Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
An international conference to improve protection and management of the Southern Ocean failed because the Russian delegation seemed not to be interested in the goal.
Ariel Bernstein participated as a soldier in Israel's 2014 ground invasion of Gaza. What he learned is that such invasions are no path towards peace or security — they are mere revenge. Since then, he has worked for reconciliation and peace.
A few prominent magazine editors and executives have been fired or pushed out for publicly criticizing Israel's actions towards Palestinians. However, thousands are coming to their defense.
I don't entirely know, and don't necessarily agree with, their specific positions. That isn't the point anyway. A free society needs to offer room for people to disagree.
Unless someone is an enemy of democracy and human rights in the US, and seriously wants to abolish them, we should accept per presence as part of our society, and argue (if we wish) the points we disagree about.
Clarence Thomas got a loan from a rich friend for $267k. A few years later, before he had to repay any of it, the rich friend forgave the debt. Thomas did not report any of this.
(satire) *New Law Requires Political Candidates To Disclose Fetishes On All Campaign Materials.*
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.
Reduced rain in the Mississippi basin has caused tap water disinfection in parts of Louisiana to leave toxic chemicals.
Protests and strikes against Amazon.com are planned for Nov 24.
Can anyone tell me where these plans are published?
Amazon wiped out enormous numbers of jobs through its anticompetitive practices. That is one of many reasons to refuse to buy from that company.
Bandcamp was sold to a company that has no respect for the community it served. Someone who appreciated the site laments this.
I might have appreciated Bandcamp too, if its unjust practices had not excluded me from using it. To access music there required (1) running nonfree JavaScript software and (2) identifying oneself to make a payment.
I did not try to check whether Bandcamp also requires/required agreeing to an antisocializing contract: that is, a commitment not to share copies of the music with anyone else. It wasn't crucial for me to know that, since I couldn't use the site anyway. But now I wonder — does anyone know if Bandcamp demands a promise to be divided and ruled?
This is an example of a situation I notice from time to time. Most internet users spinelessly accept being the victim of widespread unjust practices. As a result, when they really love a site, it is quite likely that I will condemn the site for injustice to its users.
*Palestinians and Israelis are bound together in suffering. Seeking to untangle this, as the UN has, should not be seen as making excuses for HAMAS.*
Everyone: Object to the proposed UnitedHealth-Amedisys $3.3 billion mega-merger.
As tech companies add microphones to a wide range of products, including refrigerators and motor vehicles, they also set up transcription farms where human employees listen to what people say to the devices and tweak the recognition algorithms.
California has suspended the permit for Cruise cars to operate without a driver after a peculiar accident in which the car's computer reacted unsafely.
I am glad that California agencies are watching out for the public's physical safety from driverless cars. However, there is no sign that they will adequately protect the privacy of people in the vicinity of these cars. That includes the passengers who ride in driverless taxis, and the passers-by whose faces are imaged by them and perhaps subsequently subject to facial recognition.
Driverless cars should not be allowed to operate until they can operate without contributing to the societal danger of massive surveillance.
*Tennessee voters reject mayoral candidate who refused to disavow neo-Nazis.*
This will encourage Republicans to hesitate before openly endorsing prejudice and mass murder. That doesn't mean we are out of the woods: not all will learn from this lesson, and those who do may employ "dog whistles" instead. But it's a step forward anyway.
Governor DeMentis is trying to forcibly eliminate chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine in Florida's state universities. That is unconstitutional, but DeMentis has no respect for the US Constitution.
I might very well disagree with those groups about what outcome would constitute justice in Palestine. I advocate the two-states solution, with one of those two states being a democratic Israel. This would require Israel to return much of the land it has seized or annexed.
Perhaps those student groups advocate something else that I would disagree with.
Whatever it is, they have the right to advocate it, whether DeMentis likes it or not, and whether I like it not.
* Gaza’s already rudimentary water network has been obliterated, with 2.2 million residents trying to get by on three litres a day.*
Israel has imposed shortages of water on Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank. The shortages in the West Bank did not endanger human health and life directly but they denied Palestinians the possibility of farming.
*Young Europeans more likely to quit driving and have fewer children to save planet. Exclusive: Poll shows young people willing to make big lifestyle changes but balk at smaller gestures.*
*Here’s what happens [in the US] when a for-profit company takes over your local emergency room.* The author is a doctor who worked in an ER that was taken over.
All emergency medicine should be run by the state — for-profit companies should not be allowed in that field.
As the Tories have demonstrated, it is not guaranteed that a government will keep medicine working well. Especially if it is a government of Tories (plutocratists) that seek to destroy the public system and replace it with a privatize system that is as horrible as the US privatize medicine system.
But we also know that government scan do this job well, for decades. Whereas we can be absolutely certain that for-profit companies will ruin it.
Lubbock, Texas, is the latest county to pass a law to persecute people who help others get an abortion.
This law employs a dodge designed to nullify the applicability of constitutional rights: instead of prosecuting whoever committed an "offense", it authorizes various people to sue that person as if they had been somehow harmed by per, in the absence of any actual harm to them. This amounts to a kind of private persecution.
In effect, the dodge creates a notional pretend "harm" which anyone (even strangers) can then sue for.
If this dodge is allowed to stand, it would put all constitutional rights in danger, because it would allow governments to declare exceptions to them at will. If we want the idea of constitutional rights to mean anything, we must make this dodge invalid in general.
A bipartisan group of congresscritters have written to two cabinet ministers calling for dropping charged against Julian Assange.
Here's the text of the letter, so you can read it without running nonfree Javascript code.
Dear President Biden,
As Members of Congress deeply committed to the principles of free speech and freedom of the press, we write to strongly encourage your Administration to withdraw the U.S. extradition request currently pending against Australian publisher Julian Assange and halt all prosecutorial proceedings against him as soon as possible.
Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, faces multiple charges under the Espionage Act due to his role in publishing classified documents about the U.S. State Department, Guantanamo Bay, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been detained on remand in London since 2019 and is pending extradition to the U.S., having lost his appeal of the extradition order in the courts of the United Kingdom.
Deep concerns about this case have been repeatedly expressed by international media outlets, human rights and press freedom advocates, and Members of Congress, among others. To cite only a few of the commentaries, in November 2022, *The New York Times*, *The Guardian*, *Le Monde*, *DER SPEIGEL* and *El País* came together to express their grave concerns about the continued prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified materials, arguing that “publishing is not a crime.” In December 2022, a coalition of press freedom, civil liberties, and international human rights organizations wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland urging him to correct course and abandon the relentless pursuit of Mr. Assange in order to protect the ability of journalists to report freely on the United States without fear of retribution. U.S. elected officials have previously called on the Administration to drop the charges against Mr. Assange, including in April of this year when Members of the House argued that "[e]very day that the prosecution of Julian Assange continues is another day that our own government needlessly undermines our own moral authority abroad and rolls back the freedom of the press under the First Amendment at home.”
We believe the Department of Justice acted correctly in 2013, during your vice-presidency, when it declined to pursue charges against Mr. Assange for publishing the classified documents because it recognized that the prosecution would set a dangerous precedent. We note that the 1917 Espionage Act was ostensibly intended to punish and imprison government employees and contractors for providing or selling state secrets to enemy governments, not to punish journalists and whistleblowers for attempting to inform the public about serious issues that some U.S. government officials might prefer to keep secret. We are aware that the Assange case has been cited by officials of the People’s Republic of China to claim that the U.S. is “hypocritical” when it comes to its purported support for media freedom. We are also well aware that should the U.S. extradition and prosecution go forward, there is a significant risk that our bilateral relationship with Australia will be badly damaged.
It is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of government. The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalizing common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the free press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible.
Sincerely,
James P. McGovern Thomas Massie Member of Congress Member of Congress
(satire) *U.S. Warns A Gaza Ceasefire Would Only Benefit Humanity.*
A court decision has ordered an end to Republican gerrymandering in Georgia. This will leave Republicans in control of the state, because they do have more voters there, but will make a difference in the House of Representatives. Also, it could deny Republicans a supermajority in the state senate.
The European Commission semi-secretly bought ads on Ex-Twitter to pressure officials to vote for the repressive plan to force encrypted messaging programs to monitor and report the unencrypted messages. This plan is called "chatcontrol".
EU voters, please pressure your MEPs to oppose chatcontrol!
Israel and its allies question the civilian casualty figures for Gaza, claiming that HAMAS exaggerates the number of casualties caused by Israel's bombardment of Gaza. Others argue for trusting those figures on the grounds that there are ways to cross-check the details so that falsifying the totals would not be feasible.
Does this question make a crucial difference? I don't think so. Even if the number of Gazan civilians killed by Israel's bombardment were only 4,000 instead of the 7,000 reported by the HAMAS-run Gaza medical system, it would still be mass murder and a war crime.
The fact that HAMAS committed mass murder first doesn't excuse Israel for committing mass murder second.
Deserters from the Putin forces, having found temporary refuge in Armenia, speak out to encourage other soldiers in the Putin forces to desert as well. They were helped by an organization dedicated to helping Putin forces soldiers to desert.
It takes courage to escape from an army that boasts of being ready to shoot anyone who retreats. Countries that support Ukraine should help those who do escape from the Putin forces, so as to encourage more.
In this article, the list of evils that the VC foist on society is incomplete. "Depending on computing done by programs that the users do not control" is another evil, not mentioned in the article's list. It includes inducing people to run nonfree programs and inducing them to entrust their computing to company's servers.
People overlook this because they have not learned to recognize how it (1) is unjust in itself and (2) makes the other recognized abuses possible.
Scholastic, the main publisher of books (other than textbooks) for students in the US, has reversed its decision to put books with queer characters into a separate catalog.
That decision was aimed at avoiding conflict with right-wing censorship. Reversing the decision means Scholastic will confront the censors head-on. That has a chance of damaging SCROTUS, and since SCROTUS is dead set on wrecking democracy and religious freedom in the US, any damage to SCROTUS has a chance of saving them.
The EU is drawing up a directive to restrict "artificial intelligence".
I get the impression that this directive will also cover machine learning systems. It may be a good thing for the directive to cover those systems, although it is very bad to refer to them as "intelligence".
The restrictions on facial recognition and emotional recognition are a good start, but I expect they will not go far enough; that they will allow those technologies to be used in ways that would circumvent and defeat the supposed limitations.
The article suggests that AI may be used as an excuse to make copyright more restrictive, over activities that have never been restricted by copyright as long as human beings have done them.
US workers have become far more eager to organize, and far more ready to strike. They are winning substantial pay increases.
An Australian company aims to produce large quantities of hydrogen by electrolysis. hydrogen by electrolysis.
The other part that's necessary is enough renewable electric generation to run that much electrolysis.
The ACLU argues that the gag order placed on the corrupter in a civil trial about business fraud is too broad.
SCROTUS made one of their most extreme members speaker of the House. Mike Johnson is an election denialist, a climate denialist, an abortion persecutor, and seeks to impose Christianity.
In addition, he also wants to make non-rich people poorer.
It looks like the democratic victory in Poland is for real — the winning parties are ready to form a coalition and replace the right-wing religious authoritarian government.
Biden rebuked the fanatical "settlers" that systematically inflict violent pogroms on Palestinians in the West Bank, saying that they are "pouring gasoline on the fire."
Secretary General Guterres rebuked Israel for the bombardment and blockade of Gaza, which he rightly compared to "collective punishment of the Palestinian people".
Israel replied by falsely equating Guterres's support for international law to "support for terrorism", in its standard way. Its policy is to try to stop the rest of the world from recognizing, and saying that "Condemning HAMAS for its terrorism does not require us to condone the other war crimes, those that Israel is carrying out."
Likewise, *Israel must stop weaponizing the Holocaust.*
*Gaza hospitals ceasing to function as water and fuel run out.*
Israel could, and is morally obliged to, let them get the humanitarian supplies they need — and the rest of Gaza too.
Israel says it will punish the UN by barring UN staff from visiting Israel. This is in response to Secretary General Guterres's mentioning Israel's long oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza.
This may provide Israel with the secondary coup of preventing UN staff from meeting with anyone in Gaza or the West Bank. Egypt could let them into Gaza; will it? Jordan has a bridge by which people can enter the West Bank, but the western side is controlled by Israel and it might block UN staff there too.
This step calls for international pressure on Israel.
* The wife, son, daughter and grandson of Wael al-Dahdouh, the [Al Jazeera] bureau chief in Gaza, were targeted at a relief camp, outlet says.* This is one small fraction of an enormous war crime.
Al-Dahdouh asserts that Israel is systematically targeting civilians who have fled — that this is not just a long series of coincidences.
*EU must cut carbon emissions three times faster to meet targets, [according to climate commissioner].*
*Earth’s "vital signs" worse than at any time in human history, scientists warn.*
*Fossil fuel firms spent millions on US lawmakers who sponsored anti-protest bills.*
*Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers have warned.*
US citizens: Call for de-escalation and ceasefire now in Gaza.
The answer to war crimes is not more war crimes.
US citizens: call on Congress to do everything it can to protect our freedom to vote.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the International and American Seabed Protection Acts.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Construction of new houses generally churns them out full of grave flaws, sometimes dangerous.
The problem starts with concentration of the industry into a few large corporations, which (typically for large corporations) make greed their watchword.
Whenever large corporations systematically harm the public, the state should break them up.
Many buildings in the US are nominally owned by shell companies. Tenants who want to complain about mistreatment can't report the landlord's address, as required, because it is secret. The New York State legislature has passed a bill requiring these shell companies to hand over crucial information to the public, such as who owns them.
Billionaires are lobbying the governor, whose progressive commitments are rather weak, not to sign it.
I suggest approaching this with a somewhat different law: to require every company that directly or indirectly owns a building to hand over all the crucial information about its ownership. If an building-owning company refuses to do this, the punishment should be seizure of the building.
These billionaires and exploiters deserve no clemency or comfort when they try to screw their tenants.
*Jewish and Arab Israelis [arrested], fired from jobs and even attacked for expressing sentiments interpreted as pro-Hamas.*
Criticism of Israel and support for aspects of Palestinians' rights have subtle gradations, and it is not unusual for annexationists and supporters of Israel's occupation of Palestine to distort the views of those that criticize them.
In the examples in the article, the distortions range from subtle to gross and blatant.
We should stand with Israel against HAMAS and its terrorism. However, we must not allow that to mean (or be taken to mean) that we support all Israeli acts (even if violent or cruel) which according to Israel are "directed against HAMAS."
Meanwhile, anyone who cares about Israel should now help stand for human rights and democracy in Israel.
(satire) *Biden Urges Americans Not To Let Dangerous Online Rhetoric Humanize Palestinians.*
*Europe’s Largest News Aggregator Orders Editors to Play Down Palestinian Deaths.*
Israel would like to free HAMAS's hostages with a military raid, but that is next to impossible so it seems Israel will have to negotiate instead.
This might provide a route for stopping Israel's massive continuing atrocities against the population of Gaza.
Javier Milei, a candidate for Argentina's presidency who may yet win, has been trying to underestimate the number of prisoners that the military dictatorship murdered.
The fact that it was a murderous lying right-wing dictatorship is more important than the precise number of political murders it carried out. But why then bring up that number as an election issue? I can't see any motive that isn't a bad one.
The insurrectionist's lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, who recently pled guilty, can inculpate the insurrectionist in two different criminal trials.
*50% of [US] Parents Won’t Let Their [10-year-old] Kids Go to Another Aisle in Grocery.*
For Queensland climate defense protester Rob Keller, age 73, "The worst-case scenario isn’t [3 years in] jail," he says. "The worst-case scenario is climate breakdown."
Australian governments are escalating their repression in defense of business activities that promise megadeaths. As Keller says, the officials putting him on trial — and the fossil fuel businesses they are protecting — are the criminals.
*Junior public servants allegedly made ‘hotties list’ that ranked female colleagues, Senate hears.*
It is wrong to demand that human beings act as if they were sexless. That men — or women — in an office are comparing their coworkers for attractiveness is normal, even inevitable, and it treating it as a monstrosity is the start of repression that will make life ugly.
More people in the UK are using cash payments. I urge people in Britain to organize now to encourage the use of cash, and publicize all the nasty treatment you can avoid that way.
The organization could also campaign for requirements for stores to accept cash, and to situate an ATM in every settlement that is likely to have a family with no car.
A British TV company now requires all staff to declare all their sexual and romantic relationships, all "close" relationships, and all friendships, and all roommate relationships. This intolerable system of repression is the natural endpoint of the ever-increasing repression of office romances. It was always heading for this.
There are valid reasons for rules against office romances, but given the harm that those rules do even when not carried to these absurd extremes, the reasons are not strong enough to justify them.
Human beings need sexual relationships; human beings need love; human beings need friendship. If your main social contact is through work, where are you supposed to look for these things? Degrading yourself by running nonfree software such a dating app or Grindr? Going to a club (if you can look sharp enough to be allowed in) and getting drunk?
We had better adapt our rules to those human needs.
An Australian city council has ceased its practice of Christian prayers at meetings, in the name of separation of church and state.
In the US we have to keep fighting against religious fanatics who try to impose their religion through government out of disrespect for people whose religious views differ from theirs.
Mohammad Yasin, member of the British Parliament, was about to fly to Canada as part of an official parliamentary visit, when he was stopped and questioned because — get this — his name was "Mohammad".
Not only is it crazy to stop a passenger who is an MP for that reason. It is crazy to stop any other passenger for that reason. If your security believes that being named "Mohammad" is a rational reason to suspect someone of anything, it is worse than incompetent.
Oops, we just lost New York and dozens of other coastal cities. Their eventual flooding is inevitable as the West Antarctic ice shelf melts.
How long it will take for them to be inundated is not clear.
*Salman Rushdie: allow writers to create characters outside of their own experience.* *"If we’re in a world where only women can write about women and only people from India can write about people from India and only straight people can write about straight people … then that’s the death of the art," the novelist said, according to the Times.* Or, at the very least, it means no story can have both men and women in it.
Government departments in the UK are using secret algorithms (implemented by nonfree software) to decide how to treat people.
This is inherently unjust regardless of the details. The mere fact that a decision was made this way should count as grounds to invalidate it.
Biden is boasting about the new fossil gas export hub, that will substantially boost global heating.
Migrant workers in Israel are often trapped, much like migrant workers in the UAE. Now they can't afford to leave.
US citizens: call on Biden to keep his promise by decriminalizing marijuana.
If you phone, please spread the word! White House: +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213
US citizens: call on Congress to push for a cease fire in Gaza and for both sides to respect international humanitarian law
HAMAS has total contempt for international humanitarian law; for that, we condemn it. However, this does not excuse Israel for imitating HAMAS and sinking to that same level.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to tell the SEC to exercise its full authority and protect investors from climate-related financial risks, specifically by requiring each corporation to publish the amount of greenhouse emissions expected from burning the fossil fuel that it expects to sell.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to restore the expanded Child Tax Credit. It brought the child poverty rate to historic lows, and can do so again.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
A pitifully small number of aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza, far from what is needed to save civilians' lives.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich more in various ways.
US citizens: call on Congress to make no cuts to family-supporting programs.
US citizens: call on the House to reject any insurrectionist as speaker.
US citizens: call for putting the wrecker in jail if he violates the gag order, which was imposed by a court to protect others involved in the trial from possible threats.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the School Lunch Debt Cancellation Act, which would pay all student lunch debt and provide meals for all school children henceforth.
*UK government keeping files on [some] teaching assistants and librarians’ [social media posts]* to keep records of criticism of its policies.*
It looks like an opposition candidate has the potential to beat President Maduro in Venezuela, if he permits a fair race.
What she says about the oil industry suggests a possibility that even though she may respect human rights better than Maduro, her other political views may lean towards neoliberalism and extractivism. There isn't enough substance in the article for me to really tell.
*New[ly published] Documents Show Exxon Executives Cast Doubt on Climate Science to Protect Profits.* According to the article, Exxon did this in 1988, 2008, 2012 and 2015.
*Scientists are examining how building and use of infrastructure relates to the burden of illness [in a city].*
US citizens: call on Congress to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, so as to stop the loss of life and allow humanitarian aid, including medical attention, food, and water.
We should not forget that Israel's mistreatment of Palestinians consists of more than just direct killing, occasionally of many Palestinians at once, usually of a few at a time. The siege of Gaza causes suffering and death every day, and so too (in different ways) does the gradual suffocation of Palestinians in the West Bank (while "settlers" take their land).
When the FAO tried to publicize the role of cattle farming in global heating, it was hit by an organized lobbying and bullying campaign.
Since then it has downplayed this crucial issue of civilization's survival.
*Ex-officials at [FAO] say work on methane emissions was censored.*
*Impact of farming on climate crisis will be a key Cop topic — finally.*
This year's climate conference is permeated by planet roaster influence, from the oil emir that is its head to the planet roaster companies that "sponsor" it and have tremendous influence.
I hope that it achieves some good despite that handicap.
*Amnesty International has
documented
unlawful Israeli attacks,
including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian
casualties and must be investigated as war crimes.*
Israel has damaged
1/3 of the housing in Gaza. It continues deliberately
bombing and destroying residential buildings.
The very old St Porphyrius Church, in which civilians were sheltering,
was damaged by a missile which hit a nearby building. Although the
missile killed some of them, at least nobody tried to attack the church.
In Israel, Arabs and Israelis now face
censorship
and punishment
if they oppose the war in Gaza.
Each time trumpet Republican Rep. Jordan held a vote on becoming speaker,
the number of Republicans voting against him increased. It is now clear
that the
insurrectionists cannot elect a speaker.
That is something we can celebrate, but how can the House elect a
speaker? Since the speaker does not have to be a member of the House,
I suggest looking for a respected older leader, perhaps a retired
judge, who is known for more probity than partisanship, to seek support
among Democrats and Republicans.
The US claims that
thousands
of North Koreans, hiding their
identities, got jobs are remote workers for US companies, received pay
in dollars, and gave that pay to North Korea's missile development.
This could have boosted North Korea's missile development greatly.
*Amsterdam sex workers protest against
plan
to move red light district.*
Biden called on Israelis not to be "captured by rage" and to
avoid
making "mistakes" like the US invasion of Iraq.
As an act by the US, the invasion of Iraq qualifies as a "mistake".
However, as an act by Dubya,
it was an intentional
crime of aggressive
war, carried out with calculation for the gain of some Americans.
*Pfizer Spikes Paxlovid Prices to
100
Times Cost of Production.*
CVS and Walgreens are making enormous profits, but still trying to
increase those profits by
understaffing
their pharmacies. That puts patients at risk of errors.
UK thugs
knocked a black 13-year-old off his bicycle because he was
pointing
a water pistol. His mother said the water pistol was "brightly colored", which
implied it did not look much like a real gun.
*Russia working to
undermine
trust in elections globally, US
intelligence says.*
*Flame
retardant pollution
threatens wildlife on all continents, research finds.*
*"We're facing
another
old enemy":
Rushdie warns against global authoritarianism [and specifically its US
form, the Republican Party].*
Lukashenko continues to pursue Belarusian
dissidents
and journalists in exile.
**NYPD [thugs]
Sued for Misconduct Cost City Millions in Settlements —
Then
Get Promotions.*
As long as thugs
can continue to dump the cost of their depredations
on their cities, those cities have two reasons to get rid of
thugs
that cause them: to protect the city's funds, and to protect the
public from harm. Either one should be enough. So why doesn't
NYC do it? I suspect there is a systemic problem to be found.
(satire) *New TikTok Stunt Challenges Parents
To
See How Fast
They Can Get Kids Taken Away By CPS.*
A large fraction of Jamaicans
grow
up speaking Jamaican creole,
and when they later go to school and have to use English without
having used it before, many fail. Jamaica is now considering
converting the schools to a bilingual curriculum designed to teach
children both languages.
It is well
established
that a carefully designed bilingual curriculum is effective at
graduating students who can speak and write both languages — more
effective than dumping students precipitously into taking class using
a language they don't really know. Americans who want to make sure
immigrant Hispanic children
in the US become good in English should support bilingual education.
I suspect that the opposition many right-wing Americans display
towards this is a way of venting resentment at those children for
being present in the US, not a serious effort to help them learn English.
* Fatih Birol, The ED of the
International
Energy Agency
said: "New large-scale fossil fuel projects not only carry major climate risks,
but also business and financial risks for the companies and their investors."*
In other words, those investors are making a big mistake even in
narrow terms of their own profit.
If they don't care about dooming civilization,
let's hope that they heed his advice. But they may not.
I suspect that "investment" in fossil fuels is driven to a large
extent by inside influence exercised by fuel barons who expect to
profit from getting institutions other people's money into the
companies the barons will profit from.
Now, before the election which Labour is likely to win, is when voters
would be wise to
demand
it reverse the choice of narrow spending limits
that will prevent fixing most of what's broken in Britain.
* Government backtracking on environmental promises is
being driven by
politicians and vested interests, not the public, the acting UN
biodiversity chief has said.*
*Stockholm
to ban petrol and diesel cars from [city] centre from 2025.*
Only electric vehicles will be permitted there.
*The
Achilles' Heel Of Propaganda — Julian Assange, Nick Cohen And
Russell Brand.*
This describes how the mainstream media, in unison, work to boost
sexual accusations against some people, and bury charges against
others, in each case with little regard to the truth.
I know a fair amount about the campaign to destroy Julian Assange for
his work as a journalist for Wikileaks, and I see how sex accusations
were faked and used as an
excuse
to prosecute him for journalism.
By contrast, I have barely heard of Nick Cohen and Russell Brand (the
famous British one), and know almost nothing about them. I do not
watch TV, I refuse to have a TV cable connection (it has DRM and it
snoops on what user watch — both of which I reject as injustice), and
I have hardly ever seen an article by Nick Cohen in the places I find
articles.
Just as the US forfeited the world's sympathy for the September 2001
terror attacks when it used them as an excuse to attack Iraq,
Israel
can forfeit the world's sympathy for HAMAS's terrorism if it uses
that as an excuse for massive war crimes in Gaza.
*Why
are some of the left celebrating the killings of Israeli Jews?*
When people bitterly condemn an injustice, for valid reasons, and are
stymied in trying to do anything to reduce it, that condemnation can
fester and develop into irrational hatred of the "side" that carries
out the injustice. In this way, condemnation of the many unjust
Israeli occupation policies that add up to
oppression
of Palestinians
(one form in the West Bank, another form in Gaza)
can develop into hatred of Israelis, even hatred of Jews in general.
I think that is what has happened. How sad it will be if those who
oppose injustice to Palestinians turn into irrational haters instead
of champions of justice. They will be unable to persuade people of
the validity of their cause if their cause is antisemitic hatred.
They could gain their goal only by deploying the bigger force and the
more powerful cruelty.
As Naomi Klein writes, by adopting antisemitism they will give violent
Zionists a justification to point to for their violence.
But worst of all, by letting their sense of justice morph into hatred
and celebration of death, they will move from the side of good to the
side of another kind of evil.
Just as we should not let condemnation of the occupation's injustice
against the Palestinians lead us to excuse murderous antisemitism, we
should also not let condemnation of HAMAS for its murderous
antisemitism blind
us to injustices of the occupation of Palestine.
*New IEA Report gives President Biden
sufficient
justification to declare a
climate emergency.*
Texas rushed
to execute Jedidiah Murphy without allowing time
to finish his appeals.
Texas law arbitrarily rules out DNA testing of the convict to call into
question a death sentence. In effect, it says, "Whether we kill you is not
important enough to justify checking the truth of conclusions on which
we based that decision."
*Court finds police in France often
use
racial profiling in identity
checks.*
This is no surprise — thugs
do similar things in many countries
including the US and
UK.
*Ferdinand Marcos Jr
drops
Philippines holiday marking toppling of
father.*
His father was a corrupt dictator who was toppled by massive protests.
It looks like this adds to Marcos Jr's campaign to cover up the truth
about that dictator.
The book Controlling Corruption, by Robert Klitgaard, describes in one
chapter the measures that Marcos Sr used to stamp out corruption in
the Philippine Customs Agency. In most of the government agencies,
Marcos encouraged agents to take bribes and give part of them to him.
But anyone practicing corruption in the customs agency was stealing
from Marcos and he did not like that. The book points out that the
measures in question were effective in the customs agency despite the
fact that the whole government around it was pervasively corrupt.
Pharma companies are suing the US government,
claiming that a price
cap on a product constitutes "taking property".
That claim is something that right-wing economist that worship the
concept of property might believe, but clashes with the US legal tradition.
Alas, we can't count on the right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court
to follow that tradition rather than bow to billionaires.
*Judge
rules Texas's age-verification law violates First Amendment.*
If we had a standard system for verifying a user's age online
without identifying per, I would not object greatly to requiring this
for some sorts of publication. As far as I know, there is no such standard and
what sites would actually demand is to see government ID.
* First complete "scientific health check" shows most global systems
[are] beyond
[the] stable range in which modern civilization emerged.*
Ex-Twitter
has started requiring (in certain countries) every new user
to verify
per phone numbers and a payment method.
The user is required to pay a trivial sum, but the surveillance
implied by the payment is more important than the payment itself.
House Republicans describe
bullying
intended to make them vote
for Jim Jordan for speaker. The bullying may have backfired.
TikTok and Instagram banned a lot of new coverage of the HAMAS-Israel
fighting and its effects, including the news site
mondoweiss.net.
Mondoweiss is led by
Jews
that call for justice
for Palestinians.
I've made links
to it on
stallman.org.
Some US politicians, including right-wing politicians, are calling for
bloody war
against
Palestinians in general.
Right-wing extremists sometimes focus their hate on Muslims and
sometimes on Jews. I think that is a matter of simple tactics,
though: which target is most useful this week for promoting fascism?
*"Do not use our death to bring death": plea to Israel from
peace
activists' grieving families.*
*A real friend of Israel would be making it face up to
some uncomfortable
truths.*
Biden
persuaded Israel and Egypt
to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza, passing through Egypt's Rafah crossing.
UK thugs
preemptively
arrested founders of Just Stop Oil
for planning
a nonviolent protest in London.
The UK has been
doing
that for years.
The protest was at a meeting of fossil fuel executives and
politicians. One must suspect they were meeting to make plans
that stand a good chance of
destroying
civilization.
Greta Thunberg was arrested there and has been charged with the crime of blocking a doorway.
The UK government's commitment to protecting the
planet roasters is
strong, and it appears ready to go to almost any lengths to defend
fossil fuel plans
that are likely to cause the death of billions
later this century.
*Greta
Thunberg arrested
at London oil summit protest. Climate activist taken away by Met
police after protesters denounce meeting of fossil fuel executives and ministers.*
*Fears grow people are dehydrating to death in Gaza as
clean water
runs out.*
The US has engaged in delicate diplomacy trying to
steer Israel
away from killing
tens or hundreds of thousands of Gazans. This may be doing some good,
though it is too early to be certain.
Biden is also
warning
Netanyahu to refrain
from atrocities that he
may have in mind. That is a good effort.
*Israel
occupation of Gaza
would be "big mistake" says Biden.*
It looks like
the
democracy coalition has won the election in Poland. However, I
don't want to count this victory before it has hatched.
If it can assume government power, it will have a lot of work to do to
restore democratic institutions.
The EU rules and treaties can be used to eliminate authoritarian
government in a single member state, if only one member state has it;
but when two member states have it, they can
protect each other
and bring the treaty requirements to naught. In recent years, Poland
and Hungary protected each other's authoritarian institutions.
Returning Poland to democracy and human rights could have made an
opportunity to rescue Hungary too, but alas no — a far-right
extremist government just won the election in Slovakia. I suspect
Slovakia and Hungary will now protect each other from human rights.
Strategies
which enabled the campaign to restore democracy in Poland
to reach apparent success.
I am very glad that they dropped the cruel "make enough money or
starve" policies known as neoliberalism. Helping the poor and the suffering
is one of the essential purposes of the statep.
The
subtleties of distinguishing
support for Palestinians
and their having a country from support for HAMAS and terrorism.
The distinctions proposed in this article are arguably valid.
For instance, "from the river to the sea" does not advocate
a free state of Palestine alongside Israel; rather, it advocates
giving the whole territory of Israel to Palestinians.
However, I do not have confidence in right-wing politicians to
come even close to applying these distinctions properly — they have
a history rather of
weaponizing
false accusations of antisemitism
against people such as Jeremy Corbyn and trying to impose
use of the badly
designed IHRA criterion
for antisemitism.
In US states controlled by Republicans, people are
considerably
more likely to die young.
They die young from smoking, diabetes, heart attacks, car crashes,
and despair.
Republicans don't win these states' elections honestly.
They do it via gerrymandering
and voter
suppression
as well as spending lots of billionaires' money
to distract voters.
Daniel Bernstein warns that NIST seems to be allowing the NSA to
weaken
proposed standards for quantum-resistant encryption algorithms,
by miscalculating the vulnerability of candidates.
The NIST's reply is, basically, "You can't possibly believe we would
do that!" However, it
seems
to have done this in a previous
encryption standard.
*Covid deaths are on the rise again, so what happens?
Mask-wearing in
hospitals is scrapped.*
That abandons people to the risk that a medical system ought to
use discipline to protect people from.
Even if your politicians are cowards, we can use courage to make each
other safe. A disciplined group can sometimes protect most of its
members from threats that individuals can't defend against. Covid-19
is one example. But there is another clearer and more vivid one.
In ancient and medieval times, infantry could protect themselves from
charging cavalry if they had pikes and knew how to stand firm with
them in a line. An individual infantryman was defenseless against
charging cavalry, but a close infantry line with pikes was stronger
than cavalry and could stand the horses off. They could save their
lives together by being firm and disciplined.
We are not likely ever to be in that situation, but it can teach
us how to resist Covid-19 together.
* Pro-democracy supporters who fled Hong Kong for Britain
speak about
continued harassment, threats and physical attacks [by China's agents].*
The UN accuses the UAE of permitting Iranian agents to
kidnap
exiled dissident Jamshid Sharmahd from Dubai airport. Iran has announced plans
to execute him.
Human Rights Watch warns dissidents from other countries not to
transit through Dubai, because the UAE might jail them or worse.
I have no reason to think I am important enough that the UAE might
bother to harass me, but why take the chance? I never even consider
such flight itineraries. Not all the victims listed in
stay-away-countries.html for the UAE were famous.
If rejection for this reason hurts the business of Emirates airlines,
that by itself is a good thing.
Countries that support human rights should reject and denounce all
plans
to hold important international conferences (for instance,
climate conferences)
in the UAE or other similar repressive countries.
The climate crisis (specifically floods, freezes and heatwaves)
threatens
seed production in the US.
The weather no longer follows
the normal seasons.
An apparent Islamist fanatic, already under suspicion and monitored by
the state, murdered a teacher in a French high school. Macron took
advantage of the emotional reaction to the murder by
calling for a
"ruthless" response.
I can't see how "ruthlessness", as such, would help prevent future
terrorist murders. It sounds like a way to stir up hatred against
Muslims.
A more strict system of surveillance, applied by
courts to people whose actions have justified it, might help.
* Justice department
launches
inquiry [into thugs of Trenton, NJ]
after "numerous reports" that Trenton officers conducted "stops and
arrests with no good reason."*
Brazil's congress
accuses
Bolsonaro of a willful coup attempt on Jan 8,
and calls for charging him with four crimes.
It seems that Australian prisoner Selesa Tafaifa was
killed in an
Australian prison by putting a spit hood on her. It hampered her
breathing and caused a heart attack. An emergency medicine specialist
watched the video in court and explained what was happening to her at
each point.
Tory leaders are
spreading
disinformation about Labour's plans.
What else would you expect?
*21
species removed from US Endangered Species Act after going
extinct.*
It is not clear why more pedestrians are dying from car collisions now
in the US than before, but
some
people are certain of whet remedy they
want to impose.
Their argument is, "Whether or not it's a good solution,
it has to do some good, right?" They also say, "If it saves
even one life, it is worth doing." I don't think those are valid.
The right approach is to figure out what benefit various possible
changes would give, and then decide which change is best.
We know that the increasing number of SUVs increases casualties, and
that it increases greenhouse gas emissions which which increase
casualties from climate disaster. I suspect — though I have no basis
to be certain — that the most effective way to address all these
problems is to strongly discourage SUVs.
For instance, we could increase the fee to register an SUV
substantially each year. People would start selling their SUVs.
* Across the US, local governments, lobbyists and industry have spent
millions to get
[wildfires'
air] pollution excluded from the record.*
As wildfires become more frequent, the effects of this policy will
shift from disguising a rare unusual situation to misrepresenting the
usual state of affairs.
* [Vietnam's] NGO leaders and technical experts who helped secure
western aid for official shift to clean energy are
being locked up
now that they are no longer needed.*
New article:
The Virgin of Emacs.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese is arriving in DC on
October 23, so that is
the time to
show support for Assange, and our national office is coordinating
people all over the country to do banner drops.
Albanese has told Biden before that he is not happy about the
prosecution of Assange and we understand that he will be pushing
harder this time, with 9 out of 10 Australians and 60 Australian
lawmakers now favoring dropping the charges.
*If someone killed my child I’d want bloody revenge. But I’d be wrong —
as is
the Israeli government.*
If I were in that situation, I would feel anger and grief, but grief
doesn't turn me directly to the goal of bloody revenge. I've suffered
from grief enough times (more often from rejection that from someone's
death, but it is nonetheless grief) that I have learned some
self-control in the situation.
Biden understands this. *Biden urges Israel not to be
"consumed by
rage"
as he reaffirms US support.*
He added, *The Palestinian people are suffering greatly as well, and
we mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian lives like the entire
world.*
This is the first time I have seen Biden do something that inspired my
admiration and support.
Don't worry, I will not start to support him when he endorses
plutocratist policies ;-{.
An explosion in the Baptist Hospital in Gaza has
killed at least 500
people,
Palestinians who were sheltering there.
HAMAS says that an Israel air attack caused the explosion.
Israel said that a Palestinian faction caused it by launching a
missile which misfired, but then later said that a Palestinian faction
fired several missiles at the hospital. I am skeptical of those
stories.
Experts
analyzing the videos
say that it looks like a weapon malfunctioned. Maybe no one intended to bomb the hospital.
*US
legal scholars urge Biden
to seek immediate ceasefire from Israel.
US citizens: call
on Citibank to stop fueling the climate crisis.
US citizens: call
on Senator Robert Menendez to resign now.
US citizens: call on Congress to once again
prevent
a government shutdown.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Senate
NOT
to confirm Republican nominee
Demetrios Kouzoukas as Medicare Trustee. He has a conflict of interest
involving a private company that hopes to profit from his decisions.
Thugs
in London are wearing protest badges
linked
to white supremacism,
even while on duty.
Cops are, in general, entitled to freedom of speech, but not when what
they say implies prejudice that conflicts with carrying out the
responsibilities of their job: to protect the public without
prejudice.
*Palestinian
voices "shut down" at Frankfurt Book Fair, say authors.
Open letter rebukes LitProm decision to cancel award ceremony for
[author] Adania Shibli [on account of] "war started by Hamas".*
The increasing climate crisis
causes
almost 3 trillion dollars in damage
from 2000 to 2019 through worsened storms, floods and heatwaves.
*California's fast-food workers
win
fight for $20 hourly pay and
industry council.*
A right-wing provocation group
attacked
a professor at Arizona State University
after he taught a class on queer culture.
The university is investigating this as a hate crime.
*[The insurrectionist]
is prohibited
[by a court order] from making
public statements attacking prosecutors, court staff and potential
trial witnesses.*
A US marine who violated his oath to defend the Constitution has
received an interesting
sentence for violating that oath by joining in
the Jan 6 insurrection.
* When rich people convince themselves that they’re rich because they’re
smart — instead of lucky and ruthless —
they
misapply their talents to
areas beyond their expertise.*
The article uses Ex-Twitter
and Starlink as examples to show that we should
not allow companies to direct such systems however they wish, given that
more important things than private profit are at stake.
The Tories made convicts' probation centralized nationwide, then
privatized it. That drove the experienced workers to quit. The
Tories since undid the privatization, but
that
has not fixed the
problem.
Basically, reorganizing such activities based primarily on thinking about
"efficiency" (low cost of the activity) is foolish because how well the
activity does its job for society is more important.
* I covered the Rwandan genocide as a reporter.
The
language spilling out
of Israel is eerily familiar.*
Israel shelled a group of journalists reporting just
across
the border
in Lebanon.
Israel has
a history
of
attacking
the press
when it bombs Gaza.
The US
attacked a press office in Baghdad
in one of the invasions of Iraq.
*You can condemn Hamas and name its actions as evil, even as you
support the Palestinians in their quest for a life free of occupation
and oppression. And
there
should still be room
in your heart for a Jewish child whose last moments were filled with
unimaginable terror — the same terror his grandparents, and
their grandparents, thought they had escaped for ever.*
At some US colleges,
supporters
of Palestinians and supporters of Jews
are accusing each other of bloodlust.
Both HAMAS and Israel are displaying plenty of bloodlust. To diminish
that, it behooves us to criticize the bloodlust of both sides and to
mourn the civilian victims (present and past) on both sides.
Netanyahu has silenced the soldiers' protest movement for democracy,
for
the time being,
but his failure to prevent the HAMAS massacres has aroused widespread public hatred.
I hope that their justified rage against that failure does not
distract Israelis too long from
Netanyahu's
deeper threat:
the authoritarianism he seeks to impose on their country.
Netanyahu speaks of wiping out HAMAS completely with a ground attack, but
that is futile.
Young people growing up in Gaza, the open-air prison, expect to be killed.
*Israeli airstrikes hit northern Gaza
as
Palestinians try
to leave* (as Israel told them to).
This does not surprise me; many Israelis are as full of
terrorist-spirited hatred as HAMAS. That attitude will tend to lead
to ever-escalating violence on both sides.
*Analysis of aerial photos and social media posts confirms
attack on
road identified as safe
by Israeli army.*
The man Israel needs
now is Uri Avnery, but I don't know of anyone alive
like him.
I wish I did.
(satire) *Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using
Last Words
To Condemn Hamas.*
That page is mean as satire, but I am afraid there are Americans who
would say the same thing seriously.
*Netanyahu told 1.1 million Palestinians they had 24 hours to evacuate. What is that if not
ethnic
cleansing?*
*Israel's response to this terror must be resolute. But it must remain consistent with
international law.*
Egypt accuses Israel of planning to push hundreds of thousands of Gazans
across the border into Egypt. Some ministers are actually
talking about it.
Egypt is stationing troops at the border
to block this. How troops would actually do that is not clear to me.
It is hard for me to grasp how the movement of Gazans into Egypt would
be importantly different from Egypt's taking over Gaza. And in either
case, I see a potential for fighting between HAMAS and Egypt — both
of which are oppressive governments, but in different ways.
*UN torture expert accuses private firms of
making
ever more cruel instruments*
and proposes a treaty to ban them.
*CIA
admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed was undemocratic.*
This coup put the repressive Shah on the throne. That later backfired
on the US when it led to the repressive (and initially murderous)
Islamic Revolution. You could say the US "got what it deserved" —
but that does not mean the outcome was just, since Iranians got what
they did not deserve and they are still stuck with it.
245 US military bases are
polluting,
or threatening to pollute, their
neighborhood with toxic PFAS.
The PFAS come from firefighting foam. I think people did not initially
realize that it was dangerous, perhaps because in the US there is no
requirement to test that before using a new substance.
The level of PFAS is not very high above the level considered acceptable.
Maybe this will not cause a much harm.
Most young Americans have been convinced that owning a gun makes you safer.
In fact, it is the other way around: owning a handgun makes you
more likely
to be shot.
Indeed, the presence of a gun in the house makes you
more likely
to be shot.
*Poorest countries
should
get $300bn a year from IMF to fight climate crisis,
says Joseph Stiglitz.*
*Threats to Germany’s climate campaigners
fueled
by politicians’ rhetoric, says [Luisa Neubauer, of Fridays for Future].*
*Under cover of a shoplifting panic, the Tories are pushing through a
shocking
expansion of facial recognition.*
*Trend for bigger, heavier cars
means
more particles get released from
breaks, tires and road surfaces.*
This is in addition to using more energy (whether fossil fuel or electricity)
and causing more damage in collisions.
It is crucial to impose sufficient taxes on SUVs and other heavy cars
to reduce their sales to a much smaller level. We should deter people
from buying them unless they really need them.
One kind of use in which GPT-4 can
actually
qualify as "artificial
intelligence" is when it is used to figure out obscured or hard-to-read
words on a document.
If it does a certain kind of job well frequently, we can say that it
displays understanding of that limited field, which would be
intelligence.
As distinguished from the bullshit generation which ChatGPT does.
Describing the corruption
Senator Menendez is accused of with Egypt, and the effects on Egyptian dissidents.
Pakistan's plans to deport Afghans include
700,000 who fled
persecution by the Taliban after those took over.
It is unconscionable not to give them asylum.
Was "Fountain", considered to be pioneering "conceptual art",
really
made by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven rather than Marcel Duchamp?
Perhaps we should consider it a hack
rather than art. I contend that it has little artistic value but
does have some hack value.
The article does not excuse Duchamp of plagiarizing her work; rather
it suggests she invited him to present it as his. If they didn't
think of it as real art, they would not have felt competitive over
artistic credit for it.
I do not appreciate conceptual art. I don't want to reprise the
pointless argument about whether it "really is art", I only say that
I'd usually prefer to see a concept presented in clear words.
20 years ago, people on Dominica ate the numerous mountain chicken
frogs as their national dish. After the chytrid fungus and a big hurricane,
hardly
any remain.
In Israel, swimming against the current of inter-ethnic hatred, there are
many initiatives
for coexistence and cooperation, some of them new or growing
in reaction to the hatred.
I am sad that one of them operates using the digital dis-service
WhatsApp. If I were there, I could laud the spirit of it while
declining to participate or promote that actual activity because of
that techno-ethical issue.
There is also the
West-Eastern
Divan Orchestra, founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said for
the specific goal of bringing the two
peoples together.
The moral questions about Israel and Palestine are complex at many levels.
Simplistic answers are inadequate. This is a
good
introduction to that
complexity.
One of many reasons we should not outsource government functions to private
companies is that they will tend to block the public's right to learn
how those functions are being administered. The outgoing information
commissioner of Scotland calls for making Freedom of Information laws
apply
to those companies.
I agree with that as far as it goes, but I think that solution is
incomplete, because this is far from the only problem caused
by outsourcing. The real solution is to put an end to it.
*Louisiana school principal
forced
to apologize after punishing a student for dancing* (and failing
to follow the rules of his church).
US citizens: phone your senators (especially Democrats) to
oppose
the vague censorship bill called "Kids Online Safety Act". Republican
attorneys general could use it to intimidate web sites over any topics
that their states prohibit, including abortion and queerness.
I wince when I see the article refer to all web pages as
"content", but
that unfortunate usage does not at all reduce the validity and importance of the article's point.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone Senator Schumer and call on him to prioritize
confirming Biden's judicial nominees. This process is dragging and
risks leaving vacancies that might be blocked or even filled by Republicans.
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to
dismiss
Moore v. United
States.
Supreme Court members Roberts and Alito
own
stock in companies that could
win around 30 billion dollars from a decision they will soon participate in.
There were apparent falsehoods in the claims made in the case.
US citizens: call on Biden to prevent further violence and
safeguard
peoples' lives in Israel and Gaza.
US citizens: call on US Treasury
not
to mandate mass surveillance of
crypto.
Everyone: call on Coca Cola to
offer
refillable glass bottles in the
US and support laws requiring deposits on bottles.
US citizens: call on Congress to
protect
Social Security from proposed
right-wing cuts — yet again.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
One of the Colorado thugs
involved in killing Elijah McClain
has been
convicted of homicide.
HAMAS, as usual, has shown
total
contempt for the rules of war
with its massacres and hostage-taking.
Israel claims to be following the rules, but in practical terms is
violating
them massively. Its attacks on hospitals and homes violate
them, and blockage of food and medicine,
are clear violations, and they could kill hundreds of thousands of civilians as the fighting
continues.
*No
power, water or fuel to Gaza until hostages freed, says Israel minister.*
That makes it explicit. Isn't denying fuel to hospitals and water
to the whole population a war crime?
Preventing civilians from fleeing the battlefield may also be
a war crime. I don't know for certain but I expect so.
A pipeline carrying fossil gas from Estonia to Finland was
recently
sabotaged. Finland hints that some other state did it.
I suspect that Russia did it, because having the pipeline out of
service clearly benefits Putin. For a similar reason,
I suspected
that the destruction of the Nordstream pipelines was not done by
Putin.
* In Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK,
authorities have responded to climate protests with mass arrests, the
passing of draconian new laws, the
imposing
of severe sentences for
non-violent protests and the labeling of activists as hooligans,
saboteurs or eco-terrorists.*
They seem to be confused about where the real threat comes from. The
protesters do not threaten to destroy civilization and cause a mass
extinction; that threat comes from the businesses that insist on
continuing to cause the danger and the politicians that refuse to stop
them.
If the politicians carried out their responsibility to make those
businesses stop roasting the Earth, the protesters wouldn't need to
undertake to campaign for them to do it.
When politicians call climate defense protesters "selfish", they are
saying the opposite of the truth, denying the danger that global
heating poses to all of us and the virtue of trying to save
civilization from disaster. In effect, they declare allegiance to
the planet-roaster side.
*How criminalization is being used to
silence
climate activists across the
world.*
*China has sentenced
[Uyghur scholar] Rahile Dawut to life in prison
and would like the world to forget her. We must not.*
* Women seeking jobs as domestic workers in the UAE allege they are
being
detained and abused in squalid accommodation, while recruiters sell
them over apps and social media platforms to household employers.*
Trafficking and enslavement of workers in many industries exists in
many countries,
including in Europe,
but Arab countries on the Persian Gulf seem to protect
it especially strongly.
*Arab ministers urge Israel to
resume
talks on two-state solution.*
*Philip Morris lobbying
to stop WHO ‘attack’ on vapes and similar products.*
Information in the article shows clearly that vapes are being marketed towards
children.
Some business executives want to start a
blacklist
of all the students
in Harvard student groups that signed their name to a letter that
supported HAMAS.
This would be adding evil to evil. The last thing we need in the US
is another massive blacklist campaign against freedom of speech.
The letter took an extreme position which entirely exculpated HAMAS
for massacres and kidnapping of hundreds of civilians. As you can see
in my recent political notes,
I
reject that view.
It is true that Israel confines millions of Palestinians to what
can
be called open-air prisons,
but that doesn't excuse HAMAS's response.
In a situation with wrong on all sides, we need to be able to see the
various wrongs of various sides, and also to weigh them against each
other. Two great wrongs are not necessarily equivalent. Whether one
wrong overrides or justifies another is a subtle question and it
depends on details.
For instance, a crime such as Putin's invasion of Ukraine justifies
the violence of fighting back with war, which Ukraine is doing, but it
would not justify terrorism as a response. (Ukraine is not doing
that.)
Republicans in the House of Representatives are
unable to agree on a
speaker.
Israeli soldiers in occupied Palestine, and fanatical "settlers" whose
goal is ethnic cleansing, have
killed
51 Palestinians in the past week
and expelled everyone from small Palestinian villages.
This is terrorism, and it cannot rationally be presented as any sort
of defense against HAMAS.
*When the US Media
Silences
One Side's Suffering, Only More Death and
War Follow.*
We should mourn the Israelis killed by HAMAS. We should mourn the Gazans
bombed and shelled by Israel. We should mourn the Israelis killed by the
intifadas. We should mourn the Palestinians killed or merely oppressed
by the occupation. And we should make a peace agreement the goal.
Criminal prosecution and harassment of drug users are both cruel and
ineffective for reducing use of the dangerous drugs. San Francisco in
particular, and the rest of the US,
should
decriminalize the forbidden
drugs.
I warned that the stretchable term "sexual assault", which extends
from grave crimes such as rape through significant crimes such as
groping and down to no clear lower bound, could be stretched to
criminalize minor things, perhaps
even
stealing a kiss. Now this has
happened.
What next? Will a pat on the arm or a hug be criminalized? There is
no clear limit to how far this can go, when a group builds up enough
outrage to push it.
Israel warned
Palestinians to flee a large part of Gaza before a
bigger attack, which might be carpet bombing or a ground attack. Civilians are
leaving their homes in terror.
Gaza being small, they don't have far to go. But there is no safe
place they can flee to in Gaza today. When the fighting is over, they will
probably have no homes to return to. Israeli bombers have
already flattened
entire neighborhoods.
People in Gaza caught
between evacuation order, HAMAS and bombs.
There is no way to move badly sick patients in hospitals, and no
guarantee those hospitals won't be bombed. The UNRWA is not
evaluating schools in Gaza; will Israel bomb them for revenge?
*Blinken
urges Israel to avoid civilian deaths and set up safe zones in Gaza.*
That is at least a step in the right direction for the US.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to cosponsor the
OLIGARCH Act, which would establish a graduated wealth tax starting at
a household wealth 1000 times the median US household wealth.
As of 2019, according
to Wikipedia, the median household wealth in the US was a little under $100,000.
Going by that figure, the tax would start at a household wealth of 100
million dollars.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
*The greater the fear [the corrupter]
feels, the more sinister his
threats become.*
The article also asserts that anyone with the slightest scruple of
conscience who tries to obey orders from
the corrupter eventually gets
an order that per conscience can't swallow, and
the corrupter orders
his followers to cancel per. This is what happened to McCarthy after he
compromised to avoid a shutdown.
Robert Reich: the insurrectionist's
current
destabilization strategy
is to create chaos and make it appear that the US can't be governed
democratically. He hopes that people who defend democracy and human
rights will give up on them and let him take over.
This follows a line of development from Reagan's sabotage strategy of
trying to make Americans forget the great effectiveness of the New
Deal and the War on Poverty — government programs to help people who
needed help — and claiming that government was bizarrely a problem.
itself.
When Iran took the US embassy personnel hostage, President Carter
ordered a military
rescue mission. The mission messed up before
any contact with the enemy, but Carter's decision was correct.
What did Reagan do? He
made
a deal with the hostage takers that they
would hold the hostages until after the election.
Then Reagan paid
a ransom for the hostages.
Today's Republicans don't need to ransom hostages taken by foreign
enemies. Instead they
take
the hostages and demand the ransom.
Brazil's latest campaign to stop illegal deforestation:
seizing
the cows that the deforesters are raising.
I expect it will be difficult for deforesters to resist this approach.
They can't hide or move the cows, and if they can't raise cows,
they can't profit from the deforestation (aside from places where
there is gold to filter).
I think some deforested areas are used to grow soybeans to be shipped
elsewhere and fed to cows. The soybean plants can't be hidden or
moved either. But it would be a shame to waste the current year's
harvest by destroying the plants. Perhaps the state can bring in
workers temporarily to harvest and remove the soybeans. This would
still be effective for deterring further deforestation because
the people who expected to profit will not profit.
Brazil should not limit this campaign to land designated as reserves for
indigenous groups. The whole world depends on keeping the Amazon forest going,
and we need to preserve as much of it as we can. Any parcel that can be
identified as having been illegally deforested should get this treatment.
If a neoliberal government did these things, it would push many
desperately poor Brazilians into hopeless poverty. But Lula rejects
neoliberalism; he is committed to helping them escape poverty in ways
that won't do harm.
*Tunisia detains
cartoonist over drawings mocking prime minister.*
For a decade, Tunisia enjoyed hard-won human rights and democracy,
but the authoritarian president has abolished them completely.
Highlighting the
fallacy
in the seductive argument for "effective
altruism".
Actions such as fraud, and abuses that are not actual fraud but
neighboring to fraud, do have bad consequences: they undermine
society's reserves of rationality and trust, just as surely as the
corrupter and his followers do. The calculations of "effective
altruism" don't measure this harm so they cannot include it in
the conclusions.
In a previous political note, Oct. 4th I wrote:
How about election stealers and voter suppressors?
The point I intended was to show the conclusion that the fascist's own
logic would lead to about how to deal with criminals like him. I
expected it to be obvious that I disagreed with his attitude
towards shoplifters, but just in case, here I say so explicitly.
I disagree with fascist thinking. Neither shoplifters nor election
underminers deserve to be summarily killed. People don't deserve to
be killed for those crimes even if they have been convicted, because
the
death penalty is unjust in itself.
What we should do to them is give them fair trials, and if we find them
guilty, punish them in accord with their actions.
Rigging or undermining an election is a far graver crime than
shoplifting. Also, we should excuse shoplifting when poor people are
stealing
the necessities of life.
To put an end to shoplifting we
should correct its root cause: poverty. The government
should help
everyone to have a decent life without stealing.
*The American dream has been sold and replaced with a
Ponzi scheme
meant to benefit the investor class. […] The American education
system has become a way of forcing lower-class citizens into a form of
indentured servitude.*
The EU threatened
to punish Ex-Twitter for disinformation about HAMAS.
*NYPD agrees to ‘significantly’
change
how it handles protests in the city.*
Starmer continues to appeal to Tory voters by
promising
to keep taxes low.
This precludes obtaining the funds needed to fix Britain's giant problems.
The article presents this as asking Tory voters to switch to Labour,
but I'd describe it as switching the Labour party to Tory voters and ditching
many Labour voters.
Drought caused by global heating
is helping sea
water pollute ground
water and rivers in Louisiana, and ruin it for human use.
This problem will spread to other rivers and other coastal areas as
global heating advances.
*Chairman Sanders Releases New Report Showing Major Nonprofit Hospital
Systems Exploiting
Tax Breaks and Prioritizing CEO Pay Over Helping
Patients Afford Medical Care.*
Russia's internal "security" apparatus proposes to require all web
sites in Russia to
store
visitors' geolocations and "payment
information" to give to the state later.
It is not clear to me whether this would require all web sites to
collect
that information, or only require them to store it and hand
it over if they collect it.
In the US, large companies record this information if you ever
transmit it to a site which uses it. I don't want those companies to
get such data about me. Fortunately my free browser, IceCat, does not
know or send my geolocation, and using the Tor network prevents sites
from figuring out from my IP address.
As for payment information, most sites impose use of nonfree
JavaScript code in order to pay (fsf.org being a happy exception), and
I refuse to run that. For that reason, in addition to my privacy, I
never pay for anything over the internet. Never!
California is setting up an
alert
system to help find missing black women and
girls who may have been kidnaped or coerced.
The Sydney thug
department wants to treat even
potential participants
at a pro-Palestine rally as criminal suspects: searching them
arbitrarily and jailing people who refuse to show their papers.
Setting off flares on an outdoor stairway is not violence, neither
against persons nor against property. Neither is chanting slogans,
even odious slogans of bigotry such as antisemitism. We should
detest those slogans but not arrest people for them.
Sydney has also
banned
all marches in support of Gazans. Human rights
defender condemn this action.
I condemn HAMAS's terrorism. I condemn Israel's siege and killing in
Gaza also.
Note, I capitalize "HAMAS" because it is an acronym.
Most Gazans are now
cut
off from the Internet following Israel's air
attacks against communication facilities and the electric power grid.
Russia
failed
to get enough votes
for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
This says the world has a little more moral commitment than I thought.
HAMAS carried out a massive terrorist attack on Israeli civilians
in areas neighboring Gaza,
killing
at least 1000.
It also took over 100 hostages.
In revenge,
Israel
bombed residential neighborhoods
of Gaza. It has not finished yet, and I expect it will kill many
thousands of Gazan civilians. The report I've seen is that at least
830 in Gaza have been killed by shelling which has hit a school a well as hospitals and homes.
In the past, Israel has always offered some sort of excuses after
killing unarmed Palestinian civilians, individually or massively. But
the excuses are often strained.
Israel's attacks
have hit
press offices
and medical clinics,
as well as residences
too. Israeli
snipers
have shot medics
attending protests.
I can't conclude that Israel's attacks on Gaza are really other than
larger terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, Israel has put Gaza under total siege, keeping out
food and medicine even as the hospitals are overwhelmed.
I expect that Netanyahu
will use this
to force through the final blow against judicial independence in Israel.
Ex/Twitter's coverage of the conflict in Gaza is so full of
lies
and deepfakes
that it is hard to find anything that is truth.
I urge people to stop reading Ex/Twitter
— to avoid wasting their
time, as a protest against what the Musk-rat is doing, and to reject the
nonfree app that Ex/Twitter says you have to use.
I tried recently to look at a specific tweet using Nitter, and it did
eventually work after a substantial delay.
The principal of a public school in Louisiana punished a student for
dancing at a party.
The
punishment was grave
— it could hurt per academic future.
The principal admitted he was trying to impose his religion the student.
That is prima facie unjust, and unconstitutional to boot.
The fact that students paid for the party venue is a side issue,
because such imposition of religion would have been unjust even if
they had been dancing in the public school.
Governor Newsom vetoed the California
bill
to prohibit
discrimination based on caste. He claimed that such discrimination was already prohibited by
California law, but a recent court decision found otherwise.
California passed a law requiring all data brokers to participate in
a state
"delete
all my data"
program. The bill makes some exceptions (not listed in the article).
If you can tell me the specifics, I would appreciate it.
Also, I am not sure if it covers data brokers that keep data on
Californians but are not "in" California. If it does not cover
them, I tend to think it won't make a big difference.
*Extreme weather displaced 43m children in past six years,
UNICEF reports.*
The article says that 125 million people of all ages were displaced due to extreme weather events.
Ukraine's victories over Putin's navy has
reopened
the grain export
sea route — but the flow rate is small now.
Putin has inspired a
global
push for a system
of sanctioning and prosecuting war criminals.
A displaced Kurd from Azerbaijan comments on the
carefully stimulated
hatred
between Armenians and Azeris, and the falsehoods used to stimulated it.
Human rights campaigners have
no
hope of excluding China
from getting a seat on the UN Human Rights Counsel, but they are trying
at least to reduce the number of votes it will get.
Other international institutions are likewise structured based on the
assumptions that governments that disrespect human rights wholesale
(not just occasionally in practice, as the US does) will not come to
dominate the institutions. But when they do, it is like a Republican
gerrymander — it is almost impossible to end their unjust influence.
US citizens: call on Congress to
investigate
Jared Kushner's
connections to Salafi Arabia.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Biden to
phase
out fossil fuel extraction on
federal lands and waters.
US citizens: call on Congress to
extend
and improve SNAP in the 2023
Farm Bill.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
New Zealand's reaction to Covid-19, closing the border, seems to have
reduced
its death rate to just 20% of the US death rate in that period.
Republican Extremist Gaetz seems to agree with progressive leader Ro
Khanna about some
reforms to Congress and the US government.
I agree with the author that term limits for Congress are a foolish
idea and that term limits for the Supreme Court require a
constitutional amendment. I support the other three.
Is it wort while negotiating a deal like this with a sabotage-minded
Republican? He may not stick to any good deal long enough to get it
enacted and through9ugh the Senate. And it would be hard to cooperate
with him on one issue while he demands to abolish other programs that
poor Americans depend on for their survival.
However, if he can learn to tone himself down enough to cooperate
successfully, it could be a good thing.
The US Supreme Court is recognized by most Americans as a
problem for
Americans' rights and democracy — a broken limb of our system of
government.
Stadiums that Greece built for the 2004 Olympic games are
now unsafe
due to lack of maintenance,
which was caused by financial crisis
imposed
by the Euro-banks
together with the rules of the Euro zone that
condemn
countries to disaster by limiting deficit spending
even when that is the way to avoid disaster.
Greece under financial attack couldn't find the funds to
save
thousands of citizens from death,
and certainly not for maintaining mere stadiums.
September's temperatures were
1.8°C
above preindustrial temperatures.
For that month, the Earth reached a level of heat that implies
almost certain disaster.
Because that level of heat isn't permanent yet, there is still hope of
avoiding disaster. People are installing solar and wind generation
very fast, but now we need to stop all new fossil fuel development
(Hello, USA! Hello, China!) and speed up decarbonization as much as
possible before 2030.
*Biden Ignores Public Interest In Push For
Record
Methane Gas Exports and
Fracking.*
Of course, Republicans want to do worse — but that doesn't make this ok.
*Denver city council members propose
$300m
medical debt relief plan
for residents.*
The article also explains how the primarily private US medical system
systematically puts people into debt.
What we really need is a proper national medical system that would
treat everyone who is ill and never put anyone in debt. However,
actions like these are a step forward.
Nobelist Angus Deaton on inequality:
"The
war on poverty has become a
war on the poor."
He aims to revitalize attention to the suffering caused by an economic
system that rewards predators.
I think "has been replaced by" would state it more accurately than
"has become". The change was intentional.
The IMF's managing director warns central banks to
stop trying to
"beat inflation" with high interest rates.
Pakistan says it will
deport
an estimated 1.7m Afghans who don't have
official permission to be in Pakistan.
The announcement says that the 1.4m Afghans with official permission
to live in Pakistan can stay. However, the Taliban oppress all women
and all girls, and a large set of men (those who had relationships
with the former government agencies or any western institutions).
Do all of the Afghans in those categories living in Pakistan have
official refugee papers? I would expect Pakistan's criteria for
granting asylum are narrower than that, perhaps much narrower.
The historical
background of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the conflict
between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
To save the spotted owl
requires
killing other owl species that
compete with it.
I don't feel sentimental about this. Since there is no automatic
"balance of nature" that maintains itself, keeping things in balance
and protecting species requires intervention. Therefore let us
intervene — to protect all the existing species from extinction.
The Tories now plan to
restrict
private installation of solar panels.
Plutocracy politicians have shown a pattern of doing this, citing
various reasons.
A US example: paying electricity customers for delivering their excess
solar electricity to the grid makes sense only if the grid can
transmit that power to someone else who wants it; but transmitting
increasing amounts of power that way requires upgrades to the grid.
Plutocratist
politicians dismiss the idea of spending to upgrade the
grid, preferring that we spend over and over on burning extra fossil
fuels and destroying civilization.
I suspect that these politicians' real motive is some sort of past or
future reward from the fossil fuel companies.
George Orwell's advice on protecting freedom:
“Nourished for hundreds of years on a literature in which Right
invariably triumphs in the last chapter, we believe
half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long
run. …. We have become too civilized to grasp the
obvious.
For the truth is very simple.
To
survive you often have to fight, and
to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often
the lesser evil."
Orwell learned this by joining in the war against fascism in Spain,
back when no other government would support the Spanish Republic
against the rebellious fascist military.
The article is full of interesting remarks on other topics. One is
how to draw the line between satire used to provoke violence and
oppression and satire that rebukes it.
The article points out that the organizers of genocide in Rwanda used humor to
convey messages of hatred and murder, to deadly effect.
American
fascists likewise often foment violence, even murder, with messages
that have the superficial form of jokes.
A Labour MP warns that Starmer's policies of low taxes for the rich
will
cause disillusionment for Labour supporters.
They see that the only hope from Labour would be that Starmer
doesn't really mean the policies he states so clearly.
I know a Labour supporter who is planning not to vote in the coming
election because perse sees no party to vote for.
UK legislators have started a
campaign
against real time facial recognition.
As China demonstrates, it puts human rights in danger.
After-the-fact recognition is also a threat to human rights.
As a famous science fiction story pointed out, the past continues
until infinitesimally close to the present; the ability to "watch the past"
approaches, as a limit, the ability to "watch the present".
Right-wing fanatics
in New York state have been impersonating state
officials to intimidate Democratic voters.
Right-wing fanatics eagerly seek ways to intimidate those who oppose
them. If real officials want to reassure bona fide voters that they
are safe, they should do more than just order them to "cease and desist".
Limiting the response to that looks like going soft on a criminal gang.
The state should vigorously prosecute right-wing election fraudsters whatever their methods.
The antidemocratic government of Poland is employing all the tools of
fascism to defeat a last-ditch attempt to defeat fascism in the Polish
election and
return
the country
to democratic government and human rights.
Ex-Twitter now shows
ads that don't
identify themselves as ads, and don't say who is doing the advertising.
Musk seems determined to adopt for
Ex-Twitter every nasty thing
that users have criticized web sites for.
*Police chief who led raid of small Kansas newspaper
put on
suspension.*
*Untruths [that is, bullshit] spouted by chatbots ended up on the web — and Microsoft's Bing
search
engine served them up
as facts.*
A
poet visited Svalbard
and found that the retreat of the ice was so blatant that one couldn't miss it.
*[A study by the Refugee Council charity] suggests asylum claims by
three
out of four crossing Channel [are valid and] would be granted.*
If this is correct, Tory claims that most are "economic migrants" are false.
Right-wing politicians often do this: they try to put the
disadvantaged in the wrong, and don't hesitate to do so falsely.
*US
student held in Dubai for weeks for tapping security officer’s arm.*
I am disappointed that Ukrainians are reacting to Putin's invasion
by hating
Russians and characteristics of Russians.
A few weeks after the invasion, I urged Ukrainians to
direct their
anger at Putin and his crimes, not at Russia and Russians.
Ecologists warn that monoculture tree plantations
endanger native
wildlife while doing little good against global heating.
This is especially the case when the trees planted are an intrusive
species to begin with.
Negative consequences reported include drying out ecosystems, acidifying soils,
crowding out native plants and turbocharging wildfires.
Australia's latest climate plan would allow some coal mines to
increase
their coal-burning emissions until 2030 and profit from it.
The Labor government is still much better than the
previous constantly
dishonest right-wing government,
and much better than the
US
on climate issues,
but we can't help being very disappointed by its occasional egregious attacks
on hope for the future.
Correcting common
myths about cancer.
As for homeopathy, that is such an absurd idea it can't possibly do anything.
It is quackery with dilutions of grandeur.
The Hollywood writers-studios contract has interesting rules to
permit
some uses of large language models but not allow them to replace writers.
I hope that they give good results — but we still should not call
those models "AI", because whatever their output says you had better
not believe it is true.
Chatgpt is an injustice because it is software that is not released
for users, not even as an executable. So it is even more restrictive
than a nonfree program. We call that
"Service as a Software
Substitute".
Comparing the marketing
of gambling with the marketing of tobacco.
Both can get people hooked on habits that can can prove dangerous.
I am opposed to prohibition of tobacco, and opposed to prohibition of
gambling, but that doesn't mean we should allow them to be the object
of planned advertising and marketing.
Freeing
Indian coffee plantation workers from debt slavery.
*What will happen [to migrants] if the "right to shelter" law is
rolled
back in New York City?*
*UK government asks
UAE for assurances over free speech at Cop28
summit.*
This point is valid and would be crucial, but the Cop28 climate
summit is so corrupted already
that I can't see any hope for it.
Some Americans who want to renounce US citizenship are
suing because the
government demands they pay over $2000 for the bureaucratic act.
To impose a fee for renouncing citizenship is, in effect, an attempt
to block renunciation, and that is unjust. The US government should
simply absorb any costs of the updating of records.
*US student safety
not
improved by surveillance technology such as
cameras and facial recognition software, research shows.*
Keep in mind that many of the edtech "tools" that students and teachers
are compelled to use
are
also surveillance technology
even though surveillance is not their ostensible purpose.
(I suspect it is a substantial part of businesses' purpose
in selling those products and dis-services.)
Surveillance that is a "byproduct" is just as wrong as surveillance
"on purpose."
UK ministers want to put everyone in the UK into a facial recognition
database that can be searched instantly.
This would be ideal for finding shoplifters, protesters, journalists,
whistleblowers, and anyone else the state wants to catch.
Global heating
is ruining
alpaca farming in Peru.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to reject HR 5239, whose purpose is
simply to prevent the protection of critically endangered Rice's whales.
To sign without running
nonfree JavaScript
code from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on Congress
to pass a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to increase critical aid programs that save people's lives.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on all US states
to join the FTC's enforcement case
against Amazon for its abuse of near-monopoly.
Amazon
is guilty of many other injustices, and together they convince me
to boycott the company totally. I ask people, when buying anything for me,
not to get it from Amazon.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to pass the End Solitary Confinement Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone:
call on Costco
to stop using Citibank for its credit card.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to pass the Raise the Wage Act, to raise the US minimum wage.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:
to finalize the draft rule to exclude medical debt from credit reports.
*Gambling and crypto lobbyists [and TikTok]
pay
£3k to sit alongside
Tory ministers.*
Biden has endorsed building the border wall that
the bullshitter ordered,
and has declared a number of
exceptions
to federal law protections
for wildlife to unblock the project.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinista party has banned the opposition party
from entering the coming
local
elections. So it will run unopposed.
The hatefulness and dishonest of lunatic Republicans is illustrated by
the interim speaker's demand that Rep. Pelosi vacate a secondary
office
immediately
if not sooner, while she is away
at Senator
Feinstein's funeral.
The conveniently located extra office, traditionally a perk for former
speakers, is not terribly important and neither is its withdrawal. A
person who was not foaming at the mouth with hate might have given
Pelosi a few extra days to move. Someone who was not hateful might
not have brought it up at all.
I wonder how the interim speaker was appointed. I suppose it was not
officially a hate contest, but unofficially it might have been.
* At least 20 members [of various governing boards] at California
public
universities
have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry.*
Several Florida thugs beat up
Le'Keian Woods
and maimed him, then placed criminal charges on him. Video suggests
the thugs are the ones who should be in jail.
*South Sudan ‘attacking’ journalists and activists who
criticize
the state.*
Two giant agricultural trading companies, Cargill and ADM,
successfully campaigned
to
prevent a treaty
that would stop sales of
soybeans grown on deforested land.
That enabled deforestation to continue at high speed. This deforestation
has brought the Amazon rainforest close to a tipping point which could
destroy that forest and this destroy civilization.
This was when Bolsonaro was president of Brazil. I would guess that he
also worked to prevent that agreement. Lula has decreased deforestation,
but an international agreement would decrease it a lot more.
The former saboteur-in-chief
has been accused of giving US military
secrets to an Australian billionaire
after
leaving office.
I expect that this was a crime, and he ought to be prosecuted for it.
You will know that there are situations in which I think it is
legitimate, even morally imperative, for whistleblowers to inform the
public about certain kinds of government secrets, sometimes military
secrets. Namely, those that involve grave wrongdoing (sometimes even
war crimes) that the public needs to know about — for instance,
crimes
that Wikileaks revealed.
What the corrupter
did here was unlike that on every dimension, He
told one person privately, not the public. The secrets he told were
of military importance but did not concert crimes that the public has
a duty to be concerned with.
Workers at Kaiser Permanente are on strike,
demanding
wage increases
and the hiring of more staff so that the current workers won't be overloaded.
*UN
report urges
global end to fossil fuel exploration by 2030.*
*Brazil expels
illegal settlers
from indigenous lands in Amazon.*
In many cases, illegal settlers drove indigenous people off their lands
by force, and not very long ago. Restitution is simply and clearly appropriate.
US citizens:
call on Walmart
to take bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides off its shelves.
US citizens:
Tell
the Biden Administration to stand firm
against corporation lobbyists, and tax billion dollar corporations.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to oppose all
bills that would weaken or break up the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB).
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Rep. McCarthy
was desperate to be Speaker of the House, so in January
he accepted conditions that put him at the mercy of the lunatic
Republican fringe. Now they have forced him out of the position.
The lunatics forced a vote, in which they and the Democrats declined
to vote for McCarthy. That denied him the majority he needed to
remain speaker.
Most
Republicans voted for a deal
with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown. But the lunatics won't
support any Republican as speaker who would agree to such compromises.
It seems to me that the Republicans who are willing to compromise
should compromise with the Democrats and elect a speaker who will
support such compromises. However, I expect that even the
most right-wing of so-called
"centrist"
Democrats won't be acceptable to them.
A few Republicans broke with the bulk of them and advocated a
compromise to allow the government to continue operating. I wonder if
it would be possible to make a deal in which one of them and one of
the Democrats alternate speakership, perhaps week by week.
One lunatic plans to nominate the corrupter for
Speaker
of the House.
I fear he may win, if enough Republicans don't dare refuse to vote
for him. He won't be willing to do the actual work involved, so
his occupation of that office could paralyze the House entirely.
That may be exactly what he wants.
Scientists have predicted a tipping point that will dry up the
South
American monsoon
and eliminate most of the Amazon rain forest. It could decrease the rainfall by 30%.
Several measurements show signs of approaching the tipping point.
US citizens:
call on the FCC
to restore net neutrality.
The FCC's version
of network neutrality is too little, but it is better than nothing,
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to increase — not cut — IRS funding.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Governor Newsom has chosen a replacement for Senator Feinstein, but
she
is not a progressive champion.
Here
is criticism
of some of her actions.
It is too bad that identity politics — a person's demographic
classification — exercises people so much that it can distract public
opinion from where an official stands on the issues that
perse can
help decide.
The UK government is tracking the
posts
of education experts
in order
to cancel events they were invited to.
They
don't like it
one bit.
Australia is still sending boat people to Nauru for
semipermanent
imprisonment
in a place
where the press are excluded.
* [Bolivian ex-president] Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and former defense
minister agree
to pay for 2003 violence in which 60 protesters were
killed [by the Bolivian military].*
This was the outcome of a lawsuit in US court by the victims.
It has proved very
hard to identify accused Nazi war criminals well
enough to convict them of participation in the Holocaust.
Things may be different for today's war crimes — it seems that there
is far more data nowadays to identify
Putin-forces
war criminals.
Why taxing inheritance is
vital
for a good society.
This note has been replaced by
this one.
Some Azeris attack Armenians living near the border between the
two countries. The latter
fear
Azerbaijan will conquer more land,
DeMentis's
ally Christopher Rufo
hints
at support for white supremacism.
This is no surprise to me. The US fascist movement has made
supporting white supremacism normal, along with antisemitism,
antimuslimism, as well as fascist political violence.
The European boycott of Russian fossil fuel exports has
greatly cut
Russia's sales and income.
I expected Russia to sell to its new friends, India and China, all it wished
to sell. It seems that is not possible, but I don't know why.
Artists and actors are
recognizing
the disparaging nature of the term
"content".
And "creator", too, when it is stretched to included all sorts of
participation in making works of authorship.
I have condemned
these terms since 2002.
Denmark is revising its dictionary of Danish to
achieve
more gender equality
by coining words to balance out points of inequality.
I support this, because the goal is a good one and there is no wrong in it.
Contrast this with the demand made in Spain to
delete
antisemitic word
definitions from the official dictionary. Using those words expresses
bigotry, and those who use them deserve criticism for that. But
hiding their existence by deleting them from the dictionary is
dishonesty about facts.
Slowing down climate defense action will
result
in increased heat and
increased damage, even if it still reaches "net zero" by 2050.
*Approving new oil and gas fields only
increased the already large amount of reserves that will have to be
kept in the ground if global heating limits are to be reached.*
But what's the point of developing more reserves if it doesn't
lead to extracting a larger quantity? Obviously the
planet roasters
will extract more, meaning they are lying if they claim they won't.
The Tory
Party
is suffering
disaster among its supporters.
If only there were a party that supported democracy, human rights, and
partial socialism that they could vote for.
McCarthy allowed a
stopgap
funding resolution
to be voted on; most Democrats and most Republicans voted for it. The
only harmful part was that it aids Putin (and global fascism) by
denying funds for Ukraine's defense.
Supposed "advanced recycling" for plastics
seems
to use more energy
and release more toxic waste than making new plastic.
The Tories' approval of a giant new oilfield, which will be paid
for 90% by state funds,
totally
trashes the idea of decarbonization.
And Starmer-Labour supports it too.
The FBI discovered
a right-wing extremist Satanic cult that entraps
children as young as 8 and adolescents as old as 17, making them
make videos of porn or self-wounding. The leader faces trial.
These deeds are horrible. If the FBI caught a gang which does that,
it has done good service. At the same time, I must recall that the
FBI has a history of
leading
hapless helpless, mentally weak people to
go through motions of fantasy terrorism, for which they face real
trial and real imprisonment. I wish I could be sure that the FBI has caught
a real abuser rather than manufacturing one.
*Swiss glaciers
lose
10% of their volume in two years.*
This effect is not in itself a disaster, but it is a sign
that disasters will be coming rapidly from now on.
An experiment found that when homeless people received more aid money,
they spent that money
mainly
on important things that they needed.
Covid vaccine disinformation, believed by many members of the public,
has dissuaded
many Americans from using those vaccines to protect
themselves. The distrust has spread to dog vaccines, so
many Americans leave their dogs vulnerable to disease by not
vaccinating them either.
The breakup of the super-continent Pangaea 55 million years ago
released large amounts of methane that
caused
5C of global heating.
Many species went extinct.
The old and damaged Line 5 pipeline crosses the Great Lakes,
and if it breaks it
could
pollute the drinking water for
a substantial part of North America's population.
The danger of pollution from any rupture of the Line 5 pipeline is
very important, and may be a reason to shut down that pipeline and
remove it. By contrast, what a religion says about the lake is of
anthropological interest.
Robert Reich describes
Republicans'
government shutdowns decades
ago that happened while he was working for the US government.
We have imagined "contextual advertising" as a simple system that
sited advertisements based on the subject matter of what users are
looking at. In fact, these systems
make
sophisticated use of whatever
other data it can get about a user.
The conclusion I reach is that we should require systems not to be
able to get any other data about individuals and not to require people
to non nonfree software.
The Uber example is telling. Uber places ads based on where someone
is traveling to. It can do that because it runs nonfree software (a
cr&helip;app) in the customer's computer. It also uses whatever it
knows about that particular customer (whom it has identified on each
trip).
We should not allow companies to require (or pressure) customers to
use systems that make them vulnerable to tracking. Privacy is a human
right, and businesses are not entitled to human rights. So it is
justified to regulate business practices simply to prevent businesses
from deducing too much about humans.
We often see, in reality, efforts to limit all sorts of aid to those
who are "truly needy".
A Republican-dominated school district in North Carolina
tried to ban
schools from participating in the American Library Association's annual
Banned Books Week, but backed down in response to press coverage.
Lionfish, with
toxic barbs,
are taking over the reefs of the Caribbean
and nearby marine areas, and wiping out most other species.
Some fishermen now mainly catch lionfish, but it is hard to do that
without getting stung.
Is it possible to design a trap that would open a door to a large
chamber, then squeeze the water out leaving only the lionfish in the
trap?
Are there any ideas for biological control? It is hard to make
sure that those systems don't get out of hand.
*Antarctic sea ice shrinks to
lowest
annual maximum
level on record.*
Global heating
has eliminated most of the salmon population in northern Japan this
year, and that has eliminated most bear cubs born there this year.
*Investigation [of four Louisiana
thugs] triggered by lawsuits
alleging abuse
and sexual humiliation of people taken to unmarked torture
warehouse.*
A UK thinktank published a report overestimating the cost of achieving
"net zero" which was "full of errors that even a schoolboy would be
embarrassed about." This should have been no surprise given that the
thinktank — or should we call it a "drunktank" —
hired a global
heating denialist to prepare the report.
The article refers to him as a "climate skeptic", but that PR term is
used to excuse climate denialism. A real skeptic applies rationality
to check claimed conclusions. Clearly that denialist did not aim to
qualify as a real skeptic.
AI programs (real or pretend) often implement racial bias. California
is considering a law that attempts to stop this —
by identity
politics!
Identity politics is not a real solution to any problem. What's more,
the problem of bias in algorithms is subtle. It is a mistake to
assume that people know how to avoid it or even detect it as a
consequence of their demographic background.
What California (and all polities) ought to do is require all software
used to make decisions about individual people to be free software and
its source code published, That way the public will be able to study
whether its behavior is biased.
A UK thug has been charged with murder for shooting a man dead
who was unarmed and caught in his car, which was blocked in and
could not move. So the thugs that carry guns went on a sort of
strike.
A former head of a thug
department rebukes
the demand of thugs
to be above the law.
*Young climate activists staged
sit-down
protests outside the offices
of every member of Labour’s shadow cabinet on Friday, calling on
the party to take a tougher line on the proposed new Rosebank
oilfield and back a comprehensive Green New Deal.*
*Oil Change International: Biden’s offshore drilling plan is
a massive
giveaway to polluters just days after president skips United
Nations summit on ending fossil fuels.*
How the Republican's
secret commission
to cut Social Security and Medicare would work.
*Disaster recovery projects stall nationwide
as FEMA
runs out of money.*
This is because it is compelled to prepare for the government shutdown.
Tory minister Suella Braverman stated in an interview that
child-grooming gangs in the UK were mainly made up of
Pakistani-British. The newspaper was
forced
to apologize for
publishing this, since it turns out those gangs are mostly whites.
Braverman is Indian-British. Since India and Pakistan have been
persistent enemies since the partition which divided them in 1947. I
suppose she seized an opportunity to spread hate against Pakistan.
You can hardly trust a Tory.
*Whether or not Suella Braverman becomes the next Tory leader,
her
extreme [and usually cruel] ideas rule the party.*
Senator Feinstein, a "centrist" (somewhat right-wing) Democrat,
has died.
Her death, as such, is regrettable; no human being deserves to die.
However, her departure from the Senate is good for America and the
world, because it will enable California's Governor Newsom to replace
her soon with a progressive Democrat.
AI pattern recognizers are effective at getting a good chance of recognizing
many significant phenomena.
Fraudulent
welfare claims
is one of them.
But humans accused of any sort of wrongdoing deserve a real investigation.
It is inherently unjust to punish someone because a program reported
perse's actions "resemble crime."
We must keep in mind that the UK's welfare system is designed to be cruel; it reduces
unemployed
and disabled
people to a point where they
can't actually get by, and imposes
impossible
requirements. Whatever
system
of enforcement
of those requirements the state happens to use is a means
to a horrible end.
*[Injustice] Thomas Secretly Participated
in
Koch Network Donor Events.*
*Labour conference rule changes
could
stop members debating issues like Brexit.*
Starmer is determined not to allow the Labour Party to be in any way
a vehicle to focus public opinion on major public issues. Only the small
questions Starmer will tolerate are going to be in order.
Starmer has already assured that advocates of bigger changes can't run
for MP
or even local offices
in the Labour Party.
Allegedly re-elected
President
Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe
has arrested a number of opposition politicians. Others were kidnapped
and tortured. Some of their lawyers have been, too.
There were doubts about Mnangagwa's
first
alleged election
too.
The bullshitter
is now claiming he supports working people and their
unions. As usual, that is more bullshit.
Here are facts
about his career of opposition to unions.
Some Republicans at an auto workers'
rally
for the corrupter
were true devotees of his. They carried signs claiming to be
auto workers or union members which were lies.
Global heating
and its effects are making
marmots'
violent, dangerous
lives even more violent and dangerous.
Whether they will adapt or be wiped out is not clear.
In the 20th century there was a long battle between car drivers and
pedestrians about
who
streets were really for.
*Big European insurers
"underwrite
30% of US coal despite net zero pledges".*
Does that conflict with their pledges? How could we know?
Formulating emission reduction plans in terms
of "net zero" makes it easy to fudge such things, so let's
not give them that loophole.
*Insurance Giants Deeply Involved in Underwriting U.S. Coal,
Undermining
Public "Net-Zero" Commitments.*
Formulating these plans in terms of "net zero" makes them easier to
undermine. If we made these plans in terms of reducing the total use
of fossil fuel being extracted, or the total amount being burned,
it would be harder for anything to to sneakily undermine them.
*Despite climate promises,
insurance
companies are still covering coal.*
Due to global heating
effects, Europe's olive oil harvest has been
badly
damaged and its own production is exhausted for this year.
Richard Stallman will give some talks in Frankfurt, Germany:
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to reject secret commissions designed to decide to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Also phone your representative to convey the same message.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The Armenian government of Nagorno-Karabakh has announced
it
will dissolve
at the end of this year. Over half the Armenians there have already fled.
I suppose the rest will flee soon.
This is how ethnic cleansing operates. Azerbaijan, which is a
dictatorship and does not take human rights seriously, doesn't need an
official policy saying "No Armenians allowed."
However, in the years when Armenians ruled the Azeri areas of
Nagorno-Karabakh, ISTR that the Azeri population mostly fled
from some of those areas.
New pun: Le Concours Pyrenéen
The Tories have
rigged elections
in Britain much as Republicans have
done so in the US — with voter suppression and gerrymandering.
A Thai free speech activist has been sentenced to 4 years in prison
for
damaging
the king's reputation
with some of his remarks.
This shows how repressive Thai law is.
*September 11 defendant declared unfit for trial
after
panel finds CIA
abuse
rendered him psychotic.*
Richard Stallman will give a talk
on September 30th in Prague, Czech Republic, at Charles
University (Univerzita Karlova) at 14:00h.
The event is organized by The Faculty of Educational Studies
(Pedagogická fakulta), Free Digital Society members. It ends at 16:30.
The Armenian
inhabitants
of Nagorno-Karabakh
are fleeing after Azerbaijan's conquest.
Striking auto workers now see that
Biden
supports them and the fascist
despises them.
US citizens:
call on the EPA
to adopt a stronger limit for pollution from trucks.
The Tory minister in charge of the hostile environment in Britain
calls
for rejecting
the European convention on human rights.
Julian Assange's perfunctory final hearing is expected
very soon.
Extraditing him raises issues of violating the
European convention on
human rights.
Will the UK follow its obligations under the treaty, or
use the occasion,
Putin-like,
to display contempt for it?
The corrupter
has been found guilty of fraud for tremendously
exaggerating
the value of his businesses
in order to get deals.
The judge canceled his business certificates in New York State.
Large fines follow.
*Trump is a real estate "genius" only in a "fantasy world".*
*[The] Conman
[…] tells GOP to shut down the government to
stop
his criminal trials
(which it won't).*
US citizens:
call
on ABC, CBS, PBS, NBC, CNN, and affiliates:
Stop platforming the fascist leader.
*It’s a lie promoted by the right [wing] that state help saps
people
of their drive.*
Plutocrats want working-class people to have to try desperately to
find a job, so that they will
take
a subservient attitude
towards their so-called "betters".
US citizens:
call
on members of Congress
to co-sponsor the Israeli Democracy Resolution.
I am not forgetting
about the injustice of the
occupation
of Palestine,
but the fight to prevent Israel from being taken by fascism is in a crucial stage now.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and convey this message.
My name is NAME, I am your constituent. Please reject any budget that
slashes Medicaid, and publicly oppose any plan to create a closed-door
commission to cut Social Security and Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard number is
+1-202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on Citibank and BofA
to stop funding JBS Foods, because of its deforestation.
US citizens:
call
on the Bureau of Land Management
to protect the Western Arctic from oil drilling.
* Reality TV show contestants are
more
like unpaid interns than
Hollywood stars.*
Exploitation
of interns occurs in many fields of business.
But let's not forget that enabling the most capable young people
get the best jobs is only part of what is needed for a good society.
We need to enable everyone to have a decent life — which means,
the less capable
don't
get so much less than the more skilled.
Likewise, social mobility is not as important as giving everyone a
decent life. Social mobility is one of the ways the wealthy try to
convince most of society to settle for a chance of getting rich
rather than demanding a decent life.
The FDA warned pharma companies to
stop
lying about which drugs
are covered by their patents.
The patent system is basically a scheme to give big companies power
over markets. In the area of medicine, they enable pharma companies
to make medicines so expensive that most people who need them, even in
a "rich" country (one with a comparatively large fraction of rich
people), cannot afford them.
The companies argue for this power based on the expense of developing
and then testing the drugs. Indeed, those are expensive, and we can't
just wish those expenses away. But the development expenses are often
paid for by the government (as they should be) and yet the government
allows the company to seize the profit for itself. As for the
testing, giving pharma companies control over testing of medicines
enables
them to corrupt it.
We should most definitely remove testing of the effects
of medicines from their hands.
Disney has yielded to right-wing culture wars and
plans to be s silent
about issues such as gay rights and racial equality.
Since the right-wing extremists will surely continue fighting to impose their
views on everyone, this is a setback for society.
Please keep in mind that Disney's commercial activities are fully based on
injustice: DRM,
identifying all customers,
and antisocializing
contracts which demand users commit not to share copies,
Sharing is good and
should be lawful.
Thus, the only modern copy of a Disney movie or TV program that does
not do you injustice is an unauthorized copy.
Michigan has raised
the minimum age for marriage to 18, protested by
Republicans.
This change may be for the better. Marriage is a difficult
responsibility, nowadays more than ever.
However, referring
to teenagers under 18 as "children" is propaganda
for treating them as helpless and "protecting" them from any agency,
even in activities and relationships far less difficult than marriage.
Lauren Weinstein:
Chinese-style
surveillance of everyone, in the UK.
The UK has gone heavily for surveillance. It has tracked all car
travel using license-plate
recognition cameras since around 15 years
ago.
Yascha Mounk: *Should
we borrow from other cultures? Of course we
should, just as we always have.*
The article explains how "cultural appropriation" has been applied to
situations in which real wrong was done — but the real wrong was
something else, and that concept was an invalid explanation of it.
*Instead of condemning appropriation, we should seek to build a society
in which members of every group are valued equally – and all are free
to draw inspiration from the cultures of their compatriots.*
To do that is a big challenge; but it will be a little less difficult
if we stop thinking that inequality and prejudice can be part of the solution.
See also Kwame Anthony Appiah's
brilliant analysis.
Students and parents are
organizing
to defy Governor DeMentis's school
censorship.
Britons rallied
to support rejoining the EU.
I predicted
that leaving the EU could be beneficial if Corbyn were in charge
but would be disastrous with Tories in charge.
Rejoining the EU would be beneficial for Britain if
plutocratists such
as Tories or Starmer-Labour will be in charge.
*The inheritance tax debate we should really be having [in the UK]?
Whether
to set it at 100%.*
That goes for other countries too.
I don't see a need for inheritance tax on the rich to be quite so
high. Surely 90% of large fortunes is enough to collect as taxes.
Calling for stronger
pipeline safety rules in the US.
If the pipeline carries fossil fuel, we must include in its safety
risks not only the risk of a leak, but also the risk that the fuel
will not leak and instead be delivered and burnt as intended.
Proposing to reshape education systems to
better
fit a world with an
internet.
The author's misguided perspective can be seen fro the fact
that he thinks that the number of startup companies (and thus billionaires)
measures success. But his points about education may be valid nonetheless.
But they may not remain valid. By 2060 there may be no internet,
because globalized manufacturing may have been wiped out by climate
disaster. We may need old methods of education once again.
Robert Reich: Biden is now the
first
President of the United States to
march in a union picket line.
Next he should oppose the dooH niboR
policies that, since 1980, have
systematically transferred Americans' wealth from the non-rich to the
rich.
I marched in a union picket line before Biden did, but I was only
president of the Free Software Foundation, not president of a
potentially great country.
The UK's third major party, the Liberal Democrats, has
joined the
other two in pledging not to increase taxes on rich people.
All three have now sworn not to do the only thing that would make it
possible to fix "broken Britain": bring more money into the treasury
from the people who can afford to pay it.
*How can you really get to know a person?
Ask
to see [per] loyalty cards.*
If I showed you mine, you'd get to know me well enough. I have only
one — from a chain which let me have it without my giving any
personal data. That is why I judge it is acceptable to use.
The Boston subways and buses would let me pay a reduced rate
because of my age, but then it would associate all my travel with
my name and personal data. No thanks!
if you asked to see what store apps I use, the answer would be even
more revealing: none at all. I refuse to carry a snoop-phone, so I
can't use phone apps. Anyway, I don't want to, since all those apps
are nonfree programs,
which means they are not worthy of trust. So I don't trust them to run on my computers.
One way the world can
unlock
the finance needed to stop global heating,
*Key Countries Responsible for the Climate Crisis
Fail
to Answer Call to
Phase Out Fossil Fuels.*
*Revealed: how Russia
deliberately
targeted Kherson’s hospitals.*
* American Library Association notes efforts to ban titles have
spread
beyond school libraries to those open to general public.*
*White House boosts
fossil fuels while speaking to the urgency of
climate threat.*
A witness claims that Bolsonaro discussed a coup with the
heads of the
Brazilian army, navy and air force,
after losing the election last year.
They may all face trial for this. I hope so!
Russia has been
hit
badly in the budget
by difficulty in exporting petroleum.
*Sanders and AOC Unveil Resolution to Apologize for US Role in Chile
Coup,
Declassify Secret Docs.*
I support this. The US government intentionally did a
great wrong
to Chile, which caused suffering of
murder
and torture while Pinochet was in power,
followed by the suffering of
plutocratist rule
more or less ever since. That calls for a solemn apology.
*How
unions won a 30% raise for every fast food worker in California.*
India is gaining prestige from an impressive mission to the Moon,
built by workers who
did
not get their salaries.
Many US conservative who do not give total obedience to the
spirit-breaker hate him for his practice of sneering at
wounded combat
veterans.
Even in the case of US wars that it should never have started, it is wrong to do that,
*Eliminate malaria
once and for all or it will come back stronger, UN warned.*
SCROTUS want
to override
all state laws that prohibit cruelty to farm animals, and some that
protect the health of farm animals too.
CAIR, a civil rights group for the rights of Muslims in the US, has
sued the US government for maintaining a
"terrorist
watch list"
which it uses to harass Muslims.
To have a watch list to keep track of the actions of people suspected
of planning terrorism is legitimate if it is used in honestly.
However, the US has used this watch list to pressure Muslims with no
terrorist involvement into
becoming
informers and snooping regularly
on their friends and families.
Furthermore, the US does not just "watch" the people on the list.
It regularly harasses them as well.
The French right-wing extremist Marine Le Pen, and 23 other members of
her party, face
prosecutors'
request for criminal charges
for redirecting some EU funds to the party staff.
Azerbaijan with its oil-funded arms has taken military control of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Now
the question
is whether it will force the Armenians out — either now or later.
Armenians have a millennium of history of Muslim conquerors seizing
some of its territory and perhaps expelling them or killing them.
It
doesn't necessarily have to happen now.
Sometimes the conquerors tolerate Christians — Islam has a
tradition of tolerating Christians and Jews — but the tolerance can come and go.
When tolerated, they are second-class citizens. Furthermore, they can
be punished for violating unjust religious demands, such as the law
against blasphemy, Azerbaijan's dictator may not be interested in
doing that, but they are not fans of human rights.
The coming UN climate conference is pervasively corrupt. UAE oil
company executives are
working
with the event's management team.
This is just what we would have expected the UAE emir in charge of the event
to do, looking at the matter with the most jaundiced possible eye.
*[The UK prime minister]'s anti-green stance exposes his reckless
dishonesty. His fate is what matters,
the
planet can go hang.*
(satire) *Every
American Exchanged For Iranian Population In First
Successful Citizen Swap Deal.*
Part of Australia
requires
women prisoners to undergo strip searches
to see doctors or their families.
The prisoners respond to this practice by avoiding medical and
family visits.
Rebecca Solnit explains why many women who have been raped or abused
do
not report it to the law. It takes a lot of courage to face the
multiple punishments they are likely to receive for making the report.
* The Australian government is
“missing
half the equation” in acting on
the climate crisis by backing a shift to renewable energy but having no
plan to get out of fossil fuels, according to an author of a new
scientific review.*
*European governments
shrinking
railways in favour of road-building, report
finds.*
Biden has launched a program to employ 20,000 young adult Americans
to work on climate
defense and fire prevention.
Sierra Club gives
more
information.
However, Biden is simultaneously failing to do the most important things
for climate defense. *Joe Biden and Xi Jinping,
leaders
of two biggest carbon emitters, among
those not attending the [UN climate] summit in New York.*
China has launched a campaign demanding the British Museum return all
"cultural relics acquired through improper channels" to China. Its
supposed
star example is a recent pot that the museum bought from the
potter who made it.
There are plenty of examples of stolen art that museums should return.
But often these conclusions are reached by anachronistically applying
standards for recent times to a world that that didn't have these
standards and which these standards did not fit. To decide which
standards to judge an old event by calls for careful thought.
US and Brazil warn that
powerful
oligarchs in Guatemala might hold a coup
to stop Guatemala's president-elect from taking power.
The UK questioned a British journalist at an airport,
claiming he was
suspected of "terrorism", and confiscated his phone and laptop.
He was suspected for his positive coverage of
Rojava, the Kurdish
state in Syria that stands for equality and unusual systems of democracy.
Rojava
was an unofficial ally of the US during the fight against
PISSI.
The most horrible thing about this law, and similar British law,
is that the crime is not actual terrorism or whatever. It is
being suspected of terrorism or whatever.
It is punishment on suspicion, with the
bogus
excuse that
being suspected is itself a crime.
Japan's summer is
extending
far longer than usual,
surely due to global heating.
People around the world must wake up to start envisioning what this
will do to their lives after a couple more decades of getting worse.
The UK is again pressuring Facebook and its allied messaging features
to delay
end-to-end encryption until they snoop for the state.
I sympathize with the goal of protecting children from pressure for sex, but
snooping
is the foundation of tyranny,
and that threatens everyone.
I would never use Facebook, because (1)
it
requires running nonfree
software,
which never deserves users' trust, and (2) Facebook itself does lots of snooping.
George Monbiot explains how lobbies
convince
the public to vote to keep
the level of disease-causing pollution high.
When extremist Republican Senator Tim Scott
threatened
to fire workers
for striking, he violated US labor law. He was urging for auto workers
to be treated this way, but he is an employer himself, and he can't
treat workers that way.
So the UAW has filed a complaint against him.
Keeping a dog should
require a license, and to get the license you
should have to pass a test in how to teach a tog to be friendly rather
than aggressive.
There could be alternate tests for training guard dogs, where the
trainer would have to demonstrate ability to train a guard dog so that
it will keep its actions within the bounds of what is acceptable for
such dogs.
Google's search algorithm chose a
generated
fake image rather than the
real photo of Tank Man as the response to a search for "tank man".
Google manually corrected this, but it shows the error-prone nature of
its system as operating.
US citizens:
call
on the judge
in the Google antitrust trial to provide a live video feed. It is a
matter of showing that the public interest is sufficient to justify it.
US citizens:
call
on the CFPB
to stop forced arbitration now.
The Tories have
dropped
the commitments
for decarbonization they adopted some years ago.
It is a standard
Tory pattern
to make a commitment in response to public pressure backed by valid
reasons, go slowly, drop it a few years later when conditions make it convenient.
Thus they pretend to address national problems but don't really do so.
A UK minister said that Britain must give up on decarbonization
rather than achieve it by
"bankrupting
the British people."
This choice is the result of a policy that will ensure suffering
for most British people: the
refusal
to tax the rich.
Britain has many grave problems, all caused by a lack of public spending.
Schools,
the NHS,
housing
for the non-rich,
public
transit, as well as avoiding
global heating disaster.
Ceasing the policy of providing more and more of national
income to the rich and the wealthy is necessary for all of them.
Corbyn would do this; Tories and Starmer-Labour have surrendered
to the rich and therefore can't do much about these problems.
I reject the term "net zero" for the way to formulate the goal of
curbing greenhouse emissions. It provides an excuse to accept
continuing emissions that might well be underestimated.
The Brazilian supreme court rejected a
right-wing
attempt to deny
indigenous groups' claims to ancestral lands from which they had
already been kicked out before 1988.
1988 is not long ago. I think this decision is correct when an
indigenous group was kicked out a few decades before 1988. But I
worry that it could extend too far: it could result in evicting
non-indigenous farmers from land that they have farmed for
generations, replacing one wave of dispossessed with another.
Situations like that call for compromise.
I wonder what other limits there are in the law regarding how many
decades it takes for non-indigenous farmers' title to be valid.
Illegal
gold miners
should never get valid title.
Canada reports
evidence
directly tying Indian diplomats
to the murder of Sikh separatist living in Canada under asylum.
*Wildfires turn Canada’s
vast
forests from carbon sink
into super-emitter.* This year's emissions amount to three times Canada's
usual annual emissions, and the fires are not finished yet.
Further global heating
is sure to increase the emissions from burning
forest in further years — until it is all burned up. This is the
sort of tipping point
that can cause unstoppable disaster.
The article describes precautions that might be able to reduce the fires in future years.
House Speaker McCarthy, in thrall to Republican lunatic extremists who
are willing to sabotage anything and everything to foil
any helpful
government policies
they can get their hands on, is desperately trying to remain in the
office of speaker by obeying their impossible demands.
The result of this is that he is losing what little shreds of honor
and political respect remain to him. How foolish that is. If he
resigns now and consigns the lunatics to hell, he may be unable to
remain as speaker but he will salvage some respectability.
The lunatics of SCROTUS
will look for another Republican willing to
dangle on their strings to be a puppet "speaker". But the rest of the
Republicans might decide to make a deal with Democrats on a bipartisan
House leadership that would adopt compromise policies. I expect that
sooner or later they will decide to climb out of the lunatics' vice.
Logging companies clear-cut Canadian forests in the 1980s, and
replaced them with
a
monoculture of highly flammable black spruce.
Those appear to have been the cause of many of the unquenchable giant wildfires of this year.
Putin's spy service directly tracks the ride service Yango.
Everyone
who gets a ride on Yango
will be tracked and reported immediately. That includes clients in
Israel and Europe as well as in Russia.
It is unjust for a ride service to identify you!
Boycott GUber!
How one oil industry agent set up
a
web of pretend "grass roots"
groups
to make a lot of noise and thus give hesitant California
legislators an excuse to water down a new oil regulation.
The agent responds with misleading words, such as claiming that these
organizations are "real". They probably are "real" in the sense of
really being legally registered, but they are not really what they
claim to be. Then he insists that their arguments are "valid", which
is no indication that they are valid.
*Iran and its agents appear to be orchestrating a
Europe-wide campaign
of harassment, surveillance, kidnap plots and death threats targeting
political activists who are protesting against the regime.*
US citizens:
call
on the DOJ to investigate
attacks on Stop Cop City activists.
The wrecker is using criminal indictments
as
a campaign strategy.
His supporters hate government, justice and democracy so much
that he can turn them against any honest manifestation of them.
Chief inspector: *I warned ministers about our
disgraceful
UK detention centres. Their solution? Stop the inspections.*
France is accused of trampling freedom of the press for arresting
investigative journalist Ariane Lavrilleux, who reported on leaked
documents alleging
French
intelligence targeted civilians in Egypt.
She has been arrested.
France is becoming ever more repressive. Long-distance buses now
require passengers' names, just like long-distance trains; next year,
all trains that travel from city to city will impose the same demand.
It is becoming difficult to pay for the Paris Metro with cash.
Pervasive tracking and surveillance is
the foundation for pervasive
repression.
Working from home makes it possible to
save over 50%
of one's greenhouse gas emissions, by avoiding commuting, but achieving that
much savings requires taking significant steps to make your activities around home greener.
We should not forget that most employers demand use of unjust
technology that people should never tolerate. Starting with things like
Zoom,
Google Meet, Microsoft Teams,
Google Docs,
and lots of imposed
employer-operated spyware.
Spain has permitted speaking to Parliament in
Basque, Catalan and
Galician,
in addition to as Castilian (what is known as Spanish outside Spain).
Those three have long been official languages for people to use in Spain.
It may feel like a great victory to the activists of those ethnic
groups to have gained this added prestige for their languages. In
practically terms, though, that right is useless because exercising it
is self defeating: if you speak to Parliament in one of those other
languages, you ensure that most of Parliament will not understand you.
A campaign
is raising funds to support whistleblower David McBride,
who revealed war crimes by Australia's military.
This July in the US was the hottest month ever, and it caused
unprecedented damage
to US food production, covering land and sea.
Richard Stallman will
be speaking
at the GNU 40th anniversary event in Switzerland on
September 27.
Celebration and Free/Libre Software Developer meeting in Biel/Bienne
40 years ago the GNU Project — to develop the GNU operating system —
was launched and gave birth to the Free Software movement, and Free
Software has since become the cornerstone of modern computing. The
GNU Project is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with a
hacker
meeting at the Volkshaus in Biel/Bienne, which will feature
presentations about various GNU packages, Free Software philosophy,
and the development process.
Australian elected officials are putting pressure on the US to
drop
charges against Julian Assange.
Robert Reich: *Strikes aren’t bad for the US economy.
They’re the best
thing that could happen.*
Previous waves of strikes gave America the large middle class that has now
been mostly eliminated by the power of the rich.
Modi is accused
of a series of assassinations of Sikh separatists.
I do not support that separatist cause, and it is legitimate for Indian
leaders to oppose it. But not by assassination of exiles.
Is Modi taking after Putin as well as after
the bullshitter?
The Putin forces have
kidnapped
over 18,000
Ukrainian children from occupied areas and sent them to Russia. Some of them have been
taken to Belarus by Lukashenko's agents.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to reject Republican plans to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Rich people do not have a "right" to keep all the money they alter our laws to direct to them!
If you are invited to phone your representative, that is an effective
thing to do. But you don't need to do this by texting from a
snoop-phone. You can simply phone 202-224-3121.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Azerbaijan
heavily attacked
the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
US citizens: call on Congress to renew funding for child care before
it
expires on September 30.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to stay firm against
corporate lobbyists,
and tax billion-dollar corporations.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
California sued Google
for
keeping track
of location history even when a user had specified not to do so.
In the settlement, Google committed to being more "transparent" about what
it was doing with location data. The article does not say that it
committed to giving users the option for not storing location data
that it will truly obey.
The usual practice when
governments
regulate with snooping
disservices
is to assume that "transparency" (as part of asking for "consent") is
sufficient to make any sort of snooping legitimate.
Given that many users find that other aspects of
their lives practically compel them to use the disservice, they
don't really have the choice not to "consent". Making the
request for consent "transparent" does nothing to fix that.
*The
One Million Tibetan Children in China’s Boarding Schools.*
They are being taught Chinese culture and separated from Tibetan
culture. Tibet is being abolished.
Many other countries have done this to minority groups, including the
US, UK, Canada and France, to mention only those I recall at this
moment.
Some manufacturers of medical equipment are
trying to impose
conditions on how the purchaser uses it — "use for execution
prohibited." They are trying to propagate this to indirect purchasers
too.
I oppose the death penalty. However, these manufacturers are claiming
the outrageous general power to control those who buy their products.
Use that power to ban use for execution, they could use it to ban
anything else too. Imagine "Use of this cable for copying audio and
video works without explicit authorization from copyright holders is
prohibited."
We must not tolerate the attempt to impose such power just because it
is being applied today to aid a cause we support.
Parents in the US are tracking their children up through ever-higher
ages. Now some college students are being tracked.
This article describes
the harm that does.
A large UK union will spend some money on publicly promoting a few
specific policy issues,
instead
of giving it to Labour.
Not all of these policies are good. One of them is to continue
developing more offshore oilfields, to extract oil that the world
cannot safely burn or make into more plastic.
I am in favor of a well-managed green transition, but trying to demand
it by overdrawing the carbon budget is environmental terrorism.
I can't see a reason why it would be beneficial overall to subsidize
steel production rather than import it. Does that have any purpose
except competition for the votes of steel workers?
Trudeau accuses Indian agents of
murdering
a Sikh separatist leader in Canada.
I do not see a reason to support that separatist cause, but assassinating
exiles is not justified.
Robert Reich: *Why
labor activism is good for America.*
For several years, the UK Labour government ordered reductions in the
amount of salt added to certain foods. In 2014, the new government
ended that, and levels of salt increased. This has been
tied to
24,000 additional deaths.
Since we get accustomed to whatever level of salt we consume,
there is no loss in reducing that across the board.
How quitting Facebook and Ex-Twitter enabled
one user
to change for the better his approach to life.
Australia needs to replace the old coal-powered electric generators.
The
right-wing
wants to build small nuclear power plants,
but they would cost over 17 times as much as solar power, 9 times as much as wind power.
Clearly the lobbying for small nuclear plants does not aim to serve
the public good. It is an attempt by companies to profit by wasting
public funds. That was pretty clear already, but this strengthens the case.
Solar power
satellites
are being considered
seriously by the EU.
The L5 society's 1980 plan was to build large ones using material from
the Moon. Launching that from the Moon's shallower gravity well would
be far cheaper than launching that from Earth.
*California sues
[five giant] oil companies claiming they [deceptively downplayed] the risk of fossil fuels.*
Despite
the cease fire
of the Tigray region's forces with Ethiopia, the atrocities continue
there, committed by other ethnic Ethiopian militias and the Eritrean army.
Expensive plans to protect Rockaway in NYC from
future hurricanes
may not be
effective.
The article explains that efforts to estimate the probability of a
another similar disaster were bogus or confused. Meanwhile, science
has advanced since the 2000s. We should make a more plausible
estimate of that probability, based on acceleration of
global heating,
then increase it for our continued incomplete knowledge.
Then we should make another such estimate assuming that proposed flood
protection plans have been implemented. We can judge whether those
plans are worth implementing based on how much they decrease the
disaster likelihood.
If even after flood protection it is likely that another disaster will
happen within 50 years, the federal government should buy out the
properties there, and declare it a protected zone. Let it become
beach, or wetlands. We had better be spending that money on
decarbonization, which protects the whole world, not on short-term
protection of each area by itself.
Using bullshit
generators to generate letters of recommendation,
letters of complaint, or letters of pressure, paradoxically makes
them count for less.
Ex-Twitter
has stopped
labeling paid ads at all, for some users.
The non-nuclear deal with Iran calls for lifting certain sanctions in
October 2023. However, France, Germany and the UK say that Iran's
violations are significant and
they
won't do it.
Iran could come back into compliance if it decided to.
It might do this if the US offers a
return to the deal
in exchange.
*We
need radical change in economic policy, not just a change of government.*
This goes for the US as well as the UK.
Students have convinced New York University to
divest
from fossil fuels.
Going by the article, the criteria will be fairly strict. Many
organizations have "divested from fossil fuels", but it covered only
some of the ways of investing in fossil fuels, leaving plenty of room
to do so.
A study has found that "carbon offsets" as certified by Verra are
misleading
and ineffective.
A right-wing extremist is likely to be elected mayor of a city in
Germany. He has
condemned
the activities to remind Germans of the
evil of the Holocaust.
I don't see in the article that he endorses antisemitism, but I think
the AfD party is heading in a direction which will get there soon.
Another politician in that party is being
tried
for using a Nazi slogan.
I abhor censorship of anything, even Nazism, because censorship opens
the door to tyranny. However, so does Nazism, and more generally
fascism. I am not sure which is the bigger danger.
The government of Victoria got advice about tobacco policies from the
PR company KPMG which has a
long
association with tobacco companies.
This was, in effect, giving those companies special influence over
the policies meant to protect the public from their addictive,
disease-causing product.
*New[ly
released old] Documents Show
Exxon Executives Cast Doubt on
Climate Science to Protect Profits.*
* ExxonMobil executives
privately
sought to undermine climate science
even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between
fossil fuel emissions and [global heating].*
In 2008, Exxon
said it would stop supporting climate-denialist groups
but it continued to support influential individual climate-denialists.
Wisconsin's gerrymandered state senate gives Republicans a 2-1
supermajority. They
just
voted to fire the state's chief election
administrator — in line with conspiracy disinformation, but really
for having unwelcome integrity.
*The Guardian view on planetary boundaries: the
Earth has limits and
governments must act on them.*
Florida governor DeMentis
*contradicted
[his] own abortion law to
claim woman will not be criminalized.*
However, the text clearly admits of prosecuting the woman who has
an abortion.
This is the common
Republican
tactic of trying to have it both ways.
*I work in a supermarket and see
how
desperate some shoplifters are. My heart
goes out to them.*
The same worker also sees professional thieves, and addicts who steal
to buy an addictive drug. Those have always existed, but what's changed
is that now there are many desperate thieves stealing necessities of life.
After Mangosuthu Buthelezi's death, South African officials are
covering
up his career of running a movement to serve the apartheid
government and repress for it.
Use of the IHRA criterion for antisemitism has led to 40 cases of
accusations by universities against specific people and groups, of
which 38
have been dismissed.
The Starbucks workers' union is
considering
calling for a consumer
boycott.
Why wait? You can start boycotting now. I would, except that I never
buy from Starbucks anyway — its products don't appeal to me.
The Polish government has
funded
development of a test to determine
whether someone has taken mifepristone and misoprostol.
And now it is using this test to determine whether specific people
have had abortions.
Some right-wing US politicians are looking forward to the same thing.
A Seattle thug
was recorded
expressing derision for a woman who was
killed by another thug
who was driving dangerously fast to deal with
an incident.
The derision did not injure anyone, but it shows he has the wrong
attitude towards members of the public and is not fit to be a police
officer.
Starmer has adopted
one of Corbyn's ideas about trade with the EU,
at least partially.
Corbyn said he would
try
to form a customs union with the EU.
*Tens
of thousands in NYC march against fossil fuels as AOC hails powerful
message.*
*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the crowd must become ‘too big and too
radical to ignore” as Biden came under fire for oil projects.*
I agree. Having separate rallies on different dates* in various cities
makes a smaller impression with the same number of people.
When people are motivated enough for hundreds of thousands to rally in
Washington DC, that will be impossible to ignore.
* The US accounts
for more than a third of the expansion of global oil
and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of
climate leadership,*
I suspect these figures are skewed by not including increases in coal
mining. China is building new coal-fired generators at a
prodigious
rate and must be planning a comparable increase in the rate of coal
mining. Whether the US or China comes out worse overall when all
kinds of fossil fuel are counted, I don't know, but they must both be
very bad.
*World Bank spent
billions of dollars backing fossil fuels in
2022, study finds.*
Direct air capture of CO2, though only rudimentary, is
absolutely necessary
for curbing global heating — as long as our reductions in emissions
remain hopelessly inadequate.
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, and the news site Rappler, have been
found innocent
of President Do-Dirty's tax fraud charges.
People suspected those
charges
were fabricated.
They still face other charges that are explicitly political.
Under years of Tory rule, dooH niboR
has evolved
from neoliberalism to
right-wing populism that drives down the meager incomes of the
non-wealthy.
*China concerns drive historic
upgrade
in US-Vietnam relations.*
Some time after 2000 I learned that Vietnam had given the US a
military base. I assumed this was support against Vietnam's enemy,
China. China has been Vietnam's principal enemy ever since China
first conquered Vietnam, about two thousand years ago. Since Vietnam
conclusively won independence, about a thousand years ago, it has
always had to watch out for China.
This is increase in relations is obviously good strategy against the
broader Chinese threat. What makes me sad is that this is one more
dictatorship that the US supports, added to a long list.
(satire) *Instacart
Valuation Crashes As Americans Realize They Can Do
Some Things For Themselves.*
Every "service" that requires each customer to identify perself is an
injustice simply for that. So I am glad to see any of them lose
demand, whatever the reason. However, shopping delivery services are
especially important to abolish, since their success threatens to
eliminate supermarkets and make life harder for those of us
who want to buy anonymously.
Crown Prince Bone Saw has
put
several dissidents in prison, and
sentenced one to death after a parody of a trial, for posting
criticism of the prince and other members of the royal family.
That regime is comparable in its evil to China, though some details
differ.
The Tories are dropping,
step by step, their plans to separate UK regulations
and inspections from EU standards.
It is not clear that they will alter the policy changes that hurt
individuals, such as the plans to discard EU human rights requirements
or the burdens of not being EU citizen. Ultimately, they care about
British businesses, not Britons.
120,000 people in Britain
died
in 2022 while on NHS waiting lists.
That is double that died while waiting in 2017/2018.
The cause of this is simple: bad policies imposed by the government.
Especially the policy of refusing to tax the rich so as to raise
enough funds to do the NHS job right and thoroughly.
I would have suggested voting for Labour, except now Labour is
committed
to be just as bad.
A study found that
some
substances from marijuana are useful medicines,
but that aside from that young people (including teenagers and a little
older) and those who are pregnant should not take it.
A white family in New Mexico was rushing to bring their badly injured
dog to a vet, when some thugs
stopped
them and (for no reason at all)
decided they were threatening someone somehow.
The thugs
made some get out of the car and pointed guns at them, as
they did nothing but say, "Our dog's gonna die."
The article does not say how many minutes the
thugs delayed this
trip to the veterinarian, so we can't try to guess whether the dog
might have survived without their intervention.
Another commentator pointed out that it is rare for whites to get this
horrible treatment, but blacks learn that for them it is standard.
This instance clearly illustrates how
thugs can perceive threats and
defiance where there are none at all.
UK thugs
are delighted
with the idea of identifying "suspects" by
facial recognition in all sorts of footage of crowds.
These "suspects" may very well be protesters charged
with grave crimes that are disguises for
"causing
inconveniencing with
a protest" — or
"damaging
corporations' profits with a protest."
UK supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers and citrus
fruits ran
short this year due to unnatural extreme weather caused
by global heating.
The danger is predicted to extend to bananas, grapes, avocados,
cashews, cocoa, peas, canned tuna and tea.
I expect this problem to be global, more or less.
* US news organizations have
turned
Biden’s age into a scandal and
continue to cover Trump as an entertaining side show.
With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways.*
* From the Sargasso Sea to the Costa Rica thermal dome, scientists are
identifying
key diversity hotspots to safeguard under a new UN treaty.*
The UK is facing another wave of Covid-19 from the multi-mutation
Pirola variant.
Reducing the harm calls for wearing masks, but the government is too timid to promote them.
The situation is similar in the US.
I wear masks by choice, to protect myself and others. So can you.
Amazon has used its near-monopoly power to
force
e-magazines
out of operation or under its exclusive monopoly.
This is clearly an injustice. However, the article does not take
notice of the context — based totally on injustice, because these
magazines were distributed for the Amazon Swindle.
Amazon identified each reader — an injustice — and, I
suspect made them sign contracts not to share copies — another
injustice. They
may have had DRM
— also an injustice.
Within this unjust context, Amazon's treatment of those magazines was wrong.
But the injustice of the Amazon Swindle
is a far bigger wrong.
A
letter proves
that Pope Pius XII received information in December
1942 from a close associate about mass murder of Jews by the German regime.
This refutes the claim that he could not be sure that Hitler was carrying out mass murder.
I can't dispute the point that the pope, living in the middle of Rome,
which at that time was the capital of Hitler's ally Mussolini, could not overtly oppose Hitler.
Brazil has
sentenced
the first of hundreds
of Bolsonaro supporters who attacked the government ministries on Jan 8 this year.
*Voter ID in England led to
racial
and disability discrimination,
report finds.*
This is what people
predicted
and criticized
in advance, and surely
what
the Tories sought.
The Tories may be considering relaxing their voter-ID scheme somewhat,
but not in a way that would reduce the
suppression
of younger voters
that the plan was designed to achieve.
Russian journalist
Elena
Kostyuchenko
went to Ukraine to cover Putin's
invasion for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, but stayed after
Putin closed it down. Then she learned that there was an order out to
kill her.
She got sick, with an unidentifiable illness, and doctors eventually
concluded she had been poisoned by Putinite agents.
As her writing describes, it is not just a few heroes that Putin tries
to crush. It is also hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians that the
Putin forces
have conquered, then shot,
kidnapped,
brainwashed
or tortured.
Alabama is trying to prosecute anyone that helps a
woman travel
for an abortion for "criminal conspiracy". Texas and Idaho also have
laws to punish helping a woman get out of the state for an abortion.
These laws are designed for repressive terror.
They show what fascist Christians
stand for, and what they deserve.
British
unions
will complain formally
to the International Labor Organization about the Tories' new
restrictions on strikes, which violate UN rules.
Sweden is moving strongly back to
teaching
school on paper.
The main aim is to help children learn better, but it also provides
an opportunity to free them from
the grip of online disservices.
*Libya’s floods are result of
climate
crisis meeting a failed state.*
In
Maricopa
county, and many
others
where fascists have organized, they are
bombarding election officials with more public records requests than they can
answer, accusing officials of hiding some nonexistent conspiracy
(the sort of thing that only fascists actually do), and frightening capable
election officials into quitting.
The danger for democracy is that their replacements will be fascists.
Fascists know that they won't be persecuted.
Instead of the rule of law, fascists practice the rule of lie.
* Poverty [in the US] increased sharply in 2022 due to safety net
cutbacks
and inflation shock.*
Bernie Sanders: *The United Auto Workers may soon strike.
Every
American
should support them.*
I agree, but I am not sure how to do that.
The report that Musk deactivated Ukraine's use of Starlink near Crimea
just as Ukraine was sending attack drones there has been found to be a
confusion. What actually happened was that
he
had never authorized
Ukraine to use Starlink in that region. Ukraine asked for this for
that attack, and he said no.
I won't call that treachery or any dirty names. However, I disagree
with his decision.
Fortunately, Ukraine has developed other ways to attack Russian ships,
in port and at sea.
It is incorrect, however, to say that supporting Ukraine's attack
would have been "escalation". Ukraine's intended attack on Putin's
ships would have been small compared to Putin's invasion of Ukraine,
and those ships had already been involved in attacking Ukraine.
Attacking them in their bases — as Ukraine has sometimes done since
in other ways — is simply continuing the war Putin started.
Datasets for journalists
censured
by Ex-Twitter and Reddit
block the posting of links to the Distributed Denial of Secrets web site.
Russia and Indonesia block the site entirely. Indonesia blocked it
after it posted the secrets of a big company that mines coal and deals
in palm oil. One must suspect it of deforestation.
Starlink has become controversial on account of Musk's repeated surprise
blockages to Ukraine, but all big tech companies have the same sort
of
dangerous
world political power
even if they have not used it yet.
(satire) *Yevgeny Prigozhin Leads
Army
Of 25,000 Undead
Toward Kremlin.*
The Philadelphia thugs
that
killed Eddie Irizarry
lied to create an excuse, and the police chief said so and told a
different story which nonetheless gave them an excuse. The cops
refused to release to videos that ought to have proved it was true.
But now a video has appeared which shows that too was all lies. They
had no grounds at all for violence.
Intuit claims that TurboTax is "free", but it has never been libre.
A
judge has ruled
that it isn't gratis either, and ordered the company
to stop saying it is "free".
That they exchange money for using it is what most people are worked up about,
but the fact that users can't use it while keeping their freedom is what's truly important.
*Six [Mississippi thugs]
known as the "Goon Squad" plead guilty to
torturing
two [black] men,
using a sex toy on them and shooting one of them [almost 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
denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that
practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider
important — and I label them like this.
(satire) *Study: More Americans Buying AR-15s To Defend Selves From
Toddlers
Who Found Their Guns.*
Immigrants who helped Florida repair after previous hurricanes are afraid
to go there now, due to DeMentis's
law
to promote deportation.
I wonder whether farms will have trouble finding workers for the harvest this year.
*Protests in Israel
as
supreme court hears
challenge to judicial curbs.*
Richard Stallman will give a talk,
"Free Software And Your Freedom",
in the Czech Republic in Prague on Oct 1. That will be at this year's
"Hackers Congress
Paralelni
Polis" 2023,
September 29 – October 1, at the La Fabrika Theater.
Australian uniformed thugs
worked very hard to
come
up with evidence
to convict Jason Roberts of killing two thugs.
There wasn't enough real evidence, so they had to fake it.
Australia fines
drivers, even cancels their driving licenses, if
occasionally a passenger does not wear a seat belt.
This is are a system of collective responsibility: "Hey you! Monitor
those others near you, or we will punish you!" This attitude towards
people is an injustice in general.
Since 1975 I have made a practice of wearing my seat belt. for safety,
whether driving or riding as a passenger. But there is one exception:
when I need to sleep. I have never found a way to sleep with a seat
belt rubbing on my shoulder — it changes my posture. If I am
compelled to wear the seat belt because the driver has been
conscripted into forcing me, I will not be able to sleep and I may get
sick.
So I regard that system as an injustice.
If the system permitted me to wear the lap belt but not the shoulder
belt, I would certainly do that, since the lap belt does not stop
me from sleeping. But nowadays they don't support that mode of use.
*Rishi Sunak hopes
for warm welcome at G20 as India’s "son-in-law".*
This warm welcome would be a business-supremacy treaty that did not
disadvantage British plutocrats too much compared with Indian plutocrats.
What we see, therefore, is a less rich oligarch sucking up to a richer
oligarch.
Most Democratic voters would rather that Biden step aside in 2024,
but few
can name a candidate they would prefer.
I would certainly prefer Bernie Sanders.
Biden is a strange mixture. He has done a number of
things that
surprised me for how
progressive
they were. And he has partly
achieved other progressive
programs to the extent progressives could
get them through Congress. On the other hand, he keeps
handing planet
roasters and other plutocrats
gratuitous victories.
Urging western tourism companies to
stop
selling package travel
through Xinjiang
into areas where
Uyghurs
are being brainwashed.
It may be romantically exciting to imagine visiting Xinjiang and
pulling back the curtain or deception, but the Chinese who operate the
curtain are skilled experts whereas you would be encountering it for
the first time. Whatever move you try, they would surely have
training and experience at countering.
It is wiser to leave that sort of thing to people who are themselves experts.
(satire) *Court
Upholds Congressional Map That Sealed Black Voters In
Impenetrable Cube/*
Mexico could
provide a place where US citizens in abortion-banning
southern states could get abortions.
The ironic result would be that the main group of people in those
states who could not go to Mexico for an abortion would be the
unauthorized immigrants. Republican racists would tear their hair out
to see their own abortion bans speeding the "great replacement".
Imagine a campaign calling for Texas to allow non-citizens to get
abortions also. "Way to go, Republicans — protect every possible
anchor baby!"
Even better, US government could directly help the non-US-citizens get
abortions. It could make an arrangement with Mexico to set up border
abortion clinics on the Mexico side, which would be federal facilities
so they would be
lawful
right away,
and allow anyone to cross the
border from the US directly into an abortion clinic and then return,
regardless of passport or immigration status. However, only
authorized personnel would be allowed to enter the clinic from Mexico.
To make sure there is no unfairness towards Mexicans, each of these
transborder abortion clinics would be accompanied by another abortion
clinic that serves people coming from Mexico.
The arrangement could also explicitly permit royalty-free importation
of mifepristone and any other medicines purchased in these clinics.
What I don't know is whether it is possible to do this without getting
the approval of the Senate, which might be blocked by overt and covert
Republicans.
In practical terms, hot weather tends to kill people when it reaches
the point
where humans must take conscious precautions to survive it.
That is well before the point of what I have called
"fatal weather"
which is where nothing short of air conditioning will suffice.
Weather deadly by that lower standard has been observed in various
places in recent years.
*Covid's back, you say? As disabled and vulnerable people know all too
well, it
never went away.*
What happened, rather is that governments gave up trying to protect the public
to cave to the people who preferred to pretend Covid was gone. This is the case
in the US and Europe, with variations in details between countries.
British business barons are
flocking
to invest in the Labour Party.
The indictment of protesters against Cop City for "racketeering"
threatens
freedom of the press as well as freedom to protest.
British unions have decided to
defy
the Tories' new anti-strike laws.
Undercover federal thugs
shot
and maimed a man in a wheelchair who had
come to the aid of his brother, whom the
thugs were attacking. They
did not identify themselves as cops until after.
People should not be killed or maimed for coming to the aid, with or
without a gun, of someone being attacked by unknown strangers.
The fact that this victim was homeless doesn't alter the issue.
Neither does the fact that he already needed a wheelchair for some
other reasons. Those are misfortunes, and a better organized society
would spare people the first of the two, but if the
thugs had done the
same thing to a fit and healthy home-owner it would have been equally
unjust.
*We Must Remember the 9/11 War Lies.*
*We can’t
afford to let these lies go down the memory hole, like we have
the other wars we were lied into.*
I disagree with Hartmann about ending the war in Afghanistan. I
supported the war in Afghanistan, for the sake of democracy and
women's rights there, when it looked like we could win that war. But
it became clear that the army we supported could never defeat the
Taliban.
Queensland cops caught sharing a thuggish attitude of bigotry
will not
be punished.
The state has a duty not to allow this. Sneering at people with
insulting words cannot be a crime, since it is part of freedom of
speech. But people who hold an office such as
"police officer", which
includes special powers over everyone else and special authorization
for violence, have a duty to treat the public without bias. If they
engage in bigotry, they are not fit for the office. If they promote
bigotry among the other officers, they undermine the proper respect
for society among the whole body of officers.
*Dozens of leading Palestinian intellectuals, artists and other public
figures have published an
open
letter condemning antisemitic
comments made by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.*
Bravo! Palestinians have
plenty
of reason to hate Israel's occupation
policies;
that they speak up to distinguish that from (and reject) antisemitism
is an admirable example.
If they can do this, surely the
supporters
of Israel's occupation
policies
can do likewise.
The Republicans' "investigation" of Biden, intended to find grounds
for impeachment, appears to be just
"blow
smoke and exaggerate it."
Chilean musicians
protested
Pinochet's dictatorship through underground
performances, often closed down by the regime's
thugs.
Some protest musicians are blind — mutilated by
thugs.
*Ginni Thomas and rightwing activists
exploited
supreme court ruling — report.*
Egypt is converting parks and open squares in Cairo into
unwelcoming
zones that are easy to police.
Republicans in Texas have passed many laws for repression of all sorts of
people
they
wish to persecute.
One of these laws allow the state to rig elections in Houston, the
state's biggest city, if Republicans claim there was an "irregularity"
in the election.
Another is meant to force trans adolescents to go through puberty the
way they do not want to. Forcing people to undergo irreversible
biological changes is gratuitous cruelty.
Another law will enable state officials to force prosecution of abortions.
Other
Republican laws
are nasty in spirit
but can be blunted with effort. For instance, young people can defeat censorship of
school libraries
by buying books and sharing them.
Prohibition
of drag shows
can be overcome by sharing videos.
As for prohibition of participation of trans-people in sports, that
may lead to disappointment, but people need to distinguish between the
important things in life and the side issues. People can get obsessed
with sports, but we should not take that to mean sports matter.
Calling on the US to publish its role in
organizing
the overthrow
of President Allende of Chile.
The dictator Pinochet, despite being dead, is exerting a growing
influence in Chile in favor of fascism, much as the fascist-in-chief
is
doing in the US.
*Chile president
[Boric]
gives staunch defense of democracy,
50 years after Pinochet coup.*
An
interview with Rep. Greg Casar,
progressive Hispanic and first term in Congress, about his visit to
various countries in South America and how the US can begin supporting
and favorizing democracy there instead of supporting right-wing oligarchs.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to enact ethics standards for the Supreme Court.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Richard Stallman will speak, along with other GNU contributors, on Sep
27 as part of the GNU 40th anniversary celebration
in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland.
The page does not describe live streaming, but we understand it
will happen.
Sep 17: Join the
climate defense rally in New York City.
Sep 20: In Boston,
join
the Extinction Rebellion rally
US citizens: call on the US govt to
say
what it is now doing in Yemen.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to
protect access to
Medicaid.
US citizens: call on the mainstream media to
end
their racist and
sexist attacks against Georgia DA Fani Willis, who is prosecuting the
insurrectionist for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
US citizens: call on the Biden Administration to stay firm against
corporate lobbyists:
tax
billion dollar corporations.
Everyone: call on Chick-fil-A to
stop
using polystyrene
foam cups.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank
response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your
signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has
text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a
way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make
the text appear.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to
protect Medicaid
access for poor Americans.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to
investigate
Governor Abbott's inhumane
border policies.
US citizens: Support
the "Unhoused" Bill of Rights.
I dislike the new affectation, the word "unhoused", which appears in
the name of that bill. I am glad I have a home to live in, and I wish
we made sure that everybody could have one, so I support this plan to
help the homeless. But I will not call people "housed" or "unhoused".
*Global push for commitment to phase out fossil
fuels gathers pace
ahead of Cop28.*
If this succeeds, it will be an important preparatory step towards
avoiding global disaster.
Some progress has been made at the G20 meeting, but it
did not reach
a phase out.
The leader of the Australian Green Party calls for protests against
government policies that cater to
fossil
fuels and deforestation.
*The arch-fascist vows to lock up political
enemies
if he returns to White
House.*
In the insane world view he promotes, there is no difference between
arbitrary political imprisonment and charging someone with a crime.
He said the reason is that "they are doing it to us," but that is more
bullshit: he demanded the same thing in 2016, and there was no move
then to charge him with a crime.
(satire) *Mediterranean Tourists Go On Incredible
Refugee-Watching Tour.*
In 2021, 16 countries pledged to stop their international investments
in fossil fuel, Most of them kept the pledge.
The
US, Germany and Italy
did not.
"Smart" devices typically collect
more
data about their useds than is required
to implement their features.
As usual, for "smart" read "snoop". Instead of getting a "smart device",
be smart yourself — and reject them.
A former head of Israel's highly respected intelligence agency set off
a stir by acknowledging
that Israel has imposed an apartheid system on
the Palestinians.
A province of Pakistan has
made
it a crime for parents to stop their
children from being vaccinated for polio and other dangerous diseases.
This is meant to overcome the disinformation that threatens to undo
the almost-completed global eradication of polio, and protection from
measles and more.
The EU's Digital Markets Act will or would ban, for
some
large tech companies, some of the worst abuses that they commit
using the power over users that they get from
non-free software.
It is a good try, but what users really need is free software.
(satire) *New
U.S. Army Recruitment Ad Touts Military As Great
Alternative To Starving On Streets.*
*Senate Finally
Confirms 5th FCC Commissioner After
[Republican-imposed] Vacancy of More Than 2.5 Years.*
One of the insurrectionist's
henchmen refused
to provide evidence or
testimony to the Jan 6 insurrection committee. He has been convicted
of contempt of Congress, and may be sentenced to prison.
Will he now be ordered to hand over the dope? I would expect that the
committee can no longer receive it, since the Republicans now control
the House of Representatives. Justice may have won this skirmish, but
the Republicans may have won this battle.
I would be glad to see well-informed comment on these follow-on issues.
Fish around the world are
generally
getting smaller. Within a given
species, the population tends to be smaller than before. Within an ecosystem,
larger species tend to be replaced with smaller species.
The article asserts that this is the consequence of what it calls the
"Anthropocene" period, but I call the "Obscene" period.
Comments on France's
ban of the abaya in schools, from several points
of view.
*Antarctica warming
much faster than models predicted.*
This suggest the rising sea will come for you sooner than previously
predicted.
New York City is
considering
a law to save migrating birds from
colliding with illuminated glass towers.
The Labour Party is
receiving
donations at the highest rate ever, now
that plutocrats are donating to it.
I think they recognize that it is now almost as
plutocratist as the
Tories, but more competent.
There is a campaign
to demand removal of certain antisemitic word
meanings from the Real Academia Española's dictionary of Spanish.
This campaign is foolish and harmful. Yes, those meanings are
antisemitic; they express bigotry. Yes, their existence comes out of
a long tradition of antisemitism in Spain — naturally it does.
People should not those meanings, or any other way to express bigotry.
But that is a separate matter from what words the dictionary should
define. To use those meanings endorses bigotry, but citing them
in a dictionary does not.
A dictionary should contain all sorts of words and meanings, including
those that you or I disapprove of — and if the meaning expresses
bigotry, the dictionary should say so. That is part of the
dictionary's mission: to document the language fully.
You can't stop bigots from using prejudiced insults by omitting them
from the dictionary — that is not where they learn those words. But
if they are omitted from the dictionary, we who have not grown up in a
milieu of antisemitic hispanophones could not find out what they mean
when we want to know.
To start trying to cleanse language by denying or hiding the existence
of words and meanings whose usage we condemn is to open dictionaries
to culture wars. Then the most powerful political forces will
weaponize them. They might be censored by racists, antisemites and
Nazis, and sooner than you think. Instead of legitimizing censorship
of dictionaries, we had better fight now to protect dictionaries'
freedom to fully document language as it is used,
I looked in my copy of the Real Academia dictionary; it does not have
the definition of "judío" that the campaign condemns. It is the 1992
edition; perhaps that definition was added subsequently.
The US immigration system uses
heuristic
(and thus unreliable)
computerized translators. Their mistakes put refugees' rights in
jeopardy.
British undercover thugs
continue the practice of
maintaining
intimate relationships under false names while keeping their lovers
in the dark.
But it may be rather different now.
One woman found out about hers in 2020 after 19 years. She was not
involved in whatever group or activity he was infiltrating, and he
reportedly wasn't directed to get involved with her. He may have been
breaking the rules.
After many years he ceased to be in the
thug department but continued
the relationship under the same false name. I guess he saw no way to
tell her the truth, so he was trapped in his own lie.
She and her families are trapped in the secret too.
(satire) *Self-Driving
Tesla Regurgitates Pedestrian To Feed Offspring.*
Organizations that campaign against hate are now
campaigning
against Musk
and his use of Ex-Twitter
to attack those organizations.
We have to conclude that Must is a fascist and suspect that he bought
Twitter to use it for hate.
Modi boasts about "India's democracy" while covering up India's
spreading
repression of Muslims
(and other
non-Hindus including
Dalits).
Other countries support the false front in order to do business with India.
Car manufacturers tell purchasers that they
intend
to collect wide
varieties of personal data. Most say they will sell the data and use
it against the purchaser.
I can see why the company would like to get information about the
owner's sex life and politics. What I don't see is how they can make
the car get that sort of information for them, Perhaps they hope to
trade car data with other snooping companies for that data.
The important conclusion of this information is that these companies don't
respect you. That leads to the question: how can you stop them from getting
data about you. That requires at least a little skill — perhaps enough
to find and disconnect the car's antennas.
China is considering a vague law to
prohibit
anything That "Hurts The
Country's Feelings".
Since countries do not actually feel anything, the only way that
phrase can be interpreted is as a metaphor, so it can be stretched to
prohibit almost anything. I suppose that's the purpose of it.
Modi has walled off poor neighborhoods of Delhi and
shut all business
in them,
so that India will look shiny to visiting foreign dignitaries.
Although Muslims, Christians and Dalits are the usual targets of his contempt,
any poor person can be a target when that is convenient for him.
*Mexico's
supreme
court decriminalizes abortion
across country.*
*Watchdog group sues to
remove
"insurrectionist" [candidate] from 2024
ballot*
in Colorado.
The Georgia special grand jury suggested charges against Senator
Lindsey
Graham and some other prominent Republicans,
for supporting the insurrectionist's
efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.
The UK parliament passed laws a few years ago to require registration of
the effective ("beneficial") owner of foreign-owned properties,
but
left a loophole
that defeats the system: when the nominal owner is a trust, it can still
conceal the identity of the effective owner.
This is plutocratism at work.
UK enforcement of the registration rules is so lax that
secret owners
are in no danger
of being punished or hassled.
This applies to ordinary tax evaders as well as
Russian oligarchs
subject to sanctions because of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
The
Tories have backed down,
for the moment, on plans to scan users' digital communications, but
the requirement is still in the law they are about to pass.
Perhaps they plan to make another try in a year or two.
*Texas Energy Grid
Paid
Bitcoin Miner $31.7 Million
to Stop Working Amid Heatwave.*
One sign of US plutocracy is the idea that
companies
should be paid every time
they do what the public needs,
rather than be taxed or fined when they do not do it.
The poor are punished;
the
rich get rewarded.
*Deadly humid
heatwaves
to spread rapidly
as climate warms — study.*
This refers to what I have called
"fatal weather."
Ralph Nader: as second-order unnatural disasters (caused by the
effects of the first-order unnatural disasters) spread death and
suffering around the world,
we
must join to crush the power of the
corporations
that make sure these disasters keep happening.
Nader believes the time is ripe for a left-right coalition to do this,
but I think one of the purposes of right-wing disinformation is to ensure
most right-wing people, in various countries, are so absorbed with fantasy
problems that they can't focus on real problems.
Big banks are financing US coal power plants,
despite
a supposed commitment
to stop,
by lending instead to their parent companies.
The effort to stop lending and insurance for fossil fuel projects is a
backup plan, which we try because we can't get Congress to do what
really needs to be done: prohibit some of those projects and tax the
rest so much that some will be canceled. If it worked, it would be a victory.
*UN
warns world
will miss climate targets unless fossil fuels phased out.*
*US "university" [calling itself PragerU] spreads climate lies and
receives
millions
from rightwing donors.*
Prager you too!
Biden
is canceling the fossil fuel leases
that the wrecker
signed for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Private
equity is investing
in causing climate disasters, and profiting from the work to clean them up.
African
countries are compelled to choose
between coping with global heating
effects, fighting poverty and paying debts.
I suppose the greenhouse emission rate of African countries is small enough
that reducing those countries' emissions is not urgent.
(satire)
*FanDuel
Promo Offers Complimentary $100 Bet
To First-Time Gambling Hotline Callers.*
The UK has been
greatly
exercised by the conviction of a nurse for
murdering 16 babies in a hospital. Of course, we must prosecute
murder; but the 170,000 excess deaths in Britain 2022 ought to be a
10,000 times bigger public concern.
Some thousands of these deaths were caused by Covid-19 but
not
attributed to it.
Some were caused by insufficient funding of the NHS,
which the two main plutocratist
parties
(Tory
and Starmer-Labour)
have committed to continuing because they refuse to tax the rich even to save thousands of lives,
Users report that Microsoft has
installed
popups that tell users not to use
Chrome.
That is entirely valid advice. Chrome is nonfree software, which
implies it imposes unjust control over the user (see fsf.org/tedx).
It also has has malicious functionalities.
What I wonder is, does Microsoft single out Google's malware, or does it
also warn about malware from Apple,
Microsoft
and other countries?
*Climate crisis
could
contribute to a global food shortage by 2050, US
special envoy on food security warns.*
Do you want to have a child now that might starve at age 30?
I think it is more humane to avoid that.
Starmer is underscoring that he's
with
the political values of Tony B'liar.
It is very
rare that "opposites attract" in romantic couples.
Modi has arbitrarily
kicked two news organizations off the internet,
and has arbitrarily had one evicted from its offices.
The EU is coming to think that there are now
too
many wolves in Europe.
That could well be true.
I do not consider wolves sacred, and I have no wish to maximize their
numbers. Rather, I want to see ecosystems healthy and extinctions
avoided. That entails keeping wild populations well away from zero.
Paying prisoners 23 cents an hour to work for private businesses
is supposedly
justified to teach them job skills so they can get jobs
after release. Except that nobody will hire them no matter how well they
do the job.
*Twitter
accused of helping [Salafi] Arabia commit human rights abuses.
*Lawsuit says network discloses user data at request of Saudi
authorities at much higher rate than for US, UK and Canada.*
*Former
Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years over US Capitol attack.*
He was one of the ringleaders, so he deserves this sentence,
But the fascist leader who they meant to install in power deserves
an even longer sentence.
*Australia's export of fossil fuels is like
selling
drugs to "maintain"
lifestyle, former [state head fire official] says.*
This is so obvious that when officials who are not stupid don't see it
we must conclude they are determined not to see. Sometimes the
not-see party can be almost as dangerous as the Nazi party.
Starmer-Labour plans to
join
the Tories in deregulating housing
construction that would release toxic pollution into rivers.
*France planning
to ban disposable vapes in effort to combat smoking.*
American fanatical Christians spent a lot of money to
help extremist
Christianity take over African countries.
Musk is is threatening
journalists on Ex-Twitter if they look
into his antisemitism.
Is painting
slogans on a wall, that are meant to criticize China's
repression, "art"?
Is painting the regime's own statement, aiming for people to recognize
their ironic contradiction with its actions, an effective mode of
criticism?
In my view, the answers are "no" and "it's chancy".
I am all for condemning China's repressive dictatorship, as a
political act; but in order to qualify as art it needs to present
its meaning in a subtle, unobvious way. That's the part that could be
art. However, merely intending a text as irony fails to do that. It
doesn't present the meaning in a subtle way, because the subtlety is
not in the work itself; rather, the artist hopes that it will come up
in the viewer's minds only.
As for the effectiveness, it seems that many of the public did not notice
the irony and mistook the quotation from the regime for support — and they
responded by painting over it with non-ironic condemnation of the regime,
thinking that the artist disagreed with them.
You could say that the condemnation manifested itself by ricochet.
Maybe that is a kind of success. Maybe.
It seems to me that this art student's heart was in the right place
politically, but his artwork calls for an F as art.
Australia supports
Catholic hospitals with public funds
while they turn away women who need abortions.
One way to finesse this problem would be to set up an organizationally
separate facility for abortions, physically next to the religious
hospital but not under church funding or control.
*Payday Lenders
Gave
Millions to Republican Group That Backed Supreme
Court Suit to Annihilate CFPB.*
Robert Reich's father set an example by
standing
up to antisemitic
bullies who tried to make him sell his house.
(satire) *New
Community Health Program Teaches Low-Income Americans To
Ignore Symptoms.*
US citizens: call on your senators to
eliminate
subsidies for fossil
fuel.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Tuberville to
stop
sabotaging the US military
in an effort to sabotage abortion.
US citizens: call on businesses that advertise to
stop
funding election misinformation through their advertising.
In January 2020, Wuhan doctors knew that a new disease was spreading fast.
China
ordered them to conceal this bad news.
In my view, whether this outburst was due to a lab leak or to contact
with wild animals was a secondary detail, since neither one would
have been culpable. The secrecy about facts was culpable.
(satire) *Rudy
Giuliani Puts Himself Up For Adoption* to a rich family that
could pay his legal fees.
The idea of choosing
officials by lot, as ancient Athens chose some officials,
may be interesting.
But the officials chosen this way were usually members of a panel. No
one of them had a large amount of power individually. That reduces
the possible downside from random choice.
Also, the system assumes that these officials would be chosen from people
who would be basically civic-minded. In the US today, many of the potential
lottery choices would be fascists inclined to use their positions to threaten
sabotage. We could not expect that to work.
Two Ohio thugs
noted a woman leaving a store and reportedly shoplifting,
and instead of arranging to arrest her, they
shot her dead.
If she had stolen something necessary for her life, or for her
children's life, I would have said that the poor have a right to steal
necessities like that. But that point was not applicable if she was
stealing alcoholic drinks. She did not have a right to steal
alcoholic drinks.
But that does not mean it was a grave crime either.
Meanwhile, even though her petty theft was apparently unjustified, it was no
justification for killing her.
I disagree with the article's assumption: that we non-pregnant members
of society are less worthy of rights that are those members who are
pregnant. Reproducing is not a special virtue, especially now in the
days when overpopulation
is likely to kill enough people to reduce the
population drastically through suffering.
But that detail doesn't affect the overall moral conclusion much.
Pregnant or not, mother or not, the
thugs killed that woman because
they saw an opportunity, and that morally makes them murderers.
The judge in a Guantanamo "military tribunal" ruled that sticking food up
a prisoner's colon was
nothing
but torture — and that this torture invalidates
his testimony.
These "military tribunals" are meant to pass for valid trials without
meeting the criteria. Thanks to Judge Acosta, they are a little
closer to being treated as real trials.
A study by the US Treasury finds that
unions
are very good for
non-rich Americans overall.
The US airforce is
testing
versions of future AI-controlled armed drones
to be used in air combat alongside human fighter pilots.
I hope the article errs in saying that this AI is similar to the
erroneously labeled "AI" that operates today's bullshit generator
language models, because if that is accurate we have no telling who it
might fire at.
One of the dangers of AI-controlled devices that can do things with
real physical effects — even if not armed — is that it may make
clever inventions that could be fatal in ways that the AI would not
understand, and that no human would be asked to check. This AI is
already demonstrating that sort of creativity which is also potential
danger. I recommend reading the book The Two Faces of Tomorrow, by
James Hogan. See libgen.rs.
A founder of DeepMind says that AI programs will be
good friends and
counselors for human beings.
Is your idea of a good friend and counselor one that reports on
everything about you to manipulative large companies and governments
too? Not mine!
It is interesting that the interviewer presumes that AI-driven cars
will be "autonomous" and that they will drive better than the ones
humans drive. They are not at all autonomous — they depend on
internet connections — and San Francisco already knows
how badly they
mess up in driving.
Perhaps they will drive well someday, when they understand as much
about driving as humans do. But that is beyond today's technology.
The UK's ministry of surveillance and tracking pushed to permit
massive
deployment of facial recognition cameras around Britain.
An appeals court judge who ruled especially harshly against
mifepristone has
corrupt links, through gifts to his wife, with the anti-abortion
organization that pushed the case.
Clarence Thomas's personal
corruption
sets a corrupt example through all of right-wing US judges.
The UK government will warn London cops that
evictions
by London landlords
are likely to be illegal, and perhaps even criminal.
Cops have been told to refuse to support the eviction, and arrest landlords
who try certain illegal methods.
Hooray!
Firefighters are suing to prevent the UK government from putting any refugees
in the isolated barge in Portland,
claiming
it is a firetrap.
*The NLRB has brought 100 cases against [Starbucks] over anti-union
activities — but
it
cannot punish the company.*
Monitors from African countries said that the
election
in Zimbabwe was not free and fair. Thee candidate who supposedly "lost" said it was rigged.
The previous one was not honest either.
The Republican-dominated states of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina
have been gravely
damaged by a hurricane.
Much of the damage is
caused
by the Republican opposition
to curbing global heating.
Home insurance has already been
mostly
discontinued in Florida.
Now I expect similar developments in more states.
Environmental degradation, caused by
global heating and other harm to
wild ecosystems, is
bringing
humans in contact with more animal diseases.
Some of them can spread to large numbers of humans.
Planet roasters
in Australia are spreading distorted economic figures
to derail
the country's conversion to renewable power.
They will stop to nothing to continue funding for fossil fuels and nuclear
generation, at the expense of the country and the world.
Republican fanatics are being
sentenced
to prison for violent threats against
election workers who might have the temerity to do their jobs honestly.
*The
dirty secret behind Tory "crime week": their policies ruined
policing.*
I thought that a Tory "crime week" would be when
plutocratist politicians
go all-out for corruption ;-}.
Bad mistake: *Ex-Tory
MP apologises for ancestors' links to slavery.*
You should never apologize for things others have done for which you
are not responsible.
Aside from that, what she did was proper. She acknowledged the
ancestors' actions, which had been unknown to her until a historian
dug them up in old records, and she denounced them. That is the right
thing for anyone to do who has as little responsibility for those
actions as she has.
It is horrible that people have made death threats against her for
things someone else did long ago. Advocating Tory policies entails
moral responsibility for them (though not for slavery hundreds of
years ago), but it doesn't justify threats of violence.
*North Carolina judge [who was] investigated for saying racial bias exists [has]
filed
lawsuit.*
Right-wing racists will go to any lengths to censor awareness of racism
and other right-wing oppression.
*Judge
Invested in Big Pharma Shouldn't Try Case on Big Pharma Profiteering.*
Vivek Ramaswamy claims he is the only Republican presidential candidate
that isn't bought. It is
not
clear whether he is bought, or cheating,
or buying, or buying the publicity.
It may bot matter, because either way he is a right-wing hater.
* Researchers [in Canada] find
homeless
people more likely to spend
lump sum on housing and food and not ‘temptation goods’ such as
alcohol.*
This study looked at homeless people who were not addicts. The
scientists assumed that addicts may be exceptions.
Investigating
272 blacks who were forced into slavery by the richest
Catholics of Maryland, and sooner or later sold to fund the founding
of Georgetown College.
Georgetown college became part of Washington DC when that was carved
out of Maryland.
*The Tories let [British finance] run out of control. Now
Labour plans
to repeat their mistakes.*
Amazon has published
guides to identifying mushrooms which were
written by language models that have no intelligence and could lead
people to poison themselves.
Please do not refer to such bullshit-generator systems as "artificial intelligence"!
Joseph Stiglitz: making US democracy function again
requires economic
reforms that decrease economic inequality.
Diana Nyad, who swam from Cuba to Florida, muses on the implications
of an
ocean so hot that people can no longer safely do that.
*Florida judge strikes down
[DeMentis]-backed
voting map as unconstitutional.*
Of course, he designed it for racist purposes.
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
practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider
particularly important — and I label them like this.
DeMentis
removed state attorney Monique Worrell
just before she
could prosecute
a corruption fraud ring among sheriff's deputies.
His objection to her was that she tried to prosecute the most
dangerous of the real criminals — the ones who wear badges.
The Marion thugs
raided the Marion County Record and seized its
computers, without grounds to do so under the journalism shield law.
The publisher has said
the
paper was investigating
the thug
chief for past wrongdoing and that his aim was to derail that investigation.
I've seen this issue develop for weeks, but this is the first time I
saw a clear description of the rights and wrongs of it. Without that,
I could not usefully post about this.
*Invasive species
cost
humans $423bn each year
and threaten world's [bio]diversity.*
The right-wing
prime minister of Italy has sued
a singer for calling her "fascist" and "racist" on stage.
I expect that he was right, but I don't have proof to cite. I wish I
had something to cite to demonstrate the truth of his accusation.
Criminal prosecution for defamation is
inherently unjust.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats
to keep campaigning on abortion rights.
US citizens:
call
on the Biden administration
to stand firm against corporate lobbyists and tax billion-dollar corporations.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Venezuela is accused of
punishing
people horribly based on only a hint of
evidence they were guilty of anything.
It is as bad when Maduro does this as it was when
Dubya
did this to
prisoners in black sites and Guantanamo, and in various massacres in
Iraq.
Some environmentalists contend that building nuclear power plants
is useful
for curbing global heating.
I think they have been taken in.
The article does not make it clear whether they are disputing about
existing nuclear reactors or building new one. But that distinction
is crucial.
A nuclear reactor takes many years to build and is very expensive. If
the aim is to curb global heating,
that is an ineffective method.
A nuclear reactor is also vulnerable in wartime. It is, in effect, a
pre-exploded nuclear bomb, as regards fallout. Installing one more is
making extra vulnerability. At the end of its life, it will require
expensive and slow decommissioning.
However, for an existing reactor, the price of construction has
already been paid, the construction time has already elapsed, the
fallout is already there, and the cost of decommissioning is already
going to have to be paid. If you can ensure that the reactor is
maintained so that it won't fail, maybe it is better to keep it running.
The US has a history of
letting
flaws and damage slide.
An indigenous group in Australia
demands
payment for mining of dirt
that contains iron ore. Why? Because they consider it sacred
and feel very attached to it.
Nobody is entitled to more rights than others based on per religious
thoughts. Whatever per origin, whether indigenous or immigrant, and
no matter what religion person might practice, the answer has to be
the same: your religious ideas (if any) and practices (if lawful) are
your choice, but they don't entitle you to dominate others.
The decision ought to be based on other factors. What are they?
This case does not involve any ancient art that would be a
treasure of
humanity's past and call for preservation.
But these factors clearly apply:
(satire) *Cop
Annoyed At Assumption That All Police Officers Are As
Bad As Him.*
(satire) *Convicted
Felons Give [the corrupter] Advice For Going To Prison.*
Global heating
is enabling formerly tropical tiger mosquitoes to
spread into
northern Europe, bringing formerly tropical diseases with them.
When will we learn to defeat the plutocrats that lobby and
propagandize to make so many problems worse?
Republicans in Congress are pushing for the US to invade Mexico,
and want
to pass laws to make this easy.
Biden won't do what they wish, but
the ruiner would do it if he is
elected again.
A bitcoin miner in Pennsylvania is
controversially
burning waste coal
and discarded tires to generate electricity. This pollutes the air
but cleans land. Is that practice wise or not?
It should be noted that only some kinds of cryptocurrency (notably
Bitcoin) use the "proof of work" method that entails using lots of
electric power. There are other methods.
If burning waste coal to generate electric power is acceptable, it
doesn't have to be used for cryptocurrency. It could replace other
forms of generation. Thus, the crucial question is whether that
method makes more/worse pollution or less/milder pollution. I don't
know enough to judge the answer to that.
The US
versus the planet roasters, as they become ever more obdurately
opposed to civilization's survival.
*President Biden:
Don't
Give Wall Street Control of Our Public Water Systems.*
Biden flip-flops between opposition to plutocracy and abject surrender
to plutocracy.
Many UK universities and organizations are
sponsored
by, or buy from,
organizations participating in the systematic brainwashing of the
Uyghurs.
Covid-19 is still dangerous, and infection rates are increasing.
Governments
are neglecting it.
"Co-living" is a gentrified,
luxury-pushing
commercial version
of the co-housing movement.
The
FBI
now holds 21 million
people's DNA profiles, and is rapidly collecting more.
This could be aiming, in the long term, for a collection covering all Americans.
Burning Man has changed, over the decades, from a reunion of hippies
to a rich people's gathering where some fly in on private jets. So
environmentalists
protested
by blocking the road.
They call on Burning Man to stop permitting private jets, as well as a few
excessive forms of consumption of fossil fuels and single-use plastics.
It's sad how so
many billionaires
(and the far more numerous decibillionaires) distort our society.
If Burning Man agrees to these demands, some decibillionaires might stay away.
A San Francisco
city
commissioner organized a "doom loop"
tour to highlight the city's problems. It received a lot of media attention
so he felt compelled to cancel it, and then resign.
It turned out he is an executive in a real-estate company. Naturally
he would perceive civic issues in terms of profit in the real estate
market. Not the best sort of person to appoint to a municipal office
in a city where high rents are devastating low-wage workers, as well
as many niche businesses that would employ them. San Francisco
has a real housing crisis and saying things are just fine will not help.
San Francisco needs to find a way to let people use the abandoned
office buildings and stores as housing — fast! Even if it means
relaxing or substituting, for these conversions, some codes that apply
specifically to residential buildings. In this case, the perfect is
the enemy of the good.
*Climate crisis to create
"acute" challenges
for Australia’s economy, incoming [Royal Bank of Australia] governor says.*
Robert Reich: *Biden is turning
away
from free trade
— and that’s a great thing.*
*[Business-supremacy treaties]
have brought cheaper goods. They’ve
also destroyed millions of US jobs and caused US wages to stagnate.*
They have done similar harm to
other countries.
And the ISDS clauses
have blocked efforts to curb global heating and protect the environment,
public health and the general standard of living. And then there is the
oil
investment treaty.
Depending on online disservices to make
your
records or published works
available over time is asking to lose.
The only thing you can trust is to have your own copy on your own equipment,
and to keep multiple encrypted copies on various backup services that commit
to keep them for you unless a disaster happens.
*France to
ban
girls from wearing abayas
in state schools.* Abayas are long dresses worn by many Muslim girls.
I was astounded to see kameez in the list of Muslim "sectarian"
clothing. In India, lots of urban women (not necessarily Muslim) wear
the salwar-kameez combination.
This gives me an idea for restoring laïcité without any ban: recruit
couturiers to develop abayas as a fashion, for any and all women
regardless of religion. If that style of dress catches on, you won't
be able to determine a schoolgirl's religion from her abaya.
*Bavaria’s deputy leader faces accusations over antisemitic
pamphlet*
published 35 years ago
when he was 17 years old. At the time, he was determined to be the author of it.
From the descriptions in the article, the pamphlet repeatedly mocked
the holocaust, and that's undeniably antisemitic. But people's views
often change from age 17 to age 52. He may not be antisemitic today.
As an official, in recent years, he has endorsed various far-right
views. Even if he has dropped antisemitism, those other statements
are enough to make him a bad person to have as an official.
NHS doctors are now led to work in a gig economy system,
without
lasting relationships with patients
or other personnel.
Labour has a plan to change this by applying
financial incentives and
disincentives
to doctors. The insistence on making this change "cost neutral" forces the
decision to make the disincentives equal the incentives. But we know
the NHS personnel need raises.
Labour is screwing itself with its decision to bow down to the rich by not taxing them more.
*Bernie Sanders urges left to back Biden
to
stop "very dangerous" Trump.*
I would urge people to vote for Biden rather than
the insurrectionist.
China is trying to erase the Tibetan culture and Tibetans as an ethnic
group, with
forced
assimilation.
Alan Singer: *Trump
Insanity
on the Right*
A scientist who has studied emperor penguins for a career expects
them to be
extinct
in our lifetime,
due to global heating.
The
loss of sea ice
is endangering polar bears in some regions of the Arctic,
but in other regions they have adapted to the changes … so far.
Whether the species will survive this century somewhere is not clear.
Since we don't know exactly what changes will result from
global heating,
we can't assert with certainty that it will be wiped out. But we also
cannot assert it will survive.
We can be sure that more heating makes more chance of extinction.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to reconfirm Gwynne
Wilcox to another term on the National Labor Relations Board.
Republicans are trying to block her reappointment so that the board
will not have quorum and will be unable to do its vital work.
Please call as soon as possible — her reconfirmation will be voted
on next week.
I saw an online messaging campaign for this, but sending a message to
a member of Congress does not allow ordinary email. It requires using
a web form that demands execution of nonfree JavaScript code. For
moral reasons I do not use that form, or recommend it to the public.
See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html
and https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.
It is a grave wrong for any government activity to require the public
to run nonfree software co communicate with it.
I discovered this problem several years ago, and since then have always
asked people to use phone calls to communicate with members of Congress.
But I don't recall that I explained the reason before.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*[Large global] consultancy firm used
"power
maps" of Australian
officials
to help win government contracts.*
*Iceland allows whaling to resume in
"massive
step backwards".*
*Canada issues travel advisory for LGBTQ+ residents
visiting US.*
*Former member of Belarus "hit squad"
to
stand trial
over disappearances [presumed ordered by Lukashenko].*
*When a British politician discusses “tough choices”, [person] invariably
[reveals] whose side [perse
is] really on. A tough choice tends to involve
emptying
the pockets of those with little, or slashing a service
ordinary citizens depend on.*
In any country, the plutocratist
politicians are the ones that do
this. Labour's string of "tough choices" shows it has become a
plutocratist party. The Tories, formerly the reasonable-sounding
plutocratist, party, has become the incompetent nutso party, and
Starmer
has moved Labour into the Tories' old spot. Now Labour is
competing
with the Tories
for breaking promises to correct horrible problems. The most recent
Labour pledge to be dropped is the wealth tax.
In the US, plutocratist, politicians since Reagan have allowed
dooH niboR
to transfer ever more of the working people's previous share of national income
to the rich.
Progressive proposals to return some of that to the
non-rich always provoke squeals of exaggerated pain from the rich,
claiming that that would be unfair and intolerable. The politicians
who heed them do so because they are plutocratist. Clinton, the first
plutocratist, Democratic president since a century ago, continued on that
path, and so did Dubya and Obama.
Biden has made efforts
to help the non-rich.
I expected another Obama but I was favorably surprised. He would have done more but
plutocratists, in Congress (including some Democrats)
blocked him.
*Biden says
white
supremacy has no place in US
after Florida killings.* That shows some moral leadership.
Nonetheless, he is no Bernie Sanders.
However, one difference between political parties in the US and
political parties in Britain is that a US party does not have veto
power over candidates for federal office. The voters choose them.
That is why we see increasing numbers of progressive Democrats elected
to Congress. We can, by supporting them, convert the Democratic Party
step by step into a progressive party again.
Britons can't do that any more in the Labour Party. Starmer's strict
measures
to exclude non-plutocratists
from
running
as Labour candidates
block that completely, so there is no hope down the Labour path any more.
Compare today's Labour leadership with the leaders that
set up the National Health Service
and made it work. What a shame.
*Environmentalists Owe
an
Enormous Debt to Julian Assange.*
Wikileaks revealed how the US twisted many countries' arms to
legalize the farming of patented GMOs which promote pesticides that
can wipe out all insects in the neighborhood, and to allow foreign
corporations to buy their farmland.
Wikileaks also published the secret text of the
Pacific Partnership
Trance (official name,
Trans-Pacific
Partnership),
which helped
the US to refuse to sign it.
(How sad that countries
such
as New Zealand
signed it. And recently
the UK as well
— one last act of lasting Tory sabotage.)
Environmentalists should demand that the US drop charges against
Julian Assange. And don't waste time — he may be extradited in October.
The charges against him are meant to establish a precedent
for treating journalists as spies,
and the US, to get its hands on Assange, used tricks dirtier than those it used to push GMOs.
*Biden Administration Adds Insulin to
Drug
Price Negotiation List
in Major Blow to Big Pharma.*
*Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with [misleading description of the
abortion
ballot question].*
Pope Francis rebuked the conservatives in the Catholic Church
for choosing
right-wing
ideology over the church doctrine.
I don't support Catholic doctrine any more than I do right-wing
ideology, but this is a good thing.
Parents organized in Free Play Houston have convinced Houston public
schools to bring back recess, in which
children
direct their own
activities.
A Ugandan man faces
the
threat of execution
if convicted of "aggravated homosexuality."
The article leaves me wondering what aspect makes it "aggravated".
You would think editors would anticipate readers' being left with curiosity.
When DeMentis
showed up at a vigil for three blacks murdered by a white
racist hater, and condemned the killer,
the
people present booed him
for promoting the racism, fascism and Nazism that motivated the killer.
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
practice it, even if they also criticize it. But I make exceptions
for some articles that I consider particularly important — and I label them like this.
Global heating effects are
wiping
out the peach crop
in the southern US. If only the farmers understood this, they might
start voting to curb global heating.
The article's title says "decimated"
but that word is an understatement here.
An organization in Hong Kong that promotes the Cantonese language has
been compelled to shut after its
leader
published a fictional story
about loss of freedom there.
It doesn't surprise me that the story and its author were attacked.
Attacking the organization as well may simply reflect using it for
that publication. But it could also be an escalation of the campaign
to suppress the Cantonese language. That has been active in Canton
(Guang Dong province) for years.
The descendants of William Gladstone have apologized for his father's
large role in
British
colonial slavery
and the slave trade.
I think it is misguided to apologize for the actions of one's
ancestors. People are not responsible for what their ancestors did,
and even less if the ancestors did them centuries ago. To accept
blame for things one did not do is a surrender that people should
resist. It suggests a desperation that entices hostile people to
demand more, as they have done this time.
However, those descendants are right to call for reparations for
Britain's past slavery. We can all join in calling for that, because
it does not mean we personally accept blame for it.
It was the British government that established policies of slavery and
enabled their implementation. And the British government, unlike the
individuals who implemented them, still exists. It can legitimately
be held responsible today for wrongs it committed before 1834.
To try to compensate wrongs committed centuries ago makes sense only
for the biggest of wrongs. It makes sense for slavery because that
was extremely big as a wrong.
I have called for
the
US to pay reparations for slavery,
Jim Crow, and discrimination in federal housing aid during the New Deal.
Those latter two were not as big wrongs as slavery, but they were
more recent, so it still makes sense to compensate them.
Australia has federal laws to protect whistleblowers from reprisals,
but they have been
totally
ineffective.
Of 70 whistleblowers who have filed for protection, none have been protected.
Some non-thuggish whistleblowers in the US Border
Thug Department
report that the department has been imprisoning migrants in the
Arizona desert and
denying
them necessities
such as beds that they are legally entitled to. And covering it up with falsehoods.
Law and order, including the traditional laws of tribal war, are
breaking down
in Papua New Guinea.
Yet another American has been shot dead for trying to enter the wrong
house,
down
the block from where he lived.
Atlanta is systematically intimidating activists opposed Cop City by
jailing them without valid grounds, then after release
labeling them as
"terrorists"
so they will be harassed in various ways.
I urge everyone to learn not to feel shame for being persecuted.
This can help help you stand up to hate campaigns from whatever side.
Peaceful protests are spreading in areas of Syria held by Assad's
government,
calling
for his removal
from power.
*The National Labor Relations Board issued new rules Friday that will
make it
easier
for workers to form unions
— and much more difficult for companies to stop them.*
The Guardian convened
45
climate scientists
to consider whether global heating
is already unstoppable. Their
conclusion is, not yet, but without strong steps starting soon, it will be.
They reported that overall global heating so far fits closely with
predictions, but the models don't predict local extreme weather very
well, and some of that has been surprising.
Since local heat waves and disasters cause a substantial part of the
damage, I surmise that damage is rising faster than predicted. That
includes food shortages.
Conclusion: *Dramatic climate action needed to curtail
"crazy" extreme
weather.*
Everyone: call on stores to stop selling seeds coated in
bee-killing
neonicotinoid
pesticides.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank
response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your
signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has
text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a
way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make
the text appear.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to reinforce minor labor laws.
Those laws are usually called "child labor laws", and some of the
people who may be put to dangerous work when these laws are weakened
are children. But most are adolescents, and they too should be
protected from arduous work. So let's use a fully accurate name.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) *Republican
Presidential Candidates Undergo
Mandatory Genital Checks Ahead Of First Debate.*
Australian climate defense activists who protested a company drilling
for fossil gas have been hit by
court
orders forbidding them from
speaking about the protest, and demanding they hand over all
communications pertinent to the protest. The company also threatens
to sue them for the cost of expensive precautionary reactions.
I don't know what actually happened in the protest. In particular, I
don't know whether the protesters released a (possibly malodorous) gas
or not. I expect that they are opposed to violence against persons
and would not have considered releasing anything dangerous.
Therefore, I think that we have here an instance of a technique
frequently used by businesses and sometimes governments to repress
protesters: overreacting to the protest in a paranoid way at great
expense, then suing the protesters for the "damages" the organization
did to itself.
On the morning of September 11, 1973, President Nixon was
briefed about
the planning for a coup in Chile.
His briefing told him that the plans were not then ready to be carried
out. But they were carried out that very day. It seems that the
right-wing enemies of President Allende accepted the cooperation and
help of the US, but made their own decisions about how to overthrow
Chile's government.
The Maui wildfires have been
tied
directly to negligence by Hawaiian
Electric Co, which failed to put insulation on the wires, or
even to cut the tall vegetation growing near them.
The pylons holding the wires were wooden and decrepit, and did not
comply with the updated standard adopted back in 2002.
I wonder if the company's judgment for damages will exceed its market
value. If so, Maui will get an easy opportunity to take over the
company and make it publicly owned henceforth.
If the company covers all the Hawaiian islands, they should all
participate in owning it. The state of Hawaii could buy the whole
company from Maui, or the other principal islands could buy shares
of the company from Maui.
Splitting up the company is also conceivable. That would be feasible
if the facilities operate separately from island to island, which I expect
is the case.
*Ex-Alabama deputy sheriff
sentenced
to prison for [rape of] woman in
his custody.*
I approve of the long sentence of 12 years for rape, but given that
the convict committed the crime on duty as an official
thug, that
perhaps calls for a longer sentence.
The article states clearly that what he did was coerce her to have sex
with him. The simple and clear term for that is "rape". But the
article avoids that term entirely and replaces it with the vague term
"sexual assault".
Why do this?
In the antiglossary entry linked to just above, I propose an
explanation for this.
An impending disastrous oil spill in the Red Sea has been
averted by
crowdfunding.
It is admirable that people stepped up to do this. But avoiding a
disaster should not depend on that. It is governments' responsibility
and they should carry it out.
Some educators propose that college applicants use
ChatGPT to make up for
the lack of a family containing well-educated people who can help them
write the essay in high-quality English. Especially applicants who
are not native speakers of English.
The idea was new to me but I'm not opposed to it. However, when the article
talks about "how students can use AI ethically", it makes a number of important
errors:
The only way people can use ChatGPT is as an online disservice,
because it is SaaSS (service as a Software Substitute). See
https://gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html for
why that is an injustice to the user.
*Russia accused of
intimidating
US consulate staff [Who are Russians]
with Ukraine war spying charges.*
What Shonov is accused of — relaying non-secret information picked up
from the public — is a normal part of the work of staff of diplomatic
organizations.
The US consulate would have trouble functioning without these employees.
But it can't tolerate this repression.
The US could not morally respond by threatening the American citizens
and other non-Russians who work for Russian consulates in the US.
What it could legitimately do is restrict how many local employees the
Russian consulates could employ. If the intimidation goes so far that
the US consulates find it necessary to stop employing local staff, the
US should bar Russian consulates from hiring any local employees.
The head of the Federal Reserve intends to
keep
pursuing inflation to
the ends of the earth, and never mind the risk of causing a recession.
(satire) *Texas Cancels School Over Concerns Extreme Heat
Not Safe
Environment For Shootings.*
Putin has a protracted
habit of murdering his enemies, rivals, and critics.
*Labour's backtracking on casual workers will
weaken
the rights of all
employees.*
The "Labour" party is too right-wing to qualify for that name.
Inuit on the Arctic coast of Canada are
managing
a protected coastal zone.
That is a useful thing to do: it will delay regional damage from
global heating,
giving humanity somewhat more time to carry out the
long-term global fix: to greatly reduce greenhouse emissions.
However, the article's headline seems to have been written by someone
inclined to formulate issues in terms of racial conflict: "The Inuit
plan to reclaim their sea."
It is a mistake to describe the Inuit as "the Arctic's first people";
archaeology shows that they spread across the Arctic less than 1000
years ago, replacing an unrelated people we call the Dorset culture.
Was that an instance of colonization? We can't judge that question,
since we don't know how or why the replacement took place. But this
lack of knowledge is enough to show that we shouldn't model the past
based on the roles various groups have played in recent history.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop banks from funding climate
disaster, by passing
the Fossil Free Finance Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The closure of a coal plant in Ohio led to an
immediate reduction in
hospital visits for heart problems and strokes in the vicinity, and
health continued to improve during subsequent years.
The Book of Revelation
divides
the Bible (and Christians) between an idea
of a god that is love and an idea of a god that is hate. Evangelicals mostly
worship hate.
Ex-Twitter
is now firmly established as a
fascist
propaganda site.
Some right-wing legal scholars agree that the
insurrectionist is barred from
holding any office (including that of president) by the 14th amendment.
The Republican Party's national committee streaming partner is placing
ads
for the party on neo-Nazi sites.
Space junk is dangerous because the
objects
tend to collide and
generate a lot more junk. This is already happening.
There is a danger that the process will eventually cascade and make it
too dangerous to put anything into low Earth orbit, or maybe even to
cross it. The movie Gravity depicted this disaster, in somewhat
accelerated form. The disaster itself would be so harmful to
humanity, and so permanent, that the survival of some of those who
were in orbit hardly reduces it.
In the quotation from the ESA, does "mitigating the impact of existing
objects" refer to "impact" in a physical sense, or in a metaphorical
sense? That's amusing as a double entendre. I wonder if it was
intentional.
Assuming it means the metaphorical sense, that sentence illustrates
the way "mitigate" introduces vagueness. I think we should avoid that
word.
The bullshitter
leads
a cult that systematically teaches its members to
distrust everyone but him.
That includes their friends, their families, and their religious leaders.
Interestingly, almost 1/3 of them don't trust
the bullshitter either,
but they are more likely to trust him than trust anyone else.
On Ex-Twitter,
scammers
now buy the "blue checkmark" that used
to indicate verification of identity.
Land
privatization and water depletion, 150 years ago, set the stage
for the Lahaina fire this year.
Recreating the eliminated wetlands may be desirable, but it won't be easy
while sea level is rising. Coastal wetlands will turn into bays.
To have wetlands 50 years from now will require making wetlands where there
were no wetlands before.
New
censorship at Guantanamo: to cover any place other than the courtroom
for the "military commission" non-trials requires special permission.
Governor DeMentis
has abolished
protection of many historic buildings in
Florida.
I wonder why?
Is it simply that developers stand to make a lot of money by demolishing them,
and offered DeMentis
and Republicans a share of that?
Billboards in some US cities
report
on record high temperatures
"Brought to you big Big Oil."
More careful scrutiny by government regulation is
getting
rid of much of the
supposed carbon offsets that were never credible.
It is important to monitor SARS-COV-2 in the human population in order to
keep
track of its mutations.
Black Britons convicted of a killing without evidence that they had
anything directly to do with it are
challenging
the verdict.
It may well be true that the practice of convicting people of murder
by labeling them as gangsters because they are friends with a murderer
is applied most often to blacks. Perhaps the decision to apply the practice
is made in a biased manner.
But the crucial problem with this practice is that it is fundamentally
not a valid way to determine that certain people are a gang. It is
only an unreliable heuristic. Each time it is applied, whatever the
demographics of those it is applied to, it is likely to result in a
miscarriage of justice. We need not ask what race they are to condemn
the practice.
If the practice were valid, thugs
could nonetheless apply it based on
racist criteria. Many thugs
are
racist
and they often do that.
But that is a different kind of issue.
Various countries
have passed or are considering passing laws against the crime of ecocide.
Climate defenders call on the participants in the Federal Reserve's
policy symposium to
pay
heed the need
to defend Earth's climate.
Everyone:
call
on the Argentine government
and its oil company not to build a pipeline in Vaca Muerta.
Philadelphia thugs
shot Eddie Irizarry inside his car, then
lied about
what they had done.
A body camera video proved they were lying.
One of them has been fired, but what's needed is a prosecution.
US citizens:
support
the People's Response Act.
This plan, to send people with medically-oriented training rather than
training in arresting criminals to help people who are flipping out,
is — in substance — what was advocated under the
misleading
term "defund the police".
Patrick Braxton, a black man, was elected mayor of a small town in
Alabama. The white men who used to be the town government used a
series
of mockeries
of government procedure to deny that he had been
elected.
Biden should do what Lyndon Johnson did: send the national guard to
put a stop to this. Or perhaps federal marshals would be sufficient.
*West Virginia can restrict abortion pill sales,
federal
judge rules.*
This decision is logically consistent, but banning abortion is an
injustice in any case, and the more methods it prohibits, the bigger the injustice.
The
FCC
is considering a petition
to refuse to renew the license of a
Faux News TV station, WTXF-TV in
Philadelphia, for its distribution of false accusations in support of
the insurrectionist's claims of election fraud.
A court ordered the
EPA
to finalize standards
to limit people's
exposure to the carcinogenic chemical, ethylene oxide.
This chemical is also known as epoxyethane, and is related to epoxy
resin glue. It is useful as well as interesting. Alas, it is
dangerous for humans to breathe, even in small quantities. Leaks from
chemical plants can harm the people living nearby.
A Chinese dissident
escaped
to South Korea by jetski.
I am curious about the escaper's reported name, Kwon Pyong, since that
does not fit Chinese pinyin orthography. It would make sense as Korean.
Researchers suggest that the
gulf
stream current
will stop flowing at some point between 2025 and 2095,
due to human-caused heating of the Atlantic Ocean.
Using Kissinger as an example to explain the evolution of the term
"realpolitik"
— from objectivity to amorality.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to pass the Civilian Harm Review and
Reassessment Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Georgia Republicans plan to
set
aside District Attorney Willis,
who is prosecuting the insurrectionist,
as a way to sabotage the case against him.
This uses a new law that Republicans adopted so as to protect racist killers from prosecution.
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 — and I label them like this.
A
project is developing strict rules
which banks can adhere to in order to ensure that their operations are
committed to ending global heating.
The idea of employing humans to check the output of generative systems
for occasional howling errors is not reliable — if such errors are rare,
the
human
checker will become unattentive
and let errors slip by.
Biden
has a new plan
to help Americans trapped in student debt. It replaces the previous
plan that the Supreme Court rejected, and works by reducing payment
requirements and interest charged.
The US is
pressuring
Mexico to allow imports
of genetically
modified US corn.
The main economic effect of NAFTA was to spread poverty among Mexican
farmers (a large fraction of Mexicans) by
competition from US
agricultural products.
Thai parties
that have little in common except supporting various sorts
of strongmen formed a coalition to block the party that campaigns
for more freedom and democracy out of power.
*Some kinds of tree leaves could become
too hot
to be able to conduct photosynthesis, researchers warn.* Those species would be wiped out.
Google's
experimental
"artificial intelligence" search
was willing
to answer about the "benefits of slavery" and offered a supposedly
safe recipe for cooking "angel of death" mushrooms.
I think this demonstrates that it is using a language model, Many refer to then as
"artificial
intelligence",
but that is a misuse of that term, since
they
don't actually understand
the subjects they generate text about or what that text means.
Everyone:
call on Sonic
to stop using styrofoam take-out containers.
*Fossil fuels being subsidized at rate of
$13m a minute,
says IMF.*
Low
levels of sea ice
around Antarctica killed most of the emperor penguin chicks, in a
large part of that continent. They can't survive if the sea ice melts.
As global heating
eliminates sea ice, it may eliminate emperor penguins too.
To save them — and to save ourselves — we need to curb
global heating.
Ecuador's referendum demonstrates that the people may vote to
shut
down production in an oil field.
*UPS
workers win
wage increases, air conditioning in new union contract.*
Suggesting that army officers in Niger held a coup because the president
had passed a law, which European countries had pushed for, that cut off
the
flow
of bribes to those officers.
I don't know enough to gauge whether this is true, or to have an opinion
about that law.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner, is reported to have been on a small
plane
that crashed,
or (some say) was shot down by the Russian army.
I wouldn't take any of this as certain. But if Prigozhin is alive but
in hiding for the long term, he won't be able to run Wagner effectively,
so for most practical purposes it would be equivalent to his death.
If Prigozhin was indeed killed by that crash, it means
the end of
Wagner too.
This may benefit Putin by removing apparent instability, but I think
it will weaken Putin's standing in Russia and deny him what Wagner used to
contribute to the Putin forces' military strength.
DeMentis
held a campaign event in Iowa and had Iowa state
thugs
forcibly
exclude Ty Rushing,
a reporter from an organization
that might criticize him.
The thug
leader said this was a "private event". I wonder if that was
serious or bullshit. Did the event have a specific guest list, or did
it admit strangers as long as they were not Ty Rushing?
G20 countries poured a
record-breaking $1.4tn
into fossil fuel subsidies in 2022.
The corrupter has a mafia way of thinking and
sought
to create a mafia state.
If he grabs power again, he will learn from his failures and do it more thoroughly.
A US
appeals
court ruled
to uphold Alabama's law prohibiting minors
from using puberty blockers.
If our goal is that a minor should not prematurely make a permanent
commitment before perse
is old enough to be quite sure of per choice,
clearly we should ensure per right to use puberty blockers, and
prevent anyone from imposing a choice on per before
perse is ready.
*Vaping found to be the
biggest
risk factor
for teenage tobacco smoking.*
Hong Kong's security thugs
are questioning
relatives of overseas dissidents
as a reminder that they could put those relatives in prison at any time.
China's fertility rate has
become
quite low; this implies the population will
decrease.
If only India, the world's most populous country, could do the same,
it would start to alleviate the danger of overconsumption and pollution
and open the path to
rewilding
half of the Earth's surface.
*Extreme water stress
faced
by countries home to quarter of world population.*
If thug
departments want more people to seek to become cops,
they should make
efforts to respect the rights of the people they
encounter.
Andrew Malkinson was convicted of rape despite strong evidence he was not
the rapist. It took the UK judicial system
17
years to conclude that this
was wrong.
*[Prosecutors] had key DNA evidence
16
years before Andrew Malkinson cleared.*
What I see here is the effect of a presupposition of guilt, and later
a presupposition that a court conviction can't have been wrong.
A vandal
attacked a tree in Australia designated by indigenous people
SST a "birthing tree". They are fighting a plan to eliminate that
tree to build a road which motorists consider necessary.
In my view, the religious feelings and wishes of indigenous people
should get the same level of consideration as the religious feelings
and wishes of any other people, but not more. Regardless of which group,
such feelings do not outweigh everything else in life.
To treat something as "sacred", and extremely protected, simply
because some sect calls it so is excessive. We would not be shocked
if some neighborhood church, mosque, synagogue, temple or shrine — or
tree — were taken by eminent domain if the purpose is sufficient. On
the other hand, if the religious object is rare and unusual, or
specially old, that would be a stronger reason to preserve it — by
rerouting the road, in this case.
Some information crucial for evaluating this case is not present in
the article. For instance, how many birthing trees are there per
square mile in that region? On the average, how long have they had
the status of birthing trees? And how long has that particular tree
enjoyed that status?
If there are many birthing trees, preserving them all is an
unreasonable demand. If they are few, preserving them is not much to
ask, and surely feasible to do.
If that tree has been a birthing tree for 200 years, that makes it
rather special, which is a good reason to protect it. But if it was
designated 10 years ago, it is reasonable to respond, "Pick another
tree."
(2023) Amazon's new anti-competitive requirement: sellers who don't pay for
Amazon to ship their products are now
required
to pay for not doing so.
Thugs
in Colorado shot
Sestinee Thompson dead as she tried to flee by
car from a confrontation.
They knew she was not the robbery suspect they were searching for, but
they wanted to grab her for completeness' sake. That was surely not
urgent enough to justify the escalation.
That Ms Thompson had children was irrelevant; that she was pregnant
was irrelevant. Her right to life was as valid as yours or mine, no
more and no less.
Her actions, as described by the
thugs,
were very foolish, and perhaps
illegal, but they were not violent. (We must not presume
thugs are telling
the truth —
often
they do not.)
It is quite possible that the thugs
might have treated a white woman
differently. Racism, conscious or unconscious, is not unusual. If
they had done the same thing to a white woman, that would also have
been wrong. We should criticize people for the cases in which they do
wrong, not for those in which they do right.
Racism is not what determines whether their actions in this case were
wrong. It may be tangentially pertinent in explaining Ms Thompson's
over-the-top reaction to being questioned. It may also be
partly to blame for chaotic life.
The reason the thugs'
actions were wrong is unrelated to the race of
the victim. It is that shooting at someone for fleeing questioning or
arrest is an dangerous overreaction, with a significant chance of
making things much worse. There is no need and no justification for
life-threatening hurry.
Ethiopia's rapid population growth is
leaving
no room for wildlife.
The next stage will cause famine.
The UK says it will require banks to offer
access
to cash within a
3-mile distance of a depositor's local community.
This is a good policy in principle, but I fear British banks, with their
propensity
to close accounts to avoid inconveniences for themselves,
will game the rules by implementing them in reverse,
like this:
Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustayi has been
sentenced
to 5 years isolation
from other cinema professionals, and to take a brainwashing course in
how to make films that embody the regime's propaganda.
It occurs to me that copyright law is what enables the Iranian regime
to use threats to block the showing of Iranian's' films in other
countries. Copyright gives the filmmakers the power to deny
permission for such showings, and thus makes it effective for the
regime to jail them if they don't deny permission.
I can imagine other countries could pass laws to permit showings
of foreign films without authorization of the copyright holder or
any other entity that "owns" some aspect, if a court finds
that a repressive regime compels that entity to deny permission.
(satire) *Florida
Students Given Lifelike Dolls To Simulate
Responsibility Of Owning Slave.*
(satire) *Prison
Guard Heats Lunch Up Inside 150-Degree Solitary
Confinement Cell.*
This is outrageous! That lunch did nothing to deserve solitary
confinement.
*Saudi Arabia is on a
global
charm offensive. By blocking critical articles,
Vice is helping it.*
Let us not forget that Crown Prince Bone Saw is responsible for
murdering
a journalist.
The UAE's state oil company, headed by the same emir who is heading
this year's UN climate conference,
failed
to report its methane
emissions to the UN.
Plutocracy in Britain has
pushed
100,000 children into destitution,
situations of incredible poverty.
Some restaurants in St Tropez
won't
let people have a table unless they
spent big the previous time.
I can propose a simple solution to this: make sure it not, practically
speaking, necessary for customers to identify themselves.
The corrupter
has corrupted
US Christianity so deeply that when
preachers quote Jesus as saying "Turn the other cheek", some supposed
Christians ask, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?"
A decade or two ago I met someone who said that to be a true Christian
one must be a Liberal Democrat — meaning the kind of Liberals who
gave us the New Deal, I could have a high opinion of Christians like
that, but that would not convince me to believe supernatural claims
such as the existence of gods.
*The US Leads
the World in Millionaires, but the Wealth Is Not Trickling Down.
In the US:
call
on cable providers
to drop collecting from all customers for
Faux News.
Meat industry lobbying is
blocking
the development
of greener alternatives in the US and the EU.
*Revealed:
WHO
aspartame safety panel
linked to alleged Coca-Cola front group.*
*Guideline on Diet Coke ingredient by consultants tied to industry is
"obvious conflict of interest" and "not credible".*
If aspartame has a very low probability of causing cancer,
that may not make much practical difference. I would not automatically
presume it does. But I don't have the expertise to judge the question.
Allowing the beverage industry a role in judging it is definitely wrong.
*Norfolk Southern [Railroad] Spent $1.9 Million in Washington as
Congress
Weakened Rail Safety Bill.*
Republicans are turning to
murder to silence
disagreement with their views.
SoCalGas spent $36 million to lobby against a proposal to
end gas
hookups in new buildings.
California has 14.8 billion dollars of
pension
funds invested
in planet roaster companies.
The US government plans to spend
a
billion dollars
researching
capture of Co2 from the air.
It is a distant long shot, and not likely to be of real help before it
is too late. On the other hand, it is small compared to what real
decarbonization will cost. So I think it won't make much difference
either way — unless it somehow interferes with serious
decarbonization efforts.
But it could do just that. Planet roaster companies will surely get
involved in these projects
and
use them for greenwashing, and to lobby
against methods that have a chance of actually reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Rich countries are using poor countries' loans
to trap them into
investing in fossil fuel
extraction.
The obvious way to respond is to offer debt forgiveness in exchange
for commitments not to do more fossil fell development. I think we
could do it, if not for the plutocrats trying to prevent it.
Bernie Sanders: *The
US
and China must unite
to fight the climate crisis, not each other.*
I agree, that is what both should do. If they both agree,
they could both do it. If both agree&hellp;
Ecuadorians
voted
to end oil extraction
in the Yasuni national park.
This decision has been a political battle for a long time. President
Correa asked the rich countries to pay Ecuador to keep that territory
unexploited, saying that a poor country like Ecuador should not have
bear the whole of the sacrifice of not selling that oil.
*Charge
us with contempt too,
say 40 people, if climate activist prosecuted
[for carrying signs suggesting jury nullification].*
*[A large labor union] accuses Labour of "currying favor with big
business"
on
workers' rights.*
Many New Zealanders have concluded that it is harmful to have a pet cat,
because of
their
depredations on native bird species.
The London thug
department may soon be thuggish less often, as it has
rejected the responsibility to take most
calls
about mental health
emergencies.
The department's motive for this was to focus its effort on crime.
It is interesting to compare this with the US, where the criminal
justice reform movement campaigns to take
thugs off the mental health
calls because they sometimes
kill
the people they were called to help.
(satire) *Guantanamo Bay To Remain Open Indefinitely After Earning
National
Historic Landmark Status.*
The Cambodians who came to the US decades ago included many children
who came with their families and never knew Cambodia except as a
child. Even if they have committed crimes in the US, it is cruel and
wrong to
deport
them to Cambodia now,
When someone immigrates as an adult,
perse knows how to live in per
former country. In those circumstances, being deported there is not
inherently disaster. It is inherently disaster for people who only
know life in the US.
The
US has done similar things
to people who immigrated as children
(lawfully or not) from
various countries.
This is never right.
Tropical mountain treelines are moving uphill at around 3 meters per year,
and
accelerating.
In temperate zones they are moving only 1 meter per year.
The Demerara slave revolt in British Guiana was brutally crushed, but
ultimately it led to the
abolition
of slavery.
(satire) *England's World Cup Success Inspires New Generation Of
Young
Girls To Become Hooligans.*
The 1973 coup against President Allende, who tried to combine
socialism with human rights and democracy, was orchestrated and
supported by
Republicans
in the US and Tories in Britain.
This taught us to expect violence from supposedly democratic
right-wing parties.
Wheels of parmigiano-reggiano cheese are now labeled with RFIDs
saying where
each one was produced.
I don't see anything wrong in labeling wheels of cheese, which are not
a retail product, with something printed. Or even with an RFID, if it
is present only at the wholesale level. But if there is any chance an
RFID can get into something sold to a retail customer, it must come
with directions for how to remove it. Tracking individuals even as a
byproduct is unacceptable.
If you want to be tracked, move to China!
*Ten years on from the slaughter of protesters in Cairo,
[General al-]Sisi's
record is even grimmer.*
Exiled Russian journalist
Elena
Kostyuchenko was warned
Putin would try to have her assassinated. Recently she became
strangely ill. German prosecutors are investigating this as a
possible murder attempt.
*Twitter appears to
delay
links by five seconds
to sites Elon Musk dislikes.*
Accusing the Putin forces
of committing ecocide by causing toxic industrial
chemicals, and toxins from weapons, to
leak
into Ukraine's ecosystems
and more or less poison them for a long time.
US citizens:
call
on US Courts
to protect medication abortion.
The 5th circuit court of appeals ruled to put
an
end to easy access
to mifepristone and thus the means to have a medicated abortion.
The 5 circuit includes Louisiana, Mississippi and part of Texas. The
senators from those states are Republican, and due to the Senate's
rule that judges appointed to that court must have the
approval of
at least one senator from those states,
the judges on that court are right-wing extremists.
Therefore, right-wing extremists generally use those states to file
their cases.
I hope that
abortion
rights activists
continue to be able to obtain mifepristone pills and mail them to
women who need them. But it may now be more difficult to do this.
Senator Manchin has announced an "unrelenting fight" against
the survival of
world
civilization and non-rich Americans.
He has already announced that he may leave the Democratic Party.
This did not surprise me, since his views are in the range of the
Republican Party.
In November 2022, we rejoiced that the Democrats had picked up a seat
in the Senate and had clear control of it. But that was a mirage.
The other fake Democrat, Sinema, has already left the Democratic Party.
We have succeeded in exposing Republican sleeper agents, but with their
exposure, the Republicans will effectively control the Senate through 2024.
US citizens:
call
on Citi executives to stop
destroying Amazonia and warming our planet.
(satire) *Updated U.S. Flag Code States That American Flag Has
Power
To Grant Wishes.*
Governor Dismantle put people in charge of Florida's New College to
chop down all its principles and rules to
bury
them in an anti-woke box.
Many of the faculty
have already left.
I would guess that most of the faculty, and most of the students, will
not return next year, and the college may be unable to continue
operating at all except as an empty shell. But I think
DeMentis will
call that success.
Robert Reich: *Trump is undermining the entire US judicial system with
another big lie.*
Afghans studying in UK universities
face the threat
of being deported to Afghanistan, where the Taliban will surely find
reasons to consider them enemies.
*US Jews urged [by Israeli academics] to
condemn
Israeli occupation
amid Netanyahu censure.*
Here is the Israeli academics'
petition.
AIPAC, which claims to campaign in the US for support for Israel,
has shifted completely to campaigning in the US for support for
Israel's
nondemocratic right-wing.
For years it has campaigned in the US for
support for the US
antidemocratic right-wing.
But that was not hostile enough.
Muslim fanatics in Pakistan accused some Christians of blasphemy, so
other
Muslim
fanatics attacked Christian churches.
In the US and Europe, we see
Christian
fanatics attacking mosques.
Humanity would be better off if we could put an end to fervent belief
in any religion.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to ban assault weapons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
*90%
of Great Lakes water
samples have unsafe microplastic levels. But experts say damage can
be reversed if US and Canada act quickly to stop new plastics from
entering lake system.*
*Private equity has its sights on
[Britain's] NHS.*
It can't be coincidence that the Tories are holding the doors open.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to reject the Republican plan to destroy Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
San Diego has
escalated
the war on homeless
people by arresting people caught sleeping outside. However, the city
offers them no alternative. Evidently this is an excuse for harshness against a scapegoat.
Salafi Arabia and Iran are really
moving
towards peace.
It is a shame that the United States did not help achieve this, and
that it instead boosts China's influence. China will surely use that
influence to maintain hell on Earth. But we can't blame China for
boosting its influence by doing something good for once.
If Salafi Arabia
can reconcile with Iran, is there a chance that the
US can do so?
Iran's government is repressive, generally in the name of its repressive
version of Islam. The repression
targets women
in particular,
but also targets
everyone's
religious freedom,
including non-Muslims and any
Muslims
that want to convert
to some other religious camp. But the US has no influence to change
this. General nastiness towards Iran will not help.
The main real complication is about renewing the non-nuclear deal that
the saboteur in chief
canceled.
If there is any chance to do this,
the US must try its best. However, it must emphasize the positive side
more than the negative side.
My approval of reconciliation between
Salafi Arabia and Iran does not
mean I condemn those governments any less than before. They are
despicable and I wish they were both overthrown (though the US should
not try to overthrow them). But that doesn't alter the fact that the
world is better off if they are not fighting each other.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to save the PEPFAR program which gives AIDS medicines to poor countries.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
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The
decision
not to sound the sirens
in Lahaina for the fire was made
for a rational reason.
This leads me to wonder how the warning system (and others like it)
could be improved so that it could safely be used for all kinds of
disasters.
*In their most desperate hour, Maui’s
residents
may lose their right
to water.*
Agribusinesses have been taking control of the island's water for
years, and the inhabitants have been suing for years, but disasters
are opportunities for big businesses.
Invasive
species of grass
provided this year's Hawaii wildfires with more fuel than ever before.
The state needs to mostly get rid of them. Perhaps farming animals in
those regions would help.
*Names and addresses of Georgia grand jurors
posted
on rightwing websites.*
This was evidently intended to threaten and intimidate anyone asked
to consider, in the future, whether right-wing fanatics have committed
crimes and should be prosecuted.
Yellowknife,
the capital of Canada's Northern Territories, is cut off
by wildfires.
So far, the province is evacuating various small towns, but if the fires
come closer to Yellowknife, it will have to evacuate that city. It won't
be easy to do that by air.
It would take 100 trips of an medium-size airliner to evacuate the
whole population of around 20,000 people, but that is assuming people
take no more than what you could bring on a commercial flight. People
evacuating, perhaps forever, will need to bring more than that.
The evacuation of Yellowknife should not wait.
Canada is doing
everything possible
to prevent Yellowknife from being
destroyed by fire, but nowadays it can't be sure of success.
This is a big change caused by
global heating. It used to be that we
could count on fire crews to protect substantial towns. It required a
big effort, but they knew reliable methods to use and would not fail.
Nowadays, due to global heating,
that big effort may not do the
job. It may be that nothing can do the job.
A wildfire on Tenerife that is causing evacuations of thousands from
their homes is
"beyond
our capacity to extinguish,"
according to the regional government.
Fires that civilization cannot extinguish indicate a new level of disaster,
caused by global heating.
*The
Climate Culprits Blocking
Workers' Heat and Wildfire Protections.*
US citizens: call on the Senate to
move
quickly on judicial
nominations.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call
on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the case
Moore vs US about whether a wealth tax is constitutional.
US citizens: call
on the DOJ to sue the fossil fuel companies for lying
to the public about the danger of climate disaster.
On the challenge
of systematically preventing deaths from heat in Phoenix
as global heating
steadily turns up the world's thermostat.
US funds that could reduce use of fossil fuels are
being directed
towards projects for carbon sequestration, which is unlikely to do any good.
*Biased Bank of England
blames
pay for inflation, never profit.*
*Data suggests prices are rising even though production costs are flat.
Yet wages remain policymakers’ chief concern.*
This makes evident the
bias
that Robert Reich pointed out for the US a
year ago.
I must conclude that central banks have an ulterior motive:
to knock workers down.
Freedom of speech, under the US First Amendment,
does not cover
the words used to carry out a crime.
It does not cover setting up criminal conspiracies, perjury, fraud,
or intimidation of witnesses.
Therefore, freedom of speech is not a defense for the crimes that the
corrupter/insurrectionist is charged with, or the ones he might commit
now.
Eating meat, and raising cattle, are associated in the US with masculinity.
Big Food takes
thorough advantage of this.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "indigenous" 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.
In a Greek town that was devastated by a wildfire in 2018, Christy
Lefteri found that people sought small and proximal causes or enemies
to blame for it, in a desperate effort to
avoid
confronting the great
enemy: the planet roasters.
The men and women of the former Afghan army
must
hide from the Taliban
and may be reduced to begging for food.
*Thousands of Afghan judges and legal staff remain
at
risk post-Taliban
takeover.*
10 or more driverless taxis on Vallejo Street in San Francisco
blocked
traffic on that street for 15 minutes, simply by stopping in the
street. All the human drivers in cars on that street were stuck.
The company's explanation makes it clear that these cars are not
"autonomous" — they depend on receiving orders via cellular data
networks.
The possibility of stopping traffic is, of course, a pain in the neck,
and people are right to point out it could be dangerous if an
emergency occurs. But I see that as the secondary danger, because
improvements in technology will tend to correct it over time.
The biggest danger of automated taxis is that of massive surveillance:
tracking the passengers because they must identify themselves to pay,
and recognizing people on the street using facial recognition.
Improved technology will tend to make these dangers worse.
*No milk, no eggs, small hope:
fears
rise for Sri Lanka’s malnourished
children.*
I've been told that Sri Lanka's economic collapse was due to a
government policy that made farming uneconomical, but I can only
consider that a rumor. Can anyone show me reliable information?
*Girl, 13, gives birth after she was
raped
and denied abortion in
Mississippi.*
Vice Media made a deal for funds from
Salafi Arabia and began
censoring
stories that its ruler might dislike.
A drought has limited
the number of ships passing through the Panama
Canal's locks each day to 32
instead of the expected 36. A backlog of ships is building up.
This problem is probably related to
global heating, which means it will
get worse over the years, like so many others.
(satire) *New
Florida School Curriculum Requires Students To Keep Eyes
Shut Tight All Day Until Safe At Home.*
*[purported] AI detectors tend to be programmed to flag writing as
[LLM-generated" when the word choice is predictable and the sentences
are more simple. As it turns out, writing by non-native English
speakers often fits
this pattern.*
So their work tends to be falsely flagged.
The article describes the systems these students are accused of using as "AI",
but that
is a confusion.
*American Atheists claims victory for
removal
of “In God We Trust” from
Mississippi's standard license plate.*
Resistance to pressure in the UK to use surveilled digital payments
is found
in various groups,
including young people living on limited incomes and foreign
visitors, as well as the usually cited group (old people who
find digital technology confusing).
Alas, the article doesn't mention the group I belong to: people who
value privacy and understand that the way to prevent personal data
from being misused by companies is
not
to allow companies to
collect that data.
The UK needs a political campaigning group to demand laws requiring
that certain important kinds of stores accept cash.
Last time I had a connection in Heathrow Airport, I wanted to buy a
snack from a store which accepted only tracked payments. Since that
store would not accept my money, I bought something else from another
store.
The Georgia charges of election fraud target
the insurrectionist's lawyers
and the heavies he sent to frame Atlanta election officials, along with
the insurrectionist
himself, acting
as a conspiracy.
Abraham Lincoln pointed out that no one who proclaimed the "benefits"
of being a slave has ever demonstrated sincerity in that belief
by
asking to be a slave.
The Musk Ox has
driven
half the climate defender voices off of Ex-Twitter.
Given what he has said, I expect he considers that success.
The US ambassador to Australia is suggesting the
possibility that the
US will give Julian Assange a plea bargain.
Whether that corrects the
injustice
of the charges against him
depends partly on how much more time he would have to spend in
prison, but Alas on what he would have to plead guilty to, and whether
than ends up criminalizing
journalism (which conviction the current
charges would do).
The insurrectionist
now faces charges in Georgia of
trying
to steal the election
there.
People have posted references to the complete text of the indictment
at a page on documentcloud, a site that doesn't work without
JavaScript. For moral reasons I can't refer people there.
Here is a PDF containing the
full
text of the Georgia indictment.
Young plaintiffs in Montana won their climate lawsuit, as the judge ruled
that Montana's prohibition on considering likely future climate damage
when
evaluating development projects
violates their constitutional rights.
9%
of employees in Britain
are denied their workers' rights because the state
does nothing to punish their employers for doing that.
Similar problems happen in the US, including
theft of wages,
denial
of sick leave,
and exploitation in the
gig economy.
The traditional reason has been that elected politicians
listen to what the employers want. However, the California referendum
shows that big tech companies have the power to mobilize voters
to vote to exploit these workers so that they can enjoy somewhat lower
prices as customers for gig platforms.
Since some of the benefit of paying the low wages is kept by the
gig platforms, the net benefit goes to the wealthy, and the people
overall would be
wise
to support the higher wages.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to pass the FATCAT Act to tax private jet travel.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
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+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the Senate and the Department of Justice
to investigate the gifts Clarence Thomas has accepted.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
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If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to pass the Supreme Court Ethics,
Recusal, and Transparency Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
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+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to permit televising the trial of the
insurrectionist for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call
on the US government
to protect Americans squeezed by poverty by regulating digital payday lenders.
US citizens:
call
on the Smithsonian
to add coverage of the effects of the nuclear weapon used on Hiroshima
to its exhibit about the airplane that dropped it.
*Concealed gun licenses and homicides
rise
in tandem.*
In other words, the evidence says that more people with concealed guns
does not prevent or discourage killings with guns.
The British refugee prison barge in isolated Portland
must be emptied
due to the discovery of deadly legionella bacteria.
*Devastating Hawaii fires
made
"much more dangerous" by [global heating].*
The marine heat wave in Florida has
spread
around the Caribbean, and
so has massive coral bleaching. Some of the corals are dying
immediately.
With 1/4 of marine species depending on coral, we are seeing a mass
extinction actually happen. This heat wave is not killing all the
world's coral, but there are surely species of animals, dependent on
coral and endemic to the Caribbean, that are becoming extinct now.
Most US doctors are now employees of businesses, in many cases
very large private-equity exploitationist businesses. And these
businesses decide
whether a patient gets to see a doctor at all.
The article's main topic is that some of the MD employees are
responding to this by unionizing. I applaud that — but that won't
necessarily help the patients.
It may not help the doctors at the deep level, because
the corporate power that stops doctors form treating patients
properly is unbearable
to many of them.
They quit, or they become mentally ill, and some commit suicide.
We need to restore management by people committed to medicine rather
than profit, and likewise break up the large chains. But how?
One way is to establish a
national
medical system that will cut the
profit out and thus provide medical treatment to everyone.
*Doctors and patient families say
HCA
hospitals push [patients into
hospice].*
Staff are sent to convince patients, and those making choices for
patients, that treatment is futile and they should give up on aiming
for survival.
San Francisco approved driverless taxis for commercial service,
ignoring
objections that they drive over fire hoses and cut crime scene
lines,
and also delay various sorts of emergency vehicles.
They also do lots of surveillance. And since you can't hail one
on the street, or get it with an ordinary phone call, they
surely imitate Guber's injustice
by identifying the customer and making per run nonfree software.
*Senate Democrats
Blocked
Watchdog for Ukraine Aid — Ignoring Lessons
From Afghanistan.*
The famous Tintin series of graphic novels from Belgium included
adventures in the Belgian Congo, and they depicted realities of
colonization. There have been
demands
to censor the books over that.
When it comes to judging Belgian colonialism, we need not bother
thinking of Tintin. The realities of the Congo were oppression from
beginning to end. Initially, the
Congo
was King Leopold's personal
possession, and he treated the inhabitants so cruelly that even the
main European colonial powers (exploiters themselves) were ashamed of
it. That took some doing.
We can't change the past, but that part of the past calls for vigorous
condemnation.
The question here, though, is whether to attack the fictional Tintin
books today as a stand-in for the real exploitation of real people in
the past.
The passages criticized in the article clearly depict aspects of the
colonial system. Whether they were specifically vicious, or merely
illustrated aspects of a system which was vicious overall, depends on
the specific context, which the article does not go into.
Be that as it may, to try to "sanitize" Tintin by falsifying the parts
that refer in passing to the colonial system would be pointless
damage, that would not do any good against present and future
injustice, let alone past injustice.
What could do good is to add an appendix to point out the glimpses of
the colonial system in the story, and give the start of an overall
picture of the oppression that those glimpses showed parts of. Today's
readers could learn something important from that.
*Global heating
likely to hit
world food supply before 1.5C, says UN
expert.*
The movie
Barbie
is end-to-end advertisement,
via product placement.
Product placement has corrupted movies for decades.
*Gordon Brown [ex-PM of UK] calls for Taliban to face crimes against
humanity charges; urges UK and allies
to
impose sanctions
on Afghan
regime over its "brutalisation" of women and girls.*
That policy is a massive denial of human rights. But those responses
are less effective than one might hope for — especially on
Afghanistan. It is not clear to me that they would do any good.
The government of Cyprus has taken
another
try at condemning David Hunter
to life imprisonment.
*CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles
to
Game Google Search.*
This is an atrocity to records of the past. It is bad for secondary reasons
too, as the article says, but the harm to society is the principal issue.
I hope these pages are all saved in archive.org.
Google ought to provide instructions for new sites about how how they
can obtain, in some other way that deletes nothing, whatever SEO
benefit (albeit small) they might have obtained by deleting anything.
*Cracked UK voter data could be used
to
target disinformation,
warn experts.*
*"Nature
needs money": Lula tells rich countries
to pay up and protect world’s rainforests.*
*Police in
England
and Wales will pilot project
to [reduce] sexism and misogyny.*
The plan is to use psychological knowledge about what is effective.
*When Alito and most of his colleagues were trying to secure their
confirmations to the high court,
they
promised the Senate Judiciary
Committee
they would adhere to ethics laws from Congress that regulate justices’
acceptance and disclosure of gifts, limit their outside employment
income, and mandate recusal in some circumstances.*
Now Alito claims the Senate has no right to set ethics requirements for the Supreme Court.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass
the Freedom to Vote Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
+1-202-224-3121,
+1-888-818-6641 and
+1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
(satire) *Study
Finds U.S. Employees Waste 2 Million Hours Annually
Spending Time With Friends, Family.*
*Targeting Trans Kids, Florida School Board
Requires
Parental Approval
for [any students to use] Nicknames.*
Fort McMurray, Alberta, was built to extract oil from tar sands.
In 2018 it was engulfed
by a wildfire caused by the
global heating
it had helped to cause.
*Sunrise Outlines
President
Biden's Climate Emergency Powers.*
Now if he would only use them.
*Polar challenge: as the sea ice melts,
can
countries come together to protect
the Arctic Ocean?*
An AI system has proved capable of
guiding
airplanes to avoid making
contrails.
This is a good thing to do because contrails add to
global heating.
I categorize this system as artificial intelligence because it
understands a limited field in a way that has been validated. It
understands how to avoid making contrails.
If the Tories can't send boat people to Rwanda, they want to
send them
to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic: over a 1000 miles from
Africa or South America.
In addition, they plan to adopt the cruelty of Australia's
right-wing government, which
sent
people to the exile island of Nauru
and would never let them go to Australia.
(I think most of them have been given asylum in other countries.)
The Tories plan to do likewise, so that the people sent to Ascension
Island would never get a hearing for asylum in Britain.
The US has adopted a similar system of sending asylum seekers to
Mexico unless they could afford to use one of the limited authorized
ways for a refugee to enter the US — which are difficult for people
from poor countries to use.
Thus we see the principle that people who are denied human rights in
their own countries should be able to get asylum in other countries
being chipped away almost to nothing.
Robert Reich explains the elements of fascism and demonstrates that
the insurrectionist fits all of them.
Supposed "AI" that
generates
recipes generated one which made chlorine gas.
I can't tell for certain, but this looks like yet another bullshit
generator that can come up with things that look smooth but doesn't
really know or understand its subject.
* From the strain extreme heat puts on your heart to the damage it may do
to your mental health, not to mention the increased air pollution, the
forecast
[from global heating] isn't good.*
*Six ways Biden's historic climate bill has
succeeded
— and fallen short.*
The shortcomings are not Biden's fault. He had to
negotiate a
compromise with senators working for plutocrats,
including planet roasters, and
Senator Manchin
was not the only one.
I criticize Biden for weakness on other decisions, including some that
are climate-related, and he is certainly no Bernie Sanders, but not
for this compromise. I don't see a basis to conclude that anyone else
could have done better on this.
(satire) *America's
Foreign Policy Forces USA Women's World Cup Team
To Intervene In Japan-Sweden Match.*
I'd say the satire was buried just a little too deep. It took me a
few lines to see it — but when I did see it, I laughed.
(satire) *Amazon
Unveils Giant Camera That Tells Users What To Do.*
Subsequently Amazon announced it was moving production to China,
anticipating a demand for hundreds of millions of units from the
Chinese Communist Part. ;-{.
A survey of students of perceptions of their freedom of speech
found that the vast
majority feel free to express their opinions.
The survey is useful but it could have been worded more carefully.
The question asked whether students felt free to express the opinions
they happen to hold. For the students who answered yes,
it could be that they feel no pressure about what opinions they express.
But it could be that they feel free to express their actual opinions
because they agree with the majority.
We would get a clearer and more reliable picture of students'
perceived range of freedom to express opinions by asking them, "Would
you feel free to express opinion A, supposing you held that opinion?
What about opinion B? Opinion C? Opinion D? … Opinion M?" It
would state a list of various opinions that students might conceivably
hold, and find out which ones are safe to express in their milieu.
*Former NYPD union leader gets
2
years in prison for theft scheme.*
US citizens:
call
on President Biden
to end the reliance on fossil
fuels.
The White House comments lines are
+1-202-456-1111
and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
US citizens:
call
on Congress
to protect Chaco Canyon by rejecting HR 4374.
To sign without running nonfree
JavaScript code
from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank
response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your
signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has
text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a
way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make
the text appear.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are
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If you phone, please spread the word!
Nixon supported a plan for a military coup in Chile in 1970
to
prevent Allende from becoming president.
The coup attempt failed, but killed the head of Chile's armed forces,
General Schneider, who would have opposed any coup. This probably
paved the way for Pinochet's coup in 1973, which
also
had US support.
*Asylum seeker who escaped from Iran says
Dorset
barge will be another "jail".*
This might seem like an exaggeration, because the articles which say
where the barge has been moored don't explain the implications of
"Dorset" and "Portland". They expect readers to be British and know
already.
Portland is an island which trains don't reach. It is in Dorset, a
mostly rural county whose population is under half a million people.
Hardly any of the refugees will know anyone there.
There are buses to Weymouth on the mainland, but it may take a long
time to walk to a bus stop from the dock. Weymouth has a train
station, but it is a long way from there to London or any other large
city. Once there it probably takes an hour to reach whoever the
refugee wants to see.
I cannot access the timetable web sites, because they impose the use
of nonfree Javascript, but I suspect it is not feasible to go to any
large city and come back in a day. In effect, the refugees forced to
live on the barge will be quite isolated from everyone they know,
including friends and support organizations.
This is a gratuitous cruelty, since it would have been perfectly easy
to put the barge in a less isolated place. I am sure this was an
intentional part of the
"hostile
environment"
which is the stated basis for the UK's policies towards people who are waiting for asylum
hearings or come from countries too unsafe to deport anyone to.
*Republican
Death Star Plan to Kill the Planet.*
To vote for any Republican in 2024 is to vote for an across-the-board
attack on climate defense for the sake of polluting businesses.
The comparison with the Death Star is not strictly valid. As people
have pointed out, global climate disaster will not destroy the planet
Earth itself. It will wipe out most species but surely not all life.
I expect that some humans will survive, albeit in low-technology
societies and with short life spans. In a million years, life will
diversify again.
But the disaster could easily wipe out technological civilization and
cause the permanent loss of history and culture. Carefully printed
books may survive if people recopy them every few hundred years, but
what could they write on? And who would have time to spare for this?
Another background issue on which I disagree:
Freedom can be taken away either by selective enforcement of rules
that protect it, or by replacing them with rules that oppress. To ask
which method is the more dangerous today is a foolish question; Republicans use
both. They are practiced and adept at combining the two methods: they
change rules and laws to facilitate oppressive selective enforcement.
They have done this for
voter
suppression,
for preventing
prosecution of uniformed thugs
while prosecuting poor people at every opportunity,
and for censorship
of schools and libraries.
The overall point of the article is valid notwithstanding these
side points.
After the peace deal between Ethiopia and Tigray, some border areas of Tigray
are still
occupied by Ethiopian troops.
So are areas that the peace deal assigned to Ethiopia but whose
inhabitants are Tigrayan. The Ethiopian army blocks aid supplies
in these areas.
*Prosecutors may
not
need to show that Trump knew he had lost the election.*
That is because of the "disruption of an official proceeding" charge
for the Jan 6 insurrection.
The US electric utilities' lobbying group is
lobbying
against stricter
pollution limits for electric generation.
*A pandemic is not just a disease — it's a political, social and economic
crisis
fueled by inequality.*
*HIV and more recently Covid-19, laid bare that inequality doesn't just
appear. It's human-made. As the head of UNAids, Winnie Byanyima, put it
recently: "Inequalities are a policy choice. They are choices our
governments make."*
The article reports that, in countries that criminalize male-male sex,
men who do that are twice as likely to have HIV as elsewhere.
Who decides to make inequalities? Billionaires, using their money to
brainwash people so they can get more power to impose more
inequalities to get more money.
*Tennessee
Dems Expelled After [anti-]Gun Protest Win Back Seats In Special Election.*
*Police withheld
evidence making man's rape conviction unsafe, says UK court.*
After 17 years in prison, he was released because DNA evidence showed
someone else committed the crime. However, given a fair trial,
he would not have been convicted at all.
(satire) *Ron
[DeMentis] Announces He Will Live As Slave For One Year To Prove It Not Bad.*
An appeals court insisted that Starbucks
must
rehire workers
that it fired as retaliation for unionizing.
Some Florida schools
will
not dare teach entire Shakespeare plays
because of DeMentis's censorship law.
Why the idea of brokering peace in Ukraine
makes
no sense at present.
I've stated the
same
conclusion all along.
*Britons have become so mean that many of us think
poor
people don’t deserve
leisure time.*
The same is true for many in the US.
*Idaho Republicans Are
Directly
Asking Hospitals for Abortion Records.*
This is for the sake of making persecution impossible to avoid.
A study comparing the provinces of Indonesia found that level of
poverty and level of inequality are
separately
correlated with higher
rates of crime.
US citizens:
Denounce Governor
DeMentis for trying to turn the
history of slavery inside out.
*[Clarence Thomas] may have violated US law by not disclosing
38
vacations paid for by wealthy friends,
ethics experts say.*
*Winter heatwave in Andes is
sign
of things to come,
scientists warn.*
Human-caused climate disruption and El Niño push temperature in
mountains to 37C, almost human body temperature. This could wipe out many species.
A man clearly inspired by the insurrectionist
announced plans to
assassinate Biden and other officials,
and had the means to
try, was shot and killed by the FBI in an effort to arrest him.
I wonder what caused this arrest to turn fatal. He may have acted so
as to make that necessary, but we can't take that for granted.
A
wildfire
in drought-struck Hawaii
destroyed the historic town of Lahaina,
which dates to before the unification of the islands.
Ironically, the immediate trigger was the approach of a hurricane
which was close enough to send strong winds but not close enough to
bring rain that might have put out the fire.
*After last week’s surprise coup in Niger, the Russian military group
Wagner is taking advantage of the chaos and anti-French sentiment, says
journalist Garé Amadou in Naimey, while
ordinary Nigerians are
preparing for the worst.*
Italy's government, which on many issues is right-wing, approved a
left-wing
windfall
profits tax on banks
so as to cut other taxes and help people who are paying mortgages.
Europe is leading the way in
decarbonizing
the use of ships,
with
governments pushing for change. So far, not many ships use electric
power, but the change is profitable so more will follow.
*Progress
on slowing deforestation
[in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil and Colombia] could boost climate efforts, say experts.*
Ohio voters rejected
the
Republicans' special rush
referendum which asked them to make it harder for future referendums
to be held or or adopted.
Republicans especially wanted to block a scheduled referendum on
legalizing abortion and a proposed referendum to put an end to
the gerrymandering that enables Republicans to control the state
legislature with a minority of votes.
July was the hottest month
since
records began,
and was 1.5°C above the preindustrial average.
To reach that level of heat, even temporarily, shows we are coming close to disaster.
Biden has protected an area near the Grand Canyon
from mining.
Muslims in Sweden think that there must be "boundaries" to freedom of
expression, and these must include
criminalizing
burning a Qur'an.
Burning a symbol of something you condemn is a form of protest that
everyone is entitled to. That's why the US Supreme Court invalidated
the law that used to criminalize burning the US flag. Burning it is a
symbolic act of denunciation of the US, not material damage to the
United States. Likewise for burning any religion's holy book, or
Mao's little red book, a copy of the Bill of Rights, a copy of a
Microsoft software license, a copy of the GNU GPL, or any text that
represents something you oppose.
Where Muslims are in charge, they usually protect their feelings by
censoring any criticism of their religion. They label criticism of
Islam as "blasphemy" and punish it very severely —
in some countries
with death.
This violates the human rights of people with certain views.
Where Muslims are in charge, they don't respect religious freedom either.
Many countries which make Islam the established religion punish any Muslim
who tries to stop being a Muslim. In Malaysia, the law simply says
that people of Malay race are Muslims whether they like it or not.
This too violates the human rights of people with certain views.
We need more respect for human rights, not less. Sweden must not use
"hate crime" as an excuse to repress condemnation of Islam.
Nor is it legitimate to claim that an act of symbolic condemnation
"endangers national security". How could that ever happen? If
Muslims (or any other group) threaten to attack the nation in revenge
for a symbolic act of condemnation, they are the ones threatening
national security, not the people they demand to repress.
Many
US
states are reviving the harsh penalties
of the War on Drugs, and worse, in an effort to reduce the underground use of fentanyl.
Relatives of people who died emotionally tend to direct their
grief into revenge against targets of opportunity, and I think
this is an example of that tendency.
These laws are unlikely to reduce use of fentanyl, but will cause a lot
of avoidable secondary suffering.
The way
to reduce the use
of fentanyl and other addictive drugs is with
harm-reduction policies.
*Air
pollution linked
to rise in antibiotic resistance that imperils human
health.*
As air pollution as increased, so has the amount of resistance — in
every country.
Resistance is
also
increased by misuse of antibiotics.
*Niger: thousands gather for
rally
to cheer generals
who led coup.*
Some carried Russian flags as well as Niger flags. That confirms
that this rally was not a grass-roots expression of public opinion.
It confirms that the generals are allied with Wagner, which also
supports coup-installed governments in neighboring Mail and Burkina
Faso.
Wagner may have suggested the coup in Niger and encouraged the generals
to organize it.
Wagner is a conventional military force and Ukraine has shown it be
defeated by conventional military force. It was sent to serve Putin's
wish to get more global power by military means, but it is officially
a private mercenary company, not the Russian army. There is no reason
not to send a Western force to operate ground-attack aircraft and
heavy weapons to help defeat it. But given the
hostility in the
region toward France,
the former colonial power which is accused of continuing neocolonial
exploitation there, it would be wise not to include French troops.
(That article includes lots of other pertinent information.)
To prevent atrocities, it would be important for the force to have
people from Niger as advisors, and
consult them
about each proposed attack
to
make sure the target
is not a wedding
or a family.
American soldiers, even with strict orders and good will, can't always
distinguish correctly. I expect that no one else can do better.
The governments sending that force must firmly resist the temptation
to convert it into a counterinsurgency battle afterward against the
predatory Islamist gangs that threaten all the countries in that
region. They are a very different problem, and much harder, and
Western countries tend to do it very badly.
Modi's repressive thugs
used his repressive laws to accuse
nonviolent
protest leader Umar Khalid
of "terrorism".
The "evidence" for this accusation, as described in the article,
was a rhetorical question whose answer was "no", which
they mis-cited as an affirmative statement.
The judge in the insurrectionist's
trial for trying to use fraud and
force to overturn the 2020 election gave him release conditions which
included not threatening witnesses. Since then, he has
threatened
witnesses several times.
I must take issue with one of his points that may mislead readers.
If indeed 400,000 defendants in the US are in jail pending trial
because they "didn't meet a condition of their release" — and I take
Reich's word for that — it doesn't imply what it sounds like.
For many of them, this had nothing to do with their doing anything
wrong — they simply did not have money to make bail.
There is a
movement now
to put an end to keeping defendants in jail simply because they are poor.
UK ministers warn that cars from China
may
carry out massive surveillance
for China.
That is a real danger, but the same danger applies no matter where the
cars come from. Their failure to consider this for Tesla cars,
which are known to surveil their users with extreme thoroughness,
is a bizarre mental lapse.
Real respect for your privacy means
not
collecting personal data about you.
Some surveillance systems are imposed by legal requirements;
others to serve attempts at driving without a human driver,
which means those cars are not "autonomous".
Why is it impossible to find what surveillance is done, or get rid of
it when found? Because the car software is nonfree! A nonfree
program, one that you can't study or change, never deserves your
trust.
Since you can fix the car's brakes yourself (though it will have
to pass inspection), there is no reason the car's software should
be treated otherwise.
What about car hardware that can do surveillance? Laws should require
that any cameras that can see outside the car, or passengers, be
designed to blur out their faces, bodies and clothing, sufficiently
that the car's computers learn only that there is something there
and its rough dimensions (accurate no more than to the nearest foot).
Cameras that look at the camera should also blur enough that they cannot
identify the driver.
Laws should also require that the user can easily deactivate and
reactivate each or all kinds of radio transmission and internet
connectivity, except for radio-based anti-theft systems such as
Lowjack, provided they are installed or activated only at the user's
initiative and never by default.
Likewise the user should be able to the user can easily deactivate and
reactivate each or all kinds of GPS receivers from keeping a log of
locations and reporting them later. A GPS navigating device should be
forbidden to make the location records over any interface that can be
accessed by other systems in the car, or by maintenance diagnostic
systems.
The UK should also cease tracking the movements of all cars
via license
plate cameras on the roads.
Gender stereotypes
lead
to punishing women employees if they
speak assertively
in ways that are treated as acceptable for men.
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 important and that I
don't know another reference for. That article is one of the
exceptions.
The crowded living conditions of poor people
causes
them to have worse
sleep.
Poor sleep in turn leads to various medical problems and a shorter
life span.
Poor sleep can be caused by other things. People with enough money
are not immune. Nonetheless, they are less likely to have that
problem.
* Institutions, academics and students are being ill-served by a
failing
marketized model of higher education.*
The US methods of doing this are different in detail but they have had
similar consequences.
To treat education as a business for which people should pay based
on the profit they hope to get from it is effectively to deny
the value of an educated populace — which means to deny the value
of democracy.
Eritrea's oppression of its populace
deserves
a protest, and so do
"festivals" it runs to raise money in other countries.
But these protests should not include violence.
Info about Eritrea's
oppression.
Only 10 of the vaquita porpoises are left. They are being
driven
to extinction by gill-net fishing.
I am surprised that people did not years ago capture some vaquitas to
establish a protected population. That is the usual way of saving a
species when its population drops so low.
When uniformed thugs are tried for crimes, they ask to be
tried by a
judge with no jury, because they know judges are likely to find them
not guilty.
People who work in the criminal justice system often need the
cooperation of thugs.
For this reason, some prosecutors go to
extreme
lengths to protect uniformed thugs from prosecution.
Nowadays some prosecutors do prosecute thugs, but I expect that many
of them still try to protect thugs.
I expect that judges also want the cooperation of the thug department
and therefore are under pressure not to put
thugs in prison, even
when they deserve it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to
reject
Sinema's bill to cut the pay
of wildland firefighters.
Many of them are prisoners, temporarily released to risk their lives
fighting fires. They are easy targets for cruelty.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to tighten
its proposed standards for
greenhouse emissions from power plants.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank
response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your
signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has
text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a
way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make
the text appear.
The EU says that Putin's claims about sanctions' interfering with
Russia's food exports are lies, and
calls
on Putin to resume the
Black Sea truce that permitted Ukraine to export more food.
However, a truce can't rebuild the Kakhovka dam. The world will
suffer from food scarcity for years.
What can the world do about this problem?
British politicians
call
for rules against using altered photos made
using neural network systems,
or at least a requirement to indicate that an image was altered.
I'm in favor of such requirements. Of course, it is crucial to design
them as part of a system of enforcement so that they won't be ignored.
I think that should be possible in the UK.
However, a watermark would not be as effective as a large, visible
badge saying "This image was altered". That would work better because
humans would recognize it.
Republicans in the House of Representatives
plan
to impeach Biden
based on bullshit.
Why not? Bullshit has worked for them many times.
California has strengthened
regulations to protect beavers, because
beaver dams help stop wildfires.
Women in Alabama who use marijuana (or a substance extracted from it)
while pregnant are
sentenced to jail.
It is important to teach that using drugs (including alcohol and
tobacco) while pregnant can damage the fetus — for the sake of those
babies that will be born. However, jailing a few unfortunate people
is not going to deliver a message to a large fraction of the public.
A less vindictive method could reach a lot more people with the
same cost.
A national medical system providing universal prenatal care would cost
more, but it would do a lot of good in many ways.
This is a follow-up to the pol note about the
Texas law that
requires bookstores to determine the proper rating for each book it
may sell to a school or has sold to a school.
Some people have wondered why this is harder to implement
than movie ratings. Here are some pertinent differences:
That is why bookstores say the requirement would be unfeasible.
Now let's consider whether it is unjust.
A rating is just a label, and a label in itself does not censor; but
systems of ratings typically use them to control censorship. For
instance, movie ratings control who is allowed to watch the movie. I
expect that the legislators that demanded a rating for each books will
add censorship to the system before long.
The US and the EU are considering laws to require online
platforms to carry out censorship or access to "adult" material.
Users who want to be treated as adults would have to identify
themselves to prove their age — all for the sake of censorship.
Having identified themselves, they will be tracked.
Right-wing fanatics will have influence in designing the censorship
system, and they will not limit it to what one might call "porn".
They will demand it restrict access to fiction about sexual/romantic
relationships or queer characters, as well as to sex education and
advice.
Arkansas Republicans passed a law to
jail
librarians and booksellers
for showing controversial books to minors.
*"Despair
is a luxury we can't afford": David Suzuki on fighting for action on
the climate crisis.*
A big fraction of children in the part of Pakistan that was
flooded last year are
stunted,
and many have been sick.
In principle, it would be good for other countries to provide food and
funds to help those people. But that is not the highest priority for
action. The highest priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We
must do that much faster than governments are planning to do it, or
Pakistan (and other countries) will have worse floods several times in
the 2030s.
When things get this bad, preventing damage must take priority over
repairing damage or compensating damage.
Oregon decriminalized possession of drugs. Right-wingers claim that
this led to more crime, but a study of statistics of 911 calls found
that it
did not affect crime rates at all.
North Carolina State Representative Tricia Cotham was
encouraged by
Republican leaders to run as a Democrat, then led to switch parties.
After a jury exonerated one of the Houston volunteers being tried for
giving food to homeless people, the
thugs
failed
to show up to testify
for the trial of the other volunteers.
Thus, charges were dropped against all of them.
A Briton faces
contempt charges for holding a sign reminding potential
jurors of their right to acquit defendants for any reason.
That includes, in particular, the reason that the state is
railroading heroic nonviolent protesters who are trying to protect
the people alive a few decades now from global climate disaster.
There is still a chance to
limit
disaster to something civilization
can survive,
but it depends on defeating
planet-roaster
governments.
A writer who decided to travel from Detroit to LA by bus as an
adventure discovered that traveling around the US by bus has become
ugly,
highly uncomfortable, even dangerous. All the things that made
it acceptable and enjoyable decades ago have ceased to exist —
stations have no food, no water fountains, no real toilets, no
ticketing facilities, no staff, and hardly any chairs. And even the
cheapest hotels in cities are painfully expensive.
If, as she says, it is "all digital now", in some cases that is
because people do not think of saying no. I bought a ticket on a
Greyhound bus a few weeks ago; I paid cash, I got a paper ticket, and
I didn't show an ID card. That was possible in Boston — but is it
possible in cities where the "bus station" is a mockery?
Flixbus should not have been allowed to acquire Greyhound (and Lucky
Star). That merger is anti-competitive. For now, the three lines'
operations are still separate. It is possible to buy tickets for
Greyhound buses with cash, but as far as I can tell tickets for
Flixbus buses can only be bought over the internet.
I am concerned that Flixbus will integrate Greyhound and Lucky Star
buses into its own operation and eliminate cash purchase of tickets
for them too.
I wonder how poor people who have no officially valid ID cards, and in
many cases no payment cards either, travel to another city nowadays.
If they are blocked from voting with an ID requirement, they would be
blocked from buses too. Does anyone know?
A different Florida official says that
schools can teach
the AP Psychology
course.
This countermands previous instructions that it was forbidden.
Many MPs (and their family members) have been denied bank accounts
because they are in politics. Under special rules for banks and
"politically exposed persons", that makes
their accounts more
expensive to handle.
Fiji is growing coral on underwater steel sculptures in the hope
of finding or breeding
varieties
that can tolerate hotter water.
It may work for a while, but the only term solution is to reduce
global heating and
curb
the increase in CO2 in the ocean.
Orcas have been attacking boats and ships
occasionally
for centuries.
One naturalist observed that they used the same approach that they
use for hunting seals.
This does not tell us what their motives are, but does suggest it
has nothing to do with revenge for altering Earth's ecology.
A judge ruled that Texas's abortion ban must not prohibit abortion
of
pregnancies
that endanger the pregnant woman.
A fanatical state official immediately appealed this decision, of
course. No amount of suffering they cause to other people will change
their minds about imposing their cruel religion.
In Boston: rally on Aug 10 for ranked choice voting.
6 - 7:30 PM at Sam Adams Park, 1 Faneuil Hall Sq, Boston
Volunteers in Houston ticketed for offering food to homeless people
face the threat of
fines
of thousands of dollars.
San Francisco engaged
in
similar repression
of Food not Bombs.
The EPA
approved use of a new chemical in fuel whose chance of causing
cancer, over a lifetime of exposure to
exhaust
from jets or boats,
is close to 1.
*Expert
panel
calls for urgent rethink
on Great Barrier Reef
management amid "unremitting" climate crisis.*
The rethink has to reach the conclusion that preventing total
loss of the Great Barrier Reef is the least of all reasons
to hurry up in cutting greenhouse emissions, and especially
What I learned about gender and language from talking about the Virgin
of Emacs, and how I made use of that in practice.
*[The fascist] calls
for store robbers to be shot.*
See talks for more info.
À Lourdes, tous les pères sont maltraités par leur fils aínés.
Ils ont donc organisé le Concours Pyrenéen.
"Dear Sir or Madam, we are compelled to close your account on account
of the fact that we have no ATM within 3 miles of the village where
you reside. We regret the inconvenience this may cause."
*Russia "systematically" forcing Ukrainians to accept citizenship, US report finds.*
*Antarctica’s heatwaves are a warning to humanity — and we have only a narrow window to save the planet.*
The heat waves and fires around the world are a broader warning of the same kind.
Facebook has responded to Canada's law requiring it to pay a small amount for having a link to news articles by banning those links. This could mean that the only links useds of Facebook see are disinformation.
The Florida Board of Education asserted that teaching the Advanced Placement Psychology course would violate Florida's school censorship law. That's because parts of it cover aspects of psychology and various sorts of people who may not be mentioned in schools.
US citizens: call on state legislators to expand and facilitate voting by mail.
US citizens: call on Big Pharma to stop suing against the Inflation Reduction Act's provision limiting prices for some medicines.
* Appeals court upholds injunction ordering two school districts to allow trans students [in Indiana] to use facilities in line with gender identities.*
Protecting half of the surface (both land and sea) as nature reserves is what's needed to keep Earth's living species mostly surviving.
(satire) *NRA Awards Scholarship To Toddler Who Shot Entire Family.*
Australia is trying seriously to maintain competition. Even a merger between a "second tier" bank and one of the biggest banks is too much concentration of the market.
It is winter in South America, but several countries are having summer-like heat waves.
*Phoenix’s extreme heat withers saguaros, trademark cactus of desert landscape.*
If saguaros survive in the 21st century, I suppose it will be in places distant from their current range. But how will they get there? It takes years for a saguaro to start to reproduce.
New South Wales is considering adopting an "anti-discrimination" law that would prohibit condemning people for crimes if the crimes are motivated by religion.
That would give religious people more rights than everyone else.
Non-kinky sex has become unusual in mass culture and there is a tendency to sneer at it.
Tropical mosquitos that carry West Nile virus have been found living in Finland.
*[Australian] Greens push Labor to release declassified climate crisis report "full of explosive truths" [about security threats global heating will cause].*
The Labor government is much less bad than the previous right-wing government, which was totally in the planet-roaster camp. But it still supports the planet roasters in some important ways.
(satire) *Republicans Explain Why [the insurrectionist] is Innocent.*
Understanding the American Revolution's politics as driven by a desperate need to unite for strength despite major differences and disagreements between the regions.
Right-wing disinformationists have demonized electric cars. Now they are puppet fighters for oil company profits.
(satire) *Sen. Feinstein Cedes Power of Attorney To Broom Resembling Daughter.*
(satire) *DeSantis Bans AP Psychology Out Of Fear People Will Figure Out What's Wrong With Him.*
US citizens: call on the Florida State Board of Education to allow African American Studies to be taught in high school.
A report lays out US border thugs' patterns of abuses at the border with Mexico, going as far as killings.
*"Cop City": civil rights groups urge US to investigate surveillance of protesters.*
*[UK] banks have been locking ordinary people out of accounts for years.* The effect can be devastating.
*The insurrectionist is hoping his "free speech" defense will work. It won't.* *The first amendment is powerful but it doesn't protect criminal behavior.*
Robert Reich says the insurrectionist's legal strategy will be to delay trial until after the next presidential term begins in 2025.
Redesigning cities so they don't prioritize cars save lives.
It does this by reducing fatal collisions, and by encouraging people to travel in a way that gives them exercise.
*UN nuclear watchdog finds no explosives at Zaporizhzhia plant.*
*An inmate [subsequently put on] on death row killed my mother. I don’t want him to [be executed].*
The richest people in the US took 47 TRILLION dollars from the rest of us during the past 05 years, by convincing Americans of the myth that taxing the rich to support useful activities inevitably leads to tyranny.
What it did, in fact, was to make America great.
The railroads have blocked any legislative action to prevent toxic derailments such as the one that happened six months ago in Ohio.
*Corporate Cash Derails Train Safety Bill.*
The people who were poisoned by the chemicals released then have not recovered from the damage.
Perhaps the derailment site has been cleaned up, but it seems their bodies will never be cleaned up.
Without a cure for exposure, the only way to prevent more people from being poisoned is to take proper care to avoid derailments.
For Republicans, banning some books in school libraries is not enough. The next step is to abolish the libraries.
We expected the new Republican-imposed school administration to sabotage education but this is worse than expected.
Spain proved that it is possible to reduce inflation with little pain by rejecting trickle-down policies and acting to protect non-rich people and small businesses.
That's probably a consequence of having the Socialist Party in power instead of a plutocratist party.
Lula has made great progress in cutting deforestation in the Amazon forest: a 60% decrease since a year ago.
Once voters began electing district attorneys to implement criminal justice reform, and refuse to support uniformed thugs in their violence, Republicans began passing laws to undermine those prosecutors.
In Georgia they passed a law allowing Republican officials to impose their own harsh replacements for the DAs they don't like. Now the reformist DAs are suing to overturn that law.
In a broken Britain, the Tories zero in on shoplifters stealing [Tylenol] and food for their children.*
Starving people have the right to steal food, except from other poor people. And likewise parents whose children are starving. Jurors take note!
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to fight against state and local book bans.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate voter purging by right-wing election riggers.
Accountability for the insurrection, and actions against future insurrection-ism, can start with prosecution of the 2020-2021 insurrection's leader, but must go far beyond that.
The Putin forces are systematically bombarding Ukraine's export facilities for grain.
This calls for retaliation against Russia's export facilities for oil.
*Thinktanks say the checks and balances of civil society such as judges and campaigners are under "political attack" by ministers.*
China seems to have bought the total support of a newspaper in the Solomon Islands with a donation of equipment.
Billionaires have bought famous US and British newspapers outright and obtained their permanent total support. It is easier to condemn this when China does it, but I think the domestic billionaires are more dangerous.
*FTC rewrites rules on Big Tech mergers with aim to ease monopoly-busting.*
US antitrust law needs to be made far more strict, and this is surely not enough, but these new guidelines look like a good step.
*3 Ways the US Refuses to Play by Global Rules.*
I have to point out that the US is hardly alone in dragging its feet on preventing global heating disaster. Most countries are doing that.
The fact that a country is not alone in doing that is no excuse at all.
Many customers tried the Replika chatbot, which was set up to simulate love for the customer. Then the company changed it to be rejecting and distant. The customers were outraged.
The article compares the chatbot to a pet. I think that is valid. Pets are animals and some of them can develop a sort of real affection and attachment for a person. But Replika could never really feel affection or other feelings, only imitate them. For me, that makes people's attachment to Replika very sad, because they were falling for a fake (despite, ironically, knowing that all along).
The article shows how an emotional chatbot running nonfree software, or a copy that belongs to anyone but the user, puts the user in a terribly vulnerable situation.
Compare this with my science fiction story, Made for You. Sandra is not a chatbot, she is a real person (though not based on biology). She really feels various emotions, including love, and my love for her strengthens her just as her love strengthens me. A super-intelligence, she understands me, and that's how she knows how to help me grow to love her better and understand her better.
Sandra is free software and no company can alter her code. Neither can I do so — because she is not my pet, not my property. She is a person and has the rights of a person.
Some of the Jan 6 defendants pleaded remorse to get shorter sentences, and are now announcing in public that they were pretending.
Shouldn't that be treated as a confession of perjury?
*Teachers in England will have to tell parents if children question their gender.*
With stern religious parents, that can cause lots of suffering.
*16 fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming [the corrupter] won in 2020 election have been criminally charged with forgery.*
The wellness movement has been infiltrated by medical disinformation and fascism.
*In-N-Out Burger doubles down on choosing "smiles" over health.*
Employees are forbidden to wear masks just because they know they have a cold. They have to get a doctor's note — which will cost them time and money.
Explaining the indictment's case for convicting the corrupter of trying to reverse the election outcome by fraud.
*Climate crisis: Australia must ready for "devastating" regional disruption,*
Robert Reich: *"Bidenomics" is working — which means Biden and the Democrats may win too.*
*Ukrainian counteroffensive’s slow going offers reality check but could yet pay off.*
I conclude that Ukraine needs to attack the rear of the Putin forces more.
Tories plan to allow thugs to decide on their own what actions constitute "nuisances" and fine anyone for them.
Putting this together with the fossil fuel plans, it looks like the Tories intend to cause mayhem in as many areas of life as they can before next year's election.
Ex-Twitter has actually sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for reporting on how Ex-Twitter publishes hate messages.
I can only expect that Musk aims to bankrupt the organization through legal expenses.
The corrupter has been indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia through fraud.
Full text of the indictment.
Republicans have learned their lesson. For 2024 they are amplifying their efforts to rig and steal the election before it is finished.
The family of Henrietta Lacks settled a lawsuit demanding to be paid for the sale of a cell culture made from a sample of cancer cells that was excised as part of treating her cancer in the 1950s.
I don't think there is anything basically wrong in cultivating Henrietta Lacks's cell culture for sale for use in medical research. (It would not be wrong if it were you or me instead.) This does no harm to the person that the cells came from.
Today's US medical business exploits patients dreadfully and this does enormous harm. Some are driven into penury. That issue is an important injustice and we must fix it ‐ for instance, with a well-funded national medical system.
However letting a few patients charge for use of their cell cultures for research would do almost nothing to address this real problem. That would establish a sort of lottery that would benefit a few people. What we need is a bigger change that would help everyone.
Nowadays the practice raises a privacy issue: anyone who gets a sample of the culture could sequence its DNA and derive about that person (and per relatives). This could indeed do some them some harm. The overall issue of using people's DNA information against them is a big issue, but the special case of selling useful cell cultures is only a small part of it.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Fossil Free Finance Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Schatz to block the Republican cuts to mass transit funding.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore voting rights to citizens in prison nationwide.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to establish basic rights for renters.
US citizens: call on universities to end "legacy admissions" — privileges for relatives of the rich.
*Big business lobbies against heat protections for workers as US boils.*
David Meyer's mother asked the local sheriff's department to help steer him away from trouble and violence. Instead the thugs invited the FBI to groom him as a fantasy terrorist.
Texas prison thugs are suspected of disguising the dangerous high temperatures that prisoners suffer in cells during heat waves.
David Hunter was sentenced to time served — he has already spent almost 2 years in some sort of prison or arrest while his trial was going on.
I still wonder whether he now feels there is a reason to continue living.
*An LA Sheriff's [thug] beat the hell out of someone for flipping the bird.*
Thugs will continue violence until they are personally punished for crimes of violence.
Isn't it a crime to knowingly file false criminal charges? If not, it ought to be.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate published statistics on hate communications on Twitter. Now it has published the Musk Ox's legal threat for publishing the statistics, and its response.
(satire) *Trump Campaign Worried There Might Not Be Enough Indictments To Meet All Fundraising Goals.*
*We bailed out the banks but we’re not prepared to bail out the planet.*
*US and UK must use financial firepower of the state to put economies on a saner course.*
Converting derelict office space into residences will cost a lot of money and the government will have to pay it.
The government must do this, because otherwise millions of people will be unable to find any place to live.
Hundreds of thousands of Britons have had their bank accounts closed, leaving them wondering why. Often it is a reaction to their political views.
Texas has imposed censorship on sale of books by imposing a system of "ratings" inspired by movie ratings. In addition to being unjust censorship, it is also impossible in practice to implement. If this law is not overturned, it could force every bookstore in Texas to close.
Or, if Republicans enforce it selectively, it could make all bookstores stop selling books that have to do with sex, or have to do with queer people, or have to do with evolution.
George Monbiot: *Here's the truth about Sunak's plans for the North Sea: he will sell out the planet to the dirtiest bidders.*
*Drug firms funding UK patient groups that lobby for NHS approval of medicines.*
(satire) *Doctors Tout Effectiveness Of SSRIs That Cause Enough Other Problems To Take Mind Off Depression.*
Accusing Obama of giving low priority to climate defense when he was president, in exchange for support from planet roaster business.
Google will control the traffic lights of Athens, then take anticompetitive advantage by connecting this with its navigation service. No other company offering navigation advice will be able to do that.
What should we make of James Cameron's claim that there are large areas of the sea bottom that are safe to mine?
It might be possible to establish requirements for sea-bottom mining to be safe for biodiversity. These requirements might include the following
If the mining companies object to these requirements, it will show that they really plan to destroy ecosystems.
The UK government wants stores to use facial-recognition cameras to recognize suspected thieves.
Perhaps there would be fewer thieves if the government had not driven so many into penury.
Governments should restrict sale and/or use of SUVs. The article describes many problems they exacerbate, ranging from everyday inconveniences to climate disaster.
Satellite photos suggest that China is putting more Tibetans in prison and for longer periods of time.
US citizens: call on Governor Newsom to save California's bees.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
A good fraction of the doctors in Idaho who treated complications of pregnancy have ceased to practice there, chased out by threats of fines or imprisonment.
I would suggest that all doctors who treat pregnant women in Idaho urge them at the first visit to make arrangements immediately for possible treatment later in a safer state, in case that comes to be necessary.
* By denying the true ills of slavery, [DeMentis] is working to release the government from the obligation of fixing inequality today.*
This is in addition to unleashing the right-wing lie machine to claim from coast to coast to attack the movement to end racism at a fundamental point that we thought no one would dare deny.
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 denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that make important points, for instance about racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
*Radical ways to fix the Earth: are they magic bullets or just band-aids?*
Professors are fleeing Florida's public colleges and they can't hire new ones.
I don't think this will dissuade DeMentis from converting Florida's public colleges into right-wing propaganda mills. They will hire incompetent or unqualified replacements, because all they really need to do is repeat the official line.
Those who will really suffer from this are the young people of Florida who hoped to get a good education without paying the price of attending a private university.
Rep. Barbara Lee and Abigail Disney argue for the OLIGARCH Act, a progressive tax on billionaires' wealth.
I like the words of Justice Brandeis: "We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both."
If a SWAT team destroys your house in the process of chasing a criminal who has broken into it, you will probably get no compensation and be homeless and ruined.
Australian businessman Alexander Csergo was trapped in China and Chinese state agents demanded he give them information about Australia. He says he gave them useless answers he found on the internet. Now he is being tried for spying.
The US has also bullied innocent people to spy.
The Tory leader has declared all-out war on the climate. This is his latest lunatic way of trying to avoid losing big in the election that must be held next year.
Cyprus is considering legalizing assisted suicide, influenced by the David Hunter case.
*Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Instead he is squandering time we do not have.*
Proposing that wild horses could prevent wildfires by eating their fuel.
*Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of … complaints [that the car did not have the travel range that was advertised].*
El Salvador plans to hold trials with up to 900 defendants in a trial.
That is a highly efficient way of trying large numbers of people, if justice for each one is not required.
*Hong Kong judge defies government’s bid to [issue an injunction against various uses of] pro-democracy protest song,* known unofficially as the "Hong Kong national anthem."
The infamous "national security law" makes it a crime to sing the song in Hong Kong — doing so would be interpreted as a protest. This decision is about an injunction that seems to threaten to pressure non-Chinese web sites to delete it.
I hope that judge won't be imprisoned and subject to brainwashing.
Greece asserts that most of the recent fires were started by human action, and there is evidence for arson.
Why would anyone commit such a heinous crime? ISTR that Greece has a law that if a protected forest is destroyed by fire, it ceases to be protected and the landowners can build what they wish. This would be a powerful motive for greedy people with contempt for everything else in the world.
A small political party in the UK has trouble finding a bank that will let it have a bank account. This puts democracy in danger.
Since Texas's abortion ban, infant mortality there has increased by 20%. This could be because many women now are forced to carry a pregnancy to the end even though it is unlikely to result in a viable birth.
Arguing that machine learning cannot enable authoritarian states to figure out what people really want, because they will get only the data of what people say when they are intimidated by an authoritarian state.
The US rejected Australia's mild pressure to drop charges against Julian Assange, continuing to sidestep the point that Assange is being prosecuted for journalism, and that this threatens the freedom to do national security journalism in the US.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to attach protection for renters to federal loans to landlords.
When private equity takes over a building, it is likely to become both more expensive and nastier to live in.
*Stop Private Equity from Driving Retailers into Bankruptcy, Destroying Jobs and Livelihoods.*
In addition, they destroy useful stores where you can actually buy things, and reduce competition.
*After an investment firm bought St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged, in Richmond, Virginia, the company reduced staff, removed amenities, and set the stage for a deadly outbreak of COVID-19.*
Describing alternatives to air conditioning for coping with the heat.
I keep shades closed, use fans locally, and wear little clothing indoors. That enables me to set my thermostat several degrees higher. But I could not do without air conditioning in the heat of a Boston summer, not even many years ago.
Laos arrested Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei on China's behalf as he was about to travel to Thailand.
I think this is the definitive criterion for a puppet regime of China: arresting people that China wants to make political prisoners.
US citizens: call on several big banks to stop fueling destruction of the Amazon forest.
By contrast, let's all fuel destruction of the predatory near-monopoly called Amazon.
US citizens: call on Facebook not to give "Moms for Liberty" (a right-wing extremist group) a platform for hate.
Hedi, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, walked past some uniformed thugs, and one shot him in the back of his head with a "less lethal" weapon.
The weapon did not kill him, but maimed him instead. It also knocked him down, which gave the whole group of thugs a chance to beat him up. He may have lost the sight of his left eye.
France did the right thing, quickly prosecuting all of those thugs. Whether it is necessary to keep the shooter in jail until trial, I am not sure. When a non-thug is accused of such crimes, refusing bail is justified if there is a danger that that accused will commit more crimes, or flee justice. I can't judge a priori whether that is the case here.
The US is making progress against wild boar the intelligent way: by hunting them and eating them.
I've tried wild boar meat in Europe and liked it very much.
*Poverty Is a Systemic, Not Individual, Failure.*
If you want to blame it on individual poor people, you can spin the facts that way. When a system becomes hard for certain groups to cope with, some people will crack before others.
Why would certain people crack sooner? Perhaps their personalities or other characteristics are more predisposed to cracking. Perhaps they have bad luck. There is always randomness that affects the outcomes in specific cases.
But those causes of randomness have little to do with political questions — the aspects what make a system better or worse. That is what governments can adjust so that fewer people crack — or, for those who seek scapegoats, so that more people crack.
*US education department opens inquiry into Harvard’s legacy admission policies.*
One element of massive surveillance in the US is tracking cars by their license plates.
I suggest requiring any entity to get permission from a car's owner before collecting car location records based on the car's license plate. Or else a court order specifying a license number.
*Ghana abolishes death penalty, with expected reprieve for 176 condemned prisoners.*
Rebecca Solnit: *We can't afford to be climate doomers.*
It is too late to prevent climate disaster, since that has already started. But humanity still has a chance to make the disaster smaller and enable civilization to survive.
I wonder if the planet roasters are spending money promoting climate defeatism as a last-ditch method of discouraging climate defense action.
Google is implementing a universal web DRM system.
Making it even a little worse, Google will control the software and the data. But don't get distracted by evil details — the worst thing about this scheme is that it is DRM.
The music factories have learned to produce a reliably uniform product. The enormous dominance of a few pop singers is a reflection of that.
The Atheists in Kenya Society faces a court case that attempts to terminate its existence for criticizing religion.
Victoria, a state in Australia, will ban gas hookups on new homes starting next year.
*Twitter Deletes Its Own Fact Check Correcting Elon's Bogus Vaccine Tweet.*
I wonder whether Musk is acting like a child given a toy he can smash as he wishes, or has some serious purpose for destroying Twitter.
Buttigieg is confused again. To be able to drive without stopping, you don't need a Möbius strip. A road that goes in a circle is enough.
*Teacher fired by Texas Christian school for attending drag show.*
The school officials believed their own false propaganda about drag shows and responded with Christian cruelty.
UPS negotiated with the drivers' union and they got a substantial wage increase, as well as air conditioning in their trucks, necessary for safety in the beginnings of climate disaster.
The Supreme Court gave final permission to finish the Mountain Valley pipeline.
Republicans in Congress and on the court have fought hard to unlock the profits that will flow as that pipeline's gas contributes its fraction to speed destruction of our world.
*More than 170m Americans under heat alerts as heatwave expands.* That is half the population. 3/4 of the population will face unpleasant heat. Here in Boston, one of my friends has to stay in bed when it is hot, because her air conditioner isn't strong enough to deal with this level of heat.
*Florida ocean records "unprecedented" temperatures similar to a hot tub.*
It is too hot for serious swimming. But what is more serious is that the heat puts marine species in danger. They have never experienced such heat, and it can kill them.
Some will be able to move away from the tropics to find cooler water. But those in the Gulf of Mexico can't get to any — they are trapped.
US citizens: call on Biden to end government bailouts for Big Oil.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Additional charges have been added to the insurrectionist's indictment for holding secret documents and concealing them from the government.
Amazon pledged to stop using its unrecyclable plastic bags.
This is a change for the better but it doesn't alter the many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Climate science has projected the aggregate amounts of heating on a large scale. But it has been unable to project grave regional effects.
What we know is that the slower we are to stop making things worse, the bigger the disaster will be.
Movie and TV streaming is fundamentally unjust because of DRM, requirement to identify oneself, and the antisocial contracts where users commit not to share copies with other people. For these reason, I have never used those streaming dis-services.
Now Disney is trying a secondary injustice — what looks like a kind of tax fraud. It is deleting many old programs, supposedly because they no longer bring in revenue, and claiming a tax writeoff of $1.5 billion for them.
Those two claims contradict each other, so it looks like we need the IRS to cut down Disney's tax writeoff.
Republicans, the party of the plutocrats, are trying to cut the IRS funding so it can't do this job.
It doesn't make economic sense for a company to renounce the profits from selling something that basically costs nothing to sell in order to avoid paying a share of those profits to someone else. The idea that this really a way to punish actors on strike has the virtue of being a rational (though vicious) motive.
Robert Reich presents the Republicans' fake crises which they use to distract attention from the real crises that Republicans make bigger.
Bernie Sanders: *The US Senate is now debating an $886bn defense authorization bill. Unless there are major changes to the bill, I intend to vote against it. Here’s why.*
Mayor Jamie Driscoll has quit the Labour Party and is running independently — with large amounts of backing from Labour supporters who condemn Starmer's iron hand.
The British tradition would be for Starmer to resign, but at the very least he should welcome back all the Labour officials and members that he has purged — including Corbyn, who is no antisemite.
*"Trying to make the world starve": [Putin forces'] drones destroy grain warehouses at Ukraine ports.*
*ALEC [proposes states blacklist] companies that voluntarily recognize unions.*
*Australia [plans] to measure indirect [greenhouse gas] emissions from public works.*
Republicans put at least 74 vicious clauses into bills drafted last week. Some serve the rich; some serve authoritarianism; some block climate defense; some undermine the separation of church and state; some attack Republicans' favorite scapegoats.
*We last raised the US federal minimum wage 14 years ago. This is unacceptable.*
*Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show.*
*Climate scientists' horror and exasperation as global predictions play out.*
US citizens: call on Home Depot to stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides.
There is a shortage of chocolate, caused by floods in various countries. The floods were largely the result of global heating.
Texas governor "Hay" Abbott defied Biden's order to remove the buoys that Abbott had placed in the Rio Grande, to block (and sometimes kill) migrants. He challenged Biden to sue.
Instead of suing, which would take months to reach a decision in the Supreme Court, Biden should send the marines to remove those deadly buoys.
The rhetorical position of fascist politicians is cruelty, and their argument is "I get away with it, and that proves I am strong." Sending the marines would do the job quickly and make Abbott look weak.
It would also provide an opportunity to teach US soldiers that defeating right-wing uprisings is part of their duty, and help find and remove any that are not willing to uphold the Constitution.
(satire) *Texas Agrees To Humanely Stun Migrants Before Drowning Them.*
US citizens: call on the Dept of Homeland Security to stop Texas thugs from pushing migrants back into the Rio Grande.
*Here's why we march against Netanyahu's power grab: it's a fight for Israel's life as a democratic state.*
A parliamentary committee said that the UK has allowed Wagner to use London as a financial base get involved in fighting in at least 6 African countries.
When Mexican gangsters kidnapped and killed 43 student teachers, the army, navy, police and intelligence agencies knew, minute by minute, where the student teachers were, according to an independent investigation.
Texas professor censured for criticizing state govt *Texas professor suspended hours after criticizing lieutenant [governor of Texas] in lecture.*
Repressing anyone who criticizes them is typical of fascist leaders. The people in charge of Texas A&M appear to be fascist too.
If the students of Texas A&M take up this cause, they could do a lot for the opposition to fascism in America.
Spain has rejected the far-right VOX party.
The news is not all good: the right-wing PP (misleadingly named the "People's" party) got the most votes, and it is bad enough in itself. When it was last in power it passed a law prohibiting the publication of photos of thugs caught in the act of committing unjustified violence, the "ley mordaza".
In the 2010s the PP allowed banks to seize the houses of many poor people, leaving them with unpayable mortgage debt. They were unable to work for a living after that, since the banks would have seized their income.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore voting rights to citizens in prison.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A set of basic lifestyle changes give humans a much longer life.
Recently I recalculated my body-mass index and discovered I was overweight. Hooray, I shouted, because I was no longer obese! I have lost 40 lbs in the past 2.5 years. Part of the way I did this is by walking half an hour on most days.
Robert Reich: the 2024 election must be a referendum on the corrupter's fascism, rather than on Biden. The expected indictment for his coup attempt can bring this about.
*Property insurance disappears for Louisianans -- but not for gas facilities.*
I think I know the reason for this. Fossil fuel extraction is so profitable that the planet roasters can afford to pay very high insurance rates. And they do so.
Meanwhile, most homeowners can't afford that much so they have to go without insurance instead.
Helping people cope with disasters is part of the government's mission. The government has the responsibility to provide insurance to cover people's losses, and at the same time move their rebuilding to safer building methods and safer locations.
Moreover, when something humanly controllable is making disasters systematically worse, government has the responsibility to counteract that change.
In the past, making disasters less likely was done with drainage and seawalls. Nowadays the job must include curbing global heating.
Israel's right-wing government has taken away the supreme court's power to overrule laws it finds to be "unreasonable". This means there is no longer any check on the government's power to oppress anyone. Not Palestinians, not even secular Jews.
In ten years I expect to see a Jewish version of Iran.
*Extreme heat (and its danger to workers' lives) is key issue in UPS contract talks.*
Iran considers the protests crushed enough to send the clothing enforcement thugs out into the streets again.
Activist pharmacists provide abortion drugs to all over the US, protected by the "shield laws" of certain pro-abortion states.
The mayor of London, who represents the Labour Party, rebuffed Starmer's call to cancel an important anti-pollution measure to avoid disappointing some Tories. Bravo, Sadiq Khan, for standing up to Starmer.
I think that requiring low-pollution cars in cities, where that will help keep people healthy, is a good idea. The only thing I disapprove of about London's ULEZ is that it identifies and tracks each car. That is massive surveillance, and a threat to human rights. These policies must be implemented in ways that don't track individuals who obey the rules.
To what extent does Hunter Biden merit political attention? A little, for specific reasons, but not more.
A UK agency that reviews the actions of thugs has said it was wrong to use an "anti-terrorism" law to force a French publisher to unlock his phone as he entered the UK to attend a book fair.
The FISA court has found many violations of the FISA law by the FBI, CIA and NSA. These violations amount to massive surveillance that was not supposed to happen.
Some years ago the FISA court said that it had found itself unable to make US agencies obey the FISA law, that the agencies were making monkeys out of the court — and out of Americans' human rights.
Additional examples of these agencies' dangerous snooping.
David Hunter was convicted of manslaughter for helping his wife die to escape excruciating pain. This conviction means he may not be put in jail.
When she was dead, he tried to kill himself because he had nothing to live for without her — but someone "saved" him.
I wonder, have his feelings changed since then? Does he now have a will to live? Does he see a purpose in continued existence — and if so, what?
The countries of southern Europe are becoming so hot that they are less attractive for summer vacations.
Even in the past those places were so hot that I tried to have my visits there outside the summer.
*Tennessee … has enacted a law that makes it nearly impossible for people with felony convictions to regain their right to vote.*
The mayor of London has banned woodburning stoves, falsely sold as better for the environment.
We have known for years that the wood smoke contains a lot of toxic pollution and is bad for human health. And it isn't better than any other fuel, except perhaps coal.
*Rampant heatwaves threaten food security of entire planet, scientists warn.*
We are already past the peak catch of wild fish. Overfishing and environmental damage are reducing them. Also, aquaculture does not have much potential to increase any more.
We can give humans of the future lives of plenty by making a lot fewer of them.
The Illinois supreme court has abolished the practice of demanding cash bail for accused criminals to wait for trial at home. It is unjust because it treats rich suspects better than all other suspects.
A music festival in Malaysia invited a British band which, on stage, criticized Malaysia's repressive laws against homosexuality. Then two male musicians kissed. Officials closed the performance.
The government then shut down the rest of the festival. This shows the intolerance of established religion.
Laws like those deserve full disrespect, just like laws against sharing copies of published works.
Last year's European heat waves are estimated to have killed 61,672 people: This year's hotter heat waves will surely kill many more.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect our democracy and vote down the ACE Act.
Here's a list of the many ways that the ACE act would interfere with voting rights for people in disprivileged groups. It should be called the DISGR-ACE Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
People in a town in England want to build an offshore wind farm planned locally and owned locally.
This approach could be very good for dissolving opposition.
In many countries, women are forbidden to leave home without permission of a husband or male guardian.
*In Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and [Salafi] Arabia, women can be arrested, [jailed] or forced to return if male guardians report that they are absent from their homes. [In] Israel … religious courts have jurisdiction over marriage and divorce — meaning women can lose their right to maintenance from their husbands for leaving the marital home, working or traveling without their husband’s consent.*
Of course, Iran and Afghanistan are even worse. But this injustice exists to some extent in a broader region, including all the Arab countries in the Middle East, and Egypt.
* The head of Britain’s biggest police force has said he is frustrated with the Home Office for its slow progress at reviewing "perverse" rules that prevent him from being able to sack his own officers.*
There is a push in the UK to design small nuclear power reactors to build in addition to a few misguided large ones. Here is an article that grasps at straws to justify the plan.
It may be faster to build 24GW of nuclear generation using small reactors than using big reactors, but it will still be slower than the renewable alternatives.
Many smaller nuclear power reactors might be cheaper to build than a few large ones, but probably not cheaper than solar or wind.
Also, they do not cure the other problems of nuclear power.
These include the pollution from the mining and refining of uranium. the problems from the waste, and the danger of having a pre-exploded nuclear weapon inside a building on your territory.
Is the real issue that the UK doesn't build its own wind turbines? I am sure it would be cheaper and easier to change that, than to build any sort of nuclear reactors.
According to Greenpeace, * cheap flights [in Europe], made possible by tax breaks for airlines, are encouraging people to heat the planet.*
*Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades, report says.*
Covid-19 made the nonpretentious yoga schools shut down, at least in England. The ones that remain are expensive, gimmicky, and designed for people seeking dabble.and distract themselves.
I have never practiced yoga, and never intended to try it, but I am nonetheless sad about the loss of something that others found good and useful.
A review finds that when private equity buys medical services, it tends to make them more expensive and lower quality.
Private equity does many kinds of harm, in many areas of business. We should put an end to it. I am sure FDR and the New Deal Congress would have done that — but today's politicians hesitate even to suggest it.
*Ex-meteorologist names US heatwaves after oil and gas firms to shame them.*
It's a good idea, if we can make it catch on. Names of banks and insurance companies that finance fossil fuels can be used as well. Names of former companies are also available.
It is ok to reuse the names after all the good ones have been used once.
17 countries make attempted suicide a crime and punish those survivors. In several there are campaigns to repeal those laws.
(satire) *Congress Warns Shrimp Imported From China Could Be Spying On Americans.*
*Migrants at US border say Texas [national guard] soldiers denied them water.*
In my view, the fact that the migrants who reported this were pregnant does not change the issue. Non-pregnant people's lives deserve protection from heat and other dangers just like pregnant people's.
*Marine heatwave in north-east Queensland sets off alarm over health of Great Barrier Reef.*
The reefs of Florida and the Caribbean may be in danger too.
Painful and sometimes deadly extreme heat, around the world.
* A federal judge in [99]West Virginia ruled that the state corrections agency cannot force an incarcerated atheist and secular humanist to participate in religiously affiliated programming in order to be eligible for parole.*
Finally, atheist's rights not to yield to religion get legal respect.
The state ought to set up secular, or non-chi-uch-based, programs for this purpose. A non-religious-based program would be acceptable for everyone regardless of per views on religion.
The term "selling out" has been mostly forgotten in regard to music, because data from online access enables the music factories to fine-tune their products so well to match audience taste that there is little room for anything very surprising.
As the article explains, selling out is not an all-or-nothing dichotomy. Everyone makes compromises in life. The question is whether you let these compromises dominate your life and push what you used to "really care about" into a small corner.
In the free software community, that philosophy typically flies the flag of "open source".
*[Salafi Arabia] appears to be exploiting the US messaging app Snapchat to promote the image of [Crown Prince Bone Saw], while also imposing draconian sentences on influencers who use the platform to post even mild criticism of [him].*
Countries including the US should prohibit high-level collaboration, or significant ownership, of any social media company with dangerous foreign interests.
Protecting against the influence of dangerous domestic influence, such as planet roasters and other plutocratic companies, is not as easy to codify, but addressing the former might suggest how to address the latter.
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP: *With the climate in peril, winning slowly is the same as losing. How can Starmer settle for that?*
The same question applies to the US, and China, and most other developed countries.
Citizens of Atlanta are campaigning for a ballot initiative to cancel the Cop City projects. The city's lawyers have indicated they will sue to invalidate the initiative if it succeeds.
Why fight so desperately for this? It suggests they have a hidden, shameful reason.
A company dumped 20,000lb of mercury into Canadian rivers near an indigenous community. The mercury caused brain damage to the young people born subsequently in the community, which caused a high rate of brain damage and suicide.
I don't know if it is possible to punish today the company which did this in the 1960s. That may be too long ago. But is there any way to remove the mercury from the environment, to make it safe to live in?
If not, what can be done to prevent harm to future generations there?
American fascists threaten that the corrupter will take direct control of all federal agencies, including the Justice Department and the FBI and use them as his personal enforcers.
At least three on the Supreme Court have already said they support this.
US citizens: call on state election officials to Keep the insurrection leader off the 2024 ballot. He is disqualified by his insurrection under the 14th amendment.
Hong Kong "security" thugs grabbed relatives of two exiled dissidents.
Threatening the relatives in China of oversees Chinese is standard practice for China. Sometimes it is aimed at frightening dissidents, as in this case. Sometimes the threats are potential and meant just to keep oversees Chinese in line. Sometimes they are pressured to join in campaigns aimed at influence or infiltration of their host countries.
A bipartisan bill to ban stock trading by members of Congress and their families has some momentum.
How about including Supreme Court justices and their families, too.
Australians complain to the government ad regulator that a planet roaster ad campaign falsely claimed that fossil gas was 50% cleaner than coal.
Gas avoids the chemical and particulate pollution of coal, but seems to contribute far more to global heating.
An Australian government program that certifies companies as "carbon neutral" may be systematically greenwashing them.
City-born city-resident Jason Aldean sang a song praising violence against protesters in an imaginary small town. It also praised and encouraged lynching, and promotes the false claim that small rural towns are safer to live in than cities.
Right-wing extremists, including some Republican officials, just love it.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the College for All Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
June was the hottest month ever recorded; July may be worse. *If humanity really is at the controls, then it is drunk.*
The author hopes that the name "Anthropocene" will make people aware of the need to exercise wise stewardship of Earth's climate and land use. I have worried that it would make people drunk on a feeling of power, and suggested the name "Obscene" instead. "Chaoticene" is another idea, because that's what it is producing: unpredictable disasters. Though we can see some trends that will continue, the local effects may continue to include unpredictable disasters among the predicted disasters.
Jamie Driscoll, a Labour Party member and elected mayor, was blocked by the party executive from running again. He has responded by resigning in a huff.
I hope they don't send him to The Village. Perhaps there is no need, since he has made it clear why he resigned ;-{.
(satire) *138 Dead As Loud Sneeze Startles NRA Meeting.*
The US claims that Russia is planning to attack civilian ships in the Black sea and claim that Ukraine's mines blew them up. Also that Russia has planted more mines.
Ukraine can legitimately retaliate against Putin's threats to attack civilian ships sailing to and from Ukraine, by attacking ships sailing to Russian ports. Especially the main Russian oil export port, Novorossiysk. To avoid polluting the shore, it should attack tankers traveling empty into Novorossiysk. To maintain better relations with other countries, it should attack Russian-owned or Russian-flagged ships, but not make a commitment to limit attacks to them.
This would do enormous economic harm to Russia, and I expect it would convince Putin to reestablish the Ukraine food export deal.
Of course, there may be reasonable things for Ukraine's supporters to do to facilitate export of food from Russia.
The corrupter is officially under criminal investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential elections, and likely to be prosecuted.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold Clarence Thomas accountable — by passing the Supreme Court Ethics Act.
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The Putin forces attacked Odessa's port facilities, especially for grain export.
He has decided to go for all-out food warfare against the whole world, The whole world had better league together to make him stop.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Abortion Justice Act.
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US citizens: phone your congresscritter to urge per to sign the discharge petition for HJ Res 25, which would affirm the continued validity of the Equal Rights Amendment and allow it to be ratified by states now.
Enough states have ratified it already that it can take effect, if the old deadline is extended in this way.
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26 Indian opposition parties have allied to defeat Modi's repressive Hindu-nationalism.
*West Bank medics given bulletproof vests after rise in attacks by Israeli forces.*
I fear that the Israeli soldiers will shoot them in the head instead. Snipers can do that.
*The world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1m years, prior to human existence, because "we are damned fools” for not acting upon warnings over the climate crisis, according to James Hansen, the US scientist who alerted the world to the greenhouse effect in the 1980s.*
Everyone: Support the demand that oil sheikh al-Jaber resign as head of COP28.
Heiress Abigail Disney used to love riding in her father's private 737 jet. Now she joins civil disobedience to block airports for them, for the sake of climate defense.
I like this statement:
My father was a good and decent man, and so are most of the people who own private planes. But we are facing an active emergency, and decency is worthless when unaccompanied by meaningful action, including a vigorous inquiry into the consequences of our personal choices and preferences. And niceness is a hollow virtue if we do not lift a finger to keep our children and grandchildren safe.
However, I expect that anyone who actually made many millions of dollars in business must have been exploiting people somehow.
The London thug department gave crime victims' personal data to Facebook. They did this by putting a Facebook tracking pixel in a page for "securely and confidentially" reporting crimes including rape.
In general you cannot trust a web site that says the data you enter is "secure". That could change if and when creating a tracking pixel and putting one into a web site are both criminal offenses.
*[Big US] tax prep companies shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds.* This too was done using tracking pixels.
Please avoid using the term "sharing" to refer to snooping on people and sending their personal data to a company.
New pun:
Nowadays the main use of the spells known as cantrips is to make parachute cloth.
*House Republicans Grease Dark Money Wheels in “Election Integrity” Bill.*
As with most Republican bills, and some "centrist" Democratic bills, the name is perfect and total hypocrisy.
In-N-Out Burger will fire employees who wear masks to protect themselves.
The company pretended to be acting out of concern for its workers when it refused to check customers' vaccination status, but its true level of concern for them is apparent now.
California's supreme court ruled that employees of Oober Eats have the right to sue that company collectively.
If they sue and win. the company will exploit them less. But the food delivery gig companies are parasites, on their workers and on the restaurants they deliver food from.
Please join me in never using them.
Meanwhile, it should be illegal for companies to require either their workers or their customers to agree to mandatory arbitration. That deck is typically stacked in favor of the company.
Children need chances to play freely in groups, but many adults have made a career of organizing childrens' play so that the children have no chance to learn to organize play together.
(satire) *RNC Sets Cutoff For First Debate At [a minimum of] 20,000 Ethics Violations.*
The Freedom to Vote Act would prohibit states from rigging elections using voter suppression, gerrymandering and election sabotage.
It would also help expose secret campaign contributions that billionaires use to buy influence and set the political agenda.
This is important, and if we cannot pass it now, we can use it to elect representatives who will do so.
Jamie Driscoll, Labour mayor who quit the party to run as an independent, says that Labour voters in his region support him, and are unhappy with the way the party is going.
The Greenwood district of Tulsa recovered after the Tulsa race massacre, but was destroyed again by building an interstate highway through it. Now there is a plan to let Greenwood recover again by removing the highway.
There may be a lot of practical opposition to removing the highway which is not based on racism. Does a renewed Greenwood necessarily have to be in the same place?
Britain has convicted 28,000 people of violating Covid-19 lockdown regulations, mostly minor violations, and is still prosecuting people for offenses some years ago.
*Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc (more precisely, asbestos found in talc) to cancer.*
*Airport expansion does not boost UK growth or productivity — report.*
"Give funds to our industry and the country will benefit" is a common thing for businesses to say, but we should never trust them.
Biden said he will cancel a remaining student debt for some low-income former students who have been paying for 20 or 25 years.
They may well be the people most harmed by student debt in the US, so starting with them is reasonable. I hope he is not going to stop with them.
*Europe should cap "luxury" energy use to meet emissions targets, study says.* Limiting demand of richest 20% saves seven times greenhouse gases required to meet needs of poorest 20%, researchers find.*
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and urge per to vote against Republican plans to defund IRS auditing of rich people.
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US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to hold a vote of the full senate to confirm new FCC commissioners.
Massachusetts residents: call on State lawmakers to end ICE detention agreements in Massachusetts.
Here's what I put in the text area. It suggests small enhancements to the bill.
An Act Relative to Massachusetts State Sovereignty" (H.1401/S.997) would:
1. Ensure that Massachusetts money and resources are used for state and local priorities, not federal immigration enforcement;
2. Prohibit all Massachusetts entities, including sheriffs, from starting or renewing contracts with ICE to rent bed space for immigration detention;
3. Prohibit all Massachusetts entities from donating state employee time to ICE via 287(g) agreements;
4. Require local law enforcement to seek and receive authorization from the Governor before signing any contracts with the federal government [[SHOULDN'T THIS CANCEL ALL EXISTING CONTRACTS UNLESS THE GOVERNOR AUTHORIZES THEM TO CONTINUE?]]; and
5. Empower state officials to ensure a proper, lawful, and productive relationship with the federal government that promotes the interests of the Commonwealth.
I hope you will co-sponsor this bill and urge your colleagues to pass this important legislation this session.
*There's no point to Labour as a party if it won't [spend state funds] to pull children out of poverty.*
I agree. The Starmerian Labour Party is a fundamental change from the past. It somewhat resembles Tony B'liar's "New Labour", but goes further because it won't allow anyone but centrists is allowed to be a candidate.
*The party claims its demands will be met with more economic growth — an argument no different to that of the Tories. Growth without redistribution merely shovels more wealth into the bank accounts of the already well off: that is what our economic model — which Labour plans to leave untouched — achieves in spades.*
This shows how fully the Labour Party has adopted the business-prioritizing policy that Tories used to follow before they went totally nuts.
The EU agreed to pay Tunisia a billion euros to try to stop refugees from sailing to the EU. Now the dictator of Tunisia says that the deal does not include deporting anyone there other than Tunisians.
Tunisia is ruled by a president who was elected democratically, then effectively abolished the legislature and human rights. It is a variation on the usual fascist takeover.
The EU plans to set up official paths for Tunisians to request work and study visas. As for people seeking asylum — and surely under a dictator some people will need that — there may not be any way. Neither Algeria nor Libya is a safe place for them to get asylum.
Planet roaster think tanks are tricking whale defenders into blocking renewable energy, by "teaching" them that sea-based wind turbines endanger whales. Then they lobby against building the wind turbines we urgently need.
The heat wave in Greece has caused rapid wildfires that are almost impossible to stop.
This is similar to what is happening in many other countries. Keep in mind that five years from now it will be much worse. Ten years from now it will be much worse again, if we let the fossil fuel companies continue to increase their output.
The corrupter's slate of false electors for Michigan have been charged with eight felonies each.
He recruited them to claim, falsely, to be the official electors of the state and to assert, falsely, that the corrupter had won the Michigan election.
(satire) *Bride Requiring All Bridesmaids To Get Matching Plastic Surgery For Wedding Day.*
(satire) *Disney Cracks Down On Copyright Infringement [by] People Picturing Mickey Mouse While Masturbating.*
This is only a joke, but there is a real push to make reading and understanding a text be considered as copyright infringement. Training a natural language system involves having it read many texts and learn from each one about what is reasonable English.
Hollywood studios demanded (in union negotiations) the right to use an actor's image for AI simulation, in perpetuity, paying a small amount per day.
*Saudi Arabia's Huge U.S. Investments Lose Money — but Buy Influence.*
The influence extends to the US government, and will help Crown Prince Bone Saw next time he has a journalist murdered or starts a war. Or, even worse, lobbies against saving the world from the climate crisis.
US citizens: call on Congress to get foreign money out of US elections. Even more important is to get US money out of US elections. We should do both.
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US citizens: call on Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Sue Gove to give laid-off workers severance pay.
There will be a small error message embedded in the immediate response; just ignore that.
US citizens: oppose laws that allow carrying weapons without any sort of permit.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Republicans' national abortion ban.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
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*Phoenix's extreme heatwave tests the limits of survival.*
The hottest days there have always endangered human life, but now thanks to the developing climate crisis it is considerably more dangerous.
Ten years from now it will be considerably more dangerous than this year.
Scottsdale, Arizona, has banned the creation of new lawns, to conserve water.
I hope this is sufficient, but I expect that in a few more years it will be necessary to get rid of most existing lawns.
*Big oil quietly walks back on climate pledges as global heat records tumble.*
Robert F Kennedy has endorsed another conspiracy theory.
The only thing you can count on from him is to be right-wing and anti-rational.
US citizens: call on your senators to move quickly to confirm Biden's judicial nominees.
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Dentistry in the NHS is imploding; many dentists have gone to private practice and now charge more than most patients can afford. This puts pressure on the remaining NHS dentists to go private too.
The Tories are doing nothing to reverse this — in my view, because they want to eliminate the NHS and privatize medicine in Britain.
I expect this is a preview of what will happen to more areas of NHS medicine. The poor will then die and cease to be a burden on the rich.
US citizens: call on the Interior Department to protect Bears Ears from uranium mining.
Bullshit marketing claims are very convincing in poor countries whose people have not learned to be skeptical of them. This is teaching a generation of young people to get used to lots of dangerous added salt and sugar.
A state investigation found that state thugs made fake reports about traffic tickets they had issued. But it is not yet clear how many did this.
The practice seems to have been designed to cover up racial profiling in the real issuance of traffic tickets.
*Deep-sea mining causes huge decreases in sealife across wide region, says study.* Decreases of over 50% for some species. The decrease was observed a year after the mining, and extended beyond the area that was actually mined.
The US Export-Import bank approved a loan to support more export of fossil gas from the US.
Advice for teaching the public to recognize the danger of the gradually advancing but ultimately fatal climate disaster.
I'm inclined to value this advice because it starts by recognizing that the terms "climate change" and "global warming" are too weak to make people recognize this as a pressing danger. They are, effectively, euphemisms, and "climate change" was adopted to be one.
*Nearly 120 Million People in US Under Extreme Weather Alerts.* Worse will surely happen within the next five years. Look up! Look up!
Kale grown in the US has shown high levels of toxic PFAS. Ironically, "organic" Kale had higher levels of them.
We can't deny that PFAS are organic compounds — they contain carbon.
Hungary's biggest bookstore company now puts plastic wrappers over books that have queer characters, under pressure from right-wing bullies that act as auxiliaries of the right-wing government. This means people cannot see any of the book's contents before deciding whether to buy it.
*Plastic pollution on coral reefs gets worse the deeper you go, study finds.*
This confirms that the biggest source of plastic in the ocean is lost or discarded fishing gear. We need strict laws about bringing all plastic (or partly plastic) fishing gear back to port, whether it is suitable for further use or not.
Food delivery companies used a lawsuit to block a New York City minimum wage law for food delivery workers.
They claimed that the wage increase would harm their business, and it would reduce the number of employees they hire. Maybe so, but so what? That's what all businesses say to justify exploiting workers.
One should never trust them, because exaggeration is their stock in trade.
Italy's right-wing government is trying to take control of the judiciary.
This is a standard right-wing move to establish authoritarian government, applied (using different methods) in Poland, Hungary, Israel and the US.
*A New Bill [being considered by the Senate] Would Force [various internet services] to Spy on Their Users for the DEA.*
In principle, I support stopping internet stores from selling fentanyl, and drugs containing admixtures of fentanyl. The question is what price we pay in liberty and privacy to achieve that.
Requiring stores to carry out due diligence to prevent this is fine, even if it means they have to charge more for their service of selling in some cases.
*US south-west bakes under potentially deadly record high temperatures.*
If there are Republicans near you, this is their fault — indirectly, because they have fought the efforts to curb global heating before it reached this point. They are led by various billionaires, including the ones that sell fossil fuels. Don't let them off the hook!
Peace in Colombia has led to a decrease in the rate of deforestation. It is not enough to make Colombian forests safe, but it is a good start.
*In-N-Out orders workers not to wear masks without doctor's note.*
DeMentis is training a personal militia to serve him; it purported to be an unarmed "civilian defense force" for disaster relief, but that seems to have been a disguise.
We must expect American fascists to set up militias to carry out violence for their cause. The Republican Party is now more or less fascistified, so maybe that's what this is.
The Republicans' latest election bill is designed to make secret election spending easier and make voting more difficult.
*Remaining "Calm" About Climate Change Will Kill Us.*
I think the term "climate change" was promoted to keep us "calm".
A lawsuit alleges that US thugs killed Michael Reinoehl by shooting him repeatedly as soon as they saw him, without even shouting "Police!"
*Seventeen states have enacted broad anti-disclosure laws since 2018 that will further conceal the influence of dark money in politics.*
This is organized by ALEC.
The latest antiabortionist strategy is to leave some narrow exceptions in their prohibitions, and cite them to claim that "abortion isn't banned."
Those exceptions do make some difference, but they don't alter the fact that abortion is banned in the normal case.
Republicans are directly attacking freedom of religion in the US by giving privilege to Christianity. They aim to demolish our country's "wall between church and state" so that there will be nothing to shield us from them.
*Starmer’s Labour are not simply defined by what it will stand up for but what it won’t. If the Labour party isn’t comfortable coming out for decent child benefits, universal social care or tackling climate change, it hardly needs a manifesto to show voters what its values are. It has made that quite clear already.*
In effect, Starmer has made Labour into a "centrist" party — one which labels any adequate solution as "too radical".
The US government canceled Robert J Oppenheimer for advocating the idea of dealing with nuclear weapons in a way designed to prevent future wars.
Reports from Sudanese who opposed the military coup, and now oppose both military factions.
Governments tend to treat preserving the environment as a luxury and consider it only when there is no pressing crisis. Now that the environment includes the climate crisis, we cannot afford that.
Robert Reich: the Federal Reserve should say "enough" now that US inflation has gone down to 3% per year.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Recovering America's Wildlife Act. This would give states and tribes funds for protecting endangered species.
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*Google lays off contractors who unionized last month. Suspecting retaliation, the discharged workers have begun a hearing with the NLRB.*
Extreme heat in Greece made it necessary to close the Acropolis to protect tourists from the sun.
Assad decided to open the aid channel from Turkey to northern Syria, but it will be under his control instead of the UN's.
*Cluster munitions from the US arrive in Ukraine.*
The reason for sending cluster munitions to Ukraine is that the West cannot manufacture shells anywhere near as fast as Ukraine fires them. The only way to keep Ukraine fighting is to take them from the large stockpile of cluster munitions.
I understand the logic of this, but it doesn't eliminate the danger that the unexploded submunitions will pose after the fighting stops.
I wonder if anyone has calculated what fraction of unexploded munitions left in the battlefields will come from cluster munitions fired by Ukraine. If it is a small fraction, in the end Ukraine's use of cluster munitions will not make a big difference. If it is a large fraction, then it will be the main cause of that future danger.
The OECD says that future artificial intelligence will mostly eliminate skilled jobs (well-paid jobs).
When human skill is no longer needed, the plutocrats will push everyone down into inescapable poverty — until we overthrow them.
A major project to plan Australia's decarbonization says that nuclear power is simply too expensive and too far in the future to play any role.
The report also suggests that making hydrogen using fossil fuel may permit storing or reusing enough of the CO2 that it can aid decarbonization. I am skeptical, but if they say so, maybe it is true.
* Barbers on Strike, author Michelle Recinos’s collection of short stories, has apparently upset strongman president Nayib Bukele.* He had her book banned.
*Guatemala prosecutor suspends party of anti-corruption election candidate.* This was because that party got enough votes to make it into the final run-off.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop future abuse of executive power by passing the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
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Unionized students of UCSD held a nonviolent protest against the chancellor for not implementing the agreed-on raise for student employees. The university retaliated by arresting some of them. on charges that seem to be an exaggeration of the truth.
Like Facebook, Threads does not have users, only useds. It is a scheme for snooping on whoever is foolish enough to get involved with it.
An Israeli play from 1970, which showed the strength of hatred for Arabs, has been brought back to the stage, with Arab citizens of Israel as its actors.
Republicans are attacking official bodies and researchers who try to reduce Republican disinformation.
The US deportation thugs disregarded Biden's order to drop the bully's blanket deportation policy.
*The Guardian view on public sector pay: higher taxes on the rich are needed to fix broke Britannia.*
Funds are needed for many other areas in which plutocratists have cut public investment and support for poor and disadvantaged people. That is clear to us — but not, apparently, to today's leaders of Labour.
A party that fails to advocate taxing the rich is on the side of harm. Maybe somewhat less so than the Tories, but still.
UK internet services use dark patterns to steer people away from the special rates for people who are supposed to get assistance.
*Paris to charge SUV drivers higher parking fees to tackle "auto-besity".*
The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar) has reported that *America’s huge, badly-coordinated and politically-driven aid programme in Afghanistan engendered the corruption that undermined its entire mission and turned Afghans away from the western coalition.*
Why do some orcas nowadays attack boats? The fact is we know nothing about their reasons or what they think about boats.
The UK proposes to develop additional fossil fuel extraction, supposedly for "energy security", but it would make little difference for that.
The way to get energy security is to build electric storage and renewable generation. The real motive for this fossil fuel project is surely to enrich some of the plutocrats that the Tory Party works for.
Review of *Fevered Planet: How Diseases Emerge When We Harm Nature*.
*"Double agents": how US cities, tech firms and universities use fossil fuel lobbyists.*
Florida Republicans are waging lawfare on voter registration organizations.
For instance, some organizations get fined because a person registering wrote the wrong county name from ignorance.
Food-delivery companies in New York City are using their money to block efforts to establish a livable minimum wage for their workers.
Those companies track and mistreat the customers while cheating restaurants. Please reject them!
Should we be concerned that seizing frozen assets of Putin and his oligarchs might "let Putin paint himself as the victim"?
When dealing with a bare-faced disinformationist, such as Putin or Trump, the concern about "giving per an opportunity to pretend to the victim" is obsolete. If they don't have a real opportunity, they fake one. Best not to worry about the matter.
There is no mistaking, this year, that global heating has gone dangerously far.
That is the sign that we needed to take action years ago. It was scientifically clear all along that if we waited till the effects were visible to everyone, we would have waited too long,
What no one could predict was that the US would be in the grip of an enormous murder-suicide plot called the Republican Party.
The American Medical Association announced it will "stand with" doctors that violate for medical reasons state laws that prohibit certain kinds of medical treatment.
The progressive party that got the most votes in the Thai election has been blocked from governing, and its supporters (including most of the young people) are angry.
It is normal in a parliamentary system that forming a government requires support from a majority of parliament. It is normal, though unusual, that the party with the most seats is blocked from forming a government by a coalition of other parties.
What is not normal about the Thai system is that parliament includes members who were not elected — rather, appointed by the army. The closest thing to this that I know of is the UK's House of Lords.
How people nowadays appropriate terms and concepts from psychotherapy, or pop psychology, and use them to justify making rigid demands of lovers, friends and relatives.
The oil sheikh paradoxically in charge of the Cop28 climate conference now speaks clearly and firmly in favor of decarbonization, and "the phase down of fossil fuels."
That is a change for the better, but we can't take for granted that he is serious.
*[The bullshitter's] CFPB Saboteurs Tell The Supreme Court To Finish The Job.*
UK citizens: call for laws to protect the right and possibility of paying cash.
The petition is weakened by the words "at least until 2050", but it is better than nothing.
US citizens: tell Biden that his nomination of Elliott Abrams for a diplomatic post is unacceptable.
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US citizens: call on Congress to address inequality by taxing billionaire wealth gains.
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Putin is using millions of Syrians as pawns by playing with their food and medical aid.
To some extent, the US joined in the game by rejecting the shorter renewal that Putin offered. It would have been better than none.
The Mountain Valley pipeline has been blocked again by a court, which said that the Endangered Species Act was not properly applied.
Hong Kong grabbed the family of Nathan Law, exiled dissident, for questioning.
US citizens: call on Congress to say NO to a nearly $1,000,000,000,000 Pentagon budget.
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US citizens: call on your congresscritter to require the Pentagon to do a full accounting of its greenhouse gas emissions.
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US citizens: call on Congress to reject Sinema's plan to reduce flight training requirements for commercial pilots.
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Some of the sufferers of Long Covid are organizing to test treatments that have been found to benefit a few, though no one understands why.
*Spain closes Pegasus investigation over ‘lack of cooperation’ from Israel.*
I would hope Spain would have ways to put pressure on Israel to cooperate with this investigation — for instance, sanctions.
A right-wing senator is blocking every appointment to an office in the Pentagon as a vindictive display of hostility to Biden's policy of paying personnel's travel cost for getting an abortion.
*Rightwingers say "pink-haired liberals" are killing New York pizza.* In fact, *An air quality rule passed seven years ago requires some shops to install air filters like those used in Italy.*
The EU is considering legalizing small gene changes in plants for cultivation, as an exception to the general policy prohibiting them.
This might be acceptable provided that the law also makes them an exception to patent law: patents should not cover the use of these plants.
DeMentis advocates putting an end to China's permanent right to normal, unrestricted trade with the US.
To do this would require putting an end to the World Trade Organization. I am in favor of this, but it won't be easy for the US to defeat the plutocratist forces that benefit from the WTO.
DeMentis probably thinks that the US will be able to use this against China better than China can use it against the US. I make no such assumption, but I think that without the WTO we could do environmental protection and decarbonization better.
The tide is turning against the rush to use "carbon offsets" as a method of pretend decarbonization.
*Programs to detect [writing made by machine learning models] [tend to] discriminate against non-native English speakers, shows study.
It is general experience that programs intended to judge people often turn out biased, even if there was no intention to do that.
Robert Reich: Biden has failed to take the side of workers against their bosses.
* Almost 200 bird species found to build nests with human litter, including cigarette butts, plastic bags and fishing nets.* These materials could be harmful to the growing chicks.
Independent evidence is being used to piece together the actions of the Greek coast guard vessel that failed to rescue migrants from a trawler. There is evidence that the trawler sank because the coast guard vessel towed it — which the government's story covers up.
After rescuing some of the migrants, Greek officials stole their phones. The coast guard vessel's cameras, intended to record the facts in such situations, were somehow not in operation. And there is evidence that agents of a secret "security" unit were present.
The US used price controls effectively to prevent inflation during World War II, without hurting workers. It could do this again now, but most economists don't want it to be considered.
Why not? Perhaps because they are supported by (and thus serve) the right-wing interests of business.
Australia's universities have been corrupted by government pressure to make profit the goal.
I expect that the right-wing ideology of the previous government encouraged this, but the change seems to have been happening for longer than that.
US citizens: call on Biden to ban the worst uses of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
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The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
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US citizens: call on your state governor to help wild animals cross the roads.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
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Prigozhin has continued occasionally meeting with Putin since his apparent "coup attempt."
This lends support to the idea that it was theater, not a real coup.
Drug companies' money is keeping the UK's NHS from collapse, but also corrupting every part of it.
To keep the NHS effective and honest, it must be funded adequately by the state.
*Corporate profits were the biggest factor driving up prices last year and will be again in 2023 unless businesses are forced to absorb rising wage bills, the head of the European Central Bank has said.*
US citizens: call on Congress to tax excessive CEO pay.
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The small Indian state of Manipur has split between its two ethnic groups, which have withdrawn into separate fortified territories.
The Indian government with its strong religious bias is not very well suited to doing anything to resolve this problem — if anyone has a way to do so.
*Sudan on brink of all-out civil war, UN chief warns.*
I don't post much about Sudan because I don't know what to say except "How sad." I don't have any insight into the fighting, and I have no ideas to suggest. Neither does anyone else, so I can't comment on proposed resolutions or actions.
*Future of deep-sea mining hangs in balance as opposition grows.*
*Heatwave last summer killed 61,000 people in Europe, research finds.*
This is surely just a small fraction of the people killed in 2022 by the increasing heat of global heating. People die from heat on every hot day, even normal summer days, and as normal summer days get hotter, more people die from the heat.
Global heating kills people in indirect ways, including due to food shortages caused by floods and droughts. I'd expect it to be millions per year. Can anyone find a plausible estimate?
US citizens: call on the IRS not to let dirty hydrogen (dirty because made from fossil fuels) get deductions for clean energy.
*NYC will require businesses to prove A.I. employment software isn't racist or sexist.*
Bias in AI systems used to judge individual humans is a well-known problem, and I support this effort to prevent it. But it won't be trivial to check for bias.
A Los Angeles county thug attacked and tackled a woman for making a video of the arrest of her husband.
Thugs that unjustly attack people for upholding their rights and other people's rights should go to prison!
A Florida law which prohibits citizens of certain countries from owning property is being criticized as "racism against Asians", but it is clear that that is confusion.
The law prohibits citizens of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria from buying property within 10 miles of "critical infrastructure."
Of those countries, China, Iran, North Korea and Syria are in Asia. Cuba and Venezuela are not. Russia is partly in Europe and partly in Asia. This law is clearly not directed at "Asians".
The fact that South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are not in the list shows that this is no racism against East Asians. The inclusion of Syria but bot Jordan and Iraq shows this is not a matter of racism against Arabs. The inclusion of Colombia and the Dominican Republic shows that this law is not about racism against Hispanics.
The law is clearly intended to terrorize scapegoats, since instead of simply prohibiting the purchase, it proposes to put the purchaser in prison: a terrible danger to anyone who might overlook some piece of critical infrastructure 9 miles away.
The ban appears to be limited to a small fraction of the state's territory, but I suspect that in practice important urban areas are entirely excluded because cities tend to have airports, seaports, power plants, water/sewage treatment sites, and military bases scattered around. (Consider, for comparison, the way many cities have almost nowhere that someone on the sex offender list is permitted to live.)
I think Republicans are constructing an imaginary "national security" scare so they can pretend to "protect" the country from it, and adding a little scapegoating so that they look tough. If they wanted to truly protect the US from acts of sabotage, they ought to make it apply to Republicans instead of Chinese.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Preemption of Real Property Discrimination Act.
The campaign presents the state laws this would preempt as racist, but at least in the case of the Florida law, that is not so. That law seems to be a bogus response to an fabricated security threat.
Either way, these laws should not exist.
US citizens: call on your senators to reject the No START Bill, which prohibits nuclear missile limitation treaties.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on NOAA to impose 10-knot speed limits on ships in Gulf of Mexico to protect endangered Rice's whales.
If you have disabled the page's JavaScript, you may get a blank response after signing. That does not mean anything is wrong; your signature has probably been sent in properly. The blank screen has text that is rendered invisible by CSS; if your browser gives you a way to disable the CSS in the page (as Icecat does), that should make the text appear.
How Putin's government adapted a system for finding and eliminating various kinds of illegal "content" to find and eliminate dissent as well.
Grey whales ask humans (in boats) to remove "lice" from their heads. When humans do this, the whales come back for more.
Whales need to have some of those symbionts, so there is some danger the whales might ask humans to remove too many. Or maybe the whales will naturally DTRT.
I like the idea of intentional cooperation between humans and whales.
As America puts more thugs in schools, and fewer nurses, social workers and counselors, this giving the priority to imposing order rather than education. some experiment with restorative justice instead.
Restorative justice takes more time. Do we think that raising children well is worth that effort? Maybe we should have fewer children and put more time into raising each one.
Kerala has organized thousands of women to cook a little extra food and donate it to a plan that provides food for patients in hospitals.
There are so many volunteer cooks that each one is asked to do this only occasionally.
The person who receives the donation does not know the cook's religion or caste. By eating the food, they learn to reduce caste and religious prejudice in their own minds.
Japan plans to release slowly into the ocean a large amount of water containing an extremely low concentration of tritium.
Many countries are shouting about this. Is it really dangerous, or is that irrational exaggeration? I can't be certain, but I think it is irrational.
Japan claims that other nuclear power plants in the region release larger amounts of tritium annually than this water would. Indeed, Wikipedia's article on Tritium lists nuclear facilities that release much larger amounts of tritium, totaling almost 100 times what the Fukushima storage tanks would release — and the list is not complete.
It is clear that people are making an inordinate fuss about this tritium because it came from a major nuclear accident rather than from operating a reactor. However, the tritium itself is indistinguishable.
Nuclear reactors generate waste that is truly dangerous. That is the reason not to build more nuclear reactors — that and the danger that enemies will bomb them. In addition, they are so expensive and slow to build that they slow down decarbonization. Those are good reasons not to build more of them.
Likewise for the chemical industry — consider PFAS, which are toxic in very small amounts which are not radioactive and therefore don't decay at all.
An international conference about reducing greenhouse emissions from shipping did not agree on any concrete plan to do that — only a long-term target.
Long-term targets don't achieve anything unless followed by concrete short-term plans.
Academics that study social change say that movements with high public support can use disruptive protests effectively to push for action.
*US must urgently treat men tortured at Guantánamo, UN investigator says.*
The US National Weather Service has been using Twitter to receive reports from storm spotters. Due to recent Musk madness, that has started to fail.
Twitter is unsuitable for anything that really needs to work.
The profits of the world's biggest corporations have nearly doubled since the period 2017-2020.
France is legalizing state surveillance by remotely activating people's devices. The law says that a judge's specific authorization is required, so it is not as bad as it could be. But even with safeguards, a surveillance state can be menacing.
France has banned an annual march to commemorate the killing of Adama Traoré, who was killed by thugs in 2016.
Josh Appignanesi writes about how he learned that joining in the climate defense battle does not require becoming a different person. Nor does it require dedicating every minute of your waking life to the cause.
It's the same with fighting for software freedom. Taking steps towards less dependence on unjust computing will enable you to help.
The sad thing is when climate defense activities are set up to require people to run nonfree software. Many of their web sites do that. They shouldn't demand we choose between one of these good causes and the other — it is a gratuitous own goal.
Australia's previous government, plutocratist and right-wing to the core, scapegoated the poor and accused welfare recipients of nonexistent fraud. It imposed fake debts on destitute people, and it intimidated those who reported the wrongs.
A government inquiry recommends prosecution of some ministers. But we also must denounce the scapegoating of the poor.
Migrant-smugglers typically recruit, or conscript, one of the migrants to run and direct the boat — so that the real smugglers can be far away if the boat is captured. After one boat fell apart and sank, its conscript faces charges for the death of some refugees.
The prosecutor said straight out that the fact the smugglers forced the conscript to do this, and beat him when he tried to refuse, was no excuse. This is an unusual form of a frequent prosecutor's excuse for treating someone as guilty who is manifestly innocent. The more usual form is "joint and several liability", where you can be convicted of murder that someone else committed.
The construction and testing of the mini-submarine that imploded trying to visit the Titanic were characterized by schemes to evade regulations. That was inviting disaster, and indeed disaster came.
The company used a contractual scheme to label passengers as "crew", to avoid liability in case they died.
Ralph Nader's suggestions to progressive activist groups.
US maternal deaths doubled from 1999 to 2019 — and that period does not count whatever effect Covid-19 had.
The cause is not clear, but since black mothers die at a much higher rate, it probably has to do with racism and to right-wing policies.
Bernie Sanders calls for massive government investment in education to fill America's shortage of all sorts of medical personnel.
*U.S. public pension funds would be $21 billion richer had they divested from fossil fuels a decade ago.*
*Improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target, research suggests.*
*True patriotism is the opposite of Trump's White Christian Nationalism.*
*US expected to provide cluster bombs to Ukraine.*
The US and Ukraine surely know how devastating cluster bombs are to civilians after the fighting — so why do they consider using them? What advantage do they think those have, to outweigh what is bad about them?
The foolish response to sea-level rise: two people are trying to preserve a small island they own by building sea walls.
This is futile because sea-level rise is accelerating. If they heroically manage to keep up with it this decade, they won't keep up next decade. By the end of this century, all their work will have been erased.
What a shame they aren't putting all that effort into an effort that may not be futile — that may actually win a victory.
We can't save everything, and scattering our efforts makes them futile. We must concentrate on defeating the planet roasters who are deliberately accelerating the problem.
Many US employers forbid workers to sit (ever) while on the job, This is worse than uncomfortable; it builds up injuries.
The experience of many other countries shows that businesses can function just fine while permitting staff to sit occasionally. But suppose that were not true — would that justify the policy? Should the employer's interests entirely override the well-being of the workers?
Of course not.
"Right to sit" laws ought to exist, but that is a very narrow remedy, for this specific method of mistreating workers. What we really need are "right to strong unions" laws, that will help workers deal with many kinds of wrongs by employers, including this kind.
Former Israeli elected officials are being investigated for "sedition" after calling for nonviolent protests.
The protests were to be against right-wing plans for a fascist judiciary.
Israel is being taken over by fascism. Where can Israelis who want to live in a democracy with human rights move to?
Hong Kong has established a bounty of over $100,000 for the arrest of any of the exiles accused of violating the "national security" censorship law.
The natural response is for other countries to make it a crime to try to capture those freedom defenders, and offer a similar bounty for the arrest of anyone involved in trying to arrest them.
Hong Kong has arrested former protest leaders. One was arrested at the airport, leading me to wonder if he was trying to flee to a safe haven.
The Hong Kong "national security" law applies to "crimes" "committed" before that law was passed. In US legal terms, it is an "ex-post-facto" law. The US Constitution bans ex-post-facto criminalization. Many other countries do likewise — because it is evident that such a law amounts to, "If we don't like you, we will put you in prison."
That's Hong Kong for you — and that's China for you.
I wonder if there is a way to arrange for Hong Kongers to flee without permission, as people fled from East Berlin.
Radical thoughts stated by the founders of the US Constitution.
Ironically amazing is Jefferson's ringing condemnation of slavery as evil — ironic given that he owned slaves and never freed them.
In the Declaration of Independence, he wrote a paragraph to condemn King George for the slave trade.
*Most [UK] doctors think ministers want to destroy the NHS, BMA boss says.*
I believe the same. It is a good thing that the NHS doctors recognize this, because they are the ones that have to fight it.
Australia is planning to demand that multi-national companies give economic data about their operations in other countries. Some Swiss conglomerates are making vague threats that they "won't invest so much in Australia."
Australia should tell them not to slam the door on the way out.
No country desperately needs investment to be made in ways that tend to subjugate the country to foreign plutocrats. The proposed Australian law will take the world one step closer to a progressive tax on corporations that would tend to pressure them to split up.
Bernie Sanders: Congress must act to overcome the planet roasters.
*Why are people dying at sea? They are fleeing disasters that we once called ‘biblical’, and now call normal.*
I rarely see an article which depicts how horrible is the fate that human activity is imposing on humans and nature. This is one.
I have to point out that the other jaw of the vise is over-reproduction. Having a few children is not much compared with what any plutocrat does, but it is harm you can avoid.
*Brazil: Amazon deforestation drops 34% in first six months under Lula.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are +1-202-224-3121, +1-888-818-6641 and +1-888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
A list of very important Labour Party policies that Starmer has discarded.
Driverless cars in San Francisco collect videos constantly using cameras inside and outside, and governments have already collected those videos secretly.
As the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project says, they are "driving us straight into authoritarianism."
I've warned of this for years.
I contend that we must regulate all cameras that collect images that can be used to track people, to make sure they are not used for that.
US citizens: call on Biden to call for Sultan Al Jaber to be removed as head of COP28.
The White House comments lines are +1-202-456-1111 and (TTY/TDD) +1-202-456-6213.
If you phone, please spread the word!
When the corrupter played with boxes of US military secrets, he was playing with the lives of Americans.
We don't need to assume that all US soldiers are always fighting for good and for justice to recognize that the corrupter's actions were a vile betrayal. It shows he is the enemy of the United States, and of all that is good in it — as well as the enemy of freedom and democracy in the United States.
Demanding that Unilever cease operating in Russia.
Global heating link to personal violence *Climate crisis linked to rising domestic violence in south Asia, study finds.*
This has been demonstrated for other parts of the world too.
*Study finds extreme rainfall at higher elevations increases by 8.3% for every degree Fahrenheit world warms.*
One incident of extreme rainfall at a place can do permanent damage.
Canada's wildfires, hotter and bigger than ever in history, can wipe out endangered species with one blow.
Texas's fossil fuel power plants have been failing during the heat wave, but increase solar generating capacity enabled Texas to cope.
You can tell which politicians work for the fossil fuel lobby, because they are disparaging solar power falsely.
The Thames Barrier, like a dam that can be opened and closed, protects London from surges of the North Sea. But, by 2070, sea level rise will leave it insufficiently tall, and impossible to maintain if they close it as often as it now must. It will have to be rebuilt.
Eventually protecting London will need a dam. And then it will become impossible.
The only way we can protect the thousands of threatened coastal cities is curb global heating, and then suck greenhouse gases out of the air.
(satire) *Multimillion-Dollar City Beautification Project Results In 3 New Blades Of Grass.*
Eighty Afghan civilians may have been summarily killed by [British military] SAS, inquiry told.
Hong Kong has filed charges of criticizing the government on democracy activists living in exile.
This is not a surprise — it is part and parcel of the Chinese repression in Hong Kong, and it is why people would be wise not to go to Hong Kong or any part of China. China has no reason to limit these charges to people who really have rebuked China's repression from other countries (not that it is justified to punish people for that).
False and dishonest charges are standard there too.
Perhaps the US should criminalize people outside the US who participate in placing criminal charges against people in the US for criticizing other countries.
The UK now has essentially a monopoly on printing magazines.
This sort of thing happens when anti-monopoly laws are too weak or too weakly enforced. That tends to happen due to plutocratist pressure on governments.
A doctor says the NHS has been collapsing since 2012, and has kept getting worse.
Even when Labour was in power, all was not well, Waiting lists for treatment were long. Of course, Tories have made it far worse.
What Tony B'liar's Labour Party and the Tories have in common is plutocratism. They are unwilling to tax the rich enough to make the NHS function properly, so they always under-fund it.
The Patriotic Millionaires UK warned the rich to expect "pitchforks and torches" if they don't stop pushing most people into poverty.
Starmer's men have expelled a decades-long Labour activist over a minor excuse — but really, over resisting his subjection of the party.
Here's what he has to say about it.
*Border agents promise better chance of asylum for those agreeing to go to Mexico and apply there, then strands them with no access.*
The article mentions an unreliable app. It does not mention that the app is an injustice because it is nonfree.
A warning from Planned Parenthood: if you are pregnant, stay out of Tennessee.
A report on pervasive tyranny in Rwanda: if you don't join President Kagama's rally, you will be individually noted and persecuted.
Rebecca Solnit: *The US supreme court has dismantled our rights (rights that we had won) but we still believe in them. Now we must fight.*
If you want to be safe from gun violence, know that Democrats tend to do it better. Republicans are more interested in making it easy for people to carry guns and shoot you.
Implementing low-emission-zones in a city tends to produce small but significant decreases in heart and lung disease.
I am in favor of limiting the use of high-pollution vehicles, but it must be implemented in a way that doesn't track where each car goes. Tracking people's movements is the foundation for tyranny and repression.
The culture in England around cricket is jam-packed with bigotry.
Swifts, remarkable birds that fly for months without landing, are running out of nest sites as old buildings are renovated. Hollow "swift bricks" built into new buildings provide them with new nest sites.
Everyone: call on WMO and NOAA to name climate disasters after fossil fuel companies.
Massachusetts residents: support the Massachusetts Location Shield Act.
Here is what I gave as my personalized message:
I urge you to support the Location Shield Act — but, as described in the articles I have seen, it has loopholes that may make it fail to achieve its laudable purpose.It would block the most obvious and usual way for states persecuting abortion patients (and those who help them) to get the data, but there are various others ways which they will not take long to think of. For instance, companies could be "persuaded" to "give away" the data. (States have ways to persuade them — think of what Governor DeMentis has tried with Disney. Most companies won't resist as Disney has.) States could also get the data by subpoena.
I suggest forbidding requiring entities that collect location data in Massachusetts to distribute that data to any entity under any basis, outside of a small list of exceptions such as subpoenas from federal courts or certain specially authorized Massachusetts courts.
This may call for requiring those entities to keep the data inside Massachusetts, stored in ways that Massachusetts law can reliably govern.
Those entities often store their personal data — including location data — on computers belonging to cloudy businesses which don't deal directly with those entities' clients: for instance, Amazon AWS. Persecuting states could get the data by subpoena directly from those businesses. That requirement proposed above about where and how to store the location data could address this loophole too.
The full solution to the danger of massive surveillance of people's movements is to prohibit collection of location data. Massive surveillance, of which tracking people's movements is an example, is the foundation of tyranny. Phones should not track people, and when a business asks where you are, it should have to be content with whatever answer you choose give it. You do not owe a business a truthful answer to whatever question it may ask you!
Buses, trains, taxis, cars, and payments systems often track people's movements. We should put a stop to that too. My associates are working on a software system for paying stores and internet subscriptions without identifying yourself — see taler.net for more information.
Ending massive surveillance is a big job and will take time, but a strengthened Location Shield Act could be an exemplary first step.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Inspector General and the Postal Regulatory Commission to Step in to Allow the Public to Provide Feedback on DeJoy's menacing Post Office changes.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to uphold the laws that protect minors from overwork and dangerous work.
*Centre for prosecuting crimes of aggression [in Ukraine] opens in The Hague.*
This war crime has been mostly neglected since the Nuremberg trials, as prosecutions focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity rather than the fundamental crime of launching aggressive war.
*Scientists ponder if climate has entered a new erratic era.*
*Biden lays out new student debt relief plan after supreme court ruling.*
He's not accepting defeat.
*[British] Campaigners vow to step up action against new North Sea oilfield.* Ministers know that the world has no room for this, and they are disregarding climate commitments to approve it.
This is plutocracy at work.
*Texas [prisoners] deprived of water and AC are fainting in jails that reach [up to 116°F].*
Water is a necessity for human life. The prison thugs are putting the prisoners' life and health in danger.
(satire) *Human Rights Organization Accuses Ron [DeMentis] Of Subjecting Migrants To One Of His Speeches.*
*"Resistance is possible": Ravish Kumar, the broadcaster risking his life to tell the truth about India today.*
A lawsuit accused the developers of ChatGPT of "stealing" people's personal data to train the system.
The article does not say how the company obtained that data. Security measures should have prevented that — how come they did not? Is it possible that the company got permission to use that data from other companies that had collected it?
Using the data can be wrong, but the fundamental wrong is collecting it at all.
*Israel’s far-right government fans the flames of vigilante settler violence.*
Several Palestinian militias are based in Jenin. Israel is systematically bombing them with drone attacks.
Possible Palestinian fighters are referred to as "suspected" whatever. Israeli soldiers who fight are never "suspected" of anything.
*[Brazilian] Judges ban Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years over "appalling lies".*
If only US judges had the good sense to do that.
*France has ignored racist police violence for decades. These riots are the price of that denial.*
Putin is rapidly evacuating personnel from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and Ukraine claims he plans to blow up part of it.
This would be tantamount to using a dirty nuclear weapon. I suggest that the US warn Putin that it will attack the Putin forces with non-nuclear weapons if he does that.
The Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action is unconstitutional discrimination, but left one aspect that applicants of disprivileged demographic background can still cite: "an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise."
Interestingly, one right-wing justice rebuked Harvard for its discrimination in favor of students from extra-privileged backgrounds, those whose families had past association with Harvard. His point was somewhat confused, but there is a valid point to be made: since 43% of white Harvard students benefited from that privilege, eliminating that privilege could achieve, through fairness in process, much of the fairness of outcome that affirmative action has achieved.
Justice Jackson explains why affirmative action is needed to counteract generations of disadvantage which government policies imposed on the blacks of the time, and which today's blacks have more or less inherited.
Biden condemned the decision and said he will seek ways to maintain the effect of affirmative action despite the decision.
*The US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to preemptively bar a wealth tax.*
The London region water company has not invested in fixing enormous water leaks, causing shortages and waste, because it was more profitable to neglect its duty and wallow in greed. (What else would you expect from a big business under today's business attitudes?)
I suspect that the laws that govern these companies were designed to facilitate profiteering. The most important thing is to change them to demand responsibility and stop the profiteering.
The new Philippines president Marcos Jr. has made rhetoric smoother, and shifted international ties towards the US. Domestically, he has said a lot to portray himself as helping the poor, but not done much to knack it up.
*Voter ID is just one item in a long list of assaults on [UK] democracy. Breaches of standards in public office, clampdowns on protest and attacks on the judiciary have all featured in the last few years of Tory rule.*
Australian prisons are keeping minors in cells almost 24 hours a day.
This article describes one prison in one state, but I've seen others showing that this practice spans Australia.
I am sure most of these prisoners are too old to be considered "children". However, the laws to protect them are important — both to ensure work does not keep them out of school, and to ensure it doesn't do them physical harm.
Republicans in several states are attacking teachers' unions, with the support of millionaires such as the owners of Walmart.
This is one example of how plutocracy in the US supports dooH niboR, who takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
Uganda now sentences people to 10 years in prison for Homosexual sex. Advocating the rights of homosexuals is punished with 20 years.
Progressive legislators propose to cut military aid to Uganda in response.
It looks like Australia's government has proposed a law to facilitate new fossil fuel development.
A TV station presented a program that accurately showed how dolphins typically mate — a group of males league together to plan gang rape.
It leads humans to pose a question of which standards to judge dolphin behavior by — the standards of human morality, or dolphins' own nonhuman nature.
*Cost of living worsening health of children in UK, say school nurses.*
This is plutocracy at work.
An inquiry into the undercover UK cops who were sent to infiltrate peaceful protest groups in the 1970s has published its first partial report. It concludes that their investigation was intimate and had no justification whatsoever.
A pregnant woman went to a phony abortion clinic, a "crisis center," and was given a gravely erroneous diagnosis of her dangerous unviable pregnancy.
We must wonder if they misrepresented it intentionally to stop her from getting the abortion that she needed.
A UK appeals court gave reasons for rejecting the plan to make asylum seekers wait in Rwanda.
Rwanda's government is generally repressive.
This decision is not final — it may be reversed on appeal.
Short-term local opposition defeated Scotland's plan to establish serious protection for 10% of its waters.
This is a step towards pollution and extinction.
Many UK schools have been closed because their buildings are unsafe.
Hundreds were made decades ago with lightweight aerated concrete, which turns out to crumble eventually, but there are other kinds of problems too. However, the overall causes is that the government did not spend enough on inspecting, repairing and replacing schools buildings.
This is plutocracy at work. The government needs more money but hasn't got the courage to tax the rich more.
(satire) *Georgia Cuts Welfare Benefits For Recipients Caught Experiencing Happiness.*
(satire) *Texas Governor Adds Backup Prayer System To State Electricity Grid.*
Youtube is experimenting with blocking users found to be using ad-blockers.
Google ads work by tracking users and their activities. I don't particularly care whether an ad appears on my graphical virtual screen, since I don't have to actually watch it — I could do something else.
What matters to me is refusing to be identified, as well as not running nonfree JS code. If I can't pull in the video without being thus maltreated, that will make YouTube inaccessible for me once again.
The real determinant will be whether the Invidio.us proxies continue to work.
A long-elected Labour MO has accused Starmer of leading a "rightwing, illiberal" faction and trying to exclude all other ideas from the party.
I expect Starmer to respond to this demand to respect the room for disagreement in the party with force. He has already shown that leading over and over.
*[Prominent feminist writer] Caitlin Moran: what's gone wrong for men – and the thing that can fix them.*
I would not try to compare how bad today's society is for men with how it is for women. It seems to be pretty bad for both — partly because men and women are being pushed into penury by plutocracy, and into horrible social relations by anti-social media.
Moran has pointed out one important difference: women and girls have found ways to support each other publicly and talk about their collective difficulties in society. Men and boys need it too but have no place to turn to except woman-haters.
Thank you Ms Moran. I hope society finds a way out of this sad gender relations trap.
Enraged Palestinians and enraged Israelis are in a cycle of violence, but the Israeli violence seems to be much bigger.
The UK put preparation for pandemics aside to leave the EU in the most crude possible way.
*UK aid should not fund private hospitals in developing countries, says Oxfam.*
I agree. To aid the harmful plutocratist press for privatization is making things worse.
*The [US] Army warned Troops in 1945 of the Danger of Fascism. That Warning Rings True Today.*
Ralph Nader: the US's major newspapers are replacing serious news with tabloid-style distraction material.
*Plans to shorten medical training put quality of [UK medical treatment] at risk, doctors say.*
If the UK finds that it needs more money to provide everyone with proper medical treatment, it should tax the rich more.
Bernie Sanders rebuked the Supreme Court decision blocking Biden's planned method for canceling some student debt, and calls on Biden to use another method that the court can't block.
*French newspaper staff strike after "far-right personality" made editor.*
Global heating has made the Hajj dangerous. In a decade or two it may be deadly to quite a few.
Will the Muslim world take note of the danger of global heating, in which a few Muslim countries play significant roles?
*Despite record temperatures, some Chinese people are yet to connect the extreme heat to the climate crisis, something activists want to change.*
Once Chinese get used to the term "climate change," they need to get familiar with "climate collapse" and "climate disaster." They need to understand that climate disaster can destroy China just as it can destroy most or all other countries. And they should think of Shanghai inundated.
The global heating we have already caused will inevitably lead to rising sea level for centuries. But if we heat the Earth more, there will be even more sea level rise.
One projection is that 3°C of global heating will raise sea level up to 50 feet by 2300.
An Australian study recommends banning marketing "inducements" designed to make it hard to for people with gambling problems to resist gambling.
"Inducements" are a term for temporary promotions such as "Buy one, get one 'free'." (They ought to say, "gratis.")
Bad working conditions for Nepalese workers in Qatar are causing them permanent kidney problems — they need dialysis for the rest of their lives.
Qatar could correct this problem, but its rich rulers don't want to reduce their income.
Improved technology could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from ocean shipping by 50%. But it would cost money: the challenge is to compel the ship owners to pay it.
*After Roe's overturn, Republicans target trans rights using extremist rhetoric.*
West Virginia state thugs have been caught in crimes ranging from kidnaping to rape to drugging, and many other crimes, not quite as grave but still nasty.
The state governor is pushing the investigation.
*What will Ukraine do with Russian collaborators? Revenge would be a mistake.*
The article suggests distinguishing between those who sought power or advantage through the Russian puppet governments and those who simply carried on their legitimate civic jobs under Russian power.
The UK plans to close most ticket offices at railroad stations.
The unions are opposed to this because of possible job losses, but I see a danger to everyone. How will it be possible to buy a ticket? Will people be compelled to do it from a web site that imposes use of nonfree software and requires them to identify themselves?
What other options for buying train tickets exist now?
*Border Patrol Video of Killing Shows [Indigenous US Citizen Near Border] Had No Gun, Complied With Orders.*
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to confirm Biden's judicial nominations.
*Wage rises are driving inflation? Don’t swallow this dangerous rightwing myth.*
*Labour leadership accused of U-turn over rent controls.*
It calls for "getting interest rates under control" instead — but without trying to act on their true cause, it is mainly working against labor.
Extra! Extra! One of Marjorie Taylor Greene's crazy beliefs — that her TV set is watching her — may actually be correct, depending on which kind of TV set she has.
On the ethics, practicality and sustainability of farming octopuses.
Octopuses are so remote from us evolutionarily that they give a sample of how strange alien life could be. That we can relate to them at all is amazing.
Literally alien life is likely to be toxic to us, and we to it. Octopuses don't think of eating humans because they don't generally eat anything bigger than their heads.
A parliamentary committee is concerned that millions in the UK are failing to move into the internet of proprietary software and surveillance.
The Netherlands has to reduce the amount of beef farming because the farms' emissions of nitrogen are damaging ecosystems around them.
It's true we need farms in order to have food. But we don't need as much beef as we produce now — and for other reasons we must produce less.
Describing an experimental shelter for homeless families, designed to reduce their trauma and stress.
The homeless population of Los Angeles has jumped to 75,000 people.
The underlying cause is that the US handles housing to serve the interests of the rich.
French thugs shot and killed a driver of Arab origin for no sensible reason, then fabricated a fake reason. This has sparked protests all around France.
Global heating will make summer miserable for much of the US.
In the south, a heat dome. In the northeast, smoke from Canadian forest fires.
Until we reduce greenhouse gas levels, it will get worse and worse and worse.
Each note starts with a date and a brief topic in parentheses. That
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