslims pour out anger and rejection at the few terrorists
in their midst, the Britons in general must seize the opportunity to
solidify an alliance with them against extremism.
Turkey now blocks Wikipedia
— a sign that tyranny is consolidating its grip.
Venezuela's suppression forces
are now gratuitously violent,
shooting tear gas containers and metal marbles at protesters' heads
and killing them.
They are acting much like the US
suppression forces
that were used against pipeline protesters,
and
like Israeli soldiers against Palestinian protesters.
I think they all reflect the attitude of
authoritarian followers
towards anyone who doesn't bow down to the master.
Sad to say, Maduro is right in saying that the US wants to enable
multinationals to exploit Venezuela's resources. However, Maduro is
also exploiting them.
Venezuela needs another opposition, a Chavista opposition.
Election campaigns in the UK (as in the US)
are based on lies
told privately to one potential supporter at a time.
It isn't always successful, but it is always dishonest.
Political campaigning organizations should be required to publish
anything they send or show to supporters who are not paid staff.
If the Tories depend on the extremist, theocratic Protestant party of
Ulster,
it could re-stimulate Ulster terrorism.
A high school in New Jersey
censored student artwork that mocked the troll.
The student who appreciates the publicity this got him is not mistaken
about its useful consequences, but if he wants to build resistance to
the troll, he's making a mistake about how to go about it.
What these students should do is publicly denounce the school and its
principal, and demand to confront those who operated behind the scenes
to pressure for their work to be censored.
It might also be effective to replace their art works with big "This
piece was censored" signs.
Corbyn's huge advance
shows that progressives can win on a progressive
platform. Democrats must stop aiming for "centrist" right-wing
positions.
Those that do so are not simply choosing the position they think
people will vote for. It's also a question of getting funds from
various businesses and rich people: corruption, in other words.
Even when they see that progressives can win, they may continue
to oppose the progressives for the sake of their paymasters.
We will have to push them out.
If Trump is
too ignorant to be guilty,
he's too ignorant to be President.
More suspicion about Sessions' actions
in relation to Flynn and Russia.
Brazil's corrupt President Temer
escaped from corruption charges.
This is a bad blow to all hopes for Brazil. Temer and his corrupt
allies seek to cut down the Amazon rain forest and crush the poor.
The troll wants to deport 1300 people
whom courts had already decided not to deport.
US citizens:
file a comment with the FCC for Net Neutrality
if you haven't done so already.
White House Releases Transcript of Trump and Comey Dinner Meeting (not).
The troll acts like a mafioso,
but not like a competent and successful one.
Sanders: Corbyn surge in UK shows world
rising up against austerity, inequality.
US citizens:
tell the Senate
not to let the troll pick a new FBI director.
Sessions wants to prohibit secure encryption
in the name of ending enslavement of prostitutes,
but this is a red herring. When the government looks for enslaved
prostitutes, it finds few of them. What Sessions wants is to crush
what remains of privacy in the US.
Students at Evergreen State College are competing to take anti-racist
campaigns
to the most extreme possible degree.
Comey's testimony says
he believes Pence lied
when he said he didn't
know about Flynn's meetings with Russia.
In several states,
prisoners are forced to work unpaid
for the
personal convenience of elected officials.
It is pointless to condemn Clinton personally for accepting in the
1980s a practice which was not controversial at the time. Instead of
that distraction, it's better to focus on the practice itself. We
should stop coercing prisoners to work on anything other than running
the prison, and if they do do such work they should get the same wage
as free labor. They should also be allowed to join the union for such
work.
Russian Parliament moves ahead with
banning anonymity on messenger apps.
The troll's
plan to privatize highways and everything else
would give companies a free hand to run them into the ground.
The deals would probably be set up so that there is no way to undo
them without paying the companies 10 times what they put in. We might need
a constitutional amendment to make it easy to undo them. Or perhaps
a new form of eminent domain can be established for taking back anything
that was privatized, in which the temporary private owner would get
back the amount that it paid, minus however much it has extracted
from the property since then.
Funny how right-wingers say you can't trust the state to do anything right,
except what it comes to
imprisoning people based on their ethnicity.
Naomi Klein: we must take the offensive
against the plutocrats' agenda,
which would drive most Americans into poverty and sickness as corporations
tread people underfoot, using every possible shock as an excuse.
Reporting on
the pros and cons of privatizing air traffic control.
I am sure the main airlines will abuse their increased power.
Miami's thugs tried to pull a fast one by getting approval for some
new surveillance in a very vague way. Then it was discovered that they
wanted to fly planes over the city to track everyone all the time.
Efforts to reverse the vote
have a chance of success.
Give those weasels an inch, and they take a mile.
Large fishing companies have
agreed to protect fish stocks
and put an end to slave labor on fishing boats.
Turning this into real change will not be trivial.
Salmon farmers are trying to use wrasse as cleaners to eliminate the
sea lice that plague farmed salmon. They are catching so many wrasse
that
they are putting that species in danger.
Uncrewed cargo ships may reduce accidents.
On the other hand, they will pass by sailors in distress without any way
to notice and aid them.
The EU wants to set up
its own version of PRISM,
which is how the FBI gets personal data directly from companies' servers.
"The cloud" is just a way of saying "Don't ask who, where, or which
agencies have has access." Don't be a fool — don't trust anything so
cloudy.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say, don't let Sessions off
the hook for
plans to fill up private prisons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
On every anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, The Chinese
state
arrests
survivors and their families. It is hard for people in China to
learn, or even remember, what happened there.
The Tories will try to rule with the support of a Northern Ireland
party of
religious
fanatics that consort with terrorists.
One of the fanatical party's ministers is
trying
to bully a museum into promoting denial of evolution.
The troll's "infrastructure plan" means
more
toll roads, more privatized water systems, and more Enrons. To
the extent it is actually possible.
The head of the NSA
refused
to tell Congress how many Americans the NSA spies on.
Danish ISPs will
no
longer disclose subscriber identities to copyright trolls.
It is a step forward, but we need to legalize sharing.
Missouri's voter ID law says that the state will fund giving all
eligible voters ID so they can vote. But the state
didn't
do so.
Corbyn's "centrist" detractors called him a radical and predicted he would
cause big losses for Labour. He has
proved
them totally wrong.
They may have convinced themselves of their claims, but it was obvious
to me that they were
straining
the truth, and making foolish assumptions, to discredit Corbyn.
The right-wing media also
couldn't
stop him.
Corbyn's success shows that it is
possible
for Sanders to win.
Russia is
considering
a bill to ban VPNs and Tor, and make ISPs block access to them.
This means Russia is trying to make censorship of foreign sites
essentially impossible to violate.
Labour made big gains in the UK election and has
stopped
the Tories from having a majority of Parliament.
This advance is due to
Corbyn
and the anti-austerity Labour manifesto, as well as to the lousy
Tory campaign which revealed its shortcomings.
Although Corbyn's Labour didn't win a majority, it achieved an
almost
record fraction of votes.
Previous Labour leaders were
"convinced
that if the public saw their true political nature they’d lose that
election that they ended up losing anyway."
Either Trump or Comey is lying. The idea that it is Comey is not credible.
Why Trump's So-Called Infrastructure Plan Is Good for Wall Street But Bad for
America
President Maduro is splitting Chavistas between those that are loyal
to Chavez' legacy and those that are more concerned with keeping power.
SCROTUS in the House of Representatives passed the CHOICE Act, which gives banksters the choice to cheat Americans and cause
another financial disaster.
Republican senators' highest priority, as Comey testified, was to defend their
megalomaniac point man.
US minimum wage workers can't afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
The minimum-wage increases some cities and states have approved won't
fix the problem.
Right-wing liars game Google Search so that their false news articles
fill the search results, pushing everything else down out of sight.
Kansas Republicans voted to undo their right-wing "experiment" in tax
cuts that proved disastrous for the state and its people.
A former EPA official is under investigation for colluding with
Monsanto to pervert the decisions about glyphosate. The official was
the head of the committee in charge of judging whether glyphosate should
be banned as carcinogenic.
Dallas has paid compensation to Robert Groden, for trying to harass him
to stop handing out leaflets in Dealey Plaza stating claims about
the assassination of President Kennedy.
The troll's nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs has shown an inclination to try to block regulations to
protect Americans' health.
Hundreds of American women are shot each year by their husbands/lovers.
It's a much bigger danger than terrorism.
Virus-writers are passing commands to a virus in
comments on photos on Instagram.
I'm afraid this will lead to shutting off commenting across the net.
Over 7% of the babies whose mothers catch zika early in pregnancy have
birth defects.
At present, the only known way to prevent those birth defects is not
to have a baby under such circumstances.
Saudi Arabia's real priority in the blockade of Qatar is to close al
Jazeera.
UK thugs have been unable to stop terrorist plots, even though they knew
of the participants as vaguely leaning towards extremism. There was no visible
difference between those few who became real terrorists and thousands of other
who have not done so.
Moreover, the methods that Theresa May proposes to "get tough" would not help.
US citizens: phone your senators at 202-224-3121 to oppose the sneaky
Republican attempt to destroy Medicaid and Obama's medical coverage
plan (and give the rich a big tax cut).
The UK and US have supported jihadi groups in Syria and Libya, as well
as states such as Salafi Arabia and Qatar that have supported jihadis
elsewhere. The result is
terrorism.
The head of Australia's human rights commission warns of
government
threats to freedoms of speech and advocacy.
Israel lied to the US about the start of the six-day war,
claiming
that Egypt had started bombarding Israel, according to someone
that was a CIA analyst at the time.
Egypt had in fact attacked Israel, by blockading the port of Elath.
Theresa May wants to impose
broad
censorship of undesirable political opinion, as well as impose
something approximating incommunicado house arrest without trial.
The Theater of Security Agency hopes to reduce its failure rate for
identifying weapons and bombs
turning
airport security into a slow and difficult procedure for everyone.
Will we be required to remove all paper money from our bags?
That would cause lots of theft.
Trump is very much like Mussolini, and
could
impose fascist power in the US.
Verizon tries to make customers move to fiber communications by
refusing
to fix copper wire facilities. In Pennsylvania the state forced
Verizon to agree to fix them.
Fiber allows faster internet connection, but it also means that your
phone will stop working some hours after a power failure.
Lawyers disagree about whether the troll's conduct, as reported
by Comey, goes far enough to amount to
obstruction
of justice.
Comey has testified about how the bully
tried
to pressure him to let Flynn off the hook.
A summary of the
important
points.
The full text of his
testimony.
Several current high officials
refused
to testify to the senate.
However, one had told other people that the troll had asked him to
try
to make Comey pull back on his investigation.
The troll has nominated a new FBI director with
ties
to the troll's election campaign.
350.org's
plan
to defeat the global heating denialists.
The Tories have used dishonest and deceptive ads
to falsely criticize Corbyn.
With constantly growing warehouse space, the Inland Empire of California
is getting more and more polluted
with increasing truck traffic.
How about building a railroad to carry cargo to the Los Angeles area?
The big bully is inspiring students all around the US
to bully students from all sorts of minority groups.
Schools should tell students that Trump is a bully, that it's wrong
to do what he does, and if he were a student he would be told to stop
or else be sent home.
An armed rebellion in England 200 years ago was provoked by an
undercover government agent
sent by contemptuous Tories.
It's amazing how many things are still the same today.
Gianforte apologized at length
for attacking reporter Ben Jacobs.
It is chilling to realize that many Republicans today
wouldn't apologize for attacking a reporter or a dissident.
Just after Iran suffered an act of Islamist terrorism,
the US plans
to put more sanctions on it.
Iran supports terrorism through the fatwa against Salman Rushdie,
but compared to what Salafi Arabia does, and has done, that's minuscule.
In South Sudan, teenage girls are
sold by their families as brides in exchange for cows.
Once married they are subject to violence.
Nothing will enable all the children to survive in a violent place
where families have seven children. It's up to rich countries to
provide women in South Sudan with the birth control they need to avoid
that.
The tracking dots code that identifies printers
gives the US government tremendous power
to identify people for any reason. Since this power was established
secretly, we have to worry that other kinds of devices have secretly
been redesigned to spy on everyone.
Snowden explains how the Espionage Act
unfairly stacks the deck against Reality Winner.
Brazilian tribal leader tours Europe to plead for help
to stop killings and land grabs.
The troll's lawyer
demands an investigation of Comey
for "leaking" with his testimony.
The troll's overall response is a general campaign of blackwhiting.
(See 1984 for the definition of "blackwhiting".)
US citizens:
call
on Congress to eliminate fossil fuel tax breaks.
US citizens:
call
on plutocratist Democrats to give away the campaign contributions
they received from Kushner and anyone else connected with the troll.
Venezuela's opposition says that thugs are
robbing
protesters.
I believe the accusations, but they probably have nothing directly to
do with President Maduro. Thugs in Venezuela have been crooked since
long before Chavez. He was unable to make them stop, but neither
could anyone else.
While Chavez was president, the head of a state agency I worked with
told me he had been (in effect) held for ransom by thugs, who stopped
him as he was driving and made up charges against him on the spot.
The fact that he was the head of a state agency didn't help him to
escape.
The infant caused a lot of trouble by
insulting
the ruler of Qatar while a major US base is located there.
Civilian casualties from US bombing in Syria and Iraq have
gone
way up due to the troll's changes in policies.
Indeed, we don't really know how many they are, only a lower bound for
them.
A charity that feeds people with rejected food
faces
prosecution for using food that has past its sell-by date.
That's an absurd excuse: food does not become unsafe after that date,
nor even unpalatable.
The NSA made the world vulnerable to WannaCry by
saving
up bugs to use for attack rather than getting them fixed.
Humans need nature
both
biologically and psychologically. But we are wiping it out.
Stop Legitimizing 'Conservatism': It's Not an Ideology — It's a
Goddamn
Death
Machine.
I have to point out that many of the Western ideas of human rights are
not thousands of years old: they were formulated in the 1700s, or even
later. However, that doesn't invalidate the point.
A scheme to compensate victims of bank fraud in the UK is so
sloppy
that one of the victims says it is a "sham".
The US under Obama
knew
early on that cholera was introduced to Haiti by the UN
coup-maintaining forces, and covered it up to shield the UN from
criticism.
US thug departments photograph everyone they arrest, and often publish
the photos directly to sites that use them for a sort of
extortion.
An example of the
total
confusion and nonsense that results if you suppose that the term
"intellectual property" has a concrete meaning.
Here's why it
doesn't have
one.
US agencies say that Russian crackers planted a false news story
which
led to economic warfare between Salafi Arabia and Qatar.
It seems that the US agencies want to avoid the economic warfare,
while the troll desired it.
The Malaysian state has disappeared foreigners
that were trying to preach second-class religions in Malaysia.
Malaysia is definitively opposed to religious freedom,
in particular for anyone who was at one time a Muslim,
or for anyone of Malay descent (since the state presumes they
are all Muslims regardless of what they say).
The troll's fast-track deportation court, inside an immigration
prison,speeds deportation by
making it difficult for the prisoners to get legal representation or advice.
Their families can't find them, let alone find them lawyers, and
they don't know whether their relatives are alive or dead.
Many women in Central America flee to Mexico
to escape husbands
that want to kill them. They have no other place to look for safety.
Erdoğan has
arrested 23 lawyers,
including the local head of Amnesty International, on the vague
accusation that they have ties with Gülen.
The claim seems implausible in the case of someone who works for
Amnesty International, but that's a side issue. Merely having some
sort of relationship with Gülen's system of religious schools would
not be valid grounds to arrest someone.
Israel has blocked electricity for Gaza,
so its wastewater treatment plants are shut down. The intense
pollution of the Mediterranean by untreated sewage has spread to
Israel's coast and is making desalination plants shut down, thus
leaving Israel short of water.
British Muslim clerics are
showing their disgust for Muslim terrorists
by refusing to carry out funerals for them.
The US government persecutes even legal whistleblowers,
because the laws against retaliation have gaps and are hard to
enforce.
A leaked document shows that
the NSA investigated apparent Russian attempts
to take control of some US voting systems before the 2016
election.
Assuming this document was not intended as a red herring, it means
that the NSA is sincere about suspecting Russian sabotage attempts.
The person who leaked the document is
Reality Winner,
who will probably be imprisoned for 10 years for it.
If it takes the knowledge and careful planning of a Snowden
to leak documents to the public and not be imprisoned, we won't
have enough whistleblowers, and
that turns democracy into an empty shell.
Snowden: prosecution of an alleged source for journalism on a charge
of "espionage" is
a threat to the free press.
Maybe that's why the troll did it. He is against almost everything
that protects Americans from his own power.
I think The Intercept showed bad practices in handling the letter it
received. It should have shredded the envelope before reading what
was inside.
UK thugs picked someone out of a crowd
using automatic face recognition. We are one step closer to an
irresistible tyranny.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate fossil fuel tax breaks.
Planet-roaster governments are spending less on renewable energy, but new capacity is increasing fast because the construction costs have dropped.
We now produce 24% of electricity using renewable methods, but we need
to produce around 100% that way. That means an increase in capacity
of 300% of the present total. And since electricity is only a part of
our use of fossil fuels, we need to increase capacity even more to
replace fossil fuels for trapsport.
That means we have a long way to go, and we don't have a long time
to do it.
We need to smash the dominion of the fossil fools before they kill us.
Thailand has put Burmese migrant workers on trial for complaining about the
horrible working conditions imposed on them.
By accusing them of theft of a timecard, which they presented as evidence,
the Thai state shows it is a state of repression that has no shame.
I urge people not to visit Thailand except for important humanitarian
reasons.
The troll wants to privatize state assets, so that companies can put tolls on their use.
The Republican Party did recruiting at a right-wing extremist rally.
In the UK, 1/3 of workers have insecure working situations and don't know if they will be able to pay their bills the next week. This is what unethical eployers want.
The US arms industry effectively buys the votes of senators
deciding
whether to approve an arms sale to a repressive theocratic regime
such as Salafi Arabia.
Should we condemn individual senators for selling their votes,
or the system that pressures them to do this?
Both! Of course, both!
We can forgive people who are in positions of weakness for yielding to
the pressures of the system, except when they do something egregious.
However, someone as powerful as a senator can never plead, "the system
made me do it."
Colorado is doing lots of good with the
100 million dollars of tax
revenue from marijuana.
Tobin Smith, formerly on the O'Reilly program on Faux News, says
that
the "debates" were always rigged,
and that the shows were
calculated for emotional manipulation of the audience.
The troll wants to authorize
using explosions in the Atlantic Ocean
(the sound from which will deafen whales at great distances) to find
oil to extract,
thus helping to wipe out most ocean life and replace
it with plastic.
That's typical extractivist behavior — use up the world as fast as possible
and never mind what does or doesn't remain afterwards.
The troll, and Republicans, are
waging war against our children.
Even children can see this.
Tariq Ramadan:
We Will Not Tackle Extremism by Stigmatising Muslim Citizens.
California State University was given an endowed chair of Middle East
studies in the name of Edward Said,
but decided not to appoint anyone
due to pressure from supporters of Israel.
We know this from the dean that had the courage to resign in response.
The troll wants to privatize US air traffic control.
The company will cut corners, such as using less skilled people as
controllers, and the result will be fatal from time to time.
Google's ad-blocker creates an opportunity for Google to
block any ads
not sold by Google.
Doctors compare
Australia's possible new giant coal mine
to tobacco.
Hooray!
But Europe still needs to kill
the business-supremacy treaty with Canada.
The troll's incompetence
fits with his leanings toward autocracy.
The incompetence can ruin the US, and its political system,
but won't
stop him from getting what he wants most.
Barrett Brown reports how
US government agencies habitually twist or
disregard the laws they are supposed to follow.
As the US fails to carry out the Paris agreement,
it makes climate action
desperately urgent
to avoid incredible heating.
Corbyn, in 2003, warned that
invading Iraq was unjustified and would
provoke terrorism.
Just recently he pointed out that we had better
stop doing more of the same.
Americans need NOAA to track hurricanes, and FEMA to help out when
they hit.
The troll has not bothered to nominate a saboteur to run
them, and instead wants to cut their budget.
The states where hurricanes tend to hit usually vote Republican. If
he causes a disaster there, he will alienate lots of Republicans.
That would be a good outcome, but it's a shame if the path there
goes through a disaster.
The Democrat running against Republican Stephen King
has withdrawn
due to death threats,
as well as Republican budget cuts imposed on the
state agency she works for.
Once Republicans see that this is effective, they will do it over and over,
in effect stealing elections by threats. Surely there is a way to
find funds for protecting her.
Apple faces trial in Australia for
bricking devices because they had had
an "unauthorized" repair.
The leader of UK's Liberal Democrats
condemned massive surveillance
as a foolish and dangerous response to occasional terrorism.
"Theresa May's 'enough is enough' risks making the extremist threat worse."
Salafi Arabia and some other Arab countries have
cut off trade and
relations with Qatar.
The troll's regime seems to be pushing Salafi
Arabia to do this.
Reportedly this is because Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood which
Salafi Arabia' monarchy hates. The other countries involved are
obeying Salafi Arabia, except perhaps for Egypt's military rulers that
hate the Muslim Brotherhood for other reasons.
Maybe it is really about the campaign to demonize Iran.
Any form of Islamist rule shows contempt for human rights. All the
regimes involved in this dispute are unjust, though the details vary.
But is there any rational reason for Americans to consider the Muslim
Brotherhood or Iran worse than Salafism? I don't see one.
Israeli leaders in 1967 had
no intention of ever letting go of the
West Bank
that Israel had just conquered. The first colony there was
set up just months after the war.
In regard to launching the war, even though Israel did not know
whether Egypt and Syria would attack, that danger was real. If Israel
had waited to be attacked, by enemies with much larger armies, it
could have lost. By attacking first, Israel took the benefit of
surprise away from its enemies. Under the circumsances, that was
justified.
A Chinese billionaire
donates to at least two rival Australian
political parties.
One senator seems to take a friendly stance
towards China in exchange for donations.
As white bigots try to silence anti-racists with threats, other white
bigots complain that
their freedom of speech is being denied.
Everyone: call on California's attorney general to
join in investigating
Exxon for climate fraud.
US insurance companies offer customers gratis "smart" security and
economy devices,
but you should not trust them.
When a product is marketed as "smart", read "treacherous spy."
Evanston's library board wants to fire librarian Lesley Williams
for criticizing the library's discriminatory practices. The community is
rallying to protect her.
Mylan, maker of the price-gouging Epipen, cheated the US government by
claiming it was a generic drug.
If we had a national health service and it negotiated the price with
each company, we wouldn't get gouged on drugs. Americans, support the
candidates that advocate this change.
Right-wing bigots are threatening lynching, by
leaving nooses as tokens of their hatred.
Speculating about corruption that might have motivated Kushner to pursue
a secret channel of communication with Russia.
A teenager who got rid of social networks
is delighted to have time
for other activities, and glad not to be bothered by "friends" that
didn't really like him.
Citizens of France: ask your candidates for elected office
to
sign the Pacte du Logiciel Libre.
A survey in Indonesia
found that nearly everyone believed that per household
was near the median income. They gravely underestimate the inequality that
really exists.
This causes real harm because people don't demand that the state act to
reduce the inequality.
They also overestimate their chances of getting wealthier than they are.
However, social mobility means that some get wealthier and some get poorer.
Increased social mobility is no excuse for leaving some people in poverty.
What we need is not more reshuffling of people on the income scale,
but to make the lives of the poorest better.
Floods in Missouri
illustrate the damage
that global heating is
already doing.
Residents of Louisiana, near chemical plants,
often get cancer.
The troll will surely help companies make more generations sick.
"Do you love your interpretation of the second amendment
more than you love your kids?"
The
"circular economy"
would mean systematically reusing products instead
of turning them into waste.
Tackling the reproducibility crisis in science.
It is of course an oversimplification to say that the state of science
at any particular time gives us "the truth". What science does is
provide a systematic method to correct errors over time. As an area
becomes heavily studied, for example global heating and (even more so)
evolution, the remaining errors get to be fewer and smaller.
I think we need universities to stop judging people by how often they
publish in "high-impact" journals.
EPA staff says that the troll's saboteurs have
effectively wrecked its efforts
to curb global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to
keep
funding campaigns against bigotry.
As white bigots try to silence anti-racists with threats, other white
bigots complain that their freedom of speech is being denied.
A Chinese billionaire donates to at least two rival Australian
political parties. One senator seems to take a friendly stance
towards China in exchange for donations.
Americans need NOAA to track hurricanes, and FEMA to help out when
they hit. The troll has not bothered to nominate a saboteur to run
them, and instead wants to cut their budget.
The states where hurricanes tend to hit usually vote Republican. If
he causes a disaster there, he will alienate lots of Republicans.
That would be a good outcome, but it's a shame if the path there
goes through a disaster.
Corbyn, in 2003, warned that invading Iraq was unjustified and would
provoke terrorism. Just recently he pointed out that we had better
stop doing more of the same.
As the US fails to carry out the Paris agreement, it makes climate action
desperately urgent to avoid incredible heating.
Everyone: call on California's attorney general to join in investigating
Exxon for climate fraud.
EU citizens: some MEPs are trying to make the proposed internet
censorship directive
even
worse.
MEP Julia Reda talks about
how to
oppose this.
A sculpture of Theresa May was full of surveillance cameras.
A passerby attacked it with a hammer, and was fined
statue-tory damages.
Spread the word!
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to support the Improving Access to Affordable
Prescription Drugs Act.
A little
more
information about it.
Resist
the troll by divesting from fossil fuels.
The
Tories plan to sell all state-owned forests in the UK.
"This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands,
sites of special scientific interest, heathland, campsites, farms and
sporting estates."
"Tories" and "trees" sound similar but are actually opposite.
Leaked documents
appear to say what Macedonia's intelligence agency
has learned about Russia's efforts to interfere in its politics.
The goal has been to keep Macedonia out of NATO and away from the West.
Companies such as Dow and Corning
try
to have it both ways on global heating.
Mining the ocean bottom
could
destroy ecosystems if we are not careful.
Trawling
the bottom for seafood already destroys ecosystems, and we have
not made much progress in stopping that practice.
A
new Montana law is a step forward in limiting the state's access
to people's digital messages stored in service providers.
However, it doesn't apply to metadata, and it won't protect whistleblowers.
This approach is fundamentally inadequate.
We need systems to be designed so they don't collect personal data.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to
investigate
illegal campaign contributions from a private prison company.
US citizens:
Support the
bill to aim for 100% renewable energy by 2050.
We need to
stop
making and using plastic — at least making it as we do now.
"Lying on the floor for hours awaiting help, unable to afford both
incontinence pants and food ... This is the reality of
[Tory]
disability cuts."
War causes
moral
injury, the result of being responsible for something that turned
out to be a terrible wrong. Often this leads to suicide.
Irish Police Phone Tapping
Undermines
Citizens' Rights.
Political parties now show
different
messages to different people, based on profile. These parties are
two-faced, or perhaps three-faced or ten-faced or fifty-faced.
Leaks prove that private thugs explicitly
treated
pipeline protesters like jihadists. That's the word the thugs
used.
Idaho started using proprietary software to decide how much support to
give to Medicaid patients. It turns out that the program used a
bogus
algorithm based on a subset of the historical records, with bogus
results.
World leaders should treat the troll as a child,
not
as an adult.
Tory politicians received
luxurious gifts from Salafi Arabia. Perhaps that is the
mysterious reason why they support the Salafi
war
of aggression in Yemen.
Berta Cáceres has won a posthumous victory: the sponsors of the
dam she tried to stop have
withdrawn
funding.
Even
supermarkets
are starting to demand different prices from different customers, based
on secret algorithms.
I wonder what they will do to people like me, that don't carry a
portable tracking device.
I wonder what will happen when customer A sees price P on the price
display on the shelf, because customer B is nearby at that moment,
then gets charged a higher price.
Raimundos Oki, a journalist in East Timor, has been found not guilty
of
defamation.
It is an injustice to make defamation a crime, because that chills
journalism. The prosecutors seem to be trying to achieve that very
result.
Journalist Mohamed Adan Dirir was
imprisoned
in Somaliland for asking an inconvenient question in a press
conference.
Somaliland is a part of what was once Somalia. It avoids the Islamist
terrorism that plagues most of Somalia, but that doesn't mean human
rights are respected.
In the US, people convicted for having copies of child pornography
tend to get
longer
prison sentences than those convicted of having sex with children.
Mere possession of child pornography
should
not be a crime at all. To prosecute people for possessing
something published, no matter what it may be, is a big threat to
human rights.
The troll
tried
to eliminate US sanctions against Russia as soon as he got into
office. The effort was blocked by some employees at the State
Department.
They were joined by SCROTUS, which supports the neocons that want too
much hostility with Russia.
The troll told some federal agencies to return to the senate their
copies of the secret Senate report on CIA torture. This is part of a
plan to
destroy
it and make sure that its conclusions are forgotten.
This would be impossible if the report had been published, as it
should have been.
Exxon and Tillerson
Accused
of Defrauding Investors Over Climate Risks.
A victim of a drive-into terrorist attack is
suing
the rental company from which the vehicle was rented.
The company cannot be held responsible for what the renter did with
the vehicle. The victim does deserve help, but the right way to help
such people is through the National Health Service, not through
lawsuits.
After what the Tories have done to the NHS, I suppose that the needed
help is not available there. The right way to deal with that is to
make the NHS do its job again.
When panicked parents impose computerized surveillance and censorship
on children,
they
teach those children that computerized surveillance and censorship are
normal.
US citizens:
tell
the troll, "take your hands off my birth control".
Everyone in the US, or those who can receive the MSNBC channel: tell
the channel that you
object
to its hiring right-wing hardhearts.
The
strange
bias of US politics: by tradition, many officials are "supposed"
to be Republicans, even under Democratic presidents. As a result,
Republicans regularly have the power to intimidate Democrats, while
thumbing their noses about their own crimes and corruption.
America's Toxic Prisons: The
Environmental
Injustices of Mass Incarceration.
The idea of recognizing microexpressions to determine what people are feeling
is
based
on unverified suppositions.
The troll
mis-cited
MIT climate researchers. They insist that the Paris climate
agreement can do a lot of good, by keeping the opportunity open to do
make the larger effort that might prevent disaster.
Muslims in Burma were
arrested
for praying in the street.
How strange for that to be a crime?
Black Lives Matter activists are
becoming
concerned about being tracked by their phones.
Finally this injustice is being noticed.
Republicans are already smearing Elizabeth Warren
to
try to stop her from becoming president.
They don't hesitate to stretch the truth, or lie outright.
Over
200 noncitizens served in the US military, expecting to receive US
citizenship, and were subsequently deported.
SCROTUS plan a suite of repressive practices that will fill up federal prisons
with immigrants, most of whom won't have been any danger to anyone, and
spend
billions to keep them there.
US public schools, forced by bad laws to compete with other schools,
have
done
away with periods for free play. The result is that children
suffer more stress and don't learn as well.
US citizens:
Support the bill to aim for 100% renewable energy by 2050.
When panicked parents impose computerized surveillance and censorship
on children, they teach those children that computerized surveillance
and censorship are normal.
We need to stop making and using plastic — at least making it as we do now.
The company cannot be held responsible for what the renter did with
the vehicle. The victim does deserve help, but the right way to help
such people is through the National Health Service, not through
lawsuits.
After what the Tories have done to the NHS, I suppose that the needed
help is not available there. The right way to deal with that is to
make the NHS do its job again.
Denmark has repealed the law against blasphemy.
Many other
countries
still need
to do this.
Disgust for the troll used to be mixed with derision.
Now that he is carrying out his evil plans, it is hard to laugh.
The author errs in suggesting that Macron should have acted
submissively. The bully interprets that as a sign of that he can go
further and demand more. He will do this until he confronts people
that won't kowtow to him.
I suggest that other countries now negotiate a binding agreement
to supersede the nonbinding Paris climate agreement.
It should include the possibility of sanctions on non-signatories
that don't comply.
Comedian Kathy Griffin is getting death threats, as well as
cancellation of gigs, from fanatical supporters of the troll,
because
of a video in which she had an imitation of his severed head.
I don't think things have degenerated to the point where civilized
people should reply in kind to the violence and threats of the
supporters of the troll. Griffin clearly agrees, and didn't intend to
make a threat.
Making a statement that is misunderstood is not something that calls
for a humble apology: all humans sometimes speak unclearly, and there
is no need to be ashamed of that. It would have been better for
Griffin to say she regretted the misunderstanding and would take care
to avoid it in the future — while restating the intended point in
some other way that would not be misunderstood.
If you are faced with a wave of hatred from people who are offended
for an invalid reason, don't give in to the urge to apologize. The
apology harms your reputation in a way that others' threats cannot.
Salman Rushdie tried apologizing to the fanatical Muslims who
condemned The Satanic Verses, misinterpreting it based on second-hand
reports.
They did not stop trying to kill him.
Chelsea Manning disappointed me greatly when she apologized for her
act of heroic whistleblowing.
It might have got her a shorter sentence,
we can't know, but it let down the cause of other whistleblowers
that also deserve our support.
The troll has told various federal agencies to
reject congressional
Democrats's requests for information.
It's Congress's function to oversee federal agencies. They are not
human beings with a right to privacy.
When stores can identify customers, and change the price
either systematically
or at random,
there is no such thing as a price for the item.
One virtue of the market as a system for commerce is that it determines
"the right" price. If there is no longer "the price", there is no longer
a "right" price.
It is another reason to (1) resist profiling and (2) buy in physical
stores, not on the internet.
Stiglitz calls for
sanctions on exports from the "rogue state", the USA.
That's the very least other countries should do.
Others have referred to the US as a rogue state
because of its wars
and
its support for dictators around the world.
The new Left-Green government of British Columbia has announced
plans for several good changes,
and we can expect more.
Bill McKibben: The Paris climate agreement, inadequate on its face,
had a chance of building momentum that would lead to a real curb on
global heating.
Now, thanks to the troll and his stubborn idiocy, it
could unite the world in doing enough.
He also thinks that it will help defeat every denialist politician.
When Will Exxon Be Worthless? Not If.
In the US:
call on the Kansas City Royals team to
stop promoting an
antiabortion group.
Some Democratic senators
suspect Sessions of perjury, for giving false testimony to the senate during his confirmation hearing.
US public schools, forced by bad laws to compete with other schools,
have done away with periods for free play.
The result is that children suffer more stress and don't learn as well.
US citizens:
Tell the troll, "take your hands off my birth control".
The US, under Obama's half-hearted support for climate protection,
weakened the Paris climate agreement at every level.
The world would have been better off kicking the US out at the beginning.
Now the revulsion of the rest of the world may be enough to lead to
sanctions on the US fossil fuel companies, or even the US. I hope so.
With pressure from the rest of the world, we Americans may be able to
redirect our government towards protecting civilization.
On the average,
the richest .01 percent evade 1/3 of their taxes.
US visa applications will
demand so much information
that hardly anyone could get it right. Thus, everyone could be
deported for the slightest mistake,
unless the Supreme Court rules to
limit that.
The social media info is
supposedly voluntary,
but people will be scared not to provide it.
Welfare is not consumption, and taxation is not a burden.
The troll proposes to
cut a large fraction of welfare for families.
What's worse, each state could make more cuts.
The reason welfare is now called "temporary assistance" is that
President Clinton's "welfare reform" put a maximum limit on how long
each family could receive assistance. "If you're still poor after
five years, starve on the street."
Establishment Democrats continue undermining Sanders-backed progressive candidates;
then plutocratists claim it's their own weakness at fault.
"Trump asked when the world will start laughing at the US.
It already is."
For kids safety, they should slide down the playground slide alone.
Riding on a parent's lap is dangerous.
A new Green/Left government in British Columbia
vows to block a pipeline
for exporting tar sands oil.
A TV in the bedroom for a young child
tends to lead to obesity.
California's single-payer medical insurance will
increase take-home pay
for just about everyone in the state, while providing medical care
to those who don't have it.
Thugs in Salt Lake City have become less thuggish
thanks to de-escalation
training. They have not shot anyone since almost two years ago.
Texas Republicans
voted to make it a felony
to help a woman go to an
abortion clinic to get an abortion that was illegal.
When asked to reconsider, they voted for it again.
The shareholders of Exxon voted to require the company to state how
necessary future regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
will
affect the value of its assets.
This will make Exxon encounter stockholder resistance if it is reckless.
The UK's nuclear missile submarines run Windows.
Someone could crack the system while the sub is in base, and set it
up to do something later, such as launch missiles.
Just imagine ransomware in a nuclear missile submarine.
The troll's latest attack on contraception:
any employer would be allowed to pretend to a moral objection to
birth control as an excuse not to cover it.
SCROTUS passed a
bill to put teenagers in prison for 15 years
(mandatory minimum) for sexting.
Sexting should not be a crime at all.
Ketamine seems to be an effective treatment for depression,
even for patients that nothing else helps.
China's ivory ban has cut the price in half, but this has
failed to reduce the killing of elephants.
The UK Greens advocate a universal basic income.
I like the idea, but the first and crucial battle is to defeat the
plutocracy and tax the rich adequately. With that done, it would be
possible to adopt policies such as the universal basic income.
The US economy convinced 600,000 people to give up looking for work
in April and May.
The saboteur-in-chief declared that the US will not follow the Paris
climate agreement, and received
world-wide
condemnation.
The US has never been a real leader in stopping global heating
disaster:
the
planet-roasters have had too much power.
To pull out formally requires three years, but he has already
sabotaged the practical US measures needed to carry out the agreement.
Donald Trump Has Ditched the World
in
Favor of Big Oil's Titans.
Amazingly, the CEO of Goldman Sachs
condemned
the troll's decision. What's amazing is that the troll dared to
disobey Goldman Sachs.
Vicente Fox (himself unpleasantly right-wing): the troll is
"declaring
war on the planet itself". Too bad it's an
understatement.
The French environment minister said that the troll may face charges
of
crimes
against humanity for this.
I think all the paid denialists, and their paymasters, should face
such charges. Furthermore, their ill-gotten gains should be
confiscated from them or their heirs. Let them face the result of
their crimes just as everyone else will, without the advantage of
wealth deriving from committing the crimes.
US citizens:
call on the
Federal Election Commission to investigate possible Russian
meddling in the 2016 election.
US citizens:
call
on large US companies to continue covering birth control in their
health plans.
It is now possible to
electrically
stimulate internal areas of the brain using equipment outside the
head.
Am I the only one who sees a danger here?
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia is telling its subscribers that they
won't
be covered if they go to the emergency room and it isn't a real
emergency.
It would be a good thing to move care for non-emergencies out of the
ER, but surely there is a way to do that which is less harsh. Can't
the ER triage nurse direct those patients elsewhere?
Congress Pushes Nuclear Energy, but Has
No
Clear Plan for Radioactive Waste.
When teenagers use mobile devices at night, they get less sleep, and this
often
results in depression.
The history of Brazil's giant corruption investigation,
Lava
Jato.
A study estimates that Tory underfunding of the NHS and social care
killed
30,000 people in the UK during 2015. That was around 86 people
killed per day.
As both of those systems have continued to deteriorate since then, I
would guess that the number killed in 2016 was considerably larger,
and that the underfunding is now killing more than 100 a day.
Here are details about 79 specific people who were
killed
in specific ways by harsh Tory policies. Clearly the list
includes only a tiny fraction the the victims.
Don't get distracted by the occasional terrorist when your country is
under attack by truly dangerous Tories all the time.
New York [State]
Forces
Women Like Me to Carry Nonviable Pregnancies to Term.
Cory Doctorow: Technology is
making
the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this.
I put my hopes on political resistance, not technology per se.
San Francisco Mulls Ban on
Delivery
Robots.
I am in favor of it. America needs jobs more than it needs
efficiency. Increases in productivity are no use to American workers,
because since 1980 that no longer gets them a raise.
The troll's budget would make America the
land
of no opportunity.
Government policies to encourage people to take out mortgages to buy
houses
often
do overall harm — such as increasing the prices of housing,
without even increasing the fraction of people that own houses.
Erdoğan's family got a
20-million-dollar
gift from a billionaire in 2008. The deal was covered up by
passing it through Malta.
Under Tory cuts, UK schools
cannot
even afford paper, let alone textbooks.
Even aside from starving the schools themselves, the
expense
of housing and the cuts in welfare for the poor are destroying
children's education.
The Republican Party's
Sickness
of the Soul.
55,000
people are now homeless in Los Angeles County.
Women journalists in Afghanistan
work
to change patriarchal society despite threats to their life.
Labor rights activists in China,
investigating
the factory that makes shoes for Ivanka Trump's brand, have been
arrested.
I wonder what the troll did to get this sort of support from China.
The Tories agreed to investigate the source of funding for Islamist
terrorism, but now
doesn't
want to publish the results. Suspicion is that the report traced
the funds to Salafi Arabia.
Disappointingly, Labour would continue with almost 80% of the
further
welfare cuts that the Tories have planned.
EFF: Chromebooks are still spying on students.
I don't think Google — or any other company — should be allowed to
collect data on students on the grounds that it is "necessary" for
something or other. When schools invite a student to use a certain
computer, that computer should not send any data about the student to
anyone.
Erdoğan has
decided
to arrest another 3,000 dissidents, supporters of
Fethullah Gülen.
It is absurd to accuse 47,000 people of participating in a coup plot.
So many people can't keep a secret, the coup plotters knew that.
China
will develop a state-approved encyclopedia, a propaganda
counterpart of Wikipedia.
In effect, Gandapedia.
Russians protested by reading the Russian constitution aloud
in Red Square. They were arrested.
Could there be a clearer admission of tyranny than this?
Kansas Republicans
require
women to sign a form printed in fairly small print in order to get
an abortion, apparently just to harass them.
Sanders: Americans,
unite
to free our country from oligarchic rule.
The troll feels threatened by the investigation of Russian ties, so he
and his staff now
refuse
to answer any questions about the issue.
No country should be saddled with a president that clams up because of
an investigation of possible crimes. He should resign, and then we
will have no objection when he exercises his right not to incriminate
himself.
Australia
must
put an end to clearing of land in order to cut greenhouse gas
emissions.
Since rising temperatures are increasing many natural CO2
emissions, we need to cut human emissions enough to get ahead of the
game.
A woman died walking into Canada
before
she could reach Canadian officials to ask for asylum.
The article is misleading when it says that Canadian thugs "intercept"
these people. They do not want to live in Canada secretly. Once
across the border, they
seek
out officials to apply for asylum.
A New York City thug faces murder charges for
shooting
a schizophrenic woman in her own home.
Thugs are supposed to know how to subdue people without killing them.
Even US government officials can't escape
persistent
debt collectors who harass them about debts owed by someone else.
The UK is trying to make unauthorized immigrants leave by
starving
them.
The troll has given right-wing terrorism a
big
boost.
They use some of the same methods that Islamist terrorists use,
so I expect they will copy the other methods as well.
He has likewise led immigration thugs to seek the
outer
limits in cruelty, while also trying to cut off legal aid to those
they have arrested.
The thugs are killing the woman with the brain tumor. They probably
gloat about that.
Once the troll has built up high pressure cruelty, it won't be limited
to unauthorized immigrants. He will direct it at US citizens too.
The first targets may be blacks, but it won't stop there either.
With Trump, A
Full-Scale
Assault on Protections for U.S. Public Lands.
The US Supreme Court
ruled
against trying to use patents on ink cartridges to stop independent
commercial refilling operations.
The article falls into a common confusion when it describes copyright
law, patent law and trademark law as
"intellectual
property". Those laws are totally different, and trying to
generalize about even two of them will surely lead you to false
conclusions.
The Theater of Security Agency
plans
a lot more harassment regarding carry-on baggage.
With global heating threatening to destroy coral entirely,
conservation is
forced
to consider a big strategic retreat. To preserve any coral reefs
at all will be hard enough.
US prosecutors
claim
that they never prosecuted any low-level drug criminals, and no such
people have been in federal prison.
However, Obama found almost 2000 of them and pardoned them.
When parents use mobile devices often, they can't pay their children
the attention children need. It's called "absent presence". The
result is that the children show bad behavior which reflects
psychological
harm.
How Liberals
lost
touch with middle America and thus lost political power.
The groups have grown apart so much that they don't know how to relate
to each other, and feel contempt for each other.
I certainly don't know how to relate to people with the usual tastes
and attitudes. I can talk myself out of thinking that mine make me
better than them, but I still can't see how to find common social
ground with them.
Most of the UK political parties now say they agree on
replacing
neoliberalism with "an economy that works".
I don't think the Tories are serious about it, though.
Black Americans are less interested in voting for Democrats because
they have become
Republican
Lite.
Although tens of thousands of blacks would probably have voted for
Democrats last year if they hadn't been blocked by
Republican
voter suppression.
Even though asbestos is known to be very dangerous, the US has not
banned it, and the
death
rate from asbestos-caused disease continues to rise.
The troll is trying to make it worse, by denying the danger
and encouraging more use of the poison.
He is trying to make more Americans sick, while leaving them without
medical care. That is the cruel way to reduce our population.
Wouldn't it be better to pay for birth control for everyone?
Comparing the
housing
policies of the three main UK parties. The Tories say vaguely
they will break from their cruel past, the Labour policy is much
better but not bold, and the Lib Dems offer interesting ideas.
The Supreme Court
overruled
one of the few ways citizens had to put a check on thugs that do
illegal searches followed by gross violence.
A Tory politician understated the need for food banks, saying it was
for "cashflow problems". In other words, transient problems.
The manager of a foodbank explains how they are
due
to long-term problems created by Tories.
Democrats, stop listening to
Rahm
Emanuel's right-wing advice.
"Centrist" Democrats (including Obama as well as Emanuel) are in fact
considerably right wing
compared
with the views of most Americans when asked about specific issues.
Dubai envisions a "smart city" system that would
track
everything about everyone.
This complete data base is suppose to make it possible to ensure
everyone is "happy". Except those for whom happiness involves having
human
rights.
US citizens: Demand that NAFTA renegotiations benefit
working
people, not corporate power.
Everyone:
call on the
press to start scrutinizing Pence for inconsistencies and denying
facts.
US citizens:
call
on the troll and other officials to respect the Paris climate
agreement.
It's not enough to prevent disaster, but it may make the disaster
somewhat smaller and buy time to take further action. To get rid of
it would be an act of reckless mass murder.
Also phone te White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 and ask for the
comment line.
The troll wants to cut taxes on corporations. Here's how they are
dodging
taxes and sabotaging the US.
UK charities know that planned Tory cuts will kill some of the people
the charities help, but
Tory
laws ban them from talking about this.
They should do it anyway, defying that law, then openly dare the
Tories to fine them since that money too will be taken from the poor.
The EU is
struggling
to put an end to emissions cheating software in cars.
The Democratic Party establishment
wants
to continue with Clinton's useless identity-based politics,
instead of taking up the causes that Americans want.
The commander of the Indian army
defended
use of human shields in Kashmir.
How disgusting.
When India took over the princely state of Kashmir, it promised the
people of Kashmir a referendum on whether to be part of India.
India should give them that referendum.
Goldman Sachs bought Venezuelan bonds for
under
1/3 of face value. (The bonds were issued by PDVSA, which is the
state-owned oil company.)
Whichever government is in power in the future, it will suffer from
the consequences of this.
Egypt has adopted a law that
will
make human rights organizations shut down unless they follow the
state's priorities (become useless).
India's theocratic ruling party is
making
it very hard to sell cows for slaughter. Especially cattle that
were used as farm work animals.
There were protests against this in various parts of India, and in one
of them a protester was
attacked
by religious fanatics and seriously injured.
With global heating plus increased urbanization, many cities could be
8C
hotter by the end of this century.
The US military continues to cover up
civilian
casualties from bombing raids.
It's impossible to fight a war and perfectly avoid civilian
casualties. It is possible to make a real effort to avoid them
— and it is possible to admit them when they happen.
Republicans are in favor of policies that redistribute wealth, as long
as it's
redistributed
to the rich. But they disguise this redistributive effect behind
some other motive, so that they can pretend to "oppose
redistribution".
The article sets a bad example in one point: it uses the
propaganda
word "protection" in reference to copyright, and to patents. A
deeper error in that same point is that it
groups copyright and
patents together as if they were similar issues.
Some US Christians cheer Gianforte's violence and call for a
"more
violent Christianity".
Other religious fanatics call for a more violent Islam, and look at
how much harm they have done. These could do even more.
200 students on a school trip were invited to give Paul Ryan a photo
op. Half of them
refused
to participate.
Bravo! They are learning what America means.
Interview:
Crackdown
on Media Ahead of Kenya's 2017 Vote.
Global heating is
destroying
Hawaii's coral reefs despite efforts to protect them.
Russia is
far
more powerful than PISSI, but Putin is less hostile: his aim is to
secure his authoritarian rule of Russia.
In today's capitalism, the customer is
beneath
contempt. What's more, treating other institutions like
businesses (for instance, schools and hospitals) means they treat the
customer with contempt much as businesses do.
US gun nuts oppose a bill
to make hearing aids cheaper simply because Senator Warren supports
it.
The troll conspicuously refuses to denounce right-wing terrorist murderers,
while other Republicans call for using armed militias for "security".
Moderate Muslims have a duty to campaign against Islamist terrorism.
Likewise, moderate right-wingers have a duty to campaign against
right-wing terrorism. It's the same situation, and the same duty.
Corbyn defended Labour policies well
in a pseudo-debate, and clearly rejected Tory austerity.
It is disappointing that Labour does not intend to undo all the Tory
cuts in aid for the poor and disabled, but stating opposition to austerity
is the first step.
A Texas Republican legislator
threatened to shoot
a Democratic legislator.
I am not surprised.
The troll can unite Europe —
against his contempt.
To carry out the Paris climate agreement, we need a carbon tax, and it
has to be preplanned to become quite high.
However, the Paris climate agreement is
insufficient.
Therefore, to avoid global heating disaster, the tax must be even
higher.
Renegotiation of NAFTA would be
an opportunity to make it somewhat less bad,
by eliminating the option for companies to sue national governments.
However, it would still be bad for the US (industry moves to Mexico)
and for Mexico (peasants can't make a living).
Facebook developed algorithms
to detect teenagers that are in a vulnerable or susceptible state, to
target them with ads.
Restaurants are using bigger wine glasses,
which
leads many people to drink more wine and get drunk.
How SCROTUS defends the Dontcare bill:
falsehoods, euphemisms, and deleting criticism.
US citizens:
call on the troll and other officials to respect the
Paris climate agreement.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Even US government officials
can't escape persistent debt collectors who
harass them
about debts owed by someone else.
The UK is trying to make refugees leave by starving them.
The troll has given right-wing terrorism a big boost. They use some of the same methods
that Islamist terrorists use,
so I expect they will copy the other methods as well.
He has likewise lead immigration thugs to seek the outer limits in cruelty,
while also trying to cut off legal aid to those they have arrested.
The thugs are killing the woman with the brain tumor. They probably
gloat about that.
Once the troll has built up high pressure cruelty, it won't be limited
to unauthorized immigrants. He will direct it at US citizens too.
The first targets may be blacks, but it won't stop there either.
US citizens:
call on
candidates to pledge to take no fossil fuel money.
US citizens:
call on Paul
Ryan to keep Gianforte out of the House of Representatives.
US citizens:
call on
the Department of the Interior to preserve all US national
monuments.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to block arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats to refuse to lend legitimacy to the troll's proposed
voter suppression commission.
Thug unions in Alaska are
lobbying
against a law that would prohibit thugs from pressuring suspects,
crime victims and witnesses to have sex with them.
This law applies to more than just situations where prostitutes face
arrest for prostitution. Anyone who is attractive and facing arrest
by a thug is vulnerable to being forced into prostitution by the thug.
The troll might be planning to
privatize
US infrastructure and sell it to Salafi Arabia.
Veterans for Peace will rallied on Memorial Day to move
beyond
remembering war dead. Their idea is to reduce the number of
future war dead.
Uruguay has legalized marijuana, but for those who
register
for a license to buy or grow it.
That adds up to a government registry that could prove dangerous, and
in any case is unjustified surveillance.
Making people work until age 70 could be acceptable, but
what
about when their pay isn't enough to live on, or they are
disabled?
Most of the world's major states give little foreign aid. The one
permanent doctor in Sudan's Nuba mountains
explains
the situation there.
Most of the world's major states give little foreign aid.
With so many rich people and companies demanding tax cuts, little is
left for starving people far away.
Food Stamps: A Lifeline for America's Poor That Trump
Wants
to Cut.
A few right-wing hate spreaders have been kicked off mainstream media
by
the hand of the increased corporate power they have fought to make
possible.
Meanwhile, progressives remain excluded from the mainstream media.
Tens of millions of Americans want single-payer medical care, and each
one thinks, "I must be the only one. Am I a an extremist?"
The troll's bizarre antics are
very
effective distraction. Keep an eye on the Republicans' other
hands!
Joy Buolamwini thinks it is an injustice that face recognition
works
better on white faces than on black faces.
I agree; but I am puzzled that she wants to make it recognize black
faces better. I think that's backwards. It should recognize white
faces just as badly as black faces.
The Tories are refusing to talk about their use of sensitive personal
data, which
appears
possibly to be illegal.
Islamist terrorists attacked civilians for being Christians.
Christians say the Egyptian government was
not
very interested in investigating.
It did use the opportunity to
bomb
terrorist camps in Libya. But they belong to a different group.
The UK is
lobbying
to undermine EU-wide energy efficiency measures which would take
effect after the UK has left the EU.
This shows that the motive must be sabotage — of civilization's
hope of surviving global heating disaster.
The way to deal with possible price increases from electricity
suppliers is to pre-empt them with a carbon tax. If they get windfall
profits anyway, apply a windfall profits tax. This money can be used
to solve other social problems.
The troll's repeatedly announced War on Journalism
targets
journalists, but especially leakers.
Blacks moving to America's small cities face
systematic
harassment by thugs. The previous inhabitants, nearly all whites,
suppose (falsely) that crime is going up and they blame it on the
blacks who are moving in.
A
Colombian grad student was finally cleared of criminal charges
for posting an academic article online.
All scholarly articles
should be free.
The latest fashion in education
is total monitoring of children
to teach them to accept total surveillance when they grow up.
The troll's saboteurs love science, but they want to
gut the EPA Science Office.
Gianforte's attack on a journalist
has unleashed the inner Republican spirit:
violent hatred of whoever gets in their way. Republican politicians are
encouraging it.
I can see this leading to a wave of terrorism.
Palestinian prisoners have ended their hunger strike
in exchange for an Israeli concession about family visits.
The article fails to mention that many of these prisoners are not
serving sentences imposed after conviction for a crime. They were
imprisoned arbitrarily without trial.
A German draft law would
require social network companies to do censorship,
deleting many sorts of works that are considered
deplorable.
Multinational companies have found a screw in EU treaties
that would enable them to claim back around $80 billion in taxes that
they paid in the UK many years ago.
Maybe exiting the EU will enable the UK to refuse to ever pay them.
There are hopes that Ecuador's new president will reduce Correa's
practice of prosecuting
journalists and leakers.
What if
getting help for mental illness
were as easy as going to the dentist?
The "war on drugs" is a failure world wide, but even worse, it accustoms the
world to
massive murder.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to reject the troll's budget.
US citizens:
Support
the financial transaction tax.
US businesses
often
cheat low-wage workers, and retaliate with blacklisting, threat of
prosecution or deportation, even violence against workers that
complain.
Right-wing bigots have adopted a camouflage of irony and humor. It
enables them to make bigotry seem normal while
recruiting
support in a deniable way.
The author recommends treating anyone that jokes about support for
bigotry as a serious supporter regardless of denials.
Another method that some clever people might be able to apply is to
inject other ideas, not bigoted, into the group. If they won't admit
they are really bigots, they might have trouble explaining disapproval
of this. To succeed at that would take skill, and I doubt I could
pull it off, but a group of clever progressives might get somewhere.
White racism in the US is
ready
for murder once again, with encouragement from the troll and his
saboteurs.
The troll
wants
to cut food stamps by 25%, and dump another 20% of the cost on
states.
When states can't pay that, the result might be no food stamps for
some people in that state. This could serve a an indirect excuse for
even bigger cuts.
If that's not bad enough, new fees would be imposed to discourage
small stores from accepting food stamp payments.
Don't respond to loss by avoiding
things
you love that remind you of the loss.
The troll stated
admiration
for Do-dirty's death squad campaign.
Republicans opposing net neutrality are
using
a script written by cable company lobbyists.
A court victory for the EFF: the NSA is
required
to give surveillance plaintiffs all the necessary evidence to
determine whether they personally have been snooped on.
The troll wants to put a polluters' advocate in charge of
administering
the Superfund for cleaning up polluted industrial sites.
The Superfund problem, like so many others, can be traced to letting
businesses get out of paying taxes.
Hoosick Falls should have a local newspaper called "Hoosick Today?"
A group of nazis in Florida were planning to explode a bomb to spread
radioactive material. Then one of them converted to Islam and
murdered
two others.
It is interesting to see how close right-wing bigotry is to Islamist
bigotry.
Automation
threatens
to divide humanity into the enhanced elite and the impoverished
masses.
The progressive movement fights against the continued advance in that
direction. Please join in.
Taiwan's highest court has
ordered
the legalization of same-sex marriage.
China has brought its birth rate down, and some say
India
now holds the shame of being the world's most populous country.
Unfortunately, those fools claim that population increase is a good
thing and China should produce more babies.
Global heating could cause changes in ocean circulation which would
eventually
wipe
out large whales.
Software
is being developed to let thugs use body cameras to identify the
faces of everyone their bodies point at.
They should not be allowed to have this capability without limits.
A film made by Armenians depicting the genocide of the Armenians faces
organized
harassment and business sabotage.
One
Pennsylvania
legislator defends to the bitter end his right to receive gifts in
exchange for votes.
In the UK even schoolteachers are
in
danger of living on the streets.
This is due to Tory policies that have
eliminated
public housing and
driven
rents up. Meanwhile, Tory dooH niboR policies squeeze them from
the other side.
The troll's budget plan, for ten years, "sacrifices
public health, environmental protection, reproductive rights,
international aid, social safety nets, farm subsidies, the arts,
student aid, and public education"
for military and the rich.
It
cuts
scientific research drastically.
Tories Say They'll
Exploit Manchester's Dead to Ban Working Crypto
in the
UK.
The plan appears not to be a ban on using encryption, but rather to
require companies to put back doors in their products.
Theresa "Snooper" May has campaigned for years
to eliminate all
possibility in the UK for people to have a private conversation. She
must have been waiting for an opportunity like this one.
Ralph Nader:
end the War on Drugs and handle other dangerous addictive drugs
the way we handle alcohol and tobacco.
The bill S.1127 would do this.
A "Russian intelligence document", erroneous and possibly fake,
complicated
the investigation of Clinton's private email server.
The US and its allies in Syria have agreed to cover up the civilian
casualties they cause.
These casualties are increasing.
Keep in mind that PISSI conscripts local men, often as soldiers. As soldiers, they are legitimate targets in war, but their relatives
should not be. In any case, making war on civilians is terrorism, and
the US must not engage in terrorism.
The PISSI-controlled area of Syria, including Raqqa, is a battle zone. There is no way assure safety for civilians in a battle zone. But the
US has an obligation, morally and by treaty, to make strong efforts to
avoid civilian casualties. Covering them up is reprehensible.
If Congress were doing its job, it would require honesty and protection
of civilians as a condition for authorizing the war.
US right-wingers now understand the danger of the Deep State.
Will they recognize that Snowden's fight to diminish it is heroic, and help do so?
Most teenagers don't have basic financial literacy,
and it's worse for those
who have a bank payment card.
This confirms that paying cash makes people more aware of how much money they are spending. So there are two reasons to pay cash: to resist tracking
and to understand your budget and spending better.
With the troll mostly hated, and
Sanders the best-liked politician in
the US,
Democrats have a clear path to victory: follow Sanders.
Strange that few Democratic politicians actually do that.
The partial ban on Muslims
is a test for the US Supreme Court.
The US subsidizes fossil fuel companies an effective
7 billion dollars a year
for their use of public lands.
Comcast has decided not to sue the site comcastroturf,
at least not
for the moment.
That's because the suit would be frivolous and Comcast knows it.
Comcast's excuse, supposing it is the truth, is really no excuse.
Many companies hire trademark lawyers that regularly try to intimidate
anyone that uses the company's trademarks in discourse, without asking
themselves crucial questions such as "Is their use fair use" and
"would demanding they stop constitute bullying?" Such trademark
lawyers are, in effect, acting like robots even though they are human
beings.
The company that chooses to employ such robot-imitators to bully
people indiscriminately is morally responsible for the mistreatment
involved.
The battle to stop a proposed giant coal mine
has given the environmental movement in Australia
a clear way to focus attention on global heating
and the threat to the Great Barrier Reef.
A journalist in East Timor faces imprisonment for mentioning the wrong company in an article.
The newspaper has already published a correction.
The injustice starts with the existence of a law making "defamation" a
crime. Prosecution for "defamation" is a tool for repression.
Leaks about surveillance of the Russian ambassador
say
Kushner the
troll-in-law discussed with him how to set up unmonitored communications with Russia.
The troll says it would be too hard to
keep track of whether he's
getting money from foreign interests
through his business.
This means he must truly divest from his business.
US reactors of the same type as those at Fukushima have been left
vulnerable to running out of water in the spent fuel pools.
It's not
worth fixing, say regulators. In the event of a Fukushima-style
accident, that could lead to a much bigger disaster.
Republican politicians think
the idea of attacking reporters will appeal
to their core supporters.
It's the same thing the troll discovered in his campaign rallies:
every time he bullied someone, his supporters loved it.
They
get a vicarious feeling of strength by identifying with him.
Before Gianforte attacked a reporter,
he attacked the citizens of Montana,
trying to stop them from fishing on public land near his
house.
That attitude typifies the Republicans' attitude towards the public.
In Libya, the failed state that resulted from the ouster of Qadhafi
opened up room for PISSI to recruit people angry at the state of their
country.
It wasn't exactly the fault of the US/European intervention,
but anger at other US/European interventions gave Islamist extremism
the force to succeed in recruiting some of the disaffected.
A man who harassed Muslim women on a train in Portland, Oregon,
murdered
two other passengers who tried to protect the women.
Do-dirty "jokingly"
encouraged soldiers to rape women
in Mindanao.
Corbyn: the UK must recognize that its warlike posture has
helped provoke terrorism,
and must change that posture.
The EU's
plan to spread WiFi
access throughout Europe must not promote big business that spies on users.
If it requires people to log in and identify themselves, it might
eliminate the convenient systems in cafes that don't require this.
In 1967, when Israel was at war with several Arab countries, its
planes
attacked
the USS Liberty, a radio listening ship. The survivors and other
witnesses say that the attack was intentional — and some testify to
hearing radio surveillance recordings in which Israeli pilots asking,
"Are we really supposed to attack an ally's ship?"
Paraguay has done a great job of giving rural population
access to clean water.
Tricks
that Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat use to make people feel anxious and spend time there.
Car owners are
suing General Motors
accusing it of using "defeat devices" to cheat on emissions tests.
Meanwhile, Diesel cars that were found to spew lots of pollution are still being sold.
Humans are
wiping out seabirds
through many practices that are deadly for them.
The job-killing mogul Greg Gianforte won the election in Montana
despite
attacking a reporter.
Or was it because of attacking a reporter? Republicans assume the
reporter must have done something horrible to deserve being attacked.
I hope Gianforte starts his congressional term in jail.
Libyans in Britain
warned the state
repeatedly about jihadi recruiters operating among them.
So don't complain that moderate Muslims don't try to stop terrorism.
They do try.
The inspector generals report that US agents were
directly involved
in the raid in Honduras that killed four Miskitu people.
The US thugs shot at them, then stopped them from getting medical
aid which might have saved some of their lives. Then the thugs lied about it,
naturally.
The coup-installed Honduran government is giving them a runaround instead
of justice.
36 US states do
face recognition
on drivers licenses. In some states, they violate state law by doing so.
Let's make it illegal everywhere!
Is California's
single-payer medical system
too expensive? It's cheaper than the present system, provides better
care, and doesn't leave millions out.
Right-wing Democrats led by Bill Clinton paved the way for
DeVos's
extreme privatization campaign.
It's not enough for Democrats to win. We need progressives in Congress,
progressives who won't support privatization.
The ease of switching from
neo-Nazi to Islamist
shows that for some people the direction of extremism is just a
detail.
The psychology of jihadi radicalization: to counter it, neighbors and
media must
help young Muslims
feel they are welcome as part of the society around them.
Weak encryption
is worse than no encryption, so business operating in countries that
don't allow effective encryption should offer no encryption and loudly
say why.
The troll is personally responsible for
encouraging violence
against journalists in the US.
The US
finally admitted
that bombing one house in Mosul killed more than 100 civilians.
It's impossible to fight a war without mistakes. The US should have
admitted the mistake quickly; trying to deny the facts only adds to the wrong.
The US should stop using 500-pound bombs to attack a few people
in a roof. And it should stop assuming that a house is empty just because
it doesn't know of anyone inside. Those practices invite causing civilian
casualties.
Thugs in Brazil
shot at protesters
that demanded the resignation of the corrupt president.
The troll-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns a rental housing company that
aggressively
squeezes money
out of former tenants — even when they don't owe any, his
lawyers pursue them for years.
A Republican congresscritter wants to
cut food stamps
for some Americans to be "fair" to other Americans that don't get
them.
Following that logic they will eventually give zero welfare benefits
to all non-rich Americans.
A right-wing extremist
murdered a student
in a Maryland university that he didn't know. The only idea for a
motive is bigotry.
Oil spills are
not a rare occurrence
where pipelines are concerned. The companies downplay the spills in
the press, which spreads a mistaken impression that they will
generally be safe and spills will be unlikely.
Egypt has
blocked
more foreign news sites, saying they publish lies.
"Lies" is Egyptian for "criticizing the state".
The PISSI offshoot in Libya has mostly lost its military power but
can still
organize terrorism abroad.
We must remember that the harm it can do is small compared with the loss
of our freedom.
Just as the Saboteur of the Interior begins considering whether to
abolish some national monuments,
he has
shut down public lands local
advisory councils around the US.
Of course, the troll's saboteurs get their orders from a powerful few.
Naturally they don't care what everyone else thinks; but it's surprising
when they expose that so clearly.
Carson, Saboteur of Housing and Urban Development, said that
poverty results
from having the wrong mindset.
Mindset does play a role, but getting out of the gutter without help
takes exceptional ability and a lot of luck.
The point of government welfare programs is so that the rest of the
poor people can have a decent life.
It should also be noted that growing up in poverty teaches most people
a bad mindset.
A poll of 8 important greenhouse-emitting countries found
most people
are willing to change the way they live to avoid global heating
disaster.
These countries are the US, China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil,
South Africa, and Germany.
The Dontcare bill would result in
loss of medical coverage for 23
million Americans.
That's one million less than the version they rejected. A small step forward, on top of a big step back.
Millions of other Americans would lose out also,
just not quite as much.
Cannabidiol made from marijuana is an
effective treatment for epilepsy
in some children.
The US needs to change the legal status of marijuana to make it possible
to sell drugs made from that plant.
Suicide bombers attacked thugs in Jakarta.
They were surely Islamist, since there is no other plausible candidate.
This is the result of
Salafist indoctrination funded by Salafi Arabia,
and
encouraged by the blasphemy law.
A truly tough response to terrorism would be to
deny the terrorists
the reaction they seek.
The damage to Africa
from global heating effects and from stripping
and hiding wealth abroad far exceeds all the aid Africa receives.
A turncoat in the EPA, linked to pesticide companies, seems to have
persuaded the European Food Safety Authority to
ignore evidence that
glyphosate is dangerous.
Britons, don't go off the deep end when there is a bombing.
Cars are far more deadly.
In the UK, over 100 people are killed each month by
car collisions. (112 per month, for 2015.)
Each of those deaths was a loss to the world, and left relatives and friends bereft. But you don't ruin your free society over those
deaths. Don't do it over these!
Don't let it make you regard Muslims as enemies.
A former prisoner of PISSI says that his captors were delighted every
time westerners responded to a terrorist attack by proclaiming general
hostility to Muslims.
That supports their recruiting strategy.
The Union of Concerned Scientists: Trump Budget Disregards Science,
Puts
Public Health, Innovation at Risk.
The plutocratist wing of the Democratic Party seems to want to fight
just hard enough to get back in power,
not
to really win for the non-rich.
Watch out for Ancestry.com and its
rules
for who owns scans of people's DNA.
Comcast is using a frivolous but dangerous trademark lawsuit to
try
to shut down a web site that criticizes it.
The troll's proposed budget includes the already announced
cuts
for the EPA and endangered species.
If this goes through, it will cause an irreparable loss.
The UK will have
stricter
security at concerts.
That could be useful, and I don't criticize it. It isn't wrong to
search people entering concerts for bombs or weapons, as long as the
thugs don't take note of anything but bombs and weapons.
The Oakland prostitution scandal has led to many thugs' resigning or
pleading guilty. One is actually
on
trial.
My ethical analysis of all this:
It wasn't wrong for Celeste Guap to do sex work,
and it wasn't wrong to be her customer.
If a thug compelled her to have sex by threatening to arrest her if
she didn't, that was a form of rape.
If a thug convinced her to have sex by offering her information about
operations, that was in effect taking a bribe from her, paid in the
form of sex. It was wrong for the thug to take that bribe, and wrong
for her to pay it; but those wrongs are overshadowed by the bigger
wrong of arresting people for prostitution.
The troll's proposed budget would
cut
hundreds of billions from support for poor people.
A paid family leave plan would give back a
tiny
fraction of that. "Ivanka Trump's family leave plan is a fig leaf
for her father's worst policies."
As for the tax cuts, we know that hardly anything will "trickle down"
to the non-rich.
Before Tony B'liar helped Dubya attack Iraq, UK intelligence
warned
it would provoke terrorist bombings in the UK.
In the long run, we can best reduce the danger from Islamist
terrorists by (1) ceasing to attack other countries (particularly
Muslim countries), and (2) making Salafi Arabia reduce its efforts to
spread a cruel form of Islam.
Uber has
repeatedly
underpaid its drivers.
Vietnam is
recognizing
the harm that rising sea level will do.
Google has
found
a way to track most credit card purchases in the US, even those
not done through a phone, and correlate that with people's online
actions.
Google can't do either side to me, since I pay cash and don't carry a
mobile phone, and it doesn't know what web sites I look at.
Illinois is considering bills
requiring
web sites to tell users what information they hold about them and what
companies they have distributed it to.
I'm in favor of this, but I don't think it will do much to protect us
from surveillance by web sites. And that's not to count the
surveillance of bank cards, pharmacies, toll booths, phone companies,
license plate cameras and face recognition cameras.
The last old forest in Europe is
being
destroyed by illegal logging and legal logging.
A public toilet in Beijing
requires
using a face recognition system to get toilet paper.
Some governments will spend lots of money to surveil people in the name
of stinginess.
If there's anyone in Beijing that can't afford toilet paper,
the city government should give out toilet paper for them.
Why not put a box of rolls next to the toilet?
I have a hunch that that toilet does something else even worse:
that it is a pay toilet. The idea of charging people to use a toilet
offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet.
Please join this campaign, and spread the word.
Britons,
don't
react to terrorist bombings with fear and vindictiveness!
The biggest danger to the UK comes not from the terrorists, but from
tearing up their own freedom in the vain pursuit of absolute security.
George Monbiot: "Don't let psychopathic murderers suppress our
common
humanity."
A Chinese student praised US freedom of political discussion as she
addressed other students in graduation from a US university. She was
subjected
to orchestrated smears in China.
It is a shame that she undercut her defense of freedom by apologizing
for it.
Banning neonicotinoid pesticides will be facilitated by a
report
showing that other solutions do as good a job.
The Supreme Court
rejected
racist gerrymandering in North Carolina.
Republicans aimed, in their usual way, to create a handicap against
Democrats.
The EFF reports that
HTTPS
is making it difficult for states to impose selective censorship via
filtering, which leads states to turn to demanding that companies
such as Facebook carry out the censorship for them.
Unfortunately, it ends with an inadequate recommendation for companies
to be "transparent" about their censorship. That's hardly enough
to qualify as trying to resist.
The article also uses the term
"content"
to refer to publications, which ought to be avoided since it
deprecates them all.
UK doctors say many of the children they treat suffer from
bad
health caused by Toryism and the poverty it campaigns for. This
harms children's health by way of bad housing, bad food, and stress
about financial insecurity.
The excessive demonization of Russia has interfered with removal of an
unconstitutional California law
barring
Communists from state jobs.
Communism sounds nice in the abstract, but when implemented it turned
out to be just another system of dictatorship by an elite. China and
Vietnam today, and to some extent Cuba as well, show that this outcome
was not limited to the Soviet Union.
9
ways Iran is more free than Salafi Arabia.
Regarding item 4, electing from a list of candidates handed down from
on high is a parody of democracy, and that's where Iran falls short of
democracy.
Item 10 is irrelevant to the question of freedom in Iran. However, I
don't think Iran's support for Assad is any worse than US support for
a variety of comparably vicious regimes.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to oppose the troll budget.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to block the troll's cruel budget.
When Erdoğan's bodyguards attacked protesters in Washington DC,
the world got a glimpse of
Turkey's
standard repression.
One of the troll's cabinet saboteurs
stated
his admiration for the absence in Salafi Arabia of any protests
against the troll's visit.
A report on business surveillance of employees, and
avenues
to limit such surveillance.
In general, we should not allow any businesses to excuse
surveillance of the public based on nominal "consent". To protect
privacy and democracy we
need
to get rid of most of the existing massive surveillance.
Business surveillance of employees can be oppressive even when they
are on the job. For instance, if they are not allowed moments to rest
between calls, or if they are impeded from going to the toilet.
Oxfam finds that opening new coal mines will only worsen [global heating]
and
drive
poor nations deeper into poverty.
US retailers may replace
7.5
million sales clerk jobs with automation in the next 10 years.
I refuse to use self-checkout machines in stores, but I do more than
just avoid them. When I pass those machines, I shout, "If you use
those machines, you are putting Americans out of work!" Then I go to
the human sales clerk.
If I have to wait for the sales clerk, that's ok. I always have a
book to read. (I don't go out without a book and a computer.)
Please join me in doing these things. It's not too early to push back
against socially harmful automation.
Of course, buying on line is even worse, and it records in a data base
who you are and what you bought. You can join me in rejecting that
too.
Two Turkish teachers went on hunger strike 10 weeks ago after being
fired for political reasons. Now they have been
arrested
for not eating.
Over 100,000 people in Turkey have been fired and blacklisted for
political reasons. Some (all?) of them have had their pensions and
passports taken away so that they cannot get asylum.
The claim that 100,000 people were involved in the coup attempt is
absurd. Coup plotters know better than to tell so many people their
plans.
How
the peace activists can try to end proxy wars.
The FCC received lots of
comments
opposed to network neutrality generated by bots, not submitted by
human beings. Saboteur Ajit Pai suggests he will treat them as valid.
This sort of two-step falsification is the essence of astroturf. One
party creates a lot of smoke. Another sees the smoke and claims
there's a fire. In effect, they combine to promulgate a lie, but
neither of them can be held responsible for lying.
100
students walked out on Pence as he addressed the graduation at
Notre Dame.
Iranians just
voted
for better relations with the US. Too bad
the
troll wants to support the warlike Sunni murder-states instead.
The UK Green Party calls for
strong
measures to help the non-rich, including a universal basic income.
The war and famine in South Sudan continue, stirred up by
rivalry
between several meddling US client states.
Egypt,
Ethiopia
and Sudan
are ruled by tyrannical regimes that are willing to kill large numbers
of people. Uganda does not have free and fair elections, but I don't
think it is as repressive as those other three.
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia to get rid of an Islamist but not
aggressive government that had unified the country, and it has been
wracked by civil war ever since; this intervention had to have
US
support.
Corbyn has made the Labour Party relevant again by
making
it stand for something that can inspire people.
Islamist bigotry in Jakarta:
140
men arrested at a sauna party.
I'm afraid it is only a matter of years before the Muslim majority of
Indonesia starts a civil war by trying to impose its rules on other
ethnic groups. This is all the fault of Salafi Arabia, which has
funded the inculcation in Indonesia of repressive forms of Islam in
place of the tolerant forms that were widespread in Indonesia before.
Salafi Arabia's many evils,
collected.
Chelsea Manning
shows
the heroism required to be a whistleblower in a country that
doesn't respect whistleblowers — and why we need whistleblowers
tremendously.
Secret New European Copyright Proposal Spells
Disaster
for Free Culture.
When the international situation permits it, it will be
possible
to prosecute those in the Assad regime who are responsible for the
torture and murder of thousands of prisoners.
Getting abortion pills and advice in using them online proves to be
quite
safe.
Iran, Salafi Arabia, democracy, and the
troll.
Twitter has implemented new non-privacy settings;
the default
is substantial surveillance, if users don't turn it off.
Sabotaging the 2020 US census would
help
Republicans get away with gerrymandering.
Republicans want to build US infrastructure through "public-private
partnerships", which means the public
pays
more and gets less control.
In Salafi Arabia, the troll
talks
about the need to defeat Islamist extremism.
As if it weren't Salafi Arabia that spends millions per year to
spread
Islamist extremism.
The troll also strained to equate Iran's repressive state with
terrorism. However, Iran's repression happens overtly, in Iran.
Stay away
from there and you're safe from it. And Iran's repression is only
a fraction of that of Salafi Arabia.
Canada has
removed
most of the requirements for supervised facilities for addicts to
take opioids.
El Cenizo, Texas, is
suing
to overturn the Texas law that forces all local thugs to obey
orders from US border thugs.
The Republican governor of Maine has
prohibited
posting signs to lead people to the Katahdin Woods and Waters national
monument, which he wants to eliminate.
He hopes to keep visitors away so he can claim people don't want to go
there.
This reminds me of how New Jersey officials (surely directed by the
Governor Christy)
punished
a Democratic mayor by closing lanes on the George Washington
Bridge. (The governor says he didn't tell his aides to do this.
If you believe that, maybe he will offer to sell you that bridge.)
This shows the scheming and dishonest attitude of today's Republican
Party. They will degrade any institutions they get their hands on,
and use it to spread lies, merely to deny their rivals a chance to
point at any sort of success.
US journalists
denounce
the practice of imprisoning journalists, which was expanded under
Dubya and Obama and is getting worse under the troll.
In January, Flynn
convinced
Obama's national security advisor to put off a plan to arm the Syrian
Kurds to capture Raqqa. Flynn had taken pay from Turkey during
2016.
The troll has since reinstated the plan.
Democratic congresscritters
wrote
to Pence in November to warn him about Flynn's employment by
Turkey.
Pence claimed he didn't know about this.
The thug that shot Terrence Crutcher
lied
about many aspects of the killing, and then was acquitted of
charges.
Thugs
assumed
Crutcher was dangerous before they approached him. They didn't
bother to notice that he was unarmed and had his hands up.
Unconscious racism may have played a role, and surely the assumption
did too. That is no excuse for what they did.
Here's an idea: put up posters showing that thug, in uniform, with the
caption "Armed, Dangerous Liar." Each word can be proved.
The US government
organizes
the arrest of hundreds of sex workers every year, under the guise
of releasing enslaved minors — except that it finds hardly any
minors and none are enslaved.
Sheriff Clarke wants to put thousands of Americans — perhaps as
much as a million —
in
prison without trial based on suspicions he appears to exaggerate.
What Facebook gained from buying WhatsApp was to
associate
nearly every used of Facebook with a phone number. Facebook lied
about this when it bought WhatsApp.
Brazilian president Temer
says
the audio recording which had him discussing hush money for Eduardo
Cunha was faked.
The Australian government is disappointed that environmentalists have
defeated coal mining plans in court, because they would harm
endangered species. Instead of making mines respect wildlife, the
government has decided to block environmentalists from taking such
issues to court.
Future mining projects will get away with destroying endangered
species, because the extractionist state doesn't care, and
everyone
else in Australia will be powerless.
The troll's saboteurs have
blocked
a plan to measure greenhouse emissions from cars and trucks.
EFF: since stingrays always snoop on everyone in a neighborhood, the
usual criteria for a search warrant are not enough for using a
stingray. They
should
be used only in cases of major crimes.
Pence is a Christian theocrat and plutocratist, but that is no reason
to hold back from
impeaching
the troll.
Some US agency
reports
listening to a Russian agent boast of plans to interfere with the US
election of 2016, to punish Clinton.
If true (those agencies do sometimes lie), it is not proof that the
troll's staff colluded with Russia about the matter. But it confirms
the importance of a full and trustworthy investigation.
The troll tried to erase concern for global heating from the nearly
finalized
Arctic
declaration.
After the final defeat of North Carolina's voter suppression law,
Republicans
there vow to try again to stop Democrats from voting.
A British woman is on trial for going to a park and
inviting
teenage boys to have sex with her there. Her husband acted as a
lookout in case someone else passed by. One teenager allegedly
visited her at her house repeatedly to have sex with her.
None of these acts would be wrong in any sense, provided they took
precautions against spreading infections. The idea that adolescents
(of whatever sex) need to be "protected" from sexual experience they
wish to have is prudish ignorantism, and making that experience a
crime is perverse.
The Tories plan total
state-controlled
censorship of the internet in the UK.
The FCC's nonuniformed thugs
grabbed
a reporter in a meeting where the press was invited, and
physically threw him out.
Other reporters, who knew him, were shocked.
Most Republicans don't care what nasty, criminal or treasonous things
the troll does; they will
construct
excuses to support him regardless.
This may explain why Republicans tell blatant absurd lies all the
time. The falsehood is easy to expose, but they know their supporters
have chosen to disconnect from reality and will treat the lies as
truth.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to protect the EPA's budget.
New Orleans has
finished
removing its memorials to the Confederacy.
The troll has appointed a sheriff that
notoriously
hates Black Lives Matter as liaison with local thug departments.
The troll's choice for Deputy Saboteur of the Interior Department
is a saboteur indeed: a
walking
conflict of interest".
If US intelligence about al-Qa'ida in Yemen is imperfect, the result is to
kill
lots of the wrong people.
If the members of al-Qa'ida are a tiny fraction of the population, it
doesn't take much of an error rate for drone assassinations to kill
more bystanders then enemies.
Trying to explain
why
do the Tories' victims plan to vote for Tories.
I think politicians that will try to do good things and might fail are
preferable to politicians that can be relied on to implement policies
that will crush lots of people.
The Tory state contracts with charities to implement state
responsibilities to help the poor, but
doesn't
pay for the costs. The charities need to use other money.
This can't go on much longer. In a year or two, the charities will
cease to bid for these contracts. Then the Tories will say, "Oops,
there's no money to help the poor, we have to stop!" But there will
be no election scheduled for several years, so Britons will be stuck
with it.
That's if they are suckers enough to vote for Tories now.
These charities should cancel now to give voters a sign of
what they'd choose
if they vote
Tory.
If We Cared about Peace We Would Be
Talking
to Hamas.
Hamas's new charter demonstrates that there's a real possibility for
Israel and Hamas to make peace. If you would like negotiations to
succeed, it makes no sense to demand more than that as a precondition
for starting negotiations. When the US demands more than that from
Hamas, and doesn't
make
similar demands on Israel, it supports Israel's unstated
intentions to continue the occupation and siege; to reject peace.
Without Action on
Antibiotics,
Medicine Will Return to the Dark Ages.
The seed vault in Svalbard had a
close
scare from global heating effects.
Svalbard is heating faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. If we
don't curb global heating soon, it will be above freezing all the time
for several months of the year.
Globalized industry pressures countries to
compete
to allow the highest levels of pollution.
If we want to change this, "rewarding social responsibility" is a weak
intervention. We should prohibit import of goods that polluted where
they were made.
The Tories are systematically borrowing Republican techniques to
suppress voting by the poor. Next step:
voter
ID.
The Tories are also imitating the troll's
contempt
for reporters that are not subservient.
Plutocratist parties operate governments of occupation on behalf of
the conquering global rich. They may use democracy while it exists,
but they aim to
deny
the people to any real control over their destiny. In the process
of doing so, they become
ever
less legitimate as governments. They deserve their power no more
than any other government of occupation.
Sweden has dropped charges against Julian Assange, rejecting the
option of bringing him to Sweden with a commitment not to send him to
the US.
However, Assange still can't leave the Ecuadorian embassy, as the UK
has found a minor crime to arrest him for, and the troll regime says
it
plans
to prosecute him somehow.
It appears they intend to make him spend the rest of his life in
the Ecuadorian embassy.
I conjecture that Sweden dropped the charges because the US no longer
had any need for them.
Do-dirty has
decreed
a ban on smoking tobacco in public in the Philippines.
I wouldn't expect that a president has the legal power to do that
alone.
Democratic Senators demand information from the troll's companies, now
operated by his sons at thumb's length from him, to
see
whether they are passing through foreign money to him.
Uber collects data about passengers, then uses the data to
profile
them in various ways.
A careful survey suggests that
1/4
of the US population may be atheist, but many of them fear to let
this be known.
Ships emit so much air pollution that they
may
cause 60,000 deaths per year.
Progressive candidate Rob Quist has a chance to get elected to
Congress from Montana, but the
national
Democratic Party has given him almost no support.
The DNC works for the Wall Street Democrats, like Clinton, against
progressives such as Sanders.
Clinton and the Wall Street Democrats want to bring opposition to
plutocratic Republicans under
their
Plutocratic aegis.
In July 2016, I posted a petition on MoveOn
calling
on Clinton to stand aside so Sanders could defeat the troll. Too
bad she didn't do it.
Wall Street Democrats want to go on and on, along the same path of
dooH niboR. If we want to go in the right direction, we must not
reject their attempts to lead us astray.
In addition to the special criminal investigator, we
need
an independent commission to investigate wrongdoing by the troll
that isn't a crime.
The troll and DeVos want to
gut
federal support for public schools and college student loans, and move
most of the money to private and religious schools.
DeVos wants to
eliminate
the program that forgives student loans for some students.
If you were rich enough to matter, in her judgment, you
wouldn't have needed any student loans.
The troll
wants
to cut 70% from support for renewable energy in the Department of
Energy.
Some US companies offer maternity leave to full time corporate
employees, but most of their workers are part-time or employed by
contractors or franchises, and
don't
get those benefits.
If there is any doubt about how you can afford to raise a child,
you shouldn't expose it to the risk of being born in that situation.
It took a series of lucky breaks to expose Nixon's conspiracy and
remove him from office. We
can't
count on that to happen again.
However, with the special investigator we have at least traveled a
step further down the path.
There are plans to store and transport renewable energy in the form of
liquid
hydrogen or ammonia.
Iceland could export energy from the
heat
of underground molten magma.
These could help avoid global disaster, but only if they are ramped up
soon.
Careless treatment of intelligence information is
not
as important as unjustified war.
So You Want to Share Intelligence with Russia ... There Are
Less
Risky Ways to Do It.
I wonder: would Russians have been able to deduce that the information
came from a spy working for Israel, from the information they got?
Or did they get that info from the US media?
Meet Aristotle, the Robot Nanny That Can
Raise
(And Spy on) Your Child.
I am glad people are starting to recognize that these products are
fundamentally bad.
EU citizens:
object to plans
to require web sites to impose mechanical copyright censorship that
would reject parodies and other commentary.
The page raises two issues. I think the copyright censorship
issue is the most important; if I were an EU citizen I would
respond put that one first.
I would also avoid using the word "content" to refer to works of
authorship in the text I wrote.
US citizens:
state
your opposition to snooping robots for children.
I think they are just as bad when offered to adults.
The wrong is an outgrowth of the nonfree software in the device.
The troll's ghost-writer says his behavior pattern now is the same as
in 1985:
no
empathy, no conscience, no shame, and no respect for truth. Every
other person is a rival he needs to dominate.
US citizens:
call
on Sessions to rescind the new prosecution policy of always aiming
for the maximum sentence.
US citizens:
call
on the UAE to back out of planned bombardment of Hodeida or its
state-owned airline, Emirates, will face a boycott.
US citizens:
call
on Republican congresscritters to sign the discharge petition for
an independent investigation of the troll's relationship with Russia.
The US air force bombed
some
of Assad's allies in Syria.
Saboteur of the Treasury Mnuchin advocates bringing back all of the
Glass-Steagall Act,
except
for the Glass-Steagall Act.
Iowa Republicans
cut
off funding to Planned Parenthood for contraception and tests for
cancer and diseases.
Many women on Medicaid will have trouble getting those services from
anywhere else.
Refugees Australia dumped on Manus Island are subject to
constant
intrusive surveillance. Guards take notes about how they look
each day and about who talks with whom. When they make phone calls,
the guards listen.
They are threatened not to talk with journalists, and their supporters
have been arrested and deported without seeing them. All this is at
the behest of the Australian state.
Sooner or later, the Australian state will arrange to waterboard them,
or stick burning cigarettes into their testicles. Or behead them
— videos of that would sure scare any would-be refugees away
from Australia.
Thugs arrested an autistic 7-year-old in school and
jailed
him for a week, and his parents could not find him.
He hadn't committed a crime. He had only made a nuisance.
Wall-Street-supporting Senate "Democrat" Manchin challenged
progressives to vote him out. Paula Swearengin is
trying
to do that.
McCain called for
expulsion
of the Turkish ambassador, and prosecution of his bodyguard for
attacking peaceful protesters in Washington DC.
I agree.
Apple Is
Lobbying
Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records
Confirm.
Recorded phone calls show the corrupt president of Brazil is
involved
in paying hush money to convicted official Eduardo Cunha.
An investigation has been
launched.
Everyone already
knew
Tener was corrupt; that was the motive for installing him.
Press freedom in Bangladesh is being
crushed
by prosecution of unwelcome points of view, and arbitrary
intimidation of advertisers.
A whole neighborhood was evicted for the Rio Olympics, and many of the
inhabitants are
left
without a community even though they have more valuable houses.
I don't think the Olympic games will be held very much in free
countries any more. The people know what a swindle the games are and
will campaign to keep them away. The games will be held in tyrannical
countries like China, where the people can't resist.
This raises the question of whether to hold Olympic games any more.
Typically each sport has an annual championship. Those are held at
different times of year, and they don't put a burden on the cities
where they are held. They also don't provide an opportunity for big
profits for a few businesses — and that is good.
Children
need
to play on their own. Not playing is bad for their health.
Delta wants to use
face
recognition for checking luggage.
I'm afraid that in a couple of years they will force this on everyone.
Since the Tories can't squeeze much more money out of the poor, they
have announced
plans
to hit the middle class, especially
old
people and ill people that can't live on their own.
I suppose they will continue hurting the poor more anyway.
Germany Is
Showing
the World What's Possible with a Sufficient Investment in
Renewable Energy.
Facebook
deleted
posts that presented evidence of individuals' use of shell
companies, evidence coming from the Panama Papers.
This resembles Amazon, which famously
shut down
Wikileaks' virtual server because Wikileaks didn't have US
government authorization to publish leaks.
Proposing a
commission
made up of physicians and psychiatrists to judge whether the US
president is incapacitated or unfit to serve.
Conjecture: US parents
demonize
non-overprotective parents in a futile attempt to convince
themselves that they can guarantee nothing bad will ever happen to
their own children if they take enough precautions.
Some US states
criminalize
driving with even minimal amounts of marijuana drugs that are too
little to impair driving.
It's not clear that marijuana is a significant factor for whether
people can drive safely.
A report says the troll's pet wall would
threaten
93 endangered species.
Birds can fly across a wall, but building the wall would destroy some
of their habitat. Habitat destruction is typically an important
factor in pushing species towards extinction.
UK thugs who accused four British man of plotting an act of terrorism
have been caught in
perjury
and other crimes.
SCROTUS plans to impose huge budget cuts
without
saying what spending will be cut. Of course, the cuts will be
aimed at non-rich Americans, but they will pretend not to know that.
A judge in Texas has been punished for
urging
the public to lynch someone.
Lynching was traditionally done mostly to blacks, and racism may have
been part of this judge's motivation for advocating it, but the wrong
of this judge is fundamental and not a matter of who the target is.
It is unacceptable for a judge to support lynching, and this one ought
to be dismissed.
Students at a Texas college
fended
off a plan to invite a Republican senator as their graduation
speaker.
I wish MIT students would organize to
reject the CEO of Apple as a graduation
speaker. And I wish Harvard students would organize to
reject the CEO of Facebook as a
graduation speaker.
A challenge that right-wing antiabortionists can't beat:
provide
benefits to make life easier for women that have babies.
Alas, in the actual world we must not do that, because it would
encourage population growth, and that threatens to destroy
civilization. What we can and should do is systematically provide
reliable contraception gratis to every woman that would choose to
abort a pregnancy.
The DOJ has appointed a special investigator to head the investigation
of troll. This will include his
relationship
with Russia and whether he committed
obstruction
of justice.
The head of the investigation is
independent
within certain limits.
The Australian government is
concealing
the details of an oil spill in the ocean, to protect the company
responsible from criticism and protests.
A
riot
of looting occurred in a part of Venezuela where there is a major
crossing to Colombia.
When I was there, my friends told me that people bought subsidized
goods and took them to Colombia to sell at market prices, and this
resulted in
shortages.
The Venezuelan government subsidized those goods without limit, rather
than subsidizing limited amounts per person or family.
Don't lionize Comey — remember the
injustices
he was involved in.
He did show integrity in dealing with the troll, but that was just one
good thing among many bad things.
Erdoğan's bodyguards
kicked
and strangled protesters in Washington DC; then Turkish state
radio told lies about the attack.
Erdoğan's actions repeatedly insult Turkey and Turkishness, and
they attack all citizens of Turkey, regardless of ethnic background,
that want freedom for their country.
The Trump News You Missed: He
Asked
Comey to Jail Journalists.
Australia
schemed
to make the Manus Island refugee camp more painful, to pressure
refugees to leave.
Apparently that didn't work well enough, so now Australia is
closing
the camp.
The reason refugees don't leave is that the native population won't
tolerate them.
Congress should
demand
a copy of the private transcript of what the troll told Russian
officials.
"Pay
Trump bribes here" projected on the troll's hotel in DC.
A SCROTUS
got
a bank employee fired for actively opposing his campaign.
The troll's
release
of secrets to Russia shows how unfair was his criticism of
Clinton's email server.
Here's
how
Paul Ryan put it.
Clinton's email server was a red herring, an molehill blown up by
Republicans into an apparent mountain. I rejected Clinton because of
her loyalty to Wall Street against America.
The troll's release to Russia could conceivably have been worth while,
but we can't trust someone like the troll to judge that.
In the US:
call
on the Saboteur of Homeland Security not to appoint Milwaukee
Sheriff Clarke to any sort of position.
Here's
more
about why.
US citizens:
insist
on continued protection for grizzly bears in Yellowstone National
Park.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to protect the Endangered Species Act.
US citizens:
call
on SCROTUS to join in releasing the troll's tax returns.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the COAST Act
to ban offshore drilling on the Atlantic coast.
Chelsea Manning is
out
of prison.
I was worried that the troll would find some excuse to prevent this.
The US and Russia have
both
decided to support the Syrian Kurds, and told Erdoğan to
get lost.
I consider this good news. It is good when the US and Russia have
good relations and cooperate, when what they do together is good. The
US government has
stirred
up lots of hostility towards Russia for no good reason.
Putin remains a
tyrant
and a
trumpish
liar. Other governments ought to condemn this, but that doesn't
call for international hostilities.
Various US cities show the same
decrease
of the middle class.
A few of those who cease to be middle class become wealthy. Most
become poor.
Media consolidation means that many Americans will have a
choice
between right-wing propaganda news and right-wing propaganda news.
Video shows that Connecticut thugs
shot
a teenager dead while he was handcuffed, then lied about it.
To celebrate Mothers Day, how about thinking about
the
needs of working mothers?
An esteemed Mexican journalist has been
murdered,
apparently by narco gangsters.
Australia is tightening the rope around the boat people that it dumped
onto Manus Island, by closing the place they live.
Those who have been judged to be refugees will have to live among a
community of people that
hate
them and violently attack them.
The rest are likely to be deported, though they may face punishment
there.
The WWF
calls
on Mexico to ban gillnet fishing in the Gulf of California to
protect the nearly extinct vaquita porpoise.
Israel prefers continued occupation of Palestine to peace. There will
be
no
peace until outside pressure changes that preference.
The USDA hardly bothers to punish companies that import non-organic grain
and
fraudulently
label it "organic".
More training can enable one working person to move up the ladder and
get more pay and better working conditions. But the
supply
of those better jobs is limited, so more training for everyone
won't change much.
To make everyone better off, workers need to organize to change the
system. For instance, with progressive laws and unionization.
Poor people in Britain don't bother to vote because
none
of the parties shows much concern for them.
Even Labour doesn't show much concern for them, though
some
aspects of its platform will help them.
What
would happen if Donald Trump were impeached?
Omid, in Britain, is condemned to years of suffering for a disease
that will kill him eventually. He demands the
right
to assistance in suicide.
I support his demand. I do wonder whether he could die by refusing
food, and get treatment to help him bear the hunger. Would the
nursing home force-feed him?
Trump's New Bank Regulator:
Lawyer
Who Helped Banks Charge More Fees.
Ukraine has
blocked
access to Russian social media sites and a search engine.
There is no justification for this.
Remote, uninhabited Henderson Island is covered by
18
tons of plastic debris that washed up from the Pacific Ocean.
We
need
to use less plastic, so that we produce less plastic.
New french
pun: Mines de
charbon.
Everyone:
Call
on Taiwan to ban ivory trade.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC to block the Sinclair TV chain merger.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to condemn the troll's latest attack against Assad's
forces as illegal and impeachable.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to support a special committee to
investigate the troll's ties with Russia.
Texas Latinos have launched
100
days of protests and organizing in response to the Texas law that
forbids cities to offer sanctuary to unauthorized immigrants.
The US practice of arresting them and deporting them
when
they get medical treatment,
when
they meet with government officials, and even
when
they appear in court, threatens public health and public safety.
Everyone: move funds out of the big banks that fund polluting
pipelines and
tell the
banks that you're doing so.
The troll is the result of
centuries
of US racism.
The article presents Mumia Abu-Jamal's story of how he and friends
were beaten up by contemptuous thugs after they protested peacefully
at a campaign rally for white-supremacist candidate George Wallace.
US high school history teachers: devote the rest of the term to the
question of
how
to remove a president that is incompetent, repeatedly breaks the law,
and disregards the constitution.
The Senate
has
not provided any resources for a real investigation of
troll/Russia by the senate committees that are supposedly doing it.
Laundering drug money is responsible for
large
amounts of deforestation of protected land in Central America.
The troll shared secret information with Russian officials in a way
that
endangered
intelligence sources.
Sharing secrets with Russia (or other countries) is not necessarily a
bad thing. In some cases it is useful for diplomacy. However,
endangering sources is a harmful practice; states do this at their
peril.
One of the few criticisms of Wikileaks that I agree with is that
sometimes it endangers intelligence sources (and other people) by
failing
to redact information.
Dubya was criticized for
revealing
the identity of Valerie Plame. He did this merely to score
political points.
When a fossil appears at the surface of the ground, we have a
limited
time to collect it before it erodes away or is crushed. We could
remain forever ignorant of past species unless we have people
collecting fossils as they appear.
Tory changes in voter registration have
greatly
reduced the number of newly eligible voters that are registered.
The troll has emboldened white supremacists in the US; they are
becoming
a real danger, just as the KKK was.
The copyright industry
repeatedly
violates copyrights in its campaigns to make copyright law more
repressive.
The Liberal Democrats in the UK
have
made massive surveillance a campaign issue.
I wish Labour would do that too.
US deportation agents didn't obey Obama's orders to focus on the
unauthorized immigrants that had committed serious crimes. In
California, nearly half of those deported in the 9 months after that
order had no criminal record.
Agents particularly
picked
on immigrants whose children were US citizens, which suggests that
the agents were motivated by sadism or cruelty.
A British antiwar activist describes her two-year relationship with an
undercover thug infiltrator who was
lying
all the way.
If he didn't love her, he was callously lying when he told her he did.
If he did love her, he callously tossed her aside.
True support for family values means
giving
children everything they need to grow up strong and capable. And
that should mean all children.
Research from Sweden shows that reducing levels of children's lead exposure
reduces
subsequent crime, even when the level starts out rather low.
Diesel engine exhaust
kills
around 38000 people each year world-wide, a study estimates.
Each time right-wing politicians hurt millions of Americans, a
fraction of the victims are so deluded about who to blame that
they
turn to right-wing extremism.
This started with the
"farm crisis" caused by
President Reagan and the Republicans.
Great inequality
makes
life unhappy for everyone. Even for the rich — because each
rich person thinks, "I don't have as much as I really deserve."
It is true that some people have more talents than others. Few people
have as much of a talent for programming as I had in my prime. Does
that mean I deserved to get rich? That it would have been unjust not
to give me a chance to get rich that way? Would that have justified
my using my talent to subjugate people, so that I could get rich?
I don't think so.
The Tories offer to give back to the non rich a little of what they
have taken, and
say
that is support for workers' rights.
Right-wingers want people to think that the
widespread
prosperity and lesser inequality of the 1970s is a "fantasy",
impossible in the real world.
Since we did it once, we can do it again — if we stop the
plutocrats from getting in the way.
The mainstream media's intense focus on troll/Russia and the firing of
Comey has pushed all the political nastiness of Republican policies
into the shadows.
Could
the troll have intended this?
Making announcements as distraction is
his
standard modus operandi. I don't think that was his motive for
firing Comey; I think he considered the investigation a real danger
and wanted to stop it. But it could be that his shocking way of
firing Comey was a distraction operation.
US citizens:
Protect
Bears Ears and other national monuments.
US citizens:
support
the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which would prohibit
deportation raids on schools, hospitals, courthouses, and churches.
Everyone:
call
on UK Prime Minister May to stop helping cause famine in Yemen.
The
troll is the epitome of the values of most Americans. We should
not be surprised he got almost enough votes to win the election.
The article assumes that people deserve the consequences of their
foolish ways of thinking and acting. I disagree. Even when people
are so foolish that they bring disaster on their country, they still
don't deserve the disaster.
People get the government their behavior deserves.
Comey
wanted
to prosecute Assange and Wikileaks based on a newly invented
criterion about his perceptions of a journalist's motives.
I disagree with the author on one point. I maintain that a US
government employee's duty of loyalty to the US and its constitution
must take precedence over any specific undertaking that the employee
has made. That duty can morally require leaking information about
injustices of the state. Drake, Manning and Snowden are the true
patriots.
New South Korea Leader Moon Jae-in
Willing
to Talk to Kim in North.
The new president is a former political prisoner and wants to bring
peace to Korea.
Texas will try to negate a court ruling against keeping immigrant
children in immigration prison by
designating
the prisons as "child care facilities".
One of the most repressive states on Earth is
pushing
to eliminate cash.
I hope this convinces you to defend the use of cash.
The way to do that is to insist on using cash.
To justify Comey's claims that protests against killer thugs have
inhibited thugs from doing their proper jobs, the FBI has released a
"study"
which only asked thugs their opinions.
Abu Zubaydah
will
testify about how he was tortured by the US government.
Tory-imposed mass poverty is causing British children to suffer from
ailments
that were eradicated.
Since marijuana has great medical potential, we
need
research on how it affects humans.
Cholera is
spreading
in Yemen.
This is a consequence of the bombing campaign operated by Salafi
Arabia with US help. Those countries did not directly bring cholera,
but the bombing is what prevents it from being eradicated.
The bombing campaign has no moral justification. Its motive is
nothing more than
rivalry
for power, which the US supports based on the
bizarre
claim that Iran threatens to take over the whole Middle East.
Even if it didn't spread famine and cholera, it would be a crime.
The mainstream media
must
defend the right to protest.
Especially we must condemn
Haymarket-style
prosecutions that hold protest organizers responsible for any crime
that occurs at the protest.
Activists on behalf of gay rights tried to deliver a petition to the
Russian state. The state not only didn't accept the petition, it
arrested
them instead.
Barrett Brown was released from prison, then arrested (the thugs
claimed he wasn't allowed to give interviews to the press), then freed
a few days later (perhaps because legally he is allowed to give
interviews to the press). Here is his
interview
with Democracy Now.
He talks about the way the US government helps plutocrats get private
surveillance assistance from companies such as Palantir.
The NSA made the wave of ransomware attacks possible by
perpetuating
vulnerabilities rather than fixing them.
US border thugs are
gratuitously
cruel to refugees, for instance throwing all their medicine in the
trash, and the troll is pushing them to be more cruel.
Muhammad Rabbani of Cage faces
possible
imprisonment for refusing to give the UK border thugs the password
for his laptop.
Cage campaigns against torture and unjust imprisonment in various
countries including the US. The laptop contained privileged legal
work product that he had no right to reveal to anyone. Now Rabbani is
threatened with unjust imprisonment, unless Cage succeeds in
overturning that law.
Because of Tory underfunding, the UK's
ambulances
are barely operable, and their first aid equipment for people having
heart attacks is rickety and slow. The experienced staff are
quitting due to pension cuts.
Nurses are
going
to strike due to pay cuts.
In a few years, the Tories will admit that the NHS no longer
functions, and replace it by privatized medical treatment that most
people can't afford at all.
The EU's proposed copyright directive would require all social media,
all sites that let users post anything, to set up
copyright
censorship systems. Parodies and other fair use, not recognized
in Europe as part of freedom of speech, would be rigorously
eliminated.
Draft Law Would Require Egyptian Social Media Users to
Register
With [Egyptian] Government.
Professor Jacob Dorman explains his resignation from the University of
Kansas because of the state's
insistence
on allowing concealed guns on campus.
He also reviews the statistics that show why this will kill students
far more than it protects them.
Two scientists resigned from an EPA advisory committee
in
response to Saboteur Pruitt's dismissal of other scientists.
They say the dismissal
shows
that their recommendations will not be valued. In effect, their
recommendations would be ignored and their names used to imply
endorsement of the conclusions.
Many Americans that work full time
can't
afford the dental work they need.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to refuse to confirm a
new head of the FBI until an independent investigation under a special
prosecutor is under way.
Capitol Switchboard number: (202) 224-3121
Everyone:
call on NBC
not to give Megyn Kelly a platform for bigotry.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject Sessions' war on drugs.
US citizens:
call
on congresscritters to pledge to move off fossil fuels.
Even total surveillance of everyone would not find all terrorists.
The few real terrorists would be buried under a heap of
false
positives.
The saboteur-controlled EPA has
withdrawn
its objection to a giant mine in Alaska that would sooner or later
poison the salmon of Bristol Bay.
Madagascar's endemic plants are
heading
for extinction.
PCBs were banned in the 1970s, but millions of tons were produced and used
and they get into in the ocean, where they
make
dolphins and sharks sterile.
To Avoid Conflicts of Interest,
Pay
Doctors a Salary.
Government-organized
private loans keep worthless for-profit colleges going.
The companies that make the loans
treat
the borrowers terribly.
Senator Sanders has introduced
a
bill to promote worker-owned cooperatives.
UN urges Pakistan to
"incorporate
into its legislation a specific definition of torture."
The troll has appointed a Republican voter suppression activist to run
a
phony
"investigation" of nonexistent individual "voting fraud". This is
meant to provide an excuse for more voter suppression.
It is clear what the troll's plan is. The Republicans know they can't
win an honest election, so they plan to steal the 2018 election even
more than they
stole
the 2016 election. The reports of the "investigation" will be a
bunch of lies, and nearly all Republicans will pretend they are true,
as an excuse for more voter suppression.
Since 1989 the total mass of insects in Germany has
fallen
by 80%. And it's not just in Germany — this is an example
of a widespread tendency.
I think the writer is obtuse about extinction. Concern about
extinction is not a matter of "fetishizing" the last few individuals
of the species. The species is different from its members, and the
loss of a species is different from the death of any number of members
of that species.
If a given species of frog has a million members, the death of a
specific hundred of them would not concern me much. If those hundred
were the only ones left, their death would still not concern me much;
but it would mean the extinction of the species, and I would consider
that a real loss.
An 80% decrease in insect biomass is a big ecological change, and I
think we had better find out soon what we did to cause it.
Theresa May Is
Creating
an Epidemic of Poverty. Don't Give Her a Free Hand.
The troll has admitted that he fired Comey
because
Comey was pursuing an investigation of the troll/Russia links.
Firing
Comey for obviously bogus reasons was an example of the troll's
attempt to destroy the very idea of truth and loyalty to truth.
His gesture said, "I can do anything I want and no one will
dare stop me."
The troll has
confessed
to obstruction of justice.
Some Americans have the
courage
to refuse to go along with the Republican lie machine.
Our future depends on whether SCROTUS find the moral fiber
to stand for truth rather than lines.
Millions of working people in the UK
can
barely pay the rent. Many sometimes have to borrow money to pay
the rent.
Thatcher started this by allowing tenants in public housing the
"right
to buy".
Thailand has
ordered
Facebook to delete posts that the state considers critical of the
Thai monarchy.
Facebook
has
generally given in to demands for censorship of political views.
I think this shows that multinational social networks have a deep
problem: each country can impose its own censorship on the whole
world.
Comey wants to testify before Congress, but
only if his testimony is
public.
Comey says that the troll
asked him to pledge personal loyalty,
basically to put the troll above his country, and he refused.
Campaigning to free the US black mothers (and others) that are jailed,
often for months,
because they are too poor to pay bail.
Laurence
Tribe: Congress must start impeaching the troll now, for his
obstruction
of justice (as well as plenty of other acts).
Are There 22 Patriotic House Republicans?
Comey wants to testify before Congress, but only if his testimony is
public.
Republicans that shield the troll from punishment for blatant
obstruction of justice, and investigation for possible treason, are
associating themselves morally with those acts. They cannot be
legitimate parts of the US government.
The Syrian Kurds would like to negotiate a trade route to the
Mediterranean. That would involve an agreement with Assad. They
also
talk about capturing Idlib from the Islamists some day.
Liberating Idlib from the Islamists would be good, provided that the
inhabitants are happy with it. That is easier said than done. Who
would rule Idlib instead? The inhabitants probably don't want that
to
be Assad, and they (being Arabs) may not be comfortable with Kurds
today
(though they were content enough with Salah ad-Din).
Our global heating, which melts Arctic sea ice, is
forcing polar bears
to live on land where they may fight with humans.
Beyond apartheid to ethnic cleansing: the rabbi that leads a
significant Israeli electoral party calls for expelling all non-Jews
from
Israel.
Peace Now: Israel's New Settlement Policy an Attempt to "Fool
International Community".
Some sunscreens contain a chemical that
poisons coral even in very low
concentrations.
Airwars has found over 3000 civilian casualties from US bombing in
Iraq and Syria, but the Pentagon acknowledges only 352 of them.
Airwars' method of counting tends to lead to a considerable
underestimate.
The real number must be a lot more.
We should note that the US bombing in Syria and Iraq is far less
criminal than PISSI. Meanwhile, the US bombing in Yemen is entirely
gratuitous.
Sanders: "A
basic principle of American economic life should be that
if you work 40 hours or more a week, you do not live in poverty."
Really our goal should be that no one lives in poverty,
but Sanders is campaigning for a substantial step forward.
No
system of recycling for drink bottles will be effective unless
people get a refund on a deposit for turning in the bottles.
US citizens:
call on the
USDA to reject GMO eucalyptus trees.
The article is mistaken in one point: growing these trees and burning
them would not contribute to global heating. But the other reasons,
such as the danger that the genes would spread, are significant.
Everyone:
phone
the banks that might fund the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to block the sale of arms to the UAE if it rejects a
cease fire in Yemen.
US citizens:
call for
protection of the corals off the New England coast.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the troll's commission that is designed to
provide an excuse for voter suppression.
US citizens:
call
for an independent investigation of the troll's campaign's ties
with Russia.
Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang
said,
in his show trial, that he wasn't tortured into confessing.
However, he had already informed people that any confession would be
due to torture. Apparently he was tortured into denying that he had
been tortured.
The charges against him amount to "campaigning for human rights".
When a state charges someone with that sort of "crime", it is
automatically an injustice.
The US also prosecutes people for political organizing. Unlike China,
it
tries
to disguise this behind phony accusations, but that doesn't make
it any less of an
injustice.
Ireland has
dropped
the prosecution of Stephen Fry — hardly any Irish viewers
complained about what he said on TV.
This is a relief, but the
prohibition
of "blasphemy" remains unjust, in Ireland as in Pakistan.
Israel has expelled a Dutch journalist, apparently for
tweeting
references to articles in 972 Magazine.
Israel
does
not have a free press. Now it is trying to repress foreign
writing about Israel.
Thugs in West Virginia
arrested
a reporter for "yelling questions" at Saboteur of Health Tom
Price.
Thugs have
repressed
dissent in the US for a long time, but it seems that the troll has
emboldened them in repression.
Sanders has introduced a bill to
provide
funds to promote employee ownership of businesses.
How
"safety"
is used to shut down discussion and control people.
Republicans have redefined "diversity"
to
avoid representing minorities or women in decisionmaking bodies.
Republican congresscritters are receiving so much condemnation from the public
that most of them are
hiding
from their constituents.
Taking down the confederate president's statue in New Orleans: "We
must remember all of our history, but
we
need not revere it."
The motive for the secession of the South was to perpetuate slavery.
No matter what good personal qualities some of the secessionists may
have had, they can't outweigh the wrong of what they were fighting
for.
The UK Labour Party platform
will
correct many of the policies that oppress the poor.
It
will
even ban neonicotinoids to protect bees.
To wish for this platform but without Corbyn, as Polly Toynbee does,
is like wishing for a square circle. The reason the Labour Party now
dares to propose to fix those wrongs, which it hasn't dared to propose
since the 1980s, is Corbyn.
A victory for Labour could be a
big
help to the poor in the UK.
The troll met with Russian officials and
allowed
a Russian news photographer but no US journalists.
Henry
Kissinger was his guest at about the same time.
People are
protesting
outside senators' offices, demanding an independent investigation
of troll/Russia.
Jeff Sessions' Defense of James Comey
Contradicts
His Justification for Firing Him.
BAE, which sold jet fighters to Salafi Arabia which it uses for the
bombardment of Yemen,
may
also employ people who load the bombs.
Innovation
starts
from the state. Without state funding, what you get is lots of
juiceros.
Global heating vs Glacier National Park:
124
glaciers gone, 26 remain.
Hong Kong Accused of
Smothering
Dissent for Expected Xi Jinping Visit.
Don't be embarrassed to ask for tap water. Be proud that you are
avoiding
some harmful plastic waste!
A Muslim Indian wife
demands
the same right of instant divorce that Muslim Indian husbands
have.
It's
Time to Build a Trump Impeachment Campaign.
Congressional aides say Comey
asked
for more resources for the troll/Russia investigation a few days
before he was fired.
New pipelines will pollute Pennsylvania to
ship
ethane to Europe to make plastic.
It's not as bad as burning the gas, but fracking to get the gas will
cause local pollution and leak greenhouse-producing methane.
Around
1/5
of low-wage workers in the US are being paid, illegally, less than
the minimum wage.
The minimum wage is worth less now than it was 40 years ago, so you
can see how the economy is getting worse and worse for the poor. This
is no accident: it is dooH niboR at work.
US citizens:
stand
for Network Neutrality.
US citizens:
urge
the Senate intelligence committee to call Comey to testify about
troll/Russia.
US citizens:
Tell
the State Department to stop promoting the troll's businesses.
Everyone:
call
on Volkswagen to negotiate with the US workers' new union.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban "conversion therapy" that purports to "cure"
homosexuality.
A high official of UK thugs was formerly an undercover infiltrator of
protest groups, and seduced a real protester to get cover.
Lawrence Tribe: "Trump is putting himself above justice in a
fundamental challenge to our system."
Clothing companies are doing little to reduce the release of
microfibers from new clothing.
Sprint and T-mobile are considering a merger that would take the US
even closer to a monopoly of mobile service.
The US constitution, or any constitution, is impotent to stop a president
who disregards the unwritten rules of democracy with no shame.
Oracle and Cisco are eager to see the end of Network Neutrality in the
US.
The repression of Shari'a law in part of Indonesia.
It was wrong of Indonesia to allow Aceh to impose Shari'a law on
anyone. Individuals should have the right to choose the same
law that applies to the rest of Indonesia.
Trump's Voter Fraud Commission Is a Shameless White Power Grab.
Substantial oil pipeline leaks happen fairly often.
The troll hinted that he secretly recorded his conversations with Comey
and threatened to use them to refute Comey's statements about their
conversations.
Said recordings may not really exist, and we must never assume the troll
means what he says. However, I do hope Comey sticks to the truth
in his statements.
A proposed definition of fake news, to distinguish that from
flawed journalism.
Nader: The US keeps attacking new enemies, and yet hostility to the US
keeps spreading to more countries. It is because Congress fails
to exercise its responsibility to control US war.
Corbyn said that Labour would try to use diplomacy rather than war
to address international conflicts.
Sessions has ordered prosecutors to aim to put drug suspects (in
particular) in prison for longer, by charging them with crimes
that have mandatory minimum sentences.
Myanmar Army Allegedly Left Rohingya Refugees with Bullet Wounds And Burns.
There are so many videos of thugs' killing blacks that each one hardly
sticks in people's minds.
I have to look up the names of specific victims to recall what
happened to each one.
Almost a million Britons now work on zero-hour contracts in which they are
not assured of any work each week.
The US government keeps too many secrets and that threatens democracy.
Journalists must publish leaked secrets, when they consider them to
speak to important issues.
They also need to fight against plans to prosecute Wikileaks.
A judge released Baxter Reid, who was jailed by the US when Canada
didn't let him leave the US just before his visa required.
I am glad that judge resolved this in a good way, but the problem is
in the system. It's not enough to end one example of the injustice.
The US needs to change the attitude of grasping for a chance
to screw someone.
The Dakota Access pipeline isn't operating yet but has already had an
oil spill. The company wasn't going to inform us.
DeVos was invited to speak to the graduation at Bethune-Cookman,
formerly one of the black colleges set up because blacks were
excluded from other colleges. The students booed her off the stage.
Hooray for them.
I don't believe that the school administrators invited her for
intellectual reasons. I believe they were doing it for political
reasons, effectively sucking up to Republicans.
I hope that students and donors demand they resign.
The Dakota Access pipeline's owner has been fined in Ohio for
destroying wetlands with a leak.
I don't think a half-million-dollar fine is enough to teach that company
any lesson.
The Republican senators foiled the troll's effort to eliminate Obama's
regulation to limit methane emissions from extraction on federal land.
Oakland, California, has adopted a law requiring all new use of surveillance
technology to get approval from the city council.
It would be even better if all current uses of surveillance technology
had to get approval from the city council within 2 years, or else be
discontinued.
Even Republicans in Congress won't stand for Saboteur Price's rule that
staff of the Department of Health must get permission before talking with
Congress.
A West Virginia police officer is suing the thug department which fired
him for not shooting someone.
More kinds of product packaging may start spying on people.
We need to push for a "No radio interaction" label.
Yale graduate student teaching assistants are hunger striking
because Yale won't negotiate with their union.
The blasphemy law is being used to establish Islamist domination of
Indonesia.
Protests in Jakarta After Christian Governor Convicted of Blasphemy.
Joint events, organized by Israelis and Palestinians to remember the
dead of both peoples, were attacked by Israeli fanatics.
Israel makes it extremely hard for a Palestinian in Gaza to move to
the West Bank.
In 8 years, permission has been granted only 5 times. Merely having a parent
or spouse living in the West Bank is not enough.
Since the Israeli Medical Association condemns force-feeding of prisoners,
Israel threatens to bring in foreign doctors to do that.
Force-feeding sometimes kills the prisoners. Fasting also is
eventually fatal, but the prisoners (like anyone else) have a right to
end their own lives.
Some of the prisoners are too weak to stand up, so Israel is now fining
them for not standing when ordered to do so.
Israeli soldiers shot at Gaza fishermen again,
and sprayed herbicide on crops in Gaza.
Israeli fanatics threw stones at Palestinian houses and broke their
windows. The inhabitants tried to chase them away, so soldiers
came and shot rubber-coated steel bullets at the Palestinians.
The soldiers didn't interfere with the attacking bigots.
Elsewhere, Palestinians protested land-grabbing Israeli "settlers" who
were building a road across Palestinians' farmland. Israeli soldiers
defended the "settlers".
The soldiers paid no attention to the Israeli court decision that
ordered the "settlers" to stop.
Wisconsin's voter ID law stole the election there for the cheater.
Republican senators are planning to draw up a new Dontcare bill
in secret meetings with no hearings.
Why give the victims a platform to complain, they must have asked
themselves.
Cloudflare rejected calls to impose censorship, but offered a way to
make anonymous complaints to sites.
The troll's FCC saboteurs have relaxed media concentration rules,
allowing right-wing radio chain Sinclair to buy a lot more radio
stations.
The troll fired FBI director Comey, supposedly for treating Clinton
unfairly in July by announcing that Clinton would not be prosecuted.
This was said to exceed his authority and thus do wrong to the
Attorney General at the time (who did not, however, object).
If the cheater really wanted to fire Comey for this reason, he would
not have waited until now. His real reason must be something else.
Many suspect it's an attempt to stop the FBI from investigating the
cheater's team's relations with Russia.
The UK now forces long-married couples separately into nursing homes.
That means they almost never see each other again.
Some German soldiers are on being prosecuted for planning a false flag
terrorist act. They would have made it appear that refugees were the
culprits.
The US
says
it will give the Syrian Kurds more arms. I hope so.
The worst terrorist group in Turkey is the Turkish army. (PISSI is a
distant second.) We don't hear much about its terror activities
because they happen in places where tourists don't go — where
mainly Kurds live. Recall that the Kurdish separatist group PKK made
a truce with the Turkish government many years ago, and Erdoğan
broke
it to get more votes.
Unauthorized immigrants
now
don't dare collect US benefits for giving their babies proper
nutrition.
That means the babies may be permanently harmed.
It is
very
important for women to talk about their abortions. If they stay
in the closet, people can fool themselves that nobody they know would
ever have one.
The troll condemned the war in Afghanistan, before the election.
Now
he wants to escalate it.
The Taliban have infiltrated schools in parts of Afghanistan,
intimidating
teachers or imposing their own choice of teachers.
Laws punishing banks for anything that resembles money laundering are
leading banks to
shut
the bank accounts of small charities and organizations. And they
refuse to explain why.
The internet facilitated today's right-wing lie campaigns: it created
"message-board" darwinian discourse, in which people compete for
attention and
the
most brash and outrageous claims win.
The total insecurity of Signaling System 7 means that
crackers
can now fake two-factor authentication using SMS.
I have never used two-factor authentication myself, because it
requires a mobile phone (portable tracking and listening device) and I
refuse to be tracked and listened to.
I think other sorts of two-factor authentication require a smart phone
— which means, even more malicious.
I don't do internet banking at all, because it is legally risky as
well as risky in regard to computer security.
The Macron campaign fooled the phishers by
giving
them phony accounts.
There is good and bad about this. If the Democratic National
Committee biases the primary race against Sanders in 2020, as it did
in 2016, it may be harder to detect that.
Israel is
considering
a law to eliminate Arabic as a national language and say that
non-Jews are essentially second-class citizens.
An American living in Germany describes
her
experience with the German public medical system.
A survey found that managers
don't
have more stress than the employees they manage.
Sally Yates warned a lawyer from the White House that Michael Flynn
could
be blackmailed by Russia.
Now that Macron has defeated right-wing demonizer Le Pen, France faces
the challenge of
preventing
him from "reforming" the French economy to suit business more, in
the name of imaginary trickle-down.
Global heating is
causing
Alaskan tundra to release more CO2.
Legalization of marijuana
makes
possible regulations to require higher levels of cannabidiol,
which reduces harmful side effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The FCC is investigating Stephen Colbert for a joke some prudes
complained about,
instead
of doing its job and protecting our freedom from ISPs.
In a sample of Australians,
20%
had had nude photos distributed without their consent. Revenge is
only one of the motives of those who do it.
In our culture, the person whose photo is distributed can feel great
pain as a result. There are other cultures where people would say,
"So what? Is this supposed to hurt me? Everyone in the village sees
me nude every day."
200 years ago, in Europe and the US, if you slapped a man's face he'd
feel he had no choice but to fight you to the death. We are fortunate
to have discarded that idea. Now let's discard the idea there is
something shameful about nudity.
The Democratic Party, if it is to win again,
must
present progressive values and stick to them.
Stephen Fry
faces
possible criminal charges for talking about a "a mean-minded,
stupid god who creates a world so full of injustice and pain" on Irish
television.
That law is evidently unjust.
As the troll blatantly embraces dictators, he is
trying
to destroy the US's national conscience.
Quietly embracing other dictators, which the US did before and still
does, does damage in some ways; embracing them openly does that damage
and other kinds too.
Can virtual reality games provide a
sense
of meaning for our lives?
The end of work won't be an unprecedented situation for humanity.
Hunter-gatherers typically had lots of leisure time. They needed to
do some work, but that was far less than 6 hours a day (the equivalent
of 42 hours a week). They had plenty of time for rituals, games,
whatever they wanted to do. We know people don't have trouble living
that way.
The article helped me understand something about myself: I am
completely insensitive to "deep play" that has no intrinsic interest
for me. I don't care deeply about baseball or football in the US, any
more than about about cockfights in Bali or soccer in Argentina. I
don't try to learn to care deeply. I don't pretend to care deeply.
The fact that other people do care deeply about these things has no
influence on me because it makes no sense to me.
I can be curious about a sport — for instance, I read a book
about cricket so I could understand how it works. I'd be interested
in watching part of a game one day, to understand it better. But that
is simply curiosity. I would never get worked up about whether team A
wins or loses.
And the only way I want to play a computer game is without
competition.
Texas has adopted a state law
requiring
local thug departments to arrest people for deportation.
Which is worse: the risk of giving aid to someone who is cheating the
system in a small way, or the risk of
denying
needed aid to someone who isn't cheating?
When the state's aid to those who are honest is not enough to get by,
it systematically compels them to cheat in every small way that they
can find. If that is bad, the blame falls those who run the state.
Everyone: call on the US National Collegiate Athletic Association
to
stop holding
prestigious football matches in North Carolina and other states
that allow discrimination against queer people.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the
Safe
Energy Future Plan, which would make fossil fuel business follow
the usual environmental standards.
US citizens: phone your senators to
oppose
the Regulatory Accountability Act.
Please don't try to send a message through that page — it
requires nonfree Javascript code.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate Intel Committee to have Comey testify.
US citizens:
Ask
your congresscritter to support the Respect State Marijuana Laws
Act.
Saboteur Pruitt is
packing the EPA Scientific Board with saboteurs
that represent polluters.
Life Expectancy Gap Between Rich And Poor US Regions Is "More Than 20 Years".
And it is getting worse.
Puerto Rico's bankruptcy
may be a disaster instead of a solution.
The board placed in charge of running Puerto Rico can impose
austerity that would kills thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
30 state bills to punish protesters would 'attack right to speak out'.
Right-wing billionaires quietly fund efforts to wipe out union power
in the US.
The biggest defeat that US workers have suffered is that they have
lost the idea that unions need their support.
A general explanation of anti-science disinformation techniques
helped
people resist those techniques on multiple issues.
The troll has no serious political philosophy. Trying to construct
one
from his inconsistent, even nonsensical words is like trying to
interpret
white noise with a speech recognition system.
Guled Hassan Duran has been held prisoner in Guantanamo for 11 years
with no trial. The US government is giving his lawyers a runaround.
Mississippi African Americans
Besieged by Illegal Searches, ACLU
Lawsuit
Says.
Republicans: "Death to the Unemployed!"
They
want to take Medicaid
away from unemployed people.
Case Farms sought out unauthorized immigrants to hire, guided them in
how to help Case officially deny it was doing this … then used
their vulnerability to impose illegal working and living conditions.
When the troll supports dictators, even mass murderers, that's nothing
new for the US.
The US has done that for decades, maybe more than a
century.
Nonetheless, the article misses out on an important change. The US
used to have certain general policies that acted weakly to promote
freedom globally. Also, it proclaimed principles of freedom which
inspired freedom-lovers to defend freedom in their own countries.
Stating these principles did some good even though many people
knew that the US did not follow them.
The troll is continuing the harmful and unjust US practices while
abandoning the principles that did some good.
A Republican in Congress said that people are always to blame for
their preexisting medical conditions.
The UK government is
planning to ban products with encryption it can't
break.
Boko Haram released 50 or 60 kidnaped girls
after negotiation with the
Nigerian government.
Oklahoma has made sit-in protests a felony, and some other kinds of
trespassing or minor mischief if it is part of a protest.
Any organization that helps organize the protest can also be
prosecuted. Those who provide legal aid to those who are arrested or
prosecuted might also be prosecuted.
The Republican Party is the enemy of what America says it stands for.
I wonder what they would dare say about the Boston Tea Party.
The
common
theme in the troll's actions is gratuitous cruelty.
A few developers are
changing
Michigan tax laws to get a big payoff for developing a small part
of Detroit.
UK thugs
arrested
a press photographer for taking pictures of city hall. This is a
small illustration of the danger of giving thugs too much
discretionary power: some of them, inevitably, will be overeager.
Thugs around the US
used
to do this sort of thing in the early 2000s. I have not seen
reports of it recently.
The troll will
allow
churches to collect money secretly and use it for political ads.
That behavior is illegal, but the troll has ordered federal agencies
to let churches get away with it.
We must defend freedom of speech from attacks from all sides. Your
words don't need to have some identifiable social value to give you
the
right to say them.
Committee to Protect Journalists: With press freedom under attack
worldwide, US is
setting
the wrong example.
President Rouhani says that
hard-liners
in Iran tried to sabotage the nuclear deal.
Sounds
like
the US.
The accusation that the CIA tried to kill Kim Jong-un is not beyond
the bounds of credibility, given its
past
history.
However, it's entirely plausible that Kim Jong-un made it up.
Argentina's right-wing government has
found
an excuse to shorten the sentences of the military torturers and
murderers of the 1970s, who were prosecuted only decades later.
These people have still refused to disclose what they did with the
people they kidnaped and killed, and with the children they took.
If you let ISPs and data brokers see what web sites you visit, that can
add up to a
nightmare
for you.
The troll, and Saboteur Zinke, are
legally
required to consult with various indigenous tribes before
abolishing national monuments, but refuse even to talk with them.
This will give the tribal governments a basis to sue.
Some predict that driverless cars will take over completely in 13
years, drastically
cutting
the combustion of oil.
If this happens, it will be great — but we have to make sure
they don't turn into a massive surveillance system that tracks where
people go, like
Uber.
Sad to say, the proponents are encouraging exactly this.
Jeff Sessions now heads the Department of Injustice. He is taking
action to
put
more people in prison, deny voting rights to minorities, and let
uniformed thugs bully and harass at will.
Many wilderness areas in the US are affected by noise from human
activities which drowns out natural sounds, This
can
mess up the lives of some animals that need to hear.
Muslim fanatics in Pakistan tried to lynch a Hindu man
jailed
for an accusation of blasphemy.
It is a good thing that the thugs are protecting suspects from
lynching, but the law against blasphemy is as unjust as lynching.
Companies are doing away with physical annual meetings
so that there is
no
place or time for the public to protest.
The US did the same thing with
auctions
for fossil fuel deposits.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to insist that Sessions resign.
US citizens:
call
for an independent investigation of the troll's links to Russia.
US citizens:
support
the People's Budget.
US citizens:
support
the College for All Act.
US citizens:
call on
Michigan governor Snyder to restore the water credits for the
people of Flint rather than letting his henchmen take away their
homes.
Snyder is primarily responsible for the lead contamination in Flint.
It was his effort that imposed a nondemocratic government on Flint and
that is what
changed
the water source in a way that caused lead contamination in people's
homes.
Kushner told rich foreigners they
could get US residency by investing
in his company.
He
left out important business from his official disclosure form, too.
Wireless power for small snooping devices: is that an advance for
the good,
or is it dangerous?
The world is
not providing enough food aid to feed the starving people
in Yemen.
If Salafi Arabia and the US bomb Hodeida, the food aid couldn't reach
Yemen anyway.
"The insurance market is
extracting millions to protect us from the
built-in flaws the surveillance state relies on."
The
US and al-Qa'ida are effectively fighting on the same side in
Yemen.
The EU supported a ban on DecaBDE, an endocrine disruptor,
then turned
around and asked for broad exceptions.
Medicaid funds the medical care for half the babies born in the US.
That's
what SCROTUS just cut.
The divestment movement offers
a way for people to put global heating
on the political agenda and press to loosen the ties between fossil
fuel
industry and the rest of the world.
Draft Law Would Require Egyptian Social Media Users to
Register With
Government.
Anti-vaxxers caused an outbreak of measles in Minnesota.
China has kept the Panchen Lama
in prison incommunicado for 22 years.
Did the Marquis de Sade Write This Health Care Bill?
No, he was only interested in directly and personally making people
suffer.
To get pleasure from harming millions of people you don't personally
know,
you have to be a Republican.
The article includes a long list of specific harmful provisions in the
bill.
The
Labour Party says it will raise taxes on high earners.
That's a good first step. It must also make businesses pay tax.
Anyone in France who republishes anything from the Macron leaks is
threatened with prosecution.
These leaks appear to be of no intrinsic importance, but the
repressive policy of the state towards leaks will help cover up real
scandals in the future.
The
UK wants to do the same thing.
The troll seeks to
eliminate 27 US national monuments.
Varoufakis says that Macron was the only French minister that opposed
the Euro-banksters on behalf of Greece.
China will require all online news portals to have staff specifically
to carry out state-imposed censorship.
Facebook reports that it was used by organized groups to spread
disinformation to influence the US election.
Global heating effects are already harming human health.
With the years, the effects will get worse.
Does anyone have an idea how to breed, or engineer, plants to make
as much protein as they do now even with higher CO2 concentration?
Puerto Rico has applied for bankruptcy and relief of some of its debt.
The objections of creditors and plutocratist politicians suggest the
bankruptcy scheme might actually do some good for Puerto Rico's
citizens.
The Republicans in the Senate may modify Dontcare drastically to
bypass
a filibuster. It will have to be limited to spending cuts and tax
cuts.
That will provide no opportunity to disguise the nature of the bill.
Boko Haram lures young girls to carry bombs into crowds for murder.
The children are too young to understand death, and it doesn't occur
to them to disobey.
As a result, people in Maiduguri are afraid of any unknown children
that approach them.
Sometimes an adult man hugs the girl to carry her away from the crowd,
much as some soldiers in World War II threw themselves on a grenade to
save the other soldiers around them.
We don't need to pretend that everyone who gets food from food banks
is totally admirable. It's a shame to make life so hard that people
need to go to food banks.
It's also a shame not to make make alcoholism treatment available
to everyone that needs it.
The US plans to demand that some visa applicants
describe their travel
and work history for 15 years — which many people could not possibly
answer — as well as demanding to look at their social media accounts.
Doing this at the time of visa application is less cruel than doing it
when people enter the US. If you get asked unacceptable prying
questions when you apply for the visa, at least you can still cancel
your trip without losing the price of intercontinental airplane
tickets.
Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir, formerly prisoners in
Guantanamo,
write about their torture and their legal cases.
The US imprisoned them without trial, and eventually released them
after the Supreme Court ruled they were entitled to demand justice.
But that was after 7 years of unjust imprisonment.
The dates suggest that Dubya was unwilling to release them
and they were freed only after Obama became president.
The Kentucky Derby is complaining that it can't find the workers
it needs.
It generally hires immigrants for low wages.
The idea of limiting immigration of workers is that businesses will
have to hire citizens. If citizens won't accept the job without a
higher salary and better working conditions, the businesses will be
compelled to improve wages and conditions. That is unpleasant for
businesses, and good for the people. But it takes time for the labor
market to adjust to that.
Stephenie Jimenez got a
scholarship to a private school, which offered
her a rare opportunity for social mobility. But she recognizes that
lots
of other people from poor families could be successful with a good
public
school system.
France has adopted new laws to prevent clothing publicity from
teaching
people
that women should be dangerously thin.
"Democrats have
no business rejoicing at the Trumpcare disaster."
Wall Street Democrats are not on our side. We have to defeat them
in primaries.
World population growth, and plans for farming in Africa,
could
eliminate wild African elephants, and wipe out lots of other species.
The article proposes ways to limit the disaster, but keeps its eyes
firmly shut to the best solution: keep the human population down. We
should give people everywhere contraception aid, and offer incentives
for people to get themselves sterilized. Let's aim to cut the human
birth rate in half, so the population will start slowly decreasing
to a sustainable level.
Around 1900, poor working stiffs recognized that the rich "robber
barons" were keeping them down — and they supported the
progressive movement and then the New Deal.
Today's robber barons have used the consolidated, corporate media to
convince
the working stiffs that the robber barons deserve what they have
taken, and it's the urban middle class (or what's left of it) that
is making them poor.
A leak of the Macron campaign's internal documents seems, on initial
examination,
not
to contain anything scandalous.
Macron says that some of them are fake.
It seems to have been published in the hope that voters will assume,
"Where there's a leak, there is wrongdoing." But that doesn't seem to
have taken hold with the voters.
This contrasts with the Democratic Party officials' leaked emails,
which proved that they were
secretly
biasing the primary race in favor of Clinton and against Sanders.
The thug that shot Jordan Edwards
will
be charged with murder.
The US government is working with cattle companies to
convince
people to eat more beef and dairy products.
Eating a lot of beef is
bad
for health, and maintaining a lot of cattle
contributes
substantially to global heating.
We have to consider this another example of the harm done by having
plutocracy instead of democracy.
If the troll's Dontcare bill passes, Republicans
will
have American blood on their hands.
The Dontcare bill offers companies an
excuse
to reduce the scope of the medical coverage that they provide to
employees.
It would
gut
Medicaid along with Obama's insurance law.
It would
allow
insurance companies to deny coverage for certain treatments to
those that already suffer mental illness from being raped or
experiencing domestic violence.
When people complain to Cloudflare about neo-nazi material, Cloudflare
sends their personal information to the publishers of that material,
who
sometimes
use it to harass and threaten those that complained.
I wonder, does Cloudflare follow this same nasty practice for all the
sites that use it?
I agree with Cloudflare, however, in opposing attempts to ban neo-nazi
sites. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to take a position we
disagree with, even one we despise. Remember, there are people who
despise your views, too, but they should not be able to kick you off
the internet.
US officials that now participate in sending arms to Salafi Arabia
may
be guilty of war crimes.
Americans
remember
only the parts of US wars in which the US was attacked or in which
Americans acted admirably. They forget the parts in which US
armed forces committed enormous terrorism.
I was particularly interested by the point about using the terminology
"ground zero" to equate the September 2001 terrorist attacks (about
3000 victims, mainly American) with the US use of nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki (hundreds of thousands of victims, mainly
Japanese). I have generally rejected the use of the term "ground
zero" for the World Trade Center because it struck me as tendentious,
but I never before understood why this was so.
A new approach to economics
recognizes
the limits imposed by nature and the needs of society.
Darwinian
economics is another new perspective.
The pace of activism against the troll and his saboteurs is
increasing.
People are not getting tired of fighting back.
Asking citizens to monitor each other for the thugs is
very
dangerous.
North Korea has missiles, but
even
their medium-range missiles rarely work. The ICBMs are pretty much
theoretical.
California has
a
chance to put strict limits on the surveillance capabilities of
thugs.
Congress is
considering
a law to reauthorize vague and abstract patents on computing
activities.
Australia's minister in charge
persistently
lies about a violent attack on refugees that Australia has dumped
on Manus Island.
Some decades ago, it was the Stalinists that stuck to official the lie
no matter how absurd it became. Now it's the capitalists.
US border thugs routinely
lie
to Central Americans who want asylum, denying them the chance to
apply for asylum and the possibility of protection from immediate
danger.
Tillerson
proposes
to disconnect US foreign policy from the stated values of the US
(human rights and political freedom).
The sad and ironic thing is that this would be very little change, as
the two have been mostly separate for a long time. The US been
allied
with repressive Salafi Arabia for decades. In the 1970s the US
arranged
murderous military governments in several countries in South
America.
And that's just a fraction of the instances.
Activist Desiree Fairooz has been convicted of
laughing
at the blatantly counterfactual testimony of a senator.
Two others were convicted of being present before the hearing wearing
KKK robes.
The Republican Party is the enemy of everything the United States
stands for.
The number of prisoners in the US sentenced to life in prison
keeps
increasing. There are now 162,000 of them.
"Prosperity gospel" preacher Benny Hinn has been
raided
by the US. His "prosperity" doesn't come from worshiping —
it comes from the worshipers to whom he promises riches, and
apparently from the US treasury.
The troll is trying to follow the same bogus economics that Reagan
followed: the idea that tax cuts will lead the rich to increase
investment and produce growth,
a
little of which will "trickle down" to the rest of us.
It isn't good for the budget or the country, but it's great for dooH
niboR.
The US has had plenty of growth since Reagan. None of it reached the
non-rich;
the
rich kept it all. What we need now is not growth, it is to
take
our fare share from the rich.
There
was
no "hiatus" in global heating. Rather, denialists seized on the
way science handles a minor anomaly in important data by proposing and
testing various explanations for it.
We don't need to know exactly where the water rose over the seawall
to recognize a flood. We shouldn't need to know every detail
of how the temperature of the ecosphere is rising to recognize that
it's going to swamp our world, nor that the only way to prevent that
is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a lot.
US
law has been used before to keep advertisements and snooping out
of certain areas of our lives.
Let's do it again!
(It is regrettable that the article refers to publications as
"content".)
SCROTUS have proposed a law to
bar
the FCC from requiring any kind of network neutrality.
The imposed government of Flint has
threatened
to seize the homes of people who have not paid their exorbitant water
bills.
Those bills are for water that has to be filtered since it still has
too much lead.
The government of Flint is nondemocratic; the people of the city
cannot replace it. It was put in place by the Republicans that
dominate Michigan as a whole. Naturally it acts to
oppress,
since that is its purpose.
Windows 10 S ("S for Straitjacket")
does
not allow users to change the default browser or the default search
engine.
WalMart and TrueValue have or will
stop
selling neonicotinoid pesticides and plants grown with them.
I expect that farms use a lot more neonicotinoids than home gardeners,
but this is a significant step forward.
Too bad our government is so submissive to business that it can't take
necessary decisive action that large companies oppose. It reduces us
to begging companies to stop doing wrong.
As I suspected, the US federal claim that even an insignificant
falsehood in a citizenship application is grounds to revoke
citizenship was
first
presented under Obama.
It is to Obama's shame, and Holder's that neither of them objected to
this. Of course, neither do the troll and Sessions.
Google outsources the checking of its algorithmic classifications to a
company called Leapforce. The company just
cut
all its full-time workers to part-time, cut their wages, and
discharged many of them.
It did this in a strange way — a new, replacement company has
been started up which is hiring only some of the workers, and it seems
the company Leapforce will be shut down.
The article doesn't explain the motive for doing it that way, but I
suspect it is an end run around US labor law — essentially, a
way to cheat some of the workers.
Senator Feinstein persistently opposes single-payer medical care.
Perhaps her reason is that she
depends
on money from insurance companies.
South Dakota Republicans are
attacking
the right to protest.
Many intellectuals think about the future of humanity
based solely on
their own fields of thoughty, ignoring and thus implicitly denying the
ecological and climate disasters that humanity is building up.
I wish the author would reconsider the name "Anthropocene" for the new
geological epoch that is the result of human activity.
Meanwhile, the oil companies pay attention to the coming disaster —
but only how to profit from it.
They too underestimate the consequences that would result from 4C of
global heating.
Preventing an ice age in 50,000 years would be a good thing, if it
were not a side effect of an even bigger disaster in a few decades
from now. The avoided ice age would imply 4C of global cooling. The
Thermocene epoch could ultimately involve more than 4C of heating.
The
House of Representatives passed an even worse version of the
SCROTUS medical disinsurance bill.
It seems they papered over the denial of coverage to people with
preexisting medical conditions with a limited amount of funds to cover
some of them.
Then they rushed it through to deny the opportunity for informed
public criticism. There was no emergency here. Any legislator who
rushes a controversial change for no urgent reason is trying to
screw the public.
It is foolish and misleading to call that bill "Trumpcare". The troll
tries to shock us, but in some ways he is totally predictable: he will
never care about Americans in general.
I have decided to call that bill "Dontcare".
Forest Service's "Independent" Report on Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Written
by Pipeline Company Contractor.
A study
documents how effectively money buys votes in congress.
The
ACLU is suing the US government for arbitrarily searching
Aaron Gach's phone.
Saying curse-words boosts one's physical strength.
I have a hunch it boosts firmness of will under some circumstances.
There are
proposals for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Growing a tree seems simple, but growing billions of trees is a lot
harder than just planting them. For instance, they could be killed by
global heating effects such as drought, floods, or tropical pests. A
dead tree doesn't sequester carbon.
An interview with Desiree Fairooz, with more detail about the events
of her arrest and prosecution.
It seems she was expelled originally for laughing, but prosecuted
for objecting when she was expelled for laughing.
Putin has got support from Turkey, Iran and the US for a plan to
establish
"humanitarian safe zones" in Syria.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to block Dontcare. More precisely, any law that
undermines Medicare and Medicaid, defunds Planned Parenthood, or takes
health care away from sick people.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject EPA budget cuts.
Everyone:
call on
professional golf tournaments to stop using the troll's golf
courses.
US citizens:
condemn
the Dontcare bill.
Everyone:
Urge
Canada to protect the boreal forest.
The last stage of Tory "welfare reform" was an
arbitrary
maximum limit on annual welfare payments. This was supposed to
pressure people into working, even disabled people and people for whom
working is logistically impossible.
This policy is a catastrophe for the non-rich, but not for the Tories
that set it up. On the contrary, it achieves their goal: to drive the
non-rich into ever-worse poverty, to the point that they become a
timid and unresisting underclass, useful for intimidating everyone
else.
There is one good effect of the policy: that it encourages some women
to have abortions rather than babies. In our overpopulated world,
with the human population still growing, people ought to ask
themselves, "Is it right for me to have a child?" If it would be
difficult for you to support one, that is the indirect way that the
world shows you that you shouldn't have it.
However, the Tory choice to send this message by denying support to
children Tories consider "excess" is cruel and destructive. It
condemns real, live children to grow up in poverty, hunger and
stress,
which gratuitously
stunts
them for life.
A Republican congresscritter revealed the cruelty of Republicans by
blaming
individuals for all their medical problems.
What Republicans are really saying is, "If you weren't born rich, you
deserve a life of shit." They say this to serve the people they work
for: the rich.
The US Justice Department will bring no charges against the thugs that
held
Alton Sterling down and shot him dead.
This could reflect a new policy of supporting thugs no matter how
flagrant their crimes. But it will take more than one occasion to see
if it is a new policy.
Varoufakis gives quotes to prove that "bailout" of Greece was
designed
from the start to be a disaster.
I disagree with Paul Mason's judgment of Tsipras. Each stage of
"bailout" only makes Greece weaker.
Eliminating today's
plastic
straws is environmentally necessary.
Remembering the
US
war crimes of the Korean War.
The two governments ruling parts of Libya
may
be making some sort of agreement for peace with each other.
Ukrainians that collaborated with the Nazi occupation later led
guerrilla resistance against Stalin. That
makes
it hard to judge those who fought them on behalf of Stalin.
Poor areas of Caracas have
broken
out in riots.
The Tories, extractivists rather than conservatives,
plan
to rewrite all of British law bypassing Parliament, if nobody
stops them.
The
nocebo
effect: how imaginary damage can cause real pain.
Among the refugees imprisoned by Australia on Nauru, 50 have
threatened
or tried to burn themselves to death.
Wisconsin had a law that
denied
human autonomy automatically to every pregnant women who had a
history of using certain drugs. It has been ruled unconstitutional.
Women have a moral obligation to the good health of babies they will
have — if they intend to have babies. (Aborting a fetus
eliminates the issue because then it won't become a baby.) But women
are not incubators. Being pregnant doesn't take away their human
rights.
Us border thugs jailed Baxter Reid for being one hour late in leaving
the US. He was not late by choice — he was
delayed
in departure by Canadian immigration.
Countries have a right to deport those who willfully overstay a visa.
But no country can excuse punishing people who in trying to carry out
their visa requirements encounter delays beyond their control. That
is the act of people whose goal is to cause suffering and use rules as
an excuse.
The United States should give Reid an apology and fire those
responsible for this treatment of him. If the government does not nip
this in the bud, soon we will hear about visitors that were jailed
because they had a heart attack before their visas expired, or their
departure flight was canceled, or their taxi had a collision on the
way to the airport.
In many US schools, the staff go out of their way to
stigmatize
students from poor families. Anyone who would even think of this
should not be working with children.
It seems to me that schools are doing the wrong sort of background
check on their staff. Contempt for some set of students —
whether it is poverty, or an ethnic group — is the biggest
danger to the students.
How the NRA's resistance to gun control
ties
in with traditional US racism.
The thug that killed Walter Scott, shooting him in the back as he was
fleeing, has pleaded
guilty
to federal civil rights charges.
A prosecutor in Texas is on trial for
illegally
rigging a trial, which caused an innocent man to be executed.
When adults need to borrow money from their parents to buy a house,
this
exacerbates
inequality — between those whose parents have that much
money and those whose parents don't.
The troll's saboteurs in the USDA have
cancelled
new nutritional standards for school lunches.
That shows how much he cares about poor rural children.
The
new
Congressional budget saved funding for the EPA and for scientific
research, which the troll wanted to kill.
Americans have learned that
Democrats
such as Clinton favor the rich. Strangely, they believed the
troll when he said he was different.
Americans need to elect politicians like Senator Sanders and Senator
Warren, who really don't favor the rich.
When the troll gave a speech for the NRA, guns were
banned
in the hall.
His bodyguards understand that this is necessary, even though he says
it isn't.
Andrew Cuomo is a plutocratist Democrat; he favors progressive policies
as long as they don't cut into the income of his
bankster
supporters.
The Safest Way to Protect Water from Fracking is to
Ban
Fracking.
This is doubly the case since each gram of gas extracted, no matter
how, contributes to global heating.
We need to keep 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves
in
the ground, and we might as well start with all the reserves that
require dangerous procedures (such as fraction) to be extracted.
A forest fire in a fallout-contaminated area near Fukushima is
lifting
the radioactive fallout into the air.
Whether this event has a significant effect would depend on the
current wind. The radioactive atoms will drift for a while with the
wind, then fall down somewhere else.
The troll's political philosophy is not neoliberal, nor antisocialist
("libertarian"). He is an
authoritarian.
The troll tells so many falsehoods that the Washington Post fact
checkers cannot keep up. An average of
almost
5 per day.
The handful of scientists that deny global heating and its human
causes have published arguments in a paper. This article shows
its
errors.
The Circle is like a cartoon parody of Facebook, and
the
real Facebook is more dangerous.
Make sure your browser blocks Facebook's Like buttons so that they
can't snoop on your browsing.
"The higher the inequality, the more likely we are to
move
away from democracy."
Equality of opportunity includes more than just the opportunity for an
adult trying to enter a certain kind of work or school. It also
includes the opportunity for a child to grow up into a capable adult.
That requires good food, good medical care, and a life without high
stress.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support sanctions against the Philippines
because of President Do-dirty's crimes.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject the Dontcare bill.
US citizens:
submit
a comment urging Nebraska to refuse to approve the Keystone XL
pipeline.
Australia's rare red-finned blue-eye fish is
threatened
with extinction by an immigrant brought from the US. To protect
it, people are building three artificial springs to which to
transplant populations of the fish.
Peru's Plans to Cut Air Quality Rules Would
Smooth
Sale of Top Polluter.
Lots of French voters loathe Macron for the
right-wing
labor law "reforms" that he imposed on them a year ago.
Since the only reason to want Macron to win is that he's not a racist
anti-truther, France will be better off if he can't "govern
successfully". A sufficient leftist majority in legislature could
stop this.
Wealthy Americans get, on the average,
far
more government entitlements (money and tax breaks) than poor
Americans do.
A racist supporter of the troll
faces
charges for harassing a black protester.
Hamas has adopted a new charter that
accepts
coexistence with Israel with the pre-1967 borders.
This ought to make peace possible, but it would require dismantling
Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory. I think Netanyahu and
other right-wing Israeli leaders will find another excuse to avoid
that and continue the occupation.
Barack Obama's
$400,000
Speaking Fees Reveal What Few [progressives] Want to Admit.
Namely, that he was never committed to fight the plutocrats.
I could see this before he was elected, which is why I didn't vote for
him.
As brain scanning technology advances, we will need to have laws to
protect
people's privacy and autonomy in their minds.
But that won't be enough, because our thoughts can have visible
effects in tiny actions of our muscles.
Devices are being designed to
watch
how fast people walk, to deduce their state of health or to
identify them.
New Orleans prosecutors
harass
investigations by public defenders by filing criminal charges
against them over doing their jobs properly.
Everyone:
support
the California bail reform bill.
US citizens:
call on Senate Republicans
to reject the Dontcare bill.
Everyone:
state your
support for the Paris climate agreement.
It isn't enough to avoid global disaster, but undermining it would
hurry the disaster.
What the Battle of Puebla can teach us about the
injustice
of international debt, in 1862 and still today.
Everyone:
call
on Bethune-Cookman University to cancel its speech invitation to
DeVos.
US citizens:
call
on Nebraska to refuse the permit for the Keystone XL
planet-roaster pipeline.
It looks like the US and Salafi Arabia are
about
to bomb Hodeida. This would make the famine in Yemen deeper,
causing misery for 19 million people.
Salafi Arabia has no legitimate justification for attacking Yemen,
and the US has neither justification nor reason to do so.
The Salafi Arabian defense minister
says
Iran is trying to "control the Islamic world".
This is absurd, since most Muslims are Sunnis and they would hardly
follow Iran. The reason he made the claim is to distract us from
what
Salafi Arabia is doing to the Islamic world.
A thug shot at a moving car and
killed
15-year-old Jordan Edwards.
Can you guess his racial background?
15-Year-Old's
Death Shows What Can Happen When Cops Shoot at Cars.
The other countries that were in the TPP plan are
trying
to continue with it.
The TPP is a malicious plan to give businesses more power over people
and states, so they can take a bigger share of production and wealth.
The result, as we know from 30 years of this approach, is that
the non-rich get less.
The
latest
SCROTUS plan to repeal Obama's medical insurance plan has split
the Republican Party.
Tasmania (a part of Australia)
punishes
protests if they inconvenience business.
What that means is that the government of Tasmania takes the side of
business against its citizens.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to sign the discharge petition for the
bill to require the troll to release his tax returns.
Everyone:
call
for criminal charges against the thug that killed Jordan Edwards.
Housing prices in London are falling. This is
good
news for poor people that actually live there.
The troll is rushing to install a missile defense system in South
Korea
before
the Korean people and politicians can debate whether they want it.
It would be a very good thing to cancel the Korea-US business
supremacy treaty. All
those treaties are designed to reduce democracy in all the countries
that sign them.
However, when the troll says such things, he usually is not serious,
just trying to provoke a reaction and then offer some other option.
US border thugs
deported
a family to Honduras while their lawyers were presenting their asylum
case.
The officials displayed trollish contempt for the very idea that
people have legal rights.
The FBI, which
uses
criminal methods to inculpate people every day, should not dare
try to say what is or is not legitimate journalism.
UN Accuses Saudi Arabia of
Using
Terror Laws to Suppress Free Speech. I'm glad to see some
criticism in the UN for that repressive and fanatical state.
The Tory outsourced system for
cutting
support for the disabled, after it has crushed their spirit,
starts pressing them to explain why they haven't committed suicide
yet.
The Tories are lower than vermin.
The troll's budget is designed to enrich the rich. The people's
budget, written by the progressive caucus, is designed to help the
non-rich.
The troll
wants
to shut down Arpa-E, which funds long-term research in generating
and using energy more efficiently.
We can guess his motive: more efficiency would lead to less demand for
fossil fuels, and less profit for fossil fuels companies.
Not all systems for saving energy are good; some have too high an
ethical price. For instance, the app described in the article is a
dangerous surveillance system. I will never have the portable phone
that the system presupposes.
Senator Warren rebuked Obama and other Democrats
for
ignoring the harm done by plutocracy.
Most people who are terminally ill would rather die at home, but
many
families can't cope with that.
Not too long ago, ex-presidents of the US
didn't
hire themselves out to companies.
Facebook Helped Advertisers
Target
Teens Who Feel "Worthless".
Heavy use of Facebook tends to make some people
feel worthless. We could
call this "vertical integration of exploitation."
How does the surveillance state watch thee? We can't count the ways,
but here's a
list
of quite a few of them.
We need general laws to prohibit most systems from collecting data
about people, or even identifying them at all.
The UK hounds poor people for small fines that they cannot pay, by
adding ever more fines. Jerome Roberts found that his
$100
fine was increased to $1500 because he could not pay it.
Jerome Roberts killed himself because, once they denied him use of his
motorcycle, he could no longer make any money.
Most of the victims pay the fines eventually, perhaps instead of
eating, but this becomes a substantial drain on poor people's income.
This resembles the practice of Ferguson, Missouri, and many other US
towns that get a lot of their income by fining poor people.
The practice of escalating fines to make people pay them presumes
people have money and simply refuse to pay. In a society so unjust as
to force millions into poverty, such as the UK or the US, that
assumption is false; the system of fining to collect fines is an
additional injustice visited on the poor.
The real solution, though, is to give poor people more money.
Then they will be able to pay their fines when first levied.
The troll is going to honor the President Do-dirty with a
visit
to Washington.
We must suppose that he will receive this honor for being a bully and
showing contempt for human rights in the Philippines.
Online sales stores are working together to use personal profiles to
mislead
the public about what the normal price of products is. They
arrange to give people the idea that they are getting a discount, when
in fact they are paying extra.
This is so pervasive that the concept of "the" price (for a given
product) may no longer make sense.
Economists claim that the market is excellent because it determines
the proper price for each good. I wonder if they are worried about
this.
A
right-wing
campaigner that seeks to ban abortion entirely has been nominated
as assistant saboteur of public communication in the Department of
Health.
The troll is placing a
religious
extremist that opposes birth control in charge of a big
contraceptive program there.
The EPA is now the Environmental Pollution Agency. It is
soliciting
excuses to allow more pollution.
Companies are still moving thousands of US jobs to other countries
where pay is less, and the troll
isn't
doing much if anything to stop it.
If your boss tells you "We are moving this work to another country,
and first we want you to train your replacements," be brave! Quit
before doing that — and organize your coworkers to quit too.
As the article points out, direct transfer of specific jobs is a very
small part of the overall job transfer out of the US due to
business-driven globalization. Its overall global effect is that
companies pay workers less, anywhere in the world.
The troll has found Sebastian Gorka's antisemitic ties
too
embarrassing.
The US is protecting the Syrian Kurds from Turkey by
stationing
US troops on the border between them.
The situation is complicated, with the Kurdish northern region of Iraq
allied with Turkey and not with the Syrian Kurds.
Apparently the troll's praise for Erdoğan was as insincere as
almost everything else he says.
The troll's threats scared many in Central America out of fleeing to
the US. But their lives are in danger at home, so they are
recovering
their courage to try.
The troll is looking at changing the US constitution so he can
sue
those that publish accusations that he denies. That would include
anything which is negative about him, since he calls such facts "false
news".
This announcement came just after he reminded Americans that
May 1 is
"Loyalty
Day", on which we are supposed to remember our loyalties to the
principles of the United States, such as freedom of the press.
In Norway, A
Growing
Movement Builds an Oil-Free Future.
In Washington DC, students that got a voucher and transferred to a
private school
did
not do any better subsequently, and in many cases did worse.
The only "persons" whose rights matter to the troll are
businesses.
Humans emit
100
times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
It
would
be easy for an internet army to rig the 2018 election.
Of course, it is
even easier for
insiders. It is a mistake to depend on computers for elections.
However, saving paper ballots for an audit is no use if state laws
make
recounts almost impossible, as we discovered in 2016.
Taser is storing the video from thugs' body cameras, and
wants
to analyze it all.
Body camera footage should be saved only when there is a
specific
justification for doing so These videos should be held by the
state and used only as evidence for specific crimes, as specified by
law. No company should ever get its hands on any of these videos,
except those which are published.
US troops have returned to Helmand, where their
previous
"victory" proved to be entirely transitory.
The US-supported Afghan government cannot defeat the Taliban. It
can't even stand against the Taliban for more than a few years without
US troops to prop it up. But US soldiers can't defeat the Taliban
either. They can only push it down.
The Taliban are stronger than the corrupt Afghan government because
the Taliban inspire real support from a segment of the population, but
the Afghan government gets no support except what it pays for.
Is it worth a forever war just to keep the Taliban from winning in
Afghanistan?
Interviews with women in the army of the Syrian Kurds.
The few refugees that escape from Raqqa confirm that the civilians
there are faced with starvation if they stay, but PISSI will try to
kill them if they leave. While there, they are
used
as human shields.
The US persistently refuses to give the Kurds much in the way of
weapons. I think the US has been planning all along to betray the
Kurds to Turkey once PISSI is
defeated. The increasing tyranny of Erdoğan apparently appeals
to the troll, which makes that suspicion even more plausible.
Approaches
for resisting climate trumpery so as to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.
Food and Water Watch says that protecting food and water safety now
requires avoiding climate chaos, so it
intends
to campaign for that.
"There can be no greater crime against humanity than the foreseeable,
and methodical,
destruction
of conditions that make human life possible."
The only way to prevent extinction of the vaquita porpoise is to
catch
all 3 of them and move them to protected waters.
The election of Obama, and that of Trump, both reflect that Americans
are
desperate
for politicians that will serve the public rather than the rich.
In each case they didn't get it. (To be fair to Obama, he tried to go
further on medical insurance, and was
blocked
by Republicans and business lobbying.) The general point is that
the US political system is
no
longer a democracy.
Sanders recognizes this, which is why he aims for a
"political revolution".
Doctors are starting to measure the phenomenon that childhood stress
tends to cause medical problems that
take
many years off people's lives.
The US is causing childhood stress for millions of children in some
other
countries.
Meanwhile,
right-wing
antisocialist
policies are causing child stress for millions of children in the
US.
If saying hello to each student on entering the classroom makes a big
difference to the class, this is one example of why large classes will
tend to be bad classes, no matter how capable and assiduous the
teacher is.
The US has put sanctions on doing business with Russia, but a
loophole
permits JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to continue.
Facebook has agreed to
censor
publications to Vietnam's specifications.
(Please don't refer to publications as
"content".)
The
Three
Hot Trends in Silicon Valley Horseshit.
The troll has given prominent anti-semites
important
platforms.
His own personal relationships with some Jews do not cancel that out.
US drug companies have increased the price of some kinds of insulin to
the point where
some
diabetic people can barely afford to stay alive.
This wouldn't happen if we had a single-payer Medicare for All system.
The troll's appointee for Deputy Saboteur of the Interior, to be in
charge of approving or disapproving mining and drilling, has made a
career of
lobbying
for polluting projects.
The troll proposes to
eliminate
courts that block implementation of his illegal proclamations.
This is, in effect, a proposal to eliminate the independence of the US
judiciary — an attack on the constitution.
The frightening thing is that the troll and the billionaires that
mostly control Republican legislators might actually be able to do it.
The level of civic virtue among Republicans is too low to assure
failure.
A Democratic Party campaign funding organization analyzed the 2016
election defeat, and
refuses
to say what it found.
But if the findings have to do with fund raising and expendature, it
is clear they are looking for the failure next to the UV streetlight
because that's the only place they can see through their UV-filter
glasses.
US citizens: stand up for the
Clean
Power Plan.
US citizens: phone Republican leaders to
oppose
their plans to cut medical care.
US citizens:
oppose
the NRA's bill to deregulate silencers.
US citizens:
oppose
the "CHOICE" Act — don't give banksters the
choice to cheat people more.
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject the
troll's plan to allow offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic and
Arctic coasts
US citizens: support the
senators
who have objected to bombing Hodeida.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass the
100 By 50 Act, which establishes the goal of eliminating all
fossil fuel use to generate electricity in the US by 2050.
US citizens: tell Congress:
don't
pass any tax cuts for the troll.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to
oppose the new,
even worse medical insurance proposal, which would attack Medicaid
as well as endangering Americans with preexisting medical problems.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Melting ice in Antarctica could subject the US east coast to
12
feet of sea level rise.
800,000 people's homes in New York City could be underwater.
Parts of Boston too.
And of course Miami and New Orleans.
Saboteur Pruitt is
sabotaging
the EPA's climate science pages.
When two Dalits got high scores on the entrance exam for the Indian
Institute of Technology, local bigots
attacked
their house with stones.
Nobody was hurt, but it shows the nature of the hatred that Dalits in
general have to face. Most Dalits, like most non-Dalits, can't get
into an exclusive school, but they deserve decent treatment anyway.
Erdoğan has underlined his repressive vision for Turkey by
blocking
access to Wikipedia.
The New York Times hired a right-wing columnist who
presents
global heating denial salted with falsehoods. The Times said it
would do fact checking on that columnist's writing, but
didn't
effectively do so.
China has
jailed
visiting Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che.
Due to the hostility between the two countries, Taiwan's government is
in no position to press for his release. It's possible that the
motive for doing so is political pressure on Taiwan.
Selling abortion medicines without prescription
seems
to be safe, and it would protect women from antiabortionist
repression.
The US is apparently going to
escalate
its bombing campaign against al-Shabaab in Somalia, reducing the
care taken to avoid civilian casualties.
The troll wants to put a persistent antiabortion campaigner, who also
opposes effective birth control,
in
the Department of Health.
The troll set up a phone number for people to report crimes committed
by unauthorized immigrants. The system is
entirely
useless for curbing crimes or catching criminals. Its sole
purpose is to spread, by existing, the impression that they commit a
lot of crimes.
People immediately began reporting supposed crimes by aliens of
another sort, flying in UFOs.
In general, the victims and witnesses can't tell whether the person
who committed the crime is an unauthorized immigrant, unless they know
that person. However, Serious investigation says they commit fewer
crimes on average than US citizens.
The NSA said it
will
stop examining Americans' email merely because it mentions some
coordinates associated with a foreign surveillance subject.
This is a small change in the right direction, but I emphasize
"small". The fight to disestablish
massive
collection of data about our activities is just beginning.
The Australian national thugs snooped on lists of journalists' past
communication records
without
even a warrant.
A warrant should be required to start keeping records of anyone's
communications.
Humpback whales sometimes organize to
block
orcas from hunting other kinds of prey.
Are they smart enough to realize this will indirectly protect the
humpback whales from being attacked by orcas on other occasions?
North Korea
fired
another ballistic missile.
I get the impression that King Kim and the troll have the same
approach to peace negotiations: act as bellicose as possible, hoping
to get the "best deal". Unfortunately, that resembles a game of
chicken.
Progressive activists
should
focus their campaigns on changing powerful repressive
institutions. Trying to silence right-wing speakers is wrong, and
protesting them tends to be a distraction from substantive issues.
Missouri's insane new law requires schools to
report
all fights between students for prosecution, and makes fighting a
felony.
Prosecutors will decide which students to prosecute. I suppose they
will usually prosecute blacks and not whites. But it is vicious
prosecute students for this.
Ivanka Trump is
soliciting
foreign donations for a fund for "female entrepreneurs".
Some Republicans are
campaigning
to move the Republican Party out of global heating denialism.
Please don't legitimize these denialists, in many cases paid to
campaign or deluded by paid campaigns, by calling them "skeptics".
However, the Republican Party still merits Chomsky's term:
the
most dangerous group in human history.
Brazilians Sick of Corrupt Politicians Hit the Streets to
Protest
Austerity Measures.
Plutocratist politicians speak of "reforms" when what they mean is
to eliminate workers' rights and reduce their pay.
PISSI terrorists may be
sneaking
into Europe by posing as wounded Libyan soldiers.
Many countries are adopting the US system of plea bargaining, which
effectively
denies
most accused people a trial.
US citizens:
call
on Zinke to preserve national monuments.
US citizens:
Tell
the troll not to interfere with states that have legalized and
regulated marijuana.
US citizens:
tell
Congress not to pass any tax legislation until the troll publishes
his tax returns.
US citizens:
call
on the House of Representatives to force vote before General
Mattis attacks the Yemeni port of Hodeida, pushing Yemen into famine.
US citizens:
call
for immediate suspension of Jared Kushner's Interim Top-Secret
Security Clearance.
Tennessee's governor encourages state agencies to
subcontract
jobs to a company that he profits from.
He's a Republican, naturally. Republican officials feel that, in the
troll's wake, no corruption is too blatant.
Texas Republicans are passing a bill to
imprison
thug chiefs that don't cooperate 100% with repression of
unauthorized immigrants.
They seek to whip up Americans' hatred of foreigners, then offer
Americans the excitement of vicarious participation in repressing
them.
Greenpeace says that palm oil company IOI Group has
made
progress in ending deforestation, and has dropped its pressure
campaign against that company.
Slavery in India is tied up in
social
networks that make it very difficult to put an end to.
Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping was given a suspended sentence
— for a bogus crime, in a secret trial, after
2
years of imprisonment with torture.
The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
fear
that the right-wing government of Argentina will cover up the 1970s
murder of their children with systematic lies.
Union organizers in the right-wing southern US
have
to reach out to an entire community, not just the workers in a
particular company.
Kayla Greenwood, whose father was killed by Kenneth Williams,
begged
the governor not to execute him.
It is a moving letter, though I denounce the idea that the state
should reduce someone's punishment because that person became
religious.
The governor, standing firm for the principle that the state is
mercilessness, carried out the execution anyway.
Most of us will not be sentenced to death, but we could easily be
hit by that immoral principle in lesser ways.
Holocaust denial was an early example of the sort of systematic
lie-fabrication campaigns that the right-wing now uses
derail
serious political discussion based on facts.
Politicians today sometimes advocate laws and repressive policies for
no evident reason except to
harass
their opponents.
The article errs in putting gun control in that category. Guns really
are dangerous, especially to the families of their owners.
"Social" features that say "If you like what A posts, try what B
posts", can
indirectly
doxx A or B.
Although human greenhouse gas emissions seem to have leveled off, the
rate
of increase in the atmosphere is rising. Evidently the heat has
damaged part of the Earth's natural CO2 sink.
The US government has made submarine-launched nuclear missiles
accurate
enough to destroy Russian ICBMs.
That was a foolish and dangerous thing to do, since it gives Russia a
reason to fear a US first strike, and thus a reason to launch its
missiles on warning, thus increasing the danger of accidental nuclear
war.
The US government is arguing, before the Supreme Court, that the
slightest
omission in an application for citizenship, even failing to
mention that you once went to a meeting of any club or once drove
faster than the speed limit, is ground to revoke citizenship.
The worst plausible projection of sea level rise is
8
feet by 2100.
Sanders and two Democrats have a
proposed
a bill to move the US rapidly towards renewable electric
generation. New fossil fuel pipelines would be banned.
The aim of the bill, which SCROTUS will surely block, is to change the
debate.
Obama demonstrates his loyalty to rich investors by
going
to their event for $400,000.
What I rebuke Obama for is not the fact that he is working for
pay, but who he is working for.
The reason I didn't support Clinton in November was that she would
clearly have been
even
more of a supporter of the banksters than Obama was.
A website
offers
advice to women in the US that want to use abortion drugs and
can't consult a doctor.
Former
US intelligence personnel warn that the US is on the verge of
going to war with Assad's forces based on intelligence conclusions
that they have chemical weapons, without making really sure — much as
it did against Iraq.
The conclusions were wrong in the case of Iraq.
Most of the plastic that finds its way to the North Atlantic ends up
in a
garbage
patch in the Arctic Ocean.
The cheater has proposed tax cuts
designed
to benefit himself personally (and other rich people).
This is the result of changes that are supposedly to help small
businesses, but
will
help large businesses more.
For decades, Republicans have proposed tax cuts that reduced most
people's taxes an insignificant amount and mainly benefited rich
people. The natural concomitant is spending cuts that mainly hurt
the poor or middle class. The total outcome is dooH niboR.
Bluefin tuna are
being
fished to extinction. 90% of the fish that are caught nowadays
are not old enough to reproduce.
Why the UK is
sinking
in respect for press freedom.
Barrett Brown was imprisoned again —
for
giving interviews to the press.
Le Pen resigned as president of her political party, for electoral
reasons. The party appointed a replacement that
dabbled
in holocaust denial.
It is wrong to prosecute holocaust denial, as France does, because
freedom of speech includes the freedom to express any views about
history. However, the people who say such things do not deserve
respect or support.
Some Republicans in Congress are joining a
bipartisan
global heating caucus.
North Carolina Republicans are trying to reduce the size of the state
supreme court, so that Governor Cooper cannot appoint anyone. A
Republican judge was so incensed at this that he
resigned
and gave Cooper a chance to appoint his successor.
The troll has
appointed
a number of hate group activists to various US agencies.
"Free"
western countries voted to put Salafi Arabia on the UN Commission
on the Status of Women.
As sea level rise forecasts for California
increase,
it appears that inundation threatens houses, beaches, roads, bridges,
railways, and nuclear power plants.
40,000 houses could disappear beneath the Pacific Ocean, or San
Francisco Bay, in 70 years.
Of course, global heating could go even faster if some new positive
feedback appears.
SCROTUS have proposed the "Regulatory Accountability Act" to
make
regulations more accountable to the companies they are supposed to
regulate.
The idea is that regulation should be so gentle that it won't hamper
companies from making people sick or broke.
Republicans have campaigned for years to turn "regulation" into a
smear term so they can
permit
businesses to harm and cheat the public with no regulations to hold
them back.
The troll's budget would
eliminate
spending to support women's rights, world wide.
The ACLU is campaigning to
hold
prosecutors accountable for their decisions, with the goal of
reducing mass imprisonment in the US.
Harvard is starting to respond to years of pressure to divest
from fossil fuels. It will
"pause"
in buying such stocks.
Seems more disappointing than exciting.
The
arguments
for tax cuts for rich corporations are bogus.
Systematic
repression of democracy supporters in Hong Kong.
Islamist terrorists now aim to
expel
or kill the Christians that remain in Egypt.
Russia
wants
the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send an
investigation team to Khan Sheikhun to verify whether the deadly
chemical released there was sarin. The western countries in the
organization voted against this, leading to suspicion they are
covering something up.
Assad and Russia together can surely assure the safety of inspectors
from their side, and if the rebels refuse, the onus will fall on them.
The copyright industry wants to
convert
the head of the copyright office into its own servant by having
the president appoint him.
I expect this to make it very hard to get any significant DMCA
exemptions in the future. The DMCA exceptions process is basically a
distraction, meant to divert energy away from campaigning to repeal
the unjust sections of the DMCA. But it has provided limited relief
from the wrong, because the copyright office has granted some
exemptions. If it stops, maybe we can mobilize opposition to the
DMCA again.
Nonetheless, I oppose this change, and I hope some organization will
start a campaign against it that I can support. I do not believe in
endorsing a change for the worse on the supposition that it might spur
opposition.
The idea that copyright should "balance" interests of copyright
holders with those of the public
gives
the copyright holders too much importance. Copyright is supposed
to balance one aspect of public interest with another aspect of public
interest.
The campaign to raise the federal minimum wage has
grown
considerably stronger since two years ago.
SCROTUS will not support it, but the effort is worth while because it
shows that they stand for low wages.
We All Need to
Defend
Speech We Hate. Even right-wing bigots such as Ann Coulter or the
troll should not be blocked from speaking to people.
A sex robot with AI could eventually become a diverting companion, but
it would
tell
various companies everything about you.
If you use your imagination, a fantasy that costs you nothing can be
as enjoyable as an expensive robot, and it won't spy on you.
The troll plans to
"renegotiate"
NAFTA, not kill it.
In principle, renegotiation could make NAFTA less damaging, or more
damaging. NAFTA is damaging because it is a business-supremacy
treaty, and we can't expect the troll to oppose that in general.
It is also quite likely that ultimately he won't do anything;
that this is a preparation for forgetting about the issue.
Turkey has begun
bombing
the Syrian Kurds.
Erdoğan has a history of grasping for excuses to start wars.
He started a civil war with the Kurds of Turkey in order to
rerun
an election and get more votes. He is likely to grasp this excuse
for all-out war against the Kurds of Syria.
Pakistanis are defending the student, Mashal Khan, who was
accused
of blasphemy and murdered.
Alas, it seems that this is more because they think the accusation was
erroneous than because of new-found respect for freedom of speech.
A state investigation found that capital trials, and executions, in
Oklahoma are
so
slipshod it strains belief.
I disagree with the supporters of execution, but still I am surprised
they are so careless in deciding who to kill.
McDonalds has
offered
fixed-hours contracts to many of its workers in the UK.
The troll is
not
following his pledge to punish companies that send US jobs to other
countries.
How SCROTUS
want
to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau totally
ineffective.
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans replaced public schools with
privatized charter schools
do
a lousy job, and are segregated too.
The Senate's Trump-Russia investigation is a phony — it is
not
actually investigating.
It seems that Heath Mello, the candidate that Sanders recently
campaigned for,
doesn't
actually advocate restrictions on abortion. He says he is opposed
to that.
1/3 of the primary and secondary school students in the US have been
given computers to use, and these
nearly
always spy on the student.
The EFF doesn't mention that devices are fundamentally unjust because
they contain nonfree software.
US citizens:
Oppose
expanding US immigration prisons; spend the money on something
that helps people.
US citizens:
tell
the troll not to use the US military as political props.
US citizens:
Tell
Congress not to mess with the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau.
Reporters Without Borders says that freedom of the press in Britain is
in
danger from Theresa May's prohibition on publishing leaks.
In Afghanistan, abortions save lives, but they are
still
illegal.
The troll
wants
to cancel programs that help cities protect environmental security
and public health.
The troll
threatens
to abolish several national monuments.
US and UK laws against "supporting terrorism" are
blocking
humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Two elected Hong Kong legislators, barred from the legislature by
henchmen of China, have now been arrested and
charged
with a forbidden protest.
It seems the US is not the only country that
fabricates
charges to repress political protest.
Where Is the Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders of
Foreign
Policy?
The troll has retreated from
most
of what he said he would do about international trade.
Olive Beddows begged her husband to kill her so she would not die in a
nursing home. He
tried,
but failed. I suspect he couldn't bring himself to hit her hard
enough, what with loving her so much.
I fear they will put her in a nursing home, even if not right away.
Milwaukee County Jail guards killed prisoner Terrill Thomas by
denying
him water for 7 days.
New Report Reveals Trump Is Not Punishing Corporations That Offshore
American Jobs, But
Awarding
Them New Government Contracts.
Israel can't cope with nonviolent Palestinian protest and opposition
except to
smear
it as "support for terrorism".
Marwan Barghouti, one of the leaders of the prisoners' hunger strike,
was convicted in Israel of murder — but the Inter-Parliamentary Union
says his trial was unfair and that his guilt is not established.
The article describes how unfair trial, even pretrial torture to
extract false confessions, is standard practice in Israel when dealing
with accused Palestinians.
More
information about that.
Israel has
blocked
lawyers from meeting with the hunger strikers.
Could
Barghouti
Become Israel's Peace Partner?
Israel is selling natural gas
from
a field underneath Israel and Palestine. Naturally it isn't
giving Palestine any say or any share. Basically that is theft.
However, the most important thing about fossil fuel deposits is not
who gets to burn them, but
avoiding
burning them at all. If the pipeline from Israel to Europe is
actually put to use at the scheduled completion in 2025, Israel and
Palestine will both be doomed. There is no possible good in spending
money to build a pipeline in these circumstances, regardless of who
will get paid for a while.
Extremist "settlers" repeatedly attacked Palestinian shepherds,
driving them off their land. Israeli thugs naturally did nothing to
stop this. When nonviolent Israeli activists came to support the
shepherds, the "settlers"
attacked
them too.
On one occasion, they attacked Israeli thugs as well. But that is no
longer necessary; the thugs have learned their lesson and now
blatantly give the Israeli terrorists full support.
The troll has had a very successful 100 days when it comes to
giving
favors to the companies that have invested in his presidency.
Kucinich has launched a
campaign
against siphoning off money from public schools to fund privatized
charter schools.
One of the troll's executive orders gave Saboteur of the Interior
Zinke an
opportunity
to allow drilling for oil and gas in national parks.
George Monbiot: "I would love to elect a government led by someone
both competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot
paper. The choice today is between
brutal
efficiency in pursuit of a disastrous agenda, and gentle inefficiency
in pursuit of a better world. I know which I favour."
Russians are getting angry at the
massive
corruption of the high officials.
Some companies are promoting
ethical
clothing — less pollution and decent treatment of workers.
Labour proposes to continue taking Britain out of the EU but
preserve
almost all of the EU's laws.
This might perhaps avoid most of the harm that the Tories will end up
doing. It will also avoid nearly all the possible good of leaving the
EU: eliminating plutocratic laws that give business too much power and
oppress countries such as Greece. However, the Tories don't want to
eliminate those laws anyway — quite the contrary, they are looking
for an excuse to make those worse.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to spend any money on the troll's border wall.
US citizens: stand for network neutrality
yet
again.
Arkansas governor Hutchinson rushed to execute a man
whose
trial was a series of bullshit and whose defense attorneys omitted
the most obvious steps.
In effect, Hutchinson said, "Never mind justice, let's kill someone."
Humans emit
100 times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
Islamic States terrorists may be sneaking into Europe by posing as wounded
Libyan soldiers
.
Brazilians Sick of Corrupt Politicians Hit the Streets to Protest Austerity
Measures.
Plutocratist politicians speak of "reforms" when what they mean is
to eliminate workers' rights and reduce their pay.
Erdoğan has underlined his repressive vision for Turkey by blocking
access to Wikipedia.
The Three Hot Trends in Silicon Valley Horseshit.
US citizens:
call
on the senate to pass SJRes 40, which would call on the troll to
certify that Salafi Arabia is not arming al-Qa'ida before selling the
former any more arms.
I would go further. The US should refrain from meddling in Yemen. By
doing so, it has
prolonged
the civil war there which has since
led
to famine.
More fundamentally, Salafi Arabia is responsible for the spread of
virulent, jihadi forms of Islam, that have reached the point of
murdering
the believers in civil, neighborly Muslims. It has
funded
this for decades.
The US has done plenty to inspire Muslims' hostility: first supporting
Israel's occupation of Palestine, and since 15 years ago fighting wars
of aggression in the Middle East. However, these work together with the
spread of Salafism.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 and say, "I
urge you to invoke the War Powers Resolution to force a debate and
vote before the U.S. helps Saudi Arabia push Yemen into famine
by bombing the port of Hodeida."
More info is in
this
petition, which I suggest signing.
How
to solve the problem of troll armies?
Restrictions on abortion
perpetuate
economic inequality, as well as being fundamentally unjust.
Nonetheless, I won't say it is wrong for Sanders to support an
anti-abortion progressive Democrat against an anti-abortion
bankster-subservient Republican.
100 Days of Gibberish — Trump Has
Weaponised
Nonsense.
The State Department was promoting the troll's private business, the
Mar-a-Lago club, but it
stopped
when people named and shamed it.
In a few decades, Mar-a-Lago will become simply Mar due to sea level
rise. But that's likely to be after the troll's lifetime.
Natanyahu gave the German foreign minister an ultimatum: "Cancel your
meetings with Israeli human rights groups or I won't meet with you."
The minister
did
not obey.
Ivanka Trump met with derision as she
claimed
that the troll is trying to help women.
It may be useful to let her speak occasionally before a live audience,
so that she can't pass off bullshit as believed.
But
not
very often.
Putin persecutes Jehovah's Witnesses because they are pacifists,
and
calls
them "violent extremists".
Due to Tory cuts in support for the poor,
3
million British children can't eat right at the times of year when
school is not feeding them.
The Koch brothers
spend
3 million dollars to press the troll's saboteur appointees thru
the Senate.
Dmitry Bogatov is being prosecuted in Russia for
messages
that others sent through his Tor node.
In a free country, nobody would be prosecuted for those messages, not
even those who sent them.
Two Supreme Court justices say the court has a
tendency
to take the side of violent thugs against their victims.
If you ever serve on a jury, keep in mind that thugs have lots of
practice in lying in court. They have practiced presenting lies
smoothly to make them sound plausible. One thug's testimony supports
another's because the system ensures they have a chance to coordinate
their stories. This should raise a reasonable doubt about whatever
they say.
With South Florida including Miami facing inundation due to global
heating, the wiser property owners are starting to sell.
Property
values could collapse to near zero once the public realizes the
land will cease to be land.
In effect, coastal land is a bubble, and the sooner these bubbles
burst, the less harm they do.
It's more or less the same for coasts around the world, though the
local rate of sea level rise varies. (It is faster in Florida because
the land is sinking.) The inundation of ancient ports around the
Mediterranean will be a terrible loss for all humanity, not just for
the people who live in them.
I propose that the US government should buy out non-rich homeowners
who bought before a certain cutoff date, but only up to a certain
limit. That would save the poor from being wiped out, while not
wasting money on wealthy people who don't face being wiped out, and
avoid creating a "moral hazard" of encouraging people to buy
properties at risk.
Those who bought their homes after the cut-off date could receive a
buy-out reduced by 4% for each year between the cut-off date and when
they purchased the property.
That would be the sensible thing to do, but I'd be surprised if it
were done.
The Tories' intentional delay in welfare support has
driven
the need for food banks to a record level.
The Tories are lower than vermin —
Aneurin
Bevan.
Most of the people granted asylum in the UK are promptly made homeless
and destitute, because
the
government won't support or help them.
The Tories
fight
to the last drop of oil combustion against renewable electricity
generation.
The International Criminal Court has received a
complaint
about the mass murder of President Do-dirty of the Philippines.
Privatizing state assets generally means the new owners make a killing
at state expense. Here's
how
it happened to the UK's military housing.
If the private financier that wants to buy is in favor of the deal,
that's enough to show the state should reject the deal.
The US bail system regularly
ruins
the lives of poor people whenever they are accused of a crime. If
they make bail, they go away with debts they cannot pay. If they
don't make bail, they lose their careers and their homes. That's
regardless of whether they are ultimately convicted of the charges.
Many people make false confessions just to get out of jail.
Obama's campaign against PISSI has been advancing
slowly
but surely. "Only Trump can save ISIS now."
Almost
90,000
jobs have been lost in US retail stores since last October —
and this could be just the beginning of a disaster that affects
millions of jobs.
In a physical store, you can buy anonymously. Internet purchases are
a surveillance system. That is why I have never bought anything over
the internet. Please buy in physical stores by preference.
Calling on Disney, Pepsico, and the Gap to
quit
the US Chamber of Commerce.
Al-Sisi's military regime is shooting prisoners, and
losing
the war in the Sinai that it provoked by the
bloody
coup against the elected president, Morsi. Once Islamists in
Egypt saw they would not be allowed to win democratically, they were
motivated to join an armed uprising.
Islamists do not respect human rights either, but under a system of
free elections it would have been possible to vote them out of power.
Al-Sisi does not allow opposition at all.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to let the troll kill funds for protecting
Americans from toxic pollution.
The petition's author lived in near toxic industry, and both her
children got peculiar diseases from that.
Everyone:
call on
Amazon to stop advertising on the right-wing bigotry site
Breitbart.
Amazon does a lot of worse things, which is why I urge people not
to do buy from Amazon at all.
"Public Goods"
Made
America Great And Can Do So Again.
Among public goods, we should count free software and free educational
resources.
The US government is prosecuting 200 protesters for the
"felony"
of participating in a protest where someone broke windows.
Even for those who broke the windows, 10 years in prison is repressive
in the extreme.
Most of the troll's executive orders don't really change anything.
They only start a
procedure
that might possibly change something.
That doesn't make them harmless. The agencies that will carry out
these procedures are run by saboteurs appointed by the troll, and they
will do their utmost to take advantage of these opportunities for
sabotage.
Three
journalists have been murdered, one by one, in the Maldive
Islands.
It goes with the tyranny that was set up after the overthrow
of the only elected president,
Nasheed.
I suspect that oil interests played a role in the coup that overthrew
Nasheed, because he
campaigned
at the global level to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that will
eliminate the Maldive Islands.
Trumponomics: Neocon Neoliberalism (and unilateralism)
Camouflaged
with Anti-Globalization Circus.
Houston's newly elected prosecutor has
decided
to stop prosecuting possession of marijuana, and to stop keeping
people in jail for months for being poor.
New Orleans is taking down
monuments
that support the pro-slavery side in the US Civil War.
Nazi lawyers studied the US race laws that were designed to keep
blacks and Chinese down, as a
guide for designing laws
to keep Jews down.
Cornel West: give up on the corporate-friendly Democratic Party
and
start
a new one.
I am not sure whether we have a better chance of a progressive victory
with or without the Democratic Party.
Japan is
failing
to abide by an agreement to protect the survival of bluefin tuna.
Unroll.me Head 'Heartbroken' That
Users
Found Out it Sells Their Inbox Data.
Three women explain
why
they needed late-term abortions.
Banning them is terrible cruelty, based on many cases on willful
denial of reality. That's faith for you.
What
"tax
reform" means to SCROTUS, and to the cheater.
Likeliest Outcome of Tax Reform is a
Deficit-Financed
Tax Cut for the Rich That Will Expire in a Decade.
In the UK, unauthorized immigrants are
afraid
to see a doctor lest it lead to deportation.
People living in precarious circumstances should ask themselves,
before they make a child, whether it is right to make a child live in
precarious circumstances. However, it may be that they can't get
reliable birth control or abortions because they fear seeing a doctor.
"We
scapegoat
and impoverish young people while destroying the world we older,
luckier ones inherited. As abdications of duty go, this one is
absolute."
Consigning most young people to a precarious and painful life results
from the callous political plutocracy squeezing on one side while
growing global population, global heating, and overusing the world's
resources squeeze on the other size.
Humanity can't continue its profligate resource use. But it could, if
it tried to, enlist everyone in reducing resource use and reducing the
birth rate, while treating everyone as worthy of a decent life.
The troll is
planning
to prosecute parents that pay to smuggle their children into the
US.
Human rights don't include the right to move to the US, or bring
someone else to the US. So I have no objection to this plan, in the
abstract, as long as it isn't implemented in a cruel way or used to
stir up hatred towards immigrants. I expect the troll and his
saboteurs to do those things, though.
This issue is completely separate from the issue of how to treat
unauthorized immigrants that were brought to the US as children, many
years ago. We should offer them citizenship.
Canadian Oil Firm Pulls Out of
National
Park in Peru's Amazon.
When the troll says, "America First", it means
"Hungry
People Last."
Killer Gorsuch voted on the Supreme Court for
executing
a man immediately rather than examining DNA evidence which could
have proved he was innocent.
The Massachusetts Democratic Party is considering a resolution to
criticize Israel's colonies in Palestine as an
obstacle
to peace between Israel and Palestine. There is a lot of
opposition to acknowledging this basic fact.
Trump's Bombings May Elicit the
'Mother
of All Blowback'.
Should we endorse an
anti-abortion
Democrat as a replacement for a right-wing Republican?
I probably would not, because I think that abortion rights are very
important.
The US Treasury
denied
Exxon's request for permission to operate oil wells in Russia.
The troll has given Wall Street a big handout with
three
executive orders.
British colonists captured Australia in a
long
slow series of battles, massacres, and hunting aboriginals for
sport.
I read in The Other Side of the Frontier, by Henry Reynolds,
that colonists would often take the most fertile land in an area for
farming or stock raising, and demand the aboriginals live on the rest
of the area; but that fertile part was the biggest part of their food
supply, so this condemned them to fight or die.
US 'Deep State'
Sold
Out Counter-Terrorism to Keep Itself in Business. Basically,
weakening al-Qa'ida was subordinated to other interests such as
supporting Salafi Arabia.
This is ironic given that the harsh Salafi approach to Islam is what
built today's jihadi movement.
The troll has pushed for a new attack against the guerrilla group
al-Shabaab. Humanitarian aid organizations warn that this is likely
to block aid to the region controlled by al-Shabaab, which is
suffering
from famine.
Activists in Uganda are campaigning for the state to provide menstrual
pads to the nation's schoolgirls, many of whom
miss
school because they can't afford to buy the pads.
One of them has been imprisoned for insulting the president for his
refusal. To punish people for insults is a sign of tyranny. (Are you
listening, France, Turkey, Russia and others?
Science has already been politicized, by those who want to disregard
knowledge in favor of fantasy. We who want to pay attention to
knowledge
must
not hold back from campaigning for that.
Prosecuting female genital mutilation
in
the US.
An arms merchant who supplied arms to Liberian tyrant Charles Taylor
has been
sentenced
to prison.
Chris Packham made a video recording of
hunters
in Malta shooting migrating birds, and hunters falsely accused him
of physically attacking them.
The hunt in Malta is authorized, but since it endangers some species
of birds, Malta must change its policy.
Practical advice for
how
to talk with relatives and friends that support Trump, so that
they might start to listen.
The Saboteur of the FCC, Ajit Pai, has
authorized
ISPs with no competitors to gouge on prices.
Instead of the incoherent war on painkillers, the US should aim for
harm
reduction.
Untreated pain is part of the harm that we should aim to reduce.
And an addiction to pain killers, kept in check by medical attention,
is not as bad as continuing agony.
The US
denied
reporters access to the zone in Afghanistan where it dropped the
large conventional bomb. No one can verify any claims about what was
or wasn't destroyed.
Even people whose families lived in the area can't get information.
Specific reports covered almost 300 civilians killed by US bombs in
Iraq and Syria in one week in April. The actual figure is probably
several times that.
Orwell's point is valid: we are morally obliged to judge the killing
of civilians by the same standards no matter which side does it.
Zinn's point about inevitable casualties is also valid, but that
doesn't mean that all civilian casualties constitute war crimes. No
army can completely avoid killing or wounding civilians; every army
has an obligation to make a real effort.
There are reports that the troll has more or less countermanded
Obama's precautions in the US military. Perhaps the casualties in April
occurred at a higher level than was normal for the past few years.
It may be anachronistic to apply today's standards to use of chemical
weapons during and shortly after World War I. While there was a
treaty that prohibited them, all the main combatants used them or
tried to, and all were targeted with them.
Why not probe Israel's influence in the US government?
There's plenty of evidence of it.
Everyone:
call on
the US media to stop glorifying war and weapons.
US citizens:
oppose
the misnamed "right to work" bill, intended weaken unions and pave
the way for cuts in wages and workers' benefits.
44 million Americans have student loans, and
almost
half have fallen behind on payments.
One way to fix this problem is to allow people to get rid of those
debts through bankruptcy — an option that Republicans eliminated
around 15 years ago.
Saboteur Pruit has
turned
the EPA into the Environmental Persecution Agency.
Welfare for a single mother in Mississippi is a swindle:
get
$200 of aid, and pay back $2500 a few years later if the father
doesn't pay for it. The slide into the trap is made smooth with
lies.
Part of the state's job is to help people avoid the situation of
having a baby and no money for food. The first step is to teach
everyone what that is like, and offer reliable birth control to all.
A Republican businessman was so sleazy that he
squeezed
money out of the Republican party.
The troll's "Buy American" policy has
loopholes
to protect Wall Street's profits from manufacturing in other
countries.
Bhikkhu
Bodhi: in Buddhist terms, global heating denial shows the combined
effect of ignorance and craving.
Two groups of Republicans have agreed on a compromise plan for how to
cut
off medical coverage for millions of Americans.
Users are suing Bose for distributing an app, to set parameters in its
headphones, which also
snooped
on the users' activities.
The suit accuses that this was done without the users' consent. If
the fine print of the app said that users gave consent for this, would
that make it acceptable? No way! It
should
be flat-out illegal to design the app to snoop at all.
Dow Chemical is lobbying the US government to discard
its
own study which showed certain pesticides endanger wildlife.
Nuclear power companies are
making
taxpayers pay to keep dirty nuclear plants running.
The longer a nuclear power plant keeps running, the more dangerous it
gets. The environment inside the reactor is corrosive; things change
their shape and move, and it is hard to tell what's going on inside.
Instead of paying extra to keep these plants running, we pay to build
storage and renewable energy capacity.
Companies used donations for the troll's inauguration
as
a way to obtain changes in laws and regulations.
Gordon Sondland wanted to donate a million dollars to the troll's
inauguration, but when people saw his name on the donor list, he said
he had changed his mind for ethical reasons. But actually he
funnelled the money through
four
front corporations.
Washington DC thugs
illegally
infiltrated inauguration protests.
As US Prepares to Gut Net Neutrality Rules,
Canada
Strengthens Them.
We are
at
the edge of having antibiotic resistance make surgery dangerous.
The UN Security Council has threatened North Korea with
sanctions
if it continues nuclear testing.
This warning has the support of China, so Mr Kim will find it
difficult to defy. It has a chance of succeeding as a diplomatic
solution to the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons.
The [US] Government's Own Data Shows
Country
of Origin Is a Poor Predictor of Terrorist Threat.
The FBI is now eagerly protecting Americans from unstable
fantasy
supporters of PISSI.
There must be hundreds of these. They are not totally harmless; a few
of them might someday commit solo terrorist attacks with cars, but the
chance any particular one would do so is small.
Although the FBI says it is protecting us from very dangerous people,
it does not seem to consider them very dangerous
when
they are released from prison.
Russia has banned the Jehovah's Witnesses church,
labeling
it as "extremist".
The sect has peculiar, unfounded beliefs, and strictly shuns anyone
that leaves or is kicked out, but it does not do anything to outsiders
that goes beyond minor annoyance. Its members deserve freedom of
speech and freedom in religion just as the rest of us do.
Don't Underestimate the
Harm
'Brittle Masculinity' Can Do to the World.
Somehow I never learned that I was supposed to appear strong because
I'm male. At least one bad thing I escaped!
The Tories are moving UK step by small step closer to a
one-party
state.
Organized
public revulsion against Bill O'Reilly struck home and compelled
Faux News to stop giving him a platform.
The boycott was about his odious conduct towards women he personally
met, perhaps dozens, but the main harm he has done to America and the
world was through
right-wing
bullying and falsehood. We need to organize boycotts based on
that, without waiting for personal wrongs to emerge.
SCROTUS are
selling
access to congressional staff.
The town of Washington Court House, Ohio,
prosecutes
people for trumped up crimes when they have a drug overdose.
Somalia's children today are
starving
for the debts of the former dictator Siad Barre.
This kind of injustice has happened in many countries. The tendency
to insist that dictators' victims pay the dictators' debts is why
banksters encourage dictators. Thus, we need to replace it with the
principle that loans to dictators are never repaid.
The Australian prime minister
trusts
the "wisdom and judgment" of America's racist bully president.
This should demonstrate to Australia that their prime minister has no
wisdom or judgment.
With Corbyn, Britain has a
chance
to decide that it is wrong for some people to be so rich, and to
demand they give the rest a bigger share.
Many prisoners in Pennsylvania state prisons come from Philadelphia,
and many of them are held far away from there. The result is that
nobody
in their families can afford to visit them.
That makes them less likely to find a way to stay out of prison once
they are released.
Forbidding anyone who was ever in prison from visiting a prisoner has
the same effect of directing prisoners to become career criminals. It
is a reflection of the attitudes that make the US #1 in imprisonment.
The US asks, "What might that ex-con do if he visits a prisoner," and
not, "What might that prisoner do, after spending the prison term out
of contact with family?"
The policy of excluding former prisoners from all but menial work, and
from most educational opportunity, also pressures them into a life of
crime.
If you see something, it's often better not to say anything.
How
to decide?
Persecuting people who drug themselves into insensibility is
not
a solution for the factors that make them look for a way to do
that.
But some of them might die because their friends have learned that
taking such people to a hospital is dangerous for them.
Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti
explains
the hunger strike he is participating in.
Gush Shalom
comments
on the trial of Marwan Barghouti.
How Israel punishes prisoners who are sick for participating in the
hunger strike.
One effect of expensive rents is that people are invited to pay the
rent in sex.
Agreeing to sex as rent is a solution for one person, in the sense
that person obtains lodgings for less money. However, when you
look at society as a whole, this doesn't make the situation any better.
If X obtains lodging this way, some Y becomes homeless.
To improve the housing situation for everyone in the short term, we
need either rent control or a lot of new housing construction. A lot
of new housing construction will drive rents down while making space
for more people. Rent control won't increase the amount of space
available, but it will enable all the renters to get food as well as
housing.
In the long term, having fewer children will help tremendously.
Because Kemal Hawwash has endorsed a boycott of Israeli products,
Israel will never again allow him to visit his relatives in Palestine.
The Palestinian campaign for BDS is a nonviolent, political response
to the violence of the occupation. Israel's refusal to let its
supporters visit Palestine, just like its refusal to let them visit
Israel, is a violation of their human rights.
The absurd trial of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour.
Arabs in Israel are prosecuted for "incitement" under very loose criteria,
while Israelis are never prosecuted, not even for specific death threats.
Reanalysis of old diet studies casts doubt on the idea that saturated fats
lead to heart disease.
This supports the idea that the cause of the increase in heart disease is sugar.
A pundit says that the new political division in France is "for
globalization" or "against globalization".
I think the crucial point is not to allow globalization to occur in a way
that gives business more power over states and people's. That's the kind of
globalization we have had.
US banking sanctions against Iran, which were never entirely lifted,
are causing UK banks to close the bank accounts of Iranian students in
the UK, putting them in financial trouble.
ACLU: the PAT RIOT Act was designed to vacuum up Americans' communications
so the FBI can find them and read them.
Then the government pretends that only foreign terrorists are being searched.
Apple forbids recyclers of Apple computers from extracting any
usable spare parts from them, by imposing nasty contracts.
Apple's conduct should be forbidden by law so that no company can ever do this.
US citizens: phone your senators to protect the regulation to
limit
leaking or frivolously burning natural gas.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Fresno Shooting Decried as Anti-White Hate Crime, But Truth Is
Complicated.
It seems that many hate crimes are the outgrowth of "mental health
issues that were never properly treated". Most of the culprits choose
blacks or women as victims.
Trump to Erdogan:
Congrats
On Your Dictatorship!
Terrorist groups will
exploit
disasters, and food and water shortages, caused by global heating.
The article calls the disasters "natural", but that is incorrect.
The Pentagon
denies
the facts in order to refuse to acknowledge that it bombed a
mosque in Syria.
The troll's business partners in Indonesia are
trying
to overthrow President Widodo.
The US
should
change its institutions to avoid further "wars of choice", since
they are likely to destroy other countries and could conceivably
destroy the US.
The troll is doing exactly what is likely to start another war in the
Middle East, exactly what will make it a disaster, and
exactly
what will make peace impossible.
Is it possible that that is not a coincidence?
That some influential interests in the US desire exactly that?
The War on Painkillers: Florida has
sentenced
thousands of old people to long prison terms (basically, life in
prison) for selling a handful of painkiller pills.
When thugs lead businesses such as United Airlines to expect the their
help in confrontations with the public, they
encourage
companies to treat the public harshly.
United's policy decision to order Dr Dao off the plane to make room
for a pilot was wrong, but it was the thugs that started the violence
on that day.
However, at a deeper level, it is the political influence businesses
have gained over what should be democracy is the reason that thugs are
there encouraging businesses to use thugs to intimidate the public.
Puerto Rico is covering up the birth defects caused by Zika by
piecemeal
denial.
The military rulers of Thailand have
declared
that mocking them is a crime.
Freedom of speech includes the right to criticize, offend, insult,
even mock anyone (and any group, organization, practice or belief).
Please don't visit Thailand for tourism.
AIs that work by trained neural nets, rather than full understanding,
take
on bias embodied by the connotations of words that they use.
The only known way to avoid this effect is via human-level
intelligence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have
installed
spyware on the phones of other people they know, to track their
movements and actions.
I think it is wrong to do this to your own children.
It is like putting them in a prison.
Palestinians in prisons in Israel have started a hunger strike to
demand
that Israel allow them family visits according to its laws.
Holding Palestinians from the West Bank prisoner outside the West Bank
(for instance, in Israel)
violates
the Geneva Conventions.
Right-wing Democratic Senator Feinstein is meeting lots of criticism
from progressive constituents for the
floppiness
of her resistance to SCROTUS.
It's true that one senator can't overcome SCROTUS. All the Democratic
senators together sometimes can't stop SCROTUS. But they can stop
SCROTUS from passing legislation — and they can contribute to
the swell of opinion that will elect a progressive Congress.
The Democratic Party
Must
Finally Abandon Centrism.
When you threaten to transfer back a substantial part of what the rich
have taken from the poor, the rich scream as if they were dying. And
they claim that we will lose gigantic amounts of (nonexistent)
trickledown from them.
Thus, if we fail to make the rich scream, it means we are not trying
hard enough to make them share the gains with the rest of us.
Islamists in Jakarta succeeded in
stirring
up religious vote to defeat the governor of Jakarta.
Even worse, they did this by accusing him of "blasphemy". That was
unjust at two levels, since (1) it was false and (2) it is an
injustice to make that a crime at all.
We are making
great
progress towards eliminating various tropical diseases that infect
large numbers of poor people.
Along with this, we need to make great progress in reducing the birth
rate, or we will increase other replacement afflictions.
ACLU: Teens Who Engage in 'Sexting' Should Not Be Prosecuted as Sex Offenders.
Detroit Needs Affordable Water, Not More Shutoffs.
US citizens:
Tell
Democrats: Stand strong. No cuts to Planned Parenthood.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to make Wall Street pay its fair share of taxes.
US citizens:
tell
Democrats in the Senate not to surrender our rights if Republicans
take the budget hostage.
US citizens: call on senators to tell Salafi Arabia
not
to attack the Yemenite port of Hodeida. That bombardment is
causing famine in Yemen.
Democrats that serve Wall Street
use
Russia as a smokescreen.
Could a Tax on Meat
Help
Us Save the Planet?
Even if a tax on fossil fuels solves most of the problem, there ought
to be a special tax on cows because of their methane emissions.
Uri Avnery:
Palestine's
Nelson Mandela.
The article mentions Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun. It also
mentions that Palestinians that fight to end the Israeli occupation
say they should be treated as prisoners of war.
Ironically, that's what the Irgun said the same thing to the British,
who treated them as terrorists.
The troll's men now say they
want
to prosecute Wikileaks and maybe Julian Assange too.
Prosecuting Wikileaks
would
endanger journalism in the US.
With the influence of unpredictable warmonger Bannon gone, watch out
for the influence of the predictable warmongers, the
neocons.
The IMF is trying to pressure India into
"labor
market reforms" that would probably, as such things typically do,
make for increases in production for the benefit of the rich, together
with reduction in income for the poor.
In some states,
irate
people have got rid of robots that give out traffic tickets.
Other robots that snoop on people on the street
can do much nastier things than give you a fine.
Democrats that serve Wall Street use Russia as a smokescreen.
US citizens:
call
on Saboteur of Homeland Security Kelly to bring Juan Manuel Montes
back from Mexico, since he was deported unjustly.
Exxon is asking the State Department (run by a former Exxon CEO) for a
waiver to permit it to drill for oil in Russia
in
despite of US sanctions against that.
DNC chair Tom Perez is
holding
back from criticizing Wall Street even while touring with Sanders.
Arkansas Fights to Execute Two Men
Without
Testing DNA Evidence That Could Exonerate Them.
This is standard practice for cruel systems of "justice": they don't
want anyone even to imagine doubting their decisions.
The UN Security Council has threatened North Korea with sanctions if it
continuous nuclear testing.
This warning has the support of China, so Mr Kim will find it
difficult to defy. It has a chance of succeeding as a diplomatic solution
to the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons.
For the Israeli army, shooting a Palestinian teen in the back is
"professional error".
Apparently "error" covers lying about the events, too.
Beyond apartheid to ethnic cleansing: the rabbi that leads a
significant Israeli electoral party
calls for expelling all non-Jews from
Israel.
US citizens: call on the Labor Department to proceed with rule to
require retirement
investment advisers to act in their clients' best interest.
US citizens:
call
on senators not to fund the troll's anti-immigrant plans.
In the US:
join the People's Climate
March on April 29.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject any proposal to undermine the funding for
Social Security.
Several leaders of the Hindu theocratic party BJP will face trial for
participating in the
destruction
of a famous historic mosque.
The mosque was built hundreds of years ago by Muslim conquerors on a
sacred Hindu site and destroyed an old Hindu temple. By modern
standards, that was a crime too. However, there was no need to
respond to an ancient crime with a new crime. The former, destroyed
Hindu temple cannot be brought back. The site is nothing special for
Muslims; moving the mosque to another site, if necessary taking it
apart stone by stone and rebuilding it elsewhere, would have restored
the site to Hindus without destroying the mosque.
In restitution, the mosque could have been moved to another site.
Mélenchon aims to save the European Union by
correcting
its great wrong: subservience to business and banksters.
The EU and the IMF have imposed austerity on France,
barring
the French state from doing anything to reduce the unemployment and
inequality that feed both right-wing extremism and Islamism.
The paramilitary youth auxiliary of Burundi's dictator chants to
murder
and rape people opposed to the dictator.
Facebook Wants [its useds] You to
Stare
Even More at the Real World Through Your Phone Camera.
A "cashless" economy is one where the
banks
have power over everything.
US border thugs arrested Juan Manuel Montes when he didn't have his
wallet on him, and
deported
him without allowing him to get his wallet and show he was
protected from deportation.
Those agents spit on the law they were supposed to enforce, just as
they spit on Montes's rights. "We can take away your rights by
closing our eyes to them and saying we don't see them." These little
not-sees deserve a sharp punishment.
When the troll negotiates with China, he asks for
advantages
for Ivanka's business.
The troll has
backed
off cancelling the nuclear agreement with Iran. That is a relief,
since this agreement is the best chance of avoiding Iran's getting
nuclear weapons.
Brain scans give a
concrete
and measurable meaning to the "higher state of consciousness"
produced by psychedelic drugs.
In some parts of the US, global heating will mean that a wildfire
burns
your house.
Sanders, with DNC chair Tom Perez, are
campaigning
to elect progressive Democrats.
The tax on sugary drinks in Berkeley, California,
reduced
sales by 15% compared with nearby towns.
It's a shame that people are buying more water, rather than drinking
more water from the faucet.
Jail
for a Joke: Student's Case Puts Free Speech under Spotlight in
Spain.
What could be wrong about assassinating a high official of a
dictatorship?
Criminal groups are moving in on the
areas
of Colombia which the FARC used to control.
On
the idea of shooting down North Korean test missiles.
As the Indian government
ramps
up hostility and threats towards Muslims, few Hindus support their
rights.
Christians
and Dalits face repression there too.
Modi supports bigotry by doing nothing to discourage it.
Alex Jones' lawyer claimed in court that what Jones says in his radio
shows is just an
act
designed to manipulate the public. In other words, it's all
dishonesty.
The European Union
favors
multinational giants in agriculture — no wonder over 1/3 of
the farms have disappeared since 2003.
Americans need to be educated about
what
science means and why we need it for understanding how the world
is.
Students, sometimes supported by faculty, are
imposing
censorship on some US universities.
Precisely because the troll uses bullying and censors those who oppose
him, we need to reject censorship.
US thugs have a
long
history of teaching children to report on their parents.
Resistance to this recruitment is important, but I hope young people
will see the difference between snitching on your parents for using
pot and reporting theft.
We should not let sports teams
extort
public money for their stadiums.
It would be useful to have state laws that prohibit city governments
from directly contributing in any way to the construction of stadiums.
Virginia legislator Mike Mullin
proposes
to narrow the intake of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Groups of right-wing fanatics are circulating
lies
to justify a future campaign to massacre progressives.
Multinational corporations are
lobbying
all around the world to pay less in taxes.
The result is that (1) we pay their share, or (2) our governments are
impoverished and can't carry out their responsibilities, or (3) a
combination of the two.
United's bloody removal of Dr. Dao should not be blamed on the
algorithm that selected him rather than some other passenger as the
one to remove. It was the
fault of
United executives and managers that chose the policy of pulling
passengers off planes by force.
What
US national parks will look like in 2050 if we don't stop global
heating.
The UK
plans
to cancel the citizenship of Assad's wife.
She is clearly supporting a tyrant, and may be guilty of some crimes.
But it is always wrong to strip people of their citizenship for
crimes.
Greenland's Zachariae Isstrom glacier is breaking up. Over time, this
will raise sea level by
half
a meter.
That is in addition to the sea level rise from other sources,
which is predicted to be up to meter by 2100.
Of course, other unpredicted melting could occur too.
The enemies of Assad are in many cases
just
as bloodthirsty as he.
"Leaders such as Turkish president look at Trump and Putin and
conclude
democracy
can be made to be what you want it to be."
The referendum was
not
held in a free and fair way.
A shrinking glacier in Canada
caused
the Slims river to disappear completely in just four days.
Why poor Americans use
check
cashing services and payday lenders. It's not that they are
unaware of the costs.
Overall, it seems that they are living so close to the edge of being
broke that they are constantly pushed around by short term necessity.
They can't afford to deposit checks in a bank that won't charge a fee.
The solution to this is to make things better for the poor.
When the CIA threatens to destroy Wikileaks, it
threatens
freedom of the press in general.
How Google, Facebook and Amazon subverted the internet and converted
it into a platform for
massive
surveillance monopolies.
At the practical level, the "war on drugs" is
implemented
in a racist way. When Sessions says he wants to "bring it back",
it means he wants to accentuate the racist repression of it.
It's easier to understand what white privilege means if we recognize
that there are
other
dimensions of privilege and they all operate simultaneously.
"Most of the world's nuclear warheads are
now
in the hands of men who are prepared to use them."
Human-caused global heating is on the verge of going
faster
than all natural events in the entire 420-million-year record of past
climate.
Canada says all the right things about global heating, but in its
actions it
continues
extractivist policies.
Erdoğan seems to have has succeeded in
changing
Turkey's constitution to give the president power to do what he
likes.
The vote was close, and the opposition says it will challenge a large
fraction of the votes.
Everyone:
join
the March for Science on April 22.
Everyone:
demand
justice for the anti-Trump protester that was mauled by thugs
while handcuffed and pinned down.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to block gay-hating Mark Green as Saboteur of the
Army.
Analyzing bureaucratic rhetoric: the
tricks
used by United Airlines and thug departments everywhere to evade
culpability for mistreating people.
This form of rhetoric is designed to create the impression that the
abuse was the inevitable action of a system for which no one is
responsible, so the victim did the abuse to perself.
Rigidly idiotic US consular staff
demanded
an interview with a baby to see if it was a terrorist. The baby
was unable, however, to answer their questions.
The callous practices of consulates, including unlimited delays, often
ruins people's travel even when there is no particular suspicion.
Combining this with the practice of making airline tickets
nonrefundable shafts people doubly. Most people cannot afford to buy
new tickets if a visa delay stops them from traveling.
Activist nuns are
pressuring
for an investigation of the root causes of Wells Fargo bank's
practice of cheating customers.
The acting saboteur of civil rights in education is
opposed
to civil rights.
The problem US blacks confront goes deeper than the poverty that
increasing numbers of them grow up in and spend their lives in.
(After all, that's happening to whites, too.) They still experience
the aftereffects of discriminatory law (first slavery, then
segregation), which propagate from generation to generation. The US
and various states owe compensation to the descendants of people who
were victimized in that way, and the compensation has to be enough to
undo the lasting harm.
As for education, ideally we would provide every child with a good
education and a safe, unstressful environment to learn in. We don't
have to use race as a rough approximation for having a disadvantage.
What this requires is money, but we could get it easily if we defeat
dooH niboR.
This 2013 article by Richard Falk has been
cited
as an example of "antisemitism".
There is nothing antisemitic in that article. It criticizes US policy
towards the Muslim world and towards Israel, and it mentions the
extent of political influence that Israel exercises on US politics
(through its lobbying arm, AIPAC, whose conference was recently
protested
by many American Jews). But there is nothing in Falk's article
that expresses any attitude about Jews.
Falk points out that various Israeli officials have also described
the occupation as a policy of
apartheid.
Falk
condemns
Palestinian war crimes, too, to the extent that the Palestinian
Authority asked him to resign from his UN post.
Notwithstanding these facts, an organization called "UN Watch"
cited
Falk's article as supposed proof that Falk is antisemitic while
calling for the UK to expel him.
Republicans have
eliminated
the retirement funds set up by some cities.
Drone assassinations killed lots of civilians when they were run by
Obama with restraint. Because we didn't take that power away from
him, it has now been
inherited
by the new inhumane bully as president.
Maryland will
locally
replace the funding for Planned Parenthood that the US government
has cut off.
SCROTUS and the troll have attacked women's health care
6
ways.
Philosophy in India
treats
Dr Ambedkar's ideas as untouchable.
Today's right-wing, including the Republicans, demonizes George Soros
and
attributes
to him almost magical powers to defend free elections and freedom
of speech.
The FCC proposes an absurd definition of competition between ISPs,
designed
to allow them to gouge customers.
That reflects the general policy of Republicans to help business
against Americans.
In the US,
cities
with more immigrants show increases in wages.
It is possible that immigrants increase wages in a way that would work
for everyone if everyone did it. But it is also possible that
immigrants increase wages in a city by pulling good jobs away from
other cities.
Labour pledges to make large companies
show
full tax returns.
The troll is quietly
planning
to reopen US coasts to oil drilling, in cahoots with oil company
lobbyists.
The cheater has
cancelled
his pledge to reduce US interventionism.
US citizens have
strong
and pressing reasons to care what is in the troll's tax returns.
[Proposed] Censorship at the [US] Border
Threatens
Free Speech Everywhere.
A moment of carelessness reveals
Iran's
strict TV censorship.
In general, the way to keep your children safe from the occasional
adult that might want to do them harm is to
let
your children learn how to handle doing things alone.
Age 9 seems rather late for a child to start walking around the city
alone. The children in my elementary school walked to and from school
at age 6. This was not in some quiet rural village — it was in
the center of the world's largest city, in Manhattan.
Hungarians protested in Budapest
against
the law to shut the Central European University.
The Hungarian right-wing regime has a strategy of undermining
democratic government and human rights in ways that hold short of
stirring up strong opposition.
A clever ad-blocker can now detect ads semantically, and even
distinguish
Facebook ads from the rest of Facebook. Is this useful? Not for
me.
I'm not interested in blocking ads from appearing on my screen. I
object to most internet ads because they are surveillance systems and
I resent being tracked.
Ironically, it seems that this clever ad-blocker allows ads to surveil
in the process of detecting them. From my point of view, this defeats
the purpose.
As for distinguishing ads from other material on Facebook, why even
think about it? Facebook is a surveillance system, pure and simple.
The ads do surveillance and everything else does surveillance. To
avoid being tracked by Facebook is simple: don't have an account,
and block its other surveillance methods.
The aspect of Facebook that does require blocking in a browser
is the Like button, which does surveillance even on users that don't
have Facebook accounts. But it's not an ad.
The Bahrain Grand Prix car race brings reporters that give repressive
state a pretty image. The reporters will be
deported
if they cover anything but the race.
US citizens:
support
the Electronic Privacy Act.
US citizens: Call for requiring the troll to
consult
congress before attacking Syria.
Massachusetts citizens:
call on
Massachusetts to fund family planning activities.
Stanford University is
trying
to censor a conference about sexual assault whose organizer wants
to use a picture of the troll.
The conference is to consider the
Title IX requirements that cover how
schools handle accusations of sexual assault.
Everyone:
call on
advertisers to drop Bill O'Reilly's TV show.
Being used by Facebook tends to be
bad
for your mental health.
Saboteur of Education DeVos has come to the aid of student loan
companies that have been
caught
taking advantage of the students that borrowed from them.
After Yahoo gave China information about users that were dissidents,
it set up a charitable fund supposedly to aid Chinese dissidents. A
lawsuit accuses Yahoo of
diverting
that money to other uses.
The reporting on United's bloody ejection of a doctor seated in his
assigned seat has
got
many issues wrong, often in ways that help diminish United's
responsibility.
Indeed Americans tend to grasp at excuses to let companies get away
with abuses — including the abuse of
making
software proprietary.
The Heatland Institute is
sending
disinformation packets to high school science teachers, trying to
encourage doubt about global heating.
The cheater
wants
to give multinational banks a tax cut even on top of all the tax
dodging they do.
Manafort is
accused
of getting lots of money from pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine
while serving as the troll's campaign chairman.
I don't think this by itself constitutes a crime or a treason on the
troll's part, but it adds to suspicion there was one.
Christian theocrats in the US have learned to
support
politicians whose conduct they consider totally un-Christian, if
it helps them impose their strictures on the rest of us.
I would not call Bentley a "pervert". I don't think having an affair
with someone is wrong, but they say they do. However, using public
funds for it is a violation of public ethics.
Uri Avnery doubts that Assad used sarin recently, because he had
nothing
to gain from doing so.
A progressive humanist student in Pakistan was
lynched by a mob of religious fanatics.
Syrian rebels and Assad are
mutually
allowing besieged villages to evacuate.
This is a step towards stabilizing their fronts and calming down the
war.
The troll has
enabled
Republican-controlled states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood
for women's health care because it does abortions.
A "spiritual festival" in India took place in an area next to and on
the Yamuna river, and wrecked the area so badly that
environmental
remediation will take 10 years and cost around ten million
dollars.
Massachusetts citizens:
support the campaign
for ranked choice voting in Massachusetts.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act.
US citizens: visit your congresscritter to
stand
for net neutrality.
US citizens:
call
on congress to demand that the troll get permission before any
further escalation in Syria.
US citizens:
meet
with Congresscritters to support net neutrality.
Please explain that network neutrality should be even stronger:
ISPs should not be allowed to take any notice of what is inside
your packets.
US citizens:
participate
in a Spring Break Resistance event.
The troll approved use of a very large bomb to attack PISSI's tunnels
in Afghanistan. The bomb's blast is
destructive
up to a mile away.
Previously, the US had refrained from using this bomb out of concern
for casualties to civilians.
The likely quantity of civilian casualties would depend on how many
civilians are to be found in the area. One extreme is that the area
is deserted with no reason for concern. The other extreme is that it
is a city with thousands of civilians within a mile. Does anyone know
how it was this time?
Aside from that, I don't think the size of this bomb makes any ethical
difference.
Here's
what
to show Christians that support the troll.
Uber
hacked
Lyft's ride-management server with phony accounts in order to
identify people that were driving for Lyft.
The Republican "budget director" admitted, using Republican code, that
he
wants
to attack progressive taxation, Social Security, Medicare, and
other government services.
The troll's "America first" turns out to mean
"US
military first".
The troll plans to shut down Obama's medical care program by
eliminating
the subsidy part. Many Americans will be unable to afford it.
One of the few good things that the troll said he would do was to
eliminate the Export-Import Bank, which provides public subsidy to
businesses. Not surprising he
changed
his mind.
Chechnya is imprisoning gay men and torturing them —
murdering
some of them.
If you have a meeting with the troll at Mar-a-Lago,
don't
eat anything!
Assad has
attacked
foreign journalists that tried to cover Syria.
US ISPs
gave
thousands of dollars to a few legislators that have served them
well. But that's a tiny fraction of the millions the ISPs will
make by mistreating their customers. The legislators should say they
were cheated.
California's central valley is attracting commuters who work in the
San Francisco Bay area, with the result that
local
people are becoming homeless.
The Thai military government has
banned
people in Thailand from communicating by internet with three exiled
dissidents.
A California thug that beat up a man for jaywalking is
facing
a criminal investigation.
Tory underfunding is
driving
the National Health Service to collapse.
For instance, doctors are quitting because the shortage of doctors has
increased their workload. In the struggle to cope with acute illness,
prevention has been cut.
Tories hope to destroy the NHS as an excuse to replace it with a
US-style system where only those who can pay get care.
Keeping British medical care functioning requires making businesses
pay their taxes.
Years of Tory contempt for disabled people has taught a segment
of the British public to
regard
disabled people as nuisances.
Under Title IX, US college students accused of any level of sexual
misconduct can be
expelled
with no chance to defend themselves.
One, who maintained he was harassed by the other, killed himself after
he was declared guilty.
Eritrean agents are
pressuring
Eritrean exiles in the Netherlands.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to let the troll weaken the funding system for
Social Security.
United Airlines has a
systematic
practice of ordering passengers off the plane and threatening them
with violence.
It's not a matter of a few "bad apples", it's the way the barrel was
built that makes all the apples in it go bad.
And it's not just this one company. Big companies tend to have rules
that forbid staff to act humanely, because their policy is that the
customer is always wrong.
Why are the companies so big? Because the US and other countries
make it too easy for companies to merge. We need to keep them small
so as to preserve competition. In addition, the "efficiency" they
achieve by merging is a nice way of saying "fewer good jobs".
Some states are
prohibiting
marijuana stores from keeping records of who their customers are.
This should be extended to all stores!
An internet controlled cooking device was working fine, then the
manufacturer
sabotaged
it remotely so as to require communication through a remote
server.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to use the War Powers Act to prohibit escalation in
Syria and Yemen.
The Tories have run out of ways to impoverish people who are unable to
work or excluded from work, so now they are
impoverishing
hard-working people too.
Both kinds of cuts are wrong. The Tories tried justify the former
by demonizing people who can't work. Now they have to demonize people
who work but get low pay.
The overall aim of Tory policy is to enrich the rich as much as
possible and damn the harm done. They don't admit this, but the facts
show
it is true.
Uganda spits on freedom of speech with the
arrest
of someone for insulting the president.
Lead bullets
don't
have to hit you to hurt you — or animals.
San Francisco thugs that
shot
Amilcar Perez-Lopez in the back and killed him will not be
prosecuted.
Sadly, Sean Spicer's Hitler Comments Serve as a
Useful
Distraction for Trump.
The ACLU explains
what
is unjust about "extreme vetting" for people visiting the US.
Anthony McDaniels of Chicago was
arrested
by thugs and imprisoned on their testimony, but it seems they were
lying and just wanted to harass him and take his money.
Poisonous
snakes kill hundreds of thousands of people a year, but no one
keeps track.
This is a lot more casualties than terrorists cause.
The NAACP
proposes
that electricity should be a basic human right, and thus people
should not be disconnected from it.
SCROTUS
propose
to make the office of Registrar of Copyright a political office so
that businesses can have more control over copyright policy.
A series of Republican deregulation proposals: how they would
benefit
shady businesses (including giant ones) and hurt Americans in
general.
This is normal because regulations generally protect the public from
being shafted by businesses.
We need to regulate business or it will screw us.
The troll supports a tax break that would
enable
giant US companies to avoid $300bn in taxes.
The troll has proposed a
sneaky
way to create an excuse to reduce Social Security, a few years
from now.
The existing Social Security tax is
regressive,
and we could make a better system, but SCROTUS will only want to make
it worse.
Hamas is
changing
to accept coexistence with Israel.
As Palestinians remove the remaining excuses for Israel's occupation
of Palestine's territory in the West Bank, will Israel end the
occupation?
What
it's like for Palestinian families to be raided by Israeli thugs,
their tools stolen, and their workshops closed.
Facebook tolerates incitement to violence,
when
it is from an Israeli and is directed at Palestinians.
Florida thugs
beat
up anti-war protesters.
Will they be prosecuted for their vicious way of "serving" the public?
Everyone:
call on
Faux News to fire Bill O'Reilly and stop tolerating sexual
harassment.
United Airlines
had
thugs brutally pull a passenger off a plane so it could it seat
one of its pilots instead.
This was not a case of overbooking, and pulling a passenger out of per
confirmed assigned seat is legally
not
equivalent to denying boarding.
The CEO of United responded with typical corporate PR manipulation,
even telling lies about the poor 69-year-old doctor, until public
condemnation made him back down.
Many media outlets publicized the passenger's irrelevant previous
criminal history, nothing really horrible,
to
smear him.
The incident illustrates the point that companies
shouldn't
be allowed to decide their own "terms and conditions".
If United had kept offering higher and higher rewards for someone to
switch to another flight, it would probably have found a willing
taker eventually.
There was no reason, under the circumstances, why the thugs should
have done what United asked. But I would guess that they didn't give
it a second thought. The airlines have the principle that "the
passenger is always wrong", and the thugs tend to be people who put a
high value on authority and making people obey any sort of authority.
United's high-handedness
follows
on from the TSA's high-handedness.
Pairs of Android apps can collude to transmit personal data to
servers. A study found
tens
of thousands of pairs that collude.
The troll made lots of promises to voters, and has
gone
back on lots of them already.
In the US:
protest
on April 15 to demand that the troll release his tax returns.
The troll and his men have
no
idea what their policy is regarding Assad and Syria.
US Navy maneuvers near Alaska kill fish and whales with
toxins
and unbearably loud sound.
The navy avoids recognizing the extent of the problem by not trying to
estimate how many fish are killed.
Destruction of coral reefs could cost humanity a
trillion
dollars, not to mention hundreds of millions of dead people, and
thousands of extinct species.
Noel Conway, dying of motor neuron disease,
will
have a chance to plead in court to arrange to die when he chooses.
Instead of growth, economics should
aim for a world in which everyone thrives.
A UK undercover thug has been accused in court of
planting
weapons to frame people.
Sessions is
trying
to escalate the War on Drugs.
Sessions is
going
to abolish the Commission on Forensic Science so that the US can
keep jailing people based on junk science.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block arms for Salafi Arabia
until
it cooperates with aid for civilians in Yemen.
I'd rather
cut
off arms for Salafi Arabia entirely, but this is a step in the
right direction.
50 American women a month are
shot
dead by men that they were in relationships with. All in all,
this is a considerably bigger danger than terrorism, though not as big
as cars or tobacco.
(I use the word "partner" only to refer to business ventures.)
Evidence from blood of the deceased, and from the empty warehouse that
Assad's air force attacked, shows that the former were poisoned by
sarin and that it
didn't
come from supplies stored there.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act and the Corporate
EXIT Fairness Act.
US citizens:
Call
on Democrats in Congress to cosponsor the Social Security 2100
Act.
Philippine Death Squad Whistleblower
Arturo
Lascanas Flees to Singapore.
Too bad the US also makes its whistleblowers flee into exile.
UK politicians
foment
hatred towards refugees and the state makes them live with rats.
Despised for not speaking English, they have to beg for English
lessons.
The brutality of shari'a law manifests itself in a part of Indonesia
where the state has given extremist Muslims
permission
to impose that on the population.
Leaked emails show Shell's CEO knew he was approving a
large
bribe for Nigerian high officials.
An Irish judge had the
good
sense not to hold a school liable after children fell down while
running in a school yard and one broke her arm.
Attempts to find institutions at fault for accidents are driven in the
US by the fact that poor people have no medical coverage to pay the
cost of treatment. In Ireland, they don't need to sue to pay for
their medical care. The US should follow Ireland (and every European
country, and Canada) and set up
Medicare
for All.
The troll is escalating various US wars, bombing more often in several
countries, and
killing
a lot more civilians.
ACLU explains how the troll's bombardment of Syria was
illegal
under US law without Congress's approval.
It should be noted that Obama's initial stated motive for intervening
in Libya was to protect civilians — but this morphed into a
campaign to depose Qadhafi. The troll's initial stated motive was to
punish (and could morphed into a campaign to depose Assad).
A punishment, even if deserved, is not as pressing as protecting
civilians.
"Global Britain", the right-wing plan for getting out of the European Union,
means a
bank
and arms merchant for global dictators.
China
conceals
the number of people that it executes.
Disguised lobbying groups connected with big pharma are publishing
astroturf
ads against laws to reduce drug prices.
Food service workers in the US now feel compelled to
hide
their union organization activities.
Activists have launched a series of protests in banks that fund oil
pipelines, where they
drop
oil on one of the protesters.
They clean up the oil before leaving.
North Carolina plutocratist legislators propose to give agribusiness
substantial
immunity for damages done through polluting practices.
If they only have to pay for the physical the damage they cause, and
only to the fraction of victims with the means and time to sue, they
will intentionally continue the practices.
The European Parliament
reproached
the agreement that allows Europeans' personal data to be shipped
to US companies even though they don't protect privacy according to EU
law.
The cost of cancer treatment in the US is toxic — it
kills
patients.
The Justice Department reported that over half of the times
that DEA thugs seized people's money, it had
nothing
to do with any criminal investigation. The thugs took money
because they could.
New York State
will
no longer charge 17-year-olds as adults.
The article also points out that nowadays there are few decent jobs a
person can get with a criminal record. In effect, the record destroys
a person's life, and there is no way out except crime.
The troll is considering
stationing
nuclear weapons in South Korea, or assassinating North Korea's
troll.
Storing nuclear weapons in South Korea would be a gesture, since the
US can hit North Korea with nuclear weapons from the sea already.
Whether the gesture is likely to do good or harm, I can't guess.
Assassinating the troll of North Korea would throw North Korea into
total confusion. We can't predict what would happen then. Even if
North Korea is not yet in position to retaliate with nuclear weapons,
it would probably end the truce and resume actively fighting the
Korean War.
New York State is
planning
to eliminate tuition fees in city and state colleges, for students
whose families are not wealthy.
This is an important thing to do, but society must also provide a
decent life for people who aren't able to graduate from college.
Australian wetlands have been contaminated by
coal
dust from a nearby coal export terminal.
This happened because of a powerful storm. Storms happen normally, so
one must expect it to happen again. One thing global heating tends to
do is cause more powerful storms.
Protests
often
succeed in changing the general public mind, which is a crucial
preparation for changing government policy.
The Taliban in parts of Afghanistan have
authorized
polio vaccination.
It was very dangerous of the US to hide its search for Osama bin Laden
behind the mask of polio vaccination.
Utopian Thinking:
Free
Housing Should Be a Universal Right.
The article gives too much legitimacy to a supposed "free market"
principle, but that is not a matter of principle at all. Markets are
a useful system, and we should use them where they give good results.
Where they are harmful, we should not let them cause suffering.
Moreover, it is a mistake to assert a privilege for the "free" market.
every market is based on certain rules, and there are many legitimate
ways that the rules could be chosen.
Global heating is killing the Great Barrier Reef right now.
Scientists say the reef is at
"terminal
stage".
A
$15 Tax Bill Nearly Cost a Family Their Home. If the Republicans
get their way, that will happen to many families. But not wealthy
ones.
Gibraltar the tax haven and smuggling hub
harms
the UK and continental Europe alike.
A major Bolivian environmental protection NGO received an order to
remove its massive research library from the university in Cochabamba
in 48 hours. When the organization said that was impossible, the rector
demanded immediate removal and
threatened
to have students attack the organization (and destroy it,
presumably).
It is apparently because the organization criticizes the state's oil
extraction.
Why Tax Resistance Under Trump
Needs
Its Antiwar Edge.
An election was held in Kashmir, but hardly anyone voted. They
protested
instead.
Hungary is on the verge of adopting a law to make the Soros-funded
Central European University move out of Hungary.
Large
protests opposed this.
The ruling right-wing party has undermined democracy to the point that
it can do basically whatever it wishes. But it has mostly held back
from doing things that arouse great opposition.
25 years ago, even right-wingers wanted to avoid global heating
disaster. One who did so now reports that
the
world economy keeps growing even though human CO2 emissions
are not increasing.
That point is important, but the article also repeats errors that
right-wingers have always done for the benefit of the rich. For
instance, he talks about how fast the "average Briton" is getting
richer, when in fact most Britons are making ever less. Apparently he
divides total income or total wealth of everyone in the UK by the
number of people there, and gets a number which is rising because the
rich are getting more.
The main US newspapers ran 18 articles praising the missile attack on
Syria and
none
criticizing it.
UN Ambassador Haley asserted the US now
intends
to fight for regime change in Syria.
The troll criticized previous presidents for getting the US into such
quagmires. It was one of the few good things he said. I guess we
should not be surprised that he has abandoned it.
The troll is
moving
ships in a way that suggests a threat to attack North Korea.
This is potentially a dangerous game.
A study reports that one hour a day using social networks correlates
with a
14%
decrease in overall happiness, for children in the UK.
This does not prove the social networks make children unhappy. They
could be turning to those networks because they are unhappy.
The UK is faced with preserving many historic church buildings that
are
no
longer wanted as churches.
I suggest converting these churches into condos, preserving the
outside structure and some particularly interesting parts of the
inside. This has been done in Boston.
Dorit Rabinyan basks in the light of Israel's
politically-based
rejection of her book for the national school curriculum. Her
book was alleged to promote a threat of encouraging mixed marriages.
Who should young Britons blame for exit from the UK? Old people, the
many who voted for it? Or
themselves,
the many that did not vote?
Both, of course.
It is vital to recognize your own errors, to learn to do better. But
that's no reason to let others off the hook.
America's Health Care System
Forces
Citizens To Turn To Crowdfunding To Survive.
As long as few people do it, it can work for many of them.
However, I don't think millions of sick Americans are likely to
find enough money this way to pay for their treatment.
Some US states
continue
to resist the US plan to turn drivers licenses into national ID
cards.
The iPhone 7
has
DRM specifically to brick it if anyone other than an authorized
repair agent fixes it.
The term
"lock"
is inadequate to describe this sort of malware. Let's use other words
that show what's really going on.
Endangered species protection has saved many species.
Here are some
new
examples.
It can continue to do so, as long as we keep up doing it, and as long
as the threats are what we have known in the past.
However, when global heating messes up nearly all the
ecosystems
on Earth, our protection measures will be unable to cope with that.
And we won't have much attention to spare for that when we can barely
keep most humans fed.
In the long term, California's aquifers
keep
draining. Wet years don't replenish as much as people take in dry
years.
Driverless cars will have
trouble
dealing with many problems in the surrounding environment, which
human drivers can recognize without difficulty.
Don't try using them in Iraq, for instance — they don't
recognize shells exploding.
Young Americans
increasingly
long for a 1950s world in which the men work full time and earn
enough to support the whole family, while the women stay at home.
I can understand the appeal of that, in comparison with today's world,
in which a couple must both work full time, if they can find work, and
even that barely supports a family.
Why have things got worse? Part of the responsibility lies with
plutocracy and business-supremacy treaties, which have
knocked
down wages in real terms for most Americans. Part of it lies with
the fact that we are taking from the Earth's ecosphere
above
its rate of regeneration. Global heating is
going
to reduce everyone's standard of living, except the rich if they
can buy their way out of their fair share of the damage.
The ethical way to shield yourself partially from the effects of this
is to avoid having children. The way to fix the problems for real is
to defeat plutocracy.
It is becoming
increasingly
difficult for US states to find drugs to execute people with.
Since I think the death penalty is wrong regardless of how it is
carried out, I am bemused by the focus on side issues, such as which
people are fit for execution and which are not, or the method to be
used.
An indigenous group in Canada rejected a billion dollar offer
that involved accepting a
natural
gas export terminal. Their salmon run, and their global
ecosphere, are worth far more than that.
Bravo!
President Maduro of Venezuela
banned
opposition leader Capriles from politics, nominally for 15 years.
This is the act of an arbitrary government, and can't be justified.
He continues
arresting
opposition politicians.
What makes me sad is that the opposition is right-wing, and its
intention is to surrender the country to the multinationals. I can't
see a good outcome in any direction.
On the issue, in Paraguay, of permitting
reelection
of presidents.
Allowing a president to be reelected is not necessarily bad in itself,
but it can be part of a scheme to suppress democracy.
With highway blockades just about the only form of protest that the
major media notice, Minnesota is moving to punish them
prohibitively.
Australia
cancelled
the visit of Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian nonviolent protest leader
and human rights defender.
Feed the Starving? Guns Are the True
Cause
of Famine.
Most farms
could
use a lot less pesticide and produce the same.
Pandas began eating bamboo 2 million years ago, but they
still
have not properly adapted to digesting it.
Apple is being sued in Australia for illegally
bricking
devices that had been given "unauthorized" repairs.
That practice is illegal in Australia, and
in
the US as well.
British Columbia has
prohibited
employers from requiring women to wear high heels.
I support this policy.
Democrats can't win in West Virginia as long as they keep
pretending
that self-described "job creators" will make it prosperous.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to vote on bombing Syria.
Michael Cox, on resigning from the EPA, says that
Saboteur
Pruitt arouses the derision of the staff.
Alas, that is probably what he wants to do.
Bombing
Syria was the troll's "wag the dog" moment.
Others support my guess that
his
real motive was to distance himself from Putin in the public mind.
I think that a president who will launch missiles for political
reasons is very dangerous.
The troll's bombardment of Syria was illegal because he
did
not ask Congress for permission.
Congress would probably have given permission, but that does not
excuse him for not asking.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to ban toxic paint-stripping chemicals and make
manufacturers switch to the safer alternatives.
Everyone:
call on
Nebraska to block the Keystone XL pipeline.
Rich Americans have a
much
longer lifespan than poor Americans.
It is
14
years longer for men, and 10 years longer for women.
A big contributor to this is that poor people are denied necessary
medical care in the US.
Republicans to American workers: If you can't make us richer, we are
arranging
for you to die.
Bombing
does
not make the troll "presidential".
The US has
backed
off from demanding Twitter identify anonymous dissidents that work
in US immigration.
Bernie Sanders: Although Assad as a war criminal is not entitled to complain,
bombing Syria
can
put others in danger.
California's long drought is over, but
global
heating will bring further droughts, even longer and worse than
this one.
Scientists
have
figured out why global heating causes extreme weather in temperate
zones.
The
UK
government appears to have cooperated with Rio Tinto mining to
block a visit by a victim from Madagascar to the company's annual
meeting in London.
I distrust on principle all "offsetting" schemes and all claims by
companies that they protect the environment in some subtle way. Big
companies have so much temptation to falsify these things, and so
little scruple about doing so.
Nine-year-old Ridhima Pandey is suing the government of India
for
exposing her to future global heating that will result from the
government's present policies.
There is a substantial chance those policies will kill her, so her
lawsuit is quite justified.
US citizens:
State your
support for Sanders's planned Medicare for All.
Two former Israeli security chiefs
warned
that Israel is drifting into tyranny.
Readers of this site will have seen that Uri Avnery has chronicled
Israel's advancing repression of its citizens for years.
The troll is strewing the government with
officials
that advocate torture and want to imprison people without trial
until the US ends a war (i.e., forever).
If the US wants to call them prisoners of war, it should treat them according
to the
Geneva
Conventions.
Gorsuch auditioned for the job of Supreme Court saboteur with a
series
of dissenting opinions showing plutocrats he was their man.
Most Americans have
learned
to reject the tiny threat of terrorism as an excuse for massive
surveillance.
Employees in the US are
surveilled
intimately.
We need laws to protect employees privacy from their employers.
If more employees had unions, they could stop this on their own.
Guber says it will leave Seattle if drivers there are allowed to
unionize. The
drivers
say that would be victory.
They only work for Uber because they feel compelled to do so to
compete with other drivers, so if Uber disappeared, they'd be safe.
How about passing laws requiring all transportation options to
permit getting a ride anonymously and paying cash? That would
drive Uber away for sure, and good riddance!
The market game
worked
tolerably well in the age when masses of workers' work was needed
— with the addition of regulations and social welfare programs
to take care of those who couldn't possibly work. In the age where
millions of people can't do any work that gets paid, we have to change
these rules.
However, it is a mistake to evaluate society in terms of people's
chances of getting into the top 20%, or top 50%, or top 5%.
No matter how we arrange the rules, only 1/5 of the people can
get into the top 20%. The right criterion is how well
the people in the bottom 20% live.
We all need freedom as well as material things. When the article uses
the term "open source", it neglects that aspect of
what
software does to its users.
Google Play
sends
app developers the personal details of users that install the app.
Merely asking users' "consent" for this is not enough to legitimize
it. We know that most users have given up on reading just what they
are "consenting" to, and the reason is that they are accustomed to
being told, "If you want to use this service, you must consent to blah
blah blah."
To truly protect people's privacy, we must stop Google from getting
this personal information in the first place!
Guber drivers are suing Guber, accusing it of
programming
its software to cheat them and passengers through misinformation.
Some US thug departments are making systematic efforts to avoid
killing — and
it
works! Instead of shooting people dead, they arrest people alive.
Even people who really are dangerous.
Who could possibly dislike this? Sessions can. More generally,
Republicans with simmering anger against minority groups or poor
people can resent not having the chance to kill someone.
A bill in Arkansas to allow parents to leave children unsupervised
from time to time was
defeated.
Any parent who doesn't act as if leashed permanently to per children
is at risk of imprisonment.
The troll
launched
60 cruise missiles against one of Assad's air bases.
The troll's pretense of caring about Syrian children is
completely
incredible.
This also raises the question of what his real reason is. Perhaps he
is looking for a public way to give the impression he's not friends
with Putin.
I am not sorry for Assad or his soldiers. There is some sense in
sending Assad a message to "stop using chemical weapons", if it does
not mean continuing to fight him (which would have the problem of
whose
victory one is fighting for).
The president should have to get permission from Congress for such
attacks.
Mining magnate:
"We
all had slavery in our supply chains."
Some in Australia
propose
to deploy cooling systems to protect a few often-visited parts of
the Great Barrier Reef.
Coral reefs are needed for more than just tourism. They are essential
for many species to survive, including many that humans eat.
At least the discussion of the issue will remind the public that there
is a serious problem. Australia must throw off the dominion of the
planet-roasters, then cut down rapidly on its carbon emissions.
The US border thug agency has
demanded
Twitter identify the users of an account that makes critical posts
and identify themselves as
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
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It's not enough to prevent disaster, but it may make the disaster
somewhat smaller and buy time to take further action. To get rid
of it would be an act of reckless mass murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
People deserve better than that.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
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