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(satire) *[The bullshitter] Claims Seized Classified Documents Had Been In His Family For Generations.*
1/3 of Pakistan could be flooded by later this year.
If India were governed by statesmen, they would offer aid to rebuild Pakistan. That could end the long hostility between the two countries. Alas, instead of statesmen it has the BJP.
Over 40,000 prisoners in the US are held in long-term solitary confinement. That is a form of brainwashing.
Putin plans to disconnect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from Ukraine's power grid. This would create the risk of reactor meltdowns if anything goes wrong with local electric generation, because keeping the reactor cores cool requires electricity.
One can see, from this, that the existence of a nuclear reactor creates a risk whenever anything else goes wrong. Earthquete? Tsunami? Air attack?
This is one of the reasons why building more nuclear power plants is foolish. The other reason is that for the same amount of money you could build far more generating capacity using renewable generation, and power storage too.
Britons might appreciate Corbyn's policies more now than they did in 2019, now that those opposed to them have discredited themselves at every level.
The challenge is to overcome the power of Starmer, who has made it his goal to marginalize Corbyn's supporters within the Labour Party. If they are ever the majority, the party will ignore them.
Would-be vaccine monopolists Moderna and Pfizer are fighting over vaccine patents.
Meanwhile, they are both using trade secrets to keep most of humanity unvaccinated. Shame on both of them! And shame on the World Trade Organization, that has made most of the world surrender to this deadly regime.
*Corporate PACs Have Lavished $22 Million on 'Big Lie' Republicans Since Jan. 6.*
In poor countries, many practical obstacles impede vaccination and treatment of Covid-19.
Six of these obstacles are not a matter of "hesitancy". One of the obstacles is a historical cause of understandable distrust, and thus hesitancy.
Republican candidates that won Republican primaries by professing bellicose opposition to abortion are trying to disown those views to win the final election.
So, did they seriously mean the positions they took before the primaries? Or do they seriously mean the positions they take now? Or neither one?
The Federal Reserve plans to keep increasing interest rates until inflation goes down.
Low interest rates are not causing today's inflation, so this tactic is not going to achieve the goal until it creates lots of unemployment.
It strikes me that Powell's real goal may be to undermine the wave of unionization. His business cronies will surely appreciate that.
Recognition of the apartheid-like nature of Israels occupation of Palestine is spreading around the world, among human rights organizations, world leaders, and even some former Israeli officials.
New sensors are being developed to determine a person's emotional state from per skin.
Based on recent fashion, I forecast that the sensor will connect to a snoop-phone, and the data will all be sent to some cloudy company from which many companies and governments will get it.
Virtual reality, backed by high computational power, makes possible subtle forms of manipulation that influences people but that they won't notice.
For instance, a political speech can be altered slightly for each person watching, making the speaker's face subtly resemble the viewer's face. This has been proven to make viewers, on the average, have a more favorable attitude toward the speaker.
The author proposes developing systems for detecting the use of this technique and other manipulation techniques.
I fear that nonfree software, combined with remote attestation, will be used to make it impossible to run the software to do this. It will be "unauthorized."
*France to blame for refugees risking Channel crossings, say NGOs.*
*Bernie Sanders rebukes GOP for backing corporate tax breaks but not student debt relief.*
*Britons need to be "less squeamish" about drinking water [extracted] from sewage [and purified], says agency head.*
Imagine you're on space station Earth — of course, sewage is recycled. The International Space Station recycles urine for drinking water.
An uncontacted indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has been murdered one by one. None remain alive.
The massacre may have started when murderous colonizers got the tribe used to eating gifts of sugar, then gave them poison (mixed with sugar?).
The last survivor refused all contact. We do not know the tribe's language, or even its name.
*Invasions and illegal exploitation of indigenous lands in Brazil tripled under Bolsonaro, says advocacy group.*
*Turkish pop star Gülsen arrested over religious schools joke.* The joke clearly suggested religious schools have undesired effects on some students, but is not a direct accusation of wrong, Nonetheless, she has been denied bail.
Do female politicians have a right to go to a small party with friends and dance?
"Some critics of Marin have said a leader who is drinking would be unable to take important decisions for their country," Never mind that Marin denies being drunk. More important is that they never seemed to apply that rule to male politicians. Those could get as drunk as a lord, in a party or a club, without criticism like this.
Flooding disaster hits Pakistan: 700,000 homes severely damaged or destroyed, 33 million people gravely affected.
Pay attention! Floods like this are coming to a place near you, if you don't campaign to decarbonize.
*Low Covid [vaccination] rates in poorer countries falsely blamed on "vaccine hesitancy."*
Under funding of the National Labor Relations Board is interfering with its ability to deal with the increased union-busting that accompanies the increased efforts for unionization.
*Louisiana[n] denied abortion despite fetus’s fatal abnormality [will] travel to North Carolina.*
The affidavit released by the FBI shows why some of the bullshitter's supposed excuses are irrelevant,
It also shows the broadness of the Espionage Act, and why it threatens whistleblowers and the public's right to know.
*Six of 43 missing Mexican students were kept alive in warehouse for days.*
Then executed by the army.
*Balls, gowns, marriage pressures. Jane Austen was basically Pakistani.*
This article helped me to truly feel the oppressiveness of woman's social role in Britain in the 1800s, and in Pakistan today.
*How migrant workers get trapped in debt to recruiters.*
A federal court has defended the right to hand out information about jury nullification: the possibility for a jury to find a defendant not guilty because they disapprove of the law that was used to charge the defendant.
As I understand it, the reason for the right to be tried by a "jury of your peers" is so that they can protect you from prosecution under an oppressive law.
Republican anti-abortion laws threaten to criminalize press coverage of abortion, and nationwide publication of information about getting an abortion where that is lawful.
The EU will not ban Russian tourists; rather, it will make getting tourist visas more effort for them, as a message.
This seems like good decision. It will avoid the closure that an outright ban would have caused.
*Desperate times need radical solutions. Even Churchill [a Tory] knew when it was time to tax the rich.*
Everyone: call on Costco to move beyond single-use plastic packaging.
US citizens: call on Biden to fire I.R.S. Commissioner Rettig, who was appointed by the corrupter, and replace him with someone trustworthy.
In the US: support American railroad workers.
Everyone: call on Tyson foods to roll back its price increases.
The Pentagon has published a sensible plan for developing new rules to prevent military operations from harming civilians. When the rules are finished, in 2025, they will become part of "military doctrine", so soldiers will be required to follow them.
A crucial part of the plan is a policy of taking seriously civilians' reports of casualties, instead of rejecting them bullheadedly.
The plan to connect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Russia's power grid is supposedly a backup plan to prevent a meltdown, if connections to Ukraine's grid are damaged.
Preventing a meltdown is important, But doing so that way would also enable Putin to steal the generated power. And the danger of a meltdown exists only because Putin stations troops in the plant.
Putin should demilitarize the plant and let someone repair the damaged redundant connections to Ukraine's grid.
Starbucks has now fired over 80 workers illegally. In one unionized store, it sent a new manager to harass workers over little excuses.
The rate of shootings has decreased 4% in the US since last year. But death threats from Republicans are increasing.
46 countries have eradicated at least one "neglected tropical disease". Togo has now eradicated four of them.
There is a long way to go, and further progress depends on donations from rich countries.
Canberra now allows people to get recreational drugs tested to see what substances they really contain. In addition to discovering adulterants, they may find there is none of the drug they thought they had bought.
A quarter of the people who test a sample of drug product decide not to use the product after all.
Around half of the inhabitants of former Yugoslavia — or perhaps more — are nostalgic for that no-longer existent country.
I wonder if they will decide to reunite most of that country, this time as a democratic federation.
China and Europe are suffering from persistent heat and drought, which are causing many kinds of harm to the economy.
The US drought is approaching that point.
It will be much worse ten years from now. And afterwards it will be disaster, unless we take big steps to avoid it.
*Northern Australia could have dangerously high heat most days of the year by 2100, study finds.*
*Southern regions of Australia may experience deadly heatwaves annually,*
The UK Green Party calls for nationalizing the largest gas and electric utilities, and for taxing the rich to pay part of poor people's bills.
The first step is very good. The second is half good. Taxing the rich to help the poor is very important, but each poor person should get the same amount of aid regardless of how much energy perse uses. That way, poor people who can reduce their energy use will have more money to spend on other things.
Rwanda does not allow journalists to meet refugees: all communication with them is forbidden. All inquiries about their conditions are blocked.
That is not only unjust in its own right, it is also a hint that the refugees have something really bad to criticize.
I've read reports of repressive treatment of dissent in Rwanda for many years.
*Under global [heating], the frequency and intensity of wildfires is expected to increase, which would lead to "more stratospheric warming", said one expert.*
*Nearly 700 Civilians Killed or Wounded by Cluster Munitions So Far in Ukraine War.*
There is a treaty that prohibits use of cluster bombs, but since Russia has not signed it, I think that is not very persuasive as a reason to condemn the Putin forces for using them.
The cogent reason to condemn the use of them what the article tells us about their effects: they mainly hurt civilians. Using them is one indication that hurting Ukrainian civilians is something Putin wants.
All countries should sign the treaty to prohibit them; that includes the US.
Dangerous heat waves could be three times as frequent by the end of this century.
This will have enormous impacts on farming in tropical regions, as it is not safe to do strenuous work in such heat.
A school in Nebraska abruptly eliminated its 54-year-old student newspaper based on objections to what the paper published about the rights of queer people.
Publishing a newspaper no longer requires the expensive and specialized equipment that it needed 54 years ago. The students can, and surely will, move it to the internet. I hope they will make sure people can read the newspaper without running any nonfree software, by not sending Javascript code to run in visitors' browsers.
Biden illustrates the default approach of "centrist" Democrats: when trying to help the poor in some way, take a small step so as not to be called "extreme".
A new study estimates that 2 to 4 million Americans are being kept out of work by long Covid. That has a substantial economic effect, though it's not responsible for this year's inflation. Wage increases this year are not big enough to be the cause.
*Energy Giants Spending Millions to Block [Maine's] Effort to Create Consumer-Owned Utility.*
Big US banks are investing 23 billion in Russian development of carbon bombs.
The history of political corruption in the US. Around 1900 it had reached a level of blatant excess that spurred progressive politicians to enact strong campaign finance limits.
Since 1980, plutocratist politicians have swept them away, absurdly claiming that giving money to politicians' campaigns doesn't buy them. Americans need to eliminate plutocracy in order to bring back democracy.
California is considering a plan to revamp math education, whose first draft aimed to reduce the advanced courses available now (only in some schools) for students who were good at math. The idea was to prioritize equality of outcomes over helping each student to go as far as possible.
If the goal is to help nonwhite students on the average to do better in math, how about making sure calculus courses are taught in all high schools? The lack of these is one factor in holding them back, and it has an obvious remedy in the school system. Meanwhile, the article suggests that San Francisco has a way of encourage more diversity of students to advance to calculus without holding anyone back.
Another aspect of racism that contributes to the problem is that people in disprivileged groups are more likely to be poor. The math curriculum can't fix that, but the government can reduce poverty. We did it before; it isn't hard to do, if the government spends the requisite sum. If we defeat the plutocrats, we can do it again.
Here are the details of what Biden announced about partial student loan forgiveness. Some aspects will have to wait for lawsuits to conclude, but in the mean time nobody will have to make payments.
This describes some other incrementally helpful provisions.
A formerly private 2019 legal memo from the Department of Justice used questionable arguments to protect the corrupter from charges of obstructing justice.
A House investigation found that the wrecker's officials harmed the US response to Covid-19 in 2020 through pressure on the FDA.
Egypt excluded "undesirable" Egyptian civil society groups from the coming Cairo climate conference by not informing them about how to apply.
(satire) *Big Ben Undergoes Routine Cleaning To Remove Hapless Tourists Dangling From Minute Hand.*
Japan plans a return to nuclear power.
Restarting idle nuclear power plants might be reasonable, if they can take adequate precautions against future tsunamis and earthquakes. Building new nuclear plants is absurd even if they are safe, because they cost too much and take too long. They are a bad strategy for decarbonization.
Arizona Republicans have passed a law to impede making video recordings of thugs in action, creating an imaginary presumption that this somehow impedes them in acting lawfully. Various defenders of freedom of the press are suing.
The Twitter whistleblower says that Chinese, Russian and Indian government agents are getting special surveillance cooperation from Twitter.
The article talks in a vague sense about "intellectual property rights" that Twitter would need license for in order to train AI systems on various databases. Because that term is a misguided over generalization, the statement gives us no clue about which law it is actually talking about. None of the various laws that are foolishly lumped together under that term would be relevant to this. Maybe the statement is garbled, or has been confused by the use of the misleading generalization.
Right-wing politicians and organizations rebuke Biden's partial loan-forgiveness, saying that it would encourage "irresponsible behavior". It turns out that many of them recently benefited from forgiveness of much larger loans, or other sorts of business bailouts.
Right-wingers believe it is wrong for the government to help the poor, because they assume that the poor are poor because they are bad people and therefore deserve to be poor.
One of Reagan's advisors warned him in 1970 that if college were gratis, it threatened to produce an "educated proletariat" which would endanger the power of the rich. So Reagan set about making college more expensive.
Everyone: call on Facebook to encrypt all messages end-to-end.
Normally my approach to bad things done by Facebook when it uses people is to urge people to refuse to be used by Facebook at all. To campaign to change one of the many ways it mistreats people is a distraction.
However, this particular mistreatment is so dangerous that I make an exception for it.
US citizens: call on Congress to limit the President's ability to launch nuclear weapons.
US citizens: call on Congress to end disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies.
I am not sure that the federal government has the power under the constitution to do this; but if it can do this, I support it.
US citizens: call on Biden to insist to Israel: human rights advocacy is not terrorism.
Georgia governor Kemp has arranged to remove local election officials who he thinks would resist pressure to alter election results.
The article starts with a theory of why he is trying so hard to avoid testifying to a grand jury.
The use of drones, controlled from far away, means that US presidents can fight small wars that the public is hardly aware of. So they no longer need to convince the public to support any given war.
A herbal "medicine" seems to have killed Lori McClintock, wife of a member of Congress.
The "Enough is Enough" movement, of and for poor people, demands that the UK government do the opposite of what Tories want: help the non-rich.
Predictions about the next 6 months of war in Ukraine.
I think Ukraine can win, with enough western arms. And we had better provide them, or Putin will emerge triumphant and set on preparing another war.
An infographic to explain what the increased IRS funding will be used for, and that non-rich Americans will not have an increased chance of being audited.
Those selling "ghost gun" kits in the US will now have to put serial numbers on certain parts, and carry out background checks.
Abortion rights and democracy are winning elections for Democrats.
*Idaho librarian resigns over "atmosphere of extremism" and "intimidation tactics"* of the right-wing Christians.
At this state of the fight, resigning in protest can be a powerful gesture. However, as time goes on, it will be necessary for librarians to find ways to fight that don't involve taking themselves out of the battle.
*Identitarianism is Incompatible with Humanism.* The Council for Secular Humanism declares opposition to the campaign to judge and treat individuals and their ideas based on the group identities each is assigned to.
On the importance of remembering slavery and commemorating its history.
The article is about slavery and Britain, but even though the history in the US is different in detail, the point is basically the same.
*Real Estate CEO: Recession Could Be "Good" If "Unemployment … Puts Employers Back in the Driver Seat."*
In a purely journalistic site, "Executive will not regret suffering for the masses if it increases rich people's power" might not count as news. It is too much like, "Dog wants to bite man." But I'm publishing political notes, not news.
A Tory activist is on the BBC board and decides what counts as "impartial" in the news.
Australia has prepared a plan to save the swift parrot from extinction, but it was designed not to protect against the biggest threat, which is logging.
New Zealand calls on the world's nuclear powers to get serious about nuclear disarmament.
It is a valid argument that, if countries have nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country is likely to use them. By the same argument, if it is possible to build nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country will build some.
Thus, abolishing nuclear weapons globally will take us one step further away from a nuclear war, but not in an irrevocable way. We will be in a less acute variant of the same dilemma we are in now.
So I think global nuclear disarmament calls for a strategic plan: if after global nuclear disarmament one country builds nuclear weapons again, how should the rest of the world respond?
Along what lines should the world respond?
I pose these questions but I do not have answers for them.
US citizens: call on Biden to agree to the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
More information about the situation.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Democrats to combat the lies Republicans tell about increased IRS funding.
The CIA couldn't find any connection between the Palestinian human rights groups and terrorism, but Biden refuses to criticize Israel for forcibly shutting them down.
Three Arkansas thugs are being investigated after a video showed them holding a man down and punching him.
I welcome public denunciation of non-fatal instances of violence by uniformed thugs. If that becomes widespread, it could potentially end official tolerance for violent thugs.
They accuse the victim of having started the fight. One can hardly believe thugs as witnesses for such a thing, as they are accustomed to testilying, but it might be true. But that question doesn't change anything significant. To teach everyone not to engage in violence is too much to hope for, but we must teach that to official thugs.
*Herewith the 6 rules for getting a second (or third or fourth) chance to sell a giant con.*
Some Michigan Republicans, including officials, got their hand on some voting machines in Michigan and did various "tests" on them.
I can't be sure what those machines actually do. It turns out that the term "tabulator" is used for all sorts of machines that generate total vote counts. It is possible that voters vote directly on those machines, and the machines output only totals. Using that kind of machine with a computer in it makes the voting system vulnerable. If so, the state should eliminate their use.
However, those vulnerabilities don't spontaneously exploit themselves. They can be exploited by people. The people most likely to rig an election through voting machines, are those who are (1) their manufacturers (because they have opportunity), (2) given to wild conspiracy ideation such as QAnonsense, or (3) willing to break any law for their cause. Each of those three groups is mainly Republican.
I would not put it past those conspirators to have inserted a back door into the machines they got control over. But it could also be the common Republican play, Blow Smoke Then Cry 'Fire'.
Making things even more shocking and dangerous, one of the conspirators is now running for Attorney General of Michigan, endorsed by the corrupter. I'd expect him to quash the investigation if he is elected.
If you find any reliable information on what part of the election these machines actually do, I would appreciate it if you send it to me with its URL.
*It’s high time the free world realised that it is not fighting a mad dictator but an autonomous and self-regenerating aggressive power system.*
Dementis is trying to remove the elected Tampa prosecutor from office, but he couldn't directly do this. He had to ask the state senate to support it. However, the prosecutor is challenging the move in federal court. For the moment, he remains in office.
*[Ukraine] says Russia has transferred more than 1,000 children from Mariupol for illegal adoptions in Siberia.*
Studying Big Oil projections for future use of fossil fuels finds that they expect/plan not to achieve the (weak) Paris agreement targets.
*Imagine a repeat of Jan 6th [the coup] — but with tanks, soldiers, and guns.*
I would suggest federalizing states' national guards, perhaps one state at a time, and giving direct orders that will provoke coup supporters to quit.
Why forgiving student loans should not be limited to people with under a certain limit:
*[It] isn't that people with high incomes will be denied student debt relief; it's that people eligible and desperate for relief will get lost in the bureaucratic maze that income-based restrictions inevitably create.*
The four big global grain companies are using the global food shortage to gouge. This calls for a windfall profits tax.
Instead of doing this one industry at a time, how about applying it to all businesses that are making big profits — counting bonuses and stock buybacks and part of those profits?
This article asserts that Dugin, the apparent target of the car bomb that instead killed his daughter, is a fierce right-wing critic of Putin and has demanded a much harsher war against Ukraine.
I can't have full confidence in what CNN reports about this, any more than I can have full confidence in the rest of the mainstream media. But I don't think Russian government agents would assassinate someone for being more Putinite than Putin himself. It does not sound like he is Putin's enemy.
Amazon warehouse workers have walked out of the job, saying that the wages are too low to live on, and that management is demanding that they work ever harder and faster, discarding safety precautions.
For more reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon, see amazon.html.
The corrupter's White House officials tried to "bully" the FDA to authorize hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, counter to the evidence.
The Solomon Islands is moving step by step towards autocracy. Now it has announced it will ban foreign journalists based on what they write.
"Racial profiling" means applying laws to people in a prejudiced way based on their race. A central part of that unjust practice is that the person acting has real, direct power over others. To apply the term to journalists' writing, even racist writing, is twisting its meaning.
Racial profiling can't be seen directly in one instance; it takes a set of instances to see such a pattern, and then it's a judgment call. To use this as a criterion to admit or exclude a journalist makes no sense — unless it's simply an excuse for arbitrary censorship.
The movement towards autocracy began when the government made a "security" deal with China. I suspect that is no coincidence.
Argentines are protesting, demanding the government help them obtain food.
As it generally does, the International Monetary Fund is "helping" Argentina pay its debts by limiting government spending to help people in difficulty. In effect, the IMF converts supposedly sovereign countries into colonies of the foreign banks, with their governments focused on extracting money for them.
This is disappointing, since the deal with the IMF was supposedly a new form, designed to avoid this result.
Oil-prospecting companies plan seismic testing in wide areas of ocean near Australia's coasts.
Surely there is no room in the carbon budget to actually extract oil from any new oil fields they might discover. So it makes no sense to let them search.
A former thug pled guilty of falsifying the search warrant that led to the shooting of Breonna Taylor by thugs.
*Anti-Union Companies are Anti-Worker and Anti-American.*
Examples described include Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. As well as Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe's, Target and Walmart. And Costco and Trader Joe's. Also Chipotle, Starbucks, and McDonalds.
And don't forget Tesla.
The assassin that attacked Salman Rushdie was influenced by bizarre interpretation of Islam. Well-educated Muslims condemn such acts. This article explains why.
I think what we can learn from this is that fanatical leaders can distort any religion into a murderous cult.
Compare, for instance, with the Christian fanatics that murder abortion doctors, and the Christian fanatics that want to imprison women for abortions. It would be wrong to conclude that Christianity advocates killing doctors or imprisoning women. What we should conclude is that Christianity has the potential to be a basis for fanaticism.
So does Islam, and so do various other religions.
The US faces a shortage of teachers, partly caused by demonization of teachers and government policies blaming them for bad outcomes. Together with low pay.
China is suffering from wildfires, like many other countries, and they are sending smoke into the megacity of Chongqing.
*50+ Israeli Organizations Blast 'Baseless' Attacks on Palestinian [human rights organizations].*
Continuing to wreck the climate as we do it now could wipe out 90% of species that live in the seas.
Biden plans to cancel just a part of Americans' student loans — not enough to rescue them from debt trap.
I think the income test is ok. People who make over $125k a year are not trapped by their student loans. But Biden ought to rescue the people who are trapped.
Mick Lynch, head of a rail workers' union in the UK, has galvanized politics with his activist stance. "You don't think strikes are the answer? What is?"
US citizens: call on the FTC to investigate the Amazon-One Medical merger.
US citizens: tell Congress, "AIPAC doesn't speak for me."
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Martha Wright Act, to reduce the price of calls with family for prisoners.
Starbucks workers have been on strike since June at a store in Boston. Bernie Sanders visited Boston to show support for them.
The UK's former spy inside al-Qa'ida accuses a British school of treating his daughter with hostility because other students' parents vague-mindedly associated him with danger.
Dean supported al-Qa'ida for local war, but when it turned to terrorism, he condemned that based on Islam.
Ilhan Omar calls on Democrats to *Give Working Folks a Reason to Turn Out to Vote for Us.*
Democrats in Congress are starting to consider legislating workers' rights for domestic workers, following the lead of various states and cities.
Syrian refugees in Turkey fear that Erdoğan will hand them over to Assad. And Rojava fears Erdoan will attack.
Italy's right-wing party that is likely to win the next election is sabotaging abortion access in the region where it has control.
Global heating disaster has struck China, drying up the Yangtze River much as droughts elsewhere are drying up the Rhine and the Colorado.
Can this convince the Chinese governments of the need to stop building more coal-fired generators?
CNN appears to have decided to triangulate between Republican insurrectionists and Democratic plutocratists, and fired a long-time show host, Brian Stelter, who made a practice of denouncing right-wing falsehoods.
Robert Reich explains the reason behind this
By the way, what the first article says about Toobin is a misrepresentation of the actual events.
A New York City prison thug shot and killed a young man who was engaging in a watergun fight with a clearly identifiable watergun.
A foreign oil company is suing Peru to block the creation of an indigenous people's reservation.
That would convert the reservation into a carbon bomb.
I wonder whether the lawsuit is based on a business-supremacy treaty.
Who set the car bomb in Alexander Dugin's car?
Ukraine's "false flag" accusation seems implausible to me. A Russian false flag operation would not target Putin's friend, or the friend's daughter.
Russia's claims about a Ukrainian underground bomber seems implausible to me, for the reasons stated in the article. They make more sense as disinformation.
That Ukraine did it in some other way is less implausible, but Ukraine generally targets things that support Putin's war effort, and for good reason. Why risk inspiring disapproval by attacking a civilian?
The underground anti-Putin group possibility seems more plausible than those.
*Duo found guilty over plot to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.*
They did this because the wrecker had encouraged it.
* [US] state department says it does not want to close off pathways for Russian dissidents and victims of human rights abuses to get visas to go to the US.*
I agree with this decision, but I can't tell from the article where the US will draw the line in giving visas to Russians. Do you have to be an active dissident or demonstrably persecuted, or is it enough to have no special connection with the government?
*Lula vows to protect Amazon [forest] if returned to power in Brazil elections.*
A court ruled that the Ben & Jerry's founders can't legally make Unilever stop selling ice cream under that name in Israel's colonies in Palestine.
Everyone: call on CVS to publicly and permanently stop blocking Medicare for All.
Everyone: call on airlines to invest in people, not Wall Street.
US citizens: call on Democratic leadership in Congress to stop overdraft profiteering by Wall Street banks.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz testify about blatant union-busting.
A court ordered Starbucks to rehire seven employees that it fired, apparently as punishment for union organizing.
Some Britons are moving back to cash payments to help themselves avoid unnecessary spending.
This side benefit of using cash is well-established. But even if you don't need to economize, paying cash is a step against mass surveillance. This very recent trend back to cash goes against a long-term trend of surrender to surveillance.
Please join the resistance! While others reject surveillance technology for the sake of valuable short-term benefits, you can reject it for the sake of freedom, whether you need those side benefits or not.
The first step is to make sure, when you leave the house, that you have enough cash for what you might want to buy that day, plus some extra.
If you don't have enough, don't identify yourself to a merchant! Get cash from an ATM, then come back to the merchant and pay cash. Giving a little data to your bank is not as bad as giving more data to a store as well as your bank.
(satire) *Texas Schools Require Clear Bags To Prevent Students From Bringing In Books.*
Pavel Filatyev, Russian paratrooper, has published a forbidden memoir about his experiences in the Putin forces.
His unit was sent to help capture Kherson. He saw how badly the army treated the troops. (Paratroops are generally thought of as elite units, which normally would get the best equipment.)
Then he figured out he had been forced into a war of conquest — recall that Putin lied to Russia about that — and was in the Putin forces. After being wounded and sent home, he published his memoir.
After hiding for a couple of weeks in Russia wondering when he'd be arrested, he decided to flee the country
I disagree with him on one point. If he had escaped the front, and surrendered, that would have been a step toward ending Putin's invasion. He could have continued by writing the memoir, and it would have done the same good, while being less dangerous.
But I don't mean that as criticism of him. Filatyev did a heroic deed, and it may help end Putin's invasion. Bravo, Filatyev!
*Eliminating invasive species on islands has high success rate and big benefits [for protecting native wildlife].*
*The Climate Movement's Fight to Undo the Worst Provisions in the IRA Begins.*
Louisiana is punishing the city of New Orleans for refusing to cooperate with the state's ban on abortions by cutting off bonds for improving the city's flood defenses.
A flood in New Orleans could kill hundreds of human beings, even thousands. Anti-abortion fanatics don't particularly care about them because they are post-birth. However, some fraction would be pregnant, and many of those would have brought those pregnancies to term if they had survived. Do the fanatics care about the survival of those fetuses?
*Over 70 Economists Call for Biden Administration to Return Afghanistan's Central Bank Reserves.*
Robert Reich: *America used to regulate business. Now government subsidizes it.*
This is one aspect of plutocracy. Our political system gives business unjust power over the government, and it has used that power to reorient the government to solve all problems by giving more to business.
I've criticized a related aspect of plutocracy by calling for punishing companies that act in harmful ways, rather than rewarding companies that don't.
*Stop telling gen Z to relax — we have to fix the mess left by your generation.*
Arguing that we should not allow a desire for revenge to play any part in how we treat criminals.
Lawrence Freedman: "[Putin's] war against Ukraine has been hampered by failings experienced by autocratic states during conflict* due to *the inability of those at the top to take responsibility for mistakes."
But, he adds, "It's not that democracies always make better decisions."
The US is still bombing Somalia, after starting in 2011.
US citizens: call for repeal of Florida's law to monitor the political
views of every student and every professor.
Biden got the court's approval to end the persecutor's
"Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers coming from Mexico.
The "power of stories" may be inadequate to deal with problems or
injustices of global scale, such as a pandemic, or the coming global
heating disaster.
*… some of the most urgent and lethal challenges our
society is facing are too giant and unwieldy to fit into the little
patterns our human minds are used to making. Our present pandemic
response policies suggest some people don't get to be "heroes" on a
"journey", and many traditional western storytelling conventions aren't
up to the task of understanding a climate emergency that defies any
sort of conflict-resolution arc.*
Texas has passed a law requiring every public school to display a
poster with religious statement of belief in a god that intervenes in
human life.
This ought to be unconstitutional.
Perhaps the state hopes to take advantage of a previous loophole
by not spending public money on the posters. A proper understanding
of the prohibition of "establishment of religion" would consider
that question irrelevant.
A black family was denied a loan because of an apparently racist low
appraisal of their home. They showed the home to another company,
covering up indications that the inhabitants were black, and got an
appraisal of almost three times as much.
A leaked video shows Russian military vehicles inside of a turbine building
at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Hackers have figured out how a farmer can take control of the
computers in many John Deere tractors.
It is true that "malicious actors" could also use these jailbreaks to
take control of the tractor. But don't exaggerate the significance of
that danger! These tractors have been under the control of a malicious
actor (named John Deere) ever since they left the factory.
Farmers, like motorists and other computer users, are entitled
to full control over their computers.
John Deere has done various secondary bad things that add to the basic
wrong. This includes bad development practices and GPL violations.
In addition, its security against unknown third parties is
ineffective.
Danger: *Election deniers have claimed nearly two-thirds of GOP nominations for
positions with authority over elections.*
CVS is trying to increase its power over US medical care by expanding
into many other business aspects of medicine. Now it plans to buy
some medical treatment company.
I don't think we should tolerate the size of CVS. We should make it split up
so that there are additional competing pharmacy companies.
Amazon shouldn't be allowed to acquire any other company.
The US government wants to make Americans pay individually for
Covid-19 vaccines and drugs.
That will make poor people much more likely to die of Covid-19, like
2020 again.
(satire) *[Right-wing Americans] Explain Why They Do Not Trust The FBI.*
It is customary to describe right-wing Americans as "conservative,"
and there was some truth in that back when progressives/liberals had
powerful campaigns for changes. Today's followers of the corrupter
are in no way "conservative."
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Liz Cheney's strong resistance to the wrecker crowns a long career
of supporting lies and injustice.
P&O Ferries will not be prosecuted for abruptly firing 800 union workers
so it could replace them with unskilled offshore workers.
The owners are quite happy with the outcome.
President Ortega of Nicaragua has crushed all political dissent, so now he
has attacked the Catholic Church by arresting a bishop and other clerics.
There are no specific charges, but it may have to do with giving
sanctuary in he past to protesters that Ortega's men were attacking.
A Greek intelligence agency used spyware on the phone of an opposition
party leader, and is under pressure to resign.
Greece should have laws and mechanisms to stop this sort of thing.
So should the US, whose laws and mechanisms seem to have been
effectively negated.
The government of Gujarat released 11 prisoners convicted of raping a
Muslim woman and murdering her relatives.
Gujarat is a center of powerful hatred against Muslims. In 2002,
Hindi extremists with support from the Gujarat government carried out
major pogrom against Muslims there,
with support from Modi himself.
These rapes and murders were part of that pogrom. One must suspect
that the release of these prisoners represents the Hindu extremists'
endorsement of support for pogroms against Muslims.
The ripper made a habit of tearing up memos he didn't like,
disregarding the Presidential Records Act for the whole of his term as
president.
Minutes show that the Federal Reserve will keep on raising
interest rates, preferring poverty to inflation.
Progressives warned Biden that reappointing the wrecker's chairman of
the Federal Reserve could lead to things like this.
The search of Mar-a-Lago will not directly interfere with the
corrupter's plans to run again for president. It could lead
to a criminal conviction, if it finds evidence to convict him.
That could — let's hope — make it harder for him to cheat his
way to victory again the way he did in 2016.
On the other hand, it won't protect us from Governor Dementis.
*Mexico's ex-attorney general arrested over disappearance of 43
students in 2014.*
Warrants have been issued to arrest 83 others, including soldiers, thugs,
and local officials, as well as gang members,
I am curious about the evidence which led to these conclusions about
the case.
*Tigray: almost one in three children under five malnourished, UN says.*
How President Petro's coalition seeks a lasting civil peace in Colombia.
Bogus Johnson invented a "jobs" program designed to pressure unemployed people
to apply for jobs outside their careers. Low-paid jobs, that would be.
The change led to a decrease in Britons' finding work.
The UN is considering regulations to prevent small plastic pellets
("nurdles") from getting into the ocean.
Nancy Davis of Louisiana is pregnant, but the fetus has a fatal
defect. Nonetheless, Louisiana will not allow her to abort it.
US citizens: call on Congress and President Biden to stop DeJoy from
slashing USPS jobs.
US citizens: call on Congress and the President to support a Green
New Deal now.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
Walden Bello, socialist candidate in the Philippines, has been charged
with libel and arrested, for criticizing President Marcos and running
mate Duterte.
This is a sign that they are going to be as evil as people have feared.
Google workers are calling on Google to stop donating to antiabortion
politicians.
The US just gave Intel a pile of money, supposedly so it could manufacture
more chips in the US. Instead it has announced a plan to reduce
investments and pay big dividends.
Intel is famous for making processors with malicious hardware, the
Management Engine back door, that users cannot turn off.
*Watchdog: Secret Service Didn't Notify Capitol Police of Threat to
Pelosi Until After Jan. 6 Attack.*
It seems natural that it should have passed along the warning.
Whether this was just a screw-up, or criminally suspect, depends on
background information I don't know.
*Allen Weisselberg, longtime Trump Organization loyalist, pleads
guilty to tax fraud.*
He will testify about the company, but not about the corrupter
personally other than that.
EU countries support the work of some of the Palestinian organizations
that Israel has declared "terrorist". They reject the accusation.
*Police call for Bolsonaro to be charged for spreading Covid
misinformation.*
Chemical pollution is wiping out the animals in England's rivers, by
killing small animals that the larger ones eat.
Most of this pollution is from pesticides used in farms.
29 Hong Kong democracy defenders have plead guilty to political charges
after a year in jail.
The west needs to mine lots more rare earth metals, to end China's
domination of that market; but if it isn't careful, the mining process
will cause disastrous toxic pollution, as it did in China.
The dispute about which country gets gas from the Timor Sea
is heating up again. Australia, or East Timor?
There is only one acceptable decision: nobody.
There is no room in the carbon budget for that gas.
It must stay under the sea.
Other countries should support East Timor so that this
step, necessary for civilization's survival, does not cause
a bigger disaster to East Timor than is going to hit world wide.
A Mexican government commission concluded that the disappearance of 43
Mexican students in 2014 was state-sponsored.
A new app for reporting dissidents has magnified the threat from Crown
Prince Bone Saw to anyone who criticizes the government.
This article doesn't mention the most grave statement that Salma
al-Shehab made while at school in the UK: she stated support for the
women's rights activist, Loujain al-Hathlou, who has been punished for that.
To imprison someone for so little shows repression carried to an almost
Chinese extreme.
A large study of medical records shows that, for people over 65 years
old, Covid-19 leads to an increase of almost 5% in the probability of
having brain fog or dementia in the next two years.
That is a big risk, worth considerable effort to avoid.
The previous mayor of London — Bogus Johnson himself — gave thugs
access to license plate camera images for the inner parts of London.
The current mayor wants to extend this to a much broader area.
The injustice of this is the same regardless of how big an area it
covers. Indeed, tracking cars through their license plates is wrong
in itself. Surveillance of everyone is the soil for repression to grow.
The International Criminal Court is operating, but handicapped because
the world's main powers have not signed the treaty for it. That includes the US.
Big Pharma's condemnation of the bill that allows Medicare to
negotiate bulk drug prices with pharma companies (for some drugs only)
shows the central bogus assumption: whatever increases those
companies' profit is automatically best for patients.
This is the faith of the cult of the Invisible Hand: "the market knows
best," no obey it sheepishly, no matter how much big businesses use
their clout to arrange for bad results.
Israel arbitrarily labeled six Palestinian civil society groups as
"terrorist," without a trial, by passing a law saying, "They are
terrorists."
Then state agents raided the offices of those organizations.
Ask yourself, if Israel stops Palestinians from organized peaceful
defense of their human rights, what alternative they would naturally
turn to.
I greatly miss Uri Avnery, who would have explained the links between
the events, and the newsletter The Other Israel, which would have
given more information.
The story of a 30-year-old man who returned to his old high school,
pretending to be a teenager, and graduated a second time.
I wonder what grounds the medical school cited for expelling him after
that. His giving a false name and age may have been irregular, but
they did not harm anyone, including the medical school. If he was
doing well enough in his studies there, why not regularize his status
instead?
*[London thugs] stop and search powers to target protesters, suggests data.*
A Texas thug threw Christopher Shaw down on the concrete in jail,
and this paralyzed him below the chest. Permanently, it seems.
It is absurd to claim that having an abortion requires more "maturity"
than having a baby, but that's what a judge in Florida ruled.
That teenager needs to get herself to a state which will let her
have an abortion. I hope her guardian will help.
*Hundreds of Google workers demand abortion care protections.*
Hundreds of Google workers called on Google to fund abortions
for contract and part-time workers. Also to stop collecting
data that would expose people to abortion repression.
They also called on Google to stop all lobbying activities.
I think it would be good to stop all businesses from lobbying.
Scientists set out to develop a way to use a computer to follow
references from printed books. But instead of doing this the natural
and general way, they want a way that will only work on books that
are printed in a special, extra expensive way.
The probable Republican candidate for attorney general of Michigan is
suspected of stealing vote tabulator machines, a felony which carries
a 5-year prison sentence.
That probable Republican candidate is a supporter of the wrecker,
and his lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
*Biden can still stop Trump, and Trumpism — if he can find a bold plan and moral vision.*
The law to subsidize semiconductor manufacturers in the US is an unjust
transfer from working people to rich companies and their owners.
It's an example of the bad trend in the Democratic Party
that Reich writes about further on.
An empirical study found children were much more likely to develop
the most common kind of lymphoblastic leukemia if they had been near
a frackwell during gestation.
Black residents of Lexington, Mississippi, are suing the city and its thugs
for persistent racist harassment that goes as far as repeated false arrests.
The former thug chief was fired for boasting about killing blacks,
killings done by predilection and preference, not necessity or
justification.
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 denounce bigotry, and
normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
Textile company Saint-Gobain published data about its use of PFAs, but
hid them in plain sight in a stack of 90,000 documents.
US Republicans support Orbán's racist nationalism.
*Putin is banking on a failure of political will in the west before Russia
runs out of firepower.*
The Putin forces' casualty rate is so high that I think Ukraine will
be able to push them out of Ukraine next summer, We must keep supporting
Ukraine that long.
The UK plans to use a snoop-watch to track the movements of some
convicted criminals, The system includes facial recognition to verify
that the intended person is carrying the snoop-watch.
Since this system tracks and recognizes only a specific person, and is
imposed on that person as part of punishment after conviction for a
crime, it is one of the exceptional legitimate uses of facial
recognition and location tracking.
This example also highlights, by the contrast it makes, the injustice
of imposing facial recognition or location tracking on anyone other
than a convict. They are typically imposed combinations of businesses
that are so powerful that they can shape our society. They receive
help from various laws designed to give those companies power.
Carrying a snoop-watch is easier than wearing an ankle-chain,
and is much less painful than being in jail.
The Solomon Islands government is showing various signs of tyranny.
The latest one is direct censorship of the country's public TV/radio
station.
Its secret "security" deal with China is another.
Some countries plan to attack the Inflation Reduction Act's EV credit
with the help of the WTO.
The World Trade Organization is a business-supremacy treaty;
it prioritizes catering to business over all other goals.
The city of Manteca, California, has cancelled a statement it made in
support of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh,
which is a foreign auxiliary
to the RSS in India.
* The biggest fallacy in the online privacy [issue] is that there is a
[real] difference between "state surveillance" and
"commercial surveillance."*
In fact, government surveillance operates through commercial
surveillance. Both wholesale (surveillance of the whole net) and
retail (think of Amazon Ring cameras).
We need to restrict the deployment of massive surveillance systems
regardless of who operates them.
The Tories will cut anything to reduce government spending that
doesn't go to businesses. They have cut 1/5 of the firefighters in
the UK since they took power in 2010.
Finland may stop issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens, to punish
them for Putin's war.
I think it is misguided to punish Russian tourists for Putin's war.
It's not their fault, and excluding them is counterproductive.
Putin maintains an information blockade; any Russians who visit
Finland will come in contact with non-Putinized news.
It also gives Russians an opportunity to leave Russia and not return.
The FBI invited Aswad Khan, a Pakistani who was visiting the US after
attending a university there, to become an informant and go to mosques
to spy on people. Aswad, who was not particularly religious and was
more interested in getting a well-paid job, said no. After that, the
FBI harassed his friends until they cut off all ties with him.
FBI whistleblower Terry Albury says that the FBI regularly does this.
Many American men are getting vasectomies before the Supreme Court
gets a chance to interfere.
Puerto Rico is suffering from widespread official corruption.
Mayors and governors have been charged with crimes.
The article doesn't mention the crushing debts, but I believe they are
the root cause. The US Congress has given Puerto Rico no debt relief,
so it is forced to squeeze the people (even poor people) to pay the loans.
The result is that most everyone who can leave does leave.
I suppose the creditors hope eventually to take control of the
island's land and turn it into tourist resorts and corporate-owned
plantations.
They won't stop with Puerto Rico — they will move on to other parts
of the US.
CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling's thoughts about the prosecution of
Julian Assange. He endorses Rashida Tlaib's proposal to amend the Espionage Act
with a public interest defense.
*One-third of the food we eat is at risk because the climate crisis is
endangering butterflies and bees.*
Before the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the Taliban were offering to
make a deal with the US which involved chasing out al-Qa'ida. If Dubya
had accepted the deal, we would never have invaded Afghanistan.
Now US newsmedia — even NPR — are covering up this history.
Why didn't the US accept the deal? I don't know, but whatever the
reason was, it is likely to be the same reason that motivated the US
to reject the Taliban's surrender offer, later in 2001.
Meanwhile, al-Qa'ida is still not very effective in Afghanistan.
I gather that the Taliban consider al-Qa'ida as a troublesome and
unfriendly rival. Next time the US identifies a leader of al-Qa'ida
in Afghanistan, it might be wise to try helping the Taliban deal with
him, rather than attacking him directly.
Poor people in Britain whose pets die feel incomprehensibly attached
to spending money they don't have, for funerals for those pets.
Overattachment to pets, and pets' corpses, leads to a perverse sense
of values. If you are rich and you feel like burying or cremating a
pet, it's harmless. But we must not stand for the idea that people
have an obligation to spend so much on pets that they ruin themselves.
That way of thinking leads to enormities such as abandoning refugees
in Kabul to evacuate a planeload of dogs.
I would feel sorry for Freya when her dog died, but I would not cater
to her mishigas.
The broken aspects of US society are damaging the physical and mental
health of young Americans to the point that military recruiters can't
find enough soldiers.
It may also be the realization that a lot of the fighting the US does
is not justified or not necessary.
Assange's lawyers have sued the CIA for violating their
attorney-client privilege — by spying on their discussions.
The former Australian prime minister, Morrison, bizarrely appointed
himself minister of health, minister of finance, minister of industry,
ministry of science, minister of energy, minister of home affairs
(policing), and minister of the treasury — without informing the
public, or even the officially appointed ministers of those issues.
Apparently this meant that the officially appointed ministers remained
ministers, but Morrison could override them at will. When he actually
did so, did the officially appointed ministers find out what he had done?
Or was that concealed from them somehow?
I wonder if Morrison was inspired by the wrecker's practice of
dismissing the heads of agencies and departments and leaving those to
be run by acting heads. This might have had an equivalent effect.
In Australia, the governor general (representative of the British
crown) is responsible for swearing in ministers. He quietly
participated in this abuse of the Australian governmental system.
There is a movement in Australia to cut its tie with Great Britain and
become a republic. I have a feeling supporters will point to this as
a reason to remove the British crown from the process.
Morrison, who apparently couldn't keep track of all the things he was
personally the minister of, said there was "no sense of bad faith in
it." That may be true — he may be so inured to practicing bad faith
that he has no conscious awareness of it.
*Britain has been avoiding its biggest problems for decades. Now we’re
paying the price.*
It has been avoiding these problems because correcting them required
rich people's money, and those rich people refused to participate
in saving the country.
Psychotherapists and other practitioners of mental health
are on strike against Kaiser Permanente.
This seems to be a consequence of the increasing frequency of psychological
problems in the US.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and a defeated Republican congressional candidate
advocated voter fraud at a rally.
This makes a bizarre contrast with her attacks on supposed Democratic
voter fraud, whose existence can't be found anyway. Does she believe
fraud is wrong only for Democrats?
60% of Americans that rent housing are worried about whether they can
pay the rent in the coming year.
The governor of Mississippi (a Republican, or course) cancelled the
state's federally-funded rent assistance program. He said, though in
different words, that helping poor people pay rent made their lives
too easy.
Drought in the US west will require big cuts in water use for Arizona,
California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
For now, they must reduce usage 15%, but the drought may get worse and they
may have to cut more.
The drought will surely get worse if we don't curb global heating.
Bolsonaro is trying to use the Evangelical Taliban to attack democracy
in Brazil. Lula has responded by saying that Bolsonaro is possessed
by the devil.
That would be entirely plausible, if there were a real devil that
could really possess people.
(satire) *City's Primary Investment In Community Comes Through Police
Department's Wrongful Death Settlements.*
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An empirical test found that Facebook systematically accepted election
disinformation ads for Brazil's upcoming election.
(satire) *New Texas Law Requires Gun Buyers To Show Proof Of Mental
Illness.*
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Republican state officials are going to extreme lengths to punish
businesses that recognize the danger of global heating.
Ricardo dos Santos, a black man, was stopped in a car by British thugs
for the third time in two years, for no obvious reason.
He alleges racial profiling and threatens to sue.
US citizens: call on your senators to prioritize judicial nominations
when they return from recess.
Peru is recruiting fire prevention brigades to supervise farmers' fires
and make sure they do not get out of control.
code.org's new high school course in programming involves stricter-than-ever
monitoring of teachers.
The motive for this is another bad practice: running the students' and
teachers' programs on servers, rather than on local computers.
Since 1980, Americans have tended overall to die younger than people
in other developed countries; since then, the problem has grown.
In 2019, 2/3 of a million more Americans died than would have died
if the US had been like those other countries.
Part of the problem is that the US lacks the national universal
medical system that other developed countries have. Another part is
that the US lacks the welfare system that other developed countries
have. Also contributing is the plutocratist politics of the US,
which impoverish an increasing fraction of Americans. Other social
problems in the US contribute too.
*A universal healthcare system utilizing a single-payer model in the
state will save California families and businesses over $100 billion
per year.*
That is in addition to thousands of lives, of people who under the
current system go untreated.
When cars record locations, the data is available to advertisers,
insurance companies, and uniformed thugs. Cars must offer a dashboard
switch to stop them from determining their locations.
Cars must also offer a dashboard switch to stop the car from sending
out signals by which other systems could track them.
Toll payment systems must offer an anonymous method so that they don't
track you either.
In Britain it is not unusual for people present at a murder to be
convicted of murder on the basis of a weak association with the
murderer.
Some US states do this too.
America does not owe Manchin anything, and especially not cooperation
with his plan to undermine environmental protection. He has broken deals
with Biden.
In addition to maintaining environmental regulations, we should reject
the idea that gutting them would be "reform".
*"Dictatorship Never Again": Massive Pro-Democracy Protests Sweep Brazil.*
This after a million Brazilians signed a petition against the return to
dictatorship which Bolsonaro threatens.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the Pentagon's unmonitored
proxy wars.
Here's a description of unmonitored proxy wars. The US has built up a
world-wide secret program of training military proxy forces in many
countries. The US sends them on missions to fight anyone that the US
considers enemies.
Europe's wildfires have burned 2500 square miles so far this year,
breaking the record.
*Weeks of heat above 100F will be the norm in much of US by 2053,
study [predicts].*
Putin is using westerners in the Ukrainian army as hostages,
employing his sock puppet regime, the "Donetsk People's Republic",
to threaten to kill them.
If it goes ahead with this, those responsible, from Putin on down,
should face charges of murder. In the mean time, it would be
appropriate to send commando teams to seize officials involved in this
hostage plot, so as to offer to trade them for the hostages.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz
testify about blatant union-busting.
Congress has failed to extend the increase the child tax credit, which is about to expire. Millions of Americans whose income is insufficient will suffer terribly from this.
Republican followers of the wrecker are making lots of threats against
the FBI and other federal agencies. And against individual agents.
I think they are nerving each other for another violent fascist
uprising, with the wrecker leading them on again.
Actions that Biden could take to reduce the enormous salaries that
corporate CEOs often get nowadays.
Here are technical details.
Kaspersky discovered this example by chance, but is unable to
check in general for the presence of such rootkits in computers.
Nonfree software does not make your computer secure — it does the
opposite: it prevents you from trying to secure it. Sadly, computers
today are typically sold with nonfree UEFI software,
required for booting, which is impossible to replace: in
effect, a low-level rootkit. All the things that Intel has done to
make its power over you secure against you also protect UEFI-level
rootkits against you.
Instead of allowing Intel, AMD, Apple and perhaps ARM to impose
security through tyranny, we should legislate to require them to allow
users to install their choice of startup software, and make available
the information needed to develop such. Think of this as
right-to-repair at the initialization stage.
PFAs have spread through the world to the point that they are present
in rainwater everywhere. There is nowhere on Earth that rainwater
meets the new EPA standard for acceptable levels.
An assassin attacked Salman Rushdie with a knife as the latter was
about to give a talk.
Rushdie is seriously injured, and may lose an eye. But he can still
think, and still speak.
Senator Warren has launched a Senate investigation of the danger that
Republican abortion persecution poses to pregnant Americans, including those that do want to have a baby, and those that don't.
*Even low levels of air pollution can damage health
, study finds.*
Don't panic, though — a tiny concentration of air pollution will
normally do a tiny amount of harm, which is hard to measure without a
sample of millions.
In the absence of any standard of perfection (keep air pollution under
level L and it will do exactly zero damage), how should we decide how
much to work to reduce air pollution? It's a matter of how the danger
from air pollution stacks up against all the other dangers we face.
Suppose we decide to spend a billion dollars on public health, which
allocation of funds would we rationally expect to make the biggest
improvement? Part of that plan could be spending to reduce air
pollution.
*The Democrats' climate bill is a historic victory. But we can't stop
here.*
The bullshitter's supposed defenses for taking the secret government
documents home are bullshit.
That does not imply he will be prosecuted. The government may be
satisfied with having recovered the documents. But it is important
for him to be prosecuted.
Three members of Congress propose to block using the Espionage Act
against journalists.
However, their bill would not offer a public-interest defense to protect
whistleblowers.
(satire) *[Thugs] Claim Unarmed Black Man They
Shot Was Attacking Them With Psychic Hallucinations.*
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The attack on Salman Rushdie demonstrates the need to fight censorship
from any and all directions.
See my article about Hrant Dink, who was ready to fight censorship
from all directions.
A senior Hungarian judge condemns the government's interference with
courts.
Some Taliban officials sneakily send their daughters outside of
Afghanistan to get an education.
Thugs at an Arizona school, which they had "locked down", attacked
parents who were trying to get their children.
The UK used torture and murder systematically in the 1950s to fight
the Mau Mau movement in Kenya. Then it blocked and suppressed an
investigation into this.
*"You often hear people say in Britain that it was acceptable by the
standards of the time. And I think documents like this really
illustrate that, no, people at the time knew this was wrong as well."*
(satire) *FBI Sent Itemized Bill For 12-Hour Stay At Mar-A-Lago.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click
and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx
that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Delta Airlines fired Leondra Taylor for posting a cartoon showing the
corrupter with a Ku Klux Klan hood. The company called this cartoon
"disrespectful, hateful or discriminatory", which is quite a distortion.
Taylor is suing.
In the 20th century, many US amusement parks practiced excluded
blacks, in some cases violently. This was not only in the south; it
occurred even in New York City.
Nowadays, black customers face hostility from staff at some amusement
parks, as at Sesame Place. With so many racists in the US, that is
going to happen randomly. But is it more than that? It could be that
that particular park has a habit of bigotry among its staff.
A report examines the specific way Cheniere Energy's greenwashing
bends the facts about the methane it trades in.
The anti-anti-racist Republican governor of Oklahoma is harassing the
Tulsa city school department. One thing she did was label it as
"deficient" for allegedly showing a video that shamed white students
for being white, which is prohibited now.
The school department replied that the video (1) didn't try to shame
anyone alive today and (2) was shown before that law was adopted
anyway.
Republicans have made it standard practice to stretch laws and twist
facts. With a little private pressure and harassment on the side,
they can hope to win a victory for injustice.
Women protested again in Kabul, chanting "bread, work and freedom."
Taliban thugs hit them with rifle butts.
As we remember the death threat Ayatollah Khomeini made against Salman
Rushdie, we should also show our disapproval to those who call for
retreating in the face of bullies that try to ban books.
Nowadays, Muslim extremists are not the only group that tries to bully
people into banning books. For the sake of freedom of thought, we
need to resist all such campaigns.
Here is the inaugural address of Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia.
The new 1% tax on stock buybacks will make those corporations pay
a little more tax.
That is a step forward.
It also sets a precedent: if we can tax them 1% today, we can tax them
25% next year. If we keep raising that, eventually the percentage
will get big enough to discourage buybacks.
*Four Key Climate Questions About the Inflation Reduction Act.*
One of the wrecker's Jan 6 coup mob attacked an FBI office with guns,
and was eventually shot dead.
I expect the wrecker and his followers to praise the gunman.
A team of scientists concludes that Sars-Cov-2 almost certainly entered
humans in the wild animal market in Wuhan.
I think the question of how the virus started infecting humans is
interesting, but not morally important. Its importance is only to
affect precisely what we might learn about how to prevent future
epidemics.
It could be that we already know the crucial lessons for preventing
pandemics from starting from wild animals, and for preventing
pandemics from starting from lab leaks, and all we need not is to put
them into practice. Regardless of which path this virus followed, we
know both dangers exist.
The Mediterranean Sea ecosystems are threatened by marine heat waves.
An activist campaigning against voter fraud in Wisconsin ordered mail-in
ballots for other people, found it was easy to do, then went public.
It would be wrong to file charges against the activist. He did not
try to vote using those ballots. But what should the state do instead?
In effect, he tried to demonstrate that the state doesn't have much
security against this sort of fraud. Apparently that is true. Is
that a real problem?
If people actually use this "security hole" for fraud, I think it is a
real problem and the state should fix it.
On the other hand, if nobody really does this, maybe the system is not
really broken and there is no need to fix it.
Australia holds hundreds of people in prison without a conviction for
any crime, and has no statistics about why, or how many.
*The strategy that worked in Kansas [for defending abortion rights]
— countering misinformation, building a broad coalition —
offers lessons for [other states].*
Republicans defeated the bill to limit the price of insulin.
California's approach, manufacturing insulin to compete with the giants,
may work better. Forcing the established companies to tolerate more
competitors could work too.
My proposed giant-splitting and competition-boosting tax scheme
could do it also.
*An Accused War Criminal Trained Florida [Thugs] in "New Concepts of Shooting."*
EU countries are helping France fight large wildfires.
Of course, they ought to help each other. But that won't be
enough in 20 years when they all face large wildfires at once.
The interaction between waves and shore is a complex system; a sea
wall can prevent erosion at one point while exacerbating it elsewhere
in the region. Scientists are developing permeable obstacles that
slow down the ocean waves, to protect shore and land from erosion.
These measures can be effective against erosion, but not against
inundation. Therefore, they are temporary expedients, presuming that
we curb global heating and prevent the coming inundation.
Inland wetlands can buffer against floods and drought (and therefore
also against fire).
I am skeptical of the "biodiversity net gain" requirement.
Constructing a new wetland is surely not as simple as it sounds, so it
is likely that businesses will often follow the rules but produce no
real new wetland. If a development has destroyed an old wetland and
failed to create a new one, what does the government do?
The FBI raid on the corrupter's home was looking for secret documents
that nobody was allowed to take home, and it found quite a few.
California could experience a series of atmospheric rivers that would
add up to an enormous flood, that could flood millions of people's
homes.
As global heating continues, the likelihood of such a flood will increase.
The Markup investigated 80,000 popular web sites and reports on
how much they snoop on users. Almost 70,000 had third-party trackers.
5,000 fingerprinted the browser to identify users. 12,000 recorded
the user's mouse clicks and movements.
A natural gas company urged Australia to forget its climate defense target
so that the company can drill.
A journalist describes how she learned to break away from right-wing
Christianity, and how she copes with the resulting breach with her
family.
Massachusetts residents: call on Governor Baker to sign the abortion
access bill.
Nixon talked with the South Vietnamese generals in 1968, urging them
to obstruct President Johnson's peace negotiations. Both parties
expected progress towards peace would help the prospects of Nixon's
Democratic opponent.
Nixon even discussed this with the bankers that backed him.
Nixon's actions may have been a violation of the Logan Act, so having
the FBI investigate was proper. Even supposing they were not illegal,
they were treacherous in spirit.
Ultimately, Johnson decided to keep the secret reports that proved
Nixon's treachery, so as to avoid stimulating distrust of the US
government when Nixon was at its head. That was well meant, though we
would today consider it naive and foolish.
Johnson also had one of his officials take those secret documents away
rather than leaving them in the White House. The article says nothing
about the motivation for this, but perhaps it was to make sure that
Nixon's treachery would be revealed some day — decades in the future.
He may have been afraid Nixon would destroy them.
Some Louisiana Christians hate same-sex couples, but interestingly
many other do not.
I think it is unfortunate when children are taught a religion. but
I still appreciate the good news that some Christian schools reject
the usual Christian hatreds.
*Koch Network Uses National Philanthropic Trust to Conceal Transactions.*
Coercive control (among individuals) is based on threats to cause pain. Often these involve physical violence, but it takes different
forms from violence in other contexts.
*Election lies [and therefore the Republican Party that encourages
those lies] pose physical threat to US poll workers, House report
warns.*
* Officials at the DHS’s office of inspector general said their attempts
to inform Congress [about deleted text messages] in April were thwarted
[by its leaders].*
* [The author has] documented 61 cases from the years 2000 to 2020 in
which people have been criminally investigated or arrested for
self-managing their own abortion or helping someone else do so; the
majority of these cases exclusively involved abortion medication.*
Despite the climate bill (which was passed), Biden must still declare
a climate emergency and stop approving fossil fuel projects.
(satire) *China Threatens To Retaliate For Pelosi's Taiwan Trip By
Letting Her Return Safely.*
Shell is using every spare pound for stock buy-backs. Investing in
renewables, it is not interested in.
Stock buy-backs used to be illegal in the US. There is no reason to
permit them now. But we should not depend on fossil fuel companies to
invest in renewable energy. We should charge them a lot of tax, and
have the government fund investment in renewable energy.
To actually do that depends on electing more progressive legislators;
talking about this is the way we get there.
The House passed the climate/tax/drug price bill, so it will soon be
law.
If Democrats increase their lead in the Senate, maybe they can get rid
of the bad parts next year.
On the obstacles to having a serious political discussion about future human
population.
Just as discussion of reducing the human population is insufficient
without discussing reducing per-capita consumption, so discussion of
reducing per-capita consumption is insufficient without discussing
reducing the human population.
Climate disaster will eventually reduce the human population with
millions of deaths, but if we want to do it by reducing births
instead, we need to plan it.
*On Their 57th Anniversary, Medicare and Medicaid Remain Under Threat.*
*Since 2021, Big Oil Has Spent Over $200 Million to Sabotage Climate
Action: Analysis.*
*Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on
Would-Be Patients.*
The "Inflation Reduction Act" is a good start at climate defense, but
only a little in other areas.
More on what it does to do Medicare.
Academic luminaries praise the new Chilean constitution.
*Yellen directs IRS not to use new funding to increase chances of audits of
Americans making less than $400,000.*
There are limits on the amount of fossil fuel energy that we can effectively
extract and usefully combust.
If we decarbonize rapidly, those limits may not matter.
Otherwise, we may actually hit peak oil.
About 5% of the people who catch Covid-19 have problems with taste and
smell for at least 6 months afterwards — bad enough to make life horrible.
Waiting 6 months for my enjoyment of food to recover, I could live
with. Waiting years would be a fate worse than death. I wonder what
fraction suffer loss of taste and smell for years?
Australia's new government has undermined its climate defense plans by
encouraging new natural gas extraction projects and describing natural
gas as an "ally" of decarbonization.
A precipitous gas shortage and price spike would cause a crisis; that
is not desirable. What Australia needs (like the rest of the world)
is a planned, steady and predictable rise in the price of gas.
That's easy to do with a tax, scheduling tax increases annually
until decades from now.
*[Australian] Greens urge Labor to reject international carbon offsets
as "accounting tricks."*
Sometimes they are accounting tricks; sometimes they are outright
fraud. Sometimes they are mere gambling. We can't predict global
heating well enough to know which "carbon offsets" will really deliver
emissions reductions in future.
UPS drivers face intolerable working conditions, including 14-hour shifts
working in heat that endangers their health.
European countries have given the US and Iran a "take-it-or-leave-it"
final text for the
non-nuclear deal.
Let's hope they take it, because that will be a victory over nuclear
proliferation. And a step towards reducing hostilities between the US
and Iran.
*Koch-Controlled Organizations Spent More Than $1.1
Billion During the 2020
Election Cycle.*
Ukraine has fought the Putin forces to a standstill. Some American
progressives want to stop the fighting before
Ukraine can retake any of
the conquered provinces.
That would pull Ukraine's defeat from the jaws of victory.
The article speaks of using diplomacy to make Putin return captured
territory, but it would never work. Putin is doing very well at
standing up to western diplomatic pressure and sanctions.
Chronicling the corrupter's campaign to reduce US military leaders to
give their loyalty to him personally,
rather than to the United States.
When the corrupter demanded a military parade in Washington DC,
General Selva (who grew up in Portugal under the rule of a dictator)
told him, "That's what dictators do." Alas, I doubt that convinced
the would-be autocrat the parade was a bad idea.
After this, various officials worked hard repeatedly to block the wrecker
from launching a coup, a war, or bloody repression in the streets.
Guber is still running at a loss,
even after raising its prices.
Guber is unjust to workers because it pay them peanuts. It is unjust
to customers because it
Please join in wiping out Uber!
More information about the FBI raid that
seized government records from
the corrupter's home.
In Australia, powerful senators are demanding that the government
erase the
housing aid debts of states.
"private equity" parasites gave Senator Sinema $500 million in campaign
funds this year,
to pay her to protect their low income tax rate.
Even worse than their low tax rate is the way these so-called
"investors" destroy companies. Years after the demise of Pay less Shoe
Source, which I used to be a customer of, I have found no physical
stores that sell the things I used to buy there. That is just one
example of many.
The two Tory contenders to replace Bogus Johnson stand for
neoliberal-ism. Their ideology says that the government should do
nothing to correct Britain's devastating problems,
because interfering with
the market is a sin.
Laissez faire, laissez mourir.
In practice, that means they do nothing to stop businesses from
squeezing money out of the non-rich. The billionaires that fund the
Tory party must find that convenient.
Google said it would "delete" location data that show visits to
"sensitive" locations, which include
abortion clinics and some other
places.
In regard to location data, it is a good first step, but limited. It
is limited because
Most crucially, it doesn't include the places where you might someday
arrange to meet a
reporter to disclose a crime committed by the state.
I am not sure what it means to say they "delete" this data rather than
not storing it. Is it just another way of saying the same thing?
If it really means something tangible, it seems like a risky mistake.
US citizens: support striking workers at Maximus, who demand
more toilet breaks and sick leave.
US citizens: call on the eight Democratic holdouts on minimum wage to
raise wages for working Americans now.
US citizens: call on the SEC
regulate corporations to impede greenwashing.
The new, effective treatment for Hepatitis C is so expensive that 2/3 of
the Americans who catch it don't get treated.
This failure of the medical system used to happen only in poor countries,
but now even the US is becoming a poor country (for most of its inhabitants).
Tennessee has made it a crime to camp on the street in a tent.
Is it permissible to camp without a tent and get wet and sick?
(satire) *SNAP Recipients Now Required To Prove Need [i.e., hunger] By
Eating All Their Groceries On Spot.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
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lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
(satire) *Prison Charges Inmate $1 Per Minute For Time With Photo Of Family.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
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*Global heating has caused ‘shocking’ changes in forests
across the Americas,
studies find.*
Trees are advancing to the north, and dying or burning in the south.
*Melting of the world's biggest ice sheet [the East Antarctic] would cause catastrophic sea level rise, but
can be avoided with fast climate action.*
*Inside Somalia’s vicious cycle of
deforestation for charcoal.*
Reportedly, al-Shabaab is trying to prohibit cutting trees with leaves,
and having some success enforcing the prohibition by burning trucks
caught carrying such wood. A democratic government might be able to
enforce the rule with less brutality, but this may be better than
nothing in the long term.
In a world of growing scarcity, the long-term non-brutal solution is
(1) decarbonization and (2) much fewer births.
ISTR that Haiti has suffered for decades from a similar problem;
nearly all the forests have been cut down.
Colombia's new president Gustavo Petro declared that
fighting the war on drugs
has failed.
but he means, fighting that war on Colombia's territory has failed. He's
right about that. But he seems not to realize that fighting that war
on US territory is equally a failure. "Strong measures that prevent
consumption in developed societies" is not a solution to the problems
caused by use of addictive drugs.
We should put that war into a treatment program to get it off drugs.
The corrupter said, "Only guilty people and mobsters plead the Fifth."
This week, he did just that,
while being questioned for a lawsuit.
It's tempting to say, "He's guilty, or he's a mobster — he said so himself!"
But it's wrong to say that, because the "rule" he cited was bullshit all along.
To treat it as valid is to undermine the Fifth Amendment itself, and we
must not do that.
We have plenty of other reasons to believe that the corrupter is guilty
of trying to overthrow the US government and seize power, as well as swindling
in his fund-raising.
Not yet proof that can put him away, though.
To whip inflation in the US, we need to stop big businesses from
raising prices from greed.
The way I prefer is to break up the many large companies that have too
big a share of whatever market. Rather than launch a lawsuit against
each excessively large company,
I recommend a tax system that raises the
tax rate sharply as a company gets bigger, or as it gets a bigger share
of each market.
Death Valley suffered flooding from unusual heavy rainfall.
At least no homes were flooded, since nobody lives there.
A right-wing t-shirt company, which supports the corrupter, has been
fined for fraudulently labeling its shirts "Made in the USA".
In fact, they were made in China.
What else would you expect from people that support someone who boasts
of lying.
Privatized water companies in Britain are profiteering while draining
their customers. That's what privatizing a government service tends to do, and the Tories
that did it probably were aiming for that result.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to vote for the
"Inflation reduction bill" (which includes climate defense, a little
more tax on the rich, and reducing some medicine prices), which the
Senate already passed.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Amazon wants to purchase One Medical, a medical treatment company
which holds lots of patients' medical records. And if it can
purchase iRobot, which makes robot vacuum cleaners, it can collect
data about the lives of the people who use them.
The corrupter could be put in prison for years for taking
secret documents home, or for destroying them.
I don't understand why Risen proposes to involving the Espionage Act
in this. That would be very dangerous, because it could legitimize
the misuse of that law to prosecute whistleblowers.
Until the day we change that law to protect whistleblowers, whose
"crime" is to tell the people about the state's actions, we must not
lump them together with people like the corrupter who take secret
documents in order to deny the state access to them and block it from
functioning.
Phoenix, Arizona, is so hot that people doing nothing more than walk around
are collapsing and need urgent rescue.
The abortion charges against Celeste Burgess and Jessica Burgess are
based on a subpoena for their Facebook messages.
The only communication systems you can safely use to discuss abortion
plans in the US now are those which do not save any record — either
in a central server or in your own device.
China's communications about Taiwan are monomaniacal intimidation pretending
to be friendship.
It's similar to coercive control, but on an international scale.
(satire) *Relieved [corrupter] Thought Mar-A-Lago Raid Was About All
The Bodies.
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telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
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* Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two
decades raked in nearly $108 billion—funds that "were distributed
and spent with a significant lack of transparency," according to a
report published Tuesday.*
*AIPAC's New Political Strategy: Spend Millions on Elections Without
Mentioning Israel.*
*With Antitrust Bills Stalled, Watchdogs Demand Schumer Disclose Big Tech
Donations.* They suspect him of being paid to block those bills from getting a vote.
(satire) Reminding would-be mass shooters that it has become old hat,
and people would hardly even remember their names.
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lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Proposing credit card companies warn when someone orders large
supplies of guns and ammunition.
I think this is a good idea. The interference with privacy would be
very narrow, and little by comparison with the things we are fighting
against.
*Biden Administration Plans for Legal Psychedelic Therapies Within Two
Years.*
We must expect Republicans to demonize this with lies and
exaggerations.
FBI agents searched the corrupter's home at Mar-a-Lago, looking for
secret government papers he was not allowed to remove from the files.
Naturally they had to look inside his safe, but if "breaking in"
implies damaging the safe, that was gratuitous. Thugs often cause
gratuitous damage to people when they search. and many of those people
aren't rich like the corrupter and can't shrug off the cost of those
damages
They should have given him — and anyone whose premises they search
— the chance to open things for them and avoid damage.
However, there is no reason to suppose he was honest about this.
(He's not usually honest.) Maybe the safe was opened without damaging
it.
*Emmett Till: woman whose accusation led to [his] lynching will not be
charged.*
I think this verdict was inevitable. If her story is true, it implies
she is not responsible for the murder of Emmet Till. If she is lying,
she might be co-responsible in some way, but there is no evidence about
what it may have been, let alone any proof.
The people who really should have been convicted of murder were the
people who killed him. They were acquitted by a racist jury.
If that were to happen today, the murderers would face federal civil
rights charges, as well as state charges. The conviction of Ahmaud
Arbery's killers suggests that the US has learned to be less racist in
its justice than it was in 1955. Maybe some day it will learn to be
even less racist.
*Brazilians fear return to dictatorship as
"deranged" Bolsonaro trails in
polls.*
Like the wrecker in the US, Bolsonaro has talked about refusing to
hand
over power peacefully.
People fear he will try to organize mobs on Brazil's
independence day to overthrow democracy, perhaps arranging a false flag
attack on them as an excuse.
As Greenland's ice melts and exposes some areas of land, people
are
prospecting for rare metals.
There are no established ecosystems on those areas, but mining can
spread pollution in many ways. It could pollute the land so that
plants can't grow there; it can pollute the nearby seas.
Investigation finds probable racism in how British thugs applied the rules
for
fines for violating Covid rules.
They were supposed to apply their discretion to make fines a last resort;
now ever, they were much quicker to fine black.
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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
Worshipers of the Invisible Hand have seriously proposed that people
should become corporations and sell shares in
themselves to raise
funds to invest in their education.
That's effectively a way of selling a fraction of yourself into
slavery. A few may become successful, while many become controlled by
their shareholders. The rich who own the shares will dominate the
decisions about the laws to regulate this system.
The book, The Unincorporated Man by Kollin and Kollin, describes a
future world in which this has happened. The people in that world are
used to the system and defend it, but at the end we see that forces
everyone to be partly owned by whoever buys stock in them.
Please do not get it from
Amazon!
The US military uses a highly polluting method (burn pits) to dispose
of most kinds of
inconvenient waste in deployment bases.
It causes avoidable injury to US solders, and also to the local
civilians. But it's cheap for the Pentagon, supposing it doesn't bear
the cost of treating those injuries. Now it will have to pay to treat
the US veterans, but not the local civilians.
Don't forget about the diseases caused to both US soldiers and local civilians
by
Depleted Uranium.
*Nebraska teen and her mother charged for
aborting and burying fetus.*
Some of the charges are about doing things with a "dead body". It is
absurd to consider a fetus a dead body, but antiabortionists push for
anything that classifies a fetus as a human being for any specific
purpose in any specific circumstance, regarding that as a step closer
to classifying abortion as murder.
Roe v Wade did not legalize abortion after 6 months except with
certain specific grounds. I wonder if any of those grounds applied
here — and also why she did not have an abortion earlier.
China is going all out to intimidate US support for Taiwan, even "breaking off" discussions on curbing
global heating.
Not that China was cooperating very much anyway: it continues to build new coal-fired generating plants, and its target for (the weak goal of) "net zero"
is 2060.
China has recently experienced disastrous floods and faces the danger of fatal weather in the
North China Plain.
China's rulers are arrogant but not crazy. The only thing that can convince them to try hard to decarbonize is awareness of what will happen if they don't.
The US is also doing far too little to decarbonize, though the
just-passed climate, welfare and tax law is a step forward.
Texas governor Abbott is having state officials force border-crossers
onto buses to New York City,
even though they wanted to go elsewhere.
It would be a kindness to offer them rides to New York City, if they
had the choice to decline the offer without being punished.
Misrepresenting this mistreatment as such a kindness is a big lie,
a typical Republican act.
China's missile interdiction of seas near Taiwan was such a large exercise
that it was
probably planned for months.
Pelosi's visit was a convenient excuse, an opportunity to put the blame
on her.
The great danger is that it shows that China can cut off Taiwan's
maritime trade just by firing missiles. To prevent that requires some
way of making it cost China more than it costs Taiwan.
A Republican candidate for attorney general of Michigan is accused of
plotting to
tamper with voting machines after the 2020 election.
The coach of a college football team has been forced to resign after
he started reading aloud the text on a distracted student's iBad, and
in the
process recited some taboo word.
The word is so taboo that CNN dares not say what it was — and indeed,
it hardly matters which taboo word it was. I presume it was a slur of
some sort.
The ethical issue here is whether to treat such slurs as insults,
wrong to use as insults because that unjustifiably nasty, or treat
them as taboos. Do people deserve punishment for inadvertently
breaching taboos?
The coach believes that even though the words he spoke were not his
words, his violation of the taboo was such a grave sin that he
deserves to be shunned and lose his job for quoting them carelessly.
By doing that, he lets down other future people condemned for
violating taboos. If he had to resign, he should have done so
without admitting guilt.
If you step on a flagstone that has a taboo word inscribed on it,
should you be shunned? How about if you are photographed near a sign
(in a non-English-speaking country perhaps) which has a taboo word on
it? Should you be fired for that? Is "what people might think" more
important than what really happened?
Using slurs to insult someone is nasty and wrong. But we ought to
know better than to punish people for violating taboos. To do so
indicates a lack of moral reflection.
61 Oklahoma legislators called on the state to re-investigate whether
Richard Glossip is really guilty. They believe there is no evidence
that he committed the murder he is scheduled to be executed for.
Some people can forgive great wrongs; others simply can't. It's not a matter of choice.
This suggests to me that society's treatment of criminals should not
be based on whether their specific victims can forgive the crimes.
Society needs to pardon the criminals eventually, if that helps make
society whole, even if the victims can't.
*Climate research finds modeling used [by central banks] cannot
predict localized extreme weather, leading to poor estimations of
risk.*
US citizens: The climate, tax and welfare bill passed the Senate, but
hasn't passed the House of Representatives. Big Pharma is lobbying to
kill the part that will reduce drug prices. Please phone your
representative to support it.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Military challenges Ukraine faces in recapturing Kherson.
I believe it is possible. The Putin forces soldiers have no reason to
fight to the death, if Ukraine shows they will be safe if they
surrender.
*Photos suggest Trump blocked toilets with ripped-up White House documents.*
Destroying those documents may have been illegal.
The Putin forces are using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as
a shield for their artillery, firing cannons from near the plant's facilities.
Meanwhile, they are interfering with proper maintenance of the plant.
The dental part of the UK's National Health Service has collapsed;
many Britons can't find a dentist to treat them.
*Climate impacts have worsened vast range of human diseases.*
They include Zika, malaria, dengue, chikungunya and even Covid-19.
*Democrats lose effort to cap insulin at $35 for most Americans before passage
of Senate reconciliation bill.*
*The Danger of Empathy.*
*Amazon [(the company)'s] carbon emissions up 40% but somehow still on
track for "net zero" by 2040.*
The right-wing government of the UK does exactly as Adam Smith warned:
it crushes the non-rich and panders to the rich.
It goes as far as murder.
As Aneurin Bevan said, the Tories are lower than vermin.
Texas threatens to prosecute any Texas organization that funds travel
out of Texas for an abortion, and to sue any individual who provides
such funds.
This is terrorism. Fanatical right-with Christian Taliban terrorism.
Activists in 13 countries that propose to negotiate a new
business-supremacy treaty warn that it may become another iteration of
the Trance Pacific Partnership,
also known as the Pacific Partnership Trance.
The new treaty has a name, IPEF, and a likely bad result
because of which countries are involved.
Poor children wore body cameras in New Zealand to contribute to a picture
of what life in poverty is like.
A study like this can have good results, but we need to take steps
to prevent poor people from being lured, tricked or forced to contribute
to massive surveillance.
*Assange family barred from taking book about WikiLeaks founder into
Australia's parliament.*
*It's time to ban private jets — or at least tax them to the ground.*
I favor taxing them heavily, because sufficient tax should make them
insignificant as a contribution to global heating, and we can use the
money. Prohibiting private jets as tax deductions would also help greatly.
*Massive Quantities of PFAS Waste Go Unreported to EPA.*
A bubble barrier is removing most of the plastic particles from the
Oud Rijn river, with a modicum of energy and little human labor.
Republicans have been increasing income taxes and cutting support for
working people for 40 years, but they are not satisfied, so they are
proposing extreme ideas for how to do even worse. Ron Johnson
proposes to make Social Security and Medicare payments a year-by-year
decision.
People like Ron Johnson and Rick Scott deserve to be sentenced to live
on $100 a week, and forbidden to receive gifts except through begging
from strangers.
Governor Dementis advocates a long list of right oppressive right-wing
policies. One that is subtle and long term is the distortion of
civics education in favor of government promotion (effectively,
establishment) of religion.
The campaign to limit use of facial recognition has stalled, and some
regulations are being reversed, or expiring.
What makes facial recognition so dangerous is its capacity to track
everyone's movements. The only legitimate cases for using it are
in systems that cannot be used to track everyone's movements.
To use it for "lead generation" is exactly the danger.
*Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that
wise?*
It was a very risky bet. For such a bet to be wise, you need to be
very sure of the dynamics of the situation. I don't think any
political group can validly be that confident.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the assault weapons ban.
People have criticized this proposed law for drawing the line in not
exactly the right place. Perhaps that is true — but it is a step in
the right direction, even if it doesn't end up in exactly the right
place. It includes a ban on selling large magazines, and that will
generally reduce the number killed in mass shootings.
Although most people killed by guns are killed by handguns,
that doesn't make this measure ineffective — only less than perfect.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness
Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to reject new oil/gas leases.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Respect for Marriage Act.
US citizens: call on Biden and Blinken to prevent home demolitions in
Masafer Yatta, Palestine.
US citizens: call on NOAA to designate the underwater Hudson Canyon
as a national marine sanctuary.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to prosecute the wrecker
for his conspiracy to steal the election.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to make the federal minimum
wage $15.
*Trump's worst toadies hold degrees from Harvard and Yale. Did they
learn anything [there]?*
*By taunting the US ‘paper tiger’, China risks provoking a backlash over Taiwan.*
Neither the US nor China is engaging in uncalculated emotional
reaction. Both countries are pursuing their conflicting goals,
driven by the strategic logic.
China's rulers' goal is to conquer Taiwan; this is not speculation, it
is what they say. As long as that does not change, the idea of
"stabilizing" this confrontation for the long term is self-delusion
because China won't accept that as an outcome.
China's "reactions" to whatever happens are not spontaneous emotion.
They are planned actions by officials, aiming at the goal of
conquering Taiwan. Sometimes they go softer, sometimes harder, but
either way it is tactics.
One of China's tactics — China uses it because it is effective — is
to twist the US up in the contradiction between its "one China" policy
and treating Taiwan as independent. In the long run, that
contradiction will be debilitating; so if the US is to protect
Taiwan's independence, it must move away from the "one China" policy.
China will threaten to break off relations, etc.; the US must respond,
"We can't prevent you from doing that, but you'll hurt yourself more
than you hurt us." Then it must stand firm until China comes to face
facts.
Smoke from wildfires harms people even thousands of miles away. A
small concentration harms a smaller number of people but isn't
harmless.
Since even wealthy people don't know how to protect themselves, we
should have programs that aim at protecting everyone. Or perhaps
everyone with asthma, if only people with asthma are particularly in
danger.
In the long run, we can expect wealthy people to pay for this
protection themselves, once we make sure they know what is needed.
Opposing the merger of Amazon and Roomba, on grounds of competition and
privacy.
With proper privacy laws, no privacy issue would arise from this merger.
A product such as the Roomba would not be allowed to send any data
to anyone about the owner or the use of the product.
Billionaire Polluters have spent a million dollars to influence the
British public against a windfall profits tax.
Texas and the federal government are headed for a fight where federal
guidelines call for an abortion as part of proper medical care for a
pregnant female with certain kinds of dangerous medical conditions,
but Texas says it is a crime.
Pearson plans to allow students to "resell" digital textbooks, but not
freely: they will have to pay Pearson for the privilege, and let
Pearson track them.
Pearson uses the term "NFT" to describe these plans, but that's a red
herring, as the article explains — a marketing buzzword that has been
stretched to fit.
There is no sign that these ebooks will avoid any of the injustices of
existing digital textbooks: DRM, surveillance,
and "jerkmaking" contracts where you commit to be a jerk by refusing
to share copies with others.
It is unethical to agree to such a contract; however, carrying it out
(supposing you have agreed to it) is even more unethical. The less
bad option, if you have agreed to such a thing, is to disregard it.
Veterans for Peace protested the US military's failure to reduce its greenhouse
gas emissions.
A judge ruled that refusing to give Andrea Anderson emergency contraception
wasn't discrimination based on sex.
That conclusion makes sense to me: it didn't fall under the heading of
"discrimination" because there is no reason to believe the pharmacist
would have treated a male patient differently. In my view, it was an
injustice for the pharmacist to refuse to fill her prescription, but
it was a different kind of injustice.
There is something in the article I don't clearly understand. Did the
jury award Anderson $25k in damages (under some other rubric), or not?
If it did, that could be a very good outcome: perhaps sufficient to
convince those pharmacies not to let this happen again. But if so,
I'd like to understand the reasons for it.
* Special [UK Foreign Office] unit spread fake news about leftist
[Kenyan] politician, Oginga Odinga, seen as threat to British
interests in 1960s.*
Anna Vorosheva was a prisoner in Putin's Olenivka prison, and reports
on the torture done to male prisoners there. As for female prisoners,
they were not tortured but were treated degradingly in many ways.
The article excuses the Putin forces of setting off an explosion a
week ago, inside the prison, which killed around 50 prisoners.
If Putin keeps refusing investigators access, it will be his word
against the satellite photos; but refusing access is a reason to
disbelieve his word.
San Bernardino thugs got out of an unmarked car, and after a few seconds
started shooting at Robert Adams who had done nothing but run away.
(satire) *Biden: U.S. Won’t Rest Until Brittney Griner
Returned Home To Serve
Marijuana Possession Sentence.*
The US should legalize marijuana and free everyone that's in prison
for nonviolent crimes relating to marijuana. Then it will speak
with moral authority when it calls on other countries not to punish
Americans for such offenses.
Republicans in some US towns are defunding their public libraries, or
trying to, over
objections to books about queer people.
I write "queer" rather than "LGBTQ" because the former is one syllable
instead of five and covers the same range of variations.
The wrecker's officials approved plans for coal mining which failed to
uphold environmental requirements. Environmentalists sued, and
Biden's officials defended the wrecker's plan.
Fortunately, a court ruled against the plans, but why defend those
plans? Whether or not they were lawful,
they were clearly bad.
*First-of-Its-Kind Greenwashing Lawsuit Targets
Gas Giant for Methane Lies.*
Actually, it wasn't what we normally called a "gas giant" — it was on
the small rocky planet we inhabit.
*Election deniers are one step closer to
taking control of voting in 4
key states.*
China is going all-out to remind us that it is a
military threat to Taiwan.
which reinforces that the US must stand firm with Taiwan.
China's "live fire exercises" close to Taiwan amounted in
effect to a
temporary blockade of Taiwan.
South Dakota has an optional Indian alternative justice system which
aims for
healing rather than punishment.
In the 1970s, US courts and prisons aimed for rehabilitation of
criminals, but that was all discarded in the
1980s under the malign
influence of the "war on drugs".
Portugal requires residents to have a biometric ID card for many
purposes, including medical care, employment and travel. This is an
injustice to everyone that is compelled to have the card; it is also a
practical disaster for the resident foreigners who can't get one.
The government seems to be using those foreigners as hostages to an
international dispute, but we should not let this distract us from
the injustice those cards present to people who DO have them.
*Justice Department employees ask for expanded benefits to protect abortion access,
asking for the administration to expand health care
coverage to include abortion-related benefits like paid leave to travel
out of state and reimbursement for travel expenses.*
Amnesty International criticized Ukraine for stationing military units
and
weapons systems in cities.
It would be absurd to compare this with the pervasive evil of the
Putin forces, and it certainly doesn't excuse them. But this is a
valid point. Ukraine should heed this criticism and change those
practices.
A woman is suing the only pharmacy within 50 miles of her home for
refusing to fill a prescription for contraception
(the morning-after
pill).
Such situations are likely to arise in the depopulated rural parts of
the US, where stores of any kind are few and far between, and
anti-abortion fanatics are numerous.
I am suspicious of any pharmacy business that gives its individual
staff the privilege to veto a prescription. No supermarket would
tolerate a sales clerk who refused to sell certain products — if you
won't do the whole job, you would need to find some other job. I
suspect that the owners or managers of those pharmacies are themselves
anti-abortion fanatics, and that letting staff veto prescriptions is a
intentional deniable way of attacking abortion and birth
contraception while denying their responsibility in the matter.
It's clear that any pharmacy, when open for business, must be legally
required to fill any valid prescription presented by anyone.
The price Biden wants to pay Manchin for approving spending is a
permanent change to environmental
rules for damaging projects.
Sanders lambasted Manchin's
planet-roasting demands,
which were elsewhere described by "Exxon CEO Loves What Manchin Did
for Big Oil in $370 Billion Deal."
The UK will test a system that uses photos of drivers of passing cars
to detect those who are not wearing seat belts, or are
holding phones in
their hands.
Detecting the use of a snoop-phone while driving is a good thing, in
itself, because that practice is dangerous. But I wonder what else
these photos could (and will) be used for. Will the state use them to
identify every driver by facial recognition? And ever passenger, too?
There should be technical safeguards in the
system to ensure it can't
be used for this
Australia's coral is
not out of the woods yet.
Global heating will eventually kill the Great Barrier Reef, and the
acidification caused by too much CO2 in the water will eventually wipe
out most sea animals with shells — including coral.
President Wickremesinghe has sent Sri Lanka's thugs to use cruelty to
crush the
protest movement that drove out President Rajapaksa.
*How the Tory party has systematically run down the NHS.*
It *does not believe in the NHS but dares not say so.*
US citizens: call on Biden to stop the Uinta Basin Railway.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
Everyone: call on Columbia Sportswear to commit to ending use of
PFAs in its products.
*Boston police chasing white suspect wrongly arrested black man, lawsuit says.*
This is an extreme case of thugs' frequent practice of assuming a
black man is guilty of something, simply because he's black. They
knew the suspect was white,
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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
*US border patrol accused of taking turbans from Sikh asylum-seekers.*
Thugs are fond of contriving excuses to claim that they are required
to do something that will cause suffering to someone weak.
*Four corporate US landlords deceived and evicted thousands during Covid.*
I contend that we should forbid ownership of buildings containing
housing for rent by corporations. Or else limit how many units, or
how many buildings, any one owner can own.
The article linked to 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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of these exceptions.
*Floods, storms and heatwaves are a direct product of the climate crisis — that's a fact, so where is the action?*
The thugs involved in killing Breonna Taylor now face federal charges
of violating her civil rights.
Governor Dementis "suspended" the elected state prosecutor of Tampa,
who said he would refuse to prosecute anyone for abortions, and
put in his place a nonelected prosecutor.
I suppose Dementis has chosen a replacement who will eagerly prosecute
abortions. I wonder when the citizens of Tampa will have another chance
to elect a prosecutor.
Warning, Australia! Warning, Europe! Potential business-supremacy
treaty sighted near both continents!
Promotion of these treaties focuses on increased profits for some
businesses, and those businesses push for treaty approval. What the
mainstream media tend not to mention is that they transfer power from
government (which can be democratic) to businesses (which are by
definition not democratic).
The sex of a baby sea turtle is determined by temperature.
This must have been an effectively random choice in the past,
but now that it is so hot, all the loggerhead sea turtles hatching
in Florida are female.
In a few decades, that will cause extinction of the species — the females
will have no mates.
Extremist Republican senator Johnson wants social security and medicare
to require congressional approval each year.
Most US schools monitor everything students say and do on their
school-supplied laptops, and students are in a substantial danger of
being charged or harassed as a result.
If this massive surveillance continues, parts of the US may jail
students for seeking abortion resources (or birth control, or whatever
the Christian Taliban may prohibit) using those school-supplied
facilities.
A school-supplied laptop that allows connection to anything but the
school's own servers is bait — tempting students to browse the web
under direct monitoring by the school and the local thug department.
Paradoxical as it may seem, perhaps schools should be legally required
to limit these computers strictly to class assignments, so students won't
make the mistake of using them for their other activities.
US citizens: call on your Senators to pass the Saving America's
Pollinators Act.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Ending Corporate Greed Act (windfall profits tax).
(satire) *Woman [is] At That Age Where All Her Friends Getting
Prosecuted For
Losing Pregnancies.*
I suspect that right-wing white women will get preferential treatment:
they won't get prosecuted for miscarriages.
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
The heatwave in Europe is damaging olive oil
production in Spain and Italy.
*Justice department urged to investigate deletion of
January 6 texts
by Pentagon.*
Republicans changed their mind about veterans poisoned by military
incineration of toxic substances, and
passed a bill to help them.
They tried following their philosophy, which is that if you're not
rich you don't deserve help, but the public disgust made them change
their tune.
*UN to investigate prison attack that killed [53]
Ukrainian
prisoners of war.*
The Putin forces claim this was a false flag attack by Ukraine, but
the claim is not plausible. It is absurd to think that Ukraine would
kill Ukrainians just to have an excuse to accuse the Putin forces of
yet another atrocity. Ukraine has hundreds, or is it thousands, of
atrocities to charge them with.
It is the Putin forces that would desire to kill those Ukrainians;
indeed, it had already threatened to execute them.
* For a long time now, the mechanisms of our democratic system of
government meant to ensure accountability have been at the edge of
collapse,
if not obliteration.*
The use of Real Estate Investment Trusts for business property cause
complications for businesses that impede them from providing good
service.
They also increase the power of the financial industry, which
harms society overall.
The 6 uniformed thugs of Kenly, North Carolina, who are white, all
handed in resignations after the
town appointed a black woman as city
manager.
In the absence of any specific facts, I speculate that they were used
to getting away with abusing some citizens, and saw that the new city
manager was not going to permit that.
California has decided to produce insulin and offer it at a
much lower
price to diabetics in the state.
I wonder if California will sell to diabetics in other states, too?
Mark Finchem, who won the Arizona Republican primary for attorney
general, is a Qanonsense believer that advocates the wrecker's
Big Lie
(that the 2020 election was stolen).
*Big oil is wringing humanity dry. We need a
fossil fuel
non-proliferation treaty.*
Rewilding marginal areas in a large farm was a big help to wildlife,
and the increased wildlife increased the
productivity of the rest of
the farm.
A new HIV-prevention drug could wipe out that disease, over time,
except that it is
too expensive for the people that need it.
*Spiraling inflation, crops left in the field and travel chaos: 10
reasons [leaving the EU]
has been disastrous for Britain.*
I dislike the word "Brexit" so I don't use it.
An extremely strange snail species, found only at a few deep-sea
thermal vents in one region, is endangered, and
could be wiped out by
deep-sea mining in that region.
Robert Reich: *Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema act out of ego, not principle.*
In a broad sense, this must be true. But is it "ego" in the ssnse of
simple emotion, or is it "ego" in the sense of future advantage?
Umberto Eco explains why the Italian term "facsism" could generalize
to fit many different repressive tyrannies.
The heat in Europe is reducing the power output of some nuclear power
plants.
They are cooled by water from rivers, and it is too hot to cool them
enough.
Right-wing Democrat Cuellar joined Republicans in proposing a law that
would allow companies to eliminate important workers' rights, by
extending the
piecework sweatshop economy to more kinds of work.
This would also stop states from requiring better wages and
working conditions for existing gig-work companies such as
Uber
and
Lyft.
*Zuckerberg-backed Summit Learning platform suggests schools 'listen' to
parents'
'online conversations'.*
The citizens of Kansas voted to keep abortion rights into the state
constitution,
by a landslide.
*Organizers said treating reproductive rights as a non-partisan issue
was key to success in a
Republican-leaning state.*
The vote was on a right-wing initiative to ban abortion in Kansas, but
initiatives to legalize abortion are also possible, in the states that
allow them.
Yet more gratuitous
cruelty by the US border thugs.
This article mentions a policy of making asylum seekers throw away
all their personal possessions, as well as specific cruelty towards
Sikh men — forcing them to violate religious commandments for no
rational reason.
Religion is not an excuse for someone to violate safety requirements
or mistreat anyone else. But these particular Sikh religious
practices don't hurt or endanger anyone.
When "security forces" display a persistent habit of gratuitous
cruelty, we cannot take their word about what they do. Their
punishment should be a requirement to document how they treat each
asylum seeker.
*AIPAC Defeats Andy Levin,
the Most Progressive Jewish Representative.*
AIPAC is a big danger to the US fight against plutocracy.
Americans who care about injustice to persecuted minorities tend to
be concerned with Israel's occupation policies, so AIPAC essentially
campaigns for disdain towards persecuted minorities.
(satire) *Democrats Worried Biden Will Be
Healthy Enough To Run Again In 2024.*
The military budget passed by the House of Representatives
is a big give-away to the military-industrial complex,
including systems
that are useless.
What should we say about the people who started out supporting the
wrecker when he was a hate-spewing right-wing extremist, and stopped
only when they saw he was an
enemy of our system of government?
I don't think that either the good or the bad erases the other.
I can't deny that Pence is actively campaigning against sedition.
I can't refuse to recognize that he is a religious extremist
that seeks to impose his religious extremism on everyone in the US.
He is a hero and he is atrocious, both at once.
Several new business-supremacy treaties are being negotiated.
In addition to the usual kinds of oppression, these may also restrict
governments' in
blocking massive surveillance by networks of businesses.
A large music festival in Atlanta has been cancelled because Georgia
does not permit
music festivals in parks to exclude guns.
The direct cause of cancellation seems to be that Atlanta refused to
authorized it, but I expect the city invited the festival to change
its rules to permit guns in order to get approval. I expect that the
organizers were wise to stand by their policy.
According to Russian law, it is illegal to jail volunteer soldiers (as
distinct from conscripts) for refusing to fight in Ukraine. However,
Putin is using the puppet governments of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the
Wagner mercenaries, to jail hundreds of refusal soldiers and
pretend
that Russia isn't doing it.
Is it possible to establish in international law that Russia is responsible
for crimes supposedly committed by those puppets?
China responded to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan with the typical bluster
with which it tries to pressure other countries not to support Taiwan,
and the
usual displays of military strength.
These are the way China tries to intimidate and threaten. If we don't
want to let China conquer Taiwan, we must not be influenced by China's
pressure.
China is a real military threat, but that's not due to Pelosi's visit,
and Pelosi could not have made China less of a real threat by staying
away from Taiwan. We cannot defend Taiwan from China's military power
by tiptoeing.
Republicans seek to purge the employees of federal agencies and
replace them with inexperienced
Republicans who will do whatever they
are told.
Due to their lack of experience, they won't respect traditional rules
that were adopted to restrain abuse of power.
In the FBI, the extremist agents will investigate whoever the
president tells them to investigate. In the DoJ, the extremist staff
will prosecute whoever the president tells them to prosecute.
* No single crisis, no matter how existential, will be enough to shut
this [planet roasting] machine down naturally.
We must break it or
it will break us.*
* The fossil fuel industry as a whole is not just another business,
providing a service to meet a demand; it is a predatory drug dealer
that works every day to keep the world addicted to its poisonous
product, knowing full well that it will eventually prove fatal.*
(satire) *15-Year-Old Finds Summer Job As
BetterHelp Therapist.*
Trumppets in Arizona organized a bogus "audit" of the presidential
election in Arizona, evidently aiming to blow smoke so they could
claim there was a fire. They later reported 282 supposed cases of
dead people who had cast votes.
A subsequent investigation by Arizona's attorney general found that
281 of them were in fact alive.
The FBI continues luring vulnerable people (generally Muslims) into
fantasy terrorism schemes and sentencing them to 20 years in prison.
If the FBI goes after right-wing extremists it could start protecting us from
real terrorism.
Australia's inflation is like America's inflation: caused by big businesses
that have the power to impose price increases because they want to.
Looking at some of the ways global heating's effects could possibly cause
extinction of humanity.
I think that result is unlikely. Humans are quite flexible, and have survived
in drastically different situations. So I think various small groups of humans
will remain, without high technology. But I can't claim that extinction
is impossible.
US citizens: call on Congress to act to let the FCC restore the past
network neutrality requirements on ISPs.
As explained before, the Obama-era network neutrality requirements
that the corrupter abolished were weak and inadequate.
Nonetheless, they would do some good.
UN Secretary General Guterres warns that the risk of nuclear war is
slowly increasing. The world's nuclear disarmament efforts are
weakening.
Putin is trying to threaten nuclear war and pretending that he isn't
— much as US Republicans (also known as the Christian Taliban) are
threatening civil war and pretending they aren't.
Shell is using its windfall profits for stock buybacks — not investing them
in renewable electric generation.
US government "security" agencies track people's movements through their
phones, without getting search warrants, by buying location data from
companies that accumulate them.
We must forbid companies from collecting, or accumulating, people's
location data.
*Corporate Media [Fail] to Connect Gas Price Surge and Climate Crisis.*
(satire) *Police Experimenting With Nonlethal Methods To
Give Speeding Ticket.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Sanders: *I say to Senator Toomey, if you don't believe we can afford to take
care of our veterans suffering from toxic burn pit exposure, then you
should not have approved funding to go to war.*
(satire) *New Windex Formula Removes Menacing Apparitions From Mirror.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
The UAE has convicted democracy campaigner Asim Ghafoor, who is a US
citizen, of money laundering after a suspect trial.
He was arrested in a flight connection in Abu Dhabi. I recommend people
avoid setting foot in Abu Dhabi's airport.
Another bizarre thing in this report is that it the accusation appears
to have come initially from the US; but the US did not arrested him,
instead it let him fly to Abu Dhabi airport and he was arrested there.
I suspect this represents dirty work.
The US has a pattern, since 2001, of persecuting Muslims that raise
money in the US for charity in other countries.
Try as they might,
they get accused of terrorism, or violating financial regulations.
Is that what happened here?
Filipinos, including expats, are buying lots of copies of the book
Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, fearing that the new president, son
of the late dictator Marcos, will suppress the memory of his crimes.
The US has adopted policies that encourage the public to ignore
Covid-19 and abandon the effective, low-tech methods of reducing
transmission. This has allowed transmission to increase enormously,
which puts vulnerable people at great danger. Politicians say,
implicitly, that it doesn't matter if those people die, that they are
not important enough to wear a mask for.
There are two side points in the article that I take issue with.
First, eugenics means an active effort to control who can reproduce.
Letting people get sick and perhaps die is not eugenics. It is wrong,
but it is a different wrong. This is an example of a pattern of
stretching terminology for condemning a wrong that has excited special
ire, to apply it to other things and carry some of that ire to them.
Second, the article describes the US practices as "American
exceptionalism", but I've seen similar practices in several European
countries, and I think most of them have adopted the policy of
"Imagine there's no Covid."
I asked the mayor of Boston to start a PR campaign to convince people
to wear masks in enclosed places. Even if it's not a legal requirement,
there are ways of convincing people to do it — and in this case, it
doesn't require any deception. Obviously, this has not been done.
Rally for Julian Assange on Monday, August 1, from 11 to 12:30, at
Park Street Station on the Boston Common. People will remain near
the Park St station entrance for an hour, then march through the
Common, giving out literature and talking to people on the way.
You can also support the campaign by phone or email.
Human-caused global heating will cause more tornadoes and more
flooding in Kentucky. The governor is horrified seeing this at work, but will he
understand what needs to be done?
The US must put an end to irrigation of lawns in areas where water
is going to be scarce.
88% of Britons who stopped working since 2020 did so because of
long-term illness.
I would expect the same to be true in the US, but does anyone actually know?
Already some places on Earth occasionally experience fatal weather,
for short periods. But we know only theoretically at which point the
combined heat and humidity (measured as the "wet bulb temperature")
will kill a large fraction of humans.
I fear we will get clear empirical evidence about this question in the
next 20 years.
*Yes, Republicans really did try to make abortion punishable by death.*
*‘Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped,
says expert.*
Hothouse Earth, by Professor Bill McGuire, says we must stop trying to
give people hope by underplaying the extent of the disaster that we have
already made unavoidable.
Are economic sanctions against Russia worth while, if they don't help make
Putin drop the attempt to conquer Ukraine?
I support showing solidarity with Ukraine, but I contend that the best
ways to do that are the ways that re effective help. Giving Ukraine
arms to defeat and repel the Putin forces is effective, while economic
warfare through sanctions seems to be backfiring. Thus, I suggest we
do more of the former and less of the latter.
The US is suing to block the merger of two of the five giant US
publishing companies.
This demonstrates the weakness of our antitrust laws. For two such
large companies to merge should be a crime, so that blocking the
merger requires no lawsuit. We should not have let them get down to
less than 20.
*A group of whistleblowers has provided evidence that the
Environmental Protection Agency has not adequately assessed the
health risks posed by several new chemicals on the grounds that they
are corrosive. Managers in the New Chemicals Division have repeatedly
and incorrectly used the idea that a chemical may cause irritation to
the eyes, skin, and respiratory tract as an excuse to avoid assessing
the risk of other harms it may cause.*
By 2100, Austin, Texas, will be as hot as Dubai is now.
Dubai then will be even hotter.
The heat wave in the UK has ruined the harvest for many kinds of
fruits and vegetables.
This is surely true also in parts of the US, but I don't have an
article to reference.
Moon's "Unification church" has offered electoral support to Japanese and American right-wing politicians, since the 1970s.
Now that some TV weather forecasters are warning people about the
likely significance of heat waves, global heating denialists are now
trying to bully them into shutting up.
A ship carrying Ukrainian grain has left Odessa, bound for Lebanon.
If Putin allows grain shipments to continue, that will be a great help
to many countries where people are suffering from hunger.
I previously suggested the idea that Ukraine could choke off Russia's
oil exports from Novorossiysk. Back then, it would have been
retaliation in kind for what Putin was doing — but maybe he is no
longer doing that.
If Putin henceforth refrains from cutting off Ukraine's exports,
Ukraine should and must refrain from cutting off Russia's exports.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to pass the "trans bill
of rights" now.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden not to run again in 2024.
Here are reasons.
* "Approving lots of new fossil fuel projects in exchange for some clean
energy funding is completely bonkers and will make the climate crisis
worse."*
All but 6 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against
legalizing abortion of pregnancies caused by rape.
Could it be that big US businesses are jacking up prices to help the
Republican Party win this year's election?
(satire) *Regretful Officer Believes More Could Have Been Done To Kill
Unarmed Black Man.*
*Humanity faces ‘collective suicide’ over climate crisis, warns UN chief.*
*US drafts new speed limits on shipping to help save endangered whales.*
The US government must fund "managed" retreat from housing that is doomed
to be flooded or burnt.
The people who live in those homes can't afford to move or build
elsewhere — the government must help them. But subsidizing
rebuilding in place is an enormously inefficient way to do that.
I disagree with the statement that "managed retreat is not defeat."
Of course it is! Global heating disaster will be one defeat after
another. However, there are different kinds of defeats. When you
can't win the battle, an orderly retreat is much less bad than a
disorderly rout, and that's what will happen if we don't plan this.
Cory Doctorow explains how the rootkit that attacks treacherous
computing is a disaster for "security" in the usual sense.
It means that machines with the WHAT? can now have additional back doors
other than the one that Microsoft designed into Windows.
However, since WHAT is what ensures we can't free our machines from
Microsoft's control, the same vulnerability that this rootkit uses
might give us a way to turn off treacherous computing and/or install
our own free boot software.
The inspector general of the Department of Hostility and Sadism knew for months
that some important Jan 6 messages had been deleted, and did not tell Congress.
The missing (deleted) messages extend beyond the Secret Service;
some involved the highest officials of the DHS.
*Big Pharma Flooding Airwaves With Disinformation to Kill Drug Price Reform.*
(satire) *Toyota Unveils Multifamily Tenement Sedan For People Living
Out Of Their Cars.*
Doctors in US states that have banned abortions are now afraid to treat
miscarriages and nonviable pregnancies, because that overlaps with abortion.
The Indian state of Telengana is pushing for total surveillance.
The excuse is terrorism, but India's repression combined with total
surveillance will do more damage than terrorism that lacks the backing of
the Indian government.
Four myths about inflation (in the US).
Republicans have, for years, pushed to start a constitutional convention
that would rewrite the US Constitution. It turns out that Republicans would
have pre-imposed control of that convention, and could do whatever they wish,
disregarding the public.
*Fears that Egypt may use Cop27 to
whitewash human rights abuses.*
Australia may soon change its constitution to establish something to
be known as "an indigenous voice to parliament",
though no one has
stated clearly what that would concretely mean.
In general, it is wrong to establish rights or privileges for citizens
based on their racial background. Would this "voice" do a thing?
Without a concrete plan, we can't tell.
Prime Minister Albanese has promised to state simply and clearly the
text for the referendum to decide on the plan. Supposing that the
simple and clear text also states concretely what would be done, then
depending on those details, it might perhaps be a good thing.
The indigenous Australians suffered a grave wrong when the British
colonists took their land, and suffer from direct and systemic racism
today. They deserve various sorts of help and compensation — but that
is a different question.
Some former Republicans are campaigning against trump-pets and for
preserving democracy.
The ancient Middle East understood the need to cancel debts
periodically, so that the rich did not
drive the rest into bondage.
Nowadays, by contrast, the creditors rule and government believes it exists
to make sure that debts are not forgiven.
*IVF may be in jeopardy in states where
embryos are granted person hood.*
I think that artificial assistance to getting pregnant is ok in
theory, but terribly self-destructive to a society in our present
situation.
The EPA has an indirect plan to get
coal-fired generators to close.
Accusation: *Boris Johnson is planning to fill the
Lords with his
cronies and legitimize bribery*
A Bank of America executive expressed hope that workers will lose their
power to pressure for raises, and
that unemployment will rise.
*Maritime heatwaves have destroyed up to 90% of coral
populations in parts of the Mediterranean.*
These heat waves are intense — almost 6C hotter than normal.
*Could Long Covid lead to the rise of a
four-day work-week?*
A four-day work week might be a change for the better, but in order
for long Covid to make society adopt that, it would have to wreak such
enormous suffering that a mere change in work schedules could not come
near to compensating. We need to prevent so many people from getting
long Covid.
Brazil has approved a paved highway through Amazonia, which risks encouraging
illegal logging.
This is Bolsonaro at work.
The US achieves foreign policy goals by sending arms or troops. Cuba
achieves foreign policy goals by sending doctors or teachers. Can the
US do with sending more doctors or teachers, and less arms or troops?
Indiana's attorney general is a religious fanatic. He is looking for
any possible excuse to harass Dr Caitlin Bernard, including "complaints"
about her from people who never met her or had anything to do with her.
Sri Lanka's new president, Wickremesinghe, formerly prime minister, is
imposing harsh repression of protests.
I have a suspicion that Wickremesinghe allowed protests to chase out
Rajapaksa, for reasons of his own.
Australia's prime minister is not an extreme planet roaster, but he is
repeating myths used by the coal industry to keep coal cheap.
Only 11 states require sex education classes that are medically
accurate.
Good education for adolescents about sexual relationships is rare.
Good education about how to be confident of delighting your lover is
almost nonexistent in our society, and that absence causes millions of
people years of misery.
Republican performative cruelty includes US workers whose medical insurance
is currently required to cover screening for various dangerous diseases.
The Department of Justice is investigating the phony electors plot.
Sanders warns that Bolsonaro is plotting to overthrow democracy in Brazil,
and called on Biden to help Brazil resist this.
Sad to say, there are reasons to distrust the computerized voting
machines used in Brazil.
Or at least, that was the case 10 years ago.
They are digital and the system does nothing to try to detect systemic
digital fraud. Brazil should replace them with paper ballots.
But there is no reason to think that cheating in Lula's favor is more
likely than cheating in Bolsonaro's favor. Quite the contrary:
Bolsonaro's supporters are more likely to have the business
connections necessary to cheat, more likely to think they need to
cheat, and more likely to be unscrupulous enough to cheat.
*Inflation Is Not an Excuse to Withhold Support for Needed Tax Reforms and
Investments.*
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to vote to allow the
Equal Rights Amendment to take effect. The Equal Rights Amendment says,
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on elected officials to speed decarbonization and
make the greenhouse gas emitters pay.
*BBC criticised over climate question in Tory leadership debate.*
The sole question about climate disaster supported the fossil fuel
companies' distraction campaign, reducing one's own "carbon footprint",
rather than on the systematic state actions that they seek to prevent.
However, when it comes to reducing your own personal efforts to avoid
global heating disaster, it's clear that the best thing you can do is
avoid having children. Fewer humans in the future means humanity's
collective ecological footprint will be smaller in every dimension.
Reproducing at full speed, and letting the human population be reduced
by famine and war is the other alternative, and it's much worse.
The US assisted in a Nigerian air raid on a displaced persons' camp,
which killed aid workers and civilians; then it secretly investigated
what had happened.
The raid was intended to target terrorists, but something went very
wrong in the planning.
The Democrats' great "deal" with Manchin includes increased drilling
for fossil fuels.
It is one step forward in exchange for Manchin's demanded half a step
back.
The deal also includes some positive changes regarding taxes: a 15%
corporate profits minimum tax, more higher tax on private equity funds,
and funding the IRS to investigate tax cheaters that aren't poor.
Also, it makes an effort to reduce the cost of medicines for people
on Medicare. Sanders called it "better than nothing."
Overall, it is a change for the better, but the additional wells
will pump death for decades.
But we must never talk about this deal without condemning the price
to civilization that Manchin has charged for it.
*Climate targets at risk as countries lag in updating emission goals, say campaigners.*
Christian anticharity is the main opposition to Australia's plan to
eliminate the national law prohibiting assistance for suicide.
The US clinical trial data for some recently approved anti-cancer drugs
is still secret some years later.
The US government should stop negotiating with those exploitative
companies and legislate that the US government can and will publish
those studies as soon as the drug is approved. Or perhaps as soon as
the application for approval is filed.
The biggest companies tend to want to increase their trade secrecy to
gain more advantage over competitors. But what is good for the public
is to give the biggest companies less advantage over competitors.
Therefore, whenever there is a public-interest reason to demand that
companies come clean about their operations, we should make that a
legal requirement.
Trader Joe's workers at one store have voted to unionize.
Noam Chomsky: *Even without fundamental changes in prevailing state
capitalism, the kind of New Deal-style regulation that was dismantled
by the neoliberal assault can be reinstated, and strengthened.*
Republicans made a deal to improve medical care for military veterans
who were poisoned by toxic substances while deployed. Then they demanded
to change the deal, and ultimately killed it.
Military veterans used to be politically untouchable in the US, but in
2016 the wrecker started started showing public contempt for veterans
and their families. Maybe that made them less sacrosanct.
A right-wing party that advocates climate defense will oppose Tories
in the next UK elections.
*What has happened to the Labour party that it can’t stand up for labour?*
The answer is, it has followed the Democratic Party in the US in
becoming "centrist", and forgotten the goal of making working people
better off.
*One in three people killed by US police were fleeing, data reveals.*
It is usually unjustified for thugs to shoot someone who is running away
or even looking away from them.
*Labor announces national security law review after inquiry criticises
secrecy of Witness J case.*
*Humanity can't equivocate any longer. This is a climate emergency.*
The wrecker put Cuba on the US "state sponsors of terrorism" list for
no valid reason — Biden should remove it from that list.
Accusing Senator Schumer of protecting big tech near-monopolies in exchange for campaign funds.
*Climate breakdown made UK heatwave 10 times more likely, study finds.*
The article does not discuss the heatwaves in western Europe and
various parts of the US, but I expect global heating is largely
responsible for them too.
*Self-awareness in short supply as Trump calls for law and order in DC.*
Hackers have developed a way to embed misoprostol in business cards
so that it can be used for abortion straight off the card.
General Milley reports that China's military has become more
aggressive in dealing with US military forces since 5 years ago.
China states repeatedly that it intends to capture Taiwan; we know
from what we saw in Hong Kong that this would mean subjection and
repression.
When China posed no real threat of conquering Taiwan, it was safe to
smile at China's pretensions of doing so, and avoid ostentatious
support for Taiwan. But now that the threat is real, the US needs to
face up to it with a calm, explicit visible commitment to Taiwan's
defense. That means that China can't order the US to limit its ties
with Taiwan.
The present aggressive confrontations are harassment, intended to
pressure Taiwan and the US to step on the path of yielding. That,
above all, they must not do. To argue that "Pelosi should not visit
Taiwan now because China might respond by increasing the harassment"
is the first step of abandoning Taiwan.
However, it would be a mistake to treat these harassments as if they
were real attacks — for instance, to respond aggressively. The only
response to these acts of harassment should be the necessary defensive
precautions in case one turns into a real bombing raid.
*Congressional Staffers Arrested for Climate Sit-In at Schumer's Office.*
One thing we can expect in last stages before total disaster is that people
will desperately pollute and destroy unusual ecosystems, to delay the local
disaster a few more years. Now the DR Congo is about to open up a large
rainforest for oil drilling.
Hulu is censoring Democrat's political ads that talk about abortion
rights and gun control.
Incoming medical students at the University of Michigan walked out on
a ceremony which presented a speaker who claims that fetuses are
people, and rebuked the university for inviting a speaker who advocates
forbidding abortions.
The US Constitution forbids people who have participated in insurrection
against the United States from running for elected office, but judges have
thwarted the attempt to make this apply to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
A study estimates that exposure of today's living Americans to PFAs
could cost 5 to 63 billion dollars in medical costs.
That is assuming that the US continues functioning with a modern
medical system that actually tries to treat most Americans who have
these medical problems.
*The Global Ruling Class Is Frog-Marching Us Towards Extinction.*
*Extreme Heat Could Wipe Out Decades of Gain in Fight Against Child
Malnutrition.*
That's just the beginning. In a couple of decades, malnutrition could affect
most of the human population.
Humans are very adaptable. I expect that small groups of humans will
survive for a long time at low levels of technology — but that will
be little comfort for the rest.
The central principle of the Republican Party is performative cruelty.
Unless you are a millionaire (as well as white and straight), don't suppose
that you are not the target.
The Tyre Extinguishers campaign against gas-guzzling SUVs by deflating
their tires, and leaving leaflets on the cars thus targeted.
Students at the University of Cambridge persuaded the university not
to name a research lab in honor of Billionaire Polluters.
*Adopting a policy to reject "all fossil fuel
industry funding and research partnerships" is what's needed.*
A female couple wants to join with a male couple to have and raise one baby
as four parents.
*[US] Banks' financing of coal, oil, and gas was higher in 2021 than it was
in 2016, the year after the Paris agreement was adopted.*
This activity amounts to mass murder, to accelerate over the next few decades.
*Leaked: US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and
fight clean energy.*
What they spend it on includes election dirty tricks to defeat legislators
that support bills to decarbonize.
This activity amounts to mass murder, to accelerate over the next few decades.
US citizens: tell Congress that AIPAC doesn’t speak for you.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Zelensky explains why a temporary cease-fire would help the Putin
forces in the long term.
We must not allow Putin to succeed in capturing and holding Ukrainian
territory, but as long as we prevent that, it makes sense to help him save face.
A militia leader testified in the Jan 6 committee that the wrecker was
preparing for an armed revolt.
The EU is making big cuts in burning natural gas. The immediate
motive is to resist Putin's pressure, but this is a good thing for
more general reasons.
In practice, "Sustainable investment" funds try to avoid investing in
businesses that would lose value from decarbonization — but they
don't invest in accelerating decarbonization. So they are no help
to what we need.
*Biden says Trump "lacked the courage to act" during January 6 attack.*
What a bizarre understatement! The wrecker had already acted, by
preparing and launching the attack on the Capitol,
and he continued to act by keeping it going and protecting it.
What he lacked was not guts, but loyalty to his country.
Doubts over obtaining insurance for the ships puts a cloud on the
supposed deal to export grain from Ukraine through the Black Sea.
Walgreens in Texas refused to prescribe methotrexate for the purpose
of facilitating insertion of an IUD, claiming the pharmacy couldn't
know that it wasn't for an abortion.
Millions of people take methotrexate to treat various medical problems
other than pregnancy, and the Texas law has put them all in danger.
*The Enduring Tyranny of Oil: War, Inflation, Geopolitical Rivalry,
and Soaring World Temperatures.*
Students: *We're planning school strikes across the world to protest
climate inaction.*
This is entirely reasonable, for those who realize that global heating disaster
will not leave them much of a chance to use their studies.
Sad to say, their web site depends so totally on JavaScript code that
it shows no information with JavaScript disabled. It's as much as to
require, arbitrarily, that you can't support your own freedom and
their campaign too. Why create a gratuitous conflict between these
two causes, when fundamentally they are entirely compatible?
If you are in contact with them, please offer to make their site
work at least minimally for users that reject JavaScript code.
If you attend a school where an occupation is planned, I expect you
will be hear about it in other ways, so that you can support it.
Tories plan to require carers who need to stay overnight in a hospital
to take care of a patient to pay to stay.
Little by little they are making the NHS impossible for poor people to use.
Tory policy is, sick poor people should die.
US citizens: call on the Senate to protect same-sex marriage.
US citizens: call on Biden to declare a climate emergency, and use
his emergency powers to decarbonize.
*The World Burns and the Richest Profit. It Doesn't Have to Be This Way.*
Biden's gestures, making nice to Netanyahu and Crown Prince Bone Saw
were ugly but merely symbolic. Sad to say, they symbolize support for
actions that are horrible.
Orbán publicly endorses unabashed racism.
Cellular network operators in Europe are associating each network
access from a snoop-phone with its phone number, so web sites
(advertisers) can track each user.
Thousands of US women are getting themselves sterilized, for fear that
they would no longer have the option of abortion. But it can be difficult
to find a surgeon willing to do the operation.
*Let's Acknowledge Why the Midterms Look So Bleak for Democrats: Joe
Biden.*
I can't say I am entirely sure that this is true. The reason why I am
not sure is because voters' thinking seems to be irrational. Why let
your opinion of Biden affect whether to vote for your local
progressive candidate?
Biden or no Biden, it's clear that the only way to get progressive
laws through Congress is to elect more progressives to Congress. The
2022 elections are an opportunity to do this — so what are we waiting
for?
Since I can't make sense of what those voters are thinking, I can't model
what would influence them. But the article could be right.
(satire) *Snobby Ex-Con Always Mentioning How He Went To Private
Prison.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Reality Winner speaks about her duty to inform the public
when the government was lying to the public.
This reinforces the need to change the Espionage Act to include a
public interest defense.
US citizens: call on Merrick Garland to prosecute the wrecker and his
co-conspirators for their coup attempt.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Forest Service to protect the Boundary
Waters.
US citizens: call on Congress to end US military support for Salafi
Arabia's war in Yemen.
200 Starbucks stores in the
US have voted to unionize.
*Biden's Presidency Isn't Sinking Because of the Left — It's
Because of
Right-Wing Democrats.*
* By declaring a public health emergency under the Public Readiness and
Emergency Preparedness Act, the Biden administration could "enable
out-of-state prescribing and dispensing of medications for
abortion for those in states with abortion bans."*
The Burmese military government has executed democracy activists,
accusing them of "terrorism".
Two large chains of Australia stores have ceased using
facial recognition
to identify all customers.
*Tyre dust: the "stealth pollutant" that’s becoming a
huge threat to
ocean life.*
Governments' mission requires compelling tire manufacturers to disclose what
the tires contain. No one is entitled to keep secrets about
chemicals that may be endangering ecosystems. The idea that businesses
should have such powers is sheer plutocracy.
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act takes a step toward
limiting how companies can snoop on computer users. But the bad part
is
that it preempts state laws.
I suspect that the ADPPA is fundamentally based on limiting the use of
data once collected, an approach that it is inadequate, because the
only method that will really work is to
limit the collection of the
data.
If states can't pass laws that go beyond this, all progress will
stop.
So I think this law should not be passed.
A recent decision by the Supreme Court may have
blocked Biden from
cancelling federal student loans.
It is not clear.
A movement for white Christian nationalism is spreading through the US.
It is based on falsifying the history and
founding principles of the US.
Republicans ruling Arkansas and Nebraska, for ideological reasons,
rejected federal rental assistance for poor people in those states.
They prefer to see poor people evicted.
The wrecker is continuing to
try to overthrow the US government.
Israel is using Google's AI services to track Palestinians by facial
recognition and analyze everything they say, write, read or express
with their faces to
generate suspicions about them
Starmer is taking the Labour Party a
step closer to plutocratism.
"Growth" as a political goal tends to be an excuse to reject other
more important goals, such as "tax the rich and help the rest."
*If Biden isn’t willing to really fight the climate crisis,
he shouldn’t run
in 2024.*
I disagree with the article on one subpoint: it is not only the
results that count. When something really important is at stake, we
can forgive you for being defeated, if we see you fought really hard.
But if you fail to do that, you have failed us.
US citizens: support the National Popular Vote Compact.
US citizens: call on investment fund companies to create sustainable
options now. This refers to companies such as Vanguard, Fidelity, and BlackRock.
US citizens: call on the Senate to replace Senator Manchin as Energy
Committee Chairman.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to end the Remain in Mexico policy.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act.
The Department of Hostility and Suffering currently buys lots of surveillance data. This law would prohibit that, but it wouldn't eliminate the resulting
injustice. It is a small step forward, but not a true solution.
Governments could buy other kinds of data which would enable them to
find out what sort of places you have been, and then use parallel
construction to attack you.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
*DRC to auction oil and gas permits in endangered gorilla habitat.*
Global disaster will push many people to the brink, and before
actually dying, they will try desperate schemes to survive.
Many of those schemes will involve destruction. This is a foretaste.
If there had been stronger winds, fire might have engulfed much of London
last week.
*These soaring temperatures have given Britain a taste of the dystopia
to come.* Other parts of the world, too.
The planet-roasters, and the officials they have bought influence with,
are responsible. Let's rub their noses in their mess.
*Barely 12 hours after Moscow signed a deal with Ukraine to allow
monitored grain exports from Ukraine’s southern ports, [Putin]
targeted Ukraine’s main port of [Odessa] — through which grain shipments
would take place — with cruise missile strikes.*
*Airstrikes on ports could derail grain export plan, warns Ukraine.*
I had a feeling that this deal was too good to be true. Cheating is
Putin's way; you can't expect him to keep a deal sincerely.
Putin has been using food effectively as a weapon, and he would hardly
let go of a weapon.
I support Ukraine in this war, but "Odessa" has been the English name
of that city for much more than a century, and I don't see a reason to
change the way we write it in English.
In Shasta county, ideological opponents of masks bullied many county
officials into resigning, and removed some officials from office,
demonstrating how they wish to harass anyone who doesn't bow down to them.
*Dip in UK woodland’s ability to capture CO2 [because] felled trees not
replaced.*
I would guess that other countries have the same problem, if they don't
take care to grow new trees as fast as they cut trees down.
Ralph Nader: * Waging peace and conflict resolution should be the
State Department's main mission.*
Extreme heat in the US is driving many species towards extinction,
including birds, fish and mollusks.
The wrecker made a plan, called "Schedule F", to enable him to
arbitrarily purge the employees in 50,000 federal civil service jobs
and replace them with people personally loyal to him. This could corrupt
the whole federal bureaucracy.
Any Republican elected in 2024 might put this into practice.
Reportedly Republicans in the Senate support that plan, and will block
the efforts to legislate against it.
Why Bannon's defiance of a subpoena to testify in Congress goes hand in hand
with insurrection.
Bannon claimed that the wrecker still has the "executive privilege" to
forbid Bannon from testifying, even though the wrecker no longer holds
an executive office. This could be the basis of an appeal.
It seems pretty obvious to me that ex-officials must not have any
power to block testimony about what they did while in office.
*Do you trust the people in suits downplaying this [climate]
emergency, or the activists lying in roads in an attempt to ward
off catastrophe?*
Unions and the labor movement have great capacity to support democracy
and human rights, and have done so throughout history.
The Jan 6 committee has presented powerful evidence that the wrecker
intentionally built up and directed the attack on the capitol, and
chose intentionally to keep it going until he concluded it had failed.
*How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against Trump.*
California has passed a law that parodies the Texas law authorizing almost
anyone to sue whoever helps someone get an abortion. California's law
does that same thing to people who do anything with illegal guns.
Is this a good idea?
I think that the "anyone can sue you" approach to enforcing a law is
cruel and repressive, regardless of what actions are being prohibited.
Using this to enforce anti-gun laws is bad for the same reason
that using this to enforce anti-abortion laws is bad.
Kenyan thugs have been convicted of murdering a human rights lawyer
and others.
Although Graham Mansfield was not convicted of murdering his dying
wife, he was convicted of manslaughter. His sentence was suspended so
he probably will not go to prison for this.
I don't know whether he cares about that question. He did not want to
outlive Dyanne, but having survived his suicide attempt, he is stuck
with it. Can he find meaning in life now?
I believe that the right to die should not be limited to people who
are going to die soon anyway. People who are incapacitated, whose
prospect is many years of helpless boredom and futility, should have
the right to help in dying, too, if that's what they want.
Extreme hot weather is causing local damage to roofs, bridges,
railroads, pipes…
In ten years, the heat waves will be hotter, and cause a lot more damage.
Same-sex couples organize to stop right-wing fanatics from ruling same-sex
marriage invalid in the US.
*US Regulators Urged to Block Amazon's "Terrifying" Purchase of [the
medical clinic company] One Medical.*
Large companies like Amazon should not be allowed to acquire any
other companies.
The inspector general is investigating the deletion of possibly
disloyal text messages posted by Secret Service agents.
(satire) *More Young Americans Achieving Homeownership By Changing
Locks On Airbnb.*
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*Progressive Lawmakers Push Biden to Stop Transferring Military
Weapons to Cops.*
The IMF could provide funds for food for starving countries, if the US
gives the ok.
*Nearly Every House Republican Votes Against Codifying Right to
Contraception.
"If they had the chance they would ban it," said Rep. Ilhan Omar
(D-Minn.).*
(satire) *Local Mom Wants Just One Nice Vacation Photo Where Family
Isn't Running From Gunfire.*
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Global heating has made fighting wildfires much harder in the UK.
The government does nothing about this.
Political divisions are appearing among evangelical Christians.
Abortion rights activism pressured Biden to take small steps to defend
access to abortion. If he had been truly eager, he would not have waited
to be pushed.
(satire) *New Ford F-450 Comes With Shotgun In Case Truck Doesn’t Kill
Pedestrian On Impact.*
*The Only Effective Pandemic Response Is a Global One.*
Biden is confronting Iran in a belligerent tone.
The article asks why he does that. I have two ideas: (1) to pressure
Iran to resume the non-nuclear deal, and (2) to such up to Crown
Prince Bone Saw so he will sell more oil. Neither one is a good reason.
The monarch butterfly is now listed as endangered.
Not enough restaurants and cafes allow the public (not limited to
customers) to use their toilets.
The solution is to pass laws which require them to do so.
Racial bias in length of prison sentences is increasing in the US.
A Chicago thug shot a teenager who ran away, as he was putting his hands up
while holding a camera phone. The boy is now paralyzed.
California thugs killed a man who ran away with a phone in his hand.
*House panel says Trump "chose not to act" during attack on US Capitol.*
That is a shocking understatement. The corrupter did much worse than
remain inactive during the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol. He continued
to egg his followers on, as they rioted, for more than an hour.
At this point, I think the crucial question is, is there any law
which criminalizes these actions? There ought to be, but is there any?
The new "interim" president of Sri Lanka, chosen by parliament,
arrested hundreds of encamped protesters shortly before they were
going to leave.
Ukraine wants to put Putin and his high officials on trial for war
crimes.
Threatening to prosecute Putin would be a mistake, if there is any
chance of actually bringing him to justice, because he would continue
the war simply to prevent that, even if he has no chance of actually
winning.
However, if there is no chance of bringing him to justice, the trial
is just a futile display of anger.
The UK spy organization supports the plan to make all UK snoop-phones
check everything people send through them.
They would like this, wouldn't they?
"Gullible cynicism": the practice of bending over backwards to
disbelieve the generally accepted explanation for anything whatsoever,
while eagerly accepting absurdly implausible conspiracy theories
instead.
Gullible cynicism appeared long before there were modern
disinformation campaigns. Nowadays it has spread beyond the US — but
gullible cynicism sure helps disinformation campaigns succeed.
Food banks in the UK don't have enough food for all the hungry people.
*We're living in an age of permanent crisis — let's stop planning for a
"return to normal".*
Governments continue trying to do that.
It is fundamentally harder to plan for a different world 10 years from now,
and a world 20 years from now that would be different again.
*Unless we act soon, this heatwave is just a taste of things to come.*
Complaints from black immigrants in US deportation prison *reveal a
disturbing pattern of physical abuse and ignoring medical needs.*
An indigenous prisoner in Australian jail died of a disease that
proper medical procedures would have identified.
But they don't follow proper medical procedures with indigenous
prisoners.
Ukraine is preparing a counterattack to recapture Kherson.
The climate protesters of Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) glued themselves
to the glass screen of a famous painting, Primavera by Botticelli.
*Ukraine and Russia sign UN-backed deal to restart grain exports.*
There are many ways this plan could fail. Putin could "implement" it
with bad faith, or make new demands. But it could also fail despite
sincere efforts by all parties. I hope it does succeed.
The UN's International Court of Justice will proceed with a
case against the Burmese government for genocide of the Rohingya.
Global heating effects are damaging roses in England.
An activist for the Satanic Temple is demanding the right to make
satanic prayers publicly at football games in Florida.
16 members of Congress were among those arrested for protesting for
abortion rights in the street before the Supreme Court.
Graham Mansfield was tried for murder after killing his wife, Dyanne,
who in great pain from terminal cancer and made him promise to end her
suffering. Then he tried to kill himself, but he couldn't go through with it.
I read that he was acquitted of murder. I hope they do not punish
him. Staying alive without his dearest is a terrible punishment.
The Republican nominee for governor of Maryland is an election liar.
Marylanders must expect him to lie about elections in the future, too,
including the elections he runs in.
Amazon is harassing warehouse employees with pressure not to vote
to unionize.
Workers at a Chipotle outlet filed for union recognition, so the
company shut that branch permanently.
The article sates that since mid-June the branch has been open "only
for staff trainings". I have a hunch that these "trainings" are
actually union-busting harassment meetings. This is a standard tactic
used by many companies to fight union organizing. They order workers
to listen for hours to the propaganda of union-busting consultants,
and perhaps to answer their questions too.
It could be useful training … in how to stand firm against the man.
Do you feel like eating Chipotle's food after reading this?
US cities are raising the priority of efforts to adapt to extreme heat,
since heat we now call "extreme" will become normal
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Most of China has been hit badly by extreme heat and extreme rain.
Will Americans and Chinese recognize that current policies will make this much worse in a decade or two? Mere adaptation to a danger while we continue to make it a little worse every year is not rational, and in the long term the heat will win the race.
US citizens: call on Biden to continue the policy of refusing to sell offensive weapons to Salafi Arabia.
It is very disappointing that instead of calling on the president to take new actions to end US support for Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen, we have to campaign against increasing that support.
US citizens: call for prosecution of the corrupter's campaign for fraudulent fund-raising.
Biden said he is taking urgent action for climate defense, but he does not seem to be acting with much urgency.
(satire) *Woman Has Friend On Standby To Drive Car Through Bar Window In Case Date Going Badly.*
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*If the Jan 6 hearings end without consequences for Trump, the main takeaway will be: this is how much you can get away with in 2020s America.*
*How US prison work breaks bodies and minds for pennies.*
*Opinion: Stop cheering for a fetus's right to ride in an HOV lane.*
Anything that accepts the claim that a fetus (or even an embryo!) is a human being will spread the damage to our legal system.
Some Senate Republicans have joined in supporting laws to fix many of the vulnerabilities in US democratic procedures that some fanatical Republicans tried or propose to exploit.
A bill to restore the FCC's power to regulate internet connection services would enable it to once again require its weak standard of "network neutrality".
This would be a step forward, but nowhere near far enough to prevent snooping.
The Tories are so determined to be cruel to refugees that they pushed ahead with deportation to Rwanda despite knowing many reasons they should not.
They are also determined to do it before a court rules on whether it is lawful in the first place.
Thus, it's not just some refugees they plan to do wrong to — it's every citizen of the UK.
Indonesian artists intended to condemn Israel's occupation policies, but the work they produced appears very directly antisemitic.
The artists have apologized for that result.
The more figurative and "artistically creative" a work is, while also making a statement about a controversial issue, the it is likely to to have various of possible interpretations, perhaps including a very nasty one.
Was it pure coincidence that two FBI officials that the corrupter fired were both audited by the IRS shortly thereafter?
The IRS said it is "ludicrous" to suspect malice was at work, but given how Nixon did exactly that to the people on his "enemies list", and given how that former president was inclined to crookedness, it would be ludicrous not to suspect him.
* To call this a "culture" war is to understate its true meaning and potential danger. Those of us who still believe in separating church and state, guarding reproductive rights, ensuring racial equality, ending gun violence, and protecting democracy must understand that much of the Republican Party now stands for the exact opposite of these values.*
Russia is using its puppet regimes in Luhansk and Donetsk to force Ukrainians into the Putin forces, while denying that it is responsible.
Offshore fish farms could increase the total amount of fish farming — and also the volume of wastes that pollute the ocean.
Documents prove that the wrecker and his officials intentionally set out to distort census data for partisan purposes, and intentionally hid that.
The plan to add a question about citizenship was blocked, but the wrecker's officials took other steps to intimidate non-citizens so as to skew the census.
The project to build a giant telescope with a 30-meter mirror on Mauna Kea is advancing but has been delayed for a new environmental impact study.
Indigenous Hawai'ians demand that we stop the project, but they cite only their emotions as reasons why, with no rational basis. They demand we obey their feelings, but there is no reason we should.
People who appreciate science look forward to advancing our knowledge of the history of the universe. The desire to understand the world is also emotional, but there is a clear and rational aspect to it as well.
I hope to live long enough to appreciate some of the discoveries that this telescope will give us.
Egypt still repressively prohibits street photography, even by tourists.
*The ferocious heatwave that is gripping much of the US south and west has highlighted an uncomfortable, ominous trend — people are continuing to flock to the cities that risk becoming unlivable due to the climate crisis.*
Kicking Manchin out of the Democratic Party would show the public the truth: that Republicans (including Manchin) really control the Senate, and Americans had better vote to replace them.
Bernie Sanders is trying to reduce the 250-billion giveaway to chip companies.
US citizens: phone your senators at 855-740-2519 and say you are disappointed with the Senate for not passing a law to boost clean energy, reduce medical costs, and raise taxes for the rich and businesses.
A US appeals court agreed that Monsanto and other companies are responsible for the damage done when dicamba, a herbicide, drifted onto an orchard from nearby farms.
Dicamba is used on genetically modified soybeans and cotton.
*Weapons Industry's $10 Million Investment in [something equivalent to bribing] Congress Could Yield 450,000% Return.*
It is misleading to represent large ratios (bigger than 2) using percentages. The clear way is with a ratio. Their return is 4500 times the amount they "invest" in congresscritters.
Biden may approve a new oil railroad, which would lock in increased greenhouse gas emissions in the US.
Biden should either cancel this, or approve it only after the passage of a bill that would reduce emissions much more.
A billion personal data records from Chinese national thugs were taken by crackers and sold.
Forget about "data protection"! Our safety depends on prohibiting the systems that collect data.
The high heat in London has caused many fires to break out inside the metropolitan area.
The OLIGARCH act would establish a graduated tax on wealth.
I think it is a good idea, except for its use of median household wealth as a measuring unit. What if further impoverishment reduces the median household wealth in the US to a negative number?
*"The climate crisis will continue to escalate and get worse as long as we stick our heads in the sand and prioritize profit and greed over people and planet," said … Greta Thunberg.*
(satire) *EPA Closes Down After Running Out Of Salvageable Environment To Protect.*
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*How [government PR about] "living with Covid" is helping keep England's infections stubbornly high.*
This applies more or less to the US as well.
An investigation showed that Corbyn's opponents ("new Labour" plutocratists) fought bitterly against his supporters.
The Tories arranged a business-supremacy treaty with the previous (planet-roaster) Australian government, and now want to ratify it without debate. Climate defenders are suing under another treaty to demand debate and examination of this agreement.
Why doesn't the new Australian government insist on renegotiation?
We must expect by default that any business-supremacy treaty is bad, but here's more about what's bad in this one.
A UK union representing gig workers calls for a one-day boycott of Uber.
If only Uber's injustice against workers concerns you, that is a natural response. But if Uber's injustice against customers concerns you too, I suggest going on a permanent boycott, as I have.
*The terrifying truth: Britain’s a hothouse, but one day 40C will seem cool.* The article explains the practical consequences that will certainly bring.
The article says "equitable", but the intended meaning belongs to the word "equable." What a big difference!
Please do not have children! Each additional birth will cause more than one additional death later this century. How much more than one, I am unable to estimate.
Republicans are lying about and threatening the Indiana doctor who carried out an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim, who was compelled to go Indiana because Ohio's right-wing law did not allow her to get an abortion there.
Many Republicans now actively defend forcing people who have been raped to have babies. It is consistent with their religious beliefs, and it shows how cruel and arbitrary those beliefs are.
A New Zealand company sued a US web service demanding it identify the people who posted harsh reviews of the company as an employer. The US court decided the case based on New Zealand's laws, which don't protect free speech as the US does.
The weakness of protection of freedom of speech outside the US is one of the main reasons I have been reluctant to live outside the US. The other countries are not getting better, not at all, but the Christian Taliban threaten to make the US far, far worse.
The Tories plan to promote more flying in the UK, presuming that future technology will eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions of all those flights.
Betting on future technology to reduce the greenhouse emissions of common activities is utterly foolish. Lobbyists always present such a bet as a sure thing, or close enough one can treat it as a sure thing. They are surely exaggerating, and we must not trust them.
* In the near future, cars will not only collect information about their driver and passengers, but the vehicles, pedestrians, and city around them.* Unless we stop them!
The reliable way to prevent this is to make it illegal for cars to save, or transmit, anything that they see in images from the car's cameras, anything that their microphones hear, and anything else that their sensors collect.
This will demonstrate to the public that they don't need to fear the presence of today's cars on our streets.
*California will start making its own insulin to combat high [insulin] prices, governor says.*
The EU is considering the question of what activities to permit AIs to be used for.
Using AI to control people's fate creates two kinds of dangers: those that result when it doesn't do a job reliably but people assume it does, and those that result when it does do a job reliably.
The head of the Australian Medical Association calls for mask mandates to slow the spread of Covid-19.
*[The issue of alleged] Antisemitism was used as "factional weapon" in Labour party,* by both Corbyn's supporters and his enemies.
*Ukrainian boy held hostage by Russia tells of cleaning up torture rooms.*
*Russian gas shutoff would send some EU countries into recession, IMF warns.
As LA thugs repress homeless people, they end up in the Mojave desert with no running water.
A proposal to punish elected officials for lying or misleading the public.
Biden could put Manchin in his place by blocking the Mountain Valley Pipeline. More importantly, it would show his commitment to limiting greenhouse gases.
I wonder whether his various decisions in favor of some large fossil fuel investments (which would increase fossil fuel consumption for decades) might be an attempt to buy acquiescence of some fossil fuel interests. If so, it did not work. It may have struck then as weakness, leading them to demand more.
The only acceptable way to make a deal with planet roasters is to insist that nothing in the deal is final until the closing. Never let them get anything "on credit", because they will cheat.
Right-wing extremists in Japan are scapegoating Korean-Japanese who have been subject to bigotry for many decades.
Friends have told me that parents of ethnic Japanese refuse to let their children marry people of Korean descent. They investigate potential spouses' families to check this.
The latest heat wave has brought unusual forest fires to countries on or near the Mediterranean. This is just a taste.
(satire) *Aides Concerned Low Poll Numbers Could Drive Biden To Do Something Drastically Popular.*
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*Children in England in deep poverty "stealing food from schools."*
I expect Tories will propose to put the children (or their parents) in prison for this.
The Christian Taliban are a big threat to the United States.
They recruit the support of other movements by appealing to their shared hatred for the state. They recruit support from white nationalist pagans, despite their religious disagreement.
They recruit support from antisocialists (the article uses their misleading propaganda term for themselves, "libertarian") even though those antisocialists would hate the theocratic state. For them, "a utopian past is one in which 13-year-old boys work in coal mines and their adolescent sisters toil 12 hours a day in cotton mills."
The Muslim Taliban of Afghanistan did not hide their aim to impose Islamist repression on their country. The Christian Taliban of the US lie about their goals.
*Not One Single Republican Votes for Probe of Neo-Nazis in US Military and Police.*
Almost 50 counties have relaxed abortion laws due to feminist campaigns.
*When a Country That's Orchestrated Many Coups Has One of Its Own.*
This article does not mention the US-organized coups in Guatemala (successful), Cuba (failed) and Iran (successful), nor the recent coups in Honduras (successful), Bolivia (successful for a year) and Venezuela (failed).
Researchers have estimated the economic damage caused to the world by the greenhouse gas emissions of the five main emitting countries: United States, China, Russia, India, and Brazil: a total of 6 trillion dollars.
With this, the rest of the world can sue these countries for damages.
Women who wish they had not had children tell their stories.
*Texas Official Admits Beloved Black Principal Was Fired for Being Against Racism.* The Republicans confusedly equated trying to discourage racism with teaching "critical race theory".
Albuquerque SWAT thugs started a fire with a flashbang grenade, and it may have killed a child who was a bystander. Local TV news told the story, obfuscating it so heavily that readers can hardly see those facts in the the story.
The establishment view of what is needed to "fix" Sri Lanka. Its idea of what "fixing" means does not include enabling the country to save the non-rich.
The IMF does not "bail out" countries to save them. Rather, it gives them a chance to sell themselves into slavery. For instance, it has a long history of imposing "structural adjustments" that reduce the incomes of the non-rich, require payment for public education, and destroy public health programs.
I think Sri Lanka's only chance is to make the west and China compete to offer a deal that doesn't enslave the country.
More generally, we need world systems that stop politicians from stealing a country's income, sending it overseas, and leaving the country and its non-rich crushed by debt.
*Trio of dissidents [in exile] in US condemn president's trip to [Salafi Arabia] and accuse him of "normalizing" murderous regime.*
Legal abortion has always been safer than giving birth.
*House Dems Call for Suspension of Aid if Brazilian Military Attempts Election Coup.*
I predict that Republicans will oppose it, because they regard Bolsonaro as one of them.
The detailed progressive program for federal protection of abortion rights.
It may not be easy to codify various individual rights in federal law in a way that the radical Supreme Court can't attack.
Many blind internauts say that nonfree website enhancers make web sites harder to use, not easier.
If you judge by convenience alone, you might think it is unfortunate that these proprietary website enhancers don't work well. But what if they did? Freedom-disrespecting web sites would benefit from them, while web sites in the Free World would be obliged to reject them.
In addition, I suspect these enhancers trample the visitors' freedom by sending nonfree JavaScript code that users are compelled to run. If so, then were they fixed to work well, they would give visitors convenience in exchange for their freedom.
Calls to move the Cop27 climate conference out of Egypt, because Egypt is planning to keep activists away from the government representatives and because queer people attending face the threat of arrest and torture.
It should have been obvious in advance that Egypt was a bad place to hold an international conference, so why was the plan made to hold it there? Perhaps because it is a bad place. Many conferences have been sited in countries that will prevent protesters from showing up.
The Suicide Six ski lodge is changing it's name because people criticized use of the word "suicide" as insensitive.
I firmly oppose the campaign to make such words unacceptable to use. It was already going too far to demand everyone avoid any word that someone might take offense at. But this pressure demands even more. It demands we tiptoe through life, always timid because of possible sensitivity.
I can imagine the same critics demanding that the Grateful Dead change it's name — or else, that radio stations boycott it's music.
China has arrested four Hong Kongers, former democracy activists, for trying to escape.
Island nations in the Pacific Ocean are trying to unite to fight their common enemy: global heating.
A large carbon capture and storage project in Australia fell very short of its target — perhaps just half what it was supposed to capture.
This came with a penalty — Chevron had to buy and use up carbon offsets to make up for the difference. As we know, many of these offsets are bogus.
I say the idea of carbon offsets should be replaced with carbon emission taxes.
Chevron is, of course, culpable for persecuting Steven Donziger for representing the Ecuadorians whose land was polluted by its oil extraction there.
George Monbiot: *This heatwave has eviscerated the idea that small changes can tackle extreme weather.*
(satire) *Deckhand Scolded For Throwing Trash On Floor Of Ship When Great Pacific Garbage Patch Right There.*
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Artificial imitation grass is bad for the environment and for wildlife, requires time-consuming maintenance, and gets much hotter than real grass. And it has to be watered (washed).
*Monopolists control nearly every part of the food production process.* And they are driving up food prices.
When the government regulators permitted these mergers, they were abandoning their mission. This was obvious, but democracy in the US had been undermined to the point where we could not get anyone to stop it.
*Democrats are facing asymmetrical warfare. It's time to wake up and fight back.*
The European Union is proposing a system of massive surveillance of all internet communication, in the name of "protecting children".
The two standard excuses for proposing repressive measures are "protecting children" and "stopping terrorism". These goals, while valid, are perfect for making citizens panic and rush to support the measures despite their danger.
MEP Patrick Breyer, who opposes the scheme, has prepared a web site that explains a lot more.
Biden threatened to attack Iran to prevent its developing nuclear weapons.
As the article says, "It makes absolutely zero sense that he won't delist the IRGC [revolutionary guards] to prevent an Iranian nuke but would launch a war to prevent an Iranian nuke." In addition, such an attack is much harder than it sounds. The crucial facilities are underground and Iran has years of experience resisting Israel's attacks.
Threatening Iran is also likely to drive it into a closer alliance with Putin. How foolish.
US citizens: call on the Senate to lower prescription drug prices now.
Biden dropped the plan to nominate an anti-abortion Republican as federal judge. He cited opposition by Republican Senator Paul, and did not give credit to the campaign for this.
If Republicans take the House of Representatives, they will conduct investigations of their enemies and attack the usual scapegoats.
Formerly unusual heat is harming agriculture across the US.
I think we must expect food shortage to become normal.
Does drought include West Virginia? If so, it might be used to pressure Manchin.
*Leak reveals corporate donors at anti-abortion GOP event: Tik Tok, Comcast, 3M, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, Juul, Koch Industries, Lowe's and Walmart.*
Some Republicans have used misleading fund-raising emails, and now Republicans are pressuring businesses to exempt their fund-raising emails from laws against spam. They also want to pass a law that their emails cannot be treated as spam.
With Rubio's plan for parental leave loans against Social Security, *"when mom or dad tragically dies a few years after having their third kid, the surviving spouse will have to send a big fat check to the SSA,"* until it is all paid back.
Senator Manchin killed any possible climate defense bill, after spending a year negotiating details of it.
This strikes me as negotiating in bad faith.
The town of Lytton, in British Columbia, was destroyed by a fire. Some residents have rebuilt their homes, and now they have been told to evacuate because another fire threatens the town.
*How Sri Lankan protesters unseated their president.*
Kicking out the Rajapaksas was necessary, but not sufficient. I fear that the only help that the US and other western powers offer will involve selling the country into something like slavery.
Ukraine is failing to arrange places to stay, and essential support, for people who flee from homes near the front.
I've been wondering why so many people remain in Ukrainian towns where they could be killed or maimed by shelling, and where they may be captured by the Putin forces and tortured, executed, or kidnapped and taken to Russia. Perhaps it is because they have no place to flee to and survive.
Putin is targeting Ukrainian civilians with long-range missiles.
Ralph Nader: corporations control almost everything in the US universities of today, including the basic assumptions that courses take for granted and inculcate.
This also includes the software courses use, which gives corporations power over every student.
(satire) *China Worried U.S. Outpacing [It] On Poorly Functioning Low-Speed Trains.*
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US job growth is slowing down, and so is the increase in wages. It would be foolish to raise interest rates.
Jim Hightower: *The GOP as a whole has mutated from a conservative party with some extremist factions to effectively proclaiming itself the Party of Extremism.*
Potential 2024 candidates are competing to be the most extreme fanatic.
*The Uber files: firm knew it launched illegally in Australia, then leaned on governments to change the law.*
Bernie Sanders: *Let's rebuild the US microchip industry — not give it a $50bn-plus check.*
*… in order to make more profits, these companies took government money and used it to ship good-paying jobs abroad. Now, as a reward for that bad behavior, these same companies are in line to receive a giant taxpayer handout to undo the damage that they did.*
If the US government does give these companies a subsidy, it should attach conditions — let us turn off the DRM, the management engine, and so on.
*Economists Warn More Fed Rate Hikes Would "Push Millions Out of Work."*
Accusing the US Supreme Court of deliberately attacking the basis of representative democracy, and fabricating far-fetched pretexts to do so.
(satire) *Increasingly Unhinged Eric Garcetti Covers Own Body With Metal Spikes To Prevent Homeless People From Sleeping On Him.*
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US citizens: call on Congress to tax billionaires' wealth.
On Jan 6, when Pence was at the Capitol, Secret Service agents tried to put him into a limo and take him to a "secure location". That would have achieved the wrecker's goal of sabotaging the formal election count.
Pence refused to enter the limo, and made it clear it was so he could continue with an honest count.
*More than 200 congressional staffers have urged the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to finalize a reconciliation package that includes robust measures to tackle the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency before the August recess.*
Meanwhile, a plutocratist Democrat in the House is trying to eliminate the tax increase for the rich.
*Sanders Warns Congress Is Working 'Behind Closed Doors' on $50 Billion in Corporate Welfare.*
Including 10 billion for Bezos.
*We're talking about giving $50 billion in corporate welfare with no strings attached — a blank check — to the highly profitable microchip industry.*
It makes sense to encourage companies to manufacture chips in the US, but not with a subsidy. We must stop "rewarding" companies for not doing some harmful practice. Instead we must punish the ones that do it.
The traditional way to do this is with a tariff. The World Trade Organization restricts that — its purpose, from the start, was to reduce the power that states have over businesses and give the businesses power over states, and it succeeded. That's why I call it a business-supremacy treaty. But there are ways to impose a tariff.
The problem is that when a country applies a tariff to a product that it does not produce, it only discourages use of the product. What we need is a tariff that applies to any given model of imported chips once some factory in the US produces comparable chips.
*Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe documents the discovery of torture chambers … in Bucha.*
The report also asserts that the Putin forces used Ukrainian civilians as human shields.
Bolsonaro has been encouraging violence against his opponents and threatening rebellion if he loses the election. Now one of his supporters has assassinated the treasurer of the Workers Party, which Lula leads.
The Putin forces seem to be burying the dead civilians of Mariupol in mass graves, without identifying them (which would be a challenge). Estimates of the number of dead range form 22,000 to 90,000, and perhaps vary even further.
DiEM25 reports that Greece is accused of throwing migrants into the Aegean sea, handcuffed.
NHS doctors will strike, using cuts in their pay (after inflation) to illustrate how the NHS is underfunded in every way.
A video shows Bannon stating, before the 2020 election, that the bullshitter was going to claim to have won, at a time when he had a temporary lead in the unfinished count.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect warehouse workers.
US citizens: call on Biden to open abortion clinics on federal land.
US citizens: call on Congress to expel the members who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
US citizens: call on Congress to end fossil fuel subsidies.
*Trouble for [the wrecker] as committee makes case Capitol attack was premeditated.*
This makes criminal prosecution easier, if officials have the guts to try.
Australia's Labor Party plans new fossil fuel projects. The Green Party is standing firm against them.
The current causes of high inflation are shortages and gouging — not wage increases.
Here's the pertinent data.
Australia and New Zealand are supporting a company that wants to mine the sea floor for valuable metals.
In principle, this is a very good thing to do, provided it is done in a way that avoids destroying sea-bottom life, which tends to be slow to reproduce.
They are working on developing robotic picking, to avoid the horribly destructive method of bottom trawling. However, environmentalists are worried that the machine's noises could destroy undersea ecosystems. Many undersea animals are sensitive to noises — the noise from ships is interfering with whales' hearing.
An investigation found that Queensland thugs sometimes arbitrarily disbelieve accusations of domestic violence, or refuse to take action.
The Biden administration told US pharmacies that refusing to fill a prescription because the patient is pregnant violates federal anti discrimination law.
This rule interpretation can protect their access to medicine for treating various diseases including lupus, as well as protecting access to some methods of abortion.
I expect that the fanatical justices will look for an way to overturn it.
Meanwhile, in Texas, doctors already hesitate just as Izabela Sajbor's doctors in Poland hesitated, with fatal results in her case.
*More than 200 congressional staffers urge Pelosi and Schumer to act on climate or risk dooming younger generations.*
Future technology may enable us to burn non-fossil gases, such as green hydrogen and methane from bio-wastes. But we can't use them in quantity in this decade, and probably not in the next.
*Turkey announces deal with Ukraine, Russia and UN aimed at resuming grain exports.*
*You have to wonder: if [the corrupter] did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, would all those prosecutors still be struggling with the question of whether they could or should indict him?*
I see the sense in thinking five times before turning a question of politics into a matter of criminal justice. That can undermine the political system. Sad to say the Republicans have already gone much farther than this, and the line these prosecutors are trying to hold has already fallen. Now the question is whether to fight back or let them win.
Uber's tactics: "break it till you make it".
Drought is emptying Lake Powell and Lake Meade, which feed two giant hydroelectric dams. In a year or two, they may cease to generate power.
George Monbiot calls attention to Bookchin's political philosophy.
*Let's Be Clear: The Battle Before Us Is Democracy vs. Autocracy.*
An analysis shows that NATO is quite capable of defending itself from any Russian conventional attack. Bombardment of cities with missiles is the one real threat that Russia has, and stopping the bombardment might require a counterinvasion — but Russia's trying this while fighting in Ukraine would be suicidal.
I have doubts about whether the various NATO countries could coordinate well, but their strength may be enough that they could win anyway.
I think of this as giving the NATO countries space to relax somewhat. They need to remain strong, but while they do, they are not in great danger.
US citizens: call on Biden to declare that the attack on abortion rights is a public health emergency.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to schedule a vote to let the Equal Rights Amendment take effect.
US citizens: call on Biden not to put bureaucratic barriers on canceling student loan debt
US citizens: call on the Republican National Committee to denounce campaign ads promoting extreme violence.
US citizens: call on Biden not to allow offshore fossil fuel drilling.
Climate insanity: Biden still wants to approve oil drilling in northern Alaska.
(satire) *Amazon Supervisor Delivers Rousing Speech To Employees About Honorably Laying Down Lives For Prime Day.*
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(satire) *Elon Musk Tries to Back Out of Twitter Deal by Deleting App from Phone.*
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*A New York Starbucks abruptly closed — was it retaliation for its union drive?*
Right-wingers call for redesigning schools as fortresses with no windows, but there is no reason to believe this will reduce the number of shootings in schools.
It will certainly do nothing to reduce the number of shootings elsewhere.
Meanwhile, stationing thugs in schools puts the students in danger of imprisonment.
Amazon regularly gives Ring door camera videos to the government without getting permission from the camera's nominal owner.
This is a secondary wrong which makes those cameras a little more unjust. But they would be plenty unjust without this. When millions of people make videos of everyone that walks past their door, and hand the recordings over to a particular company to store, that's asking for abuse of the recordings. That kind of system should be prohibited.
Basically, you should be required to set up the camera so that it only sees people when they approach your door, not when they pass by on the sidewalk.
The president of Sri Lanka did not resign when he promised he would. Instead he got an air force plane to take him to Singapore.
No doubt he has access there to secret funds, which the people say come from corruption. I doubt that Sri Lanka can convince Singapore to send him or his money back to Sri Lanka. It will be a great shame if he lives for the rest of his life in wealth while leaving his country in poverty.
Biden's Secretary of Veterans Affairs wants to close facilities and outsource services.
Outsourcing means the workers are paid less and the work has no accountability to the public.
*Groups Demand Egypt Uphold Right to Protest at Global Climate Summit.*
The corrupter tried to threaten witnesses who were going to testify for the Jan 6 attack investigation.
A rough estimate suggests that around 100,000 Americans develop long Covid disabilities each day.
Almost all of them decided to dispense with precautions, such as masks, because "nobody else does that any more, so they must be unnecessary."
*US, African Scientists to Collaborate on mRNA Vaccine Development.*
The US bends over backwards to aid Salafi Arabia's intervention in Yemen while falsely denying what it does.
Suggested work-arounds for various destructive acts by the Supreme Court. Some of them are substantial work.
Iran has jailed three film-makers, two of whom have won international awards, for protesting.
Secretary Becerra says that federal law overrides state abortion bans when an abortion is needed for a medical emergency.
This will remove the most dangerous aspect of those bans — if the fanatics on the Supreme Court do not invent an excuse to strike it down. It is hard to be confident that there is a limit they respect.
Almost 2/3 of Democrats don't want Biden to run again in 2024.
*Nearly $2tn of damage inflicted on other countries by [past] US [greenhouse gas] emissions.*
I think that how we cut down emissions is more important than who emitted how much already. The bad guys are those who fight against rapid cutting.
Amazon warehouse workers have a new slogan: "Don't quit, organize!"
*West must force private lenders to ease Africa's crippling debt, say campaigners.*
If they don't dare to overcome the investors in vaccine companies to free up making of vaccines, I see little hope they will do this.
Drivers for Uber make less than minimum wage — in London, at least — but there is no competition for drivers to switch to.
*Elon Musk wants everyone to have big families like him — but who's going to pay for them?*
It is rational to choose not to have children because raising them is so expensive. But if that is the main thing that convinces people to avoid having children, then survival of civilization will depend on making the children of poor people grow up in poverty.
We need people to be even more rational, and choose not to have children because the world can't support them. Plus, it's dangerous and painful, etc.
US citizens: call on Congress to: protect Birth Control from the supreme Court — pass a law protecting the right to use birth control.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act, which will enact ethical standards for the Supreme Court.
Germany will reactivate old, closed coal power plants to cope with the lack of Russian natural gas.
Since gas causes as much global heating as coal does, this substitution may not do any net harm. But what will happen to the gas that Russia is not selling to Germany?
Will Russia leave some in the ground? (I've read it is not feasible to entirely shut off extracting gas.) Will Russia sell it elsewhere? Will Russia burn it at the well-head, for the lack of any place to put it?
Driverless taxis operated by Cruise are not autonomous — they work on remote control. If they lose communication with the base, they stop.
I wouldn't trust any driverless taxi if it communicates with any server whatsoever — or if I can't use it anonymously.
The latest Jan 6 hearing showed evidence that the wrecker strove persistently to steal the 2020 election, first by lies and lawfare, then by planned provocation of violence at the Capitol.
Neelie Kroes, formerly head EU official in charge of internet policy, is accused of lobbying for Uber shortly after leaving that job.
Several UK ministers met secretly with Uber lobbyists.
Having those meetings may not violate any specific rules, but morally speaking it suggests they are working for the wrong side.
*Rashida Tlaib Is Trying to Fix the Espionage Act, but Whistleblowers Are Probably Out of Luck.*
Australia's privacy regulator will investigate two store chains for using facial recognition on customers in general.
Uber paid academic economists as much as $100,000 to publish research that would present the company as beneficial for society.
The article explains facts that these economists disregarded. However, just as crucial was to choose economists whose general assumptions predisposed them to evaluate based on parameters where Uber would excel, and ignore consequences that we might consider bad, such as wages that you can't live on.
*Tax cut pledges by Tory leadership hopefuls "risk stoking inflation and inequality."*
You can generally expect Tories to address any problem by cutting taxes for the wealthy. It's their hammer.
The UK's strict lock downs may have harmed the psychological development of children and teenagers.
The Spix's macaw has been reestablished in the wild after a massive, careful program of breeding the ones living in captivity.
The movie Rio may have helped inspire the effort.
Some black men run away from traffic stops because they are terrified that thugs will kill them.
Rationally, the chance that any given black man will be killed in any given traffic stop is minuscule. But I can't blame them for feeling terrified, given the thugs' patterns of bias and harassment. There is no reliable way for a black driver to get through a traffic stop safely — you can get shot for obeying the thugs' orders.
A regional drought in northern Italy has left the Po river nearly empty.
Agriculture has been devastated, and cities have water restrictions. I expect large wildfires to follow.
Iran is providing armed drones to Putin.
This support is comparable to (though much smaller in scale than) NATO's support for Ukraine. It is clear, and very regrettable, that the US blew its opportunity to reduce hostilities with Iran.
I think the US's motive was to appease long-time allies such as Salafi Arabia. This entails sucking up to Crown Prince Bone Saw — someone as murderous as the rulers of Iran, and even more oppressive to women and dissidents. And he doesn't even give the US strategic support when it asks.
Uber's highest executives approved of using this "greyball" deception feature to thwart government investigations of allegations that Uber was violating regulations.
If that wasn't illegal, the laws are too weak.
Sri Lanka's president tried to flee to Dubai on a commercial flight, before he ceases to be president, but airport staff stopped him.
Reversing Roe v Wade was nothing at all like the historic Brown v Board of Education decision that ruled out "separate but equal" education.
Modelling suggests that a middle-size nuclear war (India and Pakistan, perhaps) would cause a global ice age that would last centuries.
Most life in the ocean would starve, and so would humans.
Mines in the Black Sea are endangering all the countries with shorelines there. It will take years to remove them all.
In April, China froze the bank accounts of thousands of people because the bank was in danger of bankruptcy. Those people have effectively lost their money, and may be broke, so they protested in the street, and thugs came and beat them up.
*The UK’s unwritten constitution is put to the test by Johnson’s unprincipled acts.*
The Australian government must act to increase use of anti-Covid masks.
*Calls for inquiry into [French president] Macron's links to Uber lobbying.*
The European Commission is Uber-corruptible, and it's not only Uber that has corrupted it.
US citizens: call on the Senate not to recess while judicial vacancies remain.
Guber implemented a command (the "kill switch") to shut off access to its data base from headquarters computers, so that government investigators couldn't determine whether the company was breaking taxi regulations. The company used it in France, the Netherlands, India and Hungary, as well as Canada and Hong Kong. The highest executives explicitly gave the command for this. Even though they are no longer working for Guber, they should be prosecuted and punished for this crime.
As for Uber, let's punish it for all its wrongs by not giving it our money.
Illegal gold miners in Venezuela are shooting the indigenous leaders that are trying to keep their land free from gold mining and the poisonous mercury it releases.
*Restoring US abortion access won't be easy — but we need leaders who will try.*
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to preserve the millionaire's surcharge (passed by the house) in the tax and investment package.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
*Plant-based meat by far the best climate investment, report finds.*
British construction companies and their suppliers knew that they were building firetraps, and went ahead uncaring. Will Tory ministers trouble to make them stop?
*Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker?*
FOSTA/SESTA's censorship provides a model for how to quash discussion of abortions.
*Our "Normal" Climate Is Dead — Now We Live in an Emergency.*
Teachers and nurses in the UK are beyond ready to strike. Many are more than ready to quit.
Diptheria bacteria are now spreading in Australia due to anti-vax superstition.
*Biden's executive order on abortion is better than nothing. But not much better.*
After public criticism, a national store chain in Australia agreed to stop using facial recognition on customers.
Sad that the organization that criticized this undermined itself by suggesting that maybe this tracking would not be so bad if the company had better informed customers about it.
If the customers were well informed about the practice, the company could argue that they had implicitly consented to being tracked. That means nothing — it is no excuse for establishing universal tracking! Even explicit consent from millions of people would be no excuse. Systematic tracking of people is the soil in which repression grows, and that is an injustice to everyone.
Deep-sea mining is noisy, and the noise can travel for hundreds of miles in water. It can interfere with marine animals' reproduction or safety, and thus disrupt ecosystems.
American women have already been prosecuted for taking abortion drugs.
Turkey arrested a Russian ship carrying stolen Ukrainian grain, but now it has released the ship, for unstated reasons.
Scientists call for banning the use of nitrites in curing bacon. Other chemicals do the job equally well and are safer.
Journalist Maria Ressa has been convicted of libel (which is a crime in the Philippines), and could be sentenced to years in prison.
As for freedom of the press, it has already been sentenced to death in the Philippines.
Putin's henchmen have sentenced a municipal official to 7 years in prison for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine.
I wonder precisely what "information" they claim is "false"?
*Ukraine forces finally seeing impact of western [long-range artillery], says Zelenskiy.*
The right-wing scheme to allow state legislatures to disregard state constitutions for federal elections completely contradicts the ideas of "federalism" which the right-wing politicians claim to base their thinking on.
It seems that UK thugs protect other thugs from accusations of domestic violence by intimidating the accusers.
*School Surveillance Will Never Protect Kids From Shootings.*
Prominent Ukrainian medic Yulia Paievska was captured by the Putin forces in March, because they recognized her as somewhat famous. Then they tortured her persistently, constantly demanding she admit to some Nazi connections.
Why don't the Putin forces grab some Republicans from the US instead? Those may be glad to admit they are Nazis.
The last journalists reporting from Mariupol were told, "Get out — if they capture you, they will torture you to say that your reporting was fake."
Offering too much to other countries to free US citizens would put more US citizens in danger.
In my view, a patriotic citizen (of any country) does not ask its government to procure per release from a foreign prison through concessions that could affect the well-being or interests of the country. I am surprised by the expectation that the head of state personally involve perself in such negotiations.
Biden's officials have refused to decriminalize marijuana despite pressure from some senators.
Cory Doctorow: The Swerve.
With climate disaster approaching, making dangerous efforts to stop the disaster is now less dangerous than not making them.
Bogus Johnson said he will step down as prime minister when the Tory party decides who to appoint in his place. That will take time.
Florida adopted a new civics curriculum; now it is training teachers to teach it. The training pushes distorted history and establishment of Christianity.
*Indian government censors tweets critical of Indian [government's] internet censorship.*
The tweets in question were made by Freedom House, which evaluates countries on their respect for freedom.
Global heating may be slowing the reaction that removes methane from the atmosphere, even as it increases some production of methane.
If that's true, we may be doomed.
A politician who openly defies norms of honesty and gets away with that permanently erodes those norms. Especially when he gets away with it because his party chooses to sacrifice the norms to keep him in office. His eventual defeat does not restore the lost practices of honesty, nor the lost trust that depended on those practices.
This, for example, the persistent and unlimited falsification of the wrecker taught most Republicans to support lies when they lead to victory.
US citizens: call on Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to protect passengers and crack down on airline malpractice.
It's much less painful to find, in advance, that no space is available for your trip, than to get a ticket but learn, at the airport, that you can't actually travel. Fining airlines for the latter will teach airlines not to schedule more flights than they can actually operate.
US citizens: call on Congress to reform the Supreme Court.
I intentionally signed this petition as well as the more specific petition to expand the court, because other forms of reform would also do the job.
US citizens: call on Biden not to nominate antiabortion crusader Chad Meredith for a federal judgeship.
The Democrats should deny Republican senators veto power over judges from their own states, just as Republican senators did before. To insist on fighting according to rules that your enemy blatantly ignores is to be a chump.
Unilever treated the moral objections of the human Ben and Jerry to selling "Ben and Jerry's" ice cream in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory as an inconvenience and found a simple fix: selling the business, in Israel (including its colonies), to another company.
Ben and Jerry are suing Unilever to stop this.
I agree with them in supporting Israel but not its occupation of Palestine.
It is not unusual for supporters of Israel's occupation policy to accuse "antisemitism" when anyone criticizes that policy. This was used to return the UK Labour Party to plutocratist control by kicking out Corbyn and his supporters,
and AIPAC, the pro-Israel-occupation lobbying group, is now funding the campaigns of insurrectionist US politicians.
Australia has dropped the prosecution of Bernard Collaery, who was accused of helping to reveal that Australia had bugged the Timorese negotiating team. Australia was negotiating at the time the division of oil rights between East Timor and Australia.
However, prosecution of other whistleblowers that revealed Australian government wrongdoing continues. This threatens human rights and democracy.
The European Parliament approved a plan to direct some of the funds meant for decarbonization into natural gas development instead.
Counting the inevitable methane leaks, natural gas is as bad as coal.
The same plan allows for spending on nuclear power plants, too. While they do not emit greenhouse gas, they create the danger of nuclear accidents. Because of their great expense, this is a terribly inefficient way to decarbonize.
The Federal government habitually helps state governments get personal data from databases, and from people's computers. If it doesn't take action to avoid this, it will help states find abortion patients or abortion providers.
*Don't waste all your anger on Boris Johnson — save some for his enablers.*
Covering fields of crops with plastic sheets increased local temperatures by around 0.7°C and humidity by nearly 25%.
The large-scale use of this practice changes the region's weather.
Oxfam: *A broken food system is perpetuating hunger.*
We must not overlook the role of population growth in the malfunctioning of the system of supporting humans. Growing enough food and distributing it to those who need it, while protecting wildlife, will be much easier for a smaller population.
George Monbiot: *It's democracy v plutocracy — this is the endgame for our planet.*
*It's as if, when ministers go to bed, they ask themselves, "What have I done to make the UK a worse place today?"*
The mayor of Uvalde accused the upper management of the Texas Department of Public Safety of organizing to cover up the cause of the incompetent reaction of the "security" forces.
European countries are considering a continent-wide high speed rail network.
This is a very good thing to do; but to get the full benefit of it, we must campaign against demanding ID from each passenger. Several countries, including Spain and Italy, imposed that requirement as a measure for tracking Covid-19 cases — but now that there are so many cases, no country in Europe is really trying to find them all. That means this anti-freedom policy is no longer justified.
*[Senate Republicans] Colluding With Autocratic Orbán Government to Tank Global Tax Deal.*
*Are Democrats Really Clueless About Impending Election Doom?*
This criticism applies to the plutocratist Democrats, but we should not hold it against the progressive Democrats.
The possibility of resuming Obama's non-nuclear deal with Iran is fast ebbing away.
The blame for this falls on the wrecker, who cancelled the deal for his own personal ambition (the main reason for everything political he does).
Secondarily, it seems to fall on the Iranian hard-liners, for preferring to make Iran a nuclear power, and on Biden, who gave insufficient priority to avoiding that.
Given the repeated acts of terror (war against civilians) carried out by the Putin forces, we must treat Russia as a terrorist state.
I don't think that this offers a magic way to alter the direction of the war. I don't think that the countries which now do business with Russia will pay attention.
Shell companies systematically evade sanctions to buy phosphates in Syria and sell them in Europe.
Pakistan's suppression forces regularly kill or disappear people of the Baloch minority. They mete out cruelty to peaceful protesters.
There has long been a separatist movement among the Balochi, but extrajudicial killing and kidnapping are not a legitimate response.
US citizens: call on Marsh insurance not to insure the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
US citizens: call on Congress to demand accountability from executive agencies for supporting war crimes in Yemen.
US citizens: call on Congress to legislate to protect same-sex marriage.
Hong Kong artists published graphic novels about wolves and sheep, that could be taken as metaphorically depicting Chinese and Hong Kongers. The wolves are now prosecuting them.
Maya Forstater, who was dismissed from work for maintaining that gender identities are meaningless and all that matters is a person's biological sex, has won a discrimination lawsuit.
I disagree with those views, but I defend her right to state views that disagree with mine.
*A toxic combination of climate emergency, conflict and Covid is pushing some of the poorest countries into an acute hunger crisis.*
*In pretending that Covid is over, the UK government is playing a dangerous game.*
This applies also to the US, and at least most countries in Europe.
A group of human rights lawyers accuse Turkey of complicity in PISSI's massacre of Yazidis, and blame Syria and Iraq for failing to prevent the massacre.
They certainly did fail, but I wonder if they could in practice have done any better than they actually did.
After one too many blatant lies, two Tory ministers resigned rather than continue serving alongside Bogus Johnson.
Subsequently, other ministers joined them. The rest continue supporting Bogus, lacking even that minimum level of integrity. But the ones that resigned just now sat still for lie after lie.
Senator Manchin is blocking medicare expansion while the poor people in his state are suffering without it.
Republicans are recruiting poll workers who are trying to falsify the last election. They are unfit for the responsibility of a poll workers — to protect the integrity of the next election — since they show their goal is the exact opposite.
Can they be prosecuted for conspiracy to steal the election?
An interview with the author of the book, Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.
The interview starts by reminding Americans of the achievements of the New Deal did for the non-rich, then how President Carter and subsequent Democrats helped Republicans undo it. The last topic is how to save democracy by fighting for something similar to the New Deal.
(satire) *CEOs Explain How They Will Protect Abortion Rights [for their workers].*
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Many of the refugees that the UK plans to send to Rwanda are victims of trafficking.
The fact that one particular refugee is a woman should make no difference whatsoever to per human rights, but being a victim of trafficking (a form of enslavement) does make a difference. Victims of trafficking must be protected so that they don't fear to report the crimes that were committed against them.
The general attitude of the current UK government is towards law is, "Laws are weapons to hit you with — not tools for defending your rights." The plan to disempower the European Court of Human Rights demonstrates this.
A preliminary report finds that catching Covid-19 twice (easy to do, with the BA.5 variant) more than doubles the subsequent danger, compared with catching it only once.
The study measured how many people died, were hospitalized, or developed various long-term medical problems in the subsequent six months.
Each reinfection adds to the total risk, and the amount it adds increases too.
Perhaps this means we need the new vaccines developed for Omicron. Or perhaps we need a different one for BA.5. Meanwhile, making a practice of wearing a mask when you are indoors with other people, except for your few closest friends, is something you can do now to protect yourself and others.
Thousands protested in England against the high cost of living, which many people with low incomes cannot afford. Sad to say, they misidentified the problem as "high fuel prices", which means that their public message is a demand to make fossil fuel cheap. That way lies death!
Anyway, it's not only fossil fuel that low-income Britons can't afford. Inflation affects more or less everything. The right solution, to give them enough extra income that they can afford their living expenses, will address all of that.
Naturally, the Tories aim to repress any protest that people will notice. They recently passed new laws to do this. I wonder how many of these protesters supported the Tories for that, while Tory repression was aimed at environmentalists.
(satire) *Conservatives Explain Why They Oppose Abortions.*
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Global heating means, literally, hell on Earth.
US citizens: Call for Democrats to consider these several ways of restoring abortion rights.
Covid in New Zealand is increasing rapidly, as people can get reinfected just a few months after having it. Doctors call for masks, self-isolation, and other measures to slow the spread of the disease.
Thugs perceive black teenagers, and even children, as more adult than whites of the same age — and treat them as culpable.
*Dangerous strain of salmonella becoming more common in UK meat.*
*Potentially deadly [drug-resistant bacteria] found in British supermarket pork.*
Even worse, it was found in pork raised under a system that limits the antibiotics they are given.
*Turkey seizes Russian ship carrying … Ukrainian grain.*
Russia announced that the grain is Ukrainian, so now it must suffer the penalty.
Toronto homeless shelters require security guards to remove facial hair so that N95 masks will fit them well, and effectively prevent transmission of Covid-19. This rule is to protect health and safety during Covid waves.
Some guards, who are Sikhs, believe that this rule is unfair to them because complying with it would go against their religion. They contend that the state has no right to enforce rules on them that conflict with their religious observance.
Such a demand must be refused. No one is entitled to set aside a requirement to protect other people's health in order to practice a ritual. In the end, if you won't do the job as it needs to be done, you must leave.
In general, we should let people practice their religions when it doesn't cause a significant problem. For instance, if someone wants to wear a long bathing suit while swimming, there is no reason to forbid that.
It is also good to look for compromises, including with the Sikh guards. For instance, a small beard, like the one I wear now, can fit under an N95 mask. (I cut it to fit underneath.) Such beards should be permitted. Whether that is acceptable to a Sikh, I don't know, but if it is, they should be allowed to wear their masks over these beards.
It is reasonable to insist that an employer offer a worker some other job, when a new rule excludes per from per current job. But people with a religion should not thereby acquire more human rights than Atheists have.
*It's time for Democrats to fear their own voters.*
Xiao Jianhua, a Canadian billionaire (formerly Chinese) who was kidnapped from Hong Kong by Chinese suppression agents in 2017, is now getting a Chinese-style secret trial.
The series of kidnappings of Hong Kong businessmen terrified the citizens; for Xi, they demonstrated that the other powers would not take strong measures to protect freedom in Hong Kong.
Humans must prepare to be ready to care about the rights and needs of sentient AIs, so that we can respect their rights if and when we meet them.
Thugs in Akron shot and killed a black man who was running away from them.
He may have been a criminal — he had left a loaded gun behind in the car, and was reportedly wearing a ski mask (in June!). But he was not threatening anyone when they killed him. Perhaps he deserved to be tried and convicted — we don't know — but there were no grounds for killing him.
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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. That article is one of the exceptions.
Is there a need to give each person an official sex (or an official gender)? Maybe not.
It may be desirable to distinguish officially between being someone's biological mother and being per biological father.
*More than 180 British Council contractors left trapped in Afghanistan have been given immediate permission by the UK government to apply online to come to Britain, but no hint of how to get out of the country safely.*
It appears that UK bureaucrats followed their standard practice, with all would-be immigrants, of looking for excuses to refuse to let them in. It must have become a habit for them.
*Spain and Portugal suffering driest climate for 1,200 years, research shows.* Scientists now know what causes this; it is directly connected with global heating. As this gets worse, it will be a disaster for olive and grape production.
The UK plans to try again to send refugees to Rwanda, and do so before the start of a planned court hearing about whether it is lawful to do this.
That would go beyond disregarding asylum seekers' human rights: it would show contempt for the idea that they (or any people) have rights.
*Brazil sees record Amazon deforestation in first half of 2022.*
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to resign.
US residents (citizens or not): call on Dollar General to end low pay and unsafe working conditions.
*Boiling Like Frogs in a Pot, Will Democratic Leaders Ever Jump Out?*
I like what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted, but it may have a correctable problem. It appears that "codifying Roe" may be difficult or impossible to do in a way that the Supreme Court extremists can't wreck; but expanding the court to restore Roe can work, if we don't wait too long.
A "global energy price cap" could cut Putin's fossil fuel income. This article explains how it would function, by conditions on insurance for oil tankers.
For this to function, it needs various countries stand firm behind it, and others go along with it.
I wonder if China might defeat it by offering insurance without insisting on the price limit.
*"Morally Bankrupt" G7 Slammed for "Caving" to Fossil Fuel Lobby on Climate.*
*Oxfam Condemns G7 for Leaving "Millions to Starve" as Global Hunger Surges.*
Poland's abortion restrictions killed Izabela Sajbor. Her doctors knew she needed an abortion to survive, but they had to wait until the fetal heartbeat ceased; by then, it was too late.
Pszczyna is around 1-2 hours' drive from the border with the Czech Republic. I wonder if it was possible to save her, while she was in labor but not dying, by putting her in a car and taking her to a Czech hospital. Doctors surely would have said it was too risky for her to travel, and I suppose it was; but I think they were not reckoning with the risk for her of staying put.
*Evidence contradicts [Putinite] claims about Kremenchuk mall attack.*
I've seen report of a rumor that these missiles are inaccurate, so maybe the missile was fired at the repair factory and hit the mall by mistake, If that is true, it means another Putinite claim (that it was accurate) is false. And it is a war crime to bombard civilian areas with inaccurate weapons.
*Growing Food for Fuel Is Starving People.*
*[Biofuels], used on a large scale, … are no more sustainable than whale oil.*
Having enough additional food production to feed 2 billion people does not mean we should be content to see 2 billion more people! We can't afford that either way.
Part of that increment production could enable us to give every living person enough food. Part of it we could discontinue, preserving wild lands or rewilding some.
Stuart, a food delivery subcontracting company which handles delivery for Just Eat in the UK, uses a driver-guidance map system which occasionally sends drivers to the wrong place or via impossible routes. As a result, they fail to complete the job on time, and Stuart fires them.
If violations of workers' rights were punished vigorously, companies would not dare treat their workers like this.
Governor Newsom of California is running ads in Florida condemning Governor Desantis for attacking freedom there.
Murderous drug mafias have led the Netherlands to launch a sort of war on drug mafias.
I would guess that most of the drugs smuggled through the Netherlands is headed for other countries in Europe, and only a small fraction is for Dutch users. If there were a lawful way to buy cocaine for personal use, it might pull the rug out from under the mafias.
A subtle but general question in copyright law is the basis of a lawsuit: to what extent can a work of fiction embody the conclusions of historical research about specific people in its plot without counting as "plagiarism".
Viewing copyright as a system for encouraging authorship, the answer is clear: this should be permitted, because prohibiting it does not serve that goal and instead obstructs it. A fictional work is not a substitute for a historical work — they do not compete.
However, if you use the propaganda term "property" to conceptualize copyright, it will bias you in the wrong direction. You might unconsciously start from the assumption that authors (in practice, more often the publishing companies that published their work) are entitled to maximum power regardless of what effects that has.
This is one of the reasons to reject and shun the term "intellectual property." The other reason is that it's an over generalization about several disparate and unrelated laws. If you assume they are similar, you are likely to misunderstand each of them.
The habitual use of "smart" phones seems to be weakening people's memory, and is perhaps responsible for visible changes in brain development.
What should we do about that?
Like a true surrender-monkey, the author says it is unthinkable to do away with them. The article suggests that taking one-minute breaks would make the problem less. Well, one can hope.
I'm glad to say that I have ever had a "smart" phone. I know others who reject this; you can, too!
I go further than that, personally. All portable phones track your movements and can be modified remotely to listen to all the conversations around you, all the time — so I refuse to carry any kind of snoop-phone.
Texas "educators", fearing the law restricting schools from teaching about racism, proposed to rename slavery as "involuntary relocation".
That reminds me of "detained". and "rendition" two other terms designed to hide the reality of what they refer to.
If properly taught, comparing voluntary immigration with the transport of slaves could teach students a lot about what slavery was. But teaching that properly would be illegal in Texas — so they must have been planning to downplay the truth.
Historically, slavery in British colonies was achieved by forced transportation of Africans. But that was not true everywhere else. Slavery in Spanish colonies started with the indigenous people Spain had conquered. It did not involve transporting them, since they were worked as slaves in the land where they lived. That didn't make it less horrible.
Millennia earlier, the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt also occurred in the place where they already lived.
Politicians are finding excuses to increase use of natural gas. They cite various bogus excuses, but all this can really do is accelerate global heating.
Depending on your employer to pay for your trip to get an abortion puts you in a very vulnerable position.
In any case, I expect that only a tiny percentage of US workers work in jobs that are covered by such commitments. (Can anyone find out what percentage?) It's a nice gesture but it isn't a solution.
New South Wales directs thugs to persistently harass some teenagers (and their relatives) as part of a scheme to stop them from repeating delinquency.
US citizens: phone your senators (each one) and call on them to explicitly enact the authority for the EPA to regulate total emissions of any greenhouse gas.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Massachusetts residents: call on your state legislators to enact limits on state use of facial recognition.
Here's the text I gave as my personal message.
Please vote to enact the recommendations of the Special Commission on Facial Recognition Technology. Those recommended rules will limit the use of facial recognition by and for state government agencies so that it does not become oppressive — presuming that the rules apply to all jurisdictions that are part of the state. (I can't see an explicit statement about that.)
However, this will certainly not be enough to protect us from the repressive potential of facial recognition. Private companies can also use facial recognition in ways that repress people. Imagine that Amazon Ring joins forces with Clearview AI: it could track almost everyone almost everywhere. It could report every person from Texas that visits an abortion clinic in Massachusetts, for possible prosecution in Texas. There are many other unjust possibilities. Other methods of tracking, for instance through cellular phones, can have the same effects.
To prevent tracking technology from threatening many human rights, we need to legislate that it not be used in Massachusetts.
Thus, I urge you to follow the adoption of the commission's recommendations about governmental use of facial recognition with strict limits on private use of tracking technology.
New York thugs violently arrested a beloved saxophone player, injuring him and damaging his instrument, for playing without authorization in the subway.
Apparently Night-Mayor Adams has taken the bogus "broken windows" theory one step further. Breaking windows is undisputedly wrong, though not a heinous crime. Playing music in the subway is merely against a regulation.
The first lesson is, never vote for an ex-cop for mayor.
The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can regulate CO2 emissions only in limited, local ways, not aiming for major reductions in total planet-roasting emissions.
That means it can't do the one task most important for civilization's survival.
*Biden Urged to Take Emergency Action After "Disastrous" Climate Ruling by Supreme Court*.
What he has been doing recently is the opposite: unleashing a big increase in US oil extraction, which will take effect several years from now.
*Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling plan.*
It would be better for gasoline prices to increase in a slow, steady, predictable fashion, with gas tax increases scheduled in advance. But they must increase!
Now legislators are calling for expanding the Supreme Court to undo its climate attack, in addition to abortion rights and voting rights.
*In Blow to Voting Rights, [the Supreme Court] Saves Louisiana's Racially Rigged Electoral Map.*
*Arizona, the most "pro-life" state in America, "one of the worst states in the union" for child health.*
This is no surprise — the people who oppose abortion tend to reject the idea of systematically helping post born fetuses.
Senator Ron Johnson privately admitted participating in the fake electors scheme.
*California passes first sweeping US law to reduce single-use plastic.*
Queensland, Australia, will ban some kinds of single-use plastics.
Helium is scarce and it is needed for some important uses. We should not permit it to be used for inflating balloons!
Ecuador has reached a harmful deal to end indigenous protests: cutting the fossil fuel price.
This eases the immediate suffering of the poor, at the cost of making future suffering worse for them and everyone else.
The right way to help poor people cope with various kinds of high prices is to give them extra money which is independent of the amount of fossil fuel they use.
The deal also includes stricter geographic limits on search for and exploiting fossil fuel. That part is good.
*Mark Meadows's associate threatened [Cassidy Hutchinson] before her testimony.*
Senate Democrats are likely to fail to fill all the vacancies in federal courts by the end of this year. If they lose control of the senate, those vacancies will go unfilled until 2024 and might be filled by Republicans instead.
Why do they not eliminate the rule that allows individual senators to block these appointments? The Republicans did. Could it be that Manchin or Sinema is sabotaging this?
ATMs and vending machines in Russia run nonfree software — the machines' owners cannot fix them.
We might argue that it is ok for banks and companies in Russia to be attacked in this way, as punishment for Putin's invasion of Ukraine; but I expect the same attack vector exists in most or all other countries too.
Construction of the planned Sizewell C nuclear power plant would quite likely destroy an adjoining wildlife reserve.
That is in addition to wasting billions of pounds on inefficient decarbonization, rather than spending it on much cheaper solar or wind power together with temporary battery storage.
Federal funds will be available for projects to undo the damage done to poor or black urban neighborhoods in the 1960s by building highways through them.
India has banned a long list of single-use plastic products.
Global heating is wreaking ecological havoc on US national parks.
In some places, all the old trees are dying of various climate-related causes.
Let's get rid of the right-wing myth that abortions lead to psychological problems. They don't.
On the other hand, having a baby does sometimes cause them. (And non-mental medical problems, too.) Being compelled to have a baby you can't afford to take care of is even worse.
About the decades-long plutocratist campaign that led to last week's sabotage of the EPA's authority to defend human civilization from global heating disaster.
Google will delete location history data showing a visit to an abortion clinic and certain other sensitive places.
That would protect people from repression using certain data bases, but plenty of other companies collect location data in various ways, including mobile phone networks.
(satire) *Elmo Receives Vasectomy In PSA On Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
*Expanding US LNG Exports Would Be Planetary Disaster.*
Mississippi Republicans are determined to force rape victims to give birth.
Republicans are avidly trying to legislate repression against people who visit another state to get an abortion. If Republicans can't actually prosecute them, they will try to organize people to sue them into bankruptcy.
Criminalizing abortions converts the thug department into your enemy, even if you're not female.
Washington's governor Inslee has ordered the state thug department not to cooperate with requests from other states for information about who got an abortion in Washington.
*Beware: The Supreme Court Is Laying Groundwork to Pre-Rig the 2024 Election.*
If it rules that state legislatures have total arbitrary control over how to choose a state's electors, Republican states will use that to disregard the actual votes and make the Republican presidential candidate the winner.
Three of the fanatical in-justices have already said they are in favor of this.
We need to prepare to stop them, recognizing that we can't count on principles of jurisprudence to deter them.
Several Republican extremist politicians and candidates have posted messages hinting at violence against Democrats, or against non-extremist Republicans, and the trend is that the hints get more obvious.
The human immune system doesn't do a good job against Omicron, and even less against the newer BA.4 and BA.5 variants. People catch it over and over — and each time, long Covid may develop afterward.
The existing vaccines, developed against the original virus, reduce the rate of hospitalization and death, but don't prevent people from getting sick again and again.
What should we say about the Russian drug charges against Brittney Griner?
First of all, the "war on drugs" is an injustice. Nobody should be punished for possessing marijuana or its derivatives. On that basic level, the conclusion is clear: she ought to be freed,
There are many countries that do, or might, put someone in prison for years for carrying hashish oil. The UAE has an extreme practice of doing this, which is why I urge people not to transit through Dubai airport. The US remains allied with Dubai despite this and other nasty practices.
Indeed, the US might itself imprison Americans for doing exactly what she did. Marijuana products remain prohibited by the federal government and many states.
I won't argue that this makes it legitimate for Russia to imprison Griner for carrying hashish oil. It is wrong for any country to do that. A's injustice towards people P, Q and R does not justify B's injustice towards people X, Y and Z. However, it's a mistake to treat this as worse when Putin does it than when anyone else does it.
Is Putin using her as a hostage? Perhaps he is — he does that sort of thing. But it isn't very useful to harp on that. The more the US demands he release her, the more valuable she becomes as a hostage.
I suggest that Americans focus on demanding full legalization of marijuana in the US, a goal which is attainable. Then it would have more moral stature to call on other countries to release prisoners of war in the war on drugs.
US citizens: call on the Senate to suspend the filibuster and protect abortion rights.
At the same time, the Senate should legislate the right to use birth control and the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, since those are the next targets of the Court of Chaos.
How to do this so that the same court can't invalidate it may be a tricky problem. It may require expanding the court to cancel the religious extremists.
Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Tony Ornato told her the wrecker tried to grab control of his limousine, when Secret Service agents refused to take him to the Capitol where his followers were attacking. However, a Secret Service agent says that the wrecker did not actually do that.
This is no reason to doubt Hutchinson's testimony. She did not claim to have seen those events herself — she was reporting what someone else told her. If he changes his story now, that could mean he regrets having had loose lips.
However, I am sure that the the wrecking crew will try to twist this so that it appears to shed discredit on everything she testified to.
If the wrecker did to try to grab the wheel, I cannot blame him for that. If my driver flat-out insisted in taking me where I did not want to go, I would consider it kidnapping and I would think about how to escape from the car. To grab the steering wheel might be ineffective, or dangerous, but it would not be wrong under those circumstances. This, in itself, would not matter for his guilt or innocence.
What does matter is that he wanted to go to the Capitol and egg on his followers in attacking it. That was inculpating, even if he asked for it in perfectly civil terms.
*Australia's bush fire season has grown by almost a month in 40 years, study finds.*
We have a big increase in wildfires, and the times of year that they happen, in the US, Canada, Spain, and Siberia
Turkey demands that Sweden extradite "terrorist supporters" including those of the PKK, or it will block Sweden's accession to NATO at some later point.
Sweden recently "designated" the PKK as a "terrorist organization" without a trial. That's always an injustice, and this illustrates it. That wrong is practiced by many countries including the US. countries including the US.
It would be an additional wrong to do this and then suddenly start to extradite people who had previously been accepted as refugees. Sweden must at least give those people time to leave.
Has Sweden has also "designated" Rojava, the state of the Syrian Kurds, as "a terrorist organization"? I would think so. I fear that Turkey demands extradition of people for working with and supporting Rojava and its army, which is a noble cause, and I fear that Sweden will eventually do that.
Charges were dropped against the Michigan officials involved in poisoning the water in Flint.
For information about the poisoning and its causes, see these notes.
The charges were dropped because of a fundamental irregularity in procedure. I wonder if the charges can be refiled in the proper way.
Planet roasters continue making totally unreal claims about energy costs to try to sidetrack renewable generation and promote nuclear power.
New York State is drawing up a new gun permit law, to replace the one that the Supreme Court overturned.
*Google Maps or a random game on your phone could just as easily be weaponized against someone as a menstrual tracking app.*
To keep people safe, we must reject the practice of designing programs to send data anywhere off your machine, except on your explicit request.
*Greek [thugs] coerce asylum seekers into pushing [actually, rowing] fellow migrants back to Turkey.* And the thugs beat those up before before having them pushed back.
The refugees are told they will be charged as smugglers if they refuse to help row the others back.
The political situation in Colombia, and President Petro's prospects for changing it.
Subcontracted non-medical workers in British hospitals are now striking.
Subcontracting has been one aspect of the general Tory pressure on the NHS.
The EU is considering a sweeping requirement for all commercial services for users to communicate or post anything to scan all communications.
The stated purpose is to detect child sexual abuse, but since this is a tool for Chinese-style repression, it hardly matters what purpose is stated.
If Congress legislates to legalize abortion, it will not be straightforward to stop the fanatical Justices from finding an excuse to overturn that law.
According to the writer, the Court of Chaos has already abolished most of the possible bases for Congress to establish any sort of right. It is now easier to prohibit something nationwide than to make it lawful nationwide.
Here's a plan that would do the job — because it includes expanding the Supreme Court. That would make possible reversing the damage, not just the immediate decision overturning Roe v Wade, but the deeper levels too.
A defendant has appealed a conviction because it was based on ordering Google to reveal which people had done a particular kind of search.
Fanatical Christian officials could do this to find women who might have got abortions.
(satire) *Supreme Court Casually Mentions Nation Now Divided Into Six Provinces Ruled By Conservative Justices.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
New Zealand has designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist group.
It seems to fit that description, but these decisions should be made by a trial, not arbitrarily.
The Labour Party seems to be rejecting candidates for Parliament that it considers leftist.
Now that Labour fails to oppose plutocracy hard, striking workers provide Britain's opposition.
The anti-abortion crusade's next goal is to impose a ban on abortion on all Americans. Many of them are willing to do this by hook or by crook.
The Putin forces are threatening teachers in occupied Ukraine with firing, eviction, and possible imprisonment or violence unless they agree to teach Putin's censored curriculum. If they do agree, they may be punished by Ukraine in the future.
I agree that Ukraine should not punish civilians who collaborated under duress. But I wonder if there is any way for teachers (and others unwillingly under Putin's rule) to get out.
Certainly, Ukraine should try harder to make sure all teachers to leave areas that may soon fall to the Putin forces.
Human Rights Watch: *Palestinian Authority routinely tortures [prisoners].*
*NHS privatization drive linked to rise in avoidable deaths, study suggests.*
This is what we would suspect, but it will be harder for politicians to continue the privatization once this is more than just a suspicion.
The Republican party is supported by a coalition of single-issue voters for various issues, but it works for the plutocrats, and uses cruelty to make its supporters stop thinking.
Rebecca Solnit: *A planet in peril and so many Big Brothers: George Orwell would have been shocked.*
I hope some one can inform Solnit that some of us do not "opt in" to this surveillance and manipulation.
George Monbiot: rich countries should forgive poor countries' unpayable debt, so those can spend money on conservation and education rather than debt service.
Perhaps this should be conditional the beneficiary countries' cutting down the extraction of fossil fuels.
*Spread of "free-range" farming may raise risk of animal-borne pandemics.*
Democratic PACs are running ads to help extremist Republicans win primaries, in the hope that they will be easy to defeat in the general election.
Aside from the fact that this is like betting double-or-nothing, which is risky, it's also insincere.
Musk said he plans to fire many salaried Tesla workers and hire more hourly workers. In other words, he wants a more precarious work force.
He also seems to plan to hire other salaried workers later this year to replace those he is firing now. You'd think he could afford to keep those workers on for the few months in between. Or is this really a fire-and-rehire scheme to knock wages down? Musk has a pattern of covering up nasty actions with distraction publicity.
*Does Justice Clarence Thomas want to overturn a landmark freedom of the press ruling?*
The plutocrats that Republicans (and many Democrats) work for would sue newspapers over and over until they crack.
Australia is making a serious decarbonization plan for electricity.
I don't think it aims to do enough before 2030, though. Also, there are other sectors that need to be decarbonized.
*An [Imaginary] Anonymous Note to Liberals From a Right-Wing Supreme Court Justice.*
*War on drugs prolonged Colombia’s decades-long civil war, landmark report finds.*
The leftist guerrilla movements started fighting against the inequality of Colombia, but over the decades turned to drugs for financing and got sucked into that.
A summary of key points in Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony.
*"Hutchinson's testimony of the deeply detailed plans of January 6 and the inaction of those in the White House in response to the violence show just how close we came to a coup."*
In Poland, as in the US, right-wing Christians attacked abortion rights by taking over the country's supreme court.
Australia's new government has recognized that its carbon offset scheme is bogus.
That is true elsewhere, too. I hope other governments will recognize it.
The EU countries agreed on a law to stop sale of new fossil-fuel cars by 2035.
Avoiding global climate disaster requires much more than this, but at least it's a step forward. Other major economies (such as the US) have not done even this much.
US citizens: call on these companies to stop funding attacks on abortion rights: Amazon, Google, AT&T, Citi, Coca-Cola, CVS, Walmart, Verizon, GM, Comcast, Walgreens, and T-Mobile.
The Philippine government has ordered Reppler to shut down.
Soon President Do-Dirty will leave office and be replaced with President Marcos II. But I doubt that this will change anything.
The UK is building more renewable electric generating capacity, but missing the chance to use energy more efficiently.
A list of hotels that unions call for boycotting.
(satire) *Study Finds Majority Of Florida Students Can’t Pass Basic Test Of Racial Purity.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
"Hardening schools" and arming teachers will not prevent shootings in schools. The elementary school in Uvalde was already "hardened", and a bunch of "good guys" with guns could not figure out what to do.
*Facebook and Instagram removing posts with mentions of abortion pills.*
There are many more reasons to reject Facebook and Instagram.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who worked in the White House closely with the wrecker, testified about his conspiring with Giuliani and Meadows to launch the attack on the Capitol, and efforts to build it up and keep it going.
The Putin forces attacked a shopping center in Kremenchuk with two long-range cruise missiles, during opening hours when many shoppers were inside.
Both missiles hit the shopping center, which shows that they did not go off course. They were aimed right there. Firing them was a war crime.
The mall owners demanded stores disregard air-raids warnings and keep operating continuously. I hope the owners are sued into bankruptcy for that, at least.
*Trying to erase the biological definition of sex isn't just misguided — it's dangerous.*
Socially (or individually) defined gender rules are central for some purposes ‐ mainly those relating to social relationships (including but not limited to sexual or romantic relationships). Biological sex is crucial for some purposes — mainly those relating to reproduction, medicine and biology. We need to recognize both and distinguish them, in our thinking and in our language.
*Labour is losing its sense of purpose just as the trade unions that gave birth to the party have rediscovered theirs.*
Salesh Prasad faces deportation to Fiji, where he knows no one but can confidently expect to be persecuted because he is gay.
A 50-year-old man is not likely to engage in street fighting. There is no reason to keep him off the streets in the US, no reason to deport him to life as a pariah.
In general, adults who have lived in the US for many years, since childhood, should be free to remain.
*Putin needs a drawn-out war — the west’s timidity gives him one.*
The west should disregard Putin's absurd threats, not take them seriously.
The Christian extremists on the US Supreme Court wants to impose Christianity on the US. As a first step, it has voted to permit public school teachers pray loudly with students, pressuring the students to accept it.
School team athletes won't dare disagree with their coach, who could easily kick them off the team. They are at his mercy.
The once-a-decade biodiversity preservation summit ended in failure due to a lack of political will to achieve the goal.
* Silicon Valley lobbied to change EU policy. Europe needs better ways to hold firms like Google and Meta to account.*
* Almost everything we grow and raise in the US is facing some climatic stress.*
Ten years from now, it will go beyond inconvenient shortages and cause widespread hunger in the US. And if we don't curb global heating soon, the next step will be famine.
India has arrested journalist Mohammed Zubair for supposedly "insulting Hindus" in 2018.
The article does not tell us what the supposed insult actually said, but it is not crucial to judging the issue. Insult is part of freedom of speech, and it includes the freedom to insult anyone — even you or me.
Arundhati Roy: *Many, many of my beloved friends — poets, writers, professors, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists — are in prison, most of them charged under a dreaded law called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, all of them for speaking up for minorities, Dalits and forest-dwellers facing displacement and state terror.*
* What does it mean to be a bestselling author when the world is breaking? What does it mean to be considered a "success" when the world is failing and everything you care about is being decimated? What is the moral way to be? The moral thing to do?*
I would not use the word "decimated" to describe this. since in this context, with its proper meaning, it is an understatement.
The chief official of New South Wales, of the extractivist Liberal party (like the just-defeated prime minister), calls climate defense protesters "bloody idiots" for practicing civil disobedience tactics that call attention to the danger of his policies.
It is possible for civil disobedience tactics to backfire.
However, when it's an enemy of the cause that says so, you shouldn't listen. Just as Putin keeps saying "Ukraine will be destroyed," planet-roaster Perrottet says, "Your protests are self-defeating," hoping they will give up and cease to oppose him.
(satire) *Fisher-Price Plastic Food Giving Kids Unrealistic Expectation That There Will Be Enough Food.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
When the government describes private businesses as "partners", we have to suspect they have converted it into a partner for their profit. That is corruption.
The last example, that of private space stations, might not be so bad. If the three companies operate space stations at their own expense, and make a profit, that's not corruption. However, if the government subsidizes them all to "compete", we won't get the benefits of private competition, so we may as well pay publicly for a space station owned and run by the country.
*"If you know a woman, if you love a woman, if you ever plan on knowing or loving a woman, or if you are a woman — don't go to Malta."*
I think that is a slight exaggeration. It it surely safe for a man to go to Malta alone. It is surely safe for anyone who is not pregnant to visit to Malta for a short period of time. Nonetheless, the basic point is valid.
I am curious to know why Prudente could not take an ordinary commercial flight to Italy — or a ferry. Even if there was some risk in those options, they may have been safer than awaiting fate in Malta.
*Trump knew crowd at rally was armed yet demanded they be allowed closer [to the Capitol].*
Thugs attacked abortion rights protesters in several US cities.
*[Bogus Johnson] asks disaffected Russian academics to defect to the UK alongside Ukrainian colleagues.*
That would be wise and noble, except that we can't expect him to follow through honestly.
UK unions accuse the government of "pushing for post-Brexit trade deals with more than a dozen countries around the world that do not guarantee workers’ rights or systematically violate employee protections."
The natural result would be to undercut British workers with very cheap and terribly exploited labor.
*California to vote on [an initiative to add] abortion rights protection to state constitution.*
In the free world, the natural way to write a period tracker app would operate purely locally and would never tell any internet server anything about you.
With proprietary apps, you're always at some risk.
*Republican state Senate candidate arrested after punching [Democratic opponent] in face at abortion rights rally.*
The arrested man is also, as it happens, an official thug. What could be more natural?
For the first time, Colombia has a president that wants to tax the rich. He does not have full support in congress, so he may have to work hard to get that passed. I hope that he succeeds.
The Republican Party is a group of dangerous extremists led by dangerous extremists, and they stir up violence and hate.
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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. That article is one of the exceptions.
Signatories have agreed to "update" the Energy Charter Treaty, a business-supremacy treaty that makes countries pay billions for the right to reduce fossil fuel activities. The change would reduce this effect, but not eliminate it until 2033. That is inadequate.
Spain urged the European Union to quit the Energy Charter Treaty.
Robert Reich: *Why is the US about to give away $52bn to corporations like Intel?*
I have a different answer. Most US officials are so much under the thumb of business that, when businesses do certain things that hurt the country, the only solution they can propose is to pay businesses not to do those things. This leads to ever more levels of subsidy.
It used to be we had another kind of solution available: punish or tax businesses which did those things. But businesses lobby for the principle that every complaint about business conduct is an occasion for more subsidy.
Abortion rights supporters have protested across the US. I wish I could get a pointer to where and how to find these protests, in a place that doesn't require running nonfree software to see the information. If anyone can find such a site — or create one by scraping — I would appreciate the ability to direct others to protests, and if I know of another in Boston I could go to it myself.
The author of Sleepwalkers, a book on the start of World War I, says that the Ukraine war is not at all similar to that and decries the comparison.
US citizens: call on Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn to apologize and resign from leadership Posts, for supporting anti-abortion Democrat Cuellar against a progressive candidate.
US citizens: call on Congress to regulate PFAs.
*"I’m very afraid": same-sex couples express anxiety about a post-Roe landscape.*
Don't sit their expressing your fear! Organize, recruit, and fight!
Oxfam's head calls for a windfall profits tax to help feed poor people.
This tax could certainly do a lot of good for poor people, and I am in favor of it. In the recent past, there was indeed enough food available, so money to help poor people get a bigger share would solve the problem of feeding them. However, given Putin's blockade of Ukraine, is that still true? Would more money for the poor be sufficient now?
Microplastics in fresh water keep intestinal viruses alive for longer, thus helping them infect more humans.
States may prohibit in-vitro fertilization, because that tends to produce lots of extra embryos that do not get implanted.
Orange roughy reproduce very slowly — at 55 years old, only 50% are ready to breed. This means fishing must be curtailed to save the species.
*Techniques such as adding manure and compost to soils, growing nitrogen-fixing plants between crops, and cultivating a wide range of produce instead of sticking to the same crops, can all increase yields while protecting and improving the natural ecosystems of farms.* The result is to economize on chemical fertiliser.
Senator Collins and Senator Manchin, who voted to confirm Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, claimed they promised they wouldn't overturn Roe v Wade. Likewise Senator Murkowski.
If the senators mean this sincerely, they should demonstrate their sincerity by helping to undo their foolish and deadly mistake: by voting to expand the Supreme Court.
The Tories' response to the UK railroad workers' strike is to facilitate breaking any and all strikes in the future.
You've got to expect that a neoliberal party will try to keep wages down. It's a shame that Labour has joined that side.
*Biden administration signals fight to stop states banning abortion pill.*
Congresscritters who asked the corrupter for pardons recognized that their efforts to overturn the election might be criminal.
Starmer boasts of moving the Labour Party to the "center". He claims it will win because people hate the Tories. They do, and it may. But the emphasis on economic growth is explicit rejection of the goal of redistributing the wealth that the rich have taken away from the rest. That's what it means to be a "centrist" party — don't make the rich any less rich.
No wonder Starmer opposes unions when they show a willingness to do more than piss and moan.
We will never get a big change for the better from Centrist Labour. It will be more Tony B'liar.
NHS doctors insist that the crisis of the NHS is caused by Tory underfunding, not by Covid-19.
This makes sense, since the problems developed in a slow and steady fashion over ten years, and have been reported on across that time.
Simon Tisdell argues that NATO could provide safety for ships exporting grain from Ukraine. Even supposing the mines have been removed, I am not convinced this will work.
Russian missiles continue to hit nonmilitary targets in Odessa. They can surely hit the port area. Russia too has anti-ship missiles. They can hit freighters carrying grain, as well as their escorts. Who wants to risk a ship worth millions of dollars to find out whether Russia will sink it?
If Ukraine starts sinking oil tankers traveling empty to Novorossiysk to pick up Russian export oil, this would end Putin's cocky contempt for sanctions. It might also convince Putin to make an agreement to allow shipping to pass unobstructed to both Ukraine and Russia. He would carry out the agreement, since attacking Ukraine's shipping would bring retaliation in kind.
Menial workers in the UK are driven so hard that they need marijuana and cocaine to deal with the pain. Some of them have to thread their lives around the constant danger of a drug test.
The reversal of Roe v Wade was the first application of a general decision by the Supreme Court to require less justification to reverse some kinds of precedents.
This will put many rights in danger — any right that was not accepted and ruled on 150 years ago.
After a shooting in a gay bar, the city of Oslo cancelled the Gay Pride march scheduled for the following day.
I think the cancellation was a mistake in strategy, because it magnifies the power of terrorists. To go on as planned would be a display of strength.
A car driver went out of his way to run into abortion rights protesters. He was obviously using his car as a weapon, but the thugs let him go.
Iowa, where that took place, passed a law to shield drivers who attack protesters with their cars from lawsuits from those they hit. Nominally, that shield is limited to drivers "exercising due care," but it will serve as an excuse for antiabortionist juries to endorse injuring people.
However, that law doesn't affect criminal prosecution. The driver committed attempted murder. Is there any way to make the state prosecute this crime?
*The anti-abortion movement has an extensive history of violence* in the name of "protecting life". Violence to intimidate opposition is a standard part of right-wing extremism, and we see plenty of it now from US extremists (Republicans).
UK laws turn foreign workers on fishing boats almost into slaves, since they are not allowed to come into port with the boat. If they complain about illegal treatment, they get fired, and that means they get deported.
Ukraine's legislature has passed a law to ban the importation of printed books written in Russian. It will also ban the printing in Ukraine of writing by post-1991 Russians. Both of these restrictions are harmful and wrong.
The most popular or important classic books in Russian may be printed in Ukraine, but a far larger number of important works of literature, science or scholarship will not be available to Ukrainians unless they leave the country. Even if we consider only the works of practical use, such as textbooks and reference books, Ukraine with its smaller population will not have produced comparable replacements in Ukrainian.
The "Culture" minister showed his lack of appreciation of literature by referring to books as "creative product" and "content."
In addition to being wrong, these laws are also strategically foolish. There are millions of Ukrainians whose primary language is Russian. Putin claims that they support his invasion, but most of them don't. Thousands of them, starting with President Zelenskyy, are fighting for Ukraine. Ukraine must treat them as the equal of other Ukrainians,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for supreme court justices to be impeached.
I would agree, except that we know it would be futile. Republican senators will not vote to remove them from office.
*We Americans are dancing on the Titanic. Our iceberg is not far away.*
I have to respond, "Which one?" There is the right-wing extemists iceberg, the China's world domination iceberg, and behind them the global heating disaster iceberg that can sink the US, China, and the rest of human civilization at the same time.
A US appeals court sustained a state law penalizing contractors that won't condemn the Palestinian Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign.
In addition to the personal suffering, banning abortion will spread poverty and cause significant economic harm to the US.
That is a significant step towards bringing rule of law to the Guantanamo prisoner, but it does not get all the way there. The US must punish the torturers, and hold no one prisoner without a true, fair trial.
(satire) *Anti-Abortion Advocate Excitedly Switches Focus To Shaming Young Unwed Mothers.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
Don't assume that coup-resisting Republicans are not the enemies of our liberty.
Continued working from home (at least part time) may reduce the demand for office space in London by 20%. If that happens, converting some of that space into residences could be extremely important to provide enough homes.
This will surely not be limited to London. I wonder whether we can get some more housing in Boston this way.
(satire) *Nation's Centrists Stubbornly Double Down On Claim That Roe v. Wade Not At Risk.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
California has joined Connecticut in passing a law to shield abortion providers and patients from lawsuits in other states.
This is a useful partial step, but a woman that wants to travel from Texas to California for an abortion will need transport in Texas to reach California. California laws can't shield a person or company in Texas that provides that transport.
Also, if a state makes it a crime to travel to California (for instance) for an abortion, I don't think California can protect those women from prosecution if they returning home afterwards.
I wonder what the Supreme Court would say about the constitutionality of a law in state A that penalizes people for traveling to state B and doing something which is lawful in state B. A reasonable Supreme Court would say that one state can't impose its own jurisdiction on other states. But with the Supreme Court under the control of religious fanatics, ready to tear up all manner of precedents to get their way, I fear that they will construct some excuse to "bless" such laws.
Ralph Nader reports on Wendell Berry's condemnation of "free trade".
To quote Berry, "Unsurprisingly, among people who wish to preserve things other than money -– for instance, every region’s native capacity to produce essential goods -– there is a growing perception that the global "free market" economy is inherently an enemy to the natural world, to human health and freedom to industrial workers, and to farmers and others in the land-use economies; and, furthermore, that it is inherently an enemy to good work and good economic practice."
Transportation of food causes 6% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
The heat in Phoenix nowadays kills homeless people.
*Israeli settler shepherds displacing Palestinians by stealth.*
The right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court are thinking about reversing the past decisions that legalized contraception, oral and anal sex, and same-sex marriage.
This would be repression in the service of repression.
*Shireen Abu Aqleh killed by "seemingly well-aimed" Israeli bullet, UN says.*
Covid-19 vaccines prevented 20 million deaths in 2021, estimated by a study.
The study estimates that vaccinating 40% of the population of every country — presumably the more vulnerable groups — would have saved 600,000 more lives during that time.
US citizens: call on Congress to extend and expand Social Security.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to expand the Supreme Court.
Everyone: call on McDonalds to carry out its commitment to reduce use of antibiotics in its beef.
This is important to prevent the spread of resistance to those antibiotics.
US citizens: call on Biden to end sanctions on Cuba.
The railroad strike has brought union leader Mick Lynch to public prominence — breaking through the lid kept on by the de-Corbynated Labour Party.
Former union leader Arthur Scargill is picketing again at age 84, and damns the Labour leadership.
What should we say about a high school student who posted nude photos of his girlfriend without her permission?
I decided many years ago not to make, or have, a nude photo of any girlfriend or lover. Why so? There's no risk that I would ever publish them, but there would always be a risk that somehow or other someone else would get per hands on them and publish them. No nude photo, no risk it will leak.
I think society would be better off if we all got used to public nudity, but I wouldn't want to cause anyone to involuntarily become a pioneer in bringing that about.
Privacy and justice are good reasons for rejecting all-digital public services; however, for those who can't understand that issue, there are other reasons — concern for people who find it too hard to use the shiny new unjust systems.
Paper train tickets are crucial for freedom because they make anonymous train travel possible. Paying for a parking lot without a snoop-phone is one of the things needed to make anonymous car travel possible, though that also requires a government which doesn't try to track everyone's car travel.
The US Supreme Court is embarked on a radical right-wing overturning of long-established laws. Now it has effectively abolished state gun permit laws.
Even in the "wild west", people were not allowed to carry guns around in town without authorization.
I wonder whether this ruling allows states to require people to study and get tested for a gun license, much as they have to get licenses to drive.
I saw a petition to impeach Justice Thomas. This would be a good thing to do, but the Republicans in the Senate will defend him from punishment no matter what he does, just as they defended the corrupter from impeachment after his attempted coup.
It is ironic that the Supreme Court members who voted for this, and their families, have just recently been granted additional security protection. They knew that they were about to exacerbate the problem, but they themselves won't have to face the consequences along with the rest of us.
E-scooters for rent in Rome have become a practical nuisance and cause of accidents.
They are also a system of general surveillance, since the only way to rent one is with a snoop-phone and the only way to pay is with a credit card. I might perhaps use a private e-scooter, but I would never rent one through the systems they actually use.
We were invited to find it absurd that GEICO was required to pay damages to someone who caught a disease via sex in an insured car.
In fact, GEICO was getting deservedly punished for compelling its customers to use arbitration.
The Supreme Court undermined enforcement of the requirement for Miranda warnings. In many situations, omitting a warning can no longer be punished.
Isn't it odd how right-wing politicians habitually condemn "big government" except when an agent of the government (such as a cop) treats you unjustly?
Three crimes that the wrecker could be charged with based on known evidence.
He told Justice Department officials, "Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen," according to the testimony of one of those officials.
Six congresscritters and one appointed official who asked the corrupter for a blanket pardon after Jan 6.
The Supreme Court made a ruling that prohibits nearly all sorts of gun control law.
I wonder what sort of "historic traditions" are allowed. The New York State gun permit law, which has been a tradition for 100 years, is clearly not considered historic enough. How old does a tradition have to be?
(satire) *Christian Parents Encourage Child To Save Self For Church Leader.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
(satire) *Experts Recommend Raising Minimum Age For Committing Mass Shootings To 21.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
(satire) *New Footage Shows Uvalde Police Rushing Into School To Take Selfies With Shooter.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
Oleh Bondarenko survived the Putin forces' torture and murder camp, with various permanent injuries from beatings. He survived because the soldiers thought they had beaten him to death.
He said they murdered captives every day.
Putin forces soldiers killed other civilians by shooting their cars as they tried to flee.
*Biden condemns US supreme court's "tragic error" of overturning Roe v Wade.*
The loss of abortion rights in many US states will mean death for many women. new and previous children growing up in life-stunting poverty, and more population growth which implies a bigger global disaster in the future.
Right-wing fanatics plan to hound anyone who comes in contact with providing abortions, even across state lines if they can.
*Our global food supply is at risk when high gas prices limit the creation of fertilizer.*
We should not draw the direct and simple conclusion that the article leads to. Keeping fossil fuel cheap means global disaster. That is not a solution, that is the worst possible problem. Fossil fuels must be more expensive ten years from now.
George Monbiot writes about regenerative farming, that can produce good yields with less fertilizer (and perhaps with more humans working the farms). I have no expertise on that, and I don't know how well it can actually work, but it would be good to organize to give it a try.
Meanwhile, if making fertilizer pushes the world into unsustainability, we can certainly head in the right direction by (1) eating less meat (a large fraction of grain production is for meat) and (2) having fewer babies.
First, we could end growing grain for biofuel.
We must kick the habit of describing warm (or hot) weather as a good thing. Soon it will be deadly.
John Feffer: *China will decide the outcome of Russia v. the West.*
Paramount has taken a stand against censoring old movies based on modern compulsory sensitivities.
If that were the only issue to judge the company on, I would admire it. However, I expect that streaming follows other streaming dis-services, imposing DRM, forcing people to identify themselves, and snooping on them. That deserves condemnation and rejection.
*Houston Forces Private Businesses to Install 24/7 Citywide Digital Surveillance Cameras for Warrantless Access by Police.*
I've called for surveillance cameras like that to be forbidden outright. Security cameras should have no network connectivity; they should make local recordings and overwrite them a few weeks later.
Hot ocean bleaches sea sponges, just as it bleaches corals. This means global heating could wipe out some species of sponges.
Yanis Varoufakis: *A half-century long power play, led by corporations, Wall Street, governments, and central banks, has gone badly wrong. As a result, the West's authorities now face an impossible choice: Push conglomerates and even states into cascading bankruptcies, or allow inflation to go unchecked.*
Reporters without Borders says it has conclusive proof that Russian soldiers murdered journalists Maksim Levin and Oleksiy Chernyshov in cold blood.
*More than half of U.S. adults report going into debt because of medical or dental bills over the past five years.*
"We've built a [medical] system that is more effective at extracting money from people than caring for them."
Canada has published regulations to put an end to most single-use plastic.
Some indigenous groups claim the power to "make decisions about their cultural heritage" — a power that exceeds even what Disney claims. This includes demanding — as if by some sort of right — the return of objects they once made, independent of how anyone else acquired them.
Such power over others' culture and knowledge is an injustice in Disney hands, and it is an injustice in Warlpiri hands.
Lauren Weinstein: *Internet Users' Safety in a Post-Roe World.*
He is coming towards what I've said since 2013: the only reliable way to prevent data from being misused is not to collect it.
I suggest that states begin legislating to allow people to get abortions, birth control and prenatal care under a pseudonym, and with other data altered to block identification.
*Multiple European countries are experiencing a significant surge in new Covid-19 infections.*
They have systematically let their guard down. Vaccination will keep the rate of deaths down, but it is no guarantee against lasting incapacitation by long Covid.
You need to use precautions with your friends as well as with strangers. Overall, the chance of catching Covid from friends is greater than that of catching it from strangers. You probably encounter far more strangers than friends, but you spend much more time, and in closer conditions, with each friend.
Global heating is producing extreme weather events so often that, by chance, sometimes two of them combine to produce a local disaster. That just happened in Yellowstone National Park, where it permanently changed the course of the Yellowstone River.
"Recovery could take years", but the concept of "recovery" presumes that the weather system will be stable enough that there is a new "normal" to be found. That may not happen — global heating is accelerating.
The flooding shut down the water processing of the city of Billings, which almost ran out of drinking water.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to take action against state laws that punish protesting.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the Green Postal Service Fleet Act of 2022, which would require that the new Postal Service trucks contract be at least 75% clean electric vehicles.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Social Security Inspector General Gail Ennis to forgive and return bogus penalties that the corrupter imposed on seniors.
US citizens: call on Congress to limit the president's emergency powers.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
In the UK, even an official warning from thugs to a teenager can blight a career for life.
It doesn't surprise me that this happens more often to blacks. Once there is a repressive system, little details where someone has discretion are easily warped into systemic racism.
The UK seems to be egregious in this regard. In the US, according to my understanding, even the criminal convictions of minors are usually erased from their records.
*Cutting works by Russian artists is "stupid", says Pussy Riot member.*
I agree. We should not punish individual Russians for the crimes of their government.
Macron's neoliberal party has lost greatly in French legislative elections, and no longer holds a majority. He will probably try to make a coalition with the right-wing Republicans.
The left alliance has gained sets, but so has the extreme right-wing (which is not, at least not overtly, as extreme as the US Republicans).
The UK plans to subcontract the data management for the NHS to a company. That's bad enough, but they've chosen Palatir, a spying company, and want to give it all sorts of data about everyone.
Mask mandates in parts of the US substantially reduced the incidence of Covid-19 in those parts, compared with the parts that didn't have mask mandates.
We should continue these mandates today.
The European Union is considering a massive plan to protect wildlife, including cutting the use of pesticides by half.
Biden plans to limit the amount of nicotine in tobacco sold in the US. This will make it less strongly addictive and thus help people to quit.
Bezos intentionally made Amazon drive warehouse workers so hard that each week 3% quit. The aim was to make them work desperately hard. By 2024, Amazon will have hired and driven away all available workers.
It could try giving its workers decent pay and working conditions. Then they might continue working for Amazon.
Nowadays, millions of Americans vote for what's bad for them in the name of anchorless abstract "principles."
Americans used to understand their interests, and vote for them. The challenge was to convince Americans to care also about the needs of others (American and not) who are worse off than them, and vote for the general good.
*US Forest Service admits "multiple miscalculations" caused New Mexico fire.
Since prescribed burns are the recommended way to prevent devastating wildfires, I think the crucial question is whether it is possible to carry out prescribed burns safely nowadays.
The Labour Party's leader told his shadow cabinet not to support the railroad strike.
However, some of them joined the picket lines in defiance of him.
Starmer is like the so-called "centrist" Democrats in the US.
Putin's sock puppet regime, the Donetsk People's Republic, says it will execute US citizens who joined Ukraine's army. Putin claims to have no control over this.
The US could respond by bombarding Ukraine's enemies in the Donetsk People's Republic. If Putin has no control over that country, he has no basis to complain.
* Big donors who supported the insurrection and the election denial that inspired it are spending to influence this year's races.*
*A few [not totally far-gone] Republicans stopped Trump — but his threat to democracy isn't over*
The Republican Party continues to push its Big Lie, rich donors support it, and big liars are winning primaries.
An example shows how the system of carbon credits is leaky and easy to game.
This is why I say we should have a carbon tax instead.
One single Democratic state assembly member had the power to block a bill to divest California pension funds from fossil fuels, so that the assembly could not vote on it.
The war in Ukraine will have to end through negotiations between Ukraine and Putin.
I agree that we should not pressure Ukraine into accepting defeat, nor into fighting further if at some point it cannot continue.
35 American cities that will be largely inundated by the end of this century.
Since predictions for future sea level rise keep increasing, very likely it will happen some decades sooner than that.
The WTO took one basic but weak step towards ending overfishing.
Fossil fuel companies have invented a new measure called "carbon intensity" which they pledge to reduce. But it is a mirage: they can decrease "carbon intensity" of their activities while increasing the total emissions from burning their product.
The Jan 6 investigation committee is making its message clear on TV, but not following through to call Americans' attention to it effectively, even as the party of the lie is working to draw attention away.
*What can we do about poverty? First, stop blaming people for being poor.*
We live in a world of systems, and the systems have great influence in how rich or poor anyone is. To overcome that influence is often very very difficult. We must not blame individuals for which way systems have swept them.
*Russian spy caught trying to infiltrate [the International Criminal Court], says Netherlands.* He was preparing his cover story for years.
Apparently Putin has, since years ago, expected Russians or officials of Russian client states, to be tried there.
Western Europe is experiencing a record heat wave.
The heat wave in Spain is occurring just as baby swifts are too young to fly. It is cooking them in their niches.
The article is long, and it is only after hundreds of lines that we find Clanchy defend using the terms "chocolate skin" and "almond eyes" to describe pupils who used those same terms to describe themselves. Everyone else quoted has no doubt that those are insulting, but they do not try to justify this, and it seems totally arbitrary to me.
Chocolate is something delicious and much loved — I can't imagine it as negative. In the 1980s some black MIT students set up a dorm floor to live together in and called it "Chocolate House". Did they think they were insulting themselves? I think it was an expression of pride.
My conclusion is that Clanchy did nothing actually wrong; she was the victim of hypersensitivity, magnified by an ideology that calls for magnifying any and all hypersensitivity (except when on behalf of white males).
Mike Pence is a Christian extremist who nonetheless resisted pressure to join in overthrowing the US government. I disagree with his politics deeply and broadly, and I would not want to publish a book of his writing. But it is dangerous if books by people with his views are generally blocked from publication by people with views more like mine who work in the publishing industry.
Prisoners in Haiti are starving to death — prisons have no food to give them.
The corrupter (Trump) is starting to treat his apprentice (Dementis) with an unfriendly rivalry.
I expect that they will compete for the prize of being the most extremist.
*[Justice] Sotomayor accuses supreme court conservatives of dismantling church-state separation.*
*Georgia elections workers describe how [the wrecker] upended their lives.*
Many US hospitals have installed a tracking pixel in their web sites, and various actions on those sites send identifying data to Facebook.
Bogus Johnson intends to break the rail workers' strike by hiring temporary scabs.
Who can be prosecuted over the corrupter's fake electors scheme, and how?
The state of Victoria (in Australia) wants to pass a law to punish offending the sentiments of the public. This is prima facie unjust.
When I look at the description of the actions of Richard Pusey, presented as an example of what this bill aims to criminalize, I simply cannot see what is supposed to call for punishment. Who did he harm, and how? Nobody, as far as I can see. The article makes no attempt to explain, and that's a sign that it may be wrong.
I wonder: if a reporter had been there, and filmed them instead of Pusey, is that also intended to be criminalized? I have no idea.
The proposed law is so vague that no one could ever feel safe from being prosecuted under it. People could literally be tried in Twitter, as public opinion is shaped to take offense or not.
Don't risk traveling to Malta if you're pregnant — a miscarriage there could give the state an opportunity to kill you.
Fortunately she was able to get away to Spain
Biden is backing a foolish method of helping poor Americans afford expensive gasoline: temporarily eliminating the gasoline tax. Making fossil fuels cheaper for their users is the exact opposite of what we need to curb global heating.
The right way to help poor people cope with current high prices for gasoline — and the high cost of living, in general — is to give them some extra money. They will be able to spend that money on gasoline if they need to, but if they conserve gasoline, they will be able to spend it on something else.
Since both methods require Congressional approval, there is no reason at all to choose the foolish method, except that planet-roaster congresscritters might prefer it.
A similar crisis is affecting Ecuador. Massive protests against a planned increase in fuel prices have shut down he country, and the president is responding with repression
The right solution for Ecuador is like the right solution for the US: give the poor extra money to cover the extra costs.
Yet again, an app used by soldiers makes it possible to spy on them.
This was due to an unnoticed weakness in a "social" feature designed to increase user engagement by enabling a kind of interaction between users. But, at a deeper level, it was caused by using an app designed to snoop on its users, who are habituated to being snooped on and not in the habit of asking whether an app can do so.
Basically, if society is set up to track people in myriad ways, it will track secret agents, and abortion patients, in myriad ways.
Young-ish Europeans have filed a suit in the European Court of Human Rights calling for overturning the Energy Charter Treaty.
That is a business-supremacy treaty which makes governments pay billions to cease promoting fossil fuels.
The lawsuit is a long shot, but I don't know of any other method that could destroy that treaty.
Apple is developing software to assure Cloudflare that the user is not a robot. I suspect this is nonfree software that communicates via a secret protocol that no one else will be able to implement.
I fear that this is a step towards a secret web protocol that will exclude everyone that uses a computer whose browser isn't endorsed by Apple or Google.
The Labour Party won't allow Corbyn to run again for Parliament as a Labour candidate. It demands he apologize for a false accusation.
He may run as an independent instead.
Hydrogen as a fuel is safe for the climate only if we prevent it from leaking into the atmosphere. It is not a greenhouse gas itself, but its presence in the air exacerbates the problems caused by methane and ozone.
James Marchant said that Nevada elections were totally rigged, every year. He just won a Republican primary election and now presumes that his election was honest.
The US must regulate greenhouse gas emissions and reduce them to zero, US scientists argue.
PIS fanatics attacked a Sikh temple in Kabul. The Taliban tolerate sikhs and allow them to have a temple, but PIS has no tolerance.
US citizens: call for naming catastrophic storms after fossil fuel businesses.
This should include the banks and insurance companies that make the fossil fuel projects possible.
*The Federal Reserve says its remedies for inflation "will cause pain."* What they don't say is that this will mainly be to poor people.
In the UK, 25% of prisoners have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The nature of prison makes them upset and can provoke violence.
I wonder if ADHD has to do with why they committed the crimes they were convicted of.
The bad functioning of the US medical system is estimated to cause around 75,000 additional deaths per year — that's from before Covid-19.
Workers at one Apple store have voted to unionize.
I do support their demand for better pay, but treating workers decently would not excuse the nasty things that Apple does to its customers, and non-customers that might have airtags planted on them.
Robert Reich calls cryptocurrency a Ponzi scheme, and calls for regulation so people don't get invited to get screwed.
Australian thugs claim to have feared they would be killed by a group of climate defense protesters who never once physically attacked anyone.
The thugs' accusation seems to start from the premise that making unusual objects to block streets is equivalent to violence against persons. What a vicious accusation.
Ironically, the thugs are the ones participating in a deadly plan to continue increasing carbon emissions that have already started killing people, to kill millions of people, in coming decades.
*Russia-backed network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified.*
The disinformationists focused on smearing the While Helmets, a medic and rescue group in rebel-held Syria.
If you read progressive web sites while the civil war was hot, you probably saw a lot of this. I did. It didn't convince me to believe it, but did convince me to doubt. I had no source that I was truly confident of to show me what the truth was.
Former prosecutors say that testimony in the Jan 6 committee's hearings bring us close to being able to prosecute the wrecker.
However, the Attorney General carefully shows no indication of where things might stand in regard to that.
The Pentagon is dreaming up bizarre imaginary uses for a large rocket for transporting people super-expensively from one place on the Earth to another.
They're unfeasible for actual use, but might be an excuse to obtain a lot of funding.
Environmentalists are pushing governments to adopt policies to avoid causing a mass extinction event.
The most important thing to do is to bring global heating to a halt. If we make the heating taper off, we will be able to take the secondary actions to protect species in marginal situations. But if the temperature keeps increasing, that will overcome the limited resources we could possibly muster to save some species.
Senator Warren has introduced a bill to prohibit "selling, licensing or trading" people's health and location data. This bill makes a valliant attempt, but falls short at two levels.
First, it has a specific loophole: it fails to cover answering questions about users' personal data. If a company refuses to give, sell or trade the data itself, but will answer simple questions about what the data says, enough answers will enable the questioner to determine the data exactly. If each question hss two possible answers, the questioner can learn one bit of data per question. It won't take data brokers more than a minute to think of this tactic.
Second, more deeply, it only applies to providing data to other companies. It does nothing to stop the government from accessing the data. For instance, it won't protect people who get abortions.
Finally, it is limited by design to only some sorts of personal data.
In general, the reliable way to protect privacy is to prevent any entity from accumulating people's sensitive personal data unless it is absolutely inevitable.
*Environmentalists praised [the EPA's] "baby steps" to [reduce exposure to PFAs] but say legally binding standards are urgently needed.*
Israel won't punish the official thugs that brutalized people in the funeral of reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, just as it won't punish the soldier that shot her dead.
*Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China.*
Understanding governments' support for masklessness as a consequence of the political power of business.
I don't think that governments ended antitransmission requirements in obedience to a commend from businesses. And I don't think that the pressure comes only from business. But we can see that businesses acted to shift public attention from the dangers of Covid-19 to the attractions of behaving as if things were normal and safe.
Around one million Americans have died from Covid-19 so far. Over 20 million report suffering from long Covid.
Masks suck a little. Dying sucks worse. Being incapacitated for life sucks totally.
Heat waves, made far more common by global heating, already endanger the health of toddlers and babies.
The UK government formally approved extraditing Julian Assange to the US.
His rejected appeal was against the court's decision that being in a US prison would not put him in danger of death. Other questions remain to be appealed, including the UK's acceptance of the US assertion that
Assange's journalism constitutes spying.
Here's more explanation about why the US charges against Assange are a danger to democracy and the public.
An appeals court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency disregarded its own safety criteria when it reevaluated whether glyphosate harms humans and wildlife.
(satire) *Philharmonic Orchestra Conductor Receives 8-Concert Suspension For Using Corked Baton.*
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To supporters of the corrupter: *But I do have a question for you: Don't you feel kind of stupid right now? Doesn't the revelation that it was all a con leave you feeling like a sucker?*
*But—and here's the part that relates to you -— even though his own people told him quite clearly that there was no election fraud, he still told you something [to the contrary]: a bizarre fable about a vast and byzantine conspiracy involving Democrats, Republicans, poll workers, truck drivers, a polling machine manufacturer and —- who knows? -— maybe Bigfoot on the grassy knoll.*
*QAnon-Linked Conspiracy Theorist Wins GOP Primary for Nevada's Top Election Official.*
As global heating melts the Arctic ice, the molten water surface absorbs more sunlight. This makes the heating faster, creating a positive feedback. Faster than expected heating in the Barents Sea confirms that this is happening now.
*Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients.*
The "Proud Boys" had a written plan to seize and hold important government buildings in Washington DC.
The group's leaders are being prosecuted, but their ultimate leader is the wrecker, and he has corrupted the whole Republican Party into a wrecking crew.
Jim Hightower rebukes the Democratic Party for giving up on rural and small-city voters — both in seeking their votes and in working for policies that help the non-rich among them.
TikTok has been storing all users' surveillance data in China, where the Chinese state can access it easily. After US criticism, it will store surveillance data about Americans in the US, where red US states will be able to subpoena it to see whether you discussed getting an abortion.
Australia's supreme court awarded indigenous groups the power to partially naturalize people as Australian citizens. The government is seeking to reverse the ruling.
The policy established by the ruling makes no sense in terms of human rights. It can only be understood as a form of discrimination based on ethnicity.
over the 19th century, the English colonists kicked the aboriginals off their land, in many cases by massacring them. This was an enormous crime, Based on the human rights of their descendants, who continue to be harmed by that crime, it calls for reparations to them.
Those descendants are the same indigenous people who compose the groups which have been granted this special power — but that we should not think of that power as implementing the necessary reparations, because (1) it will help only a few of those who are due reparations, and (2) rather than reducing the preexisting inequality, it creates an additional form of inequality.
For cities to confront global heating, they need redesign on several dimensions.
However, this is no substitute for stopping global heating.
*A person of conscience and integrity would never have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on January 6. A man with courage would have stood up to Trump sooner; a man of moral commitment would never have worked for him in the first place.*
The Republicans that broke with the wrecker and refused to support him in overtly attacking the US election were prepared to go along with him into betrayal, but there was a limit to how far they would go. They are villains, not heroes, but they were not total villains.
*The attack on the US Capitol wasn’t the isolated doing of [the corrupter] and a few loyalists. Nearly the entire Republican party is now united behind it -– and the attack on democracy hasn’t ended.*
A lab that has studied for decades the intelligence of jays and rooks will be shut down for lack of funds. There may be little work in this field without it.
Ukraine's strategic situation facing an artillery war of attrition.
I suggest that Ukraine forcibly evacuate civilians from cities facing attack. We all know, from reports from Mariupol, that the Putin forces carry out unpredictable repression against the civilian population. If the presence of civilians in an area of combat puts the military in strategic danger, it must avoid their presence.
Lies told by the bullshitter in 2020 that his own officials told him were not true.
Germany is prosecuting Apple for offering features to resist some surveillance by other companies' apps, but Apple's own apps get an exception.
The EPA reduced its recommended maximum exposure for a few specific PFA chemicals.
This is a step in the right direction but it's a small step.
*Biden Saudi visit is "presidential pardon for murder," says ex-spy chief’s son.*
This metaphor is partly valid, but not 100%. Crown Prince Bone Saw is guilt of a murder, but the US can't try or punish him. Pardons have a legal effect on criminal charges, but to moral culpability they are irrelevant.
(satire) *Americans Explain Why They Oppose Abolishing The Police.*
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*Why I Quit Being a Banker to Join Extinction Rebellion.*
First he rejected the system of driving the economy with debt, that his bank was a part of.
US citizens: call on the EPA to block the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska.
US citizens: call on your state legislators to support the National Popular Vote Compact.
Here's more about it.
US citizens: call on Congress to allocate for public transit the full $8.3 billion that was already made available for that.
US citizens: call on Merrick Garland to prosecute the corrupter and his criminal network of coup conspirators.
Everyone: call on social media companies to stop the spread of abortion lies.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support protecting more of the vulnerable US species
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*Medicare for All Could Have Prevented More Than 338,000 US Covid Deaths.*
Jeremy Corbyn, effectively shut out of activity in the Labour party, has joined forces with Just Stop Oil.
China is using people's "health passes" to carry out arbitrary political control.
Progressive economists warn that the Federal Reserve's policy of raising interest rates will drive the US into a recession.
Robert Reich explains why the rate increase is a misguided solution and what the US government really should do.
Progressives campaigned against reappointing Powell as the head of the Federal Reserve, explaining that he would be likely to follow his bad ideas to make decisions like this one.
Senate Republicans have demanded changes in the weak gun safety deal that they agreed to a week ago.
They are dragging Democrats through a process of bad faith and blaming them for the resulting lack of agreement.
I think Democrats should refuse to agree to a compromise starting from their last compromise. Instead, they should say,, "We made a deal, and we are still ready to accept it; but if you now reject it, we will have to start over from the beginning and see if we can make a deal."
In the future, they should refuse to be dealt with in bad faith in negotiations. Being desperate for a deal is the path to a bad deal.
Near southeast Greenland a small group of polar bears survives despite loss of sea ice for most of the year. It turns out they take advantage of temporary ice floats that break off glaciers and drift downriver to the sea.
I think this manner of subsistence will fail in its turn once the glaciers have melted.
The US heat wave, in Kansas, has killed 2,000 cows (at least).
This reminds us that there is cattle-fatal weather just as there is human-fatal weather. Kansas is getting close to both thresholds.
* Denying people basic human needs for the sake of saving a few [pounds] now is a false economy -– the long-term impacts of poverty are a ticking health time bomb.*
We know that growing up deprived can stunt a child, physically or mentally. So I've taken the stand that we must give every child what children need to grow up well.
The article linked above shows that poverty does lasting harm to adults, too.
Republicans in New Mexico decided to recheck the results of computerized ballot tabulators, because they claim those were used in 2020 to steal the election from the corrupter.
All computerized voting machines are suspect in principle.
Those Republicans seem to have learned of that problem, but they garbled the point. Machines that tabulate paper ballots are less suspect, precisely because their reports can be verified by hand.
A street sign in Washington DC honoring Jamal Khashoggi is, apparently, all the punishment Crown Prince Bone Saw will get for having him murdered.
Global heating has made Phoenix, Arizona, so hot at night that many people can't sleep.
The European Court of Human Rights blocked UK plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, at the last minute.
*Asylum seekers [were] being rushed towards flights to Rwanda, without proper access to justice.*
The US has done similar things to migrants.
A Republican congresscritter, Barry Loudermilk, was recorded on video giving a tour of the Capitol on Jan 5, 2021, to people who joined in the attack the following day.
The UK is investigating the bad system that enabled various companies to build an apartment building with cladding that was known in advance to make it a firetrap. But nothing has been done to prevent it from happening again, and the government has not arranged to fix all the buildings that were built with the same problem.
Global heating is causing big economic losses already. "Supply-chain problems" are often the result of this. Adding them up shows that they are a substantial part of today's inflation.
Plutocratist politicians use inflation as an opportunity for dooH niboR. To invest now to reduce future inflation (and future losses) does not concern them unless it avoids losses for the rich.
*I'm sick of daft Tory ideas to reinvigorate Britain, so I've come up with a few of my own.*
I posted this because it is full of delightful sharp humor.
Modeling concluded that *a total of 7.4 million lives around the world will be saved over this century if the US manages to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050.*
This model considers only death caused directly by heat. Including fires, floods, heating-strengthened hurricanes, heating-spread diseases and climate-caused wars, I expect it to be hundreds of times that — but estimating that number is difficult.
The model also estimates saving $3.7tn in costs to adapt to the rising heat. A way to understand that is around 70 billion per year over 50 years.
A think-tank describes the obstacles to making Putin pay reparations for destruction in Ukraine.
*International courts not in a position to award compensation and UN would have no enforcement power.*
US citizens: call on members of Congress to cosponsor the war powers resolution to end US support for Salafi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen.
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to protect the sage grouse.
Protecting that one species actually protects many species in the ecosystem with it.
US citizens: call on Biden to designate Castner Range National Monument in El Paso, Texas, to protect the region's wildlife.
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A painful result of global heating: increased levels of pollen.
*GOP Lawmakers Blaming 'Mental Illness' [for massacres] Are Same Ones Who Refuse to Expand Medicaid [to help treat mental illness].*
This would be a real contradiction if the blame were serious and valid. But since it is only bullshit, it hardy matters what it may contradict.
*Jan. 6 Hearing Offers Yet More Proof That 'Trump Lied' and 'He Knew He Lied'.*
Republicans used the corrupter's big lie (that he had really won the 2020 election) for fraudulent fund-raising.
*'People Over Pentagon' Proposal Would Take $100 Billion From Pentagon to Fund Social Programs.*
The new Australian government includes a minister for resources who recently endorsed the bogus idea of natural gas as a first step to be followed by renewable generation.
It would be a way to give some planet roasters some profits, if it is allowed to keep operating when it would need to be shut down.
Jenn Budd, a former US border thug, helped make the border thug department shut down its "coverup incident teams", after one of them helped cover up the fact that other border thugs had beaten Anastasio Hernández-Rojas to death.
200,000 homes by the coast of England will be lost to rising seas by 2050. Of course, there are millions more in the rest of the world.
It is too late to prevent this, but sea-level rise won't end in 2050. Indeed, it will accelerate. If we take proper action, we might reduce the number of houses to be lost in the following thirty years.
Gig-economy businesses proposed a ballot question in Massachusetts to deny their drivers the rights of employees. The Massachusetts supreme court rejected it because they snuck in a provision to dump the responsibility for accidents on the drivers.
The "gag law" imposed by Spain's last right-wing government continues to repress journalists. Now a prominent journalist covering the conditions of refugees that arrive in Gran Canaria has been the victim.
The law was wrong when it was adopted, and it will be wrong for as long as it exists. Maybe this will pressure the Socialists to get rid of it.
When Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians, the military "investigations" tend to be cover-ups.
A Canadian flight crew who reported unexplained bags in their airplane while in the Dominican Republic were arrested and put in a horrible jail. They are only witnesses, but they were treated treated worse than any suspect ought to be treated. Now they are out on bail, but still forbidden to leave.
Some US Christians and churches that are not right-wing extremists are publicly denouncing the followers of the corrupter.
We are learning that it is easy for machines to fool us — for instance, to pretend convincingly to be humans. To me, this seems to call into question the validity of the Turing test.
Why unionization of Starbucks stores is taking off, while unionization of Amazon warehouses is not.
*Ukrainians who fled to Georgia reveal details of Russia’s "filtration camps."*
Global heating is wiping out the little blue penguin in the north island of New Zealand.
New South Wales, with a right-wing government, is suing the teachers' union for holding a one-day strike.
The best response to this attack is to strike again — each teacher individually, immediately on hearing the news. If the government threatens some of the individual teachers, they can march, chanting "Why don't you fire us all?"
A study has found that catching Omicron does little or nothing to boost one's immunity to Omicron. One can catch it again and again.
However, vaccination does greatly reduce the chance that one will get badly sick (or die) from Omicron.
A US court declined to rule that an elephant is a persons. Once in a while, sanity does prevail.
A proposal for a "peace industrial policy."
Imagine having a privacy-industrial complex, a nonpollution-industrial complex, a wildlife-industrial complex, and a sustainability-industrial complex.
The wrecker's efforts to overthrow US democracy have not ended. We need Congress to take action against defiance by the officials that are supposed to carry out an honest election, and against the threat of violent intimidation of voters.
In the 1930s, the US chose the New Deal instead of fascism. The Democrats must offer a big improvement again now, to avoid plutocracy and fascism.
(satire) *Conservatives Warn Watching Drag Shows Could Turn Children Into Attention Seekers.*
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Amazon fired one of the main union organizers, apparently as retaliation.
Business-supremacy treaties with ISDS clauses ("I Sue Democratic States") are becoming a big obstacle to laws to defend the climate from global heating.
I've condemned business-supremacy treaties for years.
There is a tentative bipartisan agreement in the Senate for some small but useful advances in gun control.
In addition, I fear that "safety measures in and around primary and secondary schools" could include more thugs stationed in schools, arresting more students, and feeding them into the school-to-prison pipeline.
*Fiji says Asia's biggest security threat is climate change, not conflict.*
Bravo! In fact, that is true for almost all the world, but few political leaders dare to recognize the magnitude of this danger.
In parts of Africa, people generally believe Putin's lies about Ukraine.
People reproach western governments for their history of colonization and repression in Africa, and are inclined to assume they are to blame this time too.
It's a mistake to understand events in terms of "the good guy" and "the bad guy". The US has done wrong to many countries in recent decades (and did wrong before that too); now Russia and China are playing the same game and committing similar wrongs.
The UK's deportation ministry plans to deport torture victims to Rwanda. Rwanda may have no particular interest in torturing those people, but you can't expect them to feel safe merely because of that.
A right-wing British billionaire has lost his libel suit against journalist Carole Cadwalladr. This slightly blunts the threat that UK libel law poses to journalism. But it's not enough.
"Outing" people no longer has the power to cause scandal with today's youth. (Perhaps that is not true for people who belong to sexually repressed communities.) I agree that is a change for the better.
I repeat my suggestion that Instagram require every user to post a nude photo — after a few years, revenge porn will cease to be a problem, because the targets will simply shrug.
Why the Google chatbot LaMDA is certainly not a person.
The lack of competition in US manufacturing created the shortage of baby milk substitutes, the shortage of N95 masks, the shortage of home Covid tests, and shortages of hundreds of other medicines. Matt Stoller traces this to a lack of competition in purchasing.
Queensland is investigating the attitude its thugs take towards people who call to complain about domestic violence.
Business schools train executives to cut wages in downturns and refuse to raise them when the economy gets better.
Rep. Cheney described the wrecker's 7-point coup plan.
Sanders said that Democratic leaders need to campaign to take away Manchin and Sinema's veto power by electing some more Democrats, so that Manchin and Sinema's votes are not needed.
*Half of New Drugs Launched in 2020-2021 Cost $150,000 or More Per Year.*
How selfish billionaires campaign to cut the Social Security and Medicare benefits of other Americans.
Turns out billionaires don't need financial help for their living expenses or their medical expenses, so (if they are selfish) they consider Social Security and Medicare pointless.
People can feel global heating in summers in the US.
Various hormone disruptors have been found in surprisingly high concentrations in humans, and correlate with poor sperm quality and various birth defects.
Academics who study China's repression and mass brainwashing of Uygurs condemned Michelle Bachelet for visiting China and then downplaying those evils.
A church in Texas offers people something that it passes off as "medical insurance", except it doesn't actually insure them. It holds out the possibility that other church members may help pay their medical bills, but not the really expensive ones of course.
Fraudsters seek people disposed to put unwarranted faith in them. What place could be better to seek such people than a "faith-based institution"?
"Treason" is defined in the US to be limited to wartime, and comparable actions in peacetime are called "sedition". The wrecker thus organized the peacetime equivalent of treason. We need to punish him and his faction both in court and in elections.
Ralph Nader: *Time for a Taxpayer Revolt Against Rich Corporate Welfarists.*
Specialized art thieves have stolen ancient Scythian treasures from various museums in Ukraine. There is suspicion that Putin organized this.
(satire) *Ambien Unveils New 48-Hour Weekend Getaway Sleeping Pill.*
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The Tory government has systematically undermined management and supervision of state activities, from medical treatment to building codes to issuing passports. This seems to be a general structural problem with the functioning of the state.
The government ordered Covid-19 protective equipment (including masks) in a big hurry in 2020, but neglected to supervise the production. Around 6 billion dollars worth is substandard; they plan to burn it.
I hope that the incineration does not release dangerous chemicals that will harm the public. Regulation of air pollution is probably inadequate too.
The Interior department will gradually phase out all sales of disposable plastics on public land. (That includes the national parks, plus lots of additional land.) This is something campaigners have pushed for; I've signed and posted petitions for it.
The article falls into confusion when it speaks of the "falling recycling rate", since most disposable plastic items, including water bottles, are not in fact feasible to recycle.
*Women must insist on pain relief during medical procedures.* It seems there are doctors who believe that suffering is, for a woman, normal and they don't really feel it.
A Google chatbot told its developer that it is a person and is afraid of death — the developer says.
Assuming he is not distorting the facts about these conversations, this suggests that we now face, in real life, the famous philosophical conundrum of determining whether something is a real person or a mere simulation.
Seven congresscritters asked the corrupter for pre-emptive pardons after the Jan 6 coup attempt.
* Disclosure that [several] House Republicans sought presidential pardon may show they believed election fraud claim was false.*
NNamdi Kanu, a separatist from Nigeria, is in prison in Nigeria. But how did he get there? He was in exile.
His family say that Kenya's secret police seized him and tortured him, then handed him to Nigeria with no hearing.
I have no opinion about the separatist cause he advocates; I don't support separatist causes by default. However, torture is an injustice, and handing a prisoner to another country without a hearing is an injustice.
Hong Kong has given foreign teachers just one week to sign a loyalty oath to uphold Chinese repression.
This haste may subject them to grave losses if they have leased apartments and are forced to pay for them for another year with no employment.
The Southern Baptist churches in the US are in crisis because of many years of sexual abuse.
Why is there a "Southern Baptist" organization of churches? Before the US Civil War, the organization of Baptist churches condemned slavery. So the Baptist churches in the south split off and made their own organization, which was in favor of slavery.
Of course, after the Civil War, they eliminated that stand, but now they have other stands that are almost as nasty. I would wish the Southern Baptists total destruction, except that their members might join the evangelicals in the extreme right wing.
In 2006, three prisoners in Guantanamo supposedly killed themselves, but that claim was impossible. They must have been murdered.
Canada has fined the company Tim Hortons for making an app that tracks people's movements to learn things such as where they live, where they work, and when they visit competitors' stores.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has trouble punishing the stock manipulation that Elon Musk does on Twitter. It is subtle, and sometimes it is impossible to pin it down enough to establish the crime in it.
The fines it has imposed on him are too small to make any difference to him. We need to give the SEC the power to fine billionaires billions.
A call for a nationwide strike of US students to demand effective gun control.
I suggest that they target global heating too. That will kill a lot more of the people who are in high school today than will random shootings.
It could happen that after 2050 millions of Americans will be killed by guns — but that would be due to warring gangs, not random massacres. And the warring gangs would themselves be the result of global heating.
Everyone: call on CEO’s of Citi Bank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, and Morgan Stanley to stop supporting fracking in Argentina.
Coal mines in Australia emit far more methane than people believed. These emissions are a big part of Australia's damage to the climate.
*[A right-wing fund, DonorsTrust] favored by Republican megadonors such as Charles Koch, Robert Mercer, and the family of Betsy Devos is by far the biggest known backer of two white nationalist hate groups that helped inspire a teen to "kill as many blacks as possible" in Buffalo, New York on May 14.*
* Turkish offer to escort ships through Black Sea blockade would face six-month wait for mine clearance, says Ukraine.*
Is it safe not to let your child run errands alone?
On the consequences of having a liar cling to power (in the UK).
Interviews with two women who led campaigns against dictators.
The funds needed for local climate disasters in poor countries have quintupled since 2002.
Measuring changes in percentages is meaningful for small changes. For large changes, it is silly and misleading. I did not repeat the "800%" figure used in the article because that is a silly and misleading way of saying "an increase of a factor of 9".
Likewise, an "80% decrease" is a distorting way to report a decrease by a factor of 5.
China is pioneering the art of directing water into the ground, to nourish plants and animals, rather than rushing it away to the ocean.
The US Supreme Court's history of political decisions affecting people's fundamental rights.
Marie Rose Ayala left a gun where her two-year-old child could get it, and he shot his father, who died. Now she is charged with the crime of killing him.
I think that is wrong; she has suffered enough. It is proper to prosecute her for the crime of leaving a gun easily accessible, since she did that, but not for the killing, which she did not do.
(satire) * Teen Spelling Bee Champion Commits To Spell For UCLA.*
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British Muslims bullied a cinema chain into cancelling all showings of a film that they claim is "blasphemous." They accuse the film of violating Islamic prohibitions, as interpreted by them.
If you choose to be Muslim, and decide to refrain from violating Islamic prohibitions, that's up to you. But you have no right to force them on everyone else.
One of the rights of any human being is the right to practice per own religion; but that religion, whichever one it is, is not entitled to any particular respect from the rest of us.
Poland has told clinics to register which women are pregnant, in a Central database. Women expect that this will be used for repression, and I expect that too,
If you want to have a baby, that doesn't make you safe from this. If something goes wrong with the pregnancy, you may need an abortion to protect you from injury or death. Even if the law permits an abortion in all of those cases, it is unsafe to be in a place which restricts abortion until your pregnancy is over.
Big Tech is spending a lot of money to pressure a few Democratic senators to kill the new antitrust bill.
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Australia's supreme court ruled that the government cannot arbitrarily exile a citizen on suspicion of participation in terrorism.
I think it is wrong to take away a person's citizenship as a punishment for crimes in general, even serious ones, except perhaps fraud in the process of becoming a citizen, if that wasn't many years ago.
There is a proposal to ban the sale of tobacco in the UK, gradually over a period of around 80 years.
Smoking tobacco is dangerous, and I wish everyone would quit. But prohibiting a dangerous drug tends to do great social harm, so I cannot support it.
*Spain's High Court Demands Pompeo Testify on Alleged Plot to Kidnap or Kill Assange.*
The latest climate denial mechanism is based on distraction and change the subject.
A UK thug murdered a woman, and when people held a vigil for her, thugs attacked them, then the London thug department tried to prosecute them. Despite rebukes by the courts, the thug department continues to try to put the blame on them.
The thugs say they thought the vigil had became an "anti-police protest", but what of that? People have the right to protest against thugs in general, too, not only a specific thug.
Greenpeace: The EU must wake up from its fantasy of natural gas as a "bridging fuel" from coal to renewables. It's nothing but a detour.
* President Biden has the power to crack down on executive excess by imposing new CEO pay and buyback restrictions on federal contractors.*
The Putin forces captured some Ukrainian soldiers of British origin, and have accused them of terrorism, apparently arbitrarily.
It is standard practice for Putin to "convict" his political opponents of trumped-up crimes. He did the same thing to Alexei Navalny, for instance.
Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke at Harvard's graduation, so supporters of Julian Assange rallied there calling on him to free Assange.
Ukraine and the Putin forces are both suffering heavy casualties, which threatens to lead to stalemate.
The International Energy Agency rebuked governments (and businesses) for failing to invest in energy efficiency.
As Amory Lovins pointed out for decades, the most cost-efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution is through increased efficiency of using energy.
* Governments including the US, Germany, the UK and Canada are investing in new gas production, distribution and use.* The supposed reason for this is to thwart Russia's threats to cut off gas to Europe. But the cure is far worse than the disease. It would destroy Russia and Ukraine, and the four countries that are doing it, and all the rest of the world.
The European Parliament voted against a weak proposal for how to extend the EU's carbon emissions trading system; MEPs want a stronger system.
A planet roaster MEP from a "center-right" (plutocratist) party was put in charge of negotiations, and he has been trying to thwart efforts to strengthen the system so as to reduce emissions more.
However, they also voted in favor of banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars in 2035.
The same planet roaster MEP worked against this, too.
Senators Warren and Murray sent Biden a list of ideas for using executive orders to protect abortion rights from right-wing fanatics.
How fascism develops, with one small change after another gradually building up to a dictatorship in which defiance is basically impossible.
I am skeptical of the claim that Venezuela is "fascist". Real opposition candidates do get elected there. I am also dubious about the idea that Hungary has gone so far as fascism. But these are minor details which I mention for the record — they don't affect the article's conclusions.
We don't have fascism in the US yet, but I haven't see anyone propose a way to stop it, other than to pray for a miracle. And praying doesn't do any good.
*US justice department to investigate Louisiana State Police following 2019 death of Ronald Greene.*
Putin compared himself to Tsar Peter I, in effect saying that conquering Ukraine is his divine mission.
The original name of the city now known as St Petersburg was Nyen (Swedish) or Nevanlinna (Finnish). Imagine giving that city to Finland and restoring those names! The idea would make Putin writhe.
On reconciliation after war has created hatred. *Peace is the ability to deal with discord by non-violent means.*
*The effort we are rightly making to support Ukraine in defending itself against aggression needs to be matched by efforts towards negotiation, dialogue, reconciliation and peace.*
I disagree with the Christian premise of the article, of course, but setting that aside I find the conclusions valid. My suggestion not to refer to the Putin forces as "Russian" or "Russia"
Summer is now the danger season in the US — Danger from hurricanes, wildfires, and heat itself.
Explaining how limits on physical production capacity are contributing to the present inflation.
Overall, this seems valid, but I see two errors in the article.
Farmer Jared Wilson found that John Deere's official dealer refused to repair his tractor until he complained to the Federal Trade Commission
John Deere considered him a troublemaker because he agitated for the right to repair — which is the campaign against one specific kind of malicious functionality.
(satire) NSA honored for diversity in surveillance footage
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Democrats should stop agreeing that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to own a gun
A food influencer in China presented an ice cream dessert which looked somewhat like a tank, just before the anniversary of the Tien An Men square massacre.
His stream was cut off immediately and he has not been heard from since.
Sad to say, if most young Chinese don't know what happened on June 4th, the Chinese state is winning it's battle against history. Is there anything we can do to defeat it?
A document demonstrates the existence of a secret Republican plan to steal the 2020 election in Georgia.
Republicans now plot to install partisan poll workers who will invent reasons to challenge minority voters from groups that are likely to be Democrats
US students are talking about a student strike next fall to demand gun control to make schools safe for students.
*Mariupol mayor: Russia demolished 1,300 high-rise buildings in city without removing dead bodies of residents.*
The mayor said that "Initially, the occupiers involved Mariupol residents in dismantling the rubble carefully." But when they saw that there were 50 - 100 corpses in each building, they took the residents away, demolished the buildings quickly, and carried the rubble off with the corpses.
No one will ever be sure who died, or even how many. The most we can say is that it was probably between 60,000 to 120,000.
The US southwest is having a record-breaking heat wave, but by 2050 it could have 25 like this per year.
Putin's puppet regime running Donetsk has sentenced three prisoners of war to death, not for committing any particular war crime, but simply for having foreign origins.
It is nothing unusual, nor criminal, for a country to enroll foreign citizens as soldiers. The US has done this in recent decades, and France's foreign legion is well known.
It appears that Putin has decided to destroy the idea of the laws of war (as well as the idea of truth), just as the wrecker seeks to destroy US democracy and (as well as the idea of truth).
I don't see how his attempt could be thwarted except by capturing him and putting him on trial — but that seems awfully unlikely.
One idea for retaliation is that the UK could announce an undeclared war with the supposedly independent Donetsk regime — not with Russia! — and start bombarding its supposed "territory" with conventional weapons. If that hits some of Putin's soldiers from Russia, he can hardly complain.
Ginni Thomas emailed 29 Arizona legislators to press them to help overturn the 2020 election of Biden as president.
A Syrian refugee who was conscripted into digging mass graves for the people killed in Assad's prisons says that more mass graves for victims are still being dug in Syria.
Pilots are supposed to refuse to fly when they are too tired to fly safety. The CEO of Wizz Air rebuked the company's pilots for doing this "too often."
Airline regulations should be changed so that that CEO is forbidden to be an executive in any airline.
The film, The Lady of Heaven, that was censored by bullying in the UK was made by Shi'ite Muslims. The bullies that censored it were led by an extremist Sunni Muslim.
The bullies used the film the way Republicans use abortion, masks, or discussion of queer gender roles, and the way some progressives use cancellation of people who don't toe the line — as opportunities to show their power and make others afraid.
The CEO of Starbucks said he will never negotiate in good faith with the union that now represents workers at hundreds of its cafes.
*WTO Negotiations Prioritize Institution's Reputation Over COVID Medicines Access.* They seem dead set on continuing the patent and secrecy obstacles that prevent vaccinating everyone against Covid-19.
The WTO is fundamentally bad because it is a business-supremacy treaty, designed to suppress democracy and give businesses power over people and their democratic institutions.
What gives rise to the WTO's repudiation? It is a battle between the plutocratists, driven by the profits of the companies that the WTO primarily serves, and the defenders of democracy who attack the WTO. I'm proud to be on democracy's side.
The article falls into the trap of using the term "intellectual property," which was promoted by businesses to create a presumption of legitimacy for ten or more different laws that the WTO pressures governments to submit to. These laws all tend to be more or less plutocratist, but they are so different in their manner of operating that generalizing about them all makes it hard to criticize any one of them.
Please join me in never using that term.
*How will the White House ensure that powerful interests do not turn the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity "into another corporate-dominated, wildly unpopular trade exercise?".*
The goal of "mobilizing private investment" sounds like an excuse for more neoliberalism and trickle-down Reaganomics. If that's what it is, we should kill the whole thing rather than allow that.
The other goals seem good, more or less, but "building on the foundation established by our [so-called] free trade agreements" has to be bad. We must weaken or eliminate those business-supremacy treaties.
Former Bolivian president Áñez has been convicted of leading the coup that removed president Evo Morales and sent him into exile.
The US is accused of supporting the coup.
Iran is removing cameras installed for the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor nuclear processing sites. This means that the non-nuclear deal with Iran is on the verge of death.
Iran is dealing it the final blow, but Biden's timidity shares responsibility for the failure. If he had cancelled the sanctions that the wrecker added, maybe the deal could have been made. Biden avoided a bogus criticism and instead brought on himself a real and important failure.
The Supreme Court ruled that you can't sue a US border thug for injuring you, or for retaliating deviously against you for filing a complaint.
*Response to Global Energy Crisis So Far? A Planet-Wrecking Fossil Fuel 'Gold Rush'* that could make global heating disaster inescapable.
*Oil and gas companies likely underreporting methane emissions leaks, new investigation shows.*
A loud cacophony of Republican lies aims to drown out the hearings about the corrupter's attempt to steal the 2020 election.
The congressional investigating committee stated conclusions that tie the wrecker closely to the Jan 6 coup plot.
The evidence for those conclusions is to be presented in the remaining sessions.
Will the Americans that need to see this evidence turn their heads away instead, following the leadership of Faux News?
10% of Google searches for abortion information lead people to the phony abortion advice of "crisis pregnancy centers."
Some US military bases cause local water contamination with PFAs with material used to extinguish fires. These are used for real fires, and for training.
I wonder if it might be possible to use an imitation substance (without PFAs) in the training exercises. That would not eliminate the problem but would reduce the amount, and it could be easy to do.
Woodward and Bernstein have published a book that compares and contrasts the corrupter with Nixon. Nixon was prepared to do all sorts of dirty tricks against his opponents, but trying to undermine the electoral system was "beyond Nixon's imagination."
Another crucial difference was that the Republicans of 1974 were loyal enough that they could vote to impeach and to remove a Republican when confronted with irrefutable evidence of his criminality. The Republicans of 2021 were already too slavish and disloyal for that: the corrupter had been bullying them for years.
The Tory Party held a vote about whether to keep Bogus Johnson as its leader. He won 58% of the votes. This means he is barely hanging on to power.
If they kick him out, his likely replacements are Tories that advocate budget cuts that will put a lot more poor people on the street.
Starbucks has decided to close a store where employees voted to unionize, citing a reason that is not credible.
Everyone: call on Faux News to stop promoting 'white replacement theory'.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Trump promptly.
US citizens: In Washington DC on June 18? Join the Poor People's Campaign for a rally.
US citizens: call on Biden not to legitimize Crown Prince Bone Saw by meeting with him.
US citizens: call on Pelosi to condemn dark-money disinformation ads. These are being used to support plutocratist Democrats against progressive Democrats in primaries.
US citizens: call on the FDIC to stop triple-digit-interest loans for furniture, auto repairs, puppies, etc.
US citizens: call on the EPA to readopt the stricter limit on smog pollution.
Russia punishes people by cancelling their citizenship.
(satire) *Americans Explain Why Assault Weapons Must Stay Legal.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript's entirely, telling LibreJS to blacklist the scripts that it accepted by default, or using a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript.
Almost as good as banning military-style rifles would be to put a very large tax on them, such as 10 times the sales price.
This could be passed via budget reconciliation, avoiding the filibuster.
One weakness is that right-wing extremist billionaires, or states such as Texas, could defeat the purpose of the measure by paying the excise tax on behalf of the individual gun purchasers. Better make the tax 100 times the sales price.
The state government of Texas protects gun companies from pressure by boycotting companies (such as banks) that boycott them.
I like the solution of having California boycott the banks that fail to boycott gun companies, because it uses for the cause of life the same instrument that Texas uses for the cause of death.
The Tories' proposed windfall tax contains a self-sabotaging tax break for building new fossil fuel infrastructure.
Biden will use the Defense production Act to boost US production of solar panels and other renewable energy systems.
This is an important thing to do, but when the means for getting businesses to do what the country needs includes tax breaks, it has the long term tendency to reduce tax revenue.
So we should rather increase taxes on business that goes in the wrong direction. That is what a carbon tax would do.
*Proud Boys leaders charged with seditious conspiracy in 6 January riot.*
*Carbon dioxide levels are now 50% higher than during the pre-industrial era.*
The highest officials of the French state defend French thugs for fatal acts of violence.
Organizing a broad campaign to defuse "carbon bombs" — large fossil fuel extraction projects that are enough to ensure global disaster.
Many of them are in China and India. What can we do about those?
In the UK, two million people are suffering from long Covid — 3% of the population.
In the US, the fraction is around 6% of the population.
It is not clear whether these two measurements are comparable, or what the difference might mean.
What is clear is that governments that yield to public pressure to "stop protecting us and let us ignore the danger" are making a terrible mistake.
*Canada's Big Banks Are Secretly Supporting Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion.*
The banks are TD Securities, RBC Capital Markets, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, BMO Capital Markets, Scotiabank, and National Bank of Canada. All these banks say they are committed to climate defense, but it seems to be lip service only.
If you have money in any of these banks (even if in a different part of it), I urge you to move it out, and tell the bank why.
Canada is planning to establish a new intelligence agency to study the threat from right-wing extremists in the US — especially in case they get political power again.
Global heating is slowing down the Atlantic's north-south currents,
This will tend to make northern Europe cooler and the Caribbean even hotter. It will also mean even more floods in Eastern Australia, and increasing drought in the US southwest.
(Satire) *Enlightened Judge Sentences Murderer To Ego Death By Means Of Ayahuasca.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely, telling LibreJS to blacklist the scripts that it accepted by default, or using a browser such as lynx that that doesn't implement Javascript.
Reportedly the Federal Reserve is pulling money out of the US economy, which could cause a global depression.
I don't have a basis to judge, myself, whether this is true now, but what it says about the past fits with what I know.
*[Some] people in US and UK face huge financial hit if fossil fuels lose value, study shows.*
The businesses that own fossil fuel facilities would lose stock value, and the owners of the stock would lose the wealth of owning that stock.
If we stop the development of fossil fuel infrastructure and extraction facilities, the undeveloped reserves will lose their value. But that is likely to happen gradually as measures are taken and made firm.
Investors and pension funds can avoid being hit by this by divesting from fossil fuels.
*Without 'Radical Action,' Warns OECD, Global Plastic Pollution Likely to Triple by 2060.*
(satire) *School Practices Drill For When There's Not An Active Shooter.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement Javascript and CSS.
*Colorado legislature passes bill to reduce plastic packaging, boost recycling.*
Various organizations that run Gay Pride parades are deciding that uniformed thugs are not welcome.
One strategy is to remember the historic hostility and cruelty of thugs towards gays. Another strategy is to try to replace that with a friendly relationship so as to avoid that hostility in the future. I, as an outsider, don't have an opinion about which to choose, but I can see the sense in each one.
Activists in Glasgow and London deflate the tires of SUVs, saying that due to their high local pollution and high carbon emissions, the state ought to strongly discourage their use.
Arguing that the US has an attachment to guns and violence that is ingrained since colonial times.
It might be true, but I am not sure we can tell for certain.
Nearly half of Republicans say that mass shootings are something that Americans just have to get used to — forget about trying to prevent them.
I think this means that understand that the way to prevent mass shootings is to take away their guns. And I think Democrats should start saying, "Defeat the Republicans and take away their guns!"
Information is emerging about the whereabouts of the civilian dead of Mariupol. The total number is perhaps 20,000, perhaps 50,000, but some bodies are impossible to identify, or even to find.
Let us not forget that that Putin intentionally prevented evacuating the civilians from Mariupol to safety in Ukraine until the Putin forces were in a position to forcibly take thousands to Russia.
I understand the worry of not knowing whether someone you love is alive or dead. I am perplexed by the idea that your late husband might be "a missing person" if you saw him dead before you fled.
Greenpeace will fight to block the development of a new oilfield in the UK.
Horribly, the US continues to sell oil leases to oil companies. Meanwhile, China and India are still building coal-fired generators. This prepares death for people who will be alive in a few decades.
Does that mean it is a waste of time to fight to stop one large oil field in the UK? Not at all. Every megaton of oil left in the ground is an important step.
The US wars of the 21st century can't be won because these interventions' main effect is to terrorize the civilian population. The US government tries actively to hush this up.
Global heating effects are making dust storms occur much more often in the Middle East.
(satire) *Texas Passes Mandatory 24-Hour Waiting Period Before Police Can Engage Active Shooters.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely, telling LibreJS to blacklist the scripts that it accepted by default, or using a browser such as lynx that that doesn't implement Javascript.
The new Top Gun movie, like the first, is an ad for increased military spending.
A morality-oriented graduation speech to the US Air Force Academy: who should be your real heroes.
The talk refers to the corruption of the South Vietnamese army. According to A Bright Shining Lie, by Neil Sheehan, its main organizing principle was graft, and the corrupt officers made sure they could never win a real battle. The US, in supporting them, was imagining that they actually wanted to win. rather than keep collecting the graft.
A Chinese fighter plane intercepted an Australian surveillance plane over the South China Sea, and did dangerous things that damaged its engines and threatened a collision.
(satire) *CEOs Discuss How Unions Have Affected Their Companies.*
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling Javascript entirely, telling LibreJS to blacklist the scripts that it accepted by default, or using a browser such as lynx that that doesn't implement Javascript.
*Hillary Clinton is right: the age of the showman leader has damaged politics.*
This started with Reagan, but in recent years right-wing demagogues such as Trump, Putin, Modi, Do-Dirty and Bolsonaro have enjoyed success around the world.
In Kashmir, Muslim terrorists are now murdering Hindu functionaries one by one, and most of the rest want to flee. The government is blocking them from fleeing.
The terrorists are taking revenge for the martial law and repression that Modi has applied to Muslims for several years.
Tory rule has tied up the British government in confusion and privatization to the point where agencies cannot do even the simplest things right.
To make it worse, Bogus Johnson plans to cut the number of government staff even as they can't keep up with the workload.
Governor DeMentis rejected a subsidy to a sports facility partly intended to help the Tampa Bay Rays after the team posted something about gun control.
Governments should never subsidize professional sports teams in any fashion whatsoever — but making the subsidy effectively contingent on the team's political stance veers into the territory of political repression.
Some of the wrecker's supporters invited him to order seizure of voting machines so as to "prove" he had really won the 2020 election.
Schools use "social media monitoring" disservices claiming that this is a way to detect and stop shootings before they happen. But the disservices don't seem to work very well, because their "understanding" is fragmentary and confused. The few real danger cases are hidden in an ocean of irony, humor and unrelated conversations.
Even worse, schools use the disservices to monitor protests, too.
The Supreme Court is considering demanding that its clerks hand over their phone records. Those clerks — who are lawyers in training — may be hiring lawyers to resist this.
*Inspector General, AMA and AHA Agree: Some Medicare Advantage Plans Are Endangering Their Enrollees' Lives*. They deny needed medical care, to reduce expenses.
*China has silenced dissent in [Hong Kong], but exiles are finding ways to keep its spirit alive.*
The Supreme Court's crooked path of reinterpreting the Second Amendment to wipe out gun control.
Republicans plan to terminate the extended school breakfast and lunch program that is feeding ten million American children.
Their parents could apply to be covered anyway, but only some would be accepted. Meanwhile, the cost of food has increased greatly and even more would have to go hungry now.
Republicans have developed a six-point plan for increasing fossil fuel emissions.
Meanwhile, their UK equivalents approved development of a new oil field in the North Sea, disregarding the fact that there is no room in the carbon budget for any more.
The Supreme Court decided in favor of government secrecy to block lawsuits by victim of US government torture.
The UK plans to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda, so some of those threatened started a hunger strike. The government retaliated by threatening to punish them by deporting them even sooner.
This would supposedly be for their own good. What contempt.
The Tories have given a large subsidy to oil extraction, instead of funding increases in energy efficiency.
President Bukele of El Salvador has attacked the powerful drug gangs that ruled the streets, and most of the people applaud this. However some innocent people are being arrested along with the gang members. And it seems that some people are tortured to death in jail.
More information from Amnesty International about innocent people arrested and simply presumed guilty.
Tobacco companies are working to addict young Africans.
*The policies currently in place to tackle the climate crisis around the world will lead to "catastrophic" climate breakdown, as governments have failed to take the actions needed to fulfill their promises, three former UN climate leaders have warned.*
Russia is succeeding in holding out against the west's sanctions. Defeating the Putin forces is not going to be easy.
However, allowing Putin to keep any Ukrainian territory would be a terrible defeat.
Hong Kong says it will arrest people for any hint of commemorating the anniversary of the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Explaining the perverse Supreme Court ruling that said to disregard evidence that someone was falsely convicted.
Wells Fargo workers are trying to unionize the bank's entire work force at one go.
The idea that we need to stop businesses from collecting so much personal data is starting to have traction.
I've advocated this idea since around 2013, so I consider this a sign of success.
The "Corinthian Colleges" were a chain of for-profit "colleges"; in 2015, a court ruled they were swindling students, and shut them down. Now Biden has canceled the remaining student debt of the students who were swindled.
These students have been campaigning and striking since 2015 to achieve this goal.
Glyphosate weedkiller damages wild bee colonies — it harms the ability of bumblebee to regulate nest temperature.
*New study finds 44% of world's land surface needs increased protection, with 1m wildlife species at risk of extinction.*
An article sheds light on the collective lunacy of the majority of people the US and most European countries, who nowadays firmly deny the danger of Covid-19.
I read today in a couple of places that 23 million Americans say they are suffering from long Covid disabilities. That is a self-report, and some may be mistaken about what their problem is. But it is good enough for a rough estimate. But it gives a rough idea. ISTR seeing the estimate that around 200 million Americans have had Covid-19, including asymptomatic infections. That means the chance that an infection leaves a lasting disability in its wake is roughly 10%.
That is a very high risk. High enough to justify going to great lengths to avoid getting a Covid infection.
I have no particular vulnerabilities to Covid-19 other than being 69 years old and somewhat overweight. I am at risk for long Covid that could ruin my life for good and all, and so are you.
Elon Musk derisively ordered all Tesla employees to resume coming to the office to work, threatening to fire them without notice if they do not.
The level of Covid-19 infections has increased greatly in the US since March, and making more people meet in offices will surely increase it further.
The UK cited, as a reason to leave the EU, that it would have the authority to protect the sea bottom from destructive trawling. Two years later, it has barely started prohibiting the practice.
The threat of sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda did not discourage people from going to the UK in small boats, so the government has chosen a small batch to test the policy.
*Rwanda accused of stalking, harassing and threatening exiles in US.*
Austin, Texas, plans to pass a law to refuse cooperation with state prosecution of abortions.
This will be is a good way to denounce the state's prohibition, but I don't think it will provide enough safety to convince abortion providers to risk performing abortions in Austin.
Everyone: call on Marsh McLennan to drop the EACOP oil pipeline project.
Ukraine has turned around the battle in Sievierodonetsk.
Many Russian-speaking Ukrainians are learning to speak Ukrainian instead, in rejection of Putin and Russia.
I think it will be tragic if Ukrainians come out of this war hating Russia. I urge them to target their hatred narrowly at Putin.
A part of the population of Odessa wants to eliminate Russia-derived names from the city. For the same reason stated above, I think that is a misguided idea.
*Russia must not be humiliated in Ukraine, says Emmanuel Macron.*
I agree that humiliating Putin would be counterproductive. At the same time, giving him a victory would be disastrous.
Can we find a way to deny him victory but give him a way to save face? It seems that Macron has not.
Guardian columnist John Naughton draws the connection between the remote kill switch in John Deere tractors and the Right to Repair movement.
The next connection from there is from the Right to Repair movement and the free software movement. Right to Repair is the first step, but it does not go far enough.
High levels of air pollution (specifically, nitrogen dioxide) correlate with more severe symptoms from Covid-19.
This has surely made poor people more likely to die than wealthier people who can afford to live in areas less polluted.
*More than 40% of Earth's land surface must be conserved to stop the biodiversity crisis, report warns.*
This will require rules about land use, and soon — by 2030, a lot of that land will be taken for agriculture if it isn't stopped.
James Risen says that he was going to meet with a whistleblower who offered information about NSA snooping, but an informant spilled the beans to the FBI. The FBI tried to turn it into a trap to arrest the whistleblower.
Ultimately the meeting didn't occur and nobody was arrested, but Risen never heard from him again. So the FBI won a partial victory.
There is a tentative bipartisan deal for a US internet data protection law.
It is encouraging that the proposed deal requires companies to minimize the data they collect, but I expect that "reasonably necessary" will be a weak criterion, as it is in Europe. Will this prohibit parking lots from collecting the license plate number of each car parked there — or photographing them all and storing the photos? If not, it is inadequate.
I fear that companies will continue demanding that customers identify themselves. In the absence of an anonymous payment system, they can argue that this is "necessary". But that means that the system is not safe — not for whistleblowers, and not for people traveling for an abortion.
If that is what happens, I will continue to reject these dis-services absolutely, as I have done for many years.
Meanwhile, no company whatsoever should be allowed to require a customer to use arbitration rather than the courts. All customers, regardless of age, must be free to join class-action lawsuits against abusive practices that arguably violate whatever privacy laws apply.
Despite those grave flaws, this bill would be a significant step forward. However, since this will pre-empt many kinds state laws, it will block all further progress on privacy rules in the US. Given that, I conclude we should oppose it.
Florida made the Special Olympics drop its vaccination requirement by threatening to fine it 27 million dollars.
If the organization fails to rail against Florida, and announce that it will never hold an event again in a state that won't permit its health requirements, that will constitute its permanent submission to the Disease Party.
Putin allows YouTube to remain accessible in Russia despite its carrying Western news.
Some US cities are converting schoolyards from asphault plazas to green parks. The change improves students' well-being. makes the neighborhood less hot, and absorbs water too.
A state-organized mob of bullies harassed defense lawyer Michael Vidler out of Hong Kong.
Scientists that work on fusion power say not to expect it to be ready soon enough to help prevent global heating disaster.
They claim it will enable humanity to increase its total available power after 2050. Maybe it will, but why won't solar and wind power suffice for that?
China tried to convert 8 Pacific island nations into military stepping-stones, but they rejected the deal.
Bogus Johnson's official ethics advisor has been obligated to rebuke the whole government for a culture of disregarding its supposed rules.
Research finds that decisive people are not more likely to be right in their decisions than people who have doubts.
Armies state the maxim that an officer who is decisive is better than one who hesitates, even if the former doesn't make better decisions than the latter.
*Africa warns of food crisis due to Russian blockade of Ukraine's ports.*
I don't think Putin will cooperate with export of food from Ukraine except under unacceptable, contemptuous conditions. But he might if the alternative were a form of attack. If Ukraine uses anti-ship missiles to blockade some Russian port, such as Novorossiysk, perhaps Putin would make a deal to end trade blockades.
A natural response to a dishonest leader (such as the bullshitter, Putin, or Bogus Johnson) is to tolerate some dishonesty in those that oppose per. But that makes the moral damage pervasive and permanent.
A team of lawyers is planning to sue Russia in other countries for the damage it has done to Ukrainians. They will also sue military businesses and associated rich people. The aim is to collect from the value of Russia's assets in those and other countries.
Two Putin forces soldiers, prisoners in Ukraine, have been convicted of shelling civilian areas and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Birds are particularly threatened by environmental threats, and most species are moving towards extinction. This article describes the main threats — above all, deforestation.
Why has there been so little global revolt against neoliberalism? And will revolts start now?
Neoliberalism is when plutocracy proudly proclaims that the non-rich don't matter.
Quebec's latest attempt to force habitants to speak French reaches a repressive level. People who can't speak French will be cut off, after 6 months, from medical care, from government services, and from their legal rights.
Those who manage to speak French, but not well, will suffer the forms of mistreatment that were the reason for the policy of offering them interpreters.
As for the "notwithstanding" loophole, that should be eliminated from the Constitution of Canada.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban the transfer of military weapons to thug departments.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on the senate to stop delaying on climate defense.
Several examples of Elon Musk's history of profiting from public falsehoods, including in Tesla.
What disgusts me more than anything about the Tesla car is its level of surveillance.
The Massachusetts supreme court authorized the state's lawsuit against Exxon for lying about the climate danger of its actions.
It is time for Senate Democrats, including Manchin, to pass at least some climate defense measures.
A secret UK government historical study, leaked to the press, says that various UK immigration laws were written (across 3 decades) with the specific racist purpose of excluding as many non-whites as possible.
Specifics about these individual laws.
Strict enforcement of these laws is nowadays directing deportation of people to countries which they have not been to since childhood, decades ago, and where they don't know anyone.
What the world must do to prepare in advance to deal with future pandemics.
The Supreme Court is likely preparing another deadly blow to Americans: eliminating some kinds of gun control.
This is the product of systematic rigging of elections for many years by Republicans in the states they control. A government imposed by a minority is not a legitimate government. What we have in the US now is an illegitimate government.
As China's foreign minister tours Pacific island countries to sign deals, he shows the world that making a deal with China means accepting repression.
Canada plans to make it illegal to buy a handgun, or a large capacity magazine for a long gun.
We need such laws in the US, but given that the rate of gun killings is so small in Canada, I'm not sure this is needed there.
Will New Zealand accept demands from the Maori Party for a special role in government for New Zealanders of Maori descent?
I read previously that the Maori Party wants a separate parliament to represent Maori.
I see a crucial difference between affirmative action designed to compensate for past discrimination, on the one hand, and innate privilege to a certain ethnic group on the other.
The British colonists took much of the Maori's land, and (ISTR) their government treated the Maori unfairly afterwards. That can justify reparations to the descendants of those who were victimized.
However, giving their descendants (or any ethnic group whatsoever) innate privilege is incompatible with equal rights and democracy.
According to the article linked to above, the Act Party opposes both affirmative action — intended to help Maori get what the state ought to provide to everyone — and innate privilege. I think that is wrong. But I also think the Maori Party is wrong.
Biden will order federal agencies to change their policies for using force against the public — for instance, not to use chokeholds. The order will limit mo-knock raids also.
This is not enough — mostly state and local thugs are the ones that kill members of the public. But this is what the president the authority to do on his own. To do more requires replacing some of the right-wing senators.
Planet roasters are pressuring African countries to invest heavily in destroying global climate.
Replacing gas with wood for cooking is not the only way to stop burning gas. There are solar cookers that do the job renewably.
Some of them are cheap by first-world standards but still require funds to provide them to Africans.
US Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi is assisted at his US events by US supporters of the Hindu-bigotry BJP party, which rules India with repression.
They protect him from questions about his association with the BJP.
What should the US do with its 900 troops at Deir ez-Zor in Syria?
I trust Juan Cole to describe the situation accurately, but I don't entirely agree with his conclusions. The 900 US troops in Deir ez-Zor may have no sensible mission, but the YPG are the only secular and democratic force in Syria, and face the threat of massacre by either Assad or Erdoğan. The bully did wrong to take US support away from them, and we can right that wrong.
*G7 countries to stop funding fossil fuel development overseas* by the end of this year. They said they would move that money to renewable energy!
This seems like a substantial change. However, if it fails to stop projects that are already started, they can still doom civilization.
*Will Black churches throw their weight behind reproductive rights?*
If you are reading this, please do not have children.
I wish for humanity to survive; I wish for technological civilization to survive. I wish for human rights and democracy to recover. I hope you wish for these things, too.
The biggest threat to that goal is the climate disaster we are still heading for. The more children we can avoid, the more we will reduce the intensity of the disaster and increase the chances of survival.
*How lawmakers in thrall to the NRA stifle gun safety laws.*
This is what plutocracy consists of.
Proposing a global minimum wage treaty.
Each country's minimum wage would be set according to the country's median wage. Or perhaps it could be adjusted based on the cost of living there.
In the US, states with fewer guns per person have fewer gun killings per person.
I've read elsewhere that houses with guns have more residents killed on the average than houses without guns. You can make yourself safer by not having a gun.
Republican candidates that rejected the corrupter's Big Lie, but did everything else to rig the election, are being presented as heroes of democracy.
Ohio Republicans keep bringing back the same unfair redistricting plans that the state supreme court has five times ruled unconstitutional, and a federal court decided to validate that rigging rather than have inconveniences running the election.
In other words, Republicans can win by defying the court.
US citizens: call on state legislatures to ban elected officials from signing NDAs with corporations.
US citizens: call on Congress to end US intervention in Yemen.
Texas cops explained their decision to wait for a SWAT team to attack the Uvalde shooter, rather than intervene sooner: they assumed he was no longer a threat to anyone.
That seems to be a failure of thinking, since they knew some children in the room with him were alive.
Toronto thugs shot and killed a man for "carrying a rifle" in the vicinity of some schools.
It turns out to have been a pellet gun, Those can occasionally cause serious injuries, but are not very effective for killing a lot of people.
His presence there called for quick action, but not that quick. They had time to shout, "Police! Drop the gun!"
Canada's Supreme Court ruled that every convict must have a chance to apply for parole after at most 25 years.
Georgians ask for federal election monitors to ensure blacks are allowed to vote.
Awards to activists who won significant local victories against destruction of nature.
The gun lobby blocks gun control by paying off Republicans in Congress.
Across the board, plutocracy is the general obstacle to every change that the US needs.
The US spends $2000 per person each year on subsidizing fossil fool suicide. That is 2/3 of a trillion dollars.
This has to stop.
The two main US teachers unions have rejected Republican plans to deal with school shootings by handing out guns to teachers.
The presence of a gun in a home goes with increased danger someone living there will be shot, so teachers have reason to think that the official presence of guns in the school will have the same effect for the same reasons. Meanwhile, we have seen just now in Uvalde, and many times before, that armed thugs in a school don't prevent school shootings.
The UK reacted to a school shooting by strengthening gun control, including prohibiting owning handguns. There was never another school shooting there.
The US can do this too, if it has the courage to take control of the Supreme Court away from the right wing, and restore free and fair elections.
Women tricked by British undercover seducer-cops who pretended to love them have written a book about their experience, and the cops' tactics of lies.
The most shocking thing I learned from the article was not how the cops went about this, but what purposes they did it for — such as, helping McDonalds sue environmentalists for leaflets that criticized it. (Most of the criticisms were ultimately found to be true.) Those environmentalists were not coming even close to a breach of the peace. The police have no business getting involved in such a case, not even if they limited themselves to methods that are totally legitimate.
In effect, the thug/trickery department was serving as a tool to boost the power of big business. Meanwhile, it disregarded the sometimes violent right-wing extremists.
Businesses are buying large tracts of land in the UK to "rewild" the land, but often this makes residents homeless.
Several Australian states have imposed or are imposing heavy punishments for some effective kinds of environmental defense protests.
*Canada investigates after Tesla catches fire, forcing driver to "smash the window".*
I don't think the maker of autonomous car would intentionally design the capability to ignite so as to kill the passengers. Someone might insert malware to do that.
However, I expect that they will be designed with the capacity to forcibly take passengers to an externally-chosen destination under command. Don't trust an autonomous car in China or Russia! Whether you could trust one in the US, I am unable to forecast.
Human rights investigators say that Putin's invasion is indeed carrying out genocide in Ukraine.
Putin is talking about calling the Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol "Mazis" and putting them on trial for "war crimes".
They could not have committed much in the way of war crimes while defending Mariupol, so I expect these accusations would be fabricated and the Putin forces would torture them into false confessions.
Putin's forces are systematically stealing art from Ukrainian museums to present Ukrainian artists as "Russian".
They are also stealing ancient Scythian art. That was neither Ukrainian nor Russian — it was made by a basically people with a very different culture. The Scythians lived in a region nowadays split between Ukraine, Russia, and some neighboring countries. Both Ukraine and Russia can validly say that the Scythians were part of their prehistory. However, that's no justification for Putin to steal Scythian relics from museums.
Intrusive Asian jumping worms spread easily and can destroy US forests.
Since the Cold War, US presidents have given themselves broad power in "emergencies". Neither the public nor Congress know where it stops, but it probably includes jailing anyone, shutting down phones and the internet, and stopping anyone from leaving the US.
And that doesn't include secret powers for the miitary.
The "emergency" declared in September 2001 is still continuing.
*The Department of Justice and other agencies continue to defend and advance legal positions held by the corrupter's administration.*
Proprietary malware accused a student of cheating in an exam, based on the fact that it saw her look down at her lap.
Merely installing that malware on your computer sabotages it. You can't trust it at all after that, though since it has to be running Windows, you couldn't trust it before that point either.
If a school wanted me to take a test this way with my computer, I would reply that that is both practically impossible (since my computer does not run Windows) and immoral (since no one should run malware).
I would agree to take the test on a computer run ny the school itself (if the school runs nonfree software on its computers, that hurts the school but not me) in a room set up by the school. That way the school could make sure I brought nothing to cheat with, and would know I'm not looking at other people or posters in the room.
Teachers in states with don't-discuss-racism laws were afraid to talk with students about the Buffalo race massacres.
Some states have laws against teaching anything that is likely to "disturb" students. What about lockdown drills?
The G7 countries published new, stronger climate defense pledges.
*Last Salem "witch" pardoned 329 years after she was wrongly convicted.*
The Putin forces are advancing slowly but unceasingly around Sievierodonetsk.
I hope the Ukrainian army can get its troops out and avoid losing them.
More info.
Bogus Johnson has changed the ministerial code so that it doesn't say he is obliged to resign.
Lawyers asking the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel's killing of Palestinian journalists have added Shireen Abu Aqleh to the case.
Egyptian freedom fighter Alaa Abd El Fattah has been on hunger strike for two months and is getting close to death. His supporters hope the UK will try to have him released.
The Australian election demonstrates the virtue of ranked choice voting.
The UK promised asylum to several Afghan journalists who now face violence for their relationship with British media. They have applied formally for asylum but the UK government has given them no response.
Could it be that the promises came from Tories?
*British empire nostalgia played part in Brexit vote, says Nobel laureate.*
The idea is that the cover-ups of repression in colonies enabled the British empire to look good until it fell, and after.
Another pertinent point is why the UK was able to prosper and build such an empire, despite being so small. The reason was, because it was the first country to go through the industrial revolution, in the 1700s. It has no such advantage now.
Victoria's Secret has been compelled to pay 8 million dollars as mandatory severance pay to Thai workers whom it had dismissed.
Some places require poor people to pay money in advance for things like electricity and heat. To treat human beings that way is harsh but businesses are not human beings, and that just gave me an idea.
If a business ever fails to pay some workers the wages they have earned, it should be put on a scheme requiring it to deposit wages in advance. The company should hand over the next week or month's wages to an agency that will distribute them to the company's workers. If ever the company fails to pay in advance this way, its work will shut down.
*[Elon Musk] has received loans and tax breaks to help keep Tesla afloat, now he says other companies should go bankrupt for the good of the economy.*
A Republican congresscritter who supports overthrowing the US government showed off his gun collection by video to a congressional hearing, focusing on how some of his guns would be "banned" by proposed laws.
He repeated the right-wing false claim that these guns "protect" his family. Actually they endanger his family more than protect it.
As I understand it, those proposed laws would ban sale of those guns, not possession of them. Thus, his criticism misrepresented them.
However, I am in favor of taking away his guns, for two reasons:
A sub-unit of Deutsche Bank was raided to investigate charges of fraud — greenwashing its investment funds.
Australia, New Zealand and the UK experienced large massacres, and put an end to the problem by through gun control measures.
The measures they used were not identical, but they were all sufficient to do the job.
Some years ago, Florida Republicans passed a "red flag" law by which a court can order someone's guns to be taken away, for a range of possible causes. The order lasts only a year or two, but the practice seems to have some good effect.
However, Republicans have become more fanatical since then. Governor DeSantis wants to get rid of the law.
The Republican Party is winning support from various sorts of groups who stand to lose from Republican policies, through party-operated "community centers".
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to pass the No Tax Breaks for Union Busting Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Texas never-delete-anything law for social media platforms.
Prof. Heyhoe: *The world cannot adapt its way out of the climate crisis, and counting on adaptation to limit damage is no substitute for urgently cutting greenhouse gases… If global heating is allowed to continue then the world will rapidly reach a point beyond what can be adapted to.*
HSBC's head of greenwashing asked, "Does it matter if Miami is 6 meters below sea level, a century from now?" Yes, if you want to live there. The ground there is porous, so if its surface is below sea level, sea will rise out of it.
A proposed law in Spain would require companies to accept phone calls within 3 minutes and give the option of talking to a real person. Companies that fail to do this would face heavy fines.
A more careful study of proposed small nuclear reactors concluded that they will produce much greater amounts of nuclear waste, in proportion to the energy they generate, than today's larger reactors.
The National Rifle Association is in deep trouble, and may be doomed to disappear. But that won't do much good, since it has converted the Republican Party into a right-wing extremist organization that encourages its followers to arm themselves to start a civil war.
The Onion reported, of the Texas school shooter: "We have reason to believe this wasn't a 'lone wolf' incident, but rather a coordinated attack carried out with the assistance of 535 individuals in the D.C. metropolitan area." However, that is an exaggeration: around half of those 535 members of Congress voted recently for gun control.
I support gun control, but we must keep in mind that other right-wing evils are far more deadly. Mass shootings are killing a couple of thousand Americans per year. Other killings with guns kill some tens of thousands, but half of them are suicides and that is not morally equivalent to murder.
Prohibiting abortions could directly kill tens of thousands of Americans per year in underground abortions. It will kill women who have miscarriages, by causing them to be denied treatment. I expect it will cause, in a less direct way, hundreds of thousands of premature deaths due to poverty caused by being compelled to have a baby.
Global heating will kill millions of Americans per year, later this century, as well as hundreds of millions in other countries. Between the food shortages, the floods, the fires, the pandemics, and the civil wars, few will escape unscathed.
Plutocracy, combined with the right-wing tactic scapegoating and distraction, is a major cause of those evils, and the root cause of the increase of poverty which also kills.
This is why I focus mainly on plutocracy, and gun control is not near the top of my list.
Using JavaScript libraries endangers the security of website-operating businesses as well as their clients. Because these scripts can change without notice, the companies (like their clients) don't even have a chance to try to vet them for safety.
Of course, the clients are equally vulnerable to the companies' own JavaScript code.
Here is the plan for a proposed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Ralph Nader: the US government has completely given up on prosecuting the people who plan and commit the biggest crimes, those implemented by corporations.
Israeli bombardment of a chemical storage plant in Gaza was tantamount to using chemical weapons.
Some UK scientists involved in developing carbon capture say it can't contribute much to limiting global heating to 1.5C — not soon enough to make a difference.
Research on carbon capture is fine as long as it doesn't distract us from implementing the urgent measures needed. Unfortunately, that's exactly what fossil fools will try to cite it for.
Tories are accused of pushing universities out of UK teacher training because they consider the universities hotbeds of leftist thinking.
The declining stock market represents the air escaping from a bubble of financialization which was hurting the real economy of the US all along.
The strange structure of the US baby formula market tends to cause local shortages even when the total supply is sufficient.
*Wall Street-Funded Democrat PAC to Spend $1 Million in Bid to Unseat Tlaib.*
The Reaganite ruination of the US gave us minority rule over a distracted, impoverished population that never learned how to think carefully or understand the system of government.
No wonder young people mostly despise the Republican Party.
*Neofascist Minority Rule by the GOP Is Laying Waste to the United States.*
Hamilton's idea of the Electoral College presumed that the choice of president was about personal integrity, not the choice of policies. The original intention was that Congress would decide policies and the president would be in charge of executing them. It took only a few years for the United States to discover than things were not actually working that way.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Andrew Biggs for Social Security Board.
US citizens: call on your state legislators to codify the right to an abortion.
US citizens: call on Louis DeJoy & the USPS Board to stop slowing down mail and raising prices, and expand products and services instead.
US citizens: call on local governments to expose Amazon's stealth attempts to start new warehouses.
A bill in Congress would impose stricter ethics rules on federal judges, including (for the first time) those on the Supreme Court.
*Millions risk losing US healthcare when Covid emergency declaration expires.*
A report from two people who lived in Mariupol and were captured by the Putin forces.
It seems that they did not exactly force Ukrainian captives to go to isolated Russian cities and take jobs they were not allowed to leave, but they made it fairly challenging to avoid that fate.
An economic study finds that the new coal mines that the previous Australian government tried so hard to authorize are unlikely to be profitable.
Their owners are hoping that they can push the government into subsidizing the mines. I have a hunch that some of that money would find its way to right-wing politicians or their campaigns. The argument the mine owners use is that they are too important to be allowed to fail.
It's just the opposite: they are too dangerous to be allowed to succeed.
*World could undo social and economic advances and face 1.5 disasters a day by 2030, according to UN's flagship Global Assessment Report.*
Pfizer has started selling some vaccines at a non-exploitative price to a list of extremely poor countries. This is "too little, too late."
Progressive members of Congress have insisted that Google must cease to collect and keep location tracking data from its customers' phones.
I think this is the first acknowledgment by members of Congress that tracking location data about people directly endangers them. That is an important step forward. However, this specific demand is too narrow to do the job, because the problem is bigger than Google.
Many companies track location data through apps, and sell them to other companies that we have never heard of. Rabid antiabortion officials in states such as Texas could send subpoenas to any of those companies. Google (and likewise Apple) must ensure that no location data is ever sent to an app unless the user manually authorizes sending it at that very moment.
Users should be able to send false locations too, whenever they wish.
People have not yet realized that this is another reason why we must make sure paying by cash remains widespread and easy. You must not ever identify yourself during a trip to another state for an abortion. Nor even before you leave, if it is in connection with the trip.
Right-wing extremist congresscritter Gosar demonstrated especially clearly that he makes up false claims based on no information. He said that the Uvalde school murderer was a "transsexual leftist illegal alien." That was entirely his imagination.
*Climate "tipping points" could push us past the point-of-no-return after less than 2 degrees of warming.*
Indeed, we may have already crossed some of these tipping points. For instance, we may have already unlocked 10 meters (33 feet) of future sea-level rise. However, how fast that happens will depend on how hot Earth gets.
The Putin forces have reportedly taken 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers prisoner in recent weeks.
That is very bad news.
An interview with NASA scientist Peter Kalmus about why he chained himself to the entrance of JP Morgan bank: the public must realize that the "people in charge" are not trying to save us.
Interviews with people who have quit the planet roaster PR companies.
Proposing that 18-year-olds should not be allowed to buy guns.
How about increasing the minimum age for gun purchases to 150?
No more onion links.
I just learned that pages on theonion.com are totally invisible when viewed without running Javascript code — they show a blank window. I get those pages as HTML by email, and render them non-graphically, and the text was plain to see that way. However, in a graphical browser, that same text does not appear.
It is against my principles to post links to pages that require JavaScript to view, so I must cease the practice of posting links to the onion pages that I like.
If you can make contact with the editors of theonion.com, and ask them to please make the contents of their pages visible in browsers that have Javascript disabled or use LibreJS, I would appreciate that. They might listen.
Tennessee has made it a felony to sleep on public property. I think that includes sidewalks as well as city parks.
Spain's prime minister and other high officials were targeted with Pegasus spyware.
India's Supreme Court has suspended prosecutions under a "sedition" law that grossly restricts freedom of speech
Hatred and contempt are sometimes justified — for instance, toward extremists of any religion — so prohibiting speech which expresses those attitudes is an offense against human rights. (If you wish to oppose the extremists effectively, you must not to let that hatred run away with you.) Exciting disaffection towards the government is a crucial part of democracy.
Republicans are using protests against the Supreme Court as an excuse for repression of protests.
*Revealed: supporters of Trump’s big lie work as election officials across Georgia.*
The uniformed thugs who arrived at the Reed school in Uvalde took 40 minutes to shoot the killer who was inside the school.
Some of the people waiting with them complained about how long they waited before going in.
Were they individually at fault for taking so long? I don't have a basis to reach that conclusion. Perhaps they were somehow stymied by the situation and were waiting for a solution.
What is clear is that the presence of a "good guy with a gun" does not prevent such shootings.
Uniformed thugs stationed in a school can't stop a killer who has come prepared, but they spend their days threatening and arresting students.
The previous two Australian ruling parties, Liberal and National, pretended to support decarbonization but in practice opposed efforts in that direction. Now that they have lost an election, and partly because of that, their leaders are planning to come out totally in favor of roasting Earth.
Perhaps we should refer to them as the Flood and Burn parties.
Richard Stallman will give a talk in French on June 4, 15h00 to 18h00, at Espace Vinci (25 Rue des Jeuneurs, 75002 Paris) near métro Grands Boulevards.
Recording and streaming on PeerTube site video.chalec.org.
Many governments invite schools to invite companies to snoop on students
The UK Parliament has recognized that contracting jobs out of a ministry leads to lower standards of work — when the work is done for the military.
Will it now recognize that this is equally true when the work is done for people? It is always bad to contract out government work, except when it can become a competitive market for private clients.
A Putin forces soldier, who was a prisoner of war in Ukraine and then was exchanged, said that his captors occasionally insulted him, but in general treated him decently, and the main pain of being a prisoner was boredom.
The NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation have set up a system to sell powerful guns in bigger quantities, and it is not broken — it is quite effective.
Beto O'Rourke, who will run against Texas governor Abbott, shouted at the latter's news conference, "This [the latest school killing] is on you."
We can debate which gun laws would be effective or reducing the number of gun murders, but it's clear that laws are required.
*"Historic" global tax deal on multinationals delayed until 2024.* And, some worry, perhaps delayed forever.
Protesting shareholders interrupted the Shell annual meeting, demanding Shell stop exacerbating global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to lower prescription drug prices and expand home care services to patients that need it.
US citizens: call on Congress to provide food to America's poor.
US citizens: call on Google to stop storing location data that tracks its users.
To protect people who travel for an abortion, this step is essential but not enough. There are many systems that track people's movements, and we need to make them all stop.
US citizens: call on Congress to fund research about how to protect right whales.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call for legalizing marijuana.
The thugs who killed Quadry Sanders have been charged with manslaughter.
Shootings are now the largest single cause of death for Americans under 20.
The article refers to that whole age range as "children", which is a misleading practice.
A proposed windfall profits tax in the UK could stop some of Billionaire Polluters' proposed drilling projects!
US citizens: call on your senators to protect Shenandoah Mountain.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sign a letter to support human rights for Palestinians and Israelis.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to cosponsor the MONARCH Act, to protect monarch butterflies.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Jared Kushner.
US citizens: call on Biden and Congress not to give money to big companies that violate workers' rights.
US citizens: call on the USPS board of governors to fire DeJoy without delay.
The head of the IEA (International Energy Agency) has affirmed that civilization must not explode any "carbon bombs".
He also pointed out that these investments in future suicide will do nothing to ease the current high prices. Putin's war will be long over by the time they produce anything.
The IEA has in the past provided cover for fossil fuel expansion plans, thus protecting them from pressure to cut back world emissions. Its ceasing to do so means one layer of cover removed.
George Monbiot: *We need optimism -– but Disneyfied climate predictions are just dangerous.*
Grenoble has proposed to eliminate absurd strict rules about what people can wear in public swimming pools.
Israeli soldiers shot famous Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh dead as she was covering a protest.
There was no fighting before the soldiers shot her, and others there say it looked like a targeted killing.
Israel will not investigate her killing.
Palestinians gave journalist Shireen Abu Akleh a state funeral.
Israeli thugs attacked the funeral; the US rebuked Israel for that attack.
*‘Cold-blooded’ killing and funeral chaos leave West Bank in turmoil.*
Sudan's military rulers are arresting and killing protesters demanding democracy.
Mallory McMorrow, of the Michigan state senate, responded to a vicious personal insult from a right-wing senator by giving a powerful speech reproaching right-wing repression and supporting progressive views in the name of Christianity.
Someone once told me that "to be a good Christian, you have to be a liberal democrat." That was before some people foolishly demonized the term "liberal".
It meant more or less the same thing that "progressive" means now.
That made perfect sense to me. A good Christian should likewise support the right to copy and share published works and software. But statements like that won't convince Christians coming from me, because I'm not a Christian. I'm glad to see Christians arguing powerfully for them.
Investigations of the Putin forces' use of weapons that kill across a substantial area: cluster bombs, powerful bombs, fléchettes and unguided missiles.
The treaty that entirely prohibits cluster bombs has not been signed by the world's main military powers, or by Ukraine. So I think it is a mistake to suppose that use of cluster bombs is, ipso facto, a war crime.
However, the more general treaty against using imprecise weapons in residential areas must cover cluster bombs along with the other weapons described in the article. So the use of cluster bombs there would be war crimes.
The head of NATO addressed the Davos meeting and told the tycoons that "free trade" had to be limited to protect national security.
The examples he cited have to do with military security, and I agree with him on those issues. But there are other principles that likewise ought to outweigh letting businesses do as they like. For instance, making it too easy for businesses to merge leads to price gouging and shortages.
Letting businesses have as much political power as they now do leads to starvation, homelessness, and untreated injury and illness for those who can't work.
Making it too easy for businesses resist unions leads to those same problems for employed people.
Arguing that society has no reason to permit the existence of billionaires.
Accusations that Amy's Kitchen (which manufactures packaged foods) treats workers like organic manure.
Wendell Potter: Medicare makes secret deals that it will cover the expensive trademarked drugs, but not cover their "cheaper" generic equivalents.
Jeremy Corbyn hopes that all military alliances will be eliminated in the interests of world peace.
I disagree with that view — I think that that would not be an effective way to achieve peace. In particular, I support the existence of NATO.
But his view is not an absurd or outrageous one. For instance, he rejects the claim, which originates from Putin, that NATO is to blame for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
I am sure I have other specific disagreements with Corbyn. Complete agreement would be amazingly unlikely, and too much to hope for. Therefore, I won't stop supporting Corbyn over inevitable specific disagreements. I continue to believe that he would be a far better leader for the UK than any of the current Tory or Labour leaders.
*Pro-democracy campaigners in West Virginia and Arizona on Monday risked arrest at sit-ins… demanding that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema [end the filibuster to] allow the Senate to pass reproductive rights, climate action, and voting rights measures.*
A Massachusetts lawsuit against Exxon for misleading investors and the public about climate risks from using its fossil fuel products can proceed to trial.
The photos of Bogus Johnson in an illegal party which he had denied attending made it impossible for Britons to close their eyes to his readiness to deny the truth.
"Party gate" is a rather small issue, in regard to its direct effects on anyone. But the photos of their idiotic disregard for the danger of Covid-19 demonstrated visibly the Tories' contempt for everyone who isn't particularly powerful — contempt that they have implemented in many areas of policies, some causing great suffering to thousands or millions.
Education apps are full of spyware, like other apps.
The mere existence of an "advertising ID" in a computer is an example of malware in the operating system.
Areas of Australia that have been subject to persistent and repeated heavy rain now face a plague of leaches.
The Czech Republic discriminates against Ukrainian Roma when they arrive as refugees. Officials deny them the refugee certificate that other Ukrainian refugees receive. They face similar prejudice if they go to Germany.
Some of these refugees have papers saying they have Hungarian citizenship too. Orbán offered Ukrainian Roma such papers, but if they go to Hungary now, it says their papers are forgeries.
Russia is exporting grain stolen from occupied parts of Ukraine.
Some of the laws proposed by fanatical Christians to ban abortion would also ban in-vitro fertilization.
In my view, we should not do any in-vitro fertilization until Earth's population is considerably smaller, and decreasing.
*Elon Musk's Twitter takeover exposes the real threat to free speech: Big Tech monopolies.*
I would not say that is the one and only real threat, but it is an important one.
Tories crushed the British unions in the 1980s, but not entirely. Now that train drivers' real income has gone way down, and they are planning a strike, Tories are planning to criminalize the strike.
*Male TV presenters in Afghanistan are wearing face masks on screen to show solidarity after the Taliban issued an order that all women on news channels must cover their faces.*
Republicans are trying to force women to have more babies, but refuse to help them feed their babies once those are born.
They care, for political reasons, about fetuses, but whether a post-born fetus lives or dies is nothing to them.
UN Secretary General Guterres is forcefully denouncing fossil fuel companies, calling them "climate wreckers" and urging young people to refuse to work for them.
I prefer "planet roasters", but "climate wreckers" fits them too.
I read several years ago that US oil companies were finding it hard to hire good staff — graduates considered them bad.
Indeed, young people are more aware of the harm and danger of fossil fuels. I hope people my age learn this soon.
Australia permitted supply problems to slow the installation of renewable generation.
With a can-do attitude, these problems can be overcome, Here are examples:
A wind-turbine factory whose production is no longer needed is a lot less dangerous than an fossil fuel facility whose production is no longer needed. The latter would be used by planet roasters to lobby for too much fossil fuel extraction and dangerous levels of emissions.
The delivery company Airgas employed drivers to drive heavy trucks full of gas (often CO2). It compels them to follow unsafe practices, and to lie to customers about how much gas is in the truck's cargo tank. A driver documented this and complained.
Slavoj Žižek: *We must stop letting Russia define the terms of the Ukraine crisis.*
*Yes, the liberal west is hypocritical, applying its high standards very selectively. But hypocrisy means you violate the standards you proclaim, and in this way you open yourself up to inherent criticism – when we criticize the liberal west, we use its own standards. … And the only way to defend what is worth saving in our liberal tradition is to ruthlessly insist on its universality.*
Biden, speaking in Japan, said that the US would defend Taiwan if it is attacked.
Some people are going to find that shocking, but it should not be. That the US will defend Taiwan if China attacks Taiwan is entirely proper and normal. What ought to be shocking is that China is willing to consider attacking Taiwan.
Professor Tribe: The revocation of Roe v Wade would be a legal revolution based on an arbitrary partisan rejection of an area of existing jurisprudence. The supposedly similar past examples are not actually similar.
*"Warmongering, lies and hatred": Russian diplomat in Geneva resigns over Ukraine invasion.*
I am reminded of the diplomat (was he American? British?) who, early in this century, resigned and said, "Has 'oderint dum metuant' become our motto?"
"Oderint dum metuant", the emperor Caligula's favorite saying, is Latin for, "Let them hate us, as long as they fear us."
Mexico's Supreme Court banned the practice of searching people on buses based on racial profiling.
The crew of a ship that was sent to rescue refugees drowning in the Mediterranean faces prosecution in Italy and possibly 20 years in prison.
It appears that right-wing extremists constructed falsehoods for the prosecution.
Putin's puppets in Kherson are going to "request" annexation of the city by Russia.
*[Proposed] US fracking boom could tip world to edge of climate disaster.*
The Tories continue to push to criminalize protesting, and even appearing to plan to help a protest.
Why condemn Putin if you're going to imitate him?
The Supreme Court eliminated the possibility of presenting exculpatory evidence to a federal court after an incompetent defense lawyer failed to present it in the initial trial — or failed to sign a form in time.
This decision places respect for the court system above the rights of people to a fair trial. Instead of making the system give justice, this decision closes its eyes to its failures and defines them away. That's called "finality."
It would indeed be a good thing if we could count on trial defense lawyers to do their jobs properly and present all important evidence for the defense. Instead of pretending they did so, our legal system should make damned sure they do so.
A Russian officer explains why he resigned from Putin forces out of shame. It seems that many Russian soldiers are refusing to be part of the Putin forces, refusing to go to Ukraine.
One thing that interests me is that apparently rule of law still applies inside the Russian army, for some things. Putin's servitors make fabricated criminal accusations against dissidents, but the army lets people resign, or refuse to go outside Russia, because the law says they can.
*Millionaires join Davos protests, demanding "tax us now."*
Planet roaster companies are building 200 "carbon bombs" — defined as projects that will generate a billion tons of CO2 if fully utilized.
These companies, the world's main fossil fuel companies, are intentionally sabotaging any chance of avoiding global catastrophe. If you are young today, these carbon bombs are likely to kill you. Don't delay fighting back against this planned mass murder until you're doomed to probable death from it.
The American Library Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Authors' Guild, and some big publishing companies have set up a campaign against censorship in the US.
The Putin forces are sending tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to special makeshift jails and subjecting them to interrogation with beatings.
Some are them released after a few days. Others have been held for weeks. It's not clear what happens to those that the Putin forces determine feel a loyalty to Ukraine, or have been soldiers. They may be sent to Russia, they may be shot.
The FCC opened the doors to political spam text messages to cell phones. It should shut the doors again.
*Globalisation of food production has left millions hungry.*
We must stop optimizing food production for efficiency and profit and bring robustness back into the system.
We must also have fewer children so as to reduce the future population.
The world urgently needs to cut emissions of methane and other short-term greenhouse gases.
*More than 120 civil society groups from around the world on Thursday warned that nations have only six months left to meet a collective commitment made at last year's United Nations Climate Conference to end public financing of fossil fuels.*
The Taliban have forced female TV reporters to cover their faces on the air. This is on top of prohibiting women's education beyond secondary school.
It is disgusting, but I don't see what we can do to weaken their grip on Afghanistan.
*Abandoned fishing gear is killing marine life and poisoning our oceans.*
Australia's right-wing planet roaster government has fallen. What kept it going for ten years was threats — and lies.
*[Ukraine chief negotiator] Podolyak made clear that Ukraine would not accept any deal with Russia that involved ceding territory, and that agreeing to a ceasefire now while making concessions to Russia would backfire on Ukraine because "Moscow would hit back harder after any break in fighting."*
That's what I said a month ago about any agreement to end the war.
US citizens: call on Biden to take executive action to expand workers' power.
US citizens: call on your senators to sign Senator Merkley's letter opposing Israel's plan to demolish a thousand Palestinians' homes.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to commit to voting No on any bills that fund military spending at over 90% of the current level.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Comcast, Charter, and DirecTV to suspend the Faux News channel.
US citizens: call on Speaker Pelosi to take a stand against corporate dark-money misinformation ads.
Could "peace circles", or other opporunities for students to speak and be listened to, help lead Americans away from plans to die in the process of killing?
The official UK thugs decided in the 1970s not to try to infiltrate violent right-wing extremist groups because those were too violent.
It was safer to infiltrate groups that advocated peace, or the rights of the weak, because they were not a real threat.
(satire) *Surgeon Loses Another Patient Under Operating Table.*
The Department of Justice said it would no longer prosecute crackers who break security for the sake of reporting or correcting flaws.
We still need to change the CFAA to narrow it to cases which are really attacks.
Please don't use the term "hackers" to refer specifically to breaking security.
*Why Seniors Like Me Are Fighting Against Medicare Direct Contracting and ACO REACH.*
Mastriano, the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, is determined to make Republicans win Pennsylvania in the 2024 presidential election. If he can't get the voters to vote that way for real, he is ready to steal the election.
Experimental proof that Microsoft's Bing search engine censors for China in the US.
The Drug Policy Alliance's strategic plan for ending the "war on drugs".
When a war is on drugs, it is dangerous to everyone.
(satire) *Knife-Wielding Tesla Kills Pedestrian.*
(satire) *Fetus Steps Outside Womb For Quick Cigarette Break.*
(satire) *NYPD Arrests Colombian Turnstile Lord Behind Massive Turnstile-Jumping Ring.*
The US government will spend about 4 billion dollars to build 4 million tons/year of direct CO2 removal capacity.
That's about 1000 dollars per ton/year.
For method this to save civilization, it would need to remove a large fraction of the 60 gigatons of CO2 emitted per year. Capacity to remove 30 gigatons/year would cost 30 trillion dollars. Aren't other solutions cheaper?
I have a feeling it will be difficult to scale up that far. Especially difficult will be sequestering all the extracted CO2 underground. The first plants will be built in places that are especially propitious, Will enough propitious places be found for so much capacity?
Having this approach available will not directly do any harm. What worries me most is that the oil companies will cite this as "the solution" and use it as an excuse to refuse to cut emissions. They will do anything to avoid actual reductions in their oil sales.
*To stave off authoritarianism, Democrats need to deliver on their promises and directly confront the institutions that deny democracy. The party is failing on both fronts.*
Ilhan Omar calls for an investigation of dangerous concentration in production of baby formula.
*Trump shares CPAC Hungary platform with notorious racist and antisemites*
Republicans killed a relief bill for small businesses. More restaurants, bars and stores will close now.
A campaign spending limit law in Brazil provided an opportunity to scientifically test the effects of such limits.
The study found that a smaller limit led to more candidates, and less advantage for the incumbent.
*Russia's Conquered Minorities Are Putin's Cannon Fodder in Ukraine War.*
This is partly true in the US — the army recruits heavily among disprivileged groups, because they have little other opportunity. At least maybe they counterbalance the right-wing extremists among the white soldiers.
Children pose deep philosophical questions. Here a philosopher tries to give them serious, respectful answers.
Florida students protested against the "Don't talk about queerness" bill, then overcame an attempt to cover up the photos in the yearbook which showed the protest.
A Colorado hospital told a patient that an operation would cost per $1,337, then afterward said, "Oops, the real price is $300,000."
With a universal medical system, this would not happen.
In Alabama, many surgeons already refuse to operate on women who are having miscarriages. They are afraid of prosecution.
Most of the time, this causes only pain and suffering. Occasionally women die from it.
Soon fanatical Christians will spread this threat to women's lives to other states.
Take care of yourself: don't risk going through pregnancy in a Republican-controlled state.
A proposed explanation for why most Filipinos voted for Marcos, especially young ones.
Right-wing US billionaires are leading an anti-democracy movement to make the world safe for unlimited plutocracy.
The Tory minister of policing emphasized the importance of arresting people who steal food to eat.
Several US government "law enforcement" agencies are keeping records on everyone who lives in the US — or as close to everyone as they can arrange.
*Afghan surgeon who fled Ukraine says he was treated differently at Polish border.*
*[Right-wing extremists] are animated by a vision of 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance –- it is the only order they will accept for America.*
Prohibition of abortion in El Salvador has created a presumption of guilt for any woman who has a miscarriage that might have been an abortion.
182 women have been convicted and imprisoned there for having a grave problem in pregnancy, over 24 years. And they keep on imprisoning more.
California raised taxes on the rich; rich people continue moving there nonetheless.
The right-wing "realist" claim that they would move away to reduce taxes seems to be bogus.
At the start of May, 15% of US households with children reported food insufficiency.
In August it was 9%. The increase is due to Senator Manchin.
Global heating has made disastrous heat waves in India 100 times more probable.
Formerly they were likely to happen once in 300 years. Now it is once in 3 years, which means they are now part of normal weather.
It's only a matter of time before they reach the level of fatal weather and kill millions of people in a day.
The US investigated an attack in Syria that killed and wounded civilians, and concluded that no specific person was to blame. That could be a falsehood to protect the guilty. But not necessarily: it could be true. If so, there are two possibilities:
A Japanese medical school has been found guilty of sex discrimination after it reduced the grades of female applicants to compensate for their superior skills.
Several scientists present reasons to conclude that various chemicals in our environmental pollution are pushing millions of people towards obesity — especially as children.
*More than 3,000 potentially harmful chemicals found in food packaging.*
*Trump claims immigrants are voting illegally. The real problem is foreign fat cats funding US campaigns.*
That's in addition to the other real problem: American fat cats funding US campaigns.
Rio Tinto mining has made a non-binding agreement to cooperate with some indigenous groups in protecting ancient sites from its mines.
It is probably better than no agreement at all; but I don't think that the disposition of amazingly old art from the past ought to be in the hands of a mining company.
*Ginni Thomas reportedly urged Arizona Republicans to overturn 2020 result.*
That was on 9 Nov 2020, 6 days after the election.
She and her husband have persistently aimed to overthrow the US government.
*There is no way to fool physics. Climate Breakdown And State-Corporate Madness.*
*FBI failing to address white supremacist violence, warns former special agent.*
Big Oil companies are using their windfall profits to buy back stock, much faster than they did last year.
The right-wing Supreme Court could reverse a wide range of long-standing decisions that put checks on the power of the most powerful.
*Decolonizing US Energy System Would Save 50,000 Lives and $600 Billion a Year.*
(satire) *Febreze Introduces New Rotting Rat Carcass For Covering Up Tough Odors.*
China makes antisocial media sites present the location of the user who made a posting. That makes it easy to demonize anyone that the government-supported majority wishes to demonize.
The US has "investigated" an air strike in Syria that killed lots of civilians, mainly as a whitewash.
Banning abortions significantly increases poverty, medical problems, and danger of death for the women thus compelled to have babies.
The UK will require banks to provide ATM or branch access in all communities.
I applaud this decision. You can help make your country do likewise, by insisting on purchasing anonymously (which currently means, only with cash).
* Handing over the WikiLeaks founder [Julian Assange] to the US will benefit repressive regimes around the world.*
He has only done what any good journalist is supposed to do.
Global heating is making it harder for people around the world to sleep.
Greenhouse gases affect nights even more than days.
A Jamaican MP takes a thoughtful stand on the question of when it is or isn't right to deport people who have committed a crime.
*Big carmakers stuck in slow lane over switch to zero emissions.*
(satire) *"No Way To Prevent This," Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.*
*Rising Authoritarianism and Escalating [Global Heating] Are Supported by the Same Industries.*
Bezos thanked Manchin for blocking a tax increase on corporations.
When you think of Amazon, think "Manchin." This is one more reason to refuse to buy from Amazon, on top of all the others.
(satire) *CIA Criticized For Use Of Abusive Etiquette Coaches In Black Site Finishing Schools.*
The European Union proposes to become a branch of China.
The European Union executive branch has proposed a directive for mandatory censorship of communication services including chat and email, which includes requiring client software to scan for prohibited communications. Interpreting the description here literally, this would prohibit free software email or chat clients.
The rules would also apply to cloudy services that offer to store data and snoop on it. Under these rules, they would be required to snoop on everything.
The proposal would also require all digital services to make users prove their identity, presumably through some nonfree software and/or online disservice. This would be the total surveillance society that we have long feared the internet would turn into — a place in which whistleblowing and dissent would inevitably be caught.
2000 years ago, local climate alterations wiped out Rome's favorite herb. Now, global climate alterations can wipe out many plant species, including some we grow massive quantities of.
The UK's plutocratist government has arranged to make poor people pay a higher rate for gas and electricity than everyone else. Now some poor people are disconnecting those services rather than pay debts of around 10 to 20 dollars.
Robot assistance in surgery for bladder cancer has made it much more reliable. It also enabled patients to recover faster.
I wish the article explained more about what "robot" means here. Is it a kind of wireless waldo, or does it have some autonomous capability?
I also wonder how they get the robot to the bladder. Through a small incision?
Between two expeditions to find the Endurance on the bottom of the ice-covered Weddell Sea, one in 2019 and one in 2022. there was a big decrease in the thickness of the sea ice.
Global drought forecast: 700 million people forced to move by 2030, 7 or 8 billion affected by 2050.
This probably implies food shortage — everywhere, all the time. And many deaths. And lots of cities burning. We may need desalination plants to get water to fight the fires, as well as water to drink.
Drought is only one of the deadly effects of global heating.
The big US meat processing companies used their political influence to keep operating in 2020 with no precautions against the spread of Covid-19 among their workers. The result was hundreds of workers dead, and Covid-19 spreading through the local area.
*[California] Coastal Fire Shows Even the Rich 'Are Not Safe From Earth Breakdown'.*
With the current drought, the fire season is now all year long.
*Texas Gov. Abbott's Solution to Formula Shortage? Let Migrant Babies Starve.*
A driverless car constantly takes video in all directions. San Francisco thugs use them for systematic snooping.
In a testament to the the power of plutocracy, only 15% of people in poor countries have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
Women's rights groups denounced Manchin and Sinema for maintaining the filibuster and their claim that this will protect against Republican wrongdoing if they ever control the senate.
With Republicans' "by hook or by crook" attitude, we can expect them to cancel the filibuster whenever they get a chance.
Various Arab governments (hostile to Iran) have lobbied very hard to block a new non-nuclear deal.
In substance, culture wars are a distraction. But that doesn't mean they are unimportant. This distraction can be deadly, by enabling right-wing extremists to control who has power on questions that do matter.
The Putin forces are holding on to some strongpoints close enough to Kharkiv to bombard the outskirts of the city from them.
The US Senate wants to enable the US to prosecute non-US war criminals. US war criminals don't seem to be included.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict Trump promptly
In the US: call on major US broadcast TV networks to show the Jan 6 committee hearings.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to take action against predatory for-profit colleges.
We should prohibit for-profit colleges; allowing them is asking for trouble.
A Putin forces soldier pled guilty to killing a Ukrainian civilian.
The civilian was talking on a phone while riding a bicycle, and The soldier was ordered to shoot the civilian to stop him from reporting on the presence of Russian soldiers.
At the time, the soldier was driving around in a seized civilian car. That would have limited what the civilian could have known and reported about the actions of the Putin forces.
But what if the situation had been different? What if the soldier had driven by in his tank instead? Is it considered a war crime to kill a civilian who seems to be acting as a scout for the enemy? Should it be? What are soldiers supposed to do in that situation?
The new federal law to prosecute lynching is not by itself going to make racist murder cease. To achieve that requires other kinds of efforts, including rooting out white supremacists (and white supremacist ideas) from thug departments.
The point that states are making it illegal to teach what happened to Emmett Till is a very important one.
One of the things we need to do is to teach people to reject bigotry. Engaging in bigotry, even in a symbolic way as that article does by capitalizing "black" but not "white", works against that goal. Normally I decline to link to articles which promote bigotry, but I make exceptions for some articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism, as here.
* As the Bank [of England] lurches to reverse its own policies, there is a risk that "stability" will again be delivered on the backs of poor people.*
The two major parties in Australia have disregarded protecting the environment. As a result, both land and sea have been grievously damaged.
The list of recommendations are good ones, but a crucial recommendation to reduce population growth (in Australia and elsewhere) is missing.
Will Putin treat the Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered in Mariupol as prisoners of war, or try them for war crimes?
The Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol would have had few opportunities to commit war crimes while besieged. The civilians around were Ukrainian and the soldiers would not have hurt them. Fighting Russian soldiers with their personal weapons would not be a war crime.
It is possible that a few of them could be accused of committing war crimes before the start of this war. In a few cases, they could even be guilty. However, accusing enemies of fictitious crimes is standard practice for Putin.
Putin could treat them properly as prisoners of war, while refusing to exchange them while the war continues.
George Monbiot: the global food system is becoming more concentrated in various ways, and some scientists that study complex systems suspect this is responsible for increasing instability.
Regulatory systems are becoming weaker: Elon Musk regularly gets away with violating laws and regulations and suffers no significant penalty.
In Victoria, more than 40% of complaints about thug departments by indigenous Australians meet with bias.
It is very rare that the complainants win.
*The [German] business dynasties who benefited from Nazis*,
and in some cases remained close to Nazis after the war.
Right-wing PACs spent millions on plutocratist Democrats in several primaries, aiming to defeat progressive Democrats, but many of the progressives won anyway.
One incumbent that was defeated was Kurt Schrader,
who set up a devious scheme to defeat Sanders's plan to pass the Build Back Better bill by not voting on the infrastructure bill until after it was passed before.
Anyone with a connection to New York City: tell Mayor Eric Adams to increase subway frequency and service, not punitive fare enforcement.
US citizens: call on Toyota to stop funding GOP election deniers.
US citizens: call on the DHS to protect immigrant workers.
US citizens: call on your state legislators to make your state a safe haven for abortion rights.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on the DNC to invest in a summer youth organizing program.
US citizens: call on your district attorney not to prosecute abortion.
US citizens: call for nonviolent first responders, not more extreme police spending.
*EU plans "massive" increase in green energy to help end reliance on Russia.* Not to mention the even bigger danger of global heating disaster.
A new sort of ultrasonic speaker and microphone could be used to track people's movements in within a house without their knowing.
A US investigation says that the Afghan army collapsed because it was set up along modern American lines and that made it dependent on US support.
Biden should use the Defense Production Act to speed conversion to renewable energy.
The surrender of Mariupol will enable Putin to conceal the war crimes his forces committed there. With the exception of the biggest crimes, such as bombarding the city into ruins, and forcibly taking some of the residents to Russia.
Several appointed high officials waited a year or more to tell the public, and Congress, about the horrible things they had seen the wrecker do or propose while in office.
If they had reported these things in January 2021, they might have helped protect the US from the extension of his grip over the Republican party.
(satire) *Biden Touts Resiliency Of American Decline While Touring Factory That's Been Closed For Decades.*
(satire) *Congress Placed On Lockdown After Deranged Man Enters Senate With Gun Control Measures.*
*Several major UK fossil fuel projects have been approved since Cop26 concluded, an analysis has found, while about 50 schemes are thought to be in the pipeline between now and 2025.*
Australia has reduced skin cancer by banning artificial UV tanning salons. Now people propose the UK adopt a similar policy.
*The [global] Energy and Food Crisis Is Far Worse Than Most Americans Realize.*
If not for global heating, we could aim for a "solution" consisting of finding more oil to pump. But that path is a very dead end.
Several US states are adopting laws to protect abortion rights for women from repressive states.
New York City Mayor Adams said during his campaign that he would help homeless people, but instead he has turned to the same old cruelty.
*What unites conservatives in the US and the UK? Terrible solutions to the cost of living crisis.*
Their "solutions" don't attempt to fix the problem, as much as to help demonize the victims. For that goal, they don't need to be in touch with reality.
Actually, inflation is nothing to worry about (in most companies) as long as your union can make the company you really work for raise workers' wages as fast as it raises prices.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, extremist supporter of the corrupter's big lie, lost the Republican primary and thus will probably not be in Congress next year.
This might be a sign that the worst form of extremism are starting to lose support among Republicans.
However, trumpery is for the most part still popular among Republicans.
Protesters that blocked a coal train in New Hampshire have been sentenced to months of jail.
Biden is sending US troops back to Somalia.
It's a bad idea for the US to get involved in fighting every terror group in the world. Many of these fights can't possibly be completely won, and in the absence of that, the US would always have a reason to keep "helping" to fight them — and generating resentment that would fuel the terror group.
Putin forces soldiers are stealing textbooks for Ukrainian, and textbooks in Ukrainian, from schools in the occupied parts of Ukraine. They are using pressure and threats to demand teachers start teaching the Russian curriculum, but some teachers resist.
They are stealing schools' laptops too. Sad to say, these laptops are surely full of user-subjugating nonfree software, and if they are replaced, the replacements will have the same problem.
The Tories propose another blow to rule of law by planning to let ministers seize more powers over thug departments, including forbidding their chiefs from criticizing the government.
The US should start negotiations with Russia about mutual reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Right-wing extremists show that they want to pressure and force people to have more babies.
They equate puberty-blocking with sterilization; then they equate voluntary sterilization with forced sterilization. Through those two evident errors, they arrive at the bizarre conclusion that choosing to block your own puberty is equivalent to someone else's forcibly sterilizing you.
With this joined with their racist assumption about whose babies are good and whose are bad,
they are gradually approaching the one-time Nazi ideology of making people have babies for the state. With the added wrinkle that the increase in population puts the state's stability in danger, as well as the lives of all people except those already old. Any sort of encouragement (or pressure) for people to reproduce (regardless of which people) puts civilization in increased danger.
The articles linked to above display 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 exceptions for some articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. These articles are some of the exceptions.
A white-supremacist bigot who killed 10 people in Buffalo had been posting for a long time about his plans for killing.
Visible signs that someone is planning violence are generally not certain or clear, especially when you don't know very well the person that is giving the signs. Chances are most of the people who might strike someone as suspect would never carry out any violence. Given that situation, what could possibly be useful to actually do? Nothing, I think.
Cuba has created a number of new political crimes.
I wonder about the precise definition of "to give information to international organizations, associations or even people who have not been authorized by the government."
South Africa's recent flooding and landslides are twice as likely nowadays as they were decades ago, due to global heating.
Explaining greenwashing: it's designed to distract the public from a company's continued involvement in developing new fossil fuel wells or infrastructure.
If a company's publicity about global heating doesn't talk about drastic reductions in use of fossil fuels, it's almost surely greenwashing.
People accustomed to opposing the US's many unjust or avoidable wars face a dilemma about confronting Putin's war in Ukraine.
I'm one of the former group, more or less. But I have held short of generalizing that opposition to a universal conclusion that "fighting is always simply wrong." Most of the US's wars have been power-rivalry or imperialism (and I won't be surprised if it does those again), but aiding Ukraine is an exception and we need to recognize it as one.
The US Supreme Court has removed yet another obstacle (though not the biggest one) against buying politicians.
*Exclusive: Nearly half existing facilities will need to close prematurely to limit heating to 1.5C, scientists say.*
*Pro-Israel lobbying group Aipac secretly pouring millions into defeating progressive Democrats.*
A former head of the WTO wants to develop a global system of government for geoengineering. I agree that the world needs one, but someone whose career has been associated with serving the interests of business is the last person to entrust this to.
Can anyone find the list of 16 experts he has invited to form the "Global Overshoot Commission", with information about their careers?
When UK fishing boats hire migrant workers, 1/3 of them are made to work 20-hour shifts, and 1/3 get beaten up.
Mariupol has capitulated after almost three months of siege. Some hundreds of the remaining Ukrainian soldiers have surrendered.
There is no way to tell how many civilians were killed, but it may be possible to count those who have got out, or who get out in coming days.
Due to bias in research into car crashes, cars protect women less than they protect men.
The US should treat the white-supremacist massacre in Buffalo as terrorism.
More generally, we need to reverse the peculiar and unjustified focus on terrorism committed by people other than white-supremacists, since the latter are the big threat.
More deeply, we need to change the right-wing bias that leads "law enforcement" agencies to enforce laws mainly against progressives and minority groups. This may require changing a lot of their personnel.
Putin is trying to intimidate Sweden and Finland, by threatening to move military units and weapons around if they join NATO.
Putin is talking about their membership in NATO as if it constituted a threat to attack Russia (which is not true). I think the purpose of that way of speaking is to encourage people to conceive of it that way.
Russia can move its troops and missiles around for any reason, or no reason. Putin could have moved troops to the Finnish border a year ago if it wanted to, but there was no reason to do so then, and will be no reason to do so next year, except to look bellicose. It wouldn't make any big difference in practice anyway.
This is just posturing, but it gives people something to panic about if they are so inclined.
*Experts Lay Out Proactive Measures to Defend World Against Future Pandemics.*
The first item in the list is protecting the forests where humans will occasionally catch new diseases from wild animals.
*Instead of sacrificing lives to a free-market insurance God, [Medicare for All] saves lives while retraining people in [the insurance business] for the life-affirming jobs of the future.*
The Americans who cry "tyranny!" about masks and vaccinations are the same ones that are trying to abolish many substantial human rights that were established in the 1960s and 70s.
Senator Warren's new proposed law would punish companies for price gouging while being profitable already.
Republican plans for persecution of people connected in any way with abortions take advantage of the injustice of surveillance that has been built into digital infrastructure and online disservices over many years.
We will need to demand coin phones, and libraries that let us do searches without saying who we are.
Australia will buy out some boats' fishing permits to help certain species survive.
If global heating effects are part of the problem, this sort of help may not suffice for long if global heating continues.
Many of Afghanistan's working women are now idle at home, the jobs they formerly did are not done, the people they served (often women) are left wanting, and this adds to the economy's losses.
*Taliban dissolves Afghanistan’s human rights commission as "unnecessary."*
The right-wing Australian government proposes to help Australians get the money to buy a house by letting them draw money from their retirement funds.
This will mean more competition for the available housing, thus forcing the prices up. It won't provide any net benefit for the non-rich. In other words, it is a swindle.
*Republicans are fueling extremism and terror like the Buffalo shooting.*
Republicans are blocking funds for Covid-19 tests, treatment and vaccination. Their willingness to sabotage the country for a partisan victory makes them effectively terrorists.
Floods ruined crops in part of northeast Australia. The area was previously flooded in February, as part of widespread flooding that also destroyed houses in much of eastern Australia.
Global heating is increasing the frequency of such floods there and elsewhere. Australia's planet-roaster politicians are responsible for this (along with other countries' planet-roaster politicians).
Isn't it a shame that the article says not a word about this?
Heidi Marston, head of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, quit abruptly and denounced the government policy which treats homeless people first of all as unsightly, and only second as people in need of help.
This is a response to selfish pressure from wealthy residents and business owners.
The underlying cause of homelessness is that any place to live in a major city (where there are jobs) is too expensive for most people even when they have jobs.
One major cause of this is zoning laws that block expansion of housing capacity.
As Covid-19 evolves and becomes more transmissible, it also evolves away from the target that current vaccines are aimed at. Their effectiveness is gradually decreasing. But there is no special effort to accelerate development of better vaccines.
All this is happening as society in most countries has totally surrendered to the fools and jerks. The fools say, "What, me worry about Covid?" The jerks say, "I wouldn't wear a mask to save your life — or anyone's life."
Contrast this with Japan and South Korea, where people continue to reduce the number or cases by wearing masks.
That's what you get when you put a habitual liar in charge of a job that requires saying no to the wealthy.
A member of Australia's Administrative Appeals Tribunal says he was stopped from hearing welfare benefits cases because he had decided too many cases in favor of the individuals who were making the appeals.
He has "rejected the department's interpretation of the law on a number of points that have never been definitively decided on appeal."
A large survey finds that cynical people are perceived as being more competent than others, but on the average they aren't really so.
The Putin forces have retreated from most of the seized territory around Kharkiv. They gave way easily to advancing Ukrainian troops.
As a result, Kharkiv is no longer in artillery range of the Putin forces. There could be occasional missile attacks, but the city will not suffer further bulk destruction.
Nuclear power is still not a usable solution. It's even more dangerous than we used to recognize.
A Just Stop Oil activist says that threats of imprisonment will not make them give up. They will continue striving to save civilization and the ecosphere.
European news associates dangerous heat waves, not with hot death to come, but with having fun.
The corrupter says that he lost the phones that the investigators subpoena'd from him.
I don't believe a word of it, but it will be hard to prove it is false.
DeMentis signed a bill requiring Florida schools to teach students about the victims of communism.
It is important for people to learn about the victims of communism. Stalin killed tens of millions of Russians, and Mao did the same to Chinese. They left behind corrupt dictatorships.
However, I fear that Republicans will use this opportunity to indoctrinate students to believe that today's extreme capitalism represents a just society. Meanwhile, slavery in the US, and subsequent racist laws, are also crucial for Americans to learn about.
Idea: Twitter should not allow any presidents or prime ministers of nuclear-armed states to have accounts, because they could use Twitter to start a nuclear war.
Perhaps Twitter should not allow any president or prime minister, or war minister, or general, to have an account.
Multiperson virtual reality raises a number of issues of right and wrong, which can be considered in relation to the laws of various countries, or to various ideas of morality. There will be conflicts among these.
One moral issue which the article is unaware of is that of the nonfree software in use at multiple levels in the underlying support, both in the VR headsets and in the multiperson interaction server. These programs will have malicious functionalities, since nonfree software usually does.
Until we have VR systems that companies can't snoop on and manipulate, I will carry out my interactions with people in other ways.
Please do not dehumanize other people by referring to their words and actions as "content".
US oil company profits are running at twice the high level of a year ago, Let's tax those profits and spend money on what we need!
In Nigeria, a mob of fanatical Muslims murdered a student accused of blasphemy. The local sultan condemned the murders, and cops are arresting the murderers.
The fanatics don't like this, so they held a protest, which fortunately was not very big or dangerous.
Whatever your religion may be, you have no right to kill people for rejecting it or criticizing it. If you do so, you bring shame on it.
*A federal judge has blocked part of a law that makes it a felony to give gender-affirming puberty blockers and hormones to minors.*
Some genetically modified plants may be safe and useful. It would be good to have a path for careful testing and approval of them.
The danger of using them, with a plutocratist government, is that it could become a pushover for business interests, and thus might not take the precautions seriously.
A big heat-wave in India is destroying the wheat harvest.
This adds to the shortage caused by the inability to export Ukraine's wheat.
It has been clear for years that we were driving ourselves into a food shortage. It was not clear that we would hit it so soon.
The US government is distributing Evusheld, a monoclonal antibody for Covid-19, gratis, but greedy bastard hospitals and insurance companies are charging hundreds of dollars for it
This would not happen if the US adopted a universal medical system, also known as Medicare for all.
The high-pressure training of gymnasts, some not even teenagers, goes as far as claiming they are faking when they say they have been injured.
Ultimately this is the natural result of competitive pressure transmitted to the gymnasts through coaches that are interested in winning more than anything. It is a perverse system. We should not put people in a position where their health depends on resisting the demands of people they have been taught to trust.
(satire) *Google Maps Adds Shortcuts Through Houses Of People Google Knows Aren't Home Right Now.*
Breaking news: Google will allow people to pay to opt out from this use of their homes.
Tomas's law:
Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from stupidity. (Because that provides deniability for the perpetrators.)
I don't know Tomas's identity, but he said I could post his law.
The UK needs a national housing plan. Corbyn would give it one.
The US also needs one, but Republicans don't want the poor and the disprivileged to suffer less.
Arguing against the absurd ruling that calling a man "bald" is sexual harassment.
I don't think it's even an insult. Why fuss about it?
Some of the reasons why the US has had the third-highest rate of death from Covid-19 — higher than all other countries other than Brazil and Poland.
The article does not present the Republicans' intentional obstruction US efforts to protect Americans from Covid. (It is hidden behind the word "polarized", which creates a false equivalence between Republicans and non-Republicans.)
Their obstruction started in February 2020, when Republican leaders publicly said not to worry while privately buying stocks to profit from the disease. In April, when it became clear that people from disprivileged groups were more likely to die from Covid, Republicans started opposing measures to reduce the spread. During 2020 they politicized rejection of the use of masks, using their breath as an instrument to support their campaign of harassment and intimidation.
A few weeks ago, Republicans blocked federal funding for vaccines and treatment.
They are still the disease-spreader party.
*Biden DOJ Applauded for 'Long Overdue' Environmental Justice Plan.*
The election of Marcos Jr as president of the Philippines will give him the opportunity to sabotage the commission whose job is to find and seize his father's corrupt gains.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to fight right-wing hate and defend the rights of teachers and students.
US citizens, tell your senators: we need Medicare for All now.
The latest right-wing hit job movie by Dinesh D'Souza insists repeatedly that dropping off ballots for others is corrupting US elections, and demonizes people who do it — without the slightest evidence that any of them did anything wrong.
Justice Thomas rebuked Americans for not respecting the Supreme Court any more.
The 6-3 majority of right-wing justices is the result of Republicans' by-hook-or-by-crook attitude and rigging of elections for a political goal. Why should Americans respect the Supreme Court more than they respect the way Republicans took it over.
About how to support Ukraine's reconstruction, comparing with the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II.
The US subpoena's a Guardian reporter's phone records to try to find the originer of a leak.
The Jan 6 investigation committee has subpoena'd five Republican members of Congress to testify.
*I Stopped to Watch [School] Recess in My Neighborhood — and Security Was Called.*
Accusing Iran of arresting visitors as an excuse to make them hostages.
Governments likely to be pressured in this way should very visibly warn all their citizens not to visit Iran. Even if you have never been involved in anything political related to Iran, even if your activity there is beneficial, even if it is just a holiday, even if it is visiting friends and family — do not go!. Especially, if you have Iranian relatives — do not go!.
It would be best to have airport ground personnel give these warnings, and give them at the time of selling tickets too.
"We are not suckers; tell your family now not to ask us to be suckers. If Iran makes you a hostage, we will not give Iran anything to try to procure your release. If you don't want to be a hostage, now is your only chance to avoid it. Don't go to Iran!"
Maine has banned use of sewage sludge as fertilizer. This law can prevent contamination of farmland with PFAS.
Meat-packing companies successfully lobbied the corrupter's officials to allow them to let Covid-19 run rampant through their plants.
Israel showed disdain for Biden as well as contempt for Palestinians and dishonesty towards the public, by authorizing almost 3000 new housing units for Israelis in the West Bank territory of Palestine.
These housing units are in colonies that Israel pretends to consider "illegal", but it doesn't let that acknowledged illegality interfere with building them.
Elon Musk's vision of a proper life for workers is that they spend all day working for someone like him, and the night too when he wants. They are effectively robots in a giga-sweatshop.
*Planned EU rules to protect children online are attack on privacy, warn critics.*
The idea of scanning all messages for prohibited messages presumes that users are compelled to run a nonfree application. That's fundamentally unjust, and these nonfree programs will surely be designed to mistreat their users. (Nonfree programs generally are.)
I wonder if these applications will be designed to report you as an
"abuser" if the text you send starts with --BEGIN PGP MESSAGE--.
Interview with Igor Pedin, who walked from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia over 2-3 weeks.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left the country, partly because of opposition to Putin's war, partly from fear of being conscripted into it.
Parents in India are suing their son for the money that they blew on his fancy wedding and his professional training, because he and his wife don't want to have babies.
I suspect that the parents were as much responsible for making the wedding expensive as the couple. Fancy weddings are a form of competitive consumption, which in general can become a compulsion. Resisting it is a crucial part of wisdom.
India's population is growing substantially, and the consequences will cause great suffering in a few decades for almost everyone in India, and contribute to the suffering of the rest of the world.
One of several causes of the US shortage of milk substitutes for babies is too many mergers.
An Australian MP is demanding a "Christian lobby" stop using her picture on a hostile leaflet, on grounds of copyright.
I don't know the details of the "religious discrimination bill", or why they call it that. (The coverage of that bill in The Guardian presumed too much background for me to understand it without too much work.) On general principles, if an incumbent elected official in a mainly Christian country is attacked by a "Christian lobby", I probably I disagree with that lobby. Most likely I would agree with MP Sharkie if I knew what the issue was.
However, it is clear that freedom of political speech includes the freedom to show a picture of a candidate you oppose. It is an injustice for copyright law to interfere with that.
A Florida judge invalidated Governor DeMentis's gerrymandering plan because racial gerrymandering violates the state constitution.
*Russian ["Wagner"] mercenaries linked to civilian massacres in Mali.*
*Staten Island DA Bought Clearview Face Recognition Software With Civil Forfeiture Cash.*
We must legally eliminate all possibility for prosecutors or other "law enforcers" to use any surveillance systems without getting specific approval from the city's elected government.
AMLO objected to Biden's plans to exclude Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela from the Summit of the Americas.
The dictator of Nicaragua is as repressive of dissidents as Putin, though not resembling Putin in military aggression. Cuba represses dissent too, though perhaps not as thoroughly. If any country deserved to be excluded from some international project, Nicaragua would.
But there is a value in inviting all the countries in the region.
Britain's withdrawal from the EU has caused trouble for many UK citizens that live in EU countries — especially when they are married to people who are not UK citizens.
Many of these problems are not direct consequences of the UK's decision, in that the problems are the result of decisions by the UK that the UK could unilaterally change.
Of the patients hospitalized for Covid-19 two years ago in Wuhan, around 1/10 have not returned to work. A much larger fraction have serious problems.
*Lindsey Graham said Joe Biden is "best person" to lead US, tapes reveal.* That was shortly after the wrecker's Jan 6 attempt to steal the election.
The significance of this is that it shows Senator Graham's cowardice. He knew what was right, but he chose to join the insurrectionist mob rather than stay loyal to his country.
It is not too late for Graham to redeem himself.
*This British "bill of rights" is constitutional butchery that will make us all less free.*
It is meant to replace the substantial support for human rights that was adopted when the UK was part of the EU. It is a scheme to pretend to follow human rights standards while in practice allowing laws to reject them whenever desired.
The musk-rat said he would allow the bullshitter back onto Twitter.
The bullshitter said he would refuse to post on Twitter anyway, but given his dishonesty there is no reason to believe anything he says about what he intends to do. It is trolling, nothing more.
We can expect plutocracy and corruption. The article says, they will help strengthen China.
US citizens: call on US corporations to stop funding anti-abortion candidates.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the harm caused by the censorship of SESTA/FOSTA, by passing the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act.
US citizens: Thank the senators who defeated the attempt to pass a law to block reestablishment of the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
The US deportation thug department snoops on the digital records of nearly everyone in the United States.
*Covid threat being ignored in England for ideological reasons, [said] NHS leaders [a month ago].*
North Carolina's Supreme Court said that whether protesters in the state assembly are "too loud" is an arbitrary decision — up to whichever politician doesn't like the protest.
That court has rejected the idea that all deserve equal rights. It is preparing for tyranny.
The UK plans to deport queer asylum-seekers to Rwanda despite knowing that they have a substantial chance of being persecuted there.
(satire) *Bombshell Report Finds Democrats Conspiring With Bookie To Deliberately Throw Midterms.*
Sad to say, the Democratic National Committee more or less did this when it decided to give Clinton unfair support to beat Sanders in 2016.
(satire) *Shell Announces Plans To Plant Single Tree For Every Irreversible Planetary Disaster It Causes.*
Colorado has removed election officials for trying to sabotage a past election.
Political bias in the British thug departments and spies: they snooped on thousands of anti-fascists who joined non-violent campaigns against violent fascists.
Apparently they did not consider violent fascists a problem.
I don't think it makes a difference that some of the antifascists were high-school students.
Now that disabled people in Canada who can't get treatment for horrible pain can get help in suicide, some who oppose the idea of assisted suicide are attacking the law for that consequence..
I agree with Jocelyn Downie about the matter. Those people do have untreatable medical conditions — untreatable in a practical sense. A plausibly effective treatment exists, but not for them. Helping them die is not the best possible help for them, but they consider it better than nothing.
A right-wing Canadian MP has been castigated for connecting to a parliamentary session from a toilet
This shows that irrational persecution over "disgusting" (but victimless) actions are not limited to things related to sex.
The company "SafeGraph", which collects location data from people's snoopphones, admits it was recently selling lists of people who visited abortion clinics.
"Anonymizing" the data does not effectively protect the people's identities. They can often be determined from the data, together with other lists of data about people.
If this company really stops, others will do it instead. Please, focus on the fundamental nastiness of the cell-phone freakosystem, and not one particular example of it.
The shortage of food for babies in the US is exacerbated by the harmful concentration of that industry.
Jesse Jackson compares the coming anti-abortion decision to the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
We need to put an end to proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining, unless all the world's electricity supply is moved to renewable sources.
Tesla's labor law violations.
Tesla's union-busting.
Punishment for union-busting.
Australia's right-wing government has corrupted Australia's scientific research agency, according to its former head climate scientist, who how has quit.
The agency does whatever research companies will fund. In the field of climate science, that means that the planet-roaster companies control the research.
The agencies scientists are gagged from commenting publicly on public issues relating to their expertise.
He says that the main opposition party (Labor) is not much better than the governing coalition.
*Workers Mark May Day With Pro-Labor Protests Worldwide.*
*Bushland marked as environmental offset for new Sydney airport bulldozed for car park.*
When companies cite land as an "offset" for carbon emissions, the state makes no effort to check whether it really survives, These offsets are essentially bogus, mere excuses for present-day environmental destruction or excess greenhouse gas emissions.
An anti-abortion group in Wisconsin was attacked with a molotov cocktail, and an unknown group calling itself "Jane's revenge" and claiming to defend abortion rights said it was responsible.
We can expect that the cancellation or Roe v Wade will lead to plenty of right-wing cruelty to take revenge for, but it's not happening yet, so the idea of revenge now doesn't make sense.
In addition, it is the antiabortion movement that has repeatedly engaged in violence (including murder of doctors). The abortion rights movement has acted nonviolently.
Those two reasons, plus the fact that the supposed group is unknown, lead me to speculate that maybe this was a false-flag attack.
*Trump inquired if China could make hurricanes to harm US, ex-officials say.*
In fact, China has been doing exactly that — by building more coal-fired power plants. However, it is wrong to focus the blame primarily on China. Historically, the US has done much more to exacerbate hurricanes than China has.
Another Salvadorean woman has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for supposedly "killing" a fetus.
The article does not make it clear whether she had an abortion or an accidental miscarriage. Maybe there is a dispute about which one it was, The verdict is unjust either way; only the precise nature of the injustice depends on which one it was.
The campaign to ban swastikas (and other symbols of hate ideologies) has spread to Australia.
Nazis today are a real threat to democracy, but there are lots of twisted messages and symbols they can spread their ideology with, with never a swastika.
What makes them powerful and dangerous is the system that facilitates any sort of disinformation and scatterbrained hatred. To attack their symbols with censorship is a misguided counterblow. It hits the wrong target, freedom of speech.
If we abandon the overriding principle of freedom of speech, we will have no strong defense to stop right-wing Nazi-lovers (such as the billehitter) from banning our own symbols and expressions of our ideas.
*Lifting zero-Covid policies in China could risk 1.6m deaths, says study.*
I admire the spirit of the zero-Covid strategy — ready to go to the mat to prevent a massive outbreak. If it succeeds, it will greatly reduce the harm caused by the disease in China. They ought to be somewhat less rigid about many details — that is Communist authoritarianism at work.
However, if it can't possibly succeed, it is better to make a careful plan for changing the strategy, than to keep trying it and failing and stay in lockdown ad infinitum.
The US seems to be ending its public concessions to China's demands about Taiwan, which the US adopted in 1972 as part of its historic reconciliation with China. For instance, going out of its way to state that it does not support independence for Taiwan.
In the 1970s it made sense for the US to make these concessions. China was not then a threat to the US, or even to Taiwan; on the contrary, it offered the US some support on international disputes. The concessions did no harm and brought good consequences.
All that has changed. China is indeed a threat to Taiwan, and is allied with Russia. The US actually supports Taiwan's resistance to China's plans for conquest. For the US to tie itself in knots by explicitly limiting its support for Taiwan is a commitment to dishonesty.
It may still be wise for the US not to support Taiwan's independence, but it can refrain from supporting that by saying nothing about the point.
*What Latin American feminists can teach American women about the abortion fight.*
Putin's war may be indirectly responsible for a big increase in death of dolphins in the Black Sea.
What is more outrageous and disgusting — protesting outside houses of Injustices of the Supreme Court, or forcing women to have babies.
The patient who received a transplanted GM pig heart seems to have died from a pig virus, which wasn't supposed to be present.
When Exxon determined that recycling plastics was unlikely ever to be practical, it launched a high-powered PR and lobbying campaign to label plastic products as "recyclable" so people would believe that recycling them was really an option.
Now, the biggest US bottled-water company is fighting a lawsuit over falsely telling the public that its bottles are recyclable. Its defense is to claim that people should have known all along that that was bullshit.
In 2019, Bogus Johnson made two conflicting commitments about future trade rules, one to Northern Ireland and one to the EU. At the time, people pointed out this could not work and would lead to big trouble. Johnson just brushed it off at the time, but the trouble is getting bigger.
*It's True Crisis Time for Trans People in America.* Trans people, and then anyone homosexual, are the scapegoats of choice of religious extremists, as they push for laws that ought to be obvious violations of the First Amendment.
(satire) *Louisiana Police Officer Plants Aborted Fetus On Black Suspect.*
Biden has responded to the former saboteur-in-chief's added sanctions on Iran with timidity, and thus failed to restore the non-nuclear deal with Iran. It is not too late to show courage.
The Tories have been pushing to privatize UK public schools, calling the privatized schools "academies", and claiming that this will make them function better. However, a study found that the still-public schools are, statistically, generally doing a better job.
Clearview AI settled a suit by agreeing to end the service of recognizing a face against its enormous data base, for "most" private entities.
The article describes a few exceptions. One is the use of its recognition algorithm against some other data base. I have a hunch some other company will build up a database and keep it state by state so that it can be used to recognize everyone that is not from Illinois.
Also, government use is still permitted, and getting more dangerous. This will endanger people that travel to get abortions.
We still need a law restricting operation of systems that can do systematic face capture and/or recognition in everywhere the public is admitted.
*One by one, Republican midterm candidates are falling into line with Trump.*
It has been visible since 2016 that you can't work with the corrupter without becoming corrupt yourself. His lies are so frequent and blatant that they attack the very idea of truth, so by accepting him you show that you do not value truth.
*Watchdog Finds Medicare Advantage Plans Deny Necessary Care.*
This is in addition to gouging patients on the more expensive drugs
and raising prices just after you bind yourself for 6 months.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to arrest and prosecute Trump's Jan 6 attack organizers who refuse to testify.
US citizens: call on Congress to make the Supreme Court follow the Federal Judge Code of Conduct.
Two US phone-tracking companies showed they could track military and intelligence personnel of several nations, including Russia and the US.
They could track Americans to abortion clinics for states with repressive laws, too, if there is no law to stop them.
Protesters demanding the right to visit forests in England held a picnic as a protest.
*Mariupol survivors rescued from last civilian bunker describe horrors of siege.*
I continue to wonder about the situation with the other reported 150,000 civilians that were reported to be stuck in Mariupol. Ukraine accused Putin of taking some tens of thousands to Russia, some willingly and some who were effectively kidnapped (and some got out). That doesn't account for them all. Are the rest all dead? Is anyone still besieged in other parts of the city?
*Zelenskiy calls for end to blockade of Odesa port to prevent global food crisis.*
Pregnant Ukrainian refugees who have fled to Poland encounter Poland's repressive abortion laws.
Western Ukraine is basically safe. Much safer than having a baby, I'd expect. Can Ukrainians go back there for an abortion, or for abortion medicine?
Can Polish women go there for that?
*South Korea's new president offers North economic plan in return for denuclearisation.*
It's worth trying, but it's a long shot.
*Just one of 50 aviation industry climate targets met, study finds.*
Basically, businesses won't conserve even to save their owners' children's lives.
Victoria is following two other parts of Australia in decriminalizing sex work.
From health workers to beauticians, cleaners to academics, the erosion of our rights at work [by the gig economy] is setting us back a hundred years.*
I've proposed a law that would stop this — requiring most of any given kind of employment go to full-time workers, while allowing a fraction to be less than full-time.
*Paul Rusesabagina's family are suing the Rwandan government in the US, accusing it of a plot to abduct, torture and jail him.*
*The Climate and the Republic, Melting Down in Real Time.*
US citizens: call on the Jan 6 committee to make Rep. McCarthy testify about what he knew.
In the US: protest for abortion rights on May 14.
I can't give you a pointer to the information about where and at what hour the protests will be held. The information is published in an antifreedom web site — it requires visitors to run nonfree software — so referring people to that site would be encouraging the public to run nonfree software.
I would expect that every state has an organization that campaigns for abortion rights. I suggest finding one in your state, preferably in your city, and phoning to ask for where and when the rally will occur.
The rallies will probably be outside, but don't stand too close to other people. Covid-19 continues to increase in the US, and we have no statistics on the probability of getting a lasting disability from the current variants.
US citizens: call on Biden to sign the cluster bomb ban treaty.
US citizens: call on Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski to undo this right-wing Court's Roe decision.
Models suggest that a Covid-19 surge this fall and winter could infect 100 million people in the US.
British forces are accused of torturing and murdering captured guerrilla fighters in Cyprus in the 1950s.
Rare bonefish have become rarer in the sea around Florida. A study found that most bonefish found have levels of pharmaceuticals high enough that they are likely to harm the fish.
*Ukraine accuses [Putin] forces of seizing 2,000 artworks in Mariupol.*
This claim may be useful in prosecution, because the Putin forces can't claim to have taken the artworks by mistake while trying to take something else.
If Democrats don't refute the plutocratist narrative of inflation (blaming it on insufficient poverty), they will lose a lot of votes.
The US continues to subsidize Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine development without attaching the crucial condition: that it not do anything to block generic vaccine production.
*Hawaii Legislature Calls For Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.*
Members of violent right-wing extremist groups such as the "Oath Keepers" are involved in training thugs in various parts of the US.
(satire) *Period Tracking App Adds "Surrender to Authorities" Feature.*
You shouldn't use an US online dis-service to save information about when you have a period. Under demand from a right-wing government, the people who own the dis-service would not dare to protect you.
Maybe it is safe to use an online service in another country that respects abortion rights strongly and would refuse to answer questions from prying US governments.
Israel decided to build 4,000 more housing units for colonists in Palestine's territory.
*The west can cut its energy dependency on Russia and be greener.* Just avoid taking suggestions from fossil fuel interests.
More than 2m adults in the UK went a day without food recently because of lack of money.
That is 3% of the whole population, and it doesn't include minors that can't afford to eat every day.
The defenders of many kinds of human rights are pleading with the Tories not to abolish them in British law.
*We must fight powerful bullies, whether they are Putin, Trump, or tech billionaires.*
*For Vladimir Putin, the sinister cult of victory is all that is left.*
How the Anti-Defamation League has helped attack and snoop on a slew of progressive movements and campaigns, supported repression by thug departments, and even supported real antisemites — all of that for decades.
The site 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 pages which promote it. But I make exceptions for important information about injustices or the fight to eliminate them. That site is one of the exceptions.
(satire) *New Raid Pest Control Kit Fat Shames Ants Into Starving Themselves.*
North American wildfires could emit 3% of the global carbon budget, and could trigger additional emissions.
A 31-year-old Canadian has applied for government help in suicide because living with multiple disabilities and chemical sensitivities, with inadequate welfare benefits, is unbearable.
I respect her decision to choose death rather than a horrible life. The state should not force her to stay alive in suffering and fear.
However, it is unconscionable that the state won't provide a place she can live safely.
The war on the poor takes many forms. This is an unusual extreme — but the victims of the less extreme forms number millions.
Poverty has exploded in Brazil — and so has homelessness. Lula rebuked the governor for not caring.
Bogus Johnson plans to make it a crime to lock yourself to anyone or anything. Even carrying the equipment to do that would be a crime.
The punishment would include imprisonment, plus confiscation of all your property.
What these protesters are trying to do is prevent global heating from killing first tens of millions of people, then hundreds of millions, and eventually billions. Eventually the companies that the Tories serve will cease to exist, but by then it will be too late to avoid disaster.
*The US Border Patrol Is Systemically Failing to Count Migrant Deaths.*
The government of Sri Lanka has fallen because of crushing debt. This could happen to other countries soon.
The underlying problem here is a system which gives countries no way to escape unpayable debts. The creditors get help from the governments they control, such as the US government, and drive the people of a fallen country into penury where they exist only as slaves paying tribute to international creditors.
Humanity is close to reaching 1.5C warming, which climate defense efforts have aimed to avoid.
*Analysis says countries can save money by switching from coal straight to renewable energies.* As well as reducing the amount of global heating.
The stories of five women killed by laws restricting abortion.
The CIA's torture psychologists describe just a little of the torture that broke Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri to the point where he would crawl into a box in anticipation of a command.
A judge rejected the suit to stop insurrectionist Rep. Greene from running again for Congress.
It seems that only blatant admission of insurrectionist intent could suffice to bar a candidate.
*Filipino inquiry finds big polluters "morally and legally liable" for climate damage.*
This inquiry is part of a lawsuit about damage caused by a storm (basically a hurricane but in the Pacific Ocean).
Syrian families have identified their relatives in the films of murders committed by Assad's torture forces in 2013.
Belarus forced down the airliner carrying dissident activists Roman Protasevich and Sofia Sapega, and took them off the plane. Now Sapega has been sentenced to six years in prison.
It appears Russia pressured Roman Protasevich into a public confession of being a dissident.
Lula has launched his campaign to become president of Brazil again and oust Bolsonaro.
Giandomenico Iannetti, professor of neuroscience, says antiabortionists have twisted his work to make a bogus "proof" that fetuses can feel pain before 24 weeks.
The question is a red herring, because abortions after 3 months in the US already require a strong justification, and some pain would not be enough to overcome a strong justification.
Millions of acres of US farmland could be contaminated with PFAS as a result of using sewage sludge as fertilizer.
There is no known way to decontaminate the soil of those farms. However, we don't know what the level of contamination is. There may be some safe way to grow something there. Or there may not.
Many major US companies are providing abortion travel benefits to their employees. Republicans are looking for ways to persecute them.
California can turn some of these measures around to punish companies which don't provide such benefits.
Ultimately, companies can move operations out of the states controlled by religious fanatics.
(satire) *Court Delays Inmate's Execution To Brainstorm Even Grislier Method.*
My view is that the death penalty is wrong regardless of the details.
Pfizer is accused of price gouging on its Covid-19 treatment, Paxlovid.
I criticize this articles for using misleading terms, such as "global south" which is a progressive PR campaign whose spirit is laudable but whose specifics are misleading.
"Intellectual property" is a PR campaign for giving various businesses various special privileges. Lumping those privileges together is an obstacle to thinking clearly about the specific harms of each one, and judging against them any supposed benefits are each one. I have taught myself never to use that term in my thinking, my speaking, and my writing.
Right-wing organizations are using Faux News as a model for how to provoke hostility in various democratic countries.
Alito's draft opinion clearly states that the right to same-sex marriage and even homosexual sex are the next targets.
*Biden warns LGBTQ+ children could be next target of Republican ‘Maga crowd’.*
"MAGA" means "Make America Groan Again."
The NLRB accuses Starbucks of 200 violations of US labor law.
Sad to say, US labor law doesn't include imprisonment or even fines of the executives responsible for these illegalities. Why doesn't it? I suspect the reason is the prevalence of plutocratists in Congress, which in turn reflects the political power of the businesses that try to break unions.
The Putin forces' attacks are causing massive environmental damage to Ukraine. People are keeping track of them, secretly, so as to avoid helping the Putin forces cause more damage.
Mike Esper, secretary of defense under the wrecker, reports that the wrecker wanted to fire missiles at Mexican drug labs.
Aside from the outrageousness of this act of war, I don't think the US could have located them accurately enough to succeed in destroying them that way. And I suspect each missile would cost a thousand times the cost of a drug lab.
The department subsequently tried to block Esper from mentioning this in his book, but backed down. Esper suggests that it was acting politically, trying to protect the wrecker rather than the US.
The wrecker did so many provocative things to Mexico that the idea of trying to protect the US's relations with Mexico by concealing this proposal seems silly to me.
In the surveillance society, data brokers will make it easy for repressive state governments to find who has gone to an abortion clinic in another state.
Payment applications will also be used to try to find people to prosecute.
When you go to an appointment related in any way to an abortion, don't take any digital devices with you, unless it's a laptop running GNU/Linux that won't connect to the internet except when you tell it to.
And don't use a digital device to pay with. Pay in cash, for the abortion or pills, and all activities related to traveling to get there. That way, you don't need to give your real name and address.
This is one especially vicious aspect of the general injustice of widespread surveillance and tracking. It leads to many sorts of repression, so we need to reject it.
Tennessee's latest attack on abortion rights is to prohibit sending abortion medicines by mail.
I think people will find it easy to defy that law. In addition, I suspect that Tennessee cannot actually prohibit the sending of such mail in places outside Tennessee's jurisdiction.
The Australian Labor Party is aiming for 2C of global heating, which will be a disaster. The extreme planet-roasters are aiming for 3C of global heating.
*Louisiana Republicans advance bill to make abortion a crime of murder.*
Repressive US Christians are already campaigning to ban abortion and even some kinds of contraception, and not just in the US.
*WHO estimates 15m people were killed by Covid or overwhelmed health systems.*
That is twice the usual estimate. I've seen estimates of three times the usual estimate.
*The UN says the report should prompt countries to invest more in their capacity to quell future emergencies.* Countries need to maintain excess capacity, not aim for "just in time" processing of the usual number of sick people.
Israel has decided to evict 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank, converting the area to a "military zone".
Israel has used this excuse many times for taking land away from Palestinians.
160,000 disabled homeless people in California, who can't live in the shelters as they exist, are getting evicted and have nowhere to go.
I fully support laws against renting substandard housing; landlords should not exploit tenants. But we need to be flexible when it is a matter of homeless people who scrounge a place to live which is not a commercial rental.
Searching desperately for reasons to justify compelling Ukraine to stop fighting and accept the loss of conquest of much of its territory.
The reasons seem invalid to me.
It seems to me that if Ukraine finds it that recapturing what Putin has taken costs too many casualties, it will drop the goal on its own.
On the other hand, if it succeeds in largely pushing Putin out, there is no reason to believe Putin will go mad if Ukraine approaches complete success. At that point, if Ukraine offers a commitment to neutrality in exchange for the rest of its territory back, I contend Putin will accept that deal.
The Guardian has published information about journalists persecuted by some regimes.
However, Julian Assange
and Edward Snowden
were strangely omitted
The population of flying insects in Britain has decreased by 60% since 2004.
AOC argues for cancelling college debt for everyone.
The really rich families probably didn't borrow anything — they had no reason to do so.
The World Trade Organization has proposed a bogus alternative to waiving the patents and trade secrecy that block generic vaccine production.
Protests can sway the US Supreme Court. US supporters of abortion rights need to organize strongly now.
US citizens: call on Biden to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Congress to expand the Supreme Court so as to dilute the votes of the religious extremists.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Climate Activists Who Blocked Houston Bridge to Fossil Fuel Traffic Cleared of All Federal Charges.*
The increase of poverty in the UK is highlighted by the case of a 77-year-old retired woman who can't afford heat. She spends all day riding buses. This way she can afford one meal per day.
It's actually worse in the US, with thousands of people who haven't got any indoor place to live.
(satire) *Justice Alito Somberly Ties Noose After Realizing He's Not Mentioned In Constitution.*
(satire) *Nation Forced To Seek Human Rights From Back-Alley Supreme Court.*
Republican Senator Collins said that *the draft Roe opinion is "completely inconsistent" with what Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said during hearings and meetings.*
The way to make up for her damaging credulousness is to undo what she did. She has the obligation to help pass a law to expand the Supreme Court with three new justices to override the right-wing fanatics.
Harsh Republican voter-suppression is blocking disabled people from voting in some states.
In Louisiana, people living in bad conditions have been branded as "career criminals", then sentenced to life in prison for minor crimes.
Amazon seems to have fired managers for failing to defeat the unionization drive in a warehouse. Insulting the public, Amazon denies that this was the reason. That's treating the managers like the staff.
Please don't buy from Amazon. Especially, please don't ever give Amazon someone else's name and address. That's like giving Amazon your own name and address, except that you're doxing someone else instead of yourself.
Margaret Atwood: *Enforced childbirth is slavery.*
George Monbiot discusses efforts to make farming protect the soil instead of degrading it.
Don't forget birth reduction as a part of the solution!
The elected official in charge of policing in the area around Liverpool accused the thug department there of institutional racism.
The governor of Texas wants the Supreme Court to overturn a decision that states must provide public education gratis to all students.
Regardless of how a child came to be, or came to be in Texas, it is cruel and wrong to deny the child what children need to grow up into capable adults.
WHO estimates that Covid-19 has killed around 15 million people.
A fraction of them died of other medical causes because they were unable to get treatment while hospitals were filled due Covid-19, but most of them actually died of Covid-19.
The figure of 14.9 million is surely excess precision. We can't estimate the number within .1 million.
Biden has replaced the bully's symbolic border wall with a barrier of automatic surveillance.
A border thug might beat you to death, or kill you by poisoning wells, motivated by racist hatred. A robot, even an unarmed one, might beat you to death or even push you over a cliff without having any emotions, and without any concept of what it means to be injured. It need only be programmed to recognize you as a "threat".
I don't see anything inherently wrong with detecting people that cross the border. It's what happens after that, that can be wrong.
However, the surveillance of "the border" is not limited to people that recently crossed it. The US border thugs are authorized to snoop on, and search, everyone within 50 miles of a coast or border. Most Americans live in that zone. The monitoring of everyone could be extended to you in your neighborhood.
*UK Survey Finds 'Terrifying' 60% Plunge in Flying Insect Population.* This is since 17 years ago.
Some in West Virginia beg Senator Manchin to support the relief bill in August.
(satire) *Aliens Making First Contact Excitedly Ask To Meet Princess Di.*
A list of important human rights decisions that the fanatical Christians on the Supreme Court could overturn with the same reasoning that they used on abortion rights.
*Medicare Surprise: Drug Plan Prices Touted During Open Enrollment Can Rise Within a Month.*
That is, Medicare Advantage plans can advertise a price to attract you, then increase the price, and you won't have another chance to switch for six months.
Katie Wright, whose son was killed by a cop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, began filming from a distance the actions of a thug doing a traffic stop to someone else, and he came over and threatened her.
There are only 10 remaining vaquita porpoises. Quick action can still protect the species, but it must be fully effective and can't wait.
To enforce the prohibition on gillnets completely enough to achieve the goal would be unlikely. Perhaps it would work to confine them to a small part of the sea and provide them with live fish until their population reaches 100 or more.
The ordinary surveillance of nearly everyone, by snoopphones and apps, could be used as an excuse to identify people to be suspect of having abortions.
In many cases, nonfree programs are responsible for this surveillance. Nearly all apps are nonfree. Nonfree browsers typically send various identifying information.
This surveillance can provide an excuse to investigate further, for almost anything that a fanatical state might prohibit. So it is not enough to protect people who engage in one particular activity (in this case, abortion). We need to eliminate the system of pervasive surveillance.
Human Rights Watch: *Russian-linked forces 'tortured' and 'executed' civilians in Central African Republic since 2019.*
An interview with Noam Chomsky about the war in Ukraine, the Republican fanatics, and what has changed and not changed in US media.
Alongside the many points I agree with, or trust him to report accurately, I must point out one disagreement. Rivalry between powers over international influence or wealth, if it is short of war, morally cannot count as "provocation" for war, because losing a game of rivalry doesn't excuse starting a war.
Thus, Japan's desire to conquer China, thwarted by US economic sanctions, did not justify Japan's attack on the US. Dubya's desire for oil riches, together with power rivalry, did not justify Dubya's attack on Iraq. Likewise, the desire for a sphere of interest did not justify Putin's attack on Ukraine.
One of the wrecker's appointees in the Department of Hostility and Savagery ordered intelligence professionals not to talk about the possibility of Russian interference in the 2020 election.
Interviews with Ukrainian civilians who were brought from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia.
One of them reported that the Putin forces invited civilians to go to Russia (and some accepted), but did not force people to go.
Ukraine has reported for weeks than over 100,000 civilians were still in Mariupol, but I don't think it has a way to find out who is still alive. It does not seem that anyone outside the Azovstal plant has been given a chance to leave.
Hardly anyone, even in Congress, knows what emergency powers the US president has. But we cannot trust future presidents to use them only when necessary.
*Medicare for All Can Fix the Unaffordable Healthcare Crisis.*
Describing the pressure and threat tactics that Starbucks uses in a Denver store where workers will vote on unionization.
Starbucks says it will soon give workers a raise, except at stores that voted to unionize. Workers say that's illegal.
US citizens: call on Thug Chief Eric Winstrom to fire the thug who appears to have murdered Patrick Lyoya.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to prioritize ending child hunger in the US.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to co-sponsor the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would help to establish a windfall profits tax for all industries.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to codify Roe v Wade and abortion rights.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to keep his promise and end the stake of fossil fuel leases for federal land.
Fossil fuel companies in the US are funding a campaign for fracking in the UK.
Tory officials are working with drug companies on plans to corrupt Britain's National Health Service in the name of facilitating drug trials.
The basic idea of having data managers allow research queries while protecting patients' queries is worth thinking about. But I would not trust plutocratist politicians to restrain companies from abusing such a scheme. The companies would game the rules to try to deduce data about individual patients and sell it, and if the data managers simply follow rules, the snoopers will run rings around them.
The main moral issue in this is that the government should not give this cooperation without charging them a price. The price must be a reduction in monopoly power (patents, secrets, and restrictions on self-replicating substances).
*Swapping 20% of beef for microbial protein "could halve deforestation."
I love eating fungi, but I want them to taste and feel like authentic fungi, not like fake meat.
The EU is considering ending purchase of Russian oil, over a period of a year or so.
To make this work, the EU needs to prepare a program of investment in reducing its use of fossil fuel. Otherwise, Russia will sell to some other country and Europe will buy what that country used to get, and the net effect will be zero,
Fossil fuel companies are trying to convince New Mexicans to think of fossil fuels as desperately necessary, authorize more oil drilling, using ads linking new wells to public schools.
I can imagine an advertising campaign showing a school being burnt by a wildfire, a school near a river being flooded by rain from an "atmospheric river", and a school near a coast being flooded by a hurricane, saying that "these disasters are powered mainly by oil and natural gas (plus coal)."
That is the "easy listening" version. The grim version is that most of the students in those schools will die from climate mayhem before they get old.
Georgia has passed a law banning the teaching of "divisive concepts" about racism.
It specific lists a few of them:
The dirty part of the law is that "divisive" concepts include other things too, and the boundary would be easy to stretch. Right-wing officials could easily act to stop all teaching about racism.
The Supreme Court ruled that a Christian group is entitled to have its flag flown at Boston City Hall. Now the Satanic Temple demands the same privilege.
US governmental agencies are not allowed to prefer one religious position over another. Whatever one group is allowed to do, others can also do. Including secular groups whose position on religion is "none of the above", such as the Satanic Temple.
Rebecca Solnit explains that the right-wing Christian fanatics now threaten a wide range of rights: abortion rights, birth control, same-sex marriage, even homosexual sex. Not to mention freedom of speech and the right to vote.
This makes a broad resistance coalition possible.
Republicans are preparing to ban abortions nationally if they get power again.
This unpopular policy, joined with others, would lead to their defeat at the polls, if we had free and fair elections.
How one couple taught the annoyingly "concerned" neighbors to get used to seeing their children walking around on their own.
Mark Esper, the bully's Defense Secretary, says that the bully asked him to have protesters shot.
The Tories want to sell off more Britain's insufficient public housing.
They did this in the 80s and 90s, which created a big shortage, but apparently they're not satisfied yet.
* Even the few Republicans in Washington who opposed the worst excesses of Trumpism have been unwilling to fight attempts to subvert democracy at the state level.*
*Spanish prime minister’s phone "targeted with Pegasus spyware".*
NSO, the company that makes Pegasus, claims to make sure in some mysterious way that the software is used only against legitimate targets, but also claims that it doesn't verify who is actually targeted. I suspect that this is doubletalk. Perhaps by "legitimate targets" it means "targets actually chosen by an authorized user."
Telecom lobbyists are spending hard to convince Senate Democrats not to confirm Gigi Sohn as FCC commissioner.
Comparing arms for Ukraine today with arms for Britain, China and Russia in 1941.
The war is Putin's choice. He chose to start it, and I am confident he can end it by choice any time. All he would need to do is pull his forces out of Ukraine, and allow everyone he has taken from Ukraine to Russia to go back to Ukraine if perse chooses.
An interview with a polio vaccination worker in Pakistan.
Sometimes I wish we had a vaccine against religion too.
*Study Shows Even 'Green' and 'Nontoxic' Products for Kids Contain Forever Chemicals.* These include clothing and pillow protectors.
*Over half of child car seats have toxic flame retardants and PFAS — US study.*
Indian street sweepers, who usually come from very disprivileged castes, are tracked constantly using snoopwatches.
The procedure for creating a Twitter account could soon be Elon-gated.
New antiglossary entry: first peoples.
Inquiring into the source of the 1.5 million dollars that paid for ads to laud corrupt Justice Thomas and attack nominee Jackson.
I agree that Justice Thomas deserves to be removed — just as the corrupter did. But impeaching the corrupter was ineffective and impeaching Thomas would be likewise a waste of time, because the Republicans would all defend him.
New Mexico now pays for childcare for most families — all but those with a comfortable income.
In some areas of Australia, over 20% of houses could become uninsurable by 2030 due to increasing dangers caused by global heating.
Will the Supreme Court allow states to prohibit women from leaving the state to get an abortion?
Until we restore abortion rights in the whole US, we must make it easy to get abortion medicine anonymously and ship them untrackably to women who need them and are forbidden to get them. It might be better, in an ideal world, for each woman to get examined by a doctor before using these medicines. But in this world, the risk of abortion medicine is less than the risk of any other method of abortion.
I suspect thet it is also less than the sum of all the risks (short-term and long-term), for women from marginalized groups, of having a baby. The risk of death or injury in giving birth is just the start. There's also the risk of poverty later on.
Advocating a kind of "nonaligned movement" that isn't even aligned against wars of conquest.
I see the sense in South Africa's refusing to be generally "aligned with the US" and instead forming another bloc of cooperating poor countries. However, thinking of China as one of those poor countries, rather than as a budding imperialist as nasty as the European imperialists were in 1900, is blindness.
There are many issues on which it is right to oppose the US. But I can't see how their movement can be any more legitimate than colonialism if it takes the wrong side in Putin's colonial war just because he calls the US the enemy.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the Roadless Area Conservation Act.
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!
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to pass the Women's Health Protection Act. Along with other things, it would keep abortion legal.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Verizon to stop distributing the right-wing OAN channel.
US citizens: tell the SEC you support its proposed new rules for disclosing climate risks.
In the US: call on major US broadcast TV networks to show the Jan 6 committee hearings.
*US pediatricians’ group moves to ban race-based medical guidance.*
Journalism in the Solomons is being hit by government secrecy and reprisals, apparently linked by the secret deal with China.
Biden wisely canceled a new nuclear cruise missile that the wrecker had proposed.
However, the US could do without some other new nuclear weapons projects, especially via arms limitation treaties.
* Wildfires in the vast and pristine forests of Canada, Europe and the far Northern US could release an enormous amount of planet-warming emissions between now and 2050, putting the world’s climate goals in peril.*
*The most devastating hurricanes could double by 2050 in nearly all regions of world.*
*Sanders Pushes Biden to Nix Amazon's Federal Contracts Over 'Illegal Anti-Union Activity'.*
*Catalonia plans law to protect historic shops as rents soar.*
I wish Cambridge, Massachusetts had such a law. The most interesting stores in Harvard Square disappeared in the past few decades.
The last few aged survivors of the Tulsa race massacre, 101 years ago, are suing government agencies that supported the massacre.
It is a gross understatement to describe mass murder by a mob as "a public nuisance", but if that is the only way they can get into court, it is better than nothing.
Some 120 civilians were rescued from Mariupol with cooperation of the Putin forces. However, they were taken to Putin-held territory and it is not clear whether they were all allowed to go to Ukraine-held territory.
An extreme heat wave in India is causing cancellation of trains, school, and farming. There could be a big food shortage in India this year, and due to Putin's war there will be little available to buy. I can imagine that millions may die from it. But it's just the beginning. By 2050 I expect that poor people will die from hunger every year in the US.
Australia uses junk science to conclude that smuggled immigrants are "adults", as an excuse to prosecute them.
It is absurd to treat a person of age X and a person of age X-1 so drastically differently in the same situation. But I think this is a secondary injustice that results from Australia's hostility towards immigrants that want to go to Australia.
Poland's plans to set up a registry of all pregnancies, and make doctors report all pregnancies to the government. I have to suspect that this is for repression of abortion.
Indigenous people in Australia and North America ate oysters in large quantities without depleting them. Europeans didn't bother to preserve them, and wiped out so many that they have become rare.
*Windfall taxes, price caps and VAT cuts: how nations are addressing Europe’s energy crisis.*
Reducing sales taxes (such as VAT) is a good thing to do since sales taxes fall mainly on the poor. Governments should tax rich people's gains instead of poor people's purchases or poor people's income.
Limiting the price of fossil fuels or electricity is a mistake, because people must be under pressure to use less of them. Subsidizing the cost of fuel is a dangerous addiction.
Instead of reducing what poor people pay for energy, the right thing to do is to support them unconditionally with enough money to get by. Those who don't spend it all on energy will be able to use it for other things.
A windfall profits tax will not directly help the poor or conserve fuel, but it will give governments income, so that the money for the poor does not all have to come from deficit spending. And it will slow the growth of economic inequality, which tends to make society more cruel and unjust.
*It is now unusual for major news media not to be owned by a billionaire.*
Some people who were hospitalized for Covid-19 experience lasting cognitive disability afterwards — sometimes comparable to 20 years of aging.
This is distinct from "long Covid", which is unrelated to the severity of the acute infection. It appears that vaccination mostly prevents this because it mostly prevents the severe disease.
With Taliban who are studying to act properly as police officers instead of brutal thugs.
I am shocked by the idea that anyone under 18 is a "child". That they should not be soldiers, I agree — but "child"? If someone had called me a child when I was 14 I would have resented it.
Lavrov, Putin's diplomatic spokesman, tried to identify anti-Semites with Jews.
This disinformation may be an attempt to deal with the absurdity of the claim that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis when it fact its leader is a Jew. It brought a rebuke from Israel. (Israel has been too friendly with Russia in recent months.)
In disinformation, one extreme lie paves the way for another more extreme. I won't be surprised if some day Putin's representatives claim that they need to kill the Jews of Ukraine because those are the anti-Semites.
Wildfires in the US have burnt over a thousand square miles this year, and it's only the middle of spring.
The ground and the plants are so dry that fires spread very fast and it is hard to slow them down.
UK thugs are eager to deport people. If you look non-white, and can't speak, they may presume you're not a citizen — no need to bother ascertaining your origin.
In the UK as elsewhere, right-wing officials want you to assume that everyone else is equally corrupt.
That's basically saying, "give up trying to change things — it is hopeless." But we know it's not hopeless — we have succeeded before.
The amount of corruption among plutocratists of any party is far too much. In the US, we have read about Manchin and Sinema's corruption, but plenty of other plutocratist Democrats are corrupt in the same way. However, right-wing officials make corruption their ideology, and they recognize no moral limits on it.
A leaked document seems to show that the US Supreme Court will overturn Roe v Wade and allow states to ban abortion. If this had happened 20 years ago, Americans would have voted the right-wing officials out of office. But now that Republicans have pre-rigged US elections with voter suppression, gerrymandering, and rigging the census,
we may no longer have the option to do that.
*Kinzinger Introduces Measure to Allow US Military Intervention in Ukraine* only if Putin uses nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
This is not a move to escalate (that would be harmful), but rather pressure for Putin not to escalate.
The Putin forces stole tractors and took them to Chechnya, but they don't work, because they have been disabled remotely using a back door.
The back door is a weapon against whoever wants to use the tractor. In these surprising special circumstances, the weapon was used against the Putin forces. That was good, since they deserve the attack. But that weapon was designed to be used against farmers, and that use is evil. These special circumstances do not excuse the back door.
US unions are gaining public approval and strength. Now they need government agencies to enforce workers' legal rights.
*Prosecute Russian and Other Powerful Countries' War Crimes.* But how?
*UN Chief Slams Fossil Fuel Sector for Trying to Use Ukraine War to "Lock in a High Carbon Future."*
Everyone: demand that the Florida Department of Education and Governor DeSantis justify their claim that math textbooks they rejected teach "critical race theory" (or anything else objectionable about race).
Refer to the explanation of what critical race theory really is.
US citizens: call on the Senate to confirm Nancy Abudu as appeals judge.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject the TRUST Act, designed to cut Social Security and Medicare, each time Senator Romney tries to sneak it in.
*Kellogg's Executive Described Union as "Terrorists" Emboldened by Social Media.*
I expect that the executive and the consultants really believe that. I would guess that they are Republicans and believe other forms of lunacy too.
Martin Rees suggests leaving human space travel to private centibillionaires.
The advantages he suggests make sense, but I see a danger also: that the centibillionaire might organize a space settlement as per own personal demesne. If only 50 people can go, it won't be hard to find 50 people who want it badly enough to yield to that.
I think Rees's equanimity about the prospect of human descendants so drastically different from us is misguided. Unless it is so different that conflict is impossible, I think that difference would lead to war, or else complete subjugation of our kind.
The US government sent personal data to Facebook for every college student that applied for US government student aid. It justified this as being for a "campaign".
The data included name, phone number and email address. This shows the agency didn't even make a hand waving attempt to anonymize the student. Not that anonymization usually does much good — but the failure to even try shows that the agency was completely blind to the issue of respecting students' privacy,
Facebook did this with a tracking pixel. The article explains carefully what that implies.
Federal agencies should not be allowed to send Javascript code in their web pages; on the contrary, they should be required to take care that none of their pages sends any JavaScript whatsoever.
A pilot program in the UK found that *supporting women asylum seekers in the community … improve[d] their well being at half the cost of [jailing] them.*
Ministers were not impressed, though. Perhaps because it contradicted their plans for a "hostile environment". The UK is already planning more immigration prisons.
Any one country which is so helpful to immigrants is likely to get far too many immigrants. But if many countries do it, it may be acceptable for all of them.
The UK immigration agency has infiltrated its agents into local governments, in agencies where people might look for help. Even in child protection services.
Immigrants will learn to avoid asking for any help for themselves or their children, and the agencies will say, "It's not our fault they didn't contact us."
If the Twitter promotion algorithm works using machine learning, its code (not including the neural net) won't tell people much about how Twitter chooses what to show them. It also may not be much use to anyone.
Basically, the trained neural net is a part of the program. It can be considered source code, since (1) it isn't compiled from any other form of the code, and (2) changing it is possible (by retraining. But if you don't get that, you don't have the whole source code.
The Havasupai tribe is trying to block a uranium mine that the US has approved near the aquifer they get water from. Uranium from the mine could poison it for millions of years.
If they can't get water, they can have a soup pie. But that is fattening — they need to have water available, too.
The beauty of this arrangement is that no one will actually have to go to jail.
*The So-Called "Pro-Worker" Republicans Are Silent on Unionization Wins.*
Republicans don't have ideals seriously, only as ways to get power. The people they really serve are those who give them money.
(satire) *Ohio Law Mandates Rape Victims Send Thank You Notes For Gift Of Parenthood.*
Covid-19 is increasing in the US, but due to Republican obstruction, the US government can't do much to restrain the increase, nor to help vaccinate the people of poor countries.
The problem of unvaccinated global poor is entirely artificial. The reason vaccinating them is so expensive that no one will pay for it is the obstruction of patents and trade secrets that prevent generic vaccine production.
Schools have established thoughtful procedures to reevaluate whether a book should be in public school libraries, while respecting the First Amendment. Republicans using censorship to demonize queer people systematically disregard or bypass those procedures.
*Nothing Spells "Big Government" Better Than GOP "Big Lie" Embrace of Martial Law.*
In general, the Republican Party supports big government, except when it comes to programs that help non-rich people.
*Pacific Elders Say US-China Military Tensions Secondary to Rising Seas.*
Elon Musk is citing a barely extant American "far left" as a bugaboo to excuse the powerful, menacing, election-stealing far right.
According to some members of the UK Parliament, looking at a small image in a place where others could possibly look at it over your shoulder is legally considered a "public display", equivalent to projecting it on a wall in the street
Prohibiting thing A, and stretching the terminology to include thing B as well, is morally dishonest. When people who look over your shoulder, or out of the corner of the eye, to see something small that you hold in front of you, you are not "displaying" it. Rather, they are prying.
I am not saying that prying is a great wrong — only that when you pry, you take on the responsibility for seeing whatever you saw, so you cannot blame that on the person whose affairs you pried into.
Some sexual material (i.e., porn) embodies misogyny or treats women as objects. I have a low opinion of that. But the moral dishonesty I am criticizing would apply to all porn, regardless of the attitudes any given porn work presents.
I have no sympathy for Parish, the Tory MP who might be prosecuted. He is a Tory! As a member of Parliament in the governing party, he shares responsibility for all government policies, and so many of them are cruel.
The Tories have done truly horrible things in recent years — starving the poor, freezing the poor, undermining the National Health Service, deporting people because their parents didn't get certain documents 50 years ago, making the disabled prove their disability to someone unqualified while disregarding doctors' reports, imposing harsh punishments on protesters trying to save the ecosphere, encouraging fossil fuels over renewable energy, and more. These wrongs have harmed millions of Britons already and could easily harm tens of millions of them in the future. These are the substantial reasons to condemn Parish. I have listed only the few I could immediately remember; there are many more.
Thus, Parish's resignation, in and of itself, is a good thing. But achieving something politically beneficial through unjust means can do more harm than good, through collateral damage to everyone. This moral dishonesty, if it prevails, will not be limited to Tories. So their guilt for unrelated wrongs, even enormous wrongs, cannot excuse it.
The University of California will waive tuition and fees for students from US-recognized indigenous California groups.
That's a good thing to do, but it should cover all low-income students. The purpose of state universities and colleges is to provide higher education to residents at a cost they can bear. No state residents should be left out because of their ethnicity.
New York City "rent stabilized" apartments have had rent increases that the tenants can't pay even if they go hungry.
A Republican state representative says, think of being raped as an opportunity to have the baby you never wanted.
One step further and she'll be advocating The Handmaid's Tale, in which fertile women are given this opportunity whether they want it or not.
In this age of overpopulation, every birth is a missed opportunity to avoid more overpopulation.
*Marjorie Taylor Greene accused of lying in hearing in Capitol attack case.*
Republicans in Florida and Tennessee have banned ranked choice voting, which cities there want to use.
The bully's partial border wall is possible for healthy people to climb, but a significant fraction of the climbers fall and suffer grave injury or death.
The fashion and beauty competition works with antisocial media to make nearly all women desperately insecure about whether they are beautiful enough.
This is partly because society — even in work — compels women to compete at beauty, judged by a standard that is set by photos of the most beautiful few.
The saddest thing is that being beautiful does not spare one the feeling of insecurity. Even "winners" of the enforced competition are subject to the pain.
It may be possible to escape by refusing to compete. Rejecting antisocial media might get you part way there.
I expect that the antisocial media companies are aware of this and intentionally increase the addictiveness and pressure. This is an example of the kind of collective trap that makes for the greatest success.
Much of the American west can no longer sustain inessential lawns. Governments are moving to prohibit them, applying law'n order to water use.
*Study Warns Only 'Rapid Action' Can Prevent Worst Marine Extinction in 250 Million Years.*
Based on video evidence, three Florida prison thugs have been charged with beating a prisoner to death.
The Jan 6 coup investigation will finish soon, but how will that translate into accountability for the culprits, and hampering the many who are now organizing to try again?
The hyper rich can now buy major companies on whims to use as toys. This could destabilize society even more.
The biggest bottled water company in the US is hardly known: it hides behind various names including "Poland Spring". It is being sued for false claims about protecting the environment. Its defense is that "everyone should realize that the claims are meaningless nonsense."
The coal plants now planned for construction will push the Earth beyond 1.5C of warming.
It is still important to wear a mask (a good one!) in airplanes and airports.
It is even more important to wear a good mask in buses and trains, and stores.
If we assume you're going to catch Covid-19 some day, you're better off catching it later. Not now!
Lots of research is still being done, so next year various groups of people may have a smaller chance of death, or a smaller chance of developing lasting damage or lasting disability.
There are two different policies under which the US border thugs send asylum seekers back into Mexico. This article discusses the legal issues about the policy called "Remain in Mexico", now being considered by the Supreme Court. The other one, known as Title 42, supposedly operated in the name of public health, is going through the courts too.
*[There is a] rush to get emergency contraception into Ukraine as reports of rape rise.*
Musk's stated plans for Twitter are sketchy, but we can already see they are dangerous. And that includes the plan to "open source" algorithms that judge what tweets to promote.
That may come as a surprise to you, especially if you believe I advocate open source. In fact, I have never been a supporter of that.
In the mid-80s I launched the free software movement, which campaigns for all users' right to redistribute the software they run, either verbatim or modified. The free software movement says that distributing a program to users as nonfree software is an injustice to those users, and that we shouldn't stand for that.
However, we don't believe that it's wrong for you, or Twitter, to develop software and run it privately without ever distributing a copy. The Twitter service does things that are unjust, but having and using private software is not one of them.
*Revealed: top US corporations raising prices on Americans even as profits surge.*
Robert Reich said something similar; this is confirmation.
*A state investigation accuses the Minneapolis Thug Department of systematically practicing "discriminatory, race-based policing."
Videoconferencing tends to be inferior to physical meetings for coming up with creative ideas.
The sheriff of Los Angeles county accused a reporter of possessing "stolen property" — a leaked video showing a thug kneeling on someone's back.
I am glad that the power of the press can make a bullying official back off. Now if only we could make the US government back off prosecuting journalists such as Julian Assange who likewise publish leaked videos showing crimes.
The Putin forces captured Kherson weeks ago, but now they are setting up a heavy-handed permanent occupation. Ukrainians are fleeing, those who can.
(satire) *Domino's Under Fire For Sharing Pizza Topping Data With Police.*
Harvard University will spend $100m to "close the educational, social and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism".
That is an admirable effort.
*California accuses ExxonMobil of deceiving public on hazards of plastics.*
When Bogus Johnson decided to allow people into nursing homes without testing them for Covid, he had already discussed with his advisors the danger of transmission by asymptomatic people.
But he told Parliament that this wasn't known at the time.
London thugs face an investigation for misconduct over handcuffing and searching two famous black athletes who drove by in a car. They had no specific grounds to suspect them, except perhaps their skin color.
One of the said this example should be used as an opportunity to do something about the thugs department's culture of racism.
New Mexico this year has had more wildfire than in a normal whole year, due to heat and deep drought.
Serial sexual abuser Jimmy Saville was protected by British libel laws. No newspaper dared publish any suggestion of accusation, despite having evidence.
Now the UK may weaken libel laws because Russian billionaires are using them too.
Sweden has permitted segregation to extend to the point of allowing Islamist and right-wing hate blocs to develop side by side.
I hope they can find a way to integrate the various groups.
For immigrants to make up 20% of the population risks weakening all aspects of a country's cultural heritage — even perhaps the Swedish language. A cultural environment has a certain capacity to absorb people coming from other backgrounds, and it is better not to overload that capacity.
*Extreme heatwave in India and Pakistan causes power and water shortages.*
A member of the European Parliament criticizes the EU's governance structure that was designed to be weak.
I made this criticism around 15 years ago after the software patents directive revealed how difficult it is for a plurality of the MEPs who care about an issue to block a directive they oppose.
*Instead of obsessing over learning facts, let’s teach children how to think.* To think with careful rationality, that is — scientifically.
Texans from minority communities are campaigning against highway expansion that would push us closer to the end of civilization.
I expect that planet-roaster lobbyists played a big role in adopting the policy of spending state money only on cars.
How the future of journalism depends on Julian Assange's freedom.
Various sects of Muslim fanatics are bombing mosques in Afghanistan.
Supporters of taking the UK out of the European Union touted the benefit of restricting imports and putting a tariff on them. But now a minister has admitted that actually doing it is too expensive. Having made Britain pay the enormous price, they don't want what they bought.
This suggests it was dishonest political distraction all along, like the bullshitter's border wall.
I said years ago that the only way for leaving the EU to benefit Britain would be to have the Left in charge. Corbyn, for instance, as leader of Labour, could have discarded the EU's plutocratic rules while keeping the good aspects.
Putin seems to be playing the "fear me, I'm a madman" card, and it is a mistake to be too scared. However, it's right to avoid making real threats to escalate, because even a non-madman might react drastically to that.
*America's food deserts start seeing influx of healthy foods thanks to federal funds.*
The UK will eliminate local government in the British Virgin Islands due to the corruption of its officials, including its prime minister who was just arrested in the US and accused of drug trafficking.
The British Virgin Islands carry out a big business of hiding taxes for rich people and companies. The UK now has a chance to put a stop to that. Will it do so?
*New Report Details Fracking's 'Widespread and Severe Harm' to Health and Climate.*
US trade sanctions have caused harm to the innocent in many countries.
In many of these cases there was no valid reason for the US to take any action against the other country. In the case of Russia, there are reasons to take action, but I wonder whether the sanctions are an effective contribution to the goal. Since they don't make Putin change policies, are they pointless harm? Would arming Ukraine be enough by itself?
Ukraine is assembling evidence of war crimes and identifying their perpetrators. Nine Putin forces soldiers who are prisoners have been charged for specific crimes.
And this is without torturing anyone.
I am disappointed — though I shouldn't be surprised — that some Ukrainian soldiers vent their anger on Putin forces who are surrendering. The Ukrainians must heed their consciences and treat prisoners as human beings.
To fail to do this is stupid as well as wrong. It is important to show Putin forces soldiers that surrendering is the wisest thing they can do.
Russia and Ukraine will be neighbors for centuries, if civilization survives this century. Hatred between them will only make things worse.
*Lawmakers Urge NLRB Budget Boost Amid 'Dramatic Increase' in Unionization.*
Accusing Jared Kushner of taking a 2-billion-dollar bribe from Crown Prince Bone Saw for helping him take over Salafi Arabia.
The Putin forces yet again agreed to a "humanitarian corridor" for civilians to get out of Mariupol, and yet again shelled it.
*More than half of the people in four former communist central European counties fear media freedom is in danger, with significant majorities wanting government or EU measures to protect it, according to a survey.*
A large gold mine in Amazonia has been blocked by a Brazilian court. The company sought approval while covering up some of the mine's
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