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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.
In the US: join a demonstration on behalf of immigrants and refugees.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose Rep. Ryan's "compromise" bill which is meant to substitute for treating refugees and other immigrants justly.
Citizens of Massachusetts: phone your state representative to support protection for immigrants by the state.
In Australia as in the US, privatization of prisons has created a prison-industrial complex that lobbies to put more people in prison.
The blacks that are imprisoned by preference in Australia are not descendants of Africans, but rather indigenous peoples.
Spanish Doctor Stands Trial over Franco-Era 'Stolen Babies'.
When useds of Facebook stop logging in, Facebook sends them emails to manipulate them to come back.
This does no direct harm to the used, but demonstrates how manipulative Facebook is in general.
Your real friends will keep in touch in some other way. Your other "friends", you can do without.
The bully wants to tear up the US constitution and reject refugees without any court hearing.
The saddest part is that this is what happens now, most of the time, in practice.
British courts have ruled several times that sweatshop service economy workers are employees and are entitled to the legal rights of employees.
A summary of Nicaragua's history since the 70s, with a view to explaining the situation today.
Spenser Rapone was an Army Ranger, then attended West Point officer training. The Rangers were invited to brainwash themselves to worship their rifles and dehumanize civilians. In West Point he realized he was "the muscle for those with wealth and status."
The Supreme Court protects racist gerrymandering, showing that it is in cahoots with those that don't want to allow Americans to have fair elections.
Thugs force prisoners in immigration prison to recite the US pledge of allegiance every day to express their "respect" for the US. The US should show more respect for them, but I think that the one-sidedness of this is intentional. The bully's idea of making America "great" is that all bow down to it. The authoritarian followers that are his supporters will groove on seeing him make others bow down. "You have to respect us and we don't have to respect you" is what he stands for.
Tim Wilkins encountered multiple groups of teenagers and children being moved around the US in commercial flights, accompanied by people who tried to stop them from talking with him.
One of them very much wanted to talk with him, but was scared to do so. Probably she had been punished very harshly and knew what they would do to her. She said she had arrived in the US alone, but the toddlers were surely brought by their parents.
The word "detained" is designed to deemotionalize a vicious crime. Please join me in refusing to use that word in this context. We don't have to let official policies impose vocabulary on us.
"As a black man, I don't need to be protected from offensive ideas. I'd rather hear them for myself — and challenge them."
A restaurant owner refused to serve Sarah Sanders, who has the job of running supposed "press briefings" for the White House, holding her responsible for taking refugee children and adolescents away from their parents.
It would be a mistake to hold government employees in general responsible for specific actions, other than those directly involved in carrying them out. For instance, a national park ranger or meat inspector would not be culpable for this at all. Even some cabinet secretaries might have nothing to do with it.
However, Ms Sanders works visibly and directly for the president. We can presume she supports all the president's policies if she does not denounce them or quit.
The UK disguises some of its sales of bombs to Salafi Arabia.
Thugs in Venezuela kill people at will, then fake evidence of a fictional gunfight to justify it.
New York's legislature has passed a bill to make prosecutors accountable for misconduct (denying suspects a fair trial).
UN Condemns Trump Administration for Exacerbating US Poverty Levels.
States force prisoners into hard labor for absurd reasons.
Deportation thugs, too.
Sam Lavigne tried to help Americans hold deportation thugs responsible for imprisoning migrant children and adolescents, by publishing the names and phone numbers of the thugs. However, various web sites deleted his post.
I think it is usually wrong to doxx people, but the staff of ICE are engaged in terrible cruelty that will scar some of their victims permanently. Due to their personal actions, they deserve to face personal protests.
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.
The acting saboteur of NOAA wants to redefine its mission to exclude concern for the climate and conservation.
Sniper's War and Anti-Terrorist Terrorism.
Polio has reappeared in Papua New Guinea, where it was supposed to have been eradicated.
It seems unlikely that it got there from Afghanistan or Africa, so where did it come from? Was polio being passed on there for many years, unnoticed?
One problem with having dogs and cats as pets is that they eat a lot of meat. This contributes substantially to our exhaustion of the Earth.
Cats that hunt birds to eat do great harm to bird populations. We need a smaller population of dogs and cats, just as we need a smaller population of humans.
If you keep a parrot as a pet, it will eat seeds, which use up a lot less agricultural resources than meat for a dog or cat.
The UK treats refugees the way it treats disabled people: seizing any fragment of an excuse to deport them.
The bully-saboteur-cheater is directly and fundamentally anti-American.
Politicians that treat politics as a show rather than as an argument are a poison for democracy in general.
Making families homeless because a child belongs to a gang will create more and increasingly vulnerable children that are easy prey for gangs.
Enslaved people are often forced to commit crimes. The bully plans to stop helping them vacate the convictions for those crimes.
The bigot's ambassador to Israel uses his position to advance repression in Israel and the US. He also violates rules for US ambassadors, and should be investigated for that.
Hindu fanatics are spewing hate at an Indian government minister for intervening to overturn religious bigotry.
These fanatics are the equivalent of US neonazis: they are openly bigots and spew the same hate at anyone who opposes bigotry.
Immigration prisoners are being sent to a federal prison where infections are spreading.
The US military is planning to make immigration tent prisons for over 100,000 prisoners.
While the blacks killed by US thugs number in the thousands, these killings cause lasting psychological symptoms for millions of blacks that live in the same states.
Years after Google dropped the motto "Don't be evil", many of the engineers campaign firmly against some kinds of evils.
I wish they would campaign against making services depend on making the user run nonfree Javascript code and blocking access through Tor. I used to use Google Search sometimes, back when it would talk to me in this way, but now it simply doesn't work.
Javier Solana, former head of Nato, can't visit the US because he visited Iran.
"[The bully's] officials don't get to eat dinner in peace — not while kids are in cages."
James Hansen's 1988 Scenario B (moderate emissions cuts) is proving accurate, but the Koch brothers' paid liars are still lying about it.
Erdoğan won the election in Turkey, and will have almost despotic power over the country, where there is no longer an independent judiciary.
US citizens: Call on the Department of Justice to investigate cops that kill.
Mumbai has banned single-use plastic bags, cups and bottles.
I try to avoid bottled water, but in India that's not feasible. How are they selling drinking water there?
The US is building a surveillance "wall" at the US-Mexico border, but it is likely to track everyone within 100 miles of the border in their daily lives.
The sweatshop service economy assures that most people's wages do not rise even when there is high demand for workers. The businesses have arranged to charge workers' piecework directly to consumers.
Applying the minimum wage to this piecework would be fine, but perhaps it would be better to get rid of that business model.
China's trade warfare specifically targets the states that voted for the bully.
Republican active cruelty to downtrodden people brings back the world of 1830s Britain, shown in Dickens' novels.
17 years after the US conquest of Afghanistan, and some 15 years after the Taliban began fighting effectively, it is clear that the US has no way ever to win this war.
I've been saying so for many years.
The only way to have peace in Afghanistan is for the US to let the Taliban win.
Assad is attacking Syrian Arab rebels, and the US has told them it will not intervene.
This might be better than intervening to keep the fighting going. These rebels are not particularly deserving of support.
For "smart", read "sabotage". Computerized appliances can be used for harassment and gaslighting by a lover or ex-lover. Since men generally know more about using these devices than women, it tend to be men that do this to women.
This special case of wrongdoing does not depend on the device itself to be malicious (although the same devices probably do spy, and may be vulnerable to sabotage by the manufacturer).
Raising a multilingual child requires knowing what to do, but it is a great help to per future.
I sure wish I could have learned French and Spanish as a child rather than having to study them as an adult.
If you've already had a child (since especially today it is better to avoid that), and you speak a language other than the principal one used where you live, give per the best. Give per your other language.
Saboteur Sessions defended splitting refugee families by citing the same bible verses that were usually cited in the 19th century to justify slavery. His supporters love it, because they have more or less shut off their consciences and dehumanized scapegoats and opposition.
In the US: tell Greyhound to stop aiding the US deportation thugs.
Fracking in northern Australia would immediately destroy Australia's Paris treaty greenhouse gas emissions. Even a single new gas field is too much.
Since we do not prohibit movies from showing murders with guns and knives, what justification can there be for censoring poems and songs that do likewise?
"The clamour in the west is for more controls on those who use the internet for communications, but little control of governments that use it for surveillance."
US cruelty officials sadists claim that they have kept track of all 2053 minors separated from their families.
If that is really true (who knows?), I hope it is all of them. The figure I have seen published is 2300 minors taken from their families.
In any case, these officials have the responsibility to reunite all of the families, and quickly.
Facebook finds it has trouble separating news from political polemics.
The UK forbade stores to charge extra for paying with a bank card. Since then, banks started charging stores more for the use of a card.
Does the UK allow stores to offer a discount for paying in cash?
Italy is denying entry to another ship carrying refugees, and more refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean.
The FBI Is Using Unvetted, Right-Wing Blacklists to Question Activists About Their Support for Palestine.
Gypsies have suffered repression and atrocities in Europe for 500 years.
The Koch brothers are funding a campaign against investing in public transit in the US.
Immigrants in the US face injustice at every stage of deportation proceedings based on suspicions of gang membership that are often irrational and based on vague nothing.
Zimbabwe Opposition Fears Crackdown after Election Rally Bombing.
100,000 people marched in London to demand a new referendum about whether to continue leaving the EU.
It disappoints me greatly that most of the arguments for remaining in the EU or for leaving are based on trickle-down and "free trade".
Malaysian cartoonist Zunar feels nostalgia for Razak's repeated attempts to imprison him for his work.
Arnovis Guidos Portillo was deported to El Salvador without getting a chance to apply for asylum. Now he can't get his daughter out of US immigration prison.
Gangs in El Salvador are so menacing that inhabitants threatened have to flee, no matter what the US might do to them.
I wonder if there is any way to set up a safe refuge in a part of El Salvador.
South Sudan has settled down into a state of permanent guerrilla war against many splintered guerrilla groups.
All these groups, including the state, fight for nothing but the advancement of their own leaders.
Rising sea level will kill coral reefs, because corals can't grow fast enough to stay near the surface.
Too much CO2 in the water will inevitably kill corals. The temperature can also kill them. So it seems that coral has little chance of surviving to the end of this century.
A billion people depend on marine resources for their food. In a few decades it could be a billion and a half. Thus, the loss of most of those resources could easily kill a billion people.
They won't all die directly from hunger. Many of them will die in wars over control of the dwindling marine resources. These wars will be futile, in that victory will at most delay the death of the victors.
If they start sooner, and fight fossil fuel extraction and use, they might avert much of the disaster. However, if they don't limit their populations, then barring some unforeseeable event they will reach the starvation point sooner or later.
A Movement Emerges to Free Former Students from Crushing Loan Debts.
Until Dubya was president, Americans could get rid of unpayable student loans through personal bankruptcy. We should make that possible again.
Puerto Rico's imposed nondemocratic unofficial government has responded to last summer's hurricane by planning to extract some of the recovery funds for the vampires (creditors) they serve.
The imposed unofficial government gives its members big salaries while cutting the wages of real workers.
An ex-conservative who lives with white-supremacist parents in a white-supremacist town says that what they want is to dominate others, and they don't think in terms of reasons.
The writer feels despair, feels that there is no chance of resisting these power-crazed bullies who intimidate others into surrender where they get a chance. I can't say that is impossible, but I think that the overall situation in the US is not as bad as it looks from where he sits.
Anti-abortion groups including "Focus on the Family" exposed the dishonesty of their concern for families by refusing to criticize their point man for taking children and teenagers away from their parents.
They don't criticize the substitute policy, indefinite imprisonment of families, either.
The saboteur of commerce faces an ethics complaint about insider trading, a crime.
The way to make pliant, craven people is to crush social relationships. Several decades of various US policies have led Americans quite a ways down that road (see the book Bowling Alone), but the bully is rushing us further along.
An oil train derailed in Iowa because tracks were flooded. Oil leaked into the water and has flowed downstream to the state capital, Des Moines.
The oil may get into the wells that provide water for Des Moines and various river towns, or it may not. It may get into them after a long time. If it does, the wells could remain polluted for a long time.
Ethiopia has unblocked access to several news web sites that it blocked in the past.
The saboteurs have forbidden scientists at the USGS from talking with the press.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress not to fund the bully's immigration plans.
The Supreme Court decision about cell phone location tracking was written in a very narrow way. It doesn't directly affect any other surveillance cases.
Opposition leader Selahattin Demirtaş, campaigning from jail, says that no fair election is possible in Turkey given its repression of opposition.
A visitor to Canada was jogging along the beach and without any notification found herself in the US. The US border thugs jailed her for two weeks, supposedly to make doubly sure she was not an unauthorized visitor to Canada.
That "reason" is no reason at all, since it wasn't necessary to do. The US thugs could have handed her over to a Canadian border post, which could have checked this immediately.
I am sure the reason for this policy, at some level, is a desire to cause pain — rationalized somehow, of course.
Cedella, please don't ask to be "allowed" into the US. Insist instead on an apology!
The torturer told US military bases to get ready to hold 20,000 minors as prisoners.
This would make it especially difficult for protesters to show those prisoners any sort of support. They would have to protest at the edge of the base, far away from anyone.
Another step in making protest useless and thus squishing democracy.
Ralph Nader: The Unsurpassed Power Trip by an Insuperable Control Freak.
Tories propose to put whole families on the street if one person in the family is a gang member.
This would be self-defeating, since the whole family would be forced to turn to some sort of crime, but it's worse than that: it is fundamentally unjust to use people as hostages for their relatives.
The US has already done things like this.
Measured methane leaks exceed the EPA's estimate of methane leaks by about 60%.
Since methane contributes heavily to global heating for the next few decades, this has a big effect.
Better EPA regulations could make fossil fuel companies greatly reduce leaks, but if they spent the money to do that they might not make a profit. So they tell the EPA not to bother them.
(Satire) Sarah Huckabee Sanders reminded journalists Friday that children under the age of 14 are unable to experience pain.
The UK's new extremely difficult one-time exams for 16-year-olds made many of them sick with stress.
Perhaps they could help themselves cope with this stress by holding protests after and between exams. They could hang Mr Gove in effigy, for instance. If crowds of students did this all across the UK, it could have a political effect.
Students should not limit their condemnation to one single Tory minister. The whole Tory party deserves the blame.
The exhilaration of the protest could also help them feel less hurt by the stress.
The SCROTUS farm bill would deny food stamps to 2 million people.
Republicans apparently hope that desperate poor people won't be able to struggle to vote.
Saboteur Pruitt appears to be illegally hiding his official communications from FOIA requests.
The number of refugees moving to the US since the 1990s is partly due to the business-supremacy treaties that the US has pushed onto Mexico and Central America.
Those coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are also partly caused by US-imposed dictatorship and military coups.
Censorship in repressive Hungary now aims to ban a theater production because it has a homosexual protagonist.
China is making abortions harder to get, based on the misguided idea that a low birth rate is some sort of problem.
When the population is decreasing, the working adults have more to do to take care of old people, and less to do to take care of children. It works out. Robots can do part of the job. It will be ok.
"Dear Europe, if you want stop Trump, sanction his companies."
The Supreme Court ruled that thugs must get a warrant to access people's cell phone records over an extended period of time.
I fear this means they are allowed to find where a person is located momentarily.
This is still a step forward, but does the ruling apply to the FBI? Snowden informed us that some phone companies were telling the FBI about every long distance phone call they made.
Asylum-seekers are compelled to cross the US border to find an official to present their case for asylum to, since the officials are hiding from them.
The article also says that the border thugs lie to parents, basically like gangsters, saying "your children will be back in a few days."
Democrats have proposed a bill to end the imprisonment of all border-crossers, as well as the separation of their families.
ICE tends naturally to cruelty because it was created as part of the Department of Harshness and Sadism. We ought to abolish it.
A whistleblower criticized Tesla for some sort of problems (I am not sure what), and Tesla is suing him.
It appears that Tesla falsely accused him of planning sabotage. In the conversation quoted, Musk tries to construe his statement as a threat, but that is clearly incorrect.
Brazilian thugs in a helicopter fired machine guns at a city and killed a teenager as well as perhaps others.
Canada secretly denies people entry at its borders using a blacklist maintained by the US.
Virginia legislators have a clever plan to discourage many blacks from voting.
If you let yourself become indifferent to suffering and injustice, the results are bad for you as well as for the world.
(Satire) Onion Social announced Wednesday that it intends to crack down on sexual harassment by banning women from the platform.
Microsoft is helping the US deportation thugs with face recognition.
Helping any government agency do face recognition ought to get any company on everyone's boycott list.
When a company's business "security" automation spuriously believes that a worker is fired, the human staff can't override it.
I wonder what would happen if a cracker marked every worker (including the executives) as fired.
Puerto Rico is closing 25% of its public schools. It can't afford to run them while feeding the hungry banksters.
To "protect" child prisoners, the immigration thugs say visiting members of Congress are not allowed to photograph them or talk with them. Did they get this inspiration from the Guantanamo prison?
Furthermore, if they have to arrange a visit two weeks in advance, the thugs could move all the prisoners to some other prison camp in the mean time. Federal prisons often move prisoners around repeatedly for no evident reason, perhaps to interfere with their contact with their lawyers and relatives.
The saboteur has cancelled the US ocean protection policy.
An AT&T-sponsored California state representative has ruined the state's network neutrality bill.
Here's more detail of what he did.
The sadist changed his mind; he says future border-crossers' children will now be imprisoned with their families.
The actual executive order is unclear and somewhat indirect, so we can't be sure which parts will be enforced.
Lawyers 'Not Confident' Family Separations Will End.
Supposing the border thugs do stop taking children away from their parents, the US will no longer inflict this one extra fillip of cruelty. However, the hostage-taker's many other immigration cruelties continue:
The UN Human Rights Council has been surrendering to Chinese repression.
US criticism of it might do some good, if it were not hypocritical.
The latest bailout for Greece's bankster creditors includes a postponement of payment on some loans.
I suspect, though, that the interest on those loans will continue accruing the whole time. So Greece is still stuck in a horrible trap.
Pension and welfare cuts, such as were forced on Greece, kill a certain fraction. I would expect that hundreds of thousands of Greeks were killed in this way. These deaths are what neoliberal economics calls a "reform". Minister Scholz says that Greeks have "done a good job" of surviving, or not surviving, the Euro-zone's imposed poverty.
I hope Scholz gets a chance, soon, to see how well he can do that same job.
Around the world, citizens of ostensibly democratic countries say they have little voice in what the state does.
I suspect that they are right, and that the cause is plutocracy including business-supremacy treaties.
New York City is supposedly thriving, but rising rents are causing rapid increase in poverty and homelessness, while causing the interesting local stores to close.
Protesters surrounded an immigration processing center for child and adolescents prisoners, and camped out, blocked access. The immigration thugs eventually shut down the center.
Toads are dying out in Britain.
Be careful if you make a pond for them — you might harbor mosquitos.
Teenagers alone in an immigration prison report they were tortured in several ways.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to condemn profiteering from imprisonment of refugee children or adolescents, and of refugee families.
Seven ways the current farm bill attacks the environment.
The saboteurs in charge say they will make no "special efforts" to return hostage minors to their parents. Meaning that if the minor is a baby and can't say who per parents are, they may never be able to find per.
There would be ways to identify them — with DNA, for example — but that costs money and these parents won't be able to afford that.
We don't know for certain whether officials kept no records out of carelessness or out of malice. But I'd bet it was malice, because malice is their watchword.
The US government's denial of refugee rights violates US law and an international refugee treaty.
A private immigration prison in Texas is forcibly drugging minors. The drugs make some of them sick and weak.
Here's some more information about how sick it made some of them.
New York protesters went to La Guardia Airport to show support to imprisoned children and teenagers that were being transported in on planes.
Italy's effective ruler, Salvini, plans to crush press criticism by removing the bodyguards from the reporters that face death threats from the mafia.
It wouldn't surprise me if his supporters soon come to love the mafia.
Half the population of India is short of clean water, and 200,000 people die from this each year.
Failure to maintain water pipes is part of the cause, but global heating contributes and so does population growth. India needs to curb its births before death limits its population.
Turkey's opposition is energized, but it still looks like Erdoğan will win the election.
There are so many tourists in parts of the Maasai Mara that cheetah cubs mostly die before they grow up.
The US is quitting the UN Human Rights Council.
Indeed some members do not respect human rights at all. But why would the bully object to that?
We Can Still Win: Next steps for the [proposed EU] Copyright Directive.
Realistic levels of cocaine in the water injure and weaken European eels; they might be unable to migrate to reproduce.
A mining company operating in Australia seems to have paid individual aboriginal leaders to decide that their people had no objections to its construction of a coal port.
Do-dirty called Joan Carling a "terrorist", but her platform is not violence but calling for an international investigation of Do-dirty's murder campaign.
T-Mobile and Sprint continue selling phone customers' location data to middlemen that sell it to others.
Everyone: Call on McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's to reject meat from animals regularly fed antibiotics.
This petition does not work with JavaScript totally disabled, but does work with LibreJS active — it evidently needs some free or trivial JavaScript code. However, it might also contain some nonfree, nontrivial JavaScript code that isn't necessary to sign.
US citizens: file a public comment against building the Keystone XL pipeline.
Extraction of Alberta tar sands oil is extremely polluting, both locally and globally.
ALEC is trying to stop Americans dying from asbestos from winning in court against the companies that made the asbestos.
Perhaps this wouldn't matter so much if the US had a universal medical system. As things stand, those people need to sue to get funds for their medical care.
Israel says that Gazans are child-murderers for bringing children to peaceful protests where Israeli soldiers might shoot them.
Saboteur Zinke is making rules to benefit a company headed by his wife.
SCROTUS want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and other aid programs by 500 billion dollars a year.
(Satire) Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson used the opening segment of his show Tuesday to angrily explain the difference between a good baby and a bad baby.
(Satire) MS-13 gang leader Edwin Manica Flores admitted Tuesday that observing ICE's work in recent weeks has provided him with quite a bit of inspiration.
The US government is deporting refugee parents without their children, and they don't have a way to get their children back.
Australia's right-wing government is shifting money to the rich by cutting taxes on business. It is pretending that this will "trickle down", but we know that is bullshit, just as it was when Reagan said it.
Mossack Fonseca, which supported tax-dodging, did not even know the names of most of its clients.
Making offshore companies identify their owners will help reduce tax-dodging, but individual countries can implement a complete solution by ending the deductibility of payments to companies that don't entirely satisfy certain requirements.
That is, they can do this unless business-supremacy treaties get in the way. If so, they should pull out of those treaties, which do harm in many ways.
Genetic engineering has been used to make pigs that are immune to a virus that is very common in farms.
I have a suspicion that factory farms are responsible for the prevalence of this virus.
I don't see any biological harm or danger in this genetic modification. It appears to have no effect, other than the pigs do not get sick and have healthier immune systems. That is all to the good.
However, the modification is likely to spread patent pollution that would harm farmers' rights in countries that permit patents on genes to apply to farming of animals.
The European Parliament's JURI committee voted for mandatory copyright filtering.
Hungary has made it a crime to help border-crossing refugees press their legal claims for asylum rights.
The effect is that they theoretically have these rights but are legally unable to exercise them.
Working-class men from Kamloops killing themselves in large numbers, either directly or through gratuitous risks of death. An article contends that their idea of masculinity gives them no way to cope with the fact that they can't be a success in its terms.
"Trump's family separation policy is as damaging to America as Abu Ghraib."
I don't think that the possible blowback from this evil is as important as the evil itself.
Trump's Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes, and No One Is Talking About It.
The latest US newspeak term for a prison for young children: "tender age shelter".
Child refugees in the UK are not imprisoned. Rather, they are left in penury, forbidden to work or go to school. Some lose hope and die.
(Satire) San Francisco police busted a filthy, unshaven Mark Zuckerberg in the early hours of the morning Tuesday for trying to sell his personal data on a street corner.
The UK has convicted a fantasy terrorist, who was going to set off a dummy bomb provided by agents.
It would have been a real crime if he had really done it, but it is not clear he would ever have tried anything without the encouragement and assistance of the state. It is unjust for the state to lead people into crime and then punish them for it, and it isn't protecting the public from real danger.
Everyone: phone JP Morgan Chase bank to demand it stop funding another tar sands pipeline and tar sands extraction.
You could also talk with your city councilors about moving funds out of JP Morgan Chase, perhaps into a public bank.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to stop candidates from personally using funds from their terminated zombie campaigns.
Most Senate Democrats supported a military spending bill that will spend 700 billion dollars on the military.
Greenpeace: how pipeline companies try to crush opposition and protest in North Dakota.
Canada has passed a law to legalize marijuana.
More people are openly rejecting reproducing.
I do not want the human species to become extinct. I want to bring the future population down to 1 billion or so, which would enable all humans to have a good life and leave room for wildlife too.
More tigers live in back yards in the US than in the wild.
US border thugs take minors away from their refugee parents using the excuse of prosecuting all the parents. They pretend that the minors arrived "unaccompanied", which is an example of a law that lies.
Sometimes parents are deported and cannot find their children again. The minors' lawyers can't contact the parents, who are the only ones that know why the parents fled.
I use the word "minors" to correct a factual error. Some large fraction of them are children, and the other large fraction are adolescents (teenagers).
This fact doesn't affect my condemnation of what the US is doing to these families. Whether the number of children taken away is 2000 or 1000 or 500, the cruelty cannot be justified, given that it is worse than gratuitous (it is the consequence of another cruel policy). And it is almost as bad to take a 14-year-old adolescent away from per family indefinitely as an 8-year-old child.
I simply want to resist the tendency to infantilize teenagers.
The UK's experiment in publicly-funded private schools is collapsing.
As I recall, the state set up a system which forced some schools to convert to that status, if their students' test scores were bad, but didn't force privatized schools with bad test scores to reconvert to ordinary state schools.
Ann Coulter called the crying imprisoned immigrant children "actors".
This is the standard Republican line, used against everyone that shows the evil that Republicans do. A survivor of the Las Vegas terrorist attack was accused of being a fraud.
This didn't start with the bullshitter; Coulter has been doing it for many years.
Puerto Rico, under the rule of the vampire banksters, is cutting medical care so they can take more blood.
The banksters' motto is, today Puerto Rico, tomorrow the United States.
The US put Eugene Debs in prison for a radical speech 100 years ago that opposed war and inequality.
My views are not as radical as his, but people should not be imprisoned for stating political views.
Volkswagen issued DMCA takedown notices three times on drawings of beetles. Insects, that is. It took a lawyer's letter to get the matter corrected — that's how unfair the DMCA takedown system is, in practice.
IANAL, but I don't think it would have changed matters if they were drawings of Volkswagen cars. As I understand it, there is no US copyright on the shape of a car (it is not a sculpture), so Volkswagen would have no copyright grounds to object to someone else's drawing or photo of those cars.
The DMCA applies to copyright law and only copyright law, not to the bogus category of "intellectual property" which does not correspond to real laws. If you use that term in your thoughts (or worse, your words), it is confusing you.
Australia's politicians plan a law that would require back doors in encryption software, but they pretend it would not.
The FBI poses a threat to democracy and dissent, and its history is hardly one of acting professionally and honestly.
I think we need an organization to investigate organized crime, which we should understand as including crimes of companies such as stealing wages and cheating customers. But perhaps we should make a new one which would stay away from dissident groups.
The CEO of Audi, a division of Volkswagen, has been arrested over his involvement with the emissions test fraud software.
Pharma companies make around 5 billion dollars a year from antibiotics for farm animals. This is the size of the lobby we will need to defeat in order to protect our lives from resistant bacteria.
We must eliminate the supposed "duty" of corporation executives to subordinate everything more important to maximizing their profit. This "duty" was not accepted until around 1980.
Synthetic biology could make it easy to create deadly artificial disease bacteria and viruses. Public health systems are not ready to cope with them.
A pharma company is running a deceptive marketing campaign saying not to worry about feeding antibiotics to animals raised for meat.
The deception is that it correctly denies an imaginary problem and ignores the real one — breeding drug-resistant bacteria.
Canada must cancel its designation of the US as a "safe country" for refugees.
Chinese agriculture uses far more antibiotics than US agriculture, but at least the government is trying to reduce it.
The US government is unable to defy agribusiness that much.
If you're not a US citizen and you're not in desperate trouble somewhere else, why would you want to live in today's US?
The Tories are very effectively cutting solar power development in the UK.
The planned Pacific Ocean terminal of the Unkinder Morgan pipeline is in a port reached through a narrow passage. Accidents and spills are almost guaranteed, and just one would pollute the for decades.
However, the danger to the world as a whole is even worse.
The Gay Pride parade in London has gone in for corporation "sponsorship" to the point that it celebrates capitalism more than anything else.
The fascist frenzy in Italy against immigrant threatens the human rights of everyone in Italy.
I can imagine Italian thugs eagerly awaiting an opportunity to frame and beat up protesters, as they did in Genoa in 2000.
(Satire) "Simply put, I am forced to tear kids away from their parents, because I am legally prohibited from throttling immigrants until their bodies go limp," said Sessions.
US citizens: call on Representatives to use a discharge petition and vote for network neutrality.
US citizens: call on Nielsen, head of the Department of Harshness and Sadism, to resign.
Polish judges describe the government's attacks on their independence.
Record 68.5 Million People Fleeing War Or Persecution Worldwide.
James Hansen warns of the great climate hoax: governments that pretend they are taking adequate steps to protect civilization and nature from global heating disaster.
Daily coverage of the bullshitter's latest tweets is a distraction from the right-wing activities of the Democratic Party establishment.
(Satire) Onion Social announces the very first-of-its-kind genital recognition software.
By 2100, over 2 million homes in the US may become unusable due to regular flooding caused by global heating.
The article focuses on the consequent decrease in property tax revenue, which is worrying about the tail instead of the dog.
Under the hopelessness and stress of poverty in the US today, you almost need to be a superman to make a long-term plan to better your own life. Everything is stacked against you, and you know it.
The head of the Department of Harshness and Sadism told a Congressional hearing that the department was not taking children away from their parents.
Lying blatantly directly to Congress is an escalation in the general policy of bullshitting. The US system of government is based on the assumption that checks and balances will limit lying. Now that Republicans in Congress permit, even encourage officials to lie to their faces, the system is breaking down.
Greece has surrendered to another round of economic crushing by the Euro zone banksters, in exchange for more loans that it won't be able to pay back.
MRI studies show that users quickly learn to stop seeing security warnings. They ignore the warnings at an unconscious level, so they do not become consciously aware of the warnings.
The copyright censorship system that the EU is on the verge of adopting would directly violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Please don't follow those writers in referring to works people want to publish as "content". The term disparages those works.
Plutocrats say the US economy is in "great shape". That's true — for plutocrats only.
The US now has "jobs for everyone", but the pay is so bad you need to work two full-time jobs to support yourself.
US citizens: oppose cute smiley-face labels for GMOs.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect wildlife in the farm bill.
US citizens: Oppose mining right next to Yellowstone. The mines' pollution won't stop at the boundary of the park.
There is a new system in Mexico for rigging elections: assassinating candidates. Over 100 candidates have been assassinated in the current election campaign.
Americans own 40% of the world's guns.
Salafi Arabia and the US rejected a cease-fire plan for Hodeidah based on placing it under UN control. They seem to be dead-set on killing lots of Yemenis.
The UK minister allowed epileptic boy Billy Caldwell to have marijuana oil as a special exception, but only for three weeks. After that, his illness will be untreated again.
At least the minister wants to change the law.
The "war on drugs" creates a dynamic in which politicians compete to be the "toughest". Therefore they bend over backwards to do harm. I'm glad the policy might be changed in this one narrow area, but that is not enough.
Increasing numbers of poor people around the world don't have access to clean water, but the cost of solving this problem would not be very much if the rich were not grabbing ever more of the world's wealth.
US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships.
The article's doubt that Russia is a dictatorship seems to indicate bias, but the statistics are surely correct.
"Nazis separated me from my parents as a child. The trauma lasts a lifetime."
The sadist sponsors Nazis today; no wonder he acts like one.
Turkey's Islamists And Secularists Join Forces in Bid to Unseat Erdoğan.
300,000 houses in the US will suffer frequent flooding due to global heating in just the next 30 years.
Saboteur Sessions has decided to deny asylum to people fleeing from the violence of gangs and spouses.
He has already corrupted the immigration hearings by giving judges quotas that are incompatible with giving any real attention to each case.
A campaign launched by — amazingly — the supermarket chain Carrefour has made the EU pull back from the strict regulation that kept many varieties of vegetables and fruits out of agriculture.
Activists have been campaigning against this regulation for years, but their voice was not heeded.
Uber is pushing taxi drivers to suicide.
Don't be a customer for Uber!
The sadist may have gone too far, building concentration camps for thousands of children.
Taking children away from their parents to punish the parents is a form of terrorism — it is hostage-taking. Putin is already using that tactic. I wonder if the sadist got the idea from him.
The workers who are supposed to "care for" these child hostages are forbidden to touch them.
Is this an intentional plan to maximize the terror by causing them maximum permanent damage? I am sure the sadist's advisers know what happens to children who don't get held and stroked. They will suffer for years, perhaps for their whole lives.
Supporters of the sadist have a new slogan: "Save the fetuses, torture the children!" Not that they really care about fetuses; that's just an excuse for making other women and children suffer.
Under the principle of necessity, violence would be legally justified to rescue those children and reunite them with their parents — if that is the only way to do it.
Can US Government 'Secretly Plot to Assassinate' Americans Without Due Process? Judge Says No, Allowing Case Against 'Kill List' to Proceed.
The Warner media conglomerate that owns Harry Potter crushed fan conventions with legal threats.
The company was not legally compelled to do this: it was a choice, and Warner chose to be nasty, motivated by greed. In moral terms, greed is not an excuse for an action that is nasty. Morally, Warner has no excuse.
I still maintain the boycott against buying Harry Potter products (including books), and I hope that this new act of aggression towards fans diminishes their inclination to buy those products.
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the right to food, housing, healthcare, and vital social services. Governments reject the idea that people can enforce this right, but they could instead uphold it.
New York State has sued to close the Trump family foundation for persistent violation of the laws for "charitable" foundations.
The leaders of the campaign to take the UK out of the EU coordinated with the Russian government, and lied about it.
A Tory minister proposes to force people to show ID to connect to the internet in any public place in the UK.
If you are in the UK, please tell your MP that you hate this idea.
The press gives the bullshitter implicit support by repeating the terms he uses to frame issues his way.
This article, by George Lakoff who deeply understands the matter, also recommends ways to resist this manipulation. My practice of rejecting words that frame issues in ways I don't support is one of those ways.
This also shows why it is so important to talk about "free/libre software" and avoid the terms "open" and "closed".
US thug departments are now being offered camera drones that feed AI programs that are supposed to detect violent attacks.
If they really only detect crimes of violence, this wouldn't bother me too much. I fear they will be used also to track people who are not committing crimes of violence on the street.
The US border thugs are systematically denying refugees the right to apply for asylum at the border, by refusing to let them into the border checkpoint. Each time they try, they are told "come back later", day after day. The agents say that there is no room to process refugees, but facts show this is bullshit. They back down when someone is taking notes.
If the European Union does not develop a way to share the short-term burden of refugees, it is likely to fall into the politics of the armed lifeboat.
The Tories say they will put more money into the NHS, but say nothing sensible about where the money will come from.
The only place it really can come from is the rich, but the Tories don't want to tax the rich, so I think they might end up not really putting the extra money into the NHS.
In the US: protest on June 30 against the sadist's family separation policy.
US citizens: Call on the Department of Harshness and Sadism to desist from separating families at the US border.
"To survive our high-speed society, cultivate 'temporal bandwidth'."
Note the curious opposition between this advice and other advice to "live for today" and "focus on the present."
Several reasons why the US needs to bring back the Glass-Steagall Act in its strongest form.
Businesses constantly pressure to weaken and then eliminate the regulations that protect the public from their power. We need to elect candidates that don't feel a need to assuage their calculated dissatisfaction; who are ready to answer them with "Tough," or "Go jump in the lake!" Saying that in a polite guise is ok, provided it is no less firm.
The UK's minister in charge made a special exception to allow a child to have the marijuana oil that is the only effective treatment for his epilepsy.
His mother demands a general policy change rather than a special personal exception.
A court ordered the UK government to publish its files about the 1984 Amritsar massacre to show whether the UK government was involved.
In China, outright censorship is used together with other methods to "manage" communication so that it becomes useless for dissent.
Facebook answered senators' questions with 500 pages, but parts of it are doubletalk.
We Need to Save Ignorance From AI.
This is another reason to limit the design of systems so that they don't collect so much data about people.
Designing city streets primarily for cars leads to many kinds of problems for the city's inhabitants.
I mostly agree with the article, but I disagree on one point: lowering speed limits. Most people need a way to get around the city quickly. That can be cars, or it can be buses; but if all vehicles are required to move slowly, neither cars nor buses can do the job.
I don't mention metro trains because few cities have developed trains to the point where they are almost sufficient without buses. The only ones I know that come close are Paris and Tokyo. Most cities can't afford to try to develop a train network that can get everywhere buses go.
In the 1800s, British publishers armed with copyright made books into luxury goods, while German publishers with no copyright system made books available to all. Counter to what the copyright lobby pretends, this led to far more books' being published in Germany. This made education available in Germany to people that couldn't have afforded it in Britain.
Attacking Iran could be an opportunity/excuse to reimpose the military draft in the US.
Young Americans should start organizing now, against the draft and against attacking Iran.
The US establishment rejects the idea of peace in Korea unless it is achieved through the total submission of North Korea.
As I see it, avoiding nuclear war with the repressive nuclear-armed North Korean regime is important progress, just as avoiding nuclear war with the repressive nuclear-armed Soviet regime was important progress.
Progressives Denounce Democratic Senators for Trying to Keep Trump on a 'Permanent War Footing' in Korea.
Some establishment Democrats are highly unhappy with the idea of peace in the Korean peninsula.
South Korean President Moon could guide things to a good outcome.
"Income inequality isn't the defining social issue of our time because your neighbor bought a slightly bigger house or nicer car than you did. It's because multi-millionaires and billionaires are competing for slightly bigger mega-yachts while our friends … plead for help with basic medical expenses."
Thugs in Newark, New Jersey, have set up cameras in public places and made the feeds available to everyone. They invite everyone to watch everyone else.
This is even worse for privacy than if only the thugs are watching. (And they are, of course — and surely saving the recordings permanently.)
The UK's high tech unified system for welfare benefits is a catastrophe for the people it is supposed to serve.
Secondarily, it fails to deliver the efficiency improvements that it was supposed to provide. Not that operating efficiency could justify cutting people's benefits so that they go hungry or become homeless.
The IPCC's draft report says that we need "rapid and far-reaching" measures to curb global heating fast.
This requires kicking out the fossil fuel puppets that control the US, Canada, Australia and UK.
A Florida town's thugs boasted of a perfect record for solving burglaries. They framed someone for all of them.
These thugs now face charges. Hooray!
Since US immigration prisons are full, the border sadists are moving 1600 arrested border-crossers into the normal federal prison system.
Eventually the numbers will require the US to build new prisons. The private prison companies will love this.
A Minimum-Wage Worker Can't Afford a 2-Bedroom Apartment Anywhere in the U.S. In most cities, even a 1-bedroom apartment is too expensive.
China is requiring all cars to carry RFID tracking devices.
Let this be a warning to us of what tyrants will do in our countries, if we don't organize to stop them.
The baby-based fear industry will sell parents all sorts of products to prevent extremely unlikely dangers.
Understanding this example may help you understand the terrorist-based fear industry, which will sell all sorts of "security" policies at the cost of your civil liberties and democracy.
Yemeni human rights defender Abdulrasheed al-Faqih keeps getting arrested by various sides in the war there. Although they hate each other, repression is one area where they agree.
In Camden, New Jersey, the water supply has been privatized. The water company refused to reveal how many customers' water supply it has shut off.
As usual, privatization blocks accountability. All private water supply companies should be made into public agencies.
One US store chain is encouraging farms to avoid neonicotinoid pesticides.
The bully's latest sadistic plan is to imprison thousands of children in rude improvised prisons made of tents.
With so many children in prison, it will be easy to lose track of those that have special medical needs, and easy to sweep their suffering or deaths under the rug.
Please avoid the term "tent cities" which, as the article says, attempts to deny that they are prisons.
When criticism of Israel is put off-limits by labeling it as "antisemitism", real antisemites take advantage by presenting that as "evidence" that Jews rule the world.
In fact, many Jews now criticize the occupation of Palestine, but the most powerful US defenders of Israel's occupation practices are not Jews. They are Christian extremists who aim to destroy the world (literally!) by making events occur that resemble biblical prophecies. Some of them are politically powerful because they are rich and back Republican candidates.
Amnesty accuses the Palestinian Authority of torturing Palestinians involved in peaceful protests, as well as one of Amnesty's staff who was monitoring events at the protest.
Contractors are already making tens of millions of dollars helping tear refugee families apart.
Millions of Americans live in abject poverty such as we thought we had eliminated. Republicans are working hard at making it worse.
The UK has ordered a rap group to stop chanting texts that promote gang violence.
It is legitimate to stop people from inciting violence. Where to draw the line is the difficult question.
The merger of AT&T and Time Warner is likely to inspire a wave of other mergers in the US. Each merger advantages the owners and harms the rest of society.
My proposed solution is a tax designed to pressure big companies to split up.
The former head of the Bank of Canada wants Trudeau to be ready to kill protesters to push the Unkinder Morgan pipeline through. Then the pipeline's oil exports could kill a lot more people.
Precisely because the demand for oil (and fossil fuel overall) is still growing, the whole world is in grave danger. We need to reduce the supply, so as to push up the price and drive users to install renewable energy instead. That will reduce the demand.
(Satire) … the president's lawyers reportedly moved to discredit Michael Cohen Thursday by pointing out his long history of committing crimes for Donald Trump.
(Satire) 3-year-old Honduran immigrant Luis Pereira still hopes to achieve the American dream of someday living in a bigger, better cage.
Bezos is treating the workers at the Washington Post like the workers in Amazon warehouses.
An Iranian refugee that Australia imprisoned in Nauru in 2013 has been begging ever since to see a psychiatrist. Recently he had become too depressed to respond, and finally he killed himself.
Both Australia and Nauru are responsible for the cruel treatment of refugees, under the principle that when A hires B to do wrong to people, each of A and B has full moral responsibility for the wrong. Neither one can cite the other as an excuse.
Nauru is a tyrannical state which excludes foreign journalists and does not recognize rule of law.
It is justified to rebel against such a regime, and that's better than killing yourself.
Vietnamese-American William Nguyen faces prosecution in Vietnam for participation in a protest.
Vietnam is ruled by a "Communist" government that is totally plutocratist.
Do-dirty is using a fight against real terrorism in the island of Mindanao as a smokescreen for supporting plutocratist terrorism. Mining companies are murdering peasants or just taking their land, with the help of the official thugs. Targeted farmers are arrested then reported as "terrorists" who had "surrendered".
When the state starts shooting "drug dealers" on the street, that won't be limited to drug dealers.
Various views of the negotiations between the US and North Korea.
The best way to commemorate the people who died in the London public housing fire a year ago is to make enough public housing in the UK.
Restore the 4th calls on the US Senate to eliminate the law that authorizes imprisonment without trial.
Argentina's Chamber of Deputies has passed a bill to legalize abortion. Now it goes to the senate.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose Republican bills that would not end the separation of families.
US citizens: call on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to investigate the corrupt practices of its acting head, Mulvaney.
US border thugs try to question people where they have no jurisdiction. You can stop them by pointing out that fact.
A BBC reporter in Malta was arrested and separately beaten up for trying to show the annual shooting of migrating birds, some of then endangered.
Delhi's level of air toxicity is beyond what their meters can indicate.
It is hard to expose prosecutorial misconduct, so the real frequency of this is surely far more than we can measure by how often it is exposed and remedied.
The Misogynistic Logic of Jeff Sessions’s Horrifying New Asylum Policy For Domestic Violence Victims.
The bully admires dictators for their absolute power, but considers democratically elected leaders "weak" because they are constrained by rule of law.
Defining antisemitism carefully to distinguish it from political criticism of Israel and political pressure on Israel.
Social mobility is falling in wealthy countries. In the UK …it could take [on the average] at least five generations for the child of a poor family to reach the average national income (roughly $40,000 a year).
Over 60 species of mammals become more nocturnal when humans are in the area. This is presumably because humans scare them, but forgoing daytime activity can make it hard for them to survive.
Is Competition Driving Innovation Or Damaging Scientific Research?
I have to comment that doing similar research two or three times is not necessarily a waste. In redundancy is reliability.
French border thugs are supposed to let immigrant minors enter from Italy, but instead jail them without food or water, steal their phones, then send them walking back barefoot.
Those refugees are not getting proper care in Italy. Proper care includes contraception and instructions on how to use it.
More broadly, a large part of the persecution and violence that makes millions flee was caused by wealthy and powerful countries such as France and the US. The US is partially responsible for the coup in Honduras and the recent stolen election. If Americans don't want Hondurans to come fleeing, how about if we allow them to have a democratic government in their own country?
Even spy agencies must be subject to disclosure laws.
An Australian journalist is charged with espionage in Cambodia. For doing journalism, I suppose.
Cambodia has abolished freedom of the press, along with all the opposition parties.
The US, UK and France are supporting the Salafi Arabian attack on Hodeida.
Is it a bad idea to use curse words when talking about the bully?
It is true that the bully is equally vulgar and has no basis to complain. It is surely true that his supporters don't care about our cursing at him except as an excuse.
Whether we curse at him or not, it won't influence them. Their reaction to cursing is beside the point. What matters is the possible reaction of those who we might be able to influence.
I'd rather call him a bully, a bullshitter, a cheater, a harasser, a war-lover. Those words make actual points, valid points.
When the media reprove progressives for cursing at the bully, it is clear that they are applying a double standard. That's what we should say to them: "Why criticize us while giving the bully a free pass?"
Right-wing extremist Quillinan went to a rally in Berkeley, California, armed and attacked antifascists. The thugs treated Quillinan as a victim rather than as a criminal, and together they prosecuted several antifascists.
It fits a general pattern where right-wing thugs lie to attack their political enemies.
Don't believe anything a thug says in court if it inculpates a black or a progressive protester. While it is not impossible that blacks or progressive protesters can do wrong, a thug is not a reliable witness about them.
Proposing that European leaders call for a UN mandate for Palestine.
A child has severe epilepsy and the only treatment that works is made from THC. This has put the spotlight on the UK's continuing War on Drugs, which requires it to pretend that THC has no medical value.
Europe's right-wing extremist parties are organizing and taking up the Nazi salute.
Democrat Rep. Crowley voted to weaken the CFPB in favor of businesses that had hired his brother to lobby for them.
Whether or not the fee to his brother was the reason, he supported the wrong side. But not only once. Crowley has a history of ties to financial businesses, and using his political clout on their behalf.
He also voted for the PAT RIOT Act and for invading Iraq.
Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh is a political prisoner of the Iranian right wing. It is plausible that the bully's cancellation of the nonnuclear deal with Iran gave them an opportunity to do this.
Some lessons from US history about progressive political movements.
The censorship law that blocks sex workers from online advertising is also suppressing them from organizing and communicating to the public.
The naming deal for "Macedonia" seems to be falling apart at both ends.
Jogger Who Trashed Homeless Man's Things Charged with Robbery in New Dispute.
"Zero tolerance" policies tend to mean suffering for anyone who makes a mistake. They are generally a very bad idea. When applied to being an immigrant with a green card, they produce massive suffering.
Seattle's city council repealed the per-employee tax on businesses that it adopted a few weeks ago.
Taxing businesses more is necessary, but taxing per job is a bad idea since it would pressure businesses to cut jobs.
The military-industrial complex is freaking out at the possibility of peace on the Korean peninsula.
The US deportation thugs are terrorizing whole communities by arresting hundreds of people, scaring hundreds more into fleeing.
Those deported are not even allowed to see their families again. Some are cut off from lawyers.
SCROTUS want to cut taxes for the rich again.
The Democratic National Committee voted to reject donations from the fossil fuel industry.
Those companies can still support individual candidates and PACs, so this doesn't eliminate their power to corrupt Democrats. However, the rejection will influence politics.
Palestinians need international protection from the violence of Israelis. Only the US prevents the UN from taking action.
This will get even worse if Israel adopts proposed laws that would give soldiers immunity for war crimes and criminalize anyone that documents those crimes.
Imagine if it were a crime to post a video of a thug beating up or killing a black.
The narcissist has a strong resemblance in personality to Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Over half of US women professors and university staff report sexual harassment.
A basic principle of justice is that whether some action on your part would be wrong may not depend on another person arbitrary opinion of it. A just criterion must be something you can in principle apply to your own actions before you do them.
It follows that it is unjust to criticize people for making "unwanted advances". In some cases the only way to find out whether an advance is wanted is to make one.
(Satire) The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced Tuesday plans to escalate human rights abuses to curry more favor with the United States.
Republicans plan to amend the constitution of North Carolina to impose an ID requirement for voting. But the citizens will have to vote on it first.
The bully said that Dictator Kim's systematic oppression of Koreans is nothing important.
I support negotiating peace with North Korea notwithstanding Kim's oppression, because war could do immense harm. If that requires the US to keep quiet about the issue of Kim's oppression for the time being, that can be worth while. But there is no need to make statements that it is not horrible.
The US returned nurse Anthonia Nwaorie's $41,000, which she was bringing to a clinic in Nigeria.
Deportation to a violent country which you knew only as a child is very dangerous.
To deport people for getting a traffic ticket reflects a policy that aims to cause suffering under whatever pretext. The authorities deny this, of course, but we will not make the mistake of believe them.
I criticize the article on one point: It asks us to sympathize more with Sr. Cano Pacheco because he had a child at the young age of 19. It is irresponsible to do that; people should not. To suggest that people would deserve less sympathy if they have helped stabilize the human population is unfair to us.
However, that is a side issue. The way the US treated him was wrong, child or no child.
Stiglitz: the Euro zone rules are causing great suffering in many countries, and Italy might be able to crack it up if it isn't reformed soon.
The Department of Heavy Surveillance (DHS) has a database that will enable it to investigate everyone in the US, all the time.
If we allow this to operate, it could make us safer from minor street crime, but it will surely make us more vulnerable to suppression of our human rights by the state.
Especially we should not allow systematic face recognition in public, by anyone including agents and agencies of the state, in the absence of specific court authorization.
Maine's Republican legislators have fought tooth and nail against ranked-choice voting, but they couldn't stop it.
Tanzania has shut down independent web publication by taxing it so heavily that most people can't even think of paying it.
Taking statistics on foot and car traffic in a way that is useful for planning but can't track anyone.
"Smart" phones are always listening for keywords, and there may be thousands of keywords.
When Will [sweatshop service] Companies Admit That Their Workers Have Rights?
US citizens: call on Congress to block any bill that would supercharge Trump's war on immigrants.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the sadism towards immigrant women and children.
Mapuche are burning farms and farm vehicles to chase others off their traditional land.
Doxxing, Assault, Death Threats: the New Dangers Facing US Journalists Covering [right-wing] Extremism.
Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested and told she had been sentenced to 5 years in prison on charges she had not been informed about.
The Antarctic ice is melting faster. This will lead to 1 meter of sea-level rise by 2070, assuming no unexpected increase due to unpredictable tipping points.
Lush has put new "spycops" posters into its store windows, resisting the thugs' attempt to intimidate them.
North Carolina proposes to allow thugs to look at anybody's prescription history without giving any justification.
I think that centralized databases of people's prescription history are dangerous already.
Honduras is suppressing protest against its rigged election by arresting and prosecuting large numbers of protesters.
Here's info about the rigged election.
Scott Pruitt's Corruption Is Bad, But His Planetary Sabotage Is Worse.
A court has ordered the EPA to do some of the jobs it is supposed to do. However, I doubt that courts will correct all Pruitt's acts of sabotage, and I am not sure he will even comply with their decisions.
What Do You Call a Country That Institutionalizes Child Abuse? The United States.
The EU has drafted a proposed directive to protect whistleblowers, but it is too narrow and limited. This page describes the limitations and recommends changes.
I get the impression that it is aimed at protecting only those who reveal business wrongdoing, not those that reveal crimes and oppression committed by the state.
The Trump family's income from renting their political power is in the tens of millions, perhaps hundreds. All of it is corruption.
When Clinton got paid tens of thousands for speeches, that was not corruption in the same sense. It was however a reason to expect that she would probably favor the banksters (over the non-rich, and even over cities and states and smaller businesses) if she were elected.
Trillions of dollars of planned investment in extracting more natural gas threatens to blow past the world's carbon budget.
Salafi Arabia, backed by the US, has attacked the Yemeni port of Hodeidah.
It claims this is ok because it first asked the Houthis to abandon the city and they wouldn't.
The Houthis took most of Yemen pretty quickly, and I think the war would have ended in 2016 if Obama hadn't supported Salafi Arabia in intervening. The bulk of the suffering caused by the war has been since then. It would have been much less if the US had done nothing and thus let the Houthis win.
NAFTA and other trade treaties should have expiration dates, so that they don't function as weapons against democracy and public safety.
Opposition to the existing business supremacy treaties is one of the few points on which I agree with the cheater. Not that he cares about democracy or public safety. I've read that he is for certain businesses and against others. But I will not change my conclusion just because he supports it.
The US government made a propaganda film extolling Dictator Kim. Supposedly it was meant as flattery for him.
The film was signed with the name of a real film company that had nothing to do with making it.
US citizens: call on candidates to pledge not to take fossil fuel money.
US citizens: tell Congress to pass the Separated Children Act.
US citizens: oppose fracking in the Little Colorado River basin.
1/5 of the mammal species in Britain are likely to be gone from there in 10 years, due to habitat destruction.
Planned Parenthood Chapter Should Back Its Workers, who have decided to unionize.
Global CO2 emissions are increasing again, partly because China is burning more coal.
A Norwegian court ordered volunteers to take their database of Norwegian court opinions off the internet, for the sake of a copyright parasite.
Notable political, academic and cultural figures remind Israel that forcibly transferring a Palestinian population out of the region they live in would be a war crime.
(Satire) President Trump concluded his summit with Kim Jong-un Monday by securing a $10 billion trade deal to sell both strategic and tactical nuclear warheads directly to North Korea.
Swedish parliamentarians propose to require the largest banks to handle cash in all their branches.
If you are a Swedish citizen, please tell them your support for this measure and other measures to defend the use of cash. Say that anonymous purchasing is important for you.
If you live in Sweden or have connections with Sweden, please pass the word!
Maltese officials are stalling the investigation of the murder of corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Zephyr Teachout: Mega-mergers like AT&T And Time Warner Crush American Democracy.
The big US banks got billions of dollars from the Republican tax attacks. The billions are going almost entirely to the owners.
Two Israeli soldiers were charged with killing an unarmed Palestinian teenager, but charges have been dropped.
It's like when thugs kill unarmed blacks in the US.
Israel accused Gazans of launching fire-kites and said that they set wildfires in Israel.
Setting wildfires can cause widespread damage, even kill. (They probably can't spread as much in arid southern Israel as they can in wooded parts of California.) Such kites are an indiscriminate weapon. If Gazans did indeed launch them — we cannot take that as certain because Israel says so — then Israel is entitled to fight back with the legitimate military means.
However, Israel's siege of Gaza, and its practice of shooting at anyone that comes near the fence (which is inside Gaza, not at the border, I have read), are morally comparable, except much larger in effect. If Israel demands compensation for wildfires, that is legitimate, but shouldn't Israel pay compensation for the fishing boats seized or sunk, the fish not caught, the cutoff from travel especially for study and medical care, and all the civilian casualties of its bombardment and shooting?
Landowners in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Unkinder Morgan pipeline are building solar installations on the land that would be seized.
70+ Internet Luminaries Ring the Alarm on EU Copyright Filtering Proposal.
I condemn the automated copyright censorship system too, but I would have refused to sign that letter because it endorses the bogus premise that the copyright industry uses to justify the War on Sharing: "for creators to receive fair remuneration for the use of their works". These funds go more to editors than to artists (let's not call them "creators"), but even the artists are not entitled to "remuneration" simply because people look at, or share, their work. What we ought to do is support artists (especially non-star artists) better, not give "fair remuneration" that goes mainly to stars.
I can't recommend that you use the EFF's campaign site, since it requires running nonfree Javascript code. Instead, please contact your MEPs and those on the JURI committee. Also please contact the EFF to politely ask them to fix the site, if the campaign continues past June 21.
Net Neutrality Can Still Be Saved.
I hope we can legislate full network neutrality some day.
US citizens: support the Workplace Democracy Act.
Also ask candidates whether they support it.
US citizens: tell the FBI to stop labeling Black Lives Matter activists as supposed violent extremists.
Poor People's Campaign protesters were arrested in protests around the US, including some of the campaign's leaders.
Kentucky created new rules for limiting access to the state capitol just to keep the Poor People's Campaign out.
A part of former Yugoslavia has agreed to change its name to Northern Macedonia, to resolve a dispute with Greece.
It is indisputable that Pella, the capital of ancient Macedonia, is in Greece. The burial tumulus of Philip the Great, in Pella, has been hollowed out as a museum so that its interior can be visited.
The two countries have a history of laying claim to each other's traditions.
Ireland to Vote on Removing Blasphemy as an Offence.
A Private Prison Company Gave 1,300 Recordings of Confidential Inmate Phone Calls to Prosecutors.
Court documents show that the citizenship question being put in the 2020 US census was explicitly intended to achieve an undercount of non-citizens.
US veterans enjoy good medical care, funded by the government. Plutocratists want to privatize veterans' medical care so it won't be good any more.
Pristine areas of the Amazon rainforest are absorbing 1/3 less carbon now than they were 10 years ago. This seems to be a positive feedback loop of global heating.
Selling off public housing is the cause of bad housing situations in the UK.
"The crux of America's current constitutional crisis is this: Our system of government was designed to constrain power, but Trump doesn’t want to be constrained."
Right-wing "centrist" Democrats have failed at the polls in recent years, so when they win primaries today, that doesn't bode well, not even for expelling Republicans.
The worse problem is that replacing Republicans with "centrist" Democrats doesn't get us officials that want to fix what's wrong with the US.
(Satire) "Man, I’m almost positive I’ve seen that person before, but this was years ago — like, eight or nine lives, at least," said the Dalai Lama.
The warlover and the neocons have no more of a plan for how to control Iran than Dubya had for how to control Iraq.
Salafi Arabia, the UAE and/or the US bombed and destroyed a cholera clinic run by Medecins sans Frontieres.
All three countries are morally responsible for the attack.
Activists have not given up on reversing Saboteur Pai's abolition of the US network neutrality regulations, which were always too weak but better than none at all.
Researchers studying South Africa's oldest and largest baobab trees (over 1000 years old) found that many of them died in the past decade.
Similar things are happening in other parts of the world.
EU citizens: call MEPs to oppose the copyright censorship directive.
"Low-income black fathers want to be good dads. The system won't let them."
I support the article's recommendations, but above all we need to lead people not to have children when they don't have the funds to raise a child. There is nothing virtuous or desirable about making more children.
Unpredictable problems can happen to any family, and one of the state's responsibilities is to provide such parents all the help they need, including what they need so as to raise their existing children free from want or stress.
However, if it is predictable that any children certain people have would live in want and stress, the best outcome is that they don't have children.
Summer insect populations in parts of Britain have fallen drastically. Some bird species are starting to disappear.
None of the political forces in the UK wants to look at the Russian interference in the referendum on leaving the UK.
Cartoonist Rob Rogers was fired by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for mocking the bully. He was told to express the views of the editorial team, and refused to accept that.
Indonesia has improved its marine conservation, in particular protecting sharks and rays.
Many large, famous US companies have been caught cheating workers of their pay. The total probably comes to tens of billions of dollars, though we have no reliable figures.
Naturally the cheater wants to eliminate penalties for cheating.
The US deportation thug agency is coercing Iraqi immigrants into agreeing to deportation — which would be especially disastrous for those that were born outside Iraq and don't speak Arabic. Those who are Chaldeans, not Muslims, would be in likely to be persecuted or killed for that if they were deported.
The Legal Fight to Leave the Dirtiest Fossil Fuels in the Ground. ALberta tar sands are among the dirtiest.
An EU proposal to improve international cooperation in wiretapping will naturally be used as an opportunity to attack everyone's privacy by cutting legal protections.
UK human rights organizations are suing to stop the massive use of facial recognition.
US citizens: call on Sessions to reunite imprisoned immigrants' families.
US citizens: call on the US to free asylum seeker Alejandra while she waits for her asylum ruling.
US citizens: call on Senator McConnell to allow a vote on protecting Mueller.
Dictator Kim turned out to be just Trump's kind of guy.
The agreement they made doesn't commit either side to much.
Some rebuke the bully for giving Kim a kind of legitimacy and getting no practical concessions in return.
However, denying Kim legitimacy was doing nothing to win any concessions from him, so the leverage that the US has forfeited was not worth much. Changing to a friendly tone might achieve some progress toward peace, and that progress could make possible concrete deals that are impossible today.
Or it might backfire and trigger a resumption of hostilities when the expectations of either side are disappointed.
History of US-North Korea Deals Shows Hard Part Is Making Them Stick.
Brazil has imposed 100% voting by computer, totally unverifiable.
Argentines are aware of how the IMF will crush them, and protested massively, but couldn't stop right-wing President Macri from putting their country under IMF power.
Plutocratist politicians are not interested in keeping Social Security and Medicare going. We need a progressive victory.
The plutocratists would rather simply pull the plug on the increasing fraction of Americans they deem surplus.
The bully has given Salafi Arabia the total military support of the US. He even accepted a medal from the king.
The US has no legitimate grounds to be involved in Salafi Arabia's attack on Yemen even slightly, and no sensible reason to want to be involved.
The US deportation thug department (ICE) was created in the name of "homeland security", and this promoted the fictitious idea that unauthorized immigrants are threats, even "terrorists".
This may explain the use of tactics that verge on terrorism — such as taking babies and children away from their parents, for no purpose except to terrify.
Since there is no real need for this agency, let's get rid of it.
I support this particular proposal despite the fact that it comes from the Antisocialist Party.
When big chain stores close, to revitalize shopping districts calls for non-chain stores, each different from the rest.
The Wall Street Journal Keeps Peddling Big Oil Propaganda.
As large, centralized companies come to dominate the internet for most users, they become choke points for censorship. (Please don't call them "cloud" anything — the real cloud is in the minds of the people who use that term.)
In the free world, we do not depend on those companies, or any specific companies. That is necessary for freedom.
Note that Telegram's cryptography software is not "proprietary" in the usual sense; the Telegram client is free software. WhatsApp, by contrast, is proprietary software, which is plenty of reason to refuse to run it.
Robot weeders could make herbicides obsolete, for farmers that can afford the robots, or cut the amount used by a factor of ten.
The US Supreme Court approved the practice of dropping voters from the list if they don't vote for several years.
I think this unfortunate, as it will stop some marginalized people from voting, but I doubt this is anywhere near as harmful as voter ID and crosscheck.
Italy's anti-immigration government has intentionally provoked an European Union crisis by refusing to let a ship, the Aquarius, land African refugees.
This reminds me of what happened to the MS St Louis, which sailed from Germany in 1939 with 900 Jewish refugees. Cuba, the US, and Canada refused to allow them in, so they had to return to Europe, which proved to be a dangerous place for them.
I believe this was one of the events that inspired the modern treaties about the right to asylum.
A patent application suggests Uber plans to use sensing in the phone to determine whether a client is inebriated.
Uber could multiply the price by 10 or 30, figuring the client would probably accept that high price without noticing it ;-}.
The bully broke off the meeting with Dictator Kim, then they arranged it again. But we don't know the sequence of real events. Did Kim eat crow to get a meeting with the bully, or did the bully eat crow to get a meeting with Kim? Or was it all a dance, jostling for who gets the public image of being most important?
Traffic signal systems designed to optimize driving make walking around the city 20% slower.
I would not assume that this is crucial to people's decisions about whether to walk or drive. It would have some effect, yes, but sometimes the effect would be that they take the bus.
If we change the design to favor pedestrians more, I would not want to take it to an absurd extreme. I as a pedestrian (which I usually am) would rather wait a couple of seconds than delay cars for ten seconds.
Activist Wayne Hsiung is facing the threat of years in prison in North Carolina for "stealing" a sick baby goat from a farm, then giving it treatment.
I do not support animal rights beyond certain limited points, but when I see businesses turn governments into their armed servants, I rankle.
Uri Avnery describes the powerful Israeli propaganda machine, which insists that everyone in Gaza is a "terrorist", especially protesters, and that the slightest pretext justifies killing them.
An Indian film star is being reviled for making a movie that involves a false flag terror attack carried out by extremist Hindus.
The scheme in the movie sounds to me (based on what the article says) too complicated and risky to be plausible, but extremist Hindus are no strangers to terrorism. It was an extremist Hindu that assassinated Mohatma Gandhi. The assassin was from an organization that is linked to the Hindu-theocratic party that now rules India.
Google is trying to patent a data compression system that Jarek Duda invented. He wants to make available to everyone for all use freely.
Applying for a patent on a computational idea is wrong, inherently wrong, unless it is blocked from use for aggression. One way to do this is with something like Twitter's defensive use commitment.
I urge people to demand that their employers do this. Or find another employer who will.
The son of an undercover thug (who lied to his mother) supports the "spycops" campaign and hopes it will pressure the thug department to tell him something about his father.
Please don't think that your own identity depends crucially on who your parents were or what they did. Their actions surely affected you, just as their genes did (in the usual case), but you are not responsible for them and they don't define you. It wasn't you that did them. You might regret those actions, appreciate them, reproach them, or admire them, but you never have a moral reason to feel ashamed of them.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency has weakened its standards for judging toxic chemicals.
This won't cause any immediate changes, but it is likely to enable some toxins to remain in our food, clothing, cosmetics, etc., in the future which would otherwise have been banned.
Puerto Rico's nondemocratic imposed government has made its priority paying the creditors — which means neglecting the people's hardship.
Animal rights activists are on trial in Utah for filming in factory farms, and for "stealing" diseased pigs that would have died soon, and curing them.
The prosecutors have corrupt personal links to factory farms, but the biggest corruption is that which procured these laws themselves.
The sadist's cruelty to targets of opportunity is distracting America from constructive action.
We need to try to protect border-crossers' children from trauma that they may never recover from. But we also need to focus on the linked long-term dangers such as global heating and plutocracy.
Progress is being made on removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
I would not bet civilization's survival on the success of this, but it would be good if it works. However, to avoid disaster this way would require lots of investment — and the fossil fuel interests will be against that.
The US TV networks often silence all criticism of major US industries that advertise on TV.
Rep. Pelosi, a plutocratist to the end, is doing her best to oppose Medicare for All.
People in many localities in the US don't have access to clean water.
Michigan is cutting off water to people in Flint and Detroit because they can't pay their water bills for lead-poisoned water. This while charging Nestle $200, total, for a quantity 100,000 times as much.
Cost of Government Rises When Local Newspaper Closes, Study Finds.
Sometimes the state should raise more money by taxing the rich, and spend it on the poor. But I suspect that is not what tends to happen when a newspaper closes.
Italy has refused to allow a boat carrying 600 refugees rescued at sea into any Italian port.
Women in Venezuela, in extreme poverty and unable to afford contraception, are turning to underground abortions, and to sterilization.
If fanatical US Christians get their way, they will ban both abortion and contraception. And they are not very far away from it. They might ban sterilization, too; it is against their religion.
The worst choice, in such a situation, is to have a baby which you can't afford to raise. Thus, the right thing to do is sterilization. If you are an adult today, there is no danger of an insufficiency of births before you are 55 years old.
Judge Temporarily Blocks Deportation of New York Pizza Shop Worker.
Do-dirty's Drugs War: How One Family Was Destroyed.
In generally, when a ruler says he will send thugs to kill all the drug dealers, they kill a lot of other people. This happened in Thailand some years ago, and it is happening now in Bangladesh.
A trial can fail to do justice, but having no trial is much worse.
I have chosen to use my alteration of his name, rather than his. To use his would support him.
Getting rid of Do-dirty could end the murder of the poor, but there is only one way to end their hunger: to have a lot fewer babies.
The pretext for attacking Hodeidah is that Houthis receive arms through there.
Where does Salafi Arabia receive arms from the US? Why call one of them "smugling" and not the other?
The seizure of reporter Ali Watkins' phone and email contact records — not from her, but from companies — shows that US reporters must be extremely careful when talking with confidential sources that report on government wrongdoing.
Canada is suffering from homelessness like the US. Many homeless people have found shelter in all-night coffee shops.
New dockless scooters threaten to call the thugs if someone stands on them and doesn't log in.
One person quoted compares them to police state behavior but does not mention the aspect that is most like a police state: the scooters require users to identify themselves, then track where people go.
This is just as bad as Uber or Lyft, so I urge you to reject them absolutely, and tell other people why you do.
Correcting myths about Gaza. For instance, even Hamas is willing to make peace; it is Israel that won't.
6% of US workers work precariously in the service sweatshop economy.
Sean Hannity urged people to commit obstruction of justice. The punishment for this is up to 20 years in prison.
He probably feels he is safe because the cheater would pardon him.
The cheater has allowed ZTE to get back in business with a billion-dollar fine.
I don't know what ZTE's overall income is, or whether that fine is enough to motivate ZTE to avoid the risk of another fine.
Lush took down the "spycops" posters at its stores because former thugs threatened the staff.
Have they got recordings of these threats? It would be enlightening to publish the recordings so as to hold those former thugs accountable.
Yet another reason why drug companies shouldn't fund (and thus control) clinical trials of drugs: they withhold important data.
The saboteur's tariffs on imported solar panels have caused cancellation of 12 billion dollars in solar power projects.
These tariffs were not designed to effectively promote investment in US solar panel manufacture. They will last only a few years, which is not long enough for such investment to pay off. New factories would take time to set up, reducing the period of time for which they could be profitable.
The saboteur is blatantly dishonest, but he is cunning. I think this is a cunning plan to slow down the migration of the US to solar power, and that he did this for the sake of the fossil fools he generally serves.
A coal magnate dictated memos for the bullshitter to sign.
How The War Industry Corrupts The U.S. Congress. This includes several Democratic senators.
Many US thug departments send thugs to train with Israeli soldiers. This way they learn the attitudes that make them quick to shoot unarmed blacks.
Nearly 1,800 Immigrant Families Separated at US Border in Four Months.
Senator Merkley visited one prison, and describes how immigrants must sleep on the floor in cages.
US border thugs take children away from their parents as a means of pressuring them to plead guilty and/or drop their bid for asylum in order to get their children back. Parents might feel they must protect their children from the trauma of being "cared for" by overworked strangers who might despise them.
In addition to this cruelty, note that Sessions refuses to recognize that people who ask for political asylum are not breaking any laws.
Sorry, persecuted people — the US is not the kind of asylum you were looking for. It is the other kind.
The cheater rejects the idea that asbestos in his buildings could cause disease, and has had Saboteur Pruitt invent an excuse to make the EPA disregard the issue.
In parts of the US, state and local laws require removal of asbestos or forbid its use. Therefore, some of his buildings might not have any. Also, the risk from spending a few nights in a hotel which has asbestos in it somewhere may be too small to worry about. On the other hand, the staff might have a reason for concern.
Under a plutocratic regime, those staff, if they get sick, will be left to cope, on their own, asbestos they can.
The bully wants to export US mismanagement of the dairy industry to Canada, but Canada won't stand for it.
If this leads to cancellation of NAFTA, that would be a tremendous advance since NAFTA includes the ISDS (I Sue Democratic States) provision that allows foreign companies to sue to abolish any laws that get in their way.
The Teamsters' Union has learned that it is a mistake to abandon future workers to preserve the wage level of the current workers.
A US court ordered the Environmental Poisoning Agency to hand over any scientific material it might have that justifies Saboteur Pruitt's global heating denialism.
The EPA claims it would have to spend "countless hours" studying literature about global heating. Perhaps trying to find the few (if any) documents that deny global heating, among the huge stacks that demonstrate global heating, would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Facebook made a deal with Huawei to give it access to personal data of Facebook useds. This included useds who were customers of Huawei, and their "friends". This even though the US government considers Huawei a spy for China.
Facebook did the same thing for other phone manufacturers such as Apple and Blackberry.
Even if you are not a customer of those companies, you are still better off not being a used of Facebook.
Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies.
Hello, Alexa, were you made in a Chinese sweatshop?
In 1921, mobs of rampaging whites burned down the black neighborhood of Tulsa, imprisoning and killing many of the inhabitants, all as the government stood by.
Our Plastic Pollution Crisis Is Too Big for Recycling to Fix.
After Turkey conquered the Afrin region of Syria, and many Kurds fled, Turkey settled Arabs in their homes.
After 30 years of a life sentence for possession of a lot of cocaine, under a law repealed 20 years ago, Rick Wershe has a chance at resentencing.
UK universities must now take attendance of foreign students so as to help deport them if they don't come to class. Foreign professors are likely to get deported if they go on strike.
This means that oppressing foreign visitors helps oppress Britons.
The US is pioneering a new kind of poverty, where most people's income is large compared with ordinary poor countries, but the cost of living is so high that life for most people is walking on a knife edge.
A hundred years ago, poor people in the US made very little money, but they could live on very little money. To Kill a Mockingbird refers to a schoolchild that couldn't accept a loan of a few cents because his family wouldn't be able to repay it. But they did not die from this. They evidently lived in a house they owned and didn't have to buy very much.
The equivalent purchasing power today might be ten dollars. Anyone in the US today that never had ten dollars would die.
US business executives intend to make sure that workers don't get much in the way of raises despite full employment.
This means that workers must organize — through unions, or through laws — so that employers can't do this.
The US ambassador to Israel told journalists to "keep your mouths shut" rather than criticize Israel for massacres of protesters.
Like a typical trumpet, he claims that the US media are biased against his side. The fact is that they usually go about "blaming Palestinians for their own slaughter".
The Israeli army will not allow us to find out who shot medic Razan al-Najjar, but we know the identities of those who wrote the orders that permitted this and those who protect the killer.
Save the Children found that 95% of the children in Gaza showed deep psychological distress.
Amnesty International: US and allied forces bombed Raqqa with bombs so large they destroyed entire buildings. There was no chance for civilians to escape, and the bombarding forces hardly tried to distinguish where civilians were.
If the bully's interpretation of the US constitution is accepted, it makes him an autocrat who could kill anyone in Congress who refuses to vote as he says, and get away with it.
"As victims of spycops, we stand with Lush in campaign for full disclosure."
US citizens: Support the STATES Act, for the federal government to cooperate with states that legalize marijuana.
US citizens: call on Mattis not to dump a US citizen on a road in Syria, where anyone is likely to be killed.
The US punishes people for doing menial work for terrorists — who kidnaped them and threatened to kill them if they didn't work.
I don't believe that fact that the work was cooking and cleaning is a crucial point. That it wasn't done voluntarily is the crucial point.
The bully has found a new method for abolishing Obama's medicaid extension: by deciding not to defend it against a right-wing state government's lawsuit to overturn the law.
Will anyone else get a chance to defend it in the Supreme Court?
North Korea is among the most repressive states on Earth, with perhaps a hundred thousand political prisoners.
I think it is wise to try to aim for nuclear disarmament of North Korea and an end to the Korean War, as the first targets, without demanding an end to the repression as well. Adding that demand would make agreement impossible. With peace, there is hope that the Kim dynasty will decide to reduce the repression.
(Satire) The United States of America signed Dunkin’ Donuts to a 10-year deal Wednesday naming the doughnut company and coffeehouse as the exclusive food vendor of the U.S.
(Satire) …Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt reportedly claimed Wednesday that the funds he has misappropriated would have only been wasted on dumb shit like clean water.
A thug in Georgia drove into an unarmed suspect with his thugcar, injuring him, and was fired as a punishment. A sheriff who is evidently eager to injure the public hired him and praised him, and lots of thugs are cheering.
Naomi Klein: 4,645 Deaths in Puerto Rico From Hurricane Maria Were "State-Sponsored Mass Killing".
"Spycop"s' Ex-Wives: We Support the Lush Campaign.
An unauthorized immigrant working as a pizza delivery courier was sent to deliver a pizza to a military base in Brooklyn. The base sent him to be deported.
I hope that all the couriers refuse to deliver there.
The UK's relentless attack on human rights, in the name of "fighting terrorism", now envisages criminalizing expression of opinions.
Surely within a decade the forbidden opinions will include criticism of plutocracy.
Everyone: oppose privatization of Minneapolis's public housing.
Americans: call on your state to pass network neutrality legislation.
US citizens: support the Debt-Free College Act.
US citizens: take a stand for protecting the oceans.
(Things have gone so far that instead of protecting this or that in the oceans, we need to protect the oceans.)
Big US companies systematically cheat low-wage employees out of their pay.
We should make participation in cheating employees a crime for the individuals that do it, to threaten the managers responsible with jail, rather than merely the corporation with a small fine.
Israel's parliament approved a law to let Israel confiscate Palestinians' land so as to settle Israelis in occupied territory.
Establishing colonies in occupied territory violates the Geneva Conventions.
The Oncologists Letter: Let Gaza Women Cancer Patients Out.
This is sexist. Men deserve medical care just as much as women; Israel should let everyone with a grave illness leave Gaza for medical care.
Dan Wenk, superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, was kicked out for trying to conserve nature in the park. Saboteurs are now using his example to eliminate the culture of conservation.
If the Yemeni forces backed by the US attack Hodeidah, and the battle continues for more than a short time, it could leave most of Yemen without food and medicine.
I don't see anything about either side in Yemen that deserves support. If one of them conclusively defeated the other, at least Yemen would have peace. So if the Houthis lose quickly, that might be a good thing for Yemen.
But what if they don't? The Houthis are not just an armed gang, they are an ethnic group. If all the sides represent large communities, a conclusive military outcome may be impossible.
Facebook erroneously made millions of users' private postings visible to all useds.
Everyone makes mistakes, so I won't reproach Facebook for the mistake itself. However, this mistake demonstrates the folly of using a single system for both publication and private communications. They ought to be separate systems.
The Pentagon has accepted "infinite war" as its mission.
According to Greg Jaffe, "winning for much of the U.S. military’s top brass has come to be synonymous with staying put." Air Force General Mike Holmes says that the goal is "not losing. It’s staying in the game."
Saboteur of Housing Carson's rent increase would increase the rents for people in public housing by 20% on the average. But some would suffer a 50% increase.
He displays the usual Republican blackwhiting by saying this would "give poor people a way out of poverty" — unless he's envisioning the path to the cemetery.
Homelessness in the US is already increasing, but the rent increase will accelerate it.
I expect the newly homeless will have trouble getting permission to vote in Republican-controlled states. Republicans surely consider that a plus.
The EU's Copyright Proposal is Extremely Bad News for Everyone, Even (Especially!) Wikipedia.
Google has posted a list of ethical principles for AI work.
What I note is that principle 5, about privacy, is a small step in the right direction, but far short of what we need to avoid a China-style society of total surveillance.
In particular, asking for users' consent is totally ineffective as a way of protecting society from systematic surveillance, if refusing said consent is considered by most people to be utterly impossible. Look at the terms for a Google account: obscene surveillance, but only by consent. If refusal is not a practical, easy thing, it's not really consent.
The EFF has some other criticisms, on issues I think are important but not as important as this one.
Thugs in Oregon punched a harmless mentally ill man ten or twenty times because he kept trying to warn them about a possibly nonexistent danger.
I can understand how he was distracting. Perhaps it was justified to arrest him and move him away. That was no need, or excuse, for violence.
A movie tries to end Spain's amnesia about dictator Franco's mass murder and other crimes.
Senate aide James Wolfe has been accused of leaking to the press, based on getting a reporter's phone call records.
Reporters and whistleblowers must learn to communicate anonymously, regarding the US as a repressive surveillance state like the Soviet Union.
20% of Mauritanians are slaves. The slaves are mainly blacks, while Arabs and Berbers are the masters.
An abolitionist party hopes to win in the next election and free the slaves.
Activists trying to block addition of a new runway to Heathrow airport have announced a hunger strike. They are focusing on the people that would be killed by the additional fossil fuel emissions from increased air travel.
Thugs raided Chelsea Manning's home with guns drawn, after concerned friends said they feared she might be suicidal.
Her friends were well-intentioned, but sending thugs to your friend's home is asking for violence.
Ortega's deadly repression has made Nicaraguans unwilling to tolerate him any longer.
Nicaragua needs a progressive democratic movement to oppose Ortega.
In 30 years, the amount of flooding from high tides has doubled in the US.
This is sea-level rise at work, and most of it is caused by global heating, so it will keep getting worse. As heating accelerates, the sea-level rise will also accelerate.
It is folly to choose to "adapt" to this with ever more costly partial measures. What we need to do is stop the actions that will lead to more sea-level rise.
Pig factories in North Carolina release a lot more toxic pig waste than they claim to release.
Professors call for the release of Professor Abbas Edalat, an Iranian expat who was arrested on a visit home.
Rev Al Sharpton: Democrats 'too tame to deal with Trump'.
I would say, rather, that many Democrats support the plutocratist establishment almost as much as the bully does. They don't aim to make America great for the non-rich again.
US citizens: Call on Mattis to respond with justice to the civilian casualties in Raqqa.
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.
Everyone: Demand corrections from FOX affiliates for Social Security propaganda.
Graduating in AI? Pledge not to interview for Google unless it vows permanently not to work on military AI.
You can sign the pledge without running nonfree software by email to stanfordsolidaritynetwork@gmail.com.
Singapore made its repressive side visible by harassing a comedian that impersonates Kim Jong-un.
Israel published a deceptive smear video against Razan al-Najjar.
All seafood now contains microscopic bits of plastic. Many species may be wiped out by it. The rest will feed us plastic as we eat it.
I find it offensive that the author says "we" drink bottled water. I never buy bottled water where I can find another way to get safe drinking water. I carry around a refillable bottle and I refill it.
The chump "is a useless negotiator, and Kim Jong-un will know that."
Putin's ministers gave an order in 2014 to destroy the historical records of prisoners in Soviet political prisons.
Google employees persuaded Google to drop its AI contract with the Pentagon.
However, Google did not promise not to take other such contracts in the future.
Without Interpreters, California’s Deaf Prisoners Are Getting Stuck Behind Bars.
In Massachusetts, many men committed involuntarily for opioid addiction are put into a prison where guards pay little attention to prisoners' health.
Austria is expelling imams that are funded by hostile Turkey.
More countries should expel imams funded by extremist countries. Indonesia would be much better off today if it had expelled imams funded by Salafi Arabia 30 years ago.
Tories latest crushing contradiction: a woman who cannot get out of her wheelchair without help was told to report for an inspection where an incompetent non-doctor will decide whether she is fit for work. But she can't get into the office because it is upstairs.
The building has an elevator, but they said she is forbidden to use it unless she can walk up and down the stairs.
If she tells them, a second time, that she can't go up the stairs, they will call her a malingerer and cut off the welfare benefits she lives on.
It takes a special kind of heartlessness to design a bureaucracy to order people to do the impossible and then punish them for failing. That is the heartlessness of Tories.
Tory dooH niboR policies amount to destitution by design. 1.5 million people in the UK were destitute in 2017. But that record won't last long, with Tories in charge. They will beat it this year.
The danger is that this has been getting worse for so long that it starts seeming normal.
"Black people are unduly burdened by the expectation that we always be on our 'best' behavior — or be subject to punishment."
When it comes to voting, even your best behavior is not enough if you're black.
"Oil may be Canada's past, but we cannot let it be our future."
China is bullying companies into pretending that Taiwan is part of China. This is dangerous, especially since it combines with military threats to invade Taiwan.
There was a big increase in the US suicide rate from 1999 to 2016.
The easy availability of guns in the US is not new. I think this indicates that precarious work, with wages inadequate to live on, is driving Americans to suicide.
Suicide rates of teenagers are rising in London.
Gaza medics take several precautions so that Israeli snipers can't fail to recognize them. Sometimes the snipers shoot them anyway. They have shot 25 medics in Gaza so far.
The nondemocratic imposed government of Puerto Rico is insisting on rebuilding fossil fuel facilities. This probably has to do with the fact that they have been privatized, so rebuilding them is welfare for the rich. Distributed solar facilities would belong to the citizens.
Australia is pushing to punish whistleblowers more harshly, and perhaps also journalists that publish their reports.
Earth is approaching a global plastic calamity. We need to eliminate most single-use plastic objects of all kinds.
After thugs killed a dozen protesters, the people of Tuticorin in India won the battle to shut down the copper smelting plant that has made many of them sick.
It may still be possible to thwart Trudeau's attempt to finish the Unkinder Morgan pipeline. But even if it is finished, it may not have many customers.
Nonetheless, he will still have succeeded in wasting billions of dollars of Canadians' money.
Time For Unions To Step Up On Medicare For All.
The pharma company INSYS hired prostitutes who had sex with doctors to encourage them to proscribe fentanyl in high doses for off-label use. It also paid doctors money as kickbacks.
Its executives are on trial for this.
The northern section of the Great Barrier Reef has lost half the coral. This was due to successive bleaching events in two very hot summers.
It demonstrates that continuing global heating is likely to wipe out the reef even before the level of CO2 in the ocean kills all coral.
Australia is driving its large fish species to extinction by overfishing, outside of limited protected areas.
Amnesty's Research Reveals the Huge Civilian Toll of the Coalition Forces 'Precision Airstrikes' against [PISSI] in the Syrian City.
What's more, the US tries to bury the issue rather than investigating civilian casualties.
The UN says that the US is violating human rights law by taking children away from immigrant parents.
US Citizens: tell Congress to reject public housing rent hikes and fully fund hud.
The bullshitter is trying to stir up Americans to hate Canada by citing (incorrectly) the war of 1812.
That's typical target-of-the-day rhetoric for the bullshitter, but why this particular target? He is cunning and generally has reasons for his choices of target for hatred — reasons that are rational although vicious and duplicitous.
The bullshitter is totally loyal to fossil fuels, so he surely appreciates Trudeau's recent act of pipeline treachery. I wonder if he aims to anger Canadians so they will stand with Trudeau, just when they need to fight him about the pipeline.
The US should expand Social Security.
Indonesia is failing to stop loggers from cutting down the Sungai Putri forest.
In addition to killing a thousand orangutans, a substantial fraction of those remaining it Borneo, cutting down the forest is likely to result in drying of the peat, which would imply the burning of the peat, or perhaps only the upper few feet of it. This would put a major spike into global heating.
The UN has proposed a plan to cut down plastic waste carefully but soon.
Israeli militarists and bigots don't feel any shame about killing Palestinian medic Razan Najjar. They defend the shooting with specific lies, general lies, and absurd conspiracy theories reminiscent of the absurd claims that mass shootings in the US were fabricated.
Their attitude is that of a lynch mob.
Israel has dropped nearly all the charges filed two years ago against anti-occupation activist Ezra Nawi, because they were false. They were fabricated to sabotage his life and mission. Perhaps from the stress, he has suffered a stroke and will never be able to campaign as he did before.
The article reports that using spurious or far-fetched charges is standard repressive Israeli practice against human rights activists.
Legal efforts to establish the right to a stable climate under the US Constitution.
3D printed houses will contain "sensors" built into the pieces of the structure.
It might be difficult to remove sensors embedded in big chunks of solid material. I wonder what they will sense. Sounds, perhaps? Presence of people?
Australia plans to force companies to help decrypt users' data. But it is not clear how far that would go.
Western sales front companies have refused to sign the Bangladesh worker safety agreement for the manufacture of their products.
New emissions tests carried out by a light beam as cars pass on the road have made cheating impossible. However, some Diesel cars have really been made much cleaner.
A UK parliamentary committee recommends ceasing to provide any government funding for homeopathy.
It was foolish to give any official support to that pseudoscientific practice.
Salafi Arabia uses "anti-terror" laws to imprison and torture human rights defenders, according to a UN examination. Some of them are flogged, even executed.
I wonder if Dubya learned the practice from Salafi Arabia.
The lawsuit against a Colorado bakery was decided by the Supreme Court in a very narrow opinion that found the bakery not guilty of discrimination, but clearly said that discrimination against homosexual customers as a general policy is unacceptable.
There are two ways to look at that bakery's action: as refusal to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, or as refusal to make a wedding cake showing two men as the couple. The first is unacceptable; the second can perhaps be defended on First Amendment grounds. Alas, the two conditions tend to go together.
Even where abortion is legal, if it is hard to find a clinic that does abortions, women turn to dangerous methods that can kill them.
US school dress codes are often explicitly biased against blacks, but even when they aren't, they tend to be enforced in a biased way (like so many laws).
The Southern Poverty Law Center made the town of Corinth, Mississippi, stop jailing poor people over fines they could not pay.
However, towns and cities across the US engage in this cruelty. In many cases it is a byproduct of Republican tax-cutting. For plutocratists, squeezing money out of poor people is preferable to taxing rich people.
These DINOs are Joe Donnelly (Indiana), Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota), Doug Jones (Alabama), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Claire McCaskill (Missouri), and Bill Nelson (Florida). If I lived in one of those states, I would support a progressive primary challenger at the next opportunity.
The Tory minister in charge of deportation said she didn't know about the numerical targets, but a secret memo shows she was lying.
A former manager of the immigration agency says that ministers could hardly have been ignorant of the targets. He also says that the policy ("hostile environment") is more responsible for the cruelty than the targets are. Maybe that is so, but targets can push staff to be crueler than their consciences would normally permit.
US Republicans are even worse, because they are theocratic too. The Tories don't judge people by their lifestyle, only by their wealth.
For Indian women, rape is the extreme manifestation of a spectrum of subjection that starts when they are children.
Microscopic pieces of plastic are found in the soil in Swiss mountains. If these kill the earthworms, they will indirectly harm the plants, too.
South and North Korea pledged to make peace. If they follow through, that will be a great advance.
Denuclearizing both countries would be a great step forward, too. Maybe someday even India and Pakistan could agree to denuclearize.
We should not presume that final agreement will be reached; there remain many opportunities for things to go wrong. For instance, the bully won't like it, and he may try to wreck it. He does not mind looking like a warmonger.
What has changed is that now there are opportunities for things to go right.
I agree completely, but encrypting the contents of messages is not enough to protect us from repression. We must not allow the government to be able to find out, in general, where people go or who talks with whom.
US citizens: call on the Senate to about the wrongs of the House farm bill.
EU citizens: write to and phone your MEPs to oppose the copyright censorship directive.
The Parliament should kill this directive entirely, rather than try to modify it. The rules of the EU will allow the other EU organs (which have already approved this tyrannical measure) to override the Parliament's decisions, and it is very hard for Parliament to block that afterward.
Bangladesh's thug department death squad killed politician Akramul Haque, then said it was in a shoot-out. His wife recorded a phone with him as he died, proving that the thugs were lying.
Brian Jones is now middle-aged, but since he is black, he still fears being falsely accused of various crimes because of his race.
The job of American thugs is upholding law and order; when bigotry is included in that "order", the result is to multiply the bigotry of any bigot that calls 911.
Other Americans describe the everyday bigotry they encounter in the US.
Google could manipulate elections simply by jiggering with search ranking. Experiments show that this can influence how people vote.
It would be very difficult to make regulations against this that a search engine company could not evade. The computation of search ranking is complex, for good reasons including stopping sites from gaming the system; this creates many places to hide the manipulation and many ways to disguise it.
I am not sure what the solution could be.
When I want to check some facts, the first place I look is Wikipedia. To do a search for articles, then read them, takes a long time, so I rarely go that way.
It is a shame that the writer endorses the prejudices embodied by using the word "consume" to refer to reading articles.
Modi said India would eliminate all single-use plastic by 2022.
That must be the eventual target, but it might be important to allow some specific temporary exceptions until better substitutes are developed. Paper bags already exist for carrying purchases, and paper straws were standard order when I was a child, but some specific uses in food packaging might not have replacements yet.
David Hogg escaped being killed in Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school, so a right-wing terrorist tried to get a SWAT team to kill him. Fortunately for him, nobody was home at the time.
If we take the danger of global heating disaster seriously, we must put an end to airport expansion and start resisting plans to increase the number of flights.
Soros: Instead of trying to teach Italy a lesson by punishing non-rich Italians, the EU should learn one.
Senator Warren condemned the saboteur-in-chief for launching "a war on public health, a war on public safety, a war on truly free and competitive markets, a war on American workers, a war on American consumers.”
Iran is increasing the pressure to maintain the nonnuclear deal by making parts for additional uranium enrichment centrifuges.
DeVos set up a panel to study safety of students in school. It won't cover the possibility of being shot.
Will it cover the danger of being jailed by a "school resource" thug?
Monsanto is (in effect) changing its name to "Bayer". So transfer to "Bayer" all the criticism and hostility that you associated with "Monsanto".
Giant tech companies now systematically kill off potential new competitors, or threaten to do so in order to force them to sell for a low price.
Many US prisons charge prisoners a small fee to see a doctor — but it can take a prisoner a month to make that small fee on prison wages.
Public-funded school vouchers are supporting religiously biased "schools" that inculcate religion and bogus science.
A former Tory official is now a corrupt newspaper editor, and has sold Google and Uber a promise of favorable news coverage.
The military is not a very good tool for dealing with the problem of global heating.
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but the military is proposed only as treatment of the symptoms. What could the military do to prevent global heating? Bomb fossil fuel facilities to render them unusable, I suppose. But how about trying peaceful approaches first?
Not having a mobile phone can make you happier.
It will certainly do wonders for your privacy.
Israel plans to make it a crime to photograph the actions of the Israeli army with intent to criticize.
So journalists will be allowed to make videos of soldiers shooting protesters only if the purpose is to praise them for it.
The EU governments joined the EU executive in supporting mandatory copyright censorship filters.
This is terribly dangerous.
The Supreme Court seems inclined to tolerate an Arkansas law that creates a pretext to ban distribution of abortion pills.
This decision seems to be about a preliminary injunction to delay application of the law, rather than about the validity of the law itself. But we have to fear that this presages the ultimate decision about the law's validity.
A week ago the Irish Republic threw off Christian theocracy, but now it threatens the US. If theocratists make safe abortion unobtainable in the US, they will kill thousands of women, and condemn millions of adults to lifelong poverty, and millions of children to stunted lives.
"It's telling that those zealots who want to defend the 'unborn child' are complicit in policies that impoverish women and children."
Misguided values of the day: a writer thinks that the effect of Javascript code of slowing down a web page from 3 seconds to 45 seconds is worse than spying on users and taking control of their computers.
There are only four big accounting companies big enough to audit big companies. This creates a danger of tolerating fraud. We need to break up these companies, as well as the other big companies they audit.
Thousands of AI researchers have taken a stand against the intrusion of paywalled journals into their field.
I salute their willingness to act to put an end to nonfree scientific publication. They could make their principles clearer and sharper if they replace the word "open" with "free (libre)".
Apple has blocked Telegram from upgrading its app for a month. This evidently has to do with Russia's command to Apple to block Telegram in Russia.
The Telegram client is free software on other platforms, but no apps are free on an iThing.
Netanyahu ordered generals to prepare to attack Iran, in 2011. He could do that again at any moment if he thinks it is advantageous for him.
The US government is shutting down the few remaining clinics where people in great pain can get enough opiates to treat it. The doctor warns that some will commit suicide.
I hope they do it in congresscritter's offices so that it might help end the War on Pain Sufferers.
Italy's new government says it will deport half a million refugees.
Lush publicized the dishonesty of thugs, and faces criticism from thugs who say it is wrong to remind people of their dishonesty.
One of the women that the undercover thugs seduced says she appreciates the support.
When farm animals are regularly given antibiotics, the antibiotics pollute local water and trigger antibiotic resistance. The EU was considering a plan to try to stop that, but gave up.
Some US schools are buying tremendously expensive face recognition surveillance systems, supposedly for security against shootings. These systems are useless for such security, but will subject all the students to tyranny.
Mueller's investigation cost only 1/4 as much as the cheater's golf trips.
The hater has appointed many officials that were known for stirring up hatred against immigrants.
Saboteur Pruitt wants to erase future car fuel efficiency standards so that the US car companies can sell extravagant large cars. Worse, he intends to take away states' rights to set higher standards.
Holding people responsible for what their partners in crime do can lead to sentences that are clearly unfair.
Youtube is deleting lots of "drill" music with violent lyrics.
I don't think any company is obligated to publish such music. (I would surely find it disgusting.) What worries me is for any one company to be such a bottleneck that its publication decisions should become news.
Some common "alternative" cancer treatments are worse than useless — they undermine the effectiveness of drugs and radiation.
Hundreds of thousands of seabirds used to nest in the Shetland Islands. Only a few thousand remain. The cause is global heating.
The Irish Republic's constitution has a clause about preserving women's role "in the home", which is now recognized as sexist.
I think it is better to make the clause gender-neutral than to repeal it. Repealing it would tend to lead to less state aid to parents; making it gender-neutral would lead to more.
Only in prison did Mohammed Khalid find friends and therapists to help him escape the spell of the jihadi cult he had fallen into. Before that, the jihadis were his only friends.
Why did FBI agents slam an unarmed person against a wall? There was no need for that.
The IMF is imposing hardship on non-rich Jordanians.
At least the state is increasing taxes more for businesses than for individuals. It could be worse, if it acted like the US.
"The research suggests that when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."
The TSA's harass-list for travelers that have protested or complained violates civil liberties, especially given that the agency tends to cover up and demand immunity for when it attacks people.
"Anonymizing" people's cell phone location tracking data still allows determining a lot about them from locations.
Everyone: call on Indonesia and Aceh not to build a dam that would destroy a protected rainforest which is a habitat for endangered species.
Who Should Feed the World: Real People or Faceless Multinationals?
Activity in Brazil was brought to a halt by a strike by truck drivers, self-organized and not going through a union. They demanded a lower price for diesel fuel.
By making the price unpredictable, President Temer put the burden on the truck drivers. The country needs to charge more for fossil fuels; subsidy of fossil fuels promotes global heating. However, it needs to make sure that the burden does not fall on truck drivers, but rather on the businesses that use the services of trucks.
Sheriffs Are Raking In Millions In Prison Phone Fees And Some Really Don't Want To Talk About It.
Canadians are protesting Trudeau's plan to force the Unkinder Morgan pipeline through.
Senator Merkley tried to visit a prison for baby immigrants, but they wouldn't let him in or tell him anything.
The motive for the policy of taking all babies away from their parents is to create what in the UK is called a "hostile environment". These babies are being used as hostages; hurting them is intended to make their parents miserable. Thus, the US has become the world leader in sadism.
The bully wants to increase US involvement in Salafi Arabia's sickness-spreading intervention in Yemen.
Proposing a maximum income limit, linked to most people's income. This way, high earners could only increase their post-tax income by helping everyone else get a higher income.
Udoka Nweke faces murder if he is sent back to Nigeria, because mobs there tend to murder homosexuals. He asked for asylum in the US in December, 2016, and has been in prison ever since.
(Satire) ICE agent Don Neville was reportedly trying Monday to think of a fun name for a jail cell before locking up a 5-year-old immigrant.
The Onion truly excels at helping us see thugs as human beings with the same range of emotions as all the rest of us.
Equating certain people to nonhuman animals makes it easier to commit violence against them.
Facebook made deals for phone and computer manufacturers including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung to access data about its useds and their friends as well. These deals seem to still be operative.
When Zuckerberg testified to Congress, he said Facebook had stopped doing this years ago. Apparently he lied.
The students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school will spend two months campaigning for candidates that support gun control.
The US Air Force has so much military power that it has no difficulty in spending 100 billion dollars to build a totally pointless new bomber.
The carbon bubble is likely to burst before 2035. When it does, if your money is in fossil fuels, you are likely to lose it.
The sooner the bubble bursts, the less of Earth we will destroy. The current rate of switching to renewable energy will not avoid global disaster, but it won't be the worst possible disaster. Thus, the bully wants to force cities to buy electricity from obsolete coal plants.
Edward Snowden: "The people are still powerless, but now they're aware."
US college seniors: Are you graduating from college in the US this year? Did you get Bill Gates's "gift" of gratis download of a book?
If so, can you tell me (1) whether you can download it without running any nonfree software, (2) whether it has DRM, and (3) whether you have to agree to a jerkmaking "no sharing, no lending, no giving" contract before you can get a copy?
US citizens: call for charges against Reality Winner to be dropped.
Nauru has made criticism of the government and its courts a crime.
That makes it even more useful as a sealed immigration prison for Australia.
Theocratic Christians plan to make state legislatures push their religion into public schools, and to legalize discrimination against queer people.
They published a document describing the states in their plan. Laws to impose religious slogans in public buildings are the first step.
Hong Kong Independence Activists Sentenced to Four Weeks' Jail.
It is actually Hong Kong that will be in jail.
Hungary will jail people for informing asylum seekers of their legal rights.
What this means is that the state plans to cheat them of their rights.
What will happen when the carbon bubble bursts?
The US ambassador to Germany tried to meddle in German internal politics.
The Germans have been too gentle in response. The bully is likely to think of this as ineffectual resistance which means he should continue along the same lines.
I urge Germany to expel that ambassador.
Can a criminal president pardon perself?
I think we need to amend the US Constitution to make it clear that the president cannot pardon crimes that were committed in connection with that president's own actions or orders.
Some of the evacuated areas near Fukushima are now safe, but most people are afraid to return.
If a nuclear power plant accident does not pollute the surrounding area with radiation, it is a disaster anyway, simply because of the loss of a plant that cost billions of dollars to build.
Chinese are commemorating the anniversary of Tank Man, who blocked for a while the tanks that were sent to slaughter protesting students in Beijing.
Publix supermarkets said it would stop making campaign contributions. Those were directed at right-wing candidates.
I suppose the owners will continue supporting them, though.
The cheater's lawyers claim that the US president cannot ever be said to commit obstruction of justice, because he is in charge of all investigations.
Trump's Lawyers Want Legal Immunity for the President. Who Will Stop Them?
Irrational mob violence against non-English-speakers has flared up in the US a number of times since 100 years ago.
Foolish people do this because non-English-speakers make good scapegoats. I wonder, do billionaires speak some special language we could ban?
I have to correct one flippant point: English did not become dominant in what is now the US in the 17th century. I've read that around 1800 German seemed to be the most common language in the US of the time, though I can't be sure that is accurate.
The US expanded westward in the 19th century to lands that surely didn't use English much before that. After the US conquered parts of Mexico in the 1840s, the inhabitants continued speaking Spanish for quite some time.
How the cheater turns vagueness to the service of lies and bullshit.
I suggest not paying attention to anything he says. Focus instead on what he and his henchmen are doing.
Hotel and restaurant workers in Melbourne are learning not to tolerate wage theft and unbearable schedules as normal.
UK spies still have intelligence collaborations which involve torture by partner countries. This despite having been ordered not to do so.
US citizens: by June 10, phone your congresscritter and demand person vote to continue the partial Network Neutrality rules.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block the nomination of anti-immigrant bigot Ronald Mortenson to be in charge of assistance to refugees.
Everyone: call on Trudeau to kill the Unkinder Morgan pipeline.
A whale was found dying from eating more than 80 plastic bags. Apparently they filled up the whale's stomach, so it starved.
Prohibition of marijuana does not "work", if you define "working" as stopping people from using it. Even if one presumes that it would be better if nobody used marijuana, the right thing to do is legalize it and regulate it.
However, the premise that it would be better if nobody used marijuana is wrong anyway.
Whistleblower Reality Winner, who made the public aware of the Trump-Russia collusion scandal, is almost forgotten, jailed while awaiting trial for leaking the document that led to Mueller's investigation.
Meanwhile, the bully is trying to stop the Department of Justice from investigating him and his campaign.
The government is also obstructing her lawyers from searching for evidence to base their case on.
Casino workers in Las Vegas are planning to go on strike, partly to oppose automation that would eliminate their jobs.
I support them, but I hope they will also campaign for state legislators to put legal limits on automation, to maintain employment.
The weak Dodd-Frank compromise bank regulation law, just recently weakened even further with the help of plutocratist democrats, shows the need to break up the big banks into much smaller pieces.
An adaptation of my tax proposal could pressure each big bank to split itself up.
One reason old Americans tend to be more right-wing is that poor people and blacks tend to die younger.
"An abortion at the age of 23 gave me freedom." Even for women who don't desperately need an abortion, abortion rights are crucial.
India has launched effective programs that have reduced deaths from heat waves.
If we keep heating up the atmosphere, we will make this a moving target. It is more effective to turn the heat down than to cope with its increase.
A UN report says that Republicans are deliberately trying to increase inequality and poverty in the US.
When US children grow up in poverty, it is nearly impossible for them to escape poverty, now that the government no longer offers much help.
I think the underlying reason for this is that American rich consider most Americans superfluous as workers, and would rather eradicate them than allow them any hope. The plan is to turn them against each other based on various kinds of racial, ethnic or gender groupings.
If one more state ratifies the Equal Rights Amendment, Congress could vote to extend the deadline so that the amendment would pass.
This might be possible in January.
The US government continues presenting gross undercounts of the number of civilian casualties.
This practice started under Dubya and continued under Obama.
Amnesty International Calls on US to Investigate All Claims of Civilian Casualties.
The US really has a "Free Trade" problem, but rather than managing the economy to make it work better, the bully's "solution" is to manage it for his own profit.
The Department of Education, under the control of Saboteur DeVos, has dismissed hundreds of civil rights cases — not based on their merits but rather based on Republicans' lack of merit.
The saboteur-in-chief wants to force electric utilities to buy electricity from failing coal and nuclear plants, to keep them running and endangering people.
To create an excuse, the saboteurs would pretend there is an emergency.
Will four-year-olds who can resist eating a marshmallow for 10 minutes develop into more capable teenagers? A study years ago said yes; an attempt to replicate it found little effect.
These studies measure correlation between the four-year-olds' untrained capacity to defer gratification and their later abilities. Whether actively teaching four-year-olds to defer gratification would lead to later benefits for them is a different question.
Indeed, it is possible that changes in patterns of raising children have altered the tendencies that the studies measure.
Uri Avnery: Israel converted Gaza into an enemy, but that enemy now offers a 40-year truce that it will certainly not break. Will Israel dare tolerate the possibility of peace?
This year's congressional election will remain vulnerable to cheating through computerized voting machines.
Calling for House and Senate investigations of the Trump family's prima facie corruption in deals with China.
The cheater is refusing to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office.
Uganda has put a tax on "social media use" to discourage citizens from communicating with anyone.
Italy's two governing parties have agreed to replace the proposed economy minister that was vetoed because he was willing simply to think about separating Italy from the euro.
I think that reforming the euro-zone rules would be better that pulling Italy and Greece out of the euro zone. However, as long as governments are unwilling to threaten to leave, the banksters won't even consider reforminmg the rule.
Protesters in Northern Ireland demand abortion rights such as women in the Irish Republic will soon have.
Nicaragua's suppression forces killed 11 more protesters in a massive demonstration led by mothers of protesters previously killed.
Florida thugs kills a black man over nothing but their own imagination and panic. Relatives sued, and a jury awarded them 4 cents in damages.
Offshore windfarms off the Netherlands are driving away fish.
If the species found in the area are not threatened overall, I think the renewable electricity is more important than the fishing in that area.
However, it is worth looking for ways to reduce the impact. There may be an alternative to pile driving as a way to emplace the wind turbines. Also, taller turbine poles could reduce the electromagnetic fields that reach the water.
A lawful immigrant to the UK was dropped into a Kafkaesque nightmare when the government lost her passport and then made impossible requirements for her to get another one.
She has been destitute for 10 years.
This sort of thing has happened to thousands of people.
Everyone makes mistakes. However, when a system punishes the victims of its mistakes, that's inexcusable. One must suspect that the agency does this because it was directed to create a "hostile environment".
A judge dropped charges against some inauguration protesters because US prosecutors were shown to have violated their right to a fair trial.
13 years later, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the countries that allowed the US operate torture bases on their territory acted illegally.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or sexual identity.
Everyone: Call on Mattis to free Toffiq al-Bihani, a prisoner in Guantanamo.
The Washington Post supports US participation in Salafi Arabia's disastrous intervention in Yemen regretting the disaster it has produced.
(Satire) FiveThirtyEight announced Friday that they would be laying off dozens of the site’s top algorithms.
The baby went to Texas to talk with parents of recently murdered students. One said it was "like talking to a toddler".
(Satire) …officials…were forced to euthanize a rose bush after it pricked a child.
I think armed plants should always be kept in cages ;-).
(Satire) A deportation thug wants to have kids of his own after seeing the love and devotion of the immigrant parents begging him not to take their child.
Senator Warren describes the anti-abortion policy that the bully aims to impose on the US.
Racist white Americans support cuts in social benefits because they have been told (falsely) that nonwhites get most of these benefits.
How foolish it is to let rich people divide you based on superficial things.
The Japanese government dealt with a corruption scandal that included the prime minister's wife by dropping charges against everyone.
Trump's Hard-Right Judges Will Do Lasting Damage to America.
We need to create a way to remove them.
A "training" scheme in the UK traps trainees in debt servitude. No wonder the "training" is not actually useful.
"When confronted with white supremacists, newspaper editors should consider 'strategic silence'."
UK frackers have convinced a court to ban all protests that would interfere in any way with fracking.
The Tories are absolutely determined to risk Britain's water supplies to put more CO2 into the air.
Puerto Rico is suing the US government demanding release of data on people killed by the hurricane.
Gazans protested again, and Israelis shot some, including a medic who was killed.
Israel says the Palestinian protests were violent. If that is true, the Palestinians are making a misguided choice. Their only chance of winning more world support is nonviolence.
The Guardian starts to recognize that the "smart" home means a surveillance home.
Everyone: call on Disney to pay all employees at least $15 per hour.
US citizens: tell the government to stop taking children away from border-crossing parents.
Disabled people in the UK fear the legalization of assisted suicide. They expect to be pressured into suicide by a state that saves money by leaving them totally helpless.
There is no fundamental conflict between providing the disabled with what they need for a decent life, if that is possible, and giving people a way out of a life which is inevitably hell. To do both, we need to put an end to plutocracy.
US border thugs shot refugee Claudia Patricia Gómez González dead, then told various stories to create an excuse. They said that the refugees were "rushing" them.
The other witnesses have been jailed and can't be found.
It turns out that border thugs have a made a practice of grossly exaggerating the frequency of "assaults" against them.
Rich people and politicians from many countries choose the UK as the place to sue critical journalists so as to silence them.
Uri Avnery: Israel converted Gaza into an enemy, but that enemy now offers a 40-year truce that it will certainly not break. Will Israel dare tolerate the possibility of peace?
This year's congressional election will remain vulnerable to cheating through computerized voting machines.
Calling for House and Senate investigations of the Trump family's prima facie corruption in deals with China.
The cheater is refusing to cooperate with the Government Accountability Office.
Uganda has put a tax on "social media use" to discourage citizens from communicating with anyone.
Italy's two governing parties have agreed to replace the proposed economy minister that was vetoed because he was willing simply to think about separating Italy from the euro.
I think that reforming the euro-zone rules would be better than pulling Italy and Greece out of the euro zone. However, as long as governments are unwilling to threaten to leave, the banksters won't even consider reforming the rules.
Protesters in Northern Ireland demand abortion rights such as women in the Irish Republic will soon have.
Nicaragua's suppression forces killed 11 more protesters in a massive demonstration led by mothers of protesters previously killed.
Florida thugs killed a black man over nothing but their own imagination and panic. Relatives sued, and a jury awarded them 4 cents in damages.
Offshore windfarms off the Netherlands are driving away fish.
If the species found in the area are not threatened overall, I think the renewable electricity is more important than the fishing in that area.
However, it is worth looking for ways to reduce the impact. There may be an alternative to pile driving as a way to emplace the wind turbines. Also, taller turbine poles could reduce the electromagnetic fields that reach the water.
A lawful immigrant to the UK was dropped into a Kafkaesque nightmare when the government lost her passport and then made impossible requirements for her to get another one.
She has been destitute for 10 years.
This sort of thing has happened to thousands of people.
Everyone makes mistakes. However, when a system punishes the victims of its mistakes, that's inexcusable. One must suspect that the agency does this because it was directed to create a "hostile environment".
A judge dropped charges against some inauguration protesters because US prosecutors were shown to have violated their right to a fair trial.
13 years later, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the countries that allowed the US to operate torture bases on their territory acted illegally.
Federal judges appointed by Republicans tend to be biased against blacks.
Debunking myths that pressure people that have one child to make another child.
A plan for increasing charter schools in North Carolina is designed so that they will be segregated.
Workers are suing Facebook for its age-discriminating job ads, as well as the companies that buy the targeted ads.
Amazon works its warehouse staff to the point of sickness and even death.
Virginia has approved expansion of Medicaid — that is, participation in part of Obama's medical care program.
Republicans fight to the death to prevent expansion of Medicaid — poor people's death, that is. Republicans oppose this program on principle because it provides government help to people who they believe aren't rich enough to deserve it. But they also oppose it more specifically because it was a victory for Democrats.
Leaked Emails Show Google Expected Lucrative Military Drone AI Work to Grow Exponentially.
As far as I'm concerned, what's important here is not which company does the work, but the danger to society of drone bombing with or without AI.
The UN has made a deal that would eventually enable some of the Rohingya to return to Burma. However, if the majority of Rohingya, who don't have any papers, are excluded, it isn't much of a deal.
Assange will be welcome to stay in the Ecuadorian embassy provided he avoids making political statements.
New Zealand aims to eliminate some introduced predators — rats, possums, and stoats — to protect kiwis and other native birds.
We exaggerate the extent to which native peoples actively protected nature. Humans have a tendency to hunt animals to extinction, until they learn better. It was the Maori that wiped out the moas, and presumably the aboriginals of Australia that wiped out the giant bird Dromornis, and presumably the Malagasy that wiped out the elephant birds.
Fortunately, humans can also learn to protect nature. In the 1700s, European traders organized a system of territories to limit hunting of beavers in Canada, so that the natives wouldn't hunt them to extinction and bring the profitable beaver fur trade to a halt. This was good for all the humans involved, as well as for the beavers as a species.
The question is whether today's civilization can learn to protect nature and work hard enough to succeed in doing it.
2050 might be fine as a target for eliminating those predators from New Zealand, if civilization continues so that New Zealand remains able to carry out the plan. But that slow time scale offers plenty of time for something to happen that would bring the effort to a halt.
Meanwhile, what about the cats? Domestic and feral cats kill tremendous numbers of birds, all around the world, including endangered birds.
The world is full of eco-menaces that humans actively keep in check. These include invasive species, pollution in the ground, and nuclear waste. If technological civilization falls, there will still be humans (I expect), but they won't have the means to stop these menaces from spreading.
The system for labeling sun cream is confusing, so most people misunderstand it.
Correcting this should not be left to the good will of companies.
A New Jersey thug punched a teenager in the head, then slammed her to the ground, after determining that she was not drunk.
For a thug to switch off a bodycam while attacking a person ought to be considered obstruction of justice. The thug should go to prison for that alone, and serve additional time for the violence itself.
As for Ms Weinman, even if she spit intentionally at the thug who had already brutalized her, that should be considered self-defense.
The right-wing ruling party of Spain has lost power due to the corruption convictions of some of its leaders.
The new governing party is the Socialist Party, which has proved rather weak in confronting plutocracy, but we can hope it will eliminate some of the oppressive measures, such as making it a crime to post photos of uniformed thugs in the act of attacking people and prosecuting squatters in abandoned buildings.
Denying welfare benefits, including food stamps, to poor people who were convicted of drug crimes makes them more likely to return to crime.
To try to discourage crime with punishment presupposes that everyone can get by ok without crime. In the US today, that is false for a large fraction of people.
The FBI's Use of Informants Is Full of Problems, but What Happened in "Spygate" Isn’t One of Them.
Australia's big four banks stopped investing in coal but shifted the investment into oil and gas.
Education Is One Way Out of Prison. Let's Make Work Another.
One of the problems is that you can no longer make a living from the jobs that are not highly competitive.
US deportation thugs seem to have killed asylum seeker Roxsana Hernandez by exposing her to cold for two weeks, combined with hunger and sleep deprivation.
None of those is legitimate treatment of prisoners &mdash not even prisoners that have been convicted of crimes.
Apparently the bully has unleashed the thugs' brutality, so that they eagerly new ways to make their prisoners suffer.
Google operates a lobbying group that pretends to represent new startups.
Google's face recognition door camera is a threat to people's privacy as they pass by on the street.
I think it would be legitimate to make such a camera system if it does not send people's image over the internet unless they approach very close to the system, and if it can recognize only the faces of specific people who have contributed their photos for the purpose.
Arkady Babchenko, Russian journalist exiled to Ukraine, reportedly faked his death in coordination with a state effort to catch real assassins that were sent to kill him.
I'd like to find out how the trick was intended to catch them.
Cameroon is developing a civil war between those whose second language is French and those whose second language is English.
As usual, they are not fighting about anything significant, it is mere factionalism. In that country, the factions have coalesced around one's second language. It could just as well have been which end of the egg to open.
Demanding to save face — the insistence that one has never been wrong — makes today's politics unable to correct any problem. The constant focus on minor details of political "optics", rather than on substance, makes it even worse.
I try to focus on substance rather than optics, but I don't know whether I do this enough.
Successful blacks find that lots of people look for minor excuses to criticize them. Clearly, the real motive for these criticisms has to be racism. They demand that the successful black be twice as clean as a white needs to be.
I've encountered a little of this. There are people who criticize me for insignificant things, making mountains out of molehills. Clearly their motive for doing this is something other than what they criticize. I suspect that they don't like the free software movement — but, lacking rational arguments against it, they hope do use irrational associations to harm it.
'Sea, Ice, Snow, It's All Changing': Inuit Culture Struggles with Warming World.
Hamas has proposed a cease fire with Israel.
A private project has rewilded 17000 square miles in Patagonia, reintroducing the species that used to live there before humans and farming kicked them out.
Meat and Fish Multinationals "Jeopardising Paris Climate Goals".
NASA has a climate of "fear and anxiety" resulting from censorship about global heating which came straight from the cheater.
This, I expect, is exactly what the cheater wants.
Americans are imprisoned for sharing drugs when that leads to an overdose.
This extends the War on Drugs by adding a form of terrorism to the tactics.
Presenting hypothetical future products that would be prohibited by the copyright censorship system that the EU is planning to impose.
The US suspended copyright on German science books during World War II. This provides an opportunity to measure how much copyright damages science. It turned out to be substantial.
Hundreds of protesters from the Poor People's Campaign have been arrested at Senator McConnell's office and various state capitals.
The troll and his saboteurs are persistently erasing all democratic, libertarian and human values from all branches of the US government.
Appliance companies, including specifically Dyson and Wahl, are lobbying against the right to repair.
2018 World Press Freedom Index reports that governments and politicians increasingly hate and repress journalism, world-wide.
(Satire) Kim Jong-un was thrown into a remote labor camp for attempting to cross the border into South Korea.
Most Americans recognize that the US government is run by the rich, and demand campaign finance reform to end that. However, paradoxically, the fraction of Republicans that believe that has dropped from 80% to 70% since 2015.
This could be because the other 10% are no longer Republicans. Or it could be that they had to drop that belief because they feel compelled to believe that the bully represents them.
Most Britons oppose the sort of trade deal they expect the bully to offer. "If mass protests against Trump's visit also derail a trade deal, it will be a double success."
International trade is so easy nowadays that the main effect of making it even easier is to give business more power over governments.
Saboteur of Housing Carson wants to raise the rents for public housing. Protesters asked, "Where will I go."
Carson has a place in mind for then to go. It's the cemetary.
US border thugs want to "protect" refugee children by arresting their parents.
(Satire) millions of souls are waiting to cross the River Styx due to an underworld ferry strike.
UK thugs have repeatedly tried to frame Ken Hinds for watching as thugs mistreated blacks.
The Republican tax attacks were supposedly going to boost the US economy, but the opposite is what happened.
Doctors Receive Opioid Training. Big Pharma Funds It. What Could Go Wrong?
The UK's justice system is completely broken, according to an anonymous lawyer.
Tories are getting criticized for their plans to imitate Republicans' voter ID laws.
President Ortega of Nicaragua undermined democracy, took control of the media, and now his former supporters say he is just like Somoza, the dictator overthrown by the movement led by Ortega.
I suspect that foreign banks and the US government pressured Nicaragua to cut support for the poor. This does not excuse what Ortega has done, but focusing the condemnation solely on him is missing the point. An honest leftist leader in Nicaragua must lead the people in a long-term campaign to throw off the power of foreign banks.
Now that the state can use your DNA in a genealogical site to find people other than you, the decision to upload your DNA to one is a matter of other people's privacy, not just your own.
This time, the state used the technique to find a murderer. I'm in favor of finding murderers, and prosecuting them. However, next time the person sought might be a dissident or a heroic whistleblower.
Canada's somewhat-left party, the New Democratic Party, can't seem to oppose the fossil fuel industry.
The EU will ban neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees (and other wildlife). There is an exception for greenhouses, because the pesticides can't get out of the greenhouse and into soil, water, and bees.
Assad plans to confiscate the homes of Syrians that have fled.
Why We Should Bulldoze the Business School, by a business-school professor. The hidden curriculum of the business school is always that the rich should be able to get richer, and that "capitalist market managerialism" is the only solution regardless of what the problem is. Students learn to seek as much money as possible, and never mind the cost to others.
Anthony Ray Hinton: How I Got 30 Years on Death Row for Someone Else's Crime.
Republicans want to "streamline" executions so that people like Hinton will be executed before they get a fair retrial.
US citizens: tell Congress to reject Trump's Rent Hikes and Fully Fund HUD.
US citizens: call for protecting the National Environmental Policy Act.
US citizens: phone your senators to ask them to stop the Department of Harshness and Suffering from taking refugees' children away.
Everyone: Call on US media to cover the occupation of Palestine accurately.
Margaret Atwood says she expects reality to resemble her fictional dystopias.
Some predict the extinction of humanity. I don't think things will go that far, since humans are very good at surviving even in horrible conditions. But I think it is likely that the living will envy the dead, at least until 40 years have gone by, by which time nearly all surviving humans have no idea what there was to envy.
Maryland is trying to hamper Airbnb by requiring additional surveillance of its customers.
The surveillance of Airbnb — and of hotels — is already so much that I stay away.
The concentration of manufacture of antibiotics puts everyone in danger when anything goes wrong in one manufacturer.
A sensible (non-plutocratist) government would explicitly ensure there are more sources.
Some UK supermarkets now surveil their customers for the thugs, whenever the thugs or other government agencies ask. The result is to turn life into a miasma of suspicion.
Surveillance like this should be explicitly forbidden except when ordered by a court for specific suspects.
Canada agreed to a business-supremacy treaty with China that requires building the Unkinder Morgan pipeline. The penalty for not doing so could be even more billions than the cost of building the pipeline, and the government might pay it secretly.
Business-supremacy treaties subjugate all the countries that agree to them, so we must cancel all those treaties.
Freedom of speech does not imply entitlement to use anyone else's amplifier for that speech.
It is true that the right-wing extremists of today don't respect the freedom of speech of those they disagree with. Nonetheless, if we were to prohibit their views outright, their governmental sponsors such as the bully would surely take the opportunity to ban our views.
Salafi Arabia may soon besiege the Yemeni port where 80% of relief supplies arrive.
California is adopting stricter net neutrality rules than those the FCC has eliminated.
Students at the University of Puerto Rico face prosecution for a protest a year ago.
Binge drinking can be fatal. Or it can cause chronic pancreatitis.
How the right-wing justifies controlling the Italian state in the name of avoiding a "crisis".
The author is clearly a supporter of banksterism; he aims to convince Italians to surrender meekly.
However, the only peaceful way to make the Euro zone boa constrictor let go of Italy is to threaten a crisis that will hurt the banksters too. If they don't want a catastrophe, they should stop imposing one on Italy (and Greece!).
The manufacturer of Ambien says that racism is not a known side-effect.
The scandal of the UK's intentional "hostile environment" for unauthorized immigrants has caused it to drop some aspects of the policy.
The bully has made it official policy to cause unauthorized immigrants as much suffering as possible, even making babies suffer so as to cause their parents to suffer.
The people who do these jobs are sadists, and that should go on their records so that they can't get employment dealing with the public. If they work in a warehouse they won't be able to inflict their sadism on anyone.
The Federal Reserve is proposing to loosen the regulations on banks own investments, to encourage the banks that don't do much of this to do more.
Allowing a bank to do any of this is a motor for corruption; it should be completely forbidden, as it was by the Glass-Steagall Act.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Corker-Kaine authorization for worldwide war.
US citizens: see how candidates stand on issues related to fair elections.
US citizens: Tell the Department of Harshness and Suffering (DHS) to stop taking children away from border-crossing parents.
This petition does work with Javascript disabled. You won't see any immediate response in the browser, but you should get a confirmation email.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Forest Service to protect the Colorado Rockies.
The developer of the Keystone XL pipeline is trying to buy the support of various Nebraska politicians.
Large Israeli banks are involved in funding the construction of colonies on Palestinian territory.
Gazans tried to carry patients out on boats for treatment in Turkey. The Israeli navy stopped them, as it generally does anyone trying to flee from Gaza.
I can't see how the tiny threat Israel faces from Gaza could justify this, even if exaggerated greatly.
Royal Bank of Scotland has agreed to stop investing in a range of fossil fuel projects. Alas, not all fossil fuel projects.
Right-wingers control a large part of US media but still claim they never get any respect.
The US government has permitted Bayer and Monsanto to merge.
We can't blame this decision specifically on the bully, because the plutocratistic surrender to corporate power, specifically in regard to allowing mergers, started under Reagan and got worse under Dubya and Obama.
The study that estimated 4600 deaths due to the hurricane in Puerto Rico has upped the estimate by another thousand, taking account of the people who lived alone and who were not covered by reports about who lived or died.
Trudeau's adoption of the Unkinder Morgan pipeline is an act of "immense moral cowardice" and has earned him the undying hatred of climate defenders all around the world.
His new role as fossil fuel executive makes it impossible to hide where he really stands, though this has been visible for quite some time to those who wanted to look.
(Satire) Bezos explains how users can delete the data Alexa has collected about them.
Nicaraguan journalist Ángel Gahona was murdered while covering a protest against President Ortega.
He said he expected to be murdered.
Trudeau decided to buy the Unkinder Morgan pipeline, in effect declaring that he will stop at nothing to force it through.
That means he has clearly taken the side of global disaster, but that doesn't mean it is impossible to stop him.
When dealing with the Trump family, "never ascribe to stupidity or ignorance that which can be explained by malice."
Amazon threatens to cut off customers if they return things more than occasionally. Amazon's customers nominally have the right to return merchandise — unless they exercise that right.
The strange irony of the article is that it is totally defeatist. It shows why we need to defeat Amazon, but assumes that that is impossible. It shows becoming dependent on Amazon is dangerous and then refuses to believe people could ever refuse.
You can't win by being defeatist. You can win by telling Amazon to drop dead.
I have never bought anything from Amazon. And I never will. Amazon knows my name because a friend, believing this was helpful, decided to get something for me and told Amazon to send it to my address, an act which made me feel violated. I hope nothing like that will ever happen again.
High-pressure exams, and starting school at an early hour, don't go well with adolescents' rapid brain development.
A new study estimates that Hurricane Maria killed 4600 people in Puerto Rico, but there is a lot of uncertainty — it could be a lot more or a lot less.
The European Commission proposes to ban single-use plastics for a wide variety of uses.
Remy: The Longest Time (TSA Version).
Please don't access youtube with anything other than youtube-dl.
People deserve the right to death with dignity rather than dementia.
Someone in Gaza fired mortar shells at a school in Israel and other civilian targets.
This is a war crime, but it doesn't mean we should forgive Israel's far larger war crimes.
Blackstone, BlackRock, or a Public Bank? Putting California's Funds to Work.
Antifascists are suing the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, aiming to prove that they planned violence.
Ellicott City had a "1000 year flood" in 2016. It just had another flood, even worse.
This seems to be global heating at work.
The dangerously creeping state of face recognition repression.
The insidious danger of the impulsivity training device, or iTrainer, which is designed to make people want what its designers wish them to want.
Nonfree software plays a crucial role in this scheme harmful, since that is what stops users from altering what the system does.
Australia's extractivist government has allowed farmers to cut down a substantial part of the remaining native forest. The greenhouse gas emissions from that have erased Australia's investment in reducing emissions, some of which were wasted anyway.
Brazil's truck drivers are on strike against increases in the price of fuel.
The price of fuel must increase so society will use less of it. But I suspect that some details of the way the government imposed this put the burden on individual drivers rather than on companies and rich people that can cope with it. For instance, if drivers have to pay for fuel and what they can charge has not increased, the whole burden falls on them. There is no justice in that.
Ivanka Trump received Chinese trademarks shortly before the cheater made a deal to allow ZTE to stay in business. Knowing the cheater's basic dishonesty, we must suppose that the former was payment for the latter.
Some of the ads that Russian trolls purchased were for legitimate political causes.
Sometimes Russian trolls spread fabrications (fake news). It's wrong for anyone to do that.
Sometimes they support legitimate campaigns for various political positions. Even though I may support some of those campaigns myself, I object when Russia does so in a disguised manner.
These ads don't represent sincere support for any cause, not for Sanders and nor for the troll.
Likewise, I object when right-wing billionaires and fossil-fuel companies employ people to spread lies. People have the right present their views, but we don't have to allow the rich to hire sock-puppets.
EDRI: [Europe's proposed mandatory] Upload Filters Endanger Freedom of Expression.
A UK think tank misrepresented how much more funds the NHS needs by imagining that the costs were divided equally among all households, rich or poor. Of course, making a poor family pay as much as a rich family would be cockeyed and unjust.
Italy's president rejected the proposed government because its foreign minister wanted to make a backup plan for exiting from the euro.
Imposing a prime minister with IMF ties was adding insult to injury.
Italy needs a progressive party that will condemn the euro zone's economy-destroying rules just as strongly as the right-wing League.
Beleaguered Amazon Tribes Remain Staunch in Defence of Their Land.
On the argument between two camps that both miss the point about massive commercial surveillance of individuals.
By arguing about whether to divide up the power that this data gives to businesses, or to regulate the use of it (perhaps nationalizing it), they miss the point that both alternatives destroy our privacy and give the state a perfect basis for repression.
The danger is to collect that data at all.
More generally, I think the idea of taxing companies for the magnitude of harm that they do (regardless of whether they broke any rules to do it) is a good one.
Many weaknesses that undermine democracy tend to suck in politicians regardless of their overall positions.
Thousands of women in the UK are forced into marriage.
Beware of "brand aid" campaigns that use charity as a front for marketing.
The US is protecting al-Qa'ida and PISSI in the south of Syria.
It makes sense, tactically, but conflicts totally with what the US says is its purpose for intervening in Syria.
Why a badly run public school is preferable to a well run charter school (which is funded by the public but controlled by a business for profit).
The US has blocked the import of anything made with cotton from Turkmenistan because of that country's practice of forced labor.
A campaign to ban brothels in part of Nevada demonstrates that it's a matter of imposing Christian prudery, and never mind the safety of sex workers.
"Facebook continued to explore and implement ways to track users’ location, to track and read their texts, to access and record their microphones on their phones, to track and monitor their usage of competitive apps on their phones, and to track and monitor their calls," accuses a lawsuit against that company.
Rudy Giuliani Admits 'Spygate' is Trump PR Tactic against Robert Mueller.
Today's professions are the result of setting up guild-like organizations and claiming some privileges; but as extreme capitalism strips those away, they become much like all other workers.
The two parties that won Italy's last election promised to fix what's broken, but they won't even try.
All they have agreed on is a tax cut for the rich. Nothing to fight against the disastrous rules of the Euro zone.
Just as in the case of the bully, anger without a constructive political program is useless.
The US government made a deal to put ZTE back in business despite its spying on Americans.
I wish the US government would make other companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Uber stop spying on Americans.
America's Version of Capitalism Is Incompatible With Democracy.
China has put hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in Xinjiang into "reeducation" camps to stamp out their religion.
Upper-caste Hindus saw Dalit Mukesh Vaniya picking up iron scrap, said he was stealing it, and beat him to death.
When I read about this desperate poverty, about having large families that they can't feed, I wonder: when will they figure out that they are making the problem worse?
Australia's subsidy to projects that are supposed to decrease greenhouse gas emissions is putting millions into projects that are profitable and would be operating without subsidy.
Bans on smoking in certain places should have compassion for those who remain tobacco addicts.
Rare bird species are headed toward extinction due to poisoning from eating lead shot.
It would be straightforward to avoid this problem by switching to steel.
US citizens: call for an investigation of Pruitt's concealment of toxic water pollution.
Due to budget cutting on all non-military aspects of life, deranged people get left in jails for months or years, waiting to be seen by psychiatrists.
The school buildings of Oklahoma are falling apart, some students don't have desks, and their textbooks are decades old.
The plutocrats prefer it this way because they don't need to hire so many educated and skilled workers any more. They think it is fine if half the country graduates unemployable, since the robots will have eliminated that many jobs anyway.
One of the consequences of India's birth rate is that massive poverty continues. That makes young people so desperate that they go accept offers from "placement agents" that lead to enslavement.
The Indian government ought to prosecute these crooks and jail them. But that will be difficult: the level of corruption is such that they can buy their way out.
I think the long-term solution is contraception.
Tax evasion (facilitated by tax havens) is one jaw of the vice that keeps Africa in poverty. The other jaw is population growth.
The bully and his neo-Nazi supporters are following the Nazi example when they ban dissent against the national anthem.
The term "bear arms" refers specifically to military activities, and always did. In particular, that was the case when the US Constitution was written.
Higher temperatures are correlated with more antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Yet another way that global heating will kill people.
When bicycle courier Jerome Rogers received a couple of traffic fines, his minuscule income meant he had no money to pay them. The system multiplied them by a factor of ten, his bicycle was seized. Rather than live destitute, he committed suicide.
None of the steps that crushed his life is unusual. When people have so little money that they can't cope with an emergency cost of $400, they will often be unable to pay fines. When the system escalates fines, they will turn into impossible debts. When the system handles those debts by crushing people, or by jailing them as often happens in the US, it becomes a steamroller that crushes people.
The law said the bailiff should not seize the bicycle, but it's not unusual for those who oppress the poor to ignore laws. Wage theft is illegal too, but employers regularly get away with it. Unless someone polices the bailiffs very carefully, they will always be under pressure to push the limits of oppression.
When poor people move from killing themselves to killing bailiffs, the bailiffs might back off some.
Two US senators demand that the FCC explain the fraudulent comments submitted in their names, and prevent such a thing from happening again.
The FCC received thousands of patently fake comments supporting the elimination of network neutrality, then pointed to them as valid.
The cladding that burnt in the Grenfell apartment building was approved based on fraudulent tests.
A vision of an AI-managed cashless genocide of the non-rich, as a projection of what's already happening in the US and other countries.
One way to fight against this today is to insist on using cash. No cash, no deal!
New Yorkers are pushing to set up a public bank for New York City, which would invest locally and not feed the plutocrats.
The summit between the two Supreme Leaders is on again.
I seem to have been right that the bully's cancellation wasn't meant to be final. I had a feeling that it was uttered in the language of bullying. And why not? It is the native language of both of them.
The bully is effectively devoid of honesty. Whatever he says, it is meant to have some dramatic effect, not to state what he believes, what he wants, or what he intends to do.
US private insurance companies often agree to pay hospitals inflated prices for operations. They pass on the cost in higher premiums, after the inflated price screws the patient with a high copay.
The UK provides temporary housing for homeless people, but sometimes it is so bad that it makes the inhabitants sick.
Meanwhile, New York City is letting public housing fall apart, perhaps with a view to selling the land for building luxury apartments.
That form of privatization is widespread, and very lucrative for some businesses, but leaves the residents in even worse situations.
Washing spinach in a chlorine solution does not kill salmonella, it only makes culturing salmonella from the spinach more difficult, thus disguising them.
The US uses this technique for chicken also.
ACLU: We're Demanding the Government Come Clean on Surveillance of Social Media.
We must not believe anything the FBI says about supposed problems caused by use of encryption. They don't just exaggerate, they fabricate.
But even if their claims were true, they would be insignificant compared with the disaster of allowing the state to know everything we say and do.
Public universities have created private fund-raising foundations which can subject the university to dirty deals with the Koch brothers, and evade accountability.
UK lawyers are happy to make lots of money serving various foreign gangsters.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in prison in Iran, will be tried on new charges, perhaps "spreading propaganda".
To make "spreading propaganda" a crime is in itself an injustice, but ever more countries indulge in it.
Apparently the Uber car that crashed was operating in a mode that depended on a human to brake. The human may have forgotten that this was per job.
Arguing that curbing global heating requires banning factory farms.
Ed Husain, formerly an Islamist radical, proposes that Muslims should join to condemn that extremist interpretation of Islam.
I think that would be a good thing to do, but will not be easy. Salafi Arabia has implanted it effectively in many regions, such as Aceh in Indonesia.
Husain's memoir, The Islamist, shows clearly the differences between various ideas of Islam.
Gaza says the death of a baby during a protest may not have been due to tear gas after all. It could be a coincidence.
However, for the hundreds of Palestinians hit by soldiers' bullets, there is no doubt about what killed or injured them.
China has got accustomed to having one child, and most couples don't want a second child.
This is tremendously good news for the future of China and the world: China with its current population is using its land unsustainably. Maybe with the coming decrease it could put an end to that.
If only we could convince other regions with still-exploding populations, such as India and much of Africa, to have small families, that would put off the consequent disasters.
Teaching birth control in Uganda has been hit hard by the US abortion gag rule.
The leaders of South Korea and North Korea held a meeting about how to get the bully to be serious about peace.
The head of UK prisons says that prison sentences under one year are ineffective at teaching prisoners not to commit minor crimes, and calls for using other punishments instead of prison.
The Irish Republic has voted to eliminate the ban on abortion from its constitution.
Abortion will soon be legal there.
This will directly help women in Northern Ireland, because it will be much easier and cheaper to go to the Irish Republic for an abortion than to travel to England as they currently must do. However, they demand legalization of abortion there next.
This change might have larger political effects. A few decades ago, anyone in Northern Ireland had a powerful reason to oppose uniting Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic: the latter's church-backed denial of human rights that related to marriage and sex. This reason no longer exists.
US border thugs shot and killed a Guatemalan woman, who was possibly an unauthorized immigrant.
The thug presented a supposed justification for shooting her, but we have no way of knowing whether there is any truth in it.
China is pressuring and tricking non-Chinese companies into describing Taiwan as a part of China.
The UK's embassy in Jamaica has systematically treated the UK citizens exiled there with the same contempt usually referred to foreigners that ask for a visa.
Many wealthy countries systematically show such contempt to foreigners that seek a visa.
The Department of "Justice" withheld information about Haspel's relationship with the CIA's destruction of evidence of torture.
Bolton's extreme demands seem to have rubbed Kim the wrong way and put a bump in the path to peace with North Korea.
That doesn't mean it is now hopeless — or that agreement was assured before Bolton did this. However, it does mean that Bolton is an impediment.
It could also be that Kim is playing manipulative games, expecting concessions in exchange for conversation.
UK aid money seems to have been used to train Bahraini "security forces" that have tortured and executed dissidents.
Why Are For-Profit US Prisons Subjecting [prisoners] to Forced Labor?
The short answer is, "because they can."
The Tories plan to speed up fracking projects, bypassing local planning entirely.
It is hard to understand what could possibly motivate them to enable local opposition to kill wind-farm projects easily while making it impossible to stop fracking. Unless it is that they are getting money from fossil fuel companies.
(Satire) Israel Defense Forces soldier Yossi Saadon recounted Tuesday his harrowing, heroic war story of killing an 8-month-old Palestinian child during a violent attack against protesters.
(Satire) … high-ranking officials at the National Security Agency reportedly spent Wednesday morning scrambling to reestablish the whereabouts of a man who had covered his laptop camera with a piece of electrical tape.
Imprisoned, Threatened, Silenced: Human Rights Workers Across Asia Are in Danger (from the state).
A reminder of how stupidly, blindly, persistently, and pointlessly the CIA carried out torture.
Even against crazy and corrupt Republican saboteurs, the Democratic Party is slipping in the polls — because the "mainstream" plutocratist Democrats don't stand for progressive policies.
I'm careful to support only progressive Democrats, not bankster-subservient mainstream Democrats.
Bannon tried using Cambridge Analytica's data to discourage blacks from voting.
The New York Times encourages you to accept being tracked by Google, and claims you have no choice so you might as well yield.
There are many things you can do it stop it. For instance, use a browser that won't run Google Analytics hooks in web pages, browse through Tor, use OpenStreetMap instead of Google Maps...
The UK's review of building codes and inspections proposed a fundamental change in the way decisions are made. Specific changes, such as banning particular materials, would not be enough by itself.
An unnamed official reports that two "suspicious activity reports", posted by a bank about Michael Cohen's bank transfers, have disappeared from the US government system which is supposed to store them.
27 US cities are "abortion deserts" — apparently no abortion facility within 100 miles.
Blaming the Victims of Israel's Gaza Massacre — standard practice in US media.
(Satire) U.S. military officials released a statement defending their much-criticized decision to test the Kilauea volcano on Hawaiian civilians.
(Satire) sociologists … confirmed the inevitable emergence of a generation more entitled and self-absorbed than any seen before.
The US House and Senate are trying to pretend that thugs face violent persecution by passing a new law imposing increased penalties for violence intentionally targeted at thugs.
In practice, these bills would not change much. Symbolically, though, they take the side of the thugs against the people they kill.
UK thugs towed away a bus that was parked providing shelter to homeless people, because an event with the royal family was scheduled for elsewhere in the neighborhood.
A UK thug will face charges for tasing a black man after mistaking him for someone else based on a vague resemblance. (Perhaps both had dark skin?) The man had done nothing to justify even the slightest violence.
The UK is planning to set up a new system of censorship for social networks.
The danger that occurs to me is that the new system will effectively ban GNU Social, Disapora, and other social networks that are not run by businesses, and others that are run by small businesses.
Donald Trump Jr. reportedly met in 2016 with a representative of Salafi Arabia and the UAE who was offering campaign assistance.
April 2018 Was The 400th Consecutive Month of Global Temperatures Above the 20th Century Average.
Seeds rescued from a seed bank in Syria might help breed wheat that can resist the crop damage that global heating effects are causing in the US.
I hope this works, but it will only carry us a short way. Climate mayhem will keep getting worse, faster and faster.
Twitter might have been designed to encourage people to get outraged.
Uri Avnery: The Day of Shame — The Israeli political parties, army and media spread lies about Gaza, and the peace movement collapsed on the floor.
The US and Australia opposed an independent UN inquiry into the massacre of protesters in Gaza.
How shameful.
"When Palestinians fight for their national rights, we are called 'terrorists'. When we demonstrate in non-violent ways and are killed by the occupying forces, we are called 'suicidal'."
Russia demands to see the Skripals, so that they have the chance to get consular help if they want it.
Even though it is possible that Russia poisoned them, I think the UK should uphold this right. It often comes to the aid of prisoners, and if the UK disregards it, that will encourage other countries to do the same.
If they do not become able to communicate, they are very likely effectively dead. Or else they are conscious but locked in, which could be a fate worse than death.
The early stages of climate mayhem are already messing up global fisheries.
Salafi Arabia has arrested, on no particular occasion, several prominent advocates of women's rights.
Some US charter schools use an affiliate marketing scheme: anyone who recruits students away from another school gets $500.
Belgian thugs decided a van was suspicious, and tried to stop it with gunfire. They killed a two-year-old baby in the van.
State officials, defending the thugs' reputation, initially pretended that the baby's death was an accident or caused by rough driving.
The EPA’s “Leadership Summit” on PFOA Pollution Will Exclude Victims and Community Groups.
Students Go on Hunger Strike to Pressure Cambridge University to Divest [from fossil fuels].
Each time there is a president that is worse than anyone we remember, the previous worst presidents use it to bury their crimes and get rehabilitated. Dubya is now doing this.
US citizens: Call on Congress to protect integrity of US elections.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the proposed arms sale to Bahrain.
The for-profit US hospital system is closing many rural hospitals because they are not profitable.
Why are they not profitable? Partly because the population in those areas is decreasing. But also because of policies that refuse to support medical care for poor people in the US.
And why does profit decide these questions? Partly because of allowing hospitals to be run by for-profit companies which then make these decisions based on profit rather than for people's lives. We should put an end to that.
A UK government agent told Melvin Collins that he didn't need his UK passport any more, and took it away. The result was to exile him from Britain forever.
Since the 1990s, Hollywood has presented abortion as dangerous, traumatic, and morally inferior, spreading the message that the right thing for a pregnant woman to do is have a baby.
That message builds support for banning abortion.
It is also the direct opposite of the truth. The truth is that having a baby is more dangerous and more traumatic. It is more likely to lead to lasting physical injury, more likely to cause depression, and more likely to be fatal.
In addition, if you're among the 40% of Americans who couldn't handle an emergency expense of $400, it is very likely to land you and the child in the gutter.
Having a baby is also morally inferior in many cases. It contributes to future global heating more than everything else you are likely to do in your life.
If you are not in the position to assure a child the food, shelter, education, medical care, and calm family environment that every child needs and deserves, the right thing to do is not make one.
HSBC Divests From New Coal Projects Everywhere … Except Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Those who claim that some countries have a legitimate "need" for more fossil fuel extraction don't understand the urgency of the danger.
Anti-obesity activists may sue junk food companies for intentionally manipulating children's brains to train them to eat junk food.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that soldiers can shoot unarmed civilians. (In practice, that means they can shoot and kill unarmed Palestinians.)
In his efforts to continue global heating, the saboteur-in-chief is one of a large team.
The recently publicized racist attacks on blacks, involving whites that call thugs to harass blacks, are not a new phenomenon. They have been a part of US blacks' life for ages. What is changing is that they come to public attention.
Describing slavery as a "financial trap" fails to do justice to the evil of slavery in the US.
Trump campaign operative Roger Stone requested copies of leaked Clinton emails from Julian Assange.
Assange said that the emails he later published were not obtained by cracking, but rather leaked from an insider. This has no effect on the ethics of Stone's request.
(Satire) "You better give our dad a good trade deal or you’ll be sorry!"
The state of Victoria proposes to make wage theft a crime, which could give abusive employers a stronger reason not to steal.
Saboteur Pruitt of the EPA, and some of his officials, met with the Heatland Institute to plan how to sabotage Earth's entire ecosphere.
The Theater of Security Agency is setting up an enemies list — a secret list of passengers singled out for harassment based on flimsy excuses.
One of them is being "notorious". It sounds like the TSA plans to harass people for being famous. Am I famous enough to get on the list?
The TSA's theater might be amusing for spectators, but it should stop forcing everyone to play a role in the comedy.
"Restorative justice" in schools aims to empower students so they won't feel they need weapons.
The House of Representatives is considering a bill to provide a weak pressure to audit the US military budget. I doubt that pressure will be enough to make the audit happen, but maybe failure would lead to increased pressure.
The audit would help get rid of corruption in spending, and some forms of waste in detail. It would have no effect on programs that are officially authorized, but wasteful or harmful.
The Republican tax attacks of 2017 were written so hastily and thoughtlessly that they contain a direct tax break for moving jobs out of the US.
Or perhaps it wasn't so thoughtless. After all, SCROTUS works for the companies that are outsourcing the jobs.
The US used to spend more on the military than the next 7 countries. In the new budget, as passed by the House of Representatives, it exceeds the next 8 countries.
All this spending doesn't enable the US to actually win any wars, but does enable it to start new ones. Meanwhile, the new nuclear weapons could put all of humanity in danger.
The bill also includes an article denying that the president has authority to attack Iran.
That will be good, if the Senate passes it too.
The UK welcomed hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian criminal oligarchs, but there is no way of knowing how much, let alone identifying what assets were bought with it.
Facebook's "focus on community" can cause depression for a substantial fraction of users.
One prisoner in Guantanamo has had a series of emergency operations, and his lawyers learned this only when they showed up for a court hearing.
The gall and dishonesty of the jailers is demonstrated by their claims that their refusal to tell anyone about the prisoner's condition is for his privacy's sake — while not allowing him to tell anyone either.
I would guess that the real reason for the secrecy is that his injuries were due to torture and the US government doesn't want us to know how he was tortured.
Now that Torture Haspel has been confirmed to head the CIA, I am surprised they still try to conceal this.
Both Supreme Leader Kim and Supreme Leader Trump seem to have stopped wanting to have a meeting. It seems that they had a misunderstanding all along about what "denuclearization" might mean.
Oops, later on Supreme Leader Trump said the meeting might be on again.
Facebook is publishing source notes on political ads, and making a searchable list of them.
This is an important change, since it will better expose stealthy political action to criticism. Of course, it is no reason to allow Facebook to use you.
"Why did Hillary Clinton endorse Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon?"
I think it is because Clinton is center-right "moderate" Democrat, like Cuomo, and serves the banksters. They don't need to order her to support Cuomo; she knows they wouldn't like Nixon.
Unlike Clinton, I do not claim to aim for more women in office. I judge candidates by their politics, not by their gender. I support Nixon's politics, not Clinton's and Cuomo's.
"Philanthrocapitalism": Zuckerberg gives "charity" to for-profit businesses that can make money for him in various ways.
Talk to Deliveroo Couriers. See a Dystopia That Could Be Your Future.
Companies that use many workers to do a large amount of a particular job should be required to hire full-time or half-time employees, with all the usual rights of employees, to do the majority of that work.
Proposing that corporations pay an "insurance fee" for the potential value to the stockholders of limitations on their liability.
The article proposes also to withhold half of executives' pay until the company has funded all its pension obligations.
Americans generally resent the rich, not the poor.
Pressuring Pennsylvania's governor to put an end to fracking in the state.
The cheater is trying very hard to save Chinese company ZTE from penalties for violating US impost laws, just after receiving a pile of money from another Chinese company.
He insist that it wasn't a bribe.
Kathryn Taylor ended her term on the Harvard Board of Overseers by resigning to condemn investment in fossil fuel.
Harvard can surely point to many short-term reasons for those investments, but they can't persuade anyone who recognizes the long-term reasons to stop.
(Satire) America's rich and powerful were at a loss Wednesday as to exactly when the rest of the country would finally relinquish all hope and simply give up…
US citizens: call on the US government to release the PFOA water pollution report.
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop selling face recognition services.
This is a temporary fix, not a real solution. We need to make it a crime for anyone to operate such systems.
Iran has responded defiantly to the bully's cancellation of the non-nuclear deal, saying that the EU must compensate for the damage the US is doing or Iran will pull out of the deal.
Encouraging NFL players to defy the ban on protesting racism by kneeling during the US national anthem, or protest collectively in other ways.
One other method that occurs to me is that they could stand … with both hands over their mouths the whole time.
The Israeli Supreme Court approved demolishing the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar.
Israel systematically denies building permits to Palestinians, so that all their houses are "illegal", thus creating an excuse to demolish them.
Apple has banned a VOIP library for all apps to be distributed in China.
Apple is a reliable tool for Chinese repression because it designed iMonsters for censorship.
Journalist Cedric O’Bannon filmed a neo-Nazi rally, and one of the fanatics stabbed him using a polearm. The thugs treated him as a suspect rather than as the victim of a violent crime. They also wiped his video recording, apparently to protect his attackers.
This follows a pattern in which official, uniformed thugs shield and support unofficial right-wing thugs.
The healthful "Mediterranean diet" is dying out in Spain, Italy and Greece under various sorts of pressure and temptation.
Belgian officials are trying a series of lies to evade responsibility for shooting a baby in a van being pursued.
There is no excuse for shooting at moving vehicles with passengers in them. If the thug failed to imagine that shooting might kill or injure one of them, person was prima facie incompetent.
Salafi Arabia has arrested the country's leading human rights campaigner.
Facebook and Google face formal complaints for pressuring users into agreeing to different terms of service.
A right-wing billionaire got an Israeli private detective firm to spy on BDS supporter Linda Sarsour in the hope of personally discrediting her.
Progressive congresscritters warn that connecting thugs' body cameras to face recognition will turn them into vicious surveillance devices.
My proposal to control their activation would reduce the effects of that, but we really need laws against allowing face recognition systems to know about anyone's face except for court-designated targets.
Seeing that the UK government is desperate to build nuclear plants whose electricity will be so expensive that it will need a subsidy, Hitachi is now demanding direct subsidies as well.
Nuclear power not only has a risk of a meltdown that will destroy the reactor (and maybe spread fallout), not only produces waste that we don't know a safe way to store — it is too expensive even if everything goes well. Kill these projects, and build renewable power!
Those dying because the NHS is being strangled and support for the disabled and unemployed is being cut now see where that money is going.
Rich, hereditary Canadian politician Doug Ford is spreading trumpery, pretending to be on the side of the non-rich while promoting policies to destroy nature to extract fossil fuels.
Arizona has deleted the word "evolution" from its educational standards.
An Alexa device recorded private conversations and sent them over the net to an acquaintance in their contact list.
Amazon said this was due to a bug, and I suppose that is true.
However, if the device has a universal back door, Amazon could alter anyone's machine at any time so that it will listen and snoop. Maybe various government agencies could, too.
Meanwhile, I wonder what is in the logs that the Amazon engineer was able to access. Can they access such logs in every Alexa device? At any time?
As Documents Reveal 'Pervasive Abuse' of Immigrant Children Under Obama, Fears It's Even Worse Under Trump.
It is possible that "children" includes minors up to age 17. Not that that would excuse any of this violence and cruelty, which extend into the range of torture.
Several striking teachers have advanced towards political office.
(Satire) Americans Freed From North Korea Sent Back To Pyongyang After Denuclearization Talks Fall Through.
What makes this so funny is the idea that today's US officials would feel an obligation to honor a deal.
The Patriotic Millionaires have condemned the just-passed bank deregulation bill better than I could do it.
Bangladeshi thugs are arresting political activists and killing them, then dropping their bodies on the streets. A campaign of shooting alleged drug dealers on the street provides great camouflage.
The reported vulnerability in clients that use GPG is no problem if you are using the latest version of Enigmail.
Regardless of whether you use encryption, you should not allow HTML in your messages to be rendered by most mail clients. There are many schemes for snooping and fraud that work via invisible links in email. Perhaps that is the main problem with email today.
As for the silly idea that email is obsolete, that could only be true if it had a superior replacement. There is nothing else that does the same job.
Sanders rebuked Amazon for paying workers so little that they need food stamps.
I rebuke Amazon for a lot more than that.
The troll said that he attacks the press preemptively so as to discredit in advance any negative coverage.
What this means is that he aims to eliminate the idea of seeking to determine the truth, so as to reduce discussion to a matter of arbitrarily choosing one side or the other.
However, we do have ways to determine the truth on most of the questions, if we want to.
40% of Americans can't handle an unexpected expense of just 400 dollars.
Amazon's face recognition threatens to destroy privacy entirely in the US and then other countries. Some thug departments have signed nondisclosure agreements and used them to justify concealing this information from the public.
Other companies will develop such software sooner or later. We need laws to prohibit the operation of such a system unless it is designed to limit data collection.
The FBI gave Congress inflated figures to pretend that encryption is a big obstacle to law enforcement.
Amitai Ben-Abba began writing a novel about an Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, then discovered to his horror that all the conditions were ready for that to occur.
Important Spanish politicians from the right-wing ruling party have been convicted of corruption.
The troll cancelled the proposed meeting with North Korea's dictator Kim, but I think his letter is meant as a postponement.
I suppose Kim will will understand that.
Let's put an end to the fraudulent and dangerous assistance known as "facilitated communication".
Italy is certainly doomed if it obeys euro-zone rules, but there is no visible hope if it resists them.
In such a prison you must try to destroy the walls. Creating a European crisis that can harm the banksters is the only path that offers a chance.
The robot Uber car that killed a pedestrian had its emergency brakes disabled as a test.
In many countries, people who call themselves "centrists" value democracy less than those who place themselves closer to either extreme of the political spectrum.
Who poisoned the Skripals? It may be Russia, but the UK's manipulation of the situation has to make us distrustful.
US citizens, tell your senator: Stop the bully's next war before it even starts!
US citizens: tell US immigration thugs to stop illegally jailing children and torturing them.
Some of the victims may be minors but not children. I don't think it changes the issue much.
Everyone: phone to demand that Burma drop charges against journalists.
The Tories' systematic hostile environment for the disabled denied benefits to a woman who needs a wheelchair because she had no way to get to the examination that was imposed on her. Many disabled people are sent to impossible appointments in this way, and the immediate result is to cut them off.
If you are really desperate to cheat those who are disadvantaged, you will seize any excuse, no matter how obviously unjust. That's what Tories stand for.
Aneurin Bevan: "The Tories are lower than vermin."
US border thugs took Anthonia Nwaorie's $41,000 which she was bringing to a clinic in Nigeria, where she also works every year.
They offered to return her money if she signed a "hold harmless" agreement. Was that offer unjust? I am not sure; I think it depends on what "any necessary expenses, attorney’s fees, or costs incurred in the enforcement of any part of this agreement" would include. If she could reduce those costs to zero simply by complying with the return of the money, I don't see anything wrong in it. However, I don't know what it might include. Might it include the costs of searching her baggage every time she travels in the future? Might it include the costs of spending time on her case? That could add up to more than $41,000, over time.
The European Parliament's agriculture committee is full of people that have ties with farm business, constituting a conflict of interest.
A Spanish rapper was convicted of a speech crime, but seems to have gone missing when it was time to put him in prison for it.
His lyrics present images of violence. Whether or not it is legal to say those things, I think we shouldn't say them. I avoid speaking that way of even banksters and plutocratist theocratic politicians.
Investigators claim to have proof that a specific Russian missile launcher shot down flight MH17 over Ukraine.
Nigeria is applying the death penalty to an increasing range of crimes. People suspect that dissidents will be executed.
People are suing the European Union for being too slow in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Various evidence suggests that smartphones, or perhaps specifically the desocial media used on them, make many teenagers depressed — some to the point of suicide.
Nigerian soldiers offered thousands of women protection from Boko Haram, but those who went to the camps had to give the soldiers sex in exchange for food. Thousands didn't get enough food, and starved.
Central Americans Flee Homes in Record Numbers: "The Level of Violence Is Brutal."
The US has much of the responsibility for this violence.
Plutocratic Democrats joined with plutocratic Republicans to reduce the regulations on banks.
Banks will benefit from this by taking more money away from the rest of Americans — as if they weren't poor enough already.
Some countries are assigning rights to nature.
Since the president didn't drain the swamp, the swamp is trying to drain the president.
The US is prosecuting another fantasy terrorist who probably would never have done anything without encouragement from the FBI.
An employee in the US embassy to China reported "abnormal sounds" and was found to have brain damage.
The hypothesis that occurs to me is that some piece of apparatus that the US installed in the embassy causes this side effect.
Democratic Party establishment leaders say that they back "centrist" (plutocratist) candidates over progressives for strategic reasons; but analysis of the facts show that they do so even when it is clear that a progressive Democratic nominee would win the general election.
So the real reason is simply that they are plutocratist.
Detroit Is about to Cut Off Water for Thousands of People.
Increased CO2 levels make rice produce less of various vitamins.
Doctors Beg Australian Border Force to Move Terminally Ill Refugee off Nauru.
Australia is building cat-proof fences to establish reserves for native mammals and birds. But the cats inside the fence will have to be caught and removed.
The prosecutor of the inauguration protesters was caught withholding exculpatory evidence.
New York City may ban plastic straws.
When I was young, we used paper straws and they worked just fine. We need to learn not to choose plastic if it can be avoided. And then we need to learn to avoid it in anything disposable.
Guatemala: Ex-Military Officers Convicted of Crimes Against Humanity.
They include the former head of the armed forces. Hooray!
Limiting global heating to 1.5C would avoid 30 trillion dollars in damages compared with letting things go on as now.
That is a minimum, since we don't know how much positive feedback will make the consequences even worse.
Las Vegas Casino Workers Vote for First Mass Strike in More Than 30 Years.
The UK destroyed files which may have described advising Sri Lanka on torture and disappearance.
We don't know what they said, but we have to presume they were culpable.
Amazon is ready to supply face-recognition surveillance to any government.
Roughly 4% of murder convictions are false. There are false convictions for other crimes too. It's partly due to officials that disregard the truth in order to convict someone, but the bail system also pressures lots of non-rich people into pleading guilty when they know they are not.
Washington DC is full of stingray-like devices, tracking various people's portable phones on behalf of organizations unknown, and from foreign embassies.
A US border thug held and threatened two bilingual US citizens, suspecting them of some crime because they spoke to each other in Spanish.
A US high school punishes students that fail to smile while walking between classes.
Students have a ready-made answer when pressed to talk about why they don't smile: "It's because you are harassing me."
They could also try putting on exaggerated phony smiles.
The discussion of a bullying incident refers to a "school resource officer", which is a bureaucratic name for a thug that is likely to send your child to prison for some minor matter. The last thing you need in school is a thug that can arrest students.
The US Supreme Court ruled that companies can stop their workers from filing class-action lawsuits.
This means that they can't take any action about frequent abuses that hit many of workers but not enough for each one to be able to afford to take separate action.
Some South Korean political leaders say Bolton is the main obstacle to peace with North Korea, calling him a "land mine".
The Atlantic Council, which Facebook will consult about reducing foreign influence on US elections, is mainly funded by the US military and plutocratic corporations, as well as some foreign governments.
US citizens: call on Senator McConnell to allow a Senate vote on protecting Mueller.
Everyone: call on Target stores to grant 12 weeks of paid leave to all employees that are parents of a newborn.
Life is very hard for non-rich people in the US. We should all make it easier.
Since the strictest sanctions didn't bring down Saddam Hussein, it is foolish to think that they could make Iran yield.
The bully's attack on the non-nuclear deal with Iran convinced the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to advance its doomsday clock a minute closer to midnight.
Tony B'liar seems to be hiding something about handing over Belhaj and his wife to Gadhafi for torture.
B'liar should be made to testify under oath about this.
Evidence strongly suggests that the Las Vegas massacre was an act of right-wing terrorism.
The thugs know who gave that testimony. Will they pursue the matter or will they try to cover it up?
Saboteur Pruitt ordered his thugs to keep certain reporters out of his speech. Naturally, a lie was offered as a "reason".
If I were covering the EPA's policies of allowing toxic pollution, I wouldn't waste a minute trying to show video of Saboteur Pruitt's lies.
The head of the Department of Hate and Sadism said that when immigration thugs take children away from their parents, they are treating the children like any object that was being smuggled into the US.
Aside from being vicious and inhumane, it is also false. If parents ask for asylum and present their children, they are not smuggling them. However, the cheater's officials think nothing of truth or falsehood.
US deportation thugs will tell any lies to deport someone. Some of them encountered a judge that would not stand for it. They really should have been jailed for contempt of court.
Crowdfunding loans to enterprises enables people to choose to make their pension funds contribute to projects that society needs.
This is no substitute for state subsidies for purposes such as housing, but it would reduce the power of the banks.
Some recommendations for moving Venezuela to democracy.
I disagree with one point: the actual opposition does not deserve our support, because it is plutocratist and aims to convert Venezuela into a fief of the global elite. It would not be very different from the Republicans in the US, who naturally support it. It can look good only when compared with someone like Maduro.
The opposition that would deserve our support is a Chavista opposition. Unfortunately, that does not exist.
Modern-day hoovervilles in the US tend to reduce crime in the neighborhood.
A fear of fictitious crime is one of the excuses used to shut them down.
President Hoover's laissez-faire response to the Great Depression made it worse, and made hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless; so they called their camps and tent cities "hoovervilles."
Plutocratist center-right politicians cover up the history of populism so as to apply the term to right-wing anti-truth politicians such as the cheater.
Studying Hurricane Harvey shows how global heating makes hurricanes more intense. It also enables one hurricane to follow closely after another.
Georgia is prosecuting Russia in the European Court of Human Rights for war crimes in the brief war between the two countries.
Gorsuch and Thomas stated they want to toss out precedent and eliminate most of the US legal protection for privacy.
Nowadays, the "reasonable expectation of privacy" gives us far too little privacy.
72% of Democratic and independent voters say that opposing the cheater is not enough; they want Democratic candidates to champion progressive positions.
Defending Our Revolution from plutocratist smears.
'Jesus Never Charged a Leper a Co-Pay': Christian progressives in the US.
Starbucks: all members of the public that enter its stores in the US are now welcome to use the toilet, whether they buy anything or not.
This ought to be the law, everywhere, for all stores that have a toilet for customers.
The definition of "white race" has been extended to perhaps 10 times as many people in the past 250 years.
In another 50 years, if we work at it, we could redefine it to include all humans.
Various paths to ending partisan gerrymandering.
"Corporate domination of West Virginia is to blame for the state's high rates of obesity, smoking, and drug overdose deaths, says the head of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Family Coalition."
The UK has pushed an immigrant into destitution because he made a mistake on his tax return and then corrected it as prescribed by law.
The new Italian government's fiscal plans are rational and necessary — it's the euro zone that is absurd.
Italy has the same kind of problem as Greece, though it is not as acute for Italy.
LocationSmart has everyone's cell phone location data because phone companies sell the data to it.
The Saboteur of Housing has withdrawn a "tool" that cities use to check for racial segregation in housing.
This "tool" is really SaaSS, and should be replaced by a free program, released to the public, so that anyone can run it and no one can ever take it away.
Saboteur Sessions is always looking to deport more people. Now he has ordered immigration judges from granting a deportation target a delay so that perse can regularize per status.
Reporting on the progress in eliminating finance for fossil fuels.
US citizens: support the Restoring Overtime Pay Act.
The bully plans to deny immigrants proper hearings by setting a quota for cases, so that judges have to rush and cannot give due consideration to anyone's rights.
Maduro won "reelection" with a low turnout as his opposition boycotted the election. The figures suggest that the opposition might have won if it had voted.
I don't see visible proof that the election was rigged, but I would not assume Maduro is honest.
Doing immigration hearings via telecommunications is bad for the people concerned, because it tends to discourage them; then they give up before trying all arguments to be allowed to stay in the US.
The EU has taken the side of Airbnb, against the residents of cities that see housing becoming scarce.
A school in New York state plans to use face recognition to record who speaks with whom in the school.
The operative words is not "Kafka", it is "Big Brother." I hope that students organize to fight and to defeat this system.
Being shot is a danger in the US, but students are in more danger outside school than in it.
New Orleans thugs listen to conversations of people in jail with their lawyers.
The Palestinian Authority has referred Israel's war crimes to the International Criminal Court.
Indian thugs shot and killed nine protesters who demanded an end to toxic pollution from a factory near their homes.
A Rohingya militia massacred Hindus in Burma, sparing only those who agreed to convert to Islam.
This crime doesn't justify the much larger subsequent crime against Rohingya civilians.
In one country after another, the would-be tyrant encourages dictators to crush and kill dissidents.
Various African "presidents" are giving themselves increased powers and setting aside term limits.
Tashi Wangchuk has been imprisoned for 5 years for teaching Tibetans in the Tibetan language, which China seeks to extinguish.
I speculate that Yushu is in the part of Tibet that China annexed several decades ago.
Shukri Abdull, Malaysian investigator whose job included investigating Najib Razak's corruption, talks about the threats and obstacles he received.
The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining has doubled in six months.
Please don't call those people "libertarians". They use that name to give the impression that defending human rights is their principal aim. In fact their principal aim is laissez-faire economics. They condemn the regulations that protect us from business as "socialism", so the right term for them is "antisocialists".
US citizens: Demand transparency in political ads.
US citizens: call on Congress to let Medicare and Medicaid negotiate drug prices.
I think the page appears not to work if you don't run its JS code, but then it sends a confirmation mail. If you get different results, please inform me.
US citizens: call on the House to restore the network neutrality rules.
Gregory Stevens resigned from a Palo Alto church, accusing the city of contemptuously crushing the poor.
Perhaps it would be better if he had stayed on.
The European Union's carbon-trading is reportedly starting to be effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"Data is the new oil" — but if so, what does that imply?
Humanity, and most other species of life, would be better off if we made most of the buried oil and gas disappear instantly.
We would likewise be better off if we made most of the present and future databases of personal data disappear.
Purdue Pharma was convicted of fraud in connection with OxyContin, but then the US government made a deal with Purdue to allow it to continue selling the drug. Rudy Giuliani obtained this deal for Purdue.
It seems that OxyContin's special characteristics are responsible for the current problem of opioids. Some of it could have been prevented, if not for that deal.
There is no justification for lurching to the other extreme and making the less dangerous approved opioid medicines so hard to get.
The Taliban and PIS are capturing mines in Afghanistan and selling the minerals.
Prison thugs in Australia have admitted beating up a prisoner for no reason, then lying about it.
One of their coworkers was a corrections officer rather than a thug. Bravo for his commitment to honesty. If not for him, they might have maimed the prisoner.
A study tracking the outcomes of punishing unemployed Britons by cutting their unemployment benefits found that it rarely leads anyone into getting a job, but it pushed many of them into poverty or crime.
The article does not report on how effective these policies have been at leading people to demonize the unemployed.
If the government wants poor people to work more hours, it should think about laws to require companies to give workers predictable work schedules, notifying them well in advance.
It seems that North Korea envisions nuclear disarmament over time, not the immediate total unilateral disarmament that the bully demands.
If we have peace between South Korea and North Korea, I won't feel terribly worried that North Korea has nuclear weapons. What makes that so potentially dangerous is the state of war. It is always unfortunate that another country has nuclear weapons, but there is no need to go nuts about that.
Mayor de Blasio told New York City thugs to stop arresting people for smoking marijuana on street.
Australia and the US must recognize: There is no justification for firing into crowds of protesters.
Imagine if playing basketball while black becomes a crime.
The article seems to be satire.
30,000 protested in Munich against plans to give thugs more power.
EDRI urges activists to "be as critical of the technology you use to further your cause as you are of the people, lobbyists, institutions, companies and governments you’re fighting."
I hope this leads to understanding of why we must reject nonfree software.
The US birth rate is falling. That means less contribution to global heating, less contribution to deforestation, less contribution to every global problem.
The low birth rate is what we need. But it does not require making most people poor.
Salafi Arabia is arresting lots of women's rights activists.
Looks like the charm offensive has stalled.
The US Senate is considering another long copyright extension, this time for old musical recordings that are already in the public domain.
Chuck Schumer Is the Worst Possible Democratic Leader on Foreign Policy at the Worst Possible Time.
One cause of acute leukaemia seems to be overprotecting children from bacteria.
Several mass shootings in the US, including the last two, were based on misogyny.
Venezuela's medical system is collapsing and no longer prevents malaria.
The system can't possibly be worse today, for the poor, than it was before President Chavez. Before Chavez, Venezuela's medical system used to be effectively limited those wealthy enough to pay. Chavez brought in Cuban doctors to offer treatment to the poor.
The bully is planning to impose censorship about abortion on most medical institutions in the US, as a condition on federal subsidy.
Campaigning to preserve the status quo is weak. The US government ought to pay for abortions. We should campaign for that.
Interpol's New Software Will Recognize Criminals by Their Voices.
I fear that this surveillance is not limited to criminals.
In Haspel Confirmation, US Moves Beyond Impunity to Reward Torture.
Warmer water from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is flowing into the Arctic, heating it up and bringing species that didn't live there before.
This is a positive feedback loop which will speed the total loss of Arctic sea ice, and speed the melting of Greenland.
Saboteur Pruitt intends to cancel the EPA's system for avoiding chemical plant disasters.
Some blacks in the British royal family won't do much to reduce racism against black commoners.
African countries need to beware of letting foreign companies dominate them by getting control of the citizens' data.
People should be allowed to access foreign social networks and services, so as to keep their data away from their own government. However, domestic social networks and services should be required to protect their data from access by foreign governments.
Even better, these services should protect the data from the local government as well.
The Washington Post uses the term "far left" for candidates that support policies such as taxing the rich more, single-payer medical care, legalizing marijuana.
Since most American's support those policies, by definition the center includes them. They should be called "center-left policies".
As for the fictional "center" of the establishment, that's right-wing.
Comcast makes new customers sign up for an "installation", for which it charges a fee, even if the house already has a connection and the customer has per own modem. Comcast claims the customer can get a refund for this, but it doesn't tell customers that.
If your congresscritter votes against network neutrality, it's because perse is getting paid by this company and/or a few others like it.
The Senate Judiciary committee says that the NRA funneled money from Russia to support the cheater's campaign.
Over the decades when the richest Americans took wealth and income away from the non-rich 90%, forcing them down into poverty, the intermediate group of not-quite-rich (around 10%) have maintained their comfortable status by building barriers to social mobility between them and the 90%.
The article refers to the "9.9%", but that is unwarranted precision. The line between that group and the 90% is not a sharp one; we cannot say whether they are 10%, 9.9%, or 10.1% of the population.
The article's terminology is slightly skewed from historical precedent. The term "aristocracy" should refer to the richest .1%. The proper term for the comfortable 10% is "gentry".
The big accounting firms must be split up to ensure honest auditing.
Student loans in the US nowadays have become a crushing burden that (unless you get a big income soon after graduation) lasts for life, and sometimes even longer. The author explains her own example.
Even while AI lacks the power to convert Earth into paperclips, it tends to destroy the meaning of human thinking.
Right-wing trolls spread disinformation about the latest school shooter almost immeditely after he was identified, using his name to falsely smear their political enemies.
Scientists Tell Congress: Don’t Strip Science Out of the Endangered Species Act.
Over 40% of American households have trouble paying for basic needs.
Plutocracy did this, and until we put an end to plutocracy, it will keep making things worse.
"Can you be a socialist and rich?" Yes, and sincerely so.
Progressives recognize that the money that some rich people would voluntarily donate is not enough to do what the state ought to do. Therefore we advocate establishing systems that give everybody a decent life. With proper taxation, all rich people will have to contribute to society's needs, but none of them will be required to reduce themselves to poverty.
Shared electric scooters would be a significant improvement in public transport, if not for the fact that they track you everywhere and require running a proprietary app.
These are fundamentally as evil as Uber, so I urge you to reject them like Uber.
Senator Corker proposes a law to let the US start wars in any country if it is for fighting certain a vaguely specified set of terrorist groups, even if there is no war going on.
US citizens: Give the Department of Health a comment opposing the proposed abortion gag rule.
US citizens: call on senators to save the Endangered Species Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to curb lobbyists' power to buy support.
US citizens: Call on Monster Beverage Corporation to seriously investigate slavery in its sugar production.
Berta Cáceres's campaign lives on, and is suing a Dutch bank for a dam project in Honduras.
Australia has been weak on supporting human rights abroad, and Malaysia's prime-minister-to-be Anwar Ibrahim does not forget this.
Permit Scheme Facilitating Slavery on Irish Fishing Boats, Says Union.
Many young people in Gaza are committing suicide, but there is no way of counting them since suicide is typically hushed up.
I wonder whether, in 30 years, the America of the non-rich will be like Gaza today.
In a real pub, smaller servings of alcohol led customers to drink substantially less alcohol.
The UK is subjecting Julian Assange to conditions both oppressive and dangerous to his health, and Ecuador's new president seems to be quietly making them even worse.
The UK's new highly competitive graduation tests discourage all students, even the best.
I suspect that rich parents have made a way for their children to bypass these tests. Is that so?
Israeli soldiers shot Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani as he was treating protesters wounded by Israeli soldiers. Israeli soldiers shot many other medics, killing one. Since the army says that it "knows where every shot went", it cannot plead that this was unintentional. Loubani gives reasons to conclude he must have been targeted intentionally.
A few years ago, Loubani was imprisoned in Egypt for months for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when the coup occurred. He was freed due to an international pressure campaign.
Ebola has spread to a big city in the DR Congo, from which it might spread all around the world.
The bully recently cut funds for emergency funds to deal with such outbreaks. This is like cutting funds to the fire department; it is crazy. Slowness in the response will let Ebola spread further.
An experimental vaccine is being tested there.
(Satire) An Israeli soldier recounted Tuesday his harrowing, heroic war story of killing an 8-month-old Palestinian child during a violent attack against protesters.
An Equifax and Facebook Lawyer Will Now Run the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
Several Senate Democrats voted to confirm torturer Haspel, along with all the Republicans.
McCain, who opposed torture, was unable to vote because he was dying.
Insects will lose half their habitat in this century if we don't curb global heating. This would disrupt many other species.
A Third of World's Nature Reserves Severely Degraded by Human Activity.
It is ludicrous to ask young working adults to save for their retirement when they can barely scrape by on their low wages.
Corrupt Guatemalan Officials Find Help from an Unlikely Source: Marco Rubio.
Everyone: oppose Facebook's ID requirements for political ads. They are an injustice towards some real activists in the US.
They won't even fix the real problem, since the foreign entities that want to advertise can easily funnel through real US citizens.
US citizens: Oppose the Republican abortion gag rule.
US citizens: Call on your congresscritter to vote for network neutrality.
CNN and MSNBC didn't even mention the Senate's vote for network neutrality.
New York State has adopted strict standards for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
I have the suspicion that Cuomo agreed to this because of the primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon.
The UK says it will provide passes for anonymous access to porn sites to people who show proof of age.
It is less surveillance than I would have expected, but people wonder if it is really truly anonymous.
US border thugs substantially undercount the border crossers that died in the process. Even deaths witnessed and reported by individual thugs are omitted from the overall count.
Acupuncture had no significant effect on the probability of success of in-vitro fertilization.
I disagree with those that recommend using it as a placebo to help women feel more comfortable. Truth is a value, as well as comfort. There are other ways to help people feel comfortable which don't spread pseudoscience.
The FBI is investigating around 1000 Americans as suspected possible future "lone wolf" terrorists.
How many of them, left to themselves, would commit terrorism? Based on general ideas of human behavior, I would guess around 10. Suppose that investigation might prevent 5 of them. (Stopping a crime which would be committed on the spur of the moment cannot be counted on.)
Are roughly 1000 FBI investigations of people only thinking of committing a crime less harmful to Americans than a handful of attempted crimes?
The US Senate passed the resolution to restore network neutrality.
Now the battle goes to the house of representatives. It may be possible to win there. The cheater could veto it, but might decide not to if faced with so much public support for it.
What Senator Thune said is interesting for its deceptiveness. First he said, "Don't vote for this because it can't win." But even if that were true, it would not be a reason not to vote for net neutrality.
Second he praised the end of network neutrality because it is deregulation. His position, evidently, is that the government should not interfere when giant businesses, in an only slightly competitive market, systematically mistreat people.
That's what government is for, silly senator!
His words show only that he's with those businesses, against the public.
Note that these network neutrality rules may not have been necessary 20 years ago, since there was a lot more competition among ISPs.
The collapse of a conglomerate that implemented privatized public services in the UK was due to corruption which the new privatization system was unable to detect until too late.
This demonstrates that privatization of public services is an invitation for companies to cheat the state, as well as to cheat the public and to cheat their employees.
A UK politician is being attacked for reporting that many Syrians support Assad.
Assad is a dictator who has killed thousands of Syrians and driven millions into exile. He is also supported by millions of Syrians — basically, Arabs that are not Sunni. The Arab rebels are Sunni, and tend more or less to oppress non-Sunnis.
This is why there is no side in Syria that deserved support, except Rojava. However, Rojava, which is mainly Kurdish, could not become a government of Syria. Arabs mostly won't accept a government by Kurds nowadays.
CFCs, banned since decades ago, are being produced again in Asia, and this is slowing the reduction of the ozone hole.
Overuse of ground water is already starting to bite humanity. Some aquifers do not refill at all, and others don't refill as fast as we take water from them.
Global heating is adding to the problem by reducing rainfall in some areas.
Occasional exercise promotes good health, but constant heavy physical labor tends to kill people.
Facebook allows ads to be targeted at people it infers are homosexual or interested in Islam, if it hasn't specifically been told this.
Right-wingers want US border thugs to shoot and kill unauthorized immigrants. They are gleeful about killing.
US border thugs are currently limited to making border-crossers die of thirst, but that doesn't provide the same visceral satisfaction.
Coulter is a troll, but she wouldn't say this if she didn't know that many right-wingers will be delighted at the thought of crushing the weak.
Arguing that factory farms cause so much harm to people and the environment that they should be banned.
Malaysian politician Anwar Ibrahim has been pardoned and freed.
Ibrahim was apparently framed by Mahathir 20 years ago.
Everyone: demand dropping all charges against Chikesia Clemons.
Everyone: call on Fedex to stop giving a discount to NRA members.
US citizens: Call on SCROTUS to pass gun control laws.
Unless you're telekinetic or some god exists, your "thoughts and prayers" won't help anyone.
The government of Cambodia plans to build a dam across the Mekong river, and never mind the likelihood that it will wipe out the fish that 80% of Cambodians eat.
The Senate's bank deregulation bill will encourage medium-size banks to merge into large ones.
One US company pays its CEO 5000 times the median wage of its workers. For almost 200 more large companies, the ratio is over 100.
California thugs kill black men at 8 times the rate of the rest of the population.
Some employees have quit Google in protest against its development of AI for analyzing images from military drones.
Trump attorney fed statement to Russians about Trump Tower meeting.
A desperate move — resurrecting mammoths to try to keep trees out of thawing tundra areas.
Undercover Corporate Work Lures Underemployed Actors and Underpaid Workers … to corrupt democracy.
(Satire) Netanyahu officially declared a nationwide day of mourning Tuesday for a section of security fence damaged in yesterday's conflict at the Gaza border.
Walmart is helping to fund a campaign to convince US workers to stop paying union dues.
Those who fall for this will lose a lot more than the amount of their union dues.
New York City thugs are especially eager to arrest blacks and hispanics for selling small amounts of marijuana on the street.
The "gig economy" amounts to a small fraction of the US economy, partly because the number of workers is not very large, and partly because they are badly paid.
EPA Saboteur Pruitt blocked release of a study that demonstrated that certain chemicals are toxic even at low concentrations.
US media downplay the fact that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian protesters by avoiding the word "kill".
Japan refuses to discuss better relations with North Korea, demanding a full resolution of North Korea's kidnapings. Japanese were kidnaped from coastal areas and forced to teach Japanese to spies.
Of course, North Korea should resolve the matter of the kidnappings. If the other kidnaped Japanese people died before 2002, North Korea should do the right thing, whatever is appropriate in such as case.
Japan should also resolve the matter of the women conscripted as prostitutes during World War II. The one crime doesn't justify the other, and they are not related; but since each country owes the other an apology, it may be a lot easier to do this if they do it at the same time.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to protect voters' right to know who is running political ads.
Everyone: Call on Philadelphia to stop its practice of jailing people for months before they get a court hearing.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for a vote in favor of network neutrality, and to sign the discharge petition.
Please do not use their Javascript-dependent site to find who your congresscritter is. Use another way to find out who.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Here's more information about what to say.
UK thugs' face recognition system, applied to ordinary members of the public, identified people erroneously 90% of the time.
It could be worse: it could identify them correctly 90% of the time. And that is likely to happen in a few years if this system is not banned entirely.
China is funding a half-billion-dollar project in Indonesia which includes the cheater as an investor.
The Poor People's Campaign has launched 40 days of protests to demand economic justice.
China is the latest economic imperialist to lend countries money they can't afford to pay back. Many countries are in debt to the IMF, or to US banks, and can't pay it back. Hugo Chavez used Venezuela's oil money to rescue Argentina from its debt to the IMF.
China could win lots of international support by buying that debt and offering less oppressive terms for paying it back.
In India, out of every 1000 girls born, 19 die from the effects of bias against females.
The author of the article confuses the issue by claiming that "girls die" when female fetuses are aborted. That's absurd, because a fetus is not a boy or a girl. A fetus is not a human being.
The campaign against sex-selection puts abortion rights at risk in general.
We can tell from the quotations that the researchers who wrote the medical article were careful to avoid that mistake.
The doctors that get taken to lunch by opioid salescritters tend to prescribe more opioids.
This does not mean those doctors prescribe opioids too much. Given the pressure on doctors to refuse opioids to patients that suffer from great pain, it could be that these doctors mainly prescribe opioids to people that really need them.
The right approach isn't having salescritters promote prescription of these or any drugs. Rather, it is to end the War on Pain Sufferers and reject opioids that are particularly inviting to addiction.
Bringing back the 20th century's practice of supply management could help US farmers stay in business.
However, they also need us to break up the large food companies that dominate and mistreat the farms they buy from.
"NRA propaganda hearkens back to an imagined past of white picket fences and financial security. In doing so, it whitewashes the history of guns in American life."
Julian Assange is cut off from visitors as well as from the internet. It looks like Ecuador might force him out of the embassy, probably into the clutches of the US.
Assange showed disrespect to his host country by causing political difficulties for Ecuador. I can understand telling him, "Don't make problems for us while we are protecting you." However, to deny him visitors entirely is unnecessary, thus too harsh.
To hand Assange indirectly to the US would be a great dishonor for Ecuador. The US sheltered Cardinal Mindszenty in its embassy in Hungary for 15 years. To have surrendered him to the Communist dictatorship would have been a great dishonor, which the US rejected.
French budget minister Cahuzac led a campaign against tax dodging, and was eventually caught doing it himself.
It would be easy to draw a cynical lesson — easy but erroneous. What this shows is that an effective system can catch and stop tax dodging by people who are fairly rich.
What is needed now is to add laws to block the lawful methods of tax dodging carried out by exploitative companies such as Apple and Amazon.
Rep. Hoyer, Democrat, endorsed Israel's massacre of protesters, and its pretense that this was a legitimate act of military defense against a military attack.
A siege is an act of war; therefore, by the usual standards, a military thrust by Gaza or its allies aimed at breaking the siege would be a legitimate act of defense.
However, protests by Gazans on the territory of Gaza are not a military act of any kind. Killing protesters is not legitimate war, it is a war crime.
This is the same Hoyer that has been working against progressive Democratic candidates.
The troll has arrogantly slapped everyone in Gaza in the face.
I don't think it is correct to say that the troll has "jettisoned any chance of peace", because Netanyahu did that years ago. As Uri Avnery reported, Netanyahu kept negotiations going as a sham, while setting impossible preconditions so that they could not succeed, and Obama tacitly accepted that.
Rather, what the troll has now done is give Israel carte blanche for atrocities.
It is hard to eliminate homelessness by taxing companies for their employees.
One cause of the shortage of housing in US cities is zoning, which prevents the construction of a lot more housing.
It needs to be mentioned that the practice of buying luxury housing purely to resell it years later, and leaving it empty in the mean time, is also responsible in some expensive cities. That would be easy to stop with a large additional tax on residential space that isn't anyone's primary residence.
We need to tax companies such as Amazon more — a lot more. However, taxation per employee creates a perverse incentive for companies to use more automation and reduce the number of employees. They can also threaten to move jobs to where they pay less tax.
I think we should eliminate all payroll taxes, including those for social security and medicare. We should raise money for those programs, and other things, by taxing businesses on their income, regardless of their number of employees, and regardless of which country they notionally assign that income to.
However, it is hard for a city to enact a tax of that kind and make it effective. It needs to be done at a national level.
When Jewish Americans Uphold Occupation, It Corrodes Our Souls.
The photographs that documented the poverty of the Great Depression, and consequent suffering, were carefully selected, rejecting many of the most painful.
Today's plutocracy, and global heating, are likely to push most people into even worse poverty.
Some Israelis demand an inquiry into the massacre of Gazan protesters.
The UK government has hired tax bounty hunters to pressure non-rich people to pay their taxes even if they are broke.
Meanwhile, it is doing almost nothing to make rich companies such as Apple and Amazon pay taxes. It is clear who the Tories are working for.
School privatizers are using Africa as a testbed for developing an inflexible inhumane standardized education without trained teachers.
Paranoid Americans now want their nannies checked by the FBI. This check violates their privacy, and secondarily costs them a lot of money, all pointlessly.
Many thug departments in the UK deport unauthorized immigrants who report crimes.
A war between the US and Iran could draw in many other countries.
The US might not be able to invade Iran by land. Looking at Iran's neighbors, I doubt any would help, except Afghanistan, but that is hardly a secure base to launch an invasion from.
Assigning a monetary value to parts of the natural world encourages the idea that they are all for sale, and helps the extractivists by undermining the awareness that they have other, more important kinds of value.
"'The river is dead': is a mine polluting the water of Brazil's Xikrin tribe?"
The reactivated Poor People's Campaign has started off with protests across the US. More protests are planned for 40 days.
Pressure to have a "positive" attitude is a burden on people that have cancer, and it doesn't let up even when the cancer is terminal.
"Trump threw a match into Jerusalem with no plan to put out the fire."
The move of the US embassy provoked Palestinian protests, but that is not directly responsible for the killing of 52 more protesters. What's responsible for that is the Israeli policy of eager killing.
Bernie Sanders condemned the massacre.
Contrast that with the sniveling of most US politicians.
Large investment institutions are pressuring oil companies and banks not to invest in drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Any and all development of new oil or gas fields is an irresponsible decision, given that civilization's survival depends on cutting back quickly.
Saboteur of Education DeVos has effectively ended investigations into the fraudulent practices of for-profit colleges.
The saboteur-in-chief, having owned one, would naturally resent the idea of investigating others.
It is part of a systematic plan to help companies cheat people.
(Satire) The Dalai Lama announced Monday that the next will be his final life before retirement.
Evidence that the US used germ warfare against North Korea and killed an American scientist who was going to reveal this.
I don't recognize the names of anyone mentioned in the article except Seymour Hersh, so I can't have full confidence in the statements in the article. It could be true.
In the predigital era, your boss was forbidden to read your mail, or listen to your phone calls. By contrast, Slack just said your boss can read your private conversations.
In the US: tell the CEO of Novartis to stop blocking Medicare from negotiating drug prices.
The CEO of Novartis has no formal say in the matter, but in practice he buys power.
US citizens: Oppose Pruitt's plan to personally censor science that the EPA can use.
US citizens: call on the US to stop donating weapons to Israel.
A vice president at Duke University defends free speech — but not for student employees on a coffee shop on campus. He had them fired for playing a song he did not like.
SCROTUS are demanding the details of Mueller's investigation, to give it to the cheater so they can undermine the investigation.
FEMA is demanding Puerto Ricans show papers for their destroyed houses, before giving them rebuilding assistance. As much as half the families never had such papers.
Saboteur of the Interior Zinke appears to be committing ethics violations.
California's efforts demonstrate how an advanced economy can drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately, since greenhouse gas is a global problem, California cannot protect itself from the damaging effects no matter how hard it works. Unless the rest of the world joins in — which the planet-roasters are doing their damnedest to prevent — California will be hosed in winter and hung out to dry in summer.
The New York Times and Washington Post argue about what the US should do to dominate Iran.
Why try to do that?
Funding cuts in UK education result in too few teachers and too little preparation time. This has driven the older, experienced teachers to quit, making the job impossible for those who remain.
The US example says they should go on strike.
Snoopphone apps that use the ultrasonic "nearby" protocol are supposed to filter out voice frequencies. Thus, supposedly they can't spy on people's conversations.
But they always spy on the user's movements, since that's their purposes. Better not to use it. (Better not to use the snoopphone at all.)
Tick-Borne Illness Has Tripled, but the CDC Refuses to Blame [global heating]. It used to recognize the connection until the saboteurs took control.
Texas State University wants students prosecuted for a sit-in against racism.
Moqtada al-Sadr's party got the most votes in Iraq's election.
He always struck me as acting more from principles than from greed or ambition, a great contrast to everyone else in Iraqi politics.
The mother of a US marine recounts how his stand-up-to-torture training experience traumatized him and he has not been the same since.
There are several minority ethnic groups in Myanmar, and several of them don't want to be ruled by Burmese. They have fought on and off for decades to preserve their autonomy. Now the state is cracking down on the Kachin minority.
The Amazon Echo Dot is designed to accustom children to surveillance-based marketing from a young age.
A positive feedback loop now increases the melting of Antarctica's ice. The meltwater mixes with the ocean's surface water and stops it from descending as it used to.
Philadelphia adopted a tax on sugar-loaded drinks, which has been very effective in reducing consumption of them. So the companies that sell these have gone to the state government to prohibit cities from doing this. Other states have already done it.
Republicans are reliable boosters of products that are dangerous to people.
The Israeli defenders of Palestinian human rights and peace face state repression and death threats, as Israel becomes ever less free, but they don't give up.
An anti-Trump Republican seeks to run for Al Franken's old senate seat.
Being against the bully is only the first requisite for being someone we should want in the senate. It is not enough. I hope a progressive candidate beats him in the primary.
Professor Scott Warren faces 20 years in prison for providing unauthorized immigrants with supplies and a place to sleep. The border thugs used to respect this humanitarian aid, but now they are trying to snuff it out.
The border thugs dehumanize unauthorized immigrants. Some dream of torturing them, and they generally drool over the idea of hitting them on the head with a flashlight. In other words, they have a culture that trains them to be unfit for any such job.
They regard augmenting the danger of death for people crossing the border as a legitimate means of deterring them from trying, and they equate any effort to reduce the danger as obstruction of their deadly plans.
I suspect they wish they were permitted to simply shoot apparent migrants.
Electronic Monitors: How Companies Dream of Locking Us in Our Homes.
The bully has ordered all US agencies to make all kinds of assistance to poor people harder to get.
The UK minister for deportation has resigned after being caught in direct lies about how hard the staff were pressing to procure deportations.
This alone will not end the "hostile environment" that she presided over. That requires changing the laws and policies which set it up.
The bully wants to send PISSI soldiers (or those accused of being such) to Guantanamo, but if this occurs, they could legally challenge whether Congress ever authorized US participation in fighting PISSI.
Indefinite imprisonment, which is what the US does in the Guantanamo prison, is a blot on the honor of the United States. Americans, if you love our country as I do, join me in insisting that this end.
Gambling companies use AI-driven manipulative techniques, based on each gambler's past history, to keep them hooked.
This demonstrates that consent must not be considered sufficient justification to record personal data.
Someone who made an inaccurate criticism of Malaysian thugs has been sentenced to a month in prison.
He had exaggerated the statement out of anger, and apologized for the error. It seems he did not intentionally lie.
False statements are unfortunate, but criminalizing them is much worse.
The FDA has found glyphosate in almost all the foods it has tested, but has not published anything about this.
The patented gene that makes some crops resistant to glyphosate might not directly harm people, but it brings glyphosate.
Michael Segalov: "A free press? I’m a UK journalist, but the police labelled me an extremist."
"Witness statements from the officers cite my time as a student campaigner as a reason to bar me: a time when I was elected as a student union officer and was voted on to the National Union of Students’ national executive council...."
"The other reason cited for labelling me as an “extreme leftwing” activist is my journalism."
I wonder why the Labour Party couldn't or didn't decide to admit Segalov to their event, regardless of the thugs. Does anyone know why?
US border guards have invented creative but absurd excuses to stop the refugees in the caravan from Central America from even applying for asylum.
India is planning to privatize the operations of its greatest tourist attractions, including the Taj Majal.
There isn't much competition in those markets, so the privatization will create a localized private monopoly.
If 10 million jobs are lost to automation in the UK, it would be a national disaster. The UK has around 66 million inhabitants, and I'd expect roughly 30 to 40 million people employed.
Having a phone on the table during dinner or other interactions with people tends to make people more unhappy.
The UK railroad network is cutting down thousands of healthy trees lest their leaves or branches fall on the train track some day.
This sounds like our fears about a hypothetical AI that subordinates everything to a narrow goal. Will Network Rail try to convert the entire substance of the Earth into crossties?
A US appeals court approved Texas's voter ID law. Voting-rights advocates will file further appeals.
The US deportation thugs are so incompetent that they often mistakenly imprison US citizens for deportation. One US citizen was imprisoned this way for over three years before a court looked at the question.
The bully is the culmination of a plutocratist plan, started in the 1970s, to take control of the US government and redirect it towards serving the rich.
There are calls for an arms embargo on Israel for its mass shooting of Palestinian protesters.
I don't think it would have much effect on shooting protesters, since Israel makes those arms.
The OSHA is almost powerless to protect workers from dangerous chemicals, so mostly the EPA has done the job. Now companies believe that Saboteur Pruitt offers a chance to convince the EPA to "defer to" the powerless OSHA, so that no agency will try to remove dangerous chemicals from the workplace.
People of Denver are calling on the EPA to limit the emissions of cyanide gas from a fossil-fuel facility.
A massive natural gas extraction system in Papua New Guinea was supposed to double the country's GDP, but it has provided little if any benefit to that country. This may have something to do with the legal concessions that the government had to make in order to get the project started.
We are learning that businesses don't ever justify such concessions, not even in their narrow economic terms presented.
Citizens of Florida: support proposed amendment 4, which would end disenfranchisement of former convicts.
Everyone: urge Germany, Russia, UK, France and China to preserve the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
US citizens: support Sanders's bill to reduce US drug prices.
Since the UK is still part of the EU, it can still work to further sabotage the EU's efforts to curb global heating.
Tight restrictions on opioid painkillers is driving abusers to illegally made opioids, which increases the deaths from overdoses. Meanwhile, people who need painkillers now suffer from great pain.
The new breathalyzer that Washington State is buying seems to give erroneous reports, but the manufacturer, Draeger, made legal threats to suppress research into the question.
The article uses the bogus term "intellectual property", which gives a confused picture of actual laws, and should never be used.
What the Onion published as a joke, the Washington Post asserted seriously: confirm Haspel because it would be a great step forward to have a woman as head of the CIA, and never mind if she is responsible for torture.
I don't care about an official's gender. I care about what person does and stands for.
A bogus report claims that 20% of homeless youth in the US are "victims of human trafficking", but the true figure was half that.
Looking at the full report, we can see that this figure is deceptive. The study followed a lying law by defining "victim of human trafficking" (and "victim of sex trafficking") to include "doing prostitution while under 18 years old."
It appears that the "victims of sex trafficking" were 17%, but only 7% were actually trafficked into sex. That suggests that the real fraction that were victims of some kind of trafficking was 10%, not 20%.
Even 10% coerced into some sort of work is a big problem, but let's not dishonestly double the figure.
The cheater is negotiating with China to exempt a Chinese company from the effect of US sanctions.
The extremism and racism of US evangelicals could split their alliance with Catholics.
Israel is preparing to shoot protesters in Gaza again, in case they protest against the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem.
A considerable fraction of today's porn shows the act of choking a woman.
I can't imagine how being choked could be exciting. I don't think I could bring myself to do that to a woman even if she asked me to.
"In the absence of political will to tackle America’s growing economic crisis, hi-tech tools can only serve to automate and amplify existing inequalities."
Most Americans don't have enough money for a decent life, and minor tweaks in public assistance can't make up for the giant cuts.
Indigenous people living near the Yukon river have increased their population and are catching so many salmon that the fish numbers are slowly dwindling.
Fontcode is a scheme for hiding messages in documents presented as images (including PDF files).
It wouldn't be effective for steganography to get it past serious spies, but it threatens to be used for watermarking as part of the War on Sharing. In other words, it will give the powerful another arm for enforcing unjust power.
The NHS is wracked by shortages of nurses, and sometimes has to send emergency patients home because it can't care for them.
We've Got to Stop Turning Our Backs on Ebola. Calling for systematic monitoring in case it spreads internationally.
Australia will ban cash purchases over $10,000 Australian dollars.
It is important to start fighting back now, because other examples such as Italy and France suggest the limit will be reduced to hundreds of dollars.
Democrats, Warns Sanders, Cannot Defeat Trump With Same Establishment Candidates.
Foreign anti-abortion activists are using Facebook to manipulate the Irish referendum vote on legalizing abortion.
North Korea Invites World to Watch Closure of Nuclear Test Site.
Two "Democratic" senators have said they will vote for Haspel, hoping for Republican votes for their reelection.
It is a terrible shame that Manchin did not face a primary challenge. What good is it to beat Republicans with someone who is almost a Republican himself.
The deportation frenzy of the US is cutting off immigrants from medical care, so minor problems develop into fatal ones. Their children go untreated, too.
And Now, For His Grand Finale, Paul Ryan Is Trying to Kick at Least a Million People Off of Food Stamps.
Bullshit jobs seen as managerial feudalism.
Sanders has introduced a bill to expand workers' ability to unionize and resist union-busting.
The saboteur in chief has cancelled NASA's carbon monitoring program, which tracks the changing (increasing) level of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere.
The UN has a program to provide schooling to 200 million children, many of them refugees.
A substantial fraction of jobs are totally bullshit.
In a society where many people can't find productive jobs and desperately need money, eliminating bullshit jobs might do great harm to many poor people. But there are better ways to support the poor.
The US official unemployment rate is now under 4%, but partly that's because more people have given up on finding work. Meanwhile, wages are hardly rising at all. We need to increase the minimum wage.
Amazon is trying to bully Seattle into dropping a tax proposal to fund housing for the homeless.
We need to prevent any business from having the sort of influence that Amazon has today. To truly succeed requires laws, but you can do your share by not buying from Amazon. Money is the only language Amazon understands, so don't give it your money!
Impeach Scott Pruitt for Dismantling the EPA, Not His First-Class Flights.
Unfortunately SCROTUS defends his sabotage of the EPA and would never impeach him for that.
Facebook's dating service will collect a lot more data from its useds.
How to operate a dating service that Big Brother won't feed off of is a real problem, and I don't have a good answer for it. But I wouldn't appoint Facebook to find that answer.
A UK deportation official was honest enough to admit that his job was to "piss people off".
Two indigenous high school seniors on a tour of Colorado State University were removed from their tour by police because someone thought they were vaguely suspicious.
I wonder whether they still want to enroll there.
The first time I went to an academic conference, to present my paper on Emacs, I was harassed on two occasions by hotel staff who doubted my right to be there. Since I am a white male, I think I was treated as suspect because I didn't (and never do) wear a business uniform (suit).
An American women was attacked online for the absurd reason that she wore a beautiful Chinese dress.
Culture is for imitating. It is never wrong to adopt or adapt cultural practices of other cultures — though some ways of doing it are boorish and might be laughed at.
Sanders objected to the deployment of US troops to Salafi Arabia for fighting in Yemen.
With Utah's ag-gag law struck down as unconstitutional, animal rights activists can lawfully make photos and films of frightful conditions in factory farms. They did this in a turkey farm, and also took away a few turkeys that were so sick they were going to die in a few days without medical care.
The activists have been charged with grand theft of these birds, a felony, although commercially speaking the birds were worthless due to their illness.
The companies that run these factory farms regularly lie about the conditions in them.
Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian President, apologized for the antisemitic statements he made a few days ago, and said he respects all monotheistic religions.
That still omits some religions, and I wonder whether he gives atheism the respect it deserves. But even if he doesn't, he is no worse than many US politicians. In this context, that is sufficient.
Warning the people of Cape Town about when their water would run out achieved a big reduction in water use. As a result, the city has not run out of water.
But that could still happen. The usage rate is still somewhat higher than it needs to be.
The Corker-Keane blanket authorization for global war would also authorize imprisonment without trial on a broad scale.
A UK thug has been fired, and may face charges, for luring a dissident into a sexual relationship in order to spy on dissidents.
This is proper, but it can't be a coincidence that so many thugs in that infiltration squad did this.
(Satire) Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue reportedly stated Thursday, in a desperate attempt to serve as President Trump’s fall guy, that he was the one who slept with Stormy Daniels.
It would be dangerous to let Facebook tell us which news media are trustworthy.
(Satire) Supermarket chain Kroger recalled 35,000 pounds of ground beef Thursday that may contain traces of its chief executive officer.
The former CEO of Volkswagen has been charged with fraud for approving the system to fool emissions tests.
Israel has convicted a Palestinian poet of being a terrorist for her poem.
The poem itself did not call for violence.
The bully's three stooges believe they can make the US start a war with Iran.
Iran has not invaded another country for the last 250 years — since before the US was established. How many countries has the US invaded during that time?
The commanders of the four US armed services have stated that transgender soldiers are not a problem at all.
Why would they be a problem? Only because of others' bigotry. However, as more and more Americans have friends who are transgender, they realize it doesn't matter.
George Mason University has sold the Koch brothers a direct role in its decisions, including who to hire as faculty.
A Republican candidate for governor of Georgia put up an ad to demonstrate that he loves guns but doesn't love basic gun safety rules.
He also advocates subjecting unmarried women to their fathers' authority up to the point of shooting their lovers if he doesn't approve.
Cambridge Analytica is dead, but its main supporters have started a new company to replace it.
Since Cambridge Analytica is bankrupt, the court will sell off its assets to some other company, which could easily mistreat people in the same way. Or perhaps Cambridge Analytica has already sold all those data to the substitute company.
Republican saboteurs plan to save US national parks by destroying civilization.
Not only is it a bad deal, it won't even achieve the supposed goal. Human activities have introduced many invasive species, and to keep them down requires constant effort. Civilization is rich enough to do that. If civilization falls, we will no longer be able to hold them down.
Carl Icahn was granted a "financial hardship" waiver from complying with pollution rules. His income last year was a mere $234 million.
Vice President Wallace, and writer Sinclair Lewis, described what American fascists would do to take control of the state. Now they are doing it, proceeding down that path.
The US Department of Justice has deleted the areas of press freedom and racial gerrymandering from its priorities.
That is natural, since Republicans don't want any interference with their plans to arrest journalists and disenfranchise bigotry-target groups.
The planned merger of T-Mobile and Sprint would eliminate up to 20,000 jobs.
Allowing large companies to merge leads step by step towards monopoly. The plutocrats' love to own monopolies, so their servants label a market as "competitive" if it has more than one seller.
One of the the thugs that killed Diante Yarber was fired from another thug department for a racist attack.
US citizens: Tell the Senate: Block and Resist Anti-Abortion Extremist Wendy Vitter.
US citizens: call on Saboteur Zinke not to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
On the break between individual feminism (making each woman stronger and better able to resist sexism) and social feminism (working together to end sexism).
In principle, I'm in favor of both forms. I don't think they conflict except occasionally in details. Sexism is a form of bigotry, so it is good to help the targets of bigotry overcome it, and also good to change society to reduce it. Just as workers organize against injustice toward workers, woman can organize too.
However, no one is entitled to demand special sensitivity from others. Demands are legitimate when what is at stake are your rights. Anything beyond that, you can request but not demand.
A Japanese politician is pushing women to have more children. Some European countries are doing the same thing.
This is dangerous short-term thinking; the human race needs to reduce its birth rate so as to decrease the population without violence. Otherwise climate mayhem and topsoil depletion and ecological disasters are likely to reduce our population in very painful ways.
Charter schools in some US states threaten public education by draining off funds to privatized schools. Even if it doesn't make public education collapse, it takes away funds which were insufficient already.
The chief justice of the Philippines' supreme court has been removed for resisting Do-dirty's death squads.
Some US states have banned, or propose to ban, the "gay panic" defense, used by men who kill gays that have shown attraction for them.
Lots of things can give some people an urge to kill someone else. The point is that people have an obligation to resist those urges.
Oliver North Worked With Cocaine Traffickers to Arm Terrorists. Now He'll Be President of the NRA.
He says that gun control activism is a kind of "terrorism".
Bob Nygaard continues putting psychics behind bars for defrauding vulnerable customers.
An interview with Bob Nygaard describes various methods and lies of psychics.
How did Velvet know that Megan would respond to "There's something wrong with you"? Perhaps Velvet said that to everyone that passed by looking anxious.
Rebecca Solnit's analysis of the incel world view: when men consider women and sex as commodities, it's not a big leap to resentment of not getting a share of it.
Even in my saddest times, I never thought of women as a commodity. I wanted sexual love with a sweetheart, not sex by hook or by crook. Because of this, I think, I have found love from time to time. I recommend that men who consider themselves "incels" start thinking about shared affection.
Mahathir seems to have become prime minister, and has stopped Razak from leaving Malaysia so as to investigate him for corruption.
Rohingya Villagers Who Spoke to UN Delegation [in 2016] Forced into Hiding [afterward]. The repression forces hunted for them.
Ralph Nader: The Democratic Party is losing support because its policies are too right-wing.
It takes a real reversal of dooH niboR to inspire enthusiasm among the non-rich non-Republicans.
The cheater proposes to reduce drug prices in the US by pressuring other countries to allow pharma companies to gouge people more.
This is based on the fictitious principal of conservation of greed, which claims that a company desires only a certain amount of income, so if it makes more profit over there, it will be happy with less profit over here.
Sharif Cousins was shot by a UK thug as he had his hands up. Fortunately he did not die from this. He had been a gang member, years ago, and the thugs never stopped harassing him about it.
I am puzzled by the idea that he was "allegedly" unarmed. If the thugs had found a gun, they would have said so. Since they didn't report one, we know he was unarmed.
Service Meant to Monitor Inmates’ Calls Could Track You, Too. Officials can in practice use this to track anyone that carries a portable tracking and surveillance device.
The court ruling about searching electronic devices at the border applies only to thorough "forensic" search, not to a manual search. This is a step forward, but incomplete.
Meanwhile, the article does not mention anything that would in practice restrain agents from doing a search without a reasonable suspicion, or from fabricating a suspicion on the spot.
Everyone: Tell Delaware North to drop its lawsuit against Yosemite National Park.
Jeremy Scahill: Obama Paved Way for Haspel to Head CIA by Failing to Hold Torturers Accountable.
(Satire) Americans just freed by North Korea will be placed in US prison labor to ease their transition.
Voice-control appliances react to inaudible subsonic commands. A computer-controlled audio device can take control of them and humans will not notice.
Even worse, each one was made by a company that demand blind faith but doesn't deserve any sort of confidence because it is run by nonfree software.
US deportation thugs stated their contempt for the constitution while forcing their way into a family home without a search warrant.
Salafi Arabia dropped US bombs on a wedding party in Yemen.
The war-lover wants to sell Salafi Arabia a lot more of the same kind of bomb.
This sort of atrocity has happened repeatedly in US-backed wars, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Apparently the human system isn't designed to avoid that. "Precision-guided" weapons don't protect civilians if they are guided with great precision onto civilians.
Salafia Arabia has won the narcissist's total support for war by persistent flattery.
EFF: The Secure Data Act Would Stop Backdoors.
LA city thugs have chosen a large number of residents (2% of the city population) for continual harassment on the street. These people say they are stopped by thugs over ten times a day.
"When you have a global pandemic of disease (obesity), telling people to take personal responsibility for it is unlikely to be the answer."
The US border thug that killed a Mexican by shooting him through the border fence was cleared of murder charges, but the jury was deadlocked on charges of manslaughter. So the thug will be retried on that charge.
Mahathir Mohamad was authoritarian before; Malaysia should not count on him as a savior, even if he is less corrupt than Razak.
Subsidizing fossil fuels is dangerous for the whole world, so restoring those subsidies would be very bad.
However, a sales tax (aka VAT) is a regressive form of taxation. It is typical plutocratist-speak to call that a "necessary reform". If Malaysia wants to reduce its budget deficit, it should do by taxing the rich more, instead.
A CIA memo said that Brazil's military dictator, as of 1974 had murdered 104 dissidents in one year. Horrifyingly, the leading presidential candidate in Brazil wants to resume killing dissidents.
Cheney endorsed Gina Haspel to run the CIA so she can resume torture.
Competitors of Facebook and Google say that the new European regulations, the GDPR will help, not hinder, Facebook and Google.
At the same time, I am not sure that increased competition in "ad tech" is progress. I think the goal should be ever fewer ad tech companies, ultimately zero.
In the automated and deregulated economy, "disruption" means people lose jobs forever, "automation" likewise, and "self-employment" means working harder for less pay.
We have no obligation to permit companies to do these things to us. Human rights cover how you live your life, but not business practices.
From Windrush to Grenfell, the Powerful Only See Tragedy When It Suits Them.
If the Supreme Court rules to cripple public employee unions, the only sensible response is, "Don’t Mourn, Organize!"
A "credit freeze" in the US is not entirely effective, since there is a path for some companies to bypass it.
Ticketmaster wants to scan the faces of people who attend concerts and shows.
Merely to find out who they are is an injustice.
Comcast threatens to expand from giant to enormous.
Canadian politician Doug Ford controlled his press coverage by hiring his own "reporter" to interview him.
Nova Scotia thugs have dropped charges against a citizen that downloaded all the web pages from a particular directory. However, they have not returned his computers.
Alas, if his computers are returned, they could be dishonest. There is no telling what malicious software, or even hardware, the thugs may have installed.
The Tories have a clever plan to lead immigrants into forfeiting their legal rights: deny them information about their own cases.
Modern PR techniques include paying people to post fake reviews on Amazon to praise specified products.
Ohio has passed a constitutional amendment for bipartisan redistricting, which means an end to Republican gerrymandering unless they find an excuse to nullify it.
The whole US needs this.
Dog bites man, that's not news. Dog shoots man, that's news.
This particular way of being shot with your own gun is very rare, but being shot with your own gun is very common.
Discrimination Against Atheists and Agnostics Is an Overlooked Issue Worldwide.
I am an Atheist, and I campaign to promote Atheism. However, I do not discriminate against or deprecate religious believers. I practice an Atheist variant of "hate the sin, love the sinner", which I can describe more precisely as "disapprove of the belief, not the believer."
Today's US working class is no longer concentrated in factories; it mostly does service jobs. This makes it less visible and less able to organize for decent pay and predictable working hours.
Costa Rica, although it has much less money than the US, gives people better and longer lives. It chooses equality, not inequality, by focusing on democracy, sustainability, and inclusive growth.
Michael Cohen's business of selling access to the White House does not legally count as lobbying, so he did not have to report it.
The last independent newspaper in Cambodia has been shut down by the state.
The Labour party has expelled an activist for antisemitism. Some important party supporters will be judged soon.
I support these proceedings, as long as they firmly maintain the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel. Bigotry towards Jews is as wrong as bigotry towards any other ethnic group, and any political party that has a streak of bigotry ought to root it out.
The Tories' "hostile environment" that blocks immigration at all costs is blocking visas for doctors, contributing to the shortage.
In 1933, some US plutocrats planned to overthrow the US government and asked the commander of the US Marine Corps to front for them. Rather than go along, he reported them to Congress.
Today's US plutocrats are even more powerful, and we can't assume they won't try it again.
We can't let that discourage us from trying to restore democracy. No matter what we do, we may be defeated; but surrender only guarantees defeat.
US weapons fuel crime in Mexico, because they are purchased by Mexican thug departments.
Naturally the bully wants to make this worse.
Toxic masculinity is responsible for a large fraction of mass shootings. Even worse, it's responsible for thousands of individual murders.
Several Republican senators voted for a bill to prevent the bully from firing investigator Mueller, in committee.
Russia Brings Syrians to The Hague to Make Underwhelming Case Chemical Attack Was Fake.
A fairly powerful earthquake in Korea, which did substantial damage, seems to have been caused by fracking.
EPIC, Coalition Urge Ethics Board to Prevent the Use of Facial Recognition on Body Cameras.
I propose a law that performing face recognition on an image requires a court order.
If you think of getting married in the US by a judge, check that the judge in question isn't a Republican deportation fanatic.
Cuomo is giving support to public employee unions to buy them off from supporting his progressive opponent.
Of course, progressives will do more for union members (and other working people) in the long run. The unions are making a mistake in choosing the short term.
AT&T faces a strike after cutting 16000 jobs.
Saboteur Pruitt has decreed an excuse for disregarding many scientific studies when making decisions about pollution policies.
The Democratic National Committee is suing Russia and Wikileaks to distract from the fact that it is not going against plutocrats.
The staff of Turkey's main non-subservient newspaper have been convicted of supporting terrorist organizations.
Like any tyrant, Erdoğan treats unfavorable reporting as a form of rebellion. Like the troll, if news is not biased in his favor, he calls it "fake", but he goes further and calls it "treason".
The troll will call it "treason" too if he gets enough power.
With Puerto Rico's power grid under the control of the nondemocratic imposed government, which is planning to privatize it, people are rapidly setting up local solar power.
Mulvaney, now saboteur of the CFPB, affirmed that as a congresscritter he was overtly corrupt: he met with those lobbyists that gave him campaign funds.
"Palestinians are being killed and maimed not because Israeli soldiers are disobeying orders, but because they are following them."
That's because their orders give them plenty of latitude to kill people who are not threatening anyone.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state representative to pass Social Media Privacy Act.
Mahathir Muhammad, the former authoritarian prime minister of Malaysia, has defeated the more blatantly authoritarian prime minister Razak.
This shows that the vote count was not rigged; that's good.
However, Najib Razak is trying to bribe recently elected members of Malaysia's parliament to vote for him instead of for Mahathir.
Two optical quasi-monopolies, one for lenses and one for frames, are about to merge.
We should not allow any market to be so concentrated.
Stop thinking that rising house prices are a good thing.
The UK has apologized for its "appalling treatment" of exiled Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj.
This was what he demanded in his lawsuit.
I hope the UK will compensate him for the torture that it enabled Gadhafi to inflict on him.
Teenager Who Killed Husband after He Raped Her Is Sentenced to Death in Sudan. She had been coerced into marrying him.
There are women in the US who have been sentenced to life in prison for similar acts.
I expect that Sudanese law defines "rape" to exclude rape by the husband. That's comparable to US laws that define "rape" to include voluntary sex with under N years of age (where N varies). Both laws falsify the meaning of "rape".
Palm Oil Is Wiping out Orangutans — Despite Multinationals’ Promises.
Israel has started a war with Iran, in the territory of Syria.
Israel says that this is retaliation for Iran's retaliation for Israel's previous interventions.
The US will donate arms and ammunition to Israel for this, thus involving itself semi-indirectly in war with Iran. It will be easy for the warlover to create an excuse for more direct combat, which I believe he will do, hoping that the major media will coo adoringly, "How presidential!" and that foolish Americans will rally to him out of a misguided idea of "patriotism".
A million Venezuelans have fled to Colombia, fleeing from the shortages.
Ads appear to be much less effective when people are told they are targeted based on accumulated personal data.
The UK has dropped the policy of making the NHS inform on unauthorized immigrants.
It is not clearly stated whether they will be required to pay for treatment (which many can't afford).
Bernie Sanders Introduces Senate Bill Protecting Employees Fired for Union Organizing.
SCROTUS won't pass it, but this will help Americans elect officials that will.
Argentina's right-wing president is going to subject the country to the IMF again.
The IMF imposes "reforms" that amount to austerity. As a cure, it is worse than the disease. Argentina had the good fortune to be rescued from the IMF, last time, by Hugo Chavez. But there is no guarantee of another Chavez to do it this time.
California will require solar panels on all new housing, except tall apartment buildings.
There are various exceptions for cases where they would be ineffective, and the solar panels don't have to be physically on the building.
On tall apartment buildings, it would not be feasible for solar panels on the roof to provide enough electricity for all the residents, even on a sunny day. But that doesn't mean they would be wasted. They would be as efficient and useful there as anywhere else. So why not require them?
Senate Report Strongly Implies Russian Hacking Story Was a Public Service — but Whistleblower Reality Winner Remains in Jail.
It seems that many companies have paid Michael Cohen's company to get access to the corrupter.
Gina Haspel pledges she won't repeat CIA torture program if appointed.
I doubt that she has learned better moral standards, so she might do some different cruel thing.
Some questions that ought to be studied before deciding to make decisions about people using an algorithm.
In addition, the algorithm should be implemented in free software and the details of the algorithm should be published.
Google has developed an AI system that does voice conversations and successfully pretends to be human. However, fooling people in this way is mistreatment.
Its phone calls should state at the beginning, "This is a robot talking."
The Dishonest Case against the Iran Deal.
Biden shows he won't do anything that billionaires might complain about, which means, nothing that would really reduce inequality.
Facebook has made it so hard to turn off targeted ads and some of the surveillance that it's not much better than impossible.
I think it is incorrect to focus on the "monopoly" aspect. Facebook's size increases the harm it can do, but having a choice between ten such disservices would not make any of them acceptable.
There are some things that Facebook does that might be useful, but they need to be done separately so that some of them can be anonymous.
UK "gang lists" label black men as potential gang members, based on handwaving.
US citizens: Don't weaken protection for pollinators in the farm bill.
US citizens, tell Betsy DeVos: Protect students' civil rights.
Victory! Georgia Governor Vetoes Short-Sighted Computer Crime Bill.
Almost 1/3 of the killings by NYC thugs involve nonuniformed (plainclothes) thugs.
"Europe must make Trump pay for wrecking the Iran nuclear deal."
It might be hard to get the bully to back down this way.
This European plan seems more likely to be effective: protecting European companies that trade with Iran.
Israel Orders Human Rights Watch Representative to Leave.
"By ending the nuclear deal, [the warlover] has handed a gift to Iranian hardliners."
They are already reveling in this windfall.
The bully might regard that as a plus, since he could use their success to justify the war he wants. Not to mention, of course, that he helped them succeed.
Oakland Passes "Strongest" Surveillance Oversight Law in US.
These laws can be effective at limiting cities' participation in massive surveillance, but in order to stop companies and state governments from doing so, we need state laws.
US Senate Bill Would Liken Violence Against [thugs] to Hate Crimes.
The biggest offense against the police force badge is telling lies to paint someone as a criminal. Whether the target is a living person who could be imprisoned as a result, or a black man killed for no valid reason by thugs, we need to put a stop to it. For the badge they wear to be honorable, we must replace the thugs with police officers.
Humans have eradicated rats and mice from South Georgia island. This will protect the endemic wildlife there.
Rats and mice have their places in the world, but if they overrun everywhere, little else will survive.
Alas, the same is true for humans. Since we are more intelligent than rats, I hope we can work out a way to depart from a large fraction of the Earth's surface, and allow the other species to flourish too.
Making hydrogen from renewable energy is a way to store the energy for later use at peak times.
In addition to the long-established crimes of driving while black and walking while black, blacks in the US can be accused of renting a room while black.
The use of the term "people of color" in this article was misleading on a specific point, as well as in the usual general way. Not all nonwhite ethnic groups would face this sort of suspicion.
Russia and Iran are preventing film directors from travelling to the Cannes film festival, apparently for political reasons.
The UK's default "child safety" internet filter imposes some amusing decisions, such as blocking the Disney web site.
However, that's a secondary problem. More important is the injustice of imposing strict censorship on everyone in the UK who can't afford a private internet line — and the bigger injustice of imposing baseline censorship on everyone whatsoever.
Some technology events are moving from the US to Canada, and it is partly because the US is now a hostile place to hold an international conference.
Unfortunately, Canada is not necessarily much better. When the World Social Forum was held in Montreal, Canada blocked some speakers from attending by denying them visas.
To close the gratuitous budget deficit created by tax handouts to the rich, the cruelist wants to cut funds for children's health care.
To reduce the cost of children's medical care, the ethical first step is to provide reliable birth control and abortions gratis. With fewer children, their medical care will cost less and their education will cost less, without denying anything to any of them. Their parents will suffer (most of them) less stress, so they will grow up (most of them) as happier and more capable adults.
How Facebook's algorithm for what articles to show to each used are chosen to increase profits, but they systematically disfavor thoughtful criticism of anything, if posted by those who can't pay to get it seen.
I agree that Facebook should be regulated, but the purpose of the regulation should be to ensure that not very many people read news or commentary through that site. Or any other specific site.
(Satire) the new fitbit tracking collar.
What the Deployment of Green Berets to the Saudi-Yemen Border Tells Us About America’s Dirty War.
The only Turkish-language newspaper that criticizes Erdoğan nowadays is operating in the Turkish-speaking part of Cyprus.
The US should allow prisoners to vote. The states of Maine and Vermont already do.
The war-lover has pulled the US out of the nuclear deal with Iran. Belligerent politicians are celebrating; generals are worried.
The UK, France and Germany say they will continue the deal, and this might convince Iran to continue its side of the deal. However, US sanctions on British, French, and German companies that trade with Iran might make the deal collapse anyway.
Commercial "social" media systems are designed to use the same methods as slot machines, to create cravings that resemble addiction to cocaine.
The community-run social networks implemented with free software don't do this, and that is not a coincidence. It results from the fact that free software is controlled by the users.
Colombia's army murdered over 10,000 civilians just to pad its figures about the number of supposed guerrillas it had killed.
Slaves Working in UK Construction And Car Washes.
Enslaving people is a grave injustice, but would imprisoning car wash workers, or their customers, make sense as a way to protect people from being coerced to work in a car wash?
Canada Plans to Legalize Weed — But Will Those Charged with Crimes Get Amnesty?
Canadian environmentalists are building tiny houses to block the Unkinder Morgan pipeline.
Fossil fuel companies paid actors to attend city council meetings pretending to be "concerned citizens".
(Satire) A north Atlantic salmon confirmed Monday that, having always lived an adventurous life, she couldn’t believe she ended up moving back to her birthplace and having a bunch of kids.
1,000 thugs crushed May Day protests in Puerto Rico, injuring protesters.
The protests are the last remaining avenue for democratic action there, since a nondemocratic government has been imposed.
US Muslims, formerly placed on the "no-fly" list through religious discrimination, then offered the chance to get off the list in return for becoming informers, are suing so they can stop this from happening again.
We should be concerned as much about Israel's actual nuclear weapons as about Iran's possible future nuclear weapons.
Israel should permit Mordechai Vanunu to emigrate. It has no legitimate reason to stop him.
Hawai'i has banned sunscreens that contain chemicals that damage coral reefs.
Tourists that put on sunscreen then go in the water deliver these chemicals straight to where they will do the most harm.
Giuliani's testimony that the cheater used his own money to pay off Stormy Daniels seems to indicate that the cheater violated campaign finance law. He spent his own money on a campaign expense and did not report doing so.
Pipeline resisters are holding a protest in a giant drilling machine that is to be used to push the Unkinder Morgan pipeline through the Rocky Mountains.
The cheater lied 53 times in one day, but on the average he lies 6.5 times per day. The long-term danger is that we become inured to blatant official lying through our current helplessness to put a stop to it.
New Zealand's government commits to offering shelter to all the country's homeless people within 4 weeks.
The short time scale makes this a real commitment rather than an excuse to kick the can down the road.
Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada talks up a great campaign against inequality but it does not include substantial action.
Selling Lemonade to Save Your Mother's Life? That's American Healthcare for You.
That's plutocracy for you.
The European Union plans to impose biometric ID cards on all citizens.
This is a real reason for the UK to get out of the EU.
In a Crackdown in Argentina, Police Shot for the Head and Blinded Protesters (and bystanders) with Rubber Bullets.
(Aren't they actually rubber-coated steel bullets?)
Argentina's right-wing government is generally repressive.
Diante Yarber's daughters are suing the thugs that killed him, accusing them of shouting insults at him instead of giving him first aid.
The bully wants to force the Honduran temporary refugees back to Honduras where the threat of violence comes from the US-supported election-stealing coup-installed government.
If Trump Destroys the Nuclear Deal, Iran Will Fall to Its Hardliners.
The bully surely does not care about the well-being and freedom of Iranians any more than he cares about the well-being and freedom of Americans. He might even consider the change beneficial since he could point at an even nastier Iranian government.
The CIA funded brainwashing experiments in Canada on unsuspecting patients. Some patients were completely broken, left with hardly any memory.
The cheater has apparently convinced Ukraine to stop cooperating with the criminal investigation of Manafort by offering a bribe of antitank missiles. I expect that the noncooperation was a quid pro quo.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or sexual identity.
US citizens: call on the district attorney to drop charges against Crystal Mason.
The fraction of CO2 in the air now is higher than it has ever been during the existence of the human race.
That means we are entering into climate conditions humans have never seen.
Two of the right-wing extremists that attacked Deandre Harris have been convicted for it.
A must-pass appropriations bill would move $200 million from renewable energy and energy efficiency into subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Sex education should include education about the dangers of being nude in photos or video chats.
I think the only real solution, for the long-term, is for adolescents to get used to nudity with each other. The special sting, and the tendency for others to criticize, comes from the taboo.
Many schools don't allow students to play in the playground if they arrive early for the day. And those who arrive early to lunch must be treated as prisoners.
Activists occupied an office of JP Morgan Chase to protest its investments in tar sands oil and thus the destruction of society.
There were protests in many other cities against that bank.
Most of the investors in that bank are destroying their own descendants through the bank's activities.
We can't trust Facebook to decide what news people see; it will predictably suppress anything but the mainstream media.
If the water available in the Colorado river keeps dwindling, as it is expected to, Arizona will crash.
Telescreens in Our Living Rooms? No, Portable Phones and Alexa.
The Afghan government attacked a religious ceremony and killed 36 people, 30 of them children. The high fraction of children was predictable because the ceremony focused on children.
Even if some Taliban leaders were at the ceremony, that doesn't excuse attacking the ceremony.
People today have largely lost the right to have private conversations, as their parents used to have.
Saboteur Sessions says he will prosecute every person who crosses the US border without authorization, and take away their children so as to imprison them separately.
The officials describe these actions via blackwhiting — let's not pay attention to their choice of terminology.
The EU's commitment to human rights is not strong enough to deal with the threat from Poland and Hungary.
When you look at the EU's proposed censorship system, you can see why.
FOIA Heroes At The FBI Protect Superman's Privacy; Refuse To Hand Over Secret Identity To Requester.
EU Commission Asks Public To Weigh In On Survey About Just How Much They Want The Internet To Be Censored.
The survey is slanted in several ways so as to generate responses in favor of censorship.
Calling publications "content" encourages people to disregard their individuality and treat them as a fungible commodity. That would tend to encourage censorship.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop the Republican giveaway to toxic pesticide companies.
Everyone: call for prosecuting the thugs that killed Diante Yarber.
Global heating will slow economic growth in the right-wing parts of the US.
These projections would apply to a few decades, but when some tipping point leads to accelerated heating, things would rapidly get worse.
The Indonesian Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir was banned in Indonesia for "threatening national unity."
That is a very broad criterion — all sorts of organizations could be banned on those grounds. Worse, the criterion is vague and stretchable — one can hardly tell what is forbidden.
The group got a court hearing about this, but the hearing considered only the question of whether the government followed the proper procedure, not whether the group really threatens national unity, or what the line is.
This is not meant to defend Hizb ut-Tahrir. Every Islamist group opposes basic human rights. Nonetheless, its members are entitled to human rights.
The US has a similar problem due to arbitrary designation of "terrorist groups". The government could designate your weekly bridge group as a "terrorist group", and if it prosecutes you for being a member, the prosecutor would not need to prove the group really has anything to do with terrorism.
China is not alone in censoring children's TV.
However, I suspect that China tries to make it impossible to find copies anywhere, whereas the other countries' censorship appears to be limited to broadcast TV.
It is regrettable that the author has fallen into the fad of saying that we "consume" videos when we watch them.
A judge forged signatures to get himself on the ballot. A citizen voted, not realizing she was no longer allowed to vote. Compare their sentences.
A British military academy gives a very broad military education, including exactly what to say to the press.
ICE, the US deportation thug force, has become the most brutal kind of national thug department.
As Jose Arreola was buying a small pack of candy, a thug who jumped hastily to the conclusion Jose was stealing it pulled a gun on him.
Even if he had been stealing the $1.19 candy, that would not justify shooting him.
Commemorating the Catonsville Nine, who fifty years ago raided a draft office and burned files that would have been used to conscript Americans to help crush Vietnam.
Another autopsy of Stephon Clark says one of the shots was not in the back.
If he was facing the thugs that shot him, that would not be enough to justify killing someone unarmed and not threatening.
Honduran protesters face four years in prison for "land invasion" (i.e., protesting).
If that seems harsh, don't forget that the same sort of thing happens in the US.
Aside from all the ethical reasons not to let Facebook use you, there is a practical reason small businesses might care about: advertising there is ineffective for them.
Senate Democrats will file on May 9 to release the bill to preserve network neutrality. To pass the senate they need one more vote.
Erdoğan says he will attack Rojava further. It will be hard for Rojava to fend off aggression by Turkey.
Because Rojava is secularist and endorses human rights, the Islamists hate it and the dictators consider it a threat. In addition, Turkey hates it because it is mostly made up of Kurds. The West ought to protect Rojava, but I think it is too corrupt and morally bankrupt to do that.
Thai protesters made the government cancel a plan to cut down a forest for luxury homes.
No Death And an Enhanced Life: Is The Future Transhuman?
I see nothing unethical with the option of replacing parts of your body with more capable appendages. But that assumes a world where you have the option of not replacing them.
In a plutocratist world, you may not have that option. What if your choices are to live on the street or get turned into a specialized mining machine?
In a world of advanced technology, I don't think the burden of caring for revived corpsicles would be difficult to handle. It might provide useful work for millions of people, for a while, but eventually the technology will make that work unnecessary. But will there be a place for those corpsicles to live? We need to decrease the world's human population, not increase it.
If we can build a space elevator, space habitats could provide space for more than mere billions. But we can't take for granted that a space elevator is possible.
US citizens, tell Congress: Postal Banking, Not Payday Lending.
US citizens: call on the US to stop promoting international trophy hunting of endangered species.
Everyone: defend comedian Michelle Wolf from unfair criticism from the White House Correspondent's Association.
People have fired guns by mistake 30 times (at least) in the US since 2014.
The troll's men hired an Israeli private detective agency to try to find material to discredit the diplomats that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran.
The agency was not looking for wrongdoing in those negotiations; apparently there was none of that. It was not looking for corruption; apparently there was none of that either.
Rather, it was looking for something irrelevant that would have happened long after the negotiations. Something that would not have had any implications about the deal itself. But it would have given the troll some eggs to throw at them, perhaps to create a negative attitude towards them and thus (irrationally) towards the deal itself.
Thousands protested in Paris against Macron's right-wing "flexibility" reforms.
Today's principal political problem is the dominion of business over the state. When countries compete to offer a "friendly climate for business", the overall effect is harmful — it increases that dominion. (When they cooperate to offer a "friendly climate for international trade", it has the same harmful effect.) So it is wrong to do these things.
I am sure there are some points in French labor law which are rigid and inefficient. Perhaps it would be an improvement to change them — but why now? The urgent need is to change the laws and the system that give business too much power. Politicians that choose "friendly climate for business" rather than "break the dominion of business" are choosing plutocracy rather than democracy.
The NSA tripled its collection of Americans' phone call and message records in 2017.
It collects all the records about everyone who has communicated at least once with one of the people on its target list. We don't know how many people that amounts to, but my rough estimate is 200,000 to 500,000 people.
The proposed implementation of the DARK Act, meant to prevent effective labeling of genetically modified foods, is to use bright, pretty images and not say "GMO".
The American Chemical Society is perverting the US legal system permanently in the attempt to make the science-sharing site Sci-Hub inaccessible.
The American Chemical Society is an enemy of science. Can we find a way to make the public condemn it as it deserves to be condemned?
Malaysia's "fake news" is being used against an opposition candidate, who was the previous prime minister.
He didn't respect democracy all that well when he was in office, but his successor seems to be flagrantly worse.
The governor of Kentucky is taking over a school district; teachers say it is retaliation against them by taking the students hostage.
It is no surprise that a school district whose students come from poor families in bigotry-target groups is doing badly. It probably has very little money.
There is almost nowhere in Miami-Dade County that people on the sex offenders list are allowed to live. Many live in a tent camp, but now it is being shut down.
The article explains that the laws limiting where registered sex offenders can live do no positive good for anyone. What's more, many people on the list never threatened strangers in any way. Some did no wrong sexually to anyone — including those who had love affairs with teenagers, those who did sexting, and some who did nothing at all but pleaded guilty in a plea bargain.
The ability to predict faces from DNA potentiates face-recognition databases to make a massive attack on everyone's privacy.
Everyone: call on Burma to release the journalists facing charges for their publications.
US citizens: call on the Senate not to confirm the NRA's lawyer as a US judge.
The White House condemned China's pressure to pretend that Taiwan is part of China.
I agree, in principle, and it may be a good thing for resisting Chinese expansionism to refuse to legitimize it any longer. However, it's hard for a rebuke to this abuse of language to gain much respect when it comes from someone who bullshits every day.
Both China and the US are guilty of worse abuse of language.
"If 'the economy' can recover without real people recovering, then whose economy is it really?"
Fracking Chemicals May Harm Developing Immune System.
We need international agreements to govern space mining: who can mine where, and what methods are safe to use.
Researchers are working on measuring human emotions from voice and facial expressions.
If this is successful, we humans could become sitting ducks for businesses that use this technology against us.
Moreover, the holographic brain activator being developed could be used to edit people's sensations and memories, perhaps even their habits of action and thinking.
Imagine what China or Gilead would do with such a device.
Watch out for "soft" terms such as "open" and "sharing" when they are applied to redistribution of your personal data.
The Big Lie ISPs Are Spreading in State Legislatures is That They Don’t Make Enough Money.
Oklahoma and Kansas now permit religious-based discrimination against couples that want to adopt a child. Children that need adoption will suffer for the sake of someone else's religion.
Russia thugs arrested hundreds of people participating in "He is not our tsar" protests in various cities, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
1,600 protesters were arrested.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed's brain scan shows trauma damage that seems to be due to CIA torture.
Arizona teachers ended their strike after winning a 20% raise and more funds for schools. I get the impression, however, that the additional funds come from other worthwhile programs, rather than from taxation. The teachers originally demanded that the funds not be taken away from other worthwhile programs. Maybe they found that that was more than they could win.
(Satire) fired from an Amazon warehouse for what?
Too much logging in forests near Melbourne, Australia, has put the forests in danger of total collapse and replacement with a different ecosystem. That would mean less water available for Melbourne.
Trauma, transmitting from one generation to another, causes pain to most everyone.
If your sibling or parent or child posted per DNA sequence on line, person compromised your family for generations.
Levi Vonk walked across Mexico with Central American migrants, unarmed and facing all sorts of hardships and threats to their lives and health, from hunger to maiming by Mexican thugs.
If a US border thug maims you, or kills your relative, the border patrol might have to pay you damages, but you'd face substantial obstacles to win them.
With electricity and water supplies still not restored in Puerto Rico, it serves as an example to show us how much Republicans care about US citizens that are not rich.
Unlike the French student protesters of 1968, the ones that Macron is attacking today live in despair.
Macron, like Trudeau, is a smooth front for the plutocratist politics that deprives all but the rich of any hope. But the rich are not the only ones at fault. Everyone needs to have fewer children.
The Christian community of Jerusalem complains of harassment and attacks from Israeli fanatics set on ethnic cleansing.
"Looks like Netanyahu, Bolton, Pompeo, Haley and Trump can't wait to get the war [with Iran] started."
The Democratic Party establishment is fighting the progressive politics of the party's base. That might defeat Republicans in November, but at the cost of not making much difference.
Confronting Nuclear Challenges in the Era of Trump.
Tories have filled the UK government with institutional racism.
The US continues to prop up the Afghan government, more or less, but sees no way to win the war. The most it can do is prevent a Taliban victory.
I don't think that preventing a Taliban victory justifies unending war as a price.
2017 Was Deadliest Year on Record for Colombian Human Rights Defenders.
Dining While Black: Toronto Restaurant Fined after Charging Customers up Front.
Israel attacks Iranian forces in Syria, perhaps trying to provoke a bigger war.
Workers for McDonald's in the UK are on strike, demanding fixed and predictable schedules.
Most US journalists show little courage in their work. They even apologize when a comedian they invited mocks a government official.
US citizens: call certain key senators to oppose the Corker-Kaine unlimited authorization for war.
US citizens: call on Congress to vote to end US support for war in Yemen.
Members of Congress will personally receive at least $14 million in tax cuts from the Republican tax attacks.
Muntazer al-Zaidi, who famously threw a shoe at Dubya, is running for the Iraqi parliament.
China is reportedly deploying cruise missiles on its artificial islands in the South China Sea.
China's tactic to take control of that sea region has been quite clear: slowly, without hiding, build up facilities which eventually would become fortresses. The only sensible way to stop this would have been to do the same thing, but the other neighboring countries have not done so.
For the world, the most important thing about the South China Sea is to prevent its fossil fuel deposits from being extracted.
Israel arrested two Palestinian nonviolent protest organizers in the middle of the night.
Israel's "rules of engagement" amount to illegal orders for a massacre of civilians. Israel must cancel them.
(Satire) Netanyahu provides "stunning new evidence" that Iranians planned the 539 B.C. sacking of Babylon.
As I suspected, the pension cuts proposed by Ortega in Nicaragua are partly demanded by the IMF and US-supported organizations.
Ralph Nader calls on the Department of Justice to start keeping statistics about corporate crime.
The cheater has been caught in a direct lie about paying Stormy Daniels.
The question is, will it be harder for him to get away with this lie than with the dozens (or is it hundreds) of other lies he tells.
Press Censorship Is a Worldwide Problem — So Banned Articles Are Being Turned into Pop Songs.
Tech Is Turning Love into a Rightwing Game.
UK Voters Are Turned Away from Polling Stations During ID Trial. It is not clear what fraction this happened to, but it may be as much as a few percent.
From the right-wing point of view, that means the scheme was a success.
The US released a prisoner from Guantanamo prison, who had pled guilty of being a member of al Qa'ida.
This is a good thing. I don't know what he personally did for al Qa'ida, but unless it was egregious, 16 years in prison is surely enough of a punishment for it.
Corn seedlings appear to communicate chemical signals about the presence of other kinds of plants nearby.
Don't assume that people that distrust everyone are better at detecting lies than people that generally trust others. One study found the opposite.
(Satire) The US stands ready to escalate military contractor profits as much as it takes.
Eight Florida youths are suing the state government for willfully disregarding the danger that global heating poses to life in Florida.
Comey has become the most visible enemy of Americans' worst enemy. That doesn't mean he has been our friend all this time. Don't forget his campaign for more surveillance and against our right to privacy.
In the long term, unchecked surveillance will be almost as harmful as the bully.
Citizens of Manchester hope to press Abu Dhabi to release political prisoner Ahmed Mansoor by naming a street after him.
The ruling family of Abu Dhabi has effectively purchased the support of the city's government by making a big investment there. It is dangerous for any government to treat the support of a specific company as indispensable; this is one of the reasons why we need to make large companies split into many smaller ones.
NAFTA blocks Canada from reducing fossil fuel extraction and export to the US.
US Jews are organizing nonviolent but inconvenient protests demanding an end to the slaughter of protesters in Gaza. They are blocking the doors of Israeli consulates, Jewish community organizations, and politicians' offices, and getting arrested, for the cause.
Some congresscritters have supported B'Tselem's call for Israeli soldiers to disobey illegal orders, specifically orders to shoot civilians that are not fighting.
Israel is making new laws to facilitate taking Palestinians' land.
A joint Arab-Jewish peace movement aims to fill the void of the almost disappeared Israeli left.
Colorado Communities File Lawsuit Against Oil Giants for Climate Change Costs.
It may be possible to prove this claim, given scientific conclusions about how the probability of various extreme weather events were increased by global heating.
California Democrats that serve the ISPs are trying to cut a big loophole in California's network neutrality law.
China uses crony capitalism to buy support from the elites of various countries, now including Europe.
Reportedly the bully, encouraged by Bolton, is in discussions about an Arab military force funded by Salafi Arabia to replace US troops in Syria.
Such an Arab force is likely to treat the Kurds as enemies, and Islamists as friends.
Forensic Science Is Nowhere Near as Robust And Reliable as Many People Think. Even fairly reliable techniques, such as checking people's hands for gunpowder residues, can be mistaken.
South Korea says North Korea wants total denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and is not attaching unacceptable preconditions.
If this is true — and I don't think it is likely to be false — we could see rapid progress towards peace and perhaps nuclear disarmament in Korea as well.
The man who killed 10 people in Toronto by driving into them was a misogynist terrorist.
I sympathize with people who describe themselves as involuntarily celibate, since I remember what that despair feels like. But they took a wrong turn when they started hating women for not being attracted to them.
No one has an obligation to feel love or attraction for someone else. People cannot decide whether to feel those feelings — it's not under conscious control. To reproach someone for not desiring you is as futile, as foolish, and as unjust, as to reproach water for being wet.
The one useful response to being generally rejected is to learn more social skills and broaden your interests. It would give you a better chance of finding a lover. By contrast, playing nonfree video games is a dead end — and it attacks your freedom, too.
600 members of the US National Academy of Sciences rebuked the troll's "denigration of scientific expertise".
Many atolls in the Pacific and Indian oceans will become uninhabitable in just a few decades, as sea water will contaminate their fresh water.
People might be able to collect enough rain for their own direct use, but if they can't grow any food, they can't remain.
The fist million people whose homes are inundated first may find have places to go. But when it gets to tens of millions, no place will let them in.
Treating the entire population of a region with antimalarial drugs could wipe out malaria there.
The US tortured Ali al-Marri for years until he confessed to a crime.
Maybe he was guilty. I am not convinced by his denials. But if he was guilty, not even a criminal deserves that treatment.
An Israeli soldier shot and killed a protesting Palestinian teenager, for no good reason. The soldier has been sentenced to 9 months in prison.
A number of aging scientists dare to say that, on its current track, civilization is doomed due to global heating.
The EU has banned the use of palm oil for biofuels, and farmers in Malaysia that think only of their own income are angry.
The EU's new policy does not go far enough. Growing crops for biofuel, if they require irrigation, fertilizer, pesticide or land suitable at the time for other agriculture, is a self-defeating practice and ought to banned entirely.
Racism manifests itself in schools, as black students are judged more harshly and punished more often.
Religious fanatics in Brazil are trying to ban abortion absolutely, with a constitutional amendment like the one Ireland is about to vote on eliminating.
Many Brazilian women are already dying from underground abortions. I suggest turning their funerals into rallies for abortion rights. If religious people direct hostility at you, don't let that shut you up.
When business says "flexibility", think "exploitation."
Zero-hours piecework contracts are the extreme form, but lesser forms of "flexibility" are exploitation too.
Fossil fuels cost includes not only the future damage of global heating, but also the cost of present-day toxic pollution: millions of deaths each year, and even more people sick or handicapped.
Arizona teachers demand a raise, but won't accept it at the expense of other programs to help the non-rich. They demand more tax on businesses instead.
Some Democratic senators are investigating the "infiltration" of agents of the Koch brothers in US environmental policy.
"Centrist" (plutocratist) Democrats systematically try to pressure progressive candidates to drop out from primaries and let other plutocratist Democrats win. Levi Tillemann, progressive candidate, recorded a phone call whose aim was to convince him to drop out.
A plutocratist Democrat is the next worst thing to a Republican, so let's work to keep progressives in the race, and to help them win.
Several of these plutocratist Democrats seem to be former prosecutors or veterans. Those are not necessarily bad things, but I think they are chosen to appeal to voters who are not progressive, so they make me worry.
The staff of Turkey's main non-subservient newspaper have been convicted of supporting terrorist organizations.
Like any tyrant, Erdoğan treats unfavorable reporting as a form of rebellion. Like the troll, if news is not biased in his favor, he calls it "fake", but he goes further and calls it "treason".
The troll will call it "treason" too if he gets enough power.
California is considering a law to require all thug departments to publish their policies and standards of conduct.
The troll's malign influence has driven the US down in the rankings for freedom of the press.
Discrimination against women authors is operates at several levels, and each has now been measured.
Fighting has resumed between the Burmese army and the rebellious Kachin people. The UN says that Burmese bombardment is hitting civilians.
Europeans don't believe Netanyahu's claims that Iran is violating the nuclear deal.
I don't trust Iran very much, but I don't trust Netanyahu one tiny bit.
The Justice Teams Network has been set up to provide quick assistance to Americans campaigning for justice after their relatives have been killed by thugs.
2000 AI researchers have committed to refuse to do anything with the new paywalled journal, "Nature Machine Intelligence".
I support their stand, but I think they undermine the central point by using the term "open access". The word "open" is weak, and "access" focuses on a secondary sub-issue.
Carl Icahn was granted a "financial hardship" waiver from complying with pollution rules. His income last year was a mere $234 million.
US citizens: Call for a ban on "assault weapons".
They are not real assault weapons, but they fire bullets with the same high velocity that real assault weapons fire them, and that makes them far more deadly than an ordinary pistol.
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
Comedian Michelle Wolf joked to attack Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her official political acts, and is being criticized based on misrepresenting that as a personal attack on Sanders's appearance.
I haven't signed this petition because I have not seen Wolf's presentation, and I am not in a position to watch it. The example presented in the article is quite clearly a distortion, unfair to Ms Wolf, but without having seen the whole presentation, I don't want to assert that the criticism is nothing but distortion (although that could well be the case).
Can someone send me a transcript? From reading this, I could resolve my doubts and then maybe sign this.
Later:
I saw the text of those jokes, and it's focused on
Sanders' politics. It refers to appearance but the criticism is not
aimed at her appearance.
Millions of Americans (including millions of children) are on the edge of being kicked out into the street. Saboteur Carson's plan to cut housing subsidies would push many of them over the edge.
The bully shows his contempt for human life by disregarding the law requiring a report about civilian casualties from drone attacks.
A report from the US government about this would not deserve trust anyway, but this demonstrated contempt for all civilians that might be killed will smooth the path to killing more of them.
Should we fear that a job guarantee will be a giant boondoggle? Here's why it is not a real issue.
A boondoggle is government spending that doesn't produce results that make the people better off. The US government puts billions of dollars into boondoggles — military spending, private prisons, etc. It makes them bigger every year.
If we transfer a lot of those funds to a job guarantee program, the boondoggle could well be smaller, if at least those jobs are designed to do useful jobs.
The "new Democrats" that yielded the Democratic Party to plutocracy in 1992 are still trying to hold on to control of the party.
1992 was the last time I voted for a Democrat for president. These "new Democrats" are not as bad as Republicans, but they are pushing in the same bad direction — just not pushing quite as hard.
Australia plans massive surveillance using facial recognition.
China's example shows that this will repress democracy. The supposed targets may be the terrorists, but since they are so rare, the important targets will be dissidents and whistleblowers. Rather than limiting use of the system's data, Australia must reject it totally.
It is unlikely that different human populations have genetic differences affecting intelligence, so let's focus on eliminating the environmental factors (lead, life stress, bad schools) that knock people's intelligence down.
A nonviolent movement among the Pashtun condemns Pakistan's army for repressing Pashtuns and for supporting terrorists that attack India and Afghanistan.
The military are disappearing supporters of the movement.
Moist towelettes include plastic, and large quantities of them are discarded. Guess what comes next?
Comparing what Israel says about killing Palestinian protesters with what witnesses have observed.
Israel says its "rules of engagement" are not as blanketly permissive as critics claim, and asks us to take its word for that since it won't say what the rules are. That is totally bogus, since it is easy for requirements to sound strict but actually be totally weak. They might have gotten advice from a lawyer who writes "privacy policies" for commercial web sites.
Two leaders of the Center for Constitutional Rights were supposed to visit Israel and Palestine, but Israel refused to let them in.
It is common for Israel to bar foreigners who have criticized the occupation, as well as official investigators.
It's Right to Condemn Mahmoud Abbas for His Antisemitic Remarks (even while calling for an end to the occupation of Palestine).
Making medical clinics report undesirables betrays medicine.
The Mystical Underpinnings of Facebook's Anti-Fake-News Algorithms.
Florida's coastal mangroves will be flooded out of existence in 30 years.
We might help the Everglades survive till the end of this century, but sea level rise will continue. Eventually all of Florida except the northern edge will be underwater.
US citizens: call on Congress and Mulvaney not to hamstring the CFPB.
US citizens: call on the deportation thugs to release journalist Manuel Duran.
Iowa has passed a bill to ban abortions after roughly six weeks. That's almost equivalent to a total ban.
The bill intentionally violates the Roe v Wade decision, hoping that the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court will use the opportunity to undo Roe v Wade.
US teachers are pushing to unionize in charter schools.
Digital technology has given the US an excuse to eliminate the privileged status of personal diaries when people's homes are searched.
EDRI: The “copyright troika” launches another censorship machine attack.
A city in Pakistan reached the temperature of 50C in April. Some people are fleeing, fearing even higher temperatures in summer.
50C is fatal for some vulnerable people, but 55 would kill a lot more. 51C, with 37% humidity, would be fatal for all unprotected human beings.
"[The cheater's] doctor is a warning to all the footsoldiers and loyal colluders: it'll come back to bite you."
Thousands of workers in China are having their brain waves surveilled.
For the first time in 20 years, since the Micky Mouse Copyright act, some works are entering the public domain in the US.
Just because copyright is not infinitely unjust, that doesn't make today's copyright law acceptable. Copyright should not last more than 10 years.
Bolton is actively trying to sabotage the prospect of a peace treaty and denuclearization deal with North Korea.
What he misses is that if North Korea agrees to such a deal, Kim will no longer have any motive to start a war, nuclear or not.
Some Republican congresscritters want to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.
No matter how powerful the US army is on paper, and what it is prepared to spend, it can't enable a fundamentally corrupt government to defeat a guerrilla with popular support.
Netanyahu Makes a Case for the JCPOA (but pretends that it is the opposite).
It's also meant to distract us from shooting thousands of protesters in Gaza.
Raising university fees in the UK converted universities effectively into businesses. The values of academia have been discarded. They pay their executives high salaries, students come because that is the only way to get a good job, and nowadays they cheat on exams a lot more than before.
People who could be honest when it's just a matter of intellectuality become desperate when a low mark can ruin their lives.
UK universities have been conscripted as deportation agencies and censors. One professor says that the next time he is asked to show his passport to prove he is acceptable for doing some academic task, he will decline to do it.
Many cities give the US deportation thugs direct access to their own data bases, even in cities which are not supposed to cooperate with deportations.
China collects deleted WeChat messages.
You can't trust any sort of digital communication that the Chinese government tolerates. The question is, can we stop the US government from becoming equally unjust.
We need laws to forbid making communication systems that snoop on all their users. They should be designed so that they don't enable snooping on a user in the absence of a specific court order to authorize it.
Everyone: Tell Brazil's president and attorney general to allow FUNAI to do its job of protecting indigenous peoples.
It has been verified that you can sign this using Lynx Version 2.8.9dev.16 without running the nonfree JS code.
Turkish Opposition Parties Unite against Erdoğan in Elections.
US and Israel Accuse Palestinian President of Antisemitism.
It sounds like real antisemitism. But that isn't a justification for the oppression of the occupation and siege of Palestine.
The purported explanation he gave for European antisemitism would not have made sense in the absence of preexisting antisemitism. When a small fraction of Jews were bankers, and only a fraction of bankers were Jews, what sense was there in directing at Jews the hatred inspired by the actions of bankers? It would make more sense to hate bankers.
The UK is just as hostile to foreign invited speakers as the US.
It's worse than just rejecting applications. The process of applying is a series of slaps in the face. When my Colombian friend Tania wanted to visit Italy, they wouldn't even give her an appointment until after she had missed her flight.
The cheater dictated the letter "from his doctor" that said he would be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency".
I know what it is like to feel violated — for instance, when I am compelled to identify myself and get put in a data base — but I would not say I felt "raped". I don't know what it feels like to be raped, and I hope I never find out, but I am sure it is an exaggeration to use it for lesser kinds of violation.
Enslavers take advantage of slaves' fear of deportation.
Research finds that MDMA (aka ecstasy) helps treatment of PTSD.
America's huge success in cutting smog at risk of being eroded — by Republican counteraction.
Toxic air pollution is increasing world-wide, except in some wealthy areas.
The Corker-Kaine extension of war authorization also extends the president's power to put people in prison permanently without trial.
This power is tyranny and it should be eliminated, not extended.
One of the schemes used by desperate UK bureaucrats to reduce the number of foreigners was being sloppy in accusing foreign students of cheating on the English test required to get a visa.
There were real cheaters, but the bureaucrats magnified this by being sloppy, hasty and harsh about making the accused students leave. Those who were falsely accused had recourse only in theory.
Victims of neo-Nazi defamation and harassment campaigns are suing the owner of a hate web site.
Raqqa is full of booby traps left by PISSI, making it dangerous to live there. There have been thousands of casualties.
Some of the booby-traps explode days after they were triggered, or only the 10th time they are triggered. So people move back into their homes, thinking them checked, and get killed later.
The cost of demining Raqqa may be such that it would be cheaper to build a new city elsewhere than to demine it.
Netanyahu's bogus announcement provided no evidence for alleged cheating by Iran, but it may still give the warmonger a political excuse to cancel the Iran antinuclear deal. For his purposes, the truth doesn't matter, only manipulation of public opinion. The announcement was trumpeted; the subsequent news that it was bogus will not have reached as many people, and his supporters will consciously disregard it.
The UK will require many of its remaining colonies to reveal the owners of companies.
It is an advance, but only a step in putting an end to tax-dodging by the rich. Other tax havens remain. What is needed is to change tax laws in the US and other places where the money is gained, so that payments can't be deducted as business expenses if they go to a dodgy company in a tax haven.
The UK political elite, like the UK business elite, is made up of short-term thinkers that look at each job (as CEO or minister) as a stepping-stone to another.
Everyone: Demand that US deportation thugs release journalist Manuel Duran.
Discrimination against women authors operates at several levels, and each has now been measured.
Fighting has resumed between the Burmese army and the rebellious Kachin people. The UN says that Burmese bombardment is hitting civilians.
Europeans don't believe Netanyahu's claims that Iran is violating the nuclear deal.
I don't trust Iran very much, but I don't trust Netanyahu one tiny bit.
The Justice Teams Network has been set up to provide quick assistance to Americans campaigning for justice after their relatives have been killed by thugs.
2000 AI researchers have committed to refuse to do anything with the new paywalled journal, "Nature Machine Intelligence".
I support their stand, but I think they undermine the central point by using the term "open access". The word "open" is weak, and "access" focuses on a secondary sub-issue.
Carl Icahn was granted a "financial hardship" waiver from complying with pollution rules. His income last year was a mere $234 million.
Vice President Wallace, and writer Sinclair Lewis, described what American fascists would do to take control of the state. Now they are doing it, proceeding down that path.
The US Department of Justice has deleted the areas of press freedom and racial gerrymandering from its priorities.
That is natural, since Republicans don't want any interference with their plans to arrest journalists and disenfranchise bigotry-target groups.
The planned merger of T-Mobile and Sprint would eliminate up to 20,000 jobs.
Allowing large companies to merge leads step by step towards monopoly. The plutocrats love to own monopolies, so their servants label a market as "competitive" if it has more than one seller.
One of the the thugs that killed Diante Yarber was fired from another thug department for a racist attack.
Australian scientist David Goodall, who has reached the age of 104, says that maladies are making his life not worth continuing. He is going to Switzerland where he will be allowed aid in suicide.
He can't do this in Australia because his maladies are not fatal. They merely make his life unbearable.
Philadelphia adopted a tax on sugar-loaded drinks, which has been very effective in reducing consumption of them. So the companies that sell these have gone to the state government to prohibit cities from doing this. Other states have already done it.
Republicans are reliable boosters of products that are dangerous to people.
The Israeli defenders of Palestinian human rights and peace face state repression and death threats, as Israel becomes ever less free, but they don't give up.
An anti-Trump Republican seeks to run for Al Franken's old senate seat.
Being against the bully is only the first requisite for being someone we should want in the senate. It is not enough. I hope a progressive candidate beats him in the primary.
Professor Scott Warren faces 20 years in prison for providing unauthorized immigrants with supplies and a place to sleep. The border thugs used to respect this humanitarian aid, but now they are trying to snuff it out.
The border thugs dehumanize unauthorized immigrants. Some dream of torturing them, and they generally drool over the idea of hitting them on the head with a flashlight. In other words, they have a culture that trains them to be unfit for any such job.
They regard augmenting the danger of death for people crossing the border as a legitimate means of deterring them from trying, and they equate any effort to reduce the danger as obstruction of their deadly plans.
I suspect they wish they were permitted to simply shoot apparent migrants.
US citizens: support the bill to allow any American to buy Medicare coverage.
Electronic Monitors: How Companies Dream of Locking Us in Our Homes.
The bully has ordered all US agencies to make all kinds of assistance to poor people harder to get.
The UK minister for deportation has resigned after being caught in direct lies about how hard the staff were pressing to procure deportations.
This alone will not end the "hostile environment" that she presided over. That requires changing the laws and policies which set it up.
The bully wants to send PISSI soldiers (or those accused of being such) to Guantanamo, but if this occurs, they could legally challenge whether Congress ever authorized US participation in fighting PISSI.
Indefinite imprisonment, which is what the US does in the Guantanamo prison, is a blot on the honor of the United States. Americans, if you love our country as I do, join me in insisting that this end.
Gambling companies use AI-driven manipulative techniques, based on each gambler's past history, to keep them hooked.
This demonstrates that consent must not be considered sufficient justification to record personal data.
Someone who made an inaccurate criticism of Malaysian thugs has been sentenced to a month in prison.
He had exaggerated the statement out of anger, and apologized for the error. It seems he did not intentionally lie.
False statements are unfortunate, but criminalizing them is much worse.
The FDA has found glyphosate in almost all the foods it has tested, but has not published anything about this.
The patented gene that makes some crops resistant to glyphosate might not directly harm people, but it brings glyphosate.
Michael Segalov: "A free press? I’m a UK journalist, but the police labelled me an extremist."
"Witness statements from the officers cite my time as a student campaigner as a reason to bar me: a time when I was elected as a student union officer and was voted on to the National Union of Students’ national executive council...."
"The other reason cited for labelling me as an “extreme leftwing” activist is my journalism."
I wonder why the Labour Party couldn't or didn't decide to admit Segalov to their event, regardless of the thugs. Does anyone know why?
US border guards have invented creative but absurd excuses to stop the refugees in the caravan from Central America from even applying for asylum.
India is planning to privatize the operations of its greatest tourist attractions, including the Taj Majal.
There isn't much competition in those markets, so the privatization will create a localized private monopoly.
If 10 million jobs are lost to automation in the UK, it would be a national disaster. The UK has around 66 million inhabitants, and I'd expect roughly 30 to 40 million people employed.
Having a phone on the table during dinner or other interactions with people tends to make people more unhappy.
The UK railroad network is cutting down thousands of healthy trees lest their leaves or branches fall on the train track some day.
This sounds like our fears about a hypothetical AI that subordinates everything to a narrow goal. Will Network Rail try to convert the entire substance of the Earth into crossties?
A US appeals court approved Texas's voter ID law. Voting-rights advocates will file further appeals.
The US deportation thugs are so incompetent that they often mistakenly imprison US citizens for deportation. One US citizen was imprisoned this way for over three years before a court looked at the question.
The bully is the culmination of a plutocratist plan, started in the 1970s, to take control of the US government and redirect it towards serving the rich.
There are calls for an arms embargo on Israel for its mass shooting of Palestinian protesters.
I don't think it would have much effect on shooting protesters, since Israel makes those arms.
The OSHA is almost powerless to protect workers from dangerous chemicals, so mostly the EPA has done the job. Now companies believe that Saboteur Pruitt offers a chance to convince the EPA to "defer to" the powerless OSHA, so that no agency will try to remove dangerous chemicals from the workplace.
People of Denver are calling on the EPA to limit the emissions of cyanide gas from a fossil-fuel facility.
A massive natural gas extraction system in Papua New Guinea was supposed to double the country's GDP, but it has provided little if any benefit to that country. This may have something to do with the legal concessions that the government had to make in order to get the project started.
We are learning that businesses don't ever justify such concessions, not even in their narrow economic terms presented.
The two blacks arrested for "loitering" in a Starbucks illustrate the way many companies and institutions give inferior treatment to blacks.
The word "catastrophe" is an exaggeration when applied to spending 8 hours in jail. Even for a person's death, the word is too strong. That incident was a racist injustice; we don't need to exaggerate those words in order to show our condemnation.
A Bomb Silenced Daphne Caruana Galizia. But Her Investigation Lives On.
Her widower says the government of Malta is protecting the person who arranged the murder.
A recently discovered coral reef in Brazil and probably has species unknown to science, but they are likely to be destroyed by already-planned oil drilling.
To Lead on Climate, Countries Must Commit to Zero Emissions (in the future).
The nuclear arms limitation treaties between the US and Russia are about to expire. That would clear the path for an unlimited nuclear arms race.
The US army is holding a US citizen prisoner in Iraq, and the bully's regime wants to deliver the person to Salafi Arabia, thus preventing the person from returning to the US.
The bully's regime didn't let per see a lawyer until a court order it.
Person is suspected of fighting for PISSI. That is a grave crime, but person deserves a fair trial, not being handed off to an arbitrary monarchy that hardly recognizes the idea of human rights.
Bernie Sanders is leading the US Senate to consider the human rights of Palestinians and criticize Israel's occupation policies.
High-Speed Pig Slaughter Will Be Disastrous for Everyone Involved.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is asking journalists to report hassles with entering the US, including searches of their digital devices and (for those not US citizens) hassles in getting a visa.
Fracking company Extraction Oil and Gas is suing protesters and a journalist.
Several states plan to make it a crime to plan a protest at a fossil fuel pipeline site.
Japan has published the names of the soldiers of Unit 731 which experimented with chemical weapons using Chinese and Koreans as guinea pigs.
"I'm a millionaire who creates zero jobs. Why do I pay less tax than you?"
One of Facebook's first useds compares it to herpes, and says she was a fool to have trusted Zuckerberg.
Philippine President Do-dirty is deporting foreigners for criticizing him, even for being near others that are criticize him.
What does deporting a (real or suspected) critic have in common with murdering a (real or suspected) drug dealer? Both attack the idea that people have legal rights.
Australia is turning to the hype of fracking to pump lots of natural gas overshoot its greenhouse gas targets by a factor of three.
The digital tech industry considered as a pile of hustlers climbing over each other to become a billionaire by standing on the rest. All while looking for ways to atomize people's lives and turn their jobs into piecework.
Canada's ruling Liberal Party is considering legalizing possession and use of all drugs.
The US uses "Liberal" to mean what Europe calls "social-democratic", but the Canadian Liberal party is nothing like that. Nowadays it mainly seems to mean "let them drill and mine anything."
A Russian journalist that investigated mercenaries fell off his balcony and died. The state wants to say that he fell accidentally.
Saboteur Pruitt has announced a cunning rule that studies of people's private medical data are off limits for EPA decisions.
US border thugs are denying Honduran refugees the opportunity to apply for political asylum, which is supposed to be their right.
Recording how members of Congress have voted on various bills to restore democracy.
The prosecution of Cliven Bundy collapsed because of gross misconduct by the prosecutors, including concealing information useful for the defense.
I don't sympathize at all with Bundy's destructive "protest", but nobody should be convicted of anything in this cavalier fashion.
Watch out for a federal school voucher scheme hidden in the National Defense Authorization Act.
The saboteur-in-chief wants to weaken the rule that was put in place to prevent another offshore oil well explosion like the one that caused the Big Spill.
North Korea Will Invite Foreign Observers to Shuttering of Nuclear Test Site.
It looks like Kim is really serious about changing North Korea's course. I suspect he will seek to follow China's course: repressive and tyrannical, but not horrible for everyone.
It turns out that fraud by voters is as rare in Britain as in the US.
Mulvaney, saboteur of the CFPB, wants to delete the database of consumer complaints. That's part of the general plutocratist policy of favoring business over the public, and the rich over the rest.
In this case, the excuse is that publishing the complaints isn't perfectly fair to the businesses. That is true, but failing to publish the complaints makes the customers more vulnerable to unfairness by businesses. So the question is, which imperfection is more important?
Under plutocratic rule, the answer is simple: the businesses are more important, and bigger businesses are more important than smaller ones.
Redesigning the estate tax could eliminate the irrational stigma and collect more money from the rich.
Streaming now gives Big Music Copyright as much money as it got before internet sharing, but musicians are poorer than ever.
What can you do?
* Don't use streaming disservices. Insist on having your own local digital copy, with no DRM, for any music you are going to listen to.
* Campaign to legalize sharing (noncommercial redistribution of exact copies) of all published works.
if the byproduct is to wipe out the major music-owners, so much the better! As parasites on musicians and oppressors of those that listen and share, they are enemies of music.
Bernie Sanders has proposed a federal program to offer a job to every citizen that wants one.
The question of whether this is the "most targeted use" of the money it will cost is a confusion, because the task to be done is primarily to give poor Americans more money. Different methods can have advantages and disadvantages, but the only way one can cost substantially less is by doing less of the job.
Rather, the challenge is to make sure that these jobs end up contributing useful results to society.
The Student Loan Report is a "journalistic" activity owned by a company that lends to students. Which means it is pure propaganda. Its star reporter, "Drew Cloud", was a fiction.
US citizens: call on Saboteur Pruitt to stop excluding science from EPA decisions.
US citizens: Support laws to protect investigator Mueller.
Shell hopes to greenwash its fossil fuel extraction by pledging to reduce the greenhouse emissions from its own operations.
The greenhouse emissions from the fossil fuels that Shell sells dwarf the emissions from those that Shell burns.
The Tories have been quietly cutting government staff concerned with climate safety since 2016.
Saboteur Pruitt has been doing the same thing since 2017 but in a very visible way.
Kenya banned plastic bags 100%, and the effect has been a tremendous improvement, but some edge cases are doing harm in specific activities.
Does the ban include long-lasting plastic bags meant for reuse? I carry a few of those with me, and I have used them dozens of times, Forbidding those would seem to be defeating the purpose. Only a few rich people would buy a bag like that and use it just once.
New Jersey has adopted a strong law to put an end to the widespread inequality of pay that women suffer.
The EPA has declared that burning wood is carbon-neutral.
In a stable climate, it would be carbon-neutral if done at a sustainable rate over a long time. However, we can't assume that another tree will actually grow to the same size — not when logging is used for deforestation. But even if another tree starts to grow, it might not reach maturity. Global heating could dry up the region, or allow pests to migrate which would kill that tree.
Melting ice in Greenland has triggered a positive feedback, releasing dust that darkens the surface so that it absorbs more light and heats up to melt more ice.
A different positive feedback loop is speeding melting of Antarctic ice.
This leads me to think that that forecast sea-level rise is an underestimate. I am not surprised, since the forecasts are based on known phenomena only, and that makes them conservative.
A mere 10 meters of rise would inundate many cities around the world.
Can we dam the Mediterranean Sea? It would be a megaproject and a great challenge, but might be cheaper than protecting, or losing, the heart of every city on its coasts.
It might be necessary to transfer lots of water and/or salt across the dam, but that would be better than letting the Mediterranean flood so many cites.
The UK's "special forces" have never been scrutinized by parliament, but that may soon change.
An Israeli member of Parliament tweeted that he wished Ahed Tamimi had been shot rather than jailed. Twitter punished him with a short suspension, but he shows no shame.
A company proposes to launch satellites to provide continuous real-time surveillance views of the whole surface of the Earth.
How much resolution this will provide is not clear, but it makes me wonder if there is an antisatellite weapon that avoids producing dangerous space debris.
Billionaire Polluters took the gloves off, threatening Cambridge University with losing a lot of donations if it decides to divest from fossil fuels.
Divesting from fossil fuels is a desperation tactic to try to encourage the decrease of a practice that is slowly but steadily causing global catastrophe, when what we really ought to be doing is blocking all new drilling world wide and steadily reducing what can be extracted from existing wells.
"Engaging" with fossil fuel companies is as useless as negotiating peace with Netanyahu: they extend the discussion indefinitely while continuing to extract profits.
If Gina Haspel is confirmed as head of the CIA, she could return it to torture at any time. Nothing would stop her.
The only reliable way to stop her successors is to try her and punish her.
US deportation thugs have taken a baby away from its mother — because they can.
The mother is not an unauthorized immigrant. She has asked for asylum. They had no reason to jail her; they did it because they can, and because they hate foreigners.
A special provision of the Republican tax attacks, supposedly meant to help small businesses, actually gives big tax deductions to rich people.
An illustration of "intersectionality": when you're threatened with deportation from the country you've lived in lawfully for decades, and you're so disabled you can hardly come to an appointment.
UK thugs arrested city councilor Afzal Shah because he resembled the suspect in a crime. They paid no attention to his alibi, that he was in a city council meeting at the time of that crime.
He speculates that the thugs would have been more capable at telling two men apart if the men where whites.
Tesla Slams Reveal News as "Extremist" After Exposé on Alleged Factory Improprieties.
The Corker-Kaine Bill Would Codify, not End, the Forever War.
Jeremy Corbyn Calls for Reconsideration of [UK] Arms Sales to Israel.
Sanders proposes measured but substantial penalties for certain kinds of opioid marketing.
I can't fault it, but are these companies still doing things that fuel the crisis? They were, it seems.
Republicans are planning to push millions of Americans off Medicaid, if they can't find regular work or they trip up on the paperwork to prove they are working.
Striking teachers, once again among the masses of American poor, are teaching America's future voters to recognize their enemies.
High tax rates never stopped Americans from investing and maybe getting rich. It did mean that their standard of "rich" was less.
US immigration prisons force prisoners (who are not convicts) to work or suffer solitary confinement, which is a form of brainwashing.
Tech giants are battling it out to own the privatized global internet.
New York attorney general Schneiderman asks the state legislature to eliminate a loophole by which a federal pardon by the bully for his cronies might protect them from prosecution in New York.
The French president is hailed as a centrist saviour, a bulwark against extremes -– even as he taxes the wealthy, attacks workers’ rights and demonises refugees.
Since the danger to civilization and most people today is from the right-wing plutocratists, a centrist is no savior.
Google has canceled a service that enabled people living under repressive regimes to access censored domains indirectly via Google.
Corbyn's plan for making everyone in Britain able to afford housing is like the one that Labour successfully implemented after the second world war: build lots of public housing.
Singapore is considering a law against "deliberate online falsehoods," and it seems that this will be interpreted in the usual way as including truths that the Singaporean state would rather not acknowledge.
Even hinting at violence in a leftist protest gives the right-wing an excuse to commit violence and get away with it.
A court case requires new legislative districts in North Carolina, but the cheater party drew the new districts so as to preserve their gerrymandered handicap. It looks like democracy in North Carolina is dead for years.
SCROTUS have invented a new legal excuse to cancel government regulations that were established years ago.
However, it could be that President Clinton laid the groundwork for it. That would be another criticism to lay at his door.
One thing I don't understand is why this is easier for them than passing an ordinary law to cancel a given regulation. If anyone finds an explanation, I'd like to see it.
The Canadian embassy in London has been surrounded by an "oil pipeline" made by protesters, labeled "Crudeau Oil".
UK activists sued; Pret a Manger is now forbidden to describe its products as "natural".
I think fake farm labeling should be illegal, too.
Pompeo won't reject an invasion of North Korea, which would be expected to kill 30,000 to 300,000 US soldiers in the first few days. I expect that implies ten times as many Koreans killed.
He advocated overthrowing the Kim regime a year ago, but in his hearing claimed that he hadn't.
I would love to see the Kim regime replaced, since the replacement could hardly be worse, but that doesn't mean launching an invasion to do it is justified.
The relatives of Gul Rahman, who was tortured to death by the CIA, demand to know where his body is.
I have never sympathized with the inordinate attachment some people feel towards corpses, but I think they have a very strong case against the US for torturing Rahman.
To protect the endangered Mary River turtle without help from Australia's extractionist government, researchers have to raise funds by selling chocolate.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep the sabotage citizenship question out of the census.
US citizens: Tell the Department of Agriculture not to let hog butchers inspect their own work.
Here's what happened when it allowed some chicken factories to use private inspectors.
The EU has a formal policy of autonomy for universities. The UK has turned all of it into a dead letter, giving the government detailed control over university activities.
BBC employees, from the 1930s to the 1990s, were secretly judged by government spies.
Georgia thugs left the armed Nazi protesters alone, and violently arrested many of the unarmed, peaceful counterprotesters.
Thugs tend generally to be right-wing. Perhaps they extended their sympathies more to the Nazis than to the antifascists.
Republican legislators in Colorado seek to fire teachers that strike, and jail them.
If the teachers have the courage to go to jail in large numbers, as civil rights protesters did, they will win.
UK thugs have been infiltrating all sorts of movements for non-plutocratist social change ever since the 1880s.
In the US, they have been especially active against union organizing.
The bullshitter has switched suddenly to praising Dictator Kim.
When he does this sort of thing, it shows that his condemnation means nothing more than "You're not giving me what I want," and his praise means nothing more than "You're giving me what I want."
New York Governor Cuomo is becoming a progressive, because Cynthia Nixon is running against him. Some other "centrist" (plutocratist) Democrats are doing likewise.
I don't have confidence they really mean it; I think they might become "centrists" again if reelected. Best to replace them with real progressives.
Arctic record: 12,000 Microplastic Particles Per Liter of Sea Ice.
A Toronto police officer arrested a multiple murderer without shooting him, then said, "That's just doing my job."
This is a noteworthy example of a practice that is not unusual in the US, when the suspect is white. It's blacks that tend to get shot on the tiniest hint of suspicion.
The Irresponsibility of "Fiscal Responsibility".
In Bangladesh, factories making clothing for western sales-front companies now get careful safety inspections. The rest are still unsafe.
It sounds horrible: "UN peacekeepers accused of child rape in South Sudan." But the article makes it pretty clear that the "children" involved were not children. They were teenagers.
What about "rape"? Was this really rape? Or did they have sex willingly, and prudes want to call it "rape" to make it sound like an injustice? We can't tell from the article which one it is.
Rape means coercing someone to have sex. Precisely because that is a grave and clear wrong, using the same name for something much less grave is a distortion.
The narcissist hates leaks that make him personally look bad. A few of them, by coincidence, also include dirty secrets that make the US government look bad, so he gets them prosecuted.
People in West Virginia are living in trees to block an oil pipeline.
The local effects will be bad for them, but the contribution to global heating will increase the resulting deaths by an amount that increases every year.
India is showing the world that massively fingerprinting citizens puts them at risk — of theft, and of future tyranny.
Now that Assad is in control of Douma, his forces are keeping chemical investigators away saying it is too dangerous for them, while shepherding journalists on guided tours to tell them there was no chemical attack.
Some of the people say there was a chemical attack but it was a false-flag attack carried out by Islamist rebels.
It is hard to determine what parts of this are true, but if one of those stories were true, I don't think anyone would be asserting the other one. Therefore, I think that Assad carried out the chemical attack. But I can't say that is proven.
Monsanto's chemical factory poisoned the town of Anniston, Alabama, with PCBs. Many of the residents are sick as a result.
Monsanto uses the power of its money to fight to avoid or delay compensation and correction.
This is one reason we should not allow companies to be that large. Suitable policies can compel them to split up. Foreign companies that are too large should not be allowed to operate directly. They could sell goods to a special importer that would resell them.
The Open Society Foundation has been forced out of Hungary by a new law that is explicitly politically biased.
The UN has accused the Burmese army in a report presented to the Security Council.
Varoufakis: the prediction in the Communist Manifesto, that capital would own and control all aspects of life everywhere, seems to be coming true today, 150 years after.
State control of the means of production might be OK, but state control of the means of surveillance will not make them safer.
The mother and father of a refugee family are both in Australia, but the government forbids them to live together. Meanwhile two of their children are stuck on Nauru alone.
Once a government adopts cruelty as a goal, the cruelty naturally comes to override every principle of decency, mercy, or justice.
(Satire) Mike Pompeo made a secret visit to North Korea, and defected.
If only he would do so; he couldn't do as much harm to Americans there as he can in the US.
The character Superman started out, in the first story about him, was a "champion of the oppressed", fighting against the injustices of power rather than merely against "crime".
Who is low enough to work as the cheater's lawyer? Rudy Giuliani says his job will be to put an end to Mueller's investigation.
After a few more centuries of human domination, the largest remaining land animal could be the cow.
If civilization gets mostly wiped out in this century, perhaps what remains of humanity won't be able to finish off the remaining large animals. On the other hand, large numbers of humans could wipe them out even with spears.
US citizens: tell Congress to pressure for firing Saboteur Pruitt.
US citizens: Oppose the SCROTUS domestic abortion gag rule.
For supporters of the cheater, no lie is too blatant.
The Tories will waive many barriers in UK citizenship applications, for people that moved lawfully from colonies in the 1960s.
The article does not make it clear whether they will waive the requirement to prove when they arrived, or that they resided in the UK since then. But that's where the difficulty is.
1988: Giuliani Had FBI End Investigation of Trump Money Laundering, [then] Trump raised $2M for Giuliani.
The Lies about Sex Trafficking That Brought Down Backpage (and led to the censorship law SESTA).
Online advertising isn't crucial for coercing people into prostitution, but helps them a lot in avoiding violent crime if that has happened.
Religious fanatics that own US hospitals and clinics are threatening to fire, even blacklist doctors for performing abortions somewhere else.
The Republicans that control North Carolina passed a law so that factory farms don't have to compensate neighbors for the many nuisances the farms cause.
A law adopted in 1871 to stop the KKK from intimidating black voters is now being used against Republicans that seek to intimidate black voters and members of other disfavored groups.
Young Americans are joining unions, looking for a way to get more respect at work, as well as better pay.
The Senate foreign relations committee approved Pompeo because Rand Paul and Chris Coons switched sides to support him.
I am sure their supporters will be disappointed in them for this.
The US-based bombardment of Yemen struck a wedding party. This sort of atrocity is, presumably, unintentional. But since it happens over and over, it is not unforeseeable.
Pesticide Executives Are Running Ag Policy for Donald Trump.
In Aceh, mobs of fanatical Muslims attack people found having sex, or otherwise violating Shari'a law.
Indonesia made a bad mistake allowing Aceh's autonomy to include denial of human rights recognized by Indonesia itself.
FAIR: Media Support US Violence Against Syria, But Long for More.
Sheriff's Deputy Who Fatally Shot Unarmed Black Man in Texas Is Fired.
At least he won't shoot someone else in the same thug department. But he can probably get hired in another one.
Anyone can set up a company in the UK and lie about who really owns it. This is a major contributor to world-wide fraud.
The only person ever prosecuted for making a phony company was the whistleblower who sought to call attention to this vehicle for fraud.
Everyone: Tell the Sturm Ruger gun company to remove the NRA leader from its board of directors.
US citizens: tell Congress not to weaken the Marine Mammal Protection Act in regard to navy operations.
500 indigenous people from Venezuela are stuck in the border zone between Venezuela and Colombia.
I've crossed that bridge. There were normally no border controls — Venezuelans and Colombians simply cross, while people from other countries who are travelling further on are required to visit an office several blocks away to show their passports. Colombia is treating these citizens of Venezuelans unlike all the others.
How the Border Patrol Faked Statistics Showing a 73 Percent Rise in Assaults Against Agents.
As of 2018, 1/3 of Amazon employees in Arizona get food stamps, their pay is so low. In some other states, it's only 1/9 that get food stamps.
Amazon's office workers are better paid but they have to work 80 hours a week. That's even more time than I spend volunteering!
Finland has cut short its test of a partial universal basic income, apparently on ideological grounds. It is too soon to draw conclusions from the test itself.
Nicaragua has backed off from cuts in support for poor and retired people, which sparked riots.
It looks like the former Socialists are obeying business, now. Nicaragua, like other countries, needs to break their power at all costs.
Egypt has put the Sinai peninsula under curfew all the time for weeks. People can't get gasoline, electricity, food, or water.
The cause of this is an anti-guerrilla operation against violent Islamists. It is hard to say which are worse, the violent Islamists of Egypt or the military rulers of Egypt.
The Pakistani army demonstrated its political power by shutting down a TV station and making it agree to censorship. The other media are already censoring themselves.
The Tories prosecuted their War on Immigrants by turning the UK into a society where you have to "show your papers" for anything you do.
The bully's War on Immigrants threatens to do the same thing.
Palestine Files Complaint against Israel under Anti-Racism Treaty.
Courts are giving US state governments carte blanche to arbitrarily declare properties "blighted" as an excuse to seize them by eminent domain.
An even bigger injustice of eminent domain in the US is that the Supreme Court has authorized its use by governments on behalf of private business projects. This means a local or state government is allowed to elevate one private entity's success over anyone's mere rights.
Why would a government even think of doing that? Partly, due to corruption. However, it is also a matter of values and ideology. For those that have surrendered in their hearts to plutocratism, it is easy to reach the conclusion that "What this city needs most is for business B to succeed here." These officials might then seize land for a business, bid millions to be exploited by Amazon or hold the Olympic games, or even vote that corporations are entitled to human rights.
When selling out to the rich becomes this deep, it ceases to feel like selling out. Instead it feels like loyal service to the master.
Pruitt Promised Polluters EPA Will Value Their Profits over American Lives.
Humans discovered the Tapanuli orangutan six months ago; now other humans are proceeding to cause its extinction in short order.
Why unexploded bombs from World War II are still frequently discovered in various European countries, especially Germany.
With the 2018 farm bill, SCROTUS hope to starve Americans that they don't poison.
Facebook publishes ads citing specific useds as if they endorsed the ads. Martin Lewis is suing Facebook for misrepresenting him this way.
Citizens of Scotland: support libel reform in Scotland.
US citizens: condemn Saboteur Sessions's plan to deny asylum to refugees fleeing domestic and sexual violence.
Tennessee Christians who are generally right-wing have been alienated by a large raid made by the deportation thugs.
The penalty imposed on Wells Fargo is partly for restitution to the customers it defrauded, but how to do this has not been specified, and the bank itself may make most of the decision.
Many anti-deforestation activists are being murdered in the Brazilian state of Pará.
I made a joke that the capital of Pará is Paranoia. (After all, the capital of Goias is Goiania.) Sad to say, it seems to be the truth.
California thugs, "bullies with badges," shot Diante Yarber, an unarmed black man, in a parked car.
They said he drove the car away when they tried to stop him. If so, that was no reason to kill him. They could have found and arrested him on some other occasion.
They also said he rammed a thug car, but others deny this, and his car mysteriously shows no sign of the damage that ramming would have caused. Knowing the MO of thugs, my suspicion is that they made this up.
They hit a passenger, too, and were more interested in interrogating her than in bringing her to the hospital.
Almost all human beings alive have to breathe dangerously polluted air.
Sea-floor mining could cause ecological damage like mining on land.
School bus drivers in Georgia didn't get the same support that teachers got, even though they get paid even less.
It looks like a few giant conglomerates will take over all aspects of medicine in the US.
We will need to nationalize them, or else convert every single activity into a pervasively regulated utility which can't decide any policy on its own. To allow one entity to have both regulated and unregulated activities is a recipe for corruption (it will use the regulated activities to subsidize the unregulated ones), so we will need to split them apart and split up the unregulated ones.
In case Senator McCain dies, Republicans are trying to change Arizona's law so his successor won't be elected soon.
The violent conflict in Northern Ireland started in 1968 when thugs attacked peaceful protesters that were demanding democratic elections and equal rights for Catholics. In response to this violence, some of the dissidents started demanding independence from the UK. Since the Catholics were a minority, they were not entitled to that, when the majority was against it. But they were entitled to democratic elections and equal rights.
Innovators are working on ideas for replacing plastic.
I rarely buy plastic beverage bottles, except in countries where drinking tap water is not safe. And I carry a few long-lived shopping bags with me, so I mostly avoid single-use plastic bags. However, I have no feasible way to avoid the containers (often plastic) that food is sold in — it isn't feasible to sell them without containers.
Exotic southern wildlife is surprising people in Alaska.
The native animals and plants are not accustomed to them either. In a few years the exotics will be eating them, competing with them for food, and spreading diseases to them.
The 'Deep State' Is Real. But Are Its Leaks Against Trump Justified?
I think the article's points are entirely valid. When intelligence officials leak intelligence information for their own purposes, it creates a permanent danger which threatens lasting harm.
At the same time, the corrupter has created a potentially permanent danger which threatens lasting harm. He is not likely to win a free and fair election, and since Republicans didn't allow the last election to be fair, they are not likely to do it in the future.
With the United States in grave danger from its own leaders, the intelligence leaks about his corruption can be seen as a backup form of the "checks and balances" that Congress lacks the courage and independence to carry out.
The deep state and the corrupter are also fighting about whether to release the last secret papers about the assassination of President Kennedy, which might show what the CIA knew about Oswald's contacts in Mexico with Cuban and Soviet diplomats.
A mission to remove a fishing rope and hook from a North Atlantic right whale's jaw aimed to enable her to reproduce again. But the mission was unsuccessful.
If the human population were so low, I would urge all humans to have babies. However, we are at the other extreme, with a population that is too large.
It's a shame the British royal family promotes the superstition of homeopathy.
A domestic-abuse victim has been charged and found guilty of second degree unintentional murder of her abusive partner. Protesters are urging the County Attorney to drop all charges against Natalie Pollard.
Cal State University recognizes the freedom to state right-wing ideas more than the freedom to state left-wing ideas.
(Satire) Congress Demands To Know How Facebook Got People To Give Up Their Civil Liberties Without A Fight.
An official in the Interior Department seems to have delayed protection for an endangered mussel at the request of fossil fool interests.
The bully's "extreme vetting" is harassing activists and blocking them from visiting the US to speak.
The Basque terrorist group ETA has recognized that its violent campaign for Basque independence was wrong, and made a humble apology before disbanding.
The leaders called on Spanish thugs to recognize the wrongs on their part. The group began its campaign while the murderous dictator Franco was still in power and the thugs worked for him, so I expect there were plenty of wrongs on the thugs' part.
US citizens: Tell Congress to end predatory phone rates for prisoners.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to defend network neutrality.
Everyone: please tell Toys Ya Us to give its employees severance pay.
The letter in the middle of the store's name is not an R. It is Я, the Cyrillic letter which is pronounced "ya". Please do no commit the solecism of pronouncing it as "ar", unless you're a member of the Pirate Party.
Maputo, capital of Mozambique, is suffering under a severe drought, which is likely to become ever worse as global heating continues.
The projected population increase for that city will not occur. Maybe the migrants will find somewhere else to go; but what they need to do is decrease the birth rate.
The cancer treatment drug Imbruvica is so expensive that doctors started testing lower doses to reduce the price. So the manufacturer started charging the same price per pill regardless of the dose.
There is something here that I don't understand. Can't they get a pill cutter and divide up one large-dose pill into several small-dose pills?
Perhaps we should to keep our fingerprints out of photographs so that our fingerprints won't be revealed.
The Terry vs Ohio Supreme Court decision, in 1968, gave thugs the power to search and harass people on the street on any grounds that thugs generally call "reasonable", bringing back the sort of British policies that sparked the American revolution.
The Internet of Stings is also the Internet of Cracking. If you want proper security, don't allow any connected appliances to connect to the internet from your premises.
Reveal News reported that Tesla was covering up injuries to make its safety record look better. Tesla called Reveal News names.
Wells Fargo has been fined a billion dollars for cheating loan customers.
I doubt that will be enough to make it change. We should split it into at least 20 smaller banks so that none of them will dare to try such cheating. And the individuals responsible should be prosecuted.
Arizona's teachers will go on strike starting next week.
When teachers go on strike, they generally demand more funds for other needs of public schools, not only for their pay.
In 2016, a Southwest Airlines flight suffered an engine failure due to a cracked fan blade. In 2017, Southwest Airlines opposed making an NTSB rule requiring more frequent inspections of the fan blades.
A week ago, another cracked fan blade made an engine explode, and one passenger died as a result.
The "National Association of Scholars" is a phony scientific organization set up to promote global heating denialism.
The World Bank wants even more deregulation of work — thus, worse conditions and lower pay.
The campaign for Britain to leave the EU took data from commercial sites without asking or informing the users.
The site's excuse is that its non-privacy policy said it might do this. A web site should not be able to make that lawful merely by stating its intentions — there should be strict limits on releasing personal data.
But that should not matter for a price comparison site, because it should not find out anything about its visitors.
The existing NAFTA forces continued fossil fuel dependence in several ways. The new one could do the same; it could even be worse.
The Republican tax attacks have given American workers peanuts. They have given the big banks billions.
The expanded authorization for use of military force, recently proposed in the senate, would allow the president — any president — to make war on any organization he chooses to designate.
In effect, Congress would cede to the president its control over when the US makes war.
It's absurd for Congress to exercise control over the president by delegating it indefinitely to the president.
The Democratic National Committee has sued Wikileaks for publishing leaked emails, as well as the Trump Campaign and Russia for plotting to obtain them. Suing Wikileaks attacks freedom of the press.
The latest consequence of the perverse idea that corporations are entitled to human rights: a US court ruled that Monsanto has the human right not to tell customers that Roundup has been designated a probable carcinogen.
A court case in Ireland could put a crimp in companies' ability to send personal data from the EU to the US.
A person's long-disused Facebook account was hijacked by a Russian troll.
The lords of copyright are taking advantage of Facebook's current vulnerability weakness, due to its trashing of people's privacy, as an opportunity to compel it to crack down on sharing of copies among its useds.
They hope people will leap from "Facebook is bad" (for snooping) to "Restrict Facebook" (from being useful for something).
Sharing is good. What's evil is forbidding or stopping people from sharing.
US citizens: Tell the Senate: Vote no on the Corker-Kaine AUMF.
US citizens: tell Congress not to let the saboteur in chief destroy the CFPB.
US citizens: tell your congresscritter to sign the Lofgren-Amash-Lee-Massie letter calling on the bully to get Congress's approval for military action against Assad's army.
Bad Decisions: Google Screws Over Tools Evading Internet Censorship Regimes.
Since Iceland generates all its electricity using renewable sources, next it wants to make combustible fuel using electricity and avoid the remaining fossil fuel.
Just 90 Companies Caused Two-Thirds of Man-Made Global [Heating] Emissions.
This is, of course, a sign of the dangerous concentration of industry into large businesses.
Supposedly Facebook doesn't allow companies to arbitrarily add email addresses to the list of people they can advertise to. In practice, they seem to be doing it.
Instead of looking for ways to make small changes to put an end to this, we should aim to drastically reduce massive surveillance at all levels.
What Happened to Winter? Vanishing Ice Convulses Alaskans' Way Of Life.
Most young Americans don't know about Hitler's campaign to kill all Jews.
We would have an easier time teaching people to condemn genocide if Israel did not try to use it as an excuse for the occupation of Palestine. We could be more successful in campaigning against real antisemitism if criticism of Israel's occupation policy were not mislabeled as antisemitism.
"America first" was a slogan of American fascists. Some of the bully's associates used associated racist slogans such as "100% American", which was understood as meaning "100% Aryan".
But don't criticize the cheater for saying that the American dream was dead. The Horatio Alger dream, that by hard work you could get a good job and prosperity (not riches), was killed by plutocrats (of which the cheater was just one) years before he became a candidate.
Where he lied was in claiming he would try to reverse that. What he has actually done is help those plutocrats knock other Americans down.
Comey joked with the bully about putting a whistleblower's "head on a pike", and reporters in jail.
He is doing the right thing (for whatever reason) by spilling facts to incriminate the bully, and we should appreciate that. But we must not lionize him, since his career has included wrong as well as right.
Opposing the National Rifle Association: introducing the No Rifle Organization or NoRA.
I enjoy the joke, but I fear it plays into the hands of the NRA, which will say, "See, they want to confiscate all rifles." US gun control advocates do not propose to go that far.
The mob of bigots in India now attacks those who try to stand for secularism or human rights for the discriminated-against.
Reportedly, illegal porn images are hidden somehow on sites that are meant to contain legally allowed porn, and this puts innocent visitors in danger of being imprisoned for something they did unintentionally.
Any law that makes it a crime to have a copy of some published works is a terribly dangerous injustice. These laws must be eliminated.
Does anyone know more about the technical practice that the article describes? Merely using a shortened URL does not "hide" the page it refers to.
Disabled people in the UK can't afford food and heating after all the aid cuts.
Syrian Medics 'Subjected to Extreme Intimidation' After Douma Attack.
I don't know anything about the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations. For all I know, it might be an arm of the Islamist rebels and as dishonest as Assad. But the Guardian reporters say they talked directly with doctors and victims. For Assad to push this hard to pretend there was no attack suggests he did the attack.
Proposed EU laws for government access to data stored by services would require every company operating there to understand the details of each EU country's laws, and obey them even when forbidden by the laws of their own country. This burden would be crushing for small companies. In addition, companies would face almost irresistible pressure to sacrifice privacy to err on the side of compliance.
After the constitutional coup a few years ago, Paraguay has fallen into the hands of supporters of the former military dictatorship.
I wonder whether the US or right-wing US oligarchs have played a role in this.
US citizens: call on Democrats to fight to undo the Republican tax attacks.
In the US: sign up to join a protest if the corrupter fires investigator Mueller.
That page does not work with JavaScript totally disabled, but it works ok with LibreJS.
High-Speed Pig Slaughter Will Be Disastrous for Everyone Involved.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is asking journalists to report hassles with entering the US, including searches of their digital devices and (for those not US citizens) hassles in getting a visa.
Fracking company Extraction Oil and Gas is suing protesters and a journalist.
Several states plan to make it a crime to plan a protest at a fossil fuel pipeline site.
Japan has published the names of the soldiers of Unit 731 which experimented with chemical weapons using Chinese and Koreans as guinea pigs.
"I'm a millionaire who creates zero jobs. Why do I pay less tax than you?"
One of Facebook's first useds compares it to herpes, and says she was a fool to have trusted Zuckerberg.
Philippine President Do-dirty is deporting foreigners for criticizing him, even for being near others that criticize him.
What does deporting a (real or suspected) critic have in common with murdering a (real or suspected) drug dealer? Both attack the idea that people have legal rights.
Australia is turning to the hype of fracking to pump lots of natural gas and overshoot its greenhouse gas targets by a factor of three.
The digital tech industry considered as a pile of hustlers climbing over each other to become a billionaire by standing on the rest. All while looking for ways to atomize people's lives and turn their jobs into piecework.
Canada's ruling Liberal Party is considering legalizing possession and use of all drugs.
The US uses "Liberal" to mean what Europe calls "social-democratic", but the Canadian Liberal party is nothing like that. Nowadays it mainly seems to mean "let them drill and mine anything."
A Russian journalist that investigated mercenaries fell off his balcony and died. The state wants to say that he fell accidentally.
Citizens of Manchester hope to press Abu Dhabi to release political prisoner Ahmed Mansoor by naming a street after him.
The ruling family of Abu Dhabi has effectively purchased the support of the city's government by making a big investment there. It is dangerous for any government to treat the support of a specific company as indispensable; this is one of the reasons why we need to make large companies split into many smaller ones.
Comey has become the most visible enemy of Americans' worst enemy. That doesn't mean he has been our friend all this time. Don't forget his campaign for more surveillance and against our right to privacy.
In the long term, unchecked surveillance will be almost as harmful as the bully.
Eight Florida youths are suing the state government for willfully disregarding the danger that global heating poses to life in Florida.
(Satire) The US stands ready to escalate military contractor profits as much as it takes.
The cheater is thinking of undoing the principal good thing he has done: his rejection of the TPP or "Treacherous Plutocratic Poison" as I call it.
That treaty has the "I Sue Democratic States" provision which would give foreign companies more rights in the US than US citizens have.
The TPP would strengthen the grip of the business-dominated globalization that increasingly concentrates the world's wealth. The suffering that this form of globalization causes is opening the door to right-wing bigots such as the cheater.
The US Senate changed its rules to accommodate senators with babies.
The New York Times has not opposed any US war or attack in 30 years. Other US newspapers generally agree.
Great Barrier Reef: 30% of Coral Died in 'Catastrophic' 2016 Heatwave.
In the next decade there will be another, hotter heat wave and more of the coral will die.
Balkan Dam Projects Could Result in Loss of One in 10 European Fish Species.
US citizens: phone your senators' offices at 877-591-6399 and tell them to oppose Pompeo's confirmation. You can mention that he has supported torture, is gung-ho for fossil fuels, and is likely to support more wars.
"Rightwing politicians spout rhetoric with which no reasonable person would disagree, while we wait for a catastrophic injustice to expose the reality."
Opposition to Pompeo puts his confirmation in doubt.
A week or so ago I posted a note that seemed to say he had been confirmed and criticized some Democratic senators for voting for him. I had that taken down because it seems to have been incorrect.
Scientists are studying a mega-project to run more fresh water from the Mississippi through the delta wetlands. This would delay their loss to the rising seas.
I fear, though, that in the long term this will only give us a one-time reduction in the loss of those wetlands, after which each centimeter of sea-level rise will give us the same amount of loss it would have given us. The money would be used more effectively on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Comey whitewashes the gross injustices of the US justice system, while lauding it and saying we should fear it more.
The UK government had entry records for citizens that moved from Caribbean colonies in the 50s and 60s, and destroyed them in 2010 although staff warned that would lead systematically to injustices against people who had no proof of when they had come.
There is a clear and easy solution now: give those people the benefit of the doubt.
From 1850 to 1950, low-wage convict labor caused a substantial reduction in US wages, and it is surely doing the same today.
The bully canceled Sessions' crusade against state-legalized marijuana. At least that's what he says for the moment.
The level of random discord between statements of high officials of the US government means that one takes a risk by relying on any of their statements.
Blowing stuff up is a great way for a US president to build public support, but in the long term it provides a bigger propaganda boost for the enemy (whoever that may be).
If we Americans don't want to be played via bombings, we have to learn to resist this technique of manipulation.
Ajit Pai's "broadband adviser" has been charged with fraud adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
I don't suppose that Pai knew she was committing this fraud. But it makes sense that the kind of people Republicans admire would not have scruples against committing fraud.
The UK's company registry finally prosecuted someone for setting up a fraudulent company, but it's a whistleblower who told them he did it.
A Canadian teenager downloaded publicly accessible files off a government web site, and was charged with "unauthorized use of a computer." This is absurd; it should never be a crime to look at what others are showing to the public.
The charge is, in effect, "We told you to look in this direction. We never told you to look in that direction, so we intend to imprison you for turning your gaze without authorization."
This is comparable to the companies that try to punish people for reporting the companies' security errors.
By seizing the family's computers the thugs have done them irreparable damage. If they don't have substantial savings, they could end up homeless from this blind act of injustice.
What makes me saddest is that the teenager fears being permanently stigmatized because of having been arrested. This reflects a social problem that affects a lot more people than the US CFAA and its Canadian equivalent. People who have been arrested, no matter for what, systematically face many kinds of repression. Wealthy people can avoid most of the painful consequences — they don't need a job, they don't need public housing or welfare, they can pay for college, etc. But when these things happen to the non-rich, they will find that the only paths open to them are poverty or crime.
US citizens: support the Clean Power Plan.
US citizens, tell the Senate: Vote no on the Corker-Kaine blank check for war.
One source of the term "redneck" was the neckerchiefs worn by striking miners in West Virginia, fighting big coal.
Trudeau has openly taken the side of big oil against the environment.
In construction as in other areas, deregulation sometimes leads to death.
Accounts show the bully is profiteering from his elected office, just as we thought.
Protesters came to the Starbucks where an employee had two black men arrested after refusing to let them use a toilet.
Who is legally responsible for the damage that global heating does and will do?
I think that the responsibility for harmful actions done by millions of people because they have been intentionally misguided falls on those who misguided them.
China seems to be starting to repress homosexuals.
The bully is suing US local governments to reduce the tax assessments of his buildings.
The cities in question have to fear that he and his officials could retaliate in an underhanded way if they don't give in.
A theory for why evangelicals defend the pussy-grabber: their belief system is primarily to reimpose patriarchy.
One point I don't see how to resolve is why patriarchalists don't became enraged that their daughters might get involved with the pushy males they defend.
The UK has its own version of the DACA issue, with a twist: the people threatened with expulsion were British citizens when they moved there from former colonies, and they are legally entitled to live there. They just don't have documents to prove this.
One MP knows of 16 victims in her constituency, which leads to a quick rough estimate that the victims number around 10,000.
Another pertinent secondary point is that they have paid taxes there for decades, so denying them medical and retirement benefits is robbery on top of exile.
The cause of all this is that the government has decided on the principle of giving all immigrants the short end of every stick. That's what the US is now doing. While the details are different, this attitude systematically leads to cruelty.
Economists are waking up to the biases in neoclassical macroeconomics and how that provides an excuse for plutocratist cruelty.
There is no such thing as "the free market" — every market is regulated somehow, and a market without proper regulation is likely to have instabilities (such as crashes).
250 former employees of the US Justice Department signed a statement calling on the bully to obey the law, and called on Congress to protect against firing investigator Mueller.
It's not just mice — widely used pesticides were found to make human children weaker, less intelligent, and more aggressive.
The greater aggression could be a consequence of the lower intelligence. Lead exposure also makes children less intelligent, and more likely to be aggressive.
Racism makes people go mad. Brennan Walker, a black teenager, knocked on a white couple's door to ask for directions. The couple freaked out, assumed he was a robber (knocking on a door?), and shot at him without engaging their common sense.
Walker says he looks older than his real age, which is 14. What if he looks 18? What if he really were 18 years old? I don't think that would change anything.
Israelis that live near Gaza rallied to demand an end to the siege and to killing peaceful protesters.
World-wide criticism is having an effect: this week Gazans protested again, and this time the Israeli soldiers killed only one protester.
I would like to know how many protesters were wounded by sniper fire this time, because previously snipers wounded over a thousand protesters.
The EU's Latest Copyright Proposal Is So Bad, It Even Outlaws Creative Commons Licenses.
Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee, were far from noble when they systematically killed black soldiers that their troops captured.
Common agricultural pesticides harm various endangered species. Republican response: a bill to ignore that problem when approving pesticides.
Australia's government is continuing to draw up a bill to require back doors in encryption applications.
Saboteur Pruitt, as an official of Oklahoma, suppressed a corruption report that could have embarrassed Republican Senator Inhofe.
Wealth Inequality Is Soaring -– Here Are the 10 Reasons Why It's Happening.
The ultimate reason, the reason that these policies exist, is plutocracy.
The forced, scripted "confessions" of prisoners of China.
The death penalty is used less, world-wide, but China is keeping the practice going.
The International Criminal Court is prosecuting an Islamist for enslaving women.
It is not feasible for communications companies to quickly delete all offensive postings. AI of today's sort can't come close to recognizing them.
Let's not assume that companies should be required to delete all offensive postings. A small site can decide arbitrarily what to let people publish, without really censoring people — they can communicate elsewhere. Not so for a giant site.
When a private company grows to the point of dominating a large fraction of people's communication, censorship by that company is almost equivalent to censorship by the state. It is ludicrous for giants such as Facebook and Google to claim the right, as "private" entities, to impose rules about what people can say, all the while profiting from being perceived as "indispensable" by many people.
We did not allow telephone companies to censor conversations, and that's effectively what Facebook is doing.
By the way, please don't use the term "content" to refer to publications or works. It disparages them all.
Senator McConnell will block any effort to prevent the bully from firing investigator Mueller.
I interpret this as an effort to help the bully get rid of Mueller. Republican elected officials have basically surrendered to him, and lost the will to resist. They serve the bully no matter what he does, or might do.
Global heating is shifting the boundary between the arid US western plains and the rain-moistened Midwest. The boundary has moved 140 miles eastward so far, drying up a belt of land. It is likely to move a lot further in coming decades.
Citizens of Massachusetts: ask your state representative to support the ACLU's recommendations for the budget bill amendments.
I added this note at the front of my response:
My own personal note: it is vital to reduce the birth rate, in the high-footprint USA as well as other countries, but imposing poverty on children who are already alive is a stupid and vicious method which probably doesn't even achieve the purpose. Thus I support Amendment #1361.
An A/B test that compared two messages Democrats could use for the 2018 election found that linking race and poverty won more support than talking only about poverty.
The US, UK and France call for resuming the Syria peace talks.
Two black men were arrested in a Starbucks in Philadelphia for "trespassing", because they wanted to use a toilet while waiting for their friend to arrive. The friend did arrive but the thug chief thinks that doesn't matter.
One of the root causes of this incident may be racism. Another is that the store seems to have a policy of not allowing people to use the bathroom if they have not bought anything.
Compelling someone to excrete on the street or soil per own garments is cruel and degrading. Therefore, an establishment that admits the public and has toilets for some members of the public should not be allowed to deny use of those toilets to any orderly person, or to require any sort of payment for using them.
It looks like we need to resurrect CEPTIA, the Committee to End Pay Toilets In America. CEPTIA made itself look like a joke, but that was H.H.O.S. — its campaign was very successful against explicit pay toilets. However, that Starbucks operates a system effectively equivalent to a pay toilet, but with a different form.
If a restaurant owner complains, "There are too many people walking by our location, so it's unfair that we have to let so many use our toilet," the best response is, "How about moving to a location with less foot traffic, then?"
Hundreds of thousands rallied in Barcelona to demand Spain allow independentist leaders to return home. Spain has imprisoned some and is trying to drag others back.
Facebook's "voter button" can increase election turnout by a small but significant amount. By showing the button to some people and not others, it could decide who wins.
Poor People's Campaign to US Christians: being poor is not a sin. Imposing systemic poverty is a sin.
I am not a Christian, and I don't use the concept of "sin". If you replace "a sin" with "nasty, destructive and inexcusable", then the statement becomes one I agree with.
The UN Secretary General says that Burmese troops' use of sexual violence was a ‘calculated tool’ to force Rohingya to leave and not return.
Uri Avnery, who joined the Israeli Army when it was first created, feels betrayed by today's army, in which the generals order snipers to shoot harmless civilians and reporters at a distance of hundreds of meters and they do so, gleefully and triumphantly.
Here is more info about that video.
The UK's new strict vehicle inspections will make many diesel cars illegal and effectively unfixable. For their owners, this will be a disaster.
It is important to get these cars fixed or off the roads, but the cost should not fall on unsuspecting car owners at random. The rational way to handle this cost is to divide it among all owners of diesel cars, and/or the companies that made them.
Corbyn calls for the UN to mediate between the US and Russia in regard to Syria.
I agree with Corbyn that this can't hurt.
Apple sues independent repair companies in many countries, using trademark law to bully these small companies into settling at a disastrous price.
Not surprisingly, Apple uses the bogus concept of "intellectual property" to make the issue too vague and enormous to even try to confront.
The article describes one time that Apple lost the lawsuit.
Corbyn wants to establish clearly and firmly that the UK government needs to get Parliament's approval to enter a war.
Republicans want to terminate food assistance to a million poor Americans.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity warn that the chlorine attack in Ghouta may have been a false flag attack by the rebels that were under attack.
Chinese take puns so seriously that they build them into taboos.
Google plans to offer "confidential" emails which can't be downloaded out of Gmail.
This looks like an anticompetitive scheme to make suckers pressure others to use Gmail rather than anything else.
It doesn't provide any real security. It interferes only with the more convenient means to copy the message.
The UK is experiencing an increase in gang warfare, sometimes deadly. One cause is budget cuts in programs that support troubled youth.
The US Constitution requires the president to get authorization from Congress before attacking. I see no doubt that Congress would have given it, but the failure to ask Congress before bombing Assad's forces undermines the constitution. This bad tendency has persisted under several presidents. Some Democrats in Congress criticized the bully for not asking for authorization.
The bully says he has a secret excuse which he won't show to Congress.
The UK government did something similar.
The corporate media acted as boosters for military action, as is their general practice.
Facebook and Google joined with ISPs to defeat a privacy initiative in California.
Cynthia Nixon, a progressive challenging New York Governor Cuomo, showed her total defiance of centrist Democrats that reject her views.
A union official responds to two of her criticisms of unions.
I agree with his second point. Most Americans get low pay, and partly this is because they don't have unions. We should not criticize unions for getting workers good wages. Overall, the US needs stronger unions, not weaker unions.
However, the subsidy for movie companies is bad and should be ended. When cities and states pay businesses to choose them rather than some other city or state, this competition benefits those businesses at the expense of society. Whether the business in question is a factory, a new headquarters, or making a movie, we should put a stop to letting cities compete.
The excuse of "creating jobs" is entirely bogus because this competition mainly takes them away from somewhere else. But even if it really did mostly create more jobs, the price is too high.
The Republican tax attacks included tax cuts for the rich, but those will expire in 10 years. Now they want to make those cuts permanent, using the minuscule benefits for middle-class taxpayers as a smokescreen to hide the big giveaways to the rich.
Wendy Vitter, being considered by Congress as a possible judge, suggested that she disagrees with the Supreme Court decision that ended official racial segregation.
Pushing children into academic study too young can stop them from learning social skills and basic prerequisites for study.
I pushed myself into academic study while young, perhaps because the basic prerequisites came naturally to me.
The Equal Rights [for women] Amendment has languished since the 1980s, but is just two states short of approval. The Illinois senate has just approved it. If the Illinois lower house does likewise, it will be one state away from approval.
If Democrats take back several states in November, the ERA could actually pass.
The UK says it has intelligence reports that Russia tested door handles as a system for delivering nerve gas.
We cannot entirely trust this. We cannot trust Russian denials at all.
I agree that it would be good for Yulia Skripal to make a brief public appearance and speak to one or two reporters briefly for TV. It could be made easy enough that she could handle it.
The US, UK and France attacked Syrian military facilities that they related to chemical weapons production.
At least they made an effort to avoid sparking a war between the US and Russia, or even Iran.
Seymour Hersh wrote that Assad didn't actually use Sarin gas last year, and that US intelligence told the bully this, but the bully refused to accept the facts. That doesn't prove Assad isn't using chlorine gas now, but it makes me uncertain about that question. His and Russia's denials are not credible either.
Either way, I won't shed a tear for Assad's army, which is responsible for numerous atrocities, in Gouta and elsewhere in Syria.
This limited attack will not have much effect on the outcome of the war in Syria. It seems clear now that Assad will defeat the Arab rebels except where they are protected by other countries such as Turkey or Israel. As the front stabilizes, fighting will wind down.
The one place where I fear fighting might continue is in the Kurdish enclave of Rojava. The Kurds are the only group in Syria that is secular and supports human rights — the only one that deserves support. However, all the powers in the region consider them enemies, some because they are secular, some they support human rights, and some because they are Kurds. I fear they will not be left in peace.
Apple has gone on a rampage against "leakers", threatening to get them jailed.
Apple makes software to attack people's freedom, and now is a lackey of the Chinese tyranny. A leak from Apple does not necessarily work against this at all, but in the case where it does, it is admirable.
Goldman Sachs dared to say what many have suspected: it is more profitable to sell people a treatment every day than sell them a cure just once.
As long as we let businesses influence medical research, they won't look much for cures. We should take the choice away from them. We should tax these businesses and fund medical research with state funds.
We should also fund tests of proposed medicines' safety and effectiveness with state funds, so that the tests will not be corrupted.
This will take away the supposed reason to allow businesses to have patents on medicines.
Israeli soldiers shot and gassed hundreds of Palestinian protesters across the Gaza border fence again.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose HR 3144; don't override environmental laws to endanger salmon and the animals that eat them.
The referendum for the UK to leave the EU was marred by massive illegal campaigning by the victorious Leave campaign. Surely this justifies holding another vote.
The EU is itself a kind of business-supremacy treaty. Leaving the EU could enable the UK to throw off some of the EU rules that help business and especially banks dominate all EU countries. But it also presents an easy excuse for yielding to even worse business-supremacy treaties, and that's surely what Tories will do.
US Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius resigned last year rather than ask Vietnam to take back 8,000 refugees that fled after the fall of Saigon.
Most of those people must be pretty old by now. And most of them must have got along badly with the Communist government, which regularly imprisons people that criticize it. If they were back in Vietnam they might be sent to a re-education camp. Probably some of them were in re-education camps before.
A new agreement calls for reducing CO2 emissions from ships, but only by 2050, which is far too slow.
The US played a crucial role in blocking a requirement for earlier reductions.
Uber charges different prices to different people. Other companies also engage, or have engaged, in price discrimination. It turns out that identifying customers helps many businesses put customers at a disadvantage.
The only thorough solution is to do what is needed for other reasons: eliminate the systems that let companies know who the customer is.
Make half of world more nature-friendly by 2050, to protect the survival of humanity.
"Scientists say the greater threat to humanity comes from the conversion of wild habitats to farmland, the degradation of soil, overconsumption in wealthy nations and the pollution of rivers by industrial effluent, agrichemicals and plastic."
Facebook is promoting Mexican "news" sites whose output is pure propaganda and were set up specially for the coming election just to smear candidate Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador. They use Facebook to hide who's spreading this propaganda.
The US suffers from more surveillance than ever, but the FBI still complains because some things remain that it can't see.
Aside from giving useds' personal data to other companies (Cambridge Analytica was one of many), Facebook combines its own surveillance data with lots more data so as to sell access to targeted useds.
President Do-dirty threatens to arrest the International Criminal Court prosecutor who might investigate his murders.
Hounding Commonwealth Citizens [living in the UK] Is No Accident. It's Cruelty by Design.
Think of this when you see the bully's plans for hounding disfavored groups in the US.
If the richest country on earth can't provide most workers with a decent wage, then we need to change the economic system so it can do so.
Businesses in the US actively keep wages down, despite big increases in business income and workers' productivity.
Thugs in a UK city decide whether to charge people with a crime based on stereotypes deduced probabilistically from big data.
FTC Says 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers Are Bullshit, Warns Manufacturers They're Breaking the Law.
Will the FTC have the courage to take on Apple for bricking devices with third-party parts?
A right-wing attack group is targeting striking teachers, arguing that they have a duty to children to suffer quietly any level of exploitation in favor of the rich.
A merger between Sprint and T-Mobile once again threatens.
Maybe they think progressives in Congress might make mergers more difficult in the future.
The software company Lanetix fired all its programmers after they agreed to unionize. They have not given up, because it is illegal to do that.
Corrupt politicians in Wisconsin are designating people's houses as "blighted" as an excuse to kick them out and not really compensate them.
This is to bring in a factory run by the company that drove Chinese sweatshop workers making Apple products to commit suicide.
Big US banks have lent billions to companies that make loans, such as auto loans. Some of those companies are going down the tubes now because their own clients are defaulting.
This could potentially lead to another crash.
Zuckerberg, testifying to Congress, pretended ignorance of Facebook's collection of data about people that don't have Facebook accounts, and its other data about people which it didn't get from their own Facebook accounts.
A teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who advocates arming teachers left his pistol in a toilet. It was picked up by a drunkard who shot it (not hitting anyone and probably not trying to).
Charging them with crimes is absurd. It is clear that the teacher did not intend to leave the pistol in a toilet, and as for the drunkard, punishing him will achieve nothing. Any sensible person already knows to try to avoid these things.
The right lesson to draw is that arming teachers is a foolish and dangerous policy (though we already knew that).
The cheater pardoned Scooter Libby, who was convicted of obstruction of justice — justice against Cheney's dirty tricks.
I think this is meant as a threat against any attempt to hold him to account.
MIT students have cracked the surveillance system that tracks them as they enter dorms.
That system is unjust surveillance, in the name of security. It is not limited to dorms; some lab buildings, including the one my office is in, use the same system that tracks people — but I don't use it.
I asked the MIT thug chief to document the effectiveness of this system in solving crimes in the building. He responded with platitudes and zero information. We have no reason to consider it any more than bullshit.
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Israel to prosecute the soldiers that shot journalist Yaser Murtaja, and stop trying to excuse the act.
Committee to Protect Journalists: Liberia should reform libel laws in wake of $1.8 million civil lawsuit against Front Page Africa.
(Satire) The Onion quotes Pompeo: "They [the senators] just let me sit in this cushy chair the whole time without waterboarding me or anything."
Avoid Gulf Stream Disruption at All Costs, Scientists Warn.
We don't know how much more global heating it can stand before freezing northern Europe and drowning the eastern US.
Another US court has ruled that scraping information from a web site is not a crime under the CFAA law.
More about Hassan Al Kontar, including how Turkish Airlines cheated him.
Is there no country that will have the decency to offer him refuge?
Telegram refused to give Russia a back door to spy on its users. Now Russia has banned Telegram — though precisely what that means in practice is not clear.
A software developer cannot wish a tyrannical state away. But it has the obligation to refuse to become a tentacle of that state.
Australians, I hope you can stop your state from becoming a similar tyranny.
Censorship in France is going to extremes; a vegan has been convicted of a crime which consist of saying "I have no sympathy for the butcher that was murdered."
I disagree strongly with that opinion, but stating such views is part of freedom of speech, which France frequently treats with contempt.
France even makes it a crime to state certain views about past events.
Zuckerberg, testifying to Congress, pleaded ignorance to many aspects of Facebook's policies. Either he was lying or he has been incompetent all along.
However, we must not focus narrowly on Facebook alone, or on advertising surveillance alone, or on surveillance done by companies alone. The problem is the total amount of surveillance of people in general (not specifically of criminal suspects).
Retaliation for the chlorine attack in Syria does not amount to a strategy.
Milwaukee applies pointless cruelty to public school students, especially those that are black.
Big companies are not sharing their big Republican tax cuts with their workers.
We should not rely on the kindness of psychopaths. We should tax them more than before, not less than before.
Hindu bigots in India are trying to physically block the filing of charges for raping and killing a Muslim.
Finland shows that it is straightforward to end homelessness by giving homes to homeless people. It takes effort and money.
Building more housing costs money, so it comes down to a political question: what are the nation's priorities? Housing? War? Enriching the rich?
The US and the UK don't do this, because they are dominated by plutocrats who think it's unfair to rich people to make them pay enough taxes. They think that because they are paid to think that.
Thus we need to replace the non-progressive Democrats in this year's primaries.
Facebook collects lots of information that users don't directly give.
However, even when users knowingly hand over personal data because a "service" requires it, that's an injustice. If being kept track of is not the service users desire, keeping track of them is wrong. We must not say "it's ok if the user consents," because the manufacture of consent is too easy.
How the Ramayana endorses caste bias.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Block the water privatization clause in the proposed 2018 climate bill.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act. This would eliminate certain forms of mistreatment of immigrants facing deportation.
I dislike the use of the word "detained" to refer to imprisonment, but I signed this anyway because I agree with the substance of the bill.
Compelling people to wake up early, even if their natural tendency is to sleep late and stay up late, causes them grave illnesses, often fatal.
Hungarian journalists say how they stirred up hatred of immigrants for Orbán.
10 years after Sarkozy's "anti-terrorism" thugs arrested the members of an anarchist commune and accused them of being an "anarchist terror cell", a judge ruled that there was never anything like a "terror cell" and that the thugs had made it all up.
US immigration thugs harassed a Black Lives Matter leader Shaun King as he was returning to the US.
The thug's questions made it clear that he had singled out King, but apparently not for any specific suspicion of smuggling or crime, so this was not justifiable.
Immigration prisoners report rapes and threats by deportation thugs.
Egypt is passing a law to require that Uber hand over its surveillance data on passengers and their movements to the state.
The US already has such a law, the PAT RIOT Act, and the FBI could be ordering Uber to do this every 5 minutes for all we know.
These governments demonstrate ill will toward the people, but it is Uber that creates the opportunity that tempts them to act.
We must eliminate systems that track people's movements, such as Uber and Lyft. Lyft is much nicer than Uber in other ways, but it is no different in surveillance.
Using endangered animals such as lions, tigers and elephants in popular culture leads people to think they are plentiful rather than endangered.
"There are a lot more Sophie the giraffe toys in the world than actual giraffes."
Impeaching the bully would set a bad precedent: removing a wild, ranting and dangerous president is exactly what impeachment was intended for.
A new satellite system is being designed to spot methane leaks.
Senator Warren called on the Israeli army to stop shooting Palestinian protesters.
Bombing Assad for using chemical weapons would be ineffective and harmful. It would be war theater, instead of a theater of war.
The government of Malta is leaving journalists there vulnerable to SLAPPs.
The UK NHS has a shortage of beds. Meanwhile, it has shut wards with 1400 beds because it no longer has the staff to run them.
This is entirely plutocracy at work.
Good riddance to bullshitter Paul Ryan, who despises anyone who succeeds with help from the state, except that he makes an excuse when it's his mother.
(Satire) UPS's new tracking system will allow customers to track the delivery driver for the rest of per life.
Dubious Forensic Evidence? That's What Happens When We Sell Off Public Services.
It can happen with state employees too, as in the FBI crime lab; but at least it is easier to hold public employees accountable. (Though not necessarily easy.)
Egyptian dictator Al-Sisi was "reelected" in an "election" considerably more phony than Putin's.
Stories about "Russian bots" cover up the similar activities of non-Russian PR actors and individuals, while helping media avoid the substantive issues.
Guatemala is prosecuting its past torturers, which includes exposing how the US trained them. This is vital because some of those former torturers hold power in the government or in criminal gangs.
The US needs to prosecute its torturers.
Trump's Enemy Is Not Your Friend: Why We Shouldn't Defend Amazon.
A pox on both of them! Here are reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed journalist Yasser Murtaja, who was covering the protest at the border of Gaza. His clothing clearly marked him as press.
Israel said its soldiers chose targets intentionally — "We know where every bullet went". It should not try to pretend now that they didn't know they were shooting at a journalist.
When Soldiers Patrol the Border, Civilians Get Killed.
Soldiers are trained for war, so they treat every confrontation like a battle.
Trump's Increasingly Lawless Quest to Enforce a Bogus Rule of Law on Immigration.
Amnesty International says that the corpses in a mass grave in Mali were last seen as prisoners of the military.
US pharma companies manipulate shortages of vital medical supplies in order to make more money from them.
There is some evidence that people outside Russia's state lab can make novichok nerve gas chemicals.
Eight states have stopped using data from Crosscheck to kick people off voting rolls, but still provide voter data to Crosscheck.
This data might be used as an excuse to disenfranchise similarly-named people in other states.
The government program that teaches jailed unauthorized immigrants about their legal rights not only helps them exercise their rights, it even saves the US government money.
The bully's men resent the former benefit so much that they are trying to pretend that it loses money.
A foreigner accused in Cambodia of drug trafficking may have been framed because she criticized Cambodia's dictator.
Everyone: call on the Charlotte DA to drop charges against Charlotte protesters that are being framed.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote to cancel the FCC's elimination of net neutrality.
B'Tselem: Minors in Jeopardy: Violation of the Rights of Palestinian Minors by Israel’s Military Courts.
They are being treated in ways that systematically pressure even many adults into false confessions.
Syrian refugee Hassan al-Kontar is living in a corridor in the Kuala Lumpur airport. He is fleeing to avoid being conscripted to fight for Assad. He was connecting through Kuala Lumpur when Turkish Airlines inexplicably refused to let him fly onward.
Yassmin Abdel-Magied, activist for Muslim women's rights, had a visa to visit the US to speak. But the US cancelled her visa when she arrived.
The bully despises women and hates Muslims, so naturally he would want to deport any advocate for Muslim women.
Stricter patrolling of the border with Mexico regularly kills people trying to cross. Volunteers set out water jugs so crossers don't die of thirst.
Border thugs often destroy water jugs, sometimes making contemptuous statements while doing so. They express the wish to deter crossers by killing some.
That's the right way to treat companies (which are not people), but the wrong way to treat people.
Some in Congress remind the bully that the constitution says he must get Congressional approval to start a war.
Airbnb was springing fees on customers after first providing a misleading low price to make the sale.
Letting a company get off with just a warning for this encourages it and other companies to try again. We need to treat this as a serious crime, swindling, not like stealing a base in baseball.
Every company caught doing this should be fined the total amount of the fees collected through the deceptive practice in all transactions during the past 5 years. A few fine bankruptcies will teach the other would-be cheaters to stop probing to see how much cheating they can get away with.
Amazon offered a "30-day free trial", and started paid subscriptions automatically at the end of it.
This is clearly an attempt to trick customers — wrong in all cases no no matter how many companies do it.
When Israel kills Palestinians who are not fighting, it falls to the same level as the Palestinian terrorists that still occasionally attack Israelis who are not fighting.
Israel’s leadership is gradually admitting a basic fact of life—and death: That Israel’s ongoing control over millions of Palestinians is impossible without committing war crimes.
Clinton reminds us of why she would have been a militarist president by saying favorable things about Pompeo.
How Many Palestinians Have To Die For the World to Stop Israel's Crimes In Gaza?
California Governor Brown has failed to stand up to fossil fuel interests. Campaigners demand that he start.
Former US foreign policy officials, including several that supported torture and/or wars of aggression, signed a letter saying that Gina Haspel is just great.
Inspector General Report Shows Clear Misconduct, Hostility to Science at Interior Department.
Some Republican senators now cosponsor a bill to protect Mueller from being fired. And future such investigators as well.
Better Genderless Pronouns in English.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Tongass national forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act.
Waiters at TGI Friday's in the UK are planning a strike against the company's plan to give the rest of the workers a raise at the waiters' expense rather than at the company's expense.
(Satire) Mike Pence Horrified By D.C. Cherry Trees Flagrantly Displaying Reproductive Organs.
If you are less of a prude than Pence, you might enjoy having nasal sex with those lovely trees.
A 15-year-old burglar has been sentenced to 65 years in prison (until age 80) because another burglar was shot and killed.
The principle applied here, that each participant in the crime is responsible for its consequences, seems valid to me up to a certain limited point — but I think this stretches it too far.
Imprisoning people beyond age 50 for ordinary violence is generally superfluous because the urge to violence dies away before that age.
The American Federation of Teachers, a large union, threatens Wells Fargo bank with a boycott unless it stops investing in gun companies.
The EU threatens further censorship, initially of "hate speech".
Dissident views such as the Poor People's Campaign and anti-fracking will be censored sooner or later.
The full manifesto of the Poor People's Campaign.
I support it. I agree with each point.
Here is a report describing the circumstances of poverty in the US.
Russian Activists Arrested for Sexual Harassment Protest.
Will Senate Democrats have the courage to reject Pompeo's nomination?
Overpopulation in Nicaragua has led to people that need land. They are getting it by burning parts of a rainforest nature reserve.
The fact that a fire spread in a nature preserve has a message for us too.
Some highly endangered turtles remain unprotected.
As Trump Threatens to Bomb Syria, Lawmakers Say Attack Without Congressional Approval "Unconstitutional".
Gulf Stream Current at Its Weakest in 1,600 Years, Studies Show.
Amazon is considering making Alexa listen to all conversations.
If the device has a universal back door — which the Echo does — Amazon could impose this "feature" by force at any time. The Guardian should not disparage such concerns as "conspiracy theory".
It is silly to whisper around the Alexa device. Turn it off, or throw it away!
The bully's threat to Russia creates actual danger: it puts obstacles in the path of avoiding war between the US and Russia.
It may have been a response to a mistranslation.
Some Democrats once again show they believe that waging war makes even a clown "presidential."
China has arbitrarily arrested Li Wenzu for publicly demanding information about her disappeared husband, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang.
US citizens: Tell Congress to raise the upper salary limit for requiring workers get extra pay for overtime.
A woman in India says a powerful politician raped her. Her father accused the politician, but the local thugs refused to listen and arrested him instead. The woman tried to set herself on fire as a public protest. Then her father died in jail, apparently murdered.
Rape victims in the US also report that thugs and others are uncooperative when they try to file charges.
In India's patriarchal culture (starting with the Ramayana, see Sita Sings the Blues), misogyny is established and society condemns women for being raped.
Analysis of satellite data points out reservoirs that are drying up and could put cities at risk of running out of water in a few years.
This is useful for providing medium-term warnings, but we already know what to do for the long term solution: curb global heating.
(Satire) John Bolton Arrives In Office Excited To See So Many Familiar Wars.
EPA's War with California Proves America Needs a Carbon Tax.
American oligarchs do more harm in the US than Russian oligarchs do.
US sex workers report that the new US censorship law is driving them to streetwalking or pimps, and that this puts them in danger of violent crime.
This law was never seriously intended to protect them. It is censorship turned to the purpose of sexual repression — totally vile.
A video of part of the interrogation of Ahed Tamimi shows Israeli interrogators threaten to take her relatives hostage.
If you want to watch the video, please do not visit youtube.com in a browser; that requires nonfree Javascript code. You can download it with youtube-dl.
The US gender pay gap is getting bigger.
The search warrant executed on the cheater's lawyer, Michael Cohen, seems to have rattled the cheater to the point where he might do something crazy and drastic.
I hope it isn't starting a war.
The EU will insist that the UK continue to adhere to EU environmental standards even after leaving the EU.
I think that is a good thing, because Tories (like other plutocratists) would be inclined to trash the environment.
The renewed Poor People's Campaign links poverty, militarism, racism, and environmental degradation, as Martin Luther King did when he led it.
Young gang-members that engage in violence, even killing, are victims as well as culprits.
Calling them "children" is an exaggeration, but we don't need to exaggerate to recognize that they are not adults, and that adult society has failed to properly raise them.
The UK government has been conscripting public officials, employers and landlords into acting as deportation police since 2014. UK citizens get caught in the same repression if they can't prove they are citizens.
Various groups call on people to refuse to be enforcers.
The bully is imposing the same policies in the US.
[Projected] Approval of Bayer-Monsanto Deal Paves Way for Price Hikes, Reduced Choices.
It also paves the way for further increase in the antidemocratic political power of big business, a power that we must abolish if we are to restore democracy.
The Department of Homeland Suppression is preparing a list of US and foreign journalists, bloggers and "media influencers", with data about their fields of interest, and presumably coordinates as well.
This would not be menacing by itself. It becomes menacing when combined with the US propensity to repress reporters in other ways.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Mueller's investigation.
Everyone: Tell Detroit not to shut off the water for poor people.
US citizens: phone the FCC to object to the Sinclair-Tribune merger.
19 US states permit schools to hit students as punishment. The rest permit physical "restraining" of children, which often causes psychological or physical injury.
When I was a child, the act of trying to "restrain" me always backfired since it was an unforgivable, horrible affront that made me continue to rage for as long as the affront continued.
I wonder if the profusion of teachers without training in better ways to handle children that are upset has something to do with spending cuts for education in the US. These cuts have occurred since the 1980s for the sake of cutting taxes for the rich.
Deportation thugs raided a factory and arrested all the workers. Only later did it ask who they were, whether they were US citizens, etc.
Schools in Washington, DC, are racially segregated in practice, and the ones whose students are black are falling apart from lack of funds.
Unkinder-Morgan has stopped work on the Trans Mountain Pipeline, but threatens to start again if governments agree to satisfy its conditions.
15% of the total wealth in the US has been transferred from the non-rich to the rich in just the past three years.
The greedy jerk fought hard to prevent New York City from requiring him to put a sprinkler system in his tall building in New York City. He even paid off the head of the city council.
One tenant was just killed in his apartment by a fire that sprinklers could have put out.
Working as a thug in the US is not very dangerous — less dangerous than being a construction laborer.
A major Black Lives Matter page on Facebook was actually run by a non-black Australian union official. He raised lots of money through the page, saying it would be given to Black Lives Matter, but that was a lie.
The International Criminal Court seeks to investigate Burma's crimes against humanity, specifically against the Rohingya.
Facebook made a concession, agreeing to inform useds about what part of their data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica.
I don't think this reduces the fundamental wrong of Facebook significantly.
The campaign to prohibit porn finds Metoo tremendously helpful.
There is a threat to wipe out bitcoin, and all cryptocurrencies, using a strained legal excuse. The threat is to confiscate individual bitcoins if those specific coins were used previously in some illegal transaction, or passed through a broker that was later accused of any sort of crime.
The article describes two alternative plans for choosing who to punish in this way, but the effect would be the same: to punish ordinary users of bitcoins effectively at random. Ostensibly it is not random, but rather based on a criterion that ordinary users couldn't hope to check, so it's effectively equivalent to punishment at random.
It is fundamentally unjust to subject people to punishment at random. Constitutions ought to insist that no one can be punished, or legally discriminated against, or have property seized, based on circumstances not feasible for them to have recognized and avoided.
Decades of Republican assault on unions has weakened them, but teachers have shown they can strike and win despite that.
Florida Republicans have given coastal landowners the power to control access to beaches.
This is not a very important issue as political issues go, but it shows how Republicans kowtow to wealthy people and spit on the rest.
Was the Israeli sniper that killed journalist Yaser Murtaja incompetent, or a war criminal?
The latest Israeli bomb strike on Assad's forces seems to have provoked Russian resentment.
I cannot vehemently criticize any attack on Assad's forces, but this seems like asking for trouble.
In Northern Ireland, women face prosecution for ordering abortion pills from elsewhere in the UK.
Since the Northern Ireland parliament has not functioned for years, and shows no sign of being able to resume functioning, the UK Parliament should legalize abortion there.
Israel justifies killing protesters in Gaza arguing that it has made everyone in Gaza so desperate that they can all be considered armed enemies even when they aren't armed.
In other words, "The only good Gazan is a dead Gazan."
Suing Syria in the US for hunting and killing journalist Marie Colvin.
Observers criticize the Hungarian election as unfair.
Rejection of the old deference to authority often results in deference to the rich and powerful, which is worse.
Cement and concrete are significant sources of greenhouse gases, but there is no known solution for reducing them, only a desire for some hypothetical technical advance.
How about making monuments to the civilians killed by US soldiers during war?
Hundreds of thousands of Dalits went on strike in India. Notwithstanding the regrettable violence, the Dalits have right on their side.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on Governor Baker to sign the Criminal Justice Bill.
Journalists are being murdered for writing about women's rights.
The bully is continuing Obama's practice of prosecuting whistleblowers as "spies".
As we learned in connection with the threat to Snowden, this kind of prosecution denies these heroes the chance even to present the defense that public interest justified their actions. This injustice is inexcusable regardless of the specifics of any particular case.
The repressive Egyptian government wants to execute a press photographer, who was jailed not long after the military coup that put this government into power.
US phone companies cheat their customers, then try to create legal excuses to stop the cheated customers from suing them.
Anarchists in Portland, Oregon, fix potholes before the state gets there.
I do not agree with their opposition to the existence of a state, but I'm glad to see people privately organizing to do some of the jobs society needs.
In New York State, a strong movement of parents is rejecting the US-imposed standardized tests that have distorted education for a decade.
The mission of policing is the community's safety, not the safety of individual thugs. When thugs kill people that are not in fact threatening anyone, they betray their mission. Laws must not accept panic and worst-case arguments as an excuse for this.
Puerto Rico's imposed, nondemocratic government has decided to outsource statistics.
Outsourcing any government activity makes it unaccountable. In this case, it means the companies that report the statistics of activities in Puerto Rico could be induced to distort them in exchange for other lucrative contracts. These contracts would be offered by companies that want to buy public assets, and that desire their value to be underestimated.
If this happens, getting proof of it will be very difficult.
Serving the ignoramus means feeding him limited information to confirm his prejudices.
Dubya had to work hard to get the CIA to produce the false information he could use as an excuse for his war of aggression in Iraq. How much easier this is for the ignoramus, whose officials have no integrity and are loyal to him as master, rather than to their country or justice or humanity.
The SEC intervened arbitrarily to protect an oil company from a proposed shareholder resolution to set a target to reduce greenhouse emissions.
"How did we let modern slavery become part of our everyday lives?" The article contends it results from trying to make luxuries cheap.
One Palestinian in the Gaza protest says he tried to cut the border fence wire and throw a molotov cocktail. I couldn't criticize Israeli soldiers for shooting someone who was doing that.
However, it is a war crime to shoot unarmed people solely for "coming towards the fence", or even trying to cross it. And even more so in the incident, caught on video, in which Palestinians were shot while kneeling in a group and praying.
Some in Sweden are fighting to preserve cash payment.
The most basic way to resist surveillance payments is to insist on paying cash, except in situations where your name is already known, such as paying taxes or utility bills. Refuse to pay stores in non-cash.
If you have a few minutes to spare for the cause, go into a store which sells things you use, and ask the staff, "Do you take cash?" If they say yes, buy something. Otherwise, say "I pay only cash; I will buy somewhere else."
Sinclair ordered local news readers to read a script denouncing other media's "fake news".
A former employee of Sinclair quit a few years ago because he was ashamed of what they ordered him to say on the air.
Sinclair news reciters can't afford to quit their jobs — they are trapped by penalty clauses if they quit before the end of their contract. 20% of American workers are subject to oppressive restrictions on changing jobs.
I'd call this a form of indentured servitude. It should be considered unconstitutional.
Current employees also denounced Sinclair for converting local TV news into mouthpieces of trumpery.
Sinclair responded by privately threatening them.
Somalis in a privatized US immigration prison complained of cruel treatment such as beating them up and denying them fresh water for days. US deportation thugs handled their complaint by deporting them.
In the US: call on Lowe's to stop selling toxic methylene chloride paint stripper.
US citizens: tell the Department of "Homeland Security" to stop splitting up migrant families.
US citizens: call on Congress to demand firing Saboteur Pruitt.
US citizens: Call for firing Saboteur Pruitt.
How an Army of Trolls Protects Guatemala's Corrupt Elite — deploying Republican-style bullshit techniques to discredit an investigation.
The richest 1% of humans are on track to own almost 2/3 of the world's wealth by 2030.
We need to adopt policies — more taxes on high incomes, and on businesses, splitting up big companies, more support for the poor — to reverse that. Let's set a target that in 2030 they own only 1/3 of the world's wealth.
With Oblivious DNS, you wouldn't have to trust anyone to know what DNS lookups you do.
A lobbying company working for car manufacturers promoted global heating denial, apparently to fabricate an excuse for weakening the future fuel efficiency standards that the manufacturers had already agreed to.
Drug-resistance in malaria seems to evolve every time in one part of Cambodia.
Many cases of violent extremism seem to relate to a specific idea of masculinity, combined with circumstances.
Sinclair news reciters can't afford to quit their jobs — they are trapped by penalty clauses if they quit before the end of their contract. 20% of American workers are subject to oppressive restrictions on changing jobs.
Rare Slavery Ruling in Mauritania Sends Three to Prison (for enslaving people).
Don't Let School Lockdown Drills Become the New Normal.
Better to make a nuisance for every American gun owner than for every American.
A non-Muslim white man in Wisconsin tried building a bomb, which killed him. He had white-supremacist material in his apartment. But officials and media don't want to "jump to the conclusion" that he was a would-be terrorist.
Indeed, that is not proven conclusively. He might have had some other motive for making a bomb, perhaps murder based on a grudge. But since we are not trying him for the crime, we need not demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt when considering plausible inferences.
The crucial point is to contrast this with what happens when a crime of violence might possibly be associated with some Muslim. There is little hesitation in those cases to jump to the conclusion and say "terrorism".
Phoenix, Arizona, is slowly but surely running out of water as global heating dries up the whole region.
Robert Mercer funded a group that stirred up fear by showing Islamist conquest fantasies, targeted at US voters likely to be manipulated by them. The group seems to have omitted this spending from its tax return, too.
When Russia manipulates US elections, that adds an extra factor of foreign intervention. However, this sort of manipulation is an attack on the fairness of the electoral system no matter who does it.
Facebook has announced a system of labeling political ads and verifying the official identities of their purchasers. This labeling may do some good, but (as the article explains) it won't be hard to create an intermediary to hide the real identity of the real purchaser.
Companies that implement targeting of ads should be required to show the public all the ads that each customer has placed, collected in a place easily found from the name of the customer, and the whole collection should be easily searchable.
Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah work on their right-wing extremism together. The American Museum of Natural History should recognize this as one more reason to remove her from its board.
Republicans increased money for one thing: privatizing public housing.
The experience with a similar program in the UK shows that this can lead to a shortage of public housing, while what was sold off ends up in the hands of people with some amount of money.
Texas wants to be the first state to adopt a streamlined process for executions.
When we read about the shockingly careless mistakes made in trials that convicted people falsely of murder, we see that this will lead to executing a lot more innocent people.
Some countries are getting close to 100% renewable electricity generation. Portugal had a surplus of renewable energy last month and exported some. Costa Rica used 100% renewable energy for most of the past year.
The main obstacle to spreading this world-wide is the resistance of the planet roasters, who work behind the scenes to decrease investment in renewable energy.
The article doesn't mention deforestation and agriculture, big sources of greenhouse gases. However, if we got rid of electricity, industry and transport as sources of greenhouse gases, that could be enough to avert disaster. We will still need to end deforestation and reduce production of beef, for other reasons.
US citizens: call on Zinke to protect our national monuments.
US citizens: call on Senators to reject Wendy Vitter as federal judge.
US citizens: oppose the Republicans' balanced budget amendment to the constitution.
The way to end a recession is with deficit spending. If this is forbidden, recessions will get worse and worse. The US would be doomed to follow the path Greece has followed since 2010.
Central banks consider requiring businesses to show how they are vulnerable to big losses due to foreseeable climate mayhem.
The bully asked the CIA, after a drone assassination, why the CIA waited so as to spare the target's family. He wants to murder innocent people.
Using drones to attack people away from the battlefield is a crime in any case, and that is why the bully is so avid to do it, just as he is avid to torture people.
Billionaire Polluters told officials in Australia that oil spills were "socially acceptable" and that the attempts to clean them up would provide a "welcome boost to local economies."
I agree with 350.org's response: "We can't allow any new fossil fuel projects, anywhere."
"[The war-lover] finally has the minions he wants: devoted and fervently militaristic."
The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published advertisements reminding Israeli soldiers that they are legally obligated to refuse to obey "patently illegal" orders, such as to shoot civilians who are not threatening anyone.
Here's the statement B'Tselem published about this.
Saboteur Pruitt has taken personal control of enforcement of the Clean Water Act.
That puts him in a perfect chance to spread toxins where they will do the most harm to people that don't matter to Republicans. (The people who do matter can afford to move away.)
Orange County [thugs] And Prosecutors: If You Can't Get a Confession Legally, Get It Illegally.
Facebook looks at Facebook Messenger chats, but that's supposed to be ok since it is only for certain purposes.
Uri Avnery: military occupation makes the occupier stupid. One manifestation of this stupidity, in Israel, was putting Ahed al-Tamimi in prison.
Proposing to bring back the decentralized web made of thousands of web sites which you could study and learn from.
I'm all in favor of these proposals, but I also notice one glaring omission: they say nothing about whether the code is free or not.
The US could use AI killer bots to pour money into killing poor peoples' uprisings around the world.
A Republican spokesperson in Colorado got carried away with emotion and posted that Republicans hate poor people.
Facebook saves all videos that useds make — even videos they say to delete.
Facebook asked US hospitals to give patients' data to Facebook.
The data was going to be "anonymized", but Facebook planned to "match it up" with other data — which probably means to reidentify it.
(Satire) "Listen, son, it’s time you learned how to conduct yourself in public. It may not make sense to you now, but you need to keep your hands empty at all times."
(Satire) Objects including but not limited to steel pipes, wallets, and cell phones are not, in fact, guns.
Are Your Phone Camera And Microphone Spying On You?
If there's nonfree software in it — and there always is, in a phone — you can't tell. You can never trust a proprietary program.
Facebook's Surveillance Is Nothing Compared to Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.
Striking Oklahoma teachers are marching to the state capital and receiving visible public support.
The northeast US regional CO2 emissions trading scheme doesn't cut emissions much, because its cap is usually above the actual emissions.
It does encourage a shift to fracked gas, because the massive methane leaks from the wells don't count.
The European scheme proved to be a failure in the 90s and has not been fixed yet.
The thug that shot Alton Sterling has been fired. It's hardly enough to be justice but it is better than letting him work.
If the governor of Georgia signs the bill to make "unauthorized access" a crime, security researchers in Georgia will be in danger.
Under the Republican tax attacks, the top 1% get an extra 33000 a year (on the average). Poor people get an extra 40 a year.
Saboteur Pruitt made a corrupt deal with a fossil fool lobbyist to get the use of a house by renting just one room in it. The owner of the house is the lobbyist's wife.
Due to deregulation of mining, Wyoming has gained 5 full-time mining jobs.
[The cheater]'s Not Only Selling Off Our Oceans, He's Doing It for Pennies on the Dollar.
SCROTUS said the tax attacks were meant to help middle-class Americans, but the benefits are going to big companies, especially oil companies.
Outrage, But Little Surprise, After [thugs] Face No Charges for Killing of Alton Sterling.
(Satire) Louisiana thugs rebuked Sterling for the foolish act of being black on that night. They think he should have known better.
Tennessee's Republican rulers plan to take medicaid away from underemployed parents that can't find full-time work.
Doing this will cost the state a substantial amount of money. It may be a net loss to the treasury — but Republicans believe that kicking poor people while they are down is so important that it's worth every penny. Especially since they are taking this cost away from welfare benefits for poor people.
This is possible because of Bill Clinton's "welfare reform", which Liberals like me condemned. The effect was to teach me how right-wing some Democrats were. Since then, I have not voted for Democrats unless I could see they were Liberals (though the term "progressive" is now used).
Smartphones, and the data centers they talk to, are projected to be a large share of electric demand by 2040.
The US census bureau is conducting a dry-run in a town in Rhode Island, and it appears intended to undercount immigrants.
The CLASSICS Act would retroactively put copyright on old phonograph records, attacking our rights.
We need to reduce copyright power, not increase it.
A black woman who voted while on probation was sentenced to five years in prison. Someone else who tried, intentionally, to vote twice for the saboteur got a suspended sentence.
The history of the US has been a struggle between an ideal of liberty and a reality of plutocracy.
Republican legislatures in several states want to define civil disobedience as "conspiracy" and imprison protesters for many years.
63 countries have allowed Facebook to become the de-facto default gratis ISP, making it very expensive for internet users to avoid Facebook surveillance.
The non-drug hemp is banned in the US because it is the same species as marijuana. Maybe Congress will soon recognize this.
Israeli soldiers shot 773 Palestinian protesters in Gaza.
Only 16 were killed, but the Israeli blockade is making medical treatment in Gaza nearly impossible, and that may cause many of the wounded to die or be maimed who could have recovered more with proper care.
Cutting the budget for mental health care in the US has dumped the responsibility on prisons by default. They do a bad job of treating patients, but they can't refuse a patient.
Naomi Wadler: the 11-year-old helping lead a protest movement.
It takes an exceptional 11-year-old to do this, but we should expect normal 11-year-olds to do most everyday activities on their own. Indeed, they don't need to be that old to do most everyday activities on their own.
Shooter drills and security are turning US schools mad. Some schools operate on full-time lockdown.
The US proposes to require would-be visitors to the US to list all their social media identities for the past 5 years.
This could intimidate people against posting criticism of the US. Maybe that's its purpose.
I think the fingerprint requirement is more of a violation of human rights than the social media requirement. But this global censorship effect could make the latter do more damage to world freedom.
Madagascar's forests are being cut down for vanilla plantations. Many species can go extinct.
It appears that today's wealthy people are more than the Earth can support.
A bill in California would set a stricter standard for use of deadly force by uniformed thugs. This would make it easier to prosecute them when they choke or kill people.
Seven peace activists, all at least 55 years old, entered a US submarine base to protest against nuclear weapons, and were arrested.
Facebook makes it easy to say different things to different groups of people, which has the effect of breaking up the common culture of any society.
Radical New Leaders Are Reviving Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign.
The governor of Tennessee aims to destroy staff unions at the state's colleges, plans to replace all the members of their governing boards.
Spotify is bad for musicians' income, and bad for listeners' freedom. Let's put an end to it!
To listen to music and not be a jerk, you need to be in a position to share copies with your friends. Normally this means listening to your own nonoppressive local copy. A nonoppressive copy is one that has no DRM or anything else that would interfere with sharing.
Any system of listening to music that discourages people from having nonoppressive local copies is encouraging people to be jerks. Let's legislate against such systems.
Out, out, damned spotify!
Various customary disguise terms help people avoid talking about or thinking about poverty as a political issue.
The bully said he would remove all US troops from Syria, which would leave the Kurds at the mercy of Erdoğan.
In the past, I opposed US intervention in Syria because there was no side that deserved support. I changed that view when the US began supporting the Syrian Kurds, because they support secularism and human rights. They are the only visible hope of good government in Syria. I hope they won't be crushed.
From Malala to Parkland, Why Are the Victims Demonised? It's Because the Powerful Want to Stay in Control.
The International Energy Agency retards reduction of fossil fuels by persistently projecting a high rate of use into the future.
We need lots more housing in prosperous US cities, but building a lot of privately-funded luxury housing in one neighborhood can raise rents there even as it helps decrease rents for the whole city.
Massive construction of public housing could be a solution.
"From the safety of Paris, I can finally say what I want to the chief of the Pakistani army: dissent is essential to progress. Don’t censor it."
A rare orchid with flowers that emit the scent of a female bee, so that male bees have sex with it, is endangered as a result of global heating.
Interesting to know I'm not the only one that enjoys sex with plants.
Whistleblower Hervé Falciani exposed crimes at HSBC. It was against Swiss law to expose the crimes. Now in Spain, he faces possible extradition to Switzerland and possible imprisonment.
This despite the fact that a Spanish court already ruled against extraditing him.
Cutting aid funds for the disabled in Britain is supposed to give them an incentive to do the impossible. Naturally, it has only pushed them into debt and hunger.
I cannot believe that Tories believe what they say about this. I have to conclude that they consciously intend to reduce poor people to serfdom, like US Republicans.
A new napkin changes color when exposed to date-rape drugs. This should make it possible for people to verify attempts to drug them.
Oil tanks and transshipment in St James, Louisiana, appear to be the cause of the high rate of cancers there. The oil companies, rather than reach settlements with the local people, are stalling, waiting for them to die.
In the US: Tell Sinclair Broadcasting you will boycott its news.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block and resist Ronny Jackson, nominated to head (and probably privatize) the Veterans Administration.
Facebook executives can send a message to a used and later seamlessly delete it, so they can pretend it never existed.
Various religious groups in the UK call for an end to the policy of offering no welfare benefits for children after the second. They say it increases poverty and abortions.
A rise in poverty means suffering. I expect that the Tories put on the limit with suffering in mind. It would fit everything else they do. However, a rise in abortions is good (at least, compared with having more babies).
Surely we can find a way to discourage birth of possible future children, without imposing privation on real children after their birth.
'If Our Countries Were Safe, We Wouldn't Leave': the Harsh Reality of Mexico's Migrant Caravan.
China has held human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang incommunicado since he was arrested in 2015. His wife suspects he may be dead, but the state won't tell her anything.
The organizer of Gaza's nonviolent protests advocates a single secular state for Jews and Arabs.
Nonorthodox Jews in Israel may find, in a decade or two, that their only safety from the oppression of the ultra-orthodox would be in having Arabs to counterbalance them. Today the ultra-orthodox demand segregation of women, but if they win that, they will demand more.
Billionaire Polluters' plans to drill off Australia's south coast risked a giant oil spill that could have endangered migrating whales.
Vietnamese democracy activists will be imprisoned for 15 years for human rights training.
(Satire) ICE agents complain that Trump doesn't give them any credit for being so callous.
People in the US convicted of violent plots get much longer sentences if they are Muslim, than if they are not.
Brazil's Supreme Court ruled that Lula must go to prison, which means he won't be allowed to run for president.
That would leave the field to other politicians that are much more corrupt but have not been convicted.
It is no accident they have not been convicted — they protect each other.
Malaysia's prime minister Razak is passing laws to rig the coming election.
This follows a history of repression of the opposition.
AI Experts Call for Boycott over 'Killer Robots' Project at South Korea University.
KAIST is South Korea's counterpart to MIT.
Charging for plastic bags in Europe resulted in a substantial decrease in plastic bags on the seabed in the North Sea and the English Channel.
Israel Is Prepared to Kill More Unarmed Protesters in Gaza.
The article also demonstrates in several ways the falsehood of Israel's claim that it does not occupy Gaza.
"Either the State of Israel used chemical weapons in a military operation across its own borders," which would be a violation of chemical weapons statutes, "or the State of Israel used tear gas legally as a means of riot control — in which case, Gaza must be considered within the borders of Israel, with all the sovereign responsibilities that this entails."
The New York City thug department has made an agreement not to infiltrate religious groups in New Jersey any more.
It had already made an agreement not to do this in New York any more.
It is noteworthy that infiltrating Muslim groups provided zero information about any terrorist plans. Surveillance of large groups of people in their innocent community activities in the hope of catching a few criminals among them is fundamentally stupid and undermines the bonds of society.
"Viktor Orbán presumes victory and threatens vengeance to anyone [in Hungary] who opposes him. Europe must see what he is doing."
Israeli troops shot peaceful Palestinian protesters from a distance as the protesters approached the border fence of Gaza.
The Israeli position seems to be, "It is okay for us to kill you because we threatened we would kill you."
The thugs that killed Stephon Clark said he was charging toward them. The autopsy says they shot him in the back.
It took him several minutes to die. Instead of giving him first aid, the thugs handcuffed him.
Tiny UV lights pointed at your face can fool face recognition systems.
I am not sure this could be effective in practice. If the UV lights have to be chosen carefully to fool any given face recognition system, another system might not be fooled.
China is already applying face recognition to recognizing people who cross the street at an unapproved time or place.
For the sake of privacy, and therefore for the sake of democracy, we need to prohibit systems that systematically observe and recognize faces.
Super-Gonorrhoea Is Here — That Means the Antibiotic Crisis Is, Too.
Americans must resist the invitation to pay attention to the troll's antics and focus on the big issues. This article suggests three of them: global heating, China's increasing power, and the weakening of liberal democracy.
I'd say that women's rights (that Christian fanatics want to eliminate), massive surveillance, and plutocracy are three more.
Clinton had a good chance to negotiate a denuclearization agreement (and diplomatic recognition) with North Korea, but Republican obstruction slowed it down until he was out of office.
Faux news pundit Laura Ingraham made a gratuitous personal smear against David Hogg, one of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas student activists. He responded by calling on her sponsors to cancel their ads, and several have done so.
Even when criminal banks can't entirely beat the rap, they can win a reduced fine by fighting it for a long time. They are glad to pay millions to lawyers if that saves them billions in penalties.
We need firm anti-plutocrats in office to thwart this.
Everyone: Support the Oklahoma teachers' strike.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block Sinclair TV's expansion.
A North Carolina thug was caught on video hitting and choking a man for jaywalking. The thug faces charges.
The Inferior Department wants to weaken the Endangered Species Act in several ways. This will benefit businesses that want to destroy habitat for those species. In addition, it will appeal to the many right-wing fanatics that oppose regulation just because it regulates.
Amazon operates a corrupt market in which sellers pay to be featured to the public over their competitors. US antitrust law has proved useless to resist this.
We need laws that clearly prohibit companies from doing anything like what Amazon is doing. In the mean time, please join me in refusing to buy from Amazon. Its long history of mistreating every and anyone, while encouraging the most foolish of short-term thinking among purchasers, provides plenty of reasons.
Jaron Lanier and others have proposed an obvious but useless response to massive surveillance (the part that's done by companies): make them pay people for using data about them. Here's a clear refutation.
The bully has ordered immigration judges to speed up hearings, which will surely lead to errors that cause people to be deported rather than receive justice.
(Satire) "Oklahoma state leaders denounced the ongoing teachers' strike Tuesday for betraying the values upon which Abraham Lincoln and Orville Redenbacher founded America in 1914."
Shell, like Exxon, knew a long time ago that its fossil fuel activities were driving the world to disaster.
Gun violence in the US is surely related to the general level of militarism in the US, which is pumped up by government efforts.
Oregon refuses to cooperate with sending its national guard contingent to the US-Mexico border, where no military attack is expected.
Addressing the issue of Thomas Jefferson, both champion of freedom and slave-owner.
Israel admitted that its massacre of Palestinian protesters in Gaza was planned in advance. Palestinians call for an arms embargo against Israel.
I have long wondered why we should consider the smuggling of arms into Gaza as worse than the importation (and construction) of arms in Israel.
This is not the first time. The US ought to stop funding Israel's military.
One point of disagreement: Ahed Tamimi, age 16, is a teenager, not a child. Please don't treat teenagers as children; teenagers are not helpless and incapable of action.
A thug spent 60 days in jail, undercover and posing as a prisoner. The jail thugs did not know he was a thug, and thought he was just another prisoner. Afterwards he quit his job, because he couldn't bear the idea of sending anyone to jail.
Everyone: Demand JPMorgan Chase Stop Funding the Climate Crisis.
Everyone: phone District Attorney Anne Marie Shubert to demand Justice for Stephon Clark.
Sinclair Scandal Foreshadows the Danger of Growing Media Consolidation.
Media consolidation has been creeping forward in the US for decades, supported by governments that have a plutocratist tendency.
The former chief of Catalonia's thug department faces criminal charges for not acting like a thug — not ordering an attack on a large crowd of nonviolent protesters.
We need to prosecute thugs more when they do attack unarmed people, not when they don't.
Manafort authorized a disinformation/attack campaign on behalf of then Ukrainian president Yanukovych, to discredit the former prime minister Tymoshenko that he had imprisoned.
"As a Jewish Corbyn supporter, this antisemitism row feels like gaslighting."
People who are inclined to blame victims for being raped can find an excuse in whatever they may have done.
In Flint, Michigan, some families refuse to pay the bills for the water that poisoned them. Their water has been shut off. Many other families simply can't pay.
I don't understand why they buy water in lots of small bottles. Various companies will drop off large bottles and pick them up when empty. It must be cheaper as well as reducing plastic waste.
And you don't need to heat water so as to wash yourself or your dishes.
3000 Google employees signed an open letter to the CEO, calling on Google to cancel the project for developing AI to analyze drone surveillance videos — which could easily include selecting targets for drone attacks.
I think the main issue is not how to study the images, but rather the legitimacy of using drones for assassinations.
Summarizing mainstream media's rulebook for how to present a massacre of unarmed Palestinians as a battle.
A campaign to foment violence against Muslims in the UK met with extreme failure: people organized friendship events instead.
Now foreign spies as well as US thugs use cell tower simulators to track Americans' by their cell phones.
The danger to Americans is less from foreign spies because they can't have people arrested in the US.
Inequality has grown since 1970 at US colleges: the ones with big endowments tend to give a boost to students from wealthy families.
Over 1/3 of US college students have trouble paying for decent food and decent housing.
Libre science is threatened in Europe by the proposed absurd copyright requirements.
The OECD predicts that even in the least vulnerable countries, 10% of jobs will be eliminated by automation.
New jobs will be created, but since 2009 almost all jobs pay shit and there is no indication that will change.
As cities offer competing levels of bowing down to Amazon, they are keeping their offers secret. Perhaps officials realize they would not be reelected if they told the people how much they are preparing to give up.
Cambridge Analytica intervened in the Nigerian election with hate-inducing propaganda.
US citizens: call on Saboteur Zinke not to allow fossil fuel drilling near Chaco Canyon.
US citizens: phone the Democratic senators that voted to deregulate big banks.
Israel's only way of coping with nonviolent Palestinian protest is to kill people and then pretend they started the violence.
Chinese pressure induced a UK institution to censor a play about Tibet and then lie about the reason.
The Tory hostility to "immigrants" includes UK citizens who can't prove they are UK citizens because they never got a passport or left the UK.
The Supreme Court almost always rules to protect thugs from accountability for shooting people.
Egyptian Website Editor Arrested for Republishing Article [from the New York Times] on Election Fraud.
Turkish photojournalist Çağdaş Erdoğan was arrested in a park for taking a picture of a building. The building houses a spy agency. Now he is on trial for publishing photos of outdoor sex parties and faces 23 years in prison.
The banned band Grup Yorum has been imprisoned in Turkey for the words of its songs.
Naturally, the state says they are terrorists, but what Erdoğan says is proof of nothing in a state which no longer has an independent judiciary.
The Saboteur of Agriculture is systematically supporting business over science and public health.
Ultra-orthodox Jewish male airline passengers demand that women sitting next to them move seats. The women face pressure from other passengers to give in.
Cornel West: "Martin Luther King Jr was a radical. We must not sterilize his legacy."
Martin Luther King's last campaign was to shift funds from war to a second New Deal. We still need that today.
William Barber, a leader of The Poor People’s Campaign, is inspired by King and carries on his struggle for various kinds of justice.
Orange Country prosecutors recruited prisoners to beat confessions out of other prisoners.
Identifying with a political identity creates more hostility in the US than supporting issues.
Mayoral elections have been eliminated in a Russian city in order to oust an elected mayor that doesn't support Putin.
The bully is planning to send asylum-seekers back without a hearing or a forensic investigation of whether they were tortured.
Afghan Woman Shot in Face [by the man she was forced to marry] Builds New Life in Canada after US Rejection.
A toy appropriately called a "peep" is advertised to spy on children all day.
Does it really spy, or is it only that parents are invited to pretend that it does?
Everyone: call on New York State prisons not to restrict what books prisoners can read.
A global requirement to list the ultimate beneficial owner of every company would put a big crimp in global corruption.
Even if many small countries do not adopt this requirement, large countries could effectively make it compulsory by denying the tax deduction as a business expense for payments to companies whose ultimate beneficial owner is not registered.
US teachers are being impoverished as states push the cost of their medical care onto them.
The real solution to the problem of the cost of medical care is Medicare for All — which eliminates the opportunity for companies to decide to charge more.
Humanity's continuing environmental impacts are leading to several different kinds of global disaster. We need law to require whole countries to reduce each of these impacts.
The root of all environmental impacts is population growth. Therefore…
Mulvaney, saboteur of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, asked Congress to take away its powers to act.
The bully told Saboteur Pruitt not to show any shame about the corruption that has been exposed.
A Jewish socialist group, which seems to be strongly committed to both of those identifications, invited Corbyn to their passover seder. Now they are being labeled as antisemites by right-wing British Jews.
Microsoft has imposed censorship on Skype and email, as well as its office suite, which is tethered to a Microsoft server, and a number of other disservices.
The article takes a very disappointing attitude, bending over backwards to find excuses for the censorship.
Worse, its advice to readers, to "make sure you stay within the code of conduct," is completely misguided. The right response is to tell Microsoft "Fuck off!" by closing your accounts with all these disservices. Most of them require users to run nonfree software, which is in itself an injustice to the user.
Don't be like the proverbial frog that remains in the pot as the water gradually heats up. If the previous injustices didn't convince you to jump out, do it now!
The EPA cancelled the previously approved requirements for better fuel economy for cars and trucks.
The manufacturers always say that higher standards are "too hard to achieve" as long as they believe that will save them the trouble of achieving them. The only rational response is, "I think you're bullshitting us."
Research affirms that even 2C of global heating will cause grave problems globally.
"Randomly shooting into a crowd, killing a few people but wounding many others, has the advantage for the regime of creating uncertainty and fear." That's what Israel is doing now in Gaza, following the examples of Syria and Yemen.
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe
Everyone: Tell First Quantum not to invest in the Pebble Mine.
The Antarctic ice sheet is melting rapidly where it is below sea level. The rate is doubling every 20 years, which means a rate increase of 16 times by the end of this century.
States with easy legal access to marijuana have 5% fewer prescriptions for opioids.
"The American right have revealed a vision of free speech that is very expansive for conservatives, but far less accommodating for those who disagree with them."
The UK plans to rewrite the rules that forbid its intelligence agencies from cooperating with torture — secretly.
Is it the Tor-y party or the Tor-ture party?
McDonald's promised to pay workers $1 above the minimum wage, but it isn't doing what it promised.
A US electric utility has gone bankrupt, perhaps as a result of focusing on coal and nuclear power.
This won't shut down the coal and nuclear power plants that the company owns. They will be sold off to someone else for less than they were thought to be worth, but the new owner (having invested so little) might find it profitable to keep them running.
A thug in Houston killed an unarmed, confused man.
Interestingly, this time the killer was black. Clearly he doesn't "hate blacks", but the unconscious racism that quickly assumes that a black man is violent is something everyone learns.
In Brazil, special prisons with no guards rehabilitate the prisoners.
How to Solve the Aid Sector Crisis? Don't Employ Expats.
Governments insist on funding only very large projects, which leads to ever-larger global NGOs, which need global management by expats.
Unofficial strikes by masses of teachers can succeed now because the teachers can measure public support.
Hundreds of Hondurans are moving through Mexico, illegally but without interference, hoping to go to the US.
Instead of condemning them, and pretending they numbered in the millions, as the bully does, I pose the question of why so many people need to flee Honduras. Could it be that the government set up by the US-supported coup is so repressive that it is oppressing people and driving them to flee?
Could it be that if the US ceased to support that government, Honduras could become a democracy and Hondurans would not need to flee to the US?
Israel has agreed not to deport African refugees back to persecution.
Momentum, the organization founded to help Corbyn become leader of the Labour Party, said that antisemitism is a real problem in the party and called for working hard to put an end to it.
The Shame of Antisemitism on the Left Has a Long, Malign History.
One of the bases of antisemitism was the practice of focusing on the fraction of plutocrats that were Jews, and disregarding the more numerous non-Jewish plutocrats who did the same things.
[The bully] Nominates a Toady for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The one remaining check on how Nauru mistreats Australia's prisoners is obedience to Australia's supreme court. Nauru is cancelling the agreement to do that. Soon it will only have to obey the secret orders of Australia's government, which is its paymaster.
Is it right to let men declare themselves female on the spur of the moment, and be treated as female in all ways?
I see this as a conflict between two legitimate interests. A rule that one must present oneself publicly under a different gender for a reasonable period of time before being treated fully as having that gender could be a wise compromise between them.
We should not insist on a uniform and simplistic response.
Climate litigation is spreading to many countries. Outside the US, many lawsuits are against governments that are not doing enough to avoid global heating disaster.
Tim Crosland expressed the issue very clearly.
The Future The FBI Wants: Secure Phones For Criminals, Broken Encryption For Everyone Else.
Greg Palast: A Koch-funded company tracks people's everyday actions through other companies' digital surveillance, to determine how to influence them politically.
This company would not be able to use that data if the other companies did not collect it. We must legislate to prohibit collecting data about people's daily activities.
The NSA worked very hard to identify some owners of Bitcoin wallets.
Neal Morris put up a mural condemning the bully for what he said he does to women, and the city of New Orleans demands he take it down. The ACLU is suing on his behalf.
Volkswagen has been forced to buy back 300,000 diesel cars, whose emissions levels it lied about and disguised from tests. These cars are sitting in the parking lots of various facilities that are not in operation. However, Volkswagen wants to sell them again someday — not by modifying them to emit less greenhouse gas, but by modifying the regulations.
You can convince a government to fool itself, especially a planet-roaster government like that of the US. You can't do that to the climate.
Ways to push back against the warmonger cabinet of the warmonger-in-chief.
Buried, altered, silenced: 4 ways government climate information has changed since [the saboteur-in-chief] took office.
Extreme space weather, which happens randomly once in a while, could destroy the power grid in the affected region.
Our capacity to repair large industrial systems is limited to a certain number per year. If one blows out, it can be handled soon. If 10,000 blow out, they may have to queue for years — after waiting for the systems needed for rebuilding to function again.
The good news is that distributed renewable generation capacity, which we need to avoid almost certain disaster from global heating, is most of what we need to prevent this problem.
It appears that Guber gouges frequent or regular passengers by charging them more.
If we eliminate the surveillance injustice of Guber by stopping it from identifying passengers, this wrong would automatically go away too.
A massive PR campaign in the US is painting the acting king of Salafi Arabia as admirable and acceptable.
A US foundation and "think tank" that was set up by Salafi Arabia has the mission of whitewashing him.
In regard to women's rights, I think the changes he has made are worthy of public appreciation as long as we make it clear they are just the beginning of what is needed. By doing so, we will encourage further respect for women's rights.
The EPA placed superfund cleanup in the hands of a saboteur who has fought against the whole idea.
Saboteur Pruitt sent a memo to EPA staff calling on them to mislead the public about the danger of global heating.
SCROTUS won't stop with getting rid of online personal ads. Those fanatical Christians want to clamp down on sex, for everyone except their leaders.
Kentucky's Republican legislators passed a bill to cut teachers' pensions, in a super rush. Most of them didn't even read it.
Teachers immediately began shutting schools down. Their union plans to sue.
Ray Hinton was convicted of murder in a careless, racist trial. It took 28 years to overturn the result.
Converting a valley in Argentina to soybeans led to the sudden emergence of a new river.
Varoufakis compares Greece to a "debtor's prison" and calls for democratizing the EU.
He points out that the right-wing authoritarians that have taken power in Hungary and Poland, and have undermined democracy to eliminate resistance, get their strength from despair about the EU's plutocracy.
Students that pay huge sums for college demand good grades, never mind the quality of their work.
A Guaranteed Jobs-for-All Program Is Gaining Traction Among 2020 Democratic Hopefuls.
The policy, "if you don't work, you can't eat, get medical treatment, or have a place to live," would make sense for able-bodied people in an imaginary world where any of them could get a full-time job with decent pay, just by asking. This policy would give us such a world.
Special school programs help the children of US Hispanics learn Spanish. Without this help, Hispanic children would mostly learn only English.
The "Spanglish" that some Hispanics speak together consists, in many cases, of English plus whatever Spanish words they know. They do this to feel Hispanic despite the fact that they don't speak Spanish well enough to use that with each other.
Moslawis gather books to replace the library that PISSI burned down.
PayPal says that it intentionally blocks payments to buy a pamphlet from the World Socialist Web Site. It says that this ban results from policies imposed by the US government, but refuses to explain more than that.
The book discusses conditions in Iran from a socialist perspective. PayPal has also blocked various other publications that relate in some way to Iran, including criticism of the Islamist tyranny there.
Everyone: call on US TV networks to cover the developing climate disaster.
Puerto Rico's bankster-imposed government plans to privatize the public schools just like the electric grid.
A company that contracted to provide medical care to prisoners in Arizona makes the business profitable by fabricating excuses not to treat them.
Libyan citizen Omar Khalifa Mohammed Abu Bakr was a prisoner in Guantanamo, then the US released him to Senegal because he would be killed if he returned to Libya. The US State Department said he could live in Senegal permanently.
Now the US is forcing Senegal to send him to Libya, where he is still likely to be killed.
If the militarist in chief goes along with Israel and Salafi Arabia by ending the nuclear deal with Iran, possible future Iranian nuclear weapons are not the only possible danger. The bully's policies could lead to war with Iran, which would cut off oil export from the Persian Gulf.
We need to cut down on use of oil with all due speed, but a sudden cut-off is not wise.
The bully claimed that VA administrator Shulkin resigned. Shulkin says that he was fired. This may affect whether the bully gets to choose the interim administrator.
Cambridge Analytica built an system for statistically classifying people into groups that are useful for political activity. It used Facebook data to develop the classification system, but now that the system is working, it no longer needs that Facebook data to classify people.
Thus, the fact that it deleted the Facebook data is of no significance.
Facebook useds who download "all their data" are astounded by some of the kinds of data they find.
The special US Court of Appeals that usually handles patent issues has made a twisted mess of the Oracle v Google case about copyright on the Java language.
Edward Snowden's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The US representative to the UN Commission on Women's Rights advocates a position worse than Salafi Arabia's.
Everyone: tell Google to take down deceptive anti-abortion ads now.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call for passage of the Massachusetts Social Media Privacy Act.
A whistleblower revealed that the election campaign in favor of taking the UK out of the EU seems to have violated campaign finance laws. In retaliation, one of the leaders of that campaign outed him as gay.
With some battery storage, the US could build wind and solar power facilities with total capacity equal to the peak electric demand, and get 90% of its electricity needs from them.
The Houthis are firing more missiles at Salafi Arabia — a few per month.
That's nothing compared to Salafi Arabia's bombardment of Yemen, which has spread famine and cholera, and driven 2 million from their homes. The bombardment has killed 10,000 civilians just by making it too hard for them to travel for medical treatment.
The fuss about the small instances of Houthi retaliation seem to be an instance of the frequent argument, "You are a monster for retaliating for our giant crimes!"
Google is deleting porn artists' porn videos from their own private accounts, quietly and mysteriously.
Never trust a remote storage company to keep anything but a spare backup copy. When you store that, put your files into an archive and encrypt it so that the company can't tell what's in them — not even their file names.
Even in the "constitution-free" border zone where 2/3 of all Americans live, deportation thugs are not supposed to question people without probable cause, and Greyhound doesn't have to let the thugs on their buses without specific cause or a warrant.
Republicans in Wisconsin will go to any lengths to stop people from voting for new state representatives to fill vacant seats. They fear people will elect Democrats. A judge ordered them to hold the special elections promptly, so they plan to change the law to avoid this.
General-purpose massive surveillance of people's preferences can determine who is homosexual, based on innocent-seeming data. Many governments imprison or even execute people for being homosexual. Thus, surveillance of people's innocent-seeming preferences can easily get them killed.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block and resist Mike Pompeo's confirmation as Secretary of State.
Everyone: call on the American Museum of Natural History to remove global heating denier Rebekah Mercer from its board.
As icing on the cake, she also funds the right-wing extremist site Breitbart.
Many Christian colleges practice gender-related discrimination, that puts them on a collision course with US nondiscrimination requirements.
Clean air standards for cars won't just help save the ecosphere. As a bonus they will save money for car owners.
No wonder the saboteurs want to cancel these standards.
The censorship laws that effectively ban publicity for sex work, in case it might turn out to involve enslavement, backfire by pressuring sex workers to work for pimps.
The US establishment denies US war crimes in Iraq by calling the invasion a "mistake" instead of a crime. This empowers militarists, such as those in the aggressor's cabinet, to glorify all sorts of war crimes that the US has committed, and that they may arrange to commit soon in Iran.
Sanders warns that the dismissal of Shulkin as head of the Veterans' Administration is likely to be a preparation for privatizing parts of it.
Privatization of government services typically means unaccountability for abuses, as well as expensive, lousy service.
Scotland Yard admits that its thugs almost surely sent union organizers' personal records to a construction industry blacklist.
Many foreign aid projects in Africa spend millions on well-intentioned projects that have a disastrous fatal flaw.
The same was true in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the past decade.
Facebook says it's ok to take note of useds' phone calls and texts, since it hurried them into formally giving "consent".
Companies that do digital surveillance are expert at the manufacture of consent. What this proves is that formal consent is not a valid excuse for surveillance.
The Silicon Valley business system directs investors towards sex toys with digital surveillance; they have little interest in actual improvements in sex toys.
AT&T and Verizon threaten to sue the states that set up their own network neutrality requirements.
The Atlantic magazine has hired a right-wing extremist troll as a columnist — for the sake of "diversity".
In his defense on one point, I have to point out that a black child is not merely comparable to a primate. That child is a primate. "Primate" is a taxonomical category, and our species falls within it. Therefore, all human beings, regardless of race (or age), are primates; exceptions are unthinkable. If the columnist meant to suggest that nonblacks might not be primates, I demand an apology for the racist insult.
However, perhaps he really intended a more traditional racist insult, the claim that blacks are monkeys, and tripped over his own ignorance in choosing the words.
By the way, if any psittacines, corvids, cetacia or octopoda feel slighted by our dubbing our own taxonomical order with a name whose original meaning was "those that come first," I will be glad to apologize and clasp hands/feet/flippers/arms.
That is only one point among many, and does not alter the overall conclusion. His views are systematically callous and cruel towards anyone who is weak or oppressed. It's the typical right-wing attitude that offers justification to whoever is strong enough to push others down.
I don't think a magazine should strive for "diversity" by publishing right-wing extremist trolls. They have a right to express their views, but a magazine does not have an obligation to publish them.
Around the US and in other countries too, teachers are fed up and eager to go on strike. Often they have to disregard their own unions to do so. In many places the union officials fear being jailed if they strike — but if you're not prepared to strike, you shouldn't run for union office.
We should see the decreasing pay of teachers as part of the general plutocratic process of driving down wages for most people.
Big chocolate companies have funded marketing to amplify possible minor benefits while lobbying to hide the sugar from our attention.
Courts have admitted unscientific forms of forensic "evidence", and create insuperable obstacles for the wrongly convicted to get an appeal.
North Carolina Republicans are trying to take full control of the courts to stop the courts from resisting their plans for rigging elections.
Noah Christiansen student called his congresscritter and said representatives should "get off their fucking asses" to enact gun control. His high school punished him personally as a way to pretend there is something very bad about the expression "their fucking asses".
The ACLU says that this violated his constitutional rights.
Christiansen's statement did not insult the congresscritter, even though the congresscritter may well have deserved to be insulted. Christiansen used the word only to express vehemence.
The congresscritter is a Republican jerk, but all he did here was make a complaint. Even if we disagree with his views, we should not condemn him for stating those views.
The ones who acted wrongly are the school officials who punished Christiansen. They deserve a protest campaign. And here's to tell Christiansen, "Right on! Please don't apologize!"
Schools are installing high-tech security such as face recognition and license-plate recognition, in the name of "security", but what it does is oppress the students.
These forms of surveillance technology should be very strictly regulated to limit what data they can collect.
The Senate is working on a bill that pre-emptively bans certain regulations to limit campaign spending by the rich.
Vladimir Uglev, Soviet chemical weapons developer who worked on novichok nerve gas, says that Russia did have some in the 1990s and it was used for a murder in 1995 — but not necessarily by the Russian state.
(Satire) John Bolton Warns War With North Korea Won't Be Cakewalk Like Iraq.
Press repression in Canada: journalist Justin Brake is threatened with 10 years in prison for covering a protest.
I expect the protesters face similar charges for opposing the construction of a dam. I don't know enough to have an opinion about the dam project, but repression of protesters is as incompatible with a free country as repression of journalists.
Stormy Daniels says that the bully sent someone to make violent threats to silence her about her affair with him.
Publishing about your sexual relationship with someone else is a hostile thing to do. Except with some special justification, you shouldn't do it. I see no sign that Daniels had special justification, so she would have been wrong to publish, then. But that didn't justify threatening violence against her. It was also stupid, since the bully had already made his sex life so scandalous that her statement could not have made it much more so.
She also says that he pressured her into sex, and she acquiesced because she felt that under the circumstances it was not possible to decline.
Should We Build the Wall? We Asked Trump Supporters.
US citizens: Tell DeVos to stop helping student debt collectors.
Citizens of Massachusetts: support the Internet Privacy Act.
Here's the personal message I gave.
The bill does not go far enough. We should prohibit ISPs from even taking note of subscribers' internet contacts, except to the extent required by federal law (which should also be changed), or required by a specific court order (the only legitimate justification for such tracking.When the ISP is required to take note of a subscriber's internet contacts, it should not be allowed to do anything with the data except hand it over to the government when and as required.
Although this bill does not go far enough, it is a step forward and should be passed.
Young People Hate Facebook Because It Forces Them to Have a Single Identity.
Surveillance-based ride companies are muscling in on the traditional public transportation that respects our freedom.
"Nuclear apocalypse looms over humanity, yet it’s not even on the political radar. Let’s work to change that."
I agree.
The cheater tried to set up a hotel deal in Latvia with businessmen linked to Putin, and also to corruption.
This particular proposed deal was not necessarily wrongdoing on the cheater's part, but the long list of situations where he has been involved with associates of Putin adds up to a pattern of support for a foreign tyrant.
Why does the UK government insist on pouring billions of dollars into building obsolete nuclear power plants, and designing a new model that will be more expensive than wind power? Some evidence suggests it is a way of hiding part of the cost of new nuclear missile submarines.
Kenyan thugs injected opposition politician Miguna Miguna with a knockout drug to send him back into exile.
Building homeless shelters using large tents whose walls keep out the weather.
A judge dropped charges against Massachusetts pipeline protesters on the grounds that their actions were necessary to prevent disaster.
(Satire) How Zuckerberg will manage the response to his testimony to Congress.
Indiana's fanatical Christian legislators passed a law requiring doctors to interrogate women patients about their past abortions and report them to the state.
Cynthia Nixon, progressive Democrat, tore into New York Governor Cuomo as a phony progressive that supports right-wing policies.
Two Mexican thugs have been convicted of murdering a journalist.
Coke and Pepsi are buying state laws prohibiting cities from taxing sugary drinks.
The crisis of plastic pollution is so vast that recycling all beverage bottles would only make a small dent in it.
The cheater discussed with his lawyer the possibility of pardoning Flynn and Manafort.
US citizens: object to stationing federal marshals at polling places.
Ecuador cut off Julian Assange's internet access, saying his postings were interfering in Ecuador's international relations.
An explanation of the antisemitic mural that shows the antisemitism that the Labour Party needs to pull up by the roots.
Isn't there an antisemitic remnant in the Tory Party too? Upper-class Britishers used to be rather bigoted towards Jews, and I'd be surprised if that were completely gone.
Salah Abdeslam's trial must not only be fair ‐ it must be seen to be fair, so that he cannot plead persecution as a retroactive justification for his murder plot.
Proposing to reestablish liberal democracy in Hungary by making a coalition with the not-in-power extremists.
A Kenyan opposition politician has been hounded into a toilet at the airport after he refused to be forcibly exiled.
The term "deported" seems inadequate when it is a matter of forcing a citizen out of his country.
Facebook continues to facilitate racial discrimination in housing ads, according to a 2018 lawsuit.
Uber corrupted the state of Arizona by offering to move business there, which led to a secret approval for testing driverless cars before they were safe enough to use.
The bully's rejection of the Paris treaty seems to have inspired a big increase in investments in extremely polluting fossil fuels.
New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner Deletes His Facebook Account.
In order for the furor about Facebook's role in election manipulation and fomenting hate to lead to the drastic decrease in surveillance that we need, we have to extend it to cover all the other surveillance systems that threaten and plague us.
China and Russia are shutting down parts of the UN's human rights defense structure.
In the past, the US would have denounced this, but the bully has contempt for the very idea of human rights.
One good point in the very bad spending bill was that it says that waiters own their tips.
Republicans plan to add a question "Are you a US citizen?" to the 2020 census, so as to cause urban areas with many immigrants to lose congressional seats and federal funds. California is suing to block this.
Indian journalists have been murdered for covering corruptions.
Greenpeace asks stores to stop selling products made from Antarctic krill. This is to avoid starving whales and penguins.
Malaysia is considering a law to punish "fake news" with a long prison term.
The ruler of Malaysia has already demonstrated enough repressive tendencies that we can be sure he will label anything he doesn't like as "fake", much like the bully.
US citizens: tell the Senate not to allow federal marshals at polling places.
They would intimidate the voters.
US citizens: call on the Department of Health not to allow medical personnel to discriminate against certain people as patients.
It is now clear that retraining workers is not an adequate solution for the problem of technological unemployment. If we don't have a guaranteed income, we need a guarantee of a job to whoever wants one.
Retired Justice Stevens calls for repealing the second amendment, which states the "right to bear arms".
I would not argue hard against that, but I don't think that is necessary. With the interpretation that the second amendment always had until the decision cited in the article, it didn't block the gun control we need.
It would be no harder, and perhaps much easier, to bring back that interpretation than to abolish it outright.
Allowing companies to run gambling operations however they wish enables them to systematically lead people from occasional gambling into addiction. A gambler proposes to nationalize gambling in the UK as a solution.
It isn't automatic or guaranteed that government-run gambling won't use the same tricks to increase income, but it would be less likely to do so. Government agencies tend to be more accountable than private companies.
Since the opportunity to gamble without going to a special place to do it seems to be a crucial exacerbating point, perhaps companies should not be allowed to support gambling through apps. Underground and foreign operations would still exist — to prevent that would require a system of digital tyranny, which I oppose. But they would not be able to advertise commercially, and people would distrust them, so I hope they would attract people less.
US gun ownership is concentrated in old right-wing white men. Their advocacy for gun rights is typically connected with racism and sexism. The NRA illustrates this when it doesn't speak up much for women that use guns to defend themselves from domestic violence.
UK Mandatory Website Age Checks Could Create Facebook of Porn, Critics Warn.
Austria's ban on full-face veils mainly impacts people wearing smog masks and animal costumes. It also interferes with our right not to be tracked by facial recognition.
The only other purpose it serves is to demonize Muslims. We should campaign to eliminate all such bans.
Spanish Spies Tracked Carles Puigdemont via Friend's Phone.
If you have a portable phone, your enemies can use it to track you.
Afghan imams are trying to convince jihadi leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan to allow polio vaccination. Finding and killing Osama bin Laden did the US no good, but setting up of phony vaccination activity to find him has done great harm to children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If not for that, polio would have been eradicated by now.
Sea-level rise, hurried by global heating, is eating away at Louisiana.
Relocating 400 people from the disappearing Isle de Jean Charles will cost 50 million dollars.
Making a rough guess, if accelerating sea-level rise forces 400,000 Americans per year to move, a couple of decades from now, the US won't help them at all.
Stateless people in Australia are being imprisoned without charge and could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives.
It's like Guantanamo, but for prisoners not even suspected of any crime.
Brazil's corrupt congress is hurrying to allow sugar plantations in Amazonia — which would encourage deforestation.
Chicago's community groups have been given a consultative role in management of the thug department.
Once again, CNN and MSNBC are supporting the efforts to push the US into starting wars.
The Tories have intentionally created a "hostile environment" for people who moved to the UK lawfully in the 1960s and never left. This involves forcing them into a life of penury on the street, or even making them die of cancer.
This is the British equivalent of the DACA issue.
The "self help" industry distracts people from collective action. It says, "Look only for a way to help yourself, not a way to help everyone in the same lousy situation as you."
Ultimately it encourages the downtrodden to try to climb up on the bodies of other downtrodden.
US citizens: call on Canada to stop the Unkinder Morgan pipeline.
Here's the message I sent. I hope it gives you ideas for your message.
Dear Honourable Ambassador,I am writing to you to demand that the Canadian government stop the construction of the Kinder Morgan pipeline in British Columbia. "Unkinder" would be a more fitting name for it.
To avoid global disaster, we need to keep at least 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. The highest priority for nonextraction is tar sands oil, along with coal.
It’s time for Prime Minister Trudeau to start protecting the long-term interests of Canadians. It is not in Canadians' interest to have a hundred million hungry American refugees pour across the border, a few decades from now, so stop doing things that will force us to flee north!
US citizens: support the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act (H.R. 676).
US deportation thugs use Facebook's tracking data to find immigrants to deport. They combine it with tracking data for the portable phones used to run the Facebook app.
How Rightwingers Have Attacked [Marjory Stoneman Douglas High] Students with Lies, Hoaxes And Smears.
I prefer to refer to them by the name of their school, rather than the name of their town, to honor Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
The "gig economy" is the result of plutocracy's plan to impoverish most people.
The suicides of taxi drivers illustrate the giant injustice.
Companies such as Uber and Lyft are not morally entitled to the right to use harmful business practices, or to exist at all. If they hurt people — and these companies do — we are entitled to stop them. That is what democracy is for.
The solution is political, and advances are being made even without support from governments.
When we elect nonplutocratic governments, we can go even further. However, we must also carry out our duty as citizens to refuse to buy from companies that mistreat their workers.
I refuse to buy from Amazon. Please join me.
Security Experts Say Georgia Senate Bill 315 Could Criminalize Legitimate [Security] Research. It could criminalize a lot of other computer use, must like the stretched interpretation of the federal CFAA.
A chemical plant in Texas exploded, and it was hard for firefighters and residents of the area to know what to do about it, because Texas allows them to keep their operations secret and the saboteur-in-chief is cooperating with that.
Given Facebook’s Privacy Backlash, Why Aren’t We Angrier With the Broadband Industry?
I suspect the answer is that there has been no single identifiable scandal about ISP snooping.
Varoufakis has started a political party to campaign to release Greece from "debt bondage".
The US government is arguing in court to eliminate the Seattle Uber drivers' union.
Global land degradation, caused by bad agricultural practices, now harms almost half of humanity, and we are making it worse.
A piecework delivery firm in the UK will offer sick pay and end fines for drivers that miss a day.
That's good, but this should not be left to the company's good will. It should be required by law — and a lot more besides.
US schools are imposing silly security-theater rules to make up for the lack of proper gun control. Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas are condemning these.
I encourage them to join together and refuse to obey them.
Proposing that Massachusetts adopt a cap-and-trade policy for all activities that use fossil fuels.
The EU adopted a cap-and-trade system, which became a total failure (the price of emissions fell to nearly zero), and then was politically blocked from modifying the system to function. Given that example of failure, I think a tax on carbon emissions is better.
A Texas thug shot and killed a possibly confused black man who was walking on the street with his pants around his ankles.
It's hard to threaten someone when you're in that state. The thug may have seen his black skin and assumed that he had a gun.
Greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2017 to a record level. Strong measures are needed to avoid global disaster — if that is even still possible.
Using the Facebook app on a portable phone tells Facebook about any phone calls and texts.
The exaggerated interpretation of the CFAA makes it legally dangerous to release a tool to help Facebook used set the account parameters to make Facebook use them less rather than more.
ACLU: Greyhound should stop letting deportation thugs board its buses without a warrant.
Surveillance capitalism converted the internet in to a massive surveillance system which is useful for businesses and for state repression.
Cell phone radio waves caused cancer in lab rats. A large fraction of the rats exposed to the waves developed cancer.
US ISPs spy on their customers even worse than Facebook does. But most Americans are not angry about this.
The article is admirable in pointing this out, but foolish in responding by sneering at people for it. The right thing to do is to help people wake up and demand an end to ISP surveillance.
The Atlantic Magazine published a video of a neo-Nazi saying "Hail Trump" with Nazi salutes, to demonstrate he is a neo-Nazi. YouTube deleted it.
School District in Pennsylvania to Arm Students And Teachers With Rocks.
I have a feeling this is going to lead to more violence and more injuries in schools, not less.
Egypt arrested British journalist Bel Trew, not saying why, and then expelled her without letting her collect her property.
A chimp in a zoo piled up stones in advance to prepare to throw them at humans. This demonstrated a kind of intelligence chimps were not thought capable of.
I read about an orangutan that hid a piece of wire in his mouth to prepare for using it to unlock his cage. Once he got out, he waited by the cage door to proudly show the zookeepers the hack he had done.
People are recognizing that Facebook is a surveillance monster, fundamentally unjust.
But they are not aware yet of how broad the injustice of surveillance is.
Preserving the Philippine news site Rappler from being crushed by Do-dirty.
Everyone: Call on Facebook to notify the 50 million useds victimized by Cambridge Analytica.
This is a side issue of the wrong that Facebook did, which is just one example of dangerous and unjust surveillance. But this particular injustice was so big that even its side issues are big.
Everyone: demand indictment of the thugs that killed Stephon Clark.
Australia proposes to fine large business hundreds of millions of dollars for certain kinds of crimes.
Hundreds of thousands of students came by bus to a rally for gun control in Washington DC, led by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
An Oaklander taught himself that he didn't need to carry a gun as "protection".
Mass Protests in Poland Against Tightening of Abortion Law.
One part of eastern Ghouta has accepted a truce for evacuation of those who don't want to accept Assad's rule. Those who evacuate will move to Idlib in the North, where they will be ruled by more-or-less jihadi rebel groups supported by Turkey.
Whether Assad or Erdoğan is worse, I am unable to judge, but I suppose the people that move to the rebel zone can expect at least to be treated as friends rather than as enemies.
Appointing Bolton as the bully's national security advisor undercuts national security.
The US government is demanding, once again, that portable phones be built for remote unlocking.
If the government criminalizes security, only criminals will have security.
However, portable phones spy on their users frequently for their manufacturers. The only kind of data that locking keeps secure is the data that they don't send to servers. With proprietary operating systems, you can't trust that.
Senator Baldwin proposed a bill to allow workers to elect 1/3 of the board of directors of publicly-traded corporations.
(Satire) NAACP Issues Travel Warning For Black Americans Visiting Own Backyards.
The sad thing is how little exaggeration there is in this article.
(Satire) "You Are The Jewel Of My Collection," Says Saudi Prince While Guiding Frightened Jared Kushner Toward Harem.
Metadata connects Guccifer, who claimed to have hacked the Democratic National Committee, with a Russian spy agency.
Dropbox Has Some Genuinely Great Security Reporting Guidelines, But Reserves the Right to Jail You If You Disagree.
The CFAA needs to be revised so that it is clear that violating terms of service is not a crime. In the mean time, any company that tries to apply it to violating terms of service deserves special hatred.
For the first time, software developers are starting to recognize (from the example of Facebook's use for election manipulation) that there are systems which should not be developed — that some systems are unethical.
Rules to enforce the ethics of a profession can be useful only once the profession has a code of ethics. The question is, what should the code of ethics of software development forbid?
Vicious, unjust features are rife in nonfree software. If the future code of ethics of software development fails to call DRM, spyware and back doors unethical, it won't be much good.
The Poison in Politics Runs Deeper Than Dodgy Data. The center-right policies of Clinton and other Democrats created the situation where the bully could gain support from people who rejected the insiders of both major parties.
Given that situation, the data analysis and stealth electioneering made possible by Facebook may have helped bring the bully close enough to profit from Republican voter-suppression.
The government's so-called evidence against Noor Salman, accused of collaborating with her husband in a massacre, turned out to be false. It was presented by an FBI agent; the judge rebuked the agent for misleading him.
It appears agents pressured her into signing a false statement which they later used to incriminate her. Such pressure tactics often railroad people into false confessions; people who are not practiced at this (which includes me, and probably you) need to be totally on guard when talking with any kind of thugs about a crime.
The oil companies, in court, accepted that global heating is caused by greenhouse gases made by human activity. But they say, "We were only following orders" — purchase orders, in this case.
EU in 'State Of Denial' over Destructive Impact of Farming on Wildlife.
Momentum, the movement built to support Corbyn within the Labour Party, gives advice to US progressives.
The Bureau of Land Management auctions off land for fossil fuel extraction and the purchasers are disguised. We can't tell who bought these extraction leases.
In the future, when an automated taxi hits a pedestrian, will someone be liable for the death? Or will the pedestrian be liable for damaging the taxi? You can be sure corporations will lobby for the latter.
The US diplomats who were mysteriously injured in Cuba actually heard a strange, unexplained sound — high-pitched, but not ultrasound.
A researcher reports that the sound could have resulted from beating between two ultrasound signals, each generated by a product that was intentionally and legitimately installed.
Republicans wrecked Oklahoma by cutting taxes and vitally important spending. Now they want to "fix" the problem by raising taxes — on the poor.
Goldman Sachs executives get a big tax windfall when they work for the US government for one year.
Reports that Kushner told the acting king of Salafi Arabia which subjects to torture, based on what he saw in the very secret presidential daily briefing.
Across Europe, poor people are being priced out of habitable housing.
Pipeline protesters in Canada attacked Prime Minister Trudeau because his support for the Unkinder Morgan Pipeline contradicts his pretense to be a climate defender.
The bully has officially ordered the US armed forces to ban transgender people.
Courts will surely block this, at least for a while. What if it does take effect?
Americans, if you are transgender, you can serve our country better by campaigning against the bully's right-wing extremist movement (the Republican Party) than by being in the military. Being in the military makes you available for him to attack other countries. As for defending our country military, that's hardly necessary at present, since no army is going to attack the US.
If you are not transgender, all that applies to you, too.
The Austin serial bomber's crimes might have been hate crimes, but it's not certain.
They were not terrorism, because terrorism is an explicitly political act. A mere suspected motive is not enough to make an action count as terrorism.
A private immigration prison in Texas practices extreme violence against the prisoners, and refuses to answer questions about what it did to them.
Privatizing a government activity generally brings unaccountability. This is one of the reasons why government activities should not be privatized.
The US Congress brought a shadow on privacy world-wide by passing the CLOUD Act.
How Congress Censored the Internet.
Craigslist has eliminated its personals section. FOSTA has made it too dangerous for a web site to have a personals section.
Let's hope that FOSTA is found unconstitutional.
I fully support efforts to put an end to enslavement of people to make them do sex work. But the problem is enslavement, not sex work, and enslavement is found in many fields of work. They include construction, farming, fishing, manicure, and domestic service.
We wouldn't propose to end enslavement in fishing by creating threats of imprisonment for anyone that operates a fishing boat. We shouldn't do it in sex work, either.
"The chief lesson of a new report is that making abortion illegal or hard to get doesn't end abortion, it just makes it less safe."
Many US cities use zoning laws to prevent people from doing business in their homes.
When New Orleans decided to take down some monuments to Confederate leaders, installed to express support for racism, violent racists threatened the contractors, then attacked them. The city had to fight to remove these monuments.
Mayor Landrieu learned that this is exactly the spirit in which the monuments were originally erected, to perpetuate racism years after the civil war ended.
Eradicating poverty could prevent most cases of tuberculosis.
US citizens: call on pertinent federal regulatory agencies to protect a strong interpretation for the Volcker Rule, to prevent banks from cheating people or causing another financial crash.
US citizens: demand that Sessions testify about the firing of McCabe.
Destruction of Nature As Dangerous As [global heating], Scientists Warn.
Bolton is the head of an anti-Muslim fake news provider.
British mosques have launched a program to protect young Muslims from various social problems, one of which is radicalization.
One can't take success for granted, but this looks promising.
The Eagle Eye manifesto is a good start on gun control, but the proposal to put more thugs in schools is misguided: it would put students in danger of arrest.
I think there should be additional gun control measures concerning how to store guns and how to take them out of the house.
A scientist's samples of white rhino semen might make it possible to save that species.
The artificial insemination is not guaranteed to work. But if it does work, they can use sperm from a wide variety of males in future generations, to bring back the genetic diversity that a species needs to be safe.
Nearly half of the US budget is for the Pentagon.
Much of the rest is going for war, through other funding channels.
GM, Ford, and Toyota Lobby for Dirtier Cars While Touting Cleaner Ones.
The bully's new national security adviser wants war with Iran and with North Korea.
If the bully starts wars, the mainstream media will say, "Ooh, how presidential!"
Criminal gangs do not control Russia, but they have learned to get along with Putin and prosper through lines of crime that Putin tolerates.
Labour Must Be Bolder — Only a Wealth Tax Can Defeat Inequality.
Leopards living in a park in Mumbai paradoxically protect humans by eating stray dogs.
A clear example of the wrong way to think about pervasive digital snooping: as mere economics.
This misguided approach leads to hopelessly inadequate proposals, such as to "pay people for their data". If this leads to substantial redistribution of wealth, that in itself would be good — but it couldn't come anywhere near making up for millions of lost jobs. And it would not even try to do anything to protect us from the manipulation, discrimination, nor the threat to democracy.
Turkey's principal critical media are being sold to Erdoğan's henchman.
Hurricane Harvey spread lots of toxic chemicals around Texas, and Republican state officials are shielding companies from responsibility by shutting their eyes to the details.
Ahed Tamimi's mother has been sentenced to prison for posting the video of Ahed Tamimi slapping an Israeli soldier. This is called "incitement".
Meanwhile, an Israeli who beat up a Palestinian was sentenced to community service only.
The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by fertilizer runoff from farms, would take 30 years to dissipate even if we were to end the runoff completely.
Tariffs Aren’t a Terrible Idea — If They’re About Well-Being of People Not Corporations.
The articles that condemn tariffs and warn that a "trade war" would be disastrous represent the neoliberal, plutocratic camp that supports business-supremacy treaties. They see tariffs as an impediment to dooH niboR. Their argument is willfully blind, ignoring the injustice of plutocracy.
It does not follow that increasing tariffs without limit is always wise. What we really need is to make it difficult to shift production from one country to another. Once we do that, each country will be able to resume regulating production for the sake of the health, safety, and prosperity of its working people.
The mainstream media are quick to call any killer that is a Muslim a "terrorist", without waiting for the facts. Should we compensate for this by doing something similar to killers that are white?
I think the media should wait for some facts before calling any killer a "terrorist" — because you can't deduce that from the killer's ethnic background or religion, whatever they are.
Comedian Ricky Gervais: A man has been convicted in a UK court of making a joke that was deemed 'grossly offensive'.
I disagree with them. Nazism is grossly offensive, but was that joke grossly offensive? I don't think having a dog give a Nazi salute supports Nazism.
In any case, making it a crime to say something because it is "grossly offensive" is injustice.
Giving Offence Is Inevitable And Often Necessary in a Plural Society.
Almost 30,000 people are on death row in Iraq.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the CLOUD Act. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The EU's latest copyright proposal would require censorship filters on all systems where users can post anything.
GitHub asks programmers to demand a special exception for posting software, but that is too small a change. Please tell your MEPs to kill this entirely!
The US Labor Department estimated the amount of tips that its plan would take away from waiters, but the amount was so large it would arouse hostility. So the department said it was unable to estimate the amount.
From Republicans, dishonesty is standard practice. Plutocratist Democrats do it too.
The EU plans to make Internet sellers pay a sales tax to the country where the client is.
The "great Pacific garbage patch" is four times as big as people thought.
Proposals to allow assisted suicide only for people that are likely to be dead in 6 months are not adequate for dementia.
Many people suffer from dementia for years, effectively zombies, before some other illness kills the corpse. By the time, six months before the latter, they would be allowed to get help with suicide, they would no longer be competent to invoke that right.
Paul Ehrlich: "Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades."
A US private prison company pretends that it doesn't put immigrants in solitary confinement, but evidence says that it does.
The fact that these prisons are private makes them unaccountable.
As we tear Russian propaganda to shreds, let us not forget the British propaganda and the US propaganda.
Lack of US Election Auditing Raises Fears of Russian Vote Meddling in 2018.
Meddling can come from many sources, and the principal threat is from Republicans.
Minneapolis thugs refused to talk to investigators about the killing of Justine Damond. The investigators had to give them subpoenas.
It's the standard wall of silence, which is why they deserve the name of "thug". The few who stand for truth and justice, rather than for protecting thugs, are the ones that deserve the title of "police officer".
Turkey is moving to the edge of war with Cyprus over undersea gas deposits.
For the survival of civilization, we must leave 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Therefore, what Cyprus and Turkey should do is agree by treaty that neither one will extract any gas from that area of the sea.
The very size of these deposits makes it all the more essential to leave them untouched.
I Saw Aid for Starving People Spent on Staff Salaries Through Inept Planning.
It makes no difference whether the staff hire sex workers. This, by contrast, is a great failure.
US unions are starting to defend their members from deportation.
Iran banned the use of Telegram, but dropped the ban because many businesses were using it.
Macron is planning another blow against France's public workers unions. They have responded with a strike.
The saboteur wants to push logging of trees a thousand years old in the Tongass National Forest.
Sanders, Warren and other senators have proposed the Consumer Health Insurance Protection Act, which would make it harder for insurance companies to jerk their customers around.
It's not as good as single-payer, which Sanders and Warren also support.
First they shot the drug dealers, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a drug dealer. Then they shot the environmental defenders, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't an environmental defender. Then they shot the human rights defenders...
Wealthy countries can get US foreign policy support by supporting Kushner's sinking real estate business.
Cambridge Analytica executives boasted of shaping US public opinion while making a monkey out of US political campaign law.
Deregulation Kills More People in [The US] Than [PISSI] Ever Will.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the nomination of Dow Chemical lawyer Peter Wright as assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management.
US citizens: Reject the bully's drug policies.
The bully bullied White House staff to sign long-term confidentiality agreements. This is an attack on freedom of the press, and the ACLU says the contracts are unconstitutional too. However, the employees may not be able to afford the cost of proving that in court.
Senator Susan Collins Sabotages Her Own Obamacare Stabilization Effort with Abortion Poison Pill.
Utah has passed a law to permit parents to let children do things by and for themselves, such as play outside or walk to the store.
"I never thought that Iraq could ever be worse than it was during Saddam’s reign, but that is what America’s war achieved and bequeathed to Iraqis."
Faux News commentator Ralph Peters quit, denouncing the company.
"In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.”
It is not easy to be too right-wing for him — considering what he has endorsed in the past.
Comparing Cambridge Analytica to The Matrix.
Courts are giving pipeline-shutoff protesters light sentences.
Reporters say they found Russians voting twice. No wonder Putin got such a big margin of victory.
Flooding and heavy rain is happening four times as often as it was in 1980.
The US northeast is an example — four big snowstorms in just three weeks.
Ahed Tamimi will spend 8 months in prison for slapping and kicking an Israeli soldier after other soldiers shot her brother in the head.
There is no sign that the soldiers who shot her brother will be punished at all.
A hack makes it possible to get in Spain the text of the banned corruption expose Fariña.
"Intensive farming and pesticides could turn Europe's farmland into a desert that ultimately imperils all humans."
The mafia assassination of journalist Ján Kuciak in Slovakia has spurred a massive protest movement against the corrupt politicians linked to the murder.
Many bird species in France are crashing, and scientists suspect it is because pesticides now kill the insects birds would have eaten in the past.
It was noted recently in Germany that the population of flying insects had decreased by 3/4 since a few decades ago. That article did not specify a cause, but it could be due to pesticides.
The US Senate rejected the resolution to deauthorize US support for the bombardment of Yemen.
However, it came within a few votes of winning. I think that is great progress. There will probably be another attempt next year.
Since a decade ago, US college students have started to lack emotional empathy for others.
The small sample size means that we shouldn't be entirely sure of this result. If it holds up, it could be an effect of some or all aspects of technology, but it isn't obvious a priori which aspects would be responsible. It might have been due to growing up with cable TV.
It might be a response to the precariousness of employment, caused by the financial crisis, and the consequent lack of good jobs.
The Minneapolis thug that killed Justine Damond last July has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Larry Krasner, the new District Attorney of Philadelphia, is redirecting prosecution from oppressing people as hard as possible, on any excuse, to leading people away from crime. Especially sex workers and marijuana users.
Prison and probation will be focused on serious criminals.
Rich people complain about being "demonized", but they're not demonized enough.
Let's vote to get laws to redistribute some of their income and wealth, and thus reduce their antidemocratic power.
Suggestions to useds of Facebook for how to adjust after deleting the Facebook account.
The article recognizes only the specific abuses of Facebook, not the injustices which Facebook shares with lots of other web sites. For instance, it recommends other web services for organizing events, one of which is Eventbrite — which is unjust. It requires users to run nonfree software and makes them identify themselves. I absolutely refuse to let Eventbrite do those things to me, just as I absolutely refuse to be used by Facebook.
The other site it recommends, Paperless Post, mistreats users by requiring non-free Javascript and selling all user data to advertisers.
Also, it is hard to have confidence that WhatsApp does what it claims to, because the app is proprietary software, and that in itself is a reason not to use it.
Everyone: call on Toys Я Us to give severance pay to all employees, not just the executives.
US citizens: call on congressional Democrats not to help SCROTUS fix minor careless errors in the tax attacks. They should insist on fixing the big wrongs, not just the minor errors.
ALEC has doubled down on evil by signing up the Chinese megacorporation Alibaba as a member.
Since the main activity of ALEC is to lobby for plutocratist state laws, this ought to be illegal.
Australia's main labor union demands employee rights for part-time workers, including those compelled to say they are "independent contractors".
Evidence of years of deals, and proposed deals, between the US bully and Russians associated with the Russian deals.
Before the US bully ran for president, these deals did no great harm to the US as a whole, although some of them might have been illegal in regard to some details. That changed when he became a candidate.
The Democratic Party needs to unify as a progressive party. But the center-right establishment is trying to argue, based on Conor Lamb's possible victory, that the center-right should continue to dominate and keep selling us out.
Outrageous laws prohibiting mere possession of a copy of certain works could make operating on Bitcoin illegal.
It would not surprise me if some governments start harsh enforcement of these laws on the Bitcoin block chain as an excuse to get rid of Bitcoin.
No matter what a work says, prohibiting people from possessing copies of it is tyranny, through and through.
Richard Dawkins has set up gratis downloads of The God Delusion translated into languages used in some countries whose governments impose Islam to some extent.
A whistleblower says that Facebook regularly tolerated companies' violation of its supposed rules on using data about Facebook's useds.
I urge you to refuse to be a used of Facebook.
Let's not present former FBI and CIA officials as heroes, merely because they oppose the bully now.
Their opposition to the bully is valid and may help overcome him, but that doesn't mean they have respected our rights in the past.
Snowden heroically criticized election fraud in Russia, knowing that he took a risk of losing his asylum there.
Can anyone show me articles about the reported previous times that he has done this?
Greenpeace supporters were arrested for a peaceful protest against expanding an oil pipeline in Canada.
Amnesty International: reject the idea of killing people in the name of the War on Drugs.
Many organizations that advocate radical change — though not violence — are increasingly kept hidden by censorship by big platforms.
The Department of Homeland Suppression has a secret "race paper" about its smearing, infiltration and persecution of black protest groups. Anti-racist organizations are suing to get it released.
Cambridge Analytica talked of offering services such as slander and seducing people for purposes of blackmail.
Arguing that we need to leave half the Earth's land area for wildlife, thus empty of humans.
Phoenix, Arizona, is heading for a long-term water shortage because the Colorado River is gradually drying up.
The UN warns that half of humanity will face water shortages by 2050.
We could reduce the problem by reducing the population of humanity in 2050.
Marine Heatwave Set Off 'Carbon Bomb' in World's Largest Seagrass Meadow.
Both Facebook And Cambridge Analytica Threatened To Sue Journalists Over Stories On CA's Use Of Facebook Data.
Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore: Russia and Stormy Daniels are distractions so we won't pay attention to real issues such as inequality.
Russian election interference points to a real issue: we don't want our elections to be vulnerable. However, the vulnerability is not available only to Russia — it can be used by anyone with money. And it is just as harmful when the manipulator is American.
Student protesters were punished by being ordered to waste time in school on Saturday. So they protested again and called it a sit-in.
It seems to me that the school enforcers are doing this solely to demand obedience for the sake of obedience.
How dare schools force students to come on a non-school day as punishment. What gives them the legal right to do this, anyway? What happens if the student has other plans and refuses to cancel them?
US citizens: call on Senators to insist the CIA release Haspel's torture record.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to fully investigate the relationship between the bully's campaign and Russia.
US citizens: Call on Congress to make the Office of Congressional Ethics permanent and nonpolitical.
Although cell phone networks can triangulate the location of a phone precisely, in the US they don't always do this, so the records they keep are often less precise.
That can be good or bad.
Republicans in Congress and the media are bending over backwards to avoid rebuking the bully for bullying McCabe.
Yet another president of South Korea faces bribery charges. Fortunately this one is no longer in office.
Antifascist activists seem to be making the neo-Nazi "alt-right" crumble.
Antifascist activism is much broader than the violent group Antifa. Violence is what played into the Nazi's hands in Berlin.
I can't rejoice in the success of censorship measures against neo-Nazis because I think censorship is wrong. Furthermore, the next opinion group to be banned from giant internet platforms could be progressives, free-software activists, or whatever.
Ramona Hernandez-Canete, in France, killed five of her own newborn babies. Her husband was not aware she was pregnant.
I wonder what inhibited her from getting abortions. That is lawful in France, unlike what she actually did. I have a feeling that the answer might be a clue to something on which dissuades other women from getting abortions.
London Air Pollution Activists "Prepared to Go to Prison" to Force Action.
With Saudi Prince on Whitewash Tour, Critics Warn Against Further US Complicity With 'War Crimes' in Yemen.
Global heating is expected to force 140 million people to try to migrate in the next 30 years.
Ten hard questions for the de-facto king of Salafi Arabia.
The planned EU requirement for automatic censorship of all uploads was inserted by an MEP but written by a functionary that is loyal to the copyright industry.
If Iran builds nuclear weapons, Salafi Arabia will too.
Salafi Arabia is a great place for solar power. It has no rational reason to take on the dangers of nuclear power, other than as a stepping stone to nuclear weapons. Therefore, other countries should not sell it nuclear power.
It would be a good thing if Salafi Arabia an Iran signed a treaty foreswearing nuclear weapons.
Corbyn is resisting the pressure for a pseudo-war with Russia.
Labour is of course no supporter of the Putin regime, its conservative authoritarianism, abuse of human rights or political and economic corruption.Here is his statement.However, that does not mean we should resign ourselves to a 'new cold war' of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent.
It seems not to be so hard to make the nerve gas that was used to poison the Skripals.
Meanwhile, Corbyn knows that Russia is a small threat to people living in the UK, as threats go. By contrast, the Tories have oppressed millions of Britons with poverty, which surely kills thousands every year. I think Corbyn is wise to focus on the bigger danger.
DeVos is trying to destroy the Department of Education's workers' union by imposing a damaging "agreement" that the union did not agree to.
CIA torturers are using the "just following orders" defense that Nazi war criminals used.
New Mexico is hastily privatizing rivers that people were free to use their boats on.
Americans in some cities are organizing in some cities against paying Amazon to put its second HQ there.
I hope that the blatant nature of this instance teaches people to recognize the general wrong of letting states or cities compete in offering concessions to any business.
Precarious low-wage employment results from a government that doesn't care about poor people.
Documents show that the massacre of half a million Indonesians in 1965-66 was organized by the army.
The bully says that McCabe's meeting memos are all false.
His strategy is to defend every lie with another lie. He is betting that no one will ever be able to make him pay for any of the lies. If SCROTUS continue to support him no matter what, and he can fire everyone else who tries, he might get away with it — in the process turning the US government into total corruption.
"The U.S. Postal Service, under attack from a manufactured crisis designed to force its privatization, needs a new source of funding to survive. Postal banking could fill that need."
David Chavez-Macias is being deported to Mexico, where he is almost sure to die because the medicine he needs for his life-threatening disease is not available.
If I were in that situation I would think about committing suicide in a way that would shame the deportation thugs.
Kim Jong-un Has Committed to Denuclearisation, Says South Korea.
Around 150 people die each year in the US desert near the border with Mexico. About 2/3 can be identified.
This is up from around 12 a year in the 1990s. In most cases it is not clear why an individual died, but it seems likely that stepped-up border enforcement is the overall reason.
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter to oppose the "CLOUD Act". The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Any reference to "cloud computing" is clouding something.
The UK keeps the thugs that infiltrated Greenpeace secret, supposedly to protect them from Greenpeace. Another undercover thug, that infiltrated real criminal gangs, says that's absurd.
Jared Kushner's company filed false papers in order to evict the tenants of some buildings it bought in New York City.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie exposed how Cambridge Analytica misused the data Facebook gave it, so Facebook shut down his account.
126 countries (out of the 200-odd that exist) spend more than 10% of their income paying interest on debts.
Many of these countries will never be able to pay down those debts, so the governments have been converted, in effect, into tribute extractors.
Minnesota Republicans plan to prohibit cities such as Minneapolis from using ranked choice voting.
If something is better for democracy, it's bad for plutocrats, so plutocrats are against it.
"Fitbits for kids? Better yet, encourage them to hopscotch — and tell them they are loved."
Proposing to upgrade "reduce, reuse, recycle" to "resist, revolt, rewild."
The free software movement is one way of resisting. Rejecting the giant surveillance dis-services is another way.
It is not clear how we can provide food, water and sanitation to cities with a population of 100,000,000 people.
We should take steps now to reduce the future size of those cities by reducing the number of babies that will be born between now and then.
Some people think it is racist to focus efforts to reduce the number of births on Africa and some parts of Asia.
But this is not a matter of race, it is simply practical. The only way to avoid hundreds of millions of births is to concentrate on the places with high birth rates.
It is also important to end population growth in the US because Americans use resources in such a wasteful, profligate way. Since the birth rate is already not very high, the way to do that is to accept fewer immigrants. This is nothing personal about particular immigrants; I'd welcome nearly any of them — but it is better to reduce the number of immigrants until we succeed in making the American way of life less wasteful.
Of course, avoiding births in the US is desirable too.
Satellites are being used to estimate the number of enslaved workers in India and neighboring countries.
Water Shortages Could Affect 5bn People by 2050, UN Report Warns.
To a large extent this will be due to global heating, but we're already using fresh water from aquifers faster than it gets replenished, so many of them will be empty.
We need to do things which short-sighted people fight against, such as (1) stop growing water-thirsty fruit in California, (2) make a lot fewer babies, and (3) curb global heating.
Celebrating the US military veterans who became the leaders of the movement to end the Vietnam War.
A confidentiality agreement can't put the cat back into the bag.
Sanders in a speech tied plutocracy to militarism and increasing arms spending. He also reminded Americans of the government lies that were used to bring about intervention in Vietnam, then later in Iraq. Then how the plutocracy leads to despair which leads to support for "populist" demagogues.
He ended by talking about the tremendous danger of global heating and the need to confront it firmly and soon.
Lauren Weinstein: Fixing Facebook May Be Impossible.
If so, we must make it go away.
Other participants in the meeting where Sessions considered contacting Russians for the troll's campaign have testified he did not oppose the idea — meaning that he was lying about it.
A new regulation requires many US corporations to publish the ratio between their CEO's pay and the pay of their workers. Some cities and states are considering imposing higher taxes or limitations on corporations which have too high a ratio.
The US didn't have immigration thugs until 16 years ago. The agency was set up to twist people's thinking to confuse deportation with national security. Let's abolish the agency!
Since the Koch brothers bought Georgia-Pacific, it has a record of skimping on workers' safety.
$340,000 is a substantial fine, but perhaps not enough to influence people as rich as they are. Perhaps industrial fines should be increased based on the company's total income, the way some places increase traffic fines based on the driver's income.
Democrats can win in most of America with a fairly progressive agenda.
I have not seen anything about where Conor Lamb stands regarding bank deregulation or the War on Drugs. Since he was a prosecutor, I fear the worst on the latter.
The EPA plans to prohibit use of research results based on studying private personal data.
It's a plausible-sounding excuse for future non-science-based policies, such as "pay no mind who or what you're poisoning."
US citizens: call on state governors to protect the right to protest.
Everyone: Call on Starbucks to increase its commitment to plastic recycling.
Leaks say that the bully and Pompeo have resumed using CIA assassination squads, as in Vietnam in the 1960s.
The US Congress has adopted a law to openly encourage contact with officials of ally Taiwan. China thinks the US has no right to do this.
In the 1970s, China was a valuable ally against the Soviet Union. Now that China is powerful, it tries to bully other countries about this, while beginning military expansion in the South China Sea. At the same time, it is becoming ever more oppressive. I think it is good to show tyrant Xi that there are limits to how much he can get other countries to kowtow.
A New Orleans restaurant invites white customers to pay extra, optionally, to illustrate the income disparity between white inhabitants and black inhabitants.
I might give some money on the strength of this disparity, to a campaign for equality. However, I don't think I would donate to a business. So I would suggest that the restaurant offer to give the extra $18 to a worthy anti-racist campaign.
10,000 people protested in Canada against expanding an oil pipeline. Now indigenous people have held a sit-in. This campaign will not give up.
Pollution, Illness, Threats And Murder — perhaps related by an aluminum factory in Brazil.
Somehow, we must defend the Kurds of Afrin and Syria against the Islamist tyranny of Erdoğan, but how?
New Orleans Program Offers Lessons In Pitfalls Of Predictive Policing.
The Three Crises of Liberal Democracy.
Arguing that physically fighting neo-Nazi organizers is an effective tactic in the US.
I can't say that is absolutely impossible, but I don't think Spencer's decision proves it is effective. The example of German Nazis teaches a lesson that wasn't invented for political reasons.
There is also the moral question: is violence against neo-Nazi rallies justified? I don't think it is justified when they don't engage in violence.
US Spy Lab Hopes to Geotag Every Outdoor Photo on Social Media.
I think I had better start asking people who take photos of me not to post them on social media.
US political satire focuses on individuals and their excesses. Thus, the system which selects those people goes uncriticized.
The bully is trying to shut down Mueller's investigation.
US war crimes in Vietnam were not limited to aberrations of soldiers having nervous breakdowns. Some of them were built into the orders issued by the high command.
It's not too late to put them on trial for these crimes.
Expensive geoengineering projects are proposed to keep polar ice sheets cool and save coastal lands from inundation.
If we're going to geoengineering specifically to counter heating, we might as well use the atmospheric methods.
But even if we cancel out global heating, that won't protect the oceans from mass extinction. CO2 doesn't just heat up the ecosphere; it also dissolves in the water making it more acidic. In a few decades, all coral will simply dissolve in the acid, and the thousands of species that depend on coral reefs will have nowhere to go.
Some fish have been observed to engage in dangerous behaviors, likely to get them eaten, in elevated levels of CO2. And it appears that rising CO2 levels are causing grain yields to fall, globally.
So even with a way to get rid of the heat, we still urgently need to stop burning so much fossil fuel. And as a way to reduce future heating, it's probably also cheaper.
President Do-dirty of the Philippines says he will withdraw that country from the International Criminal Court. He cited various pretexts, but it is clear that they are trumpery. His real reason is that he knows he is guilty of mass murder and wants to ensure that no court can try him.
Formally, the withdrawal will not affect criminal investigations that start within the coming year, but we can guess what Do-dirty will do about those. Perhaps imprison any UN personnel that are in the Philippines, or perhaps simply not allow them to enter.
The Philippines will join the list of criminal countries headed by Russia and the United States.
Aceh, the province of Indonesia dominated by Islamists, wants to start beheading people.
The reason for this, I think, is to stir up Islamist forces in the rest of Indonesia.
Indonesia would be better off if it had expelled Aceh as a separate country 20 years ago. Perhaps it is not too late.
Legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands is working out well, raising moral issues only for a few edge cases.
I think Ms. Brouwers deserved the right to die. Safeguards are needed for people who aren't sure, who might plausibly in the foreseeable future be glad to be alive, if they were not allowed euthanasia. But that was not at all likely in her case.
(Satire) The Onion, from the 1990s: Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia.
Even odious racist views must not be censored by the state.
The absurd charges against DeAndre Harris explained: it appears that one of the right-wingers saw Harris hit a flagpole which another right-winger was using as a weapon, and claimed Harris he was trying to attack that person.
Even if Harris had been trying to hit that right winger, while the latter was attacking people with a pole, it would have been justified to protect them.
The saboteur is bringing back abstinence-only "sex education", which turns out to be a pile of lies.
Some US politicians defend free speech for right-wingers but not for those who criticize Israel's occupation of Palestine.
With the global heating projected if we don't act, the Earth's principal forests are projected to lose half their species.
Uber seeks to convince London it is worth of operating there by giving the state more data.
Trump Organization "Negotiated with Sanctioned Russian Bank in 2016".
Is this treason or mere corruption? Mueller is trying to find out the facts, but if we knew all the facts, we might still have trouble telling which.
Uber imposes arbitration on customers for all complaints, including rape by drivers, and this covers up the prevalence of the problem.
No company should be allowed to require its customers or its workers (whether labeled "employee" or "independent contractors") to use arbitration instead of going to court.
Renewable electricity in Australia has become so cheap and reliable that the planet-roaster government is having trouble convincing electric utilities not to jump for it.
US citizens: Call on Congress to pass the Secure Elections Act.
US citizens: Call on your senators to reject Pompeo and Haspel.
To sign this without running nonfree Javascript code you will need to use the Salsalabs workaround.
A US senate candidate proposes to give every homeless person a shotgun for self-defense.
It's probably not a wise solution but it does respond to a real problem, since homeless people often face violence and theft.
The candidate is running in the Antisocialist party, whose main goal is a laissez-faire economy which would let businesses and rich people trample the rest however they like. As a side issue they support human rights as well.
Civilians are escaping from eastern Ghouta into Assad's territory. For some, it means peace at last. For some, it could mean prison, torture, or execution.
How many civilians were killed in Iraq by the fighting that Dubya started? One statistical estimate is 2.4 million, plus or minus a million.
Dubya is criminally responsible for all of these deaths, since they all result from his crime of aggressive war.
The US executed German and Japanese leaders for the crime of aggressive war. However, the death penalty is an injustice, so Dubya should be sentenced to 2.4 million consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
Another Russian was just apparently murdered in London, exiled oligarch Nikolai Glushkov. It took place on the day he had an important court hearing, and was set up to look like a suicide.
A Russian oligarch probably used dirty tricks to get his wealth, but murder is not a solution to that.
Senator Schumer sets an example of weakness by not opposing Flunky Pompeo or Torture Haspel.
He supported the bank deregulation act too.
Germany has banned the sale of phones that have a feature to allow someone else (typically a parent) to listen through them.
Bravo! However, this is just the beginning of the requirements we need.
(Satire) Putin had to advance his election victory a few days to fit his busy schedule.
Hun Sen, who has suppressed human rights in Cambodia, faced protests on visiting Australia.
The Oxfam Scandal Has Taught Us That There Is No Reward for Honest Charities.
I have never seen a clear explanation of why an Oxfam manager's hiring prostitutes would have affected the work of Oxfam, and therefore why it should be a scandal at all.
As competition pressures more and more young adults to study in universities, we have to wonder to what extent this is worth the expense for society.
One good thing college courses can give people is the ability to think critically about political questions and arguments. I think that is a very important contribution — look at all the people who believe in homeopathy, or in demonizing the poor.
There is pressure on colleges to turn into professional schools, which means they do less to teach critical thinking. On the other hand, to the extent that colleges do professional training, at least we know what jobs they enable people to do.
It is possible that the competitive pressure results because there is not enough work that society will pay people to do to keep everyone busy from age 18, and this generates pressure to keep many people busy as students until age 20 or 22.
(Satire) The Onion explains, step by step, how thugs get away with killing people.
The bank deregulation act will allow the biggest banks to do dangerous things and get bailed out when that causes them to lose money.
The only way for a bank to get bailed out should be through nationalization.
Google and Facebook repress employees that talk to the public about working conditions — which is illegal.
The French investigative journalism organization Mediapart dares to investigate anyone for corruption. With no sponsors and no advertisements, it is funded only by readers.
History textbooks in the US today do not explain that the Irish famine of the 1840s was caused by exporting food rather than allowing poor Irish people to eat it.
The stubbornness of some countries' legal systems verges on insanity. Romania has decided that Constantin Reliu is dead, and refuses to recognize he is alive.
In 1968, three US soldiers ended the My Lai massacre. They were ready to shoot the murderous soldiers if necessary, to protect the Vietnamese civilians that were still alive.
My father was disgusted when he learned of the My Lai massacre. It reminded him of Nazi behavior. So he printed stickers (he owned a printing company) with a list of the locations of a few well-known German massacres in World War II, with My Lai added at the end. This was what first led me to think about the issue of war crimes.
The US suffered a moral injury from committing the My Lai massacre and then protecting the guilty.
Censorship Creep Is Setting In As Social Media Companies Try To Stay Ahead Of European Lawmakers.
Berkeley, California, has passed a law requiring city departments to get explicit permission before installing any surveillance technology.
Students and teachers in Texas see danger, not safety, in the idea of teachers with guns.
"School resource officers" is a bland disguise for thugs in the school that will arrest students and ruin their lives. If you want the students to be safe, don't have any thiugs in the school.
Japan is likely to store lots of nuclear waste in the Fukishima exclusion area.
It seems like a good idea to me. Those wastes exist, and it would be better to store them in a safer way.
The Death of Retirement Is Looming -– And the Fallout Will Be Disastrous.
The article is about the UK, but the US has the same problem even though the details are different. The only reason for these changes was to enrich the rich.
I don't intend ever to retire unless illness compels me to, but that's because I have a mission rather than a job. Most people don't have such good fortune.
Tennessee Republicans would not allow even a discussion of a resolution to condemn the ideology of neo-Nazis. It cuts too close to home.
In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was influential in the Democratic and Republican Parties. Modern manipulators exaggerate the former and cover up the latter.
US citizens: Call on Saboteur of Education DeVos to resign.
Turkish artist Zehra Doğan is in prison for painting the way the city of Nusaybin was damaged by Erdoğan's civil war.
I Went to Prison for Disclosing CIA Torture. Gina Haspel Helped Cover It Up.
The absurd charges against DeAndre Harris have been dropped.
Now we need to find out why absurd charges were given so much credence that they were allowed to hang over him for 8 months.
Brazilian human rights defender Marielle Franco, leader of Brazil's Black Lives Matter movement, was apparently assassinated by Brazilian federal thugs. They kill thousands of people each year.
Don't get hysterical about Russian trolls.
Russia's interference with the US election was a form of attack, but the real problem is in our own social and technical system, including weak education, fanaticism, and the social networks that magnify right-wing fake news whether its authors are Americans or not.
Amid Rampant Wage Theft in Post-Harvey Reconstruction, Immigrant Workers Take on Disaster Recovery Giant -— and Win.
Turkey is besieging the Afrin enclave.
I don't expect Erdoğan to be any less cruel towards "enemy" civilians than Assad. And for Erdoğan, every Kurd is an enemy by definition.
Aung San Suu Kyi could be prosecuted in Australia for crimes against humanity; specifically, against the Rohingya.
US citizens: oppose Republican plans to let doctors and hospitals deny medical care for religious reasons.
If you don't want to do abortions or prescribe birth control, become a gerontologist or a pediatrician.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Pompeo and Haspel.
US think tanks and mainstream media work to discourage Americans from understanding the reasons why Iran fears a surprise attack by the US.
Regarding one side point: I am unwilling to grant Assad's tyranny more legitimacy than the Syrian Kurdish state, in drawing any moral conclusions.
Cambridge Analytica collected data about 50 million useds of Facebook and used them in violation of Facebook's rules, and perhaps in violation of British data protection law.
Rules are frequently broken; therefore, any organization that collects personal data which then are misused cannot excuse itself by saying "That was against our rules".
UK anti-deportation protesters blocked a flight which was going to deport some people before their appeals had been heard. They are now faced with possible life imprisonment for daring to protect people's legal rights from a lawless state.
SCROTUS blocked investigation of whether the NRA transferred Russian funds to the bully's campaign.
Cities where the bully held campaign rallies experienced a temporary increase in violent crime.
3 students at a school in right-wing Arkansas joined the student protest for gun control, and were punished with a spanking.
I admire their courage, but I believe that if they had thought it through they would have refused to choose between the two punishments they were "offered". Also, I think they made a mistake when they forgave the school officials on the ground that they were only following orders, because that's no excuse.
A scientific study about published scientific papers found that the edited, paywalled version of a paper had no significant improvement over the libre preprint version in arxiv.org.
It's too bad that this article uses the philosophically weak term "open" rather "free (libre)".
The internet/cable companies get handouts of billions of dollars a year through state laws written to favor them.
Melvyn Iscove, psychiatrist, said he could "cure" homosexuality. He did this by having sex with the patients.
There is no reason for jaywalking to be illegal, and the prohibition provides an excuse for attacking blacks.
If we keep using phosphorus fertilizer wastefully, we will run out, perhaps in a few decades. Then we will face a food shortage.
Andrew McCabe describes the political reasons for the bully's reprisals against him.
Putin is cracking down on election observers.
Since he has made himself very popular through control of the media, he would win even an honest election. So why do this?
I think he dislikes the idea that there is anything in Russia he does not control.
Why the US Second Amendment permits gun control.
In a vindictive and nasty measure, the bully had FBI official Andrew McCabe fired one day before he was going to retire.
The nastiness is that this denies him a pension. The vindictiveness is that there couldn't be any valid reason to do anything to remove him one day earlier.
I will not assume that an FBI official is a hero, or even that he isn't a criminal. There might be a valid reason why an honest president might want him out. But there can't be a valid reason to fire him a day before his retirement.
More artificial "scandal" about Oxfam.
An employee, Mutiku, was accused of sexual harassment, but was not fired. Assuming the allegations were true, whether they required firing him would depend on the details, which are not stated. In some situations it would be enough if he promised not to repeat whatever it was. In other situations, that would not be enough. We have no basis to try to judge the question.
The article then said that he was later fired for hiring prostitutes. Why should anyone be fired from any job for that? The article simply takes for granted that it is a horrible wrong.
Then the article connects the two by saying that the decision not to fire Mutiku was taken by a manager who was later fired for hiring prostitutes.
If we had reason to think the decision was wrong, we might suspect that that manager was inclined to go easy on sexual harassment. We might then wonder whether that was somehow related to his practice of hiring prostitutes.
But since we don't know what the alleged harassment consisted of, we don't know enough to begin to consider whether the decision was right or wrong, and we don't have anything to try to link to anything else.
Ultimately, the article is just an attempt to throw random dirt at people for hiring sex workers.
Uri Avnery: There is no reason for Israel and Iran to be enemies, except for the occupation of Palestine.
Sanders: "We need to ask the hard questions that the corporate media fails to ask: who owns America, and who has the political power? Why, in the richest country in the history of the world are so many Americans living in poverty?"
Apple cut off access to the app store for Iranian users of iMonsters.
The underlying wrong here is that Apple gave itself censorship power over everyone that uses those computers — power that we should not allow anyone to have.
20 years ago, if you bought a computer, you could install whatever software you chose to install. You didn't have to tell the manufacturer what software you installed. You didn't have to say what country you were in. You didn't have to make an account on the manufacturer's server. Indeed, you did not need to communicate with the manufacturer at all, ever.
That changed when Apple convinced millions of otherwise-sensible people to accept computers that gave Apple censorship power over installation of software in them. Somehow they thought it was more important for a computer to have an elegant "cool" appearance than to respect their freedom and treat them decently. This was a terrible setback for freedom in use of computers.
Apple mostly uses its censorship power for its own motives, but occasionally does it for various governments. Apple censors applications for users in China at the command of the repressive Chinese government, and censors applications for users in Iran at the command of the belligerent US government. Both of these governments are abusing their power, but what gives them that power? Apple does. So does Microsoft, which followed the path Apple had pioneered.
Censorship is just one of the malicious functionalities you are likely to find in software that's not free. For hundreds of documented examples, see https://gnu.org/malware/.
The way to have freedom in your computing is with freedom-respecting free software. A nonfree program puts anyone that uses it under the power of its owner. To have freedom, you need to escape from this. See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.
We in the free software movement have been working since 1984 to build the place for you to escape to. Please help us do it! See https://gnu.org/help.
Not the Onion: Trump Chief of Staff Calls Meeting to Insist No One Is About to Be Fired.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators not to do more favors for factory farms.
US citizens: Call on the Housing Department to preserve "inclusive" and "free from discrimination" in its mission statement.
The US deportation thugs "reframe immigration as a national security issue, which is to say, an exploitable source of national fear." The bully has turned it into a fount of hate and dehumanization.
We don't need such an agency, so let's get rid of it.
The American Petroleum Institute is proved guilty by its own documents of a conspiracy to destroy the Earth's climate.
This amounts to genocide, not of a specific race but of the human race as a whole (as well as most other species). It is the ultimate crime. Thus, it is not just the American Petroleum Institute that should pay for this. All the individuals that knowingly participated should pay, with a sentence of life in prison.
"When fixing items is actively discouraged by manufacturers, recycling becomes a political act."
Repair of digital devices demands free software.
Chinese Crackdown Separates Pakistani Husbands from Uighur Wives.
Senator Warren proposed a bill to cut off the ways bankster executives avoid punishment for crimes.
Doug Jones appealed to progressive Democrats for support, and tried to appear as a progressive (he fooled me). Now his supporters press him not to support bank deregulation.
The nerve gas used to attack Sergei Skripal was produced at only one site in Russia, as far as is known.
Why not arm teachers? A teacher just injured students by firing a gun unintentionally while teaching about "gun safety".
Don Blankenship's cost-cutting on safety killed 29 miners. He spent a year in prison for that crime. Now he is likely to become a senator, if Democrats nominate the corporatist Steve Mnuchin again.
The liar fired the White House aide who confirmed that the liar had fired Tillerson on the spur of the moment, not based on an advance plan.
In Missouri, teenagers are sometimes pressured into marriage by a combination of bad laws and bad religion.
People of age 14 are adolescents, not children — let's not infantilize teenagers. If they want to have sex, that's normal; they should. But it is unreasonably young to get married. However, just prohibiting their marriage won't spare them the factors that pressure them to do so.
The direct source of the problem is the lying law that redefines "rape" arbitrarily to include voluntary sex. This law put Heather Strawn in the position where the only way to protect her boyfriend from prison was to marry him.
However, religious interference with birth control and abortion are also part of the cause. No one of any age should ever "have to" get married because of pregnancy: that's what abortion is for. With proper sex education and a good medical system, unwanted pregnancy would hardly ever occur.
The patriarchal attitude towards women is also part of the cause, but I don't need to explain that because the article does.
Jewish Voice for Peace invited an Arab member of Israel's parliament to give talks in the US about Israel's erosion of democracy. Israel's parliament has prohibited him from going.
(Satire) Proud Billionaire Helps Young Son Open First Offshore Bank Account.
For-Profit System Driving Up Health Costs for US, While Outcomes Remain Poor.
The Tories plan to hit poor Britons hard — single parents will face cuts of 20% in their income.
The Tories don't want to admit it, but all their cuts since 2010 have focused on the poor.
With the further cuts, many will not be able to afford food, after paying for child care so they can waste all day in the job center making futile applications for jobs they won't be offered, and which wouldn't pay enough to live on anyway.
The poor people of Britain might win better treatment if they demand it collectively with audacious protests.
Democrats 'Fooling Themselves' to think Wall Street Giveaway Will Bolster 2018 Chances. "The Democratic senators preparing to vote for this thing are either Wall Street toadies or complete political naifs."
Most of them are toadies. They were paid 70 million dollars to do this.
We need to make them lose a primary first rather than lose to a Republican later.
James Schwab quit his job for the US deportation thugs "because I didn't want to perpetuate misleading facts."
"… the Trump administration isn't just sloppy with the facts. It has engaged in a deliberate campaign to suppress information that contradicts its corporate and ideological extremist agenda."
The chemical attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal was carried out with an unusual nerve gas developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
Since the chemical structure is a secret, not many groups could have made it.
This is not yet conclusive proof that Russia carried out the attack, but does make it likely.
If We Want to Support Refugees, We Need To End the Wars That Create Them.
Raising the minimum age for buying guns would not do much to prevent killings in schools.
Banning high-powered rifles like the AR-15 is useful because the wounds they cause are especially likely to be fatal.
Eliminating the loopholes in the background check system would prevent some killers from getting guns.
The Canadian system of gun control works pretty well; we could copy that.
To make biofuels part of the solution instead of part of the problem, we need a carbon tax.
Rep. Lipinski got hundreds of thousands of dollars for delaying an automatic train braking system that would prevent some train crashes.
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect more of the range of the Southern Resident orcas.
US citizens: Tell the EPA: Protect teenage farmworkers from toxic pesticides.
Gina Haspel's confirmation hearings will provide a chance to ask her about her crimes, including torture and destruction of evidence.
Senator Rand Paul will vote against Gina Haspel.
This means there is a possibility of blocking her approval.
States that have legalized or decriminalized possession of marijuana should expunge the criminal records of those convicted for that.
A dissident Iranian professor has been imprisoned for "anti-state propaganda".
That's what one expects in a regime that tramples human rights.
Facebook Quietly Hid Webpages Bragging of Ability to Influence Elections.
Students from 3,000 US schools participated in the gun control protest.
Former Equifax Executive Charged with Insider Trading After Data Breach.
"A young Stephen Hawking would never have made it in today’s age of austerity."
"I would not have survived", he said, without the NHS (as it was).
(Satire) Gina Haspel Recalls Having To Torture More Prisoners Than Male Colleagues To Prove Herself.
Speculation about why Putin found it useful to murder a harmless person in the UK.
Some US universities demand that students and/or visitors promise not to support a boycott aimed at Israel.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to support a boycott of any institution.
Right-wing billionaire Sheldon Adelson is happy to work with anti-semites as long as they support the Israeli state.
A Danish pension fund will divest from Motorola because of its links with the occupation of Palestine.
Israel won't allow Palestinian prisoners to have enough blankets.
Imposing painful and dangerous cold or heat is one of the lesser forms of torture that prison thugs often impose, either from sadism or by policy.
Israeli soldiers attacked Palestinian medics who were trying to take wounded Palestinians to a hospital.
Being realistic about nuclear weapons means recognizing that complex systems do not always work as intended.
Indeed, a complex system often has failure modes that nobody anticipated, not even the designers, and that the people operating the system were therefore never trained to deal with.
US citizens: Tell the Department of the Interior: No drilling or seismic exploration in the Arctic Refuge.
US citizens: tell your state to get out of the Crosscheck voter-suppression program.
A federal court ordered Saboteur Pruitt to carry out the smog reduction regulations he had tried to forget about.
A science teacher faces an "investigation" for feeding a puppy to a large turtle.
What do they expect a turtle to eat? Salad? Pizza? Would they keep a barn owl and not let it eat mice?
Isn't it bizarre to emphasize that "at no time was the safety of students or staff compromised." Why not mention that there was no earthquake and no meteorites fell? This point was not logically pertinent, but I suspect that the psychological effect of mentioning it was, irrationally, to make people more afraid and upset.
Republicans want the troll to send armed federal agents to patrol voting places. To scare off some voters, we must presume.
The only significant threat to Americans' right to vote comes from Republican voter-suppression and these patrols will do nothing to protect voters from that.
Nebraska falsifies licenses and registrations to get execution drugs.
For the past several years, the focus on the issue of which drugs are used for executions has sucked the energy out of the campaign to end the death penalty. It reminds me of how the biannual DMCA exception process has sucked the energy out of the campaign to repeal the DMCA. I wonder if these two similar cases have more in common than the outcome.
Mexicans staying in Tijuana and seeking to cross the US border seem to be mostly non-criminals who want to rejoin their children in the US.
Tillerson didn't do a good job as secretary of state, but it was still too good for the troll to tolerate.
For instance, he had the sense to support the nuclear deal with Iran.
High school students across the US are planning to go out of school today for a short protest, defying right-wing school officials that have threatened to punish them.
That's the spirit! The courage to defy repressive authority is admirable.
As for the officials' claim it is "unsafe" for students to go outside the school, this contributes to the stultifying paranoia that already infantilizes American teenagers. That's a different issue, but perhaps a more important one than guns. After all, only a tiny fraction of American high school students get shot, but almost all face being overprotected from the requisites of ordinary life.
"Scientists found a strong link between high temperatures near the pole and unusually heavy snowfall and frigid weather farther south."
Indonesia's fanatical Muslims have launched a fake news bigotry campaign to take over Indonesia.
The London housing bubble has partly burst, but this alone will not undo the effects of many factors that have priced housing out of most people's reach.
An underground organization of young men of the Oromo people brought down the autocratic and repressive prime minister of Ethiopia.
The troll has fired Tillerson and wants to move the CIA director to his post.
Tillerson was a former Exxon executive and pursued some policies for the good of the oil companies. Notwithstanding that, he was sincere about trying to serve the traditional establishment idea of the US national interest, not the subservient henchmen that the troll really wants.
Fishing for Krill is an Eco-Disaster: We Must Protect the Antarctic.
Here's how the problems develop.
If the krill are gone, whales won't have anything to paint with!
In subcontracting of night cleaning work, "The way [a business can] make money … is to cheat."
Subcontracting makes it easy to cheat, as well as to rape. We can clean up both problems substantially by putting an end to subcontracting.
Republicans in the House of Representatives decided to shut down their investigation of the cheater's collusion with Russia and to find that there wasn't any.
Amnesty International calls on Spain to repeal the law that prohibits expression of certain opinions.
A study estimates that 400,000 Americans die each year from the effects of lead poisoning.
(Satire) Betsy DeVos Argues Issue Of Guns In Schools Should Be Fully Left Up To Individual Shooters.
To make America great again calls for making America pay attention to science again.
It also calls for making the life of non-rich people great again, and rejecting corruption again, but those are other issues.
Bringing risk back into playgrounds gives children a chance to learn good attitudes towards small dangers.
Carefully selecting the risks may not be a mistake, as Ms Skenazy claims. Selected "controlled" risks may be just as effective for introducing children to the risky aspects of life as "uncontrolled" risks.
US citizens: oppose Republican plans to arm teachers.
In general, more guns make people less safe.
US citizens: call on Congress not to fund the bully's deportation machine.
Every year, there is a celebration of the 1960s voting rights movement that passed the Voting Rights Act, subsequently weakened by right-wingers on the Supreme Court. Nowadays there is a campaign for voting rights for former prisoners, and a campaign to inform many current prisoners that they are entitled to vote from prison.
The challenge of rehabilitating imprisoned criminals is to give them a stake in their community. Voting will surely help.
One of the advantages for a rural area in having a prison is that the prisoners are counted as part of its population. Right-wingers might be less eager for private prisons if the prisoners could outvote them.
A group of vigilantes in Ulster, that killed or wounded alleged drug dealers, shot a man for participating in a protest against them. The group later developed into terrorists.
The thug that attacked Johnnie Jermaine Rush now faces charges.
Destroying the Notorious Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo Is a Huge Mistake.
The TSA is taking and searching domestic passengers' computers and phones, with no warrants and apparently no authorization under the constitution.
Global heating is killing trees by the millions, and this means increased greenhouse gas emissions.
ACLU: don't play into the hands of right-wing provocateurs by trying to censor them — instead, use your freedom of speech.
The Tories get millions from Russians and Saudis.
Many video games incorporate right-wing ideology. This could be another reason to kick the proprietary video games out of your life.
Paying women less than men is a relic of a world in which all kinds of work were gender-segregated, and the jobs women did were paid less because the workers were women.
The Netherlands has shown that, for most criminal convicts, there is no need to put them in prison. We should forget the idea that convicts have to "pay a debt to society" and think instead about how to discourage crime.
Destroying biodiversity is "burning the library of life", and the result will be increasing instability of the ecosystems that make our life possible.
About programs to teach young teenagers the alternative to toxic masculinity.
Burning coal may have caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.
FAIR: coverage of the West Virginia teachers' strike illustrates how mainstream US media treat labor issues as unimportant.
US citizens: call on members of Congress to stop accepting funds from the NRA.
Don't pity the militarists for supporting the conquest of Iraq 15 years ago. They had plenty of opportunity to open their eyes and recognize the reasons not to start that war — if they had wanted to.
If Labour wins election in Britain, then decides to stay in the EU, some think it could achieve progressive reform of the EU itself.
I think this might be possible if progressive parties were in power in other important European countries. But there is no chance of that in the next few years. France, Germany and Italy have had elections recently so there won't be any chance to put progressives in power there.
Amnesty International: Myanmar Builds Military Bases on the Site of Rohingya Homes And Mosques.
AI software has made it easy to create fake recordings showing the person of your choice saying and doing whatever you choose.
How long before thugs start doing this to the people they shoot?
Farid Hilali wants 2 million dollars compensation for five years false imprisonment in the UK and Spain, based on no evidence.
The profligate spending of the troll's cabinet saboteurs says something about their attitude towards their country: they think it belongs to them.
In the dirty gang war in Northern Ireland, between the IRA terrorists and "loyalist" terrorists, UK thugs used threats and blackmail to force people to become informers.
I am unable to reach a moral conclusion about these informers, because of the imponderable consequences described in the article.
Many Americans in the 70s and 80s supported the IRA's goal of separating Ulster from the UK and incorporating it into Ireland. I never saw anything desirable about this. What good is there in satisfying a certain number of Catholics by disappointing a larger number of Protestants? In any case, Ireland was a repressive Catholic theocracy, banning abortion, contraception, even divorce. I could hardly wish a government like that on anyone.
Ireland has almost eliminated its previous theocracy. Soon it will probably legalize abortion. Perhaps soon there will be no substantive reason for Ulster Protestants to oppose uniting Ulster with Ireland.
Israeli land-thieves build a "settlement" on a Palestinian family's land, protected by soldiers of course.
Distrustful of real experts, young people are turning to bogus expertise such as astrology.
Serious astrology, based on a person's entire chart, has been tested very thoroughly, and was a complete wash-out. An experiment compared all the variables of the astrological chart with all the variables measured by a thorough personality test, and found no relationship whatsoever.
Restaurant managers say they don't make waiters pay for customers that leave without paying. But waiters say they are forced to do this.
Likely climate tipping points could lead to much larger global heating in the lifetime of most people reading this.
We don't know enough to say for certain whether it will happen, but ignoring the danger is lunacy. Why do so many people go in for such lunacy?
Six months undercover in the world of precarious work. It's not enough for the workers to do their jobs; they are required to spout the ideology of devotion to the company.
Britons are nostalgic for the British Empire based on a one-sided picture which the peoples of the former colonies do not agree with.
It is ironic that colonial laws imposed to help Britain repress the colonized people are now being used by some of them to repress others of them. One of these laws was imprisonment without trial. In South Africa it was used by the apartheid state to imprison those who criticized apartheid. In Israel it is used today to imprison Palestinians.
I disagree with the claim that the evacuation of Dunkirk was an "ignoble retreat". It was a retreat, for sure, but there is nothing ignoble about retreating in good order. Sometimes — as in the case of Dunkirk — retreating is exactly what an army needs to do to win the war. A good commander must have the moral courage to retreat when necessary.
Martin Shkreli defended his bullying and greed, saying that they are the way people succeed in America. Sentencing him to prison is not enough; we have to change America so that his claim ceases to be true.
The habits of thinking of the past few thousand years have brought humanity to a crisis which threatens a mass extinction. We need to change some of them.
US citizens: call on senators to protect the Tongass National Forest.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose SESTA/FOSTA, the bills to make web sites responsible for what people post on them.
I suggest also saying you oppose the calculated confusion of the term "sex trafficking". Call for any laws directed at ending enslavement to give clear boundaries for what is not allowed, so that they won't treat other activities as enslavement.
The Department of Injustice announced plans to increase "civil forfeiture", which is the practice of punishing people for alleged crimes without a trial or even formal charges.
When a thug went wild and attacked Johnnie Jermaine Rush, Rush was not killed, but it is vitally important to prosecute the thug.
If thugs are prosecuted only when they kill, they won't be taught a lesson very often. Prosecuting them for the far more frequent nonfatal crimes is what we need in order to change their culture of violence.
"I've seen the hidden horrors of high-speed slaughterhouses." Allowing companies to inspect their own work is an invitation to cheating.
The higher the level of racial segregation and inequality in a state, the more likely thugs are to kill blacks there.
Luis Mancheno fled for his life and got asylum in the US. Now an immigration lawyer, he describes the sadistic dishonest repression that confronts refugees coming to the US today. He says that it's not worth trying, not even to save your life.
In effect, that means the bully has achieved his goals of sadism.
It's similar in Britain.
The West Virginia Teacher's Strike Is What Real Resistance Looks Like.
A one-day protest doesn't have enough impact on politicians that blatantly act with contempt towards the non-rich.
Saboteur of Housing Carson is accused of making the staff of the department live in fear.
Kellyanne Conway violated federal law by electioneering for candidate Roy Moore.
The big question is whether there is any way to punish her for this without the cooperation of her boss, the cheater in chief.
People in San Francisco have physically attacked driverless cars. It seems wise to me.
In different circumstances, there might be nothing wrong with driverless cars, assuming they function well, which is an engineering challenge that I suppose will eventually be achieved.
Under our present circumstances, we must expect them to do systematic harm, at the level of employment and that of privacy, and the better they function the worse harm they will do.
Surveillance cameras posted around New Orleans make the residents feel the heavy boot of repression.
There are many reasons for progressives not to admire Israel.
Another reason not mentioned is that Israel's domestic policies even as regards Jews are rather right-wing: supporting business more than workers or poor people.
Israel has arrested Palestinian social worker Munther Amira, leading to international condemnation from social workers.
"Both Trump and Kim Jong-un believe they are winning — and the risks of that are epic."
German unions are pushing for reduced working hours.
The Guardian's China correspondent describes watching Xi's repression build up year by year.
The lack of democracy in the EU has become manifest, and people are generally dissatisfied with it.
The only government worth loyalty is one that will lead us to defeat the banksters.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Preventing Preemptive War in North Korea Act.
While it's good that the bully said he will talk with North Korea, that doesn't eliminate the danger he will start a war. What if he doesn't like the way the meeting goes?
The UK is trying to sabotage EU negotiations aimed at limiting deforestation in Indonesia caused by the palm oil trade.
Right-wing Hindu extremists are accused of murdering Indian Atheist activist Gauri Lankesh.
Debt, Corruption and Tax Policies Impact Poverty, Says Vatican at United Nations.
Washington State has passed a law requiring independent investigations of killing by thugs, and reducing their special legal protection from prosecution.
These are positive steps, but the most important point is to make it harder for them to conspire to lie to present the killing as justified.
The Koch Brothers want to teach a misleading picture of slavery in the US and how it related to the writing of the US Constitution.
(Satire) Other meddlesome countries complain that Russia is getting all the credit for meddling in the US election.
The success of the bully's repression of unauthorized immigrants is causing farms in California to go without harvest workers.
In the long term, the market will adjust — perhaps by paying a decent wage for this work.
Perhaps some of the agriculture will move to Mexico. It certainly won't be able to stay in California, because global heating is reducing the water available for irrigation there.
One reason why the bully has so much power is that Democrats voted to give presidents too much power.
In parts of Alabama, many houses discharge raw sewage, which often contaminates drinking water and makes people sick.
The students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School compelled the Florida legislature to pass a gun control measure with some significant beneficial provisions.
It's a small step, and includes funds for the foolish purpose of training teachers to shoot. Nonetheless, it testifies to the students' effectiveness, since no one else was able to achieve even this much. If they keep it up, and others support them, it could make a difference in coming elections.
Research shows that Airbnb in New York City has raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification.
Fossil fool executives express their irritation at pipeline protesters.
(Satire) Reminding Americans that the troll's sexual liaisons are a side issue.
He's not just screwing porn stars. If you're not rich, he's screwing you every day.
Why do some Democratic senators support bank deregulation? For money.
A trial, San Francisco vs various big oil companies, will require them to show what they knew about global heating and when they knew it.
US citizens: call on Congress to reinstate the DACA program and refuse to increase funding for deportation or for the bully's border wall.
I hate the hokey term "dreamers", but I support the substance so I signed it.
Everyone: call for charges against killer thug Mateau.
US citizens: call on the Senate to support S.J.Res.54 to end U.S. military involvement in the bombardment and blockade of Yemen.
Quebec's doctors say, "Give our pay raise to the nurses — they need it."
LAPD Finally Starts Fixing Its Awful Body Camera Policy, But It's Not All Good News.
Senators Patrick Leahy and Steve Daines Seek to Rein in Warrantless Border Searches of Electronic Devices.
The Arctic Is Melting Down as the Antarctic Food Chain Is Breaking. And catastrophic changes are starting in San Francisco, Louisiana, West Africa, New Zealand, and the world's forests. Coral reefs could start dissolving.
Ohio Gas Well Was Spewing Methane Pollution Three Weeks After Blowout.
The newer safety standards approved by the EPA under Obama would have prevented this, but they didn't apply to pre-existing wells. And the Republicans want to cancel them entirely.
Some senators are trying to prohibit participation in boycotts directed at Israel for its occupation of Palestine. The ACLU explains why the bill is unconstitutional.
Monsanto's internal documents show efforts to suppress scientific investigation of its products, and a tendency to claim that studies that show danger are "junk".
How Big Tobacco is pushing its addictive product to children.
Do-dirty has put UN special rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz on a list of "terrorists", officially to be spied on, unofficially to be killed.
Sweden demands that China allow political prisoner Gui Minhai to meet with its diplomats and doctors.
Xi will not be afraid of Sweden's military or economic power, but these criticisms will have an effect on China's global prestige. Contrast this with the behavior of the UK, which visibly sucks up to China's money, or the US, which is so hypocritical that its criticisms have little effect.
The bully agreed to meet Kim Jong-un for nuclear negotiations.
That's a relief. I hope for the best in these negotiations.
The ACLU is suing to overturn Kansas's law that requires voters to present either a birth certificate or a passport, or naturalization papers, to be able to vote.
Like all Republican voter-suppression measures, it is presented as a way to "correct" a problem that hardly exists at all, and was calculated to block legitimate voters that are likely not to vote Republican.
Sanders and some Democratic senators have proposed a plan to rebuild, not privatize, America's infrastructure.
Republican Senator Kennedy has introduced a fake net neutrality bill, designed to appear to reinstate network neutrality, but in an ineffective way.
Time For Action: Seven Proposals From Sweden For Reducing Sexism and Sexual Violence in the Midst of #MeToo.
These proposals look good to me. They all aim at preventing serious problems, and it is clear that they do.
Vancouver has imposed a special tax on housing units that remain empty, or underutilized, more than half of the time.
Spanish Women Give Up Work for a Day in First 'Feminist Strike'.
This is part of a broader movement.
For the Tories, Eliminating the Deficit Was Just a Pretext to Slash the State.
Likewise for US Republicans and center-right Democrats, since Carter.
The Saboteur of Housing, displaying overt support for racism, has eliminated the goal of ending discrimination in housing.
Assad's forces are conquering Eastern Ghouta.
'Guilty of being poor': Does California Couple's Poverty Amount to Child Abuse?
I am sure it is possible to convince them to accept state aid without going so far as to jail them.
The US government has sued California over some of its sanctuary laws designed to impede mass deportations.
Senator Warren proposes 17 amendments to the bank deregulation bill, to remove all its harmful aspects.
The way SCROTUS are handling this, senators can't even tell what the bill will be when it finally passes. If they are rational, they have to assume the worst, which means vote no at every stage.
On Twitter, false claims tend to spread faster than the truth.
This suggests that we regard the problem as a flaw in Twitter as a system. Naturally, unscrupulous people and groups take advantage of the flaw, but who they are and what they do may be less important than fixing the flaw.
US citizens: Tell Senator Schumer to fight the bank deregulation bill.
US citizens: tell Congress not to defend Monsanto by cutting WHO's cancer research funding.
North Korea has invited the US to nuclear negotiations. This would be great news if the US government were prepared to talk.
The US is using Google's deep-learning free software to analyze images taken by drones.
I don't find anything scandalous in using deep learning to aid human analysts in understanding what they see. But it would be a small step from there to a policy of "bomb anything that the AI program flags", which would be an automatic killer robot.
The West Virginia Teachers' Strike Is Over. But the Fight for Healthcare Isn't.
Iran: two years in prison for showing your head in public.
A bill in Rhode Island threatens to impose censorship requirements on ISPs.
We've seen the results of this in the UK. People who can afford their own accounts can pay to disable the censorship. Those who must use public access WiFi will be blocked.
Any imposed censorship is incompatible with network neutrality.
Remember the "dispersant" that Billionaire Polluters (BP) dropped on the oil from the Big Spill?
It proved to be toxic, and a substantial fraction of the Coast Guard and cleanup workers exposed to it got sick.
Senator Schumer gave a speech to the Israeli lobbying organization, AIPAC, which in effect endorsed annexation of all of the Palestinians' territory.
Right-wing men (they tend to be men) in Washington DC find that women reject them for that.
The poisoner's plan for oil drilling off all US coasts threatens important industries based on the sea. The only aspect which is not as bad as one might have feared is that the total amount of available oil is not so large.
At least this will limit the amount of global heating that results from this stupid plan.
The bully must publish his rules for drone assassinations.
It's impossible to detect school shooters in advance by monitoring the social media postings of all students, because (1) most of those who commit violence don't show signs in advance, and (2) most of the students that show what people might take for signs don't commit violence.
To make schools safer, don't put more thugs in them.
I can't judge the effectiveness of the SEAD program, but I'm pretty sure that teachers who are overworked and overstretched, and desperately aiming for high results on standardized tests, won't have much attention to spare for "the whole child". I think the first step towards making schools safer is to address those systemic problems. I expect that will reduce the stress on students, too, and that might by itself reduce the school shootings along with plenty of other problems.
Tennessee wants to fund thugs in schools — typically arresting students — through forfeiture. Two injustices for the price of one.
Civil forfeiture is simply punishment without trial.
The new effective ruler of Salafi Arabia has doubled the rate of executions. Among the prisoners awaiting execution are some political prisoners convicted of protesting.
Stores propose to do away with cash registers, and the staff that run them, by pressuring people into paying with their phones and thus getting totally profiled.
Using this dis-service will put other people out of work and thus spread poverty. It will also result in tracking you. So don't be tracked — pay cash!
If you go to a store and find you don't have enough cash, that is no reason to let the store know who you are. Visit an ATM to get cash, then pay cash!
And make sure that your computers' WiFi is totally off before you enter the store.
That will take a few minutes. Don't you value your freedom enough to make a few minutes' effort to preserve it?
The US in 1988 had hardly anyone who supported the whole right-wing agenda. They were created subsequently by the right-wing media machine. In the past 10 years, progressives have used social media to awaken many Americans to their agreement with progressive views, which the mainstream media generally downplay.
The result is that there are now many thoroughgoing progressives as well as some thoroughgoing right-wingers.
I actively avoid watching TV news. If it ever covers something important, I will read about that elsewhere, and there's never any hurry about it. Even NPR bothers me with how right-wing it tends to be.
Myanmar: Forced Starvation Of Rohingya Highlights Danger of Premature Returns.
The UK threatens to punish immigration prisoners for their hunger strike by deporting them faster.
The state already intends to deport them, and is waiting only to the extent imposed by legal requirements. How, then, could it deport them faster? By violating their legal rights?
Bad news: Australia and East Timor have signed a treaty to divide up the fossil fuels in the sea between them.
That makes the biggest threat to civilization's survival even worse. Fortunately the extraction is still held up by disagreements about commercial plans.
An Australian whistleblower revealed that Australia was snooping on the cabinet of East Timor. Ever since, Australia has kept him under house arrest.
US citizens: call on the Air Force to leave the Desert National Wildlife Refuge alone.
Uber's Underpayment of Drivers Keeping It Afloat, Report Finds.
We can protect our freedom by protecting drivers' pay rates.
Around the former Soviet Union small plaques on houses commemorate the millions murdered by Stalin's repression.
Some of them were dissidents. Some of them were suspected based on Stalin's paranoia. Some were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For the Tories, the wish to buy lots of ammunition washes away all sins from Salafi Arabia.
Steven Pinker's environmental optimism is based on shallow fallacies.
Laura Moser, the progressive candidate attacked by the establishment Democrats, passed the first round of the Democratic primary and is likely to win the run-off.
The publicity she gained from this attack seems to have boosted her vote.
Americans are becoming firmly progressive, and will eventually make the Democratic Party come along. But it is important to do this quickly.
Gary Cohn: Mission Accomplished — Goldman Sachs won, the US lost.
The establishment center-right Democratic Party of Illinois is attacking progressive Democratic candidates with absurd charges.
Teachers are afraid to touch students, and doctors are afraid to touch patients. Coworkers are afraid to touch coworkers.
How the new business-supremacy treaty CETA would eliminate existing national regulations in Europe.
It would oppress Canada as well.
Large areas of land around San Francisco Bay are likely to be flooded in this century.
The article makes an unfair contrast between this and the failure of some west-coast states to pass stronger green energy laws, but that is silly. No state can prevent global heating on its own.
Ayn Rand was fundamentally wrong to dismiss the common good. If there is no common good, there is no society.
The EPA air pollution rules that the bully is getting rid of save a lot of money. But they save it for poor people, and cost a smaller amount of money for rich people.
For Republicans, only the rich people matter.
Proposing the human right to an environment conducive to good health.
The FBI pays employees of computer repair stores to search the computers for things they can prosecute, sneaking around the requirement to get a search warrant.
This illustrates how any prohibition on possessing copies of some publication threatens human rights.
US citizens: phone your senator to oppose the Bank Lobbyist Act.
European Union citizens: oppose the plan to impose automatic copyright censorship filters on the European web.
US citizens: support banning assault weapons.
To sign this without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: oppose the nomination of anti-LGBT lawyer Gordon Giampietro as a US judge.
Corporations controlled by AIs would be an even bigger threat to humanity than corporations today.
See also my story, Made for You.
A black man from Jamaica describes going to school in the US, and learning the constant fear of being attacked by thugs for the slightest shadow of a reason.
An analysis of survey data suggests that US Liberals mostly support free speech for views they oppose, even more broadly than they did decades ago.
This is good news, since the loss of freedom of speech about political views leads to the sort of tyranny we see congealing in China.
When the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee calls you, hang up.
United cut the bonuses for its staff by offering them tickets to a lottery instead.
The staff will get less money, all told, but more excitement. Those who are foolish may think this is an improvement.
Secret NYPD Files: [Thugs] Who Lie And Brutally Beat People Can Keep Their Jobs.
Even worse, the thug department conceals their record of lies, to help them get away with further testilying in court (to use the word the thugs use for it).
The West Virginia legislature gave all state employees a 5% raise, and the teacher strike has ended in victory.
Australia is quickly destroying what remains of its native forests. Many farmers hate and sabotage neighboring farmers that protect forest on their own land.
Another politician is being pressured to resign over vague accusations that amount to "someone disapproves of something, someone didn't like something".
Am I the only person who sees a danger of injustice in judging people over secret accusations?
Polish nationalists in the 1930s implemented anti-semitic campaigns and discrimination. The current ruling party is their follow-on.
That doesn't mean that the current ruling party is anti-semitic. It has a choice about that. However, denying the past will interfere with making the ethical choice.
Comcast’s "Protected Browsing" Blocks TorrentFreak as "Suspicious" Site.
I wish TorrentFreak would stop calling sharing "piracy". I link to their articles because they are interesting, but this makes me feel bad about it.
Detroit thugs have pressured 250 businesses to set up remote cameras for the thugs to look through. These are expensive for the businesses, but even more expensive for people's human rights.
Violence Forces Aid Trucks to Flee Syria's Eastern Ghouta Without Unloading. Assad's forces attacked them.
The West Virginia teachers are striking without support from their union, which is forbidden by state law from striking.
Despite the Republican hatred for workers and therefore for unions, workers can still win if they have courage.
Pressing the envelope on surveillance: the TSA is putting body scanners in Penn Station.
Any kind of checkpoint will randomly catch some criminals of some kind, but we don't want the repressive society that this creates.
Trump Wants to Get Rid of the Heating Support That Kept Me Safe.
After each mass shooting, people ask, "Why didn't we realize in advance that person would be a killer? We noticed some warning signs but didn't follow up."
The reason is that these warning signs don't indicate much. For each person that displays some of these signs and goes on to kill, thousands of others display the same warning signs but don't kill anyone.
Thugs hope that we won't realize this, and that we will agree to advance the surveillance state towards total surveillance.
The ACLU already showed that "fusion centers" are used to investigate dissidents and protesters. They don't protect us, they threaten us. We should cancel them.
Following the lead of the US Republicans, the Tories are step by step denying the vote to disadvantaged people who are likely to vote against them.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to insult people, but in Belgium a mere insult is a crime if it is sexist in nature.
I don't like sexist or racist insults, but that doesn't mean it should be a crime to say them.
The prohibition is not limited to insults, and I can't figure out what the limits are. If you say, "I don't hang out with her because I don't find her attractive", is that criminalized because it "reduces someone to his or her sexual dimension"?
There is a proposal in the UK to make it a crime to say or do anything that makes a woman feel uncomfortable.
It starts by talking about "sexist abuse", but if you keep reading, you'll see that the criterion for what is to be prohibited is purely subjective.
I support the goal of teaching people not to be sexist, but not through totalitarian means, and not by restricting freedom of speech.
The Male Glance: How We Fail to Take Women's Stories Seriously.
Part of the way it works is by assuming that any interesting aspects of a woman's art are the result of luck rather than capable artistic thought.
Another aspect is the dismissal of some books as "chick lit" because "that is just meant to appeal to women". We could equally well dismiss some writing as "dick lit" because "that is just meant to appeal to men". The former term is, and the latter term would be, nothing but an excuse to reject and dismiss. But why dismiss a book merely because it addresses issues that interest a certain large segment of people?
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose deregulation of banks.
US citizens: call on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to support progressive values instead of opposing them.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bully's budget.
Authors get 3% of the sales price of their books.
My alternative systems of supporting authors and artists might do a better job.
Australia's planned repression of whistleblowers will include journalists too.
A Polish right-wing group, connected with the ruling right-wing party, is trying to sue an Argentinian newspaper for "defaming the Polish nation".
The alleged "defamation" is a rather subtle point — a juxtaposition — which means that this case attempts to extend the censorship to the widest conceivable level.
When governments attempt to censor publication outside the countries they govern, this attacks freedom world-wide.
The US army spreads militarism by promoting sales of army-branded guns, clothing, and video games.
I don't think we should ban, or censor, video games. There is no reason to believe that they make people violent. It is not clear that they made Nik Cruz violent. But even if they did occasionally do that, censorship is a threat to human rights.
Most video games are unjust because they are nonfree software. That is a good reason to refuse to have them on your computer. But that is a separate issue.
However, it is clear that selling US Army fan material of any kind promotes militarism, and that increases the danger of violence that can kill thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people — in other words, the danger of war.
A charity that helps the homeless also helped the UK government find and deport some of them.
Homeless immigrants need assurance that accepting help will not threaten them. For the same reason, they need assurance that seeking medical care or school for themselves or their children will not threaten them, and testifying in court will not threaten them.
Egypt's thugs and courts are so crazy that even government journalists are prosecuted for "insulting the police".
The Guantanamo kangaroo court "trial" of prisoner al-Nashiri has come to a halt. The defense lawyers all quit because they were not allowed to meet with the defendant without being spied on.
The US government absolutely insists on spying on their conversations, and no ethical lawyer will work under those circumstances, so there is no way to resume the trial. In effect, the idea of using "military tribunals" rather than fair trials has fallen into an essential contradiction.
The root of this contradiction is the government's insistence on concealing how it tortured these prisoners. However, justice demands that that this torture be revealed, and then prosecuted. It is more important to prosecute the torture of prisoners than to prosecute anything the prisoners may have done. For a patriotic American, there can be no worse crime than a crime committed by the US government.
An economic hypothesis for why US wages don't go up: with all the mergers in the US, there is little competition for employees.
When companies merge, they always say it will lead to improved "efficiency". What they mean by "efficiency" is "fewer jobs". So it is completely clear that these mergers are bad for most people.
The cheater has placed big corporations effectively above the law. Under Obama, they were fined 17 billion dollars a year. The cheater's saboteurs fine them only 1 billion a year.
How Can Liberals Defeat Populism? Here Are Four Ideas.
The US immigration thugs aim to revoke the US citizenship of naturalized citizens, using a secret rulebook that was designed to bypass their legal rights.
However, the rule book has now been published.
Several Republican state governors are refusing to schedule special elections for vacant legislative seats. They would rather keep the seats empty, and deny the people in those districts representation, than give a Democrat a chance to win.
Now people are challenging those decisions with lawsuits.
The students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School learned to speak clearly and persuasively with the help of a good education, including programs such as debate, drama, and journalism.
How the fossil fuel divestment movement persuaded New York City.
The bully wants to eliminate the immigration option that permitted his wife's parents to move to the US.
Could it be that he advocates this because he dislikes his mother-in-law?
The challenge of introducing gender-neutrality into German.
"Trickle down" never worked before, and it won't work in the tax attacks now. Its handout to the rich functions, in effect, as a handout to the rich.
Portugal's decriminalization of using illegal drugs, together with plenty of treatment and other support for users that need it, has almost eliminated the main secondary problems that drug use causes in other countries.
Don't assume that all use of illegal drugs is a problem. There are plenty of people that sometimes use marijuana and it isn't a problem at all. Marijuana should be legal, not merely decriminalized.
South Korea is trying to start peace negotiations with North Korea, hoping to draw in the US as well.
Allowing companies to collect all the personal data they can maneuver people into "consenting" to will develop into something similar to China's totalitarian "social credit" system.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban distribution and production of assault weapons and large magazines.
US citizens: oppose the bully's budget.
The Tories say austerity has hit its targets. Fortunately not all of them are dead.
In India, people of the Valmiki caste are effectively forced to clean toilets and septic tanks, because the caste bigotry won't let them do anything else.
Rather than doing the job the safe and clean way that it's done elsewhere, they are forced to do it by hand without safety gear. That makes the work dangerous.
Without the bigotry, the job would have to be done by someone, but it could be done safely. A society without caste bigotry might invest in plumbing to make parts of the job unnecessary.
"Liberal democracy is at a critical point." How to protect it?
Many companies use AI systems to evaluate job candidates. Candidates are completely mystified about why they are rejected, and can't tell whether it is due to bigotry coded into the neural net.
I would guess that many of these procedures require the candidate to run nonfree software, which is an injustice.
I would guess that many of these procedures collect lots of personal data, then use it or sell it for other purpose. This suggests that the law should require the company doing the testing to erase absolutely all the data obtained from it, after making the hiring decision.
A job interview is an opportunity to learn about a prospective employer. You might learn, from this procedure, that you don't want to work there.
Pipeline companies and plutocratist legislators are systematically attacking the right to protest across the US.
Billionaire Carl Icahn gave the bully "advice" on which regulations to eliminate to help enrich Carl Icahn. He sold stock in a company that uses a lot of steel, a couple of weeks before the bully announced new tariffs on steel imports.
Surely that's a coincidence, right?
The SEC "coincidentally" dropped its investigation of Apollo Global Management shortly after it gave Kushner a loan of almost 200 million dollars.
Of course, there is no proof that the dropped investigation was related to the company representatives' visits to the White House.
The bully wants to keep immigrants out of the US if their children, US citizens, have got federal medical or food benefits.
US immigration thugs may be the most vicious thugs in the US. They systematically practice verbal cruelty and violent physically cruelty towards their prisoners, hoping to break their spirit so that they will abandon appeals against deportation.
Cutting them off from medical care is another standard practice. If US "custody" means they must suffer untreated diseases, that might scare them away.
Blocking them from seeing their lawyers makes rational sense, too, if the aim is to arrange a miscarriage of justice.
(Satire) Nation Not Sure How Many Ex-Trump Staffers It Can Safely Reabsorb.
How the tax attacks swindle Americans (other than very rich ones).
When a patient in southern California with Aetna medical coverage needed expensive treatments, the company answered automatically "no". It's no surprise — allowing the profit element in invites such dishonesty.
There are general techniques of manipulation that can be deployed to make any sort of interactive digital activity addictive.
Reading this leads me to want to keep such interactions out of my life. In fact, I've more or less totally done so, by not carrying a mobile device, and rejecting on principle their proprietary malware cr…app software.
You can do it too, with firmness and determination.
The bully stated his desire to follow President Xi's example and become president for life.
Xi prepared for that grab by increasing his power within the Chinese Communist Party, step by step, to the point where no one could oppose him on anything.
The bully has steadily done the same within the US Republican Party. This statement is another step in the process. He has just taught Republicans that, to remain in his good graces, they must stand by uncritically while he says he'd like to abolish democracy in the US. This step follows dozens of previous steps. Step by step, his supporters learn to abandon everything they used to hold dear and become members of his cult. Tools in his hands, ready for any use, even for overthrowing the Constitution.
If they hate our freedoms, they should move to China.
Chinese workers in construction projects around the world devastate local wildlife to feed their superstitions.
A completely paralyzed person has demonstrated consciousness by answering questions by choosing what to imagine.
Chinese who remember the hell of the Cultural Revolution fear that Xi will repeat the horrors of Mao Zidong.
There is no way to prevent this. He has already grabbed so much power that no one dares resist as he tried to grab more.
With the "social credit" system they hope to convert China into a nation of loyal robots, for whom doubting even the slightest point of what they are told will be unthinkable.
Australia is promoting vaccination in an aim to eradicate cervical cancer.
Salafi Arabia is taking some first steps towards rights for women.
It has a long, long way to go, but I think we should encourage these steps so as to press for more.
We should also press for freeing political prisoner Raif Badawi.
"What we really should be asking is what McMaster and NSA director Mike Rodgers want to do that Kushner is standing in the way of."
I agree that this is an interesting question. Not because it might cast any doubts on Kushner's corruption, which we can smell, but because it might reveal some other devious schemes. After all, we can't suppose those spooks have a commitment to truth or justice.
New US Bills Introduced to Tackle Global Tax Avoidance and Corruption.
In Santa Barbara, the effects of global heating are deadly. People there can't deny it any more.
What will it take to wake up the rest of us from the lulling spell of the planet roasters?
A Canadian oil company has lost its fight to drill for oil next to a town's water supply.
Beware of the fools that reject the idea that there is such a thing as nature (or physical laws), and believe humans can manage the whole ecosphere.
I don't think humans could manage all life on Earth with our current abilities, even with complete good will. Even managing Biosphere II proved to be too difficult.
In practice, this plan would be an excuse to discard all fixed limits, so that the rich could plunder as they wish, while promising that some unspecified clever scheme would fix up the damage. Then it would become known that they never had a specific clever scheme at all, and the damage is irreparable.
News publishers have become dangerously dependent on Facebook, and the proof of just how dependent they are is that when Facebook separated news from personal postings the publishers call it "Orwellian".
What's Orwellian is this dependence.
Russian trolls supported pipeline protests, as well as fossil fuel advocates. SCROTUS want to hold this against the former but not against the latter.
It appears that Rep. Nunes in the House Intelligence Committee leaked communications of the Senate Intelligence Committee to cause trouble for it.
The US immigration thugs are now rampaging against refugees from Vietnam, imprisoning them for deportation even though, by treaty, the US cannot deport them.
Isolation for 23 hours a day is brainwashing treatment, and unacceptable for more than a short period even for criminals serving prison sentences. It is certainly not acceptable to treat people that way who are merely awaiting deportation.
Holding these people far away from their families, and stopping them from touching their families, are also inexcusable.
Kushner's web of business interests make him an easy target for foreign influence.
He's also an easy target for rich Americans, whose influence is even more dangerous. The days when rich and non-rich people had a common interest, what you might call a "national" interest, are far behind us.
Poland's law censoring statements that criticize "the Polish nation" for participation in the holocaust spurred present-day antisemitism in Poland, as well as more of the false, exaggerated criticisms of Poles during World War II that the law aimed to stop.
Occupied Poland was deadly hell, so we should not be surprised that some Poles responded with great heroism and others with great depravity. Jan Karsi's book, Story of a Secret State, presents the heroism. In this article we see Karski's presentation of the depravity. Alas, anti-Semitism provided an easy path to depravity.
Most nations with a long history have crimes in that history. The US has crimes at least as big as Poland's. To deny the crimes is self-delusion. Poles, like Americans, must recognize them and work to prevent future crimes.
Amazingly, Baltimore will refuse to pay damages for the lawsuits that criminal thugs are about to start losing. The thugs will be personally on the hook.
As they always should be.
The European Commission's plan for quick and "efficient" erasure of publications that are forbidden by censorship laws, and even those alleged to violate some terms of service, is just a hair's breadth away from arbitrary censorship without legal checks or limits.
"EU Commission’s Recommendation: Let’s put internet giants in charge of censoring Europe." The DMCA takedown system in the US has been used many times for political censorship. This system could be even worse.
Saboteur Sessions wants people that have surgery, or chronic pain, to suffer without remedy.
Car companies are planning to collect lots of data about the use of the car, and want to sell it.
The first way a "connected car" spies on the driver is through the connection itself. It uses a cell phone modem, and the phone network tracks its movements just as it tracks a cell phone.
You can disconnect the modem in your car, probably just by unscrewing it. Then the phone network can't track you, and the car isn't connected, so it can't send any data about you, such as where you travel or what you say in the car.
But it might save up data to be sent or extracted later. To prevent this, we need laws.
Responding to leftists who think that "free speech" is just a way to legitimize bigotry.
I respect the free speech of bigots, not because I agree with what they say, but rather despite the fact that I disagree with them. I am sure that if some views come to be censored, they won't be the plutocrats' views, or the bigots' views. Rather, the views that criticize them will be censored.
Since the article mentioned trigger warnings, I would like to mention the idea (which I believe I read in an article in Free Inquiry) that trigger warnings are like spoiler warnings: a way of doing a favor to people who might prefer to avoid a particular topic. To fail to warn should not be a big deal, but when you have an opportunity to do people this favor, why not do it?
Russia claims to have tested a nuclear-powered drone for dropping nuclear bombs. Testing it is dangerous even if it never carries real bombs.
Monarch butterflies will be threatened by spraying a pesticide that kills milkweed in a very large area through which the butterflies need to migrate every year.
The UK dropped the investigation into thugs that tried to spy on the sister of a prisoner that was killed by thugs.
The idea that they could have any legitimate reason to interfere with her beggars belief. Especially since they obtained no warrant to do so. What we see here is impunity for repression.
If only it were true.
The only protection from surveillance cars is to require driverless cars not to identify their passengers and not to report where they go.
How Republicans manipulated 13 Democratic senators into supporting deregulation of banks.
Whatever good this law does in regard to community banks is smaller than the harm it would do by deregulating big banks. Like almost anything today's Republicans are willing to pass, it is negative overall.
Spring in the Arctic comes 16 days earlier nowadays than it did only 10 years ago.
But even winter in the Arctic is not cold the way it used to be.
Kushner tried to get money from Qatar, to bail out his debts. Qatar said no, and soon the US supported Salafi Arabia's boycott of Qatar.
Honduras has charged a former army officer with arranging the murder of environmental defender Berta Cáceres.
The bully's handlers, and the NRA, say they have got him back on script and he won't break out into support for gun control again.
He must loathe being kept in line this way. He might snap some day and start a nuclear war.
Sinclair Broadcasting wants to "sell" a station and retain control of what it transmits, so as to meet media concentration limits in a dishonest way.
(Satire) New iPhone Will No Longer Secretly Record Every Word You Say.
Since the Sandy Hook school massacre, Republicans have foiled gun control measures, and diverted the pressure to "do something" into harmful measures: more thugs in schools to arrest more students.
What schools need, rather than guns, is funds to do a proper job of education and attend to the well-being of their students.
Internal emails from the Department of the Interior show that the motive for reducing national monuments was for extracting fossil fuels.
(Satire) 23AndMe Forensic Kit Informs Customer What Crimes He’s Committed.
Plutocratist senators are making the bank deregulation bill do even more favors for big banks.
Reports from NAFTA negotiations say they are planning a chapter to limit government regulations that protect public health and well-being.
This could be even more harmful than the ISDS clause of the current NAFTA. The Democratic senators that support bank deregulation can't be relied on to block this.
The bully's saboteurs are hiring lots of former business lawyers to work in the agencies that are supposed to regulate business. They are likely to bring with them the businesses' views about how to interpret and enforce regulations — that is to say, "weakly" and "not at all".
Saboteur Pruitt is "trying to sell the safety of our water to industrial polluters" by pulling back the regulations on coal ash.
Duke Energy tried to hide its report that its coal ash is leaking excessive levels of radioactive materials into groundwater.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is going all-out to suppress progressive ideas and even progressive primary candidates.
For many years I have tossed their fundraising mail in the recycle bin without opening it. That was all I could do on my own. Now, together, we must aim to take the Democratic Party away from the right-wing "centrist" Democrats.
The National Labor Relations Board commits Republican sabotage against workers at McDonald's.
US white supremacists designed a plan to dominate YouTube and exclude opposing views.
China is pushing censorship onto Western companies, from Apple to Mercedes-Benz.
Big businesses are not generally known for their defense of any sort of principle, other than "We should be deregulated." We shouldn't leave resistance to Chinese censorship up to them.
Everyone: Call for warnings on clothing that releases plastic microfibers.
Everyone: call on Kentucky's senators to help Martin County with its water emergency.
Seattle is installing superfluous bike racks to kick out homeless people.
Israel has blocked off the Palestinian town of Hizma, population 7000. One exit is now pedestrians only, and the other is a dirt road. Israeli soldiers won't allow anyone in except the residents.
The civil rights progress of 50 years ago has been mostly wiped out. Blacks are being pushed into poverty, stopped from voting, and stuck with bad education.
Expanding E-Verify is a Privacy Disaster in the Making.
The European Parliament is considering a twisted compromise to require most web sites to actively censor new postings to prevent copyright infringement. However, some big businesses such as Google could buy their way out of it.
Arming Islamist rebels has led to violent blowback, first in Afghanistan and then in Libya.
Right-wing falsifiers started planning to lie about the students in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School before the attack even finished.
The Republicans' tax attacks created tax incentives to move work out of the US. The No Tax Breaks For Outsourcing Act would correct them.
I think the Republicans billionaire masters will tell them not to support this.
Some schools are so overwhelmingly afraid of exaggerated dangers that they forbid students from even touching snow.
Jared Kushner's housing company jails tenants for falling behind on their rent.
The state legislature tried to prohibit the practice, but the representatives of the rich blocked it. Now it only dares propose to prohibit this when the arrears are small.
The big tax cut on bringing foreign profits to the US encouraged many multinationals to do that, but they didn't invest it — they handed it out to owners.
Just as was predicted before the Republicans did it.
Bipartisan pressure in Congress to reconsider Dubya's Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which is dangerously overbroad but not universally broad the way Obama and the bully have interpreted it.
Doesn't anyone care whether the Republicans' tax cut "works"?
It is working — to give more money to the rich. That was its real purpose.
As for whether it encourages more investment, the Republicans never cared about that.
Jared Kushner can't get a security clearance because of suspicious Russian contacts.
Could Donald Trump get a security clearance?
Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak was assassinated while investigating an official's ties with Italian criminal gangs.
US schools are pervaded by sublethal violence by the staff towards students. It is especially intense against students in groups that are targets of general prejudice or disapproval.
Giving teachers guns would enable more of this violence to be lethal.
High-ranking Mexican thugs face trial for setting up death squads to disappear suspected drug gang assistants, after torturing them in the police academy.
In Mexico one can hardly separate the thugs from the gangs. Could it be that thugs targeted those people for belonging to a rival gang?
Rep. Barbara Lee's recommendations for what any new Authorization for Use of Military Force should contain.
The recommendations from the article:
First, any new AUMF should name the specific enemy that military force is authorized against and specify the permitted mission objectives to prevent the executive branch from overstepping Congress's intent.Second, any new AUMF should include robust reporting requirements to promote democratic accountability and enable Congress to fulfill its critical oversight functions.
Third, any new AUMF should require compliance with U.S. obligations under international law to demonstrate to our allies and enemies alike that the United States is a nation that complies with the rule of law and is committed to its obligations to respect state sovereignty, human rights and the law of armed conflict.
Fourth, any new AUMF should include language that makes it clear that it is the sole source of statutory authority to use force against the enemy named in the authorization to avoid overlap, confusion, or loopholes.
And last, but perhaps most importantly, any new AUMF should include a sunset provision that sets a timetable for ensuring continued congressional approval and oversight as the conflict evolves, providing a safeguard against perpetual armed conflict or overly expansive executive interpretations
Bernie Sanders as well as one Democratic senator and one Republican senator propose to end US support for Salafi Arabia's bombardment and siege of Yemen.
US support includes selling lots of ammunition as well as tactical assistance.
The troll stated support for closing the loopholes for buying a gun without a background check.
If the result is to pass such a law, that will be a good thing. However, it had better be done quickly before he changes his mind again.
He also insisted on the foolish plan to arm lots of teachers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is protecting the cheater with a slow-down job action.
A Republican idiot said he thought Jews could have survived Nazi extermination if only they had had guns.
If Rep. Young wants to know how armed Jews fought Nazis, he should read about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. They fought valiantly, outnumbered and without heavy weapons, because they preferred to take some of the enemy with them; but they never had a hope of winning.
Alabama limits Medicaid to families with an income under $4000 a year, but that isn't harsh enough to satisfy Republicans.
The Svalbard seed vault, meant to preserve many varieties of plants in case they are lost, will be upgraded to protect it from the effects of global heating.
Now if only we could upgrade all the places that plants live.
Gas extraction in Groningen has caused hundreds of small earthquakes which have cumulatively damaged lots of buildings. The cost of compensating the owners of the buildings can be more than 5 billion euros, more than the worth of the gas and wells.
The oil company is clever about dragging its feet and pressuring homeowners to accept only partial compensation.
"Brazil's Amazon Protection Laws Invite Deforestation."
When a government says it arranges for a "balance" between the interests of the rich and the interests of humanity and/or wildlife, we should expect it to tip over and crush the latter at any moment.
Why the nitrites used to cure meat are carcinogenic while the nitrites found in lettuce are not.
A "smart" product is generally a spying product, and that's true for cities too. In addition, their spy systems tend to be privatized, so there is no public accountability about what data they collect or how that data is used.
Supposedly the data collected in Stratumseind is "about crowds, not individuals" — but what does that really mean, concretely? Does it mean that the record data do not permit identification of individuals, only of crowds? If so, maybe it is not a threat to human rights.
But it could mean that they collect and store data about lots of individuals but they are only interested when that data shows a crowd. If so, that is no protection at all, and no excuse. Tracking people's movements is a threat to human rights, and we must not stand for it except in very small and limited ways.
According to theoretical modelling, 5 years' delay in curbing global heating means 20cm extra rise in sea level.
Every year during the NRA convention, the rate of injuries caused by guns temporarily falls by 20%.
Apparently the people who attend these conventions are responsible for over 20% of the usual rate of injuries.
Portland, Oregon, has a program to help the people forced out of the city by gentrification to move back.
It's well-meaning, but I expect that thousands of people have been forced out of the city by gentrification, and that only a few percent of them will get this help to move back.
Putin says that Russia has developed missiles that can get past US ABM defenses, since Dubya terminated the ABM treaty in 2002, and warns that Russia will respond likewise to the troll's plans to develop new nuclear weapons.
I don't find this shocking, or particularly evil. Nor is Putin necessarily telling the truth about these things.
Regardless of those points, this is a further reason why the troll's nuclear weapons plans are at best foolish and wasteful.
How America's Identity Politics Went from Inclusion to Division. The US Left made a grave mistake by adopting identity politics.
People who that see that their group is the target of systematic wrongs have the right to organize to stop it. I therefore respect and support Black Lives Matter as a campaign to stop thugs from gratuitously killing black people.
"All Lives Matter" was not a serious campaign to get thugs to stop gratuitously killing people, regardless of race. If it had been, it might have deserved our support. But in fact it was a cynical racist right-wing way of saying, "Ignore the fact that thugs kill so many blacks." This distraction campaign only showed the need for Black Lives Matter.
However, when mutual defense extends to the point of tribalism, it discards the universal morality which we could all support with our better nature, and aims for nothing beyond more effective competition with other tribes. This encourages the other tribes to fight back, turning politics into a squabble between groups in which none of them has any particular right on its side.
The only goal worth aiming for is to reject tribalism and return to universal humanitarian goals.
In particular, let's reject entirely the idea that tribes own certain cultural practices. What would be left for the rest of us? Hollywood? No one should be allowed to own cultural ideas, because everyone deserves cultural freedom.
A Spanish student was convicted for making light of the assassination of dictator Franco's second in command. The Spanish Supreme Court has overturned the conviction; but it endorsed Franco's dictatorship by saying that the assassination a "tragedy" and a "terrorist act".
Franco's tyranny murdered around 200,000 prisoners. The assassination of his officers was not terrorism, it was resistance to tyranny.
Support for Franco is dangerously strong in the right-wing party that now controls Spain; indeed, his supporters, never punished, were integrated into that party and have great influence in it.
A high school teacher in Georgia brought a gun to school and started shooting in a classroom.
This illustrates one of the many flaws with the troll's plan to end school massacres by arming a million teachers.
US citizens: support changing senate rules to allow for senators that give birth to babies while in office.
(Satire) An aquarium petting zoo tank gives children the chance to pet water in its natural environment.
Some New York City public high schools rent buildings from the Catholic Church, and the contracts forbid sex education and distribution of condoms.
The city should have a law requiring all public schools to offer sex education and distribute condoms. Then the church could either find some other way to use these buildings or drop its conditions.
Gretchen Whitmer, seeking the Democratic nomination for governor of Michigan, opposes single-payer medical care. Michigan Blue Cross is pressuring its staff to donate to her campaign.
People sell phony books on Amazon, apparently for money laundering, and they use real people's social security number. Amazon refuses to cooperate with the victims who may then get stuck with paying tax on the income they never got.
Republicans have not been able to repeal Obama's medical care advances but have adopted practices that will make it collapse.
Kuwait and the UAE deny citizenship to thousands of people born there. Those countries pressure or trick the stateless inhabitants into becoming citizens of the Comoros, then threaten to deport them there.
A broad campaign of misleading articles in mainstream media with headlines about "$1000 bonuses" have convinced the public that the tax attacks are benefiting working Americans. Too bad the articles are misleading.
(Satire) Pornhub announces more selective parental controls.
Saboteur of Education DeVos appears to have many conflicts of interest, but her main preoccupation is attacking the rights of students.
Despite the efforts of racists, most Americans still welcome immigrants.
I too welcome immigrants, in small quantities. It's the large number of immigrants that causes the problem of increasing the total population of the US. That weighs on the whole world, since immigrants to the US are almost compelled to have the same sort of carbon footprint as native-born Americans.
How prison gangs create order in US prisons — and to criminals outside prison.
If essentially all the prisoners have "forbidden" cell phones, and the guards know this, I expect the guards do more than just search for them once in a while. With a Stingray they can identify the phones. I'm sure they know how to convert them to listening devices, too.
Note: other articles say that prisoners can be labeled as gang-affiliated based on vague suggestive evidence and that this leads to heavy additional punishment.
The US has interfered in elections in many countries around the world, doing things a lot nastier than what Russia is accused of doing now.
That's in addition to overthrowing elected governments in Guatemala, Iran, Haiti and Honduras.
This does not mean we should passively allow Russia to stir up racism and division in the US. But we should stop our country from doing wrong in the future.
Two proposed bills would make small advances in Americans' rights against credit-reporting companies.
In Shishmaref, Alaska, no one can miss the effects of global heating. They affect hunting and even survival of the prey animals. They are also destroying the town's land and houses.
The experimental Kemper "clean coal" power plant, which was supposed to burn coal and capture the CO2, was doomed before it was started. Executives knew their plans were likely to fail, and covered it up.
I suspect that "clean coal" was hyped intentionally by planet roasters with the specific purpose of discouraging society from doing what really needed doing: putting an end to fossil fuel use with all due speed — while there was still time to avoid disaster.
Since Republicans blocked the US government from funding research into gun violence, we have no good data about how effective various gun control measures have been — only the guesses of various camps.
Uber and Lyft Drivers' Median Hourly Wage Is Just $3.37. In other words, half make even less.
Since these businesses are based on identifying customers and tracking them, they are an injustice. Even if they paid more, they would still be an injustice. But they would not continue to exist if they didn't cheat their drivers too.
So let's just get rid of them!
Burning wood at home is not green energy.
Thousands of the workers in Disneyland don't get paid enough money to live on.
Disney's denial is based on fallacies. For instance, so what if the respondents were self-selected? Even if all the staff that did not respond have no difficulty living on their wages, that doesn't alter the fact that thousands of them do have difficulty.
The House of Representatives passed the bill to censor advertisement of prostitution services on the internet.
The bill is dishonest because it uses the term "sex trafficking" to mislead people. The text I saw did not have an explicit definition of that term, but implicitly defines it — through what it actually prohibits — to mean "advertising prostitution services".
However, the term was designed to call to mind the term "human trafficking", which refers to a form of enslavement.
Any law which uses that dishonest term is a swindle and should be rejected simply for that.
Please phone your senators to oppose it.
Oakland Mayor Schaaf warned the city that the immigration thugs were about to come through and seize them for deportation.
As usual, the thugs claimed to be getting rid of dangerous criminals, and perhaps a few of their targets really were such, but most of them were not.
Laid out in details, how blacks in the US face the same unfairnesses as they did 50 years ago.
French politicians face prosecution for posting images showing PISSI's crimes.
I do not agree at all with those politicians, who are right-wing, but this prosecution is unjust censorship regardless of their views.
The UK is using medical records to find unauthorized immigrants, so now they are afraid to visit a doctor.
(Satire) Tourism at the Great Barrier Reef a few decades from now.
Various US cities are planning safe places for users of illegal drugs to inject themselves. This will reduce various secondary dangers that result from the prohibition of those drugs.
A large study finds that neonicotinoid pesticides have harmed many kinds of wildlife but don't increase farm yields very much.
Warren Buffett rebuked the Republican Party for giving his investment company 29 billion dollars in tax cuts that the company didn't need and didn't earn.
Republicans have removed the head of the Election Assistance Commission, which helps states make their voting systems resistant to interference.
(Satire) Americans waste enough sugary food each year to give a billion people diabetes.
Explaining the lies in the Nunes memo, exposed by the Democrats' counter-memo.
Students have a right to go out of school to protest, and the US has a long history of successful protests by students.
Radio Canada plans to destroy 200,000 CDs, some rare, and says that copyright forbids it from giving them away.
The viciousness of copyright law has no end. We must legalize noncommercial sharing of copies of every published work!
Canadians, you may be able to campaign to get the government to pass a law to allow these CDs to be given to a library.
Europe's "right to be forgotten", when applied to search results, becomes a "right to rewrite history".
I support this right for companies' private databases.
Antisemitic Incidents in US Soar to Highest Level in Two Decades.
The bully supports all the usual forms of bigotry — whether about race, religion, national origin, or gender. Hates R Us could be the Republican Party slogan.
The foolish practice of letting the state know everything you buy also rebounds to harm homeless people, not to mention street musicians and charities.
The rise in sea level is speeding up.
The current acceleration, if it continues unchanged, will more than double the total rise by 2100. However, we don't know whether it will continue unchanged. Positive feedback could cause it to increase.
The "just world" myth leads people to blame victims of any sort of misfortune.
Justice is artificial, not natural. We can't expect nature to give people what they deserve. If we want there to be justice, it's up to us to make justice.
Evidence suggests that giant manta rays can recognize themselves in a mirror.
Norway Set to Ban Semi-Automatic Guns from 2021, Says Lawmaker.
Canadian citizens: oppose the bill to order ISPs to block access to sites without trial.
If filing a comment through that page requires nonfree Javascript code, you can email it to response@ccts-cprst.ca .
A new Republican scheme to drive millions of Americans out of medical insurance: create cheaper plans for healthy people only, so that those who aren't healthy will have to pay more.
Several US states are considering progressive initiative positions.
Everyone: call on Google to stop phony abortion clinics from pretending to be real abortion clinics.
In 1998, UK thugs watched idly as prisoner Christopher Alder choked to death. After his sister made a fuss about this, thugs started investigating her.
It is clear that they did so to stop her from embarrassing them over their own wrongdoing.
Now that the cheater is selling foreign policy decisions for his business profits, will selling naming rights of embassies be next?
Other countries including Australia, Canada, Britain and Israel have strict gun control laws. The US should, too.
Now that US teenagers are mobilizing for gun control, it would make sense for them to mobilize to curb global heating.
Only a small fraction of them will be killed by guns, but global heating could kill tens of millions of them, a few decades from now.
US citizens: call on your state to reject the Crosscheck voter-suppression program.
America's Richest 2% Made More Money in 2017 than the Cost of the Entire Safety Net.
How the Pentagon Devours the Budget.
US citizens: phone certain senators to oppose plans to deregulate banks even more.
The teachers of West Virginia are on strike, state-wide.
US citizens: call on Congress to insist that a redesigned NAFTA eliminate the ISDS provision, and other important changes.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency has terminated a program to investigate how chemicals affect children's health.
"Finally America's children will be allowed to choke on the freedom of a lighter regulatory burden."
The reinvigorated gun control movement can be seen as fitting into a broader movement to root out systemically entrenched violence.
US citizens: call on the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the deportation thugs for human rights violations.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the FOSTA bill, which threatens to punish web platforms for what people post in them. The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also object to the use of the dishonest term "sex trafficking", which appears to mean only "advertising prostitution services" but is intended to trick people into thinking of enslavement.
Arming teachers would increase the risk of shooting students.
Nobel laureates write to Erdoğan calling on him to free the imprisoned writers.
Global heating can harm fruit trees by denying them the winter cold they need.
Switzerland, yielding to US copyright bullies, plans to require all web sites to actively censor new postings to prevent copyright infringement.
These automatic censorship systems make lots of mistakes, but the worst injustice is their contribution to the War on Sharing.
I hope the Swiss people vote to reject this law and tell the copyright bullies to jump in the lake.
The UN says that North Korea sent Syria equipment for missiles and chemical weapons.
The commercial marketplace depends on companies to take risks which could lead them to fail. Public services must be stable and accountable. Therefore, companies should never be entrusted with providing public services.
Rex Iverson was killed by an emergency visit to the hospital. Not by the treatment, but by being jailed later because he could not pay the bill.
He had every reason to expect to spend his life in jail, working for a few cents an hour to pay it. No wonder he committed suicide instead.
An EU analysis found that neonicotinoid pesticides harm all kinds of bees. They accumulate in the environment and remain persistently.
Afghan President Offers to Recognise Taliban to End War.
The arrival of many aid workers in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake was a boon for prostitutes, since the aid workers would pay five times what Haitian clients paid.
I don't understand why some men desire sex with women that desire only their money and not them. But many men do, and given that they do, I don't see that they are doing the women any wrong by paying for their services.
Thus I conclude that this so-called "scandal" is nothing but an outbreak of irrational prudery. I suspect it has been boosted for some right-wing political motive, although I have no proof of that.
The real scandal is how some aid agencies managed to deliver so little real aid to Haiti using so much money. It's possible that the aid workers' use of the service of sex workers reflects some of the causes of the agencies' ineffectiveness, but we should focus on the causes, not on the salacious side effects.
A small town in Germany started a wave of unprivatizing public utilities.
Islamist repression continues in Aceh, with small examples of the general injustice of Islamic law.
Even worse, Islamist repression is spreading into other parts of Indonesia.
China's censors are working overtime to ban the clever ways Chinese people have expressed their disapproval of Xi's plan to become dictator for life.
One of the National Labor Relations Board's sabotage decisions has been reversed because an official who voted on it was hiding a conflict of interest.
Now it is Saboteur Carson of Housing and Urban Development who is caught in illegal excessive spending of money on his own office, and firing an official who objected.
Corruption at the top encourages corruption at all levels.
More Palestinians Are Dying Waiting to Get Medical Treatment Because Israel Won’t Give Them Travel Permits.
Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian dead, then claimed they hadn't shot him.
Israel plans to ban dissident organizations such as Breaking the Silence from going to schools.
Israel is converting itself step by step from a democratic society with open debate into a repressive state in which disagreement with the official ideology is hampered across the board.
The Supreme Court ruled that the US immigration thugs can imprison immigrants arbitrarily with no court hearings while trying to deport them.
(Satire) Pros And Cons Of Free Speech On College Campuses.
Some right-wing extremists want to use blockchain as an opportunity to eliminate democratic city governments and replace them with businesses that would own the city.
Clara Zetkin saw the Nazis take power in Germany and presented an explanation of fascism's appeal, under the conditions where democracy is too corrupted by the rich to offer the poor any hope.
The accusations against Geoffrey Rush have been made somewhat more specific.
Pursuing a woman into the women's bathroom and making some sort of demand from just outside her toilet stall would be hard to justify.
As for touching her in some unspecified way while carrying her, that is still too vague. I could imagine things it might mean which she would validly object to, and other possible meanings that would not deserve criticism.
Anyway, this is a big step forward in clarity from "inappropriate".
EFF: Customs and Border Protection's Biometric Data Snooping Goes Too Far.
I think it is wrong for the state to make a register of people's biometric data, aside from people convicted of serious crimes.
The Mozilla foundation called on India to release the software for its biometric identification system as free software (actually they said "open source", but I don't advocate that).
Their recommendations don't go far enough. The existence of a national ID system is a tool for repression regardless of how it is implemented.
Using touch-screens and not using pencils leads to children that don't have the finger strength to hold a pencil properly.
Mumbai moves evicted poor people into a modern slum where the air is so polluted that nearly everyone is ill from that. The neighborhood has no schools, pharmacies or work. They have been sent there to die.
It is certainly possible for India to treat them better — today. But if India's population keeps growing, there will be a time when that is no longer possible.
Dr Wakefield, whose false research results cast doubt on the safety of vaccines, is still campaigning against vaccination despite the lack of any evidence against them. Now he in Texas trying to benefit from the right-wing tendency to believe fashionable conspiracy theories.
Remember when it was leftist extremists that believed conspiracy theories? The rightists have gone far beyond them in irrationality.
Monbiot: arguing against ecomodernism.
China's President Xi is trying to make himself president-for-life.
"Centrist" politicians have created the United States of Care to campaign for something short of single-payer medical care. Something that would still leave room for business to gouge Americans that get sick.
A center-right Democratic think tank has its own inferior proposal.
The US makes it difficult to take legal action against persistent sexual harassment. The investigation, inside an organization, aims above all to protect the organization. Even when the organization finds the complaint was valid, often the only response is to fire the complainant.
The Second Amendment was intended to protect state militias, but recent right-wing judges have twisted it into an individual right to own guns.
Congressional Democrats have released a memo showing how Nunes's memo was designed to mislead by omission.
Some restaurants in the UK require customers making reservations to pay in advance, or give credit card numbers.
While I sympathize with them about the problems that no-shows cause, their solution is intolerable since it forces customers to identify themselves.
If most of the no-shows come through the online booking systems, which are unjust in this and other ways already, how about putting these requirements only on the people who come through those services?
Saboteur of the Interior Zinke has a corrupt conflict of interest in a weapon factory.
Senator Feinstein faces a progressive primary challenger who got more support at the state Democratic convention than she did.
The bully loves coal miners so much that he aims to cancel a rule that will reduce their chances of getting black-lung disease.
The UN approved a cease-fire for Syria, which had no effect because Putin and Russia did not carry it out.
After a documentary that presents the movie fans that write subtitle files, the barons of film are trying to abolish this useful activity.
The term "piracy", except when applied to attacking ships, is propaganda for the enemy. Please join me in rejecting it vociferously.
US citizens: Call on Congress to demand NAFTA put people and ecosystems above corporations' profits.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the plan to allow oil drilling off all the US coasts.
Everyone: call on FedEx to stop cooperating with the National Rifle Association.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to use a discharge petition to force a vote on a clean DREAM Act, without unrelated provisions.
This would give unauthorized immigrants who arrived many years ago as children permission to stay in the US and a way to become citizens.
The North Pole is 30C hotter than normal.
Several days this year have been above freezing in parts of the Arctic. Anomalously hot weather in the Arctic has become frequent.
North Atlantic right whales are headed for extinction. This year, it seems there were no births.
Texan Ricardo Palacios took down a remote-transmitting camera that he found on his land, placed there by persons unknown without his permission. Now he is suing various suppression agencies that threaten to arrest him for that.
Amnesty International reports that the bully is leading a world-wide move towards authoritarian rule and contempt for human rights.
A new lobbying group opposes right-to-repair laws by pretending that modification of products by their owners would give them worse security than they already have.
As Bruce Schneier points out, most of them are made with such bad security that they couldn't be worse.
A veteran who had a pistol when someone else started killing people in his university campus explains why he judged it was a bad idea to try to find and kill the shooter.
Several sheriff's deputies waited outside the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while the killing was going on, and did not go in.
I don't know enough to judge whether they acted wrongly, but this is more demonstration that having some armed and trained people in the vicinity is no guaranteed protection.
The cheater's business says that it gave the US treasury the profits it gets from foreign governments, but won't show us what that means.
The question of how much money in the sales price is "profit" is not a simple one. They could easily have chosen an interpretation that minimizes the "profit".
Saboteur Zinke is persistently ignoring the public advisory boards which stand up for conservation of public lands.
Toxic Brew: State Politicians, Gas & Oil Lobbyists, and ALEC Join Forces Against Environmental Protesters.
US border thugs imprisoned an asylum seeker and her 7-year-old child, separately, keeping them apart for 4 months.
King penguins face extinction due to two human activities: global heating and overfishing.
Macron's approach to the debts of the French railways is … crush the unions, as usual.
Israeli soldiers arrested Mohammed Tamimi, age 15, who is awaiting reconstructive surgery to treat the results of the bullet in the head he received from an Israeli soldier last year. Tamimi had been told he was too ill to leave home for 6 months.
Fortunately the soldiers let him return home. Apparently some cruelty goes too far even for the occupation of Palestine.
The cheater says he is "eager" to be interviewed by Mueller, but his lawyers are afraid he'd tell lies and be caught.
Because SCROTUS wrote the new tax law in a big hurry, they made big careless mistakes. Democrats say they won't cooperate with fixing the unintentional bad parts unless they can fix some of the intentional bad parts too.
Americans who killed themselves to escape from unending pain after they were denied opioid painkillers by rules set up to "protect" them from addiction.
A Chinese state-owned chemical company has joined a US lobbying organization, presumably to influence US elections.
George Soros warns that the monopoly power of Google and Facebook is a danger to society and calls for them to be regulated.
Soros is right, but he misses part of the danger. He recognizes how China uses commercial databases for oppression, but doesn't recognize how the US is increasingly doing the same thing.
Having the US regulate these databases will not prevent that danger. What we need is to protect anonymity by preventing these databases from being collected at all.
Performance metrics for evaluating researchers are distorting research because researchers are under pressure to game the system.
It often happens that a metric is useful for evaluation but optimizing it ruins things.
Law Enforcement Use of Face Recognition Systems Threatens Civil Liberties.
When a practice is an injustice to anyone and everyone, I don't think we need to resort to arguing that the injustice falls heavily on certain racial groups. I think it is better to argue in the name of all people rather than in the name of a subset.
And I can't stomach the term "people of color".
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