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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
A giant fracking project in Argentina is close to cancellation. Argentina has promised large subsidies for drilling there, which means that most of the profit would go to the companies and little to Argentina or Argentines.
Some countries are making big efforts to help the homeless; others are punishing them for being homeless. Meanwhile, businesses are exploiting Covid-19 to make more people homeless.
Fundamentally, the large number of people with no home, or a cramped home, is due to the combination of inequality (and its consequent poverty), urbanization, and population growth. Urbanization is itself the result of economic causes related to inequality.
An incinerator that is burning firefighting foam that contains PFAs is not burning 100% of those chemicals. Some have been find in soil and water in the vicinity of the incinerator.
This is a matter of concern even for small quantities, since they don't naturally decay at all.
The US commission on international religious freedom asked to list India as one of the "countries of particular concern" due to Modi's repression of Muslims.
The overload of the NHS, and other secondary effects, could cause around 18,000 additional deaths from cancer in the UK over the next 12 months.
These are people who have cancer anyway, but the situation will impede their treatment.
The new US government program of handouts for the biggest companies has no conditions of honesty or decency. Nothing would stop them from handing the money straight to the CEO, except that the other stockholders might demand a cut.
Only 5% of people imprisoned for crimes described as terrorist commit another such crime afterward.
This suggests to me that it is safe to release most of them so they don't catch and spread Covid-19 in prison. But also that a special kind of sentence might be invented that would serve in place of prison and achieve the same results.
In reaction to Covid-19, hospitals and individuals are taking a lot more antibiotics.
This will build resistance, and few new antibiotics are being developed. Our neoliberal governments have left the decisions in the hands of business, which mostly considers antibiotics not profitable.
The Mayo Clinic allowed Pence to visit and even meet with a patient without as mask.
His argument, that he is tested "regularly" for the coronavirus and therefore knows he can't transmit virus to anyone else, is not absurd. However, we don't know how frequently "regularly" is. If it is once a week, he might become infected and start transmitting virus between tests.
In any case, there was no reason for the hospital to make an exception for him. I expect the hospital management were afraid of reprisals if they did not.
An app for parole monitoring is so buggy that it is very hard for people to keep the requirements. They live in fear of being imprisoned again because something did not work. It needlessly drains the battery, and when the battery runs dry at the wrong time, the user can be imprisoned for that. In addition, it can listen through the phone at any time.
I'd choose an ankle bracelet if I had the choice. However, those don't work in the smooth way you might imagine. Parolees using ankle monitors have to pay for them, also, thought they don't also have to pay hundreds of dollars at the start to buy one. And ankle bracelets too are unreliable, and run out of charge too often, which puts the user in danger of being imprisoned or missing work.
Every portable phone, whether smart of not, can be converted into a full-time listening device. Let's learn to think of every portable phone as a form of virtual prison.
How China, with foreign cooperation, quashed an outbreak of plague in 1911.
Then doctors from around the world met to study which methods were effective.
Around 20 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance, but a study suggests roughly 50% more are unemployed but have been blocked or discouraged from doing this.
*Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.) announced a new joint proposal on Tuesday to halt mergers and acquisitions during the coronavirus pandemic.*
I agree, but why allow them again afterwards?
Republicans want to give businesses complete immunity for imposing working conditions that favor transmission of Covid-19.
This goes with a plan to keep meat-packing plants open without giving the workers protective gear.
It would be unreasonable, perhaps even harmful, to demand too much. If not enough protective gear is available made, when medical personnel have trouble getting them, we must not blame an employer for not getting some -- or insist it outbid the hospitals for them. Some companies might get gear by bribing the conman, and medical personnel might get sick as a result.
However, it would be a mistake to jump to the opposite extreme. For instance, if unsophisticated masks will prevent most transmission in the work place, companies must get them and provide them. There is no sense in giving businesses license to be totally careless with employees' health.
US unions attack the business bailouts for supporting businesses as those businesses shaft workers.
The New York State Democratic Party cancelled its presidential primary on the grounds that all the candidates except Biden have withdrawn. The election will be held anyway, since it includes other offices as well.
The Sanders campaign objected to this move, since it could reduce the turnout of progressives for other candidates.
I hope progressives understand the importance of replacing right-wing Democrats, and vote as if their lives depend on it -- since they will.
Democrats are coming to understand the danger of Republican voter suppression. However, anything that artificially discourages progressive voters from voting will have a similar effect.
Large parts of the US economy cannot recover as long as people are worried about catching Covid-19. Even if US states allow them to reopen, not many people will make use of them.
The article mentions a restaurant reservation service called OpenTable. I've read it gouges restaurants, so that overall they are worse off due to its existence, but no restaurant can afford to reject it while its competitors don't.
That is a reason to boycott OpenTable, but the strongest reason not to do business with it is that it identifies customers and feeds the surveillance industry. Once I stepped into an interesting-looking restaurant and learned that the only way to dine there was to reserve via OpenTable. Which implied that I would never dine there.
When I make a restaurant reservation, I do not identify myself in a way that a database could track. Usually I give a false name — which will not alter how much I pay for the meal. And I pay only in cash.
The Saboteur of Agriculture wants to allow chicken processors to speed up their inspections. Basically, to cut corners and spread more pathogens. Similar things have already been done with pork processing.
*Vilnius gives public space to bars and cafes to allow physical distancing during lockdown.*
Companies that make plastic are asking the US government for a billion dollars.
The right thing to do is extract concessions to the environment in exchange for saving a part of the industry with a smaller amount of plastic going forward.
Michael Moore has fallen for and repeated planet roaster disinformation. It is sad.
Criticize the conman for the wrongs he does, but not for avoiding the war in Vietnam. The war was evil, and the draft was evil.
Workers from Amazon, Instacart, Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, and FedEx plan to strike on May 1.
The social change of keeping distant from other people can affect how much we trust each other, or empathize with each other, and it could be hard to reverse.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on Massachusetts lawmakers to protect voting rights, by mail or in person, for this year's election.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect farm workers from Covid-19.
America's food depends on that, as well as the farm workers themselves.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
Immigrants crowded up in US immigration jails are trying to tell us about their vulnerability to Covid-19. The deportation thugs sometimes punish them to shut them up.
NIH official Rick Bright says he believes he was taken out of his official role because he defended making government decisions based on science. In particular, he rejected the unsubstantiated use of chloroquine to treat Covid-19.
The saboteur in chief is against science because he can't bribe it.
*COVID-19 is so dangerous to food security because the global supply chain was insecure to begin with.*
*COVID-19 Sweeping Through Ranks of US Immigrant Farmworkers and Meatpackers.*
Texas has backed down on its scheme to ban abortion by calling it a "nonessential" procedure. I hope the women who were blocked from getting abortions can get it done now, but some of them might have been pushed past the 3-month limit, up to which they don't need to offer justification.
The US Department of Agriculture dawdled for a month before buying surplus produce. Farmers were ruined along with vegetables while the agency disregarded its mission.
A small company that does data collection for the conman's campaign got a suspiciously large small business loan, suspiciously fast.
New Zealand has nearly eliminated Covid-19 and will start gradually reopening many kinds of businesses.
The lesson here is that a lockdown can be effective, if it is complete enough to stop nearly all transmission and thus eliminate the need for the lockdown.
New York City will exclude cars from many streets.
I am eager to see which streets I am familiar with will be included.
The bullshitter has gone beyond fake news to publishing a deepfake video about Biden.
I fear that many people will treat whatever is depicted there as fact even if they see a notice that it isn't.
(satire) *[The bully] publicly accused New York health officials Monday of inflating the state’s Covid-19 mortality rate by including African Americans in their calculations of the total dead.*
*Without 'Transformative Change' to Global Economic Systems, Humans Risk Causing More Deadly Pandemics.*
One thing we need to change is the operation of factory farms for meat.
Agribusiness demands reducing the controls against disease, which means moving in the wrong direction. Thus, the US under the saboteur is cutting back on meat inspection, which is crazy, since it will promote the spread of antibiotic resistance.
You don't need to have any preexisting conditions to die from resistant bacteria.
*'Halt This Madness': US Drove Last Year's Over $1.9 Trillion in Global Military Spending.*
Poland says that people can trust its centralized quarantine tracker because the data will be saved for "only" six years and only the Polish government will have access to it. That doesn't make it very trustworthy.
On the one hand, 14 days of location tracking data, which on each occasion reports that you are in the same place (at home), is nothing to worry about in itself. If I were in quarantine for a few weeks, infected with coronavirus, I would not object to being tracked for that period.
I would not let them do it with a portable phone, though, because that device can also listen and transmit at any time, and it can be tracked by others aside from the quarantine authority. I would not install a nonfree program on my computer to do it, either.
I would invite the government to lend me a portable phone with a broken microphone for the duration of my quarantine. Then I would uncover its camera when agents call me through it. I would not care what software they have installed on their phone while I borrow it, as long as it could not do anything except the job it is officially supposed to do. If they wanted to hear my voice as well, they could call my landline at the same time.
On the other hand, the general defeatist attitude in the quotation at the end, "They know all about us, so why resist their systems to know all about us," is a very important mistake. All we need, to force systems to be redesigned so that "they" won't "know all about us", is to throw off the defeatism and start demanding they do so.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose bailouts for weapons companies and military contractors. That includes mercenaries — the US army should stop hiring mercenaries.
*Hamas arrests Gaza peace activists for … chat with Israelis.*
*Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began.* Global heating is continuing steadily.
*Nonvoters Are Not Privileged. They Are Disproportionately Lower-Income, Non-White and Dissatisfied With The Two Parties.*
*Halt destruction of nature or suffer even worse pandemics, say world’s top scientists.*
Even if you are willing to be tracked by online sales, you can help the world by boycotting Amazon in particular.
Even if the people deciding a country's response to Covid-19 are smart and of good will, they are vulnerable to groupthink.
This presents an interesting comparison for today's Republicans: those of the 1970s.
The UK said it would releases some prisoners so they would be less exposed to coronavirus. And it did release some — 33 of them.
The Acting King of Salafi Arabia announced that it will no longer sentence minors to death.
Whether unofficial dismemberment will be limited to adults is not clear.
Covid-19 could wipe out many endangered languages that are spoken only by a few old people, most often poor.
Employer-paid medical coverage causes a many kinds of bureaucratic disasters because each company has its own list of allowed doctors and hospitals.
The copyright industry is trying to use Covid-19 as an excuse to impose robotic copyright filters in the US, similar to the devastating directive that was passed by the EU a year ago.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the confused term "intellectual property" as if it referred to something meaningful. It is a bogus overgeneralization which is lumps together various unrelated laws.
This issue is about one specific law: copyright. "Copyright" refers to a meaningful topic. "Intellectual property" does not.
I think it is also unfortunate that the article speaks of "monetizing".
The "reopen" campaign is an astroturf campaign; its web sites were registered by well-funded right-wing groups.
*Texas Attorney General's Office Says It Can Toss People In Jail For Suggesting Coronavirus Fears Are A Legit Reason To Vote From Home.*
Evidence including DNA sequences and sequences of events makes it pretty clear that the SARS-CoV-2 virus strain evolved in animals and did not escape from a virology lab.
Everyone: call on the European Investment Bank to close your fossil finance loopholes and fund a just COVID-19 recovery.
Amnesty International…demanded online retail giant Amazon start prioritizing the health and safety of its workers around the planet.
This one injustice is a small part of the injustice Amazon does. Let's refuse to give it any money.
Millions of Americans who have lost their jobs have been unable to file claims for unemployment pay.
Insect populations overall have declined by 25% in the past 30 years.
The saboteur in chief set up a panel to recommend ways to promote nuclear power. Its recommendations would throw loads of money into radioactive waste.
A Reagan-like Republican is running in the Democratic primary against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
They can't imagine her voters would actually prefer such a candidate. Are they some sort of trickery?
Various countries are increasing the level of surveillance to react to Covid-19, but that may be only the occasion for long-prepared plans.
Covid-19 has disrupted measles vaccination. Children could die from that.
Hungary's oppressive ID requirements — one must show government ID even to buy a bus pass or pick up a parcel — are being used to repress trans people.
Bogus Johnson sent his chief political heavy to participate in supposedly independent scientific advisory meetings.
The crisis caused by Covid-19 may pulverize the right-wing assumption that the state must not help people. But it can also encourage state actions to hurt people.
We Are Ruled By Wizards — bending reality is as simple as bending people's perception of reality.
Under Cover of Pandemic, Trump's NLRB Moves to Make Unionizing 'Nearly Impossible for Workers'.
[The saboteur in chief] has been hesitant to invoke the Defense Production Act for medical gear. But he's already used it hundreds of thousands of times for weapons and bombs.
"Tea Party" Republicans undermined the US stockpile of N95 masks. They pretend that no one could have guessed that the US would need hundreds of millions of masks, but they didn't need to guess, only to listen. Their ideological opposition to making use of government to serve all of society throws us into helpless dependence on the plutocrats that they serve. We need to reclaim control of the state, so that it can do the many jobs that only a state can do.
Ted Chiang Explains the Disaster Novel We All Suddenly Live In.
I highly recommend Ted Chiang's book, Stories of Your Life and Others. If you buy a copy, please pay cash only — don't let a business track what you read. And especially don't get the commercial ebooks that impose DRM and require you to promise to act like a jerk.
I bought a printed copy and paid cash.
Some companies that operate bug bounty programs for tech businesses have been perverted into schemes to pay bug reporters to keep silent — permanently.
The low price of oil has already made oil companies shut down many US oil wells permanently, and a lot more will be shut down soon.
Bizarrely, the article does not mention that this will help civilization survive. Why not? Why do the Guardian's editors want business journalist that doesn't look beyond the effects on the profit prospects of certain businesses.
*Coronavirus Hasn’t Stopped Jared Kushner’s Real Estate Empire from Hounding Tenants with Debt Collection, Eviction Lawsuits.*
*How To Tell Real News From Useless Narrative Fluff.*
Just as many people have begun foolishly giving companies lots of their personal data, by buying things over the internet or paying in non-anonymous ways, these companies have started giving lots of customer personal data to the US government.
I say it is not enough just to survive Covid-19. We need to survive with some privacy left. My policy is to refuse to let companies know that I am the one buying.
*Leading US biologist Thomas Lovejoy says to stop future outbreaks we need more respect for natural world.*
The argument that some vulnerable people depend on a wet market is not strong enough sustain the conclusion that the market should stay open. There are less dangerous ways to help those people.
The UK is prosecuting supporters of independence for Scotland, and others who have reported on the trial of Alex Salmond, for publishing information that could have helped people identify one of the witnesses that testified for the prosecution. One of them is Craig Murray.
I think there is more from him here.
Murray says that mainstream newspapers published more or less the same information but were not prosecuted. He concludes that this is a politically biased prosecution. He will not get a jury trial, so he could be railroaded as Assange is being.
Alex Salmond was the leader of the Scottish National Party, which advocated independence for Scotland (and still does). He was accused of raping or groping women (I don't know the details), but the jury rejected the charges.
I have no position on the issue of Scotland, but politically biased prosecution is evil.
Sérgio Moro, Brazil's justice minister, has resigned.
Previously, as a judge, he participated in a corrupt scheme to jail Lula.
A business collects broken plastic fishing nets in Chile and recycles them to make clothing.
A large fraction of the plastic floating in the oceans comes from broken fishing nets, so this could be quite useful if it scales up.
Unfortunately the oil glut may kill the market for the recycled plastic.
If you want to vote in November, check now that you are registered. And you may have to do more than that.
However, it is an exaggeration to say we have 6.5 months to "save the planet", because whatever happens in November, the president elected then won't try to do it.
The US military and climate disaster feed each other.
Is there still "enough for everyone"? If that is true today, it won't be true ten years from now. If and when there are too many of us, the only humane and ethical remedy is to reduce births.
Racist bigotry is more prevalent in China than in the US.
In the US, many of us campaign against it.
*Small Business Rescue Money Flowing to Major Trump Donors, Disclosures Show.*
California opens some beaches, with restrictions to keep transmission of Covid-19 to a very low level.
This is a rational change, from zero-tolerance rigidity to a flexible approach.
Republicans are thinking of using the US Postal Service crisis as an opportunity to break its unions.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to demand that the head of the Pentagon answer questions about authorizing use of landmines.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call spread the word!
When Sérgio Moro resigned he revealed some illegal actions by Bolsonaro that could justify impeaching him. However, the military are now in control, and impeaching Bolsonaro would replace him with an ex-general who admires the military dictatorship. Not much better, but perhaps little worse.
I expect the US will work for military rule in Brazil.
Amazon has been caught cheating against companies that sell through Amazon, by using data about their sales to compete with them.
Due to a paywall, I cannot access the article that reported on this, and even if I saw a copy I would not post a reference to it. But I am confident that it would not have reported this without convincing evidence.
Edward Snowden warns Israel about the danger of using massive surveillance data to act against Covid-19.
Palestinians report that Israeli colonists attacked Palestinian farmers while Israeli soldiers encouraged them. A Palestinian tried to record this but one of the colonists stole per camera.
The human rights group B'tselem reports that these attacks have increased in April, now running more than one per day. They attack buildings, olive trees, cars, and persons, often destroying or damaging them. They have not killed people this month, but they have grievously wounded helpless people. They often carry guns, so they could easily kill many at any time.
Often Israel soldiers are present and attack the Palestinians out of sheer hatred.
*If Coronavirus Overwhelms Gaza, Israel Alone is to Blame.*
Israel will keep Gazans locked up in the prison which is Gaza, and shoot them if they try to flee.
US citizens: call on Congress to give Americans $2,000/month until employment returns to pre-COVID-19 levels.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Another flaw in the the extremely flawed CARES Act: the small business loans are supposed to be forgiven later if used to keep staff on the payroll, but the loan contracts don't guarantee this forgiveness.
This will give banks an opportunity to cheat or harass those businesses later.
*[The conman] reportedly owes tens of millions to the Bank of China.* That bank is owned by the Chinese state.
If that is true, it means that China more or less owns the conman, unless he has amassed so much money through his corruption that he can pay back the loan now.
So, Mr Trump, have you repaid that loan yet?
*The Dutch government has announced measures including huge cuts to coal use, garden greening and limits on livestock herds as part of its plan to lower emissions to comply with a supreme court ruling.*
UN Secretary General Guterres warns that Covid-19 endangers human rights, threatening freedom (attacked by authoritarian governments) as well as other human needs.
Stiglitz warns that Republican policies are driving the US towards another great depression.
*South Carolina’s Republicans gutted public healthcare. Then the pandemic hit.*
*Warren Demands Investigation Into Trump's Coronavirus Response, Saying He Put 'Political Expediency' Before Public Health.*
The decrease in coal burning and mining in the US is the result of years of pressure from the public.
Congress should stop piling more and more money onto the bloated US military budget.
Computerized voting machines, in addition to making the election vulnerable to rigging, can potentially transmit Covid-19 from one voter to the next.
Rep. Shalala sold stocks and did not mention this on the required disclosure forms. She pleads ignorance of the disclosure laws. Natural that Pelosi chose her to supervise the enforcement of financial laws on large companies receiving bailout funds.
(satire) *Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) assured Democratic House representatives Wednesday they don’t need to try being productive during the stressful pandemic.*
Washington State passed a law limiting government use of face recognition. The ACLU says the limits are not enough to avoid the danger.
It appears that the law does not apply to businesses, indeed to anyone other than government agencies. That makes the law inadequate, since it does nothing to limit the businesses, such as Safran that accumulate face recognition dossiers about everyone and sell access to these dossiers.
*COVID-19 ‘Liberate’ Groups Are the Same Ones Pushing Climate Denial.*
There is no activity more essential than protesting when necessary. But the thugs of Raleigh, North Carolina, say it is forbidden because it is "non-essential".
However, we should recognize that one of the ways Covid-19 threatens to do permanent harm is by allowing governments (including the US) and companies (Google, Apple, Amazon, Zoom and others) to increase their levels of surveillance and control over people.
Ironically, even as government threatens us with repression, it is also a necessary platform for serving many vital needs, and the only tool we could use to keep the companies and plutocrats in check, and stop global heating before it destroys technological civilization.
This means we must first take control of our government, then use it to defeat the plutocratists. It's a devil of a situation, but it's that or serfdom.
We must not allow discrimination between protests based on what cause they advocate. If we permitted that, the plutocrats would ban protests against them.
“Every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the FDA from 2010–2016" was developed using public research funds, according to the National Academy of Sciences. The NIH used to have a rule that drugs developed with public research funds had to be sold for a reasonable price, The plutocratist president, Bill Clinton, eliminated that rule.
Congress could restore that rule now with a law, if we replace the plutocratists in it.
Big Pharma says it needs monopolies to get the money to pay for the large studies of the effects of drugs. Those studies are crucial but we must not allow pharma companies to play any role in them — because when they pay for studies, they corrupt the studies.
If we are wise, we will pay for those studies with public funds, too.
After all, it's our money either way, whether we pay it via the government or through the pharma companies.
Mafias are distributing food to Italians who have no money and can't buy anything. It appears that the government's efforts to give people food are not reaching everyone.
Rather than sending thugs to question people on the street who are suspiciously bringing people food, the government should improve its own efforts to do the job.
Members of the UK Parliament will be compelled to use Zoom in order to vote.
This is the ultimate surrender of a government to malicious technology.
The US faces a national shortage of purified CO2, and this could impact water treatment.
Boston is planning for a meter of sea-level rise by 2070. Since we keep finding that Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than expected, I am not sure that is enough.
Building "resiliency" is a useful medium-term measure, that could help Boston survive while we curb global heating — if we do. But without that, it is futile; all such efforts will be overwhelmed by the sea.
Farms are letting fresh fruits and vegetables rot, while millions of Americans can't get food.
This is what results from devout worship of the Invisible Hand, whose cult demands human sacrifice.
Common Cause's list of urgent recommendations for Congress to support democracy.
I agree with them aside from one: funding to extend broadband internet.
In order for "digital inclusion" to be an advance, it has to respect freedom. The internet today, used as people normally use it, devours freedom. When society as a whole depends on such use of the internet, it becomes a trap that keeps people under the thumb of surveillance capitalism and state repression. Making that sort of internet faster is a mistaken goal.
Republicans have proposed funds to support farmers — but watch out: they will give all the money to big agribusiness unless the system is designed very carefully.
Indeed, even if they don't directly give all the money to giant agribusiness corporations, those will grab most of it because of their domination of the market. Smaller farms typically sell to giant monopsonies, which effectively set the price farms receive for their production. These prices keep farmers right on the edge of going under.
To support actual farm prices would require different systems. The US had such systems in the past, but plutocratists won't be in favor of bringing them back.
*Unless a vaccine is made available to every country Covid-19 will turn into a global threat without end.*
We hope to develop a vaccine, or a treatment, but the way to get rid of Covid-19 that we already know can work is that of testing, tracing and isolation. If that is our only way to do it, that too must be implemented globally.
Testing, tracing and isolation does not require tracking everyone's movements with a digital device. China does that because repression is its goal.
A discussion of China and WeChat — how China has gained surveillance of nearly all activity simply by making people pay for many vital things via WeChat or Alipay.
Covid-19 is temporary, but if it acts as an excuse to impose surveillance, the surveillance is likely to be forever. The time to resist is now.
One way to resist is to join me in always paying cash when you purchase goods, publications (textual or not), and ground transport. If a store declines to take my cash, I say politely that cash is the only way I can pay. If the store refuses to make an accommodation, I say "Too bad," and leave.
It is useful to tell your local and state politicians that you want laws to require retail businesses to accept cash. New York City passed one last year.
Above all, don't be defeatist: don't give in to the attempted self-fulfilling prophesy that Covid-19 will terrify us into paying only through surveilled systems.
*Nobel laureates condemn 'judicial harassment' of environmental lawyer.* This refers to Steven Donziger, being persecuted by Chevron for being the lawyer for the Ecuadorian farmers who sued Chevron.
Microsoft is planning to invest heavily in machines to extract CO2 directly from the air and convert it into other substances. It aims in 10 years to extract more than it emits.
Investing in research on those machines, and on the less radical carbon capture and storage, is a good thing to do. It has a chance of making a big difference.
But research is always a risk. We must not assume this will work out.
Amazon has donated to a fund to keep UK bookstores operating, but the donation is minuscule compared with the harm that Amazon's unfair practices have caused them.
We should not leave it up to rich people to decide how much to give back out of all that they have taken.
A court is considering the Tory plan for voter suppression in the UK by demanding photo IDs.
Arkansas's ban on surgical abortions has been upheld by the federal appeals court.
In some states, these bans have been overturned. In others, upheld. I suppose the Supreme Court will study the case, and its right-wing majority will seize the opportunity to interfere with abortion rights by hook or by crook.
*Top vaccine expert says he was fired for resisting Trump on hydroxychloroquine.*
Amazon is considering adding face recognition and license plate recognition to Ring surveillance cameras.
Setting up a system capable of systematic recognition of faces — or license plates — should be illegal, outside of very narrow circumstances.
An additional dam on the Nile will create a competition over which country gets the water.
This indicates that the population of the region is hitting a resource limit. Whether or not that competition leads to an actual war, people will die as a result.
Showing that you can't overcome resource shortages with dams alone. You need birth control too.
*New research finds 147 million will be hit by floods by the end of the decade.*
The UK is considering ordering people over 70 to stay home for months.
I would not obey a rule like that. Since I do not wish to get sick, I go out only occasionally and take care when I do. But I will not live by an absurd zero-tolerance rule that demands I avoid even small risks, regardless of what that does to my freedom and privacy.
For instance, I buy groceries in the supermarket and I pay cash. I will not order them delivered or pay for them in a way that would identify me.
Covid-19 is spreading through Singapore's 300,000 migrant workers, who are housed together up to 20 to a room. Now all of them are quarantined in those rooms all day.
Even before Covid-19, they were exploited and cheated.
Democrats are about to accept another "stimulus" which helps small businesses and hospitals, but none of the poor.
The Trump Hotel in Washington DC leased a building from the US government so as to profit if the bullshitter became president. Now it is having trouble paying its rent, so it is asking for rent relief.
There is a glut of oil, and oil companies are paying others to take massive quantities of oil and store it until someone wants it. Many fossil fuel companies are facing bankruptcy, and many investors are facing losses.
We need those investors to lose money, and learn the lesson not to invest in fossil fuels. As always, the saboteur in chief doesn't want rich people and big companies to suffer the negative consequences of their actions, so he has announced a big "bailout" for them.
Bailouts for fossil fuel companies are not merely wasteful, not merely dooH niboR. If they spare investors from learning the lesson that their investments are damaging, the bailouts are damaging.
*A political system that is structurally incapable of acting for the common good, even when millions of lives are at stake, is not just failing to solve our problems. It is the problem.*
The US government's evident corruption and incompetence in dealing with Covid-19 demonstrates that this is the situation. Now we need to fix it so the government can protect us from the even bigger dangers such as global heating and world-wide wars.
The House of Representatives is considering remote voting.
I see no particular problem in the interim plan to use proxies for votes. However, remote voting creates a security problem that is impossible to correct if it uses nonfree software or services operated by companies. It has to be with free software and the server must belong to the House of Representatives.
Milan plans to shift many streets to pedestrians and bicycles.
I hope it will also increase bus service and build new subway lines. Not everyone can ride a bike, and walking to distant places will take too long.
US officials say China organized a disinformation campaign in March saying that the bullshitter was going to use soldiers to clamp down on movement in the US.
The bullshitter makes the US more vulnerable to disinformation from whatever source. Perhaps he should ask someone to tell him the children's story, "The President That Cried 'Fake!'". Eventually the president said "fake" about news that really was fake, and nobody believed him.
The corruptor placed the US's biggest private medical insurance company in charge of distributing aid to hospitals.
This gives the company an opportunity to pressure hospitals to modify their relationships with that company in ways that will benefit the company in the future, and perhaps even today.
Why did the corruptor choose that company? My guess is that it is paying him off.
Lobbying turned a supposed "loan program for small businesses" into a loan program for larger businesses — some of which just want to go bankrupt.
In effect, Congress is assuming that the officials that administer the program are making strong efforts to keep it honest — but with the conman in charge, you can be sure that will not happen.
US citizens: call on Congress and Mnuchin to stop big banks from taking Americans' crisis relief checks.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to protect US contributions to the WHO.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
The Western US, from Oregon to New Mexico, has been suffering a deep drought since 2000. Researchers have established that, in the past 1200 years, only one past drought equaled this one.
If this was the worst a drought could be before 1950, global heating now makes worse droughts possible.
A thug in the UK was caught on video, threatening to fabricate an accusation against a man who was passing by.
The chief of the department had the decency to condemn the thug's actions unreservedly. That condemnation goes beyond an apology. But this is not enough by itself. It is necessary to punish that thug firmly, so that the others know they won't be winked at if they do this again.
*'Absurdity and Cruelty' of US Healthcare System, Says Sanders, 'Should Now Be Apparent to All'.*
Cooperating with North Korea's need for help in coping with Covid-19 could offer the US an opportunity for useful diplomacy.
Human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been released from formal prison, but remains a prisoner in some undisclosed location while he is trained to say what his guards wish.
Australia is funding several hail-mary programs to keep the Great Barrier Reef alive another decade or two in the face of global heating.
Succeeding in this, would help the planet-roaster government resist doing anything to limit global heating itself. Even making the attempt will help that.
The article does not mention ocean acidification, which is the other big effect of increased CO2 in the air. In a few decades perhaps, that will kill all corals, and many molluscs, crustacians, and starfish. The excess CO2 may interfere with the thought processes of fish, which could wipe out some species.
Australia principal river system, the Murray-Darling system, gets only half as much water nowadays as in the 20th century, due to global heating — so it will get worse.
Australians believed the water was there but they were taking out too much.
* Polluting industries around the world are using the coronavirus pandemic to gain billions of dollars in bailouts and to weaken and delay environmental protections.*
The extra pollution could do more harm than Covid-19 does.
Privatized medicine has mostly abandoned rural America, and laws assure a nationwide shortage of doctors, few of whom choose to go there. This causes helplessness in facing any sort of epidemic.
With copious testing, contact tracing, and isolation of those infected, it is possible to eliminate Covid-19 from an area, or pretty close. Taiwan and South Korea have done it.
Just waiting won't make ending stay-at-home safe, so how does the US plan to achieve that? If we are waiting for some major change in the situation, what change is it, and how do we plan to make it happen?
An internal investigation in the Labour Party, which was leaked, concluded that some of its staff, who opposed Corbyn, weaponized accusations of antisemitism so as to ensure the party would not win an election under Corbyn. The mainstream media did its best to support that campaign.
Part of the campaign was to demand a zero-tolerance approach to eliminating antisemitism from the party. A zero-tolerance approach to enforcing any rule tends to create dissention and hostility, because it means that very small differences in conduct lead to enormously different treatment.
Apple and Google, which do enormous amounts of tracking of users, have become the unlikely guardians of people's privacy by limiting how apps can get data about bluetooth contacts.
In addition to blocking various abusive forms of surveillance, they also prevent any sort of contact-tracing app that accumulates a list of phones that have passed nearby, even if it were up to the user to decide to send it in.
If such an automated recording of nearby-passing phones is an effective method of contact tracing — which some experts doubt — then preventing it from being used seems to be a bad thing.
In addition, governments can do this in other ways, as China does. I think China's app operates by reporting the phones GPS location to the state. If everyone is forced to install that app, the state can figure out which phones passed nearby.
Even voluntary schemes for tracking people's movements can become effectively mandatory if employers, landlords, and services punish people who don't do it.
I have to point out that the UK began tracking all car travel over 10 years ago, and has already abused the system to sabotage protests. Of course, now it is sabotaging all protests, and not that there is less to protest now than there was.
Biden is not seriously trying to win the support of progressive voters. I think he takes us for granted.
Biden was making the US a worse place many years before the conman got into politics, and he will continue doing so if elected, just not as fast as the conman does.
Slow sidewalk-travelling robots can now deliver food orders to customers willing to be surveilled.
I see only two things wrong with this system. For customers, there is no way to buy anonymously, so I would not use it. For workers, it means a lot of unemployed people. The Tories would have them living on the street faster than you can say "Tories".
More information about why the US postal service is about to collapse. It is a plan that Republicans have been operating for over a decade.
Many important reforms have been implemented in some parts of the US in the past month.
An internal investigation within the Labour Party quotes staff's emails to show that some of the supporters of B'liar and his crew acted to sabotage the party so that Corbyn and his progressive side could not win power.
In other words, Labour's plutocratists were more loyal to plutocracy than to their party or its constituents.
*Ukraine: wildfires draw dangerously close to Chernobyl site.* Ukraine is alleged to be covering up the danger.
Corporations have used disease as an excuse to exclude shareholders from their annual meetings.
This eliminates one of the few methods that were available to the non-rich to put political pressure on corporations.
A Hong Kong protest leader warns that Beijing is likely to push once again for total control of Hong Kong, and that Hong Kongers will resist.
*Big Banks Sued for Putting Large Corporations Ahead of Main Street Small Business Owners for Covid-19 Rescue Loans.*
*Freedom of information request filed after Pentagon stopped publishing figures for Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.*
The large number of people in prison in the US could cause 100,000 extra deaths from Covid-19.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for ending military draft registration — HR 5492.
Also oppose HR 6415 which would make conscription cover women as well as men.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Why would US workers want to sue their employers about this? I see two rational motives.
I don't expect Republicans to support that.
*The Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) consortium … removed [all] mention of the decentralized protocol proposal Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP3T) from its website.* The people developing that protocol found out when they saw their work had been deleted.
This stinks of an intentional effort to increase surveillance. Europeans, fight this now!
If you don't put as much effort into protecting your freedom as into protecting your immediate health, your effort to "stay safe" is unbalanced!
*Governments must act now to stop 265 million starving, warns World Food Program boss.*
*Inequality and the Coronavirus,* and gusher-up economics.
Yanis Varoufakis: the reason the EU should agree to issue EU-level bonds is that it is in the interest of the whole EU.
*80% of the [recent US] stimulus tax break will go to 43,000 people.*
*Loss of [birth control and abortion] services caused by lockdowns could result in millions of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions.*
Contrast the behavior of rich people, such as Richard Branson, who think the government owes them loans after shirking taxes, with the responsibilities they say poor people have.
*"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps," billionaires are fond of telling us. All while making us pay for their boots.*
*Denmark: no bailouts for companies headquartered in tax havens* or that have squandered their reserves on stock buybacks.
The UK welfare system has been compelled by circumstances to abandon some of its cruel practices because of the staff requirements. More importantly, the Tories no longer dare pretend that citizens prepared to work reasonably hard will never need government assistance.
They might go back to that pretense once Covid-19 is out of the way.
Labour voters can help the party overcome the internal sabotage that succeeded in stopping Corbyn from winning the 2017 election.
Peru: riot police block highway as people attempt to flee [to their home towns] amid lockdown.
Some of those people have Covid-19 and would bring it to their home towns if they go. However, the overwhelming majority do not have Covid-19, and would die if they stay in Lima. Covid-19 is going to reach those places sooner or later, but it could take time,
A better-organized and wealthier state would test them all, then quarantine those who are infected and let the rest go home. But Peru is not capable of that.
This shows us the sort of disasters that massive inequality can cause. Meanwhile, the plutocrats labor every day to make more inequality.
Prison officials are monitoring prisoners' phone calls to see if they say anything about coronavirus.
The fact that they are using some sort of neural network to identify that topic seems like a side issue to me. It would be just as bad if humans were listening for such discussion.
Doubt is essential for science — but for politicians, it's a sign of weakness.
The UK plans to require witnesses testify in a hearing through nonfree software.
Sea-level rise, and its various consequences, will destroy South Florida in this century. Even before it is inundated, it will be wiped out.
Scientists say it appears to be too late to prevent the Arctic Ocean from losing all its ice in the summer, starting around 2050.
This will accelerate global heating no matter what else we do.
Two studies suggest that air pollution makes people more vulnerable to getting badly sick from Covid-19.
Inside Rikers: An Account of the Virus-Stricken Jail From a Man Who Managed to Get Out.
Pelosi appointed Rep. Shalala to the oversight committee, rather than Rep. Porter.
Porter is known for grilling CEOs hard. Shalala is known for owning shares in quite a few corporations that might ask for a bailout.
Greg Palast: Absentee ballots in the US place many obstacles in the voter's way, and the votes of people from marginalized groups are more likely to be blocked.
Thus, switching to voting by mail will not automatically assure that all registered voters get to vote.
Farms should make some adjustments on living arrangements so that citizens can help in the picking — not structure it only for migrant workers.
The US government confiscates protective equipment being shipped between states.
The corrupter uses the equipment to reward states, even businesses, that serve him personally.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject a bailout for big oil.
Proposed contact-tracing apps would do a lousy job, because what they try to do is very different from real, effective contact tracing.
Don't assume that a system, once actually in use, will respect any sort of privacy for anyone.
I hope the US does set up effective contact tracing, and if I am ever called because of a rational suspicion that I am infected and asked about my contacts, I will do my best to cooperate. If I am told I am likely to be infected, I will stay inside to protect others. But I will not use something that would let the state track my movements even if I do not become infected. I will not carry a portable phone.
To throw freedom and privacy overboard to avoid a small incremental risk to health is folly. We need to maintain our freedom and privacy along with our health.
The US deportation thugs hold 34,000 prisoners. Most of them it could legally release right now. It is considering releasing only 600.
Spain has allowed workers to go to work for many non-essential businesses, calculating that the infection rate will continue to go down.
*In this moment of crisis, macho leaders are a weakness not a strength.*
Leaders appear strong (and win support) by visibly making someone else back down. Business is so powerful nowadays that it is generally easier to make the non-rich back down and serve the rich. So that is what they do.
The Occupational Suffering and Hardship Agency told employers not to bother reporting when their employees catch Covid-19.
This information is very important for measuring the spread of the disease and detecting when working conditions are encouraging its spread.
*Don't be fooled: Britain's coronavirus bailout will make the rich richer still.*
There is no need to wait — it is already happening, in the UK as in the US.
Public Citizen proposes how Congress should restore oversight to the 2-trillion bailout for big companies selected by the conman and Mnuchin.
When the article talks of "squandering" this money, it understates the danger. Having negated all existing oversight, Mnuchin and the conman will have no obstacles to stop them from exercising favoritism in whatever way they wish, in effect using this money as bribes. They could pressure large companies to spend more on Republican campaigns.
Given how far the conman has already gone in corruption, such as handing out ventilators and masks to states that support him, I expect he will do this.
It was terribly foolish for Democrats in the House of Representatives to agree to this loan program — foolish to imagine those corrupt officials would not exploit every opportunity for corruption.
When talking about the Special IG, please do not refer to per as "they". It causes grammatical confusion.
The OPCW has labeled Assad as responsible from dropping sarin gas on Khan Sheikhun in Syria.
There are claims that this attack did not happen at all.
After contemptuously defying Congressional oversight committees, the conman is now contemptuously defying executive branch inspectors general.
This confirms that his goal is arbitrary rule with unlimited corruption.
The numskull is making US allies distrust the US and despise him.
*Inequality doesn't just make pandemics worse — it could cause them.*
*More than 60 poorer countries are spending more paying creditors than on health – study.*
Paraguay won't tax the rich to help the poor, so poor people are trying to help each other.
Paraguay's leftist president was removed a few years ago by a more-or-less coup and replaced by the right wing.
The US plans to test an amazing Cuban medical discovery, a vaccine which prevents one kind of lung cancer from growing any further.
The UK is giving patient medical records data in bulk to Palantir and other companies, for "research" purposes.
I would not trust those companies to keep the spirit of their commitments, or even the letter of them.
Coal mining companies in the US are asking Congress to "rescue" them by eliminating the taxes that pay for cleaning up abandoned mines and the lungs of abandoned miners.
If coal mines are not to be cleaned up, it is better to shut them down immediately, so they stop contributing to global heating disaster.
The Miami Herald decided to sue the State of Florida demanding release of information about which nursing homes have had Covid-19 fatalities. Thegovernor intimidated the newspaper's law firm into refusing to do this work.
*The GOP Has Become a Death Cult.*
I would say, rather, that the Republican Party has merged with a variant of Christianity that is death cult.
Starting from their mad premises, their reasoning is rational. If there were a heaven where you would be eternally happy, why hesitate to die in a way that would get you in? Indeed, Christians had to decide that suicide was a sin, or their believers would have eagerly begun the trip to heaven.
This simply demonstrates that madness requires nothing more than the adoption of mad premises.
Beware the temptation to go to the opposite extreme. There is no reason to take risks to continue the dooH niboR economy, but there are parts of the economy we must take risks to continue. We need to grow food -- and make sure everybody gets enough. And we must be ready, now as in the past, to take risks to defend our freedoms.
Their campaign is based on valid principles, but it does not get to the root of the matter and the solution it advocates is inadequate. It supposes that schools could somehow insist, and verify, that nonfree programs do only what they are supposed to do, and that dis-services don't manipulate students or allow their data into the hands of anyone that would misuse it.
The one solution that will really fix the problem is to switch completely to free software, keep all the school's data about students on the school's own computers, and not even collect data that could be used to hurt the students.
Perhaps that is seen as too radical even to advocate, the way some Democrats in Congress see Medicare for All as too radical no matter how much we need it.
China is pushing again to impose total control over Hong Kong. Protests will be necessary again soon.
A former US convict talks about how much he appreciated having a tablet in his cell.
It makes me terribly sad to see this praise for a tablet full of nonfree software. Surely he is running several nonfree apps designed to mistreat the user.
I won't deny the benefit he reports. A computer can be very useful, even while mistreating its user in ways most people don't recognize. However, the mistreatment is entirely avoidable. A tablet with free software could have done the same jobs.
Billionaires' investment clubs ("private equity") are taking advantage of the crisis to move in on corporations that are experiencing losses.
The damage from the Big Spill reached all the way to the coast Mexico, and big decreases in seafood catch afflict the coast ten years after.
Mexican President Peña made a settlement that effectively let Billionaire Polluters off the hook. Whether or not a bribe can be identified, I call this corruption. The US has seen similar corrupt settlements recently.
Norway is moving very fast to electric vehicles.
If the electricity comes from hydropower, this really does eliminate the greenhouse emissions.
There is just one bad aspect: most electric car charging systems require payment by credit card. It is very hard to travel without being tracked by this. That is an injustice.
Electric cars don't have to be tracking devices. There is no fundamental obstacle to doing this right. But countries are turning them into tracking devices.
*Employees Say Smithfield [pork] Plant in Wisconsin Concealed Covid-19 Infections, Pressured Them to Work Elbow-to-Elbow Without Protection.*
The UK is delivering food to people who dare not go out, but following its usual practice, the UK has set strict criteria for who qualifies to receive these deliveries.
It would be unthinkable to risk handing out food to someone who might not deserve it.
US citizens: call on the FDA to lift the prohibition on telemedicine for abortion medicines.
Rating employees with a single number tends to make for more inequality in their bonuses than rating employees through a discussion.
Several EU countries propose to combine the Green New Deal with a plan for restoring the economy after Covid-19.
I am not an expert who can usefully study the details, but the idea seems very good to me.
The effort to impose computational idea patents in Europe was thwarted by the UK's departure from the EU.
The monopolist forces will try again, and we will get another chance to fight to stop them.
Republican officials are cheating on implementation of the extension of unemployment insurance.
You can't expect Republicans to honestly carry out a deal. "Cheat the poor" is their motto.
Don't be impressed when billionaires donate small fractions of their income as "philanthropy". They do it for self-serving reasons: to discourage us from cutting back their political power.
The time to resist repression and surveillance after the end of Covid-19 is now.
Don't tell people "Stay safe!" Tell them, "Stay healthy and free!"
Some people in the UK feel their lives have been ruined because assisted conception services have been shut down.
While I can appreciate the disappointment of those who wish to have children, I say we must not cater to it, because far worse things than being childless are coming. Having children nowadays (with or without medical assistance) places a large burden on the future. It reduces civilization's chances of survival, even as it adds more one person to suffer in civilization's coming crisis.
Rather than spending public money to help people make a child, we should tell them to consider adopting a child — to satisfy their yearning in a way that helps future humanity rather than burdening it.
Modern-day slums, created by right-wing economic policies, are spreading Covid-19.
The "cramped" living conditions of the poor, in the US and the UK and some other countries, get their impetus from the general economic situation that draws large numbers to a few successful cities — but this turns into real hardship because of favor-the-wealthy government policies that don't build enough housing in those cities, combined with the right-wing squeeze-the-poor policies that squeeze some poor people onto the street.
The US Postal Service is likely to collapse in a few months unless it gets direct government support, according to its head.
I wonder why the conman believes it would be profitable to make it collapse.
The Houthis in Yemen have sentenced journalists to death.
China is censoring research publications about Covid-19. Apparently China's face is more important than people's lungs.
Singapore has banned use of Zoom for schools, over a side issue.
Singapore is paying no more attention than the US to the inherent injustice of that program.
The EU agreed to rescue Italy, Spain and other countries, temporarily, only to crush them in a couple of years as it crushed Greece before.
The concessions that the richer countries agreed, eliminating the conditions that crushed Greece immediately, will postpone the crushing of Italy and Spain, but not for very long.
The right-wing propaganda idea that governments can't do a good job is totally wrong in South Korea. Citizens insist on that governments do their jobs well, and governments do.
US citizens: call on Congress to end the spread of Covid-19 in US prisons and jails, including immigration jails, including providing safe conditions and medical care.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Liberty Mutual insurance to stop insuring tar sands.
If you sign, please spread the word!
BlackRock's plan for buying corporate bonds is aimed in a direction that will tend to help fossil fuel companies most.
The bully has sent a war fleet to the seas off Venezuela and is making threats of war.
I can't put Maduro and the bully on a linear scale to judge which is worse, but it is clear that if the bully succeeds in realizing his ambitions of absolute power he would be far worse.
*Moving towards a Medicare for All healthcare system will not just stem the financial losses that hospitals are now experiencing, but will ensure that we are prioritizing care and equity in our healthcare system.*
Political repression in Kashmir includes threatening doctors who report that they don't have sufficient equipment. Internet blockage stops them from accessing information for medical purposes.
The article mentions a web site for reporting on Covid-19's spread in Kashmir, which has chosen "open source". I have a hunch that they are not apolitical, as the term "open source" encourages people to be, but that they don't know how the free software movement is different from open source.
USAA, a bank and insurance company for members and veterans of the US military, has reversed course on seizing government aid payments for debt.
However, the US government has still done nothing to prevent this practice.
Mnuchin and the bully value the rich and powerful, while dehumanising everyone else. The idea of agreeing to aid human beings, then diverting the aid to banks and rich creditors, must have them laughing at the suffering they cause.
Petroleum-based fields of industry, including plastic, are lobbying for what will be an unending system of bailouts, as well as changes in the laws meant to protect us from the harm their operations do.
After they have got a series of handouts, they will use the "sunk costs" fallacy to argue that "You can't stop now".
We have to aim for a large but orderly reduction in these fields, not for keeping them going as before.
Gaza has run out of coronavirus tests. It can't get more because of the siege imposed by Israel.
Since Covid-19 reached the West Bank, attacks by Israeli fanatics against Palestinians have almost doubled.
Their slow but steady taking of Palestinians' lands is speeding up.
Some right-wing Israeli fanatics fought against imposed quarantine, left their quarantine site, then found three Arabs having a picnic. They threw stones at the Arabs, then burned their cars.
The fanatics will be prosecuted for trashing the bus that was taking them to quarantine. Burning Palestinians' cars is perhaps not considered worth prosecuting.
The US renamed its War Department as the "Department of Defense," but in substance it is still the Department of War. Looking at the real threats that the US faces, what would a real Department of Defense do?
*The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Exposing the Plague of Neoliberalism.*
Neoliberalism is the economistic ideology that goes with plutocracy. It denies that there is a place in society for any relationships except the market. Neoliberalism inflicts suffering globally, all the time, and hollows out society's resilience so that medical and political harm can easily spread. And when it intersects with acute plagues, such as Covid-19, the combination produce special, acute harm.
But there is a worse alternative:
China's
authoritarian capitalism. China's system is not dysfunctional; it
doesn't tie the state in knots. When that state wants to
put
a million people in prison, it lies even more shamelessly than the
bullshitter does, and entirely silences dissenting voices.
Shell's
new
greenwashing plan.
Setting 2050 as the target date and using the term "net-zero carbon"
are
enough
to indicate that this is not serious.
India's journalists that criticize the ruling party are in danger of
prosecution,
or
even murder.
The US
and Russia are opposing the UN's global cease-fire initiative. War takes priority over all.
The bully's methods
have much in common with the way Mussolini made
himself dictator of Italy.
Ilhan
Omar has proposed a bill for the government to pay people's rent
and mortgages for a while.
I suggests paying corporations only a part of the usual rent.
The ACLU position's on contact tracing by phones identifies some
valid issues.
However, it misses
other
valid issues. Whatever privacy protections
this one app offers are at best one watertight wall on one side of a
leaking ship. The phones themselves allow location tracking in many
ways. And you can't trust any nonfree program to do only what its
developer says it does.
Danger: vending machines for meat and vegetables seem like a great idea
until
you find out that they track who buys.
Now more than ever we must defend the right to pay cash — but
insisting on paying cash. Covid-19 will not last forever,
but rights lost tend to be lost forever.
Decades of systematic right-wing attack on scientific experts and
government action have spread a
bias
to reject them. Neither of them
is immune to corruption, but the right-wing alternative is corrupt at
the root. How can we get back to a way of thinking that has room
for something other than corruption?
US using coronavirus pandemic
to
unlawfully expel asylum seekers, says UN.
VICE has published documents showing Michigan Governor Snyder
actively
participated in the conspiracy to poison Flint's water supply.
However, it looks like Snyder will escape prosecution, protected by
his Republican cronies.
In the US some poor people are ground up between the gears of
a response to Covid-19
that
doesn't think of them. In Mexico and Guatemala,
that is happening to masses of people.
Children in Spain are
not
allowed to go outside the house — never at all.
Many find it unbearable.
Hungarian journalists fear coronavirus law
may
be used to jail them.
More
reasons for the US to cancel student loan debt.
The US is slowly building up the capacity for protective gear,
testing, and contact tracing, but is nowhere near the level necessary
to eliminate Covid-19 here.
The
numskull wants to reopen business
anyway, and never mind getting ready.
A Koch-funded protest group is being organized to protest
to
demand that.
I am glad to see that some Americans are ready to protest despite the
danger, which they do reduce by applying the usual measures. Too bad
they are not doing it for a sensible cause, such as reducing
surveillance by business and government, or pushing for more
production of the things that are necessary to reopen business safely.
Biden is proud of
his
role in repressive intervention in Latin America.
10 years after the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the
damage has not
disappeared.
We know how to prevent a repeat of that disaster, but the oil
companies would rather take the risk; they figure that the public will
suffer most of the costs of the next disaster, just as it suffered
most of the costs of the last one.
The biggest disaster ever, for a free and ethical internet,
is the current pressure on everyone to rush to do things on line.
When people talk about "being online", that as become an abbreviation
for "carelessly
running any nonfree app someone tells you to use."
However, if you don't want to be subjugated and kicked around online
you must take the opposite approach: rejecting software unless we can
determine it is free/libre, and that it doesn't send any data beyond
what we want it to send.
You can support internet freedom simply by saying no to organizations'
online portals, saying, that code does harm to the users. I hope you
will redo this code, but in the mean time I can do this activity only
by phone or email."
I've been doing that, with airlines and medical clinics, for some time
now.
US citizens: call on Congress to
end
surprise medical bills in the
next COVID-19 package.
If you call, please spread the word!
The IMF cancelled 6 months' worth of debt payments for the
poorest
countries, but that is just the beginning of what they need.
Oceania reports that the US oil industry has done
little to improve
safety of offshore drilling since the Big Spill 10 years ago.
The conman's supporters are eager for the end of the world and they
expect
him to make it happen. They regard anyone who disagrees with them
as an enemy to be spit on with contempt.
The latest Covid-19 "stimulus" law includes
another
big tax cut for the rich.
The intended benefits for the non-rich are being
eliminated by
Republican cheating,
Here's
an article that defends the importance of digital privacy,
but starts by giving up on many fronts. It lauds online dis-services
and their nonfree client software, and won't go further than to
plead to avoid even more change in the same bad direction.
I'm not interested in whatever secondary benefits those dis-services
might offer. I don't want to be distracted from making sure I don't
have contact with them.
Morozov: The
tech ‘solutions’ for coronavirus will supercharge the
surveillance state.
"Progressive solutionism", like "punitive solutionism", to use
Morozov's terminology, both presuppose tracking people and having a
system "manage" them. I'd say they are two ends of a spectrum
Once the system is operating, it can easily be adjusted along that
spectrum.
Whatever forms of repression and centralized power we accept today
will continue to hurt people for a lot longer than Covid-19 does.
Whole Foods workers plan to strike,
demanding
masks and training to
protect them and customers.
It is surely not a coincidence that Whole Foods belongs to Bezos.
Why buy from him?
Should
passengers return to cruise ships after the pandemic? No.
The article explains how cruise ships harm their passengers, their
staff, and the environment.
How the left starts
to organize when protests and political campaigning
are banned or perceived as dangerous.
Amazon
fires two employees who condemned treatment of warehouse workers.
The basic way to limit Amazon's power to do wrong to various sectors
of society is to refuse to do business with it.
The
residents of Brazil's shantytowns face the danger of hunger due to
lockdown.
(satire) Trump
Urges Loosening CDC Restrictions To Let Coronavirus
Get To Work.
Over a year ago, Foxconn said it would build a big factory in
Wisconsin in exchange for a subsidy. The factory plan keeps changing,
and shrinking, but so far
nothing
seems to be happening.
Amazingly, Foxconn may actually be denied the subsidy for not carrying out
the plan.
A suffering US restaurant chain owner applied for a loan whose purpose
is to allow him to rehire laid-off workers, then
complains that it is
"inflexible" because it requires him to rehire the laid-off workers.
Billionaires' income is mainly generated by their wealth, so no matter
how the tax amounts are determined, we can understand the effect on
their wealth by measuring them as a fraction of that wealth. For US
billionaires today,
that
fraction is 1/5 of what it was in the 1980s.
How the tax amounts are determined does make a difference. If it is
calculated on wealth, it can exceed the billionaire's income,
resulting in a welcome decrease in the billionaire's wealth.
The 2008 fiscal crisis damaged US-led globalization.
Covid-19 has damaged China-dominated globalization.
Can we stop globalization
from bouncing back?
Globalization is the triumph of efficiency over resilience, and profit
over people. If we learn the lesson, we will strengthen resilience,
and that means pruning the globalization.
"DNA vaccines" could amount to genetic engineering, since the genes
they carry get incorporated into the genome of the animal (which may
be a human) that
gets vaccinated.
A DNA vaccine is not necessarily bad or unjust, but it has the
potential to be so. So they need to be studied carefully, not rushed
into use. It is therefore a matter of concern that some of the
vaccines being developed against Covid-19 are DNA vaccines.
The US system of imprisonment is a trap in which millions of people
are caught, and society as a whole as well.
It
doesn't achieve its
stated purposes.
Covid-19 is interfering with the scheduled refueling and repair of
nuclear power plants.
They
may have to shut down.
Or they could keep operating with increased risk of a nuclear accident.
Operators have imperfect information about what is going on inside of
a nuclear reactor. Under the influence of hot, corrosive fluids, pieces
of metal can break and move. This makes it
even
harder to understand what
is going wrong and what to do about it.
Canada (like the US) moved mountains to produce equipment for World War II.
Why accept a shortage of ventilators, or any product,
necessary to put an
end to Covid-19?
With our governments in thrall to billionaires, one is compelled to
suspect that the billionaires have a plan to profit by not making enough.
Big US banks want
to buy assets of US oil companies.
This could make it harder to crank those oil companies down to zero,
because they won't need to go looking for funding.
However, it could also reinvigorate the boycott of JPMorgan Chase,
Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup — a boycott which started
ten years ago to punish them for causing the recession.
Online misinformation about 5G wireless has inspired
many acts of
vandalism against base systems in the UK.
I've read that the safety of the frequencies used by 5G wireless has
not been established. It should have been thoroughly tested before
the decision to adopt those frequencies, but the uncertainty does not
constitute evidence for the claim that it is dangerous.
The known dangers of 5G wireless are the same as the dangers of 4G and
3G: every portable phone helps the phone network track the users'
movements (except the Librem phone when its radio is switched off),
and every portable phone can be remotely converted into a listening
device (except the Librem phone).
Airlines are disregarding the EU law which says
they must offer
customers a refund when they cancel a flight.
Perhaps it is a good idea to offer them a compromise, but that
compromise must be accepted by the public, not imposed by the
airlines. The broader voucher program proposed in the article could
be a good solution, but giving putting these customers at the head of
the companies' creditor lists could also be part of the solution.
That way, the customers might not get all they are owed, but at least
the stockholders will be the first ones to lose.
*Wisconsin proves it:
Republicans
will sacrifice voters' health to keep power.*
Covid-19 outbreaks
are
sparking riots in many US prisons.
Tracking coronavirus may be a good idea,
but
doing this by tracking
every individual creates a threat of repression.
A clever system to detect who an infected person has come close to,
without reporting where any person has been,
is
described here.
Schools are trying to make students
take
exams via vicious snooping
software.
The article says how nasty the program's behavior, and the company's
behavior, are.
But even before we get to the nastiness of the surveillance, and the
painfulness of the hoops (such as to stare at the screen and never
look away), even installing the program violates your freedom.
It is surely not free software,
so just by running on your computer
it
denies your freedom,
and (I expect) it requires an equally unjust operating system
in order to install it.
(I tried to check those things, but the company's web site would
not let me connect.)
I see two ways to avoid this in justice.
Your stand will have more power if you join together with other
students as a group to refuse.
The bully
has told border thugs to deport asylum seekers summarily,
without
an asylum hearing.
The WHO has been given so little power to coordinate response to epidemics
that it
can only plead with national governments.
A bookstore owner writes about how her bookstore has continued to
operate…as
a surveillance system.
She presents this as a story of triumph over adversity, disregarding
the implications of imposing surveillance on all purchases. For me,
this outcome is perverse and alarming. Paying for a book with a
credit card tracks people and what they read. So does shipping it to
the customer.
I won't give a store any information that could identify me, and
especially not a bookstore. So until there is a store that lets me
enter, browse, pay cash, and take the book away, I won't buy a book
from a bookstore. If bookstores "survive" by converting themselves
into collectors of data, all of which is available to the FBI without
a warrant under
the
law Biden helped write,
they will become part of the problem.
Can we count on them to let people pay cash again some day?
US citizens:
call
on Congress to rescue the US Postal Service.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on
Congress to provide support to local journalism, which is now
endangered everywhere in the US.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Will the US government tell us
which
big corporations get a handout?
Noise pollution from roads
drives
away bats.
Many bat species are endangered; this may be part of the cause.
*Will coronavirus shock the global economy into
long-term
thinking?*
Imagine if instead of renaming the Department of War to "Defense", the
US set up
a
department really for defense.
A judge ruled that one of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline's
environmental review was
not
properly done. Construction across water has been put
on
hold.
No wonder the saboteur in chief
wants
to get rid of environmental reviews for large projects (the ones
with the potential to do really big harm).
Australia is
offering
to end lockdown if 40% of the people carry a contact-tracing app.
Under ordinary circumstances I would refuse to carry any such thing;
no need to bother investigating the details.
Nowadays, due to the epidemic, I feel an obligation to cooperate with
contact tracing. But that does not mean I would accept anything
whatsoever under the rubric of contact tracing, regardless of what
else it really does.
And that goes double in Australia, due to its law that authorizes the
state to order the developers of any product or service to secretly
sabotage it.
Plutocratist Democrats' new idea for giving some nonrich Americans
medical insurance is to
subsidize
their premiums for the insurance they had before they were laid
off.
The criticism in the article exaggerates, which is a shame since it is
mostly valid. This would give laid-off former full-time workers
something: it would pay part of the cost of continuing the
coverage that they most of them received from their employers. Which
is usually a lousy plan with high deductible and high copay.
Compared with a national medical system, it is a little better than
nothing.
Meanwhile, the US government is giving big airlines billions,
plus loans.
An incomplete consideration of the question of whether it is right to
use the park yourself,
if
everyone else is staying away to avoid a
dangerous crowd.
This discussion ends prematurely with an invalid conclusion: to
deprive everyone and call it "fairness". There is some number of
people who can use the park while staying sufficiently apart from each
other. Since that is not dangerous, society should set up a system of
rationing for slots to use the park.
The system should not commit incidental injustices through a bad
choice of mechanisms. For instance, it should not require using
non-libre software, and if authorities verify that park users have
slots, that should not identify those users who do have slots.
The arguments for individual disobedience are much weaker against this
helpful system than against a wasteful extreme of complete denial.
A reawakening dormant volcano, located between Reykjavik and its airport,
may
cause substantial difficulties for both.
*Peter Navarro:
what
Trump's Covid-19 tsar lacks in expertise, he makes up*
He *wrote books quoting expert who turned out to be fictitious version of
himself.*
The euro zone banks are once again driving the poor EU countries into
unending debt.
They
will be forever reduced to working for the banks,
like Greece.
Some hedge funds
have
made billions of dollars betting on a stock
market crash.
Others say they are going bankrupt.
Let's hope so!
Plutocratist US politicians
are
managing the response to Covid-19 to
protect big businesses
and let everyone else suffer for their sake.
How FDR would include
the rich in making the sacrifices to fight the
"war" against Covid-19.
Also, right-wing voter-suppression in the 1940s.
Eli Lily has
stopped gouging on insulin.
That practice endangered the lives of people with type I diabetes,
often
forcing them to skimp on it
and risk their lives
The US could get rid of this problem in general by changing its patent
laws and adopting a national medical system,
also known as Medicare for All.
The company could have done this before, but thought it could get away
with gouging. Perhaps Eli Lily made this change hoping to preserve its
power to gouge by eliminating one of the arguments used to push for
eliminating that power.
(satire)
*… police shot an unarmed black civilian who
reportedly matched the description for Covid-19.*
"In the heat of the moment, it was completely impossible to
differentiate between the 6-foot-1inch, 175-pound male and the
0.125-micron pathogen."
(satire)
*CDC Releases Instructions For All
Americans To Make Their Own Hospitals.*
As Republicans push hard for another act of
dooH niboR, Pelosi and
Schumer are
not trying very hard to make it better than that.
In San Francisco, vote for progressive candidate Shahid Buttar for Congress.
Many kinds of animals, even some fish,
transmit
patterns of activity
(culture) to their offspring.
Global heating
effects have forced millions of people in Somaliland
into refugee camps.
Women
in those camps are in great danger of rape.
The article sometimes says Somaliland and sometimes Somalia. Nowadays
those are two different polities with different political situations.
Somalia is
whether the outside-imposed government fights al-Shabaab.
However, these events are in Somaliland which is more or less at peace.
A landlord in Minnesota faces charges
for
evicting a tenant in spite
of the emergency order against evictions.
Various groups representing not-yet-middle-aged voters have announced
to Biden what programs
he
would have to adopt to their support in the
presidential election.
I will join my name to them. Biden would have to work hard to
demonstrate sincerity in commitment to these programs, but if he does,
I will support him.
*Coronavirus is not some great leveller:
it
is exacerbating inequality right
now.*
US citizens:
call
on all governments to end their wars.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The precipitous decline in excessive clothing purchases has led to
cancellation of orders.
Millions
of people will be faced with unemployment.
Last year we had a couple of long-term concerns about world garment
production.
leaving mostly dooH niboR.
The acute problem of unemployment for those workers doesn't alter the long term disaster that the production of last year was leading to.
We need to move towards a real solution, not a stopgap that makes things worse. A real solution saves the workers and their families from an early death, this year and in future years. It ends the wasteful excesses of production.
I think that a real solution requires either a big drop in the birth rate, or some miracle.
*'I didn't buy new clothes for a year and it was the best thing to happen to my wardrobe'.*
The bully says he will
cut
off US support for the WHO.
*[The bully's] decision to cut WHO funding is an
act
of international vandalism.*
*What
does the WHO do, and why has [the bully] stopped supporting it?*
*Commercial creditors
'must
sign up to global debt deal' — or forgo Covid-19 help.*
I agree — except that it seems wrong to give any state "help" to
giant investment companies. Their stockholders often claim that they
deserve their high profits because they are risking high losses, yet
whenever it looks like such a loss is going to occur, they plead "it's
not our fault, so save us from this loss."
By the same logic, every time they get a big gain, it's not their
credit, so they should hand it over to the public treasury.
*Water in estuaries along NSW coast has
warmed
by more than 2C [since 2007].*
This is much faster than the ocean or the air.
US hospitals and clinics are shutting down departments, even closing
entirely,
putting
their staff out of work.
Meanwhile, the hospitals that are still open are overwhelmed with
patients, but they have no extra funds to hire the doctors and nurses
that have lost their jobs. A national medical system could give them
new assignments where they are needed.
The ACLU is suing to stop Baltimore from using airplanes
to
track the movements
of everyone in the city all the time.
Ecosystem disasters are just a step away. *New study finds ocean
ecosystems likely
to collapse [suddenly] in 2020s, and land species in 2040s,
unless global [heating] stemmed.*
The Coral Sea, in the ocean beyond the Great Barrier Reef,
is suffering
extreme coral bleaching.
Those reefs are too far offshore to be affected by fertilizer runoff
and tourism. This is due to heat alone.
*Bernie Sanders’ political revolution
is not over.*
*"While this campaign is coming to an end," said Sanders,
"our
movement is not."*
It won't be over until we win.
Doctors in Pakistan protested the lack of protective equipment for them.
Thugs
attacked them violently.
Given the world's low state of preparedness, there may be little that
hospitals or governments can do to give medical personnel better
protection quickly.
US doctors and other medical personnel don't have masks to protect themselves
from Covid-19, and hospitals fire them if they talk about this. They are
asking people to
join in making masks for them.
*Top doctor sparks anger
by
telling NHS staff not to waste PPE.*
His point, which in principle seems valid, is that precisely because
they don't have enough of the most effective protective equipment,
they should take care to use what they have in the most effective way
— the way that gets the most net protection.
*Coronavirus could
turn back the clock 30 years on global poverty.*
*Coronavirus could
push half a billion people into poverty, Oxfam warns.*
The world needs a massive program to help the poor and save the
environment so civilization can continue. The enormous government
spending already being carried out in many countries
may puncture the
claims that "there is no money for this."
With Sanders out of the race, it is virtually certain that the next
president will be a supporter of plutocracy and authoritarian state power.
We know of course that the conman supports those. It is less well
known that
Biden also supports plutocracy
and attacks
human rights (he wrote the basis of the PAT RIOT Act).
Big oil companies that have spilled lots of toxic chemicals in the US
have got a big gift from the conman, non-enforcement of the laws against this,
and
now want another big gift.
To ensure that Mnuchin and BlackRock can play favorites arbitrarily with
bailout money, the conman
has
fired the inspector general that would be in
charge of investigating them for corruption.
The US is buying masks from China and turning them over to companies,
which then sell
them at exorbitant shortage prices to states.
I wonder how these companies remunerate the conman.
The conman is using Covid-19
to
escape corruption investigations, skew
the census, sabotage elections, and other things.
*Top Sanders Aide David Sirota Explains Why Billionaire Class
Will
Support "Coronavirus Care for All" But Never "Medicare for All".*
*Monopoly houses, toy soldiers and Lego:
the
museum of plastic lost at sea.*
The brinksman and his cronies want to cancel the treaty that
permits the US and Russia
to
operate observation flights over each
others' territory.
I can't believe that the desire to reduce military spending by $40
million dollars is a sincere motive. In general, plutocratists seek
to increase spending on the military-industrial complex. I wonder
what the real motive could be.
Polluted air increases
the chance of dying from Covid-19.
It also increases
the
chance of dying from other causes, and getting sick.
A UK mayor said that Boris Johnson
"deserves"
to have Covid-19.
I don't think anyone "deserves" to have Covid-19, or any other
disease. I don't think anyone "deserves" to die. We all die, but
death is always an unjust fate.
However, since Johnson courted infection as a callous, dishonest
political stunt, he is morally responsible the consequences, including
getting infected himself, and the thousands of others who will catch
Covid-19 as a result of his "leadership", some of whom will die of it.
And that was only one of his many acts of contempt for truth and
justice.
Perhaps he deserves to be punished for these acts, but not punished
with death. The death penalty is an injustice and should never be
inflicted on anyone. What Johnson deserves is for Britons to tell him
they won't give him another chance to endanger people, then take away
his political power. But this will not happen if they erase their
memories of his wrongs.
When Britons voted for Johnson and other Tories, they brought bad
government and its consequent suffering on themselves (and other
Britons too). But that does not mean they deserve bad government and
its consequent suffering. Nobody deserves that. What they deserve is
to (1) change their minds and (2) undo their bad decision.
US citizens:
call
on the FDA to lift the restrictions on the abortion drug
mifepristone.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone:
call
on TV networks (primarily US networks) to stop showing the
bullshitter's dishonest "briefings" live.
If you sign, please spread the word!
* We must hold the likes of Rishi Sunak and Andrew Cuomo to account,
not
fawn over their modest displays of competence.*
The British fashion industry
could
be wiped out as a side effect of
Covid-19.
The fashion industry is a manipulative waste of people's money and the
world's natural resources, so we are better off without it. However,
those people and other people without jobs must not be reduced to
penury. We need a real welfare system that provides everyone with a
decent life.
Craig Murray: Julian Assange has a long-term pulmonary problem,
so if he catches Covid-19, he has a high chance of dying.
Murray believes
the UK wants him to catch it and die.
He may be better off catching Covid-19 and dying than living
to spend his life being tortured by the US. However, the affect
on freedom of the press will be the same disaster either way.
Domestic violence has doubled or tripled in some countries due to
lockdowns. A rough estimate
is
that this includes over 200 million
women.
Organizing to make sure future US stimulus plans
don't
further ingrain
dependence on fossil fuels.
Returning to the previous economy
should
not be considered the goal --
and anyway, the
plutocrats already working to make it worse.
Stiglitz: many poor countries
are
going to default on their debts this
year, unless they are rescued.
To truly rescue them would require forgiving those debts, or lending
them again at very low interest. Stiglitz proposes something along those lines.
However, I expect the plutocrats of the world to see in this crisis an
opportunity for disaster capitalism — to buy all the valuable assets,
including farmland, to convert the governments of those countries into
debt collectors, and to treat the inhabitants, for all time, like
unauthorized immigrants from nowhere.
*As Coronavirus Looms in Federal Prisons,
People
Inside Denied Constitutional Right to Speak With Lawyers.*
They test hardly any of the coughing prisoners, then count everyone
not tested as not infected. Anyone who makes, or believes, that
argument must be looking for an excuse to falsify the facts.
But stopping prisoners from consulting their lawyers is far worse,
as it prejudices their cases in many ways that the article explains.
Many governments around the world are grabbing total power
in the
name of protecting people from Covid-19.
Republicans are profiting from it, too, using it as an excuse to
prevent protests, almost eliminate opposition campaigning and
fund-raising, and hamper voting.
An emission of CO2 comparable to what humans are expected to emit in
this century, due to the giant volcanism that ended the Triassic
period, caused
extinction of half the species of life on Earth.
That emission took 500 years. We humans are doing it even faster,
which means even less time for life to adapt.
"I have studied the psychological effects of pandemics – and
even a few
weeks of isolation can cause lasting anxiety."
This makes it especially important to get some people we know to use
free software to talk with us, and soon. Make sure that the place
they retreat to from future anxiety has room for free software.
*Even though a small minority have persisted in gathering in groups, I
still do not accept the need to legislate
for
a nationwide house arrest
using the police for enforcement.*
The denial of citizenship rights to UK citizens of Caribbean origin was
the result of a bad attitude:
if
you can't jump through our hoops,
that's your fault.
Many immigrants with US medical qualifications are banned by
visa conditions
from
travelling to the cities where they are urgently
needed.
Proposing that Sanders should continue his campaign, not with the aim of
winning the nomination (since that is unlikely)
but
rather with the aim of
influencing policies after the election.
I think the best chance of influencing policies after the election
is the chance that Sanders may win. Biden gives us no chance of ending
plutocracy,
because he never wanted to do that.
As for the idea that people should "unite" behind Biden, if he wanted my
support he should have stood for progressive policies.
Boris Johnson is now
in
intensive care due to Covid-19.
I won't mock him with the name "Bogus" now that he is very sick dying,
but recall that his last great act of denialism was to deny that
Covid-19 was a big danger. He denied this with actions as well as
words, and he probably would not be sick now if he had not done so.
The narcissist uses his power to make people bow down to him, while
caring
nothing about others, even as he kills them.
He
personally
corrected the text of his speech to say "Chinese virus" instead of
"coronavirus".
The Daily Beast speculates that this was meant to distract
non-supporters from his bad decisions. I think it was meant to
distract his supporters from them also.
The narcissist
was
told in January that Covid-19 might kill over a million Americans.
Everything he has done to interfere was after hearing that danger.
The effects of Covid-19
fall
hardest on the poor and marginalized. In the US, that includes
blacks, because racism tends to marginalize people and make them poor.
The article describes how this exacerbates the effects of Covid-19,
citing blacks as an example. However, racism has some special
consequences that go beyond the problems of being poor.
*I'm a black man in America.
Entering
a shop with a face mask might get me killed.*
Ordinary local thugs
have
not let up on shooting people, and the immigration thugs have not
let up on arresting people for deportation (aside from the fraction
that will die in immigration prison).
(satire) "The free market works best with some healthy competition, so
by
increasing
the number of U.S. states to 68, we can hopefully double the cost
of ventilators," said the conman.
*Why America’s
Anti-Science
and Anti-Intellectual Attitudes Doom It to Coronavirus "Pearl
Harbor".*
Michael Atkinson: "It is hard not to think that the president's loss
of confidence in me
derives
from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an
independent and impartial Inspector General, and from my
commitment to continue to do so."
The USDA's new policy of letting slaughterhouses decide which
carcasses to inspect is
ideal
for smoothing the path for new diseases to jump from pigs to
humans.
They call it NSIS, which perhaps stands for (Almost) No Swine
Inspection System. It demonstrates plutocratists' ideological
opposition to anything that regulates business for the public good.
*School closures have
little
impact on spread of coronavirus — study.*
A toilet connected to an artificial intelligence system could monitor
your health daily and
keep
a host of corporations informed.
The only way people should trust such a system is if all the software
is free and various community organizations maintain versions that
they check for respect for privacy.
One aspect of the system is an advance for privacy: the use of
analprints to recognize people is far superior to the more commonly
fingerprint and face recognition. You don't leave an analprint
behind every time you sit down, and your ass can't be identified from
its analprint as you walk on a sidewalk or a lobby.
*After Coronavirus, Let’s Never Forget:
Republicans
Recklessly Put Our Lives In Danger.*
They have done worse than that, and they are still doing it.
Cancelling the measures to prepare for any future epidemic was certain
to kill people some day. But their relentless efforts to force the
world into global heating disaster are
certain
to kill hundreds of millions (at least).
Only
3/4 of the new electric generating capacity built in 2019 was
renewable.
How foolish it is to build any infrastructure that depends on fossil
fuels! We must put an end to that practice, on the double.
From "free" countries' governments to private hospitals, freedom of
speech is
threatened
in the name of "protecting" us.
*Misinformation Hampered Ebola Response. The Same Thing Could Happen
With Coronavirus.* Indeed, right-wing nuts (including the president)
are
already
promoting this.
His
henchmen, too.
The job of the US Trade Representative is corrupt at the root. It
consists of promoting business-supremacy treaties, twisting arms to
impose them on countries, to help companies dominate people and turn
democracy into a sham. This has been the case for decades, probably
at least 40 years.
If the US Trade Representative told me that 2 + 2 = 4, I would get out
my computer to check.
Proposing a
step-by-step
relaxation of lockdown rules, allowing increasing amounts of
various activities but still preventing transmission of Covid-19.
On the workplace relations that result in
business
gibberish.
*Coptalk
is defined by what at first seem to be paradoxes. On the one hand, it
is saturated with anodyne, technical language — the exhaustive
precision demanded by official reports and internal reviews. On the
other, it is fundamentally evasive. This might seem contradictory, but
in fact reveals a kind of systematic cunning …*
This cunning addresses the problem of how to kill and then frame
someone and make it sound like just another day's work.
Colorado has
published
objective criteria for deciding who is to get treatment for
Covid-19 when there is a shortage of supplies.
I think these criteria are wise, except for the preference given to
those who are pregnant over those who are not. That preference was
standard in the past, and it derived from the idea that making more
humans was an important contribution to society.
Now that population growth is a big danger, that assumption should be
discarded.
Why
taking
hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 could kill you.
It could also use up the limited supplies of hydroxychloroquine,
leaving
people suffering from lupus without their medicine.
All this based on an unfounded speculation.
Sanders's proposed law to
reduce
the medical and economic harm done by Covid-19.
Bangladesh is
providing
food to sex workers, since their business is shut down.
(satire) *Congress Sets Aside $1,200 In Trust For Each American
Until
[perse] Proves [perse's] Responsible Enough To Handle It."
US citizens: thank
Bernie Sanders for running for president.
The bully's men decided in September to cancel a program
to
identify coronaviruses in various animals that had the potential to jump to humans.
It had already identified a close relative of Covid-19. If it continues,
it can identify other viruses that may help deal with future pandemics.
Americans: don't mistake Governor Cuomo for a progressive just because
he handles one highly visible issue well. He is still the same
plutocratist he has always been,
a
so-called "centrist" Democrat that
stands for the interests of business.
The bully's
men have added artificial obstacles to the recently passed
law offering paid sick leave, which will have the effect of excluding
many workers who
were supposed to have this benefit.
The conman cheated contractors he hired to work on his buildings.
Why wouldn't he cheat workers too?
*How US Can Keep Death Toll Far Below the 100,000 Projection.*
By building, rapidly, a public health system that can test lots of people
and find
most of the recent contacts of those found to be infected.
The problems with the US medical system result from being shaped for a
bad goal: business profit rather than patients' health. These
businesses use
their influence to make medicine more expensive.
The way to fix this is to take them out of the circuit, with Medicare
for All. The other proposed "solutions" are designed to leave a big
role for the business that gouge patients. Unless their proponents
have made a big mistake, you can be sure their proposals will gouge.
The US government and states should support businesses by helping them
keep
paying the wages of idled workers.
I am concerned that urging people to think about "safety" will have the
effect of encouraging people to cede their freedom to reduce physical risk.
So I suggest we explicitly distance ourselves from that way of thinking.
What keeping "safe" means to me
A Labour leader calls for a wealth tax
to
help pay the UK state expenses
caused by the epidemic.
Orbán used Covid-19 as an excuse to obtain dictatorial powers,
which he
aims to use for general right-wing repression.
*US facing hunger crisis
as
demand for food banks soars.*
We need the government to operate food banks: to buy food to
distribute in them, and send national guard to run them. And make enough
face masks for them.
Remember when the government of China concealed the danger of the (not
yet really understood) Covid-19? Now the US government is doing it,
removing the captain of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt
claiming that he did not try hard enough to conceal
the spread of the
virus on that ship.
How to improve America's safety net so it catches workers
knocked off their
feet by recessions under today's conditions.
Obama's former press secretary, Jay Carney, is now an executive for
Amazon. After warehouse employees went on strike, demanding
protective equipment to avoid spreading Covid-19,
Carney said Amazon
fired the organizer because he "violated social distancing rules."
Just the day before the strike, Amazon ordered him to stay home in
"quarantine" for 14 days.
Was the strike announced in advance? I expect it was. If so, I think
this quarantine was arranged by Amazon's as an excuse to keep its
leader away on the day of the strike.
Amazon's PR staff intended to use that to distract attention
from
the bad conditions it keeps imposes on its workers.
*Senators Requesting Big Oil Bailouts
Received
Millions in Big Oil Donations.*
Current US laws permit this, when done in an indirect way, but it is
corruption just the same.
US citizens: call on Congress to
staff
the new Congressional Oversight Commission with aggressive
watchdogs to prevent corruption in coronavirus relief spending.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on American officials at various levels to end water
shutoffs and
restore
water service to everyone.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to
stop
the continuing practice of taking immigrant children away from their
parents and subjecting them to cruel conditions including denial
of medical treatment.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call
on Instacart to give workers supplies for
self-protection, and paid sick leave.
Even if the company treated its workers well, I would refuse to use
it for the protection of my privacy, because it can't be
used anonymously. And I expect it requires clients to
run nonfree JavaScript code, which
for
my freedom's sake I refuse to do.
US citizens: call
on HHS secretary Alex Azar to declare abortion an
essential medical procedure.
*Decline in Fossil Fuel Emissions Due to Coronavirus Lockdowns
No Substitute
for Climate Action, Advocates Say.*
Covid-19 will be licked in a year or two, and greenhouse gas emissions
will rise again (the plutocrats intend to make sure they do), so the
bigger (but slower) danger of climate disaster will still be waiting
for us.
*When the Invisible Hand Gives You the Finger* —
(1) failing to
provide medical supplies and equipment, then (2) saying that you
should go back to work just to keep the profits flowing.
The cult of the invisible hand seems to be as absurd as any other religion.
*The Coronavirus Paradox: Biden's Delegate Lead
Increases
as the Need for
Bernie's Politics Adds Up.*
Republicans reluctantly agreed to a law to send checks soon to
non-rich Americans. Then they cheated on the deal, by making an
arbitrary rule that poor people who live on government pensions or
aid, and don't file tax returns, would not get checks.
Unless they
find out about this and file a return solely for this rule, they will
get shafted.
Yielding to a wave of criticism, Republicans dropped the new
requirement only for those who receive Social Security pensions.
They must hope that this will divide the opposition, so they could get
away with shafting the other affected people: military veterans, and
those whose income is small enough to qualify for the existing income
assistance.
Why deny this aid to the poorest? Those politicians' overriding goal
is to transfer money to the rich, so they take advantage of any
opportunity,
I do not submit my tax returns on line because it requires nonfree
software. I use xournal to write my data on the PDF form, and print
that. As I have no printer, I will visit a copying store to do the
printing.
I do this because keeping safe means protecting our freedom as well as
our health.
Concentration camps have existed for a century;
the
US and China both
operate concentration camps today.
US concentration camps do not kill prisoners directly,
but
often deport them
to a high probability of death.
Working from home, nowadays, often means that the employer monitors
everything that you do,
via
the nonfree software they make you use.
The government should not be allowed
to
collect data on masses of
individuals' movements without a warrant.
Australia is not satisfied with the forest destroyed by the
unprecedentedly large fires — it is giving logging companies
an
exemption from environmental laws to help destroy what remains.
*[The numskull] Refuses to Reopen Affordable Care Act Enrollment
to Help
[Newly] Uninsured [Americans].*
Greta Thunberg rebuked the US government
for
ceasing enforcement of
environmental protection regulations.
Environmental damage allowed now by the EPA will make people more
vulnerable to Covid-19 now, and continue harming people and nature
for years after Covid-19 has ceased to preoccupy us.
In education, don't think of "soft skills" as secondary.
*Soft Skills Are Essential Skills and
Our
Kids Need Them Now More Than Ever.*
The ACLU won a US court ruling
that
disobeying a server's terms of
service (or disservice) does not violate the CFAA.
This will be a milestone victory, if it endures, but we cannot take it
as final yet. I expect the big digital quasi-monopolies will arrange
to try to reverse this decision.
Too bad we could not bring Aaron Swartz back to life if the decision
stands.
Robert Bork's evisceration of US antitrust law allowed a gouging company
to dismantle the US government's contract
for making copious
inexpensive ventilators.
More
information about those events (though it doesn't trace the
connections to antitrust law and Medtronic).
But it does mention that the US government pushed to reduce the number
of hospital beds because it expected that the business-based US
medical system would seek excuses to keep all hospital beds full.
A National Health Service can maintain extra beds as a reserve, given
political
will to provide good medical care.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to fully fund a vote-by-mail system for November.
To sign this without running nonfree Javascript code, use the
Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone:
call
on New Mexico's Department of Cultural Affairs and Museum of Art
to undo its censorship of art that shows the effects of fracking.
If you sign, please spread the word!
*The Democratic Party
Must
Harness the Legitimate Rage of Americans. Otherwise, the [extreme
right-wing] Will Use It With Horrifying Results.*
The US sent a hospital ship to help New York City, then
covered
it with rules that have made it almost useless.
This fits the conman's pattern. He signed a law to give Americans
payments to tide them over, then
made
rules to exclude millions. He signed a law to give some American
workers paid sick leave, then
made
it easy for a company to exclude its workers from paid sick leave.
I wonder if the conman had anything to do with the rules
preventing the use of the hospital ship.
I wonder if he studied government under Kafka.
The bully's
men have added artificial obstacles to the recently passed
law offering paid sick leave, which will have the effect of
excluding
many workers who were supposed to have this benefit.
The conman
cheated
contractors he hired to work on his buildings. Why wouldn't he
cheat workers too?
Republicans reluctantly agreed to a law to send checks soon to
non-rich Americans. Then they cheated on the deal, by making an
arbitrary rule that
poor
people who live on government pensions or aid, and don't file tax
returns, would not get checks. Unless they find out about this
and file a return solely for this rule, they will get shafted.
Yielding to a wave of criticism, Republicans dropped the new
requirement only for those who receive Social Security
pensions. They must hope that this will divide the opposition, so
they could get away with shafting the other affected people: military
veterans, and those whose income is small enough to qualify for the
existing income assistance.
Why deny this aid to the poorest? Those politicians' overriding goal
is to transfer money to the rich, so they take advantage of any
opportunity,
I do not submit my tax returns on line because it requires nonfree
software. I use xournal to write my data on the PDF form, and print
that. As I have no printer, I will visit a copying store to do the
printing.
I do this because keeping safe means protecting our freedom as well as
our health.
Paul Mason forecasts that the effects of the epidemic shock
will
compel capitalism to incorporate many socialist features —
such as nationalization of some large business sectors, perhaps a
guaranteed monthly income.
Ellen
Brown's comments on the US bailout of business debt.
The US Strategic National Stockpile's web site said its purpose
included providing medical supplies to states and local governments.
Kushner mistakenly said this was not true, so the government
removed
those words from the web site.
The mainstream media don't dare to say "Orwellian", but that's what it is.
This is how the Soviet Union approached its own history.
(satire) *… Jared Kushner admonished resource-stricken states
this week that they
should
have shown some foresight and planned ahead before joining the
Union.*
(satire) *… the governors of several Southern states confirmed
Thursday they have exempted religious services from their
shelter-in-place orders, arguing that
Covid-19
is a good Christian virus that wouldn’t dare to spread during
church.*
A nonfree program is ipso facto untrustworthy: its developer controls
what it does. It is always the case that the developer may have
already used that control in ways that hurt the users.
In the case of Zoom, this is not a mere possibility. The developer
has done a
lousy
job.
This is in addition to denying freedom to the users by making the
program nonfree.
The fastest way to develop treatments or vaccines for Covid-19 would
be through
international
cooperation. However, mainstream politicians and mainstream media
ignore this and stick to the plutocratist line.
It is unfortunate that the author of that generally admirable article
fell into the confusion that the term
"intellectual
property" always tends to spread.
Amazon warehouse workers in Chicago have gone on strike
demanding
the company take steps to protect them from the spread of Covid-19 in
the warehouse.
Amazon is demonstrating the cruelty to workers which is its usual
attitude. That is one of the
many reasons I urge everyone to refuse to
buy from (or through) Amazon. I never do that.
Ralph Nader: supporters of the president should
look
at all these things he is doing to increase dangers for Americans.
Owen Jones: The Labour Party's new leader, Keir Starmer,
continues
Corbyn's policies, and progressives should defend him against the
followers of Tony B'liar.
Millions of Indians are stuck on the street with
no
money and few friends, and forbidden to travel to the places they call
home. Modi is willing to let them starve to death.
The conman is firing the inspector general of US intelligence agencies
as
punishment
for noticing the conman's crimes.
This is part of his general campaign to intimidate anyone in the
government who would criticize him.
US citizens: phone the White House at 202-456-1414, and demand
allowing veterans, and people receiving Supplemental Security Income
(disabled, or working but poor), to get their $1200 CARES act benefit
checks without having to file a gratuitous tax return.
US citizens: call
on state officials to allow everyone to vote by mail.
US citizens: call
on the narcissist to Use the National Defense Production Act
to force production of protective equipment.
(The Japanese word for "bank" is "ginkō".)
In 2016, under Obama, the US government made advance plans for how to deal
with an epidemic.
In
2020 the numskull's officials ignored them.
The numskull's virus denialism
is
causing thousands of American deaths.
Russia plans to require everyone in Moscow to get government approval
for each trip out of the house. Added to this obvious injustice is
another injustice whose gravity most people won't recognize:
the
system requires a nonfree app running on a Stalin's Dream device.
Edward Snowden: *high-tech surveillance measures
governments use to fight the outbreak of COVID-19 …
could
have a long-lasting impact.*
US bombing in Somalia continues killing civilians and
the US government
continues saying everyone killed was an enemy.
*Violence and humiliation used to police coronavirus curfews around
globe, often
affecting the poorest and more vulnerable.*
In China in 2020, if you don't carry a portable phone with a special
malicious app, you
are almost under house arrest.
Lockdown alone will not put an end to Covid-19.
Mass
testing can.
*Oceans can
be restored to former glory within 30 years, say scientists.*
That would require great efforts to end the damage that humans
continue doing to the ocean, and that includes CO2 emissions.
90 million years ago, a part of Antarctica that was under 600 miles
from the South Pole was covered by rainforest.
Scientists suspect that
a high level of CO2 was responsible.
US citizens: call
on your state officials to make vote-by-mail available in all elections.
US citizens: call
for investigation of the senators that profited
from inside information about Covid-19 by selling their own shares.
US citizens: call
on private medical insurance companies to cover all
Covid-19 treatment in full).
*Poll Shows Nearly 60% in US Believe
Political
System Designed Solely to Serve Rich and Powerful.*
So why did they vote for Biden rather than Sanders? There is nothing
to recommend Biden except his support for those bad goals.
Biden continues to state
his
opposition to Medicare for All.
*Financial help for airlines
'should
come with strict climate conditions'.*
Likewise for all business pertaining to transportation using fossil
fuels.
Refugees in Italy have set up a cooperative farm
which delivers
vegetables to nearby Italian families.
(satire)
*"We allocated hundreds of million dollars in state funding
… to begin construction on thousands of estates, country
houses … to ensure that each and every wealthy New Yorker
can ride out the pandemic in safety and comfort," said New York
governor Andrew Cuomo.*
Las Vegas is giving homeless people "shelter" in boxes painted on a
parking lot while
thousands of hotel rooms are empty.
New York City has enough vacant hotel rooms for all its homeless people,
but instead of housing them there,
it
sends thugs to roust them.
The shelters are now dangerous places to stay.
(satire)
*[The numskull] kicked off
his plan to tackle the medical supply shortage Tuesday by awarding
ExxonMobil an exclusive contract to drill for ventilators in the
arctic.*
Most American families will have trouble paying their rent or mortgages
this month or next.
They need help.
The bullshitter occasionally tells the truth. He admitted on TV that
Republicans
can't nationally win a free and fair election.
Alberta's planet-roaster government has invested a billion dollars
in in the Keystone XL pipeline
so
that Trance Canada can begin
construction while Covid-19 has everyone in a trance.
This despite the fact that it can't start construction now because it
doesn't have approval of various kinds.
Running hospitals, and medicine in general, with the attitude of
business rather than medicine is directly responsible for the
shortages of hospital beds and ventilators in the US. In New York
City, mergers
and closures in the name of efficiency have eliminated
over 1/4 of the hospital beds since 2000.
The FBI has announced it will stop accepting FOIA requests by internet.
Supposedly this is necessary because of
Covid-19,
but there is no rational
connection between the two.
This seems to be an instance of the right-wing extremists' general
attack on truth and rationality. They can cite any irrelevant fact as
a reason for any decision, and thumb their noses at anyone who points
out the irrationality.
US political leaders, and investors,
have
a very limited horizon for
imagining that bad events could really occur, or how bad they may get.
The saboteur
in chief has ordered nearly eliminating Obama's 2012
requirement for increased fuel efficiency of new cars,
which was
scheduled to take effect in 2021.
I expect this will kill millions of people by accelerating climate disaster,
but that will take a couple of decades to become visible, and today's
high officials won't be in office by then. Their successors will try to evade
the blame by lying about the facts.
*Myanmar (Burma) editor
could
face life in jail for interviewing rebel.*
Amazon
fired the worker who organized Amazon warehouse workers to
go on strike demanding equipment to avoid transmitting Covid-19,
as well as decent pay.
The madman is making states
bid
against each other for scarce
mechanical ventilators.
There must be many makers in the US who can provide improvised ventilators.
International concentration of the industry that makes making medical
equipment, supplies and drugs is a false economy — it optimizes
profit for normal circumstances and prevents ramping up production
when there is an epidemic.
Instead
it leads to competition between
countries for something they all need.
I think that countries should agree that each will maintain production
facilities that can be ramped up when needed, for a wide variety of
medical needs.
One danger of relying on private hospitals, as the US heavily does, is
that they
may shut down just when they are most needed.
Private equity funds are buying up small companies in certain US
medical fields, consolidating them,
and
making them gouge people.
Florida's governor wants to stop the cruise ships Zaandam and
Rotterdam from docking, saying that since they are "foreigners"
they
should all get sick and die.
That's right-wing extremists for you — they never miss an opportunity
to demonize the scapegoats-du-jour and inflict cruelty on them.
The lockdown response to Covid-19 may lead to a big undercount in the
US census, perhaps
favoring the Republican efforts to exclude
unauthorized immigrants.
The madman is planning to escalate the fighting
with
an Iran-aligned
militia in Iraq.
This could result in direct war between the US and Iran.
*We Don't Need Return to Normalcy —
We
Need President Bernie Sanders.*
Thugs in Europe are acting like callous robots
in dealing with
homeless people.
*Bailouts …
must
help people, not (mainly) corporations.*
Exiled Pakistani journalist Sajid Hussain, operating from asylum in Sweden,
seems
to have been disappeared weeks ago. Thugs of Pakistan's government are suspected.
*Climate-killing products
should
come with smoking-style warnings.*
An unprecedented heat wave in Antarctica
shows
the world is proceeding on track to global disaster.
The US government is lending Boeing 17 billion dollars at a special
low interest rate that amounts to a gift of hundreds of millions.
Does
this make sense?
US citizens: call
on Congress to end the spread of COVID-19
in migrant detention centers, jails, and prisons.
US citizens: call
on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza and allow full
access to medical supplies.
US citizens: call
on officials to let people out of jail and stop
jailing people when it is not vitally necessary.
US citizens: call
on federal and state officials to make prisoners'
phone calls gratis.
Orbán is now dictator of Hungary in all but name. There is no more
legislature and no more elections
until
he decides to bring them back.
He can imprison anyone for "spreading misinformation", whether it is
true or false.
*'The Strike Wave Is in Full Swing': Amazon, Whole Foods Workers
Walk Off Job
to Protest Unjust and Unsafe Labor Practices.*
Bravo to these workers.
Maybe it is necessary
to
set up a public subsidy for local news in the US.
I would hope that this requires sites permit anonymous access via Tor.
(satire)
*Amazon Announces Unlimited Time Off, Increased Health
Benefits For All Warehouse Robots.*
In the UK, *Coronavirus has mercilessly exposed
the
damage years of
austerity and shrinking of the state have wreaked.*
Monsanto expected its herbicide dicamba
to
ruin other farmers' plants.
The Muslim victims of the Delhi pogrom are being kicked out of the
camps they moved to.
They
can't find homes and can't get food.
Putting BlackRock in charge of buying up companies' debts
creates a
giant corruption opportunity.
Perhaps that's the intention.
*Why Coronavirus Is Humanity’s Wake-Up Call.* Since our economy is so
lousy that it isn't worth a sacrifice to preserve it,
we need to
change it.
Employers are hurrying to replace many of the workers now staying
home, with robots —
if
we let them.
I refuse absolutely to use robot sales registers in stores. Once I
went to a supermarket in the evening and found no way to pay except a
robot, so I put my purchases down and left. But I do more than that.
I generally shout to the people near the robot sales registers,
"If you use these machines you are putting other Americans out of work.
Join me and insist on going to the human sales agents. We don't have
to let them replace humans with robots!"
How about joining me an doing likewise? It build awareness of the
need for social solidarity.
Covid-19 creates a crisis: a need to choose between paths, including
the
path of global solidarity and the path of kicking others when they
are down.
*Fighting COVID-19 Starts With Universal Access to Water and
Sanitation.* All countries including the US
must
cease water shut-offs,
and turn the water back on in every home.
Since Bolosonaro won't protect Brazilians from Covid-19,
a local gang
has started doing its bit.
Trying to "restart the economy" as the bullshitter wishes would
not achieve its goal.
Workers
would get sick and businesses would
shut down again.
What is needed, rather, is to protect workers and small businesses
from the effects of the temporary shutdown. Most big businesses have
plenty of reserves; they don't need help.
The bullshitter's lawyers are trying to gag an ad by Biden's campaign
which shows the
bullshitter's statements downplaying the severity of
the Covid-19 situation.
Venezuela was very quick to block the spread of Covid-19. Many
Venezuelans in the US want to go home,
if
only the US would allow
Venezuela to pick them up.
My friend in Venezuela, who does not blindly support Maduro,
confirmed this is accurate.
Salafi Arabia is using the security flaws in SS7
to
track people around
the world.
SS7 is the protocol for communication between phone companies.
It has been known for many years that the lack of security in SS7 allows
anyone (if willing to commit a crime) to spoof being another phone system
and get data about the activity and movements of any phone line.
*Without adequate healthcare and unable to deliver basic needs,
India
now faces twin catastrophes of coronavirus and starvation.*
Spain and Ireland
have
temporarily nationalized all private hospitals.
They should make this permanent, and the US should do likewise.
*Bernie Sanders in the Age of Coronavirus:
We
Need Him Now More Than Ever.*
The US is exceptionally vulnerable to Covid-19 because of decisions
and policies that make it insecure —
due
partly to accepting a narrow
military definition of what it means to be "secure".
At least one teenager has died, apparently from
Covid-19, because an "urgent care" clinic refused to treat him.
He was one of the 8% of Americans who have no medical insurance.
The US is underreporting deaths from Covid-19
by
attributing them to
other causes.
*'We Need Medicare for All': Massive Coronavirus Job Losses
Expose Obvious
Failure of Employer-Based Insurance.*
The "stimulus" slush fund authorizes bailouts for non-US companies.
This could include cruise ship companies
which
avoid US taxes and
environmental laws.
*American Small Businesses
Are
on Edge of Extinction Event and Congress Is Not
Doing Enough.*
Italy seems to be doing a great job of helping society, as well as
individuals rich and poor, survive.
KUOW public radio will no longer transmit the bullshitter's daily
propaganda speeches about Covid-19. The station says
they are likely
to spread misinformation.
Bravo!
Whenever the bullshitter starts speaking in any program you are
watching or listening to, I suggest you switch it off and do something
else.
If his utterances contain, by chance, any valid information, you will
find it elsewhere — you can't trust it if it comes from him.
Whatever he says about what he will do, he will probably change
anyway.
Arguing with his words is ineffective for convincing his supporters.
So don't waste your attention on them — switch off.
Telling a broadcaster that you switch off when he comes on might do
some good.
People who enter Taiwan are subject to a strict quarantine, tracked by
their Stalin's Dream devices (portable phones). If the device ever
does not respond (such as, out of power),
enforcers go after you
immediately.
The strict quarantine may be necessary, but the specific method of
enforcement is intolerable. I wonder what they would say to a person
who has no Stalin's Dream device and refuses to have one.
The tracking of my movements would not matter if I were forbidden to
leave the apartment. It would only show I did not leave. But it is
also a listening device, and I would protect myself from that one way
or another.
What worries me most is how I would get food. I buy things only
anonymously. I do not give my name or address and I pay only cash.
Under those quarantine rules, I might not be able to buy any food.
14 days without eating would not kill me, but it would be extremely
unpleasant — enough to convince me to do as Paul Huang did, and stay
away.
For me personally, that is all theoretical. Travel for speaking is
not feasible if entering a country requires a 14-day quarantine,
regardless of the details of how it is enforced. But the issues of
freedom posed by the enforcement affect everyone, not just me.
*'Amazon Putting Lives of Workers at Risk': Omar and Sanders Press Bezos
on
Alarming Lack of Coronavirus Protections.*
The lockdown to stop the spread of one infection will presently cause
the spread of other infections,
because
much of world condom production
is shut down.
Condoms are used to prevent disease; they should be considered
essential products and their factories should not be closed. Surely
they can take steps to protect employees from catching anything at
work.
*Tackle climate crisis and poverty
with
zeal of Covid-19 fight,
scientists urge.*
The UK plans to lend over a billion dollars to countries
so they can
buy British weapons.
A retired Venezuelan general says he bought weapons to plan a coup
using money provided to him by Guaidó, encouraged by the US. He
announced this in
public after the US government indicted him, along
with Maduro, for alleged drug trafficking.
Factory farms (of chickens or pigs) encourage evolution of especially
virulent strains of flu. They also encourage small farms to move to
areas close to wildlife.
They may thus have contributed to the
evolution of Covid-19.
Today I received a postcard saying, on the front, "President Trump's
Coronavirus Guidelines for America." I laughed. Surely nobody but
his fanatical supporters
would
trust advice because it carries his name.
It is also a mistake to reject advice because it carries his name.
Someone checked, and the advice on that postcard is basically the same
advice you'd get from WHO. It has no resemblance to the bullshitter's
own views.
The thing to do with advice published under the bullshitter's name is
not even look at it. That way you won't be in danger of being
influenced by it in any manner. There are plenty of better places to get
advice from.
A friend suggested that putting his name on advice is electioneering.
New Zealand has found
a
giant aquifer of fresh water under the ocean.
To ensure it remains available for emergencies, it had better regulate
the use of that water to avoid permitting extra growth that would require
drawing water from it all the time.
Kaiser Permanente denied a patient hydroxychloroquine which she needed
to treat lupus, saying it was reserving the drug for future sufferers
of Covid-19. There is no scientific evidence that hydroxychloroquine
is good for treating Covid-19,
only
speculations boosted by the
bullshitter.
Adding insult to injury, the company thanked her for the "sacrifice"
it was forcing on her.
I have no information on whether it is true that she can safely go
without it for a month. I hope it is true.
Netanyahu shut down Israel's parliament and imposed massive
surveillance by decree. Israelis protested
and
were arrested in the
name of the Covid-19 emergency.
As one protester said, officials that trample human rights and
democracy is more dangerous than Covid-19. And that applies even more
strongly to greedy nihilists such as the bully.
If Israel wants to use phone location data to check who might have
passed Covid-19 to whom, it should set up a firm institutional
structure to ensure that data obtained for this purpose
cannot be used for any other purposes.
Members of the House of Representatives have asked the State
Department for detailed information on how Israel uses weapons
procured from the US, including whether they are used for actions,
such as demolishing Palestinians' homes,
which
violate the conditions
US law places on those weapons sales.
Bolsonaro denies the reality of Covid-19 as a dangerous disease, and
has
opposed all measures to stop it from spreading in Brazil, even in
his own life.
State governors who formerly supported him
are
now defying his orders
in order to establish social distancing.
One measure he did take, supposedly for protection against Covid-19,
was
to reduce enforcement of forest protection laws.
That is because he supports destroying
the forest.
(satire)
*Trump Announces Plan To Retrain Nation’s 3 Million
Unemployed Americans As Human Ventilators.*
India tells people to stay indoors and starve, and one state says
people will be shot dead if they don't. Meanwhile, foreign visitors
are being evicted because hotels are closing or they use up their
funds. Will
they be shot dead for this?
Australia is offering help to the Australians who face eviction or starvation.
Maybe some other countries do, too.
Does the government offer some other way out to starving Indians, one
not described in the article?
Any company that wants a bailout should in exchange
eliminate its
tax-avoidance schemes.
The shutdown of much clothing production is
an
opportunity to reshape
the industry to stop being grossly wasteful.
The numskull declared high-level planning meetings for dealing with
Covid-19 government secrets. Thus,
officials
from spy agencies could
participate and medical officials from the Department of Health and
Human Services were excluded.
US citizens: call
on the US government to stop fighting wars and
ocus on the real dangers: global health, migration, inequality, and
climate disaster.
US citizens: demand
an end to taking funds from important government activities
to pay for the damaging border wall.
The wall does no good,
but
it does do harm.
US citizens: call
on Texas to let abortion clinics stay open and
continue functioning.
The Netherlands will pay compensation
for
some of the abuses of its
colonial rule over Indonesia.
The UK government decided to give housing to all homeless people in Britain,
to
protect them from Covid-19.
This could have been done at any time; all that was lacking was the
will. Better late than never.
It could be done at any time in the US, too.
Using Covid-19 as an excuse, Republican saboteurs have given US
companies almost
unlimited permission to pollute air and water.
There may be some cases in which this is justified and necessary, but
many companies will jump for the opportunity to dump toxins. They
will kill people; they can even cause Covid-19 to kill more people.
And there is no limit on it, and no requirement to look for the least
dangerous alternative.
Loujain al-Hathloul, who was tortured in jail for agitating for the
right to drive a car in Salafi Arabia,
will
soon be put on trial.
The acting king offered to release her if she would swear she had not
been tortured.
Robert Reich: *The real divide [in the US today]
is
between democracy
and oligarchy.*
I think the term "plutocracy" is slightly clearer than "oligarchy",
but under either name, we must put an end to it.
The "national security" apparatus sucks down lots of money, year after
year, with
little opposition.
It does not make Americans secure; on the contrary, it puts our
freedom in danger and persecutes the heroes that try to tell us about it.
*'Looting of America by Big Corporations': Progressives Appalled as Senate
Unanimously
Passes Largest Bailout Bill in US History.*
"COVID-19 emergency spending bill: $250 billion for direct payments to
Americans, $250 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $4 trillion
to bail out corporations. Seems like the balance is off a bit."
US airlines got a big bailout,
with
no commitments about reducing
greenhouse gas emissions.
350.org says this is
not
as bad as Republicans initially intended.
Many European banks are forcing customers to carry a Stalin's Dream device,
but there
are some that will do two-factor authentication through a land line.
My landline does not report on where I am when I am not using it.
*Coronavirus Proves It:
We
Need Medicare For All.*
Somalia has received
substantial
debt forgiveness.
Many countries need the same.
Why is it so hard for countries to get their debts forgiven? Because
many big lenders lure governments into borrowing too much. Often
these governments are run by dictators who intend to pocket most of
that money and keep it in tax havens where it cannot be tracked to
them. The dictator figures that when
perse someday face overthrow and
flee, perse
will still have that money and will have a cushy life.
It is totally unfair to make the people of that country keep paying
that debt. However, the lenders and their submissive world powers
insist that no country ever be allowed an exemption. If it were
possible to be exempt, they say, every country would demand an
exemption. The profitable business of lending to dictators, and
flogging the people pay those debts decades after the dictator is
dead, would come to an end.
Would you consider that a bad outcome?
Occasionally democratic governments also borrow too much. In an
otherwise perfect world, maybe it would be unfair if they did not have
to pay those debts.
But our world is far too aligned overall with the rich over the poor,
which is a giant unfairness. Perhaps the unfairness of borrowing from
the rich and under some circumstances not repaying the debt would be a
morally legitimate compensation to reduce the giant unfairness.
I think it would be good if funds that lend to countries had to
consider the question, "Is this money going to national development
that will make the country more able to pay back the loan without
oppressing everyone? Or is it going to something corrupt or
unsustainable and we will not get paid back?"
This might make it harder for dictators to gain and keep power.
A Republican Texas official is trying to make Covid-19 an excuse
to
ban abortion by labeling it as "nonessential".
You can't delay an abortion the way you can delay a hip replacement.
The UK is going to give self-employed people (except high-income ones)
80%
of their normal income.
However, waiting until June could put some of them on the street.
Mobile phone companies around the world are figuring out how to
implement
world-wide
tracking of the movements of anyone that has a mobile phone.
In this context it makes no difference whether the phone is "smart" or
"dumb": the phone company
can track any
phone that is communicating.
"Smart" phones allow other kinds of tracking as well — by the
operating system (Android or iOS) and by
malicious
apps.
Turkey has
charged
two friends of acting king Mohammed bin Salman with murdering
journalist Jamal Khashoggi. As well as 18 more of his subjects.
Turkey cannot get its hands on those suspects, but the charges may put
a crimp in their international travels.
China's "Belt and Road Initiative" is
dangerous
to ecosystems as well as threatening Chinese economic colonization
around the world.
Economic imperialism is no better when it comes from China than when
it comes from the US. It may indeed be worse, because the US has a
public opinion one can try to influence, while the Chinese state has
prohibited and obstructed the existence of public opinion.
(satire) *a restless Donald Trump
confirmed Monday that he
couldn’t
believe he was stuck inside with nothing to do except be
president.*
Around the world, freedom-hating politicians are seizing the excuse of
Covid-19 to crush democracy —
or
trying to.
US nuclear reactor owners want a handout to
keep
aging nuclear reactors operating past their design lifetime.
They were
rejected
last year, so they hope Covid-19 will somehow provide an excuse
this year.
I refer to the book
Normal
Accidents for why it is dangerous to keep old reactors operating.
(satire) *a disturbing new study … found
American
fifth-graders were only absorbing advertisements at a first-grade
level. "Out of the 10,000 children we studied, over 75% of them
scrolled right past products placed onto their social media feeds and
did not even click or hover over the ad once…"*
The numskull has over 50% approval for his reaction to Covid-19
simply because
he
stopped saying it was no worse than flu.
That is a step up from a very low starting point. I think it shows
how little keel Americans have today, except when rigidized by a
church dogma.
Doctors
disagree about carrying "social distancing" to extremes.
It is always the case, for any kind of risk, that there are bigger
risks and smaller ones. A rational plan to reduce the total risk to
some target level involves trying hard to avoid the bigger risks,
while accepting occasional smaller risks. The lower the target level,
the more you'll reject risks of any given size, but it will always be
rational for you to accept small risks occasionally.
To put it another way, if you choose to ride in a car or bus, you're
accepting some small amount of collision risk. It is not rational to
take, for Covid-19 risk, the attitude that "any risk whatsoever is too
much", while ignoring small risks of collision.
The murderer's ministers gave Gilead, a particularly greedy Pharma
company, a
7-year
monopoly over selling remdesivir, the one known medicine that has
a good chance of saving people who have a severe case of Covid-19.
Gilead's business model is to procure such monopolies in order to
extort high prices from wealthy Americans who would otherwise die.
The non-wealthy Americans can't afford those prices do then die.
Would someone like to prepare to start selling banners and bumper
stickers that say,
*The middle class are about to discover the
cruelty
of Britain's benefits system.* It will drive them into penury, as
it has done to so many disabled Britons.
Shutting physical stores in some US states is helping Amazon dominate
the US economy
in
an even more dangerous way.
I refuse to buy anything from or through
Amazon. I always pay cash and only cash.
I tried to get take-out food for the first time since the shutdown. I
called two restaurants near my home. One seemed to be not operating
at all. The other was operating but would take only credit card
payments. Since I refuse to buy any goods with a card, I changed my
mind and did not order.
Feral hippos in Colombia prove to be
ecological
replacements for the mammoths and protohorses that humans wiped
out when they arrived in the Americas. Their presence makes the
ecology more like what it was 15000 years ago.
*Covid-19 economic rescue plans
must
be green, say environmentalists*
Covid-19 may kill one or two percent of the world's population. If
you think that is the ultimate horror, you may underestimate what
climate mayhem
could do. It may kill half of humanity or even more.
It could destroy civilization. Some think it might make humanity
extinct.
We must not treat climate mayhem
as the smaller danger just because
the worst part of it is a few decades away.
* Rightwing governments have denied the problem [of Covid-19] and been
slow
to act. With coronavirus and the climate, this costs lives.*
China is an interesting special case. It is repressive, like a
right-wing government, but unlike them the real rulers are not
businesses that hide their power over the state; rather, they are the
officials of the Communist Party and don't hide the fact that they
control the state. China's response started with the typical denial
of repressive governments, then flipped to an all-out effort which
turned out to be quite effective, though it has surely been used for a
permanent increase in control.
*[The numskull's] staff cuts have
undermined
Covid-19 containment efforts, watchdog finds.*
US government agencies have been
warning
for 15 years that the US needs a reserve of mechanical ventilators
to treat people affected by an epidemic.
Since the numskull claimed there was no shortage, he now can't bear to
recognize that competent, responsible officials were aware of the
shortage.
*Colombian [right-wing] groups exploiting coronavirus
lockdown
to
kill activists.*
I suspect these are some of the paramilitares,
Colombia's
most vicious terrorists.
US citizens: call
on Gilead Sciences to commit now to license its
COVID-19 drug, if approved, to all qualified producers, in exchange
for a modest royalty.
US citizens: call
on Congress to establish a right to medical care
for everyone in the US.
The UK will provide support for self-employed people
whose work has
collapsed.
Gilead Sciences backed down and released the murderous monopoly that
the US government offered it. But that is not enough. Gilead
must
commit to licensing the drug for other companies to produce.
The Dakota Access pipeline hit a legal snag,
as
a court ordered a full
environmental impact study.
With luck, this could delay it long
enough that it will never be built.
Migrant construction workers in Qatar are forced to keep working in
dangerous conditions. Now those dangerous conditions
include Covid-19
as well as high temperatures.
In general, foreign workers there
are
treated abominably.
In time of epidemic, US employer-funded medical "insurance" is an
incentive to lay off the employees as fast as possible.
The article recommends that the US immediately extend Tricare, the
medical system for military families,
to
cover all Americans.
A previous generation of cruel right-wing leaders, including Reagan
and Thatcher, started
the campaign to distrust anyone with
professional expertise.
Prematurely lifting Wuhan's measures to stop the spread of Covid-19
could
lead to a new outbreak.
Private US medical insurance companies are slow to move patients from
hospital beds to rehabilitation hospitals. This is
filling
up beds for people sick with Covid-19.
Amazon part-time warehouse employees had to fight for it,
but have won
paid sick leave.
Chinese expat Yang Hengjun, now an Australian citizen, is expected to
be charged with espionage in China. He has been jailed more than a
year, finishing with three months of solitary confinement,
and not
allowed to see a lawyer.
I remind people that Julian Assange
faces
roughly similar treatment
and has been prosecuted
in
such an unjust way that it is like
a veiled form of what China does blatantly.
*As 'Fury of Virus Illustrates Folly of War,'
UN
Chief Calls for Global Ceasefire.*
*Leading scientists also said the Covid-19 outbreak was a "clear warning
shot", given that far more deadly diseases existed in wildlife, and
that today’s civilisation was "playing with fire". They said it was
almost always human behaviour
that
caused diseases to spill over into
humans.*
Parts of England are headed
for
permanent drought due to global heating.
I am looking for reports of malicious functionalities in Zoom. Please
send me URLs of credible reports — I can't repeat a mere rumor.
US citizens:
call
on world leaders not to use Covid-19 as an opportunity to deny
basic rights.
You will almost surely live to see Covid-19 be eliminated, but if you
surrender any freedoms now without a fight, except in a carefully
limited way, you miss those freedoms for the rest of your life.
*"Temporary" powers in an emergency have a habit of becoming
permanent. In these circumstances, paranoia appears more a necessity
than a delusion.*
*Yet it remains true that technology is not destiny. Politics counts
for more than algorithms. Just as tyrannical governments, from Hungary
to China, are using the pandemic to impose more controls, so
democratic societies
will
need to show a liberal response to the virus.*
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
support
the Universal School Meals Program bill.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Eric Prince, former head of Blackwater, is a right-wing fanatic. He
recruited
former US agents to spy on organizations that the right-wing considers
enemies. He attacked the American Federation of Teachers, perhaps
at the request of his sister, Betsy DeVos, who is Saboteur of
Education. I suppose the teachers' union got in her way.
It is legitimate, and admirable, to conduct stings by making
recordings of meetings in which groups propose corrupt practices.
However, right-wingers don't always limit themselves to that.
Prince's infiltrators rummaged around in the office files
and secretly recorded the others in the office. They did not find
real corruption.
They also don't limit themselves to the truth. If they don't find
corruption, they may fabricate some. ACORN used to help poor people
and members of disprivileged groups register to vote. Right-wingers
ran a sting against ACORN. They found no real corruption, but
released
misleadingly edited videos that falsely suggested corruption.
London has cut down service on trains to the point that the many who
must still travel to work are
packed
together dangerously in them.
Boston and other cities are cutting train and bus service and
presenting this as some sort of safety measure. This is announced as
a measure to reduce contagion, and we are asked to take for granted
that it does so. Perhaps it is a sacrifice that is supposed to cure
by magic.
If the aim is to reduce the amount of travel, making travel more
risky is a perverse way to do it.
If the number of riders falls very far, it could happen that
some bus or train trips are useless and wasteful. If there are
typically one or two passengers in each bus on a certain line at a
certain hour, perhaps it is a harmless efficiency to cut the number of
bus trips then and there in half, and have three or four riders in
each bus. But this should not be carried too far.
I have not been on a subway train since a week ago, and I don't know
how many riders there are nowadays on Boston trains at various times.
I don't know whether Boston currently has the problem reported from
London. But the MBTA should know, roughly. I do think the MBTA
should explain just how this measure is supposed to help protect
passengers, and the facts about how it is working out.
BlackRock hopes to reduce the demand to tax it properly on the
billions of dollars it makes, so it is
offering
a mere $50 million to various community needs.
*Wuhan eases coronavirus lockdown
as
restrictions intensify outside China.*
Covid-19 will give Orbán the excuse to
make
himself dictator of Hungary.
*We can't let the coronavirus lead to a
9/11-style
erosion of civil liberties.*
It's not just increases in state repression and surveillance that
threaten us. Pressure to surrender to nonfree software and its
constant companion, surveillance, are a threat too — whether it
is for work, for school, for purchasing, for leisure, for chatting,
for political organizing, for whatever, it is unjust.
In resisting this, it helps to draw a clear line and refuse ever to
cross it. If you say, "I don't like the idea of using
Zoom/WhatsApp/Amazon/Google for this," people will argue back, "If you
can do it for that, why refuse to do it for this?" By contrast, if
you say, "I'd like to join you in this, but I do not use
Zoom/WhatsApp/Amazon/Google — it is an injustice," people will
find it hard to argue with your stance.
That doesn't mean you will always convince people to adopt your views.
They may say, "We're going to use Zoom/WhatsApp/Amazon/Google; if you
want to participate, that is the only way." How you respond to that
will show what you're made of.
The Heatland Institute
suggested
a "donor-advised trust" as a way for businesses to funnel money to
its efforts to sabotage climate defense.
It is ostensibly called the "Heartland Institute", but "Heatland" more
accurately describes what it is heading towards.
WHO has published
guidelines
for keeping Covid-19 out of prisons. If this is not achieved,
prisoners, staff, and the public outside the prison will all be
endangered.
*The bitter lesson is that what’s essential to community survival
can
and should be collectively guaranteed by the government.*
*Polar ice caps melting six times faster than in 1990s.*
*Losses of ice from Greenland and Antarctica
are
tracking the worst-case
climate scenario, scientists warn.*
*The outbreak necessitates heavy government involvement in our lives
but
this does not mean an overreach is justified.*
"… more people will suffer and even die as a result of the way
governments choose to handle the crisis than from contracting the
virus."
*Because of the Threat of Coronavirus Turning ICE Detention Into 'Death
Camps,' Groups
Rallying to Free Families Held Around Country.*
I think the article means "minors" when it says "children". The point
is just as valid for adolescents as it is for children, but I don't
want to appear to endorse that distortion of terminology.
On the matter of substance, I have to question the limitation of this
campaign to those who are jailed with relatives. Are the lives of
people who are jailed without relatives are less important?
*The Climate Movement Doesn’t Know
How
to Talk With Union Members About Green Jobs.*
Brazilian thugs are disappearing people,
perhaps
based on racism.
*The coronavirus relief bill
could
turn into a corporate coup if we aren't
careful.*
*It's morally repulsive how corporations are exploiting this crisis.
Workers
will suffer.*
An interview with AOC about how to protect the US economy,
including the poor
as well as the rich.
Measures to protect banks from the effects of Covid-19
should be designed
to protect them later from global heating.
This should go beyond shallow protection by including deep protection.
By "shallow protection" I mean structuring banks so they are less
likely to fail as a result of climate mayhem. By "deep protection" I
mean stopping them from funding any fossil fuel development, which
includes step-by-step programmed divestment from fossil fuels
companies and activities.
(satire)
*…hysterical mobs of violently bored citizens have begun looting puzzle
stores across the country,*
(satire)
*North Carolina Senator Richard Burr wondered
Friday when profiting off mass suffering had suddenly become a crime in
this country.*
*5 Key Demands:
U.S.
Foreign Policy in the Face of the Coronavirus.*
Arguing that Sanders lost because he didn't lead his movement to tackle his
opponents hard,
or
lead a direct action movement.
I can't judge whether that position is valid.
(satire)
*[the monster described] his administration’s best case
scenario projections for coronavirus where eight million Iranian
people are killed.*
Barr (and behind him, the would-be dictator) cites Covid-19 as an
excuse to eliminate the right of Habeas Corpus, so that governments at
any level could
put
anyone in jail indefinitely without giving a reason.
By using public money to protect California homes from [sea level rise]
the state is
transferring
wealth from working-class people … to … property
owners.
This is an example of dooH niboR.
In the US, classes correlate with
races, so every dooH niboR
policy is going to effect racial bias also.
That applies here, but the dooH niboR
element is why this is unfair.
More basically, resisting the damage done by
global heating cannot
hold out for more than a few decades if we keep building up global
heating.
If all you have is a tax cut,
every
problem, even an epidemic, looks like a chance to cut taxes.
Australia's equivalent of the NSA
has
spied on Australians. It can do this without a warrant.
*The White House, under the guise of its coronavirus response, is
quietly
advancing policies that President Trump has long advocated, from
tougher border controls to an assault on organized labor to the
stonewalling of congressional oversight.*
The November-January fires in Australia directly killed over 200 people,
but we should also count an estimated
400
deaths due to breathing the smoke all over the most populous parts of
Australia.
Kentucky Republicans have
voted
for a more strict voter-ID law now that the offices to obtain state
photo IDs are closed.
On
foreign policy, Biden may be no better than the bully.
In regard to
business-supremacy
treaties, I expect Biden to be worse, just as Obama was worse.
Obama pushed for the TPP (Treacherous Plutocratic Poison).
There are of course areas where the bully would be worse.
*'Do F-35s Fight Pandemics?' Amid Covid-19 Outbreak, Lawmakers
Pushing
For Even More Useless Pentagon Spending.*
The poisoner's officials
propose
to allow planting of genetically-modified herbicide-resistant crops in
wildlife refuges. This would imply using herbicides there, thus
endangering wild plants in the surrounding areas.
*Changeable weather in mid-latitude countries may have masked impact
of climate crisis
up
to now, study finds.*
US citizens:
call
on Secretary Mnuchin to suspend sanctions on Iran for 120 days.
US citizens:
call
on the House to pass the Ban Fracking Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on
the Senate to reject Stephen Schwartz as a federal judge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
*Third
House COVID-19 Stimulus Bill Better Protects Public Health, the
People, and Democracy.*
Surely it can't be perfect. I would like to see a review of its
downsides, from someone who criticizes it, to get an idea of how big
those are.
*New Senate Stimulus Bill Would
Ban
Companies Owned by Trump or His Children From Receiving Any Bailout
Money.*
However, it
gives
other giant companies a giant handout.
*OBSCENE: Patriotic Millionaires Slam
Senate
Bill Provisions on CEO Compensation.*
I think it also has a provision to cut employer contributions to
Social Security, which was
reported
in this article a few days ago. This would enable Republicans to
say, perhaps next year, "Social Security is running out of money; we
have to cut benefits."
The lieutenant governor of Texas
urges
older Americans to risk death to keep "the economy" going.
I might be able to imagine making a sacrifice to sustain an economic
system that supported all Americans well — as happens for
example in Scandinavia. The US economy is designed to keep the rich
working most Americans into the ground. This is an economy that
makes most people sacrifice to
serve the rich. Why make any sacrifice for that?
Patients were going to die in Brescia, Italy, because of a shortage of
oxygen valves for mechanical ventilators. The manufacturer,
Intersurgical, demanded $11,000 for each one, and couldn't deliver
them right away. It refused to provide the plans either. So a local
device manufacturer
figured
out plans and a local fablab made them with a 3D printer.
Fracassi's design, made by the fablab, fixed the problem for one city,
but the shortage of oxygen valves surely affects other parts of Italy,
and will soon spread around the world. Out of fear, perhaps tinged
with undue respect for the unjust "rights" of the manufacturer,
Fracassi insists he will not take the next step which would enable the
world to fix this problem globally: releasing the plans he has
developed.
The real hero will be whoever releases working plans to make these
oxygen valves — perhaps anonymously — so that there can be
ventilators for all who need them.
*UK privacy activists raise fears over
social
distancing tracking [of individuals].*
*[The bully's] ban on fetal tissue research
blocks
coronavirus treatment effort.*
That's not all it blocks. A friend of mine went blind, across many
years, because this ban prevented the research that might have
developed a cure.
*Experts fear [locust] swarms like those seen in Africa will become
more common as
tropical
storms create favourable breeding conditions.*
*Uber and Lyft drivers
protest
to demand more benefits during coronavirus crisis.*
What about cab drivers that are not working for a company? They need
sick leave too, and they should get every benefit that exploitees get.
Target gave workers a raise, but
made
them work a lot faster. Most workers there can't live on the
wages they get from Target.
*Global Green New Deal Supporters Urge World Leaders to
Learn
From Coronavirus to Tackle Climate Crisis.*
Brazilian religious nuts
want
to use helicopters to contact isolated indigenous tribes in
Brazil. That way, they can catch Covid-19 as well as other, older
diseases which are more fatal.
I guess there is no chance for uncontacted indigenous peoples to
obtain SAMs for self-defense.
*Coronavirus will bring into focus the depraved inefficiency of this
system—the model of profit-driven health care, of
market
forces that look out for the short-term interests of business, not
the long-term interests of us all.*
We should also learn that
we
need elected officials such as Sanders that want to correct the bad
system, not officials such as Biden or the bully that defend it.
Economists
call on the US to end the sanctions that interfere with response
to Covid-19 in Cuba, Iran and Venezuela.
'Bolsonaro Out!' From Balconies and Windows,
Millions
Demand Ouster of Brazilian President Over Handling of Coronavirus.
Physical protests reach a lot more people than virtual ones. It is
very important to continue them.
The US government
wants
to track everyone's phone to enforce possible travel restrictions.
The UK thugs
that infiltrated various nonviolent dissident groups,
sometimes by getting into pretend-loving sexual relationships with
other participants,
destroyed
documents after being told to preserve them for the inquiry.
If this doesn't put the thugs
behind bars for obstruction of justice,
they will have got away with that crime.
The bully bowed to the inevitable and
signed
the bill that will provide paid sick leave for about 20% of US
workers, as well as some other help.
By testing every person in the hotspot town of Vò, and quarantining
everyone found to be infected with Covid-19 including those who were
asymptomatic, Italy
put
an end to the spread of the disease there.
Lots of countries could apply this method, given only enough testing
capacity.
*Greenland's melting ice
raised
global sea level by 2.2mm in two months.*
The UK is planning emergency measures that
can
harm human rights.
This follows a
long
series of restrictions on human rights.
The power to test people and quarantine them seems legitimate to me,
in the emergency situation that exists. I agree with Corbyn that the
law must be reevaluated frequently.
However, banning protests "for our safety" is extremely dangerous.
I fear the US will follow the same path.
With great efforts to stop poaching, the population of African black
rhinos has
increased
slowly over the past 6 years.
The climate crisis threatens to leave countries (even rich ones) too
desperate to be able to continue these protection efforts. A world
recession might also cut into the world demand for the totally
ineffective "medicine" of rhino horn.
Progressive Democrat Marie Newman has
defeated
right-wing Democrat Representative Lipinski.
Although the Democratic Party machine has lost this battle,
I expect it has succeeded in protecting several other right-wing
Democrats that could have been replaced. Americans will replace
them sooner or later, but with the climate emergency, we haven't
got all the time in the world.
Wendell Potter: expect
deadly
greed from US medical insurance companies including his former
employer, Cigna.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency is being sued for
repeatedly
disregarding some of the requirements in the Toxic Substances Control
Act.
*From testing for coronavirus to treating the health impacts of
climate change,
universal
healthcare and publicly owned medicine production are critical
components for adapting to the coming crisis.*
In 1917, the US
imposed
arbitrary political censorship in the name of war. It was,
effectively, a war on dissent.
US officials are talking about sending money directly to individuals.
The question is
who
will get them, and whether they will be enough to protect people
from destitution.
Almost
1/5 of US households have someone who has already lost work.
(satire) Trump
Quietly
Checks With Aides To Make Sure He’d Be Included In Receiving
$1,000 Government Checks
Poor people in India live several people to a room, have to carry
water home so they can't often wash their hands. A day when they stay
home from work, they don't get much food. They
can't
do much to stop transmission of Covid-19.
Moreover, they are so much in danger of diseases that are more likely
to be fatal that they can't give Covid-19 priority. The worst effect
of Covid-19 might be the shortage of doctors to treat those other
diseases.
The underlying cause of this situation in India is the combination of
concentration of wealth and overpopulation.
The US is vulnerable to Covid-19 in the same sort of way, though not
to the same degree, because of
concentration
of wealth and plutocratist crush-the-poor politics.
China is making friends by
exporting
the supplies and equipment needed to test for Covid-19 and treat
it.
*A Biden-Trump Election Is a
Win-Win
for Wall Street and a Loss for Our Democracy.*
The author recommends electing Biden anyway, then trying to pressure
him to keep his somewhat progressive election promises.
(satire) *Trump Hits Back At China By
Announcing
U.S. Will Also Expel American Journalists.*
The sad part is the he
really
has expelled them from the White House.
The US government has
threatened
to harass relatives of the staff of the International Criminal
Court.
Any government rescue for airlines
must
rescue their workers and permanently give them more power in the
companies.
Senator Warren has proposed similar (identical?)
rules
for bailouts to any large businesses.
Many nasty practices that shouldn't have existed ever are being
relaxed now because, in the context of an epidemic,
their
nasty effects are revealed as intolerable — and because the
justifications for them were weak or nonexistent in the first place.
Here's one more example:
searching
aggressively for people to deport.
And another:
pressuring
people to pay medical and student debts (but only those owed to
New York State).
Alas, new rigid excesses are being imposed, including "Absolutely
never meet a friend in person," and new unjust practices, such as "Do
your studying, meeting and paying through nonfree software and digital
dis-services that will track you."
The former will presumably disappear easily when the epidemic is over,
but getting rid of the latter will require a fight. Therefore I
continue refusing to use web sites that demand nonfree JS code, and
not having a portable phone to track me with.
Some Italians have been accused of
violating
quarantine orders even when they have been told they may have
Covid-19.
The article says that the state wants to punish anyone who goes
outside even if perse
has had no sign of or contact with Covid-19.
I've heard a report that Italy is tracking people through their phones
so as to make the repression total.
There is no need to repress people that strictly. Occasional meetings
of a few people who probably don't have Covid-19 will have little
effect to spread it.
A New York City uniformed thug
was caught on video planting marijuana
in someone's car, to frame him. When the state failed to imprison him
for the act of bearing false witness, he
did
it again and was caught again.
Until we put those thugs
away for years, they will continue exploiting
their immunity to put honest citizens in prison arbitrarily.
*Study: global banks 'failing miserably' on climate crisis by
funneling
trillions into fossil fuels.*
Support for refugees in the EU has been cut off because
the
support organizations have shut down.
New Zealand has
eliminated
the former legal obstacles to getting an abortion.
Daryl Davis was a black jazz musician who switched fields and began
befriending
white racists and convincing them to drop their bigotry.
US citizens: call
on Congress to refuse the demand to suspend habeas corpus. Doing
so would allow thugs to arrest people and jail them for
any length of time.
US citizens: call
on Senator McConnell to stop interfering with who
will have the job of investigating the alleged corruption of
Elaine Chao, Saboteur
of Transportation, who is (as it happens) his wife.
US citizens: call
for an investigation of each
congresscritter or senator who is suspected of profiting from Covid-19 by
selling stock based on inside information.
US citizens: call
on the House of Representatives to pass the
Ban Fracking Act.
US citizens: call
on the FCC to use its authority to put a stop to
dangerous Covid-19 disinformation on broadcast TV.
US citizens: call
on US governments to release old prisoners and sick
prisoners.
US citizens: call
for many steps to keep people safe from
catching Covid-19 in prison.
US citizens: call
on the US to remove all military forces from Iraq.
US citizens: call
on the Boston Globe and the L.A. Times to stop
charging for access to coronavirus coverage.
Paying to access an article these days generally requires running
nonfree Javascript code, and tracks who reads the article. I consider
each of those an injustice, and I won't stand for either of them.
Therefore, if an article is thoroughly paywalled, I do without seeing
it.
US citizens: 51 Republican senators voted against offering paid sick
leave to additional American workers. If any of them is your senator,
phone
per office now and rebuke per.
(Please respect gender neutrality and number agreement together,
by referring
to a single person of unspecified gender as
"perse" and "per".)
US citizens: call
on the Senate to reject the political appointment of
John Ratcliffe as DNI.
US citizens: call
on Facebook to fact-check political ads.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass legislation to provide national
paid sick leave. For everyone, that is.
US citizens: call
on Louisiana Governor Edwards to implement a rent
freeze and a moratorium on layoffs, evictions and water shut-offs in
the state of Louisiana.
US citizens: call
on New York Governor Cuomo to end the prison injustices
that make prisoners vulnerable to Covid-19.
department stores and
refrigerators
Residents of Massachusetts:
call
on Massachusetts legislators to pass the moratorium on government
use of face recognition.
I gave this personal message:
I urge you to pass the proposed moratorium on use of face recognition
in Massachusetts government activities.
This is only a first step. Systematic use of face recognition technology,
and the systems that can do so, should be very strictly regulated.
The operations of Clearview AI should be illegal regardless of what
sort of entity carries them out, whether it be public or private.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
stop
Wall Street from using the coronavirus to weaken bank regulations.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 and call for
strong action to protect Americans from the effects of the epidemic.
Please support these proposed actions:
If you call, please spread the word!
*TikTok
'tried
to filter out videos from ugly, poor or disabled users'.*
*Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe
freed
temporarily from Iranian prison.* She is now under house arrest
instead, which is at least much safer.
(satire) *porn industry leaders held a press conference Monday to
announce the
immediate
closure of all orifices.*
Don't go to the orifice — work from home!
The Norway University of Science and Technology
urged
students in countries with "poorly developed health services",
including the US, to return home where they would get better
medical care.
The university was later intimidated into deleting the reference to
the US. How sad.
As for the students, I think they have no way to return home now.
They are stuck.
*'Basic Human Decency' Wins as Judge
Blocks
'Cruel to Its Core' Trump Effort to Strip Food Assistance From 700,000
People Amid COVID-19 Crisis.*
PAHCF, a medical insurance company lobbying group,
lobbies
against anything that helps or would help Americans get medical care
without going through those businesses.
It would be interesting for Americans to organize to demand that their
medical insurance companies say how much money they gave to that
lobbying group in 2019.
*Why debt relief
should
be the answer to this coronavirus crash.*
The US
will
face a big recession unless the US government starts giving money
to non-rich people to make up for the decrease.
The best way to do this is with spending that will have other social
benefits — spending on jobs that make an improvement. For
instance, the Green New Deal.
*Can the Coronavirus and the Stock Market Meltdown Break
America’s
Addiction to Fantasy?*
One corrective is needed in regard to increases in productivity: they
result in increased production each year, but who gets the benefit of
that increase is a political question.
The
rich try to keep it for themselves, and workers get it only if
they fight for it and win.
Pelosi
tricked
the House of Representatives to vote for a reduction in the new
paid sick leave provision by calling the change "technical", implying
there was no significant alteration.
(satire) *Congress Allocates $2 Trillion
To
Bail Out Struggling Bailout Industry.*
Upward social mobility is no longer giving people overall a better
life, says the best expert on the field. As some move upward, others
move down. But
only
a small fraction move very far in either direction.
Decades ago, the developed world was creating many additional
well-paid jobs, so there was more mobility upward than downward.
Nowadays, neither one is true.
Thus, to make a large number of people better off in the developed
world requires massively deconcentrating wealth (for instance, more
support for the poor, a Green New Deal, and Medicare for All) or
massively eliminating waste (such as, a Green New Deal, and Medicare
for All).
The Boston subways and buses are running on a reduced schedule,
supposedly to encourage "social distancing". I can't follow the logic
of that. Running fewer buses or trains will mean more people ride
together in each one. The effect of that will be exactly the opposite
of what they claim is the goal.
If you can figure out what sense they think this move has, please tell
me by email.
Venezuela's medical system is crippled by
shortages
of basic supplies.
The article attributes these shortages purely to Maduro, and mentions
US sanctions in a way that doubts that they matter. Chavez's
subsidies
created
shortages in the everyday goods that he subsidized, but the
shortages
became
much broader and worse after the bully imposed the sanctions.
The bully is pushing sanctions on Venezuela
as
hard as it can.
China is using an
antiviral drug developed in Cuba.
*Joe Biden's pledge to pick a female vice-president
smells
like tokenism.*
Identity politics is about to tokenism. To clamor for an
official in demographic group XYZ is to beg for tokenism.
US citizens: call
your congresscritter and say to reject the bully's
plan to cut Social Security funds in order to fund response to Covid-19.
There is pressure to allow
every
US voter to vote by mail.
Just as long as they don't allow voting by internet!
*Biden Is Still Lying About His Positions
on
Social Security Cuts,
the Bankruptcy Bill, and More.*
(satire)
*Biden Pledges To Select Woman As Vice President Since
Position Doesn’t Entail Much Anyway.*
Bailing out the airlines, if it is done,
should
not save the stockholders
from losing their shares.
Pelosi's version of emergency aid for Americans dealing with Covid-19
gives
paid sick leave to a fraction of American workers.
It omits gig workers; more surprisingly, it omits employees of
companies with over 500 employees. I would not describe a company
with 600 or 1000 employees as "big". Even some Republican senators
say it is insufficient.
It appears they are omitted because she negotiated with Treasury
Secretary Mnuchin, who is a toady for big (and not-quite-big)
business. I think it would have made more sense to include them
and dare Republicans to reject it.
To assure everyone in the US can wash per hands frequently, the US must
end imposed water-shutoffs and restore water to everyone
whose service has
been shut off.
That it is even necessary to discuss this demonstrates how cruelty to
the poor is ingrained in the US economic system. More fundamentally,
with a just minimum wage and a just welfare system, nobody would get
that poor.
(satire)
*Pfizer announced Monday they
were pouring all their resources into developing a new hyper-depressant
pill to help Americans ease the transition into self-quarantining.*
The callous bastard told US governors that the US cannot help them
get
the respirators they need to protect medics from Covid-19.
He told them, in effect, to go and scramble for the few spares
that exist.
The root of this problem is that the US has neglected central planning
to make sure there would be enough such machines if someday there were
an epidemic.
In addition, the profit-seeking US medical system tries to cut costs
even as it jerks up prices, so it tries to lower the system's capacity
to the point where it can just barely get by in normal times. It
plans to treat only those who can pay,
and
has no slack for
emergencies.
Covid-19 demonstrates even more strongly than usual the need to
replace this system with a national single-payer medical system.
Regarding respirators, the US should set up an emergency manufacturing
plan, like
what is happening in the UK.
The Delhi thug department denied protection to Muslims while the
pogrom was going on. Currently
it
is refusing to investigate crimes
committed against Muslims.
Thugs
seem to have gone further and encouraged the pogrom, which was launched
by a BJP official.
I expect Hindu thugs
in India have the same range of attitudes towards
Muslims that German thugs in 1934 had towards Jews. This means,
shifted further towards hatred and violence compared with the range of
attitudes that white thugs in the US have towards blacks.
US citizens in jail have the right to vote,
but
they must struggle
to exercise that right.
Note that only a few states permanently take away the voting rights of
anyone that has been convicted of a felony, and there is a movement to
eliminate practice that entirely, since it
has
the side effect
(perhaps intentionally) of disenfranchising blacks.
"Quarantine soirees" and digital freedom:
does
any of the live streams
described here respect freedom?
The usual forms of digital oppression are
Experience suggests that all of those streams are oppressive,
but I'd like to know if any of them is not.
If you try one and find it to be oppressive, I hope you will not go
ahead with installing that nonfree software, entering your personal
data, or agreeing to the terms. Get a copy of some music which does
not oppress those who listen to it, and listen to that instead.
It would be useful to inform the organization's personnel of your
objections to its computing practices. Keep in mind that they have
probably never thought about these issues, never even heard the idea
that there might be something wrong with the usual practices that they
imitated or were taught by some "expert". So be prepared to explain,
and not in an angry tone.
For streaming, the program they should be using is called IceCast.
There may be a global shortage of acetaminophen aka paracetamol,
since India
has just banned exports.
The concentration of drug production causes harm in many ways.
Gouging
is one consequence; shortages are another, even in normal times.
Isolating old people for months
can
be crushing for them.
*How Helsinki and Oslo
cut
pedestrian deaths to zero.*
I think that slowing car traffic is acceptable provided improved
public transportation offers a better way for people to get around the
city.
Is it better to treat Covid-19
as
a kind of fire, to be extinguished, or as a tide, that will wash over
and recede?
The article says no one can be sure, and I suppose in general that is
true. My point is that it depends on the circumstances in each
country. Some countries are in a position to act quickly and
thoroughly; they have come close to extinguishing the epidemic. Other
countries can't do this.
Covid-19
could
wipe out the theater. And all restaurants, all art galleries, and
all artists. Also all bands, all symphonies, all concert halls and
all music cafes.
Some African countries are
banning
travel from Europe to keep travellers from bringing Covid-19.
Unfortunately, it won't make much difference in most countries, as
the virus is already spreading in them. Most of Africa won't have
the medical capacity to keep the epidemic's spread in check.
*[Western Sahara] independence movement lodges documents in high court
arguing
$45bn
fund invests in illegally mined fertiliser.*
The next casualty of global heating is
cognac.
I don't think this qualifies as a disaster, though some will surely
miss it. I mention it as an example of the wide variety of things
that will be lost.
*The
Anti-Science
Movement in the Democratic Party.*
(Some of the problems, such as the "electability" self-fulfilling
prophesy mechanism, are not limited to the Democratic Party.)
The whole world is heading for a
long
recession.
The idiot is ensuring that it will be a deep one. I wonder if he will
use Covid-19 as an excuse to cancel the 2020 election and convert
himself into a tyrant.
As of a year ago,
almost
52,000 Indians were applying for political asylum now.
That number had increased from almost 5,000 ten years before.
US citizens: call your senators at (202) 930-8115 and urge them to
let
PAT RIOT Act surveillance systems expire. Say that if the
government wants to get information about people from data bases, it
should get warrant to investigate specific people and then get data
only about them.
Here is
more
information about the situation.
If you call, please spread the word!
A Congressional candidate without medical insurance
had
to stop knocking on voters' doors to talk with them. This may
cripple her campaign.
Although Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan, was convicted of the bombing
of Pan Am 103 over Scotland in 1988, others claimed that Iran was
responsible. Khomeini was still ruler of Iran, and sought to attack
the US.
Now a Scottish agency has recognized these doubts by
calling
for reconsideration of the verdict.
China
seems to have disappeared Ren Zhiqiang, who insulted Xi for his
handling of Covid-19.
The economic effects of the Covid-19 epidemic
will
put millions in California at risk of homelessness, including many
old people who could not find new work. Those who end up living on
the street are likely to catch the virus, and could die of it.
Over a million Americans could become homeless
once
the bully cuts off their food stamps, since they won't have money
for rent and food.
The UK government
admits
that Russia succeeded in interfering in the UK election. It seems
to have used cracking government systems as well as disinformation.
*Newark’s Lead Crisis Isn't Over:
"People
Are Still Drinking Water
That They Shouldn't".*
The US government reportedly is trying to buy exclusive use of a
Covid-19 vaccine currently under development,
intending to limit its
use to Americans.
If this is accurate, it is murderous lunacy. If and when a vaccine is
developed, it must be available to the whole world.
The report that the German government is countering with "financial
incentives" so that the vaccine will "stay in" Germany, if true,
indicates similar disrespect for that principle. Also, if offering
money is the most Germany can do to prevent that scheme, it shows
plutocratic legal corruption. It should not be necessary for Germany
to offer money to resist that scheme. Germany should have the power
to order such things.
The US has effectively no public health system. If a vaccine for Covid-19
becomes available,
the
US has no system to vaccinate everyone.
Supporters of Chelsea Manning
are
raising money to pay the large fine.
If you want to contribute, don't go through Go Fund Me — it requires
running nonfree software. Instead, insist on getting an address to
mail a personal check or a money order.
However, paying that fine means that the government wins. I'd rather
contribute to a fund to buy groceries for Manning. Is there one?
Climate strikes are continuing, but
only
people who use Twitter will
notice them.
The Environmental Pollution Agency has announced new rules to
facilitate using pesticides to kill wildlife,
including endangered
wildlife.
Canada once had a world-class public medical lab which developed cures
and manufactured them at avoidable prices.
It
was privatized by a
plutocratist government.
The House passed a bill requiring paid sick leave, but Republicans
insisted on exemptions for big businesses and small businesses,
so
the bill will cover only 20% of US workers.
White House meetings to discuss reaction to Covid-19 are secret and
all
public health experts are excluded.
Republican leaders today do not generally worry about embarrassing
disclosures. They figure that their cloud of disinformation will
prevent all adverse consequences. Whatever they are hiding, it must
be much worse than usual.
Perhaps they are trying to maximize billionaires' opportunity
to practice disaster capitalism,
a.k.a.
the "shock doctrine".
Perhaps they are trying to create, rather than avoid,
an
election crisis.
Republicans have stolen several presidential elections recently,
and some elections for lower offices as well.
I would not put it past them to plan to make the epidemic worse.
Their previous budget cuts
have
undermined programs that would have
helped respond to it.
Recall how Hurricane Katrina showed that
Dubya had undermined FEMA, with
disastrous results.
Meanwhile, rank-and-file Republicans believe that Covid-19 is not a
real danger, just
as they believe that global heating is not a real
danger.
In a month they will start dying, and would be able to recognize the
statements their leaders have made so far as lies. But by then they
will have been told to believe that those statements were never made
at all.
Whole Foods is asking employees to pool their limited paid sick days
in case they have to stay home due to Covid-19
and
need more sick days
than each one is given.
That would work fine for the first ones to need sick days.
But those who need sick days once once the pool is used up
will really be in a hole — the Hole Foods hole.
*We're about to learn a terrible lesson from coronavirus:
inequality kills.*
*'I can't get above water':
how
America's chicken giant Perdue controls
farmers.*
This is one more example of how concentration of US big business harms
many small businesses.
*When [the bully] no can longer lie or deny,
he’ll
blame immigrants,
journalists, [disprivileged racial groups], liberals and other
enemies.*
I replaced the term "people of color"
because color is not something a person can be "of".
*Maryland man fatally shot by [thugs]
while
asleep in his bedroom.*
They shot from outside the house without informing anyone inside
they had come. Then they claimed he had "confronted" them —
presumably awake. Lies like this are standard practice for thugs
who have killed someone.
They wounded his girlfriend too.
Social media (that's what the article means when it says "internet")
are
making participation in discussions difficult for women.
Intimidating women into leaving discussions is an injustice and a
major social problem. However, it does not constitute violence.
Calling it "violence" is an exaggeration, which invites solutions
that carry a danger of repression.
I suggest looking for fixes that change the servers' algorithms so
that they are difficult for trolls and bullies to exploit. This might
be easier if the servers were not making money from targeting
advertising.
*Public health experts say that
once
a disease has begun circulating within a community, banning outsiders
is mostly futile.*
However, the numskull travel ban for people coming from Schengenia
might be effective for scapegoating purposes.
How Big Pharma companies have
lobbied
and pressured to be able to gouge on a future Covid-19 vaccine.
This mostly admirable article causes a gratuitous spot of confusion by
using the overbroad term "intellectual property".
Use of that term spreads confusion because it generalizes about
several unrelated laws, which have so little in common that lumping
them together impedes clear thinking about any one of them. The term
leads people to adopt shallow, simplistic positions such as
"intellectual property is good" or "intellectual property is bad."
In any real issue, it is always better to name the specific law that
relates to the issue — in this case, patent law. That way it is
easier to study the dimensions of that issue, based on the actual
requirements and effects of whichever law is involved.
See
https://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
for more explanation.
Arguing that Biden's victories in the Democratic primaries is because
older
Democrats expect they can squeak by under the existing US economic
system, while younger voters see it will crush them.
The article does not mention coming
global heating disaster, but
younger voters realize it is likely to make them die young, while
older voters expect (perhaps rationally) not to face great personal
suffering from it during their expected lifetimes.
New Zealand is
developing
a drone that can drop poison bait on a precise target, near an
invasive animal that would eat it.
Eventually Australia may be able to use this to exterminate rabbits.
Is there any way to poison a cane toad?
Quarantine, including imposed self-isolation,
tend
to traumatize people, much as
solitary
confinement in prison does.
The two are quite similar. In the latter, guards forcibly keep
someone away from everyone else. In the former, they compel someone
to avoid everyone else.
There is another version, shunning, in which someone is compelled to
avoid everyone else because they reject per. I think that traumatizes
people too.
The article says that people can withstand quarantine better if they
understand clearly the reasons for the quarantine system and when it
will end.
Academic studies which
claimed
to prove that world agriculture can't get along without Roundup
were secretly funded by Monsanto.
The US is
deporting
people with Covid-19, who then spread the disease to another
country — and probably won't get treatment there if they
have a bad case of it.
Clarifying
the conceptual confusions in most press coverage of Covid-19,
including measurements of its spread and measures to control it.
In particular, figures about number of cases are not even significant
to an order of magnitude at this point — the measurement system
is basically broken.
Phone your congresscritter and senators to push for a bill that would
help non-rich Americans cope with Covid-19. The bill would do these
things:
If you call, please spread the word!
Taiwan is containing Covid-19 with no added surveillance:
only the system of
tracking
people through their portable phones.
Taiwan is not applying that surveillance to repress masses of people.
It remains a democracy. However, we have no way of knowing that it is
not using that system against whistleblowers and a few dissidents.
US citizens and residents:
thank
abortion providers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Tell world leaders:
don’t
exploit Coronavirus to take away our basic rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The House of Representatives
voted
to extend the massive surveillance power originally granted in the USA
PAT RIOT Act. Around 60 representatives voted no.
I suggests phoning your congresscritter's office and asking, "Did Rep
XYZ vote to extend the government's power to track massive numbers of
phone calls?" If the answer is yes, you could express your opinion of
that vote.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Sweden sets an example in teaching everyone
how
to be prepared for possible disasters of any kind.
Deadly extreme rainfall events in southern Brazil have become
more
frequent and more deadly over the past 30 years.
They are directly caused by the hotter air.
Watch out for
potentially
dangerous misinformation about Covid-19.
French riot thugs
violently
attacked a peaceful march for International Women’s Day. The
thugs
had been venting hatred verbally towards the marchers for a long
time before they attacked, so their misogynist motive is clear.
British Columbia reduced drunk driving deaths by 50% by
focusing
on prevention rather than punishment. The province can take away
the drivers' licenses and even their cars, rather than putting them in
jail.
Under the new system, the fines and the loss of the right to drive can
render a person destitute. On the other hand, alcohol addiction can
also do that.
An Italian in the US is desperate to get home,
figuring
that Italy will protect its people from Covid-19 much better than the
US.
Chelsea Manning has been
released
from jail. The court ruled that there was "no need" for her
testimony.
Surely that did not change last week. The "need" must have ceased
weeks or months ago. I hope she will tell us soon why she attempted
suicide this week rather than waiting a day to see if the court would
release her.
She is still saddled with a huge debt that would be difficult for her
to ever pay. If she could get enough money to pay it, the idea of
working to pay a fine must be bitter. If it were me, I'd be inclined
to shun wages and live by barter, just to avoid ever paying any of the
fine.
*Insurance Industry Corrects Trump: Actually,
We're
Only Waiving Copays for Coronavirus Testing, Not Treatment.*
Low-wage US workers will be able to find out that they are sick, but
they won't be able to do anything to protect themselves or others.
Harvard students who are not wealthy have been
shafted
by the enforced requirement to move out in 5 days and fly home at high
expense. Not to mention the loss of jobs they depend on.
The article assumes that on-line courses are fine if only you have
high-speed internet available. It pays no attention to the injustice
of requiring students to run nonfree programs — which Harvard
does. If I were one of the students, the only way I could see the
course lectures would be if I could look on with another student.
I admire an activist friend who tried to take a Harvard edX course,
but refuses to use imposed nonfree social networking software, so he
automatically failed the course.
*Detroit
to
turn water back on temporarily for poor families over
Covid-19 fears.*
The scapegoater
banned
travel to the US from Europe (except for US citizens and permanent
residents, and their families).
This could be an effective preventative measure, if nobody in the US
had Covid-19 already.
More about the confusion this has caused, and
what
his twisted thinking might be.
A
xenophobic
conspiracy theory in China claims that Covid-19 came from the US.
This theory has no evidence behind it, but people who want to believe
it will believe it anyway.
China is not culpable for the start of the epidemic, but the practice
of catching and selling live wild animals as food is risky, and China
is wise to be putting an end to that practice.
China is. on the other hand,
culpable
for trying to cover up the epidemic at the early stages, rather
than contain it.
Robert Reich: the conman's plan to "help the economy" with tax
subsidies for banks and wall street
will
not help Americans cope with the effects of Covid-19. The
government should instead spend that money, on sick leave, medical
care, and cash subsidies for everyone.
The US fracking industry is collapsing due to low oil prices, so the
saboteur in chief
plans
to save it with public funds.
*If Warren refuses to endorse Sanders, and if her supporters vote for
Biden, then this was never about winning feminist reforms, let alone
dismantling patriarchy. It was about
advancing
the political career of one woman over the lives of the many.*
Alas, she did not endorse him, with the sad results we have seen.
(satire) *Tulsi Gabbard Named Democratic Nominee After Discovery Of
Obscure Rule That
Grants
Nomination To Whoever Wins 0.7% Of The Vote In Missouri.*
Covid-19 is overwhelming Italy's medical system —
it does not have
the capacity to treat so many patients.
People who have other medical problems may die because the medical
personnel have no time to treat everyone.
This demonstrates the error of prioritizing efficient operation in
normal time by tuning medical capacity to the normal level of demand.
A system such as the British NHS, which is operating over capacity
even in normal times due to Tory budget cuts, is starting from
a position of being overwhelmed.
*In opposing Medicaid expansion, Koch-funded organizations
have
increased the likelihood of the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.*
Why is the US unprepared to deal with Covid-19? The same underlying
reason that it is unprepared to deal with global heating:
the 40-year
plutocratist war on science, and its political reach.
*Accusing US of 'Medical Terrorism,'
Iran
Demands Trump Lift Drug Import
Sanctions Amid Coronavirus Crisis.*
The current dispute between Iran and the US is entirely the fault of
the US (specifically, the saboteur in chief). The US ought to
apologize, and help Iran, in exchange for its agreement once again to
the non-nuclear deal which was succeeding in stopping Iran from
refining nuclear fuel.
There is no fundamental reason for the US and Iran to be enemies. The
Iranian regime represses Iranians on religious and political grounds,
but nowhere near as much as Salafi Arabia does.
Billionaire Polluters (BP) is talking about
aiming to become
"carbon-neutral" some decades from now.
This is such a weak target that it contributes little more than lip service
to avoiding climate disaster.
Many professors of economics and related fields state their
endorsement for Medicare for All
as
the affordable way to provide
healthcare to Americans.
Our current system
fails to do so.
The joy of the Democratic Party establishment, and its tools in the
mainstream media, at Biden's recent victories show what we are up
against as we try to correct America's giant problems.
But we cannot
give up.
I have no reason to think that the election was dishonest, overall.
More Democratic voters have voted for Biden. I can't argue with those
votes. But that doesn't compel me to vote for Biden. I do not vote
for right-wing plutocratists merely because others have done so.
Biden's victories in recent primaries
make
it almost impossible for
Sanders to win the nomination.
For a while I hoped that we could have a good president, but it seems we
will have another lousy one.
Burma is using its libel law to sue a member of its parliament
for saying that the army killed two Rohingya.
And
suing Reuters for
reporting that.
Here is the
original Reuters article.
Here is the article as Reuters modified it
in
response to the complaint.
Ranked choice voting would fix the problem of primary votes
which are cast early
for
a candidate that drops out before election day.
This is in addition to
its
other advantages.
20 UK charities that serve the mentally ill demand an investigation
of dozens of cases
in
which welfare cuts resulted in people's deaths.
Senators are working on a bill that would
effectively ban end-to-end
encryption in commercial products (with their nonfree software).
Nonfree software is inherently untrustworthy;
the
developer can always
insert a back door and deny it.
Even without this law, you should not trust it.
Nonetheless, we should campaign against this law. If they go this far,
who knows where they will go next.
Interviews with Syrian Kurds
report
on a region ruled by local
neighborhood councils.
The book Losing Reality describes social systems that deny some
aspects of reality, replacing it with obligatory falsehoods.
The
bullshitter's following is one example.
70,000 Britons petitioned the government
to
reject ISDS corporate courts
in any new trade agreements.
How Covid-19 is likely to do widespread economic harm,
especially to
working people.
Low wages, precarious employment, lack of medical insurance, and
homelessness will
all compel US workers to go to work even if they are
spreading Covid-19.
A government which cared about working people could protect people
from the worst forms of economic harm.
One
recommendation is
rapid direct payments to individuals.
The social and economic effects of Covid-19 are a foretaste
of what
climate mayhem will produce.
Both problems call for global cooperation.
If the US government can start a war without asking "how will we pay for it,"
why
should it ask that question about prevention (or treatment) for Covid-19?
Indeed, why should it ask that question about any necessary medical
care? Especially since Medicare for All will cost less than America's
current lousy medical system.
*Five Americans Living in Social Democratic Norway Explain
Why Bernie Sanders
Is So Appealing.*
AT&T lobbied for the conman's tax cuts for the rich by suggesting it
would hire more workers and increase wages. Instead it continues
to cut jobs, and
has cut back on investment in its operations.
Why try harder when you have so few competitors?
Quite a few Palestinians die from illness in Israeli prisons.
Palestinians accuse
Israel of carrying out a policy of "medical
neglect".
The protest by college basketball players in Brooklyn
was criticism
of Israel's occupation policies, not antisemitism.
An Israeli minister spoke advocating (via hints)
a
policy of driving
all Arabs out of Israel.
US prisons do not have adequate plans
to
protect prisoners from
Covid-19.
Once one prisoner in the prison gets sick, it is likely to spread to
many other prisoners (and guards).
Iran has freed 70,000 prisoners (perhaps temporarily) so they won't
catch Covid-19. However,
political
prisoners are not being released.
(satire)
*… the CIA rolled out a new torture
program concert series Wednesday that brings Metallica into black sites
to play 72-hour sets.*
*Canada's government seeks to expand access to assisted dying.
Proposal would
include for the first time people who are not in
immediate risk of dying.*
This would help people who face a likelihood of decades of suffering
or decades of hopeless paralyzed uselessness and boredom.
*This pronghorn migration route is 6,000 years old.
Now [the
wrecker's] gas wells could block it.*
The result of burning that gas could be part of destroying our
civilization, too.
There is a plan
to
restore seagrass meadows off the coast of Britain.
This is a good thing to do, provided the attempt isn't futile —
provided that the newly planted seagrass won't immediately be killed.
But even if this gets off to a good start, people must not count their
meadows as carbon offsets before they are fully grown.
People in the DR Congo are suing Apple, Google, Tesla, Microsoft and Dell
for
employing children in cobalt mines and causing them injury or death.
When one activist was discovered to be involved in the lawsuit,
he received death threats.
Bolsonaro's proposed bridge across the Amazon river
would make it
easier for gangsters to cut down the trees in the region.
Bolsonaro would cheer them on as they push the forest towards the tipping
point where it would disappear.
Growing trees does little lasting good against
global heating
if the wood is used in ways
that
will quickly decay and release
the carbon again.
*There's no 'deadline' to save the world.
Everything
we do now has to pass the
climate test.*
Italy's reaction to Covid-19
and
its political consequences.
It appears that the right-wing extremist Liga party, in power in
Lombardia, leaked the Lombardia quarantine plan so as to provoke chaos
which it could then blame it on the government.
Praise for Italy's well-organized campaign to block spread of the
virus, treat those who are sick (nearly all patients can survive with
good treatment),
and
prevent the disastrous economic consequences that
the epidemic is likely to have.
*Deadly heatwaves, floods and rising hunger
far
greater threat to world
than coronavirus, scientists say.*
*Ecosystems the size of Amazon
'can
collapse within decades'.*
*Biden Refuses to Commit
to
Signing Medicare for All Bill as President.*
US citizens: call
on Sanders to skip the AIPAC event again as he did
in 2016.
*Boosting Electability Argument,
Sanders
Has Won Independent Voters in
13 Out of 16 Exit Polls So Far.
In CNN's [exit] polls, Sanders won the support of independent voters
in every state so far except Virginia, South Carolina, and Alabama.*
On the other hand
Biden
is the favorite Democratic candidate among
pre-2016 Republicans.
Prize-winning Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof
has been
sentenced to a year in prison for his films.
The World Bank is funding Guyana
to
make its laws more
compliant to oil companies.
Freelancers Shouldn't Betray Other Gig Workers
By
Allying with Anti-Union
Opponents of AB5.
Receiving gratis lunch in school
helps
children avoid obesity.
Stephen King condemned the mob censorship that cancelled publication
of Woody Allen's memoire — not out of support for Allen
in particular, but
out principled opposition to censorship in general.
India shut down two TV channels for some days because they showed
video of the pogrom in Delhi and
made
the perpetrators (Modi's
supporters) appear to be at fault.
Sanders' Reproductive Health Care and Justice for All plan
would
assure all American women of contraception and pre-natal care.
One aim is to reduce the rate of death in childbirth, which is
particularly high in the US.
California's initiative petition to tax business property fully
would
make Amazon and lots of smaller businesses fund the state's needs.
Claiming that female genital mutilation started
as
part of a series of
ancient fertility rituals in East Africa.
The proposed European Green Deal would be far from sufficient,
but
failing to do it would guarantee disaster.
*How Trump's business empire
is
cashing in on the 2020 campaign.*
His support comes from cynical businesses that don't mind paying bribes
if they won't be prosecuted, and from plutocrats think funneling money
to the rich is the purpose of the state.
Russian and Ukrainian rebel officers are being tried
for shooting down
MH17 as it passed over the rebel part of Ukraine.
I am shocked by the use of the word "murder". Does the prosecution
accuse that the officers knowingly attacked a civilian air vessel? I
have never seen that accusation seriously made, and even assuming they
would kill noncombattants without hesitation, I can't imagine what
could have motivated them to do so in that instance.
I have seen claims that there was evidence that the plane was shot
down by machine-gun fire (by another plane). It could be fake. In
any case, I hope it is submitted to this trial so that the question of
its validity can be settled.
*Fashion culture now would benefit from studying the ‘make do and mend’
attitude of the second world war,
says
Extinction Rebellion co-founder
Clare Farrell.*
China is forcing everyone to install a new surveillance and
classification app which tracks a person's movements, and reports per
status. At many places,
guards
check whether the phone says the user
is allowed in.
At the moment, it is used to implement quarantine for Covid-19.
But they will never get rid of it.
What made this possible is the switch to digital payment.
Don't use digital payment! Pay cash!
*'We Have to Get a Climate President in Office': Jane Fonda Says
Bernie
Sanders Is the Only Climate Candidate.*
*However controversial, Woody Allen’s memoirs
should
be published.*
Explaining the nature and causes of coercive control,
a
spirit-crushing form
of domestic abuse.
I've seen this happen, though I had no name to call it. When I was a
child, around age 10 to 12, I heard my father do this to his wife in
the evenings when I was in bed. I felt so sorry for her, and helpless
because I had no way to protect her.
New Zealand is making a systematic effort to value the traditionally
feminine jobs more highly,
and
pay them more too.
*No-platforming and the government’s Prevent anti-terror strategy
are
both threats to free speech in UK universities.*
*Erik Prince Recruited Ex-Spies to Help Project Veritas
Infiltrate
Groups 'Hostile' to [the conman's] Agenda.*
US citizens: phone
one of Senator Warren's offices to urge her to
endorse Sanders for president.
This is the necessary next step if she wishes to advance the
progressive causes she has supported.
Italy quarantined the region of Liguria (along with several
provinces). This enormous step
inspired
thousands of people to flee
that region so as not to be stuck there.
In Italy, each region consists of multiple provinces.
Elevated repression by the US deportation thugs is likely to
discourage unauthorized immigrants from getting tested or treated for
Covid-19. They would instead be
more
likely to spread the disease,
and more likely to get badly sick or die.
Taiwan's public health measures have cut down Covid-19 transmission
so effectively that
the number of active cases is decreasing.
At least, that's what the government reports. I am willing to trust
the Taiwanese government to be honest about this, but there could be more
cases that it does not know about.
Chinese dissident Xu Zhiyong is being held incommunicado in solitary,
and is likely eventually
to
be imprisoned for many years, for
criticizing Xi's handling of Covid-19.
The bully
hasn't yet grabbed enough power to do this to Americans, but he
and his supporters are working on it.
The Organization of American States has supported theft of elections
in Honduras and Bolivia, and
seems
to have tried to support a coup
in Dominica.
Virginia has adopted a strong law
to
move reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from electricity and heating.
That does not cover all greenhouse emission: other sectors including
transportation, manufacturing and agriculture need to be reduced a well.
The sadist's sanctions against Iran stopped Iran from protecting itself
from Covid-19, and now they are squeezing the flow of medicines
that can
help treat people in Iran who get sick.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley is campaigning
to
eliminate the death penalty in
the US.
I am proud to have voted for her in 2018, and I will vote for her
again this year.
*Study Shows DOJ Prosecutions of White-Collar Criminals
Hit
All-Time Low Under [the conman].*
When a rich person grabs a bigger share of the world's wealth,
perse
may break some laws, expecting to be immune from punishment. The
conman undertakes to support rich people generally whether they are
breaking laws or not. This report shows us one of the methods used to
do so.
The conman was not the first modern plutocratist president.
Since
Reagan, each president has been plutocratist,
and Carter
seems to have started the trend.
US thugs
often issue "geofence warrants" that ask Google for a list of
references to people tracked to certain area in a certain period of
time. Subsequently
they
demand more information about some of those
people.
In principle, using this to find burglars is legitimate, if it is done in
a legitimate way. (Not secretly, for instance.) But we can easily imagine
using it to identify and persecute protesters — which is exactly what
right-wing US politicians are making every effort to do.
A US appeals court ruled that a protester who suggested other
nonviolent protesters protest in an illegal way can therefore be sued
for the subsequent violent action of one of those other protesters.
If the Supreme Court allows this to stand,
Americans could be
bankrupted for protesting.
Chinese dissident Xu Zhiyong is being held incommunicado in solitary,
and is likely eventually to be imprisoned for many years, simply for
saying that
Xi was "clueless" about Covid-19.
The bully
hasn't yet grabbed enough power to do this to Americans, but he
and his supporters are working on it.
*The profiteers warn ominously that such reforms as Medicare for All or
a public option for health insurance would take away people’s "choice"
and our "control" over health care.*
*Hello: we [Americans] presently have no choice or control.
Our "care" is managed by a handful of insurance, drug, and hospital
monopolists whose
primary objective is not improving our health, but
feathering their own cushy nests.*
(There are some exceptions: the wealthy few, plus a larger number that
have good medical plans.)
The unparalleled expense of the US medical system is reflected in the
fact that 10
CEOs in medical companies made a total of over $300
million last year.
Craig Murray suggests
ways to support Julian Assange.
It appears that Exxon convinced the EU
to
abandon its plans to
phase out sale of fossil-fuel vehicles.
(satire)
*Biden Says Incredible Comeback Proves
He Can Beat Progressive Democrat In A General Election.*
*Coronavirus: nine
reasons to be reassured.*
Measured against the heartless cruelty of Thatcherism, even a hint of
empathy for the poor from today's Tories looks like "moving left" —
if
you don't try to measure it against fixed benchmarks.
Don't trust Biden
to
fight for abortion rights.
*Coronavirus Matters, the Stock Market Doesn’t,
and
Thinking It Does May Literally Kill Us.*
We can apply that to other areas. Medical care matters, the stock
market doesn't. Decarbonization matters, the stock market doesn't.
The University of Washington
has
cancelled all in-person classes.
This is understandable, but it also makes it especially crucial that the
university allow students to do this with free software.
Until now, it seems that students had the option of attending classes.
With that option cancelled, they may face the choice of running nonfree
software, or flunking out.
If I were a student, I'd drop out rather than yield to that. But
schools should not impose on students the need for such sacrifice.
Aside from that, virtual "school" over the internet is known to be
inferior in quality to real school. If this continues, students won't
continue paying for quality which they don't get.
The UK will investigate
the
apparent kidnapping of Shamsa al-Maktoum
by her father, the emir of Dubai.
In the latest Israeli election, the mainly-Arab "Joint List" Party won
15 seats and can
block Netanyahu from forming a government.
Some Jewish supporters of ending the occupation may have voted for
that party also.
*Kentucky Koch Group
Opposes
Saving Hospital.*
The organization, "Americans for Prosperity", should properly be known
as "Aristocrats for Power".
*Dubai ruler organised kidnapping of his children,
UK
court rules.*
This was considered in a case which he filed against his runaway wife,
except that it emerged she was no longer his wife since he has
divorced her and not informed her.
I wonder how Latifa was able to send her account to the court or the
public.
US citizens: call
on the Senate to pass H.R. 1, for clean elections.
British couples who took a ferry from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, and were
observed to have sat near someone with Covid-19, have been
quarantined with absurd and gratuitous strictness. One couple was
forced to stay in two separate rooms and are forbidden to see each
other. Another was allowed to stay together,
but both have been
ordered to wear masks and not touch each other.
Why not leave it to the couple to decide if they want to keep apart to
avoid transmitting the disease between the two?
An anti-Iran pressure group, with close relations with the
bully,
is pressuring US drug companies
to
stop exporting medicines to Iran.
Texas Republicans are trying to stop blacks from voting
by closing polling sites in areas which have many blacks.
Blacks stayed up for hours after the polls closed,
waiting in line
to vote.
To try to stop some of your fellow citizens from voting displays total
contempt for your country. That's typical among Republicans today.
Tropical forests are showing signs of converting into releasing
greenhouse gases
instead
of absorbing them.
Scientists predicted this change, but did not expect it so soon.
Senator Warren has dropped out of the Democratic presidential
nomination race, without stating a preference between Sanders and
Biden. If she is to support the policies she has proposed,
she needs
to endorse Sanders.
Progressives are calling on Warren to exit the race
and
endorse Sanders.
She owes this to
herself as well as to her country.
Sanders has asked Biden
for
a debate about Medicare for All.
Texas tried to use its new protest repression felony law to some
Greenpeace protesters, but
the
grand jury refused to indict them for
the felony.
It is very unusual for a grand jury to resist whatever the prosecutor
asks it to do.
The EPA is broadening its policy of ignoring scientific evidence
from
studies that respect patients' privacy.
(In effect, the Environmental Poisoning Agency now rejects all
legitimate scientific studies that involve human subjects.)
Aid for keeping
Covid-19 in perspective.
The pogrom in Delhi has ended, but thousands of Muslims who were
driven from their homes by murderous Hindu extremists
do not dare go
back.
Pelosi campaigned successfully for Koch-beloved right-wing
representative Henry Cuellar
to
defeat a progressive challenger in the
Democratic primary.
An Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian teenager in the head with a
rubber-coated steel bullet at a short distance. When people from his village tried to
bring him to a hospital,
the
soldiers blocked the car for 25 minutes.
Both of those actions are common practice for Israeli occupation
soldiers. I don't believe that either one happens accidentally.
A former Israeli soldier campaigns to end the injustices he carried out as
a commander while
maintaining the occupation.
*Chelsea Manning
hospitalized
after suicide attempt, legal team say.*
I hope that this suicide attempt does not interfere with her chance of
being freed by the hearing that was going to happen on Friday. And
that it isn't used an excuse to keep her in brainwashing conditions.
Don't watch TV coverage
of Covid-19!
US citizens: call
on Congress to demand replacing Pence as chief of
dealing with Covid-19.
The International Criminal Court has decided
to
investigate war crimes
in Afghanistan.
Senator Wyden and Rep. Khanna have proposed a law
to make it clear
that journalism is not considered espionage.
Greece is trying to force Syrian refugees back
across the Turkish
border at gunpoint.
Big banks' cure-all for the whole range of problems, including
coronavirus: deregulate the banks.
If all you have is a hungry mouth, every problem looks like a piece of
candy.
(satire)
*Americans Urged To Stockpile Loved Ones Ahead Of Coronavirus
Outbreaks.*
Organized people or organized money:
the
choice between Sanders and Biden.
*Mouseland Should
Be Governed By Mice, Not Cats.*
The problem is not which cats (billionaires and their servants) rule,
it is that they are cats.
US hospitals are not prepared
to
protect their medical staff from
catching Covid-19.
An Israeli thug shot a 9-year-old Palestinian boy in the head.
His
skull was fractured and he will probably lose an eye.
The thugs have made no effort to show that this was necessary to
protect their lives.
Why Russia does not want Sanders to be president:
the Green New Deal
would reduce oil prices, world-wide.
Over 1/3 of the Americans with student debt have stopped making
payments —
some
legally, some not.
You can see this as an aspect of the system which makes it less rigid
and harsh. You can see it as a debt strike. I think it is a mixture
of both. It is definitely an improvement — but millions of Americans
with student debt and low income are still stuck with payments.
*Congressional leaders might use a multibillion-dollar aid package
to
extend the government’s unpopular Patriot Act surveillance powers.*
*Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe family believe she has coronavirus.*
The
prison officials refuse to test her.
There is no cure for Covid-19. Do we know of a treatment that helps
in any way?
US teachers' unions call for an end on shooter drills,
because they
make children scared.
Big Brazilian meat companies resell meat raised by a farm-owner
that
steals land from the poor.
*California's rules for independent party voters
could
suppress the Bernie
vote.*
Independent voters can vote in a primary, but the mail-in ballots
they were sent don't include the presidential race. To do so, they
have to jump through complex hoops that the state does not tell them
about. In effect, it is a dark pattern to obstruct voting for certain
voters.
Economic measures that the US could employ
to reduce the
economic shocks the Covid-19 will cause.
Paid sick leave could also reduce the number of people that catch
the disease.
Allowing children to wait at home by themselves could reduce the number
of people who lose work because schools are closed.
Biden got more delegates than Sanders
in
the primaries on Tuesday.
This is likely to mean that the superdelegates will choose the
nominee, and I suppose they will choose Biden. That would mean no
hope of electing a president that would try to correct America's
devastating problems, including plutocratic rule, people dying for
inability to pay for medical care, and
global heating disaster.
The only way we can ever get the Democratic Party to stop foisting
right-wing candidates such as Biden on us is to show it can't presume
we will vote for them.
Bloomberg did badly in Super Tuesday primaries, and
is
almost ready to
drop out.
It is heartening to see that just throwing money at a US election
can't win it. Apparently one needs to use the money with more subtlety
and expertise.
Bloomberg has the same age as Sanders. Remember how that age was
taken up by the pundits and presented as a possible drawback of
Sanders? Strange that they don't say the same thing about Bloomberg
now. I suspect that this "concern" about Sanders was artificially
generated.
A mob of enraged immigrant-haters attacked volunteer doctors who had come
to treat refugees
who
arrived in Lesbos (Greece) via Turkey.
George Monbiot: *The [UK] government must abandon its fossil fuel
power projects.
If
not, we’ll sue.*
Europe's planet roaster lobbyists have a revolving door with the
European Union bureaucracy, and they are using it
to make sure
they can squeeze out every last eurocent,
before civilization collapses
and they can't make (or spend) any more.
Some countries in Europe are paying people to have more children,
presuming
that those will be of the government's preferred race.
It is good to give more support to parents — that can reduce their
stress, which is likely to hurt their children. Not having having a
superfluity of resources to care for children leads to parents that
are under great stress and can't do it well. And that
often leads to
lasting problems for the children.
But if parents use that support to have additional children, that will
put them back into difficult lives and cancel out the benefit.
Progressive Shahid Buttar, a constitutional lawyer who has worked for
the EFF, will
face Rep. Pelosi in November.
*The Real Global Threat to 21st Century Freedom
Is
Authoritarian Capitalism,
Not Democratic Socialism.*
Sanders has denounced this threat for years.
Bloomberg is the epitome of authoritarian capitalism. His supporters call
him "non-ideological" but his ideology is that
the
richest should rule, and
the poor should be downtrodden.
Janitors in Minneapolis went on strike, demanding (among other things)
that the companies they indirectly work for adopt climate defense policies.
Student
climate strikers joined their union picket line.
*Extreme Weather Could Spark Economic Recession
'Likes
of Which We've Never
Seen Before,' Research Warns.*
Caitlin Johnstone: *Humanity Is Making
A
Very Important Decision When It Comes To Assange.*
China is using imprisoned Uighurs to make export products for famous
brands. It
looks like they have been enslaved.
Australia's summer has extended a whole month since the
mid-20th-century. As this continues, it will cause
*longer and hotter
bushfires, more heatwaves and crop damage.*
The president of Argentina proposes
to
legalize abortion.
*Progressives Planning to #BernTheDNC with Mass Nonviolent Civil Disobedience
If
Democratic Establishment Rigs Nomination.*
The Democratic Party leaders may be willing to impose a plutocratist
candidate that the voters have not supported,
even
at the price of
losing to the conman again.
The article proposes that Senator Warren may be planning to help the
plutocrats do that. If she does that, I will never vote for her for
senator again. But it is only a suspicion, and I hope it is not true.
[the deportation thugs]'
New York Office Uses a Rigged Algorithm to
Keep Virtually All Arrestees in [immigration prison].
The ACLU Says
It's Unconstitutional.
About half the member states of the EU
call
for a 2030 climate target.
This is the necessary first step, but in addition they need to be
strong targets. And backed up by specific measures to achieve them.
*Mike Pence shouldn't lead the coronavirus taskforce.
He
can't be trusted.*
Conditions in Iran resemble an all-day curfew. With people washing their hands
so often, the
water supply is running out.
People distrust the government because it has lied to them about
violence before.
Spain is moving to define "rape"
to
include all sex without consent.
No more exceptions.
*Physicians for Human Rights: the Persistent Psychological Effects
of
Family Separation.*
The US border thugs
never stopped taking advantage of excuses to separate
children (and teenagers) from their parents when they ask for asylum.
*Record-Breaking Warm Weather Expected Around Globe As Human-Caused Climate
Crisis Now As
Powerful As El Niño's Effects, Says WMO.*
The violent, Nazi-like
history
of Modi and the BJP.
Bloomberg still argues for natural gas (i.e., methane)
as
a "bridge fuel".
That was the fracking industry's fashionable excuse, a few years ago,
but it
is thoroughly fallacious.
Outdoor air pollution cuts life expectancy by 2.9 years, on the
world-wide average. The pollution that humans cause, and thus could
potentially avoid,
is
responsible for 1.7 years of that.
Putting an end to handshakes and kisses,
as
a measure against transmitting
Covid-19 (or other diseases).
Students protested at several US universities
demanding they end
the use of face recognition.
While these universities are only a tiny part of US society, and nowhere
near as dangerous as government agencies that can arrest people and even
deport them, success in the domain of universities would be a first
victory that could build the movement.
The US is not the only country which arbitrarily labels organizations
as "terrorist" — and which tends to call nonviolent protest groups
"terrorists". Vietnam has sentenced Chau Van Kham to 12 years in prison
for
supporting a group that advocates democracy in Vietnam.
His trial was blatantly unjust. Vietnam doesn't bother to try to disguise
the injustice the
way the UK does with Assange's extradition.
MSNBC TV host Chris Matthews not only hates progressives,
he
hates women too.
Why would Bloomberg lie? Because he wants to get elected, perhaps?
Perhaps because truth is not one of his values, perhaps?
Globalization and outsourcing has left the US with no capacity to
manufacture face masks or protective clothing to prevent Covid-19
transmission. They are all made in China,
which
we can expect will
soon need all it can produce, and stop exporting them.
Many thug departments, and many companies,
are
using Clearview face
recognition.
1/4 of Americans with type-I diabetes are skimping on insulin
because they
can't afford it.
There are many changes we should make in the way American business
operates, but one
vital change is Medicare for All.
*Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible [short] Melody,
Release
Them to Public Domain.*
A comedian changed his name to Hugo Boss so he can irritate the luxury
clothing brand by that name. He did this
to
take revenge for that
company's trademark bullying of small businesses in other fields.
A court ruled that the bully
illegally appointed Ken Cuccinelli acting head
of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,
and
voided two of his
anti-immigrant decrees.
Americans are being charged thousands of dollars for coronavirus
testing and related procedures — even those performed in mandatory
quarantine, where
they have no choice about the procedures.
*Texas closes hundreds of polling sites,
making
it harder for minorities to
vote.*
Republicans have
done this in other states.
Representative Sanders fought to make medicines developed by
government-funded research available for a reasonable price.
Senator
Biden blocked the plan.
US citizens: call
on Congress to restore the ban on using antipersonnel
landmines.
US citizens: call
on Congress to Scrap the Cap on Social Security
contributions.
The agreement with the Taliban
may
have papered over big
disagreements.
Global heating is
eliminating the world's beaches.
Craig Murray: *The Armoured Glass Box
is
an Instrument of Torture.*
Murray watched the judge listen to lawyers' arguments why Assange
should be allowed to sit with them, so that he could confer with them
about what to say; then she read out a decision she had written in
advance.
Murray believes she wants to drive him to suicide. Or she is paving
the way to murder him and say it was suicide.
Brooklyn College basketball players protested the playing of Israel's
national anthem, somehow related to Yeshiva University.
Then they shook
hands with the Yeshiva University team.
In other words, they have nothing against Jews but they criticize Israel.
CNN compared Sanders' increasing success
with
the spread of the
Covid-19 virus.
It is blatant bias based on a blatant lack of reason. That the
plutocrats' tools sink to this level of obviousness demonstrates
their desperation.
*'Uncharted Waters': DC Lobbyists Panic
Over
Possibility of Sanders Win.*
*It's Not Bernie But the So-Called "Moderates" That the Democratic Establishment
Should
Be Freaking Out About.*
Tories' welfare cuts since 2010 have made poor people die younger.
And the
cuts are still rolling out.
One million acres of oil and gas extraction leases on US public land
have been cancelled so as
to
prevent extinction of the greater sage grouse.
It will also help prevent extinction of our civilization, but we have no
Endangered Civilization Act to protect us. We needs a conspicuously threatened
species to keep our habitat habitable.
The Onion corrects the "facts" about Bloomberg's policy of stopping
and searching black people (usually) on the street.
(satire)
Extinction Rebellion protesters on trial in the UK were acquitted based
on grounds of necessity:
preventing
a worse crime.
Considering that
global
heating disaster, if not checked, could kill billions
of people over this century, almost anything which is effective at reducing
that disaster, and uses the minimum possible violence, ought to qualify.
Bloomberg's extensive record as a Republican makes him
as bad as
the other Republican candidates of 2016.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
has
identified 3000
conflicts of interest on the part of the cheater.
Since NATO won't support Turkey in Syria against Russia and Assad,
relations
are rather strained.
US citizens: demand nonpartisan redistricting committees in
every US state,
to
prevent rigged district maps.
The RSS in India
are
following in the footsteps of the KKK.
*Coronavirus is bad enough — [the numskull's] cuts
have
made the danger
far worse.*
Ironically, even the oligarchs are in danger from their own contempt
for the rest of us. They imagine that they will buy for themselves
"the world's best medical care" that they have put beyond the reach of
most Americans — and usually they can. But not in this.
An expert discusses the prognosis of Covid-19, and
what
changes need to be made
to better resist future new diseases.
A new hack makes it possible to give spammers a credit card for a
"free" trial (they mean "gratis") and
gets
them sued if they try to
charge it again.
I have the sad feeling that these otherwise-neat hacks require users
to run nonfree JavaScript code. What a shame.
Dictator Xi's cult extends its suppression of the truth to all areas
of life that might concern him. Although the doctor that first
reported Covid-19 has posthumously been declared a hero (once dead, he
could no longer say anything embarrassing),
others
have since been
jailed for showing the truth.
Threats of violence against civil war reenactors said that they came
from "Antifa", and led to much criticism of Antifa's absurdly extreme
position. Turns out this was a false-flag attack,
intended to hurt
the reenactors and Antifa.
Sanders supports
ending
the NSA's power to keep track of all phone calls
in the US. If you do too, phone your congresscritter ASAP, since the decision will
be made in the next two weeks.
Here is more
about the issue.
The prosecutors in the Assange hearing are arguing that the extradition limits
in the UK-US extradition treaty do not actually limit extradition
— that the subsequent extradition law makes the treaty irrelevant.
Craig Murray, who as an ambassador has participated the process of
passing laws to implement treaties, explains why this is backwards.
The law's purpose
is
to implement what the treaty says.
An appeals court blocked two of the
bully's
schemes to hurt asylum-seekers,
including
making them wait in Mexico for a hearing.
*Facebook, Google and Twitter
Rebel
Against Pakistan’s Censorship Rules.*
They rarely do anything I admire, but I can't deny I admire this.
Nonetheless, I urge you to refuse to be used by Facebook.
The bully told the Department of Justice to hunt for opportunities
to
strip immigrants of their US citizenship.
Around the world, developers are converting residences in cities to
luxury housing, and
making
life in the city almost impossible for
the non-rich. They buy the government's support.
One cause of this is the world's increasing urbanization.
China has made a giant effort to build new cities.
The US has hardly tried to address the problem.
Caitlin Johnstone: *To Be Assanged:
Notes
From The Edge Of The
Narrative Matrix.*
*Warren and Schakowsky Introduce
Part-Time
Worker Bill of Rights to Battle
Companies That 'Skimp on Wages and Benefits'.*
*No, Elizabeth Warren –
taking
Super Pac money is not girl power.*
I am disappointed with this, too. Sure, she would like to win — but
this is compromising part of what used to be her principles.
A heated competition tends to have that influence on people who are
falling behind. "I'll make a little moral concession, and then I will
win, and I will do a lot of good." But if that one concession to
wrongdoing doesn't enable you to take the lead — or if the opponent
makes the same moral concession — you will be back in the same
situation.
*US and Taliban sign peace agreement
aimed
at ending Afghanistan war.*
Ending the war would be a very good thing. It would not make the
conman/truth-hater an acceptable president, because preserving
democracy in the US is more important than ending this war.
Obama could have done this if he had had the will to do it. Indeed,
Dubya could have made a similar deal in the summer of 2001. The
Taliban were talking about the idea, but
Dubya gave Afghanistan low
priority at the time.
If the millions of Americans who have no medical insurance catch Covid-19,
they
may die because otherwise they'd starve.
And what if they have to go to work even though sick, because they have
no sick pay?
Covid-19 demonstrates that keeping us healthy
is
something we need to do
together.
The Voatz "mobile voting app"
was
designed with worthless "security".
Because the app is nonfree, it is no surprise that its "security" is a
joke. But even if the app itself had no security holes, the phone it runs on
does have them. Taking votes by computer is nuts, and letting people
vote on their own computers is stun-nuts.
California's groundwater regulations prioritize farms over human
residents. The humans are running out of water, while the farms
are
unsustainable and will need to shut sooner or later anyway.
Turkey and Russia/Assad are sliding into war in Idlib, but Turkey
is
attacking Assad's forces while Russia attacks Turkey's forces.
Craig Murray reports on the dispute about whether the crime Assange is
accused of is a "political offense" under the extradition treaty,
and
whether the treaty matters at all.
Murray, as a former ambassador of the UK, knows more about how
treaties and laws interact than the judge and prosecuting attorney
know.
*Plan to drain Congo peat bog for oil
could
release vast amount of carbon.*
Drying peat bogs is enough to make them burn sooner or later.
The trees burn, and
the
peat burns too.
People in some places
have
extracted peat to use as a fuel.
Bloomberg has literally
put
state-level Democratic Party officials
on his payroll.
There is no law against this — though there ought to be — but it is
no less corrupt for all that. It demonstrates that he would be hardly
any improvement over the current corruptor.
Luxembourg has
made all public transit gratis, to reduce use of cars.
Most of the Democratic Party's "superdelegates", those who will vote at the
convention but are not selected by voters, seem to want to block Sanders
from running at any cost —
even
the destruction of the Democratic Party.
Some "moderate" Democrats openly tell the public
to
like it or lump it,
if that happens.
*DNC Superdelegate Promoting Brokered Convention Is a Significant GOP Donor,
Health
Care [business] Lobbyist.*
A UK court ruled that building an additional runway for Heathrow
Airport is illegal
because
it conflicts with the UK's commitment to
reduce CO2 emissions.
*For first time it seems impact of human activity has outweighed holy
grail of economic growth.*
*[MIT statisticians'] New Study Finds No Evidence of OAS Fraud Claims,
"Very
Likely" Evo Morales Won Bolivia’s October Elections in the First
Round.*
Two NPR journalists
smeared
Sanders with FUD, falsifying the views of
American voters (about Sanders, about issues) just as servants of
plutocracy usually do.
In the late 1990s I noticed that NPR journalists frequently attacked
President Clinton from the right. My dismay developed into
disapproval and I stopped listening to NPR news.
Corporations like having healthcare linked to employment. They like
having people held captive in jobs they hate
for
fear that they’ll lose
their health coverage.*
And other reasons why big companies will fight to the death — their
workers' death — against any plan that will assure those workers
get medical care.
US citizens: call
on congress and the DOJ inspector general to
investigate the process of reversing the Roger Stone sentencing
recommendation.
An oil company has
given up on plans to drill for oil off Australia's
southern coast.
UCLA has yielded to public pressure
and decided not to
install face recognition technology.
I suggest sending a message of appreciation. Here is what I sent.
Some migrants in US immigration prison are on hunger strike and being
force-fed. They are being held
waiting
for hearings to decide whether
they can have asylum.
How do people become billionaires? Not by investment in the usual sense.
They do it by preparing to capture a windfall before someone else does.
To
capture the windfall does not mean earning it.
Public opposition induced the backers of a planned pipeline for
fracked gas, in New York and Pennsylvania,
to
give up on it.
Such decisions are not always final. They may propose it again, with
some details changed.
Errol Graham died because the UK cut off his welfare benefits because
he missed an appointment. His unsent letter to the officials who did
that begs them to "judge [him] fairly." He was
too
depressed to send
it, or take any action except to huddle in a quilt as he starved.
*Thousands of people in the UK are dying from the cold, and
fuel poverty is to
blame.*
*How Alabama blocked a man from voting
because
he owed [the state] $4.*
What is said in Assange's hearing, Assange cannot hear, because he is kept in
a glass box. He has to get a summary from his lawyers — but not very
often, as they are forbidden to speak with him in the court.
The Department of "Health" refuses to commit
to
making Covid-19
vaccine affordable for all Americans.
This is terribly foolish, because it would forfeit the chance of achieving
herd immunity and thus eradicating the disease.
Party of famously rainy New Zealand
is
suffering from an unheard-of
drought.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the MORE Act, which would
legalize marijuana.
The page displays in an ugly way in IceCat — it looks better in lynx.
Both browsers allow you to sign this without running nonfree
JavaScript code; in IceCat you should enable LibreJS to make sure
that code does not run.
Palau has banned commercial fishing on most of its waters. The protection
needs to be re-balanced, because people have entirely stopped catching tuna
and now
catch the more rare (and more easily threatened) reef fish instead.
People should not draw the simplistic conclusion that marine protected
areas are a bad idea. Stricter protection on reefs, along with
allowing some additional area for fishing for tuna, might correct the
problem.
*'In Chile, In Guatemala, In Iran': Sanders Applauded
for Highlighting
US Record of Overthrowing Governments Around the World.*
In order for the US to quit the coup addiction, it needs to start
by recognizing it.
Billionaires are accustomed to getting the US government to do their
bidding, and feeling poor compared to decabillionaires, that they
believe they
naturally deserve to rule and don't grasp what poor
Americans suffer.
*'I Bough...—I, I Got Them': Bloomberg
Almost
Admits to Buying Members of Congress.*
I suppose he was going to say that he bought their offices for them
rather than that he bought them. After all, slavery is still illegal
in the US, and so is bribery — unless it is indirect and disguised.
The conman's campaign has sued the New York Times for libel
based on a story which asserted that the conman
had
an "overarching deal"
with Russia to help get him elected.
That was four years ago. It would be entirely in character for the
conman to make such a deal, but I can't remember whether we had
evidence showing he had done so. I would like to see what the Times
says to support that claim. It is somewhat closer to truthful than
the conman is, but it often presents half-truths, as cited in many
political notes.
It is extremely difficult for a public figure (in particular, any
candidate for office) to win a libel lawsuit in the US. Since the suit
a New York State matter, the conman hasn't got much influence to pervert
justice with. Maybe he plans to drop the suit after the election.
The school-to-prison pipeline
begins
in Florida at age 6.
At least the thug was fired.
WHO and UNICEF: Children's "collective concerns must now be heard, and
effective actions taken
to
prevent the next generation inheriting
an irreversibly damaged planet."
Starbucks is
firing staff for organizing a union.
(satire)
*the American Psychiatric Association announced Thursday the
supplemental addition of “Obsessive Categorization of Mental
Conditions” to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual Of Mental Disorders.*
*Barbaric': 8 Million Americans
Have
Been Forced to Start Crowdfunding
Campaigns to Cover Medical Costs, Survey Shows.*
British MP Debbie Abrahams leads a parliamentary group concerned with
occupied Kashmir. She went to India bearing a valid visa and India
without
warning said her visa was cancelled.
This is typical behavior of authoritarian truth-denying governments;
compare with
Israel
and
the
US.
Kashmir remains
under
military occupation, and last I heard, most
people there are
still
denied internet access.
The corruptor is replacing many US civil servants
with people
personally loyal to him.
Some ocean bottom species live only in in a small area of the bottom.
A
single zinc mine could cause extinction.
Lead poisoning from lead paint
continues
to stunt the intelligence
of many US children.
Your Man in the Public Gallery – Assange Hearing Day 2. The judge is
so hostile towards Assange that when his lawyer, joined by the
prosecutor, call on her to ask the prison officials not to persecute him
(so he would be able to participate properly in his case), when they
both said this was normal practice and that prison officials usually
followed judges'
advice, she
said she had never heard of such a thing.
At the end, she announced that UK law authorized extradition for political
offenses. Shame on the UK, if that is true.
The arguments in Assange's extradition hearing show that
he is being
prosecuted for journalism.
Google directs some email from political campaigns to secondary mailboxes.
More
from some campaigns than from others.
Armed gangs of Hindu extremists in Delhi are carrying out a
pre-planned pogrom against Muslims.
Often
the uniformed thugs
support the unofficial thugs.
The gangs were urged on by an official of the Hindu-extremist BJP,
which is the ruling party. I suspect it organized the gangs, too, to
win more votes in the Delhi election. Bigotry against Muslims is its
platform. Prime Minister Modi got his initial political boost from
presiding over a
pogrom
in the state of Gujarat, where he was a state official.
The conman and Modi are made for each other:
each
shift his country
towards hate and cruelty.
*Living under an oligarchic system, we should develop a healthy
skepticism of the actions of billionaires,
whether
they are running for
office, bankrolling other candidates or giving billions to charity.*
*'String of Intentional Outright Lies': Bloomberg Campaign
Deletes Tweets
Containing Fake Quotes of Sanders Praising Despotism.*
Climate Defense Team endorses Sanders for president. Comparing all
the presidential candidates' climate defense plans, it finds that
Sanders's
plan comes closest to what is needed to save the ecosphere.
*There is nothing radical about Bernie Sanders’ views on Israel, yet the
American Jewish establishment seems bent
on
portraying the Democratic
front-runner as an anti-Semite.*
What those organizations can't stand is that Sanders takes the
two-state solution seriously and is willing to press for it. They
present themselves as representing all American Jews, but most of them
agree rather with Sanders.
*The IDF Spokesman Announces:
Continue
to Shoot Palestinian Children.*
Slavoj Zizek: *US enters brutal ideological civil war
as four-party
system begins to take form.*
I disagree partially. It is a mistake to talk about four parties;
really there are only three. There are still some "moderate"
Republicans (though they are even further from what most Americans
stand for than the "moderate" Democrats) who disagree with the
bullshitter, but hardly any dare to stand against the extremist
Republican Party.
The US had real moral leadership during World War II and the Cold War.
In some places and times its behavior was consistent with its stated
principles, especially in Europe and Japan, even as in other parts of
the world the US supported colonial empires or economic elites.
Meanwhile, the US contended against horrible enemies. Communist
Russia and China committed massive crimes. Imagine if the
bully could
have anyone in the US imprisoned or shot, as a whim, and nobody dared
to hint at disobedience; that's what Stalin's rule was like. In
China, Mao's delusional "Great Leap Forward" caused an artificial
famine that killed millions. There too, no one dared criticize.
The imprisonment of a million Uighurs for brainwashing is a sample
of what Mao's rule was like.
These were not merely a low standard of comparison against which US
looked better than it was. They were real enemies on a global scale.
In today's United States, the good aspects have faded while the bad ones
have increased. But we know that the way forward is with Sanders
and his political revolution.
*To connect the enclaves that make up Kedumim, [illegal Israeli
colonists] seized control of a central road serving Palestinians
and
blocked their access to it.*
*Israeli ["settlers"]
torch
Palestinian school in latest 'price tag' attack.*
India has released some of the arbitrarily-imprisoned political
leaders of Kashmir.
But
the former highest leaders are
still in prison.
Physicians for Human Rights reports on how the
bully's family separation
policy amounts to torture —
and
often included intentional cruelty
to the parents and their children.
*Bloomberg effort
to
mock Sanders with tweets praising dictators backfires.*
Over and over, plutocratists accuse progressives of exactly what the
plutocratists often do. Supporting and praising dictators is a perfect
example.
The conviction of Weinstein shows that
victim-blaming
and millions no
longer assure impunity.
Black students in some countries' public schools often face punishment
because of the shape and form of their hair, which doesn't easily comply
with
the rules designed based on white students.
*A 'brokered convention' designed to block Bernie Sanders
would be a poison
pill.*
We will see whether the Democratic Party is so obedient to plutocrats
(including Bloomberg) that it will destroy itself at their command in
order to block Sanders.
Bloomberg is spending
a
lot of money to make that happen.
Buttigieg has morphed into a plutocratist tool to attack Sanders,
along
with progressive political ideas.
Because Chilean thugs systematically shot protesters in the eye,
people have
painted bloody eye sockets on statues around Chile.
Craig Murray reports on how Julian
Assange's extradition hearing is
being stage-managed as a show trial.
The public is nearly excluded, and
the mainstream media
quote
from prosecutors'
press release instead of reporting
on the real matters at stake.
The whole article is worth reading. The details are far worse than I
would have supposed.
*Julian Assange was handcuffed 11 times, stripped naked twice and
had his case files confiscated after the first day of his extradition
hearing, according
to his lawyers, who complained of interference in
his ability to take part.*
To do this to a person who has never shown any tendency to violence,
and who is hardly able to access weapons, is sheer political theater
as well as sabotage of his defense.
Sanders will not attend the AIPAC event: "You can support the
Palestinian and Israeli people without supporting leaders or
organizations that
oppose the freedom and liberation of the
Palestinian people."
China has sentenced kidnapped book publisher Gui Minhai
to
10 years in prison.
(satire)
*the United States unveiled a
plan Monday for the rest of the world to become carbon-neutral by 2030.*
Sanders proposes federally-funded prekindergarten and child care
for young children,
as
an investment in America's future.
Greyhound has stopped allowing deportation thugs
to enter buses at
will and demand to see passengers' ID.
Governments meeting about protecting biodiversity have presented a
"Global Rescue Plan",
but
aside from the name, it is inadequate.
Public pressure for climate defense convinced a mining company
to drop
its application to start a new tar sands oil mine.
UK plans to keep prisoners, that were convicted of somehow supporting
terrorism (which can include having copies of propaganda or
information), longer in prison can backfire
by
giving prisoners more
of a chance to further radicalize each other.
Whatever we do to those prisoners, it has some chance of reducing terrorism
and some chance of inciting more terrorism. No perfect solution is known.
It is foolish to presume that "tougher equals better."
1/3 of the population of Venezuela
has
trouble getting food.
This is partly because of Maduro's foolish policies, and partly because
of crushing US sanctions on Venezuela.
*Bloomberg’s Investment Portfolio
Includes
Bets on Private Equity, Fracking.*
Half a million people in Britain live in buildings with flammable
"cladding" insulation, and they face the threat of enormous bills to
replace it —
bills
they cannot ever pay.
3/4 of Americans
support
the Equal Rights Amendment.
3/4 of Americans also believe the Constitution already requires
equal rights for men and women. I wonder how the two questions, and
their answers, relate. Did the pollsters inform people about the
current situation before asking whether they support the amendment?
The US mainstream media have thrown a series of fabrications and
exaggerations at Sanders, but now that we have actual election
results, we
can see they are not true.
US mainstream media's coverage of Sanders is not just subtly wrong.
It is thoroughly and persistently
disconnected
from reality.
Protesters are blocking train tracks in Canada
to protest the
planned planet-roaster pipeline to Canada's west coast.
The indigenous Wet’suwet’en group continues
to
resist attempts to
build the pipeline across its land.
*Beware the politics of identity.
They
help legitimize the toxic far right.*
The US and the Taliban have agreed on a truce and
are
considering a peace deal
if the truce holds.
*[Thugs], Prosecutors, and Republicans
Are
Looking to Undo a Criminal
Justice Reform in New York.*
A fable about what happens if all life activities
are managed
over the internet, and it goes down.
Cash will continue to work.
People who criticize the cost of Sanders's plans to fix our pressing
problems fail
to compare them with the cost of not fixing them.
Except for Warren, the other candidates don't propose to really fix them.
Gentrification is replacing old fashioned food stalls and food trucks
with "gourmet" versions inside chic markets,
that
make the food a
little fancier and far more expensive.
They may enable you to formulate a romantic fantasy of your meal, as
long as you can afford to eat there.
The bully is preparing to ban unions
for
the civilian workers in the
Defense Department.
A right-wing MSNBC anchorman compared Sanders's success in Nevada
with
the German conquest of France in World War II.
One crucial difference which he disregarded is that Sanders is doing
well in a peaceful, democratic election, whereas France in 1940 was
defeated by a military invasion.
Many MSNBC commentators
are
also smearing Sanders.
India built a wall so that the bullshitter
would
not be able to see
a slum during his visit there.
Supposedly this was for "security reasons", and that might be true in
an ironic way. If he had seen the poor people's improvised houses,
who knows what he might have done? Bomb the whole city?
Bloomberg News killed Michael Forsythe's article about intimate
financial dealings of relatives of Chinese party officials, because it
didn't want to jeopardize its sales in China. Then it fired him, and
demanded repayment of money provided for him to move to Hong Kong
unless both he and his wife signed a nondisclosure agreement.
Then
it threatened to sue them if she didn't.
She, Leta Hong Fincher, now reports on those events. Bloomberg News
seems to demand others bow meekly to its threats just as it bows
to China's threats.
Bravo Ms Fincher!
New exhaust scrubbers now required for ships keep toxic pollutants out
of the air by
sending them into the ocean instead.
This is not necessarily better.
A worst-likely-case scenario for 2050
if
the planet-roasters remain in control.
Some have envisioned the complete extinction of humanity. I think
that is unlikely. People survived with low tech in harsh environments
before, and could do so again, albeit in small numbers (most of
humanity would be killed by such a transition).
CommonDreams reports that Emily's List and the Center for American
Progress silenced their criticism of Bloomberg
because they couldn't
do without his donations.
That's the power oligarchs enjoy. In the same way, Bill Gates's money
ensured that hardly anyone in the field of education would criticize
his plans to
restructure public schools in the US.
Teaching assistants at the University of Santa Cruz are on strike
and are
threatened with being fired from their assistantships.
(satire)
*General Motors
unveiled Friday their new 14-seat, 11-door, 7-wheel, 4-trunk Chevrolet
Teton.*
Always paying cash (as I do) can save you lots of money
by helping you
decide not to buy.
It is important to learn to appreciate that, each you consider buying.
And that's not to mention the most important thing it can give you:
privacy!
Bolivia's court says Evo Morales cannot run for senator in Bolivia
because
he is not a resident there.
What a sick excuse! (He has taken refuge in exile since the coup in
November, only 3 months ago.)
Safe drinking water advocates applauded the public pressure which
forced the EPA on Thursday to announce it would regulate substances
known as "forever
chemicals"—but
warned the new rules could take years
to have an impact on water safety.*
*Democrats Call on White House to Ensure
Any
Coronavirus Vaccine Is Not
[a Monopoly] for Big Pharma.*
*'No Tolerance': Union Urges DCCC to Cut Off Support to Dems
Who Voted Against
Pro-Labor Bill.*
The bill passed the house despite them, but when a "Democrat" is as
Republican as that, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee should
not support per.
People demonstrate racist and sexist bias in showing sympathy for
someone who reports pain. When the sufferer is black, or female,
others often
look for excuses to disbelieve the report.
The British state tells schools and other institutions to report
people for
nonviolent commitment to dissenting positions such as
protecting the environment, and animal rights.
It was only a matter of time before this mechanism was put to the
service of labeling dissent as "terrorism".
Decreased acquaintance with neighbors in the UK is marching along
with
increased use of antisocial media.
A US Republican politician tried to bribe Assange to say that Putin was
not involved in leaking DNC emails, offering him a pardon.
Assange refused.
There is a disagreement about whether that offer came from the conman or not,
but I don't think that detail changes anything.
Bravo for opposition shadow-minister McDonnell for speaking up for Assange.
Sanders would work to reduce the global problems that Putin derives his
power from exploiting:
tax
havens (plutocracy), dependence on fossil fuels,
and seeing international relations as a zero-sum competition for power.
The Democratic candidates running against Sanders
would welcome
superdelegates giving them the nomination.
There is a real danger that that will happen.
Australia's main opposition party
now
calls for prioritizing ending greenhouse emissions.
His plans have the usual faults — too late, and too little
(net-zero emissions sounds nice but offsetting
tends
to be self-delusion). Nonetheless, this is a big step forward.
Too bad it is over 2 years to the next election there.
Warren and other candidates
put
Bloomberg on the spot in the Democratic debate, mostly for his
personal politics, but also
for
his political positions.
The Onion's satire in which
the
DNC asks the bullshitter to run as a Democrat is just a small
exaggeration of what it is doing by facilitating his fellow
billionaire, Bloomberg.
"If he wins the presidency, striking a 'grand bargain' with Mitch
McConnell to cut our earned benefits is
likely
to be among his top priorities."
Australia
seeks
to arrest and try the Australians accused of supporting PISSI, who
are now in prison in Syria.
That is the right thing to do with them — not exile them.
A white-supremacist terrorist murdered 9 people in bars in Germany,
then killed himself. He was
inspired
by US right-wing extremist conspiracy theories.
The
Nazi-like
AfD party is accused of fomenting this hatred.
Ironically, there really is a conspiracy in the US to abuse and
torture children (plus a larger number of teenagers), operating at
locations that are inaccessible. It is a right-wing conspiracy,
created by the bully
and operated by the US Department of Hatred and
Suffering (DHS). Its victims are imprisoned immigrants.
The latest Australian excuse to ban environmentalist protests is
claiming
the protests are making an unsafe workplace.
Tories have
brought
renewed misery to Britons that don't own a house.
However, Bogus Johnson is making specific exceptions to the policy of
crushing the non-rich,
cutting
into the resentment against making people suffer without eliminating
all the suffering.
1/4
of all tweets about global heating come from denialist bots.
Low-paid UK university staff, including teachers, are
on
strike.
Global heating is slowly
drying
up the Colorado River. The resulting drought could force millions
of people to move.
California
is also drying due to global heating.
*Leaked Reports Show EU Police Are Planning a
Pan-European
Network of Facial Recognition Databases.*
Congressional representatives say that US intelligence warned them
that the Russian disinformation army is
still
at work, supporting the conman.
Russian election meddling is a real danger, but I expect that Koch
election meddling and Bloomberg election meddling are bigger dangers.
Ideas for
teaching children media literacy.
Methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction seems to be
25%-40%
more than previously thought. This implies that cuts in
extraction will make an even bigger and faster difference. Let's get
cracking!
Locusts in East Africa
threaten
25 million people with hunger.
FFII contends that the departure of Britain from the EU has
invalidated the "unitary patent" agreement, and this
offers
a chance to kill it permanently.
This is important because that deal would make the European Patent
Office effectively autonomous regarding the question of which ideas
are patentable — and it
would
certainly take advantage of that to rule that computational ideas are
patentable.
This offers one more chance to try to save software from patents
in Europe. FFII will campaign to do this, and I will offer my help.
There is
no
time to wait for more data before taking action to prevent the
insect apocalypse. The danger is desperately urgent.
When you need to stop the train before it runs off the broken bridge,
you can't afford to spend a minute calculating precisely how hard to
push the brakes.
After the UK's exit from the European Union, Google
plans
to move the data about UK residents to the US. It will be able to
do this because the GDPR will no longer apply
The GDPR are inherently weak, because they aim at "protection of data"
already collected, rather than at
preventing the collection
of data about people's activities.
The US has
blocked
Eyal Weizman from visiting Miami to open an exhibit about his
work. He leads Forensic Architecture, which investigates human rights
violations world-wide.
The border thugs said that a computer program suggested he was a
security threat. However, it was the humans who decided to heed that
suggestion. They demand a list of all citizens of Syria, Iran, Iraq,
Yemen or Somalia that he has met, and invite him to volunteer names of
everyone else he knows who might perhaps be somehow suspect. In
effect, "conduct a fishing expedition on yourself."
In the course of investigating human rights violations he has talked
with witnesses from those countries, people of various political
affiliations. To turn him into a US spy on all of them could benefit
the US government, both by getting more information for its giant data
bases, and by getting a lever with which to ruin his career at any
time. It could use that lever to stop him from investigating human
rights violations committed by the US.
He was wise to this danger, and refused to give the information.
In the past, being caught doing this would have chastened the US. The
bullshitter will boast of having damaged two birds (human rights
investigation, and justice) with one lie.
In Fiji, large trees
protected
crops from the wind and waves of a hurricane — in farms that
had not cut the trees down.
(For reasons of tradition, the term "hurricane" is not used for storms
in the South Pacific, but it's the same kind of storm.)
Many kinds of computer components have processors which contain
nonfree preinstalled firmware that
can
be altered maliciously by anyone with bad intentions.
Some require the firmware to be signed with a particular key.
In those, to alter the firmware maliciously requires the aid
(willing or unwilling) of the manufacturer. Still not secure.
Real security requires that the device not allow modification of the
firmware through the connectors for normal use of the device.
AI programs that are claimed to recognize emotions from facial expressions
have to be bogus, because
different
people express the same emotion with different expressions.
Trying to refute internet propaganda lies
often
backfires and has the overall effect of spreading them further.
It's best for most of us to ignore them.
*Fox in the Henhouse: Koch-Backed
Opponent
of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Chairs Taskforce to Evaluate
Its Regulations.*
Everyone: call
on Facebook to delete false political ads.
The UK plans to push hard
to
end immigration of low-wage workers.
We will find out if it really achieves a increase of standards of
living and of productivity.
Scandinavian countries have a different approach: tax the rich more
and spend more on helping people. That method visibly does work.
The bully
demonstrated his contempt for all attempts to restrain corruption
by
pardoning a number of corrupt officials and crooks.
Sanders put it well.
Amazon's Ring surveillance cameras are marketed as a way to catch
burglars and reduce burglary,
but
there is no evidence that they
really do either one.
This seems to be a campaign of marketing that uses fear to manipulate
people.
China's early coverup for Covid-19, and the resulting epidemic, has
led to mass demand for freedom of speech, just as the state
is applying
quarantine via threats far beyond the normal level of cruelty.
One example is Chen Qiushi,
who
has reported from Wuhan.
A week ago, he was apparently disappeared and his mother could not
find him.
*Impunity Guaranteed for Torturers (and Presidents).* None of the US
government's torturers has been held responsible.
Before the bully,
Dubya and Obama protected them.
Bloomberg has not stopped pushing to cut Social Security, but
he has learned
to be more cagey about it.
*Buttigieg and Centrist Dems Want a Military Response to Climate Change.
That’s
Dangerous.*
They want to enhance the military's capacity to fend off refugees and
flood waters. That won't enable the United States of 2060 to survive
as a free and stable country.
*Greenpeace Finds Labels on Plastic Products "Mislead the Public and Harm
America's Recycling Systems"*.
Many plastic objects that are labeled for recycling
cannot
really be recycled
in the US today.
WHO: *The world
is
failing to ensure children have a 'livable planet'.*
A certain level of hunting is ecologically sustainable.
In the case
of deer, it is absolutely necessary.
What it's like for a Dalit to "pass" as Brahmin:
fear of making one
little mistake that will give it away.
Urban trees and hedges absorb air pollution. They also
soak up rain,
thus reducing flooding.
"Neglected" tropical diseases have harmed hundreds of millions of
people. We are on the verge of eradicating some of them, but if we
don't push on and reach that point,
they
will spread again.
Utah Republicans have become aware all of a sudden
of harm global
heating can do.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban face recognition in schools.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the judge presiding over Assange's extradition hearing not to
extradite him.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Bloomberg to fund racial justice groups instead of a
presidential campaign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An interview with Alan Singer about
what
schools can do to lead students away from hate.
Notably, schools can't do the whole job of eradicating racism and
bigotry. That requires changing the conditions of inequality that
people grow up in.
*"We can’t afford healthcare": US hospital workers
fight
for higher wages.*
Henry Ford famously paid the workers of his car factory enough that
they could buy his cars.
Bloomberg
aims
to privatize public schools, much
like
DeVos.
*The
Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders.*
China's medical system, overwhelmed by people sick with Covid-19
coronavirus, is unable to treat them all, so China is
censoring
people who talk about needing help.
To be ready to treat so many sick people is not easy. Are other
countries stockpiling what they will need? In the US, Republicans
tend to neglect such preparations because they don't care about
non-rich people. The bully cares even less than usual.
The amount of online purchasing of goods has brought about
mountains
of additional packaging waste.
*Researchers find a western-style diet can impair brain function.
After a week on a high fat, high added sugar diet,
volunteers scored
worse on memory tests.*
*Beavers cut flooding and pollution and boost wildlife populations —
according
to a five-year study of animals in Devon.*
*The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather review – the hero
who
sent himself to
Auschwitz.*
Jan Karski infiltrated the guards of a Nazi murder camp, and since he
was not a prisoner, he found it easy enough to leave to report on the
murder methods. Later, in the US, he reported this to officials, who
did not believe what he told them. He recounted this is in his book,
Story of a Secret State.
Reasons to imprison Uighurs in brainwashing camps include
*growing a
beard, wearing a veil or accidentally visiting a foreign website.*
(satire)
*DNC Offers Startup $500 Million To Develop Pencil That Can Accurately
Record Election Results.*
*More Than 2,000 Former US Department of Justice Officials Tell William Barr:
Resign Now!*
The Afghan government's soldiers say the reason they are fighting is
for the pay. They
can't find other work.
Meanwhile, the Taliban soldiers are fighting mainly because the US
side has killed their relatives. That is not a deep commitment, but
it is stronger than a salary. No wonder the Taliban keep gaining.
But this suggests that if the US stops fighting them, in a few years
they will not be motivated to fight the US any more.
Washington State is considering a law to put its waters
off limits to
bottling.
Dicamba, Monsanto's latest herbicide, the next generation after
Roundup, is meant to be used with genetically engineered resistant
crops. But it drifts off the field and poisons nearby farms.
Monsanto has been ordered
to
pay 15 million dollars in compensation to
a large peach farm that has been destroyed, plus 250 million in
punitive damages.
Will it be possible to rebuild the production there, or is it lost forever?
After the US-supported coup in Honduras in 2009, the country has
suffered two more attacks against the constitutional order,
both with
US support of course.
The UK never set up a system for Parliament to review or approve trade
treaties. Ministers
and officials write them in secret and impose them.
Any bad law can be policy-laundered this way, and a trade deal with the
US under any plausible president but Sanders or Warren will surely do
great harm.
The article falls into the common error of talking about "intellectual
property" as
if that term referred to some specific thing.
*The great vape debate:
are
e-cigarettes saving smokers or creating new addicts?*
The UK, France and other countries
are
blocking their citizens
captured by Rojava (for supporting PISSI) from returning home.
The Kurds are now reluctantly trying them for their crimes,
but are not in a position to reliably keep people in prison for decades.
US citizens:
call
on Connecticut to make phone calls for prisoners gratis.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to extend the deadline on ratifying the Equal Rights
Amendment.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Congress to Ban local subsidies for Amazon Ring snooping
cameras.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Politicians in the UK, Europe and Australia are
starting
to campaign against extradition of Julian Assange.
The sad thing is that Bogus Johnson has a pattern of contempt for
everything that gets in his way. He does not care about Assange, one
way or the other; he is negotiating a deal with the conman, so I
expect him to offer Assange in exchange for some of what he does want.
*Will
Tennessee Kill a Man Who Saved Lives on Death Row?*
*A Professor Was Called a Pedophile
Because
of His Work.*
*Deportations to Jamaica, the Shamima Begum case and Windrush betray a
woeful regard for the notion of citizenship* in the UK.
*negligence
of a basic human right for many of its own citizens.*
This puts "all children of immigrants, all Jews and everyone from
Northern Ireland" at risk of arbitrary exile.
Personal medical data is a special case, among data bases of personal
data, because
there
is a pressing reason to collect it and a pressing reason to look for
patterns in it. Perhaps the data can be made safe through a
system where no company or researcher can have a copy of the data, or
unlimited access to it; rather, they have to submit queries to be
vetted.
*In his assault on justice,
Trump
has out-Nixoned Nixon.*
*Bloomberg and [the conman] are
two
sides of the same sinister coin.*
The use of untrustworthy computers and software in elections —
in other words, any computers and software —
turns
any mishap, even an accidental one, into a source of distrust.
People worry that the system was "hacked" (that is,
cracked).
There is a danger that Russian crackers will break the security and
alter the results. But I am more worried about that the voting
machine companies or election authorities will alter the results.
They can do this without cracking the security — they simply
step around it.
The UK's policy of budget cuts for everything except enriching the
rich has
undermined
efforts to de-radicalize terrorists.
The US government subsidizes some cattle ranching businesses by
charging
a pittance for letting their cattle graze on public land.
This subsidy to beef promotes eating too much beef, which is bad
for individual health and for the survival of a livable climate.
It should end.
*Mike Bloomberg Claims He Cut Stop and Frisk by 95 Percent —
After
Increasing It Seven Fold.*
He misrepresents his past actions in several ways, and denies his
documented past racism.
*Foreign-Funded Dark-Money Groups Lobby IRS
to
Repeal Remaining Reporting.*
This illustrates a standard phenomenon: the rich lobby to change
the rules in their favor.
A worst-likely-case projection
of
climate disaster in 2050.
If you have a child this year, that's what per 30th birthday could be like.
Per 40th would be even worse. Unless you want to do that to someone you love,
don't have one!
Each birth avoided will make it a little less bad.
The DCCC and Pelosi are supporting Rep. Cuellar, who is so
plutocratist that
the Koch brothers support him too.
(satirical
title) After [the bully] Shoots Susan Collins In the Middle of
5th Avenue, She Says She's "Troubled" But Still Supports Him.
This is not the Onion. The title is extrapolation, but the article is
serious criticism of Senator Collins.
The conman has the Secret Service pay exorbitant rates for his
bodyguards to
stay in his hotel when off duty.
This sort of corrupt self-dealing is the conman's basic MO.
A county in Kansas has a peculiar law that arrests people for unpaid
medical debt, charges them $500 "bail", and never returns it.
The money goes to
the gougers, and to a lawyer who implement the scheme.
US citizens: call
on Congress to reject the BURN IT act,
which would let Barr ban services from supporting effective encryption.
"BURN IT" is not the bill's official name, but describes it accurately.
At most 2C of global heating, around 120,000 years ago,
caused at
least 3 meters of sea-level rise.
*Of course there’s a globalization backlash.
It
has failed billions of people.*
Globalization of manufacturing is also a danger for society, because
it eliminates redundancy. If only one company knows how to make an
XYZ, it is easy for one local disaster to eliminate all the capacity
and knowledge of how to make them. This is happening just as we are
doing things that will make lots of local disasters.
(satire)
*… moderate Democrats were worried Amy Klobuchar could split
the crucial people-who-will-vote-for-anybody vote.*
(satire) *Michael
Bloomberg’s presidential campaign hired thousands of canvassers Friday
to stop black men on the street and force them to hear his campaign
pitch.*
Could we say his campaign is getting frisk-y?
One city in the UK has reduced recidivism rates by 15% by offering people
charged with certain crimes the opportunity
to participate in
rehabilitation courses and win deferred prosecution.
This rehabilitation before prosecution is unusual, but US prisons used
to provide rehabilitation programs for the convicted. That was
eliminated in the 80s when US politicians found they could win
elections by promising to be "tough". That is also how the US ended
up with the world's highest percentage of population in prison.
Senators
to Barr: "The shocking action taken by you or your senior
staff to seek special protections for Mr. Stone make a mockery of
your responsibilities to seek equal justice under the law."
But Barr has done this more than once: he has a habit of subjecting
political cases to special review of the prosecutors' actions,
looking
for excuses to intervene.
Prosecutors in the US have been known to break the law so as to make
trials unfair. It might be a wise policy to give every trial
a special review to see if prosecutors violated the defendant's rights
— if that were done fairly.
However, special preference for cronies of the conman is not justice.
The prosecutors in the Stone case
resigned
in protest.
Bizarrely, Barr claims that the conman is undermining his authority
by
tweeting about this. I cannot believe that Barr really wishes to be independent of the conman,
or that he is so.
Modeling that considers species' ability to move
forecasts 30% of species
on Earth could be wiped out in 50 years.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC not to damage the lifeline program. (It provides phone
and internet to poor people at low cost.)
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Senate
passed
the resolution to deauthorize fighting Iran. However, this is
apparently a joint resolution (which requires presidential approval or
else a 2/3 supermajority) rather than a
concurrent
resolution. Why did the Senate choose to do this in a form that
won't have legal effect?
British immigration thugs
held Rahman Mahafuzer’s six-year-old boy for
10 hours, and
refused
to call a medic even though the boy was vomiting.
They seem to have blamed the father for the vomit, as if he had
intentionally made his son sick just to annoy them.
This is probably indirectly related to leaving the EU, because the
campaign stirred up bigotry and this look like an instance of that
bigotry.
The oil leaked from the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2010,
spread
below the surface much farther than was visible on the surface from
satellites.
Since fishing was not banned in areas beyond the visible oil slick,
that underwater oil could have got into fish which humans then ate.
I wonder if
the
dispersants that BP poured on the oil, which make the oil mix more
with water, played a role in causing that. This response was
criticized at the time.
Las Vegas has
made
it a crime to live on the sidewalk. Someone campaigned for this
cruelty because he did not like finding excrement on the street.
They could have addressed the ostensible problem by providing proper
toilets instead. But if the real goal was to treat homeless people
with contempt, that would not have sufficed.
As for squatting, if people suffer from homelessness and a house is
uninhabited, I think they should take it.
The violence of the French thugs was
derived
from repression in African colonies. Now there is video to prove
it, and the state is facing public reprobation.
Amal Clooney and others
propose
international sanctions against countries that repress
journalists.
I am in favor of it. Don't forget the US and UK, for
their
treatment of Julian Assange.
The UK deported 17 people to Jamaica last week, 7 of them are living
in hiding, afraid
of being murdered by gangsters who have threatened them
or their families.
Delta Airlines announced
a plan to become "carbon-neutral".
The plan involves ten years of spending. It is not clear whether
it includes a specific target to complete the work in ten years.
The biggest weakness in the plan is that it depends on
offsetting the emissions, and these offsetting plans are likely to
have full effect only over ensuing decades —
if
they work at all.
(satire)
*the Nevada State Democratic Party announced Friday
that it had addressed election security concerns by upgrading to a new
system of electronic voters.*
Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, explains how the legal
process against him was rigged from the start
and
violated legal norms
over and over.
Why he is concerned about this case:
Melzer also explains how the legal procedures against Assange in
Sweden and the UK were run corruptly all along, violating all norms
of justice.
He also explains painstakingly how the Swedish state fabricated
charges against Assange, twisting what the two women actually said.
Rather than pursuing "justice" for them — supposed "justice" which
they did not want — the Swedish state only used them as an excuse
for bullshit.
Bloomberg raised funds
for
a Republican congresscritter in 2018.
Nepal tried to protect Nepalese women from effective enslavement
as domestic workers in Persian Gulf countries by prohibiting Nepalese
from going there for such jobs. But
it
didn't stop them, and made them
even more vulnerable once there.
Nepal's embassy could give them new passports and fly them back to
Nepal. But since Nepal is so poor, maybe cannot afford the flights.
Is there a chance or organizing ship they will take them to India,
perhaps once a month? They might have to wait a few weeks on the ship,
but it would be better than being stuck in Kuwait as a slave.
The world powers could make these Gulf countries change their
policies, if they got together.
In a few decades, the problem may solve itself — those countries
probably won't exist any more, due to
global heating and sea-level
rise. If we can stop them from exporting oil and causing global
heating, those countries may stop hiring foreign workers.
Immigrants in California
are
going without food and medical care for
fear of being denied residency for accepting them.
*EU spending tens of millions of euros a year
to
promote meat eating.*
It is one of many issues where the EU works for the interests of
European businesses even to the detriment of Europeans' (and others')
life, health, or freedom.
*AIPAC Is Helping Fund Anti-Bernie Sanders
Super
PAC Ads in Nevada.*
*When Trump interferes with the proper exercise of power, as he did with
Roger Stone, he
puts at risk the life, liberty and reputation of every
American.*
(satire)
*Fox News Producer Knows His Work Formulaic But At Least It
Helps People Escape Reality For Couple Hours.*
Toxic pollution from fossil fuel
is
estimated to kill over 4 million
people annually.
This does not count the number killed by
global heating effects.
Bloomberg acts like a true oligarch, using his money's power to reshape
the political system
so
he can squeeze more money out of it.
The idea of “hate the game, not the player” is sometimes valid when
the game is one that people play for recreation — because they can
play some other game instead.
However, the idea is inapplicable when they treat our political system
as their game and exploit people through it. Those who take advantage
of a bad political system to exploit people are always personally
culpable, even if the system is too.
*Bloomberg in 2014:
"We
Should Hope" the NSA Is "Reading Every Email".*
Republicans propose to destroy the climate
in
order to "save" it.
This is done in the most blatant possible way: by extending a tax cut
on oil.
*How to Support Your Children
in
Turning Climate Angst Into Climate Action.*
The comparison with the "Keep America Beautiful" campaign illustrates
a common paradigm: business change the system in a way that tends to create
a problem, then tells the millions they deal with that compensating for
that tendency is their responsibility.
UK universities are ordering academics to keep silent on social media
about
issues affecting their work environment.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to investigate the conduct of the war in Afghanistan
based on the Afghanistan Papers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Justice to stop the prosecution of drone
whistleblower Daniel Hale.
If you sign, please spread the word!
*Earth just had
hottest
January since records began, data shows.*
A
temperature of 20C was observed in Antarctica. That's almost as
high as the temperature I like to have in my office.
It feels like spring now in Boston, and it is only February. People
with their heads in the sand may think it is comfortable. I find it
frightening!
Bloomberg is keeping his actual views out of the limelight, apparently
so voters won't notice their disagreements with him. The mainstream
media are helping. But he
has
shown his repressive views.
Obama also hid his views behind the vague slogans of "hope" and
"change". I did not expect much of either from him.
Salafi Arabia has
agreed
to prosecution of airplane crews that carried out specific war
crimes, such as attacking a hospital and a wedding party.
Ilhan Omar proposes laws to direct US foreign policy towards international
cooperation and encouraging peace, and
reducing
the president's power of economic warfare.
The insect apocalypse has been
measured
in the UK and Denmark.
It was
previously
reported from Germany.
*Bernie Sanders Isn't a Radical — He's a Pragmatist Who
Fights
to Un-rig the System.*
"Trump
wants
to destroy Medicaid while claiming to save it." This will kill
thousands of poor and disabled Americans.
Sanders got the most votes in New Hampshire Democratic primary, but
two
corporate Democrats were close behind.
*A
humanitarian crisis looms in Africa unless we act fast to stop the
desert locust.*
A TV show in Pakistan showed an extramarital affair — unusually,
involving a wife rather than a husband.
The
producer and actors are accused in court of misogyny, putting
freedom of expression in danger.
I reject the assumption that monogamy is morally imperative. I refuse
to use the words "cheating" and "unfaithful" to describe sex, or
romantic love, in conflict with monogamy. I think people should be
monogamous if they wish, and not if they don't. When I love a woman,
I do not ask her to be monogamous, because I do not think of her as my
possession. I simply wish for her to join me in keeping our love
going well.
The article refers an the end to the violence in Tom and Jerry
cartoons. Americans a few decades ago began to question whether it
was a good thing to enjoy that violence. I read that point, and it
made me aware of the pain that the violence depicted would cause in
reality. I began to identify with the character suffering the
violence. I am grateful to those who wrote about this.
But it must not be a crime to show violence in cartoons.
Bogus Johnson
wants
to politicize the selection of judges in the UK and limit their
ability to overturn decisions of government agencies.
In effect, the UK has evolved something comparable to the explicit
"checks and balances" of the US Constitution, and Bogus wants to
weaken it so he can do whatever he wishes.
In 1960, the UK framed Stephen Ward so he couldn't say that a minister
had lied to Parliament. The trial was "a charade,
presided
over by a judge committed to a conviction." It was characterized
by "manipulation of the trial by the lord chief justice."
The UK has not got any more honest. It is now doing something
comparable to Julian Assange.
UK thugs set up face recognition cameras
looking
at the door of a shopping center. They put up signs saying "you
are not legally required to go through this area", but that does you
no good if you need to go there to shop.
They made a statement about what they would do with the videos, but
did they promise not to save the videos and do other things with them
later?
*EU accused of climate crisis hypocrisy after
backing
32 gas projects.* The amount spent will be over 30 billion dollars
that should be spent on defending the climate rather than destroying
it.
Damming off the North Sea (and thus the Baltic too) would be a
feasible
and cost effective way of protecting large parts of northern Europe
from inundation due to global heating.
However, it would not protect anyone from the other aspects of climate
disaster — that should be the preferred solution.
The UN has published a list of companies
linked
to Israel's colonies in
Palestinian territory.
The UN does not call for boycotting companies with a special tie to
these colonies, but I do.
The bully's
"peace plan" proposes to hand over some Israeli territory
to a future powerless Palestinian "state".
The
Palestinians living
there would rather remain part of Israel.
Amazing respect for justice: a woman facing possible deportation from
the UK won a decision that she would not be deported, at least not
immediately. But the prison guards tried to force her onto a plane.
She resisted this illegal action by fighting back.
A
court has ruled
that this was legitimate self-defense.
*More than two-thirds of the migrants fleeing Central America’s
northern triangle countries …
experienced the murder,
disappearance or kidnapping of a relative before their departure.*
US citizens: Phone
your senators and say to pass a
"concurrent resolution" deauthorizing war with Iran.
A concurrent resolution does not require the president to sign it.
US gun owners do not feel happier
or
sleep better than people without
guns.
Objectively, having a gun in the house makes people less safe.
*A Canadian Energy Company
Bought
an Oregon Sheriff’s Unit.*
It wasn't officially a purchase, but in effect that's what it was.
The unit's purpose was to fight pipeline protesters, and its funds
came from a fossil fuel company.
Bogus Johnson is
putting his relatives into powerful government positions,
much like the conman and Bolsonaro.
113 species of Australian animals
need
help to survive after the great
fires.
Offering shared parental leave from work reduces one of the causes of
the gender pay gap:
the
assumption that women will time off for babies
and men will not.
It will also enable babies to feel less stress, which will help them
grow up healthier.
The climate crisis will give them too much stress, all too soon, which
is part of why people should avoid having babies nowadays. But starting
the stress when they are newborns is not a humane way of making this point.
Global heating
is damaging the delta of the Río Ebro in Spain,
squeezed
between two effects of the heat.
On one side, bigger storms start from the higher sea level. On the
other, Spain is becoming more arid and needs more water from the river
for irrigation.
*Every leading Democratic candidate supports a form of conservation
that
can reduce greenhouse gases and create jobs in rural America.*
*If Bloomberg Wants to Buy an Election,
He
Should Run as a Republican Against Trump—Not Sabotage Democrats.*
Why didn't he? He may have judged that the bullshitter's fanatical
supporters can't be swayed by mere mainstream media, or that the
bullshitter is a master of stirring them up into hatred.
In any case, we have to deal with what he is actually doing.
You can't go far wrong by voting against the candidate supported
by lots of expensive TV ads.
*Sudan says it will
send
former dictator Omar al-Bashir to [the
International Criminal Court].*
Chile's very loud labels for food with high sugar, high salt or high fat
have had a big impact:
consumption
of sugar-laden drinks has fallen by
about 1/4.
Thugs
tend to hold right-wing views, so it is no surprise that they
sometimes frame anti-fascists,
and
sometimes succeed in putting them
in prison.
*Utah cuts healthcare costs
by
flying employees to Mexico for prescriptions.*
Medicare for All, with its plan to negotiate an overall quantity price
for drugs (as most European countries do), would eliminate this problem
once and for all.
A company that sold encryption systems to 100 countries was
controlled by US and German intelligence,
and
the equipment spied
on the governments that used it.
Of course Huawei equipment will do likewise.
Moral: never trust a nonfree program, especially not for encryption.
Many different kinds of human activities are together
responsible
for driving insects to extinction, and if they die, we die.
*[The saboteur
in chief’s] Proposed Budget Cuts Disastrous for Public
Health, Clean Energy Investments.*
He
is going to subsidize coal instead.
He also wants to
cut support for food and water.
The house will not pass this budget, but since the bully has said
he
wants it passed, we can judge him by it.
The US is
spreading prudery to workplaces around the world.
If your main way of meeting and getting to know people you could hope
to find love with is at work, and you're forbidden to have a
relationship with them, you may have no way at all.
The UK is systematically deporting to Jamaica people who have lived in
Britain since they were children —
in
some cases, since they were born.
People who grow up in a country deserve citizenship there, and it is unjust
to exile citizens even if they commit crimes. That applies to the UK
and
the US.
*Pacific Islanders have been experiencing climate-induced disasters for
years, now
they have reached Australia.*
(satire)
*Jared Kushner held a press conference Wednesday to
make assurances that the administration’s Israel plan would relocate
all Palestinians to a generous swath of the Mediterranean Sea.*
The next stage of global heating
will
be that of "climate apartheid".
People with more wealth and/or privilege will move to places that
are safer from global heating effects.
I forecast that this will be temporary. Once
global heating cuts into
food production, while population growth leads to more demand for food,
increasing numbers will be trapped in hunger. And if wars disrupt
the globalized manufacturing system, technology will crash.
There are millions of people who imagine surviving this on their own.
That is a pipedream. You can't stockpile a lifetime's worth of food
and computers, Even solar cells need to be replaced eventually. In a
Mad Max world, only a tiny fraction will survive even 20 years. You
are not likely to be one of them.
The only way we can all survive — or at least most people — is to do
it together. We have to avoid the situation that will cause climate
apartheid.
That means, Sanders
for President!
The new NAFTA is a lot less bad than the previous one. But it is
still bad, as Sanders points out.
Americans are being pressured towards a state of "total work", in which
every
waking moment is occupied with one's job.
Referring to writers and artists as
"content-producers",
as the article does,
is a reflection of this change. Please join me in refusing to
describe works of art or authorship as "content".
*West Virginia Legislation
Would
Make Civil Disobedience Against Gas Pipelines
a Felony.*
Chinese live under the total surveillance of a totalitarian state.
The new face recognition systems can recognize people even wearing
masks. And the systems
automatically
judge everything people do.
In the special emergency of the coronavirus epidemic, I might consider
tracking justified as an emergency measure. It could, potentially,
save thousands of lives, maybe even millions. I would pay the price
of being surveilled to achieve that — if it were used only to prevent
the spread of the epidemic, and would be removed when the disease is
eradicated.
But once a country gets people used to surveillance, it won't stop
surveiling people, and mission-creep is sure to follow.
Meanwhile, the US government uses location data from a commercial
database to track unauthorized immigrants.
The
database is fueled by
malicious phone apps.
*Virginia will eliminate a state holiday honoring Robert E. Lee and
Stonewall Jackson.
It'll
make Election Day a day off instead.*
*The FBI Just Put White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis
on
the Same Threat
Level as [PISSI].*
I think that the right-wing extremists are far more dangerous in the
US than Islamists. There are other parts of the world where Islamist
terrorists are a substantial threat, but they don't have much power here.
EU citizens:
contact
your MEPs and call on the EU to spend more on green energy and
stop financing fossil fuels.
*In Thuringia, mainstream parties have
allied
with [the neo-Nazi AfD]. The response has been furious and
chaotic.*
Can anyone tell me whether this is a case of channeling into bigotry
the anger provoked by the all-suffocating power of business over every
area of life? That is a foolish response, as the right-wing
extremists won't give the non-rich anything but a scapegoat to look
down at, but people do it.
The unfolding climate crisis is causing harm, so people fear more harm.
This means
people
suffer from climate anxiety.
Don't let it paralyze you. If that starts to happen, join and work
for an organization that works to curb
global heating — the
Sanders campaign, a Green Party, the Sunrise Movement, Extinction
Rebellion.
There are many other systemic injustices that afflict humanity, and
working to end any of them will help you feel better about your life.
User-subjugating software is one of them; would you like to
>help the GNU Project?
*Pete Buttigieg’s Policy Director Has Been
Traveling
the Country for Months to Meet With “Investors” in His Campaign.*
Senator Warren has a
plan
to revamp US agriculture to end the dominance of giant
agribusiness and the contempt for small farms.
It could offer an opportunity to end wasteful overproduction and
exhaustion of resources.
Immigration thugs tried to arrest someone in NYC and
did
not say they were official thugs. The victim tried to fight them
off, and a relative helped. They shot the relative, fortunately not
fatally.
There is a long history of prosecution of people who tried to defend
themselves from unknown assailants, who later turn out to be official
state thugs
but did not reveal that at the time. Many of the people
were convicted of various crimes for these acts of self-defense.
What were they supposed to do? Use telepathy?
Tim Flannery: *This is the age of the megafire — and it’s being
fueled
by our leaders.*
Another
record
high 65F in Antarctica should make us reflect on the coming
submergence of New York, Miami, New Orleans, Shanghai, Tokyo, London,
Amsterdam, Hamburg, and so many other great cities, after the ice
melts.
*Drought and hunger: why
thousands
of Guatemalans are fleeing north.*
Global heating
is gradually making things worse. We can see these
people as the start of a wave of central-American climate refugees.
It is not just food that they need. They also need birth control,
sterilization and abortion. Desperately supporting an increasing
population where food production is falling is as futile as
desperately preserving coastal housing as the sea level rises. It
will inevitably fail, and cause suffering as described in the article.
Humanity must reduce the burden it puts on the Earth!
Goober, which pays drivers peanuts, has changed some details of how it
deal with drivers, so as to
convince
California voters that drivers shouldn't have the right of
employees.
Leaving the EU offers the UK opportunities for deregulation, such as
*Putting
the lead back in paint, the sewage back on beaches and enhancing the
lethality of children’s toys.* But even weak regulation needs
people to write them and enforce them.
Varoufakis: *The EU's green deal is a
colossal
exercise in greenwashing.* It proposes to spend a fair pile of
money, but that money was already in the plans. The real increases
proposed add up to little.
Brazilian artists and musicians: *Brazil’s rightwing regime
wants
to censor textbooks, spy on teachers, and repress minority and LGBT
groups. We need the international community’s support.*
A UK government inspection bureau has investigated 69 suicides
possibly caused by cutting off welfare benefits in recent years, but
suggests that
there
may be far more such cases.
The DNC is turning to Bloomberg and his money to block Sanders, but
we
can still win.
So don't give up!
The corruption of Instagram "influencers" has now reached election
campaigns: Bloomberg
plans
to pay them as campaign advertising.
If influencers are influencing you, you have been suckered. But you
don't have to allow this to continue. You can change your habits so
that influencers no longer impinge on you.
Did growing up with apps
deprive
today's teenagers of the chance to learn to spend time on their
own, or with a small group of people?
Professor Sussman thinks it also hampered them from learning to do
activities as a group. He reports that clubs and community
activities of many kinds are dying.
Four ways that global heating of the oceans
is
causing chaos and
destruction, and what we don't yet know about it.
When the RCMP arrested pipeline protesters, it also
drove
off journalists
with a threat to arrest them too.
After three months, Australia's enormous fires
are
being extinguished
by heavy rain.
A pro-occupation campaign group
is
running ads claiming that Sanders
is unelectable —
the same old would-be self-fulfilling prophesy that is money can
make believable. It doesn't try to argue openly in favor of the
occupation of Palestine because Democrats have ceased to support that
position.
I don't call it a "pro-Israel" group because defending Israel's
existence (as do I, as does Sanders) is not the same thing as
defending the occupation of Palestine. The latter is the real
bone of contention.
The bully
took revenge against impeachment witness Alexander Vindman,
who worked for the National Security Council,
and
against his brother
for nothing more than being his brother.
Turkey threatens war with Syria
if
Assad's forces continue advancing
into Idlib.
Idlib is filled with millions of Syrians who are refugees from other
parts of Syria that Assad's forces have conquered.
Chinese are honoring the public service of Dr. Li Wenliang,
who discovered
the coronavirus infection and tried to spread a warning, caught it, and then
died.
China suppressed his warning because it was unpleasant news. If China
had not been so repressive, the epidemic might have been stopped at
the outset, or perhaps only delayed.
Chinese repression shares the responsibility for all the
problems caused by the disease, and the Chinese people (on whom
the suffering is now chiefly falling) are aware of this.
*Michael Bloomberg is trying to buy the presidency –
that should set off
alarms.*
If your goal is to save the republic, don't get sucked into a fight
between Pompey and Caesar.
A citizen's crimes are no excuse to deny citizenship to per.
Each country has the responsibility to treat per as a citizen,
even
when doing so means prosecution and punishment.
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is straining to appear preferable to
the original Liberal Party
while
supporting coal nearly as much.
It's not for nothing that it has been called the Alternate Liberal Party.
*More than half of women in Zimbabwe
have
faced sextortion, finds survey.*
The UK's National Health Service medical records are sold by the
millions to data companies —
in
supposedly "anonymized" form, but
they can be de-anonymized.
Continuous partial attention — a state of partial distractedness —
could explain why people who are not stupid nonetheless forward fake news
which
they would recognize as fake after a minute's though.
*How Advocates Are
Fighting Voter Suppression.*
Georgetown University
has
decided to divest from fossil fuels.
Australia's planet-roaster government said it would put limits on
greenhouse emissions from big mining and industry companies, but in practice
the limits do not limit them —
companies
get them increased as they wish.
Supporters of the bully did
a
DOS attack against the Democratic caucus
hotline.
Australia is on the verge of
prohibiting
the use of cash in large amounts.
I don't think I would want to use cash to pay $10,000 or more,
However, limits like this tend to start high and get pushed much lower.
Some countries have limits of a few hundred dollars.
An officials of the Hinduismist BJP party
is
calling nonviolent protesters
"terrorists" and says to shoot them all.
His statements can be summarized as "MIGA", "Make India Great Again",
and it is as bogus as when the bullshitter says that about America.
Glenn Greenwald seems to be safe from prosecution for his journalism,
because of a Supreme Court injunction that
his
journalistic acts are
not crimes.
*The principal producer of chlorpyrifos has decided to stop making it.
It has
been linked to brain damage in children.*
However, the Environmental Poisoning Agency has made sure agribusiness will be
able to obtain chlorpyrifos elsewhere.
The former Environmental Protection Agency did not stand up to
business fully or often enough, but it did some good.
(satire)
*Senate Republicans Say One Mistake Should Not Ruin The Life Of A Naive,
Promising Young Man Like Trump.*
Two members of the DNC's rules committee
work
for the Bloomberg campaign.
This is clear evidence of the DNC's bias against Sanders. More
evidence is that DNC Chairman Perez, a plutocratist Democrat,
demanded
that the Iowa caucus work sheets be studied and accumulated again.
A poll by the American Psychological Association found that over half
of US adults consider "climate change"
the
most important issue facing
society.
I recommend calling it "global heating", and its consequences "climate
mayhem" or "the climate crisis." "Climate change" was introduced on
orders of the Dubya administration in the aim of downplaying its
importance.
The UK deportation authority gave immigration prisoners cell phones to
talk with their lawyers, but they can't get a usable signal in the prison
so
cannot make plans with their lawyers.
*Forget [the bullshitter's] Lies, Here's
the
Real Economic State of
the Union.*
*Brazil's Bolsonaro unveils bill
to
allow commercial mining on
indigenous land.*
Activists against female genital mutilation
have
a big task to do
and little support.
Posting the codes for the locked toilets of London cafes has made
it possible for a lot of people
to
find a toilet when they need one.
It should be illegal for a restaurant or cafe, with a toilet for patrons,
to deny any orderly person the use of it.
Congress Quietly Adopts Exxon Mobil-Backed Law
Promoting
New Gas Pipeline,
Arms to Cyprus.
I don't object to the arms, in this case, but every new fossil fuel facility
makes war against humanity and nature.
US citizens:
call on
Japanese companies to stop financing the Vung Ang 2 coal plant.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Barbara Smith, campaigner for the rights of black women,
endorses
Sanders.
Russian anti-fascists have been
sentenced
to 6-18 years in prison for "terrorism".
The official bias towards fascists and against antifascists
exists
in the US too.
In Canada, pipeline protesters
blocked
ports and railways to oppose a new fossil fuel pipeline.
As unions endorse Sanders,
*Attorneys
From Union-Busting Law Firms Are Throwing Support Behind Joe
Biden.*
Many colleges and universities in the US
lead
or pressure their students to agree to be surveilled through portable
phones.
The best way for students to resist this is not by hacking the system,
but by confronting it. "No, I won't install your app — nonfree
apps cannot be trusted." Better, "No, I won't carry a smartphone
— the nonfree operating system cannot be trusted." Or do as I
do: "No, I won't carry a portable phone — they track people's
movements and can listen all the time."
Best of all, organize a group of students to make such a statement
together.
When you do that, don't be belligerent in tone. Chances are it never
occurred to the staff that surveiling people was an injury to their
rights. You must be firm, so don't add anger to that.
Be proud that you are standing up for freedom. Even if you lose,
you can be proud of trying.
The US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is supposed to verify
the honesty of the audits that big accounting companies do on
publicly-traded corporations. One accounting company, KPMG,
corrupted
the PCAOB through the "revolving door", even hiring away its
employees and telling one of them to regard his new salary as a bribe
for telling KPMG which of its audits would be investigated.
To advance the campaign to curb
global heating, stop feeling guilty
and trying to make small decreases in your own use of fossil fuel, and
join
efforts to change the system that makes everyone live wastefully.
The exception to "stop feeling guilty" is for activities that make
profligate use of fossil fuels. For instance, to have a private jet,
a large boat, a mansion, or a child, are things you can and should
avoid.
The same advice applies to the campaign against nonfree software.
People often write to me asking me to forgive them for using some
nonfree software. But I don't ask them to apologize for this; I ask
them to support campaigns against nonfree software, such as the GNU
Project.
Keith Martin approached a car to wash its windows, The driver was an
undercover thug; he
shot
Mr Martin and then charged him with making a "terrorist threat".
I can understand how the "offer" to wash your windows can be annoying.
These people often rush to start washing before you can say no, then
they manipulate you into paying them out of a feeling of undeserved
obligation, or to get the soap off your windshield. It is bad
behavior, indeed.
But does it qualify as a "terrorist threat"? What an absurd
exaggeration! Do they deserve to be shot for this? Obviously not.
That thug
should be prosecuted, because firing is not enough to stop
those menaces to society.
What children need most, to learn anything or everything well, is
curiosity.
It is also a vital requisite for doing well on grades and tests. But
schools systematically squash their curiosity in the name of
maintaining order.
I conjecture that teaching a class takes more work for the teacher if
the teacher encourages curiosity by answering the children's
questions. I further conjecture that the extra work increases with
the number of children in the class. Perhaps this is part of the
reason why smaller classes are better: because they make it easier for
the teacher to answer questions for all the children and avoid
squashing their curiosity.
Getting to know people in your neighborhood,
building community
trust, makes your children safer than hovering over them, while
giving them a chance to learn and explore.
The US should stop exporting oil — that
would
make a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The comparison with smallpox-infested blankets (which the US
government gave to some indigenous groups during the 1800s) is
misguided, since those two wrongs are wrong in different ways. The
blankets were intended to, and likely to, kill only people in the
targeted groups. Burning more oil, no matter who does it, is likely
to kill more people all around the world. The one was a sneaky,
treacherous act of war; the other a contribution to global suicide.
*Wales to
ban
parents smacking their children from 2022.*
When my father spanked me, he terrified and humiliated me. It only
happened a few times, but each time it drove me permanently further
away from him. I am sure it is better for families to avoid such
anger.
At the same time, I am sure that if I were a parent I would arrive at
situations where I was at my wits' end and saw no way to carry out my
responsibilities without spanking. I don't understand how some
parents do it.
It's one more reason why it is
good that I have not had
children.
*Was
order to kill Soleimani lawful?* It seems to have been an act of
war, not authorized by Congress.
The US deports lots of Salvadoreans to El Salvador. Since 2013,
200
of them have been killed, raped or tortured — usually by the
same gang that had threatened them before.
*‘I'm not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn
unsafe,
grueling conditions at warehouse.*
This is one of the
many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
I have never done so, and I refuse to start.
*‘Try
to stop me’ — the mantra of our leaders who are now ruling
with impunity.*
The UK responded to a small terrorist attack (three people wounded)
with
drastic
proposals, such as a life sentence for terrorists.
The recent terrorist attacks in the UK add up to a tiny amount of
violence compared with all the violence in the UK now. Even if these
measures reduced the violence (and we don't know), that would make a
very small difference in safety.
It is self-defeating to respond to this with disproportionate symbolic
"toughness". What is needed is to search for an effective way to
deradicalize.
The International Energy Agency says
we
should work out a plan with
the fossil fuel companies to slowly reduce fossil fuel use, starting
many years from now.
This is a plan to cause disaster. The article explains the details.
Finland has revamped the school curriculum to teach children and teenagers
the
practice and habit of checking facts.
The campaign distinguishes discusses three categories: misinformation,
disinformation, and malinformation. All three have been used against me.
A retired general in El Salvador admitted that
the
US-trained Atlacatl
Battalion killed 800 civilians in 1981.
The US, under Reagan, helped cover this up, through attacking the US
reporter who had written about it.
The "School of the Americas" became notorious for such "training".
In response to demands to shut it down,
the
US changed its name.
A few years later, Reagan started funding a right-wing militia to
destabilize Nicaragua through terrorism, and paying for it by selling
arms to Iran.
*America, founded on the evils of slavery, genocide and the violent
exploitation of the working class,
is
a country defined by historical amnesia.*
(The history of the US includes all three, but not all at the same time.
Violent exploitation of the working class wasn't a very big factor
until after the Civil War. Before then, most Americans lived on farms.)
The most interesting part of article is the part about Joseph Roth
and what to do after vicious inhumanity has taken over your country
and civilization has been defeated.
The US system of primary elections is badly flawed as a way of representing
the voter's preferences.
This
article proposes improvements.
Unscrupulous right-wing extremists circulated false information about
the Iowa caucuses
to
try to discourage participation.
One woman yearns to have a president who resembles her … and
has concluded that
resemblance
in values is more important than
resemblance in gender.
Republicans are ready to impeach at the drop of a hat,
and are already
thinking about how to impeach Biden
for alleged shortcomings in the past.
The impeachment standard they propose does have one benefit: it would
permit impeaching Kavanaugh for attempted rape in the past. But I
think that this would not outweigh the permanent damage caused by
debasing impeachment as Republicans generally debase things.
Meanwhile, Biden still claims
he
can "work with Republicans" in the
Senate.
*Only Sanders among the candidates understands the urgency of the Crisis
of Plutocracy and
has
a workable plan for dealing with it.*
Warren also understands plutocracy, and I have confidence that her plan
is workable too. But Sanders does go further.
Switching from coal to fracked gas did not reduce greenhouse
emissions. Meanwhile, fracking in the US is
expanding
so much that it
guarantees disaster.
*A "sustainability charge" on meat to cover its environmental damage
could raise billions
to
help farmers and consumers produce and eat
better food.*
This tax would discourage people from eating meat — which is a good idea,
for the sake of health. If the tax on beef is especially high, it would also
discourage raising cattle, which makes sense because they generate methane.
However, it makes sense also to tax the cultivation of plants that are
grown specifically to feed to animals farmed for meat.
Indigenous Australians in Western Australia are fined by human
enforcers (thugs)
of the rules of the road much more often than other
drivers. Strangely,
robot
enforcers do not fine them especially
often.
This seems to be proof of human bigotry.
Tanzania's government wants to accept repressive conditions (on
non-rich people) with a loan from the World Bank —
but there is
opposition.
*Federal Judge Reverses Conviction of Border Volunteers,
Challenging
Government’s “Gruesome Logic”.*
*Airlines want you to think they’re serious about the climate crisis.
They’re
not.*
US citizens:
support
Medicare for All.
A family doctor
insists
on Medicare for All, and Sanders.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the International Energy Agency to push for decarbonization,
instead of asserting the world will burn more and more fossil fuel.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A few weeks ago, the US deportation
thugs
interrogated quite a few Iranians
entering the US from Canada, including students with US visas to study,
and did not let them return. The
thugs said this was coincidence.
An internal memo says
it
was a written plan.
London thugs
want
more power to crush Extinction Repression protests, which are
nonviolent but inconvenient.
No matter how much people may care about distant matters such as the
survival civilization, that must not be allowed to interfere with
maintaining order today.
The Tories introduced a system of blindly insisting that disabled
people are fit to work, and
cutting
their welfare benefits until they can prove otherwise. Errol
Graham was too disabled to do this, so he starved in his cold
apartment as they prepared to evict him.
Each disabled person who dies this way means more funds
to give to the rich.
*Biodiversity hotspots with millions of years of climate stability
could
be among the world’s hardest hit regions*, in future global
heating.
Most people
feel
false to themselves after buying some impress-with-your-wealth
luxury product. The exceptions are people who feel highly entitled.
If I had bought such a product, I would feel mad at myself for having
been manipulated into wasting my money on appearance rather than
anything I really wanted.
*Fireflies under threat from
habitat
loss, pesticides and light pollution.*
Yazidis in the UK are
working
to preserve their traditional choral music.
I would very much like to hear it some day.
A leading Dutch politician
fabricated
an incident of harassment on a train, attributed to "Moroccans".
He cited this a basis for bigotry.
(satire)
*DNC
Mulls Asking Donald Trump To Run As Democrat In Effort To Stop
Sanders.*
*China's leadership admits
‘shortcomings’
in coronavirus response.*
In this regard, at least, they are more honest and responsible than
the US leadership.
Bogus Johnson has rejected the extreme forms of climate denialism,
calling
for a weak pledge to aim for "carbon neutrality".
This would be a step towards what is needed, and if anyone can
pressure the extreme denialist governments to make this pledge, it
would be an advance, It has two big flaws: (1) 2050 is too late, and
(2) "carbon-neutral" is an invitation for self-delusion. Are those
trees you are planting really going to survive in the climate of 2030
the climate of 2040?
Are
they even going to survive this year?
The fines in Australia for destroying native forest habitat are
insufficient:
one rich farmer has been fined several times.
A few years in prison might be enough to deter this nearly irreparable
crime.
The UK government
held
a press briefing but said that certain reporters were not welcome.
The rest of the reporters walked out in sympathy.
Two
workers at monarch butterfly sanctuaries in Mexico have been
murdered in recent days.
What
do supporters of continuing war in Afghanistan say to the parents of
casualties of US soldiers who were killed in that war?
What do they say to the parents of Afghan civilians who were killed?
*Why is Boris Johnson waging war on the EU? To distract from
his
cuts.*
California's new law that requires companies to show a customer all
the data it has about per is
helping
people realize how much Amazon surveilles their lives —
especially any reading they do on the Amazon Swindle.
I hope you will join me in boycotting
unjust e-books and
Amazon in general.
An Indian law school has a special program to train women who were
raped or enslaved, so they can
bring
about prosecution of the perpetrators.
"The rapist is you" could be
condemning
anyone whatsoever.
There are judges, thugs
and politicians that facilitate and encourage
rape, and they deserve the song's accusation. But that accusation can
be aimed at any man. The song stirs up general hatred of men just as
the bully's
rhetoric stirs up general hatred of women. It is a form
of three-minute hate.
Iran's government
knew
its missiles had hit the Ukrainian airliner before it hit the
ground. The coverup started then.
*The Midwest was made
with
socialists’ sweat and abolitionists’
blood.*
If a book about Hispanics at the US border is written by someone who
doesn't have that background,
it
is likely to be based on stereotypes
and therefore crap.
Thus, a concept of "cultural appropriation" isn't needed for
criticizing such books.
China is taking surveillance and control
to
a level that is shocking even
by Chinese standards.
This may be justified for a national emergency that could potentially kill
millions of people in China. But China won't get rid of all the new
surveillance and control when the epidemic ends. Like
the
Olympic games
(which a city can choose not to have), this epidemic can leave freedom
permanently debilitated.
Hinduismist violence is driving Indians
to
try to flee to the US
illegally.
Plutocratist officials are
gradually
encroaching on Canadians' right
to nonviolent protest.
Sea otters can save kelp forests by eating sea urchins, but where there are
no sea otters, humans
need to do that job.
Past defeats
of "centrist" Democrats.
They don't all lose. Obama and Bill Clinton won, but that didn't
do us much good.
Libya's civil war is now
between
proxy forces for various foreign powers.
To understand this, we need to understand what those powers want.
My first guess would be, Libya's oil — but that is no more than a guess.
All US internet discussion and conversation sites are in danger
if
their section 230 defense is repealed.
*Trump Administration
Gives
Texas the Green Light to Limit Family Planning
Services for Poor Women.*
Putting this together with repression of abortion, it adds up to a plan
to force poor women to have more babies.
New Yorkers protested heavy policing of the subways,
saying it is racist
and calling for the subways to be gratis.
*Palestinians cut ties with Israel and US
after
rejecting Trump peace plan.*
This was basically the Palestinian Authority's last recourse,
to be used only in case of total desperation. The PA has also
stopped helping Israel against violent Palestinian factions.
*Short story: The
Ghost Town on the Moon.*
The mutilator has
authorized the US army to plant landmines.
The new policy claims that advanced technology will protect
civilians from these mines — but it would take years to determine
whether the mines reliably deactivate as they were supposed to.
Civilians would find this out the hard way.
Above-freezing water just found under the ice sheet coming off the
Thwaites glacier in Antarctica shows that
the
glacier will eventually
melt and raise sea level by 10 feet.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to stop the bully's plan to work with Republican
states to cut funds for Medicaid.
These cuts would kill poor disabled people and perhaps their
relatives.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 919-7073 to
support
the Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act, which would
correct
some
of the worst aspects of the PAT RIOT act's surveillance
provisions.
It is
far
from enough, but any step forward deserves support.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
*Climate,
extreme weather, biodiversity, food and water crises could lead to
'systemic collapse'.* This could imperil human survival, as the
combination is worse than the sum of its parts.
*UK taxpayers
funding
African fossil fuel projects worth $750m.*
As Democrats condemned the bullshitter's "normalization of
lawlessness", Republicans demonstrated the truth of this by
normalizing
their own contempt for law and truth.
People are calling this a "cover-up." If only it were merely that.
The conman's basic strategy is overt contempt for the law, and the
checks and balances that are supposed to defend democracy.
The US government is not much more democratic than Maduro's, and it's
just barely legitimate enough to justify rejecting a coup.
AOC: The official US "poverty line" is
far
too low and systematically underestimates poverty.
40 million Americans now live in poverty, and 1.5 million public
school students are homeless.
Salafi Arabia is
trying
dissidents in a special court for "terrorists".
The practice of labeling dissidents as "terrorists" is found in many
countries, including
the
US and
the
UK. Salafi Arabia's "justice" is more violent and arbitrary
in general, and especially where dissidents are concerned.
A woman who shot the man who had raped her, as he was fighting with
her brother afterward, has been
denied
the benefit of Alabama's "stand your ground" law.
That decision seems absurd, but even without that law, isn't this
clearly a case of justifiable homicide?
Collin Clabaugh moved in with his grandparents after his parents died.
But the homeowner's association says they are not allowed to let him
live there, and
demanded
they kick him out.
I think states should pass laws guaranteeing people certain rights
that override all homeowners' associations. Not only the right to
have dependents live with them, but also the right to post a sign
supporting a position regarding an election or political issue.
*Help bees
by
not mowing dandelions, gardeners told.*
Australia's current bushfires are so hot that they break even rocks.
Old
rock art has been destroyed.
The fact that these fires have destroyed rock art that had come
through many fires in the past reflects the increased heat of these.
*‘I’ll destroy your family’: India’s activists tell of
false
arrest and torture in [prison].*
South Dakota
proposes
to imprison doctors for giving puberty-blockers to people under
16.
But they can't wait until hey are 16. By then, it is too late —
they have already had puberty.
Protesting face recognition by
wearing
the makeup designed to fool it.
*By denying witnesses, Republicans made clear
even
a smoking gun would not be enough.* That was blatant contempt for
the truth, the constitution, and their country.
A book explains how Russia's political system functions: illustrating
how it
forces
people into compromises that corrupt them and uphold the corrupt
system that corrupts others in turn.
This resembles some aspects of the US social and political system, but
they are not as pervasive or complete as in Russia.
Please
don't buy books, or anything, from Amazon
and please
reject unjust e-books.
How an ecological ricochet from global heating
caused
whales to get tangled up in crab lines.
*An oligarch [Bloomberg] has
bought
his way into the 2020 race. Why is no one talking about this?*
Allowing oil demand to continue to grow could create the need for a
sudden change later, which
could
cause an avoidable economic crisis. This will look small compared
with the climate crisis itself, but suppose it is as bad as the
recession of 2009. Crises give plutocrats the opportunity to take
wealth away from every else. They did that
after
2009.
Perhaps they are planning to cause this mini-crisis in order to profit
from it.
Global heating has helped to fuel
the
devastating plague of locusts in East Africa and Arabia.
'Screaming the Quiet Part Into a Bullhorn': Sen. Joni Ernst
Admits GOP Using
Impeachment Trial to Damage Biden in 2020.
I am not outraged on Biden's behalf — he deserves it — but I am disgusted
by the disrespect Republicans show for anything that limits their power.
*EPA Proposes to
Re-approve Bee-killing Pesticides With Token
Restrictions.*
*A Majority of Americans
Support
Decriminalizing Sex Work.*
Coronavirus is
stimulating bigotry against Chinese people.
The EPA approved
glyphosate again.
This may not be as wrong as it seems. There is evidence that
glyphosate is not carcinogenic by itself, but
becomes
carcinogenic when
combined with other ingredients of Roundup.
If that proves true, it might be valid to rule that glyphosate is not
carcinogenic, and rule separately that Roundup is carcinogenic.
But I don't think the EPA is going to do the second half of that.
Roundup has
other dangers, too.
The mutilator has deployed a "low-yield" nuclear weapon
on
a Trident missile
on a submarine.
This threatens to lower the political and moral threshold against
starting nuclear war.
I suspect it is also a stunt. It doesn't make practical sense
to put such small warheads on an expensive Trident missile.
For the first time, the House of Representatives voted
to cancel the
2020 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
However, even if the Senate passes this too, the mutilator can veto it.
This is treated like an ordinary bill.
That seems nonsensical to me. Since the AUMF is Congressional permission
for the president to make war, Congress should be able to withdraw
that permission on its own; it should not require the president's
approval.
Does anyone understand why it isn't treated that way?
Salvini cut off all aid for immigrants, which hit Sicily very hard.
Now that he is out,
people
are starting to help immigrants again.
121,000 immigrants in one year, as occurred in 2017, is not a real
burden. At that rate, the population of Italy would double in 500
years. But if we don't curb global heating, in a few decades it could
become a million per year, or ten million.
Wells Fargo bank and its executives
have
suffered greatly for 14 years
of frauds.
Antisocialism — also known as propertarianism, but calling itself
"libertarianism" — has foundered
because
its philosophy cannot permit
any way to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
*Chicago [thugs]' predictive policing tool
has
been shut down after 8 years of catastrophically bad results.*
It did no good, while embodying racial bias.
Don't restrict scraping —
ban
face recognition!
California's bill to reduce zoning limits on housing was defeated,
so there will continue to be
little
housing construction in the cities
that need it most.
Unless a city has a lot of vacant land, there is no way to build more
housing units except to demolish some buildings and replace them with
bigger buildings. However, the law can put requirements about how
this is done — for instance, the requirement to include at least as
many low-income units as were demolished. The law could even assure
the old tenants of returning at the same rents they paid before.
But there needs to be more housing space.
*US underprepared
for coronavirus due to Trump cuts, say health experts.*
Everyone:
call
on the judge to release Chelsea Manning from jail.
If you sign, please spread the word!
80%
of the migrants that the bully forces to wait in Mexico suffer
violence of some kind while there. Many are kidnapped for ransom.
US citizens:
call on the
Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to Stop the Line 3 Tar Sands
Pipeline.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Congress to support the NO-BAN Act, which would put an end to
the bully's
cruel policy towards visitors from certain countries.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to end its
blacklist policy.
If you sign, please spread the word!
With the support of a judge prepared to twist any law, and an army of
its own lawyers, Chevron has
crushed
the life of Steven Donziger, who won the lawsuit against Chevron
for pollution in Ecuador. Next step, to put him in prison.
Pressuring US universities
not
to use face recognition.
Israeli soldiers have
left
50 Palestinians half-blind by shooting them in the eye with
rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters.
This is intentional.
Hitting someone's eye by accident is extremely unlikely.
Legal ways that a progressive US president could pressure Israel
to respect Palestinians' rights,
without
passing new laws.
Senator Warren's political journey began with recognizing that
bankruptcy laws for corporations
can
be designed either to concentrate wealth or to spread wealth.
For decades, Big Pharma has used the US government to push broader and
longer patents on the rest of the world. Now the conman and Modi are
about
to kill the Indian generic drug industry which supplies many poor
countries.
I advocate
abolishing
patents on medicine and treatments.
Please do not refer to patents (or anything else) as
"intellectual
property"; that term spreads confusion.
*For all its fiery rhetoric, Riyadh actually
benefits
from a standoff between Iran and the US.*
David Miranda and Glenn Greenwald: *The far-right Bolsonaro movement
wants us dead. But
we
will not give up.*
Chinese local officials endangered the whole world (starting with
China) by covering up the danger of the new coronavirus for a few
weeks. To avoid public attention
required
skipping crucial
precautions that would have revealed the danger of the disease.
Bruce Schneier is mistaken in claiming that
there
is no important
difference between face recognition and other kinds of surveillance
systems.
The error starts in the article's first line: "The whole point of
modern surveillance is to treat people differently," referring
specifically to commerce. That is only one of the points of modern
surveillance: repression of dissidents, whistleblowers and journalists
is another. The article's reasoning simply doesn't address that.
Face recognition is especially dangerous for this because it is
especially hard to avoid. It is not hard to leave a portable phones
(if you have one) home one day, and pay cash for travel and food that
day. But it is very hard to avoid face recognition and license plate
recognition. Therefore, those two types of surveillance pose a
special danger to political freedom.
Hong Kong protesters
are
boycotting Chinese-owned business.
The Tories' welfare reform (a plan that shuffled benefits around so as
to disguise how much it cut them)
is
"sending people into arms of loan
sharks."
Sanders has introduced a bill to tax companies that
make
PFAS to pay for
water treatment to take them out of the water supply.
*Companies [in France] to be
banned
from destroying unsold clothes,
cosmetics and other items.*
They will have to be put to some use, recycled, or given away.
Americans have learned to recognize the reasons to decriminalize sex
work, and
many Democratic politicians too.
If a country installs Huawei wireless networks,
it
would be impossible
to prevent China from spying on them.
The same is surely true with with US wireless networks: it would be
impossible to keep the US from spying on them.
The Australian government may not mind if the US spies on Australians.
Indeed, reports are that the US government spies on Australians and
gives the data to the Australian government so that it can bypass the
legal protections of Australian law (and vice versa). Still it seems
foolish to build in vulnerability like that.
India's repression of dissent knows no bounds. The leaders of a
primary school face various criminal charges
for
a school play that
included "slurs" against Modi and criticized the discriminatory
immigration law.
A Hinduismist fanatic shot marchers
who
were peacefully protesting
against that law.
He chose the date and time to honor the 1948 murder of Gandhi by another Hinduismist.
I predict that Modi's supporters will praise the shooter try to get
charges against him dropped, just as Israel's right-wing extremists
lionize the fanatic that assassinated Prime Minister Rabin in 1995.
Several Swedish media sites condemned Chinese attempts to repress
European journalists, editors and diplomats,
and
asked the Swedish
government to push harder against China.
Sweden's power to do this is limited, but it could give this more
priority and the Chinese market less. The EU could require foreign
manufacturers to hand over the circuit diagrams and source code for
security analysis.
The conman's lawyers told the Senate that
he
is allowed to do
anything whatsoever in order to win the next election.
Turkey planted 11 million trees in November as a project for National
Forestation Day.
Checking
them suggests that around 10 million of
them have already died from lack of water.
Valve turner Ken Ward:
*The
US government claims I'm a 'domestic
terrorist'. Am I?*
Privatization made the UK children's care homes both profitable and
inadequate. If Tories privatize the NHS,
it
will do the same sort of damage
to the adults of the UK.
PISSI is
coming back to life in Syria and Iraq.
The bully
contributed to this through his abandonment of the Syrian
Kurds, and will have difficulty recruiting their help again.
Meanwhile, Iraqis consider the US an invader and want its troops out.
Shall we describe this as "Make America Hated Again"?
He is an expert at manipulating people through bullying. I wonder if
his goal is to make sure that PISSI,
like a comic-book supervillain,
never really dies and therefore is always available for use as a
villain.
*Tom Perez Stacks 2020 Convention Committees With
"From
the Swamp" Nominations.*
Some of them have
lobbied
specifically against progressive policies.
In one simple image:
https://i.imgur.com/KNGsrSo.jpg
*In the topsy-turvy world of
Israel's
High Court, international law is nothing more than a disguise to
delegitimize the state and its settlements.*
The court equated condemnation of Israel's policies with
"delegitimization of Israel". Then the overbroad definition of
antisemitism
(the
same one used to demonize the UK Labour Party) equates that to
"antisemitism". Thus demonstrating how to relabel criticism of
occupation policies as "antisemitism" in two easy leaps.
Global heating
effects, and their ecological ricochet effects,
threaten
to wipe out many of New Zealand's unique wildlife.
One species, the cobble skink, survives only in a zoo. There is no
longer any place it can live in he wild.
Such conservation efforts could go on for centuries, provided society
continues to maintain the interest, the wealth, and the organization
to carry it out. But those are likely to disappear as the crunch gets
harder. In 50 years, will society still be able to carry out such
efforts in he midst
of calamities
such as starvation, fire, and migration war?
Salafi Arabia
appears
to have cracked Bezos's phone and installed spyware. UN special
rapporteurs call for an investigation.
If it were only a matter of justice for Bezos, we could call this
crack poetic justice for Alexa. Morally there is little difference
between inserting spyware in a product after sale and building it in
before sale.
But Bezos is not the only person whose rights matter, and Salafi
Arabia's doing wrong to Bezos will not protect the public from
the wrongs Amazon does.
Salafi Arabia has committed far worse crimes:
repression
of women, diffusion of
fanatical
Salafi Islam,
torture,
murder,
executions,
and the
war
of aggression in Yemen.
Erdoğan's right-wing party is
trying
to punish rape victims by making them marry the rapists.
Several Islamic countries have such laws and have had them for a long
time.
The right-wing fanatic that attacked reported Owen Jones has been
convicted. He writes that
the
UK has not figured out a way of sentencing fanatics that will deter or
avoid future violence.
Qatar will make an improvement in the laws that now effectively trap
foreign workers in the country, but
a
new requirement might have almost the same effect as the
requirement being eliminated.
A campaign in Rajasthan aims to
make
it acceptable for women not to cover their faces in public.
I am in favor of encouraging women to go unveiled if they wish.
However, I worry that requiring them to unveil in order to vote could
have the harmful effect of discouraging them from voting.
*Republicans
push
to weaken court that caught them rigging elections.*
In effect, they plan to gerrymander the election of the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court.
The Guardian will
reject advertising from fossil fuel extraction companies.
The Supreme Court has approved the bully's scheme
to block non-rich
people from immigrating.
*Who Will Protect
My
Right NOT to Pay for Your Child’s Religious Education?*
Decriminalization of sex work in New Zealand
has
protected prostitutes
from violence from all sides.
This makes it safer to continue doing sex work. Paradoxically, it
has also removed an obstacle that hampered moving out of sex work.
The organized sex workers have overcame efforts to criminalize their
clients.
*The for-profit U.S. healthcare system is so broken that a growing
number of people who are fortunate enough to have private insurance
coverage are still unable to afford doctor visits and other essential
services due to soaring costs — leaving
a
larger [fraction] of Americans with
unmet medical needs today than there were two decades ago.*
The article says "larger number", but lest you think that simply reflects
the increase in population, here we see that the fraction has increased too.
3% of the current US military budget
could
pay to end starvation for
human beings worldwide.
Modi's right-wing religious nationalist party, the BJP, is trying to
pass itself as the heirs of Dr Ambedkar,
even
though it is the enemy
of everything he fought for except small details.
The BJP is a Hinduismist party (Hinduismists are to Hinduism as
Islamists are to Islam). Caste prejudice
is
deeply rooted in Hinduism
so Hinduismists cannot help perpetuating caste prejudice.
India
has little traditional of liberalism — that is, championing
freedom to disagree peacefully and to advocate different views.
(satire)
*Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated Monday that the United
States has overwhelming and undeniable evidence to support going to war
with whoever.*
*"Like a Kleptocracy": Investigation Details
How [Republican]
Lawmakers Cashed In on [the conman's] Tax Cuts.*
Byung-Chul Han contended in 2018 that the digital surveillance society
seduces
people into building their own panopticon.
If you want to buy his book, or any book, make sure you cannot be identified
as the purchaser. And
don't
accept an e-book if it tramples your freedom.
In a reversal of
what
19th-century socialists believed,
surveillance capitalists sells citizens the rope to tie themselves up in.
In 2019, Shoshana Zuboff described the system of surveillance capitalism.
She explained how
this new system of tyranny functions and how it developed.
But what do we do about this?
The first part of the solution is free software — we users can make sure
it doesn't spy on us. But that addresses only the programs we run on our
own programmable computers. To go beyond that, we need
laws to prohibit
systems from collecting people's personal data.
Don't fall for foolish substitutes that wouldn't fix the problem, such
as the idea that "you should own your own data". People would
sell the use of that data for a pittance, if they don't see a path towards
truly changing the surveillance society.
*Sick of Big Pharma’s pricing,
health
insurers pledge $55M for cheap generics.*
Creating a drug company with other motives aside from profit is a good
thing to do. Its competition could hold back other companies from
gouging. However, there is a danger that the other companies could
get out of that business or merge. That could lead to even less
competition.
I hope the founders have taken very firm measures to prevent this
company from being co-opted later and turned into a monopolistic
super-gouger.
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, facing possible extradition to the US,
got support from protesters at the court house. One of the protesters
said he
was paid to appear and had been told it was for a music video.
It's not only Chinese businesses that do this sort of thing. Not long
ago, Senator Warren spoke to a group of black voters and met with a
protest organized (though they didn't publicly say so) by an
organization that
campaigns
for charter schools.
I suspect that organization is funded somehow by businesses that
extract money from charter schools.
The UK government
wants
to prohibit "possession of terrorist
propaganda".
The UK is already taking a stab
at
labeling Extinction Rebellion and
Greenpeace as violent extremists.
Prohibition of their publications would be only a few more
steps further down this path.
Furthermore, prohibiting the possession of some kind of writings or art,
no matter what kind, puts people in danger.
* Misguided assumptions about race are going mainstream,
but hard facts
can help you combat entrenched attitudes.*
In particular, one can't deduce anything about large groups of people
from the few who are so atypical as to be finalists in an Olympic sport.
A video recording shows that
the
bully discussed dismissing Ambassador
Yovanovitch with Lev Parnas in 2018.
This refutes several of his lies. It may challenge some Republicans' capacity
for blackwhiting.
(The term "blackwhiting" comes from the book, 1984, where it meant
telling lies even though they are obviously false.)
*Interim Bolivian Government
Taps
the Same Lobby Firm Hired to Sell
the Coup in Honduras.*
EFF: The charges against Glenn Greenwald, for reporting on corruption
in the Brazilian prosecution of Lula, are an example of a dangerous
practice: stretching
vague "computer crime" laws to attack the
reporters and activists.
The same was done
to
Aaron Swartz.
The expression "playing the race card" is
the
racists' excuse to bury the
issue of racism.
For burying the issue of gender bias, the expression is "You must be a
feminist." Meanwhile, the supporters of plutocracy say you are
"trying to start a class war" if you talk about their War for Poverty.
The giant vampire flower of Sumatra
is
endangered due to habitat
destruction, and needs protection.
Don't worry, it can't attack people. It only sucks sap from plants,
as mistletoe does.
*Bernie Sanders’s Lonely 2017 Battle
to
Stop Iran Sanctions and Save
the Nuclear Deal.*
Over 100 human rights defenders in Colombia
were
murdered in 2019.
Likewise in 2018, and it hasn't slowed down this year.
When the article refers to the government's "military-focused
response", I suspect that really means
the
paramilitaries, Colombia's
unofficially state-sponsored terrorist group.
Pompeo blew his top in an NPR interview
in
response to questions about
Ambassador Yovanovitch.
*TV shows erase
racism, normalize police misconduct and leave women and
[racially disprivileged people] of the creative process, study finds.*
The American Nazi terrorist organization, "the Base",
has been exposed
by leaks, and some of its members arrested.
The reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park has enabled
the willows, aspens, eagles, songbirds, beavers, foxes and badgers to
recover. The
elk, deer and coyotes are now kept in check.
Lebanese protesters
accuse
thugs of torturing protesters.
An effort to replace illegal gold mining
with
cacao farming in
the Yanomami reservation at the North of Brazil.
The US wants to deport Omar Ameen to Iraq, where he would probably be killed,
accusing him of having committed murder there for
PISSI. In fact, it has good
evidence that he was a refugee in Turkey at the time,
but
it is keeping this
secret in the name of "national security".
Seeing their parents occasionally naked at home
seems
to be good for children
in many ways.
There are suspicions that China suppressed information about the
coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan
until
too late to contain it there.
On the other hand, as long as the epidemic was small, quarantining an entire
city may have been politically impossible even in China.
US citizens: call on your (present or former) university to
reject face
recognition.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act.
This would undo some of the damage that the Supreme Court did to the
Voting Rights Act, thus launching the modern era of voter suppression.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Massachusetts state legislators to pass a law to avoid helping
the deportation thugs harass immigrants
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on senators to remove press restrictions in the impeachment trial
If you sign, please spread the word!
(satire)
*[The bully] Makes Powerful Pro-Life Case By Speaking About The Joys Of
Neglecting A Child.*
*Over 200,000 Iraqis protested against the U.S. military presence in
their country on Friday,
demanding
American forces leave.*
The US forces should leave. They are not doing Iraqis any good, now.
Having betrayed the Syrian Kurds, they cannot be very effective
against PISSI.
The Iraqi Army could not face PISSI in 2014, but maybe
it has learned how to do so.
London thugs will set up face recognition systems on streets,
to check
the face of each person that passes by.
They say that each system will have a specific list of suspects' faces
to look for. However, today's face recognition systems are
inaccurate. If a suspect in the list is black, the system is likely
to trigger on other blacks who resemble the suspect. The
thugs will
stop them and identify them, and determine that they are not that
suspect. This does not imply they will be allowed to proceed down
the street. They could be searched, arrested, whatever.
In effect, these systems can provide an excuse to stop large numbers
of people "for cause".
It doesn't go all the way to China, but it takes a big step in that
direction.
*Greta Thunberg: Davos leaders
ignored
climate activists' demands.*
Biden and Buttigieg keep misrepresenting Medicare for All in order to
attack it. This goes well beyond a mere difference of opinion:
it is
dishonest, and makes them unfit to be president.
Sanders or Warren for president!
Kindergarten in the US (at least in some places) has been converted
into rigorous training that most children can't handle,
and teachers
can't bear to make them suffer.
The article talks about "standards" that require this. I am curious
where those standards come from. If from government, is it the US
government, some state governments, some cities, what?
The campaign for racist censorship has launched a new battle,
targeting
a book about Hispanics that live near the US-Mexico border, written by
someone who is basically a gringo.
We must reject any attempt to claim that someone has no right to write
about a certain subject. However, if the book repeats stereotypes,
that is a valid criticism of it. And it is entirely legitimate to
criticize publishers and demand that they publish and promote the
writing of Hispanics that live near the US-Mexico border.
Please don't buy this (or any) book from Amazon.
For your freedom's sake, always pay cash for books, and without
identifying yourself. And never accept commercial e-books
that impose DRM,
surveillance, or an antisocial contract that forbids sharing copies.
*The Assange Precedent:
The
Spark That Lit the Fire in the War on Journalism.*
*Emails show Trump and appointees tried to craft a narrative
that
forest protection efforts are responsible for wildfires.*
*Frequency of intense floods and storms
could
double in 13 years, says study.*
Floods have caused
a
food shortage in East Africa.
*The real issue of 'representation' isn’t that there aren’t enough
powerful women. It’s that
what
is represented as feminism is
actually corporatism.*
I've long had the feeling that focusing on how many women are
executives of large companies is a distraction from the issues that
affect the lives of millions of non-rich women for whom a steady
9-to-5 job would be a dream.
*Most political unrest has one big root cause:
soaring
inequality.*
UN Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard
is
keeping the heat on Salafi Arabia's
acting king.
The EU is pushing to standardize the connectors on phone chargers.
Apple
is fighting this.
An experiment concluded that glyphosate-containing pesticides damage
human DNA, but pure glyphosate does not. They attribute the damage
to
the presence of secret secondary ingredients.
A Monsanto scientist was aware of this as far back as 2002.
I conclude that all pesticide should be sold with full disclosure of
chemicals included. If the manufacturers complain about not having
trade secrets, the proper reply is "Tough! People's lives are at
stake."
*Millionaires like me should pay more taxes.
Giving
to charity is a fig leaf.*
Egypt's vicious military rulers jail people for the slightest criticism,
and try
to silence exiles by taking their relatives hostage.
That regime has the full support of the US government.
I would not feel safe visiting Egypt; I urge everyone to stay away.
New York City now
requires
retail businesses to accept cash.
It is true that rejecting cash discriminates against poor people who don’t
have a bank account or a credit card. If you are not poor, that problem
may not affect you —
but
your privacy is not safe.
Poland enters a constitutional crisis as
the
Supreme Court rejects the
legislature's attempt to punish judges at will.
Tories propose to reduce the UK's
energy
efficiency standards for new
buildings.
Why would they do this? To serve business, or course — but which and
how? I suppose builders would spend less and profit more, but I am
surprised that the increased profit would pay for the sort of lobbying
needed to win this.
*The persecuted Rohingya now have legal protection,
but
will it amount to
anything?*
(satire)
"As you address members
of this deliberative body, please bear in mind that nothing you say or
do will have any effect on the completely predetermined outcome of
these proceedings," said Chief Justice Roberts to the senators.
There is evidence that the conman's inaugural committee
gave
some of its funds
to the conman's own business.
*Humanity Risking 'Global Disaster' as
Material
Consumption Passes 100 Billion
Tons Annually.*
The EPA's new Dirty Water Rule aims to give some lucky Americans once
again the
chance to see a river catch fire.
However, the most common result will be toxic drinking water.
(satire)
*In response to ongoing complaints of unexpected outages and
subpar customer service response times, cable provider Comcast debuted
a new bundle deal Thursday that includes 24/7 live-in technical
support.*
The bully admitted his plan
to
cut funds for Medicare.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the "doomsday clock" at 100
seconds to midnight,
representing
the dangers of global heating,
pollution and resource exhaustion as well as possible nuclear war.
Venezuela's coup-supporting opposition has been thwarted, and visible
US support has driven Venezuelans away from it. Now the political
division is
between supporters of Chavismo and Maduro, and supporters
of reforming Chavismo to move on from Maduro.
Italy's efforts to prosecute people-smugglers have gone astray. They
concentrate on the boat drivers, who are usually migrants conscripted
into that job, and
can't get evidence to identify the real smugglers,
who stay in Africa.
US citizens:
Call on
Microsoft to liberate the code of Windows 7.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone:
state
your support for Glenn Greenwald.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support modifying the PAT
RIOT Act to
reduce
government power for warrantless collection of data, in Section
215.
The bill under consideration would affect section 215, which allows
the FBI to collect almost any data base of personal data with
"national security letters". The FISA court admitted that it was
unable to exercise effective control over the FBI's use of these
powers. I think section 215 should be eliminated entirely.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Everyone:
call
on NYC Speaker Corey Johnson to enforce regulations on facial
recognition technology.
If you sign, please spread the word!
We
should prohibit face recognition network companies,
but we need to go further than that. Some years ago,
I called for
something stronger: to prohibit cameras that transmit images over the
net more than once in a while.
This prevents not only the purpose-built face recognition networks but
also cameras that could be incorporated into such networks.
*Snowden Warns Targeting of Greenwald and Assange Shows Governments
'Ready
to Stop the Presses—If They Can'.*
2C of global heating will eliminate
over
half the world's vineyards.
With a 4C rise in global temperature, I don't think anyone will have
attention to spare for making or drinking wine. They will be too busy
trying to find a little butter to put on their insufficient bread.
Pompeo is now using
lies
to attack NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly,
in whose interview he blew up when he couldn't
intimidate her facts.
Pakistan has arrested a leading equal rights activist and
accused him
of advocating unacceptable political views. Specifically, criticizing
the country's constitution, on grounds of justice.
Whether we agree with his position or not (I don't know enough about
Pakistan's constitution to have an opinion), we should defend his
right to advocate that position.
The cheater's
deal with China will allow China-grown chicken meat to be
sold in the US without labeling, and with no inspection
except China's
untrustworthy inspection. Disease is sure to come with them.
Robert Reich: Republican
senators will not remove the bullshitter from office
because that would require courage and integrity. We will have to remove him
in November.
Increased poverty and the danger of becoming homeless inspire people
to the short-term thinking
whereby
they protest against plans to
reduce subsidies for fossil fuels.
Ironically, right-wing planet-roaster governments use this to win
support from the poor. Once elected, what they give those supporters
is even deeper poverty.
In other words, electing Sanders is the way to curb
global heating soon.
Waste brine from frack wells in some places carries a
very high load
of radium. If it gets into dust (particulates) in the air, people can
breath it in and develop cancer from its radioactivity many years later.
The desperate search for new sources to release more atmospheric CO2
is bringing us to frack and ruin.
*Google’s ads just look like search results now.*
In effect, when Google Search started offering advertising, that was
the first step on the path to total corruption.
The
article exaggerates slightly. The user can distinguish the ads by
a slight difference between two icons.
*Police called on man for attempting to
deposit
checks while black.*
Warning! What if they do "reinvent every industry" in the next 10 years?
Change qua change is not necessarily bad. But if this "reinvention"
is done under a plutocratic regime, the plutocrats will make this an
opportunity to give business more power to get away with mistreating
customers, and more "flexibility" to tie workers' lives in knots.
The
specific change that Diamandis yearns for would create a
surveillance dystopia. People will say it is "impossible" to live
without participating in those dis-services, but the first condition
of participation will be "consenting" to be tracked. Further
conditions will control many aspects of people's lives -- for
instance, requiring them to buy from particular allied companies, use
certain products, not use certain other products, do exercise on command,
or allow video and audio recording inside their homes.
Companies are rushing to mine metals
from
the ocean floor.
This will increase pollution of the ocean and endanger the unusual
species that live near the undersea volcanoes that deposit metals.
*Southern Peace Activists Help Soldiers Become
Conscientious
Objectors.*
Calling for mobilizing to fight global heating
as
we mobilized to win
World War II.
The effective approach for leading youth away from fanaticism is a
positive one, but the UK plans to step up the
ineffective
punitive approach.
On the other hand, the punitive approach will work great for scapegoating
and boosting the right wing.
The commercial
orientation of universities tends to turn them into
mere professional training.
Increased pressure on young people, the big gap between the good jobs
and the bad one, leads many of them to gladly focus everything on
training for a job. Some of the benefit that college used to bring
about disappears. Studying at home through proprietary software using
rented textbooks, with little contact with other students let alone
teachers, will eliminate another piece of it.
*'Mexico has become [the bully's] wall': how
AMLO
became an immigration enforcer.*
Pacific Ocean’s rising acidity causes Dungeness crabs’
shells
to dissolve.
Eventually all crustaceans and corals will be wiped out by the excess CO2
in the water.
Palestine
has no allies that will strongly resist Israeli
annexation/occupation.
However, no
Arab country showed support for the bully's annexation plan.
US citizens: call
on U.S. banks to cease funding drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call
for abolition of the Electoral College.
If you call, please spread the word!
85% of Americans
want
a transition away from fossil fuels. The main disagreement is
about how fast. Around 45% want to hurry.
Ralph Nader: *Trump Is an
Unparalleled
Threat to Safety and Security [of every American].*
several meanings of "deep state" and
whether
they relate to the US.
*Harvard Law School Students Disrupt Recruitment Event,
Calling
on Major Law Firm to #DropExxon.*
*Senate Urged to Convict Trump After GAO Says
White
House Broke Law by Freezing Ukraine Aid.*
Forest ash washing into rivers in Australia are
killing
fish. In some places they have killed all the fish.
Scientists say it could take decades for the river to recover, but
that projected recovery is not guaranteed. In a decade or two, there
is likely to be another such fire every few years, so the rivers
will always be full of ash.
Or perhaps the minerals lost in the ash will stunt regrowth of forests
entirely. Maybe there won't be enough plant life to produce much ash.
*Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned in Uganda after writing poem about
president’s mother’s vagina, lambastes regime's "fear of writers".* She
has just been
given
a PEN award in the name of freedom of expression.
I can imagine that that poem was rather insulting in tone.
The point is that freedom of expression includes the freedom
to offend people, even insult people. We must not gag people
merely because we disagree with or resent what they say.
*EU eyes
temporary
ban on facial recognition in public places.*
This could be a first step towards proceeding beyond the GDPR, which
are
insufficient.
*Biggest
food brands 'failing goals to banish palm oil deforestation'.*
Guatemala is serving the US government by
blocking
refugees from Honduras from trying to reach the US.
Guatemala
suffered
civil war for decades under a repressive governments that obeyed the
US, and its citizens still try to flee the violence.
Lev Parnas said that his efforts to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden were
explicitly
known to the conman — the two discussed them on the phone.
Barr, Bolton and Giuliani also knew.
Videos of responses to real victims of street violence showed
no
sign of a "bystander effect".
The idea of a bystander effect was launched by reporting in the New
York Times of the murder of Kitty Genovese.
Wikipedia
says that the New York Times admitted in 2016 that the original story
was fabricated — the reporter did not find evidence of a
bystander effect after all.
Bruce Schneier: 5G mobile networks are
so
pervasively insecure that it hardly matters who built the hardware
— people and countries are screwed anyway.
In South Korea, graduates
need
to study how to fake out AI systems used to choose who to hire.
The UK has made
no
changes in its auditing system in two years since a major government
contractor went bankrupt while its directors concealed what was
happening.
The directors made out handsomely from this. Perhaps laws should be
changed so that directors cannot do that in the future -- but
unscrupulous rich people wouldn't want those laws. Do you think
Tories would ever pass such laws?
If you are having something made in China,
avoiding
forced labor is not going
to be easy.
*Gun Violence Isn't a Problem — it's actually 5 Problems, with
Different Solutions.* Not all, but most deaths due to guns, fit into 5
specific patterns, and
it
might be possible to prevent many of them
with specific actions.
Fast, efficient, domain-limited voice-command recognition
can operate
locally without sending personal data to anyone.
This technology can in principle respect privacy, but that doesn't
guarantee it will respect privacy. It could transmit data just
so that a company gets personal data. How can we make sure it doesn't?
Former state fire commissioner Greg Mullins tried in April to warn
Australia's planet-roaster prime minister that
"adapting to climate
change" is insufficient to avert disaster.
The minister did not pay attention.
US deportation thugs
often
ignore court orders not to deport someone.
Especially for Iranians.
The hypocrisy and dishonesty of a "moderate" Republican senator
has a good
chance of preventing her reelection. Overcoming the damage she
has done will be more difficult, and I suppose
she will be paid well for her service.
*'A Fact-Free Sham Trial Perpetrated in the Dead of Night':
McConnell's Trump
Cover-Up in Senate Begins.*
Israel labeled around 1/5 of the territory of the West Bank as "fire
zones" for the army,
to
create a pretext to force most Palestinians out
of those areas.
The US press has mostly ignored the report that the bully
assassinated Soleimani at the request of Republican senators
wanting
a distraction from his trial.
He could have been lying when he said this. His supporters could have
made it up. But it also may be true. Indeed, maybe the senators
asked him to do it.
*Addameer Collects Hard Evidence on Torture and Ill-Treatment Committed
against Palestinian [prisoners]
at
Israeli Interrogation Centers.*
*If the [US] minimum wage kept pace with productivity growth since
1968 it
would be over $24 an hour today.*
Since 1968, it has not even kept up with inflation,
let alone
productivity growth.
The second article refutes some of the plutocratist arguments claiming
this problem is inevitable.
African gray parrots tend to help other African gray parrots even when
they
don't expect any direct benefit from doing so.
*Warning of 'Environmental Ruin and With It a Human Tragedy,'
Report Details
Triple Threat to Coral Reefs.*
*Mayfly populations
have
fallen 50% since 2012.*
They are an important food source for other animals, so their populations
are falling also.
*We Risk Living in an 'Empty World'
If
Assault on Nature Not Stopped, Warns UN
Biodiversity Chief.*
"People's lives depend on biodiversity in ways that are not always
apparent or appreciated. Human health ultimately depends
on ecosystem services: the availability of fresh water, fuel, food
sources."
Not-exactly-natural disasters cost 3 trillion dollars in the last decade,
up
from 1.8 trillion in the previous decade.
Global heating
effects are responsible for much of the increase.
A survey found that 57% of Australians
have
been affected directly by
the fires.
The fires are still spreading, so the number may yet increase.
A quarter of the population has experienced medical problems from the fires.
After removal of dangerously flammable insulation from two housing
projects in London,
heating
has become so expensive that the residents
are starving and/or freezing.
The local government needs to replace the insulation with something not
flammable.
Unexpected levels of PFAS chemicals
have
been found in water supplies
in various US cities.
These chemicals do not break down naturally, and can do various kinds
of damage. No one knows yet what levels of them are safe.
Brazilian prosecutors want to charge Glenn Greenwald for publishing
information, obtained by crackers,
about
the corruption of Brazilian
prosecutors.
This is not exactly parallel to the US case against Julian Assange
(since the information he published was leaked), but they are mostly parallel,
and they
pose similar threats to freedom of the press.
US border thugs
forced foreign student Shahab Dehghani to fly back
out, defying
a court order saying that for the moment he could stay in
the US.
The US and France agreed to push for an agreement on
taxing
internet sales.
If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination,
Clinton
said she will not
endorse him.
I don't think Clinton has an obligation to endorse a candidate simply
for having the Democratic nomination. But why does she not want to
endorse Sanders? I conjecture it is because he is progressive — and
she is not. We saw in 2016 that she was a dyed-in-the-wool
corporatist.
Former Clinton supporters ask, *Why is Clinton amplifying destructive
myths about Sanders and his supporters
just
weeks before the primaries
begin?*
I conjecture the same answer for this question too.
Psychologist and torturer James Mitchell testified about his torture
for the CIA, saying he was so determined to ensure that the US used
the best possible torture that
he
felt obligated to carry it out
himself.
The American College of Physicians
has
endorsed Medicare for All.
*Does Letting [thugs] Enter Your House
Give
Them Permission To Wreck It?*
The doctrine of "qualified immunity" assures that when
thugs commit mayhem
in a way that no court has ever ruled on, no court will ever rule on it
and they will always get away with it.
Tilli Buchanan faces charges of "lewdness" in Utah
for stripping to
the waist, along with her husband, inside their house, while his children
were present.
If convicted, she could be put on the sex offender's list. As this
shows, people can be put on the sex offender's list for things that
are not very wrong. Some
didn't
actually do anything to anyone.
*Countries from Britain to Greece
are
guilty of democratic backsliding.*
It is not only Hungary and Poland.
George Monbiot: *Police say climate groups such as Extinction
Rebellion are a ‘threat’.
They’d
have done the same for the
suffragettes and Martin Luther King.*
The most violent of extremists are those whose plans will bring about
the premature death of hundreds of millions of people: the planet
roasters.
Gangs which splintered off rebel groups
are
now enslaving everyone who
lives in the llano region around the Venezuela-Colombia border.
*Rising temperatures put more US workers
at
risk of dying from heat.*
A interview with
the
president of Planned Parenthood.
She discusses the right-wing attacks that target many aspects of sexual
and reproductive medicine for women.
When Biden first ran for the senate, in 1972, he adopted progressive
positions. By 1982,
he
was working with Republicans against Social
Security.
*'A perfect storm': US census
imperiled
by Trump rhetoric and growing distrust.*
For Republicans, corrupting the census is one more method of voter
suppression. They know that it will reduce the representation of areas
where people that face discrimination live.
Global heating is
increasing wildfires in Europe, too; even in the Arctic.
The fires in Sweden in August 2018 were the worst ever observed there.
*Unsustainable use of resources is wrecking the planet
but
recycling is falling, report finds.*
US citizens: phone
your senators to urge them to vote to block war
with Iran.
If you call, please spread the word!
Some UK teachers say
how
they would respond to commands to report students
to the government for supporting Extinction Rebellion.
Taking women's reports of violence and danger seriously could protect
everyone from grievous harm,
including
the Flint water supply kind of harm
as well as mass shootings.
*Greta Thunberg tells leaders at Davos
to
heed global heating science.*
*As [the bully] goes on trial,
so
does the conscience of the Republican party.*
*The case for …
cities
where you're the sensor, not the thing being sensed.*
Poor men in their 50s in England today
are
considerably less well
than comparable men who were in their 50s four decades ago.
Australia has stripped a woman (perhaps a supporter of
PISSI) in Syria
of
her Australian citizenship.
The Australian government backdated the penalty so that her last two
children, born in Syria, will not be Australian citizens either. They
are, apparently, stateless.
China's birth rate
continues to fall.
This will be inconvenient in
the next few decades, then tremendously beneficial in the long term
for China's land, water and air, and may enable the smaller number of
Chinese to escape with less damage through a smaller global disaster.
Iran is holding Kylie Moore-Gilbert in prison because
she refused
to work as a spy for Iran.
I am sad to point out that the
US
has punished people simply for refusing
to work as spies.
AirBnB is canceling customers' accounts for engaging
in certain kinds
of sexual activities not carried out in an AirBnB room.
This is a little taste of the developing US social credit system.
We must protect anonymity.
*'Modi is afraid':
women
take lead in India's citizenship protests.*
A scenario of justice
implemented
with machine learning.
California's governor intervened so that the homeless mothers (with
their families) who squatted in a house in Oakland
will be allowed
to buy it.
Fixing one instance of bullying by a company is nice, but what we
really need is to
prevent
such situations from arising again.
*The European Union risks wasting €29bn of taxpayers’ money
… in gas projects which
will
be unnecessary under
Europe's climate action plans.*
I wish this were nothing worse than a waste of money.
Operating the Guantanamo prison has perverted the US military and legal system
in
ways that have spread beyond Guantanamo.
You may enjoy my song parody, Guantanamero.
About teaching students about
the
causes of US war, the professed reasons
for them, and resistance to these wars.
On learning the
skill of listening.
The article advertises a book. If you want to buy it, please defend
the right of anonymity by buying it anonymously with cash.
*Countering Annual Whitewash of His Legacy,
Progressives Remember the
'Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Imperialist' Martin Luther King Jr.*
Indigenous Australians propose to use their traditional fire management
technique — small controlled burns —
to
prevent large fires. The problem is that global heating effects make that harder to do.
Before English colonization, the aboriginals kept forests much thinner
using fire. It was easy to walk through the forests in those days,
with spaces between trees and little
underbrush.
*Citing Threat From Armed [right-wing extremist] Groups,
Virginia
Gov. Declares Emergency and Bans Guns at State Capitol.*
Canada's Supreme Court ruled that the province of British Columbia
cannot
block the Trans Mountain planet-roaster pipeline.
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.
Seven questions expose the ways mainstream media
implement their bias
against progressives.
The mainstream media are big corporations owned by giant corporations.
Naturally they support the policies that serve giant corporations,
on the issues that those care about.
Shipment of live animals between countries is dangerous for everyone
— many
bring infections with them.
China ended manufacture of the greenhouse gas HFC-23,
but emissions
have increased despite that.
Nasty behavior by thugs inspires distrust, and
this
seems to lead to
increased gun violence — not only by thugs.
On a raid of a nail bar
accused
of enslaving workers.
University professors nowadays are regularly treated by the university
with the
same abuses that the staff of fast-food joints have long had
to suffer.
*Climate refugees can't be returned home,
says
landmark UN human
rights ruling.*
*Humans risk living in an empty world,
warns
UN biodiversity chief.*
I think that is an exaggeration. Surely some weeds and cockroaches
will survive.
*Big oil is the new big tobacco. Congress
must
use its power to investigate.*
The Tory victory
is
rapidly increasing the price of housing.
Rich people now feel secure that they will be able to exploit
the poor with high rents.
Scientists at the Environmental Poisoning Agency say that the Republican
officials at the top have excluded them
from
the process of developing
new rules to facilitate poisoning the US.
I wish that statement were satire, but it is true.
Many museums are changing to
expose
children to new kinds of joy via
learning and exploring,
However, I am not taken with the child's idea that "objects have
rights"; it seems to be an instance of the childish mistake of
personifying everything.
Objects cannot have rights because they are unable to exercise any
rights. To do that requires feelings, wishes, preferences, and a way
to express them. If we can ever make objects which have those
faculties, such as are familiar in science fiction, they might deserve
to be considered persons — but they don't exist now.
This is an instance of a gratuitous conceptual rigidity, according to
which the only way to conclude that a non-person ought to be protected
somehow is to say it has rights. Thus, we can't simply protect a
river from pollution, we would have to say the river "has rights."
Experience shows that laws against polluting rivers will do the job,
given political will to uphold them. Absent that will, defining that
protection as "rights of rivers" won't help much; governments that
don't value justice often allow the rights of human beings to be
trampled.
A company plans to track people on streets
all
around the world
by facial recognition.
The article mentions secondary ways this could be used to oppress and
mistreat people, by stalkers and foreign governments. It tiptoes
around the biggest threats: that companies and your own government
could do this.
My recommendations would
make
this system's operation illegal.
DiEM25 members are voting on a proposal regarding
"Tech
Sovereignty".
The proposal is inadequate because it fails to tackle the crucial
issues: moving
government agencies to free software and stopping
the
collection of data.
Removing the bias
from
Oxford's admissions process.
Sanders tells New York Times editorial board:
*Trump's Racist Demagoguery Only Works Because
Too Many
Americans Feel Establishment Has 'Failed Them',*
A stolen Afghan statue from the 2th century AD
has
been found.
It will be returned to the museum in Kabul to await destruction by the Taliban.
The US Space Force represents an eager plan to extend war into more theaters
rather
than try to limit space arms.
(satire)
*"This new evidence proves beyond a doubt that
Bernie Sanders strongly wants to lead a nation that has repeatedly
enabled, supported, and encouraged misogyny …"
(satire)
*Stephen Miller Hurt At Being Passed Over For Job Stalking Female
Ambassador.*
*Grand Jury Backs Murder Charges Against Houston [thug]
Who
Lied to Justify a
Deadly Drug Raid.*
Other thugs may be charged too.
*The Missouri Library Association says it is monitoring a bill put
forward in the state House by a Republican lawmaker, which, if passed,
could create committees across the state with the power to
jail
librarians for distributing material the panels deem "inappropriate."*
This is an example of the general conclusion that
"inappropriate"
describes a judgment call, so we must not use that as grounds to
punish or restrict anyone.
Public Citizen: The New NAFTA isn't very good, but it is
a lot less bad
than the old one.
In my view, in order for a trade treaty to avoid being a
business-supremacy treaty,
it would need to avoid helping companies become larger and develop
more political power.
Bogus Johnson is, surprisingly,
not
going all out to crush the poor and weak.
*Montessori education could reduce the advantage gap between rich and poor,
but it's
only available to the rich.*
Society should make sure every child gets the education and other
requisites to realize per potential. Denying this to anyone is not
only unfair, it's a waste.
Virginia's new Democratic legislature voted to ratify the Equal Rights
Amendment, but it is not effective because the deadline passed in
1982. The process will have to start over again in Congress, and
that
will require taking control of the Senate.
Leatherback turtles, pikas, monarch butterflies, puffins, polar bears:
each of those species is falling victim to
an
ecological disconnect
that puts its survival at risk.
China is pushing hard
to
reduce plastic waste.
The PLO calls on the European Union
to
recognize the State of Palestine.
Exposure to sugar caused changes in pigs' brains
similar to those
caused by opioids.
It would be harmful to ban sugar — just as it is harmful to ban
other recreational drugs — but it could be helpful to change
social systems to reduce the social pressure to use them.
Australian planners recommend buying the land from people
whose
isolated houses in the forest were burned.
This will surely reduce property damage and deaths from future fires.
It may also make containing those fires a little easier, as
fire-fighting will not be complicated by the wish to save houses where
there are no houses.
However, over the decades as the fires get ever worse, that won't make
a noticeable difference. Short-term improvements are good, but we must
not let them steal the show from what we need for the long term:
to
curb global heating.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to defund the bully's border wall.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on lawmakers to
preserve the right to encryption.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Parts of the US sanctions against Iran
are
hitting US citizens and
residents of Iranian origin.
Aside from the question of whether US economic warfare against Iran is
necessary, or makes any sense, it clearly makes no sense to stop
parents in Iran from paying their children's school in the US.
The bully
has introduced hatred into the issue, and officials seem
to think that anyone that hurts or rejects some Iranian is good.
The IRS has terminated its commitment
not
to release its own
tax-filing software. Does this matter?
When the article says "free", it means "gratis" — zero price.
The gratis digital filing options offered by companies almost surely
require the user to run a nonfree program.
(Can anyone check the facts for me?). In addition, they require
trusting the company with your personal data.
A gratis digital filing option from the IRS won't require trusting a
company with personal data, but no other improvement is assured.
The IRS would be able to release it as free/libre software, but we
can't expect that to happen by itself. More likely it will release
that software in the unjust way most software is released. A nonfree
program is
equally unjust
whether it comes from a company or a
government agency.
We will need to urge, perhaps pressure, the IRS to respect taxpayers'
computing freedom by releasing free/libre tax-filing software.
*Kimberly Gardner, first African American circuit court attorney in St
Louis, accuses city and police union of conspiring to remove her from
office.* She
is suing them and has the support of other black
prosecutors.
The UK government classed
nonviolent
Greenpeace and PETA along with Nazis.
*Beetles and fire
kill
dozens of 'indestructible' giant sequoia trees.*
Mature, healthy trees are proving vulnerable in ways that didn't
happen before.
*Oakland’s Moms 4 Housing Were Evicted by a Giant Corporation
That Runs
National Home-Flipping Operation.*
There is no reason to allow companies to buy large numbers of houses,
and no reason to allow a company to conceal who its owners are. In
particular, there is no reason to allow a company with concealed
owners to buy real estate at all.
*Choking point: how Australia's bushfires have left
its
citizens struggling
for air.*
US pesticide companies have persistently manipulated the media and science
to prevent recognition of
how
dangerous neonicotinoid pesticides are
to various kinds of animals.
A constant effort may succeed in protecting the honeybee population, but
no one is trying to protect all the wild insects that get exposed to the
same pesticides.
The danger may not be limited to insects. If neonicotinoids can cause
birth defects in deer, we cannot rule out a priori that they might do
so in humans. And since these compounds last for many years, we may
be accumulating more of them every year.
The UK sentences Islamist extremists to longer prison terms than
right-wing extremists, for similar crimes.
Three times as long,
on the average.
The UK does not fully recognize freedom of speech, and some of the
crimes in question involve posting extremist opinions and nothing
more. I condemn those opinions, but imprisoning people for their
opinions is dangerous too.
Putin's plan to reduce the president's power seems designed to
transfer the power to other offices
which
he could hold for the
rest of his life.
*Brazil culture secretary forced out
after
appearing to paraphrase
Nazi Goebbels.*
Bolsonaro often appoints ministers for sharing his extremist ideology.
*Germany will pay billions
to
speed up coal-fired power plant shutdowns.*
It is important to shut down the coal-burning plants, but the idea
that electric utilities should not have to pay any part
of the cost of this change seems unfair to me. If it is a matter
of supporting the poorer eastern regions of Germany, the support
should go to those regions and their people, not to electric utilities.
Florida's citizens voted to allow ex-cons convicted of felonies to vote,
so the Republican legislature found an excuse to block 80% of them:
requiring
them to pay all their fines and court fees first.
There is no record of what any ex-con owes, so those who wish to pay
these fines and fees have no way to make sure they have done so.
It looks like nothing will convince Australian PM Scott Morrison to
stop trying to convert Australia and the rest of the world to ashes.
How can Australia
bypass
his power and protect itself?
Senator Paul threatens that if other senators call Bolton as a witness,
he
will call Hunter Biden as a witness.
Hunter Biden's testimony, whatever he may say, will be irrelevant to
the question of the conman's guilt or innocence. Biden may have done
something corrupt in Ukraine — it would not surprise me — but the
conman did not seem to have evidence of this. If he had evidence that
Biden had committed some crime, he had many legitimate ways available
to act on that. The military aid shakedown was private political
manipulation, not a legitimate channel of law enforcement.
Wendell Potter apologizes for helping inventing a powerful
message which US insurance companies use to oppose universal medical
care (Medicare for All):
the
mostly-false claim that the existing system
gives Americans some meaningful "choice".
Seattle Bans Foreign-Influenced Corporations
From
Spending in Local Elections.
More precisely, corporations with over a certain minimum percentage
of foreign stockholders are not allowed to do that.
Really, all corporations should be barred from political spending.
Corporations are not beings; they have no feelings or wishes.
They are not entitled to human rights.
Everyone: call
on companies that sponsor the Olympic Games to ask
for elimination of Rule 50 which prohibits political gestures
by athletes.
*Backtracking in light of recent polls that indicate public
dismay over his handling of Iran, President Trump announced Wednesday
he was moving forward with
a plan to reverse the killing
of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.*
Released documents seem to show the bully's henchmen talking about
possible
violence against Ambassador Yovanovitch.
Democrats say the bully
is concealing documents pertinent to proving the case
against him.
*UN sounds alarm over
unprecedented
levels of hunger in southern Africa.*
Since this involves flooding and drought, I suppose it's
climate mayhem.
*Key Architect of 2003 Iraq War Is Now
a
Key Architect of Trump Iran Policy.*
With only one letter of difference between Iraq and Iran, why
distinguish? Fight one, fight 'em all!
Good thing there are no countries Irao and Irap for the US to fight.
*In a sense, this moment calls for Sanders and Warren supporters to be
better than their candidates, who've descended into an avoidably
harsh conflict that
hugely benefits corporate power and corporate
Democrats.*
Arguing that BlackRock's climate pledge represents
an
attempt to forestall
the sort of fossil fuel legislation that we need for those companies.
Putin announced a plan to transfer some political power
from the
presidency to the legislature.
The article calls this a "power grab" but I don't see how he
personally could gain any power from this. Although I am not inclined
to trust Putin, this seems to be a plan to make sure that his
successors as president don't have the same power he has had.
Unusual heat in a large area of the Pacific Ocean seems to have killed
around a million seabirds in 2015. They died because of
a shortage of
the small fish they eat, one of many consequences of heat in the ocean.
*Taliban offer to stand down fighters
to
restart peace talks with US.*
It appears that YouTube gives
gratis
advertising to global heating
denialism.
Before handing decisions (even about how to treat individual humans)
to AIs, the previous step is to tell the human officials or service
representatives to follow rules like AIs.
This
is already common
and we can see how badly it malfunctions.
3 million Syrians are trapped in Idlib province as Assad's forces
slowly
advance and squeeze them tighter.
Assad may kill many of them if he captures them.
The offensive includes systematically attacking hospitals and clinics.
It is unconstitutional for the US government to prioritize someone for
deportation because of dislike for per political statements and activities.
Activist Jean Montrevil
is
suing for the right to return from Haiti.
Instagram (one of Facebook's mouths) deletes postings simply
for containing
photos of General Soleimani.
This reflects badly on the freedom of speech which the US defends.
In 10 years since the Corporations United decision,
25
billionaires have
spend 1.4 billion dollars to influence US elections.
There is no way of knowing how much corporations have spent.
Macron, president of the French Republic, hopes his crowning
achievement will be to proudly lead his country
in
complete surrender
to the empire of globalized business.
That disgusting editorial likewise makes surrender the goal.
Je ne mange pas les avocats, mais les mac(a)rons oui.
*Victory for Democrats as Wisconsin appeals court
puts
hold on voter purge.*
*Yes, Iranians can protest against
both
US intervention and their government.*
*Netflix … pushed up to £330m in profits through low-tax state [the Netherlands],
despite
generous UK reliefs and rebates.*
Offering special tax discounts to incite a company to profit from you
is
being a sucker.
*The [bully]'s decision to kill Suleimani
stemmed
from ego rather than
the country's best interests, Douglas London [former CIA employee] claims.*
US citizens: call
on Facebook not to publish the bullshitter's false ads.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Germany’s abortion law:
made
by the Nazis, upheld by today’s right.*
Bogus Johnson has now learned that a trade deal with the US
would
require servile support from the UK.
*When it comes to growth versus green,
the
short-term view always prevails.*
Teaching and leading the public to choose pain starting now to avoid
death and disaster later is not easy, but the first step is having the
courage to try.
The Tories are embarrassed each time the underfunded NHS fails to meet its
targets on metrics of good care,
so
they will cancel the metrics.
*Warming oceans force leatherback turtles
on
longer journeys to feed.*
Over time, this could wipe them out — if something else doesn't get
them first.
Frequent sex correlates with later menopause,
according
to one large study.
This study doesn't demonstrate what causes what.
A meteorite that crashed on Earth
contains
pieces of material emitted by dying stars before the Sun was
formed.
*[Australia]
refuses
to reveal extent of exports as arms sold to UAE, Saudi Arabia, Sri
Lanka and Democratic Republic of Congo.*
*UN draft plan sets
2030
target to avert Earth's sixth mass extinction.*
Australia's climate denialists have
"adapted"
to evident global heating.
Now they attack a strange straw man by saying that the amount of
wildfire can't be related to a specific greenhouse gas reduction
policy. That may be true but it isn't pertinent to anything.
11
endangered Australian animal species that the fires have brought
closer to extinction.
The oceans continue heating up. 2019 saw
an
especially great rise in ocean temperature.
The Department of Harassment and Subjugation (DHS) listed the
nonviolent Valve Turners as
"suspected
environmental rights extremists."
To criticize climate defenders as "extremists" shows the conceptual
error in using "extreme" to define "dangerous". Not all extremists
are dangerous, only those who lean towards violence when there is no
justification for violence. When plutocrats have maneuvered almost
everyone into disregarding the harm that plutocrats are doing, the few
who try to oppose that are by definition "extremists" -- but that
doesn't make them a menace to society. Quite the contrary.
The right concept to use here is "fanatical".
The EU offered to
let
UK banks do business in Europe in exchange for letting EU fishing
boats fish in the UK.
Each of those would
make the world a worse
place.
Iran's failed denial of having accidentally shot down an airliner has
reminded Iranians of
their
criticism of the regime — from which they had been
temporarily distracted by the bully's rash act.
The criticism of the regime is
strong.
The wisest thing for the US to do is avoid any hint of meddling.
Iranians will not welcome advice from the US about a domestic matter.
If the bully
had any concern for the interests of the US, he would
heed advice to do that.
The regime's best hope is that the
bully will commit another rash act
that will unify Iranians again.
This reminds me of the way Dubya and al-Qa'ida used to
strengthen
each other's support base through belligerent and offensive
statements.
*Human Rights Watch head says China is a ‘surveillance state’
using its
economic clout to stifle international criticism.*
*Activists cheer BlackRock's landmark climate move
but
call for vigilance.*
When companies promise to reduce the harm they do to the world,
it often turns out to mean no effective change.
Most scientific researchers feel great pressure,
from job insecurity
with bullying on top.
Indigenous groups in the US
are
fighting to be counted in the census.
"Dumb" cities can do many things better, even preventing floods and
cleaning ground water.
And
they can do it without tracking people.
However, a "dumb" city in China will surely track people too.
Wollemi pines have survived 200 million years, and are known to
survive in just one place in Australia.
Helicopter
water-drops saved
them from fire — this time.
It will be hard to keep them alive for the rest of this century.
*Sacked or silenced: academics say
they
are blocked from exploring trans
issues.*
Puerto Rico, which has still not recovered from the hurricane which
struck over a year ago, was recently hit by damaging earthquakes.
The US government
is
holding back money to support repairs.
An unintentional experiment suggests that air filters in schools
improves
students' work.
In the UK it appears that participatory local government
strengthened
and protected the vote for the Labour Party. I wonder if it might
have a similar effect, in support for
progressive politicians at the national level, in the US.
UK thugs
put Extinction Rebellion on a list of terrorist ideologies
to be repressed by schools. When this became public,
the thugs said it
was a mistake.
This illustrates the danger of repression inherent in that system for controlling
ideologies.
*Droning the World:
The
Assassination Complex From Bush to Obama to Trump.*
We can make it easier to recycle plastic by changing the system for
making aid distributing plastic objects. But that won't do the job
that needs to be done. We need
to
reduce the amount of stiff that we
make, buy, and throw away.
Global heating is drying out Tunisia and
destroying
the date palms.
*Justin Trudeau: US escalation
partly
to blame for Iran plane deaths.*
I think he is right about this. Both sides engaged in the escalation
of violence which created the situation in which the airliner was shot
down. I don't think either side intended that outcome, but playing
with fire made deadly accidents more likely.
I wonder why Iran
is
arresting some of the people who fired on what
they believed was a cruise missile.
Sanders and Warren
have
started attacking each other.
I am very disappointed with this. They are the only two progressive
candidates for the Democratic nomination. If they tear each other
down, they will benefit plutocratist candidates. They should end
their dispute forthwith.
Oslo has made tight constraints against driving
that have
cut down the use of cars.
This depends on truly good public transport, reaching into
the suburbs, but the great benefit of that will be worth the price.
A total surveillance app invites parents
to
snoop on children 24
hours a day. At least it teaches the children to resent and resist being tracked.
Senator McConnell demonstrated blatant contempt for Senate ethics rules
when he said he
would not act as an impartial juror in the conman's trial.
Leaked messages show that the conman approved assassinating Soleimani
months ago. When
he said it was because of an immediate threat,
he was apparently lying.
The reason he gave at the time was in the nature of revenge or
reprisal, not prevention.
US citizens: call
on the EPA not to relax regulations for coal ash.
If you call, please spread the word!
Rick Wilson (former Republican campaign consultant)'s latest book
presents
the conman's corruption.
*More than 300 human rights activists were killed in 2019, report reveals.*
The worst countries were
Colombia,
Philippines, Brazil, Honduras, and Mexico.
The first four are ruled by murderous regimes.
(satire)
*[the bully] Warns Iran Not To Kill Any Protesters Who
U.S. Already Has Dibs On.*
A report proposes that the US spend $100 billion (over a period of
many years) to
prevent extinction of hundreds or thousands of
endangered species.
The proposal does not include curbing
global heating, but it depends
on doing that. Without that, preventing a mass extinction is
hopeless. In addition, without curbing
global heating, technological
society is likely to take such a big hit that it will no longer have
the capacity to do the things proposed in this plan.
We must do both.
The moderators Facebook employs to moderate postings suffer regimentation
comparable to the Amazon warehouse. Facebook
counts
the seconds of their
toilet breaks.
It also punishes them for the time they spend looking up the rules
they are supposed to judge by.
They need a union. However, the worst of this should be
illegal for any employer.
Please don't call people's communications or works "content".
That
term disparages all communications indiscriminately.
A survey of women who had abortions, asking them across five years how
they felt about the abortion,
found
that 95% of them felt relief.
The campaign to divest from fossil fuels
has
won support from half of
the UK universities.
Nepal is considering 5-year sentences
for
offensive postings or ridicule.
Three news announcers have quit Iranian state TV,
apologizing for
telling lies for the state.
*Joe Biden Has
Advocated Cutting Social Security for 40 Years.*
Iran's terrible mistake, on top of the death of Soleimani,
has weakened
Iran's influence without immediately sparking violence.
New York City is a good place
to
document languages that are on the verge
of extinction.
US citizens: call
on Congress to guarantee a home for every American.
If you call, please spread the word!
US recycling capacity for paper and plastic is so insufficient that many
cities are
considering ending their recycling programs.
A real solution for this requires limiting the commercial distribution
of plastic to make it easy to recycle.
On Jan 18, participate
in the global Women's March for Human Rights.
It is not easy to see the list of events
in
the organizing site
without running nonfree JavaScript. I found a way: first, click the
EVENTS button, then move the mouse onto the list of events and a
scroll bar appears with which I believe you can see the whole list.
If you click on the word MARCH or ACTION in an event, you may get a
page with some additional information. But in some cases, not enough.
The crucial information to participate is where and when. Some of the
events do not say precisely where, at least not in that page.
Perhaps you can see it if you run some nonfree JavaScript code, but
doing that is bad for your freedom.
If you can get in contact any event organizers and suggest adding the
missing information directly in the event's own page, that would help
some people find the event and participate.
If you go, please spread the word!
*This wave of global protest
is
being led by the children of the financial
crash.*
*Has the climate crisis made California
too
dangerous to live in?*
Has it made the main populated parts of Australia too dangerous to live in?
Will we stop greenhouse emissions before they make much of the Earth
too dangerous to live in?
BlackRock has joined other big investment funds
to
demand companies reduce
emissions.
Kentucky Republicans hope to defeat the state's new Democratic governor
by
means of a stricter voter-ID law.
US citizens: call
on the BLM not to strip polar bear habitat protections.
The US militarily dominates Iraq, and its oil, from two large air
bases. Iraq does
not have a real air force so it must obey.
This is challenged by the Shi'ite militias that Iran supports, and were
the work of General Soleimani.
Sports fans in the UK
protested
against face recognition at a match,
and covered their faces.
*Scientists reveal
how
they are dealing with a profound sense of loss as
the climate emergency worsens.*
We all need advice on this. Global heating
disaster will be worse, in many
places, than military conquest and occupation has usually been.
Android phones
subsidized by the US government come with
preinstalled adware
and a back door for forcing installation of apps.
The adware is in a modified version of an essential system configuration
app.
The back door is a surreptitious addition to a program whose stated
purpose is to be
a
universal back door for firmware.
In other words, a program whose raison d'être is malicious
has a secret secondary malicious purpose.
All this is in addition to the malware of Android itself.
Recordings show that the deportation
thugs falsely accused visiting
foreign students of seeking to enroll in their fraudulent university
so
as to cheat immigration requirements.
The students wanted to enroll in a real university, take real classes,
and fulfill the requirements. Only the deportation
thugs wanted them
to cheat.
Amazon gets
access to video from Ring devices.
This was highlighted by the fact that some Ring employees who were
authorized to look at the videos used that access for personal motives
and were fired. There will always be employees who do this, and with
Ring the uniformed thugs
often can do it too, which is far more dangerous.
Facebook gives video-publishing media sites exaggerated view counts
to attract them to move from YouTube. Some of them borrow money to invest
to profit from this increased popularity,
and
they go bankrupt.
Another drawback is that if you refuse to be a zucker, the site becomes
inaccessible to you when it is on Facebook.
Tulsi Gabbard's campaign staff
attacked
protesters who criticized the powerful right-wight Hindu extremist group, RSS.
A New York City thug has been convicted of perjury for
trying
to frame someone for an imaginary attempted murder.
The sentence, four years probation, seems too light to me.
Will it succeed in deterring similar crimes in the future?
30,000 in Sydney
demanded
to get rid of the denialist prime minister
who will defend fossil fuels at the expense of humanity.
Almost 2/3 of Americans
support
Senator Warren's wealth tax proposal.
There is a report that the bully had General Soleimani assassinated
to
help Republican senators stand up to criticism of protecting him
blindly from impeachment.
Freedom of humor is under attack
from
both political sides.
We all lose from censorship. You don't have to like every joke,
and neither do I, but we must fight against censorship.
International judges participated in a march in Warsaw for judicial
independence, which
the authoritarian government plans to eliminate.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter to cosponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
If you call, please spread the word!
*The [saboteur's] administration has filled the parks
department with
anti-public land sycophants.*
Lula and his foreign minister
helped
the US and Iran negotiate the
nonnuclear deal. Their motive was to avoid a war.
Greta Thunberg and associates call on the elite meeting in Davos
to
end the investment in destroying their future.
*Ballooning debt [and international pressure]
forces
poor countries to
cut public spending.*
*Citizens' panels
ready
to help Macron set French climate policies.*
I don't know whether this is a good idea, but I suppose it can't make
things worse.
*UK "deliberately" separating families in
flagrant breach of
international law, report finds.*
Millions of people can no longer deny the
global heating danger we all
face. This will lead to anger —
but
if the anger fades with time,
how do we go on?
Boeing employees' told each other in emails that
the
design of the plane
was grossly disregarding safety.
"This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by
monkeys." "I’ll be shocked if the FAA passes this turd." One message
referred to "the very very few of us on the program who are interested
only in truth."
The New York City Bar Association called on Congress to investigate
the US Attorney General
for
partisan use of his official powers.
*Iran admits shooting
down Ukrainian airliner 'unintentionally' — state TV*
This mistake was very sad, but the only moral lesson to be drawn is that it
would be good for the US and Iran to reduce tensions.
Globalization has decoupled US companies from Americans. The success
of the former means little for the latter. The "success" of the
bullshitter's deal with Russia
is
entirely for the former.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency (formerly Environmental Protection
Agency) approved
over 100 products using toxic pesticides it
previously committed to eventually prohibit.
Increasing the US minimum wage saves a few thousands of lives per year
per dollar of increase,
simply
by reducing suicides.
People should have the right to kill themselves, and to get help. But
a good society will avoid driving people to the despair that leads to
suicide.
I am confident that the minimum wage increase saves even more lives by
enabling people to afford food and medicine.
Ralph Nader: Democrats Need to Rip Off the Mask of Timidity and
Impeach
Trump on All Counts.
*Sanders, Khanna Lead Dozens of Lawmakers in Introducing
No War
Against Iran Act.*
US citizens: phone
your senators and insist on a real, proper trial
for the bullshitter — not a rigged excuse to let him off.
Also sign this petition.
Plutocratist Democrats proposed a climate protection plan
which
would be insufficient to avoid disaster.
It seems that their aim is to placate supporters who really want to
protect the climate.
The border thugs
started a "pilot program" to separate minors of all
ages from their parents,
a
year before they made that the standard,
blanket practice.
The blanket practice was cancelled, but they didn't really stop.
Rather, they came up with various excuses to separate some minors from
their parents, and
still
do this quite often.
*Corporate Media Welcome Back Iraq War Hawks
To
Make Case for Iran.*
Online shopping has cost
thousands
of jobs in the UK this year. It also costs heavily in tax revenue,
and attacks privacy (which depends on anonymity). It would make sense
to penalize online shopping.
The flora is changing on high Himalayan mountains,
perhaps due to
global heating.
This could lead to flooding in India and neighboring countries.
Now that Democrats in favor of gun control govern Virginia, right-wing
extremists there are threatening violent disobedience. Some sheriffs
and some local governments
have
announced in advance they will defy
whatever new gun control laws are passed, and threatening to start a
civil war.
Comparing this violent mob to a "powder keg" is fundamentally wrong.
It exempts them from responsibility from the violence they are
planning to cause. (Powder kegs do not pack themselves with gunpowder.)
The consequence is to presume, for the Democrats, a moral onus not to
irritate the mob — in effect, to obey its orders.
A better analogy for this mob is a gang of terrorists with powerful
suicide belts. I think we had better take their guns away.
Right-wing extremists used this approach in Oregon and intimidated
the state government. Virginia must find the way to overcome the
scheme. It must not let a violent faction impose its will by
force.
India's Supreme Court ruled that
keeping
Kashmir incommunicado
indefinitely is unacceptable.
Will Modi take this as an opportunity to display his power through contempt
for the court?
A study found that 1/3 of adults in Hong Kong are suffering from
PTSD. Following the news on social media
seems
to increase the risk.
The study did not cover minors.
The smoke from far-away wildfires subjects everyone to toxic
pollution. It fills hospitals and makes some medical equipment
unusable. It injures babies as they take their first breaths.
Author
Gemma Carey wonders whether the pollution caused her to miscarry.
She now doubts whether it is right and proper to get pregnant again.
If the fires next summer in Australia are not as big as this summer,
don't let that fool you. As long as temperatures keep increasing,
worse fires are inevitable. But ever-increasing temperatures
may not be inevitable yet.
Global heating
could cause temporary shutdowns of the Gulf Stream.
This would make winter in Britain
cold
and snowy like winter in Scandinavia.
The US Congress hardly bothers to scrutinize
the
warlike acts ordered by
the bully.
A billionaire has warned other rich Americans to
get ready for
President Sanders.
It is unwise to assume that Bolton's testimony to the Senate
will hurt
the conman.
The Sunrise Movement, youths campaigning for a Green New Deal,
has
endorsed Sanders for president.
Overall, it
is wise for society to encourage people to attend college.
The article argues that it is beneficial in the US to go to college.
That may be true for most people, but there is a substantial risk of a
bad outcome.
The article reports that college graduates earn a lot more, on the
average. On the average, they can pay back their loans. But I
suspect that a considerable fraction of graduates make much less than
the average and can't pay back their loans. Especially those whose
college degrees did not aim narrowly at a particular profession. And
then there are all the people that didn't graduate from college, don't
get the higher incomes, but do get the enormous debts.
And this doesn't take account of the graduates that do get higher
incomes because they are doing evil things such as working on nonfree
software products or on internet dis-services. They may avoid being trapped
in debt, but their lives have been harmed anyway.
*San Francisco has
nearly
five empty homes per homeless resident.*
This bespeaks the need for changes in the law that will get those
housing units put into use. As a last resort, the city should be
empowered to lodge people in those units without asking the owner's
permission. However, other milder measures should suffice to
achieve the job.
The bullshitter's surely killed General Soleimani to manipulate the
public. His
critics' responses should be more emotionally powerful.
The bullshitter's effort has not worked with most Americans. Most
Americans believe that the assassination of Soleimani made America
less safe. Almost 2/3 believe it made war more likely. Likewise, a
majority say that
the
bully's actions towards Iran were reckless.
However, the minority that supports the bully are surely jumping
up and down and longing to see more blood flow.
Rumor has it that Iran is developing a tiny drone equipped with a
cigarette lighter, which they will use to target the bullshitter's
pants while he is not wearing them.
*"As long as the cloud of impeachment exists, it would be a grave
mistake for the Senate to allow the president to
continue making
lifetime appointments to the federal judiciary."*
The US and some of its Five Eyes allies claim that Iran
fired
missiles by mistake at the Ukrainian airliner that crashed
recently just from after taking off from Tehran.
Since the claim is based on secret intelligence material, I have no
way to judge its validity, but there is
some
other evidence that missiles destroyed the airliner.
Morally the question is not crucial, if it was a mistake. A mistake
is not a crime.
The largest national group of passengers in that airliner were
Iranian. If indeed Iranian soldiers destroyed the plane by mistake,
there is no call for other countries to harass Iran about it. Rather,
I pity whoever made the mistake (or whoever Iran blames for the
mistake).
This recalls
the
air liner shot down some by the USS Vincennes over the Persian
Gulf.
It also recalls the air liner shot down by the Ukrainian rebels a few
years ago,
also
apparently by mistake.
The "fog of war" leads soldiers sometimes to kill civilians without
intending to. There is no way for any army to avoid that completely.
What we should criticize is the
recklessness
about civilian casualties and
intentional
killing of civilians.
Military occupation of conquered territory is not supposed to result
in long-term repression of nonviolent dissent. A report from Human
Rights Watch explains that Israel
systematically
imprisons Palestinians for nonviolent criticism of the occupation, and
for journalism, on strained excuses.
Israeli thugs
destroyed the homes and sheep-pens of Palestinian shepherds.
People gave them tents, so thugs came back and
took away
their tents.
This is part of a slow-moving campaign of ethnic cleansing, described
by Uri Avnery as
aiming
to make the West Bank "araberrein".
An interview with Chomsky on the world's most powerful rogue state and
how
the egoist has used its power to mess everything up.
I was surprised that he suggests that the downing of an airliner by
the USS Vincennes was intentional. I find that theory implausible.
Would Reagan have ordered a crime that would arouse hostility to the
US, and gain nothing? I don't think so. It requires being worse than
merely unscrupulous.
*Mike Bloomberg Says He’s Immune to Corporate Influence. His Campaign Is
Managed
by Lobbyists.*
Traditionally, conservatives advocate
prudence
to prevent a problem rather than waiting and fixing it.
Plutocratists, even if they call themselves "conservative", are
nothing like that.
They rediscover their conservative views each time they need an excuse
keep poor people down.
A
Christian evaluation of the conman.
Congress
should
limit profiteering on war. Capping CEO pay could be part of that,
though I think more is needed.
70% of people in one zone Detroit are black, and
polluting
industries have concentrated there. Life expectancy there is 10
or 15 years less than in the suburbs.
The residents of
"Cancer
Alley" in Louisiana have finally got some attention from their
congresscritter, a thoroughly plutocratist "new Democrat".
A new form of gentrification is filling San Francisco with empty
storefronts. Perhaps empty condos. too.
Landlords
would rather have no tenant than a rent lower than their wildest
dreams.
This calls for a heavy tax on housing units that are not anyone's
primary residence. This may be blocked in California by the
tax-limiting initiative adopted in the 1980s.
India's unions held a 24-hour general strike
in
protest against Modi's policies that prioritize the rich over
workers.
Carlos Ghosn said he escaped from Japan because he was likely to
remain in jail for years unless he confessed.
It's true that
Japan
does this to accused people. That doesn't imply he isn't guilty,
but he might not get a fair trial.
Many non-rich defendants in the US face a
similar
unfairness due to the bail system and they are often effectively
compelled to plead guilty.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to hold a fair impeachment trial.
If you sign, please spread the word!
British prosecutors blame budget cuts for
failing,
in half of all trials, to hand over the evidence that defendants are
entitled to.
The bully's officials presented a "briefing" about the "imminent
threat" that supposedly required and justified assassinated General
Soleimani, but when senators started asking probing questions,
the
officials walked out.
US citizens:
call
on Forest Supervisor Russell Bacon: Don't strip away protections
for Thunder Basin's prairie dogs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone:
call
on Netflix to cancel its program that is propaganda for the border
thugs.
But do keep in mind that Netflix systematically shreds its customers'
freedom. For your freedom's sake,
join me in refusing to be a
customer of Netflix.
Sharing is good. The only ethical way to watch a movie is a way that
enables you to share copies.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A book accuses Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump of
intentionally
lying to sell condos.
This could be fraud, which would be a New York State crime.
The conman could not protect them from prosecution there.
The will to war is so strong in Washington and Tehran that
we
cannot rely on them to keep stopping short.
*The thing about maximum pressure is that it normally causes things to
explode.*
We
can't
expect the reckless US president to look for a way to de-escalate the
conflict with Iran. But Congress can.
It would also be nice if Congress were to
legislate
that the US cannot refuse or delay visas to attend UN sessions,
for foreign officials entitled to attend under the UN treaty.
The superfluous bureaucracy of the US medical system
costs
$2000 per year per person.
Medicare for All
would
eliminate this. It would also save costs in other ways. As much
as $8000 per year per person.
Economist Thorsten Veblen, from 1890 to 1920, analyzed
how
the plutocrats dominated US politics in the first "golden age" of
inequality and poverty. What he wrote illuminates this, the
second such "golden age".
I just wish the author had not called this the "age of Trump". The
conman wasn't the leader in creating today's inequality and poverty.
What he did do was escalate the
attack
on the idea of seeking to know and state the truth. But he
doesn't deserve to have us affix his name to the whole practice or to
the age as a whole.
The US government has been claiming for 12 years that Iran was chiefly
responsible for arming Iraqis to fight the US army, with
no
evidence for it.
Iran has backed the Shi'ite militias in Iraq, but they were not the
Iraqis that fought the US army. On the contrary,
those
who did so were Sunnis. They regarded Iran and its Shi'ite
militias as the enemy.
Biden, in 1998, already
advocated
attacking Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He continued to
advocate that in 2003 when he voted to support Dubya's invasion.
What I said in 2003: invading a country to remove a dictator is
justified if (1) we are sure the people of that country want this sort
of help, and (2) we can be confident the new government will be better
than the existing one. I also said that
I
didn't believe either condition was true in Iraq.
The Tories have not reestablished "select committees"
whose
job is to monitor
the conduct of ministers.
One might think that Tory ministers are trying to evade accountability.
US citizens: call
on Congress to adopt a Social Security
cost-of-living adjustment that reflects the real costs of living.
The bully held a meeting in the White House with Salafi Arabian
military minister, and
tried
to conceal that bare fact from the public.
*In Australia's Nightmare,
a
Vision of the Planet's Terrifying Future.*
Part of Western Australia has a food supply problem because fire
has
closed the only highway for supplies for the last two weeks.
The assassination of General Soleimani was another step in the US practice
of
erasing the border between war and peace.
Science fiction has imagined tiny killer drones that can be programmed
to seek and kill any particular person and can be employed by anyone
willing to commit murder. If this happens in the future, we will be
able to thank Dubya, Obama and the bully.
UMass Amherst Removed a Professor
for
Showing a Downfall Hitler Parody Video made by a student. Most
of the students laughed. Later, most of them protested the decision
to remove her.
I think Professor Lowry would have done better by being less contrite.
Climate emergency
is
a bigger danger than nuclear war. Nuclear war could happen; climate
disaster is inevitable unless we go to great lengths to avoid it.
*By killing Qassem Suleimani, [the
bully] has achieved the impossible:
uniting Iran.*
*Venezuela: Maduro opponents
storm
parliament to reinstall Guaidó as leader.*
Smoke from Australia's fires has a global reach.
It
has arrived in Chile.
*TV Pundits Praising Suleimani Assassination
Neglect
to Disclose Ties to Arms Industry.*
The whole world is facing a slow-motion climate emergency. Some
places, such as California and now Australia,
have reached acute
climate emergency.
Normally wet New Zealand
is
starting to have significant wildfires.
*The Australian fires are a harbinger of things to come.
Don't ignore
their warning.*
I am gratified that someone else is using the term "Pyrocene", which
is one of the names I recommended for this epoch. However, I now
believe that nothing less than "Obscene" does justice to it.
I'd be even more gratified if people started taking sufficient actions
to prevent this from getting worse.
In 1972, UK thugs
infiltrated
nonviolent protests against South
Africa's apartheid system.
In my view, trying to defend apartheid is the biggest wrong revealed
here.
US employers increasingly require workers to participate in oppressive
"wellness programs", imposing on them to contort their lives
to overcome
problems that are substantially due to being underpaid.
*More than 60,000 people
are
missing amid Mexico's drug war, officials say.*
The Boston public school system
has
been collaborating with the US
deportation thug department for years.
A four-day work week overall increases productivity and reduces
greenhouse emissions.
The
problems that arise can be solved.
The die-hard planet roasters of the Australian government
insist on
keeping taxes on fossil fuel companies to a minimum.
Holding them liable for the damage of
global heating could be useful
in a world with the political will to shut them down, but it does not
guarantee a good outcome by itself. It is not a substitute for the
political will to curb global heating.
It would be just and right to make the various businesses that are
responsible for global heating
pay the cost of the damages. But I
think the damages will amount to more than the worth of those
companies. The effect of holding them 100% liable would be to seize
the companies. That would leave their shareholders with nothing —
which is arguably more than they deserve — and effectively
nationalize the companies.
That won't guarantee that the companies change their actions. The
government would have the power to order nationalized companies to
change; but that would take firm political will. The government might
be tempted to keep running the companies for short-term profit instead
of shutting down the fossil fuel operations, or to sell off their
assets to other private companies that would operate them. In the
short term, those actions would be advantageous — and fatal only in
the long term.
*Expert Notes US Bombing of Iran That Didn't Target Cultural Sites
Would Still
Be 'Terrible and Illegal'.*
To end and reverse the "insect apocalypse" requires
an end to use of
some pesticides and fertilizers, and curbing global heating rapidly.
The dearth of insects will harm the many animals that eat them, and
this will impact plants too.
Scientists recognize that human overpopulation and overconsumption
are among the roots of this developing disaster. It is very important
to have fewer children, or none.
But this is a long-term issue; the other recommended actions can
have much faster effects.
Republicans plan to approve US government projects
with incomplete
environmental impact judgment and no greenhouse gas consideration.
In Massachusetts and some other states, the deportation thug
department is now required to present ground for keeping immigrants in
jail until
their immigration cases are heard.
*Transformation is recognizing the facts:
Australia
is a climate vandal,
led by wreckers. We are [105]ranked the worst of 57 countries on
climate policy.*
The politicians who have for decades opposed efforts to avoid climate
disaster are arsonists and murderers, because their years of work are
directly responsible for these fires.
We can still try to hold the US
short
of committing war crimes and
a big war with Iran.
*Iraqi Parliament [Resolved] to Kick Out US Troops.*
The bully responded
by threatening crushing sanctions.
The parliament backed
down from the threat.
*Children who experience severe deprivation early in life
have
smaller brains in adulthood, researchers have found.*
Cas Mudde: *In obsessively pursuing white, middle-class Midwestern
voters, Democratic leaders are setting their party up for
disaster.* They
need to appeal to the non-voting majority.
There are limits to how far the UK
will
follow the bully into war crimes.
US citizens: call
on Congress to block war with Iran.
US citizens: call
on the bully not to attack Iran.
The bully's threat
to bomb Iran's cultural sites is on a par
with the
intentional destruction carried out by PISSI in Palmyra
and the
Taliban in Bamiyan.
US citizens: call
on Congress to investigate Saboteur of the Interior
Bernhardt for corruptly aiding his former clients.
Outsiders with masks entered the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University
and used
sticks to attack students.
The students suspect the attackers were sent by Modi's political
party. It would not surprise me; it is
associated
with many violent
organizations.
An Australian politician calls for
a
national civil defense corps for
fighting fires.
Maybe that is needed, but it seems really foolish to focus on treating
the symptoms and neglect the disease that will make them worse each decade.
Bogus Johnson is
the bully's flunky. When the bully says "Jump", the UK government asks "How high?"
Iran responded to the killing of General Suleimani
by
canceling entirely
the nonnuclear deal that the bully had already pulled the US out of.
European countries tried to convince Iran to keep the deal in order to
trade with them,
but
the US sabotaged their efforts to keep doing so.
US border thugs
questioned many travelers of Iranian origin, including US
citizens, for
hours asking about their politics.
Maduro reportedly had thugs
keep opposition members of the national
assembly out as the assembly elected its leader for this year.
Instead of Juan Guaidó,
it
elected a supporter of Maduro.
As people eat less meat, or avoid it, it becomes a problem that our
vegetables have
only 50% the nutrients that vegetables used to have.
Arundhati Roy: *The
rise of Modi and the Hindu far right.*
*As Sanders and Warren Vow to Block War With Iran,
Biden
and Buttigieg Offer Better-Run Wars.*
The bully
threatened to destroy unnamed important Iranian historic
places, clearly not military targets.
This
would be a war crime.
*Killing Suleimani was the equivalent of
lighting
a match on top of a powder keg.*
The US Green Party
calls
on Congress to prevent war with Iran.
*Corporate Media [turn] to
War hawks,
Including Former Bush Officials, to Beat Drums of War on Iran.*
*German Rail Company
Cuts
Long-Distance Fares by 10% in Response to Government Climate
Package.*
Republicans preach fiscal conservatism, yet they always find
money for war.
The Thwaites glacier in Antarctica may be collapsing. Its complete collapse
would cause .6
meter of sea level rise.
Joe Biden’s Role in Creating the Student Debt Crisis Stretches
Back
to the 1970s.
There is pressure to
eliminate
the fare on Boston-area buses.
I agree that this by itself would not attract people to take buses.
That would require an increase in frequency and bus lines.
Combining that with gratis use of buses would be a big improvement.
For society as a whole, it could pay for itself in reduced car traffic,
and reduced car pollution. It would require more subsidy to the MBTA,
but surely that can be solved one way or another.
The bully displayed
his
contempt for the UN by forbidding Iran's
foreign minister from attending a meeting of the UN Security Council.
This is very bad for world peace -- even worse, perhaps, than assassinating
General Soleimani.
Can the UN Security Council arrange for the official to make a
presentation by video?
The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions on
Monday called for an
impartial
probe into the legality of the U.S.
assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
London and NYC Mayors Call on
Every
Major City in the World to Divest From
Climate-Destroying Fossil Fuels.
Iran's Parliament
Designates
Pentagon an Official Terrorist Organization.
This demonstrates the tyranny and injustice of arbitrarily labeling an
organization as "terrorist". The US ought not to sink to such
arbitrariness. It should require a trial to do this.
US peace activists campaign
against
war with Iran.
Australians right-wing extremists are
pumping
out fake news to discredit
climate science and environmentalists.
The economic costs from Australia's wildfires are expected to be
more
than 4 billion Australian dollars.
The fires are predicted to keep burning for another month or two,
increasing that figure.
Iran retaliated for the killing of General Suleimani by launching missiles
at US bases in Iraq. The choice of targets suggests the missiles were
intended
to satisfy requirements of honor rather than to cause US casualties.
Progress on making a range of foods using bacteria could eliminate
most farms in a few decades.
This
could avoid several sorts of
medical and environmental disasters and permit rewilding of much of the
Earth.
However, patenting this technology could lead to
economic disaster.
Coastal land in Bangladesh
is
now frequently flooded. Farmers have
found clever ways to adapt — but in a few decades, when their land
has become sea, there will be no way to adapt to that.
The country can adapt via birth reduction.
*'Wrong then, wrong now': US clash with Iran
echoes
march to Iraq war.*
The population of the new "territory" of Jammu and Kashmir is 12
million people. 7 million are still cut off from the internet.
Those
organizations allowed to connect face strict censorship.
100,000 people protested
in Hyderabad against the discriminatory citizenship law, which combined with the
register of citizens
amounts
to an excuse to expel Muslims who lack
documentation about their parents' citizenship before 1970 or so.
The coup-installed government in Bolivia
threatened to arrest
political opponents.
Indeed, it is threatening the Mexican embassy
which
has given asylum
to legislators in Morales's party.
The world pattern of weather no longer fits into what was normal in
2000. In the world-wide weather of any given day,
scientists can now
detect and measure global heating.
Telling children "Be careful!" gives zero practical advice,
and can undermine their confidence.
However, to state practical advice may not be feasible. How long
would it take you formulate and then say the words to express the
advice that writer had in mind? I couldn't do it fast enough for it
to do any good.
When it is urgent, for an immediate physical action, perhaps "Look all
around!" might be a good first thing to say.
Thugs in many areas in Uttar Pradesh have arrested and tortured
Muslims, and attacked the homes of Muslims, following the massive hate
campaign backed
by prominent supporters of the ruling party.
*Reminder: American
Officials Lie About War.*
*A Federal Job Guarantee
Is
a Crucial Tool to Fight Inequality.*
Interest rates are so low that businesses are borrowing to pay
dividends on their stock, rather than investing. If interest rates
ever rise, such that they can't pay their enormous debts,
it could
cause a collapse.
The numskull has given the Shi'ites of Iraq and Iran
a
martyr to unite them
against the US.
The assassination of General Soleimani brought hundreds of thousands
of Iranians to hold rallies of support for him,
and
hostility to the US.
This should not surprise anyone. Many Iranians criticize government
policies and want more freedom, but they will not stand for other
countries to attack their country. The idea that the US might give
them freedom, as it says it has done to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,
Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and Bolivia, does not appeal.
*The United States' Assassination of Iranian Military Leader
Violates
International Law.*
Two US officials that got intelligence briefings about the
assassination of Soleimani say that the information
didn't add up
to a justification for an act of war.
Two Texas thugs shot black driver Schaston Hodge almost to bits
because
he drove away instead of stopping.
Maybe he did that because he was scared of being framed. Maybe he was
afraid of being caught with something illegal. If so, it surely was
not a capital offense.
The Australian wildfires may have already obliterated the habitat for
several endangered marsupials.
Those
individuals that survive may
starve, or have no place to nest.
And that is not to mention the species that lived in small areas of
the forest and had not yet been discovered by science.
Conservation of endangered species is mostly a matter of preserving
their habitat. When most of the habitat burns, it takes many years to
make any more.
*Sen. Tim Kaine Files War Powers Resolution
to
Stop [the bullshitter] From
'Stumbling Into a War With Iran'.*
The bullshitter does not expect to stumble — he expects to manage the
process and adjust the frequency of the dog's wagging each week — but
stumbling is always a possibility in a fight.
I don't clearly understand the text that describes what the resolution
would require, but I have the impression it depends on more honesty
and good will than the bullshitter generally exhibits.
*Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna Friday night unveiled new
legislation that would bar any Pentagon funding for "military force
in or against Iran"
without
congressional approval.*
This seems more solid as a method for preventing war.
*Stop saying Biden is the 'most electable'. [The bullshitter]
will
run rings round him.*
Chelsea Manning stands firm in
refusing
to testify, even though she expects to be kept in jail for a long
time.
Australia wasted the 2019 election, and lost the chance to get to work
on preventing the fires of the 2030s from being much worse than this
year.
The
US could waste the 2020 opportunity if it doesn't see the future
flames (and floods) coming towards us now.
Learn to recognize the
patterns
of denialism used by planet-roasters today.
*Eight Ways the [Republican] Tax Cuts Have
Made
the Rich Richer While Failing Working Families.*
Google's former head of international relations was
forced
out after objecting to doing censorship for China.
Technology is not likely to make the world a better place unless the
users control what it does.
If we don't want US companies to censor for China, the US should
forbid companies that censor for China to do business in the US.
Australia now has its first Dunkirk:
rescuing
people by sea while abandoning their equipment — and, this
time, their homes as well.
Alas, the world today has no Churchill and no Roosevelt — no
leader preparing strategically to convert that tactical defeat into
overall victory against humanity's worst enemy ever. We know what has
to be done, but every powerful country is controlled by the enemy.
Climate scientist Joëlle Gergis fears that the great Australian fires
indicate a tipping point towards inescapable disaster. *Failing to
adequately plan for the known threat of climate change in a country
like Australia should now be considered to be an act of treason.*
A big part of the
motivation
for banning alcohol in the US was to reduce violence against
women.
Prohibiting alcohol was oppressive and boosted organized crime, just
as prohibition of other drugs is today. As a cure, it is worse than
the disease. But use of more than a little alcohol is still a big
problem. Prohibition is not the answer, but I am in favor of
exploring ways to eliminate the social pressures to drink to excess.
The lunatic in chief used a drone to assassinate an Iranian general,
Qassem Suleimani, who was visiting Iraq. That is an
overt
act of war against Iran, and Iraq too for that matter.
The lunatic's supporters are
cheering
at the possibility of outright war. Others
forecast
that Iran will instead respond in a way that will hurt the US without
being an overt act of war.
Iran may not need to move a muscle. Recently masses of Iraqis were
protesting against the officials that are friendly with Iran. That
was working against Iran's interests in the region, in a way that
could have strengthened US interests there at no cost to the US.
What the lunatic just did could reverse that dynamic. Suleimani's
death could strengthen the resolve of Iranians and Iraqis that oppose
the US and are allied with Iran.
Republicans' latest scheme to hurt the poor is
to
make disabled people prove
more frequently that they are disabled.
The Tories have
achieved wonders with this approach.
*Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg Are Not to Be Trusted.
It’s understandable that corporate-backed candidates
don’t want to be
cornered by questions that touch on realities of political and economic
power.*
Thugs
in Los Angeles and San Francisco are much more inclined to stop
and search blacks than whites,
even
though they find something criminal
much less often when searching blacks.
Indian thugs
launched a pogrom against Muslims in the state of Uttar
Pradesh. Thousands
of Muslims have been forced to sign false
confessions. Many more have been attacked on the street, or their homes
were looted.
The thugs
have killed 17 people and are covering up the information
about how they were killed.
The Squamish own a piece of land in Vancouver, and plan to develop it
with
6000 apartments meant for people with no cars.
I like the plan, but that land is right on the edge of an arm of the
Pacific Ocean, and close to sea level. How long will it remain
habitable land?
Automatic Gender Recognition AI systems threaten to impose
a
rigid set of gender roles on society.
I agree with the author that these systems should be banned from
public spaces, just like face recognition ID systems.
By 2050, global heating effects will cause
annual
(at least) flooding
of coastal regions where 300 million people live.
Anxiety leads some people to want a "strong" leader. Leaders
appear strong by
being visibly harsh and cruel.
Twitter's ban on political ads means that companies can pay for ads
that promote climate denialism,
while
overtly political counter-ads
are banned.
Residents of Massachusetts:
call
on Massachusetts legislators to adopt the moratorium
on face recognition.
Various groups that live in the Brazilian Amazon are putting aside their
rivalries to
unite against the planet roasters.
If you enjoy seeing exotic wildlife that formerly lived only far to
the south, let
that remind you of the need to fight to stop this trend.
Remember that the next exotic tropical organism to come your way
could
infect crops,
trees, or
human beings.
It seems that Indian thugs used face recognition
to identify the
participants in a protest against religious discrimination.
Joseph Stiglitz: "After 40 years of Neoliberalism, the verdict is in –
the
fruits of growth went to the few at the top."
There are other approaches to economics, but we rarely come across them.
Here
is the approach of the latest Nobel prize winners.
How did it happen that neoliberal trickle-down came to dominate the
academic field of economics? I suspect that some rich people donated
to economics departments and used their influence to get them filled
with that ideology.
* More than 75% of companies now forbid [romantic] relationships
between an employee and someone in [per] chain-of-command.
Should
corporations dictate who we can go out with?*
It is important to stop sexual harassment, but surely that does not
require the extreme of prudery. We need to recognize that sometimes a
romance is not harassment.
Pakistan is imposing
strict
and blatant political censorship.
A study ties increased poverty in the UK to
changes in systems to
support the poor.
A US court blocked North Carolina's new voter-ID law, which was designed
to achieve the same discrimination as the old voter-ID law
while
avoiding the specific reasons for which that one was overturned.
I worry that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will restore it.
Macron called for a rapid "compromise" with government workers
that
would include their acceptance of his plan to cut their pensions.
As usual for plutocratist politicians, the French government wants
to "unite the French" in serving the rich better.
A Tesla traveling in driverless mode
crashed
into another car and killed
the people in it.
I presume Tesla's engineers are working hard to design a system that
will never do this. I've seen reports that this is fundamentally
difficult.
But even if they succeed, Tesla's servers could remotely command a car
to crash off a cliff.
Why would they do that? I don't think the staff of Tesla would send
such a command, but they might not know about it. Various
governments, or criminal gangs, might be able to crack their system,
or use the law to demand access, so they could do this.
*Sanders Vows to Create
National
Clean Drinking Water Standards to End Corporate Contamination.*
*Australia is becoming a nation of dread —
and
the world looks on with pity
and scorn.*
The head of the planet-roaster government tries to deny the facts
by suggesting that
it
is unpatriotic to doubt that Australians and their "can-do" spirit
can ride over this with ease.
This fire season is a timely warning. The fires have not killed many
humans, not so far; humans with high tech are very good at helping
each other escape. It won't be so easy to escape the effects a few
decades from now, when it gets much worse.
The teachers in five primary schools in London made a careful effort to
avoid personally transmitting gender-linked rules and expectations to
the students. It
was very effective.
The 1946 Disney film, Song of the South, was recognized as a paean to
plantations and slavery even while it was being made.
It still spreads
apology for slavery.
To make half the Earth's surface wild, eco-region by eco-region,
would
require moving a billion humans out of those wild areas.
This will be much easier if we work hard to reduce the human birth
rate. The human population is predicted to peak 9 or 10 billion, but
I expect a big increase in deaths to set in during this century as we
rush towards ecocide. The human population will decrease — sooner
than predicted — in a gruesomely painful way. We can avoid those
deaths with a strong effort to reduce births first. This would also
make space (physical and economic) for those billion people to move
to.
Ukraine has adopted a
law
to protect whistleblowers that report corruption to the
government.
The bully's
demonization of a US government employee for internally
reporting the shakedown of Ukraine has made many government employees
afraid to report corruption. I expect that was an intended result.
Anonymity and other protections for internal whistleblowers are always
needed, because agencies — like companies —
tend
to punish whistleblowers.
India says it will permit text messaging in Kashmir, but
the
internet will remain turned off.
Because of the communications shutdown since August, the outside world
has no way of knowing how Kashmiris India has killed or imprisoned.
Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture, said that the imprisonment
of Chelsea Manning
amounts
to torture.
*West Virginia governor
fires
34 [prison guard] cadets and instructor over Nazi salute photo.*
Bigotry and hatred disqualify people from certain jobs, and this is
one of them.
*Global heating
supercharging
Indian Ocean climate system.*
This system, called the "Indian Ocean dipole", makes Australian seas
hotter and East African seas colder, or vice versa. Cold seas around
Australia make for drought, and then fire.
Scientists expect such problems to happen in the Atlantic and Pacific
as global heating continues.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject Romney's quiet attempt to cut Social
Security.
If you sign, please spread the word!
*We all say things we regret. Trawling young activists’ tweets
denies
them a chance.*
Republican political groups have given the conman's businesses at
least 8 million dollars (since 2016) by
renting
space at his hotels.
Global efforts to make contraception available to a bigger fraction of
the world's women are
falling
behind population growth.
*Trump’s 2019
War
Against Science, Public Health, the Environment and Climate
Awareness.*
An armed security team
stopped
a shooter in a church, making one instance where two "good guys"
with guns were able to do that.
It is not easy in such a situation to hit the attackers and not
bystanders. It requires special training to do that reliably. I have
no objection to allowing churches to authorize security teams, if the
teams are trained enough to do it safely. But this has little effect
on the issue of gun control.
A Hong Kong thug
shot
Indonesian journalist Veby Mega Indah in the eye, leaving her half
blind.
She wants to sue the shooter, but the thug department is blocking
this, keeping the thug's
name secret until she misses the deadline.
*Recorded incidents of water-related violence have
more
than doubled in the past 10 years compared with previous decades.*
"Presentism": a term for
trying
to judge people in the past by the moral standards of today.
*Greek activists warn of
surge
in police brutality and rights violations.*
This was to be expected from a right-wing government.
*E-cigarettes are
still
safer than smoking, scientists find.*
*The Y2K problem is now seen as a bit of a joke — but
only a fool would
be complacent about the vulnerability of IT systems.*
The article describes some of the many system faults that occurred at
the start of the year 2000 (the last year of the second millennium AD).
These were the fraction that were overlooked by the world-wide effort
to find and correct all such problems.
*The ocean plastic we see is 'the tip of the iceberg'.
Where's
the other 99%?*
The US attacked bases of an Iran-sponsored militia in Iraq. Iraqi
supporters of Iran
mobbed
the US embassy in Baghdad and broke in.
Meanwhile, large numbers of Iraqis
have
been protesting against the
government by corrupt politicians supported by the Iran-sponsored
militias.
Barcelona has more or less banned old cars from the city,
and it
will enforce this through surveillance cameras.
The rules do not seem to take account of the fact that diesel
cars, even newer ones,
were
found to pollute a lot more that was
previously believed.
Will the new transit passes track where people go? That threatens
human rights.
Will the city guarantee that the system will not record the passage of
cars which are not banned? Tracking cars likewise threatens human
rights.
South Dakota yielded to an ACLU lawsuit and
agreed
not to enforce its
protest-is-rioting law, which was intended to protect the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline
from the inconvenience of nonviolent protests.
A Philippine court convicted the ringleaders of a massacre of
journalists in 2009,
as
well as uniformed thugs that helped carry it
out.
When the conman personally ordered an end to military aid to Ukraine,
he violated a law
which
took away the president's power to override
appropriations by Congress.
Humans are pumping out groundwater so fast that aquifers are likely to
run dry — and in arid regions
it
will take thousands of years of
rainfall to replenish them.
*In countries like Peru, extractive industries contract police
to
suppress Indigenous protesters and detain international
observers-—including me.*
*Women in medicine are not given the respect they deserve,
from their male
colleagues or patients.* It happens over and over, in every kind of interaction with anyone.
*How Much Does It Cost to
Read
a [gratis] Book on a [gratis] Tablet?* The prison-industrial complex
is gouging prisoners for using tablets
that oppress them with DRM.
It is well known that the best thing to help prisoners avoid crime once
they are released is to encourage them to participate in their community.
What nonfree software does is cut people off from their communities, and
Digital
Restrictions Management makes it even worse.
UK thugs have investigated 6000 children (age 13 or under)
for the
crime of sexting.
Varoufakis believes that the only way to stop corporations from ruling
the world is to
eliminate
corporations (more precisely, eliminate
buying and selling of shares in corporations).
I am not convinced that this is necessary.
Indians are recognizing Dr Ambedkar as
the
symbol of resistance to
theocratic oppression.
No sane person in Australia can deny the danger of
global heating
after the continuing wildfires,
but
some right-wing politicians are
still insane.
*"Facial recognition technology is now being sold as standard in CCTV
systems, for example, so
hospitals
are having to work out if they should use it.*
If we forbid surveillance cameras, and permit only
security
cameras, this issue won't arise.
*Domestic violence
kills
15 times as many as terrorism in Britain.*
I am sure the ratio is similar in the US. "Terrorism" is exotic and
sensational, and on rare occasions has many victims, so people see it
as bigger than it really is. By contrast, violence tends to be
covered up and downplayed.
Everyone:
call
on Hershey, Nestlé and Mars to end child labor practices in their
supply chains.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Elif Shafak: Surrendering to rage can be a pleasure, but
not
a wise one.
"Anger…is addictive. It must be diluted and counterbalanced
with more powerful, positive feelings: empathy, compassion, kindness,
sisterhood and love."
Putin is
trying
to blame Poland for starting World War II.
I conjecture that Putin wishes to be seen by Russians as heroically
strong, so he is trying to promote admiration for Stalin, then
identify himself with Stalin. He therefore seeks to bury the fact
that Stalin joined Hitler in the conquest of Poland, hiding it under a
pile of distracting bullshit.
US citizens:
call on
Justice Kavanaugh to recuse himself from the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau case.
If you sign, please spread the word!
*This was the decade
America’s
self-serving myths fell apart.* Myths such as that the US
political and economic system was good for Americans, and was the only
model people of other countries could want to adopt.
China is trying to destroy Taiwanese politics with a
giant
barrage of fake news.
*The
environment in 2050: flooded cities, forced migration — and
the Amazon turning to Savannah.*
*Afghanistan's Taliban ruling council
ready
for ceasefire with US.*
Greta Thunberg's activism has
helped
her overcome depression.
Feeling that your life is doomed and useless, and that your activities
serve only to distract yourself from that, is inherently depressing.
When you start to take action that has a chance to make the situation
better, that naturally reduces the depression.
By contrast, her father's self-described attitude is an example of the
narrow focus that puts humanity and the ecosphere in danger. Will
she, some day, lead him to rise above that?
The EFF is
starting
to push for companies not to collect personal information in the
first place.
This is, at least, a step on
the path to a real
solution.
Mexican avocados have become so valuable that they are
driving
deforestation and gang wars.
Prisoners in South Carolina are
complaining
to the UN about inhumane conditions.
Global heating
affects the water of the ocean. Too high a temperature
is
killing
the kelp forests of Tasmania's coast. This could cause extinction
of the species that shelter in the kelp. That includes many species
that grow much larger, but which start out as small larvae that
shelter in the kelp.
There is no shallow sea region between Tasmania and Antarctica —
no natural place where the kelp could move to. I wonder if it is
possible to make underwater platforms that kelp could grow on. This
would protect the kelp and the other species that depend on it.
They would have to be held up by flotation, as the sea bottom is too
deep for them to rest on. They would therefore circulate around
Antarctica. Perhaps they could use solar power to maintain a stable
latitude.
These might be economically valuable by acting as nurseries for fish
that people would catch. Can anyone tell me whether kelp sustains any
commercial fisheries? Can anyone tell me how to reach people that
might consider this idea?
Amnesty International reports on Israeli state
attacks against
freedom of expression, including expression by elected legislators,
and suppression of Palestinian voters,
In 2018, Exxon gave money to oppose climate defense,
even though it
claims to recognize the need for that.
This follows decades
of denialism.
No wonder the name is pronounced
like
"Yech-on" without the "y". ;-}
(satire)
*Newly Discovered Scrolls Suggest Jesus Devoured Twin Messiah
In Womb.*
The falling child vaccination rate in the UK was not caused by anti-vaxxers.
It was caused by
Tory
budget cuts and reorganization.
*Chile protests: UN to investigate
claims
of human rights abuses after 18
deaths.*
*With Assange on Verge of Extradition to US, Sweden
Drops
Years-Long Rape Investigation Into WikiLeaks Founder.*
I don't know whether he was guilty of those charges, but it is clear
that, for the Swedish state, pursuing those charges was simply a way
to help the US get its dirty hands on Assange. If the prosecutors had
really been concerned about justice in that matter, they could have
got Assange to go to Sweden years ago,
simply
by promising Ecuador not
to extradite him to the US.
Bernie Sanders identified
the
overthrow of President Morales as a coup.
This is one of the issues on which
Sanders
is better than Warren.
The false OAS accusation of election fraud in Bolivia could not be an
ignorant mistake.
The
OAS has served the US by imposing its power on
other countries before.
*Fossil fuel production on track for double the safe climate limit.
"We're in a deep hole over the climate crisis and
we need to stop
digging," warn experts.*
*Noise produced by human activities should be better regulated to
protect wildlife, say the authors of a study exposing
how sound
pollution affects myriad creatures from fish to birds.*
Now that few deny the climate crisis,
the
movement needs to make
some basic decisions.
How long a time period should we consider? I argue for an answer for
that. In principle we should consider the really long term; but we
cannot make concrete plans for 10,000 years from now.
I think we can use this heuristic: if high-tech civilization with
human rights can survive to reach 2070 with the greenhouse gas level
going down, it should be in a position to cope after that. We must
aim to make sure we reach that level of success.
We need to preserve human rights, or we face a China-like world
forever after.
Beyond that, we should preserve as much of what is good in today's
world as we can. But that has to be secondary to avoiding disaster,
because there will be no way to protect anything through a
full-blown climate disaster.
Over a million Uighurs in China are imprisoned in concentration camps,
being
brainwashed to talk about how they love Chairman Xi, as well as
starved, sterilized, tortured, raped, and, killed.
Those outside the camps are subject to total tracking and control.
Uighurs outside China say they can no longer reach their parents or
their children, nor find out where those are.
Ironically, China's wealth has bought the support of governments
that claim to defend Muslims.
I disagree with the claim made by an interviewee that imprisonment in
Guantanamo is nothing compared with imprisonment in those
concentration camps. The two have a lot in common.
The article reports about Chinese people who defend the oppression and
totalitarian control of Uighurs to be "patriotic" Chinese. This
reminds me of the Americans who defend US wars to be "patriotic"
Americans. Just as Americans are inclined to assume their superiority
to other nations, so are Chinese, who have long called other peoples
"barbarians".
Both peoples need to learn to resist that misguided idea of
"patriotism". A true patriot wants per country to deserve
respect, not extort it through bullying.
*The European commission has been accused of seeking to cut EU
funding for the continent’s poorest people by 50%
to
secure post-Brexit
cost savings and extra funds for defense projects.*
Big US businesses pledge responsibility to their "stakeholders", but
that
doesn't seem to include workers, or the customers of their
customers, or the public.
The WWF works with companies that damage the environment,
hoping to teach
them to do that less.
It sounds great in theory — supposing that it achieves the intended
results. But I wonder what they are giving those companies today to
achieve the hoped-for improvement years from now. And what they will
do if the improvement achieved is less then hoped.
*Amazon’s Ring Planned Neighborhood "Watch Lists"
Built
on Facial Recognition.*
A crash vaccination campaign
has
ended Samoa's measles outbreak, at the cost of 81 deaths that
could have been avoided by vaccinating
babies earlier.
An area of Australia half the size of Belgium
has been ordered
evacuated ahead of bushfires expected on Dec 30.
Five dangers caused
by large wildfires.
Building the bully's border wall will require pumping 50 million
gallons of water out of an arid area that is drying up.
This could
kill off eight species of animals that live in the region.
We should not allow water-guzzling crops to be grown in arid areas.
That practice represents a competition to be the first to grab the
last of a resource being drained. For society as a whole, that is
imprudent, so society as a whole should stop it.
(satire)
"Father Christmas is dead. No US personnel were lost in the
operation, while a large number of Christmas’s elves and reindeer
were killed with him," is how the
bully announced an intervention
against socialist distribution of toys.
Redirecting US agricultural subsidies from Big Ag to small
regenerative farms could turn America's agriculture regenerative in a
decade. It
would be good for human health and soil health, and reduce
greenhouse emissions.
Farmers that have experienced John Deere's
subjugatory
tractor software should
not make the same mistake again. Instead of jumping into dependence
on another nonfree program, they should develop free software for mapping
their pastures, and not save their data unencrypted in a cloudy server.
US labor, housing and business policies have made it impossible for
most working Americans to buy a home, and compel them to live many to
a house, if they are not on the street.
Changing these policies
can fix that.
The states that restrict abortion
tend
to have the worst records
on the health of new mothers and babies.
This is no coincidence: the right-wing christianitist ideology that
bans abortion generally treats women as inferior, and it is
inclined to tell poor people that their poverty is a
divine
punishment which they deserve.
The way the political system responds to right-wing extremists
plays
into their hands.
Medical procedures tend to cost a lot more in the US than anywhere else.
The US typical price
is
often several times as much.
US citizens: call
on presidential candidates to cancel Real ID.
While I agree with the petition's concerns about immigrants, I am even more
concerned about increased control over citizens.
Apple designs its products so that they are hard to repair
then cites this
as
a reason not to let anyone else do it.
Discussing right to repair as a matter of costs is missing the most
important part of the issue: our control over technology. Apple computers
today don't permit replacing the nonfree software. If someone gave me one, my
quandary would be whether it is less wrong to sell it to a would-be user or
give it away for recycling. To keep it and use it would not be an option.
Today's AI technique of reinforcement learning has a fundamental
insecurity: messing
with the training data can create a back door
which can be controlled by presenting a trigger in the incoming data.
Thus, a driverless car controlled by a reinforcement learning system
could be mis-trained to make it drive off the side of the road (which
could be a cliff edge) when it sees a particular object on the other
side of the road.
A victory for voter
suppression in Georgia.
*For the past six months, Israeli police have subjected Issawiya's residents
to daily raids and arrests.
No
one seems to know the goal of the operation —
including the police.* Issawiya is a part of the West Bank which Israel claims to have annexed
as part of Jerusalem.
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Copyright (C) 2020 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is
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is protecting both your
health and your freedom.
Q: Is it true that in Japan money grows on trees?
A: Yes, on the ginko trees.
Trump and Gilead "Sciences"
If remdesivir does succeed as a treatment for Covid-19, there will
be plenty of customers.
murdered my relative
"[The report] found pervasive symptoms
and behaviors consistent with trauma; most met diagnostic criteria for
at least one mental health condition, such as post-traumatic stress
disorder, major depressive disorder, or generalized anxiety disorder
consistent with, and likely linked to, the trauma of family separation."
From: Richard Stallman
When our land was great before,
We taxed the rich a whole lot more.
The case falls into my mandate in three different ways: First, Assange
published proof of systematic torture. But instead of those responsible
for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he
himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting
symptoms of psychological torture. And third, he is to be extradited to
a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty
International has described as torture. In summary: Julian Assange
uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to
death in the United States. And a case like that isn’t supposed to be
part of my area of responsibility?
The share of adults aged 18-64 who were
unable to afford to see a doctor rose by nearly a third—-from 11% to
nearly 16%—-between 1998 and 2017.
Do not, as my party did, underestimate the evil, desperate nature of
evil desperate people. Do not come to this fight believing that the
Trump team views any action, including outright criminality, as off
limits. [The 2020 election] is a battle that decides whether they have
an unlimited runway to create a dynastic kleptocracy based on an
authoritarian personality cult that makes North Korea look like Sweden,
or whether the immune system of the Republic kicks in and purges them
from the body public …
There is no bottom. There is no shame. There are no limits … He is
surrounded by cowards with frightening and tremendous skills …
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