Remote exam software companies try to have it both ways: telling schools that they automate detection of cheating while saying that teachers can and must review recordings and make their own decisions.
It is clear that those programs snoop on students and the interiors of their homes.
However, the article says nothing about their demand that students install nonfree software. Even worse, the program talks over a network, which means you must expect it to be spying on users.
The EFF criticizes the ACCESS Act, a bill meant to stop platforms from mistreating users. It is too weak in several ways.
The EFF's criticisms are valid, but it doesn't mention a basic weakness: that it doesn't require services to allow anonymous use. If the service knows who the user is, it will track the user, and that is the basis for some injustices.
A Disney heiress explains the attitudes she absorbed from her family while growing up, which taught her to feel entitled to avoid paying any taxes.
These people ought to pay lots of their income in taxes. Their political philosophy enables them to justify escaping from that, by spending a much smaller amount on philanthropy.
Uber and Lyft corrupted community groups to get them to push the companies' campaigns to stop gig workers from unionizing.
*The Republican narrative that enhanced unemployment benefits are dissuading people from returning to work—and that cutting off the aid is necessary to boost hiring—is running up against reality in the GOP-led state of Missouri, where officials have yet to see any significant increase in job applicants since the governor cut off pandemic-related federal programs last month.*
We don't see much effort by legislatures to stop landlords from holding apartments vacant until someone offers a higher rent. But if workers wait for a better offer, legislators insult them and try to pressure them. That's plutocracy at work.
Toyota has donated lots of money to Republican congresscritters that have supported overturning the election.
United Nations human rights officials have called on all countries to stop police from practicing discrimination against blacks.
In Idaho, most of the people not wearing masks indoors are unvaccinated.
Interviews with people suffering from various medical problems that cause chronic pain. Many report that doctors didn't believe they had real medical problems.
Amartya Sen: Britain taught India important traditions, including a free press and democratic elections, but the British Empire prevented India from taking advantage of them until India became independent.
Right-wingers in the UK are distributing fake leaflets, pretending to be from the Labour Party, which make extreme statements.
South Africa has sentenced its former president Zuma to prison for refusing to testify about corruption.
The US Southern Baptists are divided between supporters of the Republican death cult and people more interested in Christianity.
Why is there an organization called "Southern Baptist"? In 1845, the Baptists of the south split from the US Baptist church because the latter had concluded that slavery was wrong. Those in the south were ardent supporters of slavery. Now they are reverting to white supremacism.
Tigrayan guerrillas have reorganized and chased the Ethiopian government forces out of Mekelle, the capital of Tigray.
Mekelle is now under the control of the Tigray People's Liberation Front,
The brain can respond to some kinds of pain and damage by lowering its pain threshold. This can lead to devastating pain in many parts of the body.
Fly-shooting nets are so effective for catching fish that they leave very little to regenerate the stock.
If our goal is to keep fish stocks strong, fish them sustainably, and provide work for many fishers, it is clear that these nets are counterproductive -- so we should ban them entirely.
New Zealand plans to ban plastic packaging for some products, as well as the usual single-use plastics that other countries ban.
Rising seas drive salt water into the ground nearby. This can corrode the foundations of tall buildings and make them collapse.
There are many places in the world where lots of somewhat tall buildings have been built near beaches. I've seen them near Rio de Janeiro.
Even if we work hard to curb greenhouse emissions quickly, sea-level rise will continue for decades, perhaps even centuries. Miami cannot be saved.
*Brazil could have stopped 400,000 Covid deaths with better response, expert says.*
A major London museum insists on its responsibility to "accurately explain the nature of its collections," including how some were acquired through British imperialism, but rejects demands to hide them.
I agree with the museum's general stance. I don't know enough about the specific cases to have opinions on them.
"Decolonization" properly means giving independence to colonies. I object to extending that word to cover removing things from display, because that results in absurd hyperbole. Also, it tries to impose the presumption that two very different issues are just one issue. Opposing colonization does not imply any particular position on what to do with objects in a museum that were acquired from colonization -- or with objects acquired by war (as distinct from colonization).
Why the approval of the purported Alzheimer's preventative, aducanumab, was questionable.
*Republicans can [rig] the next elections through gerrymandering alone.*
In many US cities, wealthier neighborhoods have lots of trees, but poor neighborhoods have few or none. So the latter become painfully, even dangerously hot. This is the result of lending practices decades ago, which will take effort and money to overcome.
Just planting trees won't immediately fix the problem; it may take some decades for the trees to grow big enough to have much effect.
To give poor neighborhoods the same amount of trees would require 30 million new trees.
That's assuming they find enough new-tree-ents to grow big.
The EU will draw up work safety standards that apply to working at home or in other premises that are not "workplaces" of the employer.
Biden called on countries whose citizens are in Syrian prison camps, accused of supporting PISSI, to take them back (and prosecute them if appropriate).
I am in favor of this.
Advances in attributing parts of the costs of global heating effects to specific amounts of greenhouse emissions are likely to lead to a lot more lawsuits against fossil fuel companies.
I predict that companies will buy laws to give them immunity. That's the plutocratic way of life.
A French court has prohibited hunting songbirds by putting glue on branches.
This will help protect endangered species.
I find it hard to understand how anyone can want to kill a songbird rather than listen to its singing.
US citizens: call on Blinken to end all US training of "security" forces of Salafi Arabia.
*The case for Brexit was built on lies. Five years later, deceit is routine in [UK] politics.*
The difficulty of getting the health minister to resign demonstrates the level of tolerance for deceit. Indeed, several instances of deceit in government, and outcry in response to them, were covered up in the past year.
*From Grenfell Tower to the Met police, shirking responsibility has become endemic.*
On the issue of cancelling books to express disapproval of their authors.
I am terrified by the reported contempt of publishing staff under 40 for freedom to disagree with them. If they succeed in excluding from publication all disagreement with their ideology -- regardless of what the ideology eventually comes to be -- the result is likely to be tyranny.
Right-wing propaganda claims that increasing rates of violent crime result from local policy changes, which in many cases did not really happen.
The UK plans a new climate impact test for proposed fossil fuel projects. The test will be applied at the very start of the process, which means that an enormous planned oilfield in the North Sea will be exempt from the test.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect workers from Amazon's oppressive surveillance.
Black Lives Matter activists and supporters in the UK are getting death threats; when they state their support, they are accused of "inflaming racial tensions".
I think that the thugs who are quick to murder blacks are the ones who inflame the racial tensions. The issue is how to change their behavior.
*Nathan Maung says [Burmese prison thugs] punched, slapped and beat him, and kept him blindfolded for over a week.*
They also chained him in painful positions and denied him sleep.
They didn't know, for the first few days, that he was a US citizen. So his treatment may be representative of how they treat political prisoners who are citizens only of Burma. But he says that some prisoners got worse torture than he did.
A "good guy with a gun" shot a murderer. Then a uniformed thug shot him dead without giving him time to explain.
The bipartisan infrastructure sellout-or-deal include an attempt to crack down on fraud in unemployment insurance.
Whatever it does, it is likely to screw people who are entitled to unemployment support. And the supposed amount to be saved is likely to be way exaggerated.
Big Pharma corrupts the UK Parliament via hiden funding to various parliamentary "all-party" groups.
They don't have official status; nonetheless, funding one gives support to its members, and can therefore corrupt them.
*Amnesty: ‘catalogue of violations’ by Israeli police against Palestinians.*
On the issue of whether two sides in a dispute are "morally equivalent," or even in the same region of morality.
False equivalence is a kind of fallacy that can be used to argue for various conclusions. Often that fallacy is used to defend unjust power; the article presents examples. The article also presents examples of false or misleading accusations of use the fallacy.
Was it better to be in Eastern Europe under the Soviet Empire than in Central America under US dominion? I think that depends on where and when. Stalin's rule also included massive arbitrary imprisonment and execution, sometimes almost at random, but he died in 1953 and after him the repression was less wild and brutal (but it was still repression).
I have a feeling that the term "genocide" is being stretched when applied to the repression in Guatemala. It was a crime against humanity, for sure; but genocide is something different. In order to be genocide, the killings would have to have been intended as a step towards eliminating the Maya of Guatemala. Was that the army's intent? I don't know for ceertain, but the basis presented here seems insufficient to show that.
*Military Contractors Quietly Boost Donations to GOP Backers of Trump's Coup Attempt.*
(satire) *Subway CEO Apologizes For Trusting Fish Who Falsified Documents To Pass As Tuna.*
A book reports that the bully, in 2020, persistently pressed for US thugs and the army to commit more violence against protesters.
How Israel should start contacts with HAMAS to reduce the siege of Gaza.
Israeli thugs found Ahmad 'Abdu in his car, which was stationary, and immediately started shooting him. Then they left without even giving him first aid. Then they lied about what they had done.
Youtube has deleted videos in which people talked about their relatives who are in reeducation camps in China, and showed their own ID cards to demonstrate their identity. Youtube has a rule against showing people's identity data.
That rule seems good in most circumstances, but this seems to be an exception.
Posting videos in a site other than youtube is not a bad thing. But some of them require nonfree software to view, and do not — unlike Youtube — have invidious as a workaround.
*Assange's fiancée urges Biden to free WikiLeaks founder to show U.S. has changed.*
The funeral of Nizar Banat became a protest against Mahmoud Abbas, president of Palestine.
Palestine has not held an election for many years. The reasons for this are complex: Israel has put elected officials in prison without charges, and has interfered with holding elections. The result is that Mahmoud Abbas remains president by default.
US hospitals, even those that are nonprofit organizations, refuse to hire enough nurses. The predictable result is that patients get injured.
Occasionally a patient develops a serious condition that went unnoticed because the nurses were always in a hurry.
I voted against the Massachusetts initiative, despite agreeing with the basic idea, because it seemed to me that putting a specific staffing ratio directly in the law was too rigid. In 20 years that ratio might call for change and would be very hard to change. Also, since the nurse I had known had died, I had no one to ask about whether that number was correct.
The UK's supreme court dismissed charges against participants in an inconvenient but nonviolent protest in the name of the freedom to protest.
Russia is excluding candidates from local elections because of their past support for Navalny.
The US has put sanctions on some Chinese solar panel exports.
This is a tricky trade off between two goals: to punish China for its repression, about which it shows as little shame as the bully does, and to continue installing solar generation in the US. I suppose the aim includes encouraging a buildup of US production which would be a long-term decrease in the world's dependence on China for this.
*Leaked IPCC Draft Climate Report 'Reads Like a 4,000-Page Indictment' of Humanity's Failure.*
John McAfee's widow says he was not suicidal and had told her he would call her again in the evening. She does not believe he committed suicide.
I know nothing about his case and have no opinion about whether he was guilty or not.
Arizona Republicans are passing a law to make it easy for Republicans to conspire to reject election results (in case a Democrat wins).
70 members of Congress told Biden that the US should resume its former recognition that Israel's colonies in Palestine are illegal.
The US Army must not be too timid to punish Michael Flynn for calling for a military coup.
The US as well as China has carried out research on potentially dangerous modified versions of coronaviruses.
This in itself is not evil; the research has an ethical medical justification. But there is some risk to it, and we are not sure how much risk that its. The author calls for coordinated international standards and oversight for such research.
(satire) *Contractor Informs Biden It'd Be Cheaper To Just Tear Down U.S. And Start Over.*
(satire) *Raid Introduces Holy Water-Infused Spray That Allows Cockroaches To Be Baptized And Die As Christians.*
Germany claims that it could stop construction of the new gas pipeline to Russia, or shut off its use, as punishment for Russian aggression.
I am skeptical of the claim. Once the pipeline is in use, EU countries would become dependent on it, and their pressure to keep it running would be even harder to resist then, than their pressure to finish it is now.
The EU should cancel this pipeline and adopt stronger measures to decarbonize. It needs to do that anyway.
Hong Kong's new head of the thug department claims that "hostility against the police" is caused by "fake news."
I think that means the state will declare news about unjust actions by the thugs to be "fake."
Biden campaign workers are suing the Republican supporters that besieged a campaign bus in Texas.
The owners of the recently collapsed apartment building in Miami got a warning from an engineer of structural damage, so they started planning to do the recommended repairs.
That takes time. Alas, the building collapsed shortly before those repairs were going to start.
What should we conclude about such a situation? Were the owners negligent or culpable for this?
Is there a way to tell when there is an imminent danger of collapse? Should all building owners assume an imminent danger from such damage?
When the US shut down Iranian web sites, it included even dissidents.
The New York City thug department has a history of sabotaging lawsuits by failing to hand over documents that the victims demand for the trial. It is doing that again now, to Black Lives Matter protesters whom the thugs attacked last summer.
The Supreme Court's ruling on farm-worker union organizers is a disaster for the public which extends far beyond union organizing.
It limits all levels of governments in the US in requiring businesses from allowing access to workers in workplaces.
In Boston: rally to support Julian Assange and freedom of the press. Monday, July 5, from 11 to 12:30, at Park Street Station on the Boston Common.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to exclude white supremacists in America's thug departments, including transit thugs, as well as the TSA.
US citizens: call on Congress and the president to pass the Green New Deal.
There is a bipartisan deal to pass an infrastructure bill. What it does not include, Democrats say they will pass via budget reconciliation process, a sort of loophole-in-a-loophole.
It seems that the crucial question is not what this deal includes, but what is included in this deal plus the budget reconciliation bill. I'd like to see what Sanders says about it.
One thing that is clearly dangerous is the plan to sell public assets. Another is "public-private partnerships", which is a nice-sounding name for making the public support the profits of businesses.
Reportedly the investments are slanted towards use of fossil fuels. Some of that can't be avoided, but it's clear that plutocratists will try do as much of that as they can.
(satire) *Scientists Announce Successful Experiment To Bankrupt Mouse That Can’t Afford Cancer Drug.*
(satire) *Infrastructure Talks Come To Halt After Giant Sinkhole Swallows Capitol Building.*
Florida Republicans have adopted a law that claims to defend freedom of speech in universities; but it lets the politicians in power (right-wing politicians) decide when and how to enforce. As a result, it is likely to defend freedom of right-wing speech, while helping to restrict left-wing speech.
Masculinity anxiety has held society back from rational advances.
I'm proud to say that I adopted wheeled suitcases as soon as I became aware of them. Conceptions of manliness didn't hold me back at all. I never considered myself physically strong, nor made much effort to be so.
I do wonder how the women who used rolling suitcases before they were a "success" got them. Did each make her own? If not, they had to buy them somewhere, so where was that?
Plutocratist Democrats including Clinton are trying desperately to mislead voters so that they won't vote for Nina Turner for Congress.
Some ideas for how the Senate can make filibusters more difficult to carry out.
The Pentagon has released its report describing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena which appear to be objects.
In some cases they reportedly affected military systems.
Let's see what explanations skeptics come up with.
UAPs could be devices that send spoofing transmissions to present a false impression of how they are moving.
The NIH deleted in June 2020 some early SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences at the request of the Chinese researcher who had previously submitted them.
It is not obvious what those sequences would prove if they were still available, but given the way China operates, we have to suspect that officials ordered the researcher to "request" their deletion, and that the purpose was to impede understanding. I think the NIH should change its rules for deletions. Perhaps it should allow the submitter to add notes, such as "I now suspect this was spurious", but not actual deletion.
China uses its increasing economic power to make other countries expel Uyghur expats or deport them to China.
This includes Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, Burma, Egypt, Turkey, and other countries.
I've decided to write it "Uyghur", because their own pronunciation of that name starts with the sound of "uy" rather than the "we" customarily used to pronounce that name in English.
When Iranian soldiers shot down Ukrainian flight 752, was it a "disastrous mistake" or was it "incompetence and recklessness"?
The difference does matter in regard to what steps Iran should take to make sure nothing similar happens again, but it is not a big moral issue.
Statistical methods suggest that SARS-CoV-2 started spreading in China in October or early November, 2019.
Australia has imposed a lockdown on part of Sydney, and a neighboring town.
This is necessary.
An article argues that Australia was foolish to depend on its quarantine and occasional lockdowns to protect the country from Covid-19.
I disagree.
In an ideal world, Australia (and every other country) would have vaccinated everyone by now (aside from medically necessary exceptions). However, given the artificial limitations on vaccine production, on top of the inevitable difficulties of ramping up production, Australia was not the most urgent place to use the limited supplies. It was succeeding, as well as any country, in keeping its population safe.
Belarus has moved journalist prisoner Roman Protasevich to house arrest in an apartment.
Likewise Sofia Sapega, who was taken off the plane with him.
This could be a step towards releasing the two. I expect the EU would suspend its sanctions unless/until Belarus does such a thing again.
PISSI is becoming PISSA as it expands in Subsaharan Africa.
PISSA in Nigeria treats local Muslims with respect, better than other governments. Which is fine, in and of itself. If it were willing to make peace with non-Muslims, we could coexist with it.
New Zealand imprisons people for "being insulting", and plans to do this in even more cases.
It is painful to be insulted, but none of us has the right to forbid people to insult us.
The US blocked access from the US to some Iranian government web sites.
That is censorship in the US. Americans have the right to see what Iran is saying.
The Poor People's Campaign protested Manchin and the Republicans outside their office in Washington DC.
The UK plans to develop a large new oilfield in the North Sea.
There is no room for this in the carbon budget.
*Ignoring Climate Goals, Biden Administration Greenlights Oil Drilling in Alaska.*
* New South Wales’ use of environmental offsets to compensate for habitat destruction caused by major developments will be examined by a parliamentary inquiry.*
Pakistan is moving to censorship of opinions and art.
Drought caused by global heating is forcing California to burn more gas and thus causes more global heating.
Forest protectors are attaching themselves to trees and roads to prevent logging of the remaining ancient trees in British Columbia (Canada).
People in the Florida Keys are starting to recognize that their islands are doomed because of global heating.
To raise their homes enough to escape flooding in the short term would cost more than they can afford. Worse than that, it would only delay the disaster, not prevent it -- the work would have to be repeated, with increasing frequency, and that would be money ill spent.
Millions of people will lose their homes due to sea level rise, and for in most cases we can't protect them for very long.
We have to focus on treating the disease, not the symptoms. The disease is greenhouse gas emission and the treatment is to curb emissions.
UN special rapporteur David Boyd warns that three proposed repressive UK laws would *make human rights violations more likely to occur and less likely to be punished.*
Dictator al-Sisi has taken at least 60,000 political prisoners, including four activists of the Egyptian Initiative on Personal Rights (EIPR).
*Part of the EIPR’s role is to investigate the [88]mistreatment of prisoners, and during interrogations the arrestees were asked why they had fabricated accounts of the grim conditions faced by those in jail, even as they sat in those very conditions themselves.*
Al-Sisi can continue this because he has outside financial backing, from the US for instance.
Palestinian thugs beat Palestinian opposition candidate Nizar Banat so badly that he died from his injuries.
The expected filibuster against the We the People Act was not a final defeat. Steady pressure can shift the votes of some senators and achieve victory.
The European Parliament approved binding greenhouse emissions targets and other measures to curb global heating.
I think this is not strong enough, but it is still a good step forward.
*At least 64 killed in Ethiopian airstrike on Tigray market.*
When US pilots bombed weddings in the Middle East, perhaps they did not know what they were attacking. However, Ethiopian pilots ought to immediately recognize an Ethiopian market.
When the US claims that all the victims of a bombing were guerrillas, it is hard for Americans to know for certain that this is false. Most of us have never been to the countries where these attacks occurred, and we don't know what is normal there or not. We have to decide whether to believe the US government or believe local people that we don't know much about. Over time, it has become clear that the US often denies civilian casualties.
I expect that Ethiopians know what is plausible in Ethiopian life, and what really could or could not have happened in that bombing.
Malaysia plans to increase the repression of blasphemy and nonstandard gender or sex roles.
We think of Malaysia as modern, not fanatical. But countries dominated by Islam tend to be repressive and deny various human rights in the name of religion, including religious freedom.
US citizens: call on the Senate to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
The House passed this, but that's not enough to do it.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a wealth tax.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: tell the President and Congress: No infrastructure deal without climate defense.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to give clemency to people imprisoned for drug crimes.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
If you call, please spread the word!
Massachusetts citizens: support the Work and Family Mobility Act.
Israel has brought back the requirement to wear masks in public places indoors, due to renewed spread of Covid-19.
Almost every death (or disability) due to Covid-19 in the US from now on will be preventable — due to American's foolish refusal to get vaccinated.
* Brazil’s environment minister has quit amid a criminal investigation into whether he obstructed a police inquiry into illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest.*
A juror in the trial of Chinese scientist Anming Hu says that the FBI tried to railroad him, that the accusation of hiding his ties to China was visibly false all along.
I wonder what the FBI does when it finds that an agent has tried to frame someone. Does it say, "Get lost, we don't want to threaten innocent people"? Or does it say, "Nice try, better luck next time"?
*UK to ban junk food advertising online and before 9pm on TV [and on internet sites] from 2023.*
The ACLU's criticisms of Amazon's private internet, "Sidewalk".
Some states require unemployed people to use unreliable face recognition to prove their eligibility for unemployment support. Failures can cause delays of weeks.
This is a use of face recognition for which a perfectly reliable system would do no harm, provided it doesn't impose nonfree software on people. Applicants for unemployment support are required to identify themselves, after all. What worries me most about biometrics is the danger of using them to identify people when they are entitled to anonymity.
(satire) *Experts Encourage Americans To Start Thinking About What Form Of Government They’d Like To Try After Democracy Crumbles.*
I think we already know the answer. If we don't defend democracy now, we will have out-and-out plutocracy — still presented as democracy.
(satire) *Conservative Man Tearfully Informs Family Critical Race Theory Has Spread To His Liver.*
As Israelis build a new colony on Palestinian territory, Palestinians are trying many ways to drive them out.
The colony is illegal under Israeli law, but the government is only interested in keeping it growing. Rather than removing the Israeli lawbreakers, Israel sent troops who are killing some of the Palestinian protesters.
Smoke from the fires burning outside the colony sometimes hurts the eyes of the colonists. It must feel somewhat like tear gas.
*Oil and gas donors gave over £400k to Tories* as the UK government decided to allow new oil wells in the North Sea.
A web of influence linked a rich backer of the corrupter with Crown Prince Bone Saw and his murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
I doubt that the training included use of bone saws or forced application of powerful sedatives, but it may have included readiness to follow orders for assassination.
I see no evidence that either the corrupter or his plutocratist donor specifically supported murdering Khashoggi. But they surely helped get the US more closely involved with Bone Saw and Salafi Arabia. If that didn't directly bring about to the murder of Khashoggi, it surely helped bring about US support for Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen, which has killed thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands.
* Rep. Mondaire Jones said [Senator] Sinema [by defending the filibuster] is effectively arguing that "we should let Republicans destroy democracy now because at some indeterminate time in the future they may try again."*
The proposed British law to restrict the right to protest — even alone — says this is in the name of avoiding noise!
Right-wingers say the law is good because the thugs like it. Duh! I say that confirms it is bad.
Companies that store data about users in China are required to cooperate unquestioningly with Chinese surveillance, and must not send the data to anyone outside China without China's approval.
This protects people in China from non-Chinese surveillance and profiling, while making all of them totally vulnerable to China.
*Study Warns of Severe Drying for Amazon Rainforest.*
Biden's slow negotiations to resume the non-nuclear deal with Iran probably helped push the voters towards the right-wing candidate.
I think the term "train wreck" is too strong, but mostly I agree with the article's opinions.
The US underestimates the future cost to society of emitting CO2, which systematically encourages plans to emit too much of it.
Connecticut will stop charging prisoners for phone calls.
Sanders: *Not a single Republican in the United States Senate has the courage to even debate whether we should protect American democracy or not.*
Buffalo, New York, has elected a socialist mayor.
She plans to reduce the opportunities for brutality by the city's thug department, and to redefine "public safety" in a broader way.
The US endorsed the validity of the Peruvian election.
This is definitively better than how the US used to act.
Some geoengineering schemes could capture large amounts of already-emitted CO2.
These schemes, if they work, could compensate for all the effects of releasing CO2, by removing that CO2. Running them extra could compensate for the methane we have released.
Concerns about "playing god" are foolish. That idea is valid only insofar as it reminds us that these schemes could have risks we won't foresee. Alas, what we are already doing has enormous risks that we have already foreseen.
We may need to uses megasystems to sequester CO2. However, I am concerned that we will adopt this as an easy substitute for reducing emissions. Fossil fuel companies will say, "Let's continue to extract and burn all the fossil fuels — and sequester all the CO2 with olivine and kelp forests."
That would be risky: if the scheme works for a while, that does not mean it will work without limits. We had better play it safe with our planet: first, make firm arrangements to cease the dangerous and destructive practices, thus limiting the damage we will do; then fix the damage we will not have avoided.
As for the schemes that would only cool the Earth, they don't try to address the danger of ocean acidification by the emitted CO2, which could kill all coral, all molluscs, and maybe all crustacians (I don't remember), because they could not make their shells. Some research suggest that high levels of CO2 would change some other animals' behavior, making them rash, so they would get eaten. Local cooling to prevent escape of methane might be useful. It would be much smaller and thus less risky than trying to cool the whole surface of the Earth.
The EU has accustomed itself to the absence of the UK, and may have been strengthened by it.
It still has grave problems: its government has only a little democracy, and it gives the Euro banksters the power to crush countries such as Greece and Italy that fall into unpayable debt.
*Hong Kong police arrest editorial writer at Apple Daily newspaper.*
Some indigenous Australians criticize Western Australia's bill to change the rules meant to protect the sites containing ancient indigenous art.
I support protecting them, but the AHAA seems to say that the destruction of ancient indigenous art is acceptable provided that the "holders of this cultural heritage give consent." I do not agree with that. Those sites include some of the oldest art in the world; it is part of the heritage of all humanity. No one group should be authorized to give consent for their destruction. On the contrary, we should make it very hard for anyone to get legal permission to do that.
We should not romanticize indigenous humans. They are humans, and susceptible to corruption by money or power like other humans. Just now an indigenous group in Canada opposes efforts to protect the remnant old growth rainforest in British Columbia, because it gets paid for the trees that are cut down.
I think logging is legitimate and useful -- as long as it doesn't go too far. In particular, we must preserve the small old growth forests that remain.
The UK's tax system allows people to own second homes, rent them out part time, and pay no tax on them. The result is more homelessness.
*Four Saudis who participated in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year.*
Apple says it restricts users for their own good, to protect them from "security risk".
Apple is using the usual narrow definition of "security" — the danger that third parties might attack the user. However, Apple's own software mistreats users in several ways, and that is bad security, using a broader and deeper sense of "security".
Let's stop presuming that all tax dodging by the rich is lawful.
Much of it may be lawful. When corporations route their profits through a country where the tax rate is zero, it may be lawful. That is no excuse morally, of course — those laws must be changed.
However, the purpose of using tax havens to hide who really gets the money is so that someone can commit tax evasion, and that is presumably a crime.
The article calls for investigating rich cheaters, and changing laws so that it is possible to nail them.
A proposed EU directive for cutting the carbon emissions of shipping would permit use of liquified natural gas as a bridge to nowhere. Compared with the current fuel (heavy fuel oil), it might not reduce emissions at all.
Cutting emissions will cost a lot of money, but the alternative is global disaster, so we need to spend it. Permitting "flexibility" to avoid this is self-defeating.
Republicans blocked the For the People Act with a filibuster, as expected. Now the really hard fight begins, to convince all Democrats in the Senate to vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster so that this and other crucial laws can be passed.
The US Interior Department will hold an investigation of the boarding schools that decades ago it forced indigenous children to attend.
*Teamsters plan sweeping effort to unionize Amazon workers.*
Bravo!
Nicaragua has arrested journalists as well as political candidates; a famous Nicaraguan journalist has fled the country after his home was raided.
When the US prosecutes journalists such as Julian Assange, it lends support to other countries that do so. Including Nicaragua and China. The US should stand up for freedom of the press, including the freedom to investigate government wrongdoing.
*US military training manual describes socialism as "terrorist ideology."*
That is arrant bullshit. Today's socialists are mostly not violent at all. Some communists are violent, but that is mainly when they are working for violent communist states such as China.
New article : Worker-owned internet services can still be dis-services.
A third wave of Covid-19 has started in the UK. It is clear that the government catered to the demands of those who could not defer gratification to save people's lives. However, the government's previous bad leadership undermined its authority and fomented those demands.
When a system behaves badly, the blame falls on the system overall as well as on the people who exploit its flaws. Neither one can make the excuse of blaming the other.
Five thugs from Savannah, Georgia, reported that a suspect committed suicide while they were taking a break from interrogating him. Mysteriously, the cameras all failed to record anything during that time.
Is it plausible that the suspect committed suicide? It seems more plausible to me that the thugs killed him. But there is no proof.
The system has to be changed so that this can't happen again.
Most US cities and metropolitan areas have become more segregated racially since 1990.
*Absurd planning policies that create Britain's housing crisis.*
Video shows that Czech thugs killed a Roma man by kneeling on his neck.
Proposing a draft law establishing the crime of ecocide.
It shows that the law can defend the well being of ecosystems without the silliness of claiming that the ecosystems themselves "have rights".
If this is adopted by the International Criminal Court, we will have another reason to press for more countries to join that court. Its main opponents are the US, Russia and China.
The Vatican objects to a proposed Italian law which might criminalize the refusal to teach certain specific ideas about gender, and refusal to conduct same-sex marriages.
I support same-sex marriages, and adoption by same-sex couples. I also support the right of people to practice their religion, so any particular church should not be required to carry out those procedures. As long as same-sex couples have other places to marry or adopt, such as state agencies, their rights are safe.
Where I see real injustice is where religious organizations have a local monopoly (or near-monopoly) on some activities, such as medical care or education. That near-monopoly gives them power over what people can do.
China imprisons tens of thousands of people secretly and incommunicado, to break them before charging them with crimes. Some who were later released report having been tortured, Guantanamo style.
Covid-19 may have pushed millions of Americans into irrational rage while other millions practice denial of what they went through.
The denial is spreading the Delta variant, while the irrational rage pressures people not to take precautions.
More details about San Jose's proposed gun insurance and fee law.
Trevor Aaronson has reported on the FBI practice of prosecuting Walter Mitty terrorists, people whom the FBI has led by the hand into trying to commit a crime which was never a real possibility. Thus it can prosecute people who would never have committed any terrorism if left alone.
This makes the FBI look very effective, but it may not prevent any terrorist plots that would really have been carried out. It's also unjust.
Right-wingers have used that truth as the basis for fiction, claiming that the attack on the Capitol was brought about by FBI entrapment.
Aaronson refutes part of their argument about this.
In addition, if that were the case, the FBI (1) would not have built up the group to be big enough to do real harm and (2) would have arrested the participants before they got in a position to do real harm.
Since 2014, the Australian government has campaigned forcefully against recognizing how global heating and fertilizer runoff are destroying the Great Barrier Reef.
Now UNESCO plans once again to label the reef as world heritage "in danger".
Tories blame the failure of British state schools on "decades" of bad policies, but the policy under funding schools, and food and shelter for the students in them, was started by the Tories in 2010.
It is still true: the Tories are lower than vermin.
*Trial of Moroccan journalists raises fears of repression.*
The right way to respond to revenge porn: "I'm not ashamed."
*Migrants turned away at border under Biden face shocking abuse in Mexico.*
Fighting Libyan factions filled Tripoli with landmines and booby traps.
The US should sign the treaty against antipersonnel landmines and lead other countries to do so.
Guatemala's anti corruption judges are facing threats of violence.
(satire) *Every day, women are using pancreatic enzymes to break down food without any consideration for the sanctity of these innocent carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.*
(satire) *Organized Crime Syndicate Condemned For History Of Nepotistic Hiring Practices.*
*Global Hopes in Doubt After G7 Fails to Meet Climate Finance Pledges for Poor Nations.*
We who are vaccinated should continue taking precautions such as wearing masks when indoors or near other people.
*Hong Kong leader refuses to say how media can avoid arrest in wake of Apple Daily raids.*
Keeping the boundaries vague is standard practice for promoting self-censorship through intimidation.
Hong Kong has decided that political accusations won't have jury trials. Juries give the people power that repressive autocrats don't want them to have.
Amazon must eliminate the tight control that treats workers as robots, and injures them along the way.
Please don't buy from Amazon. When people buy things for me, I ask them to please not buy from Amazon.
Encryption algorithms used in old portable phones were designed to be weak. Some numeric parameters were chosen to make breaking the encryption particularly easy.
A Lunatic Party candidate for Congress said he would send contract killers to murder a rival Lunatic Party candidate, if the latter wins.
The US Supreme Court allows corporations to direct farms outside the US to mistreat workers and not be held responsible.
The decision gives corporations more rights than human beings. That is always wrong. Aside from that, the decision is wrong because it allows a US entity to organize and direct an action and escape responsibility for it, by organizing and directing it outside the US.
There is a crucial factual question: to what extent do Nestle USA and Cargill really control the working conditions on those farms? The article quotes someone as asserting that they have total control. The article itself doesn't demonstrate that. It may be true, though.
Obama backed Manchin's proposed compromise version of the For the People Act.
Sanders said he did not reject it out of hand.
Manchin's version of voter ID requirements is not as bad as what Republicans are imposing in many states. It permits demonstrating residence with a utility bill. In some states, that is a lot cheaper and easier to get than an official state ID.
However, many people who share apartments don't directly pay any utility bills (though they may share the cost). How are they supposed to vote? What about spouses that don't have the utility bills in their name? And adult children who had to move back to their parents' home?
I don't know whether Manchin's compromise would enable them to vote or not, since I don't know the details.
The same difficulties could prevent them from getting a driver's license in some states.
*UN warns of worst "cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetimes."*
Uber and Lyft are cutting pay for drivers even as they charge customers more.
This is in addition to making customers run nonfree software and identify themselves, which both Uber and Lyft do.
Putin may regret outlawing opposition organizations such as Navalny's.
Some of the sufferers of long Covid injuries can recover their normal strength and capacity by getting lots of rest for a substantial time. Society needs to give all of them the opportunity to do this.
What would the Buddha have said about the idea of a 69-meter-tall statue of him?
*Donations flood in to restore Gaza bookshop destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.*
Some of Princess Latifa's friends report travelling with her, and that she is not imprisoned, but there are some reasons to wonder if it is really true.
*Biden Subsidies for Liquid Natural Gas Could Doom International Climate Goals.*
The EU will reject major exports from Belarus as punishment for the seizure of Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega.
Salafi Arabia and the Houthis are reportedly negotiating peace.
I think Biden is partly responsible for Crown Prince Bone Saw's decision to seek peace. In addition to the overt pressure, I expect there was private pressure.
* US study finds households with recent birthdays about 30% more likely to have positive diagnosis [for Covid-19].*
The effect is strongest for children's birthdays. It appears that birthday parties are spreading the disease, and suggests that children are playing a significant role in the spreading.
The study covered most of 2020. It will be interesting to see what happens in the second half of 2021.
(satire) *CEO Of Troubled Company Accepts Full Compensation For His Mistakes.*
Ralph Nader: business executives control most political decisions, because they have systematically neutralized the former competing sources of power in society.
Amnesty International calls for an investigation of Ebrahim Raisi, who was just elected president of Iran, for the execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran in 1988.
The US has eased sanctions against Iran, Venezuela and Syria to facilitate shipment of products to treat or prevent Covid-19.
It is clearly the right thing to do. It should not have taken so long.
British students protest the London Science Museum for letting Shell fund an exhibit which leads people to think we can trust in carbon capture and storage to curb global heating and skip the necessary effort.
Some US bishops are trying to bully Catholic politicians (including Biden) into opposing abortion.
When John F Kennedy ran for president, some said that it would be intolerable to have a Catholic as president because he would be a puppet for the pope. Kennedy responded said that he would not let that happen.
*Witness K spared jail after pleading guilty to breaching secrecy laws over Timor-Leste bugging.*
However, that is no excuse for prosecuting whistleblowers who report wrongdoing by the state. Australia must change its laws.
*UN blasts world leaders for failing to seal £72bn-a-year deal on climate.*
Fujimori's anti-democratic party aims to cancel the votes of Peru's rural poor, saying they are too ignorant to be allowed to vote.
We know what happens when elites don't let poor people's votes count: they form governments that serve the elites. They are trying it in the US and they are trying it in Peru.
How will the US government use its influence in Peru? Will it support the coup, as Hillary Clinton did in Honduras and the bullshitter's servants did in Bolivia? Or will it support the elected government?
Australian thugs have arrested a journalist for "stalking" an official at public events to ask embarrassing questions.
Hong Kong's non-submissive newspaper Apple Daily will have to shut down soon because China has frozen its assets.
The immediate threats to the US do not come from China. They come from its own flaws.
In the longer term, Chinese dominion is a threat to the world as a whole. But the US will not be able to help resist that threat unless it corrects its own flaws.
Barr as attorney general was a thoroughly willing flunky for perverting the Department of Justice.
Half of Zimbabweans are now in extreme poverty: 8 million now, up from 6.5 million in 2019 and 3 million in 2011.
*Farm plan poses ‘catastrophic’ threat to Zambian park vital for fruit bats.*
The last frenzied decades before massive global collapse could see desperate humans wipe out thousands of endangered species in a futile effort to postpone that collapse.
It's getting so that people will condemn an actor for playing a character that has any substantial difference from per real self.
President Do-dirty said he will put people in jail for refusing Covid-19 vaccination. I think that is unjustly strict. First of all, there are people who have certain medical conditions for whom vaccination would be dangerous. However, even for people that have no medical reason to refuse, actually forcing them is going too far.
It is legitimate to restrict certain activities to vaccinated people, such as large gatherings, and occupations where other people's safety depends on vaccination. However, if people who cannot be vaccinated are excluded from work for not being vaccinated, the state should pay their salaries, because it isn't their fault.
Once enough people have been vaccinated to reach herd immunity, it will be safe to let unvaccinatable people return to those jobs, and generally treat them just like vaccinated people.
*Who Setting up hub to make COVID-19 vaccines in South Africa* for vaccinating people in poor countries.
UNESCO threatens to decertify Venice unless it stops letting cruise ships dock.
90,000 disappearances (and plenty of simple murders) in Mexico are directly related to US-Mexico collaboration in the "War on Drugs".
This is one of many reasons we need to end that war.
Progressives call for repealing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Voting rights activists have to help disprivileged voters, one by one, overcome the hurdles Republicans invent to disenfranchise them.
Cory Doctorow talks about the proposed interoperability law, ACCESS, and endorses the idea of limiting the collection of personal data.
"Data protection" requirements may do a little good — here's one interesting attempt — but this is unusual. For the most part, their approach is too weak.
Some nasty things about Airbnb. For instance, most airbnb rentals belong to large companies that gobble up lots of houses that people used to live in.
This could be driving up your rent.
Right-wing Peruvian retired military officers called for a military coup.
This is the standard right-wing one-two punch: fabricate accusations of election fraud, then cite them as the excuse for a coup. That's what the right-wing opposition did in Bolivia against Evo Morales.
Congress plans to eliminate the exception in the US Constitution that permits imposing forced labor on convicts.
When I read those words in the 13th amendment, I thought that their purposes was to allow sentencing convicts to imprisonment. I don't advocate abolishing that.
However, the practice of forcing prisoners to work for low pay is a dangerous abuse, because it encourages passing laws to put more people in prison. I strongly support eliminating that practice.
The Portland thugs that police protests demand to be allowed to bash protesters at will. One of them was charged for a gratuitous violent attack on a protester, so the others resigned from the team.
The city cannot afford to give in to such demands.
California's gang data base includes supposed gang members added at the age of one year. And other errors that can ruin someone's life.
LinkedIn censors user profiles for China.
The question of whether SARS-CoV-2 jumped to humans from an animal or leaked from a lab has become politicized, and researchers feel threatened based on the positions they take.
Scientific progress needs the truth, whatever it is, and this will make the truth harder to ascertain.
A court ruled that the CDC can't make vaccination requirements for cruise ships.
Rulings like this make the US rather helpless defend itself against future pandemics. In other words, they endanger national security.
I expect the Republican-controlled US states to suffer another wave of Covid-19, with the Delta variant, causing a substantial number of deaths and permanent disabilities among adults under age 60.
*Climate campaigners claimed a "historic victory" after a Brussels court on Thursday condemned Belgium for its climate policy that breaches the country's duty of care and human rights obligations.*
*The amount of heat the Earth traps has doubled in just 15 years, study shows.*
This is related to drought.
*94% of Americans Oppose Big Pharma's Control of Global Covid-19 Vaccine Doses: Poll.*
Scientists regarding the US west: We have warned about heat waves and droughts like these, and the fires that will follow.
People who attacked pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong have been convicted of violent crime.
Comfortable and unchallengeable lies paved the way to overthrow democracy in Germany. It can happen in the US too.
The reason why the US military can't win the wars it has started in the 21st century is that foreign armies and foreign money normally can't defeat a strongly motivated guerrilla. Only a local force with an even stronger commitment to victory can do so. In situations like that, a US military intervention is usually self-defeating.
US leaders should recognize this.
ALEC is lobbying for more states to imitate Arizona's "election audit".
As far as I can tell, the aim of the "election audit" is to be secretive and sloppy enough to create the opportunity for liars to claim to have discovered irregularities, and no one will have enough facts to refute the claim. Then the Republican anti-truth machine will convince 50 million Americans to believe the lies, along with other lies such as "Covid-19 is not dangerous" and "Democrats stole the 2020 election."
*Critics Warn Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan 'Would Facilitate a Wall Street Takeover.'*
The Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act would shift funds to support counseling in schools instead of uniformed thugs.
Prefabricated small houses, to fit in spaces which used to hold garages, can provide a lot more housing comparatively quickly.
Thugs in Lahore demanded gratis burgers at a restaurant. The staff said no, so the thugs returned the next day and arrested all the staff, leaving the restaurant unattended, even the machines that heat oil for frying. This risked causing injuries or a fire. Fortunately that didn't happen.
Reportedly the thugs have been suspended. They deserve more punishment than that; what they did was corrupt.
Biden's order to stop issuing oil and gas leases on public lands, or offshore, was temporarily blocked by a judge. It may be blocked permanently.
We have to keep this in perspective. If this comparatively small action is a "key" part of Biden's efforts to avoid global heating disaster, it's because what he has done so far is small. He has proposed legislation to do more, but Manchin and Sinema are blocking those bills. Unless we do a lot more, our future is hosed.
San Jose, California, cannot prohibit guns. It plans to require gun owners to carry insurance and pay a tax.
Those who possess guns but have not paid and insured them will have them seized.
I think it is a clever idea. Let's see how well it works.
A leaked meeting recording shows Manchin asking rich donors to "convince" some Senate Republicans to vote for an investigation of the Jan 6 insurrection, to help him preserve the filibuster.
Pfizer has pulled out of ALEC, in response perhaps to public pressure.
It is better to cease support for ALEC than continue it, but whatever motivated the company to support ALEC may find a new expression — perhaps through PhRMA, which lobbies for Big Pharma.
Australia will soon decide, secretly, the sentence to impose on the heroic whistleblower that we know only as "Witness K".
Hungary has passed a law which seems to prohibit showing video including transgender minors except late at night.
The expression "defend the right of children to an identity that conforms to their birth gender," when we interpret "right" correctly, means that no one should try to force or pressure children to be trans. I agree that children who want to be cis have the right to be cis.
However, I doubt that many children grow up under pressure to be trans. Few parents are likely to impose such pressure. (The Chinese movie, "Farewell My Concubine," presents a fictional example that might be based on some real instances 100 years ago.)
The right-wing advocates of that law seem to twist the concept of "have the right" by adding, implicitly, "whether they like it or not." That results in an excuse to impose something on people while pretending to be respecting their freedom.
People have duties as well as rights. There are times when we must demand that people carry out their duties — for instance, to pay taxes so the state can carry out its missions. But we should reject the dishonesty of pretending that this is done for the sake of those people, that it constitutes defending their rights.
It appears that "children" is being used here to mean "minors". I can't let that practice go by without a rebuke. Treating teenagers like children harms them by infantilizing them.
*Legal scholars publish letter calling for Stephen Breyer to retire from Supreme Court.*
He is old; the aim is to ensure Republicans don't get to replace him as they did Justice Ginsburg.
*Press Freedom Advocates Say 'Congress Needs to Act' to Prevent More DOJ Spying Abuses — Under Both Parties.*
*Protests against police abuse spread across Tunisian capital.*
Proprietary software tends to be designed to mistreat the user. The FBI released proprietary software for gangsters which was designed to snoop on them.
In my view, snooping on those gangsters' crimes was a good thing to do, for special reasons. Nonetheless, it is a good example of why you should not use nonfree software.
*Nixon's War on Drugs turned out to be a war on people. President Biden should end it once and for all.*
The Democratic Party power structure in West Virginia is made up of people with political stances like Senator Manchin's. They keep the working-class and nonwhite Democrats from having much influence.
Jesee Jackson: Most West Virginia residents are poor and need more federal government support. To represent them, Manchin should help enact the progressive program.
*Rev. Barber Says West Virginians Are Ready for 'Non-Violent Sit-Ins' Against Manchin for Abetting GOP Voter Suppression.*
Meat made in non-living factories could address issues of sustainability, and animal suffering. But it creates possible problems for human beings, both biological (elimination of the biodiversity, and organ diversity as in present-day farm animals) and legal (patent-owning companies could control all meat).
This is not necessarily a reason to reject artificial meat, but means we should not uncritically assume that all artificial meat is free of grave problems.
Britons, protect your anonymity — pay cash! If you don't defend this right, you will lose it.
When you leave your house, take cash with you, enough for the purchases you might make.
A bonus: most people find that paying cash leads them to spend less.
US citizens: call on Pelosi and Schumer to give the Pentagon none of the infrastructure plan money.
If you sign, please spread the word!
June 19 is Juneteenth, a new federal holiday which celebrates the freeing of slaves in the defeated confederacy.
It was not the end of discrimination by law against blacks — that continued into the 1960s and was ended by the civil rights movement. Systemic racism continues to this day. So we still need more change in that area.
Some Americans had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in blood samples they gave in January 2020, so they must have got infected in 2019.
I don't know whether there is any chance that some other coronavirus could have triggered formation of antibodies that react to SARS-CoV-2. If not, those Americans must have caught Covid-19 in December.
*'Let Scientific Evidence Determine Origin' of Covid-19, Say Heads of US National Academies.*
A Chinese virologist said this means the investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 should move to the US.
The investigation should study all relevant places and events. Trying to "blame the US" for Covid-19 is as foolish as trying to "blame China" for it. It is foolish to consider this as a matter of rivalry between countries. If any mistakes were made by China, if any mistakes were made by the United States, if any were made elsewhere, the world needs to know what happened and understand them.
*Driver accused of driving into protesters in Minneapolis charged with murder.*
Republican state legislatures are passing laws to help murderous fanatics get away with such murders. They will only need to claim that they hit the protesters by accident, and right-wing jurors could decide to believe them.
A minister in Bolivia's previous coup-installed government sought to hire US mercenaries to block the 2020 election of the new president Arce.
China is remodeling old buildings in some cities in Xinjiang as more appealing oldish-looking tourist attractions. When reporters visit, they feel the heavy hand of Soviet-style repression.
The FDA must enforce limits on arsenic and lead in baby foods.
For most Americans, a college education is something they need to win a lottery to get.
*[The US deportation thug organization] Discussed Punishing Immigrant Advocates for Peaceful Protests.*
China arrested executives and editors of the Apple Daily for endangering national security. Precisely what actions supposedly had that effect, China does not bother to answer, since the goal is to intimidate all journalists.
*Father of [Sofia Sapega, who was] arrested off plane in Belarus, appeals to Lukashenko for her release.*
*Israeli policeman charged with manslaughter of autistic Palestinian.* The thug had no reason at all to shoot him.
It is rare for Israeli thugs or soldiers to face justice for killing a Palestinian. I hope this is the sign of a change.
Eight countries in the Pacific Ocean organized to prevent foreign ships from overfishing, and get a share of the money at the same time,
Emails show that the White House chief of staff, under the corrupter, tried five times to make Acting Attorney General Rosen investigate various bogus accusations of voter fraud.
Rosen refused. At that time it was possible for supporters of the corrupter to retain some scruples about their civic duty.
How plutocracy co-opts and perverts the defense of freedom and autonomy — using consumerism. Zuckerberg wanted to buy the rights to "Another Brick In the Wall" to use it to promote Instagram, which is a very big collection of bricks in the wall of surveillance.
Musician Roger Waters, author of the song, condemned Facebook and stated support for Julian Assange.
Tories plan to deregulate businesses across the board.
Contracts will be awarded in "agile" ways, thus regularizing the Tory practice of giving contracts to companies run by friends of ministers, whether or not they have the capacity to do the job or the experience to do it right Planning will also be agile, so that local people won't be able to argue against plans that would harm them. (Unless it's a land-based wind farm; Tories want those all to be blocked.)
*[Minister] Michael Gove's civil service plans threaten impartiality, says union leader.*
Andy Slavitt hinted at how some Americans (Republicans) were too selfish in confronting Covid-19, and refused to do the little things that save other people's health and lives, They should have made little sacrifices such as wearing masks, keeping distance, getting vaccinated. What they opposed was the principle that we ought to help each other. "War on Earth, ill will to men."
He touched the right-wingers' nerve because what he said is evidently true. So they began spewing gibberish as white noise to drown out his message.
Delta variant has to start a wave that will kill or disable a lot of antivaxxers. As people see the pattern that Republicans spread human death and Democrats more or less protect human life, they may learn not to trust Republicans.
Global supplies of soybeans, coffee, chocolate, and palm oil will be cut by global heating, even if we curb emissions quickly.
They will be cut a lot more, over time, if we fail to curb emissions.
US citizens: call on TikTok to stop collecting biometric data, and delete what it has collected.
Trying to prevent the extinction of eels in the Britain.
Australia has temporarily released a boat refugee from an immigration prison on a remote island, to reunite him with his wife and children, but he will still be kept under some sort of house arrest.
Australia has sworn unending repression for boat people, and treats that as the highest political priority.
Whether or not Covid-19 escaped from a virology lab, such labs need to take stronger precautions.
*Trump spied on journalists. So did Obama. America needs more press freedom now.*
*Ikea fined €1m by French court for spying on staff.*
*London's [thugs] corruptly concealed failings in the investigation of the 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan.*
The revolving door for violent thugs leads out of one thug department and into another.
They continue to main and kill, but they suffer the penalty of a lower salary.
Republicans will thwart a Senate investigation into how Trump's henchmen seized senators' communication records.
Small amounts of antidepressants in the water make crayfish "bolder", and more rash. This could affect ecosystems.
* From food standards to fossil fuel exports, Britain’s agreement with Australia could stop us dealing with the climate crisis.*
*ICC prosecutor seeks investigation into Philippines ‘war on drugs’ killings.*
President Do-Dirty's war was nominally on drugs, but actually against whoever looked good to shoot.
*Brazil to deploy special force to protect the Yanomami from wildcat gold miners.*
Measures like this are justified for the protection of the Yanomami and the land and its ecosystems. However, I have to worry that Bolsonaro will intentionally pervert or corrupt the mission so that it poisons them instead.
Biden has endorsed repeal of the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force.
Bravo!
Will the Republicans in the Senate block this to make sure the next Republican president can make an excuse for war wherever he wants it?
(satire) *Senate Passes $50 Billion Bill To Combat Chinese Influence By Developing Own Pandas.*
That is less of a joke than it might seem. China uses its pandas with great care as instruments of influence. It does not give pandas, only lend them, and the contract says that all baby pandas they produce belong to China. Thus, China maintains its monopoly.
This has been used to induce various countries to panda to China.
A heatwave in the US southwest brings temperatures of 49C, 120F, in some places.
If we don't curb global heating, people should expect much worse.
The corrupter has inspired thousands of Americans to hate masks the way they hate Democrats and minority racial groups.
Biden dropped pressure to quickly end burning of coal. Perhaps this was catering to Manchin.
It is a mistake to give Manchin anything without a concrete deal where he gives something concrete in return.
Ukraine's president very very much wants Ukraine to be part of NATO.
I suspect that it would be far more effective, for restraining Putin, to threaten to include Ukraine in NATO than to actually do it. That is a general principle that I learned about by reading a book about Go strategy.
*U.N. rights office voices concern on serious violations by Tunisian police.*
As the Delta variant of Covid-19 spreads, it increases the danger. Being vaccinated is still very helpful, but the chance of catching it despite vaccination is significant.
Delta can also more easily be mistaken for a cold. *The number one symptom is headache … followed by sore throat, runny nose and fever.*
* Rich countries must come forward with detailed plans on how they hope to meet their climate targets.*
A campaign calls on companies to split from ALEC. That organization lobbies states to adopt right-wing policies that hurt poor people, democracy, or both.
Reality Winner has been released on probation, but the US government practice of imprisoning whistleblowers by calling them "spies" is only getting worse.
Global heating will make major Australian cities unlivable in a few decades.
*UK health inequalities made worse by Covid crisis. Disadvantaged groups have faced greatest disruption to medical care.*
The underlying long-term cause of this is steadily increasing underfunding of the NHS. Tories keep saying that they will get more done with less money; but always the result is less done, so some poor people get squeezed out the cracks.
* The [G7] summit was a golden opportunity to avoid countless deaths. History will judge the rich world's failure harshly.*
Floating plastic detritus is transporting various marine species around the world, to other regions where they can become intrusive pests and wipe out native species.
On top of war, Afghanstan's hospitals are collapsing under the weight of Covid-19.
A new form of predatory lending lures women into improvidence by inviting them to imagine the bliss of never worrying about whether you can afford something. Such bliss can be yours in an instant with one-click borrowing.
You will still need to worry about how much you are spending, but you will fail to do what you need.
Imagine when someone combines this with the prosperity gospel. "Start borrowing now, and since you're a good Christian, your debt will miraculously pay itself. If it doesn't? You must not be a good enough Christian."
The US conquest and occupation of Iraq were one cause of its economic weakness, which is enabling China to move towards dominating the world.
I think that its plutocratist decadence is, however, another cause. (The two are related.)
If this were no more than a matter of competition between countries, I would say, "Let the (most capable) country and system win." The reason I don't say that is that China would impose a totalitarian hell.
Protesters in London and Glasgow objected to plans to deport to Jamaica a man who has lived in the UK since he was a toddler.
*This G7 reflects our G-zero world, ruled by self-interest instead of global ambition.*
*Israeli coalition ousts Netanyahu as prime minister after 12 years.*
Netanyahu's great achievement was to eliminate Israel's will to make peace with Palestine, and replace it with the will to subjugate Palestinians for ever.
He has postponed dealing with the corruption charges against him by being prime minister. With luck, the prosecution will soon start and prevent him from holding that office again.
Netanyahu's great achievement was to eliminate Israel's will to make peace with Palestine and replace that with the will to rule Palestinians for ever.
*Pelosi: "beyond belief" that [the corrupter's] DoJ chiefs didn't know of secret subpoenas.*
If it is true that they did not know, it follows that the corrupter had undermined their control of the department in order to use it to undermine the US government.
Since it appears that the leftist candidate has won Peru's presidential election, the right-wing candidate is making bogus accusations of fraud.
The next right-wing step may be to spend a lot of money to create a false impression that the election was stolen. It worked in Bolivia; it might work in the US; it may work in Peru if people don't organize to stop it.
US citizens: call on Zuckerberg to endorse laws prohibiting algorithmic discrimination.
This is a half-measure. Collecting people's personal data endangers them in many ways, and discrimination is only one of them. It also harms society in various ways — for instance, boosting hate groups and conspiracy fantasies; this is not an issue of discrimination by Facebook, even if some of the hate groups might practice or advocate discrimination.
We should not allow anything comparable to Facebook to exist.
In Mexico, 1/4 of the population — 31 million people — have had Covid-19.
I'd expect this to mean around half a million deaths and a larger number with persistent disabilities.
Deep sea explorer Sylvia Earle: we must "protect marine areas and stop eating tuna."
She may be right regarding people in wealthy countries that most seafood we eat is a luxury. But not in poor countries. I've read that around a billion people around the world depend on seafood for their sustenance.
Of course, most of them are not eating expensive tuna. They are eating whatever they can catch near where they live. The people who eat canned herring are not splurging.
I don't want to rush to stop eating tuna in sushi, especially since I only rarely have sushi at all. But I endorse firm measures to end the practice of fishing for tuna, and all forms of overfishing, non sustainable fishing, and ecosystem-damaging fishing.
In some places, "sushi" usually means tuna and salmon only. Other kinds of fish may not even be available. I suggest that people try the other kinds of fish, aside from tuna and salmon, to discover how delicious they are.
Human Rights Watch: *Systemic failures behind Colombia police rights abuses.*
Tunisians are protesting after uniformed thugs beat a prisoner to death.
The prisoner was accused of selling illegal drugs. Repression of drug
dealers is a bad solution to a gratuitous problem created by
prohibition of drugs. The best way to handle drugs that can harm
their users is to
legalize
the drugs and regulate them so that fewer people will use them.
China is teaching Tibetans to
thank
the Party for everything they have
in life.
Argentina has captured a fugitive Chilean colonel who was one of
Chilean
dictator Pinochet's murderers.
*Azerbaijan swaps
15
Armenian PoWs for map of landmines.*
It is very bad to plant antipersonnel landmines.
Assad's forces have
shelled a hospital
again.
The court that convicted Craig Murray for writing about Salmond's
trial decided not
to let him appeal the peculiar basis given for convicting him.
How can it make sense to let a court decide whether its decision can
be appealed? "Is there any chance that you might have misjudged this?
No, that's impossible."
Factory working conditions in southeast Asia
encourage
the spread of Covid-19 among the workers.
One candidate for mayor of New York wants to
fire
most of the public
school teachers, leaving only a few "great" teachers, each of whom
will "teach" 400 students.
This would make sense if students were mass-produced, identical machines.
The American people are in strong agreement about the most important
policy questions, including preserving democracy. These policies have
2/3
support, and many have 3/4 or 4/5 support. A small minority of
extremist Republicans are hijacking the country.
(satire) *Thrilled BlackRock Announces
Purchase
Of 800,000th Dream Home.*
(satire) *Over
2 Million Left Brain-Dead In Most Brutal Day Of Culture
Wars Yet.*
New repressive Republican laws in various states allow
thugs to decide
whether a protest
constitutes a "riot", and to punish anyone nearby when some unidentified
person commits a crime.
Paleontological evidence suggests that global heating may
heat
both summers and winters the same amount.
That would lead to painfully hot summers.
Israeli thugs have
arrested
over 2,000 Palestinians, in many cases
over obviously bogus charges.
Some were protesting; some were at home. Some are journalists, but
journalists were arrested despite not being at protests.
Sometimes the thugs
attacked protesters with violence and then did not
let them get medical treatment.
Sometimes the thugs
did not allow volunteer lawyers to meet with the
prisoners.
Israel demanded that Egypt
block
the shipment of construction materials
needed to rebuild Gaza's destroyed houses, on the grounds that some of it
might be used to rebuild HAMAS's military facilities.
Fortunately, Egypt is disregarding that demand. Biden pledged funds
to help rebuild Gaza, and must have urged Egypt to allow in the
necessary materials to do it.
*EU leaders urge
unfettered
probe into origins of COVID-19.*
I too think that is called for. To achieve it calls for not giving
presenting the possibility of a lab leak as wrongdoing by China.
It would be a mistake.
How should we fund
the
development of drugs to treat resistant diseases?
This article proposes that governments fund them to do the
development, and later are entitled to the drug at a reasonable price.
That could be good if all governments will be entitled to the drug
at a reasonable price. But I suspect that all but the sponsoring country
will have to pay through the nose.
Inviting Big Pharma companies in will surely mean letting them gouge.
They will find an excuse, or simply insist.
I think that the drug-manufacturing know-how should be available to
any country that either (1) is poor or (2) sponsors drug research
appropriately for the size of its economy.
The European Parliament voted
to
support liberating Covid-19 vaccines.
This is non-binding; the parliament has no say over such questions.
A UK appeals court endorsed the right to state dissent from
established political views
about
what respect various individuals deserve.
The UK continues
to impose censorship in other ways,
but this is an important step forward. Unless overturned, it means
that people in the UK cannot impose political censorship by law simply
by saying, "Your views are harming me!"
*Climate and nature crises:
solve
both or solve neither, say experts.*
People of Bristol are working on making
an
accommodation between their
conflicting views about Colston, and political values.
I hope that the targets of racism and the targets of economic
inequality learn to work together. Together they can win.
Amnesty International presents
more
reports of torture of Uyghurs and
other Muslims in Xinjiang.
Having a leader that isn't everyone's worst enemy
is winning back
trust in the US.
Pedro Castillo, a socialist candidate, has won the election for
president of Peru,
subject
to reexamination of some of the ballots.
He is not an extremist, and said he intended to continue a market economy,
but he wants to raise taxes on extractive foreign companies.
Naturally, the right wing is fabricating charges of fraud, as is its
strategy nowadays.
*Single-use bags, plastic bottles, food containers and food wrappers
are
the four most widespread items polluting the seas.*
Russia labeled the Jehovah's Witnesses as an "extremist group" and has
attacked their prayer meetings,
sentencing
some of them to many years
in prison.
This is inexplicable, since they do not advocate violence, or agitate
against Putin.
The European Parliament voted to demand sanctions against Hungary and
Poland for
violating the rule of law.
The wrong those two countries are carrying out consists of
infringing
the independence of the judiciary.
Asking the International Criminal Court to investigate
the deportation of
thousands of Uighurs from Tajikistan to China.
The discovery of unmarked burials of indigenous children who died at a
Canadian boarding school — which they were forced to attend — has
compelled Canada to offer settlement for legal disputes
about
forcing indigenous children to attend those schools.
The purpose of these schools (which were spread across Canada) was to
disconnect indigenous children from their parents, their culture, and
their language. That in itself was cruel, but the schools also
practiced direct physical forms of cruelty, including giving the
students inadequate food.
Canada set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate
the crimes of those schools,
but
has not implemented its recommendations.
Australia's planet-roaster government wants to spend 600 million to
build a new gas-powered generator
that
won't be fully utilized,
and isn't necessary.
At least, it isn't necessary for providing electricity. I am sure
some construction companies and fossil fuel companies desperately need it.
US citizens: call on Biden to fire and replace one of the USPS board
members, to assure
the firing of DeJoy.
The effects
of PTSD on US war veterans are exacerbated by the fact that the
US doesn't want to be a society which cheerfully accepts killing.
We want to be a society that fights wars only when just.
Thus, veterans feel guilt about what they have done in war.
This makes a paradoxical contrast with the fact that the US fights so
many avoidable
wars that one can hardly keep track of them all.
For most of these wars, there is no possibility of
real victory, which means the US has to choose between indefinite
prolongation and
politically
unacceptable voluntary defeat.
Perhaps the best way to reduce the harm done to Americans by PTSD is
by learning to be less ready to fight a war. If we only fought when
there was a reason to be proud afterward of having fought, perhaps we
would fight fewer wars, fewer veterans would suffer moral injury, and
those who did could be welcomed back and healed.
Other countries have similar problems. Samantha Crompvoets
interviewed
Australian veterans about war crimes, and stated
conclusions that the Australian government would rather silence.
Right-wing trumpery: running ads on Facebook for Green Party
candidates in the hope of
dividing
Democrats, and pretending not to be
who they really were.
The Sri Lanka pollution ship disaster can be traced to the country's
debts, which forced
it to lease its ports, long term, to foreign investors
that didn't care about safety.
The UK and the EU are
headed
for a trade war.
Bogus Johnson saw a collision coming, and pretended for political
purposes that it would magically go away.
*How Tories changed
their tune on Northern Ireland protocol.*
In Britain, smokers overall give more support to
discouraging smoking
than to protecting the right to smoke.
Tobacco is death for the smoker, as well as disgusting for everyone
else. I wish I could magically help everyone quit. Nonetheless, I
oppose prohibition of tobacco, on grounds of personal freedom.
China will impose
political
censorship on movies in Hong Kong.
If you are in Hong Kong, the only way to get copies of movies is through
unofficial channels, sharing from people in countries which have only some
of the oppressive systems that Hong Kong and China have.
Right-wing Italian prohibitions want to
repeal
the law that allows making
deals with informants in the Mafia.
They want to have their cake (long prison sentences) and eat it too
(get confessions and convictions).
*The Biden Administration Is Routinely Sending Mexican Children
Back to
Danger, Report Finds.*
The US military is the
largest
socialist entity on Earth.
Strange how officers tend to despise socialism.
The US Labor Department's
new
workplace rules about Covid-19 fail to
require most workplaces to do anything to protect employees.
An enormous group of investment funds are calling on governments to
speed
up greenhouse emissions reduction.
Two notable exceptions are Blackrock and Vanguard, which deserve
specific rejection by the public.
If these funds are serious about the matter, they could exert strong
pressure on corporations as stockholders. Their lobbying power could
be significant too.
The UK has received the suggestion to fill a shortfall in funds for
universities from
low-income graduates,
by reducing the income threshold above which they must repay their
student loans.
That sounds like the sort of soak-the-poor plan that Tories would love.
(satire) *Pfizer Announces
Breakthrough
Medication That Will Treat
Executives To New Chalet In Swiss Alps.*
The would-be tyrant had the Department of Justice
seize communications
records of Democrats in Congress and their staff and relatives,
as part of a leak investigation.
In this
article, an official claims this was meant as punishment, not real investigation.
Chip factories in Taiwan are
having
trouble getting enough water, as Taiwan
suffers form a drought.
Global heating
will lead to more and worse droughts there.
Powerful countries should not allow their manufacture of any critical
product to be concentrated in one region or a few regions. Such
centralization leads to vulnerability — to various kinds of problems.
The way to reduce the vulnerability, to threats of many unrelated
kinds, is to disperse production.
Anti-corruption crusaders in Guatemala have been
charged
with crimes that
are incredible.
I can't imagine that anything could motivate those influential people
to intentionally found a political party and list a dead person as
participant. Why not find a living supporter to list instead?
I conclude the charges must have been fabricated.
Colombia's former president Santos was previously the defense minister
and thus ultimately responsible for the over 6,000 murders committed
by soldiers during that time. He says that he took action to stop the
practice when he determined it was happening. Nonetheless, he
asks
forgiveness.
Santos said that the pressure for the murders came from the then
president, Alvaro Horrible (Uribe).
I think that those who killed, or encouraged or facilitated the
killing, ought to be prosecuted for it.
An article about
keeping
an invasive species as pets (Australian
possums in New Zealand) presents the usual emotional pleas, plus a
peculiar nonsequitur about colonial history.
Perhaps it would be safe and reasonable to permit neutered possums as
pets in New Zealand, provided they are not allowed outdoors. The
article does not say whether the pet-owners interviewed do that.
One of them has a cat, too. Cats in New Zealand are a
similar case.
Even in the US, cats that are allowed outside devastate many species
of birds. If you want to have a cat, please keep it indoors and
protect wildlife.
The UN official in charge of food aid accuses the Eritrian army of
starving
people in Tigray.
One Indian village is
praying
to a new goddess, "Mother Corona", to stop
the disease.
That's where religion comes from.
The G7's agreement on a global tax system for multinational companies
will mostly increase
tax revenue for their home countries. It won't do much good for
poor countries they operate in.
*Whistleblower Craig Murray Sentenced To
8
Months In Prison Over His
Reporting On Former Scottish First Minister's Trial.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the "millionaires
surtax", which would establish higher tax brackets for individuals
with incomes over a million dollars a year.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: remind Senator Manchin that the For the People Act has
overwhelming
bipartisan support.
Many Greek workers are on
strike
against a labor "flexibility" bill that would
weaken their position in some ways against the demands of employers.
Amnesty International: *The self-interest of G7 countries is the
biggest
obstacle to ending the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of
campaigning organizations said today.*
To vaccinate the world fast requires building a lot more vaccine
factories, fast. This requires eliminating the patent obstacle
and making the vaccine companies teach others how to make those
vaccines.
Under the present circumstances, with the way Big Pharma has
corrupted
the field of pharmaceuticals, patents on medicines to a lot of harm
and very little good. (Patents in other fields don't do as much harm,
but they still do
very
little good.)
Any blow against the patent system will be a
good thing.
However, building the additional vaccine factories may not be
necessary. If China will finish vaccinating the world by early 2022,
we might not have any way to speed that up by much.
Student groups call on corporations to
quit
the US Chamber of Commerce
unless it stops lobbying against climate defense.
Right-wing campaign groups are saying that CEOs are engaging in
"corporate-run
communism" when corporations state their opposition to
voter suppression and election sabotage.
They know that right-wing lunatics today will accept any lie that
supports their side.
The Fossil Fuel Exit Strategy presents a
path
to low greenhouse gas
emissions that is feasible with no new technology.
Maine has passed a law to
divest
from fossil fuel assets.
Every government on Earth must do likewise.
(satire) *Children’s Museum Docent Reminds Guests
Not
To Touch The Kids.*
A Dutch court ruled that Shell
must
reduce its greenhouse emissions.
A company executive makes fallacious arguments that this is unfair.
*Wealth Tax on World's Billionaires Would
Raise
$345 Billion a Year.*
(satire) *Desperate Employer Offers
Basic
Dignity To Incentivize New Hires.*
A growing problem: resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure now
frequently downplays the main danger of extracting and transporting
fossil fuels — that they might leak methane into the air, or be burnt
and release CO2. This
example
does not trouble to mention it at all.
What's with these people? I get the impression that they are more
concerned with who owns certain land or waterways than with whether
civilization survives.
Ironically, the same can be said of the companies that want to extract the
fossil fuels.
The reason not to build the Line 3 pipeline applies to every other new
oil or gas pipeline, every new refinery, and every new well or mine:
there is no
room in the world's carbon budget
for any more fossil fuel infrastructure.
Kevin Strickland was convicted of murder in 1979. Since then,
everyone involved in his case agrees he was
falsely
convicted, even
the prosecutors. The governor of Missouri is grasping at straws to
excuse keeping Strickland in prison anyway.
These strict "law and order" fanatics believe that it should be
unthinkable to question a court's decision to punish someone. Unless
that person is trying to destabilize our democracy for right-wing
ideology.
Columbus, Ohio, thugs have been
charged
with crimes for spraying pepper spray on peaceful protesters who
were violating no law or order,
and for covering up lies.
A Louisville thug faces criminal charges for
nonfatal brutality:
hitting a suspect on the head with a stick while the latter was
kneeling with his hands up.
No matter what that person was arrested for, or what he had actually
done, nothing can justify hitting him under those circumstances.
Prosecuting thugs
for unjustified violence even when it is nonfatal is
crucial for teaching them to practice self-control as required for a
police officer.
New York State has made gun manufacturers
legally
liable for damages caused by the manner of marketing or selling guns.
I want those activities to be better regulated, but I am concerned
that this law may be unfair on account of vagueness. If those
companies are to be required to obey new rules, the rules must be
clear.
*San Jose mayor proposes gun owners
carry
insurance and pay annual fee in wake
of mass shooting.*
I am in favor of this. Gun owners should also have to get safety
training and keep the guns in ways that prevent theft or unapproved
use of the gun.
*Venezuela says payments to COVAX vaccine system have been
blocked*
by US sanctions.
Rep. Cori Bush put FBI director Christopher Wray on the spot while he
was testifying to Congress. She demanded a copy of the
records
that the FBI had collected on her protest activity.
Australia's government wants to
give
the WTO more power to make
countries bow down to foreign businesses.
This is indeed the purpose of business-supremacy treaties,
but few governments dare to admit they advocate that purpose.
Now that a court found
"apparent
favoritism" by ministers in choice of
companies to get UK contracts, how will that make future decisions
less corrupt?
The old UK method was that ministers had to resign when visibly
tainted. Now, like US Republicans, Tories don't object to corrupt
ministers, as long as they are Tories. So the question is whether
this will weaken ministers' hand in disagreements with civil service
professionals.
I don't have confidence in that.
*Voluntourism: new book explores how volunteer trips
harm
rather than help.*
*Oregon house expels
Republican who helped far-right rioters enter capitol.*
That is the treatment Republicans bent on insurrection deserve.
The G7's pledges to donate an
insufficient
quantity of Covid vaccines
constitute a total failure.
Unidentified aerial phenomena may appear to be "out of this world",
but they are in fact
mundane
objects that appear mysterious due to the
circumstances of the view.
None of them are evidence for alien visitors.
US citizens: call
on Congress to fully fund a zero
emission transit policy now.
US citizens: call
on Biden to lift sanctions that are blocking Covid relief.
Artificial light at night on coastal reefs
seems
to kill 20% of young
clownfish there.
Ethiopia has built a large dam on the Blue Nile. Egypt and Sudan
worry that by retaining water in Ethiopia,
it
will reduce their share
of the water.
Egypt and Sudan have coasts, and can do solar-powered desalinization
(very expensive) to purify sea water. That is the only solution for
the medium-term — the only way to make enough potable water for the
growing population.
In the long term, curbing and then reversing population growth is the
only way.
The UK has reopened too fast;
the
Delta variant of Covid-19 is spreading.
This was quite predictable.
What the UK needs is leadership in taking the steps to prevent
transmission. But it won't get that from Bogus Johnson, whose
repeated policy changes have not given Britons a reason to trust his
judgment.
Officials' breaking their own hygiene rules have led Britons to
disregard the same rules.
It looks like Russian agents
poisoned
author Dmitry Bykov with
novichok in 2019.
The Keystone XL pipeline has been cancelled. The owner yielded
in
the face of Biden's decision to revoke the permit.
Now what about the Line 3 pipeline? That would carry tar sands oil
too, if it is allowed to be built.
Former Guatemalan soldiers face charges
for
murdering and disappearing
people during the US-supported dirty war.
Koch money and the US Chamber of Commerce
are
behind senators Manchin
and Sinema's stubborn defense of the filibuster.
Texas Republicans have launched the "1836 Project"
to
teach a distorted version
of the reason for Texas's secession from Mexico.
I expect that the Mexican government and Mexicans elites found the
rapid arrival of so many border-crossing immigrants in Texas worrisome
in itself, independent of the fact that some of them illegally had
slaves.
I suspect that one of the aims of this project is to pave the way for
an attempt to take nondemocratic control of the US government,
or else secede.
The UK wants to exempt the big banks from the plan
for
global businesses
to pay tax in the countries where they get the income.
Even if those banks do pay an adequate tax rate — and I won't take a
minister's word for that! — it is still important to make them pay tax
in each country where they operate.
When writing about unknown aerial phenomena (UAPs), it is soooo
tempting for writers to presume that at some of them are sightings of
actual objects that
are actually moving at their apparent high
velocities with their apparent rapid accelerations.
They look like that, but many are not that.
The term "unidentified aerial phenomena" is better than "unidentified
flying objects" because it rejects that presumption — but we need to
remember not to let the presumption sneak in later.
I find it implausible that alien visitors with high technology would
fail to conceal their presence from us, supposing they were trying to
do conceal it.
Due to the deferred US taxes on capital gains, the richest 25 US
billionaires paid an effective tax rate
of
3.4% on the increase of
their known wealth.
How CNN fought the bully's
secret demand for Barbara Starr's email
metadata, which
was supported by secret court filings.
The story is somewhat vague about the ultimate result. It appears
that CNN ultimately did have to deliver some of this information.
The US government should stop persecuting whistleblowers. The US
government should build precedents and laws to prevent persecution if
a subsequent administration sets out to persecute whistleblowers.
*Poll Shows 83% of Americans Believe So-Called 'War on Drugs'
an
Abject Failure.*
US citizens: call on the Secretary of Defense to have
Michael
Flynn tried for advocating a coup.
The UK NHS is hiring nurses who
don't
have nursing qualifications.
This, along with the lack of nurses, results from many years of
gradually reducing
the NHS's funds, together with the refusal to spend enough on training nurses
and the refusal to employ immigrants.
*San Francisco may be first major US city to
hit
herd immunity, experts say.*
Mining destroyed the caves on Banaba Island (also called Ocean Island)
that preserved water in periods of drought. Nowadays, when their
desalination plant breaks,
they
have only sea water to drink.
Lukashenko plans to make
protesting a crime.
Also insulting officials — which is also a crime in many countries that
don't sufficiently respect freedom of speech.
France is an example.
Human rights defenders in Australia are calling for an
end to
imprisoning people secretly.
Australia keeps the identity of such a prisoner secret by threatening
the relatives and friends who know about per disappearance.
A trial held in secret is likely to be an unfair trial. That is true in
Australia just as in the
UK,
Belarus,
or China.
There is no reason to suppose that "Witness J" really broke an
Australian law, or that perse
did not have an overriding justification
for doing so, as
Witness K had.
Feral peacocks have
become
a nuisance in the northern LA region.
I am perplexed by the idea of "relocating" the peafowl. Peafowl
originated in India; in California, they are an intrusive pest
species. There is no reason to protect them.
In India and Europe peafowl were traditionally farmed to be eaten.
We could
Bahrain's political prisoner Husain Barakat
died
in prison from Covid-19.
Prison tends to put prisoners (and guards) in danger of catching
Covid-19. That has been true world-wide. Putting someone in prison
for legitimate political activity, which
repressive
governments such
as Bahrain tend to do. Thus, Bahrain's repression was responsible
for Barakat's death.
The UK government will
pay
landowners for increasing forest cover
in specific beneficial ways.
A PR agency for fossil fuels
greenwashes
its business by
pledging to reduce the greenhouse emissions of its own activities.
That reduction is insignificant compared with the increased use of
fossil fuels by others caused by its own PR work.
Companies that extract or deliver fossil fuels have used this
distraction tactic for years.
Joseph Stiglitz: don't listen to people
that
claim inflation is a real
worry now.
(satire) *Revolutionary New Driverless Car Requires
Zero
Functional Technology To Generate Profit.*
The Sunrise Movement demands Biden stop trying to make a
ruinous
compromise with Republicans that only want to make him fail.
I would like to support the Sunrise Movement. However, I found it was
impossible to participate in any of their activities without running
nonfree software. When I saw that was completely true, I
unsubscribed. I wish they would fix this so I could support them.
The Federal Anti-Solitary Taskforce has developed specific targets for
ending
solitary confinement in US federal prisons.
Solitary confinement is a kind of torture, but the word "tortuous" has
nothing to do with torture. It describes a road or path with many
twists and turns.
New Zealand's prime minister
tentatively
endorsed a big effort to
reduce use of fossil fuel, and reduce other greenhouse gas emissions.
A conman cheated would-be supporters of the bullshitter's campaign by
collecting for a
fake
campaign organization with the fake support of
the bullshitter's relatives.
If your aim is to con people. what better place to seek victims than
among people who want to be lied to? The difference between a fake
charlatan and a real charlatan is a subtle point.
Netanyahu approved
the right-wing march in old Jerusalem that
officials had previously forbidden.
I suspect he aims to create difficulties for the new government that
will probably take office next week.
*Nicaraguan police arrest
third
potential Ortega opponent.*
How many other Nicaraguans might possibly run against Ortega?
Is there anyone in the country that certainly won't do so?
*Knowledge of medicinal plants at risk
as
(indigenous) languages die
out.*
African activists are making some progress campaigning
against female
genital mutilation.
The Australian government plans to weaken environmental protection
laws, and
thus "fast-track extinctions."
Erdoğan is now trying
to
entirely abolish the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party).
The party did well in an election,
so Erdoğan launched a civil war against Kurds and announced victory.
Then he held a new election in which the HDP did not do so well.
Whether this was because nationalists were elated by the "victory" of
Turkey over part of Turkey, or because some HDP voters were dead, I
don't know.
Biden appears to overlook al-Sisi's practice
of
taking relatives of
dissidents as hostages to intimidate them.
The plan for the NHS to distribute patient data (or use of it)
has been
postponed for reconsideration.
It's very useful to make medical records available for medical research,
but there must be a very strict system to prevent it from being used
to judge people or discriminate between them.
"Sharing" is something that people do with people; let's not use that
word for this.
Bogus Johnson's former advisor said he had witnessed dishonesty among
the ministers, but
has failed to give any evidence of dishonesty.
The nastiest forms of Republican election sabotage
are those designed
to destabilize the system of counting votes.
The bully did
pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden's son.
His lawyer, Giuliani, did this on a phone call, of which a recording
has now leaked.
Ratko Mladić has
been finally convicted of genocide in Bosnia.
He ordered the Bosnian Serb to kill Bosnian Muslims with the aim of
driving Muslims out (euphemistically referred to as "ethnic cleansing").
El Salvador convicted Sara Rogel of aborting a pregnancy,
and sentenced
her to 30 years in prison.
She has been released by a judge after 8 years in prison.
Nevada will prohibit useless lawns in the Las Vegas area,
because
the grass wastes scarce water.
Criticizing the fashion for making documentaries as stories,
and
prioritizing empathy (for individuals) over understanding (of a
phenomenon that affects individuals).
Something like this has happened in textual journalism. I sometimes
stop reading an article because the "human story, feel for this human
who was hurt" part is too big and heavy compared to the part that
explains what's going on (events that may hurt lots of people).
The House of Representatives once had rules
that
allowed something
comparable to a filibuster.
Segregationist Democrats tried to be counted as absent one moment
and present the next. In 1890, the House stopped permitting them to
be counted as absent while actually physically present.
US citizens: tell Congress that the federal infrastructure bill must
be big,
bold and green.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
California is in
deep
drought, exacerbated by global heating. Many
farms will be idle this year for lack of water. There may be big
wildfires again.
I wonder whether lakes will have water available to put out the fires.
*China funneling
billions into harmful production of beef, soy and palm
oil, says campaign group.*
Researchers say that the economic impact of
global heating disaster, in 2060,
will be twice
that of Covid-19.
African great apes are predicted to
lose
90% of their habitats.
Their survival in the wild could be impossible.
Turning off the light in half the windows of a large building can
reduce
bird collisions by a factor of ten.
In Australia A plague
of mice is destroying crops, even houses,
but the poison that might be effective would kill endangered parrots,
as well as predators that eat mice.
NYC unions plan to move their retirees onto
Medicare
Advantage programs whether they like it or not.
These insurance programs reduce the subscriber's costs when the subscriber
is more or less well, and can
increase
them by thousands of dollars when the subscriber needs expensive medicines.
*Hawaii bill seeks to gut funding aimed at
protecting
environment from
tourism.*
Republican state governments are using federal funds, meant to support
poor families, to fund phony "crisis pregnancy centers" whose purpose is to
spread
religious opposition to abortion.
*Top Japanese virologist
warns
of risks of Tokyo Games during pandemic.*
The Olympic games tend to do lasting harm wherever they are held:
to homeless people, to
anonymity
(via public surveillance), and to
the public treasury.
If your city proposes to hold them, I suggest
campaigning
against the bid. This has been successful.
The EFF analyzes
the Supreme Court's decision about the CFAA.
It pretty clearly rejects the twisted interpretation that was
used against Aaron Swartz, then at the end creates some doubt.
The US informs
other countries about drug mules so that those countries can catch
them and imprison them. Most of these drug mules are old,
and many have been tricked into carrying drugs.
Aside from the special case of cognitively impaired old drug mules,
what about drug mules in general? Many of them claim to be duped,
too. Some of those are lying, some are telling the truth.
What of those who participate knowingly? Indeed, they are committing
crimes. But what purpose is served by practice of imprisoning them?
As far as I can see, it does a lot of harm to them, and achieves
little good for anyone else. The whole War On Drugs does
more
harm than good, even when it concerns drugs that are dangerous.
*How Third-Party Auditors Make
Oil
Industry Fraud Possible.*
75,000 customers of Amazon filed cases demanding arbitration, so
Amazon withdrew
the rule saying that customers can't do class-action
suits.
Companies should not make their customers or employees use arbitration
instead of suing. If what happened to Amazon convinces companies to
stop, that will solve the problem. But if arbitration requirements
continue, we need laws to negate them.
(satire) *Biden Offers Infrastructure Concession By Partially
Demolishing
Brooklyn Bridge.*
*In a secretly recorded video, GOP Oregon lawmaker tells protesters how he
will help
them enter closed state Capitol.*
Will the legislature expel him?
The Department of Justice
continued
trying to subpoena journalists' communications records even as
Biden was saying his administration would not do this.
One can never rule out lying by a politician, but another explanation
seems plausible: institutional inertia. People appointed by the
bully
may still be in their positions, and committing sabotage to serve him.
Others may still be following orders they received which reflected
his policies.
The DOJ recently said it would not do this any more, so it looks
like Biden took the necessary action to overcome the bully's
policies.
The last time Earth had
this
level of atmospheric CO2, it was 7F hotter
(around 4C) and sea level was around 80 feet higher.
If we don't get the CO2 level back down to 350 ppm, we are likely to
see all of today's coastal cities inundated, by and by.
*Swiss to vote on whether to become first European nation
to ban
synthetic pesticides.*
Hungary says that the proposed Budapest branch of the Chinese
university Fudan has not been approved,
and
suggests it could be
cancelled if local people don't like it.
It could be an excuse to silence controversy and quietly proceed with
the plan.
We don't know enough about the things that affect male fertility
to
draw conclusions from the sperm count data.
What we do know is that the world's human population is still increasing,
and that is still dangerous.
*Israeli police
bar
right-wing march through Jerusalem's Old City.*
I guess the authorities have noticed that they couldn't keep playing
with that fire.
The attorney general of Washington DC is suing Amazon, claiming that
Amazon
Prime uses Amazon's size to harm competitors.
Today's industry, at least in the west, has prioritized efficiency
over robustness. The result is that
lots
of things don't work.
The president of Colombia announced measures
to
try to restrain the thugs' violence against protesters.
I don't know how effective they will be, but at least this
acknowledges the problem.
*Our decision to structure patent and copyright monopolies in a way
that allows for a small number of people to get incredibly rich is
because
we have politicians who like very rich people.*
If China is on track to provide vaccines to most of the world by early
2022, it seems that a western investment in increased vaccine
production would be a waste now, because it is too late to help. It
would, reportedly, produce enough vaccine to vaccinate the world by
the end of 2022, but long before that it won't be needed any more.
Why is China going faster? I suspect it has more to do with the (low)
competence of the western business system than with the competence of
western engineers. This too is due to having politicians who like
very rich people.
Israeli thugs
beat up, then arrested al-Jazeera journalist Givara Budeiri
while
she was covering a protest.
As usual, the thugs
fabricated outrageous accusations against her,
but even if they were true, they would not have justified ordering her
to stop covering the protests for 15 days.
The UK minister for domestic oppression wants internet platforms to
delete postings
that
"glamourise" migrants' crossing the channel
illegally.
This shows that censorship is now the go-to British solution for
unpleasant communications.
Plutocracy interferes at every political level
in
efforts to save
civilization from global heating disaster.
The world can no longer allow profit-seeking companies such as Shell
to manage
the continued use of fossil fuels.
They will try to drag it out as long as they can.
The wealthy countries have put a lot of money
into developing new
fossil fuel facilities in poor countries.
This is busting the carbon budget and directing civilization toward
disaster.
Nigeria says that use of Twitter is banned
and
it will prosecute anyone
who tweets.
Publishing news obtained from Twitter
is
banned too.
The Dept of Justice
tried
to get reporters' email logs for a leak
investigation.
*Global G7 deal
may
let Amazon off hook on tax, say experts.*
Protesters in British Columbia
are
trying to stop the unsustainable logging
of old-growth forests.
Humans have already eliminated most of the old-growth forests that
existed 100 years ago. It's time
to
stop before they are all gone.
As the supply of these woods decreases, their price will rise. If
today's high prices are taken as a reason not to stop now, higher
prices in the future will always be a reason to keep logging — until
there are no old-growth forests left. That is absurd, so this reason
is invalid.
US citizens: call on Congress to
repeal
the 2002 Authorization for Use
of Military Force.
This was meant for a misguided and harmful purpose — to authorize
attacking and occupying Iraq — but continues to be stretched to justify
other wars.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Californians are trying to save monarch butterflies by
planting more
milkweed for their caterpillars.
But they don't know whether this will do the job.
Computerized systems to monitor old people, perhaps partly demented,
for their safety, work by means of
AI-based
surveillance, and their
actions can feel oppressive to the people they "help".
However, the problem goes deeper: they contain proprietary software, so
neither the people to be "served" nor the people who install the system
have real control over it.
In particular, they can't be sure which sorts of events are being
observed and reported to companies by the system, and used to profile
or manipulate people.
A 3D model of the movements of protesters in Charlotte, a year ago, as
well as the thugs
who had surrounded them, demonstrates that thugs
intentionally
trapped and besieged the protesters.
Then they attacked the trapped protesters with tear gas and other
weapons.
UK officials told asylum seekers in immigration jails that complaining
about the conditions there would
jeopardize
their asylum requests.
Manchin has effectively
killed
the For the People Act.
This means nothing can be done to stop Republicans from stealing the
next election at the level of various states.
Uganda's president has
jailed
hundreds of the opposition after his
"reelection."
The 2,000 inhabitants of Wagina island, in the Solomons, won a court
case to prevent a bauxite mine on their small island. Then 8 of them
appointed themselves a "council of elders" and
claimed to authorize
the mine.
I wonder what inducement convinced those 8 people to do this.
*The Tax Foundation [Cites] Mythical Taxpayers to Cause Alarm Over
Proposals That [Would]
Only
Impact the Wealthiest Among Us.*
A business leader says that rich countries must cooperate with
vaccinating poor countries in order for poor countries to
cooperate with
climate defense.
I don't know whether the two issues are linked, but I am not sure it
matters. Rich countries must cooperate with vaccinating poor
countries. Poor countries must cooperate with climate defense.
The FBI demanded from USA Today the
IP
addresses of everyone that read
a certain newspaper article.
The power to get that information is dangerous to a free society. I
take steps to prevent such information from being recorded about me.
This is also why I do not identify myself when accessing any online
publication, whether text, music, video, or whatever.
Now the Department of Justice says it
won't
demand reports' phone records
for leak investigations.
That is a small change for the better, but what we really need to do
is change the Espionage Act and whatever other laws whistleblowers may
be prosecuted under.
Some democrats ask Biden to *support a
$25 billion investment in the
production
of roughly eight billion mRNA
vaccine doses.*
Is that what we need? The words are not precise enough for me to
tell.
Whatever vaccine production lines exist will surely keep running,
producing vaccine, as long as there are people who want to be
vaccinated. I expect funds will be found to pay for the vaccine and
vaccinate someone or other. Pledging funds towards that will be
necessary, but doing so in advance won't speed things up.
The way to funds to speed up vaccinating the world is by increasing
the future rate of production: building more plants, sooner. If
that's what this plan would do, I'm in favor of it.
So which one are they proposing to do with that money?
If it refers to
this
proposal, then it would be spent on boosting production. In that case, I'm
in favor of it.
(satire) *L.A. Mayor Prevents His Kid From Lazing About By
Installing
Spikes On Family Couch.*
The connection between the lousy US response to Covid-19 and the
laissez-mourir plutocracy of the cult of the invisible hand calls for
an investigation, but there is
no
visible intention to investigate
this.
Florida is considering a constitutional amendment to declare that
rivers
have rights.
I am in favor of the goals of this amendment, and practical rules such
as are likely to follow from it. However, it should not be formulated
this way.
It is a confusion to extend "rights", as such, to anything other than
intelligent beings. To exercise a right is to make a decision. A
river cannot make any decision whatsoever, so it cannot exercise any
right whatsoever.
If you think a river can have rights, next you'll believe that a
corporation can have rights. Reject these absurd ideas!
It would be legitimate to decide that rivers have inherent value, that
there is an imperative to preserve them in good state, that their
health counts in some sorts of legal questions. Just don't call this
"rights".
*126 Nobel Laureates Warn
"Humanity
Taking Colossal Risks With Our Common
Future."*
10
signs of fascism on the rise.
The US faces an immediate fascist threat, not merely a potential one.
The progressive caucus warned Biden that they would not vote for a
"compromise"
infrastructure bill dictated by Republican senators.
Afterward, Biden rejected the Republican proposal.
We need to get Manchin and Sinema to vote to abolish the filibuster.
Rejecting Republican sabotage "solutions" for the infrastructure bill
might put on enough pressure to achieve that goal.
Biden's plan is already a "compromise" compared to
what
we really need.
What's at stake in the infrastructure plan: prosperity, democracy,
saving
civilization from climate disaster.
Also making America great again, with health and strength rather
than bullying and cruelty.
Nicaragua has jailed a
second
opposition presidential candidate.
The charges are vague, of course.
*Psychopath-Driven Inequality (grab-it capitalism) Is
Making Our
Society Sick.*
Rewarding the "move fast and break things" approach makes the US even
more psychopath-favorable today than it was before.
It turns out that Victoria (a state in Australia) does not requires
everyone to use an app
to "check
in" when entering a supermarket (or any other store).
People are allowed to use other methods, including pencil and paper.
Thus, this system does not require customers to run nonfree software.
It does track their movements. Whether that is acceptable, for the
very importat purpose of eradicating outbreaks of Covid-19, depends in
my view on how much that data is available to be used for other purposes.
*Microsoft blocks Bing
from
showing image results for Tiananmen "tank man".*
If you support Chinese censorship, Microsoft, move to China!
Even Zionists can
condemn Israel's occupation policies.
US movies are ceasing to treat abortion as taboo, ceasing to present
female characters
who
find abortion too stressful to go through with.
It turns out that SARS-CoV-2 spreads by aerosols —
usually not
travelling a long distance, but it can do so.
Some Amazon warehouses provide a booth which a staff person can get
into for some sort of help in coping
with
the pressure of working in
an Amazon warehouse.
I suspect Amazon will keep track of what employees say and do while in
the booth, and use that as well as other profiling that information to
decide how to pressure them and whether to fire them.
A thug involved in killing Ronald Greene lied about what the
thugs had
done, then
falsely claimed not to have any body camera footage.
Officials including the governor participated in the coverup.
Somehow, that body camera footage showed up recently. I am curious how.
*126 Nobel Laureates Warn
'Humanity
Taking Colossal Risks With Our Common
Future'*.
They say that "transformational action this decade" is absolutely necessary.
*More than a dozen cities push
to
minimize or even eliminate police
presence at mental health calls.*
This is an important part of the substance that "defund the police"
refers to. However, it is also important to take armed
thugs out of
traffic law enforcement. That is another big source of opportunities
to mess up someone's life.
The Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo prison saw that some prisoners were
being tortured, and saw that the officials knew most prisoners were
innocent, and
saw that Dubya would not release them because that would
mean admitting a mistake.
After his scheduled return to the US at the end of his tour of duty,
he was jailed and kept in solitary confinement with some of the same
sorts of torture, based on the general feeling that he sympathized
with the prisoners and must therefore be a terrorist.
*Firefighters Denied Coverage by Veterans Affairs
After
Exposure to PFAS
Firefighting Foam.*
A federal judge, who is a second-amendment extremist, ruled that
an
AR-15 is legally equivalent to a swiss army knife.
It is possible to hurt someone or destroy something with a swiss army
knife, but it isn't particularly good for that use. It is mainly
designed for other things.
Conversely, it may be possible to use an AR-15 for something that
doesn't involve sloppy destruction, but it isn't designed for that.
Indeed, it would be a clever hack to do so.
*Arctic sea ice
thinning
twice as fast as thought, study finds.*
This will accelerate global heating.
*End destruction of nature
to
stop future pandemics, say scientists.*
The immediate cause is that people get into closer contact with
wildlife. However, the amount of travel (between regions and between
countries) is increasing, and that helps a disease become a pandemic.
Parts of Peru have a Covid-19 outbreak that exceeds hospital capacity
in some regions. In those regions, many of the sick people die
even though
standard treatment could have saved them.
Uber recognized a drivers' union in the UK, but the contract signs away
collective bargaining on their rate of pay.
One
driver says it's a "dud".
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to end the filibuster and pass the For the People
Act.
Han Dongfang
commemorated
the Tiananmen Square massacre alone in Hong Kong. He lived through
that massacre in 1989 and will not stop resisting.
"Before your last breath, don’t tell yourself you are dead."
*Residents light candles, lay flowers and paint messages as
police
enforce ban on annual vigil for massacre.*
The EU has
proposed
"we'll try a little harder" as a substitute for unlocking vaccine
production.
The point at the end about the existing WTO for compulsory licensing
of patents is true (though countries including the US
have
pressured countries not to do this), but it is fundamentally
inadequate because it only allows a country to make vaccine for its
own use. Most countries, other than big economies, can't do their own
vaccine manufacturing. The bigger and more capable countries must be
allowed to make vaccine for the smaller/poorer countries.
Globally, the world has to choose between efficiency (and profit), and
finishing the job of vaccinating everyone quickly.
The efficient way to vaccinate everyone is to make just enough vaccine
plants, then run them until they make enough vaccine for everyone.
That costs less but will take a long time.
The rapid way is to keep building vaccine plants, so that the
production will accelerate. This way, we will get enough vaccine to
vaccinate everyone, sooner.
The drawback is that many of those vaccine plants won't run for a
whole year. The expense of running them may seem wasteful. Private
companies would call it wasteful, but so would the governments that
have to pay to get them running. "Why be in such a rush", they will
argue. "We have enough plants now — be patient and you'll all
get vaccine."
However, while billions of people are "being patient", tens or
hundreds of millions of them will be patients, and millions of them
might die from Covid-19.
In addition, the virus might mutate and become even more dangerous
than the Delta and Kappa variants are now. They might kill hundreds
of millions of people.
Producing vaccine as fast as we can until the job is finished
is worth the cost.
The EU has
banned
Belarus planes from EU airspace, and orders its planes not to fly
over Belarus.
What about planes registered in other countries — the UK, for
instance? Should the EU allow UK planes flying to or from EU cities
to cross Belarus?
*World's
soils "under great pressure", says UN pollution report.*
*UN Agencies
Call
for a Decade of Restoring Ecosystems to Confront Biodiversity and
Climate Emergencies.*
*World
must
rewild on massive scale to heal nature and climate, says UN.*
Rewilding is often a difficult task, and in some cases nobody knows a
way to make it successful. We can't count on being able to duplicate
an ecosystem that has been eliminated in a place, not even if that
ecosystem still exists elsewhere. And even less, if it does not.
Dissident leaders in Nicaragua
call
for a general strike to protest the jailing of the opposition
leader.
EU agrees to
compel
multinationals to publish how much tax they pay in each EU country and
in some non-EU countries (though some of the biggest tax havens
are missing from that list).
For countries that charge businesses no tax, will they be required to
publish how much of their income flows through them?
*Microsoft Irish subsidiary
paid
zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year.*
This subsidiary is only nominally Irish, since it "pays taxes" in
Bermuda, and it sucks in money from around the world.
The Republican motto is "Say it with cruelty." The governor of Texas
plans
to cancel the licenses of the child care facilities that take care of
immigrant minors, trying to compel the federal government to keep
them in prisons instead.
The federal government could transport them to new facilities outside
Texas. But Texas is big, so they would need to spend a long time in a
bus, exposed to catching Covid-19 from each other.
If governments agree to liberate manufacture of vaccines,
companies
could sue them using
business-supremacy
treaties. "You're not allowed to save lives if that reduces our
profits," is the motto of plutocracy.
(satire) *Homeowner
Shoos
Away Feral Driverless Car Rooting Around Garage.*
(satire) *Congress Takes Field Trip To Goldman Sachs
To
Learn How Laws Get Made.*
The Supreme Court limited the breadth of the Computer Fraud and Abuse
Act, ruling that
accessing
data for invalid purposes was not a violation.
This was the right decision. Justice Thomas was confused in his
arguments. It should be prohibited to pull a fire alarm when there is
no file — and it is prohibited, by another law, one which has
nothing to do with using a digital system. The CFAA should not apply.
The recent experiment in giving every US household hundreds of dollars
showed that this made a
big
help in easing poverty. So let's do it every year.
Paxton Smith, high school valedictorian,
focused
her speech on condemning the new Texas anti-abortion law.
Amazon has
cancelled
its policy of gratuitous drug testing of employees.
This is a change for the better, but Amazon continues to
mistreat
its staff and its customers so I won't
start buying there because of this change.
Many large companies have this policy of harassment. Drug testing is
part of the war on drugs, and it's not a good solution to real
problems.
For employees such as drivers whose ability to concentrate is crucial
for safe work, it is better to test their concentration and reflexes
each day than to test them for drugs once in a while.
*UN Labor Agency Finds Pandemic Pushed
Over
100 Million Workers Into Poverty.*
The Pentagon
continues
understating the number of civilians killed by US military
operations. It
tends
to call casualties "enemy combatants" regardless of facts.
A study found that right-wing Americans are
more
likely to believe fake news. Also, that right-wing viral stories
tend to be fake.
US citizens:
call
on Biden to cancel student debt now. At least some of it!
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reduce military spending.
A long list of
voter-suppression
measures in the Texas Republican voting bill that Democrats
recently blocked.
The US proposal for subdividing international taxation would be a step
forward, but it is wrong to use the nation's power to defend those
companies' exploitation.
Facebook, Google, and Amazon, etc
mistreat their "users"; I say that Facebook does not have users, only
useds.
Schumer's bill to focus on China as a threat
would
cancel the joint climate action plan that Kerry has negotiated.
China's growing power, and its practice of using that to build an
empire of repression, is a threat to the world. However, the actions
we can take to defend against that are mostly in specific areas of
activity. Global heating
is also a threat to the world. We should be
able to work together on climate defense.
(satire) *Dianne Feinstein
Considers
Eliminating Filibuster Over Upcoming Vote On Smoot-Hawley Tariff.*
*America Has
More
Than Enough Renewable Resources to Meet All of Its Energy Needs,
Says Report.*
Indonesia's
leading
anti-corruption investigator has been fired, and says it is
because corruption has won.
China is setting up the internet for many African countries, and China
is reportedly
implementing
a different architecture that allows it to monitor and control all
usage.
*‘If publishers become afraid, we’re in trouble’:
publishing’s
cancel culture debate boils over.*
40 years ago there were many substantial independent publishers with
distribution to bookstores. If a few refused to publish a book, it
could still reach the public. Nowadays there are four large
publishing empires (or is it now just three?). It is easy to keep a
book from reaching bookstores.
The concentration of book publishing results from plutocratist
policies which continue to allow mergers in nearly all industries.
We need to deconcentrate industry, to make the large companies split up
into many competing pieces. My
tax
proposal is a way to do this without needing a lot of lawsuits.
In 2021, Apple has been
shifting
more production to China.
A fire in 2020 seems to have destroyed
1/10
of the world's giant redwood trees.
The fire's intensity was partly due to human fire-suppression
activity. We could prevent wildfires from being intense enough to
damage those trees by doing a lot more controlled burns, but that is
easier said than done. It is hard to keep a controlled burn under
control in times of deep drought, and even harder when flammable
debris has accumulated.
It would make sense to grow more giant redwood groves in widely
separated places.
*Why Israeli progressives have
started
to talk about ‘apartheid’.*
Russia will extradite a Belarusian exile to Belarus, who is charged
with protesting and is
likely
to be tortured there.
This is not surprising given that Putin is fundamentally similar to
Lukashenko in his contempt for opposition and dissent.
*Trump justice department
secretly
obtained New York Times reporters’ phone records, paper says.*
This was, of course, a hunt for leakers (whistleblowers). The US
should stop persecuting leakers, because they serve the public.
*Why governments
should
keep spending, and stop worrying about inflation.*
We are still in a slump, and the way to end a slump is with deficit
spending.
However, we should stop putting government funds into fossil fuel
development and
move
it all to renewable energy.
The only obstacle to a renewable energy future is that governments
still put their money into civilization-killing fossil fuels.
An Arab party has
endorsed
right-wing annexationist Naftali Bennett as prime minister of
Israel. Without the Arab party, Bennett would lose his majority.
This may restrain him from passing new unjust laws.
All of humanity is under attack by the greenhouse emissions that
humanity makes.
Television
news fails to show the severity of this.
*Denmark agrees
law
to deport asylum seekers outside Europe.*
This sounds somewhat like the horrible things that Australia has done.
Biden is
raising
the pressure on senators Manchin and Sinema to eliminate the
filibuster and pass voting rights laws.
Norway says that in 2014 it objected to US spying on allies, and the
US
promised
it would stop.
*Climate tipping points
could
topple like dominoes, warn scientists.*
The Indian "delta" variant of Covid-19 is twice as likely to cause a
severe case that requires hospitalization. It also
spreads
more easily. This is evolution at work.
The article does not state anything quantitative about effectiveness
of vaccines against it.
*Pakistan court
overturns
blasphemy conviction of Christian couple.*
*Top ALEC Official
Is
Ringleader of Arizona Election Audit Circus.*
*Ai Weiwei accuses curators
of
rejecting artwork over [a reference to]
Julian Assange.*
Nicaragua's dictatorial president Ortega has arrested the main opposition
candidate, Chamorro,
on
charges of money laundering.
It is not impossible that these charges could be valid, but it is
implausible. Ms Chamorro has been under state harassment for many
years. Would she take the risk of committing a real crime and giving
Ortega a valid reason to prosecute her? Of course not.
Biden has announced a new drive
to
vaccinate 70% of Americans against Covid-19.
If this is achieved, uniformly over the population, the US will be at
or near herd immunity, safe against the disease. Unless we encounter
a variant that is more transmissible, in which case herd immunity
would need a higher fraction to be vaccinated.
The mayor of Budapest will demonstrate opposition to building a branch
of a Chinese university in Budapest
through
street names China will
not like.
I love this sort of mischievous hacktivism. And I have a suggestion.
How about naming a plaza in the vicinity of the university site Tien
An Men Square? Then they could have a rally for democracy (in China,
in Hungary, world-wide) every June 4.
Giving babies special medical care and education for five years
resulted
in visible increases in the size of some brain regions at age
40.
Two billionaires want to build
a
molten-salt nuclear fission power
plant using US government money.
I am skeptical of the claim that this would be "clean" energy. It would
not emit greenhouse gases, but it would create radioactive material.
Many Americans refuse Covid-19 vaccination
because
they fear it would
cause them financial side-effects.
When properly understood, that concern is a reason to get vaccinated
as soon as you can. Vaccination is gratis, but if you get a severe
case of Covid-19, treatment is not.
However, the US needs to do a better job of showing everyone that
vaccination is gratis.
*Revealed: NHS England bosses meet with tech and pharmaceutical giants
to
discuss price list of millions of Brits' medical data.*
The data would be "anonymized", but we know that it is easy to
identify most of the "anonymized" individuals
given several data
about each one.
The NHS has no inherent need to sell anyone access to data about its
patients. The illusion of a need comes from the Tory policy of
starving the NHS of funds,
since 2019,
which I believe is intended to lead to privatizing the NHS
and thus effectively destroying it.
Tories now plan to include this in a business-supremacy treaty with
the US, so that future UK governments would have their hands tied.
*"DOJ Antitrust is run by people promoted under Trump/Barr!"*, and
they
are not trying to restrain monopolies.
The EU's Green New Deal has many fundamental flaws.
Here they are.
Global heating
is causing the level of oxygen in lakes to decrease —
by 20% so far. This endangers wildlife
and
can taint drinking water.
For Europeans 16-25 years old, Covid-19 has caused great harm to their
lives. 2/3 of them
are
at risk of depression.
*G7 nations committing
billions
more to fossil fuel than green energy.*
*Microwave weapons
that
could cause Havana Syndrome exist, experts say.*
The British and Australian governments
plan
to subject those two countries to a business-supremacy treaty
which gives businesses direct power over what laws the countries can
have.
This would be implemented with an
ISDS clause ("I Sue
Democratic States") that would empower foreign businesses to sue the
state if it does anything that would reduce the profits those
businesses expect to make.
The advocates of taking the UK out of the European Union said that the
goal was to recover Britain's sovereignty. I warned that the Tories
would
give
that sovereignty to global business instead, and now they are
about to do it.
Australia has
bad
experiences with an ISDS clause, and politicians should have
learned their lesson never to accept one again. But the current
government of Australia is irredeemably plutocratist.
Pakistan's army tortured journalist Asad Toor in his home,
then
charged him with "defaming" the government.
The next step will be to explicitly criminalize criticism of the
government.
*By representing [UK government policy] failures as the outcome of the
psychological nature of groups,
"groupthink"
hides their political
basis.*
The Tories want
to put the UK into the TPP.
That would imply subjecting it to the ISDS clause ("I sue democratic
states") that
gives foreign companies more rights than citizens.
Australia has suffered greatly
from
the ISDS clauses.
A ship laden with chemicals, many of them more or less toxic,
is sinking near Sri Lanka and
is
likely to poison the wildlife
in that area.
The effects could last for decades.
*Biden suspends
Trump-era
oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge.*
This is one step towards what we need for ecosurvival. There is no room
in the carbon budget for additional fossil fuel infrastructure. We need
to end the drilling world-wide.
*Key species at risk
if
planet heats up by more than 1.5C.*
The loss of those species can upend ecosystems and thus cause havoc.
*Emissions from coal mined in Australia but exported and burnt overseas
were
almost double the nation’s domestic greenhouse gas footprint in
2020.*
When coal is mined in country A and burnt in country B, which one is
responsible for those emissions? Both share the responsibility, since
both work together to arrange to burn that coal.
If we had sufficient pressure to stop burning coal, country B would
stop buying it and stop burning it. Country A would not be able to
prevent that.
But the world does not put enough pressure on country B to bring the
practice to an end; thus, pressure to stop mining the coal is needed
too.
Since Covid-19, ambulance crews in the UK have been attacked enough
times that
they will now wear body cameras to document the attacks.
What's the cause of this, I wonder?
When cruise ships start operating again, they plan to destroy coral reefs
around Gran Cayman Island
to
build a bigger harbor and unload far more
tourists every day.
Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft
are
lobbying to kill right-to-repair bills
in many US states.
Some of the arguments they use amount to, "We designed these products
to be tricky to repair," and the obvious response is, "You had better
not do that any more."
Looking at the information in the article from the standpoint of users'
freedom, we see that Chromebooks (some of them? all of them?) are designed
not to work unless it can spy on the user.
Pharma companies spent $$44 million last year on lobbying EU countries,
and
much of it was to oppose generic vaccines.
*At a Time When America Faces Cascading Crises, Republicans Just Say No* —
to
every constructive action.
Amazon's harsh working conditions and workloads result in
a rate
of injury 50% higher than in competing companies.
Please don't buy from Amazon. I refuse to buy from Amazon for my own
protection, because buying from Amazon entails being identified and
running nonfree software. In addition, I boycott Amazon, so I ask
others, when they are getting anything for me, not to get it from
Amazon.
There's no harm in looking at products in Amazon's web site as long as
you've blocked it from identifying you or running nonfree software on
your machine.
* …coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths would
continue to rise [in North Carolina] if pandemic precautions such
as quarantine, school closures, social distancing and mask-wearing
were
lifted while vaccines were being rolled out.*
*Illinois lawmakers pass a bill
banning
police from deceiving juvenile
suspects during interrogations.*
You may call me hyperstrict, but I think there should be limits on
manipulative treatment of adults, too. Adults are not immune to being
pressured into false confessions. I agree that an adult ought be
strong enough to resist the pressure to lie, but that doesn't imply
that adults who are not strong enough to resist deserve a false
conviction.
*How US mega-dairies are
killing
off small farms.*
Chinese censors are very creative at
inventing
speech crimes.
*An Indian court has ruled that a local government administration in
Uttar Pradesh filed
a "false and unfounded" police report against
eight Muslim leaders who had opposed the "illegal" demolition of
their mosque.*
Belarusian protester Stepan Latypov cut his throat in court, saying
that he had pled guilty because Lukashenko's men had
threatened to
imprison his family and neighbors if he did not.
I suppose he had been tortured already and expected more torture, so
he attempted to escape a fate worse than death.
He may have failed in that attempt — but he did land a blow on the
enemy in the process. I bow to the courage he displayed in doing
this.
Amazon gave customers just one week to opt out of having
their Amazon devices
offer
wifi connections to other people's
devices.
I don't think that letting other people's devices connect is as bad as
the spying that Amazon devices do. However, giving people one week to
opt out of anything should be prohibited. The FCC should set
standards for this, and any company that doesn't follow the standard
should be prosecuted.
If a company is too big to prosecute then it is too big to exist.
A campaign asks the UK's NHS doctors to
refuse
to put patient data
into the new digital system that makes it available to companies.
Australia has an outbreak of the Indian variant of Covid-19, and finds
that it
can spread when people brush past each other momentarily.
This is very dangerous — people need to get vaccinated.
A year ago, *NYPD Took
Hours
to Respond to Mass Looting,
Despite Quickly Cracking Down on Protests.*
*Oil and Gas Companies Get Enormous Welfare,
Still Lay Off Workers and Enrich Executives.*
And they are "too busy" to testify at a congressional hearing.
Israel's request for more military aid from the US faces
opposition from
US Jews, including Jewish Voice for Peace, and Senator Sanders.
The US has offered aid to rebuild Gaza. That influence over Gaza, plus
the influence the US has on Israel when it dares to use it, could be
sufficient to prevent more violence — if the US can also guide Israel
away from the apartheid and fanaticism that could spark violence.
*[Republican] initiatives are transforming several
states into political systems that
no
longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is
now at risk.*
(satire) *Couple Who Met During Pandemic
Tenderly
Remove Each Other’s Mask Straps For First Time.*
Juan Cole: Naftali Bennett, who personally advocates annexing the
Palestinians' land and treating them as unwanted residents, may become
prime minister of Israel
with
the support of a coalition of parties
with a spectrum of different views.
Ironically, he may need one Arab party's votes. I can't begin to
guess how much of Bennett's personal views would get implemented by
that coalition.
But it could stay in power long enough for Netanyahu to be formally
prosecuted for corruption. Maybe then he could not become prime
minister again, and the political situation would change permanently.
Trickle-up economics: economic modeling including the "velocity of
wealth" predicts that giving a larger share of economic growth to the
non-wealthy increases economic growth, and this benefits everyone
including the wealthy —
while
decreasing the gap between them.
The result is to increase the total level of consumption. That would
be good if it benefited mainly the non-wealthy, except for one
problem: nowadays it is not clear that we can sustain more consumption
in the US.
Daniel Ellsberg published a secret US report
that proposed using
nuclear weapons against China in 1958,
supposing China were to attack Taiwan.
Now he dares the US government to charge him under the Espionage
Act, as it has charged other leakers including Edward Snowden,
as well as journalist Julian Assange.
Lukashenko has charged the editor-in-chief of TUT.BY with tax evasion
"on an especially large scale,"
which
could only be a fabricated excuse.
*Colombia to probe police who stood by
as
civilians shot at protesters.*
Pakistani talk-show host Hamid Mir criticized the military's
censorship of media,
and
was removed from his show with no explanation.
Unsustainable logging in the Solomon Islands
will eliminate its
natural forests in 15 years.
I suppose this will cause extinction of many species. Ecological
damage is everywhere.
Some used book stores
will
give money to the book's author when they
sell a book.
I'd be in favor of this if it were accompanied by a move to narrow the power
of copyright.
Many local armed groups
are
fighting the Burmese army.
The army is
using artillery and helicopters to attack them.
Hong Kong's repression agency arrested a solitary protester
who called
attention to the 1989 massacre in Beijing's Tien An Men square,
Grandma Wong.
19 members of Oath Keepers militias
have
been charged with attacking
the Capitol.
The new Texas voter-suppression law will do more than stop
disprivileged people from voting. It will also give judges an easy way
to
perceive a problem of election fraud, even when there wasn't one.
Democrats blocked it for the moment
because
the legislative session
was ending.
* The Arizona Legislature is continuing its attack on voting by mail. In
a party-line vote, the state house advanced a bill that would turn
allegedly mismatched signatures on mail ballots
into
potential criminal
cases.*
A Republican who rejects the very idea of truth would have little
difficulty reporting a "mismatch" between two identical signatures.
A voter who is informed of an alleged mismatch might wish to go
through the process to cure it, but there are various innocent reasons
why perse might not do so. Here are a few that occur to me.
* We must ensure that rich companies and nations stop this destruction of
life in the oceans, which not only impoverishes wildlife but also the
coastal communities
that
are truly dependent on small-scale fishing for
survival.*
Yang Hengjun, prisoner of China, says he was tortured and drugged, and
made to say things
that
were probably recorded to be presented as
(false) confessions.
US citizens: call on Democrats to reject ruinous Republican
"compromises" and
pass
the whole American Families and Jobs Plan.
Let's stop describing the supporters of the wrecker's cult as
"conservatives". Most Republicans today are
no
longer conservatives,
they are right-wing extremists.
It's foolish for anyone to entrust secrets to cloudy digital
"services". It's especially foolish when these secrets concern
guarding
or accessing nuclear weapons, but that doesn't mean you ought to make the same mistake.
The guards should use one of the free/libre programs for flashcard
learning — some are listed in
the free software directory.
They won't send anything to remote servers unless you ask them to.
The UK agency that investigates crimes by uniformed thugs
refused to
reopen its astonishing conclusion about the thugs' killing of Mark
Duggan, despite new analysis that makes the conclusion even more
astonishing.
Many Americans will decide to get vaccinated when they can get a Covid-19
vaccine that has a
regular
(not emergency) approval.
That will probably be soon.
*The Ugly Truth: Republicans Want
More
Poverty and Crime.*
Their cuts in aid to the poor, and cuts in workers rights (which makes
more workers poor), encourage crime, which Republicans then cite as an
excuse to bash the poor some more.
Millions of Britons will
lose
their homes soon —
perhaps this week.
Even if the US takes you off the no-fly list, you may still be on some
secret
list that cues other countries to interrogate you blindfolded for days.
There is no way to confirm whether you're on one of these lists, and
no legal procedure for getting yourself taken off.
Archaeology
in the UK is in crisis because projects can't hire
Europeans any more.
The "people power" methods of making autocrats step down no longer
work. Repressive regimes have learned that they can
crush a dissident
movement, then survive being hated.
We see this today in
China,
Belarus and
Burma,
but it was Egypt,
Bahrain,
Turkey and
Syria
that demonstrated this.
China and Russia are setting up an informal bloc to defend repressive
countries that are willing to have a bad relationship with the US.
Colombia won't reach out to them, but countries farther from the US
will.
*Republicans who embraced Trump’s big lie
run
to become election officials.*
Since they endorse cheating, Republican extremists will vote for them so that
they can cheat.
In Tulsa, nobody dared talk about the 1921 pogrom against blacks,
especially not the few survivors. Official records were destroyed.
It took persistence and hard work to
pull
the story into the open.
Calling for the US to
adopt
a more normal, less "special" relationship with Israel.
I think the US should remain committed to protecting Israel's survival,
while at the same time pushing to end the occupation of the West Bank
and the siege of Gaza.
The US spied on its European allies
via
facilities in Denmark.
Denmark investigated this starting in 2015 based on information
released by Edward Snowden. The results of the investigation have
only now been published, but the Danish government seems to have been
acting to prevent a repetition.
China's appetite for minerals, wood and fish from the Pacific
is having a big
economic impact, and a big ecological impact too.
A virologist calls for
interviewing
the individual stall operators
at the wild animal market in Wuhan.
The goal is to find out which kinds of wild animals were traded in
2019.
Apple is systematically
undermining interoperability. At the hardware
level, it does this via nonstandard plugs, buses and networks.
At the software level, it does this by not letting the user have any data
except within one app.
The NHS has a plan to
redistribute
patient data to university labs and
even companies.
This can be useful for progress in medicine, but if it isn't held in
check by an organization whose main priority is privacy, it could ruin
some people's lives.
Please don't refer to the redistribution of personal data between companies
with the word "sharing".
*Data
isn’t oil, whatever tech commentators tell you: it’s people’s lives.*
Thinking of art works as
"intellectual
property" demonstrates contempt
for these works and for art,
much like calling them
"content."
I've described several reasons to reject the term
"intellectual property"
entirely.
This is one additional reason.
President Kagame of Rwanda is now being recognized for his
persistent
repression of opposition leaders.
It's on a level with Putin and Lukashenko.
US citizens: call
on Biden to revoke the permit to build the Line 3
pipeline.
US citizens: call
on the Senate to end the filibuster and approve the
Jan 6 investigation commission.
A promising choreographer killed himself after he was canceled
in
response to unsubstantiated accusations of some sort of sexual
wrongdoing.
Although an investigation found no indication the accusations were valid,
institutions
proceeded with the cancellation anyway.
The decision to stop performing his work, the fact that there was no
way he could clear his name or ever be able to practice his art again,
must have made him feel he was as good as dead already, his art
already buried.
A few developers of useful free software have been convicted of grave
crimes, even murder. (With the large number of contributors, by
chance we must expect this.) We disapprove of murder, but we don't
reject their code on that account.
*Kumbh Mela: how a superspreader festival
seeded
Covid across India.*
All around the world, fervent religion has been deadly in
spreading Covid-19. We have seen this with Christianity
in Brazil,
South Korea,
the US of course;
with Judaism in the US,
and now with Hinduism in India.
If death followed quickly, it would be easier for believers to stay in
touch with reality. But nobody is likely to die of Covid-19 from a
religious ceremony until a couple of weeks later, and most of the
victims will not have participated in the ceremony themselves, but
rather got the disease indirectly via participants.
The 2021 version of the MORE Act, which would legalize marijuana,
would also
eliminate some continuing punishment of people with old convictions.
*The statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford,
should
be turned to face the wall in shame.*
I like it.
Covidiots beware — a new variant
has
appeared which spreads faster
than the other bad variants.
It is currently limited to one country, but it will get to the others
soon enough.
Bogus Johnson is once again rushing to eliminate all Covid-19 restrictions,
and this
is producing yet another surge of infections.
Most of of the protests in Colombia have been peaceful recently.
However, in Cali, protesters have made barricades blocking roads.
Official state thugs attack the protesters,
sometimes killing or
maiming them.
Unidentified nonuniformed thugs joined in shooting at protesters.
If the protesters manage to kill or capture one of those, maybe it
will be possible to determine what their affiliations are.
There were large protests across Brazil against Bolsonaro and
his
callous disregard for Covid-19 and Brazilians' lives.
(satire)
*New Evidence Shows Fauci May Have Been
Created In Chinese Lab.*
Biden's budget does
not try to prevent extinction of species in the US.
An idea for step-by-step reduction
of
the power of filibuster.
Relatives of victims of government misconduct call for a law requiring
ministers government departments and advisers
to
answer truthfully in
investigations and court proceedings.
Thugs that bring dogs sometimes tell them to bite people —
around
4000 people a year in the US.
Usually the dog bites whoever the
thug directs. Sometimes it bites
someone else who happens to be in the vicinity. Sometimes the bite is
fatal.
US citizens: call
on Congress to divide transportation funds 50-50
between mass transit and highways.
US citizens: call
on Congress to cancel all student debt.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
A man condemned to execution has subpoena'd secret source code from
GitHub for a program that the court used to analyze evidence. (If the
program is flawed, that might invalidate the conviction.) But GitHub
is in another state,
and
has ignored the subpoena for years.
The article explains that the difficulty of accessing secrets needed
as evidence can drive people to please guilty.
In this particular case, the court should conclude that it can't get
the source code, therefore it can't trust that program, and overturn
the conviction. Society should adopt a general rule that programs used to
evaluate evidence for a court must be free/libre so that their validity
can be analyzed.
Senate Republicans
have
decided also to mostly kill Biden's
infrastructure plan.
Biden yearns for bipartisan cooperation, but it is worth than
useless to try to cooperate with saboteurs.
A study concludes it would cost 25 billion dollars
to build vaccine
factories sufficient to vaccinate the whole world in a year.
*How my family's memory of the Tulsa massacre
sheds
new light on Jan. 6
Capitol riot.*
We don't need technological miracles
to
curb global heating and prevent
climate disaster.
What we need is firmness and determination.
Progressives in Congress: *Ending Poverty in the Richest Country on
Earth: poverty
exists because we allow it to exist.*
*We can't end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices
of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate
emergency.*
Republicans used a filibuster to block the Senate from voting
on an
investigation of the January 6 Republican attack on the Capitol.
Those Republicans now endorse the obvious falsehood that there was no
attack, or else it was an attack by "antifa". This is a lie
about events
that Americans saw less than 4 months ago.
They have, in effect, endorsed 1984-style rewriting of history.
Having convinced their followers to accept this, on something very
visible, I expect that they will do it over and over.
It is noteworthty that Republicans accuse Democrats of trying to deny
the truth of who won the 2020 election, when in fact it is Republicans
who have done that ever since November, and are still trying with
irregular "audits" in Arizona and Georgia. The attack on the Capitol
was specifically part of that.
This may be preparation for
a
bigger attack on the mechanism
of US democracy in 2022 or 2024.
Will Democrats take
this threat seriously?
*Brazilian wildcat miners
attack
police and burn indigenous homes in Amazon.*
*A dangerous cult now runs Britain —
the
worshippers at the Temple of Johnson.*
I don't think that worship is as complete and blind as what is found
in the US, though.
The opposition in Belarus
plans
a national strike.
5% of the members of the Democratic Republic of Congo's parliament
have
died from Covid-19.
It seems that they don't practice physical distancing and don't wear
masks.
Erdoğan is prosecuting the leader of the opposition for saying that
the supreme election board
was
foolish to cancel a previous election.
His attitude towards laws is like that of Republicans: they are
opportunities to imprison whoever he wishes. At least this time
he
did not launch a civil war.
Biden is running
the
Pentagon's revolving door with power assist.
*Meet the Senate Nuke Caucus, Busting the Budget
and
Making the World Less
Safe.*
Richard Stallman will be giving a talk/interview on Monday May 31, titled
"Live
de Segunda #80 - Uma conversa com Richard Stallman"
(Monday's Live #80 - A conversation with Richard Stallman).
People can send in their questions from #debxp:matrix.org via Matrix or
#debxp on freenode via IRC.
Everyone: call on large store chains to
reject using face
recognition technology on customers.
US citizens: call on Biden to
hold
firm on increasing corporation
taxes.
Imposing sanctions on violent regimes is
usually
ineffective, and
often hurts the people that the regime oppresses.
He is mostly right, but (as is his tendency) he falls into simplistic
exaggeration.
I contend that some of the sanctions against Belarus are likely to be more
effective than usual.
The US should block
Amazon from merging with MGM.
In general, large companies should not be allowed to merge at all.
The larger the company, the more lobbying power it has, and the more
it can mislead the public about science and the public interest.
We should take steps to make it difficult in general for companies
to be large.
The big US insurance companies are eagerly profiting from
encouraging
business that increase global heating, destroy ecosystems, and violate
human rights.
This is to be expected. The US adopted a twisted policy around 1980
which says that corporations are legally required to maximize profit
at the expense of everything else that ought to matter, and this is
the natural result.
Far from requiring psychopathic behavior, we should require all entities
to have a care for the rest of society.
(satire) *‘No
Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This
Regularly Happens.*
Forced arbitration
harms
small businesses as well as individuals.
When companies are able to impose arbitration requirements, it is
generally because they are large and don't have many competitors.
Large companies often try to change laws in ways that benefit them at
the expense of everyone else. Prohibiting businesses from imposing
arbitration requirements on customers, workers or suppliers would
reduce that harmful advantage.
Israeli thugs are
arresting
Arab protesters by the hundreds.
*Nearly three-quarters of patients with moderate-to-severe Covid-19
had at least one
long-term symptom.*
A friend of mine had Covid-19 a few months ago; he needs to sleep
two hours more every night.
(satire) *Coronavirus Variant
Excited
To Compete With World's Top
Mutations In Tokyo This Summer.*
Chevron's stockholders voted to require the company to
deliver energy
with less greenhouse gas emissions.
That would require the company to invest in renewable energy,
or perhaps increasing the customers' energy efficiency.
One of the Australian climate plaintiffs talks about their recent
partial
victory in court.
*UN rights council votes for probe into
crimes
committed in Gaza conflict.*
Israel refuses to cooperate with the investigation.
Biden's administration have not explained to Congress what they really
mean by ending
"all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen,
including relevant arms sales."
Colombian thugs
shot
protesters in the eye so often that people think
they were intentionally aiming to render people half blind. A
right-wing leader mocked them for complaining about it.
The spirit of right-wing arrogance is to mock their victims.
The United Nations has not brought world peace, but the documents
around its founding
still
point the way.
Scientists agree that Bogus Johnson's decisions led to
tens
of thousands of avoidable Covid deaths.
Facebook has been
deleting
photos from many years ago showing
New Guinea natives nude in ceremonies that called for nudity.
*Protesters call on banks to
"drop
African debt" in wake of Covid.*
Much of the debt was borrowed by dictators who then stole the money
from their country, leaving it with only the debt. Once the dictator
is ousted, the country should be able to repudiate those debts.
Eric King, anarchist, has been
tortured
by US prison thugs, who then
claimed he had attacked them.
Rebecca Solnit discusses the right-wing assumption that the
"center"
is morally superior, a priori, and other views bear the onus of their
disagreement with that "center".
The article does not mention the second-stage lie: referring to a
fictitious "center" position which is actually rather right-wing
compared
with what most people think.
Whether the UK's "hostile environment" targets a particular foreign
visitor is largely a matter of what the border officials suppose
perse
will do in Britain. That is largely a matter of
profiling
and stereotyping.
Mexico is failing
to protect Teotihuacan from a private construction
project that is destroying ancient ruins without properly excavating
them.
*Biden's military budget puts
lots
of money into weapons that the US
is better off without.*
Israeli thugs eagerly
arrest Arabs for protesting; meanwhile, they
usually don't even try to interfere when fanatical Jews attack Arabs
or their property.
A secretive and mysterious PR campaign tried to hire influencers to
denigrate the Pfizer vaccine. The company whose name was on the offer
may not exist at all, but the people listed as involved had
internet
ties to Russia.
Whether this campaign had anything to do with Russia is not clear.
Non-vaccinated Americans
should
not assume they are safe from Covid-19
simply because many of the other Americans they encounter are vaccinated.
The problem is that the fraction that are vaccinated is insufficient
to reach herd immunity; the virus still circulates and you can still
catch it. And in some regions, it is even less.
Indeed, vaccinated individuals can catch the disease and spread it,
and may not experience any symptoms. This is less likely for
vaccinated individuals than for non-vaccinated, but the chance is not
zero.
Tesla cars collect lots of data for the company, including the precise
trajectory of movement of the car. Henceforth, all the
data
for Tesla cars in China will be at the tentacletips of the Chinese state.
Tesla will offer the misleading response that it is legally required
to store data collected from cars in China in servers in China that
the state can easily browse through. That is true, but it evades the
issue. The wrong is that the car
collects
that data in the first place.
It took 80 years for the whole of The Man Who Lived Underground, by
Richard Wright, to be
published this year.
The EPA is becoming the Environmental Protection Agency again. It has
cancelled
the rule that Republicans invented to exclude most medical
studies from consideration for EPA decisions.
That rule converted the EPA into the Environmental Poisoning Agency.
Climate activist shareholders ran candidates for Exxon's board of
directors, and shareholders
elected
two or more of their candidates.
Some scientists are coming to see the lab-leak theory of SARS-Cov-2
as
plausible, due to reports that workers in the Wuhan virus lab got
badly sick a month before the identification of the disease Covid-19.
According to this theory, China's applied its standard approach to
problems — cover up and deny! — and this led to the pandemic.
There is not much evidence for that theory; what exists is
not clear
or conclusive.
If the lab-leak theory is true, it does not mean that China deserves
all the blame for the harm that the disease has done.
In December 2019, people had little knowledge about what this virus would
do. The Chinese authorities may have believed they could prevent the
disease from spreading, get rid of it, and the world would never
notice a problem or complain. Such a response would have been risky,
perhaps reckless, but not murderous.
Later efforts to
cover
up the outbreak were injustices, of course,
regardless of whether there was a lab leak.
More blameworthy are the right-wing rulers such as
Bolsonaro,
Johnson,
Modi and
Trump,
who decided to let their compatriots die rather than
take action to bring the epidemic to a halt. That was murderous.
Climate defenders call on Biden to tell the Department of Justice to
stop
defending proposed oil drilling in Alaska.
This would be new development of fossil fuel extraction infrastructure,
and there is no room for any such development in the carbon budget.
Germany will pay Namibia
enormous
compensation for the atrocities
it committed after conquering Namibia.
Tweets about fuel shortages led to Venezuelan oil union leader's
arrest.
last year.
Regardless of the facts, those charges seem morally invalid to me.
I wonder what happened after that hearing. Was Girot jailed until
trial, or not?
A privacy campaigner puts the recent court
victory
over GCHQ's massive
surveillance in context.
A Dutch court ordered
Shell to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 45%
by 2030.
When I first read about this, the vague words did not make it clear
whether this meant a 45% decrease in the emissions from Shell's own
operations, or a 45% decrease in emissions from the energy and fuel
that Shell delivers to customers. That difference is crucial: the
former would be insignificant, while the latter would be revolutionary.
From this article, I think it is the latter. Hooray! Even though this
is just the first of many such battles, Hooray anyway!
The "bomb threat" which Lukashenko used as an excuse to force down the
plane carrying Roman Protasevich was
posted
after the attack had
already started.
Global heating, in Miami, means that
death
from heat will continue to
increase.
Global heating has
increased
the range of summer temperatures in
Tokyo. Sometimes it gets so hot that vigorous exercise becomes
hazardous to health.
*Investing 0.1% of global GDP could
avoid
breakdown of ecosystems,
says UN report.*
But the work that is done would become insufficient as the climate crisis
gets worse.
It is absurd to think we can afford to cope with the consequences of
global heating
each decade, as each decade will bring new changes
bigger than the old ones. The costs will rise until they become more
than we can cover.
The only solution we can afford is to stop
global heating.
It will be a big expense, but we only have to do it once.
Oman plans to build a large plant to
make
hydrogen from renewable
energy.
That's the right spirit!
Global heating is causing
more
and bigger cyclones in the Indian Ocean.
In the Atlantic, Hurricanes (as they are called there) are also becoming
more damaging.
Taiwan had made a deal to buy vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, but China
intervened
to cancel it.
US citizens: call
on big store chains to reject using facial
recognition on customers.
US citizens: call
on the Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice in
Policing Act.
Republican senators say they are uncomfortable with a congressional
investigation into the attack on the Capitol
because
it could stir up
awareness of Republican support for attacking the Capitol.
It might also help Americans remember, for the next election, how
Republican elected officials continue giving support to the same lies
that Republicans used to organize the attack on the Capitol.
Franco's fascist rebels shot prisoners,
then
recorded their deaths as
due to natural causes.
The Australian Federal Court ruled that the environment minister
has a general "duty of care"
to
protect young people from future
climate disaster.
Ministers will have to defend their specific decisions based on this
standard.
This is not a final decision. The Federal Court is an appellate
court, but an appeal could still be made to Australia's High Court.
*Australians travelling overseas
should
be forced to have Covid
vaccine, doctors say.*
I support this, but there should be an exception for people
who, for medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated.
*Belarus regime
uses
video confessions as a tool to silence dissent.*
They extract confessions by torture and threats of violence.
They don't mind if the confessions are false.
Ms Sapega was forced to confess to an activity that would not be a
crime in a free country. In effect, Lukashenko is the one who has
confessed, on two different levels.
The Satanic Temple of Texas is suing to overturn some of the new Texas
restrictions on abortion, claiming that they violate the state
Religious Freedom Restoration Act
by
imposing gratuitous preconditions
(and financial costs) on the temple's abortion ritual.
As the Satanic Temple's page says, "The state might as well tax and
regulate Mass."
This is the legal equivalent of aikido, and a great hack.
Dominic Cummings accused Bogus Johnson of displaying incompetence,
carelessness, dishonesty, appointing incompetents with connections,
and disregard for human life,
in
dealing with Covid-19.
Other high officials participated, including Cummings himself,
he admits.
Tens of thousands of Britons got sick and died as a result.
*The Dominic Cummings circus is
an
indictment of the entire governing class.*
The International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran
is
hiding something about
its processing of uranium.
Just what that might be is not clear.
*Israeli Police
Target
Palestinian Journalists at Al Aqsa Mosque.*
*WhatsApp sues Indian government
over
‘mass surveillance’ internet laws.*
The UK is at the mercy of Bogus Johnson, who can impose
business-supremacy treaties arbitrarily;
Parliament
has no say.
Bogus Johnson's former chief advisor, Dominic Cummings, stated that
the health minister lied about how the UK was dealing with Covid-19 in
April 2019, falsely claiming that all patients were getting the
requisite treatments
and
that supplies of protective equipment were
under control.
Living through the impacts of global heating effects, or just fearing
future impacts,
are
causing widespread mental illness and distress.
Nevada's legislature has given a strong punishment to a Republican
anti-mask anti-vaxxer. She is
barred
from speaking or voting in the legislature unless she apologizes
for breaking the chamber's mask rule.
Her firmness in defense of principle would be admirable, if not for
the fact that the principle being defended is "Spread disease!"
A guide to the fashionable ways to impress people,
for
those who can't afford a mansion.
The construction of a new, potentially polluting chemical plant in
Cancer Alley is
running
into government resistance.
Instead of trying to clean up Cancer Alley, how about if we move the
people out of there? Here's how we could do it.
Help out each of the families that lives in the polluted area, paying
enough that it can afford a home in a city some distance away.
Set up bus lines from those cites to the area where the polluting
plants are, taxing all chemical plants nationwide to pay to run them.
Put all new chemical plants in such a zone, so that they won't pollute
places where anybody lives.
How Democrats can maneuver the political process so that Manchin
votes
reluctantly to eliminate the filibuster.
It seems to me that they are working on a plan like that.
Cory Doctorow has endorsed my denunciation of "intellectual property"
as a
bogus
overgeneralization.
See
"Did You Say
'Intellectual Property'? It's a Seductive Mirage", for how I
stated the point.
Doctorow does a good job of explaining the point, and will reach a
bigger public.
Community Health Systems, Inc. owns 84 hospitals, and watch out if you
end up in one! That company
sues
lots patients that can't pay their medical bills.
Most Americans can't raise $400 for an emergency expense. Can you
raise $162,000?
Android tracked users’ location across third party apps,
even
if the user disabled "location". Installing a Google-disconnected
operating system, such as the not-entirely-libre LineageOS or the
totally libre
Replicant, was the only way to
stop this.
In addition, it tracked users' location via which WiFi networks the
phone could see.
Navalny says an official told him of
additional
criminal charges. They all seem absurd to me.
Poverty, and
inadequate
government support for the poor, forces many Britons to live in
vans because they can't afford any housing.
The US
must
not accept "compromise" with right-wing fanatics about whether
right-wing fanatics are allowed to sabotage democracy.
The ACLU is continuing to advance the lawsuit
challenging US border
thugs' power to unlock any traveler's computers arbitrarily.
However, this lawsuit does not go far enough. The border
thugs should have to
ask a judge to sign a warrant before they can search a traveler's computer.
(Every smart phone is a computer. Maybe some nonsmart phones
should also be treated as computers.)
The new head of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice,
Kristen Clarke,
has
made a career of fighting against bigotry and bias.
*A Third Reconstruction Is Pragmatically Achievable
and Could End
American Poverty.*
By "reconstruction", the author means the elimination of the systems
that disenfranchise and impoverish poor people and disprivileged
demographic groups.
Even as many public pension funds divest from coal,
some others are
gobbling up the shares that they sell.
The net result is not zero. It drives down the stock price of the
companies that do coal development, which is a positive step. But not
a big positive step. We need laws to make fossil fuel industries
shrink.
A
carbon tax is one method that can do it.
Israel's bombing of Gaza damaged a lot of the water and electricity
infrastructure. 400 thousand
have
no access to water except by going
to fetch some.
This makes it hard for people to wash their hands regularly, as they
need to do.
*IG Report Shows Top Trump Officials at EPA
Hid
Threats of Toxic
Dicamba Herbicide.*
(satire)
*Class-Action Suit Against God Pays Out 45 Extra Seconds Of
Life To Every Creature.*
Calling on the UK
to
stop the flow of Lukashenko's tax-dodging money
through UK banks.
It ought to stop this for all tax-dodging, but (like so many other
countries) it stubbornly insists on continuing to profit from
assisting.
*Iran’s leadership accused of fixing presidential election*
by
authorizing the main hard-line candidate and blocking the popular
softer candidates.
Belarusian journalists in exile
are
getting lots of death threats.
Somalia has
a plan for elections for president.
*Nile fishermen protect [fish] stocks
by
pulling plastic from river.*
Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers
raided
refugee camps and violently
took away 500 refugees.
Fossil fuel development continues because it is still profitable.
To curb global heating we must take such strong steps
to
discourage it that it won't be profitable any more.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the UK's GCHR was
violating human rights
through
its uncontrolled massive surveillance.
90% of the casualties caused by military explosive weapons when used in
cities, in the past ten years,
have
been civilians.
This fuels a campaign to end the use of explosive weapons in cities.
(Writing "91%" gives the number too much precision. I can't believe
the data are reliable enough that we could tell whether the true
percentage is 90% or 91% or 92%.)
Plastic trash that washes up on tropical beaches makes the beach sand
substantially hotter. This causes
most
sea turtle eggs to come out
female.
The lack of males endangers the species.
Global heating
will eventually have the same effect anyway, but that
will take longer and maybe we will stop it.
In 1945, the UK secretly deported hundreds of Chinese seamen
who had helped
run the UK's merchant marine during World War II.
The government did not tell Parliament, nor did it tell the men's
British wives and children.
A British clothing company
registered
"Yoruba" as a trademark.
That is absurd — the name of an ethnic group, or other group of
people, should never be anyone's monopoly. Imagine if a company in
Africa made "British" its trademark! It would be the same wrong.
However, using the term "cultural appropriation" to describe this wrong
is a confusion.
A fitting term for what happened here would be "cultural enclosure":
the attempt to seize part of the common.
Biden offers to give up on central progressive commitments to try to
"compromise" with Republicans
whose
goal is to make him fail.
Don't believe Apple's claims to care about users' privacy. In China,
it stores all user data
on
servers controlled by the Chinese government.
*Venezuelans in mining town loot stores
that
refuse to accept
[Venezuelan currency].*
Texas has removed nearly all legal limits on carrying a gun in public.
No
safety training (or accuracy training) is required.
A lot more people have reasons to drive cars than to carry guns.
When will Texas eliminate the requirement for a driver's license?
If Democrats start urging Americans not to cut their ears off with a
kitchen knife, will Republicans insist on upholding the freedom to do
that?
Australia's quick and strong reaction when Covid-19 somehow escaped
from quarantine
demonstrates
the way to defeat the virus.
Any country can do this, if it has sufficient social cohesion to trust
that the inconvenient measures will pay off. And they do pay off,
even economically, if you judge with a time frame as long as six
months.
(satire)
*New Orleans Airbnb Touts Location In Heart Of Historic
Airbnb Quarter.*
(satire)
*Patient With 18 Months To Live Not Sure She Can Sustain
Cherishing Every Moment That Long.*
*EU report highlights
widespread
use of ‘stop and search’ on ethnic minorities*
The EU is about to change its farm subsidies
to
avoid promoting
concentration and intensification.
Italy seeks EU funds that come
with
a requirement to allow more
subcontracting.
When businesses subcontract work, it tends to imply lower pay,
worse working conditions,
and in many cases illegal working conditions.
*Kremlin critic Khodorkovsky tells Europe:
sanction
Belarus's oil and potash
producers.*
US citizens: call on Congress to enact the
right
to an abortion in
federal law.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
If you call, please spread the word!
Massachusetts residents: call on Massachusetts legislators to support the
VOTES act.
Here
is more explanation of that proposed law.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the
Break
Free from Plastic
Pollution Act.
Here
is a description of that proposed law.
Video entertainment attracts people so strongly that they
reduce their
working hours to do it.
(The article says "television", but that word introduces a specificity
that I suspect is spurious.)
If you want to watch video, I urge you to make sure your choices are
not being tracked by some snooping tech. Don't use nonfree software
(including nonfree Javascript code from a web site) or a streaming
dis-service or a cable box.
*Both left and right
practice
"cancel culture". Both should stop.*
Blood
Legacy, by Alex Renton, examines Britain's involvement in
slavery through his family's investment in slave plantations in
the Caribbean.
*Washington toughens stance to
fight
atrocities in Ethiopia.*
*Police records show
threats
to kill lawmakers in wake of Capitol attack.*
This is a part of the Republican campaign to attack the truth about
the election.
*What is at stake with Nikole Hannah-Jones
being
denied tenure.*
Vancouver, with its large population of immigrants from China and
nearby countries, is becoming the focus of
anti-Sinasian hate in
Canada.
I use the term "Sinasian" because the target group of this particular
hate movement includes countries such as Indonesia and the
Philippines, which are not in Asia. Also because it does not include
countries such as Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Pakistan and India,
which are in Asia.
People from those countries are also currently targets of bigotry and
hatred, and that is just as wrong as when the targets are Chinese or
neighboring. But when people say "anti-Asian", they don't have in
mind the western parts of Asia.
Belarus forced down an airliner crossing its airspace in order to
arrest
a passenger — Roman Protasevich, a Belarusiano protest
organizer who had gone into exile.
Lukashenko's toadies say they will kill him.
How to push back? Other countries could close their airspace to
flights going to or from Belarus airspace, until Lukashenko frees
Protasevich and commits not to do this again.
In spirit, this resembles what the UK did to David Miranda when he
transited
through the UK with a copy of Snowden material.
However, that did not involve forcing down an airliner.
*Mexico Wants to Import Non-GMO Corn and US Farmers Say
They Can
Deliver It.*
However, Mexicans can also grow it, and that might enable a lot of Mexicans
to get out of the poverty that NAFTA pushed them into.
In Arnhem Land, in northern Australia,
indigenous
rangers actively
manage fires.
This sort of management can reduce destructive fires and protect species.
However, whether it will succeed in storing carbon long-term depends on
how bad global heating
gets. It is good to pay rangers to do it,
but we should not take for granted it will reduce net emissions.
Indeed, I think we should not plan for curbing
global heating in terms
of "net emissions" and "offsets". Rather, we should make plans to
reduce emissions; and we should also make plans to protect various
sorts of terrain.
*Academics suspect papers with grabby conclusions are
waved through
more easily by [peer] reviewers.*
The WHO has refused
to allow Taiwan to send observers to participate
in its plenary meeting.
I think western powers should bite the bullet and start recognizing
Taiwan as "Taiwan". There could, by chance, be a more convenient
moment in the future, but it won't get easier.
Burma's democracy movement is shifting into a
guerrilla uprising
and getting involved with minority ethnic separatist movements
that have maintained autonomous zones for decades.
Don't expect China to be any less violent in its imperialism than the
US has been. However, its denials will be in the bullshitter's style,
broad and blatant denial of truth, rather than subtle lies.
Samoa's prime minister is holding on to power with a sort of
nonviolent autogolpe.
Japan is suffering a wave of Covid-19 in Osaka which is
overwhelming
the medical system there.
I wonder why Japan has failed to apply the necessary discipline to
suppress the disease. It seemed to do so effectively a year ago,
though I don't recall details.
Could it be that the government has denied the severity so as to
reduce pressure to cancel the Olympic games?
Around 10% of women have a medical problem, polycystic ovary syndrome,
which can
cause severe complications if they catch Covid-19.
Most Covid-19 medical studies have not paid attention to it, and most
of these women don't know they have it.
Even in 2012, lunatic extremists were
altering
the Republican Party.
They were not yet a majority, but the trend was clear.
Right-wing cancellationists have
got
two noteworthy journalists fired
for past support for Palestinians' rights.
50 years ago, plutocratist in the Republican Party started a long-term plan
to convince
Americans that the government should work mainly for the rich.
It has been very effective.
I love the German businessman's explanation for why he did not resent
the high income tax bracket he was in: "I don’t want to be a rich man
in a poor country." Today's plutocratists are aiming precisely for
that situation.
Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are being
overcome by
Covid-19.
The lack of enough vaccine is not pertinent to why things are worse
than a year ago, since vaccine is more plentiful now than then.
The more transmissible B.1.617 strain may be part of the cause. But
it seems that they are failing to take adequate measures against
transmission.
Australia showed the right example: take local measures immediately
that are strong enough to end transmission. Don't wait, because
waiting will require the measures to cover more areas.
The Burmese military rulers
imprisoned
the editor of Frontier Myanmar,
an American, as he was about to fly out of the country.
The UK has punished Belarus for arresting Roman Protasevich
by forbidding
Belarus's airline from flying to the UK and ordering
British planes not to fly over Belarus.
That is a substantial step, but I think it is inadequate. At the very
least, other countries should ban any flights between their airports
and Belarus — regardless of which airline — and ban flights from or
to Belarus from crossing their airspace. This would cut off Belarus from
air transportation with anywhere except Russia.
As a separate matter, they should to prohibit flights that have
crossed Belarusian airspace from entering their airspace. That would
would not punish Belarus any further, but it would make all flights
avoid the territory of Belarus, and that would ensure the safety of
passengers in those flights.
Belarus is not the only country which interfered with travel in
foreign country's civilian aircraft. When Snowden was seeking a way
to reach Bolicia, and the US wanted to keep him stuck in Russia, the
plane of the president of Bolicia went to Europe. The US suspected it
would bring Snowden to Bolivia on its return there, and had its allies
compel
the plane to land in a country which then forcibly searched it.
Fortunately, Snowden was not aboard.
They did not threaten violence against the plane or order
it to land at a specific place. But they did box it in by forbidding
it to enter various countries' airspace. And they likewise compelled
Bolivia to allow it to be searched.
It would be a mistake to draw blanket conclusions about the US
government or the Belarus government from this. Each one is capable
of doing evil. Lukashenko's regime is unremitting tyranny and
unremitting evil; the US has some hope of being better.
Ghana has arrested
people for holding an event and "advocating LGBTQ
activities", then held them incommunicado without access to lawyers.
To avoid global heating disaster, we need to
put
an end to extractivism
as the basis for our economy.
It is an error to suppose that local cultures of the past had an
inherent understanding of sustainability. Some groups recognized
problems and adopted ways of life to protect their environment.
Others did not, and caused environmental crises that wiped them out.
In regard to our current situation, the problem that drives us to too
much growth is partly in the desires of masses of people, and partly
embedded in laws and institutions. For instance, the fairly new
"principle" (adopted in the 1980s) that a corporation "must" maximize
return to its investors regardless of all other values.
Belarus is choking
off all avenues for independent reporting and trying to
imprison all dissidents. Even dissidents in exile are not safe.
Supporters of Palestinians' rights
stand
firm against antisemitism.
Covid-19 vaccination makes you pretty safe from actual harm, but does
not guarantee you can't get a mild case and transmit the virus to
others. Thus, some people
rationally
decide to keep wearing masks.
I continue to wear a mask when in the proximity of strangers.
Barrett Brown went to a protest in the UK and multiple times helped
hold a banner that said "Cops Kill". The last time, it had been
rearranged to say "Kill Cops" — and
he
was arrested for incitement to
violence.
If I understand right, that would not count as incitement to violence
in the US. The US has a very strict definition of that crime.
Exhorting Biden to insist on the infrastructure/jobs plan,
not cut
it back in the hope Republicans will deign to accept it.
A general principle of negotiation, when you're working for something
other than your own gain, is never to propose a concession. You can
accept all or part of a concession proposed by the opposition,
preferably attaching a condition (a quid-pro-quo); that is the way
deals are reached. But initiating a concession says, "I am desperate
and weak-willed." It invites the opposition to respond, "That's not
enough — make a real concession!"
WHO estimates that the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 is
two or
three times the official reported total of 3.4 million.
Perhaps even more.
Many countries don't have good systems for reporting cause of death,
In some cases it is hard to determine whether Covid-19 was to blame.
And then there are the cover-ups.
William Jennette was in jail in Tennessee, and handcuffed, when a
group of thugs killed
him by kneeling on his back for several minutes.
(satire)
*"And You Lived In Afghanistan For How Long?" Asks Suspicious Agent
Questioning Returning Soldier At Customs.*
The former dishonest journalist, Bogus Johnson, must not be allowed
to
reform the BBC after his own heart.
*World expert in scientific misconduct faces legal action
for challenging
integrity of hydroxychloroquine study.*
It is remarkable that Dr Raoult would escalate this far to silence a
scientific criticism, and also that he has the resources to do so.
I wonder where those resources come from.
The UK government is covering up the results of an investigation into police
corruption from 34 years ago, corruption
which
resulted in the murder of
a private detective who was investigating it.
This demonstrates that the corruption is not just a thing of the past.
An argument against the UK's proposed university free speech
requirement shows real problems, but it also shows that the author
(Renton) advocates
a lot of censorship.
I disagree politically with Yiannopoulos, and when Renton criticizes
things Yiannopoulos said, I agree with the criticism. However,
censoring such statements is another matter. In arguing for that,
Renton shows little support for freedom of speech.
Naturally, right-wing politicians in power will try to crush dissent.
The solutions they propose will tend to be unfair. But that doesn't
mean there is no problem.
The UK is hardly trying to make businesses
prevent
Covid-19 spread in
workplaces.
*Don't let Middle East violence
fuel
hatred on the streets of Britain.*
Bogus Johnson suppressed information
on
spread of new Covid-19
variants via schools.
The more transmissible Covid-19 variants
are
more likely to make children
gravely ill, even kill them, than before.
People age 12-15 are not children. They are adolescents.
Please do not infantilise adolescents.
US citizens: call
on Congress to allow Medicare to negotiate drug
prices.
US citizens: call
on the US to condition military aid to Israel on
ending the occupation of Palestine, human rights abuses, and war crimes.
US citizens: call
on Biden and cabinet secretaries to lift US
sanctions temporarily to facilitate countries' imports of food and
medicines required to deal with Covid-19.
US citizens: call
on states to stop requiring facial recognition for
unemployed benefits.
Chicago's mayor, a black woman, has set a policy
of
refusing to give interviews
to white journalists.
Blacks in the US continue to meet with individual bigotry as well as
systemic racism. But you can't help cure bigotry by pushing back in a
bigoted way.
The Extinction Prevention Act would provide funds
to help save many
endangered species that live in the US.
*Tech Companies Want Schools
to
Use COVID Relief Money on Surveillance Tools.*
It's standard practice for thugs to lie about the people they
gratuitously shoot. In Ronald Greene's case,
we
now see the truth.
With Andrew Brown, we have indications of it but the
thugs are still
keeping the facts secret.
More
info about Ronald Greene's killing.
Australia's climate strike movement
has
made the planet-roaster
Australian government its main target.
Israel's bombing
has
damaged 19 medical facilities in Gaza.
Bolsonaro wanted to achieve herd immunity by having most Brazilians catch
Covid-19, rather
than by vaccinating most Brazilians.
The article errs by using the term "herd immunity" only for the first
option. Both recovery from an infection and vaccination convey the
same sort of immunity; a sufficiently large fraction with immunity from
whatever cause results in herd immunity.
Where they differ is that catching Covid-19 can result in death, or
in lasting disability (perhaps permanent) in a few percent of the
infected people. Vaccination does not do this.
Out of 200 million Brazilians, letting the disease run rampant may
imply a few million dead and a few million disabled on the path to
herd immunity.
This is why it makes sense to use various methods to reduce the fraction
of people that ever catch Covid-19.
Taiwan says that China is using disinformation
to
undermine Taiwanese
cohesion in responding to Covid-19.
Taiwan asked everyone to stay home this weekend so as to break the chain
of transmission.
*Charles Koch funded eviction push
while
investing in real estate companies.*
China has been suppressing Tibetan culture for so long that, soon,
little
will be left.
We should not forget that many imperialist countries have suppressed
the culture of colonized peoples. The US did, Canada did, and so did
some European countries to their minorities. Nowadays, these countries
no longer have such policies, while China does.
Texas passed a law allowing parents
to
give their children reasonable
independence outdoors.
The article does not make it clear whether the law also includes
allowing children to be home alone. It would be logical if it did,
but can anyone find out and tell me?
Everyone: call on BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, T. Rowe Price and
Vanguard to vote
for shareholder resolutions 4–8 at Facebook’s annual
meeting on May 26.
US citizens: call on the Forest Service
not
to permit Nestlé's
successor to extract California's water.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
support
the Jan 6 insurrection
investigation.
*Climate crisis behind
drastic
drop in Arctic wildlife populations.*
China is supplying
jet fuel to Burma. The military uses that for air
attacks.
The US has a history of similar behavior, and progressives criticize it.
We should not treat it as less bad when China does it.
*Hong Kong court
denies
jury trial to first person charged under national
security law.*
The US government should
buy
Greyhound and provide intercity buses
as a government service.
This would be great as long as it is not used as a surveillance system.
Greyhound asks for passengers' names but mostly does not seem to check
their identities. It should stop asking!
A German soldier who is apparently a Nazi is being tried for
planning
to assassinate politicians while posing as a Syrian refugee.
Catching him after those murders would have revealed that he was no
Syrian. I wonder why he did not consider that a flaw in his plan.
Perhaps he assumed it would take so long to catch him that the truth
would never overcome his lie. Or perhaps he expected Nazis to reject
the truth whenever it did come out.
Covid-19 vaccine profits have made
nine
people billionaires.
They are not satisfied — they and their businesses are determined to
get as many billions as they can from vaccination, even by slowing the
process of vaccinating everyone.
Many of the experts and think tanks that argue for strict application
of patents and trade secrets on Covid vaccine production are
supported
by drug money.
The mainstream media do not mention this when citing their "wise"
advice.
This sort of practice makes it necessary to be skeptical of the motives
of scientists and other experts, and that hurts society deeply.
Argentina's medical system is
collapsing
under the strain of so many cases
of Covid-19.
As in the US, politicians are exploiting resentment against public
health measures, boosting their careers by killing some fraction
of the public.
The G7 countries have agreed to
stop
financing coal development in
other countries.
That will be a significant step, if they carry it out quickly.
But then we need similar policies regarding oil and natural gas.
Ethiopia has convicted
four of its soldiers of rape or murder of civilians.
Every army has a duty to enforce the laws against war crimes, but
disorder in the army is out of control in Tigray;
Ethiopia has a long way to go.
Erdoğan is still working on
convicting
the organizers of the
2013
protests in Gezi Park in Istanbul.
That was his first big foray into repression. Since then he has done
much worse things, such as starting a civil war so he could rerun an
election
that he had lost.
Guatemala has decided to stop prosecuting corrupt officials and
instead prosecute
the officials who tried to make the rich pay taxes.
Sounds like Guatemala's equivalent of Trump or Bolsonaro is in charge.
The families of people who died in Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752
won
a lawsuit against the government of Iran.
There is no question that Iranian forces shot down the plane, but I
am surprised by the conclusion that they knowingly and intentionally
targeted an airliner. What evidence exists for that?
*Asthma in toddlers linked to in-utero
exposure
to air pollution.*
Republican governors plan to
cut
the unemployment benefits of 3 and a
half million unemployed Americans.
In approximately Covid-free Australia, students are
striking again for
climate defense.
Excluding the most
polluting vehicles from densely populated areas is
an effective way to reduce the general level of exposure to air pollution,
and the medical harm which that pollution does.
However, when the exclusion is implemented by systematically tracking
all vehicles, that is a form of oppression. Tracking the movements of
people in general is inherently oppressive. The system should be
implemented so that it does not notice the movements of low-emission
cars, only the presence of a high-emission car.
*The U.S. Must Stop Providing Weapons Used to
Repress
Colombia’s Protests.*
The scarce
resources for making efficient batteries, as it is
currently done, will cause conflict among states.
*His family says they were told he died in a car wreck. Video now
shows Ronald Greene was
kicked,
dragged and tased by [thugs].*
Then, as usual, they lied about it. At least this time they did not
try to frame him.
*The EPA effectively
admitted
grave errors in EPA’s 2020 interim registration of glyphosate,
best known as the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup pesticides,
and asked the court for permission to re-do the agency’s faulty
assessments.*
*Committee to Protect Journalists Accuses Israel of
Trying
to 'Shut Down' Gaza Coverage by Bombing Media Outlets.*
*Democrats unveil $30bn bill to
cancel
water debts and bail out utility firms.*
To evade the responsibility for bad decisions on protecting the UK
from Covid-19, Bogus Johnson is
blaming
the Britons who did not want
to be vaccinated.
This is even more absurd than it looks like. because vaccination in
the UK is limited by supplies of vaccine. If one person chose not to
be vaccinated, another person got the chance to be vaccinated early.
This had no effect on the vulnerability to the more transmissible
Indian strains.
US citizens: call on Congress to
abolish
the death penalty for federal
crimes.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the DOJ to create a task force to
investigate
the corrupter and his associates.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
Medicare for All.
To sign without running
nonfree
JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Israel and HAMAS have
agreed
on a cease-fire.
I think that Biden privately pressured Netanyahu to accept it,
while publicly defending Netanyahu. That seems to be his approach.
*Declining birthrates will
take
the strain off our planet.*
I agree with the first two letters. However, I have to point out
that, for the societies that live in an ecologically inefficient way,
the effects of one more immigrant are not very different from the
effects of one more baby. Either one adds to the population
and is likely to result in further growth in subsequent generations.
*The pro-Palestine movement is broad but it
can’t
be a home to antisemitism.*
Furthermore, the presence of Jews, and a majority of people who are neither
violent nor extremist nor antisemitic, must not be taken as proof
that none of its supporters are violent or extremist or antisemitic.
Israeli state thugs,
plus thuggish right-wing private citizens, are
committing repeated violence that has
poisoned
the peace between Jews
and Arabs that prevailed in Jaffa for many years.
Oriel College in Oxford decided
not
to remove Rhodes's statue. It did
not refuse on principle, but rather because some laws create an
obstacle.
Rhodes's main activity was colonial conquest. He did good with some
of the riches he got from colonialism, but that can't compensate for
the harm by which he got those riches. Therefore, I conclude that
there are no good reasons why the statue ought to remain.
I hope that the UK will change whatever laws interfere with removing
such statues.
India's Covid-19 crisis has
eliminated
vaccine supply for most other
countries.
The world needs more production capacity, for other countries and for
India too.
Sanders and other senators have introduced a bipartisan bill to
audit
the Pentagon.
This is long overdue.
Some Republican cultists in the House of Representatives refused to
wear masks, and
got
a warning for the first violation of that rule.
They believe that getting away with this makes them look brave to voters,
and that may be true. The House needs to take measures stern enough that
it will make them back down. For instance, keeping them off the house
floor for the next ten hours of being in session.
Even though the Jan 6 investigation had been pre-undermined with a
requirement for Republican agreement to issue any subpoena, most
Republicans in the House
voted
not to have any investigation.
Democrats compromised by giving Republicans
equal
representation in
the commission, hoping to win some Republican support. In response to
that, Senator McConnell called it a "slanted and unbalanced proposal."
McConnell can probably kill the investigation entirely.
It was foolish of the Democrats to agree to a compromise without
getting a final deal as part of the compromise. It appears that what
they will ultimately get for their concession is nothing — and
making a concession uselessly only looks weak.
(satire) *U.S. Military Leaves Scarf In Afghanistan So It Has
Excuse
To Go Back Later.*
Ethiopian soldiers
raided
a hospital in Tigray searching for staff and
patients that told journalists about interference with humanitarian
aid to that region.
Despising politics, and expecting elected officials not to care about
what people need, gets us elected officials that
show contempt for
the public.
I disagree, however, with the criticism of sleeping in the office.
That space is theirs to use, and their using it 10 more hours
each day does not cost the government anything significant.
(satire) *Neighborhood Rallies To
Designate
Pothole As Historic Landmark.*
Ford is considering programming the nonfree software in the car
to impose
ads on the people in the car.
The owner could pay extra to turn off the ads.
This is what you get with a device that contains nonfree software
and can communicate in any fashion.
US waste companies continue to
send
the waste to countries that won't try to recycle it.
Fact-checking and debunking, as Snopes does, used to be apolitical and
fun, as well as educational. People who read the explanations often
learned from this.
Nowadays, refuting the spew of right-wing lies
is
ineffective;
right-wing fanatics don't change their minds no matter how much
evidence is piled on them.
If someone you know has fallen under the truth-hating spell, then unless
you have the best information on how to lead someone out of it, and wish
to put a lot of patience and effort into it, I suggest cutting off those
conversations rapidly.
European ministers look forward to
joining
Biden in policies that give businesses further power over democracy in the US and the EU.
The area of business-supremacy treaties
was one of the few policy areas in which the corrupter made things better, keeping the US out of
the TPP
and modifying NAFTA to remove the ISDS clause (I Sue Democratic States).
Will Biden return to something like Obama's bad policy?
Can progressive legislators block it?
*North Carolina prosecutor says [thugs] were
justified
in fatally shooting
Andrew Brown.* He claimed Brown was driving his car at the thugs.
Brown's family's lawyer says the video
contradicts
the prosecutor's claims. The family has seen the video but the public
is not allowed to see it.
False accusations against blacks have
played
an important role in
history and politics in that region of Virginia.
The prosecutor is not entitled to say, "take my word for it!"
*Michigan "Big Lie" lawmaker proposes eerie bill that would
punish fact
checkers: "You better be right".*
I suspect they will draw up the law such that it will be easy to
launch lawsuits that will deter people from criticizing, even if they
would ultimately fail.
*What will the institutions of liberal democracy do when Republican
officials simply
refuse
to concede Democratic victories?*
(satire) *Congress Reaches Compromise To
Investigate
Events Of January
9.*
(There was nothing on January 9 that Republicans don't want investigated.)
*The Most Colossal
Planning Failure in Human History:* setting up a
civilization to run on fossil fuels without planning for how to stop
using them.
Ohio is offering a prize lottery to people that get vaccinated, and
this
boosted interest in vaccination.
Republicans are no longer ashamed to say their intention is to stop
legitimate voters from voting. On the contrary,
many
Republicans are
proud to do that.
They are picking up the "by hook or by crook" attitude that the wrecker
has promoted.
* A review of California cases shows that
[thug departments] frequently
publish highly misleading information about people they've killed —
just
like the first George Floyd press release.*
*Brazilian police raid environment ministry
over
‘illegal’ timber sales.*
The minister, a close ally of Bolsonaro, seems to be one of the suspects.
Belarus blocked the news site Tut.by
and
arrested its journalists.
The UK was exporting plastic waste to Turkey, but once it arrived
the
companies just burned it or littered it.
Now Turkey will stop accepting such waste.
Cheaters will keep looking for countries they can pollute in that way,
but we had better stop making large quantities of unrecyclable plastic.
Chad's troops attacked
protesters denouncing the military coup.
US sanctions against Venezuela are cutting into planting, and
the
threatening the country with food shortage later.
The government of Honduras feeds the supporters of the ruling party.
Others
have to flee to get food.
Survivors of the 1921 massacre of blacks in Tulsa
testified
about it in Congress.
They were children when 300 people in their neighborhood were killed.
It's bad enough that this happened once, but the wrecker is trying to make
it happen again.
*Ivory Coast jails
child traffickers after cocoa farm raids.*
Food companies Cargill, Bunge and Cofco were caught
selling soy beans
produced by deforesters in Brazil.
When the wrecker was in charge, the Department of Justice gave Twitter
a subpoena to try to identify the operator of
a
parody account that made
fun of abject supporter Rep. Devin Nunes.
It went so far as to make Twitter keep the subpoena secret.
This looks like an attempt to use the government to repress criticism of Nunes.
*Israeli TV reporters
face
attacks and threats from Jewish extremists.*
Soon they may have to flee to the West Bank and seek the protection of
the Palestinian Authority ;-}{.
In a survey, 90% of US blacks said
they
had experienced some sort of
prejudice from the staff of stores.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to
block
funds for Israel's
evictions of Palestinians.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Washington State has
banned
disposable styrofoam food containers and
packing "peanuts", as well as other steps to reduce disposable
plastic.
Varoufakis: Why do the rich push against stimulus programs? Ultimately, they
want working-class people to be
desperate
and take low pay.
(satire) *Israel
Returns
Occupied Territories To Palestinians After
Running Out Of Targets To Hit In Gaza.*
(satire) *‘The Onion’ Calls On Israel To
Bomb
Our Offices In Case Any
Hamas Agents Hiding Out There.*
The UK has announced plans to
protect
and restore peat bogs, which absorb
considerable amounts of CO2.
Rep. McCarthy opposes
an official Congressional investigation
into the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.
This is a form of the Republican big lie, which claims there was
no attack.
It appears to me that the proposed investigation, if approved, will be
paralyzed by its structure. With equal numbers of Democrats and
Republicans required for a subpoena, Republicans could block all
subpoenas. Is there some crucial point I am missing?
Australia will spend almost a billion dollars (AUD, not USD) on a
fossil-fueled
power plant that would only rarely be turned on.
At least it won't emit a lot of CO2 if it rarely operates, but it is a
big waste of money. How about building storage batteries instead?
In the US it is easy to
get
a gun by mail order, with no background
checking. It comes as parts, which are not considered a gun until
they are assembled.
The conservative
parties lost big in elections for Chile's
constitutional assembly. Candidates that favor substantial change will
dominate the body.
*Amazon’s Ring is the
largest
civilian surveillance network the US has ever
seen.*
Why is Bogus Johnson so eager to
urge
Britons to take foreign holidays,
then warning everyone to be careful about it?
The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency says
there must be no
more investment in fossil fuels anywhere in the world.
This is important because the IEA has in the past promoted and defended
fossil fuels. Its departure from that camp will have an influence.
The same report also explains that putting the economy into full
decarbonization mode will create jobs, and requires no futuristic
technology, only predictable advances.
Signal tried to use Instagram ads to show users how Instagram
was profiling them. Instagram
shut
down these ads.
Bogus Johnson made
corruption
in awarding government contracts systematic.
Putin will prohibit
Navalny's supporters from running for the
basically subservient Russian parliament.
A lynch mob in Pakistan tried to break into a police station to
murder
two people accused of minor property damage to a mosque.
Denmark has decided to
admit
22 Danish citizens who are in prison in Syria
for involvement in PISSI.
Justice calls for this. Those people may be accused of participation
in PISSI's crimes, but if so, they deserve trials to judge their
actions. If they are convicted, exile should not be their punishment.
The British parliament has
ceded
too much power to ministers.
Nowadays, UK ministers tend to be
corrupt
and unaccountable.
Pinochet's constitution for Chile
imposed
a laissez-mourir
"neoliberal" economy. The vote on the constitutional assembly
indicates repudiation of that ideology — an intention to allow the
government to limit the power of the rich and to actively help those
that need help.
It is ironic that some bemoaned the surprise that the explicit
requirement for 50% women in the assembly actually resulted in
slightly increasing the number of men in the assembly. Does this mean
they now reconsider whether it is right to have an explicit gender
requirement in public elections?
I also wonder what will happen, or perhaps what did happen, in the
encounter between such a requirement and transgender and
nonbinary gender.
In the 1980s Savings and Loan scandal, hundreds of US banks
engaged
in outright cheating.
President Bush I clamped down on the agency that reported the crimes
so that future crimes would be protected.
Private equity coalitions are trying to
take
over Medline, which makes
and resells medical supplies.
If they destroy this company as they destroyed Toys-Я-Us, any of us
could
die as a direct result.
It looks like Israel must have been
systematically targeting
Palestinian journalistic sites in Gaza.
Systemic
racism example: Carlette Duffy's home was appraised at a much higher
value when she tacitly let the appraisers think the owner was a white man.
What's more, it is clear how appraisers used the owner's race in the
appraisal process, leaving no doubt that her race was the cause of the
difference.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
Bad news: Uber made
money last year.
More bad news: it paid no US taxes, because it laundered the profits
through a tax haven: the Netherlands.
The article uses the term "intellectual property". You might think that refers
to something of inherent monetary and intellectual value, but chances are
it only means some excuses to sign a contract for Uber branch A to pay rent
to Uber branch B. Please don't use the term
"intellectual property".
An dietary additive could
reduce
each cow's methane emissions by 30%.
I see one potential flaw in the system: once a company has bought the
supplement as an "offset", what will ensure that it reaches farmers
who really feed it to their cows? If its use is advantageous to the
farmers themselves, they they will arrange to get it and use it; but
if not, it could get put in the trash.
Biden's proposed arms sale to Israel includes
more
of the missiles that
Israel fires at many civilian homes and institutions in Gaza.
*Israeli Airstrikes
Damage
Gaza's Only Coronavirus Testing Lab.*
The International Energy Agency
still
has some changes to make to fully
support curbing global heating.
Amnesty International says Israel
has
a pattern of air attacks on
civilians.
Some unions that represent many cops have adopted policies
to
lead and press them to act like police officers.
Officially, they will no longer defend thugs.
Making changes in this area is easier said than done. We will see to what
extent this decision is effective.
The melting of ice in Antarctica could cause increased rain there.
This fall of molten ice
could
make the remaining ice melt even faster.
The executives of many EU countries have made Covid-19 "emergency"
declarations which
have enabled them to rule by decree.
The UK's "hostile environment" for foreign workers is driving out so many
long-term residents
that
there is now a labor shortage.
Millions of Americans have medical problems that call for them
to wear
masks even once they are vaccinated.
We could eliminate this problem if we cooperated in taking precautions against
transmission.
HAMAS says it never operates military activities in civilian buildings,
and in particular not in the building
which
housed the AP and al-Jazeera
offices until Israel bombed it.
It looks like I didn't miss anything by not using dating apps; they
are addictive and twisting,
and
not very good for finding love.
I won't consider using dating apps — they are nonfree software so I
refuse to run them.
US citizens: call
on Biden to nominate a climate leader as chair of
the Federal Reserve.
US citizens: call
on Congress to forbid Israel from using US aid
funds for actions that trample Palestinians' human rights.
In my view, the fact that the trampling is done with US funds is not a
central moral issue. Those actions would be equally bad if it did not
benefit from US funds. But the US should not overlook them.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsa labs workaround.
*Sierra Leone sells
rainforest for Chinese fish plant.*
Australia plans to invest heavily in production of hydrogen, including
production that consumes fossil fuels
and
will probably contribute to
CO2 emissions.
It wants to
use "renewable energy" funds for this project.
The core aim of this planet-roasting bullshit is to paint CO2
generation as acceptable on the expectation supposition that the CO2
will be captured. Will that really happen? What fraction will the
hypothetical technology actually succeed in capturing, if it ever
works? Is it ready for use at industrial scale at all now?
The loophole for cheating our future is that they will build the
plant, and capturing all the CO2 won't actually be feasible, but they
will insist on using the plant anyway "because we already paid for
it."
A lot of Greenland ice is about to start melting, and
as
much as 2 meters
sea level rise may already be unavoidable.
*The warming Arctic tundra will make it harder for the world to curb
climate change, as thawing permafrost and wildfires release
greenhouse gases
that
are not fully accounted for in global emissions
agreements, a study said on Monday.*
Canadian thugs
accused someone of running an illegal casino, but the charges
have been dropped
after
videos showed thugs stealing and planting evidence.
Proposing to release wild jaguars
in
parts of Arizona and New Mexico,
an area which used to be part of their habitat.
The right-wing-dominated US Supreme Court has chosen an opportunity to
undo all or part of the Roe v Wade decision
which
established the
right to an abortion in the US.
*The FBI is supposed to track how police use force — years later,
it’s falling
well short.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the
exceptions.
*There's a database whose mission is to stop problematic
[thugs] from
hopping between departments.
But
many agencies don't know it exists.*
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, has voted to hire unarmed
non-thugs to
handle certain kinds of situations,
including people having
psychological crises.
This change would presumably have prevented Daunte Wright from being killed.
Thugs object to some of the changes.
*How Apple’s AirTag turns us [captives of Apple]
into
unwitting spies
in a vast surveillance network.*
Inevitably Apple will see where each user's tags are located, so the
state will be able to see that too. However, the main danger I see is
that of tracking other people or their property. The safeguards that
are described won't prevent that.
The Burmese army is imprisoning writers and poets,
sometimes
killing them.
Big tech companies are making concessions about privacy, so they can
continue their targeted advertising while collecting less data about each
individual.
Evgeny Morozov suggests that this fails to touch their deepest problem:
the fact that commercial factors
determine
how the internet treats people.
I think that tracking individuals is an important moral issue, and it
is not limited to internet service/disservice companies. The stronger
we can make the movement to demand anonymity and non-tracking, the
better our chance of putting an end to other forms of massive
surveillance, including
Amazon Ring video cameras
and Apple Airtags that could be attached to other people's cars,
property, or clothing.
At the same time, I think he has a valid point that we shouldn't have to filter
the internet we want through the filter of startups.
Rep. Doug Lamborn is being sued by a former staffer for compelling his
staff to risk infection with Covid-19
by
not letting them wear masks
when together in the office.
*Long working hours
are
a killer, WHO study shows.*
The Associated Press calls for an investigation of
why Israel bombed
and destroyed its office in Gaza.
Authoritarian right-wing rulers
have
a pattern of denying Covid-19 and
covering up casualties.
Biologists are scrambling to find a way
to
help some coral survive
longer against global heating.
Identifying heat-resistant coral species, or breeding some species to be
more heat-resistant, cannot possibly protect more than a fraction
of the coral species that exist now. The only way to preserve reef
biodiversity is to halt the increase of CO2 in the air.
Meanwhile, ocean acidification
will
eventually wipe out all coral
and many
other kinds of ocean life.
*Challenge bigotry by all means, but outlaw it? I’d rather not.*
The UK is considering a law to prohibit political censorship in
universities and another law to require censorship by antisocial
media. Both
are projects of the Tory Party.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to make statements we disagree
with or disapprove of. To respect freedom of speech, we must maintain
the distinction between offending people and harming them.
The UK deportation thugs
imprisoned refugees that they did not need to
imprison, then
held them in solitary confinement for more than a year.
It is crucial for Biden to appoint a
climate
defender as the next
chair of the Federal Reserve.
Workers in McDonalds franchises are planning a
strike on May 19.
The wrecker made the EPA conceal data on developing
global heating
damage, but Biden has it publishing the data again, and it shows
how
things have got worse.
In China, school officials
cover
up student suicides, and if parents
and their neighbors demand information, the state's noise machine says
they are working for the CIA.
The US likewise places too much pressure on students. However, such coverups
tend to be limited to thug
departments after a uniformed thug murders someone.
A proposed Texas law would
authorize
anyone whatsoever to sue anyone
who helps anyone to get an abortion.
The target could be bankrupted by one 10,000-dollar penalty after another.
This is the same tactic used in Israel's law that made it impossible
in Israel to advocate boycotting the products made by Israeli
businesses in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory. It
threatened such a person with the prospect of penury through unlimited
judgments of "damages".
The root cause of the Texas law is that Republicans rig the elections
in Texas.
(satire) *Biden Outlines Renewable Energy Plan To
Invade Mt. Olympus
And Steal Aeolus’s Bag Of Wind.*
It should be "Aeolus's" because the "s" in "Aeolus" is not a plural suffix.
Most vaccine disinformation in the US comes from
12 saboteurs.
Although their bullshit is likely to kill people, I do not like the
idea of censoring it, because the systems of censorship will be used
against other targets — perhaps including, some day, people who
question Trump's proclaimed victory in the 2020 election.
It would be much better to force companies to drop the business model that
promotes postings based on how much "engagement" they provoke.
*Jacinda Ardern calls for
‘ethical
algorithms’ to help stop online
radicalization.*
Whether it's white supremacism or radical Islamism, anti-vax or QAnonsense,
I suspect that "social" media promote them all in the same way.
Apple fired a new employee because he had
published statements of
misogyny in 2016.
What he wrote about women in 2016 was contemptuous and nasty. It was
also 5 years ago. Perhaps he should have been offered a second chance
if he has had a change of heart.
I can't disregard the other moral issue, that of his job. The job he
was hired for was adtech, which is itself harmful and exploitative by
nature. Whoever does that job will do a lot of real harm to people,
more than mere insults can do.
Fossil fuel extraction projects are having difficulty
finding investment
funds and insurance for their projects.
This is a crucial step forward, but it won't be enough until it makes
those projects come to a halt.
Diosdado Cabello, vice president of Venezuela,
won
a libel suit
against a newspaper for republishing an article that accused him of
ties to drug trafficking, and is seizing the newspaper's offices as
payment.
In the US it is very hard for a public official to win a libel suit.
The standard is set very high so that officials cannot suppress
criticism.
Australia's practice of keeping refugees in prison with no time limit,
arbitrarily with no stated reason, violates international human rights
law. But Australia
quietly
made it legal under Australian law.
Israel destroyed the building in Gaza which
held the offices of
Associated Press and al-Jazeera.
Other
media organizations had their offices in that building too.
The US did something similar in Baghdad in 2003: it bombed the office
of al-Jazeera. The office was visibly labeled and the US knew where it was.
The attack had to be intentional.
Israel knew where those offices were in Gaza, so this attack too had
to be intentional.
*Cheney says some GOP members voted against impeachment
out
of fear for their
lives.*
Some epidemiologists, fully vaccinated, say why they will
continue
wearing masks when near strangers or non vaccinated people, and why they think
the CDC made it too easy for anti-mask anti-vaxxers to risk their own health
and other people's too.
(satire) *Houston Authorities Scramble As
Missing
Tiger Disappears Into Crowd Of Tigers.*
Vaccine patents, vaccine manufacturing monopolies, are part of a
neoliberal
system of trickle-down.
Patents were supposed to trickle down both material benefits (products
incentivized by the patent system) and knowledge (made available by
the patent applications since the patent system requires it). Both of
these trickle-downs have slowed to vary little. For example, the
vaccine patents do not give enough information for other companies to
make the vaccines commercially.
Let's eliminate
the patent system. We have little to lose.
People in Glasgow massed in the street to
block the arrest of
immigrants for deportation.
The objection to their arrest was not focused on the idea of deporting
them, not that as such, but rather the idea of keeping them for a long
time in an immigration prison where prisoners are
likely to catch
Covid-19,
as well as the idea of arresting Muslims on a Muslim holiday.
I can't empathize with that last; if I were going to be put in prison,
I wouldn't care what day of the year it might take place. If I were
arrested for advocating free software, and it occurred on the
anniversary of the GNU Project, that would make it more ironic but
would not make it more unjust or more painful.
China is targeting Uighur expats by
inserting
spyware into their
computers.
There are around 5,000 tigers in captivity in the US,
and only around
4,000
of them in the wild.
Ralph Nader criticizes
NPR's deep inadequacies.
US citizens: call
on the Senate not to confirm Rahm Emanual as
ambassador.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: support
the Freedom to Move Act, which would fund better
and cheaper public transportation.
Wage stagnation in the US is the result of policy decisions expressed
in laws, not
mysterious unchangeable economic "laws."
Epidemiologists generally believe that vaccinated people
should wear masks
indoors with other people who might be unvaccinated.
Vaccinated people can catch Covid-19, can be damaged, and can pass it on.
The vaccination makes this far less likely, but not impossible.
Let's choose to protect each other.
(satire)
*DSM-5 Finally Stops Classifying Adult Disney Fandom As Form
Of Psychopathy.*
The major media should stop reporting official figures about Covid-19
infections or deaths
as
if they reflected the reality.
Australia has started bringing home Australians
who
have been stuck in
India.
At the rate of 2000 per fortnight, it is going to take 10
weeks, provided no one else joins the waiting list.
Craig Murray has been imprisoned for covering the trial of Alex
Salmond, under an extreme standard of secrecy
that
mainstream media
are not held to.
I linked to his coverage of the Assange hearing.
I do not advocate independence for Scotland, but that's a separate
issue.
The UK does need to have regional governments with some real
authority, but it was
a
terrible mistake to set this up using
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as regions.
Chile is
going to draw up a new constitution.
I have suggestions
for national constitutions.
I urge free software supporters in Chile
to
look at this
and think about whether these relate to the new constitution.
A new Covid-19 which may be more transmissible
could cause another
wave in England.
*Covid quarantine process in the UK
is
riskier than being in a ‘red list’
country.*
Properly run Covid-19 quarantine procedures require careful planning
and a lot of money spent on actually work. The Tory government is
stingy with both.
*Brazil's easing of COVID-19 controls
will
cause new surge, experts warn.*
That can happen in the US too.
Allowing fully vaccinated people to go unmasked in stores is probably not
significantly dangerous for them or others; but how can you tell whether
the maskless person you see is vaccinated or not?
*1/3 of global food production
at
risk from climate crisis*
by the end of this century.
Facebook's plan to merge in data from WhatsApp
violates a promise it
made when it bought WhatsApp.
Opposition leader Bobi Wine: *Young Ugandans are being brutally
oppressed. They
must be allowed a voice.*
Everyone: call on Senator Menendez to
support diplomacy
with Iran.
How the UK's Home Office, which deals with immigration among many
other things, developed
into Ministry of Cruelty.
The minister "seeks to do and say the thing that will be perceived to be
the toughest thing that anyone could possibly do or say in any given
scenario."
*The violence that began at Jerusalem’s ancient holy sites is
driven by a
distinctly modern zeal.*
(satire) *Parents Can’t Believe
How
Bad Daughter Is At Being Raised By Them.*
*Fear
stalks streets of Israeli city where Jews and Arabs mixed freely.*
When the extremists compel people who are not extremists to become
hostile, that is a victory for the extremists. The hostility tends to
propagate, since change in the other direction is very difficult.
Israeli hate groups have been carrying out pogroms for many years
and I think their goal was this.
Netanyahu is using
the pogroms against Arabs (and, occasionally,
against Jews) for his own political advantage.
I have to wonder if he has done something to exacerbate the violence
in order to get this advantage.
Proposing that the US should have laws to
defend
US industries from Chinese
competition before they get wiped out.
The US ought to defend the workers in these industries from their
employers, not only from their employers' competitors.
In the 1970s, it was still normal for American mothers to
send little
children to the grocery store.
I never saw that; when Sesame Street appeared, I was in high school.
*Last hope over climate crisis
requires
end to coal*, says the president
the Cop26 climate conference.
When it comes to permitting generic vaccines, plutocratist officials
that Biden appointed will still have
plenty
of opportunities to get in
the way.
The Republican authoritarian death cult has demonstrated, by ousting
one of its leaders on Congress, how it will
purge
anyone that stops
short of the latest, biggest lie.
If there is any lie that you would not repeat, get out now.
(satire) *Sally Beauty
Introduces
New Press-On Hangnails.*
JPMorgan Chase announces a new policy of
appearing to support
decarbonization in its investments.
Samoa was a stable democracy but its current government is
undermining
democracy.
I can't tell from the facts given here what the correct outcome of the
election was, but the efforts to weaken democracy are alarming.
*Suspected Russia-led cyber campaign
targets
Germany’s Green party leader.*
The motive is her opposition to the proposed Russia-to-Germany gas
pipeline. That pipeline would boost both Russian influence in Europe,
and use of fossil fuels, and that effect would last a long time.
Since the pipeline is almost finished, I wonder if withdrawal
of support for it will come too late.
*Will Movement for People's Vaccine Open Doors to
Larger
Revolt Against Big Pharma?*
We can't possibly know the answer to that question, but it would be good
if that happens.
People are raging about the
treatment
of the corpses of the people who
were killed when the Philadelphia thug department
dropped a bomb on
the MOVE house.
I think this is a side issue, and a distraction from the real moral
issue, which is how they died, and why.
They died by murder. The Philadelphia thug department killed 11
people, gratuitously — it could easily have let them live. This is
the issue that matters. Living people are important in their own
right; living people (which they were) have rights. Corpses don't.
I don't believe that corpses deserve any special sort of "respect."
That goes for all corpses, includes my corpse when it some day exists.
I've signed papers for it to be used for scientific or medical
purpose, because that's a constructive use. You can do that too!
Let's not shift our moral focus from respect for people's rights to
respect for taboos.
Some real biologists say there is not yet sufficient evidence to rule
out the possibility
that Covid-19 leaked from a lab.
Morally, I don't think it makes much difference. Everyone makes
mistakes.
A captain in the Belarus army showed the press a
secret
order that told
the army to attack protesters. He has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
In the UK, a creditor can
easily
make it impossible for a debtor to
rent a place to live.
That is not an officially mandated consequence, but that is what
results in practice.
Perhaps it is still possible to pay to use a room in someone else's
apartment.
Qatar arrested
a blogger who writes about the life of migrant workers
there, and is holding him secretly, incommunicado.
*Study finds alarming levels of ‘forever chemicals’
in US mothers’
breast milk.*
Goodreads is an antisocial network that encourages people to show off
what they read and be judged by others accordingly.
One reader
thinks this perverts the enjoyment.
I think that may be valid. Of course, it also collects data about each user
and that will surely be used to manipulate per.
Electric companies in the US want to charge homeowners
for the privilege
of using their own solar power systems.
This has the tendency to discourage decarbonization, so with rational
politics the US government would make it illegal.
*The American gun crisis? It’s largely
a
domestic violence crisis.*
The UK is competing for the most-unfriendly-nation prize by
imprisoning and deporting Europeans who visit for the purpose of a job
interview, although
this is supposed to be permitted.
Most microplastics in UK rivers come from untreated sewage
that
water companies sometimes release into rivers.
Jewish and Arab mobs in Israel are carrying out reciprocal mob
violence, which
can reach the point of lynching.
The Jewish mobs are composed of right-wing extremists, which Netanyahu
has increasingly tolerated.
*Live TV shows Israeli mob
attack
motorist they believed to be an Arab.*
Uganda has allowed cutting down part of a forest reserve
which is
habitat for chimpanzees and other wildlife.
Thailand is having
a
Covid-19 outbreak in two large prisons.
The prisoners there include political prisoners.
Biden's proposal to pay farms to sequester carbon is designed in a way
that
will not cover regenerative agriculture.
US citizens: call on Congress to
give
the FCC authority limit the
price charged to prisoners for for phone calls in prison.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Asim Jamal Shakir Jr watched an LA
thug, who is Asim's uncle, tell
another thug to
shoot Asim.
I get the impression that he shot Asim with rubber-coated steel bullets.
The birth rate of Uighurs in Xinjiang
fell
by half from 2017 to 2019.
Humanity needs to reduce its birth rate substantially, but not by means
of inflicting suffering on masses of people. Singling out a specific
minority group for that suffering is an injustice in itself.
*[Wrecker]-Appointed Judge
Rules
Against CDC Moratorium on Evictions During Pandemic.*
I do hope that this will be overturned on appeal, but eventually it
will go to the Supreme Court where the same bad outcome could be
reimposed.
Guatemala's government has given itself the power to
monitor or
dissolve NGOs, particularly those that get support from outside
Guatemala.
This would include the local affiliates of international human rights
organizations.
*Colombian protest leader Lucas Villa,
who
was shot eight times, dies.*
He was shot by gunmen on motorcycles, who I suspect are somehow related
to the paramilitares.
EU citizens are signing a petition to demand an
EU-wide
referendum for
rejecting products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory.
Reportedly Eritrean soldiers are
occupying
Tigray and wearing
Ethiopian uniforms, and they are blocking aid from some regions.
The ancient city of Axum is besieged by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces,
which do not allow aid or communication.
EU citizens tried to establish a petition to demand an EU-wide
referendum for rejecting trade with illegal colonies in occupied
territories. The European Commission refused to register
it, but now a court has
ordered
the commission to do that.
The Tories are considering a law to
punish
universities if they interfere with freedom of speech.
Opponents say that the law would instead limit freedom of speech.
But the arguments presented in the article seem very weak: "It's
complicated, don't interfere" is not persuasive, and neither is "Only
53 people were deplatformed in a year."
Given that the law is being proposed by Tories, and Tories are not
known for scrupulously respecting the rights of the non-rich, I will
not rule out the possibility that the law would indeed do the opposite
of its stated purpose.
However, I think it should not be hard to design the law so that it
can't interfere with speaking. If the Tories don't want to do that, a
constructive proposal could demonstrate what they are really aiming at.
(satire) *New
Program Encourages Americans To Get Vaccine To Prevent
It From Going To Foreigners.*
Reportedly the US is
blocking
the UN Security Council from publicly
calling on Israel and HAMAS to make a truce.
Right-wing elites have
their
own forms of "cancel culture" — ways of
silencing those who disagree with them.
Moreover, they are now actively cancelling Republicans that don't
recognize the bully as their personal savior.
I think, however, that we should not get too distracted by comparing
the respective levels of cancellation activity. It's bad on either side.
Some US states are adopting laws to
protect
people from coercive control.
China is "protecting"
old mosques in Xinjiang by partly or completely
demolishing them, and by putting fences around them.
China is not the only country that destroys the Muslim heritage.
Salafi Arabia has
systematically
destroyed the oldest sites.
Biden's decision not to put sanctions on
Salafi Arabia's acting king
was followed by a
big
increase in punishment of dissidents.
*Air pollution from food production in the United States is linked
to
an estimated 15,900 premature deaths each year.*
*A Developmental Psychologist
on
Why Kids Need Some Independence.*
Georgia has reformed the citizens arrest law that provided vigilantes
an
excuse to stalk and kill Ahmaud Arbery.
*We Don't Have a Labor Shortage in the US,
We
Have a Crisis of Low Wages.*
*Report Reveals How Big Corporations Rigged Rules
to
Boost Pandemic Pay of
CEOs as Workers Suffered.*
(satire)
*New Evidence Finds God Destroyed Sodom And Gomorrah As Part Of Luxury
Condominium Development Deal.*
*HSBC has stakes in firms
that
plan more than 70 new coal plants.*
We can easily boycott HSBC.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter and senators to demand
Israel end the practice of evicting Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah.
Sheikh Jarrah is a part of East Jerusalem.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
*Why is the world still being hit by wave after wave of Covid
when we
know how to stop it?*
*Covid pandemic
was
preventable, says WHO-commissioned report.*
At the start of 2020, the virus existed, but quick action could have prevented
it from infecting very many people.
Originally, the flaws in the response were due to political leaders.
Now, however, they have taught millions of people to believe fake
news, react irrationally, and sabotage public health measures.
The next new pathogen may be even worse if we are not disciplined enough
to keep it away.
*Chemical giants hid dangers of [PFAs]
in
food packaging.*
*EU states cooperating informally
to
deny refugees asylum rights.*
*[Rep.] Cheney's ousting proves the "big lie"
is the Republican
Party's religion.*
They still seek to abolish democracy in the US, and they will tell
any lies to do it.
Colombian protesters, fired up by the murders committed by
thugs and
right-wing death squads,
are
demanding policies to improve life for
the non-rich.
Hungary's opposition parties
are
forming a coalition to defeat Orbán.
A report from the Louisville thug department says that the
thugs that killed
Breonna Taylor violated
the department policies by starting to shoot.
*Michigan governor orders Enbridge
to
shut down controversial Canadian
[Line 5] oil pipeline.*
The US border thugs
now holds 21,000 border-crossing minors, though nowadays
they
mostly stay only a few weeks in those camps.
Facebook insisting on merging all WhatsApp data into its main data base.
This is a
great impetus to stop using WhatsApp forever.
Conservation efforts have enabled large areas of forest to regrow.
However, deforestation
is going much faster.
The US has approved
an
800-megawatt wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean to
the south of Massachusetts.
This is almost twice as big as the failed Cape Wind project.
I hope that it gets built.
Tory voter-ID plans
could
disenfranchise up to two million UK voters.
The UK has arrested Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion
over
a planned nonviolent protest.
*Italy to ask EU
to
pay Libya to stop migrant departures.*
Is it legitimate for Libya to prevent people from leaving the country,
if they are not wanted for nonpolitical criminal charges? China stops
people from leaving, and even caught a boat in which dissidents were
fleeing Hong Kong,
and
arrested them all.
China has bought lots of diplomatic support, which it is using to block
Taiwan from participating
in
the World Health Organization's conferences
about dealing with Covid-19.
US citizens: call on the U.S. State Department and Department of
Defense to demand an
end
to Israel’s forced displacement of
Palestinians from East Jerusalem.
US citizens: call on your Senators to
sign
letter opposing Salafi
Arabia's blockade of Yemen.
To sign without running
nonfree
JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Colombia's president has
acknowledged
the demands of the countrywide
protesters that the thugs have been killing.
In Colombia, protesters have built barricades, and right-wing gunmen
with support from the uniformed thugs
shoot
to kill them.
I suspect that these killers are part of, or related to, the notorious
"paramilitares"
right-wing gangs.
*Sen. Bernie Sanders … announced that the Senate Budget Committee will
hold
a hearing … on "Waste, Fraud, Cost Overruns, and Auditing at the Pentagon."*
Three Portuguese border thugs
have been sentenced to years in prison
for beating
a would-be immigrant to death.
The US has become accustomed to many
endless
undeclared wars;
to end them all is almost unthinkable.
Now that the UK has adopted binding targets for greenhouse emissions reduction,
it must reconsider
its plans to expand airports.
Australia's endangered species protection laws
do
not seem to apply to logging.
Logging is the main direct threat to forest habitats, so this omission
is disastrous.
*The 10
companies that have contributed the most to state lawmakers
sponsoring both anti-voter and anti-protest bills are: AT&T, Dominion
Energy, Zurich North America and its subsidiaries, Berkshire Hathaway
and its subsidiaries, UnitedHealth Group, Mednax Services, Charter
Communications, State Farm Insurance and its subsidiaries, Phillip
Morris USA, and Vistra Energy (FKA Energy Future Holdings) and its
subsidiaries.*
Some of these are easy to pressure or boycott.
Mainstream media are trying to
rehabilitate
Republican supporters of
overthrowing the US government and overturning the 2020 election.
The UK's Covid-testing operation employs 50,000 people, but they are paid
through many
small companies which obscure where the money actually goes.
It's exactly the sort of system one would set up to facilitate corruption.
(satire) *Conservatives Panicking After Every Member Of Republican
Party Ousted
For Insufficient Loyalty To [the bully].*
A proposed lithium mine in Nevada would likely
cause
the extinction of
Tiehm's buckwheat, a plant that has adapted to grow in soil with
lithium and boron and is not found anywhere else.
Dealing with a decreasing population has some inconveniences, but the
robots that will exist in 20 years will ensure it is not really
difficult. The main challenge will be to ensure that these robots are
under the control of the people that they serve, rather than acting as
companies' agents to control those people.
Burmese journalists who fled to Thailand to escape the army's
murderous crackdown
face
the threat of being sent back to Burma.
Australia has an immigration prison where the average prisoner has
been held
for five years. (A year from now that average might be six
years.)
The prisoners have, effectively, no legal rights. So some of them dug
an escape tunnel, which was discovered unfinished.
China is trying to deplatform Tsai Ing-wen,
the
president of Taiwan.
China's wrath is not limited to invective. It uses all the power at its
disposal to bully
countries into shunning Taiwan while China gets the world
used to the prospect China will invade.
The situation calls for a courageous response: uniting to defend
Taiwan, and backing this up with action while this could avoid the war.
Global heating may damage tea production as
some
of the growing places
become too hot for it.
The PRO Act might need to be amended to clear up
what it would do
regarding some independent contractors.
Or perhaps it's ok as now written.
The Tories will
impose a voter-ID law on the UK.
Apparently they found the voter-suppression effect quite satisfactory.
*FTC Report Finds
Manufacturers' Repair Restrictions Unwarranted.*
I support the right to repair movement but its goal is only a first
step. It should be illegal to block purchasers of a product from
replacing the software embedded in it, or to impede them from together
to replace that software with free software.
Private equity fund managers arranged to have their management fees
taxed as capital gains rather than as ordinary income. This
intentional giveaway to the abusive finance industry is referred to
by the misnomer of "carried interest loophole".
It
may be eliminated soon.
I am in favor of this change, but it won't be enough to put an end to
the "private equity" funds that have eliminated many companies we used
to deal with.
*Global Protests Target
Banks
Funding Line 3 Tar Sands Pipeline.*
I wish I had found out a week ago and could have posted an urgent note
suggesting that people participate in these protests. Does anyone
know where these plans are announced in advance? If necessary, I will
recruit developers to help you access the announcements without
running nonfree JavaScript code, then link to them here.
Summarizing the most harmful points
in
Florida's new voter-suppression law.
Texas Republicans passed a bill to interfere with voting in a number
of ways. This article describes how Democrats
resisted
efforts to make
it even worse.
The article mentions the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting
Rights Act. The only way to get these past the coup-supporting
Republicans in the US Senate is to eliminate the filibuster, and that requires
the support of a few plutocratist die-hard Democrats.
I hope someone has a plausible plan for how to achieve this, a plan I
could support. So far I have not seen any discussion of one.
The US needs to undo the plutocratist revolution of the 1980s
and reject
the idea that a corporation's only duty is profit.
The head of Ethiopia's Orthodox Church made a video saying that genocide is
occurring in Ethiopia
and
that he had been stopped from talking about it.
He did not give the details to answer the obvious first questions.
One must suppose that the Ethiopian government is doing those things.
With the US adult population roughly half-vaccinated,
cases of
Covid-19 are decreasing.
However, in order to get rid of Covid-19, we need to vaccinate 80% of the
population, in every country.
Arizona's "audit" of the 2020 election may violate civil right law
because it
provides opportunities to generate suspicion based on
racial profiling.
Kentucky has set up a commission to study how
thugs carry out search
warrants, looking for ways
to
reduce the danger that they might hurt
someone in the process.
*Hundreds of Palestinians Protesting Evictions in Jerusalem
Injured in
'State-Sanctioned Campaign of Israeli Violence'.*
These evictions are not like the ones in the US, carried out because someone
cannot pay the rent. Israel is systematically seizing Palestinians' homes
in Jerusalem.
A shocking defeat in an election Labour expected to win
has made the party
aware it needs to change something.
What it needs is to unite behind Jeremy Corbyn, but that name did not even
appear in the article.
US citizens: call on Biden to
ban fracking.
The Department of Justice has
only
5 more months to prosecute crimes
of the bully's 2016 campaign.
Stiglitz: *Big Pharma Greed Will
Prolong
Pandemic—If We Don't Fight Back.*
I agree fully with the substance of his points. I wish he did not
fall into trap of using the term
"intellectual
property" to talk about
patents. copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks as if they were
similar enough to generalize about.
Since the whole point of the WTO is to
give
businesses more power over
national governments, and thereby more power over people, we should
abolish the WTO.
Higher unemployment payments are
not
the main reason Americans
hesitate to go back to work. Safety is one. Taking care of children
who are not spending the day in school is another.
Fascism
is spreading around the world, with fascist ideas spreading
before it. No two fascist regimes are identical, but we must acknowledge
that that is what they are.
The Gates Foundation's
forays
into education have not turned out well.
The Republican Party has become the
Lie-Cheat-Steal
Party, still
repeating in unison that the bully really won the 2020 election.
Every year since 2000, if not before, the Republican Party has tried
to rig the election. In
2000,
2004 and
2016 it succeeded.
(satire) *Mark Zuckerberg Asks Facebook Oversight Board To
Rule On
Whether Argument Wife's Fault.
*Rejecting Bayer Appeal, Top EU Court
Upholds
Ban on Bee-Killing Pesticides.*
The US attorney for Southern New York says that the scheme that sent
fake letters to the FCC about network neutrality
was illegal.
Will we see some charges?
*This Motorcycle Airbag Vest Will
Stop
Working If You Miss a Payment.*
In the world of the future, you won't own anything, not even the vest
around your torso. Unless you are rich.
Introducing DRM-gouging
to dishwashers.
Normally, a new kind of product may start out expensive, but
the price goes down. However, if the product requires a subscription,
its price may never fall.
The heirs of Samsung will have to
pay
a substantial fraction in
inheritance tax.
South Korea has made a wise decision. The US should follow it.
*Mayor of Mexican town and two officials
arrested
over disappearance of
activist.*
Claudia Uruchurtu Cruz was grabbed after a meeting and forced into a
van belonging to the city.
*Brazil judge sees
signs
of 'arbitrary execution' in Rio police raid.*
*Lula lays
foundations of anti-Bolsonaro coalition.*
Amnesty International has resumed referring to Alexei Navalny as a
"prisoner
of conscience".
The organization has decided to be less particular, and recognize
people that courageously resist tyrants, even if they have expressed
views that Amnesty disagrees with.
I disagree with those views too, but I think Amnesty's change in
policy is wise.
A descendant of Ponca chief Standing Bear demands that Harvard
return
a hatchet that Standing Bear gave away in gratitude.
We know that the US committed many injustices against Standing Bear
and the rest of the Poncas, as it did to many other indigenous
Americans. Only a fraction of them are mentioned in the article.
However, none of that invalidates Standing Bear's gift of the hatchet
to Webster, who had defended his right to be considered human. That
was a valid gift, and so (as far as we know) was Webster's gift of the
hatchet to Harvard. Thus, I conclude that Chapman's argument is
invalid and Harvard should keep the hatchet.
Displaying the hatchet in a museum can teach Americans about what
indigenous Americans had to do to claim human rights in the United
States.
The UK should stop
prosecuting Extinction Rebellion protesters.
The public are protecting them by finding them not guilty. Bravo for
the public! Now it is time for the state to back down.
European politicians have found an excuse to
thwart
generic Covid vaccines:
demanding that the US start exporting vaccine first.
This is a bizarre nonsequitur. The US will have spare capacity soon
and could export it, but that won't be enough to vaccinate the whole
world quickly.
The EU has brokered
a deal between the two main political parties
of Georgia. The opposition alleged rigging of the election,
so the ruling party imprisoned the leader of the opposition.
With no information to go by except this article, I'm inclined to believe
the opposition. It is hard to set up an ecosystem disinformation as complete
as the one that Republicans have established in the US, and even that one
can only fool those who wish to be fooled.
The bully had the Department of Justice
seize
phone records of
reporters who were investigating whether Attorney General Sessions
had talked with the Russian ambassador.
US citizens: call
on Biden's team to clean up ICE or shut it down.
New Zealand threatens to prosecute Geoff Upson
for
trying to get potholes
fixed by drawing penises around them.
Sick and cruel prudery is seeping back, threatening to reverse the
sexual revolution.
Very small tracking tags, made by Apple and other companies, make it
easy to track any person or object. We may have to start
checking our
clothing and other property regularly to remove them.
Some say that Prince Charming has no right to wake Snow White with a
kiss without first waking her to ask for her consent. His obligation
is
to leave her unconscious forever, they contend.
In real life, nobody needs a kiss to regain consciousness. But there
are real situations in which medics need to cut clothing off of
unconscious people, perhaps even exposing their genitals. This is a
prelude to medical treatments which aim at restoring those people to
consciousness. Medics have presumed that that goal justifies
stripping them.
Maybe we will see real pressure for medics medics to leave those
people untreated, on pain of being charged with some sort of sex
crime.
I compare this to the right-wing political pressure to let women die
rather than abort ectopic pregnancies.
Biden's infrastructure plan includes subsidy for the existing nuclear
power plants, as
well as plans to build a new one.
This would be a harmful use of the money, as well as wasteful — it
would be cheaper to replace the nuclear plants with storage batteries
— but if it can convince Manchin to vote to end the filibuster, it
would be a price worth paying.
A London thug probably killed dissident Blair Peach; afterward,
undercover thugs spied on dissidents (including his lover) for 20
years as
they demanded information on how he was killed.
One must suppose the thugs were seeking a way to discredit the
dissidents who were, for them, an inconvenience.
The BBC has exposed
the
persistent corruption of London cops.
US citizens: call
on youtube to exclude the wrecker.
US citizens: call
on Congress to adopt a wealth tax.
*The company I founded in my 20s
exploited
vulnerable people for profit.*
It sold special kinds of funeral activities, mainly to people who
would pay for more ways to grieve.
Republicans in Wyoming
threaten
to sue states that don't burn coal.
*EU court upholds
ban on [neonicotinoid] insecticides linked to harming bees.*
They harm other
kinds of animals too.
Florida has agreed to spend 400 million
to
help various endangered species
including the Florida panther.
My "childhood sweetheart" Melinda
would
be glad if she were still
alive.
After the 2018 California fires, 20,000 refugees fled to the city of
Chico. After a while of warmth and assistance, the city got tired
of them and
now tries to chase out those that remain.
* Research reveals that many national vaccination plans
exclude asylum
seekers, refugees, migrants and [internally displaced persons].*
The remaining Koch brother is
still
promoting extremist Republicans
that supported the Republican big lie that the
bully won the election.
There are now federal
charges against four thugs that participated in
the killing of George Floyd.
The US deportation agency, ICE, is
disregarding
Biden's orders
and doing gratuitous harm -- because it can.
*France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain urged Israel… to
halt settlement-building
in the West Bank.*
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that almost
7 million
people have died from Covid-19.
That is a lot more than governments recognize.
Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed was
injured by a bomb.
He championed climate defense, and was removed by a coup which we must
suspect was organized by planet-roasters.
The article says he is now speaker of the Maldives Parliament.
I hope he is still pushing for the need to curb sea-level rise
before the Maldives are inundated.
Three Hong Kong dissidents have been imprisoned for "rioting" simply because
they were present
at a protest.
Republicans are trying to make it easier to imprison protesters for
"rioting." This seems to be a standard item in the repressive playbook.
Uber and Lyft are lobbying against the PRO Act, which would facilitate
forming unions.
So are Instacart and some of the food-delivery companies.
This is another reason to boycott them all. (I won't use them anyway
since they won't let me pay anonymous cash.)
It is physically possible to make hydrogen and
use
it as a fuel,
and it's renewable if generated using renewable electricity,
but that is inefficient use of funds. In this decade we can decarbonize
more by converting the uses of energy to run off renewable electricity.
I wonder if it is possible to generate hydrogen efficiently from petroleum
without producing any greenhouse gases as the result. Maybe the result
could be sugar.
Even with US support, a waiver on patents and trademarks on Covid-19
vaccines is likely to take many
months
to negotiate, in effect keeping humanity helpless against the virus.
The WTO is structured to resist any initiative to reduce the power
of the businesses that it exists to serve. Of course, it claims that
this is for our own good, to ensure plenty of wealth for the rich
that could theoretically trickle down to the rest of us.
I have said before that we should
abolish
the WTO. I repeat that now.
* Unless actions by governments and corporations cut emissions in the
here and now, a
dose
of scepticism is in order.*
Amsterdam's mayor wants to move the visible prostitutes' windows to an
out-of-the-way place where tourists will not see them. This change is
supposed to "protect" the prostitutes, but the prostitutes
do not want
to be protected in this way.
I think the mayor is motivated by prudish disgust.
It would be better to consult the prostitutes and see what sort of
protection they would actually like.
*Cut methane emissions to rapidly fight climate disasters,
UN
report says.*
Rep. Liz Cheney is the one Republican leader in the House of
Representatives that refuses to be a puppet of the bullshitter. So
the puppets are planning to
replace
her as a leader.
New Zealand's Labour Party is sliding into establishing
two classes of
citizenship with two different laws.
It may well be that the Maori deserve compensation for being
mistreated in the past by European colonists. That sort of thing has
happened in many colonies including the US, Canada and Australia. I
don't know enough about New Zealand history to have a firm opinion
about that case.
But this compensation should not take the form of a permanent division
of society between two kinds of citizens, with different rules and
privileges.
Australia refused to lend money for a wind farm and battery farm,
saying that all funding for that is supposed to come from
private
lenders.
Does Australia provide any subsidies for fossil fuel development or
extraction? Any tax write-offs such as depletion? I would expect it
does. By its stated philosophy, it should stop that immediately.
The new standard in Hong Kong is
15
months in prison for telling people
about the Tian An Men Square protest and massacre.
One dose of Covid-19 vaccine improves your chances a lot, but the
second dose is a
big
improvement on top of that.
Conclusion: get
vaccinated and get both doses!
Bill Gates says, have faith in the
Invisible
Hand and assume technology
will prevent global heating.
When confronted with the political issues about which way the world
will go, he plays dumb.
US citizens: call
on Congress to include paid sick leave and family
leave in the American Families Plan.
*US declares support
for
patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines.*
I am curious to see how this change of position came about,
and who championed it. Most of the officials that Biden chose
for foreign policy have plutocratist leanings.
The article says nothing about the trade secrets of the vaccine
companies, but I've read elsewhere that the US means to include them too.
Governments should require the vaccine companies to teach their
methods to new producers, but that (unlike the patent license) is not
just a matter of stating a new policy.
*World Must Move From Pledges
to
Actual Green Recovery Spending.*
(satire)
*Couple Worried Relationship Will Lose Spark Once They Move
Into Leader's Compound.*
Will Biden find the courage to propose the whole of what the country needs,
instead
of just 1/3?
*House Democrat introduces bill to release
COINTELPRO
files on surveillance of
Black Panthers and Fred Hampton.*
Since 1980 the world's elites have adopted right-wing ideology and
spread suffering.
Only
left-wing politics offers an answer.
"left-wing" covers a lot of ground, so we must be careful about which
variety we support.
Why young (and middle-aged) adults
need
to get vaccinated,
for their own health and everyone else's.
Fight for the Future gets to the root of how surveillance capitalism
promotes civic strife: it's the algorithm, and behind the algorithm,
the
business model.
Notorious civic saboteurs, such as the
bully, are the creations of
that algorithm and that business model. They are people who had
enough talent to exploit it, and lacked the conscience to hold them
back. Instead of playing whack-a-mole with them, we should fix the
system they exploit.
*Tens of Thousands of Premature Deaths
Linked
to So-Called "Cleaner" Energy
Like Fracked Gas: Study.*
A UK undercover infiltrator in the Troops Out Movement became its
leader and
surely reported all the personal details of supporters.
He used deceptive sexual relationships with other supporters as a
means to advance in the group.
British banks have
increased their lending for coal since 2015.
A dis-service now offers everyone face recognition
applied
to lots of collected
pictures of anyone and everyone.
*European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex,
systematically pushed back refugees [numbering 40,000]
using
illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention
or transportation.*
2,000 of them died from this.
Venezuela has refilled the election council,
including
some members of
the democratic opposition.
The forest-protection programs that airlines present as "offsets" for
for their greenhouse emissions
don't
necessary do much good.
Even the head of the WTO says that the world
should make Covid-19
vaccine as fast as possible.
Alas, the head of the WTO has no power to override its rules, which
are not designed for public health.
(satire)
*Private Equity Firm Heartbroken After Realizing There No AOL
Employees Left To Fire.*
The US birth rate
took
a big drop in 2020.
If this is due to cruel starve-the-poor policies, those are a terrible wrong.
But the birth rate drop itself
will
be a good thing.
*Myanmar junta bans
satellite dishes in media crackdown.*
*US seen as bigger threat to democracy than Russia or China,
global
poll finds.*
That was true for most of the time since 1990, and it is still true for
Russia, but it is not true any more regarding China.
A wide variety of explosives and weapons
have
been confiscated from
right-wing protesters in the past year.
US citizens: support the
Tax
Excessive CEO Pay Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to
ban
oil and gas development in the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Progressives immediately cancelled mayoral candidate Scott Stringer
when a former intern
accused
him of groping her. However, others say that the two had a relationship
and she wasn't an intern.
Greta Thunberg says that the political leaders she has met with
show
no "sense of crisis" about the climate.
No wonder they think it is acceptable to surrender to the business pressure to take it slow.
One of Sudanese tyrant al-Bashir's lieutenants says he wants to be
tried
by the International Criminal Court, not by a Sudanese court.
He expects the ICC to be less biased.
Bravo to the ICC. The US should cease its
campaign
to delegitimize the ICC and sign up for it.
"Carbon offsetting" or climate defense by protecting forests, as it is
now done, is a weak scheme.
It may do some good, but certainly not enough.
Afghan journalists face
murder
threats from the Taliban,
especially those who are women.
The US should offer them all asylum.
Germany is suffering a
peak
level of right-wing hatred displays.
The figure of 24,000 "attacks" includes mere statements (I will not
call this censoring messages merely because I disapprove of what was
said) as well as actual violence. The article does not tell us how
acts of actual right-wing violence took place last year in Germany.
I wish it did. I would expect that that too has increased.
The US Department of Justice, then operating under the control of the
wrecker, threatened MIT researchers who had published a statistical
demonstration that there was no sign of fraud in Evo Morales's
electoral victory, which was
followed
by the coup in Bolivia.
*UN condemns
violent repression of Colombia protests after at least 18 die.*
PISSI is gradually
recovering
its strength in Iraq.
After the US assisted Rojava in defeating
PISSI, the wrecker removed
US troops and cooperation and let the remnants survive. That was a foolish move.
Belarusian dissidents ask for Germany to
investigate
Lukashenko's crimes
against them.
If Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland break away from the United
Kingdom, they will have a chance of more democracy than Tories allow
(though that will be limited by the European Union, which they would
join).
Meanwhile, England, with most of the UK's population, would
sink under
inescapable Tory dictatorship, with democracy more tenuous each year.
England would have as much chance of restoring democracy as Hungary
has. I can't see that as a happy ending.
People who have been trafficked into the UK and forced into crimes are
nearly always
treated as criminals, not as victims. Parliament decided
recently to make it even harder to escape this fate.
Uganda has reprised an old law imposed by the British Empire which
criminalizes
homosexuality.
*Internal NYPD Documents Show Cops Were Sent to Protests With
Barely
Any First Amendment Training.*
It is complex, organizationally, to choose the personnel for a
specific mission based on which trainings they have had. The easy thing
to do is train everyone. The next easiest is to have specific units
for specific jobs and give those units the training for those jobs.
Several young Germans
won
a lawsuit against the government for failing to take
adequate action against global heating.
*Rich nations' climate targets
will
mean global heating of 2.4C — study.*
That's if there are no unexpected positive feedback loops.
I've discovered that it is possible to view
the
1619 Project
using IceCat by clicking on the "Reveal Hidden HTML" button
that appears at the bottom right corner of the window.
In other graphical web browsers, open the "web developer tools," usually
by pressing the F12 key, then switch to the console and run:
You should paste and run that as a single block.
It reveals the contents of the 1619 Project page.
The New York Times ought to use Javascript to make the contents
initially invisible — that way, when Javascript is not running,
the contents will be visible.
If you know a way to pass that message to the Times, please do so.
They might fix this, since it won't be a big change.
*LA sheriffs frequently
harass
families of people they
kill, says report.*
France has decided to sell Egypt
more
fighter-bombers.
There are points in that message that seem like bullshit, but I don't
understand what's really behind them.
I don't see that human rights are a direct concern regarding fighter jets.
The Egyptian military regime
is
highly repressive,
but I don't think fighter jets are very apt, or necessary, for
attacking protesters, journalists or bloggers.
I also don't see how terrorism relates to sale of fighter jets.
Egypt does
have a problem with domestic terrorists,
but I don't see
how fighter jets are very useful against them.
The Burmese military
killed
several dissidents with a mail bomb.
Pesticides are harming the animals
that
turn dirt into soil,
including earthworms and insects.
This is very dangerous.
A professor of linguistics explains how (and perhaps why) the US has
converted racial slurs into taboos that can't be mentioned,
not even
to discuss them.
I agree that overt racist attitudes should be "ridiculed and socially
punished in general society"; it is wrong to make racial slurs against
anyone.
However, that is no reason to put taboos on them. I am opposed to
putting taboos on any words, for any reason, because they gratuitously
tie society in knots. When the taboo is on a racial slur, it
prevents discussion of racism,
and famous
anti-racist statements
cannot be quoted.
The same hypersensitivity does its harmful work when students seeing a
picture of George Washington with slaves are "triggered," and lose the
ability to think and speak
about
the significance of the fact that
Washington owned slaves.
How progressive Democrats gained power in the New Mexico state
legislature, replacing
some plutocratist Democrats.
They had to fight against identity politics. If you choose which candidate
to support based on matters of identity, you are asking to be manipulated.
A big oil discovery in Namibia offers windfall profits to some of the
inhabitants, until
global heating destroys their country.
So the people of Namibia have a right to a better life — for a couple
of decades — thanks to a little trickle-down from the profits of
exploiting a giant oilfield and perhaps destroying civilization?
Of course not! Nobody does! There is no room in the world's carbon
budget for any new fossil fuel development, whether it is in
California, Namibia, the Mediterranean Sea, or anywhere else.
President Correa of Ecuador asked the wealthy countries to pay Ecuador
not to exploit a new oil field. No one took up that deal, but the
basic is still a good one. Let's give the people of Namibia a better
life in exchange for an agreement to keep that oil forever in the
ground.
Of course, we need to structure the deal so that corrupt oligarchs don't
swipe the money and put it into secret offshore investments.
* Removing armed [thugs]
from traffic enforcement and turning it
over to civilians
should
be a major goal of the racial justice
movement.*
Thugs
use minor traffic violations — or possible appearance of one —
as pretexts to stop blacks and search their cars. Civilian traffic
code enforcers would put an end to this practice.
I contend that the practice violates the fourth amendment regardless
of whether racial profiling is used, because an unaggravated moving
violation, by itself, is no excuse to search a car.
The EPA is moving to reduce use of hydrofluorocarbons,
which are
very powerful greenhouse gases.
There is a campaign to stop Facebook from merging two collections of
data about useds:
the
data about the useds of Facebook itself, and the
data about the useds of WhatsApp.
Of course, if Facebook eliminates an internal policy barrier that
limits its use of the massive data it collects from its useds, that
will make its power to abuse people a little greater. It would be
better to prevent that.
But I cannot support this campaign, because doing so would legitimize
the injustice those dis-services already do.
Facebook in its current form should not be allowed to exist at all,
because
much of the data collection it does should be illegal.
Don't be a zucker! Stop letting Facebook and WhatsApp use you!
* The Biden administration is reportedly considering teaming up with
private companies to monitor
American
citizens' private online activity
and digital communications.*
What creates the opportunity to try this the fact that these companies
are already snooping on users' private activities. That in turn is
due to people's use of nonfree software which snoops, and online
dis-services which snoop.
"Israeli" dates are mainly grown in Palestinian territory, and those grown
in Israel proper depend on
underpaid
Palestinian workers.
Several plutocratist presidents have found ways to let businesses off
the hook for their crimes.
Will
Biden change directions?
The US is using NAFTA to try to stop Mexico from
banning
glyphosate.
NAFTA is a business-supremacy
treaty, and it used to contain an ISDS clause (I Sue Democratic States)
which authorized businesses to sue a country for adopting a law or
policy that interferes with their plans.
The bully
revised NAFTA, eliminating the power, but another member
country can still do so, and that is what the US is threatening to do.
* We are told by some opponents of the far-right that supporters of
equality and civil liberties should not be worried about expansions of
U.S. surveillance and counterterrorism capabilities.
They
are wrong.*
(satire) *U.S. Vows To
Invade
Next Country That Asks For Covid Vaccine
[patent licenses or trade secrets]*
Even when you're joking, please don't lump together trade secrets and
patents as if they were similar!
Colombia's president pulled back the regressive tax plan in response to
big protests around the country. However, thugs
attacked
the protesters.
The Tories are proposing a law to make it so hard to sue the UK
government (claiming its policies are illegal) that the government
could
get away with anything.
New Zealand is proud of taking an "independent" foreign policy towards
China: independent of the west, but going along
with China in
practical terms.
On May 10, RMS will give a remote talk for the University of
Buckingham Free Speech Society, starting at 7pm UK time.
You can watch the stream
here.
US citizens: call for the US to
offer
gratis college education in public colleges.
To sign without running
nonfree
JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Biden to
cancel
college debt.
Everyone: call on AT&T to
speak
out against the Texas abortion ban
and pledge to stop funding anti-abortion politicians.
Bogus Johnson appears to have said, "let the bodies pile high in the
thousands," insisting
on keeping the UK economy open.
(He later changed his mind about that decision, and changed it again, and again, etc.)
Bogus Johnson has
evaded
scandal after scandal by refusing to take
them seriously, but the current scandal about accepting gifts of money
and covering them up is constricting around him.
Nonetheless, he continues trying to thwart punishment by ignoring it.
The UK used to hold its ministers accountable with a firm expectation
that a minister would resign over any wrongdoing, whether public or
personal. The Tories have
abolished
that expectation by disregarding
it, and now they can get away with just about anything. But they are
still pushing to destroy every institution that could stop them.
I can imagine them as saying, "If you're a Tory politician, they let
you do it." And, as when the bully
said it, it's not really true,
unless "let you" includes "be too scared to stop you".
The Indian government asked Indian scientists for advice for dealing
with Covid-19, but when they said that the variants threatened another
wave of illness, the
government
ignored them.
The UK, by outsourcing regulation, has demonstrated that this practice
encourages corruption that defeats the regulation, with results that
sometimes
kill and often ruin people.
Unionizing the workers in charter schools
prevents some of their
usual kinds of exploitation. Is that enough to make them harmless?
Thousands
protested peacefully in London against Tory plans to repress
protesters if they cause inconvenience to anyone.
I fear this will not be enough. The Tories figure they will win the
next election, with some help from
voter
suppression,
and aside from that they care about nothing and no one.
A thug went mad and
attacked
a teenager who had surrendered, for not obeying
every violent demand.
An interview with the
last
resident of the village of Wollar in Australia.
Everyone else has sold per property to Peabody coal mining.
If the new use of the town's land was something necessary for
Australia and the world to survive, I would say that what has happened
in Wollar was not so bad. At least people are getting bought out and
they can move to other communities.
But given that mining more coal is death, the state should not have permitted
a new coal mine at all. Laws should prohibit new coal mines.
Republican election sabotage bills go beyond making it inconvenient to
vote (especially for Democrats). They propose to allow poll watchers
to look at people's ballots (and see how they are voting),
harass
voters, even try to disqualify voters.
Republican officials would judge the challenges and there is no reason
to expect them to try to judge in a non-partisan or fair manner.
Cars record everything that happens in them, even opening doors and
windows. If you connect a phone to one, it gets lots of data from the
phone, and stores
them permanently too.
In the US, various government agencies can get this data out of the
car. However, it's not just the government. Surely the car manufacturer
gets it too, and can sell it.
I wonder whether all this data enables the government, and the car
manufacturer, to track the car's movements by dead reckoning if the
GPS antenna is covered.
We need laws to tightly
restrict
what data a car can record.
The Tory government has stated the intention to
privatize all public
schools in the UK.
Privatization would result in paying teachers less, spending less on
education, and providing profit to the operators. In addition, the
privatized schools could get away with disregarding educational needs,
even kicking out students because they cost more money, perhaps
leaving them with no school that will admit them.
Bernie Sanders: *Big Pharma doesn’t want us to expand Medicare.
We
have to fight them.*
Children who catch Covid-19, even without symptoms, have a significant chance
of ending up with
lasting
pain and disability.
Putting aside the gratuitous disrespect reported for some doctors,
there is, in fact, nothing that medicine can do for those people now.
No one has any idea what might help. Maybe research will discover
treatments in the future, but there is no guarantee.
This is a fate worse than death. I suppose some of those children
wish for death. If they don't now, they may start in a year or
several years. But it may take them years to attain that wish.
To prevent this horrible fate, we need to eradicate Covid-19, from our
countries and from the whole world. That means a large fraction of
the population must be vaccinated.
We cannot allow perverse cults to stand in the way.
The UK's fines for violating Covid-19-suppression rules
fell most heavily
on disprivileged racial groups.
I think it would be interesting to study the importance of various
factors in producing that result, including these:
Polls suggest that the Green Party may be
Germany's
strongest party after
the next election.
That would be truly revolutionary.
So don't say, "Colorless Green ideas sleep furiously." They are not
colorless, and they are not sleeping any more.
Hong Kong plans to
require
foreign domestic workers to get Covid-19
vaccination.
Each domestic worker works in close proximity to a family, over long
periods of time. If the worker catches Covid-19, person is very
likely to transmit it to that family. Therefore, the worker should be
vaccinated.
Perhaps people who work in stores and deal with the public should also
have to be vaccinated. A store worker rarely spends even 5 minutes
near one customer, but one infected worker in a store for hours can
fill the store with virus and several people could catch Covid-19 from
that.
The likelihood of this depends on the store's ventilation system. It
also depends on whether customers keep wearing masks when in a store.
The only sort of exception that, for ethical reasons, needs to exist
is for those who, for medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated. Hong
Kong says it will offer that exception.
Aside from those people, anyone who feels discriminated against by
this policy has a simple solution at hand: get vaccinated. It's the
right thing to do and the safe thing to do. Humanity needs to
eradicate Covid-19, and this is the way. Stop complaining, and get
vaccinated!
However, for the time being, many people don't have the option of
getting vaccinated, because they live in places where little or no
vaccine is available. It would be proper for a country that has money
to burn, such as Hong Kong (i.e., China), to offer people admitted
with work visas vaccination before or after arrival, if they are
coming from one of those places.
Singapore is using a
disco
ad to encourage people to get vaccinated.
Australia's chief medical officer talks about the need to
stop
citizens from returning from India while getting the quarantine system
ready to cope with the extremely contagious virus variant now
spreading there.
I think this is legitimate as long as they work fast and get this
over quickly.
Poaching rare plants in a South African desert is
likely to wipe them
out, and if it doesn't, global heating effects can do it.
Complex and subtle factors have to be weighed to determine whether use
of the chickenpox vaccine is desirable. One factor is
whether everyone
will agree to be vaccinated.
Funeral
for a glacier.
Evidence that some sort of directed radiation attack
was made against
US personnel in the 1990s.
*Redirect harmful subsidies
to
benefit the planet, UN urges governments.*
Witchcraft accusations in New Guinea: is it correct to call this a
"highly modern phenomenon" and say
it
is not a practice from "ages
past"?
I think that is a false choice, and that it is part one and part the
other.
It may be true that an accusation of witchcraft nowadays typically
results from conflicts related to modern society and the precarious
economy. I have no reason to doubt that. It would result from whatever
tends to cause strong conflict.
However, the choice to handle the conflict by accusing someone of
witchcraft surely comes out of cruel traditions, and so does the
choice to deal with that accusation by torturing the alleged witch.
The fact that in some regions it is usually males that are accused of
witchcraft, while in other regions usually females are accused,
supports the idea that the traditional culture of each region is
responsible. New Guinea traditional cultures varied greatly in their
customs and religious beliefs, including their beliefs about
witchcraft.
Whatever the explanation, the idea of witchcraft is a plague of
irrationality that leads to persecution of many innocent people.
One thing secular humanists do, in many countries, is campaign for an
end to persecution of "witches". I see articles about this
occasionally in the secular humanist magazine, Free Inquiry.
*Glacial lakes threaten
millions with flooding as planet heats up.*
Getting a Covid-19 vaccination
greatly
reduces the chance of your
transmitting Covid-19 to anyone else.
Please get vaccinated as soon as you can.
India is giving false figures for the number of people killed by
Covid-19, reporting
only
half as many deaths as the number of bodies
that were cremated.
In the US we have seen governments falsify Covid-19 statistics
in Florida
and New York State.
Oregon has reinstated restrictions to prevent spread of Covid-19,
based on projections
that
this would avoid hundreds of deaths from
Covid-19.
How about conditioning reopening in each area on the fraction of residents who
have been vaccinated?
Chad's military shot protesters
who
were criticizing Chad's military rulers —
which include the son of the recently deceased former dictator.
Glenn Greenwald: *The Left Continues to Destroy Itself and Others
With
Evidence-Free Destruction of Reputations.*
Biden says that
he
continues to push for "denuclearization" of North Korea,
which is an impossible goal. Kim has learned that nuclear
weapons are the way to protect his dictatorial power, and will not consider
giving up that protection.
Canada has obtained new insurance coverage for the planet-roasting
Trans Mountain pipeline, and
is
concealing which insurance companies
are providing the coverage.
This is a reaction to the pressure already placed on insurance
companies to stop insuring fossil fuel projects.
Canada's government takes a planet-roaster stance, and what we see here
is how far it will go to continue destroying civilization's future.
Some Republicans object to the New York Times' 1619 project,
about the history of slavery in the US,
claiming
that it is wrong
to call attention to the country's flaws.
Since some of these flaws continue to cause injustice today, I believe
as a general principle that we should pay attention to them, not cover
them up. Therefore, I would like to look at the 1619 Project and see
what it says.
I am blocked from doing so because its web site
insists on running
nonfree software (written in Javascript) in my browser.
Since I don't allow anyone to do that
to me, the site shows me a blank window.
Does anyone know of another way I can look at that material? Perhaps
a way that is not "interactive"?
Because of that injustice in the site's infrastructure, I must urge
everyone to decline to visit that site, unless and until they fix it
to be accessible from the Free World. I hope that school curriculum
will likewise refuse to suggest the site as a resource until it has
been fixed.
I hope that they fix it soon, to make the material available for
viewing from the Free World. But we will need to press them to do it.
Does anyone know where we should direct the pressure?
*How the For the People Act
[would
blunt] New Florida Voting Restrictions.*
Delete your social media accounts, because sooner or later
the algorithm will figure out
how
to trigger you and start changing
you so you can't get away.
Pressure for people to study for careers in science and technology
is
leading universities to stop teaching history.
*Who's Controlling the COVID Vaccine:
10
Myths and Misdirections.*
I posted this link because overall the points are valid. However,
talking about the concept of "intellectual property" inevitably
spreads
confusion through over generalization
and putting scare quotes around the term does nothing to undo that
confusion. Each use of that term inherently misinforms.
The way to avoid that misinformation is to talk about patents and
about trade secrecy as two separate issues which are legally
unrelated.
Win Without War's campaign
to
end the arming of US thug departments
with military weapons.
The world struggle between democracy and repression has been going
oppression's way for ten years. The influence of repressive powers,
China and Russia plays an important role,
and
so do the supporters
of the bullshitter.
The existence of a powerful antidemocratic party in the US undermines
its influence for democracy in several ways: it makes the US a
disappointing example of democracy's functioning; it encourages
repressive and aggressive US policies, which set bad examples
themselves; its support for plutocracy weakens the US and thus
undermines its ability to do anything inspiring.
The right to take and publish photos in public places is under threat
from another direction: in the UK,
some
campaign to criminalize
photos of breast-feeding in public.
I sympathize with Ms Creasy's feeling of disgust, but we should not be
led into supporting a dangerous law by a feeling alone.
The right to take and publish photos is already threatened on several
fronts. Some US states have adopted "ag gag" bills
that criminalize
publishing pictures of farms' treatment of animals.
Some countries, including Spain,
criminalize
publishing photos of thugs
committing acts of violence,
under vague and stretchable conditions. And many countries restrict
photos that include buildings whose architecture is copyrighted,
even in the background.
To combat these threats, we need to insist on a simple and general
principle: wherever you have the right to be, you have the right to
photograph anything that you can see, and to show the photograph to
others.
Those who wish to breast-feed in public and avoid others' looking at
or photographing their breasts have an easy way to prevent this: wear
(or don at the moment of need) a garment that can be arrayed to block
the view. This can achieve the goal more reliably than the proposed
law, while not putting anyone's rights in question.
Extinction Rebellion organized highly visible protests in London, in many cases
blocking
the travel of cars which are mostly using fossil fuels.
The four factors of the apocalypse:
*Dangerous Republican Anti-Protest Laws
Grant
Drivers License to Kill.*
*Right-Wing Extremism
Is
on the Rise in Israel.*
It is ironic in the extreme to see that a party with views comparable
to Nazis is so powerful in Israel that it may soon be in government.
Comparing Biden's tax proposals
with
what FDR actually did.
Biden's plan goes further in regard to capital gains, though in some
others it does not go as far.
Ralph Nader: we must make Congress
raise
the taxes on rich businesses and
rich people.
US citizens: call
on Congress to reduce drug prices this year.
Thousands are protesting in Bogotá
against
a plan by the right-wing
government to institute a sales tax.
A sales tax is a very regressive method, so this plan is designed to
hurt the poor and spare the rich. So I support the protesters.
Pedro Castillo, Socialist, says that as president of Peru
he would make
mining companies "70% of the profits in Peru".
*Republican [state representative]
who
let violent protesters into
Oregon state capitol is charged.*
Apple takes a step to interfere
with
some kinds of tracking of users.
If Apple's operating were free/libre,
public-spirited hackers would
already have released a modified version which had the defaults set
to protect privacy. You could get the benefit of these modifications
without having to work on them yourself.
Proposing to end
the profit-based decisions on whether to invest
in fossil fuel infrastructure.
The West Antarctic ice sheet could start to
break
up within this decade.
If it does, it will eventually raise sea level by an additional two feet.
I don't know how long it would take for that extra sea level rise to occur.
UK undercover thugs that infiltrated peaceful political groups
lied
about their activities to justify continuing to spy on them.
This according to former minister Peter Hain, who participated in a
political campaign to end apartheid in South Africa and thereby became
one of the targets for this spying.
He charges that the choice to infiltrate that movement was made for
political reasons: the government supported South Africa and therefore
opposed pressure against apartheid.
*Four [UK] police officers have been
convicted
after one of them beat up a
member of the public and the others helped him to cover it up.*
The latest round of relief checks sent to US taxpayers made a
big, though
temporary, dent in overall poverty in the US..
Making this permanent would convert it into a form of universal basic
income.
The popularity of extra support to Americans suggests it might be
politically possible to
lift
all children in the US out of poverty.
The US border thugs are now
quickly
transferring border-crossing
children to long-term shelters run by the Department of Health and
Human Services. Far fewer children are in the first-level camps at
any time.
This is how the system is supposed to work.
It is still necessary for journalists to look at the conditions in
those shelters, and in the first-level camps.
Climate defense activism, shared, can give people a feeling of joy
to
cope with the external disasters.
A former Louisiana thug faces state and federal charges for
attacking
and injuring a man he was arresting,
with no legitimate reason.
If we weed out the violent thugs for crimes that are not fatal,
we may be able to avoid most of the killings that some of them
would have gone on to commit.
*Free
childcare equals class warfare, say Republicans.*
I agree, and it's time the non-rich fought back — let's march!
Children should grow up with less stress.
*Study Commissioned by Sanders Shows US Pays
2
to 4 Times More for
Prescription Drugs Than Other Nations.*
US laws provide a handout to pharma companies by restricting the
practice of buying prescription drugs at retail price in other
countries and selling them to Americans to fill their prescriptions.
That allows pharma companies to charge a higher price in the US
than anywhere else in the world.
The world's major powers
increased
their military spending
substantially in 2020.
Australia has made
it a crime for Australians stuck in India to
return home. They face imprisonment, and ruinous fines.
Many of them have been stuck in India for a year trying to get a flight
home. The seats available were few and expensive.
Rebecca Solnit: climate scientists are
starting
to see hope that we
will do what is necessary, as fast as is necessary, to avoid climate
disaster.
But we are not on a course for safety yet. We need to fight for this.
The new hope is that, by fighting, we can win.
India's encounter with theocratic populism is
much
like that in the US.
Indian politicians threaten criminal charges against people that report
the shortage of oxygen.
I am disappointed that the article propagates a claim about the
emperor Nero that may be a lie concocted by his enemies.
Bolsonaro may
face impeachment and prosecution for almost half
a million Brazilians that his policies caused to die.
A lawsuit in Florida attempts to
defend
the rights of some wetlands.
I may well agree that the construction of that housing should be
stopped. Aside from the threat to the wetlands, it sounds like the
construction is too close to sea level and likely to be flooded in a
few decades. I suspect that someone is being swindled. No one should
build anything in lowland areas of Florida.
However, the idea that the wetlands "have rights" seems like a kludge.
Philosophically, only a being that can have desires and make choices
can have rights. I would rather achieve the same result — blocking
bad development — in a conceptually coherent way.
England has restricted
burning coal and wood inside houses, to reduce
toxic particulate pollution.
The Taliban made a deal with the US to
protect
US and other western
forces in Afghanistan, until their planned departure on May 1, from
other Islamist groups.
This follows the Taliban's pattern. In 2001, the Taliban offered to
kick
out al-Qa'ida for the sake of peace with the US.
Too bad Dubya was not interested.
Tunisia has arranged
a loan through the IMF, and (as usual) there
is an element of dooH niboR in it.
Wages will be reduced.
Will the profits of business shareholders be reduced?
Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner in Guantanamo based on an false accusation
of being a member of al-Qa'ida, is
suing
the countries that kidnapped and tortured him.
US citizens: call on your senators to
introduce
a Senate counterpart
to the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act (H.R. 1694).
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
The FDA is planning to
ban
flavored cigarettes and cigars.
The flavored cigarettes in the US are mainly flavored with menthol.
ISTR reading that the menthol makes cigarettes more attractive to
teenagers.
A discussion
of controversies about Substack.
Is it possible to read Substack and make a donation to a writer
without running nonfree software? The usual ways of paying most web
sites require the payer to run nonfree software, which is why I never
pay a web site.
The head of the OECD is in
favor
of Biden's proposed reform to the
international tax system.
I agree it would be a step forward, but the system
I
proposed to put
pressure on big companies to split themselves up would be much better.
A sheriff in Georgia faces charges for
ordering
torture of people in jail.
Progressives in Congress have asked Attorney General Garland to review
the case
mounted by Chevron against Steven Donziger.
The thugs that injured Karen Garner
have resigned.
I am heartened to see several cases in which
thugs have been held accountable
for violence that was not fatal. This is the way to teach cops to avoid the
habits that lead to unjustified violence, which occasionally is fatal.
*New York mayor
calls
off ‘creepy, alienating’ police robo-dog.*
Putin has labeled
Navalny's opposition movement as "terrorist".
We should not forget that "anti-terrorism" laws often turn out to be
anti-dissent laws.
Has Bogus Johnson taught most Britons to
accept
bullshit from their leaders?
*Female political prisoners in Iran
facing
‘psychological torture’, say
campaigners.*
*[Three] UK students
sue
government over human rights impact of climate crisis.*
Mexico is trying to phase out glyphosate genetically modified corn,
but the US is trying
to interfere.
*UN Treaty Could Force Mining Companies to
Behave
Responsibly.*
Thugs in Alameda, California,
killed
Mario Gonzalez by kneeling on his back,
then lied about it.
*The low-hanging fruit in the climate battle?
Cutting
down on meat.*
The Epoch Times is accused of
sinking
into far-fetched conspiracy theories
since 2017.
A priori I can't tell whether the accusation that it is fake news
is valid, or fake news itself. I would like to be able to verify this.
US citizens: call on Biden to
add
Medicare expansions and
improvements to the American Families Plan.
US citizens: call for
green
augmentation of Biden's
infrastructure plan.
Manchin argues for letting Republicans rig the 2022 election
because otherwise they would try to
steal
it by force.
Is it better if they rig it?
Using
virtual reality to train cops on how to respond to difficult situations
and avoid killing innocent people.
If it enables them to see how their scores are worse when dealing with
blacks than with whites, could it train them out of unconscious bias?
Covid-safety of people in an indoor space depends greatly on the
amount of
ventilation — and on use of face masks.
A New York City thug faces criminal charges for
ordering
subordinates not
to save a prisoner who was killing himself.
Elizabeth City, North Carolina, privately
showed
relatives a heavily
edited video of how thugs shot and killed Andrew Brown, Jr.
One thing they saw is that the
thugs
began shooting just as they said,
"Show us your hands", while in fact his hands were in plain view.
Vanuatu is about to chill all controversial public statements
with a law making
libel a crime.
Even if that law is applied honestly, it will make all controversial
journalism dangerous. But such honesty is not likely, as the powerful
will keep trying to distort the law.
We have seen many
examples of
use
of such laws for
repression.
* Germany’s supreme constitutional court has ruled that the
government’s climate protection measures are
insufficient to
protect future generations.* The government must adopt stronger
climate defense measures.
Three Extinction Rebellion activists were found
not
guilty of charges
for a protest against a denialist right-wing newspaper.
A court ordered the EPA make a proper decision about
regulating
Chlorpyrifos.
Two more states have passed laws to allow parents to leave their
children alone for a while,
without
being accused of "neglect".
San Francisco is
taking
the police out of dealing with the homeless
and complaints about them.
The idea is to regard them as people that need help, rather than as
nuisances to be pushed away, which is how San Francisco has
treated
them historically for a long time.
*Factory Owners Around the World Stand
Ready
to Manufacture Covid-19
Vaccines.*
Those who lobby not to allow them to try to do it
claim they could not.
After Portland thugs
sprayed protesters with tear gas in July, over
1000 of the protesters
reported
medical problems that did not quickly
go away.
In particular, it seems to have a tendency to cause abnormal
menstruation. I wonder if it can cause abortions also. Would
Republicans ban tear gas, if so?
We say "tear gas", but I've read that there are different products
with different composition. They might have different medical
effects, too. I wonder what kind, or kinds, the Portland thugs
sprayed.
24 senators urged
Biden to get to work on closing the Guantanamo prison.
The US should either offer them real trials or stop holding them in
prison.
Republicans in many states are working to
draw
new congressional districts
so as to dominate the House of Representatives with a minority of the votes.
Companies and apps are using AI to
analyze
people's voices to
manipulate them.
The government of Nigeria is permitting religious fanatics to
jail
humanist Mubarak Bala for criticizing religion.
*Senate Urged
to Reject Fossil Fuel Attorney Beaudreau for Deputy Interior
Secretary.*
Human Rights Watch has recognized that Israel intends to
operate
an apartheid system permanently, in Palestine and in Israel.
New York City is
suing
Chipotle for failing to give workers
predictable schedules.
For workers that are terrified of losing their jobs, being compelled
to work at last minute is a big hardship.
DeJoy plans further sabotage of the USPS — closing facilities and
slowing delivery,
in
the name of cost savings that are probably
exaggerated.
(satire)
*God Frustrated After Google Search Reveals Octopuses Already
Exist.*
(satire)
*Researchers Determine Coelacanth Faked Own Extinction To
Escape Massive Gambling Debt.*
*Speed at which world’s glaciers are melting
has
doubled in 20 years.*
Chinese repression
is
squeezing journalists in Hong Kong.
However, China is hardly alone in repressing journalism more these days.
It is a
global trend.
Plutocratist Democrats in the House of Representatives are pushing for an
increased tax deduction,
almost
entirely for high-income taxpayers.
Biden has proved to be
much
more progressive than I expected.
We need to keep pushing on the areas where he isn't; but mostly we need
to convince a few plutocratist Democrats in the Senate to eliminate
the filibuster.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter and senators to support
Medicare for All.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call
on your senators to support the George Floyd
Justice in Policing Act.
US citizens: call
on Biden to halt use of land mines.
I was pleased to learn that New Zealand concluded that Ahmed Zaoui was
not a terrorist after all,
and
allowed him to live there in freedom.
I first heard about Zaoui when New Zealand had imprisoned him without trial,
Guantanamo-style,
based
on unverified suspicions.
Navalny is ending his hunger strike and has appeared in court
in an
attempt to appeal his bogus conviction.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think that Navalny's dramatic return
to Russia, which at first galvanized opposition, has been defeated by
Putin's willingness to throw away all restraint.
People around 10 years older than me write about
enjoying liberty
outdoors by themselves at the age of 4 or 5 years.
Local action to protect the Great Barrier Reef would extend its life for
only two decades,
unless
we also curb greenhouse emissions.
*Study links childhood air pollution exposure
to
poorer mental health.*
What makes it interesting is that it controls for other variables that
might affect people's mental health.
*Tribes without clean water
demand
an end to decades of US government neglect.*
The American Families Plan
would
help low-wage families in several ways.
We still need to
reduce drug prices.
As well as a national medical system.
China has set up to arbitrarily ban certain people from leaving Hong Kong,
as
it arbitrarily bans certain people from leaving China.
The Soviet Union and its puppet countries famously required people to
get an "exit visa" in order to leave the country. This practice was a
constant reminder of that empire's tyranny.
New Zealand proposes to "fight terrorism" by giving
thugs the power to
search anywhere without a search warrant
when
they say it's because they
suspect terrorism.
This would be a grave error. Terrorism is a real danger. Unchecked
policing is a real danger, too.
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa
has
won the Unesco press freedom
prize.
Let's hope this convinces President Do-dirty that
putting
her in prison on
bizarre charges
would not be wise for him.
I call him Do-dirty because
he
boasts of sending thugs to kill people
in the street.
He says that those killed are drug traffickers. I
suppose some of them really are drug traffickers.
The "music industry"
represses
people who listen to music, using unjust copyright laws such as the DMCA
The "music industry" plants its boot on people who listen to music, using
a repressive
copyright system
such as the DMCA,
in the name of musicians and composers. At the same time, it
increases its plutocratist exploitation of musicians and composers to the point
where those get almost none of the money that the companies squeeze out of us.
I've proposed two
better ways for listeners to support the musicians
and composers.
Let's make a deal with them, and tell Spotify and the music
copyright industry to dry up and blow away.
The first, personal step: always listen to music from a non-DRM copy
in your own computer — never from a streaming dis-service. By
insisting on having a copy, you make sure that the possibility of sharing
a copy is always available to you.
The copyright industry is
lobbying
the WTO against an exception to
vaccine patents.
Since copyrights and patents are independent laws, different on every
detail, why would the copyright industry care about this question? I
think it is the result of lumping these and other unrelated laws
together under the umbrella term "intellectual property". That is
meant to teach people to imagine a mythical principle of "intellectual
property," which is so important that it overrides practical needs of
whatever kind.
The world would be better off if we eliminate patents entirely.
We should do so, in software
and in general.
I do not advocate entirely eliminating copyright — rather,
reducing it
to some extent.
But we should entirely reject the term and myth of
"intellectual property."
Florida is still working on a
voter-suppression bill.
The prohibition on handing out food or water to people waiting on long
voting lines (themselves a consequence of voter-suppression measures)
may be omitted.
North Carolina thugs
shot
Andrew Brown in the back of the head as he
was driving away from them.
The FBI is going to investigate the thugs' actions.
The thugs
were carrying body cameras but the thug department seems
reluctant to show the video.
Sanders and Democrats in Congress call for
publication
of the wrecker's
secret vaccine contracts.
The imperfect democracy that the US has is our only avenue for
addressing the injustices and threats we now face. With Republicans
dead-set on negating it,
we
must now defend it.
There are two kinds of criticism of American democracy: the kind that
accepts democracy in principle, and the kind that rejects it. We are all
aware of the flaws in the way the democratic system functions in the US, and
of campaigns to fix them.
What is shocking is the existence of progressives who reject democracy
in principle. What do they imagine as a better alternative?
*America Needs a
21st-Century
Civilian Climate Corps.*
Reducing greenhouse emissions is curing the disease. Protecting
people and places from the effects of greenhouse emissions is treating
the symptoms. We must make sure to cure the disease, and then if we
have resources to spare, we can treat the symptoms.
The place to get those resources is from the rich.
Florida is passing laws to
obstruct
the transition to renewable energy.
The Republican death cult has decided that
global heating is not a
threat and efforts to curb global heating are acts of the devil.
So they will do anything they can think of to interfere with that.
Likewise, efforts to curb Covid-19 are acts of the devil and they will
do anything they can think of to interfere with that.
Yet another accusation of "cultural appropriation" — this one aiming
to establish racial
restrictions on wearing certain hair styles.
Each person is entitled to the right to wear per hair in any style.
*Brazil begins parliamentary inquiry
into
Bolsonaro’s Covid response.*
Colorado cops arrested a 73-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease
who had tried to leave a store with a little merchandise she had not
paid for (and maybe did not remember she had). Staff had taken it
from her already.
The cops
broke
her arm and caused her other injuries.
*Police video shows officers
joking
about violent arrest of Colorado woman.*
The threat to ocean life is not just overfishing —
pollution
is involved too.
*Protests erupt in N’Djamena as
Chadians
demand civilian rule.*
A pressure campaign demands that Simon & Schuster refuse to publish
books by right-wing politicians even if they did not support the
attack on the Capitol —
for
instance, Pence.
I find this frightening. I disagree with Pence on issues across the
board, but it is wrong to make it impossible for him and other
right-wingers to publish books.
*Drought-hit California [prepares to order] Nestlé
to
stop pumping millions of
gallons of water.*
Companies like Nestlé and its successor privatize the profits while
dumping the cost on the public.
Biden proposes to give the IRS a lot more money
to
audit the tax returns
of people with a lot of income.
* Human Rights Watch calls on international criminal court
to
investigate ‘systematic discrimination’ against Palestinians*
in Palestinian territory and in Israel.
* A coronavirus “vaccination persuasion” initiative targeting elderly
people who have declined invitations to get vaccinated
is gearing up to
be rolled out across Turkey.*
The climate-striking students in the UK call for a boycott of an exhibit
about the climate in the Science Museum,
sponsored by Shell.
Oil companies have used their money in clever and subtle ways to deny,
then downplay, then delay action to reduce fossil fuel use. We should
not trust them to have influence in education about the climate.
*Slashing Methane Emissions
Must
Play Larger Role in Fighting Climate
Crisis, UN Says.*
*House Dems Propose Lifting 'Cruel' Ban
on
Former Drug Felons
Receiving Food and Cash Aid.*
It is harmful for society overall if people who have been convicted of crimes
are thereafter excluded from survival without crime.
A mob in Papua New Guinea tortured two women with burning metal,
demanding
they confess to being witches.
This sort of atrocity still occurs in many parts of the world.
Our internet hate mobs are the same sort of psychological phenomenon,
but without the physical violence.
Bill Gates is
still campaigning hard against generic Covid-19 vaccines.
France supported
the dictator of Chad (who was just killed by rebels)
in exchange for his help in fighting PISSI.
I agree that fighting PISSI is a good thing to do, but keeping a
dictator in power (and now his son and heir) is not.
Google has decided to protect users of Android from being tracked —
except
by Google.
What gives Google the power to make this choice and impose it on users?
That is due to Google's
nonfree
software in Android.
*Revealed: UK solar projects using panels from firms linked to
Xinjiang
forced labour.*
The effective way to get away from using products of China's forced
labor is to plan to develop production capacity outside China, and
plan to refuse to buy the products from China. However, the WTO may
make that difficult.
Which is one more reason why the WTO, which is a business-supremacy treaty,
is an injustice. Add that to the obstruction of generic Covid-19 vaccines
and a long
list of other injustice.
Australia's retirement funds have decided to cast their votes in
corporations' bodes in favor of
greenhouse
emission reduction targets.
To be sure, following the Paris treaty is aiming for failure,
and 2050 is far too late; but it is a shift to start pushing aside
the Australian government's planet-roaster policies.
*United Airlines received billions in Covid aid. Now thousands of workers
could lose
their jobs.*
Why didn't Congress attach conditions to that "bailout" money? It's
not that nobody thought of doing that. The same Covid relief law,
passed a year ago, included "forgivable" loans to small businesses and
organizations; in order to convert these loans into grants, the
organization had to maintain the level of staffing. Why not put the
same conditions on handouts to airlines?
"Eliminalia" is a network of 300 fraudulent "news" web sites which
eliminate
real news articles by posting copies of them, backdating them, and
filing DMCA takedowns on them.
David Jones was jailed, pre-trial, for 14 months. Then his charges were
dropped, but the jail
demands
he pay $4,000 for the service of jailing him.
I imagine him daring the jail to jail him again because he will never
pay a cent either way. If it does, it will have to spend even more
money on him. How long will it take the jail to give up and limit its
loss?
The now-right-wing Supreme Court could
sweep
away laws requiring disclosure
of who donates campaign funds.
Twitter is censoring
tweets that criticize the Indian government's
handling of Covid-19, upholding the Indian government's contempt for
freedom of speech.
US citizens: call on Biden to
make
the American Families Plan reduce
drug prices.
The European Union's policies against concentration of industry
are so weak
that hardly ever is a merger blocked.
Thanks to action by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, people
who are evicted during the Covid emergency
will
be able to sue.
Proposing a campaign to ask US restaurants
to
admit only clients who
can prove having been vaccinated.
I think we should not start this now. Many people in the US have not
had a chance to become fully vaccinated yet — they became eligible
for vaccination only recently. We should wait a month or two, until
the time when everyone over 16 will have had a chance to be fully
vaccinated.
A small fraction of Americans cannot be vaccinated, for medical
reasons. Allowing them in will make little difference in public
health, so restaurants ought to do so.
People under 16 can't get vaccinated yet, but in fancy restaurants only
a few of the clients are so young, and there is no significant risk
of transmission between them as long as they are few in number.
With these two exceptions, people who cooperate with public health
measures, as much as they can safely do, will not be excluded.
Thus, the only people excluded will be those who intentionally
refuse to join in putting an end to Covid-19 in the US.
UK thugs issued a fine of 10,000 UKP (more than 12,000 USD)
for a peaceful protest,
without
bothering with a trial.
The Tory government wants to make it clear that thugs can do this
with no accountability.
*In space, no one will hear
Bezos
and Musk's workers' call for basic rights.*
*US policing is far less about fighting crime
than
controlling the poor.*
Organized opportunities for groups of children
to
organize their own games.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Made in America tax plan.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act.
This is just
the first step of what we need to restore digital privacy.
Many courses that aim to train people out of unconscious bias
use
methods too weak to do the job.
*Before Chauvin: decades of Minneapolis police violence
that
failed to spark
reform.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid that bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and
normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make
an exception for articles which give important information about
racism or the fight to eliminate racism. This is one of the
exceptions.
Calling on the US State Department to take its own conclusions seriously
by
insisting on the human-rights conditions on military aid to Egypt.
Why not replace it with civilian aid?
*Fears Covid anxiety syndrome
could
stop people reintegrating.*
I see parallels with the Americans who were paralyzed with fear of
terrorist attacks in the 2000s, and the parents who won't let their
children alone for a minute.
[The bullshitter's] $27m-a-mile border wall
being
scaled with $5 ladders.
US citizens: call
on live event producers to reject imposing face
recognition in the name of Covid safety.
US citizens: support
the Democrats' Green New Deal.
Indeed, it is not as good as the Green Party's Green New Deal,
but it's better than none at all.
US citizens: call on Congress to
fix
the Supreme court.
Increasing its size may not be the best method. I think it would be
better to reduce the size to six, if it is possible to ensure that the
three most-recently-appointed justices are the ones that are moved to
other federal courts.
None of these methods can actually be enacted now without first
eliminating the filibuster.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Women who work in massage parlors in New York City are afraid
thugs
will pressure
them into sex or into prostitution, or what could be
portrayed as prostitution, whether or not they normally do sex work —
and then arrest them.
This means that the decision not to prosecute prostitution in
Manhattan any more (following Brooklyn's example) makes them much
safer. But not as safe as they would be if sex work were not a crime
at all.
Meanwhile, I've read that some of the sex workers in massage parlors
are enslaved. It happens in a
wide
range of occupations,
and that includes sex work.
Arresting them does no good against enslavement, but
has anyone found a method that is effective for freeing them?
Exposing phony
"news sites" whose purpose is to fabricate backdated
"original" news stories, so as to accuse journalists of copyright
infringement on their own writing.
(satire) *Person Criticizing Police Has
No
Idea What It’s Like To Wake
Up Every Day And Put Lives In Danger.*
The UK government turned to minor crimes, committed decades ago, as
reasons to exclude
people of Jamaican origin from the UK citizenship
they had been entitled to claim earlier if they realized it would be
important.
(satire) D.C. becoming its own planet
(satire) *Republicans Argue
D.C.
Statehood Slippery Slope To District
One Day Becoming Own Planet.*
Seriously, it would be a great thing if a part of the Earth could
become a separate planet capable of supporting human civilization.
Then civilization would have two chances for survival.
(satire) *Milwaukee
Promotes Itself As Hip, Affordable Place To Live
With All The Police Brutality Of Chicago.*
The big banks, in the US and elsewhere,
continue
financing fossil fuels,
for all that they talk about wanting to reduce greenhouse emissions.
The big US banks also were behind the recession of 2008, followed by
taking the homes of millions of Americans with
fraudulent
foreclosures.
Afterward, there was a campaign 10 years ago to move our money out of
those banks, and I did.
It's not too late to participate in this campaign.
*Pentagon review panel recommends
taking
sexual assault investigations out of
commanders' hands.*
I object to the vagueness of accusing a person of "sexual assault" —
people have a right to a more specific accusation. However, in this
issue we are not talking about any specific person or any specific
alleged action. Rather, it is a proposal for how to handle trials for
all crimes of a sexual nature. That doesn't constitute vagueness
about any individual.
The fundamental problem of military "justice" overall is
"command
influence" — the fact that your trial is under the control of one of your
commanders and the judges also report to that commander. The
consequence is that the court has a tendency to rule as that commander
wishes.
In the 19th century, with travel so slow, it may have been necessary
to hold courts martial locally. That is no longer necessary now. So
it is good to see a plan to eliminate command influence, even if it is
for just some kinds of charges. If this is adopted, perhaps
eventually the US military will do this for all kinds of charges.
The US will continue
air attacks in Afghanistan after withdrawing
ground troops.
However, the US may withdraw all its military contractors,
including those that act as mercenaries.
Russia's military buildup near Ukraine seems to have been a
bargaining
point.
*Covid spread as
overcrowding
doubles among private renters in England.*
Many aspects of life in poverty tend to make people sick, and shorten
their lives.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
the NO BAN Act.
It would prohibit religious discrimination in regard to entering the US.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Fifth of UK Covid contracts
‘raised
red flags for possible
corruption’.*
The Gambia has eradicated
trachoma, following the example of Ghana.
We can eradicate trachoma globally with the same methods. All it
requires is spending money, plus having the trust of the people. If
there is trachoma in Afghanistan or Pakistan, it may be impossible to
make progress there.
Biden's proposals for emissions cuts
look
large, partly because they
are presented in misleading ways.
For instance, using 2005 as a basis for measuring greenhouse gas
emissions reductions exaggerates the amount of reduction being
proposed.
Green Party: *The President is
offering
half of a parachute when we’re
about to be kicked out of an airplane.*
The article describes the Green Party's plan for a full Green New Deal.
Australia is also using
fudged
accounting to magnify small planned reductions.
The world may be at a
tipping
point for climate defense action.
Amazon is offering customers the option of using
palm-prints
to identify themselves.
In situations where it is acceptable to demand people identify
themselves, palm-prints are somewhat better than fingerprints, because
people in other activities leave fewer palm prints than fingerprints.
However, people people should not have to
identify
themselves to buy
things.
CVS recently donated millions of dollars to a lobbying campaign
against
single-payer medical care.
We could think of it as PAHCEF, or Partnership for America's Heath
Care's Expensive Future.
Wealthy countries set up a scheme called Covax to donate vaccine to
poor countries, instead of permitting alternate producers. But Covax
is running
far behind its schedule. The manufacturers are not
delivering as much as they promised.
I continue to support ordering the vaccine companies to stop impeding
the generic manufacture of vaccines.
Biden's new restrictions on financing fossil fuel development outside the US
are simultaneously
a great advance and terribly inadequate.
This is the Biden pattern. Starting from such a low level of climate defense,
it is not difficult to make a great advance and be terribly inadequate.
For decades, US urban transportation facilities have been situated in
places where they
cut
off or eliminated black neighborhoods.
Their disenfranchisement (even where not official) left them unable to
stop this.
Greta Thunberg: *We can keep using creative carbon accounting and
cheat in order to pretend that these targets are in line with what is
needed. But we must not forget that while we can fool others and even
ourselves, we cannot
fool nature and physics.*
(satire) *EPA Hoping To
Streamline
Ecosystem By Hosting Team-Building Lunch
Meet-And-Greets Between Species.*
*EU lawmakers propose
strict
curbs on use of facial recognition.*
The proposal described here comes in range of what is really needed.
But since massive tracking of people's past movements is enough
to make society repressive, that too must be regulated. I've
proposed that
the right action to regulate is systematically collecting images of people
and making them available for automatic identification.
A new vaccine against malaria
prevented
3/4 of the expected cases of
malaria in its test.
In combination with other measures, maybe this will make it possible
to eradicate malaria.
California Governor Newsom decided to stop fracking — slowly.
The state will take 3 years simply to stop issuing new permits
for fracking. And it will
end
oil extraction, so many decades from now
that it will be too late.
Newsom seems to think we've got all century!
*NIH Scientist Who Developed Key Vaccine Technology Says Patent
Gives
US Leverage Over Big Pharma.*
The question is whether the US wants to use this leverage. Around 1980,
the US changed its policy on technology developed with government funds.
Before that, it prioritized public access to that technology. Then, with
the Bayh-Dole bill, it it switched to the trickle-down goal of giving
companies "more incentive".
Several Extinction Rebellion protesters were
found
innocent of various
minor offenses they committed in a protest against Shell.
They presented the defense of necessity, and the jury acquitted them
even though the judge said not to.
*Pharmaceutical Industry Dispatches Army of Lobbyists to
Block
Generic Covid-19 Vaccines.*
When you talk about this issue, please choose not to employ the term
"intellectual
property". It is subtle propaganda for the other side.
*Virginia family questions
why
sheriff’s deputy shot [Isaiah Brown] 10 times.*
*Brazil's indigenous groups
protest
bill that would allow commercial mining on
their land.*
That's the sort of thing we'd expect Bolsonaro to support.
Australia's federal government is using new laws to
prevent China from
spending money to buy influence in Australia.
The phone-cracking program Cellebrite has such bad security that
a special poison file in a phone being cracked could
alter any
and all of the data in the Cellebrite installation.
(satire) *FBI Says Chauvin
Matches
Profile Of Blue-Uniformed Killer
Behind Hundreds More Unsolved Murders.*
Reporters Without Borders says that 3/4 of countries have used Covid-19 as
an excuse
to interfere with reporters' access to information.
*To Confront 'Systemic Failures,' DOJ
Announces
Federal Probe Into Minneapolis
Police Department.*
That's the sort of thing we need, to reduce the lawlessness of cops.
When Ireland helps multinational corporations pay less tax,
they pay Ireland a fraction of the tax they avoided paying elsewhere.
Ireland says it will
fight
hard to continue this betrayal of the
rest of the world.
My proposed progressive
tax on businesses
can be implemented by one country or several coumtries, regardless
of what the rest of the world does.
Several large US cities have adopted a policy of
not prosecuting
anyone for prostitution.
This is a big step forward. I think sex work should be legal,
and sex workers should be free to work with support businesses for
advertising, security and finance. If they cannot work because
of an epidemic, they should get unemployment payments.
Legalization does not have to mean deregulation. It is reasonable
to require sex workers follow hygeine standards and get regular tests
for STDs, for public health.
Meanwhile, some sex workers are enslaved. Prohibiting sex work has
failed to prevent enslavement; indeed, it can help keeping trafficked
sex workers in slavery because they don't see how they could survive
if they escape. We should design other methods so that they work.
The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would
forbid
the government agencies
in the US from buying location tracking data in bulk.
This is a good but small start at what we need to do to restore
privacy. We should prohibit systems that collect personal data
without a specific warrant.
Contrasting
the cases of Alexei Navalny and Julian Assange: they
receive similar repression, but the former gets mainstream western
support, and the latter does not.
I support them both. I have some political disagreements
with each of them, but I set those aside because of their heroism
in a good cause.
In general, the right way to criticize a double standard
is to apply the right standard, and criticize judgment based
on a wrong standard.
*[The Revolving Door Project] Gives
Biden
White House 'B-' on
Corporate Capture in First 100 Days.*
That is better than I would have expected from a US administration.
Reportedly one Capitol Police officer
gave radio instructions on Jan 6
to focus on hypothetical progressive counterprotesters and
disregard the
wrecker's insurrectionists.
*Children need free time to figure out
how
to handle stressful situations.*
*US vows to cut
its emissions at least 50% by 2030 ahead of climate summit.*
Hypothetical
sunlight-dimming technology would not be a correct
substitute for sufficient cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Promoting them
as if they were a substitute tends to encourage fewer cuts.
The US should require a license to have or carry a gun,
just as it
requires a license to drive a car.
*FTC Declares Racially Biased Algorithms in Artificial Intelligence
Unfair
and Deceptive, Prohibited by Law.*
This should have a real effect against that problem.
(satire)
*Depressed Police Officer Reminds Self That Chauvin Verdict
Not Representative Of System At Large.*
(satire)
*Police Ask Tesla To Drive In Straight Line, Recite Alphabet
Backwards After Vehicle Crashes Into Tree.*
The International Life Sciences Institute gets its funding from big
food companies, and works to form the standards of scientific
integrity to
make it easy for those companies to get away with things.
Simon & Schuster rejected demands from staff
to
cancel publication of
Pence's memoir.
I thoroughly oppose Pence's politics, and I would not regret if his book
were not published, But I also oppose the efforts of the publisher's staff
to bully the company into cancelling books.
Iran as much as admits that
it
is holding dual-citizens hostage for
exchanges.
I conclude that it is not safe for citizens of likely target countries
to visit Iran. But the chance that any given person will be targeted
is small enough that they will convince themselves that "It won't
happen to me."
The Burmese army is arresting medics and doctors, even people who have
first-aid supplies on the assumption
that
they mean to aid civilians that
the army shoots.
Covid-19 is spreading in India at an alarming rate. Hospitals have
run out of beds and are running out of oxygen for ventilators. Even
young, healthy adults
are
dying in large numbers.
This is the result of a right-wing truth-rejecting government
that
recklessly "reopened the economy".
As well as causes that people could not easily have changed.
*Four in 10 Americans live in counties
with
unhealthy air pollution
levels.*
Do we know a feasible way to substantially reduce toxic air pollution?
*101 Nobel laureates
call
for global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty.*
Derek Chauvin has
been convicted of murdering George Floyd.
That killing was
one
instance of a recurring pattern.
Lesser
instances, which are not fatal but do oppress, happen all over the
country every day. One conviction is just a step towards the goal of
ending that.
I wonder — if Chauvin had let Floyd up after 7 minutes, and Floyd had
survived with evident brain damage, would Chauvin have been prosecuted at all?
In Mexico, election season is also drug gang war season,
since the
rival gangs want to control state governments.
Turkey is deporting Iranian exiles to Iran
after
they joined Turks in
protests.
Some Christian clerics
are
working for climate defense.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support
H.R. 2509 / S. 1139, which would eliminate the mechanism for the
military draft. Specifically, it would do these things:
*The UK chancellor, Rishi Sunak, must radically overhaul the
Treasury’s response to the climate crisis,
reforming
the department’s
longstanding hostility to green spending and resetting its priorities,
experts said.*
UK is suffering from the problem of giving children less freedom.
This shows up in
not
letting them go outside to play on their own.
Greece set up a system for Covid-19 vaccination that depends on a
Greek social security number. Foreigners, and Greeks who came home to retire,
are
excluded in practice.
This seems to bespeak incredible bureaucratic rigidity.
Some of the companies that publicly support voting rights
also help fund the US Chamber of Commerce,
which campaigns
for the same voter suppression laws.
Systemic racism is visible in vaccination: blacks and Hispanics face
practical obstacles in dealing with the system of vaccination, and the result
is that vaccination
has reached a smaller fraction of them and a larger
fraction of whites.
*Poll Finds Majority of US Voters
Back
Green New Deal and Want
Lawmakers to Co-Sponsor Resolution.*
If the US had an effective democracy, the strong backing from voters
would lead to passage within a few years. However, a plutocratic
system can reject it for decades.
*A Former Lobbyist Explains How the Privatization Movement
Is Trying to End
Public Education.*
Its goal is to make parents pay for education of their children.
Parents with low income would have to beg or borrow for elementary school.
The article refers to "libertarians" and their policies, but that term
is misleading. They are not about liberty; the aim of those policies
is to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor: that is, dooH
niboR. I refer to those people and policies as "antisocialist".
A few decades ago, the IMF bullied many poor countries
to eliminate
their public education programs,
in accord with the then-prevailing "neoliberal" economics.
How did that
view of economics come to prevail? By means of contributions to
academia from various rich people who saw it as a long-term method to
obtain laws for dooH niboR.
The Energy Charter Treaty, a business-supremacy treaty, threatens to
make European countries pay hundreds of billions of dollars in
"compensation" for
taking explicit action to cut down on fossil fuels.
When a treaty puts the business interests of private parties over the
vital needs of society, that must make the treaty invalid.
Biden is changing the US industrial policy. The old one gives
handouts to businesses for the sake of billionaire's enrichment.
The new one must
reject that practice.
(satire)
*Rainforest Tree Remains Very Still In Hopes That Bulldozer
Will Lose Interest And Drive Away.*
The Green New Deal for Public Housing Act would invest in public
housing to build more, make it cheaper and safer to live in, and
reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
and
achieve this by making good jobs.
Disinfecting surfaces is much less important,
for
preventing Covid-19,
than wearing a mask, keeping distance from other people, and
frequently washing hands.
The principal union of US coal miners
has
accepted the need to put an end to
coal mining.
This raises a number of issues of justice.
The miners have the duty, like the mine owners, to cooperate fully
with rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as toxic
pollution.
Former miners, present and future, deserve the things that the union
now demands for them. They deserve this not as an exchange for
ceasing to campaign against civilization's survival, but because all
unemployed and retired people deserve those benefits, to the extent we
can provide them. They are parts of a proper welfare system.
One demand is to properly clean up and close abandoned mines. That is
a necessary part of reducing the toxic pollution over the long term.
The US is planning to pressure other countries to move faster to curb
global heating,
after
announcing plans to do that itself.
This is what all countries should have done starting 20 years ago or
more, and they would have done so if not for the influence of the
planet roasters.
Better late than never, but we hope it is not too late.
*Compulsory worship of national symbols
is
the sure sign of a culture in
decline.*
*Cambodia accused of using Covid
to
edge towards ‘totalitarian dictatorship’.*
*Why is the right obsessed with ‘defending’ borders? Because
it sees
citizenship as a commodity.*
*Alexei Navalny moved to hospital
as
fears grow for life of Putin critic.*
Huawei equipment seems to have been able
to
snoop on all calls in the
main Dutch mobile phone network.
To put this in context, mobile phones enable much more spying than
that.
*Environment protest
being
criminalised around world, say experts.*
*Extinction Rebellion prosecutions
showed
the spectrum of climate protest.*
Everyone:
support
Biden’s decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Washington DC statehood bill.
If you sign, please spread the word!
It is
difficult
for journalists to adapt their methods to the awareness that cops
often lie.
The National Security Education Day celebration in Hong Kong
sold
souvenirs of the repression of 2019.
I wonder how long before China takes note of anyone who does not buy
them with proper enthusiasm.
Biden plans to
extend
the bully's war on fentanyl.
Covid-19 is
speeding
the demise of many endangered languages. The remaining native
speakers are usually old, and thus in special danger from the disease.
A language, like a species, is a self-propagating bundle of
information. If its propagation is interrupted, it is lost
forever.
Passing a language through a stage of existing only in dictionaries
and teaching tools is damaging, too — comparable in a very broad
sense to a population bottleneck that strips a species of genetic
diversity.
Potowatomi's close relative, Ojibwe, is much healthier.
Bolsonaro has proposed an
inadequate-hearted
effort to reduce deforestation, but
only
if other countries pay Brazil to do it.
Biden has announced a plan to remove US ground troops from
Afghanistan, but it looks like
US
airplanes, drones and mercenaries will continue fighting there.
Biden has continued the bully's
secrecy about drone bombings, so we
will be told nothing about what is going on.
If it is true (we can't really know) that these attacks are mainly
directed at al-Qa'ida and PISAP (Pseudo-Islamic State in Afghanistan
and Pakistan) rather than the Taliban, they may not prevent movement
in the direction of peace. The Taliban are at war with PISSA, and I
think they might find al-Qa'ida an inconvenience if they win.
The P1 variant of Covid-19 that dominates in Brazil is
especially
dangerous to pregnant patients, so officials have urged people to
avoid pregnancy now.
Avoiding pregnancy in Brazil faces the extra obstacles of restrictive
abortion laws and fervent Christianity. Indeed, you might want to get
an abortion now so as not to die if you catch Covid-19, but the
government will make that difficult.
In Brazil, Covid-19 is
killing
lots of young, vigorous, formerly healthy people. It could be
that the Brazilian variant is the explanation.
Putin plans to criminalize support for Navalny's opposition movement
by arbitrarily
designating
it an "extremist group".
I've denounced for years the US practice of designating organizations
as "terrorist" without holding a trial to prove it. When the US shows
contempt for human rights, other countries are quick to follow the
same path.
The Tories have made
private
corruption of the state's work into normal practice.
Various aspects of the response to Covid-19 were contracted out to
companies that didn't have the capacity to do the job at all. Almost
everything that the UK government tried to do, failed. Vaccine
production was the exception because the Tories didn't have the choice
to hire unknown companies to make pharmaceuticals.
The latest lifelong UK resident to be denied a UK passport is,
ironically, a
member
of British nobility.
With his position, he won't suffer much difficulty — unlike the
people who were
forced
to live in Jamaica for lack of records of living in Britain as
children.
*Witnesses to deaths in detention
‘deliberately’
deported from the UK.*
Betraying their country is the
standard
practice of Republican
candidates for the presidency. That has been so since 1968.
The New York City thug department has
acquired
a dog-robot. Is that
good or bad?
I can see very good uses for that robot, to save people's lives.
But it can also be used against protesters. The question is, as I see it,
is how the thug
department will decide what to do with it. As it is,
I would not trust it to make good decisions.
A documentary
about an activist for liberal Islam.
She faces death threats from Islamist extremists.
They are not threatening only us "infidels".
An interview
with Maria Ressa, Philippine journalist facing imprisonment.
Systematically pressuring BlackRock and other investment companies to
stop
promoting fossil fuels and disaster.
Some of the methods
of disinformation that Amazon used to win the union vote.
*Big Tech Is Pushing
States to Pass Privacy Laws, and Yes, You Should
Be Suspicious.*
In general, these bills' approach to "privacy" is that of "data
protection" — limiting the use of personal data once sites collect it
— and that is
fundamentally
inadequate.
The only real way to protect privacy is to limit the data that
systems can collect about people.
For the mainstream media, a political idea is
"divisive" or
"controversial" if rich people don't like it.
The new renewable electric capacity installed in 2020 equaled
3/4 of
the world's total nuclear generating capacity.
With a little push, we could build enough extra renewable capacity
to replace all the existing nuclear generation, and shut those plants down.
The UK is prosecuting
ex-thugs for false statements about what they did
at the time of a fatal panic in 1989.
Those false statements were intended to evade the cops'
responsibility for the deaths.
The US should learn that Blue Lies Matter.
We must learn to recognize fascism so we can take care not to
treat
its talking points as ordinary politics.
Australia's government is doing all possible to
continue
fossil fuel extraction
while saying it aims to reduce greenhouse emissions at some distant date.
The corruption
of the Tory party today is measured in millions
and directly involves current and former ministers.
*Statement to CEOs: If You Really Want to Stop Voter Suppression,
Support
the For the People Act.*
More about this.
* We must ensure that temporary Covid-19 data surveillance
infrastructures
do
not needlessly outlast this once-in-a-century
pandemic.*
US citizens: call
on Biden to close the Guantanamo prison.
US citizens: call
on your congresscritter to co-sponsor the Keep It
in the Ground Act.
It is a small first step, but it is nonetheless in the right direction.
US citizens: call
on Biden to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline.
*Supermarket ‘bags for life’
must
cost more to cut plastic use, urge
campaigners.*
Covid-19 is spreading fast in most of the world,
and
3 million people
have died.
A system to collect clams faster and in large quantities
could
endanger them and other species.
In general, equipment that collects wild animals or plants, in bulk,
faster than people used to do is potentially dangerous.
*Alexei Navalny allies
call
for mass protests in Russia to save his
life.*
Brazilian progressive organizations call on Biden not to give money to
Bolsonaro's government
in
exchange for a promised partial reduction in
deforestation.
How US police unions developed into
thug unions: they built so much
power that they demanded, and
got,
basically everything they could
think of wanting.
I support most of what these unions have obtained for their members.
Indeed, I think workers in general deserve those benefits.
The two exceptions, the benefits that cops should not have, are (1)
payment for their family court bills, which is unfair to their present
and former spouses, and (2) impunity after committing violence against
the public, whether based on racism or not.
*Man smokes legal weed in Nevada,
gets
arrested in Dubai, could face 3 years [in prison].*
If they are reasonable about applying their laws, they will recognize
that he did not commit any crime in Dubai. But one can't count on
that — and they might keep him in jail for months while deciding.
So stay
away from Dubai, and the UAE in general.
The US mainstream media use many methods
to
help cover up the facts
after a thug shoots somebody,
including the basic fact that the thug did the shooting and that
killed someone.
I had not identified this pattern of vagueness, but I had noticed that
the first stories I see about such a killing don't say enough abot
what happened to be useful to link to. I wait a few days and see stories
that make it clear.
The Interior Department just reverted
many
of the wrecker's policy changes
that favored fossil fuels.
Banks and investment companies spent almost 3 billion dollars
on
political campaigns for the last election.
Probably more than that, since 1 billion can't be traced.
We need to pass the
We
the People amendment.
The US and China
stated
a joint commitment to curbing global heating.
Both countries have to cut down greenhouse emissions much faster than
they are committed to doing. China's commitment to "net zero emissions"
(a
vague way to formulate the goal)
by 2060 is far too slow.
Convincing antisocial media to
curb
the spread of hate.
The companies' business model leads them to promote hostility because
hostility in general gets the biggest amount of "user engagement."
US voters favor by 2 to 1
eliminating
the patent and secrecy obstacles to
broader vaccine manufacturing.
Please don't use the term
"intellectual
property" to refer to those
two very different artificial obstacles.
The End
Polluter Welfare Act of 2021 would eliminate several tax
Breaks that promote fossil fuels, as well as increasing a tax that
pays for medical care for coal miners with black lung disease.
(satire) *Loose-Cannon ACLU Investigator
Beats
Recantation Out Of
Confessed Murderer.*
*Trump EPA appointee
blocked
public release of cancer danger,
inspector general says.*
*Nobel Laureate Warns of 'Devastating Marriage' Between
Artificial
Intelligence and Killer Robots.*
I agree that the US should sign the land mine ban treaty.
(satire) *In an attempt to address community outcry over recent police
encounters, [Chicago] Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a
reform
effort Friday that would require all city teenagers to undergo
mandatory deescalation training.*
(satire) *Minnesota
Deploys
National Guard Ahead Of Next Week’s Police
Shooting.*
Famous children's books from the 1950s and 60s present a way of life
in which children
had considerable freedom.
I especially enjoyed the hours between the end of school and when my
mother got home from teaching — the hours when I could be alone.
(satire) *Russian Diplomats Given 30 Days To
Complete
Espionage Before
Being Expelled.*
Many weed killer products combine glyphosate with various secret "inert"
ingredients. The "inert" ingredients vary from product to product, and
some of them are
highly
toxic to bees.
I don't think we should continue to permit the practice of adding
secret ingredients that are presumed to be harmless.
An unfair election with various dirty tricks
enabled
a right-wing candidate
to win Ecuador's presidential election.
Plutocracy is leading many governments to respond to the cost of
dealing with Covid-19 by
making
budget cuts.
That could lead to recessions, amounting to more unemployment and more
suffering for the poor.
A bill in Congress would require Israel
not
to use US aid for
violating Palestinians' human rights.
Based on the description here, I support the bill. However, I wonder
how such requirements deal with the fact that funds are fungible. For
the sake of such conditions, how does one determine whether the funds
spent on the specific actions that violate Palestinians' human rights
came from the US aid money or not?
Maybe there is a standard answer to this — if anyone can tell me, I would
appreciate it.
*Tech giants are happy to do Modi’s bidding in return for
access to
the Indian market.*
US citizens: call on Biden to advocate an
increased
estate tax.
Attorney General Garland
pledged
to tackle systemic racism in the
practices of US thug departments.
The Keep
It in the Ground act would ban new fossil fuel leases on
public lands.
It is just a first step towards stopping the expansion of fossil fuel
extraction. To achieve that goal would require banning construction
of new wells on land already leased, and extending the ban to private
lands, too.
This article describes a
more
complete effort to decarbonize.
But even a first step would be good.
A black reporter
contrasts
his fear of uniformed thugs and their
violence with cops' fear of black men who might be violent.
One crucial difference is that cops tend to enjoy impunity for their violence.
Interviews
with Afghans living under Taliban rule.
The US has mostly failed to release non-dangerous prisoners from jail
to protect them from Covid-19. Prisoners in jail are
rioting to
demand protection.
Prisoners are especially exposed to Covid-19 because conditions won't
let them maintain proper distance or good sanitation. And when there
is an outbreak in a prison, the guards catch it and spread it to the
surrounding community. For both reasons, vaccinating prisoners should
be a priority, like vaccinating retain workers and meat packers.
*Public Health Coalition Urges Biden to
Create
Vaccine 'Manufacturing
Operation for the World'.*
ACT-Accelerator is Bill Gates's way of
infiltrating of the World
Health Organization to ensure the triumph of private monopolies over
public health.
I am heartened to see the building condemnation of the use of patents
to put profit over people's health. It is unfortunate that it uses
the term "intellectual property", which is a bad fit for each real
issue including this one. The article acknowledges this when it talks
about "technology transfer".
My proposal to remedy several problems in medicine is that
pharmaceuticals should not be patentable, that the government should
run all trials of pharmaceuticals, and pharma companies should make
medicines and sell them in a non-monopolistic world.
Alongside Facebook and Google, data brokers that buy databases and
correlate them are
another
threat to people's privacy and independence
of thought.
This is why I reject most opportunities to let a business have my name.
Don't pay digitally — pay cash!
Businesses exploit workers by putting them into a "work culture" which
is based
on overwork.
That tends to isolate people as a byproduct, leaving them lonely.
My work is also my life — but I'm not working for a company's profit.
I'm working for your freedom and mine. And it keeps me going when
I am lonely.
Adolescents generally
get
more sleep when school starts at a later time.
They delay their bedtime, but not as much as the delay in school start
time.
The US border thugs
make a practice of releasing adult asylum-seekers
in minuscule towns just on the US side of the border,
which cannot
support them.
New Zealand is trying to
eliminate
the practice of smoking tobacco.
I hope this succeeds, but I am concerned that the prohibition will
become repressive.
Florida has passed the bill to make it easy to
label
protests as "riots" and
jail the protesters.
As we get close to the climate cliff, delaying climate defense is
almost equivalent
to not doing it at all.
The Tories' lobbying law was intended to
restrict
lobbying by the charities
that help the poor and weak. Corruption continued as before.
*Warren and Smith Reintroduce 'Critical' Bill to
Block US From
Starting Nuclear War.*
Progressives in Congress propose to fund the IRS adequately
to audit lots
of rich people to see if they are evading taxes.
*What We Can Learn
From
the First New Deal to Make the New One Better.*
The tradeoff between efficiency and effectiveness relates to the point that
an effective system for dealing with emergencies needs to have more capacity
than is needed on the average.
72% of Democrats want Biden
to
clear away the patents that limit
vaccine production.
*Facebook planned to remove fake accounts in India — until it
realized a
[Hindu-repression party] politician was involved.*
There are thousands of abandoned oil wells in Texas, and
no plan for how
to pay for cleaning them up and shutting them down.
I can propose one straightforward method: engage all the capable
oil-well cleaning teams, put them to work cleaning oil wells and
training more workers as fast as is reasonable and proper, and make
the oil companies that are still operating pay the cost.
The reason there is a problem is that vested interests won't allow
that. So the problem is purely political.
Convicting Derek Chauvin
must
not let all other uniformed thugs off
the hook.
Cop Cariol Horne tried to stop another cop from using a choke hold on
a prisoner, and
was fired for doing so.
I'd say Horne was a police officer, and a judge has now agreed,
ruling that Horne was fired unjustly.
Even better, the city of Buffalo adopted a law calling on cops to do
this.
Is firing a gun, while thinking it is a taser,
"culpable
negligence"?
Is it negligence at all?
*Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine research
"was
97% publicly funded".
It follows that allowing it to be privatized was a form of corruption.
A very common form, sad to say.
*Oil firm CEOs’ pay is
an
incentive to resist climate action, study finds.*
It motivates them personally to do anything whatever to keep the oil
flowing, and the money too.
*Just 3% of world’s ecosystems
remain
intact, study suggests.*
*Mexico’s high Covid death toll
blamed
on populist government.*
The research that claimed to demonstrate that cognitive behavioral therapy
can treat chronic fatigue syndrome
seems
to have been based on improper
analysis.
US citizens: call on Congress to
End
the War on Yemen.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Insisting that flights not fly over Belarus is not primarily a
sanction, it is a necessary safety precaution.
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global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
Fossil fuel extraction and refining emits lots of toxic local pollution.
They can even harm plants in the vicinity with their loud pumps that drive birds away.
The people who live near them are the disprivileged people who lose the competition for better places.
The best way to correct this injustice is by ending the extraction and refining of fossil fuels. We need to do that anyway. Then we need to clean up the closed facilities.
Belarus has arrested the director of a documentary film festival. I guess one of the documentaries said something dictator Lukashenko did not like.
Introducing bison to forests in Spain may reduce forest fires.
Is anyone trying something like this in California and Australia?
Lukman Thalib fears that while tortured in Qatar he confessed to something he can't remember, because Sri Lanka now accuses him of helping to plan a terrorist attack two years ago.
* Rep. Betty McCollum Leads Effort to Block Israel From Using U.S. Aid to Destroy Palestinian Homes.*
*Report claiming global temperature rise will top 1.5C by 2030s divides scientists.*
I am not an expert on climate modeling. I hope scientists can figure out what we should really expect.
Several organizations for privacy have taken up the call to prohibit all use of face recognition, which I have advocated for many years.
The Capitol police force was debilitated by many kinds of mismanagement.
I get the impression that everyone in the force expected it would never be put to a difficult test. It never had been before.
In addition, the leaders disregarded warnings of a coming violent attack.
The FBI cracks servers to delete malware previously installed by crackers.
I think this action is legitimate and useful, but please don't use the word "hacking" to describe what the FBI are doing. That gives us hackers a bad name. Please distinguish between hacking, which is playful cleverness, and cracking, which is breaking security.
If I were an adherent of cancellationism, I'd say that your use of antihackerist language is an aggression against us hackers, doing us psychological harm, and that you're a bad person if you don't stop.
If big business takes its support away from the Republicans, Democrats must beware of accepting it.
The US food system lets big businesses exploit the people who actually produce food, while letting millions of Americans go hungry. It exhausts the land, too.
The loss of most black farmers' land parallels the loss of most white farmers' land. A lot of this happened under President Reagan, which inspired me to write a parody of Old MacDonald's Farm.
San Francisco has a new plan to house homeless people. Previous efforts have in many cases offered people housing that requires they give up their work, their close relationships, or their pets.
California is likely to have devastating fires again this year.
No local wildlands management can possibly overcome the inexorable effects of continuing global heating, just as no construction of seawalls can possibly overcome the inexorable effects of continuing sea level rise.
We need to curb global heating.
Forest protectors in Canada are trying to defend old-growth forests while factions among of the indigenous peoples are trying to sell the timber.
Protecting wild lands must be a global priority, Well-organized indigenous peoples are often excellent defenders of wild lands, but we should not let indigenous people cut down old-growth forests any more than we let other people do so.
Mergers of large companies are often approved under the idea that the resulting very large company can compete with a pre-existing very large company.
The net result is to exacerbate the concentration of that industry, which is the initial problem. Thus, this way of thinking is a pretend-solution that contributes to the problem.
The right thing to do is to break up the pre-existing very large company.
(satire) *Geologists Recommend Eating At Least One Small Rock Per Day.*
A campaign has identified 30 crucial bank directors that enable the fossil fuel industry to resist climate protection. Now to pressure them to stop.
Jesse Jackson states the reasons to support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Calling for reform of the Freedom of Information Act to require release of the documents that an agency is considering during the final decisionmaking about how to handle an issue.
Physical Education classes can let the students invent their own games and play them freely.
Comparing the US Republican Party with Órban's Fidesz Party and other fascist parties.
The Republican Party is now a fanatical anti-truth cult, which retains power only by rigging elections (gerrymandering and voter suppression).
Walmart will require all its produce suppliers to adopt integrated pest management, which will protect pollinators and insects generally.
Fresh fruits and vegetables make up only a small fraction of farming. So this is an important step but doesn't reach the goal.
(satire) *Police Department To Avoid Future Errors By Replacing All Equipment Officers Carry With Guns.*
*Police officer jailed for breaking Black man's knee in 'clear case of racial profiling'.*
It will be harder for people to deny the existence of racial profiling as cases like this accumulate.
Several news publications say: *Journalism should reflect what the science says: the climate emergency is here.*
Scientific American is one of them.
Around 60% of US voters support various measures to regulate banks so they cannot facilitate increases in fossil fuel infrastructure or use.
I think we need to do more than those four requirements.
A special blood-filtering machine can cure Covid-19.
Most people won't die from Covid-19 now, but many will develop a lasting disability. We don't know whether they will ever recover. Instead of limiting these machines to those who are close to dying, we should see if they prevent "long Covid".
Cops admit that they use minor driving infractions, such as an air freshener attached to the rear view mirror, as excuses to stop and search a car based on vague and groundless suspicion.
If we take the idea of rights seriously, we should not allow the supposed enforcers of laws to set them at nought.
Of course, there is another risk to justice that occurs whenever cops search a car: that they may "find" something that wasn't there before the search. Can we develop a way to end this risk?
Biden has ordered US troops out of Afghanistan by September. I am very impressed by his courage.
After several attempts to "stabilize" Afghanistan, we know that we do not know any way to do that. To "stabilize Afghanistan first" means, in practice, "keep the war going forever."
It is silly to insist that the US has a responsibility to "fix" Afghanistan, because no one knows how.
If this means that the Taliban win the war, that will be a setback for human rights in Afghanistan — especially for women, but also for men. But keeping that country forever at war is not a better outcome.
Here's what Senator Sanders said about this decision.
In the first years after the US invasion, it looked like Afghanistan would be peaceful and better off. I hoped for a lasting improvement in women's rights there. I have long thought that Dubya's decision to attack Iraq played a part in spoiling that peace. Of course, I can only speculate about what would have happened otherwise.
The US has a higher death rate, for people under 85 years old, than European countries. If the US had had a typical European death rate, 400,000 Americans under 85 would have survived past 2017.
Curiously, about 100,000 more Americans over 85 would have died in 2017 with a European death rate. However, each death of an younger person typically means more years of life lost than the death of an oldster.
This problem started to appear after 2000, and has been getting worse since then.
Julian Assange has been in prison for two years, accused by the US of journalism.
*US unions not fazed by Amazon setback and vow to keep up the organizing fight.*
*Boris Johnson’s ‘chumocracy’ is using Covid crisis to sell off health service by stealth, says Sir David King (former chief scientist of the NHS).*
We may have 3 feet of sea-level rise by 2050. Areas in the US and other countries where tens of millions of people live will be uninhabitable. And it won't stop at 3 feet.
In addition to curbing CO2 emissions, we need to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Large-scale engineering for pulling CO2 out of the air are preferable to attempts to reduce the sunlight that hits the Earth's surface because they can prevent ocean acidification (which could wipe out entire phyla) as well as global heating.
*Facebook knew of Honduran president’s manipulation campaign — and let it continue for 11 months.*
A Minnesota cop shot and killed Daunte Wright, a black man, at the wheel of his car.
The cop thought she was shooting a taser, and when she saw she had shot a bullet instead, she was shocked by what she had done. She has resigned.
France is taking a small step to reduce short flights. The world needs to do a lot more to reduce the amount of flying. A substantial tax on airplane fuel would be effective.
Canada's wealth tax proposal: *If you don't have $20 million or sitting around you can just relax.*
*Living near a US Superfund [chemical pollution] site could shave a year off your life, study finds.*
Israel's sabotage of Iran's uranium refining plant may have been intended to sabotage negotiations between the US and Iran.
60% of US voters support various sorts of regulations to make companies pay more attention to how they effect global heating and how global heating can affect them.
(satire) *Judge Asks If Chauvin Jury Minds Sticking Around For A Couple More Police Misconduct Trials.*
(satire) *Cadet Studying For Police Academy Exam Just Skimming Over Deescalation Training He’ll Never Use In Real Life.*
Biden's plan to reduce the impetus for people from Central America to flee to the US is limited to some disaster relief.
That will be nowhere near sufficient as long as the war, on drugs, continues in Central America. The war fuels gangs, and those gangs create error. The US must stop doing this to those countries if they are to become safe places for people to live.
The next step is to stop helping "American" companies extract the wealth of those countries and thus push the people into penury.
Japan will release the water stored at Fukushima into the ocean, after filtering out the more radioactive isotopes so that the release will not harm anyone.
It seems that many people don't understand the concept of "down in the noise".
We ingest Carbon-14 every time we breath. That is why archaeologists of the future will be able to date our bones after we die.
Protestant youth in Belfast started a violent riot out of a general feeling that their side has been screwed by the deal between the UK and the EU — together with the fear that they may cease to dominate Northern Ireland's politics.
Bogus Johnson promised to do two incompatible things: end free trade between the UK and the EU, and preserve free trade between Northern Ireland and both of those. That promise was a lie.
It seems that separating UK trade from the EU requires a customs barrier between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, or a customs barrier between Northern Ireland and Britain, and either one will cause violence.
The other option is to reestablish free trade between the UK and EU.
Republicans tried to kick 129,000 voters off Wisconsin's voter list; the state supreme court block them.
*Republicans push ‘tsunami’ of harsh anti-protest laws after BLM rallies.*
*Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens.*
*The climate emergency is here. The media needs to act like it.*
Biden is augmenting the bully's program of having Guatemala and Honduras, as well as Mexico, keep would-be immigrants away from the US border.
*Critics Warn $15 Billion Merger of Global Water Giants Would Create 'Dangerous Corporate Monopoly'.*
Large companies should not be allowed to merge at all.
* David Cameron’s ‘chumocracy’ instincts run through the Tory party, which treats Whitehall checks and balances as the enemy.*
In Bogus Johnson they have found someone shameless enough to order checks and balances to begone.
*Thousands of [Burmese] citizens in Australia at risk of being deported to violence back home.*
Calling on Stephen Breyer to retire now, so he can be replaced by Democrats.
Labour MP Jon Cruddas says the party is *losing sight of its historical mission to stand up for the working classes.*
To respond to digital scheduling with precarious work was a political choice. If installation of robots results in many humans living in penury, that too will be a political choice.
Why I am not reading about the trial of Derek Chauvin.
When I read, then saw, what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd, I concluded it was murder. I am glad Chauvin is being tried, and I hope he will be convicted.
I am not following the events of the trial for the same reason that I don't watch election returns on the evening after Election Day: it's too late for us to influence the outcome.
To focus on the details of the process would cause us anxiety, uselessly. It's more productive, and less stressful, to do activism instead.
We'll see the result at the same time either way.
The Houthis have captured journalists and imprisoned them for "spying".
The US is trying to do the same thing to Julian Assange. They should both stop.
Israel launched a cyberattack against Iran's uranium refining centrifuges and caused them physical damage.
With each attack, one way or the other, the danger of nuclear war some day increases.
*Concerns mount that US withdrawal from Afghanistan could risk progress on women's rights.*
Sad to say, a probable increase in oppression of women is the worst aspect of making peace with the Taliban. The second-worst aspect is a probable increase in oppression of men.
But oppression of women in Afghanistan is pretty bad even now under the US-supported government. It's not as bad as the Taliban would be, but that's the best thing one can say about it.
I think that endless war is too high a price to pay to keep the oppression somewhat less.
40% of US marines offered Covid-19 vaccination have refused it.
This could be a symptom of dangerous right-wing extremism. It also means that an outbreak of Covid-19 in the marines could weaken the US military.
Biden refused to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline.
It is disappointing that he fails to protect our future when he has an easy chance.
*Italian prosecutors secretly recorded human rights lawyers.*
The lawyers were talking with their clients, who operated rescue boats to save drowning refugees.
Kentucky has responded to the killing of Breonna Taylor by putting stricter conditions on the use of no-knock warrants.
The requirements for carrying out no-knock warrants may do some good, but the added conditions for obtaining no-knock warrants won't make any difference if all they do is require thugs to tell a bigger lie.
Has the detective that lied to get that warrant been punished? If we want to teach cops to be honest, we must give them more than a slap on the wrist when they lie. And that must not be limited to cases like this one, where the lie results in someone's death. Even those of us who reject religion must not tolerate bearing false witness.
One minor detail: In the winter, 6am is just as dark as 2am, and many day-time workers and students are still asleep at 6am.
Republican minority rule in Michigan has brought about a surge in Covid-19, and the governor is powerless to do anything effective to stop it.
She has asked Biden to send more vaccine doses to Michigan, but even if he does, the time scale for curbing Covid-19 by vaccination is measured in months — if Republican antivaxxers don't prevent it from reaching that point.
The only known methods to stop the surge now are those that prevent transmission of the disease, which is exactly what Republican covidiots refuse to do.
Republicans in Michigan have made the elections unfair through gerrymandering. That is why they control the legislature even though the voters elected a Democratic governor.
Michigan Republicans are trying to build up hatred against Democrats, and since the governor is a woman, they are using misogyny as part of it.
On the global scale, Covid-19 is spreading exponentially.
No matter what political decisions are made this year, there is no hope of vaccinating billions of people. The only chance of slowing the global spread of Covid-19 this year is by preventing transmission.
The UK government convened a commission of experts to write a report on race relations and racism — then Bogus Johnson's staff rewrote their text to get rid of the idea of systemic racism.
The low wages of the US economy are part of a system designed to make some people rich and keep most people struggling.
*China launches hotline to report "illegal" comments about Communist party.*
When Virginia thugs stopped driver Caron Nazario, he wisely stopped in the nearest gas station so that cameras would catch whet they did. He got out with his hands up and they attacked him for no reason.
It seems that they stopped him because they did not notice his valid temporary license plate. As for why they beat him up, I have to suppose it was racism.
I hope he was not seriously injured.
One of the thugs has been fired.
*Biden Creates Commission to Study Supreme Court Expansion, Other Reforms.*
I am glad he is thinking about it. However, to actually do any such thing would require convincing Manchin to support both this and eliminating the filibuster.
Bill Gates convinced the Oxford vaccine development team to cancel its plan to allow all companies to manufacture its Covid-19 vaccine.
Everyone: call on Disney not to use face recognition.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to commit to voting No on any bill that funds militarism at over 90% of the current level.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: support the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
A black British academic talks about leaving academia to become a cop — because the police have made more of a commitment to combat racism than universities have hade.
US citizens: call on the Senate to end the filibuster so as to pass federal voting rights and democracy protections.
US citizens: call on your senators and congresscritter to support the ICBM Act, which would transfer funds from ICBM development to vaccine development.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on world leaders to protect the climate, and help those who will face hardship soon.
US citizens: support the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
When Jon Heylings worked for Syngenta, he tried for decades to convince the company to stop selling the weed killed paraquat which also kills humans. What he achieved was a persistent effort to pretend to have made it safe.
A right-wing cancellation network is attacking US college professors.
The IMF has endorsed a wealth tax.
*Biden’s Tax Plan Comes Up Short on [cutting] Fossil Fuel Subsidies*
*LAPD officers are accused of racial profiling during an arrest of a Black man outside his home.*
It seems rather open-and-shut. Because the man was black, they assumed he was guilty instead of bothering to check.
One of the ways Amazon intimidated workers into voting against unionization was to arrange to get workers mail their ballots from work.
One of the people accused of attacking the Capitol was attacked in jail and may lose the use of one eye as a result.
Even if he is guilty as charged, that doesn't excuse attacking a prisoner in jail.
Killers in Virginia can no longer claim as a defense that they freaked out because the victim was gay or trans.
New Mexico has abolished qualified immunity for thugs. So it will be easier to sue them personally for gross violence or dishonesty.
*GOP group bullies donors who don't give every month: "We will have to tell Trump you're a DEFECTOR".*
US employers have sophisticated techniques for refusing to hire anyone who might be inclined to join a union.
US citizens: call on Biden to support UN sanctions against Erik Prince.
US citizens: call on Biden to Cancel Student Debt.
British Columbia is allowing the small area of remaining large old-growth trees to be cut down, and activists are blocking the logging teams.
Brazil-nut hunters are forming cooperatives to get more than a tiny share of the price that we pay for them in foreign countries.
If deforestation turns the Amazon forest into a savannah, the Brazil-nut trees will mostly be wiped out. That alone would be sad but not a disaster; to envision what things will be like in 40 years, imagine that half the things you eat are gone and the other half are too expensive.
*Fascism of India's RSS Denounced by European Members of Parliament.*
Congress should reduce military spending, not keep it unchanged.
I have a hunch there are military programs that spend a lot of money in West Virginia. Proposing to cut them drastically could persuade Senator Manchin to abolish the filibuster. The security of the US would still be adequate with such cuts.
*Arm Our Cities With Military-Grade Healthcare, Not Weapons.*
*Economists Warn Democrats 'Going Too Small' on Infrastructure Risks Economic and Climate Catastrophe.*
* The costs of inaction outweigh the risks of borrowing to take action—by trillions of dollars.*
* Democrats often blame their election losses on gerrymandering and voter suppression, but progressive initiatives win all over the country. It is time to embrace a bold agenda and then fight like hell to to win it.*
A large beef- or pork-packing plant in a county more than doubled the level of Covid-19 infection in that county, on the average.
(satire) *Amazon Celebrates Union Defeat By Raising All Prices 150% Anyway.*
Norway's prime minister was fined for having a birthday party with 13 participants, after endorsing an official limit of 10.
What a contrast with Tories and Republicans.
The US is beginning a fourth Covid-19 surge, caused by the same foolish actions that caused the second and the third.
The anti-transmission precautions that have been recommended for a year or so would prevent the fourth surge.
Biden has endorsed plans to prevent companies from shifting taxes from one country to another which charges a lower tax rate.
All countries should unite to tax the plutocrats!
(satire) *Panthers Adopt Patchy-Haired, Shivering Rescue [Quarterback] Who Spent Years Abused By Jets.*
New York State will offer compensation to residents who are unauthorized immigrants for problems such as lost employment caused by Covid-19.
Other residents are already eligible for such compensation.
Palestinian Authority president Abbas is under pressure to cancel the Palestine elections because Hamas might win.
*Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian motorist and injure his wife.*
Several soldiers shot at them after telling them it was ok to get back into their car.
With 4C of global heating, Antarctic ice shelves (which float) will collapse and melt. This will allow ice from the ice sheets (which rest on land) to flow into the ocean and melt in turn. That in turn would cause large rises in sea level.
Wildlife defenders in Italy have pretty much put an end to trapping migrating songbirds, so people have switched to shooting them. To stop this will require a change in the law.
(satire) *More Companies Considering Hybrid Model Where Half Return To Office, Half Laid Off.*
The US deportation thugs, on Biden's orders, now focus once again on unauthorized immigrants that are dangerous or serious criminals.
The number of prisoners in deportation prisons is half as many as last year.
Liberty Mutual insurance company not only continues insuring fossil fuel extraction, it is building a new coal mine itself.
Amnesty International reports on aggravation of human rights abuses in many countries under the cover of Covid-19.
Courts in Britain are ordering some people on probation or parole to wear new ankle tags that check sweat for indication that they have drunk alcohol.
I think this is legitimate because it is applied only as part of punishment for a crime. What I object to is the systematic monitoring of people in general, without specific grounds such as a conviction for a crime.
Australian universities are trying to increase cooperation with Indonesia to reduce dependence on China.
Biden made some small increments in regulation of guns, to try to convince Congress to go further.
The UK government's report on racism in Britain cited old scholarship which didn't figure on structural racism, rather than newer scholarship which does.
The idea of using health disparities between groups to measure the net effects of racism surprised me. In principle, racism's injustices are not limited to worse health and shorter life span. Bigotry is wrong even if it does not shorten your life, and it can do you harm in ways that don't make you physically sick.
But the author suggests that the varied wrongs of racism tend to manifest themselves in the form of worse health, visible in medical statistics — and that this provides an objective way to measure the level of harm caused by racism within any given population. That is very interesting.
A man died in Oslo ten years ago, in his apartment, and his corpse was only just discovered.
This is a sign of how little social contact a person can have now. I wonder if the man was lonely and sad.
A study finds that sheep tend to have lower pulse rates when shepherded by drones.
That might mean those sheep are better off, but that isn't certain. Perhaps sheep benefit from occasional higher heart rates. Humans do.
* The United States created a hellish world for millions (south of the border) and now demonizes those trying to escape it.*
Over 3,600 US workers in the medical field have died from Covid-19. A substantial part of this was caused by the wrecker's bad policies, such as allowing the manufacture of protective gear to grow slowly, and encouraging the spread of the disease.
(satire) *Rats Scramble To Hide Fully Functioning Amusement Park And Resort They Built As Workers Return To Office.*
Moral arguments against AI-based surveillance of students, in exams or not.
The article uses the term "ablism" in a way I think is incorrect. A tendency to move your head around while thinking is not a disability, merely a quirk. So if a system penalizes people for such head movements, I think the term "quirkism", meaning "prejudice against people because of quirks", describes that system better.
Whatever name we call it, it is bad for systems to show prejudice against quirks like that.
The article does not mention the essential basic injustice of proctoring systems: they are nonfree software that the student is required to run.
It appears separatists in the Donbas area of Ukraine are escalating the fight against Ukraine.
The separatists are Putin's willing proxies; when the fighting was hot, a few years ago, he sent Russian soldiers with Russian arms to fight alongside them. I presume that Putin invited them to heat up that little war now to provide a pretext for a bigger invasion from outside.
Amazon's employees in Alabama seem to have voted against unionization, but the union claims Amazon intimidated workers and made the election unfair.
Salafi Arabia sentenced alleged satirist Abdulrahman al-Sadhan to 40 years of punishment. The monarchy may have identified him by infiltrating Twitter.
Abdulrahman has been tortured in prison.
The UAE has not responded to the UN's demand for proof that the kidnapped Princess Latifa is still alive.
Were they Indian commandos mercenaries, or were they Indian armed forces? What role, if any, did the government of India play in the events. It ought to investigate who in India was involved.
China has sentenced some former Uighur officials to death.
*The Guardian view on peat: keep it in the ground.*
The UK is on the verge of another surge in Covid-19 among the millions of people not yet vaccinated — if it continues to relax restrictions and open the commercial spaces that are closed.
The US is already having another surge. It is the work the same Republican officials that obeyed the bullshitter by making foolhardy disease-spreading a badge of defiance against rationality.
*Police are most effective when the public approves of their actions.*
*Climate campaigners call for halt to regional UK airports expansion.*
There is no room in the carbon budget for increase in flying that expanded airports would lead to.
West Virginia came to exist because that part of Virginia refused to secede from the United States, and stayed with the Union in the Civil War. More recently, a right-wing political movement set up monuments to the Confederacy and Confederate generals, thus spreading an erroneous idea of the state's history.
Now Republicans, who dominate the state's government and perhaps lean towards white supremacism, want to make it illegal to remove or rename those monuments.
It is possible to deal with a statue that supports the Confederacy by putting up an opposing statue: perhaps of Lincoln or Grant, or some West Virginian who fought for the Union.
However, when a building's name refers to the Confederacy, it would not usually be feasible to override its message by building another building nearby. Cities and schools in West Virginia should rename those buildings promptly, before a new law can get in the way.
Putting up new monuments depicting West Virginia soldiers in their blue Union uniforms would help teach the state's history. And if West Virginia organized regiments of escaped slaves, like the 54th Massachusetts, monuments to them would get the point across even more clearly.
They surely deserve monuments.
New kinds of fishing gear could save the North Atlantic right whale.
On the coast of North Carolina, forests are slowly being inundated by the ocean, and many of the trees are dead.
When there is a drought on the land, salt water seeps inland and salinifies the land.
The US government, and international institutions, have recognized that trickle down only feeds dooH niboR, and have adopted Keynsianism.
The reason why Covid-19 increased inequality is that it caused lots of disasters. So it created lots of opportunities for disaster capitalism. People and institutions that had a habit of searching for such opportunities found them and benefited from them.
*Zimbabwe under renewed pressure to give up Rwanda genocide suspect.*
*China’s vast bitcoin mining empire risks derailing its climate targets, says study.*
* We at Carbon Tax Center believe that removing climate deniers from the Climate Solutions Caucus could help rehabilitate carbon taxing in the public conversation.*
The overall point is that a revenue-neutral carbon tax, redistributing the tax money to help the poor, would complement programs to invest in renewable energy generation and use. The investments would provide an alternative to fossil fuel use, and the tax would pressure everyone to use the alternative instead of fossil fuel rather than using more energy.
The US military — or any military — is based on a philosophy of seeing the world as a potential fight and the enemy as dehumanized. This gives it a fundamental similarity to right-wing extremism.
That is the foundation of the US military's vulnerability to right-wing extremism, but other factors add to it.
* Analysis finds 77% of directors on boards of seven US banks have ties to ‘climate-conflicted’ groups.*
*UK's 'headlong rush into abandoning human rights' rebuked by Amnesty.*
1/3 of patients who had Covid-19 developed neurological or psychological problems in 6 months. Most of these problems were psychological.
Supporting Stallman against a campaign of hatred
San Francisco has retracted the plan to rename schools named after heroes that were found to have done some things wrong.
In some of those cases, I know the wrongs were real. Perhaps that was true in all 44 cases. But it is a mistake to judge past heroes by today's values and demand perfection.
Over time, the default views in society change. Views we now consider reprehensible were once held by almost everyone. We don't need to condemn people of the past for not understanding what we understand today.
I have criticized Senator Feinstein for her right-wing positions. In addition, I believe that no government in the US should display the flag of treason and slavery. However, I can understand how an official might not want to let vandalism decide changes in policy, even changes for the better.
*[Two] Months After Biden Promised to End Support for Yemen War, Congress Still Has No Details.*
* Study suggests [the ocean] is already too warm in tropics for some species to survive.*
* Light pollution is killing insects and birds – and an ancient human connection with the heavenly bodies.*
I have some criticisms of the specifics of Biden's infrastructure plan.
I question the decision to give so much money to roads (as distinct from bridges) rather than to mass transit.
Upgrading Amtrak's Northeast Corridor would be a good thing if it included allowing anonymous travel on that line.
Support for for buying electric cars is a good idea but the owner must be allowed to turn off all features that track the vehicles' movements.
Building charging stations for electric vehicles must include allowing anonymous payment and the stations must not take note of the identity of the vehicle being charged.
Replacing lead water pipes is a very good thing to do.
The US keeps attacking Venezuela, with coup attempts and sanctions.
The fight for abortion rights continues in countries around the world.
*After Decades of Raking in Corporate Cash, McConnell Tells CEOs Mildly Defending Voting Rights to 'Stay Out of Politics'.*
Does that mean he won't accept their money any more ;-}?
The difference in US work, 50 years ago and now, is that well-paid union jobs have been replaced by precarious work for a pittance.
The "We the People" Amendment bill has been reintroduced. This amendment would wipe away various Supreme Court decisions that extended human rights to nonhuman corporations.
Alexei Navalny is "seriously ill" in the Russian prison.
Since the Russian state poisoned him once, maybe it is doing something similar now.
*Survey Finds 2/3 of US Students Want Cops Removed From Campus.*
I get the impression this is not a scientific survey, but it demonstrates that US high school students are aware of the danger of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Ukraine is afraid Russia is about to attack again soon.
This is not an absurd fear. The Russia-fueled rebellion in eastern Ukraine quieted down after a Russian missile unit mistakenly shot down a passenger airplane, but it seems that Russia is heating it up again.
Putin tends to probe for weaknesses. Responding with strength, but not aggression, can convince him to pull back and not start a war now. But this does not have to mean joining NATO — which would in any case take too long.
*Six Ways Chevron Imperils Climate, Human Rights, and Racial Justice.*
Tesla's innovation in malware is designed to help repossess the car if the owner falls behind on loan payments.
States should pass laws to enable car owners to turn off GPS and turn off all radio communication from the car.
In an economy of near-monopolies, you can't usually get political power via boycotts.
*It's a perfect macrocosm of the consumer's dilemma: if you rely on money, rather than politics, to accomplish political change, you will never make a change that reduces the power of money in politics.*
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: *Pfizer demands governments gamble with state assets to secure vaccine deal.*
The US military-industrial complex and its products are surprisingly broad. This article investigates the moral issues of how to deal with it and how not to.
I think the US should move the research that is not directly about fighting into a non-military agency. That way, the cuts that we need to make in military spending will not harm that research.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Medicare for All Act of 2021.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*NYPD "Goon Squad" Manual Teaches Officers to Violate Protesters’ Rights.*
Parkinson's disease is increasing, and Trichloroethylene may be the cause. We should ban it now rather than wait to be absolutely certain when it is too late to avoid getting sick.
*Will the United States Ever Become a Strong Nation for the Common Good?* For the US to be great again, the US government must do great things and tax the rich to pay for them.
*Greenland’s leftwing anti-mine party wins snap election.*
Rare earths, though not exceedingly rare, are important as well as valuable. But mines tend to leave dangerous pollution lying around, and mining companies lobby not to pay for remediating the damage they do.
I wonder, is there any safe way to let a mine operate?
Democrats in Congress are failing to use their power to eliminate many of the wrecker's destructive federal regulations.
(satire) *U.S. Criticized For Giving $1 Trillion To Military Contractor To Develop Hat That Didn’t Work.*
To reestablish the non-nuclear deal with Iran, the US needs to get rid of several existing sanctions against Iran, even if the ostensible motive for the sanctions is "terrorism".
Millions of Americans have private medical insurance that won't cover the cost of expensive treatments for grave illnesses.
US citizens: Tell Zuckerberg not to give the bullshitter his megaphone back.
Britons: call your MP to oppose "Checkpoint Britain".
I hope you will say that no occasion should require a person to carry a portable phone.
Economists that advocated "free trade" knowingly hid the fact that millions of people, and even some countries, can be permanently harmed by adopting that system.
Perhaps it is true that they sincerely believed that this condescending approach to the topic was for the best. But business schools and economics departments have ties with businesses, and that biases them.
It is a mistake for schools to eliminate all free play, even in the name of preventing bullying.
There are some children who can't learn to deal with bullying on their own. It is important for schools to do something to help them not just dismiss the problem with "That's life." But this does not entail eliminating free play for everyone.
A bill in the Maine legislature would put an end to Maine's "fusion center" which exchanges surveillance data between various government agencies.
British thugs arrested legal observers present outside a protest in Briston to give legal aid to protesters that were arrested.
The thugs could not have failed to recognize that they were legal observers.
Describing all of the Briston protests together as "sometimes violent, sometimes not" misrepresents them. Most of the protesters were nonviolent while sometimes certain protesters started violence.
(satire) *Man Opposes Taxing Rich Because He Knows One Day He Could Find $20 Bill On Ground.*
Treasury Secretary Yellen called for a global minimum tax rate on corporations.
I support this; however, to make it truly effective will require global agreement on limiting deductions and blocking tax evasion.
*NLRB Says Amazon Firing of Workers Who Demanded Better Climate, Labor Policies Was Illegal Retaliation.*
Public pressure has convinced some large companies to condemn Georgia's voter suppression laws — after supporting the campaigns of the Republican legislators that passed them.
*Corporations Gave $50 Million to GOP Lawmakers Behind Voter Suppression Onslaught.*
Additional Republican-controlled states are passing similar laws. To get these companies to pressure additional states, we will need to keep up the pressure on them.
The US Supreme Court ruled that imitating the API of Java was fair use of the text of the API description.
The other decision would have been disaster.
*Your 'smart home' is watching — and possibly [sending] your data [to] the police.*
I am glad to see that awareness of this threat to everyone's freedom is spreading, but it continues to be associated with an inadequate proposed solution: laws to "protect privacy" by limiting how companies use the data that they accumulate about the public. This would reduce the abuse of people's accumulated personal data but not stop it.
Please don't use the word "sharing" to describe propagation of surveillance data.
The police are plural, so the pronoun "they" fits them — but "roommate" ought to be plural as well.
Before my freshman year of college, I stated my preference for a roommate that was invisible, inaudible and intangible (if I couldn't have a room of my own). I forgot to add deaf and blind.
Western governments need to end their support for human rights abuses and authoritarianism in order to be able to exert effective pressure on China.
*Can an assault weapons ban reduce killings if firearms last 100 years?*
Perhaps the clips don't last as long as the guns.
* Extinction Rebellion is planning to step up its campaign against the banking system with a series of direct action protests and debt strikes*
* The government has effectively declared institutional racism does not exist, and framed those who disagree as the problem.*
When the government takes the position that criticizing its statements is unpatriotic, that is the final demonstration that it is unjust.
The wrecker's support among Christians has given religion a bad name in the US, and young people are abandoning it fairly fast.
US citizens: call on AT&T to Stop Funding Voter Suppression.
US citizens: call on Biden to support an arms embargo on Burma.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Equality Act.
US citizens: call on Biden to propose bigger plans to reduce US greenhouse emissions faster.
Bill Gates is buying lots of US farm land, just as an investment — but concentration of land ownership is not a good thing.
A seedling of PISSI has captured part of Mozambique. It seems to be too strong for Mozambique to defeat alone.
*Ethiopia is fighting 'difficult and tiresome' guerrilla war in Tigray, says PM.*
I expected something like this.
New Zealand's annual Great Easter Bunny Hunt killed almost 12,000 rabbits, but that wasn't enough. Perhaps they should do it every month.
Regional heating in part of the Amazon rain forest, due to deforestation, is making it hard for the trees there to survive.
This could deforest the whole region.
Teaching people to feel more empathy can have a good effect, with people that want to feel more empathy.
Enslavement in the UK seems to have increased by 25% to 40% during Covid-19.
*Scientists create online games to show risks of AI emotion recognition.*
The article identifies various dangers of this technology, but does not mention the ones I think are worst.
If your boss can tell whether you are lying, and you can't tell whether your boss is lying, that magnifies the boss's power over you.
If the repression agencies can tell whether you are lying, and you can't tell whether agents are lying, that magnifies their repressive power over you.
*Across the UK, environmental protest is surging.*
From this article, it seems that most of it is against local development projects. In principle, such objections may be valid or they may be NIMBYism. The UK needs a lot more housing; the shortage especially hurts poor people. The questions are where and how.
Each project should be evaluated under the right criteria. What are the right criteria? That is a national political question which I would not trust the Tories about.
The evaluation must be carried out by an honest government body -- which is unlikely with Bogus Johnson in charge.
Thus, I would expect a lot of those objections ARE valid.
The hunt for capitol rioters used many widely deployed surveillance technologies that can be used for repression also.
I think it is proper to have security cameras inside and around the Capitol. But their video recordings must not be accessed in any fashion except when there is probable cause for an investigation of a specific person. A security camera's recording should not be easy to view, and it should be overwritten automatically after a few weeks if there has been no grounds to look at it.
I propose the following guideline for judging whether a technology with surveillance potential is acceptable in a free society:
- If tracking or identifying any randomly chosen person is so much trouble that the state won't do it unless there is a need, it is safe.
- If identifying and tracking 100 people requires a major effort, and the state would not even consider mounting such an effort except because of an actual or planned terrorist attack or something comparable, it is safe.
US citizens: call on Democrats not to weaken the infrastructure bill to cater to Republicans.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on The NIH to tell Moderna to increase vaccine production.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US is sending unaccompanied unauthorized immigrant minors to Fort Bliss, a large army base of which parts are highly contaminated with PFAs.
Is it a significant danger to a child to live in a place near ground with a high level of PFAs for a few weeks (supposing finding places for them to go to gets even more backlogged)? I don't know, but I think they are likely to ingest less PFAs that way than by drinking the water in some American cities for extended periods.
PFAs are a grave problem for all humanity, in the long term, but I am not convinced they are a
But there is another problem with using military bases to house border-crossers of any age: it makes them inaccessible to journalists, and this makes their guards unaccountable for how they treat their temporary prisoners.
*Haaland Announces New Missing and Murdered Indigenous Unit at Interior.*
The aim is to give indigenous people who are murdered the same chance of getting justice that other Americans have, or at least more chance than now.
*Any proposal for vaccine credentials must be primarily paper-based, decentralized, and protect privacy.*
If we handle vaccination right, that system won't be needed for very long. Real vaccination will be very effective in making Covid-19 a minor danger, as long as enough of the population gets vaccinated.
*The Republican Party has no interest in actual governing.* It has no serious proposals, only tactics for fighting the culture war and making elections unfair.
*55 US Corporate Giants Paid $0 in Federal Taxes in 2020 Thanks to 'Gaping' Loopholes.*
We should fix these loopholes — but also refuse to be manipulated by fandom in businesses such as Nike.
*Why are desperate refugees turning up on the U.S. border? Because we have offloaded the costs of the drug war on Latin America.*
*These 7 ways of taxing the rich would generate more than $6 trillion over 10 years.* In other words, 600 billion or so per year. (Reporting costs and benefits on an annual basis keeps them all comparable.)
Eliminating the "stepped-up cost basis" rule would be entirely justified for billionaires, but if it applies to your parents' apartment you would probably be unable to inherit it. I suggest maintaining that rule only for the deceased's primary residence. Rich people generally have a smaller fraction of their assets in their primary residence than non-rich.
*Fracking brings pollution, not wealth, to Navajo land.*
I am not surprised. Businesses employ negotiators whose job is to make bad deals sound good.
The UK government published a study of racism in the UK, whose main thrust seems to be to reassure Britons that the situation is getting better, so there is no need for the state to do anything to make it better.
*The government has reversed progress and betrayed black Britons with this divisive and politically motivated document.*
*This is the legacy of Britain's year of Covid: power unchecked, scrutiny sidelined.*
A dam in Florida used to retain wastewater loaded with phosphate and nitrogen is on the verge of collapsing, so people are pumping some of it into nearby Tampa Bay where those chemicals could damage the ecology.
Fertilizer run-off is largely phosphate and nitrogen, and it regularly causes toxic algal blooms and dead zones when it gets into the sea.
The problem with the dam has been developing for many years, but the state ignored it until the last minute. Florida needs to pay close attention to assure all its dams are Tampa-proof.
Imagine a sports team, the Tampa Bay Fertilizer. Or Tampa Bay Algae?
In addition to the carbon emissions from using a building, which could be reduced by using renewable electricity to heat and cool it, we must start reducing the carbon emissions from constructing it, repairing it, and eventually demolishing it.
*Trump 'money bomb' scheme raised millions from unwitting donors.*
If this isn't illegal, it ought to be.
New York State has greatly limited solitary confinement.
San Francisco has implemented, to some extent, the basic idea of "defund the police": send trained de-escalators as first responders instead of cops.
Larry Lessig argues with the Green Party criticisms of the bill, HR1.
I agree that we should pass HR1 — modified not to make things harder for minor parties than they already are.
Daniel Hale's whistleblowing to journalists led to publication of important information about American drone assassinations. Prosecuting him was an attack on freedom of the press in the US.
*LexisNexis to Provide Giant Database of Personal Information to ICE.*
The breadth of data that LexisNexis collects about people makes its existence dangerous. Some of that data, such as tracking based on license plate readers, must not be collected at all.
New York City is worried about the sea level rise that global heating will cause.
A barrier that will keep water away from the city at high tide is just a temporary stopgap. To protect all the cities in the world that way would cost more than curing the root cause — greenhouse gas emissions.
Asia may over time switch to using Chinese currency for international trade. This would enhance China's economic power and diminish that of the US.
I hoped to see a reduction in the US dollar's dominance in favor of the euro. In favor of China, that's a different matter.
*Ethiopia dismisses evidence of war crimes verified by CNN investigation*. The crimes were killing of prisoners.
*The Pro-LGBTQ Companies That Helped Elect Arkansas Anti-Trans Bill Sponsors.*
Amazon apologized to the Rep. Pocan for calling him a liar, and admitted that its drivers really have to pee in bottles in the truck.
I don't think that peeing in a bottle is a horrible thing. Nowadays there are products that make it less difficult for women.
But it reflects the outrageous time pressure that they are under — all the time, not only when they need to pee.
The US border thugs are deporting migrants to Mexico without even telling them that that is what happened.
The company that owns the Dakota Access Pipeline has subpoena'd unreleased documents and videos from news publisher Unicorn Riot, which covered the protests, aiming to identify all the protesters and sue each and every one.
The name "Unicorn Riot" seems to be a joke — what they did was journalism, not rioting. I hope that it does not help the pipeline owner pretend that they were rioting.
Maskless covidiots, many of them still unvaccinated, are making a last attempt in the LA area to spread Covid-19 to a hundred thousand more Americans.
The Canadian Pacific herring fishery is being fished to death. Other animals that eat the herring are indirectly in danger.
* The campaign to cancel the author [Philip Roth] is typical of today’s all-or-nothing approach, where if you don’t like everything about a public figure, you can’t like anything.*
*Early bloom of cherry blossoms in Washington DC point to climate crisis.*
Over 120,000 personnel in Britain's NHS have long Covid. That must be an amazing fraction of all NHS workers. I wonder how many workers it has.
*US lifts Trump administration's sanctions on top ICC prosecutor.*
The FSF should support the ICC.
Italian prosecutors tapped the phones of journalists who were covering the rescue of migrants rescued from drowning in the Mediterranean, all in order to accuse people in the organizations that did the rescuing with "collaboration with people smugglers."
The US and Iran are making progress negotiating a return to the non-nuclear deal.
*US fossil fuel companies took billions in tax breaks — and then laid off thousands.*
The wrecker's ultimate act of sabotage was a proposed rule to let drug companies raise prices unreasonably. Shockingly, Biden does not seem to plan to cancel it.
Israel has vaccinated a large fraction of its population, and Covid-19 transmission is dwindling. The main danger of Covid-19 in the future will be from variants spreading in Palestine.
Israel is responsible for public health in territories it occupies or besieges. That means it must provide vaccine to the Palestinians. Now that is also crucial for Israel's public health — so its refusal is vindictiveness carried to the point of self-destruction.
I think the US should offer to donate vaccine for everyone in Palestine if Israel does not.
Meanwhile, I wonder if people in Israel who refuse to run nonfree programs, and therefore can't run the "green pass" app, are being excluded from much of society's activity. Is that really true? Is there no other way to demonstrate that you have been vaccinated?
A whistleblower claims that a UK agency whose job is to check for misconduct by thugs did the opposite: it spun its report about recent protests in Bristol so as to justify increased repression of protests.
*This anti-protest bill risks making the UK like Putin's Russia.*
Daniel Everette Hale has pled guilty to whistleblowing: giving a reporter secret information about US drone assassinations.
*Forget 2030 or 2040, Says Greta Thunberg, World Must 'Reduce Our Emissions Right Now'.*
I think she is right, as a general point. Targets in the future serve as an excuse not to make big efforts right away.
I think that Covid-19 did great harm to the climate strike movement. It distracts people's attention to a threat that, ultimately, is not as big. And it prevents the large demonstrations that made climate strike influential.
I hope it won't be too long before it regains its influence. Civilization's survival depends on that.
(satire) *New Gun Control Measure Would Put Firearms In Difficult-To-Open Hard Plastic Packaging.*
(satire) *Man Living In Most Affluent Country In World History Has Nerve To Complain About Being Homeless.*
*Rapid global heating is hurting farm productivity, study finds.*
(satire) *GOP Argues Government Shouldn't Be Deciding Which Bridges Succeed Or Fail.*
British Gas is bullying its installation engineers by firing them all, then hiring them back only if they agree to pay cuts and longer hours.
The company's customers are pushing back against this.
*India's top court has granted bail to a comic [Munawar Faruqui] after he spent 35 days in jail for a joke he didn't crack.*
He wrote the joke in his notes, but did not use it in his performance.
The US could reach herd immunity for Covid-19 if enough people get vaccinated — but that won't be permanent. Herd immunity could come and go.
The US military has had cells of violent white supremacists for decades, and doesn't have an adequate policy to prevent them.
Thai dissidents are threatened with 20 years in prison after the queen's car drove through a crowd containing some dissidents.
Georgia is moving to mostly eliminate the practice of "citizen's arrest", which is used as an excuse for racist crime.
This article leads me to wonder whether citizen's arrest existed in Georgia before the 1863 adoption of the present law.
*Biden Administration Deports Human Trafficking Victims, Expels Immigrants to Countries They’ve Never Visited.*
*Hong Kong democracy leaders found guilty over peaceful 2019 protest.*
Almost a third of the patients hospitalized for Covid-19 in the UK have been in the hospital in 4 months.
So even if you get better, you're very likely not really better.
US citizens: call on Biden to restore the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
The US has had experience with trans-people for decades.
There are a few examples I've read about in Europe, centuries ago. I presume there must have been some for all of human history, though I don't know details.
The Zuni Man-Woman describes the practice in various Amerindian and Pacific Ocean cultures.
The UK puts almost no effective checks on directly corrupt lobbying.
Even when lobbying is not directly corrupt, it tends to make government serve those who can pay lobbyists, and that is a corrupting effect. Perhaps the right solution is to prohibit lobbying, or prohibit lobbying in many situations.
A treaty alone may not secure global cooperation against a pandemic. Governments need to be willing to cooperate on a rational policy or they will break the treaty.
*Toxic impact of pesticides on bees has doubled, study shows.*
The US is pressuring Britain in trade negotiations not to tax tech companies.
Comparing China with the US in regard to alliances with autocracies.
(satire) *Experts Worried Students Will Fall Behind After Spending Past Year In U.S. Education System.*
(satire) *New Wells Fargo Employee Walked Through All The Crimes He’ll Be Asked To Commit.*
* Democratic [so-called] moderates are holding climate policy hostage to get a tax cut for the rich.*
For mainstream media, "moderate" Democrats are the plutocratist Democrats.
To curb global heating, we need to regulate business and investment, not think of it as a "partner".
*Nearly 46m Americans would be unable to afford quality healthcare in an emergency.*
The Burmese military have released some of the protesters they arrested, who report extremely cruel treatment in jail.
*Global treaty needed to protect states from pandemics, say world leaders.*
I agree. We need to bring more areas of life out of narrow national interest, and into the sphere of cooperation.
*New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists.*
We must increase the capacity to produce vaccine so that we can get the new version to just about everyone in a few months. Then we won't have to do it yet another time.
Biden plans to construct offshore wind electric generation to power "10 million homes" by 2030.
That is a significant step, but not enough. We need to power half the country with renewable energy by then, vehicle as well as homes.
If offshore wind farms have the effect of protecting part of the ocean from fishing, so much the better. We need to protect a substantial fraction of the ocean. Protected zones enable fish to reproduce and grow, which results in more fish to catch in the nonprotected areas.
And if we don't stop making lots of CO2, with the resulting ocean acidification there may not be much to catch a few decades from now.
*The Australian Academy of Science says Australia needs to push faster to cut greenhouse gas emissions.*
*Under cover of Covid, British workers' rights are being quietly stripped away.*
Tories do this in the UK just as Republicans do it in the US. Unions, and laws giving workers rights, help protect them from what businesses, with their right-wing pretense that it is virtuous to exploit workers as much as they can, keep trying to do to them.
*AT&T said [the wrecker]'s tax cut would create jobs — now it's laying off thousands of workers.*
Reviewing many things that are wrong with the US electoral system, not counting voter-suppression and gerrymandering by states.
(satire) *CDC Concludes U.S. Not Prepared For Potential Pandemic Following Year-Long Simulation Drill.*
Experts estimate around a year before the current Covid-19 vaccines become obsolete due to new variants that are different enough to infect people who are vaccinated.
The conclusion is clear: we must vaccinate everyone and soon, to cut off the evolution of the virus.
Who gets the limited current supplies of the vaccine is a side issue. We can't avoid the development of mutant strains by vaccinating A instead of B. We have to vaccinate them both.
Biden's infrastructure plan could be a significant start at what the US must do to achieve its share of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
I don't think it goes far enough. I expect that the UCS doesn't either.
Union of Concerned Scientists to Biden: *Slash Emissions 50% Below 2005 Levels by 2030.*
It is important to people that you pronounce their names rather than ask to substitute for them.
However, please be considerate of people who can't pronounce it, or feel ashamed of pronouncing it wrong.
I could pronounce Fermín or Kuan-lin, but some languages have sounds I don't know how to make. I would be glad to learn, but I would need teaching over time. If you are prepared to coach me, I will do my best.
New York State has made a try at a digital vaccination certificate.
That article describes some flaws, which maybe will be fixed. But I wonder, how do restaurants, concerts and so on check your status? Does it require you to have a smartphone?
Also, does the system record where your certificate is checked?
Can people use paper certificates instead? I have one of those.
Please call Governor Cuomo's office and ask these questions. Show the state that these questions matter.
*Destruction of world's forests increased sharply in 2020.*
New Zealand has raised taxes on the rich to help support the poor.
Hooray!
Alexei Navalny has started a hunger strike, and reports being tortured and denied medical care.
His return to Russia was a powerful spur to opposition to Putin, but the effect can wear off with time.
The amount of damage caused by intrusive pest species is 'trebling every decade'.
Perhaps in 20 years we will have safe technology to wipe out some of these species, in the places where predators won't keep them in check. However, the same technology might be used to wipe out the people of a region.
Singers and musicians are bullying songwriters to give up their share of income from music.
This happens as the the companies that distribute music are putting the squeeze on the musicians.
They would be better off with my suggestions for how to support the musicians and songwriters/composers.
Capitol police sue the bully for inciting the Jan 6 riot.
I'm delighted to see it, but I doubt personal injury claims can possibly amount to enough of a punishment for him.
Bolsonaro may have prepared the ground for another coup in Brazil, perhaps to strengthen his grip on power as the people come to hate him.
A former victim describes the cruelty of an elite English boarding school.
I got a taste of that just once while attending a private school in New York City. Being made to thank the school's head for slapping me hard and knocking me off the chair was far less than what the article describes, but I hated him after that.
One day I put a sign, "Ministry of Love," on his office. I put signs for the other three ministries of Oceania on other people's offices.
The man who attacked a stranger of East Asian descent, in NYC has been caught. He was previously convicted of killing his own mother.
I condemn the surging violence and hatred against people who have ancestry in East Asia and the Pacific. Like all forms of ethnic hatred, it is a evil that we must denounce and try to stop.
But I feel we should call those people by a term that doesn't define India and other large parts of Asia out of existence.
More exact than "Asian Americans" would be "East Asian Americans." However, that is not perfect, since the same hatred also targets ethnic groups from Pacific islands, which are not in Asia at all.
The UK offers some welfare support to people in penury — but it is not enough to live on, so they go hungry.
The US, by contrast, offers nothing to many Americans in penury and they end up begging on the street.
The American Petroleum Institute says it wants a carbon tax.
A big enough carbon tax will cut down the demand rapidly. A smaller one won't have much effect. The API will lobby for a smaller one, and
I agree that we should not trust the API. It represents the oil companies, and what they want is to delay the emissions reductions that we need to do quickly.
(satire) *Police Now Ignoring Active Shooter Reports In Effort To Deprive Killers Of Attention.*
Tens of thousands marched in France demanding a climate law strong enough to do France's share to prevent global heating disaster.
The US is helping abusive big tech companies by demanding a trade agreement that stops Britain from regulating them.
*How many anti-vaxxers does it take to misinform the world? Just twelve.*
Two St Louis thugs beat up and injured an undercover thug at a protest, and were put on trial, but not convicted.
What surprises me is that the attackers were not charged with the attack itself — only with other related crimes.
The Labour Party says it is now a pro-business party. Indeed, more than merely pro-business.
I do not advocate being "anti-business"; it would be very bad to abolish business. (We have seen how bad Communism is.) However, businesses have a tendency to mistreat human beings, so a large part of the job of the state is to make businesses stop doing that.
You can't make businesses respect human beings by thinking of yourself as "pro-business" or "in a partnership with business".
Civilians say that the "gathering of armed extremists" bombed by a French plane was actually a wedding party.
I am inclined to believe the local people. They generally know a lot more about what is going on.
The US has done things like that too.
When mass media believe thugs accounts of fighting protesters without checking them, that puts democracy at risk.
*Big Chunks of Corporate Tax Cuts End Up in Executives’ Pockets.*
This was supposed to "trickle down", but it didn't, because that never really happens.
Some right-wing judges want to weaken the criteria for judgments of libel. If they succeed, criticizing the wealthy would become very risky.
If you're worried that the US national debt is too big, keep in mind that patent and copyright monopolies (especially patents) have the same effect and much bigger.
Any continuing monopoly will tend to have the same effect, even if no law prohibits more competition from arising. Having insufficient competition will do the same thing, though to a lesser extent. Ask the diabetics that can barely afford the insulin they need to live.
A tendency to oversensitivity to "what might someone possibly mistakenly criticize?" is pushing society into increasingly rigid self-censorship.
Even when New York City refuses to directly defend a cop in a lawsuit, the city does so indirectly through a special fund paid by the city.
* As the former chief investment officer of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world with $8.7 trillion in assets, I led the charge to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) into our global investments. In fact, our messaging helped mainstream the concept that pursuing social good was also good for the bottom line. Sadly, that's all it is, a hopeful idea. In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community.*
In the 1990s or 2000s, someone challenged me to look for an ethical investment fund. As it happened, I was acquainted with someone to had started one — an independent company. The fund stated its criteria and it listed its investments.
I think the fund was honest. The main investment was Microsoft.
Microsoft got a high ethical grade, according to the usual criteria — which did not include the question of whether software respected the freedom of its users.
I did not invest in the fund.
*US Military Ordered 'Clandestine Burning' of Toxic Chemicals in Poor Neighborhoods: Study.*
(satire) *L.A. Books 5,000 Hotel Rooms For Police Officers To Take Naps In Between Displacing Homeless.*
How to wind down the "global war on terror". In addition to the deaths and other misery that it directly causes, the US brings itself into valid disrepute by pursuing this "war."
*Lawsuit Challenges EPA Approval of the Use of Medically Important Antibiotic as a Pesticide on Citrus Crops.* If that decision stands, it will kill people.
The European Court of Justice dismissed the young people's climate case on the grounds that it does not consider accusations that a law is bad for people in general. I think the idea is that these issues should be handled by democratic processes, not by trials. That is valid in principle, and it might be ok in practice if the EU had a strong and effective democracy. But that is far from true. The lawsuit may have boosted the climate defense movement despite having failed.
(satire) *‘Can You Trust Anything You See?’ Says Jack Dorsey, Shapeshifting Into Cat During Congressional Testimony On Misinformation.*
(satire) *Ted Cruz Decries Voting Rights Bill As Shameless Power Grab By American People To Control Country.*
US citizens: call on your congrsscritter to end US involvement in the war in Yemen.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Is pornography to blame for rise in 'rape culture'?*
*Rio Tinto pledges to protect cultural heritage after Juukan Gorge disaster.*
After one sad loss, the outcome could be very good.
*Covid-19 has shown humanity how close we are to the edge.*
*Shanna Swan: 'Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045'.*
If it were no worse than that, it might be ok. But we cannot be sure that human reproductive systems will work sufficiently to utilize those techniques.
China's heavy-handed pressure on its critics is causing blowback.
The US has given support to the UN again, in a prestigious way: inviting it to lead peace negotiations for Afghanistan.
I see hope that this might lead to a real peace rather than merely a fig leaf behind which the US can stop prolonging the war.
*Republicans have taken up the politics of bigotry, putting US democracy at risk.*
Disunited Europe has trouble standing up to China's economic power.
"Vaccine passports" in the UK would be a "national ID card by stealth."
I think it is possible to design them so that they do not have that drawback. However, as the article points out, it is not yet certain whether they would do much good for public health.
*Four-fifths of Sudan's £861m debt to UK is interest.*
Many poor countries pour out money to pay interest on old debts that they cannot pay back. In many cases, the borrowing was done by dictators who spent the money and left the country with the debt.
Cancelling these debts would teach banks not to be so eager to make loans to dictators.
*[Salafi Arabia] has spent at least $1.5bn on 'sportswashing', report reveals.*
The increasing size of ships inspired warnings that one would get stuck in the Suez Canal.
UK thugs lied (partially) about the violence at the first Briston protest; on subsequent days, they attacked peaceful protesters.
*Kurdish forces enter refugee camp in Syria to eliminate [PISSI] cells.*
It won't be easy for soldiers to find them, though. That would take police work or spying. If most of the prisoners support PISSI, those who are ready to kill for it will easily be able to hide.
*More than 100 killed as Myanmar junta unleashes worst day of terror.*
I imagine mothers of soldiers sending them text messages, "The next protester you shoot may be me." It might convince some soldiers to desert.
Some are organizing a guerrilla to overthrow the army.
The classic Maya had a higher level of inequality than other Mesoamerican societies, due to being more autocratic.
Ironically, this may be linked to the ancient monuments that make the Maya so fascinating to us.
I think it is important for a society to use some of its wealth to make glorious lasting things that can fascinate the public, present and future.
Lasting things do not have to be buildings or art. Condors and whales are glorious, too, so saving them counts.
Making glorious things does not require the extreme inequality that the US suffers today. What it requires is to tax the rich enough to have money for society's needs — including glory.
Congress is looking to reverse the saboteur's change in methane regulations using the Congressional Review Act.
I wonder whether Republicans can block this using the filibuster. The article does not say.
*Jakub Żulczyk faces possible prison term for insulting [President] Andrzej Duda.*
Many countries other than the US make it a crime to insult officials. Some make it a crime to insult anyone. This is disrespect for freedom of speech. People are entitled to the right to call anyone a moron, even me.
I raised this issue once with an official in Mexico, who responded that insults can wound people so much that it should be a crime to say them.
I tried to reply, "The words that can wound most are, 'I'm breaking up with you,' but everyone has the right to break up, so it must be lawful to say so. That being the case, it makes no sense to prohibit mere insults from strangers."
However, I did not put it into Spanish clearly, and did not get my point across.
Greg Palast describes the conspiracy of oil companies to turn off the expensive precautions that they had agreed to, in order to get permission to ship oil out of Valdez, Alaska.
More about the frauds that led to the oil spill.
I am very interested what Greg Palast has to say, but I would prefer if the articles were shorter, and more focused on the crucial facts and the crucial conclusions they demonstrate.
A teacher in a UK school showed students cartoons from Charlie Hebdo and is being excoriated by officialdom.
Was it wrong to show those cartoons in class? I can't judge, because crucial information has not been given.
The article tells us nothing about what lesson the teacher was teaching. If the lesson was to disparage Muslims, that was completely unacceptable to teach in a school. If the lesson was about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and controversies about them, perhaps it was proper.
This would depend also on the age of the students, which isn't stated.
The protesters have the right to protest, but they must take precautions against spreading Covid-19 to each other or to others.
Sanders's bill to reduce the estate tax threshold would also eliminate some of the legal maneuvers that are used to dodge paying it.
US citizens: call on Uber to stop doing facial recognition on drivers.
There are many reasons to refuse to do business with Uber and Uber Eats.
US citizens: call on the FBI to investigate Bannon's role in the attack on the Capitol.
*Top US scientists back $100m geoengineering research programme.*
It can't hurt to do this research, but we must not expect those measures to address the whole problem, since they won't prevent ocean acidification from wiping out coral, mollusks with shells, and some sea animals. That alone would be a disaster, though not as big a disaster.
A fake cosmetic company gives Polish women a way to ask for help, unnoticed by their controlling spouses.
It is a clever idea. If only it were implemented without Facebook!
Republican efforts to spread Covid more are having an effect: a 7% increase in the past week.
This is not as fast as it was last fall, but still dangerous.
*Fears climate crisis could increase allergy season severity by up to 60%.*
*Power-sharing is the only way to end the war in Yemen — if the US supports it.*
Yemen has been unstable for a long time. If the US gets Salafi Arabia to stop intervening, that won't necessarily enable Yemen's factions to share power in a peaceful and stable way. But it will probably not be as bad as now.
*'Breonna’s Law' bans on no-knock warrants are growing — but they're just one step.*
Amazon's drivers don't have access to toilets while they work, so they have to pee in bottles in the truck. Amazon claimed this is not so, but an internal memo shows it was lying.
* Researchers say half a million infections might have been stopped if more states had suspended [water] disconnections during pandemic.*
Consider the recommendation to wash your hands often to avoid spreading Covid-19.
The Republican government of Georgia, itself elected by a minority, rapidly passed a law to attack voting rights in every way they could think of.
There is a Robert E Lee high school in Florida — shocking enough — which has banned teachers and students from showing support for Black Lives Matter.
I don't think teachers in a public high school can have the right to teach their political views in class, giving them the authority of the school. But they should be allowed to present their views as personal views.
Students too should be free to show their support for a political point, for instance with buttons, shirts, or printed handouts. (I disapprove of making students wear uniforms.)
US cops confronting Black Lives Matter protesters acted like thugs, according to most of the investigations that cities have carried out. They treated the protesters like "the enemy."
(satire) Amazon made bathroom breaks unnecessary in its warehouses by turning the floor into an open toilet grate.
*California Supreme Court ends cash bail for some who cannot afford it.*
New York City adopted a law to rein in the impunity of violent thugs.
In 2015, the University of Michigan rejected divestment from fossil fuels. Now it has adopted divestment.
The policy is still weak: it defines a goal in
terms of "net zero".
*Myanmar military says
protesters
could be 'shot in the head' as it marks
Armed Forces Day.*
A major UK clothing retailer has
placed
stringent new conditions on
how its suppliers in the UK treat their staff. For instance, at least
some are not allowed to do subcontracting.
I don't know what fraction of the clothing it sells come from foreign
producers, to which apparently these conditions would not apply.
It might be none, but I can't tell.
I am very unhappy with pressuring employees to give their fingerprints.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to make Washington, DC, a state.
If you sign, please spread the word!
(satire) *National Support Grows To
Give
North Dakota’s Statehood To D.C.*
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, which
would give non-citizens brought to the US as children a path to become
US citizens.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Brazilians see no way to prevent Covid disaster except to
impeach
Bolsonaro.
I don't know whether there is any real prospect of convincing Congress
to do that.
(satire) *Georgia Lawmakers Warn Stricter Gun Regulation
Could
Cause Mass Shooters To Move To Other States.*
*Amazon to Delivery Drivers:
Agree
to Be Spied On Biometrically or You're Fired.*
This is one among
many reasons not to buy from Amazon.
*Beating Back Cancel Culture:
A
Case Study from the Field of Artificial Intelligence.*
(satire) *Police Say
Dead
Homeless Individual Threatened Them With Weapon As Far As You
Know.*
New Zealand has
moved
hard against the housing speculators.
This is good, but New Zealand (like many other places) needs to build
a lot more places for people to live, in concentrated form near public
transport.
*Deep job losses and benefits lags have meant an increase in homeless
Americans, and
shelters
have struggled to keep up.*
Senator Warren is pushing for closer oversight of Blackrock, because
it is so big it
endangers
the overall economy.
I think this is a good first step, but the right thing to do is make
Blackrock split up. And other large companies in this and other
fields.
*The US military is
poisoning
[low-income] communities across the US with toxic chemicals.*
Republicans are stepping up both voter-suppression and gerrymandering
in an all-out push to
make
it impossible to vote them out of office.
*American bald eagles have made
'strong
return' from brink of extinction.*
We can protect a species, with effort. But the main cause of
extinction is loss of habitat. That means we have to stop the actions
that make habitats unlivable for their wildlife.
*Having police in schools is emblematic of a society headed in the
wrong
direction.*
Los Angeles thugs
forcibly
evicted a large homeless people's encampment.
How Singapore crushes criticism of the powerful:
suing
critics for libel
when they post newspaper articles.
*The Urgent Need for a Biden-Putin Summit:*
to
prevent nuclear war.
The UK is going to punish boat people
by
never giving them permanent
asylum.
*UK government to
allow new North Sea oil and gas exploration.*
This is supposedly in exchange for a promise by "industry" to cut its
emissions by 50%. But which emissions would be cut? Only those by
the fossil fuel businesses themselves, I suspect. Emissions by users
of fossil fuels would probably increase a lot more than their
emissions would decrease.
*Over 30 million people
'one
step away from starvation', UN warns.*
*Europe's trust in Britain has gone.
We're
now a problem, not a partner.*
Burmese oppositionists are now using
a
general strike and staying home
as a replacement for visible protests.
Somalia is in
danger of collapsing again.
Another positive feedback loop for global heating:
soil absorbs less
carbon than was expected.
An interview with Steven Donziger, the lawyer
put
under house arrest
by an evidently biased US judge for representing indigenous people in
Ecuador against Chevron.
I wish that sort of thing happened
only in Brazil.
A proposed Florida law would repress protests by jailing
all participants in a protest if
anyone
commits a crime of violence.
(satire) *USPS Announces
10-Year
Plan To Deliver Letter.*
It's an exaggeration, but
the
reality is bad enough.
(satire) *HR Warns Employees Against Taking
Unsanctioned
8-Hour Naps
Every Night While Working From Home.*
The words of the founders make it clear that the purpose of the Second
Amendment was to allow slave states to keep the militias that they used
for suppressing
slave revolts.
Now that we don't allow slavery, that purpose is irrelevant. If the
Second Amendment were interpreted as limited to state-regulated
militias, it would become basically harmless.
*By the end of the century, summer weather could last
half
a year (and
that's not a good thing).*
All sorts of pests would chow down, and winter would hardly slow them
down.
(satire) *A lack of adequate
bridge maintenance [is] the
most
reliable form of suicide prevention
available in the United States.*
Ending
Covid-19 restrictions in the US now will lead to an own goal.
It is a sign of immaturity, of Americans and our political system
that it can't hold out some months longer to prevent another surge of
cases — and perhaps a new variant that could be a big setback in
eliminating Covid-19.
When "biomass" means wood chips, it is
not
a renewable fuel.
Due to global heating
effects, the trees being cut down now
may be a permanent loss.
Activists celebrate the
cancellation
of a proposed export terminal for
fracked gas, and bizarrely cite only the local damage it would have
caused.
Don't be a NIMBY: oppose all new fossil fuel infrastructure no matter
where it may be!
*Massachusetts DA seeks to vacate thousands of drug convictions connected to
botched
evidence certification at state lab.*
The forensic lab which tested their possessions for drugs employed
chemists found to be messing up the testing.
*Climate Polluters Pour Billions Into Hundreds of
'Sportswashing'
Sponsorships.*
There is nothing particularly healthful about watching spectator sports.
These artificial struggles for a meaningless "victory" are a distraction
from real struggles over something important.
*Experts Urge World Leaders to
'Put
Marine Ecosystems at the Heart of Climate
Policy'.*
A billion human beings depend on oceans and seas for food.
Lakes are warming faster than oceans. Warming of the depths of Lake Michigan
is harming
native species and aiding intrusive species.
(satire) *Biden Claims It’s
Unfair
To Attack Administration Over
U.S. Borders That Were Created By [President] James K. Polk.*
An eye-witness in Bristol (England) describes how a few hundred very
angry protesters
started
a violent riot after a peaceful protest
(against repression by thugs) of 3,000 people.
We on the left who denounce injustice need to keep the violent
protesters at a distance, if we can't convince them to contain
themselves on the occasions of our peaceful protests.
I understand why marginalized people can burst into anger, because I
have done so myself. They have a lot to be angry about. But they
need to develop the self-control needed to win their fight.
A lawyer that sued on behalf of the wrecker's campaign, claiming that
the election had been stolen from the wrecker, now says
no
reasonable person would have believed her claims.
Lots of supporters of the wrecker took them seriously. I guess she
claims they are not reasonable persons.
*Top Saudi official issued
death
threat against UN's Khashoggi investigator.*
The US has sunk
11 points in 10 years in the Freedom House ratings
of how democratic a country is.
Virginia has eliminated
the death penalty.
Builders in the UK went on strike in 1972 and were prosecuted for
picketing. Just now
an
appeals court threw out the convictions.
*Europe and US could
reach 'peak meat’ in 2025.*
I doubt I will ever eat imitation meat — but lots of vegetables that
are proud to be vegetables are delicious.
California is trying to spearhead requiring new guns to stamp
cartridges to
show which gun fired them.
It seems like a good idea to me.
The Tories rejected the amendment to save flat owners from paying
enormous sums to
repair fraudulent construction that made their buildings
unsafe.
A proposed merger between Penguin and Simon & Schuster
would be bad
for everyone else, including authors.
The advocates of increased concentration of industry will always say
that the merger of X and Y will make it big enough to compete better
with giant Z. But that path leads to fewer and bigger companies. The
right way to eliminate Z's advantage over X and Y is to make Z smaller
or split it up!
Critics of the Iraqi government
face
arrest for insulting officials.
Such prosecution is unjust in Iraq,
but
also in other countries.
A large consortium of investors
is
coordinating to pressure companies
to decarbonize.
(satire)
*AI Researcher Warns Deepfake Videos Of Him Cheating On Wife
Will Become More Common.*
I think that the possessiveness presumed by the article is a harmful
way of thinking. I decided before 1980 never to be possessive about
someone I have a romantic and/or sexual relationship with.
*Richest 1% of US Households
Don't
Report 21% of Their
Income*
in total.
This does not mean that each of those taxpayers hides 21% of per income.
Some hide less, and some hide more.
Finding the enormous unreported sums requires careful and targeted
effort. It is much easier to audit a few poor people who are hiding
small amounts so that they can survive.
The "Paygo" law which imposes automatic budget cuts
threatens Medicare
funds.
Obama signed this Republican law, demonstrating what it means to be
"centrist" and seek "bipartisanship".
A large protest was held in Bristol UK repression of protests and the
plans to restrict them more. The protesters
attacked
cops violently and
injured some severely.
Bristol is a rather leftish city which elects a Green representative
to Parliament, so it makes sense that a big protest would happen there,
and that local officials would support the purpose.
I expect the violence did harm to the cause of defending the right to
protest, because it will allow the cops (who did not, it seems, act
like thugs
on this occasion) a justification for the claim they need
more powers — which would enable them to repress nonviolent protests
more in the future.
It is not a valid justification, but they will make use of it anyway.
The left needs to adopt disciplined nonviolence, such as it employed
effectively in the 60s and 70s in the US, and reject "black bloc"
tactics. As long as it does not, it is vulnerable both to hot-headded
supporters and to right-wing provocateurs.
China sent 200 vessels (boats, I suppose, rather than ships) to a reef
in disputed waters
as
a provocation against the Philippines.
I don't know whether it is true, as claimed, that their crews are
militias, but if they aren't this time, they will be in the future.
China has an advantage in this confrontation because it can mass its
forces at any point, whereas the countries it is attacking cannot
easily do so.
Sending 200 probably armed small vessels separately into Philippine
waters at once would be even more troublesome.
The wrecker has endorsed theft of elections by pushing to replace
Raffensperger with
an election official that endorses theft
as well as voter-suppression.
The UK is considering putting asylum seekers
into
an island prison, perhaps
forever.
US officials will go to Guatemala to "address root causes of migration
in the region and
build a more hopeful future in the region."
If they are sincere about this, the US could alleviate a lot of suffering that
it helped to cause. But one can't take for granted that they are sincere.
The UK has banned trawling in a coastal area,
hoping that this will
enable kelp to regrow.
Thugs
in Georgia kept Mario Gonzalez in handcuffs in a squad car for
four hours after his wife (and others) were shot. They didn't release
him until long after they had caught the killer —
and
until after his
wife was dead.
* We have to act on the Rwandan regime’s human rights abuses, but
withholding aid
is
unlikely to help the general population.*
Salafi Arabia and the Houthis
are
negotiating about a cease fire
and end to the blockade.
I don't see any reason to insist that the Houthis receive no arms.
Nothing stops Salafi Arabia
from receiving arms. In my view, Salafi
Arabia is in no way morally superior to the Houthis; one can argue it
is inferior.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Advancement
Act.
The border thugs are not allowing journalists into the
places where
migrant children are being held.
Journalists must be allowed to photograph the conditions, and should
have a chance to talk with the children too. Protecting the children
from Covid-19 is indeed important, but I expect that methods can be
designed for that. For instance, the journalists could be required
to use use medical level PPE and show recent negative Covid-19 tests.
The Arctic ice is melting extra early this year. Usually icebreakers
can start crossing the northernmost part of Siberia in July. This
year, one
did it in February.
This is a measure of the approach of climate disaster. Many animal species
will be in big trouble without polar ice near the land.
Two Florida thugs beat up and injured a man then charged him with
attacking one of them.
Video
proved the thugs were lying.
Both thugs
had had prior complaints, but that did nothing to stop them
from committing crimes. Because of
thugs' political influence, the
system bends over backwards to protect them.
Legalizing marijuana creates jobs, increases tax revenue,
and reduces
opioid abuse.
I expect that it saves many people from the fate of being convicted of
possession of marijuana, but I don't have a reference to verify that.
Two large US railroads
want to merge.
We should not be run over by another megamerger.
The government should stop it.
On reconciling appreciation of Winston Churchill's tremendous
achievement — defeating Nazi Germany —
with
reprehension for his
racism and his support for dooH niboR.
The new Canada Infrastructure Bank
is
designed to give handouts to
big business.
Georgia disregarded the voter registration forms of thousands of
Korean-Americans, and used outrageous criminal charged
to shut down
their voter registration organization.
In December, the wrecker's minions started a plan to literally
privatize Medicare. If Biden does not stop it,
it
will continue to
run.
But things were not ok in Medicare before that. Years ago, Democrats
approved an insurance industry plan to embrace, extend and undermine
Medicare: "Medicare
Advantage" plans,
described here by Ralph Nader.
Nader is being a little too harsh here. On a radio program on March 5
he said that Sanders was giving single-payer medical care low priority
for now because Biden said he would veto it, so Sanders decided to
push on other issues where he thought progress was possible.
In that program, Nader and his guest, Kay Tillo, explained why and how
"Medicare advantage" plans are a trap: they cost less for people who
don't have major medical problems,
but
cover less for those who do.
And if you make that choice when you are 65, your preexisting
conditions may deny you the option to switch to the older "medigap"
option back when "Medicare advantage" becomes expensive.
Since then, progressive Democrats
have
introduced a single-payer bill.
There are many on-line shops
that
try to be ethical alternatives to
Amazon.
I appreciate many of the ways in which these stores try to be more
ethical. (I do not wish to be vegan, though.)
However, they are all spoiled by not offering the two primary
dimensions of ethical treatment of the customer: (1) anonymous
purchase and (2) not imposing use of nonfree software. So I decline
to use them.
Aside from that, when buying clothing, food or books I generally want
to see the product before deciding. With clothing I want to try it
on. With prepared food, I want to taste it. With a book, I want to
browse it. Nowadays it is hard to try on clothes even in a physical
store, and hard to taste the food, but I hope that will come back.
How the UK's "mainstream" right-wing press
supports
racism by targeting the weak and helpless.
Miami Beach declared
a curfew 8pm to 8am to stop crowds of covidiots
from getting drunk, destroying restaurant property, and making each
other sick.
Corrective
information about people of Asian or "Asian" descent in the
US.
What is occurring seems to be bigotry and hatred directed at people of
East Asian descent. Whether we call them "Asians" or describe them
more accurately, the wrong of that hatred is the same. But I like to
be accurate.
*Biden must punish Putin’s cyber-attacks. But [Britain's] building
more nukes only
makes things worse.*
The US has a strong interest in limiting nuclear weapons, and if it
throws that away to punish Putin, it would put itself (and the rest of
the world) in more danger. That is not a rational way to punish Putin?
Giving Germany something in exchange for its agreement to cancel the
new pipeline, and with it the planned increase in fossil fuel purchase
from Russia, would address two problems at once.
Mark Carney, until recently head of the Bank of England, has
excoriated
the cult of the invisible hand.
His book, Value(s), calls for *fairness between the generations, in
the distribution of income and of life chances.*
Fairness in the distribution of income is crucial — it means that
nobody should be painfully poor. Without that, we would have the
frequent error of believing that
"social
mobility" is enough to make a
society good.
"Relationship
education" is an advance in regard to teaching people
what not to do in connection with sex and romance.
Still missing is teaching people in practical terms how to find
their way towards joyous love. Without that, people either stumble
upon it by chance, or fall into loneliness.
Japan now requires people entering the country to have or acquire a smartphone
and install
some tracking apps on it.
This is not as bad as it first appears, because the requirement is
only for the duration of the mandatory quarantine. Tracking your movements
is not harmful when you never go anywhere.
The harm that remains even if you're staying always in the same place
is that the phone can listen to your conversations all the time.
Canada's Conservative Party voted
not
to take action against global
heating.
Arguing against
cancellation
of architect Philip Johnson.
I don't recall that I ever heard of him before, and I have nothing to
say about him specifically, but I agree that we should not equate each
person to per worst mistake.
Museums in Hong Kong
now
face state censorship with vague rules.
There is no way to be certain that any art work is not "subversive"
and criminal, so the M+ Museum should sell its entire collection
and open empty.
A UK thug who grabbed a woman on the street by her neck
was sentenced
to a nighttime curfew, plus paying her a small sum of money.
I think more is needed to reliably change his behavior, but I don't
know what sort of thing is effective with men that suffer from
irrational violent rage. Perhaps psychotherapy could help.
The British Army proposes that soldiers will communicate and get information
via
mobile phones running Android.
The article doesn't say whose phone network the soldiers would use, or
how they would stop it from triangulating on each of them — nor how
they would stop the enemy from getting their locations by cracking the
phone network.
I recall this sort of thing vaguely from the US, where officials said
that the army can save money by being smaller and yet be stronger by
using high-tech systems. I think the high-tech systems ate up more money
than the savings.
The House passed a bill, the PRO Act,
which
would give gig workers the right
to organize unions.
But that's all it would do for them.
In my view, it's a step forward but not enough.
Half of surveyed Republicans say
it
is very important to prosecute the
people that attacked the Capitol.
It would be interesting to know whether the Republicans who want to
prosecute are the ones that believe the attackers were Antifa.
A senator reports on visiting a building
where
border-crossing minors
are kept.
The senator says that they are being treated decently given their numbers.
If children were held long-term in such places, the places would be
prisons. Legally the government is supposed to send them to stay with
families within 72 hours, but it can't keep up.
The "Build Green" infrastructure bill
would
invest in electrification
of transportation in the US.
*For Biden's Climate Diplomacy to Be Successful Abroad,
It
Will Need Address
the Abusive Activities of U.S. Oil Companies in Africa.*
A fanatical restaurant owner in Michigan has been arrested
for
persistently refusing to follow Covid safety guidelines and probably
spreading the disease.
Biden is extending the drugged war
by
pressuring Colombia to spray
glyphosate on coca farms.
*All Health Is
Public Health.
The pandemic has blown up the myth that
our health is largely a product of individual choices and personal
responsibilities.*
I agree with this proposal, more or less. However, if we make
national sovereignty a foundational principle, we must recognize that
the rulers of countries can do things very badly. The US was ruled
until January by
a covidiot who acted intentionally to spread
Covid-19.
Tanzania's late president was a Covid-19 denier and
may have died from
the disease he refused to recognize.
Wealthier countries will not stand for funding the medical system of a
country which does not seriously aim to protect people's health.
National sovereignty and democracy don't guarantee that a system will
treat all the country's citizens with equal effort. Prejudiced
majorities can be found in many countries.
Finally, plain old corruption can occur anywhere.
These potential problems do not constitute a reason to reject the
overall idea of the article. But a proposed world medical system must
have a structure designed to reduce its vulnerability to these
problems — to discourage them rather than play into their hands.
*The planet cannot
survive our remorseless pursuit of profit.*
Arguing that the US owes reparations to Iraq
for
the damage it has
done.
I agree that the US owes reparations for damages, but I disagree on
some secondary points.
The US did occupy Iraq for many years starting in 2003, but what the
US military has done in Iraq in recent years was help to defeat
PISSI.
The US government has not controlled the Iraqi government for a long
time — reportedly it has been friendlier to Iran than to the US.
Paying to rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure is not as simple as it
sounds. This is not very different from the "nation building"
activities that the US made for some years after the conquest in
2003, and those funds were mostly siphoned off to corruption.
Funding the rebuilding of infrastructure in the US without having
the funds dissipated uselessly cannot be taken for granted. To do so
in Iraq would be an amazing achievement.
Maybe the US could rebuild Iraq's medical system successfully.
That may be the most important infrastructure system to rebuild.
*At behest of settlers, Israeli forces arrest Palestinian children
picking
wild flowers.*
This is not as harmful as some other things they do -- but it shows
the mean spirit of those fanatical "setlers".
*GOP Senator Blocks Democratic Effort to Shield
Covid
Relief Payments From
Debt Collectors.*
I can imagine a landlord taking the relief payment to cover a small
part of an unpayable debt, then evicting the tenant anyway.
China has banned Tesla cars from
entering
military bases.
I think that is wise. Maybe Tesla doesn't normally use the cameras in
its cars for spying, but it would be foolish to trust any car not to
spy.
We should not trust them either. Rather, we should require cars to be
designed so that they can't spy on what is around them.
*We always speak of women's safety. Let's talk about
male
violence instead.*
I have never understood how a man can yearn for a woman and then do,
based on that yearning, something that is likely to make her unhappy
with him. To me, that's akin to deciding to be totally mortified.
Only some terribly important responsibility could convince me to
suffer that fate by choice.
Perhaps this means I am not a normal man. Are most men different
from me? If so, what made them so, and at what age?
I have no idea -- how would I know?
Putting undercover cops in bars is
dangerous
rather than helpful for safety.
I think it is comparable to
putting
cops in schools.
When there isn't time to do science the careful, reliable way, and it
becomes necessary to extrapolate beyond what is known, it is easy
for science to become
politicized
and distorted for advantage.
Opponents of Bolsonaro called him a Nazi, so to show how right they were,
he
had them arrested.
India plans to track
all cars somehow.
That will make it easier to find dissidents and anyone that state-linked Hindu
extremists wish to lynch.
The UK plans to
change
citizenship law to help people that were kept
out of the UK by the government's mistake and thus became ineligible.
However, the way they plan to fix it is not the right way, because it gives
a minister arbitrary discretion over whether to punish the individual
for a government mistake. The right change would be to legislate that
absence from the UK in which a government mistake played a role is not
an impediment to citizenship.
An opinion article describes a
disputed
Congressional election with
subtle right-wing bias.
I agree that it would be better to decide this election in an unbiased
apolitical way. And the House of Representatives won't do that; it is
dominated by the Democratic majority.
But the State of Iowa procedure would be equally political and
biased. The Chief Justice was appointed to the court by
an extreme right-wing governor.
Given this situation, I conclude that asking the House to decide is as
legitimate as asking the Republican judge to decide, if it has to be
one of those two.
What could be a better way? The idea that occurs to me right now is
to establish objective criteria for deciding which ballots are valid,
in edge cases. But this too will be politicized: Republicans would
prefer to invalidate any ballot which is somehow strange, since they
figure it is more likely to come from someone marginalized and thus
probably a Democrat.
China is systematically
breaking
up Uighur families
and keeping them relatives apart after years.
Covid-19 spread from one person to another by remaining in the air in
a hotel corridor for
a
period of 50 seconds, from closing the door of
the first person's room to opening the door of the second person's
room.
The fact that there was no ventilation in that corridor may have been
crucial.
(satire) *Local Birds Pissed Off Feeder
Full
Of Tourists.*
*Poor Peoples Campaign's "Moral Budget" Offers Guide to
New
Budget Priorities.*
I agree with the moral budget in a general way. I don't know enough
to comment on the specific details, except that I was surprised that
it seems to hold short of establishing a universal medical system.
Why not?
A UK government
tutoring
scheme hires 17-year-olds in Sri Lanka and pays them
only £1.57 an hour.
The author is most disgusted that some tutors are not quite 18 years
old. I am most disgusted by how little this government program pays
workers.
The UK government did something
right
for a change: it will make some
house construction companies cancel the sneaky, exponentially growing
fees that the not-exactly-owners of the houses were going to have to pay.
China is building a new embassy in London. The local council decided
to consider renaming
nearby places and roads to Uyghur Court, Hong
Kong Road, Tibet Hill, and Tien An Men Square.
I hope they push ahead with this plan.
The Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act would authorize Puerto Ricans
to choose
statehood, independence, or various other options.
Nine months after many New York City
thugs attacked peaceful Black Lives
Matter protesters,
only
two thugs face some sort of legal proceedings.
But these legal procedings are not real criminal charges. The
thug
department will hold a hearing to decide whether to punish them. Perhaps
they will get slaps on the wrist.
Around 180 more cases are still being investigated, slowly, but unless
their acts of violence are taken more seriously than those two,
thugs
in NYC will continue to feel perfectly safe punching and kicking
protesters.
*8 People Describe How Unions
Changed
Their Lives.*
*Big Music Needs to Be
Broken
Up to Save the Industry.*
Also to smash its lobbying power, which it uses for repressive laws
such as the DMCA and worse.
Out, out, damned Spotify! Please refuse to use it.
The only ethical way to listen to music is by getting a copy
that has no DRM, without identifying yourself, and without making
the antisocial promise not to share.
The People’s Parity Project aims to influence US courts and laws in a
progressive direction,
working
against the right-wing Federalist Society.
An Israeli organization finances
intimidation
lawsuits against people that
criticize the policies and/or actions of the occupation of Palestine.
One such lawsuit was defeated by California's anti-SLAPP law.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
end
the filibuster.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the National Marine Fisheries Service to slow
ships to protect
young North Atlantic right whales.
US citizens: call on the FTC to
investigate
possible conspiracy to
fix the price of insulin.
The European Union and its member countries have
messed up Covid-19
vaccination, with the effect of fomenting anti-vax sentiment.
Thousands may die because of their fear of a tiny danger that turned
out not to exist.
Brazil's medical system
is
collapsing under the weight of Covid-19,
and it is all because Bolsolaro has sabotaged the country
much as the wrecker
sabotaged the US.
* Twelve months of Covid-19 has
reversed
12 years of global progress
against tuberculosis.*
A few years ago, China accused two Canadians of espionage, apparently for
revenge. One of them, Michael Spavor, just had a
secret
trial which
lasted just three hours.
Clearly China is not interested in whether Spavor really committed a crime.
The bullshitter urged his supporters to get Covid-19 vaccination. An
interviewer found a group of them
clinging
to the lies he taught them,
and despising him.
That's a step up from supporting both him and the lies. But it is not
a step towards rationality or sanity.
If the majority of his cult followers follow this pattern, I predict
that the bullshitter will soon return to condemning vaccination,
and they will forget that he ever said anything different.
A broad coalition from 50 countries calls on Biden to
end US support
for fossil fuel projects world-wide.
Lula called on Biden to
donate
the US's surplus vaccine pre-orders to
Brazil, or another country poorer than Brazil.
The US does not have a surplus of physical vaccine. What it has a
surplus of is commitments by various countries to sell the US
additional vaccine doses later. I expect the US will release those
commitments when it has enough actual vaccine, and the manufacturers
will sell those doses elsewhere. But I don't think the US will pay
for them.
Goldman Sachs operates
like
a sweatshop for its new employees. They
have to work 100 hours a week.
I work something like 100 hours a week, but nobody makes me do it.
it's for causes I am glad to fight for. In a good society, nobody has
to do that merely for money.
The CLEAN Act bill
pretends
to aim for 100% "clean" energy by 2035 by
allowing "clean" to include unclean forms of generation, such as
fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
Several countries have compelled companies to give gig workers the
rights
of workers.
But in the US, plutocracy has won, so far.
Global oil demand is quickly
returning
to the level from before
Covid-19.
The House of Representatives
passed
once again a bill to give immigrants
brought to the US as children a way to become US citizens.
I support this bill, notwithstanding their use of the hokey term "dreamers"
for the people that it would help.
A lawsuit challenges
Tory plans to impose a Republican-style voter ID
law in the UK.
Human fertility is
decreasing
so fast that by 2045 it extrapolates to
zero.
I doubt it will actually reach zero. Also, I expect there will be
ways to enable reproduction. The decrease in fertility so far may
help reduce overpopulation.
But it is impossible to be certain. And we need to stop the decrease.
I wonder how the decrease affects animals.
The UK has cut
the subsidy for electric cars while preserving the
subsidy for fossil fuel cars.
Tory policy statements are so contradictory that you can't tell what
they really intend to do. Perhaps that is a strategy for getting away
with inconsistency.
* The oil industry knew at least 50 years ago that air pollution from
burning fossil fuels posed serious
risks
to human health, only to spend
decades aggressively lobbying against clean air regulations.*
Natural immunity after infection with Covid-19 is
not reliable.
People need to be vaccinated, especially old people.
*Why do so many straight men
come
to resent the women they find attractive?*
I've noticed that pattern too, but never understood it. It seems to
result from an invalid step of reasoning which fortunately never
occurred to me. If I long for a woman's affection and attraction, but
she does not feel that way about me, I assume my own inadequacy is at
fault.
*Drugmakers Promise Investors
They'll
Soon Hike Covid Vaccine Prices.*
The Tories are planning a new era of spending cuts,
which are sure to
fall mainly on poor people.
Utility companies have cut off electricity to over 750 thousand US
households because the pandemic
has
left them with bills they can't
pay.
And that counts only 10 states.
Senator McConnell threatens: if Democrats abolish the filibuster, he
will use all possible excuses in the Senate rules to paralyze the
Senate. And that, if Republicans ever win power again, they will go
all-out to
reverse the progressive achievements of past Democrats.
In other words, exactly what they doing now ;-}.
If he abuses other rules to paralyze the Senate, the Democrats can
alter those rules to prevent the paralysis.
As for threats some day to pass horrible laws, the best way to prevent
that is for Democrats to pass some laws that most Americans are eager
for.
Biden ended the temporary halt
to
fossil fuel drilling permits for
public land.
This is a step in the wrong direction. And remember that fossil fuel drilling
on private land is just as dangerous for the survival of civilization.
There is no room in the carbon budget for fossil fuel development on
land or sea, anywhere in the world.
*Documents Show Industry
Pushed
to Relax Food Safety Measures During
Pandemic.*
Congress is considering bills to protect the western Monarch butterflies,
which
are close to being wiped out.
*Feeding cows seaweed
could
cut their methane emissions by 82%,
scientists say.*
This is a great advance, but we would still need to reduce the
production of beef — because growing their feed uses too much
land and too much fertilizer.
A new Medicare for All Act has been introduced in Congress. Passing
it will not be easy,
but
let's push hard.
The proposed single-payer medical system would be considerably better
than actual Medicare.
A study argues that Medicare for All
would
have prevented a considerable
fraction of Covid-19 infections and deaths in the US.
US businesses are rushing to replace human workers with automation.
Some analysis forecast
eliminating 45 million jobs by 2030.
"If robots make it, we've gotta take it!" A society with a cornucopia
must include everyone.
Of course, the cornucopia can't include products that degrade
ecosystems. There will have to be limits on things like beef.
*Sanders Bill Would Hike Taxes on Big Corporations
That
Pay CEOs Over 50 Times
More Than Median Worker.*
(satire)
*Zookeepers Confirm Pandas Not Mating Because They’re Scared Of Messing Up
Friendship.*
Correction: Republican Rep. Salazar, who voted against the Covid-19
relief bill, did not try to take credit for it. She was talking about
a different bill
that
proposed a policy change for the Small Business
Administration.
I correct this point because I posted the incorrect criticism before.
*This is What Israeli
Apartheid Looks Like.*
US presidents have for decades overthrown governments in many countries.
It was a small leap from there to
trying
to overthrow the US government.
(satire) *Bible Scholars Say Early Mistranslation
Distorted Story Of
Jesus Crucifying The Romans.*
*A substitute teacher living in his car got a
birthday
surprise of $27,000 from a former student.*
If you focus on those few individuals, it is a heart-warming story.
But look at the bigger situation: our society is so plutocratist that
rich people blow millions on frivolities while teachers are homeless.
Burning refined coal was supposed to reduce air pollution, but it
doesn't
have that effect in reality.
The moral
and military issues raised by drones as weapons.
*Eating up the rainforest: China’s taste for beef
drives exports from
Brazil.*
*Bottom trawling
releases
as much carbon as air travel, landmark study
finds.*
*Racist extremists
pose
most deadly terrorist threat to US,
intelligence report warns.*
Europe is headed into
another
wave of Covid-19, caused by variants
that spread more.
I agree that holding back on vaccination is foolish. In addition to
delays in saving many people's lives, it will fuel anti-vax sentiment
which will itself endanger lives.
Australia is deporting
New Zealanders for committing crimes, even if they
have not seen New Zealand for decades.
This is not as bad as when the US deports people to countries where they
don't
even speak the language.
But it is nonetheless unjustifiable.
The full enormity of Australia's policy can be seen in its attempt to
deport an Australian citizen, with Australian roots, who
happened to
have New Zealand citizenship too.
Cancelling
people's citizenship is not a legitimate punishment.
*Prominent supporters of Alexei Navalny face
"indefinite"
house arrest.*
Various proposed rule changes for the Senate would make it easier to
overcome
a filibuster, and more difficult to keep it going.
The Burmese army has launched
deadly
mass repression in Rangoon.
*ECJ orders France to
ban
glue-trap hunting of songbirds outright.*
A journalist investigated the trapping and found much deceit.
Republican state legislators are trying to
stamp
out any and all forms of democracy at the state and local level.
The right to protest is part of democracy, so Republican state
legislators are trying to
criminalize protest.
The recently passed US relief bill failed to say that debt collectors
could not take the relief payments for
payment of debt.
The result is that many poor people are just as poor as before.
The Tories are rushing through a law to
criminalize protests
and give thugs more power to attack protesters.
There was a substantial
protest on Sunday.
Britons had better protest while they still can.
*Amazon Retaliated
Against Chicago Workers Following Spring Covid-19
Protests, NLRB Finds.*
A few rich people with houses on Long Island are suing to
stop
the power cable from an offshore wind farm from running, 30 feet
underground, through their hamlet.
It would be good to establish national safety criteria for wind farms,
on sea and on land, to assure that they can't be built where they
would cause real problems for anyone — not even people who are poor
or disprivileged — and that even rich NIMBYs can't arbitrarily block
them.
Britain (and the world) needs to remember the
evil
side of Winston
Churchill as well as the heroic side.
In addition to his racism, he was also a Tory: he stood for keeping
working Britons down. That's why they voted in 1945 to replace him
with the Labour Party, led by the giants that inspired Jeremy Corbyn.
Set against this, he not only championed the defeat of Germany and
Japan, he also made the world aware of the totalitarian repression of
the Soviet Union under Stalin.
It is true that cancellationism and pressure for censorship can be
found on the left and on the right. When they come from the right,
they tend to involve heavy-handed threats. Resisting that can be
difficult but people don't hesitate to denounce it as censorship.
When they come from the left, it consists of a mob that demands
submission in the name of a cause which is basically just. Many
consider them heroes, and just as with Churchill, find it difficult to
recognize the evil side of what they do.
Sperm whales taught each other
Sperm whales taught each other, as a society, effective methods to
protect
themselves from human whale-hunters that were using sailing
ships.
There is a campaign to
stop
the US government from buying personal
data about people from data brokers.
It would be a step forward, but as usual it does not try to deal with
the overall problem: massive surveillance of people in general.
The US government may not be the only government that buys data about
Americans from data brokers. Is it ok if other governments know all
about most Americans?
Indeed, the US government could work around the proposed law. The NSA
could get data about Americans by cracking the computers of foreign
governments that buy the data from US data brokers. Or by cracking
the servers of foreign data brokers.
The real solution is to make sure that data brokers don't have such
data, because the data are not collected in the first place.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on the
danger
to journalists
from spyware used to endanger them.
People see the problem of goods designed to cease to run,
but they don't see that it is the
tip
of the iceberg.
The things that make an iMonster impossible to repair include the same
things that make it unjust to its users while it is still "in working order".
Please distinguish between obsolescence (something that happens to a
given model) and inoperability (something that happens to a
particular object).
Swiss thugs seized
the computers of Tillie Kottman, who I previously
read was the voice of the group of crackers that looked at the video
archive of Verkada insecurity cameras.
The thugs say this was on account of a previous act of security
breaking, about which we know nothing, but if it is similar to what
they did to Verkada and Nissan, it would involve commercial secrets
about mistreating the public.
I wish Kottman had not fallen into the trap of using the confused
pseudo-concept of "intellectual property".
The article is written using confusing pronouns, so that I cannot tell
in some points whether "they" refers to one person or several.
Us neighborhoods where banks refused to make loans (because they were
inhabited by poor people or blacks) are now generally
more vulnerable
to damage from flooding.
Global heating is exacerbating the danger of flooding.
I'm curious about how this came to be. I have a conjecture.
Cities invested less in those neighborhoods, and still do;
maybe inadequate infrastructure causes the risk of flooding.
The US convinced the UAE to have its proxies in Yemen
release
journalist Adel al-Hasani.
He is not to be confused with the other person, Osama al-Hasani, whom
Morocco recently handed over to Salafi Arabia for repression.
An investigation by the CDC found that the saboteur's aides
altered or
wrote parts of some CDC reports last year.
I'd be interested to see a summary of what specific changes and
impositions they found.
(satire)
*Florida Attempts To Increase Vaccinations By Leaving Loose
Syringes Around Beaches.*
The Director of National Intelligence reports that Russia tried
secretly to support the wrecker's campaign with disinformation,
while
Iran tried secretly to support Biden.
Various countries will say what they wish to try to influence US
elections. That can't be avoided. But maybe we can have a system in
which such campaigns don't have much influence.
Maybe we can have candidates who won't be eager for such "help."
Women's participation in urban design and engineering
can
make streets safer.
The UK threatens
to
use nuclear weapons in response to a cyber-attack.
This is foolhardy and dangerous. It is not obvious who launched a
cyber-attack, thus easy to do it as a false flag move. And it could
lead to a nuclear war that would destroy our world.
*Uber to pay UK drivers
minimum
wage, holiday pay and pension.*
They get some benefits in case of illness, too.
If Uber treats drivers decently, I'd have no reason not to use it, if
someday I can do so anonymously and without running nonfree software.
Port Moresby General Hospital (in Papua New Guinea) may have to close
because
30% of the staff has Covid-19.
Two groups of chimpanzees, in two different zoos,
seem
to enjoy a video
link between them.
I hope they are not grooming those chimps to use nonfree software.
They might never get organized to stop.
On the other hand, they are not entitled to human rights,
so maybe in their case it's not as bad as it is when humans use
nonfree software.
Some big investment companies are starting to recognize that they have
been accelerating global heating for decades,
and
making some effort
to slow the juggernaut.
Is this going to be enough? I don't think it will stop
global heating
fast enough. We need stronger action.
*Feeble Pandemic Protections at Private Texas Prison
Leave People
Fearing Death Behind Bars.*
With Republicans in Texas preferring to catch and spread Covid, there seem to
be vaccine doses available there. The US government has a responsibility to
give federal prisoners medical care, including vaccinations, so it should
give those vaccinations to prisoners to protect them.
Proposals to use hydrogen as a fuel are causing confusion
because they
think of hydrogen as a source of energy.
In fact, the proposed use of hydrogen is not for generation. It is
for storing and transporting energy densely, good for machines such as
airplanes which need to minimize the weight of their fuel. A tank
full of liquid hydrogen weighs a lot less than a battery holding the
same amount of usable energy.
However, we're going to need to extract the hydrogen atoms out of
something. If we want to use electricity to power this operation, we
will extract the hydrogen out of water, using electrolysis.
The advantages of using hydrogen for storage and transport are
entirely independent of how we generate electricity to make the
hydrogen. Naturally we should choose the best method for that:
renewable generation. Not expensive, polluting and accident-prone
nuclear reactors.
Foxconn seems to want more subsidy from Wisconsin. It is trying to give
the impression that
it might actually manufacture something there.
If Foxconn does make electric vehicles for the US market, I suspect they will
report their movements and listen to conversations for the Chinese state,
in addition to whoever else new cars snoop for.
Spain will sponsor companies
to
try out a four-day work week.
* Why have Tory defenders of ‘free speech’ been so quiet over the
proposed police powers?
They
know who they are aimed at.*
Purdue Pharma proposes to get out of bankruptcy
with
insufficient payments
from the Sackler family.
There seems to be a disagreement about how much money the Sackler
family actually received from Purdue Pharma. Perhaps they should
agree to a full audit of their finances to determine what they
actually received. For instance, to see whether they acquired any
offshore assets that are difficult to trace.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Postal Banking Act.
Thousands of minors have crossed the US border unaccompanied.
Immigration sends them camps where they are supposed to stay for at
most 72 hours before being housed somewhere; the government can't find
places to
house them as fast as they are arriving.
The conditions sometimes get very bad. Perhaps this is due to
overcrowding, but I don't think that is enough to explain the
problems. I can't see what could legitimately cause people, in a camp
using tents as housing, from seeing the sun all day — unless they are
locked inside their tents. Is that the case? If so, why?
The government is trying
to
make more places for minors.
Biden must end Salafi Arabia's blockade of Yemen,
which is causing
starvation.
Economics Nobel prize winners say that the world's economic recovery
depends
on setting aside vaccine patents.
Since June/July, states governed by Republicans
have had higher
Covid-19 case/death rates than the states governed by Democrats.
Medea Benjamin's criticisms
of
Biden's foreign policy.
I agree with her except on items 3 and 6.
Regarding Salafi Arabia, Biden using a kind of pressure
that has a chance of bringing about a transfer of power
away from Prince Bone Saw.
Regarding China, I regard China as a real threat to the world,
especially its
threat to conquer and enslave Taiwan.
Unlike many other countries that the US claimed it would "help" — for
instance, Afghanistan, Cuba, Honduras, Iraq, and Venezuela — the
Taiwanese have a real democracy and want US support to protect it from
China.
*$15 Minimum Wage Would Lift Millions Out of Poverty, Says...
Wall Street
Giant Morgan Stanley.*
If a big company is against raising the minimum wage, I have to
suspect it wants to pay workers little. But if it is for raising the
minimum wage, its motive must be more decent.
Computerized filtering of job seekers' résumés means that anyone
who
is capable but unusual is never considered.
Covidiot students went to Florida on spring break and acted as if
there were no such thing as Covid-19. Many
will
bring Covid-19 back
to school and spread it there.
Last weekend was the Easter holiday long weekend in Italy. Some
resort towns in Liguria, on the Mediterranean Sea, closed all stores
including supermarkets for the entire long weekend, simply to make
sure that vacationers from heavily-infected Milan would not come there
this time.
That is a wise policy, placing people's lives and long-term health
above profits.
Tree ring studies show that recent droughts and heat waves in Europe
have
no parallel as far as the analysis runs
— which is 2,000 years.
Scientists have found that global heating
is the cause, which implies that
we are making the problem worse.
Ilhan Omar proposes that the US deportation
thugs stop using prisons
for criminals to
imprison people for deportation.
The Canadian province of Alberta
runs
an undisguised propaganda effort
in favor of fossil fuels.
Specifically, in favor of the CO2-intensive tar sands oil that
Alberta exports.
The mingling of modern humans with Neanderthal and Denisovan humans
may have resulted
in
a burst of creativity from 50,000 to 30,000 years
ago.
I think it is a mistake to include Homo floresiensis among ancestors of
modern humans. They were more like Homo erectus, and there is no evidence
that they did or could interbreed with Homo sapiens.
We need to triple the rate
of
building renewable electric generation.
As the Tories push for a law to restrict protests, the minister of
repression says that protesters are "hijacked"
what
she thought was
supposed to be much less.
Bogus Johnson promised the protesters one part of their demand.
Whether a promise from him means anything is a good question. But the
right to protest, itself, is more important than any of the causes
people protest for.
If some of the protesters stood too close together, the proper action
by the state would have been to insist that they they protect each
other by keeping distance — not to stop them from protesting.
European governments have ceased administering the AstraZeneca vaccine
based on a shadow of a shade of a problem, because
they have adopted a
policy of bending over backwards to cater to vaccine anxiety.
Den Haaland has
been confirmed as secretary of the interior.
Usually I don't care about the "identity" of an official, only per
political stances. However, in this case I think that Haaland's
indigenious background, which is more than just a matter of ancestry,
is likely to help her right some of the effects of historic wrongs,
given that her political stance is to try to do that.
I also cheer her commitment to increased protection of ecosystems.
The wrecker is no longer president, but his attacks on the
International Criminal Court continue. Biden
has
done nothing to
change them.
Americans that cooperate with the ICC face punishment under these sanctions.
The ACLU is suing to invalidate that part.
Morocco was in an awful hurry to hand over Osama al-Hasani to
Salafi Arabia,
where he is wanted for forbidden publication. It extradited him
before
his case was actually finished.
It is clear that Morocco does not take legal rights seriously.
Sad to say, Morocco is not the only country that acts this way.
The UK's treatment of the extradition of Julian Assange is not similar
in details, but
it is generally similar in its disrespect for
his legal rights.
In recent years, the US has deported people who were
in the middle
of their court cases over deportation.
Bogus Johnson lied to the British people, to Northern Ireland, and to
the EU about the trade UK-EU trade deal. The British people are
starting to suffer the consequences — unemployment and poverty —
and
ought to be fed up with the lies.
*Collapse of trade with EU
will
"last until the summer".*
Meanwhile, the EU
is
already fed up.
As Sanders says, Americans want Democrats in Congress to do the right
things, not
wait for Republicans in Congress to go along.
The Republican Party today
is
a lunatic death cult.
The only thing to do with it is defeat it.
US citizens: call on Biden and the Senate to
appoint a progressive
commissioner to the FCC, and soon.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to
sign the
Lee-Pocan-Auchincloss letter to reduce military spending.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to
cancel
the ship-launched cruise
missile.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support the
Break
Free From Plastic
Pollution Act of 2021.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
The crackers who found a way to watch through Verkada insecurity
cameras did it so they could show the world the
extent
of surveillance
Verkada's insecurity systems carry out.
Bravo!
What these activists did was an act of cracking, because it consisted
of breaking security. It may also have been
hacking, but I can't
directly tell.
According
to Israel, if you claim that human rights in the West Bank
are Israel's responsibility, you're an antisemite. And if you claim
that the Palestinian government has the responsibility, you're an
antisemite.
2 trillion dollars of investment in coal-powered and gas-powered
electric generators
is
a bubble. When it bursts, those generating
plants are going to be valued at much less. Don't be caught owning
any of them when that happens!
The army arrested a Burmese political leader and protest organizer,
then said he had died while trying to escape from jail. However,
evidence suggests he was
tortured to death.
*Acting civilian leader says people 'must
win
the uprising' against
junta.*
*Has the pandemic led to a
long-term
erosion of the right to dissent?*
There is no need to make it a question. The answer is, definitely
yes. What remains a question is whether the people, in the various
countries harmed, can overcome and reverse the process.
The UK wants to
cancel
the citizenship of the British wife of Syrian
dictator Assad.
The UK government claims she participated in his horrible crimes. The
proper way for it to act to those claims is indict her and ask
Interpol to help arrest her. Given adequate evidence, a fair trial
could convict her and sentence her to prison. This would be justice.
Cancelling someone's citizenship is wrong on its face, and since the UK
does it without a trial, it is also punishment without trial.
In practice, the effect of either measure would be to prevent her from
traveling to the UK or to a country that might extradite her to the
UK. If she travels anywhere, it would be to a country that has
decided to receive her as the spouse of Syria's president, and in that
case it would not matter directly to her which way the UK had handled
the matter.
But it will matter for justice to others in the future.
*To kill terrorist leaders
without addressing the despair of their supporters is a fool’s errand
and produces more frustration, more despair, and more terrorism. The
more we ‘win’ such a misbegotten war — the more we debase civil
society and democratic norms — the more we turn our society into an
Orwellian dystopia in which
truth
and lies are indistinguishable.*
The Observer: *On
the erosion of our civil liberties.*
The Burmese now blame China
for
its support of the murderous army.
A call for people and government to do work
to
teach males not to be
violent towards women, with suggestions.
An Italian WHO scientist says he was pressured
to
cover up Italy's
failure to plan for a future pandemic.
The London thug department broke up a vigil for Sarah Everard,
a
woman who was murdered on the street.
The thugs
do little to pursue men that rape or kill women, but when
women hold a carefully harmless protest, they think they must not
allow it to go ahead. Apparently they are upholding the principle of
"No protests!" Not even carefully planned harmless nonviolent
protests may be tolerated.
Meanwhile, the Tories want to give
thugs additional permanent power to
suppress protests even after Covid-19 is gone.
That the man arrested for murdering her is a
thug, acting as a private
citizen, adds to the irony of this situation.
Bolivia's "interim president" who took over when the military ousted
Evo Morales faces
criminal charges.
The right-wing accusation that Morales rigged the election
was bogus
all along.
This does not, in itself, imply that Añez and the various officials
now charged are guilty of crimes. That we will have to see.
A proposed giant mine in Papua New Guinea includes a big dam to hold
toxic mine waste, plus lots of water. The rock there would not safely
support the dam structure, and
if
the dam breaks it would pollute the
important Sepik river.
The officials of Austin, Texas, are fighting in court
to maintain
their mask requirement
against the all-out efforts of Covidist state
officials who persistently seek to spread the virus wherever they can.
It is our country's sad fate that Covid-19 and a mind-virus are spreading
in tandem.
First Google, now Microsoft, are trying impose patent obstacles
on
use of Jarosław Duda's ANS compression system.
This illustrates how the US Patent Office has been deeply corrupted by
envisioning its job as serving patent applicants. However, even a
well-run patent system
would
do harm if it issues patents that
restrict running software on computers.
Some progressive members of Congress asked Biden
to
start considering
Palestinians' rights.
The Covid-19 stimulus just adopted does not fix the problems in
the US economy:
dooH
niboR is still at work.
In China, students are tracked in everything they do, using tracking
devices in their uniforms. EdTech is inventing totalitarian tracking
systems for US schools and students,
with
the motto, "No child left
untracked."
Everyone: call
Illinois legislators to defend the Illinois biomedical
privacy law which businesses are pushing to repeal.
It is helpful for people outside Illinois to call!
A doctor said I had a distended abdomen. I said, "Hold it right
there! I tend my abdomen carefully every day — particularly the
stomach."
US citizens: call on Biden to put an
end
to executions by the US
US citizens: call on Biden and Congress
not
to make Rahm Emanuel an
ambassador.
Here are reasons why not.
To sign without running
nonfree
JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!!
Russia arrested more than 150 dissidents on
charges
of dissenting.
*Philadelphia calls for
'lights
out' after skyscrapers cause hundreds
of bird deaths.*
I wonder why birds do not hit dark buildings.
*How Unions Defeated
a Right-to-Work Bill in Deep-Red Montana.*
China has complained to the UN about
Australia's
imprisonment of
asylum seekers — in islands outside of Australia where the press
may
not be allowed.
China is right about this. Australia is committing a horrible crime
and we should not let it off the hook.
Meanwhile, China is doing much worse, and on a far larger scale.
This is not a question of which of the two countries are committing
bigger crimes.
New York Governor Cuomo can no longer keep scandals bottled up,
because his plutocratist Democratic machine has
lost control
of New York State to progressive Democrats.
UK ministers used to have to resign if they lied.
Bogus Johnson has
made
lying to Parliament standard practice.
Some US colleges are
cancelling
spring break so that their students
don't go to Florida to catch and spread Covid-19 and then bring it home.
That is a wise precaution. It would be wise for the US to forbid
interstate travel in and out of states governed by spreaders.
A Texas thug has been charged with murder for
shooting and killing an
unarmed man with no justification.
The thug department, of course, says thugs should be allowed
to get away with that.
Wealthy countries including the US continued to insist on
hampering
global production of Covid-19 vaccines by means of patents.
Please do not call patents
"intellectual
property". That term
injects fundamental confusion and presupposes values that put profit over life.
The TRIPES agreement (Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production,
Education and Science) ought to be cancelled entirely, along with the
rest of the WTO.
A Palestinian died in a fire because Israeli soldiers
held up the fire
truck for half an hour.
The US just gave private medical insurance companies
more subsidy to
provide lousy medical care to Americans, but a universal national
medical system is what we need.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to do their utmost to
support
unionization at Amazon.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Israelis that are living on Palestine's land
continue using
violence to try to drive out Palestinians.
This reminds me of what I heard about the pogroms that gentiles
carried out occasionally against Jews. I have the impression that
Israeli Jews have learned the backwards lesson from the injustices
that their ancestors suffered until around 100 years ago: the lesson
that "We can do, to those weaker than us, as we were done to by those
stronger."
Plutocratist Democrats are making sure that Biden's infrastructure plan
will be
too small to do a lot of good — or win over many voters.
The For
the People Act would override many new Republican obstacles to
voting.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
reject
the Menendez-Graham
letter, which would obstruct resuming the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject
the "SAFE" bill.
which would terrify companies into censoring who-knows-what.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
There is a report that Israel has
attacked
Iranian oil tankers, as well
as Iranian ships carrying arms.
Israel has accused Iran of attacks at sea. If that's true, those may
have been retaliation for Israeli attacks. I have a suspicion that
the US encouraged Israel to make these attacks.
There is no reason for the US and Iran to be in conflict. Iran is not
the Great Satan, and not a world power.
Iran supports Assad's regime in Syria. Assad is a dictator and
torturer. However, the US supports torturer-dictators too,
including Iran's great enemy,
Salafi
Arabia, so we Americans should not demonize Iran too much for this. Let's make our
own government change its own wrongs.
Iran's government has a democratic part and an Islamist theocratic
part. The theocratic part oppresses Iranians, and it should not
exist. But there is nothing the US could or should do to change that.
We Americans should focus on defeating the
lunatic
Christian theocratic movement that threatens our own country's
rather
limited democracy.
Proxies of the UAE have
jailed
Yemeni journalist Adel al-Hasani,
who reported on ties between UAE and al-Qa'ida.
*Growing Chorus Implores Biden to
Fire
Trump Holdovers Who Support
'Dismantling and Cutting' Social Security.*
They have already tried to sabotage the program. Why let them have any
authority?
It is sometimes wise to make peace with officials who disagree with
you but are not cutthroat about it, and may change their minds. But
it never makes sense to let a known saboteur remain.
Some Burmese cops resigned and fled to India after
refusing an order
to shoot protesters.
I suppose there were others that obeyed the order.
The Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act would
limit
the transfer of military weapons to thug departments. That's
important since they often use those weapons when there is no valid
reason.
A driver describes the
encounter
with three passengers that had no
masks, and coughed on him when he insisted they get masks and wear
them.
It should be a crime to knowingly approach a person while maskless inside
a building or vehicle.
You can see, from how stingy Uber was, how much it exploits drivers.
That is one of many reasons to refuse to do business with Uber.
Lyft is no better.
It is a good idea for drivers to carry spare masks for passengers who
need them.
The London thug department says that
holding
a vigil for a murdered woman
is illegal because the current rules intended to prevent spread of Covid-19
don't allow it.
The right of the people to gather in public to express one's views
must be respected, as long as the people take care to avoid spreading
disease. Since these people are not right-wing truth-haters, and
indeed would be protesting about the danger women face on the street,
I am sure they will make every effort to keep each other safe while
they do this.
Perhaps instead of holding a vigil, in one area, they should spread
out around the neighborhood or around the city.
One measure of how effective dooH niboR has been is that there are
people ready
to blow 69 million dollars on a "non-fungible token"
whose worth derives from nothing except that (1) it can't be copied
because it has a signature and (2) others may in the future pay even
more for it.
It can be amusing to see them blow money so foolishly, but the poverty
that their system has imposed is no joke.
*[Republican] Senator Who Voted Against COVID-19 Relief Already
Taking
Credit For Bill's Benefits.*
Today's Republicans will say, at each moment, whatever they feel like,
as if past history were meaningless.
*Researchers
Say 'True Climate Leadership' by US Would Be 60% Emissions
Reduction by 2030,* plus support for poor countries to convert to renewable
energy.
US citizens: phone your senators calling on them to confirm Deb Haaland
as secretary of the interior.
https://act.350.org/go/227102?t=1002&akid=142708%2E1151744%2Exs4nEL
Here's why
it is important to confirm her.
*Broadcast TV Networks Coverage of the Climate Crisis Plummeted in
2020.* It
dropped 50%.
Rep. Jayapal demands
an investigation of the involvenment of three right-wing
extremists, themselves members of Congress, in the attack on the Capitol.
A study reports that the Fukishima nuclear meltdowns have
caused no
medical problems for the people living nearby.
However, it may be starting to harm the people who have recently
returned to areas closer to the power plants.
Even if people other than plant workers suffer no medical harm,
the loss of the plant itself and the cleanup cost amounts to
a disaster. And if 50 years from now Japan is not in a situation
to finish the cleanup, a much bigger release of radiation will occur.
One advantage of renewable electricity is that the collapse of a wind
power generator or solar generator is not a disaster.
The UK government plans to tackle "premature obsolescence" for large
appliances with a
requirement
to sell spare parts.
Global heating
is eliminating forest in many parts of the world.
Shrubs
grow instead.
This is a positive feedback for
global heating, since the dead trees' carbon
will get converted to CO2 (unless it becomes structures or furniture) and the
replacement vegetation won't use as much carbon as the trees.
It also casts doubt on whether planting lots of trees will do any good
to overcome global heating.
It may be too late now for that.
*14-hour days and no bathroom breaks:
Amazon's
overworked delivery
drivers.*
An overworked driver is dangerous.
There should be a special law specifying the maximum time a paid
driver can be paid to drive in one day, for the purpose of road
safety, and a special minimum wage for any paid driver, to make
sure paid drivers don't need to take more than one job.
If a paid driver has a collision and has been working more than the
maximum hours, whoever hired per to work longer should be legally
responsible for the collision. That would make Amazon quit
overworking drivers.
* [Thug] departments in major cities across the world give their officers
legal impunity to use lethal force
even
when their lives are not in
danger.*
*Hong Kong activists urge EU
not
to ratify new deal with China.*
I hope Europeans will organize a campaign for this.
In Australian universities, Chinese students and Chinese professors
kowtow to the long tentacles of China.
So
do the universities
themselves.
Perhaps a computer system can be designed to enable students from China to
participate pseudonymously in courses and seminars, for their protection.
However, I don't see what could possibly be done to make professors
from China safe from Chinese repression.
I think that, in fields such as history and modern literature, in
which honest evaluations of Chinese policies is crucial for teaching.
Universities should not hire professors who would be inhibited by
China's repression. I don't despise people who would be inhibited by
that monster. I can understand it. But if they are inhibited that
way, they can't be good professors, so the university must hire
someone else.
As for how to prevent the university from kowtowing, perhaps it would
be adequate to limit the number of students from China that can enroll
in any one university, any one department, any one lab, etc. Limiting
the amount of funds that come from China might limit China's
influence.
These measures will be painful, but that pain must be suffered for the
sake of the university's integrity.
The UK has proposed
new
laws to restrict and punish protests.
India's repressive right-wing government has imposed
sweeping
surveillance and censorship on the internet.
India has already imprisoned people for criticizing the state,
so we
can expect this new repressive power to be used in the most harmful
possible way.
It's no longer just the Dalits and Muslims who are being repressed.
Now it's anyone Modi's party considers hostile.
The US border thugs
want to make face-recognition patterns for every
non-citizen entering the US. These patterns
would facilitate
checking images to match their faces.
(satire)
*Secret Service Worry Major Biden’s Behavior Influenced By
Time Spent On Far-Right Dog Forums.*
The April 2020 Covid stimulus bill lent money to businesses (and other
employers) to keep their workers employed. But many of the businesses
that borrowed did
not then keep their workers employed.
The bully
arbitrarily blocked many Muslims from coming to the US.
Many can apply again, paying substantial fees a second time.
Thousands are not allowed to apply again
because
of the nature of the
visa they sought.
If Biden agrees that the ban on some Muslims arbitrarily denied them
their rights, he should restore what they were denied. Citing laws is
not a moral excuse for failing to do so.
*Activists and Rights Groups Sue Clearview AI, Warning
'We Won't Be
Safe' Until Facial Recognition Firm Is Gone.*
I wish they would stop undermining their arguments by talking about
the lesser accuracy of the system for blacks' faces. We can't defeat
face recognition by arguing that sometimes it does not work.
The danger is that often it does work.
*Journalist Andrea Sahouri, Arrested at Black Lives Matter Protest in Iowa,
Found
Not Guilty of 'Bogus Charges'.*
It is scandalous that the prosecutor brought this to trial.
Perse had
plenty of chance to find out that they were bogus. It bespeaks the
intention to use the legal system to harass journalists. I suspect that
the prosecutor is right-wing, and perhaps even a white supremacist.
Is there information about that?
The big US grocery store chains, such as Walmart, use their purchasing
power to
keep small grocery store's counters bare.
I recommend breaking up those big chains. Make more, smaller chains,
that will have less power to starve everyone else.
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject
the "SAFE Tech" act, which would
pressure Internet platforms to censor very strictly.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
(satire) *Don Jr. Sends Letter To RNC
Begging
To Have Likeness Used
For Fundraising.*
The wrecker told the RNC a couple of weeks ago to stop using his
likeness.
50 million American schoolchildren today are likely to go through
lockdown
drills repeatedly in their school careers. I estimate that
100,000 current students will experience a non-drill school lockdown
at some time in their lives, and 100 will be killed in school
shootings. Do the drills do more good, or more harm?
Greek thugs
are habitually violent. A video showed a thug hitting
someone with an iron bar, and this
inspired
a peaceful protest in
which a few violently attacked some thugs.
The person attacked by the thug was reportedly caught violating
Covid-19 precautions. It is important to enforce them, but brutality
is not justified.
I can understand the pent-up anger that the protesters feel, but
sinking to the thugs' level will only
undermine
their cause.
Protest movements must learn the discipline of nonviolence.
*Failure to investigate [UK] ministers [accused of corruption]
risks
alienating public, says ex-ethics adviser.*
Texas is endangered
by gangs of covidiotic bullies, and the rest are
desperately trying to get vaccinated to be safe from them.
If you run the nonfree Javascript code of a vaccination web site,
I'll understand — Covid-19 could endanger your life. I decided
not to run that nonfree software, and instead find a vaccination
appointment by phone. It did not take very long.
Burmese thugs are
arresting
protesters by the hundreds, and trying to
intimidate the striking railroad workers by shootings.
*Governments failing
to fulfill talk of green Covid recovery, UN warns.*
The European Parliament advanced a proposed directive to make
companies responsible to some extent for
damage
done by their foreign
suppliers, including human rights violations and environmental damage.
It's not clear to me how far the responsibility would extend.
Also, I am not sure whether non-European companies selling directly
to customers in Europe would be covered.
Rep. Raskin: *FBI must target white supremacists'
infiltration of
police agencies.*
Victor Obiols was
fired
as Catalan translator for Amanda Gorman's
poetry because he was the wrong race.
Obiols commented,
*But if I cannot translate a poet [Amanda Gorman] because she is a
woman, young, black, an American of the 21st century, neither can I
translate Homer because I am not a Greek of the eighth century BC. Or
could not have translated Shakespeare because I am not a 16th-century
Englishman.*
I can't say it is impossible that a young, black, female translator
would have an objective advantage in understanding and translating
Amanda Gorman's work. My understanding of poetry is limited, so I
won't try to judge that question.
However, since Obiols has finished his translation, I think it would
be interesting to publish both translations and let readers — and
Gorman herself — compare and judge.
Even more interesting: publish both translations, labeled A and B, and
identify who translated which in an endnote. This way, people can
compare the translations and see which they prefer, in a blind test.
*Queensland passes laws
banning
'killer' single-use plastics.*
The aim is to reduce litter and protect wildlife.
*Thailand considers
expanding
jails as it arrests more political prisoners.*
*US must cut
50% of emissions by 2030, environmental groups say.*
This is counting from the 2005 level, which was higher than today.
Making
the case that China's treatment of the Uighurs is genocide.
An Illinois law requiring companies to give notice of any biometric
surveillance is starting to
get
in the way of some businesses, so they
are pushing to repeal it.
That's what plutocracy looks like.
If you live in Illinois, I suggest you tell your state legislators you
want more restrictions on surveillance, not less.
A right-wing extremist who joined in attacking the Capitol joyfully
told friends that
he
pretended to be a supporter of antifa during the
attack.
*The
Racist History of Tipping.*
This article was publish in 2019. Does anyone know whether the minimum
wage increase bill that was just defeated would have eliminated the
subminimum wage
for tipped workers?
The idea of meritocracy makes sense to the extent that we would rather
have capable people make civic decisions. But that doesn't justify
the idea that
more capable people deserve better lives.
The prosecution of Nazir Ahmed, accused of sexual abuse of children,
collapsed when it was learned that
the
prosecution had concealed
crucial evidence from the defense.
I don't understand how the British legal system deals with this, but
it smells like an attempt to railroad the defendants.
70% of Americans want to override the drug company monopolies and
allow
companies in other countries to make Covid-19 vaccines.
If only there a way to translate this into actual policy.
The DCCC has ended, officially at least, its policy
of blacklisting
consultants who work for progressive primary challengers.
(satire)
*CDC Launches Ad Campaign Featuring Racist Mascot In Effort
To Get More Conservatives Vaccinated.*
After years of progressive organizing, Biden
has
chosen a number of
progressive officials for important posts.
It's a step forward, but we need several more such steps.
*Help Hong Kong residents flee before it's too late.*
China is imposing a law to block anyone, arbitrarily, from leaving Hong Kong,
Other countries
should
help Hong Kongers flee before then.
I expect that China will block anyone from leaving that it suspects
may aim to move permanently.
Those who could stay home during Covid-19 are exaggerating their suffering;
the people who had to go to a store or factory to work, or become homeless,
have
had it far worse.
*All in it together? The pandemic's losers
could
soon be left behind.*
The US is designing a new ICBM because the businesses that will build it
have
steered the consideration of the question.
That leaves the question of what the US ought to do. I can't
rigorously prove this, but I think that the existing ICBMs are in effect
a doomday machine, because a Russian attack intended to destroy them
would require so many nuclear weapons as to cause a nuclear winter.
Does anyone know whether that is true?
If that is true, there is no need to try to "improve" the ICBMs.
George Gascón, district attorney of Los Angeles, is trying to institute
criminal justice reform in the face of massive opposition
from those
who believe the purpose of justice is cruelty.
Diversity training often fails;
sometimes
it backfires.
Telling me to learn to be "less white, less oppressive" will inspire me to
righteous anger. On the other hand, I've found it useful to learn to be
less certain, and I'd rather not be arrogant at all.
Nationalist fanatics associated with the ruling right-wing nationalist
repressive party blocked an annual theater festival, because the
titles of some plays to be presented
struck
them as insufficiently
nationalist.
Modi is even worse for India than the wrecker has been for the US.
*The best way for Democrats to
weaken
the far right? Build up the labor
movement.*
Many well-known childrens' books were
revised
to eliminate prejudice.
I think such revisions are a good way to fix the problem. They make the
book available without the prejudice.
The bad aspect is that the new edition will have a newer copyright;
children reading the new edition shortly after its publication will
grow old and die before they can lawfully share copies of it. Beware
the oppressive e-books with DRM!
They will have to resort to
unauthorized copying.
What publishers should not do is to withdraw the book from
publication at the slightest hint of prejudice. That represents the
choice to destroy the work rather than fix it.
For instance, Dr Seuss's 1937 book, And to Think That I Saw It on
Mulberry Street, was withdrawn on account of one small drawing, which
depicts a Chinese man dressed in what might be a style of the 1800s
and wearing his hair in a queue, as the Manchu conquerors imposed.
I asked a Chinese friend and a Taiwanese friend what they thought of
that drawing. Neither one felt offended by it. Nor would I feel
offended by a drawing of an American with clothing and hairdo in a
style from the 1800s.
Papua New Guinea is being
overwhelmed
by Covid-19.
The statistic about the fraction of mothers coming to hospitals to
give birth who are infected is interesting because it is is something
close to a representative sample. If 40% of them are infected, it
suggests that around 40% of the population are infected.
We will see what damage Covid-19 does when there is no way to hold it
back.
Arkansas has passed
a law banning abortions, almost like Honduras.
This is part of a plan for right-wing radicals on the Supreme Court to
eliminate or reduce the Roe v Wade decision that established
the right to an abortion.
* New coalition calls on governments to
tackle
root cause of emerging
infections — the destruction of nature.*
*Humanity Has Degraded
or Destroyed Two-Thirds of
World's Rainforest.*
*A proposed Kentucky bill would make it a
crime
to insult or taunt a
police officer.*
How about making it a crime for those
thugs to insult or taunt, or
worse, other people.
(satire) *ExxonMobil Throws In A Couple Extra Million While Paying
Pollution Fine As
Advance
On Next Violation.*
The wrecker privatized
Medicare for some Americans.
As usual, privatizing a government service does harm to the people
it serves.
If a president could start this without Congress, another president
can end it without Congress.
(satire) *Los Angeles Carries Out
Controlled
Burn Of Old-Growth
Celebrities To Make Way For New Stars.*
Avril Henry: *People with a terminal illness are the
lucky ones. I
have longed for a diagnosis of cancer.*
Eventually she gave herself a rapidly terminal illness.
It was an inexcusable wrong that she ended up (like so many others) in
a situation where life meant unbearable pain. But no one had a way to
right that wrong. She did not want people to feel sorry for her over this,
but I do anyway.
Henry did not deserve to die — no one ever does. But even less did
she deserve to continue living in that pain-wracked body, a fate worse
than death.
It appears that France's nuclear tests
exposed
people downwind to more
fallout than formerly believed. Those parts of Polynesia have
suffered an increased cancer rate since then.
*Charge more for flights to deter tourists and help the planet, says
Air New Zealand adviser,* advocating a
greenhouse
emissions tax on
international flights.
I have to agree.
In some countries, a large fraction of working people work in serving
tourists. The loss of many of those jobs will cause considerable
suffering. But that is the consequence of bad aspects of the
was our economies are organized: each person needs to work long hours
on something that is hard to automate. We could change that.
*US scholars form
Academic
Freedom Alliance to defend free expression.*
The presence of Cornell West and Nadine Strossen suggests it does not
conceal a right-wing alignment, and will defend freedom to express any
viewpoint. When I have a chance to learn more, I may support this
organization.
US citizens: call on Google to
remove
Proctorio from the Chrome app
store.
Chrome is unjust also; kicking out Proctorio does not mean your
computing respects your freedom or treats you decently. But it's one
step in that direction.
US citizens: call on Congress to send
monthly
aid payments to every
individual in the US.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
New anti-glossary entry:
worth
Advocates for Palestinian's rights are being blacklisted for their
stand, by tarring them as "antisemitic". Those not ready to
dedicate them to that cause and get blacklisted often ask to
participate in an activity anonymously. However, when they do this in
an event at a public university, an Israel-funded lawyer sues
using
public records laws to force disclosure of their names.
These public records laws were meant for official decisionmaking; they
should not apply to academic activities.
That change needs to be made soon. Otherwise, China will hire a
lawyer to get the names of people who anonymously describe what China
did to them or their relatives.
*Mail-in
voting did not raise turnout or boost Democrats, study finds.* At
least, not generally. It may have made a difference in some places.
It was unwise for the House of Representatives to shut on March 4
because
of threats from QAnonentities.
Chancellor Merkel *has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic
could
endanger progress made on gender equality, as women [are saddled
with the bulk] of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in
at-risk jobs.*
The use of the metaphor "the lion's share" in the article is
ironically inappropriate, since it means "100%" and refers to what the
lion unfairly takes by force.
The founder of Jacobin magazine argues that building unions is the
most
effective way to reduce racism in businesses.
Why the US needs
the
WATER Act.
*Israel's military courts for Palestinians are
a
stain on international justice.*
America's military courts in Guantanamo, likewise.
But the ones in Israel are imposed on far more people.
The activities criminalized in occupied Palestine remind me of
those
China has criminalized in occupied Hong Kong.
Discussing US relations with Salafi Arabia and
how
to deal with Prince Bone Saw.
Trevor Donald was formally denied UK citizenship on the grounds that
errors
by the UK government had kept him outside of the UK for nine
years.
Tennessee Republicans propose to
make
it a felony to block any passage in a protest, and legalize
injuring or killing a protester through vehicular collision.
Global heating
threatens national security for just about every
nation. But the only defense for a nation is to
defend
the Earth's climate.
Focusing on adapting to how military threats might change could enable
the US to win a hypothetical war, but only until
global heating
effects cause it to collapse.
The House did not fix the weaknesses in the Justice in Policing Act,
described
here, so activists ask the Senate to make up for that.
(satire) *Researchers Warn Of New Giant Covid-19 Variant
Large
Enough To Swallow Grown Man Whole.*
Hedge fund raiders
squeeze
big corporations so that they have to buy back shares rather then
invest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It does not follow inevitably that they would have invested more in
reducing greenhouse gas emissions if not for the hedge fund raiders.
And some of the companies they raid are scum because of what they do
to the freedom of users.
Apple, for instance, restricts users so that
they can't install a free program from source code.
*Goldman Sachs Latest Major U.S. Bank to Set Net-Zero Emissions Goal
Without
Key Details to Get There.*
When I read that headline, I thought it was from The Onion. But it is
not satire. It is factual.
*Women in UK armed forces
face
'hostile environment' if they report bullying. … women are
coerced to withdraw harassment complaints.*
The US military is
developing
weapons systems that cost billions and don't work, yet it is
almost impossible to cancel them.
Local journalist Andrea Sahouri
faces
prosecution for covering a Black Lives Matter protest in Des
Moines.
Local thugs
seem to have decided to treat her as a protester, never
mind that she told them she was a journalist. This article makes me
wonder whether they also violated the protesters' right to protest,
but I don't have the information to judge that. Can anyone tell me?
At 1.5C of global heating,
only .4C more than now, fatal weather
will start to occur
fairly
often in topical areas.
Lula is free
to run again for president of Brazil.
Forests and wetlands are more
useful
for humanity if preserved as they are
than if they were converted to other uses.
India has arrested Rohingya refugees and threatens to deport them
to Burma, where they
might be killed.
Ethiopia's violent
suppression of Tigray has triggered guerrilla resistance.
This could continue for years.
A thousand covidiots were
joyfully
infecting each other in Boulder,
Colorado, when cops tried to make them stop.
I don't know whether the cops acted like thugs -- one can never
presume they did not -- but some of the covidiots did.
The location outdoors would have tended to interfere with transmitting
virus, but with no masks and no distancing, they could have done it
anyway.
New York City is about to introduce municipal rental scooters that
will track
whoever uses them.
Don't be distracted by the side issue of rules for access to this
tracking data. Whatever rules New York City adopts, the FBI won't be
required to heed them. It will be empowered to collect the whole data
base at will — once a month, or once a minute.
Making systems respect privacy means designing them not to collect
sensitive data (such as locations) about people without a specific
justification validated by a court.
I would not use these scooters unless I could use them anonymously.
Likewise, I would not use Uber unless I could use them anonymously.
* The U.S. can't [persuasively] rebuke global tyranny when our companies
sell [face
recognition] tools that enable it.*
Burmese thugs and soldiers have
taken
over hospitals, presumably to
arrest (or worse) protesters they have wounded.
The US Chamber of Commerce, an extreme plutocratist organization, has endorsed
the wrecker's campaign to
override
US voters' votes.
*Research reveals that financial support of infected workers
benefits
everyone, but the [UK] government won’t budge.*
The US government isn't doing much about it either.
Kenan Malik: * Race should
not
be a factor in who turns the poetry of
Amanda Gorman into Dutch.*
The idea that particular art or culture should on principle be limited
to certain subsets of humanity -- even certain subsets of intelligent
life, if we meet intelligent non-humans -- is pernicious
discrimination, and unjust.
Criticism of "cultural appropriation" is an
outgrowth
of that unjust idea.
Rep Caliban: Democrats *need to find a way to
pass major voting rights legislation
or
they will lose control of
Congress.*
*More than 20 major [US] cities have reduced police budgets in some form, and
activists are fighting to ensure that is
only
the start.*
The UK has been very successful at
chasing
away migrant workers.
Their absence may prolong the recession.
Over a period of years, according to economics, wages for construction
jobs may increase and draw more Britons into those jobs. But most of
them (except that of waiter) require training.
The US military has a long tradition of
not
worrying about whether
its recruits are racists or right-wing extremists.
Prince Bone Saw is so important the US thinks that it
can't afford
sanctions against him.
But Salafi Arabia
is one among many regimes that regularly get away
with murder. Partly because making sanctions effective is harder that
it might appear. If the US wants sanctions to exert positive
influence rather than only look tough or cause mass suffering, it
needs to be very clever about them.
The US blames a missile attack on a US base in Iraq on Iran-supported militias
and plans
to retaliate.
If we consider only that one attack on a US base, as a narrow issue
without context, I think that retaliating is justified in general.
It may not be wise, though.
However, considering that attack in its context, as following several
much worse US attacks on Iran's
officials and
installations, I think
the US should realize that it is more perpetrator than victim in this
exchange. Instead of retaliating, it should ask for negotiations.
Switzerland approved by referendum a law to
prohibit
covering your
face in public.
I am not Muslim, and I am not a woman, but that law will infringe my freedom
to defend myself from surveillance, when I am there.
Seven of the eight Democratic senators that rejected the minimum wage increase
are
multimillionaires.
The article's reasoning about Senator Sinema is too aggressive. She
may have a million dollars; she may have several. But I wouldn't try
to deduce that from her salary. With an income of $174,000 per year,
it is likely to take more than a decade to save a million dollars.
Prosecutors keep on
concealing
evidence to exonerate defendants.
Freeing some defendants 25 years after a false conviction is a rather
unsatisfying form of justice. Can't the US develop a system that will
assure this form of prosecutor cheating does not happen?
China is building warships in large numbers,
which
could make the defense
of Taiwan very difficult.
*Biden orders temporary limits
on
drone strikes outside war zones.*
This is an interim measure while they develop new permanent limits.
Ultimately we will have to judge by the results.
(satire)
*Congress Cancels Thursday Session After Authorities Warn Of
Looming Plot To Pass Stimulus Bill.*
White supremacists fabricated a story of Irish slaves in the Americas
to distract attention from concern with racism in Ireland
and the
involvement of wealthy Irish in slave plantations in the past.
Any Irish that went to the Americas in the 1700s and 1800s went voluntarily,
or else as punishment for a crime. However, many of them were driven to go
by the activities of dooH niboR in Ireland.
Ten years since the Syrian civil war began have turned Syria
into a horrible
mess of suffering that no one sees how to heal.
Secret "risk assessment" algorithms are still being used to steer the
education of black and Latin college students
away
from the tracks
followed by white students.
Is the governor of Texas prematurely dropping mask requirements
just
to please business interests?
I don't think it's only that. I think this is suppression of nonwhite
(and probably Democratic) voters who are more likely to die.
I suspect also that it is partly that the refusal to protect oneself
or others from the disease is an act of bravado that can inspire fools
to join in.
The War on Drugs has perverted many aspects of life in the US.
*There are serious consequences for drug use in nearly every sector of
civil life — education,
employment, housing, child welfare,
immigration, and public benefits.*
You could say that the US is addicted to drug punishment.
In the State of Washington, until recently, you could be convicted for
possessing drugs
which
you did not know were inside something that had
been given to you.
Republican officials in Texas found far-fetched reasons
why it would
be wrong to reduce the impossible charges for gas or electricity
during the big storm.
Look for instance at the claim that people trying to cope with various
urgent problems caused by the storm should have looked at the high prices
and used no energy.
*Spring break could be a perfect storm for spreading coronavirus variants.
Don't
let that happen.*
Facing the explicit and implicit social clubs of the well-off
students, British students from working-class families, who went to
state schools, have
founded their own 93% Clubs to socialize, and to
organize.
I hope in their organizing they look beyond the goal of "social
mobility." Increased social mobility means that a larger fraction of
those starting poor will achieve a comfortable level of income.
That's good, but it would not end poverty. A real solution would give
everyone in society, even the poorest, a comfortable life.
*The Richest Country in the World
Should
Guarantee Universal Paid Sick and
Family Leave.*
This won't be sufficient if it is limited to employees. We need to make it
cover gig workers too.
Biden said he would work with Congress
to
reduce the authorizations
for war.
Glenn Greenwald: Congressional plans to compel Facebook to censor
would
violate the first amendment.
Worse than that, the censorship might not stay limited to right-wing
domestic terrorists.
Right-wing disinformation on Facebook and Twitter puts our lives and our
freedom in danger. But we can't defend our freedom through censorship.
This is why I propose to require them to change their algorithms
fundamentally so as not to promote articles because of how much
"engagement" they generate. Let's recognize Facebook as running an
engagement ring, and prohibit that.
To pass the For the People Act, Biden must do as President Johnson did
in 1964 to pressure a few hold-out Democratic senators
into passing
the Voting Rights Act.
However, the For the People Act has a few bad changes designed to
create hardship for parties other than Republican and Democrat. The
Green Party says:
The changes would put smaller parties at a bigger disadvantage in
funding,
and make it so expensive to get a presidential candidate
on the ballot that they may have to give up. There may be no one on
the ballot in 2024 I would consider voting for. For the first time
since I became old enough to vote,
I
may cast no vote for president.
The Green Party asks people to oppose the For the People Act. I do
will not oppose it, because its good changes are absolutely necessary.
What I will do is call my senators and urge them to remove the bad
provisions from the bill.
US citizens: call
on Congress to end "qualified immunity" for thugs.
US citizens: call
on McDonald's to stop snooping on workers' advocacy
of raising the minimum wage.
US citizens: call
on Biden to clear away obstacles so all countries
can make Covid-19 vaccines.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on the state government to stop
helping the deportation thugs deport Massachusetts residents.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the wealth tax bill.
Blinken should open his eyes and see why the ICC
has
jurisdiction to
investigate war crimes committed on the territory of Palestine.
The For the People Act has many good provisions, but also some bad
ones. They increase the power of money in politics,
and put parties
other than the big two at an increased disadvantage.
Eight Democratic senators
voted
against raising the minimum wage.
The minimum wage would have been raised by steps, reaching $15 per hour
in a few years.
Requiring masks, and closing restaurants,
correlate
with lower rates of growth
of Covid-19 or higher rates of decrease.
(satire)
*Disney Announces Next Movie Will Feature Princess With
Never-Before-Seen Ethnicity.*
*ACLU to Biden: Do Not 'Review' Drone Killing
Program—-End It Once and
for All.*
Assassination via drone cannot be justified as war.
If considered as
war, it is a war crime.
Low traffic neighborhoods reduce pollution in that neighborhood,
but they can
increase traffic elsewhere.
Often "elsewhere" is where poor people live.
One key question, I think, is whether the low traffic neighborhood
leads people who live there travel carelessly for a substantial
fraction of trips. If it does, it can decrease the total pollution.
The UK systematically uses polygraphs
to
interrogate some convicts on
parole.
Making someone sit still for 3 hours answering questions, and accusing
per of cheating if perse
fidgets, while threatening jail if perse does
not answer, is a subtle form of harsh interrogation — a psychological
equivalent of a "stress position." The polygraph itself might not be
necessary.
However, it won't cause real injury. Perhaps using it to get
confessions of parole violations is acceptable.
Georgia Republican officials claim that handing out food or water to
voters waiting for hours on line to vote — as blacks are often
compelled to do —
is a crime.
They have adopted various measures to suppress the black vote.
Perhaps it would be lawful to sell snacks, rather than giving them away.
This article describes
additional voter-suppression measures.
Republicans figure that each obstacle will block or deter a certain
number of voters and bring them closer to "winning".
One of the Republican officials involved in these disenfranchisement efforts
is Brad Raffensperger. Meanwhile, the press lionizes him
for refusing to
of committing outright election fraud for the bully.
By refusing, he did his job honestly in that particular, but that does not make
him a hero.
* New York governor [Cuomo]’s aides rewrote report, which was not yet
public, to
omit 9,250 deaths of nursing home residents.*
They would never have done such a thing without Cuomo's knowledge.
Don't forget that Governor DeSantis of Florida falsified te death
figures there.
Is there any reason to believe that he has stopped?
The New Enlightenment And the Fight to Free Knowledge, a book by Peter
Kaufman, describes the forces that have purposely crippled efforts to
share knowledge widely and freely, and proposes how to defeat them.
In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that the book
says very nice things about me. But it's about a lot more than me.
The book is being published on line
one chapter at a time, under CC-BY; eventually the whole book will be
there. Nicely printed copies are also available.
Everyone: call on McDonald's to
stop
snooping on workers' advocacy
of raising the minimum wage.
*China's five year plan could
push
emissions higher unless action is taken.*
Asking the public to admire underpaid "heroes" is an
excuse
for not giving them a raise. The Tories' treatment of the NHS shows this clearly.
*NHS may face a
million
long Covid patients after pandemic.*
If 16% of the people in a country are debilitated this way,
it would cripple the country. Will that happen to the US?
*Aussie State Senator
Calls
Out "Right-Wing, Intolerant Modi Government".*
* The total number of butterflies west of the Rockies
has
fallen 1.6%
a year since 1977.*
That amounts to around 50% since then.
*India's top judge tells accused rapist to
marry
victim to avoid jail.*
The article does not suggest he considered what the girl wanted.
* More than 400 European parliamentarians have urged leaders to use Joe
Biden's new presidency as an opportunity to stop what they term
Israel's "de-facto
annexation" of the occupied West Bank.*
*WHO chief: waive
Covid vaccine patents to put world on 'war footing'.*
Here are his
actual words:
More precisely, he calls for allowing any manufacturer to make
vaccine. Anyone doing so would still be required to pay a royalty.
That cost by itself could slow vaccination.
I am disappointed that he used the ill-conceived concept of
"intellectual
property", since that overgeneralization spreads confusion
and every use of it creates resistance to what he is trying to do.
Assad will confiscate
the homes of Syrians who have fled his tyranny.
* A handful of
rightwing
“super-spreaders” on social media were
responsible for the bulk of election misinformation in the run-up to
the Capitol attack,*
They were not independent — they were working together.
Nearly all the principal supporters of democracy in Hong Kong are now
facing
charges, or at least arrested.
China's rulers make up bullshit to justify each instance of injustice,
but they don't try to make the justification plausible to people
outside their control. They consider it sufficient brainwashed
supporters believe it, since almost everyone in China is a brainwashed
supporter now, or pretends to be.
The NOAA is planning to convert to publishing nautical charts
only in
digital form. In principle, that may not bad. But will people be able to
access charts from the Free World?
If you are a mariner, please investigate the system of publication
that NOAA used. Try accessing it with LibreJS active, and see what
results you get.
And if it does not work, complain to NOAA.
Meatpacking companies
lobbied
hard against rules to protect workers
from Covid-19, and kept outbreaks secret.
Israeli soldiers are
destroying
Bedouin's crops.
Palestinians in Israel protested that the local
thugs were doing nothing
about organized crime. The thugs began
attacking
many of them with weapons.
Some of the protesters required hospitalization.
The violence was clearly directed by officers.
US citizens:
call
on Merrick Garland to investigate and prosecute Trump and his
network.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass Senator Warren's wealth tax.
US citizens:
phone your congressional
representative and ask per to pressure Biden to stop construction
of the Line 3 pipeline.
Israeli border thugs
gratuitously
shot Ahmad Erekat dead after he had an embarrassing car crash,
then lied about the circumstances.
Thugs in various countries have a
practice of thinking, "What accusations can we make against the victim
that no one can disprove." But in this case they seem to have
exceeded that limit.
When my friends die, I miss them. It doesn't matter whether I even
see their corpses. But it occurs to me that there may be a sinister
reason why Israel holds permanently the corpses of Palestinians that
Israelis kill: to prevent autopsies that could provide objective
evidence about how they were killed. Making this a blanket policy
avoids the need to conjure up an individual excuse.
Biden gave in to a demand from Manchin and Sinema to
reduce
the stimulus payments for people whose 2019 income was above $80k.
Whether they were unemployed most of 2020 or not.
A UK Green MEP explains
the
Green Party proposals for reversing the Tories' dooH niboR cuts in
business taxes, plus a steadily increasing carbon tax.
*US experts warn new Covid variants and states reopening
may
lead to fourth wave.*
*Fauci: US shouldn't loosen coronavirus restrictions
until
daily new cases fall below 10,000.*
That is assuming your goal is to make Covid-19 go away. Republicans,
who boosted the infection last year and killed perhaps 300,000
Americans who otherwise would not have caught it, are still trying to
spread it. Perhaps their motive is that they expect it to
kill
mainly blacks.
I would add an additional proviso: we should not loosen coronavirus
restrictions unless we can determine that R will remain substantially
under 1 after they are loosened.
(satire) *Covid Announces Plan To Move Operations To Texas Full-Time
To
Escape Burdensome Regulations.*
(satire) *New Texas Law
Requires
All Masks Have Word ‘Pussy’ Written Across Front.*
How
the EU Commission Broke Its Own Rules to Let the Biotech Industry
Help Rewrite GMO Safety Laws.
By selecting the questions to ask, and who to ask them of, it is not
hard to shape the answers.
*China's Communist party
ran
campaign to discredit BBC, thinktank finds.*
Warning the UK that
it
can't shrink its carbon footprint and expand
an airport.
Italy is prosecuting the volunteer crew members of boats
that went to sea
to rescue migrants traveling to Italy on smugger boats.
The US has likewise prosecuted people
who leave water in
the desert for people trying to migrate from Mexico.
*Iran and IAEA clear
potential roadblock to talks with US on nuclear deal.*
*The George Floyd Act
wouldn't
have saved George Floyd’s life.*
I will look for more information about the Breathe Act. However, the
George Floyd act does try to prevent other injustices committed by
uniformed thugs.
The ICC might prosecute Israeli officials, even a minister,
who
were involved in bombing Gaza in 2014. They might be unable to
travel internationally.
It is even possible that the court
might
investigate the crime of settling Israelis in the occupied West
Bank.
An Italian court is investigating
the
use of bombs made in Italy by
Salafi Arabia in Yemen.
The drug company lobby is lobbying heavily for the US to punish countries
that
propose to save lives by making their own Covid-19 vaccine.
The article follows the misguided practice of using the term
"intellectual property". That term
spreads
both bias and confusion;
I urge people to reject it entirely as I do.
*Global oil companies have committed to 'net zero' emissions.
It's a sham.*
They say they will make "offsets" so big, by 2050, that they will cancel out
fossil fuel combustion and leaks.
There's no way to absolutely prove this won't work, until 2050. Then
they can say, "Too bad, we tried," but everyone alive then will suffer
the ecological damage.
*South Korea's first transgender soldier
found dead.*
Of suicide, it appears.
Humans are rapidly destroying the world's remaining seagrass meadows.
That is a shame, because
they
shelter baby fish and sequester carbon in the
sea bottom.
The chairman of the board of Rio Tinto will step down, following
several executives, due to the scandal resulting
from the company's
destruction of 46000-year-old cave habitations in Juukan Gorge.
Management had got legal approval to do this, and acted as if nothing
else mattered.
Right-wing misinformation on Facebook attracts more attention than
truthful information. Left-wing misinformation
attracts less attention
than truthful information.
A good, quick heuristic for finding valid information is look at
whatever left-wing information comes your way.
(satire) *Pros
And Cons Of Sharing Vaccine Supplies And Technology.*
(satire) *New Military
Diversity Initiative Aims To Make Leadership
Look More Like Countries They Invade.*
*Blaring Quiet Part Out Loud, GOP Lawyer Admits to Supreme Court That Easier
Voting Puts Republicans at
'Competitive
Disadvantage'.*
The CLEAN Act would take some steps forward towards decarbonizing, but has
big
shortcomings.
A protester has been
jailed
for protesting repeatedly in the vicinity
of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
The article makes a big fuss about the protester's ethnic background.
I do not think that makes any difference. I would admire anyone
equally for doing the same thing.
Sanders called on the Senate Democrats
to
disregard the views of
the Parliamentarian.
Varoufakis: *Both supporters and critics of US President Joe Biden’s
$1.9 trillion stimulus plan assume that there is a dollar amount that
is just right. In fact, no such figure exists: every possible
stimulus size
is
simultaneously too little and too big.*
In addition to a stimulus, Biden needs to *lift the spending power of
those who have next to none.*
Unconscious bias training does not seem to be effective
in reducing
unconscious bias.
Chinese-Australians face a powerful current of racism.
Almost 1/5 have
suffered violence or threats of violence.
People of Chinese origin or ancestry are not necessarily supporters
of the Chinese government. Indeed, some of them hate it.
I've seen articles recently about prejudice in the US against
"Asian-Americans". Racial prejudice is bad regardless of the details,
but I do wonder what people "Asian-Americans" means. Asia is the
biggest continent and includes a variety of peoples, and they do not
look similar, so it is implausible that all Asian-Americans are
involved.
Are Americans of Turkish descent facing prejudice? Iranian? What
about people from India and neighboring countries? Siberians? Do
Balinese musicians face threats? Hawaiians?
Are these articles really about people of Chinese descent, or who
resemble Chinese? If so, please don't mislead us with "Asian".
Factory farms emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. We need
to
regulate farms to bring those emissions down.
A restaurant chain, threatened with closure,
asks
workers to "lend" it
10% of their pay.
Considering how little most restaurant employees make, they may have
trouble doing without 10% even supposing they will get it back.
But will they get it back?
If the restaurant chain stays in business and becomes successful
again, it will probably repay the loan, but we can't be sure.
Wage theft from restaurant staff is not unusual.
However, if the restaurant chain goes broke, which apparently might
happen, I expect the workers will probably lose the lent pay.
*Biden Criticized for Lack of Transparency
After
Refusing to Publicize Virtual
Visitor Logs.*
Hybrid cars use more fuel and emit more pollution
than they are
advertised to emit.
In other words, they are a green swindle.
*Net zero increasingly involves highly
questionable carbon accounting. As a result, the new politics swirling
around net zero targets
is
rapidly becoming a confusing and dangerous
mix of pragmatism, self-delusion and weapons-grade greenwash.*
*[The deportation thugs] reached a new low: using utility bills
to
hunt undocumented immigrants.*
*Emmanuel Macron has admitted French soldiers tortured and killed a
well-known Algerian lawyer and activist
during [Algeria's]
independence war.*
The fact was already known, but the government's recognition of its
involvement is a step forward toward justice.
The Canadian "incel" killer has been convicted of murders, and will
presumably be
sentenced to spend a long time "in cell."
Burmese soldiers and thugs
shot
protesters in various
cities.
They must have received orders to do that. They killed at least 33 people.
The Republican governor of Texas
has
eliminated nearly all rules
designed to slow the spread of Covid-19.
I think he wants as many Texans as possible to get infected before
it is too late.
Millions of Americans are receiving tax bills
for
their unemployment
insurance payments over the past year.
After decades of rule by dooH niboR,
most Americans live close to the
edge. Especially those who lost their jobs last year. An expense of
$500 dollars will push them over the edge.
Millions of Americans are falling over the edge,
because they
have not received unemployment benefits.
Jamaica's laws criminalize homosexuality. The Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights ruled that these laws violate human rights
and inspire violence, especially by the uniformed
thugs, which extends
as far as murder.
The challenge
of changing those laws, and changing the hatred, remains.
Bogus Johnson openly manipulates the government to
pay for personal
conveniences for him.
Tories have legitimized corruption to the point where they don't need to
disguise it.
Meanwhile, Labour has become so "centrist" that there is a serious proposal
for it to become
the "party of business",
instead of the party of working people and those in need.
A party of the rich and the bigots and a party of business — that's
what the US had under Clinton. Progressive Democrats are gradually
changing that.
A study found toxic fracking chemicals in the
air,
water and human bodies
in the region of fracking in Pennsylvania,
even in people who live five miles away.
Fracking ought to be banned on account of its
global heating
contribution alone, but local pollution adds another good reason.
Planet roasters try to distract Americans with concerns about side
issues such as "energy independence" so that they can keep
pumping oil to export.
They have obtained plenty of oil leases that they are not using yet,
so Biden's moratorium on approving additional leases won't affect them
for a long time.
I do not wish to take a nationalistic viewpoint towards the global
problem of planetary heating. If country C is going to buy oil and
burn it, it is not worse if that oil comes from the US. And refusing
to export it will mean some other country exports that oil, perhaps
Salafi Arabia. That is not a step forward.
On the other hand, if several countries compete to export oil, they
will export more oil, which is the opposite of what we need. We need
a treaty to limit and reduce oil exports.
But it may be possible for one oil-exporting country to exert
influence on its own.
Here's an idea: the US should agree to continue exporting oil to China
for the next 10 years, provided China agrees to build no new coal
power plants and shut down all its existing coal-fired plants on a
pre-agreed schedule during that time. And replace them with renewable
electric generation. And not to export any coal.
The energy independence that Earth needs is independence from
nonrenewable or unsustainable energy.
(satire) *World Leaders Pledge To Cut Emissions By As Much As They Can
Realistically
Back Out Of.*
(satire) *U.S. Allocates $500 Million For Mohammed Bin Salman To Use
On
Anger
Management Counseling.*
The federal government
transfers
funds from more urban, Democratic
states to rural Republican states. Perhaps that offers a lever to
influence the Republican voters.
To punish them would be pretty easy, but would not help enact
progressive policies. How to use these programs to win over some
Republicans is harder — and how to do it with changes Democrats
can enact is even more challenging.
*US hits Russian officials with
fresh
sanctions over Navalny poisoning.*
Secretary-General António Guterres called for
cancellation of all
planned coal projects.
We have understood this for years, but that the head of the UN says so
is a big step towards making it happen.
The damage caused by global heating
in Australia will get to be so
costly that insurance
will no longer be a feasible way for people to
protect themselves from damage.
I think the same thing will
happen
in California.
The only effective remedy will be to curb
global heating.
*McDonald's spies
on union activists — that's how scared they are of workers'
rights.*
RSF has filed a complaint against Prince Bone Saw in Germany, over
systematic
persecution of journalists.
This includes the murder of Khashoggi and lots more.
This is possible because Germany asserts universal jurisdiction over
crimes against humanity.
(satire) *No-Nonsense Negotiator Strong-Arms Landlord Into
Fixing
Toilet For Rent Increase.*
*Biden Can Freeze
Potentially Dozens of Harmful, Last-Minute Trump
Regulatory Rollbacks.*
The leader of Zimbabwe's principal opposition party
calls on world powers to
stop
supporting its tyrannical government.
It is harder for western powers to restrain the government of Zimbabwe
now that China is shipping arms to it.
In this regard, China is not uniquely evil. Western countries gave
tyrannical governments similar support in the past, and still do with
some. Nonetheless, the fact that China does it today has bad
repercussions in many parts of the world. Western governments
sometimes join together to push for freedom, but China won't care at
all.
US citizens: call
on Congress and the president to stop all transfer
of military weapons to US thug departments.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
The US does little to restrain Erdoğan
from
accusing political
opposition of "terrorism".
Electric vehicles are
more
efficient than fossil fuel vehicles on
every measure.
Then use less energy, and less materials — even if you don't count
the fuel.
The US has a kind of wealth tax — the property tax — and rich people
pay
much less property tax (as a fraction of their wealth) than anyone
else.
Renters pay a high fraction, because their rent covers the real
estate tax on the dwellings they live in (but do not own).
Explaining Iran's refusal to negotiate
while
the US keeps all the
sanctions going.
The article shows the diplomatic harm this would do to Iran.
For me, a
much simpler explanation was sufficient.
*Fossil fuel emissions
in
danger of surpassing pre-Covid levels.*
This is no surprise. What it shows was that people should not let the
Covid-19 recession relax their demand for policies that cut emissions.
Since people can refuse to believe the bullshitter when he says he won
the last election,
they
can also refuse to believe Ex-pope Benedict
when he sais he resigned.
* Ben Bonnema says he was [fired by Trader Joe's] after writing a letter to company’s
CEO calling
for a series of safety measures for workers.*
Spain makes it a crime to insult the king.
This
system of censorship
is an injustice.
I strongly dislike Tarantino's movies, those I have seen any of. I
don't intend to see any more. I would probably dislike those rappers'
performances, too — except that they probably speak too fast for me,
and with Spanish colloquialisms I don't know, so I would not
understand them. But my tastes are irrelevant to the issue. Their
works don't need to appeal to my taste to be covered by freedom of
expression.
Biden is awfully quick to admit defeat on legislating to raise the
minimum wage to $15 (over a period of a few years).
He ought to try
his damnedest before giving up.
*[Ex-president] Sarkozy found guilty of corruption and influence peddling
but is
unlikely to spend time in prison.*
*Ayanna Pressley and Ed Markey
Push
to Abolish Qualified Immunity.*
*More than 75% of Syrian refugees
may
have PTSD, says charity.*
*Senate Democrats
Can
and Must Abolish the Filibuster. Now.*
Hong Kong is putting protest leaders on trial for political charges.
1000
people came to protest.
China has crushed freedom in Hong Kong. What about freedom in the US
and the UK? Both are
threatened now.
Starmer is so frightened people will accuse Labour of raising taxes
and spending too much that he is
making
it into a right-wing party.
Global heating is
reducing
the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,
which includes the Gulf Stream. This could eventually result in
freezing Ireland and Britain.
The UK government has
arbitrarily
terminated the citizenship of Shamima Begum. Attempts to block
that decision failed.
Exile of citizens is not an acceptable punishment.
What makes this even worse is that the punishment was
imposed
without a trial. No punishment should be imposed without a trial.
Adding insult (to the public) to that injury, the minister who decided
on exile for her cited an absurd excuse. She has no other
citizenship, but the minister did not wish to recognize the fact that
this would leave her stateless. So the he claimed it was sufficient
that she would be entitled to citizenship in Bangladesh
— theoretically.
No one knows what would happen if she tried to apply for citizenship
in Bangladesh. Perhaps that country deny her citizenship, citing
something like the UK's grounds for terminating her citizenship.
The US has unjustly terminated citizenship, too. US citizen Emma
Goldman was deported as punishment for advocating resistance to the
draft.
Biden put official personal sanctions on many officials of Salafi
Arabia, but
not
directly on Prince Bone Saw himself.
This may be a clever indirect form of sanction against him. Cozying
up to the king and shunning the prince has a chance of causing his
demotion in the Salafi Arabian court, whereas direct hostility could
inspire the rest of the power structure to close ranks behind him.
Salafi Arabis is culpable for many different wrongs:
The US does not have the power to make
Salafi Arabia desist from all
these wrongs; as a result, it is not immediately obvious what stance
would be best for the US to take so as to reduce some.
Most of these have gone on since long before Mohammad bin Salman
became crown prince. I think he started item 2; he certainly
started item 3.
As for the other wrongs, the US is already starting to try to end 1.
The others will take time.
Biden ordered an attack at two Iran-linked militias in Syria.
This raises
two
moral issues: was it harmful to nuclear negotiations with Iran,
and did it violate the War Powers Act.
This is a decrease in level of violence compared with when the wrecker
was president, so I tend to think it won't affect the negotiations.
However, Biden has done
other
things that may put these negotiations at risk.
*Lawmakers Say Biden Admin
Must
Present Congress Legal Justification for Bombing of Syria.*
US agencies say that the acting king of Salafi Arabia
ordered
the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
The WATER Act would
ensure
Americans can get clean water to drink even if they are poor.
The House of Representatives has
passed
a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Republicans will block this, along with every bill to fix the nation's
permanent problems, unless Democrats find a way to make Manchin and
Sinema vote to abolish the filibuster.
The UK Inspectorate of Constabulary says that
thug departments are
going overboard in their arbitrary searches of blacks on the
street, and
cannot
justify them. I can't escape the conclusion that this is bias at
work.
I suppose the thugs
have had training about unconscious bias already,
and it does not seem to have helped. Here's an approach using
feedback that might be good to try, with each cop separately.
The hope is that, over time, the cop learns to filter out spurious
triggers of suspicion.
Has anything like this been tried?
Illinois has
eliminated
bail for those accused of crimes. Suspects will no longer be kept
in jail until trial simply because they are poor.
*Jewish Groups
Urge
Biden to 'Review and Revoke' Trump-Era 'Made in Israel' Settlement
Goods Policy.*
The US should not allow any of the wrecker's policy changes in support
of Israel's occupation policy to stand.
(satire) *Joe Manchin Claims West Virginians
Too
Deficient In Character, Grit To Deserve $15 Minimum Wage.*
Mexico has
banned
both growing glyphosate-resistant corn and importing it.
*Majority of US Voters Want Government to
Invest
More in Healthcare, Education, and Fighting Poverty.*
Will the US government define "national security" in terms of power to
fight future threats, or in terms of
helping
other countries be safe from disasters?
Jim Hightower on Texas: *Not only must our corporate-controlled
electric grid be replaced; so must our corporate-controlled ag
policy—and our
corporate-controlled
elected officials.*
US wages increased on the average in 2020, because
many
low-wage workers lost their jobs.
I suspect that if we tabulate household income rather than wages, we
will see a shift towards lower income.
Iran refuses to discuss resuming the non-nuclear deal unless the US
does more to lift
the the sanctions that the wrecker imposed when be broke the deal.
I think it would be wiser for the US and Iran to stop delaying
negotiations by disputing how to start them. But since the US broke
the deal, the US should go out of its way to resume the deal.
Perhaps the US should suspend sanctions for a year, and extend that
to a permanent cessation if the deal is remade.
* UN report claims up to 10% of the world’s wealth could be hidden "offshore"
and calls for global
banking reform.*
"Offshore" means "in a tax haven". Some important tax havens are in
quasi-independent islands, but Switzerland, Belgium, the UK and the US
also function as
tax havens.
All that money concealed from taxation leaves governments short on funds,
which translates into poverty.
* The UK government is considering
nationwide
curbside collection of
used electrical appliances and gadgets, and requiring retailers,
even online ones, to take them back.*
For once, the IMF wants to
do
some good. It needs approval from the US.
A federal court ruled that the CDC's
emergency
ban on evictions is
unconstitutional.
The ban is indeed an emergency measure, not a permanent solution. The
US needs to set up a system that will give everyone in the US a place
to live that meets our standards.
"Modernizing" the world's nuclear missiles would only provide us with
a fancier
way to cause a fast mass extinction. We should cancel it.
*Two-year jail terms signal bid to
crush
all independent journalism in
Belarus.*
Journalists were convicted on a *trumped-up
charge of organizing a protest they simply filmed.*
Uber is trying to
falsify
an impression that drivers really want to
have no rights.
Many California towns inhabited by poor Hispanics
don't deliver clean
water.
In some places the threat of future water shortage is the obstacle to
fixing it. The only fix for that is to use a lot less water — which means,
less farming and fewer people.
*Facebook's Australian news wipeout showed it can
delete [zuckers']
history at any time.*
It can't delete any of my history, because I don't put it there.
You shouldn't either.
The Tories are planning to
criminalize
protests that interfere with anything.
Chain yourself to a door and you'll be wearing chains for years.
Some right-wing UK "defenders" of freedom of speech
criticized a
no-platforming which did not actually happen. They, and the minister
in charge, were careless with the facts.
Nonetheless, another instance they cite did really occur, and so do
others. If 53 speakers were vetoed in one year, that may be a small
fraction of all speakers that year, but it is still a lot of
censorship.
I gather that the Equality Act is meant to prohibit discrimination and
harassment. I support that goal, but campaigning for that goal should
not go so far as to ban controversial speakers from giving talks.
Even in a good cause, there must be limits on how far we can go. I
would not try to ban people from praising proprietary software, even
though I disagree with such praise. People have a right to disagree
with me, or with you, or with anyone.
I also agree that the government can easily be a worse threat to freedom
of speech than any collection of students.
Environmental defenders have sued California and Governor Newsom
for illegally
issuing thousands of oil and gas drilling permits.
I am not sure how much Governor Newsom was personally involved in
granting those licenses, but he's in charge of the state government,
so it's his
responsibility to stop it — and, if possible, to cancel those leases.
*From 2018 to 2020, the United States government undertook what it
labeled “counterterrorism” activities in 85 countries.*
This map shows
what it did where.
Israel is going out of its way to
deny
vaccine to Palestine.
We need to immunize almost everyone against Covid-19, and the rate of
production means many will have to wait. Who has to wait more and who
gets to wait less is a secondary matter that I usually don't dwell on;
instead I campaign for faster production so that the waiting is less.
Palestine is an exceptional case because it is under military
occupation. Israel as occupying power is responsible for public
health in Palestine and thus has the obligation to secure vaccine for
Palestinians, if it can. We see that it can. When Israel has extra
vaccine in its hands, it should carry out its responsibility.
US citizens: call
on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Advancement
Act.
US citizens: Support
the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act.
This bill would do many things
to
reduce death in childbirth in the US —
which is shockingly frequent in the US. Contrary to its name, its benefits
would expect to all poor women; they would not be limited to blacks.
The US must not increase the laws to repress protests. Instead it should
start
using its existing powers adequately against right-wing extremists
and stop overusing them against nonviolent leftists.
Many states are passing laws for repression of nonviolent protest action
against dangerous business activities, and thugs tend to be extra
harsh against all left-wing protests. Compare that with
the friendliness
of thugs with the Kenosha killer, Rittenhouse,
and the Capitol
Police leaders' betrayal of their mission on Jan 6.
The US should boost Social Security by eliminating the cap
on
how much income
a person pays the tax on.
The reason this cap exists is because there is an idea that each
person is supposed to receive support based on per own earnings.
Following that idea, if there is a limit on how much Social Security
will pay a retire rich person, there has to be a limit on how much
that person pays Social Security.
I think it is perfectly fine to say that rich people will help support
the rest, through Social Security as well as in other ways.
(satire)
*Biden Unveils Cool Teen Migrant Detainment Center Where
Youths Can Hang Out And Never Leave.*
Americans believe that their country has a "social safety net" which
will protect them from absolute penury when something goes wrong. In
recent decades, many cords of the net have been removed or stretched,
so now people tend to fall through it.
Here
are the details.
A good government arranges to do better for its people than merely set
up a net somewhere beneath them in case they fall. It provides good
things for its people so that everyone can have a good life.
One benefit for the UK (and the world) of its departure from the EU
is that Goober
will have to stop paying British drivers peanuts.
I made a mistake in a previous note of saying that the drivers were
now "employees." It seems that in the UK makes a distinction between
"employees" and "workers"; the drivers are now "workers." I am not
sure what rights workers have, but it is more than "independent"
contractors.
Planet roasters can no longer convince by denying that
global heating
is occurring, so they have switched to other methods to stop society
from taking sufficient steps to curb the heating.
Interview with
Michael Mann.
There is no evidence that Wikileaks was part of a scheme to elect the
wrecker. It published evidence in 2016 that the Democratic Party
had
corruptly prevented Sanders from winning the nomination.
That corruption was a bigger problem than the fact that it was leaked.
Western countries, no longer as powerful as in the past, are
exaggerating what
they might do to support democracy in Burma.
This is leading some Burmese to expect an armed rescue. They might
start a rebellion which would be crushed.
QAnincompoops now claim that Trump
will
be inaugurated as president on
March 4.
When this fails to occur, they may pretend that it did.
A special business supremacy treaty
specifically for energy
infrastructure has a ISDS clause.
Under this treaty, countries must pay for permission to adopt climate
policies that make foreign-owned fossil fuel infrastructure less useful.
All business-supremacy treaties
are
instruments to crush democracy.
Countries should refuse to sign them, withdraw from them, ideally join
together to cancel them out entirely.
For this treaty, one possible last-resort solution would be for
countries to declare war on each other and bomb each other's fossil
fuel infrastructure, disabling it from functioning. Then they could
decline responsibility on the grounds that the damage was an act of
war.
I don't suggest bombing the power plant into rubble — that would
cause pollution — just destroying some key part of it, without which
it does not operate.
Is this idea shocking? There are better ways to stop burning fossil
fuels, but it is good to have this fall-back method if the others prove
too difficult. Don't say it can't be done!
The faculty at University College London
rejected
the IHRA definition
of antisemitism.
It was not designed to be used as a basis to judge people for their actions.
Malta says all those who masterminded killing of Maltese journalist Daphne
Caruana Galizia
have
now confessed or been charged.
The wrecker put sanctions on personnel of the International Criminal Court;
a month after inauguration,
Biden
has not lifted them.
How the US should approach the ICC may be a complex question, but
sanctions on its personnel cannot be a valid answer.
It was Dubya that began
attacking
the ICC and trying to make it
ineffective.
The US should end that, too.
*CO2 emissions: nations' pledges
'far
away' from Paris target, says UN.*
The Paris agreement's target
is
far from sufficient to avoid global
heating disaster.
Remote work has led to a
great
jump in remote surveillance of workers.
They can be monitored far more than they were in the office.
Amazon is putting cameras in delivery vans to
monitor drivers.
I hope the drivers go on a camera strike, all covering the cameras
on the same day.
However, given all the other nasty things Amazon does, I urge you
never to buy from Amazon — and to urge your friends not to buy any
presents for you from Amazon.
*The United States Is the
Biggest
Carbon Polluter in History — Now Is the Time
for Bold Action.*
Or a cowardly drift into disaster.
*Is Israel trying to
keep
Hamas from running in Palestinian elections?*
Georgia passed a law requiring speakers at universities
not to boycott
Israel. One speaker threatened to sue; Georgia is changing that law.
(satire) *Florida GOP Introduces
Ballotless
Voting In Disenfranchised Communities.*
The Senate parliamentarian ruled that increasing the minimum wage is
not a budgetary measure, thus thwarting the plan to include that in
the Covid-19 relief bill. Democrats now have
plans
to work around that decision.
I advocate increasing the minimum wage, but I think the
parliamentarian made the right decision. It is stretching things
to say that any measure that could will have fiscal effects
is a budget measure.
There seem to be
other
ways to raise the minimum wage.
Raising the minimum wage will give the US economy a boost that
focuses
on working people, rather that trickle down.
An experiment found that various artificial sweeteners
promoted gene
transfer between bacteria.
The gene transfer can speed the evolution of multi-drug-resistant
strains. Since tons of these chemicals now appear in human wastes,
they can easily affect
It seems like an amazing coincidence that several chemicals whose only
point of commonality is to taste sweet would also have this effect on
bacteria. So I suppose there is an explanation to be found.
*A third of US military personnel
refuse
Covid vaccine.*
It shocks me that blacks often refuse the vaccine. It can't be due to
heeding white-supremacist right-wing extremists. Since the same
vaccines are being offered to whites, it should be clear that this is
not a case of offering blacks something dangerous. They are doing
themselves harm by refusing.
If a way can be found to win over the blacks in the military, a few
months to observe will convince most people that the vaccine is safe
enough. (Unless a problem appears.)
The main remaining group of refusers will be white-supremacist
right-wing extremists. Requiring vaccination of all service members
— no choice about it — might convince some of them to leave the
military, which is exactly what the country needs.
Monarch butterflies are threatened. The population this winter is
only 1/3
of what is needed to keep the species safe.
*New research links Delhi’s thick smogs to
burning
of plastics.*
Since the UK government has failed to stop bottom-trawling in
"protected" marine areas, Greenpeace is doing so — by setting up
lines
of boulders as obstructions.
Bravo!
Both Republicans and Democrats are
papering
over the ways Neera Tanden
has boosted government-for-hire.
I am disappointed that Sanders supports her. I wish I could ask him
why he does.
Meanwhile, some of the senators that are very hostile to Deb Haaland
own
fossil fuel stock.
When the Ethiopian government captured the ancient city of Axum,
its soldiers (and allied Eritreans)
rampaged
and massacred civilians — hundreds, at least.
The prison camps for captured women and children of
PISSI have become
radicalization
camps, ruled by the most fanatical prisoners.
I can't tell from the article whether there are prisoners in those
camps that no longer support PISSI.
If there are, I hope they get a
chance to go somewhere they can live in peace.
Fanatics should not be allowed to raise children. The children
should be adopted by families that do not support PISSI.
In general, what to do with prisoners that support violent extremist
cults is a question with no evident good answer.
Twitter shut
down its old web interface that permitted tweeting without
running nonfree Javascript code.
US citizens: call
on the Department of Justice to investigate the
Rochester thug department for civil rights violations and racist
violence.
Residents of Massachusetts:
call
on Massachusetts legislators to enact
the VOTERS act and require public meetings to be accessible virtually
I added the following text:
I ask you push to amend HD2828 (Garlick/Lewis) in two ways:
* To require virtual meetings to be accessible by phone as well as by
internet.
* To require the state to use its own servers for this purpose, rather
than any company's servers, starting no later than June 2023.
The companies such as Zoom that offer the use of their servers for
virtual meetings impose their own rules about what may be said and who
may participate. It is intolerable for any governmental activity or
state entity to be covered by commercial censorship, so the state must
have a firm policy not to use commercial servers for its meetings
except in an emergency. However, recognizing that the state will need
time to set up its own facilities, I propose a transition period of
two years before the requirement to use them becomes effective.
US citizens: call
on Congress to cancel Americans' college loan debt.
I entered this text.
I advocate cancelling student debt for undergraduate education,
and for postgraduate education except when it is for a professional degree
and the person has or will become employed in that profession.
We don't need to forgive doctors' and lawyers' expenses for
medical school and law school.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
*Rich nations must
either
help developing countries fight Covid or
live in a fortress.*
The first thing advanced countries need to do is get themselves
governments that will help those very countries fight Covid-19. With
leaders like Trump and Bogus Johnson, they are charging off to defeat.
The US military has done next to nothing to keep out white-supremacist
radicalization. Nazis openly talked about their views. Aside from
the Navy, the
US armed forces treated this as acceptable.
India is
overconsuming its ground water,
and is approaching a deadly shortage. Food production would be
insufficient. Some major cities are faced with the threat of having
no drinking water.
Solar-powered desalination of sea water can help provide drinking
water, but it would take a long time for India to make enough capacity to
serve the purpose. Shipping water to inland Delhi, Bangalore and
Hyderabad (36 million people) would also be enormously expensive. I
don't know if that solution is feasible even with a desperate effort.
Looking at what Modi has done with the desperate protests of farmers
over a change in laws, I expect that Modi will try to hide the water
shortage when it comes, rather than address it.
(satire)
*NASA Welcomes Litter Of Mars Rovers After Successful
Breeding Of Perseverance, Curiosity.*
*If the UK government isn't held to account for its Covid failures,
democracy
may never recover.*
Even before this, democracy in the UK was rather decrepit. Corbyn,
the only leader for decades who had any chance of redirecting the UK to
serve most of its citizens,
was
shot down by character assassination.
A democracy which gives such a leader no chance to succeed is not
much of one.
Nonetheless the article is valid as regards the threat to the little democracy
that remains.
*The Coronavirus Death Toll Reached 500,000
Because [the wrecker]
Sabotaged the Covid Response.*
Fracking has
been banned in the Delaware river basin.
That still leaves large parts of the US where we need to ban fracking.
Of course, no new fossil fuel development of any kind should be allowed.
But fracking is particularly bad, since
it
tends to leak methane
and can
pollute local water supplies.
*UK's gas power plans
risk
derailing climate targets.*
If civilization survives, new fossil fuel power plants will not remain
in use long enough to recoup their investment costs. And likewise if
civilization collapses. So there has to be some dirty reason for
proposing to build them.
NASA is testing the main component
for
a future large solar power
satellite.
In the 1980s I helped the L5 Society campaign for this.
Biden has ordered prioritizing protecting critical supply chains
from
risk of interruption due to dependence on foreign suppliers.
The US should have started this in the 1990s if not before.
Indeed, I wonder if the US used to pay attention to this,
and whether it ceased as part of Republican deregulation.
Can anyone find out and tell me?
Biden and some Democrats in Congress think they can get a "bipartisan"
deal to change some laws for the USPS
by
leaving Saboteur DeJoy in office
as its head.
It is not entirely lunacy to try to make a deal with Republicans, but
you must check your pockets frequently during the meeting, a well as
after. The leader of their cult made a practice of not paying his
debts
and not keeping his deals, so you must not give them anything on
credit. Allowing
a
known saboteur
to remain in place would be asking
for trouble, even as part of a deal. To give him more opportunities
for sabotage indefinitely in hope there might be a deal is idiotic.
If there is a good deal to be had, the Democrats can get it without
DeJoy. But they can't possibly get a good deal by acting desperate
for one.
California has approved thousands of fossil fuel wells
without the
environmental approvals required by law.
They have also omitted the required public hearings about the projects.
No doubt you've heard from "progressive" groups about how HR1 contains
much-needed voter protections. And it's true, HR1 contains some badly
needed reforms. That makes it all the more shameful for the Democrats
to use those reforms as cover to eliminate competition from
alternative parties.
With luck, Covid-19 will no longer be a big threat, next time there is
an election in Georgia. People can develop convenient and safe water
dispensers on carts with which to distribute tap water to waiting
voters. Tap water is not an "object of (monetary) value", so the law
might not apply to it.