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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: call on Iran to free and pardon Atena Daemi.
If you sign, please spread the word!
New Zealand prohibited so-called "synthetic cannabis", which then became extremely fatal, apparently as a consequence of prohibition.
"Synthetic" is a misnomer; "artificial imitation" would fit these drugs better, since they are not the same psychoactive chemicals found in real marijuana. It appears they are addictive.
It is not stated what "urgent action" is being considered, but I doubt that they include any sort of legalization or partial legalization, even though those measures could make the drug less dangerous and less appealing to young people.
The US is not, in fact, carrying out its totally inadequate greenhouse gas commitments made under the Paris Climate Agreement.
China has constructed a 34-mile-long sea bridge from Hong Kong to Zhuhai for use only by selected individuals China wants to single out for reward.
As a transportation system, it will be a waste of money. As an instrument of influence over Hong Kong, it may prove effective. Wealthy Chinese compete for status, and part of this competition might be shelling out lots of money so as to win qualifications to be permitted the use of the bridge.
The West Enabled Khashoggi's Demise — Not To Mention All the Other Saudi Crimes.
Los Angeles teachers have voted to strike, and not only about their salaries.
South Korea threatens to imprison South Koreans for using marijuana even if they do it in places where it is legal to do so.
I dislike this article greatly. It asserts that South Koreans couldn't possibly use marijuana in defiance of that law. And it seems to endorse the idea that that law makes the South Koreans wrong for using marijuana, rather than making the country wrong for having the law.
Amnesty International: Mexico must not deport anyone to Honduras or Guatemala who would face danger there.
No matter that the US mass media are so right-wing that they praise plans to cut back on civil rights for queer people, the right-wingers claim the mass media have a "Liberal bias".
Wales will pledge not to open any new coal mines.
Most coal mining in the UK, perhaps all, was shut down in the 1980s because the underground mines were more expensive than blowing off mountaintops in Appalachia.
Wales has also banned fracking.
Many examples demonstrate that humans can practice democracy and make it work. The US is having trouble because Americans have not recognized that they need to unite to take power away from the plutocrats.
Germany has stopped arms exports to Salafi Arabia.
Two New Zealanders that Israel tried to "fine" for urging a singer not to perform in Israel write to turn attention back to the real issue: the occupation of part of Palestine and the siege of the rest.
A sample suggests that 50% of humans have microplastics in their stools. They could cause medical problems, but we don't know.
Addiction Treatment Gap Is Driving A Black Market For Suboxone.
Kavanaugh Once Lobbied for Judge Now Handling Ethics Complaints against Him.
Nowadays, Republicans scorn the idea of integrity. Is it possible that the other judge still has some?
"After what I lived through?": survivors of Brazil’s dictatorship fear Bolsonaro.
UK thugs have been fired for lying about the encounter in which they broke a student's neck, leaving him with incurable grave brain damage.
A study of international statistics shows that the "war on drugs" is "terrible at eradicating drugs, but great at upending societies."
Salafi Arabia brought a man that resembles Khashoggi to the Istanbul consulate, and sent him out after the murder wearing Khashoggi's clothing.
French students are suing over racial profiling in searching people on the street.
The environmentalist group XR campaigns for efforts to curb global heating which are proportional to the gravity of the danger. Their protesters have occupied the Greenpeace UK headquarters to call attention to the fact that Greenpeace's campaigns don't demand enough to solve the problem.
Supporting Pat Elder's campaign to be elected Democratic Whip in Congress is vital for taking the Democratic Party away from the center-right "moderates".
Municipal plastic recycling is, in many cases, a sham — nothing ensures that the plastic collected goes anywhere but a landfill or an ocean.
If you reuse a carry bag, or refill your own water bottle, the reduction in plastic use is guaranteed.
Authoritarians persecute trans people as a way of repressing women in general.
The bully has found another excuse to take refugee minors away from their parents.
Kemp de-registered an additional 100,000 citizens of Georgia simply because they had not voted for 3 years.
Bolsonaro says he would put the army on the streets of Brazil's cities.
Soldiers are trained for war, not for policing. They would cause tremendous avoidable suffering simply by responding to confusing or alarming situations as if they were on a battlefield.
Salafi Arabia is threatening to cut oil shipments, but this would backfire if tried today.
Experts say that cancelling the INF treaty is a misguided way to get Russia to comply with it.
An Italian candidate for office made video recordings of corrupt deals he was offered — even selling votes.
In Brazil as in the US, military + evangelicals = violent repression.
Over 80 US political campaigns are demonizing Muslims.
With a president that spews contempt, civility may be too much to hope for. Bill McKibben says, how about if we stop threatening to kill each other?
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to end the war in Yemen.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the WATER act (Water Affordability, Transparency Equity and Reliability Act, to provide Americans with what people in Flint and other cities don't have.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on California to reject unreliable "offsets" as an excuse for expanded fossil fuel extraction.
If you sign, please spread the word!
MPEG is developing a new format for genomic data, which will be patented, and probably off-limits in the free world for 20 years.
We should campaign for rejection of that format.
The author thinks that some computational-idea patents might be legitimate. The reasons they are all harmful is that they create a form of gridlock — and that they usually exclude free software, since the developer must pay license fee per user. (We don't know how many users our programs have.)
Therefore, we should protect the entire software field from the threat of patents.
The author says he is not against "commercialisation" of software. Interpreting the term precisely, neither am I. I am not against profiting from software, as long as it respects users freedom (it is free/libre software). However, nothing can justify a program that takes away freedom from whoever uses it.
Israel has built up the world's leading source of surveillance equipment, used by many unjust states to implement repression of dissidents, as well as groups such as queer folk that are persecuted out of sheer bigotry.
How Do You Write about Trump vs. Reality Without Saying 'Lie'? New York Times Shows The Way.
We may not have absolute, direct proof that the bullshitter is lying. That is because he does not attempt to maintain a consistent position from one moment to the next. If he looks at the sky and sees sunshine, and a minute later says it is raining, it is conceivable that he isn't lying: he could perhaps sincerely believe that statement if he has forgotten what he saw a minute before. However, if he is even halfway mentally competent, the only plausible conclusion is that he is lying.
Moscow Bans Ceremony Honouring Victims of Stalin's Terror.
Those who protect the reputation of Stalin take on a share of Stalin's guilt.
St Louis is considering a local law to give elected officials control over surveillance technology.
This could be a big step forward, but only if it leads to eliminating some of the existing massive surveillance that the article describes.
Cambridge Mass is also considering such a law.
China turned abruptly from denying it puts Uighurs in brainwashing camps to describing them as wonderfully beneficial schools.
I trust whatever China says about them about as much as what the bully says about immigrants.
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps 700,000, marched in London to demand a new referendum on taking Britain out of the EU.
We used to believe that the internet would promote democracy by decentralizing media. At present, it does little of either one.
The Saboteur of Human Disservices wants to define gender in an immutable way based on a baby's sex organs.
The article does not say what they would like to do with people born with sex organs that are intermediate or mixed.
The EU should not impose policies to curb disinformation which are based on guesswork.
Appeals Court Says Of Course Georgia's Laws (Including Annotations) Are Not Protected By Copyright And Free To Share.
This is a good outcome, if it is an outcome. With doctrinaire plutocratists now dominating the Supreme Court, I expect it to overturn every decision that goes against plutocrats.
Khashoggi Murder Exposes Trump Administration's Dependency on Saudis.
These dependencies concern the bullshitter's success, not anything that is good for the US or the world.
The US is jailing then deporting US military veterans based on infinitesimal excuses, and (naturally) lying about it.
When the US defends human rights and democracy, instead of defending plutocrats from everyone else, it might be a good thing to join the US military.
Red Cross: global heating is already contributing to conflicts, years before that was expected. "It's obvious some of the violence we are observing … is directly linked to [global heating],"
Australia is considering an escalation of the War on Sharing.
Australians, please write to your elected officials to oppose this. What I would say is that sharing is good, and sharing ought to be lawful; copyright issues should not be decided mainly for the sake of the copyright industry.
Meantime, I urge you to make sure that you personally can share with people you know. Don't watch or listen to anything directly by streaming; rather, insist on getting a local copy without DRM, so that you can share copies if you decide to.
US citizens: Tell Congress to end U.S. support for Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose the bully's plan to make parts of the federal government deny all recognition to transsexuals.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: see which candidates have pledged to work against fossil fuels.
The UAE hired US veterans to assassinate local leaders in Yemen. The targets were called "terrorists".
Joseph Stiglitz: how the US economy and political system were rigged to benefit the plutocrats and screw most people.
Because the plutocrats got their wealth by legalizing cheating, and hold on to their political power by lying and rigging elections, they have no moral right to either this wealth or this power. We should organize to take it and redistribute it. We need to do it soon, in time to stop them from roasting Earth's ecosphere.
Supposedly "bipartisan" seminars for US judges teach right-wing thinking that endorses deregulation.
The latest form of identity politics is to condemn straight actors for playing homosexual roles.
Since gay actors such as Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (according to Scotty Bowers) have played straight characters (and done it well), why shouldn't straight actors play homosexual roles? Why should it matter what any actor's real orientation is? The only question that should matter is whether that actor plays the role well.
An Australian minister ordered an auditor not to discuss whether an arms contract was unreasonably expensive, on the grounds the information might harm the interests of the arms company.
This means that the Australian government is in effect a government of occupation for foreign arms companies, as well as for foreign coal companies.
Sub-leaders of the Republican cult are trying to smear Jamal Khashoggi so as to protect the repressive regime of Salafi Arabia, because their leader says Salafi Arabia is on their side.
It appears that Khashoggi covered Osama bin Laden's activities in the time when al-Qa'ida was supported by the US to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
A cop confronted a black child reported to have a gun … and behaved like a police officer instead of a thug.
He did not shoot, and the reported gun turned out to be a BB gun.
The main damage from hurricanes comes from storm surge and voluminous rain. High-speed winds do damage too, but it is much less. So we should rate hurricanes based on the expected water damage.
"It's naive to think college athletes have time for school." Evidence shows they don't have time to succeed in their studies.
Big-time college sports teams are a tumor on the side of education, a perverse way of funding colleges based on inculcating a bizarre obsession into the students (even the non-athletes). It didn't take with me; I never once attended a sports event during my own college years. I simply decided that teams were a distraction of no importance.
With public funding of college — and if we stop employers from asking about education that the job doesn't need — we could cut out the tumor.
The richest people and poor people do similar peccadilloes, but when poor people do them, people say they are bad and deserve to starve.
One of these peccadilloes, "promiscuity", is bad only in the eyes of prudes. There's no reason you shouldn't have sex with various people, if you enjoy that and have the opportunity, provided you take care to avoid spreading diseases and babies.
How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions.
A Chinese music star was jailed for singing the national anthem in a non-serious manner. She was coerced into apologizing for "hurting the feelings" of properly brainwashed Chinese.
Nobelist Frances Arnold is glad she did not patent the directed evolution of enzymes.
33 countries allowed Omar al-Bashir to visit without arresting him for the International Criminal Court.
Freedom of expression is a dangerous licence when severed from any commitment to truth, as cyber-thugs reveal daily.
However, no one has found a way to offer freedom of speech only to those who are sincere, or only to those who are right.
The UK may speed global heating by expanding a runway at a London airport.
We have no chance of saving our climate if we don't reject proposals to increase air travel. We should increase the taxes enough so that air travel does not increase; then no more airport capacity will be needed.
In the US, Democrats appear to be too weak, or perhaps too corrupt, to even propose measures sufficient to do the job.
Widespread despair about avoiding global disaster helps them get away with that weak stand.
It is not physically too late to avoid the big disaster, but we have to reinsert the world's overriding need into all issues that affect it.
Facebook deleted a video in which George Monbiot describes the atrocities that Christopher Columbus personally led in the colonization of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
It later restored the article after widespread criticism.
I don't know what words Yannis Mendez used, but the article refers to publications as "content" and says it is legitimate to delete "inappropriate" publications. The term "content" disparages all publications, regardless of what is good or bad about them. There are valid reasons to delete some publications, but in order for a reason to be valid, it must be statable with some concrete word — "inappropriate" is never sufficient.
Publishing on or via Facebook feeds the power of that company. The best way to protect yourself from its censorship is to publish elsewhere.
If you access the video (or anything) on youtube, for your freedom's sake I urge you to do it with youtube-dl rather than by running the nonfree software that youtube.com sends in every page.
HIV prophylaxis medicine could, over time, eliminate HIV. We only need to make sure everyone can get it.
Dubya and Obama borrowed their assassination programs from Israel, which had set it up as part of denying that the occupation of Palestine was an occupation.
At that time, Israel occupied the whole of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza.
The US has privatized salvage archeology to companies that discard the data.
A professor at the University of Michigan was punished for refusing to write a letter of recommendation for a student's application to a university in Israel.
In general, I think professors should be allowed to boycott specific universities for any reason. However, letters of recommendation are a different issue because they are something professors do for their students. Denying a student a letter of recommendation to a university because of disapproval of that university forces the student, in effect, to boycott that university too. That choice should be the student's choice to make.
Since the bully practices murder of civilians, it is no surprise that he defends his Salafi Arabian accomplice for the murder of Khashoggi.
Up to 9.5 Million Net Neutrality Comments Were Made With Stolen Identities. Lobbyists are being investigated for this.
They were lobbying against network neutrality. It was clear at the time that the phony comments were meant to give Ajit Pai a superficial excuse to pretend that the public did not support network neutrality. It was not clear that some were identity theft, too.
Rising seas will destroy the Florida Everglades, which people have worked for so long to preserve.
Anti-fracking protesters in the UK were sentenced to long prison terms, but the appeals court cut them down to a short period (which they had already served).
This is not good enough. Nonviolent protesters should not be jailed.
"My release from prison for protesting fracking does not equate to justice."
A Republican Party official in Montana is trying to provoke the shooting of protesters.
Israel's Supreme Court decided to allow Lara Alqasem to study in Israel, based partly on the argument that she no longer campaigned for the Palestinian boycott.
How Bolsonero wins support from poor and black Brazilians who fear criminal violence.
Making life harder for the poor is, however, likely to impel more violence.
10 years after the crime, a white man who shot 3 blacks who were fleeing New Orleans has pled guilty and will go to prison.
Evidence suggests Florida governor Scott invested state money in a company in exchange for a donation to a PAC Scott controlled.
Blockchains Won't Fix Internet Voting Security — And Could Make It Worse.
Until we can rely on voters' computers to be secure, we must not allow voting by internet.
Georgia is grasping any excuse to block poor and black people from voting. The latest excuse is to claim signatures don't match.
The Republican candidate for governor, Kemp, is in charge of this, and he takes the usual Republican attitude: "If you can't stop me, I will do it."
Pirate Party Enters Parliament in Luxembourg, Gets 17% in Prague.
1600 refugees crossed from Honduras into Guatemala, so the bully demanded that Honduras catch them and bring them back or he will cut all US aid.
Remember when the Soviet Union blocked refugees from leaving? Leaving required an "exit visa" — a demand that was condemned as fundamentally unjust. What the bully demands of Honduras goes beyond that. The Soviet Union did not try to kidnap and bring back all the refugees who had managed to get out.
Much of the "aid" to Honduras props up the coup-installed fake-democratic government. Cutting off that aid might do some good for that country. But the bully won't consider doing that.
On the other hand, increased aid of the right kind might help end the repression that drives people to flee.
In the US: participate in a rally Sunday or Monday to support the youth plaintiff's lawsuit against the government for allowing planet roasters to prepare a predictable global disaster that is sure to affect them.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bill that would start a reign of terror for refugees, and imprison them indefinitely.
I am disappointed that the article uses the emotionless word "detain" to refer to imprisonment. A prison is still a prison even if you decide to call it a "detention center".
I'm also disappointed by the absurd word "Latinx". But I signed the petition anyway and I hope you will too.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Kemp to release the 50,000 Georgia voter registrations that he is blocking.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Don't let Erdoğan's pursuit of justice for Jamal Khashoggi blind you to Erdoğan's not-quite-murderous repression of Turkish journalists.
Salafi Arabia admitted that Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its consulate, but claim that his death was not intended.
This is, of course, incredible a priori, but what if it had happened? Nothing could explain denying his death and disposing of his body.
The bully plans to pull the US out of the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty, signed with the Soviet Union in 1987.
This might be meant as punishment for alleged Russian violations of the treaty. I saw reports of those accusations quite some time ago.
The caravan of Hondurans and Guatemalans crossed into Mexico by rafting and swimming, bypassing Mexican border controls.
A parking garage lets motorists pay by handing in plastic bottles.
If the bottles can really be recycled, this does some good, but we really need to make fewer plastic bottles.
For the plutocrats and fascists, global heating is not a problem. The problem is us — the people they consider superfluous — and global heating is the solution.
I see a possible way to defeat them: to prove to them now that, if they kill hundreds of millions a few decades from now, those hundreds of millions will make sure to drag them down too.
For the giant businesses that seek to rule the world, Universal Basic Income is appealing as a way to keep the masses dependent and powerless.
That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a change for the better. However, today's politicians would be likely to make the basic income less than universal. They would pass laws to kick people off the basic income if they commit a crime, fail a drug test, protest, attract the attention of the thugs, etc.
I agree that Universal Basic Assets might be better — depending on details. At the same time, I still think that Universal Basic Income could be a good system, if the rest of the political and economic context were better.
The article's criticism of Uber omits the injustices Uber does directly to its customers:
PEN and others are suing to stop the bully from threatening to use his powers against freedom of the press.
The merger of Time Warner with AT&T ought to be forbidden simply because they are both so large — regardless of what CNN publishes.
Right-wing prudes would rather put women in danger of cancer than allow them to be vaccinated against papilloma virus at age 12.
Women in many states of the US need to get abortion drugs by mail, as the states have set up arbitrary obstacles.
Bolsonaro's plutocratic supporters are illegally sending campaign messages to millions of Brazilians.
Republicans have made it nearly impossible for the Latinos of Dodge City to vote. They have given the city just one polling place for 13,000 voters. It is outside the city, a mile from any bus stop.
They can't win an election, so they have to steal it.
If you can get to Boston, join the rally Monday at 11:30am at the start of the Juliana v United States climate damage lawsuit.
Everyone: Tell the G20 leaders that natural gas is not a "bridge fuel".
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for preserving the Flores Settlement, which limits how long the US can imprison refugee minors.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Australians: you can opt out of My Health Record.
I don't have enough details about this to judge whether it is important to do so, or whether it protects in any substantial way from state surveillance.
Everyone: Demand Justice in Police Taser Killing of Chinedu Okobi.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Small, cheap farming robots are being developed to pay attention to each individual plant, and to kill weeds without pesticides.
In growing wheat, they could be used to enable the same number of humans to do a far better job. However, the plans for broccoli would imply a big cut in employment, and that will harm people. Until we are ready to prevent efficiency from making millions of people starve in the midst of plenty, we should not allow robots to be used that way.
Meanwhile, when farmers use such robots, they deserve to run their robots with free software, and to process their data with free software too.
Small steps towards gender equality, decreasing the advantages of being male, are interpreted as oppression by supporters of the bullshitter.
In Virginia, it is a felony to protect your anonymity by hiding your face.
We must demand such laws be abolished, so we can protect ourselves from face recognition surveillance.
The world's entire insect population has decreased by a factor of 2 since 1980, apparently due to global heating.
Most of the decline has been in tropical forests, where the quantities have declined catastrophically, in some places by a factor of 60.
"New data tool can help scientists use limited funds to protect the greatest number of endangered species."
There is no inherent limit on the funds available for protecting endangered species. There is also no inherent limit on how many species human activities can endanger. So I think they are optimizing for the wrong problem.
Global heating is shifting the region of the US where tornadoes usually occur. This means people are vulnerable now who were not before.
Printer manufactures are very innovative — at blocking the use of independent replacement ink cartridges. Their "security upgrades" occasionally impose new forms of cartridge DRM. HP and Epson have done this.
"The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?"
Meritocracy means "rule by the most worthy." But the reason we want the most capable as managers of society is not because they deserve more than anyone else, but because we presume they could manage society better.
That presumption may be valid provided they are not affected by bias or corruption. However, in practice ability does not assure honesty.
It is crazy to give homework to three-year-olds, but New York public schools are compelled to do this.
"Adults in the Room": Greens surge across Europe as centre-left flounders.
Saboteur Zinke used government funds for family boat trips.
West Virginia is allowing people to vote remotely (which in general means your spouse or boss could watch), demanding that voters give their fingerprints (surveillance of voters) and use lots of nonfree software (tyranny).
Of couse, it is insecure too.
Assassins Without Borders: Salafi Arabia joins North Korea, Russia (and the Soviet Union), Chile, Bulgaria, Israel and the US.
I would not apply the term "assassination" to most of the killing of Gazans by Israel, because that word means that a specific target was chosen and specifically killed.
Israel recently announced its soldiers would apply even less restraint before killing Gazans that come near to the border with Israel.
If Israel wants a buffer zone to keep Gazans away from Israelis, it ought to set up the buffer zone on its own side of the border.
The bully praised violence against journalists, as a general matter.
Voter-verified paper ballots seemed to have potential, but they don't work to protect the election from theft.
For a secure election, voters should vote on paper. Computers can count the votes by scanning the papers.
Florida citizens: vote to restore voting rights to ex-cons.
Guatemala did not block the caravan of migrants, which is now approaching the border with Mexico. Mexico has threatened to stop them.
An interview with a British sex worker who chose that career, rather than the alternative: her family hungry and living on the street.
Arresting her customers would have given her no help. Hampering her form of advertizing would have been no better. What she needs is proper government support for poor people.
Training unauthorized immigrants to understand and exercise their legal rights. This is necessary since immigration thugs frequently act illegally.
Nicaragua's suppression forces have killed over 300 protesters by shooting at protests. Others have been arrested and tortured.
I cannot blame the opposition for firing back, but it might be mistaken strategy.
Rep. Rohrabacher might be defeated by a former Republican running on the Democratic Party ticket.
That could mean less support for bullying and bullshit, but a plutocratist Democrat is no better than a Republican in the fight to end plutocracy and curb global heating.
"The United States must view the Saudis not as flawed partners, but rather as malign actors undermining US interests."
The cheater and his family are directly involved in at least some of the businesses that say "Trump". They claim not to be.
The world is hardly serious about reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
Experiments are testing the planting of mercury-resistant trees in parts of the Amazon forest that gold miners have poisoned.
It's worth trying, but Bolsonaro might permit cutting down the whole forest.
The EU is designing tax rules intended to block offshoring of wealth, but a loophole was just discovered in them.
From Nail Bars to Car Washes: How Big is the UK's Slavery Problem? It is hard to count the slaves.
As the Fracking Protesters Show, a People's Rebellion Is the Only Way to Fight Climate Change.
Republicans are bending over backwards to excuse the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
They have designated the Salafi Arabian monarch as "on their side", so they will excuse whatever he does. This is pure 1984.
The former head of MI6, says that the evidence points to the crown prince of Salafi Arabia as the one who commanded the murder of Khashoggi.
The US is developing a laser weapon to attack crowds of protesters by burning off the outer layer of their skin.
Republicans are slowing down processing of voter registrations so as to block people from voting.
The Republican Party stands for "power by hook or by crook".
In many parts of the world, traditional fishing peoples that can't catch enough fish are being lured or forced to do smuggling instead.
Corrupt customs agents represent a threat to US national security.
One benefit for Europe if the UK leaves the EU: it will no longer be able to push the EU in the direction of plutocratic policies such as business-supremacy treaties ("free trade").
It will also be unable to sabotage measures to protect the environment and human civilization.
Khashoggi's Fate Isn't a Surprise: Trump Has Emboldened Saudi Arabia.
The bully has emboldened bullies around the world, including from right-wing extremists, misogynists, and tyrannical states.
DOJ's new saboteur of civil rights has a career of helping companies override them.
Australian workers are getting little share of the increasing business profits. The employers are making sure of that.
Even the IMF says that the UK's privatizations were a mistake.
This is ironic because usually the IMF forces countries into privatizations that are harmful for them in the long run.
The cheater wants to put a persistent enemy of Medicaid in charge of Medicaid.
Global heating may be causing the
tremendous
decrease in insect populations around the world, which occurs even in
places where we do not use insecticides.
American
Officials Could Be Prosecuted for War Crimes in Yemen.
The TripAdvisor prankster, who made his nonexistent restaurant number
one on that site, has now branched out into hoaxing interviewers by
sending
volunteer proxies to give interviews for him.
Republicans are
still
planning to cut Social Security and Medicare to compensate for the
supposed budget shortfall that the Republicans created by cutting
taxes for the rich.
Perhaps
a
million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China have been put in "reeducation
camps". Inmates learn to say how great it is to be in a reeducation
camp.
We have to acknowledge that Islamist extremism has had an influence
among the Uyghurs, and some became terrorists. At the same time,
Uyghurs resented having millions of Han Chinese moving into their home
and outnumbering them. China did the same thing in Tibet, and is now
crushing
Tibetan culture.
Indonesia has done something similar, moving
millions
of Javanese colonists into the areas inhabited by less dense
populations of different ethnic groups.
It's a noted phenomenon in Chile that leaders of protest movements
turn up dead, having apparently committed suicide.
Union
leader Alejandro Castro has now "committed suicide" just a day
after leading a protest.
Leading a protest is tremendously exciting. Even participating in one
is invigorating. That's hardly the time anyone would commit suicide,
even if
perse had the
inclination.
10
reasons the US (and other countries) should stop supporting Salafi
Arabia.
The saboteurs' plan to force electric utilities to prop up
unprofitable coal and nuclear plants has been
blocked.
Many parts of the US are now
deserts
for news coverage.
Republican politicians
firmly
deny that human actions are causing global heating, and complain
that ending global heating would be a lot more expensive and
inconvenient than continuing the status quo in a fantasy world.
US
citizens: call
on Mattis, Secretary of "Defense", to make the US obey the laws of
war in Yemen.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Can
an "AI
ethics body" set up by companies that develop and use AI software
possibly be adequate?
I have no solid proof, but I doubt it.
The Chicago thug that shot Ricardo Hayes said Hayes was armed. In
fact, Hayes
was unarmed, and did nothing threatening. The threat was only in
the thug's imagination.
Scandinavia shows that having society help people do what increases
life expectancy is effective, while telling people it's their fault if
they don't do these things leads
to falling
life expectancy.
Why Is [Salafi] Arabia Under Fire Over Jamal
Khashoggi, But
Not Yemen?
College
in the US is a scam: Americans are pressured to pay for it, with
loans that they will spend a lifetime paying back, so as to escape the
income decline suffered by Americans without a college degree.
English is starting
to threaten
the survival of Icelandic.
Chief Justice John Roberts Tries to Convince the Nation That Supreme
Court Is Still
Legitimate.
69
of the Richest 100 Entities on the Planet Are Corporations, Not
Governments.
That reflects the problem that corporations don't pay enough taxes,
and that they have been permitted to merge too much.
Heavy Use of the Internet And Watching Commercial
TV Increase
[children's] Desire for Junk Food.
Security Seals Used to Protect Voting Machines Can
Be Easily
Opened With Shim Crafted from a Soda Can.
It appears that the
NRA illegally
supported the campaigns of Republican candidates.
Research Reveals That Fighting Between Youths — Particularly
Females —
Is
Less Common Where Corporal Punishment Has Been Outlawed.
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to reject Andrew Saul as head of the Social Security
Administration. He wants to sabotage it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the BLM to protect Chaco Canyon from fossil fuel drilling.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Federal
Judge Orders
Reunification of Asylum-Seeking Father And His Two-Year-Old Son,
Who Were Separated for Nearly Six Months.
Oil pipelines in Louisiana damage swamps and bayous in ways that are
not obvious. They
even hasten
the inundation of the land.
The leader of the California NAACP is working for a campaign against
rent control — something which California
blacks very
strongly want.
Sincere and honest political activists talk about
Facebook's shutdown
of their pages, which were labeled as spam.
UK
thugs infiltrated
various sorts of UK left-wing groups for decades, including
anti-racist groups, environmentalists, even opposition to the Vietnam
War.
The UK needs
to legislate
criteria for "domestic extremists", not let the thugs decide based
on their own right-wing pro-business politics.
"I’ve seen the Antarctic’s untouched
beauty. There's still
time to protect it."
That is true, but just barely. To properly protect Antarctica
requires protecting it from global heating.
Canada has eliminated blanket prohibition of marijuana, but is
replacing it with
a patchwork
of disagreeing local laws about how to buy it, use it, carry it
and share it.
These will provide plenty of pitfalls that will endanger unwary
Canadians.
UK restaurants discard almost a million prepared meals each day.
Arranging to bring this food to hungry Britons who (due to Tory
spending cuts) can't afford food could give at least one meal a day to
almost
a million of them.
The extent of the developing famine in Yemen was underestimated.
Millions
could die from it.
An oil refinery company, Valero Energy,
has invested
heavily in using Senator Cruz to make the EPA allow more
pollution.
Reginald Andrade was walking back to his office from the campus
exercise machines when someone perceived him as a threat and called
the campus thugs. They came to his office
and started
interrogating him.
He was fortunate in that they did not kill him. He answered their
questions and was fortunate that they didn't use them to fabricate a
crime, something that the
thugs can easily do
if you answer any
questions.
Reporters have been allowed to interview the refugee minors imprisoned
at Tornillo, Texas. Many have
spent weeks or
months in prison.
They have trouble looking for a lawyer because the form they must fill
in to do that demands more English skill than they have.
US billionaires give lots of money to public schools,
while buying
elections to deny schools even larger amounts of tax money.
Genetically modified honeybees
might save
them from the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides.
However, if they are patented, beekeepers will be subjugated by the
patentholders.
Neonicotinoid pesticides
damage other
non-pest insects, too.
Turkey
is deporting
Syrian refugees back to Syria, where there is still a civil war.
FEMA's slow response to Hurricane Michael
resembles
the slow response in New Orleans.
It is too soon to say whether it is as bad as what happened in Puerto
Rico a year ago.
The confirmation of Kavanaugh was another step in the degradation of
the US judiciary. The previous step — the
Guantanamo
kangaroo courts — is still going on.
Trickle-down from arms sales is not enough to excuse US support for
Salafi Arabia's
war
of aggression in Yemen.
How the World Bank's loans to poor countries
tend
to keep them poor.
Few Democrats Offer Alternatives to
War-Weary
Voters.
Sanders will ask the Senate again to
cancel
US support for the war in Yemen.
Increasing
global inequality makes poor people desperately overrun the wild,
while it influences the global middle class to compete to consume.
That's the opposite of what the world needs.
In the first few decades of the United States, rich people were met
with disapproval. As a result, they didn't flaunt their wealth, and
people generally felt less ambition to get rich beyond their needs.
If we begin expressing mild disapproval towards people who are
inordinately wealthy, we can start that pressure going again.
Matthew Hedges visited Dubai for two weeks and was then arrested and
charged with spying. He has been
kept
in solitary for 5 months and is now being tried, effectively
without a lawyer.
My guess is that some of the questions he asked for academic purposes
were somehow sensitive to the rulers of Dubai, and they reacted in
typical Dubai fashion.
'You Couldn't Make This Up': A Bunch of
Mops,
Cleaners, and Trash Bags Delivered to Saudi Consulate Ahead of
Khashoggi Murder Probe.
Humans have
wiped
out the most evolutionarily unusual mammals, lopping off branches
of the evolutionary tree. It will take 3 to 7 million years for
evolution to replace the lost diversity.
US schools are
buying
expensive (and unproven) hardware that is supposed to hamper shooters
in schools, rather that spending the money on making a better
environment that discourages violence.
The European Parliament
voted
to let car manufacturers own a copyright on the telemetry from a
"connected" car.
In my view, the first and basic moral issue about telemetry from a car
is whether to allow it to exist at all.
Senator Sanders
called
for the US to defend democracy, both at home and abroad, by making
it effective rather than a mask for plutocracy.
Sanders for President!
The UN
accuses
Australia of arbitrary imprisonment of an asylum seeker.
Not long ago, Republican officials were eager to get rid of Obama's
medical insurance law. Now Scott Walker pretends to want to keep it
going, while
trying subtly to
make it fall apart.
As the Pentagon starts asking civilian tech companies to develop
war-fighting systems, it
increasingly
provokes resistance from their workers.
Guatemala to Reject
Caravan
of 1,600 Honduran Migrants Heading to Border.
80 days after a judge ordered the US to reunite separated refugee
minors with their parents,
136 of them still
remain separated in immigration prison.
The government has found various creative excuses.
Humanity
Is 'Cutting
Down the Tree of Life', Warn Scientists.
The disappearance of Khashoggi should remind us that Salafi Arabia is
extremely
repressive towards even the mildest of dissidents.
The right wing used to attack leftist postmodernism for rejecting
moral absolutes. Now the right-wing
rejects
the idea that there is any objective truth.
I think the term "scientific relativism" is inadequate to describe the
bullshitter. I'd call it "Humpfty Drumpfty thinking" — "the
truth is whatever I say it is".
The bullshitter pledged
a million dollars
to the charity of Senator Warren's choice if she took a DNA test
and it revealed indigenous American ancestry. She did, and it did.
Will the bullshitter pay up?
The UK government is
straining
to avoid any substantial investigation into Russian meddling in
the referendum about leaving the EU.
I suppose the fact that the government is committed to leaving has
something to do with the unwillingness to investigate.
Yemen
on
Brink of 'World's Worst Famine in 100 Years' if War Continues.
Should professors refuse to write letters of recommendation addressed
to Israeli universities? One has just been
punished
for refusing.
Like Juan Cole, I support the boycott of products made by Israel in
occupied Palestinian territory — started by Gush Shalom, which
promoted it until Israel
adopted
a law to impose unlimited damages on anyone that advocates this
boycott. I don't support the Palestinians' boycott of nearly all
Israeli institutions, though
I followed it in the speaking
tour in which I was invited by Palestinians.
Palestinians point out that each university in Israel is
directly
involved in the occupation.
Evading taxes is
standard
practice for the US rich, and the government hardly tries to
detect, stop or punish them. If the Trump family example makes us
aware of the bigger ripoff, let's put a stop to it.
The dockless rider-tracking scooters are
recharged
by low-paid piecework workers.
That is an additional reason not to use them.
Notre Dame Struck a Secret Deal With the Trump Administration to
Deny
Birth Control Coverage. Now Students Are Fighting Back.
This is more evidence that abortion rights are only the first target
of the right-wing assault.
Amazon trained an AI system to recognize good candidates for
employment, but since most of the past employees were male, the system
learned
to prefer males.
Amazon eventually decided that there was no way to fix the system,
that the flaw was fundamental.
The US deportation thugs are deporting children alone to Central
America
without
informing their dear deported parents.
Californians will soon vote on an initiative to
permit
rent control on houses, and on apartments built after 1985. Wall
Street landlords, that own lots of houses now, are spending a lot of
money to convince Californians to reject it.
If you know anyone in California, please pass the word.
Maryland uses a private company to develop voter registration
software. That is a grave error; it became a scandal just now because
the company was
bought
by a Russian oligarch.
The company might now fiddle with the software on behalf of the
Russian oligarch, who might order that for Putin.
Before the purchase, the company could have fiddled with the software
for someone else.
The state
should
always do its computing with free software, to make sure that
software never falls under the control of any private entity.
Around the world,
governments
don't provide sufficiently for mental health. This causes an
estimated 13 million deaths per year.
Prevention is more effective than cure. What is causing mental
illness to increase? I can make guesses, but guesses are not
necessarily correct.
The Communism in Cuba handled recovery from Hurricane Maria
better
than the extreme Capitalism of the US did in Puerto Rico.
The proposed
"internet
bill of rights" is a step in the right direction, but it won't
prevent all the abuses we see today.
Médecins Sans Frontières
Calls
for Immediate Evacuation of All Refugees on Nauru.
Chicago Should
Reject
a Proposal for Private-Sector Face Surveillance.
Beyond that, states should prohibit all systems for face recognition
in public places, unless they are limited to recognizing
court-designated suspects.
When a Google executive said its censored-for-China search engine was
merely a plan, he lied. In July he
told
developers it would be ready to launch in 6-9 months.
Salafi Arabia has a
history
of attacking its expatriate dissidents.
US citizens:
tell the
SEC that no CEO is too big to fail.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Washington Post is not "liberal media". In Maryland, it
supports
the candidate that would be good for Amazon.
Progressives explain
how
plutocratist Democrats impede the Democratic Party from doing what
is needed to win Americans' full support.
The UK
plans
to set up an illegal surveillance database for repression.
Suing Georgia to
stop
its eager purge of voters.
(satire) Many states
still
use outdated methods to disenfranchise their voters.
Facebook deleted hundreds of pages, calling them "spam" and
dishonesty, and it turns out to
include
honest dissidents too.
When Nauru expelled Médecins Sans Frontières, it
provided
no
other medical care for the refugees it is warehousing for
Australia.
The US may be trying to force Facebook to
insert
a back door into Facebook Messenger. It is hard to tell, because
the case is secret.
Oil prices are rising again, and one of the causes is
increased
demand.
This is a sign of danger, since increased demand for oil means faster
global heating.
The UK regularly deports people to countries it says are
too
dangerous to visit.
The US military is systematically expelling soldiers that are not
US citizens, and
lying about it.
These soldiers joined up as non-citizens, and were welcomed as such.
It was an advertised path to citizenship.
Putin's supporters repeatedly postpone a local election
because
they know an opposition politician is going to win it.
Reportedly Turkey
gave
the US recordings that demonstrate that Salafi Arabian officials
murdered Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate in Istanbul.
In the moral vacuum created by the bully's rejection of human rights
as a global goal, pressuring Salafi Arabia for the apparent murder of
Jamal Khashoggi falls to
businesses
and the media. While it is good that they are helping out in the
case of Khashoggi, in general I don't think their support is very
reliable.
Everyone: tell
Greyhound not to let the border thugs into its buses.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: affirm that fossil
gas is
not a "bridge fuel".
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Fox News to drop out of Salafi Arabia's investment event.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer
Is as
Creepy as You Feared.
The first step in stopping this is to insist on buying only
nontethered devices, and break the connectivity of any tethered
devices that you are stuck with.
The second step is political organization against tethering devices
to servers.
Canada has joined the US and Australia, etc.,
in demanding
back doors in computers, while pretending that what it is asking
for is not back doors.
Don't Believe the World Bank —
Robots Will
Steal Our Wages.
The argument is stronger than Elliott presents it. When he says,
"Automation will bring growth," implicitly that assumes we have
unlimited resources that we could safely use, so the limit on our
production is our ability to use the resources. But if we are limited
by the resources we dare use — and I think that the case now
— automation won't produce more, it will only produce more
cheaply.
All the savings will go to the owners of the robots.
UK thugs seem to practice extreme racial profiling when searching
people "for no particular reason" for drugs. Blacks
are nearly
10 times as likely to be searched as whites.
"At
the precise moment science reveals women have the bigger 'need' to
be sexually adventurous, society clamps down on infidelity."
Australia’s
chief scientist says the question facing the nation’s energy
future is not about renewables versus coal but how best to create "a
whole-of-economy emissions reduction strategy."
The goal needs to be a zero-emissions society.
How Profit-Driven
Inbreeding Could Bring the World Dairy Herd to Its Knees.
Around
200,000 protested in Berlin against right-wing extremism.
We
Should Talk
To al-Shabaab Now.
I think that al-Shabaab's military position is weaker than a few
years, and the government now has some real support. This could
be the right time for the US to get reasonable peace deal.
Political discussions about a possible change in UK law about
transgender rights are
being shut
down by campaigns of intimidation.
The article does not state what the disagreement consists of, and I
can't begin to guess what my position would be if I knew. However, it
is clear that British people need to respect freedom of speech more,
just as the British government does.
Using
AI to select targets for missiles will make the US war machine
more of a global force against peace.
Lara
Alqasem has
taken her case (for being allowed to enter Israel to study at
Hebrew University) to the Israeli Supreme Court.
The World Bank tells the world's poorest countries
to reduce
workers' rights.
If they do, they will lower the floor level for workers' rights, and
pressure other countries, not quite so poor, to follow in the same
direction. That is exactly what global plutocracy aims to do to every
country,
imposing business-supremacy
treaties to push the process along.
To reduce the use of resources that we are running out of, or whose
use threatens to destroy civilization, we need to move away from an
economy that prioritizes growth, since
that causes
it to push against reducing dangerous but profitable industries.
"Green growth" may be possible in specific activities for a time. But
if it operates by replacing an overused resource with another resource
which isn't used very much — not yet — then we cannot
assume it can be ramped up very far, without studying how far that
process of replacement could continue without exhausting the
substitute resource.
"The oil and gas
industry is
gaslighting you" — pretending that global heating is
happening because you let the lights and water run too long.
Nonprofit service organizations, as a general tendency, work to
protect poor and vulnerable people from the harmful effects of the
plutocratic economy and political system, but do so in a way that
reinforces
the system itself.
"For pity’s sake, let’s
end
the indefinite detention of immigrants now."
Rise of Robots "Could See Workers Enjoy
Four-Day
Weeks" … if we elect progressives into government.
Otherwise, you'll work four days a week and get 4/5 of what you make
now.
Fishermen that captured fish in a protected area in France have been
sentenced
to pay "environmental damages".
James Hansen accused the UK of
ignoring
science and "aping Trump".
We Need Tax Police — And They
Should
Go After the Likes of Donald Trump.
When Lara Alqasem arrived in Israel to study at Hebrew University,
Israel
arrested
her in the airport because she supports the Palestinian BSD
campaign.
Later a court ruled that she could not be jailed for this, so she is
now free to go back to the US. She remains in the airport waiting for
her court case which will decide whether she is allowed to study in
Israel.
WHO Voices Alarm as Academics
Denied
Visas to Visit UK Conference.
New cures for cancer are being developed, but companies will charge so much
that
most
American patients will have to die instead.
Exxon supports a bill to establish a carbon tax — because it has
a rider that
would
cancel Exxon's liability for the damage caused by the climate
mayhem resulting from what it has already done.
Salafi Arabia has made a practice of
grabbing
dissidents from other countries so as to punish them.
The IPCC report says that
we have 12
years to curb global heating, but that is assuming we don't hit a
tipping point first.
Since we don't actually know where the tipping points are, we need
to act even faster if we want to be (fairly) safe.
From Kiribati to Australia:
stop
making our islands uninhabitable.
Orbán amended Hungary's constitution to
permit
severe repression of homeless people.
If you find it annoying to find homeless people living on streets in
your neighborhood, think how annoying it is for them to be homeless.
How about participating in providing them with decent housing?
Parents
can
oppose turning US schools into fortresses.
The article does not even mention the biggest danger of armed guards
in schools: if they are not merely armed, but also have the power to
arrest, they will feed students into the
school-to-prison
pipeline.
Most school thugs will pass their whole careers without shooting
anyone, but they are likely to arrest several students each year.
The University of Texas owns lots of rural land which is
leased out for fracking.
I wonder: what steps can the university lawfully take that would
reduce the amount of fracking on the land it owns? I expect that at
the very least it could refuse to sign any more fracking leases. Is
there a way it can go further than that?
Trudeau plans to apply two counteracting forces to fossil fuel use in
Canada: a steadily increasing carbon tax, along with
direct
state investment in increasing production.
The latter ensures that the former won't reduce emissions much.
If you live in Nevada, call your election commission by Oct 18
to see if your voter registration has been cancelled.
(At least 90,000 registrations have been cancelled.)
If it was, you can reregister by Oct 18.
Please pass the word to anyone you know in Nevada.
US
citizens: call
on House Democrats to support Barbara Lee for a leadership
position in their caucus.
If you sign, please spread the word!
California has
put impossible
regulations on handing out food to the homeless.
Amazon patented the idea
of analyzing
the user's voice to check for signs of illness or upset.
What I find most scary is that this would be used by insurance companies.
Dear Progressives: Craig Kelly, Abbott and Trump
Are Making
You Their Stooge.
On-line gambling in some US states is legally required to do
location
tracking of users.
To sacrifice privacy (vital
for human
rights and democracy)
to protect profits for one gambling company over another
is disproportionate at the level of values.
Israeli
soldiers shot
Palestinian protesters in Gaza, killing seven and wounding over
250.
45
Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After
Independent Repair, Sting Operation Finds.
I wonder whether Apple's planned brick-it-if-repaired malfeature also
violates the Magnuson-Moss law. I suspect that the idea of banning
independent repair through DRM did not occur to anyone when that law
was passed.
US border
thugs pressured a
five-year-old refugee to sign away her legal right to a hearing.
I don't think she had any way of understanding the meaning of what she
was signing.
Israel is trying to apply its censorship law globally. It
has imposed
fines (dressed up as damages to "harmed" individuals) on New
Zealanders.
Israel's censorship law says that the artificial plaintiffs were not required
to demonstrate that they had suffered any damage. But even if they had, the
law would still be unjust, since all they did was state a political position
and suggest a response to that. The law was designed specifically to punish
expression of that political position.
New Zealand should not take any risk that its courts will apply this judgment.
It should pass a law to assure that they don't.
Beaten, Terrified And
Disappeared: China
Cracks Down on Faulty Vaccine Outcry.
Saboteur Wilbur
Ross admitted to
court that he consulted with Bannon and Kobach about asking a
citizenship question in the 2020 census.
This may help plaintiffs prove that question was based on racist intent.
Egypt dares to
torture even
US citizens.
Torturing Egyptians
is nothing
special there.
The US gives Egypt lots of money, and if the US insisted, Egypt
would have to stop.
Several
countries that trample human rights are being elected to the UN
Human Rights Council.
This trend threatens to make that organization
useless or even antagonistic to human rights.
US abortion
doctors face
retaliation at their other workplaces, especially when a workplace
gets bought by a religious organization.
Many US law
students held
a strike demanding impeachment of Kavanaugh.
The UK puts people in prison when it might want to deport them. They
may not even have entered the country without permission. Prisoners
say it
is worse
than the prison for criminals.
Everyone: Tell
USA Today and other news publishers to stop publishing the
bullshitter's lies without fact-checking.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Recordings
Prove Jamal Khashoggi Was Killed, Turkish Investigators Claim.
Nauru's tyrannical
government condemns
Médecins Sans Frontières for the temerity to treat some of the
refugees.
Never mind that doing so was part of their contract.
Some
UK politicians object to the latest proposed "counter-terrorism"
law on the basis of freedom of speech.
In areas where there are so many wild horses that they cause harm to
the ecosystem, Americans have an
inaccountable opposition
to killing the excess.
Louisiana's Undocumented Seafood
Workers Unite
to Fight Workplace Abuses.
Corbyn proposes
a way to confront slavery and imperialism in Britain's past more
deeply than with simple "pride" and "shame".
Facebook's new "smart camera" offers people the opportunity to
completely surrender
the privacy of their home to that company. Perhaps it will help
others wake up to the danger.
"Food deserts" are areas in which junk food is the main food available.
They
promote obesity.
The Tories have taken another step to increase future fossil fuel
consumption in the UK. This time it
has cut
subsidies for low-emissions cars.
Salafi Arabia is
receiving some
nongovernmental pushback for disappearing Jamal Khashoggi.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp Is Helping His Gubernatorial
Campaign by
Putting 53,000
Voter Registrations on Hold.
The targets are mainly blacks that are likely to vote for the
Democrat, Stacey Abrams.
Washington State
has ruled
the death penalty unconstitutional.
This is due to the details of the state's law, so it would not be impossible
for the state to reestablish the death penalty. I hope that this can be
stopped.
US
citizens: call
on the CFPB to fire Eric Blankenstein, whose racist statements
disqualify him from his post in charge of stopping financial
discrimination.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A privatized US immigration prison gave
prisoners rotten
food, and never enough. As well as no medical care.
Hurricane
Michael flattened
towns in Florida, and inundated some islands completely.
It would not have done so much damage without human help.
State courts may be giving custody over refugee minors
to unrelated
American families, which could block them from ever being reunited
with their families.
The British Army is permeated
by right-wing
extremist views, which follow from its colonial traditions.
Bahraini Arab Spring
Dissidents Sue
UK Spyware Maker,
saying that it knew the surveillance software would be used to
find dissidents so as to repress them.
A South African elected
official compares
Israeli apartheid to the apartheid of South Africa.
The UK Supreme Court ruled, much like the US Supreme Court, that
bakers have a right
to refuse
to make a cake which stated support for same-sex marriage.
I agree with this decision, when it concerns individual bakers or a
privately held corporation whose individual owners can validly think
of it as theirs. I disagree with their views but I support their right
to express those views.
I see no reason to extend a similar right to publicly traded
corporations, however. They are not people and
not entitled
to human rights.
Isn't it easy to write any message you like on a cake, with frosting,
after you buy it?
The newest form of US racial bias: thugs questioned a black man and
two children, suspecting him
of babysitting
while black.
Texas
thugs seized
a political sign showing an elephant with its trunk up a young
girl's skirt. They threatened to arrest the owner if she did not take
it down.
The sign exaggerated by presenting a child as the victim, but that's a
small detail; if it had shown a teenager or an adult woman, it would
have been straight on target. In any case, it is lawful political
speech, and the thugs were abusing their authority.
(satire) NFL Urges Pass Rushers To Try Reaching Peaceful Resolution
With
Quarterbacks Before
Resorting To Tackling.
How Boston
can mitigate
the rise in housing prices caused by large luxury condominiums
that rest on land where non-rich people used to live.
As the bullshitter pushes the US towards war with Iran, the public
(guided by the mainstream media)
are paying
little attention.
Pipeline protesters facing felony charges were permitted to present a
necessity defense, but the
court rejected
their expert witnesses.
It appeared they were doomed, and then the
judge threw
out the charges and declared them not guilty, on grounds of
necessity.
Huge
Reduction in Meat-Eating "Essential" to Avoid Climate Breakdown.
We Label Fridges to Show Their Environmental Impact
— Why
Not Food?
Workers at the Acropolis, and hundreds of other sites and museums in
Greece,
are going
on strike against rumored privatization.
The Euro-banksters are pressuring Greece to sell or privatize everything,
even if it is nailed down.
The Australian official in charge of supervising various intelligence
agencies says that the proposed new compulsion-to-help-them-spy law is
dangerous.
The US has put
4,000
mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement tends to make people mentally ill even if they
were not so before. For those who already are, it is the opposite of
treatment.
Majority of Top U.S. Newspapers
Failed
to Feature Bombshell Climate Report on Homepage.
A study in the UK found that
rise
and fall of parents' incomes correlate with fall and rise in
children's mental illness and criminality.
Scientific proof that the income changes cause those behavioral and
mental changes would take a lot more experiments, but it is clear that
rich countries are making life far too hard for poor people, and that
the resulting stress does lasting harm for their children.
Various pieces of circumstantial evidence
tie
Salafi Arabia to the disappearance of dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
However, Turkey seems to have decided to play down the incident.
Europe is
now
aware that Putin tries to cause trouble all across Europe.
China has started banning specific foreign reporters from visiting
Hong Kong
based
on their political leanings.
The second Russian poisoner has been identified as a
military
medical doctor that works for Russian military intelligence.
The US reacted energetically when DDT, useful though it was, was
discovered to be a threat to birds. We
must
do the same for fossil fuels.
An appeals court
ordered
the Netherlands government to bring about bigger cuts in
greenhouse gas emissions with a 2020 deadline.
A million Australians have signed a petition against using the Sydney
Opera House to promote gambling. There were
large
protests at the opera house itself.
This issue is
more
important than its immediate practical consequences would imply.
Obama's
Resistance
to Investigating the Bush Administration['s torture] Allowed Brett
Kavanaugh to Skate Onto the Supreme Court.
A Venezuelan opposition politician was arrested on returning from
visiting the UN, and
within
a few days "jumped" out a window and died.
There is no proof he was pushed; but if he really did voluntarily
jump, the thugs must have done or threatened some horrible treatment,
which would still make them responsible for his death.
Software developers are
starting
to object to working on drone AI projects and censorship projects.
I admire their personal refusal, but the refusal of some engineers and
researchers will not by itself put a stop to these projects. What it
could do is spark a larger movement that might achieve that goal.
Queensland is
planning
to prohibit taking photographs of shark nets, even when whales are
caught in them.
"Kavanaugh could become the deciding vote on an administration
official
caught lying in
public statements can claim that executive privilege shields him from
having to testify about those statements."
In
Brazil,
Only the Grandest of Coalitions Can Now Defeat [the droolingly violent
right-wing extremist] Bolsonaro. He may get a mandate for
mass
murder of the poor.
Destruction of Threatened Species Habitat Taking Place on
'Scandalously
Huge Scale' [in Australia].
This is the result of government policies chosen intentionally to
favor extractivism.
We can probably avoid 1.5C of global heating, but we need to push hard
to reduce emissions in
all sections.
The Australian government
directly
opposes the very idea of trying.
In the US, Republicans are
arguing
not to bother cutting greenhouse gas emissions because it's too
late — global disaster is now inevitable.
That's like saying, "We can't avoid the collision, so don't bother
using the brakes."
US
citizens: call
on Democratic leaders, donors and consultants not to work for
Senator Manchin, who voted to confirm Kavanaugh.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An amendment to the treaty that ended production of ozone-destroying
chemicals
could delay
global heating for a while.
This would give civilization a breather, but would not by itself save
us.
Schools are
now invading
student's privacy through cheating-detection systems.
I would not object to a school's running my papers through something
like Turnitin, as long as they did not tell Turnitin who wrote it, or
even say that all my papers were written by the same student.
However, I would never let the nonfree proctoring software onto
my computer. (Besides which, it would not run on my operating system.)
I would be willing to take the test on the university's computer,
running whatever software the university happens to run, since the
exam is communication with the university.
People once again propose geoengineering
to reflect
sunlight into space as a way to counteract global heating.
However, ocean acidification would continue unabated, with the effect
of eventually wiping out all coral, and all molluscs with shells.
Many species of sea
animals depend
on coral reefs, and they would be wiped out too. The food supply
for a billion people would be lost, just as plants
are producing
less protein due to the higher CO2 levels.
Banksy auctioned a painting in a frame
that shredded
the painting shortly after.
I appreciate this as a bizarre hack. The person who had won the
auction (but had not yet paid) could have been very disappointed, but
was not in fact disappointed.
Russians
are losing
trust for Putin in response to his pension cuts.
Mississippians are campaigning
to reject
the racist myths they were brought up with.
For decades, local governments have increasingly traded integrity and
public spirit by renting out civic buildings for commercial publicity.
They even name the buildings after companies, for a price. However,
Australians now say that using the Sydney Opera House walls
to project
ads for gambling is going too far.
If this had met no objection, the state might next have renamed it to
the "Horse Race Gambling Opera House" and put pictures of race horses
all around it. That would fetch a higher fee.
Looked at superficially, this is a nice opportunity to bring in money
without directly hurting anyone. Looked at deeply, it conveys the
message to "forget about civic spirit — everything in this city
is for sale."
Global [heating] Must Not Exceed
1.5C, Warns
Landmark UN Report.
"Climate change is
occurring earlier
and more rapidly than expected. Even at the current level of 1C
warming, it is painful."
In fact, this
report understates
part of the danger.
Meanwhile, fossil
fuel business sails on, disregarding the disaster it is bringing.
Citizenship considered
as a fob key, the first and least selective of a series of
increasingly limited fob keys.
The
EU has
a grand project to restore substantial parts of some vast forests
that existed before modern times.
The project has a crucial prerequisite, not mentioned in the article,
without which it will fail: to curb global heating soon. Without
this, the ecosystem they are trying to preserve would not be able to
survive where it used to exist, and perhaps not anywhere on Earth, not
even unmolested. But it will surely be molested, by tropical pests,
floods, drought, and/or fire. This project would fail, just as
walling out the rising sea will fail.
"No More Torture," Says
France. Not
So the United States.
Famatta Massalay was handed by her parents to another family that
promised her education in the US. Instead they made her a domestic
slave, who was forced into sex as well. Now she heads
a campaign
against trafficking.
Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Isn't Democracy. It's a
Judicial
Coup.
Elections do not amount to democracy when they are rigged by a
conspiracy of a minority.
An journalist's investigation of the disappearance of 43 Mexican students
shows that
The difference between a good neighborhood and bad one can make a tremendous difference in children's subsequent lives.
We can't make all neighborhoods above average, but this difference suggests there must be something that would make them all better.
New North American Trade Deal Has Bad News for Canadian Copyright.
I suggest Canada legislate that copyright last until either 70 years after the author's death, or such time as is at least 50 years after that death and this treaty is no longer in force — whichever comes first.
That way, the treaty will not have a lasting effect if it is cancelled.
EFF: California has adopted a bill that requires labeling of influence bots while respecting privacy.
Amazon is creating subsidiaries that act like "third-party" sellers, to compete with the real third-party sellers.
This is one more example of how Amazon cooperates with various other parties so as to get more power, then betrays them. Amazon has done wrong to readers, authors, bookstores, as well as its workers. And now to the companies that accepted it as a nearly-monopolistic market.
More reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Many federal agencies, asking for public comment, are bombarded by lobby-bots.
How [Salafi Arabia's] Money Keeps Washington at War in Yemen.
Turkey says that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside Salafi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.
Neither of those states is known for its respect for human rights, or for honesty. There is no hard evidence. However, if Salafi Arabia cannot produce Khashoggi alive, we will have to consider the accusation proved.
It would not surprise me for Salafi Arabia to assassinate dissidents, given that it has sentenced dissidents to death. It does surprise me that it would do so in a way that is implausible to deny and would cause a diplomatic incident.
Saadia Muzaffar has resigned from the advisory panel for Toronto's "smart" city, because the project is not seriously attending to citizens' privacy concerns.
As usual, "smart" means "spy".
Most campaigns to protect privacy aim for an inadequate target: regulating the use of data collected. That is not enough to protect people from being harmed by the data collected about them.
I don't see anything in this article to suggest that Muzaffar, and the citizens that complained, are trying to go further than that.
Since the FOSTA advertising censorship law was passed, more sex workers are working on the street, making them vulnerable to arrest, violence, and subjugation by pimps.
Finding clients through the internet used to enable them to avoid these dangers.
Everyone: call for giving Flint residents real inspections for lead in the water.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An experiment to eliminate an isolated population of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae with a gene drive has succeeded. Should we eliminate that species of mosquito, together with the other few that carry most malaria?
I think we should do so. There are over 400 species of Anopheles mosquitos, so wiping out a few of them probably won't lead to big changes in ecosystems. Other mosquitos will replace them, and bats and birds will still have food.
Human activity is on track to wipe out a large fraction of all the species on Earth — not intentionally, only as a byproduct of causing global disaster. Instead of sparing a few species that really do hurt us, we should try to protect the hundreds of thousands of species we are likely to extinguish unthinkingly, by curbing our population and our greenhouse gas emissions.
Americans are still in prison, decades after being convicted of arson based on false theories of how fires spread inside a house. The falsity of those theories was recognized over 15 years ago.
Apple plans to lock out independent repair by designing MacBook hardware and software to brick the machine if anyone else replaces the screen.
Recycling is regarded as a feminine trait, so some men reject recycling so that they will not be regarded as "effeminate".
"Consent" for data collection is meaningless because it is impossible to express what actions the consent is for.
Fifty thousand Germans protested to demand and end to burning coal, and to protect a forest that is scheduled to be cut down for coal mining.
Republicans succeeded in putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, with help from Manchin, who calls himself a Democrat but votes with Republicans on all the important issues.
A loophole permits the UK export of surveillance systems to tyrannical states.
Since even states that are not generally considered tyrannical abuse massive surveillance, I think it is becoming necessary to block sale of surveillance systems to any state whatsoever.
An artificial intelligence, or even an artificial non-intelligence, could wield political power by having control of a corporation with no official human owners.
Schools have been closed in London because many harmless spiders have appeared in them.
It's good that Amazon is giving its workers a raise, but the overall effect of Amazon on workers in general is very harmful.
That's not to mention the harm it does to customers' freedom by tracking them and requiring they run nonfree software.
Arguing that Putin's popularity is superficial, and his continued domination of Russia is not assured.
Nauru has ordered Médecins Sans Frontières to stop treating the refugees that Australia has sent there for imprisonment.
Fast food stores are driving obesity, and restrictions on their marketing practices have done nothing to hold them back. They find ways around the restrictions.
Maybe that means we need stricter measures. The spread of obesity is a disaster almost at the same level as global heating.
How Nietzsche's work was altered, after his death, to make him look like a right-wing bigot.
US citizens: Support Sen. Udall's new bill S.3517 to prevent war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Salafi Arabia has jailed or forced into exile most of the women who campaigned for the right to drive a car.
It seems that that the ruler intends that to be the one and only step towards equal rights.
Nadie Murad, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, tells how she was made sex slave by DAESH (*), which made a detailed plan for enslavement of its captives (after killing all prisoners except attractive women).
She later escaped to Germany and started a campaign against enslavement.
* My usual term, PISSI, feels too flip for this context. I've read that the Arabic acronym DAESH means, more or less, "What crushes things".
Rwanda's president Kagame has repressed dissidents for decades. Now he has released over a thousand political prisoners.
He is reputed to govern fairly well in areas other than human rights. He should be able to get reelected honestly, so his repression was gratuitous as well as wrong. I hope he is learning to stop it.
A crowdfunding campaign to support Senator Collins' eventual opponent (but only if she votes for Kavanaugh) has received around 2 million dollars in donations. Recently the site crashed because of the high volume of donations.
I wanted to post a reference to that campaign, but I determined that there was no way to contribute to it without running nonfree Javascript code.
Selling the US Postal Service would be a grave error.
Its financial problems result from a requirement that is not imposed on private companies. Converting it to a private company would fix the problem, to be sure, but simply removing that special requirement would fix it too.
Australian documents show that Australia worked with Nauru to set up Nauru's policy of blocking access to reporters.
The Australian government directly lied about this, pretending that it had no control over its puppet.
The National Council of Churches called for Kavanaugh's Nomination to be withdrawn.
Naturally, Republicans didn't listen.
Nicaraguan protest leader Nahmoy Urbina had to flee the country after being charged with terrorism. Her mother and grandmother were arrested by thugs looking for her.
Other female protesters continue heroically despite repression, defying threats of rape and murder.
The thug that killed Laquan McDonald has been convicted of second degree murder.
Occasionally they are held accountable. It needs to happen more often.
The polygraph is nothing more than pseudoscience — it should be called a "fear detector", or better "anxiety detector", rather than a "lie detector".
Many Facebook posts show person A that B and C are doing something together without A. They tend to make A feel sad and think less intelligently.
Almost all US elected officials are from a privileged background. The article presents several reasons this happens.
San Francisco has accepted a statue recognizing women forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army.
Many of those women felt so ashamed that they never went back to their families afterward. Their culture taught them that they were to blame for what had been done to them, rather than the perpetrators who did it.
You can only be to blame for what you do, or fail to do, never for what others do to you.
The thugs who shot pipeline protester Marcus Mitchell in January 2017 in the eye, and maimed him, face no punishment. But they seek to imprison him for two years, on charges that are evident exaggeration.
His neck is likely to break from his injuries within two years, rendering him a paraplegic.
Some Italians have commissioned a ship flying the Italian flag to rescue drowning refugees. Minister Salvini will not have the authority to block that ship from docking.
America's New Aristocracy Live in an Accountability-Free Zone. No matter what crimes they commit, they are never punished.
ACLU: San Francisco thugs have arrested blacks for selling small amounts of drugs, but never whites.
Green Party Calls for Free Time Index to Replace GDP Measure.
I agree that the GDP is a bad index of how well the economy serves people in general, but I haven't seen a good replacement. It would be good to include something like the Free Time Index, but that alone can't do the job. To take an extreme example, if a lot of people are unemployed and starving, they have lots of free time but it isn't a good situation to be in.
Therefore, a good index needs to include other things. It needs to include some measure of whether people have enough income for a comfortable life, as well as not being overworked to get that income.
Professor Gérard Mourou, who just received the Nobel prize, made a video with students which refers playfully to sex.
I see no wrong in it, but I fear that prudes will try to crucify him.
"My classroom has asbestos and bats": a Message for Betsy DeVos.
"Charge €30 a tonne for CO2 to avoid catastrophic 4C warming."
The wording of the article suggests that when they say "carbon price" they mean a carbon tax. If so, I agree with them, but they are not making the point clear. The same term is used also to refer to emissions trading, which has been ineffective because it was so easy to game.
When UK undercover thug Mark Kennedy pretended to love Kate Wilson, he took notes on her activities of all sorts, and manipulated her life so he could spy on other activists she knew.
US farm policy promotes overproduction, and directs the money towards large intermediaries rather than farmers.
Kavanaugh lied in his testimony about the meaning of the slang that he used in his yearbook.
Here Are the 30 People the FBI Needs to Interview in its Kavanaugh Investigation.
If, that is, it were going to do a proper and thorough investigation.
From London to Shanghai, World's Sinking Cities Face Devastating Floods.
Interpol-China scandal #2: the chief of Interpol, who is Chinese, was disappeared last week on a visit to China.
Interpol-China scandal #1: the head of China's secret police was made chief of Interpol.
Scandal 2 brings discredit on China. Scandal 1 brings discredit on Interpol.
The International Court of Justice ruled that US sanctions against Iran violate a treaty, and that they interfere with humanitarian aid. It ruled that the US should drop these sanctions.
In response, the US cancelled the treaty.
Union of Concerned Scientists: The cheater wants to nominate a saboteur to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Disappeared Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has communicated again after months, with a public confession.
I don't know whether Ms Fan is guilty of tax evasion. I won't claim that is not so. However, mere guilt can't possibly justify holding a prisoner incommunicado, nor torture.
I wish China would stop holding prisoners incommunicado in horrible circumstances. Even more, I wish the US would stop. One expects injustice from China, but the US is supposed to follow a higher standard.
Peru: Decision to Overturn Fujimori Pardon Confirms That Victims’ Rights Must Take Priority Over Political Decisions.
Animal rights activists entered a chicken farm in California and found chickens that were very badly sick. They were arrested and charged with felonies for "stealing" some chickens, which were so ill that veterinarians would not send them back to the farm.
The idea of "rescuing" chickens, especially chickens that are so sick that they couldn't survive anyway, is is a gimmick and doesn't impress me. However, gimmick aside, I support their efforts to reveal the true conditions of farms.
Meanwhile, the cheater plans have the USDA endanger Americans who process or eat chickens: speeding up the processing in a way previously determined to be unsafe.
We Need to Talk About Masculinity.
Somehow I escaped being taught to judge myself in terms of masculinity. I judge myself based on success or failure, but I never took up "having sex with women, regardless of circumstances and feelings" as a goal. Instead, I learned to want to feel loved and wanted by women, and for women to be glad to feel loved by me. My goal will never lead me in the direction of trying to pressure a woman into reluctant sex.
The toxic masculinity goal is sometimes called "scoring", because it treats sexual relations like a game where one gets points. Those points have no meaning, and that imaginary competition can't lead to happiness. It's only an excuse to tell yourself you're "winning". If you are playing that game, I hope you will recognize how pointless it is.
Scientists Say Halting Deforestation 'Just as Urgent' as Reducing Emissions.
"Jeff Bezos runs a powerful monopoly that causes him to exert huge power and control. We shouldn’t be praising him but tackling his power."
A federal court ruled that the bully cannot terminate Temporary Protected Status for people that fled El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Sudan.
The basis of the ruling was that the bully based his decision on racism, rather than on the criteria he is supposed to apply.
Schumer and Feinstein say that the FBI "investigation" of Kavanaugh was a sham.
DARPA is funding a system to use insects to deliver viruses to crops. DARPA says that is meant to benefit farmers, but maybe it is actually for biological warfare.
If the crops are friendly and the farmers are willing, you don't need the insects.
A plan to save samples of the highly diverse intestinal bacteria of people in remote communities.
Nonviolent protesters blocked a deportation flight out of London. Now they are on trial and face possible life imprisonment. Their defense is that they were preventing a crime.
Canada wanted to deport Ebrahim Toure, considering him a menace to Hollywood. But he was totally stateless, so there was no country Canada could send him to. So Canada put him in prison, where he has been for six years, in service of an impossible goal.
A Christian extremist movie says that the bullshitter was sent by "god" to save the world's morality.
According to the restored morality, people will lie and cheat all the time.
This movie's success further demonstrates that the Republican Party has become a cult.
A letter written by Kavanaugh in 1983 provides more evidence that he lied to the Senate about how he lived then.
Wildfires, increasing in many areas due to global heating, are polluting water supplies — sometimes long after the fire.
The fires also release mercury, which ends up in wildlife, which can be unsafe for people to eat.
If civilization survives, we ought eventually to deploy a system to concentrate mercury from the environment, so we remove it from the environment.
Genetic engineers are developing nitrogen fixing bacteria to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (which is made using fossil fuel).
Will these new bacteria be designed to limit how much fixed nitrogen they make? Without negative feedback that would limit the production based on circumstances, what would avoid that?
I also worry about the issue of patents and what this will cost farmers. Patents on the bacteria could make farmers even more dependent. On the other side, if the protection against an excess of these bacteria, and a consequent excess of fixed nitrogen, is that they don't survive very long, does that mean farmers would have to buy more bacteria each year?
Runoff has made the rivers of Iowa toxic — people can't the fish or drink the water.
This runoff includes phosphate as well as nitrate. The bacteria to fix nitrogen would perhaps eliminate the latter but not the former. And no substitution of fertilizer will reduce the outflow from animal feedlots — they only consume the plants.
An Italian right-wing extremist, who wasn't elected when he ran for the right-wing extremist League party, shot immigrants at random as an act of racial hatred. He has been sentenced to prison.
Puerto Rico Has Not Recovered from Hurricane Maria.
US citizens: Boycott the bully's State of the Union speech.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Citizens of California: call on Governor Brown to sign SB 1017, which would phase out use of drift gillnets for fishing.
Drift gillnets kill various species that are not targets for fishing, including dolphins and some whales, and endangered sea turtles.
A federal court ruled that a secret watchlist does not give US border thugs the power to jail people indefinitely with no grounds.
"Lie detectors" are not only pseudoscience, ineffective at determining whether someone is lying, they also enable racial bias.
Australia is suffering rapid deforestation under the policies of its extractivist government. Almost 3000 square miles of native forest have been cut down in 5 years.
Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill to break up financial companies that are above a certain threshold — amounting to 8 of them.
900 US law professors have signed a petition calling for rejection of Kavanaugh, saying that he lacks the temperament and impartiality every judge is supposed to have.
NYC is considering limiting the thug department's use of surveillance technology. The first step is simply to make the thugs say what they do.
The EFF is challenging New York City's law requiring room rental platforms to give a lot of personal data about those who rent out a room.
I agree with the EFF. The city has a valid right to get some limited information, because the public has a valid interest in limiting the amount of loss of rooms people can live in. But it shouldn't get more than what is necessary for this.
Please don't refer to rental as "sharing".
Democratic senators have proposed to require border thugs and deportation thugs to use body cameras.
Body cameras can be an effective check on violence by thugs, but they require systems to ensure that they record at the right times, and laws to stop them from being used to record the full interior of every place that thugs enter and every person that thugs pass.
Especially we need to prohibit passing those people's faces to a face recognition system if they are not observed committing some specific crime.
EPA saboteurs are setting up a two-stage process for cancelling the limits on how much mercury coal plants can emit into the air. They are planning to do likewise for radioactive fallout emitted by coal plants, citing a convenient crackpot theory.
Because India's biometric identification system depends on fingerprints, it often fails for people who have done manual labor for many years and eroded their fingertips.
If the sincere intention is to identify people for welfare benefits, they should be able to take prints from some other part of the body — one which (1) doesn't leave prints on what you touch and (2) won't get worn away.
The report that a daycare center requires children to wear helmets is only partly true, and it isn't totally outrageous. However, the overall issue is real.
Arguing that the aim of everyone in capitalism is to escape from capitalism.
I think that idea has a lot of truth in it, but not 100%. To construct a single thing that nearly everyone in capitalism is trying to escape from, you need to put in more than just capitalism. You need to expand it to include the need to do work (whether for pay or not) and the constraints of living in a society with others. The billionaires are clearly aiming for all of that.
US citizens: call on Daily Kos to make its candidate portals function from a browser that disables JavaScript, so that voters can consult them without having to surrender some of their own freedom.
You can communicate with the site by clicking on General Inquiries on the site's footer, followed by Contact US.
You will be asking for a favor, so please use a friendly tone.
US citizens: support the Justice For All Civil Rights Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Amazon's decision to raise wages to 15 dollars an hour may have been a response to Bernie Sanders's proposed BEZOS act.
Hooray for Bernie Sanders!
In the UK, however, Amazon is canceling out half of the pay increase by reducing bonuses.
Researchers say that psilocybin should be treated legally like prescription sleep medicine.
New Zealand's new law about searching digital devices of people entering the country has an apparent step forward, in that it requires specific grounds for suspicion. But the thugs don't have to say what it is, so the step forward is more apparent than real.
The people that live in Washington DC voted to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, in effect to put an end to their dependence on tipping. The city council, influenced by money from restaurant companies, is in the process of overriding that decision.
The article uses the confused term "people of color". I agree with the article's position but not with that term.
Here's a summary of various kinds of harm that Canada would suffer in the field of copyright if it adopts the NAFTA replacement.
The article confusingly presents a few harms in the area of patent law. It looks like the author is following the confused practice of lumping together several unrelated laws and calling them "intellectual property". The confusion in that term is why we should refuse ever to use it.
The article also uses the word "content" so much that I groan inwardly as I read it. I would have preferred to link to some other article to present this information, but the information is important and I don't know of one.
Former federal prosecutors say that prosecutor Mitchell examined Prof. Blasey Ford only, which is far too little to constitute an adequate basic investigation of her accusations, but Mitchell's report passes it off as one.
This is just one of the flaws they describe, which suggest it is politically motivated.
It looks like the FBI is cutting the Kavanaugh investigation short under pressure from Republican politicians.
However, Senator Collins is now insisting on a thorough FBI investigation of Kavanaugh.
The article presumes, and I agree, that her shifts on the issue are a matter of how seriously she takes the political pressure from various sides. I can't see what pressure could be responsible for her supporting Kavanaugh as much as she has done until this point, despite knowing that her constituents will resent it, but it must be awfully powerful.
I am relieved to see that the anti-Kavanaugh pressure is capable of outweighing that.
Bipartisan Legislation Would Stop ICE from Targeting Immigrants Who Want to Sponsor Migrant Kids.
Detroit protesters, charged with protest-crime, are refusing to accept plea bargains, making the state put them on trial. These trials will put unjust state policies on trial.
Rep. Nunes lets his voters think he has a farm in California in the district. In fact, he sold it in 2006 and gives interviews from someone else's farm.
Many countries prevent the teaching of evolution. Israel and Turkey are joining them.
Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident from Salafi Arabia living in Turkey, entered the Salafi consulate in Istanbul and did not emerge again.
[The bully's] Mocking of Christine Blasey Ford Shows How Women Are Silenced.
(satire) Nation Urged To Be Extra Sensitive To Men Reliving Trauma Of Not Getting Something.
Text messages of Kavanaugh's friends show he was aware of Deborah Ramirez's accusations before they were published. That proves he lied to the Senate about that point.
NAFTA version 2 would weaken the ISDS provision. However, it would make it harder to resist pipelines.
It would permanently limit the EPA's use of scientific research results, and weaken food safety regulations, and facilitate use of toxic pesticides. It would also expand fracking.
It would also extend the length of copyright in Canada, a sad loss for Canada.
When the UK expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, it allowed them to live in the UK. But their grandchildren face deportation to places where they have no connections.
Proposed changes in US laws to prevent future presidents from sabotaging government ethics rules as the bullshitter is doing.
(satire) Paper Towels On Amazon Surge To $2,000 A Roll After Crippling Cost Increase Of Paying Workers A Living Wage.
Amazon has indeed agreed to pay all its workers $15 an hour, but low pay is not the only way it mistreats them.
The cheater presents himself as a "self-made man", but he got $400 million from his father through tax-dodges, some of them alleged to be fraudulent.
The Palestinian Authority sends lots of money to Gaza every month. With the US and Israel crushing the Palestinian Authority, and cutting off its funds, Abbas may decide to stop paying Gaza. This could start a war. It would be rational for Gazans to fight before they starve.
On the other hand, other powers might decide to provide Gazans money to live on.
The "secret nuclear fuel warehouse" Netanyahu claims Iran has is really a known archive of nuclear program records, according to a US official.
States Can't Punish Businesses for Boycotting Israel, Federal Judge in Arizona [rules].
Palestinian prisoners say Israeli guards gave them polluted water to drink, which made some of them sick.
The US does not make a serious effort to provide psychological and psychiatric care to the seriously mentally ill.
It would cost a lot of money, which means we need to tax the rich to pay for it.
George Monbiot: By reducing politics to a celebrity obsession — from Boris to Trump to Corbyn — the media misdirects and confuses us.
Banks and card networks are pushing Britons into using digital payment systems that give them a cut of every payment — and track people, to boot.
Germany has accused right-wing extremists of plotting to overthrow the government by attacking foreigners on the street.
The planned to attack journalists and politicians, too.
The Supreme Court refused to consider the Grand Canyon uranium mining ban, so the ban will stand.
The right-wing Australian government wants to legalize some corrupt campaign donations.
The bullshitter has come out of the closet, affirming that he and President Kim have fallen in love.
I am glad for the two of them, but should the US have a president that is in love with the ruler of another country? Is love an emolument?
Kavanaugh got into a fight in a bar in 1985, and was questioned about it by thugs. A witness described Kavanaugh as "belligerent and aggressive".
This contradicts his statements about being a sober and nonviolent person.
He has been working to recruit witnesses to testify on his behalf. There is a report he was working on countering Ramirez's testimony as early as July. If this is true, it demonstrates another instance of false testimony.
The UK is putting the capstone on its system of massive surveillance of everyone: a system to give every thug access to the surveillance data.
Whole Foods Employees Have Begun to Organize resisting changes Amazon has made. "They want us to be robots."
Australia outsourced the government department that is supposed to help people find jobs. It is 'leading to anxiety rather than jobs.'
A series of prominent Iraqi women who don't stick to traditional restraints have been assassinated.
A New Zealand company with hundreds of employees is moving to a four-day, 32-hour work week with no decrease in salary. It has already tested this approach and decided to adopt it completely.
The Indonesian government has fallen down in delivering food and water to tsunami-hit Sulawesi.
Maybe there should be a National Housing Service to provide housing to everyone.
Studying the contagion of memes, including disinformation.
US Christian fanatics are now seriously trying to eliminate access to birth control. The bully has put a saboteur in charge of the funds for women's medical care to achieve this.
I think these Christians want to force women to have children. Stopping women from ending a pregnancy is half the job — forcing them to get pregnant is the other half.
Convicted kidnaper Equan Yunus was imprisoned and then released, but because he kidnaped a minor (the son of a rival gangster), he is still punished by being placed on the sex offender list. His crime had nothing to do with sex; this is an arbitrary rule.
Some teenagers have been placed on the sex offender list because they were advised to plead guilty to "crimes" even though their actions were innocent.
Even for those who have committed sex crimes, it makes no sense to impose restrictions on them that are impossible to follow.
These restrictions have been heaped on following worst-case thinking. They assume, unrealistically, that everyone on the list is prone to commit all kinds of sex crimes. Any real criminal is prone to commit certain kinds of crimes and not others. The restrictions on any one criminal should be based on what that person might plausibly do.
Citizens of Georgia: the state purged 10% of registered voters last year. By Oct 9, the deadline for registration, call your local election authority to see if you are still registered — and, if not, do register.
I learned of this from a mailing with a reference to a site I can't access, so I am passing on the crucial message this way.
US citizens: oppose the proposed federal voter ID law.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Kellyanne Conway Proves Patriarchy Has No Gender.
In an unequal society, the aristocrats can easily recruit others as their lieutenants, by giving them power over most of the people. In that society, this is the only way for someone other than an aristocrat to get some power, within the system's rules. To change the inequality requires that people seek such change rather than seeking to compete for more power or wealth for themselves.
New iMonsters urge users to use face recognition instead of passwords. That makes it trivial for state agents to unlock them.
I would expect that armed thieves can do the same thing.
The weakest link in cybersecurity is no longer the users. Rather, it is the companies that pressure or lure people to entrust data to them.
Blacks face discrimination in FEMA disaster recovery loans.
A voluntary code to suppress fake news includes a plausible definition of it.
The error of smugness: "By dismissing the masses as fools, progressives confirmed all the culture warriors’ claims."
The Supreme Court refused to hear millionaire Vinod Khosla's case about the California beach from which he seeks to exclude the public. That means the California public access law will stand.
McConnell wants to have a vote on Kavanaugh before the FBI finished its hasty investigation.
US immigration thugs have moved hundreds of minors who are prisoners to a military camp where they will be out of sight and impossible to visit.
How white southerners put over the heroic myth of aristocracy, at the same time they were lynching.
Facebook blocked posting of some news stories about Facebook's data breach affecting 50 million of its useds.
The cracking of these Facebook accounts was made more harmful because Facebook encouraged using its accounts to log in on other sites.
Perhaps that sort of relationship between sites should be prohibited.
This suggests that plans to "eliminate passwords and log in with your phone" are a bad idea, too.
The US needs to reform its system for appointing justices of the Supreme Court; the current one is crippled by partisanship.
Labour leftists want to take Britain out of the EU because it is wired for neoliberalism.
The UK drove Owais Raja and his family into destitution by labeling him a "security threat", and canceling his visa, because he discovered and corrected an error in his tax return.
The UK government has now given him a visa. I hope it will compensate him for the harm done by its deliberate policy of erring on the side of harshness.
Most of all I hope it will change that policy.
A judge reports on sleazy and dishonest practices by prosecutors in regard to plea bargains.
'I Feel like a Slave': St Louis' Workhouse Denounced as a Modern-Day Debtors' Prison.
The Maldives has a chance to move to democracy, but there are many obstacles.
The fanatics that condemned The Satanic Verses launched a global war against freedom of speech. No longer limited to Muslims, it now aims to silence anything that would offend some group of people.
The right to offend is an essential part of freedom of speech. If we are forbidden to offend some groups, sooner or or later we will be forbidden to offend Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, right-wing extremists, rich people, and other groups with political power. Unless you are namby-pamby and timid, sooner or later you will be the victim of that censorship.
Please support the ACLU in defending freedom of speech, including speech that offends someone.
Republican candidates are trying to tell right-wing voters they will ban abortion, while hiding this from the mainstream media and the general public.
Fact Check Shows That Kavanaugh Is a Skilled Liar … But Still a Liar.
Another threat to increase copyright power would allow the Copyright Office to impose fines and injunctions on people without a fair trial.
California thugs that want DNA samples from minors will be required to get a court order, or consent from the minor and parent or guardian.
This is not quite enough; the law should prevent them from obtaining consent by offering or hinting at any quid-pro-quo.
Furthermore, samples (except those of convicts) should be linked to a specific case, and discarded whenever that case is closed.
Vermont has adopted a law to regulate data brokers.
The right way to regulate data brokers is to prevent them from getting their hands on most information about people.
Facebook collected its used's phone numbers for "security" but uses them for advertising.
European investigators report on how Israeli thugs torture Palestinian prisoners.
Alan Singer: Trump Administration Declares Me an Anti-Semite.
I think this is what Singer refers to.
I disagree with the claim that the existence of Israel is racist. By the standards of the day, every nationality deserved a homeland, and Jews desperately needed one. However, the Arabs of Palestine suffered a real injustice and they deserve justice too.
Here's how Uri Avnery presented these two demands for justice.
Everyone: can you find out whether this new Google "smart" thermostat is just or unjust in certain ways?
US citizens: call on the US not to deport parents for claiming benefits for their US citizen children.
Denying medical care and food aid to children can cause them lifelong harm.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Mahatma Gandhi tested his resistance to sexual temptation by sleeping with young naked women, and doing nothing sexual with them.
I find his religious ideas irrational, but I see no harm in what he did. Today's narrow-mindedness would call for putting him in prison.
Gandhi is not the Indian I most admire. That is Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, a firm rationalist and even firmer campaigner against bigotry.
US Justice Department Sues California over New Net Neutrality Law.
The FCC already said that states could not adopt stricter rules, so this confrontation was predictable. That's why some other states decided instead to adopt rules about what ISPs the state could do business with.
I hope California wins, but that is unlikely if Kavanaugh has anything to say about it.
As a Wealthy, Warm Country, the US Would Benefit from Implementing a Carbon Tax to Slow Global [Heating].
The FBI investigation of Kavanaugh will be very limited. The FBI will not interview several pertinent witnesses.
The bullshitter says he did not impose those limits, but that could be bullshit.
Brace for Impact, as the Climate "End Game" Has Arrived.
When new fathers take care of their babies alone, their relationship with the babies' mothers becomes much more stable.
Israeli troops have recently shot and killed Palestinian children as young as 11.
Apple's "smart" watch could get you arrested by calling 911.
Based on results in psychology, there is a lot of evidence that Kavanaugh is lying.
His background of privilege teaches many people to think they are empowered to lie and entitled to do so.
Bernie Sanders calls on the FBI to investigate whether Kavanaugh has lied in his testimony.
Houston Officials Halt Proposed Plans to Open First US 'Robot Brothel'.
The hostility towards this business, which would employ no human sex workers, demonstrates that repression of sex work is based to a substantial degree on prudish disapproval.
To help the people that do sex work reluctantly, we should not repress sex work for those who choose to do it. What we should do is give poor people a bigger share of income.
To free those who are enslaved and forced to do sex work, let's use methods that will also free the people who are enslaved doing other kinds of work.
Huge Protests in Brazil as Far-Right Presidential Hopeful Returns Home.
He seems to be a lot like Do-dirty.
A few parents who were deported without their children are sneaking into the US to find them again.
Australia is thinking of demanding back doors to install different software into computers and phones, claiming this would be something other than a "security weakness".
Elizabeth Warren is considering running for president in 2020.
I will vote for her if she is the Democratic nominee and Sanders is not running, but I'd rather elect Sanders. His criticism of plutocracy is deeper and broader.
Amal Fathy posted a video criticizing sexual harassment she experienced at a bank in Egypt. She received an absurd assortment of criminal charges and has now been sentenced to two years in prison.
For your own safety, stay away from Egypt. Spend your money on some other country.
Zimbabwe's New Artistic Freedoms Are Tested by Film on Matabeleland Violence.
Arguing that Nobel prizes don't fit into the modern form of scientific research.
Instagram and WhatsApp will be fully integrated into Facebook's surveillance network.
I never trusted them to be truly separate.
Afghanistan is planning a parliamentary election for Oct 30, but it has been delayed for 3 years and may not be possible now.
An interview with the founder of Bellingcat.
World 'Nowhere Near on Track' to Avoid [heating] Beyond 1.5C Target.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a report admitting that the world is on track for 4C of global heating in this century.
However, the same report supports cancellation of vehicle efficiency rules on the grounds that that alone wouldn't be enough to avoid disaster.
Of course it wouldn't — that's why more and broader measures are needed, and proposed.
That's one of the tactics in the planet roasters' playbook: to oppose each measure because "this alone wouldn't be enough."
While Everyone Is Looking at the Senate, the EPA Is Being Taken Apart.
Senator Collins is misrepresenting the criticism and opposition she is now getting from Mainers.
"It's fairly obvious that Kavanaugh cannot be trusted, but there's more to it than that."
The UK encourages universities to act like businesses and treat students as customers. The result is that they mislead and cheat their customers like businesses.
(satire) Kavanaugh is greatly impressed by the Supreme Court's hazing rituals.
When Police Use Disappearing-Message Apps, It's Not Just Bad for Accountability — It's Illegal.
US citizens: keep phoning your senators at 1-844-778-3056 to tell them to reject Kavanaugh.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Climate Risk Disclosure Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Interviews with the protesters that convinced Senator Flake to demand a delay in confirming Kavanaugh.
Macron dares to point out that Africa needs to reduce its birth rate, not scrabble desperately to keep up with it.
The latest example of totally inadequate "privacy protection" laws, this one assumes the danger to users of the Internet of Stings is limited to unauthorized access by third parties.
Fracking Chemicals Dumped in Allegheny River a Decade Ago Entered Food Chain. They were found in the shells of mussels that were growing that year.
Mussels grown since that discharge was prohibited still show signs of those chemicals.
Freshwater mussels are endangered and this probably contributes to the danger.
Canadians, watch out! Canada might follow the EU and US in censoring the internet in the name of copyright.
The article gives undeserved support to the companies that want to impose these restrictions by calling music-sharing "piracy" and referring to it as a "sin". Sharing is virtuous! The first step in defeating the copyright industry is to refuse to spread its propaganda.
If Canada wants to punish the bullshitter, it should do so by legalizing sharing of all published works. Indeed, it should do that regardless of what the US government is doing.
"Evidence shows that privileged families will stop at nothing to prevent their children being overtaken [by anyone else's children]."
Society needs social mobility so that we don't end up with incompetent aristos in charge and so that people from poor families get heard. But social mobility is not a solution to the problem of poverty. The small chance of becoming wealthy is of no benefit to the poor children who don't become wealthy (which is most of them).
Growing up in poverty and hardship stunts children's growth, including their mental growth, so when judged on their "merits" later they will be consigned to poverty.
The solution to poverty is to redistribute the wealth and income. When no child grows up in hardship, no child will be stunted. Indirectly, this will help social mobility too.
The text of Christine Blasey Ford's statement.
Sanders and some Democratic senators have introduced a bill to explicitly disallow a US aggression against Iran.
John Hancock insurance is pressuring people to give their personal data to Apple or Fitbit.
The insurance company should offer an alternative which collects only the exercise data, not people's locations or the time of day when they walk, and sends it only to the insurance company, which will store only the overall totals that are pertinent.
The only rational need for life insurance is if you have long-term dependents. If you do the wise thing and avoid having children, you probably won't need life insurance anyway.
SCROTUS's lawyers made discussions about Deborah Ramirez's testimony break down by switching from phone calls to written communication. They also demanded a full description of her evidence in writing before they would even decide to invite her to testify. Sounds like they wanted the negotiation to fail.
Then they blamed it on Ramirez's lawyers.
Hurricane Maria gave vulture funds an opportunity to buy Puerto Rican debt cheap. It looks like they want funds supposedly for Puerto Rico's rebuilding to be given to them instead.
Puerto Rico deserves an opportunity to declare bankruptcy and make those debts disappear. That the vultures will lose a lot of money is an additional secondary reason for this.
Don't treat Salafi Arabia like a banana republic!
For one thing, it's not even a republic. It is an absolute monarchy with an imposed religion.
Big tech companies propose a federal data privacy law that is intended to do an inadequate job while prohibiting states from doing any better.
They want the law to be weaker than the EU's GDPR, which itself is not strong enough to do much good.
Anything that regulates mainly the use of their collections of personal data, and fails to limit what data they can collect, is missing the point.
Senate Republicans agreed to delay the final vote on Kavanaugh by one week for the FBI to investigate the various rape and groping accusations against him.
Is one week really enough to do that?
Normal FBI investigations of nominees do not examine their conduct as juveniles. But even if they did, they had no reports to look into until the recent accusations were reported.
"Kavanaugh has revealed the insidious force in global politics: toxic masculinity."
Articles that opposed the conclusion that glyphosate causes cancer turn out to have been secretly arranged by Bayer (formerly Monsanto), which even paid some of the authors.
51 unauthorized immigrants in the US are living in churches that have offered them sanctuary. One, Edith Espinal, has spent a whole year in refuge in a church.
In the US: say that you believe Christine Blasey Ford.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Just after Kavanaugh cited his approval by the ABA, the ABA called for suspending the process of confirming him, so the FBI can investigate.
(satire) A Coca Cola water tanker ship exploded off the coast of Mexico, leaving marine animals drenched. Water is now washing up on the coast.
ARPA-E funds projects for efficient energy storage. Congress has not let the bully kill it.
Evidence suggests many patent examiners are influenced corruptly by the prospect of future employment by businesses that get patents.
The future employment they seek is, effectively, lobbying patent examiners on behalf of those businesses.
A store sold its old servers, and the disks were sold with customers' personal data which is now being used to harm those customers.
The obvious way to try to prevent repetition of this specific problem is with a law about disposal of servers' disks.
The deeper way to fix this and many other problems caused by stores' personal data is not to allow stores to collect any. Stores should not be allowed to track their customers.
McDonald's workers held a one-day strike against sexual harassment on the job, which they say often includes groping by supervisors.
Dubya offered Americans paths to have their student debts "forgiven", but those paths are strewn with obstacles and your chances of reaching the goal are roughly zero. Loan companies neglect to inform people of the fine print, leading them to fail.
Fan Bingbing's Disappearance Shows No One Is Safe from Beijing.
I know very little about that actress, and I have no reason to conclude that the charges are political. For all I know, she might be guilty of tax evasion. Or not.
But this is not the way suspects ought to be treated.
The Mexican federal government took direct control of the Acapulco thug department and arrested thugs suspected of working with criminal gangs.
The War on Drugs fuels those gangs. If limited to other kinds of crime, the gangs would not disappear, but they couldn't get as much money.
Court Won't Let FBI Dodge Lawsuit By Removing American Citizen From No-Fly List Shortly After Being Sued.
About the teenage activist pushing for Right to Repair in Michigan.
Sad to say, the article does not hint at the ethical points. Americans have been taught that businesses are fundamentally entitled to treat customers in any way that customers will go along with, and only certain kinds of arguments can be used against that.
Journalist-investigators say they have identified one of the poisoners of the Skripals as a Russian intelligence colonel.
Half the world's orca population will be killed by PCBs that continue leaking into the ocean.
A treaty calls for destroying the PCBs that were produced decades ago, but only the US has actually tried to do it.
The former governor of Veracruz has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for corruption.
UK anti-fracking activists, jailed for nonviolently blocking fracking activities, stand firm and say that they will win the battle against fracking.
ACLU: Greyhound continues to let US border thugs board a bus and demand to see passengers' id — and pretends that it has no choice.
Google is trying to fudge the wrong of censoring for China by denying that it's censorship.
Platform Censorship: Lessons From the Copyright Wars. Basically, forcing web sites to censor "fake news", "terrorism" or "hatred" will censor a lot more than that.
As I read the article, the repeated use of "content" as a noun irritated me. I also grit my teeth when I see some publications referred to as "unlawful" when really they only infringe copyright, and by the verb "monetize".
I linked to the article despite that because its point is important.
I wish there were another article I could link to instead.
The speculative investment vehicles that gave us the fiscal crisis of 2008 are banned, but banks are selling something quite similar.
Tesla's giant storage battery in Australia has recovered 1/3 of its construction cost in one year.
Clearly the world needs a lot more storage batteries.
Selling blood products for big profit led to disaster in China; it spread HIV among the donors and perhaps a million of them, perhaps more, died from that.
The US blood system is heading in the same direction. depending on testing carried out by people whose imperative is to work fast.
Adultery Is Not a Crime, India's Supreme Court Rules.
This is to say, a wife is not her husband's property.
Describing corruption in Argentina as the 'main structure of power'.
A large illegal fishing operation threatened to wipe out sea cucumbers off the coast of Washington State. The authorized fishing operations were cut way back to give the sea cucumbers a chance to increase their population.
Most US children, age 8-11, spend too much time using digital screens and not enough time sleeping.
This is associated with poorer cognitive development, but that leaves the question of which causes which.
Perhaps starting school at a later hour would help them get more sleep.
Anger at Dutch Plan to Ask Race And Religion of Gun Licence Applicants.
Political views, too.
The sacking of Puerto Rico began long before Hurricane Maria.
Disaster capitalism (through their subsidiary, the US government) demanded crushing cuts in all public services including education and medicine; to get this, it eliminated democratic government there.
Italy's right-wing government is making a bigoted right-wing liar president of the state radio/tv broadcaster Rai.
Palestine: The Testbed for Trump's Plan to Tear up the Rules-Based International Order.
Israel Gives Palestinians Eight Days to Leave Khan al-Ahmar.
A delegation of European parliamentarians warned Israel that demolishing Khan al-Ahmar could be considered a war crime.
Khan al-Ahmar unites the two halves into which Israel has divided the West Bank. If it is destroyed, Palestinians will be unable to travel between the two except by passing through zones controlled by Israel.
Edward Snowden describes Malkia Cyril, a campaigner against surveillance in the US.
The EPA's Inspector General reports that the EPA is too quick to grant "emergency" special approval for pesticide use, and that it fails to measure properly the risks of harm to humans and wildlife.
Facebook gets advice about what news is "fake" from two partisan organizations, the National Democratic Institute (representing "centrist" plutocratist mainstream Democratic Party) and the International Republican Institute (representing the theocratic-plutocratist Republican Party).
Naturally this tends to label anything that doesn't sustain plutocracy as "fake".
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-248-4061 and call on them to hold Kavanaugh's confirmation process for an FBI investigation, and vote against him if that isn't done.
If you phone, please spread the word!
In another act against Americans' safety, the US has canceled a rule requiring oil trains to upgrade to computer-controlled brakes.
The saboteur in charge was convinced by the argument that the cost of upgrading the brakes exceeds the worth of lives that might be lost in explosions from runaway trains.
If you would like to stop the US deportation thugs, one way is to boycott companies that serve the US deportation thug department.
There are many reasons to boycott the big banks and Amazon.
A deradicalization system in Australia explains how it operates: finding people holding an intense grudge who might get tipped into an insane desire for violence, then working with them.
Some of these grievances might be due to real injustices.
One Somali boy was "mistakenly accused of swearing at police." The word "accused" has a range of meanings. Did someone merely say that the boy uttered curse words at some thugs? That's a valid meaning, but it seems unlikely to have resulted in a lasting grudge.
I have a hunch that insulting a thug is a crime in Australia, and that the boy was charged with this "crime". That would not justify terrorism, but it would justify the grudge.
If that is what happened, Australia should repeal that law and apologize to everyone prosecuted under it. Insulting people is part of freedom of speech. People deserve the right to curse at thugs, at elected officials, at you, even at me.
Some US electric utilities are running their expensive coal plants and charging customers extra to pay for that, rather than buying cheaper electricity to resell.
One issue where the bullshitter is right: he condemns the idea of surrendering the state to globalization — to the power of foreign business.
The ironic part is that he bows down eagerly to business on all other aspects of policy.
The ever-bubbling civil war in the DR Congo impeded vaccination against Ebola.
Saboteur Nielsen, head of the Department of Harsh Sadism, chose a policy recommended by staff as a way to deter unauthorized immigration and that they acknowledged would mean taking children (and teenagers) away from their parents. Subsequently she lied repeatedly about those two facts.
Important Democrats in Congress now support a resolution to stop supporting Salafi Arabia in attacking Yemen.
Julie Swetnick swears that Kavanaugh and Mark Judge used to put drugs in the punch at their house parties so as to make girls lose their inhibitions, or even incapacitate them so a series of boys could rape them.
She was once drugged to the point where she could not resist being repeatedly raped. She doesn't claim that Kavanaugh was one of the rapists, but they allowed it to happen.
Several friends of Prof. Blasey Ford have signed statements that she told them about Kavanaugh's rape attempt years ago, as far back as 2012. To some she said his name; to another she said, "He's now a federal judge."
The Jailing of Fracking Protesters Tells Us We Are Winning This Fight. However, the UK is escalating repression of nonviolent protest on many different issues.
The author is one of the leaders of the UK Green Party, and was arrested (but not jailed) for a similar nonviolent protest.
The saboteurs' elimination of the methane leaks rule will make natural gas as dirty as coal.
Civilian casualties in Yemen have more than doubled since June.
George Monbiot: While Economic Growth Continues We'll Never Kick Our Fossil Fuels Habit.
Privacy International: UK Intelligence Agency Admits Unlawfully Spying on Privacy International.
India's supreme court ruled that many important activities may not require a biometric id number. However, since paying taxes does require it, in practice it is impossible for Indians to escape.
Glaciers can move up to 80 feet per day. Global heating has made many glaciers move fast enough to change visibly from day to day.
EU, China and Russia set up a special financial institution to help insulate their trade with Iran from US sanctions.
The stockholders of American Outdoor Brands voted to require the company to record what its gun company subsidiary, Smith and Wesson, is doing to monitor and reduce gun violence.
Of all the countries on Earth, the US is the second-most-vulnerable to damage from global heating.
China is building more coal capacity that would amount to a 25% increase.
Could it be that China wants to provoke disaster because the US will lose more from it than China will? That's the same as the bullshitter's attitude towards a trade war. No, I'm not seriously proposing that theory.
The most vulnerable country is India, which China is not particularly friendly toward either.
Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of patients getting blood transfusions in the UK around 1980 were infected with HIV in the process. An investigation has found that their medical record suffered deletions and even fake additions as a cover-up.
Similar infections occurred in the US and France. The medical systems were not designed to prevent this sort of thing.
The sadist's officials are dragging their feet in obeying the court order to reunite immigrant minors that were taken away from their families. Almost 200 have not yet been reunited.
Kavanaugh's acquaintances and record present him as frequently violent and frequently drunk, and motivated by hatreds.
In several fields, business funding for research serves to distract research from issues the businesses don't want explored, and distorts public policy.
Paris Man Jailed for Three Months for Slapping Woman's Bottom.
I agree with this decision. He physically attacked her.
If it were just a matter of his verbal remarks, I would disapprove of them (it is nasty to insult strangers for no good reason), but insults should not be a crime.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter and senators to cosponsor the LYNE act, which would stop the development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons which are more conducive to actually using them.
US citizens: tell Saboteur of the Interior Zinke to drop the plan to charge high fees for protesting in Washington DC.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter, and call on them to remove the drone shoot-down provision and the biometric surveillance provision from from the FAA reauthorization bill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: contribute to the Medicare for All PAC.
All you need to do is send a check to
PO Box 21912
Seattle, WA 98111
Arguments for a global ban on nuclear weapons.
The bully is now terrorizing authorized immigrants, threatening to deny them permanent residency if they get get federal benefits for the health of their children, who are entitled because they are US citizens.
Adapting Dutch technology and spending $15 billion dollars could enable Houston to avoid a much larger sum in flood damage from future hurricanes.
The sad thing is, the US has become so downtrodden that it no longer has the gumption to tax companies so it can do important jobs. Thus, this job can be done only if companies graciously bestow their sponsorship. Then they will ask us to be grateful for it.
Campaigners Fear Creeping Privatisation of El Salvador's Water.
Climate Gentrification: the Rich Can Afford to Move — What About the Poor?
Ex-UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Says US Healthcare System Is 'Morally Wrong'.
He also acknowledged that businesses are blocking a national health system for their profits' sake.
Philippine Senator Trillanes, who had been sheltering in the senate hall, has been arrested.
Joshua trees may disappear from Joshua Tree National Park as a result of global heating effects.
The Republican Party Is About to Face the Wrath of Women.
Existing US border walls along parts of the border with Mexico damage infrastructure and the environment.
They don't stop people from trying to enter the US illegally, but do push them into more risky routes on which a greater fraction die.
I think that is the border thugs' intention, judging from the way they destroy water supplies left by humanitarians.
China is gaining influence in the UN's defense of human rights, and won't use that for good.
Whether it will do more evil than the US directed by the bully remains to be seen.
Glyphosate can harm honeybees by damaging their normal intestinal bacteria. This is in addition to other indirect forms of harm.
France and the US are pressuring for a permanent arrangement for Idlib and for the removal of Iranian forces from Syria.
If you discuss political activity as a game between teams, in which the sides can win or lose points, you're missing the point.
US citizens: call on the FCC to investigate failures of Puerto Rico's communications infrastructure after Hurricane Maria.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose SITSA, which would give the attorney general the power to ban any drug arbitrarily.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US parents are now invited to track their teenage offspring like convicts on parole.
Australia has permitted Nauru to block badly ill refugees from being brought to Australia under a court order. The Australian judge ruled that Australia is responsible for that difficulty.
Victoire Ingabire, a Rwandan opposition leader, has been released from prison and vows to continue the struggle despite the danger she will be imprisoned again.
President Kagame represses human rights harshly.
Italy pressured Panama to cancel the operating permission for Médecins Sans Frontières' ship that rescues drowning migrants.
Low Pay, Poor Prospects, And Psychological Toll: The Perils of Microtask Work.
The Endangered Species Act functions very effectively. 99% of the species that have been protected are still living.
Perhaps that's why Republican saboteurs are trying to destroy it.
Shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Is a Disaster for Paleontology.
Researchers have discovered how to hide voice commands in other audio, so that people cannot hear them, but Alexa and Siri can.
US national parks are heating up faster than most of the US. Some are forecast to suffer 9C of heating (16F) in this century. Today's local species will go extinct if they can't move elsewhere.
What is Glacier National Park if it doesn’t have glaciers anymore? To an environmentalist, it's a tragedy. To an extractivist, it's an opportunity for mining.
Thousands of Americans are moving to higher ground, fleeing from global heating.
In 30 years it will be hundreds of thousands.
Some decades later, it will be millions. We can't predict how many millions; the climate models don't allow for the methane that will be released by melting permafrost, since we don't know how much that will be.
Currently 30,000 households are being squeezed out.
China has banned the Hong Kong independence party entirely.
China is stepping up its control and repression in Hong Kong by steps. Just a few years ago it banned individual candidates from the election for advocating independence.
As long as it faces no penalty for this, China can keep pushing.
India's government offers gratis medical care for all the poor.
I hope it includes the most effective forms of birth control.
Deborah Ramirez accuses Kavanaugh of attacking her sexually while he was at Yale.
Two other women make accusations against Kavanaugh, not yet publicly.
Big Pharma companies route their profits through Ireland so as to avoid taxes in various poor countries.
My tax proposal would prevent that.
Kavanaugh claims to be a strict constructionist, following the text of the Constitution literally — but that's only when he can use that to justify deregulation. Sometimes he rules for deregulation by inventing a fanciful interpretation of the Constitution.
Apparently his approach to the Constitution is better described as, "Deregulation by hook or by crook."
A terrorist attack in Iran may have been funded by Salafi Arabia with the purpose of pushing Iran to retaliate and give the bully an excuse for war.
OPEC predicts that coal and oil usage will increase for decades.
If that happens, it won't continue for the rest of the century. The poverty, hunger and wars will stop it. However, that is not a second-best solution; that is failure.
President Yameen of the Maldives was defeated. Apparently he was unable to rig the election.
Plutocratist governments in Central America are forcing peasants off their land and converting it to plantations or mines. Sometimes women organize and stop them.
Since 1990, 1/4 of Australian [ex-]Ministers Go on to Work for Lobbyists or Special Interests, according to a study that tracked each one's career.
The author of the report said that this is not necessarily bad, Perhaps I'd agree, if each one had been surprised to receive a cushy job after leaving government office.
Let's not be naive. Government officials know they will be offered such work, and their decisions while in office are likely to be influenced by the prospect. Accepting a job that is unofficially contingent on their policies is morally equivalent to taking a bribe.
I've always found this quotation inspiring: "I'm not trying to change the world. I'm trying to stop the world from changing me."
I used to attribute the quote to Thoreau, but it seems that was mistaken: it is actually from Ammon Hennacy.
I have succeeded in changing the world to some extent, and I am still trying to achieve more. At the same time, I see how the use of nonfree software, and digital dis-services, has changed others for the worse. Millions surrender their freedom and privacy without moving a muscle to protect it. They run freedom-denying software that snoops on them constantly. They let Facebook use them. They play nonfree video games for hours, killing time which they could have used for something meaningful, and learning nothing except how to retreat from society.
Even if they would find it hard work to resist these evils 100%, there are surely parts they could easily resist. It sure looks like malicious technology has changed them for the worse.
Please don't let it change you!
Right-wingers are posting long lists of supposed non-citizens who are voting, presented as proof there is a big problem of invalid voters.
They are being sued by US citizens whose names they falsely posted.
"Land-based bird populations are becoming confined to nature reserves in some parts of the world—raising the risk of global extinction—due to the loss of suitable habitat."
Cambodia has pardoned Australia documentalist Ricketson on the recommendation of the tyrant that had him prosecuted, calling making photos of a rally "spying".
This is a common ploy for governments enforcing unjust laws: prosecute someone, who is of course convicted, then pardon the victim. It serves to scare people into obeying the unjust law, while avoiding the odium that would follow from keeping journalists in prison.
Prof. Blasey Ford agreed to testify to the Senate on Thursday, but other details have not been agreed on.
This includes such as whether they will call in some lawyer to talk with her (being too cowardly to do so themselves).
The bully's saboteurs are going to cut Head Start and cancer research to fund their prisons for immigrant minors.
The article says "children", but I am pretty sure the prisoners range up through age 17. Some are children, and some are teenagers.
Citizens of North Carolina: fight against Republican voter-purging.
I can't test this, since I am not from North Carolina and should not sign. If you find that this petition can't be signed with Javascript disabled entirely, and can't be signed with LibreJS active, please email me (rms at the GNU project site) so I can delete it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
One of the bully's appointed federal judge disregarded the facts to make a partisan decision in favor of right-wing counterprotestors.
The bully's policy of arresting unauthorized immigrants if they go to court succeeds in scaring many of them away from seeking protection against domestic violence.
It took the US State Department just one week to publish a sham environmental review of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Protests are planned at the Salesforce annual event, demanding that the company stop serving the US border thugs.
(satire) Trump Asks Why Kavanaugh Accuser Didn’t Just Immediately Request Hush Money.
Israelis Experience Palestinian Home Life in Virtual Reality.
They see the home of a specific Palestinian family that volunteered for this.
Sessions has ordered immigration judges to be cruel, strict, callous and merciless.
The reason Republicans intend to vote for Kavanaugh no matter what is that he is part of the same plutocratist group as four other right-wing justices. They will turn the US into hell for all except the favored classes.
Pompeo condemned China for putting around a million Uighurs in brainwashing camps.
Someone else called this "The pot calling the kettle black", but that is not correct. What Chine has done is comparable to putting a million people in Guantanamo. The US put only a thousand people, total, in Guantanamo. Even today it is possible to be worse than the US.
When Pompeo talks about "stealing intellectual property", he spreads confusion. That term invariably has that effect because it doesn't fit reality.
US mainstream media covered Hurricane Florence, but very rarely connected it to its human cause.
An Italian judge freed the Tunisian fishermen, victims of the right-wing attempt to criminalize the act of rescuing migrants from drowning.
This won't end the threat. Right-wingers trying to pervert justice never give up.
SCROTUS have delayed the last Kavanaugh hearing rather than tell Ford "Too late!"
NASA Launches Satellite to Precisely Track How Earth's Ice Is Melting.
I wonder if the denialist will order the satellite deorbited in December.
Maine is moving to prohibit protesting by projecting images onto the state capitol building.
The practice does not hurt anyone, but there is a general tendency to repress effective protest in the US. If it can attract the attention of substantial numbers of people, politicians that don't represent the public will find some excuse to stop you.
Call on mutual fund companies to support the shareholder resolution to make American Outdoor Brands stop supporting the NRA, and be clear about what it is (and what it isn't) doing in claimed efforts to reduce gun violence.
The company is a conglomerate, but its main business is guns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The cheater wants to reduce capital gains taxes, to offer the rich yet another handout. Rather than change income tax law, he wants to disregard it.
The UK denies citizenship to teenagers for petty crimes, and seeks to deport them to countries they would hardly remember and where they may not know anyone.
Citizens of New Jersey: call your state legislators to support the law that stores must accept cash.
You can support cash (and your privacy) more by actually insisting on cash when you buy things in stores, and refusing to give your name. I do this, and so can you.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reject building more prisons for immigrant families.
The problem is not space to imprison them, the problem is imprisoning them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Kavanaugh (as an appeals court judge).
If SCROTUS put him on the Supreme Court, we will want to impeach him from there. Convenient that there are several valid grounds already, including attempted rape and lying to the senate at least twice.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Removing the bullshitter from office using the 25th amendment would run into the same obstacle as impeachment: requiring a 2/3 majority in Congress.
The UK thug chiefs said they never approved of letting infiltrator Mark Kennedy pretend to love Kate Wilson, hoping she would forgive them. Now we know that they were lying.
The new "expressvote" voting machine offers to print a paper ballot for the user to check — but invites the user to speed up the process by saying "skip the check."
Alaska's salmon are threatened once again, by several kinds of human activity.
Kavanaugh's defenders decided to fabricate an accusation that a specific man, other than Kavanaugh, was the one who tried to rape Professor Blasey Ford.
That's libel, isn't it?
Duke Energy, in North Carolina, is directly partially responsible for the hurricane's flooding in that state.
Cuts to Cancer Research, Head Start, and Women's Shelters Among $226 Million Diverted to Pay for [imprisonment of immigrant minors].
Senator Grassley's staffer admitted that Republicans plan to confirm Kavanaugh "no matter what."
The citizens of Washington, DC, voted for an initiative to increase the minimum wage. The city council decided to cancel it, showing it represents the businesses, not the voters.
Oakland is setting up sheds for homeless people to move to.
It seems like a positive step for me, but we shouldn't accept as a permanent solution that poor people have to live in sheds. The US is not so poor that it can't afford housing for everyone at the usual standards.
The US government is refusing passports to natural born US citizens, saying that their birth certificates are not good enough.
A Republican Member of Congress Wants [gratis] Public Access to Judicial Records.
It is a good idea, and I won't criticize it because of who supports it.
Verizon blocked people in North Carolina from getting their email and storm updates, saying "Pay for higher priority if you want any service."
The Seattle Mariners squeezed another 135 million dollars out of the city of Seattle. The city council came close to rejecting the demand, but did not quite get there.
I think there should be a federal law that prohibits cities and states from subsidizing sports teams either directly or indirectly.
Oregon's bottle recycling program now handles refillable bottles for breweries. They don't need to be ground up and melted and made into new bottles.
It is good to see such beginning steps, but if we don't scale it far up we are still screwed.
Rice University will spare low-income and middle-income students the need to borrow money.
The FCC has rewarded the giant wireless companies at the expense of US cities.
Just reminds us of who the FCC now tries to serve.
Normally anyone investigating an accusation of rape is fortunate to have another witness, a chance to find the truth. The fact that SCROTUS did not call him to testify is yet more proof that their goal is to cover up the truth.
The weakness of truth in contending with lies is like a deficiency in society's immune system.
The report about how the bullshitter will not accept corrections even on insignificant details suggests that he considers himself infallible, and that he is out of touch with reality. Is that enough to judge him mentally incompetent and institutionalize him?
The US deportation thugs imprison children as bait to deport relatives that offer to receive them.
How Congress Can End the War in Yemen. It looks like Congress's will is moving slowly in that direction.
There is no legitimate reason for the US to involve itself in Yemen's civil war. No reason for the US to maintain special hostility to Iran, either. That country is dominated by a repressive theocracy, but it is not as repressive, nor as harsh in its theocracy, as Salafi Arabia, which the US is supporting.
"Dr. Blasey Ford has zero to gain from lying and everything to lose. Brett Kavanaugh on the other hand has a repeated and well documented history of lying to and misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee."
The coup-running "president" of the Maldives seems to be trying to rig the coming election.
I suspect that "president" Yameen's coup was organized by fossil fuel interests.
In recent years he has put the country in China's pocket by accepting loans for unnecessary projects, such as a bridge that in a few decades will connect one patch of ocean to another patch of ocean.
We need an international system for countries that have emerged from dictatorship to repudiate the debts imposed by tyrants and corrupt rulers. That will teach plutocrats to stop trying to enslave countries through lending to those rulers.
When the islands are awash and no one lives there any more, China will foreclose on them and build a naval base there.
The bullshitter is systematically removing regulations that protect birds. He has even allowed shooting birds with lead, which tends to poison carrion eaters and introduce lead into the whole ecosystem.
Australia has refused to resume sending ships to oppose Japan's "commercial" whaling, but holds out as consolation that it just perhaps might launch a legal challenge of some kind.
I would be glad if Australia really did that, but I think this is just a way of letting people down gently step by step.
Yet another danger of Kavanaugh: he could eliminate California's law that requires public access to all beaches.
The thug that killed Botham Shem Jean while he was minding his own business has been protected from normal investigation of suspects through the schemes that thugs have set up to protect themselves from justice, as well as unofficial privilege.
A former US border thug is reporting on the cruelty towards migrants that he found to be standard practice in the thug agency.
It must be worse under the influence of the bully. His views will have empowered all the thug commanders that are looking for someone to be cruel to.
A former official says that, by usual standards, the FBI should investigate the attempted rape accusations against Kavanaugh.
The US ordered two Chinese government "journalism" organizations to register as foreign agents.
That seems legitimate to me.
Calling on Spain to repeal its law against blasphemy.
Valentino Dixon was wrongly convicted of murder in a trial that hardly bothers to respect the rights of the accused. He had a lucky break and received national attention, after which it was discovered that his conviction was based on insufficient evidence, and he was freed.
We ought to give every murder case this sort of attention the first time.
MDMA makes octopuses sociable.
This indicates similarity between brains whose evolution has been separate for 500 million years. Perhaps with all animal's brains.
Private firefighting companies remind us of how the Roman Republic turned into an empire.
Marcus Aurelius Crassus became the richest man in Rome with his private firefighting company. When a house caught fire, he offered to buy it immediately for a low price. If the owner sold him the house, Crassus put out the fire.
[Weakened] environmental regulations heighten risk during natural disasters.
Hurricane Florence caused the worst flood in the history of the American east coast.
The US has imprisoned almost 13000 immigrants that are minors. (Some hundreds were taken away from families; most arrived alone.) Many of them are being forcibly drugged with sedatives.
Don't get a laptop that charges through USB-C. It is inherently vulnerable.
It is a shame that the article uses "hacker" to mean "security-breaker". Please distinguish the two by calling the latter a "cracker".
In a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy, the traffickers generally force one passenger, at gunpoint, to drive the boat. If that one is not up to the task, another passenger may take the controls so that they don't all drown.
Whichever migrant drives the boat to Italy is likely to be jailed and charged with "aiding illegal immigration".
Barriers at the edges of undersea glaciers could retard them from sliding into the sea and raising sea level.
The US is planning to treat pipeline protesters as terrorists.
The attack on Hodeida by Salafi Arabia, with US support, has made food expensive. Any worse, and famine will affect millions of children. Some are already starving.
Air Pollution (NO2) Linked to Much Greater Risk of Dementia.
AI censors were unable to distinguish between terrorist propaganda and evidence of atrocities.
The distinction is a matter of the overall statement, not merely what images contain, and making the distinction requires actual understanding — a trained neural network can't do it.
Countries just now reported to the UN Human Rights Council for arbitrary imprisonment include Australia, Burundi, China, the Congo (which one?), Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Israel, Pakistan, South Korea, the US, Zimbabwe. Maybe more.
The US is trying to hijack UN drug policy and drag it in the direction of repression.
The Capitalist Manifesto: Let Poor People Die. Or, as I put it, plutocrats want a laissez-faire, laissez-mourir economy.
I must point out that having over 7 billion humans, and perhaps someday 11 billion, is not merely a job that plutocrats prevent us from handling. It is a grave problem in its own right, and the only way to truly handle that population growth is to reduce the birth rate enough that the population declines. No economic system could keep us out of poverty indefinitely with an increasing population. We are using Earth's resources almost twice as fast as Earth can replace them.
Several women are suing Facebook for implementing gender discrimination in employment advertisements.
The agreement between Turkey and Russia over Idlib is only for one month.
Thugs in London arbitrarily search people people based on no concrete reason (aside from race or ethnicity). They search some people repeatedly, even many times a day.
This is not only unjust, it provokes crime.
Republicans have set up an inadequate hearing to smear Christine Blasey Ford, while excluding any other testimony except Kavanaugh's.
That assures it will be "he said, she said", which will be their excuse to disregard the matter.
People that claim to — maybe really try to — help refugees on Nauru often try to stop them from speaking to the press and the public.
Gulf Petrodollars Are a Destructive Addiction - the UK Must Kick the Habit.
A participant in a Pussy Riot protest in Moscow was, it seems, poisoned in court or in jail.
UN Investigators Publish Report Detailing Evidence for Accusation of Genocide against Burmese Military.
Canada gives hundreds of millions of dollars per year as subsidy to fossil fuels.
The bullshitter is planning to send a text message to every American at once through a FEMA broadcast system.
It has been delayed from the planned date.
The article says phone users cannot block receiving the message, but that probably means only that you can't ask the phone network not to deliver it. If your phone is running Replicant, you could modify it to drop messages from the bullshitter on the floor. If you do as I do, and refuse to carry a Stalin's dream device, you need not to anything — you won't receive it.
However, let this annoyance not distract us from the truly harmful things that Republicans are doing, such as imprisoning and deporting more immigrants, attacking voting rights, banning abortions, killing poor people, and roasting Earth's ecosphere.
Belgium refused to extradite Spanish rapper Valtònyc to Spain for speech crimes.
The song lyrics suggest the possibility of violence but do not directly advocate violence.
Issues about the FISA court's secret rules for surveillance of journalists.
(satire) Senate Republicans Seek To Delay Kavanaugh Vote Until Accuser Properly Smeared.
(satire) White House Raises Official Hurricane Florence Death Toll To -17.
California citizens: call on the state government to stop Nestle from pumping out scarce ground water without paying for it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Putin is making use of the UK laws designed to help all money-launderers.
Uganda's opposition leader (and pop star) Robert Kyagulaniy returned there after fleeing briefly to the US (he had been tortured in Uganda). On returning to Uganda, he was arrested.
French police seized models of the Eiffel Tower that were being sold to unauthorized immigrants to resell to the public.
No word on whether they found gold in some of the confiscated models. ;-)
When I was in Paris, I saw the Eiffel Tower. What an eyeful!
The US army has been building up eroding beaches for 30 years, by dumping sand on them. It's fine as long as it works, but global heating and sea-level rise will make this ineffective at an increasing number of places over the coming 30 years.
Besides which, Republicans will need the funds for more wars.
Efforts to reduce the extent of extreme poverty in Africa are faltering because people in sub-Saharan Africa are having too many children.
These efforts are like trying to bail water out of a boat while the leak gets bigger and bigger.
The funds and aid aimed at increasing people's well-being there should be redirected toward avoidance of births there. This will increase people's well being, over time; it will also help prevent the disaster. Once the population is stabilized, and global heating disaster reduced or avoided as a result, we will have a better chance to raise the people of that time out of poverty.
Cody Wilson has been charged with "sexual assault" on a "child" after a session with a sex worker of age 16.
I have never been the customer of a sex worker, because I would not want sex with a woman who did not feel desire and affection for me. However, I have been friends with people that sometimes did sex work by choice.
There are other prostitutes that have been enslaved and forced into sex work. It is possible that the prostitute Wilson did business with was enslaved. We don't know, and Wilson probably didn't know.
Some people reading earlier versions of this note seem to have got the idea that I condone enslavement of prostitutes. Quite the contrary — I consider enslavement a grave crime, regardless of what work the slave is forced to do, and I support campaigns against enslavement provided they don't use unjust means.
Where I part company with the mainstream view is in regard to laws that make it a crime to do business with someone who turns out later to have been enslaved, or someone who might have been enslaved. This is why I oppose FOSTA, for instance. There are non-repressive ways to oppose trafficking, ways which don't punish anyone except traffickers, and we should use them energetically. (Those who participate in an activity, knowing someone else in it was enslaved, are accessories, so there is a legitimate basis to punish customers if they know.)
To help prostitutes who have been trafficked, or have fallen under the control of pimps, or simply would prefer not to do sex work, we need to stop prosecuting them or their customers, since driving them underground makes them more vulnerable, then provide them with the support they need to get out. That may include another source of money to live on. We can afford all of that, and the many other things we need to do for a just and kind society, if we tax the rich as we should.
The article refers to the sex worker as a "child", but that is not so. Elsewhere it has been published that she is 16 years old. That is late adolescence, not childhood.
Calling teenagers "children" encourages treating teenagers as children, a harmful practice which retards their development into capable adults.
In this case, the effect of that mislabeling is to smear Wilson. It is rare, and considered perverse, for adults to be physically attracted to children. However, it is normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents. Since the claim sbout Wilson is the latter, it is wrong to present it as the former.
The term "sexual assault" is stretchable but usually means forcing something sexual on someone. It is not impossible that he did such a thing, but a priori it is unlikely. In general a customer does not force a prostitute into sex, but rather pays the agreed-on price. To associate this with the word "assault" is another smear. Whatever our views about what Wilson (or anyone) actually did, we should not smear people.
I do not like the idea of 3D-printed guns that can't be caught by a metal detector, but that issue is entirely unrelated to this.
The Senate is holding a hearing about "data privacy" and has invited only data-collecting companies to participate.
This is a sure sign that the only policies they want to consider are rules about how to store and use the data — with a giant loophole, the PAT RIOT Act, which says that the FBI can copy it all and then use it in any way.
Real protection for our privacy entails stopping companies and governments from accumulating data about people.
Most of today's "consumer advocates" won't propose that, because they think of the matter as one of consumers' interests rather than one of human rights.
Ralph Nader: ten important questions about the US situation that no one seems to be investigating.
Workers are on strike against McDonald's, demanding it make real efforts to stop sexual harassment of the staff in its stores.
Kavanaugh, in a speech given in 2015, said, "we had a good saying that we've held firm to to this day, … 'What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.' That's been a good thing for all of us, I think."
The transcript of that speech, published later, omitted those words.
Deportation thug Matthew Albence said a family "detention center" was like a summer camp, but refuses to say whether he'd send his children to that prison.
North Korea has offered to shut down its missile test sites and its nuclear complex, as part of a deal.
However, the deal would have to include US concessions too, as part of a gradual process.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to stand for breaking up the big banks, and regulate all banks so they can't do damage.
Every deregulation of the banks leads to increased corruption.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on senators to reject Kavanaugh.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Russia's elections commissioner will annul a vote because of signs of centralized fraud.
Aid to people without electricity due to Hurricane Florence shows bias based on race and class.
The melting of Arctic permafrost, and release of its stored CO2 and methane, creates a tipping point. We may have passed it already and be doomed to more than 2C of global heating. If not, the remaining "carbon budget" is much less than previously expected.
Kudlow, one of the cheater's economic advisors, says that SCROTUS will attack Social Security and Medicare if they retain control of Congress.
Republicans are willing to give Christine Blasey Ford's accusations just enough lip service to invite her to be smeared in the senate committee, before they confirm Kavanaugh anyway. They picked a date without consulting her, and are already blaming her for (they presume) failing to be there.
Republicans set up the Guantanamo prison as a justice-free zone. Now they aim to do the same thing to the whole US.
Their death threats have forced her to go into hiding with her family.
Even the plutocratist "centrist" Democrats are not as bad as that.
She knew she was taking a risk of retaliation by revealing her accusations.
Ford wants the senate to wait for an FBI investigation, which is the best way to get independent evidence about whether Kavanaugh is guilty.
Former federal prosecutors say her accusation is credible, has some corroboration, and calls for an investigation.
Republicans would prefer not to recognize the corroboration, and not to find any more, so they can dismiss the matter as "one person's word against another's."
'People will die', says a former Obama official, due to the scapegoater's cuts in the number of refugees the US will accept.
A Year After Hurricane Harvey, Some Cleanup Workers Are Still Unpaid.
Wage theft is common in the US, and it is common because the government has shown it doesn't care. That, in turn, is because the plutocratists have discouraged poor people (typically, victims of wage theft are poor) from voting.
Shell and Exxon researchers predicted in the 1980s not only the future increase in CO2 but also some aspects of the disaster that would result.
Mosquitos eat microplastics as larvae, then grow up to be eaten by other animals, which ingest the microplastics. In this way, they move up the food chain and are ingested by humans.
There are reasons to think they can harm all the animals that consume them.
George Soros writes that he urged Obama to make bailed-out banks hand over part ownership rather than giving them loans. He argues that Obama's decision hurt the non-rich, and Americans recognized that Democrats were responsible.
Economic records such as tax payments show that the Republican tax attacks resulted in no significant increase in wages.
The Israel Project (a lobbying group to support Israel's occupation and siege of Palestine) sets up pages for various causes (women's rights, protection of the environment, others) so as to associate their campaign with those causes. It veils its relationship with those pages.
Since the article mentions the six-day war, I should point out that Egypt had already attacked Israel by blockading shipping to Elath. A blockade, whether of Elath or Gaza, is recognized as an act of war.
Israeli courts now legitimize houses built by Israelis on land taken from Palestinians, against Israeli law, and authorize demolition of Palestinian homes that are inconveniently there.
(satire) FEMA Airdrops Emergency Cyanide Pills For Residents Stranded By Hurricane Florence.
Democratic senators have sued to demand an answer to their FOIA request for Kavanaugh's papers.
Former senate staff lawyers explain how Kavanaugh lied to the senate before, and how he is lying now.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The UK wants to question people without lawyers at airports, and then when they finally do get lawyers, listen to their conversations.
This is what you'd expect from a country that imprisons people for the "crime" of being suspected.
The UK may increase its use of coal, as natural gas is getting more expensive.
The planet-roaster response to the situation is fracking. The civilization-saving response is renewable electricity.
If not for the Tories' highly effective campaign to slow development of renewable electric generation, the situation would have been corrected already.
The bully's fear agents are now holding 12,000 immigrant minors prisoner.
Some of them are children, and some are teenagers.
In the past, most of them were sent to stay with families, but cruelty suits the bully's purpose of demonizing them.
On Christine Blasey Ford's work in psychology.
A proposed new criterion to determine whether a household lives in poverty.
Universities which received funds, centuries ago, from participants in the slave trade are taking steps to educate the public about this.
I don't think that the universities are guilty for having received those funds, but educating the public about the slave trade and its influence is a good thing to do.
The point at which accepting donors from evildoers becomes a moral issue in itself is when they use you to buy public approval for their acts and undermine your responsibilities to the public. For instance, today, when planet roasters have positions on the boards of organizations that do science education, such as WGBH and the American Museum of Natural History, and when Bill Gates donates "Gates Buildings" for university computer science departments.
Advice to journalists about how not to be played by right-wing extremist liars.
Berta Cáceres Murder Trial Delayed after Judges Accused of Abusing Authority.
The US-Led Global War on Terrorism Has Succeeded… in Creating More Global Terrorism.
Microsoft and Dropbox are pushing against the "CLOUD" Act, which would enable foreign governments to get any US company's data about Americans (and others).
We should instead be getting rid of the PAT RIOT Act, that allows the US government to any US company's data about Americans (and others).
The US government has special rules permitting many kinds of spying on journalists, through the FISA court which admitted it normally rubber-stamps all requests.
The government of Ontario is passing a law to override a court decision that blocked its attempt to abruptly and arbitrarily reduce the number of representatives in Toronto's city council.
US citizens: call on Senator Grassley to cancel the Sep 20 committee vote on Kavanaugh's nomination.
Sign this, too.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone senators Collins, Murkowski, Corker and Flake to call on them to oppose Kavanaugh.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-515-2798 and call on them to heed Christine Blasey Ford by not confirming Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Russia and Turkey agreed to make a buffer zone in Idlib to protect civilians.
The UK government is using "national security" law to gag reports of possible fiscal misconduct in two different projects.
One of the projects is installing "smart" meters for electricity. For "smart", read "spy"; "smart" meters generally spy on the public. They could be designed to respect privacy, but they won't do so unless we force them to.
I Worked In an Amazon Warehouse. Bernie Sanders Is Right to Target Them.
Guatemala's president has exiled the head of the anti-corruption commission. A court ruled he must be allowed to return.
Berta Cáceres Murder Trial to Be Monitored by International Lawyers.
The "one-man revolution", according to Thoreau and Hennacy.
I had not read either of them, but I started one.
Brian Kemp, Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, is currently Secretary of State, and has put the state's unauditable digital voting system under his personal control.
To trust a Republican not to rig an election, given the opportunity to do so in secret, is like putting your money in the safe keeping of a used car salesman.
Christine Blasey Ford has discussed Kavanaugh's rape attempt with therapists over the years, but was intimidated out of telling the public because she expected Republicans to defend Kavanaugh's confirmation by demonizing her.
The IPCC's predictions of global heating disaster are only the lower bound. We cannot tell how much worse positive feedback cycles will make it. And we don't need to know — because what we do need to recognize is that global heating disaster is already starting.
Social Security benefits go to retired and disabled Americans, but when they spend their benefits, they boost the local economy where they live.
Gush Shalom: The Oslo accord did not fail; rather, Israel did not carry it out.
US government flood insurance should stop paying to rebuild buildings that are sure to be flooded again.
When a building is totaled, leaving the land vacant should be a condition for receiving the insurance payment.
Call on the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to stop funding global heating.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose increasing funds for ICE in the continuing resolution that will be passed to fund it.
If you phone, please spread the word!
CVS is the sole supplier of drugs for many "managed care" medical plans, and gouges both the patients and the plans.
Furthermore, it tries to stop states from publishing the data to show how much it gouges.
There has been a lot of concentration in the pharmacy business in the US. That surely helped put CVS in a position to do this. Thus, it is misguided to judge business mergers in terms of direct, short-term effect on the retail price of their products. A large company is ipso facto dangerous.
Republican and Democratic State Legislators Release Letter Signed by 300 Colleagues From Coast to Coast Urging End of ISDS in NAFTA.
The American Psychological Association considered a motion to allow its members to work in the Guantanamo prison. 1/3 of the members voted for it, arguing that this would enable them to help the prisoners suffer less.
To assuage the suffering caused by that prison would be a good thing if it did not grant legitimacy to the prison and help it continue. We need to put an end to that "no-human-rights zone".
Bombing Yemeni School Children for Profit.
Putin is saying, "We killed on [British] your territory and now we are laughing at you." This open contempt for the truth is dangerous, just as when it comes from the bullshitter.
Journalism and research should have access to study what Facebook and Twitter are showing users.
For many people in the Philippines, "the internet" means "Facebook". So when Do-dirty made Facebook the platform for his propaganda, much of the populace found it hard to access anything that disagreed.
Professor Christine Ford described how Kavanaugh attacked her sexually during a party, tried to take off her clothing by force, and then gagged her. This was in the 1980s when Kavanaugh was in high school.
He might not act the same today, but there is no reason to think his attitude has changed.
This goes well beyond the sexual pressure that Clarence Thomas applied to Anita Hill. The Senate approved Thomas despite her testimony. Ford may have expected to be demonized as Hill was.
SCROTUS want convicts being released from prison to have to struggle for food. This will push some of them back into crime.
With over 43% of Americans living in economic difficulty, the war on poverty begins at the ballot box.
Birmingham, England, agreed to host the Commonwealth Games in 2022 but it can't afford to do so.
People depend on the city's support and services for important needs. It should not let this frill, which would benefit businesses but not the poor, get in the way. Cancel the games!
Many academics have called on the EU to prioritize wellbeing over GDP. That means, more or less, to reduce inequality and give the non-rich a better life, instead of increasing totals.
I agree completely. The rich would be just fine if they were only half as rich.
Spotify can tell whether users are happy or sad, based on what they listen to. It will use that data to manipulate them. The data will sooner or later be combined with other personal data, to control people according to the corporate will.
To protect yourself from this tracking, do as I do — get an actual copy of the song, and listen to it with free software. Then no company will know what you are listening to.
As if the UK didn't have too much censorship already, an MP wants to impose censorship requirements on all private discussion groups with more than 500 members.
Apple handles a lot of recycling of electronic products — mostly not Apple's own products — and requires the contractors that do the work to shred all the component parts, rather than save those that are still usable.
Several US states have tried cutting off donations of paper books to prisons, allowing only e-books which are unjust in the usual way.
Some have even cut off paper mail in favor of permanently stored and censored email through one imposed email service.
This sort of policy tends directly to encourage recidivism. If the goal of US prisons were to discourage crime, prison authorities would know better than to do this.
If, however, the true goal is slave labor, then it makes sense.
The US Department of Agriculture has authorized outsourcing of processing of US-grown chickens to China, and there will be no US inspection of the processing.
Not only is this unsafe, it is also a gratuitous increase in outsourcing. The bullshitter likes to pretend to be fighting outsourcing, but his "successes" are bogus yet he allows it when it's not merely disadvantageous but unsafe as well.
The US threatens to deny entry to Canadians that have used marijuana in Canada, even though it will soon be lawful there.
Even people that have had jobs in producing and selling marijuana could be absurdly banned.
There is no sensible reason for this, no motive besides opportunistic harassment.
6000 Chicago hotel workers are on strike.
Matt Taibi: The financial crisis of 2008 was the predictable result of allowing banks to make bad loans and turn them into a Ponzi scheme. The large banks were so tied together that they would all have crashed if not "rescued".
The result of the rescue was to make the big banks even bigger, give them special advantages, and repeatedly let them get away with crimes.
Public pressure made Sony release its claims to have a copyright on Bach's music.
Wherever automated copyright censor systems exist, a stream of such false claims will pour into them, and each one takes far more work to remove than to create.
New business-supremacy treaties are moving from the full-strength ISDS (I Sue Democratic States) clause toward more limited variants.
I don't have information on whether these are significantly less of an impediment to democracy.
Prozac kills bacteria, the same way as some antibiotics, so it provokes some bacteria to evolve resistance to those antibiotics. The effect would occur in the bodies of patients using the drug, but also in rivers and lakes. Sewage treatment is not designed to degrade such drugs.
Many countries' central banks, totally independent, are buying stocks, putting them among the largest investors.
In general this pushes the stock markets up, but they also manipulate markets, causing and popping bubbles that they can take advantage of.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate Kavanaugh's false statements to the Senate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose the second round of SCROTUS's tax attacks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
PISSI has reshaped itself into a guerrilla force; the Iraqi army is unable to fight it effectively.
PISSI gets support from some of the Sunnis, who generally feel repressed by the majority Shi'ites. Their experience with being ruled by PISSI was worse than the Iraqi state, but now that the Iraqi state rules them again and PISSI does not, they seem to be forgetting that lesson.
Justice Department Attempts to Suppress Evidence That the Border Patrol Targeted Humanitarian Volunteers.
Duke Energy was very slow in removing the coal ash from an insecure waste dump next to a coal plant that shut in 2013. As a result, the ash was still around for Hurricane Florence to wash pollution out of it.
Now that Obama is starting to lead "mainstream" Democrats to endorse a single-payer medical system, we will have to campaign to ensure it isn't watered down into something much less.
I propose this watchword: if it still offers private insurance companies a role, it doesn't go far enough. Those companies are already scamming patients by leaving large expenses uncovered.
Doctors and hospitals should not be allowed to bill patients directly for any part of the care covered by the system, except system-approved co-pays, and those should exist only for outpatient care.
The US takes so long to decide whether sick prisoners are eligible for "compassionate release" that many of them die before it can make up its mind.
"My father’s murder in Algeria shaped my life. That’s why Macron’s apology is so important."
Adani's plan to open up a massive new coal mining region in Australia has collapsed, but it may still open a single large mine there. For the sake of avoiding global disaster, we need to push hard against that and against every new fossil fuel facility.
Michael Bloomberg, who wants to run for president in 2020, went to a business-dominated "climate summit" and mocked environmentalist protesters.
I won't vote for him.
When US parents demand schools "do something, right away" to prevent a shooting, the measures schools adopt make them feel (more) like jails. This does little for safety but a lot to create an atmosphere of distrust.
School shootings harm few students each year; the school to prison pipeline harms far, far more.
Republicans are chiefly to blame for "natural" disasters in the US. Directly so because they corrupt FEMA, so that the physical events cause a much bigger human disaster.
When the physical event is extreme weather, Republicans are also responsible indirectly because they have forced global heating faster.
Democratic officials do a good job with FEMA. Against global heating, plutocratist mainstream Democrats are not as bad as Republicans, but not good enough to avoid global disaster.
A UK supermarket chain will replace plastic bags for fruits and vegetables with cornstarch bags.
The problem with cornstarch is that it is made from corn, and the corn has to be grown. If all the plastic packaging now used were replaced with cornstarch, what fraction of the world's corn crop would that use? Can anyone find the data to make a rough estimate of this?
If I receive a good answer, I will post it.
Activists have tied the recent nerve gas poisoning suspects to the Russian Ministry of Defense, and caught them in other lies.
Based on all the information that has been published, I consider it nearly certain that they committed the poisoning.
Facebook Suppressed a Story About Brett Kavanaugh's Opposition to Roe v. Wade. We’re Republishing It.
Once again, proposing to build solar power satellites using material from the moon.
The L5 society campaigned for this around 1980. I supported it.
Solar power satellites could indeed give us plentiful renewable electricity. The obstacle to building them is the large initial investment before the first one is running. States starved for funds by tax-competition have trouble making such an investment.
New cities are being built in coastal areas liable to be flooded in some decades. These "investment vehicles" might turn out to be submarines.
We need to start moving people away from some coastal areas.
Australian farmers demand more effort to curb global heating.
Global heating is making category 6 hurricanes possible; we will surely see them in the future, and they could submerge entire cities.
Europe is producing more cattle than the environment can stand, and will have to cut in in half.
Progressive organizing among the Amish.
The UK increasingly represses mere insults. It started with insults based on bigotry, but now it is expanding to all insults.
I disagree with the author on one point: I think it is correct to punish crimes of violence more heavily when they are based on bigotry, such attacks represent a campaign of violence that could tend to spread. It's proper for the state to act to stamp that out.
The ocean off Tanzania is overfished — more boats are going out, and the catch is declining. A large cause of the decline is the foreign fishing boats that fish illegally.
In the long term, what Tanzania needs is fewer births, not more food.
Massachusetts state thugs accidentally leaked the fact that they have bookmarked several progressive political groups to follow.
Either the thugs are much more progressive than one would expect, and are looking for opportunities to show support, or they are biased against these groups.
Theater of Security Agency staff insisted on swabbing the top of a passenger's prosthetic leg to see if it had been in contact with explosives. They threatened to arrest her if she did not let them.
The article ends by giving the TSA undeserved legitimacy by asserting that it has actually made flying safer. This is unlikely — the TSA acknowledges that terrorists are not targeting airplanes any more.
Palestine's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, says that the bullshitter is trying to eliminate peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine by taking Israel's side on every important issue.
At this point, Palestine could reject the idea of including the US in talks, and ask some other power such as the EU or Russia to mediate peace talks.
That can't advance negotiations now, since Netanyahu refuses to consider any concessions, but it will put a little more pressure on Israel and the US.
Amazon's subcontracted delivery workers suffer wage theft and various other mistreatment.
Farmer Lobbying Group Accused Of Selling Out Farmers On Right To Repair Laws.
When the Berkeley thug department arrested protesters for bogus crimes and posted their personal details, this was part of an explicit PR campaign meant to intimidate protest and make the department appear powerful.
Those thugs brought the law into disrepute. Every one of them who participated in these actions, including those who approved the plans, should be fired for that.
After the leader of the Church of England (the Archbishop of Canterbury) criticized zero-hour contracts and the piecework sweatshop economy, someone called this a "hypocrisy" because some churches hire on zero-hour contracts and the church invests in Amazon.
The stated rebuke that you should "put your own house in order before" criticizing an abuse is misguided. If we accept that as a principle, it would come down to "Only saints are entitled to criticize", which would give abusers a shield to deflect pressure to correct abuses.
The right response is, "Don't forget to include your own organization in this criticism." We should focus on correcting the abuses, not on loathing everyone somehow associated with them.
I think the accusation of hypocrisy is invalid with regard to the zero-hour contracts, given that the archbishop doesn't control those hiring practices in other church organizations.
The issue of investing in Amazon is a different one. Shareholder activism has proved to be ineffective, and the church could do more to change those companies' behavior (and get their taxes increased) by divesting from them and condemning them. I don't know how much influence the archbishop personally has over these investments, but that is how he should use it henceforth.
"Centrist" Democrat Governor Cuomo defeated Cynthia Nixon, but 6 of the 8 "Democratic" collaborationists that have kept Republicans in power in the state legislature have been defeated by progressive Democrats.
The head medical officer of Sloan Kettering Cancer Center resigned in a scandal for not reporting conflicts of interest in his relationship with businesses, including a large drug company.
Making researchers report these conflicts of interest is just the first step. If we want research to be honest, we must end the practice of letting businesses choose whether to fund it. They should fund it indirectly, through taxes.
The Demise of Democracy (in the US).
Heavy rain from Hurricane Florence has washed toxic pollution from coal ash dumps into water supplies. Even from one inactive dump that was capped, supposedly to make it safe.
This is because the coal companies make more money by not moving the ash away from waterways, or letting it be recycled into concrete.
A scientific recommendation that 50% of the Earth's surface be protected wildlife areas by 2050, to avoid massive extinction.
If we want to protect more than desert and mountain species, protected lands will have to include a lot of places that could be used for agriculture, at least for 20 years till they are exhausted. To protect them, we need to keep human farmers away. That will be difficult, but keeping the birth rate down will make it a little easier.
In addition, protected areas may not serve their purpose if global heating makes them unviable habitats for some of the species that live in them. Curbing the human population will also make progress towards reducing global heating.
On 10th Anniversary of Wall Street Crash, Warren Says: Break Up the Banks and Jail the Bankers.
Senator Graham is the paradigmatic example of a Republican who can see no wrong in anything the bullshitter says or does.
The Republican Party is no longer a political party in the usual sense. It is a cult.
Google already developed a prototype censored-for-China search engine.
It also identifies who searches for something "suspect".
I think the US should make it a crime for a US company to censor politically for other countries. Other countries that wish to be considered free should do likewise. Even though this will mean that tyrannical states such as China will block access to them, the fact that they are blocked will communicate a message of freedom to those who cannot access them.
The UK government permitted rigging the referendum on the EU in favor of the leave campaign.
US citizens: call on the State Department to stop denying the citizenship of Americans of hispanic descent.
Please join me in rejecting the absurd and unpronounceable word "Latinx".
US citizens: call for shutting down criminal megabanks like Wells Fargo.
"If Jeff Bezos wants to help low-income people why not just pay them better?"
Mexican farmers say the proposed new agreement with the US is bad for Mexican agriculture.
The cheater wants the agreement to be approved without showing it to the public. It must be bad.
(satire) Freeloading Refugee Children Taking Up Thousands Of Prison Cells Meant For Real Americans.
Some US government officials knew shortly after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico that the death toll was higher than the government claimed.
The Democratic Party can't formulate what it stands for.
What it should stand for, above all, is to end plutocracy and restore democracy.
Various countries including the US are competing to tax businesses less.
This is a "beggar thy neighbor" race which harms all the competing countries and benefits mainly the rich that own most of the stock.
A study concluded that states, cities and businesses can bring about greenhouse gas reductions in the US that come close to this Paris agreement pledges.
Alas that means not enough.
Governor Brown of California went to open a business-oriented "climate summit", but thousands of activists protested him for permitting many new fossil fuel wells in the state.
Setting a target for 2045 is just talk. The new wells are real.
(satire) Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed Tuesday they were frantically writing the apologies they will issue for screwing up their response to Hurricane Florence.
Over 800 million people now don't have enough to eat. The number is increasing because of global heating — and because of population growth.
1/4 of young children are stunted by malnutrition. People who can't feed all their children need to have fewer.
Population growth accelerates global heating as well as decreasing crop yields. It will also reduce the nutritional value of many staple foods.
Please do your bit — don't have (more) children.
The Pentagon published a ridiculously low estimate of the costs of the wars of this century, $1.5 trillion instead of $4.5 trillion, and the mainstream media are repeating it without question.
Thanks to Obama Bailouts and Trump Tax Cuts, (the) Five Largest US Banks Have Raked in $583 Billion Since 2008 Crash.
In a case against Google, the European Court of Justice is considering whether the EU can impose a "Right to Be Forgotten" on the entire world.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that GCHQ's bulk communications snooping violated human rights.
We will need another Snowden to find out whether GCHQ ceases the practice. It will probably claim to have stopped, but that might mean only that a few details have been changed, with no alteration of the result.
(satire) Trump Unfairly Claims Credit For Rise In Economic Inequality That Occurred Under Obama’s Watch.
Cuomo defeated progressive challenger Cynthia Nixon.
Cuomo has taken somewhat more progressive positions since Nixon entered the race, but I fear they will not last long now that she is out of it.
The workers in Amazon's warehouses are so remote-controlled that they are effectively robots with human brains inside.
Disabled and poor Americans can't afford to evacuate when a hurricane strikes. They can't board up their own windows, either.
A competent, helpful government would help them.
Progressives should not abandon the concept of "liberty" to right wingers.
We, not they, are the true libertarians.
The president of Guatemala, relying on implicit US support, said he will shut down the agency that investigates official corruption. It was investigating his corruption.
Evidently-corrupt army officers cheered.
President Do-dirty has encountered resistance from various state institutions which have blocked him from arbitrarily arresting opposition senator Trillanes.
Trillanes continues living in the senate.
Refugee families split up by US border thugs are suing, demanding damages and therapy for the trauma that has not gone away.
Palm Oil: Pledges to Protect Orangutans Have Failed — the Industry Needs to Act.
Or else we need laws, but plutocratist states would rather let plantations destroy all rain forests.
Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gases, too.
California has passed a law setting a target to end carbon emissions from electric generation by 2045.
This law is a step forward, but long-term targets don't do much to reduce emissions in soon. Indeed, the target may not even be met. And what about agriculture, transport, and deforestation, the other big sources of greenhouse gases?
I'd be more impressed by a plan to reduce emissions in the next few years, even if not to zero.
(satire) Obama Urges Young Voters To Ignore How Many Lousy Candidates Democratic Party Runs.
Perhaps that's not news — he's been doing that since 2009.
Toxic coal ash dumps become very dangerous when a hurricane threatens to wash them into your water supply.
Spain found an excuse to proceed with selling bombs for Salafi Arabia to drop on Yemen.
If weapons to hit precisely where they are aimed, that won't protect children in a bus if the weapon is pointed at that bus.
Palestinians Still Live under Apartheid in Israel, 25 Years after the Oslo Accord.
Indeed, it is worse now that the government has made apartheid overt and official.
The EU plans aggressive censorship rules for "terrorist" postings.
Platforms that can't afford to hire people to work 24 hours a day to carry out deletions would be wiped out immediately. And if they are big enough to pay for that, they still won't be able to develop automated filters.
The automated filters can't really understand what is "terrorist" and what isn't, so they will be designed to err on the side of caution and delete lots of other publications.
Well, if you delete everything, at least you can be sure you deleted everything that is "terrorist".
(Please don't refer to publications of any sort as "content" https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#content.)
New York State has reduced solar power subsidies, causing a slowdown in installations.
I understand that net metering has a problem — sometimes solar installations have more power to sell than the grid can use. So adopt some other system to subsidize solar installations. It will be cheap compared with the costs of global heating disaster.
South Carolina officials refused to evacuate prisoners from a prison that is in danger of being flooded.
The prisoners could be left for days with no food, water, medicine, even sanitation. Isn't that cruel and unusual punishment?
Hurricane Florence's rainfall is likely to be 50% greater due to global heating.
Venezuelan opposition leaders are once again looking for US help in overthrowing the government.
Today's government is much less legitimate than that of Chavez, but willingness to conspire with the US neonazis shows that what they intend for Venezuela is lousy.
UN truce talks broke down, and Salafi Arabia is now intensely attacking Hodeida, through which most food and other supplies arrive in Yemen.
US citizens: call on the EPA to preserve the methane leak regulations.
If you sign, please spread the word!
France Admits Systematic Torture During Algeria War.
The European Parliament voted to put sanctions on Hungary because the right-wing ruling party has imposed repression of dissent, and basically wiped out democracy. All in the name of demonizing foreigners.
The UK Tories voted to defend the Hungarian quasi-fascists.
Australia's carbon emissions have reached a record level. This probably has something to do with government's years of steadfast support for fossil fuels.
In a tentative court agreement, the US said it will give hundreds of deported parents another chance to file an asylum claim. This is because border thugs intimidated them into waiving their rights based on illegal threats.
Saboteur of State Pompeo certified that the US is taking sufficient steps to protect civilians in Yemen.
In other news, the President certified that the US is taking sufficient steps to respect the human rights of border-crossing children, and that he has not grabbed any pussies in the past 10 years.
EU countries warned Israel not to demolish a Palestinian village that was built up using EU aid funds.
The prosecutor investigating right-wing minister Salvini for illegally imprisoning migrants on a coast guard ship received a right-wing death threat.
The US National Adacemies have published a report on election security, recommending that all votes be recorded on paper, to keep voting systems off the internet, and to carry out "risk-limiting audits" to make sure the ballots were counted correctly.
Cory Doctorow explains the continuing fight to block Europe's horrible copyright changes.
A Spanish prosecution for blasphemy — "insulting God and the Virgin Mary."
Republicans want to charge protesters the cost of whatever the state sees fit to do in response to their protests.
More US cruelty to visitors and immigrants: rejecting applications for the slightest mistake.
US citizens: refer to the Democracy Scorecard to see how your federal legislators stand regarding measures to reduce the influence of the rich in federal elections.
Big tobacco companies illegally funded advertisements against Montana's cigarette tax increase, which will fund medical care for almost 100,000 poor people in that state.
The saboteurs took money from FEMA to pay for deportations and prisons.
Los Angeles residents will vote on whether to establish a public bank for the city.
One good thing public banks will inevitably do is take money out of the hands of the big US banks that caused the financial crisis, and lobbied to block laws that would restrain them from causing another.
The bully invited sheriffs to a meeting, and they applauded as he demonized the press. Some of these sheriffs have rational reasons to hate the press, which exposed their wrongdoing.
In the past, reduced inequality has generally been the result of great disasters.
Today's inequality, the power of plutocrats, has locked us on the path to global heating disaster. The survivors may live in reduced inequality if they are all poor.
Everything bullshitter says is good about the US economy is bullshit.
Israel Legalizes Theft of Christian, Muslim [individuals'] Lands for Illegal Jewish-Only Settlements.
Report: Israel Using Judicial System to Facilitate Settlement Project.
Israeli Court Drops Mask on Support of Occupation.
Occupy Venice: "We are the alternative to the death of the city".
In some European countries, "occupation" is the term for "squatting". Maybe that is true in Italian too.
Australia Deports Iraqi Asylum Seeker Whose Appeal Was Due Next Week.
Australian officials are making a monkey out of Australia's laws.
(satire) Apple offers customers the chance to trade in their old iPhones for nothing.
Bolton's real motive for attacking the International Criminal Court seems to be to block an investigation into US torture practices.
The Medicare for All PAC offers a way to support the campaigns of candidates that endorse Medicare for All.
They will all be strongly progressive. If you don't have time to study candidates, and figure out which ones need funds most, this is a good way to donate.
McDonalds Workers Set to Strike over Sexual Harassment.
Evidence of additional perjury by Kavanaugh.
No wonder the bullshitter is concealing his white house papers.
War Profiteers: The U.S. War Machine and the Arming of Repressive Regimes.
Nauru's judicial system is so small that it often uses Australian courts. An Australian court has rejected Nauru's politically-motivated prosecution of various opposition leaders for bogus "crimes".
Nauru recently created its own court of appeals, which will probably obey orders by nullifying this decision.
Nauru is doing all this to serve the government of Australia as a prison for refugees.
"White supremacy and fascist flirtations are not ideas that need to be 'exposed'. We just need to fight them."
Italy and Malta have effectively blocked the operation of ships to save the lives of migrants.
The EU's new greenhouse gas law is likely to encourage chopping down forests all around the world so as to burn the wood in the EU.
Copyright Directive: the Cultural Industry and Press Publishers Feed on the Crumbs of the Mass Surveillance Business.
EDRi: EU Parliament flip-flops backwards on copyright.
In the UK, parents get their children into government-funded religious schools by pretending to belong to that religion.
The bully plans to imprison a lot more migrant minors.
Over 300 New York thugs and firefighters have died of
medical problems
caused by working in the vicinity of the September 2001 attacks.
Some US officials are considering putting sanctions on China because
of its
oppression
of Uighurs.
Migrants arriving in the US are
imprisoned
in harsh conditions — crowding, heat or cold, barely edible
food if there is any, hungry children wailing all the time, disease
spreading.
This can't be coincidence. It has to be cruelty.
North Carolina took global heating denialism to a legal extreme by
requiring
that planning be based on denying it.
The suffering the EU has imposed on Greece
extends
to tourists that get sick. Naturally, the medical system is
damaged like all other systems in Greece.
Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers
Forcibly
Deported from Australia Despite Torture Risk.
Dangerous natalism
from
the president of Tanzania: if you don't have a big family, you are
"lazy".
Dangerous natalism
in
China: pushing to boost the birth rate.
The inconveniences of a slowly declining population can be handled.
Population increase is leading towards disaster. Chine is still
increasing its fossil fuel use, and (I suppose, since it would be hard
to do otherwise) still intensifying agriculture. But not nearly as
much as it would be doing if it had millions more people.
The thug that killed Botham Jean as he was minding his own business
in his apartment has
changed
her story. Not very credible.
Japan is
pushing
to resume commercial whaling, saying that certain species have
recovered enough to make the practice sustainable.
I think that whales are too intelligent to be hunted and eaten.
The occasional atrocity by US troops that attracts attention in the
US, such as
bombing
a wedding or a schoolbus, are just a hint of the unending stream
of atrocities funded by the US government and carried out around the
world.
The hurricane that hit Puerto Rico killed thousands of people, but not
directly or immediately. Rather, it was
the
incompetent US government response that was directly responsible.
The incompetence went far beyond ordinary levels; it suggests that the
officials in charge had no idea how to do their job.
I don't think that could have been due to random murphism alone. I
suspect that budget cuts drove honest, competent people out of the
agency and that they were replaced by political appointees who were
totally lost when they faced a real emergency.
The Jones Act prohibits outsourcing US internal shipping to
foreign-registered ships that might pay their workers less and
maintain their ships to a lower standard. I support that, and I don't
believe it would have hampered competent emergency managers from doing
a good job. Apparently the not-so-competent managers of today were
not up to the task.
Extreme weather caused by global heating is causing a
world-wide
food shortage, whose effects mostly hit countries with other
problems.
1/9 of the world's human population is
chronically
hungry. This should be a
wake-up call to
reduce the birth rate in the affected regions.
Fossil Fuel Dependence Poses
'Direct
Existential Threat', Warns UN Chief.
Almost 7 weeks after the court deadline to reunite migrant families,
over 400 minors remain imprisoned in the US and
have not been
reunited with their families. There is no way to determine how
many are children and how many teenagers but 22 of them are under 5
years old.
In effect, the bullshitter is using this as an opportunity to
disregard the authority of the court.
Facebook has given the right-wing Daily Standard "fact-checking"
authority, and it is now censoring left-wing articles
based on points
that are mathematically small.
Bolton
bombastically
threatens sanctions and prosecution of the ICC judges and
prosecutors, as well as companies and countries that cooperate with
the ICC.
I don't think he can find an excuse to prosecute them. I think that
is typical trumpery. However, he might be able to do parts of this,
and that in itself could be enough to shield corrupt toadies of the US
government.
There is reason to suspect Kavanaugh may have taken a bribe.
SCROTUS
declined to
investigate his finances.
Kavanaugh
would have plenty
of cases he could use to help Republicans make abortion illegal or
impossible — and even contraception.
EPA
Admits
Scrapping Regulations Will Put More Methane into Atmosphere.
Irish protest plans
dissuaded
the bullshitter from visiting there.
New research shows the meditative exercise
improves
mental health, reduces stress and can prevent reoffending.
Running prisons as cheaply as possible is a false economy
if the goal is to reduce crime.
"The left
must
restore the ties between antisemitism and other racism."
Assad's bombers are already
attacking
parts of Idlib.
China has
imposed
strict censorship on religion.
Kavanaugh should be impeached as a federal judge for
lying
to the senate under oath.
Intentional divestment from fossil fuels is
starting
to impact oil companies financially.
Alas, they still think they can defeat civilization and natural world
through the governments in many countries that will defend them to the
death. (Our death.)
In the states governed entirely by the Democratic Party, they don't
introduce progressive policies — because too many of them are
sell-out
plutocratist Democrats.
The UK wants to deport an opposition politician who
fled
Zimbabwe in fear of his life.
It is sickening that the state even thinks about doing so.
The Dallas thug who killed a man for supposedly being in her apartment
(though actually it was his apartment) has been
charged
with manslaughter.
The mere fact that someone is (you think) in your apartment is not by
itself a reason to kill per.
Bolton is
leading
a US campaign to effectively destroy the ICC.
The war in the DR Congo is causing a food shortage that is
likely
to kill 300,000 children this year. Other wars add an equal
number.
Kavanaugh's
Views
on EPA's Climate Authority Are Dangerous And Wrong.
The saboteurs in charge of the EPA are crippling it by driving out
crucial staff. So far,
1600
have left.
This could render the EPA incapable of functioning by the time it is
asked once again to do its job.
A UK commission proposes replacing "religious education" with study of
comparative
religion, including major world religions as well as the
nonreligious stances of atheism, agnosticism, humanism and secularism.
We Need
Public
Ownership of Banks to Stop the Next Financial Crisis.
Republicans
aim
to forbid cities from banning glyphosate.
Republicans generally say they want "small government", but what they
really want is a government of the richest, by the richest, for the
richest.
The UK government is threatening teachers that inform voters about
school
budget cuts and their effects.
In 18th century naval warfare, the UK
kept
permanently all the letters carried by captured ships.
This was gratuitously cruel. The senders of those most of those
letters were not officials or soldiers. Their mail should have been
handed to the country of destination.
Strong evidence suggests the Skripals were
poisoned
by two Russian agents that made a brief visit to Britain. Their
movements have been pieced together from many security cameras.
Bellingcat claims to have identified a Russian intelligence officer
who was
in
charge of the antiaircraft missile unit that shot down flight MH17
over Ukraine.
The cited phone discussion, about plans to shoot down Ukrainian
military planes, confirms that Russia did not intentionally attack a
civilian airliner. That makes the incident comparable to the one in
which a US ship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airliner.
mistaking it it for an attacking military plane. The US acknowledged
the mistake, somewhat
reluctantly.
Guatemala is
considering
a law to punish women if they are believed to have had abortions.
Even women who had natural miscarriages will be punished.
Other countries in Latin America
already
do this.
The bill also represses queer people.
One scientist has been measuring the
CO2
levels on top of Mauna Loa for 60 years — simple proof of
how CO2 levels have risen.
The Guardian View on Jeremy Corbyn's Labour: it must be an
anti-racist
party.
Alarm as Guatemala
Bans
Head of UN Anti-Corruption Body from Country. He's a "threat to
public security".
Australian thugs responded to a woman's complaint of domestic violence
by
erasing
the video evidence that the man threatened her.
Comparing the
junk
food offered in every store to a "swamp" is unfair to real swamps.
Paraguay has
moved
its embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv, rejecting decision three
months ago to follow the US in supporting Israel in rejecting peace
with Palestine.
The religious extremist prime minister of India has swept away the
limits on repression by
arresting
advocates of Dalits' rights and calling them "terrorists" and
"communists".
The balance sheet of making banks a big success: they enriched the
banksters
at
the expense of everyone else.
US
citizens: demand
dropping charges against Jacqueline Dixon.
I am unhappy that the petition cites Alabama's "stand your ground"
law, since that law shouldn't be necessary to justify killing someone
who is already attacking you.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Serious,
rational leftist populism can compete against the scapegoating
pseudo-opposition of right-wing populism.
The bully
"almost
sent tweet that North Korea would have seen as warning of attack".
President Do-dirty has ordered thugs
to arrest
a senator, who is compelled to remain constantly in the senate to
be safe.
The senator launched coups against a former president, and was pardoned.
The Consequences of Steve Bannon's Ideas Need to Be
Interrogated, Not
Just His Words.
The awareness of coming climate
disaster makes
parents doubt whether it was right to have their children.
This is a change for the good, but people need to have these
doubt before they have children — and choose not to
have them.
The Bretton Woods monetary system kept the banksters down and reduced
inequality. Then the banksters exploited disunity between the
participating governments
to destroy
that system, and began grabbing a lot of wealth for themselves.
The question is, how can we defeat the banksters and stop them from taking
so much away from the rest of us?
My progressive
sales tax system might help.
The bullshitter wants to destroy Medicare and Social
Security in
order to "save" them.
EFF: Last-minute amendments that pretend to fix the EU copyright
directive proposal actually make
it even
more of a menace.
Cory Doctorow: merely regulating giant tech companies
is insufficient
to resist their threats to freedom and democracy.
The bullshitter
is telling
various government agencies to publish one-sided, cherry-picked
propaganda against marijuana.
If you find any negative information about marijuana coming from the
US government, distrust it.
Lithuania asked Walmart
to stop
selling shirts that carry a hammer and sickle and state support
for the former Soviet Union.
I would not want to present support for that tyrannical state,
and I would not want to buy anything whatsoever from Walmart,
but it is wrong to ban the symbol.
Leaders of Trump's campaign
rallies direct
attendees when to applaud.
US
citizens: Ask
your state rep to propose a state resolution calling on Congress
to deny the President the power to launch a nuclear attack
unilaterally.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
Comparing
ways of taking away people's citizenship, in Nazi Germany, in
Bahrain, and in the US today.
Prisons
to Take
Florida Inmates' MP3 Players, discarding the files they paid for.
Hundreds
of thousands of Americans joined the Rise for Climate Jobs, and
Justice.
Google Caves
in to Russian Demands, Censors Videos Promoting a Protest Rally.
Dallas [thug] Who Shot Man in His Home
[also] Wounded
[another] Suspect in 2017.
US
prisoners ended
their strike, which was planned to be temporary, and plan now to
campaign for restoration of voting rights to ex-cons.
I am sad that the issue of wages for prison labor has been deemphasized.
Almost
4,000 people in Argentina are formally leaving the Catholic
Church.
Google Pulls
YouTube Ad by Putin Critic Alexei Navalny.
How
to recognize that the US is a plutocracy.
Hungary represses
gender studies and research into migration.
Teaching refugees is now criminalized.
Some indigenous groups in Canada are asking to be bought off. They
will support
a planet-roaster pipeline designed not to pollute their water
supplies, in exchange for money.
This shows the weakness of focusing attention on the local dangers
rather than the global danger. I have criticized the term "water
protectors" for this reason.
"Gitmo
for Children": Trump Administration Reveals Plan to Imprison
Families With Kids Indefinitely.
US
citizens: call
on the Department of Harshness, Hostility and Sadism not to
imprison migrant families indefinitely.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: Support
the STATES act, to protect state-legal marijuana businesses from
federal interference.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
Intensifying Protest Against 'Sham' Confirmation,
Democrats Release
Kavanaugh Documents GOP Didn't Want Public to See.
Some Democrats in
Congress propose
to remove Yemen from the authorization for US use of military
force.
Joseph
Stiglitz comments on the danger that AI and big data give
businesses an advantage over individuals.
He does not touch on the danger of what the state will do with that
data after taking it from the companies.
Trash-collecting systems are
being deployed
in the Pacific Ocean to pick up floating plastic, which will then
be taken — where?
There is something fishy in the figures in the article. If the system
removes 5 tons per month, that is 60 tons per year. To remove 80,000
tons would require 1333 1/3 years.
Perhaps the 5 tons per month figure is for one structure and they plan
to have 33 1/3 of them.
The article lists reasons why this method, even if it works, cannot be
a full solution to the plastic waste problem.
Too much focus on measuring the success of
organizations tends
to mess them up.
"In every realm in which performance metrics are tied to rewards,
practitioners find tools to fudge the data."
"Often, the things that aren’t measured are
unmeasurable. They also tend to be things that are essential to the
enterprise."
A few decades ago there was an obsession with using statistics to
determine whether code was clear and understandable. Various
statistics were found which correlated with clarity. But when
programmers were taught to write to improve those statistics, their
code did not get clearer, This seems to be a general phenomenon,
that the statistics correlate with what really counts only as long
as nobody but researchers study them.
"Populist turbulence, viral panics, experts under attack: instinct and
emotion
have overtaken
facts and reason in the digital age."
To win back trust for science, we have to root out the corruption of
science by big business, including
the pharma
industry,
the food
industry (protecting sugar by blaming fat),
the tobacco
industry, and
the fossil
fuel industry.
A political
trial in Egypt sentenced hundreds of protesters to prison and 75
to execution.
An appeals court decision
has invalidated
laws against sleeping in the street, in California and several
other western states.
George Monbiot: "We won't save the Earth with
a better
kind of disposable coffee cup."
Convincing individuals to make personal changes is not enough:
we need to change the systems that have big impacts.
That requires politics.
The right-wing officials blocking some of the cheater's evil acts, in
order to protect the rest of them,
are no
friend of the American people or of the democratic system.
Email Marked 'Confidential' by GOP
Shows Kavanaugh
Pushed for John Yoo, Legal Architect of Bush Torture Program, to
Be a Federal Judge.
Russian expat Nikolai Glushkov, who was strangled in London this year,
reported in 2013 that two Russians had poisoned him. An
electrocardiogram showed
a very
strange heart rhythm.
A
Democratic threat to make the Senate almost cease to function
might be a strong enough threat to block Kavanaugh.
Due to automated copyright censorship, youtube deletes performances of
18th and 19th century music because various companies have told the
company
that they
own those compositions.
Rep. Pelosi (may she be primaried soon) rejects all Democratic
proposals that
would increase the deficit.
Since the US has an economic boom (limited to the rich), in principle
this would be the right time to run a surplus. However, as long as
Republicans are enacting huge deficits with useless spending and tax
cuts for the rich, there is no reason to be deficit-pure at the
expense of the non-rich.
A senate
committee passed
a bill to end use of gillnets on the US west coast. Gillnets kill
many dolphins and sea turtles, as well as other protected species.
ACLU
Launches State-by-State
Blueprints with Roadmaps for Cutting Incarceration by 50 Percent.
Five months ago, the UK apologized to Caribbean immigrants who were
denied the citizenship rights they were entitled to. Some of them
are still
forbidden to work in the UK.
SCROTUS
is planning
another tax cut for the personal "small businesses" through which
billionaires receive their income.
High US officials
are restraining
the bullshitter from doing wanton damage.
However, they are right-wing plutocratists and the "successes" they speak
of are sabotage.
Trump’s Enablers Boast of Saving Nation But
Reveal They’re
Looting the Nation.
US
citizens: call
on Congress not to give the deportation thugs a bigger budget in
the continuing resolution.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on cabinet ministers, if they think that the bullshitter is unfit
and a threat to the nation, to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove
him from office.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Oklahoma to decertify thug Shelby's course on how to present
yourself as the victim after you kill a black man who has his hands
up.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Kavanaugh committed
perjury during his hearings for appointment to the appeals court.
Senator Grassley tried just recently to cover it up.
Many streets in New York City are named
after prominent
investors in the slave trade.
Many parts of current US voting
systems connect
to the internet, or transmit over the internet, and that makes
them insecure.
Hospital Care in America
— the
$10 cough drop.
We used to mock government contractors for selling products to the US
government (especially the military) for far more than they cost in
civilian life. Now hospitals are doing the same thing to people
like you and me.
Demanding freedom for political prisoners,
Nicaraguans held
a general strike that shut down much of the country.
High
temperatures forced
the shutdown of several nuclear power plants in Europe.
And in some cases the exhaust water was so hot that it killed fish.
Many important internet cables and their connections
are in
danger from sea-level rise even by 2030.
The sadist wants to imprison migrant children
for unlimited
lengths of time.
Some
Syrian Kurds in Idlib support Assad against Arab rebels and
Turkey.
I hope this means that the Kurds of Rojava can maintain autonomy and continue
to respect human rights. Assad is not an Islamist and won't oppose them
for being secular. However, a bloodbath in Idlib would be horrible.
The head climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States
says it
is almost
too late to save Fiji, the Maldives and other islands from rising
seas.
"Hero swimmer" Sara Mardini, who swam to rescue a small boat
containing Syrian refugees and pull it to Greece,
faces charges
of human smuggling for working for an organization that aids
refugees.
The thugs say that the organization was corrupted and carried out
actual smuggling, but why charge individual volunteers?
Anyone corrupt would know better than to let them in on it.
Australia at the Pacific Islands
Forum tried
to weaken the resolution on the danger of global heating.
It's
the same
thing the US did in the Paris climate conference.
When a planet-roaster government succeeds in undermining resistance to
its deadly policies, that is the first step. Having agreed to the weakened
accord, it then looks for ways to avoid substantially implementing it.
US citizens, tell
Congress: Pass the Protecting American Votes and Elections Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: phone
Senators Collins and Murkowski to oppose confirmation of
Kavanaugh.
If you phone, please spread the word!
UCLA's Patent War in
India Prevents
Access to Prostate Cancer Treatment Worldwide.
The supposed reason for allowing patents on medicines is to enable Big
Pharma companies to collect the money needed to fund large tests of
their safety and effectiveness. However, allowing companies to control
these
tests corrupts
them.
We should have the government directly fund these tests.
Then it will be easier to do without patents on medicines.
Australia's planet-roaster government
is delighted
to point out that the Paris climate agreement doesn't actually
require Australia to take any steps to reduce global heating.
Therefore, Australia can go hurrying global disaster without actually
violating the treaty.
Qatar
will permit some — but not all — foreign workers to
quit and go home if they wish.
Provided they can get their passports back.
Threatened Species Inquiry Told Public
Servants Think
Australia Is Failing.
Other countries in the Pacific
Ocean consider
Australia an obstacle to protecting themselves from climate
mayhem.
The right-wing government of Australia supports business profits over
both nature and civilization.
Schools in parts of the US
are letting
students out early because of the serious heat wave.
India's Supreme Court
has overturned
the law against homosexual acts.
Mauritania follows shari'a law, so women who report being raped can
be found
guilty of adultery.
This is true in some other Muslim countries as well.
US schools
are turning
to unqualified teachers as so many qualified teachers have quit.
Good teaching costs money. Plutocratist governments think it's not
worth the money to educate the common people, so they don't spend what
it costs.
The Healthiest Menu for Poor
People? An
Extra Helping from Government.
Italy's right-wing extremist party has been convicted of fraud and
will
have to shut down. I wonder if the voters will find this
disturbing.
The
cheater personally
ordered editing of photos of his inauguration to make it appear
there were more people.
Populists Aren't a Silent Majority —
They're Just
a Loud Minority.
Dealing with
cancer is
not a "battle" — that ailment may be dangerous but it is not
an enemy.
Response to an infection is, in a sense, a battle, but the enemy is not
conscious.
Salafi Arabia has started admitting that some of its air attacks in
Yemen
have killed
groups of children.
(satire): How
did the bullshitter come to believe Woodward was lying when
quoting criticism of the former by his staff?
US
citizens: phone
your senators at 1-844-515-2798 and point out that Kavanaugh has
contradicted his claim that Roe v Wade is safe from him because it is
"settled law".
If you phone, please spread the word!
Tunisian fishermen towed a boat with migrants to Italy
and face
charges of "smuggling" them.
How Weak
Schools Serve
[the exploiter's] Agenda.
(Supposed Labour leader) Tony Blair
has 'friendly,
positive meeting' with Italy's (semi-extreme right wing) Matteo
Salvini.
They have a lot in common — the lots
of plutocratist
money of their backers.
Australia
has blocked
Chelsea Manning from going there to speak. She will present her
talks through remote video.
Progressive Ayanna
Pressley won
the Democratic primary in my congressional district.
Many years ago, I went with a group of progressive Democrats to press
Rep. Capuano to take a progressive stance on some issue. He said, "If
you want someone to stand for that, vote for someone else!" This year,
I followed his advice and voted for Pressley.
Not because of her race or gender — they make no difference in a
candidate — but because of what she stands for.
The
bullshitter lied
blatantly to Bob Woodward about Woodward's own actions, apparently
trying to bully Woodward into a false confession of incompetent
journalism.
I suspect the recording is not accessible without nonfree software, so
here's
a transcript.
If seagrass meadows are lost, the bonnethead
shark could
be lost as well.
Will
thugs repress,
surveil and frame protesters against Keystone XL of terrorism as
they did the protesters against the Dakota Access pipeline?
Final
lessons from a Polish Jew who fought in the underground Home Army
against the Germans, and survived the war.
"There is no such thing as a 'heroic nation' — or indeed an
inherently malign or evil nation either." There are, however,
societies where myths that tend to encourage atrocities become
widespread, and right-wing extremists are working hard around the
world to make this happen. In the US the non-extreme but amoral
power-seekers have been using such myths for decades
to carry
out atrocities.
Latin American governments are deciding whether to
sign the
Escazú Agreement, which calls for strengthened enforcement of
environmental law and protection of environmental protection
activists, who are often murdered by extractivist businesses.
80 years ago, many US
Christians were
socialists.
A
UN report says that the US coalition has committed many war crimes
in Yemen.
Brazil's National Museum Blaze Blamed on
Austerity
Cuts Amid Olympics Spending.
The cheater occasionally does something potentially good. He is
attacking
the World Trade Organization.
The WTO is a
business-supremacy
treaty. It has been responsible for eliminating laws to protect
the environment and other things that are worth protecting.
I don't have confidence in the cheater not to replace it with
something worse.
ICE (the US deportation thug agency) is Deporting Mauritanians Back to
Modern-Day
Slavery.
Private schools for the wealthy
make
society more unequal for the future.
Due to the danger of heat waves,
we
must consider access to cooling a human right for those whose
lives and health are threatened by heat.
Nauru has developed into a dictatorship in which
protests
are forbidden and even members of parliament are imprisoned for
dissent.
The press are effectively banned, and the reason is basically
the
abuses
committed against the refugees that Nauru imprisons for Australia.
US citizens: phone each of your senators and call for rejection
of Kavanaugh.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Preventing
Nuclear War: A National Campaign Emerges [in the US].
The Labour
Party bowed
to pressure to adopt the definition of "antisemitism" which
includes some kinds of criticism of Israel's treatment of
Palestinians.
[The cheater] Succeeds in Making Insurance for People With Health Problems
Unaffordable.
A new
German progressive movement has been launched.
A debate about the precise criteria for the crime of
genocide is
a distraction from what are clearly enormous crimes against the
Rohingya.
Nauru arrested
a New Zealand reporter for interviewing refugees. Nobody is
supposed to be able to talk with them.
Local governments in the UK that oppose fracking
are investing
pension funds in fracking.
We
have wiped
out eight species of birds since 2000.
Don't Demonise
Beggars. It Won't
Solve the Problem of Homelessness.
The FCC plans
to cut
off 7 million poor Americans from subsidized phone service.
Trays in airport security carry
a substantial
amount of viruses.
I wonder how the risk of contagion from these compares with that of
being in the airplane cabin for a few hours. I would guess that the
risk from the trays is negligible by comparison, but I can't be sure.
The UN and the bully both wanted Russia and
Assad not
to carry out a bloodbath in Idlib.
Perhaps Turkey will take real steps to prevent it.
Everyone: urge
Gov Dayton of Minnesota to block the Line 3 pipeline.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
European research funding agencies aim
to put an
end to paywalled journals.
I've called
for this for 17 years.
Healthy
Babies at Risk, Warn Experts, as Trump Fearmongering Drives
Immigrant Families Off Nutrition Assistance Program.
In Britain, all sorts of public places to meet people and hang out
are closing
in large numbers.
Over 60% of Americans support unions,
but just
over 10% are union members. This measures the effectiveness of
repressive anti-union laws.
The bully
has cut
off US funds to support Palestinian refugees.
One can criticize the Arab governments of 1949 for deciding not to
integrate Palestinians into their populations, but that hardly excuses
starving them now.
In the 10 years since the fiscal crisis, the richest 10% of Americans
have gained 30 trillion dollars in wealth. Meanwhile, the poorer half
of Americans have lost
around half
a trillion in wealth — from an average of $11,000 per person
to $8,000 per person, a loss of over 25%.
Thus, the new wealth created in the US since 2008 has gone entirely to
the rich, and they have taken what the poor could not spare. This is
dooH niboR at work.
Right-wing parties in the European
Parliament chose
a denialist to write a paper on global heating.
The Denver
thugs physically
attacked, and arrested, a journalist taking photos of their
interaction with someone they had handcuffed on the street. As usual,
they made absurd excuses that showed contempt for the law they are
supposed to uphold, as well as for human rights and justice.
If the thug chief does not fire those two thugs, that will make per
complicit in their contempt for the rights of the people that thugs
generally claim they "serve and protect".
Bank of America has demanded that many customers prove they are US
citizens, and closing their accounts
otherwise. It refuses
to admit that this policy exists.
Bank of America is one of the large banks that has too much power.
Why not move your money into a smaller bank this week?
Two thugs
were caught
illegally selling soda in a school in Connecticut. They were not
punished for this.
This cute story describes a minor peccadillo done in one place by some
thugs in a school. Meanwhile, all the thugs stationed in US schools
arrest students from time to time and send them down the
school-to-prison pipeline.
Software that
predicts outbreaks of cholera has enabled medics to do a pretty
good job of suppressing the epidemic.
If only they could predict outbreaks of cluster bombs and drone
missiles.
The ISPs/phone companies leaked their lobbyists' talking points by
mailing them to a
journalist. This
article describes them and refutes them.
Google made
a deal with Mastercard so as to use credit card data to detect
when an ad effectively lead to a sale.
This is one of the reasons why I pay my bills by check, not by credit card.
Malaysia
has punished
people with caning for having homosexual sex.
Pulling scallops off the sea bottom is done
by extremely
destructive dredging.
Paranoid US parents are now
invited
to use surveillance technology to spy on their children
everywhere.
Here's an idea for a story: a US teenager from 2025 inexplicably goes to 1970
and learns to get used to not being tracked. Then
perse returns to 2025
and finds family tracking intolerable.
There were large protests in Russia against a
planned
increase in the retirement age. Arresting Navalny did not stop
them.
The brain damage suffered by some US diplomats in Cuba and China might
have been caused by
"microwave
weapons".
Such weapons may be possible, but I can't see any sensible reason why
Cuba and China would want to use such weapons against US diplomats.
If microwaves were involved, was it necessarily an intentional attack
using a weapon? Maybe the microwaves were emitted by something else,
such as a security device or spy device set up by the US in the
embassy, and the effect on people's brains was an unexpected side
effect.
A classic example of how "smart city" projects claim to protect
privacy while
ignoring the danger
of massive surveillance.
This mentions that someone is "accountable" for the use of the data
the snoop city collects — which gives no reason to think the
rules seriously protect our privacy — but shows no attempt to
protect against a massive increase in tracking and collection of
personal data.
Arab members of Israel's Parliament praised Corbyn for
refusing
to define criticism of Israel as "antisemitism". They praised his
opposition to all forms of racism, antisemitism included.
Exxon still
gives
money to global heating denial organizations although it claims to
acknowledge global heating now.
The Tories are using withdrawal from the EU as an
excuse
to negate environmental protection.
The basic functionality of a "smart" TV is to
report
what people watch on it. For "smart", read "snooping".
The Prime Minister of Samoa said
officials
that deny global heating belong in a mental hospital.
They should be put in a padded cell and not allowed communication
except with relatives and doctors.
The Burmese Army has published a book accusing Rohingya of atrocities,
showing
photos from past wars in other countries.
Australian journalist James Ricketson has been convicted of "spying"
in Cambodia. Cambodia
doesn't
recognize much difference between journalism and spying.
Sad to say, neither does
Australia,
nor
the
UK.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to demand to
see
the full papers of Kavanaugh's White House advice to Dubya.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: Call
on the USA to stop supplying arms for use in bombarding and
attacking Yemen.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
A underwater drone has been constructed that
can recognize
and destroy the starfish that are eating the Great Barrier Reef.
The biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef (and most of the
ecosphere) is fossil fuel combustion. Could we design a drone to
recognize and destroy oil wells?
Russia is putting people on trial and labeling them as "extremists"
for posting
irreverent jokes.
South
Korea and the US disagree about how to deal with North Korea.
Trump Administration Helped Banks Rip Off Student
Borrowers, Official
Alleges.
Russia and Assad are preparing for
a bloody
reconquest of Idlib, the last region of Syria where Arab rebels
have control.
Those rebels
are Sunni
Islamists;
if they had taken over Syria,
things would have gone badly for other groups.
However, if Assad takes Idlib, he
is likely
to torture and kill thousands more prisoners.
I can't see anything that anyone could plausibly do to prevent this,
and that's what is the great shame.
Prisons
are putting
strike leaders into solitary or transferring them to other
prisons.
(satire) Florida candidate Desantis regrets causing offense with his
"monkey this up" comment, saying it was intended to
go unnoticed
as a dog-whistle to his supporters.
Some
US cities and states are planning to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions, but the existing plans do not come anywhere near what is
needed to avoid global disaster.
The
cheater cancelled
a planned wage increase for federal workers on the grounds that
the money was already spent on his tax gifts to the rich.
Iran continues
the nuclear deal even despite painful US trade sanctions.
European countries should take steps to prevent their export products from
depending on the US in any way, so that the US cannot have a veto power
over their future exports.
Kavanaugh Sided With U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Big Businesses Associations in
76
Percent of Cases.
Trump’s Policies Toward
Workers: Drop
Dead.
The cheater plans to give wealthy people
a bigger
tax shelter for retirement savings, dressed up to look like it
will benefit working people who can't even afford to pay their debts.
(satire) Pelican Bay supermax prison warden Earl Daniels has divulged
that he is
struggling
to find methods of punishment worse than the inmates' current living
conditions.
Expected August 31 NAFTA Notice: A Final Deal Must Be Judged on
Whether
It Will Stop NAFTA's Serious Ongoing Damage.
There is also the danger that the replacement deal will increase
copyright repression, as the WTO did.
Kavanaugh's record shows that he
favors
the power of the federal government, and especially the president,
over any possible restraints in the constitution or treaties.
Noted journalists have been
arrested
by the UK for leaking information about a massacre 24 years ago,
that was connected with the sectarian violence there.
The US government
denies
passports to citizens of Latin origin, claiming their birth
certificates are fake. Some citizens have been exiled to Mexico.
Republicans
Will
Let Florida Drown. (Along with much of New York City, Washington
DC, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc.)
A panel of UK thugs
ruled
that strip-searching Konstancja Duff was legal because she denied
active cooperation such as answering questions.
I think the thugs' main crime against her was to arrest her for
handing a card with legal aid information to someone they had decided
to search without specific suspicion (which usually means, to harass
based on racial profiling).
Republicans propose to give American parents paid parental leave at
the expense of their retirement pensions. An economic study describes
the
effects that would have.
For some poor people in the US,
jail
is the only place they can get proper medical care.
A bill to
put
a moratorium on mergers of large corporations in agriculture and
processing and selling food would take a small step towards
restoring the antitrust law that we used to have before Reagan.
Before Reagan was elected, he
made
a deal with Iran in which Iran agreed to keep US soldiers prisoner
until after the US election. Later he rewarded Lebanese
hostage-takers by
paying
a ransom in the form of arms.
Legal Analysis Exposes Kavanaugh's
Long
History of Siding With Corporate Power Over the Common Good.
In the US: participate in
a Rise
for Climate rally on Sep 8.
Here's
the
idea of the protest.
US citizens: support Senator
Warren's corporation
reform bill.
If you sign, please spread the word!
ACLU of California Changes Position
to Oppose
Bail Reform Legislation.
The
bill was
modified to create a different system for putting too many people
in jail before trial.
15
Ways the Democrats Can Lose the November Elections.
Kavanaugh's judicial
record shows he would make the US more plutocratist, more cruel,
and more unjust.
A thug who killed a black man for no reason is
now teaching
classes to thugs about how get away with killing.
Global heating will enable agricultural pests
to do
a lot more damage.
The government of Brazil's President Fear
is imposing
poverty on the country, much like the US Republicans.
Politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka musician Bobi Wine, has
been banned
from leaving Uganda to get treatment for the effects of torture.
Amazon misrepresented
its treatment of workers when arguing with Senator Sanders, by
forgetting about all the temporary workers.
An
appeals court blocked the Unkinder Morgan tar sands pipeline.
"Energy drinks" are loaded with caffeine and sugar. The UK plans
to ban
their sale to minors.
Chen Guangcheng, Chinese
dissident, implores
Google not to censor for China.
A part of New
Zealand plans
to ban cats in order to protect the native birds.
Mice and rats are intrusive species in New Zealand, like cats. In a
few decades it may be possible to eliminate all mice in that country,
as well as all rats and all cats.
"Security" censorship in Australia: a man that the state won't
identify is accused of planning a violent crime solely on the strength
of having
a copy of some information.
The state admits that the man could not have committed an actual crime.
Which means the alleged "planning" would have been just a fantasy.
Trade of Coastal Sand
Is Damaging
Wildlife of Poorer Nations, Study Finds.
This is one of many ways in which human economic activity is
unsustainable, and eating up the ecosphere. We need to reduce
the human population, and the humane way is to have fewer children.
Australian right-wing extremists
are pushing
to ban Chelsea Manning from going there to speak.
Ten Years after the Financial Crash, the Timid
Left Should
Be Full of Regrets.
Yes, but someone who serves the banksters as Obama does was hardly
part of the left.
Italian Minister
Salvini is
being investigated for imprisoning 100 refugees on the Italian
coast guard ship Ubaldo Diciotti.
That ship docked in an Italian port and Salvini would not let
the refugees off the ship.
Aggressive Israeli right-wing "settlers" are attacking peace activists
ever
more frequently.
If you imagine the kind of right-wing total domination that the
bullshitter's supporters are aiming for, that is what Israel has become.
Protesters in
Paris ruined
public urinals because they consider it unfair to reduce public
urination by men until women are allowed to breastfeed.
I support the latter cause, but that doesn't make it desirable for drunken
men to piss on the sidewalk.
Prominent Indian activists, for human rights or more income for the
poor, have
been arrested because of their political views.
The hurricane that hit Puerto
Rico killed
about as many Americans as the 2001 terrorist attacks, so why not
have a Global War on Global Heating, or at least a War on Puerto
Rico's Poverty?
I think the difference in response is that the damage in Puerto Rico
provides an opportunity to seize property from Puerto Rico. By
contrast, the opportunity provided by the terrorist attacks was for
"security" (massive spending and massive surveillance).
(satire) Trump Revokes Puerto Rico Recovery Funds After Learning
Hurricane
Maria Had
Fewer Survivors.
Senator Schumer claims to be a Democrat but is making deals
to approve
extremist Republican judges.
50
years ago, Chicago thugs rioted and crushed nonviolent peace
demonstrators — and journalists — at the Democratic
Convention.
(satire) SC Johnson & Son recalled every single product from their
Raid brand of insecticides Tuesday after realizing the food chain
would simply
collapse without bugs.
Everyone in the US:
Call
on Core Civic (a prison company) to end forced labor in its
prisons and pay workers a proper wage.
(satire) The White House
raises
and lowers its flag from moment to moment to indicate the
president's feelings about Senator McCain.
Rights Groups Are Demanding That Google Not Release A
Censored
Search Engine In China.
Phony cellular towers, supposedly intended as a means of tracking
phones, usually at protesters, actually cuts them off from the phone
radio network.
Even
emergency calls may not go through.
I expect that thugs consider this a feature. It would stop protesters
from posting about the crimes that thugs are committing, and as for
emergency calls, a newly arrived group of thugs will protect the thugs
that were committing them.
Detroit Turns Off Every Public School's Drinking Water Due to
High
Levels of Lead, Copper.
Siding with the Palestinian Struggle
Is
Not Antisemitic — Corbyn has no need to apologize.
I am not outright opposed to Zionism; like
Uri
Avnery, I want a peaceful compromise between the Israeli cause and
the Palestinian cause.
Explaining
White Privilege to a Broke White Person... by someone who grew up
as a broke white person.
Global heating
increases
the effects of El Niño, especially for land regions in
North America and Australia.
It appears that some German thugs are
helping
neo-Nazis.
US citizens: insist that a replacement for NAFTA
should pull
back from various policies that are bad for the environment or for
workers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Phone your senators to oppose confirmation of Kavanaugh.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The UK privatized deportation, then gave the deportation company
extra
money for deporting more people.
Such a contract directly discourages justice.
Israel's Supreme
Court prohibits
the policy of punishing relatives of Hamas leaders by stopping the
relatives from leaving Gaza for treatment for serious illnesses.
US commercial health insurance
means you
only owe $100k for treatment of a heart attack.
Obama
has endorsed
a billionaire Democrat while snubbing progressive candidates.
I could see in 2008 that Obama was no progressive, which is why I
never voted for him.
Bees
get addicted
to neonicotinoid pesticides, just as humans get addicted to
nicotine.
Then they get sick from the pesticides, just as humans get sick from
nicotine.
I think that tobacco makes nicotine as a pesticide.
The Indonesian teenager who was jailed for an
abortion has
been freed.
But she feels she cannot go back to her village.
Carmakers' Gaming of Emissions
Tests "Costing
Drivers Billions".
They haven't stopped trying to cheat the goal.
Substantial numbers of teenagers are
becoming fed
up with social networks.
I suspect that the aspects of company-controlled social networks that
pressure people to use them more are designed intentionally to boost
income. Thus, I suggest that people who have learned to dislike these
aspects try using distributed free software networks. Those networks
will make it easy to do the things you want to do, and no more.
Vietnam
demands that Bayer (formerly Monsanto) pay damages for the toxic
herbicide Agent Orange that the US dropped on substantial areas of
Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Disney World workers have won a $15 minimum
wage, three
years from now.
Hundreds of millions of people will
be in
danger of various deficiency diseases as higher CO2 levels cause
food plants to have less of certain nutrients.
These people are poor — they can't correct the problem by buying
supplements or meat.
California
has adopted
a law to end the requirement for money bail for suspects. The law
will take effect in October 2019.
I hope that the future risk-assessment system will not be a secret program
controlled by a company.
All
Sides in Yemen May Be Responsible for War Crimes, Say UN Experts.
That all sides are doing it does not excuse any of them.
'They're Liquidating Us': AT&T Continues Layoffs And Outsourcing
Despite
Profits.
We need to either limit or tax outsourcing.
North Carolina Must Fix
Republican
Gerrymander Before Midterms.
Australia's planned digital tyranny
threatens
each programmer with being ordered to commit sabotage. Even
programmers outside Australia. Officials will be able to order this
arbitrarily, and informing a court would be forbidden.
If this law is adopted, everyone involved in software development will
need to keep away from Australia. Even the shortest visit would
invite being compelled to betray the whole world.
Amazon's voice response system is now
designed
to lie to children.
Replicability in
psychology:
out of 21 important papers published in prestigious journals, only 13
of the results could be reproduced, and often the effect was not as
strong.
Metal in the Air Really
Messes
with Ocean Life.
Rapprochement between the North Korea and the US and South Korea
has
not reassured Japan's military, which says North Korea is still a
threat.
This could be simply pressure for Japan to spend more on the military.
Nicolas Hulot, French minister of the environment, resigned speaking
on the radio, saying that
President
Macron gives the environment low priority.
A study in the 1950s concluded that the US
used
germ warfare against North Korea in the Korean War.
The whole
report: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4334133-ISC-Full-Report-Pub-Copy.html
California faces
dire
danger from heatwaves, fires and rising seas if we don't stop
global heating.
That's not even counting the tropical diseases and the failure of
agriculture.
The Amazon twitter army consists of
full-time
employees whose job is to say nice things about the company.
Seth Frotman resigned as head of the Students Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, saying that saboteurs
won't
allow student borrowers to be protected.
Highly polluted air causes a
reduction
in intelligence "equivalent to having lost a year of education".
It harms old people more than young people.
Regulation of certain persistent organic pollutants under the
Stockholm Convention has
succeeded
in reducing their concentration in the Arctic.
These are chemicals that can damage wildlife even in small
concentrations.
Myanmar's Military Accused of Genocide in Damning
UN
Report.
Iraqis in the region of Basra are rioting in
protest
against a quagmire of corruption that chokes them in toxic oil,
while they get none of the money from it.
Iraq's most desperate need is to reduce the birth rate and reduce its
population.
US citizens:
post
your comment against the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens:
Demand
the Senate suspend Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings.
Zainab Merchant describes how the TSA and US border thugs
search
harass her with "searches" every chance they get, without ever
offering a justification.
These actions can't be explained by a concern about any physical
object she might be carrying. That is merely an excuse.
The US legal system regularly and systematically imprisons people
through
false
testimony coerced from accused people — usually poor people,
coerced because they can't afford bail, let alone a real defense.
Often they are accused of activities they had nothing to do with.
The cheater's henchmen now testifying about the cheater's campaign
activities are atypical: they are not poor, they do have lawyers,
and they really have had an association with those activities.
The racist is
making
his racism more blatant, with drive-by tweets whose details are
insignificant except that they spread racism.
Senator McCain may have unintentionally
paved
the way for bullshit to capture the Republican Party when he chose
Sarah Palin as running mate.
Before 2008, the Republican Party was cruel, dishonest, and
plutocratist. The Democratic Party was too, though to a
lesser
degree. But neither was dominated by hatred of the idea of truth,
the idea of justice, and the idea of human rights.
Australian border thugs
took
Nathan Hague's computers and cracked them, out of his sight, and
would not give any reason.
The recommendation to store your data in the so-called "cloud" is
misguided. There is no "cloud" — only computers belonging to
others. What makes you think that government "security" forces can't
get your data there? The GDPR does not apply to "security".
You will probably not be able to lease a laptop which has anything but
Windows or MacOS. Those systems are nonfree — you
can't trust them either.
From Tahrir to Trump: how tyrannical regimes
mastered
using the internet to reinforce their power and to defeat
resistance.
Rohingya remaining in Burma remain
excluded
from many aspects of life.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, in prison in Iran, has started a
hunger
strike.
Varoufakis: Greece
Was
Never Bailed Out — It Remains a Debtor's Prison And the EU
Won't Let Go of the Keys.
Opposition
Warns
of Protests after Zimbabwe Election Result Is Upheld.
New York City has regulated Guber,
imposing
a minimum wage.
That will be good for the drivers, who won't be subject to long waits
and thus low daily income. However, it does nothing to correct the
injustices of Guber towards its customers: making them run
nonfree software and identifying them.
Memphis thugs
raided
Black Lives Matter campaigners' homes, apparently as retaliation
for a lawsuit.
Oil companies have learned how to create
astroturf
support movements on the fringes of the indigenous groups whose
land then want to drill.
The US government
intimidated
Reality Winner into pleading guilty through unsubstantiated claims
of unspecified harm to "national security". That it got away with
this puts journalism and democracy in danger.
There is evidence that skimming texts on a screen
undermines
the development of reasoning ability and empathy.
In other words, we may be educating a generation that won't understand
how to see through the foolish arguments of cheaters and plutocratist
politicians.
Research Paper Shows Militarized SWAT Teams
Don't
Make Cops — Or The Public — Any Safer.
We should eliminate most of the SWAT teams, and keep just a few that
can be flown to where they are needed.
An underground
network of women in the US perform abortions in women's homes.
Assad's "security" forces photographed the corpses of 11,000 prisoners
that they killed. Secret documents captured by
rebels confirm
some of these killings, as well as identifying victims and
describing how they were "interrogated".
Farmworkers
Are Dying
from Extreme Heat.
Most current coal industry
workers could
get better pay in solar power installation.
This is icing on the cake. We need
to end
coal burning, and even if it were expensive, we would still need
to.
Sexist
Barriers Block Women's Choice to be Sterilized.
This relates to social pressure on women to have children.
I knew a woman who had got herself sterilized, and did not regret it.
She told me that it wasn't easy to find a doctor who would do it.
Considering how important it is to limit and reduce the human
population, we should not impede anyone's choice to be sterilized.
Research
Shows "Merit"
Is Highly Subjective And Changes with Our Values.
US teenagers
are organizing
voter registration campaigns to defeat senators that oppose gun
control.
Please don't call
them "children".
Airlines have learned to
give higher
estimates of flight times, so that flights are less likely to
arrive late.
The article disapproves of this, but I am not sure I agree. Giving a
later estimate of arrival time does not mean that the flight takes
longer. Rather, it introduces more caution into people's plans,
including connections.
Pressing
the government of Thailand to agree to the Work in Fishing
Convention.
A campaign aims
to prohibit
nondisclosure agreements that suppress testimony about crimes such
as rape.
The nondisclosure agreements that cause the broadest harm are those
that withhold generally useful technical information from the public.
One technical nondisclosure agreement can keep millions of people
under someone's thumb. In the early 1980s I reached the conclusion
that it was immoral to accept a nondisclosure agreement for generally
useful technical information, and I have carefully followed that
principle ever since.
It was this conclusion, which I reached in the early 1980s, that
propelled me
to develop the free operating system GNU.
The UK allows obvious bogus front companies to keep operating, by
failing
to enforce recently adopted laws.
The Democratic National Committee has suffered
a decline
in donations, as progressives choose to donate to progressive PACs
instead.
We don't want our funds to support "centrist" right-wing Democrats.
The ACLU has found an
opportunity
to ask US courts to rule on the constitutionality of PRISM, the
NSA's warrantless snooping system.
I hope we can stop Kavanaugh from biasing the Supreme Court in favor
of all surveillance.
Proposing to follow Finland's example and have
all
children attend the same schools.
It might be a good idea, if this enables them to be as good as
Finland's schools have become.
Global heating is
softening
permafrost in the Alps, making some old climbing trails unsafe.
The US immigration thugs claim that Joel Arrona-Lara, grabbed while
driving his wife to the hospital for a cesarean section, was wanted in
Mexico for killing. But it is
not
clear that is really true.
Hundreds
Dead, No One Charged: the Uphill Battle against [killings by LA
thugs].
Germany set a strong target for decreasing greenhouse gases, but has
been unable to achieve it despite real effort. It
requires
greatly reducing the use of cars.
50
Student Activists Missing in China After Police Raid.
Study finds 93% of tweets about vaccines between 2014 and 2017 were
planted
with aim of sowing division.
This sabotage
kills
human beings.
Spain should go beyond moving Franco's grave, and
turn
his memorial to fascist conquest of Spain into a museum of national
conciliation and remembrance.
A certain amount of punishment of past criminals can be proper.
Franco's grandson said that moving his remains is "vindictive".
Maybe so, but it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.
Volunteers in Virginia and North Carolina
monitor
pipeline construction looking for illegalities.
(satire) … students at the University of California, Berkeley
… were
excited
to see the slate of notable speakers who will be disinvited to
campus this year.
In the
US: call on
Bank of America to stop asking customers about their citizenship
status.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on
AT&T, UPS, FedEx, Pfizer, State Farm, Chevron, Anheuser-Busch and
Comcast to stop funding ALEC.
If you sign, please spread the word!
American white supremacists
explicitly campaign
to end democracy and they label the power they hope to wield over
others as their "freedom".
Sanders advocates
taxing employers to pay for all public assistance their workers
need.
Impeachment of the president was intended as the remedy for when a
president acts like a king. If partisanship makes this remedy
impossible to use, we can't defend the republic; we need to make
impeachment a
real possibility again.
The Democratic Party
has finally
adopted new rules to reduce the power of superdelegates. They will
no longer vote in the first ballot.
(satire) GOP Leaders Demand Congressman Duncan Hunter’s
Resignation After
Discovering He [is] Poor.
Putin had Navalny arrested again, and the thugs appear to have been
violent
— breaking
his finger.
The oil companies want the US government
to spend
12 billion dollars on sea walls to protect its facilities from sea
level rise.
The absurdity is that their facilities are causing sea level rise.
Sanders:
"Disney
is so nervous that the living wage ballot initiative in Anaheim is
going to pass, it would rather end some of the corporate welfare it
receives from local taxpayers than pay all 30,000 of its workers
decent wages."
We cannot get much news about strikes and hunger strikes in US
prisons, but supporters
are protesting
in solidarity in 21 cities.
The Prison Strike Is an Overdue Opportunity
to End
the Slavery of Incarcerated People
If the bullshitter pardons convicts such as Manafort and Cohen, he
could lay himself open to
a charge
of obstruction of justice, and it might not even fully protect
them or enable them to avoid testifying about his crimes.
Wells Fargo
bank closed
candidate Nikki Fried's campaign bank account because she accepts
contributions from the medical marijuana industry.
I don't think campaigns should get money from any businesses,
but this prejudice against the marijuana businesses is meddling in
politics.
The Senate's "election security bill" is
so weak
and misguided that it is worthless.
Amazon seems to organize some of its warehouse workers to say good
things about their
work. Remarkably
similar good things.
Is Amazon paying them? Threatening them?
Arguing that President
Pence would
be less of a menace than President Bullshitter.
Pence is hardly honest, but he can't bullshit like the bullshitter.
I think he would not be able to maintain the cult of truth-defying
extremism that the bullshitter maintains.
Konstancja Duff tried to give a legal advice card to a teenager who
London thugs had stopped on the street for no particular reason. The
thugs threw her down (causing permanent injury), charged her with
bogus crimes, then tied her up and cut apart her clothing (ruining
it), and booked her while she was nearly nude.
Now one of the
thugs faces
an internal accusation for stripping her.
What about for knocking her down and injuring her? That is worse.
You can get over embarrassment, but getting over some injuries is
impossible. We cannot allow thugs to get away with claiming they
couldn't tell a piece of paper from a weapon.
Bravo to Ms Duff for recognizing that the thugs must do this
frequently, and that her somewhat privileged status as a postgraduate
student gave her a chance to stand up for everyone's rights.
UK censorship is shockingly extreme — posting photos of a car
crash is
labeled as "malicious" because they might cause "distress".
Ralph
Nader proposes how voter education could reactivate democracy in
the US.
Mollie Tibbetts was murdered by an unauthorized immigrant. (Such a
thing surely had to happen someday.) Some of her relatives have
denounced
the bullshitter's campaign to smear all unauthorized immigrants
based on this one crime.
Should we smear everyone named "Trump" just because one family with
that name turns out to be full of cheaters?
Will
the cheater attack Iran to distract Americans from his crimes?
If he does, we will need to brace ourselves to resist the idiotic
"support our troops" campaign. The support US troops deserve is not
to be sent into wars that are either (1) unjustified, (2) unnecessary,
or (3) futile.
Coal-powered generators in the
US are
being shut down, and coal executives know that even with help from
planet-roaster officials, their industry is disappearing.
The question is whether it will disappear fast enough, and along with
enough of the oil and natural gas, to avoid global disaster. Merely
carrying out
the weak
terms of the Paris agreement is not enough.
Over
360 immigrant minors taken from their parents may remain prisoners
of the US for years because it already deported their parents and
can't find them.
Since they were fleeing from violence, and were deported back to
places where people threatened to murder them, they may be hiding
— or they may already have been murdered.
Tens of millions of Americans suffer each year when forest fires fill
the air with smoke, and some of them will get sick and even die from
it. The cost of trying to protect and treat
them will
become too much.
It would be cheaper to build renewable power sources and prevent the
problem.
In general, with global heating, an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure.
The Javari Valley, home to some of Brazil's uncontacted tribes and
endangered species of
wildlife, is
under threat by constantly growing modern "civilization".
The human population cannot keep growing without limit. In the last
gasp, civilization will try to plunder everything that remains, but
this will buy only a few more years. Can we find the wisdom to stop
population growth?
You can help, by doing as I have
done: not having
children.
Indonesia's law against blasphemy continues to be used for oppression.
A Buddhist has
been sentenced
to prison for asking a mosque to reduce the volume of its call to
prayer. Muslims responded with lunatic violence by burning temples.
Blaspheming against any religion is part of human rights.
"If Democrats
clean
up their act and appeal to the working class again, that would be
far more threatening to Trump than the Mueller investigation ever
could be."
Whistleblower Reality Winner has been sentenced to
five
years in prison.
A program tries to teach violent Brazilian men that
hitting
their wives is not normal or right.
Overfishing is
wiping
out tuna around the Philippines.
Verizon appears to have
artificially
slowed net access for firemen who were working on putting out a
wildfire.
The old network neutrality rule prohibited this.
True network neutrality would mean that an ISP is not allowed even to
take note of who you are talking with.
The company that runs the cafeteria in the Pentagon is paying workers
too little and
faces
an investigation for wage theft.
Imagine
what
Republicans would say if the cheater shot Michael Cohen on Fifth
Avenue.
An immigrant in the US committed murder, so Republicans are
trying
to smear all immigrants in the US on that basis.
Overall, immigrants commit
fewer
crimes (in proportion to their numbers) than natural-born US
citizens.
It would be no less rational to smear all natural-born US citizens
because some of them commit murder, but the Republicans won't do
that…as long as they need some natural-born US citizens to vote
for them.
Big Tech Turns Saboteur to
Cripple
New California Privacy Law in Private.
Parts of the law, those about getting your data back in a usable
format, assume that a company is keeping data about you as a service.
Occasionally that is so, but we should not let that distract us from
the cases where we never asked the company to track us at all.
(satire) Aspiring felon Matthias Winnow said Wednesday how moved he
was that lawyer and lobbyist Paul Manafort, 69,
didn't
get his first eight convictions until his late 60s.
Hypothesis: the bullshitter's campaign was
like
The Producers. Various crooks assumed he would lose and
considered the campaign a great opportunity for grift. But —
oops! — he won, and now they are getting investigated.
A
local
Texas ISP is resisting in court the demands of the copyright
industry to conscript it as copyright police.
I wish there were a way the public could help them.
An automated copyright censor
took
down MEP Julia Reda's post opposing automated copyright censors.
Unless senate Republicans become willing to remove the bullshitter
from office, impeaching him is
useless.
The WTO has
ruled
against various national and local policies (in several countries)
that promoted local solar power business.
Every such policy benefits the whole world, even though it benefits
that nation or locality especially.
The US thinks that a good mother is one that
never
takes a moment away form taking care of her children.
I hope the US stops harassing parents about insignificant risks to
children, but you can protect yourself from the problem by not having
children. In the process you will make your life easier and less
stressful, give yourself the opportunity to do something actually good
for the world instead, and shrink your carbon footprint.
US executives have made a public show of distancing themselves from
the cheater but
continue
meeting with him privately.
Places in Germany where more of the inhabitants are used by Facebook
have
more
incidents of racist violence.
Israa al-Ghomgham in Salafi Arabia
faces
possible execution if convicted of "incitement to protest" and
"providing moral support to rioters (protesters)". She campaigned to
allow Shi'ites to practice their version of Islam.
Killing male dissidents is nothing new for that country. Now it aims
to become an equal opportunity killer.
Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu was arrested,
then
tortured
by thugs to the point where he can't walk, speak, or see. It is
not clear he was conscious enough in a court hearing to understand
what was said.
Other protesters were beaten and arrested, too.
The "president" of Uganda is a typical dictator, unofficially
"president for life".
Wales has made a
law
establishing children's right to play — and requiring
various institutions to make sure they have a place to do so.
Many ordinary activities can exclude disabled people, or enable them
if society pays a
fairly
small cost of doing so.
If Google Goes to China, Will It Tell the
Truth
about Tiananmen Square?
Saboteur Zinke, and the cheater,
want
to use California's fires as an excuse to abolish environmental
protection.
Describing the political trap of the Republican and Democratic parties
that
sustain
the power of the rich in two different ways.
The article is weak by presenting "capitalism" as something monolithic
and unchanging. US capitalism today is nastier, more powerful, and
more antidemocratic than US capitalism in 1979.
Because the US electoral system makes it so hard for a third party to
win, I pin more hope on progressives in the Democratic party.
In the wake of the defeat of the abortion bill, which was fought hard
by the Catholic Church, Argentines are now
formally
dropping their membership in it.
A friend of mine in Spain did this years ago, because churches in
Spain get a subsidy based on the number of members they have.
Many progressives are
winning
in state and local primary elections.
US prisoners are starting a strike,
demanding
(among other things) to be paid a reasonable wage for the work
they now do for a pittance.
The low pay they get undermines wages for Americans that live and work
outside prisons.
British prisons, protected from journalists by privatization, have
fallen into conditions that suggest a
third-world
country in the 1930s.
Privatization enables a government to impose budget cuts on an area
and evade responsibility for the results.
Due to a
court
ruling, begging is no longer a crime in Delhi.
Global heating is
breaking
up the ice at the North of Greenland, where it has been frozen all
the time since humans first saw it.
The toxic algae bloom in Florida is
killing
lots of endangered manatees.
An Italian coast guard ship returned to port with almost 180 refugees.
The Italian minister of harshness
refuses
to let them leave the ship. They are stuck on board indefinitely.
Eventually Italy will start to regret the nonavailability of its ship.
The cheater said he won't give Mueller a statement, fearing that if his
statement disagrees with other witnesses he might be
accused
of perjury.
He's not the only one this could happen to. In addition, any slip of
memory in one's testimony can be turned into a criminal accusation.
This is why lawyers advise clients
not to give authorities any statement
whatsoever when they might be suspects.
US
citizens: call
on the US to get out of the war in Yemen.
You can sign this without running nonfree Javascript code using
the standard
Salsalabs method.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Now that the cheater is directly implicated in violating
election
law, tell
the Senate not to let him put anyone on the Supreme Court who
might help him evade punishment.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the suburbs of Baltimore, a campaign to shut down light rail trains
resembles
anti-vaccination: once people are predisposed to blame the trains,
they imagine more "examples" to justify their foolish cause.
Michael Cohen
has made
a plea bargain and turned state's evidence against the cheater.
The result could be that the evidence closes in on the cheater. But
he has led Republicans step by step to accept and support
ever-increasing levels of dishonesty, when he orders them to. Have
they reached the point where they will stand by him against all
justice, decency, democracy, and honesty, and will help him to crush
them all? That is surely what the cheater is aiming for.
So far, they
are still
defending him.
Greece May Still Be Europe's Sick Patient, But the
EU Is
at Death's Door.
That may be an exaggeration. The tyranny of the banksters, like other
tyrannies, often manages to hand on for years while extremely sick.
The EU has become a motor for dooH niboR, with rather weak democracy
that isn't enough to restrain the banksters. It pressures member
countries to push most people down. If it is not made democratic it
should be eliminated.
The prosecution of Backpage and its publishers was a
politically-minded
falsehood, part of a campaign to stop sex workers from
advertising.
This is why I do not support Kamala Harris. Her campaign struck me as not
merely wrong, but dishonest.
It seems that many sex workers are enslaved, while many others are
working freely on their own terms. World-wide, workers are enslaved
in many other areas of work: manicure, farming, fishing, construction,
domestic help, from what I recall at this moment. It is very
important to free people from enslavement, but prohibiting manicure,
farming, fishing, construction, domestic help and sex work is not the
way. We need laws aimed at the practice of enslavement and its
methods, not at these jobs.
Michigan's official in charge of public health
faces charges
of involuntary manslaughter for decisions that lead to cases of
legionnaire's disease.
Not, alas, for lead poisoning.
Particulate air pollution in Spokane, due to wildfires, is so bad now
that people
are being
warned to stay indoors.
I am very sad
about the
death of Uri Avnery, our wisest guide to justice and peace in
regard to Israel and Palestine.
We will now have to figure out the best course
without his wisdom.
The article doesn't mention that Gush Shalom was forced to drop its
boycott of products of Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory by an
Israel censorship law which contrived
to impose
unbounded debt on anyone who advocates the boycott.
We who live outside Israel
can still
advocate this boycott.
Newer frack-wells use a lot more water than the first generation, and
they
produce a
lot of toxic waste water.
The EPA's proposed sabotage to the Clean Power Plan
would kill
1400 Americans a year through air pollution, and untold millions a
few decades down the line due to increased global heating.
Senator Warren
has proposed
a number of measures to reduce corruption in national US politics.
I think they are all good, but need to be done in parallel with a general
reform to reduce the influence of large donors on campaigns.
Manafort
was convicted
on 8 charges, including 7 charges of fraud.
US citizens:
call
on the US to end its unconditional support for Salafi Arabia.
As California burns, Billionaire Polluters
bought
rights to drive the world faster to frack and fruin.
Dutch voters
eliminated
a new law that allowed mass surveillance.
Socialism has had a range of meanings, with certain
core
ideas in common.
(satire) President Donald Trump
accused
voters Monday of meddling in the upcoming midterms.
Extreme rain events in most of India have become
three
times as frequent since 1950.
(satire) Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos revealed Monday that she
was
forced
to use her own salary to purchase supplies for her yacht.
White thugs in Iowa pulled two blacks out of a car and
handcuffed
them because they had a vague "feeling" about the two.
A lawyer that formerly worked for the Koch brothers is at the EPA,
in
charge of increasing air pollution.
Australian activists are campaigning to move all refugee children (all
minors, perhaps?)
from
Nauru to Australia.
Remote driving of cars on city streets is
already
working, more or less.
The danger that someone will remote-control the supposedly
"driverless" or "autonomous" taxi is only a matter of whether they
decide to do it. It follows that you cannot trust these cars!
The US government is
paying
US sports teams to promote militarism as propaganda for increased
military spending, and for war.
Everyone: Support
the Waorani against the companies that want to drill in their rain
forest (and pollute it forever).
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the senate to block confirmation of DowDupont lawyer
Peter Wright as an EPA official.
If you sign, please spread the word!
37 people (mostly minors) have died in the first half of 2018 in
Europe because they and
others didn't
get the MMR vaccination.
Proposing that the FBI leadership is driven, above all, by
the desire
for effective autonomy.
Corbyn could lead the European Union to become something
that serves
the people of Europe.
Australia's right-wing prime minister proposed to encourage renewable
energy,
but he
just capitulated to the planet-roaster wing of the party.
"Rising arctic temperatures mean we face
a future
of 'extreme extremes' where sunny days become heatwaves and rain
becomes floods, study says."
US thugs nowadays go beyond just arresting anti-fascist protesters by
fabricating absurd "crimes". The
thugs publish
their photos and addresses, to expose them to the threat of
fascist violence.
It is clear that these thugs are on the side of the fascists. Because
of their wish to cheat, they should all be fired. Those who actually
did cheat should be jailed.
Palestinian teenagers imprisoned by
Israel were
tortured.
The increasing extent of wildfires in California
is making
people in Idaho sick from the smoke.
A
hacker of age 11 was able to crack a clone of a real US election
system in 10 minutes.
Sulfoximine-based pesticides, proposed as a replacement for
neonicotinoids, may
hurt bees just as badly.
Surveillance technology for people to use on other people (their
children, delivery couriers) pressures people to check each other,
teaching
people to accept surveillance and feel uncomfortable without it.
At the top of the pyramid of surveillance will be the rulers of your
country.
Putin
Urges Europe to Help Rebuild Syria so Refugees Can Return.
In principle, it seems like a good idea, but it is not clear that the
fighting has stopped. Also, it is not clear that Syria under Assad's
rule is safe for Sunnis.
It's Time
to End
America's War in Afghanistan.
The bullshitter is trying to make more Americans die on the job. His
supreme court nominees
may finish
off American workers' lives.
The bullshitter's agents claim that, because gasoline is not expensive
now, US
cars might
as well waste it.
US Supplied Bomb that Killed
40
Children on Yemen School Bus.
US deportation thugs
arrested
Joel Arrona–Lara as he was driving his wife to the hospital to
give birth. They left her alone in the car.
It's
not a good thing for anyone, citizen or not,
to have five children. I mention that because there are people
who think that those who have many children deserve special sympathy.
I don't agree -- I think that this couple deserves the same sympathy
as any other couple, children or no.
Facebook is resisting a
US
government demand to break the encryption of Facebook Messenger.
This particular act is good, but nowhere near enough to counteract the
wrongs of Facebook's core activities.
Republicans are
making
a distorted attack on New York Governor Cuomo for admitting that
the US has always had flaws.
By doing this they demonstrate their loyalty to the coverup of all
problems that the US has — in other words, to keeping those
problems uncorrected.
Cuomo is not a progressive; I support Cynthia Nixon. But the
accusation now coming from the liar party is nonsense.
Companies that want to make cars without local human drivers are
pressuring
to blame pedestrians for getting in the cars' way.
The political danger of
remote
control of driverless cars, and the surveillance danger of they
watch the people they pass by, makes for a danger of worse tyranny as
well as collisions. We should either ban both remote control of and
surveillance by these cars, or ban the cars.
"Putting
a Bushie Neoconservative in charge of the Iran Action Group can
fairly be seen as a signal that Pompeo wants to do to President Hassan
Rouhani what Bush did to Saddam Hussein."
Congress passed a military spending law that more than doubles what
the US spent at the end of the cold war, and authorizes support for
atrocities in Yemen and Iran.
The US news media
distracted
the public from this by focusing on the irrelevant fact that the
bullshitter didn't thank Senator McCain when signing it.
How about if US newsmedia start focusing on the government actions
that really hurt people?
The intensive farming in the UK is
wiping
out wildlife. Saving it requires urgent action.
The ten years since the fiscal crisis demonstrate that Keynes is still
right:
deficit
spending leads a country out of a crisis, while government budget
cuts make it worse.
Why do today's economists so often refuse to recognize this? I think
they are pandering to rich people that will profit from
shock
capitalism.
The full potential of budget-cutting disaster was
visited
on Greece, and Greeks will continue to be effectively serfs of the
euro-banksters for decades more.
Facebook faces a
US
government complaint for racial discrimination in housing
advertisements.
Three thugs in Georgia
tased
an old woman who had a knife, which she was using to cut
dandelions.
Then they strained to charge her with crimes to fabricate a
justification for their act of gratuitous violence, which could have
killed her. Tasers
can
kill people of any age, but I'd expect someone 87 years old to be
more vulnerable.
With the knife, she could potentially have hurt a thug, but she didn't
threaten to attack. It is part of a thug's job to recognize the
difference between a conceivable threat and an actual one; to
disregard that difference is contempt for the public. The thug chief
should be fired for trying to excuse that.
Phony scientific journals do more than give "scientists" a way to say
that they have published papers. They also
give
companies a way to create "scientific" evidence for their
products.
I suspect that Philip Morris and AstraZeneca can buy more prestige for
the places they publish their marketing materials. Some pharma
companies have been found
ghostwriting
articles for professionals to sign, and even setting up "journals"
to publish articles to
boost their products.
The only way to enable homeless people to have toilets to use and
avoid harassment by thugs is to
require
businesses to allow non-customers to use toilets.
It is not only the homeless that will benefit from this. Every
pedestrian will occasionally need to use a toilet. Sometimes I have
found myself on the street with hands sticky from eating a fruit, and
couldn't find a place I could wash them. The YMCA showed how
committed it is to charity by refusing to let me use a sink.
The objections that businesses might have are selfish and callous, and
not worth even considering.
I've
advocated this for a long time.
It appears that US prostitutes fall into two different worlds: the
ones who work voluntarily in fairly peaceful circumstances, and the
ones who are coerced or enslaved
and frequently
face violence.
I wonder what keeps the two worlds separate. It seems to be a central
question, perhaps related to what keeps the enslaved ones enslaved.
I also wonder why a paying customer used a gun to force a prostitute
to have sex. That implies combining two roles that seem incompatible.
One could rape anyone with a gun, but how does paying fit into that
scenario — and why call it "buying" sex?
Trump uses
the techniques
of mafia bosses to intimidate.
"Reality TV" taught the public to accept unreality as real and blatant
lies as truth, even as it taught the bullshitter
to succeed
through telling blatant lies.
Research found that men generally
find females
of age 18 the most attractive.
This accords with the view that Stendhal reported in France in the
1800s, that a woman's most beautiful years were from 16 to 20.
Although this attitude on men's part is normal, the author still wants
to present it as wrong or perverted, and implicitly demands men
somehow control their attraction to direct it elsewhere. Which is as
absurd, and as potentially oppressive, as claiming that homosexuals
should control their attraction and direct it towards to the other
sex. Will men be pressured to undergo "age conversion therapy"
intended to brainwash them to feel attracted mainly to women of their
own age?
Senator Warren's proposal aims to make capitalism bearable again
by undoing
some of the changes of recent decades, that converted it into a
monster.
It may not be enough to rein in plutocracy, but at least it is a good
start.
Human children, age 7-9, are vulnerable
to peer
pressure from robots.
The robots are not disguised — the children know that they are
robots.
A US auction for offshore oil drilling leases attracted less interest
than expected.
Only 1%
of the leases offered were sold.
That's a good sign, but not enough to imply that we are on course
already to avoid global disaster. We need to push hard, to reach that point.
The US government has disregarded the court order to reunite refugee
minors with their
parents. Over
560 minors are still waiting.
The article refers to them as "children", but it is generally bad to
talk
about teenagers that way.
Australia's planned law to require companies and individuals to help
the state break encryption could
be used
to repress free encryption software and free software generally,
around the world.
Australia is an inviting site for attacks on human rights because its
constitution does not protect human rights, and these attacks can
be extended
to the whole world.
Ralph Nader: progressive politicians need to campaign
for deeper
changes to end plutocracy.
To give them
credit, single-payer
medical care is one such change which progressives have taken up.
Let's hope
the spread
of Democratic Socialism will lead to adoption of more of Nader's
proposals.
(satire) …local man Derek Wilkinson told reporters Friday he
worries his girlfriend, Katie Spencer, has started to
become radicalized
by a skin-care blog.
"If You're Poor or
Disabled, the
GOP Wants You to Die."
European countries are not alone in facing problems in bridges. There are 56,000 structurally deficient bridges in the US.
Mexican gangsters are kidnapping and killing elected officials.
PISSI no longer holds a territory, but it survives as an underground terrorist network.
Ironic turnabout: Disney is being sued by a greedy estate for applying the principle of fair use, and is publishing a defense of the principle.
The turnabout is that Disney is a notorious copyright bully.
Don't be distracted by supporting Disney or opposing Disney. We need to reduce the power of copyright, regardless of who is the copyright holder.
'Deeply Disturbing': For Second Time This Year, Facebook Suspends Left-Leaning TeleSUR English Without Explanation.
If there was a reason for this, Facebook should have told it the reason. The same, of course, for anyone whose channel is suspended. I would not be surprised if Telesur made exaggerated or even false statements for political motives, but Facebook doesn't suspend news media for that.
This possible indication of bias is another reason to criticize Facebook, but it would be totally disgusting anyway for other reasons.
Proposing that US news organizations intentionally work together to fully cover the Republican corruption of multiple areas of society.
Stores such as Walmart use contracted companies to pursue alleged shoplifters. They don't bother to check the facts before they start harassing and threatening to sue.
Companies and governments use contractors to evade responsibility and accountability, as well as to underpay or cheat workers. We need to limit the practice in a broad way.
US companies focus too much on short term results and current stock price. Would a switch to twice-a-year financial reporting improve matters?
I cannot know the answer, but I tend to think that it is not a good change: it won't be enough change to fix the short-termism, and it could result in companies' getting deeper into trouble before the public notices.
UK immigration authorities have taken over 20 years to decide on granting asylum to certain refugees. During that whole period, they could not work and lived in penury.
Nowadays they would also be required to pay for their medical treatment, which they could not possibly do. This could kill them.
Clearly, people waiting for a decision should not be left in penury in the meanwhile. However, why not simply grant asylum by default to anyone whose case takes several years to decide? The number of such cases must be small.
The admiral that was in charge of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden asked the bullshitter to withdraw his security clearance, in solidarity with other officials that have been or will be punished in this way.
That raid was apparently intended to kill bin Laden rather than to arrest and try him for his crimes. That was wrong.
Nonetheless, this gesture of solidarity is admirable.
(satire) Trump Locked Out Of White House After Accidentally Revoking Own Security Clearance.
1400 Google employees signed a letter calling on management to reconsider the censored search engine for China.
Condemn the bully for punishing his critics, but don't present John Brennan (former CIA head) as a hero.
"What if male identity, rather than racist ideology, is the most important reason why people join far-right groups?"
One piece of EPA sabotage — not implementing the safety rules for chemical plants — has been blocked by a court.
Kavanaugh took a strange position on network neutrality which included devaluing the public interest in freedom of speech.
US citizens: call for cancellation of US student loan debt.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The bullshitter's war on science is doing damage. "At several federal agencies and departments, scientists reported that political and capacity pressures are compromising their ability to protect public health and the environment."
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has dropped the goal of fighting discrimination.
The TSA systematically harasses Zainab Merchant every time she travels by air. Needless to say, they have never found any weapons or explosives on her, but they have faith that if they search her enough times, one will appear.
The US immigration thugs deported spouses of citizens by tricking them with phony "marital status interviews".
(satire) Elon Musk gave Saudi investors a presentation on a new autonomous adulterer-beheading machine he has invented.
Arguing that increased inequality in a society causes mental illness.
In China, apparently the state can easily decrypt an iMonster; thugs on the street have tools to do it.
Body scanning will be mandatory in the Los Angeles metro, but dishonest officials want to have it both ways: "The screening process is voluntary, Wiggins said, but customers who choose not be screened won't be able to ride on the subway."
If the scanners don't recognize and identify individuals, and if they don't use dangerous radiation such as X-rays, maybe they don't do much harm. But I presume someone will physically search passengers when the scanner "finds something". So the next question will be how many false positives there are, and what happens to those people.
Malaysia repealed its "fake news" censorship law.
Stacking stones on a beach can destroy ancient relics and birds' nests. It also denies people the chance to feel that a place is wild.
Saboteur of the Interior Zinke is holding up science grants to make sure they will not produce results inconvenient for mining and fossil fuel extraction.
Honduran thugs murdered 16 people after the election, but no one has been charged.
The election was rigged, too.
The small population of coelacanths could be driven extinct by oil wells to be drilled off South Africa's coast.
Since oil extraction is likely to wipe out half the species on Earth, there is no excuse for permitting new oil wells anywhere.
Cruelty and violence spread among Chicago thugs like a disease.
The TSA recognized secretly in 2013 that terrorists were not targeting airplanes in the US.
In other words, the supposed threat that supposedly justify unpleasantness that kills 500 Americans a year, and annoys millions, does not exist at all.
The TSA recognized this, but tried to keep it secret from the public.
The war-lover cancelled Obama's rules about when to use cyberwarfare methods.
The article assumes they will be used against Russia, but we can't assume this is limited to Russia. Maybe now they can be used against Greenpeace and the ACLU also.
A Pakistani woman moved to the UK to marry a man whose family then enslaved her. (I suspect the family was of Pakistani origin.) Later her husband told UK authorities to kick her out — and they tried to do so without asking for her side of the story.
It's clear they have been told to grasp every possible excuse to deport anyone or keep anyone out. To listen to the deportee's testimony would risk spoiling the opportunity.
The Chinese state demands that Uighurs outside China submit to surveillance and compels them by threatening to punish their relatives at home.
China is exporting the technology of total control to other countries, but that's not the only place they could get such technology. The US is also developing it.
It doesn't matter whether the system that tracks you on the street comes from China, or the US, or your own country. For the sake of freedom and democracy in your country, you need to get rid of the system.
The unlimited US support for Salafi Arabia and the UAE boosts al Qa'ida, involves the US in atrocities both localized and general, and advances the cause of tyranny world-wide. The US should stop this.
It pressures the US into war with Iran, a war for which there would be no moral justification or even national interest.
I suspect there is a monetary interest behind the US support for them. My main suspicion is that it involves oil and oil profits, although the US doesn't actually import much oil from the Middle East.
The pay of the CEOs of the biggest US companies was 312 times the pay of the companies' workers, last year.
Let's not say that the CEOs "earned" the amount they were paid. To judge whether they earned their pay is a different question and a complicated one.
Scientists warn of the danger that global heating could pass a tipping point leading to a stable "hothouse earth". They also say that we could still avoid this if we take act energetically to curb global heating.
We don't know where the tipping points are, so we had better do it fast!
[Florida Governor] Scott defunded the state agencies responsible for dealing with toxic algae blooms. Presto, a giant toxic algae bloom has arrived.
Israel seized Palestinians' land "for military use", then promptly handed it over to Israeli civilians to build a colony.
Peter Beinart, a US Jew, went to Israel with his family for relatives' religious ceremony. What he encountered was a wandering interrogation that desperately sought some reason to bar him entry.
Palestinian writer Lama Khater is being interrogated every day, chained to her chair.
(satire) Senate Republicans Promise There Will Be Plenty Of Time To Review Kavanaugh Writings When They Become Law Of Land.
Just as the US couldn't defeat the Vietnamese with deadly bombardment, Salafi Arabia and the US are unlikely to ever defeat the Houthis in Yemen. They should pull out.
After North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam, it made all of Vietnam into an abject, corrupt dictatorship — which it still is. Nonetheless, I have to agree that that was better than having an unending war between one dictatorship and another.
The banksters of the Royal Bank of Scotland joked about the suffering they would cause by making loans that homeowners would be bankrupted by.
Farmers in Niger are revitalizing degraded land with acacia trees that help crops planted near them, and provide fertilizer too.
Unfortunately, a disease is spreading that threatens them all.
Opt-out (enabled by default) organ donation might not increase availability if the state permits relatives to veto the donation.
The solution is obvious: stop catering to this deadly irrationality. Show the relatives the photos of some of the people who will receive the transplanted organs, and tell them, "We are going to save these people's lives with your relative's organs. Their lives are more important than details of burial."
In principle, there is no reason to allow people to veto use of their own organs. You don't need them after you are dead. But it is not irrational, in certain cases, for people to fear they will be killed for their organs — reportedly that has happened in China. And there is also the concern that the system might be too quick to declare you dead.
Most breakfast foods for children, made with oats in the US, contain possibly dangerous levels of Roundup.
Quaker Oats and Cheerios have substantial levels.
Between overpopulation, ineffective corrupt planning, and global heating, Delhi is running out of water. People occasionally fight over water. The groundwater could all be used up by 2020.
Many approaches could help things limp by for some more years, if they were carried out, but the only humane lasting solution is to drastically reduce births in India.
Several countries in western Europe have many bridges in bad condition.
It looks like these are the countries that expanded their highway networks in the 1960s because they were prosperous then.
It is an overreaction to condemn a word such as "colony" in all contexts, solely because in some places and times it was the name of an injustice.
Europeans are planning street protests against automated copyright censorship.
Everyone: tell Cambodia's ambassador that Cambodia should drop charges against housing rights defender Tap Vanny.
With JS disabled, the web site won't show you that you succeeded in submitting your message to the ambassador, but you should get an email confirming this.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on car companies to commit to meeting fuel efficiency standards even if the bullshitter's men officially cancel them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In Turkey, men can get away with murdering trans women and gay men by saying the victim "insulted his manhood."
Salafi Arabia supposedly investigates when it bombs civilians in Yemen, but the investigation is usually a whitewash.
A Dutch court ruled that Pastafarianism is not a religion.
I agree with the court's decision. If your religion does not require you to wear some headgear essentially all the time, if you don't have to wear it while driving, then you don't have to wear it for your driver's license.
Telling the Truth About Defects in Technology Should Never, Ever, Ever Be Illegal. EVER.
The pro-fracking UK government wants the public not to know how much the public opposes fracking.
500 wildfires are burning in British Columbia.
There are so many fires because of global heating. It is getting worse over time. The Canadian government is trying to push through a pipeline that will accelerate that process.
This process will eventually become self-limiting as fires destroy the pipeline and shut it down.
Uber and Lyft are lobbying California's Democratic legislators to oppose a plan to give their "independent contractors" the rights of employees.
When companies are powerful enough to block justice for their employees, we cannot allow them to remain so powerful. But Uber and Lyft do wrong to their clients customers as well as to their workers, through surveillance systems. Let's get rid of them entirely!
Most US Democrats think favorably of socialism, but not capitalism.
Capitalism and socialism are not mutually exclusive; they exist in a mix. What the US has today is a plutocratic form of capitalism which gives the rich the power to extinguish all the socialism, and that makes it unjust.
Under the anglo form of capitalism, which controls the US, Canada, Australia and UK, companies dominate the state so much that it lacks the power to stop companies from dragging civilization into the grave. China is more capable of this than the US is.
How Monsanto Plants Stories, Suppresses Science and Silences Dissent to Sell a Cancer-Linked Chemical.
Israel destroyed a large theater in Gaza. Israel's strategy in Gaza is to make people suffer, no matter how.
The Theater of Security Agency says that of the 5000 people it tailed through airports for no real reason, zero did anything potentially criminal. Sounds like the TSA has too much time and money on its hands.
Now that they have verified there is no real danger, how about ceasing this dangerous injustice?
Crackers found a way to break the security of an Amazon device and turn it into a listening device for them.
It was very difficult for them to do this. The job would be much easier for Amazon. And if some government such as China or the US told Amazon to do this, or cease to sell the product in that country, do you think Amazon would have the moral fiber to say no?
These crackers are probably hackers too, but please don't use "hacking" to mean "breaking security."
Everyone: call on California to tighten limits on thugs' use of deadly force.
"If the warming trend caused by greenhouse gas emissions continues, years like 2018 will be the norm in the 2040s, and would be classed as cold by the end of the century."
Medical specialists question the claim that US diplomats in Cuba were attacked with a "sonic weapon".
The five countries that surround the Caspian Sea made an agreement to manage it together.
It also includes an economic alliance among countries that feel threatened by US sanctions, whether for good reasons or bad reasons.
The EU's economics chief said, "Without European aid (sic), Greece would have collapsed and been in deep political and economic chaos for decades."
Instead, Greece has effectively collapsed and will be in economic chaos for decades.
Civilization faces many parallel crises of waste and overuse of the world's resources. The economic system based on wealth tends to produce crises.
A novelist begs for forgiveness for transgressing racial censorship while endorsing it as valid.
The core of the article is a thoughtful presentation of how writing about people different from yourself is difficult but necessary. You can easily mess up and make an ass of yourself, so doing it right requires great care. But this is no reason to forbid it.
The sad aspect is that the author ends up endorsing a system of racist censorship that would cement every writer, every person, into an ethnic pigeonhole of thought.
Our existing culture developed by appropriation. That's what culture is meant for. To allow any group to "own" stories, or roles, would subjugate the human spirit. You deserve the right to imitate any culture you can see. Please do not yield if anyone tries to take that away from you.
The real threat to culture today is not "cultural appropriation" by other people. It is the giant corporations that control so much of our culture now.
People in Niger protested the presence of Western armies and their drones. The government of Niger has all the leaders.
The US is always much better.
Matt Taibbi: Beware the Slippery Slope of Facebook Censorship.
I think the problem we must correct is the tendency for people to get their news via Facebook and Google.
ALEC has not gone away: it is pushing state laws to attack unions, and to promote gerrymandering, fossil fuels, and school privatization.
An immigration lawyer reports on how US immigration agents interrogated him repeatedly, simply to harass him. This is what they do to many others, but he knew for certain just what was illegal.
Bigot Stephen Miller condemns the US welcome to refugees that enabled his grandfather to move to the US and survive.
Be careful not to rush to attribute human emotions to animals.
The US economy is making so many Americans suffer that there is an opening for big improvements that would have been impossible before.
Heat now kills more Americans than floods, hurricanes or other natural disasters — but they are all part of the climate mayhem that global heating increases.
Hong Kong's puppet officials openly assert that no one should be allowed to speak in favor of independence from China, and tried to pressure the Foreign Correspondents’ Club to cancel a presentation.
This is China's repressive idea of "freedom of speech".
People are rebuking a parent for allowing a 10-year-old child to walk almost 3 blocks to school without direct parental supervision. Such infantilization is typical of the US today.
In many cultures, in the past, parents left children entirely to their own devices until puberty, except when giving them chores to do.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to stop funding the Department of Hostility and Sadism.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: support Barbara Lee for House Democratic Caucus Chair.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The EU plans to try to restrain planned obsolescence.
Bravo!
Ocean acidification appears to be harming oysters in Australia already.
Agricultural runoff has an effect locally, and we could reduce it by changing agricultural practices, However, CO2 in the air also contributes, and it will continue making worse acidification as long as we increase the CO2 in the air.
In a few more decades, there may not be any oysters, clams, mussels, snails, or coral, or the species whose larvae or juveniles depend on coral reefs.
Brazil's Lula Launches Presidential Bid from Jail as Thousands March in Support.
Senator Warren has proposed to reform the structure of large corporations in the US, giving representation to workers, customers and cities, and requiring them to consider other goals besides profit.
The average temperature of the ocean is rising, but not uniformly. Heat waves in the water are increasing, too.
This means that the danger to marine life is worse than would appear from the averages alone.
"Almost 900 cities, universities, and governments have divested over $6 trillion from the fossil fuel industry. Why not yours?"
The bridge that collapsed fatally in Genoa had been privatized. This may not be a coincidence.
Some techniques for keeping cities cool function by reflecting more light back into space, thus counteracting a little global heating.
In Sydney, you can tell the end of winter is only 5 weeks away because wildfires are burning.
(satire) Saudi Arabia Condemns Canada's Appalling Human Rights Record of Selling Arms to Saudi Arabia.
California faces an invasion of nutria that destroy wetlands.
I wonder whether neutered nutria (neutria?) could be useful in some areas for keeping down water hyacinth, kudzu, and other invasive plants.
"Adapting" to global heating is a red herring. "You don’t 'adapt' to a raging fire, do you? You have to stop it. And the first thing you need to do is stop pouring fuel on it."
With a wildfire, the first step is to contain it. That's where we are today in dealing with global heating. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The EU's carbon emissions trading price has risen to 18 euros per ton, which is enough to do a little good. It would need to reach 30 euros per ton to start doing the job it was intended for.
This illustrates the point that a carbon tax is more reliably effective than emissions trading.
In towns too small for a Walmart, Dollar General gets a tax break to come in and wipe out any local grocery stores. The result is a food desert.
To subsidize a profit-making business to operate in your town, whether it's a factory or a store or a sports team, converts businesses into parasites. In the long term, only dooH niboR benefits.
Publication control based on opinions and views affects many others aside from Alex Jones.
Please don't call publications "content", because that deprecates all publications. A clear term for what the article criticizes is "views-based censorship".
The Georgia special congressional election in 2017 might have been rigged digitally. There is no way to find out. That state's voting system is insecure and impossible to audit.
Orbán has shut down or taken over the Hungarian media that opposed him.
One year after the violent right-wing demonstration in Charlottesville, students protested against the inaction of the thugs, that let the right-wingers get away with violence.
We tend to assume that ankle monitors for people on parole or bail work as they ought to, but that is far from true. Their failures can get people jailed for no fault of their own. The person who has to wear one has to pay a lot and many people can't afford it.
Some people are allergic to them and get sick.
Many Dalits are compelled to clean out latrines by hand, because no other work is open to them.
An immigration prison chained teenage refugees to chairs and put bags over their heads. Some say they were also handcuffed and beaten.
Markeis McGlockton's killer has been charged with manslaughter after prosecutors concluded that Florida's "stand your ground" law did not cover him.
An AI system now excels at diagnosing many eye diseases.
I think this sort of AI system can do a lot of good, but hospitals have a duty to run local copies so as to avoid sending a copy of the data to any specific database.
US citizens: Call on the Senate to get and consider Kavanaugh's record from when he was working for Dubya.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Demand the release of journalist Manuel Duran Ortega.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Tax Havens Shielding Companies Responsible for Deforestation And Overfishing.
The UK is driving local governments into bankruptcy, the result being disastrous cuts in all their services, down to the legal minimum. On top of that comes privatization, which has the result of introducing uncontrollable corruption, so that real services don't reach the legal minimum.
Be careful not to set up a self-fulfilling prophecy of militarizing space in the short term.
Perhaps it is impossible to rule out that, in a future with space settlements, they would sometimes fight wars, with weapons we cannot anticipate. That does not imply space combat is inevitable in this century.
More British Troops Are Being Sent to Afghanistan, kowtowing to the bully.
If the UK becomes desperate for a trade treaty with the US, what would he demand then? His demands will not have to be limited to trade. He could demand 10,000 troops, or 50,000.
Want to Create More Jobs [and well-paid, too]? Reduce Fossil Fuel Use.
Even if not for this side effect, we would still need to do this to avoid global disaster.
What temperatures of 50C (122F) will do to urban life.
If you don't like it, fight to curb global heating!
Russian prison thugs are on trial in Russia for beating and injuring prisoners.
The peace talks between the US and the Taliban offer some hope.
Chicago's murder rate rose from 2013 to 2016, but since then it has fallen substantially. Surely more could be done in ethical ways to reduce it, but Chicagoans should not do anything rash or dangerous for that sake.
Puerto Rico's imposed nondemocratic government has imposed charter schools.
The Bizarre Spat with Canada Shows Mohammed bin Salman's True Colours.
The UK finally offered Palestinian author Nayrouz Qarmout a visa, at the last minute. But it is already too late: since she lives in Gaza, she cannot possibly get to Edinburgh in time for her speech.
Over 100 large wildfires are burning now in the US.
Large wildfires do substantial harm afterward, too.
Conversations with residents of the ghettos of Denmark, who face systematic official discrimination for living in areas where most people are poor.
This is a slightly indirect way of punishing people for being poor, and a little more indirectly, punishing them for being immigrants.
GEO Group, a private prison company, sent a lawsuit threat to try to intimidate a child that explained, on video, what the company is doing.
Aside from the specific injustices that the company carries out, the basic idea of privatizing prisons is systematic injustice.
As for whether these injustices are also illegal, that is a minor side issue. If they are not illegal, that's proof of the lobbying power of these companies.
Community schools are run by the local school board, but get an extra subsidy and make broad efforts to help students overcome their handicaps.
Community schools may be a real improvement over ordinary public schools even when the latter are well funded, but only time will tell. Any experimental change in education — supposing the students don't hate it — has a tendency to work better, for a while, simply because it is an experiment.
Kosovo now offers a pension to women who were raped as an act of war by Serb soldiers.
What made rape such an effective weapon in that war is the patriarchal attitude of Kosovan society, which regards women as (in effect) property and considers them worthless if they are not "chaste". Serbs raped them so that their own families would betray them.
If these women want to make themselves so strong that such betrayal can no longer weigh down their spirits, they could consider going to Rojava (in Syria) and joining the Kurdish Women's Protection Units. Their help may be needed there.
New York City has required "gig" platforms to pay workers a decent wage for the time they are on call.
It's not humanity in general that is causing global heating disaster. The plutocrats that have taken control of our planet are the culpable humans.
The concentration of many industries goes hand in hand with the concentration of wealth and the loss of democracy.
Nonviolent activists kayaking to protest oil pipeline construction in Louisiana were kidnaped by private security guards, then charged with felonies under a recently adopted law designed to give the planet-roasters total power.
A Tory proposal would try to end homelessness in England by spending roughly 13 million dollars a year over 10 years.
This is good in principle (though I wonder why the rest of the UK is not included), but it can't possibly do the job as long as the Tories continue pushing most people into poverty. That will generate new homeless people faster than they can get anyone out of homelessness.
Unless perhaps the "accommodation" intended for these people is a small cell.
Note that I am using the word "homeless" in the American sense. In UK terminology means something else.
The Department of Education, lead by DeVos, is systematically finding ways to increase discrimination and impoverish the poor.
A deranged man who is susceptible to any conspiracy theories has been charged with starting a large wildfire in California.
Qanon is not so much a conspiracy theory as an infection. It mutates faster than HIV, which makes the question of the validity of any of these almost irrelevant for susceptible hosts. Disprove one strain and they will fall prey to another, and another.
A campaign to privatize public schools named itself "Democrats for Education Reform", apparently to misrepresent the Democratic Party and turn people against it.
The Christian Taliban in the US impose biased restrictions on women wherever they get enough power to try it.
In Australia as in the US, semiprivate campaign messages targeted at specific groups have eliminated the "national conversation" about what is best for the country.
Perhaps we should tamp down the semiprivate campaign messages.
Dewayne Johnson has won his lawsuit against Bayer (formerly Monsanto), holding the company and specifically Roundup responsible for his cancer.
The evidence presented included Monsanto's secret attempts to corrupt science. That is an attack on truth, narrower in scope than what the bullshitter does, but no less evil.
If our government were not corrupted by large companies (of which Bayer is one), then Americans wouldn't need to sue anyone to get funds for their medical care because everyone would be covered. We wouldn't depend on lawsuits for harm to individuals to get pesticides properly regulated.
Romanians protested against government corruption; thugs attacked peaceful protesters who had their hands up. (Is that why they are called "riot" thugs?)
The next day the people held an even bigger protest.
Some engineers are refusing work for certain employers because of unethical activities of those employers.
Developing nonfree software is mistreating the users, too. That's something to boycott.
The ACM has a new ethics code, which on some issues seems good.
I note that the issue of developing weapons or military systems is not raised. Neither is the injustice of nonfree software.
What it says about privacy is comparable in its philosophy to the EU's GDPR. That is a step forward but won't prevent oppressive mass surveillance.
What it says about patents is absurd — to "respect" patents in general would mean screwing yourself; your lawyers would tell you it is foolish.
What it says about copyrights is vicious — sharing is part of being a good member of society, so if a legal requirement forbids sharing of copies of published works, that requirement is devoid of moral authority.
Socialist Bookshop Welcomes 'Uplifting' Response After Attack by Far Right.
Israeli Arabs and Jews rallied against Israel's apartheid law.
No other country is supporting Canada's rebuke to Salafi Arabia. They have all been corrupted by its money.
Organized international condemnation of tyranny has been broken.
We wish that the hate-monger's use on tape of the word "nigger" would make his supporters ashamed. However, his strategy is to lead his supporters into gradually increasing levels of hatred. He might use the proof of his explicit racism against blacks as an opportunity to lead his supporters into equally explicit racism.
Is it possible that the he and Manigault planned it that way?
There is no biological obstacle to women's equality.
There have been clear empirical demonstrations that women face considerable direct gender bias, as well as considerable unequal obstacles to their careers. Given these known explanations, we have no reason to presume they are any less capable than men.
Some Canadians demand stricter gun regulations following an increase in shootings. The rate is small compared with the US.
Dubai dropped charges against Ellie Holman, and allowed her to leave.
Aside from great stress, the experience cost her tens of thousands of dollars. Why take a crazy risk? Stay away!
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook — Serf Labor, Overpriced iPhones, and Wasted Burning Profits.
He doesn't mention subjugating the users with nonfree software, which is even worse.
Regulating Bots on Social Media Is Easier Said Than Done. For One Thing, Defining "Bot" Is Tricky.
Many US cities punish people for being frequent victims of crime. In general, this potentiates other forms of inequality, so the punishment typically affects poor people and members of suffering ethnic groups.
Business interests argue against a regulation requiring restaurants to list the allergens in each food product.
Usually the problems they cite are real, but exaggerated.
Every regulation that is implemented locally carries a risk of inducing businesses to move elsewhere. However, this is often much smaller than businesses claim. In some cases, we can and should avoid that problem by adopting the regulation for a broader region. But if the only possibility is to apply it locally, that may still be better than nothing.
Small exceptions can make a regulation much easier to obey. It would make sense to exempt specials that are offered for less than a week. I hope the regulation permits a restaurant to address the cross-contamination issue by saying, "this dish contains shrimp and may have traces of fish".
People dispute how best to protect a beach in Belgium from the early stages of global heating, but it only postpones the problem.
It also distracts people from the much bigger dangers that we will encounter if we don't curb global heating.
U.S. Is Complicit in Child Slaughter in Yemen.
A Year After Charlottesville, White Nationalist Views Creep into Politics.
When activists on the left exult about electing members of discriminated-against groups (typically women, Muslims, Latins, blacks, indigenous Americans), or call on the public to support a candidate for that reason, I am concerned lest this encourage whites to campaign to elect people because they are white. The more we legitimize that sort of reason, the more we clear the pathway of white nationalism. To defeat that, we must reject the idea of choosing candidates based on race.
I choose candidates to support because of what they stand for, not their origins.
As for the candidate's religion, I consider that as such unimportant except to the extent it is reflected in the candidate's position.
The more a candidate makes a fuss about religion, the more I worry that per views come from a church. Most churches hold some right-wing views that I would not want in a public official.
A French park has trained crows to collect litter. They are rewarded with food.
Crows are fairly clever. I wonder how soon one of them will find that the most convenient and reliable source of litter is a trash can.
Several Republican congresscritters are inculpated in apparently corrupt stock transactions in one Australian corporation.
In a sign of how strong the campaign for single-payer medical care has become, some giant companies are organizing to defeat the campaign.
They have moved from "then they laugh at you" to "then they fight you", which is an unavoidable step on the path to victory.
Plutocratist "centrist" Democrats are crying victory because some of the strong progressive candidates lost primaries this week. But even when they lost, their victorious opponents were usually somewhat progressive.
An Asian tick is now established in the US, which reproduces so vigorously that a mass of ticks can kill a sheep by draining all its blood.
Freezing weather kills most of them, but we are busy shredding that protection by heating up the Earth's atmosphere.
The US government is at last making a real effort to find the refugees whose children it took away. It has not succeeded with all of them, but only 26 of these children remain whose parents or relatives the US has no contact with.
This figure appears to pertain to the children alone, not including the teenagers.
Researchers Suggest We Could Tip into a Hothouse Earth.
When Temperatures Rise, So Do Crime Rates: evidence from South Africa.
Senator Nelson of Florida says that Russian crackers have got into the election systems of some Florida counties.
Rep. Nunes, a total lackey of the cheater, told his sponsors the plan to protect the cheater from prosecution: put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, then impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to replace him with someone else that will fire Mueller.
The saboteur-in-chief wants to impose fracking on California's public lands.
Kris Kobach refused to recuse himself from the counting of an election in which he was one of the candidates.
There is no kind of corruption of which today's Republicans have any shame.
Captive Audience: How Florida's Prisons and DRM Made $11.3M Worth of Prisoners' Music Disappear.
This is a bigger crime than most of the prisoners are accused of.
But the new Jpay system is far worse than that. It is total greed. The Florida Department of Corrections and Jpay plan to squeeze money out of the prisoners, and divide it up.
Creeping school privatization has been a disaster in the UK. Also, in different ways, in the US.
We need to restore the formerly public schools to public control.
As workers of digital companies start to impose ethical demands, they are discovering their power. But how far will they demand ethical behavior?
They recognize the injustice of some unusual activities that serve tyranny, but can they recognize the injustice of their businesses' normal practice, such as proprietary software and collecting personal data?
A Danish woman accepted a complimentary glass of wine on an Emirates flight to Dubai. On account of this, she has been jailed there for a year awaiting trial.
"The federal government pays millions of contractors less than $15 an hour, and the Trump administration has further cut wages."
Indian prostitutes denounce a law that will punish them if they work in brothels. The law would presume they were trafficked (even if they were not), and sentence them to prison-like "rehabilitation".
The enforcement of the Endangered Species Act has been on slowdown for decades, with the result that many species that need protection don't get any.
Norway will prescribe heroin for addicts.
The wall of the "war on drugs" is cracking. May we soon get rid of it entirely, and treat drug addicts simply as patients.
Bangladesh is arresting students who participated in protests.
Governments can set policies that prevent non-rich people from being priced out of a place to live.
Over the long term, this requires arranging to build housing for the non-rich. Governments can do that, too, as long as they don't give priority to the wishes of the rich. In the US, we have been propagandized to forget that we used to do this.
An Iraqi beekeeper started a campaign that enabled Yazidi prisoners of PISSI, in particular women, to save other Yazidi prisoners of PISSI.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to reinstate in full the policy of rejecting fossil fuel contributions, which it just weakened.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Gina Haspel's personal reports to CIA headquarters show her commitment to torture.
The US deportation thugs were transporting imprisoned border-crossing women to meet their children, when the bus had an accident.
Such things happen, but the deportation thugs didn't want to be embarrassed by it, so they lied to cover it up.
Several women were injured, but they decided not to go to the hospital for fear of not seeing their children again. There was no rational reason it would have had this effect, but you can't count on thugs to be rational.
Betsy DeVos is dodging taxes on her yachts by registering them outside the US.
That shows whose side she's on — not her country's side. But she's adding injury to insult: trying to enable sleazy for-profit colleges keep the money that they took from Americans who thought they were paying for a real education.
The authors of the US Constitution made it clear that "emoluments" to officials included anything of value, and that the purpose of prohibiting officials including the president from receiving emoluments was to prevent them from being influenced or corrupted.
The number of Americans that live in cars or RVs is rapidly increasing. Even people with jobs can't afford any other place to live.
Why do cities pass laws against this? Because the city government works is controlled by the haves, and they don't want their pretty lives inconvenienced by have-nots.
This is why I oppose local political movements to keep density down. Keeping density down means kicking out the have-nots.
If we end plutocracy, the non-rich will get a bigger share of the nation's income. However, in cities that are too expensive, that may not be sufficient. We need to weaken zoning laws so as to build a lot more housing that is near public transportation, and we must not let the local haves stop it.
Americans overall are increasingly in debt. This is likely to exacerbate the next recession.
The figures may not count all the the really large debts of rich(?) Americans, such as the cheater. We don't know whether his net assets are in the positive millions or the negative millions.
Why is debt increasing while "the US economy is prospering"? Because that claim is based on measuring by totals (or per-capita figures, which over periods of a few years are equivalent to totals). The rich are gaining more millions than the non-rich are losing, so the totals increase.
The ethical measure of an economy is based on how well the not-rich and especially the poor are doing.
World-wide, extreme poverty has been reduced, but inequality has risen.
The UN is considering a measure to help poor countries make generic medicines to treat tuberculosis. The US is pressuring various countries so as to defeat the measure.
The fact that a former Obama advisor is helping that effort demonstrates what we could see at the time: Obama was more a supporter of plutocracy than an opponent of it.
A Russian exporter of asbestos thanked the poisoner for keeping asbestos legal in the US.
We can ban asbestos some day, if we fight asbestos we can.
Facebook bought a company apparently for the sake of learning its tricks to rope in high-school students as useds.
The right-wing candidate for president of Brazil showed himself to be an enemy of democracy by choosing as running mate a general that spoke in favor of a military coup.
There is a real danger that this candidate will win.
Younger MDs have won a victory for single-payer medical coverage by convincing the AMA to consider the idea.
Georgia's election systems are grossly insecure, both for the voter list and for the supposed list.
DEFCON will hold a contest for young crackers to break the security of imitations of real US state voting systems.
The Creeping Privatization of [US] Public Libraries.
The article calls the Koch brothers "libertarians", but their support for some kinds of human rights is a beard for their real cause: a laissez-faire, laissez-dévorer economy. They hate public libraries because they are public, and any public activity that helps people is what they call "socialism".
Please don't support their pretense: join me in calling them "antisocialists".
Communications satellites could be used to do various kinds of harm, if crackers break their security.
Judge Orders US to Bring Back Family Deported While Asylum Case Was Open.
I hope higher courts sustain this attempt to rein in the lawless bullying carried out by US thugs. One can't count on the right-wing justices to defend the legal rights of people (as opposed to businesses).
Some exiled members of the Venezuelan opposition endorse the recent assassination attempt. Others reject the accusation that they were involved.
Collecting your medical data (and other data about your life) and combining that into a "wellness score" would give companies an excuse to screw you.
The Democrats Must Do More Than Simply Oppose Donald Trump.
Puerto Rico has acknowledged that Hurricane Maria killed 1427 people there — not all immediately.
Shortly before elections, Mauritania has jailed an anti-slavery campaigner.
Hamas and Israel are back to fighting again.
Israel demonstrated conclusively that it will respond to nonviolent protest by shooting thousands of people. I find it hard to blame Palestinians for responding to arms with arms.
Hamas is an Islamist organization. That means it rejects fundamental human rights. But that does not justify refusing the permanent cease-fire that it has offered.
An opposition leader from Zimbabwe fled to Zambia for asylum. Zambia handed him back to Zimbabwe, defying an order from the Supreme Court.
The tyrant of Zimbabwe, after apparently stealing the election, is now sending soldiers to destroy the homes of opposition supporters.
The governor of Louisiana is formally a Democrat, but he is so right-wing that he works with ALEC.
Tribune abandoned its plan to merge with Sinclair.
Argentina's senate rejected legalization of abortion.
Argentines will campaign to reverse this defeat in the next election.
The US-backed intervention in Yemen by Salafi Arabia bombed a bus in Yemen whose passengers were children, killing over 40 of them.
Solar power with storage batteries is becoming cheap enough to replace natural gas — but planet roasters won't let that happen without a fight.
Let's fight! Let's destroy the planet-roaster companies — before they destroy us!
US citizens: call on Congress to block attempts to authorize discrimination against queer people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Support AT&T workers if they strike.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Cutting off Infowars without presenting a clear reason may fuel all its conspiracy theories.
Extreme weather has damaged the potato harvest in Belgium, making frites (known in the US as "French fried" potatoes) scarce.
As the dimensions of the coming global heating disaster sink in, some people despair, and fantasize about miraculous escapes to high ground in places that are fairly cold.
However, it is not too late to avert the worst of the disaster. If we put more effort into it, we can overcome the murderous billionaires. In the mean time, having no children will incrementally reduce the extent of the disaster. If we avoid enough births, the resulting smaller future population might have survivable troubles instead of a disaster.
The actions of the planet roasters amount to mass murder that is already starting. As a last resort, the victims-to-be could use bombs to destroy the murderous billionaires' prepared refuges. If those realize that they cannot expect to survive dooming the bulk of humanity to death, some might change sides and direct their power to averting global disaster.
Russian banks offered special deals to the main donor to the UK's election campaign to leave the EU.
Whether this legally counts as corruption on his part may depend on legal questions I don't understand. However, what he did qualifies in spirit as selling out his country.
The cheater wants to give banks another big tax cut by redefining "financial service industry" not to include banks.
(satire): Yemen has developed a drone-zapper tower to protect people from its infestation of drones.
(Serious) Drone Strikes on Yemen Don’t Make My Country Safer — Or Yours.
Ryanair is trying to bust unions in Europe, punishing workers in various ways.
I urge people to refuse to do business with that airline, which I like to call Cryin'air.
The UK's "hostile environment" for foreigners loused up the Edinburgh international book festival. Scotland's devolved government is complaining.
I should note that the US does this too, perhaps worse. So, recently, does Canada.
The crony-in-chief is still trying to keep money-losing coal power plants. He has another avenue to do it.
Plutocratists condemn government help to people in general, citing the "free market" as justifying suffering for the weak. But that's only because the victims are weak.
Fight for the Future has collected funds to post critical billboards in the districts of any California state legislators that try to undermine the state's planned network neutrality law.
A US court ordered the EPA to proceed with banning the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which it had determined to cause birth defects in children's brains.
Calling on President Moreno to protect the lives of indigenous people that oppose oil extraction in their land.
The US government in 1945 knew that Japan would soon surrender and therefore there was no military need to use nuclear weapons.
With such controversial a claims, it is always possible that it was fabricated. I don't think that is the case here. That article is followed by several others about issues including the damage done by Dirty Uranium in Iraq and felony charges against nonviolent protesters at a base storing uranium for nuclear weapons.
Some of these points I already know are valid.
Three of the cheater's cronies are unofficially commanding the Department of Veterans Affairs.
(satire) Shy Rep. Harold Olsen confided to reporters Wednesday that he often feels left out of all the illegal activities going on in Congress…
Immigrants in the US do not drain funds for medical care. On the contrary, they subsidize the rest of us.
Overcoming 'Decades of Corruption and Systemic Racism,' Reformer Wesley Bell Ousts Prosecutor Who Let Michael Brown's Killer Off the Hook.
Using buses and trains can be very difficult for a person with vision or mobility difficulties.
I speculate that the reason the staff are so unhelpful is cuts in staff due to either government "austerity" or privatized greed. When the staff are overloaded, they are also under pressure, and rush rather than paying attention with kindness.
Thus, this is one more of the many problems we can fix by taxing the rich fairly.
The scapegoater ordered denial of asylum to people fleeing gang violence and domestic violence. The ACLU is suing to block the order.
2/3 of the voters in Missouri voted to repeal the recently-inflicted Republican "right to work" law.
Americans over age 65 are filing for bankruptcy much more than they used to — three times the rate (per population) than in 1991.
I've read elsewhere that some are crushed by the loans for their children's college education, which they had to guarantee. The children couldn't pay these loans back, and in some cases the parents can't either.
13 congresscritters and 2 senators have been labeled as "worst for women" for opposing a broad range of women's rights.
Almost half of US Republicans want to give the president the power to shut down any publisher of news. Like Erdoğan.
The bullshitter would shut down any publisher that doesn't fake the news his way.
"At local level Conservatives can see the harm wrought by austerity, but that insight has not reached the party’s upper echelons."
None so blind has he who will not see — because his power is based on plutocrats that don't want him to see.
Use Our Loos Campaign Urges UK Firms to Open Toilets to Non-Customers.
I'd make it a law.
Even when interpreted carefully, Florida's "stand your ground" law encourages people to start a violent confrontation when they could have avoided it.
After someone apparently tried to assassinate President Maduro with a drone carrying some explosives, he is using this as an excuse to arrest leaders of the opposition.
We should not think of the opposition as supporting democracy or equal rights. The Venezuelan opposition is right-wing, and stands for plutocratic oligarchy. In 2002, the opposition worked with the US government to stage a coup against President Chavez, which was defeated by crowds of citizens.
Meanwhile, Maduro is a mad dictator who has basically sidelined the constitution that Chavez designed. He is on the side of his own oligarchy.
It is not out of the question that some in the opposition were involved in attempted assassination. But we can't trust Maduro to accuse them only based on real evidence.
The war-lover's sanctions against Iran violate a UN security council resolution which the US voted for three years ago.
Killed by dooH niboR: in the UK, an estimated 1 million more deaths expected by 2041 due to spending cuts needed to help the rich.
US citizens: call on Congress to give Puerto Rico debt relief.
If you sign, please spread the word!
West Virginia is allowing internet voting, which is nuts.
Adding injustice to idiocy, it requires voters to use a nonfree app.
French thugs attacked and intimidated charity workers that were distributing food to homeless migrants that want to go to the UK.
I wonder why they specifically desire to go to the UK.
Loans from China, like loans from the World Bank or the IMF, can turn into a terrible trap.
Some Puerto Ricans still have no electricity. The privatizing government is very slow to reconnect them.
Inhabitants distrust the water supply, although it might in fact be quite safe.
Spreading distrust in the state is a natural consequence of what right-wing wreckers do to the state.
Zimbabwe activists are hiding from state repression forces.
To protect the orcas in Puget Sound, we would need to increase the number of salmon and reduce the level of toxins they carry. And reduce the level of sea noise from boats.
Over time, the more humans we make, the less room there will be for other species to survive on Earth. I imagine Norma Sanchez's great grandchild asking per parents, "Why did you have me, knowing what disasters were likely to be waiting for me before I got to be 40?"
The Music Modernization Act would be dangerous if not fixed, even without the "CLASSICS Act" that has been tacked onto it.
The FCC's commenting system was overloaded by a flood of comments supporting network neutrality, and lost some of them. The FCC pretended that this problem was caused by a DoS attack, which people disbelieved at the time.
Now the FCC admits there was no DoS attack.
Accusations of theft and fraud against Wilbur Ross, Saboteur of Commerce, plus the fine that the SEC imposed, add up to 120 million dollars.
A big-time crook is just the sort of person the cheater wants in office.
(satire) the National Rifle Association told staff members Tuesday it has been forced to cut operational costs by shooting dozens of … redundant employees.
More Than 400,000 Tea Estate Workers in India Go on Strike over Pay.
Their wages are a tiny fraction of what we pay for tea. Surely the tea companies can handle an increase.
Wells Fargo says that a "glitch" was responsible for causing 400 debtors to lose their homes.
That could be the truth, but it's one detail of a system that has been shaped into something fundamentally designed by and for dooH niboR.
Spain and Portugal are suffering under unprecedented heat.
In December it won't be so hot, and the planet roasters will say, "It went away, don't worry about it."
A UK ministry says that the UK needs to be more ready to make deals with "elites" that have committed war crimes.
The UK has been quite ready to make deals with nasty regimes: Qadhafi, Salafi Arabia, the UAE, China, If it were any more ready, it would do this twice an hour.
Nicaragua's new anti-terrorism law reportedly can be applied to protesters too.
The article contains a link to the text of the law. It's hard work for me to read and understand text like that even in English. If someone can check this, I would be grateful.
Settle has given domestic workers rights. In most of the US, they are excluded from the rights other workers have.
France has made it a crime to "sexually harass" people on the street.
The most important question about such a law is where it will draw the line. Severe cases raise no moral issue — by all means, prohibit them. Violence and threats, including following someone persistently, ought to be punished.
It is when we look at cases that are less and less severe that a moral issue arises. Where does prohibition of speechcrime become repression? Where will the line be drawn?
We cannot have confidence in France to respect freedom of speech. European countries standardly infringe freedom of speech by prohibiting insults. In France, merely insulting an official is a crime, and people are really prosecuted for it. To an American, this is almost incredible.
Therefore, the most crucial point in drafting such laws is to specify clearly where the line is drawn.
Unfortunately, the article gives no concrete information about where the line is drawn. To the extent that it cites acts whose severity we can gauge, they rather severe. We get no information about how mild an act is now a crime. Is it a crime to say, "You are beautiful"? Is it a crime to say, "Please have coffee with me"?
Facebook deleted a real, honest antifascist event after finding out that Russian state agents were promoting it.
Russian state agents promote Nazi events and anti-Nazi events because they want to promote conflict in the US.
How the American Left Is Rediscovering Morality.
Right-wing morality looks for excuses not to care if the weak get crushed. Left-wing morality looks for ways to avoid crushing the weak.
Documents Expose Big Pharma's Scheme to Turn Democratic Candidates Against Medicare for All.
The right-wing used fake news to try to smear AMLO in Mexico, but it didn't convince people.
Elizabeth Warren: Democrats can be "party of white working class and Black Lives Matter."
The atmosphere's level of CO2 is the highest it has been in the 800,000 years recorded by ice cores.
If we had ice cores from before 800,000 years ago, we might observe that the CO2 was less than today for many years before that.
In the UK, at least thugs that brutally attack prisoners tend to get punished for it.
Protesters in Chicago demanded the resignation of the mayor and the thug chief on account of violence (including violence by thugs), corruption, and refusal to invest in the neighborhoods where marginal groups live.
Israel has sentenced Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour to prison which talks in general terms about resisting the occupation.
Meanwhile, Israelis regularly propose violence in concrete terms and are not prosecuted for it at all.
Israel is now explicitly an apartheid state and this is part of it.
Right-wing gunmen say they will infiltrate the counterprotest in Portland.
Given their propensity to cheating and lying, this is in effect a threat to take their guns out, shoot anti-fascists, then claim they were "defending themselves" from imaginary "threats". Then they will dare people to prove that was not true.
The Chinese government abruptly demolished Ai Weiwei's studio without notice. His art was still inside.
A judge rebuked the government for dragging its heels in reuniting kidnaped refugee minors with their parents, in particular for creating spurious obstacles, and for claiming that finding the parents is not its responsibility.
A year after right-wing extremists' demonstration of violent hate, Charlottesville is looking at how to change its systemic racism.
The UK's fire code enforcement is deeply incompetent. The government was warned in 2014 about how flammable construction materials were causing deadly fires, but regulators did nothing to stop that use. The large, deadly fire was the natural result.
The government has still not banned putting them into additional buildings. Meanwhile, the residents of condos in buildings which use the same dangerous materials are being ordered to replace them at their own expense — which would put many of them into penury.
Indonesia continues to stop foreign journalists from visiting West Papua. Former journalists are blacklisted.
This is because Indonesia has been colonizing Papua since conquering the territory in the 1960s, settling large numbers of Javanese there, and is trying to cover up the indigenous people's resistance. After Indonesia's experience with Dutch colonialism, it has not learned to think of colonialism as wrong.
Sad to say, the US also requires journalists to have a special visa. Foreigners that enter the US on a tourist visa are forbidden to report professionally from the US.
US citizens: call on the Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of the Department of Harshness and Sadism, to resign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on OSHA to make regulations to protect workers from extreme heat.
The best way to do this in the long term is to curb global heating fast. Otherwise we will not be able to keep up with this problem as it gets ever worse.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Warning Kavanaugh Would Be 'Rubber Stamp' on Trump's Anti-Healthcare, Anti-[abortion] Agenda, Groups Announce Wave of Direct Actions.
The US poultry inspection system has been undermined by privatization, and now supervisors are pressuring inspectors to put speed above safety.
An initial court ruling says that the US Constitution's limits on "emoluments" for the president has a broad meaning, and that a lawsuit accusing the cheater of corruption for operating a hotel in Washington can go ahead.
Several internet redistribution companies have deleted Alex Jones's right-wing conspiracy theory broadcasts.
I don't think this deletion is much of a loss to the world. Many of his claims are bullshit, and some are dangerous bullshit.
A few do have some distorted relation to reality. Apple is censoring for China, and soon Google may join in. Some of the waste chemicals businesses and humans release into lakes and rivers do affect the sexual maturation of sea animals, making them physically abnormal: not merely "gay", but incapable of reproducing. If that hits a whole population, it will soon disappear.
However, occasional partial overlaps with the truth don't cancel out Jones's plenteous falsehoods.
What worries me is the censorship power that a few private companies have. They say that they are entitled to decide what not to publish on the grounds that they are private companies. They are not obliged to redistribute something merely because it is not illegal.
But it is dangerous that a few companies have so much power.
If each one were small, I'd stand up for each one's right to decide what not to publish. But each of these companies affects hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions. Their influence is so great that people and governments ask them, or try to pressure them, to censor certain things so that those things will not be available.
This is developing into a contradiction — a system of imposed censorship that legitimizes itself by pretending not to be one.
I don't believe that this censorship will be limited to right-wing extremists. Oil companies have lots of money to spend on marginalizing the sane voice of alarm. Billionaires have lots to spend on marginalizing the demand to restore democracy.
As plastic degrades, it releases greenhouse gases. Thus, when it is finished killing fish and birds directly, it can help wipe them out (along with human civilization).
When Jared Kushner owned the New York Observer, he personally deleted stories about his friends.
He had a right to do this, but it's disreputable as journalism.
Outside the US, the world recognizes that children are safe alone.
Amazon, Facebook and Google are pressuring US banks to give them personal data on the activities of bank customers.
So far, it seems the banks have refused. We cannot count on them to continue to refuse. This is one more reason to pay anonymously with cash.
The peace movement in Afghanistan points out that the "war against terror" has only increased terror and increased war. They need peace to cope with the global heating effects, such as the oases that are drying up.
The EU is pushing hard against the war-lover's sanctions against Iran.
Philippine President Do-dirty has threatened to kill corrupt cops.
I sympathize with condemnation of corrupt cops, but summary execution is never justice. Anyway, decriminalizing the drugs would put an end to this corruption and could result in a lot less drug use too. (That has worked in Portugal.)
Telecom Lobbyists Have Stalled 70 State-Level Bills That Would Protect Consumer Privacy.
ALEC Sets the Table for Gerrymandering, Union Busting, Protecting Fossil Fuels, and Privatizing Schools.
As homelessness (in the US sense — no place to live) increases in Britain, a pub refused to serve two homeless men to whom a kind person decided to give breakfast.
This is right-wing disgust-based morality at work.
Salafi Arabia went apeshit when Canada's ambassador talked about the human rights champions that Salafi Arabia has imprisoned. It expelled the ambassador, cut of air travel, and suspended some trade.
Then a government-connected organization threatened a terrorist attack against Canada.
That repressive regime is trying to intimidate all governments so that they don't dare criticize.
Largest Wildfire in California's History Expected to Burn for Rest of August.
Caribbean States Beg Trump to Grasp Climate Change Threat: "War Has Come to Us."
I think that producing dangerous levels of greenhouse gas should literally be considered an act of war against whatever parts of the world will be damaged.
In Meerut, People — Including Children — Were Arrested for Being Dalit. Literally!
Almost 600 minors taken away from refugees are still prisoners of the US government, and are in danger of being "permanently orphaned."
Three US agencies were negligent about keeping records about the families that they "deleted".
I suspect that a substantial fraction of these minors are children too young even to give the names and addresses of their parents.
Fueled by Pollution and Unsound Policies, Toxic Algae Overtake Florida Beaches.
Is it worth trying to fix this problem? If we will curb global heating rapidly, to avoid the inundation of most of Florida, then yes.
American Democracy Is in Crisis, And Not Just Because of Trump.
There are points in the US Constitution that could be improved based on practical experience. Alas, to hold a new constitutional convention would make things worse. Right-wingers want one, because they expect they could dominate it and eliminate protection for human rights.
(satire) Financial advisors recommend Americans spend one evening ripping apart … their homes each week in search of hidden cash, jewelry, or other valuables.
It's about as effective as anything else you can do, as long as rich rule.
The US and al-Qa'ida are both fighting the Houthis in Yemen. US allies are recruiting al-Qa'ida members and funding al-Qa'ida groups there.
This is especially ironic since the supposed reason the US is fighting in Yemen is to keep al-Qa'ida down.
Journalists, don't play into the hands of conspiracy trolls!
Angry Louisiana Cops Strangle Man to Death After He Asks to See His Arrest Warrant.
Global heating seems to be responsible for the 40% decrease in bird populations in the Mojave Desert.
US housing construction is skewed towards the rich. So much luxury housing has been built in recent years that rents are going down — for the rich only.
Many government programs work so well that people hardly notice them. When right-wingers try to wreck them — to create problems that would support their claim that "government activity can't benefit people" — the public don't realize what is at risk.
Anti-Semitic right-wing extremists attacked a leftist bookstore in London, and it is clearly the result of the right-wing extremism of the US and UK governments.
Don't blame climate mayhem on "human nature" and exculpate the people responsible.
Human nature includes many options. It doesn't force people to follow any one of them, so it is not an excuse.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Same Day Registration Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to join the Medicare for All caucus.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Congressional Democrats risk defeat if they don't support the progressive program of the Democratic base.
People in a large part of California and Oregon are suffering from mild cases of smoke inhalation. For old people, it can be fatal. For children and pregnant women, it can cause lasting damage.
The writer recognizes that this was caused by fossil fuel combustion and that his children will be paying the price for the rest of their lives. That will be true, one way or another, for everyone that is a child today. Not everywhere is getting arid — some are getting permanently drenched — but no place is safe from the violence that climate mayhem will cause.
Please do your bit to reduce the problem: have no more children.
Republicans are very firmly opposed to protecting November's US election from Russian interference.
I speculate that the reason they oppose it is that the bullshitter has threatened to attack them in the election if they resist his masters.
Amazon, and other multinational companies, should be required to publish a lot a more information about its income and accounts in each country.
"It's not illegal" is a valid excuse in court, but not in our judgment. Laws that encourage tax-dodging by the rich are the result of a tacit conspiracy that communicates through lobbying. The politicians that keep these laws in place are responsible, and so are the companies that lobby for them and profit from them. Morally, they are all culpable.
Thugs in the LA area are now forming violent gangs. And I don't mean the departments they work for or their unions.
Syrian refugees think they are protecting their daughters by forcing them into early marriage. For many of them, it means being raped. A significant number of them commit suicide to escape the trap.
Many US parents now want to track their children all the time, and expect them to call for help for any minor problem rather than learn by handling it themselves.
When I was 8 years old, I could hardly have got very lost in Manhattan; but if I had, I would simply have asked someone the way to a subway stop.
Janitors of some government agencies are going on strike in London.
The UK separates immigrant parents from their babies, hundreds of them per year, as part of its policy of intentional hostility.
The UK owes compensation to legal residents deported or threatened due to its error-prone and catch-22 immigration practices. It drags its feet to pressure them to sign gag agreements.
Nobel Peace Prize winners call on California Governor Brown to move California completely to renewable energy.
Women fear when men whistle at them because occasionally one of those men attacks them physically.
I can understand how this danger teaches women to react to whistling with fear. It is considerate not to whistle. It does not follow that whistling is wrong.
That a fraction of people that do A also do B, where B is wrong, does not imply that A is wrong. It would be unjust to criminalize whistling because of what a small fraction of whistling men go on to do.
I wonder, though: if we could end misogynist violence against women on the street, would women cease to feel frightened by whistling?
In classical music performance, conductors, orchestra directors and agents have so much power over musicians that they use it to get away with rape, and actions that come close to rape.
These incidents, the ones clearly described, are grossly wrong. Other incidents are described with the vague word "inappropriate", or "sexual assault" which is almost as broad. They might in fact be additional instances of rape, or something close. But "inappropriate" could also be used for minor matters. It is important not to be vague in this way.
US citizens: call on Congress to Protect Mueller's investigation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In 1978 the Move black liberation group was besieged by a gang of thugs, who eventually tried to shoot them all. One thug was killed — by another thug, since the Move members didn't shoot at all. In a perversion of justice, all the Move members there were sent to prison for life.
They can't ever have parole unless they express "remorse" for what they didn't do.
I don't know enough about the activities of Move to say whether I would support it. I have not heard the other accusations and criticisms against Move, so I cannot judge whether they committed some crime some time, or did things I would disagree with. I don't know whether there were grounds to arrest them in 1978, or in 1985. I have no opinion about those matters.
But it is clear that biggest injustice in the matter was the one done to them by the thugs.
Legalizing recreational marijuana in Oregon wiped out the medical marijuana dispensaries. The businesses don't cater to the sick people that need medical marijuana, and parts of the state which don't allow sales have nowhere for sick people to go.
It would be cheaper as well as kinder to resettle refugee families rather than imprison them.
The opposition in Zimbabwe, officially said to have been defeated in the election, says its supporters have been abducted and attacked.
"Why are employers allowed to police what we say as private citizens?"
"Consent" for anything in a love relationship can have a meaning far deeper than a binary "yes or no" decision.
I think this article is profound. I wish it did not have the blemish of the use of "they" for singular antecedents.
Loving each other does not imply automatic understanding of each other. It means a willingness to trust each other and care for each other. That doesn't substitute for learning about each other, but rather provides the base for such learning.
The Monarch butterfly is being driven to extinction, facing threats in both the US and Mexico. We need a treaty to protect migratory insects, like the one to protect migratory birds.
While various companies try to privatize Puerto Rico's public utilities, Coca Cola is buying up its coffee farms.
Safeway staff accused Erika Martin of theft because she gave something to a homeless man who was outside the store.
The members of Italy's Five Star party are getting fed up with the racism, scapegoating immigrants, of the right-wing League coalition partner.
The example of the bullshitter suggests that Salvini may have succeeded in unleashing racism and could end up with more votes in the next election. Allowing him into government may turn out to be a bad mistake.
A UN conference aims to set up an endangered species protection on the high seas.
The UK has made organ donation approved by default. People can still refuse to allow their organs to be donated, but they have to request this.
As an American, I had to give explicit permission for reuse of my organs when I die. I became aware of this when I got my driver's license, and I filled out a donor card eagerly. Please give permission for your remains to save lives.
The bullshitter set up a commission which claimed to have found evidence of voter fraud. Matt Dunlap, ex member of the commission, says that claim was a total fabrication.
While the commission operated, Dunlap was not allowed to see these documents. He had to sue to get them.
The NRA illegally offered insurance to gun owners, and was stopped; now it says the fines may wipe it out.
The NRA's main purpose is marketing for guns. The insurance was a political stunt, and I won't feel sorry it puts an end to the gun marketing campaign.
Various cities are considering requiring hotels to equip cleaning staff with silent alarm buttons in case guests attack them. Some of these laws also raise the minimum wage.
Sabotage at the SEC: it has dropped the federal investigation of Exxon for lying about the danger global heating. The cheater sees nothing as more admirable than fraud against the whole world.
New York State's investigation is continuing, so Exxon may eventually face justice.
Remember the correct pronunciation of the name "Exxon".
IBM in the US directly controlled its Polish subsidiary, which supplied punched card machines for German genocide, and received payment for them via Switzerland.
With mountaintop removal coal mining, you don't need to be a miner to be made sick by the dust from the mine.
Considering the toxic effects of burning coal, we ought to ban coal mining entirely.
China regularly imposes censorship on Chinese people living abroad by threatening their relatives in China.
Censorship now goes beyond politics — anything lewd or disorderly is now banned. Thus sexual repression joins political repression.
Sabotage of US wildlife refuges: permitting use of neonicotinoid pesticides and others (Roundup, etc.) in some of them.
Why we should ban corporations from buying back their stock. It was Reagan that legalized this, which should make anyone suspicious.
Some women in Nepal try to spot young women who are bring trafficked out to India.
Reading between the lines, I get the impression this traffic is rooted in a combination of naivety on the part of young women (isn't there an effort to teach them that these offers are probably phony?) combined with prudish prejudice on the part of parents. I suspect that some of them wanted to, in effect, sell their daughters into marriage, and those lose value as brides if they get a "bad" reputation.
These are the things that need to be changed to put a real crimp in trafficking.
Destigmatizing sex work in India would also help, as that stigma encourages and facilitates keeping prostitutes as slaves.
Stories about the few people rescued from poverty or deadly sickness
via surprising acts of personal charity
In effect, they suggest that the solution is to pray for a personal
miracle rather than organize to help everyone.
I am sure that GoFundMe requires nonfree Javascript code, so I would
never use that site. More importantly, I recognize it does more good
to donate to the progressive political campaigns to help everyone,
than to help one person at a time directly.
The miracle solution doesn't scale. If a million people pray for a
miracle, at most a few thousand are likely to get one. To help people
in general, we need to help them systematically. With Medicare for
All, you will get treatment for your illness. With paid family leave,
you won't need your coworkers to sacrifice their vacations. With
decent wages, you'll have savings and the failure of your car won't
make you walk to work. With more housing in cities and good public
transport, you won't need a car.
How the privatization of Sallie May
turned
it into a predatory lender, which has grown into the principal
source of student loans in the US, at high interest and impossible for
people to escape.
Borrowing to go to school in the US is a risky bet. Lots of Americans
lose the bet, and are saddled with debt for the rest of their lives.
"The Kochs
turned
the GOP into a crazy train, then left the keys where any idiot
could find them."
I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. What the bullshitter did
required total contempt for truth, practiced for a long time.
(Satire): Ivanka Trump complains that imprisoned refugee minors are
not given sewing machines so they can
work
for a sweatshop.
In parts of the UK
where
Tory dooH ninoR policies did the most harm, more people voted to
leave the EU.
23000
Nicaraguans have fled as refugees to Costa Rica.
Facebook
still
supports housing discrimination through its advertising.
40
Senate Democrats voted to spend $717 billion dollars on the US
military.
Want to Fight GOP Voter Suppression And Gerrymandering?
Elect
Democratic Secretaries of State?
The ACLU is suing because the US is
keeping
refugees in prison in inhumane conditions: cut off, lacking food
and medical care, and kept uninformed by giving them information only
in English.
Corbyn has focused closely on the
difference
between antisemitism and criticism of Israel, and on the need to
eliminate the former while ensuring the latter is permitted.
I am convinced that his critics are fudging the line between the two,
and exaggerating, and that it is part of the world-wide campaign to
smear criticism of Israel as "antisemitism".
In a
town
in Louisiana, prisoners of the thugs regularly get killed, and
justice is never done.
Baltimore proposes to amend its charter so that it can
never
privatize the water supply.
We should amend the US Constitution so that government services cannot
be privatized at all.
Right-wingers
take
old tweets out of context to create artificial pseudo-scandals for
anyone they think of as opposed to them.
ISTR I've seen other political camps act similarly.
We must make room for people to learn and change.
The repressor has
followed
the lead of Stalin and Mao in calling some Americans "enemies of
the people".
Australia's right wing government has
taken
the limits off destroying native forest. New South Wales is also
ruled by the right-wing, so there is nothing to hold it back there.
If this isn't stopped, koalas could have little habitat left.
How Russia
Persecutes
Its Dissidents Using U.S. Courts.
The bullshitter's actions are
driving
the US into a spiral of disruption that could leave it a ruin.
His bullshit is
making
the fraud of Springtime for Hitler into reality.
The Hindu bigotry that rules India is
crushing
contrary views in Indian universities.
Denialism consists of movements that feel triumph because they
continue to maintain an absurd contention and nobody can make them
stop.
It is threatened with replacement by
post-denialism,
in which a group of people spew all sorts of contradictory bullshit
and revel in the fact that they have the power to undermine systematic
efforts to determine the truth.
We need to recognize bullshitting groups and stop giving credence to
the bullshit, but that alone won't stop them from killing people
and occasionally paralyzing society.
The Zimbabwean opposition candidate claimed that the election was
"fraudulent and illegitimate",
once
riot thugs stopped interfering with his press conference.
Boston found that body cameras had a
small
but significant effect in reducing thugs' use of force against the
public.
China is now powerful enough to
support
tyrants around the world, just like the US.
US
citizens: call
on Saboteur of the Interior Zinke to resign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In a fluctuating environment, natural selection
can maintain
genetic diversity.
Bahrain is killing imprisoned dissident Hassan Mushaima
by denying
him medical care.
Bahrain repressed
a campaign for democracy and human rights with the help of troops
from Salafi Arabia.
Government advice about drugs and health tends to
be perverted
by rigid morality which assumes using drugs is immoral.
There is a proposal that the reason total alcohol abstainers in middle
age tend statistically to show worse health than moderate drinkers is
that a substantial fraction of them are alcoholics on the wagon, who
would be suffering damage from their previous heavy drinking.
It would be interesting to study whether that is the case.
North Korea has
been hit
with a drought and heat wave that could result in crop failure and
then massive starvation.
Ironically, it is largely the US that is responsible for the global heating
that is largely responsible for heat waves and droughts today.
Why the French working class abandoned the Communist Party for
right-wing
extremism: it
wasn't about the philosophies the two stood for.
The World Bank supported a reserve to protect chimpanzees, a species
now endangered. It also proposes to support a
dam that
would flood the reserve.
The right-wing Italian government
has boosted
violent attacks against immigrants.
US spy agencies say that Russian
agents continue
to try to interfere in the US elections this year.
Rich Americans engage in some of the same attacks
(suppressing
voting
and pouring
in campaign funds).
Oleg Sentsov, a political prisoner that protested Russia's military
takeover of the Crimea,
has been
on hunger strike 82 days.
Amnesty International
was forbidden
to see Sentsov.
My
views on the takeover of the Crimea.
Chinese human rights defender Sun Wenguang
was arrested
in his home while doing a video interview.
"Think tanks" supposedly offer objective research as a service, but
nowadays the service most of them provide
is slanted
research and lobbying.
An Australian food delivery company was especially cruel to its staff,
making them compete for rewards and punishing the losers. But it has
been driven
out of business. Hooray!
Now make a law so that no company can do this.
Bacteria
Becoming
Resistant to Hospital Disinfectants, Warn Scientists.
The ruling party claimed victory in the Zimbabwe election, the
opposition claimed the election was stolen, and now soldiers are
shooting
at protesters on the streets.
There is some
evidence
that the election was stolen.
Google Is Still Planning a ‘Smart City’ in Toronto Despite
Major
Privacy Concerns.
When something is called "smart", understand "spy".
Australia
continues
denying crucial medical care to its prisoners on Manus Island.
One prisoner faces lifelong blindness from the denial of treatment.
Memphis thugs are
surveilling
and investigating Black Lives Matter activists.
These activists are no enemies of society — only of the racism
and injustice of thugs.
Some activists
demand
to impose every possible kind of discrimination on theater and
cinema, making each part the property of some specific group.
I understand that performers in some groups face discrimination which
is an obstacle to their careers. There are two ways to deal with
that: less discrimination or more discrimination.
The demand being made is to maximize discrimination in a world of
hundreds of crosscutting quotas. How many parts will be open to a
female-to-male transsexual of mixed Tibetan and Vietnamese ancestry?
None, I suppose.
To accept some discrimination as legitimate would poison the goal of
ending discrimination. We must not make that terrible mistake.
Therefore, I demand less discrimination, not more. If audiences can
accept seeing a caucasian play a character that was "Asian", as the
makers of Hellboy expect, then audiences can learn to accept seeing an
"Asian" actor portray a character that wasn't "Asian".
I put "Asian" in quotes because many disparate ethnic and racial
groups come from Asia.
After two years, Minnesota has dropped charges against
18
people who protested the killing of Philando Castile, who was shot
by a thug for
informing
the thug that he was carrying a licensed gun.
Perhaps the prosecutors decided that two years of ruining these
upstanding citizens' lives was enough.
I wonder what happened in the trial of seven other protesters,
and whether charges remain against others.
Specially prepared mosquitos wiped out dengue fever in an Australian
city. They
carried
bacteria that infected all the mosquitos of that species and
prevented them from being hosts for the dengue virus.
Indonesia sentenced a teenage girl to
prison
for having an abortion.
This is more galling because she was pregnant due to rape, but I don't
think we should assign any special importance to that. Women who want
an abortion should not be judged based on how they got pregnant.
Every pregnant woman is entitled to abortion rights.
The US is
making
a peace approach to the Taliban, hoping to defeat an offshoot of
PISSI in Afghanistan.
The dynamic among Islamist fanatics is that the most extreme ideology
tends to have the most attraction for those inclined towards
fanaticism. Even the Taliban and the US together might find it hard
to destroy PISSI.
Kavanaugh
loosened
rules on making complex loan derivatives, with the effect that
risky loans are mushrooming.
Santa Monica thugs confronted a black man in his home at gunpoint.
A
neighbor reported him as a "black robber" and a thug pulled out
his gun before even asking what was going on.
Mountaintop-removal coal mining is estimated to cause around
1000
extra deaths from lung diseases per year, as well as many birth
defects. This is in addition to permanent scars on the land.
The
witch
hunt against mothers that leave a child unwatched for even a
minute is due to fear that is demonstrably whipped up by a
propensity to disapprove of women. The more the disapproval, the more
the irrational fear.
The bullshitter has got very far by intimidating those who don't dare
publicly oppose him to make them obey. Now he is
trying
this on the Koch brothers.
This would be fun to watch, if we could be sure it would fail. But it
has
succeeded
in making many powerful politicians submissive. I hope it fails
now.
Many refugee minors, perhaps including children, report sexual abuse
by the thugs
that imprison them.
A court ordered prison thugs to stop
drugging
refugee minors in their prison.
Ryanair has been forced to recognize a few unions but it
still
plans to fight them to keep wages down.
We don't have to be easy prey for this.
US
citizens: call
on the TSA to shut down "quiet skies", the program of surveillance
of people chosen for nothing more than a "what if".
If you sign, please spread the word!
Fracking causes air pollution, said a study carried out for the UK
government. The
Tories kept
this secret for 3 years while changing policies so Britons could
not resist fracking.
The
EPA intends
to kill Obama's upgrade of car emissions regulations and intends
to cancel California's authorization to set stricter standards.
Italy's right-wing
government has
forgiven Egypt for the murder of Italian
student Giulio
Regeni and has arrested an Egyptian opposition politician that the
Egyptian government wants to imprison.
The UK has made it difficult for musicians to get visas to perform.
Sometimes
it holds
their passports for weeks before telling them no, and as a result
they can't apply for visas to perform in other countries.
Some are allowed in after their performances are over.
Some lose thousands of dollars they paid for tickets they couldn't use.
Israel attacked
a Gaza aid ship, beating up and tasing the activists.
Israel has no excuse for preventing boats with non-military aid
from sailing to Gaza.
Brazilian professor Debora Diniz is scheduled to testify in the
Supreme Court in a case that aims to legalize abortion. Anti-abortion
fanatics have demonstrated their commitment to preserving all human
life
by threatening
to kill her.
The US
will put
sanctions on two Turkish ministers for prosecuting an American
expat that runs a Christian church in Turkey.
This could give the US an opportunity to defend all the others —
dissidents, journalists, opposition politicians, and bystanders
— suffering
from repression
in Turkey.
UK women that were forced into marriage in other countries sometimes
ask the government not to allow their husbands into the
UK. Half
of these requests are denied.
It is a perverse exception to the usual UK practice of looking for any
excuse whatsoever to deny a visa.
A planet-roaster elected official called a young climate defense
campaigner
"naive". Here
is a response from a leading young climate defender.
I think the word "naive" is hardly adequate for that official.
I suspect that "cynical" and "corrupt" would fit him better.
The
BBC still
holds "debates" with denialists about whether global heating is
happening.
The UK government is controlled by planet-roasters; that's plain to
see as it prohibits all ways to resist fracking while making it easy
for any fringe group
to block
wind farms. I wonder if the government is somehow responsible for
the BBC's policy.
Salafi Arabia has arrested many human rights activists,
and some
are accused of "terrorism".
It is common practice to use laws supposedly intended for "terrorism"
against dissidents.
The US deportation thugs have now been ordered
to deport
spouses of military veterans.
The person cited in this example is being punished for a paper she was
tricked into signing many years ago. The deportation thugs
are still
doing that sort of thing now.
The TSA is
considering ending
security screening of passengers on flights in small "regional"
planes.
One of the criticisms cited in the article is mistaken — the TSA
says that passengers connecting from a small plane to a larger one
would be screened at the connection airport.
Given how inefficient the TSA is at finding weapons in passengers'
baggage — reportedly
it misses
most of them — I don't think this would put passengers in
much danger. A terrorist that wants to kill 60 people could do that
in a subway car.
President AMLO says he
will ban
fracking in Mexico.
Hooray! Let's hope we can do it in the US, too.
The UK's "hostile environment" has conscripted teachers, doctors,
landlords, even charities for the
homeless into
immigration enforcers.
The government replaced the word "hostile" with "compliant", to try to
duck the criticism. I see no reason to follow that right-wing act of
political correctness.
Pruitt's EPA Decisions
Should
Be Suspended Until Corruption Investigations Are Complete.
Brett Kavanaugh Would Put Trump
Above
the Law.
Senator Durbin: the saboteur of Homeland Sadism
should
resign for having taken 2700 border-crossers' kids away from their
parents.
Refugees are especially vulnerable denial of their rights by
government officials. US government legal aid
helps
them to exercise their rights.
Counterintuitively, it also saves the US money — imprisoning
refugees turns out to be expensive. But even that reason may not sway
officials whose goal is to demonize and scapegoat refugees, not merely
to brush them off.
Jersey and Guernsey, tax-haven islands that belong to the British
crown but are not part of the United Kingdom,
paid
a plutocratist think-tank to publish absurd trickle-down arguments
in favor of tax havens.
(satire) Cop Who Shot Unarmed Black Man
Let
Off With A Promotion.
The US government
issued
a whitewash as the environmental impact review about the Keystone
XL tar sands pipeline.
As pressure increases on the bullshitter for his crimes and tricks, he
might
do drastic things to escape, such as declare martial law or start
a war.
Perhaps this is his motive for preparing a war with Iran.
"Donor-advised funds" allow rich people to take tax deductions today
for "donations" that
won't
actually reach any charity for years or decades. Perhaps never.
A Democratic billionaire is
funding
a campaign to encourage young people to register and vote. It
says that impeachment of the bully is the biggest motivator.
Many workers in the UK
no
longer dare to call in sick; their work is precarious so they
could be fired for that.
Instead they go to work while sick. That risks making themselves
sicker and making other people sick.
The Republican Party has
morphed
into a cult; it shows all the crucial signs.
The advice about how to lead people out of a cult is something that
you could try to use with people that you have a long-term personal
relationship with. It is not applicable to acquaintances.
SCROTUS
want
to tax batteries for electric vehicles, and bicycle tires. This
is in the name of eliminating "free riders" on roads.
The same motive is cited for schemes to track all car travel
in places such as
Connecticut.
Supposedly it is unfair that the gas tax falls heavily on the cars
that burn fossil fuels and help to destroy civilization, and not at
all on electric cars whose electricity can be obtained from renewable
generation.
I wonder how much the Koch brothers paid legislators to advocate these
positions.
Some border-crossing parents say that the deportation thugs returned
their children, only to demand they agree to immediate deportation.
When they refused to waive their rights, the thugs
took
their children away again.
The bully hopes to order the IRS to change its rules to give
billionaires a
giant
tax cut on capital gains.
US
citizens: call
for the renegotiated NAFTA to eliminate ISDS, and add
environmental protection and wage standards.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the US not to weaken undersea oil drilling safety rules.
If you file a comment, please spread the word!
(satire) Facebook Identifies Dozens Of Suspicious Accounts Seemingly
Enjoying
Time On Website.
Amazon is luring US local governments to become captive purchasers.
If they do, the city
will lose
out in a number of ways.
So will workers in the region, given the way
Amazon mistreats
them.
No one should buy from
Amazon.
For black Americans, having the thugs called on them based on silly
suspicions or intentional harassment is
a normal
part of life.
White adults have a certain tendency
to misperceive
black faces as expressing anger. This leads to unfairness in
school towards black students.
Flint's water supply is no longer especially toxic, but unsafe levels
of various toxic
metals can
be found across the US since the standards are too weak.
Meanwhile, many families in Flint have had their water shut off,
and they have been threatened with seizure of their homes.
Some government — probably a Middle Eastern Arab country —
is trying
to take over the smart phones of Amnesty International staff.
The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity warn
the bullshitter that using bullshit intelligence as a basis for
attacking Iran could be disastrous.
(Satire) Sessions
Vows To Protect All Deeply Held Religious Bigotry.
Whistleblower
Reveals Google Plan to Launch Censored Search Engine in China.
Refusing to censor for China is one of few noteworthy admirable things
Google has done (making
a big contrast with
Apple).
Now it seems that Google intends to sink to Apple's level.
I think it is unacceptable that
Google obeys
French censorship
and British
censorship.
In Britain, drug dealers move into "vulnerable" people's homes
by first
helping them cope.
It occurs to me that cuts in all sorts of support for mental health
and for isolated, disabled and unemployed people may be responsible
for this.
Western countries providing humanitarian aid to Syria should not let
Russia or Assad control its distribution. Food and medical
supplies can
be used as a weapon.
Albuquerque's highly lucrative car seizure program has
been shut
down by a court.
Biometric Mirror gives people an opportunity to see how harmful
AI-based
suppositions and probabilistic inferences can be.
The bully has
threatened
Ajit Pai after the FCC enforced its rules and blocked the
Sinclair-Tribune merger.
Zoe Carew, age 7, asked a New Zealand official to change "Linemen" to
"Line Crew" on temporary road signs. So
he
did.
Seven-year-olds of New Zealand, please write to officials asking them
not to sign the TPP with
its I Sue Democratic States clause.
To execute those who fought for PISSI would glorify them as
martyrs.
No Bosses, No Managers: the Truth Behind the
"Flat
Hierarchy" Facade.
Four million people in Assam
face
having to prove that they are Indian citizens, or left stateless
and put into US-style immigration prisons.
When workers at Amazon are injured, Amazon
shafts
them.
The Government By the People Act is another bill that proposes to
replace campaign
funding by the rich.
The population of king penguins in their principal island home has
crashed
by 90%.
Scientists don't know why, but if global heating is not responsible
now, it is expected to hit them later.
Thousands of Nicaraguans are fleeing to Costa Rica to escape
repression
by Ortega's "security" forces.
Various expats' reports on the
clampdown
in Nicaragua.
Sooner or later the US will have
another
economic crisis. The causes of the last one are still mostly in
place.
The Dodd-Frank law was an
insufficient
measure to prevent another crisis, and
part
of it has been repealed.
Macron is being harmed by the scandal of his aide who dressed up as a
uniformed thug to help beat up a protester. But the worst scandal is
that
he's
a centrist — a plutocratist.
Alas, he has already done permanent damage to the rights of workers,
and to the interests of the non-rich.
The Koch brothers funded a think tank to publish a smear report
projecting that Medicare for All would cost 33 trillion dollars over
the next ten years. This is
a savings
of many trillions compared with what the current US system is
expected to cost — and it doesn't cover everyone.
The report mentioned this point at the end, where many reporters did
not notice it.
It also
disregarded 8
trillion in expected cost savings from simplifications in the
payment system under Medicare for All.
The UK worked with Bangladesh to defeat a plan to force a woman into
marriage. Her parents threatened to kill her if she didn't do as they
ordered.
Now they
are in prison.
It will be necessary to watch them carefully when they get out of prison.
They may try to kill her then.
Global heating will bring fatal weather to the North China plain
starting
in 2070.
Other parts of China may also be hit by this.
Canada is
suffering increasing
concentration of wealth, but it's nowhere near as bad as in the
US.
Facebook
has shut
down accounts of Russians that were buying political ads, accusing
them of "coordinated meddling" in the coming US election.
Palestinians in the
UK published
a statement condemning the attempt to label of criticism of Israel
as "antisemitism" as a violation of their supporters' human rights.
I've read a number of articles in the Guardian about the Labour
Party's refusal to label it so. It seems that there are, or have
been, real antisemites in the party, but that there is also an
organized campaign by supporters of the Israeli occupation/blockade of
Palestine to force the party to endorse that tactic of mislabeling.
Seattle
Judge Blocks
Release of Blueprints for 3D-Printed Guns.
I would rather that they not be available, but the censorship of
preventing that seems dangerous.
Australians Say No Thanks to Electronic Health Records, because the
system does
not respect their privacy.
The UK unified all forms of welfare support into a single monthly
payment. In cases of domestic violence or abuse,
this plays
into the abuser's hands.
Companies can no
longer use
Indian tribes as a shield against reevaluation of a US patent.
Two New Orleans thugs have been charged after making
an unprovoked
racist attack.
We need
to save
the Tongass National Forest from Republican axes so that it can
continue to do the crucial work that healthy forests do to protect
Earth's climate from us.
The more abortion is stigmatized, the more women tend
to suffer
mental and physical symptoms after an abortion.
An ancient Roman
library has
been discovered in Cologne, which may have been a public library.
Republican Congresscritter Rohrabacher is using thugs
to harass
voters that phone.
Egypt
has sentenced
80 protesters to death. They participated in a sit-in to protest
the military coup against President Morsi.
I recommend that everyone stay away from Egypt.
India has strictly regulated GMOs,
but regulations
are widely ignored.
I don't advocate a blanket ban on GMOs. Each genetically modified
variety is a separate issue, with its own advantages and
disadvantages. Some of them will be advantageous to use. However,
it is important to study each one.
However, those which will be grown in large quantities, for food or
fabric, must not spread patent pollution
that tramples
farmers' rights.
The citizens of Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania, organized
to prevent privatization of support for just-released prisoners
that is intended to help them reintegrate into society.
The intention of the companies that take over any sort of public
service is to divert some of the funds into profit. Since that means
less money for actually doing the job, the company must (1) pay the
staff a pittance and (2) skimp on the job.
Government activities should never be contracted out to companies
if the amount of work is enough to occupy several full-time staff.
The Fix
Democracy Now campaign is aimed at ending the schemes used to
suppress democracy in the US.
JPay tablets are provided gratis to prisoners in New York State. Then
they gouge
the prisoners and their families.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to block Kavanaugh's anti-environmental agenda.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to cosponsor the Violence Against Women
Reauthorization Act.
Everyone:
call on
UPS to quit ALEC.
As California wildfires become bigger, faster-moving and much more
frequent,
firefighters
worry that fighting one fire after another will make them
exhausted so that mistakes will kill them.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
tell the legislature not to give control
over public space permanently to businesses.
Soon the damage caused by global heating will be so great that
even
fossil fuel companies will be unable to escape.
Aside from the lies about Saddam Hussein,
other
lies were used to get the US to conquer Iraq and spread misery
there. Lies like, "This war will be quick, easy, cheap, and painless,
and Iraqis will thank us."
Rand Paul
yielded
and will support Kavanaugh.
So, probably, will Manchin.
What a shame that Manchin, Donnelly and Heitkamp were not replaced in
primaries. They are only a little better than Republicans, but they
block all chance of electing senators that won't be like Republicans.
WHO mismanaged the large Ebola outbreak of 2014 and
failed
to make reforms afterward.
The availability of a vaccine has made it
a
lot easier to control an Ebola outbreak now than it was in 2014,
but WHO should nonetheless learn to do a good job.
Why Americans
Need
to Defend Julian Assange's Freedom.
The overall issue is vitally important, far more important than
which side Wikileaks' publications have served.
Extreme weather may
drive
up the price of food in the UK.
In a few decades, we
may
not be able to grow wheat in the US.
America Spends
Over
$20bn per Year on Fossil Fuel Subsidies. Abolish them!
An appeal to Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to break off
ties
with murderous Hindu fanatics.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is less of a celebrity now that he no longer faces
execution, but he
remains
an activist.
It seems likely he shot and killed the Philadelphia thug, as accused.
I have no idea, based on the known facts, whether that killing was
justifiable or not. But if his trial was full of evident injustices,
he deserves a new trial.
Parents are leading the fight to block the UK's forced conversion of
their local public school into an
unaccountable
publicly paid private schools.
The TSA has put some passengers on a list of suspects, because of
actions that
vaguely
suggest a remote possibility they might be involved in something,
then has air marshals to follow them and take notes on them, in
airports and in flight.
In effect, the Theater of Security Agency is performing security
theater with only itself as an audience.
Does this suggest to you that the TSA is getting more money than it
can put to any good use?
The Tories' voter suppression plan is
facing
opposition.
"National
identity is fake. We should focus on the wider common good."
I think "artificial" is a more apt word than "fake", It is good to
encourage fellow-feeling with the people of your country, but not to
the point that it interferes with fellow-feeling with everyone else.
The proposed merger of AT&T and Time Warner would become
even
more harmful due to the absence of network neutrality.
The US should do what some other countries have done: require whoever
owns the cable to a customer's home to rent its use to any ISP. This
way we could have many competing ISPs.
A publicly-owned drug manufacturer
would
be a good idea for the US.
However, that alone will not do enough to push down gouging drug
prices. The US should do what other countries do: negotiate with drug
companies on behalf of all patients to set a lower price.
But that alone is not enough either. When a drug's manufacturer funds
the studies of the effects of the drug, it
corrupts
the study. The government should fund these studies, taking the
drug company out of the equation entirely.
This will eliminate one of the arguments that the drug companies use
to give an appearance of justifying charging such high prices.
New Zealand is replacing a supermax prison with a humane prison
designed to provide a sort of
therapy
for mentally ill violent criminals.
23andMe will
sell
the DNA data of its customers to GlaxoSmithKline.
If this is useful for medical research, it should not be a monopoly of
one company.
The results of DNA testing should be returned to the subject, then
deleted. If the subject wants to make them available for research,
perse can send them. If perse does send them, they should be
available to all researchers.
A bill, the Kelsey Smith Act, tries to do something well-meaning (make
mobile phone networks report the location of a phone when thugs say
the owner needs help), but it
has
nothing to protect against mistakes or lies by the thugs.
The bully's persistent attacks on the press lead some in the press to
fear
that they will encourage physical attacks by his supporters.
Illegal cutting of forests is
rife
in Papua New Guinea, and the level of corruption is such that
logging permits are not a sufficient basis to judge whether timber was
cut legally.
Strippers
criticize
the laws that restrict strip clubs.
The US is the most dangerous country in the developed world for giving
birth to a child.
50,000
women are injured every year, and half of those injuries could be
avoided by proper care.
All it would take is some money.
The National Defense Authorization Act explicitly says it
doesn't
authorize war with Iran.
Skepticism After US Government Says It's "On Track" to Reunite
2,551
[refugee families].
The government does not keep parents and lawyers informed when it moves
these prisoners around. That is standard practice with prisoners of the US
government, and it is never excusable.
The US may keep some refugee children away from their parents
for
years.
In some cases this will be "for their protection." The sadism
agencies are using all possible creativity to make excuses to
"protect" children by causing them suffering. They might even allow
the children as permanent immigrants to keep them away from their
families.
Or, even worse, they might allow those children to stay until age 18,
growing up knowing only the US, and then deport them to a country they
hardly remember.
Several insightful comments about
drawing
the line for the boundary of antisemitism.
A Palestinian teenager in the West Bank attacked Israeli colonists
with a knife, killing one. Israelis shot him dead, as is their usual
practice. Then they punished his relatives, also usual practice, but
they didn't feel that was enough. So the next punishment will be to
build
another illegal colony, taking more land from the Palestinians.
Israel had, and has, no right to settle its citizens in the land it
conquered in 1967.
The National Butterfly Center wildlife preserve will be
effectively
ruined by the bullshitter's border wall. So will the property of
many other landowners.
Eminent domain is acceptable as a practice as long as the government
properly compensates the people whose land is taken. For the
government to seek excuses not to compensate them makes the practice
inexcusable.
A map now lists 250 massacres of Australian indigenous people. Many
of them were committed with the
help
or connivance of Australian uniformed thugs.
Medicine hackers
distribute
instructions for manufacturing medicines to avoid the intolerable
prices of the US pharma industry.
Public and legal pressure made the UK government reconsider the plan
to hand over two PISSI fighters to the US
for
possible execution.
The plan is illegal; the UK government is not allowed to cooperate
with the death penalty under any circumstances whatsoever.
The two extremists in question may be guilty of multiple murders, and
that would deserve punishment — but not the death penalty. Even
the bully does not deserve the death penalty.
A right-wing extremist Italian politician
wants
to harass same-sex couples that have arranged surrogate gestation
in order to have a child.
The proposal is motivated by bigotry against same-sex couples, and
such bigotry deserves condemnation. It is excessively cruel, probably
because right-wing extremism uses cruelty to recruit support.
However, I disapprove of surrogate gestation, along with all extreme
measures for producing offspring, regardless of the sex of the
would-be parents. Such measures normalize the natalist position that
having children is tremendously important. The pressure for people to
have children is one of the causes of possible coming global disaster.
We should discourage all the extreme measures, though not with the
cruelty that right-wing extremists would use.
If you feel you simply must have a child, adopt one! Instead of
making another child, you can give parents to an already-existnt child
that needs them.
The UK has
legalized
medicines made from marijuana.
Connecticut
threatens
to track all cars' movements and charge a toll on that basis.
What's worse is that the ACLU is legitimizing the scheme by proposing
only to regulate the use of the data. That "solution" would last only
until the state finds an opportunity to relax the regulation. On the
issue of massive surveillance, it is tantamount to surrender.
A real solution would be to collect money some other way. One obvious
way is checking cars' total mileage from time to time, perhaps once a
month or once a year. This is not ideal, but comes pretty close: it
would avoid nearly all the data collection in the currently proposed
scheme.
Australia
found
a convenient excuse not to reexamine the asylum case of a Sri
Lankan Tamil man, even though his whole family has been shot or
disappeared.
Saboteur DeVos
delayed
Obama's rules that would have enabled students to get out of their
debts for studying at "colleges" that cheated them. Now she wants to
modify those rules so they would avoid achieving the goals.
This is an example of plutocratist rule: it encourages schemes to push
poor people into debt, then gives priority to the bankster creditors.
Antiabortionists are trying a new legal pathway:
state
laws saying that frozen embryos have an interest in being
gestated.
Given society's tremendous interest in not increasing the human
population, I think it would be wise to adopt laws that discourage
implanting frozen embryos.
Another sleazy tactic is to make women, before an abortion, choose how
to
"bury"
the fetus.
Gwyneth Paltrow started a magazine to publish about "alternative
medicine", but it didn't take off because the publisher insisted on
fact-checking
the medical claims.
Most "alternative medicine" has not been scientifically tested. Once
in a while, by chance, an alternative "treatment" is effective.
Mostly they aren't.
For a period of time, Flint's water supply
infected
people with legionaire's disease. 12 deaths have been attributed
to this, but a study suggests a few dozen other deaths might have been
due to the same cause.
This is aside from the lead poisoning that damaged the brains of
thousands of children in Flint due to the bad water supply.
Both problems were the consequence of the Republicans'
imposition
of a nondemocratic government on Flint.
The bullshitter
had
a specific reporter banned from a press event for trying to ask
embarrassing questions at a previous event.
Only
13%
of the ocean's area remains mostly wild and unaltered by human
activities.
Progressive senators have introduced a bill to allow US territories to
escape
from debt after a natural disaster. This would enable Puerto Rico
to escape from the vultures that are trying to convert the territory's
infrastructure into their property.
The cheater's business history is
full
of signs that lead one to suspect money laundering.
Thugs planned an operation specifically to arrest Stormy Daniels, then
lied
about it.
US
citizens: Endorse
the People's Budget.
For
a little more information on it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: support
the No Money Bail Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
states purged
16 million voters from voting lists between 2014 and 2016. That
was more than in the previous election cycle.
Antiabortionists in Chile are accused
of stabbing
three women in a march for abortion rights.
Nobody could really love fetuses the way they claim to do. The reason
for opposition to abortion rights is hostility toward women.
Almost
80% of US Workers Live from Paycheck to Paycheck.
As the article explains, US workers mostly have no bargaining power,
and many sectors of the economy lack competition.
A factor that the article doesn't mention is that concentration of
industry means there
is less
competition for hiring workers.
A major change in modern news media: opinion has become more valued
and
facts less so.
Cambodian tyrant Hun
Sen won
a smashing election victory after totally smashing the opposition
and the press.
Hottest Four Years
Ever? 2015. 2016. 2017. 2018?
Our Scorched Earth Needs Voters
to Put
More Heat on Their Politicians.
Wheeler, the acting administrator of the EPA, revoked Pruitt's last
act of sabotage — which permitted the construction of heavily
polluting trucks installing old engines. A court blocked the order,
and instead of challenging
it, Wheeler
cancelled it.
However, he does violate ethics rules,
by meeting
with his previous polluter clients.
Perhaps Wheeler prefers to concentrate on a few especially destructive
forms of sabotage, rather than inefficient scattershot sabotage.
Equifax got
away without any penalty after carelessly allowing crackers to get
data on around 150 million Americans.
10,000 unionized Disneyland
workers have
won a big raise. 20,000 more non-organized and badly paid
Disneyland workers depend on a ballot measure to increase the minimum
wage (for certain businesses only).
"You can't eat GDP." The US economy appears to be very successful, if
you measure it by this incorrect measure.
Meanwhile, most
people's income is going down.
It's nothing new that the
GDP does
not measure what matters about an economy,
but having an example where the GDP rises and most people's lives actually
get worse is a clearer demonstration of this.
As part of the US-backed intervention in Yemen, the UAE operates a
secret police unit
that kills
and tortures Yemeni civilians.
Elin Ersson prevented Sweden from deporting someone to Afghanistan
by refusing
to sit down on the flight.
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to reject the CLASSICS act which would make a large
extension of copyright on musical recordings.
If you send an email, please spread the word!
US
citizens: Phone
your senators to oppose funding the Department of Homeland Sadism.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A
report claims that the opposition in Nicaragua is responsible for
the violence.
Is it true, or is it fake news?
Non-trafficked independent sex workers are trying
to convince
Congress to repeal FOSTA.
Egypt can
now use
"fake news" as an excuse to put journalists in prison.
Criticizing
CLASSICS, a bill to retroactively increase copyright old musical
recordings.
I worry about the other bill that this was attached to, MMV. I don't
know any details about it, but any plan to "compensate" publishers is
likely to
be bad
for the public.
Bernie
Sanders introduced
a bill to end cash bail at the federal level and pressure states
to end it too.
Fines issued by 11 federal agencies to businesses dropped greatly
after the cheater put saboteurs in charge. In the
EPA they
dropped 94%.
A
campaign to smear sharing by calling it "piracy" and saying that
it loads malware.
Condemn Communists’ Cruelties, But
Capitalism Has
Its Own Terrible Record.
Let's not equate socialism with communism. I think we can do without
communism, but we need socialism. Capitalism implies competition,
with winners and losers. We need some socialism to go with the
capitalism, so that losing the capitalist competition is not a
personal disaster.
Colombian journalists are receiving death threats from paramilitaries
and believe that newly elected President
Duque is
encouraging them.
US states ban anyone with a past criminal conviction
from working
in certain jobs — such as cosmetologist, plumber, massage
therapist, and dietitian.
In addition to denying criminals the possibility of going straight, these rules
can also ruin the life of people prosecuted for protesting.
No part of the US
is safe
from voter purges, used to disenfranchise marginalized people.
How
right-wingers use exaggeration to give the idea that they are
threatened with censorship.
US
citizens: urge
the Senate to insist on getting all of Kavanaugh's records before
considering his nomination.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on your congresscritter and senators to oppose war with Iran.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
The US economy is booming, but it's based on pushing poor
Americans deeper
into debt.
The US and
allies have
accepted responsibility for killing many civilians in Raqqa.
Ride-pooling services tend
to increase
street traffic: they take business away from the more efficient
buses and trains.
That's while tracking their passengers, which should be illegal.
The military spending bill threatens to impoverish non-rich Americans
by too
much military spending (and the rich won't pay their share of it).
"Centrist" right-wing Democrats intentionally plan to focus on the
bullshitter's collaboration with
Putin rather
than his collaboration with planet-roasters and the billionaires
that make most Americans poor.
The bullshitter's "Christian" supporters are more interested
in imposing
Christian theocracy than in practicing Christianity.
Phony abortion counseling organizations are set up
to lure
and trap women into having babies which they could have avoided
with an abortion. They also collect personal data about the women,
which they use to harass them later.
The usual figures for the ratio of CEO income to workers' income are
an underestimate — they don't count the
CEOs' enormous
income from rising stocks.
Methane is leaking out of the ground in the Russian
Arctic. 200
methane-loaded lakes have recently come into existence.
After the fires near
Athens, the
political ashes fall.
It is incorrect to call these fires "Greece’s worst disaster in modern
times". The economic occupation of Greece by the euro-banksters has
surely caused far more
harm, both
economically and in human lives.
Large wildfires are burning up
California before
the usual start of the fire season.
In 20 years there will be much worse fires, but eventually most of the
state's forests will be gone.
Michael Mann: extreme weather is "the face of climate change"; the
long-predicted effects of global heating
are "playing
out in real-time".
Right-wing extremists use Facebook to
whip
up hate against the families of people killed in massacres committed
by right-wingers.
The new Ebola vaccine
swiftly
ended the latest Congo outbreak. Medics vaccinated the people in
danger of getting exposed from the current victims.
"Conservatives"
claim
to stand for conserving something, but that is bogus.
The bushfire season in parts of Australia starts in August —
in
winter.
Treating violence as a disease, and blocking its spread where there
is an outbreak, has proved
effective
in various cities for reducing violence.
"Hypocritical Clergymen"- How the
Trump-Pompeo
Slam of Iran Backfires.
The bully seems to be trying to move the world from a system of
(incomplete) US hegemony to a system of
three
roughly comparable superpowers.
This can have some good effects. US hegemony, when challenged, has
led to a proliferation of wars. A triangular system might provide a
way out of some of them. At the same time, it could start other wars.
Parents have to pay
8
dollars a minute to talk with their offspring that were taken away
by the US deportation thugs.
I suspect that this fee is imposed not by the deportation thug agency
itself but rather by the privatized prisons that the agency uses. In
other words, the agency is privileging a few companies to shaft these
parents rather than shafting them itself.
This indirectly does not morally absolve the agency of responsibility,
but does provides a convenient shield for evading that responsibility.
Privatization of a state activity is wrong in general for
several
reasons, and one is that it systematically tends to lead to
unaccountability.
This is one of many examples.
California's renewable electricity program has been
attacked
in a way that seems fallacious to me.
Landfills and sewage treatment plants are needed in any case, and they
produce methane day in and day out. I think that this methane
qualifies as renewable.
As long as factory farms exist, the same is true of them. You may
wish to abolish factory farms, but as long as they exist, it is good
to burn their methane for electricity. That is better than dumping it
into the air (it is a powerful greenhouse gas) even if we use
solar or wind power to make the electricity.
If someday conditions for farms are reformed, collecting and burning
their methane waste would still be a good thing, if it is still
feasible.
Likewise for paper mills. It could be good to improve them to
generate less waste, if that is possible, but until that time we
should burn the methane rather than let it into the air.
(satire): a new supermax "detention center" will
imprison
the most hardened toddlers.
Someone
went
to the trouble of packaging nerve gas in a perfume spray bottle and
sealing it in a box, just like new, and leaving that as a deadly
booby trap for whoever happened to pick it up.
Since the novichok nerve gas is hard to make, a state was surely
involved in doing this. But one can only guess why.
Everyone: Call
on the Argentine senate to pass abortion rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Call on
Florida to file charges against Markeis McGlockton's killer.
If you sign, please spread the word!
California requires each portable phone to carry a remote shutoff
device. This was meant for turning off phones that had been stolen,
but now it
is being
used for other cases too.
Our current rate of emission of greenhouse gases will lead (in a few
decades)
to heatwaves
with temperatures of 55 C (131 F).
"Just in time" production, with no inventory, is very efficient
— and
terribly fragile, since it tends to convert any narrow problem
into a broad stoppage.
My conclusion is that disaster preparedness at the national level
includes requiring the production of everything people really need to
be done the robust, old-fashioned "inefficient" way.
Massachusetts is considering a bill
to set
up a system of ratings on ISPs based on how far they respect
network neutrality.
It sounds nice, but with so few ISPs, it might not do a lot for
network neutrality.
Somalia is prosecuting female genital mutilation for the first time.
The victim, a 10-year-old
girl, died
from the operation.
Greeks
blame the government for being unprepared to help save people from
the wildfire.
Preparations cost money. Are the euro-banksters responsible for this?
Another cause was that people illegally built houses on land that was
supposed to be reserved for escape routes. That sort of corruption is
typical of Greece.
A UK parking garage
company threatened
a customer who entered "O" instead of "0" in per license plate
number. The company's software refused to recognize "0".
However, that is only a secondary wrong. The company's primary wrong
was
in asking
for the license plate number.
The real Iranian progressive movement begs the bully
to end
the US sanctions against Iran.
A foreign conflict is exactly what any illiberal regime prays for.
People will forgive the regime when there is a foreign threat it can
claim to be standing up to.
"Democracy
Has Died": Cambodia's Exiled Politicians Call for Election
Boycott.
The world music festival Womad says
that many
musicians refuse even to try to perform in the UK, because they
don't want to face the intentionally hostile environment.
A systematic effort to observe voter caging (a form of voter
suppression) in North Carolina has induced the Republicans to more or
less stop
the practice this year.
The bullshitter uses scandals to distract from other scandals.
Sliding
from one scandal to another scandal makes it hard to focus on any
one of them.
To sell out America to Russia is shocking in a special way. However,
I think that selling out America to billionaires, planet roasters and
theocrats does more damage.
Everyone: call
on Twitter to apply its rule against violent threats and close the
bully's account.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: support
the bill to carry out automatic impeachment of any president that
starts a war without congressional authorization.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
The mainstream media cover extreme weather,
but avoid
talking about its cause:
global heating.
The
myths that keep Americans working for a pittance instead of
rebelling.
A former head of ICE
said it
will take years to reunite children with their dear deported
parents.
It seems that the thugs are inventing obstacles to make the task harder.
40 pregnant refugees are stuck on a ship in the Mediterranean, running
out of food and water, because the countries
nearby refuse
to let them in.
Europe
has ruled that organisms with genes edited with Crispr-Cas9 are
considered "genetically modified".
It would be absurd to deny this. The real question is what rules should
apply to them.
Perhaps that should depend on what the modification does. A
modification for use with a pesticide is potentially dangerous because
pesticides are often dangerous. A patented gene is legally dangerous.
A variety that could outcompete the wild type is evolutionarily
dangerous.
Doctors in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is lawful, are in trouble
because they euthanized a demented woman
who at
that moment was uncooperative. She had previously given them
instructions to do so, but it was not done in the proper legal form.
I agree that the system should be very careful to prevent people from
being killed unwillingly. At the same time, if the system
investigates small failures like this one, that gives me the
impression that overall it is very effectively careful.
Álvaro Uribe, the former president of Colombia who I referred to as el
presidente
horrible, is
being investigated for bribing and intimidating witnesses.
He was closely associated with the paramilitares, right-wing
state-supported terrorists
that plagued
Colombia then
and still
plague it now.
Florida's "stand your ground" law is not as loose as it is presented.
It covers only people that kill based on a reasonable belief that they
are in danger. To
kill based
on an unreasonable belief is still a crime.
Notwithstanding that, I still think it is better not to have such a
law. If you face a real threat, and you can protect yourself by
moving away or by shooting someone, I think it is valid for the law to
say that you ought to move away rather than shoot.
The US is pressuring Turkey
to release
one political prisoner who is an American Christian preacher.
The idea that a Christian foreigner collaborated with Gülen, an
Islamist, in a supposed coup plot is absurd. But then again, we never
saw proof that Gülen himself was involved in the coup plot.
The preacher's release would be a step forward, but we shouldn't
forget the thousands of Turks that
are political
prisoners in Turkey.
Global heating deniers
are still
spreading falsehoods on Facebook.
I see danger in deleting false claims about history (including denial
of the holocaust) and false claims about physics (including denial of
global heating). However, Facebook could legitimately mark them
as "bogus" and provide links to corrective information.
I suspect that the denialist funding, which corrupts politicians and
institutions, is the core of the problem.
The cheater is now proven to have violated election laws, but his
supporters
are unlikely
to care.
The cheater's brazenly increasing broad disrespect for standards of
ethics and legality has trained his supporters not to care about those
standards any more.
Three Russian prison
thugs pled
guilty to torturing a prisoner.
I wonder what happened to the other 7 guards that participated.
The victim's lawyer received death threats and has fled.
A heat wave following a winter of drought made the Athens wildfires
spread so fast that
people
could not run away.
Pay attention, because global heating is doing the same things to many
areas of Europe and the US.
Maybe the US is willing to
negotiate
with the Taliban.
The US can prop up the Afghan government to fight the Taliban for as
long as it decides to, but it cannot defeat the Taliban. The only
way to end the war is to let the Taliban win.
Record-breaking heat in Japan
killed
65 people.
The government calls the heat a "natural" disaster, but that is
denialism. We know who caused it.
100 White Helmets and their families fled Syria to
escape
from violence by Assad's forces.
The Tories have decided to extradite PISSI terrorists to the US to
possibly
face the death penalty. The UK is not supposed to extradite
anyone anywhere without a promise not to execute per.
One of the hostages taken by terrorists in Bangladesh was
jailed
two years on suspicion of being participant.
It is unconscionable hold someone prisoner for that long on the off
chance that person was involved in a crime.
17,000
prisoners in the US have been sentenced to life in prison without
parole for nonviolent crimes. About half of them were casualties of
the War on Drugs.
Pollen in the air
can
reduce rainfall, even prevent it entirely.
Rep. Nunes told baldfaced lies about the contents of a secret FBI
document that summarized the state of the Russian collusion
investigation. Now the document has been
released,
and his lies are proved.
The multinational drug gang Mara Salvatrucha dominates most of El
Salvador, but it
started
in the US — a consequence of US repression in El Salvador.
Then the US deported the Salvadoreans, and they brought the gang
home with them.
I don't think the US should admit large numbers of immigrants. The US
birth rate is now low enough that the population (and thus the
enormous ecological footprint) would decline, if not for immigration.
However, when it comes to refugees, the US would face a lot fewer
requests for asylum if stopped messing up other countries.
"Since we have so completely bombed at providing anything like equal
opportunity, and no serious person can think this is about to change
in the decades ahead, how about we
structure
our economy so that it makes less difference whether someone ends
up at the top end like Jeff Bezos or at the bottom earning the minimum
wage?"
Bot
Disclosure Act Would Promote Identification, Accountability.
Do the social media platforms necessarily recognize bots?
"Wellness programs" means insurance companies will charge for medical
insurance based on
collecting
all sorts of personal data. It would be the equivalent of China's
citizen score.
When a gang of French thugs beat up a helpless protester, it was not
what it seemed. One of them, Alexandre Benalla,
worked
directly for President Macron in a nebulous "security" position at
the presidential palace.
The president and his officials protected Benalla pretty hard. I
wonder if Benalla has some sort of hold on Macron.
Bogus scientific journals will
publish
any article you send them — if you pay.
I can understand why real people might want to publish in bogus
journals, for career-boosting (since not everyone will recognize that
the journal is bogus). However, I can't see what motivated people to
pay to publish the article attributed to a nonexistent lab.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the DISCLOSE Act,
which would require political ads to disclose who paid for them.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress not to impeach Rosenstein. Replacing Rosenstein would
be a way to shut down the Mueller investigation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US tax cuts enacted under Bush, Obama, and Trump amount
to 10
trillion dollars. Of these, 2 trillion have gone to the 1%
richest Americans.
The US government
has reconciled
itself to the possibility of 3D printing guns.
I think that the possibility of 3D printing guns is going to be bad
for society, but I don't see how it could be avoided without
repression that would also be bad for society.
Humans are consuming the Earth's limited
resources faster
every year, and already far faster than the Earth can regenerate
them.
Sri Lanka's government said it would end the practice of torturing
suspects,
but torture
continues with impunity.
The House of
Representatives passed
a bill to sabotage environmental protection across the board.
"The far-right doesn't have to win
to set
the legislative agenda."
Global heating is directly deadly: the hotter the weather,
the more
frequent suicide becomes.
Many countries use troll armies to maintain control of social media
and suppress all non-state-organized activity there. Some use their
troll armies
for repression
of activity outside social media.
Social media's damaging effect on adolescents: not only are they under
pressure to appear impossibly beautiful, but the
are compelled
to chat with their friends frequently or face exclusion.
It sounds to me like being in a cult.
Florida
sheriff Morris Young makes an effort to steer the children of
criminals away from crime.
He has to fight
the prison-industrial
complex.
Israel is now
a de
jure apartheid state.
It has had de facto apartheid for a long time, but tried to pretend
that wasn't so.
60%
of the foreign aid for African electricity production goes to
fossil fuels.
I suspect that the planet roasters have subtly corrupted the agencies
that provide the aid.
US citizens: call on Congress to release the bully's tax returns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to save the Endangered Species
Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US
government provides
low-cost flood insurance even to homes that flood over and over.
We need to start pushing to move the owners to high ground.
15 years ago the US organized campaigns for electoral defeat of the
rulers of Serbia, Georgia, Belarus and
Ukraine. Was
it, is it, wrong for a foreign power to intervene in an election
that way?
Milošević in Serbia was a genocidal nationalist, and Lukashenko in
Belarus was and is a tyrannical absolutist. I think such rulers
invite foreign nonviolent intervention. Shevardnadze was an important
politician in the Soviet Union, and probably no respecter of human
rights as president of Georgia. I don't know much about Kuchma.
The campaigns did not steal the election, but they were a form of
outside interference nonetheless, comparable in a very general way to
what Russia did in the US in 2016. But there are differences. The
Russian intervention was in support of a candidate whose party
obtained "victory"
by rigging
the election.
I think a functioning democracy is entitled to stop such outside
interference in its elections.
Google's "confidential" mode for Gmail and Google Docs provides no
real confidentiality, but could provide
an excuse
for monopolistic practices.
The knowledge-hater has opened
a treasure
of dinosaur fossils to mining that would destroy them.
The war-lover's officials are mounting
a pressure
and destabilization campaign against Iran.
For instance,
Pompeo accuses
some Iranians of getting rich while most people suffer.
Sounds like the US!
I don't think this will influence Iranians much. It will be too
obvious that the country's bad economic situation is due to the US.
The government of Iran is theocratic with a level of democracy. This
involves contempt for some human rights, and many Iranians resent this
injustice. Many others support the theocracy, much like the American
supporters of the war-lover. Increased foreign hostility is likely to
strengthen support for the government.
If the US can stomach Salafi Arabia as an ally, it has no reason to
balk at Iran as a friend. The US should negotiate
a better relationship with Iran.
Advanced countries' gratuitously imposed dependence on digital
technology threatens
national security in case of attack, storm, power outage,
whatever.
The Tories continue forcibly converting "inadequate" UK locally-run
schools into privately run "academies", and when these prove even more
inadequate and cheat the students, the
Tories won't
let them convert back to public schools.
One might suspect that providing good education is not really an
important goal for the Tories.
Geithner, Obama's plutocratist Secretary of the Treasury, is now
getting
even richer through a private equity company. One of the
companies it funds pushes predatory loans on desperate poor Americans
who don't understand what they are getting into.
This is typical of "centrist" Democrats that work for the banksters
even while in office.
"Recycling" of plastic can
mean putting
it in a landfill.
I expect this problem is global.
Colombia's worst terrorists, the paramilitaries,
are on
the rise again.
Just as they did decades ago, they are murdering families to steal
their land.
Kavanaugh suggested that the Supreme Court's Watergate tapes ruling
may
have been 'erroneous'.
A different decision would have protected Nixon from the culpability for
ordering the Watergate burglary.
Advanced countries' dependence on digital
networks is
a weakness if they are attacked by a country such as North Korea
that is too backward to have vulnerabilities.
Assad is recovering control of Syria, mostly ending the
7-year
civil war.
Although Assad was a butcher, the Arab rebels were more or less
Islamist and could hardly deserve support against him. Everyone
except
Sunnis was in danger of being killed by them.
However, there are still many Syrians that are afraid Assad will kill
them, who continue to flee wherever his army goes.
Then there is Rojava, the only group with territory that advocates
human rights and equality. As Assad conquers other rebel areas, I
worry that he will attack Rojava next.
Plutocratist "centrist" Democrats are
planning
to contend with progressives for control of the Democratic Party.
If other historic figures, and politicians, used
the
bullshitter's excuse.
Descartes: "I do not think, therefore I am."
Some clothing contains
fake
fake fur (i.e., real fur mislabeled as imitation).
It is bizarre that real fur is cheaper than imitation fur.
I do not oppose the use of real fur or real leather.
Relating censorship of social media today to the
Hollywood
blacklist of the 40s and 50s.
For social media platforms to censor specific views is a threat to freedom.
For social media platforms to be ideal for spreading lies that can
spark mobs in
the US and
India,
and gives violent extremism an advantage over the truth, is also a
threat to freedom.
Perhaps there is a way to modify the systems of social media
so that they cease to give fake news an
advantage
over truth.
Iraqi thugs from the "security forces"
attacked
protesters in Basra, reportedly going out of their way to wound
people. They disabling Internet access for several days, apparently
so protesters would be unable to post evidence of the attacks.
I wonder whether the cutoff was limited to mobile internet, or
extended also to cabled internet.
The protests appear to be about bad economic conditions.
62 Democratic congresscritters
launched
the Medicare for All Caucus.
This will provide a clearer way to distinguish the
progressive
Democrats from the plutocratist center-right "mainstream"
Democrats.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
drew
thousands to their rallies in generally-Republican Kansas.
US
private
schools don't, on average, improve the education of students from
poor family backgrounds.
To give children a better education, what might help is to relieve the
stress imposed on them by the precarious life of poverty today.
The Big Tent Is
Really
No Tent: Why the Democrats' Old Guard Has to Get Out of the Way.
Civility in discourse is generally good; demanding civility from one side
while allowing bullying from the other is unjust.
How
to decide when to be uncivil?
The Putin regime
asked
Pompeo to release the accused Russian agent of illegal influence,
Maria Butina.
The Pakistani army is
bullying
people to vote for Imran Khan's party, and journalists not to
cover the other parties.
The article that suggested mobile phone use tends to cause cancer has
various scientific errors, and the conclusion
may
be false.
The conclusion that mobile phones damage privacy is
completely
established.
Uri Avnery: Israel's slow creeping expulsion and colonization in the
West Bank is at least logical, given the unjust goal of permanent
dominion. But its siege of Gaza is
simply
stupid.
EFF:
what's
next in fighting the proposed EU copyright filters.
It is unfortunate that the article gratuitously uses the term
"intellectual property." That term misleads people into thinking that
copyrights, trademarks, patents and trade secrets all have something
important in common. That is
not the case.
Less
Than a Fifth of Children Reunited with Migrant Parents as Deadline
Looms.
It seems to me that the US is bending over backwards to slow down the
return of these seized children and find excuses not to.
Wildlife poachers in Uganda are
heavily
armed and kill rangers when they can.
The bully's men have returned to parents
less
than 400 children out of the 2500 that they took away.
Most of the residents have
fled
Hodeida. The UN has kept the port mostly open until recently.
Turkish environmentalists who moved to an isolated forest area to be
alone are now
defending
the area from corrupt construction of dams.
An Indonesian teenager was sentenced to
six
months in prison for having an abortion after the 6-week limit.
Why didn't she get an abortion within six weeks? Six weeks is an
awfully short time limit for this. Quite possibly it took her longer
than that to recognize that she was pregnant. She may have hesitated
to try to find out, because her family (including the brother that
raped her) might have intimidated her, either intentionally or not.
She may not have had much in the way of sex education, so she would
not have realized there was something she could do.
The UK campaign funding rules are so weak that
violators
consider fines the "cost of doing business."
A ten-month-old boy taken away from his parents by the US border thugs
was reunited with them after 5 months ago. But he
did
not recognize them.
An app is a great way to
disguise
medical quackery for suckers who assume that digital technology is
safe and friendly.
They are non-free programs, so you should expect them to
mistreat users one way or
another. What you can't always predict is just which kinds of
mistreatment a given program will do.
"Smart" meters will save UK residential electric customers the
equivalent of
under
$20 per year. However, they will work as snooping devices.
A mob of Hindu fanatics
killed
a Muslim man for traveling with cows. This sort of thing
happens
regularly.
The US keeps trying to kill journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem, because he is
on the drone assassination list. He is
suing
to get taken off the list.
The US government response is to pretend not to know what is going on
and that there is no issue to discuss.
Abdul Kareem is an Islamist. That means he advocates imposing the
rules of his religion, in a grave assault on human rights. You could
see the results of this in places such as Iran, Salafi Arabia, and
Pakistan. I oppose him on this.
But reporters should not be killed for their political views,
regardless of whether they are US citizens as is Abdul Kareem.
Long ago, the US used to declare some criminals "wanted, dead or
alive". That was announced publicly in court after a decision made by
human beings. Nowadays, the US awards the designation of "kill him,
plus any number of bystanders" in secret based on decisions by
algorithms.
The fact that human pilots operate the drones and fire missiles at
designated targets, even though those are not engaged in violence at
the time (and perhaps not ever, but the pilots can't tell), is no
protection against what is in effect an automated killing machine.
We must put an end to that system entirely.
Israel Just
Dropped
the Pretense of Equality for Palestinian Citizens.
Israeli snipers killed Palestinian protesters, so a Palestinian sniper
retaliated
by killing an Israeli soldier. Israel then retaliated with
bombing and shelling. No word yet on what casualties that caused.
Shooting civilians is a war crime, but shooting enemy soldiers is
simply war. Bombing and shelling Gaza may be either one, depending on
the target; Israel has
bombed
civilian targets in Gaza in the past.
US
citizens: support
the Detention Oversight Not Expansion Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
AI in the hands of companies tends
to increase
their power over workers and customers.
Why not kill it?
Chinese restaurants in the UK are threatened
by strict
immigration rules that get in the way of bringing good chefs from
China. Even more directly, the UK's immigration thugs raid
restaurants at peak hours, driving away customers permanently even if
they don't arrest anyone.
The cheater has borrowed lots of money from Russian banks. Perhaps
that
explains his
servility to Putin.
(satire) Revealing that the physical world could no longer bear the
weight of numerous contradictory realities, sources confirmed Friday
that dozens of White Houses have begun to leak from a temporal vortex
as President Trump’s rapidly changing story of meeting
Putin tears
apart space-time.
New York City voted
to make
prisoners' phone calls gratis in city jails.
Charging prisoners for talking with their families is cruel to the
prisoners (many of whom are accused, not convicted) and pushes them
towards committing crimes after they get out.
Keeping accused people in jail because they are poor is also
cruel, hence the movement to put an end to the bail system.
Republicans in the House of
Representatives don't
want to know what secret deals the traitor made with Putin.
Glenn
Greenwald reports that Ecuador is negotiating handing over Julian
Assange to the UK. Whether this would permit the UK to turn him over
to the US depends on what terms Ecuador negotiates.
If the US prosecutes Assange for publishing leaks, the effect would be
to damage freedom of the press in the US. The bullshitter would
love this.
Various global heating effects are causing great damage in the Mekong
Delta,
and almost
2 million people have been compelled to leave.
Sally
Yates warned
White House lawyers in January 2017 that Michael Flynn was
vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
How
a One-Word Loophole Will Make It Easier for the US to Sell Weapons
to Governments That Kill Civilians.
The "gilded age" of the 1890s, an age of increasing inequality, has
several similarities with the current age of increasing inequality.
The "gilded age" inspired the progressive movement which achieved
political changes including direct election of senators, and (in many
states) initiative petitions for laws and recall elections for
officials — as well as anti-trust law.
UK thugs pressure juveniles
to serve
as undercover informants on other criminals.
This can be dangerous for them, and not just the direct danger of
violence.
The article says "children". If any of them are really children, that
would be horrible, but that is unlikely. I expect they are teenagers.
When teenagers are eager to do this, perhaps because they want to get
even with those that exploited them, and supposing they understand the
risks, then I'm all for giving them the chance. But we have to
suspect that most of them are coerced. Juveniles that are accustomed
to being exploited for crime, or enslaved, would have trouble saying
no when bullied by thugs.
(satire) House
Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters Wednesday that he was worried
history may judge him harshly for his failure to confront the ruthless
tyranny of government food stamp abusers. "What will I say when my
grandchildren ask, 'What did Grandpa Paul do to prevent those cruel
and remorseless monsters from collecting $125 per month to spend at
the supermarket?'"
Kavanaugh's record thoroughly supports
businesses against
customers and workers.
San Francisco will allow all parents and guardians of school children
to vote in school board
elections, even
if they are not US citizens.
I think some countries in Europe standardly allow non-citizens to vote
in local elections.
US
citizens: phone
Senator Schumer's office and call on him to lead energetically in
blocking the nomination of Kavanaugh.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: tell
Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase to stop financing prison companies.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The bully is
considering sending
Somali refugees back to Somalia, where al-Shabaab threatens to
kill them if they don't join.
The amount of meat production is forecast to increase and
to cause
enormous harm to the environment, including through global
heating.
"Wellbeing
is a nice buzzword. But when employers use it, ask why."
Heat and
drought threaten
the harvest in Northern and Central Europe.
Global heating is making such crop failures more frequent. Will
the politicians learn to face up to the threat?
India's ruling
politicians encourage
and reward mob violence against Muslims.
This article doesn't mention it, but other non-Hindus are targeted
too. The name "Swami Agnivesh" does not sound like a Muslim name, and
Muslims do not generally wear turbans. I would guess from the turban
that he is a Sikh. Christians are also persecuted.
The hotel from which the Las Vegas shooter shot
is suing
all the victims, seeking a ruling that it is not liable for the
shooting.
It seems like common sense that the hotel should not be liable. It
was not to blame for the shooting. There is nothing it ought to have
done to prevent the shooting. There is no reasonable way that hotels
could do so.
However, in the screwy US medical system, often the only way the
victims of violence or accidents can get money to pay for medical care
is if they can sue some organization and make it pay.
MEP Voss, who put the copyright filter censorship into the EU
copyright directive, thinks it is wrong to post any copyrighted work
on the internet if the author does not get
paid. His
own actions contradict this supposed principle.
I agree with the point about hypocrisy: Voss's actions contradict his
position. That doesn't mean that his actions are wrong. His position
is what's wrong.
Making everyone pay to use art is a misguided goal. The right goal is
to support artists
and thus
support the arts.
In the US, where copyright law includes fair use, it is often lawful to
post a copy of some work without asking for permission, for political
or educational purposes. The EU ought to adopt fair use in an even
stronger form.
It should also legalize sharing (noncommercial redistribution of
exact copies) of any published work.
A state-organized Nicaraguan
militia attacked
student protesters sheltering in a church, using guns. Eventually
the militia captured the students, aside from one who was shot dead.
New York City's lawsuit against fossil fuel
companies was
dismissed. The city will appeal.
Saboteur
Zinke proposes
to reinterpret the Endangered Species Act so that it
will not
be very capable of preventing the extinction of endangered
species.
The
cheater's plan for "peace" between Israel and Palestine is to make
Israel's occupation of the West Bank permanent and call it "peace".
Terrorist attacks
get 7
times as much US press when the perpetrator is a Muslim.
This gives Americans the false impression that terrorism is committed
mainly by Muslims.
That false impression is also supported by (1) the tendency to speculate
that the perpetrator is a Muslim, and (2) the tendency to avoid saying
"terrorism" when the perpetrator is not a Muslim.
(satire) CNN Anchors Brooke Baldwin and Dana
Bash reportedly
sat speechless Thursday after their guest Dr. Gina Jimenez went on
a long, coherent thought, unleashing a tirade of articulate points
completely relevant to the topic at hand.
There are reasons to suspect that the bullshitter has been a Russian
asset for years
— at
least since 2015.
Greenpeace
activists occupied
the headquarters of Barclays Bank to protest its funding of tar
sands oil pipelines.
ES&S, a US company that makes digital voting machines,
admits
that it put a remote back door on some of them, in the period
2000-2006.
Senate Democrats
Unveil
Bill to Reunite Immigrant Families 'Immediately'.
Turkey has replaced its temporary "state of emergency" by becoming a
repressive state
on
a permanent basis.
Convincing real juries to nullify a law often does work,
if
it is presented in a positive form.
Trump administration hit with lawsuits over
inhumane
treatment of [imprisoned kids of border-crossers].
The inhumane treatment includes dirty drinking water, spoiled food,
being denied a chance to bathe for three months, and being exposed to
lice.
For the children among them, being kept away from their families may
have harmed them even worse. I guess they can't sue for that.
Right-wing extremists in the US are
promoting
far-fetched suspicions about vaccines, and even the former doctor
whose fraudulent claims started those suspicions.
When parents act on these fantasies, real children get real diseases.
It is
wrong
to censor the statement of views on the grounds that they are
mistaken. On this, I actually agree with Zuckerberg.
However, when you are presented with claims that a conspiracy is
stifling the truth, consider whether the conspiracy is plausible.
It takes a lot of money to corrupt lots of scientists and officials.
Companies that sell products that many people use every day can afford
this — products such as tobacco, sweets, fossil fuels, and
opioids.
Oil companies have enough money to corrupt institutions such as the
Museum
of Natural History and
WGBH-TV.
How many packages of sweets are sold in the US every year? My quick
estimate is 400 billion, but it could be much more that. There's a
lot of money available to corrupt the institutions that ought to be
adopting policies to help people resist sugar.
Telecommunications companies have enough money for this (look at the
network
neutrality battle). A commercial movement backed by billionaires
can also corrupt people and institutions. For instance,
charter
schools are backed by billionaires.
How many doses of MMR vaccine are used in the US every year? I
estimate around 6 million. It is a substantial business, but not
enough to make a billionaire. It is not plausible that these
manufacturers can corrupt a large number of people and institutions.
What kind of conspiracy can a small business set up? Only a rather
small conspiracy. Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent paper, which first
claimed that MMR vaccine did harm, was a conspiracy of that sort. It
fooled a part of the scientific community for a while, until more
investigations showed the claim was false.
New York City will investigate
whether
Eric Garner's killer violated any rules in the process of killing
him.
Canada's High Arctic Glaciers
at
Risk of Disappearing Completely, Study Finds.
The EFF has proposed
standards
for technology companies to apply when deciding to provide
products or services to the US government.
This practice would be a step forward, but the proposal has a
fundamental weakness: it defines "abuses" as illegal acts. To bypass
them, the government need only legalize whatever practices it would
like to carry out. Remember the
U
SAP AT RIOT Act? Remember how far the US government goes to
legitimize torture, and imprisonment without trial?
Despite that shortcoming, I support this campaign. I expect it will
do some good directly, and that it will make people more aware of the
dangers, which could create an opportunity to prohibit some kinds of
surveillance practices later.
(satire) SCROTUS announced
what
it would take to convince them to resist or oppose the
bullshitter.
Only a
fine
line of subtleties stand between Republican dealings with Russia
and the definition of treason.
World investment in fossil fuel use
increased
in 2017, while investment in renewable energy declined.
Extractivist governments in the US, UK, Canada and Australia are
pushing hard for this, and it looks like they are achieving their
murderous aims.
The policy that has been proved to reduce the rate of abortion is to
make
it easy to get contraception. Theocratic policies do not reduce
abortions, but do make them more dangerous by driving them
underground.
The explanation for this paradox is that theocrats don't punish
abortion as a means to have less abortion. The punishment is itself
the goal.
US
citizens: file
a comment to oppose the abortion gag rule.
US citizens, tell
the Senate: Veterans deserve better than Robert Wilkie.
The
EPA's relaxation
of rules for coal ash pollution means more future risk of cancer,
heart disease, stroke, and brain damage.
Google has
been fined
5 billion dollars for restricting the sale of phones with certain
modified versions of Android.
The restrictions were clearly designed for anticompetitive goals.
Facebook allows right-wing extremists to violate the rules it applies
to
others, reports
an undercover journalist who worked as a Facebook moderator.
Large meat and dairy farms are not doing much to reduce their large
carbon footprint.
Indeed, most
of them conceal it.
Beck
Dorey-Stein resigned
as white house stenographer because she saw that the bullshitter
didn't want an accurate record of what he said.
Business-dominated globalization does more than spread poverty.
It creates
the cracks for hatred between groups to grow.
This article proposes economic localization, a return to local
commerce instead of globalized commerce, as a form of resistance.
Why does the bullshitter attack the EU and NATO?
One reason may be to boost the extreme right-wing.
Another reason may be that it serves Putin.
This is not to say that the EU or NATO deserves entire support. The
EU is not very democratic
and largely
serves the banksters.
However, the extreme right-wing is even worse.
Supporters of Rep. Maxine
Waters massed
near her office and discouraged right-wing protesters to show up
to menace her.
However, their in-your-face tone might be cited by
extremists for
their own recruiting.
The bullshitter and Putin are collaborating …
to keep
fossil fuel interests in power.
(satire) Papa John’s founder John Schnatter
announced
plans Wednesday to launch a new chain of fast-casual segregated
lunch counters across the Deep South.
Saboteur Pruitt's aides aired his new desk for a week before putting
it in his office, to protect him from exposure to formaldehyde.
Meanwhile, they
suppressed a report about the dangers of formaldehyde exposure, at
the request of businesses. The businesses don't want Americans to
know that most Americans are exposed to too much formaldehyde.
Exposing large numbers of people to small but significant amounts of a
carcinogen will cause some additional cases of cancer. If we see the
report, we might get an estimate of how many additional cancer cases
result from US formaldehyde exposure. It might be thousands, or it
might be less. The added risk to one person is minuscule, but the
added harm to society can be important.
Too bad we don't know whether Pruitt personally asked for his
expensive new desk to be aired out.
The UK's arms exports don't just support tyrants (in many cases), they
also promote
corruption and poverty.
The FBI, in charging Butina, reported that a leader in the Republican
Party
boasted
in 2016 of establishing a secret communication channel to the
Russian state through the NRA.
To condemn politicians for colluding with a foreign tyrant does not
mean that I believe US politicians would be honest and good if not for
Putin's influence. It also does not mean I consider Putin the Great
Satan or that I would advocate maximum possible confrontation with
Russia.
But the US does need to defend itself from this. Primarily
that means punishing the politicians who engage in such betrayal.
Senator Rand Paul
dislikes
Kavanaugh's approach to the Fourth Amendment which bans
unreasonable searches and seizures.
If all the Democrats reject Kavanaugh, and so does Paul, I think that
is enough to defeat him.
Farmers in California's Central Valley are draining the aquifer for
unsustainable irrigation. As a result, the land is sinking (10 meters
in some places), and the water supply is
contaminated
by arsenic.
Israel has accepted that Assad's forces will take control of the
region bordering on the Golan Heights (occupied by Israel). Syrians
are fleeing towards the Israeli border, where they
will
not be allowed entry.
(satire) … newly hired ICE agent Kevin Michelson revealed this
week that he had established dominance on his first day by
beating
up the biggest child prisoner he could find.
Thousands of Scientists
Pledge
Not to Help Build Killer AI Robots.
The practice of allowing charter schools in the US is kept going by
billionaire's
lobbying funds.
US
citizens, tell
Congress: Don't privatize the war in Afghanistan — end it.
US
citizens: call
on Senator McConnell to stop blocking a vote on the bill to
protect Mueller's investigation.
In Paraguay, even children (pre-teens)
are forced
to give birth if they get pregnant.
Documents show that certain Burmese
officials planned
to attack the Rohingya. They are the ones who did the attack.
The Tories say they want to exit the EU to reclaim sovereignty for the
UK. But they intend
to surrender
that sovereignty by signing the TPP.
The TPP is a business-supremacy treaty,
which means that it hands power over the state
to foreign companies.
In India, Summer Heat
May Soon
Be Literally Unbearable.
Means to cope with the heat can handle a limited amount of temperature
increase. If we don't curb the increase itself, it will eventually be
far more than those measures can cope with. We need to curb global
heating!
Rising Sea Levels
Are Coming
for the Internet.
The UK government has arranged
to deny
some asylum applicants legal aid.
As a result, they lose in practice the rights they have in theory.
This is a small step along the path that Hungary
has traveled
to the end.
The
Cashless Society Is a Con — And Big Finance Is Behind It.
Israel
has eliminated
Arabic as an official language.
This is likely to lead to indirect discrimination against any Arabs
whose command of Hebrew is imperfect.
Analyzing
US actions in the Middle East.
May We Speak of Reason, Rather Than of Treason?
The general point that treason can be seen from two sides is valid. I
don't think it changes much as regards the bullshitter. Indeed, a
Russian might consider him to be a loyal servant of Russia, but so
what?
EPA Fans Struggling Coal Industry
by Rolling
Back Pollution Regulations.
An experiment with a 4-day, 32-hour work week was a great success for
one company. The same
employees got
more done in less time, for the same pay, and felt less stress.
This is a win for both the company and its own employees, but we can't
assume that the same will happen for all companies. What about the jobs that
are not creative, where you are not likely to do more in one 8-hour shift
than in another 8-hour shift?
Those companies should also go to a 32-hour work week for the same
total salary — and hire more employees.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support restoring the
network neutrality regulations.
One Republican recently signed the discharge petition, showing that it
isn't hopeless to try to convince others.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Endangered Species Act.
Greedy Indian parents continue driving their sons to murder their
wives for not delivering enough money as a dowry.
Global heating has
brought wildfires
to the Swedish Arctic.
Libyan Coastguard Accused
of Abandoning
Three Migrants in Sea.
Many kinds of digital technology are now used to monitor employees
in various ways — their actions, and their feelings.
Some of these uses can be beneficial. The simplistic question, "Would
we be better off with no monitoring or 100% monitoring," is a red
herring. The right questions are which kinds of monitoring
we should permit, which uses of the data, and who should
control the systems and the data they collect?
It is clear that workers with a strong union can more effectively
prevent employers from monitoring them and using the data against
them. A progressive government can make laws to protect workers
from harmful monitoring.
The town of Penzance is pioneering
the rejection
of all single-use plastic.
One Republican congresscritter
has signed
the discharge petition to force a vote on restoring the Obama
administration's network neutrality rules.
Israel has
made it illegal for Breaking the Silence to send representatives
to high schools to talk about what the students will be ordered to do
as soldiers of the occupation.
Breaking the Silence offers soldiers and ex-soldiers an opportunity to
talk about the crimes of occupation that they witnessed or committed.
Students will now have to smuggle these ideas into schools to share
with other students.
As preparation for demolishing the village of Khan al-Ahmar, Israel
has put gates
on the two roads that lead there. The only way to get in or out
is now via the mountains.
(satire) The rest of the world wondered aloud Tuesday about
exactly what
Trump has on America that compels the nation to keep him in
power. "Whoa, he must have some real bad dirt on the U.S. populace for
them to just let him get away with so much unconscionable
bullshit…"
The bullshitter wants to "clarify" something he said in
Helsinki by
adding "not".
I have accidentally omitted the word "not" in emails. Anyone can make
such a mistake, including the bullshitter. However, he is
persistently and totally dishonest, so we cannot take either the
original Helsinki version or the corrected version as sincere. More
likely he is following his usual pattern of saying outrageous things
and then claiming he didn't say them.
Sanders:
"Too
bad Trump didn't have the guts to say that yesterday while with
his authoritarian friend, Vladimir Putin."
(Satire) In
response to public outcry over his recent controversial press
conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Senate leaders
cautioned Tuesday that it was far too early to discuss Trump.
We need the Supreme Court to make sure that the president does not
become an autocrat. Kavanaugh's writings
say he
will not help.
(satire) In the aftermath of the president’s controversial meeting
with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Finland, supporters
reportedly praised Donald Trump Tuesday
for upholding
the traditional American value of supporting murderous dictators
for political gain.
The Social Security Administration is trying
to crush
its workers' union.
Examples
of trauma suffered by children that the US border thugs kept away
from their parents.
Leticia, at age 12, is on the border between a child and an
adolescent. It appears she was able to stand up to it better —
but no one should do these things to 12-year-olds.
30
Jewish groups from various countries have condemned the practice
of labeling criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine as
"antisemitism".
Maria Butina, Russian "gun rights activist",
worked
persistently to promote the NRA and Republican candidates.
We are
wasting
the limited stocks of phosphate fertilizer on creating harmful
algae blooms in the ocean.
Kavanaugh said he wants to allow prosecutors to
use
evidence obtained from illegal searches.
The bullshitter's "summit" meeting with Putin was a series of
concessions
to Putin. Only Putin was at the summit; the bullshitter was
kneeling to him.
The bullshitter
trusts
an ex-KGB agent more than US intelligence.
US intelligence agencies don't necessarily defend US human rights and
democracy. Their own snooping on us is a threat, and they might
instead defend the power of the plutocrats that rule America against
Americans in general.
A Russian spook, by contrast, never defends Russian human rights and
democracy, and US human rights and democracy even less.
The electricity to run data centers is a
significant
contribution to global heating.
The
five
areas of rights that fascist regimes tend to attack first.
Hong Kong is moving to ban the pro-independence party and
punish
everyone who associates with it.
The FBI wants a program to recognize tattoo images, and
plans
to infer people's beliefs and associations from their tattoos.
Even when a human being looks at the tattoo, the inference of
associations is unreliable. This unreliable basis is
used
today in the US for punishing people.
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to investigate the Russia-NRA connection.
US
citizens: call
on Mattis to stop discharging non-citizens from the US military
for no valid reason.
Why
There Must Never Be a Speech and Assembly Tax.
Cutbacks on the UK's NHS have led to denying surgery to people with
hernias. This can cause them horrible pain, and in some cases death.
Hernia surgery is not high tech and not tremendously expensive.
The fact that this is rationed shows that the Tories are cutting medical
care to the bone.
Facebook protects far-right
activists even
after rule breaches.
Since economic growth does very little to benefit the poor, it makes
sense to design an economic system that doesn't depend on economic
growth.
A journalist for The Nation
was ejected
from the two-bullshitters press conference for holding a sign that
said, "Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty."
(satire): Intergalactic
Fleet Week 2018 in New York City.
Tenants
Accuse 'Predatory' Kushner Real Estate Firm of Exposing Families
to Cancer-Causing Dust Then Forcing Them Out.
The kind of national security that most Americans
need is
economic security. More military security hardly does Americans
any good.
The US government has set up
a maze
of bureaucratic requirements that keep refugee parents and
children apart.
One payment app publishes all the data about payments (unless the user
has changed the settings). A researcher
has analyzed
what this leak does.
The other payment apps don't publish the transaction data — but
they provided it to the stores, to the banks, and to the state. Which
is almost as bad. The analysis from this one payment app can teach
us, if we are willing to learn, how bad the others are.
Can you be confident that your country's government will respect
everyone's human rights? What about 5 years from now? 10? 20?
Elon
Musk donates substantially to keep Republicans in control of
Congress.
$33,000 is a small amount for him. If he cares about a cause, he
would surely put far more money into it than that. I suspect he has
donated a lot more through various other channels.
Two years ago, supporting Republicans meant promoting concentration of
wealth and cutting most Americans off from medical care in general (as
well as abortion in particular). Nowadays it also means supporting
fascism, racism, and the death of the idea of honesty.
Saboteur of Housing
Carson presents
his plan to raise rent in subsidized housing as a way to pressure
poor people to work.
40%
of Americans can't handle an unexpected expense of $400. These
rent increases would add up to more than $1000 a year.
Poor people in the US today are in such desperate situations that they
would all work — if they can. So the idea of pressuring then to
work, regardless of what kind of pressure it would be, is
fundamentally absurd.
What those people can do, and will do for a while, is go without food
and/or medicine.
Andrew
Farotade's case shows what the UK's "hostile environment for
immigrants" means in practice.
I don't think it is mere imperfection that leads officials to make so
many mistakes — always to the immigrants' detriment — nor
that it is a coincidence that they have to bankrupt themselves trying
to get those mistakes corrected. I think officials designed this
scheme, knowing that it would chase out lots of immigrants and that
they could get away with that all they were doing was carrying out
laws and that each expulsion was justified.
The officials who planned this didn't do it from mere spite, although
they may feel some. Surely they were directed from higher up to
increase the frequency of expulsions and "Don't tell us how."
Economic modeling studies suggest that a carbon tax would
boost
the economy by reducing global heating. Some tax systems are more
effective than others.
A US judge
halted
deportation of families reunified by the US.
A Mexican woman
reports
on 11 months in immigration prison. Her report describes many
forms of cruelty, and she says that her children show lasting effects
of trauma.
Nigeria is now the
world
leader in extreme poverty.
One of the things people need to do in such a situation is stop
having children. We ought to donate reliable birth control.
Women working in stores in Kerala often develop injuries because they
work a 12-hour day and are
not
allowed to sit down while working.
Just because oppressive employers practice gender bias is no reason
for laws to do so. Kerala should give all workers the right
to sit, as well as the other rights they need to stay healthy.
Ending poverty requires
changing
the conditions that create poverty.
It's ineffective to pour in millions in aid while
multinationals
continue to suck out much larger quantities while paying hardly any
tax, and while corrupt politicians can put billions into
secret
companies in Nevis.
Putting children (and teenagers and adults) in cages was a
trial run for
fascism.
It seems to have been a success, in that the bully's base is totally
happy with it, and ready to dismiss the crying children as "actors".
The thug chief of San Diego concocted fake "crime statistics" to
impede marijuana sales in California. Various real cities are
using
the fake statistics as the basis for real decisions.
Aggressive war can now be prosecuted in the
International
Criminal Court.
The history of nuclear weapons and
nuclear
disarmament.
More countries have ended their nuclear weapons activities than
continue them today.
Snooping
voice-controlled
shopping will let a few giant brands put their competitors out of
business.
Pussy Riot
protested
on the field in the final match of the soccer world championship,
demanding certain basic political freedoms in Russia.
The Fair Elections Now Act would set up a system of
public
funding for senate candidates.
The teachers at the American Federation of Teachers' annual convention
have been
spurred
into militance by the recent strikes in several states.
That, of course, responds to the increased Republican contempt for
public education, reflected in giant classes with no supplies as well
as in low wages for teachers. The Republicans of 20 years ago would
not have thought of going so far.
California's Democratic Party executive board
voted
to endorse de Leon over Senator Feinstein.
Feinstein is not much better than the Republicans of 3 years ago.
US citizens: The ACLU asks you to phone your senators and call on them
to demand that Kavanaugh say exactly where he stands regarding Roe v Wade.
US citizens: phone Senator Schumer at (202) 224-6542 and urge him to
appoint progressives to the Democratic slots in the SEC and FDIC.
I'd say, "People who will oppose the banksters."
A study of the resistance to the Vietnam War by US soldiers and
sailors.
People saw a private prison company, MVM, bring children into
a "vacant" office building and keep them there for weeks.
The company pretended this was not happening until video footage
proved the truth.
The building had few toilets and no kitchen, and using it as a
residence was illegal.
This secrecy is an extreme example of the lack of accountability that
typifies privatization of any government activity. We should abolish
all private prisons.
America has
been splitting up families since before the United States was
founded. Slave families, indigenous families, and Japanese-American
families.
Gorsuch promised over and over that he would follow precedents.
Once confirmed, he has broken them over and over.
FEMA
has admitted
it did a bad job of aiding Puerto Rico during and after the
hurricane. Puerto Rico still needs help, but the US government has no
intention of offering any.
Israel is about to enact a
law imposing
segregation in housing.
We could call this Jamal Crow.
Greece is nominally about to emerge from the "bailout" of its
creditors. This
will change nothing real; Greece will still have to squeeze Greeks
to the bone to pay them.
The people interviewed in the main body of the story are advocates of
the EU dominion, so they paint everything with a rosy glow. The
"reforms" they talk about are reductions in wages and workers' rights.
The "democracy" that has survived has no power over anything
important, like the "democracy" that
is crushing
Puerto Rico and the "democracy"
that crushed
Detroit.
The "surpluses" they speak of refer to the tribute for the creditors
that today's Greeks will serve for the whole of their lives.
The banksters that directed and direct the creditor organizations
deserve to spend their lives in prison for this.
A
deadly scorpion now inhabits Brazil's cities.
The scorpions eat cockroaches. Efforts to cut down on the food for
cockroaches might cut down on scorpions.
Ortega's unofficial armed forces
are attacking
students that occupied their university.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez
are going
to Kansas to campaign for progressive candidates in Democratic
primaries.
How "Don't tread on me" sank from a slogan for resisting power to a
slogan
for petty jerks that want power over those weaker than they.
The US
is shutting
down a vital reference for medicine, to "save money".
That means the money will go to rich people's tax cuts. But even rich people
won't be able to buy, reliably, doctors that can do as good a job without this
reference.
The bully's men have
returned
about half of the small children that it took away from families
back to those families.
The other half supposedly are "not eligible". In principle, it could
be true, but I would not trust his agents to judge that.
SCROTUS have
passed
a bill to encourage overfishing.
US
major
media warn that newly elected Mexican President Lopez Obrador
might cause disaster — for multinational corporations that
dominate Mexico at the expense of the Mexicans. Decades of "gains"
for those multinationals might now be at risk.
A citation that criticizes the dominion of the multinationals talks
about "income growth per person", so I should point out that that's
not a good way to measure how well a country is doing for its
citizens. It's somewhat vague, but the most natural meaning would be
growth in per-capita income, and per-capita income is a bad measure
because one rich person with a high income can drive up the figure
without making most people any better off. Growth in the
inflation-adjusted median income would be a better measure.
Walmart has
announced
methods for tracking workers' activity.
If they change anything, they are dangerous — but it could be
that more traditional methods could track all the same things.
As for the patent, I don't think that increases or decreases the
danger.
Should Your Company Help ICE?
"Know
Your Customer" Standards for Evaluating Domestic Sales of
Surveillance Equipment.
Facebook claimed to support "closed" groups and said it would not
release the names of the members. Meanwhile,
companies
could get their names, and other personal data.
An (evidently) racist distributor
sold
black farmers in Tennessee low-quality seeds, instead of the seeds
they thought they were buying.
The US deportation thugs are trying to make every moment a moment of
terror
for unauthorized immigrants.
Some studies have found that mobile phone transmissions
tend
to cause certain kinds of cancer.
I have some caveats about this article.
The
business
environment of scientific research now compels universities, as
well as scientists, to compete to maximize certain quantitative
measures of production of research. This pressure leads to
exaggeration, careerism, and even bullshit.
Why Identity Politics
Benefits
the Right More Than the Left.
It turns out that some people activate latent hostility towards other
groups when they perceive their own group (whatever that is) as
threatened. The left's discussion of racial diversity thus leads
some whites to support bigoted policies to a greater or lesser extent.
However, I disagree with the conclusion that progressives should bend
over backwards to be "civil". The level of incivility coming from
Republicans every day is so great that a failure to respond has the
danger of making them appear strong and dominant, which invigorates
their supporters.
The bully's threats against Iran
could
easily provoke a war. Perhaps he hopes they do.
The US government keeps accused people in jail unless they are
well-off, or connected with gangs. The effect is to punish them
before trial, and
pressure
most people into pleading guilty even if they are not.
Residents of Washington DC: tell your city council member you support
the Cashless Retailers Prohibition Act.
Even better, say that your concern is not only about those
who don't have bank accounts — it is for everyone that values
anonymity, and that that includes you.
US citizens: call on Republican senators not to confirm Kavanaugh
or any other Supreme Court justice that might help the cheater escape
the law.
Describing the antecedents of the bullshitter's attack on the very
idea of truth.
A true history of specific events does exist in principle. There is room
for a certain amount of disagreement when analyzing what they mean,
but that does not make the analysis arbitrary or relative.
Kavanaugh's record shows he
will facilitate
voter-suppression and other Republican schemes to rig elections.
"Centrists" are trying to dilute the meaning of the phrase "medicare
for all" so that it could stand for something less than what is needed.
Let's campaign for a national health system instead.
The
US published
detailed accusation that Russian state cracking agents attacked
the servers of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and several
state electoral commissions, often successfully.
Their action may have been intended to manipulate the US election.
How much it helped the bully steal the election is imponderable. (He
did not win the electoral college, but came close enough that
Republicans could steal a few states with voter suppression.)
Ironically, their
releases exposed the plot by the Democratic Party that had already
successfully manipulated the US election. This gave us our current
chance
to take
back the Democratic Party from the right-wing "centrists".
Congressional Democrats
have introduced
a bill to limit drug costs for Americans, but I can't tell from
the article how it would achieve that.
Would it work by having the state pay the rest of the cost? If so, to
ensure that this does not translate into paying exorbitant prices from
the public treasury, we need a single-payer, single-purchaser system
that would buy all the drugs and negotiate the prices.
Facebook gave
Faux News a big role in its review of "trustworthy" news.
Tories want to use the UK's exit from the EU as
an excuse
to attack the poor and working people in the ways they wanted
anyway.
Advances in treating premature births earlier in gestation are cited
by antiabortionists as reasons to ban abortion at that stage of
gestation.
This shows that it is a mistake to let viability of the fetus
determine abortion rights.
Someday we have have an artificial womb replacement that can gestate a
fertilized egg all the way to birth. Would it follow that every
fertilized egg has the right to be gestated? Certainly not.
Mueller's investigation has indicted 12 Russians, state agents,
for cracking the DNC's computer systems in 2016.
If the bullshitter fails to demand Putin cease this, it
will reveal
him as a collaborator.
This week has
seen record
temperatures around the world.
A specially
designed cart will make it easier for homeless people to keep
their property.
It will be an improvement over current conditions but not an adequate
substitute for a place to live.
Italy's government said it will kill CETA.
The reasons it cites are minor, economic ones, not about the ISDS (I
Sue Democratic States) clause that would give foreign companies direct power
over each country involved.
A similar Canadian business-supremacy treaty with China reportedly
makes it terribly expensive for Canada not to build the Unkinder
Morgan pipeline to Vancouver. A treaty that can do such harm
must be prevented, or else it will have to be cancelled.
UAE forces in Yemen, together with the Yemeni faction they support,
have
been arresting
and torturing people for years. The victims include various kinds
of dissidents, and journalists.
The path to defeating Republican gerrymanders is
by electing
Democrats as governors.
This is because the Supreme
Court defends
the Republican gerrymanders that effectively rig elections.
Some of the young children recently reunited with their refugee parents
show
effects of trauma.
In 2014, Russia created 48 fake twitter accounts that
pretended
to belong to nonexistent local newspapers.
It used the accounts to post real local news (obtained from real local
newspapers, I suppose).
I Yearn for a Society in Which Civility Rules, But
These
Are Not Civil Times.
Some shopping malls in California
use
license plate recognition cameras and report cars immediately to the
local thugs — and to the deportation thugs.
I think this demonstrates the need to regulate license plate cameras.
I argue for a law that would limit the license plates that the camera
can "see".
The owner of Turkish broadcasting companies which Erdoğan
confiscated is
using
a trade treaty to sue for compensation.
If he wins, he will get money, but it won't bring back freedom of the
press in Turkey.
NATO has
no
meaningful mission, and therefore no strategy.
Ireland's investment fund has
divested
from fossil fuels.
Does Ireland have pension funds that could be made to divest?
Justice
Democrats recruited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for Congress,
and other progressive champions too.
The UK government systematically
disbelieves
refugees' reports of torture and menace, based on any excuse it
can fabricate.
A small step for sabotage: the FCC
will
not consider informal complaints about companies any more, only
forward them to the company involved which will surely find excuses to
dismiss them. People screwed by telecom companies will have to pay
$225 to file a formal complaint, for the FCC to take notice.
Making it more expensive to complain is standard practice for harming
those who can't afford it. Often this is done by a series of small
steps that add up to a big change.
The "New Walled Order" and the
criminalization
of aiding people in need.
Spain will set up a truth commission to
investigate
the crimes of Franco's dictatorship. It will cancel the
convictions of people who resisted Franco, and try to identify the
loyalists that Franco's men killed then buried anonymously.
India has
chosen
network neutrality.
Important officials of the Obama administration are
profiting
from lobbying the departments they worked in.
The USDA has approved chicken-processing plants in China
based
on nothing but "trust us". Neither the US nor China inspected
them.
The UK is
working
with manufacturers to interfere with regulation of titanium
dioxide, which is suspected of causing cancer.
Clearly the EU will be better off once the UK is out of it.
Brazilian thugs form gangs which take possession of neighborhoods and
rule them. They push out drug sales and replace them with
murder/extortion.
If you can be in San
Francisco, join
the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice protest on Sep 8.
Start
Immigration thugs may be personally liable for keeping children away
from their parents.
One of the great benefits of a national health service is that
it negotiates
the price of medicines in large quantity. The US doesn't try to
do that — on the contrary, it protects the drug companies' high
prices.
Protest Against What Donald Trump Represents, Not Who He Is.
What he represents is plutocracy, not mere bigotry and hatred.
For US businesses and plutocratist politicians, the worst possible
disaster is that Americans get a raise.
Sea-level rise could
do trillions
of dollars per year in damage if we don't curb global
heating.
"Labour’s antisemitism code is the gold standard for political parties."
Museums, movie theaters, zoos, even dentists' offices are banning
children and teenagers from entering without an adult to supervise
them. They are usually banned from flying without an adult, and
banned from riding a bike to school.
So if you have to work, your children basically can't do anything
except get in trouble.
The new Tory ministers include shameless liars and sadists.
A study forecasts that more use of robots will push low-skilled
workers in Asia into increasing poverty and enslavement.
The island of Nevis provides the service of hiding the real owner of
property. Crooks, cheaters and tyrants across the world use it.
Here's a possible approach to correcting this problem: other countries
can pass laws making it a crime for property (including local
corporations) to be owned by secretive foreign owners. If a Nevis
corporation (or any other) is used in that way, it could be prosecuted
in the country where the property is located. It would be unable to
offer a valid defense, so it would be convicted. The punishment would
be to confiscate the property.
Ocasio-Cortez punctures the trickle-down logic of "mainstream centrists".
At last we see what's really at stake in the dispute about various
definitions of antisemitism.
Peace between Israel and Palestine requires that Israel remove its
colonies in Palestinian territory (including the territory that Israel
claims to have annexed to Jerusalem). Those Israelis are all Jews, at
least nominally, since Israeli Arabs don't join the settler movement.
With some distortion, this could be equated to a demand for "all Jews
to be expelled from a future Palestine", and then under the author's
criterion it would count as "antisemitic".
I think this is a reason not to accept his criterion.
Kavanaugh is
a persistent
enemy of gun control. He might not allow a ban
on high-velocity
military-style rifles that are especially likely to kill or maim
people they hit.
A Guatemalan Family Faces Endless Obstacles as They Struggle to
Recover a 9-Year-Old Boy From U.S. [clutches].
I will not refer to this using the euphemism of "custody".
Unpleasant heat slowed down reaction time for students in Boston.
There is only one way to enable both men and women to feel comfortable
in an office: set the temperature cool enough that nobody feels too
hot, then encourage each person to wear as much clothing as it takes
to feel comfortable.
US citizens: oppose Ivanka Trump and Marco Rubio's plan to cut Social Security
(in the name of family leave).
Everyone: call on big US banks to divest from the private prisons for immigrants.
Nevada's efforts to obtain midazolam for an execution appear to have
been illegal.
Because of this, a judge blocked the execution.
There is something strange going on here, something not mentioned in
the article.
Why does Nevada procure drugs surreptitiously to cover up the fact
that its method is illegal, rather than change its laws to legalize
it?
Why do they believe it is necessary to give a sedative before
fentanyl? Isn't fentanyl supposed to give a feeling of euphoria, like
opioids generally?
I oppose the death penalty on principle. If these technicalities and
legal details put an end to the death penalty in the US, I will
celebrate the outcome. But I doubt that the states that want to
continue execution will be stopped for long by problems of detail.
Surely they will construct a legal channel to do what they wish to do.
I find it incredible that they haven't already done so.
What am I missing?
Kavanaugh would be a disaster for internet freedom: he opposes network
neutrality, and supports massive surveillance.
The UN Secretary General has proposed a roadmap for progress toward
nuclear disarmament. The US, Russia and NATO should discuss this.
The Irish senate gave preliminary approval to a bill to ban
importation of products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian
territory.
This is a vital step towards pressuring Israel to accept a workable peace
with Palestine.
Russian diplomats were caught stirring up opposition in Greece to the
proposed deal about the name of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.
This deal would end a dispute that Russia can use to make trouble.
I am glad this Russian meddling was exposed. Now if only Greece could
expel the diplomats of the euro-zone banks.
Libya may be moving hesitantly towards unification and elections.
"Finlandization" refers to the legal impositions through which the Soviet Union
restricted the press, the schools, and culture in Finland after World War II.
The US does not do this directly to other countries, but global plutocracy
does something comparable.
A new pipeline to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe would make
Europe dangerously dependent on Russia.
It would also mean that Europe misses a great opportunity to invest
greatly in renewable energy, and thus help protect civilization from a much
greater menace than a shortage of fossil fuels.
On the ethics of personal protests against the bully's servants.
We need to be mindful of the line between criticism and harassment.
Those who carry out the bully's cruelty deserve criticism, but if we
legitimize harassment of them, what will we say when they pay people
to harass us?
US officials separated a baby from its father over a year ago,
considering them unauthorized immigrants. They now cannot find the
father.
Qin Yongmin has been an activist for democracy for decades.
China has sentenced him to 13 years for "subversion".
In British Columbia (a province of Canada), the "child protection" agency
defines poverty as "neglect". Officials would rather pay a stranger to
take care of a child than give support to the parents.
Abolishing the deportation thug agency would not mean allowing absolutely
anyone to move to the US.
Israel has made the siege of Gaza tighter.
We are now invited to despise the bullshitter for telling a
17-year-old woman at a party that he found her attractive.
We can hardly assume that the bullshitter's boasts were true. Even
men who are usually honest on other topics have been known to lie
about their sexual achievements. However, I wouldn't assume they were
false, or that he did an injustice to anyone at these parties. In a
group of 50 models, there could well be some that would eagerly go to
bed with a rich man, either to boost their careers or for a lark.
If you condemn men for finding teenage female models attractive, you
might as well condemn men for being heterosexual. The bully may be
predatory, but it appears he didn't display this overtly at those parties.
There are indications that he arbitrarily chose the winners of the
Miss USA beauty contest while he owned it.
That would be a real wrong, since it would have made the contest
dishonest.
I understand the desire to condemn the bullshitter on every aspect of
his life, but it is no excuse for ageism. If you can understand that
we shouldn't dictate people's gender preferences, you should
understand that we shouldn't dictate their age preferences either.
There are plenty of tremendously important reasons to condemn the
bully. He is attacking workers' rights, abortion rights, non-rich
people's pensions and medical care, the environment, human rights, and
democracy, even the idea of truth. Let's focus on those real reasons.
(The Onion satire):
ICE
authorities confirmed Monday that picky Honduran refugee Blanca
Diaz … expected to be reunited with the exact same family she
had before. "… you think you deserve special treatment and will
just be automatically paired with whichever parents you want?"
The main challenge that Senate Democrats face in resisting the bully's
Supreme Court nominee is to
convince
some "centrist" Democrats not to vote for him.
Nestlé has
lost
its sustainability certification for palm oil.
The certification process is not strict enough to fully protect
against deforestation, but failure to qualify implies being even
worse.
Imprisonment of refugee families has hit a snag: there is
no
way to get such prisons licensed.
The companies that fish for krill in the Southern Ocean have
given
support to a giant marine reserve to keep that fishery
sustainable.
Macron plans to reform programs that help people who are poor,
unemployed, old, and ill,
so
as to cut spending. The spending cuts are necessary because of
the shortfall resulting from his tax cuts for the rich.
Macron has also adopted the standard plutocratist line that welfare
programs keep people poor. The only time that is true is when the
welfare programs keep people from dying.
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are the ones that most need
the help of a teacher in order to learn. Naturally, the plutocrats
want to
replace
their teachers with computers.
The students won't learn as much that way, but the
plutocrats don't think a well-educated populace is important.
FEMA is
about
to evict 1800 Puerto Rican families from temporary housing.
That might have been ok if it had done its job promoting construction
of replacement permanent housing.
Pakistani presidential candidate Imran Khan is trying to win the votes
of religious fanatics by
endorsing
the law that makes execution the penalty for "blasphemy".
It is unjust to punish people for conviction for "blasphemy", but that
is unusual. What usually happens is that they get lynched before the
trial.
"Diversity" in a small body can easily come to mean a
tokenism
that makes plutocracy palatable.
This is why I refused to vote for Obama merely because he was black,
and refused to vote for Clinton merely because she was female. They
didn't stand against plutocracy and banksterism. Clinton didn't stand
against militarism, either.
There are situations where diversity is directly beneficial. For
instance, it is important that a large medical study include women and
that it include blacks. There may be significant medical differences
between them and white males.
It can be helpful to include women and minority groups in local
decisionmaking bodies because it isn't feasible to limit those bodies
to the servants of the elite.
Syriza has morphed from a leftist party of resistance into a
government
of occupation which has made it a crime to protest evictions of
the poor. Syriza obeys foreign orders on all sorts of issues, doing
whatever the plutocrats want.
Replacing Syriza would change little if its replacement surrenders the
same way. To change something, it would need to force the banksters
(and the governments that obey them) to stop oppressing Greece. It
would need to launch a rebellion against the occupation forces.
Are Greeks ready to rebel against the banksters?
Everyone: call on Salesforce to cancel its contract with the US border
thugs.
Everyone: tell the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank to choose a
president who stands for the non-rich.
Kavanaugh's record shows he would sabotage climate defense if confirmed to
the Supreme Court.
Environmental protection, too.
He is on record as saying that presidents should never be sued or
investigated.
The US deportation thugs transported refugee women shackled in a hot van,
denying them water (and vital medicine) for 12 hours.
This caused them various injuries and medical problems, beyond the
immediate discomfort.
Another was denied medical attention as she had a miscarriage.
She speaks of the lost fetus as if it were a baby, but a fetus is not
a baby. We can give compassion to her disappointment while rejecting
that incorrect interpretation of the events, and we must reject it
lest we unwittingly aid the cause of the religious fanatics that want
to prohibit abortion.
Saboteur Zinke claimed to have revoked the Bears Ears National Monument
to "give [it] back to the states and to the people", so now a Canadian company
plans to do mining there.
The numbskull believes, or perhaps pretends, that his joint statement
with Dictator Kim was a "contract" for North Korea's denuclearization.
Persistent rain has caused flooding in Okayama, Japan. Entire neighborhoods
were inundated.
Global heating effects tend to cause this kind of extreme weather,
which is why rain-driven floods are much more frequent now than they
were 20 years ago.
The bully has acquiesced partially to a court ruling by agreeing not
to imprison all the families that cross the border.
Kavanaugh, if appointed to the Supreme Court, would protect the cheater
from Mueller's investigation.
The UK plans to make it a crime to watch "terrorist" propaganda
through streaming.
(It is already a crime to watch it by downloading.)
Disgusting as this propaganda is, especially that of right-wing
extremists, to prohibit it is an offense against human rights.
Elba Luz Domínguez's daughter was taken away when they crossed the US
border in October then asked for asylum. The mother was deported to
El Salvador, and is still suing to get her child back.
Denmark's new law against occupants of ghettos imposes many
punishments on people just for living in certain specified low-rent
areas.
It is time for Americans that support abortion rights to say so
publicly, loud
and clear.
China allowed Liu Xia to leave, after 8 years keeping her under house
arrest,
but they
have her brother as a hostage to keep her silent.
Budget cuts on services that help the non-rich
are bad
for your health.
The Center for Constitutional
Rights is suing
for rejection of holding prisoners in Guantanamo with no criminal
charges.
A woman is likely to be convicted of murder for killing a lover that
has been persistently violent to her, but men can
get acquitted
for killing a woman merely because she had another lover.
Everyone: support creating a large Antarctic ocean wildlife sanctuary.
Italians, phone your legislators to insist on killing CETA.
Italy's government says it will kill CETA, but it will come under
pressure to change its stance. We must not take victory for granted.
The reasons the government cites are superficial economic ones. The
crucial reason to kill CETA is that it contains an ISDS (I Sue
Democratic States) clause that would give foreign companies power over
each country involved.
A similar business-supremacy treaty
between Canada and China
reportedly would impose terrible penalties if Canada does not build
the Unkinder Morgan oil pipeline to Vancouver.
A treaty that can do such harm must be blocked, or else it will have
to be cancelled.
Plastic foam is made in China using a chlorofluorocarbon that was banned
in order to protect the ozone hole.
Will China take firm steps to put an end to the use of that chemical?
Burma has charged journalists that were investigating the murder of
Rohingyas with spying. Thugs handed them some papers, then other
thugs arrested them for having the papers, which turned out to be
"state secrets".
The cheater is trying another approach to sabotage Obama's imperfect
medical insurance system.
Each sabotage attempt is challenged in court. I suppose he hopes that
he can shift the Supreme Court enough to accept one of the sabotage
plans, and that the system will fall apart, thus denying medical
insurance to tens of millions of people.
Since those people probably vote Democratic, he will consider it a bonus
if some die from this.
Amal Fathy posted that she would leave Egypt because of sexual harassment.
She was arrested for it.
The Next Supreme Court Justice Could Gut Medicaid And Planned Parenthood.
How Justice Kennedy’s Retirement Could Lead to an Increase in Housing
Discrimination.
The US used to suffer from contradictions in its policies on human
rights, working to promote them in some areas of policy while
supporting dictatorships. The bully has resolved some of the
contradictions by taking the side of dictatorship.
The participation of the war-lover in the NATO summit has inspired
protests, not only against the war-lover, but against the militarism
that NATO represents.
The obvious reason for NATO disappeared with the Soviet Union. Since
then it has gone in search of a mission. It has carried out several
small interventions, of which I think some were good and some were
bad. However, even if one considers all of them good, they don't add
up to a need for NATO.
The main threats to peace and justice in Europe are plutocracy and
undemocratic right-wing governments. NATO doesn't help against those.
All the countries in the World Health Organization supported the
resolution to encourage breastfeeding except the US. The US
delegation threatened to retaliate against WHO and individual
countries, and forced them to weaken the resolution.
The bully's motive for this was corrupt: to protect the companies
that sell milk substitutes in poor countries.
In the 1980s, Nestle was condemned for offering gratis milk substitute
to new mothers. Those who accepted it and used it found that their
milk dried up; then they had to pay for substitute for a couple of
years.
Extreme bullying in the US has not discouraged asylum seekers from
coming from Latin America.
That's because they are fleeing from threats of murder.
Democrats must resist the temptation to sell out for donations from
the rich, if they are to receive the support of the progressives that
can campaign for them and vote for them.
Saboteur Pruitt's final act of sabotage: allowing a lot more trucks
to use old engines that pollute a lot more.
Quite a few prominent Republicans have rejected the Republican Party because
they recognize it as a fascist plot.
They have not changed their right-wing views, however; they want to
elect "centrist" plutocratist Democrats, the sort that would continue
slowly undermining democracy as they did under Clinton and Obama.
They will defend the structure of democracy, but they will not support
efforts to reestablish the substance of democracy.
A court ruled that the US cannot jail all asylum seekers as they await their
hearings, in the absence of specific reasons about the person.
The proposed EU copyright directive would impose several specific new
injustices.
That is on top of the basic injustice of perpetuating a system
that already restricts people far too much.
The bully's next Supreme Court choice
might eliminate
affirmative action by reversing the decisions that permit it.
US citizens: tell Senator Schumer to unite Senate Democrats against
Kavanaugh.
US citizens: call on Illinois Governor Rauner to sign HB 4469, which
would set up procedures so that eligible voters jailed awaiting trial
will have a practical way to vote.
The UN Human Rights Council has condemned Australia for imprisoning refugees
indefinitely.
Journalists from the former Turkish newspaper Zaman have
been sentenced
to 8 years in prison for "terrorism".
A special California program puts students on probation without their first
committing any crimes. This can easily provide an excuse to put them in prison.
Five billionaires consulted Douglas Rushkoff; he was surprised that
their questions were about how to maintain control of the servants and
guards in their fortresses after the collapse of civilization.
We need to show the billionaires that their only chance to save
themselves from collapse will be to help us prevent the collapse.
A judge ordered US agencies to reunite all refugee family groups that
they split up, and the children under age 5 must be reunited by July
10. The officials are saying that they can't do this and that such
hurry is "extreme".
Haiti is cutting subsidies for fossil fuels, so protests by the poor
have broken out.
Subsidizing fossil fuels is a suicidal policy, but cuts in subsidies must
be joined by increased support for the poor, so that the price increase does
not crush them.
Ethiopia's popular new leader is making many reforms. I cheer at
reducing repression.
Whether privatizing some state companies is good or bad depends on what
they do. It is wrong to privatize a government activity unless it
sells into a highly competitive market.
It's not clear whether the garment workers in the Ethiopia's new
clothing factory make $27 a month or $40 a month (food and living
quarters not furnished).
What is clear is that as long as companies can make countries
compete to attract work by allowing companies to keep workers in
penury, this sort of exploitation will continue.
Maedeh Hojabri was arrested, and pressured into a public confession
for posting a video of herself dancing with a nude head.
The Frank family tried to get permission to flee to the US starting in
1938, but US unfriendliness to immigrants made it impossible. That is
why they were stuck in Amsterdam and mostly killed by the Nazis.
Democratic Socialism enjoys increasing support in the US, and is starting
to push the Democratic party into resisting plutocracy.
Glenn Greenwald asks MSNBC why it has failed for two years to correct
the false accusation that Jill Stein hosted a program for RT.
Only
a union could stop Amazon's persistent mistreatment of its
workers.
The UK's campaign finance laws are inadequate to protect against the
cheating that the Leave campaign has been caught in.
Pompeo urged Dictator Kim to follow the path of Vietnam.
Vietnam is a tyrannical state in which every policy is for sale to
foreigners as long as the rulers remain firmly in power and get their
cut of the money. They don't even try to disguise this.
North Korea is one of the few countries in the world for which
imitation of Vietnam would be a step up.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop attacks on endangered species in
the National Offense Authorization Act.
US citizens: phone these six senators and tell them not to approve
Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.
Putting Hispanic refugees in prison resembles putting US blacks in prison.
With the threat that the bully might nominate a Supreme Court justice
that would reverse Roe v Wade, it is necessary to explicitly repeal
the state laws that once prohibited abortion.
A press campaign aims to deny multi-murderers the notoriety they expect
by focusing coverage on the victims instead.
It sounds wise to me — I suggest they join me in doing the same
thing to the bully.
The Rocky Mountains are now home to enormous firestorms that spread
unstoppably while the conditions favor them.
Although it is early in the summer, 30 large fires are burning.
UK law now orders functionaries to impose prohibitions on any activity
that someone else complains about.
It may serve sea life better to leave old, useless oil drilling
platforms in place, rather than remove them to "clean up".
A small increase in particulate pollution leads to a substantial
increase in the rate of diabetes.
Rep. Maxine Waters refuses to be daunted by death threats from Republicans
or "be a nice girl" from plutocratist Democrats.
If your representative is a tie-it-behind-your-back Democrat that
criticizes champions like Maxine, ask per why not.
Bedouin live in Khan al-Ahmar near Jerusalem because Israel forced
them out of the Negev desert decades ago. Now Khan al-Ahmar stands
in the way completing the line of colonies meant to split the West Bank into
a northern part and a southern part, so Israel has concocted a
Kafkaesque excuse to demolish the village.
Using refugee children as hostages is a part of the bully's broad campaign
to harm kids (except rich people's kids).
The UK frequently refuses visitor visas for absurd and dishonest reasons.
Russia is holding around 70 Ukrainians as political prisoners.
Non-citizen US soldiers that were promised citizenship are being kicked
out of the military for no fault of theirs, and this could mean they
don't get citizenship either.
The cheater must love the opportunity to make the US cheat immigrants
based on a "legal" excuse.
A year and a half later, the US has dropped the last charges against
inauguration protesters.
Contrast this eagerness to prosecute progressives by exaggerating
small excuses with the strange reluctance to prosecute neo-Nazis for
their violence against progressive protesters in Charlottesville.
It looks like political bias to me.
Reportedly Whitney Houston was crushed when blacks condemned her as a
kind of traitor — merely for being too influenced by the culture
of whites.
To demand that certain people do, or do not, practice certain forms of
art or culture because of their origins is bigotry. Whether the demand
is that people in group G stick to the traditions of G, or that
other people stay away from them, it is utterly wrong. Culture lives
through imitation and develops through variation. Everyone has the right
to imitate cultural practices and to vary them.
US citizens: tell Congress to support the Social Security
Administration Fairness Act.
Everyone: Demand
justice for Anthony Wall, who was attacked by restaurant staff and
then by thugs, apparently for being black and gay.
Mueller's investigation is buried in work, there are so many leads to check
and people to prosecute or sentence.
Last week's record-setting heat wave, in North America and Europe, was
unusual.
In a couple of decades, a heat wave at the same level will be so
common that it won't be worth reporting.
A Subway employee reported a supposedly dangerous situation — a
black family had stayed for a whole hour while eating, and several had
used the toilet. She was so rattled that she counted 6 people as 8
people.
Perhaps she assumed that nobody would stay in a "fast food" restaurant
for a whole hour except for evil purposes.
Court filings by refugee parents show the abuse, dishonesty and
cruelty of the immigration thugs toward both parents and children.
Those thugs are getting off on sadism. I wouldn't trust any of them
in a position of responsibility from which they could mistreat
vulnerable people.
Is there a psychological treatment to help them become decent members
of society?
A US college student resents how digital surveillance by her parents
gave them power over every aspect of her life.
Public pressure convinced California legislators to reverse the amendments
that weakened the network neutrality bill.
Saboteur Sessions cancelled some federal guidelines about how federal
agencies should respect human rights. These guidelines go back to
Presidents Obama, Bush II, and Ford.
Andrew Wheeler, who now runs the EPA, is not crazy and careless like
Pruitt. He is a careful and persistent saboteur for the coal
business.
ACLU: The widespread revulsion against imprisoning refugee children,
and subsequently indefinitely imprisoning refugee families, may
provide an opportunity to win the campaign to stop imprisoning so many
US citizens.
A French thug has been charged for a killing that sparked a riot,
and changed his story afterwards.
The group End Citizens United funds the reelection campaigns of
"centrist" Democrats who are not especially strong on getting money
out of politics.
A journalist says that the strangers that raped her are not monsters or
animals. They are men who think they can get away with violent crime.
Thugs in the area of St Louis systematically harass black drivers by
giving them lots of traffic tickets that they can't afford to
pay. They systematically allow white drivers to get away with much worse.
A US court ruled that Tennessee cannot confiscate drivers' licenses because
people owe money.
This will thwart one scheme for voter suppression.
Is it wise to shut down lobster trapping in a region of the sea
because a whale was spotted in the area?
Japanese eels are
severely
overfished and this year's catch is down by 1/3 from last year's.
Short-termist governments are refusing to take the strong measures
that will be necessary to protect the species.
Ben Carson, Saboteur of Housing and Urban Development, has
attempted
several important acts of sabotage.
Americans have set up protest camps near ICE offices in several cities
demanding
to abolish the ICE (the deportation thug agency).
The engines of ships in the Mediterranean produce lots of air
pollution. This is
especially
dangerous when they run their engines at a dock in a city, right
next to where people live.
A six-year-old Salvadorean girl was deported to El Salvador (where her
father was) after a
month
of imprisonment by herself in the US.
She is physically well, but psychologically harmed.
Therese Patricia Okoumou climbed up the outside of the Statue of Liberty
as a
protest
against imprisonment of refugees.
Thugs responded by
forcing
all visitors off the island.
I think this is an example of intentional overreaction. Ordinary
overreaction is based on misunderstanding — for instance,
mistaking a phone for a gun and shooting the "armed suspect".
Intentional overreaction is an act of propaganda — an taking
actions that are clearly unwarranted with the aim of convincing people
that such actions are warranted.
Ms Okoumou is now threatened with a year's imprisonment, which
demonstrates how many ways thugs have developed to construe a peaceful
and harmless protest as a crime.
As Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum was canvassing voters for the next
election, someone
called
the thug department, assuming she was a thief.
Channel One's commercial advertisements to captive audiences in US
schools are
coming
to an end.
Saboteur Pruitt of the EPA has been
forced
out due to many personal scandals.
Any one of these scandals would have ended the career of any
politician in the past, but the cheater doesn't mind them.
His temporary replacement is
likely
to commit the same sorts of sabotage, but more systematically and
without the side-scandals.
Rohingyas
rejected
a secret repatriation agreement which was negotiated between the UN
and the Burmese government without consulting the Rohingyas.
The EU Parliament
rejected
the proposed new copyright directive which would require automatic
copyright censorship.
However, the directive is not dead yet. We have to continue fighting.
Global heating will enable pests to spread and wipe out the US wheat
harvest. However, genetic engineering
might
be able to make wheat that can resist the pests.
I expect that these genes, taken from a related plant, would do not
biological harm — but they would spread patent pollution that
would drive further concentration of farming.
George Soros strove with all his intellect to use his money to protect
democracy — but he was
defeated
by extreme capitalism. Extreme capitalism treats democracy as an
inconvenience to be corrupted and subverted.
I do not reach the conclusion that his fundamental philosophical ideas
are deficient. We cannot point to some other approach and assert with
confidence that it would have achieved more.
Global heating effects
won't
end in 2100. If we allow two degrees C of heating, the follow-on
could lead to 4 degrees.
Billy Caldwell needs his marijuana oil twice a day to treat his
epilepsy, and his mother will be forced to spend
four
hours each time bringing him to the hospital and back.
That leaves a total of 8 waking hours per day for all other waking
activities.
Ireland
will
hold a referendum to remove the remaining gender-biased clause
from its constitution.
The US Declaration of Independence as well as other important
historical works have been
deleted
by various social censorship web sites.
The case of the Declaration of Independence is an interesting one. It
is true that talking of "merciless Indian savages" disparages an
ethnic group. However, both the "Indians" and the English colonists
of the 1770s qualified as "merciless savages" by the modern moral
standards that Trump is now trying to abolish. In context, the only
flaw in that statement is that it unfairly criticized the former and
not the latter.
The works deleted include the photo that helped end the Vietnam war,
which showed a naked Vietnamese girl running toward the camera. The
photo doesn't show her back, which had been burned by a US napalm
bomb.
Rick Falkvinge warns that in some countries it is a crime to republish
that photo, because
it
is considered "child pornography".
Can business incentives (positive and negative) curb
global heating in
time to avoid disaster? Some candidates propose
stronger
measures.
I think we should try the stronger measures — why bet that the
business incentives will suffice?
Working in US meat-processing plants is a rather
dangerous
occupation. Relaxing safety by speeding up the production line is
sure to make it more dangerous.
Urging the new Prime Minister of Ethiopia to put an end to
torture
at Jail Ogaden.
The government has recently taken some actions in favor of human
rights, so maybe it will do some more. It has a long way to go.
26,000
species are now classified as threatened.
French thugs shot and killed a Muslim, then
claimed
he had attacked them with his car. Witnesses say that claim was a
lie.
This touched off a riot in which people went crazy and destroyed
whatever they could get their hands on.
US citizens:
call on the
Indian Health Service to implement its protocols for dealing with
reported "sexual assaults".
I object to the term "sexual assault" because it lumps together rape
with other crimes that are much less grave. I support this campaign
because it will help deal with those crimes.
US citizens:
oppose the
bill to permit underwater factory farms in federal waters.
US citizens,
tell Wells
Fargo: divest from private prison companies.
Poland is holding a follow-up conference to the 2015 Paris conference,
which made a toothless agreement that is failing to curb global
heating. Poland has prohibited protests in the host city, and
authorized
itself to spy on people at will.
Even worse, the Polish government is in the planet-roaster camp and is
already arranging to make the event useless.
Senator Duckworth, a more or less establishment Democrat,
said
that Socialists such as Ms Ocasio-Cortez could not get elected in the
Midwest.
However, I don't know the Midwest very well, so I cannot say whether
that claim is right or wrong. But I see a reason to suspect that the
statement is at least partly wishful thinking on Ms Duckworth's part.
She is
sponsoring
an amendment to make it difficult for the US to withdraw any troops
from South Korea. I have a suspicion she is connected with the
military-industrial complex.
Scotland
plans
to limit marketing of foods that lead to obesity.
This does not include prohibiting foods, only stopping businesses from
certain methods of encouraging people to buy them. So I think this is
a legitimate policy. It remains to be seen whether it is effective; I
hope so.
Poland's Supreme Court justices
decided
to resist the government's attempt to exclude 1/3 of them, then
appoint lots more.
Giant digital tech companies including Apple, Amazon, Facebook and
Google are getting
big
tax breaks from US cities and states that compete to take jobs
away from other US cities and states.
These amount to almost 2 billion dollars a year.
We
need a federal law to stop
cities and states from competing to kowtow to business.
Various Pacific island countries are
having
a diplomatic conference in Nauru, which always
tightly
restricts the press.
It appears that Nauru does so on behalf of the Australian government,
to help Australia evade press coverage of the immigration prison that
Australia pays Nauru to run.
Spanish Chambermaids Seek Tripadvisor's Help to
Fight
Exploitation. I hope it works.
The left candidate,
Andrés
Manuel López Obrador, won the presidential election in
Mexico.
What he says is good, but people tell me he hasn't gone much into
details. Meanwhile,
some
of the deals described here may play into the hands of business.
His acknowledged victory demonstrates that the right wing didn't rig
the election. That in itself is a step forward for Mexico, since
several presidential elections have been stolen in the past 20 years,
including once
from
López Obrador.
Greg Palast says that right-wingers are stealing elections for the
Mexican Senate, though.
An Australian who revealed that Australia had bugged the East Timor
negotiators is
being
prosecuted; his lawyer is being prosecuted, too.
The attorney general blanks out the injustice of this with a 100%
closed mind.
The negotiations in which these events occurred were about how to do
something that must not be done at all: extracting fossil fuels from
the sea bottom between Australia and East Timor.
In Nigeria, poverty
does
not make people hopeless or depressed.
Aside from the possible reasons in the article, I wonder if something
about Nigerian society makes it less dangerous simply to be poor. If
you are confident you can last through a bout of poverty, that it
won't put you in debt or in jail, maybe it is no reason to despair.
Guards in an immigration prison in Texas are telling the prisoners
that they can be immediately reunited with their children if they
agree
to deportation and give up their legal right to apply for asylum.
This means, in effect, using their children as hostages. Aside from
the injustice of this offer, it seems to be dishonest, since the US
government is apparently
not
able to carry out that promise.
Hundreds of thousand protested on June 30, across the US,
against
the bully's cruelty to immigrants. Another article said a million
people participated.
Making state schools in England compete with each other has led some
of them to "excel" by
driving
away students that are less capable or need more help.
A
Web-based
campaign to preserve endangered languages.
US citizens: Tell Congress to block the second round of tax cuts for the rich.
Rich people now pay to control US politics by buying influence at
every level and through all kinds of institutions.
If you think that it makes sense to root for some football team's victory,
read this.
Professional sports are a distraction so people won't get passionate about
kicking out plutocratic government.
Acceptance of sex-change operations is leading some to subscribe to rigid
gender roles: if you don't want to follow some gender role assigned to your
gender, they jump to the conclusion you need an operation.
Scientists
pressure London's Science Museum to stop accepting funds from
planet-roaster interests.
Similar corruption occurs in the US — for instance,
with WGBH
and
the Museum
of Natural History in New York City.
Americans: stop voting for incumbent plutocratist politicians!
You don't want to replace them with even viler plutocratists,
so what you need to do is elect a progressive in the Democratic primary.
Manafort provided propaganda guidance to Russia starting in 2004, the
aim being target Ukraine.
"Don't
call an ambulance — I can't afford it," said the injured
woman in Boston.
Personal data has been compared to toxic waste. That makes
Facebook comparable to a polluting industry that survives
because it doesn't pay for the damage caused by the pollution.
A Christian church put up a display of Jesus and his parents in a cage.
This can reclaim Christianity from being a support for cruelty and harshness.
Juggalo face makeup defeats face recognition systems.
This is a step forward, but not enough to make face recognition cease
to be a threat to human rights. We need laws that strictly limit whose
faces can be included in the data base for a face recognition system.
Clear and specific proof that the UK's "leave" campaign cheated in use
of campaign funds means that the referendum result must be rejected as
invalid.
UK courts are allowed to make outrageous orders, prohibiting "crimes"
that are not crimes at all. One couple was ordered never to look
at a neighboring home.
Here is an economic explanation of why a gradually increasing tax on
fossil fuels, returned directly to households by dividing up the
money, would boost the economy for everyone while pressuring all
people and businesses to use less fossil fuel.
Returning the tax to households, if done in proportion the number of
people in each household, would be almost equivalent to an
unconditional national income.
As stores close, retail workers lose out to big tech.
Customers lose, too — there are fewer things we can buy without
oppressive tracking. I won't buy anything from Amazon, because no
data base should attach my purchases to my name.
We don't have to permit this to happen.
Is Bezos Holding Seattle Hostage? The Cost of Being Amazon's Home.
Focusing journalism mainly on exposing corruption and cruelty tends to
teach people a right-wing viewpoint — that you can't trust anyone.
Jefferson wrote about one widespread kind of political conflict,
between trusting the people to participate in government or excluding
them. But the conflict in the US today is only partly about that.
The main question at stake is whether the rich can reduce most people
to desperate penury and convert them into serfs.
No Republican senate has confirmed a Democratic president's Supreme
Court nominee
since
1895. So there should not be any expectation that Democrats ought
to vote to confirm a Republican nominee, especially if that nominee is
dodgy.
Obama tried nominating someone fairly right-wing,
hoping
Republicans would make an exception, but they held out for an
extremist.
The right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis swim in a sea of Republican
not-sees. Here are
various
tactics they use not to see.
Don't
let the trumpery make you demoralized. That's the bully's plan.
It is surely true that if Clinton had been elected president, the US
government would be defending abortion rights, and probably not
oppressing immigrants as much as is happening now.
Instead of right-wing extremist Gorsuch we would have a center-right
"moderate" like Merrick Garland, who would defend Roe v Wade but might
have joined in some of the bad decisions that the Supreme Court
actually made last week.
With Clinton, we would have had the
TPP, and might not
have had the progressive resurgence that could take the US government
away from the rule of the rich. It is not guaranteed that this
resurgence will win, but it gives us a chance.
The Gates Foundation set up a system of judging teaching based on "big
data", which many states have employed for judging individual
teachers. The system led to
inconsistent
results, on which teachers were fired.
An independent study found that the system's results are
meaningless.
Everyone: Tell Fidelity and Vanguard to stop funding US immigration prisons.
US citizens: call on the US district attorneys of regions near the
Mexican border to refuse to enforce "zero tolerance" prosecution of
all refugees.
The first, and the worst, terrorists in the US Guantanamo naval base
were the ones that Washington directed to operate against Cuba.
ICE Form Confirms Children Being "Held Hostage" to Force Asylum-Seeking
Parents to Relinquish Legal Rights.
Chilean army officers have been convicted of murdering singer Victor
Jara a few days after the 1973 coup against President Allende. That
was after torturing him first.
Could precautions against sexual harassment go too far? They already
have gone much too far in a Netflix video production crew where total
asexuality has been imposed.
Nasty as this is, it is small compared to the injustice Netflix
imposes on its users: DRM, tracking, and a jerkmaking "I won't share,
give or lend" contract. For those reasons, I refuse to give Netflix
any business.
More than half of the Israeli army regularly uses marijuana.
This could be a reaction to moral discomfort with the nature of their
mission, just as it was when US soldiers in Vietnam used heroin.
Comparing the bully's presented ideas with fascism leads to the
suspicion that he is trialing various fascist ideas, so as to find
ways to move the US in that direction.
The list of "characteristics of fascism" concerns what it presents to
the public, not its actions. Its actions include repression of
dissent, violence, punishment without trial, and collaboration with
business. All of them things that the bully does.
Saboteur Pruitt's official published schedule of meetings was
falsified — some meetings were left out.
Kristin Mink confronted Saboteur Pruitt as he was eating in a
restaurant and explained to him why he ought to resign.
Will Pruitt spend public funds to build his own personal restaurant
inside his
hyper-secure
EPA office?
Greenpeace protesters climbed down ropes from a bridge to block an oil
tanker from leaving Vancouver, to highlight the danger of oil spills
that the Unkinder Morgan pipeline would create.
The Governor of Kentucky is determined to cut medical care for the
state's poor — the details don't matter to him.
Elected president López Obrador says he will not accept the usual
salary and mansion of Mexican presidents. Bravo!
He also says he will not accept bodyguards, because the people will
protect him. I am sure they will want to protect him, but can they
do the job of professionals?
An American who shot a giraffe in Africa is being called a "murderer"
and a "savage".
I have no particular sympathy for hunting, and I want the giraffe
species to be protected. Notwithstanding that, I think those
condemnations are unjustified.
I don't know enough about giraffe conservation to be sure whether
killing that particular giraffe was helpful or harmful. But even if
we suppose it was harmful, the word "murderer" would be an
exaggeration. A giraffe is not a person; it cannot be murdered.
US citizens: Tell the CEOs of General Dynamics and MVM to cancel their
contracts for imprisoning refugees.
Right-wing politicians in Denmark are passing laws to punish children
that live in districts of poverty and unemployment — because
they presume that is a stand in for "Muslim".
A Tesla factory has brought many more workers to a corner of Nevada,
so poor people in the area can't afford a place to live. The factory was
brought there with large tax subsidies, so the state has no funds to help
with the social problems that the factory causes.
I have never accepted the idea that government's legitimate job
included trying to compete with other governments to offer businesses
the biggest tax breaks. That approach is called "beggar thy neighbor"
and the only ones who benefit, overall, are the companies.
We should put an end to it.
Protest rallies can lead to political victories when they build
support for other actions that can win the victories.
Bernie Sanders represents what the Democratic Party stood for
from 1932 to 1992.
Plutocratic Democrats who reject that position try to present
themselves as the "center" by painting Sanders as the "opposite
extreme" from the cheater.
Thugs are trying to pressure a South Carolina school to drop two realistic
books about thugs' violence from a summer reading lists. "You must never
promote distrust of the police," they say.
How about if they make sure no one in their department would ever support
a lie about a victim of thug violence? Then they could say, with justice,
"There are no thugs in our department, only police officers, so you can
trust us."
Several African countries exclude pregnant teenagers from school.
Burundi says it will exclude the fathers as well, but it is unlikely
to be able to carry that out.
There seems to be no rational motive for this, so I suspect it is
motivated by religion-based hatred. Teenage girls that can survive
only through prostitution can't stop unless offered another way to
survive; ironically, school is one way they could get that. This
is typical of irrational hatred; it is too stupid to think about
goals and methods to achieve them.
If the goal is that fewer teenagers have babies, it would be more
effective to take a helpful approach, providing sex education,
contraception, and abortion.
In Gaza, harvesting parsley looks "suspicious" to Israeli soldiers,
who might fire grenades at you and kill you.
If Israel wants a buffer zone around Gaza, it is entitled to create one
on the Israeli side of the border.
After Long Career Bailing Out Big Banks, Obama Treasury Secretary Tim
Geithner Now Runs Predatory Firm That Exploits the Poor for Profit.
The mayors of London and Barcelona call for power to prevent using residential
space as empty investments.
"Don't ban skirts in school. Let everybody wear them."
The idea of requiring students to wear a specific uniform
strikes me as mere repression.
Sikkim's example demonstrates what is required to entirely stop the
use of plastic bags and bottles.
Republicans want to "modernize" the Endangered Species Act so that it
won't protect endangered species.
There are many ways to judge whether people are poor. In general, they lead
to the conclusion that most Americans are poor.
The decision Roe v Wade was based on a principle called "substantive
due process", established by previous Supreme Court decisions and
applied in many other areas including contraception and the legalization
of homosexual sex.
Gorsuch opposes that principle in general, and the oppressor's other
Supreme Court nominees are likely to oppose it too.
The 49 Senate Democrats can't directly defeat a Supreme Court nominee,
but there are many things they can do to delay it — if
they stand firm and united. With firmness, they have a chance of
delaying until January, when perhaps they will have a majority.
Mexico needs to end the War on Drugs. But maybe it needs cooperation
from the US to make this effective.
The Three Gorges Dam has reduced water flow in the Yangtze river, and
China's largest lake
has
dried up.
Building the dam was
itself
an atrocity, since the three gorges were considered a treasure of
special beauty.
A publication of videos made by Islamist terrorists demonstrates
another form of the banality of evil: terrorists
play
football, then drive off to do a suicide bombing.
One thug in a US immigration prison sexually abused a child for
months, and
threatened
to have the child's mother deported if she complained.
If he can get them deported before his trial, there might be no
witnesses to testify against him.
The bully's
tariffs on
electronic components will tend to push assembly of products out
of the US. It will penalize small businesses, as well as makers.
Recognition of people from their speech
threatens
to identify everyone making a phone call, as well everyone listened to
by a portable listening device.
A byproduct is that people may be harassed and threatened due to
inaccurate data base entries that label them as suspects.
I propose legal limits on whose data can be included in data bases
for such recognition.
Using teenagers as workers is
standard
practice in tobacco farms in many poor countries. Some of them
can't go to school, as a result.
Zephyr Teachout: ICE is a
tool
of illegality. It must be abolished.
India is
promoting
generic drugs, because 55 million Indians fall into poverty each
year due to the cost of medicines.
I do wonder why ordinary pharmacies in India don't sell these generic
drugs.
A doctor in Britain killed almost a hundred people, unintentionally,
by
prescribing
opioids and failing to monitor them.
This was not an act of euthanasia, but it
may
be cited to oppose the right to euthanasia, as well as to deny
people in great pain the treatment they need.
A proper right-to-die law should not make people wait for years in
pain, or in helpless boredom, until death is only a few months away.
Anyone who is too incapacitated to commit suicide alone should have
the right to help.
Paper bag or plastic bag?
Each
one is worse for the environment in some ways.
The Democratic Party must embrace the
progressive
ideas that Democrats uphold, or it can't lead them to an election
victory.
China is
spreading
a repressive form of internet to repressive countries around the
world.
The article spreads confusion when it uses the term "intellectual
property". What this article really means is "trade secrets".
Another article may use the same phrase to mean "copyright". Yet
another may use it to mean "patents".
The three have
nothing in common, so any use of a term that tries to generalize
about all of them (and other things, too!) is pure confusion.
Everyone: call on all governments to divest public pension funds from
weapons companies.
Everyone: call on Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock to stop profiting
from imprisonment of refugees.
New Jersey's Democratic governor wants to undo Republican tax cuts,
but Democratic legislators are protecting the rich from paying more
tax.
Raising the sales tax is wrong, because that falls mainly on the poor.
The tax increase should be directed only at income tax, so as to spare
the poor.
In a prison for child refugees, a guard threatened prisoners they
would be denied asylum if they talked to the press.
Some poor African countries accept refugees and don't repress them.
Perhaps wealthier countries could do the same, if they weren't ruled
by stingy rich people that want to starve the poor.
Reportedly the alternatives to palm oil would require a lot more land
to produce the same amount of oil. The problem with palm oil is that
people cut down lots of forests to grow it. Certification programs
to stop such deforestation are ineffective.
I wonder if the other crops are more suitable than palm oil for land
that is not forest and hasn't been forest.
The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain is unionizing the sweatshop
service economy and achieving victories.
The global supply of sand suitable for making concrete is insufficient,
so gangs steal sand from beaches, and in some places kill anyone who tries
to report or stop them.
US immigration courts often require babies to represent themselves in
court.
When UK officials demanded answers from abu Zubaydah, they knew he was
being tortured.
Reporter Peter Beaumont describes how officials of various levels told
specific and general lies, for decades.
Journalist Carole Cadwalladr revealed the election manipulation
of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, and the manipulators are
trying to punish her to teach everyone subservience.
"Hostility to migrants is not born of rising numbers but a failure of hope."
Hostility to immigrants comes from a society of distrust for
institutions, and when all the major political parties are more or
less plutocratist, that is sure to arouse distrust from the non-rich
citizens that they harm.
Some present and former US soldiers say that being ordered to jail
civilian hostages will pervert their sense of honor as soldiers, and
that the practice will cause lasting problems.
What will soldiers do, having been placed in this moral contradiction by
their commanders? Some will find ways to get out of the military. I fear
that the rest will replace their sense of honor with cynicism, so that they
will be able to commit any crime and feel nothing. Just as soldiers occupying
Iraq and Afghanistan did, and do, dehumanize the occupied civilians so as to
kill them with no guilt, these soldiers will learn to dehumanize immigrants,
maybe all civilians.
I suspect the sadist and his advisors have discussed the matter and
that that is one of the results they aim for.
The neocons are reprising their campaign for the US to go to war with Iran.
Where does the Mujahedin-e-Khalq get all that money? From Salafi Arabia,
I suspect.
US citizens: call your senators and suggest cutting off funding to the
Department of Harshness and Sadism.
As of 2015, most of the bacteria in most of the meat samples from US
supermarkets were resistant to some antibiotics.
Privatizing Puerto Rico's water is likely to raise the price by 60%.
Given how poor the island is now, many will be without water.
There is a systematic problem with immigrants in the US, those who are
jailed. Thugs keep treating them as slaves.
More than half of mass shootings are motivated by misogyny.
I am not surprised that many of them showed signs that led people to
wonder if they were dangerous. Nonetheless, the percentage of
misogynists that actually become dangerous is tiny, and it is hard
to predict who is part of that percentage.
Monsanto's herbicide dicamba is now made by Bayer, but it still has
the same problem: when sprayed in warm weather (such as in June),
it can vaporize and spread to other fields where it kills the crops.
The 2020 Census Could Overlook Millions of (low income) Kids, Report Finds.
Italy and Libya told a nearby rescue ship to stay away from a sinking
boat with 125 people on it. Then they waited 90 minutes, until 100 of them
had drowned.
The California privacy law was passed to forestall a ballot question
that would have gone further.
However, it looks like the ballot initiative was also limited to
regulating businesses that collect data. Would it have done anything
about government face recognition cameras?
US spy officials say that North Korea is still enriching uranium,
and say this is "deceiving" the US.
But it would not be a deception, rather a reflection of the fact that
North Korea has not made a concrete deal with concrete commitments
about nuclear weapons.
Wood pellets sound renewable. Maybe they would be so if made from
fast-growing tree farms, but they are being made by cutting down
ordinary forests that would take a century to regrow.
That's if they ever do regrow. Global heating could prevent that.
This is why I have always been skeptical of "carbon offset" schemes
that rely on planting trees.
When Everyone Is a Suspect: How Vehicle Inspections Terrorize Immigrant
Communities.
Right-wing rich Americans can manipulate voters through Facebook as well
as Russians can. And they are doing it now.
Massively-funded right-wing campaigns are pressuring public workers
to stop supporting the unions that represent them.
In private, they admit that their goal is to deny the Democratic Party
election funds and votes.
The party's best hope in coping with this
is to choose progressive candidates that give voters an opportunity to
aim for more than delaying the advance of plutocratist poverty.
Assad's forces are driving 160,000 refugees towards borders they won't
be allowed to cross.
ACLU: The NSA Is Using Secrecy to Avoid a Courtroom Reckoning on Its
Global Surveillance Dragnet.
US citizens, tell the heads of the Forest Service and the Department
of Agriculture: Don't give Nestlé a new permit to extract water from
the San Bernardino National Forest.
Everyone: call on AT&T to stop giving people's data to the NSA.
Here's more info about what AT&T is doing.
US citizens: Call on the Department of Justice to block the merger of
Sprint and T-Mobile.
The Crucial Next Few Days In the EU's Copyright Filter and Link Tax Battle.
The troll proposed a saboteur to head the International Organization
for Migration, but other countries wouldn't have it.
Purges of voter lists are a grand opportunity for rigging elections,
and Republicans use it where they can get away with it.
15 Actions That Can Shut Down Trump’s Assault on Immigrant Families.
George Mpanga, British performance poet, was attacked on the street by
thugs and strip-searched for no evident reason. The thugs also told
lies about him.
A teenage refugee in the US describes the life of arbitrary punishment he
was subjected to in an agency that was supposed to "help" him.
The part that bothers me most is requiring relatives in the US to give
their fingerprints before they can receive their family members.
Most people will surrender their fingerprints to such pressure,
and that makes it unjust to use this leverage to demand that.
The EFF has sued to overturn the censorship law, FOSTA.
A similar wave of repression is campaigning for such a law in the UK.
The real goal of such campaigns is to try to repress prostitution.
Thus, what they really do is harm sex workers in general, rather than
protect them from enslavement.
It is possible to act against enslavement without creating repression,
but that requires licensing and monitoring the web sites and brothels,
as well as ending prohibition of brothels. The monitoring will cost
money.
The intimidator-in-chief encouraged his supporters to commit violence
against Rep. Maxine Waters, and they are working on it.
Five years ago, the UK government launched an "investigation" of the
CIA's use of Scottish airports for torture flights. The investigation
seems to have been designed not to find out anything.
We are making progress in prying the Democratic Party away from
plutocratist right-wing "centrists".
That means we have to push harder!
"Employers love high-deductible insurance plans. They’re designed to
deter patients from seeking care — and they work."
19 agents of the deportation thug agency call for the agency to
be split up.
They say that the focus on cruelty to harmless refugees interferes
with the agency's other job: to investigate possible terrorists and
organized crime.
Canada has chosen retaliatory tariffs to attack states which support
the bully.
Craig Murray: hampering Parliament's investigation into the UK's
collaboration in torture was the latest in a series of coverup
measures.
Nonetheless, the investigation revealed something about the true scale
of the problem — even Murray was surprised.
Against Privacy Defeatism: why browsers can still stop fingerprinting.
IceCat
has many features to reduce fingerprinting.
Even Canadians can be harassed trying to enter Canada because they are
included
in a
secret US blacklist, referred to as "Tuscan". US officials can
add names based on vague, confused suspicions, and neither the US nor
Canada will tell you that you are on the list, nor how to try to be
removed.
A Canadian "public consultation on national security" reviewed the
policy for the officially acknowledged no-fly list but didn't mention
this second, unofficial no-fly list. That means it was a phony
consultation. However, mere "transparency" and some sort of stated
policy is not enough to justify punishment without trial.
Stopping a person from flying, nowadays, is a grave punishment. It is
an injustice to impose such a punishment other than as the result of
conviction for a serious crime.
A Supreme Court decision will allow credit card companies to
prohibit
cash discounts.
It could go much further; it might allow middleman companies such as
Amazon and Google to impose many kinds of conditions on people as well
as other companies.
Biometrics and DNA of imprisoned immigrants could be used to reunite families
the US has split up, but could also be used to
track
and harm them.
When a government makes arrest and deportation its priority, it almost
surely errs in favor of imprisonment. No wonder the UK has
jailed
almost 900 lawful residents erroneously since 2012.
Putting an end to homelessness is not rocket science. It requires
building
a lot more non-luxury housing and subsidizing rent for those too
poor. But the US is too plutocratic to do it.
Protesters have
occupied
and blocked several of the deportation thug agency's facilities.
I think this is why the sadist wants to
imprison
immigrants on military bases.
The UK is
subject
to a military-industrial complex that feeds off dreams of the
grandeur of the British Empire. It's very profitable for the weapons
companies that build weapons for a conventional war that is unlikely
to occur.
The Federal Trade Commission is half-hearted about stopping companies
from merging, but really energetic about
preventing
workers labeled as "independent contractors" from bargaining
collectively.
Full-time writers in the UK earn
less
than minimum wage, on the average.
Authors now get only 3% of the publishers' sales totals.
The publishers have some gall claiming that their demands to
crush sharing are in the name of authors.
We should legalize sharing copies of any published work, and support
authors by other methods such as crowdfunding and anonymous voluntary
payments. As for the publishers, they are no longer vital nowadays.
More generally, we should reject the idea that corporations' main duty
is to "make money for their shareholders". That idea was
not
generally accepted 40 years ago, and we should reject it now.
The EU countries made a "deal" about how to deal with migrants
which is mainly an agreement to
disregard
the fact that they have not agreed.
Italy (and maybe the EU) are
forcing
Médecins Sans Frontières to serve the Libyan coast
guard, which imprisons "rescued" migrants in horrible conditions.
Europe could manage to ensure that migrants returned to Libya are
treated humanely.
Due to global heating, England's peatlands are likely to burn and
release CO2, which will
speed
global heating.
Catering to rich landowners that want to shoot grouse makes fires
more likely.
Just one of many ways that
plutocracy
is speeding the destruction of Earth's nature and human
civilization.
Uri Avnery: The US and Israel have a plan to settle the
Israel-Palestine conflict. The plan is secret, but they
expect
to force Palestinians to accept it.
The European Union says it wants "open" science — a weak term I
recommend avoiding — but has
put
Elsevier in charge of monitoring progress. Like putting the fox
in charge of designing the hen house.
The term "open access" is a bad choice of banner because it
focuses on the secondary issue and takes a weak stand on it.
The way to take a strong stand on the primary issue is to
talk about
"free" or "libre"
scientific publication.
Campaigning for "open access" may do some good, but it achieves
its success in spite of the weakness of its visible stance.
Flight attendant Hunt Palmquist vowed he would refuse to work on flights to transport immigrant child prisoners. He realized that if he helped do this, he would morally responsible for his actions. His response may be the reason that some airlines have since refused to carry those prisoners. We should pressure the other airlines in the US to do the same.
Hamlet: "To not be, or to be, that is not the question."
Martin Luther King: "I do not have a dream, and anyone who says I did
must have misheard me."
10:00 AM
Embarcadero Plaza, 4 Embarcadero Ctr
Phone: (202) 224-3954
Twitter: @Sen_JoeManchin
Phone: (202) 224-4814
Twitter: @SenDonnelly
Phone: (202) 224-2043
Twitter: @SenatorHeitkamp
Phone: (202) 224-6665
Twitter: @lisamurkowski
Phone: (202) 224-2523
Twitter: @SenatorCollins
Phone: (202) 224-4124
Twitter: @SenDougJones
The LocationSmart web site enabled anyone to roughly track the position of any mobile phone, due to completely missing security.
However, anyone willing to commit a crime can get the same data through the bad security of the SS7 protocol through which one phone network talks with another phone network.
Even worse, the data is easily available the government.
This is one reason I refuse to carry a mobile phone. The other is that it can be modified through a back door to listen and transmit all conversations in its vicinity.
Many towns in Britain repress homeless beggars, fining them or jailing them for begging. It almost resembles the US.
If you don't want people to beg, don't make them destitute!
Even as Facebook oppresses real useds with its "real name" requirement, it is easy to buy and run a realistic Facebook account that is completely fake.
Facebook plans to work with a right-wing think-tank funded by rich fossil fuel interests, supposedly to "protect" democracy.
The funding suggests that what they plan to protect is plutocracy
This is one more reason to stop being used by Facebook.
The disastrous Republican farm bill was blocked because some Republicans demand more repression of immigrants.
We can't expect this to save us permanently from the nasty provisions of the farm bill.
A team of doctors propose thorough reform of the US (and Canadian) pharmaceutical system, designed to correct many of the problems of the existing system.
I'm glad to see it includes taking control of clinical trials away from pharma companies. I've advocated this for a long time. We need true clinical trials, rather than funding-perverted c(l)ynical trials.
Working in an Amazon warehouse is like being in prison with a sentence of hard and hurried labor.
The workers don't have breaks even enough to go to the toilet.
Working in an Amazon warehouse is like being in prison with a sentence of hard and hurried labor.
The workers don't have breaks even enough to go to the toilet.
Facebook was compelled to offer some additional options to limit use of certain kinds of personal data. So it designed the user interface to discourage people from using them.
Everyone: Call on Microsoft to stop serving the US deportation thug department.
US citizens: tell Senate Democrats not to support vicious Republican "compromises" that repress refugees a little differently.
George Monbiot says that nature is disappearing in front of relentless human alteration of ecosystems: one after another, species that used to be abundant have become rare or disappeared entirely where he lives.
600 protesters held a sit-in in a US Senate office building, demanding an end to imprisonment of refugee families.
I think that the bully will use this as an excuse to increase repression. He has no desire for civil peace, any more than international peace.
Over a thousand people face imprisonment in Italy for driving boats full of migrants — because they were told to drive or be shot. But this is just the clearest of the stupidities in the European campaign to arrest smugglers.
A report surveys how companies including Facebook, Google and Microsoft design systems to hamper users from exercizing their rights.
How America's Wars Fund Inequality at Home.
Republicans representing oil companies are proposing a carbon emissions tax. However, at the the cost of big concessions.
Young American workers are joining and organizing unions, reinvigorating them.
California has adopted a stricter-than-usual law to regulate commercial databases.
It will probably do some good, but if it does what the article suggests, it won't stop the recordings made from cameras and microphones in the street and in buses, or real-time face recognition on their images, and I doubt it will do much good regarding phone company tracking of phone calls, messages and locations.
Pimps pay bail for female prisoners in US jails, then compel them to do sex work or else be jailed again.
"Incarceration takes vulnerable women and makes them more vulnerable."
"As Israelis, we call on the world to intervene on behalf of Palestinians."
Indonesia could use seaweed to replace plastic for food packaging, ten years from now.
But it will require government pressure to stop using plastic.
One important reform in the Democratic National Committee: the "superdelegates" will not vote in the first ballot round.
This means that anyone who wins enough primaries and caucuses to win on the first round cannot be blocked by the superdelegates.
James Schwab was a press representative for the deportation thugs who quit rather than carry out orders to lie. As he was giving a TV interview at his home, leak investigators burst in and tried to question him.
Schwab said this illustrates the way the US government tries to silence its critics.
The number of prisoners in the US is so high that it directly alters elections. Groups that suffer bigotry are imprisoned unfairly more than others, even after committing similar crimes, and that costs them voting strength. Moreover, prisons placed in right-wing areas make their votes count extra.
Senator McConnell said that blocking the appointment of a supreme court justice for a whole year until the 2016 election was not mere partisanship but a civic duty.
Naturally this time he intends to rush the process of replacing Kennedy.
UK law was designed to allow spy agencies to kidnap people and hand them over to dictators to be tortured.
Successive governments have covered up the details to protect the agents involved and the ministers who gave them orders. As a result, similar things could easily happen again.
(satire) Facebook is cracking down on false educational credentials such as "School of hard knocks".
Protest Isn’t Civil. Indeed, protest against unjust rule cannot be effective if it accepts the limits imposed by unjust rule.
Many US cities and counties have cancelled deals with the deportation thugs to hold their prisoners.
A visit to a US hospital's emergency room can land you with a "trauma charge" for tens of thousands of dollars, despite your insurance.
Hospitals do this even for patients that required hardly any treatment.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-515-2798 to call on them to reject all the bully's nominations for the Supreme Court. They all want to abolish the right to abortion.
People who work in tobacco farms are exposed to the same addictive nicotine as the people that smoke the tobacco. Teenagers are more vulnerable than adults. So it makes sense to exclude minors from doing this work.
However, the adults are surely not really safe, either. Is there some sort of safety gear that would protect them from the nicotine without causing them heat stroke?
As always, I oppose referring to teenagers as "children".
US Immigration Must Reunite Families Separated at Border, Federal Judge Rules.
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic party."
Amnesty: banning refugees from Yemen and Syria is "essentially lighting a house on fire and locking the escape door shut."
The thug who rushed to shoot and kill Antwon Rose has been charged with homicide.
Every time a killer thug doesn't get off without charges, I think that is something to celebrate.
Some UK schools seem to improve their students' average national test scores by kicking out students who are likely to do badly.
The new head of the US Bureau of Consumer Protection is a saboteur who has represented many companies, some of which have mistreated the public.
Tesla appropriated Tom Edwards's drawing of a unicorn as part of its branding, without asking him or even telling him.
I believe everyone is entitled to the freedom to share copies of any published work, including the farting unicorn. However, sharing means noncommercial redistribution of exact copies. What Tesla is doing is commercial use, not sharing. Thus I agree with Edwards that Tesla ought to get his permission and pay him.
Greenpeace reports that ships carrying toxic tar sands oil away from the Unkinder Morgan pipeline would threaten oil spills all along the California coast, as well as near Vancouver.
They would harm marine mammals even when they don't spill any oil.
How can we save Earth's biodiversity?
If global heating requires species to move to survive, they won't be able to survive in small wildlife reserves that currently suit them.
The warlover seems to be planning to kick out Mattis as Saboteur of Defense. He is not sabotaging hard enough, it seems.
Countries that think of themselves as US "allies" will soon learn that they can't expect the warlover to let "adult" officials restrain him very much for very long.
Microscopic life has not yet recovered from the 2010 Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
EU citizens: take the next step in fighting against mandatory copyright filters.
US citizens: support the bill to limit rich corporations' stock buybacks and give workers a slot in their boards of directors.
US citizens: call on the DEA not to ban Kratom.
Some towns in Florida are already being taken over by the sea.
Saudi Arabia Is Not Driving Change — It Is Trying to Hoodwink the West.
The bully, of course, is not skeptical when a country serves his personal interests.
American Jews campaign for Jewish institutions to stop teaching a one-sided view of Israel and Palestine.
In Israel, colonizing fanatics are allowed to attack and even wound security agents, but Palestinians who slap them go to prison.
The bully and Netanyahu plan to pound Palestinians into the ground until they accept permanent occupation in the West Bank.
More about this plan for non-peace.
Corbyn says that he would recognize Palestine as a state, and cut arms sales to Israel to press for a peace agreement.
(Satire) The Onion presents the new civility rules for criticizing the US government.
ACLU: the Supreme Court upheld the bully's partial ban on Muslim visitors by closing its eyes to facts.
Cambodia's ruler, Hun Sen, has become an absolute dictator.
British military bases in Cyprus were very heavily used by hunters to kill migrating songbirds. The army has taken effective action to stop most of this.
The decision to expand London's main airport at the expense of Earth's ecosphere shows what kind of reaction we can expect from the UK government to other crisis situations, such as leaving the EU.
Fraudulent businesses operate based on the weaknesses of the systems of oversight, such as accounting and reporting. Fraudulent businesses can find the accountants that they can corrupt, and then present a picture of great success that discourages inquiry.
Senator Warren reports on the cages for immigrants. Men are packed so tight that they can't all lie down at once. Children sit all day doing nothing. The prison guards lie about the conditions.
Whistleblower Reality Winner, who informed the US about Russian attacks on states' election computer systems, accepted a plea bargain for 5 years in prison.
Treating whistleblowers as spies is fundamentally wrong. In effect, it declares the American people to be the enemy of the US government. If that's how things are, I choose the people's side.
To ensure that taking the public's side is not allowed in court, the Espionage Act explicitly forbids the defendant to argue that blowing the whistle was a service to the public, even if it was.
One of many reasons to eliminate the death penalty is because of bias in sentencing. One form of bias in the US is against homosexuals. The Supreme Court refused to consider a case in which jurors were openly and even admittedly motivated by this bias.
The best way to eliminate bias in applying the death penalty is to abolish the death penalty.
Venezuela's largest ISP, government-owned, has blocked Tor.
Can someone find me a page which presents an up-to-date list of countries that block Tor?
The US immigration thugs use a special program to try to estimate whether an asylum seeker is likely to show up for hearings if released, or should be imprisoned. The program is very simple — it unconditionally answers "imprison!"
A black firefighter in Oakland was doing fire safety vegetation inspections of yards of houses, wearing a uniform. Residents twice accused him of being a burglar, apparently because of his skin color.
Mass-murdering dictators usually aren't born that way. They start as effective and likeable people, which enables them to win the power with which they later commit atrocities. Power can teach its wielders to be capable of callous atrocities.
I have never been particularly impressed by physical courage, and I don't particularly admire veterans. I feel sorry for today's US military veterans: they joined the military thinking they would "serve their country," but instead the US used them to invade and destroy other countries.
Many of them realized this, and some of them started organizations against militarism — in effect using their cachet as veterans to protect others from being swindled as they had been. Those are the veterans I consider heroes.
When I see organizations promote candidates by saying that they are veterans, I think, "Is this meant as a substitute for being a strong progressive champion?"
The mainstream media make a one-sided demand for "civility" from progressives, while officials responsible for horrible crimes reject civility 100%.
The main source of incivility in US politics is the systematic hatred and intimidation that the bully creates.
Destruction of tropical forest has hit a record pace. It is a positive-feedback system for global heating.
Plutocratist governments that promote deforestation for the sake of business are a big part of the cause.
The Janus decision doesn't have to kill public employee unions. It does mean that they have to put much more effort into organizing.
Defendants in US courts are sentenced based on secret AI programs and told they are not allowed to find out what the basis was for the decision.
The founders of the US considered trade secrecy antisocial, to the point that one argument for having a patent system is to discourage trade secrecy.
How about if we discourage trade secrecy by eliminating the laws that artificially facilitate it?
The right-wing extremist that murdered Heather Heyer faces federal hate crime charges.
France is prosecuting people accused of planning a right-wing anti-Muslim terrorist plot.
The plotters included an ex-thug, so it seems likely they could have really committed terrorism.
The UK has extended civil partnerships to different-sex couples.
Justice Kennedy, a Republican appointee who was not an extremist, is retiring. The Republicans will replace him with another extremist.
"In prison I saw the futility of locking up women for minor crimes."
I am disappointed that this statement is limited to women. UK (and US) prisons for men, nowadays, offer no rehabilitation and clearly do harm in many cases.
Our legal system fails to properly punish thugs even for the nastiest illegalities.
Public-employee unions in the US can no longer collect fees from all the workers they serve.
Republicans have worked for decades to kill off those unions and cut public employees' pay. Now it looks like they will succeed.
Progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated right-wing Democrat Joe Crowley in the primary.
Crowley is one of those so-called "centrists" that support the power of business over the state. If we are to restore democracy, we have to replace them as well as replacing Republicans.
Poland may be repealing criminal penalties for using expressions such as "Polish death camps", but still thinks it has the power to impose fines on publications in other countries.
The expression "Polish death camps" makes a false statement about history. The death camps in which millions of Jews were murdered were not run by Poland or by Poles. They were set up and run by German Nazis.
Patriotic Poles in occupied Poland would never have aided the Germans in killing Jews. They did it all on their own.
Regardless of those facts, it is dangerous for any country, whether Poland or China or another, to have the power to impose global censorship. Other countries should make sure their courts will not enforce fines imposed by foreign courts for violating censorship.
North Korea is upgrading its nuclear reactor.
This is not treacherous. It reflects the fact that North Korea has not made an agreement for nuclear disarmament.
I think that peace between North and South Korea would make the nuclear issue much less important.
The Supreme Court's approval of the bully's veiled ban on Muslim visitors legitimizes bigotry.
CODEPINK is investigating US mutual funds to expose how much they invest in the military-industrial complex.
Several local trials test the effects of an unconditional basic income.
These tests are not "universal"; some of them are offered to a selection of people in a certain locality, rather than everyone. But they give some information about the effects of the policy.
In 1948 Britain, the creation of the National Health Service was considered the fulfillment of a human right just agreed on.
Marijuana cultivation in California is finishing off the endangered Humboldt marten. Only 300 or so now remain.
Digital business lobbyists in California are trying to replace a proposed privacy ballot initiative with a new privacy law that would do less to protect privacy. At the same time, they are lobbying to weaken the proposed law to do even less.
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